More Warhammer 40,000 from Black Library

• BLACKSTONE FORTRESS •
Darius Hinks
Book 1: BLACKSTONE FORTRESS
Book 2: ASCENSION

VAULTS OF OBSIDIAN
A Blackstone Fortress anthology by various authors

THE BEAST INSIDE
A Blackstone Fortress audio drama by Darius Hinks

AUGUR OF DESPAIR
A Blackstone Fortress audio drama by Chris Dows

CORSAIR: FACE OF THE VOID
An audio drama by James Swallow

ROGUE TRADER: THE OMNIBUS
Andy Hoare

• DARK IMPERIUM •
Guy Haley
Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM
Book 2: PLAGUE WAR

• THE HORUSIAN WARS •
John French
Book 1: RESURRECTION
Book 2: INCARNATION

DIVINATION
A Horusian Wars anthology by John French

• MEPHISTON •
Darius Hinks
Book 1: BLOOD OF SANGUINIUS
Book 2: REVENANT CRUSADE
Book 3: CITY OF LIGHT

BELISARIUS CAWL: THE GREAT WORK
Guy Haley

RITES OF PASSAGE
Mike Brooks

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Before

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After

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Vaults of Obsidian’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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

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

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

BEFORE

Vorne had not come this far to be intimidated by screams. She had heard worse.

‘Do not be afraid,’ she said, her voice chiming through her faceplate. ‘I have come here to save you.’ She peered into the darkness, listening for movement. ‘I understand your fear. And your anger. Your talismans were fakes. Your spells are powerless. Your utopia was a lie. But the Emperor is real. He will scour your sin. He will bring you truth.’

There was no answer but, after a brief pause, Vorne heard a shuffling sound from the lower steps.

She pulled the flamer’s trigger. The promethium tanks were empty but the weapon had other ways to elevate the faithless. Sparks billowed as the underslung chainsword rattled into life. She glimpsed mutated flesh, a face of lipless mouths, then the teeth bit home, glittering the darkness with blood. The heretic tried to aim a stubber but she wrenched the chainsword free, severed his arm and kicked him down the steps. She followed and lunged again, hacking twice, finishing the baptism with a whispered prayer.

A metallic chorus swelled around her, filling the shadows. The voice of the Blackstone. Near the Crucible it was hungry and eager. This was the very heart of the fortress. Tinny shrieks and whistles assailed Vorne from every direction. It was like a mockery of birdsong, trills and warbles woven into a scream. It rose to a crescendo, gripping her shaven scalp, resonating in her skull. Vorne sneered, amused that the Blackstone thought she could be so easily cowed.

‘Vorne?’ called Taddeus.

‘I’m fine, eminence,’ she replied, staring down the blackness. ‘It’s nothing. Your false gods have deceived you,’ she said, addressing the shadows again. ‘They do not care if you live or die, because they are illusions, conjured madness. By turning your back on the God-Emperor, you have ensured that your souls will–’

There was another rustle of combat fatigues and she lunged, triggering the chainsword.

The teeth screamed, rattling uselessly against colourless rock, scattering sparks. A piece of the Blackstone had risen from the floor and formed itself into a mockery of the divine human form. Vorne cursed as her weapon kicked and bucked, sending painful tremors through her arms. She backed away and, before the sparks died, the column tumbled back down into steps, folding into faceted blackness.

This was new. She had seen the fortress assume many shapes and forms, but nothing that looked like a man. The Blackstone Fortress was becoming progressively less stable, and on this latest expedition it was so erratic that it had been almost impossible to traverse. Taddeus had warned her that this would be the case. The Chaos cults had triggered something momentous with their blood rites. The fortress was preparing to ascend. Soon it would begin the next stage of its development.

Soon it would be reborn.

There was more noise and she triggered the chainsword again. Another step had risen up and become a rotating column, almost human in shape. This time, she managed to hold her blade back and avoid blunting its teeth. She caught her reflection in the column’s shifting surface. She was pleased by the savagery of her appearance. The lower half of her face had been burned away on the day she met Taddeus and he had grafted an iron mask over the scars. She looked as merciless as she felt.

The column of polygons fell away as she stepped closer, crashing down the steps like spilled coins. She followed them, using the last shreds of light to reach the passageway at the bottom of the steps. She was effectively blind, but she could feel shapes moving all around her, forming and reforming.

‘What is this?’ she muttered, edging through the blackness, slowly feeling her way with her iron-soled boots. Light glimmered up ahead, revealing shapes all around her, human-sized, but more like architecture than people – chiselled columns, bent and crooked, built of black geometric blocks. The sounds of the fortress grew louder, and Vorne had the strange sensation that she was passing through stone boughs. There was no sign of movement, and she was thinking again of turning back when a voice rang out over the whistling noise.

‘Vorne.’

‘Raus?’ she replied, guessing it was one of the abhuman runts who had led them to the Crucible. She had seen them fall down a shaft, but perhaps they had survived. ‘Rein? Is that you?’

‘Here,’ said the voice.

Vorne hesitated. The voice was familiar, but it was not one of the ratlings. She glanced back in the direction of Taddeus and, for reasons she could not explain, her hands began to shake, her gauntlets knocking against the flamer.

A column moved towards her, coalescing as it approached. The light flared brighter, and Vorne saw a face.

‘Mother?’

How could it be? But it was. It was her. She looked unchanged, and as she loomed out of the darkness she reached out towards Vorne. Vorne lowered her flamer, shaking her head, and reached out to take her hand.

‘Traitor,’ said Vorne’s mother, striking her hard across the face.

Vorne stumbled back and tripped over the bottom step, landing painfully. Her mother walked after her and booted the side of her skull, snapping Vorne’s head back so hard it slammed against the steps. She tried to rise, blood filling her mouth, but her mother kicked her again, harder, in the guts.

Vorne curled into a ball, winded, unable to stand.

‘You betrayed us.’ Her mother’s voice was cold with hate. ‘To an off-worlder.’

Blood filled Vorne’s eyes as a metal-capped boot cracked her cheek, splitting the skin and sending her tumbling down the steps. Shock had slowed her reactions, but Vorne had stopped taking beatings from her mother when she was nine years old. And she was not about to turn back the clock.

As her mother rushed at her again, drawing back her fist, Vorne rolled clear, letting the woman’s knuckles crack against the steps. Her mother cursed and reeled away, clutching her bloody fist, then fell back into the dark, headless and trailing blood. As the decapitated body hit the ground Vorne stood over it, her chainsword spraying gore. Then she released the trigger and silenced the weapon. She staggered back onto the steps. Her legs buckled, and she sat heavily on the cold floor.

The corpse juddered.

Vorne lurched to her feet, but then her mother vanished, leaving a mound of black polygons.

Had she ever been there? Vorne laughed at the absurdity of the question. Of course not. Her mother had died years ago, burned by Taddeus with all the other wretched sinners from her clan. How could she be here, now, looking just as she did when Vorne was a teenager? How could she be on the Blackstone? The fortress was trying to confuse her. Or the heretics had employed their dark arts against her. Something had reached into her mind and plucked out her greatest fear.

She climbed stiffly to her feet, her head still light on her shoulders and her legs trembling. Her greatest fear? Is that what her mother was?

She looked at the black shape. The light was fading again. This happened a lot in the Blackstone. Lights came and went without logic. As darkness swallowed her, Vorne thought about her mother. A driven woman, dragged into idolatry believing it would be a way out of Gethsemane Hive. Cruel and relentless. So driven she had almost dragged Vorne into damnation. But not worthy of fear. Certainly not now, so many years after her death. Since Vorne had pledged her allegiance to Taddeus, she had seen true horrors. And that had been before Taddeus brought her to the Blackstone Fortress.

She looked around, using the last few shreds of light to study the shapes at the foot of the stairs. There was no more movement. The Blackstone had played its trick and then fallen back into its fathomless slumber. She wanted to sneer but she could not. Her mother’s thin, resolute face filled her thoughts. The fortress had guessed correctly that it would shake her resolve, but why? Why did she care?

She tried to hurry back up the steps but then she had a thought so dreadful, so painful, that she thought she might vomit. What if she had been wrong about her mother’s guilt? She had not handed her mother to Taddeus, but she had known that her evidence would lead the priest to her mother’s door. What if her thinking had been clouded by hate? All those years of cruelty and beatings might have confused her. Vorne was not worried that she had wronged her mother; she was worried that she had wronged the Emperor.

‘No,’ she hissed, heading back to the steps. She knew what this was. She had strayed too far from Taddeus. Without his fierce soul to ward her, her mind often played tricks on itself, roaming avenues best left unexplored. One word from him would set her straight.

‘Your eminence?’ she called.

There was no reply.

Her head pounded where she had fallen and she had to wipe more blood from her eyes. Pain lanced through her broken cheekbone, but the break was not serious. Her mask had taken the brunt of the kick.

She climbed awkwardly back up the steps, keeping the flamer raised as she followed the trail of charred heretics she had left behind. Using the bodies as a guide, she eventually saw a pool of light and the hunched shape of Taddeus, still poring over the Liber Eudoxus. Even a glimpse of him was enough to banish her doubts. The Blackstone had distorted her memories, that was all. Taddeus believed in her. Which meant the Emperor believed in her.

Taddeus did not look up as she approached. He had removed the tall mitre he usually wore. Vorne had never seen her master without his elaborate headgear. Taddeus wore his holy vestments at all times, even into battle. There was something shocking about seeing his gleaming, tonsured head. He was pawing furiously at his scalp as he stared at the Liber Eudoxus, the holy text that had led him across half the galaxy to the Western Reaches and the Blackstone Fortress. He was looking at the same page he always looked at. It showed a simple picture of a square on a faded pattern of triangles.

‘It’s not me,’ he said. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet. Taddeus was usually a booming, confident man, perpetually mid-sermon.

Vorne hurried to his side, wiping blood from her face so as not to trouble Taddeus with her fall. ‘Your eminence?’

One of Taddeus’ servo-skulls was drifting above his head, shining a lumen on his pate and on the pages of his book. The picture of the square was heavily annotated, surrounded by Taddeus’ florid script. He jabbed his finger at the drawing then hurled the book at the wall.

‘Eminence!’ Vorne was unable to disguise her shock. ‘It is holy!’

‘It’s a lie!’ He hauled his massive bulk upright and slammed his mace into the cover. The servo-skull had to bank away to avoid being smashed, and light flashed drunkenly around Taddeus as he pummelled the ancient book.

Vorne rushed to Taddeus and tried to stop him, but he hurled her back towards the steps with such violence that she barely stopped herself from falling. Taddeus raised his mace, glaring at her, then paused, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, lowering the mace and helping her back to her feet.

‘No need,’ she said, but she was shaking. ‘What happened?’ she asked, glancing at the ruined book. Its cover had torn and the spine was broken, spilling pages across the floor.

Taddeus stared at her. ‘I am not the Anointed.’

‘Of course you are. The abhumans have led us to the Crucible. Just as you prophesied.’ She waved her flamer at a light in the distance, glinting and flashing. ‘We have come through the Aberration. You found the entrance, exactly as you said you would.’

Taddeus shook his head and headed over to the tattered remnants of the book, glaring at it. ‘But I could not get in, Vorne. It would not admit me. None of the prayers worked. I am not the one.’

‘Your eminence, you must be. It is what you’ve always known. How could you have managed to come this far if you were not the Emperor’s chosen? No one else has made it through the Blackstone’s storms.’

He glanced around, still gripping his mace tightly. For a moment, she thought he might attack the walls, but he looked at the distant light instead.

‘I tried to get in, Vorne, while you were purging the unclean. I tried and I was denied. It would not admit me.’ He drew the shape of a square in the air. ‘All these years, I thought my mission was clear – to reach the Crucible and claim it in the Emperor’s name, but I’m wrong. I could not enter. I am not the one.’

‘Then this is just not the right time,’ said Vorne. ‘This is not the moment. We can return to Precipice and pray for more guidance. The Emperor will speak to you, as He always has done.’

Taddeus waved his mace at the shadows. ‘Not the moment, Vorne? This is the only moment. The fortress is changing. Being reborn. This is the ascension that was foretold by Saint Corval, by the Idumaen Prophecy, by the Scrolls of Varros, by every sacred text we have studied. The Blackstone is about to become unstoppable. And the Anointed must enter its heart! Cleanse its darkness with fire! Steel its soul against Chaos!’

His face turned purple with fervour and his eyes flashed. Then he halted and shook his head. ‘But it is not me. I reached the Crucible and I could not enter.’ His voice was desolate. ‘I was blessed with a message from the Emperor Himself, and in my hubris I misunderstood it. I did not listen hard enough.’ His head was trembling. ‘I am worse than heretical. Trusted with a great duty and too blinded by pride to perform it.’

A clamour was rising in Vorne’s head – not the din of the Blackstone, but the voices of her own victims. Hundreds of them, burned on the orders of the man who was now saying he had made a mistake.

‘You are not wrong.’ She dropped to her knees and started collecting the pages of the book. ‘Read it again.’

She was about to rise when the floor shifted beneath them and the symphony of shrieks swelled in volume. Taddeus thudded against the wall, while Vorne stayed on her knees until the tremor passed.

‘More light!’ cried Vorne and the servo-skull obeyed, revealing the broad, octagonal chamber at the stop of the steps.

They had learned to use lumens sparingly. Bright light sometimes triggered the Blackstone’s defence mechanisms. But here there was no option and, as the light reached the far side of the room, Vorne saw that the walls were crumbling, collapsing as quickly as Taddeus, who was now babbling to himself. The sheer black surfaces had fragmented like shattered crystal, and the pieces were flooding across the floor. As they landed they clumped together like metal filings drawn to a magnet, creating dark, blocky mounds that quivered as they rose.

‘Time to leave,’ she muttered.

But the steps had gone. The slope was still there, but the steps had become a torrent of glinting shards. Taddeus was still staring at the light and he did not seem to hear.

‘Your eminence!’ she snapped, grabbing his arm. ‘We have to go.’

He turned to her with flat, lifeless eyes. Vorne was almost as shocked as she had been on seeing her mother. She had never seen Taddeus like this. The zeal was gone. The fire was out. He looked like a normal man.

‘I am not the one,’ he said, oblivious to the flakes of black ore whirling around them.

‘You are everything,’ said Vorne, gripping his arm tighter. ‘Do not…’ She lowered her voice, trying to stem the rage burning through her throat. ‘Do not fail me.’

He grabbed his mitre from the shifting floor, placing it back above his jowly face.

There was a noise like a landslide and the walls folded away from them, revealing the endless dark beyond. Even at full brightness the servo-skull’s lumen could not penetrate more than a dozen feet in any direction. With the walls gone it looked like Vorne and Taddeus were standing on the peak of an undersea mountain, surrounded by ink-dark leagues. Colossal shapes churned in the depths, impossible to make out, and a brittle breeze whipped into the two priests.

The mounds created by the toppled walls were growing and reforming. Some were as tall as Vorne, and they were taking on the same shape as the structures Vorne had seen earlier – tall, columnar crystals that glinted as they turned and grew. Some of them were gripping blades of black ore, and blocks that were forming into guns. Some of the slabs were falling away and sliding down the churning slopes like abandoned sledges, rattling into the darkness.

There was a grinding roar as something swelled up from beneath the shifting slopes. It looked like an anvil carved from bone and it was the size of a tank. It was armoured like a tank, too, with rows of gun muzzles at its sides. It climbed from the tumult on three spindly, arachnid legs and towered over the landslide. A drone, like others they had fought earlier, but built on an even larger scale. The darkness shook as it pounded up the slope towards them, turning its T-shaped head to take aim.

Vorne pointed her flamer, then cursed as she remembered she was out of fuel.

‘This is a punishment,’ said Taddeus, staring at the mountainous automaton.

‘No!’ cried Vorne, looking around the summit they were now standing on. ‘This is the Blackstone.’ She knew she had no chance of escaping alive while Taddeus was so dazed. And without him, she would be…

The thought was too dreadful to pursue. She had to rouse him.

‘Your eminence,’ she said. ‘Think about what we have seen. The fortress is overrun with Chaos cultists. Despite everything we have done to drive them out. They are everywhere. If the Blackstone is becoming a weapon, it must be our weapon.’

Taddeus nodded. ‘Yes. You are right. Of course you are right. We have to make sure they are not the ones who claim it. We have to seize control, just as it was written. But I am not the Anointed.’ Taddeus was clearly still dazed by this revelation. ‘It is not me.’

‘Then what do we do?’ demanded Vorne as the drone thudded up the slope towards them. ‘The Emperor must have a plan.’

Taddeus stared at her. ‘But what is it?’ He snatched the torn pages of the book from her hand, peering at his notes.

‘If we die here, we have no chance of finding the answer,’ she said. ‘We have to make it back to the lander and return to Precipice. The rest of the crew will be waiting. If we find a–’

‘Wait!’ He snapped his fingers eagerly, looking closer at the picture of the square.

Vorne whispered a prayer of relief. The holy rage was back in his eyes.

He smiled grimly. ‘I see what happened. I have been so focused on driving Chaos from the Blackstone that I turned a blind eye to the heresy in our own ranks. The heresy on Precipice. That is why my visions have been clouded. I need to turn the Emperor’s vengeance on them.’

Behind her mask, Vorne’s ruined mouth spread into a grin. This was the Taddeus she had sworn to serve. This was the fiery prophet who would lead her to deliverance.

‘Then you are the Anointed?’

‘Perhaps.’ He gripped her shoulder so tight her armour creaked in his grip. ‘Or perhaps not. It matters not. I see my mistake now. I was sent here to cleanse Precipice as much as the Blackstone.’ He looked around at the looming shadows. ‘I was beguiled. I lost my way. I must purify Precipice. And then, as the ashes fill the air, the Emperor will show me my path. Perhaps it is to come back here or perhaps it will be to send another, but,’ he raised his mace into the air, shaking with passion, ‘either way, I will fulfil the mission I was born to–’

The ground exploded beneath Vorne’s feet and she fell onto the seething rubble. She rolled clear and staggered back to her feet in time to see the drone’s guns flashing. She crouched and wrapped her arms around her head as the ground detonated again. More slabs of wall collapsed and hurtled down the slopes, leaving no trace of cover.

Taddeus lurched to his feet, mace held aloft, and howled prayers at the drone. The machine was only a few dozen feet away now and it was turning its triangular head in his direction, aiming guns at his billowing robes. Vorne sprinted across the heaving ground and barrelled into him, sending them both flying through the air onto one of the pieces of toppled wall.

The ground where Taddeus had been standing exploded, hurling shards in every direction, but the two priests were already gone. Their weight had dislodged the slab of wall and sent it sliding down the steep slope.

The drone swivelled its head, still firing, slashing the air with blue-white energy, but the wall hurtled clear and Taddeus and Vorne plunged into the abyss.

1

Quintus had spent half an hour in Janus Draik’s company and he was already confident the man was insane. He had encountered rogue traders before and always found them to be arrogant. They thought their precious Warrant of Trade elevated them above the plebeian hordes. So much wealth. So much freedom. It did something to their minds. But Quintus had never met anyone quite as deluded as Draik.

‘It’s falling apart,’ said Draik. He had his back to Quintus, standing before the viewport on the far side of the Vanguard’s luxurious stateroom with one hand behind his back and the other near his face, dangling a smouldering lho-stick. Outside, Precipice was indeed in a state of collapse. Chaos forces were massing again on the Blackstone, rebuilding their black shrines, but there was a new threat that some said was nothing to do with heretics. Geomagnetic storms had lashed Precipice for weeks, battering moored void ships and ripping anchorages from tangled spars. Precipice had always looked like a wreck. Now it looked like a wreck that would struggle to survive the next few hours.

And Draik sounded indifferent. He discussed the madness outside as though it were inclement weather. He seemed oblivious to the fact that Precipice’s dream had become a nightmare.

The cabin shook violently, rocked by one of the tremors that hit Precipice several times an hour. Quintus had heard that the larger booms were the Blackstone’s weapon systems coming online, firing into the void as they searched for a target. Quintus flinched and grabbed the back of a chair, trying to steady himself as ornaments toppled and books thudded across the polished floor. Draik continued smoking, gazing blithely at the mayhem. The only sign he had noticed the tremor was when he absent-mindedly brushed some plaster from his sleeve. He turned away from the viewport and looked at the papers scattered across his desk, sketches of xenos life forms, from what Quintus could make out.

Quintus was being paid handsomely to get this close to Draik and he would not ruin everything by letting his nerves show. He had spent a long time forging his letters of recommendation, letters Draik had not even bothered to look at. Quintus touched the patch of bone at his wrist, stroking its smooth surface, wondering if his employer might contact him soon. The idea unnerved him, but he needed to know what was expected. He could feel the growth under his skin, larger than before, forcing the veins aside. He cut the thought short, not wishing to recall the voice that had been giving him sleepless nights. This was the best deal he had been offered, but also the most troubling.

‘The void-storms will only get worse, sir,’ he said. ‘I was staying in the Helmsman before I joined you and–’

‘The Helmsman?’ Draik finally deigned him worthy of consideration, turning from the drawings to look his way. His chin was raised and he studied Quintus down the length of his nose. ‘Nothing of import was ever uttered in that pit. I do not expect you to frequent it again. Not unless I expressly order it. It would not do, do you understand, now that you are in my employ. You, sir, are a servant of House Draik. The Helmsman is entirely unsuitable for a gentleman’s valet.’

Quintus dug his nails into his palms. ‘Of course, sir.’

Draik crossed the room towards him, treading silently across debris-strewn rugs and keeping his chin raised. ‘You’re from the Rhegium System?’

Quintus nodded, resisting the urge to pull at his collar. His new uniform was so starched and braided he felt mummified.

‘Isola tells me your references were very impressive.’

Quintus nodded again. Draik’s attaché had shown far more interest in his credentials than her master. She had studiously picked at every part of his story. ‘I have been honoured to serve in the household of lords Needus and Thruce, sir,’ he said, lying with practised ease. ‘Whatever skills I have to offer are entirely due to their tutelage.’

Draik only had one eye. In lieu of the other he wore an antique, gilded augmetic, an ocular implant ringed with notched brass. It was probably worth more money than Quintus would earn in his whole life. The lens whirred and clicked as Draik focused it on Quintus. ‘Thruce is a damned fine fencer. I met him once. In the Ultima Sector. Is he still a sportsman?’

Quintus struggled not to smile. Draik was trying to catch him out. ‘I’m afraid not. He was injured during the early stages of the Indomitus Crusade.’

Draik stared at him, taking in his tall, gangly body. ‘Have you ever been trained,’ he said, frowning, ‘in any military capacity?’

Quintus nodded, aware of how his youth and physical appearance made that seem unlikely. ‘To some extent, sir.’

Draik frowned at him a moment longer, then he shrugged and sauntered over to a couch. Like all of the furniture, it was covered in pieces of broken plaster, but he brushed them aside without comment and sat down. Precipice swayed and shook again, groaning pitifully. Quintus held the chair tighter as it started to rattle across the room, trying to escape his grip. Pictures dropped from the walls, cracking their frames and scattering glass.

‘I breakfast at ten,’ said Draik, nodding to a silver-framed chronograph on the wall, ‘ship’s time. So you will begin my toilet at eight. I have my moustaches waxed in the Terran style, using prisren wax, and you will see to it that I have a freshly laundered uniform each day. Standards matter, even here. Especially here. The more culturally impoverished one’s neighbours, the more one must display good breeding. It is the duty of the fortunate to elevate the unfortunate.’

Draik leafed idly through some sheaves of paper on his couch. They were more sketches of alien creatures, carefully labelled and annotated. The rogue trader muttered as he studied them, scribbling extra comments and amending the illustrations. The walls were crowded with ferocious specimens and Draik clearly fancied himself as something of a xenologist. He looked like he was relaxing in the lounge of a gentleman’s club or a scientific society. Everyone else on Precipice was looking for a way to survive the place, but Janus Draik was making studies of the local fauna. Quintus struggled not to sneer. This man was the perfect embodiment of everything that was wrong with the Imperium: pompous beyond belief and utterly removed from reality. He had been bred to believe that the galaxy was his playground and that there was nothing in it that could harm him.

‘You may shave me,’ said Draik, discarding his work and tilting his head back.

Quintus looked at the razor rattling on a silver tray. Even in the subdued light, he could see how keen its edge was. Trying to shave someone in these conditions could only result in bloodshed. He wondered, not for the first time, if he should have taken on this particular commission. It should at least be brief. He would gather information, as requested, then leave fools like Draik to their fate on Precipice while he left to build a new life.

He crossed the room, his eyes fixed on the razor, then remembered why he had come. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘A bulk hauler docked at Celsumgate a few hours ago.’

‘Really?’ yawned Draik.

‘It arrived carrying communiqués and parcels from beyond the Oort cloud, sir. One of them was addressed to you.’

Draik frowned and extinguished his lho-stick. Quintus took a crystal tube from his pocket and carried it over to him.

‘Correspondence can usually wait until after breakfast,’ said Draik, opening the tube, snapping the wax seal and unrolling the parchment. ‘I prefer to digest bad news on a full stomach. But it is unusual for me to receive handwritten letters out here in this…’

His words trailed off as he read and reread the scroll in silence. Quintus noticed a Draik crest in the watermark.

‘Amasec,’ said Draik, still staring at the scroll. Quintus crossed the room to a drinks cabinet and carefully poured a shot, wondering what could have roused Draik from his nonchalance.

Draik kept reading the scroll as he drank the amasec. There was more silence.

As the moments passed, Quintus looked around the cabin. One of the illustrations next to Draik caught his eye. It looked strangely familiar. It was a xenos weapon of some kind – a pistol, maybe – but it looked to be made of bone and its shape was similar to the organic, shell-like whirl lodged in his wrist. He leant closer, trying to read the small handwriting. He made out the words ‘Symbiotic? Parasitic? Bio-tech?’ and then, lower down, ‘Encountered during seventh expedition. Taragonna? Abusir? Zoat? Aenos? Tyranid? Masqueraded as ally until treachery was revealed. Motives unclear. Highly dangerous xenos predator.’

Quintus backed away, unnerved. Highly dangerous? He had never seen his employer face to face. The word ‘parasitic’ echoed through his thoughts.

Draik tightened his fist and the glass he was holding shattered. Blood and amasec pattered through his fingers and onto the rug. He continued studying the scroll as he calmly held out his bleeding hand to Quintus.

Quintus rushed to grab a cloth from the drinks cabinet and, after picking splinters of glass from Draik’s palm, he tied the cloth around his hand. He tried to discreetly look at the message, but Draik re-rolled it before he could decipher the flowing script. The rogue trader maintained his cool demeanour, ignoring the fact that the bandage around his hand was turning crimson. He waved his uninjured hand at the door.

‘See that Isola joins me for breakfast. And the alien.’ He glanced at the scroll.

‘It would appear that I am ruined.’

2

Quintus had encountered dozens of xenos creatures since reaching Precipice. The space port did not conform to any normal rules of decency. Men crossed paths with aliens but refrained from gunning them down. It was a strained, edgy truce, maintained only through a mutual understanding that no one had the upper hand. If fighting broke out it would never stop. And they had all risked too much reaching Precipice to let it turn into a bloodbath. The ever-present Blackstone loomed over the orbital platform, both warning and lure, reminding them why they had come. And what they had to gain by holding fire.

The fragile peace was governed by a loose confederation of captains and pilots, some of whom gave themselves the pompous title of ‘proctor’. They kept their rules simple. Fighting on Precipice was punishable by death without trial, with the dead criminal’s belongings distributed among the proctors as recompense for the disruption. As a result, the incredible became commonplace. Willowy xenos rangers could be seen drinking next to red-robed tech-priests from Mars, and flak-armoured abhumans shared cabins with species they had previously only observed through crosshairs.

Despite this, Quintus had not yet grown accustomed to associating with creatures that Imperial doctrine rightfully designated an abomination. He hesitated as he entered the Vanguard’s dining room, unnerved by the sight of the creature seated at Draik’s side. The kroot was repulsive – a seven-foot giant with long, rangy limbs, barbed skin and a crest of quills rattling above its oversized skull. Its head was a mixture of avian and humanoid, with a brutal, hooked beak dominating the lower half of its face. The creature was laden with barbaric weaponry and it was fidgeting constantly, tapping at tiny cages that dangled from its chest, sniffing the air and watching the dust motes drifting through the room, its head jerking and nodding as though it were about to attack them. As it turned to face Quintus the quills on its head rattled, responding to his arrival. The creature sniffed, studying him with black, inhuman eyes.

‘Have you informed Isola?’ said Draik, breaking from his conversation with the alien to look at Quintus.

‘She is on her way, sir. I explained that you have news from Terra.’

Draik glanced at the scroll lying on the table in front of him and raised an eyebrow.

Quintus had already sent word to his employer that something was afoot on the Vanguard, but until he could speak with them, he could do nothing but observe. He busied himself with the breakfast things and felt his stomach tighten as wonderful smells filled the chamber. There was quiet music drifting through hidden emitters and he felt like he was in a Terran palace, rather than a crumbling shanty town orbiting a heretic-infested hell.

The kroot opened its beak slightly and produced a series of whistles and clicks that Quintus guessed was a method of communication. Then, to Quintus’ shock, the alien formed intelligible words. Its voice was a disjointed rasp, but still a reasonable approximation of Gothic.

‘What of Audus?’

Draik looked pained but nodded. He waved to Quintus. ‘Fetch the pilot too.’

Quintus addressed a vox-caster in the doorframe, relaying Draik’s order.

The two women arrived together a few minutes later and they could not have made a more contrasting pair. Draik’s attaché, Isola, was neat-looking, with perfectly bobbed hair and a wide, boyish face. She was small, compact and precise. She was dressed in a smart Naval uniform almost identical to Draik’s, with braided epaulettes and starched collars. The slovenly environs of Precipice had failed to blunt her edge. She nodded briskly at Draik and took a seat.

Audus, meanwhile, was a heavy-set slouch, almost as tall as the alien, clad in a scruffy old flight suit and wearing an incredulous sneer. Her head was shaven and her blocky face was covered in scars. She looked like she’d be more at home in a pit-fight than Draik’s grandiose ship. Quintus wondered how she had come to be in such a genteel environment. Then he remembered how rich Draik was.

Audus looked Quintus up and down as she passed and winked. Then she slumped heavily into a chair, grabbed a piece of fruit, rocked back on her seat and slammed her boots on the table.

Draik looked at her.

She rolled her eyes and took her feet off the table.

Draik passed the scroll to Isola. ‘You were right. The old man has reached the end of his patience.’

‘Old man?’ said Audus, picking fruit from her teeth.

Draik’s lip curled. ‘My father. He did not approve of my decision to remain on Precipice and make further forays into the Blackstone. He thinks my time would be better spent fawning over ambassadors at governors’ balls. I had a suspicion he might cancel my stipend but he has deemed my transgression more serious than that. He has finally done what he always wanted to. He has disowned me.’

Audus shrugged.

‘Which means,’ continued Draik, ‘I will no longer collect tithes or dividends. Not even from estates, companies and enterprises that I established. Also, at my father’s request, my sources of credit have been withdrawn. And, to ensure the message is clear, I will have no more access to the Draik House Guard.’

‘The Draikstar,’ muttered Isola, reading the scroll.

Draik laughed. ‘Oh yes, and my father has also requisitioned my ship.’

Isola’s neutral expression wavered. ‘No ship, captain?’

‘Correct. And you can dispense with the “captain”. I have been stripped of my rank.’ Draik spoke calmly but Quintus noticed that his bandaged hand was clenching and unclenching, as though itching to break another glass.

Audus rocked back in her chair and whistled. ‘So the great Janus Draik is on his uppers.’ She looked around the room. The walls were hung with crooked portraits and hunting trophies. ‘Maybe you should start clearing out some heirlooms? You could probably buy passage to the next habitable system. If you slept in a cargo crate.’

Quintus could feel the tension in the room. Audus’ humour was strained. Whatever their pretence at civility, these people knew how dire the situation on Precipice had become. Every few minutes there was a distant rumble as more of the station collapsed or tumbled off into the stars. And the two women had clearly pinned their hopes on Draik. They and the alien were all watching the rogue trader closely. Even on such a regally appointed ship, there was no escaping the truth: Precipice was at the point of collapse and the Blackstone was firmly in the grip of enemy hands. Frontiersman spirit had been replaced by survivalist frenzy.

Draik nodded. ‘I can no longer afford to pay you a retainer, Audus, so you are free to leave.’ He hesitated and softened his tone. ‘Good luck.’

Colour flushed into Audus’ cheeks and her sneer faltered.

Draik turned to Isola. ‘As you saw from his note, my father now considers you tainted goods and has terminated your position. It is a measure of his monumental ignorance that he has robbed himself of your skills simply because of your association with me. House Draik will be poorer for your absence. But I fear a recommendation from me is unlikely to help. So you, too, are free to leave. You are no longer my keeper.’

The two women glanced at each other, clearly shocked.

Quintus could not understand why either of them was still in the room. Draik was obviously unhinged. They should be glad to escape him. Then a worrying thought occurred to him. The Archivist had been clear on what would happen to him if he did not stay close to the rogue trader. What if Draik decided to dismiss him? He backed away, glad that, for the moment at least, he seemed to have been forgotten.

‘And what about you?’ asked Audus, frowning at Draik. ‘What will you do?’

Draik held her gaze.

Isola sipped some water and spoke to the table. ‘He will return to the Blackstone, of course. After everything that has happened he will go back down there. Even though the place has ruined him.’

Audus waved at the breakfast. ‘How can he be ruined with such a well-provisioned table?’ Her joke was half-hearted and she was watching Draik closely.

Isola kept looking at the table. ‘Grekh has convinced him he can “conquer” the Blackstone. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you’re still trying to do.’

‘It’s not a mountain,’ said Audus. ‘You can’t plant a flag on it.’

‘Draik is linked to the Blackstone,’ said Grekh. ‘She summoned him here.’

‘She!’ Audus’ smirk returned. She leant across the table towards Grekh and patted his arm. ‘Bless you, Grekh, for your endless faith in that place. Even now that it’s tearing itself apart. You might need to find another lump of rock to worship. Surely you’ve repaid your debt to Draik? I know he saved your life, but every time we go to the Blackstone you protect him from one horror or another.’

Grekh clicked his beak, as though chewing, then tapped one of his claws against the rags on his chest armour. ‘The debt remains. I have yet to restore the balance.’

Audus gave him a quizzical look and seemed on the verge of making another joke, but she held it back. She shrugged and looked at Draik.

‘To be fair, former-captain, it’s all pretty academic now.’ She waved to a viewport at the far end of the dining room. Scraps of Precipice were hurtling past as the storm grew worse. ‘You’ve heard what they’re saying in the Helmsman. The heretics on the Blackstone are only half the problem. The disturbances up here are nothing to the ones down there. Even landing at the Stygian Aperture is no longer safe. And even if you got past the heretics in the outer chambers, you’d end up in some kind of constant mutation loop.’

Isola was watching Draik closely. ‘Audus is right. The old routes have been fortified by heretics. And the deeper regions are in flux. Nothing is stable.’

Audus nodded. ‘Try speaking to Gatto at the Helmsman. It’s his dream come true. Anyone who survives an attempt on the Blackstone has returned ruined. Gatto has had to extend his bar to cater for all the new drunks. And half of them went down there with the same idea as you – that they could conquer the place and cover themselves in glory.’

Draik shook his head. ‘Conquering the fortress is no longer my objective.’

Isola looked shocked.

‘Really?’ said Audus.

Grekh shifted in his seat, rattling his quills. ‘Then what is your objective?’

‘I have to admit,’ said Draik, looking at his bandaged hand, ‘I am irked by this message from my father. I had hoped for…’ He closed his eye and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘I hoped for something else, but now I’ve had time to reflect on things, I see that this is all exactly as it should be.’

‘Because the Blackstone willed you to be here,’ said Grekh.

Draik waved his hand. ‘Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t. That’s not what I’m referring to. What I mean is this family schism. It is overdue. I have felt the indignity of my position for a long time. What respectable man lives off a father who despises him?’

‘He does not despise you,’ said Isola. ‘He never despised you. He merely wants–’

Draik held up a hand. ‘I do not want his money. And, what’s more, I do not need it. I ridiculed those who scoured the Blackstone for hidden treasures, I mocked them for being ignorant of the fortress’ true worth, but I see now that I have been naive. I was intrigued by Grekh’s mysticism. But this letter has brought me to my senses. My goal is simple. A man must forge his own path, by whatever means. Perhaps I was “summoned” here to conquer that place, but I will not conquer anything without funds. I don’t care what the drunks in the Helmsman say. The Blackstone is the size of a small planet. There will still be archeotech and relics down there, waiting for someone strong-willed enough to take them. Someone who isn’t deterred by a few cosmic squalls. Or scared of malnourished deserters with stars daubed on their uniforms.’

He leant forward in his seat, his brows bristling.

‘For whatever reason, I am exactly where I need to be. Janus Draik does not need to be supported. I will take an expedition down there and bring back a haul more valuable than anything those oafs in the Helmsman could dream of.’

Audus smiled at him, clearly impressed, but Isola’s expression hardened.

‘So you’re just a treasure hunter now – a scavenger, like all the rest.’

‘I’m a rogue trader. What use is my Warrant of Trade if I have nothing to trade?’

Isola looked away, but Quintus could see by the set of her shoulders that she was angry.

‘It’s worse than ever down there, now,’ said Audus, grabbing another piece of fruit and crunching into it. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting into? Forget the heretics, the whole place is unstable. The drunks say it’s moving and changing into something new. Even you must have heard people talking about it. They give it different names, the Seethe or the Aberration or the Eye of the Storm, but they all mean the same thing – the Blackstone is in flux and no one can reach the deeper chambers.’

‘Rot.’ Draik shook his head. ‘There is always a way.’

Audus laughed. ‘Ah, indefatigable Draik. But who would guide you? No one really goes down there any more. And if they do, they certainly don’t come back. The gold rush is over.’

‘Rein and Raus.’ It took Quintus a moment to realise the words came from the kroot.

Draik frowned at Grekh. ‘Rein and Raus? Remind me.’

‘The abhumans,’ said Isola, still not looking at him.

‘The small, dirty abhumans,’ clarified Audus.

Draik grimaced. ‘The ratlings. I remember. Drunkards. Are they still alive?’

‘Taddeus the Purifier employed them recently,’ said Grekh. ‘He is still seeking a way to fulfil the prophecies that brought him here. Rein and Raus led him past the cults and the outer vaults and on into unclaimed regions of the fortress.’

Audus laughed. ‘The mad priest? He’s still not given up? If he was employing Rein and Raus I suggest you keep well away.’

‘They found him a route to an unopened vault,’ said Grekh. ‘He believes it is the sacred location he has been seeking since he came to Precipice. He believes he will ascend if he reaches it.’

Draik nodded. ‘Everyone out here is so determined. I have never seen anything quite like it. They will not relinquish their dreams. Even now. Even after all they have been through.’

‘How do you know all this?’ asked Isola, looking at Grekh.

‘Rein and Raus frequent the Helmsman. While there they drink alcohol. They have weak constitutions. And loud voices.’

Audus snorted.

Grekh frowned at her, then continued. ‘Gatto’s pets hear everything that is said in the Helmsman and he confides in me.’

‘How would you pay the ratlings?’ asked Audus. ‘You said you’ve lost everything.’

Draik was about to reply when Grekh reached up to his chest and snapped something from his body armour. As far as Quintus could make out, it was a bundle of struggling insects bound by strands of hair. Grekh snapped the hair with his talons and several beetles scuttled across the table or whirred off across the room. Once the insects were gone, the kroot gave Draik a knowing look.

Audus smirked. Grekh looked intently at Draik.

‘What?’ said Draik as a beetle landed on his plate.

‘You look without seeing. The meaning is clear – Rein and Raus will not need paying.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Audus. ‘They do nothing for free. They’re not on a holy mission. They’re not like Taddeus. Getting paid is the only thing they’re interested in.’

Grekh nodded. ‘That is usually true. But this time they need protection. They want to reach the same location as Taddeus, at the heart of the fortress, the place called the Aberration, and they agreed to travel with Taddeus and his missionaries if the priests kept them alive.’

‘I can imagine how well that went,’ said Audus. ‘They might need some convincing before they’ll consider trying it again.’

Draik ignored her. ‘Then I will find the ratlings and accompany them into this so-called Aberration. I have no faith in Taddeus’ visions, but a region like that will still hold treasures. I will bring back what I can and then,’ he tapped his augmetic eye, ‘once I have recorded the ratlings’ route, I will be able to make repeated visits. Then I will sell my finds in the Dromeplatz.’ He looked at Isola. ‘And this is how trade dynasties are begun. It may seem like undignified “treasure hunting” but a few small gains invested wisely will fund more ambitious endeavours. Within a matter of months I will be recruiting my own House Guard and buying void ships. Within a few years I will have a trade empire.’ He gazed out at the stars. ‘There will be a new House Draik. Built on valour and determination, rather than handouts and inheritance.’

Draik’s guests fell silent, digesting what he had said. The two women looked at each other again and Quintus sensed that each was waiting to see how the other would respond. Neither of them seemed to understand how absurd Draik was being, talking of trade empires while Precipice collapsed around him.

Draik nodded at Quintus, indicating that he would like another glass of amasec. As he sipped the drink he studied the women over the rim of the glass.

They remained silent.

‘My financial difficulties will be brief,’ said Draik. ‘And once I have made my first deals in the Dromeplatz I will be looking to employ appropriate staff. People with the wit and gumption to establish an empire.’

Isola looked intensely at the table, shaking her head.

Draik raised his chin. ‘Do you doubt me?’

‘Of course not. If anyone can still make a fortune out here, it’s you. If we manage to get off Precipice alive I’m sure you will build your empire. But I am not interested in being your employee.’

‘You saw the letter. You are no longer employed by my father. You have no means of your own. How will you live?’

Isola looked at Audus, then back at Draik. ‘I have been bound to your family my whole life. I was born into service. But out here…’ She hesitated, as though regretting her candour, then scowled and continued. ‘Out here I have seen people make their own way.’ Her words were stiff but her eyes glittered. ‘I’m tired of being an employee. Tired of being beholden. Forge an empire, Janus, but if that is your only purpose, I have no interest in helping you.

‘I have made contacts of my own,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘If all we’re doing out here is empire building, I can build my own.’

Draik shook his head. ‘Why? I will be going to the Blackstone. With those inebriates, Rein and Raus, admittedly, but I will make a fortune, you know I will. Why not join me?’

She sighed and leant back in her seat. ‘Join you in what capacity?’

‘As my attaché, of course, as you have always been.’ He shrugged and held up his hands. ‘Or something else. Chief steward? Whatever you like.’

She looked at him with the same weary expression.

Draik slumped back in his chair, shaking his head. ‘What, then? What do you want?’

Isola sat rigid, her hands folded neatly on her lap. ‘If all you’re doing is hunting for wealth, then make me your partner. Let it be our trade empire.’

Audus laughed and slammed her hand on the table. ‘Yes! The worm turns!’ She waved for Quintus to bring her some amasec. ‘I always liked you, Isola.’

There was no trace of emotion on Isola’s face, and she ignored Audus. ‘I have learned far more in the Helmsman than you, Janus. I have made enough connections in Gatto’s bar to establish deals right across the Western Reaches. As a partner, I could help you establish a trade empire that would match your father’s business interests within a few years. As a competitor…’ She shrugged.

‘Just to be clear, Draik,’ said Audus, downing her drink. ‘I think this is a wonderful idea but I have no interest in business empires. Give me the same cut as last time and I’ll fly you anywhere.’

Draik nodded and looked back at Isola. ‘I know how valuable you are, Isola. Why else would I ask you to join me? But partners? Think of what you’re suggesting. Think of the impropriety.’

Audus laughed. ‘You’re not on Terra any more. No one bloody cares. All people will care about is how well informed Isola is. Precipice is unique.’

Isola nodded. ‘Precipice is an anomaly, and a useful one. I have met people from worlds that are crying out for people like us. People who can supply their needs. But why should I make you rich, Janus, when I could make myself rich?’

‘Since when do you care about wealth?’

‘I care about survival. The galaxy is in tatters. You’ve heard the news from the Helmsman. It’s not just Precipice that’s collapsing. Wars are breaking out in every subsector with no sign of Imperial fleets to stem the bloodshed. Ships can’t even find safe passage through the warp. Entire worlds are vanishing, whole systems.’ Isola looked at the pictures on the walls. ‘And only one thing will buy safety – money. I don’t have blind faith like Taddeus. And neither do I place any stock in the Senatorum Imperialis. The Lords of Terra have clearly lost control of the galaxy. When did anyone hear news from Terra? The Imperial Palace could be in ruins for all we know. Any drunk in the Helmsman will tell you that the Imperium is on its knees. The old rules are meaningless. But maybe Precipice is the beginning of something – of races working together to survive, with money as the only religion that matters. Currency is the only currency now, and I won’t get that working for someone.’ She said these final words with such force that, when she had finished, she dusted down her jacket and reached for a glass of water to steady her nerves.

Draik stared at her. Then he frowned and looked at Grekh. The kroot was picking at the grubs on his armour. He shrugged.

‘I was never your servant. I will repay my debt.’

Draik nodded and sipped his drink.

‘But,’ continued Grekh, ‘your time is almost at an end, if you wish to brave the Blackstone again.’

‘Why? I have already been disinherited. What else could my father do to me? I have all the time I want out here.’

Grekh shook his head and held up the grub he had been toying with.

Quintus strolled casually across the dining room, trying to get a better look. The creature looked like a wriggling pupa but, when he got closer, Quintus saw that it was a string of black gemstones. It looked like living jewellery. It writhed on the kroot’s claw, morphing and re-forming, changing from a tube to a sphere, and then a chain of blocks.

‘The Aberration is part of the Blackstone’s life cycle,’ said Grekh. ‘And the change is accelerating. When we were last on the fortress I acquired knowledge regarding it.’

At the words ‘acquired knowledge’, Isola looked away. Quintus had heard rumours about Draik’s pet alien, rumours that his method of asking questions was to consume people he wished to interrogate. Quintus had dismissed the stories as fanciful but Isola’s reaction made him wonder. He moved back down the table, putting as much distance between himself and Grekh as he could without drawing undue attention.

‘The fortress is being reborn,’ said Grekh, showing everyone the crystalline shape winding around his claw. ‘And once it changes, there will be no way in. It may not even remain in this system.’

Audus raised her glass to Grekh. ‘You always have such a great knack of making bad situations seem worse. I don’t think it’s being reborn. I think it’s being trashed by heretics, like the rest of the galaxy.’

Draik scowled. ‘Either way, I have no time for debating notions of equality. Grekh is right about the need to move quickly. I will find the ratlings and, if they are sober enough, I will leave for the Blackstone this very day.’ He looked round the table. ‘Who is with me?’

Audus gave him a mock salute. ‘You can count on me, Former-Captain Draik.’

Grekh nodded.

Isola shook her head. ‘If all we’re doing is getting rich, I will make my own money.’

Draik was about to reply when she held up a hand and continued.

‘But, actually, I suppose I will need capital to get me started, even if it’s just to buy passage out of here. Give me the same cut as Audus and I will make this last expedition with you, in a freelance capacity. Once I have my share, I will use it to make sure I never have to be an employee ever again.’

Annoyance flashed in Draik’s eye and Quintus thought he was about to refuse, but then the rogue trader seemed to reconsider and nodded slowly.

‘Have contracts drawn up immediately. We leave as soon as I lay my hands on those knee-high dolts.’

3

‘I’m standing in someone,’ said Rein.

‘This is not the time to start making friends,’ muttered Raus, staggering on through the darkness. The only illumination was coming from a stab-light on Raus’ gun. It flicked over the bulkheads of the ship they had just broken into, revealing mounds of what Raus had just told Rein were sacks. Troubled by his brother’s comment, Raus pointed the light at one of the sacks to examine it more closely.

‘Unusual to see a bag with a face,’ he admitted.

‘And all the other bits of a person,’ replied Rein.

‘But not arranged in the traditional shape,’ said Raus. He stared at what he had to accept was a brutalised corpse. ‘Do you think all those innards are his? Seems like an unnecessary amount of plumbing.’

‘Whose ship did you say this is, Raus?’ asked Rein, as they both realised they were surrounded by dozens of dismembered bodies.

‘I didn’t say, Rein,’ said Raus, ‘on account of not knowing.’

He tracked the light over a large cargo crate at the far end of the hold. It was covered in slender, barbed symbols.

‘They do look a little bit like drukhari runes, though,’ he said, with a sinking feeling.

There was a strained silence and Raus felt Rein staring intently at the side of his face. A door slammed somewhere overhead and the sound reverberated through the hull of the ship, followed by the unmistakable stamp of running feet.

‘Now then, Rein,’ said Raus, casting the lumen around and trying to keep it from revealing any more bodies. ‘We both agreed that this looked like a good ship to ransack. Gurning at me won’t help. Perhaps there might still be a–’

‘Moron!’ whispered Rein, sprinting back the way they had come.

‘Unnecessary,’ muttered Raus, racing after him.

They reached the access hatch just as light flooded the hold. The two ratlings clambered quickly up the metal ladder towards the hatch. Shapes whistled through the air and clanged into the bulkhead as Rein and Raus leapt out into Precipice’s sweltering smog.

They emerged onto Celsumgate, one of the busiest mooring spars in Precipice. Mounds of space junk had been welded together in imitation of a transitway and there were landers of every class docked to its jumble of anchorage points. So many ships had come to Precipice that they were stacked in a teetering heap, looming over the spar like crowded hab-blocks and throwing everything below into fitful shadow. It was an oppressive, chaotic scene. Raus felt as though he had stumbled into a smouldering, mechanised hell. The Blackstone Fortress was visible through the shimmer of the void screen but the rest of the galaxy was obscured by fumes: thick, oily clouds that spilled from every heat pipe and turbine.

The walkways were as crowded as ever, clogged with every form of humanity from hollow-eyed wretches in Militarum fatigues to scuttling, spider-like acolytes of the Machine-God, hiding their blessed mechadendrites beneath red, rune-stitched cloth. And the variation stretched far beyond deviations of the human form. Lumbering xenos waded by with no fear of attack, knowing that, in Precipice, everyone had a right to skulk through the filth – even slender, black-clad murderers of the kind that were currently sprinting after Rein and Raus.

The two ratlings had perfected running away to a fine art. They used their diminutive forms to their advantage, racing between the figures, losing themselves in the profusion of limbs and weapons.

‘This way!’ cried Raus, waving Rein onto a piece of shattered hull that had been turned into an awning. ‘They won’t dare shoot. They know the rules.’

Projectiles whistled past.

‘I don’t think they know the rules,’ gasped Rein, rolling clear and dropping down onto another abandoned ship.

Raus cursed, putting his finger through a new hole that had just appeared in his flak jacket. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he grunted, tumbling after Rein.

As they clambered over skeletal salvage, an explosion of shouts and curses filled the transitway. Raus and Rein did not stop to see what had happened. They dropped down onto the next walkway, barged through a huddle of arguing traders, leapt down onto another walkway and then rushed under the towering landing gear of a macro hauler.

The shots kept coming, pinging and clanging across the hull of the ship.

‘This way!’ cried Raus, spotting a broken access hatch that led down to another level of the platform.

They dropped onto the hull of another ship, dashed through a wall of hissing steam and then Raus howled as he fell into nothingness. His breath exploded from his lungs as he landed on a hard surface with a thud. There was a curse as Rein crashed down beside him.

‘Halt!’ cried a shrill voice. ‘Don’t move!’

Raus’ hand strayed to his pistol but the voice cried out again, even more panicked.

‘I’ll kill you!’

As the steam cleared, Raus saw that they had landed in a crowded cargo hold, filled with fuel canisters, many of which looked to still be full. Crouched in front of one of the fuel tanks was youth of around fourteen years old. He was dressed in a flight suit that was far too big for him and gripping a lasgun that probably weighed as much as he did. He was thin almost to the point of starvation, his huge, wild eyes staring from a grubby, skeletal face, but he glared at Raus with fierce determination. Behind him, huddled in the shadows, were a group of children clutching ratchets and lengths of pipe with equally belligerent expressions, despite the fact that some of them were only three or four years old.

‘Get out quickly and I might not shoot,’ snapped the youth with the gun, edging closer and jabbing the weapon at them.

Raus raised his hands. ‘Wait! We fell, lad. We didn’t mean to come in here. We’ve got no interest in your…’ He glanced around at all the rusted canisters, grimacing. ‘Highly unstable promethium tanks.’

The boy licked his lips and looked even more furious.

‘Is this the best place to be hiding out?’ asked Rein, stepping to Raus’ side, his hands raised.

‘What does it matter to you?’ growled the boy, his hands shaking as he struggled to hold the lasgun.

Raus gave Rein a furious glare. ‘We will happily leave you in peace, won’t we, Rein?’

‘Of course,’ Rein said, revealing his blackened teeth in an attempt at a comforting grin. ‘We’re more than happy to go. If you could just show us to the door.’

The boy waved his gun at a gap between the canisters. Raus nodded in thanks and turned to leave.

‘Our father is coming back,’ said the boy, answering a question no one had asked.

The other children looked at their older brother and nodded eagerly. As Raus paused to look back at them, he felt an infuriating tug at his conscience.

‘Where did he go, lad?’ asked Raus, his hand resting on the door as he looked back at the youth.

‘Down to the Blackstone Fortress,’ said the boy proudly, lowering the gun. ‘When he returns, he will have enough money to buy his own ship.’

Raus could sense Rein grimacing, but he ignored him. As the boy talked, Raus noticed that he had a nasty gash running down his arm that looked to be infected. He stepped back towards the youth, but the boy immediately tensed and raised the gun again.

Boots clanged across the hull.

‘That could be them,’ whispered Rein. ‘The drukhari. We don’t want to bring them down here. I’m not having that on my head.’

Raus sighed and nodded. Precipice was crowded with little tragedies like this. ‘I’m sure your father will make it back,’ he muttered, turning to go. Then he paused, thinking of the boy’s arm. He took a medi-pack out of his flak jacket.

‘Raus,’ whispered Rein. ‘We have no more.’

Raus rolled his eyes. ‘We can get more, brother. Look at them.’

Rein looked at the emaciated youths and nodded. Then he rummaged in his jacket and took out a ration pack. It was Raus’ turn to be shocked.

‘Food, brother?’

Rein hesitated, looking pained, then nodded. They placed the objects on a crate and Raus looked at the boy, gesturing to the medi-pack.

‘Did your father ever show you how to use one of these?’

The boy nodded, some of the fury fading from his eyes.

Raus muttered a curse and added a combat knife to the pile. ‘And I presume you know what to do with this.’

The boots moved across the hull again, coming closer.

‘We’d better go,’ hissed Rein.

Raus nodded, giving the boy one last look. ‘Pick a better hideout, eh, lad? If these storms keep getting worse these barrels are liable to explode, do you understand?’

The boy nodded, looking fierce again. ‘Our father will repay you when he hears of this.’

‘Of course he will,’ muttered Raus, opening the blast door and heading back out onto the mooring spar.

They emerged beneath the fuselage of another ship and paused to get their bearings.

‘Raus,’ said Rein. ‘What if the drukhari do follow our route into that cargo hold? Have we just put those kids in danger?’

Shots strafed across the fuselage, kicking up shrapnel and causing them both to duck.

‘I think they’re still with us, brother!’ cried Raus as they both sprinted off again.

‘Anyone would think we were trying to rob them,’ gasped Rein.

Raus shook his head. ‘Everyone’s a damned cynic, these days, Rein. The galaxy is a hard place for simple, honest folk like us.’

They dashed along a gantry and Raus grinned as he saw a familiar ledge. ‘We’re almost at the Helmsman!’ he cried, changing direction as more shots whistled past. ‘Even drukhari won’t open fire in there. No one messes with Gatto.’

They leapt into what looked like a bottomless pit and plunged through a cloud of exhaust fumes. Raus had remembered the route correctly and they landed with a splat in what could either have been an open sewer or an abandoned food store. The ratlings scrambled from the filth and ran into a small opening between moored ships.

‘Present arms, soldier!’ howled a deep voice.

The command was yelled with such force that the ratlings forgot themselves and leapt to attention. Almost immediately, Raus realised the absurdity of what he was doing and dropped back into a battle crouch, pistol raised.

A man marched out of the fumes towards them, dressed in the uniform of an Astra Militarum officer. Raus could not recognise his regimental markings but he was clearly a veteran sergeant – a big, powerful-looking man with huge, mutton-chop sideburns and a chest full of medals. Years of parade ground drills made it impossible for the ratlings not to salute the man as he strode imperiously towards them.

‘Eyes front, Guardsmen!’ snapped the sergeant, glaring at them, his face flushed.

‘Sir!’ they snapped.

He strolled around them, then nodded. ‘At ease.’

The ratlings gave each other puzzled looks, unsure how to proceed.

‘You!’ snapped the sergeant, pointing his drill cane at the rolling fumes. ‘Shoulders back, man!’

There was no one standing where the sergeant was pointing and Raus glanced at Rein, shaking his head. The sergeant caught the movement and looked back at them. His rigid expression faltered and his eyes cleared for a moment.

‘Auxilla? You’re not from my regiment.’

‘No, sir,’ replied Raus, wondering how long it would be before the drukhari arrived and gunned the three of them down. He wanted to run on to the Helmsman, but the sergeant was armed and had a worryingly distracted look about him. He did not seem to have noticed that both Raus and Rein had stripped their regimental badges from their uniforms.

‘No matter,’ snapped the sergeant. ‘You look hungry.’ He waved his cane at an open landing ramp. ‘Join the others. Grab yourself some rations before you go.’

‘Rations?’ said Rein eagerly, looking over at the ramp.

Raus could hear no sign of the drukhari so he nodded. ‘Just a quick snack, brother. We need to keep moving.’

Raus knew it was a mistake before they reached the top of the ramp. A cloud of flies rushed out to greet them, accompanied by a dreadful smell, familiar to anyone who had fought in military campaigns. The ratlings slowed as they reached the opening and raised their hands to their faces. The ship’s hold was full of Militarum troops, but none of them had eaten anything for a long time. They were all dead, some so decayed they were barely recognisable, consumed by the plagues that had ravaged Precipice.

The ratlings backed down the ramp and looked at the sergeant, who saluted, then continued marching round the small enclosure.

‘Sergeant…?’ began Raus, unsure what to say.

Rein grabbed Raus by the arm and whispered in his ear. ‘Let him be, Raus. We need to move.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, he seems happier than most of the people in this dump.’

Raus had to agree that the sergeant had a pleasing air of confidence about him. Not many people on Precipice still looked so sure of them-selves.

‘Thank you for the rations, sir,’ he said, saluting.

‘Good luck, soldiers,’ nodded the sergeant, giving them a brisk nod. ‘Not long now, before the relief force arrives. We’ll have this place whipped into shape before you know it.’ He narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. ‘I don’t doubt there will be some medals in it for you boys. You’ve done the regiment proud, all of you.’

They saluted again, and even though he knew the man was utterly insane, Raus felt a rush of pride.

‘We’re proud to serve, sir,’ he replied as they moved off. ‘Proud to serve.’

The ratlings headed back out onto the main walkway and, after checking there was no sign of the drukhari, they strode cheerfully through the doors of Precipice’s longest-surviving drinking den, the Helmsman.

The bar was thick with smoke and crowds. Vertical shafts of light hung from the crooked ceiling, hiding more than they revealed. The faces that flickered in and out of view were haggard and desperate. There was a time when the Helmsman had radiated desperate hope, but now it felt more like a wake – a wake in a salvage yard attended by mourners who despised each other and had drunk too much.

‘Quite the party,’ said Rein.

Raus grimaced, looking at the rows of dour, ruddy faces. ‘I’d forgotten how miserable this place has become.’ He gestured towards one of the alcoves that lined the walls.

The ratlings weaved between the legs of staggering drunks and flopped heavily onto a couch hammered out of an old heating duct. They sat there for a while, slumped against each other, trying to catch their breath. Raus looked back towards the door.

‘I didn’t see anyone follow us in, did you?’

Rein was still grimacing at the drunks. ‘Don’t think so, Raus.’

‘I’ve never seen it this full in here,’ said Raus once he had managed to steady his breathing.

Rein nodded. ‘It’s a tragedy, Raus. No one dares go down to the Blackstone any more. They’ve come all this way, navigated miles of space junk and now they can’t do anything but sit in here and drink themselves to death. It was bad enough going down there when it was just the fortress trying to kill you – now there are all those drooling cultists. Everyone’s too afraid. And fear always reveals the true nature of people. Look at them. They’re too scared to go down there so they spend all their time trying to screw each other over in here. Lowlifes, the lot of ’em.’

Raus nodded, reached past someone’s legs and stole a drink from the next table. ‘Wise words, Rein.’ He downed the drink. ‘Wise words.’ He looked around for another drink to steal. ‘They are lowlifes. I’m starting to think we would have been better off clearing out of here. Precipice has become all risk and no reward.’

Rein fished some dried meat from a passer-by’s pocket and chewed on it thoughtfully. ‘It’s not a good time to leave, Raus. Not since the Blackstone’s guns came online. Remember what Gatto said. Half the ships that disembark get blown apart before they get past the first drifting hulk. Those brainless heretics down on the Blackstone have triggered its defence systems. It can only be a matter of time before Precipice gets targeted.’

Raus puffed out his chest. ‘Well, brother of mine, it’s times like this that we always come into our own. That sergeant may have been slightly confused, but he was damned right about us deserving medals. Think about how bravely we led those priests down to the Blackstone. All these other cowards hid up here, shaking in their boots, while we–’

The door of the Helmsman flew open and the ratlings quickly hid under the table.

‘What can you see?’ whispered Rein.

‘Arses,’ replied Raus. He edged a little way out from under the table to try and get a better view. Then he sighed and climbed back up on the chair. ‘Just some traders from the Dromeplatz.’

The two ratlings nursed their stolen drinks and stared at the rusty surface of the table. There were still markings on the paintwork and Raus recognised the heraldry of an Imperial lander. He thought of how proud he had felt when the lunatic sergeant praised him.

‘Maybe we should never have done a runner,’ he muttered.

‘Now then,’ said Rein, ‘there’s no need for that kind of talk. We’re not finished yet, Raus. As you just said, we managed to get down there and survive. We even got those priests pretty close to their… What did they call it? A crucible?’

‘We lost the bone machine, Rein.’ Despite the sweat dripping down the walls, Raus grew cold as he remembered the creature that had given it to them. ‘He won’t be pleased.’

Rein took a deep swig of his drink, looking grim. ‘What could we do? The whole place started moving. I’ve not seen anything like that, even on the Blackstone. It was like it was melting, or…’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘It was like it was turning into a painting of itself. A painting made of food that was being eaten while the plate was melting. And while it was on fire. But black fire. Do you know what I mean?’

Raus stared at him. ‘I don’t remember any food, Rein.’

‘My point, Raus, is that things got weird and we can’t be blamed for losing the bone machine. Besides, we did get it close to the Crucible. Maybe that will be good enough?’

Raus felt a flicker of hope. ‘Maybe. In which case, maybe we could still get paid.’

They looked at each other for a moment, then the lustre faded from their eyes and they shook their heads.

‘He was pretty clear on what we had to do,’ said Rein. ‘Besides, I was hoping we would get into the Crucible ourselves. If the priests wanted to get inside, I bet it’s crammed with holy relics. You know what the Blackstone’s like.’

Raus muttered and reached for his drink, wondering what to do next. Before his fingers could close on it, he slammed, face first, into the table.

Then he wasn’t wondering about anything any more.

Raus opened his eyes to be dazzled by a fierce strip-lumen hanging a few feet above his face. He gasped and tried to turn his head, but he was securely restrained.

‘What was in that drink?’ he groaned.

‘Raus! I thought you were dead.’

Raus could tell by the tone of Rein’s voice that his brother was in the same troubling situation.

‘I don’t feel dead,’ he replied. ‘You?’

‘I see four of everything. Is that right? That doesn’t seem right.’

A figure loomed over Raus. He was too blinded by the light to make out any details, but he caught a glimpse of a hood and heard the sound of whirring augmetics. There was also the distinctive smell of unguents and hydraulic fluids that he associated with tech-priests. He was about to ask for an explanation when he felt a sharp pain at his wrist.

‘Throne!’ he yelled. ‘What are you doing?’

Nobody answered but Raus would have struggled to listen even if they did. His head was suddenly full of low, guttural sounds. He seemed to have a zoo in his head.

‘Do you hear that, Rein?’ he gasped.

‘Hear what, Raus?’

‘Animals.’

‘I only hear you, brother.’

Raus panicked as the sounds grew louder. Even before asking Rein, he had suspected that the noises were only in his head. Like hounds or bears, snarling and growing more frantic with every snort. He strained against his bonds, desperate to escape the noise. The dissonance grew as all the sounds competed with each other, overlapping and drowning each out. Then, with a hoarse growl, they formed into a single, ragged voice that resonated through his body.

+You failed.+

Raus had never spoken directly to his employer, but he had no doubt who was in his head.

‘We got close, sir!’ he cried, wondering what the pain in his wrist meant. He had been tortured before. The subtle techniques were usually the worst.

‘I know,’ replied Rein, confused, and Raus realised that his brother was not hearing the voice. It was reaching him by a route other than his ears.

+Then you came close to surviving.+

The pain in Raus’ wrist exploded.

‘We got the priests to their Crucible,’ he managed to gasp through gritted teeth.

+I have no interest in Taddeus. The priests were just there to keep you alive. Taddeus is not the one. I am the one.+

‘We placed your bone machine near the entrance,’ said Raus. ‘It might be close enough.’

+Placed it?+

‘Ah, yes… Well… To be honest, sir, things were moving fast by that point. “Threw” might be a better description.’

The voice became more feral. +You have made my situation difficult. You assured me that you were capable of placing the teleporter at the entrance to the Crucible.+ There was a brief pause, then the voice continued, but seemed to be addressing someone else. +Make it hurt. I want them to suffer.+

Raus heard the scrape of heavy footsteps thudding away from him, as though a large animal were leaving. Then he smelled the engine aroma of the tech-priest again.

White-hot agony flooded his veins, racing from his wrist, up his arm and across his chest, causing his body to shake so violently that even the restraint harnesses could not entirely hold him down.

‘Wait!’ he howled. ‘We can make it up to you! Let us make amends! We can steal anything you like if you just–’

The pain increased and Raus screamed.

‘Forgive me, Rein,’ he tried to say but his head was shaking so furiously that he struggled to form intelligible words. He wanted to plead for his brother’s life, to explain that Rein was not to blame, but his jaw was locked shut. The agony built to a terrible crescendo and Raus could think of nothing else.

Then the pain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

+Can you still visualise the information I shared with you?+

Raus panted furiously, trying to catch his breath, unable to speak. ‘I do!’ he said eventually. ‘Of course I can!’ He hesitated. ‘What information?’

+The map.+

‘You mean the routes through the Blackstone? Yes, I do still see them. We both do, don’t we, Rein?’

Rein moaned enthusiastically.

Raus felt a rush of hope. ‘Why? Why does that matter?’

