Warhammer 40000

The Beast Arises

History of changes

1.0 — the book was created in InterWorld's Bookforge.

1.1 — "Watchers in Death" by David Annandale and "The Last son of Dorn" by David Guymer were added.

1.2 — "Shadow of Ullanor" by Rob Sanders was added.

1.3 — "The beheading" by Guy Haley was added. Omnibus is complete.

Dan Abnett

I, Slaughter

One

Ardamantua, 544.M32

The Chromes were relatively easy to kill, but they came in ferocious numbers.

Eight walls of Imperial Fists boxed one of their primary family groups into a scrub-sided valley east of the blisternest, and reduced them to burned shells and spattered meat.

Smoke rose off the hill of dead. It was a yellowish air-stain composed of atomised organic particulates and the backwash of fyceline smoke. According to the magos biologis sent to assist the undertaking, sustained bolter and las-fire, together with the chronic impact trauma of blade and close-combat weapons, had effectively aerosolised about seven per cent of the enemy’s collective biomass. The yellow smoke, a cloud twenty kilometres wide and sixty long, drained down the valley like a dawn fog.

The magos biologis told Koorland this as if the fact had some practical application. Koorland, second captain of Daylight Wall Company, shrugged. It was a non-fact to him, like someone saying the shape of a pool of spilled blood resembled a map of Arcturus or Great-Uncle Janier’s profile. Koorland had been sent to Throne-forsaken Ardamantua to kill Chromes. He was used to killing things. He was good at it, like all his company brothers and like every brother of the shield-corps. He was also used to the fact that when things were killed in colossal numbers, it left a mess. Sometimes the mess was smoke, sometimes it was liquid, sometimes it was grease, sometimes it was embers. He didn’t need some Terra-spire expert telling him that he and his brothers had pounded the Chromes so hard and so explosively that they had vaporised part of them.

The magos biologis had a retinue of three hundred acolytes and servitors. They were hooded and diligent, and had decorated the hillside with portable detection equipment and analysis engines. Tubes sniffed the air (this, Koorland understood, was how the magos biologis had arrived at his seven per cent revelation). Picting and imaging devices recorded the anatomies of dead and living Chrome specimens alike. Dissections were underway.

‘The Chromes are not a high-factor hostile species,’ the magos told Koorland.

‘Really?’ Koorland replied through his visor speakers, obliged to listen to the report.

‘Not at all,’ the human said, shaking his head, apparently under the impression that Koorland’s obligation was in fact interest. ‘See for yourself,’ he said, gesturing to a half-flayed specimen spread-eagled on a dissection stand. ‘They are armoured, of course, around the head, neck and back, and their forelimbs are well formed into digital blades—’

‘Or “claws”,’ said Koorland.

‘Just so,’ the magos went on, ‘especially in sub-adult and adult males. They are not harmless, but they are not a naturally aggressive species.’

Koorland thought about that. The Chromes — so called because of the silvery metallic finish of their chitin armour — were xenosbreed, human-sized bugs with long forelimbs and impressive speed. He thought about the eighteen million of them that had swarmed the valley that afternoon, the sea of silver gleaming in the sunlight, the swish of their bladed limbs, the tek-tek-tek noise they made with their mouthparts, like broken cogitators. He thought of the three brothers he’d lost from his wall during the initial overwhelm, the four taken from Hemispheric Wall, the three from Anterior Six Gate Wall.

Go tell them not naturally aggressive.

The Chromes had numbers, vast numbers. The more they had killed, the more there were to kill. Sustained slaughter was the only operational tactic: keep killing them until they were all dead. The rate at which the Imperial Fists had been required to hit them, the duration, the frenzy — no damn wonder they aerosolised seven per cent of their biomass.

‘Chromes have been encountered on sixty-six other worlds in this sector alone,’ said the magos biologis. ‘Twenty-four of those encounters took place during compliance expeditions at the time of the Great Crusade, the rest since. Chromes have been encountered in large numbers, and have often defended themselves. They have never been known to behave with such proactive hostility before.’

The magos thought about this.

‘They remind me of rats,’ he said. ‘Rad-rats. I remember there was a terrible plague of them down in the basements and sub-basements under the archive block of the Biologis Sanctum at Numis. They were destroying valuable specimens and records, but they were not, individually, in any way harmful or dangerous. We sent in environmental purge teams with flame guns and toxin sprays. We began to exterminate them. They swarmed. Fear, I suppose. They came flooding out of the place and we lost three men and a dozen servitors in the deluge. Unstoppable. Like the sub-hive rats, the Chromes have never behaved this way before.’

‘And they won’t again,’ said Koorland, ‘because when we’re finished here they’ll all be dead.’

‘This is just one of a possible nineteen primary family groups,’ said the magos biologis. He paused. Koorland knew that the magos intended to address him by name, but, like so many humans, he found it difficult to differentiate between the giant, transhuman warriors in their yellow armour. He had to rely on rank pins, insignia and the unit markings on shoulderplates, and that information always took a moment to process.

The magos biologis nodded slightly, as if to apologise for the hesitation.

‘—Captain Koorland of the Second Daylight Wall—’

‘I’m second captain of the Daylight Wall Company,’ Koorland corrected.

‘Ah, of course.’

‘Forget about rank, just try to remember us by our wall-names.’

‘Your what?’

Koorland sighed. This man knew more than seemed healthy about xenosbreeds, but he knew nothing about the warriors built to guard against them.

‘Our wall-names,’ he said. ‘When we are inducted, we forget our given names, our pre-breed names. Our brothers bestow upon each of us a name that suits our bearing or character: a wall-name.’

The magos nodded, politely interested.

Koorland gestured to a Space Marine trudging past them.

‘That’s Firefight,’ he said. ‘That brother over there? He’s Dolorous. Him there? Killshot.’

‘I see,’ said the magos biologis. ‘These are earned names, names within the brotherhood.’

Koorland nodded. He knew that, at some point, he’d been told the magos biologis’ name. He hadn’t forgotten because it was complicated, he just hadn’t cared enough about the human to remember it.

‘What is your name, captain?’ the magos asked brightly. ‘Your wall-name?’

‘My name?’ Koorland replied. ‘I am Slaughter.’

Two

Ardamantua

In less than six solar hours, they were back in combat.

A filthy dusk had settled over the landscape. In the reddish haze of the sky, the low-anchored bulks of their barges hung like oblong, tusk-prowed moons. The Chapter Master had ordered over ninety per cent of the Fists’ strength out on this undertaking. It was a huge show of force. Too much, in Slaughter’s opinion. But it was political too. The Adeptus Astartes were very good at prosecuting and finishing wars. Whenever extended periods of peace broke out, especially in the exalted systems and holdings around the Terran Core, it became harder to justify the sheer might of a standing army like the Imperial Fists. It was good to get them out, to give them purpose, to chalk up a staggering victory that the core system populations could celebrate. The extermination of a xenosbreed threat like the Chromes was ample justification for such lethal institutions as the Imperial Fists.

Strategic surveys put the Chrome numbers at something in the order of eighty-eight billion, and migratory scans showed a pronounced in-curve diaspora towards the core worlds. Besides, Ardamantua, Throne-forsaken Ardamantua, was just six warp-weeks from Solar Approach.

Since the very earliest ages of the Imperium, the Imperial Fists had been the primary defenders of Terra. Other Chapters — Legions, as they had been known, until the Great Heresy and the instigation of the Codex — might crusade, explore or take war to the furthest corners of Imperial space. But the Imperial Fists were the primary guardians of Terra and the core. This was what they had always done. This was the duty their beloved Primarch-Progenitor had charged them with when he had left them.

It was their legacy.

Surface scans had shown another Chrome family group of significant size moving around the blisternest. Daylight Wall had led the way across the river, with two walls at their heels and another crossing further up. The river was broad but slow and heavy, no more than waist-deep, and muddy. The brackish water fumed with insects.

The Chromes started to resist when they saw the Imperial Fists wading out to the nest side. Some plunged into the water and attempted to attack. Shooting began, brothers firing from the soupy water, pushing the foe back, driving the Chromes up the claggy banks even as the xenos gathered in greater numbers to plunge in. The enemy became agitated. The slow tide was soon full of Chrome corpses, spinning end to end as they drifted downstream. The Imperial Fists advance seemed almost sullen; they came slowly, trudging through the stinking water, firing because they had to at targets too ridiculously easy to hit.

Slaughter roused his men. If they were going to engage, they were going to do it with dignity. They were coming up the bank, approaching the huge, septic shape of the blisternest rim.

‘Daylight Wall stands forever,’ he voxed. ‘No wall stands against it. Bring them down.’

The men of the company clashed their boltguns and their broadswords against their combat shields and chanted the refrain back. The advance began to accelerate.

A wall of men. A wall of supermen.

Slaughter reached the bank. It was a steep, slick mire threaded with coarse vegetation. Glinting in the smoky light, Chromes bounded down onto the ridges, rising up into threat postures and challenging him. He came out of the water, oily green moisture trailing off his yellow armour. Frenzy was at his left hand, Heartshot was at his right.

The first of the Chromes came at him.

Slaughter’s broadsword was a two-handed power blade with a silver cross-hilt and a black pommel. It had fought at Terra, during the Siege, in the hands of a Fist called Emetris, who had fallen there. It was as broad as a standard human male’s thigh. He brought it up and it described an arc in the air as the first Chrome leapt. It split the xenos through its gleaming bio-armour and cut it in two. Ichor showered in all directions. A second sprang, and he smashed it aside, slashed open. A third met the blade, impaled itself, and thrashed wildly until he ripped the sword back out.

It was just the beginning. They started to rush. A dozen, two dozen, all at once. Slaughter liked sword-work. It was economical. It saved munitions for more significant moments. The broadsword was a finely balanced instrument in his huge hands. The two-handed grip could turn and shear each swing in a surprisingly subtle number of ways.

Slaughter began to slaughter.

He left a trail of dead behind him: ruptured silver husks weeping ichor into the matted, trampled vegetation. Each step was an impact as another two or three Chromes came at him and were met by the brute, full-stop force of his blade. Organic debris flew from each killstroke. Ichor and other xenos fluids squirted high into the air and dappled his armour like dew, like rain.

Frenzy tore through the stand of dry weeds to his left, swinging an axe that had been the proud possession of a series of Fists since before the Great Crusade. The curve of its bite had been notched by the skull of a green warboss during the Malla Vajjl compliance. Frenzy, a big-hearted generous man, possessed particularly acute hand-eye coordination. His movements were so fast and precise, they seemed almost random. He had earned his wall-name through his grace on the field, the constant motion, the changing grips, the reversals, the back-steps, the aggression. His axe moved from grip to grip like a baton or a staff whirled by some ceremonial parade-ground officer. It seemed to fly from his hand many times as he turned and changed position, but it never left him. Like Slaughter, he had eschewed his bolter for the clearance work.

Slaughter wished he could stop and admire the battle-craft of his friend and brother, but there was no opportunity. The enemy’s numbers were increasing.

To Slaughter’s right, tearing through the reed beds and the dried mucus walls of the blisternest edges, came Heartshot and Chokehold. Heartshot’s rotary cannon made a metallic din like a stamp-press forge at full production. Chokehold’s bolter exploded two or sometimes three charging Chromes with each shell.

Slaughter barked orders, kept the line firm. He didn’t want over-step. He didn’t want the Chromes to find a way in through any gap in their line. Heartshot and Chokehold moved ahead fast, cutting their path with firepower. He had to keep them leashed.

He called out wall-names — Cleaver, Arm’s Length, Coldeye, Lifetaker, Bleedout — and urged them in at the back, ordering them through the reed beds to fill and cover.

His head snapped around from a sideways blow. He smelled blood in his nose, blood that clotted instantly. A screamer alert sang in his helm and his visor display blinked up mottled damage patterns.

He recovered. This took less than a second. One of the big adults had raked his head with a forelimb claw. He’d taken his eye off the fight for a micro-moment to check the line.

His sword killed the thing for its insult and for the scratch it left in the yellow surface of his helm. But there was another at its heels, an even bigger adult. It was two-thirds his size. He hadn’t seen Chromes this big before. Its appearance was different too. It was not chrome or silvery. Its chitin and armour, and its claws, seemed resiny black and brown, as if made from a horny bark that was still growing.

It ripped his chestplate. Slaughter got his shield in the way, took off its limb mid-forearm, and then reversed his blade and killed it.

Two strokes for one kill. Inefficient.

The thing had been big. It had required the extra effort.

Another large, dark form appeared, and then two more. What were they? A sub-species? A larger, more aggressive form of the basic Chrome xenotype?

Slaughter’s helm was alive with vox-chatter reports from across the offensive, all describing the same new type: larger, darker, bigger, stronger, harder to kill.

Tactical re-evaluation. Slaughter started to issue advisories even as he met the next of the new kind. Two strokes to kill one, three to finish the next. More gouges down to bare metal on his armour.

Why would any force, any species, keep its largest and strongest warrior-forms in reserve? Why would they not send them out into open combat? They might have halted or driven back the Adeptus Astartes’ attack long before they had cut their way to the blisternest.

The tek-tek-tek noise the Chromes made with their mouthparts, that malfunctioning data-engine clatter, was changing. The bigger, darker warrior-forms made a lower, duller noise, a clack-clack-clack. Two brothers in the line had already fallen to their superior power and savagery.

‘Do we fall back?’ Frenzy voxed. ‘Slaughter, do we break and regroup? This is new. This is—’

‘Hold the line,’ Slaughter replied. ‘No regroup. No fall back. Hold the line. Daylight Wall stands forever. No wall stands against it. Bring them down.’

‘Understood.’

Frenzy’s unquestioning understood was instantly echoed by a hundred voxed voices.

Slaughter ducked a slashing brown claw the size of Frenzy’s axe-head. He was smiling.

He had made a realisation. He knew what this was.

They are us. They are Daylight Wall.

The blisternest was the Chromes’ Palace of Terra. They had kept their bravest and best and mightiest warriors in reserve to defend it, in case an enemy ever got through.

This was their last ditch. Their last stand. This was their final wall, their do or die.

The Imperial Fists were just hours away from completing their undertaking to Ardamantua and adding another proud tally to their glory roll.

This was the bloody endgame, and it would be a battle to relish.

‘Hold the line,’ Slaughter ordered. Then, as a practical afterthought, he added, ‘Use your bolters.’

Three

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The air was smoke.

In preparation for the midday Senatorum meeting, servitors had lit the burners in the upper galleries and the approach halls, and in the alcoves along the Walk of Heroes, whose great leaded windows, miraculously spared by the pounding overpressure of the Siege, had looked out onto the stately yards behind Eternity Gate for two dozen centuries.

The burners fumed with camphor and septrewood, rose-ash and parvum, the sacred incense of the Saviour Emperor, thought to smell exactly like the incorruptible sanctity of His Eternal Form.

Vangorich couldn’t attest to this. Given his office as a Grand Master, he might have requested, and even been granted, the chance to show observance at the foot of the Golden Throne. He had never bothered. The dead did not interest him, not even the divine dead. What interested him — obsessed him — were the mechanisms by which things became dead, and the opportunities those deaths afforded the living.

He had entered the Inner Palace that morning through West Watch, and then followed the hallway walks behind the High Gardens and Daylight Wall before pausing in the chapel ordinary behind the cloister wall to make a small devotion at the basin font.

Vangorich was not a pious man. He was a man of faith, but it was not a spiritual faith. He made his devotion because he knew — or at least could be fairly certain — that agents from a dozen or more ministries and factions were watching him at all hours of the day and night. It was easier to make sure he was seen to be doing what he was supposed to do, than it was to waste manpower eradicating those spies on a daily basis.

Let his rivals do the hard work. It was no great effort to act a part.

Drakan Vangorich had been doing it all his life.

So he did what was expected of him. As a Grand Master — albeit of an Officio that had once been powerful and was now regarded as an atavistic throwback to a more brutal age — he was expected to attend all meetings, formal and discretionary. He was supposed to show humility and dignity. He was supposed not to express any cruel or bloodthirsty appetites, the sort of appetites his rivals assumed that a Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum must harbour. He was supposed to show respect to the Creed.

All Senatorum members took a blessing or expressed some devotion before taking their seats at meetings, so that the will of the God-Emperor might guide their thoughts and wisdom. Some, like the odious Lansung, made a great show of doing so, in full dress uniform, usually in the chapel-vault of one of his battlefleet vessels in orbit. Mesring was the same, leading a train of gowned, gold-helmed savant-priests into the rotunda church below Hemispheric Wall. Pompous idiots!

Vangorich, dressed in simple, ascetic black, opted for a less showy effect. The chapel ordinary was used by Palace servants and householders for their daily observances. It was not a public place, just a very plain cell with frugal appointments. Vangorich was aware that using it made him look dutiful, restrained, and very humble. It made him look more admirably spiritual than the lords who made their observances for show. It spoke of simplicity and a lack of arrogance.

It made him look trustworthy and noble. It made him look good. He liked his rivals’ spies to see that. He knew it irked them beyond measure to hear that he had stopped for a few minutes in a private, unostentatious servants’ chapel to make a discreet act of faith. How it bothered them that he was so unimpeachably wholesome.

The truth was, he probably thought more about how he looked at all times, and what his image said about him, than the likes of Mesring and Lansung. Their activities were conducted publicly, to win popular support; Vangorich’s were conducted simply for the benefit of the ever-circling spies. He performed for his rivals, playing the part he wanted them to see.

How would they see him now, coming to the meeting? As a man of medium height and medium build, dressed in black, with black hair oiled back like a clerk’s across his narrow skull. His skin was pale from the constant twilight of life in the Palace, and he had precious little in the way of distinguishing features, except for his dark, wide-set eyes and the duelling scar that canyoned the left part of his mouth and chin.

Vangorich never spoke of the duel, except to say that it had happened when he was a youth, before he took office, and he regretted it in as much as the matter should not have been resolved face-to-face with rapiers, but rather with him placed behind his adversary, dagger in hand, and his adversary unaware of his presence.

Drakan Vangorich liked to kill things. He liked to kill things as efficiently as possible, with the least possible effort, and he only ever killed things if there was a reason: a good reason, a persuasive reason. Death was the pure solution to life’s greatest and most confounding problems.

This was what so many of the offices and agencies seemed not to understand about the ancient Officio Assassinorum. It was not an archaic killing machine, lurking to spread disorder and mayhem at the whim of some mercurial Grand Master, poisoning here and stabbing there. It was not a thirsty sword hung in a rack, aching to shed blood.

It was a necessary and purifying fire. It was the last resort, the end of arguments. It was hope and it was salvation. It was the noblest and truest of all the Offices of Terra.

The Emperor had understood this, which was why He had instigated the office and allowed it to function during His lifetime. He had understood the necessity for ultimate sanction. He had, after all, permitted the VI Legion of the Adeptus Astartes to exist simply to function in that role as it applied to primarchs and other Legions. Grand Master Vangorich’s office existed to perform that function at a court level.

That was why the other lords were afraid of him. They all presumed he might stab them in the spine. They always forgot that he was their instrument. They got to vote on who he killed. They should spend more time worrying about each other.

‘Good day, Daylight,’ he said as he stepped out of the chapel ordinary to continue his walk to the Great Chamber.

The Imperial Fist, his armour polished and perfect, turned slowly and offered Vangorich a shallow tip of the head.

‘Good day, Grand Master,’ the Space Marine replied, his voice welling up as a volcanic rumble through helm-speakers. He towered over the human lord, ornamental spear in his left fist, litany-inscribed shield in his right. Vangorich felt sorry for the wall-brothers of the VII. They were reputed to be the very finest of all, the most excellent and capable of their Chapter. Yet, because of ritual and ceremony and honour, they were fated to remain here for their entire service lives; the best of the best, one for each of the Palace walls that the Fists had protected, wasting their immense potential, serving out their time in the one place in the galaxy that war would never visit again.

They didn’t even have names. They simply wore the names of the walls they patrolled, every day and night, in perfectly polished armour.

‘I’m probably late for the meeting,’ Vangorich remarked.

‘You have six minutes and thirteen seconds remaining, sir,’ replied the Space Marine. ‘However, I suggest you take Gilded Walk to the traverse behind Anterior Six Gate.’

‘Because they’re not meeting in the Great Chamber?’

The Space Marine nodded.

‘They are not, sir.’

‘They keep doing that,’ said Vangorich, peeved. ‘I think it is unseemly. The Great Chamber was good enough for our ancestors. It was built as our parliament.’

‘Times change, sir,’ said the warrior Daylight.

Vangorich paused and looked up at the grim and unfathomable visor. Light glowed like coals behind the optic lenses.

‘Do they?’ he asked. ‘Do you wish for that, Daylight? Do you wish for the chance to kill?’

‘With every fibre of my soul, and every second of my life, sir,’ the Imperial Fist replied. ‘But this is the duty I have been given and I will perform it with my entire heart and will.’

Vangorich felt he ought to say something, but he could not think of anything adequate, so he nodded, turned, and walked away down the gloomy hallway.

Four

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Great Chamber had been the seat of power on Terra since the Palace had been established. It was a formidable stadium, a veritable colosseum, with a central dais and seats for the High Lords, and then vast tiers of seats for the more minor officials and lords, lesser functionaries, petitioners and so forth. At full capacity, it could hold half a million people. It had been damaged during the Siege, but it had been restored and repaired in a sympathetic fashion. A huge statue of Rogal Dorn had been erected at the east end, commemorating his superhuman efforts of defence in general, and his extraordinary running battle in the hallways just outside that very place.

It had not been Dorn’s choice. Guilliman had ordered the statue raised.

‘My brother watched over the Palace during our darkest hour,’ he had said. ‘He should watch over the council evermore.’

Of late, in the last few decades, the Senatorum Imperialis had taken to meeting in other places. The Great Chamber was too big for anything except full meetings, many claimed: too noisy, too formal. Favour was placed on more closed sessions, in smaller chambers, for intimacy and immediacy. The Clanium Library was often used, almost as a private cabinet. Sometimes, the High Lords convened in the Anesidoran Chapel.

Most preferred was the Cerebrium, a comparatively small, wood-panelled room near the top of the Widdershins Tower. It was said that the Emperor had favoured the rooms of the tower for meditation and mindfulness, and the Cerebrium in particular. ‘It makes us feel closer to His thoughts to convene here,’ Udo had once exclaimed, defending the regular use of the room.

Vangorich knew perfectly well why they did it.

The Cerebrium had a large, figured wooden table at its centre, and the table was big enough to take twelve chairs.

Only the twelve members of the High Senatorum could sit in session together. Secondary officials, like Vangorich, were obliged to lurk in the shadows, or take seats along the wall.

It was power play. It was infantile.

The Cerebrium was a fine room, well-appointed and quite atmospheric. Opening the casement shutters afforded the room an extraordinary view across the Palace roofscape and down over the ring-gates and the armoured flanks of the world. Vangorich had often thought it would make an excellent private study or office.

However, it was hardly a place to run the Imperium from. It was too small, too insubstantial, too amateurish. It was a back-room, fit only for private thoughts and back-room deals. It was not a place of government.

Vangorich entered, his attendance solemnly noted by the servitor of record. The High Lords were taking their seats. He nodded a greeting with Lord Militant Heth, his only true ally among the High Twelve, and then found a place in the flip-down wooden pews under the east windows, where other lesser lords and functionaries were seating themselves. They greeted him as if he was one of them.

He was not.

Less than a century before, one of the permanent seats among the High Twelve had belonged to the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. The office was one of the ‘Old Twelve’ that had sat in governance of the Imperium since the Senatorum’s inception.

Times, as Brother Daylight had said, were changing. Some offices, and none more than the Office of Assassins, were now seen as obsolete at best, or archaic and primitive at worst. They had been edged out of the inner twelve, and either dispensed with altogether, or relegated to the lesser seats outside the High Circle. Other, newer, stations had advanced in their place.

This was ignominious. Vangorich accepted that some of the Imperium’s newer institutions absolutely deserved a seat at the table. Both the agents of the Inquisition and the ecclesiarchs of the Ministorum required representation among the High Lords since the Heresy War. They were fundamental parts of the modern Imperium. Vangorich would not argue that. What he would argue was that the council should have been expanded to admit them rather than culled to find them places.

He watched them take their seats at the table, talking together, some laughing. Wienand, the Inquisitorial Representative, was the only one not talking to anybody. She was quiet and reserved and surprisingly young, with sharp cheekbones and very short, steel-grey hair. Technically, she was his replacement. Technically, the Inquisitorial Representative had taken the permanent seat that had traditionally belonged to the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum.

Vangorich held no grudge. He quite liked Wienand, and he’d admired her predecessor. He believed in the near-autonomous function of the Inquisition, because it reflected, in spirit, the same safety-catch mechanism as the Assassinorum. He often met with Wienand and others of her kind, in private of course, to discuss operational techniques, methodology of detection and research, jurisdiction, and also to share inter-agency intelligence. He found that the inquisitors were often astonished at the level of intelligence his office was able to gather, and they often turned to him, clandestinely, for favours.

It was all part of the give and take.

Heth was the Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum, an old, maimed veteran. Though the Guard was the largest military body in the Imperium, Heth felt it to be very much the junior third service to the Adeptus Astartes and the Navy. It was probably why he sought out unlikely allies with voting rights, such as Vangorich.

Lansung was certainly ignoring him. Lansung, broad, red of face and booming of voice, was the Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy. His corpulent form was encased in a uniform of oceanic blue threaded with silver braid. He took a while to be seated, engaging Tobris Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum, in some convoluted piece of scandal-mongering while Vernor Zeck looked on with patient indulgence. Zeck, the giant among them, was the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbitrators. He was one of the two most heavily augmented humans among the High Twelve. He was not particularly amused or even diverted by Lansung’s outrageous gossip, but he was forcing himself to at least feign a show of interest. Vangorich was aware that Zeck’s mind was a billion light years away, processing the layers of administrative and forensic data, the ceaseless work of keeping Terra’s gargantuan hives ordered and policed. The look of wry amusement on his leonine face was a simulation for Lansung’s benefit.

Similarly, Lansung wasn’t at all interested in speaking to Ekharth, other than to cultivate the loyalties between Navy and Administratum. He was telling a story at Ekharth so he could get Zeck’s attention, and be seen to be the close and genuine confidant of the Provost Marshal.

Maybe I should draw up a map, thought Vangorich. A map or chart, some kind of visual aid, a diagram of the basic interpersonal relations of the High Twelve. It could be colour-coded to reveal areas of contempt, deceit, insincerity, political expediency and outright rancour. Yes, I might do that and present it to the Senatorum one day under ‘any other business’, he thought.

At the other end of the table, Kubik, the Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus, was conducting a dialogue with Mesring, the Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum, and Helad Gibran, the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators. Kubik was, of course, the other extensively augmented person present, but his alterations had been elective and had begun at an early age, rather than being the result of repair and injury like Zeck’s. Vangorich watched Kubik’s actions and movements with great interest. He had only limited experience of killing servants of the Mechanicus, and it was a skill he felt he ought to develop given the vast political and materiel power of Mars. He thought, instinctively, they would be hard to kill. The Navigators, equally inhuman, at least seemed physically frail and vulnerable.

Vangorich had already prepared methodologies on some of the other ‘sub-species’ at the table. The haunted, spectral servants of the Astronomican, represented in the High Twelve by Volquan Sark, the Master of the Astronomican, were still human enough for conventional processes. The telepaths… Ah, the telepaths were a different order of things. Abdulias Anwar, the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, was typical of their malevolent and discomforting kind. To deal with telepaths, with the Imperium’s most powerful sanctioned telepaths… Well, that was why Vangorich had brokered such close ties with Wienand and her ilk.

Juskina Tull, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, was the eleventh of the High Twelve. A magnificent woman in an almost theatrically ostentatious gown, she occupied a role that many thought was the most trivial of all the seats. On the other hand, the Merchant Fleets represented nearly ninety per cent of the Imperium’s interstellar capability. In times of crisis, the Speaker wielded power greater than the Lord High Admiral.

A bell sounded. The delegates moved to their places, even the most exalted of them. Cherub servitors and vox-recorder drones buzzed around the Cerebrium as though it were an aviary.

Lord Guilliman entered the crowded, panelled chamber and took his seat. He bowed his head to his eleven senior fellows. He was the Lord Commander of the Imperium, the commander-in-chief of all Imperial military assets. His head was shaved, and the huge old scar traversing his scalp and neck was very visible. Though beyond any single discipline or arm of the Imperial war machine, he wore a braided uniform that was, in style at least, an echo of the grand admiral’s uniform he had worn during his illustrious pre-Senatorum career.

His name was Udin Macht Udo. He was not the first human to hold the chair of the Senatorum Imperialis, but like all his predecessors, human and transhuman alike, he used the formal, honorary title of his office, the name of the first Lord Commander: Guilliman of Macragge.

Udo glanced around the chamber. His eyes, the left one glazed and milky under the lip of the long scar, fixed upon Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum.

‘Bring us to order, sir,’ Lord Guilliman said.

Ekharth nodded, activated the cogitator-recorder that was crouching on the table in front of him, and began to type on the quivering spindle keys that unfurled from it like the wings of a giant moth.

‘High Lords, we are now in session,’ Ekharth began.

Five

Ardamantua

The loops and coils of the tunnels ahead resonated with the dull clack-clack-clack noise that told Slaughter what was waiting for them.

More fierce resistance. More of the new, more powerful warrior-forms. Many more.

The Imperial Fists had smashed and torn their way into the outer layers of the Chromes’ huge blisternest. Daylight Wall had made the first entry, an honour mark for their company, and then Hemispheric Wall had punched through about ten minutes later on the far side of the vast edifice’s sloping sides. Brothers of the shield-corps were now pouring into the alien nightmare of the Chromes’ nest through two dozen breaches.

The blisternest was an organic structure the size of a large Terran hive. Its walls, compartments, chambers and linking tunnels were curved and organic, and seemed to have been formed or grown from some greyish, semi-transparent material that had been extruded and then woven, hardening in the air. From the outside, it looked like a swollen blister. Inside, it was like venturing through the chambers of some alien heart. There was a general dampness and humidity, and sections of the structure throbbed and pulsed wetly, heaving with pus-like fluids that pumped and writhed through the building’s skin. The compartments and chambers inside were more like valves and organic voids, the spaces inside living structures. There was mould and fungal growth, and pockets of vapour. The echoing tubes throbbed with the tek-tek-tek sound, and the deeper agitation of the more powerful warrior-forms.

At regular intervals the interior sounds generated by the nation of Chromes were drowned out as airstrike support howled in overhead. Low-flying attack runs left blossoming trails of firestorm fury in their wake, engulfing the upper levels of the blisternest. Flights of Caestus rams, specialist vehicles designed for ship-boarding actions, had been unleashed too, driving their armoured prows into the skin of the vast nest to deliver assault squads of shield-corps brothers.

Slaughter waged his own war through the dank, miasmal chambers. The muzzle-flash of his bolter, jumping and sun-bright, lit up the green twilight of the nest. He kept his sword drawn. The big warrior-forms tended to get the bolter rounds. The regular Chromes met his blade’s edge. In places, the dipping, curved floor of the nest tunnels was ankle-deep in swilling Chrome ichor. The standing fluid reflected the crackling light of multiple fires, and crimped with ripple patterns every time an airstrike shook the ground.

A pack of Chromes rushed him down the flue of a tunnel. Slaughter stood his ground and set in with sword and boltgun. Severed or exploded aliens peeled away on either side of his resolute form, or were hurled backwards into their kin. Slaughter bellowed the battle cry of Daylight Wall, and urged his brothers up the ducts and grimy arterial conduits that the nest used as corridors.

His yellow armour was flecked with soot and slime. He smashed a charging Chrome away from him with the back of his fist. The thing broke as it hit the nest wall and left a spatter of juice as it slid down. One of the bigger, darker things attacked. With a grim smile, Slaughter realised he was thinking of these things as ‘veterans’. They were the old guard. He admired their skill and their power. They had fought wars for their benighted race out among the stars. He could see that in them. They had protected their own and perhaps conquered territory. He wondered which xenos species they had battled that he had also fought.

The first thing a good warrior always did was respect his enemy. He evaluated and assessed his foe, and woe betide him if he failed to appreciate what his opponent brought to the field. Slaughter had nothing but appropriate respect for the ‘veterans’. He’d seen them gut and dice enough of his shield-brothers that day already. The losses were going to be high. At least, he reflected, the damn lordlings and politicos would be pleased. The war against the Chrome advance was proving that serious threats still remained, and that military forces like the Imperial Fists were not expensive luxuries.

The second captain met the veteran’s approach with his blade, deflecting the scything claws of the upper limbs. The veteran was strong, and managed to smash the sword out of Slaughter’s grip.

He cursed and shot it through the brain case with his bolter. The entire front of his armour was sprayed an instant grey. Another lumbered towards him and he shot that too, blowing out its midsection and snapping its spinal membranes. Frenzy finished the next with his axe.

‘Getting tired, captain?’ Heartshot asked Slaughter.

Slaughter told him what he could do with his rotor cannon, and then retrieved his sword.

‘Anterior Six and Ballad Gateway are now in the nest with us,’ reported Frenzy, his voice a vox-buzz.

‘That’s good enough,’ said Slaughter. ‘Four walls should bring this place down.’

‘There are assault squads from Zarathustra in the upper levels too,’ said Coldeye.

‘We can close the book,’ said Slaughter. ‘By the next time the wretched local star rises, we—’

His words were drowned out. A sudden and deep noise boiled out of the guts of somewhere, out of space itself. It was brief, but it was immense. It shook the nest. It overloaded the frequencies of their vox-systems for a moment. It hurt their ears.

Slaughter’s visor display took a moment to reboot.

‘What in Throne’s name was that?’ he asked.

‘Contacting the fleet,’ reported Frenzy. ‘Checking.’

‘Some kind of transmission,’ said Chokehold. ‘Ultra-high frequency. Gross intensity. Duration six point six seconds. A new weapon, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Slaughter grudgingly.

They resumed their advance. After a few minutes, fleet tactical reported back that they hadn’t been able to identify the sound either. It had been picked up by Imperial forces all across the planet, and in orbit too.

‘A new weapon,’ muttered Chokehold. ‘I told you…’

There was another burst about half an hour later, duration seven point nine seconds. By then, Slaughter’s force was locked in a furious hand-to-hand war with dozens of veterans. The noise took them all by surprise.

When it ended, the Chrome veterans were slightly stunned, and then recommitted to the fight with renewed fury. As though they were afraid, and starting to panic.

Six

Ardamantua

The magos biologis’ name was Phaeton Laurentis. When the first noise burst occurred he was preparing to enter the blisternest behind the shield-corps advance. The blast of sound terminally damaged two of his six sensitive, audio-specialised servitors. Like Slaughter, he immediately contacted fleet tactical, and also sent direct vox-burst communiques to the staff of his own vessel, the survey barge Priam, which was in the vanguard of the Imperial Fists fleet.

‘Tell them I need at least a dozen more audio-drones shipped to the surface,’ he told his communication servitor. The servitor, a grinning bronze skull mounted on a cloak-swathed wire anatomy, chattered its teeth mechanically as its brainstem fired processed vox data-packets into the aether. Laurentis reeled off a list of other complex devices he would need: techno-linguistic engines, parsing cogitators, vocalisation monitors, trans-aetheric responder coils.

‘Permission denied for surface drop of requested material,’ the communication servitor replied after a minute. Its voice, which emanated from a mesh speaker cone fused into its verdigrised collarbone, was oddly that of a young woman. As the voice spoke, the bronzed skull clacked its teeth aimlessly and uselessly.

‘On what authority?’ asked Laurentis, offended.

‘Undertaking Command,’ the servitor replied.

‘Open me a direct link with the Chapter Master,’ said Laurentis.

‘Pending.’

‘Of course, he will be busy. Inform me when the link is open,’ Laurentis said, and strode off to mount one of the motorised carts that would convey, on their heavy, clattering treads, the magos’ survey staff into the alien habitat.

Smoke from the nest clambered into the sky as if trying to flee the warzone. The heavens above were black with filth, and embers rained down. Around the edges of the nest, which were cracked and splintered like the shell of an egg, the soil and vegetation were awash with draining bio-fluids from ruptured nest organics and the ichor of slain Chromes. There was a pervasive stink of rotten fruit.

Such a sight, such a vivid display of an alien ecology, even one so damaged and desecrated, should have filled Magos Biologis Laurentis with total fascination. His life had been dedicated to the study of xenoforms, and it was very rare, even for a man as distinguished and respected as he was, to see such a spectacle first hand. Usually, the only traces of hostile xenoforms and their habitats that magi biologis got to inspect were burned scraps and fused tissue residues brought back by undertaking fleets.

However, his enthusiasm for his research, and the alien specimens spread out before him awaiting his probes and scalpels, was muted. The sound had bothered him, and he knew exactly why.

A total of four noise bursts, each of progressively longer duration, occurred in the following ninety minutes. After the fourth, Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen walked slowly and thoughtfully across the gleaming bridge space of the battle-barge Lanxium, took his seat on the great steel throne, and gestured to the vox-servitor that had been waiting patiently for almost two hours.

The command crew and the bridge officers watched the Chapter Master anxiously. He was a great man, arguably the greatest warrior alive in the Imperium. His deeds and achievements were recognised on an honour roll that was the envy of all other Chapter Masters. He was commander of the Imperial Fists, and the living embodiment of Dorn himself.

But he had a temper, oh yes indeed…

Since the latest phase of the attack had begun in the early part of the day, Mirhen had been on his feet in the ship’s strategium, watching every last scrap of data as it came through from air and ground forces, and taking personal control of every tactical nuance. Defence was the Imperial Fists’ greatest skill, and even in attack, the Chapter’s strategy was reflective and complex. Nothing was left to chance. Nothing was over-extended or risked. Leave the headlong insanity of assault to the likes of the Fenrisian Wolves or the White Scars. The Imperial Fists were the Imperium’s finest military technicians, and even the most fluid plans of assault were made with the same precision reserved for indefatigable defence. It was often repeated that the Lion had once scoffed at Dorn’s precision thinking, remarking that ‘no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ to which Dorn had retorted, ‘Then you’re not making the right plans.’

Indeed, Imperial Fists methodology, the methodology that had saved Terra in its darkest hour, the methodology espoused by Rogal Dorn and inherited by Mirhen, seldom used the word ‘plan’. Mirhen prided himself on ‘schemes of attack’, whereby layers of careful, preconsidered variables could be stripped back as necessary. Every step of combat — that most chaotic and mercurial of all circumstances in the galaxy — gave way to multiple possibilities. Some warriors, especially the noble Ultramarines, reacted intuitively to such possibilities as they occurred.

An Imperial Fist identified and prepared for all of them, and simply diverted to the part of the scheme that was most appropriate.

Most believed that Mirhen’s presence in the strategium, and his hands-on approach to the Ardamantua Undertaking, was typical of this obsessive precision thinking. In truth, Mirhen liked the challenge. War did not come often enough for him. It was a test, a game, an exercise, a trial. He wanted to be involved, entirely involved; he wanted to push himself.

War was fading away in the Imperium of Mankind. The purposes for which the likes of the Adeptus Astartes had been engineered were dying out. They had done their job. Peace prevailed across a billion worlds. Only distant skirmishes and half-hearted wars boiled along the hem of the frontier, most of them the endless campaigns of suppression against the ubiquitous greenskins. The orks never went away. They menaced and harried the edges of the Imperium like packs of feral dogs, and every now and then broke in through the metaphorical fence and got at the metaphorical livestock. Once or twice every few centuries, a new and potent bestial warboss arose, their numbers multiplied in response, and another of their mass onslaughts was unleashed. Mirhen knew from intelligence briefings that the greenskins were currently enjoying one of these periodic revivals, and that for the last few decades some of the frontier wars had been especially hot. But even so, they were exactly that — frontier wars. They were very far away, far too far to act as effective demonstrations of Imperial might to the population of the Terran Core. And the orks had not been a serious, palpable threat since they had been stopped at Ullanor by the beloved Emperor Himself.

Ardamantua was different. It wasn’t the frontier, it was close. It was a genuine xenos threat without being a critical one. It was also an opportunity to live-test the capabilities of his Chapter and his own mind, and to demonstrate the enduring worth of the Adeptus Astartes. Opportunities on the scale of Ardamantua were all too rare.

Mirhen’s temper was famous. It manifested, more often than not, when those around him failed to keep pace with his tactical thought process. He’d even been known to rage at cogitators and data-engines. His anger showed when the rest of the universe failed to stay in step with his brilliance.

First Captain Algerin had privately remarked that Mirhen had become Chapter Master because of his anger. Yes, his tactical genius was astonishing, but it was equalled by three dozen of the senior ranking Fists. What Mirhen had was a tactical genius tempered by passion and the unpredictability of gut feeling. Some said there was more of Sigismund in him than Dorn.

When Mirhen retired to his throne during the pitch of the assault, all of the bridge crew expected his anger to emerge. The noise bursts had confounded them and there was a tense feeling that they represented something that had not been factored into a precondition.

‘Connect me,’ the Chapter Master told the vox-servitor.

The servitor extended its vox-speakers and opened its mouth. A beam of light projected out of it and formed a hololithic image on the deck at the Chapter Master’s feet.

A jumping, inconstant pict image of the magos biologis appeared, cut and broken by atmospherics and data-feed. Laurentis was in profile and appeared to be riding on some kind of open vehicle, and the light conditions were poor.

‘Magos,’ said Mirhen.

‘Sir,’ the magos crackled back over the speakers. He turned to look at his pict unit, his face turning full on in the image.

‘You sent a signal?’

‘Over two hours ago, sir. I need to transport equipment to the surface from my vessel, and permission has been denied.’

‘There is an assault underway, magos. I was not in a position to grant orbit to surface passage for any non-military transport.’

‘Are you now in a position to authorise my request?’ asked the magos. ‘If I can explain, I need the items so I can—’

‘You don’t need to explain, magos,’ said Mirhen.

‘I don’t?’

‘It concerns these bursts of noise, doesn’t it?’ asked the Chapter Master. ‘Your comm-request came through very shortly after the first one. You have not got in my way before, magos. It was slow-witted of me not to realise that you would only request a surface drop in the middle of an action like this if it was both urgent and pertinent.’

‘I appreciate the compliment, sir. You are quite correct.’

‘Tell me what you know,’ said Mirhen.

‘I believe the sound is organic in origin.’

‘Organic?’ asked the Chapter Master. ‘On this scale? Magos, it was a global detection—’

‘Organic, though it may have been synthesised and boosted,’ Laurentis replied. ‘I cannot explain why I feel this to be the case. I hope you will trust my experience and judgement. Both of those things tell me it is organic.’

‘A bio-weapon? Something the Chromes have that we haven’t predicted?’

The holo-image of Laurentis shook its head.

‘I think it is communication, sir,’ he said. ‘We just have to work out what it is saying. Hence my request for additional equipment.’

‘Your transport is already underway at my order,’ said Mirhen.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Are you suggesting the Chromes are trying to communicate with us? Since mankind first encountered them, they have not shown any propensity for sentient communication.’

‘This attack may have pushed them to a level where they feel communication is necessary, sir,’ replied Laurentis. ‘Perhaps they have broken their long silence because they are desperate to sue for peace or surrender. I cannot answer that yet, but I believe it’s clear that something is trying to communicate.’

‘Stay on this link, magos,’ Mirhen said. ‘I want to hear more about this, and I want to be apprised as soon as—’

He broke off as the pict image of Laurentis became choppy. The magos appeared to be agitated. There were flashes of light, and a great deal of background noise and interference. The image started to jump and wink out.

Then it shut off altogether.

‘Reconnect!’ Mirhen roared. ‘Reconnect that link!’

‘Transmission disrupted at source, sir,’ the servitor reported.

‘I think the magos’ party has come under attack,’ said Third Captain Akilios, awaiting his master’s orders.

‘I can damn well see that,’ said Mirhen. ‘Route the nearest available ground forces to him immediately. Pull his fat out of the fire. I need him alive.’

Seven

Ardamantua

Claws. They were definitely claws. They weren’t ‘digital blades affixed to or articulated from forelimbs’, which was a phrase Laurentis was pretty sure he’d used several times in the genotype description he’d composed for the Chromes.

They were claws.

It was perfectly straightforward to see them as such when they were swinging at you.

The Chrome was massive. It was one of the darker-hued forms, one of the new ones that Laurentis had overheard a great deal of vox-traffic about once the Adeptus Astartes had entered the blisternest.

He’d been dying to see one.

How ironic.

It must have weighed about five hundred kilos. Its hard-shelled back was ridged, with a pronounced, sclerotic-looking hump. The shoulder portions and upper joints were bound with layers of muscle and sinew, like a great simian. The face… The face was not a face. It was a knot of ocular organs on the snout of the armoured head-crest, surmounting a powerful set of chattering mouthparts. The sound it made — clack-clack-clack — was like some funereal march, like a death-drum, like rot-beetles clicking away in wood.

The Chrome warrior-form had come out of a side aperture in the nest tunnel and attacked the leading carts in the magos biologis’ convoy. One cart was already mangled, and the curving tunnel walls were spattered with blood and lubricant fluid from three servitors that had been dismembered in the first strike.

‘Warrior-form’ was the word the Imperial Fists were using. It was a perfectly apt term, simple and technically appropriate. The creature was combat adapted. It was built for fighting. It was not, like the regular Chromes, a worker or drone obliged to defend the nest.

Gun servitors in Laurentis’ retinue had already opened fire, but their lasweapons were not sufficiently powerful to wound the armoured hulk. It came forwards, wrenching a second cart into the air, spilling its occupants, tipping it.

The confines of the tunnel were so tight. There was nowhere to run, to move to, no air to breathe. The light was poor and gunfire was causing intense visual disturbance. Everyone was shouting. Las-shots howled. Laurentis could hear the voice of the comm-servitor as it tried to reconnect his link with the Chapter Master.

He was caught up in it. It was exactly where he didn’t want to be, exactly where he’d spent his career trying not to be. He was caught in the untameable insanity of combat.

‘Save yourself, magos,’ the pilot servitor beside him said in a flat and oddly sad tone. Hardwired and bone-bonded into the cart’s driving position, the servitor itself could hardly escape. Even so, Laurentis wanted to snarl in outrage. Save himself? How? Where could he run to? Up the tunnel, away from the survey convoy? Into the nest, alone?

There was a sharp bang. The warrior-form had ploughed into one of the gun servitors, its claws ripping open the plated bio-organic torso like chisels. Power cables shredded and the servitor’s power plant exploded, showering sparks and sizzling fragments and releasing a stink of ozone.

Brain-dead, transfixed by the claws, the gun servitor went into a death-shock spasm, its autonomic systems reacting mindlessly, ungoverned by any programmed control protocols.

The double lasguns mounted onto each of its twitching wrists began to fire, the blue barrels pumping to and fro in their pneumatic sleeves as they spat out bolt after bolt of lethal, shaped light.

The first flurry ripped through three servitors and a biologis assistant standing on the stern of the nearest cart, killing them and making them tumble like skittles. Another wild burst blew out the port-side motivators of the same cart, and then killed two servitors on the ground beside it.

Laurentis flinched as another stray shot whined past, blowing out the head of his cart’s pilot servitor. The servitor didn’t even slump. The braced and bonded figure remained rigid in its driving socket, smoke streaming from the burned-out bowl of its skull.

Laurentis leapt over the side of the cart, and started to run up the narrow space between the cart and the tunnel wall. He could hear his comm-servitor, wired to its dedicated function, single-mindedly trying to reconnect his link with the Chapter Master in orbit.

Laurentis found his robes tangled in his feet. He was aware of a hot prickling in his lungs and chest, in his throat. Terror. Panic. He was going to die. He was going to die. Fleeing was the only possible option, but it was pointless. He was going to die.

Behind him, the warrior-form shook the dead gun servitor off its claws and sent the servitor’s corpse crashing away, bouncing off the tunnel roof and then the fairing of another cart.

Laurentis ran. He realised he wasn’t very good at it. The tunnel floor underneath his feet was spongy and thick with slime or mucus, and his boots weren’t in any way the right sort of footgear for these conditions. He banged his elbow on the vector cowling of the cart, and it really hurt. He could feel sweat streaming down his spine. He was hyperventilating. He was about to throw up.

A body flew over his head, hit the tunnel wall with a twig-snap of fracturing bones, went limp and fell at his feet. It was Overseer Finks, the convoy manager. Laurentis recoiled and felt the hot acid of reflux in his throat. He wanted to stop and help his colleague, though the overseer was clearly past helping. He didn’t need a Laudex Honorium in Advanced Biologis to know that any human missing quite that much torso probably wasn’t alive any more.

It felt squalid, however, squalid and shameful to just step over the man’s body. It felt improper to pass by and keep running. But the alternatives, stopping or turning back, seemed even more unfortunate.

Laurentis realised, with a scientist’s detached precision, that he had frozen. Fright had conquered flight. He was shutting down.

The cart he had dismounted from, the cart he had been in the process of running past, suddenly overturned and slammed into the side of the tunnel. It deformed and buckled, metal plating and machine components shredding and scattering. It had been half-sheltering him, but now he was alone, a man standing beside a corpse with a curved, slimy wall behind him.

The cart compressed further as the advancing warrior-form pounded it and mashed its structure into the wall. The heavy throb of clack-clack-clack welled out of the dark beast’s oesophagus. Blood and oil drooled off its claws.

‘Golden Throne preserve me,’ Laurentis muttered, his voice as quiet as a sub-vox echo.

Eight

Ardamantua — orbital

Captain Sauber, known as Severance, commander of Lotus Gate Company, cocked his head to one side.

‘This isn’t the noise bursts?’ he asked.

‘No, sir,’ replied the adept. ‘Though they are recurring.’

‘We have compiled a list of timings and durations, sir,’ added another adept. ‘Would you like to review it?’

‘No,’ said Severance. He kept staring at the cogitator screen, processing the data. ‘You’re saying this isn’t the noise bursts?’

‘No, sir, a separate phenomenon,’ replied the first adept.

‘Gravitational?’ asked Severance.

‘Yes,’ said the adept.

‘It reminds me of the mass-gravity curve of a Mandeville point,’ said Severance.

At his side, Shipmistress Aquilinia clucked her tongue, impressed.

‘What?’ asked Severance, turning to look at her.

‘You recognised a Mandeville curve from a schematic profile,’ said the shipmistress, looking up at him. ‘I thought you were just a soldier. That’s impressive.’

‘The mass-gravity curve is similar to a Mandeville point,’ said the adept, ‘though of far, far less magnitude—’

‘Which makes it all the more impressive that the captain recognised it,’ Aquilinia snapped at him.

‘Yes, mistress.’

‘Can we get to the point?’ asked Severance. ‘Are we detecting gravitational instabilities in the Ardamantua orbital zone?’

‘Slight ones, yes, sir,’ said the adept.

‘The whole zone was surveyed as we approached,’ said Severance.

‘These are new,’ said the adept.

‘Like the noise bursts?’ asked Severance.

The adept nodded. ‘We noticed the first approximately two minutes after the initial noise burst occurrence. And only then because of a slight drift in our orbital anchor point. Analysis showed that a tiny gravitic anomaly had occurred eighty-eight point seven two units off the portside drive assembly, causing the anchor-slide. We corrected. Then we scanned, and saw that sixteen other anomalies of similar profile had occurred during the period.’

Severance turned and crossed the long, narrow bridge of the strike cruiser Amkulon. It was like the nave of an ancient cathedral, with various function-specific crew departments working in lit galleries stacked on either side above him. Aquilinia hurried after the massive armoured warrior.

‘Open a channel to the flagship!’ she cried. ‘The captain wants voice to voice with the Chapter Master!’

‘You read my mind,’ said Severance.

‘I grasp the significance,’ she replied. ‘If there’s genuine, previously undetected gravitational instability in the orbital zone, we will have to back the fleet out. That would seriously compromise the ground assault.’

Severance nodded. He felt cheated. His wall wasn’t even deployed yet. His men were prepped and ready in the drop holds of the Amkulon.

‘Did you see them?’ he growled at Aquilinia. ‘The gravity blips, popping up like blisters, and then closing again. Have you seen that before?’

She shook her head.

‘I’ve seen gravity fraying close to major mass giants,’ she said. ‘And you get that kind of peppering, blistering effect on the fringes during translation in and out of the empyrean.’

‘Hence the similarity to a Mandeville profile?’

‘Exactly. Throne’s sake, captain, I’ve seen plenty of non-Euclidian gravity effects on the rip-curve of the translation interface. Daemon space does not behave itself, as my mentors used to say.’

‘But you think this is natural?’

She shrugged. A brass-framed optic slid down from her crested headdress, spearing data-light into her left eye so she could review the adept’s findings again.

‘I believe so. Yes, yes. It has to be. There’s no patterning. We have to accept we’ve entered a gravitationally unstable zone.’

‘I’ll inform the Chapter Master,’ said Severance.

He took the proffered speaker horn in his huge left hand and waited a moment for the vox-servitor to cue him that connection was established.

‘Speak,’ said Mirhen’s voice over the link.

‘Severance, Lotus Gate, Amkulon,’ said Severance. ‘We’re plotting increasing gravitational instability in the upper and outer orbital zone, sir. Routing all data to your bridge.’

He looked at Aquilinia, who nodded and began issuing orders to her data-adepts.

‘You should be receiving data now, sir,’ Severance began.

The deck shuddered. There was a dull, heavy sound of something vast and leaden colliding with something of equal mass. Hot, acrid smoke gusted across the bridge.

Alarms started to sound.

‘What was that?’ Severance asked.

The shipmistress was already yelling commands and requesting clarification. Bridge personnel dashed to their stations.

‘Amkulon? Severance, report.’ Mirhen’s voice scratched out of the vox-speakers.

‘Stand by,’ Severance replied. He looked at the shipmistress.

‘A gravity pocket spontaneously opened in our starboard reactor core,’ she said. ‘We’re ruptured and venting. I don’t know if we can contain the damage and maintain our position.’

‘There must be—’ Severance began.

‘Captain, please get your company and all auxiliaries off this ship now,’ said Aquilinia, ‘before we suffer catastrophic anchor-point failure and nosedive into that planet.’

Nine

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Senatorum session had lasted for almost seven hours. Tedium had been etched on some faces by the time it drew to a close, and few had been able to disguise their dissatisfaction when Ekharth had announced that they would resume after a three-hour interval as there were still eighty-seven items remaining on the agenda.

Vangorich withdrew to his private suite to rest his mind. The problem as he saw it, and he believed he saw it very clearly, was that the instrument of governance was not as sharp as it had once been. The Old Twelve had met regularly, and had dealt specifically with high-order matters. Everything else had been delegated to the lower tiers of government and the Administratum. Any review of the parliamentary records showed how economically and concisely the Senatorum had dealt with state affairs in previous, greater ages. Greater ages, populated by greater men.

Now the Senatorum was bloated and fat, over-stuffed with hangers-on and minor officials, and it met on a whim, whenever Udo or any of the other core members felt that it should. Business piled up, most of it far too trivial to bother the dignity of a proper Senatorum. And as for the actual process! These people weren’t politicians. Procedure trudged along. No one knew how to debate properly. The most mindless committee vote took forever. At every touch and turn, the in-fighting and rivalries between the High Twelve spewed out and gnawed like acid into the gears of government, slowing everything down.

The decision taken on isotope shipments, for example. Utterly ridiculous. They had actually voted through a policy that would actively harm the Imperium by retarding the efficiency of shipbuilding in the Uranic shipyards. Did anyone dare see it that way? Of course not! Mesring had wanted the vote swayed to protect his family’s huge commercial interests in the Tang Sector, and he had called in favours from those in his power bloc. House Mesring had benefited. The Imperium had not.

Vangorich’s suite was quiet. His signet ring deactivated the pain door and rested the alarm systems. He went inside. The outer room was panelled in dark oak, and lined with couches dressed in gleaming black leather upholstery. On a lit display stand ancient fragments of pottery, pre-dating the Golden Age of Technology, hung in suspension fields.

Vangorich put down his data-slate and a sheaf of documents, and walked to the sideboard to pour an amasec. The drinks, a modest collection of fine marks, were kept in special, tamper-proof bottles. He sniffed the empty glass for residue before he poured. Old habits.

Before he took his first sip, he used his thumb ring to deactivate a secret drawer in the top of the sideboard cabinet, slid it open, and took out the elegant, long-barrelled plasma pistol cushioned inside.

Without looking around, he said, ‘The left-hand armoire, beside the De Mauving landscape.’

Then he turned and aimed the weapon at the item of furniture he had just described.

A small but powerfully built man in a black bodyglove stepped out from behind the armoire and nodded sheepishly to Vangorich.

‘Nice try,’ said Vangorich, and lowered the weapon.

‘Every time, sir,’ said the man. ‘What was it on this occasion?’

‘Body-heat sensors,’ said Vangorich, taking a sip of his drink.

‘I deactivated them.’

Vangorich nodded.

‘And, therefore,’ he said, ‘I got no body-heat notifications from the security overwatch when I entered the suite, not even my own.’

‘Ah,’ said the man, slightly ashamed.

‘Also, you managed to throw a slight side-shadow under the foot of the armoire. You didn’t take into account the glow-globes to your left.’

The man nodded, chastened.

‘Where is she?’ asked Vangorich.

‘The atrium, sir,’ said the man.

Vangorich poured a second amasec and carried both drinks through to the small inner courtyard. Wienand was sitting on the bench beside the thermal pool, watching the luminous fish dart in the steaming shallows.

‘All done humiliating my bodyguard?’ she asked, not getting up.

‘A visit from you wouldn’t be the same without an opportunity to humiliate your man,’ he replied, handing her one of the glasses.

‘Kalthro is very good,’ she said, ‘the best we have. You’re the only person who ever catches him out.’

‘I consider it to be part of his education, a gift from the Officio Assassinorum to the Inquisition.’

He sat down next to her and crossed one knee over the other, rocking his glass.

‘Your visits are less frequent these days, Wienand,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think you didn’t like me. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘Agenda item 346,’ she said.

‘346?’ He paused and thought for a second, running through the day’s fearsome data-load in his eidetic memory. ‘The Imperial Fists’ undertaking to Ardamantua?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘It was the quickest item of the day. It was raised and covered in about two minutes. Pending, awaiting reports from the Chapter Master.’

Wienand nodded. Her cheekbones were as sharp as glacial cliffs. Her hair was silver in the light.

‘What of it, Wienand?’

She pursed her lips.

‘A threat is developing,’ she said.

‘A threat?’

‘In the opinion of the Inquisition, yes.’

‘A xenos threat?’

She nodded.

‘They’re called… Chromes, aren’t they?’ asked Vangorich. ‘I did see the briefing paper.’

‘The Imperial Fists have undertaken the mission to Ardamantua to suppress a xenoform outbreak. The xenoforms are known as Chromes.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘What am I missing?’ he asked.

‘You tell me.’

Vangorich shrugged. ‘I don’t know. As I understand it, these Chromes are like vermin. Nothing out of the ordinary. They have to be dealt with. I gather their numbers are greater than usual. The Fists have mobilised in prodigious numbers, almost full force. I understood that was a political gesture, to show them being useful in peacetime.’

He hesitated.

‘Wienand, if it’s a threat that seriously jeopardises an almost full-strength Chapter, you’re starting to worry me.’

She cleared her throat.

‘No, the politics should worry you,’ she said.

‘Go on.’

‘Mirhen’s taken pretty much his entire Chapter to Ardamantua to deal with the xenos threat. He’s the only one taking it seriously.’

‘And why is he taking it seriously? Who alerted him to it?’

‘We did,’ she said.

‘Of course you did.’

‘The Fists are more than capable of dealing with the Chrome problem,’ Wienand said. ‘The point is, they shouldn’t have to. The Imperium should be meeting the challenge. Ardamantua should have been a joint undertaking between the Astra Militarum and the Navy, with a backbone of Fists as its cutting edge. Deploying the whole Chapter was ungainly and clumsy.’

‘Heth should—’

‘Heth can’t commit Guard forces without the cooperation of the Navy, and Lansung is more interested in the glory wars against the pathetic greenskins on the frontier. That’s where he’s sending his fleets. He’s fighting border wars and claiming territory practically in his own name. And with Udo backing him, he’s pretty much got a free hand to do that.’

‘Like too many seats on the council, Lansung places his own interests above those of the Imperium,’ said Vangorich.

She nodded again.

‘Ardamantua is just six warp-weeks from Solar Approach. It’s not a frontier war. It’s on our doorstep.’

‘And?’

‘We’ve been intercepting comm-traffic between the undertaking fleet and the Chapter House. In the last ten hours, relative, problems have begun to arise. We anticipate that Mirhen will be forced to request support and reinforcement inside a week.’

‘Against a xenos threat? Against… vermin?’

She held up a hand.

‘He will need it. And Lansung won’t give it. We must make sure we apply pressure today.’

‘Pressure?’

Wienand’s soft smile tightened.

‘Mirhen may have underestimated the nature of the xenos threat.’

‘Since when did the Imperial Fists underestimate anything?’ asked Vangorich.

‘Since, I think, they were forced to act without the combined support of the Senatorum,’ she replied. ‘I believe — that is to say that the strategic planners at the Inquisition, and my immediate superiors, believe — that the Imperial Fists will require direct fleet support within the next three months in order to complete the undertaking.’

‘Or?’

‘Or the xenos threat could actually threaten the Terran Core.’

Vangorich thought about that.

‘There hasn’t been a threat inside the Core for… centuries,’ he said lightly, much more lightly than he was feeling. ‘Xenos or otherwise. It’s unthinkable.’

‘Politics could make it happen. Power play.’

He considered her carefully.

‘These… Chrome things? Really? That dangerous?’

‘We believe there is a palpable and credible xenos threat. We brought it to the attention of Udo, Lansung, Kubik and Mirhen as a Critical Situation Packet. Only Mirhen agreed on its credibility.’

‘What aren’t you telling me, Wienand?’

‘Nothing, Drakan. Nothing at all.’

She fixed him with eyes as chilly as starlight.

‘It’s the principle of this matter. Personal ambition is allowing the Senatorum to become weak and inefficient. This is a matter we have discussed before. Now it threatens to become more than a theoretical annoyance. I will not stand by and see a core world burned or overrun just to demonstrate the fatal inadequacies of the Senatorum.’

‘What are you proposing?’ he asked.

‘We bring the issue into special business. Lansung, Mesring and Udo are too strong, and too many look to them, even if we swing Heth with us. Zeck too, perhaps, because the reputation of the Adeptus Astartes is at stake and he holds them in especial regard. The point is, we don’t try to change the world overnight. All we want is the Senatorum to recognise the problem, and get Heth to propose a fifty-regiment reinforcement expedition to back up the undertaking. We basically shame Lansung into approving fleet support. The Lord High Admiral does not want to go down on the parliamentary record as the man who refused support and left the core worlds wide open.’

‘Can he commit what we need? If we embarrass the man, we could corner him.’

‘I’ve reviewed it,’ she replied, ‘carefully. There are three Segmentum quarter-fleets he could mobilise easily enough, or two vanguard attack squadrons standing off Mars. He has the resources. Thank Throne, he hasn’t sent them all to the frontier.’

Vangorich sat back and watched the fish dart about.

‘Let’s not make it a hard vote,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘Let’s not push him or humiliate him into compliance. Let’s make the case and give Lansung the opportunity to look magnanimous.’

‘You let him be the hero of the hour?’

‘Does that matter if the Terran Core is protected? Let’s give him the opportunity to look good in the eyes of the Senatorum and the populace. Let him take it as a win. Wienand, you get much more out of people if you let them feel good about doing what you want them to do.’

She laughed.

‘And if he does not?’

‘Then we apply pressure. Then we threaten him with shame. You have my vote. I have a little sway with Zeck, and I believe I can call in a favour owed by Gibran if necessary.’

‘Good,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he replied, smiling. ‘I like our little talks.’

She rose to her feet and handed him her empty glass.

‘This xenos threat, Wienand,’ he asked. ‘Really, what aren’t you telling me?’

‘I’m telling you everything,’ she said.

‘I see.’ He shrugged. ‘When will you allow me to know your forename, Wienand?’

‘My dear Drakan, what makes you think you even know my surname? Killing is your business, sir. Secrets are ours.’

Ten

Ardamantua

The warrior-form came at Laurentis, jaws open, ropes of saliva stretched out between the points of laterally extended biting parts.

A force knocked it aside. The creature was smashed to the magos biologis’ right, splashing into the muddy slime that drooled along the tunnel floor. The impact that felled it was like the concussion of a demolition tool-bit working rockcrete.

The huge beast couldn’t get up. Something had it pinned. A humanoid form in yellow: an Imperial Fist.

A captain. Laurentis could see the rank marks, despite the wash of gore and mud plastering the Space Marine’s armour.

Slaughter. It was Slaughter.

Slaughter had brought the Chrome down, floored it and pinned it by the throat with his left fist. The Space Marine’s right fist was a piston, ramming a huge combat knife into the Chrome’s distended belly over and over again. Something burst. Brown liquid sprayed out across the tunnel. Laurentis recoiled from the vented reek of formic acid and rancid milk.

The warrior-form went slack. Slaughter got off it, but his combat knife was wedged between the integuments of its armour. A second large xenos thundered down the tunnel on the heels of the first, trailing the semi-articulated pieces of a driving servitor from one of its limbs.

Slaughter abandoned his combat knife. Leaving it embedded in the torso of his first kill, he threw himself over the corpse and into the face of the second warrior-form. He drew his broadsword as he leapt, sweeping the powered blade out of its over-shoulder scabbard and forwards, so that its cutting edge led the way.

Space Marine and Chrome warrior-form met. The clash made an air-slap that hurt Laurentis’ ears. The Chrome smacked Slaughter hard, twice, its claws drawing sparks off his armour. The Space Marine rocked, reeled back from the blows, and then renewed his efforts, hefting the blade into the Chrome’s shoulder with both hands.

It was the Chrome’s turn to reel. It staggered sideways. Taking a better grip on his gore-slick sword, Slaughter delivered a second blow that did significantly more damage. Split open, the Chrome tilted and fell backwards.

Laurentis hadn’t even seen the third enemy. Slaughter had. The warrior-form was very dark, the colour of a bruise. It came down the tunnel from the other direction, moving with extraordinary speed, claw-limbs hinged out to rain lethal downstrokes on the Imperial Fist.

Slaughter switched around to meet it, hacked with his sword, and took off one forelimb. The creature milled at him, claws glinting in the noxious light. Slaughter ducked aside, letting the blow go long over his shoulder guard, stooping his back into a turn that took him under the Chrome’s guard and into its chest. He stabbed his sword in, tip-first, cracking the organic armour, and then shoulder-barged the clacking alien backwards, freeing his blade so he could thrust it again. The second time it went clean through the creature.

He ripped the sword out, and the warrior-form went down.

‘Magos?’ Slaughter called out, checking up and down the tunnel, sword ready.

‘Yes, captain?’

‘Are you alive there?’

‘I am, captain.’

‘Get ready to move with me when I tell you. The Chapter Master has sent Daylight Wall to get you out of this.’

‘It is very much appreciated,’ said Laurentis. ‘I thought I was d—’

‘Shhhh!’ Slaughter warned him.

From the distance, Laurentis could hear the sound of bolt-weapons firing.

‘There’s a lot of opposition in this zone,’ Slaughter said. ‘A lot.’

Laurentis began to wonder where the rest of Daylight Wall Company had got to.

‘Let’s move,’ said Slaughter, and beckoned the magos biologis after him. The captain had made some kind of assessment presumably based on the data his armour was feeding him and incoming vox-signals, neither of which Laurentis was privy to.

They began to work their way back down the nest tunnel, picking their way through the ruins of the magos biologis’s convoy. The carriages were all shredded and crushed. His servitors and juniors were dead or fled. Blood-smoke wafted in the gloom of the tunnel. Now our matter is vaporised, Laurentis thought unhappily.

‘They have shown unexpected resolve within the perimeters of their nest,’ he said.

Slaughter grunted in reply.

‘We don’t much like the unexpected,’ the captain said.

‘Because?’

‘Because nothing should be unexpected.’

‘I see.’

‘I didn’t expect to run out of bolt-rounds today, for example,’ Slaughter said. Laurentis saw that the Space Marine captain’s massive firearm was clamped to his belt. He’d exhausted its munition supply. The fight must have been extraordinarily intense.

Slaughter glanced down at Laurentis.

‘There are supposed to be munition trains moving into the nest, at least one near here,’ he added.

‘Ah, so that’s what I owe my salvation to,’ Laurentis replied, trying to sound brave. ‘You were looking for the ammunition.’

‘I had an order,’ snapped Slaughter, ‘from the Chapter Master.’

‘Of course. I apologise.’

‘The fact that you were near a munition train was simply a bonus.’

Laurentis managed a laugh. Then he realised something that chilled him. Just as Laurentis had done, the Space Marine captain was trying to make light of the situation.

They really were in the most terrible trouble.

Eleven

Ardamantua — orbital

Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen watched the stricken Amkulon begin to fall out of fleet formation. There was something significantly wrong with the strike cruiser’s engines. It was venting radioactive clouds and all contact had been lost in a blizzard of vox-interference.

‘Did Lotus Gate get clear?’ he asked.

Akilios shook his head.

‘We don’t know yet, sir.’

‘Find out as soon as you can. I don’t see any drop-pods or escape boats.’

The truth was, it was hard to see much of anything. The incoming feed to the main viewers and the repeater and image-booster screens was fogged by the radiation backwash and some kind of gravimetric distortion. That was what Severance had been trying to warn them about. Mirhen had most of the Lanxium’s tech-staff working on the issue, analysing the data sent over from the Amkulon. Initial reports were bad. Pockets of gravity distortion were being detected in a range of orbital locations. No one could explain it, and no one could adequately explain why there had been no sign of the phenomenon before the fleet moved into its assault anchor.

Now there was the Amkulon itself. A whole ship, a good ship, and a whole wall of shield-corps brothers, potentially lost.

Mirhen watched the flickering, jumping screen image. The majestic strike cruiser was making a slow, pitching descent into Ardamantua’s gravity field, unable to support its mass. How long? An hour? Two? Four? The crippled drives would probably blow out because of the stress before that.

‘Can we get relief boats out to them?’ he asked.

‘We’re trying now, sir,’ replied Akilios.

‘We must be able to fetch some of them off it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mirhen turned to the ranks of the technicians and science adepts.

‘I want this explained,’ he said. ‘I want this accounted for and explained.’

The adepts nodded, but Mirhen felt no confidence in their response. They were as mystified as he was.

He was about to add further encouragement — at least, what he felt was encouragement — when the bank of screens behind him lit up brightly for a moment.

‘What was that?’ he asked, turning. ‘Was that the Amkulon?’

The airwaves were filled with vox-static and ugly distortion.

‘No, sir,’ replied a detection officer. ‘That wasn’t the Amkulon. Sir, the battle-barge Antorax just… just exploded, sir.’

Twelve

Ardamantua

The sky was weeping light.

Slaughter kicked his way through a half-collapsed section of tunnel wall and hauled himself onto the softly curving upper surface of the blisternest.

It was raining some kind of liquid that wasn’t water through an ugly squall that blew sidelong and made every surface slick and sticky. The nest was a huge sprawl, like some mass of offal oozing on a slab, magnified to titanic proportions. There were loops of tunnel that looked like intestinal knots, there were renal lumps and lobed chambers. Some sections of the vast, organic city were patterned coils like the fossil imprint of ancient seashells. Other sections were crushed to pulp by orbital bombardment and airstrikes. Smoke bled up from the blisternest in a thousand places, mixed with the wind, and washed into the squalling storm. Slaughter heard the downpour tick and tap on his helm and armour.

‘Come up,’ he called.

Cutthroat climbed after him, and then reached down to haul the dishevelled magos biologis up out of the tunnel. After them came Stab and Woundmaker. Slaughter had left the rest of Daylight Wall inside the nest under Frenzy’s command. The Chapter Master’s express orders had been to get Laurentis to the contact point. Well, four of them could do that. There was no sense pulling a whole company out. He’d voxed that decision to the Lanxium, but he hadn’t had a reply. Something was chopping vox and pict to hell. Atmospherics. It was like Karodan Monument all over again. They’d been deaf and blind there.

And they’d still won.

The magos biologis was looking around, blinking at the daylight. The rain ran off his face and plastered his robes to his body.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the sky.

‘We haven’t got time for sight-seeing,’ snapped Woundmaker. Woundmaker was a sergeant, a good man. In the last stretch of tunnel, they’d come upon one of the automated munition trains sent in to support them. It had been mangled beyond recognition by Chrome warrior-forms, and the servitors slain, but Woundmaker and Stab had managed to drive the enemy off and recover some reloads for their bolters. He was sorting and distributing them.

‘No, look,’ said Laurentis.

Slaughter took the four clips Woundmaker handed him and turned to look where the magos biologis was pointing. There was a light in the sky. It was a broad, diffuse light, weeping out of the ugly cloud cover, but there was a malicious little glowing coal at the heart of it, small and red, like the ember-fragment of a star.

‘That’s a ship death,’ said Cutthroat bluntly.

Slaughter heard Woundmaker curse. He’d been too ready to dismiss the magos biologis’ comment, but he could see that Cutthroat was right. They could all see he was right. They’d all seen a ship die from planetside. It was a heartbreaking thing.

‘When in Throne’s name did these vermin get orbital weapons?’ asked Woundmaker. ‘When did they get ship-to-ship capability?’

‘We still don’t know precisely how the Chromes distribute themselves across space,’ said Laurentis. ‘It is presumed they employ some form of pod or seed dispersal via fluctuations in the warp, but a full scale migration of the magnitude that would explain their population density here has never been witnessed or described. We don’t believe they have what we would consider to be ships or a fleet, no vessels at all, but—’

He fell silent. Four angular visors glared at him, rain beading off their beaked jaws.

‘I… I’m just saying,’ Laurentis managed. ‘I don’t know how the Chromes could have taken out one of our ships. Perhaps it is an unhappy coincidence, or an accident.’

‘There are no coincidences!’ Stab told him.

Cutthroat began to say something about accidents and defaming the ability of the fleet.

‘Well, something’s happened,’ said Slaughter, cutting them both off. ‘That’s a dead ship up there, and a big one too. The magos is right. If the Chromes couldn’t hit it, that leaves accident, or coincidence. And coincidence means—’

‘What?’ asked Laurentis.

‘Someone else,’ said Slaughter.

A noise burst filled the air. Outdoors, in the stinking open air, it was like the booming of a warhorn, the braying of some daemonic voice. The air seemed to shudder. All four Imperial Fists winced as it stripped through their helmet vox-systems and assaulted their ears. Laurentis felt it prickle his skin. The hairs on his arm rose, despite the rain. Static. Ozone. Around the distant, broken steeples at the blisternest heart, chain lightning flickered and crackled in a sickly yellow display. Two more noise bursts followed. Laurentis felt the actual structure of the blisternest beneath them resonate with the plangent sound.

‘The Chromes are capable of a great deal more than we realise,’ Laurentis told his guardians. ‘These noises… these bursts of noise… They are why your Chapter Master has charged you to protect me. I have a theory—’

‘Tell us,’ said Slaughter bluntly.

Laurentis nodded and shrugged.

‘I will, sir. I think it’s communication. I think the Chromes are trying to communicate with us. We understood them to be non-sapient animals, but we may have been very wrong about that. I wish to test the communication theory, and that is why I need to get to the drop-point to access specialist equipment.’

Slaughter nodded. He checked the auspex mounted across his left forearm.

‘Tracking the drop. It’ll be down at DZ 457 in the next twenty minutes. Let’s move.’

They started off, crossing the oddly ridged humps and rain-slick gullies of the blisternest’s upper surface. The Fists, with their strength, long stride and armoured feet, had no trouble negotiating the unpleasant material. Laurentis kept slipping and slithering. He was wet, and cold to the bone. Woundmaker kept picking him up by the scruff of his robes and setting him back on his feet as if he were some clumsy toddler.

‘The point of the communication,’ said Laurentis, out of breath and struggling to keep up. ‘I mean, the point I was making was that if the Chromes are capable of communication, if they are capable of language, then they may be capable of much else besides. They can clearly cross between worlds and star systems in ways we cannot divine. Maybe they can take out ships. Maybe they have potent weapons for void fights.’

‘Ships of their own, after all,’ said Slaughter.

‘Perhaps.’

‘If they are capable of communication,’ said Slaughter, pausing for a moment to look at the magos biologis. ‘If you prove your theory…’

‘Yes?’

‘What are they trying to say?’

Laurentis paused.

‘I first presumed, captain, that they might be trying to negotiate surrender. That was when they seemed to be at our mercy, when their nest seemed to be toppling under assault.’

‘And now?’

‘Now, I wonder if it might not be a warning. A cry of defiance. A challenge. Now I wonder if they might not be demanding our surrender.’

‘Because they are hurting us?’

Laurentis sighed.

‘They are, it seems, taking out our starships. They are harrying our ground assault. The successful outcome of this undertaking is not as clear-cut as we first imagined.’

They followed the rim of the nest down, along to the ugly, chordate ridges that pressed like giant finger-bones into the mud of the river’s edge. The noise bursts continued to bark across the smoke-wrapped distances, causing the rain to squall and billow. Laurentis tried to keep a basic log of observable details on his data-slate as he struggled to keep up with his transhuman bodyguards. Fountains of ash and light vomited into the air from regions on the far side of the central blisternest, and the concussive booms reached them a moment later.

‘Major munitions,’ said Slaughter.

‘Orbital strike?’ asked Cutthroat.

Woundmaker shook his head.

‘Looked like… subterranean.’

‘So… our enemy has further weapons we don’t know about?’ asked Stab.

‘That they destroy their own nest with?’ asked Cutthroat.

‘Don’t argue. Don’t debate,’ Slaughter snapped. ‘Get moving.’

Another blast rocked the ground and a huge plume sheeted into the dismal sky six or seven kilometres away. The Fists of Daylight Wall stoically and obediently ignored it and started moving onwards. Laurentis hurried with them.

‘It could be a new weapon,’ conjectured the magos biologis, a little out of breath. ‘They might, I suppose… They might destroy their own nest if there was nothing left to be gained from protecting it. It might be… uhm, intended to create confusion and disarray, to take as many of us with them as possible.’

‘For what purpose?’ asked Slaughter, getting his hand under Laurentis’ armpit and frog-marching him over a stretch of mud so slick it was like quicksand.

‘If they had a final asset to protect?’ Laurentis ventured. ‘A queen, or the equivalent? A dominant reproductive female? The egg source? I am just hypothesising, but if the nest was lost, they might destroy it as cover for an evacuation of the queen.’

There was another blast. This one came from much closer at hand. The force of it knocked all five of them over and slapped out a wall of mud and steam. Debris pattered down, and the rain ran brown. The Imperial Fists struggled to their feet. Laurentis coughed and shivered, trying to clear his head.

‘My gravitics are shot,’ reported Stab, checking his visor display.

‘Mine too,’ said Cutthroat. ‘No, correction. Gravitic register is working. It’s just showing very irregular patterning.’

‘Agreed,’ said Stab, ‘rechecking. Local gravity just looped for ten milliseconds, and that blast focus was gravitically strong.’

‘These weapons… these new weapons…’ Slaughter asked. ‘They’re what? Gravity weapons? Gravity bombs?’

Laurentis struggled to reply. He tried to formulate a reasonable-sounding explanation for why the Chromes should have mastery over gravity, one of the universe’s most notoriously uncooperative forces. Maybe their inter-system travel relied on some gravitic drive?

‘Watch your heels!’ Cutthroat yelled.

Chromes were rushing them from the nest pods behind them. They were standard forms, their silvery shells glinting in the stained light, spattered with mud and liquid, but there were a lot of them. Cutthroat and Stab met the first of them, side-by-side, driving strokes and slices with their hefty blade weapons that sent the xenos tumbling and bouncing backwards, slamming into the ranks behind, slit and spraying. The stink of ichor filled the rain.

Slaughter and Woundmaker got Laurentis back, and began to struggle down the reed-choked slope towards the waterline. The ground, wet as a marsh, was littered with dead xenos from the first phase. Moving backwards, Stab and Cutthroat came after them. Laurentis, gasping with anxiety, marvelled at their bladework. The speed of it. The relentless fury. The precision. Severed pieces of Chromes flew up into the air, spinning. Ichor jetted. The pushing ranks of assaulting xenos stumbled and clambered over the bodies of their dead.

Laurentis had seen ants do that. Forest ants, at the edge of a stream, the first ones drowning and dying so that those behind could use their corpses as a bridge, as a growing bridge.

The ants always got across the stream.

Ants never mourned their dead. They used them.

Another wave of Chromes scurried towards them along the bank to their right, clacking and sounding out the tek-tek-tek noise they made with their mouthparts.

Slaughter, positioned on the right, turned to meet them, his broadsword coming out. None of the Space Marines had resorted to bolters. Conservation of munition supplies.

Slaughter’s blade met the first Chrome, half-impaled it, then hurled it bodily across the river. It arced and hit the water with a dirty splash. His sword swung back and decapitated the next, and then cleaved the third down the middle through the head.

‘Protect the principal!’ Slaughter roared.

Laurentis cowered on the mud flats. The four Fists closed in around him, at compass points, each one meeting the assault as it swirled around them from the two lines of attack. There was so much ichor spray in the air that the rain tasted of it. They were all dappled with it. The Chromes threw themselves against the four-point defence, finding only death and dismemberment as a reward for their efforts. There is nothing, Laurentis remembered the old saying, as deadly as an Imperial Fist standing his ground.

Laurentis wondered how much scrutiny the Masters of the Chapters and other senior minds of the Imperial military, and even the beloved and exalted Emperor Himself when He had set to devising the Legiones Astartes, formulating their minds and bodies… How much scrutiny had they given to natural history, to the behaviour of cooperative animals and insects, to their selfless and almost mechanical efforts? The individual was never important, only the group effect. One quick glance at a magos biologis’ notebook or cyclopedia would reveal a thousand examples in nature of selfless cooperation, postlogical stratagems, and ensured survival.

A huge, armoured beetle could easily kill a tiny, lone ant.

But the ants always got across the stream.

Thirteen

Terra — Tashkent Hive

‘You look unhappy,’ remarked Esad Wire.

‘Do I?’ replied Vangorich. ‘Do I really? You can tell that?’

Wire shook his head.

‘No, you can’t read that in a face. Not for certain,’ he admitted. ‘You can’t read anything in a face for certain.’

He stared at Vangorich for a moment, Vangorich just standing there in the doorway of the monitor station control room like a shadow brought in by the dusk, and considered him carefully.

‘Been a very long time, besides,’ Wire added. ‘A long time not seeing your face. I’m no longer familiar with its nuances. I wouldn’t know what sadness looked like anyway, even if I could read it for sure.’

Wire rose from his worn leather seat, brushing imaginary lint from his double-breasted arbiter jacket.

‘A long time,’ he said, an echo, spoken only to himself.

Vangorich was still in the doorway. Wire beckoned him.

‘You can come in, sir,’ he said. ‘Come right in. Or do you have to be invited over the threshold like a night ghoul?’

Vangorich stepped inside the control room. It was brightly lit, too brightly lit, the hard shine of the lamp-globes and spots revealing every fatigued edge and scuffed fascia of the control suite: the dials and levers worn by centuries of hands, the milky read-outs, the chattering banks of antiquated switches, the electric noticeboards with their mechanical letters and series lights that stated the day’s crimes and actions and, every few minutes, reshuffled and revised, like the journey monitors at transit stations.

Monitor Station KVF (Division 134) Sub 12 (Arbitrator). It had taken Vangorich four hours to get there. An hour’s flight east from the Palace by suborbital, then a three-hour descent into the underhives of Tashkent Spire, a journey of rattling lift cages, suspension platforms and dank hallways.

It had taken Esad Wire a great deal longer to reach Monitor Station KVF. After his past life was laundered and washed clean, three years at Adeptus Arbitrator incept training, two more at the Procedural Division in the Asiatic Domes, and then eight years with Tashkent Major Case and another six as a jurisdiction subcommander. Then he got the Sector Overseer star to pin on his jacket, and a monitor control room full of antiquated switches.

Everything was processed, everything formalised. Every crime had to be catalogued and filed, described and posted, and redirected to the appropriate division. It was a ritualised system that had never really coped with the actuality of real life and real crime in the vast hive, but it was considered the optimal solution and thus persevered with. Running the data-switching station was also considered a task of great responsibility, and thus always awarded to a man of significance or ability, as a mark of promotion. Esad Wire was not a law enforcer. He did not fight crime. He simply filed it.

The room was essentially automated. Wire made a gesture, and two junior arbiters, the only other living people present, went off to find duties in adjacent chambers.

‘“You look unhappy”,’ said Vangorich. ‘After all this time, that’s the beginning of your conversation?’

Wire shrugged.

‘It struck me as so,’ he said.

‘How has life treated you since you left the Officio?’ Vangorich asked. He did not look at Wire. He studied the chattering, updating lines of tile-type that were rattling up and down the displays.

‘One never really leaves the Officio, sir,’ Wire replied, with a half-smile.

‘No need for the sir,’ said Vangorich.

Wire shook his head.

‘I think so. You are a man of a certain position in life and the world, and I am another, of another position. The inequality of our states seems to indicate I should call you that.’

‘It’s good to see you, Beast,’ said Vangorich.

‘And you, sir.’ Wire grinned. ‘Damn, I haven’t been called that in a long time.’

He walked to the side cupboards and poured two mugs of thick, black caffeine from a jug. He handed one to the Grand Master.

‘Social call, is it? Been a couple of decades, about time I visited Esad?’

‘I’ve wanted to before, many times,’ said Vangorich with surprising directness. ‘Never been appropriate.’

‘Is it now?’

‘No, but I did it anyway. I needed to get out. I needed to… converse with someone who wasn’t anything to do with anything at the Palace.’

‘Find a priest,’ suggested Wire. ‘A confessor.’

‘The priests all have agendas,’ replied Vangorich.

‘So… you’re here. Go on.’

‘Little men,’ said Vangorich, taking a seat at one of the monitor stations and sipping his caffeine. ‘Little men, playing at being High Lords. Personal ambition is in danger of costing the Imperium very dearly. I tried to block it, but the Officio doesn’t have the clout it once wielded, and I got played.’

‘Lansung. Udo. Mesring,’ said Wire quietly.

Vangorich smiled.

‘Well informed.’

‘There’s little to do here, sir,’ said Wire. ‘I fill my time with the data-slates and the court reports. I do like to keep up with the reported business of the legislature and the Senatorum. Politics has always been an interest of mine. My old dad used to say that politics is what determines who lives and who dies, so though the business of parliaments sounds dull, it pays to keep an eye on what those idiots are up to.’

‘Published Senatorum records don’t show the half of it,’ said Vangorich.

‘They show enough to see that Lansung’s after Lord Commander, and Udo’s happy to facilitate that succession. Mesring and Ekharth will go along for the ride and lend their weight, if they get rewarded on the other side. Or is that read too simplistic? Am I just an armchair amateur?’

‘Good enough,’ said Vangorich. ‘It’s the usual power play.’

‘But?’

‘They’re so busy playing, they’ve taken their eyes off the board. The Fists have gone to address the situation, but they’ll probably need support. Navy support.’

‘The Fists will need support—?’ Wire began.

‘Let’s skip that for now. It’s a threat. The Inquisition says so.’

Wire whistled.

‘How far out?’

‘Far too close. We need the Navy, and we need the Guard, and if we need the Guard, we need the Navy anyway. But Lansung doesn’t want to get his toys broken.’

‘So make him look good.’

‘I tried that,’ said Vangorich. ‘We brokered a little persuasive block vote to make him commit his fleets, but which allowed him to look like the hero of the hour. And he took it, but he played us. He said that if the Fists needed full support, they should be allowed to commit their entire reserve. He made ships available. Even the wall-brothers have gone from their eternal posts. For the first time ever. The whole Chapter. There isn’t an Imperial Fist left on Terra or on the Phalanx. It’s as if he’s handing them glory, as if it’s his to give. Of course, by making it possible for the entire Chapter to deploy, he’s reduced the commitment of fleet and Guard forces he needs to field.’

‘That’s not right,’ said Esad Wire. ‘You don’t commit a whole Chapter in one go. That’s basic.’

‘You do if you’re an idiot with dreams of a de facto throne. You do if you put yourself above the needs of mankind. And you do if you’ve become so complacent after decades of peace that you think nothing can ever harm us again. Beasts arise.’

Wire laughed, though his face was troubled.

‘They do,’ he agreed. ‘When you least expect. First lesson they ever taught us.’

‘And the reason for your nickname,’ said Vangorich.

‘That belonged to someone else,’ said Wire, losing the smile. ‘I’m a respectable civil servant now.’

He looked at Vangorich.

‘When did this happen?’

‘Six weeks ago. It wasn’t publicly announced. A matter of security. The reinforcements should reach the main force very soon.’

‘That close?’

‘Oh yes.’

Wire shrugged.

‘So, may I ask, sir,’ he said, ‘what was this visit? An opportunity to vent to a sympathetic ear? Or did you think that I could somehow offer a solution to help an entire Chapter of Adeptus Astartes in trouble?’

Vangorich smiled.

‘Back in the day, I would not have put such a task beyond the powers of Beast Krule.’

‘Beast Krule’s long gone,’ said Wire.

Vangorich stood up.

‘Anyway, no. Not at all,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect you to have a solution, and we don’t need one. It’s the entire Chapter of Imperial Fists, plus support, Beast. They will quash this threat very quickly. Very quickly. Then no one will notice or remember how close we came to being stupid.’

He faced Wire.

‘That’s the real crisis. That’s why I came to ask your opinion. It’s not what’s happening now. What’s happening now is an act of strategic idiocy sanctioned by men who are too busy chasing the highest office. It’s ugly and ham-fisted, but it will resolve itself, and all will be safe. We can trust the Fists. But in the long term, we are left with men who made it happen, let it happen, and thought it was absolutely fine that it happened. And that presents us with the possibility of what might happen next time, and the time after, and the time after that, until such acts of idiocy really start to cost. These men are not fit, Beast. But they represent a seamless power bloc at the heart of the Twelve that cannot be unshaken or dislodged, even with the most radical tactical voting from the rest of us. The Senatorum Imperialis is theirs and will remain theirs.’

Wire nodded ruefully.

‘I came, old friend,’ said Vangorich, ‘because there is a possibility, with all other options exhausted, that one day soon I might have to ask you to go back to your old job.’

‘Glory,’ Wire whispered. He took a deep breath. ‘I can’t go back, sir. Not after all this time… I mean, that’s not me any more. I left the Officio…’

Drakan Vangorich looked at him without pity or humour.

‘Beasts arise, Esad,’ he said. ‘And besides, one never really leaves the Officio.’

Fourteen

Ardamantua — outer system approaches

The translation bells were sounding along the quarterdeck of the Azimuth.

Daylight rose to his feet from the arming block, took his helm off the rack, and lowered it over his head. The neck seals hissed and whirred into place.

An attendant approached, dressed in a yellow gown.

‘I heard,’ said Daylight before the man could speak.

The Imperial Fist methodically placed his bolter in its clamp, selected a gladius and sheathed it, and mag-locked a combat knife to his chestplate. Then he finally adorned his head with the laurel wreath that marked him as the senior Imperial Fist in the reinforcement detachment. The laurel symbol had already been painted on his shoulderplates.

He turned and walked from the arming chamber, out onto the quarterdeck space. Hundreds of attendants in yellow robes stopped and watched him as he strode forwards. It was a moment, a singular moment. Daylight was going to war.

Daylight was aware of the significance. He had longed for war, and felt guilty for doing so. Only the best were ever given the reward of wall-brother status, but it amounted to a punishment, because it took them from the zones of glory and made them live out their lives on ceremonial sentry duty in the draughty halls of the Palace of Terra.

This had been his dream since he had won the status. Going back to war had been his dream.

Yes, the significance was not lost on him. It was a day full of significance. It was the first time ever that wall-brethren had been allowed to leave Terra and the Phalanx and go to war in support of their kind, the first time that the entire Chapter had been committed at one stroke since the days of the Siege, when they had been a Legion still. The first time since then that a capital threat had come inside fifty warp-weeks of the Terran Core.

Though he was a creature bred for war, Daylight was not blind to the political significance either. Attending the Palace as he had done for so many years, he had watched the activities of the Senatorum and knew power play and counter-agendas when he saw them. Daylight’s glorious return to war, and the wielding of the Imperial Fists as one unified weapon at this time of crisis, were merely by-products of Lord High Admiral Lansung’s ascension. He had made himself look quite imperial by moving his forces in support of the Fists, and even more imperial by magnanimously suggesting that the Fists support and preserve their reputation. He had, in effect, facilitated everything that was happening. The fact that he had effectively sent an entire Chapter of Adeptus Astartes to war left a great deal more unsaid about his power.

Attendants swept up on either side of Daylight and attached a long cloak to his shoulders, a cloak of blue silk that trailed out behind him. Armed footmen fell in step around him, an honour guard supplied by Heth. Just like politics, the cloak was an encumbrance that Daylight would dispense with in combat.

They moved up the quarterdeck, and under the valveway arches. The burnished deck throbbed beneath them as the warship bled out power. The warp had just spat out the Azimuth after six and a half weeks of travel, and now, translated into the realm of real space, they and the rest of the reinforcement squadron were slicing in across the outer banks and belts of the Ardamantua System into the compliance zone.

As he walked, Daylight processed. Data-feeds were inflowing to his visor mount, and had been since the trip began. He processed the latest intercepts and battle reports from the line formation, archived data on the planet and the blisternest site, force composition and a rolling track of action-by-action detail from the very first moment of deployment onwards. From the outside, Daylight looked like a ceremonial figure walking in a grand state parade. On the inside, he was a strategium in war mode.

Most of the data he could process was archived, however. It came from the early part of the compliance, and from intercepts received before the reinforcement squadron had left the Terran Core. They had spent weeks in the empyrean, and nothing viable or reliable had entered the data-streams of astropathic communication links during the voyage.

Now they were back in real space, the vast leap of their extra-universal transit achieved, communication could resume.

Except, Daylight could see from the feeds, nothing was coming from the world called Ardamantua.

Nothing human.

He entered the warship’s state bridge. Navy officers turned to acknowledge him with formal stiffness, but a gesture sent them back to their vast consoles, set in tiers up the mountainside flanks of the chamber. On high platforms with gilded handrails, strategy officers plotted courses and operated the vast hololithic displays of the central strategium. Lines of Navy armsmen in formal uniforms, in ranks forty long and seven wide, stood facing each other on the central, mirror-polished steel floorspace of the bridge, forming an avenue down which Daylight could proceed to the command dais. They came to attention, their silver lascarbines raised.

Daylight walked the line, still processing.

Nothing human, nothing human…

Admiral Kiran stepped off the dais to meet him, escorted by General Maskar and a small army of aides, subalterns and autoclerks. Kiran was Lansung’s appointed proxy, a slender and unfriendly-looking man in late middle age with a permanently cunning expression on his face. He wore silver and blue, and a broad bicorn hat. He carried the ship’s command wand in his left hand. The wand was a jewel-encrusted device the size of a sceptre or battle-mace, and it hummed soft songs of deep space and the warpways to itself.

Maskar was Lord Commander Militant Heth’s proxy on the command warship, though Heth travelled with the squadron aboard the grand carrier Dubrovnic. Unlike Lansung, who had seen the Ardamantua crisis in purely political terms and had instructed his officers to conduct it on his behalf, Heth was a more selfless individual. He appreciated the potential scale of the crisis and had elected to join the reinforcements in person. He led sixty-eight brigades of the Astra Militarum, the biggest deployment from the core seen in years, and he was not about to place that in the hands of his juniors. Heth wanted to show that unlike Lansung and, indeed, the other High Lords, he was prepared to get his hands dirty. The Imperial Fists required the assistance of his Astra Militarum, and he intended to deliver that in person.

It had caused a stir when Heth had announced his intention of joining the squadron. There was nothing Lansung could say about it that wouldn’t look petty, but Lansung’s thunder had been stolen a little. Heth was positioning himself as a willing man of the people, a leader who did rather than told. It was clear that Heth saw this moment as an opportunity to show that the Astra Militarum, vast and reliable, was the most important service standing in the Imperium’s defence, the truest and most doughty.

It was also an opportunity for Heth to ease himself out of the shadow cast across the Senatorum High Twelve by Lansung, Mesring and Udo.

As per protocol, not all the squadron’s senior officers travelled on the same vessel. Vox-officers set up a real-time link to Heth so he could coordinate with them.

Maskar was a useful officer, short and bullish, with an excellent track record. He had not long returned from service in a frontier campaign, the ‘blood fresh on his tunic’ as the phrase went. Daylight had read Maskar’s file. He liked the man, liked him for what he could do.

None of that data was pertinent now: not Maskar’s file, not the politics on Terra.

‘Sir,’ said Kiran.

‘Anything?’ asked Daylight. ‘Anything from the surface?’

‘No,’ replied the admiral.

‘Nothing human,’ Maskar added with a growl.

‘I have reviewed the incoming data,’ said Daylight. ‘It’s very noisy down there.’

Kiran nodded to one of his analysis officers, who projected a small hololithic display between his tech-engraved hands as though he was opening a book for them to look at.

‘Since our last data from Ardamantua,’ the analysis officer said, ‘the surface and atmospheric situations have degenerated catastrophically. The planet seems to have been plunged into some kind of stellar crisis. It’s almost primordial down there. We presumed at first that it might have been struck by another body, a large meteor, but there is no trace of that very distinctive damage pattern.’

Daylight watched the man’s shifting display, staying one step ahead of everything he said.

‘Ardamantua has been rendered unstable in the six weeks since we last saw it,’ the analysis officer continued. ‘It is unstable atmospherically, geologically and orbitally. There are gross levels of surface radiation, and significant signs of massive gravitic instability.’

‘There were never any indications of gravitic weaknesses in the early planetary surveys,’ said Admiral Kiran.

‘However,’ said Maskar, ‘some of the last few intercepts we received from the expedition force before we departed spoke of what appeared to be gravitational anomalies.’

‘That data was never substantiated,’ said the analysis officer. ‘We have been attempting to contact Terra astropathically to see what they may have heard from the expedition fleet while we were in transit.’

‘The answer is precious little, it seems,’ said Kiran. He looked directly at the towering Space Marine. ‘All effective contact with your Chapter Master and the expedition fleet was lost over six weeks ago, two days after we entered the warp.’

‘So they are gone?’ asked Daylight. ‘Dead?’

‘There is no sign of the fleet or of any surface deployment,’ said Maskar. ‘But that isn’t to say they aren’t there.’

‘The planet and its orbital environs are a mess of interference patterns and disruption,’ said the analysis officer. ‘It is quite possible that the fleet is there, as well as surface forces, but our scanners can’t detect them and we can’t hear their vox.’

‘So what are we hearing?’ asked Daylight.

‘Massive amounts of sonic and infrasonic noise bursts,’ said the analysis officer, ‘similar to the kind of noise bursts reported by the surface forces before comms went down, but of greater intensity, duration and regularity. It’s as though the planet is howling in agony.’

Kiran shot the man a scolding look. The analysis officer stepped back, ashamed of his colourful description.

‘What’s making the noise?’ asked Daylight.

‘I think it’s some kind of stellar effect,’ said Kiran. ‘A solar storm, perhaps, or a transmitted by-product of the gravitational mayhem.’

‘Except,’ said Maskar.

‘Except?’ asked Daylight.

‘It reads as organic,’ said Lord Commander Militant Heth’s proxy. He said it hesitantly, as though he didn’t quite believe it himself.

‘How can it be organic?’ asked Daylight.

‘A voice,’ murmured the analysis officer. ‘It’s like a voice…’

‘It’s something amplified and broadcast,’ said Maskar.

‘A weapon of some description?’ suggested Kiran.

‘What action do we take?’ asked Maskar.

‘We deploy, of course,’ said the unmistakable tones of the Lord Commander Militant.

They turned. The vox and pict link had been established to the Lord Commander Militant’s vessel, and his face, slightly crackled by interference patterns, had appeared in the ruddy field of a large hololithic projector unit.

‘Is that not rash, my lord?’ asked Admiral Kiran. ‘We don’t even know how close we can get and maintain the safety of the squadron.’

‘We travelled six weeks to face a problem and perhaps save the lives of some honoured friends,’ said Heth, his voice signal distorting slightly. ‘We are also investigating a potential capital threat to the Terran Core. I don’t think this is the time to be prissy. How long until we’re inside a decent deployment distance, admiral?’

‘Four hours and seventeen minutes,’ replied Kiran.

‘Are the men ready for planetary landing, general?’ Heth asked.

‘All infantry and armour support will be boarded on the drop-ships and surface landers within the hour, sir,’ replied Maskar. ‘I can commit a full force drop as soon as we are in range.’

‘And the Imperial Fists?’ asked Heth. ‘The wall-brethren?’

‘We are ready,’ replied Daylight.

‘Then the only thing that appears rash,’ said Heth, ‘is the notion of me making this decision rather than waiting to hear it from the nominated and honoured commander of this expedition. Forgive me, sir. The call is yours.’

There was a pause.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ said Daylight. ‘Given the extremity of the conditions, I believe it would be prudent to arrange an advance recon, fast and powerful, to penetrate the zone and report back before we risk the bulk of our forces. I will lead this. Have a ship prepared.’

Daylight looked at Heth.

‘The main force should be held at readiness. As soon as we have data, and as soon as an enemy or objective is identified, the fleet elements and the Imperial Guard will take it with the fury of the Emperor Himself. Does that seem like a plan to you, my lord?’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ replied Heth.

‘Then let us begin,’ said Daylight.

‘The Emperor protects,’ nodded Maskar and Kiran, making the sign of the aquila.

‘And we, in our turn,’ replied Daylight, ‘protect Him.’

Fifteen

Ardamantua

Like stooping raptors, pinions swept back for the long dive, the Stormbirds plunged into the swirling atmospheric halo surrounding stricken Ardamantua.

The planet was swathed by a bright, visible corona of agitated energy, a sensor-opaque aura that shrouded the orb to almost the depth of its own radius. It resembled a solar storm, a swirling, luminous ocean of gas, dust and radiation that flickered in blues, golds, ambers and reds. The planet itself was just a dark globe, silhouetted within the maelstrom.

Just as the wall-brothers had been drawn out of traditional service and allowed to roam away from Terra, so the Stormbird war machines, the fastest and most honoured of all the drop-craft in the arsenal of the Adeptus Astartes, had been selected for the reinforcement mission. Stormbirds, sleek, powerful and large-capacity, had been born in the earliest years of the Great Crusade, developed from the almost mythical Skylance drop-ships that had served during the final days of the Unification Wars splitting open the hives of Ceylonia and Ind. Stormbirds had been the inter-orbital weapon of choice throughout the Crusade, and through the dark, treacherous time that had been the unexpected sequel to that bright glory.

The Heresy had consumed them in great numbers, however, just as it had consumed men and brothers and Legions, and the forces of the Imperium had been obliged to resort to more utilitarian vehicles that were cheaper and easier to mass produce. These replacement craft were now ubiquitous in all Chapters, and had proved worthy of service through their simple functionality and durability.

Still, for those with long memories, there was nothing like a Stormbird to stir the heart. The symbol of the Emperor’s wrath, wings hooked back like an aquila — one only saw them in ceremonial flypasts these days, or in the Hall of Weapons, or as escorts for High Lords, warmasters and sector governors.

Daylight had ordered six of them to be raised from the Fists’ Chapter House hangars and stowed aboard the reinforcement fleet. No one had argued. Heth’s presence on the campaign mission had helped. He was a High Lord, after all.

Firing from the capital ships like missiles, the Stormbirds formed a formation spread and scream-dived into the unholy vortex surrounding the planet. Ardamantua lay beneath them, a vast curve of grey mottled with orange and crackled with veins of fire. Cloud banks and storm patterns of vast magnitude curdled and swirled across the boiling surface. Magnetics, radiation and the pop of gravity blisters rendered the nearspace realm a lethal soup.

‘We have substantial vulcanism around the equatorial belt,’ reported the lead Stormbird’s tech-adept. ‘The crust there is faulting and splitting.’

The Stormbird was shaking. Daylight keyed up the data on his overhead monitor and swung it down on its gimbal arm. On the flickering pict, strung with overlays, the planet seemed to have a burning, white-hot girdle around its waist.

‘Something’s happening to the magnetic poles,’ said the adept. ‘The planet is deforming. I—’

His voice cut out briefly as another noise burst ripped through the vox-links, squalling and deafening. The screech was painful, but Daylight’s ears could endure it. He had a concern for the human component of his taskforce, however. The unmodified, unaugmented humans of the Imperial Guard formed the greatest proportion of his strikeforce. They would suffer, either through mortal injury from the noise bursts, or through lack of coordination if vox-comm proved unviable. What were the implications if he was unable to deploy any of his Guard strength to the surface? Could the wall-brothers complete the mission unassisted? Could they find and rescue the shield-corps?

Rescue was a word he certainly did not like.

The Stormbird began to shake more furiously as they entered the outer radiation bands of the high atmosphere. Plumes of what looked like flame flashed past the small, semi-shuttered cabin ports. The tongues were blue, mauve and green, like noxious gases burning in a lab. For a moment, Daylight wondered if they were some trace of the warp, some daemonic lightning. All along there had been quiet rumours that the silent hand of Chaos, whose actions had been absent from the galactic theatre for a troublingly long time, might be playing a part in the Ardamantuan misadventure.

But it was not false fire or warp-scald. It was a geomagnetic display, auroras of charged particles ripping through the maddened thermosphere.

‘Any indication of vessels in nearspace?’ asked Daylight.

‘Negative,’ replied the tech-adept.

Another hope dashed. There was a fleet here, somewhere, the best part of the entire Imperial Fists battlefleet, unless it had been utterly reduced and annihilated already. Where was it? It could be directly in front of them, but veiled from them by the tumult.

The descent turbulence became progressively worse. The Stormbird was shaking like a sistrum at a fervent ritual. Lines of red alert lights were flashing into life along the pilot’s enclosing consoles, filling entire rows. Deftly, with great calm, the pilot took one black-leather-gloved hand off the helm and muted the alarms.

Daylight began to flick through the meagre and imperfect surface scan readings they were finally obtaining, as they got closer and their auspex systems penetrated the atmosphere a little more deeply. They were on a pre-selected dive towards the location of the blisternest, working on the tactical assumption that the site was the last place their forces had been reported. But there was no clear sign of the structure, and little of the surrounding landmass matched, in relief or topographical schemata form at least, the geography logged by the survey teams that had accompanied the original assault.

‘Is this just bad luck?’ asked Zarathustra.

Daylight turned and looked at the wall-brother strapped in beside him. Zarathustra’s war-spear was mounted like a harpoon on the weapon rack above his grim-helmed head. He was the oldest of all the wall-brothers and had been the most reluctant to abandon the old tradition and leave the walls of the Palace behind.

‘Bad luck?’ replied Daylight. He noted that Zarathustra had selected the discretion of a helm-to-helm link. There were other wall-brothers in the craft alongside them, not to mention forty atmospherically-armoured shock troops of the Astra Militarum Asmodai Seventieth, Heth’s finest. The Guardsmen and their leader, Major Nyman, seemed to Daylight to be about the finest and most resolute warriors that unmodified human flesh could compose, but he did not want them overhearing dissent from an Adeptus Astartes warrior as they fell headlong into Hades. Through the dark and slightly breath-fogged visor lenses of their faceplates, he could see pale, drawn, anxious faces that winced at every violent buck and lurch the Stormbird threw.

‘Bad luck happens even to good men, Daylight,’ said Zarathustra, his voice chopped and frayed by the interference patterns even on the short-range dedicated link. ‘Sometimes the forces of light prevail, sometimes the forces of darkness take the upper hand. Sometimes, as history teaches us, fate itself intervenes.’

He turned his impassive visor to look directly at Daylight. There was a gouge of raw metal across the otherwise perfectly polished faceplate, a gouge that had been left by the blade of one of the Sons of Horus during the fight at Zarathustra Wall. Heresy wounds were never patched, though the brother who had taken that stroke no longer dwelt inside the armour.

‘Think of Coldblood and his wall, at Orphan Mons,’ said Zarathustra. ‘They took that day against the eldar raiders, full of glory. Then the star went nova and took Coldblood, his wall and the surviving eldar. Victor and defeated alike, levelled by the whim of the conscienceless cosmos.’

‘They say the eldar corsairs engineered that stellar bomb to effect a pyrrhic victory,’ said Daylight.

‘They say… they say… Don’t spoil my story,’ grumbled Zarathustra. ‘My point is sound. Sometimes you kill the enemy, sometimes the enemy kills you, and sometimes the universe kills you both. This may have been a very conventional fight against these xenoforms, these Chrome things. Mirhen was probably wiping the floor with them, soaking the dust with their blood, or whatever they have that passes for blood…’

Zarathustra’s eye-slits were milky pale, and back-lit by a faint green glow, but Daylight could feel the intensity of his old friend’s gaze upon him.

‘Then the planet dies. Solar storm. Gravity anomaly. Tachyon event. Whatever. Doesn’t matter who’s winning then. We end up with a mess like this.’

Daylight glanced at his overhead again. The only time he had ever seen data footage of a planet as catastrophically mangled and tortured as Ardamantua was in feeds of unstable worlds to be avoided as ‘not supportive’. Six weeks earlier, the cream of his Chapter, the majority of his kin, the shield-corps itself, had been down there, dug in and on a solid footing, burning out the last vestiges of a numerous but outclassed enemy.

‘Are you suggesting we turn back and give them up as lost?’ he asked.

‘Of course not.’

‘Then what?’

‘I’m suggesting that we prepare ourselves for the worst,’ said Zarathustra. ‘If this mudball has up and died under Master Mirhen and our brothers, then…’

‘We will make a great mourning like never before, greater even than we did for our Primarch-Progenitor,’ said Daylight, simply.

‘It would be the worst loss imaginable,’ agreed Zarathustra. ‘For the Imperial Fists, the Old Seventh, greatest of all the Adeptus Astartes, and the most loyal of all defenders of Terra, to be reduced to… to nothing, to nothing but the last fifty wall-brothers stationed at the Palace. To lose all but five per cent, to be diminished to a twentieth… How would we ever recover from that?’

Daylight had no answer. Zarathustra was right. It was unthinkable. Even a force of transhuman warriors dedicated to dying in the service of the Imperium did not like to consider what might happen if they all died. The gene-seed loss alone would be an atrocity. Could they ever rebuild, even turning to Successor Chapters for support and bloodline? No loyal First Founding Chapter had ever been entirely swept away, not in the history of the Imperium, not even in the Heresy War.

Would the Imperial Fists be the first to pass into legend?

Some said, quietly and very informally, that it was inevitable. The Adeptus Astartes were a dying breed. Bloodlines and gene-seeds were gradually failing over time. The vigour had waned, and long gone was the time, pre-Heresy, when thousands upon thousands of Space Marines marshalled under the stars. The bitter gall of the Heresy had cut them down, halved their Legions, decimated the surviving loyalists, and tragically reduced the Chapters’ ability to produce new Space Marines in anything like the numbers of old. With the possible exception of the Ultramarines — and even there, there was the contention that the same plight ultimately afflicted them too — the Adeptus Astartes were diminishing. They were a finite resource, used only for the most elite missions and efforts. They were slowly, very slowly, dying out. Senior men in the Chapter predicted that within four or five hundred years, unless effective new methods of gene-seed synthesis could be developed and a new Golden Age brought about, the Space Marine would be a thing of myth.

In his early life, before the honour of wall-brother had been granted him, before he had become Daylight, Daylight had fought the eldar. In fact, it was his deeds in the face of the eldar that had led to the wall-brother honour being bestowed upon him.

Daylight had admired the eldar immensely. They were truly worthy opponents, and he had always thought them sad, tragic, like figures in an ancient play. He had thought about them often as he paced the ritual patrol routes in the cold hallways of Daylight Wall. They were great warriors, the greatest their species could produce, and in their time, in older ages, they had been peerless among the infinite stars.

Their time had passed, however, and their glory with it. Their suns were setting, and they were but ghosts of their old selves, unimpeachable warriors with great stories, proud histories, old glories and fine hearts, who were simply fighting their end-day wars as they waited for extinction to overwhelm them. When Daylight had slain the crest-helmed master of Sethoywan Craftworld, there had been tears in the alien’s eyes, and tears in Daylight’s too. When great eras end, all should mark them, even the champions of the next epoch. And no great heroes should ever pass unto shadow unmourned.

For a long time, Daylight had felt that the Space Marines were facing a similar long decline. They were more like the worthy eldar than they cared to admit: giants from another age who were simply living out their twilight amongst mortals, incapable of fending off the gathering darkness, and unable to recapture their halcyon greatness.

Daylight had not expected to see that end approach so fast inside his own lifespan. If the Imperial Fists were as lost as Zarathustra feared, perhaps the age of the Adeptus Astartes was coming to a close faster than anyone imagined.

Zarathustra’s words had troubled him in another way. He had spoken of the terrain turning against friend and foe alike, of Ardamantua and its geological mayhem being the true enemy.

That was a bleak prospect. The pride of the Imperial Fists was their ability to defend anywhere from anything. How could they hope to excel if anywhere and everywhere, the very ground itself turned on them?

The Stormbird bucked again, more violently than ever. More warning lights lit and a klaxon sounded. The pilot and his co-pilot were too busy controlling the breakneck descent to be able to cancel it this time. The lurching turned into a protracted bout of shuddering vibrations.

‘Atmospherics worse than cogitator prediction,’ said the tech-adept, a flutter in his tone. ‘Crosswinds… also, ash in the upper airbands.’

‘Ash?’

‘Volcanic ash, also particulate matter. Aerosolised mud. Organic residue.’

‘Hold on!’ the pilot yelled suddenly.

The Stormbird started to bank along its centre line. The exterior light beaming into the gloom of the cabin through the slit ports began to rapidly creep up the cabin walls, over the ceiling and back down the other side, illuminating the struggling, desperate faces of the Asmodai troopers behind their visor plates, cheeks and chins tugged by the inverting gravity.

The banking turned into a full rotation, then another, and then another, faster. Daylight knew that the humans aboard weren’t built to withstand that kind of flight trauma. The Stormbird crew members were modified enough to withstand it, with their reinforced bones and muscle sheaths, their inner ears and proprioception senses replaced by augmetics, and their stomachs and regurgitative mechanisms removed and regrafted with fluid ingesters. But the Imperial Guardsmen would be disorientated, panicked, distressed, vomiting inside their helmets, choking.

‘Stabilise!’ Daylight ordered.

‘Negative! Negative!’ the pilot yelled back. ‘We’ve hit some kind of gravitational—’

He didn’t finish the word. The turbulence became too great and too noisy for voice contact. The unpredictable gravitational anomalies that plagued Ardamantua were regarded as the greatest threat of all because they couldn’t be mapped and thus avoided.

And they couldn’t be explained.

Daylight heard the pilot yell something again.

On the ground, a broad plain of mud and boiling pools lay beneath the angry sky. Ragged grasses blew in the hot crosswinds. In the distance, the broken horizon coughed and smoked, and spat sparks into the sky.

The sky was low, a rotting mass of swirling cloud striped by lightning. The clouds were running swiftly across it, like a pict-feed playing fast. Far away, six bright raptors punched out of the clouds, diving, catching the sun. They stayed in formation for a second, but they were fluttering, beset by both savage crosswinds and a gravitational pocket that refused to obey the reality around it.

One burst into flames, like a flower blooming, scattering its shredded fuselage. A second failed to recover from its dive, and plunged like a stone into the distant hills. A third tried to bank, but then spun away like a leaf on the wind, out of sight.

The other three stayed true, pulled up, cut low, but their trajectories were not stable either.

Gravity stammered again, bubbling the sky and slamming them hard.

They fell into darkness and black cloud, and were lost.

Sixteen

Ardamantua

Anterior Six was dead. They carried him from the crash site and laid him next to the nine Asmodai fatalities. Daylight waited for Nyman to tell him the extent of the other injuries.

Zarathustra clambered back into the wreck to recover his spear. Daylight knew he was also going to mercifully finish off the valiant pilot and co-pilot who had brought them down as intact as they were, and now lay mashed and bleeding out in the Stormbird’s compressed nosecone. They were plugged into the drop-craft’s systems anyway, nerves and neural links. They had burned their minds out sharing the Stormbird’s impact agonies. Even without their limbs and torsos irrecoverably sandwiched in ruptured metal, they could never have been disconnected to walk away.

It was a duty Daylight would have preferred to do, but he had command, and there were too many duties to deal with. He appreciated Zarathustra taking that sad burden from him.

He looked down at Anterior Six’s body. On impact, a fracturing spar had sheared the wall-brother’s head off.

‘I never thought I’d see him dead,’ said Tranquility, at Daylight’s side.

The plain they had come down on was a broad one surrounded by low, smoke-dark hills. It was grassy, and peppered with curiously pretty blue flowers. Some of the petals, torn up by the crash and scattered by the wind, had fallen across Anterior Six’s yellow armour, as if laid there by mourners.

‘No time for sentiment,’ said Daylight. ‘Give me a situation report, brother.’

Tranquility cleared his throat.

‘Flight crew dead, Daylight,’ he said. ‘Transport destroyed, vox-link down. No bearing from our instrumentation and portable auspex is flatlined. Last known location was forty kilometres short of the blisternest site.’

Daylight nodded.

‘No contact with the other birds,’ said Tranquility.

‘I saw one blow out.’

‘I think at least one other crashed before we hit,’ Tranquility agreed. ‘Gravity was just shot. We probably all fell out of the sky.’

‘So we’re all that we can count on,’ said Daylight.

‘There might be others nearby who survived the landing and—’ Tranquility began.

‘This is not a place where we can deal in “mights”,’ replied Daylight. ‘Even the laws of the universe are playing tricks. We can only count on what we know.’

‘I understand,’ replied Tranquility. ‘Then we have you, and we have me. We have Zarathustra and we have Bastion Ledge. We have decent resources of ammunition and our close-combat weapons. We have no ground transport. We have Major Nyman, a brain-damaged tech-adept, and twenty-six Imperial Guardsmen with kit.’

‘I thought there were nine fatalities amongst the Asmodai?’

‘There were, outright. But there are another five more of them are too torn up to walk away. Out here, they’ll all be dead in an hour, less perhaps. Even with express evacuation to a medicae frigate, they probably wouldn’t make it.’

‘We move out,’ said Daylight. ‘Find high vantage. Assess the landscape and consider our next action.’

Tranquility nodded.

Daylight strode back through the flowering grasses towards the Stormbird wreck. Zarathustra was just emerging, spear in hand. He reminded Daylight of one of the ancient, pre-Unity demigods, born alive from the belly of a fallen eagle. He liked the old myths. Paintings and tapestries of them filled the galleries and halls of the Imperial Palace, their meanings, names and symbolism lost forever, except perhaps in the memories and dreams of the Emperor.

‘Bad?’ asked Zarathustra.

‘And getting worse,’ Daylight replied. ‘We’re heading for those hills. You and I will move ahead with Bastion. Tranquility can escort the Guardsmen.’

‘We should stay together.’

‘They’ll slow us down. They’ll never cover the ground like we can. Besides, they’re in shock.’

‘What of their wounded? They’ll make them even slower.’

‘I know. I’ll do it.’

They walked back to the gathered survivors. A few of the Asmodai were carrying munitions and equipment crates from the opened stowage cavities of the Stormbird. Others crouched beside their injured brethren. Daylight noted that a few had formed a perimeter, lasweapons ready. Not in such shock, then. They remembered their duty.

The sun came out suddenly, covering the ragged plain and its sea of straw-coloured grasses and nodding flowers in a hot golden light. The roiling black clouds had parted briefly. The Stormbird had torn a two-kilometre scar across the ground, a long gouge like the one that the Horusian blade had left on Zarathustra’s faceplate. The Stormbird’s impact had ripped up grasses and soil and bedrock, and scattered silvered shreds of its bodywork, wings and undercarriage. The fragments of metal caught the sudden sunlight like pieces of mirror or broken glass scattered in the swishing grasses, or like the cut jewels of a broad cloak spread out behind the noble craft.

‘We’re moving for those hills,’ Daylight told Major Nyman.

‘I’ve activated a beacon, sir,’ said Nyman. His voice was a reedy croak issuing through the speaker grille of his orbital armour. Through the tint of the man’s visor, Daylight could see an abrasion head wound that was starting to clot.

‘Good. At least any who follow can trace our landing point.’

‘Will any follow?’ asked Nyman.

Daylight was turning away, but he stopped to look back down at the human soldier.

‘I told them not to, but Lord Commander Militant Heth will send others,’ he said. ‘He will not give up. I would not in his place.’

Nyman followed Daylight over to the Asmodai casualties.

‘Some of us will scout ahead,’ Daylight told him, ‘but even allowing for your rate of advance, we cannot be encumbered. You know what I have to do.’

Nyman’s mouth opened in horror, but he had no words.

‘They will all be dead in an hour, less perhaps,’ put in Tranquility, repeating the summation he’d made to Daylight. ‘Even with express evacuation to a medicae frigate, they probably wouldn’t make it.’

There was a moment’s pause. The sunlight blazed. Radiation made their built-in meters crackle like crickets at dusk. Thunder, wind and volcanics rumbled in the distance and made the ground fidget.

‘Is there going to be an issue here?’ Daylight asked Major Nyman.

‘No issue, sir,’ Nyman replied with great effort. He turned his back, and signalled his men to do the same. In slow realisation and horror, they stepped back and looked towards the bleak edges of the horizon bowl. One hesitated, a hand on the grip of his sidearm. Bastion looked at him, and that was enough.

Zarathustra came to stand with Nyman and his men, and gazed at the distant hills and the sky filled with smoke. He began to declare the Litany of the Fallen, as it was said in chapels and templums and sacristies across the loving Imperium, the words set down by Malcador himself during the bloodiest months of the Heresy. His voice was clear and strong, and carried from the speaker of his battle-helm. Bastion and Tranquility joined him in his declaration, a mark of honour to the fallen Guard and the sacrifice of the Asmodai. Nyman made the sign of the aquila.

The three wall-brothers boosted the amplification of their speakers as they intoned the Litany, partly to add power to their statement of respect, and partly to mask the sound of bones snapping.

Daylight drew a breath and then, quickly and gently, broke five human necks in quick succession.

Seventeen

Ardamantua

The sunlight seemed to be at odds with them. It followed them across the grassy plain, away from the crash site. From underfoot came the thump and shake of a planet in convulsion, and great sprays of burning ash lit up the sky far away, volcanic plumes thousands of kilometres wide.

The sunlight followed them still, as if their world were a tranquil place.

Daylight, Zarathustra and Bastion moved ahead, covering the grasses with clean, strong, bounding strides, outpacing the sturdy efforts of Nyman’s fighting pack. Daylight wondered if he ought to have finished the tech-adept too. The man had been cortex-plugged to the Stormbird’s cogitator system when they crashed. He had suffered neural feedback, and the impact had torn his plug out and mangled the primary socket in the back of his neck. He was stumbling along at the back of the secondary group, escorted by one of the Guardsmen. Daylight thought he would give him an hour or so to see if his head cleared and reset. If it did, the adept might usefully operate some of their portable equipment. If it didn’t, Daylight would revise his decision.

Plumes of ash smoke and white streamers of steam were borne across the plain on the wind, residue of distant cataclysms. They left the crash site far behind, the wreck and the heresy-scar of its death across a foreign field, and moved towards the nearest hills.

Noise bursts continued to beset them, coming from both near at hand and far away, as if wilderness spirits, the genius loci of Ardamantua, were howling at them and taunting them for their efforts. Daylight wished the tech-adept could set up and examine the audio patterns, but the man was incapable. The noise bursts, some of them long and tortured, were overwhelming their limited-range vox too, and causing discomfort to the Asmodai. Daylight instructed Nyman and his men to switch off their suit comms. Thus, the only communication between the two moving groups was the vox-link between Daylight’s party and Tranquility who was escorting the Guard. It was not ideal.

Daylight also possessed enough imagination to know that it was not ideal for the individual Guardsmen either. Each one of them was alone in his stifling and cumbersome orbital drop-suit, the armour heavy and rubbing, with fear and disorientation in his heart, and trauma and grief in his bones. They were trudging along in the strange and sickly sunlight, hearing the distant roar of the noise bursts as contact vibrations transmitted by their atmospheric armour-helms, with no voices and no vox-chatter, only the inexorable sound of their own breathing inside their suits for company.

The three Space Marines, advancing away from the beleaguered troopers, were approaching the foothill slopes of the ragged outcrops that edged the plain. Now the sun was going in and out as clouds gathered and spilled across the sky. Something had detonated on the horizon and the sky was filling up with blackness, the smoke trying to erase every corner of light.

Zarathustra led the way, using the haft of his war-spear as a climbing staff, leaping up slumped boulders and ridges of displaced stone. Bastion and Daylight followed, almost amused by the old veteran’s vitality.

They reached the peak. Beyond them, a thousand kilometres away, the next ridge of mountains was on fire, a ring of active volcanos. Darkness seemed to have gathered above the next rift valley like a threat. Jagged and almost magical explosions rippled across the valley floor as spontaneous and random gravitational anomalies, like the one that had downed the Stormbirds, chewed up the ground and blew sub-crust magma into the air. Impact patterns of disruption on a seismic level travelled through the ground away from the explosions. At this sight, Daylight’s mind turned to other images stored in the books and paintings of the Imperial Palace: visions of the apocalypse, of the circles of the Inferno described by Dantey, of the imagined hell once thought to exist beneath the Earth.

The rift valley was a vast plain of smouldering rubble that shifted and flexed, exploded and shivered. Mountains had both been raised and had fallen, overnight. Valleys had uplifted into hills, fracturing the surface, and summits had plunged like avalanches into the bowels of the ground. Flames leapt up from the mangled earth in burning geysers, like signs or portents. Flammable noxious gases released from deep in the planet were burning with strange colours: purple, blue, green, yellow, as varied as the magnetic auroras that had wreathed their wings on their descent.

In places, the flames were black, and a mile high.

‘Has the Archenemy touched this place?’ asked Bastion Ledge cautiously. ‘Is that warpcraft?’

‘No,’ said Daylight. ‘This is just a planet dying. Strange phenomena manifest when a planet dies.’

Four or five kilometres from them, beyond the initial spill of rubble and rocks, there was a broad lake, silty and muddy, its surface stirred and chopped by wind and vibration. Daylight selected data from his helm memory and began to patch and re-patch quick overlays.

‘That’s the river,’ he said.

‘The river?’ asked Bastion Ledge.

‘The blisternest was sited beside a large river. The geography has been traumatically altered, but that is the river, I’m sure of it. There are just enough comparatives to make the connection. The river has broken its banks and overspilled, and then been dammed into the lake formation by the collapsing outcrops here and here. The blisternest will be partly submerged and, I think, partly covered by geological debris, but it should be in this position.’

He marked the proposed site on his optics and then copy-bursted the overlay to the visor displays of his two wall-brothers.

‘An objective, then?’ asked Bastion Ledge.

‘The blisternest was the last reported location of our shield-corps ground forces,’ said Daylight.

‘Ardamantua was the last reported location,’ growled Zarathustra. ‘I don’t think we can say anything more specific than that.’

‘We’ll head for it anyway,’ said Daylight. ‘It’s a place to start.’

He clambered back across the ragged top of the peak to vox-link to Tranquility and inform the secondary group what the new intention was.

Below, he saw the flash of lasweapons discharging. In the sunlit grassland, under an alien storm of ash, Tranquility and Nyman’s Asmodai Guardsmen were under attack.

Eighteen

Ardamantua

It was a Chrome. Major Nyman knew this because he’d thoroughly reviewed the briefing packet that had been circulated among the officers of the reinforcement taskforce, and the packet had included helm pict-captures of the Chromes in action.

It came at him through the grass, claws raised and mouthparts snapping, making a most peculiar noise that he could only half-hear in the claustrophobic isolation of his atmospheric armour.

He shouted an order that he instantly realised no one except him could actually hear, brought his laspistol up and shot two bolts at the charging xenos.

It slowed it down, but didn’t kill it. Nyman had to snap off four more shots before it dropped a few metres short of where he was standing.

He looked around, having to turn his whole body to maximise the view through his narrow visor port. He could hear his own rapid respiration, as if he was in a box. He could smell the rancid bitterness of his sweat and breath, laced with adrenaline. Muffled noises came to him, as though through water. The dull bangs of weapons. Shouts. Sunlight shone into his visor. Glare.

There were Chromes all around them, most of them the glossy silver xenotype. He wasn’t sure where they had come from, but the odds were they were burrowers and had come up through the soil, clawing their way out. His men, without orders to give them structure, had nevertheless obeyed essential combat drill and were forming a box, firing out at the things rushing them from all sides. The Asmodai were fine soldiers, trained by the very best in the gun schools of the old Panpacific. Their proud boast to be the best in the Astra Militarum was not without merit.

Lasrifles flashed and snapped in disciplined volleys, the searing las-bolts ripping open organic armour and mutilating limbs. Puffs and squirts of ichor drizzled into the bright air.

One of the Chromes, a very large, dark variant form, survived the rifle-fire barrage and made it to their line. It got Corporal Vladen in its claws and tore him in half, the way a man would rip a sheet of paper when he was done reading the message written on it. Ribbons of bright red blood shivered into the air and covered the grass. Vladen’s armoured suborbital drop-suit split like overheated plastek wrapping.

Tranquility, the massive Imperial Fist, waded in, and drove the dark creature back, striking it twice with his power hammer. Leaking fluids through crush-splits in its shell, the Chrome reared back and launched itself at the Space Marine. There was no time or space for a defensive swing. Tranquility met the heavily built animal and grappled with it, gripping its chattering mouthparts with his left hand and tearing, while he tried to stave off its claws. As they broke again, Tranquility came away with part of a mandible in his hand. Ichor spurted down the Chrome’s throat and chest. Tranquility knocked it down with a hammerblow and then swung his power hammer down in both hands and finished it with a devastating overhead strike.

More Chromes tore up out of the ground, flinging soil and uprooted grasses in all directions. Some of them were big and dark like the thing that had murdered Vladen. The Asmodai redoubled their fire rate, snapping off shots to keep the creatures at maximum distance. Nyman kept shooting, directing fire by means of gestures.

There was no way of knowing how many more of the things lay under the ground.

Tranquility closed with another of the more massive forms, despatched it with two clean blows of his hammer, and then found himself beset by two more of the dark beasts. They clawed at him, fending off his attempts to swing at them. With a curse, he drew his boltgun and shot each one point-blank, exploding their carcasses in showers of meat, gristle and body fluid.

He’d cut them a path. Nyman could see that, and he could plainly see the Space Marine’s emphatic gestures. They had a path towards the hill slopes. In the distance, he could see the other Imperial Fists wall-brothers bounding down the hill to join them.

The hill slopes offered the protection of boulders and rocks for cover, and a small hope of staying alive until the other Space Marines reached them. Nyman knew his men would have to double time, and shoot as they ran.

He sent the signal, and most of them started to move, but visibility in the suits was so poor that some missed the gesture and found themselves caught out, alone. Nyman ran to them, grabbing them so he could look in through their visor plates and press his head against theirs, yelling so that the touching helms would transmit the sound.

‘Get moving! The hills! Move it, man!’

They started running. Nyman and Trooper Fernis scurried the poor tech-adept along. The damaged man had little clue what was going on. Trooper Galvet had been slow to recognise the intended effort, and once he did, ran the wrong way. Nyman, dismayed, believed that Galvet had suffered some concussion during the crash, and was not thinking clearly.

His fuzziness cost him his life. Two silver-shelled Chromes ran him down and fell upon him, shredding him with their claws.

Nyman didn’t watch. He ran, dragging the tech-adept by the arm with one hand, firing at the Chromes that menaced them with his weapon in the other.

As soon as the Asmodai were moving towards the hill slopes, Tranquility fell in behind them, his back to them, retreating and fending off the Chromes that gave chase. He whirled his hammer and struck them down as they came at him, knocking them over onto their backs, splitting their shells, breaking their limbs and their spines. His power hammer was a long-hafted, weaponised version of a stonemason’s mallet, the sort of tool that had been used to raise the bulwark walls and defences of the Palace of Terra. Its design was symbolic. Its effect was not.

Nyman, still moving with Trooper Fernis and their befuddled charge, was suddenly aware of yellow shapes racing past them from the direction of the slope. Daylight, Bastion Ledge and Zarathustra had joined the fight.

Daylight had his gladius raised. Zarathustra was lifting his war-spear. Bastion Ledge hefted a power mace. They reached the line where Tranquility was single-handedly stopping the Chromes and crashed into the mass of them, rending and slicing, smashing and tearing.

Nyman reached the lowest of the heaped boulders at the foot of the slope, and pushed the tech-adept into cover, with a gesture to Fernis to look after him. His men were taking up positions among the tufted rocks and outcrops, slithering up the scree and loose pebbles and sighting their rifles as they found good firing places.

They looked back at the fight.

Several hundred Chromes, most of them silver-shelled, had broken out of the soil of the plain and were assaulting the line. Dozens of them already lay dead, generally split or sliced open. Steam from hot fluids clouded the cool air of the grassy plain. Overhead, a looming volcanic darkness threatened to close down the light.

The four Imperial Fists, wall-brothers, battle-kin, shield-corps, fought side by side. It was diligent work, dutiful work, holding ground so that the Guardsmen could find cover and in turn support them with directed fire. It was a blocking action, it was a defensive stance, it was holding ground, it was everything that the Imperial Fists did best.

Daylight knew that none of them, none of the four of them, would or could ever admit that joy was filling them at that moment. Despite the crisis, the predicament, the threat, and the possibility that their Chapter was lost and dead, they secretly felt joy.

Their greatest and darkest prayer to the God-Emperor of Mankind, and to the Primarch-Progenitor who sired them, had been answered.

After years of silence, ritually patrolling the walls of the Imperial Palace, they had been granted the right to fight again, perhaps for one last time.

War, for which they had been wrought, had finally admitted them back into its secret, dark and savage mystery. They were whole again. They would make the most of it.

Nyman and his men watched in awe as the four wall-brothers fought back the tide. Imperial Fists chosen as wall-brothers were the greatest of their kind, and had excelled at feats of arms. It was for their very excellence that they were selected as the embodiment of the Chapter’s creed, and set to stand guard on the walls where they had mounted their greatest defence and paid in blood.

He could see why these men had been chosen.

He could also see how many more Chromes, hulking and dark-bodied, were splitting the soil of the plain and clawing their way into the sunlight.

Nineteen

Ardamantua — orbital

‘Any signal from the surface?’ asked Admiral Kiran.

The vox-officer shook his head.

Kiran slowly crossed the bridge of the Azimuth to meet Maskar and Lord Commander Militant Heth. Heth had joined them from his warship as the reinforcement fleet decelerated to the drop-point.

‘We’ve lost them, then,’ said Maskar. ‘Sheer madness going down into that murk and mayhem blind.’

Heth looked at him.

‘I suggest you get your men ready, Maskar, because you’ll be following soon enough. We’re not going to leave the Imperial Fists to rot down there.’

‘And what makes you suspect they are anything except dead already, sir?’ asked Maskar. ‘With respect, look at the screens. Look at the dataflow. This is a fool’s errand. Nothing has survived the fate that has befallen Ardamantua. Not even their damned fleet survived.’

‘We give them another five hours,’ said Heth. ‘That’s my word on it. Five hours, then we send in more scouts. The first thing Daylight will do is set up a workable uplink or send some kind of signal.’

Maskar looked at Kiran. There was no love lost between the Navy man and the Guard commander, but they were thinking the same thing. Heth, a High Lord, was painfully out of touch. He clearly thought the Adeptus Astartes immortal. There were certain situations, certain conditions, certain environments, that nothing could survive. They were both working men, fighting men, and they had seen how bad it could actually get, not how bad it could be imagined from a throne in the Palace.

‘Move the picket ships in closer,’ Admiral Kiran told his deck officers. ‘Have them despatch more long-range probes.’

‘Probes will be obliterated, just like the last spread,’ said Maskar.

‘Some may survive,’ replied Kiran curtly. ‘Even if one of them survives to send back a millisecond of data, it will help. Besides, with the picket ships closer to the atmospheric rim, we can try penetrating deeper with auspex and primary sensors.’

Heth nodded. The deck officers hurried to their stations and began to relay instructions.

They watched the strategium display as the reinforcement fleet began to move into its new spread, circling the stricken planet. Indicator lights and icons drifted like sunlight dapples across the topographic grid. In the lower portion of the strategium’s vast hololithic array, columns of data spread, jumbled and reassembled, processing the energetic flux and signature of the planet. Kiran had never seen a planetary body generate so much wild and contradictory data so rapidly.

‘Wait!’ he said, suddenly.

He crossed to one of the observation consoles and shoved two sensor-adepts out of his way. He began to manipulate the controls himself.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Heth.

Kiran didn’t reply immediately. Most of the crew in the huge bridge space were watching him. Kiran irritably yanked off his gloves so he could better manipulate the control surfaces. His fingers wound back the brass dials and adjusted the ivory sliders until he had recaptured the data-stream information from a few moments before.

‘There,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at,’ Maskar ventured.

‘Admiral, please elucidate,’ said Heth.

‘I know what I’m seeing,’ said Kiran, ‘and I’m sure my senior officers do too.’ In truth, many of them hadn’t immediately recognised it. Few had Kiran’s years of experience, and few had seen as much cosmological data speed by them as the admiral had, but given a few seconds, with the data-stream artificially suspended and frozen, they could pick it up.

‘A ghost,’ said the primary auspex supervisor.

‘A ghost,’ agreed Kiran with a grin.

‘It could just be an imaging artifact,’ said the gunnery officer.

‘Or the echo of a piece of debris blown out by the surface disruption?’ suggested the oldest of the navigation adepts, running the same data through his own, handheld quantifier.

‘I don’t believe it is,’ said Kiran. ‘I think that’s a ghost, the ghost of a friend.’

Heth and Maskar moved closer to the vast display, trying to work out what everyone seemed to be seeing.

‘This blip?’ asked the Lord Commander Militant. ‘This shadow here against the relative lower hemisphere of the planet?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Kiran. ‘Sensorus! Have the advancing picket ships direct their full-gain auspex and detector grids at that shadow. And the fleet too, for what it’s worth. Address all our scanning arrays, passive and active, at what the Lord Commander calls “that blip” and have the data streamed to my console.’

‘But what is it?’ asked Maskar.

‘It’s a ship, my dear general,’ said Kiran. ‘One of ours.’

Twenty

Ardamantua — orbital

The ship emerged from the elemental fury surrounding Ardamantua, rising out of the radioactive soup and lashing ocean of charged particles like a wreck brought up from the seabed. Streams of energy and magnetic backwash, lurid and phosphorescent, spilled back into the pulsing blister of gravitational madness encasing the planet.

The ship rose, powered by its own half-failing engines, summoned by the frantic hails from Kiran’s ships, voices that gave it a direction to head in. It was ailing and damaged, they could see that. Many decks were blown out and the hull was ruptured as though titanic battles had been waged on every level. At least one of its main engines was dead and bleeding clouds of lethal atomic blood into the vacuum.

Two of Kiran’s most powerful cruisers, at the admiral’s direction, moved in closer to the struggling revenant and secured tractor beams, slowly hauling back and assisting its desperate ascent from the cauldron of seething cosmological destruction.

‘Identity?’ asked Lord Commander Militant Heth.

‘It’s Aggressor-class, my lord,’ said Kiran, ‘which means it has to be either the Amkulon or the Ambraxas. They were the two Aggressor-class cruisers assigned to the Chapter Master’s undertaking.’

‘Keel number and auto-broadcast codes confirm it is the Amkulon, sir,’ a sensory officer announced.

‘Let’s raise her now she’s clear of the backwash,’ said Kiran. He walked over to the main communication station, where plugged-in operators and servitors worked at the steep banks of titanium keys. They looked as though they were attempting to play some nightmarishly complex cathedral pipe organ, out of which only the clacks and taps of their keys would issue.

‘Connect me,’ said Kiran.

Eerie squeals and screams suddenly blew up out of the vox-speakers, the ambient sound of space being tortured by radiation and gravity. Beeping and pulsing signals resolved out of the screams. Hololithic energies crackled around the cable-fed and rack-mounted hoop of the station’s projector array, and then an image began to shimmer into place, suspended inside the rim of the hoop like soapy water inside a child’s bubble-blower.

There was a great deal of distortion. They could see a face, but it seemed like a face as seen through a white veil of mourning, or some cerecloth for funereal binding.

‘This is Admiral Kiran, commanding the reinforcement squadron. I am speaking from the bridge of my vessel, the Azimuth. Amkulon, can you hear me?’

Static. The moaning of vacuum ghosts.

‘Amkulon, Amkulon, this is Azimuth. Can you hear me?’

‘It is my pleasure to confirm that I can, admiral,’ a broken voice said from the projector and the speakers. ‘We thought we were lost. Lost forever. This is Amkulon. This is Amkulon. Shipmistress Aquilinia speaking.’

‘Aquilinia! By the Throne, it’s good to hear your voice,’ said Kiran.

‘Have you come to save us all, admiral? That will be quite a feat. The brave fleet is gone. Ardamantua is dying and it is taking the last of our best along with it.’

‘Shipmistress,’ Heth said, stepping up beside Kiran. ‘Forgive me, this is Lord Commander Militant Heth. I am commanding this taskforce that has come to reinforce and assist the Imperial Fists effort here.’

‘My most honoured lord,’ the pale, half-seen phantom replied. ‘I never expected that a man so great would come for us.’

‘Can you, shipmistress, account for the situation as you understand it? We have precious little data. Can you give any report?’

‘I have maintained my mission log since these events began,’ Aquilinia replied, the edges of her words shaved off by static. ‘I will link the data directly to your cogitators, so you may inload and review the information in full detail. To summarise — we were close to victory. The blisternest was under assault and due to fall. Ground forces had been despatched, and others were preparing to drop. Then the noise bursts began. You will have heard those. First the noise bursts, then the gravitational anomalies. There were not supposed to be any hazards of that sort in this system, but they ripped through the planet’s nearspace like a plague infection. One of them opened in my starboard drive and crippled us. Saved us, too.’

‘Explain, please, Amkulon,’ instructed the Lord Commander Militant.

‘It nearly brought us down. We had to drop our personnel and troop strengths by boat and teleport. But I managed to arrest our descent by ejecting the damaged core, and we were able to withdraw to a safer high anchor point above the planet where we began repairs. As a result, we were the only vessel a great deal further out when the full gravitational storm erupted. It destroyed the fleet, my lord. I saw ships torn apart, and others fall on fire into the planet. I saw the Lanxium die.’

‘Great God-Emperor!’ Heth whispered.

‘We were far enough out to survive the worst of it, but we were caught inside the wash of the storm, and blinded. All directional input was lost, sir. I could not move for fear of running directly into Ardamantua. I could not move until the sound of your voices showed me which direction was out.’

The battered Amkulon was still pulling clear of the worst spatial distortion. Debris trailed out behind it, whipping back into the gravity well like silver dust. Resolution on the communication image was improving, and the vox quality had got cleaner.

‘The Amkulon was transporting Lotus Gate Company,’ said Maskar to the Lord Commander.

‘Shipmistress?’ called Heth. ‘Did Lotus Gate Company get clear, or are they still with you?’

‘At my instruction,’ she replied, ‘they teleported to the surface. I personally gave Captain Severance the teleport locator wand so that I could recall them if the situation improved. But I lost all contact with the surface. Sir, I did not even know where the surface was. I have kept the locator’s transmission signal on automatic recall, but I fear the captain and his wall are lost to us.’

They could see her on the hololith now. Her bridge was a charred ruin behind her. The image distortion had cleared somewhat, but part of what they had first taken as distortion remained. Shipmistress Aquilinia, and those members of her command crew who were in view, were all swathed head-to-foot in white cloth. It was stained in patches, as if pink fluid was gradually seeping out from within.

‘Radiation burns,’ muttered Kiran. ‘Sweet Throne, I’ve never seen such extensive… They’ve shrouded themselves in protective veils, but they are burned, burned so badly…’

‘Shipmistress,’ Heth announced. ‘We are sending rescue boats to you. Medicae teams will—’

‘Negative,’ she said. Her voice was quiet but firm. ‘We are thoroughly and lethally irradiated, my lord. All of us, poisoned and scorched. We will not survive long. My entire ship is contaminated by the drive damage and utterly deadly. No one must come aboard. To board us is a death sentence.’

‘But—’ Heth protested.

‘You have dragged us from the flames, sir, but we do not have long to live. Stay away. All I can do for you now is present my testament of events and convey all the information I have.’

‘I won’t accept that, shipmistress!’ cried Heth.

‘You must, my lord. A great disaster has overtaken the Imperial Fists here at Ardamantua.’

‘We can plainly see,’ said Kiran, ‘a cosmic event, a gravitational hazard that—’

‘It is not natural, admiral,’ said the shipmistress through the vox-link.

‘Say again?’

‘It is not a natural phenomenon. Ardamantua has not killed us all because of some whim of the universe. This effect is artificial. This location is under direct attack.’

‘Attack?’ echoed Maskar.

‘By what? By the Chromes? The xenoforms?’ asked Heth.

‘I do not believe so, sir,’ answered Aquilinia. ‘There are alien voices in the noise bursts. Listen to them. And watch the rising moon.’

‘Ardamantua has no moon,’ said Kiran.

‘It does now,’ said the shipmistress.

Twenty-One

Ardamantua — orbital

‘That simply cannot be a moon,’ said the Azimuth’s First Navigator, studying the large printout that had been unfolded on the silver display tables of the charting room. ‘It is far, far too close to the planet itself. Look, it is within the very aura of the nearspace disruption. That close, its gravitational effects would split Ardamantua in two.’

‘Am I honestly hearing this?’ asked Heth. ‘We have what appears to be best described as a full-blown gravity storm besetting this planet and coring out the heart of the system, gravitational anomalies all around the nearspace region, and you say—’

‘My lord,’ said the First Navigator. ‘I am quite precise. The gravitational incidents, the disruptions that we are seeing, are considerable. But it is random and it seems to be manufactured by distortions in space. If a planetoid appeared in such close proximity to the world, it would be a much more focused and significant effect. Ardamantua would have shifted in its orbit, perhaps even been knocked headlong. The hazard we are encountering is like sustained damage from a shotgun. A moon… that would be a blow from a power hammer.’

‘But still,’ said Maskar, tapping his finger on the oddly shaded part of the printout. ‘This… What is this?’

‘An imaging artifact,’ said the First Navigator.

‘It’s of considerable size,’ said Maskar.

‘It’s a considerably sized imaging artifact, then, sir.’

‘The Amkulon was an imaging artifact too,’ Heth reminded them quietly. ‘Then it turned out to be a ship.’

‘The physical laws of the universe would simply not permit a moon or other satellite body to move so close to a planet, nor could such a body appear—’

‘I’ve seen daemons,’ Heth growled. ‘Up close. Don’t talk to me about the physical laws of the universe.’

They stood in silence and stared down at the huge printout. The chart room was cool and well-lit, arranged for the study of cosmological documents. The air circulator stirred the edges of the vast vellum sheet that hung over the edges of the silver table.

None of the ships in Kiran’s fleet had been able to detect or resolve anything resembling a moon in the gravitational and radioactive maelstrom surrounding Ardamantua. The printout image had come from the mission log data transmitted to them from the Amkulon. Aquilinia had recorded and stored the auspex scan as she dragged her ship out of its death-dive. This had been shortly before the tumult increased, swallowed her up, and blinded her.

‘We have examined the resolution,’ said one of the several tech-adepts assembled in the chamber. ‘The so-called “moon image” is indeed a ghost. Verifiable data is hard to find, of course, but that object seems to be only partly material, as if it is an echo of something not quite there.’

‘An imaging artifact!’ the First Navigator declared.

‘No, sir,’ said the tech-adept. ‘It is like something trying to emerge. To pass through. To translate. As if through a warp gate.’

‘Hellsteeth!’ cried Heth. ‘Then who or what are we dealing with?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Admiral Kiran, ‘but I place my full-throated support behind your efforts to pursue this, sir, rather than giving it up as a dismal and lost cause. We must find out what is happening here, and who has wrought it. Because if they can move a planetary body here, then they can pretty much move one anywhere, and do anything.’

Twenty-Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The meeting done, Wienand dismissed the four interrogators. They rose from their seats, bowed to her, raised their hoods, and left the tower-top chamber.

The Inquisitorial Representative sat alone with her thoughts for a while. There were documents and advisories to review, and her rubricator had been urging her to annotate the latest watch list.

Time enough for all of that later. The morning’s news had been grim — pretty much exactly what she had been anticipating, but grim. Her masters in the three sub-divisions of the Inquisition expected much of her, and they had set her in place among the Twelve to accomplish a great deal, but it was a complicated dance, a matter of balance and timing. The Inquisition was an instrument of the Imperium. It did not set Imperial policy.

Unless it knew best, in which case it could not be seen to set Imperial policy.

Wienand’s quarters were an eight-level suite in the armoured crown of a tower overlooking Bastion Ledge and the Water Gardens. There was not much of a view because of the tower’s ample fortification. Agents of the Inquisition had added defences of a more specialised nature when the tower was acquired for the Representative’s use. The very walls and the armourglass of the windows were threaded with protective wards woven from molecular silver fibres, and potent runes had been discreetly worked into the patterns of decorative ornamentation on the carpets and ceilings. Automatic weapon arrays and intruder denial systems had been retrofitted into every staircase, doorway and floorspace, and most of the servitors were wired for weapon activation at a moment’s notice. The suite was cloaked, in addition, by multiple counter-surveillance fields, and several more exotic effects derived from the esoteric arts that the Inquisition both practised and guarded against. A cone of silence, psychically generated yet psychically opaque, covered the uppermost storeys, and there was even a Mars-built, engine-rated void shield in the tower core that could be activated by voice command.

Wienand rose to her feet. She was dressed in a simple, full-length gown of pale grey wool. Her rosette adorned her wrist, as a bracelet. She felt she should summon her rubricator and begin the day’s correspondence, but she was enjoying the solitude, the calm emptiness of the room.

She walked to the side table beside her desk and poured herself a glass of water from the fluted crystal jug, wishing her mind were as clear as the cool water. She raised the glass to her lips.

‘There really could be anything in that, you know.’

Wienand tried not to react. She maintained her composure with an extraordinary, invisible effort. Without sipping, she set the glass down again and returned to her seat at the desk without making any eye contact, or any outward show that there should be anything troubling in the fact that Drakan Vangorich was suddenly sitting in one of the seats vacated by the interrogators.

‘Such as?’ she asked, moving some papers.

‘Oh, toxins,’ said Vangorich. ‘I hear toxins are very popular. Untraceable, of course. Not necessarily lethal, but certainly mood-altering, or behaviour-modifying. Toxins that make you compliant and suggestible. Toxins that render you open to autohypnotic implanting. All sorts of things.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t you have a taster? An official taster? I thought you would have. A person like you.’

‘I’ll recruit one if it makes you happy,’ she said.

‘I’m only concerned for you. For a friend.’

She looked at him, directly. He was smiling, and the smile did not sit well with his scar.

‘Why? Did you place a toxin in my water, Drakan?’

He shook his head.

‘Throne, no. No, no. Why would I? What an awful thought.’

He paused, and looked her in the eyes.

‘But I could have done. Anyone could have done, that’s my point.’

‘No one could have, Drakan.’

‘Why is that?’ he asked sweetly.

‘Because no one—’

She broke off.

‘Because no one can get in here?’ he asked. ‘Well, I seem to put the lie to that.’

He rose to his feet.

‘You really are the most composed person, Wienand. Applause for that. Not even the courtesy of mild surprise at finding me here.’

‘I should not be surprised,’ she said.

‘Even though your security advisor told you that this suite had a triple-aquila secure rating that nothing short of a primarch could get past?’

She didn’t blink.

‘I was quoting directly from his written report submitted for your approval nine months ago.’

‘I know.’

‘Page eighteen, line twenty-four.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Quite a colourful turn of phrase… “Nothing short of a primarch…” though not terribly technical.’

‘I agree.’

‘And not terribly accurate,’ he said.

‘I noticed.’

‘I’d sack him, if I were you.’

‘Drakan,’ she said, done with his games, ‘I’m impressed. All right? Does that satisfy you? I’m impressed that you got in here without setting off any alarm or countermeasure. It is almost inhumanly chilling that you were able to do so.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘For what it’s worth, when it comes to the private Palace apartments of the High Twelve, this is by far the hardest to get into.’

He looked at her and affected an expression of innocence.

‘So I’m told,’ he said.

‘I presume you came here for a purpose,’ she said.

He sat down again, leaned back and crossed his legs.

‘I presume,’ he echoed, ‘that you read the transcripts this morning?’

‘In particular?’ she asked.

He sighed.

‘You’re really going to make me work for it, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘The first intercepts are back from Heth’s valiant rescue mission. Ardamantua is a mess. Worse than could be imagined. The sheer scale of the loss isn’t yet reckoned, nor is the true nature of the threat. But… it’s bad news.’

‘Yes, I saw that,’ Wienand replied.

‘You’re very calm about it,’ he observed.

‘There’s no point panicking,’ she answered. ‘There’s every point making a considered and rational response. It is a threat. A severe threat.’

‘Just as you originally suggested,’ he said. ‘That’s why I thought I’d come and have a little word with you. You used me slightly, Wienand. You used me to move against Lansung in the Senatorum. That’s fine. I quite enjoyed it. It’s nice to feel wanted. You were concerned about the threat, because no one seemed to be taking it particularly seriously, but you were far more concerned with Lansung and his power bloc of allies, and the way the threat — and others like it — might be mishandled by them. It was a political manoeuvre to realign the High Lords. That’s how you sold it to me.’

‘Agreed. So?’

‘The threat’s very, very real, Wienand. It’s not a valid excuse for brokering, it’s a palpable problem. And I think you knew it was when you co-opted me. What does the Inquisition know that the rest of us don’t?’

‘I was concerned with Lansung’s high-handed attitude towards—’

Vangorich raised a hand.

‘There is a threat to the Imperium that is of far greater magnitude than anyone imagines, but the Inquisition is reluctant to disclose it. Instead, the Inquisition attempts to use political subterfuge to alter Imperial doctrine and policy.’

‘Not so,’ she said.

‘One would hope not, or that might be regarded very badly. The Inquisition taking over effective control of Imperial policy? There’s a word for that.’

‘A word?’

‘The word is “coup”.’

‘Drakan,’ she said, ‘you’re beginning to frustrate me with your paranoia. The Inquisition is not attempting to mount a political coup from within the Senatorum.’

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it would seem to be one thing or the other. Either the Inquisition is trying to take control because it knows something the rest of us don’t, or you really are very concerned at the fitness of Lansung and his kind to sit at the high table.’

She said nothing.

‘What is the threat, Wienand?’

‘It is what it is.’

‘What is the nature of the threat?’

‘You know as much as I do, Grand Master. It is a xenos threat that requires attention.’

He rose again.

‘So you’re sticking to your story. This is all about your concern about power balance and the fitness of Lansung, Udo and the others to rule?’

She nodded.

‘Well, that rather makes it my problem, then, doesn’t it? An issue for my Officio?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, with a slight note of anxiety.

‘Well, if any High Lord is deemed by his peers to be unfit or unworthy, the ultimate sanction has always been the Officio Assassinorum. It’s why we exist. It is our purview. Political subterfuge is entirely a waste of time when you have the Officio to clean house.’

‘Vangorich, don’t be medieval.’

He leaned on her desk and stared into her face.

‘Then I suggest you start trusting me,’ he said. ‘Tell me the nature of this threat. Share it with all of us. Tell me what is so terrible. What scares the Inquisition so much it needs to take control of Imperial policy? What do you know?’

She stared back at him, and hesitated.

Then she said, ‘There’s nothing. Nothing to tell.’

He stood up straight.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see. If that’s all you’ll say, I see I must take you at your word. I suppose I had better get about my business.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Drakan, what are you suggesting?’

He walked to her side table, picked up the glass of water she had poured, and drank it down.

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ he said. ‘I am going about my business and performing the duties entrusted to me.’

He walked towards the door.

‘Drakan,’ she called after him. ‘Don’t do anything. Don’t do anything foolish. Please. This situation is very sensitive. This moment… You mustn’t act rashly.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ he replied. ‘But if no one tells me where the sensitivities lie, I cannot help but step on them, can I?’

The door opened, and Wienand’s bodyguard Kalthro strode in, a pistol raised. He halted when he saw Vangorich.

‘Far too little,’ Vangorich told him as he strode past, ‘far too late.’

Twenty-Three

Ardamantua

Daylight led the way over the broken ridge and down into the rubble-strewn valley where the lake spread out under a black sky. His armour, and the plate armour of the other three Imperial Fists, was spattered with ichor. No one had made any attempt to clean it off. They had left the field on the other side of the ridge strewn with dead xenos, piled high. It had plainly astonished Major Nyman and the Asmodai troopers, who had moved in towards the end and helped to slay the last few dozen with targeted fire.

Gravity, shifting and flexing like an invisible serpent through earth and air, shattered a distant row of hills with a noise like thunder. The clouds boiled past overhead, on fast-play. Flames of red, green and yellow danced around the ridges of broken rock and upturned, split earth.

‘Once we reach the lake, then what?’ asked Bastion Ledge.

‘From the lake, the nest,’ replied Daylight.

‘Then?’ Bastion Ledge asked.

‘Then we look for survivors,’ replied Daylight. ‘For signs.’

‘And if we find none?’

‘We look elsewhere.’

‘And if more of those things appear?’ Bastion Ledge asked.

‘Then we kill more of those things,’ said Daylight.

They skirted a series of murky pools and crooked ponds that were offshoots of the lake, their trudging figures reflected in the water, the running sky behind them. The wind blew. The noise bursts continued to break the air, howling barks that came from everywhere and nowhere.

The gravity blister popped without any warning except a slight shrug of physical matter. A random anomaly, it opened on the edge of one of the pools about fifty metres from their procession. The physicality of the world, the rocks, the air and the pool altered instantaneously. It went off like a bomb, hurling tonnes of stone and soil into the air sideways, like a blizzard. The ground broke open and water turned to steam. The main volume of the pool surged in the opposite direction in a spontaneous tidal wave three metres tall, and broke across the next ridge with enough force to shatter rock.

Flying rocks and debris, along with mud and water, ripped along the line of Daylight’s party. The Guardsmen were knocked off their feet. One died, his head crushed by a boulder. Only the frail, mind-addled tech-adept, bewildered and confused, remained upright.

Rocks and stones rained off the Imperial Fists, pelting their armour. In that instant, Daylight once again felt the uneasy fear. The Imperial Fists excelled at holding ground, but how did a warrior do that when the ground itself couldn’t be trusted?

The thought barely had time to form before another blister ripped the world open. It was smaller than the first, a gravitic aftershock, but it was right under them. Two of the Asmodai simply atomised, turning into clouds of blood and whizzing armour shreds, their forms lost in the explosive upchuck of rock and bludgeoning concussion.

Bastion Ledge died too.

As the smoke and steam cleared, and the last of the rock debris rained down and skittered around them, as the ground stopped shaking, Daylight saw his wall-brother. Half of Bastion Ledge, most of the left-hand side of his body, was missing. It was folded and compressed in on itself, flesh, bone and armour alike. He looked as though he had been snatched up by a giant and squeezed until he was crushed like a tin cup. Black blood drenched his buckled, ruined wargear.

Zarathustra knelt beside him to check for vitals, but they all knew it was in vain. Bastion was gone, killed by the world, killed by the ground, killed by the forces of nature they ought to have been able to trust.

For a second, Daylight felt hopelessness, but there was no time to consider such luxuries as emotions.

A third gravity blister blew out on the far side of the valley, and the boom rolled around the outcrops. It hardly mattered. There was a more immediate threat.

Major Nyman was shouting. He’d ripped his helmet off so he could be heard and he was yelling, gasping in the thin air.

Daylight turned.

Chromes were coming out of the stretch of lake behind them, scrambling towards the shore. They were all large, dark, mature and powerful. Flying rocks hurled by the third gravity detonation hammered across the lake, killing several of them and sending up spouts of water, as though heavy-calibre gunfire were peppering the surface. The Chromes churned on regardless, bounding up the stony shore to attack the Imperial party.

Nyman and his men began to fire, though some of the Asmodai were still dazed from the triple hammerblow of the gravity blisters. Zarathustra sprang up and charged down the slope into the water, impaling first one and then a second dark Chrome with his war-spear. He felled a third with a savage back-thrust of the spear’s haft, and then threw himself full-length to tackle a Chrome in the shallows that was bearing down on Major Nyman. Nyman’s repeated shots were not slowing it down. Zarathustra knocked the creature sideways, and then tangled into a wrestling brawl with it, kicking up sprays of froth and water.

Tranquility used his boltgun as he moved down the shore, picking off two more of the Chromes that had come too close to the Asmodai line. His mass-reactive shells stopped them dead in a way that the poor Guardsmen’s las-rounds could not. It took sustained, saturating fire to stop a warrior-form with a lasrifle. Having bought enough time with his shots to get at the Chromes close-quarters, Tranquility holstered his bolter and unslung the power hammer from his backplate. He crushed one Chrome’s skull down into its shoulders and then struck another sideways, into the shallows. Its cranium split and ichor sprayed out. A third, attacking the Imperial Fist furiously, was knocked back with the butt of the haft, leaving it open for a downward smash of the head that ruptured it like a well-cooked piece of shellfish.

Ichor stained the frothing surface of the lake at the shallows.

Daylight met the attack with his gladius in his right hand and his combat knife in his left. He stabbed his sword through a sternum plate, and then slashed a mouth and throat open with his knife. As his second kill fell back, Daylight used the combat knife to block the striking claws of a third Chrome warrior-form, shoved the creature’s limbs up and aside, and ripped his sword through its exposed midriff with a sideways slash.

A fourth Chrome closed. Daylight outstepped its charge and hacked his sword edge into its spine as it passed him, dropping it on its face into the pool. A fifth beast ran onto his extended knife. A sixth died from a cross cut, a double slash of both weapons that ran from shoulders to hips.

A particularly large Chrome seized Daylight from behind, sawing into his armour with its claws, gnawing into his backplate with its mouthparts. It hoisted him off his feet, backwards, tilting.

Daylight inverted his grip on both blades, letting them fall out of his hands so he could catch them again reversed, and then stabbed past either side of his hips with the sword and the knife, impaling the torso that was braced against his. The Chrome burst at the wound points and sprayed ichor. It collapsed, pulling Daylight down with it into the water in a thrashing commotion.

Others rushed at him, trying to rip into the Imperial Fists wall-brother before he could regain his footing. Zarathustra and some of the Asmodai saw this and moved to support. The Guardsmen fired at the thrashing Chromes, and Zarathustra charged them, spear raised.

Gunfire raked the surface of the pool, cutting down dozens of the Chromes. It resembled the fury of spume and spouts that had been kicked up by the rock debris, but it was real gunfire.

Rotor cannons.

Tranquility turned.

Zarathustra reached Daylight and hauled him upright, stabbing at the Chromes that tried to mob and menace them.

Figures moved down the stony shore towards them, a squad of men. Two in the lead carried rotor cannons, firing bursts into the pool as they approached to drive back the xenoforms.

They were Imperial Fists.

Daylight crunched up the shoreline out of the water to meet them, Zarathustra at his heels.

The squad commander faced them, and removed his helm.

‘Severance, captain, Lotus Gate Wall,’ he said. ‘Where did you come from?’

Twenty-Four

Ardamantua

‘We’ve been on the surface six weeks,’ said Severance. ‘At least, I presume it’s about that long. Gravity distortion is so prolific planetside, I feel we can’t trust any other laws. Several suit chronometers are showing significant time variances. This world is not aligned with the natural flow of the cosmos.’

‘Increasingly so,’ Daylight agreed. ‘Six weeks is a reasonable estimate. We’ve been in transit roughly that long, from Terra.’

‘Who’s with you?’ asked Severance.

‘Everything that was left. The Phalanx is emptied and the walls of the Palace are bare. We’ve got a decent fleet support, and a substantial Guard cohort.’

Severance shook his head.

‘I can’t believe we’ve left the walls bare. I can’t. If Mirhen…’

‘Does the beloved Chapter Master still live?’ asked Daylight.

Severance shrugged.

‘My wall made an emergency drop to the surface via teleport when the Amkulon was holed. It was an extreme measure, and I would rather not have abandoned the vessel.’

Daylight saw that Captain Severance carried a battered teleport locator on his harness. A power light showed that it was still, futilely, activated.

‘By the time we were down, we were blind,’ Severance continued. ‘The gravity storm had closed in. We’ve been scouring the surface for survivors or contacts ever since. We saw drop-ships. Stormbirds? That’s what brought us this way.’

‘You must have been in the vicinity already,’ said Zarathustra.

‘Yes,’ said Severance. ‘We managed to identify this zone, despite the geological upheavals, as the site of the original blisternest, so my wall has been section-searching the area to look for survivors.’

‘And ammunition,’ remarked Severance’s second-in-command, Merciful. His tone was mordant.

Daylight smiled. He was amused that both he and Severance had independently lighted on the same strategy. It reassured him that the core training of the Chapter was both profound and reliable.

‘Have you found anything?’ asked Zarathustra.

‘A few pitiful dead,’ replied Merciful. ‘Crushed by the tormented planet or overthrown by the Chromes.’

‘They’re not the real enemy,’ said Severance.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Tranquility.

‘The Chromes are just a hazard, and the cause of our undertaking here,’ Severance replied. ‘But there’s something else. Something that wasn’t here before. You can feel it. You can hear its voice on the wind.’

As if to underscore his remark, noise bursts echoed across the valley.

‘Substantiate that,’ said Daylight very directly.

‘I cannot,’ Severance replied. ‘It’s a gut feeling.’

‘The walls do not deal in gut feelings,’ said Daylight. ‘The shield-corps relies on what is verifiable.’

He looked at Severance uneasily. Perhaps the brother had been here too long, subjected to the extremities of the environment. Perhaps gravity, or one of the other natural or even unnatural forces being twisted and convoluted on Ardamantua, had affected his personality or his brain chemistry. Where Daylight had felt reassured by the overlap of their tactical decisions, he now felt a distance, as if the bond of the shield and wall did not connect them at all.

‘Have you seen the shape in the sky?’ Severance asked.

‘What? No,’ said Daylight.

‘Some things cannot be substantiated,’ said Severance. He rose from where he had been sitting on the boulders scattered at the shore and gestured Daylight to follow him. Daylight did so reluctantly. The pair clambered up an outcrop overlooking the dark mirror of the lake.’

‘Wait,’ said Severance. ‘Look.’

‘At what? What am I looking at? The sky?’

‘No, look at the lake.’

‘You asked if I had seen the thing in the sky—’

‘Be patient, Daylight. It comes and goes.’

They waited. Daylight felt he was wasting valuable time.

‘Look,’ said Severance.

The scudding, racing cloud-cover, moving across the heavens like a black lava flow, parted briefly, riven by the wind and orbital disruption. Sunlight speared through in a pale beam. The sky beyond the cloud was white and blank, like static. There was nothing to be seen.

But in the lake…

Daylight started. It was there and gone in an instant, but he had seen it. He reset his visor recorder for immediate playback, and then froze the image.

Therein, the clouds were parted, drawn like drapes to show a colourless sky where nothing resided. In the reflection below, however, trapped in the surface of the lake, the patch of bright sky did contain something.

Something large and ominous, an orb that seemed to press down on the wounded planet.

It was a moon. A black, ungodly, hideous moon.

Twenty-Five

Ardamantua

They had been walking around the lake edge in the company of Severance’s squad for several hours when they spotted the flare.

It lofted up in the distance, an incandescently bright pin-prick, then shivered as it hung in place, before fading and falling away, all effort spent.

‘One of mine!’ Severance cried. ‘Move!’

They began to make the best pace possible. As the leaders ran ahead, Captain Severance told Daylight that his subdivided wall had agreed to use basic flares and visual signals to stay in contact, given that everything up to and including short-range helm-to-helm vox was useless.

The ragged Asmodai troopers couldn’t keep up. Major Nyman had put his helmet back on, exhausted by the impure air, but rather more troubled by the constant noise bursts. Even those Asmodai who had kept the visors of their orbital drop-suits firmly sealed since planetfall were feeling the effects. The noise bursts echoed into the cavities of their helmets and armour, unsettling them. It was psychologically hammering them.

Severance pointed to four of his men and told them to stay with the Guardsmen and bring them along behind. Then he set out at full pace.

It took them half an hour to reach the origin of the signal flare. Daylight was beside Severance as they slowed to approach.

It was a second search party from Lotus Gate Wall, commanded by a sergeant called Diligent.

‘Good to see you, sir,’ the sergeant called out. He hesitated as he saw Daylight and the other Space Marines new to him.

‘I see you’ve made discoveries of your own,’ he remarked.

‘What did you find?’ asked Severance.

‘The blisternest, or what’s left of it,’ said Diligent. ‘And survivors.’

The survivors of the original undertaking assault had taken shelter in the ruins of the blisternest, using its structure to weather out the worst the gravity storms threw at them. They had, in the weeks since, constructed a makeshift stockade from boulders, wreckage and parts of the nest structure.

Inside the jagged walls, there were men from Ballad Gateway, Hemispheric, Anterior Six Gate and Daylight walls, about one hundred and thirty of them all told, together with a few, fragile servitors. There was no substantial equipment, no heavy weapons or vehicles with them, and precious little munitions supply.

First Captain Algerin of Hemispheric had command.

‘Well met in bad days,’ he said to Severance and Daylight. He looked at Daylight, and at Tranquility and Zarathustra nearby.

‘You left the walls unguarded to come for us? I’m not sure I approve.’

‘You’re not the first person to express that thought, captain,’ said Daylight. ‘We made our choice. The Chapter was beset.’

‘Worse than beset,’ said Algerin. His voice dropped. ‘Worse than beset.’

He looked at the ground. His armour was almost black with filth, and it showed hundreds of nicks and gouges from Chrome claws.

‘The Chapter Master is dead,’ he said, aiming each word like a las-bolt at the ground. ‘He reached the surface by teleport before the flagship was lost. He came to us. He was with us for three weeks. Chromes took him. Rent him. There were three hundred of us then. They wear us down. There are so many of them. Attrition, the coward’s tactic.’

Algerin looked at them.

‘He was so angry,’ he said. ‘Mirhen, such a great man, but so angry. He railed at the gods, at the stars, to see his fleet wrecked and his Chapter shredded, and the honour that has carried us through at the forefront of all Chapters, since the very start, shredded away… by animals. By vermin and a crooked planet.’

He took a breath.

‘They killed him because of his anger, you know,’ he said. ‘He wanted to kill them. He wanted to kill them all, but there were too many. I tried to pull him back. He—’

Algerin stopped. He looked at Daylight.

‘You have brought ships to take us off here, wall-brother?’ he asked.

‘I have,’ replied Daylight. ‘But conditions are still bad. We have to devise a way for them to get close enough to effect evac.’

‘I don’t think conditions will improve,’ said Algerin. ‘Not any time soon.’

He looked up as Severance’s men brought the Asmodai stragglers into the makeshift fortification.

‘Men,’ he said, unimpressed. ‘They will not last long. We had about fifty auxiliaries with us at the start. The noises drove them mad in the first week. We had to… It wasn’t a good situation. Only one of them survived. I suspect it’s because he was scatter-brained to begin with. He’s determined though, I’ll give him that. Determined to puzzle it out.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Daylight.

‘See for yourself,’ Algerin invited. ‘He’s with one of yours.’

‘I am Slaughter,’ said the second captain of Daylight Wall Company.

‘I am… Daylight,’ said Daylight.

‘I’m glad of the sight of you,’ said Slaughter. ‘You came for us. That won’t be forgotten.’

Daylight nodded. ‘I am heartened to hear that sentiment from one mouth at least. Who is your charge here?’ he asked. A bedraggled and filthy human in ragged robes was hunkered in the corner of the nest chamber, working at various pieces of Imperial apparatus. The devices, stacked and piled against the chamber wall, many of them damaged, were running off battery power. Several of them had clearly been customised, refitted, or repurposed.

‘He is the magos biologis sent to accompany our mission,’ Slaughter explained. The chamber was gloomy and dank, part of the surviving underground burrows of the blisternest. Water dripped from the organic arch of the roof.

‘He was supposed to study the xenoforms while we killed them. I was set to guard him when our fortunes changed. I’ve been doing that ever since, pretty much.’

They approached the scientist. He was intent on his work, muttering to himself. He was in need of a decent shave. His hair, dirty and unruly, had been clipped back in a bunch using the bent clasp of an ammunition pack.

‘His name is Laurentis,’ said Slaughter.

‘Magos,’ said Daylight, crouching beside the magos biologis. ‘Magos? I am Daylight.’

Laurentis looked at him for a moment.

‘Oh, a new one,’ he said. ‘You’re new. He’s new, Slaughter. See? See, there? I’m beginning to tell you apart.’

He smiled.

Noise bursts echoed outside the chamber, and Laurentis winced and rubbed his ears roughly with begrimed knuckles.

‘The wavelength is changing. It’s changing. Today, and these last few days. Greater intensity. Yes, greater intensity.’

The magos biologis looked at them as if they might understand.

‘I had specialist equipment,’ he said. ‘I was sent it by the Chapter Master himself…’

He paused, and thought, his eyes darkening.

‘He’s dead now, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Slaughter.

‘Well, yes. Sad. Anyway, before that happened, him, dying, he sent me equipment. I asked him for it. Specialist equipment. I asked for it, you see? But so much of it was damaged before I could use it. Everything went a bit crazy. Yes, a bit crazy.’

‘The magos believed from the very outset,’ Slaughter said to Daylight, ‘that the noise bursts were a form of communication. He wanted to decipher them. A drop of specialist equipment to allow him to do that was arranged, but it had been overrun by Chromes and half-scrapped by the time we got to it.’

‘Communication,’ said Daylight. ‘From the Chromes?’

‘I thought so at first,’ said Laurentis, jumping up suddenly to stretch his cramping legs. ‘Yes, yes, I did. At first. I thought we had underestimated the technical abilities of the Chromes. I thought we had underestimated their sapience. They migrate from world to world. That suggested a great capacity for… for, uhm…’

Another noise burst, a longer one, had just echoed though the darkness of the stockade and the ruined nest, and it had rather distracted him.

‘What was I saying?’ he asked them, digging his knuckles into his ears again and jiggling his head.

‘Communication?’ prompted Daylight. He remembered very clearly what had been spoken of on the bridge of the Azimuth. The noises coming from Ardamantua read as organic — boosted and amplified for broadcast, but organic. Like a voice. ‘You believe it’s communication?’ he pressed.

‘Yes! Yes! That’s what I thought! That was my theory, and it seemed a valid one. I thought the Chromes were trying to surrender, or negotiate peace, that’s what I thought at first. Do you remember me saying that, Slaughter?’

‘I do, magos,’ said Slaughter.

‘Then I thought they might be trying to compose a challenge. Then I thought they might be warning us, you know, warning us not to mess with them. Then, then I thought they might be trying to warn us about something else.’

‘Like what?’ asked Daylight.

‘Well,’ said Laurentis, ‘it doesn’t much matter, because I don’t believe it is them at all any more. Do I, Slaughter?’

‘You don’t,’ said Slaughter.

‘I think it’s someone else. Yes, that’s what I think. Someone else.’

The magos biologis looked at them both.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think I’d like you to explain more,’ said Daylight. ‘Who do you think this someone else is?’

Laurentis shrugged.

‘Someone very advanced,’ he said. ‘Very advanced. Take gravity, for example. They are very, very advanced in that field. Gravitic engineering! Imagine! They’re shifting something. And this world, it’s just the delivery point.’

‘What are they shifting?’

‘Something very big,’ said Laurentis.

‘A moon?’ asked Daylight. Slaughter looked at him sharply.

‘It could be a moon. Yes, it could be,’ said Laurentis. ‘You’ve seen the reflection in the lake, have you?’

‘I have,’ said Daylight.

‘Whatever it is, it’s still in transition. If it’s a moon or a planetoid… well, Throne save us all. That’s a different class of everything. I mean, we can terraform, we can even realign small planetoids in-system. But shifting planetary bodies on an interstellar range? That’s… god-like. There are rumours, of course. Stories. Myths. They say that the ancients, the precursor races, they say they had power of that magnitude. Even the eldar once, at the very peak of their culture. But not any more. No one can do that any more. Not on that scale.’

‘Except… whoever the voice belongs to?’ asked Daylight.

‘Yes, well, perhaps,’ said Laurentis.

‘And who does the voice belong to?’ asked Daylight.

Noises boomed and howled. Laurentis scrabbled at his ears again like a man with headlice, and pulled a pained face.

‘That’s the real trick, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Knowing that. Knowing that thing. We’d have to translate the words first, and find out what they were saying. Maybe… maybe they’re introducing themselves to us? Maybe this is a contact message. A hello. I’ve spent six weeks trying to figure that out…’

He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed his makeshift pile of devices and equipment.

‘…six weeks, working with these items, which are hardly ideal. It’s so hard to jury-rig what I’m missing. The parsing cogitators are a particular loss. And the vocalisation monitors. I’ve made do with quite a lot, actually, quite a lot, but Throne alive! What I wouldn’t give for a decent grade tech-servitor, or a vox-servitor… or… or an augmetic receiver. Cranial! Cranial implants! I never took them myself, you see?’

‘If this is contact,’ asked Daylight, ‘it’s surely hostile?’

Laurentis nodded, blinking away another noise burst with a shake of his head. ‘I mean, definitely. Definitely. But it would still be worth hearing what it had to say for itself.’

‘You would confirm a hostile intent, then?’

‘I don’t have to!’ Laurentis exclaimed. ‘Look at the rats!’

‘The rats?’ asked Daylight.

‘No, not rats. The Chromes. That’s what I mean. The Chromes. Like rats. You can gather so much data by observing the behaviour patterns and habits of animals. Rats. Remember when I first called them rats, Slaughter? Remember that?’

‘I do, magos,’ said Slaughter.

‘I said it as a joke, at first,’ said Laurentis. ‘I said it because their behaviour reminded me of rat behaviour. Rats suddenly turning hostile and flooding into a new area with great and uncharacteristic aggression. It can be very scary. Very dangerous. They’re not a threat. They live under the floorboards and in the walls for years, never harming anyone, and then they are turned into a threat. Turned into one!’

‘How?’ asked Daylight.

‘Because they are threatened, by a greater natural predator. Something they fear. Yes, fear enough to make them attack things they would not normally attack. In this case, the Imperium. And Space Marines! Goodness me, the Chromes are just animals. They are just vermin! They’re rats, rats, you see? We’re fighting them because they’ve been driven into our zones of space by something they do not want to be around. They are fleeing, fleeing for their lives, and it’s made them desperate enough to battle us.’

He looked at them both.

‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he asked, pleased with himself. He grinned. Daylight noticed that, at some point, several of the magos biologis’ teeth had been knocked out. The gappy smile made him look more like an eager child than a credible expert.

‘If they’re animals, how are they travelling between worlds?’ asked Daylight. ‘How are they effecting interstellar and void transport?’

Laurentis clapped his hands and did a little jig.

‘That’s another thing, you see? You see? That’s sort of what clinches it because it neatly answers the other mystery! How do the Chromes get from world to world? How do they migrate? What explains their diaspora? Nothing! They can’t do it! They’re animals! QED something is bringing them here! They’re moving through the tunnels!’

‘The… tunnels?’ asked Daylight.

‘Yes. Tunnels. There’s probably a better word for it. I haven’t really worked this material up into a presentation form yet. Tunnels will have to do. The tunnels built by whoever the voice belongs to.’

He looked at Slaughter, and then Daylight, then back to Slaughter.

‘Whoever owns the voice,’ he said quietly, as though someone might overhear, ‘is equipped with a highly superior tech level. They can manipulate, at a fundamental level, gravity and other primary forces of the universe. They can, so it would appear, reposition planetary bodies over interstellar distances. They do this by constructing tunnels — let’s use that word — tunnels through space. Perhaps through the warp itself, as we understand it — not that we really understand it, mind — or through some closely associated stratum of subspace. Perhaps a gravitational sublayer, or even a teleportational vector. I can’t really be sure yet, so let’s simply settle on the term “subspace tunnel”, shall we? Now the Chromes, they’re vermin, you see? Pests? They live in that subspace realm we’re talking about. Like rats live in an attic or a sewer. The subspace realm is an attic of the universe we don’t ever see. A cosmic sewer. And as the owner of the voice moves through that attic… subspace realm… you still with me? As the owner of the voice does that, it drives them ahead of it.’

‘The Chromes are spread indirectly,’ said Daylight, ‘via the transportational rifts constructed by this… unknown xenoform.’

‘Very well put!’ Laurentis exclaimed. ‘Can I write that down? Like rats in an attic that’s on fire, the Chromes are being driven out ahead of the flames, fighting anything that gets in their way. Or like rats in a sewer, where there are big lizards of some sort, and the big lizards are trying to eat them, so they’re afraid and they’re running away from the big lizards and—’

‘I get it,’ said Daylight. ‘Calm yourself, magos.’

He looked over at Slaughter.

‘We very much need to find out what’s coming, captain,’ he said.

Slaughter nodded.

‘It’s not going to be pretty when it arrives,’ said Laurentis, quieter now. ‘It’s an immense threat. The Chromes may be pests, and essentially non-sentient, but they are durable, and resilient and highly numerous, and their entire population — whole nests, whole family communities, millions strong — is being forced to flee for parsecs across the galaxy, through the cellars and chimneys of space.’

He paused.

‘Just like rats.’

Daylight was thinking.

‘Did you say,’ he asked the magos biologis suddenly, ‘that you needed a servitor? What about a tech-adept? Would a tech-adept do?’

Twenty-Six

Ardamantua

‘But his primary socket’s ripped out!’ Laurentis complained.

‘He was hurt during the crash,’ Major Nyman explained patiently. He had opened the faceplate of his atmospheric suit so he could be heard. The major clearly didn’t trust the filthy, matted magos biologis at all. He was wary of his manic, agitated behaviour. ‘He’s been hurt. Stop manhandling him.’

‘Please be calm, major,’ said Daylight. ‘Magos, perhaps you could be a little more gentle with the adept? He is injured and hardly in the best shape.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Laurentis said.

Nyman and two of his Asmodai had brought the tech-adept into the magos biologis’s chamber, and were helping him settle on a seat made of a munition crate beside Laurentis’s repurposed workstation.

The humans had all been fed from some of the rations in the stockade’s supplies. They’d been given purified water too. First Captain Algerin didn’t think much of their survival odds. Humans, in his experience, had about four or five days’ tolerance for the conditions of Ardamantua. Algerin also didn’t seem to think much of Daylight’s interest in the magos biologis’ theories. To Algerin, Laurentis was an eccentric who had been driven half-mad by his prolonged exposure to the environment, and was probably fairly deranged and obsessive in the first place. ‘It’s a miracle he’s survived this long,’ Algerin had remarked, and Daylight wasn’t clear if that meant Algerin was surprised that Laurentis had outlasted the other human survivors, or if he thought it was a miracle he hadn’t silenced the magos long since.

The tech-adept seemed a little calmer for food and water, and also to be out of the open, in a place where the noise bursts were more muffled. Nevertheless, his eyes were still dead and wandering, and his movements jerky. The sudden attention and manic eagerness of the tattered magos made him shrink back, timid and alarmed.

The magos made soothing, cooing noises, and began to examine the ruined primary plug in the back of the tech-adept’s neck. The touch of his fingers on the blood-crusted injury made the adept wince. Laurentis made a tutting sound and looked elsewhere.

‘Secondary plugs,’ he said, with some relief. ‘Here in the sternum, and under the arms. Also the spine. Not as clean and direct as a primary cortex, but it should do the trick. Yes, very good, under the circumstances.’

He looked sidelong at Daylight and whispered, ‘The fellow looks a little ropey, though, sir. A little wobbly.’

‘He’s been injured,’ said Daylight. ‘In the crash. So he might be a limited resource. He’s not strong or mentally robust.’

‘Crash. Right. Yes, I remember you saying that,’ said Laurentis. ‘I’ll just have to use whatever I can.’

He began fiddling with the dirty brass dials and levers of his machinery. Oscilloscopes flashed and pulsed, and small hololithic monitors lit up, displaying angry storms of ambient noise. The relayed echoes of noise bursts and other background sonics, most of them from the upper atmosphere and nearspace, fluttered out of the speakers at low volume.

The tech-adept shivered as a series of long, low, booming noise bursts filled the air outside. He shivered again as Laurentis began to connect jack leads to his implant sockets. His eyes rolled back as the last lead plugged into his spinal augmetic and linked to his damaged cortex.

‘I’ve had the basic parsing program complete for over a week,’ Laurentis explained as he worked. ‘I mean, it was relatively simple. Relatively. The problem was the lack of a decent vocalisation monitor. I basically made the translation, but I couldn’t read it, you see? I couldn’t read it. To read or hear the translation, you need to pass the translated data-stream through the language centres of a live cortex. The language centres sort of do the work for you. They get the signal and interpret it.’

He looked at Daylight as he adjusted some settings on the devices, and then tweaked the fit of the adept’s sternum plug.

‘I thought of using my own language centres,’ he said pleasantly. ‘That would work. Except I don’t have the cranial plug. No cranial plug. There are ways around that, I suppose, but I couldn’t find a knife clean enough.’

The adept suddenly stiffened. His spine went rigid. His head started to twitch.

‘That’s good,’ said Laurentis, adjusting some dials.

‘Is it really?’ asked Nyman doubtfully.

‘Very good,’ Laurentis insisted.

He turned a gain knob, and then gently dialled up a feed source.

The tech-adept began to twitch more violently. His head rocked and jiggled, and his eyes rolled back. His mouth began to move. Saliva flecked his lips as they ground and churned, as though they were trying to form words.

‘Stop it,’ said Nyman.

‘It’s all going very well,’ said Laurentis.

‘I said stop it,’ Nyman warned.

‘Back off or get out, Major Nyman,’ Daylight said.

There was a sound. A soft sound. A tiny blurt of noise. They all looked. It had come from the adept. His chewing, churning mouth, with spittle roping from it, was forming words. He was speaking.

‘What was that?’ asked Nyman.

‘Listen to him!’ Laurentis insisted.

The adept began to make louder noises. He gurgled and choked on the amorphous sound-forms and half-words bubbling out of his voicebox. The sound was coming from his throat, across his palate, as if he was enunciating something primordial, something from the dark, hindbrain portions of his mind.

It grew louder still, deeper, more brutal. It was an ugly sound, an animal sound, atavistic.

Finally, there were words.

‘Did you hear that?’ Laurentis cried.

‘What did he say?’ asked Nyman.

‘Did you hear that?’ Laurentis repeated, excitedly.

The tech-adept, blind, rigid and drooling, was repeating one phrase, over and over, in a deep, bass voice.

‘I am Slaughter,’ he was saying. ‘I am Slaughter.’

‘Oh, that’s not right,’ said the magos, suddenly disappointed. ‘That’s you.’

He looked at Slaughter.

‘That’s what you say,’ said Laurentis. ‘That’s the thing you say. He’s overheard you and he’s just repeating it. Poor, mindless fool. I said he was no good. Too damaged, you see? Too damaged. Just repeating what he heard. What a pity. I had such high hopes. The whole thing’s a failure.’

Slaughter looked at the tech-adept, who was still in rigour, grunting out the crude phrase.

‘He’s never met me,’ he said. ‘He’s never heard me say that. He’s never met me.’

Twenty-Seven

Ardamantua — orbital

Something was happening to the nearspace shadow around Ardamantua. The gravity storm was intensifying. All the sensors and auspex arrays on the bridge of the Azimuth went into the red scale, and then the vermillion, and then went to white-out. Glass dials cracked and blew out of their brass mounts. Sensor servitors squealed and clutched at their aug-plugged eyes and ears, or wrenched out their cortical jacks in sprays of blood and amniotic fluid. The main strategium flickered and then died in a ribboned flurry of collapsing hololithic composition streams.

Admiral Kiran, who had been closely observing the attempts to steer the wounded Amkulon towards the flank of a recovery tender, leapt out of his high-backed throne. The cosmological event had accelerated so suddenly, so violently. The seething, simmering storm surrounding the target planet had, in the space of twenty or thirty seconds, turned into something else entirely. The cream of his sensory and detection bridge crew were crippled and blinded, and most of his primary range-finding and scanning apparatus was annihilated. He was quite sure that the planet was about to die. From the energetic signature dynamic, as he had briefly glimpsed it before the screens went dead, the gravity anomaly was expanding, spiking. The planet would never survive a trauma like that. Tectonic rending and seismic disruption would husk the world like a ripe crop, and squirt the molten core of Ardamantua into space in a super-cooling jet of matter.

‘Shields! Shields!’ he yelled, though his experienced deck crew were already enabling the Azimuth’s potent forward shields. Kiran hoped that the commanders of his fleet components closest to the nearspace rim would have the wit to initiate emergency evasive manoeuvres and pull back from the planet zone as rapidly as their real space drives would allow.

If the planet died, his fleet would die with it.

‘What’s happening?’ Heth yelled, running onto the bridge in his breeches and undershirt, braces around his hips, shaving cream covering half of his chin. His aides and attendants rushed after him as if they could somehow complete his ablutions while he yelled at Kiran.

Maskar also appeared, emerging from the chart room with data-slates in his hand, a bemused expression on his face.

‘We have a situation,’ Kiran said, trying to pull data up onto his repeater screens. ‘We have a very serious situation. Something is happening to the planet.’

He turned and yelled at the strategium officers.

‘Get that thing re-lit! Get a data-feed up! I don’t care if you have to act as live connectors and hold the power couplers together with your bare hands!’

They rushed to obey him, though there seemed to be little hope of restoring the feed. Sparks and filaments of shredded and burned-out cable showered from the cavernous roof of the Azimuth’s bridge. Several of the gleaming silver consoles had burst into flames and two large monitor plates had cracked with gunshot bangs and exploded. Servitor crews rushed forwards to extinguish the conflagrations and haul the injured crewmen away, burned and peppered with glass chippings.

Kiran’s bridge crew were some of the best in the Imperial Navy. Whatever could be said about Lord High Admiral Lansung, he insisted on the highest degree of schooling for the first-line and primary battlefleet candidates. Working with the tools they had to hand, the sensorium techs managed to reconnect the strategium main display and re-engage it to half-power.

An image blinked into view, fuzzy and indistinct, flaring with distortion and interference.

‘What is it? What are we looking at—’ Heth began.

‘Shut up!’ Kiran said, flapping a hand at him and peering at the display.

‘How dare you speak to the Lord Commander Militant in that—’ Maskar exclaimed.

‘You shut up too!’ Kiran bellowed, his eyes never leaving the strategium display. ‘Look! Look at the damned display!’

In the hololith, the orb of Ardamantua was buckling and shuddering, surrounded by a vast halo of sickly, bright radiance. Overlay schematics told Kiran that two of his vessels closest to the planet had already been overwhelmed and immolated by the outrushing energies ripping from the planetary sphere. He waited, braced, knowing that he was about to see the planet blow apart.

But it did not.

A second planet had appeared beside it instead, smaller, like a conjoined twin, so closely nestled against the larger globe of Ardamantua that it looked like a swollen, cancerous growth extending from the target world.

It was the phantom, the auspex phantom, the so-called imaging artifact.

It was the ghost moon. And it had finally manifested, solid and real.

‘I don’t understand what I’m seeing,’ murmured Lord Commander Militant Heth.

‘I do,’ said Kiran. Alert overlays, bright red, zoomed in on the display to triangulate and identify hundreds of tiny shapes that rushed from the new moon like missiles.

He didn’t need the overlays. He had already seen them.

They were ships. They were warships.

They powered out of the gravity storm of nearspace towards his fleet in attack formation.

‘Gunnery! Gunnery!’ he bellowed. ‘Weapons to bear! Now!’

Twenty-Eight

Ardamantua

A blast of stunning sound and pressure swept across the stockade.

The force shredded parts of the fabricated structure and spilled over many of the stone blocks and boulders that Algerin’s survivors had expertly stacked into protective walls. It was an overpressure burst, the sort of concussion that might have accompanied a multi-megaton detonation on a neighbouring landmass. The wall of the blast travelled through the anguished atmosphere of Ardamantua like a sonic tidal wave, crossing continents, swirling seas, lifting soil, stripping vegetation and levelling forests.

It was accompanied by the longest, loudest noise burst of all, a burst that every living thing on Ardamantua could feel in its guts and in its diaphragm. It shook internal organs, even those encased in the transhumanly reinforced and plate-armoured bodies of the Adeptus Astartes. It made eardrums burst and noses bleed. It burrowed into brains like iron spikes.

