WHAT WAKES IN THE DARK


 	Miles A Drake


 	Hailing from Amsterdam, author Miles A Drake makes his second venture into the Dark Imperium’s alien-infested battlefields to spin a story of danger and intrigue. 

 	While on deep void patrol, Sergeant Achairas and his Tactical Squad of Death Spectres are ordered to urgently rendezvous with a member of the Ordo Xenos. They learn that Black Station Thirsis 41-Alpha has fallen silent after reports emerged of buried xenos archaeology being uncovered. Achairas and his elite warriors must locate the heretical device capable of untold destruction at all costs, or die trying. 

 
 
 	 
 


 	His eyes opened to the reflection of a ghost. An apparition stared back at him from the surface of the inky river that flowed silently below him. He regarded his own shimmering image for a moment. His ivory pauldrons were in stark contrast to the ebon ceramite plating he wore. His helm was gone, revealing bleached, hairless features – gaunt, but cast in the wide mould of a transhuman skull. His eyes were as black as the void.
 	‘The river…’ he muttered, his voice deep but barely a hiss as he overcame his disorientation. He looked up, into the rest of the ill-lit cavern. 
 	It was vast, its obsidian walls disappearing into the gloom, and a veritable landscape of jagged black glass formed hills and peaks in the distance. The colossal space was lit by an ephemeral glow, emanating from nowhere and everywhere at once. 
 	He stood on the bank of the Black River. That meant death was near. Its dark waters were impenetrable, plodding and relentless as they wound their way through the mantle of dead Occludus, his home world. They gave life as they exhaled the atmosphere during each perihelion, and they brought death when they inhaled it again, on the aphelion. 
 	His vision resolved, seeing the far bank, several hundred paces away.
 	It was there. He was there. 
 	‘Megir…’ The Space Marine bowed, his voice barely a hiss. It would carry across, in the total silence of the cavern, towards the master he had never, until this night, seen. 
 	‘Achairas,’ a voice returned. It was older, many hundreds of years more lifeless than his own. It was ragged, and echoed impossibly through the Stygian darkness. The voice came from the structure on the opposing bank, from the jagged throne of dark crystal, entombing his master in this place of death and silence. 
 	That throne was the Shariax, the tomb of the Chapter Master of the Death Spectres. And it was seen only by those who were marked with doom. 
 	Achairas regarded the Shariax, master of himself and all of his brothers, with reverence. Its crystalline lattice of dark razors, spurs and blades was woven around a cadaver in black-and-white artificer armour. The crystal was a symbiote, growing from the Megir where he sat, fusing with ceramite and flesh alike. 
 	Achairas advanced deeper into the waters. 
 	‘Wait,’ the Megir commanded, halting his steps. ‘Return to the shore. This is not your time.’
 	‘But I am in its waters…’ Achairas looked down. The darkness coiled around him, tugging at his armour like the cold hands of the dead. 
 	‘You are,’ the Megir agreed. ‘Your destiny has been marked. And death is its end. But you must still follow the path to meet your ending.’
 	Achairas looked back up. The certainty of his own doom did not bother him. ‘What path?’ 
 	‘Follow the call. Follow it to what is buried. Learn what wakes in the dark and ensure that the Menrahir are warned.’
 	Achairas nodded. The words were cryptic, and he did not understand them, but it did not matter. The Megir had spoken. He had given Achairas a command, to learn something and warn the Council of Librarians that shepherded his Chapter in their master’s absence. 
 	‘Now return to the shore,’ the Megir commanded once more.
 	Achairas did as he was bidden, wading through the beckoning waters. He stepped from the shifting, glittering silt onto the broken obsidian beyond the banks. His vision dimmed, then faded entirely. 
 	And he awoke from his dream.
 	898.M41 – System Thirsis 41, 
Subsector Thirsis, the Halo Region


 	Brother-Sergeant Achairas stood with his compatriots and their new guests within the aphotic strategium of the Vox Silentii. He listened to the muffled chatter of Chapter-serfs and servitors as he watched the bleak orb of Thirsis 41-Alpha slowly approach on the external pict-feed. The vaulted arches of the deck were decorated with images of death and darkness. 
 	Four of his nine battle-brothers were on deck, monitoring key systems and overseeing the serfs. The other five were attending to their various tasks about the ship, or were taking their Hours of Silence. 
 	The Megir’s warning had foreshadowed a call, a black-clearance astropathic cry, flagged with markers of the Ordo Xenos, from the quarantined world of Sarvakal-22b. Achairas’ squad and their Nova-class frigate had been in silent vigil, monitoring the Sarvakal Cluster along the edge of the Ghoul Stars for years, lying in ambush for the retreating Cythor Fiends that fled the fury of the Black Templars’ crusade. 
 	It was beyond any doubt in Achairas’ mind that the astropathic cry was the call the Megir had forewarned him of. He had immediately brought his ship to full power to make for Sarvakal-22b, and sent missives to the other four ships the Death Spectres had committed to the vigil, explaining his withdrawal from the campaign. 
 	Several days of warp travel through the unstable sector had brought them to the source of the message, a world of nightmare oceans and monolithic alien spires. It had indeed come from an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. With his work documenting the Cythor Fiends’ disturbing empty worlds finished, he was requesting aid for another assignment, one of a more pressing, and sensitive, nature.
 	That inquisitor now presented a wraith-like silhouette as he observed the feed from the Vox Silentii’s heavily modified augur arrays. Grey robes obscured tortured, mangled flesh and replacement machine. A mask of faceless steel concealed a flensed skull, and nearly a third of his body was galvanised metal, meshed seamlessly into his slate-grey carapace armour.
 	This was Inquisitor Senerbus Astolyev. Sergeant Achairas had heard the name before. It was synonymous with radical ideals, known well enough to those possessing clandestine knowledge in the Halo Region. He was an inquisitor renowned, and loathed, for turning the weapons of the enemy against the enemy. To the Space Marine, it was sound reasoning, but such a line had always to be trodden carefully, and Achairas did not yet know how light Astolyev’s tread was.
 	‘Six point eight standard days ahead of schedule, barring warp-related time oscillations,’ Magos Explorator Vemek commented. ‘The technology of this vessel’s peculiar… adaptations… intrigues me. The augur systems and internal energy absorption coils are beyond the capabilities of most Adeptus Astartes vessels…’ 
 	The magos beside the inquisitor was a small man, entirely concealed behind augmetic replacements and bone-white robes, his four mechadendrites shuddering in excitement. 
 	Both Achairas and Astolyev ignored Vemek. The magos had been a mild annoyance since the inquisitor had boarded with his retinue of acolytes and Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, and Achairas did not approve of his meddling with the vessel’s systems. 
 	‘Keep your fascination to yourself,’ Brother Nym reminded the magos, as he approached to join in the observations. Like all the Death Spectres, Nym was clad in black ceramite, with ivory pauldrons bearing the heraldry of a hooded skull on crossed scythes. He was albino, and completely hairless, with black, pupilless eyes. Such was the result of the faulty mucranoid gland that was present in all of the Chapter’s warriors. 
 	‘I’m more concerned with the auguries themselves, magos.’ Achairas steered the conversation back to what mattered. 
 	He watched the hololithic display, studying the image of Thirsis 41-Alpha, committing the bleak geology of the planetoid to memory. It was a dead world of no consequence, orbiting a stillborn star, a brown dwarf. But the auguries had detected an energy source of unprecedented power burning in the upper crust of its scarred surface. 
 	‘The power source is situated directly below the excavation site,’ Inquisitor Astolyev rasped, turning to Achairas. The inquisitor had already elaborated that it was far more than a simple excavation site. It was an operation involving an Inquisitorial shroud station – seven hundred personnel divided among servants of the Ordo Xenos and the Adeptus Mechanicus, working secretly, hidden from all other Imperial eyes. 
 	‘I take it this is a new discovery,’ Achairas guessed.
 	‘Indeed. This is… an anomaly.’ The inquisitor’s hesitation did not bode well.
 	Achairas had already been briefed about the shroud station falling silent. The Ghoul Stars were a place of unnatural danger. A station or colony going dark was not unheard of, but Subsector Thirsis was unusually quiet, unusually devoid of the typical xenos and nightmare phenomena plaguing these regions. 
 	According to the information Astolyev had divulged to the Death Spectres, the excavation had begun eight years earlier, the goal to unearth a vast, monolithic structure of unknown xenos origin. Initial carbon readings had dated it back sixty million years. 
 	‘Could the origin of the power source coincide with the time of the last astropathic cry?’ Achairas inquired. When the research station had fallen out of contact, it had submitted one last frantic signal that had been received some six weeks prior. Of course, given the nature of the medium through which astropaths communicated, the true ‘time’ of the cry’s origin could not accurately be determined. 
 	‘Possibly,’ Astolyev admitted. ‘Vemek, can you discern when this power source was first detected?’
 	‘Preliminary scans indicate that it has grown in magnitude by six point three eight per cent since our first observation,’ Vemek replied, taking in the hololithic feed data. ‘The growth in magnitude has been exponential, not linear. I should be able to calculate when it originated. Roughly.’
 	The magos chittered with his servitors, the binaric chirps indecipherable to Achairas’ ears. Judging by the way the inquisitor angled his head, as if listening, he guessed that Astolyev had the prerequisite implants to understand them. 
 	‘Analysis of reverse exponential growth traces the power source’s origin to seven point three three eight weeks ago,’ Vemek buzzed, after a few moments. 
 	The inquisitor sighed. Or hissed. 
 	‘Convenient,’ Brother Nym growled, his drawling accent evident of his non-Occludan birth. Nym was from the marshes of Atropos Sigma, one of six worlds the Death Spectres recruited from. 
 	‘Close to when the astropathic cry might have been sent,’ Achairas agreed, frowning. While it was imprecise, the times lined up too well to be coincidence. ‘And I can’t help but notice that the power source seems to emanate from within the xenos structure.’
 	The inquisitor did not respond.
 	‘What is down there?’ Achairas asked. His tone carried threat and command, even though he voiced the words as an inquiry. 
 	After a few moments of tense silence, Astolyev responded. ‘I don’t know.’ 
 	Even with the man’s augmetic voice, Achairas sensed an undercurrent of unease in the reply. It was clearly not something the inquisitor was used to saying. 
 	Achairas knew there was one way to get more information, and that was to make planetfall and investigate in person.
 	898.M41 – Thirsis 41-Alpha, 
Subsector Thirsis, the Halo Region


 	A long retro thruster burn slowed the Vox Silentii’s immense re-entry speed over the course of many hours, and the vessel sank into a wide orbit around the small, battered black orb of Thirsis 41-Alpha.
 	The ground team was diverse. Three forces, independently led, yet all unified in the desire to find answers, had embarked upon the ebon-plated Thunderhawk Apparition, and descended towards the eerie, rugged landscape of the world below. The inquisitor led his own team, thirty warrior acolytes in slate-grey, void-sealed carapace armour, devoid of any heraldry. Their helmets were fed by backpack-mounted canisters via thick tubes, and their optical lenses glowed a faint green. Many possessed cybernetic augmentations and their hotshot lasguns, flamers and bolters were clenched calmly in their hands. These were well-disciplined, elite soldiers, Achairas noted, not the typical rabble used by some, more eccentric inquisitors. Astolyev was known to possess a private army, and resources provided by an alliance with the Dalvarakh Explorator Consortium. 