The heavy footfalls approached again. Raus sensed something large looming over him, blocking the light. His vision was blurred with pain and tears, but he had the sensation of being prey, scrutinised by a predatory beast.

+You might be redeemable.+

‘There’s no need for name calling. We did everything we could to–’

+Silence.+

There was a long pause. Raus could hear heavy, deep breathing.

+The teleporter is still active. When you abandoned it, it did not break. I am still receiving a signal. It is weak but it is there. If you still have the routes lodged in your hippocampus it should be possible to reach the teleporter and complete your errand.+

‘We would need the full fee,’ said Raus. ‘As promised.’

+I would pay you with your lives.+

Agony flared at Raus’ wrist again. ‘We can certainly work with that,’ he gasped. ‘We are very attached to the being alive aspect of our lives.’

4

There was a dull crunch as the Vanguard’s landing ramp thudded down into a corpse. Draik strode out into Precipice’s acrid fumes, ignored the bodies strewn across the mooring spar and lit his lho-stick, gazing indifferently across the carnage. Isola, Audus, Grekh and Quintus gathered behind him on the ramp, peering out through the crimson haze.

Isola shook her head as she stepped past him. ‘Listen. That sounds like autoweapons.’

Draik ignored the perpetual groan of Precipice’s gravity engines and picked out the sound Isola was referring to – a brittle clatter echoing through the battered hulls. Draik was careful not to show it, but he found the noise troubling. Open combat had never been tolerated in Precipice. If people were gunning each other down without fear of the consequences, the situation had worsened.

A group of crewmen ran past, their flight suits scorched and torn. They were bloodstained and limping and they did not reply when Draik called out to them, rushing off down a walkway between two moored landers. Through the void screen, Draik saw pieces of Precipice break loose and spin off into the debris cloud, and below the screen the smog was twisting into violent eddies, crackling with electric charge.

‘I didn’t think this place could get any uglier,’ said Audus.

Grekh loped off down the ramp and crouched next to the corpse trapped underneath.

Draik had become more tolerant of the creature’s habits, but he had no wish to observe them at close quarters.

‘To the Helmsman,’ he snapped, waving Grekh to his feet and leading the rest of the group on as he marched out onto the walkway and began picking his way through the piles of abandoned salvage. In Precipice’s early days, there had been an attempt to create something resembling a true space station but, in recent weeks, the place had reverted to its original form – a knot of buckled space debris, orbiting the Blackstone like something discarded rather than contrived.

The gunfire grew more distant as they approached the Dromeplatz – the dome-shaped trading auditorium at Precipice’s heart. The structure was dilapidated but still stable enough to contain several embarkation points, and there were landers banking around it as Draik and the others approached. The structure was as jerry-built as the rest of the station, but its mounds of rocket boosters, nose cones and cargo bays somehow conspired to resemble something magnificent. Perhaps it was simply the scale of the building, but it almost resembled the grand cathedra and manufactoria of an Imperial world.

‘There should be more people out here,’ said Audus, looking suspiciously at the empty walkways.

Draik stopped to look around. There were far more people in Precipice than the space station could comfortably hold, and it was usually hard to walk more than a few feet without bumping into someone or something, but Audus was right. The place looked deserted.

‘There’s plenty of noise coming from the auditorium,’ said Isola.

Draik nodded. ‘And that’s the only route to the Helmsman.’ He patted the xenos pistol he always carried, checking it was at his belt, then continued down the walkway.

People were reeling out of the Dromeplatz by the time they reached its doors. They were followed by clouds of what looked to be more smog. It was only as he reached the doors that Draik realised it was smoke. Before Isola could suggest a more sensible option, he extinguished his lho-stick and entered the Dromeplatz.

Even by the standards of Precipice, the heat was dreadful. He staggered to a halt, waving embers away.

‘Looks like we’ve found everyone,’ gasped Audus, as silhouetted figures barged into and around them, yelling and cursing.

As the smoke billowed and danced, Draik got a clearer picture of the scene in the marketplace. Crates and vehicles had been overturned and there were fires everywhere, but after a few seconds, Draik realised that there was no fighting taking place. People were firing the occasional shot into the air, but not at each other.

A group of heavily armoured abhumans waded through the crush – huge, hulking ogryns carrying wrist-mounted grenade launchers. They charged into the flames, raising slab-shields as they advanced. Jets of fire rushed out to meet them and Draik squinted as the giants were engulfed, staggering like drunks as the flames washed over their tank-tread armour. They tried to rise but more fire washed over them until they became charred husks.

‘We should get to the Helmsman,’ said Audus. ‘And leave these idiots to cook each other.’

Draik was tempted to agree, but he yielded to his better instincts. ‘If Precipice is under attack,’ he said, ‘I will be needed. Janus Draik is not the kind of man to–’

‘Let’s move then,’ interrupted Isola, giving him an impatient look as she broke cover and strode into the waves of smoke.

Draik was about to hurl an order at her back when he remembered that he was no longer her superior. He drew his splinter pistol and marched after her. All around him, Precipice’s crewmen and mercenaries were firing weapons and tearing down stalls. They seemed deranged. The air was a ripple of heat haze but Draik could see a building of some kind, erected right in the centre of the trade hall.

A dazzling shaft of fire ripped through the smoke, dripping burning promethium as it rushed towards him. Draik ducked and rolled across the floor, shielding his head as the fire roared past.

He rolled back onto his feet and staggered to a halt. ‘Isola?’ he called, but he was surrounded by unfamiliar faces.

‘That way,’ said Grekh, rushing to his side. The alien always carried a tatty-looking rifle with a hooked blade on the barrel and he pointed it at the structure Draik had just been studying.

Audus caught up with them, her face flushed and her expression grim. ‘We should go.’

Draik looked around and realised that the whole structure was groaning and buckling in the heat. All around him, people were either fleeing, or howling excitedly.

He shook his head. ‘I must find out what’s happening. Precipice is the property of the Imperial Navy and these people are under the aegis of the Senatorum Imperialis. Whoever dares–’

They all ducked as another bolt of flames ripped through the crowds, momentarily blinding Draik.

Once his vision cleared, he saw that almost everyone was now retreating. He dusted ash from his epaulettes and strode into the heat, his splinter pistol raised before him like he was stalking prey. Grekh padded silently at his side, rifle raised to his shoulder and, after cursing, Audus stomped after him, slamming a cartridge into the bulky autogun she was carrying. As they got nearer to the silhouetted structure Draik heard a voice booming through the smoke. It was amplified to such an extent that it was distorted and he struggled to make sense of the words, but it sounded deranged, like a lunatic screaming at imagined tormentors.

There was a crowd of people gathered around the structure in a circle and, as he got closer, Draik saw that they were all gripping flamers and chainswords.

‘Zealots,’ he muttered, lowering his pistol. ‘Ecclesiarchy.’

They were all draped in the holy symbols of the Adeptus Ministorum and most of them had shaved their heads. They were chanting along to the amplified voice ringing out over their heads.

‘But there are so many of them.’ He realised that there were too many to have reached Precipice with Taddeus. These were new converts. Fear was driving people to shave their heads and throw in their lot with fanatics.

Draik approached cautiously and saw what the huge shape was. The zealots had torn down a large section of the hall’s superstructure and welded the metal into a crude approximation of an Imperial aquila. Standing on the eagle’s back, legs apart and head thrown back, was Taddeus the Purifier. He had his ceremonial mace raised to the whirling smoke, and embers were dancing around him. The flames licking across the giant eagle lit his face from beneath, giving him an infernal majesty as he preached to the smouldering wreckage, his jowls shaking with passion. Pious Vorne was at his side, her flamer raised over her head like a trophy and her eyes closed.

He began to catch some of Taddeus’ words. The preacher was calling on his congregation to tear down the vile abomination that was Precipice, to set light to their ships and possessions. To put their faith in the Emperor rather than gravity engines and void shields.

‘Keep back,’ he said. ‘I doubt Taddeus would even recognise us while he’s in that state. If he orders these fools to open fire we’ll be incinerated.’

Isola nodded, and they gathered at a safe distance. Draik squinted up at Taddeus. The priest looked triumphant as he roared through the emitters attached to his armoured vestments.

‘Why would he do this?’ said Audus. ‘Surely he knows what a mess we’re already in?’

‘He doesn’t know anything that isn’t written in his holy book,’ said Draik. ‘It sounds like he’s seeking guidance. He thinks that stoking up all this madness is going to gain him a vision.’

‘Can you hear him?’ said Audus, shaking her head. ‘Sounds like barking to me.’

‘I hear enough. He thinks the changes in the Blackstone stem from a holy shrine.’

‘A holy shrine?’ laughed Audus. ‘The only shrines on the Blackstone were built by heretics.’

The smoke was clearing and some of the zealots looked their way, eyes rolling as they gripped their weapons.

Draik waved everyone further back. ‘Taddeus sees everything through the lens of his faith. He thinks the Blackstone was put out here by the Emperor – or at least put out here for the Emperor.’

The word ‘lens’ reminded him of something. The last time they’d travelled with Taddeus, he had taken pict captures of the priest’s holy book with his eyepiece, recording each page while Taddeus prayed. It was clearly a relic of great importance, so Draik had considered it his duty to keep a record of its contents.

‘Did he just say “crucible”?’ he asked Isola.

‘Yes. I think so.’

As Taddeus continued ranting at the growing crowd, Draik used his augmetic eyepiece to skim through data files until he found the images of the priest’s holy text. ‘Yes, the Crucible,’ he said, finding the relevant pages. ‘That would make sense. One of Taddeus’ prophecies talks about a prophet who harnesses something called the Crucible – and then uses it as a weapon for the Emperor.’

Isola and Audus were both staring at him.

‘How do you know that?’ asked Audus.

Draik shrugged. ‘I remember things.’

He looked back at Taddeus. The priest and Vorne both knew him well, but they were too lost in prayer to register anything, spitting words at their adoring crowd. The Dromeplatz was filling with more wild-eyed converts but as Draik considered his next move, another group of bullgryns charged through the fumes and opened fire. Heavy rounds smashed into Taddeus’ acolytes, flinging bodies and shrapnel.

Draik and the others backed even further away as the priests retaliated, unleashing a wall of fire at the lumbering soldiers.

‘Did he have this many followers before?’ said Audus, shielding her face from the glare.

Draik shook his head. ‘Fear breeds faith. He has their undivided attention.’

‘And what’s he doing with their attention?’ asked Audus. ‘What’s he telling them?’

‘The usual,’ said Isola. ‘That salvation comes through unswerving devotion.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Which probably means burning anyone who isn’t following Taddeus.’

Draik gave her a warning glance. ‘Taddeus is an ordained preacher of the Adeptus Ministorum and a representative of the Holy Synod. A senior one, at that.’

‘Well, Former-Captain Draik,’ said Audus. ‘What do you propose? You said you were duty-bound to stop this attack.’

‘It’s not an attack.’ He looked up at Taddeus. ‘It’s damned annoying, but I’m not going to climb that scaffold and accost him. What would be the point? There’s little to gain in challenging his beliefs now, other than a place on his pyre.’

‘If we don’t stop this, innocent people will get hurt,’ said Isola.

Draik shook his head. ‘Proctors will put a stop to it.’

‘You’re scared of him,’ said Audus.

‘Don’t be absurd. What do you suggest? I attack a representative of the Holy Synod?’ He looked back at the exit. Defeated-looking wretches were scrambling out onto the gantries and walkways, grabbing abandoned salvage as they went. ‘I will continue as planned. I will find those ratling reprobates in the Helmsman and navigate my route through the Blackstone.’

Audus waved at the figures baying at Taddeus. ‘How much interest do you think these people will have in buying what you find down there?’

‘Then I won’t stay here,’ he replied. ‘I will take the Vanguard out of Precipice, get through the Oort cloud and buy passage out of the system on a larger ship. There are some very wealthy systems in the Western Reaches. There will be plenty of buyers out there.’ He waved at the hazy outline of the Blackstone Fortress, just visible through the dome overhead. ‘Besides, someone needs to warn the wider Imperium of what’s happening out here. If the Blackstone really has fallen under the control of heretics, the whole galaxy could be at risk. The place is a weapon.’

Isola was about to snap back another retort, but then she sighed and looked up at the Blackstone. ‘We do need to get word out, but how? The Blackstone’s weapons are online. They’re firing randomly, but they’re still firing. You’ve seen what happens when people try and fly out of here. Most of them get blown apart before they reach the debris cloud.’

Audus grinned. ‘None of those ships had me as a pilot.’

Draik nodded at her.

Isola pursed her lips and looked up at the Blackstone again. ‘We have enough fuel to get the Vanguard across this system. There are Imperial outposts at the Marianus Cluster and at Rimini Point. We could reach the officers in charge and have word relayed from there.’

Smoke whirled around Draik as he glared at Isola. ‘And what then? Join the teeming ranks of poor and the nameless? Should I work in the manufactoria or the refineries, do you think?’ He slapped the family crest on his breastplate. ‘Is that a suitable end for a Draik? Is that a suitable end for you?’

Draik kept his tone neutral, but it was hard. He could feel how close he was to that fate – to becoming one of the downtrodden wretches he had spent his whole life pitying. He saw a flicker of emotion in Isola’s eyes. Was it fear or pride? She had a great skill for masking her thoughts. It was one of the reasons she had always been so useful.

The conversation was tiresome so he headed back the way they had come, waving for the others to follow. ‘Raus and Rein rarely drag their noses out of their drinks,’ he said, ‘so the Helmsman should still be a safe bet.’

As they left the Dromeplatz, more crowds were gathering around Taddeus, but no one was attempting to attack him any more. They were raising their voices in prayer, waving their weapons in tribute rather than in threat. Draik shook his head. He had studied Taddeus’ Liber Eudoxus at length, and whatever he said openly about the priest, he knew the man was deranged.

If Taddeus was Precipice’s only hope, it really was time to leave.

5

Drinkers were spilling out of the Helmsman as Draik and the others approached. With no chance of plundering the Blackstone and no way to do anything else, the good souls of Precipice had elected to get drunk. It was a violent mess. Draik doubted these people even realised what was taking place over in the Dromeplatz. They were too busy vomiting, fighting or sleeping on scrap.

The tenuous peace that had lasted all this time was quickly disappearing. Not all of the bodies strewn across the wreckage were merely unconscious. Draik stepped carefully over dark pools, unsure if they were wine or blood. There were people from right across the galaxy’s Western Reaches, and even further – cultures so different from each other they might as well be alien. And alongside these strange bedfellows were actual xenos, creatures with an entirely different biology and intellect. And yet, as Draik stood watching them roll, spew and punch, he realised what a great leveller desperation was. They all now looked the same, whatever colour, size or shape they were. Fear had turned them into savages.

Reaching the door took a lot of shoving and shouting and, finally, several brutal swipes with the butt of Grekh’s rifle. Then the four of them stumbled into the main bar. It was a low, circular chamber built of salvaged heat shields and fuel pipes, and so crowded with sweaty figures that it resembled the enginarium deck of a void ship.

The owner, Gatto, kept a flock of void creatures he called bloodbirds, and they were wheeling over the crowds, fluttering and screeching as the drinkers reeled into each other. Draik and the others barged through the crush, making for the bar. Gatto was there, a rusting lump of augmetics whose rage-flushed head was the only relic of his humanity. Draik called out to him as he struggled to reach him through the sweaty crowd, but Gatto was too busy slamming someone’s head on the bar to notice. Gatto had such a forest of mechanical limbs that, even as he pummelled the man into unconsciousness, he was serving drinks down the length of the bar, slopping overpriced liquor towards the slumped wrecks of former captains.

‘Draik,’ said Audus, grabbing his shoulder and pointing to one of the booths that lined the walls. ‘I see them.’

The ratlings were hunched over their table, half-hidden in the gloom and whispering furiously to each other. Draik shoved his way over to them, gesturing for Audus and Isola to follow.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said as he reached the table.

Even by the standards of Precipice, Rein and Raus stretched the definition of ‘gentlemen’. They were sanctioned mutants, barely waist-high on Draik, covered in lank hair and dressed in scraps of Astra Militarum uniform with the regimental markings torn off. They had no doubt deserted at some point prior to reaching Precipice. Draik struggled to drag the next words from his throat.

‘I am looking for passage into the deeper regions of the Blackstone and I am led to believe that you have knowledge of a safe route.’

The abhumans looked up at him with bleary eyes, wiping their mouths with the back of their sleeves. Then they sat up and tried to make themselves presentable, licking the palms of their hands and trying to plaster down their muck-splattered hair.

‘Captain Draik!’ they cried simultaneously, standing and saluting.

‘We know that place inside out, don’t we, Rein?’ said Raus.

Draik waved them back into their seats. Something troubled him about their response but he could not quite place it. His mind was too crowded with images of Taddeus and Vorne.

‘I hear that you were employed by Taddeus the Purifier,’ he said, taking a seat.

Raus grinned and offered him a drink. The glass was greasy and filled with pieces of whatever Raus was eating. Draik stared at the food, unable to tell if it was scraps of meat, or flakes Raus had picked from his head.

He waved it away.

Raus shrugged and glugged it down thirstily as his brother reached over and grabbed a handful of the indeterminate foodstuff scattered across the table.

‘We have taken His Magnificence to various locations on the Blackstone,’ said Raus, attempting to emulate Draik’s refined speech. ‘It is always an honour and a privilege to assist such a tarragon of…’ Raus waved his hand, revealing nails that were an inch long and caked in grime. ‘Such a tarragon of virtue and wisdom and things of that ilk.’ He raised his chin and glanced at his brother. ‘You might say we’re his personal advisors when it comes to matters of scouting and locating, isn’t that right, Rein?’

‘Personal advisors,’ nodded Rein. ‘I recall him using that very term when we led him to the Sacred Holy Crucible.’

Draik glanced around the bar, wondering if anyone of quality was observing his liaison with these wretched clowns. Half the glowglobes were broken and it was hard to make anyone out clearly. He could tell there was no one of his social rank watching, but he had learned to hold most of Precipice’s inhabitants in high regard. They were such a fearless, tenacious breed that, in a peculiar way, he almost considered them his equals.

‘The Crucible?’ he said, recalling the name Taddeus had used in his sermon. ‘Is that the most recent location you led them to?’

Raus nodded eagerly. ‘Very important it is too, Captain Draik. Which is why he came seeking our expert guidance. The Sacred Crucible of the Holy Emperor of Mankind, I think they called it.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leant across the table. ‘His Holiness means to enter it and seize control of Blackstone Fortress.’ He glanced at his brother, who was still investigating scabs. ‘Isn’t that right, Rein?’

‘Right, Raus. His Majesty is going to enter the Crucible and fulfil his ambition of burning all the heretics.’

‘All. Of. Them,’ asserted Raus, tapping the table. ‘Once he’s in that Crucible he will clear the way for honest, Emperor-fearing folk like us to finish our job of salvaging relics for the glory of the Imperium.’

‘For the glory of the Imperium,’ intoned Rein, closing his eyes.

As the ratlings babbled enthusiastically, inflated by an absurd sense of self-importance, Draik realised what had seemed odd about their initial words. No one in Precipice was daring to enter the Blackstone any more, but they had not seemed surprised when he approached them to discuss an expedition. It was as if they had been waiting for him.

‘Were you expecting to see me here?’ he asked, leaning back to try and escape the ratlings’ aroma.

Their smiles froze. Rein resumed picking at the pile of scabs and looked away and Raus took a long, hard swig of his cloudy drink.

‘Well, we was just saying,’ he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve again, ‘that if anyone has enough class to get down there and get round those heretics, it would be Captain Janus Draik. Ain’t that right, Rein?’

‘Right, Raus. We was kind of expecting you, captain. On account of the fact that matters have become so dire and there has been no word from you for days. We assumed you would be working on a plan.’

Raus grinned again, waving his drink at Isola and Audus. ‘You and your servants have been down there so many times, we knew all these black shrines and magnet storms wouldn’t deter you any more than it deterred His Gloriousness.’

‘We’re not Draik’s servants,’ said Audus, smirking at Isola. Isola said nothing, studying the ratlings with, if anything, even more distaste than Draik.

Raus shrugged. ‘All bets are off. No one has the balls to go down there any more. They think all the good stuff is out of reach. But we had a route map to the Crucible, in our heads. And once you get beyond those doors you’re in undiscovered territory. His Holiness was very clear on that. Those regions of the Blackstone have yet to be broken into.’

‘By anyone,’ said Rein.

‘By anyone,’ agreed Raus. ‘So all the good stuff will still be out there.’

‘What about the Seethe?’ asked Isola.

Their grins froze again. Draik remembered this from the last time he had dealt with them. Every time they encountered a new concept, the ratlings’ haggard little faces fell slack. It was as if they lacked the intellect to process new information and control their facial muscles.

Isola sighed. ‘I mean the violent changes that are taking place down there. Some people call it the Seethe. Perhaps you give it another name. I mean the transformation that has made all the old landing points unsafe.’

‘Ah,’ laughed Raus. ‘The Aberration. That’s what the priests called it.’ He grimaced, making his face even more rodent-like. ‘It is even more of a nightmare down there now, to be honest. None of the walls hold for more than a minute and the floors turn to liquid or gas when you try and stand on them. It’s all mutating and twisting and bubbling and crashing.’ He waved his hand with a flourish. ‘And things of that ilk.’

‘Bubbling and crashing,’ muttered Rein, shaking his head.

‘But you managed to get Taddeus and his followers to this Crucible?’ asked Isola, casting Draik a sideways glance. ‘How? If everything is in flux down there, how did you manage to reach unexplored regions?’

The ratlings smiled proudly. ‘We have a map,’ said Raus, tapping his greasy locks. ‘In our heads.’

‘A map that you acquired where?’ asked Draik.

‘Come now!’ exclaimed Raus, raising his hands. ‘We’re gentlemen of business. I hardly need remind you that the confidentiality of a source must be respected.’

Rein shook his head, looking appalled. ‘We would never devolve the identity of a source, Captain Draik.’

Draik felt like he was wading through treacle. The ratlings were even more absurd than he remembered from their last encounter. ‘So,’ he persevered, ‘you have a map, in your minds, that allows you to navigate the constantly shifting environs of the Blackstone Fortress.’

‘Constantly shifting,’ nodded Raus.

‘Environs,’ agreed Rein.

Draik stared at them in disbelief. ‘Did you really escort Taddeus to his destination?’

‘They did,’ replied Grekh, before the ratlings could answer. The kroot was looming over the table, leaning on the butt of his rifle. ‘I gained insights regarding their mission when I was–’

Draik held up a warning hand and shook his head. Then he looked back at the ratlings, who were both beaming at him. Raus took another piece of unrecognisable food from his flak jacket and offered it around the table. Everyone declined apart from Rein, who tore a piece off with an eager gleam in his eyes.

‘If you escorted the priests to their destination,’ said Draik, ‘how is it that they are currently preaching in the Dromeplatz?’

‘Ah,’ said Raus. ‘A bad business that. It turns out that the rulers of Precipice–’

‘Some of the rulers of Precipice,’ interrupted Rein.

Raus nodded, looking around anxiously before continuing. ‘Some of the rulers of Precipice were involved in bad goings-on. They were not–’

‘At least, His Magnificence said,’ interrupted Rein.

Raus nodded. ‘His Explicitness decided that some of the lawmakers were part of the problem. He said that he would not be able to enter the Crucible until he had dealt with the heresy back here on Precipice. He needed to do his holy work here and then go back.’

‘Charity begins at home, you might say,’ grinned Rein.

‘Perfectly put, brother,’ replied Raus. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper again. ‘I’m not sure I fully understand everything the priests told me, but we don’t need to worry about them. If we hotfoot it down to the Blackstone, we can get rich quicker than a–’

‘Bring glory to the Imperium,’ interrupted Rein.

‘Exactly that,’ agreed Raus. ‘Once we have found the Blackstone’s most hidden treasures we can bring them back to Precipice and keep them safe until the correct authorities can instruct us further.’

A tremor rocked through the Helmsman, causing drinkers to fall as heat shielding crashed onto the bar. There was a brief, tense silence as everyone checked to see if they were harmed, then Gatto bellowed obscenities at the door, as though he could berate the Blackstone’s guns into silence.

‘You’ll need to bring plenty of guards, mind,’ said Raus, once the dust had settled.

Draik shook his head. ‘You said you have a route past all the problem spots.’

‘Ah, well… It’s not quite that simple, is it, Rein?’ said Raus.

‘Nothing is ever simple,’ replied Rein.

Raus nodded philosophically and seemed to lose his thread.

‘Why is it not simple?’ said Draik, battling the urge to slam their heads together.

‘Heretics,’ said Raus. ‘We can lead you around the changes in the Blackstone, but we can’t predict where heretics might pop up.’

‘And they pop up everywhere,’ muttered Rein.

Raus nodded. ‘You’ll need plenty of your House Draik Guardsmen if we’re going to reach anywhere interesting. The heretics think the place is theirs for the keeping. You can’t get two feet without meeting someone who wants to use your head as bunting.’

Draik sat back and drummed his fingers on the table. He had Grekh, Isola, Audus and a dim-witted valet. Not exactly an impressive fighting force.

‘Is there a problem?’ asked Raus, scratching furiously at his neck.

‘No,’ muttered Draik, considering his next move. He needed time to think. ‘Meet me at the Vanguard in two hours and we will plan our approach.’

The ratlings nodded and grinned at him, but made no move to leave. Draik stared at them.

‘We have not fully finished our negotiations, Captain Draik,’ said Raus.

‘Not fully,’ agreed Rein.

‘There is the small matter of our recompensation for leading you forthwith inextricably and…’ Raus grimaced, unable to summon any more complicated words.

‘Unto the Crucible,’ said Rein with an elaborate flourish of his hand.

‘Unto,’ nodded Raus.

‘Are you talking about your fee?’ asked Draik.

‘Nothing so crude, Captain Draik,’ replied Raus.

‘No,’ assured Rein. ‘Nothing crude.’

‘We will help you in this matter,’ said Raus, ‘because it is the right thing to do for the glory and security of the Imperium. If the priests are unable to enter the Crucible then we need to make sure that another legal representation of Holy Terra gets inside. If His Munificence no longer means to reach the heart of the Blackstone then we will help you, Captain Draik.’

Draik took a deep breath and almost considered sampling Raus’ murky drink. ‘Just tell me what you want.’

Avarice shone in their eyes and Raus leant over the table. As he did so, Draik noticed that he was stroking something at his wrist.

‘His Holiness mentioned that inside the Crucible there would be holy relics. And he was happy–’

‘More than happy,’ clarified Rein.

‘More than happy,’ said Raus, ‘for us to take a memento of the day we helped secure the safety of the Western Reaches.’

‘Just a memento,’ nodded Rein.

Draik had expected a more ambitious request. The inner vaults of the Blackstone Fortress were reputed to be littered with priceless artefacts. He was surprised the ratlings were only asking for one. Mind you, he thought, one priceless relic would be enough to set them up for the rest of their lives and be portable enough not to hinder them when they tried to escape Precipice in some unsuspecting captain’s hold.

He nodded. ‘I will hold to the deal you agreed with Taddeus. Meet me at the Vanguard in two hours.’

They nodded eagerly but remained seated, grinning at him.

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ said Draik, indicating that they should leave.

‘Of course, Captain Draik,’ laughed Raus, and the pair of them scurried away through the bar, vanishing out into the fumes.

‘You have no soldiers,’ said Audus when the ratlings were gone.

Draik pictured his father’s face and resisted the urge to punch the table. ‘Grekh,’ he said, looking up at the kroot. ‘Are there more of your kind on Precipice?’

The alien looked blankly at him. ‘My debt is my own to pay. Even if my clansmen were here, they would not share my obligation.’

‘What about other contacts? Have you any allies out here?’

Grekh looked through Draik.

Audus laughed. ‘No one wants to be in the same room as him. They’re scared he’ll eat them the moment he gets a mental block.’

‘And you?’ replied Draik.

She laughed again. ‘No one wants to be associated with a deserter. The shadow of a commissar dogs my every step.’

Isola waved at the door. ‘We could just leave, now, before Precipice falls apart and spits us into the void.’

Draik shook his head and looked at the gaunt-faced wraiths who surrounded them. ‘I will not leave here a ruined man.’

Isola leant close to him. ‘Think. If you spread word of what’s happening here, you will still be known as a hero. The Navy would give you safe passage back to Terra. You could visit your father and–’

‘And what? Beg him to forgive me? I will not crawl back to Terra like a pitiful hound, with my–’

‘They’ve got the proctors!’ howled someone over by the door. Laughter and jeers filled the room, and the drunks swarmed around the exit, fighting their way out of the bar.

‘Who’s got the proctors?’ demanded Draik, grabbing a passer-by.

‘The priests,’ laughed the man, shrugging Draik off and heading after the others.

‘Without the proctors this place is really screwed,’ said Audus.

Grekh looked unimpressed. ‘They are criminals. They had no hereditary right to rule.’

Isola shook her head. ‘Audus is right. Precipice is already falling apart. People are panicking. If there’s no rule of law they’ll turn on each other. We have to talk to Taddeus. He might listen to you, Janus. He trusts you.’

Draik closed his eye and thought for a moment. Then he nodded. His optical implant was still showing some of the images he had recorded from Taddeus’ book. ‘There might be a way. In fact, this might be useful.’

‘Useful?’ laughed Audus.

Draik quickly called up more pict-captures of Taddeus’ sacred tome, the Liber Eudoxus, letting the pages flick across his augmetic eyepiece. He homed in on the passages about the Crucible prophecy, reading the text carefully, looking for the vision Taddeus was hoping to summon by burning people.

‘We need to do something quick,’ said Isola.

‘Wait,’ said Draik, rising from the table. ‘I have it.’

6

By the time they reached the Dromeplatz, the fighting was already over. There were dozens of bullgryns sprawled over broken stalls, their hides as charred as their armour. The crowd of zealots now included half of Precipice and the sound of adoration was deafening.

Taddeus was at the centre of the hall, still standing on his crudely made eagle with Vorne at his side. There were fires everywhere and some were spreading up the walls of the Dromeplatz, skirting dangerously close to promethium tanks.

‘Look!’ cried Isola as they raced through the demented crowds, pointing at the wings of the eagle. There were several figures trapped in the structure, tightly bound and struggling to free themselves. ‘It’s the proctors.’

Draik nodded vaguely but his mind was still fixed on the images he had seen in the Liber Eudoxus. He knew that Taddeus would never respond to arguments of logic or pleas for clemency; only holy instruction would stop him now. There was one particular image that Draik was focused on – a picture of the prophet that was destined to enter the Crucible, as it was described in the Liber Eudoxus. The man was devoid of facial features, but otherwise clearly rendered, to the extent that a specific injury was visible.

Draik blinked away the pict-feed and looked for a way to reach Taddeus. A crowd was gathered before the priest, chanting wildly as others tore down the station they had fought so hard to reach. Behind the eagle, the Dromeplatz was almost empty. Draik picked up his pace, not caring if the others managed to keep up. He had dealt with Taddeus before and knew exactly how to handle him. As he ran, he ripped the bandages off the hand he had cut when he crushed his glass. The wound was still bloody and Draik waved his hand violently to get the blood flowing. By the time he broke out of the crowd and reached the back of the scaffold, his hand was drenched.

As Draik clambered up the eagle, flamer-wielding zealots turned to face him, so he halted and cried out over the din. For a worrying moment, the preacher did not hear him, too engrossed in his furious oratory. The zealots glared at Draik, raising their smoking flamers.

‘Taddeus!’ cried Draik, wondering if his desperation had caused him to make a mistake.

Finally, Taddeus glanced back his way. He grinned and waved Draik up. ‘Join us, Captain Draik. The path to ascension is about to be revealed!’

Draik shoved past the zealots and clambered up the scaffold, climbing past the struggling shapes of the proctors. They were drenched in promethium and called out as he passed, desperate with fear. Pious Vorne came to greet Draik at the edge of a dais that topped one of the eagle’s heads. The pitted iron of her mask hid most of her face, but he could see that she was ecstatic, enraptured by her master’s call to arms. She put her flamer down and hauled Draik up onto the platform. She was lashed with wiry muscles and easily dragged him up to Taddeus’ side.

Taddeus rounded on him with a wild grin. ‘This is it.’ He gripped Draik’s shoulders. ‘I can finally see clearly.’

‘See what?’ Draik looked around at the figures bound into the cages.

‘My mission on Precipice! The Emperor did not send me here to master the Blackstone Fortress, He sent me here to find a prophet who would deliver us from heresy and misbelief.’ Taddeus pointed his mace at the roaring crowds below. ‘They see it, Draik. They see the truth. Soon, the God-Emperor will reveal His purpose to me.’

Draik shook his head. ‘If you burn the proctors there will be mayhem.’

Taddeus massaged his sweaty face like he was kneading bread. ‘Holy fire never fails. I will reach for a vision. I will purify!’

Vorne grabbed her flamer from the floor and held it aloft. ‘Purify!’

The crowds echoed her cry and the word ‘purify!’ rang out from hundreds of mouths.

‘Taddeus,’ said Draik, grabbing the preacher’s arm. ‘Must all of these people die for you to see the truth? Think about what you are doing here. Is that truly what the Emperor would wish?’

Taddeus grinned and was about to reply when he caught sight of Draik’s blood-drenched hand. The smile froze on his face. Isola and the others had climbed up to the platform and looked on in shock as Taddeus stared at the rogue trader.

‘Vorne!’ gasped Taddeus, holding Draik’s hand out to her. ‘Look! At this exact moment. It cannot be a coincidence.’

Draik acted as though he had no idea what Taddeus meant. Audus still looked baffled, but he noticed that Isola was giving him a suspicious look. She knew him better than anyone. She had guessed this was not a simple misunderstanding.

The crowd grew quiet as they all saw how Taddeus was looking at Draik.

‘Are you sure?’ said Vorne, her eyes wide.

‘Remember the painting!’ said Taddeus. ‘The bloody hand! How could it be a coincidence? Captain Draik appears now, at this exact moment, just as I am about to light the flames, his hand as red as the saint in the Liber Eudoxus. He is the one whose route was prepared by Saint Corval. He is the Eye of Hermius. He is the one who will teach the blind to see.’

Taddeus loosed Draik’s hand and began pacing about the platform.

‘It all makes sense. Think of our previous expeditions on the Blackstone. Draik survived when others did not. He has always found a way. And it was Draik who led Saint Corval onto the Blackstone. It’s because the God-Emperor willed it, Vorne. He is the one. He is the Anointed.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ lied Draik, gripping his wounded hand protectively. He could only remember a fraction of Taddeus’ complex prophecies but he knew the name Corval. Corval was an old Terran friend who had accompanied him on a previous expedition. He had died after attempting to betray Draik and he was certainly no saint, but Draik saw nothing to gain by pointing that out now.

Taddeus dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. ‘You are the Anointed. You are destined to join your soul to the Blackstone Fortress and claim it in the name of the Emperor. It is just as you always suspected, captain.’ He waved at Grekh. ‘As your animal always claimed. You were meant to come here. You are the Eye of Hermius. It is your destiny to join the Blackstone.’

Draik caught Audus giving Isola a sideways glance. He hoped Audus had the sense not to crack a joke. ‘Well,’ he said, still wearing a confused expression. ‘I do intend to make one final journey to the fortress – one last attempt to fathom its secrets.’

‘Of course!’ cried Taddeus. ‘Exactly as the great book predicted. And we will accompany you.’ He waved at the crowds of zealots below. ‘We will be your honour guard as you approach the gates of deliverance, Janus Draik. We will carry you to ascension!’

Audus turned away, and Draik guessed she was hiding laughter, but Isola and Grekh watched the farcical scene in deadly earnest.

Draik placed a hand on Taddeus’ shoulder and told him to stand. ‘Then your work in the Dromeplatz is done?’ he said. ‘You have received the vision you were looking for?’ He glanced at the proctors. They were staring up at him with a mixture of terror and hope.

Taddeus placed a hand over his chest armour and sighed. ‘You are the answer, Captain Draik. I knew it. I knew if I returned here and purged Precipice of its sin, my ward would present itself.’

Draik gave Isola a discreet look and she nodded back at him, her shoulders dropping as she realised Draik had averted catastrophe.

Taddeus grinned at Vorne and gripped her shoulder. ‘We have been purified, my child. Let us give thanks.’

Vorne nodded and looked around at the other missionaries on the platform. ‘We have been purified!’ she howled.

As one, the zealots fired their flamers into the cages beneath their feet, setting the enormous eagle alight.

‘No!’ cried Draik.

Audus howled and leapt from the platform, scrambling down the burning wings. Isola hesitated, looking at Draik, then did the same, diving through the curtain of black smoke that bloomed around them.

Beneath Draik’s feet, the proctors screamed and the smell of burning hair and skin filled the air. The whole structure began to collapse and Draik staggered towards the flames. He slammed into Taddeus, who was staring at him in awe, then reeled backwards, thudding into Vorne, who looked at him with the same amazement.

‘We’ll burn!’ cried Draik, furious at the priests’ idiocy. He staggered again as the eagle crumbled into the flames. The heat was dreadful and everywhere he looked Draik could see gouts of flame, igniting the eagle and the zealots who had set it alight. The proctors were already dead, their blackened remains crumbling in the blaze, but now their executioners were catching too.

‘We will not burn!’ cried Taddeus, lurching towards him through the fire, staring at Draik’s hand. ‘You are the Anointed. The Emperor will not permit your death.’

‘This way,’ said Grekh, smashing supports aside in a whirl of sparks. He used his rifle to hammer down the burning struts, creating an opening down the back of the eagle.

‘Follow me!’ cried Draik, gesturing to Taddeus and Vorne as he leapt after the kroot.

The priests followed and, as the four of them tried to scramble down through the flames, the eagle collapsed under their weight, sending them tumbling towards the floor of the hall. Draik landed with a howl of pain and outrage, then rolled aside as a burning column smashed down behind them. He followed Grekh, running away from the wreckage as more of the eagle fell.

When he was clear, he looked back and saw Taddeus striding proudly towards him through the flames, followed by Vorne and dozens of the zealots. All of them were burned and some of them were still on fire, but they seemed oblivious to their pain, their eyes fixed lovingly on Draik.

‘What have you done?’ whispered Isola, limping towards him, her face blackened by soot.

Draik stared at the bodies burning in their cages, horrified.

Taddeus rushed over. ‘This is just the beginning,’ he said, breathless with excitement. He had clearly mistaken Draik’s dismay for religious awe.

‘Think what we will achieve,’ he said, flames glinting in his eyes.

7

+Call me Archivist. It is neither accurate nor appropriate, but it is easier than trying to explain my true name.+

Quintus felt the words more than heard them. They entered his veins through the spur of bone at his wrist and flooded his body with thoughts. It was the most peculiar sensation and he sat back, battling nausea. He was seated in an inner chamber of his employer’s lander, but even the brightly lit room gave him little insight into the nature of his host.

The room was so crowded with salvaged equipment that the original design of the place was hard to discern. The objects stacked against the walls were an eclectic mix: engine parts, weapons and scientific equipment, all placed in carefully ordered piles. He could recognise some of them as property of the Imperial Navy or the Astra Militarum, but most were so strange that he could not even guess at their origin, never mind their purpose. Many were a mixture of mechanical and organic – there was a row of slender filaments near his seat that looked to be alloy strands, bundled into glass terrariums, but the strands were straining towards him, making rustling noises as they snaked across the floor. He scoured the room, trying to make out its design. It seemed more industrial and utilitarian than the grand staterooms of the Vanguard, but he could not be sure of its purpose. A storeroom, perhaps, or a cargo hold.

There was no one in the room with him. The guards who had admitted him had vanished without a word after letting him aboard and waving him to the chair.

‘Very well, Archivist,’ he said hesitantly, moving his seat a little further from the questing filaments. ‘Am I…? Will you still need me to stay close to Captain Draik?’

+You will stay at his side until I give you the order.+

The words rose up through Quintus’ chest and blossomed in his head, like the warm glow that followed a shot of amasec. It seemed a little less sickening this time and he realised that he was growing accustomed to it.

‘Order?’ he asked, trying to hide his fear.

+Ultimately, you will need to end Draik’s life. But it will not be a difficult task. I shall provide you with an explosive device that will not be detected by his equipment. It is small but powerful. You will need to trigger the timer and then make yourself scarce. But you must not do anything until I give the order. It is important that Draik reaches the Aberration at the centre of the Blackstone Fortress. Or, more accurately, it is important that the abhumans reach that spot, and their best chance is if Draik survives until that point. Once the destination has been reached, you must make sure that Draik does not enter.+

Quintus laughed nervously. ‘Kill him? With an explosive? I think you misunderstand. I did not mean–’

+I understand everything. Once the ratlings reach the Aberration, you will use the explosive to ensure Janus Draik does not pass inside.+

‘I’m not flying down to the Blackstone Fortress. Have you heard what people are saying? It’s a heretic stronghold.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, even if I did go, I’m no killer. I’m not going to murder anyone.’

There was a pause.

Quintus heard the creature breathing and another sound that reverberated through his wrist – a half-hidden echo that sounded like an animal trying to form speech, a torrent of snorts and growls. It’s a translator, he thought, looking down at the lump of bone jutting from his wrist.

+Not just a translator,+ said the Archivist, answering Quintus even though he had not spoken the thought aloud. +A nebulium coil. It links me to you. Your Martian priests would refer to it as a psychic resonator. Before you sent me word that Draik was planning an expedition, your subconscious mind had already alerted me. I only needed to hear the details. And this is important news. Of all the agents I am currently employing, you are now the most interesting.+

‘I will not go down there. And I will not kill anyone. I agreed to get close to him and feed you information and I’ve done that. But I am not a damned murderer.’

+You are whatever I wish you to be.+

Agony exploded from Quintus’ wrist and flooded his body, causing him to howl and jolt. The pain vanished as suddenly as it had come and he slapped back down into his chair, panting and weeping. To his horror, he saw that the nebulium coil had spread further up his arm, turning more of his flesh to bone.

+Believe me, I would rather not employ a crude implement like you, but I am no longer a welcome sight on Precipice. Your species is short-sighted, to say the least, but people are beginning to guess at my purpose here. There could be tiresome delays if I were seen outside this ship. Which forces me to work with simple life forms such as yourself. The Blackstone is hazardous. I will not risk travelling to the Aberration by any normal route. I need the abhumans to reach it for me and provide me with a safe point of egress. You will travel with them, help Draik keep them alive and then, once the Aberration is in sight, you will detonate the device and kill Draik. I will be watching you every step of the way, but you should know this – I have programmed the nebulium coil with a very clear instruction. Should you venture more than a few hundred feet from Draik’s side, it will spread. It is eager to spread, human. It is hungry. It would like to transform more than your wrist. Do not leave Draik’s side, or you will die begging your fellow travellers to end your suffering.+

Quintus gasped as agony flashed up his arm and pounded in his temples. ‘Throne!’ he cried, almost falling from the chair as he gripped his head.

+Do not leave him.+

Quintus was about plead for mercy when the pain vanished.

+But if you perform to my expectations, I shall honour the terms of our contract and I shall also remove the implant.+

Quintus could not speak for a moment as he struggled to breathe. The pause gave him time to realise how much danger he was in. This creature was not like the fools he had spent the last few years duping. It could see into his head. It could kill him with a thought. He slumped in the chair, shaking, and a miserable realisation washed through him. There was no way out of this. He was trapped. He would, at the very least, have to fly with Captain Draik on his absurd expedition to the Blackstone. There was no way he was going to murder anyone, though. Perhaps, once he was down there, he would find some way to outwit the creature.

+Do not delude yourself that you are my intellectual equal, human. You could not outwit me any more than an insect might outwit me. Conform to my wishes. It is your only chance.+

Quintus cursed inwardly. The wretched thing could read his thoughts as easily as if he were speaking out loud. ‘And if I do conform,’ he said, ‘you will alter my appearance?’

+I will. And the changes will be more than cosmetic. My surgeons can alter your genetic fingerprint. You will be untraceable.+

‘And you can get me out of here?’

+The weapons batteries on the Blackstone Fortress are far from random, whatever your uneducated compatriots believe. Once I am sure that the abhumans have reached the heart of the Aberration and Draik is dead, my agents will return and you will have a place on my own ship. In my crew even, if you desire it, and as a passenger if not.+

Quintus hesitated as a shadow moved across the opposite wall. None of the lumens had changed position and there was no reason for the shadow to have shifted.

+My silhouette,+ said the Archivist. +This is not a true wall, only a screen.+

Quintus struggled to make out the creature’s shape. The silhouette was distorted and vague, but he could see that it was taller and bulkier than a man. The shape was also long, as though the Archivist were standing on four legs rather than two.

‘What are you?’ he asked, immediately regretting his blunt tone.

+I am the past. I knew of the Blackstone Fortress before you were even born. And I knew it would arrive in this sector. The fortress belongs to me and I belong to it.+

The Archivist moved as it spoke and Quintus saw that he was right: it was a hulking, four-legged creature, with various shapes attached to it: pieces of armour, perhaps.

+Draik is currently without soldiers, but he is resourceful. It will not take him long to secure some. Make sure you are ready and waiting on his ship when he leaves.+

‘What if he leaves me behind?’

+He will not. If his former assistant is no longer his to command, he will require someone to be his subordinate. He would consider it degrading to travel without a servant.+

‘Why are you doing all this?’ Quintus asked, intrigued despite his fear. ‘Did you come here to get rich, like all the others?’

There was no reply and Quintus tensed, wondering if he was about to feel another influx of pain.

+There are many forms of wealth.+ The shape moved away from the screen, but the voice still resonated in Quintus’ head. +And many kinds of pain.+

8

Word spread before Draik could make it back to the Vanguard. News of the proctors’ execution had shocked the people of Precipice to such an extent that a strange calm descended. Captains ordered their crews to their ships, unsure what the deaths meant, but sensing it was probably disaster.

As Draik strode along Celsumgate, heading back to his ship, he noticed people staring at him. Not the column of scorched fanatics trailing in his wake, but him.

‘They think you gave the order,’ said Audus. ‘They think you wanted the proctors dead.’

‘No matter,’ he said, as the Vanguard loomed ahead of them, its silver prow cutting fumes like a raptor’s beak. ‘We’re leaving.’

Rein and Raus were waiting near the landing ramp, and as Draik reached them they greeted him with an absurdly elaborate sequence of bows and salutes. Draik strode past them up the ramp, and as Quintus appeared he ordered the valet to marshal the servitors and clear all the cabins.

‘We need to carry as many of Taddeus’ followers as we can accommodate,’ he said as he marched into the ship, gesturing at the crowd following in his wake. ‘Make room.’

Quintus looked even more nervous than he had when Draik had left him a few hours ago. Under any normal circumstances, Draik would have dismissed him, but there was no time or funds to recruit anyone else.

‘There are too many,’ gasped Quintus, staring at the brutal-looking zealots.

Draik gave him a stern look. ‘There are exactly the right number.’

As Quintus and the servitors ushered missionaries throughout the ship, moving furniture and storage, the Vanguard filled with the heady smell of scented oils and burned skin. The ship’s usual calm was disturbed by grunted prayers and the clatter of iron-shod boots. Draik felt as though he had been invaded, but the inconvenience did nothing to dampen his spirits. With these zealots and the ones who would follow on board Taddeus’ ship, the Clarion, he had a small but very determined army at his disposal. However confident the cults on the Blackstone had become, they would think twice before confronting an entire Imperial crusade.

He hurried to the command deck and strapped himself into his seat as Audus brought the flight systems online. Viewscreens blinked into life, lighting up the slender alcoves that lined the walls, and cogitators rattled and wheezed, filling the room with hololiths and rolls of data-punched vellum.

The Vanguard had made dozens of expeditions to the Blackstone, and Isola and Grekh took to their seats without a word, stowing weapons and fastening their restraint harnesses. Rein and Raus stumbled around, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling. Even this small echo of the Draik empire was enough to leave them muttering in wonder. They stroked the gilded furniture and stared at the fluted columns.

‘This is just his lander, Rein,’ whispered Raus.

‘Imagine his ship,’ replied Rein.

‘Imagining it is all he can do,’ chuckled Audus, still clamping cables to her flight suit.

Draik had spent so much time in her company he barely noticed her dreadful manners. He waved the ratlings to seats at the back of the chamber.

‘Strap in. We’re making for the Stygian Aperture. It’s still the best route into the Blackstone but the flight will not be an easy one.’

As he settled into his own seat, he noticed that Isola was ordering the servitors about and double-checking the ship’s flight systems as though nothing had changed, as though she were still his attaché. She would see sense. This absurd talk of partnerships was a temporary madness. Everyone on Precipice was behaving oddly. It was something to do with the geomagnetic storms. Taddeus’ riot in the Dromeplatz was just another example. The people of Precipice were hardier than he had first expected, and he had developed a grudging respect for them, but they were not bred to cope in such situations for long periods. They were confused and afraid. He needed to make allowances.

Isola caught him watching her as she returned to the seat beside his and gave him a warning look. ‘This is the last time. After this, we work as equals or not at all.’

He said nothing. There was no point engaging in such an absurd debate. She would see sense once she had calmed down.

Audus looked over at him. ‘Ready?’

Draik looked around the flight deck. The ratlings were muttering excitedly to each other and sharing bits of meat, Grekh had draped an animal hide over his face and appeared to be asleep, Isola was hunched over a viewscreen, data-screeds flashing in her eyes, and the feckless valet had returned to his cabin to hide.

He hesitated, savouring the moment. For the first time, he was going to land on the Blackstone freed from the weight of his family’s expectations. He was going to pursue the same, simple goal that had dragged everyone else down there: he was going to make himself rich. He was going to do what he did best: overcome obstacles that terrified lesser men and drag glory from the flames. He felt a lightness of spirit he had not felt for years. He was free of the yoke. His future was his own.

‘Take us down,’ he said, settling back in his chair with a smile.

9

‘Did you see that?’ asked Draik.

Audus was hunched over the flight controls and did not hear, but Isola frowned.

‘See what?’

They were on the final approach to the Blackstone and there was a field of salvage drifting past the viewport – everything from fuel canisters and fragments of heat shield to entire void ships, flayed metal carcasses that were gradually collapsing in the fortress’ gravitic pull. But Draik was not looking at the debris outside, he was looking at the command bridge, at a spot just a few feet from where he was sitting.

‘Is it meat?’ said Draik. ‘Do you see it?’

Isola shook her head.

Draik blinked and looked again but it was still there. It looked like a liquid – pink and red liquid. Or skin, ruddy and angry-looking and rippling across his vision. He looked at Isola and it moved with his gaze, obscuring her face as he tried to look at her. He looked around the deck and the liquid ripple was imprinted on his vision, obscuring whatever he looked at.

‘Strange,’ he muttered, rubbing his eye. ‘I must have looked into one of the glow-globes.’ But there was something odd about the red light, something about the shapes boiling at its centre. He focused on the image and saw a face, vague and fragmented, as though someone were looking through faceted glass, peering into the Vanguard.

As they approached, Draik felt an inexplicable rush of urgency, as though he had to do something quickly or face terrible consequences. Draik prided himself on being collected and calm, but the sense of urgency was so intense it bordered on panic. Instinctively, he reached for his splinter pistol.

‘Janus?’ said Isola, reaching for her laspistol.

The distorted face came nearer and the light grew brighter. Pain sliced through Draik’s skull. He jerked forwards against his harness, gasping and cursing.

‘Draik?’ cried Isola.

He looked around, expecting to see the face still staring at him. There was no one. The pain was coming from his eye. No, not his eye – his implant.

Draik unscrewed the case of his augmetic and pulled it away from his empty eye socket, glaring at it. The moment he removed it, the light and the face vanished, along with the pain. Draik would not usually remove the lens in public, conscious of how unseemly it was to reveal his puckered eye socket, but he was relieved to have discovered the source of his discomfort.

‘Damnable thing,’ he said, holding his hand in front of his face. ‘Must be a fault in the lens. Or maybe the optic processors.’

Isola settled back in her seat and lowered her pistol. ‘It’s had a lot of knocks since we came out here. I’m not surprised it’s damaged. Do you have replacement parts?’

‘Yes,’ he said, then he shook his head. ‘No, damn it. They were on the Draikstar.’ He studied the heavy, gilded eyepiece. ‘It was a gift from Ambassador Leptis. Do you remember? After we agreed a deal over the Anvil Straits. It’s irreplaceable.’

‘There are tech-priests on Precipice. Perhaps one of them could repair it?’

‘I doubt it. It’s ancient. The technology in this is far superior to anything available nowadays.’ He tapped the casing and turned the lens a couple of times, listening to the satisfying click. There was no obvious fault. He carefully placed it back into his eye socket and flipped the clasp.

The pain jabbed through his skull again and the red, bubbling liquid returned, dazzling and hypnotic. The face was gone, but there was something else.

‘Isola?’ he muttered.

‘What?’ she replied, but Draik was not looking at the Isola sat beside him. He was watching the one in the red light, as though he were having a waking dream. He could see nothing of her surroundings; she seemed to be falling through a void. But the rest of the scene was so vivid: she was falling, tumbling through a great abyss. He watched, fascinated as she reached out for something to hold. It was gut-wrenching to watch her drop at such speed, but he could not take his eyes away.

The falling Isola smashed against an unseen surface. Half her body was ripped away and the rest was engulfed in blood. The pain in Draik’s head grew worse and he took the eyepiece out of his head and deactivated it.

‘What is it?’ asked Isola, reaching out to grip his arm.

‘This wretched thing. It’s making me hallucinate.’ He gripped his head for a moment, keeping his eye closed. The after-image remained on the inside of his eyelid – Isola’s ruptured body falling away from him. ‘Must be a fault in the interface,’ he said.

The image was clearly a phantasm, dragged from his subconscious, but it troubled him. For a moment he was unable to locate the source of his unease, then he understood. He looked over at Isola. She had returned her attention to the cogitator in her armrest, tapping away at the runeboard and creating a storm of spectral glyphs that danced over her hand as she typed.

Draik had lost so many advisors and attachés over his career that he had lost count. Why was his subconscious agonising over the imagined death of Isola? No, not death, he realised. Her fall. He valued and respected the woman, and her talk of striking out alone was playing on his mind. They had crossed half the galaxy together. She knew his methods better than anyone. But if she left Precipice alone, she would not survive a year. However quick-witted and skilled she might be, a single person without significant financial and military assets at her disposal would not reach the first Imperial outpost.

‘There’s no shame in serving a great house,’ he said, pocketing his augmetic and settling back in his seat.

She looked up in surprise. Then she sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to be so abrupt when you made your offer. Everything I have came from House Draik. I’m well aware of that. Your father’s servants educated me and my travels with you on the Draikstar have taught me how to manage situations I never dreamt I would face. But…’ She hesitated, looking away from him. ‘I have also seen who survives in this galaxy. And it’s not the servants, Janus.’

Draik willed away the image of her death. ‘You must choose your own path, of course.’

She looked back at her cogitator. ‘My choice would be a partnership. An equal partnership, in the new House Draik.’

Draik’s respect for Isola only went so far. ‘Absurd,’ he replied. It would have been easy for him to point out how much decent society relied on a clear hierarchy, but it would also be ungentlemanly.

‘Draik,’ said Audus, glancing back over her shoulder at him. ‘Do you see this?’

Draik looked out through the armourglass. They were now so close to the Blackstone Fortress that it obscured the stars, filling the Vanguard’s viewport with a baffling mass of polygons. Angles and planes, all forged from the same dark, indefinable substance. Even now, after so many voyages, Draik was still humbled by the scale and strangeness of the place. It was so vast and confusing that he had never been able to discern its true shape, and he retained a sense that it was only partially anchored in reality, the summit of something even more incredible that lay beyond the range of his feeble human senses.

But Audus was not referring to the peculiarities of the fortress; she was nodding to the diamond-shaped aperture they were approaching. Landing points on the Blackstone were famously hazardous due to drifting wreckage, but Draik had never seen anything like this. Dozens of void ships were drifting around the opening, tumbling slowly and trailing smaller objects.

‘Not a problem for you, surely,’ said Draik. ‘I’ve seen you navigate far worse.’

Audus shrugged and did as ordered, but as the Vanguard looped towards the Stygian Aperture, Draik imagined he saw Isola, tumbling ahead of him through the darkness.

10

‘What the Omnissiah has forged, let none set asunder.’

As Daedalosus finished his prayer, he rose from the shrine and turned to look out at his guests. They were seated in a semicircle, as he had instructed them, but they were clearly uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Daedalosus took a deep breath and mentally recited the lacus-conputant mantra, letting the binary tumble through his mind. These were the most trustworthy, skilled pilots on Precipice. Without their agreement, his plan could not succeed. He had to convince them to help; to work together.

The servitors had gathered them in the tribolic chapel, with a view through an armourglass hagioscope into the laboratorium that Daedalosus was currently working in. The confines of the chapel had created a noticeable tension. Only the anthropoid seemed at ease. It had folded its long, powerful arms across its chest in imitation of the man seated at its side, and it had picked up a cup of altar wine with one of its feet, staring at it and sniffing it.

Daedalosus was fascinated by its demeanour. There was such mournful wisdom in the ape’s gaze. It was wearing digital weapons, half-hidden by the shaggy, copper-coloured hair that covered its body. Even after his lifetime of study Daedalosus would have struggled to guess their function. They were precise and delicate, wrought of gleaming alloys, and Daedalosus would have liked to examine the weaponsmith in more detail, but no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the Blackstone reminded him why he needed to be brief. A tremor rumbled through the freighter’s hull, jostling his guests’ chairs and causing some of them to mutter curses.

They were a disparate bunch, encompassing the peculiar mix of travellers that had come to Precipice. Besides the anthropoid weaponsmith, there were salvage captains and data-traders that were reputed to be men of learning as well as action. He had hoped to invite the rogue trader, Janus Draik. He had worked with the Terran several times since arriving at Precipice and held him in high regard. But Draik had departed for the Blackstone, heedless of the geomagnetic storms.

Bustling around the unaugmented humans were his own cybernetically blessed adepts. They were lighting tapers and placing them in censers suspended on anti-grav platforms, circling the room at head height. The censers had already filled the room with incense-heavy smoke that gave the acolytes a mysterious quality as they moved back and forth, whispering prayers, their faces hidden deep in crimson hoods. Nearest to the hagioscope was the cryptogeologist, Mepsus Upsilon. He was an august, well-respected disciple of the Cult Mechanicus and had gladly assisted Daedalosus since his arrival at Precipice. Mepsus had proven to be a wise counsellor and a good friend. He had allowed Daedalosus to utilise his teams of probe-servitors so that they could continue to explore the Blackstone Fortress even after it became too hazardous to visit in person.

Mepsus was blessed with a particularly impressive augmetic enhancement. His upper half, including his gaunt, shaven head, was unadorned, aside from a long, grey plaited beard, but from the waist down Mepsus was a nest of silvery mechadendrite feelers that snaked and coiled across the floor of the chapel as the rest of his hunched, frail body remained motionless. His eyes were perpetually hooded, giving him the air of a watchful, slumbering serpent, but they glittered with a playful, agile intelligence.

‘You are now in the innermost sanctum of a consecrated Adeptus Mechanicus survey freighter,’ said Daedalosus. His words were translated from binharic to Gothic by his lingua-mantle, relayed by the vox-cabling in his bio-cawl and amplified through the emitters in the chapel walls. ‘It is deeply irregular of me to bring you aboard. I have had to pray very hard on the matter to allay my fears. My adepts have spent the last two point seven hours preparing these chambers so that you may be admitted without compromising the hallowed mystery of the Deus Mechanicus.’

The captains and data-traders stared at him with non-committal expressions, but Mepsus gave him an encouraging smile. The simian weaponsmith watched him with an expression of such sage-like profundity that Daedalosus could almost imagine the ape was about to speak.

‘I tell you this,’ said Daedalosus, ‘not as a warning, but to convey the importance of what I am about to share.’

No one spoke, but Mepsus nodded quickly, swaying on his rippling limbs. He leant forwards, peering through the armourglass, toying absent-mindedly with the metal beads that were knotted into his beard.

‘You have all achieved something incredible,’ said Daedalosus. ‘Crossing the galaxy at a time of such turmoil is the mark of a brave, determined soul. I do not ask what drove you to cross the Western Reaches, but I will guess that whatever your goal was, it is now beyond your grasp.’

One of the salvage captains spoke up. It was a woman called Lees who had worked with Daedalosus before, supplying him with equipment and information. She was thickset and powerful-looking, wearing a battered, tight-fitting enviro-suit. Her long grey hair hung over her face in matted strands. She was around fifty years old, and her face was gaunt and hard.

‘Everything is beyond our grasp.’ She turned to her husband, a younger man named Tukh with a beard and a Mohawk. ‘We’re stuck on Precipice and there’s nothing to do on the Blackstone but bleed into a heretic’s altar. We’re damned idiots for coming here.’ She glared at Tukh. ‘As I told you before we set off for this pit.’

Tukh massaged his scalp and scowled back at her. ‘You didn’t say that when we were at Tharmusa Point. When everyone was talking about the Blackstone. Well, I know they didn’t use the word Blackstone, but you remember what they were all saying. There was a new chance, they said. A way to get so rich we could buy ourselves out of this damned war.’

He looked away from her, shaking his head. ‘But you’re right. I am a fool. Why did I listen?’ His tone was bleak. ‘I’ve always prided myself on not being an idiot.’ He waved at the sigils inscribed into the drifting censers. ‘Never follow creeds.’ He nodded at the old Militarum uniform one of the other men was wearing. ‘Never join a damned regiment. And now look at me. Downed at the last hurdle. We cashed in all our credit to get here. And for what? A place that was too lethal to land on even before the heretics took over.’

Tukh and Lees had been useful allies before, but Daedalosus wondered if they would be able to help him this time. Tukh seemed to be on the verge of emotional collapse. Captain Lees looked pained by her husband’s anguish. She shook her head and spoke in a softer tone.

‘I could have refused. I was as excited as you were. We’re both to blame, Tukh.’

The men on either side of them nodded in agreement, their faces grim. ‘We all made the same mistakes,’ muttered one of them. ‘You’re not the only one who thought this place would be a way out.’

Tukh waved at the door. ‘Have you heard the latest news? About the proctors? They’ve been lit up by the Ecclesiarchy. Precipice is falling apart, the proctors are dead, the Blackstone has been conquered and there’s no way out of here.’

His voice had risen to a yell, but Lees placed a hand on his arm and he sighed and fell quiet.

Lees looked at Daedalosus. ‘You said you have a plan to discuss. What is it? What have you found?’

It was a constant shock to Daedalosus how erratic most of humanity was. Without the ballast of augmented faith, people were unable to face their destiny with clarity or dignity. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps there was no way to coordinate such inconstant people. These were good people, but they were all either hysterical or despondent. Only the weaponsmith had remained calm. The ape had put one of its fingers in the altar wine and was now sucking the digit thoughtfully.

Daedalosus recited the lacus-conputant mantra again. Tukh’s anger had momentarily distracted him, but as he recalled his morning prayers he quickly regained his focus. He had prepared an introductory speech with which to soften the facts but, as the deck trembled again, he decided to discard the preamble.

‘Matter has value,’ he said, holding up the hydraulic digits of his left hand. They wheezed and clicked as he flexed them. ‘Intrinsic value and extrinsic value. My hand has mass. That mass exists independently of any external influence. It is intrinsic.’ He relaxed his muscles and allowed his hand to fall to his side. ‘It also has weight, but that weight is a product of the Blackstone Fortress’ gravitational field. You will all have felt the change. As the geomagnetic storms grow more violent, the Blackstone’s gravitational pull also grows stronger. This is why you feel tired and sluggish, not just physically, but psychically. Your shoulders droop, your visceral organs are crushed by bad posture, your spirit flags.’

‘We’re being crushed by more than bad posture,’ muttered Tukh. He glared through the hagioscope at Daedalosus, his beard bristling. ‘And I’ve spent the last week in the Helmsman trying not to think about it.’

The other captains muttered in agreement.

‘Your contraptions said you had news,’ said Lees.

‘Indeed he does.’ Mepsus spoke with such quiet authority that the muttering ceased. ‘And the news is that the situation is far worse than you realise.’

Lees shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?’

Daedalosus nodded at Mepsus. ‘Magos Upsilon is a cryptogeologist. He has been studying noctilith for many years. It is his hypotheses that have led me to my conclusion.’

Tukh wandered over towards the armourglass window and peered into the laboratorium. ‘Noctilith?’

‘Pariah stone,’ said Daedalosus, waving for Tukh to come closer. ‘The underlying substrate of the Blackstone Fortress. There are other sites in the galaxy, quarry worlds and other locations where pariah stone has been found.’

Lees approached the window, looking intrigued. ‘Other locations? What other locations? How much do you know about this stuff?’

‘I am already sharing more information with you than I should. It is only in such a state of extremis that I share even these facts.’

‘Why are you sharing them?’ Lees looked at the other captains. ‘What are you expecting us to do with this information? Do you know something about the Blackstone that can help us get out of here?’

Daedalosus shook his head and stepped aside, revealing his workbench. There was a canister resting on the scratched metal, a foot tall and made of thick armourglass. It looked like a tear, locked to a blocky, rune-inscribed base. Inside the canister, magnified by the thick armourglass, was a single shard of black material. It might have been a piece of flint or slate if not for the familiar polyhedral shape. Everyone came closer, staring at the little dark blade. Even the weaponsmith swung down from its chair and loped closer, using its wiry arms to haul itself up onto the frame of the hagioscope.

‘This is pariah stone,’ said Daedalosus, tapping the glass case. ‘It has several unique intrinsic properties. When salvage crews first began arriving at Precipice, the Blackstone Fortress was an enigma. It mutated, seemingly at will, confounding many of the attempts to plumb its depths. It has an ability to metamorphose and seemingly defend itself, as though sentient. However…’ Daedalosus turned to another object on his desk, the same size as the canister but covered by a piece of rune-embroidered cloth. ‘It is noctilith’s extrinsic qualities that I wanted to explain.’

He placed his un-augmented hand on the cloth, preparing to lift it. Everyone moved a little closer to the hagioscope, peering at him.

‘As you all know, the fortress’ outermost chambers have almost entirely been conquered by heretical cults. The cultists have assembled shrines to their false gods, and produced transmutative, empyric waves by sacrificing human victims in vast numbers. They are as shambolic as all heretics, but the sheer scale of their violence has had a catalytic effect on the noctilith, shifting its empyric polarity.’

Tukh glanced at Mepsus. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means the Blackstone is being mutated by the warp,’ said Lees.

Daedalosus nodded. ‘An oversimplification, but essentially, yes – the heretics’ bloodletting has charged the Blackstone’s superstructure. They have infused it with the same empyric energy that surrounds void ships as they try to navigate the warp. A malign, unknowable force that is usually only glimpsed through the safety of a Geller field, is now present, in realspace, in this sector, in the Blackstone Fortress.’

He lifted the cloth and revealed a second canister. The glass was smeared with a dark, greasy, gluelike substance and the case was filled with slow-moving fumes of a colour that even now, after hours of study, Daedalosus would struggle to name. For a moment, there was no sign of the piece of noctilith and the canister only seemed to contain fumes. Then a shape slapped against the inner surface of the curved glass, trying to reach his hand. It was the colour and texture of raw meat, but it was alive – a frantic explosion of wet tendons. They coiled and rolled against the glass attempting to force a way out, and at the centre of the undulating limbs there was the fractured remains of a black shell. It looked like a crustacean that had become so frenzied it had smashed its own carapace.