In the blisternest chamber, the tech-adept had risen triumphantly to his feet, the jack cables straining at his sockets, his arms outstretched as he howled the words aloud.

‘I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter!’

The magos biologis’ makeshift apparatus was beginning to malfunction. Connections were shorting out and monitor screens were rolling, blanking or dissolving into squares of hissing white noise.

Laurentis and Nyman had fallen, clutching their ears in agony. The ground shook. The walls reverberated and cracked at the huge atmospheric disturbance passing over the stockade. Fragments of the blisternest material, translucent and grey, dropped out of the deforming walls and the curve of the fracturing ceiling. Daylight and Slaughter began to move up the tunnel to the surface to learn the nature of the crisis, but the rushing, concussive force of the wind drove them back.

Then the wind and the noise were gone, abruptly gone, and the vibration began to ease. The tech-adept stopped speaking forever and collapsed, snapping out the last of his plugs with the slack motion of his body.

Daylight and Slaughter rushed to the surface, their steel-cased boots thundering along the xenos-woven flooring.

Threads of vapour hung in a twilight world. The stockade was ruined. The brothers on the surface had been more grievously mauled by the overpressure than those, like Daylight and Slaughter, who had benefited from the comparative shelter of the nest tunnels.

The sky was a sickly, blotchy colour, like bruised flesh. All cloud cover seemed to have disappeared, and the wind had dropped. It was hard to think where all the clouds could have gone to. There was an odd, loud buzzing sound in the air, and a thin, pitiless rain fell straight down, hard and cold.

The moon hung above them, filling the sky. It was vast and black. It seemed so close that it must be resting on the rim of Ardamantua, propped up on the planet’s mountain peaks. That was just an illusion, of course, but no heavenly body could ever be so close to another without some form of technical suspension or energetic holding field far beyond the capabilities of Imperial humanity.

Daylight and Slaughter could see the surface of the moon, gnarled and interwoven, a vast pattern of fused wreckage and interconnected metal plates. It looked like a giant clockwork mechanism, half-rusted, or some intricate toy planet whose brightly painted cover had been removed to expose the inner workings.

Daylight saw the ships, tiny by comparison, that flooded out of the moon’s interior into the sky. They looked like insects swarming in their masses, coming out of their colony mound on the one hot day of the year to take wing and migrate.

Thousands. There were thousands of them.

They were too far away to identify with any confidence, but Daylight had enough of a grasp of comparative scale to know that some of them were smaller atmospheric aircraft, and some were vast void-capable warships.

They were seeing an attack formation, a multi-strand attack designed to hit surface and nearspace targets simultaneously.

A rapid-deployment raid of huge magnitude.

An attack on a planetary level.

An invasion force.

Daylight heard the whistle of high-altitude munitions auguring in. The first blasts ripped through the hills above the stockade, turning them into steam and light. Monumental cannons, vast missile arrays and planet-slicing beam weapons were being fired at the surface from the invading moon and the fleets of attack ships it was disgorging.

Bombs rained down, chewing their way across the valley in mushrooms of smoke, or hurling water from the lake in towering columns. Stabbing beams of light raked in from high above, vaporising ground targets and scoring deep canyons of blackened, fused glass in the rock.

‘Rally! Rally!’ Daylight yelled. He couldn’t see First Captain Algerin anywhere, but what little force the Imperial Fists had left needed to be focused and directed.

Projectiles smashed into the countryside around them like meteors. They fell like giant bombs, but they didn’t detonate on impact. Thunderclap concussions blasted out from each strike.

‘Landers! Troop landers!’ Slaughter cried.

Daylight didn’t argue. The enemy, this brand new enemy, was deploying in unimaginable strength. Daylight saw the first of them appear, flooding from the impact crater of one of their lander projectiles.

Smoke washed the air, but he could see their ground forces distinctly. He could see what kind of creatures they were. The face of the enemy, revealed at last.

It either made no sense, or it made the worst sense of all. Daylight knew this enemy. Every brother of the shield-corps knew this enemy. Warriors of the Adeptus Astartes might almost regard such a foe contemptuously due to over-familiarity.

Except this particular foe never operated in this particular manner. It simply didn’t. It couldn’t.

There was no more time for questions. The roaring enemy was upon them, and all that remained was war.

Daylight drew his sword.

‘Daylight Wall stands forever,’ he voxed. ‘No wall stands against it. Bring them down.’

Twenty-Nine

Terra — The Imperial Palace

An individual was more vulnerable when he or she was alone. That was basic.

The Officio taught its agents and operatives to watch the behaviour patterns of a target patiently and methodically, learn their routines, and then carry out the play when the individual was most vulnerable.

Alone. In a bath, perhaps, or a bedchamber. On a retreat to a country property, or in transit in a small craft. When at his ease or relaxing, his guard down. Eating, that was a good moment.

Approaching a target when he or she was accompanied by other people made things much more difficult. The play might be compromised. A definitive killing action might not be possible. The individual might be surrounded by bodyguards, retainers or a security retinue. Whoever they turned out to be, and whatever their level of expertise, vigilance and reaction, they were witnesses. The presence of others increased the agent’s vulnerability. It reduced the chances of success, or anonymity. It reduced the chances of finishing the play and withdrawing alive.

There were eighty-four thousand, two hundred and forty-seven people with Lord High Admiral Lansung when Vangorich approached him. Vangorich knew the figure precisely because he had swept the immense domed chamber with a miniature sensor drone.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

Lansung, dressed in the gold and scarlet robes of the Winter Harvest Battlefleet, had just finished delivering the commencement speech at the Imperial College of Fleet Strategy, and the vast audience of immaculate cadets and staffers was still applauding. Golden cherub servitors flew overhead among the banners and streamers, clashing cymbals and playing fanfares on long silver trumpets. Lansung was coming off-stage with his armsmen around him: twelve bodyguards from the Navy’s Royal Barque division. The Royal Barque was the name of a mythical, or rather conceptual, ship of the fleet. It was not an actual, physical vessel, though it had a serial code, a keel number and a registration mark, as well as its own sombre ensign design. When a man was selected to join the crew of the Royal Barque, he was being recruited into the Navy’s elite protection squad. Such individuals were all highly trained and experienced killers, who were then further trained and honed, and appointed as bodyguards to the high-ranking admirals and fleet officers.

They were all tall, stone-faced men in black uniforms with red piping and frogging. Each carried a sheathed cutlass and wore a pair of red dress gloves. One of them, the chief protection officer, carried the admiral’s fur shako.

The armsmen tensed slightly when they noticed Vangorich approaching through the crowd of cheering cadets, and the beaming tutors and executives hurrying to congratulate the admiral on his perceptive and inspiring remarks.

‘Step back,’ one of them snarled quietly, hoping to avoid a scene. Lansung was busy shaking hands with the Head of the Bombard School. Vangorich simply smiled at the armsman.

Lansung, alert as ever, saw Vangorich, and saw he was being challenged. He expertly detached himself from the Head of the Bombard School and swept in.

‘Really, Romano,’ he said to his armsman, ‘you must learn not to obstruct a member of the Imperial Senatorum.’

‘My apologies, lord,’ the bodyguard said to Vangorich. He clearly didn’t mean it. He had not recognised the modest and unostentatious man in black when he had approached, and he did not know him any better now.

‘Do you often come to hear me talk, Drakan?’ Lansung asked.

‘Almost never, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘But I must do so more often.’

They started to walk together through the huge chamber into the mobbing crowd, followed by the men from the Royal Barque detachment. Trumpeting cherubs and psyber-eagles flocked after them through the air. Lansung smiled and nodded to those he passed, shaking hands with some. He barely looked at Vangorich as they continued their conversation. Vangorich, for his part, paid more attention to the finely painted ceiling fresco visible through the flags and banners high above, great images of battlefleet ships at full motive, gunports open, crushing enemies.

‘Why have you come, Drakan?’ asked Lansung. ‘Surely not to kill me, or you’d have chosen a less public moment.’

‘Oh, you don’t realise how good I am at my work, my lord,’ Vangorich replied.

Lansung shot him a look. He’d made his comment in jest. There hadn’t been a sanctioned Senatorum assassination in a very long time.

‘My lord, I’m joking,’ said Vangorich. ‘Rest assured. Indeed, I chose this moment precisely because it was public. I’d have hated you to get the wrong idea if I’d shown up suddenly, unannounced, in a more private place. Things can get so complicated. Messy. I don’t know what it is. People just get jumpy around me. Must be my face.’

‘I’m busy, Drakan,’ said Lansung, energetically shaking hands with Lord Voros of Deneb.

‘Then I’ll cut right to it, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘We need to become allies.’

‘What?’

‘Political allies, my lord.’

‘Why?’

Vangorich smiled.

‘I know. It sounds insane. We’ve never been allies before, and I absolutely know why. I’m not important enough to cultivate. And you, my dear lord, you are about as important as it gets.’

‘Where is this going, Drakan, my good friend?’ asked Lansung, trying to glad-hand others.

‘Now there’s an encouraging phrase,’ said Vangorich. ‘Indeed. “My good friend.” I know you don’t mean it in any literal way, but it shows me you’re willing to make a decent show of civility, and put a good face on a public encounter. That does encourage me. So, let me press this. We need to become allies.’

‘Explain to me why before I lose patience,’ Lansung said, smiling a fake smile at two august fleet commanders.

‘You are a very important man, my lord,’ Vangorich said. ‘One day, perhaps one day soon, you may be the most important man of all. The balance of power you hold in the High Twelve is very solid. You, Lord Guilliman, his excellency the Ecclesiarch. You draw the others around you. None can stand against you.’

Vangorich wasn’t blind to the fact that he was standing in the middle of a vivid demonstration of Lansung’s personal power and influence, the cult of his personality. The Imperial College of Fleet Strategy, the Navy’s most elite academy, was on its way to becoming Lansung’s private youth movement. Lansung had been a graduate, and he favoured it unstintingly. All the best fleet promotions went to graduates from the College. In return, the cadets showed the Lord High Admiral a form of blind support that bordered on adoration. Many proudly referred to themselves as ‘Lansungites’, and modelled their tactical theories after Lansung’s career actions.

‘The trouble is,’ said Vangorich, ‘though none can stand against you, some might try.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It would be foolish. Divisive. But there are some parties, my lord, who might try to oppose you even if it was futile. And that could harm the Imperium at this time.’

Lansung looked at Vangorich directly for the first time, and held his gaze for a moment.

‘Who are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘It would be inappropriate to betray a confidence, sir,’ Vangorich replied, still smiling. ‘The point, sir, the real point, is Ardamantua.’

‘Ardamantua? Drakan, that’s an entirely military issue. Why is a political outsider like you even slightly interested in—’

‘We should all be interested in it, sir. All of us. Ardamantua is turning into a debacle. An extraordinary military calamity actually, and we don’t yet know what the consequences will be. But let’s imagine for a moment that they are the worst possible consequences.’

Lansung murmured an agreement, turning to shake more hands and mouth more small talk. He was still listening.

‘If Ardamantua turns into a disaster, sir, as you may suspect it might, it may well have long term effects on the security of the Terran Core.’

‘We can deal with anything—’

‘Sir, the problem as I perceive it… and, of course, I am only a mere political outsider… but the problem as I see it is a disagreement about how we deal with it. Certain… parties, certain quarters… they see things in different ways. When push comes to shove, they may well disagree with your proposals as to how to handle the matter. They may wish to employ alternative policies. They would fight you over the correct way to deal with Ardamantua and its fallout.’

Vangorich leaned closer so he could whisper, while Lansung shook hands.

‘That might be fatal. Your power bloc in the Twelve is unassailable, but others might be so desperate they would fight it anyway. Then what? Stagnation. Impasse. Brutal, political, internecine war amongst the High Lords. Paralysis. An inability for the Senatorum to act, to make policy of any sort… just when the Imperium is under threat? In short, my dear lord, my dear friend, the fact is if Ardamantua develops into the threat that it really could be, then it is not the right time for the High Lords of Terra to become locked in a pointless, hopeless battle with themselves, with each other. The Imperium must not be left so vulnerable, nor can such a vulnerability even be risked.’

Lansung looked at Vangorich again.

‘I may be a political outsider, my lord,’ said Vangorich, ‘and my seat and Officio may carry very little weight compared to the influence they used to bear. But I will not stand by and see the Imperium under such jeopardy of political paralysis. After all, if my Officio ever had any purpose, it is as the final safeguard against precisely that danger. And that, sir, is one of the two important reasons you need me as an ally.’

The audience around them was clapping more enthusiastically again. Lansung raised his hand to acknowledge them. His armsmen steered him towards the stage steps.

‘Oh, they love you,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’m not surprised. They’re stamping and shouting. They want you back on the podium for an encore.’

Lansung turned at the foot of the steps and looked back at Vangorich, who had stopped walking with him.

‘We’ll talk again, at your convenience,’ said Vangorich. ‘Soon. Now, go! Go on! Shoo! They want you up there!’

‘What is the second reason?’ asked Lansung.

‘My lord?’

‘You said there were two important reasons why I needed you as an ally,’ Lansung called out over the rising roar of the crowd. ‘What is the second reason?’

‘Very simple, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘You may not much want me as an ally. But you definitely do not want me as an enemy.’

Thirty

Ardamantua

Laurentis regained consciousness. He knew at once he was pitifully injured. His neck, throat and chin were wet with the torrents of blood that were leaking from his ears and nose. There was pain in his joints and organs that he was sure would be crippling him into immobility if his nerves weren’t so dulled.

He hauled himself to his feet. The tech-adept was dead, and most of Laurentis’ apparatus flickered empty with equivalent lifelessness. Major Nyman lay sprawled on the chamber floor nearby, twitching and moaning.

A terrible noise rumbled from above ground. The whole structure shook from repeated detonations and impacts. Laurentis had lived through fearful events in the previous six weeks, and that had included the most appalling climatic upheavals and gravitation storms.

They had been nothing compared to this tumult.

Leaning on the oozing wall of the blisternest tunnel for support, he dragged his way towards the surface to see for himself what new ordeal had been visited upon them. Noise bursts continued to reverberate though the ruined nest. He could hear what seemed like gargantuan warhorns too, warhorns sounding out long, braying, raucous, apocalyptic notes.

The end of the world. The end of this world. It was about time. They had suffered enough.

Laurentis came out onto the surface, into the dank twilight and the rain, and cowered in the mouth of the tunnel. He gazed in wonder at the stockade and the world beyond. The moon filled the sky. The stockade was on fire and overrun. Around him, in the smoke and lashing rain, he could see figures in yellow, Imperial Fists, locked in furious battle, grossly outnumbered.

The place was swarming with orks.

Laurentis had never seen a living one close up. He had only examined preserved specimens brought back from the frontier. He didn’t really understand what he was looking at. Where had the orks come from? What part did they play in the disaster overwhelming Ardamantua? Were they another by-product threat that had spilled onto the planet because of the subspace realm, like the Chromes?

Laurentis struggled. He knew he was hurt, and that his mind wasn’t clear enough for reasoned consideration. The noises hurt so much. He wished he could make sense of it. Orks? Orks?

Slowly but surely, terror began to permeate his numbed body. The intellectual issues ebbed away. For the first time since he had faced down the Chrome warrior-form in the tunnel, he felt true mortal jeopardy.

In life, in the stinking flesh, the orks were colossal. Every single one of them was as big as a Space Marine. They simply radiated weight and power, from the huge knotted masses of their shoulders to their treelike forearms and wrecking-ball fists. Laurentis had never seen creatures express such manifest strength and density by simply existing. They were muscle and power, they were fury and rage, they were raw noise and brute strength. They were truly monsters.

They were armoured in metals and hides, but the armour was nothing like as crude as he had imagined it would be. Hauberks and shoulder guards were expertly woven from steel wire and reinforced animal skin or synthetic fibre fabrics. Seams were precise. The level of ornamentation was marvellous. Shields were studded and curved for impact resilience, and some of them smoked with heat and ozone, revealing they were self-powered with built-in kinetic fields. The weapons, clamped in prodigious fists, were the immense, burnished cleavers and swords of frost giants, not the crude blades of ogres. The huge-calibre firearms were of eccentric design yet superb craftsmanship.

The orks had dyed and painted their green flesh with powders and inks, making intricate tribal designs and motifs. Laurentis wished he could understand what each of the marks and stripes and hand-prints signified. There was something primevally shocking about an ork head dusted in white or pale blue powder, its eyes glistening, its mouth splitting open to expose splintered yellow tusks and rotting molars, its maw shocking pink and covered in spittle. It was an atavistic thing. The ork was the primordial predator that man had fled from when he had lived in caves. It was the beast, the uber-myth behind all other monsters. It was the murderous face of man’s oldest, purest terror.

The monsters barked, roared and bellowed as they attacked, their tusked, open jaws as massive as those of grox. They hacked and slammed their blades into the warriors of the shield-corps, ripping Adeptus Astartes ceramite plate asunder. Every blow resounded like a thunderclap, like a slap to the face. The rain sprayed off everything, bouncing off armour, helms and blades, mixing with blood, flooding the ground, splashing underfoot.

Dazed, Laurentis stepped backwards. He trembled. He knew there had been long ages in Imperial history when the greenskin tribes had posed the greatest of all threats to the security, the continued existence, of the Imperium of Mankind. He’d always presumed this was simply a result of their sheer numbers, their ubiquity. He’d never considered the orks to have any potency as a species. They were little more than animals, mindless and unskilled, mobbing in the fringes of the stars, an endless supply of cannon-fodder for Imperial guns in the frontier wars. They were not a genuine threat, not like the malevolent forces of the Archenemy, or the threat of heretical civil war, or even the genius machinations of the eldar. Those were dangers to be taken seriously. The orks were a joke, an annoyance, a bothersome chore. They were an infestation that had to be managed, cut back, and kept down. They were not a critical hazard. They were not… They were not…

They were not this.

He understood now. Laurentis understood. He understood why past eras of mankind had lived in fear of the greenskins for centuries, why the frontier wars had raged forever, why the periodic Waaagh!s had been threats that had caused the entire populations of colonised systems to evacuate and flee, why the prospect of a credible warboss and his horde was something that could make a sector governor or a warmaster quake. He understood why, more than any other accomplishment of the Great Crusade, the God-Emperor had been so determined to stop the greenskin threat dead at Ullanor.

He understood why the orks were an eternal menace that could never be ignored.

He just didn’t understand how they could be six warp-weeks from the Terran Core.

He looked up. The rain hit his face, washing blood out of his beard. He stared at the manifested moon. Its machined, pock-marked, plated surface was ork technology. He could see that. How? How had they done this?

The moon whirred. Surface features moved and adjusted. Vast armour plating structures re-aligned. Shutters the size of inland seas opened and folded. A huge maw appeared. The stylised image of a vast and monstrous ork face manifested on the surface of the rogue moon. Its eyes burned with magmatic light from the moon’s core. Its titanic, tusked mouth stretched open wide, and it bellowed at the world below, the loudest and biggest noise burst of all. It was like a pagan god screaming at a sacrificial offering.

I am Slaughter.

Laurentis shuddered. He was having difficulty standing up. A hand grabbed at his arm.

It was Nyman.

‘What are you doing?’ Nyman yelled. ‘Get into cover!’

At least one of the rampaging beasts nearby had spotted the magos biologis. It was coming for him through the rain, shield and cleaver raised. Nyman fired several shots at it with his pistol and then began to drag Laurentis back into the tunnels. The ork came after them. As it entered the confines of the blisternest duct, its roaring screams began to echo and resound.

Nyman stopped and fired at it again. The ork advanced. Laurentis could smell it. It seemed to fill the tunnel, head down, shoulders hunched. The rasping tone of its voice was deep, deeper than any human voice.

‘Run!’ Nyman told the magos biologis. Laurentis tried to obey, but he wasn’t very good at it. Nyman had pulled a grenade from his battledress pouch. He primed it and hurled it at the advancing monster.

The blast brought a section of tunnel down, either burying the ork or driving it back. Nyman and Laurentis picked themselves up and struggled back towards the magos’s chamber.

‘We’re finished,’ Nyman said. ‘Did you see their numbers?’

Laurentis realised he could hear the major quite clearly, because the major had opened the faceplate of his orbital armour.

Laurentis could hear something else, something tinny and thin crackling out of the man’s helmet set.

‘Your vox is working,’ Laurentis said.

‘What?’

‘Your vox!’

Nyman noticed the noise.

‘I… Yes, I suppose it is. The signal’s live again.’

Laurentis thought feverishly. He sank to his knees in front of his bank of devices and instruments, and began to reset and adjust them. White-noise screens flickered back into life. He had resolution on several of them, and dataflows. Some of them had burned out entirely, but many were functioning better than they had done in weeks.

‘There’s still gross interference from the noise bursts,’ Laurentis said as he worked, ‘but the gravitational storm has eased. Yes, look. Look.’

Nyman crouched beside him.

‘We’ve got vox-banding again,’ he said. ‘And data sequences.’

‘Exactly,’ said Laurentis. ‘All the while the moon was in transition from… from wherever it came from… there were colossal levels of gravitational disruption. The storm itself. The whole of Ardamantua was stricken with it. Most tech was as good as useless.’

The magos biologis glanced at Nyman.

‘But now the moon is here, now it is fully manifested, the gravitational flare has subsided. We have a little technology back on our side. Major, can you contact your fleet?’

Nyman had already pulled his helmet’s vox-jack out of his armour and was connecting it to the battered vox-caster unit that formed part of Laurentis’s equipment stack. He plugged it through to use as a range booster. Static fizzled from the speakers.

‘Azimuth, Azimuth,’ he called. ‘Azimuth taskforce control, this is Nyman. Repeat this is Nyman, surface drop. Do you read me?’

‘This is Azimuth,’ the vox crackled out.

‘The command ship,’ Nyman told Laurentis.

‘Azimuth,’ he said into the vox, ‘We’ve found survivors from the original undertaking, but none of us are going to live long. There are orks everywhere. Full invasion force. Unimaginable numbers.’

‘Reading you, Nyman. Ork threat identified orbitally already. Extraction of your personnel not viable at this time—’

‘Azimuth? Azimuth?’

There was a pause.

‘Stand by, surface,’ the vox hissed. ‘I have the Lord Commander for you, vox to vox.’

A different voice suddenly came over the speakers.

‘Nyman? It’s Heth. Great Throne, man, you’re alive?’

‘Just about, sir. It’s not looking good.’

‘What strengths have you got down there?’

‘Virtually nothing, sir. The Imperial Fists are decimated. We’re overrun and being murdered. Sir, do not drop or try to reinforce us. You could put every scrap of the ground forces at our disposal planetside and you would still never take this world back. I’ve never seen greenskins in these numbers.’

‘Understood, Nyman,’ Heth replied. ‘To be brutally honest, a surface assault was not a likely possibility. We’re in the middle of a void fight. Assault drop not an option.’

Laurentis pulled at Nyman’s arm.

‘Let me talk to him,’ he said.

Nyman hesitated.

‘Sir,’ he said into the vox, ‘I have the magos biologis from Chapter Master Mirhen’s original undertaking mission here. He wants to speak to you.’

‘Put him on, Nyman.’

Nyman threw a switch on the caster and handed Laurentis the handset.

‘My lord, my name is Laurentis, magos biologis.’

‘I hear you, Laurentis.’

‘Sir, if I may be so bold,’ said Laurentis, ‘you need to do two things. You need, as an absolute priority, to communicate this emergency to Terra. This is just the beginning. Ardamantua is not a high priority target. Whatever mechanism the greenskins have used to bring their attack moon through subspace, Ardamantua is simply a convenient stepping stone, a rest point. Maybe it’s a matter of range limit, or power generation. Whatever. They will mass again from here. They will perhaps bring other planetoids through.’

‘Throne! How do you know, magos?’

‘I don’t, sir. I am speculating. But we have to prepare for the worst contingency. Yesterday, we did not know they could do this. Tomorrow, we will learn what else they can do, and it will be too late. Sir, you have to transmit a full disclosure warning to Terra. I have some equipment here. I have been trying for weeks to translate the noise bursts. Now we have confirmed the identity of the xenos threat, I can narrow my linguistic programs to include what data we have on record of ork syntax and vocabulary values. Sir, I need to open a direct data-link between your primary codifiers and my resources here. If we work fast, you may be able to include, in your urgent warning to Terra, some actual detail regarding the greenskin intention and operation.’

‘How so, magos?’ Heth asked.

‘By learning, sir, what they are telling us.’

Thirty-One

Ardamantua — orbital

Admiral Kiran had drawn his sabre. He’d done it subconsciously, his mind on the fight. The light on the bridge gleamed off its exposed blade. It was a habit of his during a void fight. The sword would play no part in a battle between behemoth warships, but Kiran always felt better with a weapon in his hand.

He had even admitted to his officers, just between them, over dinner in his stateroom, that he had a fear and a shame of dying unarmed.

‘When death comes for me, I won’t go quietly,’ he had said.

The bridge officers manning the stations and consoles around him, diligent and determined, saw the sword come out of its scabbard and knew what it meant.

They were going to deliver death to the best of their considerable ability, but they were awaiting death too.

The bridge of the Azimuth was a place of pandemonium. Alarms sounded, most of them notifications of damage to other decks, some of them target or proximity alerts triggered by the attacking warships. The air was rank with smoke from artifice deck fires. Crewmen rushed in all directions, delivering data, or attempting frantic repairs on crashed bridge systems. For now, the strategium was working again. On it, Kiran could see the ships of his line, a curve of green icons hooked like a claw into the nearspace region of Ardamantua. He could see the enemy too, a blizzard of red icons spilling from the hazard marker of the rogue moon.

The taskforce fleet was outnumbered thirty or forty ships to one. A bridge officer did not need years of training at the Imperial College of Fleet Strategy to know how this was going to end.

‘The odds are too great,’ said Maskar. ‘We run. Obviously, we run.’

Kiran shook his head.

‘No time, sir. They’d bring us down stone dead before we ever made it to translation.’

‘Then what?’ asked Maskar, horrified.

‘Tell the Lord Commander to make a full statement of the events as we know them, and send it via astropathic link as fast as possible. I will buy him as much time as I can, but it won’t be long. We will take as many of them with us as we can, general.’

Maskar looked at him.

‘Quickly,’ Kiran said, tightening his grip on his sword.

Maskar saluted him. Kiran saluted back. The Astra Militarum commander turned and hurried towards Heth, who was at the vox-station across the bridge.

‘Gunnery!’ Kiran yelled.

‘Gunnery, aye!’

‘Status?’

‘Status effective!’

‘Target selection is now at my station. Primary batteries live.’

‘Primary live, aye!’

‘Secondary batteries may fire at will.’ Kiran drew his free hand across the touch-sensitive hololithic plate of his console, aligning targets in order of priority.

‘Autoloaders live!’ a sub-commander called out.

‘Gunports open!’ yelled another.

‘Let’s kill them,’ said Admiral Kiran. He stabbed his finger at the glass to activate the first pre-programmed firing sequence.

The Azimuth’s main forward batteries and spinal mount fired. The recoil stresses made the vast ship’s superstructure groan. Beams of energy lashed out from the ship, followed by slower-moving shoals of missiles and void torpedoes.

An ork warship died in a ball of light, like a sun going nova. A second ship ripped open, spilling its mechanical guts into the void in a cloud of oil and gas and flame, tumbling end over end, inertial stability lost.

Kiran tapped the second sequence. He was already loading a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, his eyes never leaving the complex mapping of the strategium display. Two more kills. Then another two. The Azimuth’s shields began to reach saturation.

He ordered them forwards on their coursing plasma engines. The real space drive swept them in to meet the rising enemy swarm. To port, one of his frigates was engulfed and annihilated. A second later, the fleet tender suffered a shield failure, and was lost in a puff of superhot gas and vapour. To starboard, the grand cruiser Dubrovnic fended off swarms of ork boarding ships as it targeted and slew three bulk warships with its main batteries. It took the third with a passing broadside that shredded the monstrous attacker.

Kiran saw the massive ork cruiser hoving in on an attack vector.

‘Focus shield strength!’ he yelled. ‘Starboard bearing!’

The cruiser began shelling and lacing the void with beam-fire. The Azimuth shook, shields flaring, straining.

Maskar crossed the shuddering deck to join Lord Commander Militant Heth.

‘Summon the astropaths,’ Heth told him without looking up from the communication console. ‘We have to make this good. There will be data to send. As much as we can code and packet.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Maskar. He signalled to aides to prepare the astropath chamber.

‘Look,’ said Heth, gesturing to the comms console. ‘Look at this.’ Various images were displayed on adjacent pict monitors. One was of the rogue moon, showing the macabre ork visage that had been mechanically created to glare out at them. Maskar could hear both coded transmission signals and noise bursts running through the vox-caster station.

‘Help from the surface,’ Heth explained. ‘The magos biologis. We’re unravelling some of the ork transmissions. It’s all bloodthirsty threat, I think. Nothing of substance. Just declarations of hatred and pronouncements of destruction. And this began about three minutes ago.’

He indicated one image in particular, and then enlarged it onto a console’s main overhead screen. The image made Maskar blench. It was a pict feed, streamed through some exotic form of image capture system, that was being broadcast directly to them. It was a transmission for their benefit, for the benefit of any victims the orks came upon.

There was little sense of scale, but Maskar appeared to be looking into the eyes of the most immense ork warboss. The creature was so mature, so vast and bloated, its features were distorted. Broken tusks like tree trunks jutted from the cliff edge of its lower jaw. It was staring right out of the screen with tiny, gleaming yellow eyes, its jaw moving.

‘That bastard thing is aboard the moon,’ Heth said. ‘It’s their leader. I think he’s the size of a damn hab-block, Maskar. Saints of Terra, there hasn’t been an ork boss that massive since Ullanor. I mean, they just don’t develop to that size any more. Look, look. In the foreground? Those are greenskin warriors. They look like children.’

‘Save us,’ Maskar murmured.

‘Too late, my friend,’ said Heth. ‘Look at the bastard. Look at him. Those noises we can hear? The noise bursts? It’s him. His voice. He’s talking to us.’

Heth pointed to another display, one that showed the glaring face on the surface of the moon.

‘Look. See how the mechanical face moves? It’s working in sync with that bastard thing. Look, the lips part and close at the same time. That’s amplifying his voice, turning his vocalisation into that infrasonic signal.’

Maskar felt the ship jolt hard as its shields took more hits.

‘Oh, hellsteeth!’ Heth moaned suddenly. He spotted something new.

Other portals had opened in the surface of the attack moon: three large circles like giant crater rims or the red storm spot on Jupiter. From them, vast, glowing beams of energy were projecting down onto the surface of Ardamantua. Within seconds, they could see something dark and blotchy flowing up the beams into the attack moon.

Heth ramped up the magnification.

It was rock. Planetary matter. The attack moon was aiming immense gravity beams at Ardamantua and harvesting its mass, sucking billions of tonnes of physical matter and mineral content from the crust and mantle.

‘What the hell is it doing?’ asked Heth.

‘I think…’ Maskar began. ‘I think it might be refuelling.’

The attack moon clearly didn’t require all the material it was swallowing to replenish its mass ratios. Huge chunks of impacted mineral deposits began spitting out of the moon’s spaceward surface. The moon was manufacturing meteors and firing them at the Imperial ship positions using immense gravitic railguns. The Agincourt was blown in two by a direct strike from a rock projectile half its size. A huge chunk of quartz and iron travelling at six times the speed of sound raked the portside flank of the grand cruiser Dubrovnic and ripped away half its active shields.

Heth was lost for words.

‘We’ve… We’ve beaten them before, sir,’ Maskar said. It was all he could find to say.

‘What?’

‘The greens, sir. We’ve always beaten them before. Even at Ullanor…’

‘The Emperor was with us, then, Maskar,’ Heth replied darkly. ‘And the damned primarchs. It was a different time, a different age. An age of gods. Damn right we stopped them then. But they’ve grown strong again, stronger than ever, and we’ve grown weak. The Emperor’s gone, His beloved sons too. But the greenskins… Throne! They’ve come just six damned weeks shy of Terra. No warning! No damned warning at all! They’ve never been this close! They’ve got technological adaptations we’ve never seen before, not even on bloody Ullanor…. gravitation manipulation! Subspace tunnelling! Gross teleportation… whole planetary bodies, man! And they’ve all but exterminated one of the most able Chapters of Space Marines in one strike!’

‘The Emperor protects,’ Maskar said.

‘He used to,’ said Heth. ‘But we’re the only ones here today.’

Thirty-Two

Ardamantua

There would be no glory. Daylight knew that now. He had been foolish to expect it and wrong to crave it. A warrior of the Adeptus Astartes did not go to war for glory. War was duty. Only duty.

He had yearned for reinstatement for such a long time. Like all the wall-brethren, passing their silent and lonely years of vigil on the Palace walls, embodying the notion of Imperial Fists resilience, he had secretly and bitterly mourned the deprivation. He had yearned for so long, even to the point, on some dark days, when he had almost wished for a threat to come to Terra, or another civil strife to ignite, just so he could defend his wall and test his mettle again.

When the call had finally and unbelievably come, he had armoured himself without hesitation and left his station on Daylight Wall to go to the side of his Chapter.

Making that journey, he hadn’t been able to help himself. He hadn’t thought of duty.

He had thought of glory.

Instead, he had found this. A slaughter, a final, miserable slaughter. In the twilight shadow of a nightmare moon-that-should-not-be, in the freezing, pitiless rain, on the blood-soaked soil of a broken, unimportant backwater world, his ancient Chapter was being cut down to the very last man. The venerable order, the illustrious heritage, the bloodline of the Primarch-Progenitor, it was all about to be lost forever. It could never be brought back.

Terra’s greatest champions were about to be rendered extinct, and the gates and walls of Eternal Terra were to be left unguarded. The enemy was already inside, terrifyingly close to the core.

Stupidity had led to this. Strategic carelessness, the vain ambitions of High Lords and the complacency of veteran warriors who should have known better and had led to this. A calamity had been mistaken for a minor crisis. An ancient and so frequently dismissed enemy had been woefully, woefully underestimated.

What’s more, no one would learn from this dire mistake, because no one would live. Terra would burn.

There would be no glory.

The orks were upon them, bestial, roaring faces in the streaming rain. They swarmed across the lakeside in their thousands, raging and howling, blowing their dismal warhorns, slamming their weapons against their shields to beat out the final heartbeats of the last few human lives. Above, low and impossible, the face on the clockwork moon howled threats at the world it was killing.

Rainwater and blood streamed off the visor of Daylight’s helm. He tightened his grip on his gladius. His ammo was spent, so he had clamped his combat shield to his left forearm to meet the foe up close and force them to pay a bitter tithe for his lifeblood.

The orks rushed in, tusks bared, spit flying from snarling lips. Daylight met them, drove his sword blade through a head, severed a limb, gutted an armoured torso. Algerin was already gone, a butchered, headless corpse on the blood-black ground. The rain was a curtain, a veil of silver, like fine chainmail. Tranquility was at his left hand, Zarathustra at his right. Together, they formed as much of a wall as they were able, stabbing and hacking, ripping green flesh and brute armour. Zarathustra’s war-spear punched through plate and leather, flesh, bone and blood. Broken mail rings and shreds of leather flew up into the rain from the blows of Tranquility’s hammer. Blood squirted, jetted.

Daylight put the edge of his gladius through a jaw and a tusk. He back-swung to open a throat, blocked an axe with his shield and stepped in to kill the owner. Too many, now. Too many. Too many to strike at. Too many to fend off. Relentless, unending, like the noise bursts, the gut-shaking roars. Daylight felt the first of the wounds, blades reaching in under his defences, around his shield, from behind. Waistline. Hip. Lower back. Nape of the neck. Upper arm. Thigh. Armour splitting. Warning alarms in his helm. Pain in his limbs. Blood in his mouth. Red lights on his visor display. Teeth clenched, he turned in time to see Tranquility fall, head all but severed by a jagged cleaver, the greenskin whooping its triumph, drenched in Space Marine blood. He heard Zarathustra roar in rage and pain. Daylight staggered. He fought. He swung his sword, even though it was broken.

He said, ‘Daylight Wall stands forever. Daylight Wall stands forever. No wall stands against it. Bring them down.’

He said it as though it still meant something. He said it as though there was anyone other than the orks left alive to hear it.

He kept on saying it until the pack of beasts tore him apart.

Thirty-Three

Ardamantua

Ship deaths lit the sky. Bright fires flared across the face of the attack moon. Some were pale green ovals of expanding light, some messier smudges of flame, drive fuel and torched munitions. A few were massive detonations that spat out expanding hoops of burning gas.

Slaughter hoped that some of them were greenskin ships, slain by the batteries of the reinforcement fleet, but he had a grim suspicion that most were the grave-pyres of valiant, outnumbered Imperial warships.

The stockade was lost. Slaughter had lost sight of Woundmaker when the west wall caved under the ork body crush. Missiles hammered in from the sky.

He swung the ancient sword of Emetris, put it through two charging greenskins, and then headed for the nearest fractured outlets of the ruined blisternest, which jutted like broken drain pipes from the mire. The rain was still heavy. Every surface shone almost phosphorescently with rebounding rain splashes.

Another ork, its face dyed crimson, swung at him. Slaughter ducked the blow, got his sword in, and cut the creature wide open. It fell back into the wet, sheeting water up as it landed.

The Imperial Fist reached the blisternest outlets. He saw a man just inside, lying where he had fallen, cut through the spine and the hip.

‘Brother!’

The dying Fist looked up. Severance, of Lotus Gate Wall.

‘Slaughter,’ he wheezed.

Slaughter tried to lift him, to patch him, but there was far too much damage, far more than even the accelerated biology of a transhuman could repair.

‘All gone,’ murmured Severance. ‘All gone.’

‘Stay with me!’ Slaughter growled.

Severance shook his head.

‘Too late for me,’ he said. He unfixed the battered teleport locator from his harness. The power light was still on.

‘Take this.’

‘It doesn’t work,’ said Slaughter.

‘Not for me. No use to me. But take it. All the while there’s hope.’

Slaughter took the locator and clipped it to his belt.

‘Thank you for the thought, brother,’ he said, ‘but I fear we are all past saving.’

Severance didn’t reply. Death had taken him.

Slaughter could hear more of the greenskins closing in. He moved on down the tunnel. Two found him there in the alien darkness, and he killed them both with his sword. Then he heard las-shots and a terrible scream.

A human scream.

The chamber used by the magos biologis was awash with blood. Major Nyman was dead, split in half by an ork’s sword. Laurentis, stabbed in the gut but not yet dead, had fallen across the precious apparatus, smashing most of it.

The ork warrior turned as Slaughter entered. It swung its sword, but Slaughter parried, deflected, and sliced the greenskin’s face off. It pitched forwards, issuing a ghastly, frothing squeal, and Slaughter finished it with a beheading cut.

Laurentis had only a few sucking breaths left in him.

‘Finished now,’ he whispered. ‘The vox just went dead and the link failed. That means the Azimuth has gone. The flagship. Lord Heth. All of them.’

‘Just us,’ said Slaughter.

‘Just you, really,’ replied the magos biologis. His breathing was very shallow.

‘We can still get out, if…’

Laurentis laughed.

‘Still trying to make light of it?’ he asked weakly. ‘We really are in trouble.’

Slaughter nodded.

Laurentis managed a half-smile. Then he closed his eyes and died.

Slaughter rose to his feet and turned, his broadsword in his fist. Orks loomed in the doorway, sniffing and growling… two of them, four, six, more…

‘Who’s first?’ asked Slaughter. ‘There’s enough for all of you bastards.’

Thirty-Four

Terra — the Imperial Palace

‘This statement must necessarily be brief,’ the recording continued. The pict quality was not sharp. It had been subjected to extreme astrotelepathic transfer and encryption, and there was a lot of distortion. It was just possible to make out the face of Lord Commander Militant Heth. There were other figures around him, though they were indistinct, and behind them, what appeared to be the bridge of a starship. The recording source kept jarring and vibrating.

‘The ork “attack moon” that I described has immense capabilities and possibly almost limitless resources. As we have no hope of outrunning the greenskin fleet, Admiral Kiran, whom I commend utterly, has taken this ship in close. We have attempted to damage the so-called attack moon with primary weapons, to no avail. It is both armoured and shielded, possibly by some form of gravitically manipulated field. It is bombarding us with crude but effective rock-mass projectiles. Our scans reveal that the moon is partly hollow, and — internally — not a sphere at all. The attack moon is simply the physical end in this location of the orks’ subspace tunnel. It is the mouth of a corridor, a conduit through which they can transport potentially unlimited reinforcements and vessels.’

On screen, Heth looked up briefly as the ship he was aboard shook wildly. The pict image blinked off for a second and then restored.

‘With the very little time and limited resources available to us, we have attempted a rapid transliteration of the broadcasts being made by the attack moon. Magos Biologis Laurentis, whom I also commend without reservation, has devised some translations which seem reliable. They are all statements issued by the apparent warboss of the ork horde. All recorded transmissions from the ork vessel, along with all of Magos Laurentis’s notes and ciphers, are attached to this communication in compressed data form. We have deduced that the orks refer to their subspace tunnel as a Waaagh! Gate. That is a reasonably close translation. The warboss refers to himself by a name that is harder to find a single, specific translation for. Depending on nuance, it seems to be “beast” or “slaughter”, or “lord that will make great slaughter”. I don’t think it matters. His intent is obvious and—’

The image blanked again. This time it took longer to return.

‘Time’s almost gone,’ said Heth when he reappeared. He had been cut by something, probably flying glass. He looked straight into the recorder source. ‘Study the files I’ve sent. Study the damned data. For the love of Terra. You need to understand. You need to be ready. The Imperial Fists are gone. They’ve wiped them out. The entire damned Chapter. We are finished here and unless you prepare yourselves you—’

The screen went blank.

‘The communique ends there, sir,’ said the aide.

Lansung nodded. He sat back and thought for a long while.

‘Send a message directly to Lord Udo. Tell him we require an emergency sitting of the High Lords immediately. Immediately.’

‘Yes, sir. Is that the whole of the Senatorum, my lord?’

‘No,’ said Lansung. ‘Just the High Lords. Just the rest of the Twelve. No others.’

‘Study the files I’ve sent,’ the uneven image of Heth was saying. ‘Study the damned data. For the love of Terra. You need to understand. You need to be ready. The Imperial Fists are gone. They’ve wiped them out. The entire damned Chapter. We are finished here and unless you prepare yourselves you—’

The screen went blank.

‘Lights up,’ Wienand said. She rose from her seat as the light levels in her private chamber intensified. She looked at her silent circle of interrogators. Despite their novitiate robes, some were far more senior than they appeared.

‘That was the latest intercept,’ she said. ‘It went directly to the Admiralty via a secure beacon, but we extracted the data-copy thanks to well-placed friends in the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Lansung will present it, or redacted highlights of it at least, to the High Twelve in the next hour.’

She paused.

‘I think three things are self evident. One, we must act and act now, without hesitation. The crisis is as bad as anything we feared and predicted. Two, the public must not be informed of the extinction of the Imperial Fists. That is a priority matter of morale. Three, we must raise our game. There is no more time for subtlety. We knew what was coming in more detail than the Navy or any other body. We did not share that knowledge with the High Twelve because we knew that Lansung’s power bloc would make it impossible for us to direct the correct and appropriate policy. Traditional and hidebound military dogmas would have hamstrung us and delayed our ability to react. We must determine policy from this point on. We must be the actual and real root of power during this crisis and beyond, or the Imperium will not survive.’

There was silence. One of the hooded figures raised his hand.

‘What, mistress, of the rogue elements?’ he asked. ‘What of them? There are more pieces involved in this game than the main and obvious players.’

‘This is a crisis of unparalleled proportions,’ replied Wienand, ‘not a game. As for the minor pieces, they will be brought to terms, or contained. Or they will be silenced.’

‘What, mistress, of the rogue elements?’ asked the hooded interrogator sitting at the back of the chamber. ‘What of them? There are more pieces involved in this game than the main and obvious players.’

Wienand looked at her questioner carefully.

‘This is a crisis of unparalelled proportions,’ she replied, ‘not a game. As for the minor pieces, they will be brought to terms, or contained. Or they will be silenced.’

Vangorich pressed a key on his data-slate and the screen image of the Inquisitorial Representative’s private suite froze, paused.

Vangorich sat back in his chair, put the slate down, and steepled his fingers.

‘Beasts arise,’ he murmured to himself. ‘And as they arise, so must they fall.’

Thirty-Five

Terra — Tashkent Hive

It was a snowy night. Out of the steel-cold blackness, blizzards drove in and coated the spires of the vast hive as if they were a range of mountain peaks. Lights twinkled in the vertical city, numerous as the stars.

The routines of Adeptus Arbitrator Sector Overseer Esad Wire had been carefully observed for some time. His work at Monitor Station KVF usually ended at around three in the pre-dawn shift, and he would return to his habitation on Spire 33456 via an eating house in the Uchtepa District, which served food after hours.

On this particular day, there were variations. Two hours into his shift, Wire received a personal transmission via encrypted vox, a call that lasted only eight seconds, and which Wire did not contribute to. He merely listened. The nature and content of what he listened to was not possible to ascertain.

Presumably as a result of this transmission, Wire reported to his superintendent that he was ill, the unfortunate flare-up of some chronic condition. He requested, and was granted, permission to leave work early and visit the district medicae before returning to his hab.

He left the station three hours before the scheduled end of his shift, as soon as the relief overseer arrived to cover him, but he did not travel to the district medicae’s office, nor did he travel home. Instead, dressed in his long, brown leather storm coat, and carrying a small but apparently heavy bag, he went west through the Commercia District towards the Mirobod Transit Terminal. The Mirobod Terminal served the Trans-Altai maglev lines.

Approaching the terminal, Wire did not seem to be aware he was under observation or being shadowed. The exterior rail shutters had been opened, and snow was blowing in under the canopy, dusting the concourse.

Wire went down two levels and then, oddly, walked into the seedy basement section of the terminal where derelicts and low-life individuals congregated. Wire vanished briefly into the dank, concrete underlevel of support pillars, garbage and oil drum fires.

Uneasy, Kalthro decided it was necessary to act before Wire began to suspect anything. He left his vantage point, dropped down the east wall of the terminal on a micro-filament cable, and waited for Wire to emerge from the north end colonnade of the underlevel.

When the man in the long brown storm coat reappeared, Kalthro pounced. He brought the man down cleanly, broke his back, and snapped his neck.

The corpse was face down on the filthy rockcrete floor. Kalthro got up and rolled the body over.

‘You don’t need to pay a poor man to wear a thick coat on a night like this,’ said Esad Wire from behind Wienand’s agent.

Kalthro turned. He was very fast indeed. The snub-las was already in his hand. He was, as Wienand had boasted, a superlative operative, the best in the Inquisition’s employ.

But, as he turned, he was no longer facing Esad Wire, Sector Overseer, Monitor Station KVF (Arbitrator).

Beast Krule met him with a smile. He touched Kalthro’s right forearm and shattered the bones there. The snub-las dropped out of a useless hand. Then Krule put his right fist in Kalthro’s face.

It went through. Clean through. The knuckle points fractured out through the back of Kalthro’s skull, jetting tissue and blood with them under considerable pressure. The operative’s body hung off the fist, twitching. Krule jerked his hand back, and it came out gore-slick and steaming.

Kalthro crumpled onto the floor beside the dead vagrant in the brown coat. More steam rose. Blood pooled, dark and glossy. Then it began to clot and then freeze in the desperate temperatures.

Krule looked down at the body.

‘Not bad,’ he allowed. He wiped his bloody hand clean on Kalthro’s jacket, recovered his coat, and picked up his bag.

Then he walked away into the frozen night towards the maglev terminal entrance, whistling an oddly cheerful refrain.

Rob Sanders

Predator, prey

Capturing…

Competition is a universal constant. Territoriality, a quantified given. Empire building — an expectation. The galaxy is quietly expanding, but there will never be enough room for all the species who aspire to its dominion. The appetites of sentient beings tend to the absolute — like our own. This is not base predation. I talk not of the hunter and hunted. This is not survival of the fittest. I have made it my life’s work — and that of the life thereafter — to study the grand design of such selection and speciation. It is both wondrous and dreadful.

The apex species of the galaxy compete not for resources or sustenance. They all take more than need demands. They compete because they can. This is intraguild predation, the predators that kill their competitors — the predators that prey on each other. They are the wolves that take down the lion.

We partake in a techno-evolutionary arms race: a galactic test of our suitability to rule, to prosper, to exist. Our success, however, is our failure. With every step we take along the path of enlightenment, dominance and superiority, we plant the seeds of our own destruction. In attempting to annihilate the other sentient species of the galaxy, we force them to adapt. To learn from their mistakes on a genetic level. We create competitors with the evolutionary gifts to wipe us from the face of the known universe.

I think of the terrible things we have achieved. Our countless numbers and culture of conquest. Our forges, our immaterial implementations and the mighty vessels that take our dread weapons to the stars. I think on galactic princes and their gene-sired Legions: our crusaders in the cosmos, our ambassadors of destruction, our lethal gift to enemy empires. I think on these cold considerations… and know that we are doomed.

ONE

Segmentum Solar — rimward sectors

How could it have come to this?

There was little in the way of historical precedent. Invaders announced their intentions with armies and armadas. Some drifted with cruel patience across the void, while others arrived on the edge of our systems with their vessels still frosted from the warp. All were outsiders. They were savage or unreasoning, insatiate or cold in their calculations. They observed humanity’s expansion through alien eyes and thought to check its advance. The Imperium became an empire encroached, with the xenos biting at the borders. Alien aggressors took virgin territory a piece at a time or relived histories long past by retaking the ground of their ancients. These were the trials of humanity in a vast and hostile galaxy.

That was before the coming of the Beast.

Early indications of the calamity to come were lost in the devotions and industry of teeming billions. Across hundreds of worlds Imperial citizens went about the drudgery of their existence and servitude, ignorant of the fact that they were being addressed across the void. At first, the noise bursts were swallowed by the vox-static of stars and background radiation. They struggled to make themselves known above the sub-light rumble of charter shipping and the aetherial boom of merchant fleets translating in and out of system. They were lost in the cannon fire of Imperial Navy frigates, engaging pirate fleets on the fringes of frontier space. They were drowned in the industrial undertakings of planetary forges and hive-worlds, in the hymnals echoing about mighty cathedrals and the riotous misery of swarming humanity.

As the noise bursts grew louder and more intense in their infrasonic insistence, the Imperium came to hearken to the herald of their doom. The listeners heard it first: those whose minds and ears were already open. A Navy listening post in the Ourobian Belt. The vox-operators of the 41st Thranxian Rifles on the jungle moon of Bossk. The Izul-11 Telepathica chorale beacon at Cantillus. The rogue trader Austregal, operating under a lineal letter of marque in the Wraith Stars. The Austregal was authorised to prey on the ghostships of the Zahr-Tann craftworld, but had discovered that the xenos had mysteriously moved out of the segmentum.

Credit for official recognition of the phenomenon on the Inner Rim was shared, however. At the same time that Divisio Linguistica adept Mobian Ortrex isolated the content of the noise bursts on the Ark Mechanicus vessel Singularitii, Sister-Emeritus Astrid of the Schola-Lexicon translated a vox-capture of the anomaly at the Mount Nisei Seminarium. They swiftly and separately came to the same conclusion and communicated their findings to Imperial authorities across the rimward sectors with equal urgency.

What sounded like the kind of belly-thunder that might erupt from a carnivorous death world predator was in fact a savage xenos vernacular. A barbaric decree from a tyrant species, hollered impossibly across the void. The words were raw and delivered like a barrage of artillery, but they were unmistakably greenskin. The broadcast assumed myriad forms, although certain linguistic patterns were the most repeated. The translation was crude but compelling.

Amongst the barbaric abandon of mindless monstrosity, the being announced itself as ‘the Slaughter to come’ and ‘the Beast’. It was beside itself with brutality and promised ‘blood for blood’, ‘an end to weakling empires’ and ‘the stench of oblivion’.

As the rimward sectors of the Segmentum Solar would come to understand, the Beast made good on its promises. The noise bursts spread. Within a few Terran standard weeks, the six outlying systems reporting the phenomenon became sixty. In mere days it became six hundred. The Beast spoke. The people listened. What had previously been distant thunder, unacknowledged and ignored, broke above the heads of the Emperor’s subjects. Across the worlds of the rimward sectors, the mind-splitting roar of the Beast became everything. Humanity could not function. People could not work; they could not sleep; they could not think. Schedules were disrupted. Tithes went unmet. Order began to slip from the Imperium’s gauntleted grasp.

Millions descended into madness. The grim rigidity of humanity’s tyrannised existence — harsh and imbalanced as it was — actually served to protect the masses from the threat of the outsider. Most Imperial citizens had never set foot outside their habsteads or districts, let alone left their home worlds. Apart from a small number of surviving veterans from the Astra Militarum, very few people had actually seen a member of a xenos race. So when the unbridled rage of an alien monstrosity unfolded in their minds, many simply didn’t have the mental fortitude to hold onto their sanity.

Amid the collapse of structures and the riotous descent of planets into chaos, there were some who heard the Beast reach out to them — and they reached back. Something repressed and downtrodden found expression in the alien rancour. Unlike the God-Emperor, who — apart from in the chapel and catechism — seemed strangely absent from the life of the average Imperial, the Beast was there. Its fury was present between their temples. It echoed about their streets. It rumbled through the void above their home worlds. It didn’t take long for shrines to be defaced and missions to be torched, as the faithless found their way to a nihilistic comfort in the doom to come.

There is power in words, but more so in deeds. The Beast made a shocking impression on the billions of the rimward sectors with its roaring menace, but then came the gravity storms. If the Beast’s emerging acolytes desired more evidence of the being’s almighty power, they needed to look no further than its unseen mastery of destructive force.

While the augur banks of sprint traders, research stations and fabricator moons detected and monitored the gravitic anomalies afflicting the segmentum margins, many only came to know of their presence through the cataclysmic events unfolding about them. The Angelini Hub dockyards — a modern wonder of the Imperium, orbiting the great mercantile world of Korsicus IV like a belt — simply shattered. An endeavour that had taken more than a thousand years to engineer and accrete drifted off into the void in splintered fragments, along with the bodies of the million or so merchant traders and their families that called the Angelini Hub home. For the common Imperial citizen, there was no explanation for such a tragedy. Mechanicus adepts and the Hub’s Naval security had next to no idea what had caused the gravity storm. For most, it was simply a demonstration of the Beast’s power and potential.

On the low-gravity world of Virgilia, where the lofty towers of schola and universitae reached for the heavens and pierced the clouds, the anomaly wreaked havoc. The collegia world passed through an erupting gravity well, causing the planet to violently wobble. Like a slow-motion holo-pict, the forest of hightowers, spires and belfries came crashing down on the ancient colleges and institutes below. Within minutes, the cloud-piercing skyline had become a dust-cloaked silhouette of finely crafted rubble.

World after decimated world fell before the might of the gravity storms. Fenimore had the misfortune of orbiting the gas giant 88-Clavia. Usually the inhabitants of the moon enjoyed the sight of the giant’s beautiful ring system in their sky. After the anomaly tore through the delicate arrangement, however, death rained down on Fenimore from above. Shards of ice and long-shattered shepherd moons sliced down through the thin skies and cut the screaming population to bloody ribbons. As the world turned, night became day and the dawn ushered in the razor-storm.

On the fortress-world of Brigantia III, General Milus Montague of the 47th Heavy Columnus had two million Imperial Guardsmen amassing for a push on the Zodiox Rift — including honoured regiments of the Phaxatine-of-Foot and Droonian Longshanks. The sparse systems of the Rift had become a petri dish of alien infestations: the Hrud, the Noulia and the Chromes. The xenos filth lived to spread their contagion another day, however. As something colossal attempted to break through into the reality of the Brigantia System, the fortress-world trembled and then succumbed to unseen and unimaginable gravitic pressures. Despite its bastions, armour formations and millions of Guardsmen, Brigantia III had no defence against the intrusion of another world.

The planet exploded. As gargantuan chunks of fortress-world rocketed away, demolishing the flotillas of super-heavy troop transports and Navy escorts waiting to receive General Montague’s Zodiox crusade force in orbit, another planet had taken its place. A small, black moon: one of many appearing throughout the sectors of the Inner Rim like bad omens.

Amongst the calamitous roaring of the Beast and the gravitic disasters afflicting worlds, these unnatural satellites materialised across the rimward sectors. The heralds of catastrophe, they ripped through reality to take their place among the ornamental orbs of busy Imperial systems. Some were black like coal, eating up the light reflected off nearby stars and planets. The surfaces of others were a collage of wreckage and plating, rusted into an armoured shell. The rock monstrosity above Arx II Antareon bore a colossal clan glyph painted across its ugly face, while the attack moon rising over desert world of Sanveen was a mechanical horror — a patchwork metal skull grinning down on the doomed Imperial citizenry with alien drollery.

Praxedes Prime was one of the first recorded worlds to experience the attack moons’ gargantuan weapons. Gravity beams struck the shrine world’s surface, chewing though the sovereign city states and tearing temples, basilicae and cathedrals violently skywards. Light years away, Port Oberon — a fleet base situated near a busy subsector ether-nexus — was pulverised. Colossal rocks, meteorites and planetary chunks, vomited forth from gaping launch craters in the pock-marked surface of a materialising attack moon, smashed through stationed sentry cruisers and fleeing merchant shipping.

The worst was to come, however. As well as rocketing projectiles and graviton beams, the attack moons unleashed plagues of ramshackle gunships, salvage hulks and rammers that enveloped escaping vessels in a web of grapnels and gunfire. Survivors on victim worlds climbed out from the wreckage of demolished cities, their eyes fixed on the slaughter above and the attack moons glowering down on them. They watched until their skies grew black — black with the swarms of descending rocks, landers and greenskin capsules. Oblivion beckoned.

This was not the first time the Inner Rim had suffered greenskin attacks. In recent memory, the Archfiend of Urswine had led its invasion into Subsector Borodino. The orks poured into the Grange Worlds like a green tide. Their decimation of the agri-world crops and tenders brought the nearby hive-world of Quora Coronis to the brink of starvation. It took the best part of a decade for the Coronida 3rd through 9th Indentured and the Royal Borodino ‘Blues’ to drive the Archfiend and its splintering horde back to its degenerate empire.

The Beast was not the Archfiend of Urswine, however. The Archfiend’s invasion force, while a savage sea of green into which Imperial worlds went to die, were mere runts compared to the Beast’s hulking monsters. Amongst the Beast’s countless number, the Urswine orks would have been trampled under foot. Even the greatest of the Archfiend’s brutes — perhaps even the Archfiend itself — would have been lost in the shadow of the Beast’s invader savages. The puniest of the Beast’s monsters were small mountains of muscle, standing snaggle-jaw and shoulder over other orks. Striding through the mobs and madness were greater beasts still: towers of tusk, green flesh and ferocity. Like gargants or giant effigies of greenskin gods brought to life, these hulks carried colossal weapons that demolished buildings at a single strike and monstrous guns that mangled infantry and tank formations with equal, bloody ease.

This was the gift the Beast brought to each planet on the Inner Rim of the Segmentum Solar: an apocalyptic flood of alien wrath. World by world, the Imperium began to fall, drowning in innocent blood less spilled than splattered. No subsector escaped armageddon. No star cluster survived the Beast. Wherever the black doom of attack moons appeared, life ended: the crowded worlds of the Scinta Stars, the void colonies of Constantin Thule, the Skull Nebula, the Gastornis Marches, planets along the Carcasion Flux, the Quatra Sound and Imperial strongholds on the Neo-Tavius Drift — even the quarantined worlds of the Prohibited Zone and the marauder-haunted reaches of wilderness space were sacrificed to feed the Beast’s apparently insatiable appetite for annihilation.

Billions perished in the fires of the invasion’s ire. Worlds lay smashed. The people prayed for an intervention — but none came. Astra Militarum forces and planetary defences stationed in the path of ruin did what they could, but were swiftly overrun. No reinforcements were sent. No reclamation fleet from Ancient Terra was on its way. Only death worlds and Adeptus Astartes home worlds seemed to have the resilience to slow the invasion’s progress. From individual planets, the Beast’s alien ambitions grew to the destruction of subsectors. From those, the green plague spread — overwhelming entire sectors of Imperial space. From prayer, the people turned to raw hope. Like the Archfiend’s feuding clans, perhaps the Beast’s monstrosities would tire, fragment and fall to fighting between themselves.

But as the months went by in misery and slaughter, it became apparent that this Beast was something else. A new breed of xenos savage. It would not stop. It would never stop. From subsector to sector it would lead its barbarian horde — and from there corewards, until the entirety of Segmentum Solar belonged to the greenskin race and Ancient Terra was clutched in the Beast’s filthy alien claw.

TWO

Undine — Hive Tyche

Lux Allegra could not believe what she was seeing.

The commander had been in the underhive for a number of days. Her mission had been simple: locate the Lord Governor and get him to safety. With the hive-world of Undine going to hell about them — hivers rioting, communities flooding, hundreds of thousands trapped under collapsing accretia and rubble — it seemed ironic that she, a former ganger, should be the one selected to lead the rescue. That Lux Allegra, who had lived so long by the edge of her knives and the whim of the ocean currents, should be chosen to pull the bastard blue-bloods out.

As underhiver and pirate, she had robbed the Lord Governor and his hive of monies and supplies. She had outrun his pirate-hunters, his enforcers and Maritine Guard. That was before she had been caught, press-ganged and promoted, however. Now she wore the hated uniform: the beret and the blue-and-white stripe, the flak plate and pads.

‘Why me, sir?’ Allegra had put to General Phifer. ‘Surely someone with consular experience would be more appropriate. A flag officer…’

‘Stop apologising for what you’re not,’ the general had grizzled back. ‘I don’t need somebody to hold the Governor’s cloak tails.’

Everyone knew where the Beacon Spire was. As both pirate and commander, Allegra had used the rotating lamps of the lantern palace to navigate the shantipelagos and hazards of sunken architecture on the seaward approach to Hive Tyche. Few others among the Undine 41st Maritine would have been able to navigate their way down through the city’s crumbling levels and sub-strata, and Chief Gohlandr and the twenty Maritine Guard under her command had been glad of her knowledge and assurance. With the Beacon Spire landing pad destroyed, along with the mighty plasma lamps themselves, and the lantern palace collapsing about them, Allegra had been forced to take them down.

The seas had quaked. The island hives had shaken. The Lord Governor — aged and infirm — had to be ripped from his pipes, tubes and wheeled throne. Carried between two valets, it would have been difficult enough to get the aristocrat out. Artemus Borghesi refused to leave, however, without the menagerie of extended family and hangers-on who had rushed to the spire palace for safety. With these, the patriarch included the palace servants and pets. While Allegra had been glad of the extra guns in the form of the ceremonial spire guardians, she had Chief Gohlandr shoot the Lord Governor’s retinue of prize flippered marine mammals — just to end the argument. Even then, the emaciated Borghesi forced the rescue party to wait while he had his valets dress him in his old fleet dress uniform, complete with medals and bicorne hat.

‘It just doesn’t seem appropriate,’ Allegra had told the general. ‘I’m of the Brethren. I’ve robbed, pillaged and stolen from this man and his spirekin.’

‘And now I want you to steal him away,’ Phifer had insisted. ‘The extraction will be hot: the transport will get to you where it can, but you may have to improvise…’

With her Marineers leading the way with their assault lasrifles, Allegra escorted the mob of inbreeds and palace favourites down through the stairwells of factoria and hab levels, down into the derelict underhive. An evacuation from the aerie villa terraces had to be abandoned, due to the shuttle being overwhelmed by swarms of terrified hivers. The pick-up became ugly, with the shuttle being rushed and crashing into the spire wall. The mob turned on the Maritine Guard and Allegra was forced to order Imperial civilians shot, just to keep the madness at bay. A second lift simply didn’t happen. Allegra had instructed Chief Gohlandr to establish a perimeter amongst the sky talons and gigabarge dry docks. There they had joined forces with Commandant Hektor Szekes and five of his enforcers in their black carapace armour. Forced to abandon their precinct house due to rioting and gangs emboldened by the chaos, the enforcers had been fighting running battles through the freightstacks.

Hours overdue and faced with small armies of trigger-happy gangers driven up though the sub-levels by flooding, Allegra ordered the Marineers and their charges on. The commander had little choice but to push down through the underhive and out through the pontoon shanties. There were fewer gangers taking potshots at the Marineers and enforcers, but the sub-levels were filling with rising seawater and some sections were now fully submerged. Gravity quakes collapsed tunnels both before and behind them, sending torrents of floodwater through the depths that swept away several of their number.

Borghesi had struggled. The Lord Governor had seen more of his Hive-Primus in the last two-score hours than the trecentigenarian had experienced in his elongated life. Even carried by his valets, the physical demands of the descent were too much for him. Combined with the overexcitement of riots and gunfire, the extraction meant to save Artemus Borghesi’s life almost took it on several occasions. Every few levels brought on a fresh attack of organ-failure and the personal physicians Borghesi had insisted on including in their party had to resuscitate the mouldering aristocrat.

‘I’m not saying you need to lay on the airs and graces, commander,’ Phifer had said, ‘but the man is the planetary governor: the God-Emperor’s representative on this world. I don’t care how hurt his sensibilities are but I need you to get him out of there alive and in one piece. Understood?’

The commander had nodded. The commander had saluted. It was less simple than that in the hive. For two days the Marineers navigated a labyrinthine hell of flooded darkness, losing a number of the grandee’s frail relatives to the rigours of exposure and exhaustion. The vox-channels kept Allegra apprised regarding the impossibilities of a planetary invasion that she could not see. Across her headset, in the dripping gloom of the depths, the insanity and slaughter reported and described seemed distant and unreal. It was unnerving, regardless. Allegra kept her men focused on the mundane: reconnaissance, the conservation of power and keeping the master-vox and the power packs of their lasrifles as dry as possible. When Chief Gohlandr blasted the rusted lock mechanism from the maintenance opening and kicked open the metal cover, water flowed out while daylight flooded in. Leading the way with her laspistol and shielding her eyes, the commander stepped out on the rockcrete.

What she experienced made her want to return to the cold and dark of the claustrophobic underhive. It was horrific.

Lux Allegra could not believe what she was seeing.

THREE

Undine — the Pontoon Shanties

It was raining meteorites. Large meteorites. Allegra watched the incandescent rocks — too many to count — stream from the sky. The heavens were a thatch-work of crossing dust trails, while the air trembled with the sonic boom of descents. Staring out across the chromatic water, Allegra could see the distant silhouette of Hive Galatae: mist-cloaked, massive and falling into the polluted sea. Hive Tyche may have been the Hive-Primus but Galatae was older and bigger, and like the capital, Hive Galatae had suffered the gravity quakes and disturbances. Vast tidal waves had done for Hives Arethusa and Thetis, but it was the trembling seabed and ruptured hydrothermics that toppled great Galatae.

Above the ghost of the falling hive a new moon had risen over the ocean hive-world of Undine, a black and impossible thing that held its ugly station above the planet. Its cratered surface made it appear as though it had a misshapen face: two eyes, one larger than the other, and a crooked valley-fracture for a nose. Its southern hemisphere was delineated by the iron glint of a colossal metal jaw fixed to the moon’s circumference. Allegra had seen alien brutes wear such contraptions in place of jaws torn from their monstrous faces. Terrified hivers were calling it the trap-jaw moon.

‘Commander…’

As suggested by the flooded underhive, sea levels had risen with the gravitic perversions. The hive’s island foundations had been buried beneath the chemical cocktail that was Undine’s oceans, and the pontoon shanties — smashed and tangled with weed — had risen to cluster-shunt about the hive walls. Beyond, the meteorites were hammering the ocean surface. Great eruptions of water and spray marked their landings before their great weight contributed to their continued descent.

Watching several of the nearest splash-impacts, the commander came to realise that they weren’t all streaming rocks. Some were armour-plated pods and capsules. An invasion had begun in overwhelming earnest. Without great Undine herself inviting the alien savages into her dark ocean-world depths, the monsters would already have swamped the planet. Allegra watched as the engine-mounted asteroids and junker pods carried their raging xenos payloads down below the waves.

‘Commander!’

Stumbling around and looking up the shell-face of the hive, Allegra saw that the spire had been demolished. Feathered sea-raptors swooped and dived in search of their missing nests. Allegra turned again, and then she saw them.

Scrambling out of the shallows in a constant stream, like the unkillable bastards they were, were thousands of hulking orks. Their skin glistened wet over their fearful brawn and their beady eyes were red with unreasoning alien rage. Like the starved vermin of the stars, they clambered and swarmed. The greenskin beasts hauled themselves up the tottering architecture and busy accretia of the city’s shell. They scrambled over each other — the mass of claws, arms and jaws snapping and scraping its way upwards like a living geyser of green flesh, gushing its way up the hive wall. Greater beasts still mounted the writhing column of muscle, climbing monstrously over their xenos kin. Beetle-backed landers, belching black smoke, hovered at the cavernous mouths of rocket-mauled entry points. There they delivered further mobs of monstrous brutality and ork chieftains buried in exoskeletal suits of plate and piston. They could smell the herds of terror-stricken humanity hiding within the byzantine dereliction of the hive. They climbed. They roared. The Beast bawled its fury through the combined thunder of their barrel chests.

‘Lux!’ Chief Gohlandr shouted. The intimacy of first names brought the commander back from the breathtaking dread of the spectacle.

‘Chief,’ Allegra barked back. ‘Establish a perimeter — our backs to the wall.’

She looked to the dribble of minor aristocrats and hangers-on stumbling out into the daylight. There were no words to describe the horror on their powdered faces. As members of the Undine 41st Maritine splashed down into the shallows at the chief’s bawling order, Allegra called out, ‘Gunner DuDeq!’

The gunner fell out of line, his lasrifle snug at his chin, his eye staring down his sights at the greenskin hordes about them. Holding her pistol upright, Allegra stepped behind the gunner and cranked the master-vox that DuDeq was humping on his back. Snatching an ear-horn and hailer from the pack, she shouted above the roar of the beasts and waves. ‘Capricorn-Six, Capricorn-Six — this is Commander Allegra, respond.’

Allegra waited as Lyle Gohlandr splashed forwards with his gunners, assuming positions about the commander and Lord Governor amongst the wet and busy architecture. ‘Capricorn-Six,’ she persisted, ‘this is Commander Allegra with the Undine Forty-First, “Screeching Eagles”. ’

The xenos were everywhere. Allegra watched as monstrous multitudes emerged from the water, hauling themselves up out of waves. ‘We have acquired our target and are awaiting evacuation. Our position is three fifty-four fifty-two fifty-six: Primus north by north-east. Do you read, Capricorn?’

The green bastards swarming all over the architecture could see them. Allegra felt their blood-vision, their appetite, their need to smash and kill. Like rivers diverting and changing direction, the hordes came for them: hundreds upon hundreds of leathery beasts thundering up through the surf, rounding an artificial headland created by the domed roof of a freight-barbican and skidding down through the grotesques and gargoyles of shell-stone decoration. They ran at them like things of madness, all bared tooth and tusk.

Allegra searched for hope. High above them, gunships and assault carriers were drifting about the hive-heights, exchanging fire with the enemy swarms. Something big fired back from within the penetrated city shell, turning one of the aircraft into a tumbling fireball of death and wreckage. Out on the water, amongst the raining rocks and pods, was a Maritine cutter, its prow-mounted inferno cannon bathing the shoreline masses in a stream of flame.

Two shallow-hulled landing craft hit hive-city masonry further along the chemical coast. Their prow-ramps crashed down into the surf and platoons of Maritine Guard stormed up towards the dripping greenskins. Allegra saw the constellations of las-fire. She watched as the grim determination of the soldiers’ faces fell to fearful dread. Like the water washing back and forth up the shorelines, throngs of greenskin predators, newly risen from the depths, turned and thundered back at the shallows. The las-fire intensified. The landing faltered. Marineers began stumbling back towards their craft, but nothing could save them. Drawn by the panic and the screams, surrounding monsters ran at the butchery, hacking limbs and bodies apart.

‘Capricorn-Six…’ Allegra half-pleaded.

‘They’re not coming,’ Chief Gohlandr roared over the din. ‘Permission to open fire?’

After days of power conservation, Allegra gave her men the order. ‘Fire at will.’

The perimeter became a halo of scintillation. With power packs hot to the touch and lasrifles unleashing beam-snaps at full automatic, the Maritine gunners made their stand. The greenskins didn’t care. Their armour scraps and iron-hard flesh soaked up the curtain of light. Riddled bodies, searing and smoking, were stamped into the masonry by the racing hordes. Beasts barged and clawed at each other in primal desperation to be the first to land a kill. Fire from the guardsmen’s rifles was punctuated by flash of the spire guardians’ fusils and the repetitive pump-crash of the enforcers’ shotguns.

‘Chief!’ Allegra called.

‘I know!’ he barked back, but he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t heard it. Amongst the cacophony of the brutes bearing down on his position and the drumming of his rapidly-emptying assault rifle, the chief hadn’t noticed the whine of approaching aircraft.

‘No,’ Allegra shouted, adding to the barrage a stream of las-bolts from her pistol. ‘Look.’

Dropping out of the sky were a trio of Thunderbolt fighter-bombers. They were zeroing in on the hive, coming in low and fast — which could mean only one thing. They were going to cleanse the shoreline.

‘Fall back!’ Allegra called. ‘Gunners — fall back!’

Allegra waved the Lord Governor’s valets and inbreeds back through the maintenance opening. Tearing DuDeq back with her by his vox-pack, the commander backed with them. The chief finally clocked the approaching Thunderbolts and echoed Allegra’s order.

Most of the Marineers didn’t need an excuse to run from the closing wall of blades, gaping barrels and green flesh. Some, like Gunners Friel and LaNoy, couldn’t make themselves move. Whether it was fear or faith in their weapons, the guardsmen remained, burning streams of light into the rabid ranks. They were gone in moments. Swallowed by the horde. There was no gallant defence. No sweeping bladework with broad bayonet or cutlass. The guardsmen were shreds in seconds.

As Chief Gohlandr pushed the last of the Marineers into the maintenance opening, Allegra saw the roaring masses behind him accelerate up the rockcrete. The greenskins did not heed the Thunderbolts screeching overhead. They did not see the mountain range of flame erupting up the shoreline behind them. Gohlandr, Allegra and Commandant Szekes slammed the opening cover shut. The hammer of claws on the metal was almost immediate and the cover was briefly wrenched back open, before the Marineers were suddenly thrown back as a blast of overpressure from outside hurled it closed again. About them the darkness of the tunnel quaked as the airstrike ripped its way up the shore. The scratching and frenetic thunder of fists on the metal covering died away, swallowed in the apocalyptic howl of destruction.

Eyes glinted by the light of the few lamps the Marineers had left. Precious moments passed. The enforcer commandant went to open the cover.

‘Wait!’ Allegra ordered, drifting her ear towards the hot metal. Satisfied, she nodded. The enforcer went to barge the covering open with one carapace-armoured shoulder, but it all but fell off its roasted hinges.

Smoke was swiftly clearing with the onshore breeze. As the soot and ash whirled in the wind Allegra stepped out, onto charred bodies. The shoreline was carpeted with blackened xenos corpses. The commander found herself nodding with satisfaction, but she knew the beasts would be back — and in number. Offshore, Allegra could see a few remaining guardsmen swamped by orks who were overrunning their battered landing craft. The Maritine cutter that the commander had also been pinning her hopes on was now listing horribly as some greenskin titan seized it from below. About the craft, the pontoon shanties — in chaotic disarray — had fragmented and were floating away from one another in ramshackle sections. The shoreline was overrun and the absence of their assigned evacuation had been a blow, but Allegra couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The Screeching Eagles simply couldn’t hold the perimeter.

‘The pontoons,’ the commander ordered. ‘Make for the pontoons.’

Directing the remaining guardsmen into two columns, Gohlandr barked at the Lord Governor and his freakish retinue to run into the shallows. Many of the spireborns had never been near the waters for fear of pollutant contamination. They were not keen on stumbling into the chemical shallows, but the heart-stopping vision of green fiends stomping up through the cadavers of their monster-kin lent the aristocrats resolve. Cutting a path through the surf with savage bursts of las-fire and lobbed frag grenades, Gohlandr led the way through the hazards of emerging orks.

Clambering up the side of a pontoon platform bearing part of the shattered shanty, the chief took the frail Lord Governor from his exhausted valets and hauled him up onto the amphibious community. As the Marineers and their charges climbed aboard, shanty wretches emerged from hiding. They extended emaciated arms and skeletal hands to help the screaming survivors — survivors they did not know were their palace-dwelling betters.

Like some death world reptile, a hulking greenskin tramped up the scorched shoreline towards the fleeing rescue party. It towered above the other examples of its species that were swarming up the coast. The creature grizzled to itself as it smashed the monstrous weapon it was heaving with a frustrated fist. It shook the rotor-cannon, and water cascaded from the barrels.

Another savage shake and the weapon stuttered to reluctant life. The unexpected eruption of shells tore through the unfortunate greenskins in front before the creature angled its fire up the shore and cut the rescue party in half. With the shallows thrashing and spitting in the gunfire, Allegra fell forwards into the sea.

She was only below the surface for a few seconds but as she emerged she felt her eyes burn and her skin sear from the chemicals in the water. Finding her way back to her feet, she started wading back towards the shore. Commandant Szekes and a handful of guardsmen had been cut off by the wall of bullets unleashed by the advancing beast.

‘Commander!’ Lyle Gohlandr roared. There was nothing she could do, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn her back on her men. It was over quickly. Greenskins bounded through desperate las-fire to maul the Undine Marineers. Szekes blasted through several thuggish creatures before his combat shotgun ran empty. Throwing the weapon at an ork bulldozing its way at him, the enforcer drew his crackling power maul; but as he readied himself to bury the weapon in the creature’s domed skull, he did not see a larger monster cannon through the advancing ranks behind him.

The beast smashed the enforcer to the side with one swing of its brute hammer. Szekes’ broken body landed some distance away in a mound of bloody bones and torn carapace. The sight brought Allegra to her senses and she turned, striding through the shallows for the drifting shanty.

Helped up onto the pontoon by one of the Lord Governor’s spire guardians, Allegra looked up, searching for Chief Gohlandr. Greenskins were clambering up the rusted metal drums and flotation tanks, only to meet the barrels of assault lasrifles pointing down at them. A number broke through and charged wildly about the corrugated habs, multi-shacks and hovels, but were blasted off-board by the two remaining enforcers. The pontoon shanty was floating away from the hive, but not nearly fast enough. The blood-splattered landing craft now belonged to the orks, and the cutter was sinking. The monstrous greenskin that had done for the vessel was aflame; there was fire on the water, with the inferno cannon’s ruptured tanks bleeding promethium across the surface of the sea. With the craft conquered, the beast disappeared below the flickering waves, dousing its flame-tangled form.

The Thunderbolts were banking for another run and orks were leaping from the blasted city-shell. Flailing green bodies tumbled the lethal distance to the roofs and rockcrete below. Some creatures made it, however, latching on to drifting gunships and carriers with claws and brute prosthetics, before smashing though into the cockpits and bringing the aircraft down. Worst of all, the hive was drowning in alien filth. Like a rampant mould growing up the city walls, greenskins were swarming the shell, rabid and unstoppable. The pontoon shanty would share a similar fate.

A beast erupted from the water like a carnivorous fish, its jaws snapping. Pulling hard on the trigger, Allegra unloaded the rest of her power pack into the thing’s face. Another had torn through the rickety walkway and was cannoning towards her. Las-bolts from nearby guardsman plucked at the monster, but did little to stop it. The patchwork floor bounced with its footsteps. Dropping the empty pistol and grabbing the wobbly support, Allegra leapt the rail, allowing the creature to thunder past.

Just as she was about to climb back, a meaty claw grabbed her by the leg. An ork had her. She could feel the feral fury in its grip, its filthy fist enclosing the whole of her booted calf. It hauled itself up to meet her, its tusk-thronged maw mumbling some alien insanity. Allegra snatched for the only weapon she had left: her officer’s hanger. It was a polite weapon, nothing like the brute blades she used in her former life. Its single monomolecular edge was serviceable, however, and cleared its stubby scabbard with oiled ease. The blade slashed though the greenskin’s exposed throat, giving even the mindless monster pause. It released her and with the sole of her boot against its cavernous chest she pushed it back into the water with a grunt.

As she climbed up onto the pontoon shanty, the commander felt the structure lurch. A rock or capsule had plunged into the water nearby, rocking the section and knocking several terrified inhabitants into the water. It wasn’t stopping the greenskins, however, who were surfacing from sinking pods and descent craft and climbing up the nearest structures they could find.

‘Lux!’ she heard as she wiped and resheathed her bloody hanger. It was Gohlandr. The chief was on a bent and rusty balcony above, tangled in washing lines and rags. Gunner DuDeq was with him, and the Lord Governor’s skeletal arm was draped across the vox-officer’s shoulder. Gohlandr dropped DuDeq’s assault rifle down to Allegra and she caught it in both hands. She called up to him.

‘Get Borghesi higher,’ she ordered.

‘What about you?’ the chief roared back over the chaos.

‘I’m coming,’ she told him. Checking the lasrifle’s depleted power pack and priming it to fire on full automatic, Allegra shouldered the weapon and began a messy climb of the shanty structure.

Two floors up, and the profusion of purchase offered by the ramshackle hab-shacks and walkways allowed the commander to make good progress. Occasionally, she hooked her flak armour on protruding struts or exposed rivets of the structure. In the background she could still hear the bark of enforcer shotguns and the staccato drum of las-bolts above. Greenskins, frothing at the maw, had made equally economic climbs and were savaging the dwindling party of guardsmen and survivors making their way up through the shanty. Risking a glance below, Allegra saw that the pontoon levels were completely overrun. Like Hive Tyche, the shanty had succumbed to the greenskin swarms.

The structure suddenly staggered, knocking Allegra from her precarious purchase. This wasn’t the shockwave from a plunging rock or pod: something had hit the shanty. Her arm slipped out of her rifle strap. She snatched for the stock, and dangled from the lasgun’s pistol grip by one hand. The strap had been caught on a rusted nail. As the shanty rocked, Allegra bounced off the corrugated wall of a shack.

A greenskin — black, scarred and charred — had surfaced like a behemoth and punched through the pontoon hull of the shanty. As water cascaded from its gargantuan body, the beast swept derelict shacks and habs aside with one furious arm, knocking mobs of its own xenos kin back into the shallows. One monster had the rabid audacity to roar its frustration, and the larger beast snatched it up in one titanic claw and snapped its carping head clean off its shoulders.

Reaching up for the rifle with her other hand, Allegra found her way back to hand- and boot-holds on the shanty wall. Slipping the blessed rifle back over her shoulder, the commander climbed for her life, with the greenskin starting its own shanty-listing ascent behind her.

The chief had reached the topmost hovels. In imitation of the hive cities they emulated, the highest habshacks boasted the most room and even welded terrace-overhangs. They were like palaces compared to the corrugated coffins below. Gohlandr and the remaining Marineers were sending a storm of light down at the monstrous creature. Climbing up onto a creaking walkway, Allegra took her assault rifle and buried the stock in one shoulder. She could not allow the greenskin to reach the upper levels. It had not yet noticed her, the colossal ork’s attention remaining firmly on its infuriated ascent and the stabbing burn of las-beams into its already roasted flesh.

Leaning into the rifle, the commander started to hammer the green, uncooked flesh of the beast’s exposed belly. The searing wound eventually got the monster’s attention and it brought the full ugliness of its scorch-smeared face and blackened tusks down to the walkway.

‘That’s right,’ Allegra spat, sending a fresh volley of fire into the beast’s melted maw. ‘On me, you bastard. On me!’

The giant greenskin took the bait and roared a foetid gale of flesh-breath at the commander. One huge fist smashed through the walkway. Allegra felt the wire mesh beneath her boots disappear, and instinctively turned and clawed for the collapsing walkway. Her fingers found grating and she clung on, allowing her rifle to drop with the debris. The beast had not only knocked out the walkway; its fist had ripped away the entire corner section of the shanty-level. Crawling up to where the walkway was barely hanging onto the collage-walls, Allegra saw that the destruction had revealed the structure’s innards. A little slum-girl sat in the corner of her hovel, her eyes wide and white against the dirty mask of her terrified face. Allegra stared from the girl to the greenskin. The monster waded inwards through the dilapidated wreckage, forcing its mangled face through the jury-rigged architecture.

‘Here,’ Allegra soothed, opening her arms to the small, stricken child. The girl didn’t move. The greenskin monstrosity was a nightmare spectacle that demanded her full attention.

‘Now!’ the commander roared. There wasn’t time for assuaging comforts. The creature closed. The child ran — straight into Allegra’s arms.

‘Hold on,’ she told the child, as the slum-girl wrapped her arms around Allegra’s neck and clung to her back. Allegra stepped up onto the walkway rail and began climbing for the shanty-stack. A monstrous growl built up within the great greenskin and echoed about the dereliction before the beast withdrew itself from the ruined structure.

Allegra felt the rumble of the monster’s movements on the other side of the accretion. She climbed for all she was worth, with the child hanging from her back.

‘Chief?’ she called up at the terrace. But he was nowhere to be seen. ‘Anybody?’ The gunfire had stopped also. Allegra began to imagine the worst. Gohlandr and the rescue party dead. Greenskins waiting for her at the end of an exhausting climb.

The monster ork was suddenly there beside her. Both commander and child were suddenly enveloped in the thing’s bestial roar of triumph as it clawed its way around the corner of the shanty.

‘Lyle!’ Allegra screamed, but there wasn’t anyone above her. The beast reached out for her.

The shanty-stack shook with sudden violence. The gargantuan greenskin was lost in a raging fireball. As the flame evaporated and the black cloud cleared, Allegra saw the waspish outline of a Maritine Guard gunship drift clear. Its nosecone flashed with the revolving barrels of its gatling cannon. The greenskin monster, its back flayed of flesh from the gunship’s rocket attack and drowning in fresh flames, retreated back around the corner, away from the punishing cannon fire.

Stunned by the explosion and with her ears still aching from the blast, Allegra scrambled up the last few levels of the shanty accretion. A few agonising moments from the top she found Gohlandr and Gunner DuDeq. They were saying something, but she couldn’t make it out. As they hauled her and the child up onto the scrap-metal terrace, she saw Capricorn-Six hovering just above and Undine Maritine Guard helping the Lord Governor and what remained of his inbred family aboard. DuDeq went to take the child but the girl wouldn’t let go, instead crawling around to the commander’s flak-armoured front.

‘It’s okay,’ she said as Gohlandr helped her towards the Valkyrie carrier. Only a few of her men remained — grim-faced but glad to see their commander. One of Szekes’ enforcers had made it also, surrounded by a cluster of terrified slummers and urchins Gohlandr had picked up on their ascent through the shanty-stack.

An officer jogged down the ramp and saluted Allegra. He introduced himself.

‘Lieutenant Kale.’

‘What?’

‘Lieutenant Kale,’ the officer repeated. ‘I have orders to take you and the Lord Governor to the general.’

Allegra nodded and went to step on board.

‘I’m not cleared for unauthorised civilians,’ the lieutenant said, indicating the child in the commander’s arms and the shanty folk staring up at them, waiting to be slaughtered by climbing greenskins.

Allegra went to reply but a voice from behind beat her to it.

‘Let the hivers aboard.’

As Lieutenant Kale turned, Allegra saw Lord Governor Borghesi, strapped into a stretcher. ‘That’s an order, lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kale replied, ordering his Marineers to admit the wretches.

Lux Allegra collapsed against the troop bay wall with the little girl still in her arms. She felt Capricorn-Six ascend, leaving the pontoon shanty to the rabid swarms of greenskins, and carry them high up into the Undinian skies. She felt the assault carrier bank from side to side as it negotiated the ork capsules and rocks raining from the heavens. Chief Gohlandr allowed his flak-armoured back to slide down the bay wall opposite. He watched Allegra with the slummer girl and found his way to a grizzled smile.

Allegra smiled back. She enjoyed the moment of calm. The feeling of safety. The last few days had been a nightmarish hell. She’d found Borghesi as she had been ordered and got him out of the hive. As the odds had grown against them and as the alien apocalypse engulfed Undine, Allegra came to realise that she had not fought her way through the city, negotiated the flooded underhive and fled the burning shore because of orders. She had fought to survive — just like she had always done. Somewhere along the way, she came to realise that it was no longer her survival that mattered. It wasn’t even the survival of the child in her arms, freshly plucked from calamity.

It was the child growing in her belly. Lyle Gohlandr’s child. The pair stared at each other across the beautiful silence of the troop bay.

‘Commander,’ DuDeq said. The silence shattered. Allegra watched the chief’s smile widen. The gunner was standing at the narrow observation port in the bay wall. Heaving the slummer girl’s head up onto one shoulder and getting to her feet, she joined DuDeq by the port. Gohlandr moved up too.

Capricorn-Six was flying high above the chromatic sheen of Undine’s chemical seas, flanked by two gunships. Below, the commander and the two guardsmen could see a fleet of ocean-going vessels. There were fat troop carriers and medical freighters, escorted by sliver-hulled monitors and heavily-armed corvettes. Multi-hulled launch carriers bearing arc-platforms of Avenger Strike Fighters dominated the armada, trailing squat bomb vessels and torpedo boats in formation, while gunships and carriers ferried surviving personnel and materiel back to sleek gunboats and pocket frigates.

Lux Allegra slowly shook her head. Ordinarily such a gathering of local defence force and Undine Maritine vessels would have been an impressive sight. Allegra thought on the trap-jaw moon glowering down on them and the vanguard hordes of greenskin monsters they had faced at Hive Tyche. She thought on the alien swarm raining down on the ocean world and the billions she suspected were to come.

‘It’s not enough…’ Lux Allegra murmured, the ghost of the smile fading from her lips. ‘It’s not nearly enough.’

FOUR

Incus Maximal — Hyboriax Cryoforge

Incus. Malleus. The hammer and the anvil.

The forge-worlds Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi hung in the darkness of the void like a pair of pearls. Orbiting in synchronous rotation, the planets pirouetted each other and their distant star like spireball dancers. Their thousand-year performance came to an end, however, with the intervention of a third astral body. A planetary interloper. In the cryovolcanic haze between the two frozen worlds appeared a junker moon, the rusted plates and rivets of its impossibly armoured surface dusted with ice. The rogue body materialised between the binary forge-worlds, throwing the Adeptus Mechanicus planets into uncharacteristic chaos and disharmony.

The hololithic representation crackled and warped before fading. Moments later, the planets seared back to full resolution.

‘Have the High Enginseer report to section nineteen and reroute power through the generatoria,’ Altarius Phylax ordered. The algorithoria was situated forty-seven ice-crafted sub-levels below Incus Maximal’s frozen ammonia surface but that didn’t stop the resonant boom of detonations reverberating down through the structure.

Phylax processed the cold code-equivalent of incredulity. It was difficult to believe that the great ark ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus were shelling their own forge-world. His frost-bitten face might have still been his own, but the fibre bundles beneath were enhancements that required a moment to catch up with Phylax’s rapid train of thought and occasional feeling.

In the ice-carved chamber adepts and servitors fussed about him, slipping the multi-limbed fusion of metal and flesh that was his body into his new robes: the hallowed red robes of the Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal, a position Phylax had inherited a mere fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds before. Fabricator Torqsi had been lost to the Mechanicus when Vostox Mons unexpectedly and explosively erupted, blowing its cryo-magma stack and accompanying forge complex clean off the face of the planet. Mistress Celestika had believed in meeting the xenos invasion head to head. She had led her temple tech-guard from the front, out onto the spotless plains of Freon-Astroika, at the head of two thousand deep-freeze adapted Kataphron battle-servitors fresh off the assembly lines. Warrior specimens of Veridi giganticus arrived on the ammonia flows in incalculable number, however, and the beast-forms had smashed Mistress Celestika and her Kataphron columns to smouldering scrap on the plain. Phylax’s predecessor, Moritor Vulk, had simply locked himself away with a congressium of logi and calculus-engines while the alien invaders overwhelmed cryoforge after cryoforge across the ice world’s surface. Concluding their statistical analysis of the invasion and associated factors, the congressium disbanded. Moritor then returned to his forge temple, disabled his aegis protocols and voluntarily uploaded a nano-infection that reduced the magnificence of his augmented form to rust and steaming spoilage. As next in runic line, the young but brilliant Magos Altarius Phylax became Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal.

Servo-skulls and technodrones swarmed and swooped through the crackling hololithic display.

‘Siege-Savant Entaurii,’ Phylax addressed the Master of the Auxilia Myrmidon. ‘Is it entirely necessary to have our own vessels execute an orbital bombardment right above our heads?’

‘Entirely necessary, my lord,’ Entaurii replied.

‘That is the Hyboriax Forge Temple up there,’ Phylax reminded him. ‘The Mons Primus and planetary capital. It honours the Omnissiah as a technological wonder and it is bare-faced blasphemy to demolish it with our own guns.’

Borz Entaurii was a squat, heavily augmented soldier — more pneumatic piston than man. His hydraulics and barrel chest were encased in bronze plate and buried in broad, hooded robes that were dyed an Omnissiah-pleasing crimson. He was a veteran, blunt and lacking in imagination.

‘Without the Contrivenant firing down on our position, my Lord Fabricator,’ Entaurii said, ‘there would be no position. The enemy xenos would already have breached our sub-levels.’

‘Could the great ark’s weaponry not find better purpose and employment in firing on the junker moon itself?’ Phylax pressed.

‘Both the Aetnox and the Melanchola were lost in such an experiment,’ Entaurii said. ‘The body’s defences are too thick: armour, shielding and presumed moon rock beneath. Even the greatest of the Machine God’s blessed weapons have failed to make an impression.’

‘And what of our ground troops?’ Phylax said.

A skitarii officer stepped forwards with his gas-masked head bowed. He was dressed in a mixture of ceremonial chainmail and white camouflage robes lined with fur. He had clearly seen recent action. Like Phylax himself, the skitarii officer’s promotion had also been an impromptu necessity.

‘Trib—’ the soldier began, before correcting himself. ‘Master Andromaq, of the Incunian Temple Praetoriax.’

‘Master Andromaq,’ Phylax acknowledged.

‘My lord,’ the master of skitarii said, ‘even allowing for strategic models and assembly line reinforcement, our losses are grievous. Many of our armoured and Kataphron contingents were lost during first contact at Freon-Astroika. Skitarii of the Phaedrik Tenth Denticle, and the artillery batteries of the Ballisteria Algistra, have been decimated at Hoarzengrad and the Novolaris trenchworks are overrun.’

‘Even the great war machine Ordinatus Incus lies in ruin on the Plain of Achromat,’ Siege-Savant Entaurii added.

‘Our numbers have been bolstered by the accelerated vat-production of gun-servitors,’ Master Andromaq admitted, ‘but the genetors are unhappy with the results. The demands of an expedited process have created a higher rate of failures and abominates. Beyond that, the munitiomats are barely configured and the enhanced infantry is fresh off the surgical slab.’

‘But we have veteran temple guard…’

‘The mainstay of our forces were garrisoned at each of the regional Mons-capitals,’ Master Andromaq told him. ‘Many of the forge temples crowning the cryovolcanoes were destroyed in the eruptions.’

‘Estimated operational capacity?’ the Fabricator Locum asked.

‘Twenty-two point six seven per cent,’ Andromaq said. ‘Estimated.’

‘With such a force, Master Andromaq, can you conceive of a defensive strategy or tactical advantage that might meet the demands of these extraordinary events?’

‘No, Fabricator Locum,’ Andromaq replied simply. ‘Complex tactics can be met with complex tactics. They create options. The Veridi giganticus restrict our responses with strategic simplicity. There are just more of them. Beyond a certain magnitude, the numbers will not be worked or contrived. In my opinion, we are beyond that point.’

‘Estimated planetary casualties?’ Phylax asked.

‘Eighty million,’ Phylax’s spindly high logist informed him, scuttling forwards. As calculus-principal of the congressium, he was best placed to make such an astronomical estimate. ‘And rising, Lord Fabricator.’

‘Has the congressium revised its statistical appraisal?’ Phylax queried.

‘Only downwards, my lord,’ the high logist replied. ‘As the full magnitude of the xenos invasion has been revealed to us, we have collated data and updated our recommendations. We submit for your consideration a revised estimation of zero point four per cent chance of victory.’

‘You are saying that we cannot repel this invasion.’

‘We’re saying that the Machine God’s servants on Incus Maximal cannot survive this invasion, my lord.’

Altarius Phylax allowed himself a moment to process what his high logist was saying.

‘And of our sister forge-world?’

‘By the vast majority of comparative measures, data from Malleus Mundi tells us they are faring worse than we are,’ the high logist informed him.

‘Siege-savant?’

‘They have the Legio Fornax,’ Borz Entaurii said. ‘And what I wouldn’t give for their god-machines right now on our hallowed ice.’

‘Ambassador Utherica,’ Phylax called.

‘Lord Fabricator?’ a silver-skinned crone in dark robes said as she presented herself before him. Her aged face was overlaid with circuitry that glittered with tiny synaptic sparks.

‘Do we have word or cant from the Lady of the Furnace?’ Phylax asked the ambassador from Malleus Mundi.

The crone cackled code back at him before drifting absently into Gothic. ‘Only that she would have you know that the Titans of the Legio Fornax bring down the vengeance of the Omnissiah on the xenos vermin and, Machine God willing, shall burn them from the glacial surface of our world.’

‘I don’t mean to contradict the Ambassador…’ Savant Entaurii began.

‘Proceed,’ Phylax invited. The hololith magnified the Malleus Mundi forge-world. Even from orbit, the planetary damage was obvious and catastrophic. One-half of the planet had been torn up and reduced to berg-scattered slush. Mons temples and cryoforge clusters streamed black destruction and the glittering white surface of the ice world was clouded with the black murk of alien hordes, swallowing the world like a growing shadow.

‘They’re troop movements,’ Phylax said, understanding immediately what the siege-savant was attempting to communicate.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘I suspect,’ the Fabricator Locum said, ‘that our own world appears similarly from orbit.’

‘I can bring up the…’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Phylax told Entaurii.

Altarius Phylax tried to reach out beyond the cold logic of his directives and protocols. This was not without difficulty, and felt vague and unnatural. Feel he did, however, and he found his way to a part of his humanity all but forgotten — the part that ached without reason for those lost to him and those he was losing. He allowed fancies and visualisations to sear sharply to focus in his mind. He dwelled on the dead — their corpses hacked to meat and wiring on the ice. He hurt for the living, those blankly processing their last orders and impulses under the barbarian invaders’ blades. He experienced a connection — something that didn’t require cant or code but travelled broad and far. A connection not only between himself and all Incusians, but also between the billion victims of the twin forge-worlds. The feeling was incredible and unpleasant. He indulged its overwhelming power a moment more before allowing the prejudice of his protocols their former supremacy.

‘Ambassador — Legio Fornax or not, I think that the Lady of the Furnace has to accept her forge-world is lost,’ Phylax said finally. The crone said nothing. The attendant magi and forge masters stiffened. ‘As must I.’

‘What do you mean, Lord Fabricator?’ the high logist asked.

‘I mean, it is time to let Incus Maximal go.’

‘The Lords Diagnostica will not sanction such an action,’ the high logist informed Phylax with cautious force. ‘They will speak against it at the machine altars. They will claim Incus Maximal as the Omnissiah’s sovereign territory and the Machine God’s subjects as the ordained defenders of such rites — to the last man and machine.’

‘This is not a cult matter,’ Phylax said simply. ‘Besides — as Fabricator Locum do I not speak for the Omnissiah on Incus Maximal?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Then it is decided. If I don’t act now — right now — there won’t be anyone left at the machine altars to preach to,’ Altarius Phylax said. He looked to Ambassador Utherica. ‘Perhaps our action might stir the Lady of the Furnace to similar mercies and to defy the will of her own Diagnosticians.’

‘You speak of mercy, my lord, a most illogical—’ the high logist began.

‘I speak of sense,’ Phylax interrupted, ‘common and good. A most Omnissian virtue, I assure you. The enemy have invaded. The enemy has succeeded. The Machine God does not demand the lives of all in order for such a precept to be accepted. Savant Entaurii?’

‘Yes, Lord Fabricator.’

‘I mean to evacuate all remaining Incusians from the forge-world surface. The Lords Diagnostica will be charged with the preservation of the machine altars and the transfer of technodivinity and knowledge contained within. The high logist and the congressium will begin ratiocinatia and matrices for a successful off-world evacuation of all surviving tech-priests, menials and technologies and constructs that can be transferred. Materiel is to remain. Skitarii forces are to disable or destroy what cannot be moved, upon withdrawal.’

‘Is that not blasphemy, my lord?’ Master Andromaq put to Phylax.

‘It would be blasphemy to allow the Machine God’s holy instruments and the spirits within to be scrapped and corrupted to alien purpose,’ the Fabricator Locum insisted. ‘I expect you to communicate such reality to your forces, Master Andromaq. It will lend them certainty and help them through their conflicting protocols.’

‘And from me, my lord?’ Entaurii asked.

‘A planetary exodus point, siege-savant,’ Phylax said. ‘A holdpoint through which to funnel fleeing forge-worlders.’

Entaurii nodded: ‘There is an auxiliary spaceport near the northern pole: the Lambdagard. It’s a freight station — largely automated — that is principally used for the storage and exportation of scrap and toxic materials.’

‘But the temperatures…’ Master Andromaq began.

‘The polar conditions will be a challenge even for native Incusians,’ Entaurii admitted, ‘but similarly so for the alien invader. The region has the smallest concentration of enemy forces on the planet.’

‘It sounds serviceable,’ the Fabricator Locum said. ‘Depots and storage terminals for waiting evacuees. Ice-strips for ferrying transports.’

‘But the deep cold, my lord,’ Andromaq pressed. ‘Think of the losses.’

‘They will be less than if we evacuate survivors through the xenos hordes,’ Phylax said. ‘I’d rather our people took their chances with their home world than with the enemy.’

‘Yes, Lord Fabricator.’

‘Siege-savant,’ Phylax ordered, looking to Entaurii. ‘You must now fight a rearguard action. You must order the Ark vessels Contrivenant, Archmagi Alpharatz and The Weakness of Flesh to risk low orbit and receive as many forge-worlders as they can from the pole. Find hump shuttles, freightskiffs, lighters: anything that can carry survivors. They must keep evacuating survivors from the Lambdagard for as long as they can. The congressium will consider how best to communicate our intentions to defending forces and the forge-world populace.’

‘What if the invaders hit the Ark ships?’ the high logist posited. Entaurii shook his head.

‘So far the aliens’ tactics have not run to anything approaching such complexity,’ the siege-savant informed him. ‘They want the planet. They want it by force.’

‘Three vessels will not be enough for your survivors,’ Ambassador Utherica piped up, morose and subdued.

‘And what would you suggest, ambassador?’ Phylax challenged. ‘I hope to the Machine God you’re right. I hope that the invader leaves that many forge-worlders alive.’

‘Use my diplomatic protocols,’ Utherica offered. ‘They carry the authority of an Archmagos or Collegia Imperatrix. Use them to order the factory ships, the frigate Ratchet and the Titanica temple supertransport Deus Charios off station above Malleus Mundi to participate in the evacuation.’

‘Ambassador, the Lady of the Furnace may still need those vessels,’ Phylax protested.

‘She will not,’ Utherica insisted. ‘The Lady will die on her forge-world, with her people. Her Diagnostica priests will not allow anything else. They lack your flesh-wisdom, Lord Phylax.’

Altarius Phylax nodded his appreciation.

‘We shall honour the Lady’s sacrifice,’ he told the ambassador, ‘and if I live to see the day, I will personally lead the effort to take her forge-world back from the xenos along with my own.’

The ambassador bowed her aged features and handed Borz Entaurii her protocols.

‘Where shall we go?’ the high logist asked.

‘Corewards,’ Altarius Phylax said. ‘We shall join forces with our brother priests on the forge-worlds of the inner segmentum.’

‘And if we experience failure there?’ the high logist pushed him.

‘Then, Omnissiah willing, to the forge-world principal,’ the Fabricator Locum told him grimly, ‘where we shall fight on the holy red earth of Mars itself. Pray to the Machine God that it does not come to that.’

FIVE

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

‘Switch to infrared, brothers,’ Second Captain Maximus Thane ordered. With Chapter Master Alameda lost to the first enemy wave and First Captain Garthas coordinating defences from the tactical oratorium, Thane was the ranking Fists Exemplar officer on the bastion. As his auto-senses responded and a thermal filter dropped across his optics, the absolute darkness of the Eidolican night was transformed. Instead of the freezing blackness of the desert, Thane could spectro-differentiate the deeper blues of the dune horizon and the starless void above. The captain knew that distant stellar pinpricks were lost to the ugly irregularity of the attack moon hovering directly overhead. Cast in total ecliptic shadow by the Space Marine home world, the only evidence that the monstrous planetoid was there were the descent streaks of xenos-infested meteorites and thunderbolting assault boats.

That was, until the first wave of attacks.

Red dots of alien fervour appeared on the contrast line of the horizon. Isolated heat signatures marking the storming advance of vanguard hulks soon became a polychromatic nightmare that swallowed the false-colour cobalt of the desert. Even Thane and his Space Marine brothers — accustomed to the grandeur of the galaxy and a life of war — were surprised at the sheer number of invaders. The night desert was awash with xenos foebreeds: a deluge of enemy targets that confounded auspex and targeters with their swarming magnitude.

The Adeptus Astartes on the ramparts stood in stoic silence as the enemy rampaged across the Akbar promethium fields. The orks smashed through radiance harvesters and enclosures of photovoltaic cells. They thundered through township after township, flattening worksteads, generatoria and battery silos before destroying the promethium wells. Through their optics, the Space Marines watched columns of white flame jet into the dark skies. The towers of fiery fury and the saturation of the sand with the drizzle of crude promethium did little to slow the alien monsters.

The captain heard the clunk of armoured boots on the hull plating behind him and turned to see Mendel Reoch, Apothecary of the Second Company. On the blasted hull of the star fort and amongst the scorched ceramite of his brothers, the white paint of the Apothecary’s plate advertised itself like a dare to the enemy. Unlike the captain, the Apothecary had braved the Eidolican night without his helmet. What was left of a ruined mouth and jaw had long been fused into the ugly grille of a half-helm. A pair of bionoptics peered over the grille, glowing darkly like a pair of colour-tinted spectacles.

‘Won’t the chief need you in the Apothecarion?’ Thane asked his old friend.

‘If the Emperor’s work is accomplished out here,’ Reoch grizzled back through the vox-modulated grille, ‘then I shan’t be needed anywhere. Wouldn’t that be a treat?’

‘Not afraid of a little real work, are you, Apothecary?’ Thane teased grimly.

Reoch drew his bolt pistol and looked down its sights at the deck.

‘There are labours,’ the Apothecary replied, ‘and there are labours of love. If you’re asking if I’d rather be in the Apothecarion sewing our brothers back together or taking the enemy apart out here, I shouldn’t have to answer you that.’

‘Both your knowledge and skill are welcome here, brother,’ Thane told him honestly. ‘Our guests, less so.’

Reoch looked up from his pistol. The glow of his implant optics intensified as he seemed to see for the first time the advancing tide of targets washing up against the void bastion. The Apothecary grunted, as though disgusted at the inconvenience.

‘Don’t be discourteous now, brother,’ Reoch returned. ‘They’ll get the same welcome as any other species trespassing within the borders of the Emperor’s Holy Imperium: they’ll be shot.’

A small cluster of Apothecarion serfs had followed their master out onto the bastion in their plain white robes. Reoch handed the lead servant the weighty pistol. ‘These sights need realigning,’ the Apothecary told him. ‘See to it, and this time do it properly. These damned creatures could have done a better job. Have no less respect for the instruments that take life in the field than those that preserve it on the apothecarion slab. I pray for your sake that you have brought my reserve.’

Another serf handed his master a second bolt pistol. Reoch fell to examining the reserve instrument before telling the servants: ‘Well, it will have to do, won’t it? It’s not as though the enemy will wait the time it will take you to perfect your duties. I will devise your corrections later — if I am alive to do so.’

‘Will you be needing us, Master Reoch?’ one of the serfs mustered the courage to ask. Beneath their hoods the servants had all been watching the darkness and listening to the cacophony of the monsters beyond.

‘No,’ the Apothecary told him harshly. ‘Only the Emperor’s Finest are required here. Report to the Chief Apothecary. Perhaps he can find you a mop and bucket for the blood. Now get out of my sight.’

The serfs headed back towards the launch bays, leaving a weapon rack behind. The rack was laden with reserve magazines of bolt ammunition, simple gladius blades and the serrated length of the Apothecary’s chainsword. The mirrored finish of the weapon gleamed with clinical lethality. Reoch scooped the white dome of his half-helm from the rack and pulled it down over his bionics and scarred face-flesh. The half-helm gave a hydraulic sigh as it locked into place with the grille of its counterpart section.

Captain Thane had had Brother Aquino request of the signum-tower array any reports of intercepted communications between enemy contingents or ground-hordes and the attack moon. There was naught forthcoming. The captain found this unsettling. Falling to the surface of Eidolica in brute clutches, descent survivors amassed in murderous throngs — before, like blood coagulating in the veins and organs of a corpse, throngs became mobs and mobs became clan swarms. The barbarians seemed to be guided by a common brutality or unthinking brotherhood. Without the aid of conventional communications, beasts that ordinarily would prey on one another with claw, fang and mongrel weaponry found each other across the black sands of Eidolica. They were drawn down on the Adeptus Astartes’ position, guided by some predacious, gestalt impulse.

Thane considered that it might simply be lack of resistance that was driving the creatures on towards them with such speed. Fortunately, the Akbar promethium fields were all but deserted during the season of the Noxtide. Hardy caravans of nomadic workers and their families had migrated east to the Sheldrahc and Pharad fields, leaving automated jack-wells and photovoltaic harvesters under the seasonal supervision of crisp-skinned servitors in stone bubble-bunkers. Thane could only imagine what havoc the enemy were wreaking there or further east in the Great Basin and Tharkis Flats, where it was the time of the Yielding and Terra’s tithe was due.

That was Seventh Captain Dentor’s problem, although vox-chatter seemed to indicate that things were not going well. In the desert darkness, cursed with an exposed position, defending hundreds of thousands of nomad-civilians and supported by an ill-equipped promethium fields militia, Dentor and his company-brothers were at the heart of a swiftly-unfolding slaughter.

The auspectoria confirmed, however, that of the invader forces raining to the Eidolican sands from the attack moon, the vast majority had converged on the Alcazar Astra — the fortress-monastery of the Fists Exemplar Space Marine Chapter. Post-formation, the Fists Exemplar had been assigned to watch over the Rubicante Flux, a warp storm that plagued the Abra Sector. Manifesting in Imperial space on the outskirts of the Segmentum Solar and uncomfortably close to Ancient Terra, the Rubicante Flux was sporadic in its eruptions, visiting occasional space hulks, mutant incursions and renegade Space Marine hosts on the surrounding systems. The newly formed Fists Exemplar Chapter was given responsibility for garrisoning the storm-wracked region of wilderness space afflicted by the rapidly appearing and disappearing Flux. For this duty, they were equipped with the Alcazar Astra: a heavily-armed star fortress that had done good service for the Fists Exemplar’s parent Legion, the Imperial Fists, in the Volgotha Deeps during the dark days of the Heresy. Chapter Chaplains maintained that the star fort was a gift from Rogal Dorn himself.

That had been until the Rubicante Flux’s most recent encroachment. Although the eruption lasted mere hours, the rift event was colossal in magnitude — wrecking subsector shipping, disrupting communications and heralding the inception of numerous doomsday cults across the Imperial worlds of the region. The eruption’s most ambitious victim, though, was the Alcazar Astra itself. At the time the star fort was being transported through the neighbouring Frankenthal System by Chapter tow-tenders and monitors, only to be blown off course and into the gravitational embrace of Frankenthal’s star by the storm shock wave. Through the skill of Chapter Master Dantalion and his castellan-commanders, the Alcazar Astra was guided towards the star’s nearest planet and beached in the black sands of Eidolica. Grounded, the fort was forever without hope of feeling again the cold kiss of the void on its armour plating. Three of its four ancient engine-columns had been destroyed in the impact. The secrets of the plasma-drives’ construction had been lost to the weaponsmiths and Techmarines of the Chapter, and so the beached star fort had become a planetary fortress.

All Fists Exemplar Space Marines gave thanks for that day and for their first Chapter Master. Oriax Dantalion had survived the Heresy but had lost his life in the fortress-monastery’s crash landing. Many Space Marines of the Fists Exemplar Chapter believed themselves and their gene-seed saved that day for some greater purpose, perhaps involving the vagaries of the Rubicante Flux.

Standing atop the ramparts of the fortress-monastery — the shattered superstructure of the Alcazar Astra half buried in black sand, its mighty baroque architecture and cathedral towers askew but still reaching for the void — Captain Maximus Thane awaited his enemy. As the monsters roared their way through the darkness, the captain’s heat vision clouded with colour. As they got closer, the hulking creatures seared red, their hot rage edging up the brute length of their cool-blue weaponry.

Thane felt the clunk of priming mechanisms through the armour plating beneath his boots.

‘That’s more like it,’ Apothecary Reoch observed.

Machine-spirits were stirring. Ammunition was being autoloaded. The mighty defence lasers of the star fort were pointed uselessly at the open sky, their wrath already directed with futility at the pockmarked darkness of the attack moon’s surface. Upon becoming a grounded fortification, the Fists Exemplar had worked hard to adapt the Alcazar Astra for a possible land assault. From the tactical oratorium, First Captain Garthas had ordered the mounted gatling blasters and mega-bolters cleared for action. Over the vox-channel, Thane heard Eighth Captain Xontague report targets on Transept South, followed swiftly by Fifth Captain Tyrian on Transept East. As both Ninth Captain Hieronimax and Kastril, the Scout Company captain, simultaneously called in enemy signatures from Fortress-Monastery North, it became obvious that the alien barbarians were to employ tactics no more ambitious than overwhelming the Fists Exemplar from all sides simultaneously. Thane felt combined respect and hatred for his enemy rise up the back of his throat like bile. With their sheer numbers, the xenos invader could afford such a wasteful strategy. It could and probably would work for them. Thane promised himself that he would make the mindless foe pay for their thuggish overconfidence.

The captain turned to Brother Aquino. Ordinarily the Fists Exemplar Space Marines left their armour unpainted. It was Chapter tradition and requirement, although the conditions on Eidolica swiftly gave the ceramite plate a sooty, chromatic sheen, the same bronzed quality possessed by the nozzles and muzzle-guards of company flamers and meltaguns. Through the captain’s infrared filters, Aquino’s armour appeared dark blue, his company banner a ghostly trapezium cut out of the sky. Thane nodded to the grim, aged standard bearer, prompting him to call in their own sightings.

Sergeant Hoque approached along the void rampart. The infrared outline of the veteran’s armour was rent and battle-beaten from an earlier reconnaissance out on the rocky dunes. Hoque moved from Space Marine to Space Marine, personally lending his affirmation or disapproval of positioning, stance and weapon readiness. With fraternal love and opprobrium, the sergeant smacked helms with his gauntlet and pointed out beyond the barrels of boltguns with ceramite fingers.

Across the vox-channel, Thane heard Techmarines offer litanies of forward assistance and shell clearance before First Captain Garthas gave the order to open fire. The crenellated nests, gargoyles and statues into which the mega-bolters and gatling blasters were built shuddered to the rhythmic cacophony. The weapons’ fire crashed about the false-colour shapes of Sergeant Hoque and the Space Marines of the Second Company, their gaping barrels wands of hot brilliance through the infrared filters.

Captain Thane stared out across the dark sands. Scarlet silhouettes, jagged and ungainly, formed a closing wall of hulking forms. Spikes and serrations decorated the muscular giants, while the shapes of brute-bore barrels, monstrous hackers and mechanical claws promised butchery to come. Thane felt the exhilaration of the gunfire reverberate through his being, and he watched with no little satisfaction as mega-bolter shells ripped through the oncoming foe, tearing the monstrosities to hot shreds of flesh and turning the barbarian front lines into clouds of red mist. Line after line of the monstrosities fell as the autofire reached deeper into the enemy ranks.

And then, one by one, he felt the guns about him thunder to emptiness. Almost immediately the routine of reloading began but in the calmness that followed, with the chatter of the guns still carried distantly on the breeze, Thane had opportunity to witness the xenos recovery. Holes in the vanguard closed rapidly, with beasts almost crawling over each other to be at the forefront of the slaughter. They stamped through the demolished carcasses of their fallen and howled their alien derision and delight. Within seconds, the impact of the barrage was imperceptible.

‘Well, isn’t that a thing,’ Reoch said.

‘Are you seeing this?’ Maximus Thane voxed through to the tactical oratorium.

‘I am,’ First Captain Garthas responded grimly. Thane heard him speak to an oratorium officer. ‘Launch the gunships.’

As the mega-bolters and gatling blasters resumed the futility of defensive fire protocols, Thane’s plate registered the heatwash of afterburners as Thunderhawks and Storm Eagle gunships blasted from the unsealing launch bays behind them. As the craft screamed their fury above, Brother Aquino’s banner thrashed and twirled. Thane watched the Fists Exemplar craft blaze away, the cool blue of their armoured hull plating bright against the deeper blue-black of the Eidolican skies. Only their triple engines glowed searing white and left a chromatic scale in the trail of their afterburners.

The formations streaked away: bomb-laden Thunderhawks flanked by lower, strafing Storm Eagle gunships. The screaming spectacle was met with celebratory gunfire from the savages. They couldn’t see the aircraft, but they could hear them. Unleashing their brute weaponry at the heavens, the beasts raged at the approaching thunder. They were rewarded with swooping passes from the Storm Eagles, who cut through the bestial throngs with vapour blasts from their prow multi-meltas and thick beams of searing light from wing-mounted lascannons. As the gunships weaved and strafed clear, the Thunderhawk formations dropped their incendiary bomb payloads. The desert-world night seared with blinding explosions that turned swarms of monstrous xenos into fields of death.

While even the most sizeable monsters were vaporised at the heart of the detonations, many thousands of surrounding beasts were set alight. This was exacerbated by the promethium that had drizzled over everything from the ruptured wells. Soon the dark desert sands were a dance of blinding colour and it was difficult to make out the enemy from the inferno that had engulfed them.

Switching from infrared back to regular spectra, Maximus Thane saw the midnight dunes lit up in a sea of flame. Against another enemy such a devastating strategy would have been a game changer. There were few species that were not susceptible to violent changes in temperature. Most forms of flesh in the galaxy burned in the fires of battle, and ork flesh should have been no different. But as Thane watched the beasts storm towards him, illuminated by the flames snaking about their scraps of armour and brute forms, it seemed to make little difference.

Apart from in size, the greenskins didn’t seem any different in physiology than other savage clanbreeds the captain had fought. Perhaps it was size alone that made the difference, Thane mused. As great, hulking monsters sculpted from leathery skin, gnarled bone and muscle, the Fists Exemplar captain reasoned that perhaps there was less need than usual in this sub-species for a complex nervous system and a brain that could interpret the intense agonies of being burned alive.

Stampeding through the flames, the enemy charged on. Fear didn’t slow their advance. Pain didn’t show on their snaggle-tusk faces. Death was an end beyond the simple imaginings of such creatures. They swarmed and they stormed the Alcazar Astra. The desert roared with flame. Alien war cries filled the air. The void bastion crashed with the fire of gatling blasters. Among the pure havoc of battle, with the fortress-monastery’s crooked spires reaching up beyond the ring of fire and the sea of thundering green flesh beyond, Second Captain Maximus Thane and his Fists Exemplar stood as calm, still and impassive as the decorative gargoyles about them. The statues would do little to ward off the evil approaching the Alcazar Astra today.

‘You’ve studied xenos physiology. Any advice?’ Thane put to his friend. ‘I’m opening a channel.’

The Apothecary angled his bone-white helmet to one side. ‘If you must,’ Reoch replied with little appetite for the duty.

‘Second Company,’ Thane called across an open vox-channel, ‘stand by for the Apothecary’s observations.’

‘On average,’ Reoch broadcast, ‘the enemy appears larger than the feral specimens we exterminated on Borksworld. Those on Konrax were mere runts to these monsters.’

‘And?’ the captain asked as Reoch’s enthusiasm for the task trailed off further.

‘Their ability to soak up the impact of our weaponry will be considerable,’ Reoch warned. ‘Still, I doubt the increased thickness of a larger skull will resist the blessed path of our bolt-rounds.’

‘So headshots are the order of the day,’ Maximus Thane agreed.

‘And night,’ the Apothecary mused, looking up into the deep sky.

‘And at close quarters?’ Thane pushed.

‘A larger biped opponent presents vulnerabilities at the throat and abdomen,’ Reoch told Second Company. ‘But don’t bother with the loins. Go for the legs. Dismembered specimens brought down to the sand will present a much greater range of kill-sites and vulnerabilities. This is all I have,’ the Apothecary signed off.

Thane gave Reoch the blank glare of his faceplate and closed the channel. The Apothecary stared back.

‘They’re your men,’ Reoch stated, allowing his optics to burn beyond his friend, through Sergeant Hoque and his defence formations and out across the green savagery that rolled on towards them like a furious formation of agri-world rotary threshers. ‘Talk to them… while you still can.’

Thane’s head fell to a solemn nod. He looked to Sergeant Hoque. Behind the veteran, the flame-swathed hulks stomped on towards the Fists Exemplar. Uncouth weapons — hacked, torched and sharpened from heavy-metal scrap and hull plating — came up like a jagged forest of death. Brute gunnery, barrels gaping wide, chugged lead at the Alcazar Astra. Elated weapons fire, wild and pathetically out of range, had afflicted the sand and sky for some time. The monsters could barely contain their exultant ferocity on the final, teeming approach, however, and metal slugs sang off the star fort’s void plating in an aimless barrage. In the shell storm, occasional ordnance found its mark amongst the cover-blessed Fists Exemplar. For the most part, the jubilant boom of greenskin weaponry at rapidly closing range was simply an ear-splitting distraction.

‘The company is cleared to load, sergeant,’ Thane said.

‘Second Company, ready weapons!’ Hoque reiterated across the open channel. Fists Exemplar Space Marines took sickle magazines from where they hung mag-locked to their belts and loaded their Umbra-pattern boltguns.

‘Maximus,’ Mendel Reoch said, with an unusual, modulated softness. ‘Talk to them.’

Maximus Thane allowed his mind to drift back to Charnassica. To that first day, stepping off the Thunderhawk ramp and into the blood-slick earth of conquest. He remembered his young body, the power and possibilities it offered. He relived the rawness of his black carapace and the sting of his interface plugs. He ached with the presence of the Emperor in his hearts, the nearness of the enemy, the imminence of his first kill, the cold beauty of battle into which he had been dropped. He had been a full brother of the Fists Exemplar mere days, yet there he was — a living, breathing instrument of the Emperor’s will. He had everything he needed to prosecute that will on the battle lines of Charnassica, yet what would he have given for the warmth of words in the darkness of his helmet at that moment — words freely given in the fortification of the soul.

‘Second Company, this is your captain,’ Thane said into his helmet vox-feed. As he spoke, the invader monstrosities closed, growing in apparent size and ferocity. ‘We face a dangerous foe. Warlords unreasoning stand at the head of an enemy innumerable. Doubt not the threat they present. Take no comfort in past experience with the green plague. These monsters are a beast-host we have never faced, wielding technologies undreamt of.’

The thunder of alien footfalls struck the void plating, where the fallen fortress-monastery of the Fists Exemplar met the blacks sands of Eidolica.

‘Trust in your commanders. Trust in your training. Trust in the plate on your back and the weapons in your gauntlets. Trust in the noble history of your Legion and the legacy of your primarch, knowing that it is through his wisdom that you stand here today: a brotherhood, a Chapter, exemplars of your kind. Know that I am with you. Know that First Captain Garthas is with you. Know that the spirits of Chapter Master Alameda and Chapter Master Dantalion — the chosen of Dorn — fight at your side.’

The beast hordes entered optimum range. The killzone beckoned. Thane felt his men lean into their boltguns. He felt them pick out their first targets. He felt the singular will of one hundred superhumans: their unbreakable faith, the pride in their purpose, their sharp hatred of the xenos.

‘Most of all, know that it is the Emperor’s blood that flows through your veins and He will not let you fail. Eidolica is His. It is Imperial sand and dirt. It isn’t much, but it belongs to humanity and as such it is not the Fists Exemplars’ to give away. I know you will do your best. I know you will make your Chapter and your Emperor proud. Give all you have in His name, as He has given for you. Bring all your genetic gifts, your talents and abilities, to bear. Live through your plate. Be one with your weapons. Fulfil, my battle-brothers, the purpose for which you were ultimately created.’

In one fluid movement, Thane slammed a sickle mag home into the breech of his own Umbra-pattern boltgun. The Umbra was a venerable pattern, thought of as uncouth and archaic after the necessities of the Heresy. Despite lacking the finesse and refinements of other patterns, Thane found the Umbra to be a reliable and reassuringly bombastic bolter. A Chapter workhorse of a weapon.

‘This is Maximus Thane, captain of the Second Company, Fists Exemplar Chapter. The order is given…’

Thane leaned into the boltgun and picked out the first of the unfortunate green beasts to die: a pale monstrosity, brutally etched with scars and jangling with rings, tribal trinkets and piercings.

‘Fire.’

SIX

Terra — the Imperial Palace

On the Feast Day of Deliverance, it was traditional for the Senatorum Imperialis to restrict its meetings to the Imperium’s most urgent business. The Imperial Palace was lifted by evensong; blessed incense was burned by the brazier and both Adeptus Custodes and Astartes attendants were required to adopt ceremonial attire. The cavernous halls and corridors of the Palace were decked with reverential tapestries and flocks of winged cherubim read from endless scrolls the lists of fallen notables and petitionaries. Prayers and benedictions were offered and armies of planetary ambassadors admitted in rotating attendances to witness ritual silences, followed by volley shots and a salute issued by honour guards of decorated Lucifer Blacks.

Beyond the urgent business of their own mighty bureaucracies, the High Lords of Terra were occasionally called to order during the solemnities and celebrations. The Samarkan hive plague had necessitated such measures, as had the mutiny at Zyracuse. Since the Ardamantuan Atrocity, the tedium of unscheduled council meetings had become a common distraction for the Senatorum Imperialis.

Today’s urgent business regarded the loss of the shrine worlds of the Jeronimus Fyodora cluster and that glittering jewel of piety, the cardinal world of Fleur-de-Fides. Most days there were reports of some kind of distant disaster. It had become almost commonplace. Such news — if reported publically — would have thrown Terra’s billions into a state of panic and mobilised thousands of interest groups and influentials.

It was agreed that this was not in the best interests of the Imperium. Instead the horror of such catastrophes was restricted to the staid and stuffy assemblages of the High Lords: informal meetings of the Twelve in which the great and good of Terra put such tragedies in context.

‘A great tragedy… indeed.’

‘I believe my confessor attended the college-cathedra at Fleur-de-Fides.’

‘A beautiful world: a real loss to the Imperium.’

‘Cardinal Creutzfeldt will be looking for another seat, I suppose.’

‘Isn’t Gilbersia part of the Fyodora Cluster? No, wait. I’m thinking of the Outer Trinities.’

‘Dreadful business…’

Loss of life, calculated by the billion, put unnecessary strain on the mind of the common Imperial citizen. The destruction of worlds, sometimes a score at a time, stoked patriotic notions of galacticism — and the suspicion that humanity was losing its grip of its precious empire among the stars.

The twelve men and women gathered in the Anesidoran Chapel did not deal in such sentimentalities. They were perpetually lost in a blizzard of decisions, quantifications and bureaucracy in which the considerations of bounty and starvation, war and peace, life and death, were measured by planet, by subsector and segmentum. In a galactic game with an unimaginable number of pieces in play, it wasn’t difficult for even the greatest minds and keenest ambitions of the Senatorum to become desensitised to the importance of individual details. Indeed, over time, even the most experienced of players tended to become blind to the board for the profusion of pieces. Within a parliament of such minds, even minor problems become exacerbated. In the kingdom of the deaf, dumb and blind, problems with small beginnings — small, at least, on a galactic scale — had a way of gathering irresistible momentum.

From their own legions of aides and overseers, the great Lords of Terra would have fragments of the same story. Some might have glimpsed certain characters amongst a greater cast; some a significant twist of the plot or timely reveal, nonsensical without knowledge of the events leading up to it; some might even have a narrative of doom laid before them but not know it. A tale with all the important words removed, a cloze exercise in fate… a puzzle of the calamity to come. What none of them had was the most essential feature of the story — the end.

Juskina Tull had colluded with her chartist captains to raise the price of passage and transportation between the segmentum core and the rimward sectors, but had not foreseen the decimation of her freighter fleets and the severance of ancient trade routes.

‘Fleur-de-Fides was a spiritual beacon in the darkness of the Outer Rim.’

‘To be sure.’

The Martian Kubik, Fabricator General and vox-piece for the Cult Mechanicus, had his own empire to look to. Can a man, even an augmeticised transhuman, serve two masters and serve them both equally? Kubik seemed to spend most of his time aboard his consular barge moving between Ancient Terra and the Red Planet, but in the cold corridors of his mechanical heart, Kubik answered only to the Omnissiah. During the Great Heresy, the two planets had been at war. The Heresy was long over and a cult confederacy — as strong as it was uneasy — had been re-established. As Fabricator General, it was Kubik’s faithful duty to serve the logic of the Machine God. Today, that logic dictated an alliance of mutual benefit. It did not preclude the action of respectful partners in their own interest. Never again would mighty Mars serve as the battered barbican to Fortress Terra. Kubik would see the Red Planet protected and its empire remain strong and ruthlessly efficient.

It was because of this that the Fabricator General had been made aware of the gateway threat of the xenos Chromes. Ruthless efficiency had secretly fed the Inquisition the selected data required to justify a Critical Situation Packet — despite the fact that Kubik himself then had to denounce its credibility for political advantage. Ruthless efficiency had placed the gifted magos Phaeton Laurentis with the Imperial Fists on Ardamantua, after the bombastic Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen predictably took up the cause. Ruthless efficiency would see the Mechanicus through a disaster that Kubik’s legion of logisticians had told him was inevitable. Ruthless efficiency would ensure that only the Machine God’s servants had the very best quality data and that the Martian empire would survive the coming storm.

‘Fleur-de-Fides was second only to Serenitrix in its global devotions.’

‘Is seat Serenitrix open?’

‘Serenitrix would be a good fit for Cardinal Creutzfeldt.’

Kubik exchanged programmed pleasantries with the freakish Sark and Anwar. Volquan Sark and Abdulias Anwar — Masters of the Astronomican and Adeptus Astra Telepathica respectively — were among the Imperium’s most powerful psykers. They were all but beings of a different plane. With Helad Gibran, Paternoval Envoy of the Navigator Families, they had helped weave the intricate web of immaterial translation routes and astrotelepathic conduits that overlaid the Imperium corporeal. Without their empyreal dominion and supporting networks, the Imperium would grind to a halt like a rust-fused piece of ancient machinery. If they hadn’t been so invested in seeking greater representation and influence for their mutant interests, they might have come to comprehend the ragged holes in their gossamer meshwork. They might have seen the speed at which the delicate fabric of the Imperium would unravel with the slaughter of their psychic servants across the rimward sectors. They might have understood the unscheduled disruption suffered by their dour League of Black Ships and the voracious hunger of an Astronomican-sustaining Emperor.

The Grand Provost Marshal looked on. Vernor Zeck was a hulk of a man, although half of his bulk was made up by augmetic prosthetics. His skin grafting and bionics were evidence of a lifetime spent working city-hives of inequity on Macromunda and working up through the ranks of the Adeptus Arbites — enforcing, hunting and judging corruption in the hearts of lesser men. His square jaw betrayed disinterest, whatever he forced his eyes to suggest, and in doing so Zeck revealed the very nature of his calling. The Provost Marshal could track a consignment of narcotics up through the hive, down to its very last grain. He could beat confessions from mutants, spire nobles and even fellow arbitrators in precinct house dungeons. He could preside over courts for months, sometimes years at a time, passing judgement on sector-spanning criminal enterprises so involved and complex that they would burn out a calculus-logi’s cogitator. But among the ancients of the Senatorum, blinded by tedium of the most intense kind, Zeck found that his nose for criminality and corruption abandoned him. The occasional sniffs of malfeasance — suspected abuses, secrets of self-interest, profiteering — were ignored by the Grand Provost Marshal. Like a cyber-mastiff before a river or a sewer-channel of effluent, Zeck lost the scent, his suspicions carried off by a stream of banal bureaucracy.

‘Perhaps a donation of some kind would be in order.’

‘For the greater palatial families.’

‘For the palatials, yes.’

The Lord Commander and Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum, were guiltier than most of inaction. If the Imperium were a ship, buffeted in a sea of circumstance, at the mercy of galactic chance, then information was its anchor. With an Imperium of information at their augmented fingertips, or at the fingertips of a chancellor, archivist, clerk or scribe who occupied posts on the bottomless data chain below them, Ekharth and Lord Commander Udo had the knowledge required to solve all but the most dire of the Imperium’s problems, or those that were to come. The abyssal infotombs of the Estate Imperium. The tithes chamber notarium. The ordozarchy of the Departmento Munitorum. The findings of inquiries and inquiries about inquiries, gathered in vellum mountains at the Officio Officium. Decades of back-dated threat assessments from the Logis Strategos, and vermillion-class strategic directives: Solar, Obscurus, Pacificus, Tempestus, Ultima and Extra-Galaxia. These were but a few of the byzantine institutions and divisions that answered to Ekharth and Udo’s absolute authority. It wasn’t as though the pair were not aware of the Ardamantuan atrocity. Even before the catastrophe, the Inquisition had brought the situation to Udo as part of a Critical Situation Packet. Ekharth was already well aware of the xenos species known as the Chromes in the form of the damage their encroachment was doing: missed tithes and trade disruptions.

After Ardamantua — as one xenos threat was exchanged for another — little changed for Ekharth and the Lord Commander. The orks had always been a threat. The Lord High Admiral’s fleets were engaged in actions on the frontier space of the Imperium, defending worlds and trade routes from junkers, freebooting greenskins and upstart warlords declaring wars from warp-spewed space hulks. Indeed, beyond being dropped into such internecine border wars with the greenskins, Verreault — the new Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum — had inherited the Emperor’s bastion amongst the stars only to find it already thoroughly committed to crusades and long-standing strategic engagements. Q’orl Swarmhood expansions. A Segmentum Solar-grazing hrud migration. Expeditionary fleets from the Nadirax Republic. Coreward appearances of the aggressive Biel-Tan craftworld. Carnivorous trans-plants mounting seed-invasions of Imperial systems surrounding the Nepenthis death world. Tarellian mercenary movements in the Phidas sector. The Kindred. The Xerontian Similisworn. The horrific resurgence of the Ubergast. Data continued to flood in from the various theatres and while Abel Verreault was eager that all threats received due attention, troops and materiel, response times were glacial. The Lord Commander Militant was often working with reports that were months out of date. Troop movements arrived to find xenos threats long eradicated. Some simply disappeared into the embrace of alien forces that had grown many times in magnitude since their deployment. Others found themselves sent astronomical distances to incorrect coordinates, finding nothing but dead space, wasted opportunity and relief in equal measure.

While some would later deem the Lord Commander Militant’s inexperience in both the galactic theatre and the daedal politics of the Imperial Palace a factor in a catastrophe both unfolding and unappreciated, others would lay responsibility at the doors of the lords Udo and Ekharth. Only they truly had the pieces of the puzzle in their hands. Their blindness came not of inexperience, but of veteran pedantry. Amongst the dire threats already presented to the Imperium, the myriad planetary tragedies and enemies innumerable — the evolving calamity heralded by the Ardamantuan Atrocity was but one atrocity among many.

‘A toast: to Beta-Novax…’

‘…Fleur-de-Fides.’

‘Beta-Novax was yesterday.’

‘To Fleur-de-Fides, then.’

Resplendent in Navy dress uniform, Admiral Lansung was bold and broad. His jacket was the blue of the deepest oceans and the golden waterfalls of his epaulettes tumbled from his thick shoulders. He parted the gathering like a capital ship on manoeuvres before joining Lord Commander Udo and Ekharth at the Ecclesiarch’s altar. Fraters moved through the group of significants, handing out fortified amasec and attending to the gathering’s petty conveniences. One by one, the Twelve approached the Anesidoran altar, where Ecclesiarch Mesring delivered a blessing. Dipping his chubby digits into the ash of incense, Mesring used his thumb and finger to smear an aquila on the foreheads of the presented worthies.

About them, the wolfish Wienand circled. She had respectfully left her bodyguard at the chapel archway and now she watched and drifted, her eyes narrowing sharply beneath her precisely cropped fringe. She absently took a glass of amasec from a passing frater and exchanged greetings with the Paternoval Envoy Helad Gibran without looking.

Wienand went through the motions. She drank in celebration of the feast day. She took her blessing. She bore her soot sigil. All the time the Inquisitor was watching. Thinking. Reaching determination. The Imperium was ailing and vulnerable to attack. The great men and women of the Imperium before her had grown like a cancer about their responsibilities. The Inquisition was the cure. They would surgically trim the tumorous lethargy and self-interest from the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace in order to save the body politic. Strategies were in play. Pressure was being directed. Wheels turned within wheels, taking the Imperium in the right direction.

She looked up at the stained-glass representation of the God-Emperor behind Mesring and the attendant savant-priests that never left his side. It was her job — her sacrosanct duty — to further the Inquisition’s myriad interventions and keep the Imperium on the right track. She despised surprises. She prided herself on being the most informed personage in the chamber, and wished to remain that way.

Surprises had a horrible way of manifesting in such meetings, however. In meetings of the Senatorum and of course, the meetings of members’ agents in the darkness of hive basement sections and underlevels. Wienand was still breaking in Raznick, her new bodyguard. Her former escort-operative’s smashed body had been dicovered in the bowels of a Tashkent mag-lev terminal. He had underestimated his quarry. It had served as a useful reminder to Wienand not to underestimate hers.

Her predacious movements were not lost on another of the chapel’s predators. As Mesring’s priests and fraters fell to prayer and the Ecclesiarch joined the rest of the Twelve, he was met with commiserations and faux-concern over the loss of the shrineworlds of the Jeronimus Fyodora cluster and the cardinal world of Mesring’s own ordination: Fleur-de-Fides. Some dangers, like the unfolding greenskin crisis in the rimward sectors, were obvious. Some dangers liked to remain hidden. Some hid in plain sight. One thing was certain: the Anesidoran Chapel of the Imperial Palace, clouded with the lethal ambitions of both predators and prey, was one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy.

SEVEN

Terra — the Ecclesiarchal Palace

Mesring had spent most of the journey from the Imperial Palace in private devotions aboard his sacerdotal skiff. The skiff was essentially a floating, fortified basilica, garrisoned by zealot forces of the Frateris Templar. Its nest of spires, minarets and steeples were carried above the ancient urban sprawl of the southern continent on anti-gravitic drives. Its progress past the colossal accretion of Hive Vostok was stately and honoured by the thousands of preachers lighting incense beacons atop shell-shrines built into western face of the hive exterior. The Ecclesiarch briefly appeared at the observation balcony in the trappings of his office to acknowledge the half-million parishioners risking their lives in the creaking shrines to catch a glimpse of the High Lord. He took refreshment and rejuvenant in his private quarters, before purification and then meetings with the Pontifex Luna on matters of cult importance and Arch-Confessor Yaroslav over revisions to his already considerable security detail.

As the sacerdotal skiff made its final approach through a corridor of cloudscraping bell towers, the Ecclesiarchal Palace rang with booming devotions. Banners and pennants streamed in the high-altitude winds and the smoke from feast day fires briefly engulfed the skiff. Below the roar of the anti-gravity engines, the courtyards and squares between the temple complexes and cathedrals were swarming with armies of fraters at prayer. Preachers and pontiffs creed-thumped their way through the ranks, shaking their ceremonial staffs and reading from ornate copies of the Lectitio Divinatus with priestly passion. Once again, Mesring presented himself in the full ceremonial regalia of the Ecclesiarch and moved through a series of services, with each of the Cardinals Palatine attempting to outdo the last in his feast day celebration. Only at the close of Cardinal Gormanskee’s final reading — that the Ecclesiarch slept through, his snores stifled by his savant-priests — was Mesring due to retire to his palace chambers.

Mesring bulldozed his way up the mountain of steps, the magnificence of his crozier clacking on the marble of each. As the Ecclesiarch went, trailing an entourage of vergers and sextons, crusader sentries of the Frateris Templar went down on armoured knees. Up and along the grand stairs a gauntlet of vestal choristers sang haunting hymns to carry the High Lord to his great, golden bed. As he passed a serene and pretty face that he liked, Mesring paused.

‘My chambers,’ he said, jabbing the shaft of his crozier at a vestal that had caught his jaundiced eye, ‘to attend me at night prayers.’ He let his gaze travel to the young woman next to her. ‘You, my child, get to attend my chambers at dawn.’

Both postulants beamed their appreciation at the special selection, having little idea of the kind of attendance the Ecclesiarch required from them. As Mesring ascended the last of the steps he allowed his savant-priests to take his mitre, staff and robes from his repugnant body.

Two auspex arches and Frateris Templar sentinel posts later, the Ecclesiarch barked, ‘Just one!’ The eruption prompted the gaggle of ushers, aides and savant-priests to peel away, either to their own miserable cells or to make preparations for the High Lord’s morning requirements. As Mesring walked through the ornate archway of his grand chamber, with its antiquities and private opulence, he handed his remaining priest further layers of cermonial vestments. By the time he reached the septrewood table bearing the basin and pitcher of holy water, the Ecclesiarch was down to his undergown and rings. In silence the savant-priest deposited the garments on a nearby stand.

‘Would you have me wait half the night on your tardiness, sir?’ Mesring berated, prompting the priest to pour the water from the pitcher and into the marble bowl. The Ecclesiarch offered the priest his hands, at which the savant bowed and reverently kissed the pudgy backs of both. ‘All right, all right,’ Mesring grumbled impatiently.

The priest fell to removing the rings from Mesring’s fat fingers and depositing them on a pair of sculpted, marble hands. Upon completion of this exercise, Mesring placed his hands in the basin and washed his weary face. He snatched a towel from the attendant priest and dabbed his features dry. As the Ecclesiarch scrunched the hand towel up and prepared to toss it back at the savant, he found the priest admiring one of his many extravagant rings of office.

‘How dare you!’ Mesring rumbled, bringing the back of his hand up to correct the attendant priest. ‘Damned insolence,’ he marvelled as the priest proceeded to try the ring on for size.

The savant-priest’s own arm came up with astonishing speed and violence. Within moments the priest had the hand Mesring was threatening to slap him with in a horrific lock. The Ecclesiarch’s features contorted beneath the fat of his face. The slightest twist of the priest’s grip shot agony through the High Lord’s trembling carcass.

The priest admired the Ecclesiarch’s ring on the forefinger of his other hand. It was crafted in the likeness of the Adeptus Ministorum’s holy symbol, inset with a tiny skull. The skull’s eyes burned red, indicating that the ring was primed. Grabbing Mesring by one of his many chins, the priest forced him back to the cold marble of the wall. Mesring struggled but then, as the priest twisted his arm further, subsided with a pained groan.

The priest tapped his ring-adorned forefinger against the Ecclesiarch’s throat. ‘Beautiful,’ he said simply, admiring the digital lasweapon. ‘Jokaero, no?’

Mesring managed a terrified nod. ‘Careful now,’ the priest warned. ‘I wouldn’t want you to slit your own throat. Such craftsmanship should be employed in defence of your continued existence, not be the instrument of its ending. I’m sure you agree.’

This time Mesring signalled such agreement with the slow closing and opening of his yellowing eyes.

‘Who are you?’ Mesring hissed through his agonies. ‘What do you want?’

‘Who am I?’ the savant-priest repeated — the savant-priest who had been chief attendant to the Ecclesiarch for decades. Who had been privy to his appetites and secrets. Who had attended on Mesring on board the sacerdotal skiff on the journey from the Imperial Palace. Who had assisted the Ecclesiarch in the bestowing of blessings upon the High Lords themselves in the Anesidoran Chapel. ‘And what do I want?’

The priest seemed to move something around in his mouth and then proceeded to bite down hard. Mesring watched in horror as the priest’s face began to tic and to tremble. Like a stone cast into a still pool, his features rippled. A ghastly transformation took place before the Ecclesiarch’s fearful eyes. Long, grey hair rained to the marble floor along with clumps of the priest’s tangled beard. False lenses ran down the imposter’s cheeks like tears and a plastek film that had covered the priest’s cracked and aged lips peeled away and fell to the floor like a strip of dry skin. With the localised polymorphine losing effect and the transformation complete, Mesring beheld his uninvited guest.

‘Vangorich…’

‘Yes.’

Face-to-face with his foe, some of Mesring’s accustomed bluster returned.

‘This is an outrage,’ the Ecclesiarch seethed. ‘The High Lords will hear of this!’

‘No,’ Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, told him with absolute certainty. ‘You asked me a moment ago what I wanted. What I want right now, your eminence, is for you to shut that interminable hole in your face. For if you do not, I shall save your shoulders the further responsibility of bearing the weight of your head. I shall then have one of the many operatives I have planted in your organisation, studying your behaviour and mannerisms, wear your flesh and assume your responsibilities. Am I understood?’

Mesring considered the Grand Master’s words and once again confirmed his understanding with his eyes.

‘Here is what I need you to do,’ Vangorich told him. ‘You will contact Lord Commander Udo and have him convene another unscheduled meeting of the Twelve. Just the Twelve.’

‘And why would I do that?’ Mesring said.

‘Ah, ah,’ Vangorich reminded him, tapping his finger and digital weapon against the Ecclesiarch’s throat. ‘I do not want to be invited, but you can wager your life that I will be in there. Just like I was today.’

‘I…’

The Grand Master raised his dark eyebrows. ‘I’d need a good reason,’ Mesring said, ‘to justify that.’

‘You have one,’ Vangorich returned. ‘You will tell them that you slept uneasily tonight. That the loss of the Jeronimus Fyodora shrine worlds weighed heavily on your mind and that you have taken the destruction of the Fleur-de-Fides cardinal world as a punishment — as a sign. An indication of the God-Emperor’s dissatisfaction with the High Lords’ present course of action in the rimward sectors.’

‘I will not take the Emperor’s name in vain,’ Mesring hissed, ‘and cheapen my faith with such falsehoods.’

‘You will,’ Vangorich insisted. ‘You do already. Every day. Remember to whom you speak, Ecclesiarch. I have been your shadow for longer than you knew you had one. You will declare a War of Faith. You will raise frater militias and mobilise your Templar forces. Your priests across the segmentum will preach this from the pulpits. This will all be done under a banner of sacred vengeance. The priests and people of Fleur-de-Fides will be avenged. You will use your influence with the Lord High Admiral — in light of the Ardamantuan Atrocity, other devastations on the edge of the segmentum, and your War of Faith — to have him recall his fleets, armadas and flotillas from the diversion of border actions and campaign crusades. To ensure the new Lord Commander Militant and committed Astra Militarum forces have the full support of Navy warships and troop carriers. To redeploy our assets across the segmentum in anticipation of xenos invasion. These greenskin successes, their barbaric new technologies, this self-named Beast: these all add up to a credible threat, not to a single world or sector but to the very core. The Imperium is in clear and present danger.’

‘You are not qualified to make that determination,’ Mesring replied. ‘And neither am I.’

‘True,’ Vangorich admitted. ‘But there are those among us who are. Those who know and have always known more about this threat to our Imperial sovereignty amongst the stars. They are fearful. I look to their fear for guidance.’

‘Then take some comfort from their interest and expertise,’ the Ecclesiarch said. ‘If they act, then why need we?’

‘You, Udo, Lansung — your inaction is defined by political advantage. They act in spite of you, but to no lesser advantage. Terrible things are done in the name of necessity. Besides — I don’t have reason to trust any of you. You will do these things I ask not because I have asked you. Not because I have threatened. You will do them because it is your duty. It is your hallowed responsibility to look to the safety and sanctity of the Emperor and His dominion. That is your only reason for being, Ecclesiarch.’

‘Lansung is his own man,’ Mesring insisted. ‘He will not allow his ambitions to be thwarted. I won’t be able to convince him to abandon wars he is already fighting. He will not break up his armadas. I can’t—’

‘You can and you will,’ Vangorich warned. ‘Many claim you to be your own man also, with power and boundless ambition. Yet here I am, using what I have to apply pressure in the right places. You will do the same. Use what you have with Lansung and find a way.’

‘Why not remove Lansung?’ Mesring suggested. ‘If he’s the problem, assassinate and replace him instead. Leave me out of this.’

‘As always, I will do what I must,’ the Grand Master admitted. ‘But if the segmentum is under threat from invasion, we are going to need Admiral Lansung and his strategic experience. It might surprise you to learn this, your eminence, but I don’t really want to kill anybody. But as I said: sometimes terrible things are done in the name of necessity.’

‘Say I agree to this,’ Mesring said with gravity. ‘Say, for the sake of argument that I even agree with a recall strategy. This degenerate xenos Beast, after all, is decimating my worlds too. What’s in it for me?’

Vangorich gave the Ecclesiarch a look of smouldering scorn and disgust. His lips tightened.

‘Why, my lord Mesring… you get to live,’ Vangorich told him. The Assassin became calmer and more dangerous with the Ecclesiarch’s every incendiary suggestion. ‘A few minutes ago I placed a toxin of unrivalled and agonising lethality in contact with your skin.’ Mesring frowned. ‘The devotion of a reverent kiss.’

Mesring looked from Vangorich’s lips to the backs of his hands, then to the floor where the plastek strip bearing the toxin lay curled and abandoned after the Assassin’s transformation.

‘You poisoned me?’ Mesring wheezed, trying to catch his breath.

‘You have three days to meet my demands,’ Vangorich told him. ‘Three days to meet with the High Lords, to use your leverage with Lansung — to have him issue the recall. Three days until you die on your knees, bleeding from your ears, nose and eyeballs, praying for a mercifully swift and painless death you don’t deserve from the God-Emperor you have served so very poorly. Upon successful completion of my demands, one of my operatives will deliver to you the antidote. If you fail, there will be no such need to do so.’

Vangorich released Mesring, before slipping the Ecclesiarch’s digital weapon from his finger.

‘I only have your word that I’ve been poisoned,’ Mesring said weakly.

‘Or that there’s an antidote if you have,’ Vangorich reminded him with chill certainty. ‘Think of it this way: you put the same trust in me as I put in you.’

‘You said that you didn’t trust any of us.’

Vangorich dropped the Jokaero ring into the basin of holy water. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He brought up the hood on his priestly robe and sank down into its darkness before walking away.

Mesring’s fat face was a nest of fury and confusion. Scrabbling through the water in the bowl, the Ecclesiarch found his weapon-ring and slid it onto his little finger. Pointing the weapon at Vangorich’s presented back, the High Lord thought on the toxin working its way through the pores of his skin, through his blood and soaking slowly through his internal organs. He thought on the potential antidote in Drakan Vangorich’s possession. The Ecclesiarch lowered his hand in defeat, and his eyes with it.

‘Three days,’ Vangorich’s voice echoed about the Ecclesiarch’s cavernous private chambers. Mesring looked up, but the Grand Master of Assassins was gone.

EIGHT

Incus Maximal / Malleus Mundi — orbital

Astropath Orm de Zut pulled himself through the module hatch and allowed his frail, green-robed frame to drift through the crowded weightlessness of the compartment. He wore a pair of tinted goggles to hide the empty sockets of his eyes, which, combined with his spindly frame, gave the astropath the appearance of an insect. He clutched a suckle-flask of low-grade amasec to his chest and allowed a lho-stick to drizzle smoke in his wake.

He negotiated the module in silence, inhaling through the narrow slits of his nostrils before exhaling through the grim line of his mouth. With one hand, the blind savant groped and pulled himself past various datamat, holomat and automat servitors who were wired into their observation cradles. Finding a corner of the compartment not drowning in cables, surveillance equipment or Adeptus Mechanicus priest-personnel and servitors, de Zut settled in an alcove, bobbing about in the zero gravity.

‘Master de Zut,’ Notatio Logi Lutron Vydel addressed the astropath. ‘You are intoxicated, sir — again.’ There was no hint of accusation or displeasure in the adept’s static-laced voice, no wrinkle of vexation in the ebony flesh of his hood-framed face. As ranking priest on the Addendus~727 Broad Spectra Adeptus Mechanicus Signum-Station, the notatio logi was not given to such emotional indulgence. It was simply a statement of recorded fact. Like a humpshuttle pilot on a outpost, only required during the cycle changeover of arrival and exodus, de Zut was bored, underemployed and without distraction.

De Zut said nothing.

‘My brother adept is reminding you of your responsibilities,’ Lexmechanic Autegra Ziegl said, turning away from the rune banks built into almost every surface of the compartment. She reached past the astropath. Nudging him to one side in the zero gravity, the lexmechanic adjected several plungers and dials. The outline of her cranial cogitator was like a research installation built into an asteroid, its unit-accretions dominating her shaven head.

‘This is the Omnissiah’s work,’ she said. ‘His loyal servants work hard to compile statistics and testimonia for the astro-telecommunication data package.’

‘To Mars,’ de Zut said, putting one hand across his chest in a mock salute while raising his suckle-flask.

‘It would be an unacceptable waste of time, resources and data,’ Notatio Logi Vydel added, ‘if the package were not to reach the Fabricator General’s choralis diagnostiad.’

‘It would,’ de Zut agreed, taking another slug of amasec.

‘Which is why I’ve opened a file on your fitness for such an important duty,’ Vydel told the astropath with cold indifference.

‘A file,’ de Zut repeated. ‘Honoured.’ Again, he raised the flask.

‘Auspexmechanic Kelso Tollec has been identified as best qualified to monitor your competence,’ Vydel said. Tollec turned his hooded face from the data-pulsing rune banks and refocused his ocular-quad of bionics on the astropath.

De Zut picked tobacco from his thin lips.

‘I can make Adept Tollec’s service record and signum-specifications available for your perusal, if you wish,’ said Ehrlen Ohmnio.

Ohmnio was an officious transmechanic with an annoyingly cheerful face-mask. De Zut took a long drag on his lho-stick before flooding the crowded surveillancia module with silky smoke and reaching for a plunger set in the compartment ceiling.

‘Please don’t touch that,’ Vydel said. The logi was very particular about the signum-station’s equipment.

De Zut gave him the dark lenses of his goggles and yanked down hard on the handle. The compartment rumbled as a metal blast screen lowered to reveal the thick armourglass of the module’s observation port. The searing ice-white glare of the Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi forge-worlds dominated the void beyond. The surfaces of the pair were blotched with the black clouds of planetary destruction. Between them sat the rusted, clinker-plate body of an armoured moon: a greenskin abomination that rained swarms of invasion craft down on the frozen planets. Hanging above the decimation of xenos conquest was a flotilla of Adeptus Mechanicus ark ships and supertransports receiving the last of the forge-world survivors.

‘This is what I am referring to, master astropath,’ Vydel told him, without the suggestion of annoyance or inconvenience de Zut’s actions might have provoked. ‘Such wilful behaviour necessitates monitoring. I expected more of your kind. That was my mistake — after all, you are flesh and flesh is weak.’ The logi turned to his auspexmechanic. ‘Tollec, I want scan coverage, augur arrays and vox-monitoring intensified by forty per cent in line of sight quadrants. Particularly those occupied by Mechanicus contingents. Without filters, we might have emitted some optical or energy signature of our position.’

‘Scanning,’ the auspexmechanic said.

‘I understand why our surveillance needs to remain hidden from the enemy,’ de Zut acknowledged. ‘But your own people and priesthood? You’ve let them just die up to now anyway. Soon there won’t be anyone left to detect your presence.’

‘Master de Zut,’ Vydel said. ‘Are you familiar with our Third Law of Universal Variance?’

‘He will not comprehend,’ Autegra Ziegl said with confidence.

‘It is called the Bystander Paradox,’ Vydel continued, ‘and it states that whatever the Machine God’s servant observes, he affects. The magos metallurgicus’ involvement in an experiment might threaten to change its chemical outcome. An alien life form might behave differently under the gaze of a magos biologis than it would in its natural environment. A patient might stifle pain or embarrassing symptoms in the presence of a magos physic. You see, this signum-station is under strict orders — from the Fabricator General himself. Covertly observe. Record. Document. Do not interact. That is our solemn responsibility. And it is your solemn responsibility to send the sum total of our data and observations back to Mars.’

‘Solemn responsibility?’ the astropath repeated back. ‘What about our responsibility to those people?’

‘Their loss has been weighed and measured against future gains,’ Vydel replied.

‘And what of the losses on other worlds?’ de Zut spat back morosely. ‘While you coldly catalogue the slaughter of the Machine God’s servants, what of the mortis-cries of the dozen Imperial worlds I have intercepted? Mortis-cries of dying billions that I am bound by ancient decrees of my own order to report on, but that your surveillance protocols forbid?’

‘I calculate that to be a burden, master astropath,’ Lutron Vydel said. ‘But a necessary one. We cannot allow enemies — xenos or domestic — to learn of our surveillance. I understand that the mortis-cries might have tested you…’

‘These deaths are but data to you,’ de Zut said grimly. ‘You can close your blast screens so that you might avoid looking down on your losses. I have no such screen. I live each and every one: in here,’ the astropath said, slapping his palm against his temple.

‘I repeat,’ Vydel said, ‘we acknowledge the burden of such mortis-cries.’

‘And of the astrotelepathic distress calls to have reached us?’ de Zut interrupted. ‘What of the living, priest? Thirsk’s World? Aguilarn Tertius? Eidolica? The Verge Worlds? Fifty-One Xerxi? Port Sanctus? Undine? What of those we could save by breaking your precious Law of Universal Variance? Those who might be saved by others, if you only allow me to pass on their communications? We might be the only ones to have intercepted such calls for assistance.’

‘Out protocols are clear,’ Vydel said, unaffected by the astropath’s entreaties. ‘We are authorised to send one communication. One communication containing our evidence and findings. Observations of enemy conquest strategies, the workings of xenos technologies and the relative successes or failures of victim-worlds to repel invasions. One communication signalling the signum-station’s readiness for extraction and redeployment. These billions you feel for do not perish in vain. The Fabricator General will learn much from their annihilation.’

De Zut pushed himself back into the corner of the compartment, defeated by the cold logic of the tech-priests. Unclipping herself from her observation cradle, Autegra Ziegl allowed herself to drift upwards. Reaching out, she depressed the ceiling plunger, initiating the hydraulic closure of the port blast screen. She had no words of comfort for the astropath. Such capacity had long been surgically sliced from what was left of her organic brain, but she watched de Zut with brazen curiosity as he shook his head and took a long, hard drink from his suckle-flask.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he mouthed before again returning to the zero-gravity teat on the flask.

Ziegl turned to her notatio logi master.

‘Perhaps we should send the intelligence package now,’ she said.

Kelso Tollec turned his ocular-quad on the lexmechanic. ‘What of the data-loss? The analytical deficiencies?’

‘We would be failing both our Fabricator General and the Omnissiah,’ Erhlen Ohmnio said, his cheerful face-mask unchanged.

‘Master de Zut is under your monitorance,’ Ziegl put to Tollec. ‘Can you vouch that he will be able to send communication following the destruction of the cryoforge-worlds? That could take days. It could take weeks. How many more mortis-cries will he intercept in that time?’

The auspexmechanic considered, then admitted to Vydel, ‘Master de Zut’s capabilities and willingness to serve the Machine God with his talents diminish with his intoxication and deteriorating state of mind. He is apparently unsuited for the isolation of surveillance service on a signum-station. I calculate a twenty-six point four five per cent chance that he will abuse his talents and relay the astrotelepathic messages he has received — thereby invalidating our surveillance and possibly betraying our position to an enemy.’

‘Better to send the package incomplete and be of some use to the diagnostiad, than not have it reach them at all,’ Vydel said.

‘But the protocols…’ Erhlen Ohmnio restated.

‘Sub-protocols allow for adaptation in the face of an external threat to the sacred data,’ Vydel insisted. ‘An accident or enemy offensive, for example. I am willing to interpret Master de Zut’s weakness of the flesh as such an external threat.’

Taking the flask of amasec from Orm de Zut, Vydel looked from the defeated astropath to his lexmechanic. ‘Begin preparing the data we have for empyreal translation. Master de Zut will sober up and send our findings to Mars, where, Omnissiah willing, they shall aid the Fabricator General and his choralis diagnostiad in their holy cerebrations.’

NINE

Mars — Olympica Fossae Titan Assembly Yards

The Adeptus Mechanicus haulage barge Internuncia gave an almighty creak as its landing claws touched down in red Martian dirt. Gone was the weightless indifference of the void. The forge-world’s gravity asserted its authority, and the great vessel and its consignment cargo of colossal Titan parts reacquired their crushing cumbersomeness. The drop-freighter was a largely automated vessel, crewed by mummified servitors, servomat drones and robotic cargo loaders. It routinely ferried parts for repair and reconditioning between the Terran Titan depots and the Olympica assembly yards on the Red Planet, transported between the two by the articulated push-tug Sumpter, which was waiting obediently in orbit. The ranking crew member was a helmsmechanic, wired into the gargantuan craft’s tiny cockpit, whose responsibility it was to pilot the barge between low orbit and the planetary surface.

As the massive bay doors opened and mechanised drones fell to the task of loading and offloading their precious cargo, a figure in dark robes broke the angularity of its cover. Not a servitor. Not a drone automaton. A stowaway. Striding down the mountainous ramp behind the broad tracks of cargo robots and between the heavy steps of power-lifter servomats, the figure’s ample hood buried its features. It looked up briefly. Weak rays of early morning sunlight were feeling their way around the imposing architecture of the Olympus Mons forge temple: grand, functional, beautiful. Olympus Mons, forge of the ancients. Cult capital of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Seat of the Fabricator General of Mars. It was a magnificent sight, sitting, as it did, like a colossal crown of glowing chimneys, furnace stacks and temple towers atop the largest volcano in the Sol System. It was a reminder of the power wielded by the Machine God’s servants in the galaxy. An empire allied, but still distinct from the Emperor’s Imperium and ruled from the red majesty of Mars.

At the bottom of the ramp, the figure found a gathering in the great shadow of the haulage barge. A meeting of equally dark shapes, waiting to be convened. A meeting unseen and secret; a meeting of assassins and killers, with death warrants at a glance — for those unfortunate enough to observe such occurrences, by design or by accident, rarely saw the next sunrise.

As monotask machinery and augmented vat-slaves went about their unloading duties, the group presented themselves to the waiting figure. Two wore the red-robed pageantry of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Two more sported cloaks and masks of midnight black over muscle-hugging syn-skin and boots of the same colour. The fifth was hulking and naked, but for being entirely enclosed in a cryo-containment pod. The sarcophagus was positioned upright and steamed with methalon gas, creating a heavy mist that sank to the floor.

‘Sleeper Cadre Red Haven: identify,’ the figure ordered them.

The first of the false-Mechanicus figures stepped forwards and offered the haptic finger ports of her hand.

‘Clementina Yendl, my lord,’ the Assassin said. ‘Temple Vanus.’

The figure took her hand in his gauntleted one and pierced her skin with a hypodermic palm spike. Painful though the experience was, the Assassin didn’t flinch. Holding her hand still, the figure turned his gauntlet and examined the data scrolling across a miniature runescreen inlaid at the wrist.

‘Clementina Yendl, Temple Vanus — Red Haven, confirmed,’ the figure said.

The procedure was repeated. ‘Mariazet Isolde, Temple Callidus — Red Haven, confirmed,’ the figure said to the other forge-world impersonator — her red-robed disguise benefiting further from a bronze mask, authentic cybernetic augmentation and the stench of oil and spoiling flesh.

‘Saskine Haast, Temple Vindicare and Sklera Verraux, Temple Vindicare — Red Haven, confirmed,’ the figure said, identifying the pair of stealth-suited markswomen.

Placing his hand on the side of the upright cryo-containment pod, the figure interfaced with a hypodermic port and drew blood from the occupant.

‘Tybalt the Abolitiate,’ Yendl of Temple Vanus informed the visitor.

The figure inspected his gauntlet.

‘Temple Eversor — Red Haven, confirmed,’ he said finally.

While the Vindicare markswomen retained their masks and Tybalt the Abolitiate remained reassuringly cryo-confined, both Yendl and Isolde drew back their hoods. Isolde disconnected her Mechanicus Protectorate honour mask with the hand that had not been replaced by a mind-impulse-controlled implant weapon, to reveal a pallid but beautiful face. The flaskless plasma gun glowed beneath the Callidus Assassin’s cloak.

Yendl was a bookish woman, lacking in the surgically refined allurements favoured by many female operatives of the temples. Beauty, for many Assassins, was simply another weapon in their varied arsenals, but Yendl had elected to remain unremarkable by comparison with her cadre companions. Framed between the greying braids on the sides of her head and within the holo-lenses of her spectacles, however, the infocyte’s eyes burned with dark, destructive intelligence. She held an armoured data-slate under one arm, a weighty intel-log that trailed rune cables and data-feeds back under her robes.

‘My lord,’ Yendl insisted. ‘If you don’t mind.’

The figure nodded.

‘And you are right to insist,’ he told her as ghostly overlays rippled through the display of her holo-spectacles and the dots of face recognition beams pulsed from devices built into her frames onto the stranger’s face. The figure managed a grim patience during the brief scan.

‘Well?’ Sklera Verraux said through the vox-filter of her mask. Both Verraux and her sister sniper had tensed at the delay in Yendl’s usually swift cogitations.

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ Yendl said finally.

‘Grand Master — Officio Assassinorum: confirmed,’ Drakan told them.

With the exception of the monster Tybalt, who physically couldn’t know he was in the presence of the highest ranking member of their order, the Red Haven sleeper cadre fell to an obedient knee.

‘Grand Master,’ Yendl said, ‘if we had known that you were coming to Mars in person…’

‘…then I hope you would not have wasted time on ceremony,’ Vangorich told his Assassins. ‘Are we secure?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ the Vanus Assassin assured him. ‘I have had all vox, pict and identifeeds out of this section — surface and orbital — phage-blocked.’

Vangorich nodded: ‘I grace the Red Planet’s presence because the intelligence you have gathered is of grave importance, not only to me and the Officio but also the Imperium. The guardian-vigilance of Assassin sleeper cadres like your own has never been more important. Not since the Great Heresy have the actions of so few endangered so many.’

‘Of course, Grand Master,’ Yendl replied. She knew better than to ask for more details.

‘Now,’ Vangorich said, ‘to Fabricator General Kubik’s transgressions.’

‘This encrypted log contains our gathered evidence and observations in full, Grand Master,’ Yendl said, disconnecting the security data-slate from her cabling and offering the log to Vangorich. ‘In short, my lord, the Fabricator General has been keeping valuable intelligence from the Senatorum.’

‘What kind of intelligence?’ the Grand Master demanded.

‘Results and observations gathered by his priests and adepts regarding the spread of xenos species in the rimward sectors,’ Yendl said. ‘The so-called Chromes. The Fabricator General has had his magi biologis and artisans trajectorae criss-crossing the segmentum, collating data from maximum-security laboratoria, observation posts and signum-stations.’

‘Where are these Adeptus Mechanicus installations?’

‘They are spread across the outer rim sectors, Grand Master,’ Yendl replied, ‘covertly monitoring worlds that have reported infestations of the Chrome vermin-species — including many citing minor outbreaks and Stage One planetary intrusions.’

Vangorich swore under his breath. ‘Kubik was presented with the Critical Situation Packet regarding the Chromes but refuted its threat credibility. All the while establishing his network of observation posts.’

‘The Fabricator General himself could be considered a credible threat,’ Yendl offered.

Vangorich slowly shook his head. ‘Kubik wasn’t wrong — logical bastard. The Chromes themselves aren’t the issue. It’s the predator species driving them corewards. No Critical Situation Packet was presented for them.’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Wienand must have been spitting blood,’ the Grand Master said, half to himself. ‘Was Kubik the source of the Inquisition’s initial information?’

‘Affirmative,’ Yendl said, ‘in the first instance.’

‘Then when the Fabricator General realised that he was onto something significant and beneficial to the Adeptus Mechanicus, he cut her off,’ Vangorich reasoned further. ‘He buried her Critical Situation Packet: the threat assessment his servants had helped to compile. Machines…’ Vangorich marvelled. ‘Wienand?’

‘The lady inquisitor is a frequent visitor to Mars,’ Mariazet Isolde answered. ‘She carelessly leaves her operatives here. They are currently being monitored.’

‘Would you prefer us to take more direct action, my lord?’ Saskine Haast asked.

The Grand Master shook his head: ‘Avoid entanglements with the Inquisition, if possible. If it isn’t possible, then do what you do best.’ With a nod, Vangorich returned his thoughts to Kubik. ‘You said these stations are gathering data covertly?’ he prompted Yendl.

‘They still are,’ the Temple Vanus operative informed her master. ‘Encrypted astrotelepathic intelligence packages arrive daily for the attention of the Fabricator General and his choralis diagnostiad.’ Vangorich lifted his hood in question. ‘The extensive coven of priests and magi he has convened to look to the problems and opportunities created by the xenos threat in the rimward sectors,’ Yendl clarified.

‘What of Adeptus Mechanicus forge-worlds?’

‘Installation personnel are under strict orders not to interfere with what the Fabricator General calls the Grand Experiment. He has not warned or attempted to spare his own servants.’

‘Machines…’ Vangorich repeated. ‘Was the intercept world, Ardamantua, being monitored?’

‘Kubik continues to recieve astrotelepathic updates from the system,’ Yendl said.

‘But the fleet was destroyed above Ardamantua.’

‘The reports are sent from a secure laboratorium aboard the Subservius, a Martian survey brig masquerading as an Imperial Fists fleet tender. Records show that the vessel was engaged in a supply run during the gravitic disturbances on Ardamantua, but she had in fact been ordered by the ranking priest on board, Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken, to haul off in advance of the gravity storm. This was deemed necessary to make observations of the enemy’s arrival.’

‘The Mechanicus had an early warning system for the gravity storms, before Ardamantua?’ Vangorich pressed.

‘Appearance of the vermin-species,’ Yendl said, ‘followed by auditory phenomena on a broadening range of frequencies, followed in turn by seismogravitic disturbances, increasing in magnitude. Their predictive system was established and trialled at Desh, Concorda Corona and Nostroya IV.’

‘I don’t recall these disasters being reported to the Senatorum,’ Vangorich said.

‘They predate Ardamantua, sir. In all likelihood,’ Yendl said, ‘their tragedies were reported as some other kind of phenomenon. These worlds are confirmed as dead, however. They are in the hands of the invader. Grand Master, may I have permission to speak candidly?’

‘Granted, Assassin.’

‘Our protocols for an action are very stringent,’ Yendl put to him.

‘And rightly so.’

‘By the letter of those protocols,’ Yendl said, ‘have not the actions of the Fabricator General justified his termination? He’s withholding a wealth of essential information from the Senatorum and embarking on a course of action — individually determined — that might very well be putting the Imperium in grave danger. An action is justified, my lord. Some might argue warranted and necessary.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Vangorich told her, ‘it is not as simple as that.’

‘But, my lord, aren’t the magnitude of these considerations beyond the politics of the Senatorum?’

‘Nothing is beyond the politics of the Senatorum,’ Vangorich said. ‘I understand your impatience. The need to act. I too have done my time watching those deserving of death breathe on, unpunished, under my blade and in my sights. The Fabricator General’s time will come, and he won’t be alone. The fact is that as of this moment, with the core facing a xenos invasion of unprecedented proportions, we are going to need Kubik and the results of his Grand Experiment. Detest them as I might, the advantage the Martian priesthood are searching for might benefit us all.’

‘Grand Master,’ Yendl persisted cautiously. ‘Forgive me my doubts, but I am not so sure. Beyond a diagnostic analysis of enemy strategic behaviours and the relative successes and failures of Imperial worlds to delay the invasion, it won’t surprise you to learn that the principal interest the Adeptus Mechanicus has in these calamities is the technologies used to promote them.’

‘Kubik is actively researching the xenos technologies?’ Vangorich asked in slow and deliberate syllables.

‘More than that, Grand Master,’ Yendl told him. ‘Kubik has several maximum security projects under excavation and construction beneath the surface of Mars. As yet, we have been unable to gain access to these projects. We know that one is located beneath the Noctis Labyrinth, with other larger excavations taking place at intervals below the Valles Marineris.’

‘What is the Mechanicus building?’ Vangorich demanded.

‘We don’t yet know, my lord,’ Yendl admitted, ‘but much of the data sent back to Mars from the secreted outposts and signum-stations focuses on the teleportation and vector technologies that the xenos use to transport their attack moons over sector-spanning distances.’

‘Kubik wishes to learn the heretical secrets of this barbaric technology?’ Vangorich said, before once again allowing his mind to dwell on the politics. ‘Perhaps the Inquisition’s interest in Kubik is less collaborative than the Fabricator General conceives.’

‘My lord,’ Yendl continued, ‘with respect, you are not thinking broadly enough. We believe that the Fabricator General’s interests lie not in what is best for the Imperium — but what is best for the Mechanicus. Kubik does not wish to learn the secrets of the xenos tech in order to destroy it or defend against it. He wishes to utilise it. Replicate it. Embrace its potential.’

‘You’re saying that…’

‘I’m saying, my lord, that in the event of a threat to the inner core, to the Sol subsector — from the invader or anything else — he means to remove Mars from the path of annihilation.’

‘Move the planet?’ Vangorich said, his mind struggling with the enormity of the proposal.

‘Save Mars,’ Yendl said, ‘and leave the Imperium to the ravages of the enemy.’

‘Does he have these secrets?’

‘Unknown, my lord. But if and when he does, beyond the defensive capabilities of such secrets, such techno-heretical wonders would make the Martian forge-world an intolerable weapon.’

‘Agreed,’ Vangorich said finally. He turned with the intelligence log under one arm and ventured soberly back up the colossal ramp.

‘My lord,’ Yendl called after him, after a moment of reconsideration. A little way up, the Grand Master of Assassins turned. ‘Understand, sir, this is speculation. We have no direct evidence of the construction of such a heretical abomination.’

Vangorich cast his eyes bleakly across the sleeper cadre.

‘Red Haven: Priority Primus,’ the Grand Master said to them. ‘Find some.’

TEN

Ardamantua

Ardamantua was a gravity-churned mess, a mass grave that had suffered tectonic upheaval. An aftermath of fresh earth and rotting bodies. It was fascinating.

Artisan Trajectorae Argus Van Auken was standing in a craterous hollow swarming with Mechanicus menials and seisomats taking readings and feeding the data back to the survey brig Subservius, which held position in low orbit above the expedition. Magi astrophysicus bombarded the ruined structure of the Ardamantuan crust with magnasonic arrays and powerful pulse-scanners, the dishes and receivers of which were directed down into the ground.

As soon as the distress calls from the surface had faded and the colossal xenos attack moon disappeared — which had happened as swiftly as the abomination had arrived — the Subservius had returned. Argus Van Auken had come back at the head of a small army of data-ravenous priests and adepts, all intent on understanding the mechanics of the catastrophe. They busied themselves with experimentation and observation, all the while trampling xenos corpses — both common Chromes and Veridi giganticus — and the shredded remains of Mechanicus support staff, and the shattered yellow plate of fallen Imperial Fists, into the disturbed earth.

Only knowledge mattered. The xenos cadavers were fearfully imposing, even in death. The honourable Adeptus Astartes — torn to pieces in the enemy deluge — deserved better. Argus Van Auken was incapable of such distractions, however. His work benefited from a lack of such sentimentality. Some might describe it as a disability. Others, a superhuman ability. It had been Van Auken’s cold logic that had held the Subservius on station, pursuing its observation protocols when lesser adepts like Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex had urged the artisan to return and interfere with unfolding events. Perhaps it had been Urquidex’s devotion to the science of the living that had burdened the priest with such weakness. Urquidex had watched the data-streams of doom return from the planet’s surface. He saw an Adeptus Astartes Chapter on the brink of annihilation. He saw the physical perfection of the human form and a rich genetic history of conquest and supremacy on the cusp of extinction. He gave in to his baser, organic impulses and requested of Van Auken a last-minute retrieval.

The request was denied — and as the expedition’s second-ranking priest, Urquidex received a citation for modus-unbecoming from the first. Van Auken reminded his colleague of the Third Law of Universal Variance: the Bystander Paradox. Urquidex had replied that they called it a paradox for a reason.

The alien Beast had unleashed its savage supremacy on Ardamantua and all those upon its surface. None had survived. Only the data — pure and true — remained. It was Van Auken’s responsibility to see that the information found its way back to Mars where it might aid the Fabricator General in his service of the Machine God’s will.

Striding through auspexmechanics and oscillamats that were monitoring the structural damage to the planetary depths, Van Auken ascended the hollow’s slopes to find that Urquidex’s survey crews had planted electrostatic rods in the mulched earth. About the artisan-primus, fields of static electricity had raised the dead. Hulking greenskin corpses were drifting a few feet above the ground on the crackling field, making examination of the bolt-ravaged specimens easier for the magos biologis and his genetor tech-adepts. The Beast’s work on Ardamantua had been so absolute in its ferocity that there were no other remains to examine. The Space Marines and accompanying Adeptus Mechanicus personnel of the Ardamantuan purge had been hacked and blasted to pieces. The monsters had been possessed of a bottomless ferocity that seemed to infect the creatures even down to their diminutive slave and vermin forms.

Knocking the monstrous bodies into a telekinetic tumble, Van Auken’s spindly form passed through the levitated carnage. But for the electromagnetic dampeners built into his torso, the artisan also would have floated effortlessly across the tormented earth. Skitarii from the Epsil-XVIII Collatorax stood sentinel among the sea of bodies, with their galvanic rifles cradled in bionic limbs. They had been assigned as expedition security and for use as execution squads, putting down monstrosities that had not quite bled their formidable life away on the battlefield. Alpha Primus Orozko saw the approaching artisan-primus and marched to meet him.

‘With me, magister, if you please,’ Van Auken requested. The officer said nothing. Orozko wasn’t much of a communicator, favouring binary for orders and transmissions. He simply fell in line behind the ranking priest.

‘Magos,’ Van Auken said as he entered a foil laboratory- pavilion. Neither Eldon Urquidex nor his surgeons and samplers looked up from the gargantuan carcass of the ork they were dissecting on the static field. Slabs of flesh and labelled alien organs floated about them. ‘Magos,’ the artisan-primus repeated. ‘My teams have all but completed their documentation of the damage inflicted by the alien weapon.’

‘And…?’ the barrel-bodied Urquidex said, not taking his telescopic eyes off the brain of the beast he was carving up with a digit-mounted las-scalpel.

‘The enemy’s mastery of gravity manipulation and teleportational vectors is considerable,’ Van Auken said, his understatement devoid of wit or passion. The priest paused; his colleague had a habit of soliciting information when he should be delivering it. ‘The gravitational aftershocks began to subside after the weapon removed itself from the system. Its disruptive influence endures, however, fading incrementally. It will be some time before gravito-planetary equilibrium is fully restored to this world.’

‘Fascinating…’

‘It is like nothing the Machine God’s servants have documented before. It is a weapon the mere presence of which is a force of ultimate destruction. A blade that cuts without being drawn from its sheath; a bolt that blasts without leaving the barrel. If we are to achieve similar masteries, we must understand how the alien accomplishes such wonders. Scrutiny of the workings of their technology alone only reveals that it should not work at all. This is an unacceptable conclusion for our data packet.’

‘Indeed,’ Urquidex agreed.

‘The Fabricator General demands better of us,’ the artisan said.

‘Always,’ the magos replied absently.

‘Magos,’ Van Auken insisted, ‘I must have your hypotheses.’

Urquidex looked up from the alien brain, his telescopic eyes retracting and refocusing.

‘Why rush such important research?’ the magos said with a withering gaze.

‘There is a time for everything,’ Van Auken said, ‘and for everything a time.’

‘Has this time been allocated for wastage?’ Urquidex asked. ‘Since it seems to be achieving little else.’

‘The Subservius has been ordered on,’ Van Auken insisted. ‘We are to rendezvous with several signum-stations before moving corewards to establish observations above Macromunda.’

‘To watch another unwarned world offered up before the alien for slaughter?’ Urquidex said.

‘You must learn to govern your sentimentality,’ Van Auken instructed. ‘Macromunda is no less a sacrifice than those genelings you experiment on in your laboratorium. These worlds would die anyway. We watch them die so that Mars might live. Now, enough of this. What observations can you add to the data packet? What is the secret of the xenos technology?’

Urquidex gave his superior the narrowing lenses of his telescopic eyes. Retracting the digit-scalpel into the toolage of his bionic hand, the magos produced a pencil beam from his cranial arrangement, the red dot of which hovered across the artisan trajectorae’s narrow forehead. Urquidex turned back to the xenos brain he had been working on.

‘This structure here,’ Urquidex said, indicating a bulbous feature at the brainstem that appeared like a bloom of fungus erupting from the base of a tree, ‘governs the problem-solving faculties of the species — at least that is my theory.’

‘Like you, I am a priest of Mars,’ Van Auken reassured him. ‘This is a xenos abomination — there are no certainties, only theories to be tested. Proceed, magos.’

‘In many alien space-faring species, as well as our own,’ Urquidex told him, ‘such structures — dealing with inspiration, experimentation and technological development — occur in the frontal lobes.’ Urquidex passed the dot across a comparatively redundant part of the creature’s brain. ‘Or the xenos equivalent thereof. In a race who have taken that crucial and technologically demanding step into a larger universe, you would expect this to be an area of recent evolutionary development.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Not so in Veridi giganticus,’ the magos biologis said. ‘It occurs in one of the most primitive parts of the organ.’

‘But what does that mean?’ Van Auken asked.

‘It means that their technological mastery, being what it is, proceeds not from evolutionary, intellectual development as it has in humans and many other races. It has been a feature of their race from very early in their existence.’

‘An accelerated development?’ Van Auken hoped so. Acceleration could be modelled. Acceleration could be predicted.

‘No,’ Urquidex told him. ‘Something primordial. A capability innate within their species. Their mastery of technology — including the gravitational and vector capabilities that you would wish to reproduce — is a natural ability. Not a product of some form of developed, higher order conception.’

‘These conclusions will not please the Fabricator General,’ Van Auken said.

‘It is only a theory,’ Urquidex said. ‘Other priests at other conquest-sites may reach other conclusions.’

‘Have you learned anything else?’ Van Auken asked.

Urquidex turned and snapped on a hololithic projector that enveloped the monstrous brain in a fluxing field representation.

‘What is that?’ the artisan asked.

‘Honestly?’ the magos said, ‘I don’t know. I happened upon the frequency by accident. This is the barest manifestation of it, I can tell you that. It has been fading since biological cessation.’

‘If you had to make an informed guess, magos?’

‘Some kind of field or emanation,’ Urquidex said. ‘It seems to be coming from deep within the brain structure — again, an evolutionarily ancient feature.’

‘Could it be psionic in nature?’ Van Auken asked cautiously.

‘Unknown,’ Urquidex said with equal reservation, ‘not my area of specialisation. However, watch this.’

Urquidex directed a pair of servitors into the foil tent. Between them they carried an alien weapon: some kind of barbaric chopping implement sporting a chain of revolving teeth like a chainsword. A brute motor was built into its ungainly shaft, the handle of which was scored with primitive glyphs and graffiti. The magos directed the drones to slip the savage weapon into the beast’s death-stiffened grip, and lay the great shaft of the weapon and its murderous headpiece across the greenskin’s open and organ-excavated chest.

‘What are you doing?’ Van Auken asked, as Urquidex directed a servomat to attach power couplings to the weapon’s monstrous motor. ‘Magos?’

‘Clear…’ Urquidex said, before instructing the servomat to supply power to the weapon from its own core.

The serrated chain of the chopper roared to life, the clunky machinery of its motor squealing and crunching, the gore of the Emperor’s Angels spraying Van Auken from the monstrous weapon’s thrashing teeth. The artisan stepped back and wiped the speckles of old blood from his face.

‘Turn it off,’ he commanded.

‘As you wish,’ Urquidex said, selecting an autopsy cleaver with a monomolecular edge from a rack of similarly macabre tools. Swinging the cleaver down with force, the magos chopped at the hulking wrist of the greenskin. It took a number of strikes, with the cleaver-blade biting through flesh and bone. With a final strike the claw-hand was separated from the meat of the arm — and the weapon chugged, bucked and died. Van Auken stepped back towards the creature with fresh interest.

‘It still has power?’

‘The problem isn’t power,’ Urquidex assured the artisan-primus. ‘The weapon has suffered a malfunction, which isn’t surprising given the poor quality of its construction and maintenance. I fear that this field — swiftly depleting and dissipating after death — in some way aids the crude workings of such creations.’

‘But what of technologies not in direct contact with the xenos?’

‘Unknown. The weapon was a simple demonstration with a cadaver-specimen,’ Urquidex said. ‘I have not observed the field’s properties in a living organism. I don’t know for sure that the field is responsible.’

‘If it was, could the field be replicated?’

‘Unknown. Not my specialisation.’

Artisan Van Auken took a moment to process this new data.

‘These are important findings,’ Van Auken said. ‘They must reach Mars without delay.’

Urquidex watched the artisan process more than just the findings. Van Auken, who scorned the display of emotions in his colleagues, had difficulty keeping pride in his expedition’s work from his gaunt face. Greed followed as an afterthought. Greed for power, recognition and influence. It was his name and designation as artisan-primus that would accompany the data packet to Mars. He who would be recalled to serve in the sacred ranks of the Fabricator General’s diagnostiad.

‘There is something else,’ Urquidex said, shaking Van Auken from his machinations.

‘Proceed,’ the artisan trajectorae encouraged, eager for more revelations.

‘I have gene-typed the creature and a sample of its kind,’ the Magos Biologis said, ‘and cross-referenced our findings with the data-vaults aboard the Subservius.’

‘And what did you discover?’ Van Auken urged.

‘They all have the same origin, genetically speaking,’ Urquidex said. ‘With some more work, we should be able to narrow it down to a particular area of the galaxy. Perhaps even a single world.’

A burst of binary cant from Alpha Primus Orozko interrupted the pair of priests. An alpha of the Epsil-XVIII Collatorax had reported to the primus. Urquidex and Van Auken turned, and Orozko prompted the subordinate to report.

‘Artisan-primus,’ the tribunus said. ‘The augurmats have discovered life signs and designation signatures in quadrant four. They’re weak but verified and coming from beneath the ground.’

‘Survivors?’ Eldon Urquidex dared to hope.

‘Witnesses,’ Van Auken corrected him, ‘to the end of a world. Take us to them.’

The alpha led his commander and the two priests through the floating carnage about the magos’ field of electrostatic rods. Beyond the static, the sampling crews and the skitarii standing sentinel, the alpha took them to a small excavation. A cordon of gathered Collatorax, augurmats and a servitor dig-team parted to admit the artisan-primus, and a medicae servitor looked up from its work at the tech-priests’ arrival.

A pair of stretcher-bearing servitors carried the remains of an ashen priest from the excavation site. He was clad in the robes of the Mechanicus, besmirched with Ardamantuan earth, but had suffered the horrific injuries of battle. His legs were missing, hacked away by some brute weapon of war. Lengths of intestine and the tech-priest’s inner workings spilled from the mess of his abdomen-stump.

‘Halt,’ the magos said, bringing the servitors to a stop. ‘Status?’

‘Compromised,’ the medicae servitor told him in monotone. ‘Critical. Demonstrated no life signs or data-feeds. Invasive interventions stabilised core and cogitae. Organic systems either dead or dying. Survival unlikely.’

What blood and oil remained in the priest’s body was leaking out onto the stretcher. His augmented biology was still partially functioning, although he was technically not alive and in machine system shock. His hands reached out for things that were not there and nonsense fell from his lips like a stream of dribble.

‘You know this priest?’ Van Auken asked.

‘Yes,’ Urquidex informed him. ‘The Omnissiah favoured him with my specialism: his name is Laurentis, Phaeton Laurentis. He was assigned to the original expedition.’

‘Laurentis…’

‘He did some good work in isolation, while attached to the Imperial Fists. He gathered some valuable data, made some useful observations.’

‘His observations were not so useful to the Fabricator General,’ Van Auken said, ‘when he transmitted them to Terra.’

‘Like many of our calling,’ Urquidex said, ‘Phaeton Laurentis was not taken into the Fabricator General’s confidence regarding the alien invader. He knew no more than the Guard officers and Adeptus Astartes besieged with him. We can hardly blame him for serving the cohort to which he had been assigned. And like I said, some of his work was very good, bearing in mind what little he had to work with.’

Van Auken was unconvinced. ‘Take him to my shuttle,’ the artisan commanded the servitors. ‘He will repair to the ship for censure and redesignation of service.’

‘Scrubbing him seems a waste,’ Urquidex offered. ‘He might have more information than was transmitted.’ Van Auken considered the idea. ‘Gathered between transmission and defeat.’

‘It is undeniably true that such information would be useful,’ Van Auken admitted. ‘Inform the magi physic and artisans cybernetica that this priest is to be stabilised and readied for downstreaming and debriefing,’ he told the servitors, before sending them off to his shuttle.

Van Auken turned, but Urquidex had already started the descent down into the excavated pit. There they found an infirmechanic standing among three waxy cocoons, taking readings. Humanoid in shape, the large cocoons appeared like the mummified ancients of some archaeological find. Instead of being wrapped in cloth, the three figures had secreted a kind of mucus-like residue that formed a thin, protective layer about their bodies. Through the membranous surface, the two priests could see the horror of mangled bodies: butchered torsos, missing limbs and scraps of ceramite plate. A yellow pauldron was visible through the stretched surface of one cocoon. The markings were clear even through the membrane: a black gauntlet, clutched into a defiant fist.

‘They must have been buried in the gravitic upheaval,’ the artisan trajectorae said. ‘With the priest… Magos?’

‘Aye,’ Urquidex agreed, his telescopic eyes whirring in for a closer look. ‘These are Adeptus Astartes genetic adaptations. A form of suspended animation, allowing them to survive all but the most mortal of wounds. The coating is an extreme form of protective secretion, airtight and temperature resistant. It is a wonder of genetic engineering.’

The magos biologis examined the infirmechanic’s readings.

‘Will they survive?’ Van Auken asked him.

‘Possibly.’

‘Fascinating.’

‘Their wounds are grievous and their life signs are practically non-existent.’

‘Like the priest, they have first-hand knowledge of the enemy’s tactical capabilities,’ the artisan-primus said. ‘You said it yourself. Better data than could be gathered by a thousand butchered drones.’

‘Agreed,’ Urquidex said. ‘But I want you to know that if we break their suspension and revive them, we might not be able to save them from their injuries.’

‘Their testimony is too important,’ Van Auken said. ‘It is required for the data packet.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes — a successor Chapter — would have the specialist knowledge to…’

‘We don’t answer to the Adeptus Astartes,’ Van Auken said. ‘We answer to the Fabricator General.’

‘These might be all that is left of the Imperial Fists.’

‘Have them transported with the priest to the laboratorium aboard the Subservius,’ Van Auken ordered. ‘Begin suspension-interruption there.’

‘You will take responsibility?’

‘I will.’

ELEVEN

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Senatorum Imperialis was in full session. It was an incredible sight. For Drakan Vangorich, it was a sight of byzantine bureaucracy and tedium. He had a thousand different ways to assemble relevant intelligence from such bloated, officious gatherings without actually having to attend them. He thought it unwise to miss too many meetings, however. Some personages were inevitably conspicuous by their absence. When the Grand Master of Assassins fails to make an appearance at such assemblies, the pervading boredom inflicted upon attendees prompts people to wonder where such a lord might be and what he might be doing. Wondering was not to be encouraged in the powerful and mighty. Wondering could get people killed.

No longer, though, was Vangorich a member of the High Twelve. Those dignitaries took their thrones on a central dais that turned almost imperceptibly, commanding a slowly revolving view of the stadium-seats, petitioners and functionaries. Below them, the Great Chamber was bustling with robed minor officials, their aides and advisors. Vangorich was not considered one of these minor officials by any means, but he did have to part a sea of the favour-curriers in order to pass long-deferred water. The path between his own allotted throne at the foot of Dorn’s mighty statue and the ablutorials passed through the dour throngs of prefectii and consularies. Many lords of the Grand Master’s office and station took the upper galleries to avoid such inconvenience. The paths to the private suites of specific influentials and the ablutorials were stalked by adepts, officials and officers waiting for just a moment of a High Lord’s time or the slate-signature it might take to get rid of them swiftly. Some legistrae and ministrators had waited weeks, sometimes months, for a particular lord or significant to pass water. If it wasn’t for the politics and the problems solved by such men over the fonts in the vestablutae antehalls, opportunistic encounters would have been an even rarer occurrence.