 	Magos Vemek led two squads of grey-robed skitarii rangers, their rebreather masks hissing vapours, and their many eye-lenses shimmering with an emerald hue. Most were armed with galvanic rifles, though a few carried faintly humming arc-rifles and plasma calivers. A trio of heavily armed gun-servitors were their support. These lumbering behemoths were draped in armour, their limbs fused and linked to multi-meltas. Their withered, grey flesh and slack, drooling jaws seemed entirely at odds with the destructive power they could unleash. 
 	Achairas’ own team was four of his battle-brothers, Tactical Marines in black ceramite. They stood in their acceleration harnesses, faceless in their corvid helms, each running over their own pre-battle mantras. Only Brother Celaeno did not bear a bolter, his flamer mag-locked to his thigh-plate instead. 
 	Apparition’s retro-thrusters roared as it decelerated through the planetoid’s thin atmosphere, the interior temperature rising to almost unbearable levels for the mortals surrounding him. The modified thermal coils within the Thunderhawk directed excess heat inward, practically boiling those within, but emitting next to no thermal signature for enemy augurs to detect. Achairas patched his auto-senses into the forward display of the gunship, watching the crater, the most prominent feature in the otherwise Stygian landscape, grow as they hurtled towards the surface. 
 	He saw the installation, the shroud station, precariously positioned over the feature’s rim, three massive struts suspending it from the cliff face. Its main bulk hung below, reaching the floor, where the excavation site sprawled outward from it in the form of countless quarries and trenches snaking towards the crater’s centre. 
 	Apparition set down on the landing pad that made up the majority of the shroud station’s upper surface. It was large enough to support the Thunderhawk, while providing an excellent vantage point over the surroundings. 
 	As Achairas, taking point, stepped out of the lowering bay door with his battle-brothers, he was among the first to gaze upon the lifeless darkness of the world. A communication and augury tower protruded from the north-eastern edge of the landing pad. Four Hydra batteries would have provided cover from the station’s corner points, but their guns drooped, inactive and dead. Three red-plated Arvus lighters stood wrecked in their landing spots, their hulls scorched from within.
 	‘Secure the perimeter,’ he ordered his brothers. They complied in silence, fanning out to inspect the towers and check for hostiles. 
 	The vista beyond the landing platform was of jagged thorn-like mountains to the east. The dim red orb of the stillborn sun shimmered on the far horizon, beyond an expanse of broken plains. The thin atmosphere barely held the light, and every ragged outcropping cast long shadows.
 	Achairas strode to the edge of the pad that faced the crater as the other teams disembarked. A few hundred yards down, he saw the criss-cross of deep grooves and gouges, veritable chasms in their own right, leading towards the central stepped quarry. 
 	It was there. The reason they were here.
 	A ruin. A lone, black apex protruded from the wounded rock, surrounded by cylindrical hab-units and Adeptus Mechanicus excavator engines. It appeared to be covered in some manner of scaffolding. 
 	The light-devouring darkness of the pinnacle was unwholesome. Though it was scarcely larger than the workers’ habs around it, Achairas felt uneasy just looking at it. It was not a sensation he was used to. 
 	He scanned the horizon in case there was something he’d missed. Magnifying his vision, he expected to find nothing, but was surprised when he did find something. It was a lone black monolith, a few dozen yards in height, but many miles away. 
 	‘Inquisitor?’
 	Astolyev had joined him at the edge. 
 	‘That monolith in the distance. What is it?’ Achairas inquired.
 	‘The sentry pylons, we named them,’ Astolyev’s grating voice replied. ‘The reports indicated that there were six of them, scattered out beyond the ruin at equidistant range from the centre, and each other.’
 	‘I assume they’re related to the ruin?’ 
 	‘Undoubtedly. The architecture is the same. We were unable to discern their purpose, but they were projecting an unknown energy signature. A signature the augury-scans of your vessel did not detect during our approach.’
 	‘Then something has changed,’ Achairas mused.
 	‘That seems likely,’ Astolyev agreed. ‘Something caused this station to drop off the grid, and these pylons are as suspect as anything else. Have your vessel continually monitor them and the ruin below. Just in case.’
 	Achairas raised an eyebrow, invisible beneath his helmet. The Death Spectre was not used to receiving commands from anyone other than his captain, and the Menrahir, but in this case, he would have chosen the same course of action. Thus, he relayed the command to Brother Vairan on the Vox Silentii. 
 	There had been no greeting party, and the orbital bioscans had been disrupted by the mysterious energy fluctuations emanating from the buried power source. It was yet unclear if there were any survivors hidden within the station or the excavation site. Achairas drew his auspex, and ran a preliminary scan of their surroundings. The device’s sensors would only pierce the upper levels of the complex, but it would provide some indication of what might wait below. 
 	‘No life signs near the landing pad,’ he reported into the general vox-net. ‘If anything is still alive, it’s deeper within the station.’
 	The inquisitor nodded. ‘Then we move into the complex, search for survivors and extract what data we can from central cogitation. Once the station is secure, we make for the excavation site. Maintain vigilance.’
 	Achairas affirmed and signalled his battle-brothers to lead. 
 	Vemek chimed in, advancing with his thralls towards the bulkhead door at the base of the augur tower. ‘Are we expecting hostiles?’
 	‘We always expect hostiles,’ Brother Nym, to Achairas’ right, answered. ‘Chirinoids. Togorans. Cythor Fiends. Eldar. Other xenos. This station didn’t murder itself.’
 	Achairas gestured at the Hydra batteries. They were unused. ‘Whatever happened, it was no aerial incursion.’ 
 	‘What then?’ Vemek crackled. ‘A teleportation onslaught? A–’
 	‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ Astolyev waved the teams onward, to the large door at the base of the augur tower.
 	Vemek coaxed the airlock open with a spark of energy from his potentia coil, and the team moved into the gloom of the entrance chamber. It was powered down, the elevator inoperable, so Achairas and his squad took point, levelling their bolters as they descended the adjacent stairwell. Even though the station had pressure and air, none removed their helmets.
 	‘Sevrim, Nym, Celaeno, with me on point. Charason, rearguard,’ Achairas commanded into his squad’s vox-net. Their affirmations were silent. 
 	The four Death Spectres were followed by the inquisitor and Vemek, while the rest of the force trailed behind. A musty, clammy gloom that reeked of oil, ozone and spilled viscera met them. The walls were dull, riveted gunmetal, coated in grease and condensation. Several of the Inquisitorial acolytes activated their luminators. 
 	‘Vemek, is there any way to restore power?’ Astolyev asked.
 	‘Negative. Preliminary readings suggest power generator units are destroyed, not disabled.’ The magos muttered a spurt of binaric prayer for the machines that had died in this place.
 	‘Death is here…’ Brother Sevrim, on point, gestured to three eviscerated, half-decayed corpses clustered in a gouged-open service duct. By their red robes and augmetics, they could be identified as Adeptus Mechanicus adepts. Achairas knelt and saw the patchwork crest of the Dalvarakh Consortium on the robes of one of the least dismembered bodies. 
 	‘You crewed your station with Consortium adepts?’ He looked to the inquisitor.
 	‘Yes,’ Astolyev replied. ‘I acquired six hundred indentured serfs of varying specialities to complement my own crew. They were to be returned afterwards, mnemonically cleansed…’
 	‘Well that won’t be happening any more,’ Brother Nym cut in, drawing a glare from the inquisitor. 
 	‘Impending debts aside,’ Vemek rasped, ‘what happened to them? The wounds are… unusual.’
 	Vast raking incisions marred their remaining flesh. Even their augmetic components were shredded, as was the sheet metal behind them. 
 	‘Looks like Bloodreeks,’ Brother Nym guessed, poking the remains with his boot. ‘Savage. Grotesque. Generally excessive.’
 	Achairas suspected otherwise and shook his head. The wounds were too clean. ‘These are blade wounds, of a sort, even if they are patterned like claw marks.’ 
 	‘Genestealers, possibly?’ the inquisitor interjected. ‘Only their talons cut that sharp.’
 	Vemek shook his head. ‘Electrical abrasions on flesh, and oxidation on metal suggests electrical charge,’ he chittered. ‘Unlikely to be genestealers, unless they have developed new biomorphs.’
 	‘These corpses don’t tell us enough. We should head deeper,’ Achairas suggested.
 	The inquisitor nodded in the affirmative and the group continued.
 	More dead awaited them, several Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, blood and oil trails suggesting they’d been dragged down several flights of stairs. At the access doorway to the main body of the station’s interior, they discovered three eviscerated skitarii flayed to the bone, their galvanic rifles empty of ammunition and discarded, the door rife with flash-burned bullet holes. But the real damage was in the form of oxidised tears in the bulkhead door, as if something had clawed its way through.
 	With the door inoperable, it fell to Vemek’s melta-armed gun-servitors to widen the breach, allowing the party to move on.
 	Achairas led with Sevrim, stepping into the charnel horror of the corridor before them. 
 	Silently, the Death Spectres stepped over a river of viscera, bone and augmetic remains. Several in the inquisitor’s retinue hesitated for a brief instant. It was testament to their discipline that most did not. 
 	‘What a mess,’ one of them muttered.
 	‘Steel yourselves,’ Astolyev reminded them. ‘We are not here to gawk like greenhorn Guardsmen at the sight of the dead. Worse will come.’
 	‘Undoubtedly,’ Brother Nym agreed, rolling over a rotten, quartered torso. ‘Whatever did this, they seem mostly interested in the meat. Still think it’s Bloodreeks…’
 	Achairas studied the macabre carpet. No body was whole. Each had been torn apart, flayed and flensed. It was impossible to distinguish where one corpse ended and the next began. Las-burns, blood and oil splatters covered the walls.
 	‘They were attempting to reach the door,’ Vemek muttered. ‘But it was already locked. They couldn’t get out, so they just… died.’
 	‘Whatever did this came from further inside,’ Achairas observed. ‘What is down that way?’
 	‘Central cogitation,’ Astolyev answered, stepping over the corpses with his stalking gait. ‘Below that? The sub-levels… maintenance, aeroponics, the armoury and ground access…’ 
 	‘Ground access. Could they have come from below, then?’ Brother Sevrim inquired, voicing Achairas’ suspicions. ‘From the excavation site?’ 
 	‘That is a possibility,’ Astolyev nodded after a moment.
 	Achairas could not read the inquisitor, but his pause indicated unvoiced information. He knew something. Or guessed at something.
 	‘That would imply that whatever did this either landed far away and advanced on foot, to avoid the Hydras…’ Achairas tested the inquisitor’s reaction. ‘Or came from the xenos structure.’
 	Astolyev didn’t respond, staring out over the dead. There were no other bodies to indicate who, or what, they’d been fighting. The enemy had either taken its own dead, or it had been a single-sided massacre. 
 	‘From the ruin…’ Vemek muttered, partly to himself, turning a few heads.
 	‘Could something have been down there?’ Achairas inquired to both of them.
 	‘I’m afraid I cannot answer that,’ the inquisitor replied, his words slow and measured. ‘The station’s last reports indicated the excavation teams were unable to enter the structure.’
 	Vemek gave an ominous answer, his mechadendrites twitching uneasily. ‘The sudden ignition of the power source within might imply some manner of activity. It could be that something… awakened.’
 	‘Awakened?’ Achairas glared at the magos.
 	‘Uncertain…’ The tech-priest held up his hands defensively. ‘Pure conjecture.’
 	‘Let us move,’ the inquisitor cut in. ‘If there’s any data on what happened, it’ll be in central cogitation.’
 	The team progressed through the corridor, intersected by a dozen corpse-strewn side passages leading to laboratories and monitoring stations, before they finally reached their destination. 