Everyone backed away from the hagioscope, apart from the weapon-smith.

‘Throne,’ said Tukh. ‘Is it an animal?’

Daedalosus shook his head. ‘It is another a shard of pariah stone – or at least, it was a piece of pariah stone. Its polarity was altered and it is now a nascent warp entity. A shadow of the immaterium, given purchase in our dimension by the actions of the heretics and the psychic resonance of the noctilith. Prior to the blood rites, it was identical to the shard in the other canister.’

No one spoke for a moment.

Lees shook her head. ‘So, as well as ruining our chances of plundering the Blackstone, the heretics have polluted the place and filled it with…’ She grimaced. ‘With whatever that thing is.’

Daedalosus was shocked that no one seemed to be making the small intellectual leap required to understand what he was telling them. Yet again, only the weaponsmith seemed to grasp what he was saying. It slumped against the frame of the hagioscope and closed its eyes, clearly moved. It swung down from the ledge and ambled back to its chair, where it picked up its wine, using its foot again, and began drinking in earnest.

‘The heretics have not polluted the Blackstone Fortress,’ explained Daedalosus. ‘They are transforming it. They have created a dimensional shift. They are giving mobility and sentience to a weapon the size of a planet.’ He tapped the canister containing the thrashing limbs, causing them to flail even more violently against the glass. ‘Imagine this, as large as a planet, more heavily armed than the Imperial Navy’s largest capital ships, and capable of warp travel. Imagine what that would mean for this system, and then every other system it reaches.’

Lees paled and flopped into her chair. She did not speak, but Daedalosus could see that she finally understood. Tukh and the other captains looked ashen as they returned slowly to their seats.

Mepsus tapped the cog-shaped blade at the head of his staff and whispered a prayer.

Lees was still staring at the pulsing shape in the canister. She spoke more quietly than before. ‘Can this polarity be switched back?’

‘Possibly,’ replied Daedalosus. ‘The heretics are mostly working in the vaults that lie nearest the surface of the fortress. By the use of Mepsus’ servitor-drones I was able to record pict footage of their progress. In those outlying regions they have built perverted strongholds. However, if another empyric presence, even greater than that of the heretic shrines, were to reach the core of the fortress, it might be able to switch the polarity into a different direction.’

Tukh sat up in his chair and glanced around the room. ‘So, that’s why you wanted to talk to us? To tell us that we need to get to the core of the Blackstone?’

‘No,’ said Mepsus, frowning. ‘Are you wilfully misunderstanding him? He has done everything he can to keep his explanation simple.’

‘I will try to make my meaning less ambiguous,’ said Daedalosus, noticing the angry gleam in Tukh’s eyes. ‘The fortress has already been corrupted beyond recognition. It is under the control of heretics who are antipathetic to everything we hold dear. It is also transforming into a weapon of such power that it will soon be able to annihilate anything the Imperial Navy could deploy against it. Theoretically, the situation could be changed, but we have no method of effecting such change, even if it were possible to reach the core of the fortress, which it is not.’

Tukh threw his hands up in the air and was about to say something, but Lees silenced him with a warning glare.

Daedalosus continued quickly. ‘We have a very small window of opportunity to leave Precipice, pass through the Oort cloud that surrounds the Blackstone and take a communiqué to the nearest Imperial outpost. If we fail to send word of this crisis to the wider Imperium, I theorise that millions, if not billions of lives will be at risk and, if the heretics are able to steer the Blackstone Fortress, the sacred worlds of the Sol System may even be in danger.’

Daedalosus prided himself on logical, methodical thought processes, but as he spoke he found himself picturing the shipyards of Mars consumed by the madness in the jar. ‘We must convince everyone on Precipice to make the attempt. We must strike out for the Oort cloud and attempt to reach the wider galaxy with news of what is happening here. If we do not, the entire Imperium of Man may be at risk.’

‘But we’re trapped,’ said Lees. ‘By the Blackstone’s guns. They would destroy every void ship that attempted to breach the Oort cloud.’

‘Not every ship,’ replied Mepsus.

Daedalosus nodded. ‘If we convinced every able-bodied captain, if we launched every intact ship from the mooring spars, there would be hundreds of void ships leaving Precipice simultaneously. You have seen the Blackstone’s armaments. They are still slow-moving and sporadic. Whatever the heretics are doing, their work is not yet complete.’

Lees nodded. ‘So, if we all launched at the same time, some of us would get through.’

Tukh raised an eyebrow. ‘Might get through.’

‘Ships would make it,’ insisted Daedalosus. ‘I have monitored the rates of fire and accuracy. I calculate that at least ten per cent of the ships that launched would reach the Oort cloud.’

‘Ten per cent?’ muttered one of the other captains, a low-browed brute called Jettura. He was wearing chipped, sky-blue flak armour that rattled as he leant forward in his seat. ‘Are you insane? Ten per cent? And the rest of us dead? And that’s just to reach the Oort cloud. We all know how hard the going gets from there. Navigating all that drifting scrap is likely to destroy the few ships that make it that far.’

‘Not true,’ replied Daedalosus. ‘By my estimates, any ship that is so skilfully piloted as to reach the Oort cloud will have a fifty per cent chance of making it through to the larger ships waiting beyond the cloud. So, of the ten per cent that reach the Oort cloud, a remaining five per cent should survive to alert the Imperial Fleet.’

His guests stared at him.

‘Life is a series of calculated risks,’ said Mepsus, tapping his staff on the floor. ‘The risks of staying here are plain enough. We would watch from afar as the fortress becomes more corrupted and more heavily armed until it eventually opens fire on Precipice itself. I am amazed that it has not done so already. The risks of landing on the fortress are equally clear – none of the recent expeditions have made it back alive, swamped by the vast numbers of heretics that now control the fortress’ outlying chambers. The risks of fleeing are great but they are measurable and they serve a purpose.’

No one spoke. The ape looked agitated, scratching at its long hair and shifting in its seat. The others looked dazed by what they had heard, staring into the middle distance.

Daedalosus had hoped for a more enthusiastic response. He was about to repeat the percentages when the corrupted shard of noctilith shook with such violence that the canister clicked out of its base. It rolled across his workbench before he managed to grab it.

Everyone in the other chamber backed away. The canister rattled in his grip and a thin whistling sound filled the air.

‘Is that an alarm?’ cried Tukh, putting his hand on the autopistol at his belt.

‘No,’ replied Mepsus, scuttling across the room on his umbrella of limbs and entering the laboratorium, locking the door behind him. ‘Magos?’ he said. ‘Do you need help?’

Daedalosus shook his head, but the canister was shaking in his grip with increasing violence, clanging against the surface of the metal table. ‘The armourglass will hold,’ he said, but then as the whistling grew louder the glass began to slump under his grip, as though melting.

‘Throne!’ cried Tukh, staggering away from the hagioscope with his hands over his ears. ‘Can you shut that off?’ The others all mimicked Tukh’s gesture, clamping their hands over their ears and trying to block out the din.

Daedalosus’ cochleas had been replaced decades ago by superior audio processors and he dampened the sound with a thought. He was about to tell his guests to be calm when the warp entity slithered through his fingers, hurtled across the room and latched around Mepsus’ throat.

Mepsus cursed as blood sprayed from beneath his jaw, washing over the armourglass of the hagioscope. Daedalosus leapt to a shelf and grabbed a gamma pistol, pointing it at Mepsus. The old man collapsed against the bulkhead and his silver tendrils thrashed at the thing attached to his neck.

Daedalosus calculated the likely consequences of firing. The gamma pistol was powerful enough to ionise not just the warp-thing, but also Mepsus and most of the bulkhead.

Mepsus cursed again and arched his back as more blood filled the air, but the other noise drowned him out, growing in volume. It sounded like a knife scraping on porcelain.

‘For Throne’s sake!’ cried Lees, drawing a laspistol. ‘Do something!’ Despite her outrage, she was no more able to target the thing than Daedalosus.

Daedalosus processed Mepsus’ chances of survival and calculated that they were nil. A warp entity had corrupted his flesh. Even if he survived the initial trauma, Daedalosus would be forced to execute him for fear of contaminating the rest of Precipice. However, if he fired now, he would tear a hole in the ship and possibly damage it beyond repair, which would lower the chances of his plan succeeding.

Before anyone could decide how to act, Mepsus slumped to the floor, almost decapitated by the frenzied attack. The squid-like shape leapt from his corpse and slapped across the workbench, rushing at Daedalosus.

He fired his gamma pistol, tore a hole in the chamber wall, and missed the warp creature. He raised his arms to defend himself.

The screeching ceased.

Daedalosus lowered his arms and looked around in confusion. The warp creature was gone, and there was pile of ash on the workbench. He looked over at Lees, but she looked just as confused and her pistol had not been fired. Then Daedalosus noticed that the weaponsmith had plucked one of the small devices from its scruffy mane and was studying it intently. The ape noticed Daedalosus looking and nodded, then hid the thing away again, before picking up the cup of wine and seeming to lose interest in the situation.

Daedalosus backed away from the pile of ash and rushed over to Mepsus. He was dead, and the wound under his chin was already festering, turning black and sprouting growths that looked like strands of grey-black ore.

He stepped back and fired the gamma pistol again, turning Mepsus’ upper half into ash.

Daedalosus stood for a moment, pistol still trained on the remains, thinking of all the wisdom that had just been lost. He recited the lacus-conputant mantra again to steady his breathing. Then he looked through the armourglass at the captains. Their expressions were even bleaker than before, but Lees and Tukh glanced at each other and nodded.

‘Let’s do it.’

The weaponsmith made a low grumbling sound, then downed its wine with a hungry gulp.

11

Quintus touched the swelling at his wrist. The bone was hidden at the moment, sunk back down beneath his artery, but he could feel it, an alien presence in his body, waiting for the Archivist to trigger it. It was horrific. But how could he do what the alien asked? Quintus was a fraud but he was not a killer. Despite everything he had been through, murder was the one low he had always sworn he would not sink to. He thought of the razor in Draik’s cabin, then shuddered and drove it from his mind.

Quintus’ cabin was small, but as beautifully appointed as the rest of the Vanguard. He was strapped into a chair near his bed, listening to the ship groan and scream as it hurtled towards the Blackstone. He had monitored the first part of the journey through a display screen on the wall, but watching the loops and rolls only made him feel sick so he snapped the device off and sat with his eyes closed, clinging to the arms of his chair and whispering prayers to Holy Terra.

Then he felt an old, familiar feeling. The friend who had stayed with him through everything. It was a truculent defiance in the pit of his stomach. He would survive this. He would not let the galaxy grind him down. He would find a way.

Quintus should have died years ago. His life had been a self-made miracle. He had no idea of his parentage, or even his real name; everything about him was an invention. His earliest memories were of escaping a hive world with other, equally skeletal children, leading them into the abandoned companionways of a vast macro transport. It was then that he realised even a nobody like him could still be someone of worth. He had lived like a rat, crawling through miles of empty shadows, competing with grey-skinned wretches over scraps, but he was determined not to sink to the brutality of his peers.

And that determination had never left him. He clung to life until the day he was lucky enough to find a uniform and the courage to pass himself off as part of the ship’s military detail. Since then he had impersonated everything from medicae staff to air support ground crew. He had a mind that could retain facts with peculiar ease, and a gift for forgery and effrontery that let him talk his way into almost any role he liked. Even though he was still only a youth, he had travelled dozens of systems, edging further up the social ladder with each new commission. But with each lie and misadventure, he edged closer to the thing he was determined to avoid: murder.

At the age of eighteen he had found a way to finally escape his past. He had learned enough to successfully masquerade as a colonel’s son, and seemed set for a life of privilege. But his plans had come to a disastrous end when he found himself playing cards with the colonel’s actual son. He fled before being arrested, but impersonating an Astra Militarum officer was far more serious than any of his previous crimes. His offence was discussed at divisional HQ and his image was flashed across several systems. He escaped arrest several times but the net tightened with each day until, in desperation, he had joined a band of deserters flying for Precipice.

Quintus had been approached by the Archivist’s agents almost as soon as he entered the Helmsman. They seemed to know of his particular skills and offered him a chance to transform himself in a permanent way. All he needed to do was gain access to a Terran rogue trader called Draik and pass on information about his plans.

The Vanguard lurched again and he grimaced as the ship’s reverse thrusters kicked in, filling him with nausea and the dreadful realisation that this was really going to happen. He was going to set foot on the place everyone else was so desperate to escape.

Warning lights flickered and klaxons barked. The lander banked hard, and then finally settled. Quintus felt his organs trying to sink back into their preferred configuration and attempted to calm himself by breathing deeply. The engines roared one last time and then died.

Quintus sat in silence for a few seconds. Then he unfastened his harness and touched the lump at his wrist, pressing his fingertips against the bone, as the Archivist had instructed. There was a flicker of pain but it was quickly numbed by whatever the bone was coated in.

We made it, he thought. We are on the Blackstone.

He heard that strange, disconcerting chorus of snarls. Then words formed in his mind.

+The Stygian Aperture?+

That was Draik’s plan. And I don’t think there have been any problems. The journey actually seemed quite–

‘Quintus,’ snapped Isola’s voice through the emitters in the ceiling. ‘Your presence is required.’

I will let you know more when I can, he thought, pressing the swelling into his wrist again. Then he triggered the blast door and stumbled out into the companionway, still unsteady from the flight.

+Stay close to him. He has survived more expeditions than anyone. He will know how to stay alive. If anyone can do this, Draik can. Just follow his orders and make sure you’re still intact when he reaches the Aberration.+

I intend to stay intact, he thought, but the bestial chorus had vanished.

He had not reached the bridge before another blast door whooshed open and he saw Draik leading the others towards him.

‘Keep up,’ snapped Draik as he marched past. ‘And fasten your damned collar. You’re not on a pleasure cruise.’

‘Sir,’ he muttered, falling in behind the lumbering pilot and hastily adjusting his uniform.

Audus winked at him. ‘We could make it a pleasure cruise.’

He bit back a reply. She likes this, he realised. She likes risking her life in this place. He looked around the group, realising that an air of excitement hung over most of them. Even Isola had a gleam in her eyes, though she was trying to hide it, and the ratlings were actually grinning as they scurried towards the door. Draik’s expression was grim, however. He had removed his optical implant and the empty, ragged socket made him look even fiercer than usual. He seemed to be in pain, massaging his head and glowering as he walked. Only the kroot looked calm, his rifle slung over his shoulder as he loped through the ship, looming over everyone else.

They reached the exit hatch and Draik paused, looking back over his shoulder at Quintus with a frown. He struggled to focus on him, blinking and rubbing his empty eye socket.

‘Have you been down here before?’

Quintus lied so instinctively that he almost said yes. He stopped himself just in time, considering how many questions he would need to ask once they left the Vanguard. ‘Never, sir,’ he said.

Annoyance flickered in Draik’s eye. ‘Then stay here. You look like a stiff breeze could kill you. You wouldn’t last five minutes on the Blackstone.’

+Do not leave his side.+ The words were accompanied by an echo of pain in Quintus’ wrist.

‘Sir,’ he said to Draik, ‘I have survived several combat zones.’

Audus leant close. ‘Stay here. Make the beds or something.’

He ignored her. ‘I would consider it an honour if you permitted me to accompany you, sir. If you could supply me with a weapon I promise to make myself useful. If everything I have heard about this place is true, you will need all the help you can get.’

Draik closed his eye and grimaced, massaging his temples. Then he nodded. ‘Arm him, Isola.’

Isola stayed where she was.

Draik sighed, then strode past her to a storage cupboard, wrenched it open and hurled a pair of laspistols to Quintus. He caught them and was about to fasten the holsters when he saw how beautiful the guns were. He paused to stare at them. The grips looked like real wood, stained and polished to a deep burgundy and inlaid with strips of a lighter wood worked into the Draik family crest. The barrels were equally stunning, forged of a gleaming, copper-coloured alloy and covered in filigree that spiralled all the way from the sights to the triggers.

Draik caught his admiring glance and nodded. ‘My duelling pistols. Look after them.’

Quintus had never held anything so beautiful or so clearly valuable. He was about to say thank you when Draik tapped the runepad next to the door and it clanged open, spewing the landing ramp into the darkness.

The words stalled in Quintus’ throat. As the landing ramp clanged down, sounds of the Blackstone Fortress flooded the Vanguard. Quintus swallowed hard, battling the urge to retreat back into the ship. There was a light source thirty feet away; he guessed it was a cluster of lumens left by a previous expedition. The warm, red light only managed to reach a few feet in either direction from a tall frame, revealing a featureless black floor and making the darkness around it even more monolithic. The floor was trembling and the lumens were shaking, like lanterns on the deck of a boat.

With little to see, Quintus’ only clear sense of the fortress was the symphony that echoed through its shadows. It sounded as though he were at the bottom of an oceanic trench, surrounded by unseen metal leviathans clanging and scraping against each other in the inky leagues overhead. He sensed movement in every direction, like the gears of a huge engine, and wind howled across the landing ramp, dragging screams from the juddering metal.

‘What is that?’ he whispered. ‘Voices?’

No one answered. The others were all looking up into the blackness. They looked like awed pilgrims returning to a beloved, fearsome cathedrum, afraid and overjoyed to have reached the end of their journey. As Quintus listened harder, he was sure he could hear other sounds beneath the wind and the metallic booms. It sounded like a choir, just at the edge of his hearing, singing words he could not discern. The voices spiralled around each other, coming close to melody then devolving into a discordant howl.

Quintus was so engrossed by the sounds that it took him a moment to realise how cold he was. After the foetid heat of Precipice it was a shock to realise that ice was forming on his face. He exhaled and his breath whipped away from him into the breeze, flashing briefly in the Vanguard’s landing lights before slipping away.

‘Raun?’ said Draik, keeping his gaze locked on the darkness.

‘Raus, sir,’ said one of the grinning ratlings, rushing to Draik’s side followed by his brother.

Draik waved a dismissive hand and peered at the distant lumen. ‘If we reach that light safely, we may assume that this landing platform is safe for the moment. From there we will need to choose a route. Either Beresmith’s Channel or the Orvieto Viaduct. Which way did you lead Taddeus last time?’

Rein and Raus grinned at each other. ‘Neither,’ said Raus. ‘There is a third route.’

Draik glared at them. ‘I have landed here dozens of times. There is no third way to the maglev chambers.’

‘We never knew about the route either,’ said Raus, puffing out his chest and looking at the rest of the group. ‘Until we came into possession of hidden facts.’

‘Hidden facts,’ asserted Rein, narrowing his eyes.

Draik looked pained. ‘How do we reach the maglev chambers?’

‘We don’t,’ said Raus with a conspiratorial grin.

Draik closed his eye and took a deep breath, but before he could say anything else, lights washed over the Vanguard, along with the roar of landing jets.

As Taddeus’ ship banked into view, Quintus saw it clearly for the first time. The moorings on Precipice were so heaped that each hull obscured the next. Seeing the Clarion’s buttresses and spires revealed in all their majesty, wreathed in the flames of its thrusters, should have left Quintus awed, but the shuttle was dwarfed by the darkness. Its landing lights flickered across the footings of structures that soared out of sight – angular, confusing planes constructed from the same black material as the fortress’ exterior.

Quintus and the others had to shield their eyes as the Clarion kicked up dust and sent scrap clanging across the landing pad. As the ship touched down, the light of its jets revealed a whole junkyard of shattered engine parts and broken hulls. Quintus realised it was the wreckage of the ships that had almost made it, reaching the landing platform but exploding on impact. Perhaps they approached at the wrong trajectory, he thought. Then, as the mountainous darkness weighed down on him, he wondered if some of them had been destroyed after they’d touched down.

‘Don’t we need enviro-suits?’ he asked, turning to Isola, who was standing closest to him.

She was as rigid as a statue, staring at Draik’s back with an unreadable expression on her face.

Quintus repeated his question.

She shook her head, still staring at Draik.

‘Why not?’ he said, breathing more hesitantly now that the idea had occurred to him.

She finally turned her flinty gaze on him. ‘The Blackstone has a breathable atmosphere.’ She shook her head. ‘You risked your life to reach Precipice and have not even researched the Blackstone Fortress. Aren’t you interested to know what you’re up against?’

Quintus was not about to explain why he had come to Precipice. ‘Of course I’ve studied it. I just misunderstood. I thought the atmosphere was toxic.’

She shrugged. ‘In some vaults, possibly. The Blackstone Fortress has more ways to kill us than you can imagine. But an enviro-suit would not help. The few times I’ve seen anyone use one down here it ended badly. The fortress does not react well when people attempt to block her out.’

‘Her?’

Isola looked annoyed and waved him away. ‘I must talk with Taddeus.’

Quintus sensed that she was annoyed with herself rather than him, but either way she was not interested in speaking any more. She unclasped a small cogitator from her belt, and as she followed Draik down the landing ramp she tapped at its runes, bathing her face in green light.

Audus and the ratlings followed Isola and Draik so Quintus did the same, taking out one of his laspistols as he went, relieved to see that the workings were similar to the gun he had used when he was impersonating a Militarum officer. Behind them, their cargo of zealots appeared, shepherded to the ramp by servitors and glaring hungrily into the darkness.

Quintus hesitated at the bottom of the ramp, staring at the fortress’ black floor. It was not, as he’d first thought, featureless. It was networked by a grid of fine grooves or divisions, as though the whole place were built of geometric tiles. It was hard to tell if the material was stone or metal, or some combination of the two but, when he took his first step onto it, bone-aching cold seeped through his boots. The chill drained his spirit, leeching the life out of him. The floor was also shaking with such violence that he struggled to stay upright. It was as if it were about to erupt. He staggered after the others, swaying and stumbling, harried by the wind and crushed by the gloom. As he crossed the landing platform, the vast expanse of darkness felt even more threatening. Footfalls echoed into the distance, describing a colossal, open space. Quintus had the unpleasant feeling that the blackness was hanging over him, like a finger over an insect.

There was a harsh clank as the Clarion’s landing ramp opened. Taddeus rushed into view, face flushed and robes billowing in the storm. Vorne was at his side, her face hidden behind her iron mask but her eyes revealing the extent of her fervour. Both of them looked at Draik with undisguised wonder and hurried to meet him. Behind them, a great crowd surged forth. Some were missionaries like Vorne, dressed in Ministorum robes and wielding sanctified weapons, but others were new converts, wearing flight suits and flak armour that had been hastily modified with the addition of Ministorum sigils and wax-sealed screeds.

The missionaries from the Vanguard rushed to join their brethren, kneeling to Taddeus and whispering prayers, but he barely noticed them, all his attention fixed on Draik.

‘Captain Draik!’ he bellowed, rushing up to him.

Draik gave a slight bow and reached for a handshake. Taddeus ignored the hand and enveloped him in a sweaty embrace.

‘I knew it!’ he shouted into Draik’s face. ‘From the very first time we came down here together, I knew that you were more than just another treasure hunter.’

Draik gently shoved the massive priest back. ‘I am no longer a captain. I would not wish to mislead you on my relationship with House Draik. My father and I–’

‘Your father is the God-Emperor.’ Taddeus gripped Draik’s arms again and stared at him. ‘He is father to all of us, but you are a special son, Janus. He has brought you here. He has brought you to the Blackstone. And He brought you here for a reason.’

Draik looked awkward as Taddeus’ followers gathered, whispering prayers and gazing at him in adoration. Quintus sensed that Draik was holding something back. He doesn’t want them to fawn over him like that, he realised. Isola was wearing her habitual expression of disapproval and Audus was shaking her head in disbelief, but Quintus could not tell who she was amused by – Draik or his adoring crowd.

‘Will you do us the honour,’ said Taddeus, ‘of praying with us?’ His eyes were gleaming, as though he were considering a mouth-watering meal. ‘It would mean a lot to hear the catechisms from your mouth.’

Draik stiffened. ‘I would be glad to, your eminence, but we may only have moments to get off this landing platform. My advisors have informed me that the heretics have control of all these outer regions. Besides…’ He looked around at the juddering floor and the debris spinning through the air. ‘I have a feeling the chamber might reconfigure itself at any moment. We must head deeper into the fortress as quickly as we can.’

Taddeus beamed. ‘Have no fear of heretics, Janus.’ He waved at the crowd of wide-eyed missionaries. They were all armed with flamers, guns and chainswords. ‘Let them come! We are ready to purge and cleanse.’

‘All the same, your eminence, if we are to reach the inner chambers of the fortress, we must–’

‘Not just any chamber,’ whispered Taddeus, staggering as the floor shifted, then leaning close to Draik. ‘My brethren and I will ensure you reach the Eudoxus Crucible. Only then will the Emperor be reunited with His glorious creation, through your willing sacrifice, Janus.’

Quintus leant close to Isola. ‘They think the Emperor made this place?’

She silenced him with a furious glare.

Draik nodded quickly, looking around for the ratlings, then he hesitated and looked back at Taddeus. ‘Sacrifice?’

Taddeus whispered another prayer. ‘You are the red-handed prophet. I did not fully understand Eudoxus’ book until I saw you climb that scaffold, your hand bathed in blood. You are not merely an adjunct to the great deliverer, you are the Anointed. You will enter the Crucible and unite your mortal, human flesh with the unknowable forces that fuel the Blackstone. Your flesh will fall away to leave a spark of divinity.’

Quintus had been a fraud long enough to recognise that Draik was not interested in crucibles or prophecies. For all his Terran pride, Draik was a conman, just like him.

He touched the bone in his wrist. Draik isn’t seeking the Crucible, he thought. He’s lying to these rabid zealots. He’d be happy to reach any of the fortress’ inner chambers. I think he’ll head back to Precipice as soon as he lays his hands on something valuable.

+He will want to reach it,+ replied the Archivist. The voice was less clear than before, distorted by bestial snarls. +His reasons are purely mercenary, but he will go. He thinks, correctly, that it is his best chance of finding artefacts of real value. Besides, Rein and Raus only know the way to the Crucible, so that’s the route they will take. Whatever they say to Draik, that’s where they’re headed. Draik has no importance. His fate is not linked to the Blackstone. But he is a skilled fighter and a clever tactician. He should be able to keep the ratlings alive until they reach the Crucible. At which point you will kill him.+

Quintus kept the barb pressed into his vein. Why? Why does he need to die? If he gets the ratlings to the Crucible, you’ll have everything you wanted.

A warning flash of pain jangled up Quintus’ forearm. +When the ratlings trigger the device, it will summon me to the doors of the Crucible. Make sure Janus Draik is not waiting there. The priests will fight for him to enter the Crucible in my place. And Draik and I are old adversaries. I will be alone and there will be a tiresome delay if I am forced to fight dozens of missionaries and Draik. He must be dead before I arrive.+

Quintus was about to ask the Archivist another question, when Audus patted him on the back.

‘Always so pensive,’ she said. ‘Come on. See the sights.’

Draik was stumbling off towards the red glow, with Rein and Raus at his side. The priests were trailing in his wake, the pilot lights on their flamers glimmering like stars reflected on a dark sea. Quintus looked back at the Vanguard and saw that Draik’s servitors had already withdrawn from the landing ramp and sealed the ship.

Audus beckoned to him as she jogged after Grekh and Isola. ‘Keep up,’ she laughed. ‘You really don’t want to be out here on your own.’

Quintus raced after her, his footfalls sounding like stones falling down a crevasse.

Audus leant close to him. ‘I’m a liar,’ she said, still smiling. ‘And liars can smell other liars.’

He stumbled to a halt, staring at her.

‘Why are you really here?’ she asked.

He continued staring at her in silence, his pulse racing.

‘I don’t care what you’re hiding,’ she said. She nodded at Draik, who was running away from them. ‘As long as you don’t mean him any harm.’

‘You care about him?’

‘I care about the money he’s going to make. And the privacy it will buy. I have a price on my pretty head and I wasn’t born into the right class to escape summary execution. People like me need to pay for their safety.’

Her situation sounded so similar to his that Quintus had a ridiculous urge to share his story; then he remembered what the Archivist expected him to do once they reached the Crucible. He shook his head.

She laughed again and kept on moving. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll work you out.’

Quintus muttered a curse as he watched her go, then, remembering the Archivist’s warning to stay close to Draik, he hurried to the rogue trader’s side, shoving his way past Audus to reach him. The priests were all still whispering prayers, but as he passed them he realised the other voices he’d heard earlier had grown louder. He was getting closer to them.

‘The maglevs have been the problem all along,’ Raus was saying as Quintus caught up. ‘They travel quickly through the fortress, but there’s no way of knowing where they’ll take you. They never quite take the route you want, do they?’

Draik nodded. ‘And you have found another method of traversing the fortress?’

‘Not the whole fortress,’ said Raus.

‘But the most important bit,’ said Rein.

Raus nodded. ‘Think of the fortress as a wheel of cheese. Each of the holes is–’

‘Stop,’ said Draik, holding up his hand and causing the whole group to halt. He was staring at the light up ahead. ‘That’s not a lumen,’ he muttered, raising his pistol.

Quintus frowned, trying to make out what the thing was.

‘A tree?’ said Audus.

‘Impossible,’ said Isola. ‘Nothing could grow down here.’

‘Nothing natural could,’ said Draik. He sniffed. ‘Do you smell that?’

Isola nodded and grimaced. ‘Smells like something rotting.’

Draik nodded and continued, approaching with more caution and keeping his pistol raised.

As they got closer, Quintus saw why Audus had thought it was a tree. It was a thick bundle of cables that had sprouted up through the floor and then fanned out like branches. The light was radiating from inside the ‘trunk’.

‘Is it part of the engines,’ he asked, ‘ripped up by the storm?’

‘Wait.’ Audus looked around. ‘The storm. Do you see? The wind is rushing towards that light.’

She was right: the wind was behind them now, shoving them in the direction of the light. The smell grew worse with every step they took and Quintus noticed dark stains on the floor nearby, leading off into the darkness as though something wet had been dragged away. There were also fragments of shattered armour and torn clothes.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t go any closer,’ he muttered.

Draik ignored him and kept approaching the object, with the others all trailing after him.

As they got closer Quintus saw another resemblance to a tree – each of the branch-like cables ended in a heavy lump, as if they were laden with some kind of fruit. He was about to comment on it, but the smell had grown so bad he thought he might vomit, so he held his hand over his mouth and nose and walked on in silence.

It was only when Quintus got within a dozen feet of the thing that he realised his mistake. They weren’t cables. They were glistening strips of meat. Flesh that had erupted from the floor, bound into thick knots. They looked like the tendons or veins of an enormous carcass. Light was radiating from their centre and it revealed blood, pulsing through the arteries.

‘It’s alive,’ he gasped, feeling even more sick.

‘Impossible.’ Isola was staring at her cogitator. ‘No vital signs.’

‘I can see its pulse!’ Quintus cried, pointing his gun at it. He felt even more horrified when he realised that the chanting was coming from this tower of ligaments. The wind was still battering his back and seemed to be driving him towards the gruesome, pungent horror. He backed away, shaking his head.

Draik was undeterred and walked closer. The thing towered over him, oozing blood and chanting, but Draik looked as though he were taking an evening stroll.

‘Interesting,’ he said, waving his gun at the floor. ‘Not native to the fortress, I think. It looks biological in nature.’ He looked closer. ‘There are flies.’ He looked down and tapped the floor with his boot. ‘And it has grown. It has broken through from a lower level.’

‘Draik!’ cried Isola as a piece of debris whistled through the air.

He stepped aside and it hurtled past him.

Quintus expected a messy explosion as the metal collided with the tree but the object simply vanished, slicing into the trunk and blinking out of sight as though breaking the surface of a pool.

Despite his nausea, Quintus edged closer, intrigued by the thing. As he got closer he noticed one of the fruit-like lumps dangling overhead. It slowly rotated and he cried out in horror. It was the severed head of a young man, dangling from the fleshy limb and chanting in a monotone. Somehow, it was still alive. The eyes were blank and the expression slack, but the words were coming from his torn throat.

Quintus backed away cursing, and realised that all of the suspended shapes were heads. And they were all chanting. This was the choir.

‘Stand back!’ snarled Taddeus, catching up with them. ‘This is an altar. A black shrine!’

Several of his followers pointed their flamers at the thing but Draik held up a warning hand. He pointed at the broken floor.

‘Look.’

There was a split in the floor, a jagged channel leading away from the altar and zigzagging into the distance.

‘Which way were you planning on leading us?’ Draik said, looking at the ratlings.

‘We go up,’ said Raus grimacing at the singing heads. ‘Up the Red Stair.’

‘And which way is your Red Stair from here?’

Raus shrugged and waved his pistol at the split in the floor.

Draik nodded, seeming unsurprised. He turned to Taddeus. ‘Do you know what will happen if you destroy this thing?’

Taddeus shook his head.

‘Neither do I,’ said Draik.

‘But it is a false idol!’ exclaimed Taddeus. ‘We can’t let it remain.’

Draik lit his lho-stick and took a drag, looking pensive. ‘From what I have heard, the outer regions of the fortress are littered with black shrines. We could spend months destroying them all and we have no idea how they are linked. I would suggest we–’

He ducked as another piece of metal rushed through the air and vanished into the blood tree.

‘I would suggest we keep moving and disturb nothing until we know more.’

Taddeus’ face flushed with anger. ‘I cannot allow it. These things are–’

‘Will you follow my commands or not?’ Draik took another deep drag as he studied the priest. ‘Either I am leading the expedition or we can part company.’

Taddeus looked about to yell. Then he closed his eyes and nodded, struggling to keep his voice neutral. ‘You are the Anointed.’ He bowed. ‘Your word is law.’

Draik nodded, still lost in thought as he smoked, looking at the singing heads.

‘It’s a kind of High Gothic,’ said Isola, listening to the droning song while tapping at her cogitator. ‘They’re singing words.’

Draik looked intrigued. ‘What are they singing?’

Isola shook her head, still peering at her screen, shimmering glyphs reflected in her eyes. ‘It’s an ancient dialect. I’m not sure. I should be able to decipher it in time.’ She frowned, looking up at the swaying heads. ‘I think they might be describing a place – a location. I think they might be recounting coordinates. I will keep researching it. It might be important.’

Draik watched her working and a faint smile played around his lips. Then he nodded and turned to Raus.

‘Lead us to your stair.’

As the ratlings scurried away from the light, Taddeus cried a command and half a dozen servo-skulls whirred through the air, leaving the ranks of missionaries and gliding after the abhumans. The tattooed skulls were covered in holy sigils and scraps of parchment. They had lumens embedded in their gleaming eye sockets and as they flew from the main group they scattered strands of light over the shifting floor, giving just enough illumination for Draik and the others to follow the ratlings.

With a shudder, Quintus tore his gaze away from the heads and started after the rogue trader.

12

The sounds of the Blackstone grew louder as they headed deeper into the chamber and the tremors grew more violent. When Quintus glanced back over his shoulder he saw that the darkness had swallowed the two ships utterly. All he could see was the pitiful-looking heads lit up by their crimson tower.

‘This way!’ called one of the ratlings and the expedition trailed after them. Quintus guessed that there were sixty or so missionaries, plus Draik, Isola, Audus, Grekh and himself. The priests were all heavily armed and they made a fearsome sight. He started to wonder if he might actually survive the mission.

They ran for ten minutes with the light of the servo-skulls bobbing ahead of them. Then Quintus sensed a change in the atmosphere. The air felt closer and the echoes of their running feet were deadened and truncated.

‘We’re in a smaller chamber,’ he said, noticing that Audus was nearby.

She nodded, waving her big two-handed autogun back the way they’d come. ‘They vary massively. That big one back there was the Stygian Aperture. The most visited of all the fortress’ docking points. Before all the lumens got smashed, you could even see a bit of the place. It’s like being inside a gemstone the size of a battle cruiser – all angles and facets and polished black surfaces. But the really interesting thing, when there was light, was to pick through all the wrecked landers. That place is supposedly the safest entry point, but there are dozens of dead ships in there.’

‘Because of the heretics?’

‘No.’ She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? No, the heretics weren’t always here. At least not in these kinds of numbers. They have taken control over the last few months. I’ve never seen an altar like that at the landing point. The early expeditions were destroyed by the Blackstone itself.’

‘How? Is it defended by soldiers?’

‘No.’ She banged the butt of her gun on the cold, black floor. ‘By this stuff.’

‘The floor?’

‘And the walls. And the ceilings. And anything else you can find down here. This is no ordinary building material. It comes to life. I’ve seen it form into killing machines faster than people can step off it.’

Quintus studied the floor he was running over, wondering if Audus was having a joke at his expense. He was about to ask more when they caught up with the missionaries. They had halted as the ratlings spoke to Draik and Taddeus. Quintus pushed closer. In the confines of the smaller chamber, which he now saw was more like a corridor, the servo-skulls’ lumens were able to shed much more light.

He took in his first clear view of the fortress’ architecture. Everything was made of the same dark, slate-like material, but the structures did not seem to make any sense. The crossroads led off in four directions, but there were also passages and flights of stairs overhead that appeared to be upside down, as though he were looking up into a dark mirror.

Draik nodded, made a decision and the group headed off down another black, sheer-sided corridor. As they went, the sound of singing grew louder, filling the darkness with a rising chorus of atonal verses.

After what seemed like hours, the ratlings triggered a mechanism in the wall, and a dead end folded away like a piece of origami to reveal a dazzling explosion of red light. Quintus cursed and shielded his eyes. After so long travelling in gloom, the illumination was painful. He staggered back and bumped into someone.

‘Don’t worry, flower,’ whispered Audus. ‘I’ll look after you.’

He shrugged her off and managed to open his eyes a fraction, peering into the light. Draik and most of the party had already entered the chamber, silhouetted by the fiery glare. The missionaries fanned out, dropping into combat stances and gripping their weapons as they edged forwards, but Draik strode purposefully on, chin raised, as though he were inspecting a parade.

Quintus stumbled out into the hall, still shielding his face and gasping in disgust. The stench he had smelled earlier was twice as powerful here, and again he had to battle the urge to vomit. A hundred feet away, the sheer black surface of the floor had cracked and buckled, rising up in broken plates and creating a stockade of teeth-like protrusions. It was not the broken floor that made Quintus grimace, though; it was the cause of the rupture.

The floor had been ripped up by a seam of raw meat. Skinless flesh had boiled up from beneath the floor, like lava cutting through rock. It had been narrow at the foot of the blood tree, but here it was dozens of feet wide and it trailed off into the distance, disappearing into hazy clouds of flies.

‘What in the name of the Emperor is that?’ said Quintus.

Audus reached his side. ‘Well,’ she muttered. ‘That is new.’

She strode on to where Draik had halted, about a dozen feet away from the channel of violent pink. Quintus rushed after her and joined her at Draik’s side. Isola, Grekh, Taddeus and Vorne were already there and all of them were staring at the tear in the floor. There were more of the blood trees like the one they saw in the previous chamber, topped by the same clusters of chanting heads.

‘It’s breathing,’ said Quintus, shaking his head, looking at the thing in the floor. Up-close, the eruption looked even more like a river of flayed muscle, but it was moving, slowly, up and down, inflating and deflating all along its length.

‘Not possible,’ said Draik. ‘No animal could be this large.’ He moved to step closer, but Taddeus grabbed his arm.

‘This is the seed the heretics planted. It is taking shape.’ The priest was shaking. ‘This is the taint that you have come to drive out.’ His voice grew sing-song. ‘When the crimson hand climbs the Red Stair, the wounds shall be healed. The throne and the crucible, the dark and the light, all shall be one.’

Draik nodded and looked around for the ratlings. They were a few feet away and rushed over when he called.

‘How do we cross this?’ he demanded, waving away the flies.

‘No need,’ replied Raus.

Rein pointed his sniper rifle away from the heaving meat to the other side of the hall. The red light was even brighter in that direction and it was impossible to see anything clearly, but the ratlings spoke with confidence.

‘The Red Stair,’ grinned Rein.

‘So the stairs looked like this last time you came?’ asked Draik, frowning.

Taddeus shook his head. ‘They were red rocks.’ He waved his mace at the bloody expanse before them. ‘There was none of this. The black shrines are transforming everything.’

Draik nodded and was about to give an order when the floor shifted violently and they all staggered away from the channel of meat. A new fissure opened up as the meat rose higher, as though inhaling. Quintus reeled away as a slab of floor sheared up in front of him.

‘Move,’ said Draik, waving the ratlings off. ‘Get us to the stairs.’

‘I’ve not seen anything like that before,’ said Audus as they all rushed after the ratlings. She was looking back over her shoulder at the meat river. ‘The Blackstone is usually pretty indestructible, but that thing has broken it like eggshell.’

The fact that Audus had abandoned her sardonic demeanour made Quintus even more troubled. ‘Isola said this place is full of things that can kill you,’ he offered.

Audus shook her head. ‘But not like that. This is different. That’s not part of the Blackstone Fortress. The fortress doesn’t breathe.’

‘It looked like a limb,’ whispered Quintus as they rushed through the clouds of flies. ‘Or a tentacle.’

Audus raised an eyebrow. ‘The size of a river?’

The light grew brighter as they crossed the hall, but Quintus found he was getting used to it. The hall was too huge for him to see walls or a ceiling. All he could make out was the sheer expanse of floor, broken only by the eruption they had just run away from. Then, as they ran further into the light, he began to make out its source. Rising up over the silhouettes of Draik and the others, dwarfing them with its immense size, was a red waterfall. It was tumbling down from some unseen height, arching overhead before plunging towards the floor.

Quintus was struggling not to be crushed by the strangeness of the fortress. As he craned his neck, trying to see the top of the red waterfall, he realised that it was not tumbling as he had first thought, but bursting out through the floor and roaring upwards. The sound of crashing liquid was loud enough to drown out the ominous reverberations of the fortress.

‘Behold!’ cried Raus, trying and failing to sound confident. ‘The Red Stair.’

As they ran towards it, Quintus had the horrible feeling that it would be made of the same rotting, offal-like substance as the river, but when he got closer, he saw that it was simply blood, a vast column of the stuff, cascading upwards with ground-shaking force.

‘Did they say we have to climb it?’ he muttered, his stomach churning at the thought.

Audus was still beside him, but before she could reply Raus halted the group by holding up a warning hand. There were silhouetted figures approaching from the opposite direction, rushing towards them. Their shapes were rippling and unclear in the blazing light, but Quintus guessed that there were fifty or so people approaching from the direction of the Red Stair.

Taddeus waved his mace from left to right, indicating that the missionaries should spread out. Draik stood stock-still, his pistol trained on the approaching figures. As people scattered in every direction, Quintus fumbled with one of his pistols, struggling to wrench it from his belt and almost pulling the trigger while the gun was pointed at his foot.

‘Just keep your head down,’ whispered Audus, stepping in front of him and hefting her autogun off her back. ‘People rarely play nicely down here.’

Quintus dropped to one knee and raised his pistol as the figures emerged from the light.

‘Guardsmen?’ he muttered as he recognised their lasguns and Militarum fatigues. He laughed in relief and lowered his pistol.

‘Don’t fire until I give the order,’ said Draik calmly. ‘We can’t afford to waste ammunition.’

‘Fire?’ laughed Quintus, confused. ‘They’re Imperial Guardsmen.’

He stood and was about to approach Draik when he noticed how oddly some of the soldiers were moving – limping and lurching, as though dragging heavy loads. They were also a strangely varied range of sizes and shapes. Some seemed of average build, but others were small and hunched, like crippled children, and others were huge, looming over the others with their heads swinging low like apes.

When they were about twenty feet from Draik, the Guardsmen ceased to be silhouettes and Quintus raised his pistol again, taking a few steps backwards. ‘Throne,’ he whispered as he saw how oddly they were dressed. Some were wearing ragged, bat-like wings on their backs and others had long, bovine horns strapped to their foreheads. The Guardsman at the front, who seemed to be the commanding officer, had attached foot-long barbs to his uniform.

‘Why are they dressed like that?’ said Quintus, but before anyone could answer, Draik gave the order to fire.

A wall of flames and las-blasts ripped into the Guardsmen, hurling the front line back. As the barrage lit them up, Quintus’ pistol hung limply in his hand.

‘They’re not costumes,’ he whispered, but no one could hear him as the Guardsmen returned fire. Shots punched into missionaries either side of Quintus and they toppled away, trailing blood as their flamers clanged across the floor.

Dozens more Guardsmen lurched into view and fear jolted Quintus into action. He raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. He cursed as nothing happened.

Audus reached over and flicked his safety off. Then she placed the butt of her autogun against her hip and launched an ear-splitting drum roll of shots. As she hefted the weapon from side to side, smoking shells whistled through the air and another row of Guardsmen fell back into the bloody light.

Quintus cursed his stupidity and fired wildly into the Guardsmen, unsure if he was hitting anything. Draik had remained at the head of the group, standing in a relaxed posture, his pistol hanging loosely from his hand as he placed careful headshots into the reeling figures. Quintus fired with increasing ferocity, growling to himself as he marched forwards, invigorated by fear. It took him a few seconds to realise that the others had ceased firing and were watching him with baffled expressions.

‘You can’t kill them twice,’ said Audus, waving her gun at the smouldering corpses.

Quintus stumbled to a halt as he saw that in just a few seconds they had gunned down every one of the Guardsmen. He kept his pistol raised as he walked slowly towards the bodies.

Draik looked up as Quintus reached his side. ‘Have you seen heretics before, boy?’

Quintus nodded. ‘Of course. I have seen men burned for heresy on countless occasions, but…’ He hesitated, looking down at the nearest corpse. The Guardsman’s hands had been replaced with elongated, birdlike claws. ‘They did not look like this. I don’t understand. Why are they so deformed? Is that what drove them to idolatry?’

Draik looked at the bodies with a stern expression but before he could answer, Taddeus strode over.

‘They harnessed the warp. As fuel for their forbidden rites. The ether has unmade them. It corrupted their minds and their bodies.’

Quintus shook his head. ‘How can prayers change bodies?’

‘Transmutation!’ bellowed Taddeus, rounding on him, his face crimson. ‘The corrupting power of heresy! Pray that you never meet their fate, boy. Physical change is the least of their concerns. Their immortal souls are far more grotesque than their flesh.’ He pointed his mace back the way they had come, towards the tear in the floor. ‘The malignancy of their religion is so potent that it is transforming this entire fortress. It is their apostasy that is tearing the walls down and filling the void with storms. If we take time to pray, we may spare ourselves the–’

‘Your eminence,’ interrupted Draik. ‘We have no time to take. These chambers have clearly been reoccupied since the Servants of the Abyss were driven out. They are more hazardous than ever.’ He looked up at the blood falls looming over them. ‘You said our route was up there. Is that right?’

Rein and Raus rushed over nodding eagerly, but before they could speak, Vorne strode to Taddeus’ side, her flamer’s muzzle still glowing with heat.

‘Three of our brothers have been killed, and another five are too wounded to continue.’

Taddeus nodded and glanced at his mace. ‘I will give them all the Emperor’s final blessing. Stay and pray with me, Vorne, and send the others ahead with Captain Draik.’ He looked at Draik. ‘I must attend to the fallen. We will join you in a few minutes.’

Quintus shook his head. ‘You’re going to kill them? Your own people?’

Taddeus gave Quintus such a furious glare that Quintus flinched; then the priest headed off towards the wounded missionaries, barking prayers as he went.

Draik did not look as furious as Taddeus but he clearly had no time for Quintus’ concerns. ‘There is no medicae deck down here, boy. Those that can walk continue with the expedition, those that can’t deserve a clean death.’

Draik waved the ratlings on and they hurried off, their large, clawed feet pattering across the corpse-strewn floor. As Quintus followed the rest of the group, he heard the sound of prayers behind him, and the muffled crunch of cracking skulls. He forced himself not to look back, knowing he was powerless to do anything, and fixed his gaze on the phenomenon the ratlings had called the Red Stair. It was hundreds of feet tall, its summit lost in the dazzling red light, and it was at least a hundred feet wide. It was like a crimson geyser roaring from the broken floor. As they got closer, a bloody mist settled on their faces and armour, filling the air with an iron tang.

As they reached the foot of the falls, another sound was loud enough to be heard over the din. It was the chanting they had heard when they’d landed. Draik gave Isola a knowing look. She gave him a curt nod and then returned her attention to her cogitator, wiping blood from its screen as she tried to read the data.

‘What?’ demanded Audus, catching the glance.

‘We have heard that song before,’ replied Draik, without looking at her.

‘Cultists,’ she said.

Draik nodded. ‘But listen to how many there are.’

Quintus listened and felt another rush of panic. There were thousands of voices chanting. He dropped back a little and depressed the bone in his wrist.

I need to leave this place, he thought.

+Not until Draik is dead.+ The voice was even more feral than last time. The deeper Quintus went into the fortress, the less clear the translation became. +Remember what happens if you leave his side.+

Quintus looked at Draik, marching fearlessly towards the Red Stair. He will die soon enough, he thought. These people are all insane. Being in here is insane. They’re all going to die.

+Stay calm. Draik must not die yet. Without him, there will be no priests. Without the priests, the abhumans have no chance of reaching the Aberration. Do you understand?+

There is no chance of reaching it anyway, thought Quintus. The ratlings have no idea what they’re doing. They’re idiots.

+Idiots with my technology implanted in their skulls. I have given them a route to the Aberration. They will reach it. They reached it last time, but failed to trigger the transportation device I gave them.+

They will all be dead in a few hours, thought Quintus.

+Make sure they are not.+

A stab of pain raced up from Quintus’ wrist and he gripped his arm with a gasp.

‘Are you wounded?’ asked Audus, walking back over to him. She was now addressing him in less sneering tones. He shook his head and loosed his arm.

‘What are they doing?’ he asked, looking over at Draik and others. They had gathered at the foot of the falls and Draik and Isola were handing objects out to people.

‘Some of Taddeus’ newer missionaries have not come prepared,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Perhaps they thought faith would carry them up the walls. Draik’s handing out auto-picks.’ She gave him a sideways glance. ‘I presume you thought to bring climbing equipment?’

‘Climb a fountain of blood?’

‘Things are rarely what they seem down here. If the abnormals say they came this way last time, that thing is obviously more than blood. Here,’ she said, rifling through one of the pockets on her flight suit and taking out a pair of small pistons with straps attached to them. ‘Take some of mine. They’ll cut into anything,’ she said, fastening them to his hands. ‘Just make a fist and stab.’

He thanked her and moved to leave.

‘What are you doing down here?’ she said, holding him back.

‘I’m employed by Draik, just as you are,’ he said, managing to keep his tone even.

She kept hold of his arm. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve crossed half of this sector. I’ve met everyone from dead-eyed cynics to faith-mad zealots and I’ve got pretty good at spotting which is which. You’re not a hero and neither are you a fool. There are plenty of people in this galaxy who need servants and don’t expect them to survive Blackstone Fortress. But you actually volunteered to come out here. You could have stayed on the Vanguard.’

It was Quintus’ turn to laugh. ‘Stay on the ship alone, down here? You’re right, I’m not a fool. I’ve seen all the broken wrecks lying around. The hull of a lander does not seem to offer much protection.’

‘Has Draik even paid you anything?’

‘He’s an honourable gentleman. You’re not the only one who understands people. He’ll pay me.’

She gave him a quizzical smile. ‘Your answers are all so quick… So smooth.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re not like the priests. You don’t think he’s a prophet. You don’t think he’s invincible. And you certainly don’t think you’re invincible. I saw how terrified you were when we saw that…’ She glanced back towards the river of meat. ‘Whatever that is. So why are you here?’

‘The same reason as you,’ he said, pulling free of her grip and heading towards Draik and the others. He sensed her following close behind, watching him, but she said no more on the subject.

He reached Draik just as the rogue trader was approaching the foot of the falls.

‘It is alive,’ said Isola. She was studying her cogitator while holding an electronic probe out to the glistening torrent. She frowned. ‘It has a pulse.’

‘The heretics summoned it from the warp,’ said Taddeus, gripping his rosarius and whispering a prayer. ‘It is a slice of the immaterium, dragged into realspace. It is a component of their blood rites.’

Draik shook his head. ‘Your eminence, you said I need to climb this “stair”. Is it safe to make physical contact with a piece of the warp, if that’s what this truly is?’

Taddeus prayed a little longer and then smiled at Draik. ‘You are the Anointed. The Red-Handed One. The heretics do not realise it, but they have unwittingly built this stair for you. The path to the light often leads through darkness.’

Draik looked unconvinced. He turned to Grekh and the kroot shrugged.

‘Taddeus and the abhumans passed this way before. I do not sense any trace of corruption in them.’ He studied Taddeus with his strange, featureless eyes and his crest of spines rattled as though testing the air currents. ‘His mind is unstable and confused, but I do not think it has been devoured by warp currents.’

Taddeus gave Grekh a thunderous scowl and Vorne gripped her flamer tighter.

‘Let me show you!’ cried Raus, interrupting before a fight broke out. He strode up to the wall of churning liquid, ignoring the spray that drenched him. He took out a pair of combat knives and slammed one of them into the blood. It quivered as the blade punched through its surface and a darker liquid, almost black, spilled from the wound, rushing over the handle of Raus’ knife.

Raus smiled cheerfully over his shoulder at Draik, then slammed his other knife into the blood, spraying more liquid through the air. He planted his boots in the blood, wrenched one knife free and stabbed it higher, starting to climb. Quintus stared in disgust, unable to understand what he was watching. The geyser flinched and shifted each time Raus cut into it, as though it were a solid structure, but he could still see the liquid hurtling up out of the floor.

‘Too slow, Raus,’ said Rein, leaping at the blood with a pair of knives and clambering up through the gore, overtaking his brother.

Draik watched them with a look of utter revulsion. Then he did something Quintus had noticed him do a few times previously. He closed his eye for a moment and, when he opened it again, his expression was calm and resolute. He was carrying two of the pistons Audus called auto-picks, and he pointed one at the blood and punched a metal bolt into it, drenching his uniform and causing the whole edifice to judder again.

Draik did not hesitate after that, climbing hurriedly after the two ratlings, who were already twenty feet up the falls. As one, Taddeus and the other Ministorum priests swarmed forwards, starting to climb. Grekh followed, using the curved blade on his rifle’s barrel like an axe and climbing easily, his long, powerful limbs making quick work of the ascent. Isola waited a little longer, but then she began climbing too, until only Quintus and Audus were left.

Audus reached into one of her flight suit pockets and took out a hip flask. She took a deep swig, grimaced and shook her head. Then she held it out to Quintus.

‘My life’s ambition is to avoid a sober death,’ she said. ‘Imagine knowing that, in your final moment, you were seeing the world as it actually is.’ She shuddered. ‘Dreadful. And, down here, death is liable to come at any moment.’

Quintus wondered if she was mocking him, but she sounded uncharacteristically sincere so he took the flask and drank.

‘Guilliman’s balls,’ he gasped, coughing and spluttering.

Audus laughed. ‘Drink harder. Show it who’s boss.’

He took another sip and handed it back. Perhaps it was the alcohol buzz that rushed through him, or perhaps it was the disarming honesty in Audus’ gaze, but Quintus found himself speaking more openly than he should.

‘I came here to hide. Not much of the sector is safe for someone like me.’

‘Ah,’ she smiled, one whole side of her face dripping with blood. ‘Then we have something in common. I am someone like you. My name is mud too. I knew we were kindred spirits.’

‘Audus!’ called Isola from overhead.

Audus slammed her picks into the blood and started to climb. ‘I hope you have strong arms.’

13

After hours of hauling himself up the slick, fly-shrouded falls, Draik finally glimpsed the top. The incline grew less extreme and the blood tide began to plateau, forming a wide river. The sound of falling liquid gradually grew fainter, but the sound of chanting grew louder. He looked around, trying to see the source, but his world had become a crimson haze. Blood spray billowed around him in huge banks, lit so brightly by the falls that everything seemed to burn. It was like climbing through a lava storm.

‘Not far!’ called Rein from a little further up the slope. The ratlings had reached a point where the slope levelled off to such an extent that they could stand.

Draik nodded and hauled himself over the last dozen or so feet and then lay panting and exhausted. His uniform was dark with blood. His face and hair were drenched. He had to blink the stuff away to see. He had not worn his eyepiece since the violent hallucinations on the Vanguard and his eye socket was now a bloody pool. On his first few Blackstone expeditions, Draik had made a futile attempt to remain clean and smart, but he had been forced to abandon such niceties in the face of the fortress’ lunacy. His only consolation was that he was no longer likely to encounter anyone down here that looked any better. There were only the heretics and the dark.

He climbed wearily to his feet and made sure that he was at least standing in a dignified pose when Isola’s gore-splattered face broke through the mist. One by one the rest of the party dragged themselves up onto the summit of the falls and lay around him, wiping their faces and massaging their aching limbs. He waited until the last of them had reached the top and then waved the ratlings on.

‘Draik!’ said Audus. ‘Give us a moment, damn it. We’re all shattered. We need to rest and eat something or we’ll all keel over.’

Draik looked at the figures sprawled around her and saw that she was right. Taddeus, especially, looked as though he could barely breathe. His face was as red as the blood that was dripping from it and Vorne was hunched over him, patting his back as he coughed.

‘Not here.’ Draik waved at the walls of buzzing flies. ‘We could be surrounded by heretics for all we know. We can’t see a thing.’ He looked at the ratlings. ‘Does this slope continue to level off?’

Raus nodded, munching cheerfully on a piece of dried meat. ‘We’ve climbed the Red Stair. From here it becomes a…’ He looked at Rein.

‘A red road?’ suggested his brother.

‘More like a red bridge, would you say?’ said Raus.

‘Depends, Raus. I always think of a bridge as a way of crossing–’

‘Is it,’ interrupted Draik, struggling to keep his voice level, ‘easier to see once we move away from the falls?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Raus.

‘Much easier,’ said Rein.

‘Probably,’ said Raus.

Draik frowned at them and looked back at the others. ‘Then we will get away from these confounded flies and find a clear spot further on, where we can be sure we’re safe to halt for a few minutes.’

He waved the ratlings on and ignored the protesting groans that followed him as everyone else followed. ‘The only chance of survival on the Blackstone is to keep moving,’ he said.

It only took a few minutes for the mist to clear and Draik had to admit to himself that they might have been safer resting where they were. The blood had formed into a kind of broad, red shelf that stretched out over another huge chamber. This chamber was so large it looked more like a crater or an opencast mine than a piece of architecture. A region of the fortress had been torn away to create a massive, star-shaped wound and there were hundreds of shapes swarming around it. Draik had almost reached the edge of the blood bridge when he realised that the shapes were people, marching in phalanxes and gathering in crowds around dozens more of the treelike shrines. Draik had never seen cultists gathered in such huge numbers. It was an army.

He backed away, hoping he had not been seen, and signalled for everyone else to stay clear of the edge.

‘Were they there when you came last time?’ he said to the ratlings.

The grins fell from their faces as they saw the vast fissure and the crowds teeming around the altars. They both shook their heads.

As Taddeus stomped out of the mist and saw what lay beneath them, his eyes flashed. ‘The kingdom of the damned,’ he whispered. ‘They are building an abomination.’

‘It’s the same stuff we saw earlier,’ said Audus with a grimace, gesturing at the pink and red mass that filled the crater.

‘Look there,’ said Isola, pointing across the chasm.

On the far side there was a single thunderhead – a boiling mass of flies so dense it looked like a storm cloud. It was turning and rolling around itself but stayed locked to the floor of the chamber. At its base, the black floor of the fortress was splintering and rending, revealing more of the gleaming flesh. As the floor cracked the meat swelled and grew, reaching out with flailing tendrils that tried to haul the main mass higher. Dozens of objects were hurtling through the air towards the cloud; everything from engine parts to severed limbs was caught in its pull.

‘That’s the source,’ muttered Draik, pointing his pistol at the distant cloud. ‘The black shrines are linked to that. That’s where all this corruption is coming from.’

‘They’re feeding it,’ said Isola, her voice full of revulsion. ‘Look there.’

Crowds of heretics were gathered around the shrines and they were throwing people into them, casting prisoners into the churning flesh. The blood trees juddered as they sprouted new heads that joined their voices to the chorus. Draik and the others watched, horrified, as dozens of people were thrown to their deaths in just a few short minutes.

‘Er, wait one moment, captain,’ said Raus, hurrying to his side and lowering the gun. ‘We don’t want to announce our presence. We don’t want them to know we’re up here, now, do we?’

‘They have some pretty big guns down there,’ agreed Rein, looking pained. ‘I’m feeling a little disconcerted. Are you, Raus?’

‘A lot disconcerted, Rein,’ nodded Raus. ‘We should just keep moving. As you said to His Highness earlier. We don’t want to get stalled by attacking these trees, do we?’

Draik could only half follow what Raus was saying. The more he stared at the thundercloud, the more furious he felt. The flesh-filled eruptions that had torn through the Blackstone’s floor all originated at this one point. He could feel the malice radiating from it. His eye socket itched and the sensation reminded him of the optical implant he had placed in an ammo pouch. What would he see if he wore the eyepiece now? What was inside that cloud? The more he thought about it, the more desperate he was to know.

‘Draik,’ said Audus. ‘Remember why we came. Those prisoners are already damned. It’s too late for them. But the rest of the galaxy is not yet lost. There is hope for us. As long as we reach the Crucible.’

Draik had no interest in whatever Taddeus was calling the Crucible, but Audus was right: he did need to remember why he came. He had to keep moving and find something valuable enough to begin building his fortune. Or he would be as nameless and defenceless as the wretches who were being sacrificed beneath the bridge. He nodded at the ratlings.

They crossed the bridge in silence, weapons at the ready as they eyed the horrific scene below. As they crossed the cavernous space, the chanting from the heads grew louder and the cloud rolled and grumbled, tearing rifts in the floor and hauling more flesh into view. Draik was reminded of the religious paintings in his father’s palace, apocalyptic scenes wrought on a grand scale. He felt as though he were travelling through a hellish afterlife, waiting for a daemonic monster to rise up and devour him.

No one brought up the subject of stopping to rest. They just stumbled along, heads hung low and faces smeared with blood. They looked like a mob of revenants ambling from a crypt. The crowd of missionaries eyed the scene with undisguised loathing, praying furiously as they trailed after Taddeus and Vorne. Even the ratlings had lost some of their relentless optimism. As usual, Grekh seemed unaffected, loping after the abhumans with his usual nonchalance, occasionally studying a distant detail through the scope of his rifle.

As Draik walked, his mind returned again and again to the distant cloud. There was something dreadful about the way it seethed on the ground, never moving away or dispersing. Draik began to find it even more offensive than the murders at the shrines. He could feel the force of its evil, disturbing the air like static electricity, washing over him in waves. He thought again of the eyepiece at his belt and what it might reveal if he turned it on the cloud.

‘What is in there?’ he muttered.

Isola was at his side and caught his words. ‘What does it matter?’

He glanced at her.

She shrugged. ‘You’re here to make yourself rich. As long as you can build your empire why would you care what’s in the cloud?’

‘Are you trying to distract me?’ he replied. ‘Of course I care, but Janus Draik does not simply give up at the first obstacle.’

Amusement flickered in her eyes.

‘I see what’s happening down there,’ he said. ‘Do you think it doesn’t pain me? Do you think I want to let those people die? Do you think I am not concerned about whatever it is they’re building?’ Audus and the valet were only a few paces behind them so he lowered his voice and leant closer to Isola. ‘Why do you think I want to build a new Draik empire?’

She gave him a sideways glance. ‘To rival your father.’

‘No. Well, yes, but not for the reasons you think. I will build a new House Draik, forged in the heat of adversity, Isola. While my father and my sister parade themselves at Terran balls, I will use my position to stop atrocities like this.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s in your blood. You’re a Draik. You want power for power’s sake. You are reckless and hungry. If you build a dynasty it will do as much damage as good.’

Isola had never spoken to Draik in such disparaging tones before and he felt a flash of fury. But the sadness in her voice leached the anger out of him. He had been barely more than a boy when his father had cast him out into the galaxy as a pariah. Isola had been the only constant presence in the intervening years. They had grown together, and he could not find it in himself to hate her.

‘Then join me,’ he said. ‘If you doubt my motives or my constancy, why not serve the new House Draik as you so loyally served the old one?’

She was staring at the screaming figures below, her expression bleak. ‘I want something better.’ She gave him such a direct, intense look that it almost drove the storm cloud from his thoughts. ‘Partners, Janus, or nothing.’

Before he could reply she turned away to talk to Audus. Draik marched on, following the ratlings, but Isola’s words rankled. Was she right? Was he putting personal glory before duty?

He looked out at the horrors below the bridge. There were thousands of cultists down there and they were not a disorganised rabble – they were heavily armed and working with the precision of a well-drilled Astra Militarum regiment. He could see armoured cars and artillery being manoeuvred around the pit, as though they were preparing for an offensive. But an offensive against what? Against whom? There was no one on the Blackstone, except perhaps a few half-starved expeditions from Precipice that had managed to survive longer than the rest. So why did the heretics look as though they were mustering for an attack?

As he studied the columns of troops and war machines his gaze was drawn inexorably back to the storm cloud at the heart of the madness. His eye socket itched and he touched the pouch at his belt, feeling the heavy bulk of his disconnected eyepiece. He remembered what had happened on the Vanguard – the painful hallucinations that had forced him to remove it. Perhaps it had just been cognitive interference, something temporary caused by the magnetic storms? He took the augmetic out and studied it as he walked. The pain had been bad but not debilitating. And if he suffered the same ill-effects as last time, he could simply remove it again.

Draik lifted the eyepiece, slotted it into the frame that circled his eye socket and triggered the power. The mechanism whirred into life and the lens clicked as it tried to focus. There was no pain. Data scrolled across the lens and Draik realised how much he had missed wearing it. He had lost his original eye in a duel on Terra, while still a youth, but the optical implant was more than just a replacement eye: it acted as a mixture of cogitator, auspex, targeting display and vital functions monitor. It was also capable of seeing through almost any kind of weather conditions.

As Isola continued talking to Audus, Draik paused and stared through his augmetic at the distant thunderhead. For a moment, there was nothing to see as the lens refocused and recalibrated. Then it pierced the gloom and Draik began to make out shapes in the centre of the cloud. At first, he thought it was more of the tendrils snaking from the chasm, but then he saw they were not solid shapes but lines of power, like coruscating plasma. The beams were the cause of the destruction that had crossed the whole chamber, spreading out into the Blackstone and ripping it apart. As Draik saw the centre of this spectacular display, a feeling of intense hatred rose up in him.

‘Janus?’ Isola’s voice seemed to come from another world.

At the centre of the cloud, Draik saw a tree-shaped altar, similar to the ones scattered around the pit, but built on a larger scale. It was a tower of muscle and ligament, and at the top was a single figure, chained to a throne with her head tilted back and her hands gripping a staff. Draik grimaced. The woman wore the tattered uniform of a Militarum officer but her head was billowing and fluttering with the plasma beams, distorting and elongating.

‘Draik?’ said Isola again, but it was too late. He was consumed by the heretic’s amorphous face. The power he had sensed, the energy that charged the air, was all radiating from this nightmarish skull. The sense of dreadful urgency he had felt on the Vanguard gripped him again. It grew so intense that he felt he would scream if he did not do something.