These were not considerations for Drakan Vangorich. The Grand Master cut through the clusters of officials like a dark knife. Few people on the Senatorum floor wanted to talk to an Assassin or be seen to talk to one. This suited Vangorich perfectly, and was why it surprised the Grand Master all the more when he was accosted.

‘Master Vangorich,’ a hooded aide said. ‘A word with you, sir.’

Vangorich slowed and turned. A frown, the result of simultaneous curiosity and annoyance, sat on his face. He said nothing. The aide was dressed in drab, dark robes but carried herself with the confidence of one who knew she was addressing the deadliest man in the room, and didn’t care. She was tall. The depths of her hood seemed to hide some kind of extravagant hair arrangement, as well as her face. Above the glint of dark intelligence in her eyes, a third optic — implanted in her brow and glowing a cold blue — created a triangular constellation in the shadows.

‘So you’re Kalthro’s replacement,’ Vangorich said, before turning his back on the Inquisitorial agent and setting off once again across the crowded Senatorum floor. The hooded operative’s strides brought her alongside him only a moment later. ‘Shame about Kalthro,’ Vangorich said. ‘I enjoyed our little games.’

‘There will be no games to be had with me, my lord.’

‘Nonsense,’ the Assassin told her. ‘We’re just getting started. What’s your name?’

‘You do not need my name.’

‘Nonetheless, I want it,’ Vangorich said as they weaved through the officious masses. It seemed that Wienand’s new bodyguard was no less secretive than her mistress. ‘Is there not enough tedium in this chamber for you already? It will take nothing to learn it by other means.’

‘And yet you don’t already have it,’ the woman said. ‘Disappointing, Grand Master.’

‘So you’re their best?’ Vangorich prodded, not rising to the taunt. ‘After Kalthro, of course. What am I supposed to tell my best? Should I be warning them to look for you behind them?’

‘That’s what you’re going to have to tell Esad Wire, formerly of Monitor Station KVF, Division 134, Sub 12.’

Vangorich narrowed his eyes. ‘Nobody serves me under that name,’ he said. It was the truth, as far as it went. Wire’s operative name was Beast.

‘Call him what you like,’ the woman said, ‘but keep him off my cloak tails.’

‘May I remind you that your predecessor got himself killed tailing my people, not the other way around,’ Vangorich pointed out.

‘My lady wishes to avoid further entanglements between our organisations,’ the woman said.

‘Understandable,’ the Assassin said, ‘considering the result of our last misunderstanding.’

‘Lady Wienand considers it just that: a misunderstanding. There will be no retaliatory action. In fact, she appreciates your attempts to be of service during these difficult times. It is my impression that she even likes you, my lord — though for the Imperium, I cannot think why.’

‘Is there a point to this?’

‘She also implores you not to meddle further in these affairs. The Inquisition, in its investigatory capacity, will interrogate the present problems and take appropriate action. Protecting the Imperium from enemies within and without was the purpose for which the Inquisition was created. Lady Wienand urges you to honour this and restrict yourself and your agents to the parameters of your officio’s own remit.’

‘Do not lecture me on parameters and remits,’ Vangorich bit back as he parted a throng of petitioners mobbing the Navigators’ Paternoval Emissary. ‘The Inquisition and its ill-recommended allies have denied the Senatorum intelligence essential to the Imperium’s security. Billions have suffered for these machinations. Scores of worlds have been lost to an alien enemy, the existence and threat of which the Inquisition has kept hidden from the Imperium.’

‘My lady apologises for not taking you into her confidences, my lord,’ the Inquisitorial agent said. ‘She sees now that you would and still could be a valued partner in our endeavours.’

‘Yet her apologies fall from your lips?’ Vangorich snapped.

The Inquisitorial agent gestured to the dais of thrones at the centre of the Great Chamber, one of which Inquisitorial Representative Wienand was occupying.

‘She regrets that she is otherwise engaged, my lord,’ the woman said. ‘However, as a sign of good faith she has authorised me to share with you intelligence she knows you not to have.’

Vangorich gave the hooded operative the hardness of his eyes.

‘Lady Wienand knows that the fleet movements that the Lord High Admiral announced today were procured by your good self through Ecclesiarch Mesring,’ she went on. Still, Vangorich gave her nothing. ‘As a courtesy, she wishes you to know that her eyes and ears within Navy command are aware of the full scope of the Lord High Admiral’s manoeuvres.’

‘And?’ Vangorich said.

‘Lansung will not redeploy his fleets,’ the operative warned.

‘The Lord High Admiral just announced, with Master Udo at his side, that he was recalling the border fleets,’ Vangorich said, taking a chalice of fortified wine from a passing servitor-servant. His nostrils flared for a moment as he raised the wine to his lips, testing for potential toxins out of long-ingrained habit, before he drank it down and handed the empty vessel to another ceremonially-dressed vat-slave.

‘Recalled, yes,’ she said. ‘Redeployed, no. Lansung is amassing an armada in the Glaucasian Gulf, off Lepidus Prime. There will be no deployment of Abel Verreault’s Astra Militarum. The Ecclesiarch will honour his promise to you and declare a War of Faith.’ The operative gestured once more to the High Twelve on their thrones. ‘Just as soon as Lord Udo has completed his endless commendations of the Lord Admiral’s foresight and decisive action. But with the Navy at void-anchorage in Glaucasia and the Chartist Captains pricing all but the wealthiest of the Ecclesiarch’s crusaders out of passage across the rimward sectors, Mesring’s war of faith is no more than a faithless war of words.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Vangorich said, his voice tight with anger.

‘Lady Wienand wants your faith,’ the agent said. ‘The threat these dangers pose to the Imperium is beyond your meddlings and the operational scope of the Officio Assassinorum. Allow the Inquisition to fulfil its purpose. Stop creating ripples in the water. Even the best-intentioned actions could compromise our efforts. Trust in our determinations. Our organisation is young but able and best suited to meet this threat in its myriad forms. Leave us to our calling.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘If you are not part of the solution,’ the operative said, ‘and have no illusions, Grand Master, you are not, then you become part of the problem.’

Vangorich abruptly turned on the agent. A flash of alarm showed in her poise, though she tried to conceal it, and he felt a certain satisfaction at that. ‘It seems appropriate that you should threaten me here, on the chamber floor of the Senatorum Imperialis,’ he said, the coolness of his words at stark odds with the suddenness of his movements. ‘You see, when the Emperor first envisaged the sprawling bureaucracy of such an organisation, many decried the fault in its design: the difficulty in harnessing the trust and concordance of so many factions and parties of interest. What they failed to appreciate was that the Emperor never wanted me to trust you. He never wanted you to trust me. That’s the damnable beauty of it all. Our divisions and contrary motives are the checks and balances that such a large and powerful empire requires to keep it on course.

‘We do face a crisis, that is true. I do believe that the Inquisition has an important role to play in its resolution. But the Inquistion — young, eager and growing in influence — will not use this crisis to grab the power your organisation craves’; for it craves it no less than the ancient offices and institutions already serving their self-interest. Your allies, through their action or omission of action, are endangering Imperial worlds. You will check their ambitions or you will force me to check them for you. In turn, I will be your check, your balance. For the good of the Imperium, the Officio Assassinorum will carry out one of the duties for which it was created and for which it is expertly suited — keeping the rest of the officios honest. Now,’ Vangorich said, turning and heading for the ablutorials. ‘Please excuse me. The wine, you see. It goes straight through me.’

As the Assassin walked through the gaggles of sycophants, towards the antehalls, he stopped a passing servitor-servant and took the final chalice of fortified wine from its silver tray. As he put the rim of the cup to his lips and drank, he watched the servitor mindlessly hold the polished platter at its side — as Vangorich had noticed the chamber drones do many times before. In the mirrored surface of the tray, the Grand Master saw the Inquisitorial agent watching his exit and a second figure, similarly robed and hooded, join her.

Vangorich studied the interloper’s height and build: her slenderness and upright carriage obvious and her step light, even in the heavy robes. He had spent time studying that figure before for knowledge of her weight, balance, ambidexterity and reflexes; all he would need to know to get past her practiced defences and kill her with his bare hands. As she turned and the light picked out the sharpness of her cheekbones, Vangorich knew that he was looking at Inquisitorial Representative Wienand. The real Wienand: ghosting the chamber floor as a busy-body official, while some surgically-crafted double occupied her throne at the centre of the Great Chamber.

Vangorich watched her lips. He read their motions; the way they formed about words for which she had clear distaste. The pair studied him, little knowing that he was studying them right back. He watched Wienand’s agent give the briefest of reports.

‘Unfortunate,’ he read from the light catching Wienand’s lips.

‘For you, my lady,’ Vangorich said to himself, ‘if you don’t heed my warning.’

As Wienand and her bodyguard melted into the crowd, Vangorich gave the servitor-servant back the empty chalice. The withered thing replaced it on the silver tray and walked off, its service done. Passing the politics and double-dealing of the vestablutae fonts, Vangorich entered his reserved ablutory. Even the restrooms of the Imperial Palace had a grandness about their architecture and ornate fittings.

‘Wait outside,’ Vangorich commanded upon entrance, prompting a brass-masked servitor who performed the function of attendant to leave the small chamber. His privacy thus assured, the Assassin produced a vox-bead from his robes and slotted it into his ear.

‘Beast…’

‘Sir?’

‘Mesring’s found a way to screw us without screwing us,’ Vangorich said.

‘He told the Lord High Admiral.’

‘The border fleets are being recalled but not redeployed,’ the Grand Master spat. ‘He’s forming an armada.’

‘A grand gesture,’ Esad Wire voxed back. ‘He can play galactic hero without risking a single vessel.’

‘Or his influence in the Senatorum,’ Vangorich said.

‘Do you want me to withhold the antidote?’ Esad Wire put to the Grand Master. Vangorich considered.

‘He delivered half a solution,’ he voxed to Beast. ‘Issue him with the same. Have the antidote solution delivered at half concentration. Something to keep his Grace alive but still useful to us.’

‘Consider it done.’

‘Beast.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Meet me at Mount Vengeance.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘It’s time we got to work.’

TWELVE

Aspiria System — Mandeville point

The void, usually so black and empty, was crowded with cataclysm. Colossal fragments of planetary rock tumbled through the darkness, smashing into and through one another. Shard storms of hull-punching regolith blossomed from such collisions, showering the tightening spaces between the gargantuan chunks of shattered planetoids with death. This was the edge of the Aspiria System, for Aspiria was no more.

An astrotelepathic distress call had drawn Marshal Bohemond’s small crusader fleet to Aspira from the Vulpius region. The Black Templars’ Vulpius Crusade had been in the Weald Worlds as part of a purgation action against the Noulia. The Adeptus Astartes had been the punch needed to break the xenos and had acted in support of a flotilla of Imperial Navy vessels under Commodore DePrasse, whose orbital bombardments had failed to obliterate the Noulia from the surface of the wooded, backwater moons.

Aspiria had been a large Imperial mining world that dominated the system. Now, in its place, sat the ugly attack moon of which the astrotelepathic distress call had warned. The abominable thing bristled with gargantuan weaponry and fluxed with field shielding that routinely seemed to short and crackle away before returning with a blinding flash. Part of the monstrous moon was missing — perhaps the victim of a former planetary collision or malfunctioning weapon. In its place was a ramshackle framework of rusted girders and scaffolding, revealing the horrors of the planetoid interior: fleet bays and an internal anchorage for a barbarian armada of greenskin cruisers, attack ships and scrap-clads. Tearing the mine-riddled Aspiria to rubble with its great gravitic weaponry, the attack moon — like a spider’s nest disgorging its young — streamed gunships, capsules and rocks at the surviving worlds of the system. What the bombardment of planetary debris didn’t destroy, the swarms of delivered greenskins swiftly decimated. By the time the combination Black Templar and Imperial Navy fleet arrived, there was nothing but the enemy left.

Marshal Bohemond’s gauntlets dug into the arms of his pulpit throne. It was not fear or concern for his safety that prompted his tightening grip, despite the tremors that felt their way through the battle-barge’s superstructure and the command deck. It was anger. It was hatred. As the Black Templars battle-barge Abhorrence banked as sharply as its blunt prow and length would allow, a gargantuan piece of Aspiria tumbled by. Castellan Clermont, the battle-barge’s commanding officer, had ordered the evasive manoeuvre. Never one to miss an opportunity to smite the xenos enemy, Clermont bawled at the bondsmen on the bridge to smash the battle-barge straight through a ragged vanguard line of ork ram ships and boarding hulks. Bohemond had allowed himself a moment of satisfaction with the castellan’s strategy, imagining the xenos’ surprise at the vessel they were intending to ram turning and crashing clean back through them. As the Abhorrence banked about the obstacle, however, with greenskin junkers detonating against the battle-barge’s void shields, the bridge lancet screen revealed the xenos attack moon. Bohemond felt bile climb the back of his throat. Like the tug of tiny threads in the muscles of his face, his mouth formed an involuntary snarl.

Bohemond had fought the greenskins many times before. Gililaq 3-16. Horner’s World. Gamma Phorsk. Draakoria. It had been on Draakoria that a feral greenskin shaman had taken his eye. With its unnatural powers the creature had set everything around it alight, but Bohemond had strode through the strange flame using his hatred of the thing as his compass. The marshal had slain its chieftain and thousands of its depraved tribe-kin, and had promised himself that the witch would suffer the same fate. With his blade encrusted with greenskin gore, the marshal had charged through the inferno.

The wyrd-creature had saved a little of itself for the encounter, however, and had called upon its sorcery to bathe Bohemond in a blazing stream so powerful and intense that it all but scorched the ceramite plate from his body. Dropping his sword and holding an outstretched gauntlet before his disintegrating helm, Bohemond had managed to save an eye and part of his face. With much of his roasted armour falling from his burnt flesh in a cloud of cinders and his hair still alight, the Black Templar had stomped through his agony and on towards the despised alien. Grabbing the spent monster, he had beaten the greenskin to death with his sizzling fists.

As he beheld the attack moon with his one good eye, Bohemond felt the soul-scalding hatred he had felt for the green plague of Draakoria resurface. He knew he was in the presence of something alien, unnatural and abominable. Something well-deserving of its end. Deserving of Dorn’s cold wrath and the instruments of his zealous fury: the Black Templars.

As the Abhorrence resumed its course and the planetary decimation of the Aspiria mining world began to clear, the derelict madness of the greenskin fleet came into focus. Between the battle-barge and the ork attack moon lay a blizzard of vagabond vessels. Jury-rigged derelicts. Drifting cannon-platforms. Rocketing voidscrap. Ungainly experiments in sub-light engineering and death. Bohemond’s teeth gleamed from within his widening snarl. The marshal would only be at peace standing in his battleplate beneath the surface of the moon, slaughtering its denizens. Between him and that purity of purpose lay a small armada of inconvenience.

‘Castellan,’ the Marshal called. ‘Order the Umbra to pull back.’ Bohemond had noticed that the strike cruiser had drawn ahead of the Abhorrence.

‘Commander Godwin wants to be let off the leash,’ Clermont observed.

‘I sympathise,’ Bohemond growled. ‘You can tell him that Rogal Dorn himself blesses this action.’ Bohemond turned in his pulpit throne and looked up for confirmation at Chaplain Aldemar. The Chaplain didn’t return his marshal’s gaze. With his cenobyte slaves clutching Chapter relics about him and his face hidden behind the featureless faceplate of his Crusader helmet, Aldemar merely nodded slowly. ‘Abhorrence, however, has the honour of leading the charge,’ Bohemond continued. ‘Order Sodalitas and Sword of Sigismund to take station on our flanks. The Ebon and Bona Fide are to support the Umbra in protecting our ships on the approach. All vessels to fall behind the battle-barge and benefit from the protection of our forward shields. The enemy are many and will hit us hard, but we will endure. Like a bolt-round through their miserable scraps of armour, we will punch through their assemblage of hulks and junkers.’

As bridge serfs fell to relaying Bohemond’s orders, Castellan Clermont asked, ‘And what orders for Commodore DePrasse, marshal?’

‘Tell the commodore to have his captains form a line of battle behind us,’ Bohemond commanded. ‘His ships may fire as they bear. We shall take them through the greenskin armada, where we will need the big guns of his capital ships to support the Abhorrence in cracking that abominate moon open. Meanwhile, the Black Templars shall bring havoc to the xenos wretches hiding within.’

‘Relaying now, marshal,’ Clermont said.

‘Frater Astrotechnicus,’ Bohemond called. Techmarine Kant was standing amongst a nest of bondsmen and bridge servitors, monitoring the enginarium rune banks.

‘Yes, marshal,’ Kant replied without moving his stapled lips. His voice boomed from vox-hailers set in the sides of his muscular neck.

‘Forward void shields powered to full,’ Bohemond growled. ‘Nothing gets through, Brother Kant.’

‘Affirmative, Marshal.’

Bohemond jabbed a vox-stub in the arm of his pulpit-throne with a ceramite digit. ‘Captain Ulbricht, this is the marshal. You are authorised to board Thunderhawks and assault ships in preparation for void insertion. I will join you on the final approach.’

‘I would expect nothing less, marshal,’ Ulbricht voxed back from the launch bays. ‘As the xenos will recieve nothing less than annihilation, ardent and absolute.’

‘Very good, captain,’ Bohemond said. ‘Stand by for the order to launch. Accelerate to ramming speed,’ the marshal added to his bridge crew as the Abhorrence plunged towards the enemy ship swarm. Both Space Marine and bondsman felt the sudden change in velocity shudder through the decking as the battle-barge’s mighty drives pushed them onwards into the oncoming greenskin barrage.

‘Crusader cruisers and frigates accelerating in line with new speed and heading,’ a bridge bondsman announced.

‘Marshal,’ Clermont called. ‘We appear to have a problem.’

‘Report.’

‘We’ve lost vox-contact with the commodore’s flagship.’

‘Lost contact?’ Bohemond rumbled. ‘Is the Magnificat under attack?’

‘The battleship is yet to engage,’ Clermont said.

‘Kant?’

‘Nothing on augurstream or binary frequencies,’ the Techmarine reported with metallic reverb. ‘The Navy vessels are slowing, marshal.’

‘The Preservatorio? The Falchiax? The Thunderfall?’

‘Static, my lord,’ the castellan said.

‘Try the destroyers and the heavy escorts,’ the marshal barked. ‘What the hell is he doing?’

‘Only the cruiser Aquillon is keeping pace with our approach, marshal,’ Clermont reported after failing to contact the smaller commands. ‘Captain Grenfell, my lord.’

‘Kant — could this be the xenos? Their technology overwhelming our communications?’

‘Arrays and transmitters are returning both trace waves and background radiation,’ the Techmarine returned. ‘Vox-transmissions between the battle-barge and crusader vessels are unaffected.’

‘My lord.’ The barbican bondsman who had been stationed by the bridge doors presented himself, pulling back his hood.

‘What is it?’

‘I realise that it’s irregular, marshal,’ the bondsman said, ‘but the battle-barge astropath craves a moment of your time. He asks for permission to enter the command deck.’

‘Does he not know we are about to enter into battle?’ Bohemond seethed. The Black Templar was furious enough with Commodore DePrasse. A detested audience with one of the only psykerbreeds allowed on board the ship would probably drive the marshal over the edge.

‘I would ordinarily forbid it, my lord,’ the bondsman said, not wishing to attract the Marshal’s ire. ‘But he insisted it was important. Something about the communications issue.’

Bohemond looked from the bondsman to Clermont, then from the castellan to Chaplain Aldemar. The Chaplain nodded slowly and solemnly.

‘Admit him,’ the marshal said.

‘Master Izericor,’ the barbican bondsman announced.

Izericor shuffled onto the bridge, his staff tapping before him across the unfamiliar command deck. He bowed and drew back his hood. Blinders, like those found on livestock, partially hid the ragged holes where the astropath’s eyes used to be.

‘You have intelligence for me?’ Bohemond snarled.

‘I have just intercepted a message, my lord,’ Izericor said with deferent enthusiasm. ‘A communiqué of such import that I risk your displeasure, marshal.’

‘Speak,’ Bohemond said with difficulty. ‘What know you of our communication difficulties?’

‘Commodore DePrasse has just received new orders from Terra, my lord,’ the psyker said. ‘Commandments that supersede your own.’

‘What new orders?’ Castellan Clermont demanded.

‘The commodore is ordered to take his flotilla to a Navy rendezvous point in the Glaucasian Gulf, as soon as possible.’

‘Whose authority is carried by this communiqué?’ Bohemond asked.

‘The message bears the telesignature of Teegas Urelia, astrotelepath to Lord High Admiral Lansung himself.’

‘They’re playing for time,’ Clermont said. ‘They don’t know what to do for the best: disobey an order or offend the Adeptus Astartes.’

Marshal Bohemond suddenly took to his feet, prompting even the blind Izericor to step back.

‘Send a telepathic communiqué to the chief astropath aboard the Magnificat,’ Bohemond said, his voice low and furious. ‘Tell him that I want an explanation from his master presently or I am coming over to the flagship myself.’

‘Marshal…’ the castellan started.

‘Do it!’ Bohemond bellowed, causing the astropath to jump.

‘As you command,’ Izericor replied.

‘The enemy lines,’ Techmarine Kant announced. ‘Brace for impact.’

While the bondsmen and servitors reached out for handles and restraints, the Black Templars rode out the tremor, the magnetic soles of their boots keeping them in place. The forward void shields flashed and flared with a storm of impacts. First came a short range wave of torpedoes, kamikaze bombcraft and macrocannon blasts. This onslaught was followed by beak-prowed gunships and ramming hulks that would have delivered their brute cargoes of boarding orks if they hadn’t detonated against the intensity of the battle-barge’s void shields. As the Abhorrence ploughed on through the crude belligerence of greenskin engineering and weaponry, the aggression and monstrous bulk of the opposing vessels increased, with cruisers and gun-hulks manoeuvring into the battle-barge’s irresistible path.

‘Marshal,’ Clermont called as an obscenity masquerading as a battlecruiser drifted a rusted broadside before the Black Templars battle-barge. Bohemond nodded.

‘Explain it to these savages,’ the Marshal sneered.

Clermont jabbed his gauntlet at several bridge bondsmen. ‘Ready bombardment cannon.’

‘Weapon standing by, castellan.’

‘Fire!’

The battle-barge bucked as its dorsal cannon fired, sending a magma-bomb warhead streaking ahead of the prow. As it struck the ork battlecruiser, a searing explosion rippled through the reinforced scrap of the derelict’s side. The mountain of salvage broke away in two sections, between which the Abhorrence charged on.

‘Is it done?’ Bohemond demanded.

‘It is, my lord,’ the battle-barge’s astropath answered.

Moments passed. Wreckage drifted clear of the lancet screens. Explosions flashed and rumbled before the void shields. Greenskin gunships drew in with their puncture-prows and grapnels, like predators of the deep.

‘Vox-transmission from the Magnificat, marshal,’ a bondsmen broke the silence on the bridge. ‘Flag Lieutenant Esterre.’

Clermont saw the flutter of cold fury pass across his marshal’s grizzled features.

‘Put the flag lieutenant on the loudhailer,’ Bohemond commanded.

After a brief burst of static, a patrician voice cut across the command deck.

‘Am I addressing Marshal Bohemond?’

‘The question, flag lieutenant,’ Bohemond rumbled, ‘is why on Terra aren’t I addressing your commodore?’

‘Commodore DePrasse is currently indisposed, marshal,’ the flag lieutenant explained with silky authority. ‘Please accept his humble apologies.’

‘I am waging war against the xenos as we speak,’ Bohemond told him, ‘yet I am still in contact with force contingents — as protocols dictate.’

‘Again, marshal: please accept my apologies.’

‘Damnation take your apologies,’ Bohemond boomed. ‘You think it prudent to lie to an Adeptus Astartes?’

The vox-stream went silent. There was no protocol for this. ‘This is the heat of battle, lieutenant. We do not have time for anything other than the truth: cold and swift. Think before you answer. I hold all of the Emperor’s subjects accountable for their actions — and inaction. Have no doubt, for the Black Templars, the latter is the graver offence.’

Lieutenant Esterre seemed to take a moment. Perhaps he was considering his future in the Imperial Navy. Perhaps he was simply considering his future. Perhaps he was conferring with a peer or superior.

‘We have received a recall, Marshall,’ Esterre told him, the truth uneasy on his lips. ‘The Lord High Admiral himself requires the commodore and his flotilla at a rendezvous above Lepidus Prime. We have no choice: it’s a vermillion-level order.’

‘And I’m not suggesting you don’t follow it, lieutenant,’ Bohemond said. ‘Attend your rendezvous, haul off to Lepidus Prime — just after the completion of this action. When victory is in our grasp and the enemy threat eradicated.’

Static. Silence.

‘Lieutenant, this is Castellan Clermont. We need Magnificat’s heavy guns. We need the Preservatorio and Falchiax. We need the Thunderfall’s lances. We cannot crack the xenos attack moon without them. We can’t do it.’

‘My lords,’ Flag Lieutenant Esterre came back, ‘I suspect there is little that the Adeptus Astartes cannot do.’

‘Then you know how much it pains a son of Dorn to admit as much,’ Clermont retorted. ‘Your vermillion-level order no doubt concerns manoeuvres reacting to this new enemy threat.’

‘The threat is here, Esterre,’ Bohemond said. ‘Why pull corewards when we can end these mongrelbreeds here on the segmentum rim?’

‘I’m sorry, marshal,’ Esterre said finally. ‘I really am. We all have our orders. Commodore DePrasse intends to follow his. Magnificat out.’

‘Esterre…’ Marshall Bohemond roared. His anger echoed about the cavernous command deck.

‘He’s gone,’ a bondsman informed him. ‘Vox-link broken from their end. The Magnificat is hauling off.’

‘Open channel,’ Clermont ordered. ‘All frequencies. Captains and commanders: this is the battle-barge Abhorrence requesting fire support, coordinates three, fifty-six, fifty-two. We are under attack. We are invoking section four-two-seven of the Vortangelo-Heidrich Proclamation signed by Marshal Grigchter and Grand Admiral Hadrian Okes-Martin during the Auriga Wars. This is Abhorrence, requesting fire support.’

Clermont waited. About the battle-barge, turrets cut through boarding rocks and breaching capsules. Broadsides crashed through terror ships and gun-hulks. A sea of wreckage and void mines tested the battle-barge’s forward shields, with the Abhorrence’s prow forced to crash through the crowded chaos.

‘Preservatorio, hauling off, sir,’ a bondsman announced. ‘Thunderfall, hauling off. Falchiax, hauling off…’

Clermont looked to his marshal. Bohemond had slammed his armoured form back into his pulpit-throne.

‘Marshal,’ the castellan said. ‘Without the Magnificat or the commodore’s cruisers, we cannot hope to damage the xenos abomination.’

‘Oligarch Constantius, hauling off,’ the bondsman droned. ‘Ministering Angel, hauling off. Morning Star, hauling off. Tiberius Rex, hauling off.’

‘Marshal…’

‘Who’s still with us?’ Bohemond murmured.

‘Marshal…’

‘With which vessels do we still keep attendance, castellan?’ the marshal insisted.

After conferring with the bridge bondsman, Clermont said: ‘The Aquillon — Dictator-class cruiser, Captain Grenfell. The Firebrand — Lancet-class corvette, Commander Ulanti. Neither vessel fields lance decks.’

Bohemond clasped the arms of his throne with both gauntlets. The alloy of the pulpit-seat creaked beneath the pressure. His good eye was set in an unswerving gaze on the enemy attack moon. The marshal’s face was bathed in red as emergency lamps and alarms erupted across the command deck.

‘Kant?’ Castellan Clermont called, but before the Techmarine could confirm the threat, several greenskin vessels gunning down on the battle-barge formed a train of explosions. One after another, drawing closer and closer to the Abhorrence, the junkers detonated.

The train of destruction ended with the Sodalitas. One moment the the strike cruiser was there. The next it had been replaced by a streaking implosion of ignited fuel and hallowed wreckage. Its armoured prow and thoraxial gun decks had been smashed straight back through its engine columns and immaterial drives, as though an invisible fist had crashed through the vessel. No one on the Abhorrence had seen the atrocity, but every member of the battle-barge’s crew felt the swell of the explosion ring through the decks.

‘Starboard evasive!’ Clermont called. The battle-barge lurched and banked sharply.

‘Commander Klein of the Bona Fide reports the Sodalitas destroyed,’ a bondsman called from where he was clinging to his rune bank.

‘Confirmed,’ the castellan reported. ‘Strike cruiser Sodalitas is lost. Forty-one battle-brothers and two hundred and sixteen bonded crew dead, marshal.’

The report struck Bohemond like a physical blow. He turned to Chaplain Aldemar. The Chaplain said nothing. He sank slowly to his armoured knees on the command deck and began his murmured obsequies and the sacraments of the fallen.

‘Kant, I need that—’ Clermont began.

‘Some kind of gravitic weapon,’ Kant called back. ‘Vectored and directional. The planet-smasher the attack moon must have used on Aspiria.’

‘Marshal?’

‘Have all Chapter vessels and Navy attendants form up behind the battle-barge,’ Bohemond ordered.

‘Sir, we are outnumbered—’

‘And what means that to the Black Templars?’

‘The enemy has the advantage,’ the castellan attempted to continue.

‘You have just summarised the beginning of every worthy battle in which the Black Templars have fought,’ Marshal Bohemond declared proudly.

‘Every worthy battle that Black Templars survived, marshal,’ Clermont replied. ‘But this will see us all dead before we can scratch them.’

‘Steel yourself, brother,’ Bohemond said. ‘These thoughts proceed from some cowardly corner of your soul.’

‘No such place exists, my lord.’

‘Well it must, Castellan Clermont,’ Bohemond roared back, ‘for I hear the suggestion of a retreat in your guarded advisements.’

‘Brothers!’ Techmarine Kant called, but he wasn’t calling for reconciliation. A chain of explosions were ripping through the void. Greenskin salvage-clads and gun-hulks formed a thunderbolt of sequential detonations, terminating in an assault on the Black Templars battle-barge. Bohemond was thrown from his pulpit-throne and Chaplain Aldemar from his devotions. Rune banks, augur stations and cogitae spat sparks and crackled with overloaded energy. Two Chapter bondsmen lay dead, while injuries and malfunctions had been inflicted upon a number of servitors and bridge crew. Smoke soaked up the bloody menace of the emergency lamps and klaxons screeched their urgency.

The Abhorrence had taken a direct hit from the attack moon’s gravitic planet-smasher on its intensified forward void shields. Proximity warnings joined the din of alarms on the bridge. Falling away from its surging course into a drunken drift, the battle-barge almost collided with the Sword of Sigismund.

‘Damage report,’ Clermont managed, clawing himself up a console station and back to his feet. A ragged gash ran parallel to the service studs stamped into his forehead. Kant, with his bionic adaptations and extra weight, had been the only unsecured member of the bridge crew not to end up on the deck.

‘Datastreams struggling to carry reports and diagnostics,’ Kant said. ‘So far I have some structural damage and electrical fires.’

Clermont moved between the bondsmen and servitors, who had fortunately been buckled into the station-seats. He cast his eyes across their flashing runescreens.

‘Seventeen fatalities reported amongst the crew,’ the castellan said, ‘mainly impact damage. No battle-brothers. Captain Ulbricht reports the Thunderhawks Smite and Purgator’s Dawn damaged and battle-unworthy.’

‘Void shields are down to twenty-two per cent nominal capacity,’ Kant said.

‘Brother,’ Clermont urged, turning to Bohemond.

‘The Abhorrence cannot withstand another hit like that,’ Kant added grimly.

‘Marshal,’ the castellan said, marching forwards. ‘We must withdraw.’

Bohemond was back on his feet. Despite having fallen, his gaze had barely left the hated attack moon.

‘It is cowardice…’ Bohemond hissed through his teeth.

‘No more, my lord,’ Clermont assured him, ‘than when I defer battle to adorn myself with plate and recover my blade and bolter.’

Bohemond looked at his castellan.

‘These beasts will keep,’ Clermont told his marshal. ‘We shall return, as we have before, in greater number — in greater fervour — with the tools to finish this job. Aspiria is lost. Since translating in-system, Master Izericor has received numerous mortis-cries but also requests for aid.’

The astropath, toppled also, had somehow found his way back to his sandalled feet and his staff. Noticing him, Bohemond’s expression resumed its former hostility.

‘It is true, marshal,’ Izericor said. ‘The hive-world of Undine is besieged — but then so are the hive-worlds of Plethrapolis and Macromunda. The Gormandi agri-worlds are under attack. The Mechanicus invoke ancient treaties and concords. They are losing the twin forge-worlds of Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi to the invader.’

Clermont went to interrupt, but the astropath hadn’t finished. ‘The First Quashanid storm troop — the so-called Immortals — are holding the fortress-world of Promentor. The penal world of Turpista IV is also holding out longer than expected. Both have requested assistance. Both have proven that they would make excellent holdpoints. Your brethren of battle and blood, the Fists Exemplar, fight for their fortress-monastery and their world, Eidolica. The list goes on, my lord.’

Clermont and Bohemond locked gazes, Templar to Templar.

‘The rimward sectors call for the Emperor’s Angels,’ the castellan told his marshal. ‘They call for the Black Templars. We have no world to defend. We have crusades. We have only wars and the worlds upon which we choose to wage them. The green plague is upon the segmentum. Isn’t there enough of the invader to go around?’

Bohemond turned to the Chaplain, who was on his knees and at one with his devotions.

‘Aldemar?’

The drone of cult litanies from within the Chaplain’s helm came to a stop.

‘Choose, brother,’ Aldemar told him.

Bohemond of the Black Templars looked to his friend and castellan.

‘Order the flotilla to break up,’ the marshal commanded. ‘Multiple targets will give individual vessels the best chance against that monstrous weapon.’

‘Yes, Marshal.’

‘All crusader contingents to rendezvous at the Mandeville point.’

‘Yes, marshal.’

‘All vessels, make preparations for immaterial translation.’

‘Yes, marshal.’

‘Do you have a destination in mind, sir?’ Castellan Clermont asked.

‘Yes,’ Marshal Bohemond replied. ‘I do.’

THIRTEEN

Ardamantua — orbital

The Adeptus Mechanicus survey brig Subservius drifted in orbit around Ardamantua, eventually becoming lost in the shadow of the Amkulon. The cruiser was a shattered wreck, a reminder of the power and ferocity visited upon Ardamantua by the xenos weapon. The gravitational disturbances about the planet continued to subside, but slowly. Although the Amkulon was useless for salvage — even the greenskins had left the radioactive wreck behind — it did provide the smaller survey brig with an anchor-point of stability, created by the natural gravity of the derelict cruiser’s own tumbling form.

Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex was thankful for the extra stability. His magi physic and artisans cybernetica needed all they could get to carry out the delicate procedures to which they had been committed for the last few hours. The medicae section of the laboratorium was crowded with surgeomats and servitors. On three surgical slabs lay the cocoons recovered from the Ardamantuan surface. The three Imperial Fists. The only surviving Adeptus Astartes of a proud and decorated Chapter. The true sons of Dorn — now butchered, half-living remnants of suspended existence.

As the last line of defence that their superhuman bodies had to offer, Urquidex thought it unwise to have them cut them out of their membranous sheathing. Instead, he had his magi gathered about the huge bodies and operated on them within their protective cocoons. About the crowded slabs, with multiple procedures being conducted at the same time, Urquidex had summoned every adept on board the Subservius that might be able to offer their expertise. Scanners and field-auspexes monitored the Adeptus Astartes’ life signs, calibrated specifically for their superhuman biology. Their genetic signatures confirmed what their scraps of decimated plate had already suggested — that they were indeed members of the Imperial Fists extermination force dispatched to Ardamantua to destroy the nest infestations of the Chrome vermin-species. Their life signs, however, were excruciatingly low and fading.

As Magos Urquidex and his team fought to save the Adeptus Astartes, with equipment and consultation exchanged across the bodies, Magos Phaeton Laurentis had been placed on a tracked stretcher-slab, positioned to one side of the surgical chamber. Medicae servitors had stabilised what was left of the tech-priest, while the chief artisan cybernetica had surgically truncated his lower torso and interfaced it for the bionic adaptations that would follow. With the Adeptus Astartes in such critical condition, there had been little time for more superficial repairs and diagnostics. Madness still poured continually from the priest’s ruined lips and his spidery fingers still reached out for objects that were not there. Artisan-Primus Van Auken had ordered Laurentis’ cogitae-core downstreamed for useful code and observational data.

Van Auken himself observed from an armourglass bubble-port in the thick laboratorium wall. This was habit. The facility was a maximum security laboratorium that up until this point had housed dissections on living or dead specimens of Veridi giganticus. Alpha Primus Orozko of the Epsil-XVIII Collatorax and a skitarii security detail stood with the artisan-primus. Van Auken knew he would be of little help actually in the chamber but wanted to remain in attendance to ensure that Eldon Urquidex followed his instructions regarding the remaining Imperial Fists to the letter. Meanwhile, Van Auken orchestrated the Adeptus Mechanicus survey team’s extraction from the Ardamantuan surface and made final revisions to the data packet he intended to send to Mars.

The artisan trajectorae had insisted that Urquidex, as the only senior priest not to have completed his report, deliver his data. Van Auken was eager to leave Ardamantua and move the survey brig on to Macromunda, where the xenos invasion was still in its early stages. The data packet needed to be transmitted first and Van Auken felt that the results of the Adeptus Astartes’ resurrection, and if possible their initial testimonies, should be included. Besides, Eldon Urquidex had insisted that the Subservius not be in transit and hold in as stable an orbit as possible while the hours of life-saving procedures were attempted.

It was not going well. Despite the best efforts of the priests, the Adeptus Astartes were fading away. Their injuries had been horrific testament to the Beast’s savages and the brutality of greenskin weaponry. That the Emperor’s Angels should be smashed and blasted thus was a reminder to all in the laboratorium that the greenskin invader was not to be underestimated.

For Van Auken, it was a reminder of a power and potency to be studied and harnessed. For if the greatest weapons of Terra’s Emperor had failed — the gene-heirs of warriors who had fought the renegade Warmaster’s forces on the walls of the Imperial Palace — then truly the capabilities of the savage enemy race warranted further study.

When the first of the Adeptus Astartes died, the laboratorium went into overdrive. As the life signs flatlined, priests and medicae servitors swarmed about the subject. Frantic magi were up to their elbows in gore. Metal receptacles clanged as slab servo-pincers extracted shards of frag and fat bullets, depositing them in rapidly filling scuttles. Surgeomats administered synthetic infusions and stimulants directly to the hearts. The second Space Marine swiftly followed his brother, splitting the magi and servitors between the hulking patients.

The laboratorium should have been clouded with regret and high emotion. The loss of any subject on the surgical slab would have prompted such reactions from common Imperial medics and planetary doctors. The significance of the event should have raised the emotional stakes higher. Before the priests’ eyes and augmetics, the last of the honoured Imperial Fists Chapter were breathing their last. Bleeding their last. Feeling their last.

The laboratorium was crowded with priest-subjects of the Adeptus Mechanicus, however, for whom such emotions were meaningless. Their fight for life was a battle with the inevitability of ignorance. If the Adeptus Astartes died then opportunities would be missed, data would be incomplete and further researches impossible. The best the Omnissiah’s servants could summon was the barest suggestion of professional remonstration. Even in failure, however, the Machine God’s acolytes reasoned there were opportunities to learn and make improvements. Autopsies could still reveal secrets of value to the Grand Experiment.

With two of his patients falling victim to the wounds that they had suffered on Ardamantua, Magos Urquidex brought all of his assistants about the remaining subject. The laboratorium was a cacophony of offered opinions, binary cant, suggested surgeries, the whine of las-scalpels and auspectoria alarms. As the Adeptus Astartes’ life signs faded, the frenetic activity intensified. The subject went into arrest. Tests became increasingly savage and invasive. Brutal cybernetic transplants were attempted. Blood fountained at the laboratorium ceiling.

‘We’re losing the subject,’ a magos physic announced.

As the Space Marine’s life signs evaporated and biological death was confirmed, the procedures doubled in their bloodthirsty desperation. By the time the priests and servo-cybernetica had finished with the Space Marine’s engineered form, it looked like he had been turned inside out. Most of his organs were outside of his body and the protective cocoon was now a shredded and gore-soaked sheath.

‘That’s it,’ Eldon Urquidex said finally. ‘Summon the magi concisus: the holy work of the subjects’ design and genetic workings should be honoured. Last rites should be issued before autopsy is conducted.’

Taking surgical towels from a servitor, Urquidex looked up through the armourglass of the observation bubble as he cleaned the worst of the gore from his hands and appendages. ‘Record the time, date and location, accounting for galactic drift and chrono-dilation. Nobody will ever know, but we just slaughtered the last of the Imperial Fists on our surgical slab.’

‘Again, magos,’ Van Auken told him, ‘you must learn to govern your sentimentality. Fellow magi and adepts. Your exemplary efforts have been noted in the mission log. You are dismissed.’

As the laboratorium emptied of Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, Urquidex and Van Auken continued to stare at one another.

‘What did we learn?’ the artisan trajectorae demanded.

Urquidex deposited his stained surgical towel in an incinerator chute. ‘That the Adeptus Astartes’ chemical therapies and implants were doing a better job of preserving the Imperial Fists than our surgeries, infusions and cybernetic transplants.’

‘You think me wrong to insist on your efforts?’

‘Absolutely,’ Urquidex told him. ‘And I would like my objection noted in the log.’

‘Entered already,’ Van Auken said. ‘But I wonder, who are you more concerned for? The subject on the slab, or yourself and your failure to save him?’

‘I’m sure that I don’t comprehend your meaning, artisan-primus.’

‘Let me put it another way,’ Van Auken said. ‘I think your sentimentality a falsehood. You suffer no less from the vagaries of pride than the rest of the priesthood. We are all judged by our work. You fear the Fabricator General’s disappointment, no less than I. You don’t want to be assigned to some Eastern Fringe dead-world research station for eternity, studying fossilised evidence of silica nematodes. The Omnissiah is willing to forgive failure, given that it is a step on the journey to success. Failing to embark on the journey in the first place is the sin of ignorance, and the Machine God and his servants are less willing to forgive you that.’

‘I think you will find the Adeptus Astartes even less forgiving than that,’ Urquidex said.

‘Are you threatening me, magos?’ Van Auken said coolly.

‘Let’s just hope that the Adeptus Astartes never have reason to visit the Eastern Fringe,’ Urquidex said. ‘Will there be anything else, artisan-primus?’

The priests stared at each other through the thick observation-port armourglass.

‘What of the recovered magos?’ Van Auken said finally.

‘Magos Biologis Phaeton Laurentis is now the only official survivor of the Ardamantuan atrocity,’ Urquidex said, turning to where the half-priest lay on his stretcher-slab.

He wasn’t there.

Urquidex discovered that the magos biologis had reached down his stretcher-slab and unlocked the brake before hauling the tracked gurney across the laboratorium by heaving arm-over-arm on a line of cables and data-feeds. His exhausting efforts had brought his stretcher-slab over to where the last Imperial Fist had been surgically butchered and had died. Urquidex and Van Auken watched as Laurentis — his ruined mouth continuing to babble trauma-induced nonsense — placed his hand on the Imperial Fist’s yellow pauldron.

‘It seems that sentimentality is a disease common to your specialism,’ Van Auken accused. Urquidex ignored him and watched the magos biologis with fascination. Pushing himself off the pauldron, Laurentis snatched at the fibre cabling running between the Adeptus Astartes’ body and the auspectoria banks. Moving his smashed, skeletal digits across the instrumentation, the tech-priest fell to adjusting calibrations and auspectra frequencies.

‘Are you going to stand by and allow a delirious patient to disrupt the settings of your equipment, magos?’ Van Auken said. ‘He might be erasing precious data of the previous procedures.’

‘The Third Law of Universal Variance,’ Urquidex murmured.

‘The Bystander Paradox?’

‘Do not interfere,’ Urquidex said.

Slamming his bloodied palm against a fat stud, Laurentis completed his reprogramming of the laboratorium equipment. The flatline feed and mortis-tone died abruptly. It was replaced with a distant, signature life sign. The very faintest beat of twin hearts.

‘What is that?’ Van Auken demanded.

Urquidex walked up to the instrumentation and placed a hand on the forehead of the butchered half-priest. His chest was rising and falling with exertion and his brow was moist. His babblings continued unabated. Looking closely at the field-auspex, he discovered that the magos had set it to a broad-range scan.

‘It’s a fourth life sign,’ Urquidex informed him. ‘Very weak. Buried below the others.’ He began punching buttons and twisting dials on the rune bank. ‘I’m rerouting this data to the bridge. Alpha primus, if you please.’

Through the armourglass bubble-port, Orozko was already on the observation deck vox-hailer. The feeble heartbeats continued. Nothing like the thunder they once must have been, but insistent nonetheless. Both Van Auken and Urquidex looked to the skitarii officer.

‘Ship augur arrays have boosted and traced the signal,’ the alpha primus said finally. ‘The life sign is confirmed as Adeptus Astartes. It’s coming from the wreck of the Amkulon.’

‘Holy Mars,’ Urquidex said. ‘The radiation.’

‘Artisan-primus,’ Orozko said. ‘Several members of your trajectorae team are on the bridge. They say that the signal betrays the trace power signature of recent trans-vectoring.’

‘A teleportation homer?’

‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

‘Van Auken?’ Urquidex called through the armourglass. ‘How can we have only detected this now?’

‘The gravitic disturbances inflicted on the system might have had an inhibiting effect on the teleportation technologies,’ the artisan trajectorae hypothesised. ‘With the removal of the affecting body — the xenos attack moon — the disturbance subsided and the vectoring achieved realisation.’

‘Life signs are extremely weak,’ Urquidex reported.

The artisan-primus nodded. ‘Alpha primus — please select an extraction team from your men. The survivor must be recovered and removed from the toxic environment of the derelict.’

‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

‘Alpha primus,’ Van Auken added, ‘this is a mortis-mission. The skitarii returning from the Amkulon will be compromised and not expected to survive.’

‘I shall send Vanguard units. They are already radiation-compromised,’ Orozko replied dourly before leaving the observation deck.

When Van Auken turned back to the observation port he found Magos Urquidex standing at the armourglass.

‘It seems that a trip to the Eastern Fringe is not required to achieve an audience with the Adeptus Astartes, after all,’ Urquidex said.

‘Keep this one alive,’ Van Auken said coldly, ‘and such a trip might not be necessary.’ With that the artisan-primus departed the observation deck and left Magos Urquidex to his half-priest patient.

FOURTEEN

Undine — submerged

It was all but impossible to find a private space aboard the armed submersible Tiamat. Both space and privacy existed at a premium below the Undinian waves, and never more so than now, following the attack on Hive Pherusa. Commander Lux Allegra knew this better than most, but still managed to find a tiny maintenance alcove in the steam-swathed engineering compartment. A place for kneeling. For gritted teeth. For trembling hands. For tears that would not come.

General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic had ordered the planetary defence fleet to put in at Pherusa for supplies, munitions and manpower. The greenskin invasion force had yet to reach the mercantile hive and the city boasted an impressive harbour. While the freighters and troop carriers took on contingents of Undine Marineers and recruits, sky talons drifted fuel and munitions over to Novakovic’s launch carriers and heavy monitors. By the time the skies darkened to the east, it was already too late. Without orbital augur arrays to warn the defence fleet, Phifer and Novakovic could have little idea what was coming. So much that they had witnessed of the greenskin invasion had been unprecedented. The attack on Pherusa Harbour was no different.

Blotting out the heavens ahead of the storm of raining crash-capsules and rocks was a greenskin wing comprising an assortment of fat aircraft, flying citadels and super-heavy bombers. The colossal junkers had monstrous bellies packed to the rivets with mega-bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Their thunderous engines barely kept the bombers in the air, while their wing expanses formed runways for smaller jets and kamikaze rockets. Their bulbous hulls swarmed with kopters and mounted accreted platforms for fat cannons, launchers and macrostubbers. The bomber wing’s approach was slow and irresistible, eclipsing the sun and casting a great shadow across the ocean.

The admiral’s Avenger formations were swallowed whole by the droning monster. The hive’s turbo weaponry and the defence fleet’s deck-mounted cannons punched holes in the swarm but could do nothing to stop the deluge of greenskin ordnance that dropped from the sky. Monitors and corvettes erupted in cloud-scraping fireballs. Multi-hulled launch carriers were blasted in two. Overcrowded transports went to the bottom of the anchorage, taking thousands of defence force guardsmen with them. Marineers. Mercenaries. Volunteers. Men and women who would have fought for Undine, now dead.

Only the submersibles survived, carrying the decimated armada’s senior officers and staff to the same sheltered depths. When they once again ascended to augur-depth they found a harbour choked with charred hulks and the waters bobbing with bodies. Worse still was Hive Pherusa. Within hours the hive city had been levelled by the greenskins’ barrage of bombs. Now it was just a small mountain of smouldering masonry and wreckage being gradually reclaimed by the waves.

Commander Lux Allegra only knew this because she had been on board the command submersible Tiamat when the attack unfolded. She had been summoned by both General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic, although she suspected that Lord Governor Borghesi’s gratitude had something to do with the order. It turned out to be an earned but impromptu promotion. Lux Allegra was commander no more. She was Captain Allegra now.

She ached to be with her ‘Screeching Eagles’. To tell Gohlandr. But they were gone. By the time she reached the forward airlock, the attack had been under way. Novakovic had given the order for the submersible contingent to dive. Rocked by the hell at surface-level and the vox-reports coming in from sinking ships and vessels aflame, the Tiamat and her consorts sank to safety.

‘Captain Allegra to the conn. Captain Allegra to the conn. Urgent,’ the vox-hailer blared. For the longest time, she couldn’t make herself move. Her stomach was a knot. Her chest was wracked with a paralysing tension. Her boots felt like they had melted to the metal decking. Her mind was a pict-recording set in a loop. An urchin’s existence in the underhive. Gohlandr. Piracy; privateership; recruitment. Gohlandr. Hive Tyche. Gohlandr saving her life. The life inside her that belonged to Lyle Gohlandr. Had belonged to him. Her hand drifted to the flak armour across her belly. She allowed her face to screw up.

‘Captain Allegra to the conn. Urgent,’ the loudhailer repeated. Allegra’s hand fell away from her midriff. She ran the back of the other across her eyes but still found no tears there. She grabbed the support rails set into the alcove sides.

‘Get… up,’ the captain told herself — and she did. Her mind was numb but her legs were moving. She allowed them to take her to the submersible’s conning tower.

There she found a rat’s nest of Marineer officers and support staff, Undinians who moved with frenetic urgency and purpose. Guardsmen and women lost in the emergency, who dared not allow themselves a moment to contemplate the unfolding destruction of their home world.

At the heart of the cramped and darkened command centre, she found the Lord Governor. Borghesi sat in his wheeled chair in silence. Gone was the imperious triviality of petty demands. Also missing was the careless entitlement of a spireborn. The Lord Commander now felt the responsibility of one born to the spire, a man born to rule in the Emperor’s name. He looked almost as wretched as she did. He didn’t avoid her gaze. He didn’t say anything. He just pursed his lips and gave her his sad eyes.

Phifer and Novakovic had lost too many men and too many vessels to feel any particular loss that acutely. Like their frantic personnel, they hid behind what was left of their honour and professional responsibility. Allegra found them standing about the faded hololithic representation of the Great Ocean. Hive after hive had fallen. The greenskin invaders were falling like a curtain on Undine, their descent line moving swiftly across the ocean planet. Presented as such, Allegra could see how the hive-world’s oceans had been their greatest ally, swallowing innumerable savages and filling the bellies of deep-sea megafauna. If Undine had been a world of rock and dirt, the greenskin monsters would have long since swarmed the planet.

This fact did not make Undine’s fate any less desperate. According to the hololith, only the distant western hives of Nemertis, Arethuse and Pontoplex remained untouched by the alien war host. Several isolated patrols were still operating on the turbulent seas of these regions, including the Meridius launch carrier group and the Western Marinine base of operations, Port Squall. The base sported a Thunderbolt contingent and two Marauder wings, including the Marinine 1st and 3rd. It was towards Port Squall that Allegra assumed the submersibles were headed. She was wrong.

Novakovic seemed to notice her for the first time. The aged admiral was dressed in his great coat and rubbers. He gave her a grim nod, and she managed an answering salute. Phifer didn’t acknowledge her at all. He was known amongst the Marineer officer corps to be a cold bastard but a competent one, and he was the only officer that Allegra knew of that had actually fought off-world. He was staring darkly at the hololith and the story it told. It seemed that the general knew the end and he didn’t like it.

‘You sent for me, sirs,’ Allegra said, wishing that they would send her straight back. She did not quite understand what use she could be to them. Her ‘Screeching Eagles’ were gone. Her captaincy an empty formality. Perhaps the Tiamat would reach the Meridius battlegroup; perhaps those Marineers left aboard the submersibles could support the Marinine 1st and 3rd in their protection of Hive Arethuse or make a stand at Port Squall. Hive Arethuse wouldn’t survive the swarms of hulking invaders clawing their way out of the sea. Port Squall could not hope to stand against the monstrous air superiority of the greenskin bomber wings.

‘She sees it,’ Novakovic said through the hololithic static.

Phifer nodded, again without looking at the captain. His face was an unreadable mask, taut and fixed.

‘She does,’ he agreed in his deep, Northern drawl.

‘See what?’

‘The futility of the situation,’ Novakovic said. ‘We cannot stand against the magnitude of this threat.’

‘The Marineers are a planetary defence force,’ Phifer said, ‘and we have defended our fair world to the best of our ability. This is, however, an Imperial world. It is part of the Emperor’s domain. We must look to the Emperor’s faithful subjects on neighbouring worlds to aid us in this desperate hour.’

‘How do we know that they haven’t been invaded?’ Allegra said. ‘That they are faring any better than Undine?’

‘We don’t,’ the aged admiral told her.

‘The Lord Governor has allowed our regimental astropath to use his consular codes and send requests for aid to Zeta Corona, Farhaven and Triassi Prime. We have also attempted to contact the Mechanicus servants of the Phlogistos Forges and sent word to the Vulpius Crusade, passing through the Weald Worlds. The astropath confirmed that the Black Templars Space Marines received our request for assistance. In all likelihood, the Adeptus Astartes are en route.’

‘Sounds hopeful,’ Allegra acknowledged, but her voice said anything but.

‘The Emperor’s Angels were crafted to meet such threats as these,’ Novakovic said. ‘And the Black Templars are known the galaxy over as great enemies of the alien. Undine will prosper once again in the fires of their hatred. I pity no savage but if I did, I’d pity the greenskins that placed themselves in the Templars’ path.’

‘But…’ Allegra put to them.

‘The admiral, the Lord Governor and I have been drafting a contingency,’ Phifer said gravely.

‘In the event that the Adeptus Astartes do not reach us,’ Novakovic clarified.

‘We cannot allow the greenskin invader to take Undine,’ General Phifer said, his words those of an off-world warlord rather than the sentiments of an ocean homelander. ‘We have a responsibility to the Imperium — to the Emperor. Live or die, we must deny the alien this tiny part of the Imperium.’

‘I agree, general,’ Allegra told him with difficulty, her own losses still gnawing away at her soul. ‘But how might such a miracle be procured? Billions live who soon will perish. What weapons we had now sit on the seabed. The enemy is irresistible in savagery and number. They will not be denied.’

‘I need a small contingency force,’ General Phifer went on, ‘led by an officer of character and certitude — one who will do what must be done.’

‘General…’

‘The Lord Governor gave you as a recommendation,’ Phifer told her. ‘Your past familiarity with these waters makes you an excellent choice.’ The Marineer general focused the hololith in on a tiny island in the middle of the featureless ocean, many leagues from the major hive or pontoon communities. ‘You know Desolation Point, of course.’

Allegra nodded. She knew it well. She’d worked as second mate on a gun-rover out of Desolation Point before operating a wrecker under her own captaincy in the surrounding waters. She had both been a pirate and a privateer preying on pirates in and around the half-mythical port. Desolation Point was the buried memory of a former life.

‘Apocalytic invasion or not, the Brethren will not fight for Marineers who have spent their life hunting and persecuting them,’ Lux Allegra told them.

‘You did,’ Admiral Novakovic reminded her.

‘Those that are not whoring or in their stimm-chests will have heard of the invasion over the vox-waves and taken to the high seas,’ Allegra said.

‘Like cowards,’ the general muttered.

‘Like survivors, general,’ Allegra corrected him.

‘Well, we will be neither,’ Novakovic said, ‘if the Black Templars don’t arrive in time.’

‘Which is why we need a contingency plan, captain,’ Phifer said. ‘There is something at Desolation Point of strategic value, but it is not the good anchorage or the Brethren scum that haunt it.’

‘Then what?’

‘Did you ever wonder,’ Admiral Novakovic put to her, ‘why the Marineers did not simply deploy Marauder wings to blast your island hideout to oblivion?’

‘I don’t understand, admiral.’

‘Desolation Point was the worst kept secret in the Sixteen Seas,’ Novakovic told her. ‘The Undinian defence forces could have taken it at any time, rather than chasing pirate skiffs all over the ocean and engaging the services of turncoat privateers like yourself.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’ Allegra replied, the edge of a challenge creeping into her voice.

‘Because your Brethren,’ Phifer said, half-spitting the word, ‘chose Desolation Point for its isolated location. Just like the Imperial Army.’

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘Your haven of rust and corrugated scrap is built on top of an old Imperial Army depot,’ Phifer said. ‘The rocky isle was too small for hive foundations but perfect for a small subterranean installation. A storage facility for two-stage orbital munitions and planetary bombs left over from the wars of the Great Heresy. They were hidden and largely forgotten at Desolation Point until the Brethren took the island for their own.’

‘We could not take Desolation Point,’ Admiral Novakovic said, ‘for fear that the Brethren had these weapons in their possession and might use them against the defence force or even the hive populations. You thought you were hidden; in fact, you were untouchable. That is why piracy flourished and the Lord Governor’s prosecution of the Brethren was half-hearted at best.’

‘I’ve never heard of such weapons,’ Allegra told them.

‘It’s likely that the Brethren never discovered them,’ Novakovic said. ‘They are secured in a fortified underground depot. We couldn’t take the chance, however. We have suffered defections to the Brethren as the pirate lords have to us.’ The admiral flashed his eyes.

Lux Allegra didn’t care much for ancient history. A bitter fire had returned to belly, however. ‘These weapons of mass destruction could be used against the invader,’ she said, finally seeing where the Marineer commanders were going with their history lesson.

‘After a fashion,’ the admiral said cautiously.

‘Records show that the cache of stored orbital weapons are largely biologicals,’ General Phifer said. ‘They fell out of favour with Loyalist forces and a number were secured at Desolation Point.’

‘Biologicals.’

‘Virus bombs, captain.’

The fire in Allegra’s belly felt suddenly doused.

‘A contingency force,’ she said, repeating the general’s earlier words. ‘You mean to deny Undine to the invader.’

A gleam of grim determination found its way into Phifer’s eyes.

‘Should the Adeptus Astartes not arrive in time,’ the general said, ‘I aim to preserve Undine for the Emperor.’

‘Preserve for him a dead rock in space,’ Allegra accused.

‘A rock purified of the green plague, yes,’ Phifer shot back. ‘An Imperial rock, captain.’

‘What about the Western Hives?’ Allegra said, turning to Lord Governor Borghesi. ‘The billions at Pontoplex, Nemertis, Arethuse?’

The old man shook his head sadly.

‘No one will survive the biological weapons, once they are unleashed,’ Phifer said. ‘But no one will survive the invader, and it has already been unleashed.’

Lux Allegra was silent. She couldn’t fully imagine the enormity of the act Phifer, Novakovic and Borghesi were proposing. She felt the cold comfort of a fate accepted creep into her bones. Her hand unconsciously drifted down to the flak armour over her stomach. All of sudden, Lyle Gohlandr didn’t feel so far away.

‘We talk of contingency, captain,’ Admiral Novakovic said. ‘Hopefully, the Black Templars will arrive in time and the Emperor’s Angels will deliver precious Undine.’

‘Captain?’ Phifer said.

‘I’ll do it,’ Allegra replied icily.

The old men — general, admiral and governor all — nodded silently.

A kind of terrible calm descended.

‘My men are dead,’ Allegra said at length. It felt strange to actually say the words.

‘You can take my security detail,’ General Phifer said. ‘Commander Tyrhone?’

An officer stepped forwards from the shadows of the tiny command centre. He was dressed in the charcoal uniform of the Marineer Elites and had the dark skin of a Southern hiver. His face was all jutting bones and unsmiling gristle. A man made hard by his duties and the needs of the general under whom he served.

‘Tyrhone and his squad will be at your disposal,’ General Phifer said. ‘The commander will be of use to you in priming the virus bombs for a launchless detonation.’ Allegra nodded at the commander, who said nothing. Phifer gave her a data-slate. ‘This contains the location and security codes for the depot hatch-entrance. We cannot guarantee easy movement across the island. Desolation Point is a small colony but will still no doubt attract landing enemy in voracious number.’

‘Just get me as close to the shore as you can,’ Allegra said. ‘The north-east anchorage is the deepest and traditionally admits submersibles.’

‘Hold the depot,’ General Phifer ordered. ‘Prime the biologicals and await my command. Do you think you can do that?’

Allegra turned with the data-slate in hand and made for the conning tower airlock.

‘Like I said,’ she said, half to herself, ‘I’ll do it.’

FIFTEEN

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

It was a wall of green flesh. A perimeter of brawn, bone and armour. An enclosure of savagery and xenos hatred. The genetic forefathers of the Fists Exemplar had stood on the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Battle of Terra. All of Dorn’s sons knew what it took to defend a wall and what it took to bring one crashing down.

Second Captain Maximus Thane knew. But despite bringing wall after greenskin wall toppling to the hull of the star fort in clouds of gore and splinter-showers of skull, Thane always found that another beast-wall had been erected behind the bloody ruins in its place.

It had been carnage for the past hour. The Alcazar Astra trembled with the storming footfalls of the alien invader. Battle-brothers stood their ground on the thick void plating of the fortress-monastery’s hull, with wild blades and bullets sparking off the scorched surface of their armour. The greenskins were everywhere, smothering the fallen star fort with their foul, alien presence. The Space Marines fought for their commanders. They fought for their companies. They fought for their Chapter and their fortress-monastery. They fought for their world. Like the metal gargoyles adorning what had been the star fort’s void ramparts, the Adeptus Astartes refused to move. They would not allow their defensive lines to be broken. But the green tide was irresistible as it washed monstrosities up from the sands and across the monastery decking, flooding each mighty transept with innumerable targets.

As Maximus Thane ducked and weaved, kicked and blasted, he felt like the fortress-monastery was sinking. Not below the sands, but below the great number of the enemy. There was green everywhere. Savage after savage came at him and the Space Marines of his honoured company. Inside his helmet it was no better. There too he was drowning in reports and requests, his suit filtering vox-transmissions from his own desperate men over a cacophony of communications coming from Fists Exemplar brothers holding the rest of the fort’s perimeter. It seemed that the alien brutes were pressing the defenders from all sides simultaneously, with muscle to spare and a constant stream of reinforcements.

Hugging his Umbra-pattern boltgun close into his shoulder, Thane felt the kick of the honourable weapon. Like a beast of burden thrashing and bucking its way to freedom, it wanted to be let loose on the enemy, but ammunition was precious. No battle-brother could know for how long he or his bolter would be needed. It was better to conserve the blessed shells than bury them in alien cadavers already finding their way to the ground.

With his elbows out and boltgun tucked in close to his plate, the captain smashed his way through the walls of alien meat. Blood and snaggle-teeth flew from where Thane buried the elbow couter-joints of his suit into snarling green faces. Guts spilled from towering behemoths whose swollen bellies came in line with the squat barrel of his gun. A beast came at him from the left, a hydraulically augmented nightmare from the right. An axe of some brute description sang off his pauldron. A hulking greenskin, struggling to bring its steaming rotor cannon under control, managed to sink lead into the flesh of the mongrel-monsters attempting to tackle Thane to the ground. The captain’s plate registered the impact of several glancing rotor shells before swiftly reporting an update of full suit integrity in his visor display. Thane brought his boltgun up.

Unlike the rotor-gunning greenskin, he did not miss his target. A judicious staccato of shells opened the beast’s skull up like an oasis fruit. With vicious momentum, the captain smashed the orks coming at him from the side back into their ranks. The first was trampled under the boots of its gore-hungry comrades. The second soaked up several suit-augmented impacts before Thane’s elbow broke through its helmet, hydraulics and skull.

Between the split-second ducking, dodging and evasive footwork — and when he wasn’t forced to end some mindless, oncoming brute — the captain attempted to cast his gaze about the swarming transept. Several battle-brothers had gone down. He’d seen Brothers Vaux and Martegan both murdered by the same power-clawed monstrosity.

‘Sergeant Hoque,’ Thane voxed. ‘Get those battle-brothers back on the ramparts.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque voxed back, the ferocious chatter of his bolter in the background.

‘A step back towards the hangar bays is a step in retreat,’ the captain called. ‘Let that be on the conscience of any battle-brother indulging such a notion.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque returned, his voice once again lost in desperate bolt fire.

Thane took the heads off three advancing creatures with his boltgun while a fourth sprayed the Fists Exemplar with lead from its own crude automatic weapon.

‘Brother Aquino,’ Thane said. ‘Stop playing with that thing and end it swiftly. The enemy are pushing through.’

‘Yes, captain.’

Sparks rained off the captain’s plate as the lead-sprayer closed. Smashing the weapon aside with his own, Thane found that the primitive death-dealer came apart with relative ease. Trusting in the craftsmanship of his own weapon, the captain stabbed its muzzle into the creature’s jaw, taking out a lump of flesh. Momentarily dazed, the monster reached for another weapon from its sagging belt. Its claw never got there, however. Thane had shot it through the eye and was pushing past it before the greenskin’s carcass hit the hull.

‘Squad Autolycon, Squad Lucifus, close that gap!’ the captain bawled across the vox-channel. ‘You could get a Land Raider through there.’

‘We could use a Land Raider up here,’ a battle-brother voxed between sword-swinging exertions.

‘Secure your mouth, brother,’ Sergeant Hoque bit back. ‘Keep your mind on your work and follow your captain’s commands.’

As Thane blasted through two more greenskin savages, he was forced to admit that the battle-brother was right. Chapter Land Raiders would have done a nice job of breaking up the greenskin swarms on the dunes. Their heavy bolters would have crashed through the monstrous lines. Their lascannons would have cut through the dense formations. Their tracks would have mulched the green invader into the black Eidolican sands. They would have created an advancing line of rally points, allowing the Fists Exemplar to push the enemy vanguard back.

That was all fantasy now. Chapter Master Alameda had gone out to meet the first wave of greenskins on the Fortunata Flats as they thundered from the black desert-world skies. Anticipating that the xenos would fight from the fortifications of their rocks and landing hulks, the Chapter Master had brought tracked fortifications of his own, in the form of the Chapter’s Land Raiders. A second wave of descents had landed almost on top of the first, however. While having the virtue of smashing many of the rocks and accompanying barbarian mobs into the desert peninsula, the second-wave descent also pulverised the Land Raider formation. Tanks were buried beneath rocks. Tanks were smashed to ruins. Tanks were bounced and toppled by the impact quakes of landing hulks. The formation scattered, while the crews of other partially immobilised vehicles were forced to fall back to exposed holdpoints in the dunes. Chapter Master Alameda wasn’t among them. His command vehicle had been one of the first smashed into the sands.

Thane couldn’t imagine how many waves there had been since that dark hour. Fifty? Perhaps a hundred. Barely a handful of Land Raiders had made it back, and those were sent on immediately by First Captain Garthas to support Captain Dentor fighting on the Tharkis Flats and in the Great Basin.

Two great arms suddenly wrapped around the captain. Something had seized Thane from behind. The arms were thick and scarred, and Thane felt like he was in the embrace of one of the Alcazar Astra’s redundant void-docking anchors as he was lifted off the deck of the star fort. A huge ork had reared to its full height and had taken him towards the heavens with it. The deluge of green fury swept in beneath Thane, hacking at the captain’s thrashing boots with chain-choppers and great axes.

Thane’s plate was telling him something alarming about the hulk’s colossal embrace and its effect on the suit’s integrity. He could hear the creak of ceramite about him and the strain of servos. Above him the monster’s elephantine skull belted out a roar of triumph, something to enrage the sea of green about it to savage jubilation, before it acted upon its intention to crush the Adeptus Astartes like a cheap alloy can.

Thane felt the monster tense further. His auto-senses registered a rapid descent, and before he knew it he was back on the hull of the Alcazar Astra. The creature had released him, and the captain was free. Descending further to one ceramite knee, Thane turned in the gore, his boltgun ready to blast a crater in the gargantuan thing.

He found that the giant greenskin’s legs had been taken out from under it. The creature had nothing below its knees and had fallen down onto the bloody stumps. As it toppled forwards onto all fours, Thane saw Apothecary Reoch standing behind the beast. Reoch had been responsible for the sweeping amputation. His armour was dripping with blood, but his chainsword gleamed like a surgical tool. The Apothecary stomped forwards, hacking down on the maimed creature, executing precision strikes like a living autopsy on the beast-ork. It roared its rage and frustration briefly before the Apothecary worked his way up to the fang-mangled skull of the thing and took it off at the neck.

‘Back!’ Maximus Thane bawled as he slid back around on his knee. Behind him he found the wall of green once more. ‘Back… Back…Back!’ he called, his commands accompanied by single bolt-rounds of persuasion. One by one, the rushing oncomers dropped before the weapon’s fury.

A Thunderhawk swooped above them, hammering into the masses with its heavy bolters. The gunship cut a path of mulched ork-flesh through the enemy lines, taking with it the next few beasts in line for Thane’s vengeance. The Thunderhawks were doing what they always did: performing admirably. They were inflicting horrific casualties on the invasion host, but the impact of their bloody work was neither seen nor felt by the battle-brothers on the ground. The orks weren’t impressed by the gunships or their death-delivering ordnance. The roar of the Mars-pattern engines and the punishment of their heavy guns and cannons drove the monsters into fits of exultant rage. As a homogenous war host, the ork invaders resembled some kind of mythical beast. Where one creature fell, two others would charge from the throngs in its place.

Standing once more, Thane felt his power pack brush against the Apothecary’s. The pair fought back to back — Reoch opening up monsters with precision and Thane finding his way to single-shot kills with his brutal bolter fire.

‘Mortalities?’ Thane called across the helmet vox.

‘Fourteen that have been relayed to my suit,’ Reoch replied, gunning his chainsword in neat arcs.

‘I thought worse than that.’

‘You’re relieved by the number,’ the Apothecary said. ‘You shouldn’t be. Do the arithmetic: we won’t see the dawn.’

Ducking beneath the irresistible orbit of a crude hammer, Thane slammed his boltgun into the wielder’s gut. Pushing against the creature with his suit-augmented might, the Fists Exemplar Space Marine made a little space between himself and the alien. Not much. There were a thousand other monsters behind it howling for their transhuman blood. It had, however, created enough of a gap to bring up the boltgun and blast several ragged holes into the greenskin’s chest. The ork fell back into the roaring green masses.

‘Well, the good news,’ Reoch told him, ‘is that our losses are fewer than on the other transepts. Hieronimax is down a quarter strength. Xontague nearly a half.’

‘Holy Throne…’ Thane hissed. Then, ‘Reloading!’

Reoch stretched himself to keep the beasts from his captain. Driving the chainsword through one monster, he reverse-gunned the weapon and sawed it through the limbs of two other unfortunates. Then once again the hammer came at them. The monster swinging it was back, despite having a bolt-blasted ribcage. The heavy metal weapon came over the ork’s howling head and straight down at the Space Marines. Moving aside and away from one another, Thane and Reoch allowed the head of the weapon to smash into the void hull, where the captain fancied it might have even dented the armour plating. The Apothecary put a boot on the hammer and proceeded to saw through the weapon’s reinforced shaft.

‘The head,’ Reoch suggested.

Thane nodded. The thing’s ugly features were staring at the deck, its eyes following the hammer and the mess the monster had hoped it would make of the Adeptus Astartes. Priming the boltgun, Thane stared down his sights before blasting the ork up under its chin and through the back of its skull. This time the beast fell away for good.

With their attention on the hammer-wielding savage, the captain and Apothecary had allowed the crushing swarms of orks to crowd them once more. Thane’s disciplined bolt blasts were now at almost point-blank range. Reoch had little space to conduct his surgical dismemberments and was forced to snatch one of his bolt pistols from a thigh holster and show off his own close-quarter marksmanship.

A heavy axe, cut brutally from a single piece of vessel hull-decking, found Thane momentarily wanting. It smashed the captain to one side, breaching the plate of his pauldron and sending one of his bolt-rounds wide. It took a second or so for Thane to recover but by then both axe-swinger and bolt-survivor were upon him, the creatures hacking away at the captain’s honourable plate. The monsters roared. Thane roared back, throwing himself at the gigantic specimens. Grabbing one of the beasts by a shoulder-spike, he buried the muzzle of his boltgun in the ork’s pot-bellied abdomen. Blasting several rounds into the greenskin’s gut, he allowed the alien to fall, clutching at its ruined midriff with its claws. Almost immediately, Thane brought the boltgun up and blasted through the throat of the second. It dropped to reveal the partially obscured shape of a larger monster behind.

‘This isn’t working,’ Thane said across the vox.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Reoch replied, sweeping his chainsword about him in tight arcs of flesh-carving efficiency.

‘Oratorium,’ Thane switched channel, ‘this is Second Captain Thane, Transept West.’

‘Yes, captain,’ a voice returned. It didn’t belong to the First Captain.

‘Where’s Garthas?’

Thane brought down the hulking ork before him. It took three bolts, which was more ammunition than he had budgeted for the task. He helm-butted a smaller warrior-wretch and smashed in the skull of a third with the clutched gauntlet-grip of his boltgun. Alien brains speckled his plate.

‘We suffered a breach, captain,’ the oratorium replied. ‘Fortress-Monastery North. Captain Hieronimax is down. The First Captain went to repel the breach force with the Chapter Master’s honour guard and support the Ninth.’

‘Sounds like Garthas,’ Reoch added across a private channel, with simultaneous hints of derision and respect.

‘To whom do I speak?’ Thane said.

Another greenskin died. Then another. And another.

‘Brother Zerberyn, captain.’

Thane recognised the name. A member of Alameda’s honour guard. The warriors fighting at the First Captain’s side, Fortress Monastery North.

‘Are you injured, honoured brother?’

‘At Fortunata, captain,’ Zerberyn replied.

‘Brother,’ Thane said, ‘we are hard pressed to gain any ground here. The void ramparts are swarming with greenskins. Can Captain Tyrian spare brothers for a front-line repulsion? We have to push these savages back into range of our weapons. Then we might be able to hold them there.’

‘Negative, captain,’ Zerberyn said. ‘The First Captain’s orders were very specific. All companies to hold their own fronts. He did not want resulting strategic weaknesses to lead to breach actions.’

‘We already have breach actions,’ Thane snapped back. As the captain spoke, the killing continued.

‘And we cannot afford another,’ Zerberyn said. ‘I’m sorry, sir. These are the First Captain’s orders. I would no more countermand them than your own.’

‘What about the guns?’ Apothecary Reoch barked, slashing back the beasts with one hand, while plugging charging green swine in the face with the bolt pistol clutched furiously in his other.

‘The rampart guns are silent,’ Thane relayed. Indeed, the mega-bolters and gatling-blaster emplacements had smoked to a stop some time before. Their absence had been keenly felt by the Fists Exemplar on the West Transept.

‘Master Aloysian ordered the weapons to cease firing, sir,’ Zerberyn reported. ‘The Master of the Forge observed protocols recognising that fighting on the ramparts had become a close-quarters engagement. The guns were silenced in order that no battle-brothers be harmed by the star fort’s weaponry.’

‘We’ll risk it,’ Reoch growled.

‘Return the guns to operation,’ Thane commanded.

‘The Master’s orders, sir,’ Zerberyn replied. ‘His protocols won’t allow it.’

‘Are we to die out here by regulation and protocol?’ Thane called back. ‘Patch me through to Master Aloysian.’

‘As you wish, captain.’

‘I fear he enjoyed that,’ Reoch said of the officious Zerberyn.

Thane had other problems. His boltgun was empty. Like many of his brother Fists, he would need resupplying, and soon. There was no time for such expediency, however. Swamped by greenskins clambering over the corpses of their barbarian kin, Thane had used the final few rounds of the sickle magazine to take the momentum out of a rabid charge mounted by a suicidal throng of alien monstrosities. He didn’t even have the precious moments it would take to recover his final clip, mag-locked to the rear of his belt. The mob of orks surrounding the captain were met with thrashing elbows and the stamp of armoured boots. Ducking instruments of bludgeoning improvisation and allowing the broad blades of crude machetes to glance off his pauldrons, Thane tried to give back as much savagery and violence as was being collectively bestowed on him.

‘Master Aloysian?’

‘Yes, second captain,’ the Master of the Forge returned. Thane tried to imagine the Techmarine in the generatorium, at the head of an army of drone-brained servitors, a perpetual scowl buried in the white of his beard.

‘Master, I need the rampart guns to visit Dorn’s ire on the enemy once more,’ Thane put to him. The captain brought down a beast with a power-armoured sweep of one leg before stamping down on the throat of the prone creature with the sole of his boot. It took several determined stomps to crush down through the gristle and iron-hard muscle of the greenskin’s neck.

‘Impossible, captain,’ Aloysian told him.

‘That’s not acceptable, Master Aloysian. I don’t care for the letter of your protocols: we need those guns.’

‘Their protocols are runic,’ Aloysian called back. ‘They will not compromise their own observances. And those observances exist to preserve life.’

‘Life is not being preserved out here, Master Aloysian, I can assure you of that.’

‘Captain,’ the Techmarine returned, ‘I can’t do anything for you. Each holy weapon would need catechising by hand. Besides, I’ve sent the gun crews to Fortress Monastery North to establish barricades and corridor emplacements.’

‘What can the generatorium do for us?’ Thane asked bitterly. ‘The enemy is upon us as a relentless force. Our weapons run dry and battle-brothers are dying in their droves.’

‘Little, captain,’ Aloysian said with regret. ‘Once the Alcazar Astra was an instrument of preservation. A great weapon among the stars. Now, the fort is an instrument to be preserved. An objective to be garrisoned and guarded. As a fortress-home, it serves with honour. But great weapon of the void it is no more.’

Thane dwelled on the forge master’s words. He thought on the Alcazar Astra restored to her former glory, her great engines turning her graceful bulk to present her batteries of void cannon to the armada junkships of the alien invader. He momentarily lived the pure obliteration the star fort could visit on hulks and landers packed to their rattletrap airlocks with hulking greenskins. Invaders it would take hours to meat-grind through in the ramparts could be void-scorched in moments in orbit.

Thane’s fantasy had cost him. A towering brute of a greenskin — repugnant, even by the standards of its breed — battered two ork bully-boys aside to get to the captain. It swung a length of sharpened girder in its hulking claws like a broadsword. The irresistible path of the heavy blade swooped underneath Thane’s elbow and smashed the captain to one side, cleaving the ceramite of his torso into crumpled plating. Auto-senses within his helm went wild. The girder-blade came down at Thane from above. It didn’t have the same orbital force as the first blow but all the captain had to offer in defence was his forearm plate, his empty boltgun still held tightly in his gauntlets. Slicing into the plate of the defending arm, the monstrous ork cut down at the captain as he knelt on one armoured knee.

The Apothecary’s gleaming chainblade was suddenly between them. The glint of its monomolecular teeth seemed to grab the beast’s attention. It swung the girder-blade at Reoch, the Apothecary defending as elegantly as a battle-brother might against such force and ferocity. Slicing and lopping at each other — the savage not seeming to notice the bite of the chainsword’s tip — the pair clashed blades. Holding the chainsword out in front of him, Reoch gunned it to a screeching blur.

Sparks showered the pair. The girder must have been made of some reinforced alloy, something scavenged by the creature from a crashed vessel. The chainblade was struggling against the material, and the ork used the difficulty to put its full weight behind the crude edge. The brute pushed with all its savage might, sending Reoch tumbling back into a knot of smaller creatures.

By the time it returned its barbaric attentions to Thane, the captain was back on his feet. The girder-blade came up. The tusked maw snarled. A battle-brother was suddenly there to defend his captain, his boltgun blazing, but the monster absently cleaved the Space Marine in two.

‘Captain!’ a second Fist Exemplar called. His weapon was spent also, and he cut deep into the creature’s green flesh with a gladius blade. The colossal ork’s arm shot out and grabbed the Space Marine by the helmet. His entire head was lost in the thing’s claw. The battle-brother dropped both empty boltgun and sword. His limbs thrashed furiously as the monstrous ork crushed his helm and tossed his armoured body out into the killing fields of its kin.

The beast was back on Thane in an instant. Its mongrel weapon rose. Thane brought up his boltgun. The length of the weapon was all he had to put between him and the sword’s mangling impact, but the captain suddenly jabbed the boltgun forwards, smashing into the greenskin’s tusk-crowded jaws with the empty sickle-clip. Thumbing the ejection stud, Thane retracted the boltgun, leaving the magazine embedded in the beast’s fractured face.

The broadsword came down. Thane stepped aside, and drew back his right gauntlet. Leaning into the servo-supported punch, Maximus Thane slammed his fist into the clip, hammering it into the monster’s skull. The girder-blade rang to the deck first, followed swiftly by the small green mountain of the ork’s corpse.

Snatching his remaining magazine from his belt and slamming it home, Thane blasted several greenskin savages clear of the struggling Apothecary. The remaining beasts fell to a three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin that Reoch accomplished with his chainsword, aided by the slick of gore on the void hull surface.

‘Captain?’ the Master of the Forge called. ‘Captain, are you still there?’

‘Yes, Master Aloysian,’ Thane replied, ‘but not for much longer. We have to force the enemy back to range. The alien are too many and we are too few to take them one at a time. As Apothecary Reoch says, the arithmetic doesn’t add up.’

‘What can I do, captain?’

‘You can activate the Alcazar Astra’s remaining plasma drive.’

‘Captain?’

‘Are you hearing me, Aloysian?’ Thane called across the vox-channel. ‘I want you to fire the Transept East engine column.’

‘But captain,’ the Master of the Forge protested, ‘the star fort is buried in a crater of its own making. It cannot ascend on one engine alone.’

‘Can it be done?’ Thane demanded.

‘The fortress-monastery’s superstructure will suffer damage.’

‘Would you rather the invader demolish it instead?’

‘The fort will incline, not ascend, captain,’ the Techmarine insisted.

‘I certainly hope so,’ Maximus Thane said.

Sliding about in the gore, his chainsword singing its way through tough, alien flesh, Reoch allowed himself a grunt of realisation and agreement.

‘I should vox the First Captain,’ Master Aloysian said.

‘Captain Garthas is busy,’ Thane told him. ‘I am ranking brother on the ramparts and this strategy concerns their very orientation.’

‘Yes, captain.’

‘As soon as possible, Master Aloysian,’ Thane added. ‘Brother Fists will pay for any delay.’

‘Yes, captain.’

Crashing bolts through the greenskins throwing themselves at him, Thane smashed and skidded his way back to Apothecary Reoch.

‘Brother Zerberyn,’ the second captain voxed to the injured honorarius.

‘Captain?’

‘I want you to vox all companies and captains with the following order,’ Thane said. Before the battle-brother could protest, Thane added, ‘And if you don’t, Brother Zerberyn, in less than a minute you’ll very much wish you had.’

‘What’s the order?’ Zerberyn crackled back after a moment’s hesitation.

‘All Fists Exemplar battle-brothers to mag-lock their boots to the void hull.’

‘Why?’ the honour guard Space Marine voxed back.

Once again, the Apothecary and the captain’s packs brushed. Back to back, the Fists Exemplar Space Marines carved and blasted an open space in the green edifice of muscle and savagery surrounding them. An island of life — raw and desperate — in a sea of alien barbarity and death. Four gore-spattering clunks, one after another, echoed about the carnage as Thane and Reoch mag-locked their armoured boots to the blood-slick deck.

‘Why?’ Thane voxed back to Zerberyn. ‘Because we are going for a ride.’

SIXTEEN

Undine — Desolation Point

The north-eastern anchorage was treacherous but, as Allegra had indicated, deep enough to admit the submerged draught of the Tiamat. With little else but the conning tower breaking the surface, Captain Lux Allegra accompanied Commander Tyrhone’s Marineer Elites out onto the small observation deck. The Elites carried garrison-duty dirks and stubby lascarbines, slung in waterproof casings.

The grating was awash with the chemical brume that passed for seawater on Undine. The commander and several other Elites had hauled personal sweeps up onto the deck. The sweeps were one-man watercraft: lightweight planers that consisted of a pontoon chassis, steering bars and a high-power churnfan. Setting off towards the colony outcrop that was Desolation Point on the sweeps, the watercraft’s riders dragged behind them wire ladders to which Allegra and the other Elites clung.

The sky was streaming with rocks and crash-capsules, falling towards the ocean surface. Fountains of spray erupted from impact sites. The greenskin descent wave had reached Desolation Point before them.

As Allegra had predicted, the anchorage was largely deserted. Vox-casts would have warned the many denizens of the marauder colony of the horror to come. Those with grapnel-rigs, solarjammers and Q-craft took to the seas, taking as many with them as could afford to leave the island. Even now, vessels were streaming out of port: smoke-belching outriggers, armed freighters and plasteel-clad sloops.

Although they remained low in the water and were not advertising their presence, Allegra and the Elites didn’t need to avoid such pirate vessels on their shoreline approach. Each was being horrifically boarded. As green alien hulks hauled themselves up the vessels they tore pieces off them and swamped the decks with brutality and carnage. The creatures soaked up canister-shot from pintle-mounted deck weapons and made short work of pistol-blazing raiders — who eventually had little choice but to climb for their towers and rigging.

The colony itself — a fragile accretion of scrap, adapted giga-containers and chain walkways — had been well on its way to becoming a proto-hive. The restrictions of the island bedrock meant that designs became more vertiginous and the rising architecture increasingly perilous. Fires were feeling their way through the pirate haven, with smoke snaking from underbuildings and corrugated citadels. As Commander Tyrhone guided his sweep through the choppy waters of the evacuating anchorage, Allegra held on tight, her eyes kept busy with the demise of Desolation Point.

The captain had not got off to the best start with the Elites. There had been several reasons for this. Firstly, like Tyrhone, they largely hailed from the Southern hives and so were naturally suspicious of a salt-pale Northerner like Allegra. Her tattoos and piercings marked her out as being a turncoat: a pirate turned privateer. The kind of scum that real Marineers like Tyrhone and his men traditionally hunted. Her Marineer rank, similarly, had little meaning for them either. Her ‘Screeching Eagles’ had been grunt coastals and boardsmen, not the highly-trained tacticals that General Phifer retained for his security detail.

The final insult was Allegra’s insistence that they eat before they set off on their mission. Tyrhone told her that he didn’t expect the operation to last long enough to warrant rations, while his men gave her jaundiced glares. Besides, if needed, Elites could live off the ocean for as long as the mission dictated. Allegra had been forced to make her insistence an order and gave each Marineer a rations can of toonweed. Several refused to eat the pungent mush, until Tyrhone too made it an order to do so. Toonweed, while cheap and nutritious, was considered a pauper’s dish by the mezzohivers, since it got its name from the crop-forests that grew on the bottom of roving pontoon shanties. Coming largely from sub-spire military families, the Elites regarded the stinking slaw with disgust.

As the sweeps churned away, dragging the Marineer Elites, Tiamat dropped back below the waves. Commander Tyrhone wasted no time in making a direct approach, but Allegra directed him towards the bare rock of a jagged spit on the anchorage side. As the sweeps drew closer, it became apparent to the Elites that the rocky shoreline of the island was awash with greenskin beasts, clawing their way out of the sea and shaking water from their brute weaponry. Pockets of resistence were evident across the haven, with the ocean-world pirates employing the island’s defences against the greenskin invaders, rather than the enemy for which they were intended — planetary defence and security forces like the approaching Marineer Elites. The spit seemed relatively sparse of alien invaders, and it soon became clear to the Elites why.

The water about the spit seemed agitated, and it had nothing to do with the currents or rock formations about the coastline. Like thick, rubbery propeller screws, a school-pack of helicondra surged for the shale beach. Long, muscular serpentforms, the native creatures cut through the water in a helical, spiral motion. They were prey for many of the ocean world’s marine megafauna, but also predators in their own right. They whirled their way through the shallows until, forming rigid, rubbery shafts, they surged up the shale beach to snatch flippered marine mammals from a dog-colony that existed on the spit. The blubber-dog meat was greasily repugnant and not favoured by the inhabitants of Desolation Point. The helicondra pack, however, would reach up the beach like a single, tentacular beast, slithering around surprised blubber-dogs and their pups before dragging them back to the shallows for unfussy ingestion.

As Tyrhone cautiously led the sweeps towards the shale, the Elites could see that the water was bobbing with distended serpents, dazed, full and floating after devouring the bounty of greenskins unfortunate enough to choose the spit as their approach to the haven. Other monsters could be seen on the beach, set upon by three or four of the rubbery constrictors, each attempting the swallow the aliens there on the shale. With arms and legs disappearing down the rippling lengths of the serpents and the helicondra crushing bones and ribcages underneath their knots and coils, the orks were thinning out on the spit.

A serpentine head suddenly shot from the water and hit Tyrhone’s sweep and drag-ladder broadside. The helicondra elegantly snatched the Elite behind Allegra on the wire ladder and took the screaming Marineer below the waves on the other side. The full length of the animal proceeded to coil about the vehicle without touching the sweep, drag or other Elites. The soldiers behind Allegra began to reach for their dirks and Tyrhone slowed the sweep.

The captain remembered the man behind her as a smirking soldier who had refused to eat his rations. ‘He didn’t eat the toonweed,’ Allegra called, casting a look behind her and then forwards at the commander who had peered around angrily. Whether he was furious with Allegra or the unfortunate Marineer, it was hard to tell. ‘The serpents have a sensitive sense of smell. They can’t stand the weed.’ She turned back to Tyrhone. ‘It’s what keeps the islanders safe from attacks,’ she gestured at the spit, ‘and makes the invader vulnerable. Beach us there.’

Allegra pointed to a bare patch of shale nearby. Unconvinced, but with little choice but to trust the former pirate’s local knowledge, Commander Tyrhone led the sweeps up onto the shale beach. Once on the shore, the Elites fell to frantically extracting their lascarbines from their waterproof cases and assembling silencers and frequency flash-suppressors. With one eye on the chemical surf for surging serpents and the other on their assemblage, the Elites seemed nervous. Crouching in the bleached shale, Allegra watched greenskins dragged back into the water by muscular lengths of helicondra and heard the wet barks of blubber-dogs further up the spit sounding the alarm for their colony. Commander Tyrhone carried two carbines, and was assembling them twice as fast as the rest of his men. Taking one for himself and throwing Allegra the other, Tyrhone pointed to the breech of his weapon as demonstration.

‘Suppressor,’ he indicated, then moved a dark digit to a megathule modulator. ‘Set to a spectral frequency outside of visible range.’

Allegra nodded. Her production-line Marineer lasrifle had sported no such feature. It was going to be difficult shooting without a searing beam to guide her.

‘Just look for the smouldering bodies,’ Tyrhone said.

Allegra nodded again before making her way up the shale bank. The commander followed, leading his Elites. They all moved swiftly but cautiously, their barrels following their eyes as they scanned the beach for hostiles.

It soon became clear to even the most prejudiced of the mezzohivers that the sea-scum captain had saved them both ammunition and encounters with the enemy. Every greenskin hulk they passed being dragged back through the shale, or being slowly coil-crushed and devoured, would have had to have been killed by the Marineers. Allegra led the way along the spit and through the barking packs of terrified blubber-dogs. The storage dumps and black markets lining the haven shore were ablaze. Precious goods and raided cargoes were furious with flame and the thickset alien thugs were bulldozing their way through the labyrinth of stalls and harbour-bound stocks.

It was unclear whether the greenskins had set the haven alight or whether the remaining pirates had. Many raiders had worked out of Desolation Point their whole lives and would have been loath to give it up to an alien invader. Some determined resistance was being mounted in the accretion squares, mezzanine chem-distilleries and obscura dens. Mostly what Allegra saw of her marauder-kin, however, as the Elites moved silently through the maze of corrugation and scrap, were whores and young rovers being hacked to pieces by greenskin savages.

As the contingency force made their way through the Brethren haven, the captain recognised locations from a childhood spent climbing, swinging and jumping from one salvage-building to another. A rattling refrigeration vault from where she used to steal ichthid eggs. The needle-den where she received a crude tattoo commemorating her second berth on a pirate vessel. A scud-wrestling den where she saw her first life taken.

All Tyrhone had said about the Imperial Army storage depot was that it had a central location. So that was where Allegra led them. Through habstacks, across bridge alleyways and through street-strata, the Marineer Elites negotiated a colony under siege. Where they could, Tyrhone and his men avoided firefights and ramshackle fortifications. Where the gutter-mouths of raiders could be heard bawling curses at invading hulks and the brute chug of greenskin weaponry chewed through corrugated walls and foundation-pillars, the Elites pulled back and had Allegra lead them a different way. They were not outfitted to wage war amongst the haven habitations. They were equipped for a singular mission and purpose.

On the occasions when ork barbarians could not be avoided or simply tusk-charged their way through walls and scrap-metal frontage, the Elites fell to their work with determination and economy. Although their lascarbines betrayed nothing but the drumming stub of automatic fire, beams transparent and invisible, their collective marksmanship was revealed in the thrashing impacts burning into greenskin unfortunates and the smouldering fall of alien cadavers. With such weapons, it took a cumulative and communal effort to kill just one of the beasts, but the Elites’ fire discipline and the economy and efficiency of their purpose was beyond question.

Jangling lightly across chain walkways and descending into a much older morass of crushed habitations and reinforced underpassages, Allegra led Commander Tyrhone and his Elites to the centre of Desolation Point: a high-rise aggregation of obscura dens, infusion houses and bordellos. At the captain’s confirmation of such, Commander Tyrhone produced a tracking-auspex to scan for munitions signatures. After a moment, the auspex told him that there were indeed munitions in reasonable quantities matching the old Imperial Army signatures of the depot cache, but they were deep below.

‘This goes down?’ Tyrhone queried.

‘A number of sub-levels,’ Allegra recalled.

At the haven centre, the greenskins were absent in any number. The same could not be said for raiders and marauders. Desolation Point was the closest thing any of them had to a home. They were not going to give it up to the newly arrived alien invader. Nor the enemy of old, the Undine security forces.

‘Get them snappers on the deck,’ a voice called from above. The accent was thick and guttural.

The Elites tensed, their eyes down the lengths of their lascarbines, barrels aimed up and down the length and height of the street. A number of marauder gunhands were making their way down a mesh stairwell, holding high-powered autorifles and working bolt actions with grim menace. There were others on balcony walkways and patchwork roofs. Most had heavy-duty sights, but one or two even sported cracked scopes on their scuffed plas-stock rifles.

‘I said get ‘em down in the rust,’ the voice came again. Their skipper stepped out onto the street. Like his men he was all tattoos and dreadlocks, but indulged the extravagance of a grand hat and coat. His coarse hand rested on the grip of a fat stub revolver that nestled in his thick belt.

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Commander Tyrhone told Allegra.

‘What do you want me to do?’ the captain said absently. It seemed, improbably, that her attention was elsewhere.

‘They are the Brethren. They are your people,’ the commander pressed, his lascarbine moving between the skipper and the two shotgun-wielding bodyguards that had walked out casually to flank him.

‘Do you think we have a secret handshake or something?’

‘That’s exactly what I thought.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, commander,’ Allegra said, her eyes travelling up beyond the death-trap balconies and mesh catwalks. ‘These men are Brethren, that’s true. But they’re also stone cold killers. They’ll try to end us, whatever we do. Words will just antagonise them further.’

‘I’m gonna count to three,’ the skipper spat. His men trained their weapons on the Marineers. The Elites trained their lascarbines back. Allegra returned her eyes to the narrow strip of sky visible up through the chainwalks, meshing and steep-sided accretions. She had been watching something above them. ‘One.’

‘When the signal is given,’ the captain said to the Marineers, ‘make your way swiftly down through the sub-levels.’

‘What’s the signal?’ the commander wanted to know.

‘Two.’

‘You’ll know it when you hear it,’ Allegra replied.

‘Three,’ the Brethren skipper snarled. Allegra saw him go for his stub gun. He would have got to it too, if it hadn’t been for the impact.

With so many crash-capsules and rocks smacking into the surrounding ocean, it was only a matter of time before one actually struck the island colony itself. Allegra had been tracking the oily smear of the rock’s descent, watching it grow bigger and more imminent. By the captain’s estimation it hit somewhere on the eastern side of Desolation Point, but it had been a hard landing: rock on rock. The impact was ear-splitting. The immediate shockwave was enough to violently tremble through balconies, walkways and accretion structures.

As the skipper and his pirate gunhands became preoccupied with the instability of their surroundings, Commander Tyrhone and his Elite Marineers did as they were ordered. They dropped down through cutways and ladderwells onto the sub-level below with their captain. As Allegra led them down through the dank meshways and underpasses, the soldiers could hear the howl of the impact gales above, whipping through the insanity of the architecture. This was followed swiftly by the cacophonous boom and excruciating moan of metalwork twisting and buckling. Buildings were toppling against and through one another as the shockwave rippled out from its impact point.

As the Marineers dropped, scrambled and skidded down though the rotting and rusted sub-levels, with passages and reinforced chambers collapsing about them, Allegra and Commander Tyrhone corrected their course. Allegra had a natural feel for the underhive environs of her youth, whereas Tyrhone used as his guiding star the signature traces recorded by his hand-held auspex.

Countless levels down and with the partially demolished colony settling dangerously above them, Allegra and the Marineers reached what they thought to be the rust-water-flooded bottom. The captain felt bedrock beneath her boots. Several of the Elites had activated their lamps and followed their commander as he in turn followed the insistence of the auspex through the knee-deep brown waters.

As the auspex delivered its final verdict, Tyrhone stopped and looked to Allegra. The captain nodded. Kneeling down, the commander felt his way through the waters. Removing several fistfuls of rust-muck, Tyrhone’s usually grim face broke with a moment of relief.

‘Got it,’ he said to himself. ‘Get those lamps in here,’ he ordered, but no amount of illumination was going to cut through the murky water.

‘Just do it by touch, commander,’ Allegra said.

Tyrhone grunted, before pulling back the sleeve on one arm to reveal silver ink on his ebony skin. The Imperial Army security passcodes for the munitions depot. ‘Four-point perimeter,’ Tyrhone ordered the Elites. ‘We don’t know who or what might have followed us down here.’

‘Nothing could have got through that,’ one of the Marineers replied, jabbing a thumb skywards.

‘We did,’ Allegra told him simply.

‘Just do it,’ Tyrhone ordered, beginning to punch the codes into the submerged and chunky glyph-grid.

It took several attempts to input the codes. Whether the commander mis-struck a glyph stud or the water-infiltrated and antiquated hatch-mechanism didn’t recognise the code was anyone’s guess. As the hatch finally popped, rust-water started pouring down through the opening. With several of his Marineers, Tyrhone managed to get the hatch fully open.

‘You four remain here,’ he ordered the perimeter Elites. ‘This is a maximum-security depot: nothing gets in. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, commander,’ the Marineers returned.

The munitions depot stank of rust and old air. It felt like a place of death. Climbing down the access ladder into the darkness, Allegra could almost hear the echo of old hatreds. Enmities of an older age: detestations strong enough to make forces want to inflict weapons of absolute destruction on one another. The kinds of weapons the depot had been built to house.

With rust-water still pouring in from above and pooling about their boots, Lux Allegra and the Marineer Elites stood at the bottom of the chamber. Amongst the servo-cranes and pulley-systems, orbital torpedoes and biological weapons sat in their cradles and carriers. Even through the flaking paint and rusted casings, the ominous glyphs and symbols still visible on their sides made it clear which of the munitions were weapons-exterminatus.

Taking pride of place at the heart of the chamber and keeping court in a dank palace of doom and destruction, the contingency force located the object of their mission. Three fat virus bombs sat there — rusted, forgotten and unrealised of purpose. As the Elites set lamp beams and eyes on the life-eaters, splashing footfalls became light and voices became hushed. Allegra and the Marineers stood and stared at the virus bombs. Dark moments passed.

Allegra took a deep breath of stale, corroded air.

‘Master-vox,’ she ordered. The Elite assigned to hump the comms-unit slipped its weight off his back and handed it to her. Settling it on a nearby torpedo, Allegra set the frequency.

‘Tiamat, this is Elite-One, come in.’

The vox-static howled around the darkness of the depot. ‘Elite-One to Tiamat, passcode Kappa, Theta, Iota. This is a command priority, please respond.’

As the cold loneliness of the unanswered vox-request crept through the bones of the Marineers, Commander Tyrhone looked to Allegra for orders. She passed the hailer back to the vox-operator. ‘Keep trying,’ she told him, before turning back to Tyrhone.

‘Let’s get to work, commander,’ Allegra ordered. Slipping his demolitions pack off one shoulder, the Marineer officer knelt down in the rising water before the first bomb and set to priming the life-eater for a launchless detonation.

SEVENTEEN

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

‘First Captain Garthas is dead, my lord.’

‘Say again, oratorium, say again.’

With the mega-bolters and gatling blasters back to their raucous cacophony and the gunship Escorchier hovering above the void ramparts like a thunderous guardian angel, Captain Maximus Thane couldn’t make Brother Zerberyn out.

‘First Captain Garthas is dead,’ the honorarius repeated solemnly across the private vox-channel.

Maximus Thane heard the words but it took a moment to process them.

‘How?’ was all he could think to say.

‘Fortress-Monastery North pict captures record the First Captain’s victory over the invaders’ breach force,’ Zerberyn reported.

‘Yes, brother.’

‘Lord Garthas was inspecting the dead and voxing new orders for Captain Xontague and his Fists,’ the Honour Guard Space Marine said. ‘One of the savages — a boarder, a hull breacher — still breathed in the First Captain’s presence. It was alive when its injuries dictated it should not be.’

‘Continue, Brother Zerberyn.’

‘It detonated the hull-cracking breach charge it carried, taking Lord Garthas and his honour guard with it,’ the honorarius said. ‘Their plate could not protect them from such a charge. Lord Garthas was found, but the Chief Apothecary said he could not be saved.’

Thane stared bitterly out across the churning ocean of greenskin savagery that continued to roll up across the shattered void plating of the Alcazar Astra. Despite a full Eidolican night of fighting, despite the taking of life in ghastly swathes and the mettle of Dorn’s sons being put sorely to the test, the green invader came still. The attack moon had blanket-bombed the Eidolican dark side with rocks and crash transports. Hulks and landers still rocketed into the black desert-world dunes, vomiting forth alien barbarians — their brief thunderbolt transit rattling and shaking them into a bottomless fury. No matter how many enemy lives the Fists Exemplar took in the name of their dead Chapter Masters and primarch, the ork attack moon supplied more.

Master Aloysian had been as good as his word. Despite his doubts, the Master of the Forge had used his skills and prayers to bring the star fort’s only operational plasma drive to explosive life. The mighty engine column, that as one of four would have helped transport and manoeuvre the mighty Alcazar Astra in-system, blasted the fortress-monastery from its sandy foundations, turning the black desert to obsidian about it. As Master Aloysian had faithfully predicted, the star fort did not ascend. It inclined.

Rising on the Transept East engine column, everything not mag-locked to the gore-slick void plating began to slip and tumble away. Fifth Captain Tyrian watched as thousands of greenskin savages fell away from the edge of the void hull and down into the plasma-drive-roasted sands. Creatures skidded and slid towards the company’s chainblades and boltguns, allowing the Adeptus Astartes to end them with ease. With their boots firmly locked to the metal deck, Xontague, captain of the Eighth, and his company cut through the monstrosities roaring and clawing uselessly past them. Captain Kastril and his Scout Marines secured themselves to the gargoylesque architecture of Fortress-Monastery North. When the deck began to rumble and tilt, the scouts picked off beasts from the plummeting masses with their sniper rifles over the pauldrons of their Ninth Company brothers.

For Thane and the Second Company, the sea of green receded at the captain’s command. One moment Thane and Apothecary Reoch were back-to-back, carving and blasting pieces off gargantuan alien thugs; the next the deck was empty but for the dripping statues of Fists Exemplar, splattered in alien gore and mag-locked to the inclining deck. Monsters scraped, scrambled and scratched at the hull plating and each other, furious that gravity should drag them away from their quarry. Claws and weapons failed to provide purchase when sunk into the blood-smeared armour plating, and those monsters desperate and fast enough to grab something and hold on were swiftly blasted from their ledges by nearby Space Marines. As soon as the guns on the void ramparts re-established their firing protocols and the Thunderhawks assumed a similar suppression role above the helmets of the Fists Exemplar, Thane ordered Master Aloysian to gently reduce thrust and allow the plasma engine to take them back to the sands.

The strategy had succeeded. Despite shattering the fortress-monastery’s superstructure further and rending great rifts in its void plating and architecture, the star fort had been denied to the greenskin invader. Both Space Marines and deck guns were replenished with precious ammunition from the fort’s armoury vaults and for the hours of darkness that followed, the innumerable invaders were kept at murderous ballistic range. Chapter serfs returned to the ramparts with ammunition and supplies, while Apothecary Reoch took the opportunity to down the chainblade that had wreaked such horrific wounds on others and look instead to the wounds that had been visited on his brothers by the enemy.

Hours passed. About the void deck perimeter a wall of greenskin carcasses steamed. Deck ordnance and gunships thundered. Boltguns blazed. Mist-banks of gore drifted through the desert darkness. The greenskin invaders died in their droves. They kept coming, however. Something primordial and predacious drew them across the dunes to their death. Hourly their numbers were replenished by new monsters, raining down on Eidolica in a shower of wanton conquest. Hulking creatures, fresh in their bestial rage, salivating through tusk-crowded maws and fixing the growing silhouette of the Alcazar Astra with their beady eyes.

The silhouette was growing because the Fists Exemplar and Second Captain Maximus Thane — ranking officer on the void ramparts and now ranking officer aboard the star fort itself — had reached their objective. The Eidolican dawn. The razorblade sliver of Frankenthal’s Star — the system sun that had once threaten to swallow the fortress-monastery whole — was reaching over the distant western dunes.

Even with such a meagre shaft of intense light cutting across the skies, the Fists Exemplar home world was revealed. In the still air and black deserts of Eidolica, the eye travelled far. An Adeptus Astartes’ sight travelled even further. Promethium wells raged at the heavens, belching black, oily smoke skywards. Little could be seen of the Eidolican black sands about the fortress-monastery. As far as a Space Marine could see, there were monsters. A sea of alien ferocity, swamping the deserted sands with their filthy presence. The dawn light drew a conqueror’s roar from the beasts and the air trembled with their intention to bring slaughter to the star fort’s defenders.

Further to the south, across the green sea of doom, rocks and hulks streaked into the promethium fields, thudding into the sands and killing their own — only for twice the number of dead to flood from the crude transits. Between swarms of junk landers descended larger greenskin droppers and tractor-tugs, all magna-grapnels, beam-anchors and rocket engines. These ungainly transports lacked the thunderbolt impatience of other crash transits. Instead they lowered colossal engines of war to the distant planet surface. Brute representations of greenskin gods and their Beast warlord, crafted from mountains of scrap and crude engineering.

His suit’s auto-senses detected the breeze. Maximus Thane nodded to himself. The rising sun brought with it the movement of air.

‘Companies,’ Thane called across the open vox-channel. ‘Conserve ammunition. Cease fire.’

The chatter of bolter fire died on the wind, swiftly followed by the accompanying boom of Thunderhawk guns and deck ordnance. No longer held back by a wall of skull-shattering bolt-rounds, the greenskins clawed their way over their dead and thundered up the void deck to meet their enemy. Their blades glinted dully, rude and unblooded. Their weaponry crashed wildly at the defenders, showering the deck with sparks and ricochets. Their tusks parted and raucous calls of pure animal aggression built to a rising crescendo in their barrel chests. The ramparts trembled with their bootfalls.

With boltguns silent about them, the Fists Exemplar stared down their hated enemy. No gauntlet grabbed for sword or pistol. No battle-brother moved from his position on the armoured hull. The invader drew close. The wild fire from their guns drew closer. Axes, mauling blades and chain-choppers came up. The monsters dribbled like mongrels at the expectation of brutality and violence, barbarically realised. Three thunderous strides away. Two. One.

The tentative twilight of dawn was no more. Great shafts of sunlight erupted over the horizon. Eidolica had turned. Day had broken on the desert world. Night — usually a time of industriousness and mass production across the promethium fields and worksteads — had turned to glorious day. Usually the radiance harvesters and photovoltaic enclosures would take over, harnessing the benefits of Eidolica’s proximity to its parent star. They now sat in shattered, silvery shards on the black desert sands in the wake of the greenskin hordes.

The sun rose. The dunes about the Alcazar Astra stood naked before the intense heat and radiation of Frankenthal’s Star. The temperature leapt and the sands were baked black in thermonuclear brilliance. The desert world turned, leaving the attack moon behind, and the system sun began its ascendency — its dominion absolute in the Eidolican skies. Maximus Thane’s helmet optics introduced filters to protect the captain’s engineered eyes. Everything became brilliant and white. The enemy hordes became as one. A jagged silhouette. A black wall against the brightness, all tusks, spiked armour and serrated weaponry.

First there was flame. Anything combustible on the invaders’ bodies — rudimentary clothing, decorative skins and heavy leathers — burned. The intense radiation roasted their tough flesh to charcoal and cooked through their organs. By the time Frankenthal’s Star had done with them and the greenskin beasts reached Maximus Thane and his Fists Exemplar battle line, they were no more than soot and ash, carried away on the breeze.

The Adeptus Astartes stood out on the void ramparts for a few moments longer, their paintless plate seared in the lightstorm to a chromatic burnishment.

‘Companies,’ Thane called across the vox-channel. ‘To the fortress-monastery.’

The silhouettes and shadows of statuesque Space Marines turned in the still inferno. They stomped through the blinding brightness back to their bays, hangars and barbican-locks, where Thane ordered the star fort’s blast shields down. Great metal shields and defences — that would have been used against the green invader had the situation made it necessary — closed, protecting the Alcazar Astra’s openings and observation ports from the radiation and roasting indifference of Frankenthal’s Star during the deadly Eidolican day.

With the star fort’s shields down and carrying the burden of a full night’s battle and bloodshed, it would have been tempting for the Fists Exemplar to return to their cells for rest and cult observances. But there was simply too much to do. The fortress-monastery had taken a battering, and it would take more than the full day of radiant preservation they had to repair and fortify it in readiness for the fresh and endless onslaught of enemy forces the next night. On the Eidolican nightside, Seventh Captain Dentor still fought the enemy on the Tharkis Flats. During the stellar disruption of daytime, vox-transmissions were not possible, but Maximus Thane trusted that Dentor would take refuge in the sub-steads and ancient cave networks of the Great Basin, waiting out the enemy as they roasted in the rolling Eidolican dawn.

As the captain and Mendel Reoch strode through the launch bays, between the anchored Thunderhawks, Thane turned to his Apothecary.

‘I give thanks for you, brother,’ Thane told Reoch. ‘Thanks for your nerve and tenacity; thanks for your good counsel,’ the captain managed a half-smile, ‘and mostly thanks for the skill of that damned sword arm.’

Reoch paused and looked to his captain and friend. With a vox-grille for a mouth, the Apothecary had no smile to return. It was plain he struggled with such appreciation.

‘I give thanks for the dawn,’ Reoch said. ‘I suspect I’ll be needed in the apothecarion.’ As the launch bay blast doors boomed to a close behind them, Reoch peeled off to the left. ‘You, Master Thane, will be needed in the tactical oratorium.’

‘I’m not Chapter Master,’ Maximus Thane said. The captain was superstitious about such things but, with Alameda and Garthas dead, he was next in the chain of command.

‘Might as well be,’ Reoch said. ‘With or without the title, the burden of responsibility is just the same.’

Thane found Honorarius Zerberyn in the oratorium. The Fist Exemplar was a mess of rent armour, dressings and stapled wounds. He had bled over the oratorium floor, which a serf was addressing with mop and bucket.

‘Captain,’ Zerberyn greeted him. Thane pursed his lips.

‘We have not always seen eye to eye,’ Thane said finally.

‘Captain?’

‘I have had cause at times to deem you officious, lacking in humility and overly ambitious,’ the captain said. The Honour Guard Space Marine’s eyes fell. ‘But you are capable and served both Master Alameda and the First Captain well. And as ranking Adeptus Astartes, I will have sore need of you also. Would you consent to remain on as my honorarius — for the Fists Exemplar now have but one — and the emissary of my intentions?’

Zerberyn, whose features were used to hiding some petty notion or unspoken grievance, simply gave the captain a nod of respect and reassurance.

‘It would be my honour to serve you, sir, in whatever way I can.’

‘Thank you, brother,’ Thane said. ‘Would you begin by asking the Chaplain to attend me in Master Alameda’s chambers, I shall need his guidance. Then assemble both the fortress masters and company captains here in the tactical oratorium. Summon Sergeant Anatoq in place of Captain Hieronimax. Sergeant Hoque for the Second Company. I shall need a status report from the Chief Apothecary on the number of dead and wounded as soon as possible — and also have the Chapter Standard Bearer report to me.’

‘Brother Byzander is dead, my lord,’ Zerberyn informed him.

Thane nodded. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ the captain said. ‘Send for my own bearer Brother Aquino, in his stead.’

‘Right away, sir.’

‘Then get yourself to Apothecary Reoch, to address your injuries,’ Thane ordered the Space Marine. ‘If he is half as good at closing wounds as opening them, you should be in good hands.’

EIGHTEEN

Terra — Mount Vengeance

Drakan Vangorich took his throne in the crypt-nexus. The temple operations chamber was dark. About the Grand Master were a select gathering of tacticians, sans-expediens, infocytes, temple alternals and officio logistas — but he wouldn’t have known it, for all the evidence of their presence. In the blackness, the Grand Master’s operational staff and advisors were just disembodied voices, echoing about the chamber.

‘Initiate,’ Vangorich commanded.

The darkness flickered to life as the crypt-nexus became the projected site of a chamber-spanning hololithic representation. The three-dimensional image was crisp and rich in colour and texture, but portrayed a first person perspective.

‘I can see what he is seeing,’ Vangorich said, ‘but can he hear what I am saying?’

‘I am receiving you, Grand Master,’ came the deep voice of Esad Wire — the Officio operative better known to his fellows as Beast. With any good fortune, the crypt-nexus was about to witness some of Beast’s talents at work — relayed directly from the holoptometric implants behind Esad Wire’s cruel eyes.

‘Assassin,’ Drakan Vangorich told his living weapon, ‘you are mission affirmative. Do me proud, Beast Krule.’

Esad Wire cast his gaze at the ground. He was in a wardroom. Starched Naval uniforms hung about lockers and stands, while the bodies they were supposed to adorn decorated the wardroom floor. Officers and ensigns of the First Royal Provost’s Naval Security Battalion had lost their lives in the discovery of an onboard imposter in their wardroom. Beast Krule had made light work of the Naval security armsmen, breaking bones and backs as he swiftly dealt with his discoverers. Sealing off the bulkhead hatch, the Assassin proceeded to select an armsman’s uniform to cram his muscular bulk into and completed the disguise with a ceremonial lasquebus, a monomolecular-edged sabre and Scipio-pattern pistol.

The ridiculous Naval foppery of his uniform complete, Beast Krule had crushed the bodies into a wardroom ablutory. Closing the cubicle door, he allowed the weight of the bodies against it to provide sufficient deterrent to weak-bladdered ensigns or armsmen curious at the disappearance of their comrades. By the time they were actually discovered, Krule planned on being long gone. Pulling the strap about his chin and the visor down on his broad-top cap, the Assassin left the wardroom and strode out into an ante-corridor.

Making his steps strident, his back straight and his boots squeak in time with a group of similarly dressed Royal Provost’s men, Krule marched out onto the hangar deck of the Emperor-class battleship Autocephalax Eternal. The hangar housed lines of gleaming starfighters and battalion presentations of what Beast Krule estimated to be two or three thousand armsmen. Like him they were ceremonially dressed and presenting arms in the form of honour-guard lasquebuses. Many were already gathered in tight at-ease formations before the podium and vox-casters at the end of the hangar. Many more were still marching in to take their positions.

The march was long and dull as the contingent Beast had attached himself to made their way up the length of the rally gathering. Out of the hangar the Assassin could see the byzantine insanity of Ancient Terra slowly turning. The Autocephalax Eternal was stationed in low orbit, flanked by her own ceremonial escort of ancient heavy frigates, hanging like ornate baubles above the hive-world.

As Beast Krule drew closer to the podium, he went through the simple rituals of his deadly craft. He checked the tools of his trade. The weapons in his possession were next to useless. Both the lasquebus and the Scipio pistol were empty of power pack and ammunition. In the presence of such an important personage, the chance of an accidental weapons discharge — especially under the extra pressure of the ceremonial occasion — could not be tolerated.

That had been part of the genius of it. Surrounded by thousands of armsmen, the target might well feel safe and let his guard down. Not a single ensign, officer or member of the Royal Provost’s, however, carried live ammunition. This had made the time and location of the operation tempting. The monomolecular sabre was more of a hacking and slashing weapon: a thug’s blade, for all its craft and finery.

Nothing would give Krule the split-second, single-action kill that was required of the situation better than his own tools: the rippling muscles of his murderer’s arms and the heavy-gauge, plasteel-infused bones of his hands. When formed into fists, the deadweight of the durable metal, propelled by his bulging arms, crashed with ease through skulls and rib cages. When ordinary men pummelled one another, the pair walked away with bruises and bloodied lips. When Beast Krule beat a target to death — his favoured mode of execution and the reason for his brutal moniker — bone shattered, organs were torn free and heads were knocked clean off. Coupled with an expert knowledge of physiology and multiple hand-to-hand combat proficiencies, Beast’s hands had known little idleness in his early service to the Officio Assassinorum.

The Assassin could hear his target clearly now. He was close enough to be in range of the podium vox-hailers. Many of his contingent had found their places in the neatly formed lines of armsmen before the podium, but Beast walked on up the central thoroughfare, his visor down and both march and stance impeccable.

‘…and so I am delighted to order Admiral Villiers and the fighting men and women of the Autocephalax Eternal to the Glaucasian Gulf,’ Lord High Admiral Lansung boomed, ‘to assume command of the Armada Segmenta, gathering above Lepidus Prime at my command.’

The Lord High Admiral was the very definition of an easy target. Huge in his acres of Naval blue uniform, his red face told of an extended lifetime working out of luxurious cabins, enjoying fine fortified wines and the lavish offerings of a private galley. He looked like he had never drawn a pistol or hanger in his life, having the family and political connections to command without ever having to do so. His sheer bulk meant that during an attempted escape he wouldn’t get far and it wasn’t as though his security detail of Lucifer Blacks — further from him than usual in the apparent safety of the Naval rally — could lift him and rush him to a shuttle with any great haste.

At his side was an equally feeble specimen of a man. Like Lansung he had enjoyed all of the benefits of a Naval officer’s existence and none of the hardships. Admiral Sheridan Villiers, His Grace the Void Baron of Cypra Nubrea, had a face that reminded Krule of a horse and a laryngeal prominence in his throat the size of a small asteroid.

Beast Krule felt his pace quicken. He was closing. He was close. The smaller details of his disguise were no longer needed. He was still just an armsman finding his place at the front of the rally congregation. He could taste blood. He could feel the crack of bones.

The quick march turned into a run. Lansung was still talking. He was handing over to the Autocephalax Eternal’s gawkish commanding officer. Krule dropped his lasquebus and with a flick of a finger, unbuckled his belt and holster. Carrying the holster, scabbard, pistol and sabre with it, the belt thunked to the deck. Beast Krule was on the steps, his storming strides taking him up two or three at a time. Some alarm had now become evident in the audience. Still confused at the bizarre actions of one of their own, the armsmen simply stared. Villiers’ brow had registered his displeasure — it was his battleship and security battalions on show, after all.

Lansung, however, betrayed the slowly dawning suspicion that he was in trouble. Krule saw the High Lord’s eyes widen and the arteries in his neck constrict. His security detail were finally on the move. Lucifer Blacks raced from adjoining corridors and cavities in the bay walls. They were too far away, however. Beast Krule had his quarry. The Assassin, his defenceless prey.

Krule’s cap and visor fell away as he leapt from the top step up onto the podium. Villiers had made some attempt to go for his hanger but was struggling to get it clear of its scabbard. The Assassin fancied that with so little use but so much polish, the blade was stuck. Lansung backed away. There was no going for a blade for him. Horror sat simply on the Lord High Admiral’s broad face.

With a bound, Beast Krule leapt from the podium at Lansung. Like a predatory feline, Krule cleared Villiers and landed on the small island of fat flesh that was Admiral Lansung. Lansung crashed heavily to the deck. Beast Krule was on top of him. Boots in his sides. Knees in his mountainous chest. One murderous hand clutched a globed shoulder, while the other retracted in a hefty fist. The Assassin was spoiled for choice. Where to punch his plasteel-infused knuckles? Through the Admiral’s triple chins and through his spine? Through his ribcage to splatter his meaty heart? No, the Assassin decided. He would smash through the High Lord’s fat skull and mash the ambitions of a dangerous mind into the deck.

Beast Krule suddenly saw a collection of panic-strewn words spill from Lansung’s patrician lips. They were called as an order to those about him. To the closing Lucifer Blacks. To his flag staff. To Villiers and the officers of the Autocephalax Eternal. The Assassin sensed the importance of the order and somehow found his way back to the moment.

‘Firing protocol thirteen!’ the Lord High Admiral screamed. ‘For Throne’s sake: firing protocol thirteen!’

No more words, Beast Krule decided. The fist came down.

‘Hold!’ Drakan Vangorich called.

Obedience. Krule turned his fist aside, smashing its metallic force into the hangar deck.

‘What in damnation is “Firing protocol thirteen”?’ the Grand Master demanded.

The hololithic representation sizzled to darkness and from that darkness temple infocytes, sans-expediens and tacticians came forwards in deference. A wall section started to shudder to one side, revealing a small chamber in a lighter shade of twilight beyond. Esad Wire was strapped to a simulcra slab. His temple-crafted body was needled from head to toe with sensors. Lines ran into impulse links in the side of his skull and fibre threads into the flesh between his ears and eyes, interfacing with the holoptometric implants beyond.

The Assassin sat up, tearing the sensor needles and datalines from his body. The indoctranostic holosimulation was over. The frustration was clear on Wire’s face. The predator had not taken down his prey. He had failed in some way. His temple re-education — his murderous strategic orientation — had been halted by a furious Drakan Vangorich.

‘Again,’ Vangorich said, ‘what is this “Firing protocol thirteen”? That’s new. I haven’t heard of that.’

‘It’s a proxy,’ an infocyte volunteered. ‘Officio operatives aboard the battleship gave us the physical detailing. It’s not a recovered piece of intelligence. It’s a proxy created by the strategium.’

‘A proxy for what?’ Vangorich demanded.

A hooded tactician came forwards.

‘The hypothetical came out of the logistuary,’ the tactician said. She swiftly added, ‘Operative Wire’s encounter with an Inquisitorial tail at Tashkent factored in a greater range of eventualities for the logistas. Firing protocol thirteen is a proxy for a target behaviour based on logical extensions of those eventualities.’

‘Like?’ Vangorich said dangerously.

‘The knowedge of certain Officio Assassinorum installations and their locations,’ the tactician told him, ‘by involved and interconnected factions.’

‘Covert temple facilities?’

‘Such delicate information could be traded between numerous individuals and organisations — the Holy Inquisition, the Ecclesiarchy, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Imperial Navy…’

‘So firing protocol thirteen in this context could be?’ Vangorich pressed.

‘The location of the Mount Vengeance Officio Assassinorum facility,’ the tactician told him.

‘Knowledge of this facility?’ Vangorich confirmed, briefly casting his gaze at a wounded-looking Wire.

‘It’s on a list of five possibilities,’ the tactician said. ‘The target’s behaviour would facilitate a stalemate scenario. The operative would be powerless to execute his mission with the target in possession of such information. If he attempted to do so, the battleship in the simulated scenario would fire its guns from orbit on this location. We have calculated, however, that the true nature of both the weapon’s discharge and the temple location would remain secret. The incident would be recorded as a regrettable accident.’

‘Well that’s a relief,’ Vangorich said sardonically. The import was lost on the tactician. The Grand Master was out of his throne and walking towards the egress-archway. He stopped and turned to the gathered temple staff. ‘I want this facility cleared of temple personnel, intelligence and equipment within the hour.’

‘Yes, Grand Master.’

‘Enough with simulations. Beast Krule,’ Vangorich said, ‘with me.’

Having removed the last of the impulse jacks from his head and the sensor needles from his flesh, Esad Wire followed his master out of the crypt-nexus.

‘What are we going to do?’ Esad Wire said.

‘We’re going to force the Lord High Admiral’s hand,’ Vangorich told him. ‘Gathering an armada in the Glaucasian Gulf will do nothing to protect the core systems from the xenos threat. What I wouldn’t give for a stalemate scenario out there.’

‘Where are we going?’ Esad Wire asked.

‘Somewhere the admiral’s great guns can’t reach us,’ Vangorich told his Assassin.

NINETEEN

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

The company chapel was empty. That was the way Maximus Thane preferred it. His Fists Exemplar — from his captains and masters, to his battle-brothers and their Chapter serfs — were all were too busy with preparations for dusk. Thane’s desperate strategy had saved many Space Marine lives but had cost the Alcazar Astra dearly. Splits and rents in the thick plate of the void ramparts were only the beginning. The star fort had suffered serious structural damage and the generatorium had also experienced damage-inflicted failings. As ranking Adeptus Astartes aboard the star fort, however, it wasn’t Thane’s job to repair ceramite, replenish ammunition or audit the armoury. It wasn’t even his direct responsibility now to ensure that others performed those essential roles — he had given Sergeant Hoque temporary command of the Second Company.

It was Thane’s function to decide which strategy would best ensure the survival of Eidolica. Which strategy would inflict greatest damage on the invader. Which strategy — if any — could possibly combine both.

Even the Second Company’s chapel hadn’t escaped the damage and desolation. Without the artificial gravity and inertial dampeners that the star fort would have benefited from in the void, the chapel — like every other hallowed chamber in the fortress-monastery — had been turned almost on its side. Minor Chapter relics lay smashed on the floor about their cases. Statues had toppled and tapestries had fallen across the altar. Placing his helmet to one side, Thane cleared up as best he could.

Thane’s favourite artefact — one of the reasons he frequented the tiny chapel as much as he did — had also been damaged. Set in a shallow central column, between the altar and the narrow entrance archway, was a small stained-glass window. It depicted Rogal Dorn — not in battle or during the desperation of the Great Heresy, but at deliberation. The window pictured Dorn deep in thought, still clad in his golden armour.

It was the moment Dorn decided to break up his beloved Legion and embrace the Codex Astartes, creating numerous successor Chapters from his stalwart and loyal Imperial Fists. Thane loved the window not least because the Fists Exemplar had been created in that moment. Like all of the Imperial Fists Second Founding Chapters, their character came from the individuals making up their ranks. The Chapter crusaders and zealots gravitated to Sigismund, while to Alexis Polux went the younger, more impressionable brothers. Many of the attrition fighters that would make up the Excoriators had held the Palace walls during the siege of Terra and had found brotherhood with Demetrius Katafalque.

It was well known that the primarch and his genetic sons struggled with the decision to break up their Legion. There were some, however, that came around to Guilliman’s wisdom — as Dorn himself did at last — swifter than others. Captain Oriax Dantalion had spoken for the sense and necessity of such drastic action among the Imperial Fists early in the process. This had initially earned Dorn’s disappointment, and some said enmity. When Dorn himself searched his soul and reached the conclusion that the window illustrated, he remembered Dantalion’s earlier wisdom. He rewarded the captain with a Chapter of his own — made up of progressive battle-brothers not unlike himself. They were deemed exemplars of the new order, and named the Fists Exemplar by the primarch.

Looking at the window, Thane discovered that some of the fragile glass pieces had fallen free of their leadwork. Dorn’s depiction was now marred with hollows and missing sections. Many of the pieces had smashed on the flags of the small chapel during the firing of the engine column. Thane discovered, however, that one piece had survived intact. A section of yellow glass, representing a piece of the primarch’s sacred, golden plate. Picking it up and turning it about in the tips of his gauntlets, Thane slipped it delicately back into place.

As the archway door rose beyond, light from the corridor lamps blazed through the window. The illuminated window, bringing Rogal Dorn’s depiction to dazzling radiance, held Maximus Thane’s attention — so much so that he hardly noticed Brother Zerberyn enter the company chapel.

‘My lord,’ Zerberyn said, taking to his knee before the altar and kissing the ceramite knuckles of his gauntleted fist one after another.

‘Brother?’

‘My lord,’ Zerberyn said, getting up, ‘sentries report a strange disturbance at the east barbican lock.’

‘What kind of disturbance?’

‘Impacts on the outer doors,’ Zerberyn said, ‘like something trying to get in.’

‘No greenskin survives the attentions of Frankenthal’s Star,’ Thane averred.

‘The alien invader is much invested in terrible new technologies,’ the honorarius said. Thane nodded.

‘Have Sergeant Hoque meet me at the barbican with a squad,’ Thane said. ‘Then lock off the section interior bulkheads surrounding the barbican. If it is the invader, we’ll see to it that he won’t get far.’

‘Very good, my lord,’ Zerberyn said, and left Maximus Thane alone with Dorn once again.

Taking up his helmet and setting off for the East Transept, the captain encountered Sergeant Hoque en route past the company chapel. He marched with Hoque and his squad down to the barbican lock.

‘Opinion, brother?’ Thane put to Gaspar, the sentry whose post the barbican had been.

‘Sounded too measured and deliberate for the greenskins, sir,’ Gaspar said, but his boltgun was still aimed at the barbican portal. Thane waited. Behind them, the section bulkhead hatches began to lower.

Then they heard it. The sound of something smashing a great fist against the thick metal door. It didn’t sound like a rabid savage or alien invader.

‘Sergeant,’ Thane said, prompting Hoque and his men to form a gauntlet of gaping barrels in the barbican chamber. If their visitor was indeed hostile, Hoque and his men would ensure that its welcome would be brief. Thane put on his battle-helm. ‘Brother Gaspar, if you will.’

The sentry fired the airlock mechanism and the massive door began to rumble towards the ceiling. Blinding Eidolican daylight seared its way under the door and began to fill the barbican, prompting the auto-senses of the captain’s plate to respond and initiate optical filters.

As the portal shuddered open and the Fists Exemplar leant into their boltguns, a single silhouette appeared at the door. A black shape in a power-armoured suit waited for them. As the boltgun barrels lowered, the Adeptus Astartes framed in the blinding light of the doorway stepped inside. He was swiftly joined by several other battle-brothers in sealed plate.

‘Lower it,’ Thane commanded Brother Gaspar. As the armoured door lowered and the barbican turned to darkness, the filter optics of Thane’s helmet returned to normal spectra. Not fast enough for the captain, however, who promptly removed his helmet.

Before him stood a crusade marshal in the roasted midnight plate of the Black Templars. A skull-helmed Chaplain stood to his side, while two Sword Brethren flanked the pair with their power swords and crusader shields. The final member of the group was a Fists Exemplar captain, clad in the temperature-tarnished bare ceramite of the Chapter. As the captain took off his helm, Thane could see that it was Dentor of the Seventh.

‘It’s a relief to see you, captain,’ Thane told him.

‘Likewise, Maximus,’ Dentor replied.

As the Black Templars commander relieved himself of his burning helm, Dentor introduced him. ‘Captain Thane, this is Marshal Bohemond of the Vulpius Crusade.’

‘An honour, brother-captain,’ Bohemond offered.

‘Likewise, marshal,’ Thane said, ‘and a surprise: we sent out broad-range requests for fraternal assistance, but did not think you so close. You are, of course, warmly welcome to Alcazar Astra and a share of the honour to come. How many battle-brothers do you have at your command, marshal?’

Bohemond’s eyes were hard but understanding. He seemed to nod to himself.

‘Second captain,’ Dentor said, ‘the Marshal does not…’

‘Thank you, captain,’ Bohemond said, cutting him off. ‘You are ranking Adeptus Astartes here?’

‘I am.’

‘I wonder if we might speak alone, sir?’ The Black Templar’s eyes never left his Fists Exemplar opposite.

‘Of course, marshal,’ Thane said. ‘I know just the place.’

With the barbican re-secured and Bohemond’s men entertained, Thane led the Black Templar Marshal into the company chapel. It was closer than the oratorium and, with the daylight hours filled with repair and industry, still deserted. Bohemond fixed upon the stained glass representation of Dorn immediately. Falling down to his knees, he hammered his armoured fist into his breastplate at the four points of the crusader cross.

‘Beautiful,’ Bohemond said as he got back up.

‘Marshal,’ Maximus Thane said, staring across the altar, ‘I do not wish to break with ritual or tradition but my world turns. With night comes the enemy and an opportunity to avenge our fallen.’

‘I’ve seen your world,’ Bohemond said, ‘and the xenos attack moon hanging over it. Your black sands swarm with orks. They travel with the terminator. In their cunning they have become wise to your planet’s lethalities. Tomorrow, the enemy takes this fortress: from orbit it is plain to see.’

‘It is not as simple as that.’

‘Captain, it is every bit as simple as that,’ Bohemond told him.

‘I expected more from Sigismund’s crusaders,’ Thane told him. ‘It does not become a Templar to turn his cheek from the fight. You speak of odds. What are odds to a son of Dorn?’

‘It smarts, doesn’t it, captain?’ the Black Templar said as he wandered about the chapel. ‘I should know. You’re right: it does not become us. But our cheek is not turned. We are simply facing the other way. We are crusaders, and crusades are not won on single days or single worlds. And that is all Eidolica is: a single world with a single day.’

‘You speak cavalierly about our prospects, marshal,’ Thane said. ‘Why don’t you help us improve them?’

‘I already have,’ Bohemond replied. ‘My Thunderhawks pulled Captain Dentor and what was left of his company from the greenskin-drenched wilderness.’

‘You had no right, Templar,’ Thane spat.

‘They would be dead now if I hadn’t.’

‘And what of the populations they were protecting? What is to become of them?’

‘Nothing, captain,’ Bohemond said, ‘for they are dead already.’

‘I need your men, Bohemond.’

‘You can’t have them,’ the Marshal said. ‘For they are needed elsewhere — as are yours, captain.’

‘Marshal…’

‘I have been where you are now,’ the Black Templar told him. ‘It is not easy for an Adeptus Astartes to turn and run, but as my castellan told me, it is merely a matter of perspective. There is running from and there is running to. We were at Aspiria, and yes, I could have sent my Templars to their deaths in the name of obstinacy and honour. But then I heard the call — as you hear now. Dorn’s call. I heard it in Imperial Navy recalls, in my battle-barge’s klaxons, in mortis-cries echoing across the immaterium. The call home, brother. Coreward.’

‘You are a crusader,’ Thane accused. ‘You call no world home. Eidolica is home to the Fists Exemplar.’

Bohemond smashed his fist against the plate of his chest.

‘No,’ the marshal hissed, ‘this is your home. You say your Eidolica needs you. I say your Imperium needs you. Do you have any idea how many astropathic calls for assistance I had to ignore to reach you, brother? Worlds die about us and sectors fall. This is not localised. The invader has not a conqueror’s eyes for your piecemeal world, captain. Eidolica is an afterthought — the enemy’s bloody gaze is fixed on the segmentum whole. What good can you do here?’

‘This is my world,’ Maximus Thane roared through the window at the marshal. ‘These are my people. This is my bastion.’

‘Your people are finished,’ Bohemond told him. He let the cold sentiment hang in the descending silence of the chapel. ‘Through no fault of your own or your commanders’, your world belongs to savages of the void. This was never a battle you could win. How long can you keep this up: fighting through the night and hiding in the light? How long will your armouries sustain you? A day? A week? And should you slaughter every living greenskin on the surface of your desert world, what then? The xenos attack moon will tear this tiny planet apart and feed it to its guardian star.’

‘What would you have me do?’

‘I would have you do nothing, captain. What we must do — brothers all — is gather our strength. The savages will be stopped here no more than they would have been at Aspiria. We must consult with Chapter Master Mirhen; with my own High Marshal; with Scharn; with Quesadra of the Crimson Fists and Issachar of the Excoriators. It is time for the scattered successors of all loyal Legions to join once again in defence of humanity. This will not happen here, Thane; it will not happen now. But we must be as one and ready for Dorn’s call, when it comes.’

Maximus Thane hadn’t been looking at Bohemond for a while. His eyes were fixed on his primarch, picked out in coloured glass. Neither battle-brother spoke for what seemed like a long time.

‘Look, Thane,’ Bohemond said. ‘I speak like a brother of wisdom, when I learned this just like you, in the fires of battle. I found this decision no less difficult or painful.’

‘Your vessels wait ready in orbit?’ the Fist Exemplar asked.

‘Yes,’ the marshal replied. ‘They hold position in the sun-blind. My gunships could have your brothers and materiel evacuated within the hour.’

Thane didn’t need to check with a chronometer. Night was coming. He could feel the seconds ebbing away.

‘Well, an hour is about all we have,’ he said. Bohemond nodded his understanding.

The Fists Exemplar captain and the marshal went to leave the chapel. At the archway bulkhead, Thane turned to take one last look at the stained glass window.

‘You think that it hurt Dorn, to break his Legion thus?’ Thane asked, his voice echoing about the company chapel.

‘More than the most grievous of wounds received in battle,’ Bohemond said gently. ‘But sometimes, you have to destroy something old in order to make something new. The Fists Exemplar know that better than any of Dorn’s sons.’

Maximus Thane nodded slowly in grave agreement.

TWENTY

Undine — Desolation Point

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The storage depot was slowly flooding with rust-water. Lux Allegra sat on top of one of the bulbous virus bombs. Every so often, Commander Tyrhone would wade over and crank the munitions cradle up another notch to keep both the life-eater and the priming demolition charge out of the rising water. The Marineer Elites were similarly sat astride or perched on the corroded torpedoes and ancient orbitals that were stored in the chamber. Many leant their lascarbines against the weapon casings and their chins against the carbines. Lamps cut through the murk of the deep depot and the soldiers listened to the distant rumble of Desolation Point coming down on top of them. The colony was collapsing. Perhaps another rock had struck the island. Perhaps the impact damage of the first was still being felt as building collapsed into building, bringing the haven down in an almighty mountain of smoking scrap. Perhaps the fires had a role to play.

Speculation was pointless, Commander Tyrhone had reminded his men, but there was little better to do than listen to the thunder of topside collapses or the sharp static of the vox. At intervals, Tyrhone’s vox-operator would attempt to raise the Marineer submersible Tiamat without success. The contingency force had been holding position in the depot for hours. In all likelihood the Tiamat had been sunk, the victim of some fighter-bomber deployed torpedo or greenskin diving sphere.

Allegra’s hands reached down to the flak about her abdomen, as was her habit. She found herself thinking of Lyle Gohlandr. The nights they had spent together and the baby growing in her belly. Gohlandr had been short-service — his duty due to end in only a matter of months. He had planned to return to Hive Galatae, apply to the harbour master for a security detail, and work the container stacks as his father had. Allegra would have been censured for conduct unbecoming an officer, but would still have received her gravidity leave. After having the baby, she would have joined Gohlandr at Galatae and got lost in the system. Forged identicodes were easy to come by if, like Allegra, you knew where to look.

The fantasy she had allowed herself, curled up in her berth, seemed a world away now. Undine had all but fallen. Galatae itself had actually fallen, crashing straight into the chemical seas. Gohlandr was dead and Lux Allegra did not have a world to bring her child into. The ocean world of Undine would be, at best, a warzone. At worst, Allegra, her child and her hive-kin could look forward to brutal existences as a xenos conqueror’s slaves. Such bottomless misery filled the captain that for a moment she thought that she had dissipated into the chamber gloom. Her thoughts turned to even darker considerations.

‘Commander,’ she called across the murk, shattering the silence. ‘You have been briefed on these weapons, yes?’

Tyrhone nodded. ‘What happens when we set this thing off?’ the captain put to him, tapping on the virus bomb’s rusty casing with her nail.

‘Is this necessary?’ Tyrhone returned.

‘Let’s call it an order, commander,’ Lux Allegra said.

‘They call it Exterminatus,’ Tyrhone said. ‘Typically the device is orbitally deployed. The priming charge on these should be enough to initiate detonation and release of the virus compound.’

‘Continue,’ Allegra said. ‘What happens after detonation? I want to hear it.’

Tyrhone stared at her. ‘The virus breaks down organic material — anything it comes into contact with — on a molecular level, and it breaks it down fast. Estimates based on observational records suggest complete planetary biological infestation in a matter of minutes. Everything rots. Everything is broken down and reduced to sludge. Nothing organic will survive. Rebreathers will disintegrate and the seals of armour and airlocks will fail.’

‘It will be quick?’

‘Yes, captain,’ Tyrhone said. ‘It will be quick. The swift release of resulting flammable gases will require but a spark to initiate a planet-wide firestorm.’

‘The oceans?’

‘Will boil away,’ Tyrhone said. ‘Undine will be left a dead rock. No oceans. No atmosphere. No hives. No hivers.’

‘No alien invader,’ Allegra added.

‘All will perish,’ the commander confirmed. ‘There will be nothing left.’

Lux Allegra nodded. One of the Marineers whimpered behind his lascarbine. The others remained deathly silent.

‘Why three, if only one is required to do it?’

‘The orbitals are ancient,’ Tyrhone said. ‘The potency of any one bomb might be compromised. Three should ensure mission success.’

‘Mission success…’

‘Yes, captain.’

‘Thank you, commander.’

The master-vox screeched.

Allegra’s heart jumped in her chest. The Marineers sat bolt upright.

‘Elite-one, receive.’

It was General Phifer.

The vox-operator went to respond but Commander Tyrhone snatched up the pack. Wading through the rust-water, he deposited it in front of the captain. Allegra took the vox-hailer.

‘Recieving, Tiamat, this is Elite-one — proceed.’

‘Captain…’

‘Receiving, Tiamat: proceed.’

‘Captain,’ the general said, ‘the regimental astropath has received immaterial confirmation.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes are not coming, captain.’

Phifer’s news felt like a lasbolt to the heart for each of the Marineers. There was another whimper. Some lowered heads. Others gave nods of grim acceptance.

‘Received, Tiamat,’ Allegra replied.

‘You are authorised to enact contingency measures,’ the general said. ‘I repeat: this is General Phifer and I am commanding you… to initiate contingency measures.’

‘Yes sir,’ Allegra replied. ‘Order received and understood.’

The Marineers stared at the master-vox.

‘Know this,’ Phifer told them. ‘We are going to win this battle. The battle for Undine. The battle for our world.’

Lux Allegra nodded.

‘But lose the war,’ she said, before dropping the vox-hailer in the rising waters and turning off the master-vox.

Nobody in the storage depot spoke. A minute, perhaps two, passed in silence.

‘Captain,’ Tyrhone began.

‘There are no words,’ Lux Allegra told him, bringing her knees up. ‘Only duty.’

Tyrhone gave her the slightest of acknowledgements. A bob of his head. The clenching of teeth and the tightness of his lips. As Allegra sat on top of the fat fuselage of the orbital virus bomb, the Marineer Elite commander reached forwards to set off the charge detonator.

Hugging her arms around her belly, Lux Allegra’s last thoughts were once again for what might have been, rather than what was — because what was, was oblivion.

TWENTY-ONE

Incus Maximal / Malleus Mundi — Orbital

Magos Urquidex entered the medicae section of the survey brig’s laboratorium. He passed Alpha Primus Orozko and two heavily-armed Collatorax sentinels on his way in. Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken was taking no chances with their guest.

Urquidex approached the small mountain of blood-dotted dressings standing amongst the mess of the cybernurgical theatre. The giant stood before the three recovered cocoons on their slabs. He was still, although the rasping passage of air through his multilung was raw and audible.

Urquidex stood to one side and adjusted several calibrates on the tracked and itinerant trolley-stand that followed the patient around like an obedient hound. Lines and tubes ran from the equipment and into the folds of the Space Marine’s dressings and hooded salve-robe. The giant didn’t acknowledge Urquidex.

‘I apologise for this,’ the magos biologis said. ‘You were not meant to see your Chapter brethren in this way. The autopsies are complete. The wonder of their design and genetic working has been honoured as the work of the Omnissiah. Last rites have been issued by our magi concisus, but we cannot carry out the appropriate cult observances out here.’

‘No one can,’ the giant rumbled.

‘They will be placed in methalon storage for the rest of the journey,’ Urquidex said. ‘There is the matter of their official identification; for our records, of course.’

The giant turned and looked briefly at the magos biologis. The wet sores, burns and radiation scarring that afflicted the Space Marine’s face made him appear raw and unfinished. The Imperial Fist turned back to the cocoons on the slabs. ‘Perhaps their plate designations might have meaning for…’

‘Diluvias: wall-name, Zarathustra,’ the Adeptus Astartes told him. Urquidex noted the designation on a data-slate. ‘Xavian: wall-name, Tranquility. Tylanor: wall-name, Dolorous.’

The Space Marine paused, his roll call complete. ‘They were found—?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Coordinates three, sixty-two, seventy-two, fourteen,’ Urquidex reported helpfully. ‘There had been such gravitational upheaval—’

‘The world turned itself inside out,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘Chrome. Greenskin. Adeptus Astartes. Buried alive in mid-battle like some xenoarchaeological find. I had fought. I had killed. I don’t know for how long. I felt the land moving beneath my boots. A cliff face erupted before me. A tidal wave of rock, earth and bodies. My brothers were down. The ground had swallowed them. I thought the magos dead, also.’

Urquidex walked with the giant over to where Phaeton Laurentis lay on his tracked stretcher. His ruined mouth still rehearsed the formation of words that had no meaning. He dribbled and pawed at the air with his hands.

‘I think your assessment all but accurate,’ Urquidex said. ‘His workings sustain his failing organics. His cogitae and systems are being downstreamed for useful data. The magi physic do not expect him to live.’

‘Do what you can, magos,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘I owe him my life.’ The Space Marine took the end of a piece of dressing, hanging loose from one great hand, and used it to clean a blood spot from Phaeton Laurentis’ brow.

‘How did you come to be on the Amkulon derelict?’ Urquidex said, ‘if you don’t mind me asking? My artisan-primus requests the knowledge for his report.’

‘I was alone,’ the Adeptus Astartes said, ‘on a planet the enemy was ripping apart. No one was coming for me. You cannot fight a planet with your sword. You cannot stand against it in your plate. All I had was the teleport homer… And hope.’

‘It worked?’

‘Yes.’

‘When it formerly had not.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were vectored?’

‘To the Amkulon,’ the Space Marine confirmed. ‘But there was a delay — not perceptible in transit. My plate detected the anomaly. Time had passed.’

‘My artisan-primus believes that when the xenos attack-moon cleared the system, the gravitic interference that had impeded guided vectoring was removed. Upon the removal of the affecting body, your transit became complete. It is true that Magos Laurentis alerted us to your life signs. If the attack moon had not interrupted your transit then you would have arrived upon the toxic derelict earlier. You would have succumbed to radiation trauma and there would not have been life signs to find.’

‘What are you saying, magos?’ the Space Marine said, leaving Laurentis and standing before the armourglass viewport set in the laboratorium wall. With the blast screens retracted, the viewport allowed light from the void into the chamber. ‘That I am the victim of good fortune?’

‘If I believed in such a thing as good fortune,’ Urquidex said, ‘and I don’t, then I should say you are very much its beneficiary. You are the last of your kind.’

‘That’s right,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘I am the last of my kind. What good fortune is there in that?’

The pair turned their attentions to the two destruction-smeared ice worlds below. Despite the smouldering forges and cataclysmic black clouds that besmirched their twin surfaces, their reflected light still managed to dazzle.

‘Yours?’ the Space Marine asked.

‘No longer,’ Magos Urquidex said. ‘But they are forge-worlds, lost to the xenos invader. Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi: the Hammer and Anvil. We have dropped out of the immaterium to dock with a Mechanicus signum-station and recover personnel and valuable data. Though the great forges were lost, we are told that a flotilla, heavily laden with preserved knowledge and faithful servants of the Machine God, escaped the enemy. Not everywhere has been blessed with survivors, however. Across the rimward sectors there are reports of entire swathes of Imperial worlds silent in their destruction, populations rotting and cities aflame. Most alarming and admirable are the worlds denied to the invader by Imperial hands. There are reports of virus bombs deployed on the hive-world of Undine. A tragedy indeed, but one from which we might learn. Knowledge through sacrifice.’

The Imperial Fist looked back at the cocoons on the surgical slabs, the smashed yellow pauldrons of their plate still visible through the protective membrane.

‘I have had my fill of questions, magos,’ the Space Marine said. ‘If you don’t mind, I should like to be alone now.’

‘Of course,’ Urquidex said. ‘If you would permit me one question more. For our records.’

‘What is it?’

‘What is your name?’

The Space Marine stared back out into the cold emptiness of the void.

‘My name is Koorland, Second Captain,’ the Imperial Fist told him. ‘Wall-name… Slaughter.’

Gav Thorpe

The Emperor expects

One

Lepidus Prime — orbital, 544.M32

‘Colossus, this is orbital command. I say again, change heading to six-three-eight, ascent forty-one. You are set on collision course with the Noble Voyager.’

‘Ignore her,’ said Captain Rafal Kulik. ‘Continue on course.’

Kulik was a tall, heavy-set man with a face lined by years, though a life spent in warp space made any estimate of his true age impossible. His skin was dark brown, as were his eyes, though his hair was silvery grey, its tight coils straightened and parted formally by the application of much lotion and toil every morning.

He wore his service uniform — epaulettes and cuffs of golden thread on a coat of deep blue, but no medals except for an aquila holding the badge of the Segmentum Solar, indicating Kulik’s rank as a flag-captain and patrol commander. His black boots were brightly polished. A sturdy boarding cutlass was held on a hanger at his waist, with a blocky service laspistol hung at the other hip.

The atmosphere on the bridge was tense and quiet, sparked by the mood of the man who commanded the fate of everybody aboard the battleship. Kulik dominated proceedings with his presence. He stood square in the middle of the main command deck in a serene bubble of importance — genuine authority, not self-importance — while around him junior officers waited in anticipation of his next command and half-human servitors murmured and burbled a litany of reports from the battleship’s systems.

The bridge was a flattened semicircle in shape, nearly eighty feet wide with a vaulted ceiling sixty feet high; a command deck at the bottom and two mezzanine-like observation and navigation decks above. A multi-part viewing display, which could be formatted to create a variety of screens and sub-screens, dominated the chamber. It currently showed two main split-screens with a schematic of the packed orbital berths around Lepidus Prime and a scrolling list of the capital ships currently identified in the system. Black Duke, Kingmaker, Emperor’s Fortitude, Vigilanti Eternus, Fortune’s Favour, Saviour of Delphis, Neptune, Argos, Uziel: a list of forty-six and still growing.

The Colossus was a rare Oberon-class ship, fitted for extended solitary patrols. Her decks carried a mix of weapons batteries, high-powered lance turrets and flight bays. A dedicated tracking sensor and communications array for these systems and flight crews was manned by three officers on a sub-deck just in front of the captain’s empty command throne; beyond them was set a broad secondary display dedicated to the tactical disposition of the battleship’s flight assets.

With a hiss of pneumatics, the main doors to Kulik’s right opened; the two armsmen sentries snapped to attention and presented their shotcannons. First Lieutenant Saul Shaffenbeck entered at a brisk pace. Shaffenbeck was prim, proper, tall and handsome like the stereotypical image of a Naval officer used by the recruiters, although somewhat in his later years now. His hair had lost none of its lustre, due to an illicit supply of dye, Kulik suspected, and though several years his captain’s senior the lieutenant moved with an energy and grace that gave him the appearance of a much younger man. Shaffenbeck had never applied for his commission as captain and was the longest-serving officer on the Colossus. He had never explained why he was content to remain a first officer rather than a commander, but Shaffenbeck’s natural calm and enviable experience made him a valuable aide; like his predecessors, Kulik was silently pleased Shaffenbeck had never sought further promotion.

The captain noticed Shaffenbeck steal a glance towards the second lieutenant at the comms panel, Mister Hartnell, as he entered. It was the briefest look before Shaffenbeck sought Kulik’s permission to enter with a tilt of the head. Kulik granted permission with a nod in return. By the time Shaffenbeck was by his side Kulik had deciphered the lieutenants’ exchange of glances: having failed to convince his captain to change course as requested by orbital command, the officer of the watch, Mister Hartnell, had secretly sought support from the first lieutenant.

‘I do not remember requesting my first officer’s presence,’ said Kulik, not looking at his second-in-command but keeping his gaze on the main display.

‘I was monitoring communications, sir, and happened to overhear recent exchanges with orbital command. I felt it prudent to be on hand should we require sensitive manoeuvring.’

‘I’m sure that is entirely correct, lieutenant.’ Kulik looked sideways at his second and gave him a glance that conveyed that the captain knew exactly what was going on and was prepared to accept this white lie to avoid imminent debate, but would possibly raise the matter at a later opportunity. In return, Shaffenbeck’s slow blink and slight incline of the head transmitted equally well that he also knew exactly what was going on and was prepared to accept the consequences. Such a momentary exchange was possible only through a familiarity brought about by long years of extended, isolated patrol.

Having swiftly and silently reached this understanding, and in doing so received tacit permission to speak to his captain about the current situation, Shaffenbeck cleared his throat.

‘It would seem, sir, that our current heading would bring us to an orbital berth that is presently occupied by the Noble Voyager.’

‘I believe what you meant to say, lieutenant, is that our current destination, an orbital berth suited to a battleship commanded by a flag-captain of fifteen true-years’ seniority, is currently occupied by a grand cruiser under the command of a three-year newcomer.’

‘And Captain Ellis has responded to the situation how, sir?’

‘He’s done nothing, directly.’ Kulik stiffened and looked directly at his second. ‘I know you think I’m simply being obstinate, Saul, but the situation is intolerable. The whole Lepidus System is overrun with Navy ships. The fact that Admiral Acharya’s fleet arrived earlier does not grant them preferential status. Orbital berths are designated by size of vessel, rank and seniority to ensure that the most important vessels and experienced commanders have better access to the supply tenders and orbital stations. Ellis must have cried to Acharya that I want him to move further out, and now the admiral is leaning on orbital. Orbital command are out of order saying that I must defer to the damned Noble Voyager!’

Before the lieutenant could respond a fresh broadcast blared from the bridge’s speakers.

‘Commander of Colossus, this is orbital command. By order of Admiral Acharya, you are to stand-off orbital station, assuming berth designated sigma-seven. We are re-routing the Endeavour to accommodate this new heading.’

‘I understand completely, captain,’ said Shaffenbeck, and he seemed sincere. ‘However, it is hardly the fault of orbital command and your current course of action is more problematic for them than the source of your anger.’

Kulik shook his head, but his mood was already softening, the irritation he felt salved by quiet words of reason.

‘The logistarius have a lot to deal with at the moment, sir,’ Shaffenbeck continued. ‘More than forty ships of the line plus twice as many escorts have mustered here, and from the general order signal we received we might expect as many again to join us over the coming weeks. Lord High Admiral Lansung seems to be bringing in almost everybody except the Fleet Solar to combat these latest ork attacks.’

‘Being busy is no excuse to make exceptions to protocol and chain of command,’ argued Kulik, though with little conviction. He dropped his voice so that only the first lieutenant could hear. ‘I do not answer to Lansung’s little lapdog, Admiral Acharya. He can shout at the coreward flotilla all he likes. We’re from rimward command and I take direct orders only from Admiral Price.’

‘Price is not favoured by the Lord High Admiral since his outburst at Caollon, sir.’ The lieutenant instinctively matched his commander’s informality with lowered voice. ‘If the rumours are true that Price intends to make the Colossus his flagship when he arrives, we would do well not to rile Acharya unduly beforehand. Forgive any forwardness on my part, but I’ve been caught between a feuding captain and flag-captain before and it was unpleasant. I’ve no desire to go one step further and be batted between warring admirals.’ He paused for a moment and glanced at the navigational display. ‘On top of that, I certainly would prefer it if you didn’t crash Colossus into anything.’

Kulik grunted a grudging affirmative.

‘Very good, sir,’ Lieutenant Shaffenbeck said, raising his voice. ‘Helm, lay in course to berth sigma-seven. Comms, relay the captain’s acceptance of orbital command’s new instructions. Also, please conduct the captain’s gratitude to the commander of Endeavour and extend invitation for him to join us at officers’ mess at his earliest convenience.’

Kulik coughed and raised his hand to his mouth to conceal a smile at this last impertinence. Shaffenbeck was like a mother sometimes, always keen for his captain to smooth ruffled feathers and make new friends.

Even so, after a four-year wilderness on space patrol some fresh conversation at the captain’s table would be very much welcomed.

Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

There were few settings more fitting for a war council than the Hall of Glories. A dome nearly five hundred feet across and three hundred high, buttressed and cross-vaulted like a castle tower, the Hall of Glories was the site, so it was claimed, of Rogal Dorn’s meetings with his fellow primarchs on the eve of the Siege of the Imperial Palace.

It struck Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of Assassins, that a chamber known as the Hall of Glories might be filled with all kinds of tacky trophies and paraphernalia of past victories, but it was not. It was currently only dimly lit by a few bluish glow-strips, set in alcoves flanking each of three immense double doors. The walls were granite decorated with horizontal bands of Sivalik sandstone that had been carved with frescoes of warriors stretching back through the long annals of history and prehistory.

The first time Vangorich had come to the Hall of Glories he had marvelled at the sheer inventiveness of mankind’s ability to kill. The earliest figures had simple stakes hardened in fires, through various flint weapons, to the first matchlock guns and then warriors with faceted armour sporting the precursors to the lasguns of the Imperial Army. The last figures in the evolution of mankind’s warriors were tall, stave-bearing soldiers not unlike the Lucifer Blacks that had become famous during the Heresy War.

Vangorich had always wondered why the fresco did not contain images of the Adeptus Astartes, nor the Custodians that guarded the Emperor. Perhaps genetically engineered transhumans had not been part of the artist’s instruction, or perhaps their artificial nature rendered them disqualified from an expression of humanity’s martial history.

There were no banners or plaques to obscure the walls in celebration of past wars. Instead, the polished black and grey marble of the floor was inscribed with a spiralling line of names picked out in gilded letters: the names of places where the Emperor’s servants had fought and died. Not even victories, just planets and starships, orbital stations and drifting hulks, where blood had been shed in the cause of the Imperium and its immortal ruler.

Before the current crisis the list of battles had circled the massive hall thrice, many of them dating back to the Heresy War. Since events at Ardamantua the small army of masons and gilders had been working day and night to keep up with the litany of engagements. They had been dismissed for the war council, as had most of the functionaries and hangers-on associated with the High Lords, leaving just a few dozen record keepers, secretariats and minor members of the Senatorum Imperialis.

It irked Vangorich that he was amongst those that were now waiting in the hall, alongside a few of the less favoured High Lords. It irked him even as it favoured him in some ways. The lesser peons of Terra were the perfect cover for an Assassin. Vangorich was unremarkable in build or appearance, save for the duelling scar that slashed through the left side of his lips and chin, and curiously wide-set, dark eyes. His simple black attire — from short boots, stockings and breeches to coat and thin scarf — was not out of place amongst the drab robes and similar suits of the flunkies and scriptors that milled about waiting for the true High Lords to arrive.

Lansung’s manoeuvring had grown bolder and bolder over the last few weeks as, one by one, the other institutions that made up the Imperium — or were allied to it, in the case of the Adeptus Mechanicus — realised just how dependant they were on the benevolence of the Imperial Navy. The arrival of the Beast and the tide of battle driven before the xenos war leader had swallowed up whole star systems, and the reach of the orks seemed almost limitless. Dozens of worlds had fallen to the haphazard onslaught, and only the Navy could provide the means to stem the encroaching horde; only the Navy offered protection for important dignitaries with the means to flee before the green mass.

The Lord High Admiral had not been idle in despatching his forces to the aid of those loyal to him in the Senatorum, while those reluctant few whose support had been tardy found their outposts and convoys bereft of military support. Though the Adeptus Mechanicus had their own ships, and were essential to the maintenance of Lansung’s continued dominance, it appeared the Lord High Admiral and the Fabricator General had come to an arrangement of sorts. The Lord of Mars was happy for the Master of the Fleet to take the glory, while in secret they divided the spoils of their newly-founded partnership.

A distant sounding of a fanfare heralded the coming of the major players in the Senatorum Imperialis. A column of Lucifer Blacks two abreast, the bodyguard of the Imperial elite, advanced along the corridor approaching the Hall of Glories, the crash of their tread resounding in unison. Vangorich stopped himself from showing the contempt he felt at that moment. The original Lucifer Blacks had fought during the Unification and Heresy War and earned great distinction for their loyalty and expertise. The Imperial Guardsmen in the regiment that now bore their name were little more than highly-trained, well-equipped ornaments for the grandiose. While nominally they answered to Lord Commander Militant Verreault — an upright, credible veteran whom Vangorich actually admired — the truth was that Solar-General Sayitora hired them out like mercenaries in exchange for favour and physical reward.

Each Lucifer Black wore enamelled black carapace armour over a deep woven mesh of anti-ballistic threads. Those that entered the hall bore shock-glaives — long polearms with silvered blades. Tall helms and mirrored visors concealed their faces. Their presence, in such numbers, demonstrated not only Lansung’s personal resources but also signified unity between the Imperial Navy and the Astra Militarum.

This was a dangerous thing to Vangorich and he was surprised the other High Lords had allowed it to come to pass, jeopardising their own positions. Such displays of cooperation would have been unthinkable a century ago. The Imperial Army had been disbanded, the Legiones Astartes broken asunder, to prevent any one individual wielding the overwhelming power of fleet and ground troops. Now Lansung was flouting such measures, using the ork attacks as an excuse to override the old arguments and objections to such hoarding of military force.

Four hundred strong, the Lucifer Blacks split to move around the circumference of the large chamber, a score remaining by the open doors with blades raised to form an honour arch for the entering senators.

Lansung was the last to arrive, a roll and crash of drums and the climax of the clarions announcing his presence. Above, amongst the smog of incense that hung constantly beneath the dome, vast chandeliers carved as flights of ribbon-trailing cherub-like figures holding burning torches blazed into light, banishing the gloom that had previously filled the room.

Into this brightness stepped Lansung, the medals on his broad chest glinting, the gold of his brocade glistening.

Though still corpulent, the Lord High Admiral’s considerable frame showed signs of being slowly eroded by his busy schedule of late. His jowls hung a little looser, his chins wobbled a little more with skin than fat. Vangorich estimated that Lansung had lost twenty, perhaps as much as twenty-five pounds, in recent weeks, and wondered whether the stress of such politicking was taking a toll in other ways. Whatever the cause, the loss of weight could not be overlooked. Certain compounds, toxins, stimulants and soporifics had to be administered in precise doses relating to the target’s body mass and Vangorich would have to take this into account if his plan for the coming conference did not bear fruit and more drastic measures became necessary.

It was no coincidence that Lord High Admiral Lansung had chosen this venue for his announcement. Probably more than half of the names circling the hall were of starships; such was the nature of war in an interstellar empire. The echo back to Dorn holding council with his brothers was also a striking image to be exploited.

With a magnanimous wave of a ringed hand Lansung invited his fellow High Lords to sit down at the ornate table sitting somewhat lost in the middle of the vast chamber. Vangorich found his place towards one end amongst the other lesser participants, though this was of no surprise. He had always been fascinated by the physical representations of more abstract concepts like power and influence, and the seating arrangements of any Senatorum conclave were a study in the principles.

Somewhat more surprisingly, Lansung chose not to sit at the head of the table as Vangorich had expected, but settled between Tobris Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum, and the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, Juskina Tull. They were close enough to the head of the table to make it clear they were in ascendance, but nobody claimed the empty chair that would once have been occupied by the Sigillite or Dorn during their long councils.

On reflection, Lansung’s positioning made some sense. Vangorich knew that the head of the Imperial Navy was about to announce a fresh offensive against the tide of orks encroaching upon the Segmentum Solar — and assumed the other High Lords were equally informed — and such an expedition would require considerable supplies and logistical support. By choosing to associate himself with the Administratum that would provide those supplies and the merchant fleet that would carry them, Lansung was elevating the status of both organisations above even the Astra Militarum and the Adeptus Arbites who had thus far been waging much of the fight against the barbarous greenskins.

Sat on the opposite side, at the far end, Vangorich’s own position was almost as far away from Lansung as was possible whilst still remaining at the table. Only poor Hektor Rosarind, the Chancellor for Imperial Estates, was further away from the seat of power.

The chair to the right of the Assassin was empty; the Inquisitorial Representative, Wienand, was not present. Her absence annoyed Vangorich more than the admiral’s posturing. He had figured she would be an easy ally to win during the coming council. Of almost equal measure was his annoyance that Wienand’s chief aide and bodyguard, Raznick, had managed to disappear. He had a suspicion, but no evidence as yet, that Raznick had been sent to Mars; no doubt to make inquiries regarding Vangorich’s ongoing operations at the heart of the Cult Mechanicus.

The Grand Master had at least hoped to see Wienand’s public assistant on Terra, Rendenstein. She was proving as elusive as her mistress. The Inquisitorial Representative was being far more cautious since Beast Krule had killed her last second.

Lansung made no pretence of allowing the Lord Commander or the Head of the Administratum to open the proceedings. This was his war council and he rose up, hands balled into fists on the age-worn wood, and looked up and down the length of the table. There was a chorus of mechanical whines as vox-trackers were powered to catch the coming oration, while flashes from pictograph-capture units reflected from the marble columns and dark walls as the scene was recorded for posterity by the Senatorum’s recollection scribes.

‘In each age of man there comes a time when we are most sorely tested,’ Lansung began, speaking quietly, with forced gravitas and sincerity. ‘I beg leave to bring forth a motion before the Senatorum Imperialis that will define this age, and humbly lay upon the deliberations of those gathered here such meagre thoughts as I can collect on the subject that vexes us most at this time.’

Vangorich wanted to laugh — there was nothing humble or meagre about Lansung — but he kept perfectly silent and still, seemingly fixed upon the Lord High Admiral while in fact he gauged the reactions and temperament of the other High Lords.

‘The encroachment of the orks staggered us, I admit. These savages we thought broken, scattered and of little consequence. Like many others, I allowed hopes of peace to outweigh distrust and conscience of duty. Their remarkable offensive has caught us off-guard. Even the might of the Imperial Fists, the honoured defenders of Terra itself, has been insufficient to match this threat.’

A few of the senators drew in sharp breaths. Vangorich was amazed that Lansung would openly criticise one of the First Founding Chapters as he seemed to be doing.

‘We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by the presence of these armoured ork stations in unexpected places behind our lines. If they are behind our forces, we are also at many points fighting actively behind theirs. Both sides are therefore in an extremely dangerous position. And if the Imperial Guard and our own Navy are well handled, as I believe they will be — if the brave Navy retain that genius for recovery and counter-attack for which they have so long been famous, and if the Imperial Guard shows the dogged endurance and solid fighting power of which there have been so many examples in the past — then a sudden transformation of the scene might spring into being.’

This intrigued Vangorich even further. There had been consistent whispers that Lansung was organising a fresh offensive using the fleet he was gathering at Lepidus Prime, but was he really going to openly promise a reverse of the war’s fortunes?

The Lord High Admiral continued talking but Vangorich only half-listened while he considered this development. It occurred to the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum that Lansung was beginning to reap the rewards of promises made, but at the same time his political creditors would start demanding results. Lansung could only manipulate the situation to his advantage for so long until someone would want their payback. It was too early for any of the other senators, Vangorich especially, to accuse Lansung of overstepping the mark. However, unless the admiral could demonstrate positive movement in the situation against the orks, his backers and followers would start to fade away.

The speech he was making now signalled a transformation from a position of offering promises to actual action. Vangorich did not know what part the others were fated to play in the drama to come, or what quid pro quo had been offered to secure their support, but he could guess. The first military action would be a success for the Imperial Navy, and with that honour secured then Lansung would most likely allow the focus to shift to the Astra Militarum. Once they had gained a few victories for their rolls of honour their positions as defenders of the Imperium would be fixed for a millennium or more. History would not forget the commanders that saved the Imperium from the predations of the Beast.

‘In the meantime, we shall not waste our breath nor cumber our thought with reproaches.’ Lansung intertwined his pudgy fingers and nodded sagely for the benefit of the recorders. ‘When you have a friend and comrade at whose side you have faced tremendous struggles, and your friend is smitten down by a stunning blow, it may be necessary to make sure that the weapon that has fallen from his hands shall not be added to the resources of your common enemy. But you need not bear malice because of your friend’s cries of delirium and gestures of agony. You must not add to his pain — you must work for his recovery. The association of interest between the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus remains. The cause remains. Duty inescapable remains. Subject to the iron demands of the war that we are now waging against the Beast and all his works, we shall try so to conduct ourselves towards the liberation of those benighted systems from the foulest thralldom into which they have been cast.’

Lansung paused and sipped from a crystal goblet. Water, not wine, Vangorich noted. The Lord High Admiral had seemingly sagged under the weight of responsibility during the last part of his speech, burdened by regret of mistakes past. Now he straightened and even smiled.

‘Let us think rather of the future. Today is the sixth of Septival, the anniversary of the liberation of Nastor Primus. A year ago at Nastor I watched the stately parade down the Avenue of Concord by the Nastoran regiments while craft of the Navy from their shipyards flew overhead. Who can foresee what the course of the rest of the year will bring?’

The Lord High Admiral looked at Ecclesiarch Mesring, head of the freshly recognised Adeptus Ministorum. The two men exchanged friendly smiles, pre-arranged it was clear to see, intended to send another message to the doubters. Lansung had the backing of the holiest of the Emperor’s servants. In return, Vangorich guessed, the Ecclesiarchy’s missionaries and preachers would find welcome and passage on the ships of the Imperial Navy. It seemed that Mesring was willing to call bluff on the poison Vangorich had introduced to his system. It was also entirely possible that the Ecclesiarch had discovered a counter-agent. For the moment it did not matter — Mesring was confident enough in his continued survival to make open alliance with Lansung.

‘Faith is given to us to help and comfort us when we stand in awe before the unfurling scroll of human destiny,’ continued Lansung. ‘And I proclaim my faith that some of us will live to see a sixth of Septival when a liberated Nastor Primus will once again rejoice in her greatness and in her glory, and once again stand forward as the champion of the freedom and the rights of man. When the day dawns, as dawn it will, the soul of all mankind will turn with comprehension and with kindness to those men and women, wherever they may be, who in the darkest hour did not despair of the Imperium.

‘But let us not speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days, these are great days — the greatest days our people have ever lived — and we must all thank the Emperor that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.’

The admiral waited for the applause such a speech deserved, which was started by Juskina Tull and quickly taken up by the others, including Vangorich. When the clapping started to falter, Lansung sat down, stern-faced, and held up a hand in false modesty.

‘Much gratitude, much gratitude. It is you that I should applaud, for allowing me to voice the thoughts of this council.’

Vangorich quickly reviewed the speech and came to the conclusion that although Lansung had spoken for some time, he had said very little at all, except as coded promises or concessions to those waiting to hear particular phrases. There had to be more here than the Master of Assassins understood, for Lansung could not advance the Navy’s plans with more rhetoric; something of substance had to be forthcoming.

Vangorich decided to move the agenda along a little.

‘Wonderful, Lord High Admiral! Bravo!’ Lansung had been turning towards Ekharth of the Administratum, expecting the first reply from him, but Vangorich interrupted, eliciting a brief scowl from the Navy commander.

‘Thank you,’ said Lansung with a gracious nod of acceptance. He started to turn back to Ekharth, who was opening his mouth to speak, but Vangorich was again quicker.

‘I can barely wait for your triumphant return, Admiral Lansung.’

‘Return?’ Lansung was perplexed more than vexed. ‘What return?’

‘Well, we all know that you wield starships as well as you weave words, Lord High Admiral, as befits your station. I assumed that you would be personally leading the fleet against the ork menace.’

Eyes narrowed for a moment, Lansung saw the trap being laid out for him. With an agility of thought far beyond any physical act he might perform, the admiral side-stepped quickly.

‘To conceive of the plan that will bring us victory will be reward enough, Master Vangorich. Like yourself, I would rather not draw attention to my efforts. There are many fine admirals in the Segmentum Solar deserving of a chance to earn proper respect and renown without my interference.’

Vangorich knew that his first strike had been hasty and clumsy and he regretted the attempt even as he smiled at the Lord High Admiral. His mind was racing, seeking some parry to Lansung’s counter-argument.

‘Noble, very noble, admiral. Yet your modesty endangers the Imperium. I would not have us send a lesser commander simply for the sake of history’s recognition. One does not leave a better balanced and sharper blade in its sheath because others have not seen such frequent use, and I think you do yourself a disservice by squandering your capacities here in the Senatorum when battle calls to your most precious talents.’

Lansung’s fixed smile grew genuine and Vangorich realised that he had missed his mark again. The admiral clearly knew that if he was physically removed from Terra his grip on the Senatorum would be lessened. Vangorich was trying to prise just a little finger away from the vice-like fist that Lansung currently maintained, and the benefit of interstellar distance would be considerable. There was even the chance that he might actually die in battle, though everything Vangorich knew about Lansung suggested he was vain and ambitious, but never a physical coward. His service record was very impressive, as was the ruthlessness that underpinned it, and Vangorich would not be able to make any accusation of that ilk. The admiral knew this and easily deflected the suggestion.

‘The commanders that will be chosen will have served under me for many years, Grand Master.’

I bet they have, thought Vangorich.

‘It is they who have been serving directly against the foes of mankind these past years and are best placed to enact our strategies against the Beast,’ Lansung continued. ‘A degree of detachment, physical as well as emotional, is required for command, my dear Vangorich. I would have thought you understood that as well as those of us who have war in our blood.’

Vangorich had to concede the point with a superficial nod. He was irked again that Wienand was not there to exploit what he could not see, but there was no point wasting time wishing for things that were not to be. The eyes of the other High Lords were upon him, showing a mixture of sympathy and impatience. He would not be indulged much longer and had to take a different approach.

‘I must defer to your superior wisdom in this instance, admiral.’ Vangorich took a petty but encouraging satisfaction from the tic of annoyance in Lansung’s eye whenever the Grand Master did not use his full title. No matter what happened next, Vangorich could still get inside Lansung’s head when he needed to. ‘Like the others, I am on tenterhooks. Please, furnish us with the details of your plans so that we might debate and approve them.’

‘When the latest intelligence has been compiled, I shall lay before this council every facet of the coming strategy.’ This was pure dissembling and Vangorich knew that he had lost this round. ‘Until such a time, I would think it wise that the council airs its desires and aims for the coming offensive, so that the voice of all shall be heard and taken into account.’

This was nothing short of open invitation for the assembled senators to bring out every time-worn axe to grind again, to air every slight and disagreement brought forth in previous gatherings.

Vangorich stifled a sigh of boredom. This was going to be a long council. He would be sure to make Wienand regret her decision to be absent.

Three

Immaterium — Subservius

Aboard the Adeptus Mechanicus ship there was stalemate.

‘Out of the question, Captain Koorland,’ said Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex. The tech-priest’s telescopic eyes lengthened an inch, the closest equivalent to a glare that the man could muster. Secondary tool appendages waved disapprovingly around his midriff. ‘In the absence of data the most obvious course of action is your transit to Terra, or perhaps Mars. You are, in no vacillating terms, the last of your Chapter. Not only is your physical personage highly valued, both for physiological investigation and purposes of wider military morale, but your first-hand experiences of this latest orkoid threat are invaluable. There is, to be clear, nobody else like you in the galaxy at this moment in time. To even consider returning you to a position of active combat duty would be reprehensible.’

Koorland towered over the tech-priest, even without his armour, and was quite capable of ripping apart his heavily augmented and cybertised adversary, but Urquidex stared up at the gigantic warrior without any sign of fear. Small digital tools flickered in and out of the tech-priest’s fingertips as Urquidex interlaced his hands across his barrel chest.

Captain Koorland turned back towards the viewport. Outside was a field of stars, the very edge of the system. In a day or two they would reach the Mandeville point and be clear for translation into warp space. The Space Marine’s reflection was dark-skinned, almost blackened by the melanchromic reflex that had protected him from the radiation that had killed so many of his battle-brothers.

‘You must understand that I will not allow that to happen, magos,’ Koorland said heavily. He laid a hand against the wall, fingers splayed, as if reaching out to the dead they were leaving behind. ‘I am a Space Marine. It is my duty to fight.’

‘It is your duty to serve the Emperor, second captain, and you can best do your duty by returning to the Sol System with us to divulge all intelligence you have gathered on the nature of this menace. In the longer term that will be of far greater benefit to the Imperium you are sworn to protect.’

‘Logically, perhaps.’ Koorland swung around to confront the tech-priest. ‘I would not expect you to understand the creed of the warrior-born, the oath of the Wall.’

‘If such matters are illogical, as you say, then your assumption is correct, second captain.’ Urquidex slumped slightly, his mechanical appendages drooping a little. A look approximating pity crossed what remained of his face, as though some more primitive, biological part of the man-machine was now in control. ‘Do not think me totally impervious to your predicament. Thousands of the Machine-God’s servants have perished here, and millions more across many star systems. They gave their lives to improve our chances of victory at some future point. Unless we are to throw untold billions of lives at this problem and hope to defeat the orks’ raw aggression with untamed barbarity of our own, we must learn to fight more intelligently. At the moment we are outmatched on both accounts.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Koorland crossed the small cell-like chamber and sat on the fold-down cot along one wall. It sagged under his weight, the reinforced braces creaking. ‘Let me tell you, my brothers and I fought with courage, honour and discipline. There was nothing we could do to match the power of the attack moon.’

‘My point exactly, captain.’ Urquidex paused as the door hissed open.

Standing on the threshold was a mostly mechanical apparition, which Koorland at first took to be a servitor.

‘Good evening, Captain Koorland,’ said the thing, in a voice that had the thrum of artificial modulation but was unmistakably that of Phaeton Laurentis.

‘Emperor’s Throne!’ swore Koorland, standing up. ‘What happened to you?’

The tech-priest looked nothing like he had the first time Koorland had met him. He now stepped through the doorway on a tripod of legs, his mechanical lower torso clanking and whirring with pistons in an effort to maintain balance. Most of Laurentis’ upper body was covered with his robes but beneath their thick layer were unnatural bulges and twists of hidden cables, jutting pipes and trembling implants. His arms were double-articulated miniature cranes, tipped with quad-digit grabbing claws that clacked open and shut as Laurentis raised a hand in greeting. Nothing remained of his face except for a small patch of flesh and one eye, which had been relocated to a central position. The rest was heavily riveted metal plates, speaker grilles and sensor-cluster lenses and spines.

‘My physique has undergone a number of repairs and upgrades. No cause for alarm.’

‘When I saw most of you splayed out on that examination gurney I thought they would put you back together the way you had been.’

‘There were some very inefficient systems in that body,’ said Urquidex before Laurentis could offer an opinion either way. ‘Magos Laurentis’ newly adapted form is far better for the sort of tasks he will be performing.’

‘That sounds like a demotion,’ said Koorland, sitting down again now that his surprise had subsided. ‘Have you offended your superiors in some way, tech-priest?’

‘The offence is to the Machine-God,’ said Laurentis. ‘I perhaps spoke out of turn concerning the actions of my fellow techna-liturgia during the Ardamantua crisis. Only by thorough debriefing have I been allowed to continue in the role of magos. However, this body and these duties of which my colleague speaks are not a punishment. Most of my flesh was destroyed and many of my hard-lined systems corrupted. Fortunately my core data store remained intact.’

‘If I understand it right, I have you to thank, what little it is worth, for my life.’

‘Gratitude is not required, captain. I simply acted on a most illogical stimulus.’ The construct-man’s head rotated strangely to regard Urquidex with a cluster of red lenses. ‘I believe I have formulated a new axiom of research.’

‘Indeed?’ exclaimed the magos biologis. ‘That would be unprecedented. Are you quite sure that your faculties remained intact following your violent interaction with the orkoids?’

‘It is called a “battle”, magos. Not a “violent interaction”. I know; I was involved in it.’ Koorland could not help but feel some amusement at the irony of this statement. It was Laurentis that had once called the Chromes’ claws ‘digital blades affixed to or articulated from forelimbs’. Though his body had been rendered even more artificial and mechanical, Laurentis’ personality seemed to have lurched towards the biological.

‘This axiom, I am very proud of it,’ Laurentis continued. ‘Perhaps if it is adopted it shall be named after me. And this is it: “When all rational explanation has been exhausted, any explanation, no matter how irrational, must be the solution.” Do you like it?’

‘Nonsensical drivel of the highest order. It was exactly this unbecoming manner that brought censure from Magos Van Auken.’

‘By all rational explanation, there were no survivors of Ardamantua. Yet here you are, captain.’ Laurentis returned his attention to the Space Marine. ‘My own recollection, somewhat hazily rendered by my damaged editicore processors, is of acting not out of any extant proof that you were alive, or indeed that there were any other survivors. Not as far as I was consciously aware. In my fragmentary state I believe I happened upon a further stage of enlightenment concerning the artifices of the Machine-God. Through unconscious and subconscious deduction I formed the illogical hypothesis that someone might be alive. My adjustment of the scanning parameters was equally unfounded by rational deduction.’

‘A guess,’ said Urquidex. ‘Random extrapolation of chaos. The Machine-God works in a convoluted manner, Laurentis, but if you believe that you are some new prophet of his artifice I must disappoint you. Evidently you have suffered a deeper malfunction to your core centres than we believed.’

‘A hunch,’ said Koorland. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘A tech-priest acted on an instinct, a hunch? It seems Ardamantua was remarkable in one more respect.’

‘Quite so,’ said Laurentis. Two of his sensor antennae bent upwards in something that might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘A hunch.’

‘It would be in your interest not to announce such a thing in the presence of Van Auken,’ said Urquidex. ‘He is already minded to have you core-stripped and data-mined for all information regarding the events at Ardamantua. This heretical nonsense does no credit to your continued deterministic existence, Laurentis.’

‘That will not happen,’ said Koorland. ‘Though Magos Laurentis does not acknowledge his efforts, I do, and I am bound by my traditions to honour the debt I owe to him. There will be no punitive measures or investigations carried out, do you understand?’

‘It is not your place to interfere in an internal matter of the Adeptus Mechanicus, captain. Your opinion in this matter is inconsequential.’ Despite his words there was a note of equivocation in the tech-priest’s tone.

Koorland stood up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling of the recuperation cell. Without seeming to expend any effort at all, the Space Marine grabbed Urquidex’s robes in a massive fist and lifted the magos from the deck. Koorland turned so that Urquidex was pressed up against the yards-thick glass of the viewport. The magos’ mechadendrites and bionic limbs squirmed.

‘Perhaps you will find floating in vacuum of no consequence, magos,’ said the captain. ‘That will be your fate should I learn of anything befalling Magos Laurentis. Equal unpleasantness will ensue for Van Auken or anyone else that acts against the interest of the magos. Am I understood?’

Urquidex nodded. Koorland lowered the tech-priest and relinquished his grasp.

‘Very well. You may leave now.’

Without another word Urquidex scuttled out of the room, head and appendages bobbing with disapproval. Koorland watched the tech-priest disappear down the corridor outside and then sat down once the magos had turned out of view. He realised that Laurentis was regarding him with a full suite of sensors, his one remaining eye staring directly at the Space Marine.

‘Interesting,’ said the tech-priest.

‘What is?’

‘Though not intimately acquainted with every battle-custom and facet of Chapter orthodoxy concerning the Imperial Fists, my data-files were significantly invested with relevant material before my association with your warriors began. I do not recall any specific blood-debt traditions or requirements, the likes of which you appear to have invoked. That being the case, in absence of other evidence, I assume that you have taken it upon yourself to extend a protective oath in my favour for another reason. I am at a loss to explain what that reason might be.’

Koorland leaned forwards, thick forearms resting on his knees.

‘Let us just call it a hunch.’

Four

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Sigillite’s Retreat.

Vangorich wondered if the small walled garden had been named as a place of repose for the founder of the Council of Terra, or if it perhaps drew on an even more ancient history for its inspiration.

The area was square, about thirty foot across, quite unimposing by the standards of the Imperial Palace. A single log split in two down its length and shaped by carpenters formed a cross-shaped bench at the centre of the garden, at a diagonal to the four archways by which the cloister could be entered. The paths were of pure white gravel between beds of larger stones in dark grey and black, arranged something like a floor plan, though Vangorich suspected a purpose more symbolic or metaphysical informed the layout.

The Grand Master wondered if there had once been plants here. If so, they had died long ago for lack of care; no mouldering leaf or root, or speck of soil remained amongst the sterile rock.

Like many other parts of the Palace, the Sigillite’s Retreat had been cut off by collapsed bastions and fallen walls, isolated by the ruin brought down upon Terra during the Heresy War. Only a chance remark in one of the old annals even admitted its existence, and it had taken three whole years of diligent investigation for Vangorich to identify its position, and a further six to secretly excavate and conceal passage into the garden.

Overhead must once have been open to the sky, but now the only light was dim, filtered through a dirty window mesh dome in the roof of the greater Palace nearly half a mile above. If one looked above the twenty-foot-high walls, the towering edifice of the Palace crowded down, piled up on great columns floor after floor, a teetering mass of dormitories and offices for the Administratum. It was if the garden existed in its own little bubble of reality now, a cave amongst the strata of hab-complexes and scriptoria.

But here in the midst of the bureaucracy and madness was a place of utter charm and utter calm. It was all the more precious to Vangorich because only he knew of its existence. The volume that named the space had been hidden deep within the Librarius Sanctus where nobody else would find it; the convicted criminal labourers sequestered from the Adeptus Arbites had been handed over to the Adeptus Mechanicus for induction as servitors after they had completed their work.

Alone, quiet and undisturbed, Vangorich sat on the wooden bench and considered his options without risk of discovery. It was perhaps the only place in the galaxy he lessened his guard for a moment.

It was, therefore, something of a shock to the Grand Master to hear a delicate cough behind him.

He was on his feet in a moment, las-blade flicked from his sleeve, digital weapons glinting with power as he flexed his knuckles in preparation to fire.

Wienand stood leaning against the inside of one of the arches, her arms crossed, her face a mask of smugness. Her features were young for one of her position, though anti-agapics and age-reducing therapies were a possibility. She was not quite as tall as Vangorich, of athletic build, with short, pale grey hair and a narrow, sharp-boned face. Not unpleasant to look at by any measure, but also not so pretty that she would attract undue attention at a gathering.

She was dressed in a dirty coveralls, much patched, over a chunky shirt of grey canvas-like fabric. Workman’s boots and an oily rag spilling from a pocket completed the disguise. Vangorich realised she must have been forced to masquerade as a menial in order to gain entry to his refuge. He didn’t know exactly where the security breach was, but that fact alone narrowed it down to a few possibilities.

‘Surprise,’ said the Inquisitorial Representative, showing pearl-white teeth in a grin.

‘Surprise be damned, you wretched woman,’ snapped Vangorich, rattled for the first time in many decades. ‘I might have killed you.’

‘Now, now, Grand Master, at least have the grace to admit when you have been outdone.’

Vangorich sheathed his blade and deactivated the digi-weapons. He conceded the point with a single nod of the head and gestured Wienand towards the bench.

‘It was too much to hope that I might be permitted just a single place of sanctuary,’ he said, sitting down while Wienand advanced along the path, the gravel scrunching under her tread. The noise brought fresh irritation; a reminder of the peace he sought being broken. Also, it was just clumsy to be heard so easily and it irked all of Vangorich’s instincts for stealth.

‘You can be assured that I will not tell anybody else,’ she said, sitting on the bench to Vangorich’s left, across from him. ‘I am rather glad you have a little bolthole, Drakan. It makes me feel safer knowing that a man who puts himself under so much stress has somewhere he can relax. The last thing we need at the moment is a Grand Master of Assassins getting tetchy.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Your little outburst during Lansung’s war council. It was stupid.’

Vangorich blinked, shocked twice in a short space of time, this time by the inquisitor’s bluntness. ‘At least I was in attendance, in a position to oppose this disastrous plan.’

‘Disastrous? Do you think there should be no response against the ork attacks? You might well think that Lansung and his games are the greatest threat to the Imperium but it is not your position to judge! The orks will not wait for us to reorganise ourselves and any response, no matter how late and no matter what the motivation behind it, must be welcome. There is an actual war, Drakan, and we are very close to losing it. Perhaps you think your operatives will be able to assassinate every one of the greenskins?’

‘If Lansung gets his way, it will lead to a reunification, in practice if not law, of the Navy and Guard. Surely you can see what a threat that poses.’

‘Greater than the orks? Not yet. Let us not get ahead of ourselves. We will burn that bridge when we get to it. You really are starting to overstep your mark, Drakan. While you were busy destroying whatever credibility you had left by responding to Lansung’s posturing, I have been hard at work protecting the Imperium. Your meddling is causing more problems than it is solving. In fact, have you done anything useful lately? I know you have a cell on Mars, do they have anything to report?’

In no mood for banter, Vangorich stood up, straightened his coat and started walking towards the archway ahead.

‘If you leave, you will never find out what I was going to tell you,’ said the inquisitor.

Vangorich stopped at the arch but did not turn. ‘Really? Do you think me such a useful hound that you can feed me scraps at your whim to keep me loyal?’

‘I bring a warning.’

Turning, Vangorich raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

‘Yes, a warning,’ said Wienand, standing up. ‘You are making enemies, Drakan. Powerful enemies.’

‘That is not news, my dear Wienand.’ Vangorich smiled with genuine amusement. ‘How nice of you to care for my well-being.’

‘It is the Inquisition that you are starting to alienate, Grand Master.’

Vangorich kept his tone light, hiding the concern he felt at this statement.

‘I thought we were friends, Wienand. I know we have had our odd duel, but we are allies, are we not?’

‘And that is your other mistake. We are allies for the time being, of a sort, but do not think for a moment that I place any concern for you above the greater protection of the Emperor and the Imperium. We would use and discard each other in an instant, do not pretend otherwise.’

‘My other mistake?’

‘Your first is to conflate the Inquisitorial Representative with the Inquisition. I am not a Lord High Admiral, a Grand Master, not even a speaker. My position is entirely arbitrary, sustained by the goodwill of my fellow inquisitors and no small amount of political games I must play away from the Senatorum. There are many who are beginning to doubt the wisdom of my continued presence in that role.’

‘It sounds as if you have enemies, not I. I wish you every fortune in your future endeavours away from the Senatorum Imperialis.’

‘You vain idiot, shut up and listen!’

The words were like a slap across the face, sharp and stinging. Vangorich took a step towards Wienand, hand half-raised to strike her. He gathered his temper and turned the fist into a pointing finger.

‘Pick your words carefully, inquisitor, if you wish to retain such allies as you currently possess. It seems to me that you come seeking help but cloak it as threat.’

‘There is movement against me within the Inquisition on two fronts, Drakan. Firstly, they believe I have been too tolerant of the excesses of the Senatorum during recent events. In fact they feel that the entire Imperium’s governance has been allowed to fall to ruin in the past few decades. They want to extend a stronger, more obvious control over the Senatorum.’

‘The Inquisition may have absolute authority, but they cannot survive without the cooperation of the likes of Lansung, Zeck and Gibran. Your temporal power is limited by the resources others place at your disposal.’

‘There are some that forget such truth. They believe, in no small part due to the influence of the Ministorum, that they answer a genuine calling by the Emperor. Righteous men and women make for dangerous rulers.’

‘There is another reason for your position becoming more precarious?’

‘My treatment of you, Grand Master. The Officio Assassinorum is a weapon to be deployed at the behest of the High Lords, not an organisation to sit in judgement of them. Some amongst my order wish to make an example of you and your temples.’

‘We would retaliate.’

‘If you wish to plunge the Imperium into anarchy whilst it is beset from outside by xenos of untold destructive potential. They rely upon you, Drakan, to stay true to your loyalty and duty.’