 	Central cogitation was a large chamber fitted with gantry walkways that wound between two-storey-high cogitator stacks. Several of these were damaged or had been destroyed by raking slashes, and there were the mangled remains of dozens of people and servitors scattered about. At the heart, upon a central dais, was a fully intact data loom. The massive machine was all columns, humming faintly, blinking with cascades of raw binaric data. A vast network of thick cables spread out from it like arteries, feeding into the cogitator stacks, and into wall sockets. Many more connected directly to the ceiling, looping up to link to the augur station on the landing pad. 
 	Astolyev stalked towards the dais. ‘The data loom was connected to reserve power, and given maximal priority. It must still be active, to some degree.’ 
 	‘What did you need all of this cogitation power for? What were you doing here?’ Achairas asked, motioning Celaeno and Sevrim to move ahead and secure the chamber. Nym and Achairas kept pace with the inquisitor, while Charason kept watch out in the hall. 
 	‘Cross-referencing,’ Astolyev replied. ‘It stores thousands of years of relevant data copied from the archives of both Terra and Mars – xenology, archaeology, geology, astrography, et cetera. It possesses the power to analyse, filter and compile all relevant insights.’
 	‘All those resources invested for one archaeological investigation?’
 	Vemek cut in, trailing behind them. ‘An archaeological investigation that might be the find of the millennium! The t– ruin possesses a metallic outer structure that is almost impervious to all forms of direct aggression.’
 	Achairas was mildly impressed. ‘An indestructible metal?’
 	‘Indeed,’ Vemek replied, smugly, reaching the central data loom, and plugging two of his mechadendrites into data-ports.
 	After a few moments, the data stream flickering from feed to feed on the display, Vemek spoke. ‘Or perhaps not so impervious.’ He cocked his head to the side, as if confused. ‘It would appear they did breach the outer shell. Fascinating. Bringing up hololithic visuals.’
 	‘What!’ Astolyev snapped. ‘They breached the ruin?’
 	A hololithic geological survey image flickered to life, suspended above the data loom’s access panel. Achairas saw a pyramid, colossal by the scaling of the surrounding crater, more than a mile high, and attached to some manner of immense crescent shape below. The shape beneath extended further, stretching well beyond the crater, buried in the crust of the planetoid.
 	‘Immense… Much larger than we anticipated,’ Vemek chirped in excitement. ‘It appears the initial structure we found was part of a considerably larger one!’ 
 	Vemek zoomed the image to the apex of the pyramid, barely a minute fraction of its actual bulk. ‘The breach was made here–’
 	‘I did not authorise a breach,’ the inquisitor interrupted. ‘My orders were to send an astropathic message with each major advancement.’
 	‘Yes, erm, regardless, it would appear the research team used vortex charges to gain access to the apex.’
 	‘When did this occur?’ Achairas already suspected the answer.
 	‘Seven weeks ago…’ Vemek hesitated, his mechadendrites slumping. ‘To the cessation of all further records.’
 	‘The day the station was silenced,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘Undoubtedly not a coincidence…’ He turned sharply to the magos. ‘You told me your researchers were reliable. I specifically ordered them not to perform any hasty actions without first acquiring my consent.’
 	‘Evidently I made a miscalculation.’
 	Astolyev snarled, shaking his head. ‘And who authorised the breach?’
 	‘That is unclear,’ Vemek replied. ‘All records of who gave the orders, and to whom they were given, have been deleted.’
 	Astolyev flexed his organic hand, clearly unsettled by the revelation. ‘Then one of your men has compromised this operation by acting too swiftly. Or it was sabotage. See if you can dig deeper.’
 	‘Unfortunately, many of the station’s records have been compromised by an unknown data corruption. And, as there is no data, and your personal crew made up a significant portion of the station’s crew, it is also a notable possibility that it was one of your men that acted hastily.’
 	‘I select for loyalty and obedience, Vemek. My men do not act without my express consent. It was your team that formed the weakest link, not mine.’
 	‘Can we get a visual feed from interior surveillance?’ Achairas inquired, ignoring the argument. ‘I want to know what we’re dealing with.’
 	‘Negative. Interior feed is corrupted. In any case, all of the station’s primary functions were shut down thirty-two minutes after the breach was made.’ The magos’ fingers flitted over the control console. ‘I detect traces of a viral onslaught, but I cannot identify the source. Only the enhanced aegis systems hardwired into the data loom saved this relic, Omnissiah be praised.’
 	Achairas glanced around. The acolytes and skitarii had taken cover behind the cogitator stacks, assisting his battle-brothers in covering each entrance. The inquisitor moved to the data loom, adjusting several of the runes and zooming the image out. Six other points were highlighted and arrayed in an equidistant radius a few dozen miles from the central pyramid. 
 	He magnified one of those. It was one of the pylons Achairas had seen earlier from the landing pad. It was buried some thirty yards beneath the surface, its pinnacle barely visible. It was clear that excavations had been performed around it as well. The damage to it was obvious. Vemek flitted through the images of the other pylons, and it became evident that all of them had been at least partially destroyed. 
 	‘These were intact before!’ Astolyev snarled, whipping towards the magos. ‘Find out what happened! I did not authorise their destruction.’
 	Vemek hastily complied. 
 	Shaking his head in rage, the inquisitor circled around Vemek like a predator while the magos frantically sifted through the data stream. Minutes passed before Astolyev shoved Vemek aside and seized the access panel himself. The magos retreated to his skitarii, evidently not wanting to stand near the inquisitor.
 	‘I suppose the destruction of the pylons might explain why they were no longer emitting energy signatures,’ Achairas mused.
 	‘Yes,’ Astolyev hissed. ‘That would be logical.’ He paused for a moment, sifting. ‘It would appear as though my researchers discovered that the energy fields emitted by the pylons were linked, like… some manner of fence around the ruin. It did not seem to affect our vehicles and personnel, however…’ He trailed off, inspecting the data feed closer. ‘What! They were destroyed under my authority! Somebody used my access codes to relay orders to this station.’ He aggressively hammered a few more codes into the panel, before stepping back, exasperated.
 	‘Naturally,’ he spat. ‘The data concerning when and where these orders originated was deleted!’
 	Achairas did not know what to make of the foul play. Had somebody deliberately sabotaged the inquisitor’s work, or were there elements within the excavation team that had become hasty, and careless in their assessment of this ‘miraculous discovery’? In any case, he had no time to ponder it as his auspex flickered to life.
 	‘Unidentified movement, two hundred feet due north,’ he reported into the vox-net. ‘Approaching through access corridors.’ 
 	The inquisitor and Vemek knelt down behind a fallen cogi­tator stack in the centre of the defensive ring.
 	‘Protect the data loom!’ Astolyev shouted.
 	In a matter of moments, Achairas counted scores of contacts converging on their location from multiple angles. As Achairas and the inquisitor relayed their orders, the teams repositioned, with the Death Spectres taking forward positions around the data loom, concealed behind the cogitator stacks to inflict maximum damage if violence broke out.
 	‘Survivors?’ Vemek chittered.
 	‘If so, they’ve picked a rather aggressive way to announce their presence,’ Brother Nym retorted.
 	Seconds later, the first shape emerged, not sixty feet from Achairas. By the look of her tattered garb, she was an enginseer. Coming to a halt, she stood there, regarding them with her three augmetic eyes. Shredded red robes clung to her heavily augmented body, and with some disgust, Achairas noted that remnants of flayed flesh were interwoven into the cloth, making a macabre cowl. Her fingers had been severed, and razor-sharp blades were crudely grafted in their place.
 	Vemek muttered some binary spurt, and she turned to regard him as a score more shapes, similar in apparel and disfigurement, emerged behind her. Brother Sevrim flanked them, unseen between the cogitator stacks. 
 	The chittering of binary echoed from the ragged rabble approaching them. To Achairas, it sounded like static, except for the alien syllables interspersed between the clicks and crackles. Even his unaugmented ears could hear them. 
 	‘Llandu… Gor…’ the words came, slithering through the noise. Somehow, they were an affront to Achairas’ ears. This was something vile. Alien. 
 	Vemek started back, leaving his cover and retreating. ‘Corrupted data streams. The binary is broken! Kill them! Kill them all!’
 	The mob of mutilated Adeptus Mechanicus personnel rushed them at that instant, making his wish reality. 
 	‘Fire,’ Achairas commanded calmly, into the general vox. The Death Spectres fired first, unleashing a crossfire of bolter shells from their concealment to reduce the entire charging mob to pulped meat and twisted metal in a matter of seconds. 
 	But more came, from other passages and the gantries above. Scores of additional malformed machine cult men and women poured into the cogitation hall, descending upon the defenders from all angles with a reckless abandon born of madness. They screamed those words, again and again. Achairas did not know what they meant, and he did not care. 
 	He spent his bolt pistol, turning half a dozen of the attackers into pulp and scrap, blasting them off the gantries above. Drawing his power sword, he sprinted between two cogitator stacks to where one of the lunatics had descended upon a skitarius, tearing into the warrior’s armour with his grafted talons. Achairas scythed past the madman, delivering a decapitating strike with his power sword before twisting around and deflecting the deranged swing of another wretch with his vambrace. The talons gouged raking scratches into his armour, negligible, but deep enough that Achairas guessed the blades would be more than able to slice through the sealed joints. He cleaved the second attacker in two, reversing his momentum to disappear behind another cogitator stack and relocate.
 	More of the tattered creatures rushed in, some dropped by las and galvanic rifle fire from the Inquisitorial acolytes and Vemek’s skitarii. 
 	On the far side of the central dais, Brother Celaeno’s flamer roared its promethium fury into another mob. The Death Spectre carefully cultivated his inferno to avoid the valuable technological relics in the chamber, whilst incinerating and blocking off as many of the charging rabble as possible. 
 	A burst of strange, dark energy screeched through the chamber, disintegrating another madman. Achairas saw the inquisitor, his alien carbine raised, with a few of his acolytes, pressed back to the data loom as another group of mutilated lunatics darted towards them. 
 	They didn’t get far, as Achairas rushed them, having reloaded in the seconds since his last kill. His pistol roared, blowing a few more apart as Brother Charason added his own bolter fire, mulching the rest of the approaching mob. 
 	Wheeling around, Achairas saw three more enemies leaping down from a low gantry towards Vemek and his gun-servitors, who had yet to even react. He dispatched them all with a single bolt pistol shell each. 
 	And then there was quiet, the only noise the faint humming of the machines, and the rasp of a few wounded skitarii. 
 	‘Clear!’ he shouted, his pistol still levelled. 
 	‘Clear!’ his battle-brothers returned, from their positions. 
 	He lowered his weapons. The skirmish had scarcely taken a minute.
 	‘Station crew,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘Driven mad…’
 	‘Did this station not have weapons?’ Brother Sevrim inquired.
 	‘Plenty. It was fully stocked in case of emergency.’
 	‘Then why were they using these crude… modifications?’
 	Achairas stared down at the mangled remains. All of them had replaced their fingertips with scythe-like blades. Some were nearly as long as their forearms. All had draped themselves in gobbets of flesh and skin. 
 	‘Wrong…’ Vemek muttered, poking at a corpse. ‘Infected. Madness in their holy machinery.’
 	‘The virus?’ Astolyev guessed.
 	‘Perhaps. We cannot know without further analysis.’
 	‘If it is a virus, perhaps further analysis should be avoided until proper quarantine procedures are followed.’ Astolyev glanced at Vemek. ‘It would be… unfortunate… if I were to have to euthanise you.’ 
 	‘Those madmen…’ Brother Nym started. ‘They were saying something. Over and over.’
 	Nobody answered. Whatever their meaning, Achairas felt uneasy about repeating the words. ‘A name,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Llandu Gor…’ He didn’t know how he knew it was a name, but he was certain it was. ‘Let us move on,’ he offered. ‘We should find out where these wretches came from. There might be more of them. We haven’t seen nearly enough corpses to account for the entire station’s crew.’