To Draik’s shock, the woman looked directly at him. She must have been nearly a mile away. Draik could only see her so clearly because of his augmetic. How could the mutant see him?

The woman opened her mouth to speak and Draik realised that, if he heard what this monster had to say, his mind would break. All the time, the awful sense of urgency was growing.

He flipped his splinter pistol from its holster and, using the targeting system in his augmetic eye, he shot a hole in the woman’s forehead.

14

The woman’s head rocked back and her staff fell from her hands, bouncing down the bloody shrine. The lines of plasma vanished and the grinding hum that had been filling the air was silenced. All around the crater, the heretics’ song faltered as the storm cloud dissipated and revealed the corpse on the altar.

There was a great clamour as heretics rushed up the pyramid towards the dead woman.

‘What did you do?’ asked Isola, her voice hushed.

Draik finally looked at her. ‘I’m not sure,’ he muttered as all the others gathered around him and looked down at the panicked crowds. He was about to suggest they keep moving when a new sound rose up over the cries of the heretics – a deep, grumbling roar that sounded like a landslide. Beneath the bridge, the pit started to collapse, spilling more captives to their deaths and throwing up dust clouds.

Hundreds of heretics were looking around for the source of the shot and it was only a few seconds before cries rang out and weapons were pointed up at the bridge.

‘Here we go,’ muttered Audus. ‘Is this the famed Draik diplomacy?’

‘Move!’ cried Draik, waving everybody on as shots filled the air, smashing chunks from the bridge’s edge. They all turned to run but failed to take more than a few steps before the entire bridge shifted to the left, throwing them off their feet and sending them sprawling across the crimson surface.

‘What have you done?’ cried Audus, just managing to grab Quintus before he was hurled to his death.

There was another seismic groan and the bridge jolted in the other direction, wrong-footing them again. One of the missionaries howled as he tumbled from the bridge and plunged towards the pit.

‘Run!’ cried Draik, managing to stand and break into a sprint. ‘It’s collapsing!’

A few shots were still howling up at them, but the heretics now had problems of their own to contend with. The star-shaped chasm was splitting into dozens of new cracks, flipping up slabs of flooring and hurling heretics towards the shrines, giving them the same death they had been inflicting on their captives.

Draik snatched a glance at the altar and saw a crowd of heretics rushing away from it towards an octagonal hole in the opposite wall. There was something odd about the aperture. It was designed to mirror the surrounding angles and vertices.

He paused for a second and switched off his augmetic. The aperture in the wall vanished, and then reappeared when he triggered the augmetic again.

‘Strange,’ he muttered, struggling to stay upright as the Red Stair shook. He had worn the eyepiece on every previous expedition and it had never revealed hidden doorways before. He looked around and saw that there were several more openings in the chamber that were hidden by optical illusions until he fixed the eyepiece on them.

‘Draik!’ howled Taddeus as auto-rounds strafed the surface of the Red Stair.

Draik dived clear, rolled back up onto one knee and returned fire, his pistol kicking in his hand. The shots had come from overhead. A group of heretics had used a jerry-built gurney to scale the walls and gather on a ledge. There were six of them and he knocked them down with six calmly placed headshots. His father might be a pompous prig, but Janus regularly thanked him for the rigour of his training regimes.

Taddeus and the others had nearly reached the far side of the structure, but at the sight of Draik so far behind, Taddeus ordered his missionaries back, bellowing furiously at them to give him covering fire. Shafts of flame spewed from the bridge as the priests turned flamers on the heretics who were clambering up power cables. Screaming figures tumbled from the walls but hundreds more rushed to replace them. The pit was still heaving and fracturing, freeing more of the gruesome substance beneath, but the heretics seemed oblivious to the danger, intent on hunting down the man who had shot their leader.

It quickly became a slaughter. As more heretics reached the upper levels a fierce barrage of shots ripped up the surface of the bridge, tearing a channel through the crowd of priests and sending several more toppling.

Draik sprinted, his legs fuelled by rage. His new empire would not be destroyed before it had even begun. He leapt over screaming priests and weaved as he ran, attempting to confound the gunmen on the walls.

Audus strode back onto the bridge and dropped to one knee, ripping up the walls with her autogun. A heretic landed on the bridge and clubbed her down with the butt of a lasgun. He flipped the weapon around and was about to shoot Audus when Draik reached him, drew his rapier and slashed it across the heretic’s neck, sending the man staggering away in a shower of crimson.

Draik’s blade shimmered as he turned on his heel and plunged it into another heretic, who had tried to rush him from behind. Dozens of them were now dropping from the walls and racing towards him. He gunned several down then lunged at the ones who reached him, dancing into them with a flurry of thrusts and slashes.

Isola appeared and hauled Audus to her feet, giving the pilot a chance to fire another barrage of deafening shots and punch more heretics into the air.

‘Go!’ cried Draik, seeing that another, larger group of heretics were about to drop from the walls. They ran on, quickly covering the last few feet of the bridge and dashing through an opening at the far end.

They emerged into an octagonal room, about fifty feet wide. It was made of the same black material as the rest of the fortress, but the walls were splintering here, too, revealing the fleshy substance they had seen in the pit.

Taddeus and the rest of the surviving priests rushed into the room. ‘Bar the entrance!’ cried Taddeus, waving his followers back to the opening.

The priests turned and pointed a line of flamers back out at the heretics rushing towards them across the bridge. The opening became a wall of light as they fired in unison, spilling flames into the heretics and filling the air with howls.

‘Draik!’ cried Rein and Raus simultaneously, rushing over to him. Their expressions were desperate as they waved their guns at the walls. ‘There are no doors.’

Draik whirled around in confusion, looking at the walls. All eight of them framed tall, narrow openings that led off into further chambers.

‘What are you talking about?’ he said – then, before they could reply, he guessed what had happened. He killed the power to his eyepiece and, as he expected, his natural eye saw eight featureless walls with no sign of the hidden exits. He triggered the eyepiece and the doorways reappeared.

How many routes had he missed since he first began exploring the Blackstone? It looked like almost every surface contained an opening that was camouflaged to blend seamlessly with the surrounding stone. Who knew what incredible discoveries he might have made if he had not been walking blindly past countless hidden doors. But why was his eyepiece revealing them now when it had never done so before? What had changed? He started fiddling with the casing, wondering if he had inadvertently altered the settings.

‘Draik!’ cried Audus. She was standing with the priests, adding a steady barrage of auto-rounds to their gouts of fire. ‘There are a lot of unhappy people heading this way.’

‘Let them come!’ roared Taddeus, gripping his mace in both hands and crouching like a pit-fighter. ‘I’m ready.’

‘She showed you something,’ said Grekh, breaking away from the fight to speak to Draik.

Draik looked up at the kroot’s proud, avian face. ‘She?’

‘I saw you tapping your eyepiece. The Blackstone showed you something. She shared secrets.’

Draik nodded, looking again at the slender openings that only he could see. ‘It’s not the Blackstone, it’s my optical implant. It’s been behaving oddly since we left Precipice. It’s showing me things that–’

A chain of holes exploded across the ceiling, scattering shrapnel as a heavy weapon opened fire on the chamber. Draik had to shield his face as missionaries flew across the room, their blood spraying, holes punched through their flak armour.

‘Draik!’ cried Audus, giving him a warning look as she continued firing out onto the bridge. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Raun!’ cried Draik, picking rubble from his face and looking for the ratlings.

The brothers scurried from a corner and approached him, flinching and ducking as shots whined past.

‘Which way?’ he demanded.

They looked at each other then back at Draik. ‘There are no ways,’ said Raus, scratching anxiously at his patchy beard.

‘Just walls,’ said Rein.

‘There are doors,’ said Draik. ‘Just tell me which direction we need and I’ll show you.’

Another section of ceiling exploded. Everyone ducked and the ratlings dropped to their bellies with their hands over their heads. As the dust cleared, Draik grabbed Raus by his collars and lifted him up in front of his face so that the abhuman’s feet were kicking uselessly in the air.

‘Which direction?’ said Draik.

Raus grinned awkwardly, as though humouring a lunatic, then looked around the eight walls. ‘That’s the direction,’ he said. ‘But last time we came there was–’

He landed heavily on the floor as Draik dropped him and strode through the rubble towards the opening. ‘Look!’ he cried, causing almost everyone to turn his way. He held his arm out into the aperture he knew only he could see. As soon as his hand passed through the opening, the optical illusion was broken and the others rushed towards him, muttering and shaking their heads as they passed through the hole and into a corridor on the far side.

When most of the group had filed out of the chamber, Draik headed back over to Taddeus and the other priests who were still drenching the bridge in flames. He reached Taddeus’ side and raised his pistol, firing a few shots out onto the bridge. It was like shooting into a furnace. There were mounds of burnt heretics sprawled in every direction, twisted, blackened husks that were being trampled by the living troops who were massing in ever-greater numbers. Draik guessed there were already a couple of hundred on the bridge. It was only the narrowness of the opening that had allowed the priests to hold them back.

Several of Taddeus’ missionaries were bleeding and stooped, their faces grey with pain, but they were all still pouring liquid death through the air, filling the chamber with heat haze and causing Draik to choke on the promethium fumes.

‘We need to make a retreat,’ he said, raising his voice over the din so that Taddeus would hear him.

‘No!’ cried Vorne, standing on the other side of Taddeus. Her mask was glowing with embers and the rest of her armour was coated in blood and ash. She looked more terrifying than the cultists. ‘We must purge them!’ She stared at Taddeus. ‘We cannot allow them to complete their rites.’

Taddeus gripped her shoulder. ‘Pious, you are an inspiration, but remember why we came. If we die here, how will Draik reach the Eudoxus Crucible?’

‘But those altars,’ she spat. ‘You saw the size of that thing they were unearthing. We can’t let them continue.’

‘We have to,’ said Taddeus, with a harder edge to his voice.

She nodded, but fired on the heretics with even more fury, causing Draik to shield his eyes from the heat.

‘We will need time,’ said Taddeus, looking back at Draik. ‘If we all leave now, they will be on us before we get ten feet.’

Draik had already had the same thought, but he was relieved that Taddeus had come to the conclusion by himself.

Taddeus called out the names of his wounded missionaries. ‘There is no way we can heal you down here.’

They all nodded.

‘And we cannot allow you to slow us down.’

They nodded again.

‘Will you perform one final act of devotion?’

‘For the Emperor!’ they cried, ceasing fire for a moment to raise their weapons. There was no fear in their voices, only pride, and Draik thought, not for the first time, on what could be achieved by filling minds with so much faith it left no room for anything else.

Taddeus went to each of the wounded priests and pressed his forehead to theirs, gripping their shoulders and whispering prayers. Then he backed away and raised his voice, addressing the rest of his congregation.

‘When I give the order, we will follow Draik to the exit. Do not pause to fire and do not look back. We have to move fast or we will not catch up with the abhumans and Draik will never reach his goal. Those of you who are about to join the hallowed ranks, back away from the opening at the same moment we do. Give the heretics the impression we have all fled. Then wait in the shadows on either side. Let as many heretics enter the room as possible before you open fire.’

He rose up to his full, impressive height and pointed his mace at the wounded priests.

‘This day! This very day! You will pass through the Eternity Gate and bask in the glory of the Sanctum Imperialis. Today, you shall kneel before the Golden Throne. You will see the face of the God-Emperor.’

Draik could see how jealous the able-bodied priests were of the wounded. Any one of them would have been thrilled to offer their lives in sacrifice.

‘Your souls are guaranteed a place at the Emperor’s side,’ continued Taddeus. ‘But that does not mean you should sell your mortal flesh cheap. If you time this right, dozens of those degenerate wretches can enter this room before you set them alight. You can make a holy crucible, barring the way and safeguarding Draik’s progress by filling the chamber with mounds of enemy dead.’ He punched his mace against the rosarius at his chest. ‘For the God-Emperor!’

‘The God-Emperor!’ roared all the priests, still pouring flames out onto the bridge.

‘Go,’ said Taddeus, looking over at Draik, his eyes wide with passion. ‘Catch up with the abhumans. I will join you in a few moments.’

Draik shook his head. ‘You will need me to see the door.’

Taddeus looked at the blank walls then turned to Vorne. ‘He sees where others may not.’

She mouthed the words back at him, her eyes glittering.

‘Very well,’ said Taddeus. ‘We go together. Ready yourselves.’

‘On the count of three!’ he cried, struggling to make himself heard over the flamers and autoguns. ‘Make them think we have all fled. And remember,’ he looked at the wounded priests, ‘fill the room with corpses. Deliver a legion of souls on this bloody floor.’

They all muttered prayers, and when Taddeus gave the order they extinguished their flamers and backed away from the opening.

Draik waved Taddeus and the others to the exit and they all ran out into a narrow, dark corridor.

15

Taddeus’ servo-skulls whirled ahead of the group, flashing stab-lights over black, faceted walls. Angles splintered the light, scattering beams in so many directions the passageway seemed to shift and blink.

Behind them, there was an ominous quiet.

‘Good,’ said Taddeus, panting as he ran. ‘The heretics are taking a moment to think before they charge.’

Draik nodded, but before he could speak, the deafening roar of igniting flamers echoed down the corridor from behind them, followed by howls of pain and shock.

Taddeus made the symbol of the aquila. ‘They’re selling their lives at a high cost,’ he said. ‘Listen, their flamers are still firing. They have caught the heretics unprepared.’

They ran on, leaving the screams behind as they turned several corners and passed junctions, led by Grekh, who had memorised the route taken by the ratlings moments earlier. After a while, they heard the others up ahead, and finally they caught up with them at the entrance to another huge vault.

Isola, Audus and Quintus were standing at the top of broad, sweeping steps that could have fronted the façade of a Terran palace. The steps formed a semicircular amphitheatre that led down into a well of utter blackness. The servo-skulls whirred out into the dark, but their lumens quickly became pinpricks, studding the void like stars. Taddeus called them back and they hovered over his head, lighting up the blood-drenched group.

‘It’s not right,’ muttered Vorne, glancing back down the corridor. ‘They should be stopped.’

‘Draik has dealt them a sore blow,’ said Taddeus, wiping blood from his face. ‘Did you see?’ His eyes flashed in the dark as he looked around the whole group. ‘Janus fired a single shot from the bridge and the whole place started to collapse. Do you know why?’

Everyone was too busy panting and wincing to answer.

‘Because the Emperor guided his hand and blessed his shot,’ continued Taddeus. The missionaries muttered in agreement and even Vorne looked mollified.

‘We are in the right place,’ said Raus, emerging from the darkness with Rein close behind. ‘Do you remember this hall, Your Worldliness?’

Taddeus frowned at the title but nodded, looking out into the wall of blackness. ‘I do recall these steps. They lead down to the battle cruiser.’

Rein and Raus nodded eagerly.

‘A battle cruiser?’ asked Quintus.

Draik kept forgetting the boy was still with them. The youth was not as useless as he had expected. On the few occasions he had been forced to bring a valet onto the Blackstone, they had invariably become a hindrance within the first ten minutes and died during the next ten. But Quintus had a determined look in his eye. There was more to the youth than he had guessed. He seemed deserving of a clear answer.

‘The Blackstone attracts celestial junk. Countless ships that did not seek this place have been caught in its pull and dragged to their doom. I have seen void ships down here before.’

Quintus nodded, then frowned and shook his head. ‘The ships crash-land but remain intact? How do they pass through the walls of the fortress without being obliterated? Or destroying the hull of the Blackstone?’

‘The Blackstone is no ordinary star fort,’ said Isola. She tapped the floor with the heel of her boot. ‘No one understands what this is but it attracts things and absorbs them, melding them with its own superstructure.’

Quintus looked down into the darkness. ‘Like it’s eating them?’

Isola shrugged.

There was a rattle of quills as Grekh approached, his tall presence just visible in the shadows. ‘It consumes and learns.’

Quintus was about to ask another question when Draik interrupted.

‘If there was ever a time to debate metaphysics with a kroot, this is not it. The heretics will fight through that chamber eventually.’ He looked around for the ratlings. ‘Which way now? Down the steps and through the wreck?’

Raus nodded and grinned. ‘We’re close. Half a mile at most. We pass through the battle cruiser’s embarkation decks, then down into its enginarium and then onto the final approach.’ He started jogging down the steps. ‘We’ll be at the Crucible in no time.’

The group set off, running as quickly as they could, but the steps were made for something larger than a human. Draik had to steady himself after each jump as the servo-skulls bobbed overhead, casting their feeble strands of light over the blackness. He was still quicker than most of the group, though, and after a few minutes only Grekh and Isola were near him.

‘Do you mean to go all the way to this Crucible they keep talking about?’ whispered Isola. ‘I know you’re not interested in their prophecies, but think how Taddeus will react if he realises you lied. If he decides you’re a false prophet we will find ourselves looking down the wrong end of those flamers.’

Draik nodded. ‘Obviously, I’ll go to whichever vault he thinks is the Crucible. I’m well aware of the dangers.’ He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the priests weren’t within earshot and then leant close to Isola. ‘The chamber Taddeus calls the Crucible is a chamber that no one has managed to enter. That’s where we’ll find our prize. Either there, or in the chambers beyond. Remember what the rest of the fortress was like before it was looted by our charming friends in Precipice, or turned to meat by heretics. There will be artefacts in there the like of which no one has ever seen. Alien machinery, holy relics, weapons from the Dark Age of Technology and who knows what else.’

‘But what about the priests? What about when you enter that vault and don’t ascend into a holy saint and become one with the fortress? Don’t you think Taddeus might wonder what’s gone wrong? Especially when you start rooting around for treasure troves.’

‘It won’t be me who does the rooting, Isola.’

Isola raised an eyebrow, but before she could disagree, he continued.

‘I will need to play the part. When we reach these inner vaults it will seem inappropriate if I start blithely hunting for relics. You will need to do that, along with Audus and Grekh.’ He paused, looking back again, spotting Quintus dropping down one of the steps. ‘And perhaps the valet. He seems to have more spine than his predecessors. Where did you find him?’

She shrugged. ‘I spread word in the Helmsman and he approached me a few days later.’

As Draik watched Quintus dropping from step to step, a sudden lance of white agony slid through his skull. He stumbled, gripping his eyepiece, and nearly fell down the steps.

‘Throne,’ he gasped as Isola and Grekh grabbed him and stopped his fall.

‘Take it out!’ said Isola.

He nodded and unlocked the eyepiece’s casing. But as he pulled the augmetic away from his eye socket, the pain tripled. He cursed and let go of the thing, slumping weakly against Grekh as the eyepiece remained jutting an inch from his face.

‘It’s locked in place!’ he managed to gasp.

‘What is that?’ whispered Isola, sounding horrified.

‘What?’ he cried, struggling to think through the pain. Then he opened his good eye and tried to look across the bridge of his nose. There was something there, linking the eyepiece to his skull. A black bevelled rod, passing from the back of the eyepiece and into his eye socket.

‘What in the name of the Emperor is it?’ he cried, touching it.

‘It’s inside you,’ breathed Isola, her eyes straining to examine the thing.

Horrified, Draik pulled the eyepiece again, trying to wrench out whatever was linking it to his head. The augmetic moved another inch but as it did so, more of the black column slid out from his eye socket, spilling blood down his cheek. It seemed be getting wider as it emerged. The pain was so great that Draik slumped in Grekh’s grip, delirious with agony, but he continued pulling. Whatever it was, he had to get it out.

‘Stop,’ said Grekh, speaking quietly in his ear. ‘You will die.’

‘I can’t leave it like this,’ groaned Draik. The thing now extended so far from his head that he could see it clearly with his good eye. It looked like black iron, jutting from his face. He tugged at it again, but this time the pain was too great and darkness flooded his thoughts.

Isola’s face stayed with him as he fell into nothingness. Then he realised that she was falling, rather than him. The angles of the Blackstone reached towards her in hexagons and octagons, grasping like geometric claws. She remained calm as she fell, but Draik felt an overwhelming sense of grief. He was losing her. What would he be without this clear-sighted, determined woman? What would become of him?

The polygons reached further, tightening their grip, and Isola crashed into them. Her body exploded, ripped apart by pitch-dark spars, but her face remained, watching him with cool dispassion as it plummeted into the shadows.

Draik had spent enough time around Grekh to guess that this was more than just a dream. The Blackstone was trying to communicate. And telling him what? That he could not risk losing Isola? That he should concede to her demands of partnership? It was impossible. A commoner could never be his equal. He had been born into a position of privilege to serve and protect people like Isola, not share their lives in some absurd pretence of equality.

He convulsed as Isola’s face reappeared, filling his vision. Her eyes were full of pain and concern. Grekh was behind her, as were Audus and Quintus, and Draik realised he had passed out. His breathing was fast and erratic, but he was relieved to notice that the agony had gone from his eye socket.

‘I got it out,’ he murmured, reaching up to touch the wound. ‘No!’ he said as his fingers brushed against the lens of his eyepiece. ‘It’s still there.’

‘You were about to rip your skull open,’ said Audus, grimacing. ‘We had to shove it back in.’

‘But that… that thing?’ Draik imagined he could feel the black column, cold and inert in his brain, lodged in his skull.

Isola shook her head. ‘There’s nothing we can do down here. Trying to get it out would require surgery. Just pulling it out might kill you.’

‘But what was it?’ Draik recalled the blurry, black shape he had seen in his peripheral vision. ‘How has it got in my head?’

Audus leant closer, peering into his face like he was an interesting specimen. ‘Surely it’s just part of your eyepiece?’

‘No!’ he cried, managing to stand and stagger away from the others. He placed his hand gingerly over the augmetic, expecting another explosion of pain. Nothing happened, and as he removed his hand the lens whirred and clicked, focusing on a point further down the steps. It was a ramp that bisected the stairway.

‘Do you see that?’ he asked, pointing it out.

‘See what?’ asked Audus.

The others all shook their heads.

Grekh raised his rifle and peered through the scope. ‘I only see steps.’

Draik was unsure how to proceed. The eyepiece was changing. It was showing him things that he had never seen before. He thought of a word Grekh often used. It was giving him insights. It was showing him aspects of the Blackstone that no one else could see. He remembered the agony he had just felt, and the object that was lodged in his head. What was the cost of these insights? If he continued using the augmetic, even though it was so clearly harming him, what would it do to him?

There was a bark of firing guns and auto-rounds whistled through the air. There were figures surging towards them. They were too far from the light of the servo-skulls to be seen clearly, but the silhouettes were horribly familiar.

‘Heretics,’ hissed Taddeus, rising to his feet and waving for his priests to do the same. ‘Our brothers and sisters did not buy us as much time as I hoped. And these steps are too slow-going for us to continue. They’d slaughter us as we descended.’ He gestured for the missionaries to fan out along the broad stairs. ‘Ready your weapons. We make our stand here.’

Audus hefted her autogun round from her back and slammed a clip in place but Draik shook his head.

‘No, wait,’ he said, pointing his pistol down the steps. ‘I see a path down there. A slope that we will be able to traverse much quicker than these stairs.’

‘He sees where others may not,’ said Taddeus, giving Vorne a meaningful look.

Despite the zealots’ usefulness, Draik was starting to find them irritating. It was already getting hard to play along with Taddeus’ pronouncements. He held back the dismissive comment that leapt to his tongue and simply nodded. He waved the ratlings over.

‘I will lead us to the bottom of this arena, or amphitheatre or whatever it is. You can guide us once we reach the bottom.’

Rein and Raus were cowering behind the step but they gave Draik brisk, practised salutes.

‘Follow me!’ cried Draik, sprinting off across the step in the direction of the ramp. As he used the eyepiece he felt a coldness growing inside his skull. He could not be sure if he was imagining the sensation or not, but as shots hit the steps, kicking up shrapnel, the thought was driven from his mind. The air hummed with gunfire and one of Taddeus’ zealots tumbled past him, bouncing down the steps and clutching her stomach as blood rushed from the wound.

Draik shook his head and ran faster. He would not be stopped when he was so close to reaching his goal. He fired a few splinter rounds back over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of missionaries climbing up the steps towards the heretics. Taddeus was now sacrificing uninjured followers.

Draik did not pause to watch the fight. He was now leaping from step to step, with the others scrambling to keep up. Only Grekh was keeping pace with his loping, easy stride, scanning the darkness down the length of his rifle.

Draik reached the slope and leapt onto it. He half-expected the eyepiece to have tricked him but the slope was real – like a steep-sided gulley between mountains. He heard the others landing behind him but ran on without a glance until the slope opened out into the base of the bowl-shaped chamber.

A servo-skull glided out after him, flashing light over the debris-strewn surface and revealing glimpses of a vast, scorched hull. Even seen in fleeting glimpses, there was no mistaking the grand, sacred edifice of an Imperial Navy ship. The plasteel was crowded with decorated panels and soaring lancet windows. Even now, the ship was glorious, swathed in gilded buttresses and weapons batteries that could have been lifted directly from the Imperial Palace.

Rein and Raus scampered past. Raus studied the shattered hull through infrared magnoculars, muttering furiously, then nodded and ran on, waving for everyone to follow.

‘This way!’ he cried. ‘The embarkation deck is this way. We just need to pass through it to the other side. This route never fails. We can’t go wrong.’

16

There were more flashes of light as servo-skulls glided into view and the whole group ran on, following the ratling. The gunfire intensified, tearing dust and shrapnel from the ship’s hull.

‘We’re out in the open!’ cried Audus. The heretics had fought their way to the ramp and were now swarming over it, guns blazing. ‘They’ll be on us in minutes,’ she cried. ‘How do we get in this damned ship?’

‘Just here!’ replied Raus, waving his lasgun at a rent in the ship’s armour plating. The hole looked tiny against the mountainous hulk of the vessel but, as he ran towards it, Draik realised it was as big as the triumphal arches on his father’s estate.

Raus rushed through the ragged opening without pausing and the others charged after him as bullet holes ripped across the surrounding hull. ‘It’s fail-safe!’

Draik ran into a hangar littered with overturned landing craft and freight haulers. Everything was coated in dust and the place had a gloomy, sepulchral atmosphere.

‘This way!’ cried Raus, running past the overturned ships and kicking up clouds of dust.

Golden light flickered across the abandoned ships as the zealots paused to launch another barrage of flame. A group of heretics had raced ahead of the main group and as Draik paused to look back, he saw dozens of them enter the battle cruiser, shooting into the wall of fire and kicking priests back through the air.

Taddeus roared and charged, swinging his mace in such a frenzied attack that nobody, on either side, could fire for a moment. He smashed several of the heretics back the way they had come then leapt aside and ordered his followers to fire on the reeling figures. Another wave of flame rolled across the deck, igniting the howling heretics.

‘Onwards!’ bellowed Taddeus, and the priests rushed deeper into the ship. As they ran, more heretics arrived, pouring through holes in the hull, spilling down bulwarks like vermin and filling the air with shots.

Draik dived behind the landing gear of an overturned gunship and fired through the buckled struts.

‘This won’t work,’ said Grekh calmly as he appeared at Draik’s side, firing into the whirling dust clouds. ‘The heretic soldiers are already on us. And there are too many. We can’t cross this deck without being shot. You need to think of something else.’

Draik looked around and saw that the kroot was right. There were already dozens of heretics rushing between the wrecked flyers.

‘Where’s Isola?’ he said as silhouetted figures raced through the smoke.

‘She kept up with the ratlings. As have Audus and your servant. They are crossing the deck.’

Draik hauled himself up onto the gunship’s wing, crawled to the fuselage and clambered up into a better vantage point. Isola and the others were racing back towards him, heads down as shots strafed the floor. In the distance there was another line of silhouettes striding into view. They were taller than the landers they were rushing past and clearly mechanical, swaying as they ran, carried on long, backward-jointed legs.

Draik had seen the Blackstone Fortress defend itself in many ways. He had seen its walls form into armoured drones that hunted down anything that did not originate in the fortress. For a second, as the shapes lurched into view, he thought that was what he was seeing – the lethal, mechanical drones that he had faced on previous expeditions. But as the dust banked away and the shapes came nearer, he realised that these were killing machines of a more familiar kind.

‘Scout Sentinels,’ he muttered, recognising the armoured combat vehicles from countless parades and war zones. Like the Guardsmen hunched in their canopies, they had been bastardised and defaced, daubed in ugly sigils and heaped with weapons that had no place on an Astra Militarum vehicle.

There was a rattle of autocannons and several of the ships detonated, spilling blooms of fire through the hangar.

‘This way!’ Draik cried, as Isola and the others came racing towards him, twisting to fire on the lurching, bipedal tanks.

Audus howled in defiance and dropped into a crouch, firing up at the nearest walker. Her shots tore through its canopy with such force that they decapitated the driver and sent the vehicle staggering off in a new direction. It slammed into another Sentinel and they went down in a tangled heap.

Audus spat at the fire then ran back towards Draik. Taddeus and the priests were also staggering back towards him, spewing flames into an increasingly huge crowd of heretics. Six or seven dead priests were slumped on the hangar floor. Taddeus’ once impressive strike force was shrinking fast. Draik guessed there were only around twenty of the zealots left standing and many of those were limping as they fought.

With flames rolling in from every direction, merging with columns of dust, the hangar looked more like a hellish underworld than the deck of a void ship.

‘There’s a problem!’ gasped Raus, scrambling up onto the gunship and rushing over to Draik.

‘A slight problem,’ agreed Rein, climbing up after him.

‘As I always said,’ continued Raus. ‘This route is far from ideal. It may not be possible to reach the vault this way any more. This is why I warned against this route right from the start.’

Draik glared at the abhumans, then looked at the chaotic scene that surrounded him. Taddeus and the other priests were climbing up beside him on the overturned gunship and it looked like the whole expedition was adrift on an ocean of smoke. Audus was firing repeated bursts into the Sentinels and the priests were still pouring flames into the inferno, and Draik struggled to think clearly.

He remembered his dream of Isola falling and the hideous way his augmetic had attached itself to his insides. Could it be that the fortress was trying to help him? Just as Grekh had always claimed? He stared through the lens at the flames and the armoured vehicles swaggering towards him like loose-limbed drunks. There was nothing. As the heretics closed in from every direction, his augmetic gave him no subtle insights or clues.

‘Draik?’ asked Isola, firing into the madness as she edged along the belly of the gunship towards him. ‘What now?’

A priest howled and fell from the ship, a hole in his throat. Then another fell, half his face sheared away. The heretics pressed closer, massing in such huge numbers that the hangar now resembled the pit they had crossed earlier.

Another barrage strafed the gunship. Isola cried out and slammed into Draik, blood rushing from her mouth. There was a wound in her side. She slammed her hand over it, trying to stem the blood, looking furious as she doubled over in pain.

‘No!’ whispered Draik, grabbing Isola and stopping her from falling.

As Draik struggled to hold Isola upright, he noticed something about one of the heretic groups that was firing on them. They were hunkered down on the back of a gunship identical to the one Draik was on, but it was upright and seemed to be intact.

‘Audus!’ he yelled over the gunfire. Once he had caught her attention he waved his pistol at the other gunship. ‘What kind of aircraft did you fly in the Navy?’

She stared at him. ‘Why would you ask me…?’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘You can’t be serious. It’s probably been sitting there for years. What’s the chance of it working? If it even has any fuel in the tanks.’

‘Can you fly it?’

She closed her eyes for a moment, still shaking her head. Then she looked at Isola’s blood-soaked dress coat and the humour faded from her eyes. She nodded.

‘We might have some unwanted passengers, though.’ She gestured at the heretics, who were still firing at them from the other gunship. There were at least a dozen crouching on its wings.

Draik looked around at what was left of his expedition. If they tried to charge the gunship, few – if any – of them would live long enough to see his plan through.

His thoughts were interrupted as another Sentinel strode through the fumes and opened fire.

The upturned gunship lurched under the force of the autocannon, kicking up sparks and groaning as it scraped across the floor.

A fuel tank erupted, forcing Draik and the others to clamber out onto a wing, lurching blindly through the smoke. All Draik could think about was Isola’s wound and the pained look in her eyes. Anger shivered through his body, tensing his muscles. He raised his voice over the flames.

‘When I give the order, make for that gunship. We are not dying in here.’

They all stared at him in shock, but before they could speak, he passed Isola to one of the priests, dropped from the wing and plunged through the smoke.

17

Draik’s youth had been an onslaught of training drills and fencing lessons, and his survival as a rogue trader had depended on these skills just as much as his years of academic study. Since he had arrived on Precipice and begun his explorations of the Blackstone Fortress he had increased his regimen of physical exercise and weapons training. None of this was done through vanity or for pleasure; since his first expedition into the Blackstone, Draik had realised that the fortress would test him. Even now, with Isola left bleeding and the others under heavy fire, Draik’s mind slipped into a well-drilled calm.

He landed lightly and rolled clear of the gunship, whipping out his pistol as he sprinted through the dense smoke. Shots roared overhead, but as he’d expected, they were all still targeted on the gunship. Down here, beneath the blanket of fumes, he was almost invisible.

He was also blind.

Draik’s breath exploded from his lungs as he crashed into something and stumbled to the floor. He rolled away and leapt to his feet, pointing his pistol at the shape. It was a man in Militarum fatigues. He looked panicked as he came towards Draik, his hands raised in a placating gesture.

‘Wait!’ the man cried. ‘I’m not one of them.’

Draik’s mind grew even calmer, even faster. In a fraction of a second, he observed that the man had removed his regimental insignia and had a thick, black chain around his neck.

Draik fired two quick shots into his chest.

It was only as the heretic fell away that Draik saw the second pair of arms sprouting from the Guardsman’s gut, and the stub guns he was gripping in his extra hands. The man tried to rise, his pleading expression replaced with a furious snarl, but the splinters Draik had fired into him were laden with neurotoxins. The man stiffened and fell back again.

Pain exploded in Draik’s hand and his pistol clattered away across the floor, kicked from his grip by a second heretic. There was no mistaking this man’s allegiance. There was an iron star hammered into his chest and he had filed his teeth into spikes. He was carrying a power axe almost as big as he was and he triggered the weapon as he raised it, filling the air with fumes and the rattle of grinding teeth.

The heretic held the axe above his head for a moment, then staggered backwards, looking confused. Draik followed, his shimmering rapier embedded in the man’s chest. He pulled the powerblade free as the man slammed to the floor.

Much of Draik’s fencing training had been performed in darkness, teaching him to memorise his surroundings from even the briefest glance. As he grabbed his pistol and ran on through the smoke, he retained the image he had seen from the gunship’s wing, following a path he had decided on before he jumped. He heard the disembodied voices of Taddeus and the others, still firing at the gathering hordes. Their voices sounded distant and strange, but Draik knew he had not ventured far from the gunship when he saw his destination.

The Sentinel loomed over him, covered in ablative armour and weaponry. Gyro-stabilisers howled in its legs as the chassis swivelled and fired, launching another volley at the gunship.

Draik walked slowly to the side of the Sentinel and looked up at the chassis. Like others he had seen before, the vehicle was crudely assembled from cheap materials and the canopy was open, with no armourglass to protect the driver.

‘Down here!’ he yelled over the sound of the engine.

The driver looked down in confusion, enabling Draik to shoot a carefully aimed splinter between his eyes. The Guardsman slumped in his seat and the Sentinel staggered before weaving off through the smoke.

Draik raced after it and fired one of his auto-picks into the vehicle’s left leg. As it staggered away from him, reeling like it was punch-drunk, Draik climbed its hydraulic bundles and riveted plasteel, making for the canopy. The driver was slumped lifeless against the controls. Draik reached in, snapped off his safety harness and dragged the man out of the canopy, hurling him to the floor. Then he clambered inside and grabbed the controls.

Draik was no pilot, but his tutors back on Terra had schooled him in the basics of Militarum hardware and Sentinels were one of the most ubiquitous vehicles in the Imperium. After a few missteps he managed to send the walker stumbling back in the direction of the gunship.

As he approached the aircraft, Audus and the others caught sight of him and opened fire.

He cursed and steered the Sentinel away, hunkering down in his seat as shots pinged all around him. As he lurched off into the smoke, the shots faded and he saw the other gunship swim into view, emerging from the flames as if it were airborne. The heretics on its back raised their weapons and cheered as he rushed towards them.

Draik only had seconds before they realised his trick. He quickly scanned the vehicle’s weapons arrays, looking for a gun that would remove the heretics without demolishing the gunship. The Sentinel was stacked with multi-lasers and assault cannons but no flamers or anything else he could safely fire.

Then he thought of a subtler approach.

As the Sentinel approached the gunship, Draik reloaded his splinter pistol and, as the vehicle swayed and stomped beneath him, he began taking leisurely potshots at the heretics. As he hoped, the direction of fire was unclear and the heretics did not connect their falling comrades with the Sentinel until he had almost reached them.

By the time the Traitor Guardsmen realised the truth it was too late. Draik abandoned the controls and leapt through the open canopy onto the wing of the gunship. There were only three heretics left standing. He gunned down the first two as he ran, then plunged his rapier into the third.

He dusted down his uniform then triggered the vox-bead in his collar. ‘Isola?’

‘Draik,’ she replied, sounding weak. ‘Where are you?’

‘Tell Audus I’m on the gunship. She’ll know the one.’ Draik had to duck behind a tail fin as shots screamed past. ‘Tell her to lead everyone over here. I’ll be in the cockpit.’

He kept low as he ran down the spine of the aircraft, ducking more shots. Then he found an access hatch, grabbed the locking wheel and tried to turn it. It was jammed. He cursed, hammered it with the handle of his rapier and tried again. It refused to move.

His heightened instincts caught movement to his left. He whirled around, pistol raised, and almost shot Grekh. The kroot hurried along the wing and dropped lightly down beside him, nodding at the locking wheel. They grabbed it together and, with a thin shriek, it finally turned.

Draik wrenched the hatch open and clambered down the rungs of a ladder with Grekh hurrying after him.

It was like dropping into a crypt. Logic engines were packed into arrow-head alcoves and cradled by plasteel cherubs. Draik rushed through the cargo hold and into the cabin, clambering over seats until he reached the flight controls at the front of the aircraft. He wiped the dials and levers, filling the air with so much dust that he had to back away, coughing violently and holding his hand to his mouth.

The sounds of fighting outside increased in ferocity and he guessed that the others were trying to reach him, but he stayed focused on the controls. If the thing had no power it was about to become a grave. Grekh crouched in a seat, his rifle pointed at the access hatch as Draik leaned over the controls, waving away some of the dust. Flying an Imperial Navy gunship was quite another matter to steering a Sentinel and Draik was not so deluded as to think he could even try. He just wanted to see if the fusion reactor was still responding.

He took out his lho-stick and began to smoke as he studied the controls, looking for a way to fire up the engines. He tried a few levers to no effect, conscious that the gunfire outside was getting closer, then the avionics suddenly blinked into life, splashing green light around the cabin.

‘There is some power,’ he muttered, taking another drag on his lho-stick and tapping gauges.

There was a clatter of boots and weapons from the back of the gunship and Draik whirled around, pistol raised as fiery light flooded the cabin. Audus and Quintus were struggling down the ladder with an ashen-faced Isola as fires raged outside.

Draik and Grekh rushed to help them down as Rein and Raus scrambled quickly past, tumbling into the seats in a storm of ash and curses. Taddeus followed, his portly frame blocking the light as he howled orders into the battle outside. Then he hauled himself through the opening and climbed down the steps, his face a violent shade of purple.

The surviving zealots tumbled through, followed by Vorne, who slammed the hatch behind her and locked it.

‘What have you done?’ cried Audus, rounding on Draik. She looked round the cabin, breathing fast and shaking. ‘I thought you must have found a passageway in here or something. Why in the name of Terra have you trapped us in here?’ There was a clanging sound overhead as boots landed on the hull.

‘It has auxiliary power,’ replied Draik, keeping his voice level, despite the panic in Audus’ eyes. ‘If the fuel lines are intact you can fire up the reactor.’

Audus stared at him, her mouth opening and closing.

‘Try it!’ gasped Isola, slumping in a seat and clutching her bloody side.

Something hammered against the hatch.

‘Now!’ cried Taddeus, dropping into a seat and fastening the harness.

‘And fly where?’ Audus laughed in disbelief, looking out through the viewport at the gloomy hangar deck and the wall of blackness beyond it.

Draik grabbed her shoulder. ‘I can see the way, Audus. Trust me. I can guide you.’

‘You can guide me?’ said Audus, frowning.

Taddeus and Vorne mouthed prayers. ‘He will lead the blind,’ said Taddeus, making the symbol of the aquila.

The gunship rocked as something heavy slammed into it. More lights began flashing on the control panel.

‘This thing is vertical take-off,’ said Draik, still gripping Audus. ‘Am I right?’

She nodded, still dazed. ‘Of course. It’s a Valkyrie.’

‘Then we have room to lift off in here,’ he said, ‘and the ability to manoeuvre around tight confines.’

The fuselage boomed as something collided with it.

‘Now, or we die,’ said Draik calmly, holding Audus’ gaze as he took another drag from his lho-stick.

She licked her lips, massaged her stubbly scalp, then laughed in disbelief.

‘Indefatigable bloody Draik.’ She jumped into the pilot’s seat and strapped herself in, flicking rows of switches and triggering the rest of the avionics. ‘Hold on, kids,’ she said through gritted teeth as everyone else scrambled into seats and fastened their harnesses. ‘This is going to be interesting.’ She triggered the ignition.

Nothing happened.

Sparks began raining down through the hull and the banging outside increased. Audus turned to Draik, who was beside her in the co-pilot seat. She stared through him, muttering, then nodded and punched another control.

There was a throaty roar as turbojets howled into life. The cabin filled with promethium fumes and the gunship shuddered, scattering debris across the passengers. Audus gave Draik a feral grin as she triggered the thrusters and gripped the W-shaped control wheel.

‘You won’t out-lunatic me, rogue trader.’

The jets screamed and the gunship jolted upwards, breaking its restraints and rising through the flames. Shots screamed past the viewport, clanging into the armour-plated hull, but Audus looked calmer now, settling into her seat in a way Draik had watched her do dozens of times before. She never looked as relaxed as when she was in control of an aircraft.

‘Which way, former-captain?’ she said.

‘Are the weapons systems operational?’

She smiled, titling the yoke so that the gunship banked round as it rose, turning to face the heretics below. She punched some controls and nodded.

‘No rockets, but the multi-laser might work. These things are built to last.’

Draik nodded and Audus fired the weapon, filling the cabin with blue light as las-bolts sliced through flames and heretics. The burst lasted for several glorious seconds, wiping out all the heretics near the gunship, but then the barrage ceased and a klaxon barked briefly in the cabin.

Audus shrugged. ‘It might need a minute or two to cool down, unless you happen to have an enginseer on hand.’

Hundreds more heretics were crowding into the hangar and rushing towards them.

‘More war machines,’ said Grekh, nodding to the distant hole in the battle cruiser’s hull.

There were four more Sentinels lurching into view, each one as heavily armed as the pair Draik had faced earlier.

‘Make straight for them,’ he said.

Audus raised an eyebrow.

‘It’s the only way out,’ said Draik. ‘Back the way we came in.’

Audus grinned again as she looked at the narrow rent, crowded with heretics and Sentinels. ‘You want me to fly this gunship through that hole, while under fire?’

He nodded.

She flexed her fingers and gripped the yoke again. ‘I bloody love you.’ Audus laughed as she sent the gunship hurtling forwards through the smoke at such ferocious speed that Draik slammed back into his seat.

The heretics opened fire as the flyer screamed towards them. Auto-rounds drummed against the hull. Claxons shrieked as holes punched through the plating, ripping seats, cracking the viewport and scattering flames. A priest’s head exploded and sparks flew from a severed cable.

Audus laughed harder, gunning the engines, making straight for the Sentinels.

‘Too low!’ cried Draik.

Audus fired into the walkers, blasting their chassis open as she hauled back the yoke and sent the gunship soaring through the hole and into the Blackstone.

‘Which way?’ she cried, bringing the gunship round and letting it hover outside the wrecked battle cruiser. ‘Quickly!’

Draik triggered his eyepiece and stared into the darkness. He was both exhilarated and unnerved by what it revealed. He could see all of the bowl-shaped chamber that surrounded the battle cruiser. Despite the absence of light, his augmetic revealed every detail, including things that he was sure his normal eye would not have seen even in broad daylight.

‘There!’ he said, pointing at the largest opening. It was a diamond-shaped portal in the wall of the chamber, as tall as a Terran cathedrum, and it opened onto a broad passage.

Audus frowned, leaning forward in her seat and staring into the blackness outside. ‘Are you sure I’m not going to slam into a wall?’

He nodded.

The gunship jolted and one of the engines began to bang and cough.

‘Damn it,’ muttered Audus. ‘Landing will be all sorts of fun if that goes.’ She sent the gunship hurtling through the dark, making for the point Draik had instructed.

Draik’s eyepiece turned and juddered as the opening rushed towards him. He could feel the metal pressing his frontal lobe, radiating an alien chill into his brain, but he ignored the sensation and corrected Audus’ trajectory until they glided safely from the hall and left the heretics behind.

‘I’m flying blind,’ warned Audus as the gunship jolted and spluttered. ‘Keep talking.’

Draik could see the passageway heading off for miles ahead of them in a perfect straight line, like an Imperial transitway cut through a mountain.

‘Straight ahead,’ he replied. ‘We need to put some distance between us and those cultists.’

She nodded, but grimaced as the damaged engine coughed again. ‘We don’t have long. If that jet dies we’re screwed.’

‘Taddeus,’ called Draik over his shoulder. ‘Is this the way to your Crucible?’

Taddeus looked at the ratlings, who shrugged.

‘We’d need to see what’s down there,’ said Raus.

The gunship would already have put a mile or two between them and the heretics, so Draik was about to order Audus to land when the aircraft made the order unnecessary. The engine died with a decisive boom and the gunship rolled onto its side, hurling more debris across the cockpit and causing the passengers to slump awkwardly in their harnesses.

‘Ride’s over, team,’ gasped Audus, battling with the controls. ‘This is gonna smart.’

As the gunship banked, with Audus struggling to keep its nose up, the second engine coughed and died.

‘Not good,’ said Audus, turning to Draik as the gunship dived.

18

There was a piece of Mepsus’ brain lodged underneath the workbench. Daedalosus crouched as low as he could until his servo-arm could reach up and drop it into his plasteel fingers. Then he placed it inside a specimen jar, closed the lid and soldered it tight with a torch at the end of one of his fingers.

‘Forgive me,’ he whispered, studying the grey matter. Mepsus had advised against storing the piece of corrupted noctilith, but Daedalosus had been sure that it was the only way to show the captains how dire the situation was. He was still sure of that, but the thought that he had robbed Mars of one of its brightest talents had shaken his resolve and left him unable to think logically.

There was a clattering sound behind him and he turned to see the weaponsmith hunched over a cogitator, trying to tap at the runeboard with its grotesquely long fingers. The anthropoid had finished an entire flask of altar wine and was swaying from side to side as it pounded the machine.

‘Leave that alone,’ said Daedalosus, hurrying across the laboratorium to drag the creature away. He had allowed it to remain on his ship, fascinated by the devices hung around its body, but the more inebriated it became, the more he regretted his decision.

As he placed a hand on the ape’s shoulder he paused, surprised by what he saw on the display screen. It was mostly gibberish – randomly typed runes that filled the entire screen. But the final few lines were different. The characters had come together in some places to make a rough approximation of words.

He ignored the reek of alcohol and leant close to the screen, peering at the final lines.

00110110100 ≥≤ µ*) ∂ ƒ ß ∂˙∆! Œ´∑´†¥ < 0010101010 ˙ƒ∂> XMXB ARKITEKT ARKITECT? )!^ 0001110011 ¬ ∆ > > ß PRESIPISS < Ω √ LEAVE PRESIPISS ≈ ∫ ≤ ! BEST ≈ CHANGE √ ∫ ç ~ ~ Ω µ THRU OORT KLOUD ¥†˙ ∫√∫ƒ ß ¬ ∂ ƒ ∆ € ∑ ¥¨ ^^ ø π ∑ BEST ≈ CHANCE ≈ 010101010001

He stared at the ape. ‘You speak Gothic?’

The creature leant its head towards him, fixing him with a deep, mournful gaze. It seemed on the verge of making a profound statement. Then it let out a long, fragrant belch.

Daedalosus backed away but kept looking at the screen. ‘What do you mean, best chance?’

The ape held up the empty wine flask with a hopeful look in its eye. Daedalosus glared at the animal. It held the flask for a moment longer, then shrugged and dropped it, turning back to the cogitator. The machine rattled and clicked as the weaponsmith hammered at the runes again.

When the animal backed away from the machine, Daedalosus saw that it had managed to form more intelligible words.

µ ∑ ∞ # ƒ ∫ † ß µ √ ∂~ß ˙ YOU ≈ YOUR ≈ THE ≈ BEST ≈ CHANCE ≈ ß µ √ ∂~ß YOU ∑ µ # ∫ HAVE MIST 001010010 YOU HAVE MISED 0010 YOU HAVE MISSED ≈ THE BEST SHIP ≈ ON PRESIPISS ~√∫≈

Daedalosus had spent the last few hours traipsing round Precipice with Captain Tukh, trying to convince people to risk the Blackstone’s guns and try flying through the Oort cloud. The results had been disappointing. Daedalosus’ logic had been met with insults and even threats of violence. He had returned to his own ship to think, after sending Tukh away.

‘We missed one?’ Daedalosus was quickly growing used to the idea that the ape was talking to him. It belonged to a species known as the jokaero, and even before meeting this particular ape Daedalosus had heard of their affinity for technology and gadgets. They were a kind of simian savant, blessed with some of the divine intellect found in humankind, but only in a very narrow field of knowledge. So it seemed quite reasonable that the thing could operate his cogitator well enough to convey a simple message.

‘We missed a ship?’

The ape nodded with such force that it stumbled, bumping into the workbench and sending implements clattering across the surface.

‘And it is the one with the best chance of what? Reaching the wider galaxy?’

The ape nodded again, more carefully this time.

‘How do you know this?’

The ape turned to the cogitator and typed a single word:

SCIENCE

Daedalosus frowned. The creature clearly thought him incapable of understanding a more detailed explanation.

‘And you can show me where it is?’ he asked.

The jokaero nodded, swaggered wildly across the room, then accepted defeat and dropped onto all fours as it headed out of the laboratorium, waving for Daedalosus to follow.

‘Celsumgate?’ Captain Lees shook her head as they fought through the wind. ‘We looked all along there. There was nothing. Nothing I’d want to fly more than a few feet in, at least.’

Tukh was stomping along at her side, glowering and trying to shield his face from the storm. Precipice was under attack. The winds were getting worse by the hour. Limbs of geomagnetic energy lashed constantly against the void screen and the whole orbital platform was encased in multicoloured flame. Pieces of ship tumbled down the mooring spars and whistled in circles overhead, caught in a vortex of junk and smoke that waltzed through the battered hulls.

The once crowded walkways were now mostly abandoned as people huddled for safety in their cabins, or slumped in the Helmsman. The few poor souls who were forced out of doors were staggering along, or clinging to gantries, heads down and battered by flying salvage. The damage to Precipice had also affected the recycling turbines and the air was barely breathable, filled with engine fumes and the stink of human waste. Daedalosus, Lees and Tukh were wearing rebreathers, but the anthropoid ambled happily through the fumes, apparently unaffected.

As they entered the storm, Daedalosus had noticed the ape trigger another one of the devices nestling in its shaggy hide. He was determined to investigate the creature more thoroughly if any of them made it off Precipice alive. For some reason, Daedalosus felt oddly certain that they would survive the attempt. Statistically speaking, the odds were very low, but he felt an inexplicable confidence. It was as though he were merely reliving a memory of an event that he knew ended well. He adjusted some of his cerebral implants, checking the calibration, but he was unable to rid himself of the strange sense of deja vu.

The jokaero led them off the main walkway and up onto a listing gantry, heading away from the imposing hulk of the Dromeplatz. As she hauled herself onto the gantry, Lees leant close to Daedalosus and spoke quietly.

‘How do you know you can trust this creature?’

Daedalosus shrugged. ‘Jokaero have been employed by Imperial agents on many occasions. They have a useful propensity for technological repairs and the like. There is no reason to–’

‘This thing isn’t employed by anyone,’ interrupted Tukh.

Lees nodded. ‘None of the ones on Precipice are.’

Daedalosus paused. ‘What do you mean? Somebody must own them.’

Lees shook her head, glancing at the ape. It was now a dozen feet further down the gantry, using all four of its limbs to swing easily across the spars.

‘They arrived in a ship of their own manufacture – a peculiar-looking thing, like a geometrical puzzle.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Actually, it looked a lot like that.’ She pointed to the vast presence of the Blackstone Fortress, turning slowly beneath Precipice.

‘And they’ve kept to themselves,’ muttered Tukh. ‘No one knows why they’re here.’

Daedalosus thought of the intricate mechanical devices he had seen the ape use. They were unlike any of the Standard Template Constructs he had studied on Mars. They did seem more like the tessellating mechanisms on the fortress.

‘They travelled here alone?’

Lees nodded. ‘And I’ve not heard of them making any expeditions to the fortress. I don’t know what they’re after, but it’s not salvage.’

The ape had stopped to wait for them and Daedalosus continued climbing along the gantry, using his servo-arms to steady himself.

‘What if they are connected to the Blackstone in some way?’ asked Tukh, voicing the same concern that had just crossed Daedalosus’ mind. ‘It is a xenos, after all. Who knows what it wants. What if this ape is simply stalling us until the Blackstone is ready to blow the place up?’

Daedalosus shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ He thought of the creature’s calm, mournful gaze. He had seen no trace of malice or deceit in the thing. It had become quite irritating since drinking the wine, but not devious, not treacherous. Daedalosus was not fool enough to base judgements on supposition and intuition, however. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will have to tread carefully and be on our guard. But we have no option other than to follow the thing. We have to get a message out to the wider system and no one has the courage to brave the Oort cloud. We need more ships. This ship may be our only hope.’

They crossed the rest of the gantry and dropped down onto another mooring spar. It was as crowded as all the others. Precipice had come to resemble a graveyard for abandoned void ships. Many of them still had fuel and crews, but none of them had captains who would risk taking off. Everyone was praying that the storms would die and the guns would fail, but the storms had grown much worse and the guns had become more accurate.

The ape loped off down the walkway, paused to fiddle with one of its devices, then ducked down beneath the landing gear of a ship and vanished.

Daedalosus rushed over and saw the ape approaching what appeared to be a collision of hulls and turbines. It had left its device attached to one of the ships and it was holding up a rusty girder, allowing access to a hidden area on the far side. He ducked under the girder just in time to follow the creature through two cooling ducts and into a small, open space between vessels.

Lees and Tukh followed quickly after and the four of them looked around. The colours boiling over the void screen made it hard to see clearly and there were clouds of steam spilling from the cooling ducts, so Daedalosus struggled to understand what he was looking at. Tukh had drawn a gun and Daedalosus did the same, taking out his gamma pistol and pointing it into the banks of garish steam.

‘What is this?’ he said, looking suspiciously at the ape.

The ape nodded to one of the rubbish-strewn shapes looming over them, and Daedalosus realised it was a landing hatch. It was closed, but from the lights blinking at its corners he deduced that it was still active. The four of them pressed closer.

‘This is the ship?’ asked Daedalosus, frowning. It looked like the landing hatch had just been welded onto a mound of salvage. Whatever lay behind it was shrouded in steam and impossible to make out.

The ape nodded, rummaging beneath its shaggy chest hair for something. Daedalosus approached the lights, looking for a way to announce their presence. The ape grabbed him by the wrist, shook its head and held a single finger up to its mouth.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Daedalosus. ‘I have not come here to steal a ship. I’m not a thief.’

The ape revealed its canines in a terrifying snarl and leant towards him. Daedalosus was about to defend himself when he realised that the animal was trying to smile. As Daedalosus stared, baffled by its behaviour, the ape held up a tiny metal cone, no bigger than a fingernail, and pressed a button on its underside.

There was a whoosh of hydraulics as the hatch slid open. Daedalosus whirled around and pointed his pistol into the antechamber that had just been revealed. It was a mess, heaped with pieces of medical equipment, broken weapons and engine parts.

‘Is this your ship?’ he asked, looking back at the ape.

The creature shook its head and bounded up the ramp on all fours, sniffing at the mounds of junk. Daedalosus hesitated, but Lees and Tukh marched into the ship, clearly intrigued.

‘We’re not here to steal, magos,’ said Lees. ‘All we’re doing is making sure the captain of this vessel knows what’s happening down on the Blackstone.’

Daedalosus frowned but realised he had little option. Precipice was shaking so violently he could hardly stand. He would need to leave here very soon. If he was going to convince anyone to join him he would have to do it quickly. He climbed the ramp.

As he entered the ship, he tried to categorise its origin, but the bulkheads and companionways were so badly lit and heaped with scrap that he could not make out any clear details. It did not appear to be of Martian manufacture, but beyond that he found it hard to hypothesise. He paused to examine a piece of equipment that was blocking his way but before he could turn it over, the landing hatch slammed shut behind them and the lumens clicked off, plunging them into darkness.

He whirled around, pistol raised, trying to find a target, but something was badly wrong. His legs gave way beneath him, and he clattered to the floor.

19

A shattered face watched Draik through the darkness. The pieces turned around each other like a monochrome kaleidoscope, then flashed in a hundred faceted planes and vanished from view, leaving just a spiral of jewel-like shards. As he watched the pieces rotate and shimmer, Draik felt the same shocking sense of urgency he had felt before. There was something desperately important he had to do. Something that was meant to happen. His life before this had been meaningless. He had to reach this face. This was why he had been born.

He watched the face for what seemed an eternity and he began to think he might have died. He tried to cast his mind back over recent events to understand how he had come to this point. At first it was difficult. He remembered crossing the galaxy’s Western Reaches, determined to find out if the rumours were true – determined to know if a Blackstone Fortress really had been found at the edge of the known galaxy, uncovered by warp storms after long ages unseen. Then he recalled the letter from his father. The letter that made him a pariah; the letter that had cut him loose. Above it all, he remembered his pain at the thought of losing Isola. It was not an infatuation. He did not desire her. He admired her, but he was not some besotted youth. The pain went deeper than that. He was convinced she had some vital role to play in his life.

As he watched the spinning shapes, he wondered if he might have made a mistake. Perhaps he should have agreed to her request for a business partnership. She belonged to a lower class, of course, but what had his own class done for him? They had turned their backs and banished him to obscurity. The more Draik watched the prismatic display, the more he felt he was in error. His future depended on Isola. She was critical.

Just as Draik settled on this idea, the scene around him began to change. The spinning fragments altered shape. They lost their beautiful, jewel-like simplicity and devolved into misshapen hulks – broken pieces of engines and fuel tanks. A storm of salvage whipped up around him, filling the darkness with rusting, blasted metal and gouts of hissing steam. Some of the larger pieces were entire ships, he saw – Imperial landing craft and haulers, whirling in circles around xenos freighters and combat ships. Draik realised the vehicles were familiar. They were the ships from Precipice, ripped from their moorings and plunging through the void. Then he saw the rest of the orbital platform – the Dromeplatz and the mooring spars that fanned out from it, tumbling through the stars like a comet, leaving a trail of wreckage in its wake.

Precipice rushed past him in a storm of noise and light and raced towards a wall of blackness. It was the Blackstone Fortress. Precipice was hurtling towards its surface. Draik heard hundreds of voices screaming and howling, then Precipice smashed into the surface of the Blackstone and the voices were all silenced.

‘No,’ he said, horrified by the idea of so much death. When he first arrived at Precipice, he had despised most of the scavengers who crowded its walkways and drinking dens. But over time he had seen what a tenacious, courageous breed they were, and had changed his mind. Most of them had arrived with nothing, determined to make their own fortune, just as he now intended to do. They were rogues and gamblers, data-traders and corsairs, but they were also proud souls who knelt to no one. To watch them die, even in a dream, quickened Draik’s pulse.

‘No!’

‘Draik,’ said Grekh, his hawk-like features scattering the vision. The kroot was scorched and bloody and was pulling at something near Draik’s neck.

As Draik’s vision cleared, he saw the cabin of the gunship and remembered that their engines had died. He tried to move but found he was trapped. His harness had jammed. That was why Grekh was stooped over him, hacking furiously with a knife. The air was full of smoke and Draik could hear the crackle of flames nearby. People were howling, and the gunship was on its side.

‘Audus?’ said Draik, turning to his left. She was grappling with Quintus, who was unconscious, perhaps dead. The impact had slammed a piece of control panel into his forehead and his face was a mask of blood.

Lights flashed through the smoke and Taddeus’ servo-skulls hovered over the flames. One of them sprayed foam from a canister fixed to its jaw.

Grekh finally cut through Draik’s harness and he managed to sit, taking in the carnage that surrounded him. More of the priests had died in the crash, ripped apart by the crumpled hull. Others looked close to death as they choked in the thick fumes, but Vorne and Taddeus had risen from their seats and were hammering at the landing hatch as the flames rose higher.

‘Isola?’ gasped Draik, looking back over the seats.

‘Here,’ she said quietly. She was still in her seat and looked to have escaped injury in the crash. She looked dreadful, though. Her face was white with blood loss and she was slumped to one side.

Draik stood, relieved to find he was uninjured, and stepped towards Isola.

‘Wait!’ cried Rein, clambering over a seat and waving furiously at Draik to halt.

It was too late. As Draik moved, the whole gunship rocked backwards, hurling bodies and wreckage across the cabin. Its nose was pointing upwards as though it were taking off. Draik crashed into a seat and pain sliced through his shoulder.

‘Back this way!’ cried Grekh, moving towards the front of the gunship. ‘We’re going to fall.’

Audus stayed where she was, fighting with Quintus’ harness, but the ratlings and the priests followed Grekh’s advice and the gunship rocked back in the other direction, hurling more scrap and stoking the flames so that Draik had to shield his face from the heat. The smell of burned hair and blistering skin filled the air. The ratlings and some of the priests clambered out though the broken viewport onto the nose of the gunship, then leapt into the darkness outside, disappearing from view.

Audus howled as flames licked over her arms and Quintus’ seat. Taddeus and Vorne gave up trying to open the landing ramp and climbed over the seats towards Draik. Grekh had almost dragged Draik out of the gunship when Draik realised what he was doing.

‘No!’ he cried, shrugging the kroot off and leaping back towards Isola.

‘Janus!’ bellowed Taddeus, pausing on the hull to look back at him. ‘The fuel tanks! Get out!’

A few more priests shoved past Draik, coughing and gasping as they raced for the exit, but he carried on into the smoke, past Audus and back towards the heat, back towards Isola. She looked like a corpse, but as he reached her chair she managed to shake her head.

‘Don’t be a fool. I’m half-gutted. You should–’ She coughed violently. ‘For Throne’s sake.’

The buckle on her harness had melted so he drew his rapier and sliced through the strap, catching her as she slumped sideways, spilling more blood over her uniform. Audus’ howls moved up in pitch as flames washed over her arms, setting her flight suit alight, but she continued hammering and clawing at Quintus’ harness.

‘Janus!’ cried Taddeus, appearing at the shattered viewport. ‘We’re on a ledge! Get out!’

Draik had already planted a foot against one of the chairs so he could lift Isola onto his back. As the seat took his weight, the gunship gave a sickening lurch and he fell, still gripping Isola, towards the cargo hold.

There was a scrape of metal on stone and the gunship rocked with even more violence.

Draik fell again, slamming into a cargo crate and losing hold of Isola. She fell away from him, through the flames, towards a rent at the stern of the gunship. As the ship rocked back he saw that it was suspended over a crevasse studded with the same angular protrusions that lined most of the fortress. Isola bounced off a seat, cried out in pain and plunged towards the hole in the hull.

Draik leapt again, grabbing hold of the cogitator slung around her chest, jolting her to a stop just as she dropped through the hole. He almost plunged through with her but managed to jam his boot against a piece of crumpled armour plate. The two of them snapped to a halt, Draik’s arm trembling as Isola dangled beneath him, suspended over the abyss.

‘Draik!’ howled Taddeus, clambering back into the gunship to stand beside Grekh. ‘Get out! It’s going to drop!’ The flames had now spread right across the cabin and Draik could hardly see Taddeus through the glare.

‘Let me go.’

Anger tightened Draik’s grip as he heard Isola’s calm request. The feeling from his dream was colouring his every thought. He had an overwhelming sense that his future revolved around her. He looked around for a way to help her up, but there was nothing within reach. And if he loosed his hold on the crate they would both fall.

‘Let me help,’ gasped Taddeus, struggling through the fire towards him, shielding his face from the flames.

The priest’s weight was too much. The gunship gave a scream of protest, tilted higher and slid towards the lip of the chasm.

‘Draik!’ cried Grekh.

Taddeus scrambled back the way he had come but the damage was done; the gunship rushed towards the drop.

‘You’re better than the others,’ said Isola, her expression earnest. ‘You’re more than a treasure hunter.’

Draik strained desperately, looking for a way to shift his position and drag her out. Then he cried out as her weight vanished from his grip.

She had unfastened the cogitator’s strap. It dangled in his grip as she fell away from him.

‘No!’ he howled.

‘Draik!’ yelled Taddeus as the gunship slid over the ledge.

As Draik watched Isola fall he was back in his dream. Her expression was calm, and she held his gaze for what seemed like several minutes. Then she collided with one of the projections and her body spun wildly, coming apart as it hit more, disintegrating as it was swallowed by the darkness.

Draik stared in horror, trapped in his nightmare as the gunship flipped over. Then he felt a sharp pain in the side of his head, and the darkness took him.

20

The Emperor flexed her fingers and arched her back. Blood rushed through her veins and ideas bloomed in her mind. As her thoughts cleared, she recalled the scale of the process she had begun. There was messy, dirty work ahead, but what did it matter? What were a few months of bloodshed measured against millennia of peace?

‘Lord Commissar Torgau.’ The voice cut cross an ocean of memory to reach her.

‘Sergeant Falso,’ she managed to say, struggling to move her cracked lips. She opened her eyes and saw that she was in her makeshift quarters, lying on her bunk, her uniform drenched in blood.

Falso was standing in the doorway. He was behind a medic who was hunched over her, working at a wound in the side of her face. Falso looked exhausted, but delighted to see her alive. He saluted and approached the bunk, removing his cap.

Like all of them, he had been deformed by ether-plague. One of his hands had swollen into a grotesque claw, like something one would see on a crustacean, and his face was marred by silver scabs that looked like fish scales. Before her revelation, when she had still believed she was Lord Commissar Torgau, the Emperor would have damned Falso as a monster and executed him for heresy, but her eyes had been opened. Since the fall of the Cadian Gate she had learned where the true monsters were. And it was not in the warp.

Whatever Falso looked like, he was a hero. When the time came to reveal her true identity, it was Falso she would speak to first. But for now, even he might struggle to accept an idea of such magnitude. It was simple for her. She felt the truth in every fibre of her being. She had risen from her Throne on Terra and been born again in this humble flesh and blood. But for Falso, even dear Falso, it would be a huge act of faith to accept that the woman he thought of as Commissar Torgau was actually his immortal Emperor.

She managed to sit up and shoo the medic away. ‘What happened?’ she said, waving Falso closer.