Vangorich was about to reply, but held his tongue. Could he really fall on his own sword to protect the greater stability of the Imperium? Was he that dedicated? More importantly, did these mysterious inquisitors believe that he would, and so risk everything on the presumption?

‘I see that you begin to understand the gravity of our situation.’ Wienand watched him intently as she stepped closer, dropping her voice. ‘We must indulge in a brief period of mutual preservation. That is why I have come here, to your inner sanctuary. I declare amnesty. You will have my full cooperation if you promise me yours.’

There was no way Vangorich could take her at her word, but conversely his own promise would be equally meaningless, so why did she ask for it? Was she really that scared of what the Inquisition, or at least parts of it, intended to do?

‘All right, an amnesty for the moment. Better that we exert ourselves to the frustration of Lansung’s ambitions than expend energy circling each other without effect. What did you have in mind?’

Wienand laid a hand on Vangorich’s shoulder as she stepped even closer.

‘Your aim is good, Grand Master. If we can force Lansung out into the fleet there is a chance that we can repair some of the damage he has done in the Senatorum in his absence. We might even get very lucky and he’ll be blasted by the orks. However, simple argument is not going to be enough. Events, my dear Drakan, will have to conspire to force the admiral to move his fat hindquarters onto the bridge of a starship.’

‘What events?’

‘That is what I am here to discuss…’

Five

Lepidus Prime — orbital

‘Remind my steward to use less starch in future,’ said Kulik, fidgeting with the stiff collar of his shirt.

‘I shall pass on the message,’ said Shaffenbeck, in an absent-minded way that conveyed that he would do no such thing because Kulik was never happy with the starch of his collars. Throughout their time together the captain’s shirts had always been understarched or overstarched depending on mood, as though there were some infinitesimally small sweet spot that he desired that no mortal could ever attain.

‘And remind me never to accept an invitation to one of these gatherings,’ Kulik continued. He moved his agitation to the heavy brocaded cuffs of his coat. Never comfortable in full dress uniform, the captain was sweltering, positive that rivulets of sweat were coursing down his face.

Turbine-like fans in the launch bay’s ceiling spun lazily, doing little to disperse the body heat of the hundred-or-so assembled officers who had come aboard the Defiant Monarch at Admiral Acharya’s ‘request’. Kulik knew as well as every other commodore, captain and commander present that such requests were not ignored without good reason. As well as the visiting ship commanders, each with their seconds and some with other hangers-on, there were nearly two dozen lesser officers from the Defiant Monarch and the same number again of petty officers marshalling the small army of attendants serving drinks and food.

‘Wine or water?’ asked Shaffenbeck, accosting a passing steward.

‘Both,’ growled Kulik. A moment later a fluted glass of bubbling white wine was in his right hand. The captain swiftly downed the contents and the empty glass was exchanged for a stein of almost clear water. Surprised, Kulik sniffed the contents. It didn’t smell of anything. He cocked an eye at Shaffenbeck. ‘Non-reclaimed hydrates? The admiral really is trying to impress us.’

‘Tenders were moving about thirty thousand litres of the stuff from Lepidus this past week,’ said Shaffenbeck. Kulik knew he could rely on the lieutenant to be abreast of everything going on around the fleet. It was the main reason he overlooked his second-in-command’s abuse of the command comms channel, which by regulations was for the ship’s captain only.

‘And what of the admiral himself?’

Saul nodded to the left. Kulik turned and saw Acharya standing in a gaggle of attentive captains and commanders, his flag-captain Brusech like a bodyguard beside him. Acharya was an unimposing man, of average height and features. His one distinguishing mark was a scar running from his right ear to his lip, a ragged line of red against almost white skin. In contrast Brusech was a giant of a man, with a black bushy beard streaked with grey, his head covered in an unruly mop of the same. Instinctively Kulik ran a hand across his scalp, checking his hair was smoothed down.

‘Stories say that the scar was suffered in combat at the hands of pirates around the Perithian Nebulae,’ Shaffenbeck said.

‘And less favourable tales claim Acharya fell down a flight of stairs whilst drunk,’ countered Kulik. Despite his dislike of Acharya’s grandstanding and obvious politicking, Kulik was inclined to favour the former explanation. ‘I served with Acharya briefly on board the Lord of Hosts, you know?’

‘I did not realise. You must have only been an ensign?’

‘Not quite. I was twelfth lieutenant. Acharya was second. He was competent, fair. Nothing spectacular but nothing terrible, either. I suspect he would have made flag rank eventually, even without licking the boots of the Lord High Admiral. Was very fond of quoting Eskenstein’s Navis Tacticus Superium every few minutes. I think he must have memorised it, but never really learnt it.’

‘Ah, and here comes the other godly being,’ said Shaffenbeck, stepping back slightly so that Kulik could see past him.

‘Hush your blasphemy,’ Kulik replied automatically.

The lieutenant’s retreat revealed the crowd parting for a short but handsome man, officers peeling aside like waves at the prow of a seagoing ship. The new arrival was dressed in stark black — a rarity amongst the usual dark blue that signified a period of officer service in the prestigious Sol fleet — and wore a peaked cap that cast a deep shadow over his face from the stark lighting strips overhead.

The man nodded and smiled in response to greetings from those around him, his head moving left and right constantly as if seeking out something. His search was successful as he spied Kulik and raised a hand in greeting.

‘Admiral Price,’ said the captain with a nod and a slight bow.

‘Rafal. Good to see you,’ said Kulik’s immediate superior, Admiral of the Rimward Flotilla. Price tucked his cap under his arm, revealing slightly ruffled shoulder-length blond hair, and suddenly he seemed in his late thirties rather than early fifties. He grinned, wiping away another ten years with the boyish expression. Kulik could well understand the rumours that Price embodied the Naval tradition of having a girl — several girls — at every station he visited.

‘I was not expecting you, sir,’ said Kulik. He glanced towards Acharya, who had noticed the appearance of his rival and was making his way through the throng in their direction.

‘My invitation must have been lost in the warp somehow,’ Price said with a wink. ‘I’m sure Solar Baron Crziel Acharya, Admiral of the Fleet, fully intended for me to attend.’

Kulik rubbed his chin thoughtfully and turned as Acharya approached.

‘Dominius, I thought you would be too busy with berthing orders and requisitions mandates,’ said Acharya. His voice was slightly higher pitched than most men’s, though it made up in volume what it lacked in gravitas. ‘After all, I thought you loved that sort of thing. If I had known you would prise yourself away from your desk and forms I would have sent a cutter for you.’

‘Such consideration would have been unnecessary, Admiral Acharya,’ Price replied evenly, ignoring the insult. ‘As it is, my lighter will be taking me back to Colossus where I shall raise my flag.’

Kulik looked sharply at Price.

‘Sorry, Rafal, here are your orders,’ Price continued, slipping a small envelope from the pocket of his coat. He handed it to Kulik and then returned his attention to Acharya. ‘Any word for the fleet from the Lord High Admiral yet?’

Acharya shook his head slowly. There was the brief exchange of a glance between the admiral and his flag-captain. Price noticed it too.

‘I see that perhaps you are finally going to show some initiative,’ said Price.

‘The chain of command exists for a reason,’ said Acharya. ‘It would be anarchy if we all started interpreting orders to our own satisfaction. That is, as you well know, the sort of thing that would get a man relegated to a life of convoy baby-sitting and patrols to half-remembered star forts on the segmentum rim.’

Price’s smile faded. He was about to speak but stopped himself, instead relieving a passing steward of a small glass of some amber-coloured liquor. He sniffed the contents of the tumbler and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘Neoscotian whisky? The real thing?’ There was genuine appreciation, perhaps even awe, in Price’s voice and expression. He took a sip. ‘By the Emperor, it really is!’

‘A century old, and more,’ Acharya said smugly, taking a glass of the same from the steward, who had stopped at Kulik’s elbow. He held the drink up to the light and turned it to and fro, gold refracting onto the pale flesh of his hand. ‘Thirty thousand light years from home, and still as pure as the sunlight that fell on the grain that made it.’

‘If only I had known.’ Price paused to gulp down the remaining contents of his glass, eliciting a wince from Acharya, who must have paid a small fortune just for one bottle of the precious alcohol. Price’s eyes widened a little and he gave a slight shudder of pleasure. ‘If only I had known that influence could bring such rewards, I would have started kissing Admiral Lansung’s arse years ago.’

Acharya’s cheeks reddened and his lips trembled with anger as he glared at Price.

‘Of course,’ Price continued, with some bitterness, ‘I was too busy baby-sitting convoys and running supplies to half-forgotten outposts, wasn’t I?’

With a snarl, Admiral Acharya turned sharply and stalked away, tossing his glass carelessly aside, the expensive liquor splashing on the deck. Brusech sighed and shook his head.

‘Come on, captain,’ said Price, turning in the opposite direction.

Kulik stepped to follow but was stopped by Brusech’s hand on his arm. The huge man glanced left then right and then leaned down to speak softly in Kulik’s ear.

‘A word of warning, Rafal. Admiral Acharya has sent orders to the coreward fleet to make translation. He’s going to lead a relief force to Port Sanctus.’

‘Sanctus? You mean the orks haven’t overrun the shipyards there yet?’

‘Latest reports are that the docks and orbital platforms are still holding out. If we can break the blockade, the Sanctus sector fleet will be added to our strength.’

‘So why haven’t I received these orders yet?’

‘Price,’ said Brusech, looking over Kulik’s shoulder at the receding figure of the admiral. ‘Acharya wants to leave behind the rimward fleet, make it look like Price was sat on his arse twiddling his thumbs while the coreward flotillas earn the glory.’

‘And how am I to know that this isn’t some ploy of Acharya’s to get Price to break ranks and head off on his own, earning him further scorn from the Lord High Admiral? If the admiral goes against orders again, Lansung’s all but promised to have him hung for mutiny.’

‘Let’s not play this game, Rafal,’ said Brusech. He straightened up and laid an arm across Kulik’s shoulders. He smiled at the other officers milling around them and kept his voice quiet. ‘You and me, we’ve got to keep the admirals focused, right? Believe me, I have no desire to jump into Port Sanctus with half the available ships. We don’t know how strong the orks really are, but I’d rather have every gun I can and see some go unfired than go into that fight without everything we’ve got. Trust me, Rafal, there’s no good to come of this if we don’t all go.’

‘And I assume you’ve said as much to Acharya? Cheap jibes aside, it really isn’t like him to show this kind of independence. Has he received word from the Lord High Admiral?’

‘No orders from Terra. I’d have seen them. I tried convincing Acharya not to go this way, but he won’t listen.’ Brusech shrugged, setting the tassels of his epaulettes swaying like clock pendulums. ‘Seems he’s taking advice from some young commodore, name of Sartinus. I don’t know this Sartinus but he’s got connections back on Terra and now he’s got the admiral’s ear too. Acharya’s claiming the plan is his own, of course, but I smell Sartinus all over it. Don’t ask me why some commodore fresh out of the Sol fleet is so eager to get us to attack Port Sanctus.’

‘That’s all well above my station, I’m sure,’ said Kulik. He offered his hand to Brusech. ‘Thank you for the alert.’

‘Just get Price to come along,’ said the other flag-captain, shaking Kulik’s hand. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

Brusech nodded and walked away, long strides taking him after Admiral Acharya. Saul fell in beside Kulik as the captain headed off after his superior.

‘What do you make of that?’ he asked the lieutenant.

‘Brusech seems to be on the level,’ said Shaffenbeck. ‘Word around the fleet is that he’s the sort of captain you want in a crunch. Dependable, straightforward, honest. Come to think of it, I’ve no idea what Acharya sees in him.’

‘Less of that, lieutenant,’ Kulik replied. ‘If the admirals want to use us in their game, that’s fine, but let’s not choose sides.’

‘I think the sides have already chosen us, sir,’ Saul replied stiffly. ‘Admiral Price is using the Colossus as flagship and Acharya wants nothing to do with the rimward fleet. I would say I know whose hand is feeding me.’

‘That might be true, but Price isn’t blameless. Like you say, he’s decided to start playing this game too.’

‘So are you going to tell him what Brusech said?’

‘Certainly. It’s going to be no secret when Acharya’s ships leave their berths, so I’d rather not have it look like I don’t know what’s happening. I should have realised something was amiss when I received the invitation to this… gathering. Most of the men here are Acharya’s. A final send-off, no doubt.’

Price had been waylaid by the intervention of various junior officers looking for favour, or simply to meet one of their heroes — Price’s reputation as a maverick had earned him some admirers amongst a certain type of officer. He was about to step into the corridor that joined the cleared landing bay with the neighbouring flight deck when Kulik caught up with him.

‘Took your time,’ said the admiral, clearly in a surly mood after his encounter with Acharya. What had probably started out as a bit of light-hearted goading in Price’s mind had turned personal and sour very swiftly. ‘What did that enormous oaf want with you?’

‘Sir,’ said Kulik, with just enough admonition in his voice that the single word had become a catch-all reproach. It was a trick he had learned from Shaffenbeck.

Price looked at him sharply, mouth curling with displeasure at the captain’s tone.

‘Captain Brusech is a capable officer, and we are fortunate that he is around to temper Admiral Acharya’s excesses.’

‘I suppose you are right,’ said Price, a little petulantly. ‘Anyway, what were you two conspiring about?’

Kulik related the conversation almost verbatim, while they traversed the linking corridor and entered the next flight bay. Cutters, shuttles and lighters from dozens of ships were packed into lines on either side of the exit strip. Admiral Price’s was close at hand, as befitted his rank.

‘We’ll take the Colossus’ cutter, mine can head back to the Indefatigable,’ announced Price, absorbing the news from Kulik. The air crew that had been fussing around the admiral’s shuttle slunk back into the gloom between the bulky craft.

They walked in silence across the deck, heading for Kulik’s lighter, which had been parked somewhat further away from the main deck than was polite for an officer of his rank. Just as with the ship’s berth, Admiral Acharya was displaying his disdain.

‘We won’t go, of course,’ said Price as they reached the Colossus’ shuttle. One of the junior lieutenants, Cabriot, oversaw the deck crew moving the boarding steps into place. Kulik said nothing as they ascended to the craft, preferring not to say anything in front of the lower ranks.

‘I think that would be unwise,’ said Kulik when the door to the captain’s cabin had been sealed, leaving the captain, admiral and lieutenant to speak without being heard. ‘That’s what Acharya wants you to do. If you don’t go and the relief attack fails, he can blame you for not supporting his fleet.’

‘But if I do go, we’ll probably win and that smug bastard will take all of the credit for the action,’ replied Price. ‘His decision; let him live by it or die by it.’

‘And the men that serve in his fleet? Is it their decision?’

‘They knew the risks when they joined up,’ Price said quickly. ‘We don’t get to choose where the enemy are, nor where we might be required to lay down our lives.’

Kulik considered this for a moment, appalled by the sentiment. Price must have read something in his expression.

‘What? You look like you’ve just found out your favourite port doxy has the under-pox.’

‘Forgive any forwardness, but this isn’t like you, admiral. That’s the sort of thing I’d expect to hear from the likes of Acharya. You never struck me as a commander who sees his men as expendable. This rivalry with Acharya, it’s changing you into something I don’t think you intend. If we let Acharya charge off with just his fleet more men will die. Most of those ships will not come back, and you know that’s true.’

Price said nothing for a little while, but sat staring at the decking. When he did speak, he was quiet, showing the humility that had earned Kulik’s respect ten years earlier when they had first met.

‘Sorry, Rafal.’ He looked the captain in the eye and moved his gaze to Shaffenbeck. ‘Your captain can be quite the moraliser, can’t he? He has a keen insight at times.’

‘He got that from me, admiral,’ said the lieutenant, without any hint of irony or humour.

‘Some of our ships are still resupplying, and the Conqueror and Heavenly Wrath are docked for refitting,’ said Kulik. ‘It’ll take at least five days to get the rimward flotilla ready, never mind some other parts of the fleet. If Acharya intends to take his ships out for translation tomorrow, we’ll be running to keep up.’

‘Yes, but I can’t just send my ships out piecemeal.’ Price folded his arms and leaned back with eyes closed. ‘We’ll split the fleet into two waves. Ships ready at present, except the Colossus, will be seconded to Acharya’s ship and leave straight away. We’ll take the stragglers in the second wave.’

‘You’ll give command of the ships to Acharya? Isn’t that what he wants?’ said Saul.

‘You know he’ll use our ships as the vanguard if we let him, sending them in while holding back his,’ added Kulik.

‘Temporary command, gentlemen,’ said Price, opening his eyes. ‘But good point, Rafal. I’ll set the transit order for two days’ time. That should give Acharya’s fleet enough of a head start.’

‘Does it bother you that Acharya’s forced us into this position?’ asked Kulik. ‘It occurs to me that perhaps I am being used by Brusech. It would be a bit of a climb-down if Acharya had to request you support him in the attack at Port Sanctus. Maybe he is relying on your better nature to follow him into battle, but this way he’ll look like the leader rather than an equal.’

‘Yes, to all of your points,’ said Price. He pulled something from his coat pocket: a silver flask engraved with the seal of Neoscotia’s Distillarius Superior. Price laughed and winked. ‘I managed to swipe this from one of the stewards. Small recompense, but it’ll do for now.’

Price took a swig and lifted the container in toast.

‘Here’s to the spoils of politics,’ he said with a laugh.

Kulik took the proffered flask and laughed too. But only on the outside. The politics of admirals would soon get lots of men killed. He hoped it would be worth the sacrifice.

Six

Nestrum — Mandeville point

‘There can be no blame apportioned for your loss at Ardamantua.’ Laurentis gripped a regicide piece in one of his crane-claws and moved it across the board. He placed it in its new position with a heavy click. ‘To have forecast the advances in technology and strategy employed by the orks would have required extrapolation bordering upon the insane.’

‘Only a madman could have foreseen what happened at Ardamantua?’ replied Koorland. He studied the regicide board. Sixteen days it had taken for the ship to travel to Nestrum, where they now waited to rendezvous with another vessel. The Achilles was due to arrive shortly to transfer Koorland to Terra. In that time Laurentis had visited Koorland in the medi-cell to play regicide thirty-eight times and Koorland had lost every single game. Laurentis had offered to disengage his secondary processors during their latter matches but Koorland did not want any such favours; a victory against an opponent that was not trying their utmost to win was no victory at all. The captain grunted and moved a piece.

‘That would be a succinct summary.’ Laurentis’ claw hovered above the board, digits clacking open and closed as he considered his next move. ‘From our own experiences we can deduce as much, but combined with data from other observations made by the Adeptus Mechanicus vessels in attendance the evidence is utterly compelling. The orks have reached some new threshold of technological and societal expansion.’

‘Orks have always had access to erratic but devastating tech — field projectors, energy beams and such. What makes the attack moons so different? One of their tech-savants has stumbled upon a gravitational disruption system.’

‘If we encountered one, perhaps two of these battle stations I would agree,’ said Laurentis. He moved a piece into an assassination position. Koorland frowned and studied the board with greater intensity. ‘The manner in which this technology is widespread and the deployment of the attack moons in a pre-meditated manner, if not wholly efficient and co-ordinated, suggests a higher level of interaction.’

‘Intelligent orks?’

‘Orks have always been intelligent, captain,’ said Laurentis. His artificial voice sounded strained, the modulators struggling to convey his disapproval. ‘They have also been numerous and determined, a fact which in retrospect the authorities of our respective organisations have failed to consider over recent centuries.’

‘The orks were broken by the Emperor at Ullanor,’ said Koorland. He reached towards a piece, hesitated, withdrew his hand. ‘There have only been scattered encounters for the last thousand years.’

‘Which brings me back to my original premise. Only a madman, capable of an astounding and highly illogical leap of thought, could have predicted that the ork menace would return with such strength and means. From the records I have accessed, historical data concerning ork advancements is sporadic. However, I have discerned an underlying trend. Not a pattern, as one might think it, but a phenomenon. The orks operate in bursts of hyperactivity. They explode, rapidly expanding and showing technological advancement on an unprecedented scale, and then when defeated recede quickly. During the peak of their strength, their innovation and cultural intelligence is at its height.’

‘They thrive on momentum.’ Koorland knew that he was beaten and indicated as such before gently pushing away the board. ‘Each conquest, every expansion, feeds into… whatever. Their orkishness?’

‘Exactly. Aggression rewards and enables further aggression. Their progress is measured in plateaus swiftly reached, which may then decline in defeat or be sustained for a period until another major leap forward occurs.’

‘The attack moons are one such leap?’

‘Of the technological kind. Our companions in the Adeptus Astra Telepathica inform us that there has also been a psychic leap forward. The Beast, the driving force at the heart of the latest expansion, is an incarnation of ork psychic potential not seen before.’

‘The two must be linked,’ said Koorland, standing up. ‘If the Beast can be destroyed, the foundations of this current plateau of advancement will also be destroyed.’

Laurentis positioned himself in front of the Space Marine as Koorland stepped towards the chamber door.

‘It appears that your heartbeat has increased, as have skin temperature, perspiration and other vascular activity. One might think that you are undergoing an adrenal rush prior to some form of action, captain.’

‘I have just thought of something I must do.’ Koorland stepped to the right but Laurentis shifted position to intercept him again. ‘Step aside, or I will move you aside.’

‘Indulge me for a moment, captain.’

‘A moment.’

‘The only reasonable explanation for your sudden activity is a resolution to act based on a conclusion drawn from our recent discussion. Reconsidering your words, it would also be logical to assume that this theoretical course of action is related to your conclusion that the ork advances might be halted by the removal of the Beast.’

‘What of it?’

‘The psychic and technological advances we have experienced are not the complete picture, captain. Biological and cultural advances are also highly likely.’

‘What do you mean? That there are types of orks out there that we might not have encountered before?’

‘Precisely, whether physically or relating to cultural role. The Beast, whatever it is, may be an ork of a different order to anything we have experienced. Increased psychic activity denotes a shift of parameters that eclipses any expectations we might already possess.’

‘You don’t think the Beast can be killed?’

‘I am sure it can be eliminated. However, I am not sure that whatever plan of action you appear to be initiating will be capable of the feat.’

Koorland stepped back, rocked as if struck. Laurentis’ cold declaration had hit him harder than a bolt-round, bringing home the realisation that the Imperial Fists were no more. Koorland steadied himself with a hand on the bulkhead, gripped by an emptiness he had never felt before.

‘Apologies, captain, I meant no offence.’

‘None taken,’ said Koorland. He straightened up. ‘Your assessment is right, magos. There’s nothing I can do alone that would kill the Beast. And there are no more Imperial Fists for me to command in such an action.’

‘Yet you have an alternative plan?’

‘I do.’ Koorland stepped towards the magos, forcing the machine-man to retreat quickly. ‘I need to speak to an astropath.’

‘A meeting I can facilitate, captain, if you would allow me.’

‘Why would you help me?’ said Koorland with a scowl.

‘It is in the interest of all non-orks that the Beast is stopped. I know that you think me and my kind inhuman, Captain Koorland, but we do have the best interests of mankind in mind on occasion. The Adeptus Mechanicus can no more survive this current onslaught than the Imperium. If you have a plan that will counter the ork threat I am happy to assist.’

‘Very well, lead on,’ said Koorland, waving towards the door.

The two of them encountered only servitors as they made their way aft and up to the top deck of the ship. Here two combat servitors were stationed at the archway that led into the astropath’s crew quarters. The hulking creatures were bigger even than Koorland, with chainblades and gun barrels for fists.

Koorland was relieved when the two behemoths stepped aside at a clicked series of commands from Laurentis; the Space Marine was sure he could have bested the servitors, but it was better that he was able to avoid further confrontation with his Adeptus Mechanicus hosts. They were capable of rendering him comatose or immobile if they wished, and he had no desire to be held in such a way.

Following Laurentis, Koorland ducked under the arch and into the antechamber beyond. A bell chimed as they entered, alerting Astropath Daezen Asarain to their presence. Benches were arranged in a square looking at a dark stone sculpture depicting the Emperor as the messenger, one hand holding a star on an open palm, wings sprouting from His back. Laurentis and Koorland remained standing. Less than a minute had passed when one of the side doors swished open to reveal a surprisingly young-looking man in a dark green robe. His blank eyes regarded the two visitors as though he could still see. They widened in surprise.

‘Captain Koorland! I was not expecting this honour.’

‘I have a message to send.’

‘Um, I am not sure…’ Asarain’s blind gaze strayed to Laurentis. ‘That is, authorisation is…’

‘I am giving authorisation,’ said Laurentis as Asarain’s voice trailed off. ‘Please follow all instructions from Captain Koorland.’

‘If you… As you say, magos.’ Asarain looked back at Koorland. ‘What sort of message, captain?’

‘General broadcast.’

‘Tricky, what with all of the greenskin roaring, and the death-screams are…’ Asarain fell quiet as Koorland’s brow creased into a deep frown. ‘Of course, I will try my best, and we have relay stations to amplify the signal. I just felt you should know that communication is ever more precarious, what with us being located close to the heart of the ork psychic blanket.’

‘The Beast is close?’ said Koorland.

‘Not the Beast, as such.’ Asarain looked awkward, and wrung the tassel of his rope belt in his hands. ‘There are all sorts of strange signals bouncing back and forth through the warp. The Beast, the roar of his coming, is strongest, but it is not the only one. Or it is, but it is echoing back from somewhere else. Or the Beast is echoing back all the other roars. It’s complicated, and we’re not quite sure on the mechanism. Basically, there’s an awful lot of roaring.’

‘Can you send the signal, yes or no?’

‘Yes, I can send it.’ Asarain nodded vehemently. ‘If it’s complicated, any subtleties and nuances might be lost. The reverberations of the ork outbursts mean that we must focus on a simple, strong pulse.’

‘The message is very short. Just three words. I want you to broadcast them as hard and as far as you can. Every relay station, every astropath that hears it is to send it on. I need this signal to break through the ork noise and spread from one end of the Segmentum Solar to the other. Is that possible?’

‘I will add a rebound cadence to the transmission so that it receives further general broadcast. Three words? No sounds? No images? Any cipher?’

‘Just three words, as loud and clear as you can make them.’

‘As you wish.’ Asarain shrugged. ‘The signal should penetrate the green fog without too much effort if that is the case. What are the words?’

Koorland took a deep breath and considered the consequences of his actions. Three words would put into motion a plan laid down by the great Rogal Dorn a millennium ago. Technically, what Koorland was about to do was treason — a gross breach of the oaths sworn after the Heresy War when Lord Guilliman’s reforms were enacted. Koorland did not care. These were dire times. The Imperial Fists were destroyed, his honour already crushed. Fell times called for fell actions.

He fixed Asarain with a stare and uttered the three words.

‘The Last Wall.’

Seven

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Of late, the Clanium Library looked less like a library and more like the command bridge of a starship, and not by coincidence. Lansung’s ‘strategic consultations’ were carefully stage-managed affairs, choreographed to make the Lord High Admiral the centre of attention whilst giving the appearance that all of the other High Lords had equal input. Dressed in the full glory of his elaborate uniform, the tails of his dress coat tipped with golden skulls, breast veritably clanging with medals, Lansung cut a striking figure as he paced and pouted, strode and frowned his way through the consultations.

Nearly all of the shelves that had been stacked with books, flexi-discs, crystal data cells and digi-scrolls had been removed, replaced with chronometric displays, tri-d hololiths and quasi-spatial projectors operated by lexmechanics from the same temple as the Fabricator General. Nothing but the best, the Senatorum had been assured. No resource spared during this time of crisis.

It was a charade, of course. All real military decisions, those taken at the highest level, were agreed in advance between the aides of the Navy and Imperial Guard. Matters were far too complex, the logistical arrangements alone requiring thousands of Administratum staff, for discussion in open assembly. The willing participation of the other High Lords perplexed Vangorich. It was as if they reasoned that their own status was elevated by Lansung’s grandiosity. Even those Vangorich had once thought entirely sensible, not as venal as the rest of the Senatorum, seemed consumed now by the desire to be shown to be in control. Having sacrificed their power to Lansung they now crowded close to him so that they might somehow gain a little of it back, reflected by his beneficence.

Some of the gains made by earlier alliances were clearer to see now. The Administratum had lost a proportion of their control of military materiel directly to a branch of the Imperial Guard. The newly instated Departmento Munitorum operated out of exactly the same wings and buildings of the Imperial Palace, but now under the stewardship of quartermaster-colonels and logistarius-majors. Clerks whose families had served the Administratum loyally for five generations or more were now nominally Guardsmen, much to the surprise of the tithe-counters and manifest assessors themselves.

Yet what was given in one hand was taken with another. All Imperial Guard regiments being raised to combat the ongoing crisis were required, by a vote of the Senatorum, to include a proportionate number of staff from the Adeptus Ministorum. Preachers for the most part, but also armed members of the Frateris Militia that served the Ecclesiarch, were now required to encourage and protect the faith of the men and women who would be laying down their lives against the ork menace.

It was the rise of these Frateris Militia — zealous worshippers of the God-Emperor led by fiery demagogues and manipulative cardinals, growing quickly in number — that indicated the price Ecclesiarch Mesring had wrung from Lansung and Lord Militant Verreault for his support.

And behind it all, the Adeptus Mechanicus were happy to watch the flow of wargear from their forge worlds increasing with each passing day, while the shipments of precious ores and labourers in return grew by equal measure.

It sickened Vangorich to see these men, and the organisations they represented, glutting themselves on the people of the Imperium. The very same citizens they were meant to be moving to protect were working harder, longer and in worse conditions to provide the arms — and the blood — to bolster the egos of those that now controlled the Senatorum. It not only offended his sense of service, but also his love of efficiency. The bloated Astra Militarum, Navy and Ecclesiarchy required an equally engorged Administratum.

In response to the ork threat it seemed as if the Imperium, at least the Segmentum Solar, was puffing itself up like some creature trying to scare off a predator. Not that any of this was making any measurable impression on the front line of the war, because the ships needed to convey these growing armies from their home worlds were all being drawn to Lepidus Prime or Terra itself.

The screens and displays showed the latest reports on the ork advance — if the semi-random encroachments could be called such a thing — and the various Imperial responses to the emerging threats. It was all slightly nonsensical even without Lansung’s theatrics. Even with the benefits of astrotelepathy, it took an average of two weeks for a message from the outer Segmentum Solar rim to reach Terra. Disturbingly, as the ork attacks had progressed, the typical delay had been reduced to a little over ten days. Even so, by the time a message arrived and a ship was despatched in response, and the report from that ship was received, a whole month might have passed, if not more.

Lansung had been explaining, in long-winded fashion, the latest fleet manoeuvres and despatches for thirty minutes and more. He was in full gush when a sharp crack of metal on wood interrupted proceedings.

All eyes turned to Wienand, who had struck the table in front of her with the base of a heavy goblet. Lansung frowned and turned to the Inquisitorial Representative. Vangorich affected indifference, but was intrigued to find out how Wienand was going to play her next move.

‘Is there something amiss, Inquisitor Wienand?’

‘There certainly is, Lord High Admiral,’ Wienand replied as she stood up. ‘It seems that events are proceeding more swiftly than you would have us believe.’

Lansung took umbrage at this accusation, his chins and cheeks wobbling with indignation.

‘I assure you, Madam Inquisitor, that Naval Command is fully abreast of the current situation and responding as swiftly as required and possible.’

‘Is that so?’ Wienand strode past Lansung and whispered something to one of the lexmechanics. One of the hololiths shifted focus, zooming in to the mustering zone at Lepidus Prime. ‘For several weeks now you have been telling us how you are gathering a sizeable fleet at Lepidus Prime. A considerable part of the segmentum fleet, in fact.’

‘That is true, Madam Wienand. What of it?’

‘And the reason for this accumulation of Naval power is to launch a counter-offensive against the orks on several fronts?’

‘That is so, as I have explained in detail previously.’

‘You have informed us that likely targets will be Syani, Locrastes, Asgarand and other systems in that vicinity, securing worlds towards the segmentum rim to divide the ork mass.’

‘That would appear to be the most likely route to victory as this time, yes. If you need me to reiterate any of the smaller details, to aid your understanding of these somewhat specialist matters, I could do so at your convenience. However, if you would allow me t—’

‘Lord High Admiral.’ Wienand’s voice was as sharp as a Lucifer Black’s glaive. ‘Is it not true that the greater part of this fleet has recently left Lepidus Prime?’

Lansung looked at his aides, who met his glare with shaking heads and shrugs. ‘I do not believe so, Madam Inquisitor. Their orders—’

‘So there is not a large flotilla en route to Port Sanctus in the Vesperilles System?’

Vangorich hid a smile with a fake yawn as he watched Lansung flail for a moment. Just for a second Vangorich thought the admiral would be stupid enough to deny this fact, which would allow Wienand to ask if he was indeed in control of the fleet or not. It was obvious that Wienand was not asking idle questions, but had intelligence to back up her claim. Lansung recognised this before uttering any denial. He instead opted for silence while he considered his position.

‘You are aware that Port Sanctus is currently an ork-held system, Lord High Admiral?’

‘Of course,’ replied Lansung, grateful to be on more sure footing. ‘The shipyards there have managed to hold out against initial attacks, but they are sorely pressed.’

‘So Admiral Acharya is proceeding on your orders to liberate the docks at Port Sanctus?’

‘Acharya?’

The single word betrayed Lansung’s utter ignorance of what had happened in Lepidus Prime. Vangorich could well imagine the whirl of thoughts going through the admiral’s head. How did Wienand know before him? Why had Acharya set course for Port Sanctus? If the attack failed, would Lansung be blamed? If the attack succeeded, would Lansung be able to take credit?

These last two would weigh the most heavily, Vangorich guessed. He wasn’t sure how Wienand had managed to set Acharya in motion, and he would dearly like to know, but regardless of her methods the inquisitor now had Lansung trapped between two unknowable outcomes. If Lansung denied any knowledge of these manoeuvres, to insure himself against future failure, he gave up the pretence of being in control. If he took credit for them he was setting his fate on a course over which he could not exercise any control from Terra.

‘It seems my orders have reached the fleet earlier than I had expected,’ Lansung said after a few seconds — seconds that must have felt like hours to the cornered admiral. ‘I will be leaving shortly to take personal command of the attack at Port Sanctus. I was going to end today’s session with this announcement, of course, but you have somewhat spoilt my surprise.’

‘Surprise? I am sure the Senatorum does not like surprises, Admiral Lansung.’

‘An over-indulgence, perhaps. I have been a little carried away by the exciting prospect of action at last. Yes, I can announce that the true fight against the orks will commence upon my arrival. With Port Sanctus secured as a forward base once more, the offensive we have been discussing in recent conclaves will be able to proceed immediately.’

Some of the High Lords greeted this news with claps, others were still confused, trying to catch up on everything that had developed over the course of the preceding minutes. A murmur broke out as the Ecclesiarch turned to his neighbours to loudly ask what was happening, while Lord Commander Militant Verreault limped out of the chamber shaking his head, trailed by officers and orderlies who glanced angrily back at their Naval counterparts.

Lansung was forced to stand in front of them all, smiling stupidly.

‘Bravo!’ cried Vangorich, standing up. He met Wienand’s gaze for a moment and she allowed a twitch of a smile, acknowledging that that word of praise was directed at her. ‘Victory cannot be far off now.’

Eight

Nestrum — Mandeville point

There was a slight increase in pressure as the airlock sealed, cutting off the landing bay from the chamber where Koorland and Laurentis looked back through the window at the departing shuttle. The inner door opened with a hiss, revealing a sharply uniformed Naval officer and two lines of armsmen with shotguns held in salute across their chests, their faces hidden behind silvered anti-dazzle visors.

‘Lieutenant Greydove, at your service.’ The officer clicked his heels and nodded his head. His hair was an unruly mane of blond, and a moustache of the same drooped past his chin. Almost as tall as Koorland but far more slender, the lieutenant moved with easy grace as he stepped back and gestured for the Space Marine and tech-priest to exit the airlock. ‘Welcome aboard the Achilles.’

‘Greydove?’ said Koorland as he stepped into the corridor. Fully armoured, he filled the main passage of the small patrol ship. At a bark from their sergeant the armsmen slapped hands to shotguns and turned to create a column on either side of the arrivals.

‘I’m from Ranesmud II, it’s something of a traditional name there,’ explained the ship’s commander. He noticed Laurentis turning the other way, heading aft. ‘Um, excuse me, magos, but your quarters are this way.’

Laurentis did not stop or turn around, but the remnants of his head swivelled on his neck-bracing to face the lieutenant with a battery of sensor lenses and one unblinking human eye.

‘I wish to make inspections of this vessel’s warp engine systems and plasma reactor. Captain Koorland is an exceptionally valuable asset that cannot be endangered by any oversight of maintenance or execution.’

‘I assure you that my tech-priest, Kahibar, is highly c—’

‘Your ship is too small to qualify for a tech-priest of magos level and attendant support servitors, therefore I am superior in respect of your current enginseer. Do not feel any insult on his account, he will understand the situation.’

‘I insisted,’ Koorland said quietly. This argument seemed to forestall any of the lieutenant’s objections and Greydove visibly wilted.

‘Very well, I hope that all is in order, Captain Koorland.’ Greydove rallied, falling back on an overly stiff and formal tone to bolster his confidence. ‘I shall convey you to your quarters.’

‘The bridge, if you please, lieutenant,’ said Koorland. The Space Marine started walking towards the prow, forcing Greydove to jog to keep up despite the officer’s long legs.

‘I, er, that is, the bridge is for Naval officers only,’ Greydove said. ‘Standing regulations, I’m afraid.’

Koorland stopped and Greydove almost ran into the Space Marine. The armsmen came to a halt around them, bumping into each other in a clatter of carapace-armoured breastplates and vambraces. The Imperial Fist carefully placed a hand on Greydove’s shoulder.

‘I asked out of politeness,’ said Koorland. ‘Do not make me insist.’

Greydove looked into Koorland’s eyes, perhaps seeking some hint of compromise or sympathy. His gaze met two grey points as uncaring and sharp as pieces of flint.

‘I see.’ Greydove glanced at the men around him. Any authority he might have hoped to keep was quickly evaporating like the sweat that now moistened his brow. He swallowed and drew himself up to his full height — impressive against the armsmen but ineffective when compared with Koorland’s bulk. ‘As commanding officer I extend an invitation to you to accompany me to the bridge.’

‘Good. I am happy to accept your invitation.’

Greydove dithered for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘Honour guard, dismiss!’ he barked, catching the sergeant of the armsmen by surprise.

‘Sir?’

‘You heard the command, sergeant,’ Greydove said evenly. ‘I am sure Captain Koorland does not need a gaggle of armsmen following him around at every turn.’

‘Yessir!’ snapped the sergeant. He called his men to offer honours once more before they turned on their heels and marched back the way they had come.

‘I would appreciate it, captain,’ said Greydove when they were out of earshot, showing genuine anger, ‘if you would at least pretend that I am still in command of my own ship. Once you have been taken to the Sol System and departed I must still maintain discipline. You are undermining my authority. My orders permit me to restrain you if necessary, but that would be inadvisable for both of us, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would,’ said Koorland. He bowed his head to acknowledge the lieutenant’s request. ‘Apologies for any problems my behaviour may have caused.’

Mollified, Greydove once again clicked his heels and nodded in salute. He turned and led Koorland along the main passageway of the ship, two hundred feet to a set of steps that led up to a pair of hydraulically-locked doors. Two armsmen flanked the portal, which wheezed open at a word from one of them.

Koorland followed Greydove inside. He noted two other officers — one manning the communications panel and another standing beside what appeared to be the sensor and weapons controls. A row of small screens flickered at waist height and altogether the bridge felt cramped, in marked contrast to the Chapter vessels on which Koorland had travelled for most of his life. The Space Marine stooped slightly to avoid banging his head on the pipework and girders that criss-crossed the ceiling.

‘Sir, I’ve been getting complaints from…’ The communications ensign fell silent as he noticed the armoured giant now standing in the middle of the command platform. The young officer self-consciously cleared his throat and continued. ‘Enginseer Kahibar is complaining about a surprise inspection, commander. I have no idea what he is talking about.’

‘Sir, we are registering an acceleration in the warp engine conduits,’ said the other officer before Greydove could respond to the first. ‘It looks as though our warp engines are coming on-line.’

‘I gave no such order,’ said Greydove.

‘That would be Magos Laurentis, I believe.’ Koorland’s voice sounded loud and flat in the close confines. He looked at the sensor ensign. ‘What range to the departing Adeptus Mechanicus vessel?’

‘Twenty thousand miles and increasing,’ the ensign replied automatically, responding to the raw authority of the Space Marine captain. The Naval officer glanced at Greydove for reassurance. ‘Um, commander, we received no signal to prepare for warp jump yet.’

‘Lieutenant Greydove, please have your Navigator report to the bridge,’ Koorland said quietly, standing beside the ship’s captain.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because you have a change of orders, commander,’ Koorland said.

The shrill whine of a warning siren cut off the lieutenant’s response as red lights flashed across the bridge.

‘Sir! Warp engines engaged!’

‘Thirty seconds to translation,’ barked a servitor just in front of Koorland and Greydove.

‘What upon the Throne is that damned tech-priest doing?’ the ship’s commander demanded, turning on Koorland.

‘A change of plans, commander. I am taking command of your ship.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘I already have. Magos Laurentis is activating the warp drive and I am currently standing on the bridge giving the orders. Which part of this scenario suggests to you, lieutenant, that I am not in complete control of the situation?’

Greydove opened his mouth dumbly a couple of times, searching for an answer. A desperate look creased his face.

‘Don’t make me assemble the armsmen, captain,’ the lieutenant said, trying to sound stern.

‘I will not think twice about killing your men,’ Koorland said, uttering the words deliberately and slowly so that he would not be misunderstood. ‘There is some chance that your men may succeed in pacifying me sufficiently for my return to Terra. They will not be able to do so without significant casualties.’

The Space Marine tried to reassure Greydove, taking the lieutenant’s arm in a gentle grip.

‘I intend no harm to this vessel or its crew.’ Koorland straightened but did not turn as he heard the distinctive snick of a holster being unfastened. He looked Greydove in the eye. ‘Tell your ensign to secure his pistol, otherwise I will be forced to take it from him.’

Koorland heard an exhalation, saw a slight nod from Greydove and then using the dim reflection on one of the communication screens watched the officer fasten the holster once more. ‘Good. We should avoid any rash actions at this moment.’

‘Translation in five seconds,’ warned the servitor monitoring the warp drive. ‘Four… Three… Two… One…’

There was a lurch inside Koorland as reality and unreality momentarily occupied the same space. Every atom of his being fizzed for a few seconds and in the depths of his mind, somewhere near the base of his brain, a disturbing pressure forced its way into his thoughts.

After ten seconds, the sensation had passed.

‘Translation successful,’ the servitor announced, rather unnecessarily. Had translation not been successful everybody aboard would know about it — or be dead.

‘I–I take it that you are not intending to travel to Terra?’ said Greydove.

‘That would be a waste of time, lieutenant. The Imperium is under threat and a suitable response is required. Honour demands that I continue the battle. I intend to rendezvous with my remaining brothers.’

‘I don’t understand. I was led to believe,’ Greydove dropped his voice to a whisper and glanced cautiously at the other men, ‘in greatest secrecy, that you were the last warrior of the Imperial Fists.’

‘We call it the Last Wall protocol. In the event that Terra should be under grave threat, perhaps even fallen, the sons of Dorn will come together to deal with the matter as one.’

‘But, excuse the question, if you are all dead, who is there to respond?’

‘The Imperial Fists Chapter may have been destroyed, but the old Legion will remember.’

‘The old Legion?’ Greydove was horrified by the concept. ‘But the Legions were broken apart by decree of the Emperor.’

‘Not the Emperor,’ snapped Koorland, more harshly than he had intended. He took a breath. ‘By Imperial decree, yes, but it was not from the lips of the Emperor that the decree came. It matters not. The signal has been sent and I will wait for those who are fit to respond.’

‘But if you are not going to Terra, where are we heading?’

‘The last place our enemies would look for us. A place that lives long in the memory of the Legion. Tell your Navigator to chart a course for the Phall System.’

Nine

Port Sanctus — Vesperilles System

After giving the order to translate, Rafal Kulik muttered a few lines of a prayer to the Emperor. He hated this moment, always had. Ever since his first voyage aboard the Furious Pilgrim and that fateful warp jump from Elixis, the process of translating had filled him with a physical sickness and an existential dread.

At least he no longer threw up with each transition. That had been cured by an old recipe from one of the gun captains aboard the Invulnerable Faith, who had taken pity on a poorly young fourth lieutenant he had found evacuating his stomach in the solitude behind the plasma relay dampers. The remnants of an ash-and-ginger biscuit were still sitting in Kulik’s pocket, just in case of a resurgence of the ancient nemesis of nausea.

‘Dear Emperor, please ensure that my ship survives this unnatural voyage, that my crew are delivered from the grip of the warp, and that my soul carries with me into the world of my mother,’ whispered Kulik.

Shaffenbeck was about twenty feet away, ostensibly to keep an eye on the junior officers, but Kulik caught the occasional glance in his direction too. The rest of the watch crew on the bridge knew well enough to give their commander adequate space at this delicate moment.

For his part, Kulik was applying all the will he had not to stare at the transition countdown display, and occupied himself with an intimate inspection of the curlicued decoration of his sword hilt. Meanwhile the depths of his guts churned in anticipation of the shrieking wail of a siren that would warn of a Geller field failure or warp engine malfunction.

Sweat was wetting his over-starched shirt and the soles of his feet were itching — a sure sign that something was going to go wrong.

He barely heard the servitor’s drone conclude the countdown. One moment Kulik was on the bridge of his ship, studying the lines of the basket hilt of his sword, the next moment he was adrift on the void of space, his soul bared to the flare of a billion angry suns, scorching his being from the inside out.

And then they were back in realspace.

Kulik took a long, deep breath, nostrils flaring and eyes wide like a charging bull as he fought back the somersault in his stomach with raw willpower. His hands were balled fists at his side, fingernails digging into flesh.

Finally, the captain let out an explosive breath.

‘Full scan, cycle plasma coils, navigational shields to full power, void shield generators to maximum, targeting grids on full lock. All stations remain at battle readiness!’

The orders were the same every time, issued without effort or thought. Similarly, the watch officers on the bridge, and no doubt the warrant and petty officers in the bowels of the Colossus, were acting even before the words left Kulik’s lips. They had been through the actions enough times on the long rimward patrols that they knew the post-translation drill by heart.

There was a slight cough from Lieutenant Shaffenbeck, and when Kulik looked at his second, the lieutenant shot a glance towards the doors of the bridge. There was another command not so familiar.

‘Oh, and please extend my invitation to Admiral Price to join me on the bridge,’ Kulik added.

As sensor vanes gathered data on the surrounding system, matriculation servitors analysed the information and cross-referenced with their memory stores of the surrounding star field. Saul double-checked the calculations of the lieutenant at helm control — Mathews — and nodded with satisfaction.

‘Confirmed, Vesperilles System. Seventy thousand miles inside the Mandeville point, heading oh-oh-five-seven, inclination thirty-eight.’

‘Captain!’ The sharp call came down from Ensign Daggan assisting Lieutenant Sturmfel at the sensor banks on the level above Kulik. ‘Reading multiple radiation sources, plasma discharge and other ordnance resonance.’

‘Evidence of an engagement,’ said Kulik, striding over to the scanner displays. ‘Boost power, we need more clarity on the full-spectrum scan. Comms, broadcast identifiers and scan battle frequencies.’

Over the following minutes the situation became clearer. Sensor traces showed battle debris and munitions detonations ranging from several hours old to ten days. Residual warp backwash located more than fifty vessels already in-system, but scattered all around the perimeter as they had dropped out of warp space. A cluster of signals almost at right angles to the Colossus’ position on the system plane showed where Admiral Acharya’s fleet was gathering.

The orks were even more numerous. Scores of escort-size and dozens of cruiser-class and larger ships flooded the system, operating in small battlegroups that were targeting the isolated Navy ships attempting to reach the converging fleet.

‘Sir, we have an Imperial ship under attack to port,’ announced Lieutenant Sturmfel. ‘Cruiser-class, three ork attack ships converging on their position. Read void shield overloads and superstructure damage. Radiation blossom indicates two destroyed ork ships in the vicinity.’

Kulik watched as the relative positions of the ships were plotted on a sub-display while the main screen continued to fill out with system details — planetary positions, gas clouds, asteroid belts and fields, and the scattered dispositions of both Imperial Navy and greenskin vessels. There was a line of more than thirty red enemy sigils between the Colossus and the flag rune depicting Admiral Acharya aboard the Defiant Monarch.

‘Helm, come to new heading, nine-five-three, then all speed ahead,’ announced Kulik.

‘It’s the Saint Fatidicus, captain,’ said Shaffenbeck, moving away from the communications console. ‘Captain Havaart is issuing an all-channels request for assistance.’

‘Tell him we’re on our way,’ said Kulik.

The doors growled open to allow Admiral Price to enter. He ran a quick, experienced eye over the screens and then turned to Kulik.

‘You intend to assist the Saint Fatidicus?’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Kulik. The captain paused, waiting to see if Price would overrule the decision. An admiral had no authority to countermand a ship’s captain in the running of his vessel, but he could issue orders to that captain to engage or break away if his vessel was not in immediate danger.

‘Very good. Carry on, Captain Kulik,’ said Price, his voice quiet, the tone formal as befitted a combat situation.

Kulik nodded and returned his attention to Shaffenbeck.

‘Request that Captain Havaart come to starboard by fifty points, if he is able. On our current course that will ensure that the two ork ships are between the Colossus and the Saint Fatidicus.’

‘He’ll be showing his arse to the third ork ship,’ said Price.

Kulik darted a glance at the admiral, who held up his hands to admit he had overstepped his mark. ‘Apologies, captain, please engage as you see fit.’

‘Saul?’

‘Captain Havaart sends an acknowledgement, sir.’

‘The Saint Fatidicus is burning retro-thrusters and coming to a new heading, captain,’ reported Daggan. ‘Flanking ork attack ships are manoeuvring to intercept.’

Surprised, Kulik turned his gaze to the tactical display. As the ensign had reported, the two ork ships to starboard of the Saint Fatidicus had altered course not to head directly to the cruiser’s new course, but to overhaul the ship and attack from ahead.

‘That’s odd,’ he said out loud. Shaffenbeck came up to stand at the captain’s left.

‘Aye, captain. That’s not usual ork behaviour, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Normally they would just head directly for their target.’

‘Yes, but what’s even stranger is that their current course will take them into the arc of the cruiser’s torpedoes. If they’re smart enough to attempt an overhaul, why can’t they see that they’ll be disadvantaged by it?’

The two officers fell silent as they contemplated the problem. Ensign Daggan hesitantly provided the answer.

‘Sir, they think that we have torpedoes too. On our current heading the Saint Fatidicus will be beyond the ork attack ships, meaning we cannot fire torpedoes without risking the other ship.’

‘Emperor’s Throne,’ muttered Shaffenbeck, as much out of appreciation as surprise.

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Kulik replied automatically. He examined the display and saw that Daggan was correct. ‘That would be a wonderful plan, but we don’t have torpedoes, do we? Let’s make sure these greenskins pay for the mistake.’

‘Pretty sophisticated thinking for a bunch of green-arsed savages, isn’t it?’ said Price, joining Kulik and Shaffenbeck at the command centre of the bridge. The admiral had a frown of concern. ‘There were reports that the orks were acting in a more coordinated fashion than we’ve become accustomed to, but I don’t think I really appreciated what that meant until right now. If they’ve discovered fleet tactics more advanced than simply charging full throttle and firing off everything they have, we could be in for even more of a fight here than I expected. The attack moon is going to be difficult enough; a properly organised fleet defence could make our mission here impossible.’

Kulik looked at Price, surprised by the admission. The admiral looked genuinely worried, something Kulik had never seen before.

‘It would seem that Admiral Acharya was guilty of a similar underestimation, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck, indicating the Imperial fleet bottled up at the edge of the system. ‘I expect he was hoping to make far more inward progress by this stage, perhaps even catch the orks unawares.’

‘One thing at a time, Saul,’ said Kulik. ‘We’ll help the Saint Fatidicus first and we can worry about the fleet situation later.’

‘You mean I can worry about it,’ said Price. ‘I know you’ve got used to commanding the patrol flotilla, but this is my fleet, remember?’

‘Aye, sir, of course,’ said Kulik, accepting the criticism with a slight nod of the head. ‘I did not mean to imply otherwise.’

‘Of course not,’ said Price.

The Colossus powered towards the other Imperial ship while the Saint Fatidicus turned towards them. As Price had predicted, one of the ork attack ships fell in behind the cruiser, directly aft where none of the Imperial vessel’s weapons could be brought to bear. Shell detonations and sporadic blasts of laser fire rippled along the cruiser, exploding in flares of purple and blue against the void shields. It would be a rough ride for those aboard, Kulik was sure, but alone the ork ship didn’t have enough firepower to breach the energy defences. Only when the other two ork ships came into range would the greenskins be able to punch through the void shields and inflict lasting damage.

‘I had hoped that the two ships would come and take us on once they saw we were attacking,’ Kulik confessed to Shaffenbeck. ‘They don’t stand a chance against a battleship, of course, but I’ve seen it happen before.’

‘But these greenskins are too smart for that, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck.

‘Well we know that now, don’t we?’ Kulik shrugged, dismissing his annoyance. ‘Havaart and his crew will have to weather a bit of rough treatment before we come into range.’

‘Aye, sir, I’m sure it won’t be anything they can’t handle.’

Kulik could feel that Colossus wasn’t proceeding quite as he intended. There was something about the vibrations through the deck, the background hum, that dissatisfied the captain. He looked at the course projection on the screen and saw that they had made minor alterations to their heading twice since he had laid down their course.

‘Helm, can’t you keep to a straight line?’ barked Kulik, rounding on the navigational crew.

‘Sorry, sir,’ replied Lieutenant Asterax, whom Kulik had brought across to the Colossus when he had been made captain. Kulik expected better of his helmsman. ‘There’s a two point drift to starboard, captain.’

Kulik grunted to acknowledge the response and turned his attention to the Adeptus Mechanicus enginseer at the monitoring station on the upper level of the bridge.

‘Fastandorin!’ The captain’s bellow brought the red-robed tech-priest to the rail above. Her face was an articulated mask of silver and copper that showed no expression. An arterial cable spiralled away from her right temple to the cogitator behind her. ‘There’s a plasma flutter in the starboard engines. You have two minutes to stabilise it before I send Mister Shaffenbeck to take personal control.’

Every ranking man and woman aboard knew what that really meant. If Kulik despatched the first lieutenant to anybody’s position, that officer would find themselves dumped dockside and on half-reparations at the next port of call. Kulik expected the best, and there were stories of unfortunates left abandoned on star bases and orbital stations deep in wilderness space who could not expect another Imperial vessel for many years, decades even.

‘Analysing, captain,’ replied the enginseer before disappearing from view. Her voice always reminded Kulik of something silky and smooth; beguiling and utterly at odds with her inhuman appearance. Fastandorin seemed oblivious to the effect it could have on the men around her, having devoted her life to matters of the machine above the flesh more than two centuries previously.

There was no need for a further report. Kulik could feel the dissonance that had niggled at him dissipating as the engine crews fixed the power imbalance. A few minutes later and there had been no further adjustments from the helm crew.

‘Thank you, enginseer, please ensure such a situation does not arise again.’

‘I will recalibrate the monitors myself, captain,’ Fastandorin’s reply drifted down.

The battleship was converging rapidly with Saint Fatidicus, with the ork ships approaching from behind and to starboard of the cruiser. As Daggan had predicted, the flanking ork vessels were between the two Imperial Navy ships.

‘When is Mister Daggan due to sit his lieutenant’s exam?’ he asked Saul quietly.

‘Next time we have any extended period at dock, sir,’ replied Saul. ‘It should have taken place at Lepidus Prime, but events overtook us before the board could be arranged.’

‘Well, ensure that he goes forward next time,’ insisted Kulik. ‘And make sure he is thoroughly prepared. He’s a good officer, Daggan, there’s a ship somewhere that will benefit greatly from his promotion.’

‘I understand, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck, nodding. ‘I will ensure he has my personal attention and tuition.’

‘Very good.’ Kulik raised his voice. ‘Fire arrestors and slow to battle speed! All flight crews to launch stations. Divert power to lance batteries and weapons matrices. Pilots and gunners prepare for launch orders. Lieutenant Sturmfel, what is the current condition of the Saint Fatidicus?’

It was a few seconds before the sensor officer made his reports.

‘Her engines are running hot, but void shields are intact, sir. No additional damage yet.’

‘Very well. Lieutenant Shaffenbeck, launch all fighter and bomber wings as soon as we have attained combat velocity. Comms, signal Captain Havaart. When we have launched, he is to come about sharply and target the ship on his stern. We will engage the other ork vessels.’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

In the flight decks pilots were warming up the plasma jets of their aircraft and ground crews were making last-minute checks on fitted ordnance and power feeds. Gun crews would be at their weapons, stripped to the waist, barefooted to get grip on the rippled floor of the gun decks. The gun captains and deck lieutenant would be reminding the crews to await their orders, to mark the targeting matrices. Energy was surging though the coils feeding the lance turrets, charging the building-sized capacitors that would power the devastating laser weapons.

It was an illusion that Kulik thought he could feel the deceleration as the arrestor engines fired to reduce the battleship’s speed, but the change in the throb along the deck under his feet was as much a signal as any report from the engine stations.

‘Sir, ork ships are firing on the Saint Fatidicus,’ rasped Sturmfel. He flicked a sweat-drooped fringe of dark hair out of his eyes. ‘Extreme range, no hits yet.’

Kulik waited, affecting an air of calm, though inwardly he was counting down the seconds as the Colossus bled away enough momentum for the flight bays to disgorge their lethal cargo. Price moved closer, his presence a suddenly unfamiliar factor in an otherwise familiar environment.

‘You have a bit of a flair for the dramatic, Rafal,’ the admiral said conversationally. Any worry Price might have shown earlier had completely disappeared. He now seemed as relaxed as if they were on a touring schooner taking a pleasure trip into orbit, not about to engage in a deadly exchange of laser and shell.

‘Sir?’

‘Combat deceleration, emergency launches. You know, Captain Havaart could probably survive the extra couple of minutes it would have taken to perform a, let’s say, more graceful entry into the combat sphere.’

‘Starboard wings launching, sir,’ announced Shaffenbeck before the bemused captain could reply. Then, a moment later, ‘Port wings launching.’

‘Lance arrays, target closest ork vessel. Attack wings are to engage second ork vessel. Helm, stand ready to come to port by twelve points, to bring starboard batteries to bear. Forward batteries, prepare to fire to starboard.’

Kulik’s rattle of orders were relayed by the gunnery officers to the relevant crews. The captain crossed his arms and half-turned towards Price.

‘Dramatic, sir?’ Kulik’s lips twitched with a smile.

‘Positively theatrical, Rafal.’ The admiral grinned and turned away. ‘Not that it is any of my business, of course, captain. It is your ship.’

‘Sir, Saint Fatidicus is under intense attack from all three ships.’

‘On screen, now!’

The main display disappeared and become a swathe of black. A sparkle of light flittered in the top-left corner. As the image resolved and magnified, the glittering patch became a scene of the four ships. The Imperial cruiser seemed to be burning along one flank, but Kulik realised it was simply the arrestor thrusts turning the ship sharply around as he had ordered. From turrets along the spine of the ship bright white beams of lance shots cut and swerved across the ether. The whole ship was surrounded by a purplish miasma of discharging void shield energy.

The ork ship that had been on the cruiser’s stern was a squat, blunt-nosed beast of a vessel, perhaps no more than five hundred yards long, but almost half as broad and high at the front. Ten, maybe twelve decks of guns and launchers bristled from its prow, massively front-heavy but capable of unleashing the equivalent firepower of a vessel many times its size. As the cruiser turned, the ork slid amidships on the port side. Saint Fatidicus’ main broadside opened fire, engulfing the attack vessel with a welter of macro shell detonations even as the orks’ forward batteries spat out a hail of missiles and shells. The greenskin ploughed through the onslaught of the cruiser, debris spilling from impacts all along its hull, while its own fusillade continued, burrowing through the void shields before smashing with terminal force into the buttressed hull of the Saint Fatidicus. Gun decks exploded outwards as magazines were penetrated by the brutish salvo, spitting men and jagged metal into the void.

Ahead of the Colossus the other two ork ships were turning away from the battleship, concentrating their fire on the prow of the cruiser. With the Colossus in its current position the cruiser could not launch its torpedoes. The battleship’s forward guns were within range and suffered no such restriction.

‘Open fire, all batteries.’

Targeting past the dozens of bombers and fighters now cutting a course toward the ork ships, the prow batteries lit up space with a pounding flurry of plasma shells and small-scale atomic warheads. They did not need to hit directly, the force of their detonations enough to cause the shields of the ork ship closest to the cruiser to flare bright orange, creating a stark silhouette of its bulbous, almost spherical hull.

‘Re-targeting,’ announced the gunnery commander. He was on the upper deck but his voice came through a speaker just in front of the command position where Kulik stood. ‘Adjusting for range.’

‘Ork ships are turning, captain,’ came the report from the scanning consoles.

‘Here they come,’ whispered Shaffenbeck. ‘Straight for us, I bet.’

‘Belay fire order, check new course headings,’ snapped Kulik. He didn’t want to risk hitting the Saint Fatidicus if the orks drastically changed their heading.

‘Sir, the orks are…’ The lieutenant stopped and double-checked his screens. ‘Captain, the orks are breaking away.’

‘They’re what?’ Kulik’s voice went up an octave with surprise.

‘Disengaging, captain. New headings are taking them away from the Colossus.’

Kulik looked first at Shaffenbeck and then at Price. They were both as shocked as he was. It was the first lieutenant who voiced his surprise first.

‘But surely that’s premature? No ork would run from a fight without first at least firing a few salvos at us.’

‘They must have known they couldn’t win against a cruiser and battleship combined,’ said Price. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t cut away sooner rather than take the risk.’

‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it, admiral,’ said Kulik. ‘They stayed long enough to inflict some damage on the Saint Fatidicus and then disengaged. Hit-and-run.’

‘Do we recall air wings and pursue, captain?’ asked Shaffenbeck.

Kulik looked at the sub-display that now contained the strategic system map. The orks were heading back towards a cluster of enemy signals around an asteroid field a few hundred thousand miles away. Only the enhanced sensor suites of an Oberon-class could distinguish between the dormant attack ships and the celestial debris. The captain’s eyebrows rose even higher. ‘Are they…? Are they trying to lure us into an ambush?’

‘Emperor’s Throne, that’s subtle for an ork…’

‘Don’t blaspheme.’

Ten

Terra — the Imperial Palace

There was some satisfaction to be gained from knowing that matters were in hand and that plans long in maturing were finally bearing fruit, but Wienand knew better than to celebrate too soon. Though she sat in her quiet chambers with a sheaf of reports from Mars, Titan and the ships of the Battlefleet Solar, the Inquisitorial Representative’s thoughts were fixed firmly on Terra. Lansung was, for the moment, en route to the front lines and incapable of solidifying his hold on the Senatorum. The fact remained that his influence had only been made possible by the self-serving nature of the High Lords currently occupying the Senatorum Imperialis.

A balance had been lost somewhere along the way. Wienand could not point to a particular period, a specific appointment, or name an individual responsible, but the checks and measures intended to keep the Senatorum functioning had failed.

Fixing it was just as complex, but Wienand had a plan now that Lansung was away fighting his war. The repairs had to begin from within the Senatorum Imperialis. To try to instigate massive changes from outside invited resistance and division, when unity was of paramount importance if the ork threat was to be dealt with.

However, there was an irony in that the very unity Wienand and others sought was the source of the current dysfunction. One of the regulating principles of the ruling council was that self-interest prevented the component organisations allowing any one or two of their fellows to gain too much power. A fractious harmony, tense but productive, was the best environment for government. Too many debates and nothing happened; too few and individuals like Lansung profited greatly.

The rot had started and would end with the Lord Commander. Udin Macht Udo and his predecessors could not be blamed for failing to live up to the standards set by Roboute Guilliman, but they should have been held accountable. It was the Lord Commander who sat as chair of the Senatorum and it was the Lord Commander who, by their title alone, was solely responsible for the protection and continuation of the Imperium. The Lord Commander could not have foreseen the ork resurgence but Udo certainly should have taken a lead in the response rather than deferring to Lansung. Whether corrupt or incompetent, Udo was no longer fit for the duty, but removing him threatened civil war.

A gentle knock at the door broke Wienand’s train of thought. She realised that she had been subconsciously scribbling notes on the reports with her auto-quill even as her conscious mind had been examining the Senatorum issue. She sealed the papers back into the static-locked sleeve and called out for the visitor to enter.

It was Rendenstein, her latest attaché-cum-bodyguard. A former lieutenant in the Imperial Guard, she had been brought to Wienand’s attention many years earlier and had submitted to months of physical and mental therapies to prepare her for a role as an inquisitor’s agent. Rendenstein had aided her mistress in many investigations and proven herself invaluable in both fistfights and firefights. The secretariat had the demure appearance of a tall, well-proportioned middle-aged woman, but beneath her pale skin was a reinforced skeleton and bio-enhanced subdermic armour layer that made her extraordinarily strong, and able to withstand bullets and las-shots. Cerebral and secondary limbic processors gave her a reaction time impossible for a normal human.

Rendenstein was also capable of eidetic recall, due to the crystal storage device in her frontal cortex, making her ideal as a personal scribe, secretariat and assistant. She never forgot names, faces or dates.

‘You have visitors.’ There was no formality between the two of them. Rendenstein had quickly learnt that her mistress preferred accuracy and brevity over all other concerns. The two had saved each other’s lives many times and though Wienand held the rank, they considered themselves equals with different skill-sets. The fact that they were occasional lovers sealed the bond between them. ‘Lastan Neemagiun Veritus is requesting your attention.’

‘Veritus is requesting? That does not sound like the Veritus I know.’

‘Demanding. Sorry, I did not even know that he had arrived on Terra.’

‘Neither did I, which means he intended to turn up unexpected on my doorstep. That also means he won’t go away until I see him, so you might as well prepare a proper welcome and send him in.’

‘He is not alone.’

‘Oh? Let me guess…’ Wienand considered who would be likely to accompany the veteran inquisitor. ‘Samuellson? Van der Deckart? Asprion Machtannin?’

‘Two of the three. Samuellson is not here, but Veritus has Namisi Najurita with him, and another I do not recognise.’

‘Najurita? She is the last person I thought would find cause with Veritus. He and she could hardly be more different. All right, I will see them in the Octagon.’

‘Should I remain with you? Is this a conclave?’

‘Not yet, unless Veritus wants to make it official. I think I know what he wants, but let us find out from the man himself. But yes, I’ll want you present to record everything. Just in case.’

After Rendenstein had left, Wienand locked away her reports and then slid the file repository back into the wall, absentmindedly shutting the concealing panel as her thoughts turned to Veritus. There was no point keeping him waiting; it would only shorten his temper even further.

She found her fellow inquisitors waiting for her in the Octagon as she had instructed. If ever the Inquisition was accused of being paranoid, the Octagon would be cited in evidence for the prosecution. The eight-sided chamber had the appearance of a reading room or antechamber, about a hundred foot across, lined with wood panelling. It was built on three tiers, with cushioned seats between the eight sets of steps leading to the lower floor. This lowest level betrayed some of the hidden precautions of the Octagon; the white stone was inlaid with lines of lead in a complex hexagrammic ward. Behind the wooden panels on the walls was a similar labyrinth of anti-psychic sigils and designs, powering a null generator that suppressed the abilities of any psyker within the room.

Such precautions were taken, it was claimed, to ensure that inquisitorial conclaves could be held in the Octagon without favouring one participant over another. Those with telepathic abilities would not be able to glean any advantage from their talent, nor unduly influence other members of the conclave.

This being the Inquisition, it was well understood but never stated outright that the wards also prevented psychic events of a more pyrokinetic, bio-electrical or otherwise outright hostile nature. It was an internally known fact that members of the Inquisition had sometimes — rarely and regrettably, they would say — disagreed so fundamentally with each other that such conflict was eventually resolved through physical combat. Conclaves were meant to avoid these situations by giving parties equal chance to voice grievance, philosophy and defence, and refer such argument to an ostensibly objective authority in the form of fellow uninvolved inquisitors. The Octagon was proof that such conclaves, bringing together inquisitors of opposite but equally passionately-held beliefs and politics, sometimes acted as a catalyst rather than a cure.

As the current Inquisitorial Representative Wienand had a slight advantage over her guests, in that she was able to observe them for a few moments on the screen hidden behind a panel beside one of the entrances, via a link to the concealed digi-recording systems of the Octagon.

Veritus was easy to identify, though Wienand had never met him in person. The ageing inquisitor wore a full suit of powered armour — even here in the heart of the Palace of Terra — painted white and adorned with much gilded ornamentation. Eagles, skulls and other Imperial insignia almost covered the plates. Veritus’ head was showing: deeply lined, the signs of surgical scars on his bald scalp, skin hanging from his chin and throat like the wattle of some domestic fowl.

He was gesturing vehemently towards a slender woman sat on the upper tier of seats. She was almost as old as Veritus, grey hair pulled back tight and styled in an elaborate knot. She wore a coat of heavy black fabric, much like a military greatcoat with wide lapels and golden buttons, and baggy blue trousers tucked into black calf-boots. Namisi Najurita could have been some high-ranking Navy or Guard officer, were it not for the lack of medals and rank insignia. From what Wienand knew of her, Najurita’s philosophy was one of working with and within the other Imperial organisations, at odds with Veritus’ creed that the Inquisition was a distinct and greater power of the Imperium.

The younger man sat below Najurita was known to Wienand. Van der Deckart wore an adept’s robe of dark grey, though a silver bodysuit glittered beneath the drab folds. He had been brought into the Inquisition by Veritus two decades before, and although he had since carved his own furrow he was always ready to support his former master when called upon. His hair was cropped tight, as was his beard, and he had an eagle tattoo covering his right cheek.

She had met Audten van der Deckart a few years earlier at Cenaphus Priam, before she had answered the call to come to Terra. They had both been investigating a merchant cabal suspected of siphoning away Imperial resources to local pirates. Van der Deckart had been poised to bring in the Imperial Navy and a contingent of Space Marines from the Inceptors Chapter. Wienand had informed Cenaphus Priam’s Imperial Commander instead, who took swift action with local forces and the Adeptus Arbites to bring the merchant guild to account, much to Van der Deckart’s embarrassment. She suspected his appearance here to be as much about that grudge as the ongoing politics of the Inquisition.

Then there was Asprion Machtannin. He was an oddly androgynous individual, with indistinct features, shoulder-length white hair and a slender build. His eyes were a startling blue and Wienand suspected his appearance was due to past experiments with the body-altering substance polymorphine. Certainly Machtannin’s pale flesh had a clay-like quality. His dress was styled as often seen amongst the Imperial nobility, particularly uphive families of the inner Segmentum Solar: buckled boots, tight grey breeches, short red jacket with flared shoulders.

The last of Wienand’s visitors was a woman who looked about the same age as the Inquisitorial Representative, with long blonde hair, a flat moon-like face, and dark eyes. Like Van der Deckart she wore heavy robes, and by the way she sat away from the others out of deference and kept glancing at him Wienand assumed she was likely Van der Deckart’s apprentice, or was until recently.

Though Wienand was tempted to make them wait a little longer, just to remind them that they had interrupted her duties, she decided that delaying the encounter was not worth the brief satisfaction.

With Rendenstein on her heel, Wienand entered the Octagon. Immediately she was the centre of attention, all eyes drawn to her as she nodded in greeting and made her way slowly down the steps to the bottom level where Veritus was waiting.

Wienand made every effort to keep her composure. One inquisitor carried the full authority of the Emperor and could, in theory at least, command the entire resources of the Imperium. Here were five inquisitors, a gathering that would give even an Adeptus Astartes Chapter Master pause. Wienand was well aware of how tenuous her position was and it was hard not to be intimidated.

She rallied her thoughts, rebounding from the implied threat with a determination not to be cajoled by this show of influence by Veritus.

‘Lord Veritus, you honour me with your attendance,’ Wienand started smoothly.

Veritus smiled, an unpleasant grimace that showed neither humour nor pleasure. The expression quickly became a sneer.

‘Save your silken words for the senators accustomed to hearing them,’ said the veteran inquisitor. ‘I shall show everyone present the respect they deserve by cutting to the chase. You, Inquisitor Wienand, have been Inquisitorial Representative too long. Your proximity to the Senatorum Imperialis has clouded your judgement and corrupted your principles. In short, you have become as bad as those you are supposed to supervise. I am here to have you replaced.’

This was no surprise to Wienand, and she decided to match Veritus’ forthrightness with her own.

‘And you have no business interfering in this matter, Lord Veritus. I assume, by the fact that you have brought a quorum with you, that you intend to call a conclave on this matter. I ask you to reconsider. The coming of the Beast is a terrible threat to the Imperium we have all sworn to protect. The Senatorum Imperialis may have its faults, but stability is needed now more than anything. Do nothing rash or we shall see the Imperium split apart from within, and consumed from without.’

‘As you seem to have forgotten, the Beast is not the only threat to the Imperium. There are subtler, darker powers at work that will exploit this situation. It was laxity that spawned this orkish horde, and further laxity may allow threats even graver to gain strength. If you wish to avoid undue upheaval, Wienand, there is a simple solution. Step aside from your position and the transition will be painless for all concerned.’

‘Easier for you, yet still disruptive to the smooth running of the Senatorum.’

‘The Senatorum understands that you are merely a token, a representative with only temporary authority to speak on behalf of the Inquisition. Besides, its smooth running is not my concern, merely its correct implementation of the Emperor’s wishes.’

‘To know a thing and to understand its ramifications are different matters, Lord Veritus. I am a known quantity — or so I allow the High Lords to believe.’

‘And that is the problem, Wienand. The Senatorum are too comfortable. It is time that they are reminded the Inquisition is not their ally, nor their political tool. An inquisitor is the Emperor’s gaze, the eagle that seeks out its prey without pity or bias.’ Veritus paused for a moment and looked at the other inquisitors. ‘I have no doubt a conclave will find in my favour. Step aside now so that the matter can be resolved.’

Wienand gauged the others in the Octagon. Najurita was the only one who would hear Wienand’s case with an objective, perhaps even sympathetic ear. Veritus had been clever to include her, giving any potential conclave a veneer of balance. It did not fool Wienand. She would be hounded until she was cornered and forced to come before the conclave, and then she would be stripped of her position in the Senatorum and despatched from Terra. Veritus was offering her a way out with more dignity intact.

‘This is an important matter,’ said Wienand, knowing that she had to buy time. The fact that Veritus was trying to get her to step aside was telling. On past form he would have simply called the conclave together without warning. Maybe he was not so sure of his position as he claimed, or feared Wienand would rally sufficient support around her to head off the conclave. It was an error on Veritus’ part to state his intentions rather than present Wienand with a fait accompli. ‘You cannot expect me to make a decision on a whim, when the future of the Imperium is so fraught with danger.’

‘Of course not.’ Najurita spoke before Veritus could reply and all turned towards her. She stood up and looked at each of them in turn, eyes narrowed. Wienand assumed that Najurita had now seen through whatever pretence Veritus had used to gain her cooperation and attendance. ‘It is clear that there is much to be discussed. Lastan, I am sure we can grant Wienand a while longer to consider her position. I would very much like the opportunity to speak with you further regarding your intentions here.’

The words were softly spoken but there was sharp iron in Najurita’s tone. Veritus held her gaze for a moment before breaking away, looking down at his feet in submission.

‘As you say, Lady Namisi. Some time for reflection so that the truth will emerge.’

Your truth, thought Wienand, even as she bowed her head in acceptance of the proposal. And your truth will see the Senatorum Imperialis shattered and the Imperium brought to ruin. Over my dead body.

Eleven

Port Sanctus — outer system

‘This…’ There was actually spittle flying from the lips of Admiral Acharya, spraying onto the lens of the vid-link aboard the Defiant Monarch. The monochrome display flickered light from the wood panelling of the captain’s comms chamber, abutting the main command deck. ‘This is outrageous. Intolerable! The orks are massing and if we do not bring the fleets together one or the other of us will be destroyed!’

Face underlit by the screen, Price leaned forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, hands clasped. Kulik could see the admiral’s effort to keep calm in the whiteness of his knuckles.

‘Which is why you must come to us, admiral. Elements of my fleet have been arriving over the last three days and are still arriving. If we try to break through the orks we will be leaving these ships to be destroyed piecemeal.’

Relaxing, Price slouched back. The screen went into a fuzzy static while the reply was transmitted. It would be a couple of minutes before the signal reached Acharya and his response was bounced back to the Colossus.

‘Sir, while Admiral Acharya moving his fleet to our position would be the best course of action, doing nothing is certainly the worst,’ said Kulik.

Price lazily spun to face the captain, who was sitting on the other end of a glass-topped oval table. A strategic display glowed beneath a scattering of translucent report sheets and pieces of paper. Three Naval regulations books were piled on one corner, tatters of parchment and plas-sheet marking various pages. Evidently Price had been looking for some precedent or rule that allowed him to assert command over the senior admiral; equally evidently, from their conversation, he had been unsuccessful.

The chain of command, even more so than in the Imperial Guard, was inviolate. A ship could spend anything from a few months to a decade away from port, and during that time the authority of its commander had to be absolute. If an Imperial Guard regiment turned on its officers it could do a lot of damage on the world it was on; if an Imperial Navy ship went rogue it could terrorise multiple star systems.

Though Acharya was senior by only a few months, it might as well have been centuries for all the difference it made in the eyes of the Articles of War. Price was under no obligation for his ship or fleet to obey any order issued by Acharya, but neither could he issue any command of his own.

Kulik realised that Price was looking at him intently.

‘No, Rafal, doing nothing is not worse. Doing nothing allows us and the arriving ships to remain close enough to the Mandeville point to translate out of the system if sufficiently threatened. Acharya has stuck his head into the noose, I see no reason why we should follow.’

‘You would abandon the coreward fleet, admiral?’ Kulik was shocked. Price’s calm manner at the prospect was even more chilling. ‘Tens of thousands — no, hundreds of thousands — of lives?’

‘And add our own to the tally for no reason?’ snapped the admiral. Price lurched to his feet and strode towards Kulik, snatching reports from the table as he passed them. ‘Emperor alone knows how they are doing it, but the orks are alert and responding quickly to any movements we make. That attempted ambush when we arrived is just the start of their cunning. Asteroid fields all across the system have been seeded with their rock forts, ready to launch missiles and torpedoes the moment a ship comes within range.’

Price tossed the handful of papers in front of Kulik and leaned forward with his fists on the table.

‘Any ship or small group — any — that comes near the orks gets pounced upon. If the rimward fleet commits to Acharya’s position, we are as good as hanging ourselves in front of the orks like the bait in a snare. I’m pretty damn sure that’s what Acharya intends but isn’t saying. As soon as we move closer and the orks come after us, he’ll either attack them from behind or move the fleet out towards the Mandeville point for translation’

‘But if the…’ Kulik trailed off as the screen crackled into motion again with Acharya’s reply. Price whipped round, arms crossed.

‘You’ve seen the dispositions, Price! The orks will destroy one or the other of the flotillas and then turn on the surviving fleet. But they don’t have the massed…’ Acharya’s desperate plea trailed off and the admiral turned his head away for a moment. When he returned his look to the vid-capture unit, there was an almost serene smile on his face. ‘Never mind, Price. It seems that events are overtaking us, anyway. Emperor’s grace be upon you.’

The screen went blank.

‘What in the name of the Emperor did he mean by that?’ demanded Price, rounding on Kulik as if the captain should know. Kulik shrugged.

The internal comm beeped and a light on a panel beside Kulik lit up green. The captain reached over and flicked the receive switch.

‘What is it?’

‘Captain, registering fresh translations at the system edge,’ said Shaffenbeck.

‘Yes, we’ve been doing that for the last three days. What of it?’

‘A lot of translations, sir. Sensor team estimates it at nearly a dozen in the last five minutes. We also have confirmation of one of the identifiers.’

‘A dozen ships? Who?’

‘It’s the Autocephalax Eternal, sir,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Lansung’s flagship!’ exclaimed Price. He moved Kulik aside to lean close to the comms pick-up. ‘Have your communications team open up a command channel with the flagship, right now!’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck. ‘Captain, what are your orders for manoeuvre?’

‘Remain on station, lieutenant,’ said Kulik. He looked at Price and received a confirmation. ‘Repeat flag order to the rest of the fleet. Ships are to remain on station until further command.’

Kulik flicked off the intercom after receiving Shaffenbeck’s assent. Price moved back to his chair and flopped down.

‘What in all that is glorious on Terra is Lord High Admiral Lansung doing here?’ the admiral asked nobody in particular, waving his arms helplessly. He half-turned and looked sharply at Kulik. ‘You know he hates me, yes? If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d already made post rank I’d have never become captain once he rose to power.’

‘I have never heard the full story, sir. Something about a public disagreement.’

‘That’ll have to wait, Rafal. Find out where Lansung’s flagship translated and plot a course. I expect the Lord High Admiral will want us to come calling on him.’ Kulik gave Price a look that, whilst not openly disobeying a command from a superior, reminded that superior that he was captain of this ship, not some messenger ensign to be sent on errands. Price shrugged. ‘No time for bruised sensibilities, Rafal. Sorry, but you’ll just have to put up with me for the next few days until everything with Lansung and Acharya is smoothed out.’

‘Aye, and I’ll say thank you too, I’m sure,’ Kulik muttered as he stood up.

‘What was that, captain?’

Kulik stopped with one hand on the curved gilded handle of the wood-panelled door. He didn’t look back.

‘Aye aye, admiral. I’ll get right on it.’

And for the next two days, that was exactly what Kulik did. Price’s communications requests to the Lord High Admiral’s flagship were repeatedly ignored or refused, leaving the admiral short-tempered and sarcastic; a mood Kulik had no desire to endure. Kulik inspected each gun deck and gun, every lance battery, both flight decks, the ship’s shuttles and even the plasma core chambers in an effort to be wherever Price was not. In his absence Shaffenbeck, ever- patient Shaffenbeck, fielded any and all inquiries, requests and orders from the tetchy admiral, including the hourly demand for the comms officers to establish communication with the Autocephalax Eternal.

During this time the other ships of the fleet did relatively little. Acharya’s coreward fleet maintained a defensive encirclement in orbit above the eighth planet, where it had been virtually trapped since punching in-system on arrival. The orks tried a few small attacks, perhaps hoping to bait the clustered Imperial vessels into a pursuit that would draw them out, but nobody was willing to break the relative sanctuary of the fleet.

The rimward fleet of Price maintained its own position just a few thousand miles from optimal translation distance, compact enough to defend itself but not so close that it could not disperse within a couple of hours to achieve translation separation. The newly arrived portions of Battlefleet Solar, eighteen more capital ships and twice that number of escorts, gathered on the system edge as they arrived, roughly equidistant between the two Naval flotillas.

They could not wait forever though, as the gigantic attack moon at the heart of the greenskin armada drifted ever closer to the docks at Port Sanctus. The orks were not to be distracted from their purpose by the presence of the humans, and their devastating weapon did not change course to meet the incoming fleets.

Under the guise of worrying about a visit from the Lord High Admiral, Kulik personally supervised gun practice and guard of honour drill. He instigated several new standing orders, including forbidding whistling and singing outside of crew quarters. Kulik individually briefed his officers on what to expect and do should Lansung decide to come aboard — all thirty-two lieutenants, flight lieutenants and ensigns. He was about to start going through the roster of sixty-eight petty and warrant officers, theoretically including the Navigators and tech-priests, when he received word from his first lieutenant that they had received fresh orders from Admiral Lansung.

Price received the ciphered communiqué in the comms chamber, with Kulik and Saul in attendance. However, before the admiral had entered his decipher codes the intercom buzzed with a message from the bridge. Saul took the transmission with the hand-held receiver, nodding and saying ‘Yes’ and ‘Understood, lieutenant’ every few seconds. After about half a minute he hung up and turned to find the captain and admiral staring inquisitively at him.

‘Sensor report, sirs,’ said Shaffenbeck. He cleared his throat. ‘Lieutenant Chambers reports that the Defiant Monarch is breaking orbit and moving towards the system rim.’

‘Acharya is leaving?’ Price seemed torn between incredulity and delight.

‘It would not be appropriate for me to venture speculation, admiral,’ Shaffenbeck said. ‘Nor did the fourth lieutenant care to offer any such opinion.’

‘Your orders, admiral? Perhaps they make mention of Acharya’s departure,’ said Kulik.

Price returned his gaze to the screen, still slightly euphoric if his distant smile and glazed expression were any indication. He keyed in a cipher code on the rune pad beneath the monitor and the display flared with static. After a few seconds, the fizzing monochrome resolved itself into the equine features of Admiral Sheridan Villiers, His Grace the Void Baron of Cypra Nubrea — Lansung’s senior fleet attaché.

‘For the attention of Admiral Price, Commander-in-office Rimward Flotilla, Fleet Navalis Segmentum Solar.’ Kulik was mesmerised by the bobbing laryngeal protrusion of Villiers, which looked like an ork attack moon in its own right. ‘You are hereby requested and required, immediately upon receiving these orders, to convene the rimward flotilla in accordance with the attached designations and dispositions, for preparation of immediate battle.’

The image halted, cut by flickering lines as Price paused the receiver. His expression had hardened at the words ‘immediate battle’.

‘Lansung intends to continue with this damn fool plan of Acharya’s,’ the admiral said without looking at his companions. ‘He really means to liberate Port Sanctus.’

‘Do you think that it was his intent all along, sir?’ asked Shaffenbeck.

‘But why send Acharya away now?’ said Kulik. ‘That doesn’t make sense if he was acting on Lansung’s orders.’

‘We might never know, gentlemen,’ said Price. He leaned forward and pressed the rune to continue the vid-flow.

‘According to said dispositions, the rimward flotilla will make all speed to the co-ordinates indicated.’ A series of nine numbers flashed up at the bottom of the transmission, somewhere within the orbit of the sixth world, Kulik judged on first glance. ‘At the same time, the coreward flotilla shall perform counter-manoeuvres with effect to break through to the same position, linking the fleets. As an added measure, the Lord High Admiral shall be leading the Fleet Solar elements on a corresponding course to intercept any enemy vessels attempting to reinforce at the rendezvous.’

Price nodded, pausing the playback again.

‘That’s not a terrible plan,’ the admiral admitted. ‘Given our current positions, those headings will break the ork presence in two places, with Lansung’s ships circling around to cut off the greenskins from the inner system where the attack moon is.’

‘Aye, sir, but he hasn’t taken into account the asteroid forts and other defences littered throughout that area,’ said Saul.

‘I think he has,’ Kulik said quietly. ‘He intends for us to clear that asteroid belt of the orks as we make our way to the rendezvous.’

‘Attack the rock forts and then straight into a head-on battle?’ Price frowned and leaned back in his chair to snatch a system-wide sensor report from the table. The creases in his brow deepened and the corners of his mouth descended even further. ‘Bloody madman, that’s what he is! I knew this was too simple.’

Kulik looked over the admiral’s shoulder at the schematics to refresh his memory on the strategic situation.

‘It is risky, sir, but it will place us in an ideal position to form up for an attack on the ork base,’ said the captain. ‘I really think Lansung intends to go for it as quickly as possible.’

‘None of this makes sense,’ complained Price, tossing the report back onto the table. He stabbed a finger at the playback rune and Sheridan Villiers’ distorted face sprang into life.

‘Stand ready to receive personal messages from the Lord High Admiral. For the eyes and ears of Admiral Price only.’

Kulik and Shaffenbeck both stepped towards the door but were halted by a wave from Price.

‘I certainly don’t care if you listen in,’ said the admiral. ‘If this is about Acharya it’ll save me the bother of telling you myself.’

Villiers’ elongated features disappeared, to be replaced by the bloated face of Lansung. It struck Kulik that the monitor controls had somehow malfunctioned, ballooning the one into the other. Lansung’s cheeks wobbled and his chins rippled as he spoke.

‘Listen here, Price. I know we have our history together, and I won’t say that I’ve forgotten or forgiven. But that doesn’t matter for the moment. That damned idiot Acharya has put the reputation of the Imperial Navy in jeopardy. Yes, I know what you’re thinking — it’s my reputation really, yes? Well, it’s yours too, Price. I don’t know why, or how, but someone got to Acharya and either persuaded him or forced him to make this attack. There’s going to be hell to pay for him when this is over. He’ll be lucky to command a garbage scow if he survives the judgement of the court martial he’s got coming. Anyway, that’s not of concern yet.’

Lansung shifted his bulk, moving further from the vid-capture unit. He splayed his hands across his chest, which bulged between the gaps in his buttoned coat.

‘We can’t afford to lose here, Price. It’s not common knowledge, but the Imperial Fists took a pounding at Ardamantua. They were almost wiped out.’

Kulik heard Shaffenbeck gasp at this admission, and was shocked himself.

‘We need a victory and damned quick if we want to salvage anything from the situation. Hate me all you like, but unless I return to Terra with a victory, and my authority intact, the whole Senatorum Imperialis is going to lose faith. And frankly, whether the other High Lords like it or not, this is a war that the Navy is going to have to win for them.

‘Acharya was far off the mark when he brought the fleet here, and it’s forced my hand. If we withdraw, our reputation will be worthless, and there’s half a dozen admirals lined up behind me just waiting to pull away the steps and take my place. We do not need a power struggle in the upper echelons of the Imperial Navy at this time. You think I’m a ruthless career-minded pig. In fact, those were your exact words, I recall.’

Kulik watched Price out of the corner of his eye, but the admiral was intent on the screen, eyes fixed, expression unmoving.

‘You are right, I probably am. But I am not a monster. Billions have died already trying to halt this greenskin tide. If we cannot hold them to a reverse now, all hope will be lost. I don’t care if we have to sacrifice the whole bloody segmentum fleet to win here, victory is the only option.’

The admiral wiped the sweat from his face with an embroidered handkerchief, which he stuffed up the sleeve of his coat.

‘When we have the fleets together, then we can discuss options. Until then, I request and require that you follow my orders to the letter. Believe me, it is our best chance to get out of this mess alive and with honour intact. May the Emperor guard you in the dark places where you must fight, Admiral Price.’

The screen went black. Kulik blinked a couple of times, trying to process everything he had just heard.

‘He didn’t seem so…’ Shaffenbeck let the thought drift away as Price turned a withering stare upon the lieutenant. ‘Shutting up now, sir.’

‘The fat oaf is right,’ said Price, lip curled with distaste at the fact. ‘Sooner or later we have to find out a way to destroy these moons, so we might as well start the job here. Damn Acharya, though, for going rogue. And damn Lansung for putting the bastard in charge of the coreward fleet in the first place.’

‘What are your orders, sir?’ asked Kulik, standing to attention.

‘I don’t know, yet. Decode the dispositions command and transmit to the flotilla. I’ll look over everything else and give more specific orders of battle once we are under way.’

‘So, we attack, sir?’ asked Shaffenbeck.

‘You heard the orders, lieutenant,’ said Price. ‘With immediate effect. Damn straight we’re going to attack, and damn our souls if we let the coreward take the glory!’

Twelve

Terra — the Imperial Palace

‘Arrogant, like you said, sir,’ said Esad Wire, better known to Vangorich as Beast Krule. ‘Veritus has taken chambers in the Ecclesiarchy dorms on the Western Projection. Hardly any security at all. Thinks that being on Terra, being an inquisitor, makes him invulnerable. No doubt the Emperor will protect him. Van der Deckart and his interrogator, Laiksha Sindrapul is her name, they’re a bit smarter. They’ve holed up in the Senatorum Rotunda until the conclave. There’re more guards there than at the Ecclesiarchy holdings, but nothing that would present a problem.’

Vangorich held up a hand to stop his Assassin’s report. Through the narrow window of his chamber — relinquished from the grasp of a lower overseer in the Administratum a few days earlier — the Grand Master looked over the turrets and roofs of the Imperial Palace’s northern stretches. In particular his eye was drawn to the dozens of chimneys that sprouted from behind the crenellations that capped the Tower of Philo. Amongst the grey smog was a slightly darker smoke, reddish in colour. It was, Vangorich knew, caused by the burning of cachophite incense, and was the signal agreed with Wienand that the two of them should meet at the Sigillite’s Retreat.

‘In short, none of them are beyond easy reach?’ Vangorich asked, standing up. Krule stepped to one side as the Grand Master headed towards the door. His hesitancy in replying caused Vangorich to stop and turn a suspicious eye on the Assassin. ‘That is the case, is it not?’

‘Machtannin has… gone missing, sir.’

Though his temper was tested, there was no point in Vangorich berating Krule for what had happened. They exited the chamber and entered the disused room beyond. A score of clerks had been moved to another wing following the relocation of their overseer, leaving rows of desks, each with illuminatorum screens and digi-quills still intact. A hexabacus had been left behind on one of the desks and there were a few personal belongings: prayer books and beads; an etchograph of a paternal-looking figure; a pair of fingerless gloves remarkable by their gaudily knitted pattern; other odds and ends of no import.

Old bare boards creaked underfoot as they passed between the empty work stations.

‘And Hurashi of the Culexus has been informed?’ Vangorich asked. ‘She will be ready with an operative should we need it?’

‘Yes, sir, the anti-psykers are ready for your word. Veritus’ entourage seems to be mundane. Mostly ex-Guard and ex-Frateris as far as I can tell. Some augmetics and bionics, and quite an arsenal between them. The others have entourages with some muscle but mostly academic and administrative. According to Wienand’s report only Najurita is a psyker, and isn’t she on our side?’

‘Nobody is on our side,’ Vangorich said, more hastily than he had intended. He recovered his composure. ‘Not even Wienand. We are each striving for our own agenda. Never forget that.’

‘Of course. There is a rotating watch being kept on the others, sir. I’ll be handling Wienand myself.’

‘Good. Get some rest, your mark will be busy for the next hour at least, I would say. You’ll be able to pick her up again in the sub-basement beneath the Ice Conservatory.’ The knowledge that he had deduced the inquisitor’s route to the Sigillite’s Retreat gave Vangorich a satisfying warmth in his stomach. ‘Be ready for anything.’

Krule nodded and broke away, heading out of a side door while Vangorich continued towards the end of the chamber. The Grand Master waited at the door for a moment, listening intently. There was no sound outside. He opened the door and stepped out into the empty corridor. Crossing the wide passage to a nondescript door opposite, Vangorich let himself into the dormitories for the former workers of the scriptorium he had just left. Bare wooden cots, small side tables and foot lockers were where their occupants had left them, though the bedclothes had been stripped. The walls were tiled with white, as was the floor, giving the bare room a clinical, sterilised feel.

Vangorich moved aside the bunk at the far end and carefully pulled out a broken wall tile near the floor to expose a keyhole. Kneeling, he slipped a key from his waistband and turned the lock. Part of the wall shifted fractionally into the room. Shuffling back, Vangorich used the key as a handle to lift the hinged portal, exposing the foot of a ladder disappearing below the dormitory. Withdrawing his key, the Master of Assassins replaced the broken tile, ducked into the small alcove behind the wall and pulled the door shut behind him.

In gloom he descended the ladder, counting out ninety-three rungs. The ladder continued down all the way to the sub-levels, another seven hundred and eight steps; he had counted them himself. Still in total darkness he stepped out to the left, swinging himself out into what seemed like thin air. The tip of his boot scraped against a ledge no wider than his thumb while the fingertips of his left hand found a similar purchase just above head height.

He edged spider-like for ten feet, between what he had subsequently discovered were the walls of an Ecclesiarchy chapel and the robing rooms of the female clergy members. He wondered if the small hidden space into which he lowered himself had first been designed by a less-than-chaste preacher or cardinal. It mattered not; the small door that had once led to it from a trapdoor in the chapel had been blocked with ferrocrete.

From here, Vangorich was able to move, bent almost double, through the collapsed catacombs of the Shrine of Imperial Mercies, once the Palatine Tower that had guarded the inner western curtain wall of the Imperial Palace. Still without any light he counted the crab-like steps until he came to an empty tomb. Pulling aside the cover, he pulled himself into the sarcophagus.

Floorboards overhead turned into rafters, in a way only found in somewhere as labyrinthine as the Imperial Palace. Dropping down ten feet to a solid wooden floor, Vangorich straightened and dusted himself off. From here it was just a few feet to the rotating section of wall that left him looking through one of the archways leading to the Sigillite’s Retreat.

Wienand was already waiting for him, as he suspected she would be. The ruddy smoke had been their agreed sign for urgent action. She was bent over a digi-scroll reader.

‘Which one of them do you want dead first?’ Vangorich asked, stepping into the bare garden.

Wienand sat up and her head snapped round in shock. She took a deep breath, shook her head in disapproval of Vangorich’s theatrics, and stowed the scroll reader in a bag in her lap.

‘None of them,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘Tempting as it is, I don’t think I want to go that far, and certainly not using one of your operatives. You do know that your department is only meant to act with the approval of the High Lords?’

‘A technicality. The High Lords. A High Lord. Is there a difference? And, as a member of the Inquisition, you bear the Emperor’s sigil. Your voice is His voice. The whole of the Imperium is yours to requisition, should you wish. You only need to ask…’

‘It would still cause ripples. A tidal wave, in fact. Look, let’s keep this brief. I came to warn you that Veritus is about to bring together the conclave to judge my actions as Inquisitorial Representative. Even if somehow I manage to wriggle out of that, I will be suspended from my office for the duration. I’m sure Veritus has someone already in mind should the Senatorum be convened in the meantime.’

‘By which you mean that Veritus will ensure the Senatorum is convened in your absence and his man, or woman, will take your place as the Inquisitorial Representative?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

Vangorich paced along one of the paths, avoiding the cracks between the slabs, to test himself rather than out of superstition.

‘Which one will it be?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

Vangorich stopped, pivoted on his toes and looked at Wienand, his hands on his hips.

‘Which of Veritus’ followers is going to be replacing you? I could, you know, have them made unavailable.’

‘I don’t know. Besides, there are a dozen more inquisitors currently on Terra who might equally be in the frame for the position. I said no to any kill-missions and I mean it.’

‘So what do you propose to do about the situation?’

‘That is for me to worry about. In Lansung’s absence, thanks be to the Emperor for small mercies, it is possible for the Lord Commander to grant provisional first tier status to one of the other High Lords not in the Twelve. I have spoken with Udo, privately, and he is prepared to extend full senatorial rights to the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. I need the Senatorum to convene before Veritus’ conclave begins so that Udo can forward the proposal and I can second it. You’ll need to be there too.’

‘All very good, but I fail to see why you needed to tell me this with such urgency.’

‘One of Veritus’ companions has gone missing.’

‘Machtannin? Yes, I know.’ As soon as he said the words Vangorich regretted his glibness. Before he could qualify his statement, Wienand was on her feet, pointing at the Grand Master.

‘Ah! So you’ve lost him as well!’

‘Momentarily misplaced, perhaps,’ confessed Vangorich, who didn’t like being caught in such an awkward position.

‘Find him,’ snapped Wienand. ‘You know he’s able to mask his true form, though to what extent we can only guess. Not like one of your Callidus Assassins, I’d wager, but certainly capable of mimicking anyone of the same basic physical structure. Veritus brought him here for a reason, to replace somebody, I’m sure of it.’

‘Replace whom?’

‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be here asking you to hunt him down, would I?’ Wienand flexed her fingers in agitation. ‘I consider Machtannin’s absence to be a paramount threat at this time. If you find him, try to take him alive.’

‘If that is not possible?’

‘Make it possible. Let’s hope he isn’t disguised as someone important.’

‘Very well. I assume I will receive no official notification of this mission?’

‘Your assumption is correct. I would certainly never condone the Officio Assassinorum being deployed against a fellow inquisitor, as I made clear at the start of this conversation.’

Vangorich smiled and sighed.

‘I do so like it when we are being absolutely clear. It makes my duties all the more pleasant. I shall deal with this bothersome shape-changer. Make sure you get me onto the Council of Terra again.’

‘Naphor incense when you’ve located Machtannin?’

‘As you say, Wienand. I look forward to a summons to the Senatorum Imperialis.’

‘And I look forward to a smudge of blue smoke.’

Thirteen

Port Sanctus — Vesperilles System

The politicking was, for the moment at least, forgotten. The endless charade of seniority and command had given way to a higher, purer purpose. Not in all his life as a Naval officer had Rafal Kulik witnessed anything as grand as he did the day the fleet of the Segmentum Solar fought the orks at Port Sanctus.

The reality of the situation was relayed by cold schematics on the main bridge display, but Kulik had seen enough battle that he could picture what was happening with his mind’s eye. The flickering runes on the massive screen were more than just blue and red symbols. Each was a starship of the Imperial Navy.

The smallest were the frigates, destroyers and other escorts, small clusters of sigils representing squadrons, three, four and five ships strong. Some were only a few hundred yards in length, just large enough to mount a warp engine, crew compartments and a lance turret or torpedo tube.

At the other end of the scale were the four battleships. Like the Colossus each was a fortress teeming with a crew of thousands, several miles long and laden with enough weaponry to raze cities and lay waste to continents. Colossus was not suited to the main line of battle, hence the flagship’s position with the other carrier assets at the heart of the fleet. Kulik’s role, along with the cruisers Majestic, Knightly Endeavour and Lasutia, was to provide fighter and bomber support for the rest of the fleet. From this position, Admiral Price would also be able to monitor the progress of the battle and make adjustments to the plan as required.

The massive Ascension-class battleship Honourable Destruction was leading the port line under the command of Captain Tiagus, while the Unfriendly Encounter and Bloodhawk, two Retribution-class vessels, formed the point of the starboard flotilla.

Behind the behemoths came an assortment of grand cruisers and cruisers, arranged as per the orders of Admiral Price to deliver a spread of torpedoes, weapons battery fire, lance shots and some minimal launch capacity.

Their plasma engines leaving trails across the firmament, the two lines of ships forged through the void towards the glittering spread of the ork-held asteroid belt. There were tens of thousands of individual asteroids in the field, millions probably, scattered across thousands of cubic miles. Many were chunks of ice no larger than fists — but on the larger and more stable asteroids the orks had built fortresses equipped with missile batteries, energy weapons and strange warp-powered displacement cannons. Added to this were the so-called rock forts — large asteroids fitted with engines and shields, turning them into crude starships.

More conventional ork vessels were loitering within the cover of the debris field too — blunt, gun-heavy raiders and larger attack ships the equivalent in strength to cruisers. For the moment they were trying to hide, lying dormant until the lead elements of the fleet came into range. However, whatever advances the orks had made in their gravity and warp technology, their discipline and radiation shielding had not improved with them. Flares of energy and sensor bursts constantly betrayed the orks’ positions to the more sophisticated scanning arrays of the Colossus. This information was relayed to the rest of the fleet as they continued to close with the enemy.

Thirty-seven ships of the line in total. Thirty-seven capital ships gathered in one place for a single purpose — to crush the ork outer defences. Along with the two dozen escort vessels that swarmed around them, these ships would have been enough to stir Kulik’s heart and fire his resolve. The fact that they were only a third of the Imperial Navy forces in the system almost made him burst with pride and excitement.

Sweeping on an arc a few hundred thousand miles in-system of the rimward fleet was Lansung’s immediate command — the expedition force of the Battlefleet Solar. There were no less than seven battleships among the eighteen capital ships in the taskforce: enough firepower to wipe out entire civilisations. Lansung’s ships would interpose between the rimward flotilla and the hundred or more ork ships in close vicinity to the attack moon in orbit around the sixth world.

Further out towards the system edge, a hundred thousand miles from the Colossus, Commodore Semmes was leading the remains of the Segmentum Solar coreward fleet. Under the tentative command of Acharya the fleet had lost nearly a third of its strength to repeated ork attacks, although it was still roughly equal to the rimward fleet in raw numbers. More damning had been the sapping of morale, Kulik was sure. He knew Raphael Semmes by reputation, and, although another of Lansung’s favourites, the commodore certainly was regarded as bolder and more decisive than Acharya. At the moment his flagship, the Torrent-class battleship Widow’s Grief, was leading the coreward fleet on a charge to unite with Price’s command. The two fleets would intersect the asteroid field from opposite directions roughly fifty thousand miles apart. At that stage the coreward fleet would come about alongside the rimward fleet and together at last they would turn and rendezvous with Lansung in preparation for the next phase of the attack.

Such was the plan, at least. It was, on the face of it, a sensible strategy. The vagaries of warp travel meant that any fleet travelling as a mass would be scattered to some degree, and it was standard Navy protocol for fleets to rendezvous at a predetermined point in the target system. Acharya, for reasons neither Kulik nor Price had been able to fathom, had been so intent upon striking a blow against the orks as soon as he arrived, possibly to ensure Price gained no share of the glory, that he had not allowed for fleet consolidation and had jeopardised the entire endeavour. The dramatic but drastic measures now required were the consequence of that headstrong action.

The strategic display was orientated with the Colossus at the centre, so that the two lines astern of the rimward flotilla stretched up and down the main screen, the clusters of escorts at set intervals along their length. Kulik stood in his usual spot, hands clasped behind his back. Price was just to his right, arms crossed as he stared at the range counter on the display. When it reached the agreed limit, the admiral spoke up.

‘Captain Kulik, please signal the fleet to assume ascending line by echelon to starboard.’

‘Aye aye, admiral.’ Kulik turned and nodded to Shaffenbeck, who passed the order to the communications officers. ‘Ascending line by echelon to starboard.’

The manoeuvre was basic but no less impressive because of that. Over the next few minutes, starting with the rearmost vessels, the two lines of capital ships started to drift up and to starboard, while the front ships drifted down and to port. This created two parallel diagonal lines, slightly overlapping on one plane, but with the tail of the port line several thousand miles above the front of the starboard line. In this formation the prow weapons of every ship could be brought to bear, and Price wasted no time taking advantage of this fact.

‘Fleet to fire torpedoes, full spread, three salvos.’

The order repeated down the ranks and a few seconds later the main display bathed the bridge with yellow light. The screen was filled with the registers of nearly a hundred plasma, atomic and cyclonic torpedoes surging towards the orks. Kulik followed their progress, followed by the second salvo, and then the third was on its way before the first wave of torpedoes had hit.

‘Main view, vid-capture ahead,’ said the captain, grinning. He glanced at Price. ‘I want to see this!’

The admiral smiled in return, a little pensively, but Kulik had no time to worry about what concerns might be burdening the thoughts of his superior. The torpedoes were almost on their target. The closest peeled open, launching dozens of plasma and nuclear warheads each.

There was no need for enhancement or magnification. One moment the screen showed the asteroid field dimly glittering in the light of the distant star. The next, blossoms of pale blue and white erupted from one side to the other, blotting out the stars. Detonation after detonation rippled across the void, here and there the darker oranges and reds of secondary explosions, or the whirling, spiralling electrical storms unleashed by cyclotronic expansions.

Then the second wave caught up with the first and the display was repeated in all of its glory, and by the time the third wave of torpedoes struck debris had formed glittering sprays of light that twinkled and spread across the whole display.

On a secondary screen dozens of enemy marker sigils winked out of existence. There were cheers from the assembled officers, who stood as one transfixed by the destruction.

‘Beautiful,’ muttered Kulik, eyes wide with awe.

‘All speed ahead!’ barked Price, who appeared unmoved by the whole experience. ‘Carrier flotilla is to launch all wings and take up support positions. Form lines of attack by squadron and prepare to engage the enemy.’

Snapped out of his appreciative fugue, Kulik relayed the order automatically.

‘Lieutenant Shaffenbeck, stand all air crews to readiness. Gun crews are to await the command. Main display to tactical.’

The view on the huge screen switched from the fading glow of the torpedo detonations to a tri-d representation of the asteroid field, with the two lines of the rimward fleet approaching from beneath. The pair of columns were breaking apart as the cruisers and battleships assumed squadron formations outlined by Price before the engagement had begun. Shorter-ranged ships moved to the fore of the attack.

‘Colossus to primary carrier group,’ Kulik announced. ‘Form on our position and launch interceptor wings. Bomber wings to be held in reserve until targets have been designated.’ The captain nodded to Shaffenbeck, who gave the order for the flight decks to launch their fighters.

The torpedoes had driven the orks from their hiding places like beaters setting game birds to flight on a hunt. The alien vessels broke this way and that from the asteroids, scattered by the devastating salvos. Most came directly for the Imperial fleet, whatever subtlety they might have possessed now lost through a combination of battle-excitement and fear.

The first ork ships headed directly for the Honourable Destruction, seizing on the closest enemy to hand. They could not have picked a less suitable target, as the Ascension-class ship opened fire with its long-range prow batteries, smashing the shields of the oncoming ork ships with blazes of shells and rockets. Lance turrets arrayed along the dorsal spine of the battleship opened fire as it slowly changed heading to starboard. Beams of pure energy sliced through the shieldless ork attack ships, turning one, then another and then a third into exploding clouds of fragments and gas.

Behind the dissipating remains of these vessels the remaining orks did their best to alter course away from the Honourable Destruction. Their manoeuvring was slow and clumsy, and by the time they had arranged themselves on new headings the Bloodhawk and the Unfriendly Encounter had parted from each other, creating a gap of several thousand miles between them for the enemy ships to pass through. The two battleships opened up with their full broadsides as the orks made a dash for the open stars between them. The void was filled with plasma bursts and the blur of immense projectiles. The first four ork ships, none of them larger than an Imperial destroyer, were utterly annihilated by the outpouring of fire. Two more were surrounded by the crackling auras of their overloaded shields while the rest hastily burned navigation thrusters in a fresh attempt to assume different courses.

By now the lead elements of the fleet were moving inside the dust and gas clouds that shrouded the edges of the asteroid field. Dragging his eyes away from the display, Kulik glanced at Price, who was standing bolt-straight, jaw clenched. Although he had voiced no concerns earlier, it was obvious that the admiral was unhappy about entering the asteroid field. He looked full of nervous energy, trembling slightly, fists clenching and unclenching by his sides as he held himself immobile against the urge to pace or speak.

A few rock forts and asteroid bases had survived the torpedo onslaught, but not enough to cause any real harm to the lead battleships. The three massive vessels were bathed in the purplish glow of their void shields as they ploughed through the swirling gases and dust. Missiles streaked past the ships from deeper within the field, launched by the ork bases.

Seven ork ships, three of them at least cruiser-sized, had broken past the battleships. Instead of heading into open space, the orks could not fight their warrior desires and the alien vessels were turning for a confrontation with the cruiser lines of the fleet. It was a fight they could not hope to win, but Kulik had seen suicidal bravery before and knew that the greenskins could inflict considerable damage before they were destroyed. It was important to remember that this was simply a linking of the two fleets; the greater battle was yet to come. Every ship damaged or lost now would be sorely missed in the fight against the attack moon.

‘Should we move in to support, admiral?’ said Kulik. ‘Our bombers can deal with the smaller ork ships while the cruisers deal with the larger ones.’

‘No,’ said Price. ‘All bomber wings remain on standby. We’re going to need every attack craft we can field if we’re going to take on that ork star base.’

‘Understood, sir,’ said Kulik. The captain rubbed his chin, an instinctual action he had developed long ago in preference to showing dissent to a superior. The distraction always helped him hold his tongue. In this case he thought it unwise to risk the larger ships in exchange for some bombers, but he was not going to argue with Price about it.

‘Send word to blue, magenta and gold squadrons to intercept at first opportunity,’ Price said, rocking back and forth on his heels. ‘Red and black squadrons are to flank the battleships and scan for enemy ships and installations. None of the orks are to escape. The last thing we need are damned greenskins dogging our heels when we go in for the final attack.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck, gesturing for Saul to transmit the admiral’s orders. The captain waited for any orders specific to his ship but none were forthcoming. ‘And the Colossus, sir? What are we to do?’

The unspoken part of the question asked why a fully combat-capable battleship was being held back rather than committed to the attack. Price must have picked up on the captain’s subtext.

‘No fresh orders, captain,’ the admiral said sharply, jaw clenched with irritation. ‘The carrier group will remain on current station. I am not risking this ship and her launch capabilities just so that you don’t feel left out, Rafal.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ Kulik replied with a nod of salute. He turned an eye towards the screen where the rest of the fleet was surrounding the ork ships and pounding them to ruin with their guns.

Saul caught the captain’s eye and subtly directed his superior to join him at the gunnery console a little further from the admiral. Catching Shaffenbeck’s gaze, the lieutenant overseeing the targeting matrices suddenly realised that he had urgent business at the comms desk and moved to attend to that duty, leaving the two officers alone with the monitoring servitors.

‘You seem agitated, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck, keeping his voice low as the two of them stood side-by-side looking at the main display. ‘A moment of pause and reflection might help you regain some equilibrium.’

‘I don’t know why Price is so reluctant to commit the flight wings,’ said Kulik. ‘He’s had further communication from Lansung, no doubt outlining the Lord High Admiral’s plan for the attack moon.’

‘And why is that such a cause for concern?’ Shaffenbeck indicated the tactical display with a flick of his head. ‘The battle seems almost won.’

‘Because if Price is under orders to keep the carriers at the back for this battle, it has to mean as sure as a Navigator’s got a third eye we’re going to be slap-bang right in the front of the next one.’

Fourteen

Phall — orbital

The battle-barge Abhorrence dwarfed the Achilles as the Space Marine vessel moved closer to receive a shuttle from the Naval patrol ship. Standing out further in orbit were a dozen other ships, of varying size and potency, from a number of different Chapters. Not all of the Successors had yet responded, but Koorland had weighed up the number that had arrived against the urgency of the situation and he had decided the time was right to hold council.

Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars had agreed to have the Abhorrence act as host for the Chapter council, as not only was it the largest vessel in the system but Bohemond was the longest-serving Chapter commander present.

On the shuttle heading for the Abhorrence Koorland sat across from Lieutenant Greydove, who had insisted on accompanying the Space Marine to his destination for the sake of appearance. To his credit the young commander had obliged Koorland’s demand to come to Phall without complaint and once the Achilles had been set on course the lieutenant had run a sharp, disciplined crew.

‘What do you hope to achieve?’ asked Greydove. The lieutenant leaned forward as far as the bars of his grip harness would allow. ‘Do you think the authorities will allow you to get away with this? You’ve gone rogue, captain, is what they’ll say. They’ll hunt you down.’

‘Who will?’ said Koorland. ‘The High Lords? The Adeptus Terra? The Inquisition? They have far greater concerns at the moment.’

‘That may be, but I can see that you are not wholly comfortable with this.’

Koorland remained silent for a while. There was no reason to indulge the Naval officer’s curiosity, and he owed no explanation for any other reason. For all that, Greydove was right. Koorland did have reservations, exceptionally grave ones. He would not be able to share them with the Successors, not without causing offence or sowing doubt, but they gnawed at his thoughts. The lieutenant made as good a confidant as anybody.

‘Bohemond,’ said Koorland. ‘Marshal of the Black Templars.’

‘What of him?’

‘He has a reputation. More than that. The Black Templars are a force apart. They claim lineage from Rogal Dorn as do the rest of us, but they cleave to their own code and practices. I do not know if I can find common ground with him. He is… headstrong.’

‘Stubborn? Surely you can gain the support of others and win him over.’

‘If that is how it is, I will be well-pleased. However, I think that Bohemond may raise objections and I do not have authority to bargain with him.’

Greydove looked as though he was about to speak, but after a glance at the Space Marine he shook his head and remained silent.

‘What is it?’ demanded Koorland. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘You are the last of the Imperial Fists,’ the lieutenant said, hesitantly. ‘That makes you, by default, Chapter Master. You are Bohemond’s equal.’

Koorland considered this. ‘By default? That is no great claim to position.’

‘I disagree. In your case, it is the greatest claim. The rest of the Chapter perished, but you survived. That makes you not remarkable but miraculous. Surely you have the blessing of the Emperor.’

‘Superstitious nonsense,’ grumbled Koorland, but the lieutenant did have a point behind the religious facade. ‘There is something to what you say. However, will the others agree with your position, or simply see an upstart captain demanding action of his superiors?’

‘That very much depends on you, captain,’ Greydove said quietly. He looked at his hands clasped in his lap, his gaze flicking up occasionally to Koorland. ‘You showed no lack of authority in taking my ship.’

‘That was little challenge,’ said Koorland. He saw the shame and hurt in Greydove’s gaze and realised that he was misunderstood. ‘Not because of you, but because of me. I am of the Adeptus Astartes. My size is intimidating, and the legends that surround my kind give me gravitas not even the greatest of Naval officers could match. I could be the least of my Chapter, yet even knowing nothing of me mortal men cannot help but defer to my will. If it is of any merit, you should know that you have my respect and, I believe, continue to have the respect of your crew.’

With a slightly abashed smile, Greydove met Koorland’s gaze.

‘It is of merit, thank you.’ The smile faded and the lieutenant’s brow furrowed. ‘But why should you care? Forgive any impudence, but why would a captain of the Imperial Fists be concerned about the feelings of a lowly Naval lieutenant? Surely you have weightier matters to focus on?’

‘Credit and honour to those who have earned it,’ said Koorland. ‘I make no exception in my remarks, for your conduct has been as worthy of praise as if you were a sergeant under my command who had shown similar qualities.’

The two of them fell silent, leaving Koorland to contemplate the exchange. A few minutes later the clank of the landing gear on decking announced their arrival aboard the Abhorrence. Greydove released his harness first and stood up. Koorland waited a few more seconds, gathering his thoughts.

‘What is the worst that could happen?’ said Greydove.

‘The last of the Imperial Fists will be ridiculed for his pretensions of grandeur, so that the memory of my Chapter will end not only with extinction but infamy?’

‘All right,’ said Greydove, taken aback by Koorland’s bleak forecast. ‘And the best?’

‘The Successors acknowledge that they must come together in the Imperium’s hour of need and we are able to the destroy the Beast.’ Koorland thought about what he said, comparing his goals with the price of failure. He pushed up his harness and faced Greydove, offering a hand in friendship with a smile. The lieutenant took it. ‘You are right, of course. The rewards outweigh the risks, the cause justifies the action. Even if I am to be plunged into ignominy there is still every chance that my brothers in the other Chapters will be able to make common purpose. Thank you.’

‘You may not believe it, but I think that the Emperor has chosen you for a greater purpose,’ said Greydove. ‘Of all the Imperial Fists, you have been spared. It is an honour to be the last, not a burden. I know nothing of Space Marines and their ways, nor of your Chapter, but in the small time since we met you have proven to be resourceful, determined, loyal and courageous. Everything the legends tell us to expect of the Adeptus Astartes. Your brothers, those that were left at Ardamantua, would be proud to have you represent them.’

Koorland smiled at these words, and yet what might be hollow, thoughtless praise struck a chord in the captain. He did not believe himself chosen by any higher power, but he was certain that he would carry himself according to the best traditions of his Chapter. He was an Imperial Fist — the Imperial Fist — and it was in his power to make that mean something.

The door hissed open and a ramp clanged down to the landing bay deck. A squad of Black Templars, their burnished ebon armour gleaming in the bay lights, waited with bolters at the salute. With them stood a warrior in more ornate armour, a red-crested helm under his left arm, a drawn power sword in his right hand. The officer stepped forwards as Koorland descended the ramp.

The Black Templar raised the hilt of his sword level with his chin, blade upright, in a mark of respect. Koorland placed a fist against the eagle on his chest in reply.

‘I am Castellan Clermont. I am to convey you to the Marshal and Chapter Masters.’ The castellan lowered his sword and carefully sheathed it before offering a hand in friendship. Koorland shook it gratefully.

‘My thanks for the welcome, Clermont.’ The two of them started walking across the massive bay, their escort falling in behind as the pair headed between the dormant Thunderhawk gunships. ‘It makes me realise that I have been too long from the company of my fellow Space Marines.’

‘You are amongst brothers again, Koorland. Harbour no doubts in that regard.’

It took a few minutes to reach the hall where the council was to be held. Clermont announced Koorland as two Black Templars swung open the great double doors, and then led the Imperial Fists captain within.

The hall was bedecked with trophies and banners, every square foot of wall covered with gilded skulls, tattered remnants of enemy standards and icons, pieces of tile, timber and masonry from conquered citadels. The floor was obsidian, as was the long table at which sat the council of Chapter Masters; the four of them turned questioning eyes on Koorland as he entered.

Bohemond was instantly recognisable, sat at the head of the table flanked by two banner bearers carrying the Chapter standard and a long pennant in the colours of the Marshal’s personal heraldry. Clermont advanced ahead of Koorland to join his commander and the group of Space Marines around him.

Koorland also recognised Issachar, whose pale armour was in total contrast to Bohemond’s. The Chapter Master of the Excoriators was well known for his bionic arm, which was a plated mass of bare metal and cables; more precisely, known for the manner by which he had come to need it following an overly competitive honour duel with Marshal Bohemond during a previous disagreement. His artificial fingers tapped out a complex rhythm on the surface of the table, which stopped when his gaze met Koorland’s.

The Chapter Master’s false hand formed a fist that moved to his forehead, lips and chest in quick succession in a sign of fraternity. Koorland met the gesture with a simple nod.

Behind Issachar stood three warriors, one in the livery of the Chaplains and two that bore markings of the Librarium. The Black Templars occasionally threw menacing stares at the pair of psykers but the Excoriators feigned ignorance of their brothers’ antipathy.

Opposite Issachar was a warrior that Koorland did not know. His armour bore no livery at all, the drab grey ceramite coloured only by heat swirls and splashes of dried blood. Only one Chapter that Koorland knew of did not paint their armour — the Fists Exemplar. The warrior was flanked by a Space Marine bearing the burnt remnants of a trapezoid banner and another with a long spear held in both hands.

Last at the table was Chapter Master Quesadra of the Crimson Fists. The Crimson Fists were almost as numerous as the Black Templars contingent, with two banner bearers, a cup-holder and three more Space Marines with thunder hammers held across their chests.

Their commander’s armour was highly polished, shining in the light that spilled from the chandeliers above the table, shoulder pads inlaid with sapphire-like stones, the red circled fist of the Chapter icon picked out in delicately faceted rubies. Quesadra regarded Koorland in the same manner a warrior might size up a potential foe, mentally measuring his capabilities. To Koorland it felt as if those bright blue eyes were stripping him down to the soul, and he was relieved when Quesadra turned his laser-like gaze on Bohemond.

Faced with the grandeur and panoply of these mighty leaders Koorland felt inadequate in his plain, damaged battleplate. Doubts crowded his thoughts as he advanced across the tiles, the clang of his tread echoing around the large hall. Who was he to call upon these leaders and legends? Greydove was a normal man, easily impressed by those with superior physique and skill. The warriors that awaited Koorland at the table were of an order far above a lieutenant in the Navy.

Koorland realised that his actions were not those of a brave survivor, but those of a foolish, petulant child. How did he dare refuse the will of the High Lords? What did he hope to achieve here? It was petty of him to place his desires above the needs of the Imperium. The worst conceit was the notion that he could still make a difference, that somehow he could single-handedly save the reputation of the Imperial Fists. What arrogance, they would say.

Stopping beside the chair at the bottom of the table, directly opposite Bohemond, Koorland paused and took a deep breath. He looked at the officer from the Fists Exemplar.

‘I am Koorland, of the Imperial Fists. I have the honour of knowing the names and titles of the others assembled here, but I regret that you have me at a loss.’

‘Thane,’ said the Space Marine. He hesitated before continuing, a flicker of a tic in his right eye. ‘Chapter Master Thane, these last few weeks.’

‘By my honour, I make acquaintance,’ said Koorland, bowing before he seated himself.

‘You are welcome, Captain Koorland,’ said Bohemond, his voice booming across the hall. ‘There is sense in us coming together to share intelligence of the foe and strategy for their destruction. We have spent some time appraising one another of our efforts, and I do not wish to waste time repeating such reports, but for the benefit of our new arrival I would make a quick summary of the situation.’

Bohemond looked around the table and there were no objections raised.

‘Good,’ he continued. ‘The orks continue to press towards Terra on all fronts and the situation, already dire, is threatening almost total collapse. Almost. Having extracted our brothers in the Fists Exemplar from their fortress-monastery I have been calling together several crusades still operating in the Segmentum Solar. As you might expect, there is little to appeal to my marshals in these relatively calm systems and so the majority of our crusades are much further from the Imperial centre. It will take time for them to arrive.’

‘Such calmness has occluded proper recognition of the threats at hand,’ said Issachar.

Bohemond scowled, perceiving the comment to be an accusation, but he pressed on with his report without argument.

‘It has fallen to us and the Crimson Fists in particular, as well as Chapters of other heritage, to wage the mobile war against the ork attackers. The Imperial Navy stands almost idle. We have filled the breach as best we can, but we have not the numbers to stand and fight at every contested star system. The orks move closer and closer to Terra each day while the Imperial Guard twiddle their thumbs on their mustering fields and the Imperial Navy watches with disinterest. If I could spare the bolts I would fall upon these traitors myself, but the orks are enough opposition for the moment. When the orks are driven back there will be time to punish those who have so easily forgotten their oaths.’

‘Report arrives daily of another system fallen, another ork incursion, all accounted to the ravages of the Beast,’ said Quesadra. ‘We attack when we can, but we kill hundreds when we need to kill thousands, thousands when we must slay millions. We come to the aid of the Imperium as ancient oaths decree, but the Imperium seems unable to fight for itself. Not since Ullanor have we seen such a greenskin threat. Their numbers are beyond measure and matched by greater cunning than we have ever thought possible. Even as the orks are coordinated and focused, the forces of the Imperium are scattered and beset.’

‘Let us not forget the sacrifice of many brave thousands that have given their blood defending their homes,’ added Thane. ‘They have taken a toll of the alien invaders also.’

A few of the Space Marines bowed their heads in silent thanks. Koorland did likewise, remembering his dead wall-brothers.

‘Yes, but the sacrifices will not be swiftly concluded,’ said Issachar. He glanced at Bohemond and received a nod of permission to continue. ‘The issuing of the Last Wall protocol is a grave matter, but I think it is just this situation for which the Primarch intended it. The Imperium is beset by a foe that will likely triumph over other forces. No Chapter alone can stand against this menace and so the bonds of old, forged by the Emperor’s hand and broken by the dictate of the Lord Commander, must be joined again. The sons of Dorn will stand united once more.’

‘Indeed!’ Bohemond’s voice boomed across the hall. It dropped in volume as he continued with furrowed brow. ‘I was surprised to find that it was not Cassus Mirhen that had sent the herald signal.’

‘The Chapter Master is dead,’ replied Koorland.

‘A tragedy we have recently experienced,’ said Thane, nodding in sympathy. ‘He was a great leader. You are the surviving ranking captain, I assume?’

‘The only survivor,’ said Koorland quietly.

‘And tell me, Captain Koorland, why it is that you come here alone, aboard an Imperial Navy vessel no less?’ asked Bohemond, darting a look of annoyance at Thane’s interruption. ‘Where are your warriors and the rest of the fleet? You call us to the Last Wall and yet you come alone.’

‘You misunderstand me, brothers.’ Koorland bowed his head. ‘I was not the only surviving officer at Ardamantua. I was the only survivor.’

Silence greeted this declaration.

Quesadra started to say something but the words died on his lips. Koorland looked at each of the Space Marines around the table and saw the same emotions in their expressions: hardened warriors brought to a standstill by confusion, anger, pity. It was the last that caused him the most pain and sent him surging to his feet.

‘The Imperial Fists are no more,’ he said, and speaking aloud the fact made the shame of it surge through Koorland. ‘Save for me, they are all dead.’

He swallowed hard. He had faced death without fear a thousand times. He had been wounded, three times grievously, and now ripped back from the edge of oblivion by the ministrations of the tech-priests. Even during the horrors of Ardamantua Koorland had never felt scared, not truly. To stand here and say what he was about to say was the most terrifying experience of his life. He did not know what was going to happen as soon as he uttered the words. The future was a black abyss waiting to swallow him, but there was nothing else to be done but to plunge headlong into its dark embrace.

He looked at each of the Chapter Masters in turn and said the words that no son of Dorn wanted to hear. They were words that signified loss. More than that, a defeat so great, so shameful, that to anyone not of the Imperial Fists or Successors the words might seem trite. Yet to those who had Dorn’s gene-seed it was a statement that would make such honoured blood run cold, an admittance of the worst failure imaginable.

‘The final wall has fallen.’

Fifteen

Port Sanctus — inner system

‘All hands! All hands! Prepare for fleet address! All hands! Attention for the Lord High Admiral!’

Shaffenbeck’s voice boomed out over every internal comms system across the Colossus, and the order was being repeated across the dozens of ships heading in-system towards the ork attack moon. The greater part of the greenskins’ strength still lay ahead, as scores of vessels rushed out from the star base’s vicinity to confront the Imperial attack. The sensor team aboard the Colossus had calculated the enemy strength at roughly forty-eight capital-sized ships and over a hundred smaller vessels.

‘Where did so many ships come from?’ Kulik asked Price as the two of them sat in the communications cabin waiting for Lansung’s speech. Neither of them were excited by the prospect of the Lord High Admiral’s bombastic self-aggrandisement and so they had cloistered themselves away from the main bridge for the moment. ‘I mean, not just here, but all across the segmentum? If every attack moon has a fleet this size, that’s decades, centuries of building.’

‘Yes, but not all of it by the orks.’

Price spread out pict-captures from the fleet of the ork vessels they had destroyed. Many were ghastly constructions, seemingly thrown together as much as they were designed. They sprouted improbably large and armoured gun turrets, packed weapons decks, oversized engines and outlandish decoration.

Quite a few, however, were recognisable as having once been other types of vessels. Kulik saw many Imperial ships, from destroyers up to heavy cruisers, that had been somehow taken by the orks and retro-fitted in their own fashion. Even just amongst those already encountered, there were enough captured Navy vessels to form a sizeable flotilla. There were also dozens of merchant ships that had been up-gunned and up-armoured with the simple addition of weapons turrets and shield generators.

‘That explains it in part, but they’ve got more of our ships than the Battlefleet Solar. How have they not been noticed missing?’

‘It seems the orks have been… stockpiling for some time.’

‘Stockpiling? You mean that the orks have been deliberately building their forces somewhere, waiting for this moment to attack?’

‘I don’t know about waiting for this moment, but the massed fleets, the attack moons, all have arrived almost simultaneously,’ Price said with a heavy sigh. ‘It’s impossible to put this down to coincidence. There is a far grander purpose behind these attacks, I’m sure of it. As to where and how the orks managed to build these things, that’s a mystery for another day. There’re huge tracts of space that have never been surveyed, even with our current Naval strength. It only takes a few systems to slip past us to hide a fleet this size.’

‘But… orks doing this?’ Kulik simply could not get his head around the idea. ‘Orks laying low and strategising in this manner is unheard of. It is, to put it a certain way, totally alien to them. I know we hardly know anything about them really, there’s been few encounters over the last centuries, but they’ve always been aggressive, invasive.’

‘Something has changed, that’s for sure,’ said Price. He gathered up the vid-captures into a pile and stacked them neatly to one side. ‘These damned orks not only have a plan, they have a larger objective, something we’re not seeing.’

‘Other than a steady encroachment, there’s been no pattern to their attacks,’ said Kulik. ‘They don’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular. Some have been strategically important systems, some are backwaters that nobody had heard of until they were invaded. If they’ve been hoarding ships all of this time, centuries probably, surely it would be for something more specific than just a huge jolly war?’

‘I don’t just mean the orks overall, I mean the orks here, in Port Sanctus. This fleet is large in comparison to some of the scattered reports we received. There must be something about the dockyards that they really want, pulling in a whole damned armada to get it. Why did Acharya have to choose this system of all the ones the orks have attacked to prove himself?’

‘It’s self-sustaining, isn’t it? The orks must have known about the shipyards, and if they can take them they know they can build even more ships.’ Kulik glanced at the chronometer. Lansung’s speech would be received shortly.

‘If that’s true, then perhaps it is best that we’re here. There’s no telling how much stronger they’ll get if they keep taking facilities and systems at this rate. Every conquest seems to be fuelling more, but to what end?’

‘I think you’re giving them too much credit, sir,’ said Kulik, standing up. ‘I doubt they even know why they’re doing half of this. Maybe there is a smart ork out there, something more intelligent than we’ve met before, but it certainly isn’t in control. It’s a figurehead, something like that. There’s not an ork in the universe that could prepare and coordinate an invasion like this.’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ said Price, following Kulik as the captain made his way back to the bridge in anticipation of the Lord High Admiral’s address.

‘How so, sir? Do you really think it would bode well for the Imperium if there was such a creature?’

‘It would be worse for us if there isn’t. If the Beast really is behind this calamity, someone can find it and kill it and bring this invasion to an end. If not… I have no idea what we can do to stop them.’

With this sobering thought in mind Kulik stepped back onto the bridge just in time for Saul’s announcement.

‘Incoming live-feed transmission. Fleet-wide address from the Autocephalax Eternal¸ flagship of Lord High Admiral Lansung.’

‘Open channels for reception, broadcast to all stations,’ Kulik said as he took his place at his usual spot at the centre of the bridge.

‘All hands! All hands! Prepare for fleet address! All hands! Attention for the Lord High Admiral!’

On the big screen Lansung’s face appeared, as round and massive as an ork attack moon. Fortunately for most of the crew they would be receiving audio only and did not have to watch a sweat bead almost as big as Kulik’s fist sliding down the cheek of the Lord High Admiral and into the fold between two of his chins.

‘We are about to embark on a mission that is vital to the continued future of the Imperium,’ announced Lansung. ‘What happens over the next few hours could well determine the course of mankind’s dominance amongst the stars for the next hundred generations. I know you do not wish to spend these next few minutes listening to me babble on about glory, honour and respect. You have all been raised in the finest traditions of the Navy and I have only a short message, which I am sure you will all understand and take to heart.’

Lansung drew in a deep breath and Kulik thought he saw uncertainty in the plate-sized eyes staring down at them. The Lord High Admiral closed his eyes, perhaps in contemplation, or perhaps in resignation, it was impossible to tell. He spoke without opening them.

‘The Emperor expects every man to do his duty.’

As the last word echoed around the bridge the transmission ended. Kulik wondered what could possibly lead a man like Lansung, a man who had demonstrated on every previous occasion a need to hear his own voice at tremendous length, to deliver such a short oration.

‘He’s scared,’ whispered Price, as if guessing Kulik’s thoughts. ‘He really isn’t sure if we’re going to win today.’

‘I’ll settle for surviving,’ said the captain. ‘That’ll do me just fine.’

‘I don’t think that’s an option, Rafal,’ said the admiral. ‘If we don’t destroy those orks, none of us is getting out of Port Sanctus alive.’

Comforting, thought Kulik. Just the sort of encouragement I’ve been hoping for.

The captain scratched his chin for a few seconds.

‘Aye aye, sir,’ he growled.

Sixteen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The moment the door swished open Wienand knew something was wrong.

For a start, an amber light glowed dimly on the entry access panel on the wall to her left. Somebody with inquisitorial clearance had entered her official chambers, other than herself or Rendenstein. In itself this was no cause for undue alarm, but it was unusual for anybody to come here when Wienand was not present.

The second factor that made Wienand stop just inside the door was the silence. Rendenstein was supposed to be here, and that always meant the faint buzz of a digi-reader or the clatter of a terminal keypad, even just the soft tread of Rendenstein as she made her random security checks. There was nothing. The buzzing of the air circulation units had fallen silent. It was part of the defence features of the chambers that all electrical systems would cut out if an energy spike was detected. In this case it was probably a lasweapon discharge, although it could be something as simple as a power cylinder from a plasma weapon or even the field source for a power sword or other energy weapon. Even the crack of a bullet was enough to set off the delicate sonic detectors secreted throughout the offices.

Also, just beneath the keypad of the door security system was the faintest red smudge of a fingerprint. Wienand had instantly recognised it as blood. There was no trace on the keypad itself — wiped clean by the interloper, no doubt — but instinct told her that the blood belonged to Rendenstein.

Lastly, the real clincher was the door ahead of her at the end of the entryway. It was ajar, kept open by a heavy-soled boot. There was more blood on the tread. It certainly wasn’t the sort of footwear Rendenstein would have been wearing.

Paused with the door still open behind her, one hand half-stretched towards the security pad, Wienand considered her options.

She had been summoned here by Veritus. The conclave was due to begin in an hour, in the Octagon. Obviously someone had decided to pre-empt the proceedings, or otherwise interfere.

In Wienand’s estimation that person was most likely Veritus himself. Maybe Najurita had been more reluctant to participate than the old inquisitor had originally hoped, or perhaps Veritus simply preferred to settle matters the way they had been settled in the old days.

Another option was that she had been betrayed by Vangorich, perhaps in trade for the support of Veritus. She dismissed the possibility. If Vangorich really wanted Wienand dead she wouldn’t be alive to think about it. The Officio Assassinorum did not give second chances, not here on Terra where everything was to their advantage.

It was not safe to stay here.

Wienand turned around and strode back into the corridor, left hand towards the sensor pad by the door, her seal ring pulse-transmitting a signal to close the portal. She whispered a three-part code to initiate full lockdown and then turned right, heading towards the monorail terminal a few hundred feet further into the Imperial Palace.

The station was empty, as Wienand expected. The mono-shuttle was for Inquisitorial personnel only — and Vangorich, apparently, Wienand remembered with irritation — and was the only way to access the inner chambers of the Inquisitorial enclave. One shuttle was at the platform, on the westbound track leading to the main part of the Palace via the Adeptus Ministorum Senatorum chapels. The eastbound track, which would take her to the main transport hub at the Eternity Terminus, was devoid of carriages.

There were two ways to read this discovery. The first was to assume that whoever had breached the inner chambers had then exited towards the transport hub. The second, more paranoid and likely version of events, was that someone had anticipated Wienand’s attempt to flee and was manoeuvring her towards the Ministorum enclave for a particular reason.

It also made sense that she was cut off from the transport hub; from there she could requisition an ornithopter to take her directly to the main Inquisitorial Fortress under the south polar ice cap. Her allies were there, as were six companies of Inquisitorial storm troopers and no doubt a few other mercenary types currently in the employ of one inquisitor or another who would be more than willing to engage in hostilities.

She suddenly realised how isolated she was here, and remembered the words of Veritus. He had said that she had become too close to the Senatorum, and perhaps he meant geographically as well as metaphorically. By holding her offices here, in the Senatorum palaces rather than at the polar bastion, she was cut off from the Inquisition.

Thinking she heard a distant footfall behind her echoing down the passage, Wienand darted a look down the colonnaded corridor towards her chambers. She saw nothing, but was now convinced that someone was there, perhaps out of sight, perhaps cloaked somehow. Her enemies — it had to be Veritus — had access to all kinds of archeotech if needed.

She jumped into the open-topped mono-shuttle, closed the gate behind her and sat down on one of the benches. The shuttle was about five yards long, barge-like in shape, with four benches running its width like the thwarts of a rowing boat. Though it had a metal infrastructure, the exterior of the shuttle was covered in ornately carved wood and panelling lacquered a deep red, with polished brass fittings. Rows of terminal panels were fixed in front of each bench. Detecting her presence, the carriage’s machine-spirit sprang into life, illuminating a map display on a board in front of Wienand. She tapped in her cipher key and then selected the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor as her destination.

There was safety in public, she reasoned. The Cathedral was one of the greatest sites for pilgrims all across the galaxy to visit and at any time there were tens of thousands of them living and waiting in the Piety Dorms that stretched for several miles around the shrine. It was easy to get lost there, and Wienand needed to get lost very urgently.

The shuttle rattled into life as gear teeth bit into the rack running the length of the track, lurching the carriage forwards. The clanking increased in speed as the motor accelerated to full capacity, yellow lamps springing into life ahead and behind as the shuttle passed into the tunnel mouth at the end of the platform.

Leaning forward, Wienand reached under the bench and used her ring-transmitter to open the auto-bolt on the reinforced locker beneath. She pulled open the front to reveal several guns and pistols. She selected a lightweight bolt pistol and loaded it, placing it in the pocket of her coat. As added protection she pulled out a snub-nosed laspistol and tucked that inside her boot. Moving to the locker to her right she repeated the action and retrieved several blind and concussion grenades. Another locker yielded up a shock maul that slipped nicely up her sleeve and a sheathed vibroknife that she tied to her waistband.

As the shuttle clattered along in the gloom of its own lamps, Wienand took stock once more. Rendenstein was still alive, she was sure of it, if only because her bodyguard and assistant was fitted with an internal pulse monitor that had not activated. She might be captured or hurt, but Rendenstein’s heart was still beating.

It was impossible to hear anything over the clattering of the rack-and-pinion engine of the carriage, but Wienand could not shake the feeling that someone was following along the track behind her. She twisted on the bench and glared back. There was nothing in the twin cones of yellow projected by the rear lamps. In the darkness beyond, who could say?

In the fourteen tortuous minutes it took for the shuttle to clank and wheeze its way to the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor, Wienand formulated a plan.

It was a very simple plan. She would lose herself amongst the human crush of the Piety Dorms. That was as far as it went. Survival was her only goal in the foreseeable future. Once that was assured Wienand could expend thought and energy on something loftier, like finding out who was trying to kill her and how she was going to respond.

The implications of what Veritus had done horrified Wienand but she forced herself to think through the consequences. The Inquisition was meant to be a free-form, self-regulating organisation. In fact, the term organisation was misleading. The Inquisition was officially recognised by the Senatorum Imperialis and the rest of the Imperium, but other than that it had no formally mandated structure, duties or remit.

In essence there was no Inquisition as such, just inquisitors. Each inquisitor, a bearer of the Emperor’s Seal, was a power unto himself or herself. Nobody was quite sure who had appointed the first inquisitors — or even if anyone had appointed them and they had not simply assumed the role for themselves. Over a thousand years later, it was still true that an inquisitor was the only authority that could bestow the Emperor’s Seal to another. Not the High Lords, the entirety of the Adeptus Terra nor the Mechanicus could grant such power to one man or woman.

Necessity had required a certain amount of support and infrastructure, and ad-hoc solutions had, over the centuries, gathered gravitas and traction to become quasi-formal institutions. The Inquisition as an entity had grown, as had the role of Inquisitorial Representative. Wienand had read some of the earliest Senatorum reports and it seemed that in those early decades the Inquisitorial Representative had simply been whoever was on Terra and available at the time. That was when the Inquisition had been looking outward far more than inward; resurgent alien threats, the risk of the rise of forces allied to the Ruinous Powers.

It pained Wienand to consider the notion that perhaps Veritus had been right on some level. Maybe the Inquisition had been tainted by association. The free-thinking, dynamic band of trusted investigators and agitators, judges and executioners, proselytisers and protectors had become something far greater, yet also diminished. The Inquisition possessed resources far beyond what it could have claimed even a century earlier, in terms of manpower, wargear and materiel. It had ships and soldiers, fortresses and libraries, communications nets, security protocols, sleeper cells, kill teams, relay posts, research stations and an untold number of agents, operatives, spies, infiltrators, slaved-servitors, pilots…

‘Damn,’ Wienand said out loud. ‘That bastard Veritus is right.’

The whole point of the Emperor’s Seal, the authority it represented, was to set the entire resources of the Imperium at the disposal of an inquisitor. If he or she needed an army, the Imperial Guard was required to oblige. If an inquisitor needed a ship, the Navy would provide. If someone was meant to be killed, there was the Officio Assassinorum. With a galaxy-spanning empire to draw upon, albeit fractured and impossible to govern, why did the Inquisition need these things for itself?

The answer was simple. The Imperium was broken. The offices and organisations meant to rule and control the vast interstellar swathes of mankind were simply unfit for the purpose. In fact, no institution would ever fit; the size of the Imperium and its scattered worlds prevented anything like meaningful communication and governance.

‘Damn,’ Wienand said again, as she realised the full extent of what Veritus intended. ‘He means to use the Senatorum as the Inquisition’s puppet. He thinks the Inquisition should control the Imperium.’

A hiss of hydraulics and a gentle squeak of brakes brought Wienand sharply back to the present. Veritus had to be stopped, but in due course. Wienand reminded herself of concern number one: survival.

The Inquisitorial shuttle bay was a concealed adjunct to a much larger transport station situated a few miles from the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor. Glow-globes broke into dim life as the carriage coasted to a stop alongside a bare metal gantry of a platform. The carriage motors whined down to a low drone and then fell dormant. Wienand activated the nav-system once more, bringing the shuttle back to full life. She punched in the codes for dock three of the Widdershins Tower, location of the Cerebrium.

As the shuttle shunted forwards, Wienand jumped clear to the gantry and watched the carriage rattle on up the track. She wasted no time, darting up a set of metal steps at the end of the platform two at a time. She keyed in the combination of the lock-cycle barring the door at the top and slipped out onto the main concourse of Saviour Station.

The drone of hundreds of people greeted her and for the first time since setting foot in her chambers, Wienand allowed herself to hope that she might actually live through the next hour.

Seventeen

Port Sanctus — Vesperilles System

A constant rumble shook the deck as the Colossus’ guns kept up a rolling salvo of fire. The battleship’s lances spat white beams at the ork ships swarming along the line of Imperial Navy vessels. Void shield generator overload warnings thrummed as return fire ploughed into the battleships and cruisers of the Emperor’s Navy.

The greenskins had boiled out of the inner system like hornets streaming from a nest, dozens of smaller attack ships and a score of larger vessels that came hurtling directly for the fleet. Kulik had first taken the headlong charge as further proof that the orks were not as sophisticated as Price feared; such rush attacks had been the hallmark of many an ork raiding force for centuries. Lansung had ordered the fleet to split into lines of attack in response, hoping to break through the orks in a repeat of the attack on the asteroid field.

That was when the orks had revealed their first surprise. Rather than continue on their course directly towards the nearest ships, the alien warships had slowed and gathered their strength, turning their fury upon just two of the forming battle lines. The Colossus had been one of several ships that had borne the brunt of that first attack.

The Seraphic Guardian, Terrible, Last Endeavour, Magnificent Fate and Klaus Magnate had all surged forward in response to the call from Admiral Price to protect the flagship, but now the cruisers were embroiled in a messy fight with the smaller ork ships while the larger enemy vessels had broken away to concentrate their attack on the second line of Imperial ships.

Price was stalking back and forth across the bridge, grunting and muttering to himself. It was obvious that he had over-reacted to the first ork attack but it was too late to salvage anything meaningful from the situation.

‘Damage crews to prioritise the energy grid and flight decks,’ Kulik announced, adjusting his balance as another shockwave pulsed along the battleship. He glanced up at the screen showing the void shield generators and hull integrity data. More hits aft. The orks were very deliberately targeting the main engines. Shaffenbeck had evidently noticed the same thing.

‘Do you think they’re trying to cripple us before moving in for the kill, sir?’ said the first lieutenant.

‘Maybe,’ replied Kulik, though he preferred a different explanation, which he voiced, just loud enough to make sure Price could hear it too. ‘It might also be that they are trying to damage our engines to stop us getting anywhere near the attack moon. It might not be as impregnable as we feared.’

‘One disaster at a time, captain,’ Price said sharply. ‘The attack moon will wait for us to throw ourselves at it, no need to hurry the matter.’

Surprised, Kulik said nothing in response to the admiral’s defeatist remark, but caught a look from Shaffenbeck out of the corner of his eye.

‘Helm, bring us seven points to starboard and have every other fourth and sixth deck gun crew moved to their starboard batteries. I want a constant fire once we turn.’

Kulik studied the schematic a little longer. The cruisers had broken into pairs and were snaking their way to port, driving off the ork attack ships but leaving themselves vulnerable to several larger ork vessels moving up in a second wave.

‘Have Remarkable and Justified Annihilation come about on the port side,’ the captain told the comms officer. ‘They are to cross our turn and assist the forward cruisers.’

Price stopped his pacing and looked at Kulik with narrowed eyes. Remarkable and Justified Annihilation were two Lunar-class ships, the newest in the rimward patrol flotilla. Although part of the rimward fleet they were also under the command of Kulik as commodore, and he was technically within his rights to issue orders. The admiral looked at Kulik for several long seconds, perhaps trying to work out if the captain was being insubordinate, before he shook his head and resumed his stalking.

A secondary detonation somewhere amidships caused the Colossus to shudder from prow to aft, the sudden movement almost throwing Kulik to the deck. Price stumbled, to be caught by an alert lieutenant who had been turning to report.

‘Sir, we’re detecting a strange energy surge from the ork ships to starboard.’ Price pushed himself away from the officer and straightened his coat. Muttering some more, he turned and glared at the damage display on the main screen.

‘Be more specific, lieutenant,’ replied Kulik. ‘What sort of energy surge? That ship looks too small to be warp capable.’

‘It’s like a small-scale transition, captain. I’ve never se—’

‘Watch lieutenants on decks four and five report enemy boarding parties, sir!’

Price, Kulik and Shaffenbeck all turned as one towards the comms lieutenant who had issued the warning, then as one they all returned their attention back to the main screen. The nearest ork ship was at least three thousand miles away.

‘Confirm that report, Mister Hartnell!’ barked Shaffenbeck, striding towards the comms panel.

‘More ork attackers, sirs!’ the distraught lieutenant repeated. ‘Decks fourteen and fifteen.’

‘Teleport attack?’ Price was incredulous. ‘Those ships are far too small.’

‘Confirm some form of warp portal excavation, captain,’ said the officer at the sensor console. ‘All three enemy ships have some kind of teleporter lock.’

‘Where?’ demanded Kulik.

The officer changed the main display and a series of green crosshairs sprang up on a rotating isometric display of the Colossus. There were breaches in seven different places. Blue icons represented the responding armsmen teams, closing in on the ork teleport attack sites from above and below.

‘Emperor’s blood, that’s two decks below us!’ Price took a few paces towards the comms officer. ‘Tell the armsmen to prioritise the second boarding. They must protect the bridge!’

‘Belay that order!’ Kulik’s command stopped Price in his tracks. The admiral was enraged as he rounded on the captain, but Kulik cut off his superior. ‘The first attack is right on top of the flight decks. We need to keep the launch bays operational. Officer of the watch!’

‘Sir?’ asked Shaffenbeck, stepping up.

‘Admiral Price will have ship command, in my absence,’ Kulik told him. The captain purposefully pulled free his service pistol and heavy sword. ‘These are not just for parades.’

‘This is highly improper, captain,’ protested Shaffenbeck.

‘Go with him, lieutenant,’ said Price, mollified by Kulik’s explanation. ‘See that your captain does not get into too much trouble.’

Caught between his sense of duty and two conflicting orders, Shaffenbeck stepped first one way and then the other, gaze flicking between his superiors. Kulik shot him a meaningful glance and the lieutenant seemed to break his stasis and followed his captain towards the doors.

‘Mister Hartnell,’ Shaffenbeck addressed the lieutenant at the comms station, ‘have Sergeant Latheram meet the captain at the top of the command deck third for’ard stairwell, with as many men from the upper companies as he can muster.’

‘Have him arm defence squads from the lance crews, they’ll be put to better use against the boarders than trying to hit fast attack ships,’ added Kulik as the doors rumbled open just in front of him. He paused at the threshold and turned on his heel to look at Admiral Price. ‘Leaving the bridge, with your permission, sir?’

‘Aye, captain, carry on!’ Price replied with a wave of the hand.

Outside the armoured confines of the bridge Kulik could immediately hear sounds of fighting echoing along the corridor. Shouts and small-arms fire rang from the metal walls. He broke into a gentle run with Shaffenbeck at his heel, heading for the closest stairwell down to the deck below.

‘Mister Cabriot,’ he barked, lifting his cuff-piece communicator to his mouth, ‘with the admiral’s assent, have helm move us away from the attack ships, and order all weapons batteries to target them as soon as they come to bear. Let’s cut off the flow of reinforcements if we can.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ came the crackling reply.

It took less than a minute to reach the top of the stairs but there was no sign of Sergeant Latheram and his armsmen. Kulik made towards the steps but Shaffenbeck grabbed his elbow and stopped him.

‘We need to wait for the armsmen, sir,’ said the lieutenant.

‘That could be another five minutes, we’ve got men fighting and dying right beneath our feet, man!’

‘All the same, sir, we can’t do anything for them yet, unless we want to join them in the Emperor’s locker box.’

‘This isn’t like you, Saul,’ said Kulik, pulling free his arm. ‘Never seen you back down from a fight, not in all the years we’ve served together.’

‘It’s the admiral, sir.’ Shaffenbeck looked away, ashamed.

Kulik knew the mannerism well; the lieutenant wanted to say something but considered it too far outside his remit to utter the thoughts.

‘Out with it, you know you can trust me, Saul. What about the admiral?’

‘I don’t trust him, not with the Colossus. He’s been acting odd ever since Lord High Admiral Lansung arrived. No, before then. This feud with Acharya, that’s what started it off.’

‘Price is a decorated and capable commander, lieutenant,’ Kulik said sternly. He saw a sudden fear in Shaffenbeck’s eyes. Not the fear of the physical but fear of reprimand, of failing in honour or duty. It softened the captain’s mood immediately. ‘There’s a lot at stake, you heard what Lansung told him. Price is under a lot of pressure.’

‘I think he’s buckling…’ Shaffenbeck let the thought drift away as boots clattered on the stairs above them, heralding the arrival of Sergeant Latheram and his armsmen.

‘Reporting as ordered, captain.’ The gaunt warrant officer snapped off a salute. ‘Got fifty men from the lance crews, sir, with shotters and boarding gaffes. Shall I lead the way, captain?’

Kulik could hardly refuse as the wiry man almost pushed his way past and shouted to his men to follow.

The armsmen of the Colossus wore the same deep blue as the officers, with red stripes on the legs and piping of the same on their plasteel-mesh-reinforced jackets. Their wore full-visored helms and rebreathers, and carried stubby shotguns and lascarbines — short-ranged but effective weapons perfect for the brutal and bloody work of shipboard combat.

Kulik started down the steps not far behind Latheram, with Shaffenbeck right behind him. The sergeant turned left at the bottom of the steps, heading aft, where the sounds of fighting were louder.

‘Captain, we have two more teleport registers close to your position. One astern of c-section, one in the prow sensor access tunnels,’ reported Lieutenant Cabriot.

‘Sergeant, we need to head for’ard. There’s another lot of greenskins attacking the sensor arrays. If they take them offline we’ll be blind and deaf.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said the sergeant. He performed an abrupt about-face, power maul on his shoulder, pistol in his other hand. ‘This way, lads. Don’t dawdle!’

Flashes of gunfire shone from the bare bulkheads a couple of hundred feet ahead of the party — the watch lieutenants on each deck were issued with keys to the firearms lockers when a ship went to general quarters. There were sporadic snaps of laser fire, but far more bass cracks and bangs from the orks’ slug-throwers. Bestial growls and roars, punctuated by the wet slosh of blood, the snap of shattering bones and howls of pain, made Kulik glad he had listened to Saul and not dashed headlong into the melee.

In the light of the gunfight large, brutish shadows were thrown against the walls ahead. Kulik counted at least a dozen bodies strewn along the passageway before them, contorted and battered so badly they were barely recognisable as human. With a sinking heart the captain counted no orkish casualties amongst the dead.

‘Captain, the tech-priests have locked down the sensor chambers and secured the prow bulkheads, but they say that the orks have brought cutting gear with them. They’ll be through in a matter of minutes.’ Hartnell sounded calm enough over the comm, but Kulik could imagine the tension on the bridge. Fighting a battle was bad enough, but doing so while hulking alien brutes were rampaging through your ship — and capable of teleporting an attack seemingly at will — was probably testing the nerves of even the bravest officers.

‘Do you think they know what’s in there, sir?’ asked Shaffenbeck, looking paler than usual.

‘I hope not,’ said the captain. ‘Because if this is a deliberate attack to cripple our sensors, the orks know a whole lot more about our ships than I’m happy about.’

‘Best we stop them, eh, sir?’ suggested Shaffenbeck with a forced smile.

‘At the double, please, sergeant.’ Kulik tried to exude confidence with his voice but his words sounded slightly shrill. ‘Let’s kill these orks before they cut through into the sensorium.’

As the company broke into a run, Kulik and Shaffenbeck surrounded by armsmen and shotgun-wielding ratings, the captain’s hands started sweating profusely. It was odd, considering how dry his mouth had become.

They rounded a corner into the corridor leading to the first bank of scanners. Fortunately, for all their guile in targeting the ship’s engines and trying to disable the scanning array, the orks were not so advanced that they had thought of leaving a rearguard. In fact, only about two dozen of them had stayed with the spark-spitting cutters at the bulkhead outside the sensor chambers. Presumably the others, having safely delivered the cutting crew to their objective, were off looking for more butchery and fun. Kulik would have breathed a sigh of relief had he not been out of breath from the running; commanding a capital ship was not always the most physically taxing of jobs and though he had made efforts to stay in shape, age was catching up with him. A glance at Shaffenbeck showed that the first lieutenant was at least reddening in the face a little.

One of the orks glanced back at the sound of tramping boots and let out a noise somewhere between a cry of alarm and a whoop of joy. Responding, the other greenskins turned as the first armsmen opened fire with their lascarbines, filling the passage with red bolts of light and the scent of ionising air. A few orks fell casualty to the salvo, but a plethora of pistols and stubby-nosed automatic weapons rose like a thicket around the survivors. Kulik slowed his run as he stared into the multitude of gun barrels.

The clatter of the orks’ return fire combined with the boom of shotguns, deafening Kulik in the enclosed space. The captain fired his pistol into the face of an ork about forty feet in front of him. The las-blast ricocheted off the side of its head, leaving a scorch mark in its green flesh but doing no greater damage. Bullets screamed and whirred past Kulik — inches away, it felt.

Saul was yelling encouragement, urging on the ratings as more and more of them fell to the scything ork bullets.

‘Up and at them, men of Colossus!’ roared Kulik without really understanding what he was doing.

An armsman just in front of the captain fell sideways, his head and helmet scattering bloodily across the corridor. Two orks wielding the ramshackle cutting devices turned their equipment on the charging humans. Lightning arced, catching Sergeant Latheram and three more men in a tempest of black and green energy.

An unthinking rage fuelled Kulik as he thumbed the power switch of his sword. A flickering energy field flowed along the blade, casting bizarre, jolting shadows on the walls. A tiny, more rational part of the captain’s mind screamed in terror, but it erupted from his mouth as a wordless bellow of defiance.

Around their captain, long boarding pikes held level, the lance gunners charged too, driving the tips of their gaffes towards the greenskins. Shaffenbeck had his sword in hand, its blade the near-transparent blue of tempered plasteel alloyed with ardamite crystal threads.

One-on-one the men of the battleship would have been no match for the bestial greenskins, but as a mass they pressed in, following their officers, united in purpose and momentum. Years spent working the aiming gears and exchanging the energy cells of the immense lance cannons had made the ratings tough, muscled men, and with the force of desperation and the shout of their lord and master ringing in their ears, they drove home their spears with irresistible force.

The orks crashed heavy mauls and cleavers against the metal-sheathed hafts of the boarding pikes, but to little avail. Pinioned in many places, the closest orks were pushed back into their companions, the men behind the pikes twisting the shafts as they had been taught, to drive their weapons even deeper through flesh.

Kulik stabbed the tip of his sword into the eye of a transfixed alien, ramming half the blade into its head to be sure. On his right, Shaffenbeck slashed the guts out of another greenskin. There was no room for parry and thrust, cut and riposte. The captain lashed out almost blindly; it was impossible to miss, his only care to avoid his crewmen with his wide swings. It was not so much swordsmanship as it was butchery skill.

Miraculously, Sergeant Latheram had somehow survived the strike from the electro-cutters, though his chest, left arm and half his face were a mass of burns. There was smoke drifting from his hair and the ragged remains of his clothes. A single eye stared wildly from the mass of scorched tissue, filled with such loathing that it scared Kulik. The sergeant brought his glowing power maul down onto the skull of an ork, crushing it with a single blow. Another sweep caved in the chest of another.

Kulik felt the armsmen surge again around him and was happy to be pushed back away from the melee for a moment, lashing out one last strike across the throat of an ork that was trying to bite the head from one of the pikemen. Shotguns barked, lethal even to the orks at this close range, shredding bodies and obliterating heads and limbs.

Kulik stumbled out of the side of the fighting, coming up hard against the bulkhead, almost collapsing as his head crashed against a stanchion. As ever, Shaffenbeck was just a step behind, in time to grab his captain to stop him falling over.

Wincing, stars dancing across his vision, Kulik turned his back to the bulkhead and eased himself against it, taking gasps of warm, sweaty air. The corridor was filled with battle-din — noises more animal than human or ork, shouts and sounds of flesh being ruined as the last of the aliens fought ferociously against the inevitable. Glancing around, Kulik could see at least a score of his own men dead, piled on the decking where they had been shot, cut down or clubbed to death.

It then fell eerily quiet, the only sound ragged panting and the groans of the wounded ratings and armsmen. There was the bark of a shot. Men with shotguns and boarding pikes moved amongst the ork fallen, cutting and shooting off their heads to ensure they were dead. Kulik could see a few of the survivors tending to the casualties; an armsman whose arm had been ripped off was helped away as he numbly searched amongst the blood and gore for the missing limb.

‘That’s the last of them, sir!’ Shaffenbeck said with a weary grin.

‘No it isn’t,’ the captain replied, heaving in another breath. ‘A whole bunch have split off and the Emperor alone knows where they’ve got to.’

A huge shudder along the hull almost knocked Kulik’s head back against the bulkhead, reminding him that defeating the orks aboard was only one of his concerns. They were still in the midst of a massive space battle. He needed to get back to the bridge — Shaffenbeck was right that Price was not one hundred per cent capable at the moment — but he didn’t want to abandon his men to the fraught ork-hunt through the corridors of the battleship.

‘I’ll coordinate the purge from here, sir,’ Shaffenbeck said, reading the conflict in his superior’s expression. ‘Get back to the bridge where you can do the most good.’

‘Very well,’ Kulik replied gratefully. ‘Keep an eye out, I don’t want to have to go looking for another officer, do you hear? Sergeant Latheram, I commend your bravery but I am also ordering you and all other wounded to report to the surgeon’s halls. Call in more men once the flight decks have been secured, Mister Shaffenbeck.’

The armsman sergeant looked about to argue, but thought better of it and accepted his captain’s command with a stiff salute, the action of which sent a ripple of pain across his face. Two men stepped up to helped their injured leader but he waved them away and started off aft under his own power.

‘You know,’ said Shaffenbeck, watching the sergeant leave, ‘with men like that, we might just win this damned battle.’

Kulik was too tired to admonish Saul for his cursing. He pushed himself upright, sheathed his sword and holstered his pistol. Straightening his coat and his back with equal effort, the captain started back towards the bridge. Medical orderlies were coming down the corridor and he gave them a nod of appreciation as he passed.

Action shaped thought, and by acting reserved and disciplined some of Kulik’s calm had returned by the time he was back at the bridge. The adrenal rush of the hack and slay of combat was ebbing away, but as he had told Shaffenbeck, they were nowhere near the end of this fight yet.

The bridge doors groaned open in front of Kulik and he stepped back onto the command deck. It took him a moment to adjust from the frenzied shouts and sweaty gore of hand-to-hand combat, to the rhythmic chatter of servitors and the soft exchanges of the bridge crew. Behind the armoured doors seemed a different world and Kulik felt almost dizzy with the dissonance. He was brought back to focus by Price.

‘Ah, there you are, captain. I hope you enjoyed yourself disposing of our unwanted guests.’

‘It’s being dealt with.’ Kulik took in a sharp breath. ‘Admiral.’

The captain assumed his usual position and passed a quick eye over every screen and console. The ork ships with the teleporters had been destroyed and the squadron of cruisers assisting Colossus had broken through the orks. Three cruisers were crippled and that many again destroyed from the flotilla. The rest of the rimward fleet was not quite so badly mauled, having had extra time to respond to the ork ruse. The coreward flotilla, which made up the starboard axis of the attack, was almost unscathed. The patrol flotilla ships were now in a position to turn back and trap a large part of the ork fleet against the main line of the rimward fleet. Price seemed to be in the middle of ordering the relief attack, and half the flotilla had already started the manoeuvre.

‘Communication from the flagship, captain,’ reported Lieutenant Hartnell.

‘Accept transmission,’ Kulik replied, crossing his arms.

A sub-screen enlarged, filled with the static of a vid-comm burst. The face of Lord High Admiral Lansung glared down at the men on the bridge.

‘What are you turning around for, Price?’ Lansung demanded. ‘The route to the ork star base is open. You will rendezvous with Commodore Semmes and continue the attack without delay. That is my command.’

Price stepped back as if struck, brow knotted. He signalled for the comms officer to switch to transmission.

‘This is Admiral Price. If we abandon the rimward fleet now, they will suffer badly at the hands of the orks. They’re taking on pretty much all of the enemy on their own at the moment. We must provide assistance.’

The admiral turned away and started to pace while he waited for a reply. Kulik stopped him at one end of his perambulations.

‘Sir, I think the Lord High Admiral is right,’ the captain admitted. ‘We have to push home the advantage while the attack moon is virtually unguarded. The orks have been trying to keep us away from the base as hard as they can, and I don’t think it’s as invulnerable as they want us to believe. The flight wings of the Colossus are needed for the attack, along with the rest of the carrier group.’

Before Price could answer, Lansung’s message arrived through the aether. He looked calm, but his voice was edged with rage.

‘Admiral Price, I have given you a direct order. Colossus and all attendant ships are to join the attack on the ork star fort. Failure to obey will be mutiny.’

‘Ignore him,’ snapped Price. ‘Continue to come about.’

‘Belay that!’ Kulik felt Price’s glare like a slap across the face and flushed red with shame, but there was no other option. ‘Admiral, we must obey and join the attack.’

‘Officer of the watch, have the armsmen attend to the bridge and place Captain Kulik in custody. He is under arrest for insubordination.’

‘Belay that order,’ growled Kulik. The officers around the bridge looked on, horrified as they watched their two commanders arguing. The captain laid his hand on the hilt of his sword and stared at Price. He was shaking, scared more by this confrontation than by the bloody fight with the greenskins. ‘This is my ship, admiral, and I have received a direct order from the Lord High Admiral. You will remove yourself from my bridge and remain in your quarters until such time as you have recovered your composure.’

Price bridled, lip quivering with indignation. Kulik leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper.

‘For the sake of the men, do not require me to summon the armsmen, sir. Let us act like officers.’

Kulik’s words seemed to strike a chord somewhere in the admiral’s mind and a hint of realisation crept into his expression. He nodded mutely, confused, and then shook his head. Kulik thought Price was going to argue again, but the admiral’s shoulders slumped in defeat.

‘I… I am feeling… indisposed, Captain Kulik. I think it better if I retire to my cabin at this juncture. I do not feel well at all.’

‘That would be for the best,’ Kulik replied gently. ‘I will have the surgeon send an orderly with something relaxing for you. Mister Crassock, please assist the admiral to his quarters.’

Price nodded dumbly once more, looking every bit the old man he was becoming, frail and uncertain. Kulik could not understand what had happened to his mentor, his friend, and it cut him deep to see Ensign Crassock helping Price off the command deck. When the door closed behind them, Kulik drove the image from his thoughts.

‘Signal to fleet. All vessels to make all speed possible to the flagship for immediate attack on the objective.’

Kulik realised he was still holding the hilt of his sword, his knuckles white with strain. He released his grip and flexed his fingers, forcing himself to relax. Emperor protect me, he thought, from orks and admirals.

Eighteen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

On past occasions Wienand had lamented the sheep-like mentality of humanity, and in particular their desire to crowd onto Terra in their tens of thousands to pay homage to the God-Emperor of Mankind. Even amongst the Inquisition such thoughts were becoming heretical, but Wienand had read the ancient records and knew, or at least had a semi-educated inkling, just how ‘godly’ the Emperor was. There were some, like Veritus, who had embraced the teachings of the Ecclesiarchy and openly supported the organisation. Wienand remained unconvinced of the necessity for an Imperium-spanning church, but she could certainly see that it might have its uses.

At the moment its greatest use came in the form of a queue five miles long, winding back and forth up the Avenue of Martyrs towards the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor. Having cut and double-backed through the crowds at the transit station several times to confuse any potential pursuer, eventually emerging out of the southern gate, Wienand had plunged straight into the milling tide of humanity.

Amongst the press of bodies, the inquisitor found herself inside a sort of mobile shanty. It took days, weeks usually, for anyone wishing to enter the Cathedral itself to achieve this, and such was the demand that it then took another three days to process from the massive doors to the entrance of the inner basilica where the altar could be seen. Each pilgrim had roughly three seconds in the presence of the relics kept in stasis there before being moved on by armed Frateris. It seemed an awful lot of effort to see a couple of metal shards — supposedly from the Emperor’s armour — and a pile of ash that was once, so the Ministorum claimed, a fragment of Roboute Guilliman’s cloak.

People had tents, handwagons and portable cooking stoves, gathered as families, groups and even entire communities that had made the long and arduous journey to the heart of the Imperium. Most of them, even those that had been considered wealthy when departing, would have expended their every resource to chart passage. Some would have worked their way from system to system, haphazardly crossing the stars, edging ever closer to their destination.

There were clothes and fashions from thousands of different worlds. Underhive punks with extravagant gang hairstyles and tattoos who had been touched by the light of the Emperor queued meekly alongside labourers in heavy coveralls and hand-woven smocks. Various individuals of planetary nobilities moved serenely through the mass atop sedan chairs carried by augmented servants, or cut themselves off inside servitor-pulled wains covered with brilliantly embroidered panels and sheets. No powered vehicles, save for the patrol transports of the Adeptus Arbites, were allowed on the Avenue of Martyrs, nor animals, so all transportation was either on foot or man-powered in some fashion.

A middle-aged couple had procured quadcycles and were gently pedalling in fits and starts as the queue edged forwards, their teenage offspring riding on top of the trailers hitched behind. Wienand suspected that both parents and children had been a lot younger when their pilgrimage had begun.

Quite a few were recognisable as ex-military: Guardsmen and Naval personnel who had earned the right to pilgrimage by conquest or bravery. That right might bring them to Terra but it didn’t extend so far as jumping the queue. Conversely, the western edge of the roadway was reserved solely for members of the Ecclesiarchy. Preachers and missionaries with letters of reference from cardinals of recognised dioceses were granted access, alongside a few fortunate individuals of the Frateris who had earned similar reward for services rendered. Amongst the cassocks, uniforms and robes were ornately dressed members of higher-class families, whose dedication to the Adeptus Ministorum had perhaps been more financial than physical or spiritual.

There were growls of annoyance and accusing shouts as Wienand pushed herself through the mass, suspected of trying to jump her place. A few brave souls made grabs and lunges but were soon dissuaded from further action by a flash of her bolt pistol; the Inquisition sigil of the ring on her trigger finger was even more of a deterrent for many. Anyone who had spent more than five minutes on Terra learned to keep an eye out for the stylised ‘I’ with cross-bars, and to affect an air of total disinterest in anybody that possessed such a thing.

She continued to worm her way through the throng. It was hard to chart any kind of course. Not only was the press of people like a thicket, allowing passage in some places and obstinately blocking it in others, great incense burners hung from the ceiling above the Avenue of Martyrs. The smoke from these spilled down like a fog, obscuring visibility even further. Wienand was dimly aware of the tenements rising up on either side of the vast thoroughfare, storey after storey of small cell windows, broken by the occasional spray of stained glass where the way-chapels were situated.

Peddlers of all descriptions moved up and down between the columns of the pilgrimage queue. Their wares ranged from the mundane to the extraordinary. Many were selling food and clothes, others had small trinkets and keepsakes purportedly from the Cathedral itself. Quite a few were soilmen, with synth-leather bottles and buckets and brightly painted portable screens to allow the pilgrims to relieve themselves without losing their place; those that were prepared made their own arrangements or organised themselves into queuing shifts to avoid such expense. There were several touting out their services as place-holders. They would, for the right fee, happily queue in place of a pilgrim so that they might spend a day or two resting in one of the dorm cells or perhaps visit one of the lesser attractions of the Imperial Palace.

More exotic were the modified queue-folk. Wienand spied a tele-bless. The woman’s eyes had been replaced with optical lenses and the bulky, cable-pierced box of a storage drive jutted from the side of her skull. She had been inside the holy sepulchre of the Cathedral and was willing to allow others to access her sights and memories for the right price, thus passing on the holiness of the sanctuary without the irksome waiting.

Messenger cherubs — vat-grown winged creatures with angelic faces and dead eyes — flitted back and forth through the haze of incense above the milling crowd, carrying missives to and from the Cathedral offices. She decided to follow their course to keep her bearing as the crowd surged and rippled around her, edging ever closer to unity with the Emperor.

Although the mass of pilgrims gave her plenty of cover in which to hide, it also prevented Wienand from seeing if she was still being pursued. She was sure that whoever had followed her down the tunnel would have been close enough to track her progress into the multitude, and if they were in communication with others sworn to Veritus and his allies she might well be at the centre of a converging net.

She needed to get into the hab-blocks, effect a change of clothes — and preferably dye her hair — before disappearing altogether. Over the heads of the throng around her the inquisitor could see the top of an arched entrance to the nearest hab-block, about three hundred feet away. She started to head towards it, stepping past an elderly couple who had sat down on the ferrocrete with a small stove to brew a pot of some hot beverage or other. They were dressed in mendicant robes — undyed smocks given out for those that needed to sell the last of their belongings, including their clothes, for food and water.

‘Tai, dear?’ asked the old lady, offering up a much-chipped ceramic cup and saucer. ‘You seem in an awful hurry. Why not relax a moment and have a nice cup of tai?’

Wienand couldn’t help but grin at the lady’s attitude. To keep a tai set whilst dressed in charity rags demonstrated an adherence to a certain level of standards that gave Wienand a momentary lift in spirits.

‘No, thank you, but I appreciate the offer,’ said Wienand. She delved into a secret pocket inside her jacket and produced a brassy coin. On one side was the Inquisitorial symbol and on the other her personal mark. She handed the token to the old man and pointed to an Adeptus Arbites watch-tower about half a mile ahead. ‘When you get to the way-station, show them this. Say that Inquisitor Wienand instructs that they escort you to the front of the queue.’

The couple looked at her wide-eyed, caught between shock and fear. Wienand winked and turned away.

At that moment she saw a commotion in the crowd about a dozen feet ahead of her. Someone was bulldozing their way through the pilgrims straight towards Wienand, smashing aside people in their haste.

With surprised shouts and angry yells the crowd parted, revealing a well-muscled man bulging out of the seams of a mendicant robe. The hood was thrown back as he sprinted towards her; he had an ageing, broad face with a squashed nose, and his bald scalp was crossed with three faint scars.

Wienand dragged free her bolt pistol but her attacker was shockingly fast and she did not have time to aim before he had reached her — she could not risk a wild shot with so many others around. The man’s hands were empty of weapons, she realised, and an out-thrust palm struck Wienand in the chest, hurling her back several yards, crashing through the brew set of the old couple, skidding and rolling across the rough ferrocrete.

The old man gave a shout, of pain rather than surprise, and lurched to his feet clutching his shoulder. Blood spurted between his fingers as he staggered a few steps and fell down to his knees.

Only here, as she lay on her back, did Wienand realise what was happening. The man’s face flashed from a memory of Rendenstein’s reports: Esad Wire, known as Beast Krule. It seemed that Vangorich was making his own play.

However, in the next instant she happened to look up and saw what it was that the Beast had also seen. In one of the hab windows on the far side of the avenue, about five hundred feet away, light glinted from a lens of some kind. Probably a telescopic gunsight.

Wienand rolled to her right out of pure instinct a moment before the sniper fired again, the high-velocity bullet cracking from the roadway where she had been moments before. Still dazed, Wienand did not resist when Beast Krule snatched the bolt pistol from her hand and turned towards the firer. There was something about his pose, the set of his shoulders and legs, the raw sturdiness of the man, which suggested some kind of endoskeletal bracing.

Beast Krule fired back at the sniper, a salvo of three bolts. From this range Wienand would have thought the shot impossible, but the trio of bolts arced over the crowd and dropped into the window. Krule had some kind of optical imaging and had even allowed for the decay rate of the bolts’ internal propellant. The flash of detonations illuminated a gaunt, shocked face within the dorm cell.

Wienand rolled to her feet, pulling free her laspistol. Other figures were converging on them from the crowd. Some of the pilgrims were rooted in horror, others were screaming, while many were trying to push their way back into the packed throng, trying to get away. The old woman had crawled over to her husband and was cradling him in her arms, a patch of wet red spreading through the crude grey weave of her smock.

‘Watch out!’ Wienand’s warning came just in time as a woman in a dark red Imperial Guard uniform lunged from the crowd at Krule, her hand clutching a gleaming power sword. The Assassin turned just in time, the shimmering blade slicing through the folds of the robe around his neck but missing flesh. Krule snapped out his right hand, fingers extended. The woman’s throat disappeared in a welter of foaming blood.

Another assailant dressed in the same manner, tall and lean, erupted from the panicked people to Wienand’s right. The inquisitor fired and there was a flash of light as a conversion field absorbed the energy of the las-shot. She didn’t have time for another, but Krule was there again, a kick snapping the legs from under the man, shattering shin bones. The Beast was on top of him in moments, driving reinforced fists through his chest and ribs.

Someone barrelled into Wienand from behind. She squirmed and twisted as she fell, firing the laspistol point-blank into the person’s gut. Hot breath warmed the inquisitor’s neck as the two of them hit the ground hard, forcing the air out of Wienand’s lungs. She stared into the red lenses of a pair of bionic eyes inches from her face, and was distantly aware of a sharp pain just above her right hip.

Suddenly the weight on Wienand was lifted away. The man seemed to rise into the air, blood drops falling from the blade of the long knife in his left hand, a scorch mark on the flak armour covering his torso beneath the layers of a preacher’s vestments. At first Wienand thought it was Krule who threw her assailant a dozen feet, but the robed, hooded figure was too slender. Her saviour stooped down, extending a hand with well-manicured fingernails and a small tattoo of a skull between thumb and index finger that Wienand recognised immediately.

‘Rendenstein? I knew you were alive!’

Wienand’s aide nodded inside the hood and stepped past, delivering a skull-smashing punch to a man swinging a maul at Beast Krule’s exposed back. The Assassin reared up, bloodied hands flinging gore. He spun around but stopped himself as he pulled back his right fist.

‘That’s the last of them,’ growled Vangorich’s agent. He looked at Rendenstein and his eyes widened. ‘That I know of. There’ll be more soon, ma’am. We should go.’

‘Arbitrators!’ snapped Wienand, spying a knot of blue-armoured enforcers with shock shields and power mauls shouldering their way through the crowd a few dozen feet away. ‘This is no time for answering awkward questions!’

Krule led the way and Rendenstein took the rear, Wienand wedged protectively between the two enhanced warriors. They headed away from the incoming Arbitrators and found the shelter of an arched entranceway to one of the transit tenements.

Krule hit the steps inside at a run, going up two floors before turning along one of the landings and sprinting along its length to another stairwell, where he ascended again. Wienand wasn’t sure if he was heading somewhere specific or simply navigating at random, but after five minutes of hard running that had the inquisitor’s heart thrashing in her chest and her lungs burning, the Assassin finally came to a stop beside the open door of a pilgrim cell. He stepped inside and reappeared a moment later.

Wienand was almost doubled up, choking down huge gulps of air. She hadn’t realised the price her body had paid for the past few years being dormant on Terra. Rendenstein stepped past to guard the other side of the doorway, her skin as porcelain-like as usual. Krule glanced at the inquisitor’s aide with a look of appreciation before concentrating on Wienand.

‘All clear, ma’am,’ said Beast, taking Wienand by the arm and leading her into the room. It was a bare chamber about ten feet square, with a low pallet bed in one corner, a washstand with rusted taps in another and a bedside table in which had been left a tattered copy of the Lectitio Divinatus. ‘Sit down, let’s take a look at that cut.’

Wienand complied, wincing as her clothes pulled at the dried blood forming a scab over her hip. Rendenstein eased Krule aside, concerned for her mistress. The Assassin stepped away and glanced out of the narrow window before he pulled the thin rag of a curtain across.

‘I think I’m missing a few pieces of this puzzle,’ said Wienand, looking between Krule and Rendenstein.

Both Assassin and assistant started to talk at the same time and then stopped. They looked at each other with embarrassed smiles. Krule waved for Rendenstein to begin again.

‘Your unscheduled and unpublicised meeting with Grand Master Vangorich meant that you were not in your chambers as expected when Veritus’ men came for you,’ said the bodyguard-aide.

‘You’re sure they’re from Veritus?’ asked Wienand.

‘Positive. I was compiling records on known agents on Terra of those inquisitors taking part in the conclave. I recognised one of them. They must have realised I had guessed why they were there. I killed one and managed to get away.’

‘I was following you from when you were finished with the Grand Master, ma’am,’ continued Krule. ‘I did a quick sweep of your offices after you left—’

‘I thought I locked down the whole area?’ said Wienand.

Krule shrugged apologetically and continued.

‘I saw what you had come across, but by the time I reached the shuttle platform you had already departed. I had to follow you along the track. I was trying to catch up, but you were moving too quickly. Once you hit the public spaces I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in case I drew attention to you as well. When I spotted the sniper, I had to act.’

‘And I ended up following Krule, though he didn’t realise it,’ said Rendenstein. ‘I started on the eastbound shuttle to the transport hub, but jumped off a few hundred yards into the tunnel to lose my pursuers. I didn’t know you would be returning — sorry it wasn’t there for you when you came to the monorail. After that I went to check your personal quarters and found another one of our attackers there. I was too late to save Aemelie, but I killed him before he could get away. The bodies are stashed in the maintenance ducts. I was returning to the offices when I heard footsteps. I hid for a few minutes and that’s when I heard the other carriage being started. I hurried back, expecting it to be you, just in time to see Krule chasing you into the tunnels.’

‘And here we all are…’ said Wienand. ‘Veritus sent his thugs to kill me at the offices, then at my apartments, and then chased me to the Cathedral. They seem very keen to silence me.’

She gasped as Rendenstein peeled away her blood-matted shirt to reveal a narrow but deep stab wound in her side.

‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Krule.

‘You’ve inflicted worse,’ replied Rendenstein. Wienand thought she detected a hint of admiration in her bodyguard’s tone and expression. ‘But you’re right. No major internal injury, no arteries or organs damaged.’

‘Amateurs,’ muttered Beast, twitching the curtain to glance outside again. He looked back at Wienand. ‘So what should we do now, ma’am?’

Wienand was at a loss. Stage one was a success. She had survived. Barely. Stage two would be to counter Veritus’ plans to usurp power in the Senatorum Imperialis. Wienand was going to have to call in a lot of favours and the whole matter would surely send shockwaves through the Inquisition. This was potentially a very divisive moment and she would have to handle it carefully. Even if Veritus was beyond caring about the repercussions of his actions — a self-righteousness Wienand had witnessed in other long-serving inquisitors too — she did not want to fracture the very organisation that would be needed at its most united in this time of peril.

‘Aemelie,’ said Rendenstein.

‘What of her?’ asked Wienand.

‘Who is Aemelie?’ said Krule.

‘My body-double,’ Wienand told him. ‘Aemelie is my surgical doppelganger for certain occasions. What about her?’

‘She’s dead, not much use now,’ said Rendenstein. ‘I hid her body with that of the man who killed her.’

‘And we can use her to make Veritus think I’m dead too,’ said Wienand, catching up on her aide’s train of thought. The inquisitor looked at Krule. ‘Do you think you could recover the corpses and stage them to look like it was me?’

‘I’m sure I can manage something, ma’am,’ said Krule. He looked at Rendenstein with a hopeful expression. ‘If I had some help, things would go more smoothly.’

‘Stay here and rest,’ said Rendenstein, looking at Wienand, ‘and I’ll bring back medicae supplies to fix that for you.’

‘Very well,’ said Wienand. ‘I’ll also need to change my appearance. Something cosmetic will do for the moment, we’ll worry about fingerprints and gene-trackers later.’

Wienand took a deep breath and looked solemnly at her companions.

‘Time that I died.’

Nineteen

Port Sanctus — inner system

Glory or death.

It was the unofficial motto of the Imperial Navy and Lord High Admiral Lansung had evidently taken it to heart. The head of the entire Navy was going to return to Terra in triumph or he was going to ensure nobody returned at all.

The Colossus ploughed across the void along with the other launch-capable ships that had broken through the ork line. Behind the spearpoint formed by the carrier taskforce came the other battleships and cruisers.

Lansung’s approach — it would be stretching the word ‘plan’ — was brutally simple. The flight wings — bombers, fighters and assault boats — would precede the main attack fleet with a single massive wave of craft. Intelligence suggested the attack moon’s gravitic manipulation was not advanced enough to target the small attack craft. They were to inflict as much damage as possible, hopefully disabling the gravity beam weapons and shielding, leaving the attack moon vulnerable to conventional weapons.

It was a long shot, Kulik knew, and the battleship’s captain suspected that Lansung knew it too. It was an all-or-nothing gamble that would cost the lives of many men, and see the destruction of many ships, even if they were successful.

Such was the price of victory.

Such was the sacrifice required to bring some hope to the defenders of the Imperium in their dark hour. If such hope needed to be watered with the blood of the Imperial Navy, Lansung was willing to shed an ocean of it.

In his heart Kulik knew the Lord High Admiral was mostly concerned with his own reputation and position. There could be no denying Lansung’s more selfish qualities. Against that, the captain weighed up what he knew of the Imperial Navy. He believed that no matter what Lansung did, or what the Lord High Admiral desired for himself, the Navy was an honourable and good organisation. Even the likes of Acharya and Price, men who reckoned pride and reputation higher than obedience and brotherhood, had in them an intrinsic quality imbued by the best traditions of the Imperial Navy.

It took a peculiar and particular sort of man or woman to command a starship. In defeat, death was almost certain. Unlike the Imperial Guard officer, the Navy lieutenant and captain rarely had opportunity to retreat or regroup. Reinforcements were very rarely on hand. Independence of thought had to be chained to rigid discipline, for years at a time could pass without contact with higher authority. Only a man or woman absolutely committed and self-confident could ever hope to tame the beast that was a warship.

It was no surprise that there were those who fell prey to hubris and arrogance. To be a captain of a cruiser or battleship was to hold absolute power over the lives of thousands of men and women. Power could corrupt, and in Lansung’s case it certainly had. But at the start, many years ago, even Lansung had been a fresh-faced officer stepping aboard a starship for the first time.

No matter how cynical or vain that young officer must have been, Kulik believed that even the most selfish and hardened heart could not be totally immune to the romance and glory of the Imperial Navy. Young Lansung had dreamed of honour and prizes and perhaps fame. Kulik believed — had to believe, for his universe to have any meaning at all — that there was still an iota of that young officer somewhere deep inside Lansung. If he did not think that, it would be impossible for the captain to lay down his life, and the lives of his crew, upon the altar of the man’s ambition.

The ships of the Imperial Navy cruised towards the attack moon. The ork star base lived up to its namesake in size, being several hundred miles across, though in shape this particular example was more rectangular than others. Mile-high outcroppings speared from its crater-pocked surface and with the scanners on maximum Kulik could see that it had probably once been an actual moon of some kind. Like the rock forts, it had been mined from the inside out, creating a vast network of caverns within its interior.

A few ork ships had turned around to chase the Imperial vessels back towards their base but these were easily held off by squadrons of frigates and destroyers. The ships of the line formed up into their battlegroups while the carrier force plunged ahead.

Kulik felt his breath coming shorter, his chest tight as his flotilla sped on towards the attack moon. It defied belief — had not similar creations all across the outer Segmentum Solar devastated systems, ravaged fleets and wiped out whole worlds?

He suddenly felt ridiculous, charging towards the immense battle station like some knight of old charging at a hive city with a lance. Kulik swallowed hard and looked at Shaffenbeck.

The first lieutenant was back at his customary place, having handed over leadership of the ork hunt to Lieutenant Hartley. Kulik was glad to have his second close at hand. The lieutenant was fixed on the screen too, hands clasped behind his back, knuckles whitening from the pressure. He sensed his captain’s attention and shot a glance at his superior that conveyed a mixture of dread and fatalism.

The best traditions of the Imperial Navy, thought Kulik. We don’t show it but everyone on this bridge, everyone on this ship, is quietly terrified. We tame it like the plasma in a reactor, channelling that fear into discipline and courage.

There was a deeper sensation than mere fear for his life working in Kulik’s gut. The greater part of the fleet was here, attacking a single ork moon. If they failed not only would Port Sanctus be lost, it would signal that the orks’ stations were impervious to the Imperium’s counter-attacks. He stepped closer to Saul as he considered that this battle signified the future of mankind. Failure here meant the orks would probably not be stopped. Never. Even if they were halted in one final battle, the rest of the Imperium would be drained dry of resources, ships and soldiers from other segmentuns drawn from their duties to combat the rampaging greenskins. Even if Terra held — as it had held in the Heresy War — the rest of the Imperium would fall prey to renegades, eldar, and sundry other dangers that threatened the existence of mankind’s dominions every day.

Glory or death.

Not at all. This was raw, primal battle for survival against one of the primeval forces of the galaxy. It was a test of the Emperor’s servants. If they could not crush the orks they did not deserve to rule the galaxy.

It was not long before the lead elements of the fleet came within range of the attack moon’s gravitic pulses. Strange arcs of green and blue energy flashed between ramshackle pylons studding the base’s surface. Their pulsing matched Kulik’s breathing, quickening with the passing seconds.

Like the mass ejections of a star this energy lashed outwards across the void, spitting green fire and flame, twisting the fabric of space-time around the fronds of energy. Kulik could not suppress a grimace and there came cries of dismay across the bridge as the Heartless Rogue was engulfed by a tendril of power, which seemed to wrap around the heavy cruiser like a tentacle. Impossible forces constricted, crushing the ship as void shields turned into red lightning, crumpling yards-thick hull like paper until the reactor containment fields ruptured and the heavy cruiser was swallowed by an expanding ball of plasma.

The corona of energy that had surrounded the moon dissipated, expended by the gravity-warping lash. Kulik had no idea how long it would take to recharge, but realised there was a window of opportunity to get close enough for the launch before the devastating weapon could be unleashed again.

It was a slim hope, but he was prepared to grasp anything that would make this seem like less of a suicide mission.

‘Colossus, this is Agamemnon,’ came a transmission on vox-only. ‘We are preparing to launch.’

‘Not yet, Agamemnon,’ Kulik replied swiftly, the order issued with gritted teeth. He knew that Nadelin didn’t want to get any closer to the attack moon; none of them did. But they had to put their heads into the dragon’s mouth if they were going to rip out its guts. ‘We have to all be within launch range and send the attack craft as a single wing. If we do this piecemeal they’ll be picked off before they ever reach their targets.’

‘Negative, Colossus. We can’t risk getting that close. That gravity whip will tear us apart!’

‘Damn it, Captain Nadelin, you will follow orders!’ Kulik snatched the comms pick-up from the arm of his command throne and his voice dropped to an angry whisper. ‘Emperor help me, Nadelin, if I see you launching your wings now I’ll blow you out of the stars myself!’

There was no reply, but the Agamemnon continued on course a few hundred miles ahead of the Colossus and showed no signs of slowing for a launch.

More conventional weapons opened fire from batteries cut into the surface of the attack moon and turrets mounted on the jutting edifices. Shells and energy beams spewed across the void, too far for any kind of accuracy.

‘I do think they might be worried, sir,’ Saul said. ‘They’re trying to scare us off!’

‘You might be right, Mister Shaffenbeck,’ said Kulik.

They were only a few thousand miles from optimum range when the crackling field of gravitic energy plumed outwards from the pylons again.

‘Emperor’s arse,’ muttered Shaffenbeck as a green tendril of fire filled the vid-display, seeming to head directly for the Colossus.

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ said Kulik. He winced as the display was filled with the static of the energy surge.

The gravity lash hit Agamemnon and Crusading Ire, tearing apart both ships like the shoddily-made toys of some enraged infant. Debris was scattered across the void, clouds of gases and rupturing corpses sprayed over the heavens as if by the hand of an uncaring alien god. Colossus’ void shields flared from the backwash but the battleship plunged through the expanding debris field unscathed.

‘Launch all wings!’ bellowed Kulik. ‘Signal to flotilla, all attack wings to launch now! Let’s get our pilots away before that thing is ready to fire again.’

The batteries and laser cannons were starting to find their mark as a dozen warships spewed wave after wave of aircraft from their launch bays. Glittering like ice, the attack craft sped across the void towards the ork star fort. Those ships capable of launching torpedoes added such ordnance to the mass of objects flying towards the attack moon. Turning broadside on to their target, the carrier craft formed a standard line of battle, their turrets and gun decks responding to the fire coming from the greenskins. Void shields burned bright and power fields protecting the attack moon flared with spits of orange and red.