 	Astolyev agreed. ‘Indeed. Vemek, stay here with your skitarii. Extract what information you can from the data loom and keep in vox contact. Sergeant Achairas, if you would lead the way. I assume your… abilities… can pick up the trail easily enough.’
 	Vemek nodded in deference, drawing a servo-skull from the depths of his robe and activating it. The lens of its right eye flared green, and tiny whirring gyro-systems hummed momentarily, projecting a rippling anti-gravity pulse to levitate it. Its vox-unit crackled to life under its upper jaw. 
 	‘I will follow remotely.’ Vemek’s voice emanated from his own vocal implants, and from the servo-skull’s vox-grille.
 	The inquisitor nodded his assent, and motioned for his acolytes to move out. The Death Spectres led, once more.
 	Achairas could indeed detect the trail. Removing his helmet, he inhaled. The air was thin, but breathable. He found the severed arm of one of the tattered madmen and tasted its putrid flesh, biting deep, his omophagea learning and allowing him to sense the spoor in the air. Astolyev’s acolytes looked upon the pseudo-cannibalistic process with unease, but their discomfort did not concern Achairas.
 	Choosing the access point that most of the station crew had come through, they arrived at another stairwell, descending to find yet more corpses. Helmetless, Achairas was untroubled by the darkness, his pupils widening until the whites of his eyes were no longer visible. He led, sword drawn, to the base of the stair, near ground access, where his auspex detected a lone contact one hundred feet away down a network of labyrinthine passages in the base of the station.
 	‘This is aeroponics,’ Astolyev announced, as Nym coaxed open the bulkhead door with a heavy valve handwheel. They entered into a sizeable chamber that reeked of rotten vegetation and flesh alike. 
 	Inside were stacks of algae vats and hovels of scavenged scrap metal and organic material. It looked like a refugees’ shanty, and a poor one at that. Another pile of bodies was arranged at the back of the chamber, around some manner of twisted effigy. It was a skeletal thing made of twisted plasteel, bolted and wired together in the shape of a hunched, scarecrow-like figure with immensely long talons. The entire thing was draped in tattered, rotting flesh. 
 	‘Seems your crew adopted some unwholesome idolatry,’ Nym muttered to the inquisitor.
 	The inquisitor did not respond. His organic hand flexed.
 	Nym kicked the effigy, sending it clattering to the ground in a heap. 
 	‘Celaeno.’ Achairas didn’t need to give the order.
 	His taciturn, ever-silent battle-brother levelled his flamer and bathed the debris in a wash of promethium.
 	As it burned, Achairas turned back to his auspex, and followed the blip into the nearby service tunnels. In the confined space, he moved forward with only Sevrim and Celaeno, followed by the inquisitor and two of his flamer-equipped acolytes. Vemek’s servo-skull remained behind, scanning the wreckage of the strange effigy. 
 	The cylindrical passage was claustrophobic, its floor grating oozing with black oil. As they advanced, the auspex blip made several quick movements, traversing a few passages and then going still.
 	‘Whatever it is, it’s trying to hide,’ Achairas observed.
 	He squeezed through several smaller ducts, his armour scraping against the walls, until the contact was dead ahead, hidden in a small service shaft. He aimed his bolt pistol at the half-open door. 
 	‘Come out and surrender. You have one chance.’ His voice was cold and quiet.
 	‘Are you one of them?’ A woman’s voice returned, terrified and exhausted.
 	The inquisitor shouldered past the Death Spectre, his weapon already lowered and a luminator active in his hand.
 	‘No,’ he rasped. ‘Ketyanna.’
 	At the name, a young woman with long, dark, matted hair and pale features slid out from behind the door, falling to her knees. She was malnourished and covered in abrasions and bruises, her black robe naught but tattered rags. The inquisitor knelt, dropping to her level as she broke down in frantic sobs, clawing at him. ‘Ketyanna. How are you still alive?’
 	‘Who is this?’ Achairas inquired.
 	‘My xenolinguistics savant. Eccentric, but one of my best.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Are any others alive?’
 	‘No…’ she sobbed. ‘The flayed… things… They killed them. They… ate them. They’ve been hunting me for… for I don’t know how long.’
 	‘What happened to the station? Why did everyone go mad?’ Achairas cut in.
 	The woman started back, only now noticing the Death Spectre. 
 	‘They came from below…’ she hissed, looking around in terror, as if expecting them to appear again. ‘From the tomb. Metal things with clicking claws and horrible empty eyes. Machines. But mad. Mad machines…’
 	‘Machines?’ The inquisitor cocked his head. ‘From the… tomb?’
 	‘That’s what it is. It’s a tomb. They came from the tomb. They killed everyone… Everyone in the excavation site. They clawed their way in here and they slaughtered. They killed and killed and killed. Some of us lived… But…’ She trailed off, staring out behind Achairas, down the way they’d come. 
 	‘But…?’ Achairas glanced behind him, even though he heard no one. The acolytes glanced around suspiciously.
 	‘But they went mad. The ones with the augmentations… the Mechanicus people… It got into them. It made them try to become like the things from the tomb.’
 	‘What…?’ The inquisitor looked confused.
 	‘Machines that slaughtered people and took their flesh. They wore it… They wore… us. The survivors started doing it too…’ 
 	Achairas understood. The survivors had started to imitate their killers, these ‘mad machines’. 
 	The inquisitor stood. ‘I see. And this all occurred when the… tomb… was breached?’
 	She nodded, then bowed her head. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus men, the ones you sent to aid us with the supply ship, they shattered the pylons. They thought the pylons were protecting it…’ 
 	Achairas assumed she meant the broken structures that had powered whatever energy fence the inquisitor had mentioned. ‘Protecting it?’
 	She shook her head violently, shuddering. ‘The tech-priests said it was a stasis web, to protect the tomb. To keep us out. But it wasn’t just keeping us out. No, no… It was keeping the things inside… in. The pylons were protecting everything else… And when the Mechanicus men broke the pylons… the tomb started waking up. The power source… and the things inside… The men breached the tomb then. They opened the door for the machines to come through…’
 	‘These Adeptus Mechanicus men, you said they came with the supply ship?’ Astolyev asked, his voice tense. 
 	‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘They came with your orders to destroy the pylons and breach the tomb.’
 	Astolyev’s human hand flexed, squeezing the luminator with white knuckles. ‘I never sent additional men.’
 	Ketyanna blinked, batting away some strands of greasy black hair, her wide eyes confused. ‘They were Dalvarakh Consortium…’
 	‘Throne of Terra…’ Astolyev cursed.
 	‘This answers why the breach was made prematurely,’ Achairas noted, remembering Astolyev’s connection to the Explorator Consortium. 
 	‘So I’ve been infiltrated,’ Astolyev growled, his tone somewhere between spiteful and impressed. ‘It would seem my benefactors had an ulterior agenda. What a surprise… I knew the Dalvarakh Consortium had an interest in illicit xenos artefacts, but defying a direct order from the Inquisition. That… is heresy.’
 	‘It could be a fringe element within the Consortium,’ Achairas offered. ‘Perhaps they are traitors, or a group of more radical intent than your own.’ The Space Marine duly noted the xenos carbine the inquisitor carried, but said nothing. 
 	‘I believe I will need to have a word with Vemek. He’s one of the few who had access to my clearance codes. And he was Dalvarakh…’ Astolyev said, helping the battered woman to her feet. ‘Very well, Ketyanna, the remaining survivors, at least the ones here, are dead – I will have several men escort you to our drop-ship.’
 	‘D-dead?’ she stuttered. ‘Is it safe?’
 	‘Hardly,’ the inquisitor muttered. ‘But let’s get you out of here. You will give me a detailed account of everything that has transpired in my absence once I return. Until then, you will rest. And recover.’
 	Guiding the traumatised woman through the tunnels proved difficult, since she refused to enter the aeroponics chamber because of the altar. Even with Astolyev’s assurances that it was destroyed, she would not so much as move towards it, so it fell to Achairas to carry her along. Her sobs stopped when she saw the shattered, burnt husk of the effigy and the force of grey-armoured Inquisitorial acolytes. Astolyev turned to two of them. ‘Nerek, Ariane, take Ketyanna back to the gunship. We will debrief her properly once we’ve investigated this… tomb.’
 	Then the inquisitor wheeled towards Vemek’s drifting servo-skull. 
 	‘Magos Vemek! If you would kindly explain how Dalvarakh Consortium agents infiltrated my station, I might refrain from having you executed on charges of sedition and heresy.’
 	The skull drifted away, seemingly involuntarily. ‘Inquisitor, my ties with the Dalvarakh Consortium were severed many years ago. After our altercation on Disnomia Four, I believe they branded me a heretic. It was only by your wisdom that I was acquitted.’
 	‘Indeed, now tell me I haven’t been played for a fool!’
 	‘You have not. My loyalty is to you, inquisitor. Not to the Dalvarakh Consortium. It is possible they have acquired information about your station through other means. Perhaps the personnel you purchased from them were not properly mnemonically censured. Perhaps one of them was warded against it deliberately, and continued feeding information to them following their arrival here.’
 	The inquisitor did not reply initially, his metal mask concealing whatever thoughts undoubtedly raged through his mind. 
 	Vemek’s logic appeared sound to Achairas. What was less clear was why the inquisitor had utilised the aid of alleged hereteks, wielding xenos weaponry and delving into a mystery best left buried. He shook his head, and forced his suspicion away. He knew the Inquisition had to tread a line far closer to damnation than the Adeptus Astartes did.
 	‘So…’ the servo-skull chirped, ‘you are not going to have me executed?’
 	‘No,’ the inquisitor snarled. ‘For now. Keep to your task. This ruin remains our priority. I will sort out the matter of treason later.’
 	From there, the team navigated their way out of the lower tunnels into ground access. They descended a long stairwell marked with trails of dried and flaking gore, but found no further bodies. Achairas strode beside the inquisitor with the servo-skull trailing behind, keeping its distance from Astolyev. 
 	‘You authorised the construction of this station, yes?’
 	‘Indeed. Eight years ago, after the discovery of the ruin by an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator vessel.’
 	‘I take it this Explorator vessel belonged to the Dalvarakh Consortium?’
 	‘Yes. But it was lost with all hands. Its astropathic choir managed to send out a distress cry, but as most of the choir were presumably already dead, the cry was weak. My agents operate in this region to monitor the movements of the Cythor Fiends. They were the only ones to receive the message. My spies within the Consortium are certain that they never learned of this ruin’s location.’
 	‘Out of curiosity,’ Achairas inquired, ‘what destroyed this Dalvarakh vessel?’
 	‘Cythor Fiends, naturally. One of their so called Pinion-class stealth frigates. The wreck is still in-system, orbiting the brown dwarf several astronomical units out. My personal investigation of the wreck uncovered the location of this ruin. I copied the data from the Explorator vessel and destroyed its archive. The Dalvarakh do not know of this. It is possible that what Vemek suggests is true, that my mnemonic censure went faulty on one of the purchased adepts. Or… that one of them was deliberately altered to resist it, and report my findings to the Explorator Consortium.’
 	‘Or this could be Vemek’s doing,’ Achairas offered quietly. 
 	‘Unlikely. Vemek’s crimes against the Dalvarakh Consortium created a rift between them that will never heal. He could be involved with fringe elements, however – individuals within the Consortium who have pursued the research of xenos technology farther than the others.’
 	‘What was Vemek accused of, exactly?’
 	‘Modifying his personal Explorator vessel with holo-fields captured from an eldar wreck.’