‘Sniper, ma’am. He fired on us from the Red Stair.’ Falso frowned. ‘He fired on you, I should say. A single shot.’

Torgau remembered watching the shot rush towards her head. She touched the side of her skull. When she was completely consumed by divine power, her flesh struggled to contain it. Her mind strained at its physical bonds, warping the surrounding flesh. At the moment, though, her head was unchanged and she could feel the wound, just below her left eye. If she were mortal the shot would have killed her. She glanced at Falso. The regiment would have been without a commander. She was the last senior officer they had. There was far more at stake than a single Astra Militarum regiment, of course, but some worldly attachments were easier to shrug off than others. The thought of her men abandoned in this dreadful place knotted her stomach.

She cast her mind back to the pit and remembered the glimpse of her attacker. He was an officer, Militarum perhaps, though the uniform had been unfamiliar. She remembered the look in his eyes. Such certainty. Such hate. It hurt her to think it might be long years before people would see her for what she was, but she knew this was just a vestigial weakness. She no longer needed the approbation of others.

‘What happened then?’ she asked.

‘Sergeant Mura and his men carried you from the altar and brought you back here while I led a contingent up onto the Red Stair, trying to reach the sniper. We thought you were dead.’

‘Did you find him? The sniper, I mean.’

Falso scratched angrily at his scales. ‘They laid a trap at the far end of the bridge. I was a fool, ma’am. I was so furious and…’

He hesitated, but she understood. She knew how the regiment would feel about the idea that she had been killed. They did not know who she truly was yet but, in a way, she had always been their Emperor. She had brought them all this way, kept them alive when the other regiments were slaughtered. She nodded and he continued.

‘They feigned a retreat and, like an idiot, I took the bait. There were only a few left behind to wait for us but they fought like animals. It was a Ministorum unit, armed with flamers. They killed over fifty men before we could break through.’

The Emperor closed her eyes, picturing the scene. There was not a man in the regiment she did not know by name. They had all fought so hard to get this far, so bravely; to lose fifty in a single ambush was dreadful. She shook her head. She was doing it again: thinking like Commissar Torgau.

‘Once we were through,’ continued Falso, ‘we pursued the sniper and the other priests down towards the wreck of the Gilded Spear. He frowned. ‘They were larger than the usual salvage crews. Over a dozen priests. And some Auxilla troops. And what looked like Imperial Navy officers, or perhaps Militarum, I could not place the uniforms.’

She nodded. ‘I saw. One of them was the sniper.’

Falso sneered. ‘I thought so. But there was an alien creature with them – a gangly thing with a beak and long rifle, I wondered if it might have been him.’

‘No, it was the officer. And he got away?’

Falso nodded. Then he shook his head in disbelief. ‘They launched a gunship.’

She thought she must have misheard. ‘Launched one? What do you mean?’

‘They flew a gunship out of the Gilded Spear and steered it through the chamber.’

‘How? How could they see?’

‘I’ve no idea, ma’am, but they managed to navigate somehow. Perhaps they got the auspex working?’

‘Down here?’

Falso shrugged. ‘They could definitely see. They launched and flew it straight through a gap in the Gilded Spear’s hull. Then they flew it across the chamber and steered it through an opening in the wall.’

‘An opening? There are no openings big enough for a gunship to fly through.’

‘I would have said the same, ma’am, until I saw the gunship leave through one.’

‘You sent men in pursuit?’

‘It was impossible. The opening was hundreds of feet up the wall. A sheer wall. We had no way of getting up there. Not without…’ He hesitated, glancing at her hands. ‘Not without your help, lord commissar.’

She nodded. It was strange how quickly the incredible had become commonplace. When she first revealed what she was capable of achieving, most of her fellow officers had attempted to kill her. Only the rank and file had listened when she told them there was a way out of the hell they were in; a way to actually win the war. They had fought on the front lines, with her. They had seen the incompetence that spewed from divisional headquarters. No one had stopped her when she silenced the other officers and assumed leadership of the regiment. And now they demanded miracles from her without pause or shame.

She limped across the room, removed her bloody clothes and grabbed a fresh uniform, fastening the buttons with trembling fingers.

‘Do not concern yourself with snipers. It’s irrelevant. Our work is here.’ She tapped her head. ‘Every time I close my eyes I see more, Falso. We must ready ourselves for the final battle. It will be any moment now. The wait is almost over. We must keep making our offerings, feeding the pit, making it stronger. And when the moment comes, I will lead the charge. And then the Blackstone will be ours to control.’

Falso nodded, but she noticed his troubled expression.

‘What is it?’ she asked, waving at him to help with her combat boots.

He avoided her gaze as he shoved them onto her feet. ‘There are still other regiments in the surrounding vaults, lord commissar. Serving many different masters. If we stray beyond the Gilded Spear they attack us and there have been more attempts to break into our territories. How can you be so sure that we will defeat them? How can you be so sure that the Blackstone will be ours to rule?’

She stood and stamped her heels into her boots. Then she fastened her dress coat and fixed her peaked cap in place. ‘We’re not going to attack the other regiments, Falso. We are staying right here.’

‘I don’t understand. You said we were going to launch one final attack.’

She nodded. ‘It will become clear soon, Falso. You have trusted me all this time. Trust me a little longer. There will be a final battle. And then the Blackstone will be in our hands. My visions have shown me with absolute clarity. We just need to complete the ritual we have begun.’

He nodded, still looking dubious.

She gripped his shoulder. ‘So many deaths. I know it seems barbaric. It goes against everything I have told you. But hold firm. For just a little longer. Every prisoner that goes into that pit will ensure the survival of an entire world, an entire system. We are about to seize control of a machine that has been off course for thousands of years. Through this one painful act, we will reverse all the horrors we saw at the Cadian Gate – all the deceit and cowardice and ignorance that has led mankind to the point of extinction.’

He nodded and closed his eyes. She knew he was picturing the brutal massacres that had been allowed by their so-called commanders. All of them had seen the truth as their comrades burned. The old Imperium was dead. Worse than dead. It was malignant. A tumour, consuming mankind at a voracious speed. She had promised her men another way. A return to logic and common sense and a chance to fight battles they could win. She had inspired them with words she had used thousands of years before, in the trenches of Terra, when she was an armour-clad man, unifying warring peoples into the germ of an empire.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’re close. One lucky sniper isn’t going to stop us now.’

They headed out into the rest of the barracks. They had built blockhouses and watchtowers from pieces of the Gilded Spear. When they seized the ship, her plan had been to fly it directly to Terra, but the Blackstone had dragged them into its heart. She had been confused at first, before she realised that fate was guiding her, as it had always done. The Blackstone was not a trap, or a delay; it was the weapon by which she would achieve her goal. She would not return to Terra in a single battle cruiser, but in a star fort at the head of a fleet.

The pit was heaving and swelling, moving with more vigour than when she left. Her regiment was spread around it, still feeding the rite she had begun months ago. The Blackstone was cracking, yielding to her will.

She paused at the end of a gantry, staring down into the fumes, and felt a powerful rush of certainty. The moment had come. She waved Falso over.

‘There is a change of plan.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Everyone goes in, now.’

‘All of them, ma’am?’

She held his gaze. ‘This is the moment we have worked towards.’

Falso looked at the hundreds of prisoners lined up around the altars. As each new victim was hurled into the crimson boughs, they sank from view with barely enough time to scream, but they reappeared moments later, their disembodied heads emerging from the raw muscle, mouths opening and closing like stranded fish.

Everything hinged on this moment. Some of the nearby soldiers were looking over, noticing Falso’s hesitation. If she did not convince him, others might start to doubt her too. And if there was even an hour’s delay, she might miss her chance. This was the moment.

She leant close to him and allowed some of her consciousness to leak through her eyes, piercing his mind, lighting his soul.

‘Did you ever wonder how I know the things I know?’

He stared back and the colour drained from his face. ‘I… I…’ he stammered. ‘You are… You’ve become something more than the rest of us.’ He looked away. ‘More than human.’

She turned his face back to hers. ‘I have always been more than human. Do you understand, sergeant?’

He nodded. She was about to explain more clearly, when he shocked her by making the sign of the aquila and saving her the effort.

‘You’re a god,’ he whispered.

‘A god? There is only one god, sergeant.’

His eyes strained even wider. Then he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together.

She smiled and gently lifted him back onto his feet.

‘The others are not ready to know.’

He nodded, his face still drained of colour.

‘But they need to see that you have absolute faith in me,’ she continued.

He saluted and turned back to the pit, looking out across the ruptured floor and the glistening surface beneath it. Then he marched briskly back down the gantry and headed towards the nearest group of prisoners. He spoke briefly to the Guardsman in charge and she could see, even from dozens of feet away, how confidently he gave the order.

The Guardsmen surged forwards and there was a chorus of screams as the prisoners were hurled to their deaths, thirty or forty of them at the same time. The red lake churned in response and as Sergeant Falso strode off around the edge of the pit, heading towards the next group, the prisoners began struggling frantically, heaving at their chains.

Falso gave another order and the second group were thrown to their deaths. The pit trembled and, to the Emperor’s delight, columns of lightning leapt from the tumult, dancing up into the darkness overhead. Rather than flashing and vanishing, the columns of light lingered, twitching and juddering but otherwise remaining in place.

As lightning blazed from the pit, the Emperor realised that she was closer to the moment of ascension than she had thought. The final battle was imminent. Falso was no longer showing any sign of hesitation. He strode quickly on to the next, equally panicked group, and as the Guardsmen booted them into the altar, more columns of lightning ripped through the gloom, filling the air with so much energy that the Emperor could see it sparking across her uniform.

As more and more victims were sacrificed, the pit became the cradle of a storm so bright that the Guardsmen around the edge had to back away. But the Emperor stared into the heart of the blaze, her flesh ignited by its power, her skull rippling like a pennant as she readied herself for the final act.

21

‘Draik,’ said Isola, speaking out of the darkness. ‘Wake up.’

Draik kept his eye closed for a moment, not ready to face reality until he could fix all of its components into their proper places. He remembered the flight from the battle cruiser and the subsequent crash. He pictured Audus, howling as she burned, trying to save Quintus. His pain grew at the memory of Isola, tumbling away from him, taken by the Blackstone.

‘Isola?’ he gasped, opening his eye.

It was not her, but Grekh. The alien’s blank eyes reflected Draik’s own, pained expression.

‘My head,’ muttered Draik, feeling a large bruise on the back of his skull.

‘I hit you,’ said Grekh.

Draik winced. ‘Why?’

‘To remove you from the gunship. You were about to die.’

Draik stared at his bloody reflection in Grekh’s eyes, Isola’s final moments playing over in his head. Then he closed his eye and slipped back into darkness.

His eyepiece whirred into life and he saw the hallucination that had plagued him since they left Precipice: Isola, falling away from him. But it was not a hallucination. It never had been. All this time he had put it down to cognitive interference, but it had been something far more profound, far stranger: a premonition.

‘I could have saved her.’

‘You tried,’ said Grekh. ‘She let herself go.’

‘I could have prevented all of it.’ He kept his eye closed, still watching the vision in his eyepiece. ‘I knew this was going to happen and I could have stopped it.’

‘The Blackstone showed you,’ said Grekh.

Draik was about to disagree but he realised it was as good an explanation as any. How did the premonition get into his eyepiece? Something or someone had placed it there. Why not the Blackstone?

As he watched Isola endlessly falling he felt a loss surpassing anything he had felt before. It was even greater than his pain at being banished from Terra. Then the scene changed and he saw the other disaster – Precipice, snatched from the void and hurtling towards the surface of the Blackstone Fortress.

‘Janus?’ said another voice and Draik opened his eyes to find Taddeus had shoved Grekh aside. ‘Look at this,’ said the priest, his voice an urgent whisper. Draik wondered if he might have dreamt the crash. Taddeus looked elated rather than saddened. His eyes were glinting with even more fervour than usual.

Draik sat up and looked around. They were on a ledge, high up on one of the Blackstone’s sheer walls with a chill wind slicing into them. The wall sloped away beneath them at a forty-five-degree angle, down into a river of darkness. The servo-skulls were gliding overhead, flashing light across the surface of what seemed to be a vast, black pyramid.

‘The gunship?’ asked Draik.

‘Back that way,’ said Grekh, pointing his rifle into the darkness. ‘The ledge is about half a mile from here. I have been carrying you.’

‘We didn’t want to hang around until those heretics caught up with us,’ said Raus, sitting a few feet away next to Audus, who was hunched over with her head down, her arms wrapped in wet bandages.

Raus and Rein were both chewing enthusiastically on ration packs that they must have found in the gunship. Raus gave Draik a concerned expression and held out a piece of dried grox. Draik stared at him. Raus nodded sagely and continued eating.

‘We stopped when it looked like you were stirring,’ said Grekh, ‘but we should not stay here long.’

‘Not when we are so close,’ said Taddeus, helping Draik to his feet and leading him across the ledge. ‘See that?’ He pointed his mace to a vague shape in the shadows ahead. It looked like another pyramid or a mountain, but Draik could make out no details. It was just a deepening of the darkness.

Draik shrugged and shook his head. He could hear Taddeus and Grekh and Raus talking to him, but it was as though they were the dream, and the image of Isola falling was reality. He could still see her pale, calm face, plunging away from him.

‘This is the final approach to the Crucible,’ said Taddeus, shaking as he stared at the distant shape. ‘Vorne and I have been here before. There’s no mistaking it. You’re on the very cusp of fulfilling your destiny. This is a unique moment, Janus. How many men are offered the chance to become a living instrument of the God-Emperor? And here you are, about to do His divine work.’

Draik shook his head and sat down heavily, leaning back against the slope. The air was even colder up here, haloed by his breath as it banked and rolled, glittering in the frigid atmosphere. As he watched his breath drift, Draik realised that the others were all watching him. It was a small group, now: Taddeus and Vorne, Grekh and Audus, the ratlings and three surviving missionaries. Incredibly, Quintus was still with them, pale and bloody but conscious and staring at him along with the rest of them.

‘I knew what was going to happen to Isola,’ said Draik, his tone clipped.

Taddeus frowned and knelt down in front of him, grimacing as his knees took his weight.

‘You are the Anointed. You know many things. And you have brought us to exactly the place that you were meant to. This is all as was prophesied. Your attaché died because she was destined to die. We cannot be held responsible for–’

‘She was no longer my attaché,’ muttered Draik, ‘and she did not need to die.’ The more he thought about her falling, the more Draik wondered why he should feel her loss quite so keenly.

Taddeus nodded sympathetically. ‘Of course, I understand. She was a friend. But these are only temporal attachments, Janus, mere shadows of the bond you will share with the God-Emperor when you join Him at the Golden Throne.’

Draik looked from Taddeus to the rest of the group with a sinking feeling. What was he doing with these idiots? Isola had been different. She saw more and she saw clearer. She understood what mattered. ‘Be more than a treasure hunter,’ he whispered, remembering her final words.

‘What?’ demanded Taddeus, glancing at Vorne. She shrugged and shook her head.

Draik closed his eye again, trying to block out Taddeus so he could think clearly. What should he do? He had killed Isola by pursuing a prize she had pointed out was beneath him. Just like every other time, his rage at House Draik had clouded his judgement. So what should he do now? What would he do if Isola were here to counsel him?

As he struggled to block out the voices of Taddeus and the rest of the party, all of whom were attempting to speak to him, his eyepiece filled with confusing scenes. He stared out into the darkness and saw light – the ruddy light of a vast forge in which huge stone slabs were being joined together by the force of a star. The angles were familiar and he realised he was seeing another incarnation of the fortress. He tried to look into the glare, to see if he could discern the architects of this baffling labyrinth. But the harder he looked, the more the scene changed.

Reality fell away, subsumed by his vision. The star was replaced by a purple wound that reached across the heavens, opening like a galactic mouth. As the tear widened, glistening flesh spilled through, engulfing planets as it writhed, forming tendrils and howling faces. Draik dissolved in the tumult until all that remained was the cold lump behind his eyepiece. He could feel it growing and taking shape, creating a new Draik, similar in size and form but wrought of featureless black ore.

Strangely, rather than feeling dread at the transformation, he felt elated. There was a core of energy sparking behind his empty eye socket that filled him with vigour. It pulsed through his colourless flesh, carrying power greater than anything he had witnessed in his dreams – more powerful than the tear in the stars; more powerful even than the stars themselves.

22

Draik slumped backwards with a groan. If Taddeus hadn’t caught him, his head would have slammed against the floor.

As people crowded round the rogue trader, Quintus muttered a curse and glanced at his wrist, wondering what to do. Draik’s lunacy had finally consumed him. He had seen this coming from the first moment he’d laid eyes on him. But what was he meant to do now? What would the Archivist want from him?

He looked over at the pilot. She was huddled into a ball, muttering to herself. The pain of her burns must be terrible. He could not quite believe what she had endured to save him. He owed her his life, and he was planning to kill the man who had promised to save hers. Guilt and confusion gripped him. What was he going to do? He had lied his whole life, but never anything on this scale. When did I become so broken I would consider murder? he thought. If he didn’t kill Draik, he would have no future. But if he did kill him…

The thought was hard to finish. What would he have become? What would be left of the boy who had led his friends to safety on the macro hauler all those years ago? He felt as though he could hear that child’s voice, still inside him somewhere, railing against the idea of murder. Either Draik was going to die, or that child would have to die; he had to make a choice.

He was stroking the bone under his skin, wondering whether to contact the Archivist, when Raus leant over and grabbed his arm.

‘Looky here, Rein,’ whispered the ratling with a hard smile. ‘The boy has met our friend.’

Rein leant closer, still chewing something foul-smelling as he stared at Quintus’ wrist. ‘So he has, Raus, so he has.’

Quintus snatched his hand free, his pulse hammering. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Raus took a deep breath and rubbed his jaw. ‘See, I think you probably do.’ He rolled up his sleeve and revealed a sickle-shaped swelling at his own wrist, identical to the one under Quintus’ skin. ‘Looks like we’re on the same team.’ Raus glanced at Rein. ‘Although the Archivist might have mentioned that there was a team.’

Rein narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe there’s more than one team.’

Raus mirrored Rein’s suspicious expression. ‘What do you mean?’

Rein leant close and whispered, ‘I don’t know.’

Raus nodded slowly, as though this statement were very profound.

Quintus stared at them, trying to understand how people with such pickled brains had managed to live so long. ‘This is just an old scar,’ he said.

The ratlings shook their heads.

‘It’s how the Archivist communicates with you,’ said Raus. He grimaced. ‘It lets it see into your head. And that’s not the worst of it.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Quintus, before he could stop himself. ‘What do you mean that’s not the worst of it?’

Raus raised his eyebrows and glanced at Rein. ‘He seems very concerned, don’t you think, for someone who just has an old scar on his wrist.’

Rein laughed and picked some meat from between his teeth. Then he seemed to lose the thread of the conversation as he examined the food.

Raus shrugged. ‘There’s no need to play games, Quintus. I’m not likely to mention anything to them.’ He nodded at the group still gathered around Draik, trying to rouse him. ‘Taddeus thinks we’re helping him because we’re virtuous. It might complicate things if he knows we’re being paid to lead him to his Crucible. Your secret’s safe with us.’

Quintus cursed himself for not maintaining his silence, but he also felt relieved to finally discuss the Archivist. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, checking that the others were still busy with Draik. ‘Do you know?’

Raus nodded. ‘Actually, we do know, although the Archivist thinks we don’t. It’s a kind of alien, called a…’ He frowned and looked at Rein, who was still peering at the piece of meat. ‘Rein,’ he said, ‘what kind of alien is the Archivist, again? What did Gatto call it?’

‘Goat,’ muttered Rein without looking away from his food.

‘A zoat.’ Raus shuffled closer to Quintus. ‘Some kind of technological mastermind, by all accounts. But it’s had to hide itself away. It’s known to folk like Draik but it isn’t very popular. It’s stabbed so many backs it makes a point of watching its own.’

‘A zoat?’ Quintus had never heard the name before. ‘What does it want?’

Raus shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. It wants us to get a bone machine to the Crucible. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen but the zoat called it a teleporter, so I’m thinking it’s going to turn up and give Taddeus a nasty surprise when the vault gets opened. Not that it matters to me. If we get the bone machine to the Crucible we get enough money to buy every ship on Precipice and a few more besides. But what about you? I and my brother are taking his gadget. So what does it need you down here for?’

Quintus hesitated. However open the ratlings had been with him, he was not about to announce his plan to murder Draik.

Raus stared at him.

‘It wanted to me to watch over you,’ lied Quintus. ‘To make sure you reach the bone machine safely.’

‘Makes sense,’ said Raus. ‘We are valuable.’

Rein nodded proudly. ‘Special. Like our mother always used to say.’

Raus’ eyes glittered with emotion, but before he could reply, Rein spoke up.

‘Raus,’ he said, still staring at the piece of meat between his stubby fingers. ‘How much of this did you eat?’

‘No more than you,’ replied Raus, sounding outraged.

‘Have you looked at it?’

‘I’ve seen meat before, Rein.’

Rein dangled the shred in front of Raus’ face. The thing was twitching between his fingers, coiling like a worm.

‘That’s not what we were eating,’ said Raus, paling.

‘It is, Raus.’ Rein stared in horror as he dropped the morsel on the floor and watched it crawl away.

‘Open the bag,’ said Raus, gesturing to a sack slung over his brother’s shoulder.

Rein carefully removed the bag, placed it on the floor and opened it. The three of them edged closer, staring at the pile of canvas. After a few seconds, the bag started to shuffle and shake. They all backed away with muttered curses.

Slowly, like a plant reaching for the light, tendrils of meat began sliding out of the bag, reaching and looping as they spilled out onto the lustrous black floor.

‘Throne!’ cried Raus, leaping to his feet and kicking the sack from the ledge, sending it tumbling into the chasm. He placed a hand over his stomach and stared at Rein. ‘I ate almost all of it.’

‘You said you had no more than me,’ replied Rein with a scowl.

‘What was it?’ cried Raus. ‘Why was it moving? What if it’s still moving in me?’

The two ratlings stared at each other in horror.

‘Everything’s moving,’ said Quintus, speaking more to himself than the ratlings as he looked out from the ledge. As the servo-skulls droned back and forth, their lumens flashed over the sloping wall and revealed that it was rippling like liquid. ‘Something is happening.’

The ratlings looked at the shifting slopes and nodded.

‘We need to move,’ said Raus. ‘We need to get to the Crucible, trigger the bone machine and get the hell out of here. This is what happened last time. Do you remember, Rein? Everything started moving and then those things came.’

Rein nodded, still clutching his belly and staring down into the darkness. ‘What will we eat?’

‘Things?’ Quintus shook his head. ‘What things?’

Raus grimaced. ‘Drones. Big ones. The Blackstone isn’t keen on people getting too deep. She likes to keep her secrets.’

‘She?’

Raus nodded. ‘This place isn’t just a star fort, boy. You must have realised. She’s alive.’ He nodded at Grekh, who was still hunched over Draik. ‘Ask beaky, he’ll tell you all about her. She talks to him when he eats people.’

‘Eats people?’

‘Aye. For all his airs and graces, Captain high-and-mighty Draik keeps some odd company.’

Before Quintus could ask for an explanation, the ledge began sliding into the wall.

‘Whoa!’ howled Raus and Rein simultaneously, backing away from the edge as the platform shrank. ‘Taddeus?’

The priest looked up from Draik. ‘Use your grappling gear!’ he cried as the whole edifice began fragmenting. There was a clattering roar as the wall devolved into points and vertices, sprouting angles and creating yawning drops.

‘I haven’t got any grappling gear!’ howled Quintus as he slid down a slope that had not been there a moment earlier and smashed his shins into the sides of a perfectly symmetrical trench.

‘This way!’ roared Taddeus, storming past him, followed by Vorne, the other priests and Audus. The kroot was with them, carrying an insensate Draik over his shoulder and using the curved talons on his feet to grasp the shifting floor.

Quintus stumbled after them as the whole party bounded and rolled from one grinding surface to another. It was as much a fall as a climb, but the number of moving planes meant it was always possible to latch onto a ledge just before dropping into a hole. Quintus howled for the first few moments of the descent, but then began to feel ridiculous as everyone else climbed in determined silence. He was soon covered with cuts and bruises but he realised that there was a kind of discernible rhythm to the eruptions.

As the minutes wore on, he found himself leaping with more confidence and less pain. It was utterly surreal, like being caught in a choreographed avalanche that moved upwards and sideways as much as it fell downwards. The changes were so fluid and beguiling that it was a shock when Quintus realised his downhill plunge had somehow turned into an uphill sprint. He laughed. Despite the danger and darkness there was something wonderful about finding that he had just defied all sense by running down a slope and ending his plunge higher than he began it.

They all ran out onto a broad plateau at the top of a vast pyramid. The surrounding four slopes were still in flux, heaving and turning, but the plateau at the top was stable and there was a light at its centre, hanging in the air a hundred or so feet away. The light was so fierce that it dragged tears from Quintus’ eyes.

‘The Crucible,’ said Taddeus, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘We’ve made it.’

23

Hallucinations came and went, snaking around Draik’s head. The indistinct face was there again, watching him through faceted darkness, filling him with a sense of urgency; then it faded and he saw Precipice, tumbling from the void and hurtling towards the Blackstone. As it fell it collapsed, shedding ships and bodies before slamming into the surface of the star fort.

Draik felt the loss of every soul with a sharp flash of grief. These were not the idle, dissolute rich he had grown up around; these were brave, hardy souls who had fought for their chances – fought to make something of themselves out here at the end of the galaxy. He watched the wreckage disappear, swallowed by the impossible angles of the Blackstone, and recalled the names of every pilot, captain and merchant he had met within its trading halls and drinking dens.

Then, the scene changed. Draik saw a Mechanicus adept, a man so heavily augmented he was barely human, his mechanical limbs draped in the plush red robes of the Martian priesthood. He was a great magos, covered in arcane sigils, but he was slumped in frustration, unable to unravel the equation he had scratched onto his dataslate. Draik somehow knew this was before Precipice fell. This was now. The magos was trying to devise a way to save Precipice. With a rush of adrenaline, Draik realised that these were not hallucinations. He saw the tormented magos as vividly as he had seen Isola die. It was not a dream, but a premonition.

The sense of urgency grew. He was no longer stumbling blindly around the Blackstone. He could see. These things were real. He could understand. He was being shown things for a reason. The sense of power was thrilling, but shocking. Suddenly, he knew that he had been focused on the wrong things. He had missed something horrific. He was like a man too focused on a wasp to see an approaching tiger.

He opened his eye.

Grekh was sitting next to him on a dark, uninterrupted plain inside the Blackstone. Audus was a few feet away, picked from the blackness by the lumen of a servo-skull. She looked pale and tired and she was still cradling her bandaged arms, but she was awake, her eyes glinting in the shadows as she stared at the floor.

Grekh saw him wake and shuffled closer, helping him sit. Audus looked up, peering at Draik. Taddeus and the other priests were a few feet away, talking to Quintus and the ratlings. They had not noticed he was awake. Beyond them was a bright light, like a sunrise, silhouetting the whole group.

‘Isola,’ said Draik, seeing her cogitator lying nearby and remembering that she was gone. He still had the same sense of loss, of an opportunity missed, but it was less painful. In fact, all of his emotions seemed overwhelmed by the sense of urgency he had felt in his dream. He felt as though he had undergone a great epiphany or a religious conversion, without knowing exactly how.

He touched his eyepiece. The augmetic was the source of his visions. It was the source of everything. He could still feel its physical presence in his brain, but rather than being repulsive it now seemed powerful, like impervious armour. He could feel it spreading inside his skull, altering his mind, strengthening his intellect, giving his thoughts a furious vigour.

‘Where are we?’

Audus nodded across the plateau. ‘Half a mile from where I ditched the gunship.’ Her tone was bleak. ‘The ratlings led us past more blood shrines. And then to the top of this ziggurat or whatever it is. I think the light you can see leads to the chamber the priests have been searching for.’

Draik looked over at the white oval. As he saw it, his sense of elation bloomed, jangling through his bones. ‘Yes,’ he said, speaking quickly and loud. ‘We are close to the centre. Closer than ever before.’

Audus frowned. ‘Isola died.’

Before he could reply, Grekh nodded. ‘Taddeus’ prophecy was right. You have come to join yourself with the fortress. The Blackstone is in you. I see it.’

Draik could sense Audus’ outrage at his lack of grief but he struggled to think how he could explain his thoughts. The loss of Isola was like a physical wound, like someone had cut an organ from him, but something else had happened in that crash. Or perhaps before.

Grekh was right, he was changed. He could feel it. He was not the same Draik who had landed in the Vanguard a few hours earlier. He had been transformed by all his expeditions, but not to this extent. The hunger that had previously plagued him was gone. After all these years of railing against his exile, of wanting to prove his worth, he no longer cared. The dread trilling through his veins had blasted everything else away. But what did it mean? He thought back over the dreams, trying to place the origins of the change.

‘Precipice,’ he said, ignoring Audus’ glare. ‘It’s going to fall.’ He looked at Grekh. ‘You were right. The Blackstone brought me here for a reason.’ He stood up and tapped his ocular implant. ‘It has shown me a catastrophe. And given me a chance to prevent it. I have to stop this happening. We have to get back.’

Grekh leant on his rifle and looked down at him. ‘Back to Precipice?’

‘When we’ve come so far into the Blackstone?’ Audus looked furious. ‘After what has just happened? That seems like an odd choice, even for you.’

‘There’s no choice involved. I have to.’

Audus looked over at the priests. They were on their knees before the oval of light, praying furiously.

‘Taddeus might not agree.’

‘Then let him stay.’ Draik looked from Grekh to Audus. ‘I was given a warning. A chance to prevent Isola’s death. And I ignored it.’ Prior to his dream he had been crushed by loss and regret; now he felt like he was on the cusp of something far worse. ‘I have been given another warning. Precipice is about to fall. The geomagnetic storms are about to tear the orbital platform down and smash it into the fortress. Everyone on Precipice will die. Hundreds of people – all of them brave souls who fought hard to reach this place.’

Audus shook her head. ‘You sound almost excited about it.’

‘Because the Blackstone has given me a chance to save them. It has given me another vision. I can stop this.’

‘How?’

Draik stared through her and thought. It was a good question. The Blackstone had shown it to him, but it was just beyond his grasp. He closed his normal eye and looked through the augmetic one, trying to recall the visions he had just experienced. He watched Precipice falling, slamming into the fortress, destroyed by the impact, leaving nothing but corpses and wreckage. How was he supposed to stop it? What would be the use in racing back only to watch the place die? He studied the memory like it was a vid-feed, trying to spot a clue, trying to understand what the Blackstone was showing him.

Then he remembered the second vision, not of the Blackstone but of the tech-priest, grappling with his equation, tormented by the same frustration Draik was feeling. The magos was battling with the same problem, realised Draik. He was seeking a way to halt Precipice’s fall. But the equation on his dataslate had defeated him. Draik could even picture the sigils, and as he studied them, he realised he had seen some of the shapes before.

Draik opened his eye and reached for Isola’s cogitator, triggering the power. To his relief, the cogs rattled into life and the screen lit up, revealing the usual emerald snowstorm. He scrolled through Isola’s recent files until he found the notes she had made at the first black shrine. Some of the characters matched the ones on the tech-priest’s screen.

‘They’re not coordinates,’ he said, showing the cogitator to Audus and Grekh. ‘It’s an equation.’

They both looked at him with blank expressions.

‘This is how I can stop Precipice falling,’ he said, tapping the screen. ‘Isola found the answer without realising. I just need to get this information back there before it’s too late.’

Audus stared at him. Her flight suit was burned away up to her shoulders and her face was covered in blisters and bruises. ‘You brought me down here to make me rich. We’re on the brink of entering the damned treasure chest to end all treasure chests.’

‘They’re all going to die, Audus. Everyone on Precipice. The Blackstone will drag it down like a comet and kill everyone on board. Unless we get back there now.’

‘How can you know that? How can you know that you will be able to save them? You don’t even know what you’ll do when you get there, do you? You’re just going to trust that the damned Blackstone will help you. Is that right?’

‘I have seen things, Audus. Not dreams or hallucinations or memories. The Blackstone is showing me the future. And it’s giving me a chance to alter it. I have seen a magos, back on Precipice, close to saving the place but missing the information I have here on Isola’s cogitator.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re right, I do not see the full picture yet, but I know that Precipice will definitely be destroyed if I stay here.’

He stepped closer to her. ‘Are you happy with that idea? Are you happy for all those people to die?’

She leant into him, her face rigid. ‘Damned right I am. I don’t care about anything except escaping this shithole with some money.’

Draik shook his head. ‘Play the cynic for as long as you like. You aren’t fooling me. Maybe you can fool yourself, but I see the good in you. Whatever made you desert hasn’t changed who you are.’

Colour flushed her cheeks and she backed away, rage in her eyes. ‘Oh, the mighty Janus Draik. The man who knows his lowly serfs better than they know themselves. How nice it must be to always understand everyone else’s motives. How lucky for the rest of us that you can tell us what we’re thinking.’

‘I saw you,’ said Draik. ‘I saw you crawl back into the flames and fight for Quintus. You have half-killed yourself to save him. Why did you do that? You act the part of hard-nosed cynic but you risked your life for a man you barely know.’

Her eyes strained wider but she did not answer.

Draik softened his tone. ‘We all wear masks, Audus. And I don’t profess to know what lies behind yours, but I recognise a decent soul when I see one. You can’t let those people on Precipice die any more than I can.’

She filled her lungs, about to yell in his face, then burst into a hacking cough. ‘Damn you Terrans,’ she spluttered. ‘Damn your bloody noblesse oblige. You think everyone needs saving.’

Draik watched her patiently, sensing, from the slope of her shoulders, that the argument was over.

She waved at the priests. ‘Good luck convincing him.’

Draik kept looking at Audus. ‘I have seen how you react under fire, Audus. And that’s when people show their true colours. I know what you are. You fight for those who can’t fight for themselves, even if it puts you in danger. You are good, Audus, whatever you tell yourself to the contrary. And if you want a place at my side, I will make sure you are safe.’

She snorted. ‘Safe? I’m a deserter, Draik. How can I be safe?’

‘By being under my aegis. My father has taken most things from me but not my Charter of Trade. If you work for me, you are untouchable. I will give you a new future and ensure your past is forgotten.’

She looked amused, then doubtful, then pained. She coughed again, then slumped against the wall and closed her eyes. ‘You have no idea who I am. Or what I’ve done. You don’t know anything about me. They made me do things, Draik. Made me kill people who did not deserve to die.’ She sneered. ‘You’d think there would be checks and measures, ways to be sure leaders are worthy of the rank. But take it from me, there aren’t. Our leaders are the worst of us, Draik, the worst. And they do their dirty deeds through idiots like me. I’m not good but they made me bad. There are people in high command who will–’

Draik held up a hand. ‘I do not care. I do not want to know what made you desert. I have seen your worth. I judge people on what they do, not what they did.’

She shook her head and was on the verge of arguing more, when Grekh made a brittle clicking sound with his beak and leant close to her.

‘Not every chieftain betrays their clan,’ said the kroot. His words sounded oddly human. ‘Draik won’t.’

Audus looked stunned by Grekh’s words. She massaged her scalp and shook her head, staring at him. Then she laughed. She looked around for her gun, slung it over her back and glared at Draik, signalling that the discussion was over. She looked furious, either with Draik or with herself, but he sensed that she would follow him to Precipice.

There was more to be said, but Audus was proud and Draik sensed this was not the time to push the matter. He simply nodded and headed over to the priests.

Taddeus leapt to his feet as Draik approached, delighted. ‘The Anointed has risen.’

Draik looked past him into the shield of light. It was about thirty feet tall and appeared to have no features – it was just an expanse of sheer energy, hovering a few feet above the floor.

‘Is that it?’ he asked. ‘The Crucible?’

‘Very nearly,’ said Taddeus, gripping Draik by the shoulders. ‘We are at the threshold. Once we pass through that portal we shall enter the final series of chambers that lead to the Crucible. It’s no more than an hour from here.’

Vorne was at Taddeus’ side and she gave him a pointed look.

Taddeus nodded. ‘The final stretch will most likely be defended. Last time we came this far the fortress attacked with drones. Large ones. We will need to be prepared for anything that–’

‘I’m not going in.’ Draik felt another rush of energy as he spoke the words.

Taddeus and Vorne stared at him.

‘What?’ asked Taddeus. ‘Not going into what?’

‘I must return to Precipice,’ said Draik. ‘It is about to be destroyed, but I have the means to save it.’

Vorne’s expression hardened. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No. I have to return. I have seen what I have to do. I must return to Precipice and find a tech-priest. Together, we can halt the fall of the orbital. If I stay here, if I continue exploring the Blackstone, everyone will be killed. I will not let those people die.’

Taddeus placed his hand on the handle of his power mace and rose to his full, impressive height. ‘You are still unwell, Janus.’

‘You may come with me or stay here,’ replied Draik. ‘Whichever you desire. But I am leaving now.’

‘No one is leaving,’ whispered Taddeus through clenched teeth. He glanced at the remaining missionaries and the four of them fanned out, raising their flamers and triggering the pilot lights.

The ratlings backed off, gently steering Quintus away too.

Taddeus jabbed his mace at the oval light. ‘We are here.’ His voice grew louder. ‘This is your destiny, Janus. Just as it is mine!’

Draik shook his head, feeling increasingly certain. ‘I saw Isola’s death before it happened.’ He tapped the augmetic eyepiece. ‘I thought I was losing my mind, but she died exactly as I saw.’

Taddeus wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth. ‘That is just as I might have expected, Janus. That you have seen the future comes as no surprise to me. But how can you talk of heading back to Precipice when you are so close to reaching your goal?’

‘Your goal,’ said Draik.

‘You came to me at the top of the pyre!’ cried Taddeus, waving his mace furiously. ‘You showed me your bloodied hand. You appeared just as the Liber Eudoxus predicted. Our goals are shared, Janus, whether you know it or not. You must trust me! Let me lead you to victory.’

Draik shook his head. ‘I tricked you. I made my hand bleed so that you would think I was your prophet.’

There was a strained silence. The missionaries’ fingers hovered over their triggers. Grekh and Audus stepped closer to Draik, flanking him and raising their guns.

Vorne’s eyes were wide and she was staring at a shape in the wall. It was just a pillar of black stone, but she was watching it as though it were a daemon about to devour her. She whispered something under her breath, shaking her head, and it struck Draik – not for the first time – how fragile her hold on reality was.

Taddeus glanced at her, concerned, then turned back to Draik, softening his tone.

‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? You came to me, just as predicted. Just when you were meant to, with your hand stained red. It does not matter why. You may think it was through deceit but what made you deceive me? It was the will of the God-Emperor, working through you – working through all of us so that we may reclaim what is rightfully His. Don’t you see, Janus?’ He waved his mace back the way they had come. ‘This place was not created by the enemy. It was not created for the enemy. It is the Emperor’s. It is His to wield.’

Draik was not interested. He knew where he needed to be. ‘I am leaving. I have a chance to save those people.’ He turned and began walking away, waving for Grekh and Audus to follow.

Vorne was now glancing from shadow to shadow, as though expecting them to attack, but the other three zealots looked to Taddeus for guidance, fingers still hovering over triggers.

Draik did not pause to see how the preacher responded. Taddeus could not attack him now. He had played his part too well. Taddeus could no more attack him than he could attack the Golden Throne.

‘Wait!’ cried Raus, running after him, looking panicked. ‘We have to get to the Crucible.’

Draik ignored him, looking for the quickest way to reach the edge of the plateau.

‘Besides,’ said Rein, appearing at Raus’ side, ‘without us, you have no way of navigating the fortress. There are no maglevs out here. How would you get back to your ship?’

Draik closed his good eye and looked out through the optical implant. He opened the aperture as wide as it would go, letting the darkness into his mind.

He stumbled, drunk on the influx of information. In a moment, everything was revealed to him. He could see not just the walls and chambers of the fortress, but also the patterns that had previously eluded him. Angles and vertices that had previously seemed random now formed an intricate pattern, beautiful in its complexity but also logical and consistent.

‘I understand,’ he whispered, looking at Grekh. ‘I see.’

He looked in a different direction and found that the patterns were so deliberate and clear that they enabled him to extrapolate from each sequence of lines and discern what lay behind the walls. It was as if his eyepiece had pierced the resolute blackness of the walls and revealed the skeleton frame beneath. He could see a clear, simple route to something he had not even been aware of: maglev chambers, peppering every surface. He could see hundreds of them in this one chamber alone and his grasp of the fortress’ geometry enabled him to pinpoint hundreds more in every direction.

‘I see,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder.

‘See what?’ demanded Taddeus, appearing at his side, his face flushed with rage.

‘All of it,’ said Draik.

24

Data filled Daedalosus’ vision, flooding his retinal implants and relaying the same message in a dozen different ways: he had been poisoned. His augmented organs had already classified the toxins and filtered them from his bloodstream, but he had been unconscious for one hour, fifteen minutes and forty seconds.

As he grew more alert, more information filtered through. While unconscious, minor surgery had been performed on him. No, not minor – something profound had been altered in his body. His internal cogitators spoke of calcification and accelerated ossification, focused around his wrist. Daedalosus felt a surge of outrage and opened his eyes. He was shackled to the inside of what he thought, at first, was a fused ribcage. As more of his auto-senses blinked back into life, he realised he was in the cargo hold of a small ship, but the bulkheads were entirely covered in bone, great whirls and arches that had been melded together somehow, forming a kind of cage.

There were crates and canisters stacked against the bones, and the floor was littered with pieces of machinery. There was a single, harsh lumen burning overhead and it was swaying violently, throwing shadows like a magic lantern, giving the impression that the bones were in motion, coiling and tightening like snakes. The whole room was shaking and the pieces of discarded metal on the floor were rattling back and forth. Tukh and Lees were dangling from the opposite wall, as was the ape, and they were all bound by the bones. They looked dreadful.

‘We’ve been drugged,’ murmured Daedalosus, finding it hard to form clear words. His brain was recovering quicker than his flesh.

Tukh’s face was the colour of the deck plating and his eyes were rolling feverishly. He managed to nod in reply. ‘Lees?’ he groaned, straining to see his wife.

She grunted in reply. Her gaunt face looked as pale as the bones on the wall. The ape looked equally dazed and the devices had all been removed from its shaggy mane. Daedalosus looked down and saw that several items had been removed from beneath his robes – weapons and diagnostic equipment, even some of his augmetics.

‘This is an outrage,’ he said, straining against his restraints. ‘Who would dare to imprison a member of–’

+An outrage?+

The voice bypassed Daedalosus’ ears and manifested directly inside his skull. The blizzard of data on his retina shifted into new patterns, announcing that he was being addressed by psychic means. Parietal implants at the rear of his skull indicated that the words had entered his body at the wrist and then been relayed through his central nervous system to his left frontal lobe.

+The outrage is that a representative of the Priesthood of Mars has resorted to piracy. There are rules about trespassing, even in Precipice, or so I had been led to believe.+

As the words filled his thoughts, Daedalosus looked down at his wrist and saw the source. There was a puncture wound in the flesh of his unaugmented hand and there was a small growth visible under the skin – a lump of gleaming bone that had spurred up from his ulna.

Any embarrassment he might have felt at the accusation of piracy was washed away by a flood of anger.

‘How dare you profane my flesh. It was sanctified by the Deus Mechanicus. Who do you think you are? What right do you have to–’

The blast door slammed down and a massive quadruped stomped into the room. It was so bulky it had to squeeze through the frame. It reminded Daedalosus of the centaurs that decorated the borders of STC manuals. It was taller than a man and far more muscular and, rather than clothes or armour, it was covered in thick, dull-green scales. As it flickered in and out of the swaying light, Daedalosus saw that the reptilian’s face was hidden behind a bulky rebreather. The apparatus amplified its breath, making a sound like the wheezing of broken bellows.

Daedalosus shook his head. ‘You?’

‘You know this thing?’ said Tukh, grimacing as he studied the hulking monster that now filled half the room.

‘The Archivist,’ said Daedalosus. ‘It accompanied me on one of my first expeditions to the Blackstone, masquerading as a technical advisor. Playing the part of an ally.’

The Archivist nodded its head. +I am touched that you remember me, machine-priest.+

‘This thing is in league with the heretics,’ said Daedalosus.

The Archivist laughed, a liquid rattle that was amplified by its breathing apparatus. +You underestimate me. I have no interest in blood magic.+

‘You are a liar.’ Daedalosus strained against his bonds. ‘You showed your hand last time I was foolish enough to endure your company. You are here to turn the Blackstone into a weapon and turn it on the Imperium.’

The creature laughed again, thudding further into the room and looming over Daedalosus, raising a foreleg and tapping the bionics on the tech-priest’s chest.

+For an organisation that worships machines, you have very little understanding of technology. Mind you, it seems to be a lack of insight that cripples all of your pitiful Imperium. Mankind has never had the wit to use technology for anything more creative than big guns, so I suppose that’s all you can see when you look at the creations of more advanced cultures. The Blackstone Fortress, as you call it, is capable of doing so much more than simply shooting things. It exists in ways, times and places you could not comprehend.+

Its tone darkened, its words becoming a snarl. +Your fellow zealots down there, with their black shrines, have no idea what they’re playing with. They are on the cusp of disrupting plans set in motion before your species crawled from the sea. Humankind has no place here. You have no rights here. Any of you. Whichever absurd deities you profess to worship.+

The creature sighed and spoke in a softer voice. +But none of it matters. In a few hours the circle will be complete and I shall ascend. While your friends squabble over scraps, I shall be delivered to the heart of my destiny. I have no idea what brought you here, engine-priest, but it is a well-timed visit. I need all the minds I can gather before I return to the Blackstone.+

Daedalosus realised that there must be some reason why they were not already dead. The Archivist was a murderous liar. It certainly would not have baulked at killing trespassers. Why had it captured them rather than simply killing them?

Binaric filtered through his head as he processed the various explanations. The alien had mentioned needing minds. What did that mean? He needed time to process the information so he decided to try and engage the creature in conversation.

‘You are not going to survive long enough to make another flight to the Blackstone,’ he said.

+I am not flying anywhere,+ rumbled the creature. +I have taken too many risks down there already. I have arranged for another, less crude mode of transportation.+

‘It will not matter how you intend to reach the Blackstone. Precipice is about to collapse. The Blackstone’s gravity well is ripping it apart.’ Daedalosus nodded at the lumen shaking violently overhead. ‘Surely, if you are so technologically advanced, you have realised that.’

+I don’t need technology to realise that Precipice is doomed, engine-priest. And I welcome it. This pile of junk has attracted a surprising array of life forms. I am almost certain there is nothing here to challenge me, but I can rest a little easier once I know I am the only survivor.+

The Archivist stroked some of the ribs that snaked across the walls. +In fact, you’re about to help me accelerate the process.+

‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Lees, struggling against her bonds. ‘We ain’t helping you do anything.’

The Archivist seemed to have lost interest in the conversation and was focused on the wall of bones. Daedalosus struggled to see much over the creature’s hulking frame, but it appeared to be sliding a sharp, blade-like spur of bone into the cage. As it shifted position slightly, he saw that the bone protruded from beneath the scales on its foreleg. He could not tell if it was a device of some kind, or if the creature had somehow managed to sprout a sliver of sharpened bone from its body.

The Archivist turned the blade like a key and triggered a reaction in the other bones. They all began moving. The snake-like motions Daedalosus had imagined earlier now began for real as the bones writhed around each other. As they slid and turned, Daedalosus caught snatches of human faces under the mesh. They were rigid and pale and he quickly realised they were made of bone. They looked like statues, but Daedalosus had the troubling suspicion that they were real people that had been ossified somehow.

He glanced at the bone that had engulfed part of his wrist and wracked his brains for information about the category of xenos that the Archivist belonged to. Very little was known about zoats but he recalled that they were an unusually ancient species and that they were far more advanced than their savage appearance might suggest. There were also a few scraps of Imperial xenologist reports that made mention of zoats employing technology rooted in organic matter, including bone.

‘You have to let us go,’ he stated.

The Archivist laughed, but continued working at the bones. The whole chamber was now in motion and the coiled ribs and vertebrae were turning in circles around the four captives, causing them to judder and lurch.

‘The Blackstone is a threat to the entire galaxy,’ said Daedalosus. ‘If I do not lead a detachment of ships through the Oort cloud, there will be dire consequences for every species in the galaxy, not just mankind.’

+Not true,+ replied the zoat, still grinding the blade into the wall. +The Blackstone will mean the renewal of the galaxy. A chance to begin again without the infestations that have sprung up over the recent millennia.+

As the Archivist worked, Daedalosus looked around for a weapon or a way to free himself. He noticed that the jokaero appeared to be using its tongue to unscrew one of its teeth. There was a glint of metal. The ape had not lost all of its digital devices.

The Archivist stopped working and looked over. Its face was mostly hidden behind its bulky mask, but enough of the musculature was visible for Daedalosus to realise it was smiling.

+I am in your head, priest. I see what you see. You should be careful where you look.+

Before he could respond, the Archivist whirled around and snatched the metal object from the ape.

+It was lax of me not to remove your teeth, jokaero. Let me rectify that.+

The ape struggled as the Archivist raised a foreleg and revealed the blade that had slid from beneath its scales. It looked like a shard of bone, but as the Archivist leant closer the pale spur began to rotate, spinning like a drill.

A howl of pain filled the cabin, but it was not from the ape.

‘Throne!’ cried Tukh, struggling with even more violence. ‘What is this?’

The bones circling him had sprouted spokes that were now wrapping around him. As the bones touched his body it began to change, growing pale and rigid.

The Archivist looked over at him and nodded. +Heterotopic osteogenesis. You are about to join my council of advisors. As are all of you.+ The zoat pointed out the frozen faces that were being revealed between the ribs. I have been adding minds to my nebulium bank since I arrived here. It is only through huge amounts of processing power that I was able to realise how I can accelerate the destruction of Precipice.+

Lees screamed and cursed as she saw that Tukh was slipping beneath the mass of bones. ‘Let him go! I will tear you apart if you don’t stop this!’

There was a loud bang from outside the ship and the room shook so hard that the Archivist staggered against the wall. The drill sheared through a metal shelf, spraying filings and scattering rock samples across the floor. The zoat laughed.

+Do you see? The end is nigh!+ It glanced at Daedalosus. +Thankfully I am not mired in prayers and superstition. By harnessing minds I have been able to destabilise Precipice’s gravity engines. I have been able to weigh anchor.+

The Archivist wrenched the drill free and then turned back towards the ape, grabbing the weaponsmith’s mouth and squeezing it open, revealing cruel-looking canines.

+What is that?+ demanded the Archivist, pausing and sniffing the smoke that was suddenly filling the room. It muttered in annoyance and lifted its foreleg. The smoke was rising from its claw – the one that was gripping the silver object it had taken from the ape.

There was another loud bang from outside and the Archivist slammed back against the wall, scattering more junk across the room. The zoat’s claw was now hidden in a cloud of smoke. The Archivist bellowed and rounded on the ape.

+What did you put in me?+

Even if the jokaero could have replied, there would not have been time. The room was rocked by another violent tremor and then rolled over as though it had been tossed into the air.

The captives remained fixed in place by their bonds but the Archivist was hurled from its feet and crashed, face first, into the ceiling, which had now become the floor.

Daedalosus struggled to move, hanging upside down in his restraints as engine parts and weapons flew past him. A skull-splitting shriek sliced through his head as the Archivist cried out in pain. Smoke was quickly filling the room, but he could see that the zoat was injured and trapped under a mound of fused bones, struggling to free itself.

‘We’re going to burn in here!’ cried Lees, kicking wildly against the wall.

Tukh had vanished, subsumed by the bones.

Daedalosus looked at his own restraints and was surprised to see the jokaero standing in front of him and fiddling with the lock on his shackles. The ape gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement, before continuing with its work. It had a small tool gripped between its long, dextrous fingers. It looked like a piece of crystal or ice, and as the ape turned it, it folded into different shapes. Eventually, after a few failed attempts, the jokaero managed to insert the tool into the lock and Daedalosus fell from the wall. Hanging on by one arm, the ape reached out and grabbed the tech-priest, preventing him from landing as heavily as the Archivist.

After lowering Daedalosus to the floor, showing surprising strength, the ape leapt from the wall and bounded over to Lees to repeat the process.

The muscles and servos in Daedalosus’ legs struggled to work as blood and hydraulic fluid tried to force their way through his cramped limbs. He limped through the smoke and wreckage, recovering his stolen augmetics and looking for a weapon. As he rifled through the mess, he stumbled across a laspistol that looked like it might work.

There was a crash of limbs on metal behind him and he turned to see Lees, trying and failing to land punches on the ape.

‘Wait!’ he yelled, pointing his pistol at her with no idea if it would work.

‘The ape brought us here,’ cried Lees, backing away from the jokaero, her face flushed. ‘It led us into a trap.’

‘The weaponsmith was a prisoner too,’ pointed out Daedalosus. ‘The Archivist was about to remove its teeth.’

The room shook and they all staggered, trying to dodge falling debris.

‘Besides which,’ said Daedalosus, when the tremor faded, ‘the jokaero has just wounded the zoat.’

Lees scrambled across the room towards Tukh, or at least the space where he had previously been. ‘What have you done with him?’ she yelled, hammering her fists on the bones. Some of them splintered and fell away, revealing a pale figure behind. ‘Get him out!’ she cried, clawing at Tukh’s lifeless body.

The jokaero shook its head and drew its finger across its throat.

‘No!’ screamed Lees, tearing harder at the bones. ‘He was speaking. Just a few minutes ago. He was speaking!’

The ape looked at Daedalosus with an even more mournful expression than usual and shook its head. Before he could reply, another painful howl ripped through Daedalosus’ skull, causing him to reel back against the door.

+Get me out from under this thing!+ demanded the Archivist in a voice that struggled to maintain human tones, devolving into a bestial roar. Flames were leaping across overturned canisters and crates, filling the room with thick clouds of smoke.

The ape rushed past Daedalosus, removing another one of its teeth as it went. It pointed another metallic device at the trapped zoat but before it could do anything, the Archivist managed to heave the bones away and stand up.

The zoat drew a pistol that was strapped to its flank and fired. At that moment, the whole room rotated again and the zoat’s shot sizzled through the air, missed the ape and burned a channel through the wall of bones.

Lees screamed with grief and fury, and ran at the zoat. The Archivist was on its side but managed to club the woman with the butt of its pistol, sending her flipping back through the flames. The noise from outside the ship now sounded like an earthquake or a powerful storm, and the room was so full of smoke Daedalosus could not see if he was standing on the floor or the ceiling.

The Archivist howled again and crashed out through the doorway.

‘Lees!’ cried Daedalosus, rushing to her side. ‘We have to get out of here. Look at the fire.’

She shook her head furiously, still clawing at the shape in the bones. Then she howled and backed away. Some of Tukh’s ossified body had crumbled at her touch. Half his torso was missing.

‘What do I do?’ she wailed. ‘What do I do?’

Daedalosus triggered the sensorium array in his augmetic hand and dozens of needle-thin probes slid from the digits. He held them up before the remains of Tukh and shook his head.

‘He’s dead. I’m sorry, but he’s dead.’

She grabbed him, her eyes wide with panic. ‘That xenos creature said he would join our minds to his machines. That means Tukh’s mind is still in there.’ She stared at the crumbling mass of bones around Tukh’s body. ‘He’s still in there.’

‘He is dead,’ insisted Daedalosus, trying to steer her away from the body.

‘No!’ she wailed. ‘I’m not leaving him!’

Then she fell back through the smoke.

For a moment, Daedalosus thought she had fainted; then he realised the ape was holding her. It waved cheerfully at Daedalosus and showed him a bulky ring on its finger with a fine needle sticking out of it.

Before Daedalosus could say anything, the ape dragged Lees away from him, hauling her easily through the smoke and out through the doorway. Daedalosus rushed after them and emerged, coughing and spluttering, into a companionway. Smoke was spilling out into the corridor, but Daedalosus could see immediately that the ship was not xenos in origin, as he had suspected, but Imperial. It looked like a small freight hauler from one of the nearby hive worlds. The strange bone constructs in the cargo hold had clearly been added by the zoat.

There was no sign of the Archivist, so he took a moment to look around. The ship was on its side, so they were currently standing on one of the bulkheads. During the fight with the zoat, he had not had time to consider what was causing such violent tremors, but now it hit him.

‘Precipice is collapsing,’ he said, looking down at the ape. It’s happening now. This is the end.’

The jokaero looked up at Daedalosus, nodding slowly and looking for all the world as though it might weep. Then it began making a strange hand gesture.

It took Daedalosus a moment to realise that the ape was asking for more wine. He shook his head in disbelief.

The weaponsmith shrugged and lolloped cheerfully off down the companionway, carrying Lees over its shoulder. Daedalosus hurried after them, his pistol raised as he looked for a sign of the Archivist. It had been wounded, but the thing was massive and well armed.

‘We need to find the exit quick,’ he called out to the ape. ‘We need to get back to my ship.’

Then he stumbled to a halt. One of the blast doors leading off the companionway was open and he could see into a cabin. The fumes were quickly spreading throughout the whole ship, but he could see what looked like scientific equipment of alien manufacture. There were several objects scattered near an overturned table, made of the same bone material as the cage they had just escaped, and they were all covered in columns of text – intricate characters of a kind Daedalosus had never encountered before.

He hesitated at the doorway. Claxons were now braying through the ship’s emitters and its superstructure was groaning pitifully, as though the hull were about to split open, but the sight of unfamiliar technology was too intriguing for Daedalosus to ignore.

‘Wait!’ he called to the ape, before stepping into the room. He scoured the smoke for any sign of the zoat, but the room was small and he was sure the creature could not be hiding in there, so he holstered his pistol and stooped down to grab one of the objects from the floor. It was about the size of a human skull and made of similar material, but it was perfectly spherical and one half of it was covered in round, fingertip-sized swellings, similar to the runeboard on a cogitator. He let his fingers rattle over some of the keys.

Pain exploded in his chest as a spear of bone slid from the sphere and punched through his ribcage. Despite the agony, Daedalosus let out a cry, not of pain but delight. A blizzard of equations had filled his thoughts. He laughed, barely noticing that the bone spur was grinding deeper into his chest and blood was rushing down his robes.

In an instant, Daedalosus understood computations that had baffled him for decades. He saw ways to unravel technological mysteries that even the greatest minds of the priesthood had failed to solve. Then, in the jumble of digits, he saw what the zoat had referred to in the cargo hold. He saw the incredible power of Precipice’s warp engines. A theory started to form in his mind. If he reversed the process begun by the Archivist, he might be able to repel the currents of the Blackstone’s gravity well. He stared at the whirling formulae, on the cusp of grasping every detail. Then the pain in his chest doubled and he fell to the floor, blood spraying from his robes.

The ape was standing over him, clutching the bone sphere. The sharpened spike was drenched in blood and was thrashing around like it was alive. It tried to plunge into the jokaero’s chest, but the ape hurled it across the room and pointed one of its digital devices at it. There was a crackle of blue energy around the ape’s fist and the bone sphere exploded, hurling shards of bone across the room.

Daedalosus pulled his sodden robes open and saw that the spike had cut through his chest armour and almost killed him. The ape had saved his life.

He crawled across the room, being careful to avoid the other bone constructs, and examined the device that the ape had detonated, fascinated to see its exposed workings. He expected to see circuit boards or wire coils, but there was just more bone. The thing looked organic, as though it had been grown rather than designed. Most of it had been turned to dust by the ape’s digital weapon, but the sections that were still intact looked like the remnants of a nautilus shell, with a beautiful logarithmic spiral centred on a small lump of soft, fleshy tissue. He stared closer at the piece of meat. It looked like grey matter from a human brain.

The freighter shook again and started to roll back the other way, hurling the pieces of bone machine through the air.

The ape carried Lees to the lopsided doorway and waved for Daedalosus to follow. Even now, with his robes drenched and his head spinning from blood loss, Daedalosus could not entirely give up this chance to learn more about the xenos technology. He took a metal canister from his robes, and using the scalpel attachments on his augmetic hand he cut the piece of meat from the bone and dropped it in the canister and locked the seal. Then he stumbled after the weaponsmith, drawing his gamma pistol and pointing it ahead of him as he fell back out into the companionway.

The freighter rolled again but he managed to stay upright, grabbing hold of a handrail as he lurched after the ape. It had already opened the landing hatch before Daedalosus reached it, and the scene outside was even more chaotic than the one inside.

The enclosed space that had been sheltering the freighter had been ripped apart, revealing the storm-lashed void screen and the menacing, dark mass of the Blackstone. Part of the mooring spar had torn free and was whipping around in the storm, slamming tons of metal into the surrounding ships. Banks of smoke were snapping past in the wind like hosts of banshees, and there were dozens of fires. As Daedalosus watched in disbelief, vast sections of the orbital platform came loose, hurtling towards the Blackstone in a shower of sparks and ruptured plasteel.

Daedalosus staggered in the wind, struggling to stay upright as it slammed into him.

‘We have to reach my ship!’ he cried to the ape. ‘I think I can repel the Blackstone’s gravity. I think I can stabilise Precipice. But I need my diagnostic equipment.’ He flinched as a section of hull clanged past, then staggered out into the open.

The force of the storm was immense and he had to haul himself along, as though he were crossing the deck of a listing ship, grabbing onto wreckage and pieces of hull. The ape struggled after him with Lees over its shoulders, nodding its head eagerly.

They passed near the Dromeplatz and saw that the trading hall was mostly intact, but there were huge rents in its armour plating and thick trunks of smoke rising from its windows. There was no sign of any people. Daedalosus guessed that they must all be hiding in their ships or cowering in the Helmsman.

As they left the Dromeplatz behind and headed off down another mooring spar, one of the ships tried to take off. It was a slender, streamlined xenos ship, with swept-back wings. It was beautiful, in a cruel kind of way, but the storm robbed it of its usual grace. It was only twenty feet up before the wind flipped it over, sending it tumbling towards the void screen. Its thrusters kicked in just in time to blast it through the screen and it managed to straighten out, screaming away from the Blackstone and towards the heaving mass of debris that surrounded Precipice.

The ship would be crewed by inhuman monsters who had no place in the Imperium, but Daedalosus felt sorry for them somehow, making such a desperate bid for freedom. All of them faced the same dreadful odds now.

The ship was only minutes away from Precipice when the Blackstone opened fire. A miles-long stretch of the star fort lit up as its weapons batteries flashed, cutting the void open with rocket trails. The xenos ship was vaporised, scattering a cloud of embers across the stars and drifting into oblivion.

Daedalosus remembered the equations he had learned from the bone machine and nodded. ‘I can stop this,’ he said, as Precipice toppled and burned. ‘I can save us.’

He rushed on but as he approached Orbisgate, where his ship was moored, he saw that the landing platform had been torn away. Where his ship should have been, there was now a mangled knot of glowing metal where something had smashed through the mooring spar.

‘By the Omnissiah,’ he whispered. He reeled backwards, as though punched, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the loss. He had spent months on Precipice, gathering technological relics from the traders in the Dromeplatz and even braving expeditions himself to gather items of interest. He had amassed an incredible, invaluable collection. And now it was gone.

The walkway he was standing on shook and slipped down, almost throwing him onto the ruined mooring spar, but he was too dazed to do anything but cling on, shaking his head. It took him a moment to realise that the shrieking he could hear was not the sound of breaking plasteel, but the ape, trying to summon his attention. The creature was dragging Lees onto a gantry on the far side of the mooring spar and was gesticulating wildly for Daedalosus to follow.

Girders were crashing down all around Daedalosus. He knew he needed to move. But the thought of all his research, scattered to the void, had stunned him almost as effectively as the toxin the zoat had drugged him with. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered, trying to imagine how he could explain the loss of his ship if he managed to survive.

There was a flash of light, so bright he had to shield his eyes, and he thought a fire must have broken out where he was standing. But then he realised there was no heat coming from the light and it was a cool, blue colour.

He lowered his hand to see that a dome of blue energy had encompassed him. He drew his pistol and whirled around, looking for the Archivist but seeing no sign of the creature. He reached out and gingerly touched the dome. Plasma ripped harmlessly across his fingers as they passed through the light. The ape screamed again, still waving furiously for him to follow.

Daedalosus nodded. The loss of his ship was one matter. Failing to warn the rest of the Imperium about the Blackstone was another. He stepped slowly through the dome of light, feeling only a faint electric charge. It was only once he was outside the light that he saw its purpose. A large piece of fuselage had fallen from overhead and would have crushed him, had the dome not interrupted its fall. The slab of rusting metal was balanced on top of the dome, even though it must have weighed tons.

Daedalosus looked over at the ape and it held up the ring on its index finger, waving it cheerfully. Daedalosus silently reprimanded himself for letting shame distract him from his purpose. The ape was a barbaric animal, but it was showing more restraint than he was.

He climbed down from the walkway, carefully crossed the buckled mooring spar and climbed up onto the gantry that the ape was hanging from.

‘I have no equipment,’ he said, sure by this point that the ape would understand even if it could not reply. ‘My ship has gone.’

The ape nodded furiously and pointed through the forest of broken spires and air vents to another distant mooring spar.

‘Your ship?’ said Daedalosus, shaking his head. ‘You have some logic engines I could use?’

The ape ambled over to him, stood erect and gave him another of its terrifying grins.

25

‘What do we do?’ whispered Quintus as Draik strode off into the darkness. He brushed his fingers against the swelling at his wrist, trying to contact his employer. There was nothing. Not even the chorus of animal sounds that usually accompanied the words. He had struggled to hear clearly before, but never failed to even make a connection. Something had happened. Perhaps the Archivist had grown impatient and decided to come and find the Crucible itself? The idea was not a comforting one.

As most of the group followed the rogue trader, Quintus was left standing with the two ratlings, who seemed equally thrown by this new turn of events.

Raus looked anxiously at the distant oval of light. He scratched furiously at his patchy scalp. ‘We find ourselves in a tricky situation, Rein. Very tricky.’

Rein nodded, looking equally panicked. Draik and the others were looking down the slope of the plateau, planning their descent. ‘But I’m sure we can agree that the only logical course of action is to head back with Draik to–’

‘We carry on,’ said Raus. ‘We’re so close. It’s madness to go back. All the Archivist wants is for us to get him to the Crucible. He won’t care that Draik and the others have left. They were just a means to get us here safely. If we can carry on, we’ll find the device and teleport the Archivist to his goal. He’ll be delighted.’

Rein looked at him, then at the endless darkness that surrounded them. ‘Carry on alone,’ he muttered.

‘Alone,’ repeated Raus.

Quintus shook his head, watching Draik and the others. ‘I have to stay with Draik.’ He looked at the swelling at his wrist. ‘I have no choice.’

‘Maybe we should go with him,’ said Rein, drumming his fingers on the barrel of his lasgun. ‘We’ve never been anywhere down here on our own.’

Raus gripped Rein by the shoulders. ‘Remember who you are, brother. We’re soldiers. Decorated Imperial Guardsmen from a distinguished Auxilla regiment. Think of everything we’ve been through. And we have the route in our heads. How hard can it be to travel this last stretch and set up the teleporter? Remember what’s inside the Crucible. Taddeus said it’s full of holy relics. We won’t get another chance like this, brother. No other sod is going to come down here with us. Not now Precipice is on its last legs. This is it. One last chance to get something of value.’ He lowered his voice. ‘What do you think will become of us if we leave Precipice with nothing?’