Lansung and the main battle line were committed to the attack. There was no time to wait to see if the bomber wings were successful, so dozens of Imperial ships forged ahead, engines trailing plasma across the blackness of space. The Autocephalax Eternal led the charge, the bright gold of her eagle-headed prow gleaming in the light of the system’s star. Vessel after vessel followed the massive flagship, the schematic of the strategic display so crowded with identifier runes that it was a mass of incomprehensible blue.

The gravity whips powered up again before the first wings had reached their target. Kulik realised that Colossus was now the closest ship. He watched with morbid fascination as coils of energy coruscated up the pylons, building in intensity. The captain turned to his second-in-command and spoke quietly.

‘This is very likely going to destroy us, Saul,’ said Kulik. It took every effort to sound conversational. No stranger to battle, Kulik was nevertheless convinced for the first time ever that this was the end. The attack moon was too powerful. The orks were too powerful.

‘Very likely, Rafal,’ replied the lieutenant.

‘If I am to die I would like to go to the Emperor knowing one thing.’

‘What is that?’

‘Why did you never take your captain’s exam?’

Saul laughed, long and hard; so long that Kulik feared the attack moon would rip them to pieces before he had his answer. After what seemed like an age, the first lieutenant composed himself enough to reply.

‘I can’t stand to take another exam, sir. Captain Astersom, he terrified me at my lieutenant’s exam. I mean, actually terrified me. I wanted to kill myself. The thought of going through that again, the fear of failure, the scorn, the worry… I’d rather face a hundred attack moons than another board of examination.’

‘That’s it?’ Kulik was not sure if he was relieved or disappointed. He turned his attention back to the alien base filling the screen. The energy flow was almost at the tips of the pylons and sparks were starting to fly between the jagged metal spires. He looked back at Shaffenbeck. ‘Really, that’s it?’

Saul shrugged.

Kulik almost cried out in surprise when the first torpedo hit the surface of the attack moon. A cluster of warheads tore apart one of the pylons, causing green energy to flare outwards in an uncontrolled burst that spat uselessly past the approaching bomber wings.

More torpedoes hit home, though most impacted harmlessly onto the rocky surface of the base, creating fresh craters but doing little else. Close-range defence weapons opened fire with bolts of laser and streams of tracer shells as the Imperial Navy aircraft dived down towards the attack moon’s exposed gun batteries and turrets. Blossoms of incendiary and high-explosive fire raked across bunker-like extrusions and detonated inside yawning caves that scarred the base’s outer crust. More wicked green fire spewed in all directions, slapping aside a squadron of Cobra destroyers like a man swatting flies, four ships turned into slag and plasma in a few seconds by the writhing energy plume.

The Colossus poured out what fire it could with the rest of the carrier flotilla, until the flagship and the rest of Lansung’s fleet arrived. Nova cannons and mass drivers, cyclonic and atomic torpedoes, plasma blasts and melta-missiles ravaged the attack moon as ship after ship closed in, unleashed its fury and then turned away, broadsides thundering as the line passed through the manoeuvre.

Kulik did not think it was going to be enough, even the combined firepower of half the segmentum fleet. Void shields overloaded under the barrage of shells and torrent of energy bolts disgorged by the attack moon’s fury. Half a dozen cruisers were broken in half by sporadic flails of the gravity whip while huge rockets and crackling particle accelerators tore apart the battleships Restitution and Almighty Deliverance, their void shield detonations sending out shockwaves that batted attack craft across the ether.

Kulik saw something in the depths of the attack moon. A green glow was brightening from within, starting to gleam out of launch bays and vision ports. He saw the flit of fighters and bombers silhouetted against the light, inside the ork base. The pilots were guiding their craft into the heart of the star fort, no doubt sacrificing themselves to launch their attacks against the unprotected innards of the gravitic generators.

‘That’s going to overload, sir,’ said Shaffenbeck.

Kulik didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They were going to destroy an attack moon! Whether they would survive or not, he was not sure. Lansung must have felt the same.

‘General order to fleet, withdraw with all speed, captain,’ announced the comms officer.

‘Helm, you heard the command,’ snapped Kulik.

‘What about our pilots, sir?’ Shaffenbeck asked quietly. Kulik suppressed a swallow of regret and silently shook his head. ‘Understood, sir.’

The last ships of the fleet were still making their attack runs when the star fort exploded. Its detonation tore a rent through space-time, engulfing half a dozen more capital ships with fronds of lethal energy, swallowing escorts, bombers and fighters whole. For a moment Kulik thought he heard a roar of pain, an outburst of primal anguish that clawed into the back of his head and twisted like a fist around his thoughts.

Then the outer edge of the shockwave caught up with the Colossus.

Twenty

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Fanfare did not begin to describe the conditions that greeted Admiral Lansung’s arrival. Pomp, ceremony, spectacle. Even these words would not convey the massive grandeur, the overbearing ostentation and carnival that engulfed the chambers of the Senatorum Imperialis as the minutes counted down to the arrival of the Lord High Admiral’s gun cutter.

The Praetorian Way, which curved gently along the shoulder of a mountain from the Eastgate landing hall to a grandiose gatehouse, was lined by a thousand Lucifer Blacks in full armour on one side, and a thousand Naval armsmen on the other. Every tenth man bore a banner of title, naming a battle victory of the Imperial Navy. Behind both lines were trumpeters, drummers, hornsmen, chanters and chantresses. The instruments broke out into heady anthemic life, the voices of the choristers raised against the wind that blew across the Praetorian Way and snapped the flags atop the towers that reared above the proceedings.

Sparkling with gilded decoration, the gun cutter descended. The effect must have been engineered, somehow, thought Vangorich as he watched the display from the entrance to the Senatorum Imperialis halls. The usual layer of mist around the peak from which Eastgate was partially built had been dispersed, as had the clouds that dominated the skies above the Imperial Palace. That in itself was no small endeavour, all for the vanity of one man.

Around and in front of Vangorich stood the other High Lords. The past two weeks had been a fraught time, for the Senatorum in general and for Vangorich in particular. Wienand had gone missing, as had her aide-bodyguard and Beast Krule, who had been tailing her. There were a few whispers from within the Inquisition that Wienand had been found dead in her quarters, her corpse next to that of her attacker. Vangorich did not hold out any hope for his own operative, though he wondered what force Wienand’s enemies possessed that could best an experienced inquisitor and two of the most augmented warriors on Terra. The prospect of confronting such power unsettled Vangorich enough to stifle any opposition he might voice against the appointment of Wienand’s successor.

It was fear of the unknown — the enemy Vangorich hated above all others — that had curbed the Grand Master’s plans. The Senatorum had been convened and Lord Veritus had quickly established himself as the new Inquisitorial Representative. His first declaration to the High Lords was that there would be inquisitors coming to Terra to look into all of the dealings of the Senatorum and its members, starting with the Officio Assassinorum.

It was a clever move. It caused outrage, of course, that the Inquisition should impugn the honour of the noble High Lords, but the selection of the Assassins as the first target served a double purpose. Firstly, the other High Lords were largely united in their dislike for Vangorich and his organisation, and to see both humbled in this manner made the senators feel better. Secondly, it gave them notice to hide or destroy such records as needed to go missing; a tacit agreement between the Senatorum and the Inquisition that things were going to change but the High Lords would keep their heads as long as they had the decency to hide the evidence well and stop whatever it was they knew they had been doing wrong.

Lansung, being physically removed from this burgeoning purge, had suffered neither the wrath of Veritus nor the more insidious doubts that had followed the Inquisitorial Representative’s pronouncements. In a way it was just what the Senatorum needed; enlightened self-interest had fallen by the wayside in the face of the orks, but Veritus had brought back the dog-eat-dog politics that allowed the Senatorum to function properly, if not efficiently.

Vangorich glanced at the man himself, standing a few feet to the Assassin’s right. His stark powered suit was in the shadow of the great entrance arch, his face lit from beneath by the glow of the collar lamps, giving Veritus an even gaunter, draconian appearance. It was a powerful image; one that Vangorich filed away for possible future use. The Grand Master could barely believe that Veritus had turned up to his first Senatorum session in full armour, but the effect had not been lost on the other High Lords. Delving deeper, Vangorich had come to understand that the suit acted as a life support system as well as personal protection. Already schemes were in motion to find out if Veritus ever left the confines of that armour.

The trumpeting, drumming and singing reached a crescendo, causing Vangorich to look along the length of the Praetorian Way to the twin landing spars of Eastgate. Lansung’s cutter, still magically gleaming, touched down on the upper of the two pads. From this distance, more than half a mile away, only small shapes could be made out as the Lord High Admiral descended from the cutter and boarded an open-topped ground-skimmer.

The only news that had reached Terra concerning the admiral’s exploits had arrived two days earlier. Evidently Lansung’s flagship had somehow almost beaten the astropathic messages back to the Imperial capital. The brief communiqué had simply stated that Lansung’s efforts at Port Sanctus had been successful. That was all. No casualty figures, no breakdown of what he had actually achieved. Doubtless it was something worthwhile, a genuine victory, otherwise Lansung would not wish to deliver the news in person. Whatever announcement the Lord High Admiral was due to make certainly had the other High Lords excited, except for Veritus. The Inquisitorial Representative had not attended the latest councils to discuss the news and arrange the celebrations and honours about to commence; Vangorich envied him the luxury of choice.

For all that good news from the war was welcome, the ongoing mood of the Senatorum was one of trepidation. Lansung’s return would lead to confrontation with Veritus, that much was certain. The Inquisition had the spiritual authority; Lansung had the temporal power. Even the Lord Commander and the Ecclesiarch, two of the most powerful men on the Senatorum, knew that they would be forced to choose one side or the other. For the smaller fish in the pond it was as if a shark and a sea serpent were about to start fighting — and nobody wanted to be swallowed by mistake.

Lansung’s procession had reached the Praetorian Way. The armsmen and Lucifer Blacks fell in behind the cortége while the musical accolades continued. Vangorich noted with a sneer that ‘Hail the Saviour’ was being played; a massive aggrandisement, as the last time that piece had been played had been for the first Lord Commander, Roboute Guilliman.

The parade continued until the echoes of the last rolling drum beats and uplifting chords faded between the Palace towers. At that moment, precisely choreographed, Lansung’s skimcar came alongside the steps to the temporary podium that had been erected a hundred feet from the entrance to the Senatorum buildings. The whistling of the wind and the snap of banners were the only sound in the still that followed, everybody’s attention on the bulky figure that heaved out of the hovering transport. With surprising nimbleness — shipboard life had shaved off some excess weight — Lansung ascended the steps while his honour guard formed alternating ranks in front of the dais.

‘It is with great pleasure and immense pride that I address you today,’ began Lansung. His voice emanated from dozens of vox-casters placed along the Praetorian Way and within the gatehouse. ‘Honoured troops, lords and ladies of the Senatorum, I bring news that will be welcomed across the Imperium. The ork menace, the darkness that has in recent months plagued our worlds and people, can be defeated!’

There was a rousing cheer from the Lucifer Blacks and armsmen. The High Lords remained silent. A simple bit of rhetoric left them needing more convincing. It seemed as though Lansung was addressing the troops in front of him more than the High Lords, and it was now that Vangorich saw what the Lord High Admiral was doing. He was deliberately placing the Senatorum to the side, his message intended for regimental commanders, fleet admirals and other high officers. He was talking directly to the masses of the Imperial Guard and Navy, not as a High Lord — an inefficient, privileged bureaucrat — but as one of them, a fighting man risking his life for the Emperor and the Imperium.

Manoeuvring Lansung back to the fleet had lessened his power in the Senatorum, but had unwittingly increased his standing with the armed forces he wished to control.

‘This very day I bring news of a great victory won by the ships of the Imperial Navy.’ By some contrivance a flight of Naval craft chose this moment to perform a fly-past, screeching overhead not far from the gathering. Well-positioned Navy political officers with vid-capture teams were able to track the progress of the aircraft behind Lansung on his podium, an image that would soon find its way far beyond the confines of Terra. Lansung hooked his thumbs into his belt, causing the hanger of his sword to sway a little as he rocked back on his heels. ‘At Port Sanctus, an Imperial fleet led by myself and others of the Naval High Command bested a far more numerous flotilla of ork vessels and improvised installations cordoning the shipyards in that system. Not only was the strength of the ork fleet broken, but the bane of many worlds, that foe which even the great and noble Adeptus Astartes could not overcome, was finally defeated. Yes, brave citizens of the Imperium, your Navy has destroyed one of the so-called ork attack moons.’

Even amongst the disciplined ranks of the Lucifer Blacks this caused a few heads to bob or turn in surprise. Amongst the High Lords, murmuring chatter broke out immediately. Vangorich heard a growl from Veritus. The inquisitor stepped out from the other Senatorum members and started marching towards the dais.

Lansung did not appear worried. He had obviously received word of the changes occurring on Terra whilst en route back to the capital and it seemed to Vangorich that the admiral thought he might handle Veritus as he had Wienand. Vangorich allowed himself an inward smile at the thought of the rude awakening Lansung was about to receive if he thought he could deal and double-deal with the Inquisition now.

‘It is true,’ continued the admiral. ‘By force of arms, by bravery, by skill and by good command, these ork abominations can be defeated. If one can be destroyed, so can they all! The road ahead may be long, it may be dangerous and there may yet be setbacks, but I can say with all surety that the path to victory lies before us and it has been laid by the ships and crews of the Imperial Navy.’

Veritus was at the bottom of the steps by this point, but Lansung was ignoring him, his speech in full stride.

‘It is without a moment of hesitation, a gram of reserve, that I can give full assurance to those benighted citizens living under the yoke of ork tyranny, and those of the Emperor’s loyal subjects who yet live under the dark fear of the coming greenskin menace, that salvation is coming. By my own hand have I struck a grievous blow to the enemy, and shall do so again at the soonest opportunity. I ask now for the support of the Emperor and his servants. To those that fight in the Imperial Guard, lend me your strength. To those that serve in the Imperial Navy, grant me your bravery. To those that toil in the manufactorums, on the agri-worlds and on the ship-fitting stations, give me your resolve. Between us th—’

Veritus had started to ascend the steps. Rather than the fury Vangorich expected to see on the inquisitor’s face, which had seemed to be his permanent expression whilst with the other High Lords, Veritus appeared solemn. Lansung glanced down at the approaching man and there was a look of recognition between them.

Recognition, not surprise. Damn, thought Vangorich, the two of them are in league. But it was not the arrival of his ally that caused Lansung to stop mid-speech.

The world lurched.

Vangorich kept his feet, but others close at hand fell to their knees or backsides. Pieces of masonry and a cloud of dust showered down onto the Praetorian Way from the spires and towers looming around the road. Veritus toppled backwards, the wooden steps splintering under the weight of his armour as he pitched with flailing arms towards the ground. Lansung held on desperately to the rail of the stage, flapping with his free arm.

In the pit of his stomach, Vangorich felt the next shockwave. It was like nothing he had encountered before. It was, for a brief moment, like being torn inside out, though without any obvious sense of pain.

Dizziness. Dislocation. Disorientation.

Just in front of Vangorich, Mesring was on his hands and knees, vomiting copiously. Others were staggering back and forth, clutching hands to their heads or guts. The Lucifer Blacks and armsmen were scattered across the Praetorian Way like matchwood as the whole road bucked and ripped under their feet.

Dull rumbling reverberated through the ground and walls. Alarms screamed and wailed inside the palaces. Adjutants and aides were squinting and grimacing as they held hands up to the comm-beads in their ears or stooped over vid-receivers.

Vangorich needed no one else to tell him what was happening. He’d read the reports, studying them in excruciating detail while other High Lords had been content to digest the précis. As he felt reality twist again, he stumbled out of the shadow of the massive vaulted Palace gate tower and looked up into the skies. Around him, others were starting to do the same.

He turned, looking from horizon to horizon. The day sky was alight with shooting stars. Streaks of white and silver fell as orbital stations and satellites plunged down Terra’s gravity well and were set afire by the atmosphere. Craning his neck, Vangorich looked directly up, into the patch of blue surrounded by the spires of the Imperial Palace. Something glinted above, bigger than anything else that had been in orbit. The sky had turned purple and green around it.

Many miles above, uncaring of Lansung’s victory, his speeches or any of the petty politics that had allowed its arrival, a monstrous star fortress larger than anything previously recorded extruded itself into orbit.

The Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum had never known fear. At that moment, as he watched a false moon rip its way into existence above the Imperial capital, he felt a cold trickle of dread.

David Annandale

The Last Wall

One

Terra — The Imperial Palace

The screams had merged into a single one. On the Avenue of Martyrs, below the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor, they surrounded Galatea Haas in an infinite variety. Every pilgrim, man or woman, child or adult, rich or poor, was an individual portrait of panic, a soul giving vent to the most profound terror. The entire rich palette of humanity howled around her; some of the shrieks were of pain, and of these some were caused by Haas as she wielded her shock maul, but in the end, all the fear and death blended together into the single collective scream.

‘Get back!’ Ottmar Kord was yelling, over and over, his voice hoarse with frustration and desperate hate. ‘Get back, get back, get back!’ Haas’ fellow Arbitrator was a few metres to her left, laying into the crowd with the same violence that she was. They were in the midst of a mob turned into a maelstrom. They brought their shock mauls down with such force that they had already killed more than a few pilgrims. The electrical discharge incapacitated nervous systems, but the physical blows cracked open skulls.

‘Get back, get back, get back!’

Get back to where? Haas leaned in to her shield, pushing back against the crush, but she wasn’t herding the crowd. There was no line to hold. The nine Arbitrators were scattered rocks in the foaming rush. Their proctor, in a compounding of bad luck, had been trampled in the first moments of the panic. It should not have happened. Morrow was indestructible. He was a wall. A simple mob could not have overcome him. But the multitude, caught in that scream, had been so strong that it had brought him down. The Arbitrators were not restoring order. They were lashing out at chaos.

‘Get back, get back, get back!’

Kord’s shout was meaningless. The words were just sounds, the raging punctuation of his blows. They were his scream. Haas was yelling, too. She roared at the pilgrims as she struck them down. She hurled her anger at their fear because, like Kord, if she did not, she would become part of the great scream. She understood the fear. They all did.

The universe had betrayed the people. On Holy Terra, where they believed themselves to be most protected by the Emperor’s embrace, they looked up and the sky had become the enemy.

The ork moon seemed to graze the spires of the Imperial Palace. It was a monster of rock and metal. The misshapen sphere was all the forms of threat. It was the eye of alien judgement, it was the visage of impossible yet imminent defeat, and it was the fist coming to smash all hope. It should not be. It could not be. And by existing, it threw everything else into doubt.

It was the end.

The waves of the gravity storm shook Terra. The ground rocked beneath Haas’ feet. It heaved. Facades crumbled. A hundred metres away, tenements on both sides of the Avenue pancaked, and they and their inhabitants vanished in a cloud of disintegrating rockcrete. The dust engulfed the street in a limbo, then was blown away by the gale winds that had sprung up in the wake of the moon’s arrival.

The people ran blind. They trampled those who fell to the heaving earth. They did not see Haas until she beat them down. Some did not register her presence even then. They were fleeing to nowhere, and the only sight they beheld was the star fortress, whether or not they were gazing at the sky.

Haas felt it too. She felt the weight of its being threatening to crush her spirit. If she faltered in her purpose, she was finished. She understood this at an animal level. There was, deep in the frenzy, little room for the rational. She roared again, rammed forward with the shield, and forced the pilgrims before her to fall back three full steps. A tall, corpulent man in finery, some minor aristocrat on his home world, trampled the man and woman in front of him and crashed against her. She smashed her shock maul against the side of his neck. Electricity coursed through his body. His limbs went rigid, vibrating, and he fell on his back.

Behind him, a tenement wall loomed. It was less than ten metres from her. In the middle of the Avenue the sides of the street had seemed an impossible distance away, but the eddies of the mob had pushed her closer to an anchor point after all. The possibility of directed action gave her some focus.

‘Kord!’ she called. ‘The wall!’

She pushed again, making for the tenement facade. She heard Kord calling out to the next Arbitrator, Baskaline, and so the word spread. Her comrades followed her lead. A line began to form again.

The pilgrims numbered in the hundreds of thousands. They could not be dispersed. But Haas grasped at the nebulous idea of breaking off a sliver of the mob, bringing it to heel, and creating a first island of order.

That was barely a plan. The fact that it existed felt like a victory.

Kord, Baskaline and the others battered their way closer. They locked shields with her. One unforgiving step at a time, they pushed towards the tenement. The scream filled Haas’ ears. She roared still. She could barely hear herself. She could feel her rage, though, in the tearing of her throat. Hard smash of the shield, swing of the maul, a step, and then again, and again. The facade drew nearer.

Sudden, overturning movement to her left, seen in the corner of her eye. She turned her head. The crowd had upended a vendor’s food wagon. Its cooking stove burst, spraying flaming promethium over the pilgrims.

The great scream took on some new notes of pain. The fire spread quickly.

They couldn’t hear the scream in the Great Chamber.

There was an official reason given for why the High Lords were meeting in the Chamber’s vastness for the first time in years. The hour was a grave one, and called for a return to the most sacred tradition. That was a simple truth. It also had nothing to do with the decision to hold a session here. Vangorich knew of other reasons, some whispered, some not uttered at all. The Clanium Library was still filled with the trappings of Admiral Lansung’s vainglory. The Cerebrium, that favoured nest of power plays, was now terrifying. From the top of the Widdershins Tower, the ork moon loomed closer. Even with the casements closed, the presence in the sky pressed upon the room. The Cerebrium was too exposed.

Terror and politics. The Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum wondered if there was any real difference between the two. The petty wars of the High Lords and their clawing for pre-eminence were the product of fear of each other at least as much as they were of personal greed. Even today, with terror more acute than any of these worthies had ever known in their lives, calculation and manoeuvring did not stop. The orks were on the doorstep of Terra but until they were in the Imperial Palace itself, and perhaps even then, their threat would remain distant. The other Lords were here now. The threats they presented to each other were clear and urgent. The need to neutralise the fraternal enemy never ceased.

And this is why we’re here, Vangorich thought. Its walls reinforced during the reconstruction after the Siege, the Great Chamber was the most secure location in which to hold a session, and the most insulated from the world outside. The terrible moon had come, and the ground had quaked, but these walls stood firm. The scream did not reach through them. The High Lords could concentrate on their agendas. They could reduce the threat of the orks and the collapsing order to abstractions — ones that could be discussed and made into factors in personal narratives, not confronted in all their terrible reality.

The Lords took their seats on the central dais. Around them, the tiers of the Great Chamber rose in echoing emptiness. It had been decades since they had been filled. Vangorich could still remember days when the full Senatorum had sat. Hundreds of thousands of people, debates rippling out from the dais and breaking into multiplicities of contention. The process had been messy, often sluggish and frustrating, and it was astonishing that it had worked at all. But it had worked, and worked well. The memories of that living governance sat in accusing silence on the benches, hovered beneath the distant ceiling and its fresco of the Great Crusade, and gathered in the stern eyes of the massive statue of Rogal Dorn.

‘You are setting a precedent, Lord Commander,’ Vangorich said to Udin Macht Udo after Tobris Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum, had called the session to order. ‘Notice will be taken that we are meeting here. Other voices will demand to be heard.’ He took some pleasure in reminding the High Lords that the scream would find them here in the end. They could not hide from events. If the Great Chamber was used, it would fill.

Udo wasn’t thrown. ‘Quite so, Grand Master. That is as it should be, in this time of crisis. They will be heard, in due course.’

Vangorich nodded, expression neutral. Udo couldn’t be thinking of spreading blame for failure, could he? The Lord Commander did understand that failure meant destruction for everyone, didn’t he? Vangorich’s fear of what was about to befall Terra, already acute, grew worse at the thought that the High Lords were not as afraid as they should be.

‘Admiral,’ Udo said to Lansung, ‘what are your recommendations?’

The question was respectful in its phrasing and its tone. It did not have to sound like an attack in order to be one. The session was being held far from Lansung’s trappings of authority in the Clanium Library. Udo wasn’t soliciting his advice. He was exposing the Lord High Admiral’s weakness, distancing himself from a former ally before he could be damaged by the other man’s fall.

‘Our options are limited,’ Lansung answered. His normally florid face was grey. His generous flesh hung on his frame as if it were pulling him to the ground. He had been brought low at the moment of his triumph. The bluster and calculation had drained from him. Whatever Vangorich thought of him as a politician, he knew Lansung was a brilliant military tactician. Alone among the High Lords, he had fought the orks. He had a true understanding of what had come upon them, and he spoke with a despair born of realism. ‘I’ve ordered the immediate return to Terra of the coreward fleet. But the orks are here now. We have the Autocephalax Eternal and its escort, along with those ships that had remained on local patrol and were not destroyed by the gravity storm. A squadron’s worth. Not much more.’

‘You destroyed one ork moon,’ Juskina Tull said. The Speaker for the Chartist Captains had preserved all the glamour of her raiment in the flight from the Praetorian Way. When she had stood with the others to welcome Lansung as a triumphant hero, the beauty of her dress seemed an acknowledgement of the importance of the occasion. Now it gave her an air of command. ‘You know how to do it now, don’t you?’ Her tone was sharp. Vangorich heard in her question the expectation, perhaps even the hope, that Lansung would respond in the negative.

He did not disappoint her. ‘The fortress we fought was a fraction of the size,’ he said. ‘If this one’s orbit were as close to Terra as that of the one over Ardamantua, the tectonic upheavals would have been devastating. Meanwhile, our resources are nothing compared to what we had at Port Sanctus. If we launch an attack, the orks will swat us from the void. The least bad choice is a defensive posture. We can hope to hold the orks at bay until our main force arrives.’

We can hope. Vangorich noted the phrasing. An invitation to engage in wishful thinking, and nothing more.

‘But the orks could be here within hours,’ Mesring said. The Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum, Lansung’s other ally, now deserted him. ‘How long do you expect us to hold?’

‘If you know of a way to accelerate warp travel, I’m eager to hear it,’ Lansung shot back.

‘If the orks have the temerity to land, they will be repulsed,’ Abel Verreault said. The Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum was the junior member of the High Lords. Since succeeding Lord Heth, he had been sidelined, his forces given no role to play in the campaign run by Lansung. His pronouncement was met by a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. Everyone on the dais wanted him to be correct. But the orks had destroyed the Imperial Fists in ground combat.

‘There is little that can be done while anarchy reigns beyond these walls,’ Udo declared. He looked at Vernor Zeck, Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites. They all did. Vangorich sensed an unspoken, barely conscious consensus to shift the spotlight onto Zeck. It was plausible to view the panic as the first urgency. If it was not already worldwide, it would be within twenty-four hours. There was a real risk of a total collapse of order doing the work of the orks for them.

Even so, Vangorich seethed at the naked abdication of responsibility he was witnessing. If action depended on Zeck restoring order, then the other High Lords were absolved of the need to make any critical decisions of their own until the forces of the Adeptus Arbites had quelled the panic.

‘No other action is proposed?’ he asked.

‘There is none to take, beyond the preparation of orbital defences,’ Udo said, giving Lansung a significant glance. No one contradicted him.

Zeck did not respond. He hadn’t moved since taking his seat. His augmetics were so extensive that he was barely more human than Fabricator General Kubik. Neither had reacted to anything the others had said, remaining statues throughout the session. The Lord of the Mechanicus was an insect-like collection of metallic angles, sensors and tubes. The Provost Marshal was a squat hulk, a machinic and organic embodiment of the necessary violence of the law. He turned his attention from the stream of reports fed to his bionic ear with visible reluctance.

‘The situation is fluid,’ he said.

‘It can’t remain so,’ said Mesring. ‘Disorder is heresy.’

Zeck turned his head to stare at the Ecclesiarch.

‘Perhaps you’d like to address the crowds outside?’ When Mesring didn’t answer, Zeck rose. His awareness had been beyond the Great Chamber, calculating the vectors of perhaps the greatest exercise in crowd control in human history. Now he was realising that the situation had given him the whip hand. The other High Lords had, for the moment, surrendered their agency.

Opportunity, Vangorich thought. You can’t resist its scent, can you?

Verreault began, ‘The Astra Militarum—’

‘Is not a police force,’ Zeck cut him off.

The Lord Commander Militant reddened. He was not much younger than Heth had been, but he had come through his battlefields with little visible scarring. He was short, and his wiry physique appeared slight in his uniform. He was fighting the perception that he was a toy soldier. Zeck’s correction did not help.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Zeck said to the rest of the Twelve, ‘I have work to do.’ He strode away from the dais.

‘How will you pacify the entire planet?’ Ekharth called after him.

Zeck gave no sign he had heard.

Vangorich eyed the fuming Verreault, and felt the weight of his own helplessness. He’d spent months fighting to get the High Lords to act in time to staunch a lethal threat to the Imperium, and he had failed. The Officio Assassinorum had no forces to offer against an invasion of Terra. Was there anything left for him to try in the defence of the Imperium? He could watch the deliberations. He could evaluate the efforts to fight the orks. He could, perhaps, just perhaps, head off more disastrous decisions.

Like you’ve been doing so well, he thought. How are you any better than these other fools?

For the moment, he had no answer for himself.

The fire raced to the tenement blocks. Walls impregnated by centuries of oil smoke and rotted by poverty ignited. Haas hesitated in her advance. Within seconds, her target became a wall of flame. Another variation joined the chorus of the great scream. The inhabitants shrieked, and were incinerated. The burn became a firestorm. It spread to the left and right along the Avenue of Martyrs. It leapt along the vaulting arches overhead and travelled on the backs of pilgrims, turning them into running torches. Soon, both sides of the Avenue were ablaze.

The Arbitrators stopped. Haas’ plan disintegrated. The people tried to retreat from the flames, but the flames were everywhere, their crackle growing to a snapping roar, a wind with jaws. The pilgrims shrank from the heat and bunched towards the centre of the Avenue. They became a solid barrier of flesh. The crush was such that even those rendered unconscious by the shock mauls were held upright by the bodies around them.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Kord.

‘Make a circle!’ Haas called.

The Arbitrators moved into a tight formation. Their linked lockshields became a perimeter wall, a shelter against crowd and fire.

‘We’re too close,’ Baskaline said.

It didn’t matter that he was right, that the centre of the Avenue would be better.

‘Can you move?’ Haas asked him.

‘No.’

‘Then this is where we stand.’

The tenements disappeared in an explosive combustion. Haas sweated beneath her riot armour. The shields blocked the direct intensity of the flame, but the fire shone through the viewports of the lockshields with daylight brilliance. The thunder-roar of the fire was joined by the cracks of failing masonry and the crashing of collapsing wood. ‘Here it comes!’ Haas warned.

The near facade came down with avalanche fury. Portions of the building fell in on themselves. Other sections of the wall smashed onto the Avenue of Martyrs, crushing the pilgrims, making them into burned offerings. Haas and the other Arbitrators crouched, angling their shields into a protective roof. Blazing wreckage crashed against the ceramite. Haas crouched lower, absorbing the shock of the blows with her arms and legs. A heavy, burning hand tried to drive the Arbitrators into the pavement. They pushed back, shoving the rubble aside.

The roar of the fire had lessened. Through her viewport, Haas saw that the worst of the conflagration had been smothered by the collapse. Hundreds of pilgrims had been crushed. She had no idea how many thousands had died in the buildings themselves.

She could move forward now. There was shelter in the smoking ruin, the chance to regroup and return to the fray. She clambered over some low heaps of rubble. The others followed, their armour protecting them from the guttering fires. The smoke choked the entire street and Haas coughed, wishing for a rebreather.

The suffocating air further smothered the flames of the panic. Many of the surviving pilgrims, bunched tightly in the street, were falling to their knees, retching. More powerful yet than the smoke was despair. It drained the urgency of terror from the crowd. It stole hope away and left the people motionless before their fate. On the other side of the street, the fire still towered from the tenement blocks. The collapse began there too.

Destruction marched up and down the Avenue of Martyrs, but in its wake, it left a kind of order.

Kord sounded like he was going to leave a lung on the pavement.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said.

‘And go where?’ Baskaline sounded no better.

Haas’ vision swam. It was all she could do to remain upright. Baskaline was right, though. Any route they took would be back towards the fire. The space around the Arbitrators was fairly open. If they waited, the worst of the smoke would dissipate before too long.

‘Our duty is not complete,’ she reminded the others. Calm had been restored, for the moment. It fell to them to maintain it until they were ordered elsewhere.

Time passed. The air cleared enough that each breath Haas took felt like swallowing hot sand instead of burning coal. Kord looked up. There was nothing to see through the smoke. Even so, he stared as if he could see the object of his hatred.

‘We need to bring the fight to the greenskins,’ he said.

‘We will,’ Haas reassured him.

‘I don’t just mean the Navy and the Guard. I mean all of us.’

‘Our oaths are different. We’re called to serve here.’

‘What good will that do? This could be our last stand. If we don’t stop the orks, there will be no law to keep on Terra.’

‘If the orks make landfall,’ Haas countered, ‘we’ll be needed as never before.’

Kord had another coughing fit. ‘Things have changed,’ he said when he could speak again. ‘Everything has changed.’

Haas shook her head and started forward to stand guard in the midst of the pilgrims, an unbending sign that the Emperor’s law still prevailed. She would not swerve from her oath of office until death took her. It was her anchor, because Kord was right. Everything had changed.

And everything was ending.

The galaxy shook. From Segmentum Solar to Ultima, from Tempestus to Obscurus, the Beast unleashed its forces against the Imperium. Star fortresses appeared simultaneously in system after system. A predatory monster with uncountable millions of heads descended on the worlds of humanity. The fleets and armies of exultant savagery struck and struck and struck. The Imperium bled from a thousand wounds.

The worlds of Ultramar were spared the tectonic events of a star fortress extruding into near orbit. That was the only mercy. The first to be attacked were the agri worlds Tarentus and Quintarn. The skies over their cities turned black with ork drop-ships. Enemy cruisers devastated their orbital defences. Three companies of Ultramarines responded within hours, and they set the void on fire as a battle-barge and strike cruisers engaged the ork vessels.

Far to the galactic west, in the Segmentum Tempestus, the forge world Lankast convulsed. The geologic tides unleashed by the ork moon above it tore open vast chasms that traced jagged paths hundreds of kilometres long. Lava flows spread over the land. Entire hive cities were wiped away, hundreds of millions of lives vanishing into waves of molten rock. And in the more stable regions, on the high continental plateaus, surrounded by new seas of fire, Iron Father Bassan Terak shouted the hatred of the Red Talons. They met the ork siege of the colossal manufactoria with a rage that had its own volcanic force. Third Company’s Predator tanks hit the ork ranks with the relentlessness of a mechanised, moving wall. The orks countered from orbit. Heedless of their own casualties, they hurled rocky masses to the surface. Meteor strikes pummelled the manufactoria and iron chimneys a hundred metres tall collapsed. The eruption of the furnaces was a solar flare. The Red Talons advanced still. They had no choice. There was nothing behind them now but flame.

But it was Klostra, a planetoid not much larger than the star fortress that closed in on it, that suffered the most important attack. The inhabitants of its colonies prepared for the invasion they knew they could not stop, the invasion whose blow would resonate as far as Terra.

Two

Terra — the outer palaces

The sub-orbital took Wienand, Rendenstein and Krule as far as a nondescript Administratum region in the south-east sector of the Imperial Palace, half a hemisphere away from the centres of governance. Wienand trusted Krule’s judgement in his choice of the flight. If he believed none of Veritus’ agents were aboard, his track record suggested he was correct. The transport had the advantage of taking her in the general direction of her destination. She didn’t tell Krule where she wanted to go, though. She didn’t trust him that far.

The flight landed just as the moon appeared. The transport hub shook. Panic spread. Wienand transmuted the shock of the event into determination instead of despair. She and her escort managed to descend from the hub into the warrens of the underhive faster than the waves of terror. Deep below, where the star fortress could not be witnessed directly, the fear was attenuated. Once the tremors subsided, something like the desperation of normal life continued, though anxiety roiled the air.

In the warrens of the underhive, Wienand wished for something more lethal than her laspistol. Rendenstein and Krule were weapons in themselves. Wienand knew how to handle herself, but she was more dependent on the technology of death than the other two. After the assassination attempt against her on the Avenue of Martyrs, there had been no question of resupply. Anything taken from her quarters would put the lie to her apparent death. Rendenstein and Krule had moved the corpse of Aemelie, her body double, from her quarters to an alcove just off the Avenue, not far from the site of the skirmish. The intent was to make it seem that she had managed to drag herself that far after the battle. None of the assassins had survived, and there had been enough disorder for bystander accounts to be contradictory. Veritus would have good reason to believe she was dead. Aemelie’s subdermal microbeacon implants would fool bioscans, whose readings would indicate Wienand’s DNA. Only the examination of a physical sample would reveal the deception.

‘Does Veritus use body doubles?’ Rendenstein asked, the same thought occurring to her.

‘If he doesn’t, he’s a fool.’

‘He didn’t strike me as one.’

‘No.’ Veritus would learn the truth, but not right away, and that was good enough. A temporary death, and the time to make her move, was all she asked.

They stopped at an intersection of passages. They were in a zone where the functional abutted the decrepit. The walkway mechanisms still worked. Conveyors of horizontal, interlocking iron bands, they clanked, rattled and screeched as they hurried serfs along the kilometres to their duties. The frescoes on the walls were black with grime. Above and below was more of the tangle of mechanised conduits. Tarps of varying size were suspended from the girders, forming patchy ragged ceilings. They were rough sleeping areas, the closest thing more than a few of the serfs knew to a home, makeshift sleeping posts that were turning permanent for souls whose lives had become unending drudgery broken only by the briefest rest periods. At least they still had an official, if tenuous, existence from the Administratum’s perspective. Not much further down in the underhive was the realm of the forgotten, where survival was so desperate a game that the line between human and animal had been erased. Wienand planned a visit to those depths. If he were looking for her, Veritus would find her trail even more difficult to pick up down there.

‘Which way?’ Krule asked.

‘South.’ Wienand indicated the walkway.

‘If you’ll wait a moment, ma’am?’

She nodded, and he disappeared into the shuffling crowd, scouting ahead.

‘He must know you want to reach the Inquisitorial Fortress,’ Rendenstein said.

‘Of course he does. But knowing that and seeing its location are not the same thing.’

‘What do you intend?’

‘We’ll have to lose him at some point.’

‘Permanently?’

Wienand shook her head. She wasn’t interested in testing Rendenstein’s killing prowess against Krule’s. No matter the outcome, Veritus would be the only winner of that battle. Krule had cost her a valued operative, but he had also saved her life. Her allies were in short supply. Vangorich was one she could count on with more certainty than her fellow inquisitors for the moment.

‘If the opportunity arises to part with his company, we’ll take it.’

‘And if that moment doesn’t come?’

‘We’ll deal with that when and if we have to.’ She sighed, thinking of what she had seen in the sky. ‘We’re at a stage where having Krule in the heart of the Fortress wouldn’t be the worst of all scenarios. We have to reach it.’ Shoring up her political strength against Veritus was no longer the most important consideration. Nor was her survival. What mattered was the contingency that she could authorise. It was needed now. She cursed the High Lords for having let things reach this pass.

Krule returned after a few minutes. ‘Looks clear,’ he said.

They headed off down the walkway, moving as quickly as they could through the crowds, the floor carrying them on for several kilometres.

‘It would be useful to know the extent of Veritus’ control,’ said Krule.

Wienand had been thinking that through. ‘The attempt to kill me is actually a good sign.’

‘You’re still a threat,’ Rendenstein said.

‘Yes. If my influence had been neutralised, he wouldn’t have bothered. I don’t think Veritus likes needless internecine killing any more than I do.’

Krule’s grin was not a reassuring one. ‘So more attacks would be a good omen.’

‘They would be delightful.’

At the next intersection, Wienand went right. An elevator platform large enough to hold a hundred at once took them down. At the third level, they got off, and she chose another walkway, still heading south. The crowds were thinner here. This route served fewer active centres. Krule offered to recon ahead again. ‘No point,’ Wienand told him. His earlier absence had given her the few minutes she’d wanted to speak alone with Rendenstein. ‘If there’s an ambush, we’re better off together.’

The downside to taking the routes she knew was that they might also be familiar to other, hostile elements of the Inquisition. She couldn’t lose herself forever in the mazes of the outer reaches of the Imperial Palace, and she couldn’t hand over her agency to Krule. She might well not reach the southern ice cap in time as it was. Her best hope was to catch another sub-orbital from a point where Veritus wasn’t looking. Another few hours of travel, if all went well, would take her to the next flight hub.

All did not go well. After ten minutes, the walkway they were on ground to a halt. The serfs using it groaned, then carried on trudging. A few hundred metres on, at the next junction, there was another mechanical conveyor moving at an uneven, jerking pace in about the same direction.

‘That will do,’ Wienand told the other two, and they took it.

The walkway passed almost immediately under a low, narrow arch. Krule and Rendenstein had to duck. On the other side they emerged in a long hall formed by rockcrete foundations on either side, and coming to a rounded vault a dozen metres overhead. There was a floor here, just below the level of the walkway. It was covered with the detritus of centuries, though at first glance, Wienand thought she was looking at a disused cemetery.

The space was filled with statuary. There were warriors and ecclesiarchs, Adeptus Astartes and High Lords of the past, and many imposing figures that likely had been intended to be the Emperor. None were complete. Many were unfinished, flawed material betraying the artists with splits and cracks. Others had been damaged beyond restoration. There was a vagueness to them all, whether their features had been destroyed or never set down. They were not gigantic. No single piece was so large that it could not have been transported by a group of unaided humans. Some of the chunks, though, were fragments of huge works. A finger two metres tall thrust from one heap, pointing at the walkway in accusation. A head as big as a man lay face-down on the dark floor.

Though the space had the shape of a building interior, it seemed to have come into being as a result of architectural happenstance, born of the juxtaposition of other structures. It had never had a purpose. It was a tunnel through which the walkway passed, and it had gradually accumulated the cast-off statuary. What must have begun as a random act had become a tradition, and then faded away. An air of abandonment hovered over the hall. The lumen strips were few and old. Many were missing. The lighting was deep night broken by weak pools of yellow.

‘We’re alone,’ Krule said.

Wienand could see no serfs on the metal path before them. She looked back. No one had followed them onto the walkway.

‘This is a disused conveyor,’ she realised. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere still active.’

‘Then why is it functional?’ said Rendenstein.

‘It shouldn’t be.’

‘It’s for our benefit,’ Krule said.

Of course. It would be nothing to stop a target’s walkway, then activate one that no one other than the target would choose to take.

They’d found her.

Krule jumped over the walkway’s right-hand railing. Wienand followed, with Rendenstein right behind. They landed between two piles of statues. Stern, unformed faces frowned and heroic limbs reached for nothing. The floor crackled with shards of ceramic and marble.

‘Keep going,’ said Krule.

Wienand moved on through the mounds of broken art. She looked back after a few steps. Krule had vanished.

‘There.’ Rendenstein pointed to a deeper patch of darkness in the wall. Another corridor. Wienand nodded and hurried forward. She didn’t worry about making noises. Her enemies knew she was here. Just as they reached the passage, she heard the crunch of footsteps behind them.

Her anger at having fallen for the trap passed, replaced by cold venom.

What she and Rendenstein moved through now was not a true corridor. It was a narrow gap between facades. The rockcrete floor gave way to metal struts. Footing was treacherous. The light was even dimmer. The gaps between the struts grew wider. A slip meant a fall into blind depths. Wienand advanced another few steps, then stopped. The next gap was too wide to jump. She turned to face her enemy, laspistol in hand. Rendenstein moved to the other side of the passage. She balanced on the rusted struts, ready to leap.

In the gloom of the passage, the main hall looked brighter. Wienand saw the attack coming. The assassins knew they had her cornered. They had no need for stealth now.

There were five of them. They wore loose cameleoline robes. They would have been almost impossible to spot in the shadows and abandoned art. As they closed in, their camouflage covered them in shifting patches of dark and grey. When they were a few metres from the entrance to the passage, a statue came to life behind them. Krule had been more still and hidden yet. The two rearmost assassins, a man and a woman, jerked to a stop. Their heads snapped back, mouths open wide for air they would never draw again.

The other three hit the passage at a run. One turned as Krule drew his bloodied fists out of the upper spines of his victims. She laid down a suppressive burst of las-fire. The other two kept coming. One, she saw, was Audten van der Deckart. He fired his pistol and an expanding cloud of silver-white burst from its muzzle — a web, the protein filaments expanding to fill the passageway. The tangling, adhesive cloud slammed Rendenstein against the wall, covering her like a cocoon.

Wienand dropped low. The bottom edge of the cloud clipped her. She lost her footing and fell between the struts. She dropped into nothing, then jerked to a sudden halt as the webbing caught her left hand and welded it to the struts. The weight of her body pulled at the web, and the fibres began to cut through her flesh. She clung hard to the strut, trying to work with the web instead of against it. A constriction of pain and steel enveloped her arm.

She still held her pistol. She fired upwards and hit the legs of van der Deckart’s companion. The man pitched forward. He reached for a strut and missed. His scream as he fell went on for a long time.

Van der Deckart leapt from footing to footing with a raptor’s grace. He holstered his webber and pulled out a short-bladed power sword. He danced out of the way of Wienand’s shots and raised the blade to bring it down on her head.

Rendenstein tore through the web. Her body was a dense crosshatching of lacerations. The web had sliced through her skin and subdermal armour, but her reinforced skeleton and musculature could punch through walls. Van der Deckart leapt out of the way of her lunge. She fell on all fours, limbs balancing on three different struts. Van der Deckart came back at her.

Behind, the las-fire ceased with the snap of a neck.

Van der Deckart swung his blade at Rendenstein’s throat. She hunched lower even as she yanked on the strut in her right hand. It shot out of the wall and flew upward. The makeshift javelin struck van der Deckart through the chin and burst out the top of his skull. Rendenstein snatched the blade from his hand as the corpse toppled over and landed face-down above Wienand.

Wienand stared up at his features. Even in death, they were pursed. The meticulous discipline of his cropped beard and hair was spoiled by his flowing blood.

Krule was with them now. He tossed van der Deckart’s corpse into the depths, then held Wienand’s left arm while Rendenstein used the power sword to cut through the webbing and free her. They hauled her up and headed back towards the walkway.

‘So much for the story of my death,’ Wienand said.

‘It stood up long enough for us to get this far,’ Rendenstein pointed out.

Krule asked, ‘Did you recognise any of the attackers?’

‘Yes,’ said Wienand. ‘Audten van der Deckart. One of Veritus’ political allies. He must have relished the chance to put me in my place once and for all.’

‘His presence might be another good sign,’ said Rendenstein.

Wienand nodded. ‘Veritus must have limited forces at his disposal.’

Krule held up a hand, listening. He lowered his voice and pointed back towards their point of entry into the hall. ‘Not that limited. More coming.’

Wienand thought quickly. ‘Can you take them?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Then you have my thanks.’ To Rendenstein, she said, ‘Let’s go. No more delays.’

They ran parallel to the walkway, weaving their way past the heaps of marble bodies. Half-finished expressions of faith reached for them with judging hands and blurred shouts. Gunfire erupted behind them.

‘He’ll catch up,’ Rendenstein said.

‘Maybe he’ll take the hint. And maybe we’ll outpace him yet.’

They ran on through a forest of arms.

Three

Klostra — Klostra Primus colony

They would hold out at Klostra Primus as long as they could. The orks had already smashed Secundus. Tertius had also fallen. There was no question that the orks would overrun this last outpost too. Gerron watched the great flood of orks rushing forward over the barren plain below the ramparts, and knew that he and his fellow mortals could not triumph. The war’s outcome was a certainty, if the lords of Klostra did not intervene. They were coming, though. He had to believe in their arrival. To show any lack of effort in the defence would be unforgivable.

An ork star fortress filled the sky. It was as large as Klostra. Its mountains and valleys of iron formed the laughing face of an ork. Its tusks looked almost long enough to gouge the surface of the planetoid. The moon was an insult, a mockery of the principles upon which Klostra had been founded. From the vast maw at the centre of the face poured the ships that were bringing extermination to Gerron’s home. On the flat, cracked, rocky vista before him, he saw nothing but orks as far as the horizon. And still the streaks of new launches came from the star fortress. The orks could not be stopped.

But he fought as if he could kill them all himself. At his sides, so did the other inhabitants of the Primus outpost. Las-fire from the high ramparts was so dense it became a blinding sheet of lethal energy. Gerron aimed and fired, aimed and fired. It took him several shots to down each ork. There was nothing wrong with his accuracy. It was simply that the greenskins refused to die. Gerron wished he could be marching against the foe. War on the defensive was disgusting. But there was nowhere to march.

It was the orks who were the ones on the move. They had no positions to take. They kept coming forward, always forward. Their losses were insignificant. And their return fire was even more blistering. It was lightning and hail, energy and projectile weapons. It was tearing apart the defenders of the wall. The ramparts were, for the moment, standing up to the assault. They were a jagged iron face thirty metres high. Their strength was the only reason the orks were not yet burning Klostra Primus to the ground.

‘We’re not making any difference.’ Bernt, at Gerron’s right shoulder, sounded like he was on the edge of panic.

Gerron didn’t take his eyes off his targets. He shot until the rifle’s energy pack was drained. He crouched behind the battlement to swap out packs.

‘You’d better not be thinking about abandoning your post,’ he said to Bernt.

‘Of course not.’ The other man’s voice wasn’t as strong as it should be, but he was still firing. ‘But we can’t win. What we’re doing doesn’t matter. The orks are going to kill us all.’

‘We’re doing what we have been commanded to do,’ said Roth as she passed their position. She carried a sniper rifle, and was moving from point to point on the wall, taking down larger, more distant orks in an effort to destabilise the advance. She wasn’t having any better luck than everyone else, but her other role was to exhort and threaten. ‘Are you questioning our orders?’

‘No.’ Bernt didn’t turn his head. In the darkness of the perpetual eclipse created by the ork moon, Gerron couldn’t make out anyone’s features. Even so, he heard Bernt turn pale at Roth’s implication.

‘Then shut up and kill more greenskins.’ Roth drove her point home by raising her rifle to her eyes and dropping another enemy. ‘Choose your targets!’ she called out to all within earshot. ‘Embody precision! Remember the example of our lords! Fight as they would!’

‘Oh no,’ Bernt said, so quietly that Gerron almost didn’t hear him. He pulled the trigger, but he had raised his head above his barrel. He was looking at something in the distance.

Gerron popped his head over the top of the parapet. He resumed firing. He saw what had terrified Bernt. ‘Tanks!’ he shouted.

They formed a solid line across the entire horizon. Gerron couldn’t make out any details beyond their monstrous size. The line flashed along its length as the cannons started firing, and shells arced through the dark. There was no precision to the bombardment. The orks had no need for that art. The shells landed short and far, blowing up scores of infantry in the plain, levelling the comfortless housing of Klostra Primus. Some hit the wall. It trembled from the blows. The first real wounds appeared in its face.

The tanks rumbled across the plain. A black, greasy cloud rose in their wake. The roar of their engines rose over the battle like the voice of the star fortress itself. As they drew nearer, they became even more threatening. Their armour was massive and horned, designed for ramming. The cannons of their stacked turrets were gigantic. They were covered in secondary guns. Spiked cylinders rolled before them, already slicked with the paste of the orks who had not moved out of the way soon enough.

‘How do we stop those with las?’ Bernt demanded. ‘We don’t have enough rockets. Where are the lords?’

‘They’ll be here,’ Roth told him. ‘Now fight.’

‘Why?’

She pulled a serrated whip from her belt and snapped a coil around his neck. She gave a yank. Bernt’s head bounced down against the parapet of the wall. ‘Our lords are coming!’ Roth shouted. ‘They will be with us. Now do them proud! Obey their commands! If you cannot destroy the tanks, hold them. Keep them from coming any closer until the great counter-attack is ready!’

Gerron had already joined in the fire on the heavy armour. Searing light erupted against the vehicles. Flights of rockets launched from the rampart. Clusters of missiles struck one tank at a time. A dozen direct hits managed to stop one of them. Its cannon fired just as it was damaged, and the top half of the Battlewagon vanished in the explosion. At the same time, the heavy stubber turrets raked the nearest ork ranks, punishing the ones who had begun scaling the wall.

The orks did not even slow. Their wave slammed against the wall. More ladders went up even as the tanks improved their accuracy and started punching deeper and more destructively into the facade.

We can’t stop them, Gerron told himself. We just have to hold them, for a little while, that’s all. He and the other mortals had not been abandoned or forgotten. They were acting as they had been ordered. The lords are coming. The lords are coming.

Kalkator circled the display table in the strategium. The weight of his boots echoed like the toll of an iron bell in the hard, open space of the chamber. The hololith showed the green stain of the orks spreading over the whole of Klostra. There was no clear point against which to push back. The orks had swarmed over the surface of the planetoid before any adequate retaliatory force could be brought to bear. Kalkator and his brothers were outnumbered, outplanned, outmanoeuvred. Their base, a few kilometres from the front at Klostra Primus, built into the top of an isolated peak, could perhaps hold against the orks’ full assault for as much as a day.

Kalkator had no intention of being run to ground. The advance would be stopped at Primus, and then the march against the orks would begin. It would not matter that the greenskins had no base planetside. Kalkator would advance until he had scraped the last of the orks beneath his boot heels.

He told himself this. He told his men the same thing. The real outcome predicted by the tactical situation was unspoken, though they talked around it.

‘Any word from the Ostrom System?’ he asked.

‘None,’ Varravo said. ‘No communications since before the star fortress arrived.’

‘But our vox is functional again.’

‘It is. The problem isn’t at our end.’

The implications were troubling. They were also nothing that could be dealt with now. What was relevant was that there would be no reinforcements arriving on Klostra in time to make any difference. ‘Then this is where we stop the orks.’

‘I don’t like being forced into a defensive posture,’ Caesax said.

‘This is only a siege if we view it as one,’ Kalkator told him. ‘I’m not about to abandon doctrine. The strategic value of the colony’s strongpoint hasn’t changed. We use it for its purpose.’ Besides, he thought, we have no choice.

Caesax nodded. He put on his helm. ‘We are ready.’

‘Guns in position,’ Derruo said.

‘Then it is time to announce our displeasure.’

Is this holding them? Gerron wondered. Are we holding them? Will our lords be pleased? He hoped the answers were yes. That would be the only victory he could claim. Nothing the defenders of Klostra Primus could do had slowed the orks. But the greenskins were not moving beyond the colony. They were using their strength to annihilate it. Yes, Gerron thought. Yes. We are holding them. For a few minutes. He prayed he would live long enough to see the arrival of the lords and their vengeance. That would be victory enough for him.

The tanks were close now, too close for their cannon fire to miss. The wall shook with the unending barrage. The barrier still held, but it was deforming, weakening quickly. The fire from its battlements was becoming sporadic. While the tanks hurled their shells against the middle section of the wall, the ork infantry raised ladders on either flank, and the defensive fire now concentrated on repelling the climbing orks. Gerron was shooting into a rising swarm. The belief that he was doing anything to delay the inevitable was an illusion, but he clung to it.

Then, to the rear, booms in the distance. The voice of gods, raised in anger. Thunder and hatred from the skies, the whistling of incoming ordnance. Vengeance was here. Gerron allowed himself the luxury of looking up and back. He had an impression of clouds falling upon him with iron and flame. In the dark second before impact he had all the time in the world to realise that the bombardment was using the wall as the targeting point.

The shells hit. They were massive high-explosives. They were designed to shatter fortifications to dust, and with them any life in their vicinity. Gerron’s world shrieked. It disintegrated beneath a blow too huge to process. He flew through battering immensity. There was no real any more. There was only destruction. He burned. He felt his bones pulped. And still he flew.

He landed. The blasts broke time into pieces. His awareness floated in and out, tugged between oblivion and pain. At some point, the bombardment ended. The roar of war barely diminished, but the ground stopped its eruption. As he lay on smoking rubble, Gerron’s mortal agony granted him his wish. He witnessed the arrival.

There was nothing left of the wall. It had fallen on defenders and orks alike. In the near distance, the colony guttered red and black, its usefulness at an end. From beyond the wall, the orks bayed with the ecstasy of a war living up to expectations. Were there any fewer tanks? Gerron couldn’t turn his head to see. He could still hear the engines, though. He could hear the eagerness of the green tide for more and greater conflict.

Marching through the wreckage of the colony came the lords of Klostra. Gerron began to weep before the majesty of strategy he had been blessed to experience. The orks had come to besiege, but the lords had denied them that pleasure. Klostra Primus was not a point to be preserved. It was a trap for the enemy. The orks had concentrated their strength here, and the fire had rained down upon them. Now the march of the lords began. Through his tears, Gerron beheld the unforgiving glory of the Iron Warriors heading his way.

The orks, unchastened, rushed over his body to greet them.

Four

Phall — orbital

The final wall has fallen.

After they were spoken, the words became a silence strong as iron, heavy as death. It spread over the council hall of the Abhorrence. It seemed to Koorland that he could sense the silence spreading down all the corridors of the battle-barge. It was the silence that followed the tolling of a funeral bell. He had made real a defeat so great that for the Chapter Masters before him, until this moment, it had been unimaginable. The fact that it had occurred opened the door to other terrible possibilities.

The silence lasted for a full minute. The Black Templars, the Crimson Fists, the Excoriators and the Fists Exemplar, represented in the persons of Bohemond, Quesadra, Issachar and Thane, looked back at Koorland, and he did not represent the Imperial Fists. He was the Imperial Fists. He was alone. As the silence pressed down, dense with loss, and Koorland saw the expressions of pity, horror and sorrow around the council table, his survival felt like a curse. He existed to spread the word of an extermination more complete than even the worst atrocities of the Heresy. How did he imagine that he, an avatar of disaster, could pretend to have authority over the assembled Chapter Masters? Even Thane, so recently elevated to that rank, still commanded a powerful force. Koorland must appear to them as the voice of the abyss.

No, he told himself. Be the voice of experience, of necessity, of unity. Be anything less, and they will dismiss you.

Bohemond spoke first. ‘Your loss, Second Captain Koorland, is beyond words. Nonetheless, please accept the profound sorrow of the Black Templars. We honour the victories and the sacrifices of your brothers.’

Koorland would have liked to receive the wish at face value. However, he had to take notice of the deliberate use of rank. Possibly a pre-emptive gesture designed to keep him in his place. If so, he would have to disappoint the Chapter Master.

‘You have my thanks, Marshal. As do the rest of you, my brothers.’ He meant what he said, but he was also choosing his phrasing with care, emphasising that he was among peers. He remained standing. ‘Let me further express my thanks that you have all answered the call of the Last Wall. I sent out the signal because what befell the Imperial Fists must be our spur to action.’

‘None of us needed that spur,’ Bohemond said.

Koorland bowed his head. ‘I did not mean to suggest that you did.’

‘Then what did you mean to suggest?’ Quesadra asked. His voice was calm, but the words were sharp. His gaze on Koorland was scouring.

‘What has fallen must be rebuilt. Together we shall be the bricks of an even greater wall.’

‘Which is to say…?’

‘We must do more than act in concert. There have already been disasters thanks to inadequate communications. This must end.’ All four of the Chapter Masters were nodding. ‘It is therefore vital that our united efforts be coordinated by a single command.’

Another silence followed, this one coloured by surprise. Koorland remained standing a few more seconds. He tried to find a balance, conveying authority but not giving offence. Then he sat, and awaited the reaction. He did not yet have the measure of the warriors he was addressing. He suspected that he might find a sympathetic ear in Thane, who at least had experienced some parallel loss and sudden, unwanted elevation. Issachar was hard to read, though he gave no sign of actual hostility. Quesadra’s gaze had grown even sharper. It now flicked between Koorland and Bohemond. The Black Templar’s face had taken on a determined cast, as of one about to do battle. Behind the Chapter Masters, their honour guards were as motionless as ever, but the rising tension gave the air a brittle taste.

Quesadra said, ‘You are proposing a step of very far-reaching implications. Some might see it as an attempt to recreate the Legion.’

‘That is not my intent. There would be no change in banners or colours. We would be the individual fingers forming a single fist for the duration of the crisis.’

‘History is rife with provisional measures that became permanent.’

‘Brother,’ Issachar said to Quesadra, ‘do you seriously believe any of the men under your command would seek to surrender their identity as Crimson Fists?’

‘No.’

‘The same is true for the Excoriators.’

Koorland couldn’t tell if Issachar was supporting his proposal or pointing out its unworkability.

Bohemond said, ‘Second Captain Koorland is correct, though. The orks have the unity and direction that we lack. A divided Imperial response is doomed. We have too much evidence of that already.’

‘And the Fists Exemplar,’ said Thane, ‘have direct experience of the virtues of combined efforts. Marshal Bohemond convinced me, I am happy to say, of the pointlessness of fighting alone, and in a lost cause.’

Koorland nodded. ‘I wish we had had such a chance.’

‘I’m not disputing the need for coordination,’ Issachar said. ‘I am questioning the viability of the second captain’s proposed integration. If we are to have a single command, who will be that commander?’

The third silence. A short one. Koorland said nothing. He wondered if, when duty had called him to Terra, he had been contaminated by the political manoeuvring of the High Lords. He wanted to be direct. He wanted to state what was necessary. But his position was weak. He had to think tactically. He waited for Bohemond to speak first, as Koorland knew he would.

‘The coordination of joint operations and the recall of crusades has been through the Black Templars,’ Bohemond said. ‘Continuity should be preserved.’

Quesadra eyed him. ‘So the command will be yours.’

‘Yes.’ Bohemond was being as direct as Koorland could not be.

‘I see.’ Issachar was still carefully neutral. ‘And what would your campaign plan be?’

‘To take the war to the orks. We cannot think in terms of defending systems. We will attack the star fortresses, beginning with the nearest.’

‘As simple as that?’ Quesadra asked.

‘There is no front,’ said Thane.

‘Exactly.’ Bohemond continued to address them all, rather than answer Quesadra directly. ‘The ork bases are appearing everywhere. They are not advancing along any discernible path. We cannot think in terms of blocking them. We must attack to eradicate.’

‘You are proposing a crusade on a scale that we haven’t seen in living memory.’ Issachar sounded impressed.

‘And what of Terra?’ Thane asked. ‘It is defenceless. There is no wall there any longer.’

‘Admiral Lansung has been keeping his precious Navy out of harm’s way. As much as I am disgusted by his actions in the Aspiria System, they have had the effect of preserving his strength. If Terra is attacked, there will be more than enough vessels readily at hand. Our move must be to await the arrival of our fleets, and then attack.’

‘We will be abandoning countless systems to their fates.’

‘Those losses are inevitable. Better to pull our forces from hopeless battles to forge them into a weapon that can actually win.’

Thane didn’t look happy, but Koorland couldn’t disagree with the premises behind Bohemond’s strategy. He thought Quesadra and Issachar were on board as well. The problem was that any unity between the Chapters Masters of the Crimson Fists and the Black Templars would be provisional. At the first opportunity, Quesadra would challenge Bohemond’s command. There was accord on a single tactical decision, not on the larger question of leadership.

The discussion moved towards the finer issues of deployment and the choice of a target. The closest ork moon was in the Illuster System. Koorland took part in the discussion, but did not try to drag it back towards the crucial issue. Now was not the moment. There would be some time before the other ships arrived, time he could use to convince the Chapter Masters, his brothers, of the path that must be taken.

It wasn’t the need for glory that pushed him. He was resigned to the fact that all glory for him was in the past. In the future lay only atonement and the struggle to keep the doom that had fallen upon the Imperial Fists from also striking down the Imperium. It was also more than his experience with the orks that urged his claim. Thane had at least as much direct contact with the enemy.

It was more, too, than the position of the Imperial Fists as foundational Chapter. The leadership of this crusade could not rest on something as intangible as a simple right of seniority. As he read the currents of power and rivalry in the council hall, he realised the vital uniqueness of his position. He was Chapter Master without a Chapter. There was no agenda for him to push, nothing to seek for his warriors. He could present a perfect disinterest. There would be no partiality to his decisions. The only dictates would be the needs of the campaign.

He would fight for what had to be. But for the moment, the terrain was not his to contest.

At the conclusion of the council, Castellan Clermont escorted him to his quarters. He did not stay in them long. He taught himself the layout of the Abhorrence and learned where the other delegations were stationed, and where the Black Templars had put Magos Biologis Phaeton Laurentis. He looked for encounters of opportunity.

He had one when he found Quesadra alone in an observation chamber. It was one of the smaller ones on the ship, constructed in the form of a chapel. Rows of iron pews sat before the stained glass viewport. Phall Primus dominated the perspective. The gas giant’s bands of colour were filtered and changed by the tinting of the viewport. Above the frame was an inscription: The Galaxy Transformed by the Hand of the Emperor.

Quesadra stood close to the viewport. The tapestry of colours washed over the deep blue of his armour, and the bloody hue of his left gauntlet. He glanced over his shoulder at Koorland.

‘Our brothers the Black Templars have taken to heart the full conception of a crusade,’ he said.

The implied worship of the setting disturbed Koorland. ‘Yes,’ he said, noncommittal. He wasn’t sure what Quesadra’s views on the matter were, and a doctrinal dispute would serve no purpose. He joined the Crimson Fist at the viewport.

‘You don’t think Bohemond should be leading us,’ Quesadra said.

‘I don’t.’

‘And who would you prefer in his stead? Yourself?’

‘It isn’t a question of preference.’

‘Oh? One of destiny, is it?’

‘I didn’t say that, either.’

‘Do you deny it?’

Koorland chose his words with care. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it is destiny or chance that has placed me in this position. What is important is the position itself.’

‘Is this what you intend to say to Marshal Bohemond? I doubt he’ll be receptive.’ Quesadra snorted. ‘You might challenge him to a duel for the leadership, if you aren’t too attached to your right arm. Issachar might have thoughts for you.’

Koorland wasn’t amused by the reference to the Excoriator’s bionic limb. ‘If that is what it takes, I will.’

‘You’re serious.’

‘The High Lords have failed the Imperium with their trivial, self-interested political struggles. I would like to believe that the Adeptus Astartes are better than that.’

Quesadra didn’t answer at first. ‘We should be,’ he said at last, thoughtful.

Koorland left the conversation there. Not long after, word came of the Imperial Navy’s victory at Port Sanctus. The news confirmed the soundness of Bohemond’s proposed strategy. It also made the wait even more frustrating. But the other fleets weren’t far. Then, even as the mustering of four Chapters began, the near space of Phall Primus filling with strike cruisers and battle-barges, came the cry from Terra.

The second meeting in the council hall was more solemn than the first. Bohemond briefed the other Chapter Masters on everything that was known.

‘The orks haven’t attacked at last report,’ he concluded.

‘When they do,’ Issachar said, ‘there is no point pretending what the outcome will be, what with the bulk of the Navy still at Port Sanctus.’

‘There are no forces close enough to help?’ Thane asked.

‘None,’ said Bohemond. He tapped the data-slate on the table. ‘For all we know, the attack has already begun.’

The worst truth, though unspoken, thundered. Terra may already have fallen.

Now, Koorland thought. He stood.

‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you regarded my arrival as an ill omen.’ He paused, thinking of Lieutenant Greydove’s religious awe. The rest of the Chapter perished, but you survived, he had said. That makes you not remarkable but miraculous. He did not share Greydove’s belief. But he was duty-bound to accept that he was more than just a single Space Marine now. Being the last Imperial Fist made him a symbol, and one that had now taken on an even greater significance.

‘We know better than that,’ Thane said. ‘You are not the cause of this catastrophe.’

‘No,’ Koorland said, ‘but I can stand for it, and I will. The Imperial Fists do not exist outside of this chamber. The final wall has fallen, and now Terra is on the verge of falling too.’ Then he chose to speak the obscene. ‘Perhaps it has.’ He paused again. ‘But what I said a moment ago is a lie.

‘How can it be? Because the Black Templars stand. The Crimson Fists stand. The Excoriators stand. The Fists Exemplar stand. I stand. The sons of Dorn in their thousands are gathering to begin their greatest crusade since the Heresy. The Imperial Fists live on in me, in you, and in the war we are about to wage. If Terra falls, the Imperium must and will live on. We will avenge Terra. We will reclaim Terra, and annihilate every last xenos brute who has dared walk its surface.’

He beat his fist once against his breastplate. He had not yet sought to have any repairs done to the visible damage on his armour. He used its scars now. When the Successor Chapter Masters looked at him, they saw the worst thing that could happen, and they saw the survival beyond that worst thing. ‘I said that we must form a single fist with which to strike the orks. So we shall. I will direct those blows. I claim this right not in my name, or by any personal authority, but in the name of Rogal Dorn, and in the name of the Seventh Legion, whose spirit we uphold in our every act and thought.’

He finished. He waited. Bohemond glared at him. The Marshal took a breath. He rose. Before he could speak, Thane stood also.

‘Brother,’ he said to Koorland. He walked around the table to stand before the Imperial Fist. ‘Chapter Master.’ He held out his hand. ‘My captain.’ He clasped forearms with Koorland. ‘The Fists Exemplar will be honoured to follow you into combat.’

‘Thank you, brother,’ Koorland said.

‘I see no fault in Chapter Master Koorland’s logic,’ Issachar said. The Excoriator didn’t stand. He was watching Bohemond and Quesadra. ‘The rights he speaks of are real. We are bound to acknowledge them. Besides,’ he continued without taking his eyes off the two rivals, ‘I can’t believe that he would be unwilling to listen to sound military advice.’

‘Of course not,’ Koorland said. He wasn’t sure if Issachar was completely convinced by his speech. His agreement might have been more pragmatic, a way of heading off conflict between the Black Templars and Crimson Fists.

Quesadra was impassive. His eyes were hooded. The gaze that pried all secrets from others now hid the thoughts of its owner. All he said was, ‘Agreed.’

Are you siding with me, or sabotaging Bohemond? Koorland wondered. He pushed his concerns about motivation to the side. What mattered was the result.

Bohemond mustered a grim smile. ‘I will not break the unanimity at this table,’ he said. Then he too walked around to grasp Koorland’s arm. ‘Lead us well, brother,’ he said.

The implied test was clear. If Koorland did poorly, what he had managed to create in the last few minutes would collapse. He accepted that condition. If he failed, he would deserve far worse.

But was there an undercurrent of hope in the Marshal’s tone? Koorland thought there was. If he was right, then there would be real strength in the wall he was building.

What he couldn’t know was whether there would still be anything left for the wall to defend.

Five

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The days passed. The orks did not come. The star fortress hung in the sky above the Imperial Palace with dreadful imminence. It refused to change its threat into action.

The orks hardly needed to bother invading, Vangorich thought as he walked towards the Great Chamber. The panic the moon’s appearance had created had killed hundreds of thousands, and brush fires of frenzy continued to ignite despite Vernor Zeck’s massive mobilisation of enforcers. Give us enough time, Vangorich wanted to tell the greenskins, and we’ll do the job for you.

He had never felt more helpless. In the depths of sleepless nights, he faced the idea that, once the threat had arrived on Terra’s doorstep, the Officio Assassinorum had become irrelevant. Why should he worry about influencing the political life of the Imperium or checking its excesses when there would soon no longer be any politics left?

He didn’t like questions he could not answer. He would not stop fighting for the Imperium until he no longer drew breath. But all his struggles over the last months had been worse than useless. He had failed to forestall the crisis, and the crisis was on a scale he would have dismissed as laughable. He had been guilty of the same complacency as the rest of the vain puppets who called themselves the High Lords. His sins were, by some measure, even greater. He had been pleased to believe he knew better.

He’d been an arrogant fool. And now here he was, off to take his place like a good puppet on the stage for what might be the last performance before the curtain was brought down.

The uproar that greeted Vangorich as he entered the Great Chamber was tremendous. If this was indeed the final performance, it was going to be a spectacular one. The great scream had finally reached the ears of the High Lords. The Chamber was full for the first time in decades. In their tens of thousands, the lesser lords, petty governors and bureaucrats with leverage filled the tiers. They had come, ostensibly, for answers. But they weren’t listening. Every voice was raised in argument, hurling questions, demands and meaningless threats. Some were weeping. Others had abandoned all pretence at dialogue and their shouts had become inarticulate howls. Vangorich walked the gold-inlaid marble avenue towards the dais. It was like making his way through the maw of a wounded, raging beast. The Chamber, to his grief, no longer held a government. He hoped that what replaced it was not the death cry of a civilisation.

A phalanx of Lucifer Blacks guarded the approach to the dais. On either side, the floor was a roiling ant hill of serfs and messengers. They rushed on errands whose meaninglessness was disguised by urgency. Vangorich was surprised when Veritus’ power-armoured form emerged from that press, brushing past the startled Blacks to walk by his side the rest of the way.

‘There are less inconvenient ways of meeting,’ Vangorich said.

‘I had other business.’ He gave Vangorich a hard look. The eyes in that aged, lined skull burned. ‘You have been interfering in matters that don’t concern you.’

‘Have I?’

‘I am doing you the rare courtesy of giving you a warning.’

Vangorich stopped walking. He was delighted to find that he could still laugh. ‘Really? You’re warning me. And here I was looking forward to a long and prosperous retirement, reading by the light of an ork star fortress. Anyway, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

‘The Inquisition won’t tolerate intrusions into its affairs.’

‘You speak for the totality of the Inquisition, do you? And by the way, have you officially taken over as Inquisitorial Representative?’

Veritus glared.

Vangorich shook his head. ‘Inquisitor, if you can’t stay on top of your internal politics, I don’t see how you can expect the rest of us to do so.’ He started walking again.

Veritus strode beside him. ‘I am trying to speak to you, Grand Master, because I know that you, at least, are not a fool.’

‘I’m tempted to interpret that as meaning you do not have a high opinion of the High Lords.’

‘I do not.’

‘All such opinions may well be moot.’ Vangorich wondered if he sounded as tired as he felt.

‘I don’t believe that. This obsession with the orks is a mistake.’

Vangorich kept his face straight. ‘I can’t imagine why the orks should be commanding so much of our attention,’ he muttered.

They reached the dais. As they took their seats, Ekharth went through the motions of calling the session to order. There was too much uproar for anyone beyond the circle of chairs to hear him, but the sight of the debate beginning brought a measure of calm to the Great Chamber. Half a million people strained to listen. Vox-casters carried the debate to all corners of the vast space.

Vangorich gestured at the mass assembly. To Udo he said, ‘I rejoice to see the Great Chamber so lively.’

‘As do I, Grand Master.’ The Lord Commander sounded quite genuine.

Vangorich swept his gaze over the Twelve. He judged that some of them, like Lansung, would have preferred the council to be private still. The High Admiral, in particular, was facing massive public humiliation. Others, Udo among them, apparently saw the involvement of the full Chamber as a way of spreading the blame for whatever happened next as widely as possible. The High Lords were behaving as if they were facing nothing worse than an especially acute political crisis, not extermination.

Then again, the orks had not attacked. Every other system where a star fortress had intruded would have long since been burning or enslaved.

The anomaly wasn’t lost on the other Lords. ‘Why haven’t the greenskins invaded?’ Ekharth asked Lansung.

The High Admiral shrugged. Defeat was corroding him further each day. ‘I have no idea,’ he said.

‘Perhaps the Fabricator General can enlighten us,’ Vangorich said.

‘We have no satisfactory answer to give,’ said Kubik. ‘The behaviour is anomalous. One can construct scenarios wherein the means necessary to transport a body of that mass to the heart of the Imperium are such that the Veridi giganticus must rebuild energy stores prior to further action. But this is mere speculation, an inevitable result of our lack of data. Since this behaviour does not conform to any previously seen in the orks, the inevitable conclusion is that it is not simply their technology that is undergoing dramatic evolution. Perhaps even cladogenesis is possible. We can rule out nothing. The situation is an interesting one.’

‘Does that mean there will be time for the fleet to return?’ Ekharth’s wistfulness was childlike. It was picked up by the assembly. The murmur of hope was loud as thunder, fragile as gossamer.

‘Unknown.’ Kubik’s brief response was as close to a shrug as the Fabricator General came.

‘The orks will let us know,’ Lansung said.

The crowd rumble grew discontented.

‘Is that what you propose?’ Juskina Tull asked. ‘That we wait to find out? That is not acceptable.’

‘Do you see an alternative, Speaker?’ Some of Lansung’s old sneer came back.

‘We take the fight to the orks.’

Now Lansung laughed. The sound was ugly with contempt and despair. ‘But of course. How idiotic that no one else thought of that. I suppose you have a brilliant way of doing this in the absence of the Imperial Navy.’

‘Yes.’

The one word shut down Lansung’s response and brought everyone up short. The silence of a collective breath being held fell over the Great Chamber. Tull rose from her seat. As she began to speak, she walked along the perimeter of the dais. Her robes were a magisterial red and black. She orated with one bare arm outstretched and punctuating each point with sweeping gestures. She held her left arm across her waist, a fold of her robes draped over it, and she strode the stage of the assembly as if born for this moment.

‘The defence of the Imperium,’ she proclaimed, ‘is not just the responsibility of the Navy, the Astra Militarum, or the Adeptus Astartes.’ She paused. ‘It is the responsibility of every citizen, of every human.’ She tilted her head back, as if gazing onto distant battlefields. ‘In this hour of greatest need, the Imperium calls upon all of us. I will not refuse to answer. Will any of you?’

She waited, and the cries of ‘No!’ came on cue, building on each other and on the anticipated salvation her confidence promised. Though he had no idea where Tull was going with this performance, Vangorich was impressed. Tull had always been a figure of great presence among the High Lords. The peace that had lured the Imperium into its deadly complacency had also denied Tull the opportunity to influence the currents of policy as much as she would have liked. Now she was in her glory.

‘The greenskins have their moon. What are the numbers that threaten us?’

Kubik said, ‘We have as yet no way of properly measuring the scale of—’

‘What does it matter when we are billions?’ Tull shouted to the tiers. Her voice rang with strength. It was the sound of defiance. Vangorich had a sudden image of countless iterations of Juskina Tull, stretching back through human history, standing on clifftops and hurling her indomitability at invaders, inspiring the armies behind her to the impossible. The power she had was magnificent. His concern was how she would choose to wield it.

‘The orks have weapons,’ Tull said. ‘Don’t we? They have ships. Don’t we? They have the presumption to believe they can invade us? Then we shall invade them! We will flood them with such numbers that the fear they have visited upon our world will pale before their own terror!’

She took a step back, her face shining, as the crowd’s roar swept over the dais in waves.

So much hope, Vangorich thought, and Tull hadn’t offered a single concrete detail of her proposed miracle.

Lansung said, ‘And how is this invasion going to take place without the presence of the Navy?’

Tull turned her smile on him, and it was eviscerating in its forbearance. ‘We don’t need the Navy.’ She looked back to the assembly. ‘We have the Merchant Fleets! We have ships beyond counting! Right here, at anchor over Terra and in the Sol System, we have more vessels than the orks could ever hope to defend against. I am issuing an immediate recall of all Merchant ships. We shall have a fleet that will fill the void. This fleet will carry our millions to the obscenity in our skies and destroy the orks utterly. This is the hour of the Proletarian Crusade!’

The clamour that greeted her pronouncement shook the walls of the Great Chamber. If sound could be harnessed as power, the ork moon would have been blasted in that moment. Vangorich saw one of Kubik’s limbs twitch as the sudden peak in sound overwhelmed his sensory inputs.

When the crest of the celebration faded, Verreault spoke up, indignant. ‘You speak as if Terra has no defenders.’

The smile Tull favoured him with was different from the one she had given Lansung. It was an invitation to join her in the light of victory. ‘I am not forgetting the Imperial Guard, Lord Commander Militant,’ she said. ‘The Merchants’ Armada will of course transport the full force of the Emperor’s Fist. But we must strike with all the might and anger that Terra can muster. You would not deny the people this great chance to stand for the Imperium?’

‘You know I wouldn’t,’ Verreault answered.

Vangorich was still trying to process the implications of Tull’s plan. The scale of the madness was so vast, it outstripped horror.

Lansung was having some of the same difficulty.

‘How are you going to destroy the fortress with unarmed vessels?’ he asked.

‘We aren’t,’ said Tull. ‘As I said, this is an invasion.’

‘Ground troops?’ Vangorich said, aghast.

‘Yes.’ Orating again, she continued, ‘I will not pretend that great sacrifices do not lie ahead, on Terra and above. Production will suffer. Those who remain will have to do the work of the millions at war. Many ships will be lost in the assault. Many warriors will be lost in the landing and in the storming of the fortress. But the orks cannot stop them all. We are too many.’

Warming to the idea and the role he would play in the triumph to come, Verreault said, ‘Under the command of the Astra Militarum, the people of Terra will sweep the orks to oblivion.’

Lansung’s jaw hung open for a moment. Then he sat back, defeated. Unless and until the Imperial Navy was able to aid Terra, he was an irrelevance, and he knew it.

‘You surprise me,’ Vangorich said to Verreault. The Lord Commander Militant was more of a political animal than his predecessor. Heth had always struck Vangorich as being more at home in combat than in governance. Verreault, though a veteran, had spent much of his career leading from the strategium table. It was easier for him to see troops as pieces in a game of regicide, and losses as statistics. Vangorich wondered if he realised that he was a junior partner in the alliance with Tull, as the Guard had been when Lansung’s star had been in the ascendant. The plan was Tull’s, as was the armada. Verreault’s share of the glory would be what she permitted.

Vangorich caught himself. There would be no glory to partition. The proposal was mad. Even a group as prone to self-delusion as the High Lords couldn’t be blind to that fact.

Yet Verreault was unfazed by his comment.

‘Speaker Tull’s argument has merit,’ the Lord Commander Militant said. ‘The regiments of the Astra Militarum stationed on Terra don’t have the numbers we need against an entire world of orks, even with the reinforcement of the Penal Legions. The call has been sent to the entire Imperial Guard. But the Cadians, the Valhallans, the Mordians…’

‘They still need to get here,’ said Lansung.

‘And they are already engaging the orks.’

Ekharth spoke up. ‘The mechanics of recruitment will be complex. There is little time.’

‘I have no doubt that the Administratum is up to the challenge,’ said Tull.

‘It is. This will be a mobilisation to give birth to legends!’ The cheer that answered him wasn’t as excited as the ones that Tull summoned, but it was the greatest Ekharth, a poor speaker, had ever received.

‘When great sacrifice is called for, faith and inspiration are more vital than ever,’ Mesring said.

‘They are indeed,’ said Tull.

Vangorich vowed to track down those responsible for giving the Ecclesiarch the antidote to the poison the Grand Master had introduced into his system. Now Mesring would be spreading the toxins of his influence even more effectively. Tull’s strategy was lunatic, but it was also brilliant. At a stroke, she had Verreault, Ekharth and Mesring invested in the plan. Lansung was opposed, but he was a pariah. Udo was eager to distance himself from the High Admiral, so Vangorich expected him to side with Tull also. If Gibran, Sark and Anwar had reservations, they were not voicing them.

‘The information such an invasion could gather would be invaluable,’ Kubik said.

Even Zeck was nodding with approval. ‘The people need something concrete,’ he said. ‘The recruitment should redirect energy. Diminish the fear. Take the wind out of the riots.’

Then Tull spoke to Lansung, and cemented her pre-eminence. ‘The Crusade will not be possible without the assistance of the Imperial Navy.’

‘What?’

‘The armaments of the Merchant Fleet are light at best. By numbers alone, I know we can overwhelm the ork defences. But with the Autocephalax Eternal leading the way, we will punch through with ease.’

Lansung stared at her with undisguised hatred. Vangorich would have applauded Tull’s move if he hadn’t been sure that she was leading them all to the slaughter. She had Lansung cornered. If he agreed with her plan, the Navy would be in a position that was even more subordinate to the Merchant Fleet than the Imperial Guard’s. If he refused, he would be offering up the spectacle of the flagship remaining behind, the Navy sitting out a fight while the common citizens came forward at the hour of Terra’s greatest need. He could not refuse.

‘The Autocephalax Eternal will be at the forefront of this great endeavour,’ Lansung said. Though he sounded sick, the Great Chamber resounded with more celebration.

We’re doing it, Vangorich thought. We’re doing the work of the orks for them. And we’re cheering our own destruction.

‘What if the invasion fails?’ He heard himself making an effort he already knew was futile. ‘What then? If the bulk of the Terran regiments of the Astra Militarum are lost in this venture, what defences will remain?’

‘Your lack of faith troubles me, Grand Master,’ Tull said. ‘The Guard will return triumphant, and the orks will have been routed. There will be no need for defence.’

Do you really believe that? Vangorich wondered. Do you really think this fever dream will come to pass? Are you capable of seeing beyond the shift in the balance of power that you are orchestrating?

There were no answers. Whether Tull believed what she was saying or not no longer mattered. Vangorich could feel the machinery of the invasion already in motion. Tull had spoken, and conjured events into reality.

‘This course of action is a folly,’ Veritus said. ‘This obsession with the orks will only open the way for the true enemy.’

His words were swallowed in the applause for Tull. The rest of the Twelve didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. Vangorich felt something that was not too distant from sympathy for the inquisitor. He might have Wienand on the defensive, but the man’s hand was weak. Insisting that the orks were not the primary threat would make him appear delusional. Veritus was clearly intelligent and driven by belief rather than political gain, yet his dogmatism was causing its own damage.

When the assembly dissolved, it was in a spirit of jubilation as ferocious as the initial excitement that had greeted Lansung’s victory. But there was an edge of hysteria, too. The hope was brittle. The investment in Tull’s plan was total, but the need to believe in it was even stronger than the belief itself.

When Vangorich left the dais, Veritus walked with him. The inquisitor’s style of interaction was as blunt as Wienand’s was subtle.

‘They are even greater fools than I supposed,’ Veritus said.

‘And?’

‘The path we are on will lead to disaster.’

‘The disaster is already here.’

‘A worse one, then.’

‘What would you recommend, Inquisitor Veritus? Do you see actions that either the Inquisition or the Officio could take that would alter the course that has been set? Would Speaker Tull’s death matter now?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘No, it wouldn’t.’ Too many of the other High Lords were invested in the Crusade. If Tull fell, one of her colleagues would turn her into a martyr and become the new face of the endeavour. ‘Or are you calling for the assassination of the entire Twelve? No, I don’t think you are.’

In this moment, though, Vangorich felt the temptation of that idea. He walked faster, leaving the other old predator behind.

As he left the Great Chamber, Vangorich forced himself not to clench his fists in frustration. Once again, he had been helpless to prevent madness piled atop catastrophe. The closest thing he had to hope was the latest report from Krule. If the arrival of the moon had Wienand even more determined to reach the Inquisitorial Fortress, then perhaps there was something there that might be worthy of actual hope. He detested being in the dark, but Wienand, at least, was sane.

Where did that leave the Officio? At best, assisting an effort about which Vangorich knew nothing. The so-called Proletarian Crusade would march ahead, and the avalanche of events would continue. He stalked towards his quarters, filled with dread and wishing for the punishment of fools.

Six

Terra — orbital

The Militant Fire was not a young ship. When Leander Narkissos had acquired her, five decades earlier, she had been showing her age. The Brutas-class cargo hauler had spent half a millennium making rimward runs, her fortunes declining with each successive owner. Narkissos’ immediate predecessor had not, technically, been a pirate, but the dividing line had been a thin one, and he had finally been forced to divest himself of his business and his ship before the Adeptus Arbites seized both. Narkissos had been starting out then, his trade in goods transportation just showing promising growth, but he had been a long way from wealthy. He was able to acquire the Fire on very favourable terms. He had set about restoring her pride.

He was pleased to think that he had done well by his ship. Fifty years of work, of endlessly pouring his profits back into renovations and improvements, and it was really only now that he believed the Militant Fire was living up to her name. She was not a large transport, so Narkissos specialised in the delicate and the expensive. The ship’s handsome lines and reborn lustre advertised his expertise. He fulfilled all promises, and as his reputation grew, it burnished the beauty of the Fire still further. Narkissos and his ship were an excellent team.

He was sorry that they were both going to die.

First Mate Demetria Kondos walked onto the bridge. Narkissos shook himself from his meditations on the coming end and rose from his command throne. Built into the bulkhead behind the throne was a small room that, with its book-lined walls, looked like a study, but was reserved for holding meetings with small numbers of privileged clients. Its ornamental status was also its vital function. It impressed the merchants he courted with its intimacy and sober elegance. It permitted quiet discussion in a location of high importance. It cemented deals. It served no command purpose on the Fire, yet it helped provide the means for the ship’s existence.

It was also a good location for Narkissos to have a private word without having to leave the bridge. He nodded to Kondos and she joined him in the chamber.

‘So?’ he asked.

‘The work is almost done. I won’t say that it’s doing much for morale.’

‘I can imagine.’ It wasn’t doing much for his, either. He had ordered the stripping out of all specialised stasis fields and containers. The cargo hold of the Militant Fire was being turned back into a multi-levelled empty space. ‘Can’t be helped. We’re going to be transporting personnel.’

‘If we had time to do it right…’

‘We don’t.’ The call from Terra had come while they were unloading at Mars. They had returned at full speed, reshaping the hold on the fly.

‘She deserves better.’ Kondos had an even longer history with the Fire than Narkissos. She had been part of the crew under the previous owner, and had been the lone member who had elected to stay on after the acquisition. Narkissos had been glad of her experience. It was colourful, and much of it not for official consumption. Narkissos cultivated a refined image, but trade in the Imperium could get rough. Kondos was good at spotting trouble before it happened, and just as good at dealing with it when it couldn’t be avoided. In initial meetings with potential clients, Narkissos was the portrait of elegant discretion. She was the face of weathered maturity and relaxed experience. If nothing ruffled her, then nothing was wrong. Together they were the guarantee that the cargo would be handled with sensitivity and security.

‘Yes, she does,’ Narkissos said. ‘But the treatment we’re giving the ship isn’t the big problem, is it?’

‘No. Her death is.’

‘And ours.’

Kondos shrugged. ‘No, that isn’t going over that well, either.’

‘Captain,’ Jasen Rallis called. ‘We’re reaching our designated position.’

‘Thank you, helmsman.’ He looked at Kondos. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Last port of call.’

‘Last but one.’

He managed a grin. ‘If we make it that far. And I don’t think the greenskins are going to be eager customers for our wares.’

They fell silent. The humour wasn’t working for either of them. Narkissos had played the vox-casts of Juskina Tull’s speech over the ship’s speakers. He and all his crew had listened more than once. He understood the necessity of what was going to happen. But enthusiasm for the Proletarian Crusade had not yet taken hold of the men and women of the Militant Fire.

‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Is the plan mad or brilliant?’

‘I don’t know. Both maybe. I can imagine it working. If we throw enough ships at the orks, some of them have to get through.’

‘Including ours?’

‘Did you invest in void shields when I wasn’t looking?’

‘I wish I had.’

‘Then, no.’ Kondos wasn’t joking now. ‘We’ll be among the first to go. We’ll be the chaff for the ork defences.’

‘I feel sorry for the troops we’ll be carrying.’

‘Captain,’ Rallis said again.

‘What is it?’ Narkissos asked. He stepped out of the chamber, and saw the view from the forward oculus. ‘Oh,’ he said.

Behind him, he heard Kondos’ intake of breath.

‘I should address the crew,’ Narkissos said. His throat was dry and his voice cracked. ‘First Officer Kondos, please call all hands to muster on the observation deck.’

Kondos left without a word. Narkissos tore his eyes away from the oculus. He needed a few moments to marshal his thoughts without awe overwhelming his consciousness.

‘You have the bridge, helmsman,’ he said.

‘Yes, captain.’

Narkissos looked at the rest of the bridge crew. ‘I’ll have the assembly piped in,’ he said. ‘You’ll hear what is said.’

The observation deck was one level above the bridge. It too was ornamentation with purpose. It was constructed to dazzle. It was large enough to hold a thousand comfortably under a glass dome that rose from floor level. To stand there was to be surrounded by the void, and the sights could be overwhelming.

Today, they were. Narkissos paused on the staircase that spiralled up to the centre of the deck. He was taking in what might be his last few seconds of mundane reality. Soon there would be nothing but the extraordinary and the terrible.

He gave in to the trembling. He wouldn’t have that luxury soon. His combat experience was limited to his time with the militia on Elysia, though the need for all ships to evade the system’s pirates had taught him the miracles one could summon from a vessel. Kondos had served with the drop troops, so she would be ready for what was coming. Narkissos, though, was no soldier.

Yet he was going to war. He would have to muster the courage and dignity that came with the duty. But here, he was alone. He clutched the steel railing of the staircase to hold himself up. The fear took him. He wanted to weep. His breath came in hitching gasps, and he couldn’t find enough air.

The bottom had dropped out of his stomach back on Mars when he had heard that the orks were on Terra’s doorstep. The lurch had come again when the call to crusade had come. He had thought he understood what was coming. He’d been wrong. He’d been protected by a shield of abstraction. That was gone now. Above him was the reality of his fate.

It frightened him. He didn’t know if he was up to the challenge of this immense day. Some of the shipmasters at Mars had decided they were not. They had tried to run. The Imperial Navy did not have the vessels to run them down, but the Martian orbital defences had executed summary judgements.

He heard the echo of boots against decking. His crew was approaching. He ran a hand over his forehead and through the grey waves of his hair. He steadied his breathing. He had a responsibility. He also felt, deep in his core, a stirring of excitement.

Can I do this after all?

He had no choice.

He cleared his throat. He straightened up. Then he walked up the staircase to take in the full sight of what lay beyond the dome.

He was still awed when the crew arrived. He could function, though. He stood at the bow end of the deck, and struggled to pay attention as the men and women of the Militant Fire gathered and were struck dumb by what they saw.

The Fire was surrounded by a spectacle of grandeur and horror. On all sides were the ships of the Merchants’ Armada. Thousands of ships. Such numbers that they could have been called a swarm, but there were too many massive presences for so weak a word. There were ships of every size and grade. Private luxury lighters that couldn’t carry more than a handful of passengers. Hulking Goliath-class factory ships whose retrofitting for their new purpose must have been a task worthy of song in itself. Mass conveyors a dozen kilometres long. Freight transports in such numbers that they were ranked in squadrons. There was so little space between the vessels that Narkissos could imagine hopping from one to the next. There was no room for error in the manoeuvring of the fleet and Narkissos felt his chest swell with pride at the skill of the pilots. The Imperial Navy could do no better.

He corrected himself. The Merchants had done better. They were here. The Navy was not.

Riding at high anchor, stationed far above the civilians, was the Autocephalax Eternal. It was almost as large as the biggest conveyors, a majestic cathedral of war. But it was isolated, separated from the others of its kind with the exception of a few escorts. The Militant Fire was in the midst of a vast concentration of allies.

So many ships. So much strength. Narkissos drank in the spectacle and thought, we are an armada.

And when he looked to port, he needed the strength of that thought. Terra’s new moon hung in the void, waiting to swallow the Armada. Its maw gaped wide. There were no lights on its surface, no flights of enemy ships sallying forth. It was silent, inert as a skull, but as full of implication. When his eyes fell on the star fortress, the fleet lost substance. The thing should not be, and so it altered all existence with its obscene reality.

To his horror, Narkissos knew that this impression was not an illusion. Everything revolved around the moon, even Terra itself. The orks had become the centre of the Imperium. The magnificence of the Armada existed only because of the monstrousness it had been called to confront. Every act, every thought, every moment of what life remained to Narkissos was utterly determined by that inarticulate, unspeakable thing. Narkissos didn’t have the words to describe what he felt before the sight of the moon. Yet it shaped his language. He, like every other soul in the Imperium, was caught in a gravitational field that reached across the galaxy.

There was no escape from the ork moon’s pull. There was no shield from its presence. There were no walls behind which he could hide. They had all fallen.

The one act left, the one thing that kept alive at least the illusion of agency, was to charge at the horror. In that charge, he was becoming part of the new wall behind which the rest of Terra sheltered.

To attack the moon was to believe it could be destroyed, and without that belief, there was nothing. Narkissos understood the need for the Crusade now. He needed it even if he was superfluous. He was even more frightened than before. He was also more proud than he had ever been in his life.

He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. He gave the crew time to see everything. There was no need to explain. Either they would know the same need, or they would not. When faces began to turn back to him, he said, ‘So, this is what we have come to fight. We will be taking on troops, and we will be part of the great attack. Our goal will be to land our passengers on the surface of… of that.’ He pointed without looking.

‘Will we even get close?’ one of the enginseers asked.

Narkissos smiled. ‘What do you think?’

Kondos said, ‘We’ve made difficult runs before. Been a few years, but it will come back to us.’

‘Possibly,’ said Narkissos. ‘Or we could be blown apart in the first minutes. I’ll say this. I don’t see a choice. We attack, and likely we’ll die. Or we don’t attack, and we die when the orks sweep over us all. I know which end I prefer. If I’m going to die, I want to die a hero. The Militant Fire is part of the Proletarian Crusade until death or victory. I won’t impose my choice on the rest of you, though. If anyone wants to run, go ahead. I don’t know where you’ll go, but I wouldn’t have you at my side.’

No one moved. He hadn’t expected they would. The silence that fell was one of unanimity.

Narkissos looked out at the Armada and the star fortress again. It was the most compelling sight he had ever witnessed, the most horrific and the most exhilarating. The emotion in his chest, too large to be articulated, emerged as a single, grieving laugh. Then he said, ‘We’re mad, aren’t we? All of this is mad.’

‘Completely,’ Kondos agreed.

‘Isn’t it glorious?’

The crew’s cheers filled the dome. Terrified joy reached out to the void.

Seven

Terra — the Imperial Palace

There were three of them in the Octagon. Veritus, Asprion Machtannin and Namisi Najurita sat on the lowest of the three tiers. For all the studied, wood-panelled pseudo-intimacy of the space, Veritus was conscious of how cavernous it was for such an encounter. Perceptions were important. He needed Najurita’s to be the correct ones.

He had little choice about the meeting place, though. The Octagon’s security systems, whether sigil-based or technological, did not only shut down the possibility of attack in the room. They also enforced privacy. The situation was beyond delicate. The unfolding disaster was pushing Veritus towards a decision he did not want to make. If he could avoid that contingency, he would. To that end, he sought total control over the words that were spoken and the ears that heard them.

‘Where is Inquisitor Wienand?’ Najurita asked.

‘We don’t know,’ Machtannin said.

‘Your answer tells me that you’ve lost track of her, meaning that you were hunting her.’

‘She is a danger to the proper task of the Inquisition.’

‘There was no consensus on that issue,’ Najurita reminded him, ‘never mind on the option of an assassination.’

‘She is heading for the Inquisitorial Fortress,’ Veritus put in. Time to calm the waters, if possible. He wanted an ally, not an enemy, in Najurita. She commanded a lot of respect within the Inquisition. Her opinion carried weight.

‘And are you planning to ambush her there?’

‘No.’ Two failed attempts on her life. The chance of a quick and quiet elimination of Wienand’s influence had vanished. To make matters worse, Veritus’ forces looked incompetent. The very moves that were meant to consolidate his authority were undermining it. Najurita had been at least listening to his arguments before, and had been willing to concede the possibility that Wienand’s relationship with the High Lords was a bit too comfortable. She had not signed off on anything more, and now, though Machtannin was stepping in to catch the blame for the botched operations, it was clear that her displeasure was primarily with Veritus.

She was not his only possible ally. He would act as he had to alone, if necessary. But he still hoped to avoid the more drastic measures. He hadn’t given up on bringing Najurita around.

‘We have friends in the Fortress,’ he said. ‘We aren’t without influence there.’

‘Inquisitor Wienand has more.’

‘And if she carries the day, the consequences will be tragic.’

Najurita sighed. ‘You do realise that an ork star fortress is in our skies? Your argument that the orks are not the principal threat isn’t terribly convincing at this moment.’

‘I’m not saying that the orks shouldn’t be fought. Of course they are a danger. But the overcommitment of resources to this one endeavour will leave us vulnerable to a greater enemy.’

Najurita looked at Machtannin. ‘You agree, I take it?’

He nodded. ‘We can’t afford to take our eyes off the moves of the Archenemy.’

‘You know me,’ Najurita said to Veritus. ‘You know that I would never underestimate the threat of the Ruinous Powers. I am fully aware of what the Heresy cost the Imperium. But we triumphed over the Eye. Its activity has been minimal of late. And the orks are menacing us with imminent annihilation.’

‘Which is exactly why all the attention given to them is such a mistake. Now is when the real enemy is most dangerous. The Imperium has been weakened, and is distracted. What better moment to strike?’

‘That is a hypothetical. The ork attack is real.’

‘What ork attack?’ Veritus demanded. ‘Nothing has happened since the moon’s arrival. Where is the ork invasion?’

The look on Najurita’s face told him all he needed to know. He hadn’t convinced her of anything except perhaps that he was unbalanced. He was disappointed to see that doubt in her eyes. It was one he had seen many times before, one of the costs of the war that was his destiny to wage. One of the great strengths of the Ruinous Powers was their improbability. It was too easy to disbelieve in them, or in their danger, until it was too late. He had made that mistake in his youth. He still bore the scars of that error. His power armour was his defence and it was his weapon, but it also gave mobility to a body that could no longer function outside of its ceramite shell.

He tried another tack. A last one. ‘The fact remains that Inquisitor Wienand is a rogue player. She must be prevented from causing any further damage.’

‘For all we know, within the next few days there will be very little left to damage. Unless Speaker Tull’s crusade turns out to be the miracle she would have everyone believe it to be.’

‘I share your doubts about the strategy,’ Veritus said, and waited for Najurita to say something more. Her statement had bordered on the non sequitur.

Najurita stood. ‘Then we are agreed.’

The meeting was over.

Machtannin and Veritus lingered after she left.

‘What did that mean?’ Machtannin asked.

‘That she does not share our evaluation of Inquisitor Wienand.’

‘She’ll oppose us.’

‘I don’t think so. She’s doubtful, but isn’t going to throw her strength to one side or the other, at least for the moment.’

‘Where does that leave us?’

‘We have to try again.’

‘Najurita won’t appreciate being lied to.’

‘I wasn’t lying. She’s forcing our hand. Wienand has too many friends in the Fortress. Once she’s inside, I’m far from certain that we have the political strength to counter her moves.’

‘A third attempt is going to be messy, whether or not it is successful.’

‘Still better than the alternative. If she has her way, there may not be any turning back.’

‘We still don’t know what she plans.’

Veritus turned his head slowly. He gave the younger man his coldest stare. ‘Your resolution is lacking too?’

Machtannin shook his head. ‘You know it isn’t.’

Veritus did not know this. At this moment, he had only Machtannin’s reassurance. Veritus knew that there was no love lost between Machtannin and Wienand — what he was uncertain about was how fully Machtannin appreciated the threat of Chaos. Veritus respected the record of Machtannin’s battles, but he didn’t know the depths of his commitment now.

Veritus left the Octagon a few minutes later. He made his way towards his quarters along Proscription Way. It was one of the narrower arcades of the Imperial Palace, less than ten metres across. The vault was so high and the skylights so few and grimed by centuries of smog, that daylight never reached the floor. The passage was a land of perpetual evening. The lumen globes were spaced such that there was enough light to see by, but a walk along the Way was a journey through degrees of shadow. The flagstones of the floor were engraved with devotional sayings. The erosion of millions of footsteps had worn them away until they were patterns of faint lines, fragments of words and suggestions of meaning.

Thought was being erased from Proscription Way one pedestrian at a time, but it was preserved and given rigour in the gothic honeycombs that lined the passage. The ground floors were emporiums selling prayer scrolls, altar icons and exegetical texts. The Way ran north-south, its gentle sinuosity carrying on for kilometres, its thousand merchants vying in solemn and twilit quiet for the attention of the faithful. Scholars lived above the vendors. They were the writers of tracts, the commentators of texts, the explorers of devotion. They laboured with the industry of obsession.

Veritus liked the character of Proscription Way. The scholars had only half the truth. There was no mention, in any of their texts, of the Ruinous Powers. But the faith they extolled was a necessary, if not sufficient, defence against them. The people who lived and worked here were fighting the war, even if they didn’t realise it.

The las-fire came in a cluster of shots. The first seared his cheek. His instincts reacted before his conscious mind, reflexes taking over. He brought up his left arm to protect his head. The second shot creased his scalp. He lunged to one side of the arcade. The third shot burned down the side of his temple. Then he was against the wall, looking for the origins of the fire. There were too many windows, with too many people visible in silhouette. None were looking at him, none were armed. The sniper had stopped shooting.

Veritus waited, his laspistol drawn. Nothing. The nearby pedestrians had scattered, crouching in doorways or behind stalls. The sniper’s aim had been excellent. His armour was untouched. His wounds throbbed and he smelt burned flesh. If he had been just a bit slower, if the sniper’s first shot had not been spoiled by whatever random event had intervened…

No targets, no further attack. He started moving down the Way again, moving backwards until he went around a curve and the point of ambush was out of sight. He turned around and strode down the passage, monitoring all sides for threat. His temple throbbed with anger even more than it did from the wound. He was furious with humiliation. He had been turned into a figure of ridicule: power-armoured, but in full retreat. But he couldn’t attack what he could not find. He hadn’t even been able to gauge the angle of the shots. Even if he could level both sides of the Way, the assassin would be long gone.

He tried to think past the rage. The tactical situation had changed. He couldn’t be sure that Wienand had instigated the attack but even if she hadn’t, she had friends who dared act on her behalf. Who were they? Too many possibilities. His own position now looked more precarious. He reconsidered the deployment of his forces.

Vangorich let three hours go by before he ventured onto Proscription Way. He found Ferren Reach in a book-lined cell on the fourth floor. The sniper had put his rifle away and resumed his scholar’s habit. Reach was the same age as Krule, but looked much older, even older than Vangorich. His face was a map of wrinkles deep as canyons. His hair and beard were lank, grey, and long. His stoop and his shuffle were convincing, but they were false. The body beneath the robes was supple wire, capable of remaining motionless yet alert for days. He squinted as if through cataracts.

He didn’t break the act even before the Grand Master of the Officio. He was standing by the shelves set into the wall to the left of the door when Vangorich walked in. He looked up from the manuscript he was holding. He didn’t look pleased. He nodded once, which was what passed for a salute from Reach.

‘So?’ Vangorich asked.

Reach looked back down at the book and turned the page over. ‘First time I’ve shot to miss,’ he said.

‘You made it convincing, I’m sure.’

‘He’s counting his blessings.’

‘Well done.’

‘Feels like a loss. Don’t like losses.’

Vangorich walked over to the Assassin. ‘It’s my hope that you killed an idea today.’ He gestured at the rows of leather spines. ‘That’s a target you can appreciate, I would think.’

Reach snorted and closed the book. ‘I wouldn’t.’ After a moment, conscious that he might be pushing too far, he added, ‘Grand Master.’

Vangorich spread his hands, expressing regret. ‘I’m sorry, Ferren. The dodge was necessary.’

‘Why keep him alive? If he’s worth attacking, he’s worth killing.’

‘He isn’t worth a war. The balance is delicate. If we killed him, we could trigger a civil war in the Inquisition, or if and when they realised what we’d done, that would be just as bad. The agents of that institution, with Wienand in the ascendant, are the only useful allies we have right now. The goal today was to destabilise Veritus. Make him uncertain about his position and his attackers.’

Reach replaced his book. ‘Well, job done, sir.’ Somewhat mollified, he added, ‘Think it helped?’

‘I hope so.’ Vangorich moved to the window and looked out. The traffic on Proscription Way flowed in both directions, untroubled by the earlier violence or by the unseen ork presence beyond the vault. This region of the Imperial Palace had been the least touched by the great panic. Instead of rioting, the inhabitants had withdrawn further into their hermetic studies. They poured their consciousness into the mysteries of faith, and denied the upheavals of the world. It was a nice strategy. Though not one, he thought, that the orks would respect, once they came.

And was the game he was playing against Veritus any more practical? He had to believe it was. He had to believe that Wienand was moving towards a viable strategy to combat the orks.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Reach said behind him, ‘but we’re putting a lot of faith into another party to solve the big problems.’

The irony made Vangorich grin. It was either that or curse. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘We have to have faith.’ Another hard lesson from the hard days.

Eight

Mars — the Noctis Labyrinth

Sklera Verreaux was the first to see a possibility in Eldon Urquidex. She observed the magos biologis alight from one of the Subservius’ shuttles. He was part of a group of Mechanicus priests and monotask servitors. Draped in the shadows of her stealth suit, Verreaux watched the arrivals through a telescopic sight. Urquidex was speaking to the priest the Assassins had identified as Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken. Urquidex was broader than his companion, to the point that he had a bodily presence unusual for the adepts of the Omnissiah. What caught her attention, though, was his manner of conversation. His right arm was up near his face, and his digitools extended and flexed to no visible purpose. Though the rest of his body had the same floating stillness typical of the Martian priests as he kept pace with Van Auken, the hand gesture looked a great deal like agitation.

When she passed on her observation to Clemetina Yendl, the Temple Vanus Assassin said, ‘A magos who is upset could be very useful to us. We should cultivate his acquaintance.’

So Yendl did.

It wasn’t difficult. Beneath her disguise of false augmentatia, she moved through the low-security zones of Mars easily enough. Urquidex was involved, as soon as he arrived, with the excavations beneath the Noctis Labyrinth, one of the veils Yendl’s team needed to pierce. Yendl spoke to Urquidex for the first time when he put in an appearance outside the Labyrinth. She played a hunch. She introduced some flaws into her camouflage. Very small ones, visible only in close proximity. Just enough so only Urquidex would be able to catch them, but enough for him to realise she was not what she appeared to be. There was a risk. The team could afford her loss, she reasoned.

‘Why are you speaking to me?’ Urquidex asked.

‘Because I think you would like to speak to me.’

There was a pause. The right arm raised again, the digits twitching with indecision. ‘You are attempting to suborn me.’

‘From a path you know to be false,’ she said. ‘It is the Fabricator General who is approaching treason.’

‘I am alone with my doubts.’

‘But you are being true to the Tenth Universal Law.’

‘The soul is the conscience of sentience,’ he recited.

‘You are listening to your conscience. The Fabricator General is ready to abandon Terra. That is sentience without soul.’

One of the priest’s telescopic eyes extended to examine Yendl, as if a study of her mask could reveal truths. ‘How much do you know?’

‘What the Fabricator General intends. Not what he can do.’

Urquidex’s eye withdrew. There were clicks and electronic chirps as if the collective of components that his body had become were in debate with each other. He said, ‘There is something that should be known.’

He incorporated Yendl into his complement of electro-priests and enginseers when he returned to the Noctis Labyrinth. The complex was an inverted hive city of laboratoria. The experimental centres functioned like the cells of an organism, at times working in isolation, at others linking with many in the service of larger projects. Urquidex’s party descended through levels of catwalks and tunnels into a world pulsing with arcane energy and technological ferment. Yendl could not understand the import of most of what she saw. It was too fragmentary. Through doorways, she saw vast machines engaged in dances complex, massive and strange. The scale of the endeavours was too huge for any one consciousness to encompass, and she came to a greater understanding of why the worship of the Machine-God had such a hold on Mars. What was constructed here, what was brought to mechanical life, and what was unleashed were far beyond the human. The spark of the numinous crackled in the giant forges.

Though Yendl couldn’t guess at the function of each piece of the puzzle that she witnessed, she had a sense of all the cells working in concert. A single project, perhaps the greatest undertaken, united the laboratoria. The cells were the mind of Mars, and it had but one goal.

Hundreds of levels down, at the end of a tunnel that twisted and spiralled and sprouted branches like ganglia, they reached the most gigantic nerve centre. It was bowl-shaped. Concentric circles of workstations and control thrones encircled a fifty-metre column of pict screens. Thousands of adepts were at work, mechadendrites plugging them into thrones and, Yendl guessed, to each other. The air was filled with the screech of binary cant.

Urquidex led his retinue to a post two-thirds of the way down the bowl. He settled into the throne, mechadendrites rising from it to sink into the base of his skull. Before him was a control surface stretching several metres in both directions. There were more ports and mechadendrites here too, enough for about half of Urquidex’s subordinates. The rest turned to devices that Yendl knew were mechanisms of some kind, though so foreign to the ways of flesh with their clusters of rods and dials and energy discharges that to her eyes they resembled jointed metal sculpture more than any form of instrumentality.

‘Bear witness to the Grand Experiment,’ Urquidex told her.

She stood beside the throne. There were other attendants, up and down the bowl, who stood guardian beside their magi, on hand to assist but not assigned particular duties. Yendl adopted that role. She slowed her breathing. She achieved machinic inertness. She watched the screens on the column.They showed feeds from numerous locations. She studied them, but could glean nothing from them. They were fragments, glimpses of vast and powerful mechanisms. Other screens showed very little. In the corners of one frame Yendl recognised the dry docks of the Ring of Iron, but the imagers were centred on empty space. The remaining screens, easily a third of the total, showed Phobos. The image of the moon repeated at intervals along the height of the column, rendering it clearly visible to every tier.

For the best part of an hour, all that happened was a gradual increase in activity. The movements of the adepts became more frequent and faster, as if greater numbers of variables were demanding attention. The chitter and scrape of binary intensified. Yendl didn’t move. She did as Urquidex had instructed. She waited to bear witness.

The event began. The energy in the laboratorium spiked. The machinery in some of the pict screens began to glow and spit arcs of lightning. The air vibrated with a subaudible hum. Yendl had the sense of being in a cathedral as a service moved towards its climax. Machinic prayer rose in a stuttering crescendo. Readouts climbed into red.

Then the vibration was not just in the air. It was in control surfaces, in the bodies of the adepts, in the floor, in the planet itself.

Phobos vanished.

The pict screens that looked at nothing flared. The image dissolved into static, returned, broke up, settled into a pulsing, jerking, tenuous existence. Tocsins sounded. More gauges red-shifted. In the centre of the frame, where there had been nothing, now there was Phobos, surrounded by a violet, violent corona.

A few seconds later, the ground shook. The earthquake lasted a few seconds. Its magnitude dropped off quickly until there was just the vibration again. Then that too stopped. The priests of Mars ceased all movement. It seemed to Yendl that they slumped with exhaustion, though there was no discernible change in their posture.

Urquidex said nothing to her then, nor during the four hours that followed as damage to the planet and machinery was assessed. Yendl remained as she was, processing what she had seen, assessing courses of action.

The Mechanicus had teleported Phobos. She deduced that the test had moved the moon from one side of Mars to the other. The game with gravitational forces struck her as reckless. The fact that the Fabricator General had ordered such a step taken implied that the risk was less than the alternative.

And the test had been successful, but Phobos was barely more than twenty-two kilometres in diameter. That was a long way from being Mars itself, and the distance it had travelled was slight. If Kubik intended to remove Mars from the orks’ reach, he would have to be planning a jump hundreds of light years long, at the very least. Yendl would have liked to take comfort in that thought. She didn’t dare.

After another six hours, Urquidex disengaged himself from the throne. Yendl, with the others in the retinue, followed him back up the sides of the laboratorium bowl. A few rows from the top, Urquidex turned down a row. Van Auken was waiting for him.

‘Very satisfactory,’ the artisan trajectorae said. ‘Your conclusions?’

‘There was a seventy-eight per cent survival rate for the sensors placed on the surface of Phobos. The same result for those in subterranean locations.’

‘That too is satisfactory.’

‘If these proportions hold for Mars itself, the twenty-two per cent loss will be reflected by over a billion deaths.’

‘A regrettable but sustainable level of attrition. The Fabricator General’s projections allowed for considerably more.’

‘I can only speak for my domain—’ Urquidex began.

Van Auken cut him off. ‘Yet you propose to do otherwise.’ The grating electronic voice had no inflection. There was no flesh visible beneath the tall priest’s robes. His prosthetics long and multi-jointed, there was very little about him that resembled the human. Yet his puzzlement was clear. ‘I hope you are not still intent on questioning the path the Fabricator General has mapped out. You will lead one to conclude you are suffering from apostatical delusions.’

‘Merely a question of means. The arrival of the orks in the Sol System has created a new urgency, is that not so?’

‘That is correct, on a number of fronts. The Imperial Senatorum is demanding the deployment of Titans.’

‘Fabricator General Kubik has refused?’

‘Of course he has. What sense would there be in departing the system while leaving behind major assets? Furthermore, they would be thrown away in the current tactic adopted by Terra.’

‘How has the Fabricator General answered the demands?’

‘By presenting practical obstacles. Explaining that the time and the means to transport the great weapons are lacking.’

Yendl realised that Urquidex was conducting the conversation for her benefit. She was amassing all the evidence Vangorich would need to prove Kubik’s malfeasance. She worried about what courses of action might still be open.

Urquidex said, ‘Is that wise? Moving Phobos to a different position on its orbit is far from what will be required. Will we not need more time than we are likely to have at our disposal?’

‘You are indeed mistaken to speculate outside your realm of expertise, magos biologis, and mistaken again in your assumption. The principles behind the teleportation technology have been confirmed. The Grand Experiment is a success. The work that remains is a matter of adjusting scale. A simple question of brute force.’

‘I see.’ Urquidex said nothing else, but did not take his leave.

Van Auken’s lenses whirred, adjusting focus as he studied Urquidex. ‘Your hesitation implies a lack of purpose or a state of confusion,’ he said. ‘You are creating the necessity of a further incident report.’

‘The completion of this project will be regarded as nothing less than treason by the rest of the Imperium.’

‘We act, as ever, in accordance with fealty to the Machine-God. Or are you saying that the preservation of Mars is unimportant?’

‘Of course not.’

‘The Imperium is more than Terra. We have already learned much from the rapid technological development of the Veridi giganticus. It is a significant probability that the benefits of what may yet be learned will offset losses incurred in the process. Study of the Veridi is more important than their neutralisation, especially if they are on the point of cladogenesis.’ More adjustment of lenses. Yendl imagined Urquidex seen under extreme magnification. She wondered what psychological cues, imperceptible to the organic eye, Van Auken might be observing on his fellow magos. ‘Or don’t you agree?’ Van Auken asked.

‘I do not.’

‘You are challenging the edicts of the Fabricator General?’

Yendl was sure she heard surprise in Van Auken’s electronic tones.

‘I disagree with their premises and their conclusions. But I will not disobey them.’

‘You are risking much, magos biologis.’

‘So is Fabricator General Kubik,’ Urquidex said. ‘It is the nature of the times.’

The conversation turned into an exchange of cant. As inhuman as the sounds were, as still as the two priests were, Yendl read an intensification of the conflict. Then Urquidex turned away, and started back up the ramp leading out of the bowl.

Urquidex said nothing on the journey back out of the Labyrinth. They emerged from a gate whose massive, sigil-inscribed iron doors parted just long enough to let them through and sealed with a metallic boom behind them. Urquidex chattered in cant to his retinue and his subordinates scattered on their appointed tasks, leaving Yendl.

‘Have you understood?’ he asked.

They kept their voices low, though that meant little in a society where augmetic hearing was the norm. Van Auken had accused Urquidex of taking risks. You have no idea how big they are, Yendl thought. She saw the delineations of heroism in Urquidex’s quiet actions. ‘I understand very well,’ she said. ‘Does the Fabricator General know how to stop the orks?’

‘My data on that point is inconclusive.’

‘But if he does, he has no interest in doing so.’

‘Our knowledge base is growing exponentially. The Veridi are therefore an opportunity, not a disaster.’

Yendl suppressed a curse. ‘The teleportation project must be halted,’ she said.

‘That is impossible, unless you have the means of an invasion at your disposal. Nor will I raise my hand in disobedience.’

‘Then why show me all this?’

‘So you can take the action necessary.’

‘You just said the project can’t be stopped.’

‘It can be slowed.’

Yendl nodded. A delay would help. If it were long enough, Kubik might lose his window of opportunity. Circumstances and Vangorich might be able to intervene and force the Mechanicus to fulfil its duties to the Imperium. The hope was weak, and based on shifting ground, but it was Yendl’s responsibility to grasp it. Shifting ground was both the terrain and the goal of the Assassin.

‘If moving Mars is a question of power,’ she reasoned, ‘then an attack on the Grand Experiment’s energy plant might result in a serious setback.’

‘That is so,’ Urquidex said. ‘I will never cause it harm.’

‘But if you were to be followed, without your knowledge, to its location…’

‘That would be a singular and unforeseeable event.’

‘We have need of many such events, magos,’ Yendl told him. ‘We have had enough of being their victims.’

Nine

Phall — orbital

Koorland was in his quarters, working on his armour. There were limits to what he could do on his own to repair the damage. Bohemond had placed the armoury and forge of the Abhorrence at his disposal, and Koorland would make use of them in due course. But the last Imperial Fist would first exhaust his skill alone. He could not wage war in isolation, but his acts as an individual mattered. So he would make his efforts at restoration count.

His seals of purity were gone. There was nothing to mark his history of battle except the damage itself. He had no wish to expunge all the scars. Doing so, he felt, would be to erase the final tangible memory of his brothers. It would be an act of denial. He was resolved to return to the battlefield with the price paid by the Imperial Fists visible to the foe. He would be announcing to the orks his survival, and the measure of what he would exact from them. The gold of the Chapter would shine again, but with the marks of its resurrection and the demands of vengeance.

He would permit no blemish to the crimson aquila of the breastplate, however, or to the badge on the left shoulder. The black fist would have none of its power diminished.

Koorland was oiling the aquila, seeing the edge and fury return to it in lustre, when Thane appeared at the doorway. Koorland looked up from his work. He saw the look on the Fist Exemplar’s face. ‘What is it?’

‘An ork moon over Terra.’

Koorland had thought he had experienced the limit of defeat. He had believed that he had plumbed the depths of failure, and perhaps taken his first steps towards redemption. After the last meeting of the Successors’ council, he had even allowed himself to feel hope for the first time since Ardamantua.

He’d been wrong. Thane’s words were blows. The shame of failure clenched his left hand over the edge of the worktable and crushed the steel. An abyss rushed up to swallow him. He fought it back. ‘What forces are there to mount a defence?’ His voice was distant.

‘Very few. The bulk of the Imperial Navy is still some time away.’

‘And our brother Chapters?’

‘No better. The greenskins have the sons of Guilliman tied down fighting them across Ultramar. The Blood Angels have destroyed another star fortress, but they are on the other side of the Imperium. The Space Wolves, the Salamanders, the Raven Guard… We have reports of massive engagements across the galaxy.’

‘This is a plague.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Thane agreed. ‘Three companies of the Iron Hands are making for Terra, at least, though they have farther to go than we do.’

‘Has the invasion of Terra begun?’ Koorland asked.

‘Not at last word, but contact has become sporadic, and this news is days old.’

‘The latest information comes how long after the arrival of the planetoid?’

‘Two days.’

That long with no attack from the orks? He shook off the stun and began to don his armour. ‘Where is Marshal Bohemond?’ he asked.

‘On the bridge.’

‘He’s given orders that we make for Terra?’

‘No.’

‘What?’

Though Bohemond had accepted, for the moment, his right to lead the unified assault, Koorland found it out of character for the Marshal to defer to him to the extent of waiting for his command to begin the race to Terra. The only other explanation was unthinkable. He asked anyway. ‘He doesn’t plan to go?’

‘No,’ Thane said again.

Koorland strode to the doorway. Thane didn’t move. ‘Let me pass, brother,’ Koorland said.

‘Please listen to me first. I know what you’re planning. That was my first instinct too. That doesn’t mean it is the correct one.’

The last wall had fallen, and the enemy was storming the heart of the Imperium. The final Imperial Fist was alive to see the absolute failure of his Chapter’s most sacred duty. The ramparts that had withstood the Siege were dust. If he did not make all speed to Terra, he would be compounding shame.

‘How can there be any question?’ Koorland demanded.

‘There is every question, if we apply the precepts of our Primarch.’

Koorland stared at Thane. He waited, balancing between rage and shock.

‘What do we know of the tactical situation in the Sol System? Next to nothing. Force dispositions? Unknown. By the time we get there, we will be even more in the dark.’

‘The Navy destroyed its target.’

‘Which we might do, but the gathering of our strength, the gathering you brought into being, is incomplete. If you lead a partial force into a complex, obscure battlefield and are defeated, what then? When have the Imperial Fists ever acted rashly?’

‘No amount of preparation helped us on Ardamantua.’

‘Nor would it have helped any Chapter. What happened was a disaster, yet in surviving it, you can hold your head high. You are a symbol of resilience, not defeat. You came by your right to lead us not just through the Imperial Fists’ foundational status. You earned it by coming through that defeat. Don’t waste what you have won.’

‘What I’ve won?’ He couldn’t find the words to express his disbelief.

‘Think about what is coming together over Phall. Think of the size of the force that you will command. Think of how hard we will be able to strike the orks. If we do so properly. As Rogal Dorn has taught.’

Koorland unclenched his fists. ‘Go on.’

‘Even if we could reach Terra before the invasion began, which is unlikely, and even if we managed to destroy the ork base, winning a tactical victory, what of the larger strategic picture? How much good did the Imperial Navy’s triumph do? One fortress is destroyed. The orks have many more. How many? Unknown. And they are deploying them at will throughout the Imperium.’

Each question was a challenge and a balm. Koorland needed the answers, and he had to think calmly if he was to find them. ‘Thank you, brother,’ he said. ‘But if Terra falls…’

‘I don’t want to face that possibility any more than do you. But you are the answer. The Imperial Fists fell, but they live through you, and their defeat will be answered by a force unseen since the Heresy. If Terra falls, the Imperium will live on, because it must, and its vengeance will annihilate the orks forever.’

Koorland stared into the corridor beyond Thane’s shoulder. He didn’t see the walls of the Abhorrence. He envisaged the worst of realities. He pictured how he would have to respond to them. When he was ready, he focused his gaze on the Fist Exemplar again.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We can’t attack the planetoids one at a time. Our assault has to take out the heart of the greenskin campaign.’ He almost added that doing so might be Terra’s salvation. He stopped himself. Hope was forbidden. There could only be reality. ‘We have to kill the Beast. And to do that, we have to find him.’

‘Agreed.’

The impossibility of the task silenced them.

No, Koorland thought. Not impossible. ‘We must ask different questions,’ he said.

Now Thane stood aside. Koorland took him down to the end of the corridor to the quarters of Magos Biologis Laurentis. Where Koorland hadn’t altered the spare surroundings of his cell, Laurentis had, at Bohemond’s sufferance, turned his space into a small laboratorium. Koorland could see no order in the mass of cables, cogitators and data-slates, but Laurentis was thriving in his environment and rarely emerged from it. When the two Space Marines arrived he was turning his head back and forth between two data-slates. He was making entries on them simultaneously, the four digits of his mechanical claws tapping at their surfaces with the rhythm of falling rain. From his speaker grilles came a steady commentary that was more dialogue than monologue.

‘Phylectic gradualism? Hardly. What are you thinking? Punctuated equilibrium, then? No better. Time span too brief, the result too massive. Oh, but you’re assuming that the rules apply to Veridi giganticus. Why wouldn’t they? They’re still part of the materium. And they haven’t changed into a new species, now have they? Haven’t they?’ He paused, considering his point, and noticed Koorland. His remaining eye twinkled. ‘Ah, captain — I’m sorry, Chapter Master.’ He corrected himself again. ‘Chapter Masters.’ The eye blinked. ‘How can I help?’

‘What progress have you been making on the orks?’ Koorland asked.

‘As subjects, they are fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. So much to speculate, but so few conclusions to make with any degree of certainty. We are being inundated with data, but all it does is create more questions. We are gathering more and more fragments of more and more picts, but never anything complete, if you follow.’

‘Do you have any new conclusions?’ said Thane.

‘I can assure you, Chapter Masters, that the orks will surprise us again.’

‘I think I might have guessed that.’

Koorland said, ‘You know about the moon in the Sol System.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Laurentis’ enthusiasm for his work, so strong that it was clear even through the artificial recreation of his voice, turned solemn.

‘Why haven’t they attacked yet?’

Laurentis’ eye brightened. The enthusiasm returned with a vengeance.

‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘That is exactly the question!’ He snatched up one of the data-slates and tapped at it as he spoke. ‘There are two primary categories of possibility. The first is that they cannot attack. There are numerous scenarios suggested by this hypothesis, most involving unprepared forces or a lack of energy, perhaps depleted in the journey.’ He looked at the files he had called up on the data-slate. He shook his head. The reconstructed magos had so little of his original body remaining that the very human gesture looked odd. ‘Most unsatisfactory. In every other instance of the intrusion into Imperial space by a star fortress, the assault has been immediate. The supposition that the Veridi giganticus could be unprepared to attack so vital a target defies reason.’

‘And the second category?’ Koorland asked.

‘That they have chosen not to attack.’

Koorland exchanged a look with Thane. ‘Orks refraining from battle?’ he said to Laurentis. ‘How is that more credible than an operational failure of some kind?’

‘Failure would be a massive anomaly in this campaign. Unorthodox behaviour, conversely, is very much the norm.’

‘The surprises you spoke of,’ said Thane.

‘Precisely.’

‘But why would they choose not to attack?’ Koorland wondered. ‘What possible advantage would delay grant them?’

‘There would appear to be none regarding immediate military concerns,’ Laurentis said, ‘but that is your specialism, not mine. However, if I may speculate…’ He hesitated.

‘Please do,’ said Koorland.

Laurentis picked up the other data-slate. ‘Examination of the effect of the moon’s arrival is suggestive. Data from Terra is regrettably partial and it would be very helpful if it were more recent.’ He looked up at the Space Marines in reproach, as if they were responsible for the inadequacy of his research material. ‘However, we have evidence of large-scale panic. The military response to the star fortress also suggests political disarray and confusion.’

‘I am not aware of any response at last word,’ Thane said.

‘No response is a response.’ Laurentis replaced the data-slate.

Koorland felt the cold wind of dread blow through his soul. He thought he could see where Laurentis’ reasoning was taking him. ‘And you have a hypothesis,’ he said.

‘The orks are triggering disruption without having to act. The longer they refrain from engaging in accepted ork behaviour, the more confusion they create.’

‘You’re saying that they’re engaging in psychological warfare.’

‘That is a theory I am considering, yes.’

In the silence that followed, Thane muttered, ‘Throne.’

‘How?’ Koorland managed. Laurentis was proposing an unimaginable advance in greenskin strategy.

Laurentis gestured at his laboratorium. ‘Answering that question is my current project. Fascinating work, Chapter Master. I have never had such an opportunity before. I am afraid that I can offer no answer that I find convincing.’

‘Still less anything that would be reassuring, I suspect.’

‘That is so.’

Koorland thanked him. He and Thane began to walk in the direction of the bridge.

‘Do you think he’s right?’ the Fist Exemplar asked.

‘Are you willing to act on the assumption that he’s wrong?’

‘No.’

‘Nor am I.’

They walked in silence until they reached the bridge. The primary oculus showed the gathering of the Chapters’ strength over Phall. The Crimson Fists battle-barge Duty in Blood and the Excoriators’ ship Resilience had arrived. Quesadra and Issachar had rejoined their Chapters to oversee the disposition of their incoming forces. The Fists Exemplar had a small show of power to make, but the strike cruisers Unwavering and Foundation’s Dawn were present. Several of the Black Templars crusade fleets had answered the call too, though the more distant ones were still awaited. The war machine that was forming around the Abhorrence could set entire systems ablaze.

Koorland barely glanced at the view.

Bohemond stood beside his command throne, speaking with Castellan Clermont. He gestured for Koorland and Thane to join him.

‘There is something you should know,’ Koorland said.

‘You also,’ said the Marshal. ‘One of our crusades cannot immediately withdraw from its current engagement. Our brothers there have come by intelligence, however, that indicates we are not the only ones to come under ork attack.’

‘The eldar?’ Koorland asked.

‘No. This crusade is operating at the fringes of the Maelstrom.’

‘Throne,’ Thane whispered again.

Ten

Terra — the Imperial Palace

‘The Father of Mankind has been your shield and your sword for millennia. Will you show your gratitude? Will you stand for Holy Terra? Will you answer the call of the God-Emperor?’ Ecclesiarch Mesring’s voice rang out from the wall-mounted vox-speakers. His words were heard throughout the Imperial Palace. They had followed Galatea Haas everywhere for days now. Even in the Arbitrators’ bunkhouse dormitoria, the recruitment call looped. She had barely slept since the crisis began. Now she was lucky if she managed to shut her eyes for more than an hour at a time.

When their shift ended, and they were back at the command post for the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor precinct, Ottmar Kord asked her, ‘Are you coming?’

‘Where?’ She was sitting on her bunk and had just stored her equipment in her footlocker. The other two were still kitted out.

‘To the recruitment field. We are.’ He indicated Baskaline and himself.

‘Both of you?’

‘Most of the station, I think.’

She’d heard the talk. ‘You’re all really going through with it?’

Kord looked baffled. ‘Of course we are. Why did you think we wouldn’t?’

‘Because we are sworn to the Adeptus Arbites, not the Astra Militarum.’

‘You can’t mean that.’

Now it was her turn to be confused. ‘Why not?’

‘You don’t intend to answer the call?’

‘It isn’t for us.’

‘Isn’t it? Then why do we hear it?’

‘It’s being played across Terra, Ottmar. There are no exceptions being made.’

‘Exactly.’

She shook her head. ‘We’re needed here.’ Why couldn’t he see that?

Kord looked disappointed. ‘I never thought you would be the one to lack faith.’

She stood up and stepped into his personal space. They were the same height. Her face was centimetres from his. ‘I won’t allow you to question my devotion to the Emperor.’

‘Then why…?’ Kord began.

‘My duty is here. So is yours. Will you leave Terra defenceless?’

‘Listen to yourself. Our duty is to defend the Imperial Law, not Terra.’

‘What I meant—’

Baskaline didn’t let her finish. ‘I think you spoke with your heart,’ he said.

She hesitated.

Kord said, ‘If Terra falls, there will be no law to uphold.’

Still she said nothing. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to convince Kord or have him convince her.

‘At least come with us and see,’ he urged. ‘Decide then.’

What harm in that? she wondered.

‘The Emperor sees into your soul,’ Mesring’s voice proclaimed from the dormitorium speaker. ‘He knows the truth of your devotion. But do you? Prove it to yourself. Know that you are worthy of joining the ranks of the saints. Lord or serf, we are summoned one and all. There is only duty. There is only one answer.’

‘All right,’ Haas told Kord.

‘Bring your armour and weapons,’ Kord said.

‘Why? Are we expecting trouble?’

‘No.’ His eyes shone. ‘Victory.’

The Clanium Library looked much as it had before the Battle of Port Sanctus. The maps, the chronometric displays and quasi-spatial projector still sat on the shelves. The paraphernalia of Lansung’s theatre hadn’t been removed. But the displays were inert. The library was derelict. A veneer of defeat, as tangible as dust, as cold as wax, had settled over the space. It even coated the man who leaned over the dark hololithic table. He held a bottle of amasec in one hand. Two more lay empty on the floor.

Lansung didn’t look up when Vangorich approached. ‘What do you want?’ he said.

The High Admiral slurred, but Vangorich doubted he was as drunk as he’d hoped to be by this point.

‘I want your help,’ the Grand Master said.

Lansung snorted. He took a drink from the bottle. It clunked hard against the table surface when he brought it back down. ‘Then you’re in an even sorrier state than I am. My condolences.’

Vangorich ignored the self-pity. ‘We know what we think of each other,’ he said.

Lansung toasted that with another swig. ‘That we do.’

‘Then you know that I’ve never doubted your skills in battle.’

‘Flatterer.’

‘So why are you being an idiot?’

Lansung finally looked up.

‘What do you think of Tull’s crusade?’ Vangorich asked.

‘It’s doomed.’

‘So why lead it? I never tagged you as suicidal.’

‘No choice,’ Lansung said. ‘If I don’t lead the fleet, I’m a coward.’

‘So?’

‘So?’

‘If the effort is doomed, what does it matter to you that you’re saving face? You’ll be dead.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That you must stay. If Tull’s scheme fails, Terra will need something to hold the orks back until help arrives.’

‘You’re putting a lot of faith in a single flagship and her escorts.’

‘And her commander.’

Lansung looked thoughtful. He didn’t drink. ‘And if the Proletarian Crusade fails because the Autocephalax Eternal left the civilian fleet to be slaughtered?’

‘With the number of ships involved, how much of a difference would the Autocephalax make?’

Lansung shrugged. ‘Some.’ He frowned. Vangorich watched him work out the vectors of the coming void war. ‘In the end,’ he said, ‘the fleet will get through or it won’t regardless of the Navy’s assistance.’

‘Then hold back. Live a bit longer.’

Eyes exhausted by failure, Lansung said, ‘And can I quote you, Grand Master, as having urged my cowardice?’

‘You mean your sanity.’

The Fields of Winged Victory had not been true fields for over fifteen hundred years. The last trace of greenery had burned during the Siege, and the area had been paved over with rockcrete during the reconstruction. The name retained some justification in the fact that this was one of the few large spaces of the Imperial Palace that was open to the sky. It covered over a thousand hectares, and its normal use was as one of the great parade and exercise grounds for Terra’s regiments of the Astra Militarum. Though the material of its surface was utilitarian, it was painted with giant reproductions of the regimental arms. It took a company’s worth of artisan serfs to keep the heraldry in good repair.

The Fields were lower than the surrounding regions of the Palace. As they walked down the Boulevard of the Militant Witness, Haas had a good perspective of the activity. The preparations for the myth the Proletarian Crusade would surely become were a wonder in their own right. The volunteers were pouring in by the thousands along roads feeding into the southern third of the Fields. Along the periphery, Administratum officers channelled the arrivals towards the hundreds of registration stations. The ranks of the stations took up the middle third of the Fields. From there, the recruits moved towards mustering points in the north section where shuttles took them off to the starports. Thence, they would be transported to the waiting ships in orbit.

Haas paused at the top of the descent. Awe robbed her of movement and breath. From this vantage point, she saw the shaping of a confused flood into ordered geometry. She was looking at a great army in the process of creation. Out of the street crowd came phalanx upon phalanx, each a thousand strong. She knew that most of the people below had never held a weapon, unless they had emerged from the underhives, for Mesring’s voice had reached there too. These were civilians, not soldiers. They had no training, nor would they receive any. There was no time. And yet, as the phalanxes moved turn by turn to the shuttles, the vision was one of military precision, of the individual transformed into a sublime war machine. The people were nothing as simple as cogs. Their incorporation into the greater being was at a much more intimate, more elementary level. Cogs were still components. Here, at the end of the process, the individual had ceased to be, its existence making way for a new, larger whole. A molecular alchemy.

Haas started walking again. She caught up to Kord. Stunned, he had slowed to a stumble. They had lost Baskaline in the flow of the crowd.

‘When is the embarkation?’ Haas asked.

‘It’s happening now. The Armada is launching tomorrow.’

I just came to see, Haas told herself. I just came to see. The refrain was weak. Even stronger than the physical current was the rush of purpose.

For the first time in days, Haas no longer heard Mesring’s summons. Another voice spoke to the assembled volunteers. Massive pict screens, fifty metres on a side, rose above the edge of the Fields at regular intervals. They all showed the same recording. Juskina Tull towered over the recruits in all her magnificence. Mesring was the voice of the call, but hers was the voice, and hers was the face, of the Crusade itself. It was her vision that had been given material form. She wore robes of purest black, and a diagonal sash of deep crimson. She gave the impression of being in uniform, though the design did not belong to any regiment. She was regal, yet humbled by the people who were making her plan come to pass. She was imperious, her profile cold in its perfection. In her bearing, she was a colossus, presiding over the shifting formations of insects below. Her voice was the ringing iron of command. But in her words, she was welcoming, she was warmth, she was the delight of triumph.

‘Warriors of the Proletarian Crusade, I thank you for the struggle you are about to wage.’ She paused. Her smile became ferocious. ‘I thank you for the victory to come!’

The Fields of Winged Victory echoed with the roar. Haas had faced the great scream of the masses when the orks had arrived. Now she was swept up by their desperate challenge to the enemy. There was an edge of hysteria to the joy, but it was real all the same, and Haas joined in.

She and Kord were now a few steps away from the Administratum officials controlling the flow at the end of their street.

In the recording, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains paused, her smile becoming almost gentle. The illusion was perfect. It seemed to Haas that Tull really saw the masses, and listened to their cry, and waited for the people to have their moment. Then she spoke again.

‘You are not trained soldiers. But you are warriors. The ships that you will board are not warships. But they will wage war. And know that you will have at your side the strength of the Imperial Guard.’ She turned her head, as if focusing on a different group in the grounds below her projection. ‘Let yourselves be heard, heroes of the Astra Militarum! Granite Myrmidons! Auroran Rifles! Jupiter Storm! Eagles of Nazca! Orion Watch!’

As each regiment was called, another roar went up, from different regions of the Fields. The bulk of the Astra Militarum contingents were not mustering here. They were being transported directly from their barracks to the Armada. But entire companies from all of them were present. They were being attached to the civilian formations to give them direction and boost their bravado even more.

Haas understood the purpose behind the integration. She could see how perfectly orchestrated the operation was. And she found it very hard to care, because it was all necessary. If the Proletarian Crusade was to be successful, the participation had to be massive.

And it had to succeed, she thought. The consequences of failure were so dark that she couldn’t consider them. No one of faith would dare.

She barely noticed that they had passed the Administratum checkpoint and been channelled towards a registration station three rows up and ten aisles over. The queue was long but moved steadily. Haas couldn’t take her eyes off Tull, couldn’t turn away from the message being vox-cast across the Fields of Winged Victory. She had difficulty remembering why she had come here in the first place. To observe? Really? What was she thinking?

What sort of faithless coward came to observe the heroes and martyrs, and then walked away?

She brought her hand to her belt. She tapped the handle of her shock maul. More than a weapon, it was her staff of office. It represented the task to which she had devoted her life. She had to be sure that she was not abandoning her duty for the sake of selfish adventure. She closed her eyes for a moment. She could still hear Tull’s speech, which had looped back to praise of the Chartist Captains. She was shielded, though, from the sight of the Speaker’s overwhelming charisma.

She knew what she wanted to do. She had to know that it was the right thing to do.

Movement ahead of her. Kord walking forward. Eyes still closed, she took another step. Still thinking.

‘You’re coming. You know you are,’ Kord said.

She kept her eyes shut. ‘I don’t know. I refuse to be derelict.’

‘When have I ever been?’

‘Never,’ she admitted.

‘I’m going because I…’ His voice trailed off.

A hush falling on all sides. Like a cold wind blowing over the Fields of Winged Victory. Tull’s voice carrying on, but sounding less convincing without the answering shouts. Sounding hollow.

Tull opened her eyes. Everyone was looking up. The blood had drained from Kord’s face. So had the fire in his eyes.

The ork moon had risen.

The sky over the Fields had no obstructions. There were very few other locations in the Imperial Palace where so much of the firmament was visible, on those rare occasions that the smog of Terra cleared away. This evening, the stars were out.

They were eclipsed by the fortress. It rode the heavens with brute arrogance, and made a mockery of the Emperor’s sacred home. Haas stared at the planetoid. Her heart swelled with a pure, sanctifying hatred.

She had her answer. She was going. She would tear the laughter from the throats of the orks. Even if she had to do it herself, she would bring darkness to that accursed moon.

Eleven

Terra — the Imperial Palace

They stood on the second cloister level of the Daylight Wall. Below them was the entrance to the chapel ordinary. The spaces between the columns were narrow, the vaults themselves masked by stained glass. Concealment was easy. The view below was clear.

‘Every day?’ Machtannin said.

‘We haven’t had long enough to tell if this is a habit of long standing. But since we began observations, yes.’

Machtannin looked to the west, to the corner and the northward arm of the cloister. The lower colonnade had wider spaces. The walk from the chapel ordinary to the Great Chamber would take the target down that route. Machtannin would have several brief opportunities for a shot. One would be enough.

There was some pedestrian traffic in the cloister’s lower level. Enough for witnesses, not enough for a hindrance. The upper gallery was deserted. No one had gone through in the last twenty-four hours, and Veritus had ensured privacy by locking the doors at both ends. Good.

‘Well?’ Veritus asked.

Machtannin nodded. ‘Making the kill and retreating should be simple enough.’ He stepped away from the vault, into the deeper shadows of the gallery’s exterior wall. ‘So we’re doing this.’

‘We don’t have the luxury of prevarication,’ Veritus said. ‘Time is limited and precious.’

‘But you aren’t sure he was behind the attempt on your life. That might have been Wienand’s move.’

‘I’m aware of that. I know this is not ideal. But it must be done. Assume that Grand Master Vangorich is not responsible for the attempt. He and Wienand are allies. That much is clear.’

‘Even so, the repercussions…’

‘We can weather them.’

‘Are we that sure of our positions?’

‘Not as sure as I would like to be,’ Veritus admitted. ‘But Vangorich is too dangerous. He is undisputed as Grand Master. The Officio Assassinorum has a unity of leadership and purpose that makes it too grave a threat to ignore. Decapitated, it will stagger before finding a new leader, and there may be internal strife.’

‘Making it easier to control.’

‘Exactly.’

Machtannin sighed.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there are times when it seems we are doing the work of the Ruinous Powers for them.’

Veritus closed on the younger man. The bulk of his power armour cast the other inquisitor into deeper shadow. ‘You will never utter those words again,’ he hissed.

Machtannin tensed. Veritus waited. They both knew there would be no violence here. Not because they must not draw attention to their location. Not because Veritus had the arsenal to overcome Machtannin’s greater speed. But because of the power of Veritus’ moral authority. And because their calling was too important.

‘Apologies,’ Machtannin said. ‘I won’t forget myself again.’

Veritus stepped back, satisfied. ‘I wish for a more straightforward path too,’ he said. ‘But remember that we have the purity of true purpose.’

Machtannin nodded. ‘I do.’

‘Good.’ He glanced back in the direction of the north cloister. ‘Make sure there are witnesses,’ he said, ‘and shoot when I’m walking with him. We need that doubt about whether he was the target.’ That was why he had insisted Machtannin use a sniper rifle. The attack had to look like a second attempt on his life.

‘In other words, you want me to miss.’

‘See that you don’t.’

He stopped at the chapel. He maintained the practice, forced to keep going through the steps of a pointless dance. The High Lords still had him watched, he was sure, if only as a matter of course. He doubted they were interested in the reports. Not now. There was only the Proletarian Crusade now, and the hopes that went with it. Juskina Tull had most of her peers so invested in her scheme, they needed it to work as badly as she did.

We all need it to work, Vangorich thought. Even those who don’t believe it will.

He performed his theatre of worship, and reflected on how badly he had failed the true object of his devotion. He mouthed what observers would think was a prayer. It was a whisper of apology to the Imperium.

When he left the Chapel, Veritus was coming down the colonnade. The inquisitor hailed him, and Vangorich waited.

‘We’re making this into a habit,’ he said when Veritus caught up.

‘A coincidence is not a habit.’

‘Oh.’ Not buying it. ‘You didn’t want to speak to me on a particular subject? No desire to unburden yourself about the Inquisition’s internal politics? No?’ Veritus looked straight ahead. Vangorich matched his pace. ‘What a shame. Then I’ll have to content myself with the simple pleasure of your company.’

They reached the corner and turned north.

The grey-brown dawn trickled through skylights to the courtyard.

‘A big day,’ Vangorich commented. The embarkation was almost complete. The launch of the Merchants’ Armada was imminent.

Veritus said, ‘A dark one.’

‘On that, we can agree.’

They walked past the first of the columns.

Machtannin looked through the sights of the rifle. He had been motionless since Vangorich had entered the chapel ordinary. His finger held the trigger. He did not approve of assassinations. They were distasteful, the province of the Officio Assassinorum. They were too merciful. Targets who did not know they were about to die escaped proper retribution. Machtannin preferred to hide in plain sight, face and dress transformed to appear before the enemies of the Imperium in a guise that inspired confidence. There was a satisfying justice in making traitors feel the sting of betrayal themselves. He had undergone so many polymorphine treatments that his face now was an approximation of his original features. It was a small sacrifice. In exchange, he saw the look on the faces of the guilty as punishment came for them.

He wouldn’t see that here. But then Vangorich was no traitor. He was guilty of poor judgement. His mistakes were harming the Imperium, but he believed himself to be virtuous. He would die in that belief. Machtannin supposed he was worthy of that much mercy.

Vangorich and Veritus walked between the first set of columns. The shot was clear.

Veritus paused, as if struck by a sudden thought.

Vangorich walked another two steps, then stopped. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Machtannin’s concentration narrowed to the centre of Vangorich’s forehead. His finger tightened.

The rifle was yanked from his grasp. The stock slammed his head backwards. He rolled into a crouch and jumped to his feet, blinking away the stun. A man stood in the shadows of the wall. He had bent the barrel of the rifle.

‘Throne save us from amateurs,’ the man said.

Strong, Machtannin thought. Maybe not fast. He leapt at the man, striking with enhanced reflexes. Speed was his weapon. He had once deflected a traitor’s bolter shell with the edge of his hand. He landed four blows to the side of the man’s neck before the other could even drop the gun.

It was like hitting a column.

The Assassin punched him in the chest. He was fast, too. The hit came before Machtannin could think to evade. Something crunched.

He entered a land of surprise. He was surprised that he wasn’t sent flying. He stumbled back from his opening. He tried to attack again, and was surprised when his legs didn’t obey his command. He was surprised when they folded up beneath him and he sat down hard. He was surprised to find he was holding his breath.

No.

Surprise: there was no breath to be had.

Surprise: the pain bursting from his chest, the pressure in his skull spreading red and black.

His head rocked forward. There was a hole in his chest. A big one.

Surprise.

Had he seen something in the man’s fist?

He couldn’t think any more. He couldn’t care any more.

No more surprises.

And after a great flare, no more pain.

Only the dark.

‘Were you waiting for someone?’ Vangorich asked as they walked on.

‘No.’ The hesitation was very brief.

Vangorich smiled. ‘Just as well. He won’t be coming.’

Later, in his quarters, Vangorich said to Beast Krule, ‘Good to have you back.’

Krule grunted. ‘This is getting messy,’ he said.

‘Can’t be helped.’ Vangorich held a bottle of amasec, debating. An Iaxian vintage, three centuries old. Was there ever the correct occasion for such a treasure? He decided there was, when there might soon be no more occasions at all. He opened the bottle and decanted two glasses. ‘Well done,’ he said, handing one to Krule.

‘Wasn’t difficult. They took the bait.’

‘Let’s not call it bait. I really had hoped Veritus wouldn’t push things this far. Think of it as a designated opportunity. If they were going to take action, better it be in a situation we could neutralise.’

Krule shrugged. ‘Call it what you like.’ He sipped the amasec, and gave an appreciative nod. ‘Do you want me to do more?’

‘Not yet. I think we have Veritus contained, at least for now. He’s running out of allies and moves. Has Wienand reached the Inquisitorial Fortress?’

‘I lost track of her before she did. But we’d know if she hadn’t.’

‘Then we wait to see her move,’ Vangorich said. ‘That’s where we stand.’ He turned to the narrow window of his chambers. The strong winds of the day were granting him rare glimpses of the evening sky. The ork moon was there, the executioner’s sword half-concealed by the spires of the Imperial Palace. There were also faint glints like moving stars: the larger ships of the Merchants’ Armada manoeuvring. ‘And we wait to see what Juskina Tull is about to reap for all of us.’

Twelve

Klostra — Klostra Primus colony

With a battering crash of iron and cannon and bladed siege shield, the Vindicators rolled through the wreckage of the colony. They came in the wake of the bombardment. The battle tanks were the follow-up to the Iron Warriors’ initial charge.

The charge that had already turned into a retreat.

The tanks, Kalkator vowed, would turn the tide. They had before. The Araakite Doom, the Barban Falk, the Pyres of Olympia, and the Lochos.

They had fought on Terra, and on Sebastus IV. The blood of Loyalists had sunk into the grain of the metal and the joints of the treads. Statues lined the edges of their hulls. They were the representations of saints and generals, the Imperium’s heroes of war and of faith. Now they were defaced, broken. Heads leaned back as if to gaze in horror at the brutality of the universe. Limbs were shattered, replaced with barbed wire. They were the trophies of smashed sieges past, and the promise of fallen cities to come. Behind, the Demolisher cannons curved massive horns in the image of the Iron Warriors’ helms. The guns fired as soon as the tanks approached the remains of the wall. They were siege weapons, designed to reduce defences to lost hopes. Today, they were coming to break a siege.

That fact was an offence to Kalkator’s pride and to the proper order of things. He could not make the situation otherwise through will alone. So he would exact retribution for the insult from the bodies of the orks.

The cannon fire hit the ork advance, four shells simultaneously. The explosion was huge. Scores of the enemy vanished and the front half of one of the ork tanks disintegrated. Another kept moving, but on an erratic course, enveloped in flame. It was as if a giant scythe had culled the forward lines of the enemy infantry. The bombardment had done nothing to slow the orks, but now, for a moment, Kalkator saw a hole open up in their formation.

He and his brothers had been forced back to the ruins of Klostra Prime. The bulk of the Great Company had been using the fallen walls of the central manufactorum as a bulwark against the orks. Now they pushed forward again.

The warsmith headed for the Pyres of Olympia. As he ran, he sent a stream of bolter fire ahead. Orks fell before him, their heads bursting. A few steps from the Olympia, he slammed into a massive brute whose armour had saved it from his shells. He knocked the ork off balance and thrust his chainsword forward, plunging it between skull plate and jaw guard, grinding through the ork’s nose and then its skull and brain. He blasted another foe coming at him from the right while he withdrew the blade from the corpse, before leaping to the roof of the Olympia. Varravo and Caesax followed him. Other Iron Warriors climbed to the roof of the other tanks while the rest ran close, tearing up the infantry.

We’re trying to stop the ocean with a knife, Kalkator thought. Four Vindicators and the individual strength of the brothers of the Great Company was enough to shatter the walls of any fortress, but he had no illusions about their position now. Thousands of orks had already climbed the top of the plateau. Even if the Iron Warriors’ counter-attack repelled them, the oncoming force was many times that size. The orks had already landed an infinite infantry.

Their heavy armour on immediate approach was no match for the Vindicators, though. Kalkator wanted to cripple the ork vehicles, and perhaps buy the company time to cohere again. Recreate the wedge, drive into the ork infantry, cause damage to force a retreat.

Impossibility was irrelevant. Impossibility was the bloody constant of the Iron Warriors’ history. As ever, there was nothing to do but fight.

At least their wars were their own now, as were the spoils. And even now they weren’t cowering behind walls, hoping for the battle to pass, like the bastard sons of Dorn.

The tanks kept firing. After the first great blast, the squadron staggered the volleys, hitting the orks with a continuous string of explosions. The orks slowed, a bit. They did not stop. The tide flowed around the craters, ignoring losses, rushing to the challenge of the Vindicators.

‘All fire on the tanks,’ Kalkator voxed. ‘Base, maintain bombardment one thousand metres forward of initial target zone.’

Three more ork tanks were gutted. The first of the Battlewagons to reach Klostra Prime had traded thicker armour for speed, and the Vindicators’ cannons could take down walls wider than the tanks themselves. The Battlewagons were big, but they crumpled and burned when the Demolisher shells hit them. The ork vehicles had numbers, though. Line after line of them mounted the slope to the colony. They fired back. High explosives flared against the siege shields. Three of the Battlewagons trained their guns on the Lochos. Two died trying, but the third flanked the Lochos and gutted it.

Over the vox, Derruo snarled in agony. Kalkator glanced back. Two other battle-brothers had been blown apart, but Derruo, his armour scorched black, his left leg dragging, was still in the fight.

The Olympia was out in front now. Behind it, the Araakite Doom avenged the Lochos with a shot that hit the ork tank’s fuel reserves at almost point-blank range. The warmth of the fire washed over the squadron.

Kalkator cursed as a shell clipped the top of the siege shield. He leaned forward into the wash of the explosion. It took out the ork that had just vaulted up from the front of the tank. More of the brutes followed. Kalkator, Varravo and Caesax moved forward on the roof. They turned their chainswords on the orks who made it past the Pyres of Olympia’s sponson bolters. The tank’s horns were magma cutters, taking down still more of the foe. The ground was littered with bisected corpses.

And the orks kept coming.

‘What do they want with the place?’ Varravo voxed. ‘There’s nothing left.’

‘They want us,’ said Kalkator. Whatever other designs the orks might have for Klostra, their targets now were the Iron Warriors. Perhaps the planet had some other value. If it did, that was secondary to the promise of war. Kalkator had used the mortal colonists as loyal bait. He wondered now if the orks hadn’t done the same to him, luring the company in with the illusion that there was a possible strategy here.

To the north, the great artillery explosions continued. A curtain of smoke, flame and raining debris rose between the Iron Warriors and the approaching body of the ork host. The Great Company and its Vindicators advanced further into the flesh and over the machinery of the enemy. They were almost at the base of the wall now.

‘Warsmith,’ voxed Occillax, piloting the Olympia, ‘do we descend the slope?’

Kalkator never answered. His command was interrupted by a rolling wave of sound, the thunder of a mountain cracking in half. He looked back. In the distance, in the direction of the base, a volcanic glow lit the deep twilight that passed for day on Klostra. The rumble had a rhythm. Streaks of light cut through black clouds towards the glow. An orbital bombardment.

‘Klostra Base, report,’ Kalkator voxed. He called three more times, as he looked away and kept killing orks. Silence from the base.

And silence from the guns.

The artillery barrage ended. Occillax halted the Pyres of Olympia. The curtain faded. The wrecking yard of ork vehicles appeared and so did the forces that were coming on, the ones untouched by the Iron Warriors cannons.

Four super-heavies. Tanks twice the size of the Vindicators, their guns with bores as wide as Demolishers, but the length of autocannons. As if they had been waiting for their proper introduction, they opened fire now.

They had the rate of autocannons, too.

And as the boom of greenskin ordnance battered the plateau of Klostra Primus, greater silhouettes yet loomed behind the battle fortresses. Colossi, three of them, greenskin idols fifty metres tall. They rocked side to side as they marched over machine and kin, a manufactorum’s worth of smoke belching from the chimneys rising from their backs. Flame gouted from their jaws. Their eyes were energy weapon turrets, blazing red lightning. The right arm of each terminated in a hand whose fingers were linked cannons, four strong. The left arm of one was a hammer the size of a tank. The second had a chainblade fifteen metres long. The third wielded a claw that could tear the hills apart.

Beneath the roars of the engines, the beat of the cannons and the tectonic rumble of the orbital strikes, Kalkator heard another sound. It would have been inaudible if it hadn’t come from a hundred thousand ork throats in unison.

‘They’re laughing at us,’ said Caesax.

Why wouldn’t they? Kalkator thought through his rage. The orks were bringing down a compounded humiliation on the Great Company. They attacked with overwhelming numbers, unstoppable armament, and then outmanoeuvred the Iron Warriors. In the gap between realising the doom of Klostra and bringing his blade down on still another ork skull, he understood that the orks were sending a message. They were speaking through the language of annihilation, and what they said was, Behold what we can do. We are more powerful and more clever than you. You are nothing.

If hate alone were a force, he would have incinerated the planet in that moment.

‘Pull back,’ he ordered.

‘Where to?’ Caesax asked.

‘The mountains.’

‘Towards an orbital bombardment?’

‘It will be finished by the time we get there,’ he snarled.

They retreated towards oblivion.

Deep into the remains of the settlement, tens of thousands of blackened mortal corpses on all sides, the vox came alive with the first extra-planetary contact since the ork moon tore through space into Klostra’s orbit. It came from the strike cruisers Palimodes and Scythe of Schravaan. The gravity storms had destroyed all of the company’s fleet at anchor. The two cruisers had been at the Ostrom outpost, and had been silent since the initial vox-failure on Klostra. They had not been recalled. Kalkator didn’t know why they had returned. He didn’t care.

He interrupted the torrent of shouted questions from the bridges. ‘I want the full complement of Thunderhawks planetside for immediate evacuation of all forces.’ He gave coordinates for a position just south of the settlement.

‘That moon—’ Attonax, on the Palimodes, began.

‘Do not engage!’ Kalkator shouted. The words were toxic. They were echoes of the foulest days of the Iron Warriors’ past.

‘Enemy launches detected,’ Attonax said.

Kalkator roared at the enemy, and the orks roared back. The laughter grew louder. It seemed to him that there was mockery in every attack. Every ork that he cut down died with the belief that it, and not he, was victorious. The giant ork machines heaved into sight over the ruined wall. They were on the plateau. The company moved faster than the ork super-heavies, but the infantry was on all sides, slowing them down. The ork Battlewagons kept pace, pounding the retreating Iron Warriors. The Pyres of Olympia, the Barban Falk and the Araakite Doom moved backwards, keeping their Demolishers trained on the foe. Bolter, cannon and magma cutter tore swaths through infantry and smashed more tanks open. But the waves of the green tide closed over the gaps. And the fire from the ork guns grew more intense.

Brothers died. Kalkator felt no regret when he saw them fall, but he did feel frustration. The orks were eroding his combat strength bit by bit.

There were no gaps in the enemy barrage now. Kalkator could see little but flame and eruptions on all sides. The Araakite Doom exploded, and then there were two tanks. ‘Palimodes, Scythe of Schravaan, where is our extraction?’ the warsmith demanded.

‘Right above you,’ came the reply.

Kalkator couldn’t see the Thunderhawks in the midst of the ork fire, but his Lyman’s ear was able now to distinguish their engines from the din of the enemy machines. A few seconds later, Hellstrike missiles screamed onto the ork tanks, followed by the hard rain of multiple heavy bolters. For several seconds, the world vanished completely. There was fire, and there was nothing else, and Kalkator grinned, because the flames were on the orks now, and they were learning the price of their arrogance.

He allowed himself that burst of savage pleasure. It lasted as long as the initial flash of the explosions. Then he faced again the reality of defeat, of humiliation, and of the fact that this was not a tide that could be turned by even a hundred Thunderhawks.

The rate of the ork fire dropped. Four more Battlewagons were burning shells.

The Vindicators were moving more and more slowly, providing cover for the battle-brothers on foot. They no longer had their flank escorts. A group of massive orks evaded the sponson fire of the Olympia and scrambled up onto the roof to Kalkator’s left. Before he could turn, one of them grabbed his left arm with a power claw. It squeezed, cracking the ceramite, crushing servo-motors. It would have broken his arm, had it still been flesh.

It hadn’t been for three hundred years. The change had come upon it, the gods of Chaos visiting him with the gift of a string of grasping mouths from shoulder to wrist. He had taken his chainblade to the arm himself, amputating it in his quarters, taking the time to burn the offending limb while his blood poured onto the ship’s decking before he stormed off, still steady on his feet, to find the Apothecary. The left arm was bionic now, a thing of metal and barbed ridges. When he didn’t buckle, the ork looked surprised.

Kalkator swung his bolter around and shot the ork in the face. The top half of its skull disintegrated, showering the roof of the Olympia with blood and brain matter. The claw released Kalkator as the body slumped. He kicked the corpse off the tank and flexed his arm. It moved in jerks, but was still functional.

To the rear, the gunships were landing. Three of the twelve remained in the air, buying time with rockets and shells. The Vindicators slowed to a crawl. Kalkator looked back and saw the first members of the company embarking. He faced forward again and watched time stolen from them.

The huge walkers and the battle fortresses were close. The walkers redirected their fire at the Thunderhawks. To the autocannon bursts were added missile launches from their shoulders. The attacks vectored onto a single target. The gunship’s pilot tried to evade. Two missiles hit the starboard wing, shells slammed into the nose, and the gunship dropped.

As it fell, a torrent of flame shot from the jaws of the nearest walker and enveloped the cockpit. The Thunderhawk hit the ground with meteoric force. It collided with one of the battle fortresses, the impact fusing the two behemoths together. Embraced by flame, they became a mountain of clashing metal, a single being that was the madness and destruction of war. They lost shape. The blasts came, shaking the ground so hard that Kalkator was almost knocked off his feet.

Above, a second gunship was trailing smoke, though it still fought. The Olympia fired its cannon through the flames of the collision. It hit one of the walkers in the centre of its wide skirt, and the ork titan seemed to stumble, then rocked forwards and came on. Its arms reached towards the Vindicator. Kalkator looked up at the cluster of autocannons aimed at his head.

‘Off!’ he yelled.

He jumped to the right. So did Caesax. Varravo was a beat behind. The cannonade caught him. The Pyres of Olympia fired back — still operational, but its roof was slag. Some of the debris was just recognisable as Varravo’s ruined armour.

The Olympia’s engine whined, but the tank didn’t move. ‘We’ve lost guidance,’ Occillax voxed.

‘Continue the attack,’ Kalkator ordered. He cut his way through more ork infantry. The brutes were stunned by the walker’s bombardment. Kalkator and Caesax made quick progress towards the rear.

‘To what end?’

‘Hold them off as best you can, brother.’

‘This is pointless.’

‘Step outside and I’ll kill you myself. Follow your orders.’

Occillax cursed him, but obeyed. Kalkator and Caesax left the Vindicator behind. The slow beat of its cannon resumed. It hit the walker again, and this time the ork Titan responded with its hammer. It struck the Olympia hard enough to make the ground shake again. The ork machinery roared louder, in triumph and anger. Another blast from the cannon, another hit to the walker, but the orks crewing the monster were focused on victory, not on the casualties they suffered. The hammer came down again and again, and the third time was when Kalkator heard the shriek of compacting metal. The gun fell silent.

He was the last to reach the landing zone, a few steps behind Caesax. They ran up the ramp to the final gunship, the Meratara. Not all of the Thunderhawks had taken off again — the battle fortresses had demolished three of them on the ground. Kalkator didn’t know how many troops he had lost in each one. The reckoning would wait until later, if there was a later.

The ramp raised as he reached the top and the Thunderhawk took off. He made his way forward to the cockpit to witness the end. He saw the Barban Falk join the Olympia in destruction, and another gunship blasted out of the sky. Then they were in the clouds, and though the ship rattled through the turbulence of the atmosphere, there were a few minutes of calm.

They weren’t welcome. They gave him time to think, to feel the humiliation of the loss scrape at his pride.

The Meratara shot up from the clouds. A new vision appeared before Kalkator. Another humiliation, another great power smashing a weaker one. The Scythe of Schravaan was under heavy attack. Squadrons of ork fighters swarmed around it. From the star fortress came an unending stream of rockets. The strike cruiser’s void shields flashed and flashed, surrounding the vessel in an aurora of desperation. Its armaments lit the void with anger. Ork vessels died, and rockets exploded short of their target.

Drops in the ocean. There were so many more orks on the way that the space between the moon and the ship seemed full. The Schravaan’s death was minutes away.

‘Make for the Palimodes,’ Kalkator told Lerontus, the gunship’s pilot. The other strike cruiser, more distant from the star fortress, was holding its own. The orks were amusing themselves with taking down one large prey at a time.

Not all of them were satisfied with the Schravaan. Three fighters came at the Meratara. Their salvoes hit hard. Warning runes lit up as the hull was pierced in multiple places. Kalkator heard the shriek of atmosphere venting. He drowned it out with his own roar of rage. As Lerontus pulled the gunship up sharply, Kalkator grabbed the controls for the weapons systems.

The fighters looped back for a second pass.

‘Straight at them,’ Kalkator told Lerontus.

‘With pleasure.’ The pilot’s anger was the mirror of his own.

Kalkator held his fire. Lerontus turned the Thunderhawk into a head-on course towards the ork ships. The orks misjudged the relative speed of the approach and the smaller profile the gunship now presented. A few shots still hit. Kalkator ignored them. He would hold the vessel together with his will if he had to.

The orks bunched closer together, jockeying for the better angle on their prey.

Kalkator fired all forward armament. Thunderhawk cannon, heavy bolters and lascannons struck the centre fighter. It vaporised. The blast washed over the other two ships. Their pilots overcorrected and collided.

The Meratara slammed through the cloud of debris, and raced on towards the Palimodes.

The other gunships still in flight were following the same path. The mathematics of defeat cascaded through Kalkator’s mind. How many had headed to the Schravaan first? How many had been taken out before reaching either vessel? How many beyond capacity would Attonax try to take on board? Did he even have to make that decision?

We have been besieged, Kalkator thought. And our citadels have fallen. The bitterness of the reality filled him with frustrated violence. Had there been a serf within reach, he would have torn the mortal apart just to see the blood.

The Thunderhawk was on the final approach to the Palimodes when the end came to the Scythe of Schravaan. Kalkator didn’t see what caused the fatal blow. It happened on the ship’s starboard, which faced towards the moon. Searing white lit the void. It engulfed the Schravaan’s midsection, a fist of suns. The bow and stern began to move independently, and the light faded, resolving into a halo of individual explosions. A gap formed between the fore and aft halves of the ship before the bow began a spiral away from the stern. The movement was slow, graceful. The lights of the void shields went dark. In their place, lines of flames, the angry red of infected veins, raced down the bow’s length as it fell towards Klostra’s atmosphere.

The reactor blew, a second wound of light in the void. The reach of the blast was enormous, wiping the near space clean of ork fighters. That death-cry bought the Palimodes a bit more time. Kalkator dared to think a portion of the Great Company might extract itself from the system. The loss wouldn’t be total.

Then he watched the Schravaan’s bow become a torch as it hit Klostra’s atmosphere, and he thought he could hear the laughter of the orks even here.

The Palimodes’ engines were going hot as the Thunderhawk docked. Attonax had ordered the run. The ship was racing to the system’s Mandeville point when Kalkator walked onto the bridge. He joined Attonax at the command throne. The other Iron Warrior nodded to him and vacated the throne.

‘The ship is yours, warsmith,’ he said.

For as long as we have one, Kalkator thought. The first rocket hits were beginning. The rear shields were holding strong, though, and the Palimodes was picking up speed. ‘Set course for the Ostrom System,’ he said.

‘We can’t,’ Attonax told him. ‘We’ve lost it too.’

‘What?’

‘That’s why we returned.’ His face was a patchwork of metal and flesh, iron replacing the mutations excavated from his skull. Expression was difficult. His bitterness was profound, for it to be so apparent. ‘We were retreating.’

‘The orks hit us there too?’

‘No. The Black Templars.’

The Great Company was caught between two fronts. Kalkator’s forces had lost their holdings. He grimaced.

‘Get us to the point and make the jump,’ he ordered.

‘Where to?’ Attonax asked.

Kalkator didn’t answer. He watched the strategium screens, noting the damage reports as they came in, measuring them against what he knew the ship could take; tallying still more casualties, still more strength leeched from his command.

The deck vibrated: rocket hits overwhelming the void shields. The sensorium array registered ork torpedo ships in pursuit. The Palimodes accelerated. The Mandeville point drew closer.

‘Our integrity…’ Attonax began.

‘Will be enough,’ Kalkator finished. ‘If we’re breathing, we jump.’

The other Iron Warrior nodded. If the ship died, it would not be in the sight of the orks.

The moment of the transition came. The writhe of the warp appeared on the primary oculus. The Palimodes was racing through nothing to nowhere.

‘The Navigator will need a destination,’ Attonax said.

‘I’m aware of that.’ He stared at the violence of colliding absences and clawed potential. ‘We can’t fight them both,’ he said.

There was a long silence. At last, Attonax asked, ‘What are you saying?’

‘That we can’t fight them both.’

Thirteen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Juskina Tull had a view of the Fields of Winged Victory from her quarters. The armourglass window stretched across the entire width of the reception chamber. The room was the largest of her suite, occupying half of the top floor of the Pharos Tower. The size was not an indulgence. Nor was its collection of tapestries that draped the opposite wall. This display, drawn from holdings of works from across the Imperium, changed daily. A necessary ritual. The furniture underwent a similar change. There was always a large dining table, and seats for dozens. It was the individual identities of the items that altered.

Sometimes Tull took an active part in the selections of the day. Sometimes she left it to the serfs. What was important was the display. Any guest would see the riches of Imperial trade, and the vast reach of the Chartist fleet. Repeat guests witnessed ever greater wealth through perpetual variety. The more important the visitors, the more often they came, and the more they would be dizzied by the unending parade.

The symbolic, Tull understood, was not weaker than the real. The symbolic shaped the real. In the right hands, it was a weapon. Some of the other High Lords grasped the principle. Mesring certainly did. But his view was blinkered. He couldn’t see beyond the icons. He could only understand symbols that derived their potency through connection to the God-Emperor.

Then there was Lansung. A hopeless case. He could see the symbolic value in military action. He couldn’t imagine the reverse.

‘Gazing upon your good work?’ the Lord High Admiral asked.

Tull turned away from the window. She nodded at Georg Steinert, her majordomo. He withdrew.

‘I was,’ she said to Lansung.

‘Proud of yourself, aren’t you.’

‘Proud of us all. This is a great moment.’

He snorted. ‘Well, you can enjoy it without me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I won’t have any part of the deployment.’

‘The Autocephalax Eternal…’

‘It will remain on station.’

‘You realise what that will look like.’ She was pleased that she answered without pause, as if his decision made no difference. Perhaps it didn’t.

‘Yes.’ The exhaustion in that single syllable was immense. At some point, Lansung appeared to have crossed the line between humiliation and apathy.

‘You’re a coward,’ Tull said, making sure Lansung understood what was heading his way.

‘I’m not here to posture,’ he said.

‘I know you’re not. I’m telling you simple truths. If you back out of the Proletarian Crusade, I’ll destroy you.’

‘Threats now.’

‘Just the truth. Like I said.’

Lansung shrugged. ‘Threats,’ he repeated. ‘Empty ones.’

‘Is that a dare?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Just the truth, since that’s what we’re speaking. You won’t destroy me. The orks will take care of that when they arrive. I’ll outlive your fleet of fools, though. I notice that you’re not accompanying them.’

‘I’m not a military commander.’

‘No. You most certainly are not.’

She smiled. ‘I sense there is a point you’re making, Admiral.’

He gave her a hard, tired stare. ‘I’ve already made it.’ He turned to go.

‘You know I will destroy you,’ she said.

He stopped. ‘I know you can. But why? Out of spite?’

‘You know me better than that.’

‘I thought I did.’

‘You are sabotaging something too important.’

‘Bold words.’

‘The truth.’

He walked to the door. ‘As you say. But important to Terra or to you?’

‘Get out.’

She went back to the window. She heard Steinert show Lansung out. She looked towards the Fields of Winged Victory and took a breath. Lansung would have been pleased to see that it was unsteady.

He would be wrong to think he had rattled her. She had been bracing to face hard questions when he arrived. No, she wasn’t a military commander. She was aware of that. Yet this was a campaign that she had mounted, and that she was directing. She had Verreault and Zeck on board, but she had to be cautious about using them as resources. She had arranged to have the Astra Militarum regiments spread out through the Armada as a means to provide some structure to the civilian troops. But the move also diluted Verreault’s leverage. He, Zeck, Mesring, Ekharth — all of the allies in the Crusade had some pull, but only she had control of the Armada itself. The captains answered to her, so she had final say on disposition and launch.

And tactics.

The plan of attack was not a sophisticated one. Then again, if it was, it couldn’t be carried out. The ships were crewed by merchants. There were able pilots aboard many, pilots who had brought their ships through threats as lethal as any faced by the Imperial Navy. Their skills, though, were individual. They had no experience fighting in formation. They fled conflict. They didn’t seek it out.

She asked herself the question she had been avoiding since first announcing the Proletarian Crusade. Was she making a mistake? She made herself think through the consequences. She ran through possible balance sheets, measuring investment against risk, potential gain against possible loss.

She was oddly reassured.

If the Crusade failed, political damage would be the least of her problems. Retribution would be far from anyone else’s mind. Defeat would mean the loss of everything. Success, however, would place her in an unchallengeable position. That was the equation, then: victory of the Armada meant her personal victory, while defeat meant no one else would be the victor. There was no question. This was the smart move.

It was also so much more than that. She believed in what she was doing.

The crowd in the Fields was the biggest yet seen. The people there now were not volunteers. The last of those had embarked hours ago. Gathered now were celebrants, well-wishers, families. The excited, the curious, the hopeful. The desperate. They were all the desperate.

Tull had given them hope. She had given all of Terra hope. That was a singular achievement. She was proud of it. This was Terra’s greatest crisis since the Siege, the worst moment in the living memory of every human being on the planet. The plague of despair had been upon them, Zeck’s Adeptus Arbites had been unable to end the panic, and she, with a single speech, had turned the tide. She had given the billions determination, direction, purpose. An endeavour of legend had sprung into being at her urging, and despite the doubts of Vangorich and Lansung, it was not a folly. Lack of action would have been a folly. And what other options were there? The cry for help had gone out, but there were no elements of the Navy or the Adeptus Astartes that could reach Terra in time.

How do you know? That was the question she could not answer. It kept prying open her doubts. She closed them again with reason. Whatever cause the orks had for waiting, they would not wait until help had arrived. Tull thought it likely that the orks believed they had already won, and had the leisure of invading when it best suited them.

She walked across the chamber to the door. It was time to head to the Great Chamber. Time for another speech. Time to show the orks that they were wrong.

Time to launch.

‘We’re going in on that?’ Kord asked.

Their shuttle was drawing up to the Militant Fire’s landing bay.

‘What did you expect?’ said Haas. ‘A grand cruiser?’

‘Of course not. But this… It’s so small.’

He was right.

‘I can see even smaller,’ she pointed out.

‘That makes me feel a lot better.’ He craned his head to look up through the viewing block next to his bench. He squirmed in the grav-harness. ‘I was hoping for maybe one of the mass conveyors.’ He pointed to something Haas couldn’t see from her angle. ‘They’ll be carrying thousands.’

‘No room for everyone on them. They’re mainly reserved for Imperial Guard companies, from what I heard.’

‘I know that,’ he said, irritable. ‘I was just saying what I’d hoped. Those ships are strong. They can take some hits. This will get swatted in the first seconds of the attack. We’re cannon fodder.’

‘That’s a revelation to you?’

He shrugged. He didn’t look at her, watching as the shuttle entered the Fire’s bay.

Haas said, ‘What did you think was going to happen when we joined this endeavour?’

Another shrug.

‘Look at me,’ she said.

He did. His jaw was set. There was doubt in his eyes.

‘I didn’t want to join the Crusade,’ she said. ‘I thought our duty was to the maintenance of the law, and nothing else.’

‘I’m sorry—’ he began.

She held up a hand. ‘Let me finish. You were right. I was wrong. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. If we win, we preserve Terra and the law. If we lose, both are gone. I’m proud to be here, Ottmar. You should be too. I don’t have any illusions about what’s going to happen, though. Nor should you. Yes, we’re cannon fodder. Of course we are. So is every single member of the Crusade. No exceptions.’ The shuttle came to a halt with the bang of landing struts on the deck. The engines cut out. Haas undid her harness and leaned forward. ‘That’s why this might work,’ she said. ‘No one element of the Armada is more important than another. It doesn’t matter who gets through, as long as enough of us do.’ She stood up. ‘There’s a reason cannon fodder is used. It works.’

Kord remained seated. The shuttle’s side door opened. Hydraulics hissed as its boarding ramp lowered to the deck. The squad of Jupiter Storm disembarked first. The other thirty passengers followed. Other than Haas and Kord, they were all civilians. Haas wanted to be out in front of them, but Kord was unmoving. ‘Ottmar?’ she said.

‘So glorious deaths await us,’ Kord said. He was hoarse. His voice was thin.

She clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Important ones, anyway. Let’s go.’

His face looked as it did when the ork moon had become visible over the Fields of Winged Victory. Haas had never had cause to question Kord’s courage or his dedication to duty. She was dismayed that he was forcing her to do so now. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. Death had been no stranger in their years of enforcing the Emperor’s law.

His lips moved. His whisper was too faint.

‘What?’ Haas said. She leaned forward.

‘It’s too big,’ Kord repeated. ‘We’re too small.’

She understood him, then. She wished she hadn’t. He drew his confidence from his faith in the strength of the greater body that he represented. He was a terror on the streets because he felt the might of the Adeptus Arbites behind him. But now, when he acted for the survival of the Imperium itself, he did not believe it was strong enough to defeat the orks.

‘Stand up,’ she told him.

He obeyed, shame and pleading contorting his features.

She stalked out of the shuttle and down the ramp. She was disgusted, but he still wore the uniform of an Arbitrator. She would not allow him to disgrace it in her presence.

Kord followed her.

There were about five hundred souls in the cargo bay. Most of them were civilian. There was a scattering of Arbitrators from other precincts. Haas counted three squads of the Jupiter Storm. They were looking at the people who would be their charges with bemused scepticism.

The captain of the Militant Fire appeared on a platform overlooking the bay, flanked by his first mate. He started to speak, but was drowned out by the babble of conversation on the floor. The woman, her bearing marking her as a Guard veteran, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled for silence.

‘Thank you, First Officer Kondos,’ the captain said. To his human cargo, he said, ‘Welcome. My name is Leander Narkissos, and I’ll have the honour of transporting you into battle.’

His manner was easy. He struck Haas as a man who had consciously shed his illusions, and was at peace with the reality of his situation. That was a good sign, she thought. He would be less likely to panic under fire. Despite what she had said to Kord, she still liked the idea of some possibility of survival.

Narkissos continued, ‘I’m going to wager that a few — just a few — of you were a bit disheartened when you beheld the warlike majesty of the Militant Fire.’ He waited for the laughter to subside. ‘I don’t blame you. I would probably feel the same.’ He straightened, becoming more formal, his posture almost martial. ‘Let me say this. We aren’t a big ship. Our armour is weak. But we’re fast. We’re nimble. If you examined the history of the Fire by the cold light of rationality, you would have to conclude that she should have been destroyed many times over. Are the odds against us? Absolutely. There is no reason to believe we’ll live one more day.’ A sly grin crept over his face. ‘Which is precisely why I say that our odds are excellent.’

No laughter this time. Only cheers. Haas joined in.

She had never expected to take such delight in madness.

Beside her, Kord had fallen into the silent misery of sanity.

Juskina Tull, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, rose in the Great Chamber and began to speak. Pict feeds flashed her image and her words across the planet. The speech was one she had laboured over since the beginning of the Crusade. She had rehearsed it for days. She knew that its delivery was the most important performance of her life. At an abstract level, she also knew that it might be one of the last. She knew this, but did not believe it. The destruction of Terra and her own death were impossible. She feared the loss of prestige, and being beholden to her enemies. But not extermination.

‘Fellow Lords, members of the Senatorum, citizens of Terra. We stand together in a moment of great peril and greater pride. A very short time ago, I asked for your help. You answered. You answered in such numbers and with such fervour that, did they but deserve it, I would pity the orks.’

That was how she began. She spoke for fifteen minutes. She spoke of the bravery of the individual, of the power of the many. She spoke of humility and pride. By the end, she thundered, promising that legendary doom was coming to the orks.

It was a fine speech. It addressed the fears of the populace, and sought to calm them. It articulated their hopes, and sought to stoke them. It was the greatest work of a politician who knew that oratory was an art form, and whose mastery of the medium was unchallenged.

Juskina Tull’s speech was written to shape the departure of the Armada into an event whose celebration would shake the heavens with its fervour. Was it not, when all was said and done, Terra’s last chance for hope?

When Tull spoke, her intent was to ignite rapture.

Seated on the central dais of the Great Chamber, Vangorich admired Tull’s artistry. Even he was stirred by the words, though their very potency filled him with dread. They were words of enormous meaning. Hearing them meant that the Proletarian Crusade had begun. Its consequences would be coming soon.

Lord High Admiral Lansung heard the speech from the bridge of the Autocephalax Eternal. He had come to his flagship directly from Tull’s quarters. He had no intention of being in her sight at her moment of triumph, and giving her even more reason to gloat. He was here too because of his own dread. He counted Vangorich as an enemy, but the old assassin was right — the Crusade would end in disaster. However, as he listened to the speech he found himself hoping that he was wrong. He had no wish to face the reality of attempting the defence of Terra with just the flagship and its escort. He knew how that would end.

With every word Tull spoke, Lansung’s throat dried. The conviction grew that he would see his great fear realised.

In the Fields of Winged Victory, hundreds of thousands watched the pict feed of Tull. They listened with the hunger of the starving. When she finished her speech, and the underbelly of the low, toxic clouds over the Imperial Palace lit up with a fireworks display worthy of the victory at Ullanor, the people roared. The roar was as loud as on the day Tull had announced the crusade, but it was not the same kind of cheer at all. That moment had been the rebirth of hope when all had seemed lost. This moment was when the dream of the Crusade became real. The Merchants’ Armada carried all hope with it. It was the last chance. It was the last wall. In the soul of every human on Terra, regardless of belief, was the hard knowledge of how fragile the last wall was.

The roar was painful. It made throats ragged. It was the refusal to fall into a final night, and it was the fear that the end was inevitable. It was the holding on to a belief with a fatal, slippery grasp.

It was, in a word, desperation.

The people cheered, and they kept cheering. Many of them were weeping. Some wished they were on the ships, heading for battle, but there was no more room. Others were relieved to be where they were, and cheered because doing so held off, for a little bit longer, the awful experience of waiting that would follow next.

The masses in the Fields of Winged Victory tried to draw strength from their numbers, and from the volume of their shout. But the sky had cleared again towards the end of Tull’s speech, and they could see the stars, and the lights of the fleet, and they could see the ork moon, and they felt the awful hollowness of hope. So they shouted even louder, shouted until they were hoarse, shouted until they fell to their knees, gagging over the pain of a simple breath. They did not find strength in each other. They saw and heard and felt only their own fear reflected back at them a hundred thousand times. They shouted as if that might help them stay afloat in the wave of desperation.

But they sank. And they drowned.

In the shadow of the Tower of the Hegemon; in the corridors of the administrative complex, larger than a nation state, of the Estates Imperium; in the tangled warrens of the Opifex hive districts, where the uncountable legions of architects, stonemasons and other Palace artisans dwelt; half a world away, at the base of the Eternity Gate; across the millions of square kilometres of the Imperial Palace, the people stopped in their tasks and their prayers and their tears and listened. On the other side of the globe, in the vastness of the Ecclesiarchal Palace, they listened. Even in the Inquisitorial Fortress, Tull was heard and seen. In every corner of Holy Terra, singly or in groups, the people sought comfort in the words and in Tull’s magisterial, triumphal bearing. Singly or in groups, they came face to face with their desperation.

The planet resounded with a cry as fierce, as expressive of the collective pain as the scream that had greeted the arrival of the star fortress. This was not terror, but it was the fear of terror’s return. It was the dying patient’s clutch at the chimera of a cure. It was the shout that would serve as battle cry for all the billions who would not be in the war until the war came for them.

It was desperation.

It was sinking.

It was drowning.

On the thousands of ships that made up the Merchants’ Armada, the crews and volunteers and Astra Militarum heard the speech too. They did not pay it quite as much heed. They had other matters to draw their attention.

The ships were moving. They were powering up engines. They were leaving anchor. They moved in a rough formation. They were heading into battle. For the volunteers, the reality of their choice had come. Many of them experienced the vertiginous sensation of running off a precipice, and feeling the sudden absence of firm ground beneath their feet. Some of them were sick.

In the Militant Fire’s observation dome, Galatea Haas looked out into the void as vessels beyond counting began to travel in concert. The ork moon was straight ahead. It was not drawing closer yet. Even so, it seemed larger. She looked at its surface, and pictured fighting there. She tried to will the Fire past the ork defences to the commencement of the invasion. Until moonfall, there was no action she could take that would at least give her the illusion of mastery over her fate. For now, she had to wait, and place her life in the hands of Narkissos and his crew.

There was no sign of Kord. He had barely set foot out of the cargo bay since their arrival. Haas exchanged a look with the soldiers a few paces to her right. They wore the mustard uniform and red sash of the Jupiter Storm. Beneath her armour, so did she. All the Crusaders aboard the Militant Fire had been inducted into that regiment. Braylon Gattan was a captain in the 546th Jupiter Storm, and the lone officer of that rank on the Fire. Beside him was his commissar, Deklan Sever, quite a bit older. They nodded to her. They were feeling the same hard impatience. At least she was here, she thought, on this ship. At least she was part of a massive move against the orks. She was glad. She had no regrets.

Behind her, the speech continued. Tull built to a crescendo of fervour. The ship moved faster, as if it too were responding to her words. The Armada, brought into being by the determination of the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, gathered momentum. Its formation became more and more defined. It was no longer a confusing cluster of disparate vessels. It took on the shape of a wide spearhead. The ships became the components of the great weapon.

‘The strength of Terra approaches the enemy, carrying dread before it,’ said Tull.

It left dread behind it, too.

On Terra, the people knew that many, perhaps most (but by the Throne, please, not all) of the heroes of the Proletarian Crusade would die. But if those deaths were exchanged for an end to the hellish moon, then they would be celebrated. It was not the deaths that were dreaded. It was their futility.

The fleet did not carry dread within it. There was too much determination.

But it did carry desperation.

Desperation given the shape of metal, given power, given impetus, given speed — but little armour and few weapons — the Armada moved away from its orbital position. The greatest civilian mobilisation in Terra’s history swept towards the orks.

Fourteen

Terra — the Inquisitorial Fortress

Wienand and Rendenstein approached the main gates, striding along the centre of the Sigillite’s March. The time for secrecy was past. Even if their arrival was not expected, trying to gain access to the Inquisitorial Fortress by any means other than the direct one would be suicidal. What was more, Wienand was clear on the message she wanted to send. She had nothing to hide. She was not a fugitive. She, and no one else, was the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum, and it was in that capacity that she was here, beneath the polar ice cap, in the vast caverns that housed the concentrated might of the Inquisition.

The March ran in a straight line through a cave big enough to swallow a battleship. They were too far underground for the endless cold of the surface to reach them. Even so, the air in the cavern was icy. Wienand’s breath misted. The sound of her boot heels was hollow with chill.

The Sigillite’s March was a hundred metres wide, and a thousand long. The wiring embedded in the flagstones formed a massive interlocking system of hexagrammic wards. The density of the sigils was such that the path as a whole functioned as a gigantic null generator. Iron pillars rose every ten metres, their powerful lumen globes turning the March into a shining road through darkness. There were no barriers on either side, only the shadows of the cavern. The brilliant light of the March was another primary defence. It made conventional weapons pointless. The individuals who walked the March were blind to anything beyond its edges, but eyes in the dark watched them. To travel the kilometre of the March was to be vulnerable at every level: psychic abilities shut down, in the open, unable to see potential attacks.

For Wienand, the fifteen-minute stroll was a declaration of faith in her position. She was announcing to the many who watched that she was confident about reaching the doors unharmed. Rendenstein walked one step behind her, arms at her side, hands open. She didn’t have to be carrying a weapon to be considered a threat. She had to keep her movements as innocuous as possible.

‘This is difficult for you, I know,’ Wienand said when they were halfway along.

‘I don’t like being neutralised. There’s no way for me to protect you here.’

‘This is the one place I don’t need protection.’

Rendenstein grunted, sceptical.

‘That wasn’t a lie,’ Wienand reassured her. ‘If something was going to happen, it would have already.’

‘That makes me feel so much better.’

‘It should. It means we have arrived safely, and that there is a solid chance that the purpose of the journey will succeed.’

Rendenstein didn’t reply. Wienand glanced over her shoulder. Her bodyguard looked thoughtful.

The main doors to the Fortress loomed ahead. They were built into a wall that extended into the cavern’s night in both directions. The doors expressed both the Inquisition’s power and its secretive nature. They were massive, wrought iron in appearance, though those were plates fixed to adamantium. The rosette of the Inquisition occupied the centre of the two doors, bisected by the seam between them, and extended to their full ten-metre height.

There was no practical reason for the doors to be so monumental, so authoritative. No one would ever see them except the inquisitors, or those rare prisoners, as unfortunate as they were privileged, whose sight of the door was their assurance of execution once their usefulness was at an end. The Inquisitorial Fortress was a keep that not only had never been stormed, it had never been besieged. But it was prepared. And it would announce to any foe the folly of attack, and the respect that was due to the servants of the Imperium within.

A lone figure waited for Wienand, standing before the base of the rosette. He was in full dress plate. His ceramite carapace armour was draped by a cloak of crimson and black. A sash of the same colours crossed his chest from left shoulder to the sheath of his sword. Gold wards marked his pauldrons and chestplate, and there were more on his plasma pistol’s holster.

‘Greetings, Castellan Kober,’ Wienand said.

‘Inquisitor Wienand,’ he answered. His stance, his expression, his tone and his words were neutral.

She had expected Henrik Kober to be her main obstacle. He wouldn’t deny her entry, but he might have the clout to block anything she tried to accomplish. The position of Castellan was a rotating one, changing every year or upon the death of the serving inquisitor. The office had no formal political power over other inquisitors. Its mandate was the defence of the Fortress. The administrative authority that followed from that was considerable, and so, then, was the indirect influence wielded by the Castellan. The yearly rotation ensured that none of the holders of the appointment had the time to establish personal dominance to any degree that couldn’t be undone by the next Castellan. But for that year, there was clout.

Wienand decided to force the issue immediately. There wasn’t time for subtlety. She had heard Tull’s speech during the final leg of her journey. ‘Are we going to be in conflict?’ she asked.

‘There have been serious questions raised about you.’

‘But no charges,’ she said, noting that he hadn’t answered her question.