 	Achairas was silent. He shook his head.
 	‘I know, you’re probably wondering why I conscripted him into my service. This isn’t the core Imperium, where purity and heresy are easily drawn lines of white and black. Out here in the Halo, we are on the edge of damnation. We must tread the grey in between and utilise every bit of knowledge we can to gain an edge. Xenos, natural and unnatural, plague us from beyond the Halo, and space itself seems to want to destroy us. The xenos out here are able to survive. They are able to tread the impossible reaches of the Ghoul Stars themselves. I will learn how they do it. And then I will implement that technology into a grand crusade fleet, and deliver the fiery sword of the Emperor’s judgement into the heart of all the vile aliens populating these unnatural stars. You, of all people, must understand…’
 	Achairas blinked. It was an ambitious plan, borderline megalomaniacal. And it didn’t sit well with him. One often didn’t realise that the grey line between purity and damnation had been crossed, until it was far too late. 
 	‘I am a radical, Sergeant Achairas,’ the inquisitor continued, as the group reached the ground access airlock gate. ‘I do what I must for the good of the Imperium. If I am damned for it, then that is the price I will pay.’ He flexed his mechanical arm. ‘I have already given my flesh for the Imperium, the only thing I have left to give is… my soul.’
 	‘It is not my place to question your conviction, nor your methods,’ Achairas said at long last, his inner conflict evident enough in the tension in his words. ‘My purpose is to destroy the threats to the Imperium, whatever they might be.’ He let the words, the threat, hang in the thin air as he re-donned his helm and gestured for Nym and Sevrim to wheel open the airlock. 
 	When the door was coaxed open, they saw the gouges in the outer hull of the station; it looked as if raking talons had torn open the thick sheet-metal. 
 	Several of the Inquisitorial acolytes brought forth lascutters and widened the gap, allowing the team to descend, two by two, over a steep access gantry that traversed the lower slope of the crater. After a few minutes, they emerged out from under the shadow of the station, and found themselves beneath the cold, lightless sky of Thirsis 41-Alpha.
 	They followed an excavated chasm-turned-road, winding between the jagged rocky outcroppings amidst the muted red glow of the stillborn sun. Vemek’s servo-skull crackled, rejoining the head of the column. ‘I have detected seismic activity emanating up from the ruin.’
 	‘We have felt nothing here,’ Astolyev noted. 
 	‘Minor seismic activity, inquisitor. Small quakes, but frequent. The power source continues to build, at a heightened rate.’
 	‘Interesting. Keep me updated.’
 	The road gouged in the crater’s base led to a sizeable secondary quarry half a mile from the station’s shadow. Cliffs of black rock jutted up around them, and small cylindrical dwellings shared space with heavy-duty tracked vehicles. All of them were torn open, deep rents ripped in their hulls. The mutilated remnants of servitors and Adeptus Mechanicus personnel were scattered about, left open to the void. As the Inquisitorial acolytes and Space Marines picked through the wreckage, they discovered many more bodies littering the impromptu streets of the chasms, and hidden away in the structures.
 	‘They tried to hide.’ Vemek’s voice chirped through the vox. ‘Or they tried to run. Neither worked.’
 	‘Strange,’ the inquisitor muttered. ‘I highly doubt we’ve seen more than a few hundred corpses. This station had a crew of seven hundred.’
 	The comment only added to the sense of unease as the team followed Astolyev’s lead down a small road towards the centre of the excavation site. The road broke out into a massive quarry, with many tiers of levelled rock cut directly into the crater. It resembled an amphitheatre of immense scale, one hundred and fifty feet deep and nearly a thousand wide. More cylindrical structures and cargo vehicles sat abandoned, interspersed with the massive excavator engines. 
 	At the centre, Achairas saw the structure that was the goal of this entire endeavour. 
 	The apex. 
 	The pinnacle of a pyramid, jutting forty feet into the air, jet-black and reflectionless. Scaffolding scaled its smooth flanks, and as the team approached, moving down the switchback road that descended into the dig, Achairas noted the strange green symbols adorning its sides. Arrayed in columns, the alien glyphs glowed with a faint but unsettling emerald light. Green lines radiated out from the glyphs, arranged over the slopes in a pattern that Achairas could not understand. 
 	The Space Marine felt cold pinpricks on his skin, and heard the faint sound of trickling water. He shuddered. His growing disquiet was not something he was used to. 
 	Even though the structure itself seemed relatively small, their knowledge of the immensity that lurked below only added to the sense of foreboding. The acolytes gripped their weapons tighter as Astolyev cautiously strode forward, ahead of them. 
 	Between the scaffolding, Achairas saw a molten wound in the side of the pyramid. A ten-foot-wide circular gap had been blown, at ground level, through the thick metal skin of the apex.
 	The inquisitor shook his head. ‘Idiots. Overambitious fools…’ He stalked forward.
 	Achairas and Vemek’s servo-skull followed. The Death Spectre kept his bolt pistol trained firmly on the entrance, and double-checked his auspex. The energy readings it picked up were bizarre. He’d never seen anything like them. 
 	‘Intriguing…’ the servo-skull chirped. ‘The pict records of the breach created by the vortex charges show a far larger gap than this one.’ A crackling noise emerged from the skull as it flitted up to investigate the gap. ‘Marvellous! The wound appears to be healing! Self-knitting metal!’
 	‘Healing?’ Achairas cut in, kneeling before the ruin, and zooming his auto-senses into the molten metal edge of the breach. Another shiver travelled up his spine as he saw tiny trickles of dark liquid pooling in the rough gouges. He watched as they solidified, becoming the same glossy, black metal of the pyramid itself. It was self-repairing. Before his very eyes. 
 	‘Imagine the potential!’ Vemek’s skull chirped again. ‘If the Mechan– the Imperium were to acquire this technology, the boon to our war engines and voidships would be immense… Not to mention the benefits the power source itself might provide. It is a growing source of energy, exponentially so. And the scans showed no power being fed to it from external sources. Can you imagine, inquisitor? Infinite energy! We must retrieve it, or make visual contact. I possess the necessary sensory equipment to make a full diagnostic scan of the energy source, and would very much like to collect data.’
 	Achairas shared a glance with the inquisitor. The magos’ claims sounded an awful lot like lunacy, and he sincerely hoped the inquisitor felt the same. 
 	Astolyev hissed. ‘Yes. Then we go inside.’
 	Achairas agreed on that, at least. They needed answers. He cared nothing for the vague boons this discovery might provide. He did, however, care about the threat contained within the ruin. He needed to know what, exactly, the inquisitor’s project had awoken in the dark, and how to destroy it. 
 	‘Be prepared,’ Achairas whispered to his brothers over their private vox-net. ‘The magos is clearly delusional. He will not have access to this technology if I deem it too dangerous. If the inquisitor disagrees, and stands in our way, we take action.’ 
 	‘The permanent kind?’ Nym inquired.
 	‘There is no other kind,’ Achairas retorted grimly. 
 	‘Against an inquisitor?’ Even Nym sounded hesitant.
 	‘If necessary. Yes.’
 	‘Check your weapons,’ Astolyev ordered. ‘Say your prayers. We enter the belly of the beast. We are here to acquire answers. If our erstwhile Adeptus Mechanicus allies have awoken something down here with their impertinent ingress, then we need to know what it is. Get visual contact, and if possible, kill what we find, so we can take samples back with us. Understood?’
 	A series of affirmations returned to him. 
 	Achairas turned to his battle-brothers, the sound of running water clear in the back of his mind. ‘Death is coming. It is waiting. Today, we meet it.’
 	Silence was all that answered him. 
 	And with that, the Death Spectres took the first steps into a darkness that even they could not find solace in. 
 	Achairas was awestruck by the black, cyclopean architecture within. The chamber in which they stood connected to a descending passage that spiralled downward, following the interior slope of the pyramid like an inverse gyre. Faintly glowing, emerald geometric panels were splayed on the walls, bearing symbols that he could not even begin to guess the meaning of. A dull rumbling hum began to sound as they advanced, accompanied by a series of light tectonic shudders.
 	Streaks of dust, which Achairas’ auto-senses identified as organic residue, created something of a trail for them to follow, though there were no side passages to lose themselves in. Unfortunately, the settled dust was far too degraded to quickly determine its origin. 
 	‘The power source,’ Vemek’s servo-skull muttered. ‘Its growth is escalating further. I speculate that you entering the ruin has triggered some manner of response. I advise haste.’
 	The further they descended, the more expansive the passage became, even if the feeling of claustrophobic oppression only worsened. It reached a point where even the Death Spectres felt tense, and utterly unwelcome in the unwholesome, alien darkness of the place. 
 	‘The geometries of this… tomb are incorrect.’ Vemek’s skull crackled, the voice growing even more distorted. 
 	The dusty trails led to where three almost skeletal corpses, part-machine, had been scattered across the obsidian floor. 
 	‘More station crew,’ Astolyev muttered, prodding one of the tattered red rags with his augmetic foot.
 	‘They were dragged down here,’ Achairas observed, understanding the origin of the dusty trails, now easily identifiable as flaking blood and viscera. 
 	They continued down the ever-widening passage into a monolithic chamber filled with randomly spaced obelisks of black metal, and faintly glowing green nodes on the wall. Emerald prisms, pulsing softly, stuck out of almost every flat surface, even as the geometrics of the structure became more complex. 
 	Deeper down, the oppressive darkness began to play tricks on them. Phantom auspex blips flickered and ceased periodically, appearing around them, sometimes in the walls, sometimes clustered behind them. Out of the corner of his field of view, Achairas was almost certain he saw movement, here and there. For an instant, he thought he’d seen a shape, large and sinuous, flitting across the wall. But when he turned, it was gone. Judging by the jittering movements of the acolytes, they were seeing things as well. 
 	More dismembered corpses dotted the way. Dozens had been dragged down here and abandoned in the darkness. It was only when one of Astolyev’s acolytes cried out that the true danger was revealed. Achairas whirled to see a darting shadow vanish into the unwholesome angles of the wall. An acolyte at the rear of the group fell to the ground in gory pieces.
 	‘Ambush!’ Achairas shouted. Weapon raised, he saw a strange pulse flicker through the glowing runes just as a shape erupted from the wall once more, giving him his first clear view of the phantom that stalked them. Its sinuous, metallic form was somewhere in between that of a mantis, a centipede and a scorpion, but shimmering as if it were hardly even there. Brother Charason managed to fire a few shells into it, but they passed straight through, striking the wall behind. The phantom ghosted towards him, snaking coils of barbed metal erupting from its form to ensnare the Death Spectre.
 	Las and bolter fire ripped across the apparition, some striking Charason, even as three of the thing’s six talon-like appendages scythed through the Death Spectre’s gorget. Phasing back into reality, the wraith-like creature slipped away, tearing its claws free from Charason’s throat in a spray of crimson. Achairas rushed to intercept its erratic escape, slashing with his power sword. The creature coiled away like a serpent, avoiding the swipe. Achairas’ momentum took him around the thing as it lashed out with its tendrils. He spun backwards, feeling his sword connect with its centre of gravity. It fell to the ground, partly bisected, three of its limbs and half of its tendrils sheared off. Seizing the opportunity, he drove into it. 
 	He uttered no war cry, no words as he fought. He was locked in the deathly silence of battle’s murderous focus. A talon raked his greave, while several of the creature’s tendrils coiled around his neck. All he heard was the sound of rushing water. The river flowed around him, its cold, black currents threatening to take him along. 