Rein licked his lips. ‘Good point, Raus, good point.’ He muttered the words, though, and still looked doubtful.

‘We have to try,’ whispered Raus, still holding him. ‘This is our chance to make it, brother. Our only chance.’

Rein nodded, took a deep breath and stood as tall as he was able. ‘You’re right. We’re soldiers, dammit.’

Quintus paced back and forth, distracted by the babbling talk of the ratlings and unable to think clearly. The Blackstone was rumbling and churning all around them and Draik was about to leave. Could this be his way to avoid killing him? The more time he spent in Draik’s company, and Audus’ company, the surer Quintus was that he could not murder the rogue trader. For all of his arrogance, the man was principled and brave. Perhaps, if the rogue trader was returning to Precipice, the Archivist might not care what became of him? It only wanted him dead to clear its way to enter the Crucible.

He touched the bone at his wrist. The Archivist’s instructions had been clear: if he strayed from Draik’s side the bone implant would take over his whole body. He shivered as he remembered the pain he had felt when it grew just a fraction of an inch.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Even if you do manage to get to this Crucible, how would you get your holy relics out of here? Draik is taking his ship. How would you get back to Precipice?’

The ratlings both gave him a sly grin. ‘We have maps in our heads,’ said Raus. ‘Thanks to the Archivist, we can find our way around here even as it changes.’

‘And we know the locations of landing ships,’ said Rein. ‘Dozens of them, left empty after their crews failed to make it back.’

‘And you’re pilots, now, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ said Rein, in a tone that made it clear that they were not. ‘As good as, anyway.’

‘How hard can it be?’ said Raus with a shrug. ‘We’re talking about landing shuttles not battle cruisers. They’re idiot-proof.’

‘And we’re not even idiots,’ said Rein, giving Quintus a sage look.

Raus nodded proudly.

The ground juddered underneath them and Rein grimaced, but Raus waved a finger at him.

‘Hold your nerve, brother, we’re so close. Our friend here can flee if he likes, but we go on. Besides, if we head back to Precipice again without triggering the teleporter I’m not sure the Archivist will let us off so lightly.’

‘He didn’t really let us off lightly the first time, Raus,’ said Rein, massaging his wrist.

‘Exactly. So with or without young Quintus here, we need to finish the job.’

Rein nodded. The Blackstone had grown louder than usual over the last few minutes, grinding and clanging, so he had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘Do you remember what was guarding the Crucible, brother? Do you remember the drones? An extra pair of hands might come in useful.’

Raus frowned and licked his lips. ‘Valid point, Rein, valid point.’ He shook his head and looked up at Quintus. ‘My brother is right. If you came with us, we would be prepared to give you a small portion of the proceeds. Say twenty or–’

A deafening clang juddered through the air.

Quintus looked back in the direction of Draik and the others and cursed. The edge of the plateau had vanished, along with Draik and most of the rest of the group. The whole edifice had reconfigured itself while they had been arguing and now, rather than being at the summit of a plateau, they were on the floor of a deep crevasse. He could just make out the priest’s servo-skulls bobbing off through the gloom, and the kroot, pacing along at the rear of the group, his gun trained on the darkness.

‘I think the decision has been made for you,’ said Raus, giving Quintus a look of commiseration.

‘Wait!’ cried Quintus, sprinting towards the sheer slope that now surrounded them. Colossal shadows speared in every direction as the fortress rumbled and reconfigured itself.

There was another deafening series of booms and the floor of the crevasse started to tilt under their feet, causing Quintus to slide and stumble down a steep slope, landing heavily at the bottom and winding himself.

‘Raus?’ he managed to gasp once he had caught his breath. The ratlings were nowhere to be seen. And neither was Draik. He was in a tall, narrow channel, only as wide as his outstretched arms, and there was only a single light source – a faint red glow coming from one end of the channel.

‘Draik?’ he howled, sprinting down the channel.

A shape loomed up in front of him and Quintus cursed, raising his pistol.

‘Where are they?’ said Draik, placing a finger on the muzzle of the pistol and glaring at Quintus.

‘Who?’ gasped Quintus, trying to steady his pulse as the others came into view.

‘The ratlings,’ said Draik, staring past him into the darkness.

Quintus looked back the way he had come. The slope he climbed down had vanished, replaced by an empty chasm. The servo-skulls glided out into the void and revealed a miles-wide chasm that seemed to have no far side.

Quintus shook his head. ‘They were back that way.’

‘Raus!’ bellowed Draik, striding to the edge of the drop. ‘Rein!’

His voice echoed back at him, but there was no other reply.

‘Look,’ said Grekh, pointing his rifle upwards.

One of the servo-skulls had flown higher than the others and its lumen had revealed that the chasm had a ceiling.

‘It’s them,’ gasped Quintus as he saw the ratlings. Somehow, they were already miles away and they were upside down, running across the ceiling as though that were the floor of the chamber. They looked like a pair of mites, scuttling across the hull of a battleship.

‘Too far to hear,’ muttered Draik. ‘Isola. Have you got the flares we–’ He cut himself off with a curse.

‘We could go after them,’ said Audus, sounding doubtful as she looked down at the sheer drop and up at the distant ceiling.

Draik massaged his jaw, scowling. ‘Damn them. What do they think they can do down here on their own?’ He glanced at Quintus. ‘Do they think they can get in the Crucible by themselves and ransack the place?’

‘They didn’t tell me what they were planning,’ lied Quintus with practised ease.

Draik frowned at him. ‘They didn’t say anything?’

‘They said we’ve come too close to go back. Maybe they do think they can get in alone.’

‘Only the Anointed will enter,’ replied the priest, staring at Draik. ‘And the abhumans are well aware of that.’ He looked at the tiny disappearing shapes of the ratlings. ‘I have no idea what they hope to achieve.’

Draik watched the ratlings in silence for a moment, then shrugged. ‘There’s nothing we can do. They’ve chosen their path.’

‘Not true!’ Taddeus jabbed his mace at the darkness. ‘You can do something. You can follow your destiny. Head to the Crucible. Save the abhumans at the same time.’

Draik shook his head and turned away, heading back down the passage with Audus and Grekh at his side, leaving Quintus with the priests.

‘No!’ snarled Vorne, but she was not addressing Draik. She was glaring at the wall.

‘Vorne,’ said Taddeus, stepping towards her, but before he could grab her arm she attacked the wall with her chainsword, filling the corridor with sparks and curses as the weapon screamed against the stone.

‘I was right!’ she howled, causing everyone to back away as she lunged and hacked uselessly at the wall.

‘Vorne!’ boomed Taddeus, amplifying his voice through the vox-caster in his gorget.

She faltered and looked around in surprise, as though she had forgotten the rest of them were there. Taddeus gripped her by the arm with one hand and silenced her chainsword with the other.

‘Stay strong, Vorne. This is a momentary delay. My visions were clear. Draik will enter the heart of the Blackstone. He cannot evade his destiny.’

Vorne stared at Taddeus, panting and twitching as she lowered her chainsword and let the muzzle clang against the floor. She stepped closer to him, confusion clouding her gaze.

‘You burned my mother.’

Taddeus was about to reply with his usual bombast, and looked surprised. ‘What?’

‘On Gethsemane,’ whispered Vorne, glancing at the walls then back at Taddeus. ‘You burned her.’

Taddeus drew himself to his full height and glared at her, gripping his mace in both hands. ‘I purge the faithless, Vorne. Always. Divine retribution makes no allowances for family ties.’ He shook his head. ‘As you well know.’

She stared at him, mouthing silent phrases and shaking her head.

Taddeus frowned. ‘You are here because of your unswerving faith, Vorne. Pious Vorne. You knew what would become of your confessions on Gethsemane. You knew where your trail would lead me, but you still pointed the finger. The Emperor is in you, child. I can see Him in every blink of your eye. You knew, even then, that my visions were the truth. That they would lead me to the Anointed and that He would–’

‘He is heading away from the Crucible,’ said Vorne quietly, meeting his eye with more confidence. ‘You said you were the Anointed. Then you said Draik was the Anointed. And now he’s headed back to Precipice.’ Her eyes flashed dangerously. ‘What if you are wrong about everything?’

The other three priests glanced at each other, and Quintus wondered how Vorne thought she could get away with challenging Taddeus so openly.

Taddeus took a deep, juddering breath. ‘This is the work of the black shrines, Vorne. The air down here has been polluted by the heretics. Find the strength you showed on Gethsemane. Find your soul. Find the truth behind the lies.’

Her gaze hardened and she snatched her flamer from Taddeus’ grip. The other priests raised their weapons but Quintus could not tell if they meant to stand with her or against her. He backed away, noticing that Draik and the others were almost out of sight.

‘I saw her here, in this benighted pit,’ whispered Vorne, lowering her flamer and looking at the floor, her shoulders slumping and the rage leaving her eyes.

Taddeus nodded. ‘But she is dead, Vorne. So you know it was a lie. You did not see her.’

She said nothing.

‘You are not responsible for her fate,’ said Taddeus. ‘None of us are responsible for the misdeeds of our kin. We can only do what we know to be right and hope that we lead by example. Good fruit can fall from rotten trees.’

Vorne straightened up, rolled her shoulders and nodded. ‘Of course. Forgive me, eminence.’

‘No forgiveness needed.’ Taddeus looked round the group. ‘Heresy is a poison. It can seep through your pores. Ward yourself with faith. We are close, my children. Whatever Draik does in the meantime, I know he will eventually enter the Crucible and join his divine spirit with the fortress.’

They all muttered prayers. Then Taddeus smiled as he waved them after Draik. ‘We have all sacrificed a lot but we are so close now. So close.’

26

The deeper he looked, the more he saw. Draik could hear the others gasping for breath as they scrambled down collapsing slopes, cursing and hissing as they bashed their shins and rolled over unexpected drops, but he ran as easily as if he were on a freshly surfaced transitway. The fortress’ impenetrable darkness was gone. Rather than colourless walls and brutal angles he saw numbers. His expanding consciousness had absorbed every detail of its structure and seen logic where it had previously seen only madness. He saw the cracks before they opened at his feet and he saw for miles in every direction, discerning routes and hazards that should have been hidden.

The rest of the group quickly recognised his ability to find the easiest route and began stumbling in his wake, trying to match his steps as darkness whirled around them.

He paused and looked back the way they had come. The slopes had folded away into a forest of pyramids and towers. As the servo-skulls whirred overhead, they illuminated a landscape that looked like a city in miniature, with hundreds of slopes and blocks trailing away into the distance. Draik turned his attention to his companions. The group was thinning out fast. Just five priests now, including Taddeus and Vorne, along with Audus, Quintus, Grekh and himself.

‘Are we safe to continue without our guides?’ Taddeus looked at Draik with an odd mixture of emotions. He seemed furious and awed at the same time. ‘How will we follow the route?’

Draik nodded. ‘I can see everything.’ He gestured away from the jumbled remains of the plateau. ‘I can see a maglev chamber, not more than half a mile from here. And what’s more, I can see where it will take us.’

Taddeus stared at him and recited a line from his holy text. ‘And he shall see the face of his god.’ He shook his head. ‘You are everything that was promised. But it is in the Crucible that you will become one with the Blackstone. It is there that you will steal it from the clutches of the Great Enemy and secure it in the name of the Holy Synod. So why are you heading away from it on this foolish errand? Those scoundrels in Precipice are not worth risking anything for. Can’t you see? Half of them are criminals and the rest came here to escape their duties as Imperial citizens. They have sealed their own fate.’

‘I will not stay down here, knowing I could save them,’ replied Draik. ‘If the Imperium’s ruling classes do not stand watch over the lower orders, we become no better than the xenos or the heretic. Whatever their backgrounds, those people came to the Western Reaches to do the Emperor’s work.’

Audus raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? All of them?’

Draik waved at the surrounding darkness. ‘The Senatorum Imperialis laid claim to this site and offered legitimate salvage contracts for anyone who managed to reach Precipice. Those people are here under the aegis of the Lord High Admiral and the Fabricator General. My personal disputes with House Draik do not mean I can abdicate my responsibility for ordinary Imperial citizens.’

‘What about your responsibility to the God-Emperor,’ snarled Vorne, looming from the shadows, her eyes burning above her pitted faceplate. ‘The Blackstone is His to wield. And He has elected you as His mortal representative. Is that not a more important matter than your fealty to the Lords of Terra?’ Her head was shaking and she was gripping her flamer in both hands. She looked ready to attack.

‘What do you think will happen to us,’ replied Draik, ‘if Precipice crashes into the Blackstone? How do you imagine any of us will ever leave the Western Reaches? If Precipice falls every ship on its mooring spars falls too. We would have no way of ever leaving this system.’

Vorne stared at him and a low growl escaped from behind her mask. She was even more dangerous than Taddeus, Draik realised. She spent half her time glancing at imagined shapes in the darkness and her mood was growing more erratic by the minute. And her faith in him was not as sure as Taddeus’. He would have to tread carefully.

‘What does it matter if we leave or not,’ she hissed. ‘If you are who you say you are, the Crucible is your destiny. As it is written in the Liber Eudoxus. You cannot try to escape it, whatever excuses you make.’

Draik sighed and stepped away from her. He took out his lho-stick, lit it and took a deep drag, thinking over everything he had seen over the last hour.

‘The Blackstone is covered in black shrines,’ he said, speaking quietly, talking as much to himself as the others. ‘The ones we saw are the tip of the iceberg. The whole structure is corrupted. These tremors are not the normal changes that affect the fortress. There are so many shrines now that the Blackstone has become something else. It has been fundamentally changed. It has become some kind of portal into the warp.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘No, not a portal. More like a conduit. I’m not sure exactly what. I can see clearly but the science is beyond me. It is becoming a lens through which all the madness of the immaterium can be magnified, and then focused on our own, physical realm.’

No one moved to interrupt him as he spoke. Vorne was glaring at him. Taddeus still looked torn between fury and devotion. Audus was staring into the middle distance, her expression grim, and Grekh was crouched low to the ground, chewing on something and tapping the floor with his claws. The three missionaries were standing guard, watching over the darkness with their flamers raised. Quintus was watching him and frowning.

‘There’s something more important going on here than just a few cultists defacing a xenos wreck,’ he continued. ‘Something major is happening out here in the Western Reaches, something on a much bigger scale than the admiralty realise.’ He jabbed his lho-stick at the darkness, scattering embers. ‘That’s why I feel this maddening urgency. The need to save Precipice goes beyond simply saving the lives of Imperial citizens. If Precipice falls, we have no way of warning the rest of the galaxy.’ He shook his head, still struggling to process what had happened. ‘And my eyepiece is showing me how to avert the catastrophe. It is speaking to me, speaking through me somehow.’

He reached up and touched the controls. As the lens rotated, he felt the metal turn in his brain. There was no pain, nor even any discomfort, but more images flooded his mind. Draik saw the magos again, even though he was conscious. He was having a waking dream. The scene superimposed itself across Vorne and the others, so that Draik was seeing two places at once. He saw the tech-priest again, clearer this time. He was in a kind of laboratorium on board a ship. But it did not look like a Mechanicus vessel. There was none of the religious paraphernalia he would expect and the furniture was of an odd design – clean and angular and made of a smooth ceramic material. He could see xenos designs on the bulkheads and workbenches. Then he saw the equation again, flickering in the air between the priest’s hands. It was some kind of hololithic projector, but more advanced than any he had seen before. The images were perfectly clear, with no trace of interference or static.

The priest looked up and, as his hood fell back, Draik realised that he had seen the man before. He knew him. They had met on a previous expedition. He struggled to place the name for a moment, then it came to him: Daedalosus, a decent man, of senior rank, sent by the Martian priesthood to study the Blackstone. There were other men in the chamber with Daedalosus; no, not men, Draik realised, apes – some of the jokaero creatures that had recently landed on Precipice. He saw one of them clearer than the others. It was tapping at the dataslate and drinking thirstily from a metal cup.

Draik drew back from the scene, as though he were a spirit, and passed out through the hull of the xenos ship. The sensation of flight was dizzying and exhilarating, and he would have fallen if Grekh had not rushed to steady him. As the eyepiece showed him the exterior of the vessel he was able to pinpoint the location, recognising the mooring spar despite the terrible storm that was tearing across Precipice. As the storm grew in ferocity, he stumbled again. Then he realised the tremors he could feel were actually on the Blackstone.

Draik took his hand away from the eyepiece and looked at Grekh and the others. The floor was shaking violently and pieces of debris were clattering past them, but they were all staring at him as though he were a vision.

He looked around and pointed his lho-stick to the far side of a rectangular chamber. ‘The maglev we need is that way.’

As he strode away from them, he had the surprising realisation that he was enjoying himself. He could feel the Blackstone growing inside him, spreading through the eyepiece. It should have been horrific but it was not. As peculiar, inhuman thoughts mingled with his normal brain functions, he felt an exhilarating vitality spread through his muscles. It reminded him of the times he had been injected with combat stimms, but the effect was far more profound and powerful. He felt as though he could have leapt into the air and glided across the chamber. It took all his strength to keep walking calmly across the floor rather than bounding like an excited youth. He could feel the others staring at him in silence and understood why. He was changing.

He was becoming.

He led them on, following the route with confidence. Even as walls and ceilings rotated all around him, Draik could see every step he needed to take to reach the maglev chamber to the Stygian Aperture. They crossed over a long, narrow bridge spanning a lightless chasm larger than any they had passed previously.

As he walked, Draik stared harder through the eyepiece. Now that he was embracing the visions, he no longer felt the pains that had plagued him when they first arrived. His mind felt clear and quick, but, he realised, not entirely his own. Peculiar thoughts occurred to him that seemed to originate somewhere beyond his own consciousness. As the architecture moved around him, Draik saw answers in the shapes. It began to feel like language, as though the fortress were teaching him a new form of grammar. He could not read the messages, yet he sensed that he was close. Soon he would understand every detail of its workings. The essence of the words was already taking shape. He could see that everyone on Precipice, everyone on the Blackstone, was simply a point of energy – each one identical, despite the various physical forms they were clad in. They were all flames from the same fire: the fire of the fortress.

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the strange, distracting thoughts. The people of Precipice were Imperial citizens, not pieces of a cosmic puzzle. And he was duty-bound to save them.

‘Quickly,’ he snapped, irritated, even though no one in the group was lagging behind.

They reached the far side of the bridge and began to see the red glow of shrines across the top of the next slope.

‘Draik?’ muttered Audus, waving her gun at the lights.

He shook his head and led them down a raised, curving path that skirted the slope and headed away from the lights. The path led into a circular, domed chamber and the servo-skulls drifted up high into the gloom, scattering light across the black, faceted surfaces. A loud humming sound rumbled up through the floor, as though the chamber were built over a generator, and the air was shimmering with flickers of electricity.

Draik hesitated at the threshold. He was about to ask Isola to scan the room with the arrays on her cogitator, but caught himself in time. He shook his head, marching on into the hall.

The light from the servo-skulls only pierced a fraction of the darkness, but as they drifted back and forth, Draik saw that there were four doorways, facing each other across the circular chamber. They followed a familiar, hexagonal design that Draik had seen on many of the maglevs he had used. Taddeus shook his head as he struggled to match Draik’s pace.

‘Closed. All of them.’

Vorne eyed Draik suspiciously. ‘Do you have a plan? You can’t use a maglev chamber once it has closed.’

Draik nodded, studying the four doors. His eyepiece had shown him, before he even entered the chamber, which one led back to the Vanguard. But he was still fascinated by one of the others. It led back to the location Taddeus had been trying to reach – the Crucible. Now that his vision was so clear, Draik saw that the priests had been right about the significance of the place. Every route through the Blackstone ultimately pointed to the Crucible. It was like the hub of a wheel, with thousands of chambers and corridors fanning out from it.

‘What do you see?’ asked Grekh, peering at the door. ‘Is that our route home?’

Draik shook his head.

Grekh nodded. ‘The Crucible. The Blackstone wants you to find it. We are all cogs in a great machine, designed to join you to her.’

Taddeus stomped over, his face flushed and his eyes glittering. ‘Did the animal say something about the Crucible? Have you come to your senses?’

‘I’m taking the Vanguard back to Precipice,’ replied Draik. ‘I will not let it fall.’ He strode off across the chamber, ignoring the sparks that clicked around the heels of his boots and the buckles of his dress coat.

As the servo-skulls glided back towards him, their lumens revealed that the chamber was not entirely empty. There was a circle of figures at its centre – nine of them, each as tall as a man and formed of the same black substrate as the rest of the fortress. They were motionless.

‘Drones?’ asked Audus, swinging her autogun up onto her hip. Since Isola died, there had been no sign of Audus’ usual sardonic sneer. She looked wary and tense as she reached Draik’s side. ‘They look like they’re guarding something.’

Draik nodded and waved his hand to his left. ‘Spread out, don’t give them an easy target.’ As Taddeus and the other missionaries fanned out in one direction, with Grekh, Quintus and Audus heading in the other, Draik raised his splinter pistol and continued approaching the circle of motionless figures. Audus had made a reasonable assumption, but he sensed that there was something else happening here. Drones did not wait patiently to attack. They fell on explorers in a frenzy, attacking like mechanised arachnids. And these figures looked more humanoid in shape.

Draik was still thirty feet from the figures when he recognised them. Even though they were formed of gleaming black polygons, their faces were unmistakable.

‘It’s us,’ he muttered, lowering his pistol in surprise.

The nine figures were statues, and they were perfect likenesses of the people edging towards them. Draik, Audus, Grekh, Quintus, Taddeus, Vorne and the other three missionaries were all recreated down to the very last detail.

Draik felt as though he were approaching a dark mirror as he drew close to his statue. He had been captured with his rapier drawn, raised in an en garde position. The sculptor clearly had an understanding of fencing, because the pose was perfectly portrayed. As Draik studied it, he was thrown back through the years to his youth on Terra. He had seen his father and his tutors demonstrate this position hundreds of times. Seeing it here was a surreal experience.

The others approached their statues with the same mixture of caution and fascination. Audus laughed, a sound Draik had not heard since Isola died.

‘Gods,’ she said. ‘Look at my face. I look like I’ve been kicked by a grox.’

Draik looked over at her statue. It had captured her essence perfectly. Her face was battered and crooked, and her stubbly scalp networked with old scars, but she looked strong and determined. There was a nobility to her that he had noticed when he first rescued her from bounty hunters, months earlier.

He nodded. ‘You look like a survivor.’

She patted him on the back. ‘Let’s not speak too soon.’

Draik lit his lho-stick and walked around the statues with Audus, studying them as he smoked. Taddeus was tapping his statue gently with the head of his power mace and Vorne was glaring at hers, whispering curses at it. The other zealots had backed away, mouthing prayers, clearly unnerved. Quintus was staring at his likeness in horror.

When Draik reached the statue of Grekh he frowned.

Audus laughed again. ‘Unlucky!’ she said. ‘Yours was obviously done in a rush. I’d send it back if I were you.’

The statue of Grekh was a malformed, indistinct lump. It was just possible to recognise, from its tall, wiry build and the suggestion of a beak and quills, but the details were obscured by dozens of half-formed faces. It was like a blurred pict-capture of a crowd scene, rendered in three dimensions.

Audus looked up at the shadows and yelled. ‘Give him his money back. This is shoddy work.’

Her words echoed strangely around the hall, magnified by the acoustics. They grew louder as they repeated, heading back through the single open door towards the distant crimson lights.

Draik scowled at her.

‘I think I understand,’ said the kroot, still studying his statue. He checked the priests were out of earshot, then looked at Draik and Audus. ‘My expeditions to the fortress have allowed me to encounter more species than ever before.’

‘Encounter?’ said Audus, raising her eyebrow.

Grekh nodded, oblivious to the jibe. ‘And I have absorbed more cultural ideas than at any previous point of my life. The insights I have gained from all these in-dwelling spirits have altered me beyond recognition. I may look normal on the outside…’

Audus gave Draik a sideways glance.

‘But on the inside, I have evolved into something new,’ continued Grekh. ‘Something that the fortress cannot quite see, or understand.’

Draik nodded. He had spent years studying xenos species but Grekh was unique in his ability to digest the knowledge and traits of other creatures. He was about to ask the kroot a question, when the red light coming through the doorway flared brighter, followed by a thudding that sounded like dozens of armoured feet.

Draik glared at Audus again and waved the rest of the group on. ‘Keep moving. The chambers are all rife with heretics.’ He extinguished his lho-stick and headed towards the door opposite.

There was a clattering din as all the statues sprang into life, following him.

Everyone turned to face them, weapons raised, but as soon as Draik stopped, the statues also halted.

‘This place is so damned weird,’ hissed Audus, backing away with her gun still gripped in her hands, pointed at the statues.

Draik took another few steps and the crystalline figures followed, glinting and flashing in the light from the servo-skulls. They moved with a mechanical awkwardness, like clockwork automata, but they were fast and had drawn weapons, just like their living counterparts.

‘This is nothing to do with the heretics,’ said Taddeus, peering at them.

Vorne frowned. ‘But if they’re part of the fortress, like the drones, why are they just watching us?’

Draik nodded. ‘They could have attacked us as soon as we entered.’ He took another few steps and, again, the statues kept pace with him, like a well-drilled unit of Guardsmen.

The crimson light flared brighter in the doorway and the noise of running feet grew louder.

‘We have to go, whatever they are,’ he said, heading off towards the door to the maglev. He broke into a jog, trying to ignore the statues as they hurried after him. As they picked up speed he noticed that there were sparks flashing under the soles of their feet. Either they were the source of the energy he had noticed when he entered the hall, or they were powered by it.

He was still fifty feet from the doorway when a loud, bright banging filled the hall.

‘Draik!’ cried Audus, rolling across the floor and coming back up with her gun in her hands.

There was no need for the warning. The air was alive with gunfire and shards of black ore exploded from the walls. Draik dropped to one knee and aimed his pistol at the approaching shapes.

‘Heretics,’ he muttered, firing a barrage of poison splinters into the oncoming horde.

There must have been over a hundred of them, all as grotesquely deformed as the ones he saw earlier, but more heavily armed and better equipped. Several of them were carrying hefty, high-calibre weapons, and instead of regular flak armour they were encased from head to toe in moulded plates of armaplas, similar to that which Draik had seen on Militarum Tempestus storm troopers. Rather than weakening this armour, their mutations had bolstered it, forming crustacean-like plates of shell over the carapace, giving the heretics such a bulky, solid presence that they almost resembled warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. Draik cursed as his splinter rounds failed to pierce their thick armour.

Shots blazed through the darkness as the Traitor Guardsmen rushed into the hall, guns barking.

‘Purify them!’ howled Vorne, striding back towards them as though she had hundreds of zealots at her back. Fire gushed from her flamer, lighting up her brutal iron mask and washing over the front row of heretics.

They raced through the flames, still firing, oblivious to the heat.

Vorne howled in outrage, triggered the weapon’s chainsword and slammed it into the first heretic to reach her. The man fell back in a shower of blood and shredded armour, and Vorne wrenched the blade free and staggered away, steadying herself for another attack.

Taddeus and the other priests rushed to help her while Audus, Grekh and the valet fired from a distance.

Draik sighed, holstered his pistol and drew his rapier, triggering its powercell as he strolled back towards the fight. ‘We do not have time for this,’ he muttered.

He had almost reached the fighting when shadows rose up and attacked the heretics. It took him a moment to realise what was happening. The front row of heretics were toppling as black shapes sliced through them, dismembering limbs and splitting neck armour.

It was the statues. They had followed him, and now rushed at the heretics.

Vorne and the other priests backed away, stunned, as the statues slaughtered the Traitor Guardsmen. They did not fire weapons or use blades; they simply sliced through the heretics with their limbs, swinging them like swords – swords powerful enough to glide through bulky armour plate. The heretics foundered, unable to grasp what was happening as the darkness seemed to rip into them.

Audus and Grekh ceased fire, for fear of hindering their new allies, and the whole group watched in disbelief as the heretics were driven back by the ferocity of the statues’ attack. A few of the Guardsmen managed to land shots on the fast-moving shapes, but the rounds vanished into the figures with no effect. After less than a minute, most of the heretics had been cut down to the ground and were either dead or howling in agony. The few that could, bolted back the way they had come, sprinting out into the crimson light with a few final, useless shots.

Then the statues turned on the wounded. Ignoring their screams for mercy, they began dismembering the Guardsmen with another flurry of razor-edged limbs. They looked more like butchers than warriors, cutting and sawing in silence until the screams finally halted.

When the killing was over, they marched back over towards Draik and formed a circle around him, becoming motionless once more.

Draik stared at them. There was no sign that they were anything other than statues. There was no trace of blood on them and they looked like they were incapable of movement. There was a faint shimmer where their feet touched the floor, but nothing else.

Shouts came from outside, and the sound of more running feet.

Audus smiled. ‘Let’s see that again, just one more time. It felt nice to be on a winning side for a change.’

Draik shook his head. ‘We have to reach Precipice quickly.’ He hesitated, though, looking at the statues, fascinated by them. Never had he felt so clearly that the fortress was willing him to succeed. He touched one, running his fingers over the frosty surface. Then he turned and strode towards the maglev chamber, waving for the others to follow.

The door was a featureless black slab, but when Draik triggered his eyepiece, it revealed a complex pattern of diagrams networking its surface – hundreds of geometric shapes that spiralled around a central circle. He placed his palm in the centre of the circle and moved it over some of the shapes, sensing intuitively the right path to trace.

The door hummed and slid down, revealing a small circular chamber beyond.

Draik waved the others inside. ‘We will be back at the Vanguard in moments,’ he said, without a trace of hesitation.

27

‘Hey! Jabboc!’

Raus could hear Rein laughing, a few feet above, but he had no idea what he was talking about. The ratlings were scaling a wall that appeared to have no bottom or top. They had been hauling themselves up its surface for nearly two hours and Raus’ muscles were burning from the exertion. He was starting to wonder if Quintus might have had the right idea.

‘What’s a Jabboc?’ grunted Raus, slamming his grappling hook into the wall and heaving himself another couple of feet. They had strapped their lumens to their heads but there was no other source of light and the slender beams only managed to reach a dozen feet ahead of them. It was like crawling through a void.

Raus flinched as something rushed towards his face. Then he realised it was Rein’s hand, reaching back for him. He grabbed the proffered hand and, as his brother dragged him higher, he saw that Rein had climbed into one of the triangular holes that peppered the wall. As he clambered over a ledge and into the aperture, he saw a severed arm and then, a few feet further into the corridor, the rest of a corpse. It was one of Taddeus’ missionaries.

‘Remember?’ said Rein, smiling cheerfully. ‘Jabboc! Friendly chap. Used to share his rations.’

Raus raised an eyebrow. ‘Share?’

Rein nodded eagerly. ‘I could sense that he didn’t mind me taking them.’

Raus walked over to the corpse. ‘Wait a minute, Rein,’ he said, aiming his lumen further down the passageway. ‘This could be useful. Look, there are more bodies down there. More priests.’

‘Useful?’ Rein looked unconvinced. ‘Hungry or not, there are limits to what I will–’

‘I’m not talking about cannibalism!’ Raus kicked the nearest body. ‘Do you remember when these men died, Rein? They weren’t part of this expedition. They were part of the last one. They came with us last time.’

Rein nodded but his expression remained blank.

‘Think!’ Raus waved him over, pointing out the other bodies. ‘Where were we when these priests died?’

Rein shook his head, his mouth hanging open.

‘We were on the final approach to the Crucible,’ said Raus. ‘Or, at least, that’s what Taddeus said.’ He waved at the floor. It was formed of black octagonal slabs, bevelled along the edges like paving stones. ‘This passageway has moved but I recognise the floor. And the bodies are still here. If we follow this to its end, we should see those buildings where we had to leave the bone machine. And if we do, we’re right next to the Crucible.’

Rein’s eyebrows lifted in dawning recognition. Then he shrugged and tried to look unsurprised. ‘Why do you think I dragged you in here, brother? That’s exactly what I was thinking.’ He started picking at the corpse’s robes. ‘But we may as well check for food.’

Raus pulled his brother away from the body. ‘Don’t be a fool. You saw what happened to the last food we were eating. Don’t eat anything down here, Rein. I don’t trust this place.’

Rein stared at him. ‘Don’t eat anything?’

Raus patted him on the back. ‘We’re close, now, brother. Steel yourself for just a little longer. We’ll eat like kings once the Archivist opens that vault and we get our hands on some relics.’

Rein nodded sadly and they carried on down the passageway. The further they went, the more certain Raus was that they were on the right track. He had an internal compass, provided by the Archivist before their first attempt to reach the Crucible, but it was not always easy to follow, offering vague hunches rather than clear directions. But combined with the familiar design of the passageway, and the corpses, the map in Raus’ head became unmistakeable.

‘Do you think it will stay in our heads forever?’ he muttered. ‘The map, I mean.’

Rein shook his head. ‘I was hoping the zoat would remove it once we’re done.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t like the idea of that grub staying in my ear canal.’

Raus put his finger in his ear but felt only the usual wax boulders. He fished one out and chewed it pensively. ‘I hope it hasn’t gone… you know… deeper.’

They looked at each other with matching expressions of disgust.

Raus tapped the spur of bone jutting from his wrist. ‘Have you tried speaking to the zoat?’

Rein nodded. ‘No answer.’

‘Same here.’ Raus halted and stared at Rein. ‘What if it’s wounded, or dead? Half of Precipice wants its head on a plate. What if that’s why we’re not able to contact it?’

Rein shrugged. ‘At least we won’t have to have any more worms stuffed down our ears.’

‘Yes, but think. If the zoat’s dead, what’s the use in us triggering the bone machine when we find it? The zoat won’t come and that means we can’t get in the Crucible. The Archivist was adamant that it was the only one who could get into the vault. No zoat, no relics. Do you see?’ He looked around at the oppressive blackness. ‘And no route home.’

Rein licked his lips. ‘I’m sure it will be fine. We’re so deep here that the messages can’t get through. The bone machine will be different. The Archivist said it was powerful, able to teleport anything from anywhere.’

Raus nodded, but as he carried on down the passageway he could not shake the feeling of dread. He touched the bone at his wrist and tried to send his thoughts back to their employer, but again there was no response.

They followed the trail of bodies for nearly half a mile, and gradually the passageway started to climb upwards. The layout was still familiar and still meshed perfectly with the map in Raus’ head, so he began to feel more optimistic again. Finally, they emerged into another of the Blackstone’s bafflingly huge chambers. It was impossible to see its walls with the feeble light of their lumens but, as they stepped out onto a ledge, the booms and groans of the fortress echoed through the emptiness, reverberating through what sounded like a miles-wide abyss.

Turning slowly at the centre of the hall, about half a mile up, was a mirrored cube. It was floating in the void like a planetary body, suspended by nothing and hazed by ice clouds. It looked like mirrored chrome, polished to a dazzling sheen. With no landmarks as reference, it was impossible to scale the thing. It might have been as small as a dice or as big as a macro transport.

‘There it is,’ whispered Raus, his breath pluming in the darkness. ‘The Crucible.’

‘So damned pretty,’ muttered Rein, stepping further out onto the ledge.

Raus nodded. ‘If it looks that pretty on the outside, think what it will be like inside.’ He looked around and spotted steps leading down into the darkness. Like most of the steps on the Blackstone, they were far too large for the likes of a ratling to walk down, so he dropped to his knees and began lowering himself carefully down each one.

‘We came this way, for definite,’ he said, after they had climbed down a dozen steps. ‘I remember this damned cold.’

The lower they got, the icier it grew. Their fatigues started to feel like plates of armour and their breath froze in their beards. It took another couple of hours to reach the floor of the chamber and then the lumens on their helmets began to pick out more familiar details. There was a colonnade of featureless pillars that they had travelled down with Taddeus and Vorne. Then Raus saw something new.

It looked like someone had made camp – temporary buildings had been erected, like tents made of glinting metal shards. As they got closer, he realised they were actually piles of junk, carefully placed to form pyramids. They looked like shrines, or burial mounds, and some of the people who had made them were still around, their corpses preserved by the low temperatures. There were dozens of the blue-grey cadavers scattered throughout the pyramids, some huddled together, frozen in a last embrace as they failed to keep each other warm. Others had their hands raised in front of their faces as though, even in death, they could not abide the light of the cube drifting overhead. They were all grotesquely thin, little more than skeletons in clothes.

‘Why would people build shrines down here?’ muttered Rein, following Raus. ‘How did they expect to survive?’ He shook his head. ‘Starvation. What a way to go.’

‘Look at them,’ replied Raus. ‘They were well equipped. And rich. Money makes you stupid.’

The dead explorers were human but they did not look like Imperial citizens. They wore elegant, tight-fitting enviro-suits, as gleaming and white as their tents. Even in death, it was clear that these people had been far healthier than the wretches who toiled in hives and void ships or marched in the endless legions of the Astra Militarum. They were tall and had long, straight backs and limbs. Their enviro-suits had obviously managed to work despite the Blackstone’s wishes, as they were all wearing clear, spherical helmets. They were also carrying weapons that looked as though they had been manufactured yesterday, rather than the battered, unreliable relic Raus was carrying.

He picked one of the guns up. An elegant, streamlined pistol that looked more like a piece of art than a weapon. He pointed it at one of the bodies and pulled the trigger.

There was no recoil or muzzle flash, but the corpse jolted and then dissolved, leaving just a vague outline of pale ash. The ratlings looked at each other, their eyes wide.

‘Damn,’ whispered Rein, looking around at all the abandoned weapons. ‘I wish we had a way to haul them all back with us. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Raus stared at the pistol, then stuffed it in his belt and shook his head. ‘Remember what Taddeus said. Once we get in the Crucible, there will be relics dating back to the earliest days of mankind. Arms dealers are one thing, but zealots will pay any price for the fingernail of a dead saint. I say we leave these for now and grab some on the way back if we don’t get our hands on the relics.’

Rein narrowed his eyes and tapped his nose. ‘Mother always said you were the clever one.’

‘Clever dick, I believe is how she put it, but I took it as a compliment.’

Rein laughed. He grabbed one of the pistols for himself and looked up at the slowly turning cube overhead. ‘Then we just need to find this damned bone machine.’

Raus nodded at a row of octagonal columns. ‘That’s definitely the crotch of the matter, Rein. I know where I threw it before we legged it. It’s the tenth column along.’

‘Why ten?’

Raus held up his hands, fingers splayed. ‘Easy maths, brother.’

Rein tapped his nose again and followed as Raus strode away from the dead bodies, making for the colonnade. They had not gone far from the campsite when a sound echoed through the darkness. It sounded like dozens of knives being dragged against a whetstone.

Raus recognised the sound instantly. He whirled around, pointing his lasgun back towards the campsite. ‘Drone.’

They were only about thirty feet from the mounds but the shapes had already been swallowed by the gloom, leaving only a vague suggestion of glinting spires.

‘Can’t see it,’ said Rein, crouching low and looking down his gun for a target. He looked over at Raus, shaking his head. ‘We’re on our own down here, brother. How can we deal with drones on our own?’

Raus knew his brother was right, but he knew how Rein would react if he showed any fear. ‘All right, Rein,’ he snapped, ‘don’t soil yourself.’ He looked over at the columns. ‘Running is what we can do.’ He slapped his brother on the back and bolted towards the colonnade. ‘No one does that better than us.’

Rein sprinted after him but neither of them could resist looking back over their shoulders and it was only a few seconds before a tall, anvil-headed shape scuttled out of the darkness. The drone was as black as the walls but it had a lumen mounted on its triangular head, and as its tripod-legs scuttled across the floor, the light fixed on the two ratlings.

‘There!’ Raus managed to gasp, pointing his gun at one of the columns, only a few feet away. There were more dead priests lying around it, preserved by the cold. ‘I’m sure this is the place I hurled the bone machine.’

‘Raus!’ cried Rein as a drone rushed at them from the colonnade, approaching from the opposite direction to the first one.

Rein fired his sniper rifle with his usual impressive accuracy, shattering the light on its pintle-mounted head. The drone veered and Raus fired too, blasting one of its legs away and sending it crashing across the floor.

Another jittered from the colonnade, making for Rein. Raus hurled a grenade that clanged onto the side of its head, mag-locked in place. Rein dived clear as the drone exploded, flinging lethal shards.

Raus vaulted through the still-smoking wreckage and raced to the tenth column, spotting the burned-out groundcar he had hurled the Archivist’s device under. Rein dropped into a crouch behind him and fired a flurry of shots, blinding the other drone and sending it scuttling off in a different direction. Raus rolled under the groundcar and grinned.

‘It’s here, Rein! The damned thing is here!’

The bone machine was no bigger than a man’s fist, but as Raus grabbed it, he remembered how strangely heavy it was. It felt as though it were made of a material far denser than metal. It was the weight that had forced him to drop it last time they were attacked here.

He rolled out from under the truck and examined the device for signs of damage or tampering. As he expected, it was just as he’d left it. No one else would be crazy enough to come looking for things down here. It looked like an ammonite fossil – an ear-shaped coil of bone, frosty and glittering in his gauntleted palm.

The groundcar exploded as a drone ripped through its chassis, lunging at Raus. He fell back, firing with one hand and trying to hang onto the heavy device with his other. The shots ricocheted uselessly off the drone’s plating. It lashed out with a flat, serrated limb. He ducked and the blade sliced into the column. Gears squealed inside the drone as it struggled to wrench its limb free. Then its head exploded as Rein slammed another grenade onto it.

Raus looked around and cursed. ‘I bet there’s more of them out there.’

Rein nodded.

Raus slapped him on the back, heading into the centre of the hall. ‘Come on! They won’t be able to follow us up to the Crucible!’

The pair of them ran as fast as they could, but Raus was struggling under the weight of the bone machine and Rein was firing as he ran, cursing as more drones swarmed into view.

‘They really don’t like us being down here!’ he cried. ‘We’re not going to make it.’

‘You’re my brother,’ cried Raus. ‘And no brother of mine is going to die down here.’ He unholstered the pistol he had taken from the campsite and began firing furiously at the drones.

The ratlings laughed in delight at the result. The drones disintegrated just as easily as the corpse.

‘Now what?’ panted Rein, as they reached the centre of the hall and looked up at the mirrored cube.

Raus grinned at him as he took a grappling hook launcher from his back. ‘Pray, brother, that we have enough rope to hang ourselves.’

Rein frowned and shook his head, but Raus, not really understanding his own joke, simply struck a hero pose and fired the grappling hook. It blasted up through the darkness and the ratlings craned their necks, trying to see if it had reached the cube.

After a few seconds, when the hook failed to hurtle back towards them, they grinned at each other. Rein wrapped his arms around his brother and gripped him tight as Raus triggered the winch in his launcher. They hurtled upwards with such force that they both cried out in pain as their shoulders jolted.

The winch slowed as they reached the underside of the cube and then juddered to a halt with the ratlings dangling ten feet beneath their goal. The surface was so reflective that they could see their own frantic faces looking back at them.

‘Now what?’ said Rein, struggling to catch his breath.

28

Audus shook her head. ‘You want me to land on that?’

Precipice was almost entirely hidden by the storm of debris whirling round it. Several mooring spars had torn loose, flailing like broken arms, and the whole platform was listing badly, spilling ships and gantries as it leant inexorably closer to the Blackstone.

‘The whole thing’s about to go,’ she said, yanking the controls to one side as a fuel tank hurtled towards them. The Vanguard banked hard to the left and the tank screamed past, causing no damage, but there were more objects rushing at them.

‘Fifteen degrees starboard,’ said Draik with the nonchalant air of a man leading a ceremonial flotilla.

Audus responded without question, hauling the Vanguard back in the other direction. A second fuel canister, larger than the first, rushed past.

‘That would have finished us,’ muttered Audus. She glanced back at Draik. ‘How did you know it was…?’ She nodded and looked back at the viewport, steering the ship past another hulk of torn metal. ‘Of course. The fortress told you.’

Draik did not answer. His head was full of visions, poured directly into his mind from his eyepiece. It no longer felt like an alien presence in his skull. It was as much a part of him as his real eye. He was being possessed. He knew, on some level, that it was wrong, but it felt like this was how he would finally escape his manic sense of urgency.

‘I can guide you in,’ he said. ‘Make for the Dromeplatz.’

Even through the blizzard of junk, the space station’s largest trading hall was visible, not far from the blazing gravity engine at Precipice’s core. A few ships were still moored to its anchorage points but plenty more had either been ripped free or attempted to escape.

As the Vanguard looped through the scrap, getting closer to the Dromeplatz, a ship hurtled past, dodging through the wreckage and heading away from the Blackstone. It had barely passed them when it foundered and began to slip back towards the fortress, caught in its gravity well. Its thrusters blazed and it started to pull away again.

‘Give it some,’ muttered Audus. ‘You can do it.’

Vivid light sizzled from one of the Blackstone’s apertures and engulfed the ship. The hull pulsed with energy, then the light died and the ship had simply ceased to exist.

Audus grimaced. ‘My mistake.’

‘This is madness,’ hissed Taddeus, leaning forwards against his harness, his face and robes drenched with sweat. ‘Even if we make it to the orbital platform we will only be in time to watch it collapse.’

Vorne nodded furiously, glaring at Draik. ‘Meanwhile, the cultists are free to move on the Crucible and claim it as their own.’ Her voice broke with emotion. ‘You are betraying the trust that has been placed in you.’

Draik ignored the priests and took a drag from his lho-stick, watching Audus steer the Vanguard skilfully between wrecks. As ever, he was amazed by the grace she dragged from his ship. It was as though she were born to fly it. Every soul, he thought, however misshapen, belongs somewhere. We all have a place.

He glanced at Taddeus. ‘Sir, if it is my destiny to reach the heart of the Blackstone, then I will reach it, whatever I do on Precipice, but I refuse to let these people die without a fight.’ He kept his voice level, but it required effort. ‘I would think, as a representative of the Holy Synod, that you might feel the same. The Emperor guards His flock, does He not? Isn’t that the very essence of His tenets and crusades? The preservation of humanity? We fight for the Emperor because He fights for us.’ He could see from the priest’s blank stare that his words were wasted, but he finished the thought anyway, talking to the whirling mess outside. ‘Lives matter. All of them.’

Audus glanced up from the flight controls. ‘Damn you, Former-Captain Draik, you almost make be believe humanity still has some worth.’

Draik shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. If humanity has no worth, why fight for it?’

‘All the worst crimes I have seen,’ she replied, ‘were perpetrated by men.’

Draik nodded. ‘So we strive to do better. And we find people of character to lead and inspire. And we judge ourselves on more than just our failures. A race cannot be defined by its lowest ebb. I see decency in us.’ He looked at Audus. ‘I see decency in you.’

She laughed, turning back to the controls and wrenching the Vanguard into another roll, narrowly avoiding a drifting hull. Draik waved his lho-stick, as though signalling to a waiter, and Audus rolled the ship back again, dodging another lump of wreckage.

Audus whistled tunelessly as she banked and dived, weaving the Vanguard between broken spars and clouds of wreckage until at last they reached the hulking mass of the Dromeplatz. Like the rest of Precipice, it was hard to make out. The station’s gravity engine was blazing so brightly that it looked like a star, and it was directly beneath the Dromeplatz, so the whole structure seemed aflame.

‘There,’ said Draik, pointing his lho-stick. ‘The anchorage point at the apex of the Dromeplatz. It looks stable.’

Audus nodded and turned the ship, struggling to grip the control yoke as turbulence battered the hull. Debris was hitting the Vanguard with such force that it sounded as though it might come apart. There was a scream of reverse thrusters as the ship slowed and approached the docking point. All around the command bridge, faceless servitors worked at gilt-framed cogitators, groaning and shuffling in their alcoves as they triggered the ship’s landing protocols.

The ship was shaking so violently that it took Draik a moment to realise that Audus had killed the engines. They were docked.

He unfastened his harness, stood and almost immediately fell onto the deck. He gripped the back of Audus’ seat and then staggered towards the door, grabbing the backs of other chairs as he went. The others followed – the five remaining priests, Audus, Grekh and the valet.

As they staggered down the companionway towards the exit, Draik gave Quintus a nod. ‘You survived an expedition onto the Blackstone. That makes you a member of a very select group.’

Quintus looked grey and drawn, shaken by the final approach to the Dromeplatz, but he managed a weak smile.

The doors opened and the landing ramp clanged out into the storm. It was a hellish scene. The light of the station’s embattled engines had drenched everything in a painfully harsh glare and the air was acrid with the smell of smoke, fuel and recycling chemicals. Draik shook his head as soon as he stepped onto the ramp and then he re-entered the ship, ushering the others back as he coughed and spluttered.

‘Rebreathers,’ he gasped, waving at a cabinet near the doors. ‘The air is dreadful.’

They did as ordered and strapped masks to their faces, apart from Vorne, who simply fastened her existing mask tighter and adjusted the seals.

Draik stepped back out onto the ramp. His normal eye was momentarily blinded by the glare so he triggered his eyepiece, but rather than showing him the anchorage point he was standing on, it flooded his head with images of the tech-priest, Daedalosus. The magos was no longer in a xenos vessel. He was clinging to a wind-lashed gantry, gripping the rusty metal with one hand and a measuring device in the other. He was leaning out from the gantry, hanging over a drop, pointing the device at a wall of bright light. His Mechanicus robes were billowing around him like a crimson cloud, caught in a ferocious crosswind. The jokaero were with him, climbing over buckled struts and trailing electrical cables behind them. They were attaching the cables to the gantry and connecting them to boxes.

‘The gravity engine,’ said Draik, staring at the struggling figure of the priest.

‘What?’ cried Audus, barely audible over the storm.

‘We have to reach the gravity engines,’ he replied, shutting off the eyepiece and addressing the whole group. ‘That’s where we can save Precipice.’

Taddeus squinted into the station’s burning core. ‘You’re not talking sense. The whole station is unstable, the engines most of all.’ He pointed his mace at the light. ‘Look at it, Draik. We’ll be burned to cinders if we get close.’

‘Not possible,’ replied Draik, looking around for an access hatch so he could leave the platform. ‘I’m destined to reach the heart of the Blackstone, remember, not to burn on Precipice.’

Taddeus’ face turned purple and he smashed his mace into a girder, buckling it. Draik finally spotted a hatch and, ignoring Taddeus, strode over to it, grabbing the wheel handle and turning it. The hatch opened with a rusty scream and he dropped onto a ladder, clambering quickly down to the next platform and then the next, heading for the sea of fumes that had once been the Dromeplatz. Grekh followed closely behind, then Audus and Quintus. Trailing at the rear came the glowering, shaven-headed priests.

The scaffolding that caged the Dromeplatz was shaking and toppling as Draik climbed down it. He had to pause several times as pieces broke away under his feet or slipped from his grip but, finally, with a gut-wrenching leap, he dropped down onto the floor of the trading auditorium.

Figures were reeling through the smoke, pilots and data-traders, their expressions grim as they stumbled past, clinging to each other like drunks as they fought through the storm. There were dozens of fires, and the stalls had all been dismantled or destroyed, leaving a jumble of half-assembled engines and weapon parts. An aeldari lander had crashed through one of the walls and its slender, graceful hull had been ripped open, spilling its contents like the belly of a gutted fish. The alien crew were clambering from the wreckage, drenched in blood and choking on fumes.

Beneath the howling of the storm, Draik could hear the low, ominous grinding of the orbital platform coming apart. It was listing badly and the void screen was blinking in and out of view, giving juddering glimpses of the Blackstone’s dreadful mass. There was a trail of wreckage tumbling down from Precipice towards the Blackstone and Draik guessed they had minutes, at most, before the whole station fell from orbit. If his vision had misled him, if the eyepiece had lied, he was about to die.

He had a brief moment of clarity, realising how close he was to an ignominious death. He drew his rapier, triggered the powercell and stared into its blue-white blade. ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,’ he whispered, reciting a scrap of ancient poetry. The words reminded him who he was and what he was fighting for. Whatever lay ahead, he would face it with dignity. He strode on through the madness, cutting down whirling debris like he was performing exercises at his old fencing academy.

‘There is an access hatch to the maintenance platform,’ said Grekh, battling through the wind to his side, using his rifle to bat wreckage away. ‘It runs underneath the station. We can drop down onto it and reach the gravity engines.’

Draik had no idea that Precipice had a lower level, but he nodded.

The kroot shouldered on through the storm, hauling himself over the mounds of wreckage with one claw and shielding his face with the other. As they crossed the Dromeplatz, Draik saw more people trying to reach their ships, but no one looked his way. They were too focused on the pressing matter of survival.

Grekh led him under a crooked old derrick and used the butt of his rifle to smash the handle off an access hatch. A column of light lanced up into the smoke as Grekh wrenched the hatch open. The low, grinding sound grew even louder.

‘Down there?’ said Audus, stumbling under the derrick, arm in arm with Quintus. ‘Are you sure?’

Draik looked at Grekh, who nodded in reply.

Audus shook her head. ‘When you said I would be safe under your aegis, did you mean safe like dead people are safe?’

Draik was about to give her a curt answer but an image of Isola flashed through his mind and the words stalled on his lips. Audus noticed his pained expression.

‘Sorry.’

He nodded, and once the priests had managed to reach the derrick, he gestured for Grekh to continue. They climbed down into the light, feeling blindly for the rungs of the ladder until their eyes adjusted enough to make out a few vague shapes. They descended another ladder and reached a narrow ledge that appeared to be hanging over an enslaved sun.

Blistering heat crashed over them. Precipice’s engine was suspended from the underside of the station and it was a sphere of seething plasma, circled by a corona of scaffolds, transformers, gurneys, gas turbines and cooling systems. Draik had never studied the engine closely before. Even for a jury-rigged lump of scrap like Precipice, it seemed a shambolic affair.

‘This is what’s been keeping us in orbit?’ yelled Audus as she reached his side. ‘You’re kidding me. It looks like it was built by a lunatic. A whole army of lunatics. Why is it just hung out here on the outside of the station? Aren’t engines usually kept inside?’

Even as they watched, whole arches of the framework were breaking free and the ball of light at its core was spitting arcs of plasma, like miniature solar flares. Draik tried again to use his augmetic eye to filter out the light, but again he saw the priest, holding his measuring device out into an inferno. Then Draik laughed as he realised the eyepiece was showing him reality. Magos Daedalosus was clinging to the circular gantry they were looking out onto. The tech-priest was just a hundred feet away from where Draik was standing, hanging precariously over the ball of plasma. The ape-like jokaero were scrambling around him, swinging easily across the metalwork, fixing cables and hammering pieces of machinery into place.

‘Daedalosus!’ cried Draik, cupping his hand to his mouth, but it was no use. This close to the gravity engine, the noise was deafening. It was like standing next to a perpetual roll of thunder.

‘I have to reach him,’ said Draik, looking for a way to drop down onto the circular frame.

‘Wait,’ said Audus. ‘Are you sure?’ She nodded at the jungle of gantries and scaffolding around the station’s core. ‘What about waiting until he climbs back off that deathtrap? Might that be a sensible plan?’

Draik shook his head, squinting at the heat-hazed platform. ‘This is it, Isola…’ He winced and corrected himself. ‘This is it, Audus. This is where I can help him.’ He was having to shout to make himself heard, which meant the rest of the group heard him as they climbed out onto the ledge. ‘However that magos intends to stop Precipice falling has something to do with this gravity engine.’

‘You think he’s found a way to boost it?’ said Audus, watching the jokaero swing back and forth across the spars and struts.

‘Perhaps,’ replied Draik, looking for a way down onto the juddering structure. There was so much heat slamming into him that his good eye was streaming and his skin felt like it was blistering. ‘Whatever it is, he needs the information I have in my head. The runes Isola transcribed from that shrine down on the Blackstone.’

‘Why?’ cried Quintus, on his knees and hanging desperately to the ledge.

Draik did not answer. He had spotted a vent pipe that looked relatively stable and stepped out to grab it.

‘Draik!’ cried Taddeus, rushing to stop him, but Draik had already begun climbing down.

Almost immediately, his weight wrenched the pipe free, and with a brittle scream it swung out over the plasma core, breaking away from its brackets with a series of explosive pops.

‘Damn,’ muttered Draik as breath-stealing heat washed over him.

29

Raus shook his head. The cube was much smaller than he had expected. The skewed geometry of the Blackstone, or maybe just the absence of light, had made the thing appear massive, but from here Raus could see that it was no more than ten feet wide. It was also devoid of any handles, hinges or any other signs of an opening.

He shrugged and crawled up the last stretch of rope until he was within arm’s reach of the surface. He was about to reach out, but then hesitated. The air around the thing was humming with power. He could feel it tickling the hairs on the back of his hand.

‘We can’t go back down,’ said Rein in his ear, still clinging to his back. ‘It’s this or nothing.’

Raus nodded. ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’ He climbed a little higher, reached out and touched the surface.

The instant his hand pressed against the mirrored wall of the cube, he fell. Not back down the rope towards the drones gathered below, but up, towards the cube. In that moment of contact, gravity flipped and he turned head over heel and slammed onto the Crucible. His breath exploded from his lungs as he hit the surface. He was lying on his back, looking up at the drones. They were now waiting on a distant ceiling, looking down at him.

Rein crashed down beside him and leapt to his feet with a cry of surprise. Raus stood too, but felt so disoriented he almost fell over. He was now standing on the cube he had previously been looking up at, its surface so polished that he could see the ground he climbed up from reflected under his feet.

‘My head hurts,’ he muttered.

‘Are we up or down?’ replied Rein.

Raus looked around and cursed. ‘Wait a minute! Now it’s huge again!’ The side of the cube they were standing on stretched away in every direction, hundreds of feet wide.

‘Or have we shrunk?’ said Rein, patting himself down, as though that would give him the answer.

Raus pawed at his forehead and groaned. ‘This place. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’ He took out the bone machine and looked at it.

‘Can you remember how to trigger it?’ asked Rein, leaning close and peering at the spiral of bone.

Raus nodded, tracing a finger over the machine. It looked more like a ram’s horn than a piece of technology, but he found a depression, just where the Archivist had said it would be.

‘Cross your fingers,’ he said. ‘If the Archivist is dead, we’ve wasted a lot of time and energy.’ He looked at the reflection under his feet, at the drones. ‘And we’ve got no way home.’

‘I’m crossing everything I can,’ said Rein.

Raus pressed the button with his thumb and heard a distinct click. ‘Ha!’ he said, as the thing began to quiver and rattle. ‘It still works.’

In a few seconds, the machine was shaking so violently he could no longer hold it. He placed in on the ground and stepped away, waving Rein back. The spirals on the bone machine’s surface juddered into life and began rotating like the blades of a turbine. Dust billowed around it and the smell of burning filled Raus’ nostrils.

Rein stepped closer. ‘How does it teleport anything? What do we have to do?’

‘The Archivist just said get it to the Crucible.’ Raus shrugged. ‘I didn’t think we needed to do anything else with it.’

Rein leant over the whirring object. ‘Maybe we just need to–’

He did not manage to finish the sentence. As his hand neared the bone machine, a tendril lashed out and fastened onto his wrist. Rein howled and tried to pull away, but the tendril jolted tight and refused to come loose.

‘It’s locked onto me!’ cried Rein, his voice taut. ‘It’s connected to the implant in my wrist. What’s it doing, Raus?’

Raus grabbed his brother’s wrist and shook his head. Rein was right. The limb from the bone machine had merged seamlessly with the wrist implant. The bone machine turned faster, rattling on the ground like a spinning top. As it rotated, it began to glow at the centre, lighting Rein’s panicked face from underneath.

‘I can’t move it!’ gasped Rein, rocking back on his heels and trying to wrench the bone machine from the surface of the cube.

The thing stayed where it was, turning faster.

‘My arm!’ cried Rein.

The bone at his wrist was spreading up his arm, turning the skin into the same dusty white substance as the machine.

Rein looked at Raus, his eyes wide. ‘Cut it off! It’s changing me! Cut it off!’

‘But…’ Raus shook his head. ‘But what if this is how it works? Maybe it has to be connected to someone to summon the zoat?’

‘Damn you!’ cried Rein. ‘I don’t care how it works! It’s turning me into a bloody bone!’

Raus nodded, grabbed his combat knife from his belt and dragged it across the tendril. The blade’s serrated edged ground uselessly against the surface, and when Raus took the knife away there was not even so much as a scratch.

‘Get it off!’ cried Rein. ‘I can feel it! Inside me!’

Raus tried once more, leaning all his weight into it. ‘It’s like iron,’ he muttered as he took the knife away again.

The machine suddenly stopped spinning and the noise ceased.

‘Maybe it’s done?’ whispered Rein, breathing fast.

With a sound like rustling leaves, more tendrils sprouted from the machine. They sliced through the mirrored floor, burrowing like worms as they broke the surface, creating a fan of cracks. As the forest of limbs wriggled deeper into the floor, the machine burned brighter and brighter.

‘I don’t think it’s done,’ said Raus.

30

Draik snatched a grappling gun from his belt and fired blindly at where he hoped the circular scaffold was. The hook clanged against something and he leapt, leaving the vent pipe just as it vanished into the plasma, flashed white and melted.

The heat was immense. Draik’s eye was streaming and he could feel his skin blistering beneath his smouldering coat. As he swung through the scorching fumes, Draik could still hear Taddeus bellowing his name, despite the din of the gravity engines below him.

He saw shapes rush towards him and reached out with one hand just in time to prevent his face crashing into the scaffold. He gripped the metal and this time it held his weight. He climbed up through the smoke and emerged onto a piece of blackened fuselage that had been welded into the framework around the plasma core. He hauled himself to his feet and tried to bat away the cloud of embers that was circling him. The heat was so intense his head was spinning, so he stood still for a moment, taking deep, lung-scorching breaths.

‘Captain Draik?’ cried Daedalosus, now only ten feet away. The tech-priest’s face was mostly hidden behind a bulky rebreather and dozens of augmetic modifications, but Draik could see one of his eyes and it was wide with shock. ‘What are you doing here?’

The tech-priest was hanging over the core at what appeared to be an insanely precarious angle, but then Draik noticed the powerful cybernetic arm attached to his spine. Its plasteel grip was locked tightly around one of the girders and it had spewed a knot of mechadendrite cables that had also wrapped around the metal struts.

‘I have to speak to you!’ cried Draik, edging slowly across the platform he was perched on.

‘Wait!’ cried Daedalosus, holding up a warning hand to the jokaero that were rushing towards Draik, gripping glinting objects in their fists. ‘I know this man. He means me no harm.’

The apes halted a few feet from Draik and gazed at him. They showed no sign of being impressed by the apocalyptic scenes taking place all around them. They studied him with cool disinterest, sprawling on the girders in relaxed poses.

‘Help him over!’ cried Daedalosus.

A few jokaero swung down to Draik’s platform and extended their long, shaggy arms, indicating that he should take their hands.

‘They work for you?’ called Draik, eyeing the creatures suspiciously. They were still holding the small silver devices that he presumed were weapons.

‘What?’ cried Daedalosus, trying to lean closer to him.

‘Do they work for you?’ yelled Draik, his voice cracking as he struggled to make himself heard over the din.

Daedalosus shook his head. ‘No, but they understand what I am trying to achieve.’

Draik let the apes take his hand and lead him across the scaffolds and gantries. They were only about half his height, but they were surprisingly strong, lifting him easily over the drops until he reached Daedalosus. The tech-priest held out a hand.

‘Well met,’ said Draik, gripping his hand and shaking it.

‘Glad to see you still alive, captain,’ said the magos.

Draik nodded. ‘You too, magos.’

‘It is most fortunate that we have run into each other,’ said Daedalosus.

‘It was not by chance, magos. I came here with the express intention of finding you.’

‘Really?’ Daedalosus shook his head. ‘How did you track me here?’

‘Hard to explain, magos, quickly at least.’ He looked at the metal blocks the jokaero had attached to the rattling metalwork. ‘What are you trying to achieve out here? Do you have a plan to save Precipice?’

‘I have formulated a hypothesis, yes.’ Daedalosus sounded hesitant. ‘The idea came to me from an unexpected source.’ He tapped the diagnostic tool he was holding. ‘But the calculations I have made in the last hour appear to support my theory. This is no ordinary gravity engine, Captain Draik.’ He looked down at the shimmering inferno beneath his feet. ‘Precipice has been built around something quite spectacular. The core does not employ fuel or thrusters. It is an extraordinary piece of work. Unlike anything I have encountered before. The product of a visionary mind. From what I can discern, it is an etheric equilibrium valve, designed to create an area of warp-entangled space around Precipice. I have never heard of such a thing being achieved before.’ He looked back at Draik. ‘You have been out here longer than me. Do you have any idea who built the original orbital platform, before the docking spars were added? Who was here at the beginning?’

Draik shook his head. ‘I have heard rumours, but all contradictory. Some say it was built by one of your brethren – that an explorator fleet was the first to arrive out here. But I have also heard that Precipice was begun by aliens of a kind unknown to Imperial xenologists.’

Daedalosus nodded and began to baffle Draik with a more detailed explanation of his theory.

Draik nodded politely, only grasping a fraction of the tech-priest’s meaning.

‘Forgive me, magos,’ he said finally, holding up his hands. ‘Can you explain in layman’s terms?’

Daedalosus looked surprised. Then he shrugged. ‘These incredible gravity engines have been damaged, in a deliberate act of vandalism, and they are no longer repelling us from the Blackstone. This, combined with the fury of the geomagnetic storm, means Precipice is about to go the way of all the wreckage you can see falling down to the Blackstone. The void screen is failing. We are about to be obliterated, Captain Draik. But a few hours ago, I stumbled across a way to not only undo the damage, but triple the power of this peculiar engine. If my theory holds up, I can revive the void shields, thus avoiding any more storm damage, and I can prevent us crashing down into the Blackstone. I have already stabilised the core. Precipice would have died an hour ago if we had not fixed these thermal governors in place.’

He frowned and shook his head.

‘But I am missing something. I have not been able to complete my work. My calculations do not quite mesh. I thought I understood the nature of the Blackstone’s gravitational well, but I have missed something.’

The scaffolding shook as another piece of Precipice broke free and tumbled towards the Blackstone. The ball of energy beneath them flashed and blinked like a guttering candle, and the whole station tilted a few degrees, hurling more ships from the moorings.

Draik would have fallen to his death, but one of the apes was still gripping him by the arm.

‘Magos,’ said Draik, once he had steadied himself. ‘I cannot easily explain how, but I saw you struggling with this problem. That is why I came back to find you.’ He took out Isola’s battered cogitator and triggered the power, showing the screen to Daedalosus. ‘My attaché recorded these runes. They were produced by one of the Chaos shrines down on the Blackstone. Could they be the missing piece of your puzzle?’

Daedalosus squinted at the display, shaking his head. ‘No. That is not at all relevant.’ He made some adjustments to his diagnostic device, moving its callipers and turning the dial on its casing. ‘No. I’m sorry, Captain Draik.’ He peered into the viewfinder of his machine. ‘I see no connection between those runes and my–’

The tech-priest stumbled and fell as the platform vanished from under his feet. A whole stretch of the scaffold had simply disappeared.