‘Not yet,’ he admitted. Then he said, ‘Inquisitor van der Deckart is dead. Inquisitor Machtannin has been assassinated. And there has been an attempt on Inquisitor Veritus’ life.’

‘And on mine,’ she pointed out. She was startled to hear about Machtannin. She guessed Vangorich had been at work. ‘I make no accusations,’ she continued. ‘I have no interest in a pointless battle. And if you think I organised assassination missions while making my way here, then I must be very formidable.’

‘I don’t think what happened was at your command,’ Kober said. ‘I do think the deaths had something to do with you.’

‘If they did, and I am responsible, and acted in a criminal fashion, then I will have to answer for my transgressions. But I have not been charged, and I have not been stripped of my rank. Events are moving fast. We need to react to them. Or would you rather the Inquisition follow the model of the High Lords and disable itself through internal politics?’

‘I’m aware of current events. Can you appreciate the reasons for Inquisitor Veritus’ concerns? A wrong move now could doom the Imperium.’

‘Agreed. That is why I am here. Have you examined Terra’s tactical situation lately? Now by your leave, Castellan, we will proceed. I have work to do.’

‘You’re presuming a lot,’ said Kober, but he stepped to one side.

‘I have to.’ She walked forward, Rendenstein following. The auspex array of the doors recognised her identity and standing, and they opened before her.

The Inquisitorial Fortress made use of the caverns below the polar ice cap, but it transcended them. The honour of the Inquisition demanded more than a network of underground chambers. The Fortress’ construction had seen the excavation of grandiose spaces, some larger than a grand cruiser. In them had risen walls and spires and turrets, and the greatest towers rose through the continental crust. From the surface, they resembled another glacier-cloaked mountain chain. Some of them did rise through hollowed-out peaks, while others were peaks in their own right. Prison and mailed fist, sanctuary and labyrinth, the fortress turned secrecy and power into the architecture of stone and metal.

Beyond the doors, a vaulted corridor, short and wide, led to a great rotunda. The space was ten levels high. Primary passageways, many of them served by light maglev transport, opened off the levels towards all the wings of the Fortress. The rotunda’s roof was a dome. At its centre, a silver skull looked down in judgement. Its omniscience was represented in radiant lines, and the background of the dome was a pict feed of the sky above the Fortress. The effect was of standing outside, beneath the void, exposed before the gaze of the Emperor.

Inquisitors, serfs and servitors moved along all the stages. More than a few of Wienand’s peers stopped to look over the balcony at her arrival. A few nodded. Others just moved on. There was a lot of traffic on the fifth level, heading east towards the Iron Watch.

Wienand heard Kober’s footsteps behind her. She and Rendenstein stopped to wait. Wienand gestured to the activity on the fifth level. ‘I imagine I’m the cause.’

Kober nodded. ‘You know what has to happen now.’

‘I would have demanded it.’

‘One thing I will never question, Inquisitor Wienand, is your honour.’

‘Thank you.’ She quieted Rendenstein with a look.

‘With your permission?’ Kober asked, moving their interaction to the safe ground of formality. When Wienand made a slight bow, he led the way forward.

Stairs spiralling up the rotunda’s perimeter took them to the fifth level. From there, they travelled by maglev. The train was an open set of steel pews mounted on a simple platform. It took an hour to reach the Iron Watch, and another hour still before they stood outside the entrance to the Camera Stellata. Kober stopped, and Wienand preceded him inside.

The Camera Stellata was the Octagon writ large, with a full complement of suppressive wards and psychic field dampeners. It was the site of great conclaves, but more than free debate took place here. Condemnation, punishment and execution were the possible, and frequent, outcomes of the deliberations.

The Octagon’s shape emphasised the equality of the participants. Its centre was empty, so the focus moved from point to point with the currents of the debate. The Camera Stellata had a centre. Wienand walked along a black marble walkway and took her place where it ended, at a lectern mounted on a circular dais. The lectern was cast in bronze, its stand was the withered body of an enemy of the Imperium, bent beneath the weight of the accusation brought down by the winged skull that formed the lectern’s top. Standing there, Wienand was orator and accused.

The chamber was a great sphere. The lectern’s dais was suspended in the centre of the space. It was ringed by tiers of seats mounted into the walls. Those above the lectern were reserved for the senior inquisitors.

She turned to face her judges. ‘Good. We’re all here. We know the situation. We are out of time. The High Lords’ greatest folly yet is under way as we speak. Do any of us expect that venture to end in anything other than disaster?’ She shook her head, establishing the question as rhetorical. ‘We can now count off the hours before Terra is bereft of most of its Astra Militarum defence to go along with the absence of the Navy.’ She took a breath. ‘I have never underestimated the threat the Ruinous Powers present to the Imperium. I won’t start now. But I also know how to recognise a danger that is immediate. Fellow inquisitors, the orks are here. Now. It is clear to me, as I’m sure it is to you, that we have been left with only one option as a response. I won’t insult you by trying to convince you of its necessity, because there is nothing else left to do. So I am invoking that measure now, officially, before you all.’ She turned around, sweeping the assembly with her gaze. ‘So,’ she said. ‘We have work to do.’

And she walked out.

Rendenstein was waiting outside the entrance. Her eyebrows were up. ‘So that’s how it’s done,’ she said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the uproar that followed Wienand’s exit.

‘Authority derives a lot from perception,’ Wienand said. ‘So I used it.’ She headed down the passage towards the maglev transport. Her next stop was in another wing of the Fortress, and many levels down. She tried not to think about how much distance the Armada would have covered before she could even reach Somnum Hall.

‘We won’t be stopped?’

‘If we are, we are. If we’re not, we’re already wasting time.’

While they waited for the train to return to the Camera Stellata’s stop, Wienand thought Rendenstein looked troubled. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘After you went in, the Castellan relayed some information.’

‘Something you were supposed to pass on to me?’

‘He seemed to want me to know it. I don’t think he cared what I did with the data. It’s part of the latest briefing to have gone Fortress-wide.’

The train arrived. They boarded. They were the only passengers on this leg.

‘So?’ Wienand asked.

‘Intercepts from a Black Templar action in the Ostrom System. The intelligence is sketchy, but it appears an ork star fortress has attacked a system in the vicinity of the Eye of Terror.’

Wienand absorbed this. ‘Kober believes they’ve opened up a second front?’

‘Yes. That the forces of Chaos are now involved.’

‘Well,’ Wienand said. ‘Well.’ She nodded to herself. ‘That will be next, then.’

‘What will be?’

‘That concern, in whatever form it takes.’

‘I see.’

The train slowed as it neared a junction with another large corridor. Inquisitors waited. They’ll stop me or they won’t, Wienand thought. ‘Tell me what’s bothering you,’ she told Rendenstein. She wanted nothing unsaid between them if things went wrong in the next few seconds.

‘If the Ruinous Powers are part of this war…’

Wienand finished the thought for her. ‘Is Veritus right after all?’

The train came to a stop. The inquisitors boarded. A number of them had servo-skulls in attendance. These hovered low on the benches beside their controllers, recording muttered dictation as the train picked up speed again. Wienand recognised one of the new arrivals, Miliza Balduin. Wienand had met her during a joint investigation on Antagonis. She was inflexible, but fair-minded. The inflexibility meant she was a bad politician, and Wienand suspected this was why she wielded less influence than her age should have brought her. She sat in the bench ahead of Wienand and Rendenstein, then turned to appraise Wienand with a flat stare.

‘Well, prodigal,’ she said. ‘You’re here to stir us to desperate measures, are you?’

‘I am. Are the deliberations over?’

Balduin shook her head. ‘Not formally. But there’s no doubt how they’ll end. The word is out. The orks have won you the day.’

‘You’ll be assisting, then?’

‘No. Other duties. You’ll have all the help you need, I’m sure.’ She began to face forward again, caught herself, and said, ‘You’d better be right.’

‘I am.’ Wienand looked at Rendenstein. The other woman was stoic in her concern. ‘Really,’ Wienand told her. ‘There isn’t a choice.’

‘I wouldn’t question—’

‘Yes, you would, and you do. With my thanks.’

‘The risks…’

‘I know them.’

‘If this goes wrong…’

‘I know what you’re thinking. I’m not discounting Kober’s information. We have to ignore it, though. It’s a distraction.’

‘I’ve never thought of Chaos as a distraction.’

‘It is now.’

Fifteen

Sol System

‘We can’t have surprised them,’ Kondos said.

‘Of course not.’ Narkissos wasn’t sitting in the bridge’s command throne. He paced back and forth before the primary oculus. The ork moon was filling more and more of the sky as the Armada drew closer. Its details resolved into mountain ranges and canyons of metal. There was no organisation that Narkissos could see. It was stone and iron come together as if brute force had a geology. It waited in the void for the human ships, silent and dark. There was no response. It was as still as it had been since the moment of its arrival. Narkissos entertained the crazy hope that the orks had somehow destroyed themselves in their journey, then dismissed it.

‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ Kondos muttered. She stood midway between the throne and the helm, leaning against the cargo monitoring station as if she were contemplating leaping forward ahead of the bow.

The oculus’ field of vision was crowded with ships. Narkissos had the impression of an endless rain of metal directed at the orks. Aft of the Militant Fire, there was an even larger portion of the fleet. He had ordered Rallis to take the ship to the leading quarter of the Armada. He wanted to see what happened from the start.

So he told himself.

Hoping to get it all over with right away?

So he asked himself.

No, he answered. We’re going to fight to live and to win.

The Fire was following the great bulk of the mass conveyor Expanse of Destiny. The huge ship, carrying a hundred thousand troops and volunteers, was just slightly to port. It seemed large and solid as a planet. It would be the Fire’s shield. Narkissos felt no shame in his tactic. His duty was to reach the star fortress. He wasn’t Guard, and he wasn’t Navy. He would leave the debates about honour to them.

So far, though, his ship hadn’t needed the shield. The Armada had covered over half the distance to the ork moon. There was no response.

And then there was.

Time split, broken in half by a single moment. On the lost side, there was the calm in the void, and the grand illusion of the Proletarian Crusade in its purest, most realised form. On the other side, in the present that now unfolded with merciless revelation, was reality, and, at last, the orks took action.

At last. Narkissos realised that some part of him did respond as if something long anticipated was finally coming to pass. The knowledge made him ill. What have they done to us? he wondered.

Gaps opened on the surface of the planetoid, a sudden spread of disease. They lit up with the fire of an endless stream of launches. The orks reached out for the Armada.

‘Take us behind the Expanse of Destiny,’ Narkissos told Rallis.

The helmsman was already changing course, putting the moon into eclipse.

‘Those aren’t rockets,’ Kondos said.

The orks were sending squadron upon squadron of fighters. Some flew straight at the fleet. Others swung wide. They attacked the Merchants’ Armada from every direction, like a grasping talon. From the other side of the moon came two large ork cruisers. They followed the fighters more slowly, and though they were dwarfed by the moon, their aggressive, brutal lines, their massive armour and their arrays of guns made their approach terrible. Narkissos became acutely aware of the lack of any fighting ship in the Armada. How had he ever believed even a single ship would get through?

Evasion wasn’t going to help.

It was also the only defence he had.

‘Get us in tight,’ he said.

‘The conveyor’s engines…’ Rallis said.

‘Yes, I know. As close as you can to their wash.’ They would hide in the nova-glare of the Expanse’s propulsion.

‘And if the orks target the engines?’ Kondos asked.

‘We run.’

The ork fighters fell on the fleet. The space between the Terran ships was filled with a swarm of aggression. Multiple squadrons surrounded the bigger ships. They gathered around the Expanse of Destiny like flies to carrion.

The coherence of the fleet unravelled as the Terran ships responded to the attack. The movements looked more like a dance than combat. The Armada had no guns, and the orks did not fire.

‘Why aren’t they shooting?’ Narkissos wondered.

‘They’re going to board,’ said Kondos.

She was right. The ork fighters were larger than single-pilot ships. Narkissos had thought their bulging hulls contained bombs or torpedoes. Now he wished they did. The swarming craft around the conveyor attached themselves to its flanks. The glare from the engines hid what happened next from him.

‘Can you get us any closer?’ he asked Rallis.

‘Risky, sir.’

‘So is being cut open by the greenskins.’

Warning runes began lighting along the bridge’s control surfaces. A proximity tocsin sounded. Rallis shut it off. The conveyor’s engine flare grew brighter. The battle lost distinction. Its events became more distant.

The starboard-facing oculus flashed as three ork ships opened fire on a small yacht. The ship could only carry five passengers, but even its owner had stepped forward to play a part in the great adventure. It was the first ship to die, its cargo the first casualties. It was too small, Narkissos thought. It wasn’t worth boarding. So the orks cleared it out of the way.

‘If we’re boarded…’ Rallis began. He hesitated.

‘What are you asking?’ Narkissos could guess.

‘We’re faster than the conveyor. I can take us all the way in. It will be quick.’

‘No,’ said Kondos. ‘We fight.’

‘Until they take the bridge,’ Narkissos said. He was already choosing his preferred defeat.

The hull of the Expanse of Destiny was shaking. Colonel Erich Lanser knew the sound. Breach points. He looked at his command: multiple squads of his Granite Myrmidons surrounded by a sea of volunteers. The civilians were holding weapons. At least there was that. But they were also terrified. The Crusade of their imaginations had not encompassed the possibility of fighting orks before reaching the moon.

‘Rifles forward!’ He stood on a raised level at the rear of the cargo bay, where he could be heard and seen. The vibration of the hull grew worse, but he couldn’t tell where the break would come. ‘There are thousands of us. Nothing can get in without being shot!’

He wasn’t lying. What he didn’t say was how little that might matter. Sergeants Bessler and Parten, closest to his position, gave him significant grins. They knew. The irony was, the regiment’s last action had been against the greenskins. It had been just another suppression exercise on the Eastern Fringe, and it was the Myrmidons who had been boarding the orks, taking apart a ramshackle raiding fleet. The fight had been one-sided. Just like this one.

There was no strategy possible. There had been no time to train the civilians in much beyond how to pull a trigger. So be it. The principle, after all, was to overwhelm the orks with numbers. They could do that here too. How many troops could the orks send in at one time?

The sound of the attack became a monstrous grinding. The ork ships were using something with a blade to cut through the Expanse of Destiny’s shell. The noise filled the cargo bay. Lanser felt the blood drain from his face. He wasn’t just hearing the vibration of attacks all along the hull. Many of them were on this section alone.

Too close together for even the most reckless boarding parties. They couldn’t know if there were bulkheads sealing off one breach from another.

But if they didn’t care…

The orks weren’t breaching this section of the hull. They were removing it.

Lanser whirled. He ran to the rear wall, to the central interior bay door. He slammed his palm against its controls. The door groaned upwards.

‘Out!’ Lanser shouted. ‘Now!’

The grinding scream of tearing metal drowned him out. Bessler and Parten saw him, though, and pushed the troops and volunteers near them towards the exit. Movement in the right direction began, sluggish, far too slow, then picking up speed as more people saw him gesture, and saw the beginnings of flight.

The terror-stricken noise of the assault spurred them on.

The corridor on the other side of the door was wide, large enough for the servitor-operated loaders to travel to and from the bays. The crowd ran past Lanser in a steady stream, the bottleneck minimal.

Too little, he knew. Much, much too late.

Hundreds had reached the corridor. There were thousands still in the hold. The civilians were panicking now. Nearest the outer hull, Lanser could see Myrmidons still holding position, still training their guns in the enemy’s direction. The gestures were symbolic. There would be nothing to shoot. There would be no evacuation for them, either. There wasn’t time. So they stood their ground, choosing honour over pointless flight. Some looked back at Lanser over the vast space of the hold. He saluted them.

A monstrous serpent hissed.

Lanser hit the controls again and threw himself into the crush out of the bay. A great wind began to blow in from the corridor. The grind reached a peak of agony. Then there was a pop that was larger than sound. Almost half the bay’s wall vanished. Slabs of the ship’s hull spun away. The atmosphere blasted out into the void. It scooped up the Crusaders in the hold and scattered them into the great and cold nothing. Two ork fighters hung in the opening. Articulated arms extended from their noses, wielding circular saws four metres in diameter. They were spinning, but the grind was gone. There was only the blank roar of the wind.

The force of the venting pulled at Lanser like chains. Blood burst from his nose and ears. The door was halfway down. He pushed against the hurricane of decompression. He gripped the side of the doorway and lunged forward, shoving against struggling backs. The man in front of him fell. He banged into Lanser as the wind took him back. Lanser clutched the doorway harder. The yank tried to dislocate his arm.

The door was less than two metres from being closed. The roar became a desperate, whistling shriek. Lanser ducked low and hauled himself around the corner, into the corridor. He slammed the top of his head against the descending barrier and collapsed against the wall. The door closed, trapping a handful of Crusaders beneath it. The wind’s shriek continued a few seconds longer as flesh and bone held back heavy steel for a moment more. Then the pressure of the mechanism and the weight of the door won, severing and crushing.

The wind died. Lungs rasping, Lanser stood. He moved forward to take the lead of the column of Crusaders who had managed to reach the corridor. He pushed past perhaps three hundred civilians before he reached Bessler and Parten’s squads. They were the only Myrmidons who had made it.

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Parten said. She wiped a smear of blood from her upper lip. ‘Why go to the trouble of peeling the ship open? Why not just torpedo it if they’re not going to board?’

‘Because it amuses them?’ Bessler suggested.

Lanser shook his head. ‘I’ve never known greenskins to entertain themselves by taking a slower approach to violence.’ He shouted for silence. The sobs of the civilians quieted enough for him to hear what he had feared: more of the vibrating grind coming from elsewhere in the ship. ‘They are boarding,’ he said. ‘That was a decapitation move. They took out most of the opposition we could muster at a stroke.’

‘Which means they knew what they were doing,’ Parten said, awed.

‘I’m not interested in what they planned,’ said Lanser before Parten could continue. The implications of orks taking the time to attack a ship based on its layout and probable complement of defenders did not need airing. That talk would not help with what needed to be done, and would change nothing.

So what do we do? He thought of the Expanse of Destiny’s other cargo bays, holding tens of thousands more Crusaders. They orks had likely vented them too. ‘We stick to the interior passageways,’ he said. ‘Make for the bridge. If they are boarding, that’s where we’ll have to hold them.’

He looked back at the civilians. Many still looked determined. All were terrified. The dream of the Crusade had soured.

‘You wanted to fight the greenskins?’ Lanser shouted to them. ‘You’re lucky. You’re getting the chance early. Let’s go tear them apart.’

He led the charge aft, towards the ship’s superstructure. Parten and Bessler’s troops shouted defiance, spreading the will to fight. And in the tighter confines of the corridors, three hundred souls became a crowd, a force, a surging wall of anger looking for an enemy to kill.

Deeper in the ship, the vibrations of the breaching faded. It became possible to pretend that nothing was happening. Lanser sensed the confidence of the Crusaders build still more.

Two-thirds of the way to the bridge, they found the enemy. About twenty orks burst out of a side passage linking to one of the smaller cargo holds. Lanser had no chance to give orders. He and the Myrmidons dropped into crouches and started firing at the intersection ahead. The first ranks of the civilians fired too. There was no discipline to the volleys of las, but there was no way to miss, either. Orks went down. The humans cheered triumph and rage, loud enough to shake the walls of the passageway.

The orks didn’t return fire. They barrelled down the hall towards the Crusaders. A few more fell. Then Lanser drew his sword and ran forward. He couldn’t let the orks steal the momentum. The Crusaders charged with him.

The two forces collided. The humans had the numbers. The orks had the physical strength. The battle became a melee, a riot of blades and blood. The Crusaders’ arsenal was basic: lasguns and bayonets. Few had any armour. The orks all carried guns, but waded in with their own blades.

Lanser had fought the greenskins before. He was used to seeing their huge machetes and axes, but he had never felt his own weapons outclassed by the brutes’ armament. The weapons these orks wielded, and the forms of armour they wore, were as massive as ever, but it seemed that their exuberant brutality was the product of skill rather than crude overcompensation. Imperial blades dulled and bent against orkish plate. Imperial bodies came apart beneath orkish blows.

The floor was awash with blood. Lanser could barely move, caught in the crush of struggling human and greenskin bodies. The density of the struggle helped. The orks were crowded in as much as he was, and denied the leverage to use their greater strength to its full effect. He slipped his sword beneath the helmet of one beast. He drove the point up through the ork’s chin and into its brain. The press of bodies held the corpse upright long enough for him to withdraw the blade.

A taller ork made a noise that was snarl and laugh. It swung its cleaver at him. He couldn’t duck. He tilted his head to the side. It was enough. The blade sank into the side of the skull of the man behind him, chopping through at eye level. Lanser raised his laspistol and shot the ork in the centre of the forehead. The beast blinked, its skin smouldering with las burn. It pulled its arm back to strike again, knocking its smaller kin aside with the force of the gesture. Lanser fired again, five more times. He had to sear the ork’s face to slag before the monster finally dropped.

Lanser took half a step forward, walking on bodies. A huge fist struck him in the temple. Stunned, vision bleary, he lunged forward, sword extended. Luck or the Emperor’s hand guided his blow. The impact of the blade sinking through greenskin muscle to the heart almost dislocated his arm.

The orks kept coming. There was no forcing them back. They advanced, a battering ram of flesh that hit like stone and broke the human wall down. Step by step, the Crusaders were forced back down the hall. But they fought and they stabbed with last-chance desperation. They died by the dozens. The orks died one by one.

The numbers won.

Drenched in gore, Lanser leaned against the wall. He gasped for breath. His right side ached from a power claw hit. If the ork had been able to do more than glance him, he would have been crushed. As it was, he could feel the movement of broken ribs. He wondered how long it would be before a floating bone punctured a lung. He pushed away thoughts of a medicae bay. He didn’t have the luxury of that hope. He would be lucky to live long enough to die from this wound.

The corridor had become a slaughterhouse. The corpses of orks and humans lay in a mire of blood. Most of the ork bodies were still intact. Many of the humans were scattered remains. The stench was thick. Lanser felt like he was breathing blood and offal. Parten was as blood-soaked as he was, but none of her wounds were life-threatening. Bessler’s left arm had been crushed to jelly below the elbow. One of his troopers was applying a tourniquet to his stump. He was pale, barely keeping unconsciousness at bay. Both squads had been decimated. Two-thirds of the civilians had been killed. But they had won. The survivors’ eyes were wide with the dulled drunkenness of their victory.

Lanser pushed himself away from the wall.

‘Keep going,’ he called out, voice rasping. If they stopped to rest, they would lose the momentum of this hard triumph. Despair was one bad thought away. He started to walk, stumbled. He stopped, aware of the eyes on him, straightened, and when he was sure of his footing, started forward again. His gait was stronger. He wasn’t going to fall.

Ragged now, battered, slower, but desperate to fight because that was all they had left, Myrmidons and Crusaders headed for the bridge. Lanser kept hearing the sounds of combat, but they were always distant echoes, travelling through mazes of passageways to reach him. Whatever was happening, it was too far away for him to bring help. The bridge remained the goal.

Parten moved forward to join him. ‘Permission to ask a question, colonel?’

‘Go ahead, sergeant.’

‘How long can we hold them at the bridge?’

‘We’ll seal the door. Even when they breach it, the entrance is narrower than this corridor. I’ve seen it. That will create a bottleneck for them, an edge for us. We don’t have to defeat them here. Just hold them back long enough.’

‘For what?’

‘For us to reach the moon.’ He said it as if that would be the end of things. It will be, he thought.

She nodded, believing in his optimism or accepting their fate.

They climbed the levels from the cargo decks, up towards the bridge at the top of the superstructure. The echoes of battle became more distant. Maybe there was time, Lanser thought. Maybe they had pulled ahead of the ork boarding parties enough to establish something like a real defence.

At the base of the plain metal staircase leading to the bridge, he could hear activity from above. Purposeful, but not violent. That gave him hope. He ran up the stairs, his breath tearing into his lungs with a knife. The stairs ended in a wide passage leading port and starboard, with the doors to the bridge straight ahead.

There was blood on the deck. It seeped from the open doorway to the bridge; the orks were already here. The battle was over. The orks’ debased slave-race were hauling out the corpses of the crew and tossing them in piles lining the corridor walls. They glanced at Lanser. They snickered, then called out to their masters as they scampered back onto the bridge.

Lanser moved forward. He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel his arms, either. His body was a collection of disjointed fragments, all acting independently, all moving forward with no purpose. His brain was numb. He was a servitor, completing a hopeless task because there was nothing else to do.

His left arm raised his pistol. His fingers were clumsy. It was hard to fire. His right arm hung limp, dragging the point of his sword over the decking.

Noises behind him now. Cries, wails, the thudding of boots. Was that the whine of las-fire? Maybe. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. It was so far away.

An ork warboss emerged from the bridge, a giant that had to bend in half to fit under the doorway. The deck shook beneath its armoured feet. It looked like a tank that had learned to walk. When Lanser shot it, its lips parted in a smile, showing fangs the length of his hand, its eyes amused. When it backhanded him, shattering his skeleton and sending him flying back down the staircase, the gesture was casual, maybe even disappointed.

Maybe even bored.

The Expanse of Destiny pulled up. Its nose tilted towards the ork cruiser riding above the cloud of the Armada. The movement was emphatic and slow, a glacier with delusions of ramming. Narkissos was about to order Rallis to stay in its wake when he saw the ork fighters moving away, heading for other targets. The Expanse was not attempting a suicidal attack, he realised. She was already lost. Her new masters were taking the ship out of formation to join with the cruiser.

There was no shelter here now.

The irony of worrying about shelter, given his ship’s destination, passed through his mind for the length of time it took him to draw a breath. ‘Helmsman,’ he said to Rallis, ‘no more hiding. Time to run. Full power.’

‘There are other big ships,’ Kondos said.

‘They won’t be ours long, not at this rate.’

‘Exactly. Look.’

He always paid attention when Kondos made that request. Their shared gifts were the reason the Militant Fire had survived to see this day. He was the improviser. She saw the big picture. She took in the myriad variables of a situation, creating the map for Narkissos to navigate.

So he focused on the big ships. The ork squadrons were thick around them, tearing them open and inserting boarding parties. Away from the giants, the smaller ships were falling prey. Many were boarded. The smallest were destroyed. But the ones closest to the mass conveyors and factory ships were being ignored as the orks concentrated on the big prizes.

‘Port,’ Narkissos said. ‘Down thirty degrees. The Europa Forge.’

‘Behind the engines?’ Rallis asked, already making the course correction.

‘No. Keep up the speed.’ Beneath his feet, Narkissos could just detect the faint vibration in the deck as the Militant Fire powered up. She was ready to race for her life, for the lives of all aboard, and for the life of any hope of victory. ‘Skim by her. Then the Spreading Word.’ He pointed to the colony ship just beyond the Europa Forge. ‘Understand?’

‘I do.’

‘We have a fast ship, helmsman. Let’s prove it to the orks.’

‘They won’t even see us.’

‘That’s the whole idea,’ said Kondos.

The Militant Fire streaked towards the Europa Forge. ‘Like a stone over water,’ Narkissos urged, and Rallis took him at his word. He took the ship in at a low angle of approach, as if he might really land on the other vessel’s refinery. He passed over the superstructure. The orks were clustered on the flanks of the hull. For a moment, the run looked clear, but then another squadron appeared off the prow, heading straight for the bridge. The Fire was flying level with them.

‘Down!’ Narkissos yelled.

A few decades earlier, Rallis would have questioned such a reckless order. Once, in the early days of the helmsman’s service, Narkissos had forced him at gunpoint to perform a manoeuvre that Rallis had maintained would tear the ship apart. It hadn’t, and they had escaped faster, more agile raiders. Rallis no longer questioned him. He plunged into the insane as if he were piloting a fighter, not a cargo ship.

Rallis dropped the nose. The Militant Fire arrowed at the refinery. A collision could take out a large part of the fleet if the smaller ship punched through the plasma containment tanks.

The surface of the reservoirs came closer. The Fire was below the height of the chimney vents. They rose like a steel forest on either side. Narkissos felt the vertigo of rushing disaster, but he said nothing. He sensed Rallis’ need to pull up, but the helmsman maintained course.

Another second. Then another. The orks passing overhead. Wait. Wait. The impact in two breaths. Now.

‘Level us!’

One breath. The perspective of the oculus changed with tectonic lethargy. The second and last breath… The Militant Fire flew straight. The struts of the belly auspex array snapped off as they brushed against the Europa Forge’s reservoir. Ahead, the ship bulked upwards. The orks were now behind. ‘Up,’ Narkissos ordered at the same moment Rallis altered the course again. They pulled away from the Europa Forge. Rallis held them in a close parallel flight with it until they passed over the bow. Then he angled towards the Spreading Word.

Any form of order in the Merchants’ Armada had collapsed. The fleet was a storm of ships, boiling with evasions and captures. Collisions killed more vessels than the orks as panicked flights intersected. The Militant Fire flew through a dissipating fog of plasma. Fragments of wreckage tumbled by. As she closed with the Spreading Word, she encountered what Narkissos thought was another debris cloud. The remains were corpses, thousands of Crusaders, frozen in their last agony, sucked out of the open flanks of the colony ship.

For every ship that destroyed another, and for every one that was boarded, there were two that kept running. The fleet was a confusion of movement, but it still closed with the ork moon. Some of its elements raced far ahead of the others. The distance between ships grew. The sense of a collective action disintegrated, but there were so many vessels that there was still a crowd, still a mass migration of humans towards the fortress.

Closer yet. Narkissos had to guard against the temptation to gaze at the moon’s gorgon image and lose the thread of the moment-by-moment decisions needed to see the Militant Fire to its destination. He was sweating. He was frightened. His ship’s path was crossed again and again by squadrons of brutal predators. On all sides, the heroes of the Proletarian Crusade were dying, killed on boarded ships, ejected into the void, or vaporised by collisions. But he was also exhilarated because the Fire was not alone in its race. There was more than terror, flight and destruction visible in the oculus. There was also determination. There was strength. There were no more ork fighters emerging from the star fortress. For the first time, Narkissos dared imagine that their resources were not infinite.

The strategy that Speaker Tull had conceived was working. The Imperium had turned the orks’ own tactics against them. ‘We’re going to do it,’ Narkissos said, turning hope into words. ‘We’re going to flood them with our numbers.’ What he said was an incantation, an attempt at a great alchemy: hope into words, words into reality.

‘Port, upper quadrant,’ Kondos said.

Narkissos looked. ‘Are you serious?’ Kondos had indicated one of the ork cruisers. The Militant Fire was ahead of almost all the large ships now. Most of the Imperial vessels in its company were smaller than it was.

‘Why not?’ Kondos asked. ‘Aren’t we trying to get close to the greenskins?’

Narkissos grinned. ‘Yes, we are.’ There were very few ork fighters near the cruiser. The big ship was doing little beyond being a massive escort, protecting the squadrons against non-existent Imperial fire. ‘Helmsman, let’s embrace the madness.’

He imagined he could actually hear the blood drain from the faces of the bridge crew. He laughed. It was that or let terror close his throat altogether. Rallis muttered prayers under his breath, but turned the Fire’s nose towards the ork monster. They closed the distance quickly. They shot past a handful of ork fighters, which ignored them. Narkissos wondered what the greenskins thought when they saw his ship’s trajectory. Could orks be stunned by the lunacy of an adversary? It pleased him to think so.

The thought that the orks just ignored the ship pleased him less, because behind it lurked the question of why they would not care.

The Militant Fire flew beneath the cruiser’s hull. Narkissos had a sense of metal dense as muscle, large as a city. The cruiser was a hellish god that could annihilate his ship with as little notice as he would swat an insect.

His shoulders hunched, as if the image alone of the ork vessel could crush him. But then they left it behind too.

And now there was only the moon. The dark divinity of the cruiser faded to nothing. The star fortress filled the oculus. Narkissos confronted an entire world built for war. The monstrosity became all that was real, and it was a reality that was shaped to enact a greater monster’s will. It was a reality that travelled.

There was too much impossible in his vision. Too much horror. In defence of his sanity, he narrowed his focus to the geography, to the purpose of landing his ship where there was no space port. He concentrated on what he knew would be the last act of his career.

Tunnel vision. He saw mountains, and he tuned out their constructed nature. He looked for a plain. He clutched the dream of victory. It held reality at bay.

Fuelled by the dream, followed by hundreds more dreaming vessels, the Militant Fire brought Juskina Tull’s vision to the orks.

Sixteen

The ork moon

The moon had an atmosphere. The air was foul, ashy, reeking of burning gases and the effluvium of xenos industry. It was thin. When the Militant Fire’s cargo door opened, Haas felt the immediate urge to gasp. Yet the air was breathable, and no worse than the more toxic hives of Terra, except for the stench of the inhuman. The smell was acrid, a mixture of filthy industry and the foul organic. Though it was dry, it had the cloying grip of high humidity. Above all, it was an odour that she had never encountered before, and she bristled, a hunted animal reacting to the approach of the predator. The air had a taste, too. Haas wanted to spit. Her mouth was full of iron, promethium and rotten blood.

The wind had a hollow, rasping sound, a snarl echoing through organ pipes.

An atmosphere. The orks had given their artificial planetoid a surface atmosphere. There was no reason for them to do so. The outside of the star fortress showed no sign of life. The greenskins had performed a gigantic technological feat, it seemed, simply because they could. That excess of power was daunting.

The surface visible from the ship was pockmarked rock, with no dust. The patchwork quality of the planetoid extended even to what had appeared from orbit to be natural formations. The orks had done more than carve an existing moon into the canyons and mountain ranges that suited them or raise barriers thousands of metres high and hundreds of kilometres long. Haas had the disturbing impression that they had assembled the fortress out of the pieces of other moons. They had created a world out of nothing.

How can we defeat an enemy that powerful?

Through their mistakes.

Kord refused to disembark. He hung back at the rear as the civilians and Imperial Guard descended the ramp. He walked slowly, and when he reached the door, he stopped.

‘What are you doing?’ Haas demanded. She had joined him for the landing out of consideration of their partnership on Terra, but her patience was exhausted. The man who had talked up the Crusade had become a shameful specimen.

Kord stared at the expanse of the ork moon before them. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Get down or I’ll shoot you myself.’

‘No,’ said a third voice. ‘You will not.’

She turned around. The last of the Astra Militarum contingents to disembark were the Jupiter Storm. Commissar Sever had come up behind them. ‘You are under military command now,’ he said. ‘That decision is not yours.’

‘I understand,’ Haas said. She stepped to one side.

Sever regarded Kord with a cold, absolute contempt. ‘Disembark,’ he said.

Kord spread his hands, pleading. ‘I—’ he began.

Sever pulled his bolt pistol out of its holster and shot Kord in the left eye. The Arbitrator’s skull exploded. Blood splashed Haas’ armour.

Sever turned to her.

‘Thank you, commissar,’ Haas said, ‘for preserving the honour of the Adeptus Arbites.’

She followed the Jupiter Storm out of the Militant Fire.

‘They got greedy,’ said Captain Fernau of the Orion Watch. ‘They made a mistake.’ His laugh was relieved. ‘So they can make mistakes.’

Gattan grunted. He wanted to believe Fernau. He didn’t dare. He had to take the realities of the battlefield as they unfolded, not as he would wish them to be. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.

Fernau took in the deployment with a wide sweep of his arm. ‘We are seeing.’

They were standing on the upper hull of the Militant Fire. They had a view of the plain where the ships had come down, and of the mustering of the army.

The plain was fifty kilometres wide, bracketed by mountain chains that lost height as they converged to the south. That meeting point, fifteen kilometres away, was the target. During the descent, several ships had observed what looked like a massive gate closing. The Crusade needed a way inside the fortress, and the plain’s size and proximity to the goal made it a suitable starting point.

Maybe Fernau was right, Gattan thought. The orks had taken many of the larger ships, but they had not sent out anything close to enough fighters to stop the Armada. Hundreds more vessels had made it through. By lighter, by shuttle, and by ships that would never take off again, legions of Crusaders had put boots to soil. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and now millions. Gattan had never been part of an operation on this scale. A sea of warriors hungry for greenskin blood stretching back as far as he could see on land flat as sheet metal. The sight made the toll the orks had exacted seem insignificant. This was a triumph. Wasn’t it?

Fernau thought so. Gattan was uneasy. There were enough companies of Astra Militarum left for some kind of coordination, but the losses had been great. Though the banners of the Jupiter Storm, Granite Myrmidons, Orion Watch, Auroran Rifles and the Eagles of Nazca were raised high, and the uniforms of each regiment were beyond counting, the vast majority of those uniforms were worn by civilians. Most of the heavy armour had been captured. All the senior officers had been aboard the big ships. There was no one ranking higher than captain on the ground.

At least they’d been able to establish vox-communication with each other even as they were landing. And the broad lines of the strategy had been established before the Armada had left Terra. There had been enough guidance to make the target clear. The deployment itself had to be simple. There was little to be done with the civilians except to send them marching in the right direction with instructions to shoot the enemy.

A squadron of ork bombers roared overhead. It did not attack. Neither had the few others that had overflown the landing site during the last few hours.

‘What are they doing?’ Gattan wondered aloud.

‘Reconnaissance,’ Fernau answered.

‘Unusual restraint. We’re a very big target.’

‘Too big. Nothing flights of that size can take on.’

‘So where are the others?’

Fernau shrugged. ‘Not here, so no help to them. They’re making more mistakes. Giving us a chance to move against them.’

Maybe. In the end, the truth didn’t matter. There was only one course of action open.

Its engine growling, a Chimera pulled up beside the Militant Fire. Gattan clasped forearms with Fernau. ‘For Terra and the Emperor,’ he said.

‘For Terra and the Emperor.’

Gattan climbed down onto the roof of his command vehicle. Another rumbled up behind it to collect Fernau.

The march began. The heavy armour that had reached the star fortress led the way. Over a hundred Leman Russ battle tanks in all their variants, and half that number of Chimeras and Hellhounds formed something too wide to be called a wedge. They were an advancing wall. The surface of the moon vibrated with the force of their passing. Behind them came the foot soldiers of the Proletarian Crusade. Slowly at first, but then with mounting momentum, the immense army advanced on the gates to the enemy stronghold.

Haas was in the leading elements of the attack, moving at a forced march speed behind the armour. She could see nothing ahead of her except iron and blue-black exhaust. Her ears rang with the roar of engines, but the guns were silent for now. The orks had not yet attacked.

She looked up into the sky. The Crusade was on the night side of the planetoid. She could see Terra, large in its shining majesty, small in its vulnerability. That was what she had come here to protect. As long as she could see Terra, she wouldn’t mind dying in this place. The ork moon had besieged the consciousness of every soul on Terra for weeks. Now the orks were the ones besieged. That in itself was a victory. We’ve come this far, Haas thought, and you failed to stop us. You’ll fail again.

Though her lungs laboured, her strides became stronger. She moved faster. She felt the hand of the Emperor at her back, and she gave thanks.

Though it was night, the visibility on the surface of the moon was high. To the reflected light from Terra was added a glow from the mountain ranges. They were lined with what looked like veins of molten lava. A wash of red reached across the plain.

The mountains jutted like a monster’s teeth from the plain. There were no foothills, no rise of the land, no transition at all between a featureless level and the brutal vertical. The peaks could not be climbed. They were an absolute barrier. The valley between the mountain chains narrowed quickly, and Haas was close enough to the western range to see the welds on them, the seams between an infinity of overlapping metal plates, as if the orks had begun constructing a ship’s hull and been unable to stop. The jagged, crooked, intersecting streams of light were not lava. They looked even more like blood flowing just beneath the iron flesh. The mix of the geological, the artificial and the organic was unnerving.

An hour into the march, a glow appeared in the distance, where the mountain chains met. It was a false sunrise in the eternal night. The light was a sullen red with irregular pulses of green.

‘We have a target!’ The voice over the vox-casters was Gattan’s. Haas could just see him, two vehicles ahead, riding high in the open hatch of the Chimera.

The march became a charge. Haas began to run. They had overwhelmed the orks this far. They would do it again.

‘They’re going to open the gate,’ Gattan voxed his fellow captains.

‘Good,’ said Fernau.

The light at the juncture of the mountain chains grew brighter. Then the clamour began. From the centre of the light came the orks. They began as a boiling disturbance in the distance. The threat gathered definition. Within minutes, Gattan could make out the figures of individual orks. Coming up the middle of the infantry were Battlewagons. As far as Gattan could tell, the human tanks outnumbered the ork vehicles. In spite of himself, he grinned in anticipation.

Closer. The mountain chains were only a kilometre apart now. The yowling celebration of the greenskins competed with the war chants of the Astra Militarum and the shouted prayers of the civilians. Gattan tried to guess the size of the ork army. Thousands, he thought. It seemed a much smaller force than the human one. The Crusaders were a solid wall across the entire width of the plain. The orks were in a narrower formation.

Closer.

‘Fire!’ Gattan ordered, and the other captains echoed his command.

The Leman Russ cannons opened up. A wide cluster of blasts chewed up the ork advance. The barrage battered one of the lead Battlewagons to scrap. There was a strange cleanness to the explosions. Fireballs hurled chunks of bodies skyward, but there was no dust, no rocky debris. The shells left the surface of the moon unscarred.

The orks rushed on, unfazed by their losses.

The snarls and the prayers and the chants and the cannon fire and the pounding of running feet were all one, a giant, indistinguishable cacophony of war. The gap between the two armies shrank to nothing.

Impact.

The orks hit the wall of the Imperial armour. They broke against it like foam on rocks. Gattan felt the Chimera jolt as it ran over greenskin bodies. The Hellhounds sent out a torrent of flame over the enemy. For several seconds, the mechanised Imperial advance achieved a total purge. But the orks kept coming. Faster brutes and stronger ones pushed through the spaces between the vehicles and fell on the human infantry. Gattan manned the heavy bolter, gunning down as many as he could. He couldn’t get them all. Over the sound of the guns, he heard the rising wave of screams and snarls as the melee began.

Human and ork tanks fired at each other at point-blank range. Every shot hit. The vehicles of both forces disintegrated in flames and tearing metal, their deaths savaging nearby infantry. The losses mounted, but the greater human numbers made the difference. The advance slowed, but it did not stop.

‘Faster!’ Gattan ordered. ‘Get us through!’ The Chimera’s armour wasn’t as thick as a Leman Russ’. It had already taken one hit that would have incinerated Gattan if he hadn’t ducked down the hatch the second before the shell struck. He was back up again the next instant, making himself visible to both orks and humans. Let one fear him, he thought, and the other take heart from his defiance.

Forward still, with more and more of the ork Battlewagons down. Gattan could see past them to the open gate itself. Then a huge shape emerged from the entrance. His eyes widened. ‘Hard right!’ he yelled. ‘Evasive—’

He couldn’t hear his words as the enormous gun of the ork battle fortress roared. The shell blew up a Hellhound close to Gattan’s left. He turned his head away from the heat of the flames as the vehicle’s ignited promethium reserves splashed outward, immolating human and ork alike.

The new ork tank was immense, four times the size of any other vehicle on the field. Its main gun looked like it belonged on a cruiser. The ork foot soldiers hooted their derision at the humans as they swarmed past their monster. The battle fortress moved forward slowly. Each shot was a high-explosive bomb, and each killed another Imperial tank. The few that missed made huge craters of human flesh in the infantry.

‘Surround it!’ said Gattan. ‘All vehicles concentrate fire on this target!’

Clicks of acknowledgement on the vox, and Gattan had a moment to wonder when the overall leadership of the attack had fallen to him. Then there were no thoughts but the destruction of the monster. Leman Russ, Hellhound and Chimera encircled the battle fortress. Its gigantic turret moved with a sluggish laziness and picked them off one at a time. Their shells were pinpricks against its armour.

Gattan prayed that the accumulation of pinpricks would be enough.

The turret gradually moved his way. The Chimera kept circling, but the gun moved closer, each terrible blast consigning more of Terra’s regiments to oblivion. Fernau’s curses were cut off by a vox-squeal as his Chimera vanished.

But the miracle happened. Gattan saw cracks appear in the battle fortress’ flanks. The fissures glowed red, then orange, then white. Even as he shouted to keep firing, that they were besting the monster, a terrible thought came to him.

He realised that this was too easy.

He realised too late.

The battle fortress exploded.

Haas threw herself down as the blast slammed fire and wind over both armies. The charge of the ork infantry had pushed her back even as other Crusaders, closer to the tanks, had continued to move forward. They were swallowed by the death of the battle fortress. The boom, so loud it was a physical force, echoed back and forth between the mountain chains. When it faded, all that remained of Imperial and ork armour was a coral reef of smoking, twisted metal.

Ork reinforcements came leaping over the ruins. They slammed into the stunned Crusaders like a battering ram. They smashed through the soft bodies of humans, advancing dozens of metres before the sheer volume of Crusaders slowed them down. The orks laid into the butchery with chainblades and power claws. For several seconds, the human force disintegrated further, its untrained warriors ground to pulp, their blood splashing over their comrades and killers alike, staining the ground red with the taint of folly. Many civilians broke and ran.

‘Fight or die, cowards!’ Sever, his uniform shredded and smoking, his face pouring blood, strode past Haas. Then he yelled, ‘Now!’ and ducked.

Haas did the same. So did the Crusaders whose discipline still held, who listened to orders, who understood. Dozens more were cut down by friendly fire, clearing the way for the disciplined, concentrated volleys of las from a platoon of the Jupiter Storm to cut into the ork flanks. Grenades followed. The blasts killed humans too. Needed sacrifices as the counter-attack began to eat into the ork column.

The greenskins fired back. They began to spread out. Their flank grew longer, opening up more opportunities for the Crusaders. Haas saw hers and rushed in. She drove her shock maul down on the skull of an ork that was reaching for Sever. The brute stumbled, stunned by the discharge. While it was slowed, she fired her laspistol into its eyes.

Her training was in the suppression of mobs, not military combat. But she looked at the orks as a well-armed mob, and her instincts kept her alive. In their undisciplined rampage, they reminded her of rebellious underhive gangs. But much stronger.

She took a step back as her target dropped. She hunched down, using its body as a shield. The next orks rushing forward swung without looking for her. Their blades went wide. She fired up, blinding one, then caught it in the face with the maul as it fell forward, tripping over the corpse of its fellow. Another brought its cleaver in too quickly for her to dodge. She turned her body and caught the blade in her pauldron. She rammed the shock maul into the greenskin’s belly. It snarled in anger. It was too big, too powerful to stun, but it reflexively lost its grip on its blade. It reached for her throat with both hands.

She fired into its face at the same time that Sever did. She looked at the commissar just as he was struck from behind. He dropped to his knees. She fired at the ork towering over him while she lashed out blindly to either side with her shock maul, trying to stave off an ambush on herself.

There were orks on all sides. She and Sever were drowning in the green tide.

Haas’ maul struck bodies, drawing grunts. Her shots didn’t kill the ork over Sever. It was too big. But they drew its attention. It came for her, a colossus in spiked metal plate wielding a large hammer. Sever must have been hit by the most glancing of blows.

A hit from an ork behind her clipped Haas’ helmet and struck the cleaver still embedded in her shoulder’s ablative armour. The blade went deeper, drawing blood, before it fell out. She fell towards the giant, tucking herself into the tumble and rolling along the ground between the ork’s legs. She spun around and fired at its back.

The las did nothing against its armour. It turned, but then there were hands pulling her and Sever out of its path, and a storm surge of Crusaders, brandishing bayonets, crashed into the monster. It roared at them, smashed heads to pulp with its hammer, but they kept coming in endless, desperate frenzy. There were so many, they climbed over each other as they struck at the ork. Haas made it to her feet. Sever was already up, exhorting the civilians who streamed by on either side, buffeting him in their rush. She witnessed the impossible: an ork submerged by the human tide.

Dozens of Crusaders died. But they trampled the ork to death.

A group of orks came back hard, avenging their leader, and the greenskin formation was diluted still further. More platoons of Imperial Guard closed in. They turned heavy weapons on the orks. Rockets and flamers exterminated unlucky humans as well, but there were fewer greenskins, and always more humans.

We’re fighting like them, Haas realised, and that part of her mind that could still think critically was horrified that the children of the Emperor had reached this state. The rest of her met savagery with savagery, and she rejoiced to see the enemy’s advance slowed, then stopped.

Then reversed.

Haas didn’t realise, at first, that the miracle was happening. She and Sever were moving forward, acting as a coordinated pair against each foe. Forward, forward, forward, over the wreckage of the tanks, and at last it registered that they were never stepping back, and that the direction was consistent, and that they were speeding up.

The orks were retreating, and they were dying as they did so.

The Crusaders pursued. They tasted blood and victory, and the roar was unlike anything Haas had yet heard. There was all the hope and all the desperation that had fuelled the great cries of defiance on Terra. But now the enemy was before them, and the enemy was running, here, on its great machine of war that was the source of globe-spanning terror. The orks were fleeing. They could be defeated. In the name of the Emperor, they were defeated. The xenos threat that had annihilated the Imperial Fists was being routed by an army that had little more than faith and dire need behind it.

Haas joined in the shout. Her throat and her lungs were scraped raw by the air. She didn’t care. She was part of the triumph. Expelling all of the awful fear of the last days, she howled her hate and feral joy. She raced after the orks, and she was part of a massive wave of humanity so powerful it must surely sweep mountains aside.

The tiny part of her consciousness that still thought tactically wondered why the reinforcing ork army had not been larger. It wondered why it had all been infantry. It wondered why there had been no tanks, no artillery and no heavy weapons of any kind.

None of these questions mattered. Not now. Not in this moment of moments.

The orks retreated faster. They put distance between themselves and the humans. Haas was frustrated not to have more greenskin blood on her hands, but she rejoiced that the enemy was so desperate to escape.

The Crusaders were close now to the light, the glow that came from underground. At the point where the ranges met, Haas could now see that immense doors had slid apart to allow the orks to come up a ramp wide enough to accommodate a dozen tanks abreast of each other. The greenskins pounded down the steep slope, and the doors began to close. They were huge, metres thick, tall as a hab-block, but set in the ground only twenty degrees from the horizontal. With the leading edge of the human wave still several hundred metres away, they began to slide closed.

So did the mountains.

The ground beneath Haas’ feet shook, throwing her down. The grinding of a vast mechanism reached up through stone. And the mountains walked. The event was too great, too impossible, so that her mind refused for several seconds to accept what her eyes saw. The ranges moved towards each other with a metallic rumble that was the voice of an entire world. The moon was changing before her eyes.

Thousands of metres high, dozens of kilometres long, the barriers were coming together to form the last of all walls. The Crusaders had run into a trap that would kill millions at a stroke.

The race halted. The roar turned into screams. There was nowhere to run. The ships were too far. The mountain faces were sheer and high. There was time only for the fullness of terror to take hold.

‘Go!’ Sever yelled. ‘Deny them this victory!’

Only Haas heard him.

She ran for the doors. There was still an opening several metres wide. It shrank at an unhurried pace. It still might be too fast, because the shaking of the ground was so intense, she couldn’t run in a straight line.

Haas looked at nothing but her goal. The world was closing in on both sides of her. There was no sound except the apocalypse rumble of metal and stone. There was also no one in front of her. She had the lead.

She pushed all thought away. She banished hope. She ignored the pain in her lungs and her legs. She became a thing of one movement alone. If there were other runners near her, she didn’t know. They didn’t matter. Her flight mattered. The mountains mattered. Nothing else.

Adrenaline gave her wings. The limits of the human body clipped them. She was slowing down, a dozen metres from the end of the line, and the doors had almost shut. But something was happening behind her. A new sound had begun, almost as loud as the rumble. It was a sound that was wet, and cracked. The air became thick, coppery, moist.

A few more steps, her legs stumping like rotten logs. Was she still running? It seemed she was crawling. And a river of blood, foaming, torrential, rushed ahead of her. It lapped at the doors as if it would quench their thirst. The mountains were less than ten metres apart. She could see both sides in her peripheral vision. The edges of the world closed in. The entrance shrank. She wouldn’t make it. She was too far.

Grind and rumble and screams torn apart by the edges of splintering bones. The sound of an ocean snapping into shards. The blood surged. Torrent became deluge, became tidal wave. It lifted her up. She tumbled in the flow, gagging and choking. Her vision became a whirl of jagged horrors, the darkness of the blood tide giving way to the momentary sight of what lay behind, of the climbing swell of bodies rising to the heavens, millions of people fused into a mass of broken dolls. A flash of Sever disappearing beneath the blood. Up and down, over and over, tossed by the pressurised current, battered by the flotsam of bones. She lost her weapons. She tried to swim, but she was an insect in the clutches of the moon’s fist. Drowning, soul blasted by the hell-vision, she had no thoughts, no hope, no awareness at all. She had only her last instinct, the bodily drive to struggle, even when all point had been lost.

The world was nightmare. The world was speed and pain and the warm choking in her lungs and the towering shadows finally meeting. She hit something very large and solid. She started to black out. Then she was moving down, and still down, and the violence of the torrent faded.

Behind and above, a great, final, echoing boom. The blood released her.

She gagged, vomited blood. She wiped the gore from her eyes. She was lying on a slope, surrounded by red light pulsing green. On either side were moving pistons like great towers, gears the size of cathedrals. Below, she heard the stir of an uncountable army, of a strength in weapons and ships that denied all measure.

She was inside the moon.

Narkissos and Kondos watched the mountains come together from the ramp leading to the Militant Fire’s primary cargo bay. Narkissos felt a jolt up his spine, and realised he had sat down. His legs refused to hold him. Kondos remained standing, motionless, as if the sight had turned her to stone.

In the first seconds of the trap’s activation, Narkissos had thought the chains in their entirety were moving. They were not. The orks had constructed them in sections. Only the region of the plain where the Crusaders marched was sealed between the towering walls. The landing zone was untouched.

Kondos whispered something.

‘What did you say?’ Narkissos asked. He couldn’t hear her over the fading echoes of the metallic death of hope.

‘They never bombed us,’ she repeated.

‘No, they didn’t.’ He struggled to his feet and wobbled down the rest of the ramp. There wasn’t much left to do. A shedding of denial, a full acknowledgement of the scale of defeat, was perhaps the only trace of heroism that could still be claimed. He turned around, looking at the plain, at the hundreds of ships that had reached the star fortress. The fleet that the orks had allowed to come this far.

He looked up. There were great vessels at low anchor. He could see their lights. Two of those would be the ork cruisers. The others were the spoils of war, boarded and captured by the orks. Narkissos understood that the Militant Fire’s heroic run through the gauntlet had been a farce. The orks had boarded only those vessels which would not be able to make moonfall. They had let the others deliver themselves into their hands, and had destroyed the ones not worth their bother.

We gave them the Armada, he thought.

Stretching almost to the horizon, with only skeleton crews remaining, the ships waited for the conquerors to arrive.

They came while Narkissos stood there. Around the periphery of the plain, at the base of the metal mountains, the great doors opened, releasing the green tide.

Narkissos walked back to the ramp. He joined Kondos, and together they re-entered the ship. They closed her down, and retreated to the bridge, along with what crew remained. They armed themselves.

The struggle would be brief and futile, Narkissos knew. But he would die fighting. He wanted his life to have had that much meaning, at least.

The pounding began.

Seventeen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

There was no scream. No cry. Now the time of the great silence had come. The eyes of the people of Terra had been on the ork moon. No one had expected to see the Crusade, though the collective imagination of the Emperor’s subjects had landed with the Armada.

All who were watching saw the end of the Crusade. The movement of the mountains was visible from Terra. It looked like an eye closing, a wink, a mockery directed at its hapless prey.

Vangorich saw it happen from the Cerebrium. He was alone. The other High Lords were in session. They had remained in the Great Chamber for the length of the Crusade. The effort had been less heroic than they had expected. The war had lasted less than a day.

The movement seemed small on the surface of the planetoid. It was a minor rearrangement of its geography. Vangorich knew what it meant, though. He had told himself that he had nothing invested in Tull’s folly. He was wrong. He discovered that when he felt a vice crush something in his chest.

He thought of the reports that had come back about the star fortress over Ardamantua. How it had been a face. How it had spoken. He hadn’t thought about the scale involved in such movement. He did now. He pictured being on the surface of the moon, of being caught in that collision of mountain chains.

Of being so insignificant that so small a gesture extinguished him.

He sighed and left the Cerebrium. He supposed he should be present for the end of the farce in the Great Chamber. He would bear witness. If Wienand, or a saviour not yet present in the Sol System, produced a miracle, then there would still be a reckoning.

He encountered the silence when he entered the Great Chamber. The parliament was as full as it had been at the launch of the Crusade. The assembly sat, robbed of volition. A hundred thousand servants of the Imperium, empty. There were some sobs. The weeping was so scattered and weak that it made the silence all the more palpable.

The stillness extended to the dais. Juskina Tull had been the presiding presence on the dais for the entire duration of the Crusade. As word of the landings had arrived, she had grown even more in stature, her energy of speech and gesture reaching for the superhuman. Now she was shrunken on herself. Her face, wan, seemed to vanish beneath the dead hand of her robes’ glamour.

Vangorich thought of that moment, walking with Veritus in the aftermath of Tull’s first speech, when he had contemplated the assassination of Tull and all the Lords who had stood with her. He had judged the move pointless. He believed he had been correct. Even so, he regretted the decision, and thought, I carry my portion of the day’s shame.

The pict screens that had been installed around the dais showed static.

Vangorich mounted the dais. He evaluated the silence of the other High Lords. Tull’s allies were as defeated as she was. Fabricator General Kubik was looking from static to static on the screens. Now and then, he uttered a short burst of binary cant, as if making notes to himself. Veritus looked thoughtful, but far from defeated.

‘Are you going to share your optimism with the rest of the Senatorum, inquisitor?’ Vangorich asked. ‘Do you see a way forward?’

Veritus frowned. ‘Your levity is misplaced,’ he said.

‘Is it?’ He paused, then nodded. ‘I believe you’re right.’ He turned his gaze on Tull and her allies. ‘We’ve had enough of lunatic frivolities.’

The screen to the left of Udo’s throne flickered back to life. ‘It’s Lansung,’ the Lord Commander said.

Lansung’s image steadied. ‘We’ve picked up a signal,’ he said. ‘A ship has left the ork moon. It’s on a trajectory for Terra.’

‘The attack has begun?’ Verreault asked.

‘No. This is a single ship. It’s Terran, and transmitting identification codes. It’s a merchant vessel. The Militant Fire.’

‘What is your recommendation, Lord High Admiral?’ Vangorich asked.

‘To let it arrive. This can’t possibly be the invasion.’

‘Then what is it?’ Ekharth asked. The Master of the Administratum’s cry was childlike.

It snapped Mesring from his catatonia. The glow of inspiration suffused his face. He stood up. He began to speak.

Encouraged by the Ecclesiarch, Ekharth’s cry was taken up. It emerged from the silence, a reed-thin complaint from the depths of an echoing well. What is it? What is it? What is it? The news of the approaching ship rippled out from the Great Chamber to spread across Terra. The ship could be seen only by Terra’s sensor arrays, but the haunted souls who stared at the moon imagined they could trace the path of the Militant Fire.

What is it? What is it? What is it?

Mesring’s sermon fed the question. It offered no answers. It took theories apart. The orks were not attacking. The ship could not be a doomsday weapon, because it was too small, and what would be the point?

‘Perhaps,’ Mesring said, ‘we are witness to a miracle. Perhaps, by the grace of the Father of Mankind, this blessed vessel has been delivered from our foe.’

An escape. The flight of a single ship could not offer true hope. But it was a dream.

What is it?

It is a sign.

The cry of frightened children was answered by a call to prayer. Summoned, the people came. Faith was the last refuge. They turned to it with a vengeance. The Militant Fire lay at the heart of the prayers. The people did not look to it for hope, but they prayed to the God-Emperor that it would become the source of hope.

In the Great Chamber, Mesring led the Senatorum in worship. Vangorich watched him with a mixture of contempt and admiration. Tull’s moment had passed. The power dynamic of the High Lords had been in flux again with the failure of the Proletarian Crusade, and within minutes Mesring had the whip hand. Impressive. And pointless. How long did Mesring think the orks would allow him to enjoy his supremacy?

Mesring’s sermon was not long. He gave the yearning of the populace a shape, then cast them back into a silence from which his voice would only be the more welcome when it returned. He sat down and bowed his head, his hands clasped.

Vangorich rose. He walked over to stand before the Ecclesiarch. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What if there is no miracle aboard that ship?’

Mesring looked up. He was calm as only a man who was as devout as he was devious could be. ‘Then we will need our spiritual strength all the more.’

Vangorich swallowed his disgust and turned to Verreault. ‘Is the Astra Militarum putting all of its trust into the divine?’

‘A company of the Lucifer Blacks will meet the ship.’

‘But not you.’

‘My place is here.’

Of course it was. There might be more power plays in the time it would take for the Fire to arrive. The High Lords would be keeping each other under observation.

Vangorich left. All he would see here would be the rearranging of furniture in a burning house.

He made his way to the Daylight Wall. The Lucifer Blacks were attempting to take the place of the Imperial Fists. The sight of simple mortals in guard posts that had been manned by giants drove the loss home again. Vangorich spoke to the officer of the watch. The ship, he learned, was transmitting a request for permission to land at the Inner Palace’s pocket space port. Vangorich considered the risk that the ship might be a bomb, come to wipe out the Terran leadership. The idea was so far removed from every aspect of the ork way of war that he snorted.

He passed through the gates of the Wall. He would meet the ship, and whatever news it brought.

The space port was not far beyond the Daylight Wall, and was visible from the High Gardens. It was reserved for high dignitaries from other systems and could accommodate a handful of lighters at a time. The Militant Fire, though a small merchant ship, was large for the space. When it arrived, Vangorich watched with approval as its pilot dropped the vessel between the spires of the Imperial Palace with an assured precision. Retro-rockets extinguished, exhaust from the descent dissipating into the grimy air of the palace, the ship sat in gathering silence for several minutes before a door rose on the port side of nose. A staircase descended. Then nothing more for a few minutes. The Lucifer Blacks’ rifles were trained on the dark entranceway.

The figure that at last appeared was human enough. The man’s clothes were expensive, though his coat was torn now. His face was grey with exhaustion and fear. He raised his arms over his head. ‘My name is Leander Narkissos,’ he said. ‘Captain of the Militant Fire. Please don’t shoot. No one on the ship is armed.’ He waited, looking like a man who didn’t particularly care if he was gunned down.

Vangorich walked forward on the landing pad and joined the commanding officer of the Lucifer Blacks. ‘What is your name, captain?’

‘Mercado, Grand Master.’

‘The situation is tense, I know, and so are your troops. Unthinking fire is the last thing we need at this juncture, don’t you agree?’ He kept his voice calm, his tone light.

Mercado nodded. ‘Hold fire,’ he shouted. ‘Weapons down, but keep them ready.’

‘Come down,’ Vangorich called to Narkissos, and he advanced until he was a few metres away from the base of the steps, visible to all the nervous soldiers.

Narkissos lowered his arms and took the stairs slowly. He wobbled when he reached the landing pad.

Vangorich stepped forward and steadied him. ‘Did you escape?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Narkissos looked back up at the doorway. ‘They want to be escorted to the Senatorum.’

Vangorich followed his gaze. He almost asked, Who? but he knew the answer. Beneath the denial that even he maintained for the sake of his sanity, he had known since the ship’s approach was first detected.

Three orks appeared. They descended the steps, and then they were there, on the landing pad, on Terra, near the heart of the Imperial Palace. Vangorich was not religious, yet his stomach turned at the obscenity of the greenskins’ presence.

He fought down his atavistic response. He shouted ‘Hold your fire!’ because the Lucifer Blacks would need to hear that command again. He forced himself to examine the orks so he, at least, might have some rational understanding of the Imperium’s foe. He already knew he would be one of the few, apart from Kubik, to be capable of clear thought, and he didn’t trust the Fabricator General to be candid with his insights.

Vangorich had studied all the reports the Mechanicus had made available about the resurgent orks. He had also read more than a few documents that the cult of the Omnissiah had preferred to keep to itself. One of the recurring themes of the studies, which the Mechanicus emphasised with undisguised enthusiasm, was novelty. These orks kept producing new weapons, acting in new ways. The pattern continued now. Vangorich looked at the orks before him, and felt another unwelcome shock of the new. All three were big. Two of them were a full head taller than he was. The third was half again as large. A leader and two subordinates, then. They wore thick leather, decorated with the brutal signs of the ork clans. The clothing seemed more like robes of office than armour.

What alarmed Vangorich most was not the unusual garb, though, but what the orks did not have.

They were unarmed.

Vangorich stared at this impossibility. The leader held a staff. It was three metres long, made of iron. Its girth was decorated with clusters of skulls. Some were human, others eldar, and many from species Vangorich didn’t recognise. The skulls were iron also, their jaws agape in an agony of death. Real teeth hung from a coil of wire that spiralled the length of the staff. The crown was a representation of an ork face, snarling in victory and hunger. The staff was formidable, but it was not a weapon. By the standards of what Vangorich knew about the greenskins, it was an artistic masterpiece.

The orks watched him steadily. They were calm, motionless, and so even more disturbing.

All it would take on his part was a simple gesture. He could turn his head, nod at Mercado, and the orks would be gunned down.

The consequences of that choice, he knew, would not be pleasant.

‘Follow me,’ he said to Narkissos.

The Lucifer Blacks followed. He led a dark procession to the Great Chamber. Vangorich was conscious of every heavy step of the orks behind him. Xenos boots on Terran marble beat the rhythm of the Imperium’s humiliation, and of the craven failure of the High Lords. He counted himself among the guilty. What did he have to show for his machinations? Playing host to the invader.

Narkissos walked like a man approaching his execution.

‘Tell me who they are,’ Vangorich said.

The trader whispered a terrible word. ‘Ambassadors.’

‘That isn’t possible.’

‘I know.’

So it was true, then. Vangorich felt colder inside with every passing moment.

Their arrival in the Great Chamber was greeted by a collective gasp followed by a growing murmur of rage. Udo rose from his seat. He pointed at Narkissos.

‘What have you brought into this sacred place?’ he thundered.

There was no threat in his bluster. He was an empty gesture given embodiment. Narkissos didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at the Lord Commander. His eyes were unfocused. He was staring at something more vivid and frightening than the High Lords or the orks. A recent memory, perhaps, or a vision of the near future.

‘They’re ambassadors,’ Vangorich said, the word alien in his mouth. He mounted the dais. The orks remained where they were. Their yellow, sunken eyes watched the High Lords. ‘Are you their interpreter?’ he asked Narkissos, wondering how the man had come to know the xenos tongue.

Narkissos looked up now. He shook his head, miserable.

‘Don’t need an interpreter,’ the lead ork said. ‘We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.’

Eighteen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The silence was as huge as the great scream had been. The scream had been the one response possible to the immensity of the moon’s arrival. The silence was the one response possible to a few simple words. The earth did not shake. Walls did not topple. Yet it seemed to Vangorich that both events occurred with every syllable that came from the ork’s mouth. Everything that the Imperium believed about the orks was wrong. The mere existence of these new orks, these ambassadors, was a blow whose implications were at least as great as the annihilation of the Proletarian Crusade. Here was proof that the military catastrophe was due to something more than brute power. The orks had numbers, and they had technology, and at least some of them had become a new thing.

Before the dreadful wonder of an ork dictating terms in fluent Gothic, what response could there be except silence? What emotion other than despair?

The ork had a name: Bezhrak. His Gothic was guttural. It sounded like the evisceration of prey. But there was no hesitation. Vangorich realised, to his horror, that Bezhrak spoke not as if he had learned the language of the Imperium, but as if it were his native tongue. The ork’s expression was uncultured, and the fact that word even occurred to Vangorich was obscene. Bezhrak spoke as if he had spawned from a deep underhive.

‘The Great Beast has you by the guts,’ he said. ‘Struggle, he’ll rip ’em out. Surrender, you get to keep ’em.’

The silence stretched on.

Bezhrak looked around the Great Chamber. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘Give up or die. Choose.’

The silence broke. The tiers erupted with screams, curses, wails of defiance and wails of despair. There were prayers to the God-Emperor, and there were what sounded to Vangorich like treasonous pleas for mercy directed at the orks. He tuned out the wider Senatorum. He was surrounded by enough idiocy on the High Lords’ dais.

Mesring turned on Tull. ‘What have you done?’ he screamed at her. ‘You have brought sacrilege into our midst. Holy Terra is defiled!’

‘I didn’t hear you voicing doubts earlier,’ she retorted. She had regained some of her fire. She was in Mesring’s face, giving no quarter, and standing with her back to the orks, as if she could erase the reality of their presence in a contest of rage with the Ecclesiarch.

Ekharth, Gibran, Sark and Anwar surrounded Verreault.

‘Why are you silent?’ Gibran asked, his voice rasping with hysteria. ‘Give the orders! Kill the abominations!’

‘The Lucifer Blacks outnumber them!’ Sark sounded no better. ‘They aren’t armed!’

‘And what does that tell you?’ said Verreault.

That they’re throwing our civilisation in our face, Vangorich thought. The self-inflicted moral wound the Imperium would suffer if it acted with less sophistication than orks would be a septic one.

The Master of the Astronomican was not worried about such concerns. ‘Kill them!’ Sark screamed. ‘Kill them!’

Bezhrak grinned at him. ‘Bad plan, little bug.’

Sark paled. He sank back to his seat, trembling.

The Lucifer Blacks’ rifles were still trained on the orks. The troopers’ faces were strained masks of hatred. They did not fire. Verreault held up a hand, ensuring they did not.

‘If we kill them, we sign our death warrants,’ he said.

Udo sought refuge in bluster.

‘We will not surrender!’ he shouted at Bezhrak. ‘We will annihilate your foul race. You have sealed your doom by coming here. You have…’ he trailed off, seeking a greater curse. ‘You will regret…’ he began again, and stopped again, held by Bezhrak’s gaze. ‘I won’t!’ he yelled. ‘We won’t! You can’t ever!’ He descended into an incoherence of defiance. He was pathetic, Vangorich thought. Before long, he wouldn’t even be howling words.

Kubik had advanced to the edge of the dais and was walking back and forth in front of the orks. He leaned forward, his telescopic vision lenses extending towards the trio. He was speaking quickly to himself. Vangorich doubted the Fabricator General experienced emotion in a recognisable sense. But there was something very like excitement in the flood of auto-dictation and binary. ‘Not a clan. Specialised evolution is a defining characteristic of the Veridi giganticus. An ambassador class? An ambassador species? That might be closer. Yes, yes. Not learned behaviour. Diplomatic skills as genetic trait? Unprecedented. Specimen collection will be needed. And the potential. If the Veridi are capable of this form of development, mutations on command, the possibilities are—’

‘Where are your loyalties, priest of Mars?’ Veritus asked.

Kubik’s neck twitched. He waved a multi-jointed hand, brushing away the irritation of the inquisitor’s voice. He chattered in cant, already lost again in his speculations.

‘Enough, then,’ Veritus said. ‘Bear witness, Father of Mankind,’ he called out. ‘I have tried. But they leave me no choice.’ He stepped down from the dais. In his power armour, he was almost as wide as Bezhrak’s attendants. He brushed past the orks and began the long walk out of the Great Chamber.

Vangorich watched him go. When he dropped his eyes from Veritus’ retreating figure, he met Bezhrak’s gaze. There he saw something that chilled him even more than the ork’s use of Gothic: contempt. The two smaller orks were amused. They were grinning their disdain for the shrieking puppets on the dais. Bezhrak wasn’t smiling. Vangorich didn’t trust his ability to read ork physiognomy. He didn’t want to trust it. He wanted to be wrong. Because Bezhrak’s contempt appeared to be mixed with pity, and if that were true, what then?

What then?

Bezhrak raised his staff and brought it down against the marble floor. The reverberation was the toll of war. It brought a momentary silence to the dais. The High Lords faced the reality of their disgusted foe.

‘Useless,’ Bezhrak said. ‘Worse than snotlings.’ He looked at his fellows. ‘No reasoning with humans. Break ’em, kill ’em, eat ’em. That’s good. Don’t try to make ’em think. Can’t be done.’ He shrugged. He turned back to the High Lords. ‘Want to die, then? Last chance.’

The Twelve said nothing. Vangorich opened his mouth, and found he also had nothing to say. He had almost responded to an impulse to save face before the orks, and acting on that impulse would have been its own shame. And Udo was right, in his idiot blathering. There would be no surrender. There could be no negotiation. Before the ork that spoke, there could be no words.

Bezhrak gave him a long look, then nodded. ‘So die,’ he said. He brought the staff down again with a slam of judgement. He stood still and quiet, the fearsome focus of the Great Chamber.

Vangorich stared at the beast who had come to the heart of the Imperium and been repelled by the animals there. An ork had become the figure of dignity and, worse still, of majesty in humanity’s parliament. With all honour dead, how was it possible that the ground did not open up and swallow the Palace?

To Narkissos, Bezhrak said, ‘Done here.’

With Narkissos trailing them, the orks turned their backs on the High Lords of Terra. In their wake, the new silence continued. It was deep and painful as a terminal wound, but it didn’t last. Words like blood poured from it, as the Lords turned on each other again.

We deserve it, Vangorich thought. The enormous, lethal, infinite foolishness of the human race shook the chamber and fell on his soul with the weight of a collapsing civilisation. We deserve it, he thought again.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring at nothing, deafened by hopelessness. But he shook off the despair. He cast it away with a refrain. I will fight, he thought. I will fight.

I will fight.

He looked up. The orks were gone. So was the point of the Senatorum. There was nothing he could do here. There was nothing anyone could do here.

He wondered where Veritus had gone.

He had taken ten steps away from the dais when the explosion hit. It came from below. The floor of the Great Chamber shook and cracked. Tiers collapsed. The Imperium’s futile dignitaries tumbled over each other in a human cascade. Tocsins competed with panicked screams. Vangorich ran towards the exit of the Great Chamber, where he saw Mercado yelling into a vox-handset. The captain looked up as Vangorich drew near. He lowered the vox-set. He was handling it as if it had bitten him.

‘Is it the orks?’ he asked. Had they somehow inserted a bomb beneath the Palace? Had he given them the opportunity to do so?

‘No, Grand Master,’ Mercado said. His voice was disbelieving. ‘It’s the eldar.’

Guy Haley

Throneworld

One

The Last Wall gathers

An armada of slab-sided warships glided in geosynchronous orbit a thousand kilometres over Phall’s equator, diverse heraldries proclaiming their masters. Bleached by harsh sunlight unfiltered by atmosphere, the yellow and silver, black, blue, crimson, white and grey of each Space Marine Chapter was nevertheless clear, defiant of the star’s glare. Void-deep shadow cut mysterious shapes onto the towering superstructures high on the ships’ spines. A million lights shone from their flanks. The craft were larger than cities; thousands dwelled within them, living out lives devoted to war. Great gun maws issued silent challenges to the fathomless interplanetary night. Hangar bays were black slots glimmering with coherence fields, ready to launch the vengeance of the Emperor at the foes of the Imperium.

Still Koorland feared it would not be enough. He counted and recounted the ships, calculating the combined strength of arms arrayed above the world. Ship tonnage, munition payloads, fighter groups, armed bondsmen, serfs and ship crews, all of it, not only the number of Adeptus Astartes, although they were the group he counted and recounted the most. Each time the mathematics of war came up short. The greatest number of Space Marines gathered in one place since the time of the Scouring, and still it was pitiful in the face of the orkish threat.

‘Truly, it is a sight to stir the hearts of men.’

‘It is, Brother Issachar,’ said Koorland. He moved away from the window to greet the Chapter Master of the Excoriators as he entered the observation deck. The mark of their shared heritage was clear to see — the fist that adorned Issachar’s dull white pauldron was the same as that upon Koorland’s yellow armour — but it was a kinship sundered. The ways of the sons of Dorn had diverged. Issachar’s fist was red, not black, and gripped in its fingers a doubled lightning bolt of yellow that Koorland’s lacked. The Excoriator’s armour was a mess of nicks and scratches, each one annotated in fastidious script detailing the manner and date of its earning. His exposed face was likewise abused, those stretches of skin not torn up by battle wounds ritually scarred.

Koorland’s own armour was battered, and he would not repaint it until his vengeance was won, but whereas his oath was exceptional, born out of grief, the practice of the Excoriators to preserve all hurts done to them was strange to him, as were the rituals of the others in the fleet: the Black Templars, the Crimson Fists, and the Fists Exemplar. Brotherhood brought them here to the gathering of the Last Wall — the successors of the old VII Legion amassed again as Terra was threatened. Despite their commonalities, fifteen hundred years had passed since the VII Legion had ceased to be, and these Chapters fathered by the same primarch had drifted far apart.

Was this how the Heresy began, Koorland wondered, brothers so distanced by circumstance that they ceased to recognise their own, and turned on one another? The man beside him shared his genetic gifts and a deep history. For all that, he was more a stranger than brother, someone to be greeted and feted at the Festival of Blades as an honoured guest, but one whose mind Koorland could never know. Surrounded by his warrior kin, the last of the Imperial Fists had never felt so alone, nor so exposed.

‘So many of Dorn’s sons gathered together in one place,’ said Issachar. Beneath the fearsomeness that his damaged armour and scarification bestowed on him, Issachar was a considered man, and he spoke softly. ‘The power concentrated here halts my breath. Such an army, such a fleet. With it, the stars are ours for the taking.’ Issachar stepped closer to the armourglass of the window gallery and spread the fingers of one scratched gauntlet upon it, as if he would seize that power for himself. He smiled at Koorland, the knotted tissue on his face distorting the expression into something ugly.

‘That is why the Legions are no more. And this is no Legion,’ said Koorland, ‘despite our numbers. At last count we are two thousand eight hundred of the line of Rogal Dorn. The Fists Exemplar are much depleted, High Marshal Bohemond calls in his crusades but they are scattered.’ He left unsaid the fate of his own brothers, slaughtered at Ardamantua. ‘Five companies of the Crimson Fists, eight of your brothers—’

‘The rest will come,’ reassured Issachar. ‘We grow in strength daily. Soon the Excoriators will be here in full, every last battle-brother and neophyte. I swear this to you. The Iron Knights have responded to the call, and make their way to join us.’

‘And then what? How many can we count upon? If all our brothers answer the call there will be fewer than four thousand of us.’

‘High Marshal Bohemond keeps his own Chapter numbers a mystery — how many of them might come? And we have yet no word from the Soul Drinkers. They are secretive but honourable, and will have set out in force the moment they received the call to the Last Wall.’

‘So five thousand, at best,’ said Koorland. ‘At the height of its power, the old Seventh consisted of over one hundred thousand warriors, and it was but one of eighteen Legions. How differently things would go were it still so.’

‘The breaking was done long ago, brother. That was then and this is now. I have always honoured the decision, as the primarch eventually did. But lately I have come to see the other side.’ Issachar gestured at the fleet. ‘Look at us, divided by tradition, overwhelmed by enemies, betrayed by the men set to rule over us. Unable to bring sufficient strength to bear to truly crush our foes, we push them out only for them to slink back when our attention is drawn elsewhere.’ He glanced uneasily at the triptych of tall bas-reliefs at the end of the gallery. The central depicted the Emperor surrounded by light, Black Templars at His feet, holding up their weapons. ‘Some of us are fallen into superstition.’

‘You do not know that,’ said Koorland, yet he agreed in his hearts. To him the image looked like supplication.

‘I look at our brothers’ decorations, their temples and their honours. They hide it yet they flaunt it.’

Koorland examined the carvings. He shrugged away his own misgivings. ‘Does it matter? Our Templar brothers are noble to a fault. A little headstrong, perhaps, but so was Sigismund of legend, and they say he was the favoured son of Dorn.’

‘All my life I have fought with honour and determination,’ said Issachar, ‘to uphold the rule of the Emperor. Let others worship Him, those we shield know no better. To them the Emperor must seem as a god. But our gene-fathers walked by His side, they were His sons, created by His knowledge, not by sorcery. To think on the Emperor as a divinity is to confer the same upon His children, and by extension onto their offspring. We are far from divine. Yes, lord Chapter Master, it matters.’

‘I am not Chapter Master, not truly. I cannot claim to have mastered myself, and I am all there is,’ said Koorland.

Issachar searched Koorland’s face a moment. ‘The honour was thrust upon you, but I adjudge you worthy of the rank, brother. We are equals, you and I.’

‘You do me a great honour by calling me brother. I shall attempt to command myself accordingly.’

‘We do not listen to you lightly, brother. We require a leader. The Imperial Fists are the senior Chapter. Your assumption of command saves much dissension and loss of time.’

‘I am a figurehead,’ said Koorland.

‘You are not.’

‘Then it is a pity Bohemond only listens to me when he feels he must.’

‘He has deferred leadership to you.’

‘Then why do we not attack?’ complained Koorland. ‘Terra itself lies under the shadow of the Beast’s moon and he plays for time, intent on attacking those nearest. His plan is strategically unsound.’

‘He plays for numbers.’

Koorland’s face creased with anguish. ‘His pride threatens us all. He would not be so headstrong had he not been forced to fall back at Aspiria.’

‘We are all hostage to our humours. You have lost much,’ said Issachar. ‘Do not let that colour your decisions.’

‘I have lost everything, and we stand to lose the throneworld itself! How could we bear that, if the walls of the Palace should fail and no son of Dorn is there to man them?’

Issachar gripped the lip of Koorland’s pauldron. ‘It is not yet gone. The moon has not attacked. The orks are unaware of our gathering. Once there are a few more of us, then we shall drive at them. Calm yourself. You are a Chapter Master now. There are politics to consider.’

‘Politics are what created this disaster.’

‘Politicians created this disaster, brother. Politics are a part of life, unpalatable as it is.’ Issachar slapped Koorland’s shoulder. ‘Come, why do we not test ourselves against one another? It is rare outside the Festival of Blades that our kind meet.’

‘This is no time for empty tournaments.’

‘That is not what I suggest. Let us hone our bladework, brother, so that we might better slay the enemy. It is rarely we of Dorn’s lineage cross blades, and there is a clarity that combat brings. It will help you, and be a great honour to me.’

‘Honour?’ said Koorland thoughtfully.

‘We will spar?’ said Issachar.

‘Not now,’ said Koorland. ‘Later. I must speak with Bohemond first. You mention honour, I will appeal to his. This delay has gone on long enough.’ Koorland strode out, brow furrowed.

‘Shall I come with you?’ called Issachar.

‘No, brother,’ Koorland shouted back. ‘This confrontation needs to be face to face, and accomplished alone. I cannot rely on my allies to carry me through. The High Marshal must see me as strong.’

Issachar approved. Koorland was learning.

Bohemond received Koorland warmly in his sparely decorated quarters. Away from the splendidly ornate public sections of the Abhorrence, the few private areas Koorland had seen were spartan, almost monkish. Bohemond’s rooms were no exception. Buried deep at the base of the ship’s command spire, they were windowless, lacking adornment. Bohemond’s plate was on a rack at the centre of a display of many weapons. A few trophies hung in stasis fields on the opposite wall. Weapons were the only indulgence the High Marshal permitted himself. A tall arch led through to his arming chambers, and through it could be glimpsed silent bondsmen going about their business attending to Bohemond’s other armours and equipment.

The furniture was plain. Documents of pressing importance were fastidiously arranged on the three tables. Koorland could not help but respect Bohemond more for this frugality.

His notion still hot in his mind, Koorland eschewed all formality and came straight to the point.

‘We will depart tomorrow,’ said Koorland.

‘I advise against it,’ said Bohemond. ‘We are too few.’ Bohemond’s robes were plain too, a bone-coloured habit covered with a black surplice, the Templar’s cross emblazoned in white upon the chest. Sigismund’s sword, the badge of his office, was as ever belted at his side, a bolt pistol on his opposite hip. Everyone in Bohemond’s Chapter, bondsman and brother alike, carried some sort of armament. The number of warrior bondsmen Koorland saw on the Abhorrence astounded him.

‘We have insufficient numbers to ensure victory, it is true,’ conceded Koorland, ‘but there are enough of us to make it a possibility. What we lack is time. Terra is threatened, High Marshal. Your plan to target the nearest moon is laudable, but formulated before the throneworld was attacked. We must act.’

‘Must we? What will you say when not only your Chapter is destroyed, Koorland, but most of four others? We must pick our battles carefully.’

‘There is only one battle we must fight. We are the Last Wall. We will not fall. Our predecessors did not fall on Terra when all seemed lost. We will not fall now.’

Bohemond’s face was a wreck, burned off by an ork psyker. Half was a metal mask, with a lidless augmetic eye. The rest was so scarred and lumpen he was almost devoid of human expression. ‘Spoken like a true son of Dorn. I applaud your sentiment.’ Bohemond poured himself a large measure of a spirit unfamiliar to Koorland. He proffered the bottle, Koorland shook his head, and Bohemond replaced it on the table.

‘Allow me, if I may, to draw an analogy.’

‘High Marshal, there is no time for stories—’

‘It will take but a moment.’

‘Very well,’ said Koorland.

Bohemond gestured to a pair of plain metal chairs, and they sat down facing each other.

‘Sigismund was a son of Dorn, and so highly favoured by the primarch that when my Chapter was founded under his auspices, he was granted one of Dorn’s favourite vessels — the Eternal Crusader — to be the lynchpin of his efforts to extend the Imperium’s reach. A great vessel, alas it languishes in refit in the shipyards of Cypra Mundi and will not be returned to us for twenty years. I feel its lack sorely.’

‘Your point, High Marshal?’

Bohemond downed his drink. He gasped in satisfaction. His mouth no longer closed properly, and so a dribble spilled from his riven lips. He wiped them unselfconsciously on a cloth he drew from his sleeve. ‘The Eternal Crusader represents the spirit of our Chapter and of our founder. Sigismund swore never to rest, that the Black Templars would not build walls but forge onward, performing the role the Emperor originally created us for — to unite the galaxy under the rule of man. Not to oversee its piecemeal dissolution under the guise of defence. The sons of Dorn are renowned as wall-keepers and castellans. Not so the followers of Sigismund — for us attack is the only form of defence. Our blades are our parapets, our tanks are our fortresses, and never are they more effective than in the advance. Walls are of no use if the enemy is permitted to live outside the gate.’

Away from the council of Chapter Masters, Bohemond was risking more, goading the Imperial Fist directly. Koorland refused to rise to the bait. ‘Then you think Terra is lost,’ he said calmly.

As Koorland expected, Bohemond did not answer directly. Instead he said, ‘Targets of greater opportunity present themselves to us, brother. We must strike now, and throw the orks into confusion. Should we kill three or four of their moons, they will be forced to deal with us. Strike at Terra, and we leave much of the Imperium to burn.’

‘And so Terra will be lost. What then of the Emperor?’

A strange look crossed the remains of Bohemond’s face. ‘The Emperor is eternal.’

‘At your waist, High Marshal, you carry the Sword of Sigismund.’ Koorland pointed at Bohemond’s great sword. ‘Within it is bound a fragment of Dorn’s own blade, broken in a rage when he failed to protect his lord. And yet you would willingly let the same happen again. Tell me, High Marshal, whose oaths are the more important to you? Those of your founder, who while a great warrior, the Emperor’s Champion, the first Templar, was still but a Space Marine? Are those of your primarch not of a higher order, forged as he was by the Emperor Himself, and set above the common run of humanity for its betterment? Do you deny your father in favour of his son? Will you honour your oaths?’

Bohemond’s gaze hardened. ‘Do you accuse me of hypocrisy, Koorland?’

‘I ask you to clarify your priorities, that is all. If there is an accusation of hypocrisy, it comes from within your own heart, and not from my lips.’ Koorland leaned forward. ‘We cannot always pursue the desires of our hearts, righteous as they might be.’ He paused. ‘You hold your Eternal Crusader as dearly as your oaths?’

‘Absolutely. Both ship and oaths were the gift of Dorn.’

‘But this, the Abhorrence that serves as your flagship while Sigismund’s craft repairs, is it a good ship?’

Bohemond’s eye narrowed. ‘It is a fine ship, a righteous tool of the Imperium.’

‘So you see, son of my father, the power of choice is not always ours to wield.’ Koorland bladed his right hand and brought it down in a slow chop to point at Bohemond. ‘At the gathering of the Last Wall at last watch today, I will command that we strike for Terra. And you will not demur, lord High Marshal, but heartily concur.’

Koorland turned on his heel and left before Bohemond could respond. Both hearts pounded hard in his chest, the secondary activated by stress levels he had felt at no other time outside conflict. Nevertheless, he permitted himself a smile.

The Black Templars would sail for Terra, or Bohemond was worth none of his regard at all.

Two

The Palace of the God-Emperor

Far from the gates leading to eldar lands, the children of Isha bent their efforts to their race’s salvation. The non-matter that made up the fabric of the tunnel was dim, sleeping. A minor branching to a nowhere world, none had trodden this path for many centuries, and it slumbered. The organic convolutions of the tunnel were barely wide enough to accommodate the party and their transport. It tapered away to nothing not far ahead, truncated by unnatural forces. A waysinger choir chanted interweaving melodies under the watchful gaze of Farseer Eldrad Ulthran, most ancient of his kind. Sorrow as thick as poison fog wreathed them all. To force an opening here spelled death to the eldar waysingers, and only a handful of their choir remained alive.

Shadowseer Lhaerial Rey waited with five more of Cegorach’s own for egress. The song rose and fell, become more complicated with every passing hundredth. The way remained shut. Dressed in their motley, the Harlequins made a play of lounging and preening as their kin expended their life force, a performance that celebrated through mockery the sacrifices of the others.

Though they seemed indolent, any who had seen the warrior dancers fight knew they could be up and moving, weapons in hands, in the blink of an eye. The other eldar — those on the path of mourning and service sent to bring the dying waysingers home, the warlock and the Dire Avengers sent to guard them — regarded the Harlequins with suspicion. Only the Dire Avengers showed no fear of them, but then they showed nothing at all.

The song of the waysingers faltered as another of their number collapsed, his soul fleeing into his waystone.

‘Sing your song!’ urged Eldrad Ulthran. He set his staff and bowed his ornate helm. The gems studding his wargear glowed with power as he poured more of his own might into the waysingers.

A gleaming slit ran down the side of the changeless stuff of the webway.

‘Your song is one of power and beauty. Success is within our grasp! Your sacrifice will be remembered for a thousand cycles,’ said Ulthran. ‘A final effort, brothers and sisters — your deaths bind a favourable skein for the fate of Ulthwé! Sing, and usher in the rebirth of our race!’

With a melodic shout, the last of the waysingers fell dead, her dying breath sung out to open the path. Twenty of them had paid with their lives so that Lhaerial Rey could do what she must do, and their corpses littered the webway. Those sent to watch over them radiated sorrow. Lhaerial Rey did not grieve. One day Cegorach would free them all from death.

The webway parted to reveal a dark and soulless place beyond.

Ulthran approached the shadowseer. Lhaerial leapt to her feet, performing an elaborate bow.

‘Take this token, given to me fifteen hundred cycles ago,’ said Ulthran. He held out a large, finely carved tooth hanging from a chain. ‘It will convince the mon-keigh of your deadly sincerity.’ Lhaerial Rey took the tooth and spoke her gratitude with a gesture. Ulthran pointed his staff at the portal. ‘Go! Go now! The door is open, but will not remain so for long.’

The webway spur convulsed in sudden peristalsis. The grav-barge that had borne the party there rocked, disturbed by shifts in the physics of that in-between realm. The attention of the Great Enemy pressed down upon the walls, whispering her seductive call to the annihilation of self that every eldar felt. The webway was damaged here, and perilous.

Lhaerial Rey’s troupe tensed. No other but a Harlequin could see it, the micro-shifts in stance and muscle.

The doorway peeled itself back, just wide enough to admit a single eldar at a time.

‘We dance,’ said Lhaerial Rey.

In a bright flurry of shattering silhouettes, the Troupe of Joyful Tears departed the webway.

The hall on the far side of the portal was of lifeless stone, part-panelled in wood killed a thousand light years away and brought in slow-drying agony across the stars. This world was as dead as its ruler. The stink of humanity lay thick upon it, the statues near the ceiling coated in dust, the shed skin cells of people five hundred cycles gone. The psychic effect was a hideous weight, thousands of years of human suffering pressing in on Lhaerial’s sensitive mind, and that was the least of it. Crushing the sensation of the dead of the Earth was the titanic presence of the Corpse Emperor.

Such power made Lhaerial’s mind reel, and for a moment her contempt for the creatures of Terra wavered. The mind of the Emperor was a mountain in the surging madness of the Othersea, blinding in its brilliance. The Great Powers circled this place like razorshark waiting out the death throes of a void-whale. That terrible presence held them back, and all His little servants were ignorant of it! Unease gripped her, that she would be noticed by the Dark Gods or their defier, and the fragile flame of her being snuffed out.

The feeling passed. The regard of the things of the Othersea was ossified, so long had they fixed their gaze on the Earth. The Emperor did not shift His regard. His attention was elsewhere, upon the blinding pyre of souls, navigation beacon of the mon-keigh. She had no indication she was seen. There was little relief in that. She had laughed in the face of She Who Thirsts, but the Corpse Emperor filled her with a sense of dread.

Few among the eldar could stand to be in such a place. To the left and right, she saw her fellows go through the same stumble and recovery, their sensitive minds disturbed. When the dance resumed, their steps were heavier than before.

The troupe ran through the abandoned hall, their light tread leaving no trace in the dust. They were spears of light arrowing through the dark, outshining the dim lanterns set into the vaulting overhead. Carved saints, comical in their anguish and pomposity, loomed out of the dark. They came to a heavy iron door rusted as red as blood. Gehennelith somersaulted, power sword slashing down. His blow delivered, he leapt aside as the sisters Tueneniar and Linead concluded the portal’s shattering with their shuriken pistols.

Lhaerial Rey was through first, her outline a shimmering cloud of diamonds. Gehennelith, Tueneniar, Linead, Barinamean came after, and lastly the death jester Bho, his dathedi spreading a cloud of ebon shards as confusing as a flurry of bats. Bho had his own reasons for coming, unknown to her. Whatever they were, she was glad of his presence.

A corridor stretched away, as dim and sepulchral as the hall they had left. A dead planet for a race that had doomed itself. Blue skies and seas, continent-spanning forests and millions of years of natural glory unsullied by crude humanity cried out to be remembered. It sickened her heart, she who had trod the nightmare ground of the Crone Worlds, who thought herself beyond such feeling. If Eldrad Ulthran himself had not requested her aid, she would never have set foot here.

Everywhere there was only silence, echoing avenues and empty rooms brimming with the self-importance of this race, so arrogant they had paved over the ground that fed them, uprooted the trees that nourished them and boiled away the seas that birthed them. Their crimes were lesser in scale than those of her own ancestors, perhaps, but their folly was worse for its crudeness. There was a majesty in the fall of the eldar, a glorious dance a million cycles in the making. Mankind was a moron chopping at the branch it stood upon. Black-hearted, close-minded, feeble-bodied. Humanity did not deserve to live. She danced out her hatred upon the flagstones as she ran.

Ulthran had chosen their insertion point well. The deaths of the waysingers bought them a stealthy entrance; these halls had been deserted for some time. The passing of their feet was as gentle as the pattering of rain on Terra’s extinct forests. The few maintenance drones they saw, ghoulishly fashioned from the skulls of human dead, they shot down.

It could not last. They burst through a creaking set of doors into a hall that ran for several hundred lengths. High desks marched up both sides in precipitous tiers, hundreds of shelves rearing up over those. More dead wood lit by feeble lights of soulless electricity. The rough scent of humanity was strong there. The place was in disarray, sheets of paper and vellum and plasticised hydrocarbons scattered all about.

They saw their first humans. Pallid things, lumpenly ugly even by the woefully low standards of the race. Several dozen cowered together beneath the desk tiers. Their dull, animal eyes were fixed on the dirty plex-glass of the ceiling a hundred lengths overhead. They did not see the Harlequins until they were practically past them, a kaleidoscopic zephyr that stirred their scattered papers.

Whole family groupings hid together. They had never seen the sun, Lhaerial could sense it. One of their young let out a mewling cry. Lhaerial’s domino-masked face whipped round, looking the human child full in the face. She raised her pistol, but her mind balked at activating it. The girl’s expression was suffused with a terrified wonder. Her eyes glistened at the beauty she saw. Lhaerial vaulted over a fallen lectern, and put her pistol up.

The Harlequins were already gone by the time the scribes began shouting. An alarm bell tolled out shortly after.

Rune signifiers shone on the map projected into Lhaerial’s mind by her wargear. They were closing on their destination, at the very edge of the administrative hives. Six thousand lengths or more to their target.

They emerged at speed into a metal cavern. Under steel skies a vast, decrepit parkland opened up, dotted with huge mansions, the fiefs of petitioner-barons and pensioned scrivener overseers. Light pipes directed weak sunlight into the park. Once it had been a lush place, but many of the trees were dead, skeletal things stark white in the gloom. Scraggly weeds dominated the few patches of day.

Through dirty-mouthed tunnels, ill-disciplined groups of soldiers in black streamed to oppose the Harlequins.

Gehennelith flipped effortlessly over streaking las-bolts, felling several of the humans with shots of pinpoint accuracy: one disc, one kill.

‘Dance their deaths and let us be on,’ ordered Lhaerial. ‘They are weak, but they are many, and we have stirred their ire.’

Truly she spoke, for already Tueneniar had become separated from her troupe mates. Bho’s shuriken cannon wailed as it spat out its deadly gifts. Men ran in terror as the shrieker cannon’s mutagens caused their fellows to explode.

+Make your own way, little dancer. Distract them so that I may complete our task. We shall meet again,+ communicated Lhaerial. +In Cegorach’s circle, if not in the flesh.+

Tueneniar sent her assent. She vaulted over the heads of her foes and onto the lowest balcony of a hanging garden that stretched most of the way to the glassed-out sky. In moments she was gone.

‘Shadowseer!’ said Linead. ‘We must all diverge, draw them away, perform alone for our audience and draw their attention away from you.’

‘Agreed.’ Lhaerial landed softly in the midst of a group of men. Five artful strokes of her sword slew them all. They fell away together, dead before they hit the torn grass. Las-fire converged on her position, but she was already away, running tirelessly towards her target. ‘Break the circle, travel your solitary skeins, my faithful. I shall see you before the Golden Throne of the mon-keigh Emperor, if that is what Morai-Heg has woven.’

Klaxons clamoured. Linead tossed a grenade through an ornate window. An explosion shook the mansion, spreading fire into its gardens. Lucifer Blacks poured into the area.

Lhaerial sprinted for the end of the park. A large block of men had taken up station there. They were forming lines, hoping to bring her down with massed volleys. A few took opportunistic shots as they organised themselves, but she effortlessly curved around them. Leaping and somersaulting, she soared high over the first ranks before they could give ordered fire. Hallucinogen grenades popped out of the fluted launcher on her back, bursting into gas clouds of scintillating colours among the humans. Their weak minds were instantly affected. She bent the hallucinations they experienced into illusions of awful nightmare, and they ran weeping before her.

Then she was away, and her fellows too, scattering like leaves in the wind, leaving the Lucifer Blacks flailing and disorganised. They trod solitary paths, save Bho, who followed her. As always he never spoke his mind, simply acted. Once again, she was glad of his presence.

Seven hundredths of a cycle later, an explosion rolled out down the endless tunnels and ways of the Imperial Palace, their planned diversion. She smiled behind the mirror bowl of her mask. Everything was going to plan.

Three

Krule’s dance

The Great Chamber of the Senatorum Imperialis was in pandemonium at the explosions in the Palace, moments after the departure of the ork ambassador. Fearing a new offensive against them, the nerve of the great and good of the Imperium broke. Prefectii and consularies wrestled with menials and aides as the exits clogged with human bodies. They scrambled over each other, trampling their fellows in their rush to escape.

Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, grabbed Mercado and shook him.

‘Where are the eldar?’ demanded Vangorich.

Mercado looked at him dumbly. ‘The Viridarium Nobiles, five levels down.’

‘That’s only five kilometres from the Sanctum Imperialis.’

Mercado nodded. His eyes were still wide, his fingers limp around his vox-horn. Vangorich came close to killing the captain of the Lucifer Blacks there and then.

‘How many?’

‘Reports are confused—’

‘How many?’ spat Vangorich through gritted teeth.

‘A handful, seven or eight. Brightly coloured.’ The man was rallying himself. ‘I’ll direct all my men to the defence of the Throne Room, and inform Captain-General Beyreuth.’

‘I’m sure he’s well aware of this breach,’ said Vangorich. ‘Send your men, but they’ll be too late.’

‘Where are you going?’ called Mercado as Vangorich shoved his way through the crowd.

‘To deal with this myself.’ He lifted his sleeve to his mouth and spoke into the vox-bead hidden in a button there. ‘Krule, I need you. Now.’ He changed channels. ‘Veritus, if you can hear me, meet me at the Sanctum.’ No reply was forthcoming.

Vangorich headed for the ablutorials. Near the exits from the main chamber the press of the crowd was slackening as the cream of the Terran adepta flailed at each other in their panic to escape. At the centre the crush grew as men and women shoved their way down from the stacked ranks of seats. The Twelve had already gone from the High Table, whisked away by their bodyguards. At least, thought Vangorich, the Lucifer Blacks can do something correctly.

He wove his way through the crowd with smooth and occasionally violent efficiency, his habitual insouciant amble cast away in favour of a predator’s fluid movement. Many recognised him and did their best to get out of his way. Where they did not, he helped them along with fists and sharp elbows. By a wash fountain he depressed an insignificant cherub’s elbow. A hidden door slid open. Vangorich slipped into the tunnel it revealed. He hurried along its dark length, emerging into dim sunlight high on the south wall of the Great Chamber of the Senatorum Imperialis.

He hurried groundwards through a network of concealed maintenance ladders and catwalks. Overhead the ork moon hung pale in the washed-out sky. He glanced at it periodically. No activity there, for the moment. Perhaps the ork ambassador had not yet returned. What the result of his embassy would be was anyone’s guess. Events were getting ahead of Vangorich.

Still, he thought. One thing at a time.

At the bottom, Krule awaited him in the groundcar of a rich man. The blood of the prior owner was still wet on the dashboard.

‘We need to get to the Sanctum,’ he said.

‘The roads are blocked,’ said Krule, getting out of the car. ‘I know a way. We need to take the high-lines.’ He pointed to a transport hub some hundred yards away. Pods rolled automatically into the station from their wire tracks as calmly as if this were any other day.

They ran through the crowds spilling from the Grand Chamber into the plaza, and down onto the Daylight Way. The transit terminus sat in the shadow of the high wall. People bunched around the terminus, fighting to get onto its boarding platforms. Krule battered his way through, Vangorich behind him. They hurled the people clambering into a waiting pod aside. The crowd recoiled, then surged back towards the open door, until Krule caved in the face of the lead man with a deadly punch. The crowd shrank back again, and Krule slammed the door shut.

Vangorich activated the pod with his signum, and it rose rapidly on creaking cables, leaving the boiling crowds below.

Through yellowed plastek windows, they looked down on the Senatorum sector of the Imperial Palace. The highways were choked with the private vehicles of dignitaries and the nobility. Lesser streets were filled with civilians on their knees, wailing out panicked prayers and blocking the way for those trying to escape. Fights erupted, threatening riot. With nowhere to go, people simply ran back and forth madly, driven by adrenaline to do something, anything, in the face of the inevitable. The sky was crowded with aircraft and flocks of servo-constructs as thick as the crowds on the ground. The ork moon loomed high overhead, intent unknown, its brutal face frozen in mirth at the uproar it had caused.

‘Emperor help us if this is the best we can muster to save ourselves,’ said Vangorich. He was no believer in the faith, but it truly would take a god to solve this mess.

Beast Krule remained mute. It was weirdly calm in the pod, the violence beneath played out in silence. The wire the pod depended on headed up and down the multi-layered hives seemingly at random. Vangorich overrode the system, preventing the pod from halting. At transit stops horrified faces whipped by. The pod plunged on, drawn on by the vast, mountain-sized edifice of the Sanctum Imperialis. The heart of the Imperium grew, dominating everything, a prison and a lens for the might of the being trapped within. The pod shifted lines, following a high track that led up and up. The wrinkled skin of the city dropped rapidly away.

Krule stood. ‘Vent spire,’ he said, pointing to a cathedral-tower chimney that pointed vaingloriously at the attack moon.

The Assassins stopped the pod as it passed over a balcony jutting from the spire. They smashed the door and dropped down, broke their way into a maintenance portal, pushed their way past the herd of servitors who lived within the tower, and descended down into the upper levels of the endless inner hives of the Imperial Palace.

They descended many levels, flying down stairs, ignoring elevators and lift platforms, heading always for the chatter of military vox and reports of the intruders. Eventually, they found their prey.

Vangorich emerged into a machine hall thundering with the business of renewing the throneworld’s atmosphere, deep below the false metal surface of Terra. Stale air hooted down plasteel tubes, drawn by pistons driven by giant flywheels, to be bubbled through lake-deep tanks of ancient glass clotted with algae. On the gantries over them a sole, gaudy alien battled single-handedly against a company of Astra Militarum.

‘There!’ said Vangorich.

A hundred men were set against the eldar. They crept towards it along the grid of catwalks. Following any law of engagement, it should have been overwhelmed many times over. Corpses littered the mesh over the water, their blood staining the algae black. All of them were human.

‘We must question it,’ said Vangorich.

‘It will die before we can get to it,’ said Krule.

The eldar executed a flawless leap. Its form broke into a confusing trail of glimmering diamonds that twisted twenty metres over the soupy mess of the tanks. Its weapon hissed, and a stream of discs cut down three men before its feet touched steel again. The human commander shouted, directing his men to block the alien’s escape routes. Las-beams cut through the air, but the alien danced over them.

‘I doubt that,’ said Vangorich. ‘Those men are outmatched.’

‘Then I’ll see to it,’ said Krule.

The eldar pranced into a squad of Lucifer Blacks, slaying seven with its sword. Not one of them came close to landing a return blow. Vangorich grabbed Krule’s shoulder. ‘Beast, this is one of their warrior dancers. I thought them a legend, but evidently they are not.’

‘And?’ said Krule.

‘And be careful.’

Krule looked at him incredulously. ‘You’ve never warned me before.’

‘There is, as they say, a first time for everything. This is one of those times.’ Vangorich released his Assassin. Krule snorted dismissively.

Krule came at the eldar when it was only metres from a wide service vehicle exit. Three dirty yellow power loaders had been drawn across the exit to prevent the eldar’s escape, the gaps between jammed haphazardly with crates of algal feedstock. Soldiers fired wildly over their barricade, desperate to bring the killer down before it got among them. The eldar leapt out of the way of every shot with stunning agility, every flip and twist bringing it nearer. A final leap, a sword of bright silver glinting in the dim light. Shurikens whickered through the air. In moments the Guardsmen were dead.

Their deaths, though quick, gave Krule the time he needed to draw near.

‘Stop!’ he called.

The eldar halted, poised on the cab roof of a wheeled loader. It cocked its head at Krule. A white domino mask covered its face, one black tear sliding down the cheek over and over again. Close-fitting motley clad its body. For all the eldar’s otherworldly slenderness its limbs rippled with muscle.

Krule advanced. The eldar leaped backwards over his head, its body shattering into a blizzard of geometric shapes. The alien somersaulted through four complete turns as it flew, its true form barely visible as a fuzzy outline in a field of spinning diamonds. Krule’s chronaxic implants kicked in, chemical stimulants overloading his metabolism and sending his heartbeat into a continuous blur. His sense of time slowed to the point he could have slipped between the raindrops of a storm. The alien was still faster.

A hail of discs shot out of the alien’s pistol, the feed-mag disappearing upwards. Krule dodged three; a fourth sliced into his bicep, embedding itself in the adamantium reinforcing his humerus. He suppressed the pain, wheeling over in a scissoring cartwheel, driving his feet at the alien. The eldar leaned back so far his crest of hair brushed the bloodied floor. Krule sprang off his hands onto his feet, and aimed a devastating punch, but the xenos wove out of the way, spinning around and bringing its pistol to bear again. Krule slapped the gun off target just as a spray of deadly discs hissed from its snout. He evaded the humming power sword that followed. The eldar flipped backward over and over, firing as it went. Krule dived aside, a storm of shurikens following him. His eyes flicked to the creature’s broad girdle. Some kind of grav-belt.

The eldar spread its arms and flipped towards him, bouncing lightly from the catwalk guardrail. Krule charged at it, dropping to his side and sliding under a further fusillade of discs. He scooped up a lasrifle still sticky with blood, and fired. The eldar leaned casually out of the shot’s way and bisected the lasgun with its sword. The metal and plastek came apart with a bang. Krule fended off further strikes with the smoking butt of the gun. He swung at the flat of the eldar’s blade, more of his improvised weapon disintegrating with every parry.

The eldar cartwheeled at him, flicked its sword down into the ground and used it as a pivot to swing around the hilt, feet out, catching Krule full in the face. The Assassin staggered back, and the eldar moved in for the kill, but Krule was feigning concussion. As the eldar drove its sword at Krule he stepped sideways, shifting his stance so that he came outside the eldar’s arm. He grabbed the alien’s girdle, and tore it free. The eldar danced back, but not fast enough. Krule grabbed its sword wrist and slammed the heel of his palm into its elbow, shattering the delicate bone. It took the blow without a sound. The sword fell from its limp hand to dangle by its power feed. The alien rolled along Krule’s arm, until the two were as tightly pressed as dance partners.

‘You fight well for a human,’ it said in accented Gothic. The smooth golden snout of its weapon pressed under his chin.

A crack shattered the moment. The eldar fell, a smoking hole in its temple beside its mask.

Vangorich stood behind, his hand out, the ring of his digital laser exposed over his knuckle. He sucked at his flesh where the discharge had singed his skin and shook out his fingers with a pained expression.

‘I told you to be careful.’

Krule looked at his fallen foe. It seemed so fragile dead, its limbs thin as reeds, more like the doll of a rich upper-hive child than a creature that had lived and breathed. His hand went to the disc embedded in his bicep. He cut his fingers on it as he tried to pull it out, for it was lodged fast in the metal and bone of his upper arm.

Vangorich strode over to the dead alien. ‘These are their elite of elite. We were lucky to kill it.’

Krule left the disc where it was. He flexed his fist. ‘It hurts like hell.’

‘Do you know, Krule, one of the reasons I have always enjoyed your company is that you never say anything asinine like “I had it covered” or other such nonsense.’

‘I didn’t. I’d be dead without you.’ Krule spoke quietly. He was panting hard, and sweat and blood ran from his skin. He had never come this close to being beaten.

‘Quite. The question is, what is it doing here? I wanted to interrogate it. It’s a shame I had to kill it to save you, but I had no choice. I could not cripple it. Their weapons are mentally operated, so it was the head or it was nothing.’

‘You have my thanks.’

‘Save them. In not too long a time the ork ambassador will be back aboard the attack moon, and you may yet die today.’ Vangorich stroked at his scar in thought. ‘Only seven or so, Mercado said. That’s an awfully small number to try anything meaningful at the Palace, even for xenos as arrogant as the eldar. I am not so sure all is as it seems here. Come, we had better go, or there will be none of the xenos left to question.’

Four

Before the Throne

Lhaerial came to the outer precincts of the Sanctum Imperialis. Bho the death jester followed her, close as a shadow. For as long as they could they avoided combat, she clouding the weak minds of the humans where possible, detouring to avoid them where it was not. They followed half-forgotten conduits and filthy service ducts, coming ever closer to their target. The blazing light of the Emperor’s beacon grew in her mind’s eye, blotting out her limited ability to read the skein. Her future was a mystery to her now, and she must act cautiously.

One by one she felt the death songs of her fellows, fallen in solo dances with no audience to applaud. A black wave of despair rose in her heart, but she froze it. Sorrow could wait for a time when it could be turned into laughter, a celebration of her troupers’ joining with Cegorach.

There came a moment when they could hide no more, at the place where the architecture of the Palace opened up and became dominated by the vast avenues radiating from the Throne Room. The weak infantry in black were replaced by armoured giants, their golden plate draped in sombre black cloaks. Their species aside, there was nothing similar between the two breeds of warrior. These were the Adeptus Custodes, and few could stand against them.

Lhaerial had expected to encounter them sooner, for Ulthran had told her they guarded all parts of the Palace in the days when the Emperor lived. Time had made them cautious, and they gathered now only around the Throne Room of their lord, careful of what little mortal life remained to Him.

The secret tunnels turned away from the Throne Room, and Bho and Lhaerial were forced out. They avoided the main processional way and its progression of mighty, symbolic gates, taking a lesser avenue — still many hundred lengths across, the vaulting of the ceiling lost to smoke and distance. Only one gateway barred this avenue, at the entrance to the antechamber. Far away down the mighty road it hid in clouds of incense.

‘This way, Bho, come!’

The Adeptus Custodes waited for them, opening fire as they ran down the vast processional way. Hard projectiles of metal whined past them, shot from the tips of long-hafted weapons as heavy as Lhaerial herself. Primitive, as all the technology of the humans was, but deadly. Just one round, were it to hit, would obliterate her slender body.

They did not hit.

Lhaerial wove around the bolts. Bho fired from behind, his screamer cannon punching the genetically enhanced warriors from their feet. They were too mighty to be felled by the shot itself, instead dying painfully as the gene-toxins in the shrieker rounds rewrote their life code explosively.

‘Stop, stop!’ she called out in their ugly language. ‘My name is Lhaerial Rey,’ she continued, ‘Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import to the Emperor of Mankind!’

Only murder dwelled in their hearts. A giant moved to intercept her, his great halberd whirling in buzzing arcs around his head. This one moved with a grace and speed she did not associate with the humans. She fought ferociously with him, trading parries and ripostes like for like, the sheer strength of the human shocking her. She saluted him before she took his head from his shoulders. ‘Friendship! Friendship!’ she cried out, Gothic’s coarseness an affront to her tongue.

More of them came at her, shouting angrily. That she was swinging her sword at them probably belied her words, she thought ironically, but she refused to die for their idiocy. She called out as she killed, over and over again. ‘My name is Lhaerial Rey, Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import to the Emperor of Mankind. Friendship! Friendship! Cease your fighting!’

Bho shot down the last of them. Lhaerial vaulted the human’s writhing form.

‘The gate!’ she cried to Bho. ‘It is near!’ Incredibly, the gate remained open, a sign of the humans’ arrogance. A stream of Adeptus Custodes flooded forth.

The Harlequins sprinted on, launching themselves over the heads of those who came to oppose them; cutting down any who came within striking distance and ignoring the rest, Lhaerial expected a lucky shot to take her in the back at any moment.

‘My name is Lhaerial Rey, Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import to the Emperor of Mankind. Friendship! Friendship!’

The warriors of the Emperor would not listen, and the nearer they came to the Throne Room, the more furious they became. She only hoped that if she could get to the centre of the warding circles that girdled the Palace for thousands of lengths, her mind could touch His.

The door came closer, monumentally huge. She had rarely seen its like in the realm of flesh and matter. Only in the webway were such things to be seen, and they were the works of long ago. It towered five hundred lengths high, covered in ornate carvings too small to be made out, and fashioned from precious materials harvested from the entire galaxy. Doubtless this adornment concealed armoured plating many lengths deep.

The doors began to close. She and Bho ran faster, veering towards the bastion guarding the left of the doors. As they neared she put away her pistol and flicked a small ovoid of warm wraithbone from a pouch at her belt. The gates were closing with the steady certainty of glaciers grinding down mountains. A line of Custodians barred the way in front of the gates, halberds levelled and firing. Bho slew three with wailing shots of his cannon. His skill was marvellous to see. He leapt and dived, somersaulting over its barrel. He fired all the while, unencumbered by the shrieker’s great length.

Lhaerial arced over a wall of crested helms, and tossed the device into a vision slit in the bastion. There was a mellow flash as it discharged, spraying the room with a burst of softly glowing microscopic constructs. They pattered onto the walls, burrowing into the fabric of the building and attacking its systems. Eldar technology millions of years old overwhelmed the simple machines of the humans without difficulty. Their motive mechanisms suborned by the superior craft of her race, the gates ceased their closing barely a length apart. She and Bho jumped, threading the gap as a blaze of shells exploded all round the door edges.

On the other side was a hall bigger than all but the widest craftworld domes. On the far side were the great gates to the Sanctum Imperialis, wherein languished the morbid Emperor of Mankind. Twin Titans guarded it, poorly fashioned to resemble hounds, and festooned with vulgar attempts at art. They started towards her clumsily, jogging across the court and opening fire. Bursts of shattered metal and rock jumped skyward. She somersaulted between the impacts as the Warhounds tracked her. The noise of their discharge obliterated all senses, and Lhaerial danced through the thunder. The war machines ceased firing as she sought shelter among the ranks of the enemy.

They were so close to their goal. Lhaerial could feel the lessening of the Palace’s psychic defences. They were nearing the centre of the wards. She called out with her mind to the Lord of Man. There came no reply, but lines of Adeptus Custodes running at them. The great gates were far away.

For a moment her heart faltered. She could not succeed. But she must try.

Bho was surrounded, attacking his foe with the great energy scythe affixed to the end of his gun. He slew four of theirs before he fell, shot from so many angles even his reflexes could not save him. As in life, he died silently. Lhaerial fought on, slaughtering her way through the humans as their war machines neared and slowed, stalking the edge of the melee. Were she to kill every one of the Adeptus Custodes, she would be obliterated immediately. Her progress slowed, the foe became too many; they were too accomplished as warriors. Their finest individuals would be a close match for her skills, and there were hundreds of them. She despaired. Her arms dropped.

‘Peace! Peace!’ she called.

She was brought down, wrestled to the floor by a dozen heavy arms.

Their leader forced his way towards her, his movements awkward with rage. He wore identical gold armour to all the others, but for a tall distinguishing plume of purple. Now would be the time to present the token, he was the one, but her arms were pinned and she could not move.

‘My name is Lhaerial Rey, Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import—’

The blow was almost too quick for her to see. It struck her mirror mask hard, snapping her head painfully to the side.

‘Silence!’ roared the leader. ‘You come here shouting friendship as you slaughter your way towards the Lord of Mankind.’

A circle of boltguns pointed at her head.

‘And now you will die.’

‘Hold!’ cried Vangorich. He and Krule rushed into the antechamber of the Sanctum Imperialis, a space big enough to station an army in. Though there was no army, war had recently visited. To the right, halfway to the Ultimate Gate, beyond which sat the Emperor Himself, a dozen Adeptus Custodes lay dead on the ground, a single, skull-masked eldar among them. The mosaic floor was cracked and ruined. Craters in the walls guttered with burning metal, damage from Titan weapons fire. A circle of Adeptus Custodes surrounded something hidden in its centre. ‘Hold!’

Four warriors stepped into Vangorich’s path, their guardian spears crossed. Their massive armoured bodies formed a wall he could not see over.

‘Let me through! It is I, High Lord Vangorich.’

‘Grand Master Vangorich?’ shouted a commanding voice. The warriors parted, revealing their leader.

‘Captain-General Beyreuth! I must beg your indulgence. Do not execute the prisoner! We must interrogate it.’ Vangorich pushed his way into a forest of metal giants. Beyreuth waved them aside and he came to their captive: a female, by the shape of her. She was kneeling, beaten. Her clothes were brightly coloured and patterned, though dirtied with battle’s smirch. Her face was hidden by a featureless mask of silver, and this was flawless. A thicket of blades pointed at her, the bolters mounted on the backs of the spearheads ready to obliterate her at a word.

‘She has already tried to trick us with talk of parley,’ said Beyreuth. ‘I will not consider her release so close to the Golden Throne. Most of this breed are witches, who knows what she plans? She has breached the Emperor’s innermost sanctuary. For this insult she must and will pay.’

‘Parley? What did she say?’ said Vangorich.

The eldar spoke for herself, her voice thick with blood. ‘My name is Lhaerial Rey, Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import to the Emperor of Mankind.’

‘Lies,’ spat Beyreuth.

‘Captain-general, please!’ said Vangorich.

‘You, the lord of killers, and you make a plea for her life?’ said Beyreuth. ‘Or is it only humans your kind kills?’

‘I understand you are angry, furious, but we must be cautious,’ said Vangorich. ‘Orks are in the sky, and these xenos come alone. What if she is telling the truth?’

‘I am being cautious. It is a lack of caution that led to the arrival of the orks. We cannot afford any further mistakes.’ He raised his hand.

‘I order you to stop!’ shouted Vangorich.

‘You are a High Lord, and a member of the Senatorum Imperialis, but your office is no longer numbered among the High Twelve. You have no authority to command me. None have, save the Emperor Himself.’

‘Then this will prove sufficient!’ called Inquisitor Veritus. The boots of his power armour rang on the mosaic floor as he stamped into the chamber, his Inquisitorial seal held high. Storm troopers fanned out either side of him, training their guns on the Adeptus Custodes.

‘I am Veritus, and I am of the High Twelve. By this sigil I wield the authority of the Emperor. While He cannot speak, the Inquisition are His voice.’

Beyreuth uttered something that might have been a sigh or a curse. He gestured, and his warriors stood back.

‘I am so glad you could make this latest emergency, Veritus,’ said Vangorich. ‘After you departed the Senatorum so dramatically, I feared we had lost your good offices permanently.’

‘Don’t be facetious, Vangorich.’

Vangorich twitched his eyebrows. ‘If I am facetious, it is merely because I find myself in a world governed by idiocy. I laugh, or I despair. You have arrived in the nick of time.’

‘I got your message. I had to gather my forces. I am here now.’

‘A reply would have been polite,’ said Vangorich.

The three men looked down upon the captured eldar. Vangorich’s spine shuddered as her faceless bowl mask looked back. A quiet power surrounded her.

‘Why should we believe your protestations of friendship?’ demanded Veritus.

‘I have upon my person a token,’ said the eldar, ‘given by the Primarch Vulkan to the Farseer Eldrad Ulthran during your recent civil war.’

Veritus looked to the Custodians.

‘You may take it out. If it is a trick, you shall die,’ said Beyreuth.

Lhaerial reached into a small pouch strapped to her thigh. From it she removed an object and passed it to Veritus. The inquisitor’s power armour whined as he reached for it.

He opened his hand. In it was a large tooth, capped with exquisitely worked gold.

‘A tooth of a Nocturnian salamander. It could be as you say. These creatures are found only on Vulkan’s home world. But how do I know this is not a trick, and that it was Vulkan who gave this to your master?’

‘I have no master save the Laughing God,’ said Lhaerial. ‘That token is all I have to prove my good intent. If you do not value it, then Eldrad Ulthran underestimated you. My task is done and my life is forfeit. I die laughing at the fools that would not listen to sense.’

Veritus growled deep in his throat. ‘The orks are at our door and an alien witch wishes to speak with the Emperor,’ he said. He folded his fist over the tooth. ‘We must take her away from here. It is not safe to have her kind so close to the Emperor.’

‘You are to take her to the Inquisitorial Fortress?’ asked Vangorich.

Veritus nodded. ‘Wienand is there. I shall deal with two problems in one.’

‘Then I suggest you hurry,’ said Vangorich. ‘The orks will move soon.’

Lhaerial spoke. ‘You have far less time than you realise.’

Five

Woman in the moon

There were mountains that walked, and people trapped beneath them. A looped segment of time that Galatea Haas could not escape played repetitively in her dreams. The Proletarian Crusade was trapped between two walls of grinding metal and stone, coming together with awful finality. A wave of blood bore down on her, carrying terrified screams that suddenly cut out.

Haas came awake with a jolt, hands scraped raw through gripping the rough stone of her resting place. She was hidden at the back of a narrow cranny, high up the wall of a tunnel more crevasse than corridor. Her ears strained to pick out whatever it was that had disturbed her from the constant noise of the attack moon. Clanking mechanisms pounded ceaselessly, unshielded and raucous. After the disaster she had passed through one of the orks’ machine halls, and her ears rang for hours afterwards. From the racket, it must have been only one of many hundreds of similar rooms.

Her flight from the doors was a jumble, a terrible memory broken into meaningless flashes of incident. Somehow, she had escaped. Drenched in the blood of the Crusaders, she had run through rough-hewn corridors and gaping natural caves. She was sure of discovery. Only her training and her will had kept her from succumbing to fear. But no one had found her, and eventually, exhausted, she had found this place, and fallen into a troubled sleep.

Something was close. She heard piping voices, far too high to be orks. Cautiously she put her head out over the lip of rock.

Three of the little creatures that served the orks were passing below, carrying small metal boxes and shoving at each other in malicious high spirits. The sight of them made her skin crawl. There was something worse about these beings than their masters. They were humpbacked and crooked. They rolled along with a sly gait. She imagined them stealing into homes in the dead of night, seeking out young to devour. Creatures from story, they seemed. Until yesterday she had had no idea they existed.

They were filthy, and they stank worse than the dirtiest man. How they smelled her over their own noisome reek was a surprise, but they did.

The leader stopped directly under her hiding place, its followers running into its back. They tittered horribly, provoking the leader to slap them into silence. It held up a finger for quiet. Nose twitching, it turned its head upward. Haas snatched her head back just in time.

The leader jabbered at one of the others. The second’s ears drooped and the third laughed at its comrade. An argument ensued, finishing in more blows. Quiet fell. A moment later, a dirty green head appeared over the edge of Haas’ hiding place. Its ears shot up in surprise as it saw Haas staring back at it.

The creature squealed as she swatted it with her shock maul. The weapon was designed for the suppression of civil disorder, but cranked up to full output it could deliver a fatal blow, and the slave orks were small. The creature flew against the wall, shrieking horribly. It impacted with a wet splat, and slid to the uneven floor, smoke pouring out of its ears. She levered herself out of the gap and fell between the other two.

They were poor fighters, but aggressive. They attacked together, raking at her with filthy fingernails, ripping the regimental uniform issued to her for the Crusade to tatters and scoring the skin underneath with burning scratches. She was fortunate that her enforcer’s armour protected her from the worst of it.

The leader went down, its pointed head sporting a new and fatal dent. The last gibbered and shrilled in the orkish tongue, flailing at her with arms that were too long for its body. Its pointed nose and ears flapped as it jumped onto her, trying to throttle her with grasping, greasy fingers. She gasped for air. Pointed yellow teeth snapped millimetres from her nose, spattering her with saliva. She fell backward to the ground, luck more than effort putting her maul in the right place. She slammed the butt into its eye. It screamed and reared up. She scrambled backward and caved its ribs in with a panicked swipe.

Panting hard, she pushed the dead creature from her legs. The energy of fear left her, and she struggled to get herself upright. Her head swam. She had not eaten since the Crusade had departed, and was so hungry she considered going through the slaves’ filthy clothes to find some morsel of food or drink, but was not yet so desperate that she could bring herself to do it.

Numbly, she stared at the corpses.

A noise made her start.

By a kink in the corridor, framed in dull ruddy light, a fourth creature stood staring at her with wide red eyes, ears flat against its head in fear.

‘Throne!’ she exclaimed.

The creature’s thin-lipped mouth worked wordlessly. Suddenly, it dropped its burden, turned on its heels and fled, squealing out a shrill alarm.

‘No, no, no, no, no!’ she shouted, staggering after.

The creature was fast, moving with a bounding scamper that she struggled to match. It cast terrified looks behind it at her, shouting without pause as it ran. Her throat burned with thirst and the polluted air of the moon, and the creature was gaining ever more ground.

Haas raced round a corner to see it diving through a crack between two armoured plates bolted to the rock. Haas threw herself after. Anything could be on the other side, but if the creature raised the alarm, she was dead anyway.

With relief, she saw it was all alone, quaking against a wall ahead, arms spread wide on the stone.

Hefting her maul, she approached.

A giant hand cuffed her across the back of the head, sending her sprawling face first into the rock. Stars swam in front of her eyes. She got to her hands and knees, blood flowing from her mouth. Something slammed into her neck. Wide metal jaws closed around her throat with a click. She grabbed at them futilely as she was hoisted high. Almost gently, the pole shifted around, bringing her face to face with the ork holding it.

Her captor regarded her with curious eyes glinting from eye sockets like caves. Its jaw was covered in a beard of bright but dirty hair, and more of the same crested its head. A single ivory fang, as long as Haas’ forearm, jutted from the left side of its mouth. The damn thing was smiling at her, its eyes twinkling with vicious humour.

It rumbled something in the tongue of the orks. Haas raised her maul. It shook its head and flicked a switch on the haft of its catchpole. A massive shock cracked out from the jaws, and Haas fell unconscious.

‘She’s coming round,’ said a man’s voice.

‘Be quiet, Marast, you’ll have One Tooth in here on us!’ hissed another.

‘Looks different,’ said the one called Marast. ‘She’s not one of us. She’s a standard.’

‘So? The galaxy’s crawling with them. Give her something to drink, for the Emperor’s sake.’

‘It means, Huringer, that we’re somewhere else, do you see? We’ve moved away from home,’ said the first irritably.

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!’ said Huringer.

‘Don’t be stupid, then. This armour too, enforcer or arbitrator, I’d say. But those badges aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen.’

A canteen was pressed to Haas’ lips. Warm, metallic water spilled into her mouth. She coughed, and swallowed gratefully. Her head felt heavy as a boulder, but she struggled up onto her elbows anyway.

There was not much light but it hurt her eyes. She was in a sweltering cell plated with metal. There was one door, a small grille at the top of it letting in a little light from outside. A little more came from a buzzing lumen globe dangling from a bare wire in the middle of the room.

Two odd-looking faces peered at her. She squinted until they came into focus, and pushed herself back in alarm when they did. Bald heads with pronounced eyes looked back, their owners crouching on unnaturally long legs.

‘What are you?’ she said. Her stomach rolled with nausea.

‘Oh, that’s charming. Very nice,’ said the one called Marast. ‘People, that’s what we are. If you don’t like us, we can call the orks. Maybe they’ll give you a waking you’d prefer?’

Haas blinked. They were human, of a sort, but stretched in the body. Her eyes strayed to their legs.

‘Guess she’s never seen a longshanks before,’ muttered Huringer.

Marast patted his leg with a thin-fingered hand. ‘That’s what we are. Don’t stare so — in here you’re the odd one out.’

‘You’re… mutants?’

‘Abhumans!’ said Huringer angrily. ‘We’re loyal subjects of the Emperor, same as you, lovey. Ain’t our fault our home’s low-g.’ He turned away from her pointedly.

Haas groggily got to her feet. The room was crammed with longshanks. They had arrayed themselves as best they could around the walls, backs to the metal, long legs drawn up in front of them.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked. Haas was aware there were sanctioned sub-strains of humanity scattered around the galaxy, but that was as far as her knowledge went. On Terra any deviation from the norm was a mutation, and a mutant was a criminal by default.

‘Orin’s Well,’ said Marast. ‘Greenskins overran the planet and took thousands of us up here. Seems we’re good for working on the moon. Most of it ain’t got no gravity generators. Doesn’t bother us as much as it bothers them. You?’

‘You don’t know where you are?’

Marast shook his head. ‘Not a splinter of an idea. Been down here slaving for weeks now. Not many of us left.’

‘Terra! You’re in orbit over Terra!’ She tapped the badge on her shoulder guard, much worn now, that marked her out as an arbitrator of the Imperial Palace, 149th Administrative District, General Oversight Division.

Marast’s mouth opened wide in amazement. ‘Terra?’ He made the sign of the aquila over his chest. Murmurs went up from his freakish compatriots. A few reached out to touch her. She shook their hands off and stepped over their fragile-looking legs to the door.

‘Don’t do that!’ hissed Marast. ‘You’ll have One Tooth in here on us!’

Something grunted outside. Haas threw herself against the wall as a bucket-jawed giant squinted into the room. One fang, a dirty beard. Her captor.

It banged on the door hard, making it shake in its mountings, and roared out a string of gruff alien words.

Marast crept to her side and pulled at her arm. ‘Don’t do that, don’t talk, don’t look them in the eye!’ he said fearfully. ‘If you do, they’ll hurt you bad, might kill you, take you… take you through there!’ He pointed at the wall.

‘What’s through there?’ asked Haas, dreading the answer.

Marast winced. ‘The meat pen.’

Haas could not help but look, her eyes drawn by a force outside of herself to the wall separating their holding pen from the room next door.

‘I can’t stay here. There must be a way out!’ she said.

‘Where to?’ said Marast. ‘Get out of that door and there are a million orks. Even if there weren’t, where would you go? Walk to the surface and toss yourself off into space? Although that’s better than the alternative, I suppose. But you can’t. The only way we’re getting off this moon is if someone comes and rescues us, and let me tell you something sad, lady arbitrator — no one’s coming, not for the likes of us. You keep your head down, work hard, and they mostly leave you alone.’

‘I won’t. I’m going to get out of here,’ whispered Haas.

Marast shook his head sadly. ‘Not once you’ve seen the gate, you won’t. It’s hopeless.’

‘Gate?’

‘The place they come through. A flash of light, and they’re there. As many orks as they need. There’s no army in the galaxy that can stop them.’

In the boundary zone between the Oort cloud and the dwarf planets parading around the edge of the Sol System, space convulsed. Vile lightnings cracked around a puckering in the fabric of real space. With a silent scream, the universe tore.

Hundreds of warships arrowed into reality, diabolical vapours spilling off their glowing Geller fields. Behind them boiled the cauldron of the warp, a pit of madness none should cross. Reality sealed itself in a blinding flash of non-light, shuddered, and was still.

‘High Marshal, my lord Chapter Master, we have arrived in the Sol System, praise be,’ announced Bohemond’s shipmaster. Other reports followed.

‘All decks report unproblematic translation.’

‘Warp engines powering down.’

‘Geller field deactivation in three, two, one. Geller field deactivated. All praise the Emperor, most holy Lord of Man.’

From the corner of his eye, Koorland saw Bohemond’s twisted lips mouth the words silently along with his bondsmen.

The High Marshal of the Black Templars strode along the sweeping command deck of the Abhorrence. Fans of workstations spilled down from the command dais at the centre. A window of armourglass a dozen metres across filled the front of the deck, showing the blackness of space. At this far removed, Sol was merely a bright dot, hard to tell apart from any other star. Koorland stared at it, searching for the dim flicker that would mark out the location of Holy Terra.

‘All Black Templars vessels, state arrival and status,’ commanded Bohemond. ‘Issachar, Quesadra, Thane. How do you fare?’

Cyber-constructs carrying holoprojectors swooped in on Koorland and Bohemond’s position, their projection gems bursting into life. The shoulders and heads of his fellow Chapter Masters assembled themselves in the air from striped pulses of laser light.

‘All my vessels report zero casualties, no damage,’ said Thane.

‘The warp was unusually calm. Not a single vessel lost,’ said Issachar.

‘Fortune is with us,’ said Quesadra.

‘Fortune has nothing to do with it! It was the will of the Emperor. He knows we come to aid beleaguered Terra,’ said Bohemond. ‘Time check reports a warp transition of four days. Unprecedented. Your judgement was well founded, Brother Chapter Master Koorland.’

‘I believe that was an apology, Brother Chapter Master,’ said Quesadra quietly.

‘My augur master has detected signs of recent fleet combat around Terra, minimal weapon discharge, and large informational exchange around the Martian noosphere. Where are the defence fleets? Why has Mars not mobilised its armies?’ said Thane.

Koorland looked past the floating light spectres of his brothers.

‘What are our orders, Imperial Fist?’ said Issachar.

‘The attack moon still orbits Terra,’ said Koorland. ‘We cannot let this insult stand. Brothers of the Last Wall, adopt attack formation,’ he said. ‘We make for the ork moon without delay. Send messages to Mars and Terra that we have come. As soon as we are close enough, open lithocast communications. We must learn how Terra can be held to ransom so easily.’

Six

Dance’s end

Lhaerial sat in the middle of a spherical room in a pool of brilliant light, bound by ankle, calf, and thigh to a high-backed chair. Her hands were imprisoned within a metal cylinder and pulled up over her back, so that she was forced forward, an uncomfortable position that seemed not to trouble her. Her mask had been taken from her, and her slender, pale-skinned face was visible, flawless but for a single black tear tattooed beneath each of her huge brown eyes. A male interrogator paced up and down in front of her, hands sweeping in expansive gestures, lips working hard. Veritus had the vox-link disengaged, and so Vangorich could not hear what he shouted at her. Instead they watched a pantomime: the angry enforcer, the apprehended villain.

‘Shockingly young-looking, isn’t she?’ said Veritus. He and Vangorich stood behind a pane of psychically warded, one-way armourglass.

‘Yes,’ said Vangorich. He was fascinated by the eldar, never having seen one in the flesh before.

‘And beautiful. I see it in your face, Vangorich, even in a cold-hearted killer like you.’

‘I am not blind to beauty,’ said Vangorich.

‘Better to be!’ said Veritus. ‘Beauty is the cloak of many an enemy. Do not be deceived.’ Veritus removed his hand from his chin and gestured at Lhaerial, the servo-motors aiding his ancient body burring softly in the quiet of the observation suite. ‘She could be ten thousand years old. Only the most ancient of them show signs of ageing at all, and I hear that some never age a day. They are immortal, kept alive by black alien arts.’

‘They are not immortal, inquisitor.’

Veritus spun on his heel, face darkening. Wienand stepped into the room, elegantly attired as always, her features set under her steel grey fringe. A few fresh lines had come to mark her face since the start of the crisis, yet still she seemed young to bear so much responsibility. The black matt metal door to the observation suite slid silently closed behind her. Vangorich glimpsed a pair of Inquisitorial storm troopers standing at guard outside. They had not been there when he and Veritus had arrived. Protection against Veritus.

‘If you had thought to consult me, then you would be better informed, Lord Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘If you weren’t seeking my death.’

Veritus and Wienand stared at one another with hard eyes. Vangorich was hopeful of a rapprochement between the two, as matters were bad enough without the Inquisition falling to war with itself. But if there were to be one, there was little sign of it as yet.

‘Yes,’ said Veritus with a cold smile. ‘They are your area of expertise. I would expect nothing less than a deep understanding from someone who has so freely collaborated with the enemies of the Imperium.’

‘Not all xenos are our enemies, unless we choose to make them so. They can be useful to us. Allies.’

Wienand stepped up to the glass to stand next to Veritus.

‘You are tainted by your association, Wienand,’ said Veritus. ‘You should not be here. Should I be on my guard in case you attempt to free her?’

‘What would you do if I did? Never trust them, but do not let hatred blind you. The eldar have aided us on many occasions.’

‘They are manipulators, they use us for their own ends,’ said Veritus.

‘Then we must manipulate them back!’ said Wienand. ‘Better that than open war.’

‘Is it?’ said Veritus. The inquisitors stared fixedly into the room, neither looking at the other as they argued. Vangorich was trapped in the middle, witness to a sour lovers’ tiff.

Vangorich held up his hands. ‘Please. Stop.’

The inquisitors took his rebuke without comment, to Vangorich’s relief. Even he couldn’t fight his way out of the Inquisitorial Fortress. But there was plenty of time for one or both of them to turn against him, he thought. ‘Wienand, it is good to see you again.’

‘You too, Drakan, although I think very little of the company you are keeping.’

‘Can we not concentrate on the matter at hand here?’ said Vangorich wearily. ‘What’s an assassination attempt or two between friends?’

‘So speaks the Assassin,’ said Wienand.

‘He has a point, Wienand,’ snarled Veritus, then calmed. He turned to face Wienand but did not look her in the eye, instead gazing fixedly over her shoulder. ‘Maybe I acted hastily, but things had come to a shocking pass and—’

‘You did not agree with my actions as Inquisitorial Representative, very good. You had recourse to options other than murder and usurpation!’ she interrupted.

‘We had no time!’ said Veritus. ‘You would not have gone quietly, and we would have fought as stupidly as the fools in the Senate, jockeying for power as the Imperium burned around us.’

‘So my death was a matter of expediency? How very comforting.’

‘Yes.’ Veritus sighed. ‘I am old, Wienand. So much older than you. I have seen so much stupidity. I could not take a chance.’

‘And now I am stupid.’ She aggressively sought out his eyes with her own. ‘Did you not think just to ask? No?’

Veritus’ aged lips pressed thin, going grey.

‘Tell me then, Representative Veritus. How goes your management of the crisis?’ said Wienand.

Vangorich cleared his throat. ‘This glass, it is psychically blocked, is it not?’

The inquisitors looked over his head.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘I have spent many long years perfecting an air of unimportance, I am used to being ignored, but this is too much. Answer me! Veritus? Is this glass warded?’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ snapped Veritus. ‘Why?’

‘Because if you stopped glaring at Wienand there, you’d see that our prisoner is looking right at you, and she finds something amusing.’

Wienand shook her head dismissively and returned her attention to the prisoner. ‘Have you actually spoken to her yet, Veritus, or did you just plan on killing her too?’

‘Not yet!’ said Vangorich lightly. ‘How about we attempt that right now? There is no time like the present.’

Veritus cleared his throat. A phlegmy, old man’s sound. ‘Very well,’ he said.

Wienand, Vangorich and Veritus entered the room, the inquisitors still eyeing each other warily. The interrogator ceased his questioning, bowed and withdrew without a word.

‘At last you come out!’ said the prisoner. ‘So pathetic are your attempts at masking that any child of my people could better them without effort.’

The three humans lined up in front of the prisoner. She stared at them contemptuously. The removal of her mask had brought a marked change in her manner. She had become more aloof, more cautious, more direct in speech, but it had only sharpened her defiance.

‘It is time to discuss your message,’ said Wienand.

‘As I told your friends, I come in peace.’

‘I have a strange appreciation of the word myself,’ said Vangorich.

‘You are a murderer. I smell blood on you,’ Lhaerial said.

‘Quite,’ said Vangorich. He found the anger in her quite beguiling. ‘My point is, arriving armed and shooting is not covered by any definition of peace.’

‘Would you have listened?’ she said.

‘Probably not,’ said Vangorich.

‘Drakan,’ said Wienand, ‘this is our prisoner.’

‘Of course, of course, please, inquisitors. Inquire.’

‘You are a psyker?’ said Veritus.

‘And what is that?’ Lhaerial said.

‘A witch, a seer.’

She nodded. ‘A seer of the shadows.’

‘Then let it be known I am warded against your powers,’ said Veritus.

‘I know your mind regardless,’ said the eldar.

‘Tell me of your mission,’ said Wienand.

‘I already have,’ said Lhaerial.

‘Again,’ said Wienand. ‘To us.’

‘I should repeat myself? And then you will ask me again, and again, and you will attempt to hurt me. You are so primitive. I do not know why Eldrad Ulthran wishes to save you. The galaxy would be a cleaner place were you to be exterminated.’

‘You lack the power for that now,’ said Wienand, surprisingly gently. ‘And I think when your kind did have that might, something stayed your hand.’

Lhaerial cocked an eyebrow and gave a sudden, savage smile. ‘Maybe. Doubtless you think our positions reversed? You cannot hurt me. I am Cegorach’s.’

‘She speaks of one of their gods,’ explained Wienand.

‘Do not be so sure, eldar,’ said Veritus dangerously. Wienand held up her hand behind her irritably.

‘Tell us,’ said Wienand. ‘The last time.’

Lhaerial closed her eyes. They were so big, thought Vangorich.

‘I was to deliver a message to the Emperor, not to you.’

‘Tell us what was in this message. We are the representatives of His will,’ said Wienand. ‘The Emperor cannot be spoken to, He is entombed.’

‘You think we do not know this? Eldrad Ulthran, greatest seer of all, entrusted me with this task. I was chosen because I am a seer, I have opened my mind, the old ways are mine. I do not fear She Who Thirsts.’

‘He cannot be reached even psychically,’ said Wienand. ‘It has been tried. You would have died. You must tell us.’

‘What was the message? A threat?’ challenged Veritus.

‘Foolish mon-keigh!’ hissed Lhaerial Rey. Her eyes snapped open. ‘No threat! The Emperor and the farseer are known to each other. Though they long diverged from friendship, they are not yet opposed. Your dead Emperor is the only hope, for us all, man and eldar alike. This current crisis will pass. The roar of the ork will subside, while the real threat grows. You, the one who calls himself Veritus, you know this to be the truth. I know what you have seen.’

Veritus stepped back, appalled.

‘You are fools to yourselves,’ spat Lhaerial. ‘You are right, old one, and she is right. There is more than one answer to every question. Listen! The ork moon will not last here.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I bring news also of a gift. A force of your Space Marines have gathered in great number, and make their way here. Even now, they pass the red world of this system. Eldrad Ulthran and the seers of Ulthwé worked long and hard to quell the storms roused in the Othersea by the orks, the better that they might come to you. This gift is given freely, because we hope with all our hearts you shall prevail over the ork.

‘Listen to our pleas. Do not let the orks distract you, nor any other threat arising from the temporal realm. The gods of the Othersea will not stop until this galaxy is their plaything. The threat they pose is millions of cycles old, the actions of your Warmaster but the latest act in a war that has raged since the time of the old races. For the lifespan of stars my people have opposed them. You are naive if you think Chaos defeated. I have been sent with this one message — do not neglect the Dark Gods, for it will mean the annihilation of us all.’

‘Do you suggest that only mankind might save the galaxy?’ said Veritus wonderingly.

Lhaerial shifted her gaze to Veritus, and her hard eyes made him flinch as if she saw something in his mind and reflected it back upon him. ‘The idea appeals to your vanity? You were correct in what you were saying, through there. You are a tool to us. Our people ruled the stars when this world was ruled by reptiles. Many came against us — the soulless ones, the krork at the apex of their might, in comparison to which this latest folly is laughable, the cythor and a thousand other races so terrible your intellects could not contemplate them. Even your own ancestors and their unliving legions at the so-called height of their mastery. We defeated them all.

‘To you we seem a sorry remnant, a ragged glory fading into the void, but we are not yet extinct, inquisitor. What is a few thousand cycles of weakness when set against millions of power? You fell yourselves, your empire is a pathetic mockery of what your kind once had. Mark my words well — unlike you we shall be mighty once again. We would prefer it if there were still a galaxy to rule when we are ready to return.’

Wienand pursed her lips and shook her head regretfully.

‘You do yourself no favours,’ she said. ‘I am trying to help you.’

A fanatical light shone from Veritus’ eyes as he looked at the eldar. ‘Now that is a threat,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, alien. I know the truth of it, awful as it is. There is one path to peace, and that is when every last world is under the hegemony of mankind.’

Lhaerial smiled. Her teeth were very small, perfectly white. ‘You are mistaken. You safeguard our heritage, until the time comes for the Empire of Ten Million Suns to rise once again. For that reason alone we vouchsafe your continued existence. The Primordial Annihilator is our common enemy. Our kind coexisted before the fall. We have no quarrel with you.’

Veritus stepped menacingly close to the eldar.

‘The Debari incident, the Veridanium massacre, the fall of Outremer, the burning of Choidenmirn.’ He counted off atrocities on golden metal fingers. ‘All these were perpetrated by your species against ours, and in the last five hundred years.’

‘Not all of my kind are of good heart, just as not all of yours are.’

Veritus laughed. ‘You claim to represent the world-ship of Ulthwé? All of those were actions of that faction against the Imperium!’

Lhaerial managed to shrug, despite her binding. ‘The worlds of Ulthwé that you trespass upon, doubtless they thought the punishment necessary.’

‘Then how can we possibly trust you?’ shouted Veritus.

Lhaerial looked into the ancient inquisitor’s face. ‘How can we possibly trust you? We only have each other, for now at least. We can stand apart and die alone, or we might persist together.’

‘This is intolerable!’ snapped Veritus.

‘Calm yourself, Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘Listen to what she is saying — she is right. We must listen to her. If they truly wanted to harm the Emperor, they would have come against us differently, if it were in their power to do so. I believe her. She speaks the truth.’

‘You are corrupted by their influence!’ said Veritus. ‘Van der Deckart told me all about your actions on Antagonis in concert with these creatures. They are fundamentally untrustworthy. Your dealings with them are grounds enough for execution!’

‘On whose authority?’ said Wienand.

‘I am the Inquisitorial Representative,’ said Veritus. ‘On my authority.’

‘You are the Inquisitorial Representative by nefarious means. I am the incumbent, you are the impostor. And we are not in the halls of government now. We are among our own kind. You are not popular in this fortress, Veritus. I have many supporters here.’

‘I have many also,’ said Veritus warningly.

‘I should kill you now.’

‘Stop!’ Vangorich stepped between them. ‘Is this really the time?’ he said, looking at the prisoner. Lhaerial Rey’s head hung, unconcerned at the humans’ conversation.

‘Oh, this is the perfect time for this conversation,’ said Veritus. ‘The eldar is going nowhere, and this room is among the most heavily warded in all the Fortress, a good venue for the most private of affairs.’ His hand rested against his pistol.

‘Don’t! Don’t draw that! Listen to yourselves!’ said a pained Vangorich. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed through his teeth. ‘Ordinarily I would have no qualms if the two of you wished to pit the Inquisition against itself. Your agency has interrupted legitimate operations of mine so many times I have lost my patience with it. A reorganisation would do it and me a world of good.’

‘We impose the will of the Emperor, Drakan,’ said Wienand. ‘Our word is law.’

‘And I exist to ensure that people who say such things as a matter of habit do not take matters into their own hands. Isn’t it nice that we can all get on so well together?’ Vangorich said drily. ‘We do need to get on with each other. Frankly, you two and I are the only ones who seem to be keeping their head in all of this mess. Can you not put your differences aside? The future of the Imperium depends on it. Is it really that inconceivable that you both might be right? That Veritus here is correct to be wary of the alien.’

Veritus began to speak, but Vangorich raised his voice and spoke over him.

‘And that Wienand is right in the utility of the xenos? Neither of these viewpoints are essentially contradictory. Perhaps, indeed, it is time to consider a certain amount of specialisation? Take a lead from my temples. One must select the correct tool for the job. This is a big galaxy — no one man or woman can hope to be fit for every task, even if they carry the Emperor’s seal. In your division you are behaving no less blindly or selfishly than the High Lords.’

Veritus worked his jaw. Wienand stared down her nose at him.

‘So,’ said Vangorich. ‘Who’s first?’

‘Very well,’ said Wienand. ‘I shall agree to a detente.’

‘Veritus?’ said Vangorich.

Veritus sneered. ‘And hand back power to you, I suppose? Your record so far has been pitiful, Wienand.’

‘On the contrary. You shall remain as the Inquisitorial Representative,’ said Wienand. ‘My return will raise questions. Open signs of dissent within our ranks will weaken our position. Matters are too delicate to confuse further with my return. The Inquisition must present a united front, outwardly at least. I shall be able to act more freely against the High Lords if I remain dead.’

Vangorich smiled in relief, interleaved his fingers and cracked his knuckles.

‘Well then!’ he said.

‘Surprised, Veritus? You see, my lord,’ said Wienand, ‘it is not only you who has the interests of the Imperium at heart.’

‘Excellent!’ said Vangorich. ‘We must begin work immediately.’ He ushered them towards the door.

‘Be hasty,’ said the shadowseer. ‘Already the Primordial Annihilator works against you.’

Vangorich got one final look at Lhaerial Rey before the door sealed, locking her away forever.

Seven

A conversation with Terra

During their voyage across the Sol System, Koorland found his few moments of peace in the practice cages. With Issachar he sparred constantly, both of them guests of Bohemond. The physical exertion of combat pushed aside his grief and his anger. When not fighting, the lords of the Chapters conferred and feasted, making their plans against the orks.

The Last Wall made all speed through the Sol System, sailing past mighty Jupiter and its glowering storm spots, on towards the asteroid belt and past it to the inner planets. From fleeing mercantile craft they first received detailed news of the situation at Terra, and of the disastrous Proletarian Crusade.

The Sol System was ordinarily alive with shipping travelling from the Mandeville point to Terra. The Last Wall saw few vessels. Those ships that had come to the cradle of mankind had aborted their journeys, and lurked unsurely around the outer planets. The captains of the ships and the lords of minor colonies around the gas giants relayed further details. The moon had arrived at Terra unopposed, they said, crushing the throneworld’s orbital defences without trouble. The Navy was mostly absent. When the Crusade had been called, the minor Imperial Navy presence held back while millions of Imperial citizens were slaughtered. Worse still, the ships of Mars remained in port, the red world’s armies mustered but inactive. Astropathic messages to both Terra and Mars went unanswered.

Koorland’s outrage grew. During the hours of swift travel from the Mandeville point to the inner system he remained in the cages. His sword clashed off Issachar’s twin axes. He fought instinctively, mind elsewhere. Several questions troubled him, and the answer to them all was more troubling still — the High Lords, the High Lords, the High Lords.

He grunted hard, and swung at Issachar. The Excoriator dodged.

‘My lords.’

Koorland drove another hard attack at Issachar, all his anger and frustration behind it.

‘My lords!’

Issachar caught Koorland’s blow upon crossed axes.

‘A messenger,’ said Issachar, nodding past their locked weapons. He and Koorland were stripped to the waist. Issachar’s torso was as scarified as his face, his flesh a coded manual to the rituals of his Chapter.

Koorland stepped back. Sweat poured off them both. A Black Templars bondsman stood by the doors, framed by the cage bars.

‘The High Lords have made contact, my lords,’ said the bondsman. He wore the weapons of a warrior, and had the physique to match. His attitude to Koorland was deferential without servility. There was pride in the hearts of the Black Templars’ men; they did not creep about as the servants of some Chapters did.

‘No news from Mars?’ said Koorland. He wiped down his face and naked torso with a towel handed to him by an arming servitor, and stepped out from the practice cage.

‘Alas, we have heard nothing from them, my lord.’

‘Continue our attempts to raise them. Have your astropaths and vox-officers make the implication the Last Wall may alter course to put into orbit around the forge world and investigate their silence. That will focus the tech-priests’ attention,’ said Koorland. ‘Have my armour prepared. I will speak with the High Lords garbed for war.’

‘Shall I inform my liege Bohemond?’

‘I shall speak to this representative alone,’ said Koorland.

‘My lord,’ said the bondsman, and departed.

‘If the High Lords contact us, we can rest easy that there is at least authority still upon Terra,’ said Issachar.

‘Yes, but whose?’ said Koorland. ‘And if the old authority, how effective can it be? The High Lords have proved nothing but their own incompetence.’

‘You are learning, Chapter Master Koorland.’

While in the arming chamber Bohemond had provided him, Koorland was informed that the representative of the High Lords was now present via lithocast. Koorland did not hurry. Arming servitors and bondsmen clad him in his armour, polished now but still bearing the marks of the conflict on Ardamantua. While the men worked silent around him, bolting him into his battleplate, he thought on what he must say to the lords of all the Imperium. Politics. How he loathed them, all the worse as he lacked the detail to make an adequate tactical plan. Idle fantasies of usurping them and replacing their corrupt rule with that of the Space Marines played through his mind. But Space Marines were no less fallible than mortal men, and far more dangerous for the belief many of them had in their own rectitude. The galaxy had suffered enough already because of transhuman arrogance. He chastised himself inwardly. Issachar’s sentiments were infectious. He could not succumb to them.

The last clasp of his armour fastened with a snap. The bondsmen oiled Koorland’s hair, set a cloak of rich red velvet about his shoulders, and he departed for the Chamber of Audience, high up on the Abhorrence’s superstructure. As befitted its purpose as a tool of diplomacy, the chamber was cavernous, possessing enough holoprojectors to accommodate the remote meetings of many hundreds of men. Only one awaited him, the slight phantom of an unremarkable man in the room’s centre, his full-size lithocast eerily lifelike.

‘My lord, my apologies for keeping you,’ said Koorland. The room swallowed his voice whole. His footsteps echoed sharply from the ornate walls.

The representative of the High Lords waved away the apology. He was plainly dressed, small.

‘These are trying times. I have not been waiting long. Rather, it is my own eagerness to speak with you that brings me to the lithocast chamber ahead of you, Second Captain Koorland.’

‘I am Chapter Master now,’ said Koorland.

‘Ah,’ said the man. His face expressed his concern, the long scar cutting across it wrinkling oddly. ‘Your losses were grave, we understand. Tell me, were there other survivors?’

‘They are dead,’ said Koorland icily. ‘You do not understand, I think. They are all dead, every one of my brothers. I am the last of the Imperial Fists. When I fall, the Chapter shall be no more.’

‘All of them are dead?’ said the man softly.

‘All.’

The man nodded. ‘I feared as much. On hearing of your survival, some of my colleagues were more hopeful that others might have been retrieved, but…’ His demeanour changed. ‘We are forgetting ourselves, Chapter Master. I have yet to introduce myself. I am Drakan Vangorich, head of the Officio Assassinorum, and one of the High Lords of Terra, though sadly not one of the Twelve.’

‘You? You are the Lord of Assassins?’ said Koorland.

‘You cannot hide your incredulity. That is understandable.’ The man’s slight pleasure offended Koorland. ‘You have yet to grasp the diplomatic niceties of your new role. I do not look like a master of murderers, and intentionally so. If I looked like death himself, I would be performing my job poorly, would I not?’

‘Why have you been chosen to speak with me?’ Koorland’s mind raced. Battle. He must see this as battle. There were tactical considerations in the choice of his words. Koorland chose to be blunt. ‘Is this a warning?’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose there is a warning in what I’m saying to you, Chapter Master,’ said Vangorich amiably. ‘But not the kind you are thinking of. Doubtless you believe my communication is meant to convey the power of the High Lords. At my command are killers who would tax and quite probably kill even you, should I command it. And it is true, the arrival of your fleet has caused as much consternation as it has celebration. But my warning is not of that sort. I ask that you pay attention to what I said regarding my appearance. Things are so very rarely as they seem.’

‘You are speaking obtusely.’

‘I really am not,’ said Vangorich.

‘Then tell me plainly, what is the High Lords’ message?’

‘There’s the crux of it. I am reasonably confident the High Lords’ message would be that you stay far away from Terra. They’d say this because you will provoke the orks, who for the four days since their ambassador was sent to us have done nothing. In fairness, the High Lords may genuinely fear provocation. What they really fear, however, is the threat to their power your — several thousand, is it? — Space Marines pose. Even at this late hour, they scheme still, and you are forcing them to act in concert. Nothing is more apt to form a concord among them than a challenge to their power from within the Imperium. A shame they do not categorise this ork invasion similarly. Terror is at the forefront of their minds, but behind it self-interest, ambition and envy still slide over one another, poisonous as serpents.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Koorland. ‘I requested, politely, that you speak plainly. Do not make me demand.’

Vangorich pointed at Koorland somewhat impishly. ‘A little steel I see there, Chapter Master. Good. We are sorely in need of a man with steel. You must also learn a certain flexibility of mind. You see, I am not speaking to you on behalf of the High Lords at all. I am currently at the Inquisitorial Headquarters. I am afraid I am very much on a frolic of my own.’

‘I was expecting instruction. Plans. Disposition of the enemy.’

‘Very commendable. Instruction I can manage. I have with me one of my colleagues, Veritus, the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum Imperialis, and one of the High Twelve. He and I unfortunately do not constitute a quorum, but Veritus has something our fellows in the Senatorum lack. He speaks with the voice of the Emperor.’

The hololith blinked. A second figure appeared on the focusing platform alongside the one projecting Vangorich. An indefinably ancient man, encased in a suit of golden power armour.

‘I am Veritus, the Inquisitorial Representative, and one of the High Twelve,’ said the newcomer. ‘Will you heed my command, Chapter Master Koorland? Will you obey the word of the Emperor Himself?’

Koorland’s relief at having made contact with some authority was undermined by the uneasy feeling a trap was opening before him. The Chapters were autonomous but even they could not deny a direct order from a High Lord. He must tread carefully. ‘State your orders, inquisitor.’

‘By the power vested in me,’ said Veritus, ‘the High Lords command that you bring your fleet immediately to Terra and smash the attack moon out of the sky.’

‘And why do you think we have come here, inquisitor? Has the Imperium become so divided that the sight of a fleet of Space Marines in response to a direct threat within the holy system of Sol inspires fear, and not relief? Our intention is to destroy the orks,’ said Koorland. ‘It is our only purpose.’

‘Then our aims accord,’ said Veritus guardedly.

‘Well, that was very dramatic,’ said Vangorich. ‘But there is some business to attend to. You will require help, lord Chapter Master. You must go to Mars, and winkle Fabricator General Kubik out from his hiding place. Set his feet on the path to war. The man sits in his palace surrounded by one of the mightiest armies in the galaxy, and he does nothing. We will advise you in what you must say to him.’ Vangorich glanced at Veritus. ‘But first, it is time to tell you exactly what has transpired since the tragedy at Ardamantua. Steady yourself — you will not be pleased by what I have to say.’

Eight

The calculation of suspicion

Kubik addressed Koorland from the heart of the diagnostiad, the clicking mind of Mars. A kilometre-wide sphere excavated from the ground in untold ages past, its sides were a hive of thousands of individual cells, each containing the body of a magos wired directly into the Martian world-core. Their whispering never stopped. Once placed inside a cell, a magos left only when his unnaturally long life was worked out. Dark patches on the wall marked out an expired follower of the Omnissiah, like dead elements on a pict screen. Sometimes they might go for months without notice until servitor teams carefully cleared brown bones, failed cybernetics and ruined robes from the cavity, and prepared it for a new occupant. It was a networked mind, far more powerful than any cogitator in the galaxy. Retaining but a fragment of their individuality, the magi became one in thought and intent; the diagnostiad had known no dissension within itself for hundreds of years.

There were few honours higher in the priesthood than to be elevated to the diagnostiad. To join the world-engine at the heart of the Martian empire was to commune with the Omnissiah himself.

The office of Fabricator General was one of those few higher honours. Surrounded by thousands trapped in the ecstasy of mechanical undeath, it was an honour Kubik preferred.

Kubik’s throne was a mighty affair, replete with data sockets, cogitator interface points, servo-skull docks and other, more esoteric devices that provided Kubik with a direct link to the mind of Mars. Backed by a giant brazen plaque depicting the machina opus, the throne occupied a dais raised on a spine in the heart of the sphere, a tall needle alight with the sparkings of the Motive Force, and set with the polished bones and preserved cybernetica of his predecessors. Like the arcane knowledge of the tech-priests, Kubik’s throne was founded on the bones of the past.

At the Fabricator General’s insistence, Koorland spoke with Kubik from a private lithocast chamber aboard the Abhorrence. A perfect, life-size image of the Chapter Master was projected by his throne in a manner that meant only Kubik and the diagnostiad could see him. No other sentient was present in the sphere, and yet secrecy reigned even there. The instinct to hoard knowledge was the most powerful a tech-priest possessed. Their mastery of technology was second only to their paranoia.

‘Well met, Chapter Master Koorland. Your return to Sol is timely. Without your arrival, Terra would surely be lost.’ Kubik selected a near-human voice from his editicore recollections, a rich, commanding voice, suggestive of masculinity and confidence. Entirely unlike Kubik’s original voice, now hundreds of years lost.

‘Greetings to you, Lord of Mars,’ said Koorland, and bowed. ‘We, the brothers of the Last Wall, come before you to ask for your aid and your wisdom.’

The Space Marine was being deferential. Kubik wondered who had schooled him.

‘We move immediately upon the attack moon,’ said Koorland. ‘Surprise is our most potent weapon. We will fall on them, and smash them from the skies.’

‘So thought Juskina Tull, and her Proletarian Crusade ended in disaster.’ Kubik’s sub-processors kept his voice neutral, injecting elements of superiority, irony and calm into the vox-output.

‘We are the hammer of the Emperor, not a desperate rabble. We shall destroy the orks.’

‘I can only applaud your confidence, Chapter Master, but I insist on caution.’

‘And I can only query your lack of action,’ said Koorland.

‘It is no mystery,’ said Kubik. ‘Our ground forces are substantial here on Mars, but our fleets are not suitable for actions of this kind. We have few vessels within the system in any case. To throw our lot in with Juskina Tull would have resulted in the loss of valuable military units that might be better used elsewhere.’

‘What of your weapons arrays, your machines of great art? Surely there is something capable of destroying the moon upon Mars.’

‘Indeed,’ said Kubik. ‘And using any of the Greater Weapons would have posed unconscionable risks to Holy Terra. Would you have us destroy the throneworld to save it?’

Koorland gave Kubik a look the Fabricator General found unreadable. He queried the diagnostiad via mind shunt.

<Voice analysis and facial muscle configurations suggest he is close to speaking freely,> spoke the diagnostiad into Kubik’s mind. It addressed him with a single voice. <He believes you to be dissembling. We calculate a ninety per cent probability that he has been in contact with others within the system. Primary suspects — Grand Master Vangorich, Inquisitor Veritus.>

‘Let us not point the finger, Chapter Master,’ said Kubik. ‘This war has taken us all by surprise. You have a good chance of success. In aiding you I will not be casting my military away needlessly, so you I shall aid. That was your intention in contacting me, yes? To ask for my help, and not cast aspersion and accusation?’

Koorland nodded curtly. ‘Yes, my lord. That was my intention.’

‘Good. Five regiments of skitarii will accompany you, and attendant support. I will pledge also seven cohorts of the Legio Cybernetica. The Basilikon Astra will transport them, and provide heavy supportive fire. Alone, or in support of the Merchant Fleets, our warships would have stood little chance. With your battlefleet, they can operate within acceptable parameters of survival.’

‘I desire to speak with Phaeton Laurentis and Eldon Urquidex,’ said Koorland. ‘They are known to me, and I would confer with them.’

‘Urquidex, Laurentis? I am not familiar with them. One moment please.’ Kubik made a show of calling up their information. ‘Ah yes, minor biologians. Unfortunately, both magi are occupied with other duties.’

‘Another time, perhaps,’ said Koorland. ‘You have our thanks, Fabricator General. While the Imperium stands together, it shall not fall.’

‘Mars will not allow that to happen. We are united, as always.’

<He suspects you lie,> whispered the diagnostiad.

‘When will your forces be ready?’ asked Koorland.

‘Chapter Master, I called the Taghmata of Mars weeks ago in anticipation of reinforcement. Our military is already prepared to sail as soon as I give the word. You insult me and the oaths of fealty and alliance Mars holds in sacred compact with Holy Terra. We have stood ready to sail to Terra’s aid since the very first. We could not act alone, nor would we support the fool’s crusade called by Juskina Tull.’ Kubik stood from his throne, mechadendrites and other, subtler supplementary limbs waving in displeasure.

‘You have my apologies, Fabricator General,’ said Koorland. ‘No implication was meant. Your aid is generous, and will save the lives of many of the sons of Dorn.’

‘Transmit me your marshalling coordinates. I will despatch the Taghmata, and place the Prime under your direct command. I have only one request.’

‘That is, my lord?’

‘Any and all materiel and technology taken in the battle must be collected by my subjects, and delivered here to Mars.’

‘For what purpose?’ asked Koorland.

‘Its study is vital to the defeat of the orks.’

‘I will agree to this, in exchange for all information pertaining to the ork threat you have already gathered.’

‘We have provided what we know to the Senatorum,’ said Kubik smoothly.

‘There are explorator fleets all over the Imperium,’ said Koorland. ‘Many of your forge worlds have been attacked. I have seen some of the intelligence you have gathered. It seems a little… thin.’

‘It is all we have,’ said Kubik. ‘Delivery of materiel will speed our analysis. We shall share what we learn when we have learnt it.’

Koorland stared a long moment at the Fabricator General. ‘Very well, but we shall oversee the transfer.’

‘Agreed,’ said Kubik.

‘We will speak again soon, on the day of our victory.’

Koorland’s image vanished as Kubik cut the link. The whispering of the diagnostiad members rose and fell like the rush of wind in the leaves of a forest. Kubik took to his throne again, and commanded it to descend. Gracefully it sank away, bringing Kubik to rest upon the only flat surface in the sphere, and the only part free of the cavities of the diagnostiad’s cells — a platform a hundred metres across, a raised road of Martian bronze leading across it to a huge pair of doors, guarded by a phalanx of stooped cyber-constructs. Kubik glided out of his throne. The doors opened before him. Outside stood the primary members of the Synod of Mars, waiting on his orders. Bowing profusely, they took his commands.

Eldon Urquidex was marched alongside Magos Laurentis up the Channel of Motivational Energies as Performed by the Flesh, a broad processional way laid out in mimicry of the internal workings of a cogitator’s logic boards. They were deep within the forge temple of Olympus Mons. Passages left at irregular intervals, each one guarded by bio-constructs and barred by heavy grilles known as the Gates of Logic.

The Channel was the largest road in a three-dimensional labyrinth, and the main route taken by supplicants to the Synod of Mars. The edifice had been constructed aeons ago during Old Night by a Fabricator General of questionable sanity, the legacy of costly experiments to mimic the ineffable deductive powers of pure energy through the medium of humanity. Techna-liturgia moving around the circuit were supposed to operate in a manner similar to the sub-atomic particles of the holy Motive Force. It had not of course worked, but where it had failed as a computational device, it succeeded as art, and remained a sacred place.

The Channel bored through the mountain in a las-straight line to the audience chamber of the Fabricator General, and Urquidex was worried.

Urquidex’s mechanical face was misleading. Behind the steel and the telescopic eye stalks lurked a very human brain. Not so long ago, Urquidex would have welcomed an appointment with Kubik as an opportunity to secure advancement with the Synod. Manipulation, flattery, spurious logic — these tools were Urquidex’s to deploy as easily as the fine manipulators on his additional limbs. That was before he became a traitor. Fear chilled the fluids in the tubes of his augmetics. Urquidex had worked himself to the centre of Kubik’s plans, and had come to disagree with them entirely. With news of the Last Wall’s arrival at Sol, and their dash for Terra, Kubik’s intelligence core and native brain alike would be slaved entirely to political scheming. It would take the slightest misstep to expose Urquidex. What small patches of skin remained to him were slick with the unpleasant excretions of anxiety.

The heavy tread of Kubik’s cybernetic guardians rang ominously on the metal plates of the Channel. Everything Urquidex saw, his nerves imbued with a sinister aspect. Servo-skulls and vat-constructs darting through the air became spies following his every movement. The chants of magi and electro-priests droning from the factory-chapels and techno-basilicae carried counter-melodies of accusation. The hisses and whines of holy manufacturing processes barely concealed their contempt for him. Laurentis, his emotions so heavily circumscribed by the surgery necessary to save his life after Ardamantua, lurched along placidly on his tripedal motive assembly, the thoughts whirring through his rebuilt brain secret from all.

Urquidex was no Ultima Mechanista, wishing away his humanity; for him and the members of his sub-cult, balance was to be sought between mechanical and organic. For was not the flesh nothing but the wet machinery of the Omnissiah? Finding such a balance was a cause of much worry to Urquidex. He thought back to Ardamantua, torn between the cold logic of the Subservius’ mission and the horror he had experienced at the annihilation of the Imperial Fists. Ruminating on that weakness, he envied Laurentis his new-found detachment.

Too soon they came to Kubik’s audience chamber. The doors were a pair of cogs set in series, one bearing a skull, the other a mechanical face: the machina opus split into two wholes. The cyber-constructs stopped and slammed their power glaives into the metal floor.

With mouthless voices they announced the magi’s arrival. ‘Magi Biologis Eldon Urquidex and Phaeton Laurentis request audience with his high logician the Fabricator General of Mars.’

Urquidex found that rich. There had been no request, they had been summoned. He would rather be anywhere than in Kubik’s presence today. Did Kubik know? Had that giant intellect uncovered his involvement with the agents of the Officio Assassinorum?

The doors rolled apart in opposite directions. Urquidex and Laurentis were ushered in. The audience chamber was designed to intimidate. On his best days, Urquidex found the vast space, crisscrossed with giant, crackling power conduits and humming with data-streams emanating from the diagnostiad, to be unnerving, and today was not one of his best days. Urquidex steadied himself and put his emotional feeds on temporary hold, redirecting his thought processes through the far steadier mechanisms of his intelligence core.

‘O mighty and most wise Fabricator General Kubik! Prime of primes, artisan without compare,’ said Urquidex, spreading his multiple limbs and executing a complex obeisance. ‘I am your humble servant. State your bidding, and I shall comply to the letter, without the error of signal loss or personal interpretation.’

Laurentis said nothing, but executed an awkward three-legged curtsey, his single organic eye blinking incongruously in the centre of his facial mechanisms.

Kubik sat in a high-backed, ovoid chair that floated a metre above the ground on a snapping grav-field. The dusty smell of high-energy discharge washed out from it as he floated forward to stop not far from the two biologians, the repulsor unit of the chair buffeting at their robes.

‘Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex, Magos Biologis Phaeton Laurentis.’

‘Prime of primes, alpha of alphas,’ said Urquidex.

Laurentis said nothing.

‘Tell me,’ said Kubik. ‘What do you know of Second Captain Koorland of the Imperial Fists, lately returned to this system?’

Urquidex’s mechanical body parts sagged with relief. ‘Whatever you wish to know, Lord of Mars.’

Kubik’s chair turned, its energy field spitting, and he performed a slow circuit around the magi.

‘Laurentis first, you spent much time with him on Ardamantua.’

‘He was kind,’ said Laurentis, his vocal modulator thoughtful. ‘Honourable.’ Laurentis paused. ‘Fabricator General, it is often wise in such circumstances as these, where mismatch exists between the relative hierarchical status of two participants in an exchange, to provide an opinion not necessarily held by the responder. To give informative discourse couched in the subjective language that tallies with the result the interlocutor wishes to hear. I calculate you wish to hear the bad, but I cannot voice it. He saved my life.’

‘Speak the truth. Flattery compromises logic,’ said Kubik.

‘I will say nothing against him,’ said Laurentis. ‘He is, in common parlance, a hero. After my transformation, he threatened Magos Urquidex with violence should additional damaging circumstance befall me.’

‘And why is this remarkable?’ asked Kubik. ‘The primary purpose of the Adeptus Astartes is to safeguard and promote the persistence of the human race. They are made to be that way, as predictable as the energy output of a lasgun.’

‘It is possible he was following his indoctrinative programming,’ conceded Laurentis. ‘But I believe he genuinely wished to help me personally.’

‘Intriguing. An altruist. An uncertain modifier to my calculations.’

‘There is more. He was also… sad,’ said Laurentis, as if struggling to recall what the word meant.

‘And you, Urquidex? State your initial observations and hypothetical deductions.’

‘He was most persuasive,’ said Urquidex unctuously. ‘Unafraid to offer violence to further his aims.’ Urquidex remembered being slammed into a wall. Most unpleasant. ‘I found him driven. He will not be easily controlled.’

Kubik’s subsidiary vocalisers made a dry clacking laugh. His primary voice remained thoughtful and cold. ‘Do not second-guess my intentions, Urquidex.’

‘I only think on the progress of the Grand Experiment, and how the arrival of the Last Wall will affect that progress,’ said Urquidex.

‘You and I are not dissimilar,’ said Kubik. ‘We are both biologians, even if our specialisations differ. Our creed is a self-evident truth — to abandon humanity entirely is a self-defeating exercise. Logic is a tool best utilised by a thinking, feeling organism, not an end unto itself. The end is knowledge, not logic as some of our brethren believe. Logic gives us a framework to understanding, but it does not provide insight. Without insight I could never have become Fabricator General nor could I survive the political processes of the Senatorum Imperialis. Logic is not the only mode of thought necessary to true communion with the Omnissiah. The flesh is weak, but the machine on its own is weak also.

‘Let the cults of expunging strip away their humanity and decry us as modus unbecoming. We must never forget the even split upon the Omnissiah’s own sigil, skull and cybernetic. A sentiment the magi of the Ordo Biologis can only agree with, is that not so, Laurentis? Before your unfortunate wounding, you had few augmentations.’

‘A choice I made to remain better attuned to subtleties of biology, Fabricator General,’ said Laurentis. ‘I have lost so much to the orks. I see more clearly now, but what was taken from me was not given willingly. I cannot imagine giving up so much of gross human feeling as a conscious act. What little emotion remains is coloured throughout with regret.’

‘Your skills as a dialogian remain. Do you still possess the necessary knowledge and mental subroutines to act as an effective translator?’

‘I remain first and foremost of the xenology sub-order,’ said Laurentis. ‘Linguistic expression is a part of my ability, not the whole.’

‘Nevertheless, it is your linguistic ability I enquire after,’ said Kubik. Upbraiding so heavily cybernised an adept as Laurentis for pedantry was pointless.

‘My linguistic skills are two-point-three-four per cent more efficient than they were,’ said Laurentis. ‘What I have lost in instinctive appreciation for the modes of speech, I have gained in rapid pattern recognition.’

Kubik swept around the magi again. ‘Then you are to report after this meeting to Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken at Pavonis Mons. There is a new project of grave importance being undertaken, vital to the war effort and to the success of the Grand Experiment. The full suite of your abilities are necessary. I have been forced by this Koorland into committing a portion of the armies of Mars to the attack on the ork moon. No matter. It shall afford us the opportunity to acquire new materials for study, and a great number of experimental subjects for Van Auken’s undertaking.’

Urquidex’s logic streams shivered with misgiving at this revelation of a new experiment. His implants seized upon the statement and trapped it in data crystals embedded in his thorax for later parsing. His initial hypothesis suggested something bad.

‘Perhaps my abilities might also be useful, my lord?’ said Urquidex. ‘I too have experience with Veridi giganticus.’

‘You are to remain upon the Grand Experiment. Your investigations into the effects of the ork teleportation technology upon biomatter are invaluable.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Urquidex.

‘We must be careful,’ said the Fabricator General. ‘The feuding of factions within the High Lords leaves us with no choice but to consider the ultimate divorce of our interests. There are those that suspect and work against us. Guard yourselves against them.’

A poor-quality hololith engaged, projecting a bubble of light that resolved itself into a live pict feed. In a grainy aerial view dogged by frequent cutouts and signal dispersion a woman was making her way across red sands, a breathing mask supplementing the thin Martian air.

‘This individual is not as she appears,’ said Kubik. ‘The diagnostic covens came across erroneous data-transfer protocols. Her code signum proved to be falsified.’

‘Who is she?’ asked Urquidex.

‘She is an operative of the Officio Assassinorum. I have been watching her for some time. Vangorich’s killers are elusive, but not invisible. We observe her from a high altitude aether-drone, and she knows nothing of it.’

The woman made her way across a landscape cluttered with ancient fragments of broken machinery. The view swung around. The hive factories of Tharsis piled themselves up behind her.

‘Sicarian assassin clade 950-Alpha-Xi, execute target,’ commanded Kubik.

The woman stopped, alert to peril not yet visible to the magi watching the pict feed. She cast away her red robe, revealing a close-fitting combat suit and a pair of bulky pistols strapped one to each thigh. She drew them both, aimed them in opposite directions, and opened fire. The action proceeded without sound. She ran, arms outstretched and rock steady, guns blazing. Her head flicked back and forth, identifying new targets, her guns ready to follow. Urquidex was certain every shot was a kill.

‘Assassins are skilled, but she is one, and we are many,’ said Kubik.

An assassination clade of Sicarian ruststalkers skittered into the pict field, over twenty of them, converging on the Assassin from all sides, their long legs nimbly picking their way over the rough ground. Always seemingly on the verge of toppling over, their darting movements instead propelled them towards their target with staccato purpose, blade limbs held out to impale and slice. The Assassin upped her fire rate. Sicarians dropped, their breached pressurised armour shooting out streams of gas, spindly augmetic limbs folding in on themselves. They came closer and closer, unconcerned with their own deaths, determined only on hers. The Assassin halted, still firing, but she was surrounded and could not escape.

The Sicarians pounced on her. With a flurry of cybernetic limbs, it was done. The Assassin lay dead on the ground.

The pict view abruptly veered as the aether-drone sped away on some new task. The sky filled the image, before fizzling out.

‘So end those who would profane the holy grounds of Mars,’ said Kubik. His chair swivelled back and rose up high so that he could look down on the magi. ‘You two have proved yourselves to me. This will be but one of a cell. We must redouble our vigilance. Spies are everywhere. We will not be thwarted so close to success.’

Urquidex struggled to control his telescopic eyes. The left developed a tic, the lens minutely focusing and refocusing. He knew very well there were more of them. He was in regular contact with one.

‘Yes, prime of primes,’ Urquidex said.

He needed to speak to Yendl immediately.

Nine

The Last Wall attacks

The ork moon hung over the holy orb of Terra, a rock that threatened an imminent drop, shattering the bland grey surface of mankind’s home.

But it was no longer master of the void. Space Marine ships stood off outside the range of the moon’s gravity weapons, arrayed in attack formation. Seven mighty battle-barges, more than a dozen strike cruisers, scores of lesser attack ships. Behind them sheltered the huge Adeptus Mechanicus ark and factory ships, their metal bellies full of cybernetic armies ready to wreak cold vengeance upon the orks.

There was one other ship of significance in the heavens. The mighty Naval vessel Autocephalax Eternal stood at high anchor, treacherously doing nothing.

‘Signal the Autocephalax Eternal again!’ said Koorland. He stood upon the highest dais of the Abhorrence, staring at the coward Lansung’s flagship through the centre of the grand oculus.

‘She is still not responding, my lord Koorland,’ reported one of Bohemond’s bondsmen.

Koorland watched the other vessel as his own fleet flew past it.

‘Anchored there, doing nothing?’ said Bohemond. ‘The High Admiral will answer to me himself!’

‘Ignore it,’ said Issachar over the fleet vox. ‘There is more at play here than warfare. Some political move on the part of the High Admiral.’

‘Begin the attack,’ said Koorland.

In precise formation, the combined fleets of the Last Wall attacked the orks while Lansung’s battleship looked on. Coming in three echelons, they speared deep into the moon’s attendant flotilla, obliterating everything they came across. Ork cruisers and captured Imperial vessels burst into short-lived blossoms of fire as wide spreads of torpedoes and projectiles smashed into them. Space Marine interdiction fighters sped out from their battle-barges, driving off ork fighters that came out to meet the fleets. Adeptus Mechanicus war arks came behind, shielded by massed arrays of arcane energy projectors. On board waited the Taghmata of Mars. Cybernetic fighter drones, piloted by disembodied human brains, swarmed in close support, shooting down ork rockets and vessels that came too close.

The moon was vast, a planetoid hooked from its home and outfitted in an undeniably orkish manner. Craters had been bored out, turning them into caverns with deep black interiors studded with lights, the outer infrastructure of buried hangars poking out from them into the brilliant shine of Sol. Roughly built towers, docks and other carbuncular constructions scarred the surface. Its giant face leered at Terra, so the Space Marines saw it side on — beetling brows as large as continental shelves turned skyward, a false mountain range of a nose, a complicated mess of scaffolds and buildings a hundred kilometres long that made up the jutting lower lip. Things of greater scale existed in the galaxy, but none of them had been built by the orks.

Koorland stood at a command podium on the bridge of the Abhorrence. With the plan in motion, he deferred command to the individual Chapter Masters.

‘Drive towards them!’ ordered Bohemond. ‘Smash them aside! Burn them all!’

Koorland watched with a more sober eye, adjusting his plans and counter-plans as the battle unfolded. Part of him wished he were aboard Issachar’s vessel, but Bohemond had shown him great hospitality, and Koorland feared the headstrong Black Templars might stray too far forward in their desire to join with the enemy first if not supervised.

‘Stay back,’ said Koorland. ‘We are at the extremity of the ork gravity weapons’ effective range.’

Bohemond made a noise in his throat, but did not disagree openly.

‘Maintain distance. Stick to the plan. Destroy the fleet. Make them come to us,’ said Koorland.

The leading Space Marine ships came within lance range. Broad beams of energy striped the sky, impacting with the ork flotilla with devastating effect. Many ships detonated the moment they were hit. In response, a large part of the ork fleet surged forward.

‘An ork cannot resist provocation,’ said Castellan Clermont, Bohemond’s second. ‘All batteries prepare to open fire! Bona Fide and Ebon, maintain protective formation.’

The moon awoke to the attack, coming alive with a frenzied sparkling as a million guns opened fire.

‘This is no threat!’ said Bohemond savagely. ‘We alone might have bested the moon at Aspiria had dePrasse not withdrawn himself! Now the orks face the combined might of four Chapters. They shall not prevail! Attack, attack, abhor the alien!’

The leading munitions of the ork moon hurtled into the Space Marines’ echelons, void shields flaring with impact flux as they struck the staggered lines of ships. More powerful weapons slashed out from tottering citadels, wavering energy beams that cut into the smaller vessels. An escort dropped out of the Fists Exemplar line, venting atmosphere from its cracked hull in white clouds.

‘Stay on course! Bring the retribution of the Emperor to the fleet. Kill them all!’ Spittle flew from Bohemond’s ruined mouth as he spoke. Koorland could barely credit they were of the same gene line, so overpowering was the Black Templar’s fervour.

‘My lord,’ spoke the Black Templars Techmarine, Kant. His lips were stapled together — some show of contrition, Koorland had been told, although for what the Black Templars would not reveal. His voice was a miserable metallic drone, soullessly issuing from twin vox-speakers either side of his neck. ‘The ork moon exhibits a spiking of power.’

‘All hands, prepare for gravity attack!’ shouted Clermont.

An erratic flashing blinked in the moon’s hollow craters. From pylons set about the face, squirming ribbons of energy rose, binding themselves into a thick cord. A sufficient build-up of power achieved, it snapped out like a whip, shearing through the orks’ own vessels before flicking along the Excoriators arrowhead coming up below the Black Templars’ line of attack. One attack cruiser took a direct hit, void shields giving out simultaneously. It imploded, the prow and stern folding up around a middle compressed to vanishingly small size. For a moment it sailed on bent double, carried forward by momentum, before exploding, buffeting the ships coming behind it with the wash of its breached reactor.

‘This is a new weapon,’ voxed Thane. ‘I have not seen its like before.’

‘Some kind of gravity lash,’ said Quesadra.

‘Such power!’ hissed Bohemond.

‘They are gathering to fire again!’ warned Kant, the faintest hint of emotion creeping into his machine voice.

Once more the flickerings essayed from the towers on the surface, once more they gathered and shot out. Again the lash targeted the Excoriators fleet, grazing the fore section of the Remembered Sin, Issachar’s flagship, as it dissipated into a kaleidoscopic spray of particles. A portion of the Remembered Sin’s hammerhead prow collapsed into glittering clouds of smashed metal and air. The Remembered Sin was twisted into a spin, as if swatted by a god.

‘Issachar!’ demanded Koorland. ‘Status!’

‘We live,’ replied the Excoriator. Alarms whooped in the background. ‘But we will not survive another hit like that. We must get in closer, attack the moon directly. If we can strip away its weaponry, we shall stand a chance. Push through the fleet.’

‘I concur!’ shouted Bohemond. ‘All ships, onward! Arm cyclonic torpedoes. Target the moon.’

It irked Koorland that he did not confer with him first, but he held his silence.

‘Fire control, liaise with the others,’ said Koorland. ‘Find a mutually acceptable firing solution. Multiple hits will give us the best results.’

‘Yes, lord Chapter Master,’ replied Bohemond’s bondsmen.

The Abhorrence’s engines opened up, pushing it with indomitable power towards the moon.

The sky around Terra was thick with debris. Shattered orbital fortresses and defence platforms floated in shoals of wreckage, making sailing hazardous for both sides. Ork fighters, keen to engage with the approaching ships, impacted with them in flashes of boiling fire. The Space Marine pilots, more cautious, better skilled, were taxed to the limit streaking through the metal-choked vacuum. The bigger ships could not avoid the debris, and all across the Last Wall void shields flashed and curled with impact flux.

‘Gravity lash arming,’ droned Kant.

‘Firing solution agreed, all fleets report readiness.’ The bondsmen manning the gunnery station looked to Koorland.

A number of impact points flashed up on the hololith of the ork moon. Koorland nodded.

‘All ships, open fire,’ he ordered.

Cyclonic torpedoes, each larger than a space fighter, slipped free of the launch tubes of twenty battle-barges and strike cruisers. Their engines flared, and they powered towards the moon with building speed, passing the emissions of the gravity lash coming the other way.

Now they were closer, the lash struck with redoubled violence. The tip of it took the battle-barge of one of the Black Templars’ subsidiary crusades in the centre. The lash writhed and coiled about it like a python, collapsing the ship’s midsection so comprehensively that the remains of the prow and stern drifted free of each other. The stern detonated with the sunburst of reactor death, engulfing its escort vessels in nuclear fire. The lash had not done: it twitched through the crusade’s ships, smashing two more of them into nothing before finally dissipating. When it shut off, a single vessel remained, heavily damaged. It was targeted by a flight of ork destroyers. Fire sped between the crippled Imperial ship and its predators, but there could be only one outcome. The ship disappeared, replaced by a perfect circle of brilliant light that winked out as quickly as it bloomed.

Bohemond roared at the oculus, slamming his fist into his palm. ‘They will pay all the more dearly for that!’ he yelled. ‘Prepare to fire a second volley of torpedoes.’

The first launch had reached the moon, slamming all over the surface. Explosions lit up tits face with domes of fire and light. The moon shook under the impact. Tall plumes of ejecta reared up, gnarled fingers reaching for the Space Marine ships.

‘Ready to fire again!’ reported gunnery command.

‘Hold!’ ordered Koorland as Bohemond raised his hand. ‘Wait for the others.’

‘Koorland,’ said Bohemond.

‘Wait!’ commanded the Imperial Fist. ‘We are most effective working in concert. You will wait!’

Shorter-ranged grav-weapons began their assault on the fleet. Clouds of energy bubbles projected at the ships crushed all those they touched. Long-ranged reverse tractor beams tore pieces from hulls or pushed vessels off course. For all the havoc wreaked on the moon’s surface, there were hundreds of thousands of weapons still, of all types, unleashing their full power on the approaching vessels. Void shields throbbed, and across the fleets they failed with oily pyrotechnic displays. Battle-barges shook under the barrage. Several of the smaller vessels were destroyed.

By now the fleets were close to the moon, deep in the debris field. Here were thousands of captured Imperial vessels, many undergoing crude refits. The broadsides of the capital ships boomed constantly, blasting ork craft and pirated Imperial ships to pieces. Destroyers duelled with fast ork attack craft, and everywhere tracers of anti-interdiction fire streaked the sky.

Icons flashed across Koorland’s station. Vox-confirmation came in from the rest of the fleet.

‘Now. Now open fire, High Marshal,’ said Koorland.

‘Do as he commands, open fire!’ roared Bohemond, but his men had already responded.

More torpedoes raced towards the moon, pounding into the surface. The weight of fire issuing from the moon lessened.

‘Brother Kant, is the gravity lash disabled?’

‘Negative,’ said Kant. ‘They are charging to fire again.’

‘My lords! We have reports of multiple boarders across the fleets,’ reported the vox-master. ‘Teleport attack.’

‘They will have taken these craft the same way. They will not find us so easy to overpower,’ said Bohemond. ‘Seal the bulkheads! Weapons free. Activate corridor defences.’

‘It is done, my lord.’

Koorland pressed his knuckles into his command station. ‘Bring the fleet around, get us between Terra and the face. The pylons have to be brought down.’

‘Too late!’ shouted Kant.

The gravity lash arced directly towards the Abhorrence. The bondsman at the helm shouted, ‘Evasive action!’ and the ship plunged as quickly as it was able. The ribbon of gravitic energy raced over the command tower as it slipped down, shearing into the engine stacks of the battle-barge as they presented themselves.

The ship lurched madly as the gravity wave perturbed its course, throwing men everywhere, an effect that worsened enormously when the beam cut into the stern. Koorland slammed against his command post and fell over it, the effects of the ork weapon making a mockery of the Abhorrence’s grav-plating. He fell down a deck that was suddenly vertical, skidding along the metal towards the back of the ship. Somehow, he got his feet under him and activated his maglocks. He lurched upright painfully, standing perpendicularly to the upended gravity. Men flew past him, dragged towards the artificial gravity well of the lash.

The ship rolled violently to port. Through the oculus, Koorland saw the Bona Fide burning engines hard to clear the stricken vessel’s path. With a further mighty wrench to portside, the beam shut off. Gravity returned suddenly to the correct vector. Bondsmen slid down the back wall. Unsecured articles fell from the ceiling. Alarms blared, tocsins sang. The lights had gone out, replaced by the murky red of emergency lumens. Men groaned in pain. A dozen of them did not get up, but lay still.

Throughout it all, Kant had remained stoically anchored in place by his master augur array. ‘We have lost our port engine assembly, my liege. There is heavy damage across all decks in the aft section. Several of our tower superstructures are no more. Multiple casualties among our bondsmen and servitors.’

Bohemond picked himself up from the floor. Bondsmen medicae teams hurried in to help their stricken comrades.

‘Get us back on heading. Continue attack run.’

‘Gravity weapon charging again.’

‘My lords!’ called a bondsman at the auspex centre. ‘My lords, we have the energy signature of a large fleet approaching from Terra’s nightside.’

‘It cannot be the Imperial Navy. The Autocephalax Eternal stands off, and there are no other Naval vessels in the system,’ said Bohemond.

‘There was no warning of orks on the far side of the throneworld,’ said Koorland.

‘Gravity weapon is close to full charge,’ warned Kant.

‘Brace!’ shouted Clermont. The lightning discharge built, and Koorland prepared for the worst.