 	Not yet, he thought, and delivered a series of economic stabs, his blade passing through the creature several times as it flickered out of material existence. Then a blinding burst of dark energy struck the thing’s metal ribcage, vaporising part of it and sending it clattering against the far wall. The tendrils slackened and fell away. Achairas staggered back, severing the talon still latched around his knee for good measure. 
 	And then there was silence. Astolyev stood there, his elegant xenos carbine held in his hands, aimed at the remnants.
 	‘Clear!’ Astolyev shouted, and his acolytes responded. The Death Spectres remained quiet. 
 	Achairas knelt beside the near decapitated body of Charason. Several of Astolyev’s men bowed their heads out of respect, or reverence, evidently unsure of how to react to a dead Space Marine. 
 	‘Drink deep of the Black River, brother,’ Achairas said, switching off his vox so none could hear. The rushing water quieted to a steady trickle. The other Death Spectres said nothing. There was nothing to say. Death was silent, and so were they who embodied it.
 	Astolyev moved to inspect the fallen creature. Two of his acolytes were dead, another slain by an off-hand swipe of the creature’s talon during the fray. He bade one of his men, wearing confessor’s robes over his armour, to administer rites to the fallen. 
 	Achairas joined the inquisitor. 
 	‘Machines,’ Astolyev remarked, impassively watching it twitch and shudder, as if it was still partly functional. 
 	He was kneeling to study it more closely when Achairas again heard the rushing water, and shoved the inquisitor aside, delivering a savage decapitating strike to the creature even as it lurched to life again. His blade passed through it, and it snaked away, coiling through the darkness in a revolting manner as the startled acolytes fired again. Whether any shots connected was unknown, as the thing slipped into the obsidian ceiling of the hall some thirty feet up, as if it weren’t even there.
 	Rising, the inquisitor nodded to Achairas. ‘Not dead…’ he rasped. It sounded like a laugh. ‘Wonderful. Self-repairing walls. Self-repairing machines. What next?’ 
 	With no remains to study, and nothing to be done for the dead, the team advanced, more cautiously than before. The spiralling descent came to an end as they entered some manner of narrow chamber composed of dozens of passages, honeycombing the walls at various heights. Half-liquefied pillars, part black chrome, part quicksilver, connected to a high ceiling, and the trails of dried blood continued through it. The strange alien glyphs on the walls seemed to flicker, sporadically. Dozens of small xenos creatures drifted about, some clinging to the walls and ceiling, with others erratically flitting around the pillars. A central obelisk, covered in glowing nodes, was tended by another dozen of the things. They were no larger than a man’s torso, fashioned from glinting black metal and scarab-shaped. They hardly showed on his auspex at all. 
 	Achairas set his sights on one of them; it registered as a minimal threat, even with its clacking, bladed mandible apparatus. It chewed through the small pylon it hovered around, piece by piece, before drifting a short distance right and seemingly regurgitating the liquefied metal into the form of a brand new pylon.
 	‘What are they doing?’ Astolyev inquired. The scarabs seemed to be randomly rearranging pieces of the interior for an unknowable purpose. They ignored the advancing team, and each other, as they periodically collided, before righting their course and moving about their erratic business.
 	‘Strange…’ Vemek’s servo-skull hissed. ‘I can extrapolate some manner of preset routine among them. They appear to be moving about in a loop, taking matter from one pillar and rearranging it into another. The loop appears to be redundant. A repetition. I believe they are… glitched.’
 	‘Glitched?’ Astolyev turned to the servo-skull.
 	‘Like malfunctioning servitors. But different. Caught in a cycle of endless assembly and reassembly… Horrible…’ 
 	‘Right,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘If they’re not a threat, then we can come back and capture one later.’ 
 	‘That would be most excellent,’ the servo-skull agreed. 
 	‘In the meantime, any news on the power source?’
 	‘It was building the last time I observed it, but fluctuating in a similarly erratic manner. Most peculiar.’
 	Passing through the increasingly labyrinthine network of pillars, obelisks and prisms, the team followed the sporadic trail of corpses until the passages became so dense as to be tunnel-like. They reached what was clearly a damaged area of the structure. Cracks ran through the dark metal like infected veins, and the crystals pulsed more rapidly, causing the emerald light to flicker across the alien geometry in an unsettling manner. Achairas felt the ground shake several times, and he heard a deep rumble coming from somewhere below. They moved on, descending further.
 	His auto-senses detected the stench before they saw the atrocity appear in the darkness before them. 
 	‘We found the rest of the station’s crew,’ Nym announced as they strode into a blanketed mess of desiccated, mutilated remains. 
 	Heaps of dead, hundreds, were scattered about the passage. 
 	‘God-Emperor…’ Astolyev said. ‘Why drag them all down here just to leave the scraps behind?’
 	‘Does not cogitate,’ Vemek’s skull crackled. ‘Artificial life forms and automata only act upon existing protocols. Either this serves some alien function we are not yet aware of, or the creators of these machines were mad…’
 	Achairas saw Astolyev’s acolytes tighten their grips on their weapons. Mortals were not as adept at channelling their fear into focus as Adeptus Astartes were, but these men and women were performing admirably. 
 	‘Advance. We should not dally here unless we discover something relevant,’ Achairas commanded.
 	The Death Spectres led, their weapons shifting from each new passage to the next. As Achairas panned his bolt ­pistol right, he saw, some ten feet from him, a form rise up from a pile of corpses, its shimmering outline barely even disturbing the dead. It was bipedal, as tall as he was, and built like a skeletal scarecrow of dark metal. Emerald light burned in its empty eye sockets, and its fingers ended in two-foot-long talons, sizzling with energy. A crude cloak of mangled, tattered flesh, severed limbs and rotting viscera was coiled around it.
 	Achairas’ trigger discipline stopped it before it could advance, and he turned its metal skull to metallic pulp with three bolt shells. More gunfire sounded around him as his brothers and several of the acolytes unleashed their fury. Shouts of alarm went up from the acolytes as more of the flesh-clad things emerged from the nooks and crannies of the labyrinth, as well as materialising out of the corpse piles. The thin air became thick with crimson sprays, screams and the sickening crackle of dead static. As Achairas dodged a raking swipe from another flesh-clad horror, he shot it in the jaw and lashed out with his power sword, severing its arm and then its head with the backswing.
 	‘To me, acolytes!’ The inquisitor disintegrated most of an advancing xenos with a burst of dark energy, before wheeling around to dodge a slashing blow that shredded part of his robe. He drew a short knife that hummed with sonic disruption, and plunged it into the xenos’ ribcage. It lunged further into him, its talons flashing but deflected by a halo of shimmering energy. A fusillade of las-fire from a squad of his acolytes, covered by Nym and Celaeno, sent the creature staggering back into an alcove. 
 	Achairas slashed the limbs from another, ignoring the distractions, focusing on the sound of running water. It staggered back, its severed appendage skittering across the ground to cut the legs from underneath an acolyte.
 	Sevrim bashed his bolter repeatedly into one xenos as it tore at his armour, as another plunged its talons through the seals under his arm. Even with such a wound, the Death Spectre said nothing, merely wheeling around with combat blade drawn to plunge it through the eye of another xenos behind him. Achairas reloaded in his moment’s respite and blasted the first from his brother. 
 	He saw his original kill rise again, its skull half-repaired. Achairas delivered a second killing strike with his power sword, cleaving it in two. 
 	Somewhere, a trio of frag grenade crumps sounded, showering the room with a spray of pulped meat as one of the acolytes targeted the corpse piles. That seemed to be where the tattered xenos machines were emerging from.
 	Burning promethium showered the passage, creating a wall of roaring flames around the team, driving the flayed monstrosities back. Achairas shot down another one through the flames, only to see it rise again, its metal ribs knitting back together in a revolting manner as fire wreathed its form.
 	‘They… won’t… die!’ Astolyev roared, out of breath, even though his xenos weapon seemed more effective than every­one else’s. 
 	The ragged band of surviving acolytes, now at half-strength, clustered around the inquisitor in a defensive cordon. The Death Spectres bolstered them, anchoring their position with their power-armoured presence. Achairas used his last two magazines to assist his brothers in dispersing the surrounding onslaught, stepping out of the defensive ring to slash down any creature that managed to come through.
 	And then, just like that, the assault was over. The remnants of the xenos simply phased out of reality, and those still standing disappeared back into the tunnels they’d come from. The rushing water subsided, and Achairas lowered his sword.
 	Any respite they might have gained was short-lived as a tectonic shudder lurched the entire chamber, and the dull humming grew in intensity.
 	‘The tomb…’ Vemek’s servo-skull chattered, emerging from its high hiding place. ‘Something is happening. My readings indicate more and more of the superstructure seems to be coming online…’
 	‘Coming online?’ Astolyev growled, signalling the group to advance with due haste.
 	‘Yes, the other parts of the ruin are… powering up.’
 	‘Then we make haste,’ Achairas commanded. ‘Whatever this structure is, we cannot allow it to awaken! Its threat is clear enough. We must end this!’ 
 	The tunnel converged into a larger passage, angling steadily down. More scarabs flitted to and fro, most of them avoiding the advancing group. The cavernous hexagonal hall continued on for a great distance, its end lost in the emerald gloom. All the while, the humming grew louder and louder, and the quakes grew in intensity and frequency, hobbling those not blessed with the stability granted by power armour with each tremor.
 	More phantom auspex blips followed, but the device was rapidly becoming unusable, flickering in and out from moment to moment. 
 	‘I’m afraid we don’t have long,’ Vemek’s servo-skull chirped. ‘Immense power fluctuations det–’ The crackling voice was cut off suddenly as the entire chamber shook, and a deafening roar echoed from further down. Several of the acolytes staggered and fell, their balance stolen by the seismic activity. All of the prisms and luminescent nodes on the floor and walls flared, painfully illuminating the darkness.
 	Achairas’ auto-senses adjusted almost immediately, as did the acolytes’ photo-visors. An energy surge disrupted everything, and for a moment, his vision became crackling static, and his power armour seized up. Thankfully, its internal dampening systems quickly compensated. 
 	‘Vemek?’ Astolyev called over the din of the tremors, shuddering as his own augmetics similarly restored functionality. ‘Status report!’
 	There was no response, and moments later Vemek’s servo-skull clattered to the ground, its delicate circuitry evidently fried. 
 	‘Throne of Terra, let’s move!’ the inquisitor shouted, and the group advanced, jogging down the massive tunnel towards the newly growing source of blinding jade at its end. 
 	The tunnel led them into what could only be the heart of the tomb, an open space of staggering size. More than half a mile across, the chamber resembled an amphitheatre of massive proportions. It was an inverted ziggurat, the ceiling soaring hundreds of feet above them. Massive pylons loomed in concentric circles around a central, colossal obelisk rising to a quarter of the height of the cavern. The obelisk was covered in gleaming geometric runes and prisms burning with the brightness of green suns. Even Achairas’ auto-senses could not adjust, and he was forced to look away. 
 	Millions of scarabs moved about in a wanton manner, scuttling along the walls and descending steps. More of the sinuous mantis constructs darted about while arachnoid machines the size of light tanks drifted between the smaller pillars jutting up everywhere. Achairas saw packs of metallic humanoids stalking about below, some draped in tattered flesh, others not. They seemed to chitter and claw at each other in fits of madness. It was some advantage as, at this distance, they had yet to notice their intruders. 
 	‘This is it!’ Astolyev called over the distorted vox-net, gesturing at the central obelisk. ‘The power source!’ 
 	Beams of energy lanced from the contained emeralds to immense prisms set into sockets on the walls, each a blinding solar flare that sent waves of heat and static resonating through the entire chamber. 