Draik would have fallen too, if the jokaero had not still been gripping him. The ape hauled him back onto another platform. Daedalosus used the servo-arm in his back to swing up onto another crossbeam and looked around in confusion.

‘Did it fall?’ he cried, looking down towards where the platform had been.

‘It vanished,’ replied Draik, looking suspiciously at the apes who were sprawled all around him, still looking unimpressed by the destruction that surrounded them.

Draik was about to say more when the floor beneath him vanished again. He fell with a sickening lurch, but again the ape dragged him to safety. As he scrambled for footing he caught sight of movement further down the ring of scaffolding. There was a man crawling up towards them. No, not a man, he realised; it was too big and powerfully built. It was a xenos creature.

‘Magos!’ he cried, drawing his splinter pistol and pointing it at the approaching shape. ‘Do you recognise that creature? Is it part of your entourage?’

Daedalosus leant out from his perch to look down through the jumble of spars and deck plates. Then he whipped out a gamma pistol and fired. A line of electrical charge simmered from the weapon, lashing against the scaffold, throwing up a storm of sparks.

When the beam died, there was no sign of the alien.

‘What is it?’ cried Draik. A large section of bulkhead had disintegrated but he could see no sign of a falling corpse.

Daedalosus kept his gun raised, peering through its sight. ‘The Archivist. Watch yourself, captain.’

Draik’s lip curled into a snarl. ‘The Archivist? Still alive?’

Daedalosus nodded and fired again, blasting through another section of the scaffold and sending more wreckage hurtling towards the Blackstone. Draik’s rage was magnified by embarrassment. The zoat was a homicidal killer, bent on killing anyone in its way, but on a previous expedition it had made of fool of Draik – convincing him, along with Daedalosus and several others, that it was an ally.

He glowered through the fumes, determined to get a shot at the treacherous creature.

One of the jokaero screamed as another section of scaffold fell away, ripping away some of the cables they had fastened to the gantries. Immediately, the ball of energy at the centre of the scaffold flashed brighter and began to judder, spewing lines of plasma into the void. Precipice’s groans grew louder, becoming the unmistakeable sound of tearing metal.

‘No!’ cried Daedalosus, staggering as though he had been hit. ‘The thermal governors!’

Draik caught another glimpse of movement down below. He could recognise the Archivist’s brutal, reptilian face, even hidden behind a rebreather. He fired but the creature was too fast. The splinter rounds clanged off a metal strut.

The apes howled again, looping and swinging across the scaffold as another section fell away, tearing more cables free. The sphere of light vanished completely for a moment and the whole of Precipice dropped, then the core blazed back into life with a shriek, burning savage red.

The frame around it shook and swayed, spitting metal in every direction as the whole edifice started to collapse.

Sensing they were seconds from death, Draik shrugged off the jokaero and leapt, making for one of the scaffold’s support struts. He caught the strut and used it like an acrobat on a bar, swinging and loosing the metal, sending himself flying onto another gantry.

The metal behind him vanished and he caught a glimpse of the zoat pointing a gun in his direction. He dived again, moments before the gantry vanished, and grabbed hold of one of the severed cables, using it to swing straight at the shocked Archivist. The zoat staggered backwards as Draik hurtled towards it, firing his splinter pistol. The creature was wearing a mechanical gauntlet on one of its forelimbs and used it like a shield, deflecting Draik’s rounds.

Draik collided with the dazed creature and they rolled across splintering metal, punching and kicking as they crashed onto another gantry. The zoat managed to stand faster than Draik and clubbed him with the gauntlet. The side of Draik’s head erupted in pain but he managed to roll clear as the zoat fired.

The shot hit the gantry and made it disappear, causing both of them to fall onto the next one.

They both landed heavily and lay there for a moment, gasping and struggling to rise. All around them the scaffold around Precipice’s engine was coming apart.

Draik was too stunned to attack the zoat as he watched the warp node at its centre blink and die.

‘What have you done?’ he gasped, as Precipice upended itself and began sliding towards the surface of the Blackstone.

Dozens more ships tore free as the station fell, along with the whole of the Dromeplatz, which ripped away in a single, flaming piece. People flew screaming into the void and explosions blossomed along the remaining mooring spars.

The Archivist lay where it was and started to laugh.

‘You’ve killed yourself too!’ cried Draik as Precipice fell faster.

The zoat continued laughing as bone sprouted from its gauntlet, spreading over its body like pale vines, then knotting together to form a gnarled cocoon. Draik fired and his splinter rounds punched into the cocoon, shattering it in a cloud of dust.

When the dust cleared, the cocoon was empty. The zoat was gone.

Draik threw his head back and howled, grabbing his eyepiece and trying to wrench it from his skull. ‘You lied!’

Precipice drowned out his rage. There was an ear-splitting scream as it turned and finally fell, hurtling towards the surface of the Blackstone Fortress.

31

‘So much has been lost,’ said the Emperor as she surveyed her army, ‘that there are no words now to describe it.’

Hundreds of Guardsmen were gathered beneath her throne, their bodies crooked with disease, their eyes bright with faith. They lined the star-shaped pit they had carved. The floor was entirely gone, leaving just the pink, heaving mass they had summoned into being. The Emperor saw what they could not. Shapes in the flesh. The army that would march at their side. The army that would bring her victory.

‘But today,’ she continued, ‘within a matter of hours, I will begin the work of reforging the entire Imperium of Man. You have come from every corner of this sector.’ She lifted her voice with the power of her mind, letting it shake the hidden recesses of the Blackstone. ‘You fought for leaders who did not deserve you. You performed deeds that were hateful and wrong. And you have endured sickness that transformed you.’

She leant forwards in her seat, feeling her skin strain. She and the throne were one, no longer distinct from each other. Living bone had fused with dead. She could no longer walk, but there was no need. Others would walk for her. She could see through their eyes now, and feel through their fingers.

‘You worked tirelessly in this pit. And now,’ she cried, raising her staff, ‘now the end is upon us. The final battle has come!’

The soldiers cheered. It was a strange sound. Not all of them still had working throats or vocal cords and their cries sounded more like the braying of beasts or the lowing of cattle. Those that were mute raised their guns or stamped their boots. It was a deranged cacophony, but the Emperor basked in it as if it were the ringing of trumpets.

‘Our foes will be weak and in disarray,’ she continued. ‘They will present little threat, but I mean to take no chances. Your work at the pit has been painful but it means I can guarantee your victory.’

Her soldiers fell quiet and eyed the lake of flesh, glancing at each other with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

‘Behold!’ she cried, hammering her staff on the ground. ‘The weapon we have made!’

The strip-lumens on the walls blinked and some of them died as a peculiar sound filled the hall. Thousands of voices sighed at once. The chorus swelled and grew, becoming a roar of whispers.

The soldiers looked around, peering into the darkness, trying to see who was approaching. Then some of them cried out and pointed at the lake of flesh. It was boiling and separating, forming distinct shapes. The hissing grew louder, building to a crescendo, and then died.

With a hiccupping giggle, one of the shapes rose from the lake. It was a shocking sight. It had dozens of limbs, none of which were recognisably an arm or leg. And its face, which was stretched across its distended belly, consisted only of a wide, tooth-crowded mouth. It was naked and its skin was the same angry colour as the lake. It dragged itself up, as though emerging from mud, and scuttled towards the edge of the lake, moving in lurches and gambols but with surprising speed.

The mutant bounded from the meat and landed on the shattered remnants of the chamber floor. It circled, twitching and spider-like, then rushed at the nearest Guardsman, its stomach hinging as its mouth stretched wide. The soldiers cried out and raised their guns but, before the mutant could reach its target, the Emperor brought it to heel, easily crushing its will.

‘They do not live!’ she cried, seeing the panic in her men’s eyes. ‘They are fragments of the warp that I will use as a weapon.’

There was a drum roll of slaps and pops as more mutants rose from the meat. No two were the same. They were a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, linked only by their abhorrence. Within seconds, there were hundreds of them ambling and lurching towards the lake’s edge. The soldiers started backing away to make room, but the Emperor waved her staff.

‘Let our crusade begin!’

With a thought, she dragged shafts of light from the floor, creating a crimson avenue that led towards one of the chamber’s hundred-foot-tall doors. Sergeant Falso seized the moment just as she had instructed him to and ordered the first units forward, leading them with a semblance of discipline, despite the cumbrous growths that covered their bodies.

As the first blocks advanced, other sergeants ordered their men back into line and advanced in ranks, following Falso’s lead. The blocks of troops marched down the avenue, past the now abandoned shrines, and the warp spawn followed, snaking, hopping and fluttering after them, trailing clouds of flies.

As the army left the hall, the Emperor’s attention wandered. She was seeing so many things at once now that it was hard to distinguish the present from the past. Her head had grown so large that the back of the throne had to support it, cradling its fluid mass with a broad, scallop-shaped loop of bone. But the physical mass of her head was nothing in comparison to her burgeoning consciousness.

She saw beyond the walls of the chamber, through the dark leagues of the fortress, past frozen corpses and xenos landers that had lain abandoned for countless centuries, their technology so ancient as to be unrecognisable. She saw her rivals, gathering their armies, just as she was. She saw the silver-winged demigod, Amphyrion, surrounded by legions of bird-headed warriors, each clad in mirrored armour and nursing unholy fire. She saw the hulking warlord, Obsidius Mallex, clad in black and gold and marshalling ranks of huge, heretic Space Marines. She saw Kel-Bahar, lounging on a litter of human skin while androgynous, inhuman waifs pirouetted around him, twirling their sacrificial blades. She saw all the heretics, traitors and false prophets who believed they were about to possess the Blackstone Fortress.

All of them were too late. Only she, with her unbounded visionary powers, had seen where the final battle would take place. As they squabbled for dominance she cast her gaze to the northernmost point of the fortress, where a blazing comet was hurtling towards its surface. Precipice smashed against the Blackstone in a blaze of light but, as only she had foreseen, it did not explode in the impact. A sphere of dazzling energy spilled from its heart as it tore through the outer levels, preserving the dangerous souls within.

The Emperor’s throne subsumed a little more of her body as she lent her vision to Falso, guiding him towards Precipice and readying him for the slaughter.

32

‘A miracle.’

The voice fished Draik from the darkness and turned him to face the light. Light was all he could see, at first, then shapes began to emerge – indistinct faces, moving in quick jerks, flitting in and out of view.

‘As it was written,’ said the voice, and Draik recognised Taddeus’ deep, righteous tone.

‘As it was written,’ echoed Vorne.

He tried to move, to sit up, but gentle hands pressed him back down.

‘Stay still,’ said Audus. He could not make out her face, but it was definitely her. ‘You took another blow to the head. It wasn’t Grekh this time, but it was still pretty bad. Probably best to rest for minute.’

Draik lay back down and gradually his vision started to clear. He was still on the gantry circling the plasma core and he was surrounded by people. Audus and Quintus and Grekh, the priests, Daedalosus and the jokaero were all looking down at him. For a moment, he took this calmly, as though it were a perfectly reasonable turn of events. Then he remembered that they should all be dead.

‘We’re not moving,’ he croaked, looking around. Precipice was static again. The brutal tremors were gone. There was no wreckage hurtling through the air and the groaning sound had been silenced. In fact, it was almost quiet. The fires that littered the station seemed almost calming compared to the maelstrom that had been whipping through it before.

Daedalosus crouched at his side, augmetics whirring and rattling under his hood as he focused on Draik. ‘You were right,’ he said, speaking so calmly that he might have been discussing an intriguing logic puzzle. ‘The numerals on your cogitator are relevant.’ He glanced at the nearest of the jokaero. ‘It took our friends here to point out the obvious. Your numbers were not the answer to my question, they told me the question I should be asking. They accurately described the gravitational waves emanating from the fortress. I was attempting to measure the wrong kind of angular momentum. Once I recalibrated my resonant mass antenna to the frequencies you provided, I was able to create an infinity loop.’ He nodded to the ball of light burning below them. ‘And stabilise the gravity engine.’

Draik managed to sit, waving Audus back. His head was spinning wildly but he could see that Precipice was not.

‘So you repelled the gravity well? And kept us in orbit?’

‘No…’ The tech-priest hesitated and looked at Audus.

‘We fell, Draik,’ she said, her gaze wavering.

He looked past the group gathered around him and saw that the stars had vanished. Beyond Precipice’s buckled landing spars there was only a void. He peered into the darkness. ‘We’re on the Blackstone?’ As soon as he said it, he noticed sounds beyond the crackle of the fires – the distant, subterranean rumbles of the fortress. The ball of plasma beneath him was too hot to admit the fortress’ chill, but he could taste the Blackstone on the air. ‘How are we alive? The impact…’

‘A miracle,’ said Taddeus, looming over the rest of the group, leaning on the handle of his mace. The anger was gone from his eyes, leaving only wild adoration. ‘The miracle that was foretold by your prophet, Corval, and described in the Liber Eudoxus. You preserved us, Janus. Through the fire and the fall, you preserved us.’ He lowered his head. ‘I doubted you, but you were right. You had to come back here to fulfil your vision. Only now can you finish your journey.’

‘A miracle?’ muttered Draik. ‘Precipice has fallen. We have been buried alive.’

Audus nodded, her expression grim, and Quintus gripped his head, massaging his scalp, looking like he might scream.

‘Thanks to you, Draik, I was able to redirect the etheric waves to the void screen,’ said Daedalosus. ‘Precipice’s warp-entanglement node is incredibly powerful. I was able to shield us as we hit the fortress. I could not be sure it would work, but the warp energy enabled us to sidestep the material realm for a moment. For a fraction of time we passed into the immaterium. It was like a brief warp jump. Very brief, in fact, but enough to pass us through the surface of the fortress intact. You saved our lives, Captain Draik.’

The tech-priest was clearly impressed but Draik wondered if it had been worth his while. They had survived a fall to be interred in an eternal grave. He tried to stand and Grekh rushed forwards to help him up.

Draik leant against the kroot for a moment, then managed to stand by himself. He took out his lho-stick to light it and frowned as he saw that it was bent out of shape.

‘Quintus,’ he muttered, casting it aside and reaching out to his valet.

Quintus stared at him in disbelief. Then he rummaged in his jacket, found another lho-stick and handed it to Draik. They all watched in silence as Draik smoked, swaying slightly as he studied the ball of energy blazing beneath the gantry.

‘We still have an engine,’ he said, looking at Daedalosus. ‘Is there no way of launching Precipice?’ He knew it was an absurd suggestion, but he could not bear the idea of simply accepting defeat. ‘Could we fly out of here, somehow?’

Audus laughed, but Daedalosus answered in the same reasonable tones he always employed.

‘It is not a thruster, Captain Draik. Thanks to you, I was able to stabilise it, which is why we survived the fall, but no, Precipice cannot simply fly to safety.’

Draik nodded, taking another drag on his lho-stick, thinking over everything Daedalosus had said. He was sure the Blackstone had kept him alive, and that it had helped him save the people of Precipice. Why do that, only to let them die now? At the memory of his visions he triggered his eyepiece. There was grit in the mechanism and it growled angrily before managing to focus.

A vision hit him with such force he stumbled and would have fallen if Grekh had not held him. He was suddenly deep in the Blackstone, up on the Red Stair, surveying the lake of meat. It was boiling and churning as legions of misshapen creatures rose from its surface. It was not the mutants that troubled him most, though; it was the figure watching over them.

Seated at the top of a tower of flesh, on a throne of ribs and femurs, was a terrible regent. It must once have been human, and Draik could see shreds of a Militarum uniform, but from the legs up her body had been transformed into a gelatinous sac, like the head of a cephalopod, trailing tentacle-like growths that tumbled and writhed across the throne. It towered over the creatures pouring from the lake, thirty or forty feet tall, and right in the centre of its head, dwarfed by its monstrous bulk, was a pair of human eyes. As Draik met the monster’s gaze, he felt a flicker of recognition. They had met before. It was the officer he had shot when crossing the bridge with the ratlings.

‘It’s you,’ he muttered, with a mixture of fury and excitement. This must be the face that had been haunting him. This was what the Blackstone needed him to do. His urgency stemmed from the fact that this thing still lived. His heart raced as he realised he finally understood what he had to do to be rid of the mania that was gripping him.

‘Draik?’ said Grekh.

Draik snapped the eyepiece off and shook his head. Why did the Blackstone need him to remove that particular horror? It was only one of countless, nightmarish creatures that infested the fortress. What was so important about it?

He was dragged him from his reverie by the booming recoil of heavy weapons.

‘We’re under attack,’ said Grekh. ‘Already.’

Draik backed away from the kroot and found that he was strong enough to stand. ‘Most probably drones,’ he said, dusting down his uniform and picking rubble from his moustache. ‘The fortress senses even the smallest foreign body. The arrival of Precipice will definitely have triggered its defence mechanisms.’

‘We’ll be butchered,’ said Quintus, looking round the group.

‘No one butchers a Draik. Magos, how many people would you say are still alive on Precipice? How many survived the fall?’

Daedalosus shrugged and rummaged beneath his robes, taking out an ornate silver sphere that looked like an incense burner. He flipped the case open and held it aloft, squinting at notches running down its side. It shimmered with static charge and a ring turned around its circumference. He frowned, shook the thing and tried again. He shook his head.

‘The close proximity of the gravity engine is distorting my readings. The survivors definitely number in the many hundreds, but I think there may be many more. Possibly several thousand spread across the whole station.’

Draik nodded. ‘Several thousand.’ He looked at Quintus. ‘And these are all people who survived every kind of hell to reach this place. The very reason I stayed out here on Precipice was that I have never seen such hardy, resilient, ingenious folk.’ He waved his lho-stick. ‘Listen to those guns. That is not the sound of people being butchered. It is the sound of people fighting back.’

He looked around at the buckled scaffolding. ‘We need to get up there, quickly.’ He turned to Grekh. ‘You seem to know every corner of this station. Show me the quickest route to the mooring platforms.’

Grekh nodded and began clambering up through the wreckage. Draik followed, and after a brief pause to exchange confused expressions, so did everyone else.

The first few minutes were painfully slow. They stumbled across unsafe ledges and platforms as the guns continued to boom, joined now by the sound of all the other weapons batteries that warded the station. The whine of lasers sliced through the air, mixed with the crackle of autoguns and stubbers.

Then Grekh found a way onto a ventilation stack that led all the way up to the station’s upper level. Its maintenance ladder was still attached, so the group were able to pick up speed, clambering quickly up the rungs as the jokaero bounded and swung ahead. A few minutes later, they emerged onto the remnants of the Orbisgate mooring spar. Instinctively, they adopted combat stances and drew out their weapons.

Precipice had become a war zone. Traders, captains and crew members were hunkered behind hastily assembled barricades, firing down the mooring spar or dashing for cover as las-blasts cooked the air.

Draik ducked as shots tore into the heat-shielding behind him. ‘Into cover!’ he snapped, striding across the walkway as shots ricocheted all around him. He reached the first barricade, an overturned groundcar, strolled behind it and began calmly reloading his splinter pistol.

The group behind the groundcar looked up in surprise. There were a dozen men clad in a mixture of flak armour and bulky enviro-suits and a squad of massive abhumans – ogryns, so laden in tank treads and armour plating that they looked almost as mechanical as the groundcar. They were carrying slab shields as tall as Draik and had grenade launchers strapped to their arms.

‘Captain Draik!’ cried one of the men, hope flashing in his eyes as Draik surveyed the scene with calm disdain. Draik recognised him from the Helmsman. He was an arms dealer by the name of Vathik who had arrived at Precipice just a few weeks after Draik.

Draik nodded. ‘Are these your men?’

The sight of Draik looking so unperturbed seemed to embarrass Vathik. He climbed nervously to his feet and tried to smarten himself, adjusting his flak jacket and almost standing to attention.

‘Yes, captain. We tried to hold the far end of the spar, but whoever’s up there,’ he waved at a wrecked watchtower, ‘is not a great shot.’

Draik looked up through the smoke and spotted a hull-mounted laser, firing furiously from the top of the tower.

Vathik shook his head and tapped a comms device at his wrist. ‘All the vox-networks are down, otherwise I’d just tell the idiot to mind where he’s pointing that thing. Mind you, he seems to have stopped firing. I think he may have been hit.’

The man spoke as though he were in the middle of a campaign that had been waged for months, rather than as the shocked survivor of a crash that should have killed him. Yet again, Draik was impressed by the stoicism running through the denizens of Precipice.

Shots screamed past in both directions and more people emerged from stranded ships, racing for cover and howling out to each other.

‘Drones?’ said Draik, squinting through the fumes and tying to see the far end of the platform.

‘No.’ Vathik spat on the floor. ‘Men, captain, like you and me. Men who should be fighting for us rather than trying to storm the place.’

‘Heretics?’ demanded Taddeus, appearing behind Draik with Vorne, Grekh and the rest of the group.

Vathik shrugged. ‘Who knows? They didn’t do much talking. I’d barely crawled from the wreckage when they attacked. They look like deserters to me.’ He grimaced. ‘Only, they have clearly been down here too long.’

‘Meaning?’ said Draik.

‘They’re diseased. Covered in scabs and tumours. It looks like some kind of rad-poisoning to me. Perhaps that’s why they’re attacking their own kin rather than helping us.’

‘Radiation,’ muttered Draik, looking back at Daedalosus.

The tech-priest was too busy to notice. He was hunched over Isola’s cogitator with one of the apes, tapping the runeboard and batting the jokaero’s hand away as it tried to help him. Draik was surprised to notice that the jokaero was drinking from a hip flask that looked identical to his own. He patted his dress coat and cursed.

‘Damn it, sir,’ he said, heading over to Daedalosus. ‘Your creature has light fingers.’

Daedalosus did not look up from the screen. ‘I think you might have something,’ he said, still tapping at the runeboard, his plasteel digits making a brittle clattering sound. The ape bared its teeth at Draik and offered him the flask.

Draik took it, wiped the top with a grimace, closed it and placed it back under his jacket. ‘What do you mean–?’

He had to duck as another volley of rounds tore into the groundcar. When the barrage ceased, he looked at Daedalosus again.

‘What do you mean, I might have something?’

The magos wiped rubble from the viewscreen and tapped it. ‘It would be impossible to use the warp-entanglement core how you suggested, as a thruster to launch us through the hull of the Blackstone. However…’ He lifted the cogitator up and showed Draik a bewildering cascade of binary. ‘The information you supplied describes the gravitic waves that dragged Precipice down here. It also means I can locate their origin. There are resonators dotted around the Blackstone Fortress and they work in concert, producing incredible amounts of etheric energy.’

He shook his head, sounding dazed by his own words. ‘Imagine the force produced by a pair of colliding neutron stars, harnessed and used to move an object through dimensions.’ He looked up at the darkness. ‘Perhaps that is how the Blackstone came to be here in the first place, simply materialising into realspace.’

Draik had to duck as more shots rattled past. He was growing impatient with the tech-priest’s rambling, but he kept his tone neutral.

‘How does this relate to my suggestion?’

Daedalosus waved at the ape. ‘The jokaero suggested another way to use Precipice’s entanglement node – by linking it to the Blackstone’s resonators. The ones you have given us the details of. That way we could harness some of that power.’

Draik shook his head. ‘Would Precipice survive if we tried to fly it out of here?’

‘Not fly, captain. We would use the resonators, in conjunction with Precipice’s warp-entanglement node, to “skim” the immaterium, just very briefly, and re-emerge at a different point in realspace.’

‘A warp jump?’

‘No, not exactly.’ Daedalosus shrugged. ‘We have no warp drive or Geller field, so we could not traverse warp space like a starship. It is hard to explain. But my point is that we would not need to fly.’

Audus was staring at the tech-priest. ‘Skim the warp?’ Then she turned to Draik. ‘He’s insane.’

Draik thought for a moment. The sound of gunfire was encroaching on them from every direction. More survivors had come to join the battle and the air was alive with shells and tracers. The men and women of Precipice were going to go down fighting, but they were still going to go down. Guts and determination could only carry them so far.

‘The magos is not insane,’ he said. ‘He has proposed a solution to our predicament.’

‘And what do you think our chances of survival are if we follow his plan?’ said Audus.

‘Slim,’ said Draik. ‘Which is preferable to none.’

Audus replied but her words were drowned out by an explosion at the far end of the spar. It was so fierce that the whole structure juddered.

‘Here they come again!’ cried Vathik, standing and firing his laspistol over the barricade.

There was a drumming sound as booted feet raced towards them and then the groundcar exploded, hit by a grenade and hurling Draik and the others flying back through the air. Draik landed hard, a high-pitched whistling in his ears, but he rolled and flipped back onto his feet with his pistol raised.

Shapes rushed at him through the smoking wreckage and he fired, kicking the first two back into the flames and then drawing his rapier as a third managed to reach him. The heretic died on Draik’s blade before he even knew he had an opponent. Draik wrenched the blade free and turned on his heel, jamming the sword through the throat of an attacker charging him from the side.

The bullgryns rose from the wreckage and bellowed as they slammed into the oncoming soldiers, hammering them aside with their shields before firing a barrage of grenades. The spar shook again as the grenades detonated, flinging another storm of shrapnel. Draik opened the throat of a heretic and was about to fire on another when he saw that it was actually a xenos ranger, someone he knew by name. She was a slender, fast-moving aeldari by the name of Amallyn. She nodded at him as she vaulted the remains of the groundcar and flipped acrobatically through the fumes, firing a quick flurry of shots from her sniper rifle before slipping away into the smoke and vanishing from sight.

A whole line of heretics toppled to the floor, killed by her quick shots, and Draik smiled as Amallyn reappeared further down the mooring spar, fired another elegant round of shots and vanished again.

The bullgryns were still pounding into the enemy, clubbing them with their shields and firing grenades, lighting Precipice up with explosions. More heretics broke from cover, emerging at the side of the spar and rushing at Draik. He stopped one with a headshot, then his pistol jammed so he shrugged and strolled out to meet them, triggering the powercell in his sword and filling the air with blue contrails.

The rest of Draik’s party was busy dealing with the wave of heretics tumbling over the wrecked barricade, so Draik found himself facing four attackers alone. They circled him, muttering and twitching as they studied his filth-splattered uniform. He could see from their fatigues that they must have once belonged to a Militarum regiment, but Vathik was right; their time on the fortress had left an indelible mark on them. They were covered in pustules and a crust of yellow scabs. The one nearest to Draik had an enormous goitre under his chin that was rippling and bulging, as though struggling to contain something. Another of them was moving with an odd, spasmodic gait and Draik realised the joints of his legs were all wrong. His legs bent back at the knee rather than forwards, and his feet resembled the scaled claws of a grox. The others all had their own peculiar mutations and Draik had the strange sensation he was fighting a menagerie of beasts.

The man with a goitre lunged at him with a combat knife. Draik parried and slashed, cutting through his bloated neck. Rather than blood, a thick cloud of flies spilled from the wound. The combatants all stumbled to a halt. The heretics seemed as surprised as Draik, and the man with the goitre grabbed at his throat, choking and wheezing as the seemingly endless swarm of insects surrounded his head.

Draik capitalised on the confusion, drawing back his blade and jamming it through the man’s chest. The heretic went down, spraying blood rather than flies, and the others leapt into action. Draik rocked back on his heels, dodging a punch, then planted his boot in the man’s stomach, doubling him over before clubbing him with his sword hilt.

More heretics rushed from the smoke and Draik was soon fighting for his life. He was massively outnumbered but, as he slashed and lunged, he felt himself growing stronger rather than weaker. The strange vigour he had previously felt on the Blackstone returned, coursing through his limbs and enabling him to fight with an elegance and speed he had never achieved before. Bodies dropped around him as he dived and rolled, filling the air with blood, flies and screams.

He could think of nothing but the glorious, heady rush. He laughed as he killed, driving the heretics back as though he outnumbered them rather than the other way round. The furious energy in his muscles came not from his heart or lungs, but from his head – from the rod of black ore he could feel still lodged in his cranium.

When there was no one left to kill, he finally staggered to a halt, gasping for breath and laughing, his face wet with blood. He reeled around looking for another opponent and saw Audus and the others staring at him in disbelief. Taddeus and Vorne had dropped to their knees, whispering prayers, and even the usually unshakeable Grekh looked surprised.

Vathik’s men and the bullgryns had driven back the rest of the heretics and there was a brief pause in the fighting. As everyone continued staring at him, Draik had the unpleasant realisation that he had lost control. He had slaughtered the heretics, but he could not really remember how. And he had a suspicion, from his bloody uniform and aching limbs, that it was not with the restraint and grace he expected of himself.

‘More!’ cried Vathik, from further down the mooring spar. He moved his men back into cover on the far side of the walkway, hunkering down behind piles of smoking wreckage. They had been joined by dozens more survivors and others were still flooding from the shadows, forming an impressive defence force. Amallyn the xenos ranger was speaking urgently to Vathik, pointing out landmarks and presumably discussing tactics, before sprinting away, slipping back into the smoke once more.

Draik cleaned his blade and wiped the blood from his face, walking back towards the others with as much dignity as he could muster.

‘Captain!’ said Daedalosus, hurrying over, flanked by the apes. ‘I am going to return to the engines. I have no time to perform a detailed dimensional analysis, but I believe the jokaero’s idea is plausible.’ He tapped a gilt-edged book fixed to his belt. ‘If I perform the Canticles of Hierachus, in their entirety, the other ceremonies may not be required.’

Draik frowned, looking at the holy text. ‘Canticles?’

Daedalosus nodded. ‘The procedure will be meaningless if the Omnissiah is not present.’

Draik could not entirely follow the tech-priest’s meaning, but he had a hunch that the magos and the apes were on to something. Somehow he felt confident he had been meant to reach Daedalosus and plant the seed of this idea in his head.

The fighting had resumed at the far end of the walkway and it sounded even fiercer than before.

‘How long will you need?’ he said.

Daedalosus shrugged. ‘The jokaero have already begun attaching the ether coupling. With the data you gave me it will be a simple matter to recalibrate and link the engines to the nearby resonators. We will have to send people out to locate the resonators, but as long as they…’

As Daedalosus continued explaining his plan, Draik found his thoughts slipping away from the battle-ravaged station. The strange vitality he had felt when fighting was still growing, flooding his muscles with so much strength he felt like he might explode if he did not utilise it somehow. The metal in his frontal lobe was radiating such urgency that he had to battle the urge to howl in the tech-priest’s face.

He was vaguely aware that a large crowd was gathering around them on the mooring spar. There were familiar faces in the throng – captains, alien bounty hunters, salvage merchants, rogue traders, even Imperial astropaths and Navigators; people he had fought and worked with since arriving on Precipice. He was glad to see them alive but he could not follow their words. He nodded vaguely, pretending to follow the urgent debate, but he felt intoxicated. Many of Precipice’s self-elected leaders were there and they were arguing with Daedalosus about the best course of action. Some seemed to be demanding that the warp-entanglement core be shut down because it was unstable; others were siding with Daedalosus, agreeing that it could be tethered to the Blackstone and used as a kind of dimensional catapult.

As the crowd grew larger and the debate more furious, Draik backed away, gripping his head, feeling as though his skull might break if the sense of urgency grew any greater. Audus and Grekh followed him, asking questions he could not hear. The power was becoming agonising, like a howl echoing round his skull. He had to relieve it quickly, and he was sure he knew how.

He triggered the power on his eyepiece and stared into the madness.

The lake of mutant flesh filled his mind, revolting and impossible, making him want to snap the device off, but he kept it on, forgetting all about Precipice and its survivors as he let the vision rock through him. He saw the woman on the throne; the terrible regent with her swollen, drifting skull and hard, staring eyes. The creatures in the lake were pouring forth at her command, rushing through the Blackstone’s chambers and corridors, racing towards an unsuspecting prey.

‘They’re coming here,’ he whispered, gripped by cold certainty. ‘They’re coming to Precipice. That’s why I need to stop her.’

Grekh and Audus were talking to him but they were just shadows at the periphery of the dreadful muster he was watching. He felt again the boiling hatred he had felt when he first saw the mutant on the throne, and began to understand its cause. Even by the standards of the Blackstone, she was an abomination. She was not merely using the fortress as a hunting ground or a treasure trove, she was planning a far more serious crime. He stared deep into the woman’s eyes, trying to understand what her dreadful goal might be.

‘Kneel before your Emperor,’ said the woman, and Draik heard the words as clearly as if he were with her at the lake.

‘Emperor?’ he whispered. And then he saw what she meant to do; what she thought she was. And in that instant, Draik realised everything that had eluded him up until that point. This was why the Blackstone had summoned him. This was why the fortress had filled his thoughts with visions and dreams and charged his limbs with unnatural strength. It had chosen him to stop this apostasy. To stop her before her creatures overwhelmed Precipice and ruined Daedalosus’ chance of escape.

‘I have to go,’ he said, snapping the device off and turning to face Audus and Grekh. To his amazement, Audus did not argue or demand a reason, she simply nodded.

‘Back out there?’ she said, waving her gun at the barricades and gun emplacements being thrown up at the edge of Precipice.

Draik nodded. He was finding it difficult to stand and have a normal conversation. He felt as though an electric current were passing through him. ‘Daedalosus has a good plan. The others will listen to him eventually.’ He glanced at the crowds massing at the barricades and setting up more gun emplacements. ‘These people can buy him the time to make it work, I’m sure. They can hold off whatever comes until the magos has what he needs, but…’

His words trailed off as he remembered the face of the creature on the throne.

‘But there is another threat. One they cannot halt. This one falls to me.’

Audus frowned. ‘One of the Blackstone’s defence mechanisms?’

Grekh shook his head. ‘Draik now is one of the Blackstone’s defence mechanisms.’

Audus laughed until she saw Draik’s grim expression. ‘What do you mean?’ She waved at the darkness beyond the fighting. ‘You’re not part of this. How can you be?’

Draik could not explain, even to himself, so he said nothing.

Audus was about to say more when Quintus stumbled towards them through the fumes. The cut across his forehead was bleeding again and he was limping, but he was still gripping the duelling pistols Draik had given him and his expression was as determined as the rest of Precipice’s defenders.

‘I have to talk to you, Captain Draik,’ he said. He spoke in a formal, serious tone that caught Draik’s interest.

Draik nodded.

Quintus glanced nervously at Grekh and Audus, who were standing either side of Draik like bodyguards, glaring at him. ‘Alone.’

Draik’s attention started to wander again and the mutant’s face swam back into his thoughts. Along with the memory came another surge of energy so powerful he almost attacked Quintus. Trembling as he battled to control himself, he shrugged.

‘Then you will have to wait.’

He looked at Grekh and Audus, trying to dampen his fervour so he could tell them something that had been on his mind for a while.

‘I employed you both for your skills,’ he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. ‘But you have given me more than that. If it was not for your–’

Audus held up a hand. ‘If this is a farewell speech, former-captain, you can forget it. We’re coming with you.’ She gave the kroot a sideways glance. ‘Am I right?’

Grekh nodded. ‘I have a debt to repay, Captain Draik. You saved my life. In your culture, that may be an insignificant matter, but in the eyries of Akchan–Kur we know the weight of a soul. The balance must be maintained.’

To his shock, Draik realised that he was not willing to let this peculiar creature kill itself on his behalf. Grekh seemed devoid of emotion, most of the time at least, and his methods were savage, but there was a quiet nobility to him that Draik did not wish to see crushed.

‘You are needed here,’ he said, ‘both of you.’ He tapped Grekh’s rifle. ‘You have saved my life far more times than I saved yours. There is no imbalance, Grekh. The debt is paid. I free you from it.’

Grekh shook his head. ‘The debt remains. Only I will know when the balance has been restored.’

Draik prided himself on his eloquence but with energy pulsing in his skull he found his temper fraying. ‘Do not be fools. Think about what I’m saying. I mean to leave Precipice just as Daedalosus attempts to remove it from the Blackstone Fortress. I have no way of knowing if I can return in time to join him. In fact, I very much doubt I will.’

He nodded at the scrum gathered around the magos and the apes. ‘He is your last chance of escape. The fortress is in flux. It is becoming something new. And what little of it remains stable is under the sway of heretics. Your only chance is to stay here and help the magos.’

Another explosion rocked down the walkway and an armoured car crashed into the barricades. Fuel tanks spewed flame and gun emplacements roared into furious life, ripping the vehicle apart.

Draik had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘This is not just a matter of whether they escape or not. They have to get word out, do you understand? The wider Imperium has to know what the Blackstone is becoming. The Lords of Terra need to act before it’s too late.’

Audus and Grekh glanced at each other then looked at Draik in silence.

He glared at them.

They remained silent.

Draik felt even more frustration as he saw Taddeus and the other priests break away from the argument and head over. The tempest in his head was too great for him to continue the conversation. He snarled in frustration, shook his head and strode back towards Daedalosus.

He raised his voice over the shouting. ‘Listen to the magos and you will have a chance of surviving. A small one, but more than you could have hoped for. Find him what he needs – whatever resonators or powercells or devices he requires to enact his ritual – and then man those barricades until he’s done. You have to try. People have to know what is happening out here.’

Dozens of voices railed at him, human and xenos alike, but Draik was not listening. The mutant’s rigid gaze was in his head constantly now, surrounded by warp-spawned horrors.

Daedalosus signalled to him through the crowd, indicating that he understood. Draik nodded an acknowledgement, then turned and marched away from Daedalosus with Audus, Grekh, Quintus and the priests hurrying after him, checking their weapons as they picked their way through the rubble.

33

‘It’s coming free!’ cried Raus, as he hauled at the bone machine, trying to wrench it from Rein’s wrist. ‘The whole thing is coming apart!’

Rein was howling too loud to register his brother’s cries, staring in horror at his arm. Veins of bone had threaded his wrist up to his forearm and were branching further across his skin. Sweat was pouring down his face, despite the Blackstone’s chill, and his whole body was convulsing.

Raus backed away, unable to do anything but watch as the bone machine fragmented, its spiral curves parting to reveal a clicking jumble of shapes inside, all made of the same dusty bone. As Rein’s cries grew louder, the device folded and extended, growing quickly larger until, in the space of a few seconds, the brittle cage was bigger than the ratlings. At first, Raus thought the bones were creating a meaningless shape, but as the seconds passed and the bones meshed with each other they began to form a solid mass with distinct, recognisable features.

‘It’s him,’ whispered Raus as the mesh of bones tightened into the likeness of a large, four-legged creature. ‘It’s the zoat.’

Rein struggled even more violently as he saw what was being born from his wrist, but there was nothing he could do to free himself. The bones continued their fast, spasmodic growth, moving like accelerated pict footage. Some of them merged into femurs and ribs, while others took on the shape of muscles and organs. It was like something from an ossuary, thousands of bones, interlocked to create a towering statue.

The light burned brighter as skin washed over the lattice of bones. The skin was a thick hide of scales that were as colourless as the rest of the zoat, and Raus wondered if their employer was going to come to them in the guise of a walking skeleton. Then colour spread through its dusty surface – just a faint blush of pigment at first, then deepening to a deep green hue.

Rein gave one last howl and fell back into Raus’ arms, unconscious.

At that moment the sculpture jolted into life, drawing a deep, juddering breath and letting out a triumphant roar.

The Archivist’s cry seemed to last an age as Raus cowered before the hulking creature, cradling his brother as spit rained down on them. As the Archivist bellowed, the tendril stretching to Rein’s wrist crumbled into dust and fell away. The zoat stomped away from the ratlings, stood on its hind legs and shook its armoured gauntlet at the darkness.

+I have come for you!+ it howled, the words exploding in Raus’ head and causing Rein to gasp and wake up.

They both backed away from the creature as it pranced and stamped in a circle, howling and waving its fists. It took it nearly a minute to calm down enough to notice Rein and Raus, watching from a few feet away. It thudded its forelegs back down onto the floor and stared at them, its crimson eyes burning in its vivid green scales.

Raus performed a florid bow. ‘Welcome to the Blackstone Fortress, sir. As you can see, we have preformed – forthwith and with the utmost currency – everything you requested of us in our professional capacity.’

Rein managed to steady his breathing and stand next to his brother. He nodded. ‘With complete capacity, sir.’

The zoat closed its eyes and sighed. +All this time, I have had to endure the deluded claims of species that have no right to draw breath in my presence. All those wretched scavengers who came here looking for baubles, never knowing the true value of what they had found.+

The ratlings shared an awkward glance.

‘Quite,’ sneered Raus, sounding as derisive as he could. ‘Baubles.’

+And now they are dead,+ it continued. +Smashed to pieces along with that pitiful wreck they called a space station.+

‘Precipice?’ muttered Raus. He had a knack of spotting when things were going badly, and his muscles tensed involuntarily.

The zoat opened its eyes and stared at them again. +Everything that was in my way has gone.+ It laughed and pointed a gun at them. +Almost everything.+

Raus was neither brave nor bright. But he was fast. Before the zoat could take aim, Raus leapt towards it and kicked the gun from its claw.

The Archivist roared again and lashed out with its armoured gauntlet but, as so often happened, the zoat had underestimated Raus. The ratling had already leapt clear with an impressive display of acrobatics and, as the zoat’s fist smashed to the ground, Raus landed next to the gun and kicked it, sending it clattering across the floor to Rein, who snatched it up.

‘You’re not the only one who can point this thing…’ began Rein, before toppling over, surprised by the gun’s weight and falling on his back.

The zoat laughed and took something from the armour plates fixed to its scales.

‘Grenade!’ cried Raus, as the zoat threw a round, fist-sized object at Rein.

Rein was already gone, sprinting away from the gun with a burst of speed that was almost as impressive as his brother’s. The grenade exploded with a deafening flash but only succeeded in destroying the zoat’s gun, hurling it through the air and leaving it bent and smouldering on the floor.

‘We had a deal,’ said Raus, drawing his pistol and pointing it at the Archivist. The zoat laughed again and turned to face him. It stamped the surface of the mirrored cube they were standing on.

+You really think you can enter the Aberration?+ The creature seemed genuinely amused. +You think you have the strength of will to possess a Talisman of Vaul?+

Raus glanced at Rein. His brother was behind the zoat and had his sniper rifle pointed at the creature’s head.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Raus, but he had to admit to himself that he was not known for his strength of will.

The zoat was fiddling with something in its claw as it began pacing in a circle again, looking from brother to brother. +Let me be clear. You expect to enter this “Crucible,” as you call it, and take your pick of the relics it holds?+

‘We’re not greedy,’ said Raus. ‘One or two objects of value would do.’

+Morons. You reach the heart of the most powerful object in the galaxy and you think about trinkets.+ There was a shimmer of light in the zoat’s claw as a jumble of bones snaked around each other, solidified, and formed into a pistol that was pointing at Raus.

Raus dived aside. There was no sign of a muzzle flash or sound of rounds being fired, but he felt something rush past his ear as he rolled clear. Rein fired his rifle but the shot never reached the zoat, creating a shimmering flash of light a few inches away from the creature’s head.

The zoat cackled. It was a feral, rattling kind of sound that rose up from inside its broad, barrel-shaped chest. +And you think killing me would help you get inside? What exactly would you do if I were now lying dead?+

The brothers looked at each other.

The zoat sighed. +I do not have the time or inclination to continue this discussion.+ The creature removed a piece of the armoured carapace around its flank and tapped at it with one of its claws.

Raus felt a flash of heat in his hands as his gun ceased to exist. He turned to Rein and saw that his brother’s rifle had also vanished. The two brothers grimaced at each other and started backing slowly away. But the zoat seemed to forget about them as it began pacing back and forth across the cube, staring at its surface.

+Where to begin?+ it said as an influx of power washed through its mechanical fist, lighting it up like a flaming brand. +Here should do,+ it said, leaning back and slamming the fist into the floor.

The blow landed like a mortar shell and the cube burned brighter as a series of cracks sprang across its surface. At the same moment, cracks rushed across the distant floor of the hall, kicking up huge plumes of dust and making a sound like a landslide. As the zoat drew back its fist to strike again, Raus noticed that the cube was shaking and creaking.

‘Perhaps now would be the time to soil yourself, brother,’ he muttered.

34

Audus had almost reached the barricades when they became a storm of blue-white sparks. Draik was a few feet ahead of her and he slowed his pace as he approached the blaze, massaging his jaw and raising his eyebrow like he was surveying a sporting event.

Audus shook her head in disbelief at the sight of the light-haloed warriors charging towards her. The heretics blazed as they crashed into Precipice’s defenders, their skin bathed in plasma and their maces attached to generators on their backs. As those at the barricades rushed to drive them back, several were hurled through the air by the explosive currents blasting through the heretics’ weapons. They landed at Draik’s feet flashing and twitching, smoke pluming from their heads.

Draik studied them for a moment, then took out his pistol and stepped over the bodies towards the barricade. Cultists bounded towards him in a frenzy, juddering and howling. Draik gunned them down with an expression of mild disapproval, while using his other hand to take a chronometer from his coat and check the time. He pocketed the timepiece and waved people back from the barricades.

‘Best tackled from a distance, I think,’ he called out.

As people backed away, firing furiously, Vorne strode past Audus to Draik’s side and raised her flamer. Audus shielded her eyes as Vorne poured a geyser of eye-watering flame from the weapon, lighting up heretics.

‘Feel the Emperor’s truth!’ she cried, striding towards the burning figures, still spewing flames.

Audus was never entirely comfortable in Vorne’s company, but she had to admit, the woman was useful in a fight. The heretics were not as impervious to fire as they were electricity and Vorne’s flamer had a dramatic effect. Their back-mounted generators detonated like grenades, ripping the cultists apart, scattering limbs and shattered armour in every direction.

Draik stepped aside as a faceplate clattered past, fizzing and crackling. Then he took a few steps back from the fighting and stepped up onto a rail to look over the barricade. There were hundreds more of the electrified lunatics sprinting through the darkness towards Precipice, shrieking and convulsing as they ran.

‘Do not engage them at close quarters!’ yelled Draik, waving at the heaps of wreckage surrounding the barricades. ‘They only have melee weapons. Pick them off from a distance.’

Draik’s tone was so commanding that no one hesitated to obey. People scattered from the barricades, scrambling for elevated vantage points or sprinting back to where Daedalosus and the others stood arguing. As soon as the cultists clambered into view, they were gunned down by marksmen on the gantries and walkways overhead.

‘We could spend hours here,’ said Draik, looking back at Grekh. ‘And this is not the threat I need to deal with.’

Grekh nodded and looked around. Then he pointed his rifle to a silhouetted shape visible through the flames. Audus squinted into the blaze, trying to see what the kroot was pointing to. It was an armoured groundcar, spilled from the damaged hold of an enormous macro hauler.

‘Yes.’ Draik clapped the kroot on the back. ‘Good thinking.’ He strode off past the people firing desperately at the barricades and headed into the jumble of ruined vehicles at the side of the mooring spar.

Grekh raced ahead of him, wrenched the groundcar’s door open and disappeared inside. By the time Audus reached the vehicle, the engines were already growling and the air was full of fumes.

‘You know how to drive human vehicles?’ said Audus as she climbed into the truck and saw Grekh hunched over the controls.

The kroot nodded. ‘I have gained insights by consuming–’

‘Grekh,’ said Draik, sitting down next to him and giving him a warning glance.

Grekh stared, clearly baffled, then shook his head and turned back to the controls, gunning the engines as Quintus and the priests clambered in and dived into seats, frantically scrambling with the harnesses. The groundcar lurched forwards, and Audus shook her head in disbelief as it careered through the wreckage, roaring towards the outskirts of Precipice. The truck bounced and jolted as it picked up speed, but the armoured chassis held and within a few minutes they thundered past the final, smouldering edges of Precipice and screeched out into the pitch dark of the fortress.

The lumen panels on the mudguards were powerful enough to punch through the gloom for at least a dozen feet or so, and Draik gripped the control panel as Grekh steered the truck straight towards what looked like a sheer drop. The groundcar left the floor for a moment, then crashed down a fan of broad, spiral steps. Audus laughed hysterically as Grekh hurled the vehicle round the tight bends, filling the darkness with sparks and screams as the treads ground across the floor.

They sped out from a final step, turned a half-circle and screeched to a halt in the centre of a featureless void. The truck’s lumen panels illuminated the floor, but there was nothing to suggest what lay around them. The engine idled as Draik leant forwards and peered through the viewport.

‘We could be anywhere,’ said Audus, struggling to control her laughter.

Draik shook his head. Audus looked closely at him. His behaviour was growing more peculiar by the second. He was twitching and shifting in his seat, seeming almost as wired as the electrified cultists. He massaged his scalp with such brutality that he seemed to be trying to squeeze something from his skull. He was behaving as if he were deranged, but when he spoke it was with his usual magisterial calm.

‘I can direct you, Grekh,’ he said, scratching at his jaw and looking as though he were about to bolt from his seat. ‘Give me a second to–’

‘Captain Draik,’ said the valet, Quintus, from the seat behind Audus. ‘Is that more of the… Is that more of the things we just saw?’

They all followed his gaze. Pale figures were massing in the distance. They boiled from the darkness like banks of cloud, too vague to make out yet but moving quickly closer.

Draik leant back in his seat and stared at them. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Damn them, they’re already here.’

‘They?’ asked Audus. ‘That doesn’t sound like a good “they”.’

Draik said nothing, his stern features bathed in the blinking light of the control panel. Grekh turned the truck to face the approaching group and splashed light on them.

‘What is that?’ said Audus, trying to keep her voice level as she saw the figures in more detail. It looked like an avalanche of body parts, strung together and hurled towards them. Limbs and internal organs rolled and flopped as they rushed towards the groundcar.

Draik opened his door, leant out, took careful aim with his pistol and fired into the seething mass.

Nothing happened. There was no sign his shot had even hit anything, but Audus knew Draik well enough to know he would not have simply missed.

‘What are they?’

‘Warp spawn,’ hissed Vorne. The words seemed to pain her. She rocked back in her seat with a whining sound.

Draik nodded and looked at Grekh. ‘They are not physical beings. If they reach Precipice, there will be no way those barricades can hold them. If I do not stop them, Daedalosus will not complete his work. And nobody will leave this place.’

‘Warp spawn?’ said Audus, looking at Vorne, not entirely sure what that meant. ‘Not physical?’

Draik was gripping his head again and his optical implant was whirring, as though he were trying to focus it on something.

‘There is time,’ he whispered. ‘I can get to her.’

Audus had no idea what Draik was talking about. ‘Her?’

Draik looked at Grekh and pointed at the approaching wall of grey shapes. ‘Drive through them.’

Grekh grabbed the controls then hesitated, looking at Draik. ‘Through?’

‘Trust me, Grekh. They are mindless. They have no weapons. Drive through them. They have no explosives, nor anything else that could compromise our armour.’

Grekh stared at him for a moment and Audus wondered if the creature might finally refuse a Draik order. Then the kroot shrugged, revved the engines and hurled the truck forwards again.

As they rushed towards the line of figures Audus felt like she was falling into a nightmare. Their anatomy was so illogical it made her stomach churn. She could see recognisable features – eyes, mouths and arms – but they were combined without rhyme or reason. The shapes were so disturbing she had to look away as the truck’s lumens revealed their grotesque absurdity.

Even then the shapes stayed with her, filling her thoughts. In fact, seeing them in her mind was worse than seeing them with her eyes. They were clawing and lurching over each other to reach her face, to crawl into her body, to possess her soul. Audus had seen countless atrocities and horrors since she reached the Blackstone but this was worse than mechanised drones or nonsensical architecture. The shapes triggered something from the depths of her memory, summoning half-formed childhood fears of what lay in the dark. She felt as though she had regressed decades and was cowering under her bed sheets, whimpering for protection that no one could offer. She opened her eyes but tried to keep her gaze inside the vehicle.

There was a series of deadened thuds as the groundcar slammed into the creatures, but Grekh’s moment of doubt was gone and he looked perfectly calm as he accelerated into them, thudding over ruptured bodies.

She could see by Quintus’ face that he was as terrified as she was. He was drained of colour and he was clutching his wrist as though he were trying to stifle his own pulse.

‘They’re in my head!’ he whispered, catching her gaze.

Grekh drove faster and the drum roll of bodies hitting the truck increased.

‘Burn it!’ howled Vorne as one of the creatures managed to latch onto the viewport and stare in at them. It was a slab of grey flesh, like an enormous invertebrate, and there was a cluster of circular mouths in its belly, crammed with needle-like teeth that slid into the armourglass.

Slid through it, realised Audus.

As the circular mouths stretched wider the teeth grew in length, breaking into the truck’s cabin and spreading cracks across the armourglass.

‘Burn them!’ cried Vorne, spitting and thrashing in her seat as she grabbed her flamer and pointed it at the viewport.

‘No!’ cried Audus. ‘Don’t fire that in here! You’ll cook us alive!’

The viewport shattered, covering them in a shower of broken shards. Audus howled, shielding her face as the razor-sharp fragments sliced into her. The warp creature emitted a strange rattling sound as it flopped over the control panel and into the cabin.

Vorne hacked her flamer into it, triggering the chainsword. Grey, rubbery lumps filled the cabin as she leant forwards in her seat, wrenching the blade back and forth. Grekh yanked the steering wheel to the right, trying to escape the tumbling figures, but he turned too hard and the truck skidded sideways, slamming into dozens more of the creatures until it came to a stop surrounded by a deafening chorus of clicking sounds.

‘Go!’ cried Draik as another pale shape rushed towards the broken viewport.

Grekh gunned the engines but the treads rattled uselessly on the gore-slick floor.

Vorne howled a prayer as the remains of the first creature started writhing across the cabin towards her.

The groundcar finally lurched forwards, careering off in a new direction, but not before the second creature slammed through the viewport and lashed a thick, spiny tentacle around Grekh’s throat. The kroot made a hoarse coughing sound and clacked his beak, but managed to keep steering the truck through a series of bends and junctions, before clanging down another flight of stairs. All the while he was driving, the lumen panels on the front of the vehicle only managed to light up a few feet ahead, so he had to steer the truck in a series of frantic U-turns and screeching last-minute chicanes.

While Vorne hacked furiously at the grub-like lumps of meat swarming over her, Draik triggered his rapier and sliced at the second creature. It did not seem to have any torso. It was just a nest of pale, tubular limbs with a face at the centre.

As Draik cut quickly through the limbs, Audus caught sight of the face and jolted in her seat, unable to breathe as panic cramped her chest. The face was perfectly human. It was the face of a young man, staring in horror from the centre of the nest of limbs. As she looked into his eyes, she saw that he was sentient and terrified, trapped inside that repulsive flesh but still human and alive and able to understand his monstrous condition.

The youthful face was trying to speak, trying to say something to Draik as he cut away the limbs, and the idea was too much for Audus. She finally let out the scream she had been holding back since she first glimpsed the warp creatures. As she wailed she thrashed in her seat and struggled against her restraints, trying to unlock them, but her panicked fingers were too clumsy to undo the clasps. Quintus had seen the face too and he was howling and bucking in his seat.

‘Hold your nerve,’ growled Draik, cutting away limbs and booting the face as hard as he could, sending the flailing mass back into the darkness.

Even through her screams Audus heard the repulsive sound of the truck’s metal treads grinding over the thing and crushing it.

Taddeus was singing along with Vorne, pounding his power mace into the shapes and, as Grekh hurled the truck down a steep ramp, the fragments of flesh in the cabin finally ceased their writhing and lay still. Draik wiped his rapier clean and slid it back into its scabbard; then he slumped back into his seat, breathing heavily as the truck roared on through the darkness. Audus managed to stifle her screams, but the creature’s terrified face stayed with her, and to distract herself, she looked over at Quintus.

Everyone else was busy staring out into the darkness as Grekh raced on through a series of tight bends, so only she noticed what Draik’s valet was doing. Quintus was scratching so furiously at his wrist that there was blood running down his arm. There was a pale lump jutting up between his veins, and at first Audus thought he must have been wounded by one of the warp monsters. Then she realised that it was one of his own bones. He seemed to be deformed. There was a spike of bone sticking out of his wrist, and it was wet with blood as Quintus clawed at it. He was mutilating himself and muttering in a panicked voice.

He caught her looking at him and his eyes widened. Then he pulled his sleeve down over the wound and gripped the material, holding it in place. He gave her a pleading look and shook his head.

Up until that moment Audus had felt that she was teetering on the brink, about to slip into a bottomless well from which she would never be able to return. But something about Quintus’ silent request for help dragged her a little way back to sanity. She gasped, taking her first breath for what seemed like several minutes, then slumped back in her seat, staring at the cabin’s flesh-splattered ceiling, battling to steady her pulse. She reminded herself of all the hellholes she had fought through when she was still a loyal subordinate of the Imperial Navy.

Before she finally saw the war for the madness it was, her superiors had ordered her on missions that were effectively mass murder. There was a particular sortie that she carried with her like an infested scar. She and her crew had carpet-bombed whole continents of a world called Sepus Prime, even though they all knew it was crowded with loyal Militarum regiments battling to take the objectives they had been ordered to secure. Now she saw, in Quintus, the same fear and hurt she had seen in the eyes of her crew that day. It reminded her of her cold, impotent rage over it all, and somehow that was enough to get her through. She managed to breathe slower as she looked back at Quintus and nodded. They were the same, she and him: fighting to survive an Imperium that didn’t give a damn.

Quintus visibly relaxed, leaning back in his seat, but he did not let go of his wrist.

‘Give me a moment,’ said Draik, fiddling with his augmetic eyepiece. ‘I know this place.’

As the truck jolted down another flight of stairs, Draik’s convulsions grew worse and he gripped the optical implant as though it were trying to break from his head.

‘Keep on as you are,’ he said. He was trying to maintain his usual clear diction, but as he juddered and twitched his words grew more jumbled. ‘The fortress is helping us, Grekh. We are not far from the source of those creatures.’

‘The source of them!’ Audus felt her pulse start to quicken again. ‘What do you mean the source of them? That’s where you’re taking us? To the place those creatures came from?’

Draik twisted around in his seat to look back at her. His face was pale and drawn and his normal eye was almost entirely red. ‘I told you, Audus,’ he began, but then Grekh interrupted him by clacking his beak and making a low, screeching sound.

‘What is–’ began Draik, as he turned back around in his seat, but there was no need to finish the question.

The track they were on ended a hundred feet up ahead, at a featureless wall.

Grekh slammed the breaks on and the truck screeched, sideways, to a halt. For a moment, the only sound was heavy breathing as they all sat there panting and trying to absorb what had just happened.

Audus looked down at her flight suit and saw that it was in shreds, and damp with fresh blood. There were shards of armourglass stuck in her arms and chest, and as the panic subsided, her nerves eagerly informed her of how much pain she was in.

‘Damn you,’ she muttered, picking fragments out and wincing. ‘I thought you meant you needed to find the rest of those electrified heretics.’ She laughed. ‘Which was bad enough. You never said anything about those…’ Her words trailed off and her humour died as she looked at the pieces of meat on the floor.

Draik unfastened his harness and wiped muck from his eagle-emblazoned cuirass. Then he looked at her. ‘Daedalosus and the others are determined, Audus. They can fight almost anything for a short time. And a short time is all they need for Daedalosus to try out his hypothesis.’ He kicked one of the lumps. ‘But this is an enemy they cannot defeat. I have been seeing it in my mind.’ He tapped the eyepiece. ‘The Blackstone has been warning me since before we lost Isola. I can stop them, I’m sure of it, if I reach the abhorrent thing that spawned them.’

The engine was still idling and the lumens were fixed on the blank wall up ahead.

‘And your eye is showing you the way?’ she asked, waving at the wall. ‘Because that looks suspiciously like a dead end.’

Draik frowned and nodded. ‘We have to get back to the geyser of blood that the ratlings took us to. The place they called the Red Stair. If I can reach that chamber I can finish the job I started last time we were there.’

Vorne was glaring at the pieces of meat on the floor, as though waiting for them to move again, but at Draik’s words she locked her brutal gaze on Taddeus.

‘I told you we should not have let that rite continue.’ Her voice was so taut it sounded barely human. ‘We should have stayed there.’

Taddeus shook his head furiously. ‘We had no choice but to move on. We had to get Draik to the Crucible. How could we have known he would have to return to Precipice? And how could we have known Precipice would fall?’

Draik opened the door and flooded the cabin with cold air as he stepped out, dropping down onto the floor of the Blackstone and walking over to the wall, still adjusting his eyepiece. Grekh and the priests followed him out, but Audus paused to help Quintus up from his seat. He was clearly badly shaken, and since their silent exchange during the attack Audus had felt an odd sense of kinship with him.

‘We may be the only sane ones here,’ she said, plucking armourglass from his uniform.

He stared at her, seeming confused by her kind tone. ‘How do you know I’m sane?’ There was no trace of humour in his voice.

She shrugged. ‘I suppose sane might not be the right word. We all chose to come to the Blackstone Fortress, after all.’ She nodded to the wrist he was still holding. ‘There might be medicae supplies in here. Do you need something to clean that thing out? Or stem the pain?’

He shook his head, clearly unwilling to discuss the wound, but he made no move to leave. She sensed he wanted to discuss something. Audus waited in silence, giving him time to find whatever words he was looking for.

‘You did things you regret,’ he said.

It was a statement, rather than a question, but she nodded.

‘So you came out here looking to buy yourself a new life, a new identity.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t care how you achieve that.’

She wanted to nod but found that she could not. She cursed Draik for shattering a persona that had shielded her for so long. He was pompous and arrogant and he stood for everything that had ruined her life, but he had been irritatingly right. She took a deep breath and sighed.

‘I do care. I don’t want to, but I do. Draik has framed me as accurately as one of his damned hunting trophies.’

She looked at the group of figures by the wall. They were silhouetted by the truck’s lumens and Draik’s strong, elegant form was unmistakeable. He was shaking and twitching but he refused to slouch. He was forcing his trembling body to stand tall, despite the pain that was obviously gripping him.

‘If he can save those people – if he has even a small chance of helping those people – I will try to help him. Damn him. I’m no hero. I should have left Precipice weeks ago, while there was still a chance, but the more time I spend around him, the more I start to feel that maybe things matter. That maybe people matter. That courage matters.’ She laughed at her earnest tone. ‘Listen to me. He’s made me into a bad joke. The deserter who ran from the war and now wants to save humanity. Could there be anything more ridiculous?’

She looked back at Quintus. He looked almost as horrified as he had when facing the warp monsters. He shook his head and pulled his wrist to his chest.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispered.

His pain felt like her pain. She could see from his empty stare what the Imperium had done to him.

‘Throne, you’re as broken as I am,’ she said. Then she shook her head and looked out at Draik again. ‘Only I don’t feel so broken now. Not since I decided to stay with him. I feel more afraid, but also somehow more whole.’ She frowned at Quintus. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

He shook his head.

‘I’m probably going to die down here,’ she said, only clarifying her thoughts as she voiced them. ‘But somehow it feels worth the risk.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s better to die whole than live in pieces.’

She felt absurd saying such things out loud and she knew she would never have said them to Draik or Grekh, or even Isola when she was still alive. They hung in the air between them, leaving an awkward silence. Audus shook her head, annoyed at herself.

‘Ignore me,’ she muttered, heading for the door.

‘No,’ said Quintus, grabbing her arm. ‘Wait.’

She looked back at him.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He nodded at his wrist. ‘For not saying anything.’

She shrugged. Then she pointed to the slops of flesh on the floor. ‘Just know this – if you sprout belly teeth I’ll throw you to Vorne.’

He looked panicked. Then, as he recognised her joking tone, a faint smile played around his mouth. ‘Fair warning.’

‘Good man,’ she said, slapping his back and heading out into the darkness.

35

A man stumbled through a void, his mind and his flesh fading into shadow. Rather than weakening him, the dissolution made him stronger. He was a catalyst. He had triggered the momentous changes taking place all around him.

Draik watched for a while, fascinated, before realising he was watching himself. He was the stumbling man. Draik cried out, shocked at the revelation, but his words were drowned out by another voice.

‘Draik,’ it said, trying to call him back from the darkness.

Draik ignored it, looked deeper into the shadows, and saw that it was not a void but a kaleidoscope of people and scenes, shapes and colours, all of them coalescing to form a single, fragmented face. The face that had been watching him all this time. The face he was so close to destroying.

‘Draik! What shall we do?’ The voice was so insistent that it snatched Draik from the face before he could see it clearly.

He fell with stomach-wrenching speed back into himself.

‘Draik!’ cried Audus, grabbing him as he stumbled forwards and almost fell into the wall.

He tensed, annoyed by his lack of self-control. He had lost himself so completely in the visions that he had almost fallen like a drunk.

He straightened up and killed the power to the optical implant, gently removing Audus’ hand from his arm. Then he held out his hand to Quintus, who rummaged in his jacket and handed Draik a lho-stick.

Draik smoked for a moment, using the time to ground himself in reality. For a troubling moment he could not recall what had happened. He could see, from the vast walls of darkness and the brittle air, that he was back on the Blackstone, but what was he doing there? Audus and Quintus were at his side, along with Grekh, and the priests were standing a few feet away, just four of them now: Taddeus, Vorne and two of their grim-faced zealots.

The group was plucked from the dark by the lumens of an idling groundcar, and at the sight of the vehicle Draik recalled everything. He had saved Precipice from destruction only to see it smash into the fortress. And now it was under attack by the legions of heretics that infested the place.

He looked up at the towering wall in front of him. He had to stop the warp-spawned creatures reaching Daedalosus. The visions from the eyepiece had led him here, to this point. The face that haunted him was the heretic on the throne, and the Blackstone needed him to kill her. But where there should be a clear route to the Red Stair, there was only this featureless wall.

‘Draik,’ said Audus. ‘You said you could stop those things. How? Where do we need to go?’

Draik was about to answer when Grekh held up a hand for silence and looked back towards the loop of stairs they had just driven down.

‘What is it?’ asked Draik

Grekh shook his head and kept his hand raised. They all stood in silence, straining to hear whatever Grekh’s xenos ears had picked up. Draik shook his head, and was about to speak when he noticed a vague rattling sound.

‘What is that?’ he muttered. It sounded like rain, but he had never heard rain inside the fortress before. Then he recognised it. It was the strange clicking sound of the warp spawn.

‘They’ve followed us,’ said Quintus looking back into the darkness, his eyes wide.

‘We need to go,’ said Audus, striding towards the groundcar.

‘We need to stay!’ snapped Vorne, slapping the barrel of her flamer. ‘And burn them clean!’

Audus hesitated, looking at Draik.

Taddeus smiled at Vorne’s zeal but looked to Draik for guidance. ‘What does the Anointed say? Do we stay here and fight, with our backs to the wall?’ He frowned as the distant noise grew louder. ‘Is it possible, Draik?’ His eyes shone. ‘That you could take on so many of those things?’

‘Of course not.’ Draik was irritated by the man’s delusions. ‘We need to keep moving.’ He waved back to the steps. ‘But not that way.’ He stared at the wall. ‘It’s this way. I’m sure of it.’

‘What is your goal?’ demanded Vorne. ‘You said it was to stop the warp spawn. And now they are coming directly to us. Why run from the fight?’

Pale shapes were appearing in the distance, at the top of the steps, rushing towards them like mist rolling down from a black peak.

‘We will not defeat them like this,’ said Draik. ‘I have to find the source. I have to reach the woman…’ He shook his head. ‘I have to reach the thing that has brought them here. I thought I killed her last time we were down here but I was wrong. She’s still there, conjuring them from her blood shrines.’