The attack never came. The face side of the ork moon appeared to change shape, redrawn by a swift painter working in blinding light. The oculus dimmed itself at the sudden fire, and the Space Marines saw the moon’s face deformed by a dozen atomic blasts.

From out of the maelstrom a fresh fleet came sailing, jet-black silhouettes set against the destruction they had unleashed.

Adeptus Astartes vessels.

A powerful, sonorous voice burst over the vox.

‘This is Chapter Master Malfons. The Iron Knights respond to the call of the Last Wall. We apologise for our tardiness, but we are here. The sons of Dorn stand together. Awaiting orders.’

‘The gravity lash is disabled,’ said Kant. ‘Auspex indicates eighty per cent of all ork surface weaponry non-functional.’

‘Malfons!’ shouted Bohemond. ‘Well met, brother!’

‘Continue attack run,’ ordered Koorland. ‘All fleets converge. Establish blockade pattern. Iron Knights, support the Fists Exemplar.’

‘Understood and confirmed, Chapter Master Koorland. And Koorland?’

‘Yes, brother?’

‘You have our regret at your loss. Moving in to support the Fists Exemplar now.’

All around the moon, the night of the void turned to mottled day as the Space Marines broke off their charge to the moon, and dealt death to the remaining ork fleet. Caught within expertly intersected fields of fire, the ork vessels and captured Imperial mercantile ships were torn to pieces.

‘Now the real work begins. What will you do, brother?’ said Bohemond with an appraising look. ‘Join the fray, or remain here? You are the last of the Imperial Fists. Perhaps you should not risk yourself.’

‘Who will lead the attack? You?’

‘If you so command, then I will gladly lead,’ said Bohemond.

Koorland examined Bohemond’s scarred face, but could not read the fragment of expression displayed there.

‘All fleets of the Last Wall, prepare to board the moon,’ Koorland ordered. ‘Adeptus Mechanicus arks, the way is clear for you to move in and begin your deployment.’ Koorland turned to Bohemond. ‘I will lead an attack party myself.’

Bohemond gave him a wild look. ‘In that case, brother, I have a gift for you.’

The ork bombardment had ceased, and now the halls of the Abhorrence resounded with the activity of men. As bondsmen and the servants of the Black Templars’ forge ran towards the vessel’s damaged sections, squads of Space Marines jogged towards their drop-halls and the embarkation deck.

In Bohemond’s personal arming chambers, silence held sway. The cowled bondsmen still went about their business as if nothing had occurred, checking Bohemond’s collection of weapons for upset and damage, and setting right that which had been disturbed. Bohemond led Koorland through his spartan dayroom, through a small weapons workshop, an ammunition store and thence into his innermost sanctum, an octagonal room lined floor to ceiling with weaponry. Most of it was of fine Imperial make, adorned with emblems of the shield and the Templar cross, honour chains and shackles coiled carefully onto pegs beneath each mount. Intermingled were a number of weapons of alien make, of all types from the obvious to the obscure of purpose.

‘You are surprised?’ said Bohemond, when he caught Koorland examining the xenos devices. ‘These are my trophies, many taken from worthy opponents, unclean though they were… But there would be no honour in employing the weapons of the alien against the alien. What I have for you is of far nobler origin.’ He pointed to an alcove where waited a large object covered with a white silk shroud, black Templar crosses repeated hundreds of times over it in an interlocking pattern. Bohemond nodded at one of his arming bondsmen. The man came forward and tugged the shroud free.

Underneath was a suit of Terminator armour, painted in the bold yellow of the Imperial Fists.

‘This suit is one of the very first of the Indomitus armours manufactured,’ said Bohemond, indicating the familiar planed helm and heavy-gauge chest plating. ‘Its name is Fidus Bellator, and it was fashioned in the closing years of the great Heresy war.’ He looked at Koorland. ‘I doubted you, Koorland. I cannot deny it. I have yet to be convinced you are suitable to lead the assembled might of the Last Wall. Yet you have proved yourself in other ways. You are confident, sure of purpose, tactically astute. You are worthy of the rank of Chapter Master, and so I may yet change my mind. In recognition, and in friendship, I give this to you.’

‘I do not know what to say, High Marshal,’ said Koorland wonderingly. Much of his Chapter’s supplies and materiel had been destroyed around Ardamantua, though there would of course be armour and weapons still aboard their great star fortress of the Phalanx and in their barracks on Terra. But were there any Terminator suits left? He doubted it. They were all lost, along with the First Company.

‘Then say nothing,’ said Bohemond. ‘The armour is not dishonoured, for Fidus Bellator has borne these colours before. Once it resided in the armouriums of the Phalanx. If it makes it easier to accept, let us agree that I do nothing more than return it home.’

‘You do me a great honour. I cannot repay you.’

‘I do,’ agreed Bohemond. ‘And you can repay me. Repay me with glory, Chapter Master. Avenge your brothers.’

Ten

The gate

An electric buzzing supplanted Koorland’s senses as his substance was projected through the warp. His body diffused, becoming a tingling sensation and little else. Thought fled as his consciousness momentarily disconnected from reality, but it did not cease — rather his sense of self became something else, a raw awareness without thought, a thing of feeling. Rationality was inconceivable. Time was irrelevant. There was only being, nothing else.

A wall of pain interrupted his contemplations. His body passed out of the warp, his wargear and flesh rearranging themselves into solid forms. A blaze of light and rush of vapour, and he was striding forward, gun raised, into a roughly hewn chamber cluttered with ramshackle machinery and orks. A subsidiary power nexus for the surface energy weapons, its destruction would knock out several dozen energy cannons, or so their Adeptus Mechanicus allies had informed them.

The xenos recovered quickly from their surprise at Koorland appearing in their midst, abandoning the tasks they were about at the machines, and launched themselves at the Space Marine with a ferocious roaring. Their weapons rebounded from his Terminator armour without effect. Koorland gunned them down with his storm bolter, blasting them into bouncing pieces. Ork slave creatures squealed and ran from him. Rushing air behind him signalled other successful teleports. The sensorium of his borrowed suit pinged into life, triangulating his location, linking up with the auspex suites of his ad hoc squad.

‘Teleport successful. Target achieved. Strike Team Slaughter, respond,’ he voxed. He could not turn easily in the massive armoured suit, not without presenting his back to the doorway.

‘Moscht here,’ spoke a voice into his helm. The Space Marines sounded off, their squad icons and vital signs flicking into life upon Koorland’s helm display.

‘Ulferic here.’

‘Donafen here.’

‘Arbalt here.’

‘Holde here.’

Two Black Templars, a brother of the Fists Exemplar, an Excoriator, and an Iron Knight made up his small command.

‘Zero casualties,’ said Koorland.

‘Praise be,’ said Ulferic and Arbalt.

Koorland ignored their odd expression of piety. ‘Thus far, our Adeptus Mechanicus allies have been proven correct. According to their information, the primary target is this way — power generators for the ork gravity weapons. Let us ensure they never fire again. Move out and engage.’

Koorland went first, the others close behind. The combat chatter of other Terminator squads crackled in his ears. Three hundred Terminators worked their way through the tunnels. The moon shook with impacts from the surface, shortly joined by the detonation of demolition charges nearer to hand. Data-screed and vox-reports kept Koorland abreast of the battle, so much information it took the superior mind of a Space Marine to comprehend.

‘Target Gamma destroyed.’

‘Report heavy fire, sector nineteen forty-three.’

‘Target Zeta damaged and on fire. Proceeding to secondary objectives.’

Koorland’s squad stamped through corridors carved from grey stone, primitive deck plating buckling under the weight of their armour. Squads of orks burst from doorways, weapons blazing. Their large-calibre bullets ricocheted from the thick plates of the Terminator suits in showers of hot sparks. Return fire cut them down. As they passed each rathole and stinking entrance, Holde of the Iron Knights poked the nozzle of his heavy flamer down it and sent a jet of shrieking promethium inside. Burning ork slave creatures ran out, screaming. Soon the twisting corridors were choked with smoke, and the Space Marines switched to artificially enhanced views of their environs.

They approached their target. The corridor widened into a cavern, floored erratically with platforms of poorly cut metal. Rough doors as numerous as maggot holes in a corpse riddled the chamber sides. A four-storey-tall machine buzzed and crackled in the middle of the cavern, topped by a rotating arrangement of three glass balls as big as light tanks whose innards writhed with peculiar energies.

‘Our primary target is ahead of us,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Destroy it.’

‘First, a little bladeplay,’ said Arbalt, pointing across the uneven cavern floor.

From an entrance on the far side, hundreds of orks pelted into the room, howling guttural xenos war cries, each one desperate to be the first to kill. Gunfire hammered down at the Space Marines from the tiered galleries ranged up the walls.

Koorland raised his gun and his power sword in salute. ‘For the Emperor,’ he said.

The Terminators opened fire.

In her dreams, Haas laboured. An eternity had passed since her arrival, and whether it was days or aeons long, she could not tell. There was no marker to judge by, no day-night cycle. It was never dark and it was never truly light. Food and water came rarely and erratically. The orks were capricious in everything, sticking to no schedule or plan. They let the prisoners sleep at random times for periods that could have been minutes or hours. Without a chronopiece, there was no way of knowing.

During their ‘day’, she and the longshanks were shackled together and marched a short distance from their cell to the lift platforms leading to the giant hollow in the heart of the moon. There they were whipped and beaten and forced to move supplies under conditions of erratic gravity. They worked in the shadow of the orks’ crackling gate, a spasming vortex of green fire whose flarings spat out raw materials, goods, food and always more and more orks. The noise from it was terrifying, a constant thunder that boomed deafeningly loud with every fresh transit.

It was there that Haas was dragged to work, and there she returned during her brief nightmares.

The ork gate shimmered over her head, bathing the sandy floor of the transit cave in painful light. An ork was coming, the one they called One Tooth, for the single ivory fang jutting over his lip. She kept her head down, not wanting to be noticed. But One Tooth was coming for her, growing to incredible dream-size.

‘Too little, too runty,’ it said. Tiny slave things scuttled around its feet, repeating its words mockingly. ‘Far too weak! To the meat room, take it to the meat room!’

A huge hand, horny with callouses lined with old blood, reached down for her.

She came awake screaming when it touched her.

‘Shhh!’ said Marast, touching his lips with a single long finger. ‘Quiet! Something’s happening.’

All around the dim cell the longshanks were stirring, unfolding spindly limbs from their uncomfortable sleeping positions and looking towards the door.

‘What?’ said Haas. Gunfire and shouting came from outside, down on the prison cavern floor.

An explosion rocked the room, followed by a storm of gunfire.

‘What’s going on?’ shouted Marast. The other slaves screamed at the noise.

‘The orks!’ said Haas. ‘They’re being attacked!’ She was up on her feet, adrenaline keeping her exhaustion at bay. She crept towards the door. The light of weapons discharge strobed through the viewing slit. She stood on tiptoes to look through.

‘Get her away from there!’ hissed Huringer.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Marast.

‘Can’t see. Wait…’ Haas shrieked and threw herself backwards as a pair of glaring red eyes appeared at the slit.

The ork rumbled aggressively in its alien tongue. Keys jangled, and it flung the door open.

The ork swaggered in, kicking the longshanks aside with bone-crushing force. Battle noise flooded the room. The ork slaver ignored it, his head swinging back and forward, nose snuffling. Haas scrambled back, until her back was against the wall by the door. The ork caught sight of her and pointed, gabbling in its uncouth language. A blind, stupid hatred of such intensity shone in its eyes that Haas was pinned by its gaze, unable to move.

It said something and smiled evilly. As it had in her dream, it reached massive hands out for her.

A series of bangs resounded round the room. The ork’s chest blew out messily, showering Haas with viscera. She covered her face instinctively. A final shot rang out, bursting its head, and its huge corpse toppled towards her. Haas scrambled aside to see a giant warrior in black-and-white armour shove itself into the cell, bringing part of the doorway down. It was some kind of Space Marine, garbed in armour Haas had never seen: tall, high-backed, the helmet roughly square and formed of brutal angular plates, arms protected by massive shoulder guards. A second stood in the door, watching his comrade’s back.

‘Thank the Emperor! We are saved, saved!’ shouted Marast. He flung his lanky body at the feet of the Space Marine, clutching gratefully at the feet of their saviours. The longshanks wept, disbelieving of their salvation.

The Space Marine nudged Marast away with its enormous boot.

‘Non-standard human phenotype identified. Loathe the mutant. Terminate.’

Haas curled up and clapped her hands over her ears as the Space Marines opened fire with their terrible weapons. The longshanks did not even have time to express their surprise before their fragile bodies were pulped by mass-reactive shells. The gunfire went on forever, the individual reports merging into one rolling booming. When it stopped, Haas was amazed to find she still lived. Her hands shook as she took them from her ears. The longshanks had been obliterated, reduced to a gory slick that dripped from the walls.

Her ears hurt agonisingly and she cried out. The Space Marine swung its blocky helmet in her direction, pointing its bolter at her. She screamed again, and the Space Marine moved his bolter away from her. When he spoke to her it was muffled, as if her ears were stuffed with fabric.

‘Human survivor located. You, come with us.’ The warrior pointed a massive articulated finger at her, the segments sparking with a power field. ‘The Emperor protects.’

Hundreds of dead orks lay in piles around the cave, by the burning machine, on the floor, on the walkways, in cell doors. A handful more of the Space Marines in the massive armour stood at the far end, weapons smoking. Their liveries were all different. Haas only recognised the bright yellow of an Imperial Fist. From the rear of the cavern Space Marines in more familiar armour were flooding in, dozens of them, drawn from the same Chapters as those in the oversized wargear.

One of her rescuers walked away on another errand, the high, hunched back of his armour swaying, the walkway rocking dangerously under his weight. The other shepherded her down rickety stairs to the cavern floor, bringing her together with a few bewildered humans like herself. They were guided to where the Imperial Fist stood, directing the incoming warriors into defensive positions.

‘Chapter Master Koorland, human survivors,’ said her rescuer. The chamber shook with a titanic impact somewhere high above. Grit pattered down from the roof.

The Imperial Fist, Koorland, finished giving his orders to warriors in bare metal armour discoloured by heat, and others in battered gear annotated with careful script.

‘State your names,’ said Koorland to the survivors. ‘Be quick. If you have anything worthwhile to tell us of the ork moon, reveal it now. We cannot tarry.’

Haas began to speak. A tracked ammunition train came clanking into the chamber, drowning out her voice. The larger warriors stumped over to it, moving slowly but with purpose. Servitors opened hoppers in the train’s sides and began rearming weapons, while others with specialised tools for limbs ran diagnostic checks on the Space Marines’ armour and effected minor repairs. Others in the giant battlesuits were arriving from elsewhere, and these were also attended to. The noise in the chamber was deafening, warriors shouting, heavy footsteps booming off uneven deck plating. The other rescued men and women said nothing, other than babbling thanks and praise. The Imperial Fist turned from them, as if he had never expected to receive anything of use from them.

Haas tried again.

‘Your men! They killed the longshanks,’ she shouted.

The Chapter Master turned back.

‘What?’ His voice was hard and inhuman from his vox-grille, the bright yellow helm unreadable. Haas was terrified, but her instinct for justice was strong.

‘Others. I was imprisoned with them. They helped keep me safe, and your men killed them.’

‘You are?’

‘Arbitrator Galatea Haas, Imperial Palace 149th Administrative District, General Oversight Division. I survived the Proletarian Crusade.’

‘Is this true, Arbalt?’ Koorland asked of Haas’ rescuer.

‘The female was domiciled with a number of aberrants,’ said Arbalt, his contempt plainly audible through the distortions of his vox-grille. ‘Non-standard humanoid phenotype. They did not deserve clemency.’

‘They told me that they were permitted abhumans. Longshanks,’ said Haas.

‘Longshanks? That kind are not mutants,’ said Koorland. ‘Arbalt, Ulferic. No human is to be harmed, no matter their type, not before you report to me.’

‘As you wish, Chapter Master,’ said Arbalt emotionlessly.

‘Convey this information to all your fellows,’ he said angrily. ‘While you are under my command I will not countenance the needless slaying of innocents.’

Arbalt gave an awkward bow, his movements restricted by his suit. ‘My lord Chapter Master.’

‘You may go,’ said Koorland to the humans.

‘There is more,’ said Haas. ‘The orks. They have a… a device, not far from here. A gate.’

Koorland looked down at her. His helmet’s muzzle and odd faceted panels made him look like an animal made of metal. ‘A gate?’

‘Some kind of teleportation device,’ said Haas. ‘Troops and weapons come through it all the time.’

Koorland motioned for a Space Marine wearing rust-red armour, a bulky servo-arm folded on top of his pack. ‘Send word to the Adeptus Mechanicus. We have intelligence of interest.’

‘Immediately, Chapter Master Koorland.’ The Space Marine hurried away.

Koorland called another to him. ‘Fetch this woman food and water. Now.’ Only then did he give his full attention to Haas. He tilted forward a little and projected a rough hololith from a device integrated into his suit.

‘This is a three-dimensional representation of the immediate surroundings,’ he said. ‘Show me where this “gate” is…’

Eleven

Servant of the Beast

The moon ceased shuddering. The fleet’s efforts to strip the weaponry from the surface were concluded, but throughout the interior Space Marines fought desperate close battles against hordes of green monsters, protecting Adeptus Mechanicus salvage teams and xenologists while they stripped whole caverns of machinery. The orks, though contained, did not diminish in number.

The woman Haas had been correct. Through a grainy pict image relayed from the eyes of a servo-skull probe to a portable augur station, Koorland, Bohemond and Thane saw the orkish gate in operation. The skull looked down from a ledge high overhead. The angle was odd, the picture a striated, brown monochrome, but the poor quality of the image could not disguise the scale of what they witnessed. The orks had carved a chamber four kilometres across to house it. Bizarre machines crowded the walls, crackling with potent energies. Within the circle of the machines, piles of crates, scrap, lesser machines and weapons occupied the flat, gravelly floor. Fat cables snaked away through the materiel crowding the chamber, plugging the gate into the machines.

The gate itself was made up of three metal horns, as tall as Titans, curving up from a crudely made platform suspended some metres above the cavern floor. Steel hawsers, chains and ungainly clamps held them in place. They wobbled even so, perturbed by the energies they contained. Constant, dancing light jumped at the centre. Every few minutes, the light shone brighter, almost whiting out the pict, and yet another mob of thick-shouldered, tusked greenskins stomped out onto the platform, hefting their weapons, eager to fight.

‘The moons. They are not simple spacecraft as we assumed,’ said Koorland. ‘They are bridgeheads. It is no wonder the planets attacked have been so easily overwhelmed.’

‘Where have they learned technology of this power?’ said Bohemond. ‘With each encounter we uncover further disquieting information. Is there no limit to their ingenuity?’

‘We have not seen this before,’ said Thane. ‘What has changed?’

‘Fascinating,’ said Kant. ‘Their mastery of the gravitic sciences must be connected with this. There is potential here. It is said the eldar possess something similar, a sub-spatial network that enables communication between their scattered worlds.’

‘Such an ability in the hands of the orks is an unwelcome proposition,’ said Koorland. ‘This must be what Kubik was so keen to secure.’

‘I concur with his desire,’ said Kant. ‘The orks are epidemic. These machines can only make that situation worse. This is surely the reason for the Beast’s success. We must capture it, study it. Then we might counter it.’

They watched as another rabble of orks marched out of the flashing tunnel of light.

‘While they keep their tunnel open, we cannot defeat them,’ said Thane. ‘Terra will become an eternal battleground. The orks will replenish their numbers as ours dwindle. The gate must close, the moon must fall.’

‘It can be done,’ said Bohemond. ‘If that sybaritic coward Lansung can best one, then it should be a small matter for us.’

‘The agreement with Mars was that the moon must be taken,’ said Kant. ‘This gate is the greatest prize of all.’

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘The gate must be destroyed.’

‘We shall see to it,’ said Bohemond.

Kant agreed dolefully. ‘It saddens me, but I can only concur. Maybe some knowledge might be gleaned from the wreckage.’

‘I suggest massed Terminator assault,’ said Bohemond. ‘Only by meeting them with the First Companies and Sword Brethren of our orders can we hope to prevail. Once we attack the gate, the orks will be stirred to heights of fury. We might fight our way there, but escape? Teleportation will be the only viable means of extraction.’

‘Thane?’ asked Koorland.

‘There are multiple plans that would result in the destruction of the gate, but I cannot conceive of another that would not result in an unacceptable toll of gene-seed and life. Teleportation through so much mass and shielding as the moon possesses can only be realistically achieved by those in Terminator plate. We would lose many power-armoured brothers. Bohemond’s suggestion has great merit.’

‘What is your proposition, High Marshal?’ said Koorland. ‘Form a cordon, fight our way in?’

‘From multiple directions,’ said Bohemond. He called up a wireframe diagrammatic of the moon, displacing the pict feed from their augur screen. Much of the ork satellite had been mapped by deep auspex, but there were large areas shaded in red, lacking detail. ‘Our Chapters hold large parts of the moon. The ork reinforcements must be using these tunnels here to come to their fellows’ aid direct from the gate.’ He indicated three straight tunnels, wide as highways, that led from the gate chamber to the surface, where they exited from the apertures of the moon’s giant ork face. Dozens of lesser ways threaded from them, riddling the crust and deeper interior.

‘We must divert their attention,’ said Thane. ‘These orks are strange, and apt to use many unusual technologies, but look at them. Projected from the other side of the galaxy, they come out roaring and snorting, hungry for war. Whatever new tricks these beasts have mastered, they remain orks.’

‘Orks cannot resist a direct challenge,’ said Bohemond. ‘Provoke them, and we may direct their fury as we might. Let us send word to the fleet and land our armoured vehicles. Deploy them in the tunnels — that is a lure no ork could resist. They will die before the guns of our tanks while we attack from the rear.’

A taskforce-wide vox-blurt signalled the beginning of the attack. Across the main triple highway into the core the massed tanks of five Chapters advanced. In the subsidiary tunnels to the sides, hundreds of Space Marines fanned out to stop any orks who might choose an alternative route around the advancing Land Raiders, Razorbacks and Predators. The moon rumbled with new detonations as vital passageways were brought down, blocked with millions of tons of rock and metal. At the peripheries of the territories held by the Chapters, Space Marines prepared for the moment the orkish reinforcements would be cut off. Thereafter they were to drive forward, trapping the remaining greenskins.

There would be slaughter, Koorland was sure, but the cost in gene-forged blood would be high.

The Terminators worked their way into position around the gate as the orks took the bait, advancing up the main tunnels where they hurled themselves at the advancing Space Marine tanks. The armour worked its way forward purposefully, slowly, the tunnel resonating with the reports of their weapons and the howling of orks.

Koorland fought alongside Thane and his bodyguard of Terminators. Through a labyrinth they proceeded, slaughtering orks wherever they found them. The corridors rarely ran straight, and where battle was met it was a vicious, close-quarters affair. Koorland’s freshly painted armour was soon a mess of nicks and scratches, the bright yellow stained dark red. His sword was caked from tip to pommel in blood baked black by its power field.

‘This feels good,’ grunted Thane, smashing an ork’s head deep into its shoulders with his power maul. ‘On Eidolica, we kept them back as long as we could, slaying them with our guns. Tactically proper, but where vengeance is involved, I prefer to see my enemy’s face close.’ He let out a shout as he smashed another ork down. Koorland cut the hands from his own opponent with a single well-placed blow. The ork roared its anger and battered at him with bloody wrists. Koorland spared a single round from his storm bolter to end it.

‘Close-quarter melee conserves our ammunition,’ said Thane at the sound of the gun. ‘We are going to need it.’

They rounded a corner. The corridor opened up onto the floor of the gate chamber. Thousands of orks were pouring from the flaring mechanism.

‘There are so many. It is as Eidolica was,’ said Thane.

‘So it was on Ardamantua also,’ said Koorland. ‘An endless tide. Let us stop it up. Time to announce ourselves!’

Thane strode into the chamber, selected a tall crackling machine for his ire, and smashed its casing with his power maul. Sheet metal caved in, exposing the flashing innards. Another blow arrested its processes explosively. Fire belched from the array of pipes on the top, followed by a greasy cough of smoke.

‘Destroy the machines! Destroy them all!’ roared Thane.

‘Interrupt the power supply,’ said Koorland. ‘Close the gate.’

Five more machines died before the orks noticed their attackers. Piggish, ugly faces turned at the sound of the destruction. Without breaking stride, a portion of the orks streaming from the gate up the tunnels changed direction, and charged at the new threat.

‘Now is the proper time for the expenditure of ammunition,’ shouted Thane. ‘First Company, fire!’

Forty of Thane’s Terminators formed a bowed line centred on him, while the others fanned out and destroyed the machines. Their guns spoke with one booming voice. Storm bolters on full automatic blazed a streaking hail of fiery darts. Assault cannons spun up to firing speed, spitting out a torrent of bullets. Where bolts met orkish flesh, they penetrated and exploded. Orks staggered on with horrendous injuries. Many required two or three further shots to down. Where they encountered the furious sweep of the assault cannons, they were cut in half. The orks stumbled and fell, or were blown backwards in bloody chunks. Stacks of supply crates were shredded. Munitions within them detonated. Shoulder-launched cyclone missiles exploded in tight clusters, tearing red holes in the ork hordes. The enemy tumbled over the corpses of their fellows, piled high by their own momentum, a line of ruined flesh at the edge of the Space Marines’ range. Still they came.

All over the cavern, explosions roared upward as other Terminator groups entered the hall and set to work. Koorland headed implacably towards the nearest of the gate horns. He smashed down an ork that had made its way through the torrent of fire. An electric fizzling crackled across the chamber as a tall, horizontal wheel covered in bronze balls came off its mountings. Green lightning jagged out into walls, floor and machinery. Another huge boom, and another. Gouts of fire rolled upward.

‘Company, change ranks!’ yelled Thane. His first line, their ammunition exhausted, stepped back, smoothly changing places with another line that stepped forward, storm bolters already chattering. There was no interruption to the wall of death the Fists Exemplar dealt out.

Koorland and his entourage were beyond the edge of the firing line, and the orks came more thickly. They brought them down, smashing their way towards the horn. Koorland cut the cables running along the floor. Fires blazed everywhere, tinged with green, choking black smoke billowing from them, moving strangely in the erratic artificial gravity of the gate room. The gate stuttered, its light and its buzzing interrupted. Orks passing through during this intermission were torn in half.

‘Press on, press on!’ roared Koorland. The flow of orks lessened. The gate blinked off again, longer this time. Koorland emptied his magazine into an important-looking machine, blasting it to bits.

The gate went out. The orks roared as one. All around the chamber they were facing lines of Space Marine Terminators. At measured pace, the Space Marine lines converged, trapping the orks between them. The sons of Dorn suffered their losses, but for every champion of humanity that fell, twenty orks died. The orks flooding up the tunnel towards the tank line milled about, unsure which enemy to engage. They surged back and forth, before finally switching direction and running towards the Terminators.

At Thane’s position the guns of the second line clicked empty. No third line existed to replace them. The orks clambered over their heaped dead, and charged into the Space Marine ranks.

A cacophony of weapons hitting thick battleplate announced the meeting of orks and Space Marines, followed by the banging of matter annihilated by disruption fields as the Adeptus Astartes swung their power fists.

‘Onward, to the gate horn!’ ordered Koorland. Orks pulled at his arms, thick green fingers slipping from his gory armour. He shook them off. The horn towered over him. He pulled out the melta bomb maglocked to his thigh, twisted the flask handle, and slapped it into place. Two more Terminators followed, attaching their own bombs. Across the smoking, empty platform, Koorland saw Bohemond and Issachar’s warriors doing the same, Malfons himself attaching his bomb to the third horn.

‘Charges placed,’ voxed the lord of the Iron Knights.

‘Withdraw,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Prepare for extraction. Our work here is over for today. Initiate teleport countdown.’

On his chronometer, five minutes flashed up, and began to tick down.

‘Terminator groups, withdraw to predesignated teleport coordinates.’

All around the chamber, the Terminators backed away, always facing the enemy. The orks were greatly reduced in number, but thousands remained, and their fury only grew as their ranks were further thinned.

At three minutes, ten seconds until teleport the gate flared again. Through the flickering light stepped the largest ork Koorland had ever seen. Not even the warlords of the great tribal migrations he had fought against compared with it. It was taller than a Space Marine Dreadnought, an axe as big as a Rhino’s side in its hand. Red eyes glowed with feral intelligence above a row of close-packed teeth as long as sabres. Upon its head was a thick helmet, adorned with a spread of horns as long as power swords. Around it were thirty or so other orks, smaller than their leader but every one a terrible warrior in its own right.

The giant ork shouted out an incomprehensible stream of xenos words, and the orks fighting the Space Marines began to rally themselves, pulling back into better order, firing their guns at the Terminators.

‘What by the Emperor is that thing?’ voxed Malfons. ‘Is it the Beast itself?’

‘Whatever it is, it is a worthy foe,’ said Bohemond.

The orks redoubled their attack as their master stepped off the gateway platform. Its monstrous bodyguard swaggered after it, wargear and weaponry uniform only in their brutality. As they stepped down, more orks were revealed behind. Some bore banner poles of iron fists clutching spanner icons. All of them wore harnesses and aprons stuffed full of tools, and their weapons were bizarre combinations of heavy axes and wrenches. These ran across the platform, jumping off the sides. They headed for the wrecked machines, dozens of slave assistants rushing after them. The leader beast roared and gesticulated, pointing to the worst damage. Now some of the orks retreated, forming a cordon, blocking the Terminators’ way to the specialists. Behind a line of warriors twenty deep, the mechanicians set to work. The rest of the orks roared and charged. The two lines of Space Marines met, and smoothly reformed into a circle.

‘They are repairing the machines,’ said Malfons.

‘Ignore them!’ ordered Koorland. ‘They have not seen the melta charges. When they do, they will not have time to disarm them. Teleport in two minutes, twenty seconds. We must prevail until then!’ Koorland swept his power sword across the front rank of orks, cutting several in two with one swipe. The rest surged on over the toppling bodies of their friends, driven on by the crowd behind and their own insatiable battle lust.

‘Hold them back! Hold them back!’ roared Koorland.

Two minutes to teleport.

The circle of Space Marines shrank. For all the thickness of their armour, they were heavily outnumbered.

The great beast lofted its axe, and brought it down with a powerful swing to point at Koorland. Shouting more orders, it bore down on the last of the Imperial Fists with a plodding charge, head down, its bodyguard forming an arrowhead behind it.

Koorland slew his last opponent, and prepared to meet it.

Those Space Marines still possessing ammunition opened fire. For a few vital seconds mass-reactives shattered thick armour plates, blew divots of green flesh from massive muscles, then the ork charge hit home. The orks towered over the Space Marine elite, and knocked them staggering. Chainaxes rose and fell, hacking through reinforced adamantium and ceramite by dint of raw orkish strength. Boxy power klaw blades squealed through hardened metal, snipping off heads and limbs. The Space Marines fought back, smashing the orks with their power fists, caving in their ribs and crushing their faces into bloody mist.

The leader came at Koorland, and the Imperial Fist had the fight of his life on his hands.

Thirty seconds to teleport.

The ork was twice Koorland’s height, broader than a battle tank. Koorland sidestepped its lowered head, but was caught upon the thing’s shoulder and sent stumbling backwards. His armour’s gyroscopic stabilisation systems protested as they fought to keep him upright. The ork recovered swiftly, swinging its massive axe out and across at Koorland’s chest height. It hit his plastron, the impact of the blow shaking him inside his armour. The eagle upon his chest was wrecked, the metal detail pressed and smashed into itself as if it had been crafted from soft lead. The ork reared up, raising its axe before Koorland could react. The weapon hurtled down, fast as a comet. Koorland pivoted awkwardly, pushing the mobility of his armour to its limit to raise his sword in an overhead parry.

His weapon met the cruel head of the axe with a titanic boom. The axe head exploded into spinning, white-hot shrapnel. The force of the blow was such that Koorland was driven to his knee. When he lumbered back upright, he found his own blade was a blackened shard. He had no time to order his armour to disconnect the power feed and discard it. The beast was on him again, its skin studded with the smoking remains of its axe.

Twenty seconds to teleport.

The ork reached down, grabbing both of Koorland’s arms in its gargantuan fists. It lifted him up, armour and all, pulling his arms apart. Koorland’s armour sang a litany of alarms. Red flashed all over his helm display. Metal groaned, and hot pain stabbed into his wrists, elbows and shoulders as the joints began to part.

The cavern filled with golden light as the melta bombs went off in stepped detonations, micro-fusion devices slagging wide rings of the left gate horn. Sectioned into pieces, the device slid apart, spraying gobbets of molten metal into the orks around the teleport gate. Then the second fell, and the third, tearing metal shrieking, severed power lines lashing back and forth with frantic energies.

The pressure slackened as the leader ork looked back at the ruin of the gate. Suddenly Malfons was there, greatsword blurring through the air. The Chapter Master moved with an agility in his Terminator armour that Koorland had never witnessed before. The ork dropped Koorland and kicked at Malfons, knocking the Chapter Master backwards, and snatched a fresh axe from its belt. It followed up with a powerful blow at Malfons.

The axe was of simple metal, but the strength of the ork was such that it bit deep into the ceramite cladding of Malfons’ pauldron. The Chapter Master shouldered the ork aside, weathered a second strike, and swung his blade hard. The weapon cleft the ork’s chest armour, slicing deep into muscle. With a howl of fury, the ork backhanded Malfons before he could attack again. Helm lenses shattered, Malfons faltered. An instant was all he gave the ork, but the creature grabbed it. The ork stamped down on Malfons’ leg, pinning his foot in place, then it reached forward and clamped its fist around the Chapter Master’s head.

As teleport blur smeared his sight, Koorland saw the ork rip Malfons’ head free with one mighty wrench. Then he was in the blacklight glare of a teleport chamber, gas gushing all over him from the internal piping, and in his helm a voice announced, ‘Teleport successful.’

The doors opened, and he clumped out. All around the deck, Black Templars emerged from other chambers. In several, dead warriors lay slumped in armour summoned back by the undeniable call of the Abhorrence’s machine-spirits.

‘Bohemond, Thane, Issachar, Quesadra,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Malfons is dead.’

Twelve

In pursuit of vengeance

The Black Templars cruiser Obsidian Sky shook as it came out of the warp, realspace engine stacks already burning bright. Five hundred metres of burnished black metal trailing the dying energies of the empyrean, it accelerated before the rift had closed, waiting on no nicety of post-transit protocols.

‘Translation complete, Dreadnought-Marshal. We have arrived in the Klostra System,’ called out Shipmaster Ericus.

The vision slit of Magneric’s Dreadnought blazed, and it stood tall, pushed upright by actuators and hydraulics. Magneric was awake in an instant.

The Dreadnought-Marshal stumped around, the shoulders of the machine that housed his ruined body swaying. Relics of his earlier life rattled on the walker’s armour.

‘All hands to combat stations. Initiate full auspex scan. Open hails, send out our challenge. We shall not hide from them, call out their doom!’ His voice boomed from his vox-speakers, brash as a Titan’s war-horn.

‘My lord, I am receiving a large amount of transmissions—’ began the ship’s Master Divulgatus from the craft’s long vox-desks.

‘Excellent!’ roared Magneric. His power fist rotated in anticipation of the coming fight. ‘All brothers, prepare for battle. Master Egredorum, prepare our transports. Track the source of the enemy’s transmissions, we engage immediately.’

‘But, my lord!’ protested the Master Divulgatus. ‘The transmissions are not those of the traitors, they are all ork.’

‘I have multiple enemy contacts, half a million kilometre range and closing,’ spoke the Master Augurum at the auspex array. ‘Again, all ork energy signatures.’

Castellan Ralstan stepped forward to stand at the elbow of Magneric. ‘Half a million kilometres?’

‘It is at extreme range, my lord, but there are large numbers of them.’

‘Marshal Magneric?’ said the castellan.

Magneric let out a frustrated growl. ‘How many times must our quarry slip through our fingers? Orks! I was informed that the Klostra System was the base of Kalkator’s Great Company. Who shall atone for this failure in intelligence?’

‘My lord, if I may,’ said the Master Augurum, ‘the auspex array is picking up residual vox-echo here, reflected from the system’s radiation belts. There was a traitor presence on the planet until only a few days ago. No civilian messaging, all of it is Fourth Legion battle-cant.’

‘Then it is over,’ said Ralstan regretfully. ‘The orks have done our duty for us. To our next crusade, brothers.’

‘No!’ bellowed Magneric, his torso spinning dangerously fast. The huge block of his sarcophagus leaned over, bringing the machine’s glass eye level with the face of his second-in-command. ‘It cannot be so, the Emperor has marked out Kalkator to die by my fist and my fist alone! I feel it. We departed Ostrom hot on the heels of Kalkator’s dogs. If there is no longer sign of battle here, then they must have departed. Send for Honoured Navigator Pholax. I will speak with him as to their likely destination. In the meantime, have more power diverted to the auspex arrays. If by some small chance the greenskins have cheated us of our vengeance, I will be sure of it before moving on.’

‘And the greenskins themselves, Magneric?’

‘You would have us fear a few thousand orks?’ Magneric boomed.

‘A few hundred thousand, my lord,’ corrected Ralstan. He held out his hand towards the massive doors leading to Magneric’s inner sanctum. ‘Perhaps we might continue this discussion on strategy in private?’

‘Very well,’ grumbled Magneric.

The command deck shook to the tread of his armoured feet. They went within Magneric’s chamber. The doors hissed shut, and immediately they were isolated from the command deck Magneric rounded on Ralstan.

‘You challenge my judgement? I, Magneric, hero of the Heresy? I, who remain in command despite my entombing? Who kept my own name when interred, when all others give up theirs?’

‘Marshal,’ said Ralstan calmly. ‘It is my role to challenge you, as you well know.’

‘“Nothing worthwhile is done without challenge, best to overcome it before plans are enacted,”’ quoted Magneric.

‘So said Sigismund,’ said Ralstan.

‘I do not quote our founder in support of your case, but against it!’ said Magneric. ‘Our plan was agreed, your opportunity to object has passed.’

‘Perhaps. But lately you have taken against my naysaying, whenever performed.’ Ralstan paced the empty expanse of the chamber. It had been stripped of everything, right back to the metal of the understructure, to accommodate the huge sepulchre the Dreadnought occupied when resting. Magneric refused to go to the forge-tombs, wishing to remain close to the centre of command at all times. ‘I must again protest against your decision not to heed the High Marshal’s order to return. The Last Wall has been invoked, and we should lend our strength to it, not spend our time harrying these traitors. There are greater issues at stake.’

‘Our way is not that of the wall! Sigismund’s oath is paramount. We are crusaders, not wall troops.’

‘This is different, my lord.’

‘It is not! We have the Iron Warriors at bay, we cannot allow them to dig themselves in, or we shall never pry them from their hiding place. We have to strike now. When they are finished, we shall embark upon this new crusade.’

‘Magneric, your feelings are blinding you,’ pleaded Ralstan. ‘Vengeance is noble when enacted for the good of the Emperor. You seek vengeance for your own sake. You should rest. Frater Astrotechnicus Baldon told me that you are six months overdue a maintenance sleep.’

‘So you speak for the scullions of Mars now!’ boomed Magneric.

‘You do our Brother-Techmarine dishonour to speak of him so.’

‘And yet you question my honour!’

‘I speak as your friend, your pupil, your admirer, my lord,’ said Ralstan. Magneric’s choler was becoming increasingly hard to douse, and Ralstan had to fight to hide his own ire. ‘Your tomb was never intended to remain active for so long a time.’

Magneric’s massive power fist came up and pointed threateningly. ‘You undermine me, Castellan. Do not do so again.’

‘At least speak with Chaplain Aladucos. If you will not hearken to me, listen to him.’

Magneric turned awkwardly, the short legs of the Dreadnought stamping clangorously on the deck. ‘When I have Kalkator’s severed head in my fist, when I have squeezed his treacherous brain into a paste, then I shall rest. Not before! By the Emperor, no matter what you or the others say, I have sworn my oath and I will honour it!’

The doors opened wide, and Magneric stamped back onto the bridge. Ralstan sighed with dissatisfaction, and followed.

Dzelenic IV had once had a name of its own. Now, it was marked upon the stellar charts of the Imperium by system and number alone. Kalkator was among the few who remembered what its inhabitants had called it, for he had witnessed its destruction.

A landscape of utter desolation slid beneath the keels of the Iron Warriors Thunderhawks, the Meratara in the lead. They flew over a dry ocean basin subsumed into the wasteland of dunes that stretched from pole to pole. The seas were long since gone, stripped away by titanic weapons during the war against the False Emperor. Kalkator remembered it as a pleasant world, civilised and green. The forces of Terra had put paid to that.

The exposed ocean floor took a step up, marking the position of the ancient coast. The Thunderhawks swung around to the south, following the grim cliffs, footed only by a sea of dust. Savage storms blew up in what remained of the planet’s atmosphere, turning the air orange with a perpetual haze.

City ruins sprouted from the dunes, emerging suddenly from the blurred sky, the only signs that anything living had ever been there at all. The long rectangles of docking piers extruded far out into the vanished sea, still visible beneath their shrouds of sand.

‘North here, to the landing fields,’ ordered Kalkator.

‘As you command, warsmith,’ confirmed the pilot, Lerontus.

A space port dominated the plain behind the city. Flat, dull grey landing aprons were swept clear by the ceaseless wind. A dry river bed wound past it towards a range of hills, exposed as the vein of a flayed corpse. Craters marred the ground, distinguishable only by their infill of windblown sand. Further cliffs edged the plain, the product of millions of years of geological processes that had been halted in an instant of fire.

‘There, to the west. Set us down,’ said Kalkator.

The Meratara’s ramp opened into a covering of powder soft as silk. The planet’s death scream played still as constant gales, and over the last millennium they had worn the debris of the world’s destruction to a fine loess. Kalkator donned his helmet before venturing outside, and bade his men do the same — the air would choke them by itself, but it was one peril among many. The ozone layer of Dzelenic IV had been stripped away, and the surface was bathed in stellar radiation from its parent star.

Behind the Meratara three other gunships squatted in the abiotic dirt of the dead world, engines cycling. The Iron Warriors had been caught too often recently to take any chances. Fifty Space Marines formed up beside the warsmith, a worryingly large proportion of his much diminished Great Company. They waited expectantly as Kalkator scanned the cliffs. The world was changed beyond recognition, its past topography a sketch in the dirt of its present. He could not see the entrance to the facility.

‘Are you sure it is here, my lord?’ said Caesax. ‘This place is deader than a tomb. The cache could have been destroyed, or looted, or buried in a million tons of dirt.’

‘Silence,’ said Kalkator sharply, for he was well aware all that Caesax said was possible. ‘You forget yourself.’

‘Yes, warsmith,’ muttered the other.

Caesax was close to what Kalkator might call a friend. Friendship was weakness. Brotherhood was all. Caesax’s familiarity had encouraged him to test those boundaries recently.

Kalkator needed to keep him under control. They were all looking at him. Since Klostra had fallen, the hostility of his Great Company had grown. Although none yet outright defied him, how many of them could he truly count on, should it come to it? Best not to consider that eventuality. Deliver them victory, and they would follow. The iron of their loyalty would not be tested.

He finally found the worn aquila carved into the rock face, defaced fifteen centuries ago and further worn away by the ravages of the raging atmosphere. It was not where he had expected to find it. Kalkator had lived long enough to know that nothing was constant, not even stone. Not even iron.

‘This way,’ he said. He pointed with his left arm, the bionic. Let them see the iron in him clearly displayed. He marched through the debris of the world, a mix of desiccated biological matter and coarse sand torn from the bedrock, this material not yet aged enough to lose its sharp edges. Dzelenic IV’s death was still fresh in planetary terms.

The sun came out from behind a flag of dirty yellow cloud, not vapour, but more detritus lofted high into the atmosphere. The star glared on them weakly, a sallow circle of light. Kalkator’s warsuit informed him of climbing radiation with a series of idle clicks.

His men were still watching as he reached for a piece of stone. Remarkable, how the craftsmanship had held. The block stayed seated in position, its secret unrevealed.

He grasped it with both hands and yanked hard. The stone came free from its place with reluctance. He let it fall into the soft regolith. A lifeless panel lay behind, sticky with ancient oils and caked in microscopic particles. Kalkator reached out his arm, an interface dendrite snaking from his vambrace and into the access port. The small screen embedded above the key panel flickered green, then went out.

Kalkator stood back as a section of the cliff ten metres broad by four high receded with an almighty grinding clunk, and began a slow tracking to the right. Behind was a dark hangar, the smooth rockcrete floor and walls kept pristine by the planet’s arid air. The door got halfway open before the power failed. Stacked pallets of transit crates covered in dirty plastek shrouds receded into the shadows in neat rows.

Dust was already snaking in from the outside when Kalkator issued his command.

‘Empty it. Take everything.’

Collustrax pushed his way through another corroded door. Away from the hangar the complex was in bad shape, exhibiting seismic damage from the world-death. He passed down a stretch of corridor whose walls were shivered by cracks, his suit lights picking out ribbons of dust. He paused by a dessicated corpse dressed in the Imperial Army uniform of a regiment a thousand years forgotten. The bones of the man were still cloaked in skin, but so tight and dried they appeared to have been wrapped for transport in flaking plastek. When he toed the corpse the head rolled free.

He looked at the skull a moment, then stamped it flat.

‘Section Lambda-8 clear,’ he voxed. ‘Nothing to report.’

The next door was jammed shut. He kicked it to pieces, his heavy boots powering through the corroded metal. It became loose, and he wrenched it free. An avalanche of dust poured out around his knees.

The corridor beyond was wider, an antechamber to a larger hall perhaps. It was also bathed in light, and three-quarters full of sand. He raised his bolter and carefully covered the room. The ceiling was cracked from side to side by a wide crevasse that evidently reached the surface, for daylight penetrated all the way into the complex here, and dust whispered down in sheets. The door on the far side was buried in it.

‘I cannot proceed further, the roof is breached and the corridor blocked with sand. It would take a day or more to dig through. No sign of supplies here.’

The vox crackled in response. ‘Return to the hangar, brother.’

‘Confirmed, sergeant,’ said Collustrax. He keyed his vox off. ‘A waste of time going further.’

He turned about and headed back the way he had come, deeper into the base. Doors he had opened before in his sweep hung wide. Most rooms were empty, those that were not held nothing useful to the Iron Warriors. Corpses, paper that fell to pieces when disturbed, dead cogitators.

He strode on with purpose, making no attempt to go quietly. There was no one to hear him.

Suddenly he stopped and backed up. He looked down, the lights attached to his suit bathing the floor in wan yellow light. The dust was scuffed by his passage, but there was something else.

Another set of footprints overlaid his own.

He shut his light off, brought up a thermal overlay on his helm display. The corridor reappeared as a grainy pict of false colour. His own footprints were a dull blue against the near black of the floor. The interloper’s were a fading green, more recent.

‘Sergeant Ostrakam. Collustrax. I’ve found something.’

‘Report.’

‘There’s something in here with us. Footprints. Booted, large.’

The second line of footprints went into a room Collustrax had investigated on the way up. He moved against the wall, and leaned in, bolter first.

‘Nothing there.’ He stood back again. ‘I will—’

A ringing blow against his helmet sent him sprawling into the wall. A blackened knife blade skidded off the metal. Collustrax jerked his shoulder back, meeting a solid body that barely gave. He swung around, but a meaty hand grabbed his pauldron and hurled him against the opposite wall. A huge ork stood over him, a pair of primitive light-intensification goggles strapped over its eyes. With calm efficiency Collustrax brought his bolter up to blow out its heart and lungs, but his assailant grabbed it and ripped it out of his hand with amazing strength, stamping Collustrax into the ground as he sought to rise.

‘Orks! There are orks in the complex. There are—’

The ork drove down with its knife, a piece of metal as long as a man’s torso and thick as three fingers. For all its unwieldiness the ork used it deftly, and the ridiculous breadth of it was ground down on one side to a wicked edge.

The point caught in the seal where his helmet joined his breastplate and was driven through it by brute strength, into the space behind Collustrax’s collarbone. The ork threw itself forward with its full weight, pushing the sword-length knife in with both hands so that it pierced both the Iron Warrior’s hearts.

For Collustrax, the Long War was over.

Sergeant Ostrakam saluted Kalkator. ‘My lord Kalkator, Brother Collustrax is slain by orks. The complex is compromised.’

Kalkator regarded the emptying hangar. They had recovered perhaps half of the supplies, armour spares, bolt-rounds, weapons. Most of it was sealed in oil-filled containers, and perfectly serviceable. Kalkator tallied what they had recovered mentally, deciding if they could afford to leave the remaining supplies.

‘Any word from the Palimodes?’ he called to his master vox-operator. ‘What news from orbit?’

‘I cannot raise the ship, my lord.’

Why would this be easy? One cruiser lost, two outposts, half his Great Company. Kalkator’s week had been disastrous.

‘Caesax! Take half the company, secure the hangar rear. Derruo, take four squads outside. Shift the landing site ten kilometres out, somewhere clear where we can’t be ambushed. Meratara will ferry the supplies, let the others take them to orbit. Unloading and reloading will take extra time, but we cannot risk the gunships, and a few more crates of supplies is better than no more. As soon as you raise him, have Attonax send down more servitors and brothers to speed the extraction, both here and at site beta. Ostrakam, what indication of numbers?’

‘None, my lord. None of the other scouts report anything. It will not be alone.’

‘They never are,’ said Kalkator. ‘We have no indication of an infestation of the planet. It may be a scouting group. Send my order to Attonax. Intensify scans of the surrounding void. If there’s a ship out there, we must find it. In the meantime, redouble our efforts. I want every scrap of usable materiel stripped from this depot and aboard the Palimodes before they find us.’

‘Too late, my lord! I have Attonax.’

‘Patch his vox-feed through to me.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Attonax’s voice came through crisply, boosted by the nuncio-vox of Kalkator’s master operator over the angry grumble of the planet’s tortured magnetosphere. ‘Fifteen contacts emerging from the shadow of the third moon, my lord. They have seen us.’

‘No more?’

‘No, warsmith. It appears to be a scouting group, ork pirate scum looking for easy kills or planets to plunder. They are weak, and will not be on our position for two hours, give or take.’

Gunfire sounded from deep in the complex. Reports of ork engagements on three fronts came in on a sudden wave of vox-noise.

‘We will not abandon the supplies! Attonax, keep the planet between you and the orks. Begin evacuation immediately. Everyone else to the rear of the hall.’

Kalkator unclipped his pistol and unsheathed his sword. His servo-arm unfurled as he strode past the serfs sweating in their rebreathers as they dragged out supply pallets on pneumatic jacks. ‘I tire of running from these creatures.’

Thirteen

Iron and faith

Like a shark following the scent of blood in the water, the Obsidian Sky came hard out of interplanetary night, streaking towards the fourth planet of the Dzelenic System, the battle there lighting up its auspexes and augurs.

‘Well?’ said Magneric.

‘We have them in our sights, Marshal,’ reported Ericus eagerly. ‘There are orks here, but a paltry number.’

The oculus was closed for battle, and so Ericus ordered the hololith lit. The display burst into life, bathing the faces of all aboard the command deck in dancing light. Auspex data crowded a true pict of the planet. A strike cruiser stood embattled in the sky over the dead world. Explosions in miniature flared in the space of the bridge as ork attack craft detonated messily.

‘Behold, the Palimodes,’ said Ericus.

‘I recognise it of old,’ growled Magneric. ‘At last, Kalkator shall face justice!’

‘Your orders, my lord?’ asked Ericus.

‘We should stand back and watch the orks destroy them,’ advised Ralstan, ‘then slay the surviving orks. That would be the most tactically astute action. We might then locate the Iron Warriors on the surface, and deal with them at our leisure. If we attack now, we shall find ourselves with not one foe, but two.’

‘And afford Kalkator the luxury of escape?’ bellowed Magneric. ‘No! The craven traitors will surely flee as soon as they catch sight of us. We will attack both ground forces and the Palimodes simultaneously. Prepare all drop-craft. We assault the surface immediately. Sword Brother Rolans?’

Sword Brother Rolans stepped forward, the black of his armour thick with the red crosses of the Black Templars veterans. ‘My lord Dreadnought-Marshal,’ responded Rolans.

‘Take one-third of the crusade. Choose your own men. Equip them for ship-to-ship combat. I bestow upon you the honour of assaulting and taking the Palimodes.’

‘It will be done gratefully, my lord,’ said Rolans.

‘Master Ericus, you will drive through the orks attacking the Palimodes, and bring the ship within boarding range. We shall take back their ship, purify it, and re-induct it into the rightful service of our Lord the Emperor.’

‘Praise be!’ shouted the Black Templars and their bondsmen.

The shout of praise was silent on Ralstan’s lips. Misgivings plagued him.

‘My lord,’ he said tentatively. ‘I beg of you not to attack two enemies at once. Let them expend their strength upon one another. See here, Magneric. The orks are deploying aircraft and personnel to the surface.’

Ralstan had the hololithic display zoom in to a fat ork carrier craft. Its sides were riddled with hangars and launch tubes. From these a steady stream of smaller ships issued, turning downwards into the planetary gravity well. ‘If there are no orks on the ground yet, soon there will be thousands.’

‘The orks are of no concern!’ roared Magneric. He turned his massive suit of armour on his lieutenant. Magneric raised his vox-amplifiers to maximum. ‘All battle-brothers proceed to drop-craft. Heed my commands, gunnery control. Upon flyover of the Iron Warriors’ planetside positions, find and target the transports of the traitors. Destroy the ships. Strand the Iron Warriors, so that we might face them blade to blade. They will taste our anger — no swift demise in fire for them! I will see them beg for forgiveness. Kalkator will not escape me this time. Shipmaster Ericus, move to engage the Palimodes directly.’

‘As you command, my lord,’ said Ericus.

‘My lord Magneric…’ said Ralstan.

‘Castellan Ralstan!’ said Magneric, his metallic voice enthused by the prospect of battle. ‘The way prescribed by our founder is always forward! We shall not hang back like jackals while the lions fight! You have your orders. With me unto battle, bold soldiers of the Emperor! We shall destroy these paltry orks, and take the Palimodes, and return to our Chapter with it as a trophy of war! I go now to ready myself for drop in the basilicus.’ He leaned over Ralstan, and lowered his voice. ‘I will brook no more dissent, castellan, be warned.’

Magneric thundered out of the command deck.

‘By the will of Magneric, make so his orders!’ commanded Ralstan. Forcing down his own disquiet, he began to make preparations for planetstrike.

A squawking of surprised messages burst from the vox-station as the Obsidian Sky slid down towards the Palimodes.

‘Master Divulgatus, silence that noise.’

‘Aye, shipmaster, initiating wide-band vox-jamming now.’

Ericus leaned forward, the weight of the cables plugged into his neck shifting on his shoulder. ‘We will pay no heed to the words of the traitors. Open fire on the orks and prepare to clear the way. Prow lance batteries to mark these targets and fire upon my command.’ He indicated his priorities on the hololith. ‘Primary gun batteries sweep the flanks. Spinal turrets fire at will. Scour the void. We shall shield Lord Magneric’s landing and then proceed to take the Palimodes.’

‘Drop-tubes loaded,’ reported the Master Egredorum.

The ship’s void shields flickered as the first of the orks noticed their new foe, and turned their guns upon them. Energy beams hit out first, cutting like searchlights across the dark. Across the command deck, bells tolled gently, bringing soft notice of the clouds of deadly projectiles following on behind.

Ericus settled himself into his command throne. He reached out and grasped his sword; a servant of the Black Templars always fought with a weapon in his grasp.

The command deck, rarely full of needless chatter, took on a focused air. Orders and commentary were the only words spoken. Servitors sighed and muttered quietly. Cogitators clacked in their housings. The crew of the ship was minimal, most of the work done by mind-wiped servitors or vat-born things that had never known a name, plugged directly into the ship’s systems. The fifty unaltered men who manned the command deck were sombre with the privilege bestowed on them.

‘Range to the Palimodes six thousand kilometres and closing,’ relayed the Master Augurum.

‘Open hangar bays and drop-tube shielding. Drop countdown commencing in three, two, one. Mark.’ The number 120 appeared on the hololith and began to rapidly count down, its colouring turning from green to red as it approached zero.

‘Turret pins released,’ said the Ordinatum Secundus. ‘Main ordnance ready for firing. Lance batteries one through four are charged and await your command, Master Ericus.’

Fifty years had passed since Ericus had fallen at the second obstacle in his bid to become a member of the Black Templars. Despite his high suitability, his genetic code proved incompatible with the Chapter gene-seed. The memory of that day haunted him forever, and yet here he was, armed and glorious, a mighty warship at his command. The lives of his masters were under his care. There was no greater duty.

‘For the glory of the Emperor, launch,’ he said.

‘Praise be,’ intoned the crew as one.

The distant rumble of rockets firing vibrated the deck plating. The ship shifted infinitesimally at the release of such large amounts of mass.

‘Correctional thrusters firing,’ reported the Master Egredorum. The ship pushed back against the jettisoning of its drop-vehicles. ‘Our lieges are away. Five minutes to touchdown. Praise be.’

Light flared in the hololith as an ork assault craft exploded. The Palimodes, shields twinkling with orkish fire, had rotated about its centre, presenting its stern to the Obsidian Sky. This was a ship’s most vulnerable aspect, but they were close to the horizon — one good burn would put them out of sight, leaving the Black Templars entangled with the orks.

‘The Iron Warriors are running. Proceed towards the Palimodes,’ ordered Ericus. ‘We will accomplish Magneric’s orders. My lord Sword Brother Rolans, you may prepare your boarding party. Helm, run the traitors down.’

Kalkator gripped the ork’s head in his servo-claw and squeezed. The thick skull cracked, deforming the ork’s already hideous alien features. Still it fought on, until Kalkator jammed his bolt pistol into its mouth and blew the back of its head off.

The last few pallets were being removed hurriedly from the hangar, the rest having been dragged out under fire. Ork bodies lay about the hall, intermixed with luckless serfs and servitors caught in the crossfire. Otherwise, casualties were light. Kalkator had lured the orks into the hangar, where they were pinned between carefully planned fields of fire and gunned down without mercy.

The orks were odd specimens. They had the look of infiltration specialists to them, executed in that clumsy, slightly comical way the orks had with everything they did. Their weapons were oversized, the camo patterns they wore jarring, but their faces were blackened, their weapons burned dark, and their equipment — nightsight goggles, grenades, charges and the like — seemed serviceable enough. As his scorn rose, he reminded himself they had successfully infiltrated the complex.

Kalkator had his squads report in. No more contacts with the enemy were reported.

The orks were dead. After several dispiriting days, Kalkator’s spirits were uplifted.

‘Bordan, raise the Palimodes!’ he ordered. ‘All squads prepare for immediate extraction.’ He strode out of the hangar back into the pale day of Dzelenic IV. The last of the supplies were being loaded into the Thunderhawks, the undersides of the ships glowing orange with repeated, rapid ascensions and re-entries.

‘I cannot raise the Palimodes, my lord,’ said Bordan.

Kalkator tapped his gun impatiently against his leg. ‘Then try again.’ The space beyond the clouds was lit occasionally by the false-lightning of low-orbital battle. ‘Surely they have not been overwhelmed?’

‘No, my lord, there is a blanket denial broadcast preventing communication.’

‘From the orks?’ said Kalkator.

‘I cannot discern the location of the broadcast, my lord. It could be the orks.’

‘Or…’ said Kalkator. He fell silent a moment. ‘Magneric,’ he whispered. ‘We will ascend and deal with the problem at source. Board the transports!’

Kalkator marched up the gangway of the Meratara, his serfs, weaklings before his armoured form, scurrying out of his way. His warriors fell back out of the emptied complex, covering their fellows squad by squad. For a moment Kalkator was transported by the efficiency of his Great Company, back to a time when they fought for a master other than themselves.

He slapped his palm against the ship, quashing his nostalgia. Iron Warriors ran up the ramp as it closed. The engines whined loudly. Turning from the dead world, Kalkator went to the flight deck.

‘Lerontus.’

‘My lord,’ acknowledged the pilot.

‘Remove us from this place.’

The ground dropped away, rapidly becoming a hazy caramel nothingness, a void that could contain anything. Kalkator stared at it, remembering the world it had been.

A sudden jolt brought him back to the present.

‘Incoming fire!’ shouted Lerontus.

‘Origin point?’

‘Orbit, Lord Kalkator! Lance strike!’ Lerontus grunted and heaved hard on his flight stick. A beam of coruscating energy stabbed down, glassing the ground one hundred metres ahead of them. The Meratara bucked as it rode out the shock wave. The Adamantine was not so blessed. Its starboard wing trailed streamers of fire, loosened panels shaking in the airstream, and it began a rapid emergency descent. Lerontus dodged the damaged craft, sending the Meratara leapfrogging over it and accelerating ahead, leaving the Adamantine to disappear into the haze-cloaked dunes. Another blast seared through the sky, carving a pillar of clear air through the smog. Thunderous shock waves boomed out after each strike.

‘Standard suppression pattern,’ grunted Lerontus, piloting the Thunderhawk through the agitated air. ‘The orks are copying Imperial fire protocols.’

Kalkator’s boots locked to the floor, and he bent forward to peer out of the top of the Thunderhawk’s canopy.

‘They are not orks. That was a precursor barrage to a drop assault,’ said Kalkator. He pointed upward to where the clouds swirled around the track of the orbital strikes, discharge-lightning crawling along their undersides. The beam strikes cut out, and the sky lit up with multiple flashes. ‘Magneric must be hot with fury at my continued liberty, if he tries to hit gunships in atmosphere with lance fire,’ he said. ‘If he tracked the others to the Ostrom System, he will have gone to Klostra, and from there, he will have come here.’

‘Sounds like Magneric,’ said Caesax. ‘He is tenacious.’

‘It is Magneric, almost certainly,’ said Kalkator. ‘He has dogged my footsteps since the end of Horus’ war. I hear he continues his crusade from beyond the grave. So you can imagine, Caesax, it will take more than an ork Waaagh! to dissuade him.’

‘I do not need to imagine it, my lord. They are coming.’

Bright meteors burst through the clouds, streaking groundward to the east. They came down rapidly, their snowy vapour trails scoring the yellow-brown sky. ‘We must leave. I will see if Vorstrex and his command can be recovered.’ Kalkator switched his vox-channel, seeking out the downed Adamantine. He cursed at discovering the range of his battleplate’s vox insufficient, and switched his communications feed through the Thunderhawk’s own systems.

A wider world of sound greeted him: the garbled chatter of the Black Templars’ communications, overlaid atop the hissing of the dead world’s voice. He scanned through multiple channels, seeking out his comrades.

A blip, and a tumble of shouted squad communication burst into his earpieces.

‘Vorstrex, this is Kalkator. Respond.’ There was no reply. Kalkator tried again, without success. It was clear the leading sergeant of the men aboard the Adamantine could not hear him. Kalkator heard him shouting urgent orders. The banging of bolter fire crackled over the vox, and with it he heard the roaring of orks.

‘It appears there are now orks also upon the planet in large numbers,’ said Kalkator leadenly. ‘They attack Vorstrex.’

‘There is more, warsmith,’ said Lerontus. ‘Enemy gunships have deployed and will move against us. They will be deep enough into the atmosphere to begin pursuit and intercept within five minutes.’

The tactical display of the Thunderhawk was crowded with icons denoting the Black Templars forces. Out of the window, curling contrails pulled away from the gracefully curved descent lines of the drop pods.

‘Five of them, and we are just the two,’ said Kalkator.

‘Long odds,’ said Caesax.

‘I have endured worse. Alter course. Put some distance between us and the Black Templars. Head for that ruin.’ Kalkator pointed at a squat building jutting from the sands some ten kilometres away. ‘We shall make our stand there. Let them blunt their ire upon a sea of orks. When they are done, our guns shall be waiting.’

‘Prepare forward lance batteries!’ commanded Ericus. ‘Spinal turret array stand by for my command. Reopen the oculus.’

‘Compliance,’ mumbled a servitor. Motors grumbled as they pulled the massive blast shields back from the window.

Ericus looked from the oculus to the hololithic tactical display. On the display the Obsidian Sky’s immediate environs appeared crowded with combatants, swarms of green signifiers clustering around both Imperial and traitor vessels. Through the armourglass of the grand window, space appeared anything but: a huge expanse of black, the light of the stars outshone by the albedo glare of Dzelenic IV. Near space sparkled with dancing motes, all that was visible to the human eye of their xenos enemies. Beyond this shifting cloud, the Palimodes was a punctuation mark of light.

The command deck was a murmur of idiot servitor queries and reports, overlaid with the terse, efficient battle talk of the Chapter servants.

‘We are within optimum range, shipmaster. Shall I give the order to open fire?’

‘Negative. Hold fire. We will not be drawn into a duel, but shall force our munitions down their throats at point-blank range. Then we shall unleash our masters upon the traitors aboard.’

‘As you command, shipmaster.’

A bell rang. Servitors gabbled moaning alarms. ‘Multiple orkish contacts closing from planetary east,’ reported the Master Augurum.

‘Steady as she goes,’ ordered Ericus.

‘Range two thousand kilometres and closing. We are gaining on the Palimodes,’ said the Master Augurum.

‘Wait for it!’ demanded Ericus. He leaned forward in his command throne, leather gloves squeaking on each other as he massaged his hands over his sword hilt.

‘Shipmaster! More orkish vessels approach from planetary north. Interceptor and bomber wings launched. They’re coming in fast. Contact in twenty seconds. Nineteen, eighteen…’

Alarms clamoured. ‘Alert, alert,’ groaned a choir of hissing mechanical voices. ‘Boarders detected. Decks ninety-seven, forty-two and six. Alert, alert, boarders detected.’

‘Long-range teleport, origin unknown,’ said the Master Augurum.

‘Was there any warning?’ snapped Ericus.

‘Negative, sir, they just came out of nowhere.’

‘Seal all bulkheads. Serjeants-at-arms are hereby given permission to open the armouries and distribute weaponry to the ship crew. All Chapter warrior bondsmen stand ready. Armsmen to the affected sites,’ said Ericus.

‘Shipmaster, this is Sword Brother Rolans.’ Rolans’ sonorous, transhuman voice rolled out across the command deck. ‘We shall postpone our boarding attempt. It will avail us naught if we take the Palimodes and our own vessel is overrun by the orks. I am moving to engage boarders.’

‘Allow my men to take care of the problem, my lord,’ said Ericus. ‘We are within boarding torpedo range of the Palimodes.’

‘There are too many,’ countered Rolans. ‘Your men will be destroyed. We will show them the Emperor’s displeasure at first hand.’

‘Very well, my lord,’ said Ericus, but Rolans had already gone.

‘Bomber wing approaching. They have launched torpedoes.’

A flight of crude orkish fighters soared over the spine of the Obsidian Sky, chased by streams of glowing tracer fire. A moment later the ship shook. A score of bombers hurtled past, weaving between each other recklessly as they dodged the Obsidian Sky’s anti-interceptor fire. One disintegrated into a cloud of glowing scraps. The rest were away.

‘Damage control?’ asked Ericus.

‘Nothing to report. Negative impact,’ said the Master Divulgatus.

‘Shields?’

‘The void shields took the brunt of it, shipmaster,’ said the Master Scutum. ‘All reading within optimal limits.’

‘Shipmaster, the northern and eastern groups of orkish ships are gaining.’

‘What is your command, sir?’ asked the Master Ordinatum.

Ericus glanced at the tactical displays. Ork ships closed on two horizons, coming fast and low around Dzelenic IV. Four cruiser-class in each group. The Imperial ship had the advantage of range; orkish projectiles were inaccurate and unreliable at distance. Up close they would be devastating.

‘Emperor forgive me, I pray that Lord Magneric shall understand my actions, and be merciful,’ said Ericus quietly. ‘Abort attack run on the Palimodes! Provide gun crew with new orders, Franzek. Kill the orks. Destroy their ships before they can close.’

‘Conveying new firing solutions to all batteries. Solutions conveyed. Open fire.’

The Obsidian Sky quaked under the release of its guns. Lance beams burst through space. Cannons spoke, scattering high-velocity chaff around the vessel in a razored net that caught ork fighters and rent them to pieces.

‘Port broadside, engage eastern ork group. Thin their numbers,’ ordered Ericus.

‘Aye, sir!’

The ship rocked as the port guns fired. Twenty seconds later, the lead ork cruiser of the eastern group flew into the mass of projectiles. It burst apart at the seams, flickering energy and fire crawling over the broken pieces for a moment before it went dark. The aft of the hull spun away, connecting with the cruiser following and severely damaging it. The remaining two ork cruisers clumsily split, getting in each other’s way.

‘Shipmaster. We have two cruisers coming at us astern!’

‘Come about, port side,’ ordered Ericus. ‘Batteries and lances stand ready.’ The ship’s engines rumbled and metal sang at the sudden course correction, played upon by the gravity of the planet and its own momentum.

A klaxon blurted out a mournful wail. ‘New contacts appearing everywhere! Behind the moon, from near space… Dozens of them. They must have been waiting, engines dark. We’re surrounded!’

‘A trap?’ said Ericus incredulously. He stared at the hololith as augur data was fed into its cogitators. New contacts sprang into life, bright red, a net around his ships. Ork ships now approached from three quadrants at once, only the Palimodes standing between them. ‘Port battery open fire on northern group. Keep them off the stern,’ Ericus commanded.

‘Fresh ork cruiser group coming aft!’ shouted the Master Augurum.

‘Palimodes is mirroring our movement and is coming about also!’ added his second.

The Palimodes’ main engine stack dimmed. All along its sides flared the ice-white sparks of braking jets. The nose dipped, carrying it to the very edge of the atmosphere. As it dived, it lumbered around and turned on its side a little, ignoring the swarm of ork attack craft pressing it from all sides, and presented its full broadside to the oncoming prow and keel of the Obsidian Sky.

‘They’re preparing to fire!’ called Franzek.

‘Up thirty degrees. Concentrate anti-interceptor fire to ventral aspect, support anti-munition cannons, or they’ll tear the guts out of us!’ shouted Ericus, half rising from his seat, his link cables tugging at his augmetics.

Cannon muzzles ripple-flashed up the length of the Palimodes’ port side.

Glinting shells sped across the void.

‘Time to impact five, four, three, two, one…’

‘Brace, brace, brace!’

No impact came. Ericus glanced at the display. Red reticules spun past the icon denoting the Obsidian Sky, heading into the ork ships chasing them. They blinked rapidly before impact. The ork ship icons flashed, and vanished.

‘They are firing on the orks!’ reported the Master Augurum.

Space was alive with explosions and the burning light of high-energy weapons fire. The main hololithic display blinked thickly with yet more orkish attack craft.

‘Close oculus shutters. Replace holo-display with true representation of the battlespace. We will concentrate our efforts on the orks. See if you can raise the shipmaster of the Palimodes. If they are not going to fire upon us, we will offer them a truce, for now.’

‘Marshal Magneric, shipmaster…’

‘I am shipmaster,’ said Ericus. ‘It is my responsibility. Rather he has a ship to return to and a shipmaster to execute, than no ship at all.’

Fourteen

The dead of Mars

Clementina Yendl disembarked from the transit tube, the dusty windows of the station affording her a view of the facilities clustered about Pavonis Mons. Low volcanic slopes rose imperceptibly, a bulge in the land that somehow managed to attain fourteen kilometres of altitude at its apex. Much of the mountain’s shield was covered with manufactoria of immeasurable size, stepped ranks that marched ever upward until they passed out of the Martian atmosphere and into the airless void. One of the great Tharsian forge temples soared over its attendant factories, in its shadow the barracks of a Titan Legion. Pavonis Mons looked like the rest of Tharsis, but there was a sombre air about this part of the Tharsis quadrangle, and rumours of a secret buried deep. Yendl knew it was more than hearsay. Yendl knew a lot of things. No data-stream was safe from the infocyte.

She passed down the platform and out through crowd-flow barriers. Machines inside the baroque pillars kept watch on the teeming citizenry of Mars. They read her implants, chiming acceptance of her signum codes. Yendl hurried down steps, arms hugging her data-slate to her chest in perfect imitation of a lowly acolyte late in performing her errands.

Wide doors opened into a wider hall. A curved plex-glass roof, its panels thick with the leavings of the last great dust storm, showed the pale blue of the Martian sky fading to yellow towards the horizon. A thick brown line of smog trapped by atmospheric temperature striation formed an artificial boundary between them, dividing one from the other definitively.

The stairs plunged deeper into the Martian world-city down a square shaft, and Yendl followed them for dozens of flights. A barrier divided the stairs into two, the left side for those going down, the right for those coming up. Cyber-constructs buzzed through the air, using the shaft’s middle as their own highway.

Only lower-ranking followers of the Omnissiah used the steps, but they numbered in the billions, and examples of all of Mars’ strange humanity could be seen there. Clanking servitors carrying giant burdens caused chokepoints, slowing the descent to a crawl, their monotasked minds ignorant of the curses and shouts of those they delayed. A file of electro-priests passed upwards singing a buzzing electric song to their god, their blinded eyes and tattooed blue skin all but concealed by the grey robes and hoods they wore. Adepts of less humble station clattered about on skittish spider sedans, using the weight of their machines to push through the throngs. Yendl pushed also, muttering to herself angrily about delays and systems failures, often checking the chronograph set into the upper lip of her data-slate with a frown.

‘Please, please, let me through,’ she said, ‘or Magos Saultis will be angry with me again!’

Hers was but one of a million small problems harboured by those tramping the stairs, but a few allowed her to pass. She slipped around them, vox-augmetics chittering effusive binharic thanks into the noosphere, and vanished into the crowd. Just another lowly adept, one among teeming multitudes.

Ordinarily Yendl would not have drawn even this small measure of attention to herself. Her temple’s way was to watch, rarely to act, to blend seamlessly into whatever place they found themselves in. To be a face in a crowd that no one would remember.

Time was short. Tracking phages were close to sniffing out her data-thieves parasiting the Martian world-mind. Verraux had arranged to meet with her the day before, but had not arrived at their rendezvous or contacted her since. Given a few more hours Yendl could have divined her fate with certainty, but she did not need to. Red Haven had been compromised.

Already she had begun to compile probable vectors for their discovery. Urquidex was the most prominent, but not likely, for the information he had provided her had been extremely sensitive. If she survived this mission, she would pay him a visit, after Pavonis Mons.

The Martians had hidden their intentions well, but not well enough. Another experimental undertaking had been established in the volcano’s laboratoria. The same encrypted signifiers that were attached to the matter transportation experiments had been buried deep within the encoded data packets regarding this new development. Vast amounts of something were being delivered, but she had yet to ascertain what. The noosphere would only give up so many of its secrets. Yendl was forced to act, her task given greater impetus by Verraux’s disappearance.

At roughly the level of Mars’ original surface, now buried under a kilometre of plascrete, Yendl’s exit from the stairs presented itself, one of many hundreds of large archways. She had to fight her way from the stairs, deftly enough to get free of them and through the door, but not so well that she drew attention to herself. She stiffened as she approached the hollow eye sockets of a bioscanner servitor guarding the way.

‘Proceed,’ it said leadenly to an adept ahead of her. ‘Proceed,’ to the next. ‘Proceed.’ A pale green scanning beam passed over her face. ‘Proceed,’ it said. The man behind her pushed impatiently.

She hurried away, an endless litany of ‘Proceed’ following her down the corridor.

Yendl went deeper into the hive factories of Pavonis Mons, following obscure ways until she was mostly alone on dusty paths trodden only by slack-mouthed servitors and a few robed adepts. None of these furtive figures challenged her. There were thousands of sub-cults and power structures within the Adeptus Mechanicus, a failing she was singularly thankful for.

She came to her last legitimate path, a narrow alleyway whose sheer sides stretched away into dark obscurity high overhead. She paused by a sealed access door, her hood over her face. A sole servitor stumped on by, power plant whistling. She waited until it had disappeared into the gloom. Sure she was alone, she acted quickly, prising open a maintenance hatch and stuffing her adept’s robes inside where they fell into the unknowable spaces between the walls. Her body beneath gleamed with shiny synskin. Pouches crowded her thighs and waist. At her hips were a pistol and a trio of long stilettos. Her posture straightened, her augmetics reconfigured. The tech-adept was gone and the Assassin was revealed.

She primed her data-slate for a full wipe, waited for its compliance light to blink green, then snapped it in two. She withdrew the memory crystal and ground it to powder under her heel. The remains of the data-slate followed her robes, rattling away from discovery. She scooped up the powdery remains of the crystal and dusted half of that down the hatch also, retaining the rest for disposal elsewhere. It was perfectly possible the means to reconstitute the device existed somewhere within the vaults of techno-arcana that covered Mars. Her disguise dealt with, she flexed her fingers, extruding feathered access probes from her digital implants. The door slid open noiselessly, revealing an access corridor lit by dull yellow lumen panels. Glancing around herself one last time, she slipped out of sight.

Crammed into a tiny ventilation duct, Yendl watched a storage hall through a grille. Yet another twenty-wheeled hauler pulled up to a hissing halt. Tracked lifters manned by the implanted torsos of servitors swarmed it, acting in concert to lift the massive transit container from the flatbed and take it away to be stacked. Unburdened, the transport drew away, its place in the loading bay taken by another. Yendl frowned. She scanned the warehouse, and saw nothing more threatening than servitors of various kinds trudging about their endless labours.

She shuffled back along the ventilation conduit on her hands and knees, seeking out a point of egress. There were no hatches or large panels that could be prised free. She probed in the semi-darkness at the joins between the plates, eventually finding a tiny access portal less than a third of a metre on each side. The bolts securing it she undid in short order, and it fell to the floor two metres below with a quiet bang.

Taking a deep breath, Yendl forced her arm out and pushed her head after, the lip of the metal scraping her forehead as she twisted to fit through. Shoving with her toes, she attempted to push herself out, but she would not fit. The corridor her head protruded into was deserted, but clean, and clean meant heavily trafficked. From the corner of her eye she could see the end, a doorless aperture opening directly into the warehouse. She had to get in there, to see what was in the containers.

Taking another, deeper breath, she made her muscles in her back spasm violently, dislocating her shoulder.

Now she could fit.

Yendl wriggled through, blanking out the pain as her shoulder emerged through the hole. She let her left arm flop down. With her upper torso out, the rest slithered out easily. She executed an inelegant somersault and landed on her feet. She waited, poised, one hand on the pistol at her waist. The bustle of the warehouse continued uninterrupted. Holding her shoulder, she went to the wall, then slammed it into the metal. The bones relocated themselves with a painful pop. She rotated her shoulder. A good reset — the discomfort was manageable.

Drawing pistol and blade, she crept noiselessly into the warehouse.

Another of the great weaknesses of the Martian empire was that so many of its citizens were mindless drones. Such an eagerness to lobotomise played into the hands of the likes of the Officio Assassinorum, whose operatives could move far more freely than on other worlds within the Imperium; the servitors simply ignored anything that fell outside their programming. The warehouse was crowded with cyber-constructs of all kinds. She dodged between them as they rattled about, and went to the door of one of the shipping containers. The lock was sigma grade, heavily shielded. She could get it open, of course, but that would bring with it a risk of detection, and would take time.

She looked about. They could not just be stacking containers somewhere they must be unloading them. From where she was situated she could see no open containers or other types of servitor that might lead her to her goal, so she looked upwards. The stacks were tall and she would fare better from the top. Holstering her pistol and placing her knife between her teeth, she clambered up the smooth side of the transit containers. Once up, she ran and jumped from stack to stack, always landing silently, gun ready for interception. A hunch drew her to the rear of the warehouse, and there fortune favoured her.

At the foot of the stack, the doors to a container were open. A file of servitors carrying something like casualty biers were marching inside, their stretchers empty, and returning with them full — massive, bulky objects hidden in white plastek sacks. These servitors too seemed to be unsupervised, so she leapt from the top of the containers, weak Martian gravity allowing her to fall several metres with the lightest of impacts. She hurried to the line of servitors and fell in beside them. As usual they ignored her. They trudged towards a door out of the warehouse, where a dingy corridor led away. A quick slip of her knife opened one of the sealed bags, and she bent down to peer inside, still moving alongside the servitors.

Inside was the naked corpse of an ork. The smell of it was staggering, and she switched to breathing through her mouth. A fat pink tongue lolled between dagger teeth of yellow ivory. Its red eyes were half closed, lifeless and dull. Massive craters pocked its flesh, and the left arm was missing. Bolt-wounds. She stepped back, letting the flow of servitors pass her as she moved back up the line to the container. Inside were dozens of shelves arrayed like bunks, transit webbing hanging loose over the sides where they had been emptied. At the rear of the container a refrigeration unit blinked running lights from red to green and back again. White vapour, smelling strongly of methalon, pooled on the floor.

Yendl ran through the calculations in her head, balancing up the size of the warehouse with the number of containers and transit cradles… She drew in a sharp breath.

Over ten thousand orks.

‘What by the Throne do they want ten thousand dead orks for?’ she whispered. She had to inform Vangorich. She had to make contact.

Yendl sneaked through the comings and goings of servitors. There were so many she almost did not recognise the skitarii for what they were until it was too late. So much metal melded to flesh. Telling the autonomous servants of the priesthood apart from their slaves was nigh-on impossible.

At the last second she noticed them, diving behind a container as a bullet buzzed past her face, setting her internal rad sensors screaming.

‘Halt! Halt! Unauthorised personnel, halt!’ screeched a harsh metallic voice. Iron feet pounded the plascrete of the warehouse floor, coming at her from both sides of the container stack.

The first skitarius found an energy blast waiting for it. Yendl had studied the endless variations of the cybernetic warriors exhaustively, and knew the weak points of each. It was thrown backwards by the blast of her pistol, an exotic relic of the great Heresy war, tangling the legs of the one coming behind it. Yendl was already moving backwards, directly into the path of those coming up the other side. She sidestepped the next bullet coming for her, a movement that brought her around the barrel of the skitarius’ gun. She grabbed the stock, preventing the cyborg from repositioning its weapon, shooting the one behind with her pistol, then the one behind that. The gears of the skitarius’ mechanical arms clicked with effort to push Yendl aside, but her slender augmetic arms were supplemented with hidden fibre bundles, and her stance was immovable.

Two further skitarii rounded the rear of the container. The first’s visor met her elbow, driving shattered glass and metal into its brain. The second got a bullet from the gun of its comrade when Yendl pivoted on the spot and yanked hard, mashing the trapped skitarius’ finger against the trigger. Only that one remained. She wrenched the gun away, threw the skitarius aside and shot it three times, in the chest, head and reactor unit.

She made sure they were all dead and their datacores shattered, then she was away.

Alarms rang. Before anyone could respond, Yendl had gone.

A steady procession of foot traffic flowed along the Trans-Tharsis Highway’s pedestrian strip. The lights of giant vehicles blurred past in a roar of colour and sound.

Clementina Yendl arranged her new disguise, a robe taken from a menial now dead and never to be found. She adjusted her posture, becoming once again the low-ranking adept, her augmetics adopting the twisted pose of bionics more hindrance than help. Transformed, she slipped from a side door in an unassuming block and joined the crowds. She had gone less than three kilometres before she became aware of the servo-skull following her some metres behind. Yendl was too well practised to reveal she had noticed. She picked up speed. The skull did likewise, a constant presence amid the confusing whirl of aerial constructs going about their duty.

She selected an ambush site. A one-man lift ascended to a gallery hanging from the lower floors of a kilometre-long hab complex. A covered walkway led off into the building there. She ascended the lift, and went down the alley. Sure enough, the skull followed. A junction beckoned, and she took an abrupt left.

When the skull came, she was waiting with her cloak, whirling it out like a net and catching the device mid-flight. She hauled it to earth, her strength overcoming its anti-gravity field and bouncing it from the floor. She wrestled it into submission, and freed it from the cloak. A standard model, bronze-plated ancient bone, long tendrils of interface cabling hanging from its rear. By the standards of Mars, wholly unremarkable, and unarmed. It stopped struggling.

‘Message, message, message,’ gargled the skull, its glass eyes flashing.

‘Speak,’ said Yendl.

A click sounded as a vox-feed engaged. ‘I have been searching for you everywhere.’

‘My well-placed friend.’

‘The very same,’ said Urquidex. He sounded agitated.

‘I hope for your sake this feed is encrypted.’

‘Of course!’ he snapped. ‘But we must be brief. The privacy of this channel cannot be guaranteed for long. One of your colleagues has met with an unfortunate end and the secrecy of your cell is compromised. It will take the diagnostic covens a little time to retrieve the information from the cortex — organics are so much less forgiving than mechanisms — but they will.’

‘She is dead? I had guessed,’ said Yendl.

‘Yes. I am sorry.’

‘Sorrow helps nobody.’

‘I have other news,’ said Urquidex. ‘The Fabricator General has embarked on new work. I do not know what. I am attempting to find out.’

‘Orks,’ said Yendl.

‘What?’

‘Thousands of ork corpses are being delivered—’

‘To the laboratoria of Pavonis Mons?’

‘Yes,’ said Yendl. ‘I have come from there. I was seen.’

‘Disaster!’ said Urquidex.

Yendl let the servo-skull free. It bobbed level with her eyes.

‘Tell me something I am unaware of,’ she said. ‘Tell me what they want with so many dead orks.’

‘I do not know,’ said Urquidex. ‘Kubik told me himself, Magos Van Auken heads a work as important as the Grand Experiment.’ He paused. ‘I delay all I can, but cannot do so indefinitely. I cannot stop the Grand Experiment.’ A faint crackle sounded on the connection. ‘Danger comes. I must go. Stay alive. I will attempt contact soon.’

The skull flew away, becoming one among hundreds hurrying through the tunnel. Yendl lost sight of it quickly. She was not so naive as to believe she could disappear so easily.

Fifteen

Lord Guilliman’s decree

The day after the attack on the ork moon, the Space Marines of the Last Wall prepared to receive Lord Guilliman Udin Macht Udo with as much ceremony and pomp as if he had in truth been the primarch himself.

They waited on the embarkation deck of the Abhorrence in full wargear. Udo’s magnificently decorated shuttle pierced the integrity field of the portal majoris and came in to land upon the golden aquila painted specially for the purpose at the centre of the deck. The landing ramp descended, disgorging fifty Lucifer Blacks in gleaming wargear. They jogged down an avenue of Space Marines made up from members of every company of every Chapter in the Last Wall. Fists Exemplar stood with Black Templars beside Iron Knights. Crimson Fists waited proudly alongside Excoriators. With these representatives of each Chapter, there were nigh-on one thousand Space Marines present on the deck.

At the end of this aisle lined by ceramite stood the commanders of the Chapters: the captains and Chaplains of every company, headed by their leaders High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars, Chapter Master Issachar of the Excoriators, Chapter Master Quesadra of the Crimson Fists, Chapter Master Thane of the Fists Exemplar, First Captain Verpall of the Iron Knights, and Koorland, Chapter Master and last member of the Imperial Fists.

The Lucifer Blacks stamped shining boots in thunderous march down the ranks of Space Marines. They spread themselves out along the length of the way from Udo’s ship to the Chapter Masters until they formed a cordon one man wide. Then they rotated ninety degrees to face into the avenue, their final stamp echoing away into the empty spaces of the embarkation deck. For all the Lucifer Blacks’ stern martial polish, there was something faintly ridiculous about this show of defence, as if all of them together could possibly hope to halt even ten of the transhuman warriors, should they decide to kill the Lord Guilliman.

Koorland pushed the implied insult to the back of his mind. More politics. Udo was making a show of his authority.

To a fanfare of silver clarions, Udin Macht Udo came down the ramp of his ship, surrounded by attendants and high-ranking officials of the Adeptus Terra. The train of his cloak was held from the ground by six blind auto-praisers whispering ceaseless prayers to the Emperor. Udo wore all the panoply of his office, a rich uniform stiff with brocade and frogging, a chest full of honours and medallions. Servo-skulls buzzed out in a cloud over his entourage, and swooped off in every direction. Cyber-cherubs came after, four spreading out to hold a cloth of gold two metres over the Lord Guilliman, two more swinging censers which billowed oily blue, perfumed smoke.

This parade came to a halt before the Chapter Masters. The sons of Dorn got down on one knee, and bowed their heads.

Udo clapped his hands and smiled.

‘Rise, rise, loyal servants of the Imperium! You, the mighty sons of the Emperor, return to your Father in the time of need, and you have not disappointed Him.’

The Space Marines got to their feet, dwarfing the Lord Guilliman. Unperturbed, Udo motioned for a cybernetic servant bearing a velvet-covered tray, on which were arrayed multiple honour badges. A hooded adept came after, and began to clamp the badges to the Chapter Masters’ armour. ‘In recognition, this mark is designated the Defence of Terra. You shall be permitted to display it upon your armours and banners for evermore.’

The adept approached Koorland gingerly. With unsteady hands he placed the award upon the bottom corner of his pauldron. The man was shaking with fear. Koorland looked over the head of the adept at the crowd of servants behind Udo. There were four auto-scribes, quill arms scratching down an account of the event upon spools of paper spilling from chest boxes. There were others making records — servitors with pict-capture units for eyes and vox-thieves for mouths. Several of the servo-skulls hovered in place, glass eye-lenses fixed on the Space Marines. They watched also, doubtless capturing the ceremony from other angles.

Another way to show power, thought Koorland. He comes aboard our ships, a statement of ownership. He wondered how many times these images would be displayed on the pict screens of the Palace, in places like the Fields of Winged Victory, in the innumerable squares and plazas of Terra. How many times the news-criers would shout out Udo’s generosity, how many priests would read of how the lords of six Space Marine Chapters demonstrated their allegiance to Terra on their knees before Udin Macht Udo.

‘And now, brave defenders of the Imperium,’ Udo said, holding his hands high in seeming blessing. ‘We must convene a council of war. The ork is not yet defeated.’

A projection of Terra rotated lazily over a chart desk set into the middle of the strategium table, the ork moon its unwelcome companion. Through a long galleried window the same scene could be seen in reality. The gathered might of five Chapters sailed in tight formation around the moon. Wings of interdiction fighters shone bright as polished badges as they swooped over it, their numbers and flight paths reproduced as graphical ideograms over the light image.

The Chapter Masters sat around the massive table. Udin Macht Udo occupied a tall throne at its head, built up so that he might look the Space Marines in the eye. Behind him a broad-winged bronze aquila glowered down from the wall, its one-eyed glare mirroring Udo’s own.

‘Those vessels taken from the Merchant Fleets that we could not retake, we have destroyed,’ Quesadra was saying. ‘Our combined forces inflicted significant damage throughout the moon. Our estimates are that two-thirds or more of the orks were killed. The outer surface has been stripped of weaponry. For the time being, the moon poses no significant threat. Chapter Master Koorland’s expedition into the moon’s core damaged a device that proved to be a long-range teleport array. Without it, the orks cannot reinforce themselves. They are cut off. This intelligence is of the highest significance for the prosecution of the war. The moon—’

‘The moon is not only an attack vessel, but a form of spatial gateway. I was informed by Fabricator General Kubik this morning,’ said Udo dismissively. ‘It has been noted. New strategies are being formulated. The question for now is, was it permanently disabled?’

‘We do not think so,’ said Thane. ‘The power supply was severely damaged, but deep auspex scans show continued power fluctuations. The possibility remains that they may repair it.’

‘And then the problem will be as it was before, hundreds of thousands of orks moving in to directly attack Terra,’ said Issachar. ‘The capabilities of the gateway are unknown. They may be able to bring in replacement materiel and ships. The throneworld remains vulnerable.’

‘There remains only one solution,’ said Koorland. ‘We must attack again.’

An aide handed Udo a data-slate. He squinted at it a while, leaving the Chapter Masters to wait, then handed it back.

‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘Second Captain Koorland of the Daylight Wall Company, you will not attack again. Not yet.’

‘We will leave it there?’ said Bohemond incredulously. ‘The Last Wall has been called! We come to Terra’s aid, and you would deny the Emperor this victory?’

‘Lord Bohemond,’ said Koorland. ‘Please. Hear the Lord Guilliman out.’

‘Listen to the second captain, he has some wisdom,’ said Udo.

Issachar’s face darkened. ‘Koorland is a Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes, Lord Guilliman,’ he said. ‘He sits here with us in brotherhood. It pains me to remind one of your exalted rank.’

‘I do not require your assistance,’ said Udo. ‘Koorland is no Chapter Master. By the customs of his own order, if not directly nominated by the passing commander, potential successors to the office of Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists must be selected by the consensus of the Chapter’s Chaplains and wall captains, and those favoured with nomination voted for. In Koorland’s case neither of these criteria have been met.’

‘How could they be? He is the only one,’ growled Bohemond. ‘The last Imperial Fist.’

‘Would the same stand if he were the last surviving neophyte?’ said Udo. ‘I think not.’

‘He has been recognised as Chapter Master by us, the lords of the other sons of Dorn,’ said Issachar. ‘He has led us in battle. He is worthy.’

Udo spread his hands, neither dismissing or conceding the point. ‘Far be it from me to deny the will of so many mighty heroes. Terra could conceivably allow such a selection, if it proved to be in the best interests of the Imperium.’

‘The affairs of the Adeptus Astartes are our own!’ said Bohemond.

‘But they are not, High Marshal,’ said Udo patiently. ‘They are yours as far as any of the other adepta’s. You are, first and foremost, servants and subjects of the God-Emperor, Lord of all Mankind — a species of which, although your alterations perhaps stretch the classification, you are still a member, High Marshal. Your Chapter forgets this fact a little too often. Your fleets are unaccountable, rumours persist of an excess of warriors under your command, and your actions have stirred up previously quiet xenos races too many times.’

‘We serve the Emperor,’ said Bohemond, ‘not bureaucrats. Ours is a sacred mission.’

‘We are the agents of the Emperor’s will,’ countered Udo. ‘Not some officio to be ignored.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Your wilfulness gives us pause. This gathering of yours was neither called for nor authorised. Now we have three thousand Space Marines in orbit over the Golden Throne itself. What are we to make of that?’

‘In the face of your incompetence we save the throneworld, and you come to accuse us of treachery?’ said Quesadra in disgust.

‘You are the largest force of Space Marines assembled since the Heresy,’ said Udo. ‘We must be left in no doubt as to where your allegiances lie. Your success is welcome, and applauded. But your unannounced arrival here in such strength has the Senatorum Imperialis in uproar.’

‘If the Senatorum had proved a little more effective in governing, and a little less in pursuing the interests of the senators, then we would not need to be here at all, and my brothers might yet live,’ said Koorland quietly.

Udo pulled a face. ‘You see, it is words of that sort that fan the flames of my fears. Is that a threat, second captain?’

‘We have no interest in usurping the Senatorum!’ said Koorland. He rose from his seat. Issachar grabbed his wrist, but Koorland pulled free. He leaned over the table. ‘Is this why we were left alone to die upon Ardamantua, because you are afraid of us? Did you expend the lives of the Imperium’s staunchest defenders in political calculation?’

‘I doubt much thought went into it at all, brother,’ said Verpall. ‘That is the root of the problem here.’

‘Yours is a simple breed,’ said Udo. ‘Bred for war. You think on nothing but matters of combat and honour. I have seen contempt for the common man too many times in the face of a Space Marine. You think yourselves intelligent, and you are, but you forget too often you are made for conflict, and conflict invariably follows in your wake. Leave the subtleties of government to those better suited, as the Emperor intended.’

‘My lord Malfons died to preserve your office,’ said Verpall. ‘Do not insult us again.’

‘There, you see. A veiled threat. Another statement that forges my opinion the harder. You must listen to me. Do as I say and we shall have no difficulty between us. Tomorrow, we will proceed to the surface where you will be feted as the saviours that you are. Then, in the Senatorum Imperialis, you will renew your oaths of fealty to the Imperium. Then you shall be acknowledged as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, Second Captain Koorland, with the full will of the Senatorum. After which, we shall formulate plans — with the backing of myself, the Lord Commander Militant, Lord High Admiral Lansung and the others — to end this crisis.’

The Chapter Masters looked to one another. Quesadra drummed three crimson fingers on the table, click click click.

‘What of the moon?’ asked Koorland.

‘Kubik desires it to be left intact.’

‘So Terra dances to Mars’ tune now?’ said Bohemond.

Udo gave him a hard stare. Bohemond returned it. ‘We have convened a meeting of the High Twelve,’ said Udo. ‘There its fate will be decided.’

‘I urge you, my lord, it must be destroyed,’ said Koorland.

‘Whether or not it will be is a matter for the Lords of Terra. You will maintain your blockade until the Navy gathers in sufficient force to take your place. If you perform this task, none shall set foot upon the moon. The Fabricator General has agreed to withdraw his armies for the time being. The moon is under your custodianship. Beyond that it is no longer your concern,’ said Udo evenly. ‘You have pulled the orks’ teeth. Bravo. It is time to let the organs of government decide the best course of action. Know this, lord Chapter Masters, this fleet of yours cannot be allowed to remain whole. Your Chapters shall each receive individual orders. With your might properly directed, we shall end the threat of this Beast once and for all. There shall be no more need for such,’ he lifted a hand, ‘charming displays of confraternity.’

The Space Marines shifted uneasily.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Koorland hesitantly. ‘When you order its destruction, we shall be on hand to aid you in your task.’

‘There is one last item I must inform you of,’ continued Udo. ‘We cannot allow the news of the destruction of the Imperial Fists to be made public. Your return, Koorland, will be the proof of the indomitability of the Adeptus Astartes of Dorn’s line. You shall return from the dead to great fanfare, the orks cannot defeat you and so forth. I shall have a suitable story provided. You are only one, and that presents a problem. To circumvent this, each of you will provide from among your number Wall Guardians to man the Palace as the Imperial Fists always have.’

‘They are not Imperial Fists,’ said Quesadra.

‘They shall be dressed in the livery of the Imperial Fists,’ said Udo. ‘The populace shall know no different.’

‘Our men will never give up their colours!’ exclaimed Issachar.

‘There will be no honour? No mention of my brothers’ sacrifice?’ Koorland’s face went pale. ‘This is an outrage!’

‘This is politics, captain,’ said Udo. ‘In the aftermath of the moon’s arrival, to inform the people that the Imperial Fists are nigh-on extinct will send a wave of terror throughout the Imperium. Worse would be rumours, for they are pernicious and far harder to deal with than the shock of an announcement. Not a single word of this disaster must become public. You have my sympathy for your loss, captain, but there are practicalities to consider.’ Udo stood, holding up his hands to forestall disagreement. ‘You must forgive me. I return to the surface now. I have much to arrange.’

The Lord Commander bowed sharply, leaving the Space Marines to stare after him as his aides and constructs filed out in his wake.

‘We will not break the fleet,’ said Bohemond.

‘We cannot defy him,’ said Quesadra.

‘We can,’ said Verpall. ‘How can Udo possibly enforce the order? If we did refuse he could do nothing. He would be forced to back down and concoct some story that cast him in a favourable light.’

‘More politics,’ spat Bohemond.

‘I cannot condone that course of action,’ said Koorland. ‘It is close to heresy.’

‘We have no choice,’ said Issachar, ‘if we are to save the Imperium.’

‘A sentiment that has been voiced before,’ said Koorland. ‘Be careful of your thoughts, brother.’

Sixteen

The welcoming of heroes

The Praetorian Way resounded to cheers as the Space Marines marched from the East Gate Landing Hall towards the centre of the Imperial Palace: over three thousand of them, more than had been on Terra at one time for hundreds of years. Millions of citizens lined the route, waving flags bearing the badges of the Chapters. They roared and screamed their approbation, ecstatic at the sight of so many of the Angels of Death. The attack moon loured at them, its porcine face expressing a fury it was impotent to act upon. Aircraft shrieked overhead, pumping coloured smoke into the hazy atmosphere. Laud hailers sang out hymnals and prayers, and servo-skulls bearing vox-projectors roared out the names of the most distinguished battle-brothers, while others recited the Chapter histories of the Space Marines.

Giant screens along the route showed picts of dead orks and burning ships, intercut with the faces of Koorland and his fellow lords, their names and honours written in bold text beneath their images. Music blasted from a hundred places, until the words and melodies were unrecognisable as coherent sounds; they were sonic fragments, an overwhelming cacophony that outsang the loudest battle.

Never had Koorland heard a million voices scream as one, either in adulation or in pain. He went bareheaded at the High Lords’ request, crowned with a laurel wreath. Let the people see their saviour, they said. He envied the twenty sham Imperial Fists marching behind him, their helms locked in place, their audio dampers working at maximum capacity. Koorland kept his face forward. So many people, so many faces, all of them calling his name. Scented flakes of paper rained down on them from every side. It was intoxicating, and it should not be so. He had performed his duty, that was all. He would not allow himself to indulge his emotions. He would not allow himself the folly of pride.

They passed from tightly clustered buildings and into the killing field before the Palace walls. Four kilometres of bare rock, open to the sky. Daylight Wall dominated it, tinted a delicate rose by the rising sun. The Praetorian Way meekly burrowed its way through the East Gate, little more than a wormhole in the fabric of the wall in comparison to the defence’s massive size. The wall was stupefyingly tall. Here Koorland’s gene-seed ancestors had fought and died, protecting the Emperor from the gravest enemy of all. What he and his fellow Chapter Masters had accomplished was nothing by comparison. He reminded himself repeatedly of his own insignificance as they approached the soaring buttresses, towers, gun emplacements and gigantic statuary.

The crowds in the killing field were no less vocal, but free of the resonating plascrete canyons of the outer district the noise was bearable. Daylight Wall, in many senses his wall. Koorland had not seen it for so long. The East Gate reared up, mighty now he was before it, its revealed scale making the wall all the more titanic. The reflected heat of the early sun bounced from it, glinting from the polished armour of the Space Marine column. Koorland’s wargear gleamed newly. Not even his intention to keep his battle damage on show until his brothers were avenged had survived Udo’s blunt realpolitik. Issachar’s Chapter were the battered exception, their creed demanding they mark their wounds well.

Koorland marched towards the gate where the multi-lane Praetorian Way became a straight tunnel through the wall. To be coming home like this, alone, the bearer of half-truths and propagandic distortions, blunted the glory of their triumph over the orks. The moon was still in the sky. The wall stood strong in the face of its aggression, but scarring from its attacks opened up gaps all over the Palace’s skylines. Despite these reminders of vulnerability around them, the Senatorum Imperialis would doubtless go back to its infighting.

The blackness of the gate tunnel swallowed him, and the crowd’s jubilation was silenced. Shame dogged his footsteps and determination drove him on.

This state of affairs could not be allowed to persist. It was a thought that would not be quieted all the way through the giving of honours and renewal of fealty that took place in the Senatorum Imperialis at the end of their march.

After the ceremony was over, the highest of the high were ushered into a giant hall clad in ornately carved tiles of malachite and onyx. There an interminable feast began, bookended by pompous speeches. The food was quite exquisite, but Koorland was so invested in his problems he found himself insensible to the flavour. He filled himself as he had been trained to long ago, shovelling delicacies into his mouth to fuel his transhuman metabolism as if they were the lowest gruel. There were so many ingredients in each dish that a confusing amount of information flooded his brain via his neuroglottis, further darkening his mood.

After the feast came the reception, a grand and tedious party where Koorland was besieged by a stream of dignitaries that would not stop flowing. Their mouths dripped honeyed comments, a request or criticism behind every one. Koorland politely listened to his interlocutors, insisting he had no say in the policies of the Senatorum Imperialis, and that he had no intention of parlaying the assembled Chapters’ might into political influence. ‘I am a servant of the Emperor,’ and its variations became a phrase repeated as often as a battle catechism.

The High Twelve and many of the greatest of the lesser lords kept themselves distant from him. Those that attempted an approach shied away under Udo’s glowering. When Vangorich appeared at his side it was so unexpected that Koorland did not at first recognise him.

‘Good evening, Chapter Master,’ said a wiry man. He surveyed the room, not lifting his face to look at the Imperial Fist. Koorland prepared himself for the usual back and forth of insincere small talk and relentless probing, but something made him hesitate in returning the man’s greeting. He was armed only with a goblet of wine and a sardonic manner, but there was something about him, a mixture of poise, alertness and confidence that the others lacked and that signalled he was the most dangerous man in the room. Then he looked up, held out a hand, and Koorland knew him.

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ said Koorland.

Koorland’s giant fist engulfed Vangorich’s hand and they shook in the civilian manner, palm to palm.

‘I recognise you from our discussion. I thank you for your… recent good wishes.’

‘I am only happy they were well received,’ said Vangorich.

‘How could I not heed you? You are dangerous,’ said Koorland.

‘My, you are blunt. You don’t think these other fine ladies and gentlemen are?’ said Vangorich.

‘Not in the same way as you,’ said Koorland. ‘Not immediately. None of them would stand a chance against me in combat, but I suspect you might. And you also possess their political power. There are several of the greatest lords of the Space Marines in this chamber, but I think you are the most dangerous of us all.’

Vangorich shrugged slightly. He was small by unaltered human standards, and minute by those of the transhumans.

‘Correct again, Chapter Master. I suppose I am exceptionally dangerous. Shall I tell you another difference between myself and my fellow High Lords? You and I, Koorland, are on the same side.’

‘We are all on the same side,’ said Koorland. ‘The orks are on the other.’

‘Oh, Chapter Master, please!’ Vangorich tutted. Koorland noticed that when the Assassin spoke he hid his lips from prying eyes behind his goblet. ‘Don’t play the naïf with me. I’m a remarkably good judge of a man’s mood no matter their type. A necessary skill in my role. It is plain that you are not pleased nor are you satisfied by what you see here on Terra.’

‘I am not,’ admitted Koorland. ‘My brothers are all dead. I hold the men and women in this hall responsible.’

‘You are not alone in doing so. There are others of us who are frustrated by the failure of the Senatorum to contain the orks. Now that, Chapter Master, is why we are on the same side. I am sorry, by the way, about your brothers. There was one, Daylight, who was a passing acquaintance of mine.’

Koorland looked down at Vangorich hard. Daylight had been his company representative on Terra. ‘I have had enough of barbed words hidden in flattery. If you seek to goad me, I advise you to seek your sport elsewhere.’

‘I mean nothing ill by it,’ said Vangorich. ‘I will not say Daylight was my friend, but I spoke with him every day and I always regarded him well. He was an honourable man. It is a shame he realised his dream of going to war. It proved his end.’

‘War is our purpose. To die in battle is an honour.’ As Koorland said the words he doubted them. He remembered the devastation on Ardamantua. There had been little honour won there.

‘How refreshing,’ said Vangorich. ‘These others here, some few of them might hold such noble sentiments. Juskina Tull,’ he pointed out a tall woman in a complicated dress. She held herself aloof, and her face was blank of emotion. ‘She, for example, for all her delusions in initiating the Proletarian Crusade, her motives were at least pure — in part. Many of the rest of them cannot even claim that. They do not see beyond their own concerns, or they actively promote their own interests. Naturally, they all invoke the Emperor, and the good of the Imperium. But frankly it never ceases to amaze me how convenient it is that the will of the Emperor coincides with the aims of every High Lord, no matter how contradictory their statements appear when set one beside another.

‘See,’ said Vangorich, pointing. ‘The Provost, Zeck. He is perhaps a little overly concerned with his office. He is very good at his job, but too good to be effective on the council. Lord Commander Militant Verreault is at odds with Lord High Admiral Lansung, and is in Udo’s pocket. The telepaths Anwar and Sark are occupied so much with their own, vital efforts to keep the Imperium together that they are too easily swayed by quick solutions, whereas the Paternoval Envoy Gibran cannot be swayed at all.’ As he spoke, he indicated the High Lords one at a time. ‘Lansung is a brilliant military commander, but of all of them he is the most responsible for this sorry mess.’

‘His ship stood back while we attacked,’ said Koorland.

‘As it did when Tull’s Crusade went forward. I cannot think why. He has perhaps lost his self-belief. I’m sure his own follies were driven by the idea that he was the best man for the job. That only he knows the way to extend the Imperium’s reach. But his manoeuvring was nearly the end of us. They all think that they alone know the answer. Confidence and zealotry, a terrible mix. He hoarded his fleet when he should have attacked, all for the chance at an office he will now never hold. The Inquisition seeks to repair the machineries of government, but cannot agree with itself and falls to infighting.

‘The fat man there in three countesses’ worth of jewellery is Mesring, the Ecclesiarch. A less holy man I have rarely met. And let us not forget Kubik, of course, hiding away on Mars up to no good. He’s turning into something of a threat to the Imperium, between you and me. All the signs suggest he seeks to assert the supremacy of Mars over that of Terra.’ He sighed and waved his goblet around him, taking in all the dignitaries, toadies, servers, servitors and every other human being in the room. ‘A room full of agendas does not make for happy governance. It is, all things told, a sorry mess of a game.’

‘I cannot see this as a game, Grand Master.’

‘But it is a game, Koorland,’ said Vangorich. ‘A very serious game, but a game nonetheless.’

‘If all the pieces are compromised, then what is left?’ said Koorland.

‘What is left is you and I,’ said Vangorich, tapping a finger against Koorland’s chest eagle. ‘So we best hope you are successful in hauling our collective skins out of the fire. I do not wish to see the time come when the Imperium has to rely on the Grand Master of the Assassinorum. We are gardeners, we Assassins. A snip and a prune. We are not intended for the wholesale remodelling of government, or, the Emperor forfend, the wielding of power.’ He smiled innocently, his scar twisting his face. Unlike Udo’s disfigurement, it somehow made the Assassin appear even more genial.

For a man who protested his lack of interest in power, thought Koorland, he seemed remarkably adept at wielding it.

‘Ah, my goblet appears to be empty,’ said Vangorich. ‘This evening, I feel like drinking. This week has been taxing.’ He rested a hand on Koorland’s vambrace, and said sotto voce, ‘Let us continue this some other time.’ Vangorich sauntered off, greeting men and women with a warmth shot through with insolence.

Thane came to his side. The Chapter Masters had been besieged by coteries of adepts, some of whom were there at Udo’s behest to keep them apart. But when a Space Marine in full battleplate chose to move through a room, people had no choice but to quickly remove themselves from his path.

‘I tire of their flattery and wheedling,’ said Thane.

‘This room is a vipers’ nest,’ said Koorland.

‘Aye, and Grand Master Vangorich is the biggest snake of all. Be wary of him, brother.’

‘A life of war, of bolt and blade, was preferable to this,’ said Koorland.

‘I agree. But Issachar has it right. We have a different kind of battle to fight now.’ The supplicants kept their distance from the Chapter Masters’ quiet conference, all save one: the fat man sealed into ceremonial ecclesiarchal robes so encrusted in jewels they were thick as battleplate, Ecclesiarch Mesring. He came over, sweating under the weight of his robes of office despite the four hollow-eyed, shaven-headed acolytes holding his train. A whole host of others trailed him: priests, scribes, and petitioners anxiously awaiting a moment to speak with him.

Mesring interrupted the Space Marines impolitely. ‘Chapter Masters! I come to offer my thanks. You do the Emperor’s duty. He is pleased.’

Koorland turned from his conversation with Thane. ‘You are Mesring, Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum?’

Mesring was taken aback at Koorland’s feigned ignorance, but rallied well. ‘A grandiose title for a humble role. I am fortunate to interpret the Emperor’s will.’ He bowed stiffly from the waist, his chins wobbling with the effort. ‘And it is glorious to stand before His favoured servants, His holy sons.’ His pale flesh gleamed, and he slurred his words despite his manners. Koorland suspected he was drunk.

‘Your garb tells another story than humility,’ said Thane. ‘You tell me the Emperor is pleased? Who are you to know?’

‘You gainsay the will of the Holy Emperor?’ said Mesring.

‘Your religion means nothing to me,’ said Thane. ‘My Chapter follows the tenets of the Imperial Truth, set down by the Emperor during the Great Crusade. How quickly you have forgotten it. We are not holy. Do not treat us as such.’

‘One thousand five hundred years is a long time, Chapter Master,’ said Mesring. ‘The Imperial Truth is all but forgotten. The scriptures tell us that the Emperor conceived of it as a necessary lie. The very name is an exercise in irony. Only in death has the Emperor cast off His corporeal cloak and revealed Himself to us in His true glory!’

‘I disagree,’ said Thane. ‘Your cult profanes His memory with idolatry.’

‘When will the Adeptus Astartes see the light?’ said Mesring. ‘It troubles me, my son, that the Emperor’s own angels deny the truth.’

‘We are not angels!’ snorted Thane.

‘You were among those who urged the populace to take the oath of crusade?’ said Koorland.

‘I did, I did! As was only right.’

‘It proved to be wholly wrong,’ said Koorland. ‘A rash move that risked provoking the orks, and cost the lives of millions, while you and Tull and the others who promoted it remain alive and well.’

A flicker of consternation crossed Mesring’s face. ‘Then it is good that you are here now, to fight them on our behalf.’

‘Aye, that is what we are, priest — warriors,’ said Thane.

‘One day, I hope to bring all our mighty warriors into the truth of the faith. Some are perhaps more amenable than others.’ His gaze strayed around the room, looking for someone. He smiled secretly to himself.

‘Then go and speak to them,’ said Thane. He glared menacingly at Mesring until the Ecclesiarch made his excuses and left.

A surge of anger built in Koorland’s chest. The men and women around him had been scheming while Terra burned. The temptation to sweep it all aside was great.

‘I am done here,’ he told Thane. ‘I return to the fleet. The Senatorum is broken, all the High Lords invested only in their own advancement. I have heard the name of the Emperor invoked by every charlatan in this house. This cannot be allowed to continue.’

With that he departed the room, the crowd parting hurriedly before him.

Seventeen

War in the dust

Magneric stamped over the gritty ruin of Dzelenic IV, assault cannon blazing. Orks filled the surface from horizon to horizon. More came thundering down from orbit in rickety landing craft, little more than balls of scrap that bounced to a halt on the ground before bursting into pieces. Sometimes they fell apart to reveal their mangled occupants, but more often than not mobs of howling greenskins came running out, shooting their weapons into the air. Magneric ploughed through them unconcerned, killing them without thought, the eye of his Dreadnought fixed upon the low ruin the Iron Warriors had occupied, visible over the ridge of a dune. By the gunfire flashing out, Kalkator still lived.

The ammunition counters in Magneric’s display blinked to orange as his assault cannon ran to below half capacity. The view Magneric had of the outside world was grainy, bleached out, striped with the lines of inferior pict capture. Reticules danced over his view, highlighting targets of priority, data-screeds and numerical data further crowding his vision, but he saw well enough to kill.

His flesh body floated in the sarcophagus at the machine’s heart. He was dimly aware of it, the hurts that it still suffered, the limbs that it lacked. It did not trouble him. Others given the singular honour of internment spoke of disassociation, a feeling of distance from the world of the living and a weariness that became harder and harder to bear. Magneric did not feel this. He considered the metal behemoth he dwelled within as his own flesh and blood, an extension of his will. Magneric refused to sleep like the others, and retained his rank and his own name, for Magneric had hatred to drive him onward. Kalkator was the wellspring and the object of this fury, an emotion pure in its heat and ferocity. Magneric lived for Kalkator’s death.

‘Kalkator! Kalkator! I will come and end you!’ He caught an ork in his power fist and crushed it flat, hurling the gory remains back into its fellows and bowling them over. Those that got back up again he gunned down with a spray of fire from his storm bolter.

‘The Emperor has decreed that I slay you, traitor! I am coming for you!’

Magneric was the ebon spear point of an unstoppable blade. His warriors came in his wake, driving through the orkish attack. Behind him Chaplain Aladucos chanted hymnals in praise of the Emperor, encouraging Magneric’s warriors to greater acts of violence. The Black Templars gunships duelled with ork fighters overhead. Three lay in smoking ruin four kilometres behind their advance. Magneric’s own craft sent a column of black smoke climbing skyward, but it did not matter. Only to go forward, to slaughter the foes of the Emperor, to continue the crusade to conquer the galaxy in the name of mankind!

Death was all that mattered to Magneric.

Let Baldon wheedle at him to rest, let Ralstan admonish him for his lack of maintenance slumber. He would sleep when the stain of Kalkator’s existence was wiped from the galaxy.

‘Onwards, brothers, in the name of the Emperor! Strike down these animals and carve a path towards those who betrayed the Lord of Terra. Feel His holy wrath. Kill the ork that we might strike down the traitors! Wash the sands of this dead world with their blood, and then let us away, and conquer, conquer, conquer in the Emperor’s name!’

Magneric surged on, batting orks from his path, until the rabble thinned and gave out. The crowd was behind him. He shot down the last few orks between him and the dune, gyros shifting within his body to compensate for the slip of the sand. He came over the crest, and looked down at the Iron Warriors’ last desperate redoubt.

It had been a building of unguessable height. The top part had been sheared away in the cataclysm that had destroyed the world, leaving sprouts of tangled rebar jutting from crumbling nubs of rockcrete. Three floors alone remained, set in a slight hollow scoured out by the actions of the wind blasting around the building, the bottommost level half-buried in the sand. The ruin had few windows, and one door. Perhaps that lack of apertures was why it had stood a thousand years in the face of howling winds while others around it had been worn down to angular patterns in the sand. The sole entrance was on the side facing Magneric, choked to the top with windblown dust. He rumbled with satisfaction. The traitors’ last Thunderhawk had come down hard a quarter of a kilometre away, ploughing up shattered concrete from the barren fields of the desert. The wreck smoked still. The Iron Warriors were going nowhere.

The glint of steel in the ruddy sunlight revealed Iron Warriors manning the building. A ring of dead orks three deep surrounded it, staining the dust black with their blood. None had come within twenty metres of the position and lived. The building was angled, knocked to one side by seismic upheaval, its rockcrete scoured rough by the dead world’s unforgiving weather. Cracks spidered it on all sides. As battered as Kalkator’s Great Company, it was nevertheless a serviceable fortress, and the Iron Warriors were far from beaten.

Magneric paused, revelling in the moment before he would crush his foe. Behind him the howl of the orks quietened, and the hard clatter of weapons fire abated. His sergeants, Chaplain and castellan all voxed him reporting the same thing from all fronts: the orks were withdrawing.

Laughing in triumph, Magneric stamped forward, sending crescents of sand skidding out in front of him, to stand at the edge of the killing field.

‘Kalkator!’ he boomed. ‘Kalkator! Come out, come out! You are caught! The orks retreat, and you face only me and my judgement. You are run to earth. Come out from your den and face me not as an animal, but as the noble warrior you once were. Ask for mercy, repent your sins against the Emperor and I shall absolve you of your transgressions with a swift death!’

Silence. Magneric’s vox clicked.

‘My lord,’ said Ralstan. ‘The orks have scattered, but I have reports from Ericus that there are many, many more inbound. The Obsidian Sky has been unable to engage with the Palimodes and is beset on all sides. Further ork craft are approaching. Be quick with this. We must leave!’

A noise of dissatisfaction rumbled from Magneric’s vox-emitter. ‘Kalkator! Answer me!’

This time a voice sounded from the building in reply. ‘Magneric! So high must I be in your regard, that you chase me for a thousand years and more, into the teeth of the greatest ork Waaagh! since Ullanor!’

‘Kalkator!’ boomed the Dreadnought. His pneumatics hissed, and the great block of his right shoulder shifted, lifting his assault cannon high. The barrels spun once, and halted. Magneric’s targeting array danced over the ruin, picking out the Iron Warriors in green outlines. Kalkator was not among them.

‘You are looking well. Iron without suits you.’

‘I am unmoved by your mockery,’ boomed Magneric. ‘Come out so that I might kill you!’

Other Black Templars gathered on the dune, kneeling down to take cover behind its ridge. Ralstan directed some of his warriors to fan out to the left and right to surround the building. They were respectfully silent. Kalkator and Magneric were veterans of the Heresy war. To hear them speak was to hear echoes of that awful conflict.

‘I ask for parley!’ shouted Kalkator.

‘You shall have none!’ roared Magneric. ‘I bring only the mercy of death, not a desire to speak.’

‘Then let me rephrase my offer,’ said Kalkator. ‘Three lascannons are pointed at your sarcophagus. If you refuse parley, or if you accept it and attempt to kill me, then I will have them open fire and burn whatever sorry scrap of flesh still exists within that machine.’

Silence fell. Evening was coming. The sinking sun, invisible behind its shroud of dust, pushed Magneric’s shadow out so that it fell upon Kalkator’s redoubt, grey and inflated in the scattered light.

‘Our auspexes detect a massive concentration of orks coming towards our position,’ said Kalkator. ‘Thousands. You are merely seventy-three warriors. You cannot hold them. I am quite content to sit here and watch them butcher you. But there is another way.’

‘My lord, he is correct,’ said Castellan Ralstan. ‘As Ericus informed us, orks are landing in number to the west. What are your orders?’

‘Do you hear them coming?’ goaded Kalkator.

‘My lord!’ said Ralstan.

Magneric roared. ‘Very well! Parley!’

‘Swear upon your honour you will not harm me,’ said Kalkator.

‘My acceptance of your truce is my bond! An oath is not required,’ bellowed Magneric indignantly.

‘Nevertheless, say it,’ said Kalkator.

‘You have my word,’ said Magneric proudly.

Kalkator emerged on the roof of the building, standing up from whatever hiding place he had been skulking in. ‘Then let us talk,’ he said.

For the first time in centuries, Kalkator stood facing Magneric. Caesax and his vexillary flanked the warsmith, the banner of his Great Company rippling in the cooling wind. Magneric’s Sword Brethren made a shallow arc about him, Ralstan at his side. Hatred glared out from eye-lenses set in black and iron-grey armour.

After a moment’s thought, Kalkator reached up and unsealed his helm. He lifted it from his head, and looked upon the Dreadnought with unmoderated eyes.

‘It is good to see you, Magneric.’

Magneric’s sole glass eye stared unblinkingly back. Upon his sensorium feed, reticules locked onto Kalkator’s vulnerable points glowed red and screamed that he should destroy the traitor.

‘Do not seek to play upon old affections!’ he snarled, his vox-emitters expressing his sentiment as an inhuman machine growl.

‘We found ourselves on opposite sides of the war,’ said Kalkator. ‘I do not see why that should invalidate our friendship.’

‘You turned on everything we fought for! You betrayed the Imperium, and cast your lot in with the Dark Powers of the universe. You have ruined mankind.’

Kalkator’s lip curved. ‘We did betray the Emperor, if such you can call abandoning the service of a liar who concealed the truth of reality from those who loved Him, who used our Legion carelessly. You might call it betrayal, freeing mankind from the fetters of oppression, allowing the strong to prevail, showing our kind the real meaning of a power that is accessible to all, not just those self-appointed guardians who hide their purposes behind untruths and oppression.’

‘You are the oppressors,’ said Magneric. ‘Your words are false.’

‘The sons of our lowliest slaves might one day join our Legion. And if they are imbued with our iron, then they shall stand strong, knowing fully in their hearts that they serve the most honest masters of all — themselves. It is you who is mistaken, dear Magneric. You Imperial Fists and that braggart father of yours. You are blind to the truth.’

‘I am Imperial Fist no longer,’ said Magneric, ‘but a Black Templar, and I am party to a greater truth. The powers of Old Night have deceived and corrupted you.’

‘And what new truth is this, I wonder?’ said Kalkator, gesturing at the relics hanging from the Dreadnought, and the texts painted upon his armour.

‘Devotion to the only one who might save us all from the hell of the warp. It was always thus.’

‘I say you are wrong,’ said Kalkator. ‘You say I am wrong. We could stand here all day and argue who is right and who is not while the orks come over that dune and hack us into pieces. Let us agree that both of us wish mankind to survive, only that we differ in the method.’

‘You are self-serving. Evil. The Emperor offers genuine salvation to the human race.’

‘Be that as it may, I do not think the orks are going to listen to your sermonising as long as I have.’

‘I will not fight alongside you again, Kalkator.’

‘Are you ashamed, Magneric?’ said Kalkator. ‘Is that why you pursue me so recklessly? I remember a time when our comradeship was lauded as an example of how our Legions could set aside their differences and find brotherhood.’

‘A trust and bond you betrayed.’

‘I could say the same of you. We fought together, Magneric. We must do so again. The alternatives are poor. We can kill each other now, or let the orks slay us one after the other. Together, we have a chance. Together, we might leave this world.’

‘A few hours ago, you might have made your escape. But the orks fill the skies. You lack sufficient flight support to break free,’ gloated Magneric. ‘Your gunships would never make it to the surface to extract you.’

‘Air cover would be part of the price of our cooperation,’ said Kalkator. ‘We fight together, we leave together. You allow us to depart the system, and then if you really must you can continue this wasteful pursuit for another thousand years.’

Ralstan voxed the Dreadnought privately. ‘As much as I hate to say this, my lord, the warsmith does have a point. Together our numbers are doubled. Nearly one hundred and fifty Space Marines against the orks, we will prevail.’

‘They no longer have the right to name themselves Legiones Astartes!’ roared Magneric for all to hear. He stamped from one foot to the other. ‘They are traitors, nothing more!’

‘We are Space Marines, Magneric,’ said Kalkator. ‘Deny it all you will, but the same gifts your warriors possess are ours too. We must fight together, or we will all perish.’

‘Never!’

‘Think how much more good you will be able to do if you survive to continue your foolish crusades. How many xenos will live if you die, how many human worlds will call out for protection from the predation of mankind’s foes and you will not be there to answer? Neither of us want mankind to fall. Today we have a common enemy. Communicate your agreement with the Obsidian Sky, and I shall command the Palimodes to fight alongside your ship. If they do not stand united, your craft will never make it to the surface either. Do not be a fool, Magneric. Remember our battles, and how often I was right then. I am right now.’

A long moment passed. No words were forthcoming. The two lines of Space Marines faced each other silently.

Kalkator shook his head, and replaced his helm. ‘You are making a grave mistake. I will return to my warriors, and we shall—’

‘Wait!’ said Magneric, his voice low and distorted, the aged vox-equipment popping. ‘I reluctantly agree. We will fight side by side, one more time. Hear me, warriors of the Black Templars!’ He rotated from side to side, addressing all his followers. ‘No member of our Chapter is to harm the Iron Warriors until our treaty is sundered. So swear I, Magneric, Marshal of the Kalkator Crusade. Ralstan, command Ericus to aid the Iron Warriors ship. Have him provide me an estimated extraction time.’ Magneric bent down, his sarcophagus slit glowing in the failing light. ‘We will leave this world together, Kalkator, or not at all. Do not think to betray me.’

‘You have my word that I will abide by the terms of our agreement,’ said Kalkator, ‘more for the sake of our old friendship than for anything else. Now come! Bring your warriors into the redoubt. We must make our preparations.’

Eighteen

Red Haven minus one, plus one

Water, so rare a commodity on arid Mars, ran wastefully from a loose pipe connector. Orange slime furred the join, a mix of rust and biological contamination that hung half a metre down the wall. The water ran down this trailing, slimy beard, dripping silently into a slick puddle more algae than moisture. This patch of errant water was the only distinguishing feature of the pressure-release chamber Yendl waited in. Rust streaked the walls. A dead servo-skull, perhaps the drone that was supposed to report on damage like the leak, lay dusty in the corner. No sign of water flooding was apparent; evidently no pressure release had been needed in this part of the system for a long time. It was unremarkable, overlooked. The ideal place for the cadre to meet.

Yendl was tense but calm. The sense of imminent discovery had lessened. She had a new identity, assumed at the cost of another’s life. The orange robes of a mid-ranking data-tech cloaked her stooped body, her limbs twisted into a new shape. Even waiting for her fellows she maintained the disguise.

Yendl blinked. Mariazet Isolde was suddenly there in the round door drain at the base of the chamber ramp. Her face was new, polymorphine-warped, but in the company of Yendl she did not keep up the rest of her pretence. She moved as an Assassin, without sound, every footstep deliberate, her body the acme of poise. She joined Yendl. They did not speak. Haast was the last member of Red Haven to come.

‘You are tardy,’ said Isolde.

‘I was followed,’ said Haast.

‘Did you lose them?’ asked Yendl.

‘Better than that,’ said Haast. ‘Wait.’

She disappeared for little over a minute, then returned carrying a man, gagged and bound hand and foot, over her shoulder. He was larger than her, but she bore him easily. Haast dropped him on the rockcrete. Hard.

‘He’s been trailing me a week now. I decided it was time to find out who he is.’

‘Verraux is dead,’ said Yendl. Haast nodded, her eyes fixed on her prisoner.

‘That I suspected,’ said Isolde. ‘I have had no word from her for some time.’

‘I was nearly discovered,’ said Yendl.

‘Are we further compromised?’ asked Isolde.

‘They look for me, but cannot find me,’ said Yendl. ‘My information gathering suffers — I must find new access to the Martian noosphere. They are watching the old ways.’

‘That is acceptable,’ said Isolde. ‘Tybalt?’

‘He is hidden still,’ said Haast. ‘I moved his cryo-pod a week ago and checked on it before coming here. No signs of detection.’

‘Then matters could be worse,’ said Isolde. ‘Let us deal with this one while we wait for the message.’

Haast bent to the man’s head and ripped his gag free. He looked at the three Assassins confidently.

‘We work to the same goals,’ he said without preamble. ‘I mean you no harm. You can release me.’

‘We will be the judges of that,’ said Yendl. ‘Who are you, who do you work for?’

‘Whoever I’m told to be, but I’ve been ordered to reveal my purpose should my life be threatened by you.’

‘I’d say it is threatened,’ said Isolde, her hand straying to her knife.

‘I can only agree,’ said the man.

Isolde squatted down next to him. ‘Your name is Raznick. You work for Wienand.’

‘Now how did you come by that information?’ said Raznick.

Isolde tapped her head. ‘Memcore implant. I have a record of every Inquisitorial agent active in the Sol System.’

‘The ones you know about,’ said Raznick.

‘I know about you,’ said Isolde.

‘Wienand’s dead,’ said Haast. ‘You’re out of a job.’

‘Is she now?’ said Raznick.

‘What is your mission?’ asked Yendl.

‘Observation, nothing more. I was told to keep an eye on you, make sure Lord Vangorich doesn’t have you do anything rash.’

Isolde scowled. ‘You of the Inquisition, the keepers of the Imperium. Amateurs.’

‘Maybe I wanted to get caught?’ said Raznick.

‘Right,’ said Isolde. ‘Because you want me to make a hole in your brain. Clever.’

‘Shh!’ hissed Haast.

Suddenly, all three members of the Assassinorum cell had pistols in their hands and trained on the drainage door. A faint skittering came up the enclosed canal outside. Isolde moved to the bottom of the ramp. They waited as the pattering grew louder.

A rat appeared in the door, weirdly long-limbed and long-bodied, a Terran animal adapted to the lower-gravity conditions of Mars.

‘It is here,’ said Isolde, holstering her weapon. The rat remained stock still as she bent down and picked it up. It immediately sank its teeth into the web of her thumb.

Blood welled from the bite as she returned to the others and offered the rat to them. Yendl and Haast allowed it to bite them.

‘Red Haven gathered,’ said Isolde.

‘Red Haven confirmed,’ said the rat, and expired in Haast’s hands.

Yendl extended a fine cutting tool from her augmetic hand and sliced the rat from jaw to the base of its tail. Haast spread the belly. Inside, the rat was mostly cybernetic, a tiny mechanism surrounded by meat. Haast retrieved a silver ball from a housing at the centre. It bleeped, and a recorded message began to play.

‘Red Haven. This is Grand Master Vangorich. I have received Yendl’s troubling information regarding Kubik’s new experiments. Our suspicions that he is working entirely for the good of Mars and not the Imperium as a whole are being sadly borne out. We must prepare contingencies for a final solution.

‘Yendl, gather information on this new venture. Find out what the Adeptus Mechanicus want so many ork bodies for, and what they are doing with them. Prime your noospheric plague phage for release. If the Adeptus Mechanicus make their move, we shall decapitate the priesthood and destroy its informational network. Haast, hand over the care of Tybalt to Isolde. You are the most talented infiltrator in the cell. I want you to watch Kubik night and day. Build up a complete picture of his every habit. Operational level detail to be collated and submitted to me by the end of next week via the usual channels. Once you have this, Haast, you and Isolde are to find a suitable deployment site for Tybalt, and secrete him nearby. Isolde, begin preparation to infiltrate Kubik’s household as soon as Haast has performed her task. I want all three of you in position. One Assassin may be stopped, four cannot be.’

‘He’s going to assassinate the Fabricator General of Mars? He’s overstepping his office,’ said Raznick. ‘Can’t you see that? Let me report to my superiors! If you go through with this, it will mean civil war.’

‘Preparation does not betoken execution,’ said Isolde. ‘Preparedness is the watchword of the Officio Assassinorum.’

‘We’re going to have to kill you, Raznick,’ said Haast.

‘Your task is great, but you have my utmost confidence,’ Vangorich was saying. ‘The survival of the Imperium hangs by a thread. No matter your duty, I know you will perform it without question. I know you will succeed.’

‘Raznick’s death was the only outcome,’ said Isolde. ‘Did you think we might let him live, Haast?’

‘No,’ Haast said.

Raznick sank resignedly into the floor. ‘Just make it quick,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Isolde. ‘Suffering in this instance is of benefit to no one.’ She took a small knife from an arm sheath. Its blue steel edges began to vibrate once it was drawn. ‘Present your throat,’ said Isolde. ‘It’s the quickest way.’

‘Vangorich hasn’t finished yet,’ said Yendl. ‘Leave it.’

‘Finally,’ said Vangorich’s recording. ‘There is an Inquisitorial agent by the name of Raznick who has been assigned to follow you. If you have not already killed him, do not harm him. Make contact with him. It is in the interests of the Imperium that the Inquisition and Officio Assassinorum work together. Inquisitorial Representative Veritus has placed the Inquisition’s assets on Mars at our disposal. Raznick is the key to them.’

Isolde bent down to Raznick and cut his bonds. The ties offered no more resistance to the blade than smoke. He sat up and rubbed his wrists.

‘Today is my lucky day,’ he said.

‘Good hunting, Red Haven,’ concluded Vangorich.

Haast dropped the ball. It hit the plascrete. She stamped on it hard, breaking it into pieces.

‘Well then, my ladies,’ said Raznick from the floor, ‘what is our next move?’

Nineteen

Witch

In tight formation, the Palimodes and the Obsidian Sky drove through the ork fleet, brothers once more, if but for a while. Ramshackle ork craft were blasted apart at close quarters by punishing broadsides issuing from the ships. Spinal lances stabbed out, vaporising smaller craft and raking long, glowing rents into the sides of the others.

On the command deck of the Obsidian Sky, the Black Templars bondsmen went about their duties efficiently. Ericus sat tensely in his command throne, reading the ebb and flow of battle through augur and implant. ‘Palimodes, you are drifting ahead,’ said Ericus. ‘Maintain formation for maximum concentration of fire.’

Attonax responded, vox only, his voice crackling as much with anger as the constant, thumping roar of the orks’ broadsides. ‘I am not yours to command.’

‘If you wish to see your master returned to your vessel, you are,’ said Ericus. ‘By all means, we can go back to our previous bellicosity instead if you wish. If not, regain formation.’

The Palimodes slipped back, rolling a few degrees as attitude jets adjusted its trim.

‘That’s better,’ said Ericus to himself. ‘Proceed forward,’ he ordered. ‘We’re close to breaking out of this.’

A flight of ork attack craft swooped down for an attack run on the prow of the ship, guns spitting. A storm of anti-fighter fire tore them apart. The Obsidian Sky rocked as a massive projectile impacted on the void shields, overloading a power conduit high up in the command deck’s ceiling. Sparks showered down.

‘Master Scutum, report!’

‘Port void shield is down.’

‘Get it up. Intensify port fire. They’ve barely scratched us, we’ll make it through. Twelve degrees to port, helm, steady adjustment. Get me a good line on the target. Palimodes, prepare for synchronised fire.’

‘As you say, shipmaster,’ responded a surly Attonax.

The last obstacle in their path tracked across the hololith with the Obsidian Sky’s course adjustment, an ugly brute of a ship created by collision rather than construction. Much of the front half was made up of a crude, toothed beak, like that of an oceanic predator. This deliberate design gave way to a humped mass of rock studded with cannons and towers. Behind that the drive section sprouted a collection of tubes jutting off in multiple directions.

‘Prepare to diverge, Attonax. We’ll take the underside, you the top.’

The ork ship was coming about, its mismatched engines erratically flaring.

‘Too easy,’ said Ericus.

An impact shivered the Obsidian Sky. Ericus kept his focus upon the cruiser.

‘Second wave of boarders reported, teleport. Multiple contacts on seven decks.’ The Master Augurum looked back to his instruments. ‘I have high-energy emissions close by. They’re coming for the command deck.’

Gunfire, feeble and popping compared to the thunderous rolls of the ship’s main batteries, sounded from outside. Men shouted in the distance, competing with the joyous roaring of orks at war.

‘Secure the deck. Close blast doors. Let free the spirits of our weapon emplacements,’ commanded Ericus. Red lights spun and flashed. A harsh klaxon heralded the sealing of the command deck. ‘Lord Rolans will deal with our uninvited guests. Every man aboard this deck must save his thoughts for the destruction of our target. The lives of our masters depend upon success. Do not waver from your purpose!’

The ork ship came closer, dominating the hololith. ‘Open the oculus once more, let’s set eyes upon the vessel. Gunnery, prepare for fire. Charge lances. Hold broadsides for passing. Attonax, Palimodes to perform the same, confirm.’

‘As you say, Ericus. One day I will make you regret ordering me around so.’

‘Perhaps you have a better plan?’

Attonax remained silent.

‘All hands, prepare!’ commanded Ericus.

The oculus shutters slid open. Bright planetshine chased away the dimness of the bridge. The ork ship was above them relative to the pull of the Obsidian Sky’s grav-plating. Its dorsal aspect faced the planet, the Palimodes cutting between it and the hazy caramel of Dzelenic IV’s atmosphere. In life it was even uglier than upon the hololithic tactical display, a mechanical parody of a diseased void-whale, its stone and metal skin pocked by cosmic impacts, back crooked. It was far from defenceless for all its primitive construction, and a hundred guns of all sizes spat orange fire from every side.

‘Prow up twelve degrees. Master Scutum, concentrate shield replenishment on prow. Gunnery, on my mark. Target amidships. Tear it in two.’

The underside of the ork ship moved down across the oculus as the Obsidian Sky pointed itself directly at the planetary equator. The fire from the other ork ships had slackened off, most having been destroyed, the rest fleeing in disarray.

‘Fire lances!’ ordered Ericus.

‘Firing lances!’

Five energy beams stabbed out from the Obsidian Sky. The ship was still moving upwards relative to the ork cruiser, and they carved a deep wound of molten rock into the asteroid that made up the middle section of the craft. The Palimodes opened fire a second later. Turrets sheared off and floated away to join the debris cloud of the battle. Fire and the explosions of touched-off munitions stores burst from across the surface. The ork cruiser continued firing. Obsidian Sky’s forward void shield blazed and winked out, and the mass projectiles cast out by the ork ship slammed into the vessel’s armour. Rumbling troubled the Obsidian Sky, and Ericus was obliged to shout.

‘Roll to starboard, eighty degrees! Increase forward thrust. Prepare to fire starboard weapons batteries. Palimodes, we shall go first. Hold back, or we shall hit each other.’ Only hours before, that was exactly what they had been trying to do. Now the two ships fought together as if they had been part of the same fleet for decades.

The ork ship slipped out of direct view. The surface of Dzelenic IV filled the oculus, nothing but debris from the battle between the Obsidian Sky and the rescue of the Marshal. Ericus watched the target upon the hololith for the perfect moment to strike.

‘Fire starboard battery!’ he yelled.

A ripple of shock waves shook the vessel as its main guns fired. ‘Give me a visual feed!’ shouted Ericus. The hololith representation was replaced by a pict feed from the starboard-side pict-eyes. Hundreds of shells slammed into the ork ship, each bursting into a perfect sphere of atomic fire. Then the Obsidian Sky was past. Ericus ordered a rear view projected, so that he could watch the Palimodes’ attack run. It came in the wake of the Obsidian Sky, unleashing its own salvo as the fires from the first were blinking out. Another blooming of atomic destruction followed. The Palimodes sailed past as the ork ship broke into multiple pieces, trailing gas and corpses.

A cheer went up from the command deck. Behind the Obsidian Sky the ork fleet was a shattered mess of metal, stone and frozen atmosphere. The sound of fighting outside the blast doors was subsiding.

‘Raise Lord Magneric and Lord Castellan Ralstan. We shall launch extraction craft as soon as they command,’ said Ericus.

From every window, boltguns fired, cutting down orks by the dozen. Time after time the orks attempted the walls, only to be thrown back. Breaching teams were targeted by disciplined Space Marine fire. Heavy weapons were neutralised, tanks and guns eliminated by long-range lascannon shots. The swarms of orks hurling themselves at the walls were further thinned by grenades and careful flamer bursts. Large-calibre ork bullets took chunks from the ancient rockcrete. Rockets spiralled in on corkscrews of black smoke, leaving smoking craters in the walls, but none could penetrate the building.

‘Slay them! Slay them all!’ roared Magneric. Unable to go within, he stood behind a berm of rubble torn from the desert sands by the Iron Warriors. His men fired from behind him, killing those orks that posed a threat to the ancient, while Magneric himself selected targets on the basis of size. The bigger the ork, the more likely they were to receive the attentions of Magneric’s assault cannon.

Within the building, Kalkator paced the buckled floors, shouting encouragement and curses at his men. Ralstan shadowed his every step, alert for treachery, but there was none. The Black Templars and Iron Warriors were thoroughly intermingled, fighting as one force. Ties to the old Legions were forgotten, treachery was put out of mind. They fought together as Space Marines, born of the same science, equipped with the same weaponry and armour. Blood and battle removed the differences between them. Ralstan’s misgivings were swamped for a while by martial pride. His desire to show the Iron Warriors who were the greater warriors had him exhorting his brothers to greater accuracy, smoother fire, wiser target selection.

‘Do not fear, my brothers!’ he shouted. ‘We shall meet them blade to blade soon enough. Kill them now at distance, lay their vile xenos hides low into the dust of this world. When they are bloodied and enraged, then shall we test ourselves against them!’

‘If this were a larger force, or better equipped, we would perish here,’ said Kalkator to Ralstan.

‘Maybe you would. The Black Templars will not be bested!’

‘A larger ork attack annihilated two of my worlds,’ said Kalkator, ‘and reduced my Great Company to this sad remnant. You speak from ignorance. You would have died.’

‘Never!’ said Ralstan. ‘Not while the Emperor watches over us.’ He left Kalkator, irked by his sniping, and went up onto the roof. Joy at battle filled him. Afterwards, he would have more words with the Marshal about disobeying the call to the Last Wall, but for now the reality of battle was a clean wind, scouring his soul and his thoughts of doubt. If they could not battle the orks with the rest of their Chapter, so be it. Here was the chance of great slaughter!

He looked out over the ork horde. There were thousands of them, but there was some truth to what Kalkator said. These were pirates, opportunists ranging ahead of the main fleets. They had little heavy equipment, and their fleet was locked in battle with the Palimodes and the Obsidian Sky. If there were an attack moon, the situation would be different. A scouting group, he thought. And still there were five thousand orks and more.

A bright flash drew his eyes heavenward. Night brought no thinning of the dust clouds that hid the face of Dzelenic IV, but when the sun had gone the weapons discharge of the void battle raging overhead replaced its light.

‘Ship death,’ said Ralstan.

The vox hissed in his ear.

‘Castellan Ralstan, Marshal Magneric, respond. This is the Obsidian Sky.’

‘Castellan Ralstan responding, shipmaster.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Ericus sounded exulted, pleased. Ralstan heard victory in his voice. ‘The ork fleet is shattered. We are free and able to bring you back aboard. Is this your desire?’

Ralstan wanted to say no. Every warrior’s instinct told him to remain and slay until no ork breathed upon Dzelenic IV. With difficulty, he replied. ‘Begin extraction immediately. We are surrounded by orks. Extend air cover to the Iron Warriors gunships. Escort them down.’

‘My lord?’

‘An oath was taken,’ said Ralstan.

‘Thunderhawks are away,’ said Ericus. ‘Prepare for evacuation.’

Ralstan watched the sky. In twenty minutes gunships would come screaming from orbit, scouring the orks from the building. Then one short flight awaited.

After that, they could drop this pretence at alliance.

A change came over the orks. Their cries of frustration became barbarous cheers, starting in the east, running out until all the filthy masses of them cried and beat their chests. Ralstan hurried over to the east corner of the building. There, at the back of the ork force, shone a sickly light in the dark. A hush fell over the orks. At some signal invisible to Ralstan, the xenos drew back from the building, leaving a wide area free of everything but their dead.

A familiar pressure troubled his skull. Thunder cracked in the distance.

‘Witch!’ he spat in disgust.

The psyker came escorted by burly orks in heavy armour. A dozen more scrawny examples capered and danced behind him. The witch was peculiar in appearance, even for an ork, carrying no gun or heavy cutting blade, only a long copper staff chained to his wrist in a manner similar to the oath bonds of the Black Templars’ weapons. Upon his chest hung a breastplate of ribs strung together. Bone fetishes and shiny scraps of metal dangled from his tusks and ears. He wore a huge greatcoat, filched from an ogryn by the looks of it. He was wholly incongruous, a whimsical creature in marked contrast to the brutal practicality of the other orks, but that he was a being of great power was not in doubt. A nimbus of green energy haloed his head. Fizzing sparks spat from his mouth when he roared, sending his insane followers into paroxysms of laughter.

The orks parted to let him through, and he strode forward, twitching and cackling, his massive minders gimlet-eyed by his sides.

Magneric reset his ocular magnification to standard.

Through his vox-link, Magneric listened to his castellan confer with Kalkator. ‘Have your men take it down,’ said Ralstan.

‘I have already commanded them to do so.’

‘Lascannons will do no good,’ interrupted Magneric.

‘We shall see,’ said Kalkator. ‘Heavy support, open fire.’

The shot was a clear one, a straight line down an avenue of orks directly to the psyker. Three beams of ruby light leapt down this path, aimed precisely at the ork. They struck home with terrible power, enough to cut a Land Raider in two. A second light burst from the psyker in response, meeting with that of the cannons and obscuring the witch. When it dissipated the psyker strode on, laughing madly, its dancing followers somersaulting and leaping about in ecstasy.

‘Again!’ snapped Kalkator.

The ork raised his hand, waved it up and down sharply. A jet of energy flicked out from it, singeing the ground. Where it rolled over dead orks they jiggled and danced, momentarily animated by the psyker’s might. The jet grew broader and brighter the closer it came to the building. It made no sound as it bore down straight upon the weathered walls.

‘Down, down!’ yelled Ralstan. Power-armoured warriors scrambled to get out of the way as the blast hit the building. It connected silently, passing ethereally through the walls, then the ork clasped his hand and ripped it backward, and the rockcrete of the building sundered. The ruin shook with the force. Atomised rockcrete sprayed outward in a cloud. Where the energy touched Black Templar or Iron Warrior, they convulsed and fell dead. Armour collapsed, helmets rolled free, allowing the liquid remains to pour onto the ground. In a second, the dynamic of the battle changed. The walls were breached, the way was open to the orks.

They heard the indrawing of breath coming from the horde.

‘Waaagh!’ they bellowed. ‘WAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!’ The orks broke into a run, coming at the hole in the wall, heedless of the hundreds felled by booming boltguns.

‘We cannot hold this building,’ voxed Magneric. ‘We must attack. If their witch falls, they may withdraw. It is our only chance of survival.’

‘We will be slaughtered,’ said Kalkator. ‘We must only hold out for another handful of minutes.’

‘We will be dead. The gunships downed. The witch must die.’

‘Then we shall fight with you, Magneric. In honour of the times before,’ said Kalkator.

‘No,’ said Magneric, stepping over the low wall of his emplacement. The orks were only fifty metres away, and coming in fast from all sides. ‘There is one defence proof against this sorcery, and that is faith,’ said Magneric. ‘Black Templars, to me!’

The Black Templars abandoned their positions by the Iron Warriors, leaping from windows and rooftop, rushing to join their Marshal.

‘Cover us,’ said Ralstan to Kalkator, jumping outside, his armour absorbing the shock of the six-metre drop.

‘Iron Warriors!’ shouted Kalkator. ‘To the breach! Clear the way for the Black Templars, or we shall all perish.’

Twenty

Faith and iron

The Black Templars lined up on either side of their Marshal, already firing. Sword Brethren ran to form an escort around him.

The orks closed. Flamers sang their deadly song of fire, incinerating dozens. Several came through, skin blazing, still ready to fight. These were felled by shots from the building, or died upon the waiting swords of the Templars. When a space was cleared the Black Templars opened fire again with long-practised discipline, rapid bursts of mass-reactives that together made an impenetrable wall.

Magneric lifted up his vox-amplifiers to their maximum. ‘Let none survive! Destroy them all! He that feareth the witch has conceded defeat, even as his boltgun sings still in his hand! Attack, attack!’

The Dreadnought led from the front, his assault cannon blazing. At a run he slammed into the press of orks, smiting them with his power fist. His assault cannon glowed hot, blazing through the last few thousand rounds in a glorious sheet of searing death, felling orks in a wide swathe. Those closest to the rotating barrels of the cannon were blasted apart, a fine mist of flesh and blood bursting from them. As far as forty metres from the Dreadnought, orks were torn to pieces, limbs and heads scattering.

Sweeping back and forth, Magneric carved a bloody road to the ork psyker. The fire of his Black Templars and the Iron Warriors in the building behind him kept them from surging back in. Behind him his men advanced, firing relentlessly. Magneric made straight for the witch, bashing any greenskin that came between them off its feet, lofting them high over the heads of the others. His last rounds cut down the creature’s bodyguard, but no more. Bullets sent true at the witch were deflected as the lascannons had been, or exploded with bright, green flashes. The psyker gibbered and pranced, waving its copper staff above its head in challenge. Its lunatic entourage ran past him, fingers hooked to tear at the Dreadnought. From behind, a trio of crude walkers waddled up to intercept the Marshal.

Magneric’s assault cannon ceased firing. Warning chimes sang in his sensorium — ammunition depleted. The five-digit counter for the weapon’s rounds glowed red: five large zeroes.

‘Thou shalt not escape my wrath!’ roared Magneric, and pressed forward. Orks surged in to fill the gap, readily as water flooding back. But Magneric was already moving, his short legs pumping, shifting the great bulk of his armoured tomb into an unstoppable run. Orks were barged aside by his mass, slammed to paste under his armoured tread. The biggest of them were flung away, bones shattered. Nothing could stop him.

Behind Magneric the brothers of the Black Templars continued their advance. Ordinarily guarded in their new faith, they sang their hymns to the Emperor openly, chanting prayers never heard upon the lips of a Space Marine. Flamers sent out rolling clouds of white-hot promethium, melting the orks by the score as they sought to regain lost ground. Where they passed between the cones of fire, they were met by bolts that slew and maimed. The press of greenskins was so great that the Templars could not keep them back forever, but they had no intention of doing so. This was a prelude to the real struggle. The rage of Dorn burned hot in them. Let their brother Chapters plan and fortify. That was not their way.

‘Sigismund!’ they shouted. ‘For the glory of the black cross! For the Emperor, holy Lord of Terra! Praise be!’

Five rounds of disciplined fire, and they let out a deafening war cry. ‘No fear, no regret, no mercy!’ They drew their chainswords and axes and charged, singing glories to the Emperor as they ran, surging past Magneric into the horde of orks.

Deep within the crowding adamantium of his towering tomb, the hearts of Magneric lifted at what he witnessed. He pressed on, Sword Brethren to his left and right. Volleys of bolter fire punched orks from their feet. The greenskins beat around him, unstoppable as the sea. He was a rock, and their fury was spent harmlessly on the metal of his skin. The Templars clove through them swiftly and surely, men o’war defying the tempest.

‘The Emperor protects!’ boomed Magneric. His storm bolter chattered its approval of his piety. ‘Blessed be the Lord of Mankind! Lift up your spirits, my brothers. Regard that which is true and eternal. Praise be to the God-Emperor, praise be to the saviour of humanity! Praise be! Praise be! Praise be!’

‘Praise be!’ scores of voices shouted back.

Strange lightnings crackled around the forces of the orks. Writhing bolts of power leapt skyward, punching rippled holes in the clouds. Tendrils of energy rose from the greenskins’ heavy faces, the fury of their vile breed feeding the powers of their sorcerer. Screaming curses, the weirdboy swept down his staff, and a beam of green warpfire vomited from his mouth, incinerating the orks that stood between the witch and the Dreadnought. No machine nor man could stand up to such raw power, and the weirdboy cackled through the fires at the doom his gods had unleashed upon his enemy. But the green fire hit an invisible barrier, splashing outwards in a writhing of broken might. The Dreadnought was unharmed.

‘I do not fear you!’ roared Magneric. ‘For the Emperor guides my right hand! His regard is ever on me, and His glory cloaks me. Behold the radiant might of the Lord of Terra! Behold the power of His champion! Abhor the witch, deny the witch, destroy the witch!’

‘Praise be!’ shouted the Black Templars.

The weirdboy shrank backwards. He lifted his hands to the air, calling up a storm of eldritch power from the warriors around him. Spectral light brought an early dawn to the battlefield, greenish and sinister, a howling maelstrom building that tugged ork wraithforms partially free of their bodies, hungry for their souls. The orks howled the louder, and began to chant. ‘Gork! Mork! Gork! Mork! Gork! Mork!’ a guttural rumbling that grew faster and faster until the names blurred into one. ‘Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka!’

The psyker was only metres in front of Magneric, arms held to the sky, his demented face lit by blazing white-green power. A whirlwind of abominable psychic energy raced around and around him, sparks of it spearing from his eyes, ears and mouth.

One of Magneric’s attendant Sword Brethren was cut down by his foes, his sword arm grabbed, bolter torn from his hand, his helm wrenched from his head. Another disappeared into a firefly swarm of sparks, disintegrated by a bizarre energy weapon. The others found themselves surrounded, and fought back to back. Their line was disrupted, leaving Magneric to go on alone.

The three walkers moved in front of Magneric as he closed upon his target. The first died, its cylindrical pilot’s compartment crushed by a single swing of Magneric’s four-fingered power fist. Magneric barged its remains aside, spraying lubricant and blood. The second swiped at him with cruel shears, grabbing at the stilled barrels of his assault cannon. The blades squealed on metal. Magneric wrenched himself free, rotating his torso to slam his fist again and again into the smaller walker. On the fourth strike, its primitive power plant detonated. Magneric stepped through a roiling cloud of fire to see the last machine stumbling away. He let it go. The psyker was before him.

‘Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka!’ chanted the orks. The psyker’s power drove them into a frenzy, and they hewed and cut and threw themselves again and again at the Black Templars, dragging many to their dooms.

‘This ends now,’ said Magneric. ‘O Emperor of Terra, lord of the stars! Once more cast Your protection about me, so that I might slay this enemy of Yours.’

‘Praise be!’ answered the Black Templars. They were few, but the strength of their faith made them sound legion.

He strode forward. A beam of light blazed from the psyker’s eyes, splashing to nothing before it could touch Magneric. The Marshal leaned forward, grabbing the weirdboy’s head. Energy leapt uncontrollably from the thing’s cranium, earthing itself in his armour.

‘So perish all unclean witches,’ said Magneric, and shut his fist, crushing the ork’s skull.

The vortex about the ork burst outward at the moment of its death, slamming into Magneric with such force that he came close to toppling backward. Green lines of power stabbed out, spearing orks.

And the orks died.

They fell by the hundred, heads exploded by psychic feedback, or their souls torn from their bodies. They dropped as the shock wave raced over them. Walkers clanked to a halt. Vehicles ran out of control or skidded and toppled over.

The light dissipated. Lightning chased itself across the skies.

Magneric turned from side to side. Half of his warriors were dead; the rest stood in a sea of corpses, black armour battered, scrips and robes bloody, but alive nonetheless. There was not a single ork left standing on the battlefield.

‘The witches,’ rumbled Magneric, and his voice was as thunder upon the suddenly silent field. ‘Their witches are their weakness! My brothers, the Emperor shows us the way! He delivers us victory, and in His beneficence reveals the road to final triumph! This is why we were sent here, this is why He brought us to Dzelenic Four. Praise be!’

As one, the Black Templars got to their knees, clasped their hands about the hilts of the swords, drove the points into the earth and bowed their heads.

‘Praise be!’ they shouted, and the faith in them burned twice as bright at their deliverance.

Kalkator took refuge from the energy wave as it hit the building. When it passed he stood, and to his amazement found himself looking down upon a field of dead orks. The Dreadnought marched across the corpses towards the fort, bellowing pieties, surrounded by his warriors singing hymns for the Emperor. Magneric stopped below the walls and angled his glacis upward.

‘What is this?’ said Kalkator. ‘The cult of the Emperor as god has grown so strong it has you in its clutches?’

‘What of it? I will not deny my faith! See, warsmith.’ Magneric raised a mighty metal fist and rotated upon his waist gimbal, showing the devastation of the battlefield triumphantly. ‘How can you deny it? You have witnessed the glory of the Emperor first hand, and that the strength of the Emperor is paramount over all things! Even sorely wounded upon His Golden Throne, He wields a power that cannot be denied! Nothing can stop Him, nor those who serve Him truly with faith within their hearts. One day He will rid the galaxy of all evil, for unlike the creatures you threw your lot in with He is just. Justice comes for you, Kalkator, the Emperor’s justice, and all your wicked betrayers will be destroyed for your treachery. Look upon this battlefield, look upon the slaughter. This was done by His will alone. That is why we follow Him.’

Kalkator gripped at the parapet, looking down on the enemy who, so long ago, had been a friend.

‘I am genuinely at a loss for words. Do your loyalist brothers know you have caught the madness of the puling herds and have turned your back upon the Imperial Truth, the lie you fought so hard to protect? That you are casting it aside for the greatest heresy of all?’

‘The Emperor protected us with His lie,’ said Kalkator. ‘He protected us further by denying His godhood. We have had the scales lifted from our eyes. He is a god. The proof is around us everywhere, here on this battleground.’

Lights appeared in the sky, growing brighter. The Thunderhawks were coming.

‘You are abandoning everything you vowed to honour, and you call me a traitor?’ said Kalkator. ‘Such irony is a rare thing, Magneric. Do all your warriors follow this insane creed?’

‘Each and every one,’ said Magneric proudly.

‘Then you are treading the same deluded path as Lorgar. How will the other Space Marines look upon this great naiveté? Common humanity already worships the Emperor, and I say again, against His express wishes. All that is, Magneric, is an expression of their weakness and desire to be dominated, and proof of the Emperor’s desire to be worshipped despite His protestations. It appears Lorgar was but a little too early with his devotion. What would your Emperor make of you now? Would He hold out a hand for you to kiss while you grovel upon your knees? Or would He smash your face in with a mailed fist as He did to Lorgar?’

‘We would take either gladly,’ said Magneric, ‘if it meant our Lord would walk among men once more.’

Engine noise rumbled. The extraction craft approached, seven of them, and began to set down one after the other in the wreckage of the field. Kalkator’s Thunderhawks opened their hatches, and his men began to leave the building. The Black Templars made no move to stop them. They remained kneeling, heads bowed in prayer as the Iron Warriors passed between them.

‘Such devotion. Perhaps the Emperor is a god, after all, if He can inspire sane men to worship Him so,’ said Kalkator.

‘Embrace this truth, and your soul will be saved!’ said Magneric eagerly.

Kalkator laughed. Before he left the roof to join his warriors aboard their craft, he shouted down to Magneric. ‘I am not going to convert to your pathetic creed, Magneric. For if I cannot trust a man who lies, I trust a god who does so even less.’

Ralstan came to Magneric’s side, his wargear dripping gore. Kalkator’s gunships were taking off and heading for the sky. The Black Templars were preparing to leave, honouring their dead with silent prayer as they gathered up the wargear of the fallen and extracted gene-seed to safeguard against the future.

‘We could order them shot down as soon as they break atmosphere,’ said the castellan.

Magneric’s torso tilted backwards, watching the Iron Warriors gunships recede, becoming glowing balls of fire rising high into the night.

‘No. Let the hunt begin anew. We honour the oaths we make in battle, castellan, or we are no better than they.’

Twenty-One

Three partings

Kubik arrived in the temple of the diagnostic covens as the interrogation was ending. In a chamber deep underground, the dead Assassin was suspended from the ceiling, hands and feet fully enclosed in manacles. Portions of her skin had been removed, exposing bloodless muscles. Spaces in her anatomy hinted at the devices removed from her body. A domed helmet enclosed her head, studded all over with conical spikes from which curled multiple silver wires.

A lone genetor interogatis worked the machines probing the dead Assassin’s brain, accompanied by coil-handed servitors whose sole purpose was to adjust the magnetism of two tall field modulators.

‘Ah, Fabricator General, you arrive in time for the climax of my investigation. Most of the information I have extracted has been through the memorandum parsers. It should be ready soon. Bear with me as I finish this final interrogation.’

The genetor was a repulsive thing, a skinny flesh torso supported on limbs of slender sliding rods. His voice was papery, eager. He was a man who enjoyed his repellent work. ‘One moment, and I shall have the information you desire.’ He returned to his howling machines.

Kubik waited behind a buffering screen, lest his own bioelectrical field destroy the data being culled from the woman’s memory. He did not have to remain there for long. The machines cut out. A wet crack preceded the withdrawal of the helmet from the woman’s head. Wormy cyber-tentacles wriggled from her skull, dripping matter. The corpse shuddered.

‘I have all the raw data,’ said the genetor interogatis. ‘It will take a little while to transpose the last few fragments into binharic instructions my cogitators might process, and thence to image and sound…’ The genetor trailed off, absorbed in his task. Kubik waited twelve minutes. ‘There, I have it.’

‘Show me,’ said Kubik.

‘The image quality will be lacking, Fabricator General,’ said the genetor apologetically. ‘The woman was fresh, but drawing information from an unmodified brain is always the hardest. Editicore processors are the best, but even the least intelligence core can offer up a mind’s secrets. Alas, here we must rely on the primitive wiring of the flesh.’

He threw a lever with one three-fingered metal hand. An elliptical screen flickered on the wall.

‘There. The most recent memory I could recover, and I believe the most relevant. To go through her entire life will take time, even those few fragments that survived her death. But I think this will be helpful, great prime.’

Kubik ignored the prattling of the genetor, and watched the picts run, a jumble of images in no particular order. A lesser mind would have made no sense of them, but Kubik’s augmetics automatically recorded the images, and began to re-edit them into something approaching usability. He watched a scene from a few days ago, the gathering of an Assassin cadre. They stood around the loading ramp of an automated haulage barge in an obscure section of the Olympian landing fields. Where exactly, Kubik could not tell. There were five of them. The dead girl, three more on foot, one in a cryo-containment unit. Kubik seethed to see them meeting in the shadow of his own seat of power. The images jumped, running out of sequence, the scene changing to the vagaries of imperfect human recollection.

Four Assassins remained at liberty. Five was an unusually high number for one cell. Kubik had sat in the Senatorum for hundreds of years and had been involved in the authorisation votes for several high-level assassinations. One Assassin could topple the government of a world. But five? Deployment of such a number within the Imperium was reserved for the holders of the very highest offices, those who could call upon substantial resources — rogue admirals, corrupt cardinals, the renegade lords of star systems, or perhaps even a High Lord of Terra…

Kubik appraised the images, using what little he knew of the Officio Assassinorum to fit the operatives with the temples. The metronomic tick of his augmetic regulators stuttered when he identified the Eversor Temple adept within the cryo-containment pod, a creature so violent it had to be kept in suspended animation.

A further jumble of images showed him Vangorich on the ramp of the ship. Vangorich had been on Mars — he had come to Mars on one of Kubik’s own vessels! Kubik’s anger rose. The cell had been deployed by his direct order. This was no routine mission.

The images played one last time, and faded out.

‘That is the extent of it, my lord. There is no more,’ said the genetor.

‘Your efforts are noted,’ said Kubik, and departed the chamber without further word. He had seen enough.

Five Assassins. There could be only one explanation. One reason to deploy such a powerful cadre on Mars. Was there not only one target of sufficient power and value? Only one so well protected that five of the most deadly killers in the galaxy would be required to ensure certain death?

Himself.

Vangorich intended to kill him.

The auditorium seemed bigger than ever to Mesring. The masses of worshippers within the nave of the vast subterranean cathedral seemed to stretch away into infinity, a sea of hopeless souls beseeching him for salvation. Vat-cherubs and psyber-birds jostled for space with servo-skulls in the incense-choked air. The breathing of the crowd was a soft wind.

Mesring was sweating long before the sermon was done. The free-floating vox-horns and vox-pieces on ornate stands crowded in on him. He stumbled through his second homily, cutting short the service with a hurried blessing when his tongue thickened and stuck in his mouth halfway through the third.

The ranks of cardinals at the back of Auditorium Oratio stage stared as he lurched past them.

‘Your holiness?’ one asked.

He ignored her, banging through the doors, his Frateris Templar guard catching him before he ploughed into the corridor wall opposite. Head spinning, he left the Auditorium Oratio and blundered along thick carpets towards his private exit. By the time he had left the Basilica Vox Imperatorum, he had difficulty walking, staggering past his sedan chair and the waiting servitors. Three lesser priests gently turned him around and put him inside. The box lurched as the servitor bearers engaged their wheels, carrying him swiftly down the five-kilometre corridor to his private apartments. His Frateris Templars fell in beside the chair, running alongside in escort.

The sedan took him deep into the heartlands of the Ecclesiarchal hive, up long ramps to the side of the mountainous staircases leading to his palace. It drew to a halt outside the main gates in anticipation of his dismounting, but the Frateris Templar runners shouted to the guard, ‘Open the gates! Open the gates! The Ecclesiarch is taken ill!’

The sedan rolled on, into the entrance hall, lofty as any cardinal world’s cathedral. The crowd of sextons, servants, vergers, ushers and savants parted in confusion as the chair rolled through them, interrupting the nightly ritual of the Ecclesiarch’s retiring. The vestal choirs on the stairs sang on, but their efforts were unappreciated, the sedan whisking past them swiftly.

‘The Ecclesiarch is unwell!’ called the Templars going before it. ‘Make way, make way!’ Murmurs of consternation went through the army of holy men and women waiting upon their lord.

The chair rushed along lengthy galleries to Mesring’s private chambers. Outside doors clad in gold his guards helped him from the chair. He pushed them away, nearly falling inside as the doors were opened for him.

‘Call for the medicae!’ shouted the Templar’s prior. ‘We shall have a healer with you soon, my lord. For the Emperor’s sake, get him to his bed.’

‘No, no,’ mumbled Mesring. ‘No medicae or hospitaller. It will pass, it will pass.’

‘Your holiness—’

‘I said no healers!’ he yelled. A stinking belch followed, half retch. ‘It will pass. Rest, rest, I need rest.’ He summoned enough strength to waver inside. ‘Leave me!’ he shouted to the gaggle of savant priests awaiting his return. Mesring tore at his heavy robes, ripping his cloak and mitre off, throwing them on the floor without a care. ‘Hot, hot! Too damn hot!’ he bellowed as he yanked madly at the multiple layers of his liturgical dress. Priests hurried to his side to aid him, and he slapped one down as he reached to undo the laces of his vestment, sending him reeling. ‘Leave me be!’ he spluttered.

His violent staggering had the acolytes sent to attend on him retreating with fear. With the strength of desperation, he ripped his vestments, scattering a planetary lord’s ransom in jewels across the floor. His priests scurried to retrieve them.

‘Out, out! Get out!’ he shouted. His throat was thick with phlegm, voice clotted. He could not think, he could not stand. He staggered on through his fleeing servants, wrenching his surplice over his head, throttling himself with its laces. Nearly naked, still he was too hot!

He came to his bedchamber, and shouldered the doors open. Food had been left out for him, a tall ewer of wine, all the plate of gold and platinum. He crashed into the table, sending delicacies over the carpet. ‘Where is it?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’ He trailed off into tears, and sank to his knees into the wet mess of his dinner, weeping freely.

He stopped. An awful voice whispered to him from the covered gallery running around the walls where, for a hefty sum, the most pious lords and ladies might watch Mesring’s ceremonial rising in the morning. When he peeked over the tips of his fingers, seeking it out, the statues of the stonework shifted and leered at him, shaking their heads in disapproval.

‘I’m not drunk, I’m not drunk, damn you! How dare you judge me, so-called saints! No man is perfect. Am I not but a man? You sit there on your lofty walls, dead and gone, safe in the Emperor’s light. It is I who must endure this world of pain and perfidy, where every smile hides a sharp tooth eager for blood, every promise is a lie. I am poisoned by Vangorich! Manipulated by Wienand. Emperor save me. Damn you, Vangorich! Emperor cast you into the warp! I… I…’ He shook his head in confusion, got to his feet where he stood swaying, peering at the mess he had made.

‘Why, what happened, what happened? The antidote, the antidote. I must have it. Yes, that is why I am here.’ He swung around, his arms flying out from his sides, lumbering to a richly carved Lectitio Divinatus box on an ancient dresser. His extremities tingled painfully, and an awful burning had set up in his stomach. With numb fingers he pawed at the box catch, opening it on the fourth try. He began to cry again as he fished out a smaller box hidden inside — the jewelled skull of a holy innocent.

At the bottom of the skull box were a half-dozen tiny crystals. He tipped the box up, spilled half. Wailing loudly, he dabbed at the carpet with a wet finger, desperate to recover his treasure. He sucked his finger. The crystal dissolved, flooding his mouth with a vile acid taste that made his stomach roil, but the unpleasantness was passing, and was followed by blessed relief. He leaned against the dark wood of the dresser as first his queasiness subsided, then the spinning in his head. Relief spread out to his fingers, the numbness and pain seeping from him.

He sat slumped for some time, before recovering himself. Groaning, he got up. His room was a catastrophe. In his hand rested the small box. With woozy eyes he focused on it. There were five crystals left inside. Each dose was good for five days, five times five was twenty-five. Such a simple calculation to count out a man’s life! Wienand was dead. His chances of getting more antidote were remote. He could tell no one, not without seriously compromising his position. Who would have faith in him if he were revealed to be so fallible?

Lucidity was fleeting. The poison would start its work again soon enough, and he was gripped by anxiety. He looked up to the many faces of the Emperor carved into rare woods in the friezes of his room.

‘Where are You? Why don’t You help me?’ he whispered. ‘Have I not served You faithfully? Put forward the interests of Your church where I could? So if I took a little pleasure for myself, it is nothing to the work I have done for You!’ He got onto his knees and lifted a hand, clawed as if it gripped his heart and he would offer it to his god. ‘Help me!’

The Emperor, His face so placid and commanding, looked everywhere but at Mesring. He gazed upon scenes from the past so distant no one could name them any more, a dead god unaware of His own irrelevance, dwelling on glories that would never be seen again.

A sharp pain stabbed through Mesring’s head. ‘You are weak! Self-absorbed! You denied Your godhood to the people who loved You, You used us, You use us still!’ His eyes strayed eastward, and he cringed in the direction of the great dome of the Throne Room. When no reprisal came he huffed in contempt. ‘But the orks, the orks!’ He lifted a finger skyward. ‘They are above Your Palace, and You do nothing! Why do You not smite them from the sky?’

A jangle of phantom noise shattered his thoughts. He blinked at the swaying images crowding his thoughts, his fellows gathered around his bed, jeering at him. The antidote had yet to complete its work.

‘It is because the Beast is stronger than You!’ he shouted.

Mesring got to his feet, and casting accusing looks over his shoulder, he went to the window of his chamber, flinging shutters wide that had remained closed for years. Acrid air flooded in. The Imperial Palace was a sea of lights shoaled by spires of metal and stone. Two moons shone down on it. Full of fear, he lifted his eyes heavenward. The ork moon’s brutal face stared down at him. Mesring met its gaze. The attack moon was surrounded by the pinprick lights of the Space Marine fleet. Surrounded by the mightiest warriors in the Imperium, and still it shone! He feared its great strength.

Strength. Undeniable, present, immanent, so unlike his deaf god.

There was something worthy of his respect.

Koorland waited to meet Thane alone in a minor shuttle bay of the Abhorrence. He stayed out of sight, watching Thane’s bondsmen go over their small craft. Vapour curled from its engines as the pilot put them through their pre-flight warm-up, while two others went over it carefully, checking its surface and various devices inside and out. There were so many tasks the servants of a Chapter performed. They were invisible most of the time, but without them the Space Marines would not be able to function. If he were truly the Master of a Chapter, he would have to acquaint himself with their activities to a level he had never considered before.

The lord of the Fists Exemplar entered the hangar flanked by two of his honour guard. They reacted quickly when Koorland stepped out of the shadows, training their boltguns upon him.

‘Koorland?’ said Thane. ‘What are you doing skulking about down here?’

‘I wished to speak with you before you departed. Privately.’

Thane looked over his shoulder at his men and nodded to them. They lowered their weapons and went into the waiting vessel.

‘What do you need to say to me that could not be said in front of the others?’ said Thane.

‘Nothing of great import,’ said Koorland. ‘I wanted to wish you well. You and I are in a similar position, both of us elevated to Chapter Mastery by the deaths of others.’

‘Your tragedy is greater than mine, brother,’ said Thane. ‘My Chapter survives.’

‘As does mine, so long as I live. I must use however much time is left to me well.’

‘A noble aim, brother,’ said Thane.

‘I wanted to impress upon you a need for great care. Not against the orks, but against hubris. Issachar is agitating that we should go further. The Last Wall has shown the efficacy of a large force of Space Marines gathered together. He has not done so yet, but it will not be long before he openly advocates the reformation of the Legion. I know you are sympathetic to his opinion. You must reconsider.’

‘I see it coming,’ Thane agreed. ‘Our own gene-father was against the division originally. He relented only to prevent further civil strife in the Imperium.’ He paused. ‘What if Lord Dorn were right all along? Perhaps Lord Guilliman was the one who was wrong. What if he divided the Legions in a panic, and it has been to the detriment of the Imperium ever since?’

‘A primarch does not panic.’

‘How can you be sure?’ said Thane. ‘They are all gone.’

‘We cannot countenance such a move,’ said Koorland.

‘Nevertheless, Issachar makes a compelling case,’ said Thane. ‘With our resources pooled, we can expand our numbers, bring the old Seventh to life in full, not this shadow. There are thousands of us here, but we are less than three hundredths of the full might of Dorn’s original Legion. Imagine what we could accomplish with ten thousand, fifty thousand, even a hundred thousand warriors? This entire war with the orks would never have arisen in the first place, but been crushed before it even began.’

‘That is exactly why Roboute Guilliman split the Legions. His foresight was great. Such power in the hands of one man, no matter how well intentioned, is dangerous. Our actions would undoubtedly start purely, but how many wrong decisions would it take for our successors to go astray, not realising their mistakes until it is too late and the Imperium once more burns in the fire of schism? The primarchs themselves did not manage to avoid that path. We will become tyrants, no matter our desire. The High Lords were put in place by the Emperor. We have no right to defy His wishes.’

‘That is the propaganda of the High Lords.’

‘It is the truth,’ said Koorland.

Thane exhaled heavily. ‘Then something must be done to return them to their original purpose. They are ineffective, divided. Their intrigues have brought the Imperium to its knees.’

‘Listen to the discussions between we Chapter Masters, who are brothers. Are we any different? We work in concert now, but already disagreement is on the horizon. I agree, something needs to be done. I will not bow to Udo’s demands and split the fleet before this crisis is resolved, but once it is, we must set the Senatorum in order, and go our separate ways.’

Thane thought a moment. ‘Maybe you are right. Power is seductive.’

‘Before that comes to pass, we have much to do. Udo presents us with a problem. Your departure will allay his fears for a while, but we must be prepared for strong resistance when you return. An increase in our numbers will anger him.’

‘I do not envy you, re-entering that snake pit.’

‘I am learning. Gather our brothers. I will deal with the High Lords. Find the Soul Drinkers, Brother Thane. Take our tidings to every Chapter that will listen, but when you return, do so in good conscience,’ said Koorland. ‘The Emperor set us above men, but He never intended us to rule over them. The moment we forget that, the Imperium is doomed.’

Thane and Koorland clasped arms, true brothers in every sense.

‘I will do as you suggest, Slaughter,’ Thane said, using Koorland’s wall-name. ‘You have proven yourself worthy of your office. There is wisdom in you. I will think on you often, brother, and hope it is not tested too sorely.’

Thane went to his shuttle. Koorland watched as the craft’s engines built to a throaty roar and it took off on four columns of fire. Angling its propulsion units backward, the shuttle sailed out of the hangar, through the integrity field, and into space.

Bells pinged. Servitors came out of their coffins to make the hangar good again, waving the nozzles of suppressant units about them in search of non-existent fires. Their limited awareness satisfied, they clomped back to their alcoves, leaving two others to buff the scorch marks from the decking. There was none of the bustle of the embarkation decks and major docks in the bay. Surrounded by the living corpses of the servitors, to Koorland it felt like a morgue.

He walked over to the hangar slot, and stood upon the edge of space. All around Terra sailed the Space Marine armada. Naval ships had been joining them daily, the mighty Autocephalax Eternal, that had so cravenly held back from their assault, sailing proudly at their head. At the centre of the blockade, circled by vigilant frigates and destroyers, the ork moon hung balefully, the great insult to Terra.

Koorland stared at the moon. The insults would keep coming from all quarters. Soon Udin Macht Udo would demand the Space Marines fleet redeploy. To defy the Lord Guilliman might well be as foolish as to cast himself through the field. Koorland looked down past his feet, past the lip of the hangar bay, into the yawning depths of space.

Sometimes, he thought, victory requires a leap of faith.

David Guymer

Echoes of the Long War

To learn without thinking is dull, to think without learning is dangerous.

— from the teachings of the Ancient Confucian

One

Immaterium — Phall transit, 544. M32

Combat lighting cut uneven diagonal strokes across the command deck of the Fists Exemplar battle-barge Dantalion. She creaked and groaned like a submersible descending into the deep, uncharted black. The real space cocoon of her Geller field rippled under the eddying pressures of the empyrean.

From null-shielded podia positioned around the principal deck to form an apotropaic symbol, cherubic serfs of the Chapter Librarius sang warp-soothing verses. The vaulted, cathedral-like space had been designed as much for its acoustics as for its strategic value, for indeed what were the choristers but another aspect of defence? Within hermetically walled-off command turrets, operations serfs worked efficiently under grainy pools of light. Shotgun-wielding Chapter armsmen, in grey carapace armour devoid of insignia, watched over their bodies. The chorus soothed their doubts and girded their souls. Reinforced by the confessional susurrus of muted conversation and the continual lifting up and setting down of hardline communication units, the song echoed down the mighty support pillars to the cogitation tiers below. Mindless though they were, even the servitors and the clicking, whirring, humming machine-spirits they tended had their contribution to make to the chorale.

The refraction field that blanketed the blast doors powered down, and the metre-thick, silver-rebarred adamantium parted with a pneumatic hiss. A dozen multilaser cradles and frag-launchers pivoted to cover the kill-zone that ramped upwards from the doors to the deck.

That was the sum of the reaction generated by First Captain Zerberyn’s arrival on deck. Fortunate then that he felt no need for the acclaim that Koorland and Thane received from the masses.

Zerberyn was humble, considered, austere: an Exemplar in his founder’s example.

Deactivating the priority summons, he stamped up the ramp with a whine of actuators and power servos, a pale-faced giant encased in armour of unpainted grey ceramite. He was pale, because he was the mortal child of a world whose light could kill. He was a giant, because his gene-fathers had seen the worth of making him so.

He ascended the deck at the same time as the blast doors resealed and the refraction field snapped back to full power. He felt the auto-turrets disengage their lock on him and return to sentry protocols.

‘Report, shipmaster.’

The crippled shipmaster stood stiffly in the middle of a ring of terminals in the vox-turret. His posture was no affectation. The augmetic brace that clad his entire right side in a metal skeleton and allowed him to stand did not also allow him to bend. He worked at attention, he ate at attention, he slept at attention. He glanced at the analogue chrono face mounted on the turret wall. It read 05:17. Still on Terran time.

‘I hadn’t expected you so soon.’

‘Your summons was flagged “priority”.’

As if to protest, Shipmaster Marcarian opened the corner of his mouth that still functioned, an eyelid flickering withlocked-in frustration, and stumped forty degrees about to face the vox-liaison. She was identically outfitted to the serfs she spoke for: glittering void suit, bulky headset, sidearm clamped under the rest of an armoured console chair. There was nothing to differentiate rank. Not on a Fists Exemplar ship.

The shipmaster worked saliva through his palsied mouth. ‘05:07, ship time, Vox logged receipt of an Adeptus Astartes distress beacon. Lexicography haven’t yet purified enough of the signal corruption to retrieve the message.’

‘The Navy abandons systems wholesale at the rumour of an attack moon in a neighbouring sector. Worlds burn, our own amongst them, the Throneworld itself is besieged, and hourly we receive a plea for deliverance. And you summon me for a distress beacon?’

‘I trust you weren’t called away from anything too pressing?’

Zerberyn looked down over the blinking lights of his gorget softseal.

Marcarian swallowed with difficulty. ‘Just curious.’

‘I was in the Locutory with Brother Columba. The sergeant and I were debating the meanings of Guilliman’s extended proverbs.’

The shipmaster produced a smile. ‘I’ve not yet had the chance to congratulate you on your promotion to captaincy of the First. The command crew held a vigil in your honour.’

‘I chose not to attend.’

‘Vardy brought amasec.’ Marcarian’s good eye wandered towards the spiralling waves on the vox-liaison’s screen. ‘We were able to provision a crate on Terra. The lord sergeant would be a worthy First Captain, but he’s a hard… task… master…’

Zerberyn’s eyes drilled parallel holes into the side of the shipmaster’s head. The man cleared his throat.

‘We have something,’ said the vox-liaison, crisply.

‘Go ahead,’ Marcarian breathed. ‘Please.’

‘It’s definitely Last Wall.’

It would have taken one even more attuned to Space Marine physiology than the two mortal crew members to note the tightening muscles of Zerberyn’s neck. The Last Wall was an abhorrence to him. The mere conception of it would have been affront enough to Guilliman’s legacy, and that it was his own primarch that had done so sickened him. It had been Oriax Dantalion himself, the visionary who would later found the Fists Exemplar, who had persuaded Dorn of the wisdom in Guilliman’s solution. And now the Fists Exemplar had discovered that the primarch was not persuaded after all.

Zerberyn had argued the case with Thane at Phall, as he knew Dantalion himself would have done had he still lived, and had done so again on Terra. Another might have viewed his subsequent elevation in spite of all that had gone before as evidence of Thane’s magnanimity, but Zerberyn knew him better. It was an insult. The First had already been culled of its finest to reform Koorland’s shield corps. He was captain of the First, but the First was a company of new recruits and stubborn ideologues like Columba, who would rather lay down their arms and let destruction find them than don the black fist of Dorn once more.

‘What does it say?’

‘I wouldn’t advise listening to it. There’s a verbal component but it’s been heavily corrupted by the transition to the empyreal phase. But I do have coordinates.’

‘Is it Phall? I told Thane that Koorland was premature to depart while the Soul Drinkers and the bulk of the Black Templars were still to be contacted.’

The vox-liaison shook her head. ‘No. The latest navigation estimate puts us at least several weeks from the rendezvous coordinates. It’s not Terra either.’ She pivoted her chair and called up a screed of data to her terminal. Gloved fingers dancing over the keys, she transformed it into what Zerberyn recognised as a four-dimensional coordinate plot. ‘It’s close by, originating from an orphan star in the Sycrax Cluster. A red giant called Vandis.’

‘Is Thane or anyone else receiving this beacon?’

The officer sucked in her teeth, frustrated as much with herself as with the difficulties imposed on her by warp physics. ‘I don’t know.’

Zerberyn looked up to where the main viewscreen hung suspended from a plasteel gantry, reassuringly blank save for a purity seal on a fuzzy grey background. It was blustery with static, interpretive in its not-quite-random swirls of the buffeting energies of the warp.

With superhuman speed of thought, he collated the available variables, assembling them into a plan of action that he then challenged with every conceivable scenario. He took the additional half-second required to satisfy himself that any ship in the Fists Exemplar fleet in possession of the same information would reach an identical conclusion.

He had no love for his distant gene-brothers, but like it or not they were the Last Wall. The Imperium stood only while they held firm, and as the Arch-Heretic himself had annihilated the last great ork empire at its root, so too would Zerberyn burn the Beast from the very ground on which he lived.

This, he promised to himself.

‘Contact the Alcazar Remembered or any other ship you can raise, and transmit a data-burst containing the beacon coordinates and our course of action.’

‘Which is?’ said Marcarian.

‘Prepare for immediate real space translation onto the origin of that beacon. All stations to battle readiness. All weapons systems and shield arrays to be engaged the second we emerge.’

The shipmaster nodded stiffly and began to relay orders to the relevant stations, which in turn disseminated them through the ship down their hardlines. The murmur of voices became a clamour.

‘To run blind into a battle is folly,’ Marcarian murmured, for Zerberyn’s ear alone.

‘I know well the lessons of the Codex Astartes, shipmaster.’

Marcarian bowed his head. ‘Let me at least recommend that Excelsior be sent in ahead. She’s Rubicante-class, designed to operate through the worst distortions of the Flux. Her vox-array should be more than powerful enough to reach us, even here.’

Zerberyn duly considered the shipmaster’s counter-proposal. Coordinating the actions of a fleet the size of the Fists Exemplar’s through the immaterium would be fraught at best. Who could say what was listening? Or worse, what truly answered. He could not even say with certainty where Excelsior or the Alcazar Remembered were, or that they had not already emerged into the materium at Phall.

It was possible that Dantalion would return to Phall in a month’s time and find that Excelsior and the rest of the fleet had never left.

Zerberyn’s thumb rolled over his bolt pistol’s holster lock. It was Umbra-pattern, lacking the refinement of post-Heresy models, the various augmentations and integrations that had come with subsequent improvements in power armour design, but it was good at what it was made for and always would be. Purity through utility: that was how one proofed oneself against the unknowables of the galaxy.

He made his decision.

Guilliman’s writings spoke often of the importance of recognising the least worst option and seizing it.

‘Take us in.’

Vandis System — Mandeville point

Zerberyn felt a squeeze on his brain as though something were trying to get in. He heard whispers, and ignored them. He saw things — things he could not ignore so easily. He saw Dantalion.

Zerberyn was a relative neophyte, a recruit of the Chapter’s Eidolican era. He had never seen Oriax Dantalion, but he knew with the conviction of his genetics that it was him. Zerberyn did not speak, nor was he spoken to, but just watched as Sigismund, Alexis Polux, Demetrius Katafalque, and then Rogal Dorn himself turned their backs on the first Exemplar one by one. Zerberyn felt anger, but he was helpless to express it to these titanic figures. Without appearing to transition, Dantalion’s armour had ceased to be gold, but it had not become the unvarnished grey of Zerberyn’s own.

It was gunmetal and bronze.

Translation was complete, but this part was the worst. Those few seconds after the warp drives had powered down and the Geller field had collapsed, but the empyreal sheath remained raw and unhealed, thin enough to touch the other side with one’s mind, and for the waking nightmares that dwelled there to, if only for a few seconds, touch back.

The vision faded as the materium resealed, and Zerberyn dwelled on its lies no further.

Klaxons screamed proximity alerts and a dozen different types of weapons lock. Alert runes cycled amber and red. Their warnings went unheeded for a few critical seconds more, the unimproved brain chemistries of Dantalion’s mortal crew requiring that extra time to recover from the ordeal of translation.

Zerberyn killed an automated low-shield sounder with a gauntlet-mash that deactivated several other warning icons and cracked the terminal.

‘Steady as she goes,’ Marcarian drooled, straight as a cane, stiffened by his augmetic brace and implant while those around were still slumped with harrowed expressions in their chairs. ‘Cycle plasma coils. Navigational shields to full power. Void shield generators to cover all quadrants. Weapon grids online. Full spectrum sweep and re-initialise main viewer. Someone find me the source of that distress beacon.’

A dulled chorus of ‘Aye, sirs’ answered him. A string of light impacts trembled through the massive vessel’s hull as the main viewscreen wiped its purity seal and shivered online. It was a default forward shot: the gothic grey armour of Dantalion’s prow. A squadron of supercharged ork fighter-bombers streaked across it, trailed by a line of explosions.

‘Shields,’ said Zerberyn.

‘Void banks to charge in three… two… one.’

A resonant harmonic thrummed over the systems’ noise and the cherub-serfs’ chorus. The fighter-bomber to the rear of the orks’ chaotic formation was swallowed up by a ball of fire as Dantalion’s port-forward void shield manifested within its fuselage and ripped the craft to pieces. A wave of static washed across the viewscreen. Zerberyn focused. His occulobe organ was designed for low-light conditions and hyperfine details, and it autonomically filtered the visual noise.

The murderous red glow of the stellar giant, Vandis, flooded the shot and robbed the void of stars. In their place, he saw explosions, propellant burns and a glittering shoal of red-lit predators. It was a void fight, and a major one. He counted at least two hundred ork cruisers, possibly more. Pre-translation inertia carried them towards the battle at several hundred kilometres per second.

‘Ship contacts!’ came the shout from the strategium, a second behind. The liaison serf there held an internal vox-horn to his ear.

‘Ours?’ said Marcarian.

‘Too many!’

A flare lit the viewer, something massive-yield thumping the forward shield hard enough to shake the deck plates of the command bridge.

‘Try to raise the rest of the fleet,’ ordered Marcarian. ‘If they haven’t joined us then we don’t stand a chance.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘They will be here,’ said Zerberyn. ‘If even one ship received our transmission then they would have signalled also and the probability of a third vessel receiving would be doubled, and so on, exponentially. We are in the only place that any brother in receipt of those coordinates could be.’

‘We should at least be prepared to withdraw. Permission to re-actuate warp drives and lock-down for an emergency translation.’

‘Granted. Caution is always the wisest course when others fail to present themselves.’

‘Very good, lord captain.’ Marcarian stumped off to distribute orders.

‘Find me that distress beacon, shipmaster.’

‘Come and look at this, lord captain.’

Marcarian was standing by the chart desk that dominated the strategium turret. The base unit was an illuminated table, above which a wavering hololithic grid chart was displayed. A golden aquila dead-centre represented Dantalion. She was surrounded by a cloud of unidentified blips, trailing back towards the bloated, crimson wire-frame that represented the Vandis star. The intervening grids filled fast with ship markers, like a spreading infection reviewed on rapid playback. The banks of time-lapse and repeater screens that surrounded the desk were walled with static.

‘Disregard the orks for now,’ Marcarian commanded the strategium liaison. ‘Authorise removal of the necessary coding wafers and route the spared cogitation capacity to parse Last Wall identifiers.’

‘Do you not want targets?’ asked Zerberyn.

‘Scanning for Last Wall signals will identify both the source of the distress beacon, and our own fleet if they are here. That should be our first priority.’

Zerberyn offered his silence by way of agreement. Before a void fight with a Death Guard flotilla had wasted his right side and earned him his command, Marcarian had been Augur Master aboard the Grey Ranger. He knew his system.

‘I’d also recommend mobilising the First. The orks have shown themselves to favour long-range teleport actions.’

It was then that Zerberyn realised that at some point during the translation cycle he had drawn his pistol.

‘We are ready for them.’

All Adeptus Astartes fleets employed the same classes of ship, but the modular design allowed for variations on the basic STC. Fists Exemplar warships differed from those of their cousins in many ways, but principal among these was the manifold layers of dedicated psychic shielding they employed. They were built for void-war, purposed to patrol the storm-wracked region of wilderness space afflicted by the Rubicante Flux. In addition to the cherub-serfs that filled every inhabited section with song, choristers from the Chapter Librarius psychically conducted the chorus from chambers specifically designed for their warp-soothing acoustics. Every one of Dantalion’s millions of consoles was worked with monomolecular silver wires. Her ballast chambers were filled with the scent of candlewood and samphyr, silvic oil and rose cedar. Even the very halls of the ship were arranged into the schematised form of potent protective runes and a good portion of her orbit-to-ground firepower had been retrofitted with psychic null generators.

She had been designed to fight the enemies of Man and triumph in regions of space where other ships could not enter, and only deep-survey barges of the Inquisition sailed with greater protection against warp-borne assault.

‘But again, granted. Have them deploy at your discretion.’

‘Bright skies…’ someone exclaimed.

Zerberyn followed the staring faces to the main viewscreen. Someone amongst the veteran crew zoomed the screen’s visual feed and placed a bracket around a patched-up old colossus. Almost three times the mass of Dantalion, it looked like an Imperial Navy battleship. It was heavily damaged and, so it appeared, either partially or carelessly rebuilt. Its aft section was almost completely crumpled, and had been fitted with a monstrous engine housing almost as large as the rest of the ship that filled the void behind it with cones of chemical fire. Construction scaffolds spread from the hull like a beetle’s wings. Fires burned on several decks.