 	Around the obelisk, at the dead centre of the inverted ziggurat, was an elevated ring, and Achairas’ magnified vision noted four more metallic skeletons working on panels within its interior. They were adorned differently, with elaborate crests, and were slightly smaller and more hunched than the xenos they had fought.
 	‘Inquisitor, can you assess what we are seeing?’ Achairas shouted into his vox.
 	Astolyev’s answer was interrupted by another sudden lurch and an increase in gravity, sending everyone but the Space Marines sprawling. Even the Death Spectres were hobbled. Surging gravity was a sensation Achairas knew all too well. 
 	The tomb was rising. Somehow.
 	Astolyev struggled to his feet. ‘Blood of the Emperor!’
 	Achairas’ vision centred on the obelisk in the middle, and the projections of energy beaming from it.
 	The inquisitor motioned for his acolytes to take up defensive positions behind the various obelisks and pillars scattered around the upper tier of the inverted ziggurat, closest to the passage they’d emerged from. 
 	The Death Spectres did likewise, dropping into cover so that they might make observations with less risk of being spotted. Astolyev took up position beside Achairas. 
 	‘That is the heart,’ the inquisitor said. ‘That is what we must destroy.’
 	‘Yes,’ Achairas agreed, glad that the inquisitor was of similar mind on what to do with it. ‘I assume your expertise on xenos technology might be able to discern some manner of weakness?’ 
 	‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Where the energy bursts are emitted from, I’d wager my life on those being weak points. But… I have another solution.’ He reached into a satchel attached to his belt, and withdrew a fist-sized object that resembled some manner of exotic bomb. 
 	‘A vortex grenade,’ Achairas muttered, actually impressed. Such relics were exceedingly rare.
 	‘Count on the Inquisition to have the right tools at hand,’ Astolyev returned. His mask displayed nothing, but Achairas assumed that beneath it he might actually be smiling. 
 	‘Alarm! Contacts behind us!’ Brother Sevrim called over the vox-net, causing everyone to wheel around.
 	What Achairas saw approaching was certainly not the threat he expected to see. 
 	Three dozen pale-robed skitarii ran towards them in two columns, with Vemek protected behind the first few ranks. Their weapons were in ready position. Somehow, the magos’ titanium legs had unfolded from underneath his robes, reverse jointed and loping. 
 	Another surge of gravitational pressure buckled everyone, including the Space Marines. 
 	‘What in the God-Emperor’s name are you doing here, Vemek?’ Astolyev called. 
 	‘Taking personal stock of the situation, and ensuring that our goals are met,’ the magos returned, emerging from the skitarii ranks as they fanned out and started taking up positions in cover. 
 	The inquisitor’s weapon was drawn.
 	‘I sense treachery,’ Achairas whispered to his brothers over the vox. They levelled their bolters in the direction of the skitarii. If this turned to violence, it would be a battle at very close range. That suited the Space Marines well enough. 
 	‘How did you even get here?’ Astolyev snarled, aiming his xenos carbine at Vemek. 
 	Vemek held up his hands defensively. ‘I followed. A mind-linked servitor is maintaining vigilance on the data loom along with my gun-servitors.’
 	‘I did not give you the order to follow!’
 	‘Negative. I took initiative. It would appear, given the threats arrayed between us and the power source, that you will need additional assistance.’
 	Achairas glanced down into the veritable valley below, and ordered Sevrim to keep watch in that direction. Thus far, the xenos there had not been alerted. The majority of the insectoid constructs continued to drift about aimlessly. The bipedal, skeletal machines shambled about in packs. If they were patrols, they seemed random and haphazard. 
 	Another gravitational surge struck, as if the floor were rising up beneath them. Thunderous tremors tore through the cavernous chamber, momentarily deafening everyone. 
 	‘It feels as though the complex is rising,’ Achairas called to Vemek. 
 	‘It is,’ Vemek returned, his elongated legs in a wide stance to keep him steady. ‘The final scans of my servitor proxy in central cogitation have suggested that the entire complex appears to be some manner of ship.’
 	‘A ship?’ Astolyev exclaimed, aghast. ‘You could have mentioned this! We need to hurry. We must destroy the heart.’
 	‘No!’ Vemek crackled, equally aghast. ‘I must get close enough to make an analysis of the power source, and we must capture one of those xenos engineers below.’ He gestured to one of the machine-men working on the interior console ring. ‘And it is of paramount importance that we harvest one of the emerald prisms on the central obelisk.’
 	‘We don’t have time for that!’ Achairas interrupted. ‘If this entire complex is a ship, it is far larger than even a battle-barge of the Adeptus Astartes. We are not yet aware of the danger it poses, but I will not allow an unknown xenos vessel of this size to threaten the Halo Region. If destroying this power source has any chance of crippling it, it is a risk we must take.’ He looked to the inquisitor. Achairas honestly did not know which way this would go, but if Astolyev decided to follow the magos’ exceedingly reckless plan to steal forbidden xenos technology, at the cost of allowing a potential threat to free itself from the prison of this world’s mantle, he would respond with whatever force was necessary. 
 	He tightened his grip on his power sword.
 	Astolyev nodded. ‘Acolytes, we make for the obelisk. Cut us a gap through whatever stands in our path.’ He raised the vortex grenade in his mechanical hand. ‘We end this.’
 	Vemek took a step back, his heavily augmented face betraying nothing. Achairas nodded in thanks to the inquisitor for seeing reason. 
 	‘You must not!’ the magos exclaimed, drawing a pair of flechette pistols from his robes. His skitarii trained their weapons on the Inquisitorial acolytes and the Death Spectres.
 	‘Are you mad?’ Achairas cut in, levelling his power sword at the magos. 
 	The inquisitor raised his xenos carbine. ‘Vemek, don’t do anything we’ll both regret…’
 	‘I have invested far too many resources in the pursuit of the knowledge buried here!’ The magos’ mechadendrites twitched, and Achairas saw the madness then. Whether it was greed, ambition or something else, this tech-priest was not whole of mind. ‘I will acquire the data I need! My research must be completed if I am to return to the Consortium–’
 	‘You did this!’ Astolyev shouted back, accusation marring his augmetic voice. ‘You ordered the breach under my authority! That is sedition, treason and heresy!’
 	The commotion was drawing attention. Already, one of the arachnoid constructs was drifting over, cloaked in a halo of shimmering scarabs. 
 	‘Inquisitor…’ Achairas warned. His battle-brothers started taking up positions against the oncoming monstrosity. The inquisitor ignored the warning, squaring off against Vemek. The skitarii and acolytes mirrored their masters, kneeling into firing positions.
 	Achairas shook his head, disappointed. ‘Inquisitor!’ he shouted. ‘The xenos!’
 	‘Vemek!’ the inquisitor roared. ‘We can settle our dispute later. For now, we have a common–’
 	Vemek fired, a burst of flechette rounds pattering over the Inquisitorial group like raindrops. The inquisitor’s refractor field shimmered, absorbing the impacts targeting him, and several of his acolytes staggered. One fell. The skitarii fired in unison. Galvanic slugs, incandescent plasma fire and arcs of blinding electricity felled acolytes and forced the rest into cover. 
 	The acolytes recovered quickly, and immediately retaliated, turning the entire upper step of the inverted pyramid into a criss-crossing web of gunfire. 
 	‘Fools!’ Achairas shouted. ‘Celaeno, burn the traitors! Sevrim, Nym, watch those xenos!’ 
 	The spider machine was approaching, drifting up towards them like an immense spectre, a nightmare apparition of glowing optical lenses and scything limbs. The smaller, hovering scarabs flitted around it. His brothers immediately began to fire. 
 	Achairas dashed into cover as a plasma burst turned the small pillar before him into molten slag. Breaking from the destroyed cover, he charged the plasma caliver-armed skitarius, cleaving him in two and moving on to decapitate the next in line on the skitarii’s left flank. A third pounded him with a volley of close-range slugs. They struck his breastplate and staggered him, but did not penetrate. Another skitarius fired at his knee joint. Twisting, he took the impacts to the greave, barely keeping his feet as he rushed forward, slashing the first’s galvanic rifle in two, and bashing his fist into the skitarius’ titanium-plated skull a few times before it pulped. With a deft twist, he seized the falling corpse, raising it to absorb more fire from the skitarii ahead of him. 
 	Darting behind another pillar, Achairas feinted right but ran left, the skitarius corpse and his pauldrons absorbing most of the impacts, before he slammed into the traitors, hurling the carcass away. In close quarters, Achairas became a true spectre of death. Never breaking momentum, he weaved from cover to cover to avoid their fire, and delivered killing stroke after killing stroke with his power sword. The skitarii were competent, elite even. But they were no match for a Space Marine. Distracted by the last few acolytes’ assault on their main line, they were unable to stop the Death Spectre from making quick work of their left flank. 
 	On the right, the remnants of the Inquisitorial team retreated down one step of the amphitheatre, pinned behind a few pylons. They were being rapidly whittled down by the skitarii’s superior armaments. Galvanic slugs tore through the acolytes and thumped into Celaeno, even as the Death Spectre covered their retreat with a wide sweep of burning promethium from his flamer. Celaeno staggered, falling, his armour fractured in places from high-velocity impacts. An arc rifle flared, scorching another pair of acolytes to the bone before the inquisitor himself disintegrated the offending skitarius with a burst of dark energy. Celaeno rose again, stumbling, spraying more promethium to create an infralens-disrupting heat flare that would befuddle the aim of the enemy. 
 	Darting into cover, Achairas halted his advance, as Vemek himself, now exposed, drew some other manner of pistol from his robe. ‘I did not wish for it to end this way!’ the magos screeched. 
 	The sound of rushing water surged around Achairas once more, grasping at him with its inviting cold.
 	The magos fired, a beam of energy shattering the toppled pillar that Achairas knelt behind. The Death Spectre immediately relocated, taking cover behind a taller pylon. 
 	‘Fools!’ Vemek shouted, realising that he too had other problems. A trio of mantis-like machines had descended on him from behind, tearing into his remaining skitarii. 
 	‘Achairas!’ Astolyev called across the vox. ‘We must reach the obelisk! If we destroy that, we can end this!’
 	Achairas relayed the command to his brothers and moved to disengage, taking a moment to survey how Nym and Sevrim were faring. They’d split up, attacking the spider construct from both sides, Nym darting from pylon to pylon as the engine focused on him, projecting emerald arcs of energy at the Death Spectre. But Nym was too quick, his momentum keeping him just ahead of the spider’s attacks as Sevrim closed in and lobbed krak grenade after krak grenade into the thing’s abdominal section, blasting away chunks of ­liquefied metal. 
 	Achairas left Vemek and his skitarii to fend off the mantis-like constructs, and rushed towards the inquisitor and his few remaining acolytes. They unleashed a volley of fire into a pack of oncoming humanoid machines. The shambling, taloned things scrambled up the steps of the inverted ziggurat, straight into the Inquisitorial retinue’s withering fire. Most fell to hotshot las-fire, even if over half of them seemed to rise again.
 	Another spider construct reared up, dislodging itself from some manner of socket in the floor. A beam of white energy pulsed from the cannon on its back, blasting two acolytes to their molecular components and causing a rippling explosion that scattered the entire group. The spider drifted forward and reached down with a pincer-limb to grab Celaeno as he rose. It lashed down with its mandibles to seize the Space Marine’s arm. Nym and Sevrim rushed it, having finished off the first spider. Both hurled krak grenades, blasting limbs off and causing Celaeno to drop to the ground. The Space Marine’s left arm had been sheared off. 
 	Nym reached his brother, lifting the wounded Death Spectre to his feet. ‘No dying yet!’ 
 	Celaeno didn’t respond, nor cry out in pain, but drew his bolt pistol in his free hand, his Larraman’s organ already clotting the wound. 