While the rest of the group readied their weapons and spread out, eying the approaching shapes, Draik stayed where he was, smoking and studying the wall.

‘It’s here,’ he muttered. ‘The Red Stair is beyond this wall. I am sure of it. Perhaps we need to cut through?’

Audus shook her head. ‘You know what the surfaces are like down here. Only the drones can cut through. There’s no way we could do it.’

Draik frowned and flicked his lho-stick at the wall. It trailed embers as it turned through the air. But rather than hitting the surface of the wall, the lho-stick carried on and tumbled from sight.

Draik drew his rapier and approached the wall with the blade held out before him. As he reached the wall, his blade passed out into thin air. Draik laughed. His feet were not at the foot of a wall, they were at the edge of a sheer drop. The wall they had been looking at was miles away, and it was even more impossibly vast than they had imagined. Between the lip Draik was standing on, and the distant wall, there were miles of darkness punctuated by countless pools of red light. He was standing at the edge of a colossal, perfectly straight valley.

He watched as the still-glowing lho-stick tumbled away from him before dissolving into a cloud of embers. ‘There’s your answer,’ he said, looking along the edge of the chasm and pointing his sword. There was a narrow ramp descending into the darkness not far from where he was standing. It was not wide enough for the truck, but they would be able to run down it if they moved in single file.

‘Draik,’ said Grekh, calling his attention to the approaching crowd. They were moving fast, despite being so ungainly, and were only a few minutes away.

‘Move!’ snapped Draik, waving everyone to the ramp. ‘Audus and Quintus, stay close to me. Vorne, you take the rear. It’s a narrow path. You should be able to hold them at bay with that flamer.’ He chose Vorne on account of her eagerness as much as her weapon. He had faced warp denizens before and seen the effect they had on people’s sanity. He doubted Audus or Quintus would be able to face the creatures that were about to reach them, but Vorne was armoured with a faith so powerful only death could puncture it.

He led the group down the ramp, running as fast as he dared on such a steep slope. There was no rail and a fall would send him plummeting. The darkness was punctuated by red flashes that he assumed were the altars they had passed before, but they were so distant as to resemble stars.

They had only been descending for a few minutes when the creatures swarmed over the lip of the precipice. The first dozen simply tumbled off the edge, gibbering and flailing as they fell, but the next group managed to turn and scramble down the path.

‘Don’t look at them,’ Audus said to Quintus as they both raced after Draik.

The group was bathed in light and heat as Vorne fired, screaming a hymn as she set the creatures alight. Taddeus’ servo-skulls were gliding ahead of Draik, lighting up the path, and he realised he needed to do more than simply run. Even Vorne’s holy wrath would not protect the group forever. She would eventually be overwhelmed and then there would be a massacre.

Show me, he thought, triggering the eyepiece again. Show me the way.

His world fragmented. With his normal, physical senses he could still see the path ahead and hear the slaughter behind. But at the same time, in his mind’s eye, he saw dark, whirling facets, pieces of obsidian turning in a void, creating the beginnings of the face. The harder he tried to recognise the face, the less clear it became, but as he looked into one of its pupils he saw himself, and the rest of the group, racing down the path with the pale, monstrous figures scrambling after them.

Seen from this vantage point, he realised how limited his vision had been. Where his human eye saw a single, narrow path, running down the sheer face of a wall, his inner eye saw the truth: every line and intersection, every facet and plane, was a route through the darkness. Every hard-edged shadow and beam of light existed in countless dimensions. In some they were optical illusions, in others they were physical matter. And the distinction was only a trick of his mind.

He turned away from the wall and ran out into the darkness, following a line that had looked like a beam of shadow, but was actually the summit of an ink-dark ziggurat. The rest of the group hesitated, crying out in panic, but when Draik waved them on, Audus took a hesitant step, laughed and rushed after him, followed by the others.

Through Draik’s natural eye, it looked as though he were running across nothing, his feet suspended in a void, but his expanding consciousness told him the truth: he was on a broad, solid plane of black rock. Once he had taken the first step into accepting this new reality, a baffling vista opened up around him. Everywhere he looked, he saw not empty shadow, but forests of walkways and slopes. The vigour that had been building in him since they left Precipice swelled to such a level that he could not help grinning as he ran.

The warp spawn tried to follow and some even took a few steps along the slope, but without the Blackstone’s guidance they were soon wrong-footed and plunged into the darkness. Draik ran faster, with increasing confidence, bounding from one edge to another, sliding down ramps that seemed to materialise as his feet touched them. As the routes grew clearer, he saw that they were all features on the face he had glimpsed earlier. Taddeus’ prophecies came back to him. ‘And he shall see the face of his god.’ Could this be what he was seeing? Had the priests been right all along? Was the Blackstone really a facet of the God-Emperor’s will? Was it His face that Draik was on the verge of seeing? Draik was not a devout man, but the idea was dizzying. Was he about to see the face of humanity’s saviour?

‘Wait!’ cried Audus.

With a great effort, Draik managed to drag himself back into the moment.

He had run so fast he had left the rest of the group behind. Audus and the others had halted in the middle of a path, unable to see it stretching out ahead of them and thinking they were at the edge of another abyss. The warp creatures had been unable to follow. He could see them far in the distance, no more than pale, indistinct shapes again. The danger had passed, for the moment.

Before heading back to Audus, he tried killing the eyepiece’s power to see how different the view would be if he only saw it through his normal eye. When he turned the dial, nothing happened. The augmetic remained on, filling his head with the same dark kaleidoscope. He nodded, unsurprised. It was no longer merely a bionic implant; it was part of him now. He could no longer feel an alien presence in his brain. There was no longer any distinction between his mind and the sentience that bled through the eyepiece. They were joined.

It took a huge effort for him to walk calmly back towards the others and address them like a normal man.

‘How are you doing this?’ asked Audus as he reached her and the others. She looked around at the jumble of paths and slopes that surrounded her, but Draik knew she would only be seeing a bottomless void.

He spoke carefully, not wanting to sound either insane or heretical. ‘The fortress has altered me. I can understand it.’

As he looked at the group, he realised that even his understanding of their physicality had changed. He could see Audus’ blood racing around her body, and the oxygen it carried reaching her brain. But his insight was more profound than that. He saw the past she had never described to him in detail. He saw her piloting an Imperial Navy craft as it dropped virus bombs on soldiers she had fought alongside for years. He saw the moment she learned to despise her commanders and tried to convince herself she was done with idealism. He wondered if this was what Grekh meant when he spoke of insights.

At the thought of the kroot he looked at him, fascinated to see the contents of such an alien mind. To his surprise, he could barely even see Grekh, never mind peer into his past. Where the rest of the group had become shockingly vivid and clear, Grekh had almost faded from sight. Where he should have seen the tall, long-limbed alien, Draik saw a shifting mass of faces and ideas. They turned around each other like storm clouds, impossible to name. Draik was reminded of how Grekh’s statue had been ill-defined where the others had been so clearly rendered. He is a fusion of everything he has consumed, thought Draik, starting to understand Grekh’s peculiar mannerisms. He has devoured so many beliefs that he is no longer a single life but many.

‘Draik?’ prompted Audus, dragging him from his thoughts again. They were all staring at him and the priests were quietly chanting prayers.

Draik battled to stay in the moment. His head was full of ideas and faces but he managed to focus on his purpose. ‘Precipice,’ he said, recalling the dreadful legions he had seen massing on the stranded space station.

Audus nodded. ‘Yes. The place we could have stayed in. But you dragged us down here to stop those walking nightmares overrunning it. Remember? You said it was the only way Daedalosus would be able to get out of this place.’

Draik looked around at the labyrinth only he could see. ‘We have to reach the woman in the throne.’ He could see the altars that littered the floor hundreds of feet below them and, at the far end of the chasm, he could see the fierce glow of the bloody lake they had passed on their last journey into the Blackstone. His eyepiece whirred and refocused, zooming in on the distant scene and revealing huge crowds of creatures spilling from the gore. He smiled as he saw how easy it would be to approach from above, unseen, travelling on paths that would not be visible to any eyes but his.

‘I thought this would be a one-way journey,’ he said, looking back at the others. ‘But I’m starting to think I may be able to get you back to Precipice before Daedalosus takes it out of here.’

‘You all heard that,’ said Audus, trying to sound sardonic despite her manic, exhausted expression. ‘I’m taking that as a promise. And a Draik is always true to his word, right?’

Draik tried to think of a way to answer, but his mind was so crowded that none of the words he summoned made sense. The best he could manage was a nod, before he turned and walked into the abyss.

36

Daedalosus had survived countless military engagements but he had never seen anything as desperate as the fight to save Precipice. Necessity had forced its various factions to shelve their differences and unite against the horrors flooding from the darkness.

From his vantage point near the warp-entanglement node, he could see most of the wrecked space station. Las-fire and rocket trails were screaming through the ruined ships and anchorage points, creating a nightmarish scene as the explosions wrenched Precipice in and out of the darkness. Every corner of the station was under attack and there seemed to be little logic to the assault. All the attackers were heretics of one kind or another but they were not a unified force.

The most intense fighting was around a wreck called the Galleus, where warriors in black-and-gold armour were laying waste to everything that stood against them. Daedalosus recognised the jagged, crude icons on their armour. Servants of the Abyss. Thought at one point to have been driven from the Blackstone Fortress, but now massing on Precipice in greater numbers than any other group. Some of them were men, corrupted and deformed by heresy, but others seemed to have never been men to begin with, walking on cloven hooves and howling with faces that looked more bestial than human; some were twice the size of a normal man, clad in hulking power armour more fit for the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. As they fought, the warriors with bestial faces played curved, brass horns, filling Precipice with a brazen din. Whichever direction Daedalosus looked, he saw Precipice’s defenders being driven back towards him, back towards the core of the station where he was hunched next to the jokaero, waiting for them to finish their work.

The sphere of plasma at the centre of the scaffold had been extinguished, leaving a dark, ominous hole at the centre of the circular frame. Precipice’s defenders were as afraid of the station’s unstable core as they were of the lunatics massing on their borders, so Daedalosus had humoured them, killing the reactor so that he could be left to work in peace. The time had almost come to trigger it again.

‘Have you checked the couplings on this side?’ he called out, addressing the ape that was furthest away from him, swinging cheerfully across the gantries with a cable in its mouth. The jokaero looped over towards him to adjust the clamps near Daedalosus.

Captain Lees was crouched lower down the scaffold, her expression bleak. She had not spoken since they’d escaped from the zoat’s ship. Daedalosus considered the thought processes of unaugmented women a foreign landscape, but he guessed that she was grieving over the death of her husband. He had offered, several times, to let her help the jokaero, but she had just stared at him from behind a curtain of matted, grey hair. She had a battered lasgun across her lap, but she had shown no desire to go and join the defence of the station. It seemed as though she would rather dwell on her pain than do something productive.

As he climbed past her to check the work of the weaponsmiths, she finally snapped out of her trance. She tucked her hair behind her ears and frowned.

‘What are you doing out here?’

The woman had been following Daedalosus around since Tukh died and he had assumed she understood his various hypotheses.

‘I am linking the entanglement node to resonators in the fortress.’ He shook his head, tapping the nest of cables the jokaero had knotted around the gantry, about to explain more, when he sensed that she was not really interested.

He used his spinal servo-arm to place himself at her side. He could think of nothing to say.

She stared at him in disbelief. He nodded, as though they had shared something profound. Then he stood next to her in silence, watching the gunfire tear Precipice apart.

‘I meant,’ she said, ‘why did you come to the Blackstone Fortress?’

‘Ah,’ he nodded, relieved by the straightforward nature of the question. ‘In search of knowledge. There are technologies on the fortress that are completely unknown to my priesthood. By deconstructing and understanding objects I have acquired on Precipice I have made invaluable progress in understanding the templates that govern our own technology.’

The scaffold trembled as a series of mortar shells detonated, cutting a path through the barricades around the Galleus. An avenue of fire opened up across the station, catapulting bodies and sections of hull. Daedalosus had to steady himself until the tremors ceased, and when the smoke cleared he saw that Precipice’s defenders had been driven back almost to the foot of the scaffold.

Captain Lees did not seem to notice. She stared at the gun on her lap. ‘We came for a new start. We thought we could escape all this.’ She waved vaguely at the violence below. ‘There’s no escape.’

The apes had almost finished their work. In moments, Daedalosus would be able to trigger the entanglement node, harness the Blackstone’s conduits and free Precipice from this grave. He could not predict exactly what would happen next, but wherever Precipice ended up, he would have given its survivors a chance to reach civilisation and warn the Imperium. Lees’ ungrateful tone grated on him.

‘We cannot escape what we are,’ he said. ‘But neither should we look to. We have a burden to carry, all of us. But despair is a step towards faithlessness. And without faith, we are no better than those wretches down there.’

Lees glared at him. ‘You think they have no faith? Look at them. They have more faith than you. Why do you think they’re so happy to kill us?’

Daedalosus looked at her. ‘Do you know what will happen if we fail to reach an Imperial outpost? Do you know what will happen if no one learns what is happening on the Blackstone? Your husband, Captain Lees, will be a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of lives that will be lost.’

Lees looked shocked by the outburst, but made no sign of moving.

Daedalosus shook his head, baffled by her. He and his kind were often accused of lacking empathy, but she seemed to have even less of it than him.

‘The people down there defending us are normal people. Like you and your husband. People who only came to Precipice to try and forge a life. They came to escape, just as you did. They are not all soldiers or priests. Do you feel no sympathy for them?’

She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded and climbed to her feet. ‘What can I do?’

Daedalosus could not follow her fluctuations of temper but he was pleased she seemed less despondent. ‘Nothing yet, Captain Lees,’ he said, looking back at the scaffold. ‘I am just waiting for the weaponsmiths here to finish checking everything is in place.’

The framework shook again, more violently this time, and Lees would have fallen if Daedalosus had not been close enough to catch her. They both looked down to see that they were almost completely surrounded. The station’s defenders were being butchered. Enough of them had listened to Daedalosus for them to make the entanglement node their final stand, but they would not hold out much longer.

Daedalosus rushed to the nearest jokaero. ‘We have no time left. I have to trigger the reactor now.’

The ape glanced at one of its fellow weaponsmiths. The other ape gave a non-committal shrug. The first jokaero turned back to Daedalosus and nodded with an eager flash of its canines. Daedalosus waved Lees over to what looked like a rusty barrel full of cables.

‘Stay next to that transformer. If it moves, hold it down.’

Lees climbed over to it while Daedalosus hauled himself across the gantries to a similar-looking object with one of its cables disconnected. He grabbed the cable, waved the jokaero clear and pushed it into the transformer.

The plasma ball at the heart of the scaffold flashed back into life, drenching them in so much light that Lees had to shield her face. The sphere made such a loud, crackling din that it was audible over the sound of the approaching gunfire. Daedalosus nodded, pleased to see that his work had not destabilised the core any further.

Gunfire ripped through a nearby support strut, filling the air with shrapnel and causing Daedalosus to duck. He used his servo-arm to swing onto another platform and then climbed down to a control panel he had welded near the inner curve of the circular scaffold.

More shots blasted through the gantries and an ape screamed, falling from sight. The other jokaero began howling and scrambling back and forth, horribly distressed, clawing at their faces. Daedalosus looked up from his work, shocked by their behaviour. They had always seemed placid but now they seemed deranged. Some of them began returning fire with the rings on their fingers, adding pulses of light to the storm of auto-rounds and laser blasts.

Daedalosus tried to ignore everything apart from the cogitator in front of him. He hammered at the runeboard, entering the codes Draik had supplied. The equations matched perfectly and he backed away from the controls, smiling, as he waited for the warp translation to begin.

The entanglement core flickered, then regained its steady blaze.

Daedalosus’ smile froze. Nothing had happened. Lees looked across at him with a puzzled expression. He shook his head and re-entered the binary codes.

Again, nothing happened.

‘What have I done wrong?’ he whispered.

The apes shrieked louder and some of them started fleeing the scaffold. At first, Daedalosus thought they were going because of his failure, but then he noticed that Lees was staring at something behind him, her eyes wide.

Daedalosus whirled around.

When he saw the creatures that were clambering over Precipice’s defence lines, he whispered a prayer, wondering if his mind had given way.

37

The Emperor watched her legions march to victory. They were not the first to reach Precipice, but they would be the last to leave. She saw everything they saw. They were her and she was them. She saw the embattled station clearly as her armies reached its defences and washed over them, driving back the station’s survivors with barely any effort. All it took was one glance for most of the defenders to collapse in horror or flee.

The other cults and warbands tried to stand against her, but they were leaden and slow. Her warriors were not bound by the same constraints of the material realm. It was glorious. After thousands of years of slow, gnawing defeat, she was beginning again. The shrines had warned her that the people of Precipice would try to escape, that they would try to reach her enemies and bring them to the Blackstone. But within the hour it would be over. With the Blackstone as her blade, she would behead the beast of heresy that had riven the Imperium. She would cleanse the stars of every alien race that pitted itself against humanity. The dream would become reality. The Imperium would be transformed from rotten effigy to something vital. Invincible. She was about to save humanity.

She was so lost in the heady thrill of watching Precipice die that it took her a moment to realise she was not alone. Someone had entered her throne room.

‘Falso?’ she said, dragging her consciousness back to her body. She no longer had eyes, in any normal sense. The final summoning had removed the last few remnants of Lord Commissar Torgau, leaving only the larval beginnings of her new form. She no longer had need of physical senses, though. As her thoughts passed over the seething, star-shaped lake, she realised that the strangers were somewhere above her, moving through the darkness.

She presumed the fortress had sent more of its brittle-shelled drones to try and interrupt her but, to her surprise, she found it was a human – and one she had encountered before. It was the officer who had wounded her just before the summoning. She struggled to understand what was happening. The man was accompanied by a small group and all of them appeared to be running through the air. They were not using grav-chutes or any kind of aircraft; they were simply crossing the darkness as though it were solid.

She did not spend long worrying over the strange nature of their approach and she smiled as she realised she would have a chance to crush the man who had planted a shot in her head. She gave no sign she had seen the group, letting them continue their peculiar rush through the open air. She counted seven of them: the officer and two of his crew, as well as four priests who were following in their wake, chanting an absurd hymn. For a moment she thought she saw an eighth member of the group but then she realised it was just the shadows cast by the priests.

‘Come,’ she whispered to herself, as they descended towards the lake with no idea they were being watched. ‘Come and kneel before the Golden Throne.’

38

Draik was only vaguely aware of the others trailing in his wake. As he reached the edge of the lake, his gaze fixed on the grotesque tower up ahead. It loomed over the chamber like an enormous cousin of the other shrines. Its limbs were spread like the branches of a tree, rising though clouds of flies and reaching up into the shadows, the boughs laden with thousands of chanting heads. It was like a vast, rotten oak, and at its crown the foetid meat had lashed together to form an ornate throne.

Draik jogged carefully around the edge of the lake. The blood soup that filled it had finished birthing horrors. The liquid popped and steamed but showed no sign of producing anything else. Draik looked up at the throne in the shrine. At first glance, it seemed to be empty, but then he realised there was a figure seated in it. Or, rather, there was a person embedded in it. The body had melded into the surface of the chair, forming a single entity. There was a vague suggestion of a torso and some wasted limbs, but it was only really the eyes, staring from the chair’s back, that revealed the presence of a living person.

The heads sang louder as Draik approached the trunk of the shrine, but the eyes in the throne gave no sign of recognition. They were fixed on some distant point, oblivious to his presence. The hatred burning through him told Draik that this wretched creature was bent on destroying Precipice. All her thoughts were locked on that goal.

Rather than using his grappling hook to scale the altar, Draik used his new awareness to walk up a slope that would have been invisible to anyone else. The fortress had brought him here to achieve this specific goal. It would not let him fail now. He imagined that, even if the creature in the throne sensed his presence, the Blackstone would lend him the strength to finish his work. He felt like a skilfully handled weapon.

When he was forty feet from the throne, Draik paused and drew his pistol. The others were struggling to rush after him, watching in amazement as he strode through thin air towards a being that seemed plucked from ancient myth, but Draik could not pause. His whole body was screaming with the need to end the thing’s life.

He took careful aim.

The face in the throne turned towards him. ‘Is that how you greet your god?’

Draik hesitated.

‘You came all this way, pilgrim. Have you nothing to say?’

At the sound of the voice Draik was hit by a wave of nausea and stomach cramps. The words came from every mouth on the shrine. The severed heads spoke in unison, producing a garbled, liquid chorus that made him want to howl.

He managed to hold steady and take aim.

‘No,’ said the heads, speaking calmly but firmly. ‘You will not delay me a second time.’

Draik’s pistol flew from his grip, snatched by a branch-like limb.

‘No!’ cried Audus from behind him.

Draik was about to draw his rapier when another tendril fastened around him, binding his hands to his sides and lifting him into the air. There was a chorus of shouts and howls as the rest of the group were caught in the same way.

Draik could not comprehend what was happening. He had spent so long sure that he was destined to kill this thing. He could not be mistaken. He strained to free himself, gasping in pain and disbelief, but it was no use. As the strand tightened around his waist, Draik’s ribs creaked and his breath was crushed from his lungs, leaving him unable to speak.

As his head grew dizzy and his chest started to burn, Draik realised that he was being held out over the bubbling surface of the lake.

39

‘These were the codes,’ gasped Daedalosus, hammering at the cogitator with increasing ferocity. He could tell, by the screams of the apes, that the warp spawn were coming closer. After the initial horror of seeing them, he had realised what they were. Such unholy creations could only be a product of the warp. He tried to banish them from his mind, but their knotted, multi-jointed limbs snaked into his thoughts, however hard he tried to stop them. The heretics’ shrines had pushed the Blackstone to the point of dimensional collapse. Boundaries between materium and immaterium were failing. Unreality was invading reality.

The apes were still hysterical but they had overcome their shock enough to defend themselves. They had gathered beneath him and were firing their digital weapons. Daedalosus doubted they would have any effect but he did not pause to look. He had minutes, perhaps seconds, to understand why the resonators had failed.

He looked at the cogitator and checked the links to the resonators. There was no break. Everything was as it should be. He looked up at Captain Lees, who was clinging to the scaffold a few feet away, staring in horror at the approaching warp creatures.

‘It should work,’ he whispered, even though she could never have heard him over the gunfire. He peered at the display again. Then he tried running the data backwards, wondering if seeing the characters in a different order might reveal his mistake. But there was nothing.

He was just about to hurl the cogitator away in despair when he finally noticed something unusual. The mass of the resonators did not make sense. They seemed to exist in some kind of partial state, as though not entirely present. He could find no explanation for it until he thought of the creatures he had just seen pouring into Precipice – creatures from other planes of existence managing to exist concurrently in this one.

‘The resonators have been altered,’ he muttered, growing even more confused. ‘By the tides of the warp. How is that possible?’

The screams coming from beneath the scaffold doubled in volume and Daedalosus realised reasons did not matter any more. His time was up. He had failed.

He turned slowly from the cogitator, took out his gamma pistol and whispered a final prayer.

40

Draik’s head was so light that he took a moment to realise that the shrine was shaking, as though in pain.

The tendril around him tightened and then relaxed, dropping him through the air. He fell dangerously close to the lake before grasping one of the angles that had been revealed by his new perception of the fortress. His arm jolted painfully but he hauled himself onto a ledge and raced back towards Audus and the others.

One by one, the shrine began loosing its hold on each of them, but Draik was fast enough to reach them before they fell, saving them from a possibly lethal fall and guiding them onto the slope. Then they watched as the edifice in front of them clutched a gaping wound in its side.

The face in the throne stared out at them.

‘How did you do this?’ said thousands of heads.

Draik watched in confusion as a section of shrine collapsed, spilling innards and flies. He shook his head, but then he saw a small shadow climbing quickly across the surface of the shrine, wedging something in the folds of meat before rushing on. The face in the throne seemed oblivious, glaring at Draik.

‘Grekh?’ gasped Audus, leaning heavily on Quintus as they both tried to catch their breath.

‘By the Throne,’ muttered Vorne. ‘It is. It is the alien.’

Draik stared, unable to see the figure clearly.

A second grenade ripped through the shrine, scattering more meat and flies.

‘Why isn’t it defending itself?’ cried Taddeus. ‘It could easily crush the animal.’

‘It does not see him,’ replied Draik. He was on the verge of saying, ‘And neither do I,’ when he realised how odd that would sound. He held his tongue and strained to see what the others were seeing.

‘Damn it,’ laughed Audus as another blast ripped through the shrine, nearly splitting it in two. ‘He’s repaying his debt.’ She looked at Draik, her eyes wide with emotion. ‘Do you see? This is why he stayed.’

The heads screamed as the shrine uprooted itself from the floor, leaning towards Draik and the others and reaching out with its countless limbs. Draik looked for an escape route and was about to wave everyone back when another blast rocked the chamber and the throne collapsed, plunging through the heart of the altar and spewing a huge umbrella of flies and smoke.

The altar fell with such force that Draik and the others had to steady each other to avoid tumbling from the ledge. The reverberations continued for several minutes and for a while the clouds were so thick that none of them dared move for fear of falling.

When the haze cleared, Draik saw a faint silhouette, strolling towards them through the fumes, a rifle slung over its shoulder – and then it vanished. It took Draik a moment to realise that the heads were silent. An odd quiet had descended on the chamber.

One by one, the altars across the hall sank into darkness, robbed of their crimson fire.

41

Warp spawn were swarming up the scaffolding, moving like frenzied larvae: coiling, flopping and looping, immune to the gunfire.

Daedalosus fired his gamma pistol, hurling radiation from the muzzle, but it was impossible to see if even his blessed weapon was having any effect. Precipice was a ruddy haze of fumes and shrapnel as the various factions battled to reach its heart.

Lees fired wildly as a warp entity flipped towards her, spewing a wild profusion of limbs. Her lasgun had no impact and the creature engulfed her like a wave, smothering her screams in an amorphous, grey deluge. The creature shuddered as it consumed her, then turned to face Daedalosus, lurching like an unsteady drunk. It was twice as tall as Daedalosus but it looked like a faceless grub, with rings of muscle and limbs like the translucent fronds of a sea creature.

Daedalosus fired his gamma pistol and the hideous thing flipped backwards though the air, one whole section of its body dissolved by the ionising blast. As the creature fell to the battling crowds below another one slithered into view, followed by another and then another, until dozens of them were ambling towards Daedalosus.

There was no time for prayers now, or even fear. He simply raised his pistol and prepared to take a final shot.

The beam sizzled through the air and hit nothing. Daedalosus cursed, thinking he had missed. Then he realised that the creature had vanished. He looked around and saw that all the others had disappeared.

The sounds of fighting beneath the gantry faltered and he heard cries of excitement. Daedalosus scrambled to the edge of the scaffold and looked down through the fumes. There was no sign of the warp creatures. There had been a whole host of them a moment ago and now he could not see even a single one. The battle for Precipice’s outskirts was still raging as heretics battled to enter the station, but there was no sign of the grotesque things that had been about to overwhelm the gravity engine.

There was a screaming sound from behind him and Daedalosus turned to see one of the jokaero hunched over the cogitator. It was the first of the creatures he had encountered, the one who’d drunk his wine, and it was waving frantically, screaming and pointing at the viewscreen.

Daedalosus rushed over and grabbed the cogitator. The characters on the screen had changed. The description of the resonators’ mass was now showing as normal.

‘Could it be?’ he whispered, looking at the ape.

The ape nodded furiously at the cogitator.

Daedalosus held his breath, his finger hovering over the runeboard, then entered Draik’s code.

The plasma core flashed white. The air creaked. Power escaped from the core and limbs of energy splashed across the circular scaffold. Then the whole conflagration began turning like the spokes of a vast wheel. Daedalosus narrowly avoided being incinerated as the jokaero dragged him clear of the blast. He had to shield his face as the whole of Precipice erupted with the same, dazzling light. Through a blizzard of sparks and smoke, Daedalosus looked back at the cogitator and saw numbers hurtling down the screen. He shook his head and then laughed, gripping the ape’s shoulder.

‘By the Omnissiah. It’s working!’

Across Precipice, the gunfire faltered again as a new sound reverberated through the broken hulls. It sounded like cloth being torn, but it was louder than the station’s engines. Everyone who heard it sensed that something momentous was about to happen.

Daedalosus whispered another prayer, but this one was not to his god. This time he prayed to Janus Draik.

42

Precipice was breaking free of the Blackstone, sidestepping reality with a shriek of tearing atoms. As Draik watched, he realised that he was not seeing some vision of the distant future. Daedalosus had achieved the impossible. He was about to escape.

‘We have to get back,’ he said, turning to face the others.

For a moment, he thought he was alone in the darkness. He was surrounded by a jumble of black, polyhedral shapes – edges, planes and vertices, bound into a single, beautiful edifice.

Then one of the polygons moved and he realised it was Audus. As he recognised her, the rest of the group materialised in her wake, shrugging off the optical illusion and looking at him with concerned expressions.

‘Get back to Precipice?’ asked Audus, handing his splinter pistol back to him.

Draik found it hard to marshal his words. He spoke slowly and carefully. ‘The magos was right. His plan is working. Now that the shrines have gone he is free to harness the Blackstone’s power. Precipice is about to leave.’

‘Leave?’ Quintus was standing behind Audus. He was ashen-faced and bloody but his eyes flashed. ‘We can escape?’

Draik nodded. ‘Perhaps. If we make it back in time. The process has already begun.’

He looked back towards where the shrine had stood at the head of the lake. The fortress was already consuming what remained of it, swallowing the mounds of offal beneath broad, seamless expanses of black ore. The whole chamber was remaking itself, closing over the lake of blood and removing any sign of the heretics. The lurid red glow had gone and the only light came from Taddeus’ servo-skulls, looping overhead, trailing scraps of ragged parchment.

‘Where is Grekh?’ he asked, turning back to Audus.

She frowned and looked to her side. ‘He’s here, Janus.’

Draik stared at the space next to her. All he could see were edges of shadow. The more clearly Draik saw the fortress, the less he saw other things. Even Audus seemed to exist on the far side of an impassable gulf. What am I becoming? he wondered.

He touched the eyepiece and had an even more troubling thought. The dreadful sense of urgency had not left him. There was still something critical he had to achieve. He looked hard at Audus and the others and realised that their arrangement was not as random as he first thought. A flicker of fear washed through him as he realised the shapes of his companions slotted perfectly together to create another, larger outline. It was the face, still watching him silently, through the crystalline blackness.

‘Draik?’ said Audus, her voice softer than usual. ‘You have done what you said you needed to do. Can you get us home?’

Draik’s mind was so full of the Blackstone’s geometry that he found it hard to keep his attention on his fellow explorers. ‘Yes,’ he gasped, forcing his thoughts to stay with them. ‘I know a way.’

He walked through the darkness without hesitation, as though he had trod the route a thousand times, leading the group up hidden walkways and impossible, gravity-defying stairways that turned in on themselves and crossed miles with a few, small steps. In minutes they had left the blood lake far behind, moving through chambers and halls at a bewildering pace. Behind him, Draik could hear the priests arguing. Taddeus was still talking about finding the Crucible, but Vorne believed she had undergone a kind of revelation, insisting that the prophecy must have referred to the entire fortress; that it referred to Draik cleansing it of heresy, which he had just achieved. She had never spoken about him in such ecstatic tones.

Draik’s vision of the Blackstone was so clear that he had no doubt that Precipice was still up ahead of them. He could feel its molecules vibrating and altering, preparing for a new reality, but it was not too late for them to escape along with Daedalosus and the others. Strangely, the idea of leaving the fortress did not fill him with a sense of relief. When he tried to picture himself returning to an Imperial world it seemed absurd. How could he live in normal society, seeing the things he now saw?

He led the group down a narrow corridor and out into a hexagonal hall with a maglev chamber at its centre.

‘This will take us to the borders of Precipice,’ he said, picking up his pace, sensing that he did not have long before his mind slipped back into abstraction.

They had almost reached the maglev when Draik became absorbed again by the angles that only he could see. Strands of the Blackstone’s web were rotating and folding, as though moving towards him. It was only when Audus and the others cried out in alarm that Draik realised they could see the shape too.

He tried to see it as they did, limiting his visions to the spectra visible to a mortal eye.

Light filled the hall as Audus and the others opened fire.

The jumble of facets merged into a humanoid shape. It was three times as tall as Draik and built like an armoured vehicle. It wore no clothes or armour but was constructed entirely of gleaming, black polygons that whirred and flashed as it sprinted towards them. It was unlike any of the drones Draik had ever faced, but it was unmistakably part of the fortress. Draik felt a rush of anger. The Blackstone was attacking him? It felt like a betrayal.

Vorne bathed the drone in burning promethium, but the flames rippled away from its surface with no sign of damage. Audus fired her autogun, spraying empty shells as rounds clattered against the giant. Again, there was no effect.

The group spread out, all firing, but nothing would halt the drone. It did not even seem to register the shots as it ran past the group, making straight for Draik. He managed to fire his pistol once before the drone slammed into him.

He flew back through the air, landed hard and slid across the floor. The others fired again, lighting up the darkness but not even scratching the drone’s surface. It whirled and reconfigured until it was facing Draik again, like a handful of black diamonds cast across a table. Then it sprinted at him.

There was blood rushing from Draik’s nose and a blade of agony running up his spine, but he sensed his injuries were more profound than that. The impact had scattered his already fragmented thoughts. His grasp on material reality was slipping.

The others howled at him to get up, and he moved just before the drone collided with him a second time. Memories of his fencing training came back to him and he managed to sidestep the attack, causing the drone to crash onto the floor, throwing up sparks as it slid into the shadows.

As it tumbled away the drone’s head transformed again, switching round to face Draik. Draik gasped in shock as he recognised the features. It was the face from his visions; the face he had seen peering at him across the bridge of the Vanguard. It had finally found him.

He fired furiously, spewing splinters at the thing.

It attacked again, and this time Draik was not fast enough. An angular fist slammed into his head and sent him tumbling across the floor. His mind shattered as blood rushed from his head.

The drone loomed over him, preparing to strike again.

Audus sprinted into view and leapt before the blow. Draik heard something break in her chest as she crashed against him, but the drone staggered away, rotating sections of its body, and then paused, as though confused.

Draik leapt to his feet and dragged Audus up after him. Confused as he was, a furious determination gripped him. Audus would not die as Isola had died. He would not fail both of them. She was slumped in his arms, gasping and wheezing, but she managed a bloody grin.

‘Grekh!’ cried Draik, staggering under her weight as blood loss made his head whirl.

‘Draik,’ said the kroot, from near his side.

The drone was still watching from a few feet away, its cells turning and clicking as it prepared its next move.

‘The thing wants me,’ said Draik, speaking to where he thought Grekh must be standing.

‘I understand,’ said Grekh.

‘Yes,’ said Draik, ‘but what I mean is–’

‘I understand,’ repeated Grekh.

The drone reared up to its full height and began striding back towards Draik. Grekh took Audus from Draik’s arms, and Draik heard him rush away towards the maglev chamber.

‘Wait!’ croaked Audus, trying to struggle free.

‘You saved me,’ said Draik, forcing the words out. He hoped he was looking at Grekh as well as Audus. ‘Now save yourselves.’

‘Where is the animal going?’ cried Taddeus, stomping back over to Draik. ‘What did you tell it?’

‘The maglev is leaving,’ said Draik, drawing his rapier and turning to face the drone, trying not to stagger. ‘Anyone who wishes to escape this place needs to get inside it now.’

‘It’s leaving without you?’ cried Quintus. His voice was a thin shriek and his eyes were straining. ‘What do you mean?’

The drone attacked.

With his blade in his hand Draik felt more like his old self, dropping naturally into a fencing position and forgetting his pain. He sidestepped easily, slashing at the drone as it passed.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Taddeus as the drone reeled away. He was spitting and gasping as he talked, and looked so furious he might forget his devotion to Draik and attack him. ‘If the chamber leaves, you will be trapped.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Draik, surprised to find that he did not much care.

The drone had rotated to face him again and was preparing for another attack.

‘Get in the chamber!’ snapped Draik. ‘Don’t just stand there gaping like imbeciles. Precipice is leaving. Go now, or stay forever.’

‘I have to stay with you,’ gasped Quintus, shaking his head frantically and clawing at his wrist. He looked from Draik to the maglev. ‘I can’t go.’

The drone rushed at Draik and he readied himself, standing in another, elegant fencing pose. Again he managed to dodge the attack, but by this point he was growing tired of being constantly on the defensive. As the drone lurched past, Draik leapt onto its back and latched his arms around its neck.

The drone’s head turned on its shoulders to face him and seeing the baffling face so close made Draik feel like he was back in one of his visions. He leapt free, but not without leaving the drone a parting gift.

As Draik rolled clear, the grenade he had attached detonated, kicking the drone from its feet and throwing it back through the darkness. A clatter of broken shards told Draik he had damaged the thing. His rage at the Blackstone’s betrayal made no sense, but it was growing all the same and he gave the drone a fierce grin as it scrambled awkwardly back onto its feet, missing a section of its upper left arm.

As the drone stumbled, examining its wound, a humming sound filled the air. The maglev had left. Draik looked at the now empty chamber with a hollow feeling. He had not thanked either Audus or Grekh. He hoped they were in time. He hoped they reached Precipice.

‘You’re still here?’ he cried, noticing the priests and Quintus huddled a few feet away, staring at him.

‘You are the Anointed,’ said Taddeus, throwing back his shoulders and gripping his mace in both hands. ‘I will deliver you to the Crucible.’

Draik felt like laughing at the glowering priests, but Quintus was a different matter. He stared at the tall, hunched youth and shook his head. ‘Why have you stayed?’

Quintus looked back at him in terror. Then Draik realised Quintus was not looking at him, but something behind him.

Draik leapt aside, barely managing to avoid the drone’s fist as it hammered into the floor. The drone had doubled in size, now looming over them like a colossal statue. The blow landed with such force that the floor shattered, scattering pieces and leaving a jagged fissure.

The drone drew back its other fist to strike again and Draik had to jog backwards to avoid the blow. The priests and Quintus rushed after him, and they all had to dodge pieces of wall and floor as the drone began attacking the chamber. The frenzied blows drove the group back down the narrow corridor they had entered through.

Draik turned and ran, waving for the others to follow. ‘I’ll get you to another maglev!’ he called as the drone forced its way down the corridor, tearing the walls down as it came. He had no idea if that would be worthwhile. He sensed that Precipice was about to leave any second, but he could not simply leave the men to die. He had to try something.

They emerged into a circular hall with arches leading onto four different corridors. Draik picked out the one he needed and ran towards it, but before he could reach it the drone charged across the hall at incredible speed and smashed the doorway apart, tearing it down in another frenzy of blows and causing the whole corridor to cave in.

Draik changed direction and made for another doorway but, again, the drone rushed across the room and pummelled the exit, making the way impassable.

‘What are you doing?’ muttered Draik as the drone ignored him and strode over to the doorway they had just entered through, demolishing it with a flurry of blows.

Now there was only one exit left so Draik sprinted in that direction, ordering the others to follow. The drone loped after them but was too slow to bar their escape, so Draik led the group down a series of corridors until he reached another junction.

Again, the drone smashed its way into the room and began attacking exits until only one route remained. Draik found himself in an infuriating game of cat and mouse as the drone shepherded him through the fortress, blocking some routes and leaving others open. Draik even tried hidden ways revealed by his eyepiece, but it made no difference. The drone was always in control, always faster, always herding Draik and the others down a route of its choosing.

After a while, Draik forgot about the men struggling to follow him through the darkness. All he could think of was his fury at the drone. Then, as it corralled them into yet another hall, Draik saw that the drone had led them to a chamber that was in a state of collapse. There were cracks opening across the floor and sections of ceiling were crashing down all around them.

He turned to try and escape back the way he had come, but the drone had already barred the way, obliterating the doorway.

Taddeus cried out in surprise, reminding Draik of his presence.

‘Emperor be praised!’ gasped the priest, struggling for breath after so much running.

Draik looked around at the hall, peering through the tumbling metal and dust, wondering what had made Taddeus so excited. He saw a collection of small, pyramidal shrines, little more than heaps of stones, but the priest was not looking at those. Up ahead, through whirling dust clouds, there was a flickering, cube-shaped light. It was broken and listing to one side, but Taddeus was staring at it as though it were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Draik turned on his heel, rapier dangling from his hand, looking for the drone. To his surprise, the giant shape was motionless, standing a hundred feet away, watching him. He waited a few seconds, expecting it to attack, but then it turned and walked slowly away, disappearing into the banks of whirling dust and tumbling rocks.

‘You were leading me here,’ whispered Draik. He looked back at the distant cube-shaped light. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Taddeus rushed over, clutching the torn pages of one of his holy books. ‘This is it, Janus! You have found it. Somehow, despite everything, you have found the Crucible.’

Draik looked at the scrap of paper and wondered if Taddeus might be even more insane than he had imagined. It was just a drawing of a square surrounded by a pattern of triangles.

‘It is the Crucible,’ gasped Vorne, staggering through rolling clouds of dust and gripping Draik’s arm. ‘You have led us back to it, just as it was written.’

‘It was not me who led us here,’ said Draik, but he could tell that the priests did not hear him. They were watching him with looks of blank-eyed adoration.

The hall juddered as another wide crack tore across the ceiling, spewing more rocks and dust. At the same moment, the blazing cube jolted and slumped at an even more crooked angle. It looked like a broken lumen dangling from a frayed cable.

Draik looked back towards where he last saw the drone. It had brought him here. It had driven him to the Crucible. This must be why his sense of urgency had not left him. The Blackstone still had work for him to do.

He ran across the hall, heading towards the cube with the priests racing after him. The cube was hanging way overhead, but Draik’s understanding of the fortress was growing clearer with every second. Even through the rolling clouds of dust and spinning shards he could see the true architecture of the place; the shadow routes that hid themselves so perfectly from normal, human eyes.

He jogged easily up a hidden slope, eliciting more ecstatic cries from the priests, and then sprinted down a walkway towards the juddering cube. As he broke through the clouds, he saw that there were figures on the cube’s surface. Increasingly, he could see people far less clearly than he could see the Blackstone’s labyrinthine architecture, but he still recognised the larger of the three shapes.

The Archivist was in a frenzy, attacking the cube with hammer blows from its mechanised gauntlet, smashing its bright, polished surface into shattered, crumbling splinters. Half of the cube’s surface had been destroyed, revealing the chamber inside. The cube was full of freight canisters and cargo crates that were clearly very ancient, and the zoat had pulverised several of them, spilling relics and pieces of machinery.

When Draik was only a few feet away from the surface of the cube, the hulking alien finally registered his presence and glared at him.

+You?+ it cried. +Still alive?+ It staggered away from the hole it had just made and trotted towards him. +How?+

Draik aimed his pistol at the creature’s head. ‘You made Precipice fall.’ The idea made him dizzy with hate. ‘You meant to kill all those people.’

The zoat stared at him in disbelief. +The people of Precipice? Is that what you care about? You’re more of a fool than I thought, Draik. You care about those vermin?+

Draik had little interest in talking to the creature. He was about to fire when the zoat whirled away and punched the cube again, smashing another section with a furious howl. As the piece of cube broke, more of the hall collapsed. The two were linked, Draik realised. By smashing the cube, the zoat was destroying the entire hall.

As the section of broken cube came free, it soared up into the air rather than falling. The fragments that followed did the same. The cube seemed to obey different laws of gravity to the rest of the chamber. Draik watched for a moment, baffled, as the zoat attacked the cube rather than him. Every time it shattered another section, the broken piece shot up into the darkness, flashing and glinting as it sped away.

‘It’s just a vault,’ said Taddeus, walking past Draik onto the cube’s surface. He sounded numb.

‘What?’ demanded Draik.

The other priests and Quintus gathered nearby, watching as Taddeus dropped to his knees and pressed his hands to the broken mirror, staring at his fragmented face.

‘It’s just a vault.’

+Just a vault!+ roared the zoat, punching the cube again, sending another piece flying into the air and causing another stretch of hall to give way, spewing clouds of dust.

Draik looked down at the objects inside the cube. They had clearly been collected over many centuries and looked to be priceless. He could not understand the zoat’s rage.

‘What did you expect?’ he asked.

+Power!+ The Archivist caused another tremor as it pummelled the thing again. +Over the whole fortress! Not another damned treasure box!+

The zoat stomped towards him and Draik prepared to fire, but the creature did not attack, it simply railed at him.

+Precipice is destroyed. My ship is destroyed. All the ships are destroyed. Do you understand? What use are relics? I will rot down here.+ The alien stared at the ruined cube. +This was meant to be the Aberration, or the Seethe, or the Crucible, or whatever name you want to use. It was meant to be the heart of the fortress. It was meant to be the answer to everything.+ The creature’s rage was so violent it was shaking. It lurched away and punched the mirrored floor again, hitting it so hard that everyone standing on it staggered or fell.

The zoat’s fury had briefly distracted Draik from his own rage. But now he recalled that the Archivist had somehow engineered Precipice’s demise. Even if Daedalosus had managed to succeed with his plan, countless people must still have died in the fall, thanks to this cold-blooded horror.

Without a word of warning he fired his pistol, planting half a dozen splinter rounds in the zoat’s neck. It gasped and toppled backwards, clutching the wounds as it fell onto a broken stretch of the cube. The piece was barely attached to the rest of the structure, and as the zoat tried to rise, cracks spread across the join.

It raised its pistol to return fire but Draik was faster, slamming several more rounds into the creature and sending its gun spinning off into the shadows.

The zoat howled and was about to punch the floor again when it saw how precarious its position was. It lowered its fist and glared at Draik, who was preparing to fire again. His rounds should have already killed the creature, but he saw lights spilling from its armoured carapace, spidering across its scales, presumably reacting against the toxins.

+Kill him now!+ roared the zoat.

Draik thought, for a moment, that the zoat was talking to Taddeus, who was still knelt on the shattered floor looking dazed. Then he realised the alien was talking to Quintus. He had forgotten the gangly, sallow-skinned youth was still with him.

‘You know this thing?’ laughed Draik, looking at Quintus.

43

Quintus was rigid with pain, clutching his wrist. Draik was still struggling to see people as clearly as he should, but he saw a pale shell spreading over the valet’s arm.

Quintus hissed in agony and reeled across the cube, doubled over in pain.

+Do it now!+ roared the Archivist, equally pained. It seemed to be battling the poisons Draik had fired, gasping and struggling to stand.

Quintus took something from his jacket and stared at it, moaning and shaking so badly he almost dropped it.

+Kill him and you will live!+ howled the zoat, managing to stand.

Draik turned his pistol on the boy but, before he could fire, Quintus shook his head.

‘I don’t want to live in pieces,’ he gasped, before leaping onto the same shard of floor the zoat was standing on.

There was a flash of light and Quintus’ body was ripped apart. The explosion was so fierce that Draik and the priests all toppled backwards across the cube. The stretch of cube holding the zoat hurtled up into the air. As it vanished, Draik saw the Archivist clinging desperately to the glinting fragment, howling in fury.

As pieces of Quintus rained down around him, Draik struggled to grasp what had just happened. He did not have long to think about it. The cube was screaming and groaning as it started to collapse and the rest of the hall was in an equally disastrous state – whole walls were slamming down and sections of floor were shearing up like slabs of pack ice.

Draik grabbed Taddeus and hauled him to his feet. The priest stared at him, desolated.

‘It was just a vault.’

Draik shook his head and dragged Taddeus from the cube, waving for Vorne and the other priests to follow as he hurried back down through the dust clouds. They were deranged, but even now, Draik knew his duty. He would keep them alive, if he could.

They staggered out onto the floor of the hall, looking around in awe at the mountainous rocks spearing up into the air. It was like being in the middle of a storm-lashed ocean. Even now, Draik could sense the Blackstone’s purpose. As the hall tumbled and exploded, Draik discerned a pattern to the madness. It enabled him to weave between the eruptions and predict the chasms that opened up in front of him.

‘The Crucible was meant to be the way!’ cried Taddeus, staggering after him. ‘Your way. Your route into the heart of the fortress.’ He sounded hysterical. ‘I was the route through which you would ensure that the Emperor ruled the fortress, rather than…’ He shook his head, grimacing, unable to consider what else would rule in Draik’s place.

Draik’s limbs were still jangling with the same dreadful need to do something. ‘It looks like you misread your book,’ he snarled.

‘Look!’ cried Taddeus, showing Draik the torn page again, stabbing the drawing of the square with his finger. ‘So it was written!’

Draik was about to bat the page away when he hesitated, noticing something about the picture. ‘What are these?’ he asked, stopping amidst the carnage to squint at the page.

‘Just a pattern,’ said Taddeus, as Draik studied the faint triangles that surrounded the square.

‘No!’ snapped Draik. ‘Not just a pattern. I have seen these.’ He looked around, trying to see through the dust clouds. ‘When we entered the hall. Shrines, in exactly that shape.’

Taddeus took the page back and stared at it. Vorne did the same, gawping at the picture like they had never seen it before.

‘This way,’ said Draik, heading off along the edge of a crumbling fissure and dodging the shower of stones that was rattling down across the hall. As he ran, he felt a powerful rush of excitement, like he was on the cusp of something momentous.

After a few minutes of dodging falling wreckage, Draik saw a figure standing up ahead of them. He halted and raised his pistol but the figure made no move to attack. He edged forwards, holding up a warning hand to the others and keeping the gun raised.

As he moved closer, he saw that it was the drone. It was watching him in silence, its facets turning and clicking. Draik felt no urge to attack it, sure now that it had brought him here for a reason. Vorne hissed a curse and raised her flamer but Draik shook his head.

‘You’ll just be wasting fuel.’

The drone was waiting at the far side of the shrines and Draik stepped carefully through the piles of scrap towards it. He had almost reached the drone when a huge section of the cube came away. Rather than crashing to the ground it rushed up into the void, screaming and booming as it rushed out of sight.

A second later, more of the walls started to come down. The few parts of the hall that had been stable now toppled, collapsing like levelled mountains, creating a horrific din and rocking the floor.

‘Get out!’ cried Draik spotting an intact exit not far from the shrines.

The priests were like drunks on a sinking ship but Taddeus shook his head defiantly. ‘Never! We will not leave you until you have fulfilled your destiny.’

Draik shook his head in disbelief. ‘Go! You might still survive.’

‘And what about you?’ demanded Vorne, waving her flamer at the falling walls. ‘How will you survive?’

Draik looked back at the drone. It was still waiting for him, watching, uninterested in the destruction.

‘I will survive,’ said Draik, and somehow he knew it to be true.

‘Then we will stay with you!’ cried Taddeus, struggling to stand as the floor lurched.

Draik felt like striking the man to drive some sense into him. Then, remembering that no priest was ever swayed by logic, he had an idea.

‘I saw this moment in my dreams,’ he lied, speaking in the same, bombastic tone Taddeus usually employed. ‘I saw you and Vorne, leading me to this Crucible.’

Taddeus frowned, looking around at the banks of dust. ‘Crucible? What are you talking about?’

‘Look at your book, eminence. These shrines are the gateway. And this aspect of the fortress,’ he waved at the motionless drone, ‘is my guardian, sent to lead me.’

Taddeus looked doubtful.

‘I am about to ascend!’ howled Draik, summoning all the righteous fury he could manage, slapping his hand to his breastplate and raising his sword. Draik’s words were followed by such a deafening explosion that it sounded like the fortress had cried out in agreement.

Tears glinted in Taddeus’ eyes as he stared at the apocalypse behind Draik and the towering shape of the drone.

‘This is the Crucible?’ he gasped.

‘Do not delay me, priest!’ bellowed Draik. ‘My moment of ascension has come! Leave! Or my time will pass!’

Taddeus closed his eyes and whispered a prayer. Then he looked at Vorne. Her eyes were glittering too.

‘Then let it begin!’ cried Taddeus, holding his mace into the storm of rubble, ignoring the shards of stone punching into him. He bowed low, made the sign of the aquila, gave Draik one final, awed look and then stumbled off across the hall.

Draik stood in the same position, with his sword raised and a triumphant expression on his face, until the priests had all vanished from sight.

Then he relaxed and lowered the sword. The shrines fell way, tumbling into a crevasse, and Draik was left standing on a spur of rock surrounded by a savage tumult.

It ends here, then, he thought. But somehow, he sensed that was not the case.

The piece of rock jolted, forcing him to leap into the dust, landing heavily on a slab that was sliding slowly downwards. He looked around but even with his altered perception of the fortress, he could see nowhere to jump. Everything was in flux.

‘What now?’ he muttered, crawling back and forth across the rock as it juddered and dropped. As the priests left, the servo-skulls drifted away too, and their light was fading fast.

Something moved near his face.

He looked up and saw an outstretched hand. It was the drone. He could see the black crystals spinning and interlocking in its palm. He hesitated, then remembered he was about to die anyway, and took the proffered hand, letting himself be hauled up onto a hidden ledge.

The drone walked calmly away from him and Draik followed, balancing on a blade-thin ledge until the drone came to a halt before a hole in the floor. The hole was a perfect square, just like the one in the priest’s book. Draik laughed at the coincidence, thinking how delighted Taddeus would have been.

There were stairs leading down into the hole and the drone descended into the darkness.

Draik felt like his old life was already over. If Precipice had survived, it was long gone by now. He had no way home. No way to rejoin humanity. Whatever the Blackstone wanted of him, this was all he had.

He took one final glance at the devastation in the hall, then walked down the steps.

After a while, the sounds of destruction grew faint, then finally faded away altogether, until all Draik could hear was the sound of the drone’s footsteps and his own laboured breathing. He found it hard to gauge the passing of time, but as the stairs plunged ever deeper into the fortress, he felt as though he must have been walking for hours. The muscles in his legs were burning and his pace started to slow. Gradually, he noticed the temperature rising. The fortress’ perpetual chill was replaced by the vast, rumbling warmth of a furnace. Finally, as his legs felt like they might give way, Draik saw a light up ahead, silhouetting the drone and washing over the steps.

Then the drone led Draik out into the heavens.

He dropped to his knees, breathless, as he saw the galaxy spread out around him. He looked back but the staircase had vanished, leaving only the endless stars. He knelt there for a moment, basking in the incredible sensation of being adrift in the void. Then, as he looked harder, he saw that he was not adrift; he was not simply floating.

The Blackstone was still there. Its miles of baffling corridors and impossible halls were still spread around him. In fact, he was at the centre of the whole star fort. The clarity of vision that had been building in him now reached its apotheosis. He could see every facet of the fortress, but he could see it so clearly that it had become a lens through which the rest of the galaxy was magnified. He reached down and touched a floor he could not see. This was the true face of the Blackstone Fortress. This was the enigma that had tormented him every time he studied its tessellating surface. By finally seeing it so clearly, he was able to see through it; to see with it.

The drone stepped aside and Draik saw that there was something hovering in front of him: an opaque triangle of light, about the height of a man. It was featureless, and as Draik stood up and walked around it, he saw that it was only a fraction of a millimetre thick. It looked like a fragment of white glass, hanging in space.

As he studied it, Draik’s pulse quickened. The overwhelming sense of urgency that had been tormenting him grew to an agonising level. Draik laughed as he realised that the priests had been right. He had played along with them for his own ends, never giving any credence to Taddeus or his books but, in this panel of light, Draik sensed a power that he had been seeking, unwittingly, his entire life. A divine power. Intuitively, he knew that were he to step through the light, he would be unmade. Draik would die and a new Draik would be born. There would be no way back. The idea terrified and exhilarated him. His instincts screamed at him to flee. Surely this was heresy of the worst kind? He was considering abandoning his very humanity, on a whim he could not even explain. But another part of him exalted in being offered the chance to become something he always sensed he should be: something more than human.

Draik stood there for a long time, staring at the triangle of light, torn by his inability to decide. He knew, now, that the stairs were still behind him. He could leave this chamber, climb back up the stairs and try to find a way home. Or, he could take a single step forwards and join himself to the fortress.

The drone moved and Draik backed away, gripping the hilt of his sword, but it had merely held out its hand.

It was offering to lead him into the light.

He looked into the spinning facets of the face that had haunted him for so long. Then, to his amazement, he realised that the features were becoming clearer. Finally, he saw the face of his tormentor.

‘We can be partners,’ said the drone, still holding out its hand.

‘Isola?’ gasped Draik.

She smiled at him through her shifting black mask. Draik grabbed her hand and for a while he was too overwhelmed to think clearly.

Then, still holding her hand, he turned to the light.

AFTER

‘Are you sure?’ asked Raus, still cowering under the rubble.

‘Sure,’ replied Rein. ‘They’re all gone.’

Raus crept to his brother’s side and peered out into the madness. The hall had almost entirely collapsed, and as the vast expanses of wall crashed down they carved ragged caverns into the floor and hurled waves of dust through the darkness. The priests’ servo-skulls had gone and the only light was coming from the stab-lights on the ratlings’ heads.

‘Then this is ours,’ said Raus, grinning as he cradled the jar of bones they had salvaged from the cube. The jar’s decoration was enough to make them wealthier than they could have ever hoped. It was studded with gemstones the size of eyeballs and framed in beautifully filigreed gold. But the real value of the thing was its age. The inscriptions on the case were thousands of years old. It was ancient beyond anything either of them had ever heard of.

‘Think what a Ministorum priest will pay for it,’ said Rein, gripping Raus’ shoulder so hard it hurt.

They were clinging to the final section of cube. The rest of the vault had spiralled up into the darkness and the piece they were on was making a troubling creaking sound.

‘We have to get off this thing quick,’ said Rein, as the final supports started to buckle. They scampered across the juddering surface, dodging shards of rock, until they reached a point where Raus could fix his grappling hook and hurl the rope into the tumult below.

‘Do you remember which way the priests went, Rein?’ asked Raus, looking dubiously at the churning rocks.

Rein nodded, tapping his head. ‘It’s all in here, brother. I saw exactly where Draik sent them. There was one doorway still standing. We’ll see it when we get close.’

Another section of cube ripped free and rushed upwards, causing the rest of the fragment to tilt. The ratlings fell backwards, hurled away from the rope and back across the shaking slab.

‘Raus!’ cried Rein as he fell off the other side.

Raus managed to grab him by the wrist, just before he plunged to his death.

Rein stared up at him, his face rigid. ‘Don’t drop me, Raus!’

‘I’ve got you, brother,’ gasped Raus, managing to steady himself by planting his boots against a lip at the edge of the platform. The hall shook again and Rein cried out as his hand nearly slipped free.

‘Don’t let me go!’

Raus was too breathless to reply, but he managed to haul his brother a little closer.

‘Wait!’ cried Rein.

Raus kept pulling.

‘Stop!’ cried Rein.

‘I can’t hold you much longer,’ gasped Raus, his muscles screaming. ‘What is it?’

Rein looked down between his feet then looked back up at Raus, licking his lips. ‘I can see another jar of bones.’ He gave an awkward smile and his left eye started to twitch.

‘You’re insane!’ howled Raus. ‘We have to get down from here! The whole place is about to collapse!’

‘There are a lot of gems on it,’ said Rein, looking down between his feet again.

Raus stared at him in disbelief. Then he sucked his teeth.

‘How many is a lot, Rein?’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blackstone Fortress, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension and three novels in the Mephiston series, Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light. He also wrote the audio drama The Beast Inside and the novella Sanctus. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novel Ghoulslayer. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas.

An extract from ‘The Oath in Darkness’ by David Annandale,
taken from the Warhammer 40,000 anthology Vaults of Obsidian.

‘Do you think she knows what she’s doing?’ Lorn Rekkendus asked.

‘It’s a bit late to be wondering that, isn’t it?’ said Harant Dalkan.

‘That is not an answer.’ Lorn was not going to be put off by Dalkan’s deflection. He couldn’t blame her. He had been asking himself the same question. It had become far more urgent since they had all arrived at Precipice. The plan, which had seemed a glorious crusade in the abstract, a mission commanded by holy visions, looked like an act of madness now that they were actually in orbit over the Blackstone Fortress. The reality of the thing was far beyond any conception of it. No one should speak of the Blackstone Fortress without having seen it. Dalkan regretted that he had come to this understanding too late.

They were in Dalkan’s prayer cell aboard the Sanctified Journey, the Rekkendus yacht moored to Precipice. He had prayed more than usual for the Emperor’s guidance since arriving. If he had known its true nature before coming, Dalkan wondered, would he have agreed to Buria’s plan at all? Precipice was a foul place. It was beyond heretical. Humans and xenos coexisted in a cauldron of competing agendas. The clamour of trade, scheming and conflict was overwhelming. It was even louder to the ear of the soul. Every breath Dalkan took here felt like an offence against the Emperor.

Did Buria Rekkendus know what she was doing? Dalkan wished he knew.

‘I believe she does,’ he said to Lorn.

Buria’s younger sister frowned. She saw through to his camouflaged doubt as surely as if she had pierced him with her third eye. ‘I am not young,’ she said. ‘I have not been for quite some time. I know very well that when I hear someone assert something by saying I believe, then they are trying to convince themselves of the truth of that statement at least as much as they are trying to convince me.’

Dalkan was silent for a moment, acknowledging the truth of her accusation. Then he said, ‘I have believed in your sister’s judgement for as long as I have been confessor to your house. I have never had any reason to doubt that judgement before.’

This was true. Rekkendus was a proud house of the Navis Nobilite. The service of its Navigators to the Imperium had been exemplary for centuries. Buria’s reign at the head of the family had been singularly successful. It was marked by a combination of rigorous discipline and a willingness to take brave risks in the name of the house and of the Emperor.

‘This is not the first time Buria has taken a radical initiative,’ Dalkan said. ‘She has always been right in the past.’

‘She has,’ Lorn agreed. ‘That is why I have gone along with her plan this far. But she has never attempted anything quite like this.’

‘We knew that before coming here. You knew that before coming here.’

Lorn nodded. ‘But we have yet to do anything irrevocable. We can still turn back. We haven’t yet descended to the Blackstone Fortress. But she has gone now to meet with our guide. The point of no return is fast approaching.’

‘Have you spoken to Viktur about this?’

‘Delicately.’

That went without saying. Buria’s son was impulsive, and he lost his temper easily. He had a habit of making fraught situations worse than they needed to be.

‘His view has not changed,’ Lorn went on. ‘His only concern is that our house achieve ascendancy over House Locarno. He would likely be here even without my sister’s visions.’

Buria was the most powerful Navigator of the three. Her connections with the warp were profound, and Dalkan worried about the long term. House Rekkendus could ill afford to lose her. Viktur was not fit to lead yet, and Lorn was too cautious. Buria spoke and prayed with Dalkan every day. He watched over her spiritual health. It was her physical well-being that worried him. But it was the depth to which she could interface with the warp that had led to the revelations she had experienced, and that had brought them to the Blackstone Fortress. Within the monster, there was a ship. Buria did not know its name or its precise provenance. It was a Navigator’s vessel, though. That, she knew beyond any doubt. It called to her. It shone, it pulsed, it sang with the power of the artefacts within. Something of enormous value to the Navis Nobilite had been lost an age ago.

Finding the ship and salvaging what lay within would be a colossal victory. It would be a triumph for the house. Dalkan didn’t think Viktur could see much further than that. But to seize something so powerful that it reached across the void to Buria, even from within so dark and malevolent a prison, would mean extraordinary things could be done for the Imperium.

Buria understood that. If Dalkan could help in any way in the recovery, it was his duty to do so. Buria had made it very clear she did not expect him to come on this mission.

But I must, he had told her. If you go and do not return, I will have to live wondering if there was anything I could have done to help.

‘So we are committed, then,’ said Lorn.

‘I am.’

‘Then so am I.’

They left Dalkan’s cell. They walked down the passageway that led from it to the observation chamber. There, Viktur was leaning against a bulkhead, looking out of the viewport. Docking tubes stretched out from the hull of the station, spiking in every direction. Most held ships, tethering them in a precarious embrace above the Blackstone Fortress’ gravity well. Below, the triangular end of a colossal arm of the fortress loomed in from the left, filling half the viewport.

Dalkan did not like to look at it. Yet when he was in this room, he could not tear his eyes from the huge, angular darkness that hid the stars. What looked like small blocks on the surface of the fortress were masses a hundred feet high and more. The construct was, Dalkan thought, the very embodiment of the concept of fortress, but even there, the word was inadequate. As impregnable as the structure appeared, it would be a terrible mistake to view it simply in defensive terms. Aggression was built into every crenellation, every rampart, every wall, and most of all in the monstrous black pyramid at its centre, the pyramid Dalkan was grateful he could not see from this perspective.

‘How long has mother been gone?’ Viktur asked. He had been absent himself. He had a black eye, his knuckles were red, and he looked very pleased with himself. Since arriving, he had been spending his time in Precipice’s drinking holes, looking for fights. Even those, from his perspective, served the family name.

‘A while,’ said Lorn. ‘She’ll be back with our guide.’

‘At last. Time we were about this.’

Dalkan disapproved of the way Viktur looked at the fortress. ‘Beware your hunger,’ he said. ‘If it is not a desire to serve the Emperor, it is the hunger of pride.’

Viktur shrugged. He was tall, like his mother, and shared the sharp, hard planes of her face. His blond hair was shaved on the sides, and he kept a lustrous tousling down on his crown. His beard was a small, groomed point on his chin. A headband of embroidered silk covered his Navigator’s eye, and was the only sign he bore as yet of any kind of mutation. He was the conscious projection of Navis Nobilite aristocracy.

Lorn was quite a bit shorter, though still taller than Dalkan. Viktur was holding on to his youth, trying to deny the inevitable transformations that came for Navigators. She had accepted hers. Her robes, though lightweight, seemed to weigh her down. She did not always need the cane she carried, but she did not dare go far without it. Her shoulder-length hair was grey, and her eyes were shadowed with experience and caution.

‘Take heed,’ Dalkan tried again with Viktur. It was worrying that he was already so consumed by the promise of power to be found in the Blackstone Fortress. They were going to an evil place. If Precipice was already a moral cesspool, what awaited over in the fortress was something Dalkan didn’t want to imagine. ‘Do not let yourself be corrupted by what lies below.’

‘We shouldn’t be corrupted by cowardice either,’ Viktur snapped.

Before Dalkan could respond, the door to the quarters slid open and Buria entered. She was the most powerful Navigator in House Rekkendus, and her affinity for the warp had taken a heavy physical toll. She had fought against it with juvenat treatments, and had the taut look of coiled wire. An augmetic framework attached to her limbs gave her strength and mobility very close to that of her youth.

Behind Buria came the guide. Dalkan’s jaw dropped open, aghast.

‘This is Dahyak Grekh,’ Buria announced. ‘He will take us where we need to go.’

‘Mother,’ said Viktur. ‘Are you mad?’

For the first time in years, Dalkan found himself in perfect accord with Viktur. The guide was a xenos horror, a kroot. His bipedal shape was a mockery of the purity of the human form. He was beaked, though his scaled hide was reptilian rather than avian. He carried a long, bladed rifle, and had to duck to get through the doorway. He looked at the humans before him. The bird beak snapped with sharp clicks.

An inhuman voice said, ‘Soft… klik. Soft and weak. Easily broken. Do well and remember this. You are foolish to be here… klik. Less foolish to hire me.’

Click here to buy Vaults of Obsidian.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mauro Belfiore.

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