 	The spider recovered, and much to Achairas’ dismay, a whole swarm of the smaller scarab machines drifted out from under its abdomen, immediately swarming towards them. Nym’s bolter was empty, but Sevrim, Celaeno and the last four acolytes managed to cut a few down before they reached them. Achairas scythed a scarab in two with his sword, before shattering another with his backswing, even as two more latched on to him. One gnawed on his pauldron, while another tore at his breastplate with its talons. He ripped the scarab off and stomped it to pieces, as another acolyte was dragged down and eviscerated by the gnashing creatures. 
 	Astolyev rose, still dazed, gathering up his xenos rifle. He loosed beams of dark energy at the spider, disintegrating portions of its carapace, and finally its skull. It fell to the ground with a deafening crash. 
 	Throwing the scarab on his pauldron off and slashing it in two, Achairas ran on, followed by his surviving allies, while Vemek and his skitarii continued their losing battle against the mantis-creatures a way up the steps behind them. But when Achairas saw what approached, he realised there was little hope of them reaching the obelisk alive. 
 	The bipedal skeletal machines advanced in full force, dozens shambling up the ziggurat towards them, clacking their talons and howling dead static. The ones that had fallen before had risen again, joining their ranks. 
 	‘Inquisitor!’ Achairas shouted. ‘Give me your grenade and get back to the Vox Silentii! Warn Occludus!’
 	Astolyev saw what was coming and hesitated. Sevrim fired the rest of his bolter shells into the advancing xenos, sending a few to the ground, if only to slow them. Celaeno readied his bolt pistol, while Nym drew a pair of wickedly curved mono-edged daggers. The three remaining acolytes fired their weapons, to limited effect, while Vemek’s team was assaulted by another spider construct that had dislodged itself from a hidden socket in the upper wall.
 	‘Astolyev! Run! You, of all of us, must live!’ Achairas urged. 
 	The inquisitor lowered his weapon and finally nodded, handing Achairas his vortex grenade. ‘Die well, Death Spectre.’
 	Achairas did not respond. There was only the rushing water. The torrent of death.
 	Achairas and his battle-brothers charged into the mass of approaching xenos, hurling their remaining frag grenades a moment before impact. Using his weight and momentum, he bowled through them, slashing three apart with a series of pirouetting blows. The tide of horrors washed over them. He saw Celaeno die first, decapitated by raking claws. 
 	Even so, their charge accomplished what it was supposed to. All of the approaching xenos swarmed the most direct threat, allowing Astolyev and his last acolytes to retreat. They stayed low among the pillars as they ascended the steps, evading the frenzied vivisections being carried out by the mantis-creatures that had torn apart Vemek’s unit. 
 	The butchery continued around the Death Spectres. The ground lurched and heaved as the tomb struggled against its stony prison. Staggering, Sevrim failed to evade a pair of curved talons that impaled him through his underarm seals. Two of the creatures lifted him up into the air, tearing an arm and a leg off, even as he pulled the pin of a krak grenade in his free hand and took several more of the xenos with him to oblivion.
 	Slashing their way through, Achairas and Nym inflicted a substantial butcher’s toll, bringing down a dozen xenos machines between them, despite sustaining numerous grievous injuries. When all seemed lost, the obelisk maddeningly out of reach, the onslaught ceased. 
 	They were scarcely three hundred feet from the ring around the central obelisk when the clawed xenos retreated down the slope, hissing madly. 
 	‘What is this?’ Nym roared. ‘Cowardice from machines?’
 	The four skeletal engineers operating the control ring knelt as an arc of blinding light appeared ahead of them, between the ring and the Space Marines. The light coalesced into a form. It was all dark metal, cast in the shape of a massive humanoid skeleton, easily a head taller than the Space Marines, hunched as it was. A regal crest adorned its skull, and a robe of tattered flesh was draped over its ornate emerald pauldrons. In a clawed hand, it clutched a glaive with a khopesh-like blade that shimmered with a fell greenish light. Everything about its appearance told Achairas that this was some kind of leader. An overlord of these xenos, even if it, too, was a machine. 
 	It stood silently, still among the madness of its minions. Whatever insanity was infecting the rest of this tomb clearly did not affect its king. Achairas and Nym took a moment to gather their breath. The sound of rushing water intensified, and Achairas knew he stared into the hollow, soulless eye sockets of that which would be his end.
 	Nym looked at him, hobbled, but still alive. ‘Use that grenade. I’ll distract this overly decorated carcass.’
 	Achairas nodded. He had to get closer. He could not miss. 
 	Smiling, the two Death Spectres advanced to their doom. 
 	Nym hurled his last krak grenade at the overlord. It calmly caught it in its free hand, crushing it before it could detonate. Achairas flanked around, but the creature moved to block both of them. Nym rushed the towering xenos lord, raking it with his knives. His onslaught was warded off as his foe spun its glaive in an arc with alarming speed. His momentum broken, Nym was barely able to duck the retaliating swing, and the xenos’ weapon lit up with jade energy as it scythed through the air. Nym darted in, delivering a pair of thrusts into the thing’s ribcage. It was all he managed.
 	As Achairas sprinted forward, shouldering through two more retreating clawed xenos, he primed the vortex grenade. In a dead run, he hurled it, as hard as he could, at the central obelisk.
 	The grenade soared through the air, just as the overlord lifted Nym up by his throat and hurled him away. The xenos king advanced, thrusting with its glaive, impaling Nym through the back as he rose to his feet. Green fire tore through the Death Spectre, burning his flesh to ash in seconds, just as the vortex grenade contacted. 
 	The detonation devoured all light, noise and sense, sending Achairas, and all of the xenos, staggering away as a blinding explosion of the warp’s uncolours struck the side of the obelisk. A maelstrom of polychromatic energy tore at its flanks, warping the outer shell and shattering the crystals. Rays of emerald light spewed violently, causing several of the prisms on the wall to overload and explode.
 	The entire chamber rocked violently, and Achairas struggled to his feet, bashing in the skull of another xenos. Looking up, he despaired as he saw thousands of scarabs and dozens of spider constructs swarm towards the obelisk. He found his sword, slashing the legs out from another horror only a split second before a searing lance of agony ripped through his midriff. 
 	Burning blood spurted up into his helmet, as the blade of the xenos overlord punched clean through his torso, from side to side. His sword clattered from his hand as his blood turned to flame and his bones burned to ash. He did not have time to scream. The only sensation Achairas felt as he died was the cold caress of the Black River that had beckoned him for so long. 
 	And so Brother-Sergeant Achairas of the Death Spectres died, having failed to destroy the obelisk awakening the tomb ship. But he did not fail in buying time for Inquisitor Astolyev to make his escape, and gain a chance, however small, to warn the Menrahir of Occludus of this new threat to the Halo Region. 
 	The inquisitor’s sprint out through the tomb had taken considerably less time than his original, cautious foray. Terror soiled Astolyev’s mind. It was an unfamiliar sensation, even if he felt some minor satisfaction in having vaporised the dying, treacherous Vemek with his dark energy blaster during his escape. Of his three last acolytes, Tyberius and Heshal had fallen in the tunnels, clawed down by the skeletal xenos that had ambushed them. He’d ignored them, sprinting past. Only Kailani still lived. 
 	He dimly made a note to give her a worthy commendation if any of them actually made it out of this wretched place alive.
 	The entire tomb buckled and quaked, and gravity itself fought him, but he ascended the innards of the pyramid to reach the gaping rent in its apex. When he finally emerged into the wan light of the world’s stillborn sun, the scene that faced him was apocalyptic.
 	The earth of Thirsis 41-Alpha was a shattered mess, as the immense shape of a black metal crescent tore itself from its terrestrial prison. Rock peeled away from the pyramid, the entire crater collapsing around it, shattering the shroud station to splinters. The roar was deafening as it rose, the crust fracturing, grinding into smaller boulders and rolling off the sides of the immense superstructure below. The atmosphere recoiled as tidal surges of emerald energy stripped away the last grasping claws of rock. 
 	The cataclysmic vista before Astolyev was truly the most awe-inspiring, terrible thing he had seen in all his many long years as an inquisitor. 
 	He couldn’t even hear his own voice as he shouted to Apparition over the vox. He hoped the servitor on the Thunderhawk could make out his commands, and had had enough sense to take off before the research station had crumbled into oblivion. 
 	But then, there it was, screaming through the tortured atmosphere like an apparition of one of the Emperor’s angels of death. Its ominous, black-winged shape was a joy to behold. He gripped Kailani’s arm. She was barely standing. Astolyev hadn’t even noticed the deep wound in her side. She’d said nothing of it throughout their escape. 
 	‘Stay alive!’ he yelled through the vox, realising she’d be as deaf as he was, that words were utterly useless. 
 	Apparition descended towards the pyramid, hovering alongside the slope of the apex, and opening its ramp. It swayed back and forth as it hung there; it would be a long jump onto a treacherous surface. 
 	Astolyev pulled Kailani back into the tomb, before sprinting forward to gain a running start. They jumped from the slowly rising pyramid onto the ramp of the waiting gunship. Out of breath, aching and battered, they were dragged into the hold by Nerek and Ariane, and were buckled into acceleration harnesses beside a sobbing Ketyanna.
 	The short, twisting flight took less than fifteen minutes to reach the Vox Silentii, which was already powering up to ready for a rapid escape. The frigate flared its engines the moment they passed through its void-shielded landing bay, and began to accelerate away from the planetoid as the colossal xenos vessel tore itself free from the planetary crust. 
 	After sprinting through the corridors of the cruiser, and hurtling up through the magnetic elevator to the strategium, Astolyev entered the chamber to find the other five Death Spectres there waiting for him.
 	‘Sergeant Achairas?’ one of them inquired.
 	The inquisitor’s hearing had returned, to some degree. ‘Dead. To buy us time to escape,’ he gasped.
 	The Space Marines regarded him silently. 
 	‘Considering the size of the vessel, escape is all we can do.’ The Death Spectre gestured towards the vid display, showing the immense, crescent-shaped ship, now almost fully free from its prison. The energy signatures of the vessel did not cogitate on the Vox Silentii’s augur systems, and the inquisitor shook his head in disbelief. 
 	‘Blood of the Emperor, what have we done?’ He turned to the shipmaster. ‘Get us out of Thirsis 41’s gravity well and make for the warp as soon as is physically possible! Make for your home world, your Menrahir must be warned.’
 	The Death Spectre nodded his assent.
 	‘That is what Achairas commanded,’ the inquisitor added with an exhalation.
 	And with that, the Vox Silentii surged away from the rising tomb ship at maximal speed. Whether the xenos vessel was unable to target them due to not being fully awoken yet, or whether it simply did not care, Astolyev could not guess, but it was no small mercy when the Vox Silentii’s Navigator announced that they were far enough out to tear a rift into the warp and slip away. Astolyev retreated to his guest quarters with his three remaining acolytes and Ketyanna in tow. 
 	He would need to do some serious thinking, and perform an analysis of what they’d found, before bringing this warning to Occludus. The Death Spectres were the watchers of the Eastern Halo, the Space Marines who vigilantly kept the nightmares of the Ghoul Stars at bay. And now, they’d have one new nightmare to deal with. One that was undoubtedly far, far worse than the others. Whatever they’d awoken down there in the dark was perhaps the single greatest threat encountered in the Eastern Halo since the Pale Wasting, and Astolyev decided, then and there, that he would devote his entire being, and all of his considerable resources as an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, to counteracting that threat. That would be his atonement, for his role in awakening the sleeping nightmare buried in the rock of Thirsis 41-Alpha.