‘Oberon-class,’ Marcarian confirmed. ‘Or she was.’

The big vessel yawed into the lower quadrant of the main viewer, drifting across the plane of the solar system with a trail of gnat-like ork fighters in pursuit. ‘Approaching on an intercept vector.’

Whatever their current naval supremacy, the orks would always make use of what they found. Zerberyn could almost respect them for that.

‘No serial codes, no auto-transmissions, no response to hails.’ Marcarian limped through the strategium desks, looking over shoulders at the read-outs. ‘I’d say it’s an ork ship.’

‘Of course it is an ork ship. That much is clear.’

‘Still no sign of Last Wall transponders on our scans, lord captain,’ said Marcarian, stiffly. ‘All hands ready for emergency translation at your order.’

Zerberyn brought the barrel of his pistol to his gorget ring and tapped it as he thought, watching the zipping ork fighters wind about the nearing battleship like surgical thread through a wound.

‘Lord captain, I think that—’

‘I commend you your unfettered thought, it improves us all,’ Zerberyn spat, quoting from the Oriax Variorum. The ship slid into full view, Dantalion gunning for it amidships. Zerberyn aimed his bolt pistol at the viewer.

‘Kill that ship.’

Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The shuttle deployed its landing struts for its final descent stage onto Daylight Pad Theta, the light void craft wobbling in the crosswinds generated by the perpetual grind of the Palace hive’s colossal cycler fans and the sheer volume of air traffic. Transorbital lighters were picking up and setting down in a near-constant flow, crowding the Palace’s skyline: red and purple and black and gold, a swirling plasteel snow of new conscripts pressed into the Navy’s proudest regiments. To navigate a shuttle through either obstacle, let alone both, was a task closer to reading the Emperor’s Tarot than landing a void craft. To even make the attempt took the superhuman reflexes and unshakable confidence of the Adeptus Astartes.

Koorland, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, looked up to watch the shuttle’s approach.

Waves of promethium heat beat down on him, and the roar of the angling turbofans rippled his lips and cheeks, but his eyes stayed open despite the onslaught. The Templar crosses emblazoned on white panels on the shuttle’s nose and underwing appeared to resize as aerofoils made minute adjustments. Jets of air from lateral stabilisation thrusters held it level. Roused from torpor by the approaching lander and flushed of soporific neurosedatives, servitors bonded to caterpillar-tracked motive assemblies moved haltingly forwards against the jetwash. Lengths of bright orange vulcanised hosing played out behind them, the oil-washed outlet valves supplanting superfluous hands and emerging from artificially gaping mouths flanked by mind-wiped stares.

The shuttle touched down within the innermost ring of blinking guidelights, and eased onto its landing struts. The roar of its turbofans became a whine and gases hissed from heat flues and radiator grilles, equalising pressure and temperature across the shuttle’s glowing heat-shields. One of the servitor units sprayed the shuttle with super-cooled carbon dioxide vapour. Another trundled underneath, frozen gases crystallising its slack features, and nozzled its wrist adaptor over the shuttle’s filler pipe. It emitted a guzzling noise, smoking under the white hiss of venting gases.

Either side of Koorland, an honour detail of human (and another of not-quite-human) troopers endeavoured to stand crisply at attention, despite the successive waves of engine heat and coolant that came at them from the middle of the pad.

The men were all tall and hard-faced, in black uniforms with red piping and frogging, armsmen of the Navy’s symbolic flagship, the Royal Barque. Each wore the Royal Barque’s forbidding ensign on their shoulder in place of the usual regimental insignia, a sheathed cutlass and a pair of ceremonial red gloves. They were the Navy’s elite protection detail, and only the highest-ranking admirals and most influential of visiting dignitaries warranted such bodyguards. In this instance, the subject of their care was Rear-Admiral Pervez Leshento of the Tiamat-class battleship Dies Dominus. The name was High Gothic for ‘Lord of Daylight’. An extraordinary coincidence, or Lansung was honeying Koorland’s gruel a little thickly.

On the other side were the skitarii of the Basilikon Astra, the exploratory fleets of Mars: visored, cloaked in dark, energy-dense robes worn over a bio-augmented flesh-carapace and an assortment of techno-esoterica. Koorland doubted that the cyborgised warriors suffered the extremes of heat and cold gushing out from the shuttle pad, but the jetwash was certainly fighting them over their heavy cloaks. The commander of the maniple was a magos explorator named Benzeine. He was wrapped up to his throat in deep red robes woven with the machina opus. From the odd, twitching motions that occasionally stirred these robes, they were to protect the sensibilities of those he moved amongst rather than for his own benefit. Hololithic equations hovered about a millimetre in front of his black-chrome facial dish from a miniaturised projector embedded somewhere amidst the array of fluttering sensors.

The Taghmata of Mars had fulfilled their obligations in the Last Wall’s assault on the ork attack moon, limited though they were, and the Fabricator General was not about to relinquish control of that orbiting planetoid of xeno-tech now.

As Koorland waited, a pair of hypersonic Lightning interceptors rocketed overhead, the second surfing on its leader’s contrail. An expanding, rolling boom rattled the ornamental flak turrets of Dawn Spire and the leaded windows of the Walk of Heroes on the other side of the killing ground. The golden vexillum of the Daylight militia that flew from the plasteel-plated turrets of the Cathedral of Saint Clementine the Absolver bent after the passing fighters. Koorland looked up to catch them but even his genhanced eyes were too slow.

Instead, distorted by stained plex-glass and cracked UV-shielding, he saw the ork moon. Its cratered face glared down through a tangle of piping as if it always knew exactly when and where to look to find him. It was far smaller than Terra’s own moon, but hanging in geostationary orbit just a few hundred kilometres above the Sanctum Imperialis it appeared ten times larger. The larger vessels of the blockading fleet — Autocephalax Eternal, Dies Dominus and Abhorrence being but three — were visible from Terra, like clouds passing slowly over the face of the hostile alien planetoid. Koorland himself knew no fear, but despite the visual reassurance, he could well understand the terror the ork moon instilled in people.

Even those who would never see the sky could feel its power over their world.

A tremor passed through the mountainous bastion of Daylight Wall. Unsecured maintenance hatches rattled. Fern-like communications vanes hummed, the indelicate side-to-side motion transformed into harmonic vibrations. The mighty fortifications moved, as they had been designed to move under tectonic stresses or the crushing overpressure of an artillery bombardment, but their superficial facades crumbled, tank-sized chunks of ornamental masonry crashing down into the killing fields and the under-hives. Cabling tore — electrical, hydraulic, plasmic — and ionised gases and pressurised fluids sprayed photochemical ejecta into the Palace twilight.

The shaking eased. The shouts of rescue and repair units filtered up from below.

Things were not, at least, as dire as they had become on Ardamantua. The Last Wall and Basilikon Astra’s bombardment had obliterated the attack moon’s weaponry along with about ninety-five per cent of its crust. No, this was not a weapon. This was simply the seismic shock of having a lunar body suddenly transposed into near orbit.

He looked across the fretted robes of the skitarii, dazzling the air with arcane symbology, to where Daylight stood on the opposite side of the platform with his back against the steep drop to the Palace. The Fists Exemplar battle-brother who had taken the name, formerly Seventh Captain Dentor, looked good in his new livery, as much as it pained Koorland to compel his brother to wear it. He knew the value that the warrior’s home Chapter placed on outward humility and inward pride. The golden spear and shield he carried were not the same as those borne by his namesake, for they too had been victims of Ardamantua’s destruction, but had been selected for him from the Chapter’s armouries on the basis of being a good enough likeness to fool anyone who was not a son of Dorn.

To his dishonour, it did feel good to share his wall with a brother again. And Lord Udo had been right. The populace appreciated the sight of Imperial Fists on the walls.

Daylight nodded the all-clear, and Koorland returned it.

In a squeal of hydraulics, the shuttle’s boarding hatch lowered. The ramp struck the platform with a dull metallic thump, flexing and rattling as if in the grip of another quake as the power-armoured High Marshal of the Black Templars emerged through the coolant vapours.

Bohemond’s face was a burned ruin, scorched by the witch-fire of an ork psyker in a battle long before the present uprising. Half of what remained was a metal mask as emotive as the chrome plate of the magos explorator, but the other half was what struck terror into mortals and transhumans alike. It was flesh, but it could not be called a face. Looking at it, you could see where flesh had run, where it had resolidifed as he beat the greenskin witch to death with his bare fists, and the new form it had taken.

Koorland was not above a slight feeling of intimidation. Whatever he felt was amplified in the mortal soldiery tenfold. The idea that they might offer any protection at all against even the one Space Marine was laughable.

The High Marshal carried Sigismund’s sword in one gauntleted fist, drawn, the long blade angled away from him and towards the ground. The other hand he presented, palm up, and waited for half a second while a warrior bondsman in bone-coloured flak armour and black surplice slapped a data-slate into it. It looked as though he was about to launch into some kind of prepared speech.

But Koorland had come to know him better than that.

‘The last coordinates of every Black Templars, Crimson Fists, Excoriators and Iron Knights ship in the blockade fleet, and the codes to our defensive installations in the base’s interior.’ Bohemond’s mouth no longer closed properly and the expression he made was a loathsome sneer. ‘I advise you to memorise them. By the High Lords’ decree, there remain enough orks in the deeper levels to occupy your surface teams.’

Bohemond looked from Benzeine to Leshento, waving the slate back and forth in his giant’s hand as though hoping the two men might fight each other to be the one to have it. Neither would have dared. With a scowl, the High Marshal tossed the slate dismissively into the hands of one of the Royal Barque soldiers.

The information could have been delivered by data-burst, but the wheels of Terran bureaucracy were greased by such petty ceremonies.

The skitarii and Navy men filed out. The single Adeptus Arbites enforcer guarding the steps down to the fifth tier battlements saluted the magos explorator and the rear-admiral. Koorland was uncertain what she was there for. He smiled slightly.

His protection, he presumed.

As the last of the men disappeared down the steps, Bohemond strode across the platform and clasped Koorland by the forearm. Koorland returned the pressure on the High Marshal’s elbow guard.

‘It is good to see a friendly face, brother.’

‘Is that a joke?’

Koorland grunted, amused, but no longer seemed to feel like smiling. They released each other’s arms and stepped back, almost wary. ‘You have not come around to Udo’s edict, I take it,’ Koorland said.

‘If he wishes to disperse the Chapters, then I say let him try and make us.’

‘Mind what you say, brother. Your anger at the High Lords’ ingratitude is understandable. I share it. But it is because of thoughts like these that we must disperse.’

‘I do not care about their ingratitude,’ Bohemond muttered darkly. ‘It is their ineptitude that concerns me.’

‘If it will keep the Council on my side then having you and the others join the Fists Exemplar at Phall is a small price.’

‘And if the orks simply lie in wait for such an opening? There could be millions yet in the attack moon’s core, biding their time, and as the Mechanicus did not permit us to delve deeper we cannot say for certain that we destroyed the only teleportation device they have.’

‘Phall is little more than a month away at worst, and fifty Space Marine veterans is no token force.’

To be counted amongst a Space Marine Chapter’s finest was no small thing, and from the First Companies of the Fists Exemplar, Black Templars, Crimson Fists, Excoriators and Iron Knights, Koorland had reconstituted the shield corps. Daylight. Hemisphere. Tranquility. Bastion Ledge. Ballad Gate. Zarathustra. Lotus Gate. He meant no disrespect to the Lucifer Blacks, who had stepped up to fill the Imperial Fist-sized breach in Fortress Terra, but they were not Space Marines. War would undoubtedly come again to the Imperial Palace, and when it did, then like the Arch-Traitor before them, the orks would meet walls defended by the sons of Dorn.

‘Can you hold for that long?’ said Bohemond.

‘It is ground, brother. I can hold it.’

Bohemond revealed his twisted grin, as if he were showing off a knife, and he nodded across Koorland’s shoulder. The enforcer had approached and halted about two metres away and threw a salute.

‘I know you, enforcer,’ said Koorland.

The part of the woman’s face that was visible between her chinstraps and visor seemed suddenly to glow. It was a look that Koorland had become wearily familiar with amongst the Palace’s mortal defenders. The sort of look reserved for saints and saviours. ‘Galatea Haas, lord, and,’ she rolled her shoulder to show her rank stripes, ‘it’s proctor now.’ She bit her lip, as though worried she might have offended her transhuman lord by wasting his time with something as trivial as mortal hierarchies, then added, tentatively: ‘You remember me?’

‘I seldom forget,’ said Koorland. ‘Thank the Emperor for designing me thus.’

‘I… I will.’

‘Praise be,’ Bohemond murmured.

‘Can I help you, proctor?’

‘Yes, lord.’ She snapped another salute and held it. ‘The provost-colonel demands the return of Daylight Pad Theta to the Adeptus Arbites.’

‘Tell her no.’

Haas smiled. ‘Thank you, lord.’

With a growl, Bohemond turned his back on the woman who reached barely as high as his elbow and made to head back to his shuttle.

‘They demand your protection, but only so long as you do not inconvenience their little fiefdoms. I leave you to it, brother, and may I never find myself embroiled in politics again.’

Koorland nodded his agreement. ‘From my shuttle, I saw rioters outside of the Great Chamber itself. I am not surprised.’

‘They should be put down,’ rumbled the fourth Space Marine present, Eternity, standing at the near edge of the platform opposite Daylight. ‘The expression of such dissent within the Palace grounds is a capital sin.’

The Black Templar who had become Eternity had demanded that wall and that duty, had insisted that he be the last line between the Custodes and the rest of the universe. He, more than anyone, served as a reminder that an Imperial Fist was more than just the colours that he wore. Haas looked towards the towering wall-brother, a sudden wariness, fear even, causing her face to tense, as if she had heard this particular Black Templar’s voice before.

‘Go to them then, brother,’ said Koorland, turning to meet the glowing red lenses of Eternity’s helm. ‘Let them see that they are safe, that it is an Imperial Fist that walks amongst them.’ He glanced to Haas. The woman was almost shaking, worse than when she had been rescued from the orks’ captivity. ‘Let them all see.’

Three

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Great Chamber had been the institutional heart of Terra for as long as Terra had been the heart of an Imperium of Man. At capacity, it could hold half a million citizens. It was a coliseum, a public arena of awesome scale, built to the grand demands of Unitarian dreams. The restoration work enacted in the aftermath of the Great Heresy had been largely sympathetic, cosmetic re-imaginings of the occasional mural where a pict of the original could not be found or showed an inconvenient contradiction to the Creed notwithstanding.

Vast tiers of empty seating surrounded a central dais. Twelve large chairs were spaced evenly across its centre line, backed by the heraldic banners of the twelve great pillars of Imperial government. A speaker’s podium, raised by the spread wings of a golden aquila, glittered under the triangulated beams of focused lighting. The dais rotated almost imperceptibly, and a more potent metaphor for the pace of decision-making by said great pillars of Imperial government Vangorich could not imagine.

The last vestige of representative and accountable governance stood at the far east end of the chamber: a statue of the great Rogal Dorn, raised in commemoration by his brother, the first Lord Guilliman. The primarch watched the council of the day with an expression of infamous severity.

Drakan Vangorich was not a man given to idle dreams, but the thought of what a living, breathing primarch would make of the small men trying to fill their superhuman boots gave him a little pleasure.

‘Order, please,’ said Tobris Ekharth, Master of the Administratum, reading tiredly from the data-slate in his hands. His voice mumbled back to him on a time-delayed echo from the vox-casters set up around the vast auditorium. Small-arms fire in the distance — but not all that distant — broke up the carefully calibrated augmitter system with pernicious static. ‘I’m sure that the situation is under control… I…’

He blinked myopically at a second data-slate on the lectern in front of him, then bent to listen to some aide unseen behind the beam-bright podium lights and visibly pulled himself together.

‘I’ve been made aware that the situation is well in hand. If you could all now please access your agenda packets, cryptex key kappa-tribus-septum-septum-omega, and once we’re all here we can begin.’

Scattered around the swathes of empty seating, lesser lords and meme-serfs approved by the Administratum’s increasingly stringent vetting lists peeled the security tape off their packets and tapped in the cryptex key.

Vangorich did as everyone else did. As a man of medium height and medium build, dressed in black with oiled-back black hair like any aide or staffer present, he was adept at discouraging notice. His skin shared the pale tone of the trillions who lived their lives on lightless Terra, his few features of note being his dark, wide-set eyes and a tiny scar that bridged the lower part of his face between jaw and chin.

He had, of course, memorised the contents of an unredacted version of the package, and his agents had furnished him with the cryptex key to the final document as soon as it had been disseminated amongst the High Twelve.

It had been a hundred years since a Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum had been seated amongst that number, but one grew accustomed to certain privileges of access, particularly if one possessed the means to retain them. Indeed, Vangorich considered it the patriotic duty of his office to keep his finger, as the saying went, on the Senatorum’s pulse.

Scanning the ninety-seven-page abstract, he flagged up the most glaring omissions from the original agenda. It was always an amusing mental exercise to attempt to deduce who was responsible for removing what.

A complaint from the Admiralty on the costs imposed on them by the transfer of the blockade from the Last Wall to the Navy? Fabricator General Kubik. Too easy. The Fabricator General would accept any cost to get his mechadendrites on the orks’ technologies, particularly if it could be loaded onto another.

A demand for civilian evacuation of the cathedral world Madrilline? Lansung. Why discuss what you no longer had the ships in range to deliver?

A motion to restrict Chapter Master Koorland’s ‘disruptive’ access to Naval facilities, and, reading between the lines, the Lucifer Blacks? It had the patrician fingers of the Paternoval Envoy all over it. Smiling archly, he skimmed ahead. The only downside was that Helad Gibran no longer owed him a favour. He held the page and frowned in thought. Here was an interesting omission.

A report of mass starvations in Albia Hive. Basic provisioning was the duty of the Administratum, but he didn’t think that Ekharth had the spine for this kind of backroom politicking. Juskina Tull of the Chartist Captains, perhaps.

He glanced up to the dais.

Juskina Tull looked waxen under the podium lights, haunted by an enfolding horror that was so much worse from the other side of her glassy stare. Host to a magnificent gown of tented lace and emeralds, she had barely moved in half an hour. Just a telling blink of the eyes whenever the screams became loud enough, near enough, to escape the weapons fire. She wasn’t hearing screams. She was hearing cries for blood.

No.

Definitely not Tull.

The other lords were still working their way to their seats.

Gibran, Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators, and Sark, the otherworldly Master of the Astronomican, were ushered into their allotted seats by plush-liveried Senatorum staff. Spread in his chair at the opposite end of the dais, Anwar of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica watched his fellow abhumans with a deep, probing gaze. The uncanny walked down Vangorich’s spine with fingers of ice. Seated beside the Imperium’s most powerful sanctioned psyker in full Astra Militarum dress uniform, the Lord Militant, Abel Verreault, attempted to make small talk.

A choir of cherubs and servo-seraphim hovered around the carved Albian oak podium doors. Beneath the dragonfly chirr of hymnals, Ecclesiarch Mesring and Lord Admiral Lansung entered together. Lansung had lately taken to porting his great bulk around with the aid of a silver cane, but his physical deterioration was barely noticeable beside that of the Ecclesiarch. Mesring looked feral. His hair was wild. His surplice was unpressed and clearly the same that he had worn to the previous week’s session. There were purpling wine stains in his beard. The two men were arguing heatedly about fleet deployments to the Tang Sector, something that continued well after Senatorum aides had adroitly manoeuvred them to non-adjacent seats.

Provost-Colonel Chabil Sarrihya rolled her eyes as if despairing of the behaviour of children, checked her wrist-chrono augmetic, and continued pacing. Her superior in the Adeptus Arbites, Vernor Zeck, had unilaterally absented himself from Senatorum business once civil disobedience had spilled into the Sanctum Imperialis, and had preferred not to return since. His deputy had no resort to such sanction and knew it. So she paced back — clipped turn — and forth in front of Fabricator General Kubik. The representative of Mars was almost as still as his counterpart from the Merchant Fleets, mechadendrites tapping on his chair’s arm interface in binarised counterpoint to the Provost-Colonel’s steps.

Ekharth’s timid appeal for order earned him a sharp look from Udin Macht Udo.

The Lord Commander of the Imperium, commander-in-chief of its incalculable assets of war and peace, simmered lamely in his grand throne. The slow pinkening of his face was accentuated by his shaved head, and the way the darkening turned the old scar that crossed the left side of his face and neck and through his milky eye an almost luminescent white. Though separate from and above any single military arm of the Imperium, he wore the starched white grand admiral’s uniform of his previous career in the Navy. It practically burst with medals and overcompensation.

It was pathetic.

Only the Inquisitorial Representative was still absent.

‘I suppose we could always just execute them all,’ suggested the woman seated at Vangorich’s right.

‘A little extreme, perhaps.’ A passing thought temporarily brightened his mind. ‘But tempting.’

Commandant Ursula Cage of the Schola Progenium was a striking woman. As the joint senior commissar, she was a feared individual. The utilitarian lines of one of Terra’s ancient noble houses shaped her face. Her hair was the shade and texture of gunmetal. She sat forwards, barely on her seat at all: summary justice in potentia.

‘Name me one who doesn’t deserve it.’

‘Verreault means well.’

With a short, hard laugh, Cage reached inside her greatcoat’s breast pocket and handed him a data-slate. It was a high-level briefing document with an Astra Militarum ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ stamp emblazoned across each page. The kind that were intercepted, copied, and subtly rerouted to Vangorich’s desk about ten thousand times each day. He seldom read them personally. He made an exception for this one.

It was the usual bad news — worlds lost or, suddenly unresponsive, presumed so — but there were bright spots if one looked hard enough.

Some dogged defending of an ice world called Valhalla had checked one front of the orks’ push into the Ultima Segmentum, and a small force of Ultramarines had successfully disabled an attack moon in orbit of Calth. Added to the one brought down by Admiral Lansung at Port Sanctus, and another by a combined force of Blood Angels and Novamarines, that made three confirmed kills.

Three. In a galaxy-wide incursion. No wonder they were losing. He didn’t need another classified internal document to tell him that.

‘The orks are getting sophisticated,’ murmured Cage. ‘Their choice of targets suggests a network of supply lines, resource processing centres and communication hubs that we’ve not seen before.’ She smiled coldly. ‘Or so the Progenium Tacticae tell us.’

‘This wasn’t in the unredacted agenda packet.’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Everyone knows orks can appear intelligent in battle. I know. But in war?’ She shook her head. ‘The Lord Militant would have been laughed out of the Senatorum.’

Vangorich glanced over his shoulder as a squad of Lucifer Blacks in enamelled black carapace powered up their shock glaives and ran for the main doors. They were wearing yellow armbands. Vangorich had never seen anything like that in the regiment before. He filed a mental note to look into it.

‘Why are you showing this to me?’ he asked.

The Lucifer Blacks thumped through the transport-sized oak doors. Suddenly, the sound of bolter fire was very close indeed.

‘Operational freedom,’ said Cage. ‘I have a certain amount of leeway. There are Progenium schools in the orks’ path, Tempestus regiments that the Lord Militant doesn’t know about, but you? I’m willing to bet you have agents in the area so deep even they don’t know who they are.’

‘This reputation of mine will get me into trouble one day.’

‘I was told you had a sense of humour, Grand Master. One of many things I disapprove of.’

‘And who told you such a thing?’

‘Wienand.’

‘You’ve spoken to Wienand?’

She ignored his question. ‘We can’t beat the orks without them.’ She nodded towards the lords on the dais. ‘But with organisations like ours we can slow them down.’

‘Leave it with me,’ Vangorich murmured, noncommittal, passing the slate back to the aide sitting in the pew immediately behind him.

Then, along with several hundred others in a hall built for half a million, he turned towards the sudden acrimony spilling from the dais.

Udo was rising, pulling the creases from his uniform in a clink of brass, and then glaring milkily from his throne.

The Inquisitorial Representative had arrived. Both of them.

Lastan Neemagiun Veritus walked up to the dais with a clunking, power-armoured stride. His antique battleplate was white, filigreed with theurgic symbols and possessed of its own wanton animus by fluttering papyrus scraps. The man himself was shrunken and pallid. His armour’s gorget seals sucked and wheezed about his thoat like a ventilator. At his shoulder, walking briskly and without augmentation, came a woman with short, pale grey hair and a face far younger than her eyes.

Vangorich had never considered her appearance to be anything other than ordinary until just then, and the kick of his emotional rebuke surprised him.

‘Wienand,’ he breathed.

Udin Macht Udo puffed out his medals. ‘The names of all Senatorum aides are to be pre-submitted to the Administratum for approval.’ Lips curled back, he turned his dead eye onto Ekharth, who quickly blathered his agreement. ‘Inquisitor Wienand will have to leave.’

‘She is not my aide,’ said Veritus, his voice like sand. ‘She is the Inquisitorial Representative.’

‘Not any more, Veritus. You are.’

‘Until the Inquisition decides otherwise,’ said Wienand smoothly.

Veritus had an undeniable gravitas, an automatic authority brought on by age and ceramite, but Wienand spoke with a reasoned clarity that the Senatorum had been missing for too long. ‘And now it has been decided that Lastan and I both will best represent our organisation at this time.’

‘Outrageous!’ spat Mesring, jumping from his chair like a feral cat. ‘This is a grab for power.’

‘Agreed,’ came Kubik’s unsubtle vocalisation.

Wienand spread her hands peaceably. ‘The Inquisition still has one vote on this council.’

‘But two voices,’ whispered Anwar, silkily.

‘United,’ said Veritus. ‘As it is time we all were.’

The Provost-Colonel was speaking urgently into a vox-pin in her cuff. Lansung appeared to be nodding slowly in agreement.

A hush had fallen over the auditorium, all eyes on Udin Macht Udo as the Lord Guilliman turned and strode stiff-backed from the podium.

‘Well, sir,’ said Beast Krule, pushing his thick arms over Vangorich’s seat back and secreting the commissar’s data-slate into one of several concealed pockets. ‘I’d say that makes things interesting.’

Four

Mars — Pavonis Mons

Two masked, metal-skinned skitarii marched Eldon Urquidex’s awkward frame down the long, smearily-lit corridor. The clump of their stride rattled the loose, metallic floor and swished the hems of their robes. The tough, energy-damping weave of their garments did odd things to the incident light, darkening their deep crimson hue to just a shade above black. These were alphas, veterans drawn from the numberless battle maniples of Mars and augmented according to that status. The best.

The transorganic soldiers’ long march brought them to a door, airlock-solid, guarded by another fearsomely augmeticised warrior-build in dark robes and wielding a brass-plated heavy rifle that bristled with deadly technologies. An arc rifle. Perfect for the close-range, narrow-quarters combat that a probability engine might envisage for the labyrinthine laboratorium subplex of Pavonis Mons. The best.

The dim red glow of the guard’s visored sight washed over Urquidex. Sour air, five parts per million perspiration, five hundred parts engine grease, rasped in and out of his cognis filters. The guard brought around his rifle in a nightingale murmur of high-tech servos and synthetics. At that range, with that weapon, with those cortico-sensory enhancements, aim was unnecessary.

They weren’t going to kill him.

Easier to have done it in any one of a hundred different places before now. The three-hour cage descent into the post-industrial hive of Pavonis crater. The skim pad, dust-blown and radiation-scoured, nothing beneath it for miles but stratified piping and still-radioactive sludge. Aboard the dust skimmer, laser-etched with the signum of the 1014 Noctis Maniple, that had swept him over the ancient rust sands and light harvesters of the Martian desert. Or even right there in his plug station in the Noctis Labyrinth where they had come for him. Who would have tried to stop them, or cared if he had been summarily executed even as he ordered his files? The locum trajectorae? His fellow adepts?

As well to expect an impassioned defence from the tech-servitors.

They weren’t going to kill him.

The Assassin, Yendl, must have been unmasked and now Van Auken wanted to interrogate her accomplice in person: that was the only explanation that made sense. Urquidex forced his dry mouth to swallow. His thoughts were of nerve endings and pain receptors: trillions of microscopic sensors, thousands of kilometres of insulated wiring, all evolutionarily perfected by the goal of rendering the hominids of his direct antecedence sufficiently risk-averse to perpetuate Eldon Urquidex. But now, no further.

The guard bared his metal palm to the judgement of the reader by the door. There was a clunk, a ripple through the creaking substructure, then a gasp of air as the doors cracked ajar and then shunted apart. His escorts led him through. They were not unkind.

Force was mass, velocity, and an exponent.

Kindness did not factor.

The chamber on the other side of the door was a short octagonal cylinder, like an expressionistic version of an antique eight-shot’s firing cylinder portrayed through geometry. The ceiling and main walls were a ridged metal, some kind of supplementary ventilation system running along the recesses. The floor was the same loose, rattling metal slats as it had been outside. The angled slants joining the horizontals to the verticals were of a browning armourglass.

‘Stop here,’ grated the skitarius to his right.

He stopped there.

The two skitarii backed away through the door. The guard simultaneously lowered his own weapon and punched the control panel to bring the doors to a shuddering close. Urquidex stared at the solid plasteel for a moment, feeling an utterly illogical sense of panic on watching the two skitarii leave, as if they had been not colluders in his captivity, but protectors, the only thing standing between him and death.

He shivered, the tensile fibres bonding his digitools directly into his nervous system causing them to twitch accordingly. Unsure what else to do, he swallowed and shuffled around to face the opposite door.

There was a clank, as if he had triggered something with his movement, and an intense ultraviolet light flooded in through the armourglass. He grunted in pain. His instinct was to turn away and he did so, optics down, but the light was coming from everywhere. It was purple, piercing, retina-burning, but at the same time little more than bleedthrough, an augur ghost at the edge of his perceptual range. The effect was at once vivid and watery. Biologis adepts designated the treatment as ‘soft’ decontamination: degrade any biological contaminant, while leaving precious technologies intact and without chemical residual.

Urquidex retracted his telescopic eyestalks and dialled their sensitive optics shut, burying his face in the folds of his robes for good measure. He could feel his exposed flesh begin to heat. This biological contaminant did not consider the procedure nearly as soft as it once had.

At the same time, he became aware of an urgent hiss. Some kind of gas was being delivered into the chamber through that secondary ventilation system. His heart rate spiked, a fight or flight reflex that perversely then delivered the command for his lungs to draw deep. Ozone, he realised, sensing the epithelial sting on the lining of his nose. Urquidex felt his UV-reddened skin begin to burn.

The lights shut down abruptly. The hiss stopped.

Cautiously, Urquidex re-extended his eyes. He could still smell ozone, a sore-throat tightness down the back of his mouth.

‘Proceed, magos.’

The voice was female, piped into the chamber like gas through the walls.

A clunk sounded from the far end of the cubicle, followed by a whoosh of evacuating air. Urquidex winced as it flowed over his sunburned flesh and the door ground open. His ears popped under the change in pressure.

A biologis laboratorium, then: the design adhered to schemata laid down by arch-magi from an era before the Dark Age of Technology, and to Urquidex was more familiar than his own surgically modified face. A slender needle of curiosity pricked his skin of fear. Such a place was an unlikely venue for an interrogation, or even an execution.

He walked through the door to be met by another skitarius. This one was female, that much of her original body plan evident even through her heavy robes and obtrusive techno-refinements, and was covering the door with an arc pistol. Her left hand had been retrofitted with a combat glove with an integrated transonic razor. Urquidex absorbed those prosaic details at a glance, for her most unique feature was too stunning to devote time and attention elsewhere. Head to toe, the skitarius had been physically remodelled in dazzling silver. Other agencies of the Imperium exploited that precious metal for its anti-psychic properties, but the Adeptus Biologis archives retained many fragmentary references to its ancient bactericidal application.

She watched him sceptically, and Urquidex, fearfully, said nothing.

‘Stand down to readiness level, Zeta-One Prime,’ came the deep, breathy voice of Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken, each word enunciated with a puff of mechanical diaphragms.

Eldon stiffened and froze.

The artisan trajectorae emerged from the incense pall that cloaked a bank of shuddering ruminators. His spindly shoulders were slumped under the weight of a servo-harness and multitools, and his forehead had been broadened and deepened with the installation of a thick plasteel plate. He emitted a hiss of pistoned air and dismissed his sterile and glittering adjutant with the flex of a mechadendrite.

‘You have no questions, magos? Do you forget the Eleventh Universal Law?’

Urquidex answered by rote. ‘The universe is uncertain until it is observed.’

‘Your locum trajectorae expressed concerns regarding your state of mind. It was her conclusion that you were distracted, that the Grand Experiment was in some way insufficiently fulfilling.’

Urquidex opened his mouth, but there was no subjective rebuttal to the locum trajectorae’s objective conclusions. He remained silent, mouth dry. Van Auken knew. The thought ran round and round his higher functions like a scrapcode algorithm on a recursive loop.

‘You are frustrated by the lack of progress,’ Van Auken continued for him. ‘I understand. It is not your proper specialism. You have been unable to devote your full energies to this grand task.’

‘Yes, artisan,’ he said carefully. ‘But my lapse of purpose is inexcusable.’

‘Indeed so, but the Fabricator General has another task more meritous of your talents, magos.’

The artisan trajectorae turned and for the first time, Urquidex took a proper look at the glorious scale of the laboratorium.

Instruments filled the floor, spaced apart from one another, as machines of their type were known to be jealous of their status within the schemata, and could be cantankerous when the proper attention was not afforded them. Adepts of the first level chanted soothing psalms, scattering the straining machines with crystals from their aspersoria, carbon dioxide produced and sanctified in the manufactories of Marcotis Temple. Even so, electrical smoke seeped from the instruments’ backs and pooled on the metal tiles. Wheezing scrubbers did their best to filter the pollutants from the air.

Servitors clumped from instrument to instrument carrying plastek plates indented with tiny wells containing organic serum. Attendant techno-magi received the sample dishes, commended them to the all-seeing attentions of the Omnissiah, and fed them into the machines under their care. And through the semi-transparent plastek view-plates that overlooked the sterilisation chamber, the exact repetitive routine was enacted over and over, identically laid out levels stacked one atop the next high into the smog layer.

‘Samples are brought to this laboratorium from across the Imperium,’ said Van Auken. ‘You can understand the demand for secrecy. And for biological integrity.’

Urquidex nodded.

A magos was loading a set of plates into the ornately inscribed chrome housing of a prognosticator, triggering seizures of clacking and shuddering and frenzied bursts of laser light. In parallel, hundreds of sequence graphics sputtered up on the networked displays. Each was an assemblage of coloured lines representing As and Ts, Cs and Gs, and Xs. After about half an hour of chewing noises the machine expelled the spent samples and emitted an insatiable peal for more data.

‘You hope to find a solution to the Grand Experiment in their genetic code,’ said Urquidex. ‘It won’t work. Veridi giganticus’ genome is structurally unstable. It is a mosaic of recombinatorial sequences and mobilisable elements, continually on the cusp of one speciation event or another. Veridi giganticus should not be at all.’

‘It is your specialism, magos, not mine, and I do not pretend to understand it. But no, that is not our goal.’

With his human hand Van Auken directed Urquidex’s attention to a neighbouring screen. This one was packed with moving code lines, the backing cogitator plugged via a heavy-duty shunt into a run of cabling that disappeared into the ceiling. The system’s program wafer had the machine data-mining the Martian noosphere, pulling up astropathic logs, engagement reports, every bit of data relevant to the Veridi giganticus samples that came with a grid stamp and a time stamp, and then cross-referencing them against the sequence output.

A map.

The artisan trajectorae was making a map.

The very genetic instability of Veridi giganticus was the way in. A population would be expected to accumulate sequence alterations over a very short period of time. As they moved on and established new populations, those unique alterations would be carried forward and added to, and so on. With enough samples those changes could be tracked back. The Adeptus Biologis did it all the time. Mapping the spread of viruses through hive worlds, extrapolating the evolution of newly discovered Homo subspecies at the request of the Inquisition. Thus was the grace of the Omnissiah made manifest in the base material of Its organic machines.

Urquidex could see sample tags referenced to Ardamantua, Undine, Malleus Mundi. Hundreds, thousands of names: worlds from the breadth and span of the Imperium. The ork incursion was more widespread even than he had realised.

‘You are looking for the orks’ home world.’

‘One successful test does not complete the Grand Experiment. Phobos has a diameter of twenty-two kilometres. Mars is more than three hundred and ten times larger. In effect, the Grand Experiment has become an issue of scale.’

‘Scale…’

Urquidex tested the word, measured it, weighed it. The Grand Experiment had not stalled because of him or Yendl. It was a technical problem. Yendl was probably still alive, going over his last communiqué and wondering what had become of him. He swallowed, his sudden relief somehow more powerful even than his fear had been, and clasped his hands behind his back to obscure his quivering digitools.

‘Veridi giganticus has somehow managed to overcome the discontinuity between efficiency and scale,’ said Van Auken. ‘Or otherwise devised a solution to circumvent the Omnissiah’s constants.’

‘It sounds as though you admire them for it.’

‘They are a superbly constructed species, individually adaptive, collectively diverse. They are an apex species, magos, as once we were. There is much to re-learn from them, and yes, we are not above admiration. We have narrowed their point of origin to six or seven candidate sectors. A few thousand systems at the galactic core of Ultima Segmentum.’

Urquidex’s mind spun out a stream of hurried calculations. Stars came fast and close in the core and a few thousand systems need not, comparatively at least, cover a lot of space. A search of it would still be a massive logistical undertaking, but compared to the galaxy as a whole…

‘Has the Imperium been informed?’

‘The Fabricator General will apprise them if and when the timing is opportune. The Imperium is more than Terra, magos, and humanity is more than the Imperium. We must learn how Veridi giganticus operate their technology. You were there on Ardamantua. The Eleventh Universal Law applies. You have observed Veridi giganticus. They are not unknown to you.’

Eldon nodded mutely, numbly. The instruments before him continued to gorge on the galaxy of data they were being fed. Too much to smuggle to Terra. Far too much. He had to find the world.

One world. One word.

That, he could get to Yendl. And to Terra.

Five

Vandis System — Mandeville point

Targeting solutions crowded the lower right quadrant of Dantalion’s main viewer, coloured box reticules jostling over the vid-feed of the cannibalised Oberon-class battleship. Energy sources. Weapons arrays. Structural weaknesses. Void-suited strategium serfs worked furiously to keep the display updated as the two vessels sailed into weapons range. Lobbed shells blistered Dantalion’s forward shields. Fire broke out between them as the two warships closed and slowly, slowly, began to turn apart. The Oberon-class dropped to port, Dantalion climbed to starboard, both ships manoeuvering to present the massed firepower of their broadsides. Banks of hardlines provided wired communications between Dantalion’s command deck and the thousands of weapons hardpoints, loading bays, and cogitators throughout the two-kilometre-long battle-barge. Breathless operators called in status reports.

‘Prow beamers charged and locked.’

‘Macro-cannons trained to target.’

‘Launch tubes alpha through delta report cyclonic warheads loaded and ready at your mark.’

‘Hold torpedos,’ Shipmaster Marcarian commanded. ‘Macro-weaponry and beamers only until we have the measure of their shields. Steady as she goes.’

‘Fire weapons!’ Zerberyn snarled.

‘Firing, aye.’

White-hot beams of stellar fury drilled from Dantalion’s fusion batteries at near-light speed. The gap between the two ships had narrowed to a few thousand kilometres — an almost terrestrial scale, a space of particle fire and scrambled fighter craft — and the barrage hit almost instantaneously. The first beam strike overloaded the Oberon-class’ jury-rigged void shield array. The second lanced through the outer hull, and set off chain explosions within the superstructure. The fusion beamers fired in sequence. Each blast lasted split seconds before the collider cells had to be removed to be cooled and recharged, but the relative velocities and opposing vectors meant that those snap shots were sufficient to gouge through hundreds of metres of armour cladding.

Spewing drive plasma and the atomised constituents of its outer hull, the Oberon-class sailed under Dantalion’s belly, the battle-barge yawing over its blistered prow.

‘Ventral batteries report locks.’

‘Fire!’

Sustained firepower chewed up the cannibalised vessel’s dorsal plating. Atmospheric decompression ignited like the pilot light of a super-heavy flamer. Edged with greens, yellows and purples from vaporised hull elements, fire erupted into the void. For all Dantalion’s killing might, however, the honour of the ship-kill and the steel plaque on the wall of her shipmaster’s cell fell to another.

‘Shipmaster Akienas, of the Paragon, hailing,’ Marcarian exclaimed, panting with short bursts of relieved laughter. ‘It’s the fleet.’

The cheers of those on the command deck followed the aegis frigate Paragon as she cut across her parent ship’s nose. Engine stacks on full burn whited out Dantalion’s viewer and for a moment the escort passed close enough that the electromagnetic distortion generated by the interplay of the two sets of shields whined over every open channel.

Zerberyn did not cheer. He had never doubted, and there was little to celebrate in seeing others catch up to one’s certainty.

The escort sailed under as Dantalion went over. The dying Oberon-class battleship cruised between them, trailing plasma discharge and colour distortions as Paragon opened up. Anti-fighter batteries walked down her centre line at devastatingly close range. They struck something critical, an unsecured mega-weapon or a main plasma chamber of the drive core.

The battleship detonated like an atomic warhead.

Dantalion blazed inside her shields like a model voidship in a lightning cage. Paragon’s layered shielding failed simultaneously in an explosive moment of brilliance that rivalled the birth of a star. Her starboard side buckled under forced compression. Bent plates spewed atmosphere, and she skewed off wildly on a new trajectory.

Unshielded ork fighter-bombers that had been emptied out of the Oberon-class’ flight decks were simply obliterated. Muzzle-flash explosions dotted the cloud of attack craft that had been racing in behind. The survivors broke off their run under the barrage of Dantalion’s flak guns and scattered, weaving a craze of propellant tails behind them.

‘Track them, shipmaster, see where they go,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Move to cover Paragon and raise Akienas.’

‘Helm, new heading,’ Marcarian relayed. ‘Put us between Paragon and the orks, siphon power to starbord shields, mobilise reserve gunnery teams to dorsal, starboard and ventral flak batteries.’

The command deck, already a hive of purpose, set about the new orders with a well-drilled efficiency.

‘Aye sir, new heading. Plotting turn.’

‘No response from Paragon.’

‘Reading catastrophic damage to her primary transceiver array. Trying to contact her machine-spirit.’

On the main viewer, the wreckage of the Oberon-class slowly dispersed.

‘The beacon?’ said Zerberyn, impatiently.

‘Nothing yet, lord.’

‘Lords!’ The elated cry came from the vox-liaison. She tore off her headphones, and leapt out of her chair. ‘Fists Exemplar ships incoming. Chastened. Angel Astra. Unbroken. It’s the whole fleet.’

‘Bright skies,’ Marcarian murmured, and closed his good eye.

‘Show me,’ said Zerberyn.

The vid-feed in the oculus switched to a view dorsal aft. There were bits of coiled wire, ice-encrusted cosmic dust that had accumulated around the communication vanes, and macro-turrets around the edge of the image. Beyond the fuzz, a dozen iron-grey splinters hung in space, ranging from aegis frigates a few hundred metres long to mighty strike cruisers a kilometre in length and bristling with armament enough to waste a planetary hemisphere. Explosive shells and high-energy plasma spat between them and the loose agglomeration of ork cruisers that had strayed this far from the main battle area.

The most likely theoretical was they were a picketing force set to guard the Mandeville point. To what end, Zerberyn could only speculate, but if he was indulging in theoreticals then he might further suppose that it was to ensure that whomever it was currently engaged by the main ork battlegroup did not escape the system.

More warships translated in all the time, cutting through the empyreal sheath like knives through black silk. Each new arrival brought a burst of vox-chatter that gabbled from the vox-turret hardlines and bled into the general commotion. Void-suited tacticians hurried to update the strategium desk, while vox-personnel spoke on two, or sometimes three, lines at once in an effort to impose the pre-formulated formation protocols on the emerging fleet.

It had been for just a few short decades that the Fists Exemplar had called Eidolica their home, but for seven centuries prior their home range had been the Rubicante Flux. Their fleet was sizeable. With the exclusion of the Black Templars, whose numbers were a secret guarded even amongst brothers, the Fists Exemplar provided over half of the Last Wall’s naval power.

Zerberyn was not of a mind to let them forget it.

A huge shape slid into main view, high on Dantalion’s z-axis.

Serfs from every station rose in unison to clap and cheer it. It was a battle-barge, Dantalion’s sister ship, but even more heavily armed. Kilometre after battle-scarred kilometre of adamantium-grey crenellations bristled with macro-batteries like the armour studs on a chrono-gladiator. Gothic spires rose from its central bulk, counterbalanced by smaller ventral towers. Launch tubes, flak turrets and antennae arrays vied with the asteroid-pitted statues of warrior angels aboard the immense dorsal spine. A volley of torpedo launches from her broadside tore a slow-turning ork crusier to shreds. Dantalion rocked with the energy discharge.

‘Alcazar Remembered,’ Marcarian confirmed with one half of a smile.

‘Welcome the Chapter Master,’ said Zerberyn in a voice that offered little of the kind. ‘Transmit our tactical data to the flagship.’

The vox-liaison frowned as she retook her seat, refitted her headset, and swivelled back to her console. Zerberyn joined her at her station.

‘A priority transmission,’ she reported. ‘It’s coming through some intense interference, but it’s definitely Last Wall.’

‘Our beacon?’

She shook her head as she worked. ‘The coordinates don’t tally. The beacon was being transmitted from a near-stationary position much closer to the Vandis star. This signal is new, and it’s coming from the system’s edge.’ She stood and shouted at the liaison working auspectoria, then dropped back into her seat as the requested read-outs squirted across to her system. ‘Residual warp backwash from twenty to twenty-five vessels suggests a recent inbound translation. An hour old, maximum. Multiple radiation sources, plasma discharge, particle spread suggestive of hostile tractor locks on ships running full ahead.’ She spun her chair towards Zerberyn and leant back to look up to him. ‘It’s a Black Templars fleet, my lord, inbound on the beacon at ninety degrees to our position. Auto-identifiers name the signalling ship the Interdictor.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘I can’t guarantee you’ll hear every word.’

‘Put it on.’

The woman flicked a switch, and angry static roared from the turret’s augmitters. The sounds of alien voices blizzarded across the channel, bleedthrough from neighbouring frequencies, some breathless prattle that ran and ran and ran.

Gorkamorkagorkamorka.

‘Castellan Kasemund,’ scratched the interference-punished voice of a Space Marine. Zerberyn could pick up only odd words of what followed. ‘Crusade… recall… Phall… retaliation beacon… cruiser, Obsidian Sky… venerable…’

The castellan stopped speaking as static erased his words like ripple patterns on a beach as the moons pulled the tide higher.

Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka.

‘They must have been in the materium when they received Obsidian Sky’s transmission,’ explained the vox-liaison. ‘Most likely they would have received the complete message.’

Zerberyn nodded his understanding. ‘Your strength and situation, brother?’

Gorkamorkagorkamorka.

‘Eleven ships… Crusade… spear in the belly… boarded… push us hard… not show the xenos our backs.’

The spit and pop of bolter fire imposed itself over the background crackle, but neither that nor the orkish chatter could quite disguise the Black Templar’s uncomplicated disdain for the alien.

‘Lord captain, sir,’ mumbled Marcarian. ‘Auspectoria confirms several hundred large-mass warships, twice that in escorts and support craft. It’s inconceivable that one ship could have survived.’

‘And yet the battle rages on.’

Zerberyn thought back on the picket fleet the orks had positioned to hold the Mandeville point, and presumably the other that the Black Templars had broken through. The incredible mobilisation of materiel to run down one ship.

It was the work of a moment, a moment in which the command deck buzzed with a thousand and one operations.

‘Bulwark and Faceless Warrior coming astern.’

‘The orks are pulling back their fighters. They’re breaking off.’

‘Orders from the Chapter Master to hold this line while Noble Savage takes Paragon under tow.’

The image on the main view had switched again, this time to a starboard shot. Dantalion’s broadside lit up with detonations as her macrocannons opened fire in unison. Zerberyn felt the battle-barge pushed several metres to port. Void flares and feedback flashed across the viewer as Dantalion traded fire with a pair of brutish ork battlecruisers, box-jawed with weapon blisters and extraneous plating. The astern battlecruiser came apart under a volley of prow lances and void torpedos as Bulwark slid into position.

There was some reason the orks wanted to keep the Obsidian Sky inside this system.

‘I have them,’ cried Vox. ‘Obsidian Sky and one other vessel. Her spirit resists divulging her identity, but energy profiles and mass ratios suggest an Adeptus Astartes cruiser.’

The turret augmitters fizzed with vox-corruption. ‘Incoming… Throne… massive… protects—’

‘Castellan? Castellan?’

Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka.

‘Cut it off.’

The augmitters hissed like the animated dead, and then went silent.

‘Should I apprise Alcazar Remembered, lord?’ asked Marcarian.

‘Of course, but first signal to Bulwark and Faceless Warrior.’

‘To what end, lord?’

An appalled exclamation drew Zerberyn and his shipmaster’s attention towards the chart desk before he could answer. Strategium serfs backed away from it as though afraid that it was one of them that had damaged it. A small portion of the display had been blacked out: a sphere of unidentifiable darkness moved slowly through the glowing hololith field towards the highlighted wedge of Black Templars ships, ork icons disappearing as though swallowed by a black hole.

‘The incoming vessel that the Interdictor reported,’ Zerberyn concluded.

Marcarian looked to him, aghast. ‘What kind of monster does it carry?’

‘Contact Bulwark and Faceless Warrior. Advise them to break formation and follow us.’

‘But lord, Thane’s orders—’

‘Are subordinate to an Exemplar’s judgement. We must protect the Obsidian Sky.’ Zerberyn glanced back to the chart desk, the auspex shadow that was slowly spreading across it. He could almost hear the challenge of the Beast roared across light years. ‘We must engage that ship.’

‘Try again,’ commanded Maximus Thane, Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar. ‘I want my ships back in formation.’

‘They’re not responding, lord Chapter Master.’

‘Is Zerberyn ignoring me?’

‘It’s the interference, lord. It’s getting worse and Dantalion’s already out of contactable range. I’m not getting a reply from Bulwark or Faceless Warrior either.’

Maximus Thane leaned forward, one hissing, armoured boot up on the seat of his command throne as though being seated was a transient luxury that he might abjure at a moment’s notice.

In the auspectoria turret below, void-suited serfs bent over the crowded scanner table, wielding protractors and slide rules with the prowess of champions at the Festival of Blades, calling out number strings to their colleagues mobbing the chart desk at the neighbouring strategium turret. The blisters of colour-coded ork markers at the desk’s extreme range were beginning to drop off the hololithic display, and operators shouted across one another in their efforts to explain why.

To Thane it resembled a planetary transition; a slow-moving disc that temporily blanked out a small portion of its parent sun.

Compared to the mortal men and women under his authority he was an armoured giant, face stern, battleplate grey as weathered bedrock, enthroned within a cathedra of moulded steel and shock-responsive hydraulics. From the various read-outs and data-displays that sprouted from the armrests, he could monitor every major function of the ship from shield strength to engine efficiency to oxygen pressure. His oversight was total, his command absolute. He was brilliant, naturally, but tactical aptitude could be found at every level of the Chapter. There were plenty, also — Zerberyn or Dentor (Daylight now, he reminded himself) to name but two — with greater prowess at arms. But there were none more stubborn, even amongst the elite ranks of his peers, and his perfectionist streak was as sharp as the high polish of his combat knife.

‘My line of battle, shipmaster. Send forward Grey Ranger to hold Dantalion’s position.’

‘Orders already relayed, lord.’

Shipmaster Weylon Kale was an old hand. He had served in the Crantar VII compliance, duelled ships with Archon M’awrr, and was even rumoured to have been aboard the old Alcazar Astra as a young subaltern during the Eidolican Crash that had cost the Chapter the great Oriax Dantalion. Clasping his hands behind his back, the shipmaster turned to regard the main viewer that dominated the far prow-end of the command deck.

The large multi-screen display currently showed the unaugmented glitter of space and occasional sweeps of static. Without magnification, even a void fight between capital-class warships could lose itself in the deep black between stars. Vandis was the simmering red backdrop to most of the displays. The sun’s surface churned, boiled, vented off the last of its fading heat. It was near enough to the fight to force the orks’ battleships into a looser than usual formation to avoid arcing ejections of coronal matter, an uncommon display of self-preservation that Thane took into tactical consideration. One corner of the display had been given over to a view of the dead Oberon-class cruiser. The frigates Chastened and Noble Savage drove through the debris field, shields stuttering, as they slowly drew the wreck of Paragon out under tow.

A keystroke from Thane reformatted the subscreen to a schematic view of the Fists Exemplar fleet.

Frigates were moving ahead of the main fleet assets to present a picket of anti-fighter and anti-torpedo capability, but had already become mired in close fighting with the orks’ own screening ships. The cruiser Grey Ranger was moving up as ordered to provide close support. Scrolling updates reported shield hits, weapons fire. Of the light ships, only the specialist frigate Excelsior held back, escorted by a pair of attack-dog-like frigates of her own. His fingers brushed the data-display again. The view zoomed out to show three golden aquilae, led by Dantalion, veering off towards the second, smaller Black Templars force that was stuck in the mass of ork warships like a splinter in a grox’s belly.

A low-yield, shield-diffused impact trembled through the hull.

‘What is Zerberyn thinking?’

Kale turned, hangdog face tilting to find Thane’s above the command throne. ‘I would not care to theorise as to the First Captain’s thoughts, my lord. But Dantalion’s last data-burst reported the coordinates of Obsidian Sky and something about an ork flagship of some kind incoming. From his current vector I’d suggest he’s attempting to flank this ship or perhaps lure it away from the Black Templars.’

‘He’s forced my hand.’ Thane shifted in his throne so that both boots were grounded and he was leaning forward. He steepled his gauntleted fingers and growled. ‘So we might as well act before we lose three more ships for no gain at all. Deploy the fleet, shipmaster, attack formation. Objective, the Obsidian Sky and her mysterious escort.’

Without a word, Kale turned on his heels, pointed across the deck to the vox-liaison, and produced a ‘go’ order with a nod. The dozen or so crew-serfs staffing the tiered, organ-like switchboard sprang into activity, routing wires, establishing vox-contacts, all under the close scrutiny of a red-robed tech-adept and a young-looking subaltern named Teal.

‘Dutiful, reporting ready.’

‘Guilliman, reporting ready.’

‘Unbroken, reporting ready.’

‘Grey Ranger, sir,’ said Teal, breaking the litany and looking up from the control board to relay the message herself. ‘The signal’s breaking up, but she’s reporting heavy shelling from beyond the range of her auspex. Requesting permission to break formation.’

‘The orks cannot be actively targeting her at that kind of range,’ said Thane. ‘Permission denied.’

‘Fishing,’ murmured Kale. ‘Hoping for a bite.’

‘And they shall receive one. Instruct all ships, forward on us.’ Thane clenched both gauntlets on his throne’s armoured rests and rose. ‘Ahead full, shipmaster, weapons free.’

Alcazar Remembered was a dominant beast. Her deck plates trembled with the power output required to sustain her formidable array of weapons systems and shields. She did not purr; she growled. It was difficult to stand aboard her as her engine stacks were fired to capacity and not share something of that invulnerability.

Her killing spirit vibrated through Thane’s boots, into the core of his being like the might and will of the primarch himself.

‘Sir.’ The call came from the liaison working at auspectoria. ‘We have visual on Obsidian Sky.’

‘On screen.’

The images currently cycling through the main viewer cut out. The panoramic shot that replaced them was badly pixellated, as though translated from an image intended for a much smaller display. Blizzards of static swept across the screens at intervals. But there was no mistaking what they were seeing. A hush descended. Hazard and proximity alerts continued to bleep. Consoles chirruped for attention. Crew serfs pulled headsets from their ears and stared up at the screen in horror. Thane realised his hand had moved across his mouth.

It was the Obsidian Sky. They were watching her final moments.

In the cold silence of full magnification, a sequence of explosions blossomed from her port stern. Shields were gone. Bits of enamelled black outer hull glittered around her, held to her mass like a miniature ring system around a gas giant. The image shook slightly and fuzzed, as if the force of the blasts had somehow carried over the feed. The static bomb faded slowly. Tracers spat back and forth over the display. Sitting above Obsidian Sky and, relative to Alcazar Remembered, behind it, was another Adeptus Astartes cruiser. Their hulls were as close together as though conducting a last stand: two old warriors, back-to-back and beset by foes. A torpedo hit blasted a chunk from its dorsal spire. A tortured flare of combusting atmosphere raged into the airless void, spraying Obsidian Sky with metal fragments.

Thane leaned to the edge of his throne, elbows to the thigh plates of his armour, chin to his ceramite-clad knuckles.

Impossible.

‘Traitors of the Fourth.’

The inconceivability of it brought a shiver to Thane’s heart. He felt short of breath, his chest felt tight. The bald fact of what he was witnessing, that which was verifiable, that which was practical, simply could not overcome his disbelief in it.

Thane tightened his hold on the brass grip-studs. Focus on the immediate.

His voice, when it came, was the exemplar of strength.

‘Signal Obsidian Sky.’

‘I can’t, my lord,’ cried Teal, little trace of that invulnerability in her tone now. ‘The interference is too intense.’

‘Forward grids.’ Kale’s voice, coming from somewhere, some universe where Black Templars and Iron Warriors did not fight side-by-side. ‘Keep those fighters off our shoulder.’

‘Reduce magnification,’ said Thane. ‘Can you show me Interdictor and the main Black Templars fleet?’

‘Aye, sir.’

The screen blinked to a broader view.

A dozen Black Templars vessels of various classes came into active view, the swollen chromosphere of Vandis highlighting lance arrays, fins and turrets in bitter red. They moved in an arrowhead formation, the blunted point pushing towards Obsidian Sky and the Iron Warriors cruiser, but were blocked off and encircled by ork ships. Debris clouds filled the gaping holes in their formation. Ork gunships, muscular and tusked, surrounded them, bristling with firepower. A Black Templars destroyer was in the final stages of disintegration, a bite taken out of its belly by the boarding claw of a monstrous ironclad. All inertial control lost, the two ships slowly spun around their conjoined axis as the void fight raged around them. The thump of explosions lit the screen, energy lances and the spent heat of solid rounds filling the display like embers rising off a fire.

And closing in on their position, casting a shadow light-minutes long, was a vessel that dwarfed them all.

‘Hellsteeth.’

Thane was not sure who said it. It seemed to hiss out of the internal communications, out of the unattended speakers and microphones of Vox. He had seen the ork attack moon that had demolished Eidolica, and the even larger war-engine that now loomed over Terra. They had been massive, but they had been moons. The gut accepted that they would be huge, even if the mind knew them to be constructed. They had been planetary bodies. He had processed them on that scale.

This was different. The behemoth hoving into view in pursuit of the Black Templars fleet was a ship. To be precise it was a carrier, fighters and destroyer-sized warships streaming from cavernous flight bays in its underside. It made the Eternal Crusader look like a corvette. Even the Phalanx would have been dwarfed.

Thane had no frame of reference for it.

A contemptuous slice from an axial beam weapon sheared through the aft of the rearmost Black Templars cruiser. Some kind of gravitic conversion beam, it crushed the entire aft section as though it were parchment scrap. The sudden spike of hypergravity flipped the warship nose to stern, torsional stresses cutting through what was left like a gladius through a ration can and spilling its contents into space.

Thane had never seen a weapon like it. Nothing the Imperium could produce came close. A sail-like array of adjusting fins, turning wheels, shivering wires and enormous copper rods rose from the ork carrier’s bloated hull. A wash of strange, green-tinged energy sparked through the array towards its vertex and seemed to radiate into space. Thane’s throat clenched.

Witch.

‘All Black Templars identifiers are in,’ said Auspectoria. He spoke quietly, mournfully, eyes on the on-screen tableau. ‘Nine ships, and debris mass-equivalent to about fifteen more.’

Thane counted quickly.

‘I see ten ships.’

‘Nine ships, my lord. There’s a delay. The feed is being relayed from Excelsior. Our systems can’t penetrate the interference.’

The carrier fired again. A full spread of crude but devastingly effective torpedoes blasted another cruiser to pieces.

Nine.

‘Can she relay a hololith signal? Can she get me Obsidian Sky?’

‘I… I think so.’

‘Then do it!’

Shipmaster Kale moved purposefully towards the strategium board. Another impact to the forward shields almost threw him the final metre, forcing him to steady himself against the metallic rim of the console’s bulk housing. An armsman in grey carapace bodyplate and with a pump-action shotgun hanging from a shoulder strap hurried to help him. Kale thanked him with a curt nod, then gestured him back to his post.

‘Should we also attempt to raise the…’ the shipmaster looked uncomfortable, ‘other ship, lord?’

‘No!’

Thane practically spat the word. The idea alone was abhorrent.

‘When circumstances change, my lord…’ said Kale. His wish to recite his Guilliman vied with awareness of his position relative his superhuman Chapter Master. He restricted himself to just that opening line, and a poignant arch of his eyebrow.

‘Some circumstances don’t change,’ said Thane. ‘Some walls can never come down.’

‘Sir. My lord.’

They both turned. It was Teal.

‘I have the Venerable Dreadnought-Marshal Magneric on vox.’

Six

Vandis System — Mandeville point

The image within the wire hoop of the cable-fed, spring-mounted hololith projector was dark. Had it not been for the drizzle of static and the occasional side-to-side flicker of the shadow shapes within it, then Thane might have concluded that Excelsior had lost the signal. The cold blue glow of the frequency-tether bulb confirmed otherwise. Primary power aboard Obsidian Sky was out. Even bridge lighting was down.

Illuminated under periodic fountains of sparks, he could make out Magneric. The hard, angular definition of his armour shone like a faceted work of jet. Silver cuneiform picked out the edgework of black, battle-scarred ceramite plates. But this was not the moulded plate of a battle-brother. It was the immense armour housing of a Dreadnought’s sarcophagus.

‘Do I address the Venerable Magneric?’ spoke Thane, forgetting for a moment, in his reverence, where he was. ‘I studied your actions in the defence of Terra as a neophyte. The sally that silenced the Fourth Legion’s guns is legendary, even if it cost you your life.’

‘The Emperor lights our true path!’ the Dreadnought thundered, shouting Thane down as he still spoke as though he had not heard, or had listened and deemed it irrelevant. His speakers were pitched to a frightening volume, his words stretched and distorted by the interlink as though delivered through a pipe. ‘Not once but twice. Twice!’

The image dissolved into drizzling static and the audio went with it. For a moment, ork gibberish pushed hard onto the line, and then the hololith returned, albeit for several seconds without sound. The Venerable Dreadnought must have been similarly affected by the break in the link but, judging by the flutter of the scriptural parchments that lay over his speakers, he spoke yet.

‘Praise be!’ the Dreadnought boomed, rising to full volume in a grind of static. ‘Praise be!’

Thane turned enquiringly to Teal.

‘There’s nothing I can do, lord. The interruptions are at their end.’

The command deck shook under a series of escalating blows, and Thane gripped the handrail that encircled the hololith plate. Mass-explosions and slow disintegrations lit the screens of the main viewer as they cycled through shots of the Fists Exemplar fleet. An aegis frigate came apart under a sustained torrent of macro-fire, its hull flaking away like rust. An ork warship vanished in a ball of light. Another lost its shields in a spasm of current, then was engulfed and destroyed. The cruiser Angel Astra split down her centre, metal shearing and snapping and spinning into space, coming apart before the ork assault ship that was ploughing into her spine. Light attack craft burst and died, indistinguishable from static.

‘Magneric. Magneric!’ Static rippled through the loop-array like blast debris in a warpstorm. He waited for a response for as long as he felt he could keep his attention from the needs of his own ship. And then, half-buried in noise, like the blip of an emergency transponder to alert a searching friend that the debris hid survivors, came the voice.

‘The Emperor guided us to Dzelenic Four and showed us the way to victory. Seven centuries I pursued the traitor that calls me friend, and it was for a purpose. Praise be!’

It sounded as though that final coda was carried by other voices in the background, but it was impossible to be sure. To add to the orks’ interference, there was a disconnect of several seconds between what Thane heard and what he saw. Holding a dialogue with the most considered of Fists Exemplar would have been difficult, but it was abundantly clear that carrying on a conversation with the Venerable Black Templar even under the most ideal of circumstances would have been a challenge.

‘Victory, Dreadnought-Marshal?’ he urged. ‘Victory over the orks? Is that why they pursue you in such numbers, for information that you carry?

‘Abhor the witch, deny the witch, destroy the witch!’

Thane tightened his grip over the handrail, hung his head, closed his eyes, and let out an exasperated growl. The shiver of shield-diffused detonations ran through the metal and into his palms.

‘Our faith in Him is our armour,’ Magneric continued, unabated. ‘His divinity is the sword in our hands. Alas for the weakness of my Navigator’s faith, his mind was destroyed when the witch craft pulled us from the warp. Loathe the mutant!’

Thane left the hololithic projection to its diatribe. The Black Templars’ fundamentalist beliefs were subject to hushed discussion among the Successor Chapters, but were nominally a secret nonetheless. To hear them declared so brazenly by a veteran of the Heresy War made Thane uneasy.

Nonetheless. ‘Whatever the Venerable’s state of mind, shipmaster, it is clear to me that he has something of value,’ he said aside to Kale. ‘Anything that the orks work so hard to keep from me is something that I want. Release emergency power to main drive and forward shields. Ram the alien from our path if you must. Divert the necessary power to tractors and teleporters.’

‘No!’ Magneric’s time-delayed static-hiss rumbled from the array like thunder. ‘The Emperor protects.’

‘I do not understand. You sent out a signal for aid.’

The Dreadnought’s bulk pivoted against the enshrouding darkness, turning sufficiently far from his hololith’s field of capture to boom something at a crew serf without Thane’s hearing. ‘I am sending your ship my sarcophagus’ vid-log of the battle. May it lift your heart, brother. Use it gloriously.’

Thane looked to Kale, who looked in turn to the vox-liaison, Teal. She frowned. ‘Data exload from Obsidian Sky confirmed but we’ve received nothing yet.’ A few tense moments passed. ‘Wait… Data packet received, not by us, but by the Interdictor.’

Thane thumped the handrail. ‘Who did he think that he was talking to?’

While he marshalled his frustration, Kale had crossed to the strategium and reformatted the viewer to a split screen. Individual screens on the left-hand side continued to flick between shots of the Fists Exemplar fleet.

The frigate picket was coming apart under an intolerable weight of firepower. The Dauntless, Champion and Noble Savage were destroyed. The Grey Ranger was burning, backup generators spitting emergency power into space.

The right-side screens had been combined to run a single, near-real-time feed of the second Black Templar crusade group, crudely overlain by a black grid showing the divides between the screens. They were barely moving at all now, held up in a mass of ork warships. Dantalion and her accompanying cruisers were just sliding into field, enveloped in an oil-on-water pattern of void-shield discharge as the three massive ships sailed into the orks’ heaviest ordnance. Arriving from the opposite direction, the ork carrier crunched into the rear of its escort fleet, spitting out a volume of fire equivalent to an entire Navy battlegroup, weird power squirming over its ramshackle sail. Another black cruiser blossomed into fire. From the vid-feed alone, Thane could not be sure that it was not the Interdictor.

‘Zerberyn gets himself into the right place at the right time once again. Can we get a message to him?’

‘No, lord. The carrier’s blanket denial broadcast grows exponentially more severe as you approach.’

‘Do we have any ships unengaged?’

‘Paragon is more-or-less intact and has drive power restored.’ Kale consulted a display. ‘And Excelsior and her escorts.’

‘Transmit new orders to those ships. Intercept Dantalion with orders to escort Interdictor from the battle and prepare for immediate translation: return to Terra with all speed, it is nearer than Phall, and hope that Magneric carries information of worth. Dispatch Guilliman to accompany them.’

‘Respectfully, lord, she’s the second most powerful ship in the fleet.’

‘I expect a degree of insubordination from my First Captain, shipmaster, I do not expect it from you.’

The old shipmaster clipped his heels. ‘Aye, lord.’

‘Use it gloriously, brother,’ came Magneric’s voice through the distortion. ‘Praise be.’

‘Hold firm, Dreadnought-Marshal. Your brother, Bohemond, saved my Chapter from my stubbornness on Eidolica and you can expect the same today. Whether the Emperor wishes it or no. Magneric? Magneric!’

The projector emitted an angry hiss. A whiff of ozone. Gabbling voices. The detector picked up the orks’ gibberish frequencies and reconstituted the random noise in eerie repeat patterns and oscillating waves.

The link had been severed.

They had lost Magneric.

Seven

Vandis

The lighting on the command deck of Obsidian Sky plinked on and off, on and off. Half-second flashes of artificial light slid across machine-smooth black metal and the stiff, liveried corpses that lay across them. Plastek console frames stuffed with broken glass flashed back, each jagged piece a lens showing a reflected snapshot of a dead ship. Coolant gases spumed into the chamber from a damaged radiator assembly in the ceiling, filling the area with a vaporous, sub-zero froth.

At the aft section there was a raised platform, above which flew a white banner bearing the Sigismund cross and a blood splatter in the lower left corner. It was ringed with displays and terminals, all dead. Castellan Ralstan had taken an exploding oxygen pipe in the face. He lay on his front on the steps down to the main bridge, armour cracked and burned, arm drawn up as if to conceal the ruin of his head. Light and shadow came and passed: on, off. Shipmaster Ericus was fetched up against the aft bulkhead as though someone had shoved him against it and put a bullet through his forehead.

Down a level, into the main deck, the bodies lay more thickly. Some had been crushed under falling panels or buried under shattered glass, and now lay staring up like dead men frozen under thin ice. They had been electrocuted, burned, cut by glass shrapnel and bludgeoned by high-mass debris, most while still strapped into work station chairs. One had been reduced to a carbonaceous smear on the seat leather by a catastrophic overload of his auspex. The console was still sputtering, sparking and fizzing into the nitrogen mist.

‘Boarding torpedoes incoming,’ mumbled the Master Ordinatum, Franzek, as though drawing each word one at a time from his head. Blood matted his hair and ran down the side of his neck. His eyes were glazed. The harsh lighting intermittently exposed his blanched face. On, off. On, off. ‘I’ve never seen so many at once.’

‘Faith is the first victim of thought. Keep firing,’ Magneric answered with a metallic rumble, stepping back from the hissing hololith projector.

Dead too.

‘Firing… aye.’

Targeting grids were dead. Auto-loaders were dead.

The gunnery chief was arming whatever had been already loaded and launching it manually, as fast as his shell-shocked nervous system could still manage. Each shot sent a shudder through the ship, a nail recoil-driven into the hull. Inertial stabilisers were dead too, but the crew, what remained of it, no longer even recognised the shaking. By sheer mass, Magneric stood immovably in the middle of the command dais.

‘We deny the alien this ship, until the Emperor gives us our leave to rest.’

‘Ave Imperator,’ they replied.

It was inconceivable that Obsidian Sky could destroy every last torpedo, but they could thin their numbers. And miracles happened, Magneric knew. The hull squealed in torment, shaken, this time from without, as though being attacked with a drill.

‘We shall know no fear!’

With a sudden lurch, the drilling stopped. Seconds elapsed without an explosion. The crew held their breath, and held onto their brace positions. They knew what a torpedo hit felt like.

‘Sound the general alert,’ boomed Magneric.

‘Aye.’

The bondsman covering at the main drive station — Cecillia — staggered from starboard to port, thumbed open a transparent plastek cover to expose a red key in a slot, and then turned it. The flickering light was immediately shot through with red. The effect was bitty, hazard-striping the debris-strewn deck as dull red lights glowed from broken screens.

Internal sensors were dead. Communications were dead.

Without them, necessity had demanded the command crew be creative. Power utilisation profiles indicated active terminals in all sections. Oxygen saturations pinpointed signs of life at muster points on all decks. Kaplin, at Operations, had breathlessly suggested retrofitting a pair of servitors to link up as a two-way communicator, but there had been no time to implement it. Now, Kaplin was directing that reckless enthusiasm into the pump action of a Mk IX shotgun. He took position on the steps near the late castellan, a slightly crazed look in his eyes.

Magneric stamped through an about-face. The assault cannon mounted on his right shoulder ran through a sequence of test cycles. His immense power fist rotated, clicked and reversed, like some kind of puzzle clock. He trained the spinning gun barrel onto the magnetically locked blast doors that sealed off the command deck from the rest of the ship.

He could almost feel the xenos aboard his ship, the way a man of flesh and bone would feel the tasteless, textureless, odourless itch of a radiation dose. This new breed of greenskin was a dangerous foe. They fought tactically, acted coherently: if they had forces to spare to claim his crippled ship then he could only assume they would do so exactly as he would in their place. The command deck would be the priority target. Then the enginarium, gunnery control, the flight bays.

It was useful however to remind oneself that they were not men. They were still orks.

‘Rolans,’ he voxed, attempting to raise the battle-brother barracked in the deck below with a squad of Black Templars and two platoons of armsmen serfs. ‘Sword Brother?’

A light crackle of static filled his acoustic register.

The carrier had somehow managed to kill off helm-to-helm vox. Until then, Magneric had thought that unblockable.

Cold gases swirled. The lights rattled, and blinked. On, off. On, off.

On…

Time stretched, bloated. The blast doors seemed suddenly a yawning distance away, although his own triple-grid spatial positioning system insisted that their relative positions were unchanged. It was as if, in this chamber alone, the laws of the universe had been relaxed, the space between particles expanding even as the particles themselves remained exactly as they were. Making room.

Off.

There was a pop, like a broken vacuum seal, and an ork burst out of the vapour cloud as if it had been hidden there all along and slammed into the middle of the main deck. The flickering light made the sudden appearance of its gruesome mass even more unreal. It was the monster that stalked the unevolved lobes of the human brain, fear centres unchanged since Homo sapiens sapiens first emerged from the forests and onto the plains of prehistoric Terra. And now, two hundred millennia and half a segmentum removed, they still recognised a beast.

The ork bared yellow fangs and roared.

Kaplin roared back, mad with horror, and swung about, leading with his shotgun. There was a boom. Scatter shot from both barrels tore up the ork’s black-and-white body armour and riddled its heavy jaw with pellets. It bullied through, tusked mouth wide like a dog thirsty for the rain.

Feet spread and mag-locked to the deck, Magneric’s torso swung one hundred and eighty degrees and obliterated the ork’s skull with a point-four-second burst of fire. Exit wounds and ricochets wasted the surrounding consoles, but the wellbeing of his ship was no longer a priority. Better to deny it to the alien.

‘Deny the alien! Kill the alien!’

More orks charged through the mist and onto the command deck, and by the strobing light men began to die.

An axe split Franzek’s head like a gourd before the dazed man even realised he was in danger. Seated beside him, Merrel punched his belt release buckle and rose, drawing his sidearm. A thunderblast from a brick-like stubber dropped him back down, printing the ruined contents of his chest over the console. The ork belted its pistol, hauled Merrel’s remains from the station and, leaving its axe where it was buried in Franzek’s head, stabbed a wedge-like device with a blinking base into the unit. The surviving screens immediately went haywire. Cecillia was ripped, chair fittings and all, from the main drive station and hurled screaming across the chamber. Her body broke so hard against the stainless steel aquila mounted over the prow in place of a viewscreen that she put a dent in its wing. Flinching from the meat-slap sound, Kaplin screamed a homily ad-libbed with wild obscenities and nonsense as he backed up the steps. He pumped his shotgun, spitting out a pair of spent casings, and then fired, whizzing the air with shrapnel and exploding a lumen fitting in the ceiling.

They were outmuscled, outgunned. The bondsmen of the Black Templars had never been so outclassed.

Venerable Magneric advanced at a measured pace, stitching the air with short, ultra-precise bursts of assault cannon fire. He shredded an ork in identical, almost uniform checker-pattern body armour with a point-three-second salvo, then pivoted, tracked, locked — and fired. A point-seven-second burst chewed through armour and skin and riddled the main drive terminal with bone.

With an implosive clap of displacement, an ork teleported directly into his path.

Magneric did not know what manner of thoughts filled the mind of an ork. Words? Images? A deep, ancestral dream of destruction and slaughter? He had never considered it. He regretted that failing now, for whatever the creature had expected to encounter when it had stepped into its ship’s teleportation portal, a Black Templars Dreadnought in the throes of battle rage had not been one of them.

The expression on its beast face was beyond price.

Magneric’s power fist punched into the ork’s chest and lifted it from the deck like an eel on a spear. Concentric rings of adamantium teeth spun in opposing directions like propellers, blending the ork in its entirety and spraying its vaporised remains.

The remaining orks took cover in pits and behind bulkheads, and fired back with noisy bursts of stubber-fire.

Keeping low, Kaplin ran to Merrel’s blood-sprayed terminal and took cover behind the dead bondsman’s chair. He tugged at the blinking spike that the ork had left embedded in it. He could not move it a millimetre.

‘Some kind of denial shunt,’ he yelled, ducking onto his haunches behind Merrel’s chair as bullets flew overhead. ‘It’s opened the outer doors to the flight bays and disengaged the cohesion fields.’

Torpedoes. Assault boats. Teleport commandos. An assault on all fronts, coordinated, and with overwhelming force. Magneric despised his enemy enough to be impressed.

Obsidian Sky was not like the ships of his former VII Legion brothers. A vessel like the Fists Exemplar flagship was a mobile fortress, constructed for the projection of force and the holding of territory. Obsidian Sky was not built to be defended. She was a blade, a tool of incision and conquest.

Stubber-rounds spanking off his metal skin, Magneric launched a full spread of grenades from his power fist’s underslung launchers. Primed for airburst, the withering frag-storm blew the orks’ improvised shelter open. The survivors, black-and-white bodyplate glittering with fragmentation shards, he mowed down with an almost hot-blooded relish.

It was moments like these when it still felt good to be alive.

His assault cannon wound down with a squeal, nitrogen condensate hissing to vapour on contact.

‘Um.’ Kaplin stared mutely at the console beside his. ‘Shipmaster Attonax of the Palimodes has been trying to raise us, Dreadnought-Marshal. They… express their intent to depart with the Fists Exemplar.’

Pistons in the back of Magneric’s legs retracted with a hydraulic wheeze, and tilted him back to face the ceiling. What remained of his flesh body after the fall of Tranquility Wall floated in an amniotic sac deep within the metal behemoth that interred him. For centuries, fury alone had driven him on. It was a living thing, that fury, in a way that he no longer was, pure and unsullied. Immortal. Others granted the highest honour of service beyond death required prolonged periods of rest between deployments, but not him. His rage denied him. He had retained his rank. He had retained his name. His fury too had a name: Kalkator. But now it seemed that it had no further to take him.

‘You seek to escape me at the last, Kalkator? By the Emperor’s decree, never! As we agreed, traitor, we escape together or we die together.’

His chassis pivoted towards Kaplin. ‘Status of engines?’ he demanded.

Kaplin swallowed and hurriedly picked his way through the debris to the main drive station. It took him a moment to interpret the unfamiliar read-outs. ‘Partial thrusters only.’

Magneric’s mind retreated to the cold space, that particular aggregation of cyborganic interfaces where his sarcophagus’ inscrutable machine-spirit met the quiet luminosity of his own immortal soul. The place where the Emperor breathed His will into his interred remains and gave them not just life, but spirit.

‘It will suffice. Set a collison course for the ork carrier and fire thrusters.’

‘Sir?’

‘Are my speakers impaired?’

‘No, venerable lord,’ Kaplin answered crisply, setting down his shotgun to prod the new coordinates into the unfamiliar set of controls. An urgently blinking light back at the communications station caught his eye. He leaned across. ‘It’s the Palimodes again, I think.’

‘Ignore it. Forwards. Always forwards. Let the fireball destroy us all!’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then—’

Magneric turned back to the blast doors.

He could hear weapons fire. Not the dispersive blooms of the armsmen’s shotguns, nor the explosive noise-makers of the orks. It was the focused double-blasts of mass-reactive rounds.

Space Marines.

With a pneumatic hiss the blast doors slid open. The ten-centimetre-thick insulated barrier removed, the frozen air filled with the roar of bolter fire. Two Black Templars, firing from the hip, were covering each other’s withdrawal down the long corridor towards the command deck. At the far end, a mob of orks in neat black-and-white checked plate and horned helms advanced behind a bank of massive shields fitted with eye slits and what looked like heavy flamers.

The auto-defence turrets were dead.

The Space Marines’ shots blazed across the rank of shields. There was a deep-chested huck, like a cleared throat, and a launched grenade flew over the shield wall and went off under the Black Templar currently providing overwatch. The explosion peeled away his power armour and slammed him, broken, into the bulkhead. His comrade was thrown flat, but immediately pulled himself up on his elbows to rake the shield line on full-auto. The orks pushed on, impervious to anything lighter than a heavy bolter.

Their slow advance revealed, squatting on the deck behind them, an abhorrence almost reminiscent of a orkish tech-priest. Except that was impossible.

The orks had always possessed a native affinity for low technology, but nothing as specialised as this. The alien adept sat within a hulking ring of bodyguards, beside a maintenance hatch that it had clearly just blasted open using the plasma cutter grafted to its left arm. The panel’s internal controls were connected to a slate-like device in the ork’s hands and by a set of jump leads to the enormous power pack on its back. But even that abomination lost all power to offend beside the giant standing over it as a man would stand beside a dog.

Its brute size and vibrating, piston-driven fighting suit were impressive, but what struck Magneric at once was the realisation that the white and black plates bolted on as a dermal layer were ceramite. It was Adeptus Astartes power armour. Crusade Armour. Mark II. Magneric recognised the colours and the emblem that stamped them, though he doubted whether anyone who had not lived through those times now would.

White and black. Like the orks in the command deck. Like these orks here. Likely, it was the progenitor design, a scheme that the orks had come to associate with power and strength.

Luna Wolves.

Magneric could think of only one world upon which an ork could have come upon so infamous a relic.

With a battle cry last heard in the flesh at the gates of Holy Terra booming from his speakers, Magneric stamped forward, blocking the blast doors with his armoured bulk.

‘I am Magneric of the Black Templars. I denied the Palace of my God to His wayward sons. I deny it to you, xenos.’

A torrent of assault cannon fire chewed across the orks’ shields and drove them back.

‘Magneric denies you! Kaplin! Fire thrusters!’

Eight

Vandis

Gloriously unrefined firepower unfolded about Alcazar Remembered like butterfly wings, carving open ork ships, murdering their shields and leaving them to perish in her wake in puffs of fire. She had the look of an angel, but she was a gladiator. The void was her arena. The frigates Chastened and Unbroken were the first to shoot through in her wake. Explosions lit the debris field; lance beams and fighter contrails, shield flares and shelling.

The orks’ mass carrier pivoted its main gun.

It was a huge bronzed barrel the length of a capital ship, fed with masses of brightening plasma coils and finned by that sail-like radiator array. With a flash of energised plasma it fired.

Thane’s data-display screamed an alert as an immense gravity spike crunched through Unbroken. The command deck shook, like a bomb shelter under sustained shelling. It was smoke and klaxons, shouts, squeals of metal pushed to the limits of tolerance. The main viewer crackled with static, showing ships and ordnance and flying debris screwing off-course and spraying out in all directions. Dutiful was snatched in by the pull of Unbroken’s suddenly swollen mass and slingshotted back. Following in on maximum drive, there was nothing that the cruiser Bastion of Arete could do to avoid her. Destruction was instantaneous and total.

‘Starboard void banks nearing saturation,’ said Weylon Kale, not shouting — never shouting — but terminally close. His voice was hoarse from breathing smoke and his eyes were raw. The old shipmaster had slotted in at the strategium to replace the section liaison, who lay spread out on the deck under a fire blanket, only hands and third-degree burns showing.

‘Increasing capacity with backup generators,’ the serf beside him screamed back.

Kale turned to Thane.

‘They’ll hold a few minutes more, but against a shot from that…’

‘The Fists Exemplar do not leave their own behind.’

‘My lord, at what cost?’

Thane stood tall as the deck around him trembled. It was a sense of duty, the stubborn grit that was so much a part of him, that stayed his course. Could anyone but a son of Dorn feel that overriding sense of obligation that the gene-seed of their primarch-progenitor imparted? The noble Ultramarines? The Dark Angels? Could they even understand it?

Thane doubted it. He doubted it.

‘We are the Last Wall. There is no further to fall back.’

‘Still no response from Obsidian Sky,’ said Teal, voice wavering up and down with the hits to the shields and the shaking of the deck.

‘Keep sending.’

‘Aye. Lord, the Iron Warriors ship, Palimodes, is signalling. They’re expressing their… gratitude.’

Thane gripped a little more fiercely to the handrail than the shaking of the command deck made necessary. ‘Acknowledge it. Order them to decelerate and come about on our heading. They can draw some of the fire off our flanks while we move in to recover the Obsidian Sky.’

The subaltern keyed in the message and hit transmit. There was a tense pause.

‘Response,’ snapped Teal. Her face went pale, her eyes moving as though scanning a large block of text. She swallowed. ‘They respectfully say no.’

‘No?’

‘The essence of it, lord.’

Thane mastered the tic of annoyance that threatened to break the resolute set of his jaw. ‘Then let them go. Any word from Zerberyn?’

‘No, lord, but Auspectoria reports Dantalion and a number of vessels breaking off and heading for the Mandeville point.’

‘Chapter Master. Come and take a look at this.’ Kale called Thane over to the strategium and directed his attention to the analytics at his station screen. The information was similar to that displayed in hololith over the chart desk, but more readily formatted into digestible data-scales, while the two-dimensional output was easier on unaugmented eyes. As of right then, it showed a fuzzy black cross surrounded by ship debris and power signatures denotive of bording torpedoes, updated every few seconds by a sonar-like sweep of code. ‘We’re approaching Obsidian Sky.’

‘Good. Now get these orks off my viewscreen and show me.’

The viewer blinked from split-screen to a single image of the bloated mass carrier. The sweep of its upper and aft sections were edged red, the sun eclipsed, its dark side lit by the fires and weapon lights of the dwarfed capital-class ships in its shadow. From the speed and angle of drift, it was clear that the image was unaugmented real-time. Rolling with the hits to his shields, Thane made his way back to the command throne and punched up a magnification of Obsidian Sky.

The screen changed, zoomed, and suddenly there she was, gliding like a disguised backhand knife under the carrier’s side. Collision course.

‘Raise Magneric,’ Thane roared, voice-amplification pushing maximum and whining with feedback. ‘Now!’

‘No response,’ Teal cried back.

‘Cut power to main drive. Thrusters, full reverse.’

Wordlessly, Kale carried out the command, liver-spotted old hands fluttering over the array of controls. Thane felt a g-force surge run through the already straining ship, but it was too late.

Not with all the legendary stubbornness of Rogal Dorn himself could he fail to see what was to come next.

The carrier had left the Black Templars vessel for dead until then, content to dispatch boarding torpedoes and assault pods, but now the few dozen kilometres between them erupted into a lava stream of shells and explosive rounds. The two ships were already too close together for primary weapons, but even under that restriction the volume of fire that the ork’s command ship was capable of putting out was staggering. Obsidian Sky’s armoured prow simply dissolved, as if the ork ship were projecting an energy field that was causing it to dematerialise on contact. But Obsidian Sky was just too much ship, even for the mass carrier, to completely obliterate with defence batteries alone.

The space narrowed to under a kilometre.

Her bow had been burned to a flat stump. There was a cauterising flare as ship met shields.

‘Venerable…’ Thane breathed.

With sublime slowness, Obsidian Sky plunged into the carrier’s port side.

It was not slow. Thane knew that. But the scales and distances involved made a nonsense of any human notion of speed. The shorn, void-exposed inner bulkheads of Obsidian Sky’s forward section were folded in and crushed, driven deeper into the carrier’s crust by failing thrusters. Her hull began to deform, ripples spreading back as her starboard thruster blew out. Drive plasma flaring out into space, Obsidian Sky tilted, ground in, and then finally crashed sideways into the larger ship.

Thane winced from the first spark of the explosion, a pure white nucleus of destructive energy swelling up from Obsidian Sky’s drive core. It lasted a fraction of a second, then rushed out in a flash that washed the entire viewscreen white. As if to compensate for the glare, deck lighting dipped. Terminals surged, arced and blew out in serial cascades of sparks. The blast front hit seconds behind the electromagnetic surge, and slammed Thane back into the command throne.

Shaking his head clear of shield saturation alerts and the low whine of decompression warnings, Thane reached up for the command throne’s grip studs and pulled himself back up. His multi-lung took over his breathing as his chest filled with smoke and his blood acidity spiked. He felt the sudden burn of frustrated anger. They could still have seen the Obsidian Sky and her crew clear; instead Magneric had almost destroyed them all.

‘Report,’ he called out, but everyone was still pulling themselves together or nursing flickering consoles like primitives around a fire.

A pair of serfs at auspectoria hurriedly shared notes and drew some quick adjustments to the pattern of curves and vectors on the scanner table. At the same time, the main viewer began to clear and a rough cheer went up from the command crew. The mass carrier was listing, a massive hole blasted out of its side. It was possible to make out distinct decks within the almost perfect hemispherical cutaway, lights twinkling behind the debris cloud and coherence fields like stars within a nebula.

‘Obsidian Sky is down,’ reported an auspex serf. ‘Two Black Templars ships still intact. Cruisers. One of them is the Interdictor. Dantalion, Bulwark, and Faceless Warrior are with them.’

‘The ork ships, my lord,’ said Kale, the swirling colours of the strategium chart desk like racing storm clouds across his face. ‘They’re assuming new headings, moving off from the carrier.’

Thane sank back into the command throne and summoned a pared-back copy of the strategium read-outs to his data-display. The orks were disengaging, breaking for the system perimeter. But why? Why run? Even with their leviathan flagship crippled they had the Imperial forces grossly outgunned.

‘I am seeing some unusual immaterial extrusions centred around the ork carrier,’ Thane said.

‘Teleporter activity,’ Kale explained. ‘High volume over short distances.’

‘It is unlike orks to evacuate. Or to run.’

‘This leadership caste we’ve been hearing about?’

Thane cupped his chin in his hand as the deck around him shook. But why run?

The movement in the viewer was so subtle that it took even Thane’s sharpened senses a moment to pick it up. The carrier’s fin-like primary weapon was cleaving through the wreckage field. Thane saw coils charging, energy gathering in glowing capacitors along the massive cannon’s length. For a moment, he was looking straight down its barrel. Alcazar Remembered was too big to move out of the way. Anything else was a stubborn act of futility.

An ember struck up within the splayed bore of the cannon, vibrating, caged within a magnetic field. Coming from within that debris cloud it looked more like a birthing sun than a weapon. Thane saw a glint, the tip of the sunbeam that lanced towards him, then it blinked like a shooting star as the beam shot across the bows.

A miss. Thane eased his grip on the armrests and let out a breath. In their panic, the orks had wasted their shot. That was his first instinct, based neither on evidence nor on past experience, and as such he was unusually loath to relinquish it, even once it became clear that the carrier wasn’t cutting off the beam. In fact, it was intensifying.

Vandis.

At first, the red giant seemed to shrug off the beam boring into its surface, but after a few seconds, a dark sunspot began to form around the drill site. Bubbles of core matter broke the surface as the sunspot began to sink. It became a blister, then a bruise, a black canker that bored deeper into its parent body and pulled more stellar matter in. The bottomless black of its event horizon garnered a halo, brilliant, burning white.

The accretion disc of a black hole.

Thane slowly rose, watching with a very raw, very human awe. The orks had transformed one of the most stable and intransigent forces in the universe into a weapon, and simply to keep Magneric’s information from reaching Terra they were using it to demolish a star.

A star!

What could any man — even an angel of death — do in the face of such reckless power?

The carrier itself, the most massive ship by far, was the first to feel the effects. Already backsliding, it stopped firing as its cannon was yanked out of alignment, and then slowly bent. In its shadow were two more Black Templars cruisers that had been disabled and seized by grapnels rather than destroyed. Drifting and helpless, they began to come apart. Hull plates crunched, compacted down, atmosphere squirting out as hardpoints tore loose and spun away to be devoured by infinity. Chastened, just sliding into tractor range, drove her reverse engines to maximum and just about managed to remain still. She came about in order to bring her main drive to bear. Thane saw what her shipmaster was trying to do, but manoeuvring thrusters couldn’t compete with the black hole’s pull and she was dragged, side-on, until gravity overwhelmed structural integrity and she blew in a hideously compact explosion.

A shuddering groan passed through Alcazar Remembered.

She was more powerful than her frigate escorts, more than the Black Templars cruisers, but she was also larger, more susceptible to the gravity waves lashing at her hull. Each shudder came with a bang, as though the bulkheads were having their rivets pulled and then being physically snapped. A barrage of high-intensity radiation blinded the viewscreen and killed shipboard communications.

‘Full reverse!’ Thane roared, a string of bolts bursting along a seam from the bulkhead behind him on a scream of inrushing air. ‘All hands prepare for emergency translation! Get us out of here now!’

Nine

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Vangorich knew that his rivals on the Senatorum, and even some of his friends, such that he possessed, had his apartments under surveillance. In recent days it had come to the point where there was rarely a moment in which the agents of two or more lords wouldn’t pass each other on the street. The increasingly erratic behaviour of the likes of Mesring and Zeck had exacerbated matters. The staged attempt on Veritus’ life had certainly not helped.

Even at this early hour, the artificial twilight of the Palace was thronged, the sun as removed from the reality of these people’s own small lives as the love of the God-Emperor of Man.

There was the catering shift bound for the Imperial Fleet College of Strategy, extravagant in pressed white shirts and black tails. Talking quietly amongst themselves, they paused just outside the gated compound while one of their number crossed the street to buy a pack of lhos from the kiosk. Then there was the pretty young girl — fifteen, maybe sixteen — selling soap and devotionals from a stand beneath a humming bronze extractor unit. She smiled pleasantly, chatting to the workers gathered with their bowls under the electrical warmth. There was the street confessor, the work detail that had been picketed on top of the deactivated transformer substation for the better part of a week, the two-man unit assigned to the corner by the Adeptus Arbites to pre-empt that particular ‘flashpoint’, the scrivener hawking his services, the servitor detail carting steel barrels of imported water for the Administratum silo in the neighbouring ward. By comparison, the street sweep working around the Navy men’s feet was a little obvious, if only because it was such a classic.

And if nothing else, Vangorich appreciated vintage.

That was not to say there were not times when an out-of-the-way office deep in the labyrinthine quiet of the Inner Wards was appealing, but it generally suited him to be seen where tradition expected the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum to be. It kept everybody honest, and prevented misunderstandings.

And so it was that the appearance at the gate of a man of medium height, medium build, and middle years caused more of a stir than so nondescript an individual might rationally expect to generate.

Vangorich was happy enough to let those agents make their reports. Partly because it would be a phenomenal waste of energy to stop them all, but primarily because at the time that his body double was deactivating the security system, he was sitting quite comfortably in the eighth level suite of a fortified tower overlooking Bastion Ledge, several lines of latitude away. The armourglass window offered a limited view of the Water Gardens and of the sunrise over the Imperial Palace. At least two-thirds of the offering, however, was taken by the automatic weapons arrays, surveillance jammers, and psychic null-generators that cloaked the compound. The Inquisition was commendably zero-tolerance in their attitude to security.

‘Some wine?’ he asked, leaning across the low-slung reception table and proffering the bottle.

‘Thank you, sir, no,’ said Krule, raising his hand. ‘Never while I’m plotting.’

Vangorich smiled and reset the bottle on the table.

It had a yellowing label inscribed in a curling script too obtuse for Vangorich to make out. He doubted it was actually Terran, but it looked old. Rigil Kentaurus perhaps, or Prospero. The Inquisitorial Representative’s suite had suffered a reversion to the minimalist since Wienand’s brief departure. The soft furnishings had been retired, or rearranged for more efficient effect. The priceless artworks and artefacts that had adorned the walls and tabletops were now warehoused in whatever vast silo the Inquisition must employ for such purposes. It was remarkable what a cull at the top could accomplish.

He took a sip from his glass.

Fruity. Woody. It smelled floral, the way he imagined a functioning ecosystem must smell.

‘Where were we?’

‘Mars, sir.’

Vangorich knew that, of course. He had an eidetic memory, a product of extensive training and cognitive therapies, and of certain genetic gifts. The same could have been achieved with implants, but they had their own drawbacks. Keeping track of the byzantine comings and goings of the Officio was not a simple matter of memory capacity in any case. It needed a human touch.

‘How many operatives do we still have there?’

Krule picked up a slate from the several spread over the table between them.

‘Red Haven cadre. Saskine Haast of Temple Vindicare. Mariazet Isolde of Temple Callidus. Clementina Yendl of Temple Vanus. Tybalt of Temple Eversor. And Raznick of the Inquisition if you choose to count him as one of ours.’ He read on a way. ‘It looks like Yendl had managed to cultivate a useful resource on the Mechanicus’ project to replicate the orks’ teleportation technology, before she lost contact. We’re assuming the worst, I presume?’

‘The official line from his supervisor is “reassigned”. Yendl’s looking into it, but it’s not the end of the world. Her pride is a little scratched, but there are other avenues of investigation under way.’

‘Translating a planet,’ said Krule, lowering the slate and gazing out of the window. ‘Damn, that would be a thing to see.’

‘The trial data is all in Yendl’s intelligence log. The so-called Grand Experiment is proving as much a dead end for Kubik as it is for us.’

‘But if it could be made to work…’

Krule let the implications hang. They were so encompassing, so fundamental, that it was difficult to take the necessary step back to see them. Assimilation of the orks’ propulsion technology would strike at the very pillars of Imperial stability. With such a power, the Mechanicus would be able to move anything, anywhere. The Adeptus Astronomica would be no more, the Navis Nobilite cast down at best and persecuted by a vengeful Inquisition at worst. The fleets of Mars would render the Navy and the Chartists obsolete at a stroke.

Schism. On a scale not seen since the Age of Strife.

Vangorich nodded darkly.

‘Merely pointing out, sir,’ said Krule, breaking the sombre mood, ‘if this intelligence log were somehow to find its way onto Sark or Gibran’s desk then you’d have all the Senatorum backing you could want to take Kubik’s head.’

‘If it comes to it, but safer to keep something so inflammatory to ourselves if possible. I gather that Haast and Isolde have managed to successfully integrate into Kubik’s household on Mars. What about when he is here on Terra — habits, and so on?’

Krule picked up another report from the stack.

‘A creature of routine, as you’d expect. Getting to him shouldn’t be an issue. The problem would be the windows available. He doesn’t seem to sleep, keeps to public places by and large, and he’s always accompanied.’ He shrugged, apologetic. ‘They don’t give much consideration to privacy.’

‘What about when he travels?’

‘Mechanicus lighter operating out of Daylight space port. The Mechanicus provides their own pilots and ground crew as well as a skitarii cohort. Knowing the Mechanicus, it’s probably better armed than it looks.’

Vangorich conceded that with a slight tip of his glass.

‘Just how formidable is the Fabricator General, assuming that an example needed to be made?’

‘Assuming?’ Krule sat back, crossing his muscular arms behind his head along the back of the low couch, as comfortable in someone else’s private space as only a man his size could be. ‘I could take him.’

‘Have you ever killed one of the Mechanicus?’

‘You’d know if I had, sir.’

Vangorich smiled.

‘Have you, sir?’ Krule asked.

Vangorich considered a moment. No one else would have dared ask their Grand Master such a question. It mooted the possibility that ‘no’ could be an answer. Another person might have raised it privately out of concern for Vangorich’s professional competence, but not Beast. He knew better.

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Do you want me to set things in motion?’

Vangorich took a deep breath and shook his head, staring at the slush pile of slates, info-logs, and reports. Selecting a member of the Senatorum Imperialis who had acted with sufficiently witless culpability to warrant death was not difficult. It was, to borrow his favourite Navy aphorism, like launching a torpedo and hitting space. No, the challenge, the surgical art, was to identify that member whose untimely removal would most effect improvement in the rest.

He released the breath. Slowly. Deliberately. He massaged the stiffness from his neck.

‘Udo,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘Tell me about the Lord Commander.’

Krule rummaged for the relevant slate just as a minor earth tremor rattled the pile on the table. Only Vangorich’s cat-like reflexes spared the Inquisition’s carpet a wine stain. The hivequake lingered for a few seconds, and then passed. Vangorich transferred his glass to the other hand and lapped wine from his wrist, then stood and moved to the window. An orange glare lit his face. A hab-block was falling away from the Palace skyline, gutted by the ignited gases that were spraying from its exposed, ancient piping. Even through the reinforced armourglass, Vangorich could hear screaming. The long, hapless whine of tocsins spread slowly across the Imperial Palace.

Something had to be done.

He turned to find Krule checking a security alert on his wrist chrono. Krule silenced the audio sounder, then drew a bulky plasma pistol from the concealed holster inside his jacket. He rose quickly and quietly from his chair, gestured to Vangorich to take cover behind the table, and moved out of line from the door, pistol raised and trained.

Doing as he was bidden, Vangorich dropped onto one knee.

He hooked one arm over the table, partially to shelter his face behind it if need be, and pulled the silenced, slender-barrelled hellpistol he carried from his boot. He took aim at the door and glanced at the access panel on the wall beside it. An amber light was pulsing across the display, left to right and occasionally spiking in the middle, like a heart rate monitor. An intruder should have triggered a red alarm. Amber meant that someone with Inquisitorial clearance had entered the suite, effectively placing the automatic weapon turrets and intruder denial systems built into every staircase and corner space into a temporary ‘standby’ posture. Vangorich’s office had all the specifications. The intruder had ninety seconds to provide the correct form of physical identification and the required codes to one of those access panels before things started to get anxious.

The panel display turned to green and flatlined.

Vangorich cleared his mind, stilled his heart. His field of view became the doorframe.

There were, as his own interest in the matter proved, plenty of individuals on Terra with the motive and means to rid themselves of the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. Vangorich doubted there was a security system built that the adepts of the Mechanicus could not break. Lansung and Verreault undoubtedly commanded personnel with the skill set required to break a triple-aquila-rated secure facility, but neither struck Vangorich as desperate enough to try. The Ecclesiarchy, too, maintained a cadre of highly trained and conditioned operatives, and against the warp-touched abilities of the Navis Nobilite and the Imperium’s sanctioned psykers, even the Inquisition’s defences would come out second best as often as not.

Were any of them the match of Beast Krule?

Vangorich doubted it.

The door handle dropped with a click, and the door swung open.

Vangorich eased himself a little lower against the table and relaxed into the trigger. He angled his body for a headshot. Unless they were really, really good, he would get at least one shot.

As it turned out, he didn’t.

With a hiss of air cyclers and magnetised joint hydraulics, Veritus strode through the open door. He came with a waft of cinnamon-scented oils and a hint — a disguised nasal sting — of preservatives. His cream-coloured power armour blinked with indicator lights and protective runes; it had been rubbed down with powdered silver and fluttered with freshly transcribed papyri. The Inquisitorial Representative’s mummified face managed to express enough surprise to stay Vangorich’s hand.

‘Drakan? What are you doing in my apartments?’ Veritus’ voice was a dry wheeze, like a legacy recording from a scrivener-cherub left to decay over a thousand years of storage.

Vangorich lowered his pistol to the table and stood as the door slid smoothly shut behind the inquisitor. He shrugged.

‘It is the most secure location on Terra.’

‘So my aides were at pains to point out to me.’

‘If it helps, I was informed equally reliably that you’d not be returning from the Inquisitorial Fortress until tomorrow. An attack moon in orbit is just one more excuse for a slip in standards, isn’t it?’

Veritus smiled slightly, an odd, grisly re-interpretation of human amusement. He looked tired, Vangorich realised. More worn out than he had ever seen him. It was as if the Inquisitorial Representative had merely dropped by his suite with no grander intention than a few stolen hours of peace and quiet.

Vangorich wondered if he still wore that armour, even when he thought he was alone.

‘You are slipping, Drakan,’ said Veritus. ‘Udin Macht Udo convened an emergency meeting of the High Twelve last night.’

‘He did what?’

Veritus glanced sideways at Krule. The Assassin had lowered his plasma pistol, but only marginally.

‘Have him put it away, Drakan. You have my assurance that I could do it for him just as easily.’

Krule raised an eyebrow, but nevertheless stowed and reconcealed his weapon at Vangorich’s nod.

‘Shall I leave you, sir?’

‘Thank you, Krule.’

Veritus peered down over the lip of his high gorget collar as Beast Krule moved past him and ducked out. Again the door slid shut and clamped. The hiss of air breathed against the inquisitor’s brittle lashes. His expression was unreadable.

‘The Lord Commander proposed a motion to suspend the Inquisition from the High Twelve.’

‘He did what? Has he completely lost his mind?’

‘Perhaps. But for once, leveller heads prevailed. Only Tobris Ekharth and Mesring backed it.’

‘The Ecclesiarchy I could almost understand supporting a move like that, but Ekharth?’ Vangorich swore. ‘Does that man even have a nervous system of his own?’

‘The Lord Commander was most aggrieved.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘The High Twelve is fracturing, Drakan. They could be coherent, at least, when they knew that Udo could pander to their interests, but now there is that.’ Veritus pointed skyward. He didn’t put a name to it, as though it was a daemon that could be summoned by stating it. ‘The paralysis, the disbelief — it was no different when Horus brought the armies of Chaos to Terra. No one, perhaps not even the Emperor Himself, believed that it could happen, even after it had already begun. Terra survived the Siege that followed only because Rogal Dorn united a factionalised military, and wielded them with one will.’

‘You’re talking about a primarch.’

‘I am talking about strong leadership. The High Lords would back it if they saw it.’

Vangorich shook his head sadly. Another age, another class of man. One could not simply replace a demigod. There wasn’t one man amongst the Imperium’s countless trillions who could even come close.

But who said it had to be a man? What if it could be something more?

‘We can speak more at the Senatorum tomorrow,’ said Veritus tiredly, angling his body pointedly to open a path to the door. ‘I trust that you can find your own way out.’

‘I did find my way in,’ said Vangorich, surfacing from his thoughts and making to leave. He paused inside the doorway and turned back.

‘Where is Wienand?’

‘You betray your care, Drakan.’

‘Or reinforce your preconceptions.’

A genuine smile stretched at Veritus’ face. ‘She works towards the common end, as the Emperor’s Inquisition always will.’

‘And your… guest?’

The suite was cloaked with a counter-surveillance manifold, both technological and arcane, and was covered by a psychically generated blanket of silence. But even with only Veritus in the room and Krule outside who could possibly overhear, it felt unwise to mention their xenos captive by name. It was like Veritus and the ork moon. Naming the thing gave it a life beyond one’s control.

‘Helpful,’ said Veritus, simply.

Vangorich let it go. He had more pressing matters on his mind.

Beast Krule was waiting in the foyer, sitting on the edge of a woven aluminium chair. He unfolded himself as Vangorich walked towards him.

‘Problems?’

Vangorich shook his head. ‘Does Esad Wire still have his uniform?’

‘He’s been off duty for a long time. Even in KVF Sub Twelve that kind of absence without leave gets noticed.’

‘You won’t be going back to Tashkent. I want you to find the Provost-Marshal.’

‘I can do that, sir. What made you decide on him?’

‘Nothing so terminal. I need you to deliver him a message. Tell him he has my guarantee that he’ll want to be at the Senatorum tomorrow.’

Ten

Sycrax Cluster — unknown

First Captain Zerberyn came round to the squeal of plasma tools and the smell of sparks. The emergency lighting was low and sporadic, the shadows long. Wired multilaser cradles hung from their rails, limp and unpowered, and flecked with white specks of flame-retardant spray. The rough shape of Marcarian’s head passed between Zerberyn and Dantalion’s ceiling. The light nicked the shipmaster’s steel frame.

‘We made it,’ Zerberyn croaked.

His throat was bruised. Talking felt like trying to swallow a rank pin.

He grunted and rolled his head, his eye at floor level, and looked along the deck plates to one of the command turrets. Sparks sputtered from torn electrics. A team of serfs in full-body protective gear and rebreather kit attacked a fallen bulkhead with a plasma torch. Charged filaments of waste plasma crackled and sprayed. The stuttering light silhouetted a robed figure casting cleansing oils around the cut site, reciting a psalm for the ship’s forgiveness and fast healing. A giant amongst those lesser mortals in his unmarked battleplate, Veteran-Sergeant Columba was bent into the heart of the plasma spray, pulling away chunks of debris in his gauntleted hands and hurling them over the edge to clang in the cogitation pit below.

‘Vox,’ Zerberyn recognised. ‘The last thing I remember… I was at Operations. Your crew allowed the dorsal void bank to overload.’

‘An inevitable consequence of going into battle with a numerical, strategic, and technological disadvantage, lord captain,’ slurred Marcarian, stumping clumsily into his field of view. ‘An emitter overload when we translated out threw you down the walkway and struck your head on the rail. You’ve been out for just over an hour.’ He shrugged apologetically, or tried to. ‘I’m not sure exactly how long. The chronos are out.’

With a groan, Zerberyn made to pull in his elbows and draw himself up.

Nothing moved.

In consternation more than concern, he jerked on his arms, then his legs, but neither moved a millimetre. He could feel them, a pins-and-needles tingle across his various points of contact with the ground, but he couldn’t command a single muscle to twitch. It was as though the servo-muscular connections to his armour had been severed. Without power assistance and nervous control, half a tonne of bonded ceramite was little more than an ornate null-sensoria tank, the kind used to prepare neophytes for the experience of mucranoid hibernation.

Indignity piled upon indignity.

‘I cannot move.’

Marcarian gestured across his body with an open palm. Zerberyn rolled his head the other way, and met the leering half-skull of Mendel Reoch.

The Space Marine’s armour was bone-white and bore the modified double-helix of the Apothecarium on the shoulder pad. All well within the diktats laid down in the Codex Astartes, and Zerberyn therefore felt obligated to approve, but, as with the Chaplaincy black, it seemed inimical to the Exemplar spirit. An alternative variable was that Zerberyn simply did not like Reoch. And he did dislike his Second Company brother, with a self-sustaining passion. Binoptics glowered dully from the eye-pits of the organic upper half of the Apothecary’s face, the lower part constructed by the ugly fusion of an iron grille to the son of Dorn’s once-noble cheekbones. The reconstructive work was so extensive, so obtrusive that given the Apothecary’s long service and skill its unsightliness could only have been intentional, as if Reoch had deliberately cut back his face to bare cold metal, and a darkness he no longer wanted to conceal.

‘You will heal. Your paralysis is induced and temporary.’ His voice was a grizzle of vox-corruption. His optics glimmered with every intonation. ‘I have noted an alarming tendency amongst our Chapter brothers to not lie still when commanded to do so.’

Zerberyn held Reoch’s unblinking, back-lit stare.

‘Flush it out of me. Now.’

Reoch sighed. ‘I blame Oriax Dantalion. He persuaded the primarch-progenitor to adopt the Codex Astartes and now every Exemplar believes himself a martyr to his own special wisdom.’

‘Except for you of course, brother.’

‘I am an Apothecary,’ said Reoch. The diamantine drill-bit of his narthecium gauntlet revved and reversed. A spring-loaded injector attachment clicked out of the reductor, cycled through various combinations of syringes and needles until a hyperfine carbon tip slotted into a slender glass vial, locked, then extended forwards. The plunger drew back into the apparatus, slowly filling the syringe with a milky fluid as the Apothecary leaned in. ‘I always know best.’

Zerberyn clenched his jaw and tilted his head to expose the vulnerable fibre bundles and cabling hidden beneath the gorget ring. He felt a sharp pain as the hypodermic squeezed between the vertebrae at the top of his spine, and then a rush of cold. He gave an involuntary gasp, then shuddered as the sensation passed down his spinal cord and dispersed into his peripheral nervous system. He wriggled his fingers and this time they moved, gauntlet servos whirring as armoured digits rolled clumsily in and out, up and down. On impulse, he shifted his hand to fumble over his weapons belt.

His fingers closed around the grip of his bolt pistol and squeezed. Fingers, wrist, shoulders: the sensation of being bundled up in a skin-tight carapace of thick wool began to recede. An Umbra-pattern bolt pistol’s uncompromising menace left no place in its proximity for that kind of uncertainty.

He sat up slowly.

A tangle of twisted and torn walkways crisscrossed the command deck, smoke and dust rising from the cogitation pits with each slow grinding whup of fans. The strategium display was static, the encircling image-boosters and visual feeds hissing noise. The main viewer crackled with electromagnetic distortions, flickering with augur traces and warp energy residuals that stained the eye with afterghosts. Everywhere the frail bodies of crew serfs lay under blood-lashed metal.

Anger, real anger deep in his transhuman belly, filled him with excoriating fire.

A Chapter-strength deployment, the might of the Fists Exemplar fleet, had been brushed aside. Ship to ship, man to man, the Adeptus Astartes would always triumph, but the weapons and technologies that the Beast could call on were just too powerful. Dantalion transported the bulk of the First Company, a few squads of the Second, Seventh and Tenth. What had happened to the rest of the fleet? Bulwark, Faceless Warrior? Alcazar Remembered? Could the Fists Exemplar have been reduced to little more than the First Company and a handful of squads from three others?

There had been no other option. Any other commander of the Fists Exemplar would have taken the same decision as him.

‘How did this happen?’

‘We were not as worthy as we considered ourselves to be,’ answered Reoch, clenching the reductor back into his narthecium as he turned and walked away.

Marcarian stepped back to allow Zerberyn to stand up, the Space Marine’s genetic gifts just about compensating for the dizziness and slight lack of motor control that lingered in his system courtesy of Mendel Reoch. The bruising round his neck restricted his range of motion, but breathing at least came easier now that he was upright.

‘What is our status?’

‘The orks took out the system. The whole damned system. We were lucky, if you’d call it luck. We were already heading out, and were able to make an emergency translation before we suffered too much heavy damage.’ A ruptured power conduit running through the ceiling sprayed the walkway with sparks and made the shipmaster flinch. ‘The rest we suffered during,’ he shouted, as the hiss of sparks died down. ‘I saw the Interdictor make it out ahead of us. I also saw Grey Ranger crushed like she was nothing.’ He was silent a moment. ‘My first ship.’

‘Did any other ships manage to escape?’

‘No sign yet, but it’s only been ten minutes or so since we emerged. Systems are still coming back online and we’re still assessing the damage. And…’

He gestured to the wreck of the vox-turret.

‘Suggestions?’

The Fists Exemplar hierarchy was no different to that of any other Codex-compliant Chapter, but the lines were enforced with a stringency seldom seen elsewhere. They were notoriously free and independent thinkers in their founder’s mould: not the barbaric affectation of the Wolves of Fenris, nor the solitary temperament of the hunters of Mundus Planus, but a mentality born of absolute conviction their personal infallibility. It was, when properly managed, their greatest strength.

‘The Codex would suggest we resume our original heading,’ said Marcarian. ‘If anyone made it out of Vandis then they could be anywhere in the subsector. Rejoining the Last Wall at Phall would be their most logical destination.’

‘I doubt the ship would survive such a journey,’ Zerberyn grunted as he stood. ‘Walk with me to Vox.’

There was not a lot to see. Zerberyn picked up a headset from a console. Foam covered it. The loop of wire by which it was plugged into the terminal pulled taut as he drew it to his face, a child’s toy in his massive gauntlet.

‘Where is the woman that was stationed here?’

Marcarian nodded to the work crew. Their plasma torch was making rasping, shallow cuts into the bulkhead that had sliced the section in half. And Marcarian’s vox-liaison too, by the looks of it. The hiss and whine of spent plasma was strangely reminiscent of the white noise leaching from the transceiver set, as if there was some cosmic confluence of which Zerberyn, for all his gifts, could never be anything but unaware.

‘A shame,’ he said, and meant it. She had been competent.

Marcarian toed aside the twisted aluminium frame of a console chair, taking the ivory sliders and brass dials and deftly recalibrating the board. Zerberyn pushed the left headset earpiece up against his corresponding ear and listened.

White noise whispered from the set. Static. Which was a misnomer in many ways. It implied a steady state, something unchanging, but the sound crying through Dantalion’s receiver arrays was anything but steady. It crested and fell, hissed and crackled, and precipitously dropped or rose in pitch. It was cosmic background noise, stellar radiation, energy bleed from unshielded power sources — which, on the command deck just then, must have numbered anywhere in the high thousands. It was almost like voices, whispers at the very edge of straining.

‘Stop!’

A horrible sensation chased down Zerberyn’s spine, similar to the feeling of the counteractant that the Apothecary had injected into him but a hundredfold worse for having no discernable material source. As if a soul could feel rotten. As if static had the taste of copper and smoke. He tightened his grip on the physical surety of the headset and turned to Marcarian.

‘Dial it back.’

The shipmaster did so. The noise dropped away, to be replaced by a sound in his head like knives on the wind. It was a voice.

+Dantalion… Dantalion, respond.+

‘The system is fried,’ Marcarian was saying, a vox-wraith in his other ear. ‘It’s the receiver. It can’t distinguish signal from noise.’

‘Do not touch the controls,’ Zerberyn snapped. He felt sick. Not physically of course — his gifts prevented that — but he felt spiritually spoiled. He twisted around the headset’s microphone bulb and spoke into it. ‘Is that you, Epistolary? Is this Guilliman?’

A sound like laughter prickled the static.

+My name is Kalkator, Warsmith of the Fourth Legion, in command of the cruiser Palimodes.+

Zerberyn froze. He wanted nothing more than to tear the headset from his face, but it was as though the absolute cold of the void had soaked into Dantalion’s antennae, run through her wires, and iced the muffler to Zerberyn’s ear.

‘I do not speak with traitors,’ he hissed.

+Then just listen. You are in danger here. Your jump has not taken you far from the ruins of Vandis. Your vessels Paragon and Intrepid are in the Corus System. Paladin of Rubicae is in Randeil and Vindicator in Quaillor. Guilliman and Excelsior are in the Ooran System. None more than an hour from an ork fleet. And trust me, Dantalion, they are coming.+

‘Trust you…?’

Marcarian was looking up at him, uncomprehending. Some horror in his eyes made the bruised skin at the back of Zerberyn’s neck creep. He spoke again into the pickup.

‘How do you know the coordinates of our ships? How are you reaching us?’

+Favours given, favours owed. Do you really want those kinds of answers, Exemplar?+

‘What of the rest of the fleet?’ he said after an uncomfortably extended pause. ‘What of Alcazar Remembered? What of the Interdictor?’

+You are the last to emerge and I had almost given up on the possibility of any more of your ships making it from the warp intact. My ship made it to the Mandeville point and was primed for translation when Vandis was destroyed. The empyrean buffered her systems against the star’s death throes.+

‘An escape paid for in the blood of my brothers. No depth of space could obscure from me the warmth you show your allies, Iron Warrior.’

The voice dropped into the seethe of static. Zerberyn could hear the crackle of emotion.

+There was a time when Magneric and I were thought closer than brothers. Our bond was stronger than I expect you to understand, forged by the glories of an age you cannot conceive. I found his faith contemptible, his obsession with me pitiable. Magneric would be even less fulsome in his remembrance of me were our fates reversed, but I will remember him as a brother. Do you think your Imperium the sole proprietor of a finite store of grief? We are not so different, you and I.+

‘How so?’

+Did pragmatism not lead you to abandon your own Chapter Master?+

‘We did not see the Alcazar Remembered destroyed.’

+I did not see the Emperor slay Horus, but I know that it was so.+

Zerberyn snarled. ‘Do not ever forget it.’

+For one who chooses not to speak, you are as lyrical as any scion of Sanguinius. I asked you to listen, now listen. There is a system less than three hours from you — Prax. It was a garrison world of the Iron Warriors at the height of the Great Crusade and if there is a single world within ten light years that the orks’ advance into Segmentum Solar has not already destroyed, then it will be that upon which sit Perturabo’s walls. If we can muster our assets over Prax, then we might all have a chance of going our separate ways.+

This time, Zerberyn managed to pull the headset off.

His chest felt tight, but hollow, as if his armour plate was wrapped like a mummy’s bindings around an over-inflated skin. He smothered the headset pickup in his gauntlet, and turned to Marcarian.

The cruiser Paladin of Rubicae transported the Fifth and the Ninth, while the mighty Guilliman held the bulk of the Second as well as elements of the Third, Fourth, Tenth and most of what Dantalion didn’t carry of the First. Three, maybe three hundred and fifty brothers. Add the firepower of the aegis frigates, Paragon, Intrepid and Vindicator, and the support frigate Excelsior, and it was clear that one run-down traitor cruiser presented little by way of a tangible material threat.

And of the other kind, that less physical peril?

He licked dry lips, mentally crunching variables he had never before now had cause to quantify or weigh relative to others. He attacked his scheme of action from every angle, however improbable, assessing with force the firmness of every assumption on which it was founded until what remained was a bastion of solid calculation and impregnable logic.

He was an Exemplar.

Infallible.

He returned the headset to his ear and uncovered the pickup.

‘Send me the coordinates.’

Eleven

Prax — approach

Dantalion slid out of warp space into the dust-banded outer reaches of the Prax System like a jammed magazine ejected from an overheating boltgun. Proximity alert tocsins added a deep basso two-tone to the symphonic chorus of alarms. The auspex was still powering up, but proximity detection was a passive system, its workings founded upon the innate sense that certain metals possessed for metal. At the same time, triggered automatically by the completion of the translation cycle, the command deck’s blast shutters were rolling back.

Crew-serfs and Space Marines looked up from rebooting consoles and covered their eyes. The starlight was hard and bright, the guide lights of a monster voidship burning like a meteor shower off the bow. The garish yellow vessel was several times more massive than Dantalion and of eccentric design. Modules stuck out from a long central body, like landing booms on a seaplane but coming out at all angles and in various shapes and sizes. The slender main body widened at the neck to give a bulbous prow and, towards the stern, grew by stepwise tiers towards a garishly hazard-striped housing for the fierce orange cones of the drive exhaust. Sitting atop the drive housing, adding half again to the height of the stern, was a crescent moon, bent and crooked into a vile facsimile of a grinning orkoid face.

‘Thrusters!’ called Shipmaster Marcarian. ‘Hard port. Decompress starboard launch bays and fire macro-batteries. All the push we have.’

The ork ship pulled away slowly, port thrusters burning hard to win some traction over the vacuum. A lumpen module, riveted plates hatched yellow and black, swung out towards Dantalion’s starboard-side viewing ports, close enough for Zerberyn to see the alien pictographs scrawled onto its side. Then, the ship winked out, something darker than space rushing out to envelop it. Torpedoes and other mass-weapons winnowed through the hole left in real space.

‘Another ship inbound,’ called the seated hardline operator reporting from auspectoria. ‘Throne, they’re everywhere. Two thousand kilometres in-system. And another in convoy, the exact same spacing again.’

Zerberyn snarled. ‘As if surrendering ourselves to the Imperial Fists is not betrayal enough, we must contend with Iron Warriors treachery. Charge weapons and prepare to fire.’

‘Wait,’ said Marcarian, looking out of a port-side viewport at the next incoming ship. ‘No torpedo apertures, no flight decks, no weapon batteries that I can see except a handful of flak turrets, no energy spike on our scans to indicate they’re powering them up. I think that ship is unarmed.’

‘When did you ever see an unarmed ork ship?’

‘My point exactly. Helm, move us out of the path of the traffic. Five hundred kilometres to port. Auspectoria, commence scans for our brothers.’

‘Ayes’ acknowledged his instructions. Dantalion swung deeper into her portside yaw. The ork ships held true to their course.

‘Arrogant xenos,’ Zerberyn muttered, watching the unaugmented view through a viewport. The image booster screens around Strategium continued to snow. ‘They lack even the good sense to alter course to avoid our weapons.’

‘We are one ship, lord captain, and a damaged one at that. I would posit that they don’t consider us a threat.’

‘Then I posit that we purge them of that unwise presumption.’

‘Lords.’ Auspectoria again, the operative already swivelling his chair back around to point to the sensorium feed being relayed in précis to his monitor. Zerberyn and Marcarian joined him. The Space Marine towered above the two serfs, looking over the sloping bank of hardline wires into the din and confusion of the recovery work still ongoing around them. ‘Receivers are picking up a lot of vox-chatter. Numerical sequences, auto-broadcasts. Well over ten thousand ships, most of them concentrated here.’ He tapped the screen with his fingernail. ‘The third planet.’

‘Prax,’ said Zerberyn.

It was a guess: the last avenue of retreat for reactionaries and for mortals impelled to wage total war on inscrutable xenos-breeds and demi-gods. But it was an educated one.

‘Prax,’ the operator duly confirmed. ‘Archives list it as an agri-world and subsector governance hub. Limited orbital and dry-dock facilities, but nothing to permit shipping on this scale. Whatever the orks are using to coordinate so many vessels, they brought it in from elsewhere or built it themselves.’

‘Look at the disposition of these ships,’ said Marcarian, leaning over the serf’s shoulder to float his fingertip over the display. He turned to Zerberyn, ear-stud catching the green of the screen, and grinned. ‘Did your duty ever take you along the Eukrist Corridor, galactic east through the Flux with a layover at Angels’ Wake Munitorum star port?’

‘Humour me, shipmaster.’

Marcarian’s nerveless lips hung a smile. ‘It looked like this.’

‘A supply hub? An ork Administratum?’

‘Except orks don’t think that way,’ Marcarian continued. ‘They exploit the worlds they come to and then move on. Like at Ardamantua.’

‘They are building,’ said Zerberyn. A smile, slow and angry, began to spread and he turned it on Marcarian. ‘He must be close. The Beast. If not here, then somewhere near.’

Marcarian stumped again to the viewport and looked out. ‘I wonder what that symbol means. That crescent moon shape on their ships. Some kind of merchant class, do you think?’

A handset in the partially restored vox-turret blinked and chimed. The new duty liaison took the missive standing up and turned to face Zerberyn.

‘Incoming transmission from Palimodes, and from Guilliman. Coming through the hololith grid.’

Zerberyn was surprised to feel disappointed. In turbulent times, it was reassuring to know that the galaxy continued to rotate and the traitors would forever be traitors.

‘Patch them through,’ Marcarian ordered, and turned to face the display.

Power built up within the arcane suspension of coils and valves with a succession of etheric metal bangs, as though the device’s spirit railed against its reactivation so soon after translation. Tech-serfs stroked power distribution sliders and capacitance dials in a bid to soothe its anguish, and coaxed the weary machine to compliance. Two faces took shape within the loop projector. The face to the left of the static divider, cowled within a high grey hood, was familiar, even if the penetrating eyes looked pained and the ancient face drawn. Epistolary Honorius of Guilliman greeted Zerberyn’s image with a nod.

That other face, however…

Unconsciously Zerberyn drew himself to his full, impressive height, resolved to meet the image’s gaze like a Space Marine.

The stranger was dust pale and cadaverously thin, as though the withdrawal of the Emperor’s love had left him withered and bitter. His hollow cheeks made his sharp jawline cruel, and accentuated his high brow to something arch and not quite fully human. His eyes glinted like nails under the unforgiving light of his ship’s hololith projector.

‘It is good to talk face to face at last,’ said Kalkator.

Zerberyn had expected the traitor’s voice to match the forsaken character of his appearance, but it was surprisingly rich and powerful. It was a voice Zerberyn could well imagine sharing a field with the primarchs.

An unworthy flutter of jealousy — no, worse — of curiosity, disturbed the calm beating of his hearts.

‘Indeed, you are as pleasing a sight as the great garrison world of your forsaken brothers.’

‘It has been a long time devoid of our care,’ Kalkator replied. ‘Had this world still been defended by my brothers, then the situation would have been different.’

‘Had these worlds still been loyally defended by Iron Warriors,’ said Epistolary Honorius, eyes far away and long ago, ‘then many things would be different.’

‘It will have to serve, regardless,’ said Kalkator, turning back to Zerberyn. ‘Your ship will not survive another transit through the warp. Not without repairs. And mine will not survive without yours.’

‘We are sending a navigation packet,’ Honorius continued, gesturing to something or someone off-capture.

Marcarian limped to the nearest functioning terminal and activated it, telemetrics and data-icons turning his pale face green. ‘The eighth planet. An Ouranos-class ice giant with a ring system in a near-perpendicular orbit. The coordinates are for a geostationary position above the northern magnetic pole, inside the rings.’ He smiled, impressed. ‘I’m afraid the diffraction index of the magnetosphere and the rings is too much for our auspex.’

‘The orks’ no less,’ said Kalkator. ‘If their technical prowess extends beyond firepower and propulsion then they have yet to show it here.’

Looking across the image of the Traitor Space Marine, Zerberyn addressed the other figure. ‘What is your condition, Epistolary?’

‘If you ask after me personally, then I must confess I have been better. The ork psyker aboard that carrier was uncommonly powerful. His effect on me was… intense. But I will recover. With Thane’s foresight Guilliman and Excelsior exited the battle at Vandis with minimal damage, but Paragon, Courageous and Implicit will require extensive repair. Of Paladin of Rubicae and Vindicator there remains no sign and no word. We had almost given up hope on you also, First Captain. We have been waiting for several hours.’

Marcarian gestured for and promptly received a data-slate, then tapped at it before turning to Zerberyn. ‘Real time confirmed and verified: translation plus twenty-two hours and eleven minutes.’ He handed the slate back to the serf. ‘See that Dantalion’s timepieces are updated.’

Zerberyn let out a rough breath.

If the orks’ teleportation capability ameliorated just some of the uncertainties of warp transit then it would be a decisive technological edge, far more so than the gravitational weaponry they had deployed at Vandis. The vagaries of the warp were the rate-limiting factor in any galaxy-scale endeavour. Fleets heading towards the same point from equidistant systems could never be relied upon to arrive even within days of one another. An astropathic message cast into the immaterium from Terra could make it to Alpha Centauri in a week or in a month, and could as easily reach distant Occludus first. It turned keeping track of thousands of active fleet and military elements and an evolving tactical situation played out over segmenta into a logistical nightmare: a challenge that would tax even the mind of a primarch.

‘If we are to remain here, then we must take advantage of the opportunity this presents us,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Orks do not settle, orks do not trade, and yet here they are. We must find out what they are up to here, and in such numbers. The orks appear content to ignore us for now.’

‘A desirable state of affairs given our current condition,’ Kalkator cut in.

‘Is there anything you can discern here, Epistolary?’ asked Zerberyn through gritted teeth.

‘The Emperor has granted me no further insight since our departure from Terra, but I have had little opportunity to meditate on the matter these last few days.’ Honorius sank back into what looked like a command throne and closed his eyes. ‘You have rank, First Captain. I am minded to agree with the warsmith, but I will support any decision you make.’

‘It is made, Epistolary.’

Kalkator emitted a long-suffering sigh. ‘On your own head be it.’

‘I do not ask for your approval.’

‘Good. Because I withhold it, little cousin. But Prax is our world, and if you insist on this course then I too must insist on accompanying you to the surface. Our chances of survival will not be aided by the deaths of you and your warriors.’

Zerberyn glowered. And why not? The greatest impossibility conceivable in his existence, as the decree of Roboute Guilliman and the legacy of Oriax Dantalion had always defined it, had already been borne out with the reformation of the VII Legion. Where was the line now? One more broken rule? Two? Was there still a line?

‘One squad each.’

‘Agreed.’

Kalkator’s pallid features drew into a smile. Zerberyn met the warsmith’s gaze, as cold and grey without as his true armour within.

Twelve

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Drakan Vangorich knelt at the shrine to light a candle. There were more to choose between than would ordinarily be the case. The handful already lit burned low, wicks struggling to hold their heads above ever deepening pools of molten wax.

The chapel ordinary was an austere stone cell lacking even a window to distract one’s mind from communion with the God-Emperor. It was generally used by Palace servants and householders for their daily observances, but Vangorich found its asceticism useful. It made him look humble, civilised and discreet. He was, in fact, all of those things, but no one ever lit a candle or left a coin in a collection bowl to affirm their own virtues to themselves. It was an elaborate masquerade, a game in which no one played the part that their costumes dictated, a performance each and every day of his life so that the ever-circling Palace spies might see the Vangorich that Vangorich wished their masters to see. In so doing, he had allowed himself to become almost as hollow as the part he played.

Some habits were hard to break. Even now, with a twenty-four hour curfew of the entire Inner Palace in preparation for the day’s Senatorum business, he maintained the charade of piety.

Vangorich blew out the lighting taper and dropped the smouldering tip into a jar of sand.

Despite his reputation, he was not a creature of solitude. Any number of unfortunate incidents could befall an individual when he was alone. He was in a position to know. Krule was, of course, no more than thirty seconds away, and he himself was by no means defenceless. A man did not rise to become Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum without possessing skills, but he also knew how far those skills could serve him. This was not a galaxy that rewarded the hubris of men.

Suddenly, he felt the unexpected and rather uncomfortable need to pray. He was a faithful man, of a kind, observant through rote if not from a true spirituality. He appeared to pray because it served him to be seen to pray.

As he generally made these shows of devotion prior to Senatorum meetings — the better to make oneself receptive to the will and wisdom of the God-Emperor — his thoughts had often revolved around upcoming business. Intelligence briefings on unredacted leaks of pre-agenda packets, comprehensively war-gamed conversational cues to feed the High Twelve. Often, but not always. The Imperium was vast, the Officio ever-busy. There had always been something with which to occupy his mind during a peaceful spell.

And yet for all the occasions that he had knelt here in this chapel and closed his eyes for the spies and vid-capture drones, he had never gone so far as to actually pray. It had never seemed necessary to carry the deception that far. He closed his eyes again.

This seemed to be the way most people went about it.

After a minute or two of stray thoughts, he became aware of the entry of another through the doorless stone arch that led into the chapel from the base of Daylight Wall.

His powers of observation were attuned rather than enhanced, a product of training, conditioning and — over the course of his career — natural selection. On this occasion however, no special talent was required. It was difficult to tread softly when one was half again the height of a normal man and encased like a warrior-knight of ancient Terra in plasteel and ceramite.

‘There is a curfew in force in this area, citizen,’ said Koorland, his voice, even unaugmented by helm or speaker, resonant and compelling.

Vangorich turned. He remained on his knees.

The Imperial Fist was magnificent in his armour. He was strength and grace, the expression on his face that which a small child might perceive upon a domineering but ultimately protective father. Through superhuman breadth alone he projected an aura of invincibility. Vangorich knew this to be false, but even so he felt it, and could understand why so many had faith in the power of the Adeptus Astartes to be the wall between humanity and its enemies. Koorland was a sight to stir the soul, to excite the subliminal with imagery of angels and immortals and god-kings armoured in gold.

‘As a matter of fact I was just thinking about that,’ said Vangorich. ‘It’s reassuring that the Senatorum retains some ability to function when their best interests are served, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘My apologies, Grand Master,’ said Koorland, recognition easing the sternness from his features. ‘This is a simple shrine. Had I realised that you prayed here I would have made allowances.’

‘I’m surprised you recognised me,’ Vangorich smiled. ‘There are people I see every day who wouldn’t remember my face. It’s something I’m rather proud of.’

‘My apologies again,’ Koorland returned, humourless. ‘I do not forget a face.’

‘Or anything else, I suspect. I have a gift for recollection myself, though nothing like yours. You surpass me in almost every way conceivable, don’t you? As you were designed to surpass us all.’

‘I fight and serve, that is all. But,’ he crossed his arms, dazzling by candlelight, ‘you did not seek me out to deliver a compliment. And you did seek me out, Grand Master.’

Vangorich conceded a shrug, and then stood.

‘I find myself struggling with what to call you. Plain “Koorland” doesn’t quite do your position justice. Chapter Master no longer seems entirely appropriate either.’

‘You could call me Slaughter.’

Vangorich felt that he was expected to smile, and did. The Imperial Fist did not.

‘A pleasure speaking with you, Grand Master,’ said Koorland, turning away.

‘The defence of Terra permits no rest, does it?’ Vangorich called after the Space Marine’s broad shoulders. ‘Your diligence in preparing the Palace’s defences has been inspirational. Given the circumstances.’

‘I hold,’ said Koorland, face half turned over the black fist that emblazoned his left pauldron. ‘That is my duty. The circumstances are never irrelevant, but they will never change that fact.’

‘When I walk the Palace grounds I see Space Marines on the walls again. I realise that they can never replace the Imperial Fists, and yet Daylight, the others, the symbol they now wear…’

Koorland’s gaze dropped almost imperceptibly, brushing the curve of his pauldron plate — the black fist on its white field.

This time Vangorich’s smile was his own and quite genuine. Guile and discretion were the principal tools of his Officio, but there always came the time when an operative had to step out of the shadows and show the knife. Metaphorically, of course. But the good ones, the really good ones, could time their move so perfectly, manoeuvre their weapon so expertly, that they never wound up with blood on their hands.

‘You have been an inspiration even to them, lord. And the regular forces even more so. The Lucifer Blacks have worn, well, black, since before the Unification Wars, but I believe I have seen some yellow starting to appear these past weeks. They worship you, and I’m not speaking figuratively — you are as close to the God-Emperor as any of them will ever come.’

Koorland turned back. ‘I do not serve for accolades.’

‘Higher words of praise were never spoken within these walls, trust me. But from whom do you think those soldiers would rather take their orders? Some distant lord who hasn’t set foot beyond the Inner Palace since greasing his way out of the Navy, or one of the true defenders of humanity?’

‘I fight, I serve and I hold. That is all.’

Vangorich tilted his head back and looked pointedly up. A hairline fracture ran across the chapel’s ceiling, a millimetre incontinuity where the latest round of tremors had moved the north wall marginally westward relative to the south. This was a minor shrine, frequented by nobody of importance but the Grand Master of a shadowy Officio that few higher authorities much cared for. The repair detail was mired in the bureaucracy of the Administratum.

‘We need more from you. If the orks tire of our dithering tomorrow and launch their assault, what will happen? Can you hold Terra without the full backing of the Astra Militarum? Let’s say that you can, that you do, and that we are all still here to conduct the hunt for the Beast that you have been calling for. Do you really want to do it fighting the Navy, the Astropathica, and the Administratum every step of the way?’

Koorland said nothing. It was an opening, and Vangorich took it.

‘You do wish to confront the Beast?’

‘A firm defence is central to the avoidance of defeat, but a strategy of containment will never win a war. The Siege was the greatest defensive action in history, but it was the Emperor’s defeat of Horus that finally ended the Heresy.’

‘Politics is very much like war,’ Vangorich agreed softly. ‘Sometimes the only solution is to strike for the figure at the top.’

‘I serve the Imperium loyally,’ Koorland returned, shocked, angry.

Sometimes a failing organ needed to be shocked, Vangorich thought.

‘Have you paused recently to ask yourself what the Imperium really needs?’

The Imperial Fist fell silent, his eyes running deep.

Vangorich offered a slight bow and left the transhuman to his thoughts. He was not nearly important enough that the Senatorum would wait on his arrival, and Koorland had a lot to think about.

Thirteen

Prax

The matt-grey Thunderhawk gunship Penitence descended hard on the planet’s night side, ventral thrusters blasting up a tsunami of dust as the assault craft levelled out and dropped its troop doors. Dust billowed through the open hatch, whipping through handgrips and cargo netting and smothering the armoured forms of Veteran Squad Anatoq. With the enhanced senses of smell and taste granted by his neuroglottis, Zerberyn sifted the storm of particulates. Small stones. Dead soil. Bone chips. Blood. It chopped up the twelve helmet beams and the weak pastel glow of wall-mounted panels, banging and rattling inside the troop compartment.

‘Quickly in and quickly out,’ voxed Veteran-Sergeant Columba over the squad channel, one hand wrapped around a ceiling handgrip.

The sergeant was an iron-faced ascetic with ice water in his veins and heart of leaden grey. A narrow view of the Fists Exemplar creed of humility had led him to turn down the captaincy of the First more than once, and he had publically rebuked Koorland over the offer of a position in the reformed shield corps of Terra. Zerberyn liked him.

The narrow beam of his own helm light cut half a metre into the swirl, catching the whipped-up grit as if by surprise, stripping it from uniform night-black to white and grey and bloody brown. A crowd of gold runes representative of his squad slid around the periphery of his internal faceplate display, the gunship’s shaking, under the force of its own engines, unsettling the runes’ positions. The boarding ramp railroaded out into the dark. He could see neither the ground nor the end of the ramp.

‘We are Exemplars,’ he said into his helm vox. ‘No wall stands against us. No wall can stand beside us.’

‘You all know your objectives,’ Columba concluded.

Zerberyn led them into the vertical jetwash, running, a servo-powered leap plunging him into a rippling funnel of dust. For a moment a combination of his battleplate’s powered systems and the updraught of disturbed earth made him fly. Then he fell, five metres, half a tonne of ceramite slamming two-footed into dry earth. Suspensor grids dispersed the impact force throughout his armour, plates shifting, crunching to a crouch, then with a counter-whine of servos he came up, disengaged his pistol’s mag-holster and whipped the weapon up.

He could not see a thing. Dust devils gyrated between the ground and the gunship’s thundering exhausts, sieving the landing lights from above. Blinking runes in his helm display and the vibrations picked up by his boot sensors told of veteran-brothers thumping into the ground around him.

They fanned out from the drop zone, murky giants with boltguns raised and aimed.

Veteran-Brother Donbuss was triple-checking the belt feed to his heavy bolter and covering the advance from relative high ground. Antille dropped to one knee, hand to where his ear was underneath his helmet, the long antennae of a shoulder-mounted vox-booster whipping above him. Each Space Marine’s battleplate was independently vox-capable, but the volume of near-orbit communications noise and the signal diffraction of their own fleet’s place in hiding necessitated the booster should they need to raise their brothers around the eighth planet. Apothecary Reoch stood nearby holding his narthecium at arm’s length, sampling the wind for toxin traces or pathogens. It was almost impossible to kill a Space Marine by such means, but a reasonable excess of caution won more wars than abandon ever had. Veteran-Brother Karva was the twelfth and last down, pivoting on the spot as a promethium tank dropped through the darkness and catching it in the crook of his arms.

Zerberyn voxed up to the Thunderhawk that his squad was deployed, received two brittle clicks through his microbead in response, and then felt a slam of downwash.

With a tremendous roar of thrust, the gunship rose, re-angling its engines for horizontal flight, and pulled away. The dust storm began to settle, stones and larger debris falling to leave dried organic matter zipping about. It cleared the air enough for Zerberyn to see Penitence turning for a fly-past of the planet’s principal city, Princus Praxa, and its Crusade fortress approximately two hundred kilometres east across the daylight meridian.

A second gunship circled in low. Its metallic bodywork was embellished with unorthodox modifications: battle honours, ablative hull plating and variant weapon loadouts — not all of it was of obvious human make. The star-backed iron skull of the Iron Warriors stared grimly from its tailfin and nose section. Keeping low, it banked left and began to steadily climb, mapping the terrain with a pair of sweeping spotlights and searching for an appropriate drop-zone of its own.

Zerberyn processed his surroundings without thinking about it.

Left, a diagonal line of wind power converters, bi-blades, chomping sombrely through the dark. A greasy metal water tank, empty, riddled with holes, fenced off with wire that had been cut and trampled. Brother Tarsus advanced, boltgun sweeping the row of quietly whumping turbines.

Right, looming rockcrete-walled slurry pits, surrounded by dirty metal outbuildings. A petrochem generator. A silage tank, round-walled and massive. One of the sheds was a machine store. It was open, an upswinging outer door half-covering a weather-beaten wheeled truck. The vehicle was a rusted contraption of belts, pulleys, and funnels, with an articulated pallet lifter at the front end painted to look like an orkish mouth. It had a canvas top and a blood-splattered rear fender. Its tyres were flat. Brothers Galen and Borhune took firing positions, Karva moving up to cover the units with his heavy flamer. Behind, nothing, according to the Thunderhawk’s deep augur scans — just over-exploited pastureland and dust.

Ahead, the objective.

His enhanced low-light vision described the structure in sharp detail. It was a massive, industrialised agricultural unit, with dust-tanned steel walls and barred windows. A large, rectangular glyph of a twisting serpent had been graffitied over the upper storey windows. It was an ork structure, but it was only as Zerberyn closed and metrics gathered in his helm display that he realised that every feature was about twenty-five per cent too large for human standard. The dirt drive leading up to the main door was churned with tyre tracks and strewn with bone meal, dung and what looked like scraps of clothing.

He loped forwards at an easy run. Brothers Hardran and Nalis followed up behind, flanking and covering the upper storeys and secondary entrances with their bolters. Tosque and Columba kept pace, the former maintaining his aim on the door with a bulky combi-plasma.

The unit frequency crackled in Zerberyn’s ear.

‘Galen. No contacts.’

‘Tarsus. Same here, brother-captain.’

‘Reoch,’ voxed the Apothecary, voice double-distorted and animal. ‘I am reading high soil concentrations of antibiotics and human growth hormones. I cannot say why, but I see no danger.’

‘Vigilance, brothers,’ Zerberyn replied, unslinging his thunder hammer.

His predecessor had favoured the purist elegance of the power sword, but long before the moment he had been granted his pick of the Chapter armoury Zerberyn had known what he would select. The weapon was dormant in his grip, quiet, and would remain so until the moment of impact. And when that moment came, whatever it was on the end of it, Zerberyn meant for it to die. Such was the thunder hammer’s pragmatic beauty.

Up close, the main door looked solid. Heavy plastek, proofed with an oily black sealant coating, hinged outwards and reinforced with armaplas crossbars. For an unmodified trooper, forcing access would have proven a complicated and time-consuming matter.

But not for him.

He dropped his pauldron plate and crashed his leading shoulder through without breaking stride. Shrugging off splinters, he straightened and scanned the room.

It was dark, cut off from the light of the stars and the ships massed in orbit, too dark even for the light-scavenging cells of his occulobe. His helm light beamed across riveted walls, ventilation grilles, moving onto a staircase against the left-side wall. The beam tracked it up to a mezzanine level, shadows of the square-sided balusters stretching out towards the rear wall and then angling sharply back across it as the beam moved on.

Hardran, Nalis and Borhune spread out, their own helmet beams dispersing through the cavernous space.

Zerberyn could hear murmuring, weeping, the strained sound of many, many bodies breathing. He sniffed. Even through his battleplate’s rebreather apparatus he was getting the smell of something rancid.

His helm display busied his vision with floating markers. The position, facing, and condition of his squad showed as glowing gold numerals. Box reticules closed over objects of interest — an atmosphere conditioner, a swaying chain connected to some kind of overhead wash unit — furnishing them with a full tactical overlay of range, angles and threat recognition. Reticules floated against the dark, open, uncertain, as his helm light swept over a chain link enclosure.

Eyes glittered dully in the beam.

‘What is it, brother?’

Tarsus. Zerberyn barely registered the vox-scratch in his ear. He grunted in disgust.

‘Animals.’

Fourteen

Prax

The man looked up into the glare of Zerberyn’s helmet beam with distant eyes. His pupils constricted to pinpricks and he recoiled from the light with a grunt, but did not otherwise appear to notice the giant in front of him. He was bruised, shorn, naked, but unusually fat. This was not the maltreatment Zerberyn would have expected from an alien conquerer. There was no brutality here. Injuries aside, which looked to be postural from remaining in one position for too long, rather than inflicted, the man looked as well-fed as any planetary governor.

Zerberyn moved his light on: blank faces luminesced under the beam, then returned to darkness and indignity as it passed. There must have been close to a hundred hemmed into the stall. There was no room for them to move, even to sit. The floor was perforated metal, for drainage, but the sheer volume of waste had clogged the pores and solid effluent heaped up in lumpen mounds over toes that were turning black with poor circulation and disease. The stink was infernal. Despite everything that he was, Zerberyn felt himself back away. Slavery and squalor he had encountered on many worlds. This was something other. Something worse.

‘There are more ahead,’ called Nalis.

‘Here also,’ said Hardran, voice echoing from the stalls away to the right.

‘There must be thousands,’ breathed Tosque, clumping forwards from behind, tracking the creaking stillness of the second level with his combi-plasma.

‘Tens of thousands,’ growled Columba.

Zerberyn spoke into his gorget pickup. ‘Reoch. I need you in here. Bring Brother Antille.’

An affirmative burred through his vox-channel. He killed the squad frequency and looked around again, easing his finger around the trigger of his pistol. Reticules wobbled across his visor, searching for something to target.

‘Detecting movement,’ said Columba, his vox dialled down to a low bass. He pointed up to the second floor.

‘More stalls, perhaps,’ said Zerberyn.

Columba shrugged.

‘Hardran, search the upper level. Tosque, secure the stairs and cover him. Nalis, run a circuit of the perimeter.’

The veteran-brothers nodded; in battleplate and deep shadow it was an ominous, inhuman gesture. Apothecary Reoch entered just as Nalis left. The glow of his binoptics intensified as they adapted to the gloom. Antille ducked through the splintered portico after him, vox antennae twanging against the lintel beam.

Mendel Reoch meanwhile continued to the stalls.

There was a piston shock, flesh punctured, a breathless gasp.

The Apothecary’s narthecium punched a sampler into the nearest captive’s jugular. The man moaned piteously, legs wobbling, but the press of filthy bodies held him steady.

Zerberyn hovered his helm light over the man’s gasping mouth, his curiosity piqued by something he had seen there. As well as having no hair, the man also had no teeth and, now he checked, no fingernails: nothing with which he could conceivably do harm to himself or another. A rare and unsettling cocktail of pity and disgust settled in his gut like one of Reoch’s analgesic slimes. His roving beam paused on the face of a woman who opened her mouth placidly as though conditioned to associate light with water or food. There was something branded onto her cheek. Zerberyn moved closer. She remained as she was, mouth wide and waiting, even as Zerberyn enclosed her head in his gauntlet and turned it gently to the side.

The brand was that of a snake.

The man under Mendel Reoch’s ministration gave one last grunt as the Apothecary’s narthecium retracted.

‘There are dangerously high levels of synthetic growth enhancers, testosterone, and other steroids in his blood. I would need to return him to Dantalion’s apothecarion for more thorough investigations.’

‘Take him and one other and begin what tests you are able. I think we have what we came for. Raise the gunship,’ Zerberyn added to Antille. ‘We need evacuation for these two test subjects.’

‘That deviates from the mission schematic, brother-captain.’

‘The fault is ours,’ said Zerberyn. ‘We failed to anticipate the possibility of survivors. As you were ordered, brother.’

‘Brother-captain!’

Straddling the top step and the next floor, Tosque swung his combi-plasma and helmet beam down onto whatever the veteran-brother had spotted amongst the stalls.

Zerberyn, Columba and Reoch instantly had pistols raised.

A human, unfettered and clothed, withered under the spotlight. Like his domesticated brethren, he was shorn and branded and denuded of teeth. Unlike them he had two off-white molars stapled into his brow. They reminded Zerberyn of rank pins, or the long-service studs that the veterans of other Chapters employed. The man licked his lips nervously, hugging a rusty pail to his chest as though to hide behind it. It slopped with a reddish-brown gelatin that Zerberyn initially hoped was waste but which, judging from the hanging mouths in the stalls to either side, he had the appalling suspicion was food.

The man bared his gums, squinting between Tosque and the others.

Then he screamed, shattering the night quiet like an intruder alarm.

It lasted half a second before mass-reactive rounds from four different weapons explosively ripped his body to pieces, vaporous parts of him filming the surrounding stalls.

The human cattle, mouths agape, began slowly to lick their lips.

Zerberyn held his breath as the echoes died. Chains and hoses clinked and swayed. Lips slurped. Tosque covered his angles warily. Columba calmly moved to cover another angle of approach through the maze of stalls. Zerberyn checked his visor display. Ident-runes shuffled across the display: there was Tarsus to his left, Galen and his team spreading out through the cattle sheds, Hardran in the plane above.

Nothing. He allowed his battle readiness to ease.

An enquiring grunt sounded from deeper in the complex. It was porcine, feral. Tension returned immediately to Zerberyn’s grip. The battle for Eidolica was fresh in his memory, the savage grunt-speak of the alien a repugnance he would remember until death relieved him of his duty.

‘Contacts!’ he roared, stepping away from the stall and aiming his bolt pistol into the swaying, clinking, snarling dark.

His beam hit something green. Metal winked from an axe-blade, tooth caps, the lead-hued base of tribal body art. He spared a passing split-second of a thought to the human cattle all around, packed in so close he could feel their body heat. He dismissed the minor variable. There was no longer any hope for them.

He fired.

The bolt-round exploded in the ork’s face, blasting the brute back and down against a partition wall. Reoch and Columba pushed forwards with him in lockstep, a perfect firing line, pistols blazing. From above, Tosque opened up with a strobing burst of fire, stitching a line of eviscerated ork green and human pink across a row of stalls. Without warning, the veteran-brother checked his fire, turned, and opened up on the second floor. Answering fire from stubbers and shooters bracketed the Space Marine’s armour and chewed into the steel wall behind him. He held firm, breaking up the incoming fire with controlled, even bursts of bolter fire.

A triumphant cry filled the unit vox, then cut off. Hardran’s rune blinked from gold to black in Zerberyn’s visor. Red threat icons, generated by his suit’s auspex, boiled around the edges of his display.

A firecrack bang hit the side of his helm with something hot and wet.

He staggered back until his genetic gifts could eliminate the aural shock and reassert his sense of balance. Reoch was down, a bullet in his temple. Zerberyn stepped over the downed Apothecary, solid slugs spanking off his battleplate.

Heavy stubber fire was thundering down on him from the second level. By weight of numbers and brute resilience, a mob of orks had taken the overhang that looked over the factory floor and forced Tosque onto the stairs. The veteran was firing point-blank now, descending backwards, ceding the stair step by step.

The orks were huge, bare-chested, arrogant in their simplicity. In a moment of clarity, Zerberyn saw them for what they were. They were the greenskins’ exemplars.

With a furious cry, Columba fired up his chainsword. The sergeant stepped up onto the air-cycler set against the stair-side wall and jumped across the walkspace, reaching the opposite side stall where he kicked, a servo-assisted release of superhuman force that drove his power-armoured bulk crashing through the metal balustrades and into the orks piling down the stairs. Blood sprayed across the wall, and for a moment it was impossible to distinguish the howls of the orks from that of Columba’s chainsword.

Reoch’s mouth-grille chewed out gravel sounds as he shook his head and rose with a slur of motorised joints, freeing a frag grenade from the clutch at his hip. He pulled the pin and lobbed the charge overarm onto the second level.

The explosion blew out the handrail, smashed the orks’ lacklustre fire discipline and brought down part of the ceiling. The Apothecary turned his half-metal grimace on Zerberyn. His face was a bloody mess, the bullet trapped between the metallic struts that secured his augmetics to the bone.

‘Retrograde aberrations,’ he snarled.

Zerberyn yanked the Apothecary behind him as an ork wearing serpentine tattoos and what looked like human-skin shorts kicked through a stall door and charged. Its axe clanged against Zerberyn’s raised vambrace. Steel on ceramite, it never stood a chance. With a loud crack the haft splintered, the head spinning aside, but the strength behind the initial blow was phenomenal and sent Zerberyn reeling.

A bolt-round punched through the ork’s ribcage and blasted half its chest out through its back. A second round blew out the other half before a third in quick succession detonated between its eyes and finally killed it in its tracks. Brother Antille lowered his boltgun, the muzzle steaming hot.

‘Gunship inbound. Five minutes.’

Zerberyn nodded gratitude and opened a vox-link. ‘Pull back to the landing zone and regroup.’ He turned to Reoch. ‘Select your subjects, Apothecary. They are to be the lucky ones after all.’

The bloodied Apothecary lowered his pistol and stalked to the nearest stall to obey.

Antille hefted his boltgun to cover Reoch while Zerberyn slowly backed up, laying down fire to enable Tosque and Columba to break away and withdraw. A resounding clang pulled Zerberyn’s attention back towards Reoch and Antille.

A ventilator grille banged against the wall and a double-jointed runt of a creature, the serf caste called gretchin, slid on its backside out of the shaft. There, it freed up the stubber in its lap and let rip on full-auto. Ricochets sprang between Reoch and Antille’s heavy battleplate, but the runt’s aim was not nearly so discriminate. The bullet spray perforated the stall partition and several men and women took hits. They mewled like stricken animals, unable even to fall over as they died.

Zerberyn dragged the creature out by the head and crushed its skull with a mild application of force.

Reoch, a bald, plump female over one pauldron and a male over the other, indicated that he was ready.

Columba and Tosque joined them, the latter raking what was left of the second level with suppressive fire while the sergeant, grey plate a gory black, squeezed off snapshots at anything that so much as threatened to be green.

The four Space Marines formed a closed cage around the Apothecary, the orks hurling themselves against the wall made by the sons of Dorn and finding it unbreakable.

‘Out,’ Zerberyn yelled over the doubled thunder of bolter fire, anchoring the retreat as, one by one, his brothers followed Reoch out.

Exiting one firestorm, and entering another.

Fifteen

Prax

Orks crowded the agri-plex’s windows and chutes, pumping the loading yard between the buildings with high-calibre shot. Crude rocket-propelled grenades screamed through the air like kamikaze bombers and blew great spumes of earth from the road. Zerberyn and his brothers gathered around Reoch and his charges and returned fire, picking their targets, always retreating towards the landing zone. An off-spherical grenade crashed through the corrugated roof of one of the cattle sheds and gutted it with fire. Zerberyn raised his arm against the pelting shrapnel and tried to instil some sense into what had happened to his battlefield.

The fighting was too intense and widespread to be the work of his squad alone, and if the Iron Warriors had entered the field then he would surely know about it.

He could see Brother Tarsus. The veteran was firing from behind the thick metal legs of the water tank, minimising himself as a visible target. Brother Donbuss and his heavy bolter, meanwhile, were still watching over the landing zone, outdoing the orks’ combined firepower both for sheer destructiveness and for noise. The belt-fed torrent of high-explosive anti-personnel rounds left twisted metal and pulverised plate wherever the orks sought to establish a firebase.

Karva announced his presence some distance to the right amongst the slurry tanks with the mighty whoomph of his heavy flamer. An expanding mushroom of promethium wash sent burning debris pattering onto the surrounding roofs like hailstones. Glottal shouts and more crude gunfire answered back. Staccato bursts. So far, so well enough within the mission schematic that Zerberyn had established during descent. At the same time as those flames were dying back however, a flurry of las supercharged to the red end of the energy spectrum spat between various silos, and even from the dust desert that surrounded the oasis of rusted tin and steel.

There was movement beneath the wind turbines.

Human troopers in moulded black carapace and dust-bowl fatigues were hurrying towards the main structure, providing rolling overwatch. Another two squads, twenty men and support weaponry, advanced more deliberately through the silos, flushing out lone orks and gretchin workers ahead of them with grenades and disciplined volleys of hot-shot. Zerberyn had seen skitarii units move like that. One will, one intent. For what looked like unaugmented human soldiers, their unit discipline was exemplary.

A mechanised growl pulled Zerberyn’s attention to the ramshackle ork tractor in the machine shed that he had marked on his initial approach.

With a trembling of its rust-brown frame, it powered back out of the shed at speed. It lurched into a handbrake spin, flat tyres skidding up dust, tarpaulin roof ballooning, then jumped forwards. There was an ork at the wheel, a dark-skinned patriarch with a leather eye patch and a massive jaw, firing one-handed out of the driver’s side window with a twin-linked stubber. A gang of squealing gretchin packed the rear container, holding on to the metal sides or to the single ladder that ran up the back, and blazed wildly in all directions. A bullet punched a trooper from his feet, reflex pulling a wild burst of las skyward as he fell. His squadmates spread out into the thin cover of the various silos and raked the careening vehicle with las-fire.

A fireball lit off under the truck’s rear exhaust, flipping the vehicle over and into a roll that ended with it on its side and white with dust.

‘Beautiful,’ said Columba, drilling a dazed-looking gretchin that staggered from the up-ended rear compartment with a bolt-round.

Zerberyn shot his gaze back towards the silos and the unexpected aid streaming from them. An officer and his bodyguard were running towards Zerberyn’s position, heads down, while the remaining troopers laid down suppressive fire.

On approaching the towering Fists Exemplar captain, the officer pulled himself straight, transferred the second of the two hellpistols he was carrying to his off-hand, and threw a sharp salute. Half the fingers of his hand had been replaced with augmetics. The horror of burned flesh that had cost him that side of his face and eyesight was old enough to have scarred and yet looked to have received little or no medicae attention.

‘Major Dannat Bryce. Seventeenth Gammic Dragoons.’ He spoke in an easy yell that carried his voice over the explosive chatter of gunfire. His damaged face glowed, flushed with supreme self-righteousness and the Emperor’s love. ‘And as pleased as you might expect to see you here, my lord.’

‘Astra Militarum?’ asked Zerberyn.

Bryce gave what was, by its own unfortunate necessity, a crooked smile. ‘You have something that needs doing, you call on the Astra Militarum. You have something that needs done then you call for the Seventeenth.’

‘Militarum Tempestus,’ muttered Columba. ‘Scions. There was a battalion of them deployed to the compliance campaign on Crantar Seven.’

‘We spotted two more gunships, one from another Chapter,’ said one of the major’s guards earnestly. A big man, only a foot or so shorter than Zerberyn, and from the weight of his gear some kind of mission specialist. Zerberyn guessed ordnance. ‘Are they hitting other targets? When can we expect the rest of the liberation fleet?’

‘You’re out of line, sergeant,’ snapped Bryce, then turned to Zerberyn with an apologetic shrug. ‘We’ve been a long time outside of chain of command, my lord.’

‘How long?’

‘I lose track. Several months. We’re here on a Commissariat Special Objective — slow the orks down in whatever way we can and prepare the ground for reconquest. Weren’t you informed?’

‘Months?’ said Zerberyn, ignoring the question. ‘Then you can tell us about the orks’ activities here.’

‘We could. Do you have time for a detour?’

‘We have time.’

‘Then we can show you. There’s an orbital command substation twelve hours east of here as you head towards Princus Praxa.’

‘Advise that we explain on the way,’ barked a female trooper with the coarse voice of a lho-stick lifer and the frosty exterior of an ice world. She was looking at the slate monitorum set into the back of her left gauntlet. It showed what appeared to be heat sources over a grid. A solid mass of them were congregating directly ahead, while still more continued to spill in from the edges. ‘The orks are regrouping inside the agri-plex, and Sergeant Cullen reports two vehicle squadrons inbound with flyer support.’

Bryce turned questioningly to Zerberyn, who nodded. They could spare another twelve hours. And he could already hear the sound of approaching engines. He doubted whether they could all be extracted by air before ork reinforcements arrived, and he would be loath to leave a useful force of Imperial soldiery to the captivity of the greenskins. The human chattel currently held within the agri-plex were another matter. They were, he had concluded, a neutral variable, neither an asset to the success of his mission nor a hindrance, and could thus most usefully be ignored.

‘Antille,’ Zerberyn voxed. ‘Contact Kalkator and inform him of the change in plan. Tell him to be quick, we have ork aircraft inbound.’

‘As you say, brother.’

Zerberyn removed his helmet with a hiss of demagnetisation and focused his hearing on the incoming petrochem growl, his Lyman’s ear isolating it from the din and sharpening it.

It was the distant but rapidly closing roar of a Thunderhawk’s combat engines.

Zerberyn looked up at the moment that the Iron Warriors gunship Meratara came down behind the line of wind turbines, losing itself in the dust thrown up by its underwing exhausts. The bi-blades spun until they blurred, droning, superfast, chips of metallic debris spanking off the blades. Turbofans angling to hover, the gunship’s box jaw pivoted towards the agri-plex and opened up with its full forward arsenal.

Zerberyn cursed, shoved Bryce to the ground and crouched over him.

‘Defend the Apothecary!’

Turbo-lasers, heavy bolters and lascannons chewed through the structure with a sound like a woodsaw biting on steel. Men and transhumans alike broke from combat and threw themselves down as a quartet of hellstrike missiles whistled from the Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints and into the agri-plex. Explosions blossomed along the building’s width, spread low like demolition charges rigged, primed and detonated in sequence, triggering a chain collapse that brought its metal walls crashing into dust and fire.

Zerberyn, still crouched protectively over the lightly concussed Tempestus Scions commander, turned his face into the heat storm. Bits of metal and burning cinders streamed down like a scene from the last days of the Siege. Massive warriors, veterans in ornate gunmetal and bronze, moved through the pyroclastic rain and brought bolters to bear.

‘Arise, little cousin,’ said Kalkator.

The warsmith’s deep voice resonated harshly from the glowing vox-grille of his horned helmet. His baroque Mark III power armour was embellished with hooks strung with barbed wire, weird devices, and campaign citations from a hundred worlds rendered lifeless by war a millennium before Zerberyn had been born. His left arm was a bionic of superb integration and design, the product of a craft lost to all but a few.

Dazed, Bryce looked from one Space Marine to the other, his mouth making confused, soundless shapes.

The twin barrels of Kalkator’s combi-bolter were trained between Zerberyn’s eyes.

‘My gunship has room enough for your squad. Take what you came for and leave before the orks come back for vengeance.’

‘You are a soulless traitor, Kalkator. There were people in there.’

‘It is a war of survival we fight. I wage it as though it is one I intend to win. We received your update, were you not about to abandon them?’

‘There is a difference. Your own survival, I am convinced you treasure. But not mine, nor theirs.’

Zerberyn pointed to the Scions scattered about. A good number had gone to ground amongst the battered silos as soon as the agri-plex had gone up and most of them had visual augmenter beams dancing over the Iron Warrior’s armour. Had the Imperium seen fit to educate even its best with a fuller knowledge of its history and its foes, then things would have become very ugly very fast.

‘Truer words were never uttered by a bastard of Dorn,’ said Kalkator. ‘But at this moment my fate is dependent on yours.’

‘Our mission is unfinished. These men speak of an operation of some kind being conducted on the surface nearby, a data trove of the orks’ activities that is within our grasp if we can move faster than word of our presence here.’

‘Arise,’ Kalkator growled again. His gauntlet finger slid across his combi-bolter’s trigger like a whetstone over a sickle. ‘I will kill these men before they can lead you to your death.’

‘You would have to kill me to do it.’

‘Do you think you would be the first?’

Zerberyn met the ruby glare of the warsmith’s gaze without fear.

The Iron Warrior grunted with frustration and lowered his weapon. Even for a near-immortal, transhuman monster like Kalkator, time was finite and precious — as rare as an ally.

‘The gods curse you, you and the stubbornness of your stock. Very well, we will go with you one step further. Apothecary,’ he barked at Reoch. ‘You may keep your cargo aboard my gunship for safekeeping.’

Zerberyn’s triumphant smile faded.

Through the dust sent rolling out from underneath the Thunderhawk’s idling turbofans, there came the rolling snarl of engines. Headlamps pierced the cloud, and for a heart-stilling moment Zerberyn thought that the orks’ relief force was on them already, but then the slab-sided gunmetal shapes of a squadron of Iron Warriors bikers drove snarling through the murk. Wide rubber tyres with deep, spiked treads chewed the loose ground as they took position by the wind turbines.

Behind them marched a second ten-man squad, who fanned out, adopting a staggered firing line of bolters and siege weaponry, shielding the ponderous advance of a final three Iron Warriors behind them. They were huge, armoured like tanks, and bound in razor wire. Terminators. The colossi stomped into position behind the Traitor Space Marines, Tactical Dreadnought suits purring and belching black smoke as they redressed the aim of their combi-bolters towards the Militarum Tempestus men.

Zerberyn’s smile returned as he found himself oddly pleased by this restoration of a cosmic truth.

‘One squad each, is it?’

‘As your precious Codex tells you, little cousin: if your enemy has one squad, bring two.’

Sixteen

Mars — Pavonis Mons

Nictitating membranes flickered across the empty, machined eyes of Zeta-One Prime. It was the cold, infinitely patient stare of a reptile, a chamaeleonidae watching a fly. Urquidex tried to abstract her from his consciousness, but the cold sense of her silver presence on the back of his neck was an order of magnitude worse. He shivered and pulled up the collar of his robe. Presumably, the skitarius’ build had been designed to elicit exactly that kind of biological response. Cold-blooded to warm. Predator, prey.

He glanced up from the half-translated cartogenetic instructional he had been reading line by line from storage wafers into the data reliquary. At least, that was mostly what he had been doing.

Genetic readers rumbled as they worked at their endless task, laser diffraction painting the eddying smoke with hazy lines of rainbow colours. The thudding steps of laboratorium servitors and the lilt of chanting hung with the dry fumes. A pair of initiate adepts drifted through it, there but, in some crucially contextual way, elsewhere, red-robed ghosts of flesh and cabling.

Zeta-One Prime was the only thing that was still. She stood while Urquidex sat, watching, her arc pistol holstered under her hand.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I am instructing the cognis units to equivalate sequence and textual data with galactic grid references.’

‘Again?’

‘It must be done each time. The repetition is important.’

The skitarius fell silent a moment.

‘The first time you performed this task it required fifteen minutes and eleven seconds. You have been at this terminal for sixteen minutes, magos.’

With an effort, Urquidex suppressed the anxious tic of his digitools. They made him look guilty. The skitarius’ membranes flickered, some kind of sub-binaric code familiar to the deep biologics of his hindbrain.

I know.

He swallowed, tasted acid.

‘How much longer will this task require?’

‘I…’ He glanced at the reliquary’s scratchy, chrome-edged rune display, the lines of machine code that, though he could comprehend barely one symbol in five, he still knew betrayed a lot more than a cartogenetic instructional. He was resting a great deal on the faith that no mere skitarius, however elevated, would have been initiated into the First Circle of Information. ‘Two minutes.’

‘You have one.’

‘But—’

‘The artisan trajectorae apprised me of your sub-optimal performance in your prior duty designation. I will not tolerate the same here.’

‘But—’

‘Fifty-two seconds, magos.’

Biting his tongue and begging the machine’s clemency for such discourteous haste, he recited the final lines of the instructional via the data reliquary’s stiff ivory keys. As he worked, his digitools slid indepently over the tiers of keys.

‘I am close.’

The runes hovered in the machine’s active buffer, the noospheric equivalent of short term memory, for about five seconds before the detailed instructional he was inputting with his other hand swept them away.

‘How close?’

The question illuminated the electronic firmament. The data-strings were inelegantly composed, the syntax of quantum bits crude and, though the final form was legible, evidence of an inexpert hand.

But Clementina Yendl was no adept.

It had only taken a few days after his transfer from Noctis Labyrinth for her to locate him once more, and though Van Auken’s laboratorium was too well isolated for them to meet in person, they communicated. From her he had learned of the orks over Terra and more, sensed the urgency of her cause in the haste with which she ‘spoke’. He had not asked who she really was or whom she really served. Perhaps because the experience of trusting another person, of believing in their cause, was too precious to risk with such questions.

‘Three days,’ he sent back. ‘Two days if I do not purge the prognosticators of scrapcode, but the accuracy of our results will suffer.’

‘If you had to leave Mars now, could you finish?’

‘Now?’

‘Magos?’ said Zeta-One Prime, making him start.

He had not intended to speak aloud.

‘Stand by,’ he said, trying to make a dry mouth sound confident.

Disconnecting from the data reliquary, he hurried through the whirring stacks of cogitators. The kick of his robes disturbed ankle-deep engine smoke. His heart was pounding though he wasn’t sure why. A fly being watched by a chamaeleonidae.

Surrounded by trembling apparatus, a quiescent hololith table gave off a stilted glow. Urquidex connected himself through a series of peripheral nervous plugs. His fingers were sweating and it took several tries.

He was aware of Zeta-One Prime watching. For now, just watching. This action was abnormal, and the abnormal made her wary.

With a sympathetic impulse, he bade the hololith to awaken.

A three-dimensional map of the Imperium of Man shimmered into being. To his telescopic optics it was a heat map, data-dense regions showing through as yellows and reds, spiral arms separated by dark bands of nothing. Urquidex willed the data-vision to change. Hotspots and stellar landmarks dispersed, to be replaced by the branching lines of a phylogenetic tree. Except that ‘tree’ was too fleshbound a metaphor. Two-dimensional. It was more like the growth of a bacterial colony on a nutrient plate or the filamentous spread of a fungus. Offshoots extended into every segmentum of Imperial space, expanding outwards in three dimensions from a common root somewhere in the galactic core. The data represented it as an amorphous zone, grey and ill-defined, unpleasing on the diligent eye. The uncertainties were being continually smoothed away as the sequence mapping progressed, but it still covered hundreds of light years of congested space, thousands of worlds. His own cortex might be capable of processing it. He shook his head.

It was too complex.

‘Install a high capacity cable-link between the hololith and the data reliquary.’

‘To what purpose?’

‘Because I require it,’ Urquidex snapped, heart fumbling, and then with what he prayed was proper urgency rather than panic, ‘Please. Every second increases the likelihood of data degradation.’

He was aware of the interlink the instant that it was made. It was an erupting singularity of blinding connectivity, light and sound, thought and sensation, that even through the remove of a peripheral plug-in was almost overwhelming. He shunted the upload to a cortical machine sub-consciousness and did his best to disregard it.

‘The orks originate somewhere in the galactic core. It is a dense area. It will take time to isolate the exact world.’

Silence from the machine. The data galaxy spiralled, spiralled.

‘Yendl?’

Nothing.

‘This deviates, magos,’ said Zeta-One Prime, overcoming a pre-programmed fear of these machines and their workings with obvious reluctance. ‘If there is a problem then I am obligated to inform the artisan trajectorae.’

‘No. There is no need for that.’

He looked up.

The skitarius was up close: not angry, she was incapable of that, but as anxious as her emotional clamps allowed her to be. She radiated an artifical cold that needled around Urquidex’s implants and into the bone. Behind her, a woman in plain red robes approached. An initiate adept with a data-slate for inspection.

Odd.

The initiates worked on independent projects. They had never reported to him before.

The crack of a las discharge rang out like a hammer striking a nail. Zeta-One Prime jerked forward. There was another shot and she stumbled into the hololith, making the image shake. Ionised smoke uncoiling from the las-burns to her silvery exoskeleton, she began to turn.

The initiate struck her across the face with the data-slate. The slate bent in two in an eruption of sparks and knocked the skitarius back into the projector. A sharp kick into the shin dropped her onto her knees. A laspistol came up in the initate’s other hand and pushed up against the back of Zeta-One Prime’s skull. With laser clarity, Urquidex noted that the selector had been switched to full auto.

The skitarius’ head lit up like a soldering iron and she slumped to the ground, head slagged and fused to her shoulders.

A blurt of interrogative binaric came from behind the cogitator stacks and the second initiate came running.

The first was already dropping, minimising her profile even as she cast aside her emptied laspistol and with mercuric grace drew Zeta-One Prime’s arc pistol. The running initate was armed with basic digital weaponry and spat low-powered laser bolts from his extended arm as soon as he spotted the fallen skitarius. They all missed.

The female took her moment, aimed and then fired. A crackling fist of electricity punched the initiate from his feet and slammed him into the brass cladding of a codifier.

Urquidex gaped.

‘Not later,’ said Clementina Yendl, manually tearing his plug-ins from the hololith projector. The abrupt separation was as extraordinary as the connection had been, and almost wiped him out with pain.

‘Now.’

Seventeen

Prax

The orbital command substation was an immense agglomeration of cylindrical towers dish arrays and landing platforms that in better days would have serviced light jurisdictional compliance craft responsible for inspection and enforcement of orbital traffic. The facility was surrounded by a crumpled wire fence, and was all just within sight of Princus Praxa’s outer walls. The city was a thumb’s-width smudge on the horizon, a coppery pall of particulate pollution that glimmered like living crystal from the final-stage escape boosters of orbital lifters.

The orks, as Major Bryce had explained it, utilised the substation’s communication nets to complement their own orbital operations.

Zerberyn could have inferred that much for himself from the sheer concentration of firepower that the orks had embedded there in its defence.

Pot-bellied howitzers thrust out of sandbagged redoubts. For such large, crude-looking artillery pieces they had a tremendous rate of fire, thumping out explosive shells and sending up rockets of dusty topsoil amidst the Fists Exemplar advance. Machine cannons screamed as they ripped up new trenchlines.

Scrap metal drizzled over Zerberyn’s armour. Dust clogged the glowing lenses of his helm.

The bombardment was a variable that, having already plotted the optimal angle of attack at the onset, he could no longer influence and so spared no further thought to.

A combat squad comprising one-half of Veteran Squad Anatoq moved with him over the broken ground in a line, their even spacing the resultant practical of Brother Donbuss’ best theoretical of the howitzer shells’ blast radius. The five Space Marines were flickering gold auspex traces in Zerberyn’s faceplate display, periodically broken up by dust diffraction and blast compression fronts. They fired sporadically, conserving ammunition, the soundless flashes of muzzle-flare in the cacophony primarily to give the orks something to aim at other than the true source of the attack.

With their genhanced low-light vision and complementary auspex overlays bolstering their awareness, the Fists Exemplar guided the lighter Tempestus Scions in. Patched in to the humans’ platoon frequency, Zerberyn listened in on their chatter as he picked a path through the stick bombs, tube-charges and tripwires that his auto-senses’ threat-recogition protocols called out from the general detritus.

Even had these men been Space Marines, Zerberyn would have been impressed by their vox-discipline. There was none of the braggadocio and backchat that he was accustomed to hearing on mortal units’ channels. Just target advisories, calm requests for recharge packs or medicae assistance, and mapping updates that were followed immediately and without question. Zerberyn had not yet seen the Scions truly tested, but if they achieved nothing else today then they had already accomplished a feat that was practically unheard of.

They had impressed an Exemplar.

‘Unidentified heat source on your eleven,’ voxed one, their system clear as a bell.

The heat source saw Zerberyn the moment that Zerberyn saw it, and fired a moment later. A Devil Dog flame tank, hull down and scarred enough by battle-damage to justify Zerberyn’s initial appraisal that it had been derelict. An ork in an ill-fitting flak jacket and a red bandana lifted its head above the hatch and shouted.

He would submit himself for proper penance when the battle was done.

A melta beam lanced from its turret gun in a howl of deconstituted atmosphere and passed a foot over Zerberyn’s shoulder, incinerating half of the following Scions in an instant. Heat washed over him. He hit the ground, rolling into the cover formed by the scrap and craters surrounding the substation as the tank’s glacis-mounted heavy bolter opened up.

‘Mine, cousin.’

An Iron Warriors Terminator strode directly into the firing line. His monstrous battleplate soaked up the glacis-mount’s magazine as mass-reactive rounds from his own combi-bolter spanked across the Devil Dog’s gunner slit. A disruption field thrummed into life around the clenched fingers of his power fist as the Cataphractii disappeared again into the fog of war.

‘Tarsus, Galen — pincer left,’ voxed Zerberyn, rising and clapping dust from his bolt pistol. ‘Tosque, Nalis, Borhune: right.’

His squad knew their duties, but it always paid to keep their wiser-than-thou individualism in check.

‘Jaskólska,’ he went on, switching to the Scions’ channel, addressing the female trooper he had spoken with briefly at the agri-plex. ‘We have you covered.’

‘Our gratitude, lord captain.’

The surviving Scions, no grief, no complaint, took off at a full sprint. They were bug-eyed by the full covering and rebreather apparatus of their omnishield helms. The greenish glow of visual augmenter beams from their hellgun scopes webbed the air like a haywired security grid.

Zerberyn followed, finding the troopers spread out in a semicircular firebase formation, Sergeant Jaskólska and the unit sapper in the process of mag-locking the final melta bombs to the substation’s Dreadnought-sized main doors.

‘Clear!’ yelled the sapper with considerable, long pent-up satisfaction, and then activated the det-charges via his slate monitorum.

White fire rolled out from the doors with a searing roar. Zerberyn felt a passing discomfort in his eyes before his auto-senses adapted to the supernova glare and filtered out the more damaging wavelengths. He was stepping into the breach with weapons ready while the Scions still had their arms over their helms’ visors.

The gunmetal floor tiles glittered like a starfield, littered with flakes of glass that a moment ago had been dust. Opposite, a security desk sat behind a reinforced shatterglass screen, the window turned almost completely white with cracks. On various walls, the torn corner scraps of instructional posters fluttered as the vestibule breathed in, exchanging the oxygen that the melta bombs had consumed for smoke from outside.

He shot and killed an ork that pushed its way in through an interior door, then another, and another. Shot, kill; shot kill. Purity through utility.

More were coming, discernably different from the savage fighters he had encountered on Prax thus far. Another greenskin sub-type, perhaps. Another clan. Their alien features were encased in horned helms, obscene musculature clad in thick body armour decorated with an optically striking black-and-white checker pattern. There were too many, and the number of entrance corridors was too great, for even transhuman reflexes and Space Marine armament to hold them at bay.

Zerberyn swung his thunder hammer as he charged headlong into the pack. The timed-release detonation vaporised the first ork’s torso, pasted its legs in two long red streaks back the way it had come, and lifted the half-tonne brute behind it off its feet, sending it crashing through the shatterglass screen. Another, hard and green and slabbed in armour, came in across his swing. It roared, all aggression. He roared back, vox-amplified to a crippling pitch, as the ork slammed into his turned shoulder and bulldozed him into the wall.

Nalis and Borhune arrived in a storm of bolter fire that shredded the ork. Following in their wake came Jaskólska and her Scions, lighting up the room with full-auto bursts of hot-shot las. Powerful though the Scions’ hellguns were compared to the standard Guardsman’s lasrifle, each monstrous greenskin took several point-blank blasts to put down, and several more to finish off.

The last ork crunched onto the glass-strewn tiles, crisped like meat held too long against the heat.

Zerberyn disinterred himself from the dented wall and opened a channel.

‘Columba, Major.’ He masked the twitch of his lip and swallowed his distaste. ‘Kalkator. Entrance secured. See that the perimeter is held and join me in the control room.’

‘A pity our fathers were such adversaries,’ voxed Kalkator. ‘Together, their sons would have been unstoppable.’

‘In some other universe, perhaps,’ Zerberyn returned, and then, aware that Bryce was also on the channel, added a poisonous, ‘cousin.’

That was an explanation that he did not want to have to give. Not now. And not to Marshal Bohemond when they finally rejoined the muster at Phall.

He scowled.

First Captain Zerberyn of the Fists Exemplar did not answer to the Black Templars.

‘This facility’s data stores had better be worth it.’

‘This way, lord captain,’ said Jaskólska smartly, unaware that the warning had been intended for himself.

Glass ground under her feet as she eased open an interior door and stepped over the greenskin corpse that had been holding it ajar. Zerberyn followed, then Nalis, Borhune, Tosque and Galen. Tarsus remained behind to hold the vestibule, directing the remaining Scions into fire points behind upturned tables and security lockers.

A short corridor led to a metal staircase. It looked like something that would have been used by lower-grade servants and perhaps as an escape route during emergency drills. Access doors onto exterior walkways stood on each tier, bloody handprints on the emergency release bars. A pair of panicked-looking gretchin came clattering down the escape and straight into two precise blasts from Jaskólska’s hellgun. They rolled down, the sounds of bolter fire ringing back through the stairwell’s metal frame as Zerberyn and the major pushed through another door and into a control room.

The terminals were still active, continuing with their operators in absentia to plot the blips and curves of an intensely crowded near-orbital space. Empty, bloodstained chairs were set up along curving desks, blinking, chirping workstations facing an armourglass window. The view was of an endless beige plain of desertified pastureland. A railroad cut across it, trailed by a dust road. Both ran from the substation to Princus Praxa. Zerberyn manually operated his helm’s magnification selector. It was no substitute for a pair of magnoculars, but it bought him a blurry three- or four-fold zoom — enough to make out the mottled grey industrial stacks crowding the city’s outer walls. The chimneys pumped out a grimy, ochre smog that hazed almost everything else within it. Even the high adamantium-ceramite walls of the Crusade-era citadel that dominated the settlement’s heart were little more than a gothic, crimson shadow.

‘What is that smoke?’

‘The people of Prax,’ said Major Bryce, appearing in the door ahead of Columba and Kalkator and a handful of Scions. ‘And a billion more from off-world, brought here to be… rendered.’

Zerberyn turned from the window as Columba strode past. The veteran-sergeant ignored the panorama entirely, thumped through the glazed metal doors onto the main staircase, and then blazed down the corridor with his bolt pistol to a riot of high-pitched screams. Kalkator joined Zerberyn at the glass. Jaskólska moved warily aside, some deep conditioning of her training causing her to half-raise her hellgun and slip behind a desk. The Iron Warrior disengaged his helmet’s seals and removed it, nose wrinkling as he took it under his arm and gazed across the plain towards the fortress that Perturabo had built. His eyes were pained, distant, his primarch’s glories dust.

‘You have seen it?’ said Zerberyn to the major.

‘Throne, have I seen it,’ muttered Bryce, hugging his carapace as though the armourglass provided no protection against the winds of the plain. ‘The smell of the tanneries stays on you for days, and the screams of the children…’

‘You are only human. It is understandable.’

Bryce nodded, grateful for that. He pointed to a humming stack of cogitator units that stood against the wall behind a clear plastek barrier. ‘The data-cache.’

‘I am no priest of Mars, major.’

‘I suggest we pull up the unit and take it with us, First Captain.’ Brother Antille walked over, shadowed by the smaller form of Bryce’s vox-officer-cum-adjutant, Sergeant Menthis, and greeted Zerberyn with a curt nod. ‘I can bear the weight, and see it safely loaded aboard the gunship. Once we return to Dantalion Forge-Brother Clathrin can conduct the necessary rites of retrieval.’

‘Do it.’

‘Everything the orks have done from here will have been automatically stored by the system,’ said Bryce. ‘Thousands of ships take off and land every day, and even more are unloaded from orbit. You’ll be able to learn what the orks are doing from that, I have no doubt.’

‘I can tell you what the orks are doing,’ said Kalkator, turning his nailhead stare on Zerberyn, ignoring the Scion utterly. ‘They are feeding an empire.’

Zerberyn looked again at that crimson pall. As if the thermosphere wept blood. If his transhuman biology had retained the ability for him to be physically sick, then he would have been so. By the Emperor’s wisdom, he was forced to keep his disgust internal; it stewed in his gut, suffused him, a familiar outrage trembling in the marrow of his bones.

Feed.

‘You saw the number of ships in orbit, little cousin,’ said Kalkator. ‘The industry of Prax could be supplying offensives against hundreds of sectors.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘You know what I am suggesting.’

‘You did not want to be on this planet. Now you are talking of reconquering it.’

‘Orks do not settle, they burn. They took no prisoners on Ostrom or Klostra or on Eidolica. I could not have known that this would be here.’

‘There must be ten thousand orks in that city, defending a Fourth Legion citadel. There is no combination of variables that can sum forty men and fewer than thirty Adeptus Astartes into a schema of victory.’

With a scowl, Kalkator replaced his helm over his head. His armour resealed with a clank of magnetic clamps. The next words he spoke came directly through Zerberyn’s helmet channel.

‘Forget the citadel. The fortress is but the surface of a complex of subterranean bunkers that runs beneath the entire city. The entrances are concealed and gene-locked. We can take the citadel, and hold it long enough for our ships to land additional forces to cleanse the planet.’

Zerberyn closed his eyes and considered. The parameters of the modified mission schematic would recommend utilising the substation’s communications and landing capability to apprise the fleet and call down Thunderhawk extraction to remove the data-cache to safety, and then most likely destroy the facility on their departure. But there was merit to Kalkator’s argument. He opened his eyes and met the warsmith’s glowing, red-lensed stare.

That horned mask was hiding something, he felt certain, but the Iron Warrior was too altered from his exalted origins, his manner too void of humanity, for him to guess what.

‘We need only get into the city,’ said Kalkator.

Zerberyn’s eyes followed the line of the railroad, across the plain and into Princus Praxa’s bleak industrial heart.

There was merit.

He nodded, feeling an adrenal buzz suffuse his muscles as his body prepared itself for the combat promised by that red horizon. It felt good.

The fightback began now.

Eighteen

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The Praetorian Way was the primary arterial between Anterior Six Gate and the Great Chamber. Fortified senatorial habs and basilicae soared above like mountains, bristling with rusted autocannon turrets and the roosts of angels, their stone faces teared by acid corrosion. Lumen globes mounted on posts lined the way, glittering like an honour guard drawn from the span of the Imperium. Brass filters shaped the light into continents and oceans, each a commemoration to the world of an Army regiment destroyed in defence of Terra. Kilometre after kilometre, they stood vigil against the deepening twilight. Lord High Admiral Lansung had intended to climax his victory march here following the Navy’s triumph at Vesperilles, and over the course of the Siege both loyalists and traitors had exploited the arterial to move their war machines between inner and outer Palace.

Now it was locked down.

Barriers and visored enforcers stood on the ramps and slip roads. Like clockwork, a black Adeptus Arbites armoured transport would cruise down the centre lane with exhortations to good order and obedience booming from its loudspeakers.

It was a rare sight then, if not an unprecedented one, when a squadron of Imperial Fists Land Raiders roared onto the flyway.

They pulled away from the towers, moving in convoy. The cut light sharpened angular lines to a golden edge. The immense power of their engines rumbled into the angels’ eyries above, and ruffled the forever-twilight of the ornamental canopy of the Night Garden below.

The Land Raider was a beast of war, one of unique inelegance in the armouries of the Angels of Death, but unrivalled in the execution of its singular function. The bonded layers of its composite armour were as near to impenetrable as the artifice of man could make them, the tank front-loaded with firepower and battlefield superiority. It was the ground-to-ground equivalent of a drop pod or a boarding torpedo, its role to deliver Space Marines into the violent, still-beating heart of battle with crushing force. Its armour, armament and machine temperament suited it equally to rolling over troops, armour and even the fortifications of an enemy in order to gain its target.

The lead vehicle pulled up before the gilded stone portal of the Senatorum Imperialis.

Sponson lascannons tracked back and forth over the imposing defensive structure as two more vehicles rolled out alongside it. The fourth and last, an ultra-rare example of the siege-breaking Achilles variant, heaved to a stop behind the other tanks. Its hull-mounted thunderfire cannon and sponson multi-meltas zeroed in on the gate.

The Imperial Fists were dead. Ardamantua had ended them. But their serfs, the Phalanx, their Chapter houses here on Terra, their armouries, vaults and frozen gene-stocks — all still remained. The Chapter was mustering its strength for one last, defiant shout.

The Achilles revved its engines, wrecking-ball frame leaning into its forward brakes.

Its ultimatum was explicit.

The Lucifer Blacks lieutenant in command of the guard detail appeared in the embrasure window of the guardroom above the gate. His hand was clamped to an earpiece and he was speaking urgently into a wired vox-unit mounted on the guardroom wall.

Koorland popped the cupola hatch of the Achilles, then stepped off the roof of the tank and onto the road. Chapter serfs in gold tabards, wielding lasrifles and ornamental blades, were pouring out of the troop hatches and running forwards to secure the slowly opening gate. Following them from each transport came an Imperial Fist.

An Excoriator, a Crimson Fist, a Black Templar and a Fist Exemplar.

Or as Koorland knew them: Hemisphere, Absolution, Eternity and Daylight.

They were each proud of their own heritage, of the distinctions that had arisen between them and their brothers over a thousand years. But it was a learned pride. It had been inculcated into them since their rebirth, nurtured by ritual and rote. Now they had been called home, brothers again, and that meant something deeper than words. Each of them wore the brilliant yellow of the Imperial Fists and carried the black fist on their pauldron. Eternity had devoted the full left half of his breastplate to a particularly prominent example and scraps of yellow cerecloth fluttered from the hilt of his longsword.

They fell in behind Koorland, armed, intense, each the very best that a human being could become, and together five proud sons of Dorn marched on the Great Chamber.

The Senatorum was in recess.

Lesser lords in military dress and civilian frippery mingled in an anteroom around refectory tables laden with canapés, sipping on recaff and talking in hushed tones about the prior session’s business. The air trilled with privilege and the clink of glassware. Servitor cherubs hovered under a fresco of the Emperor delivering the Imperial Creed, weaving between columns and vid-capture drones bearing reams of parchment. A steady stream of dignitaries hurried from the ablutorials, hands still wet, and made for the waiting doors to the Great Chamber. A polite chime sounded through the vox-casters set up in the vaults, sounding the recall to session.

It all stopped as Koorland and the Last Wall strode past.

The Space Marines towered over the human lords like god-kings out of legend. A few hundred Lucifer Blacks, officers of the Adeptus Arbites and Palace Defence Forces, as well as liveried attachés of the High Lords, watched from various discreet corner rooms and side corridors, but stood off. Whether out of fear of his brothers or hesitation over stepping on another’s jurisdiction, Koorland could not care.

He turned to face the doors.

They were vast, oak, inlaid and fretted with silver from which an energy-nullifying protection field hummed. They were also open. Koorland focused his hearing on what lay beyond. His Lyman’s ear cued him to the strains of Ecclesiarch Mesring delivering the commencement blessing.

‘Bestia, qui in sapientia.’

As the Adeptus Astartes’ adherence to the secular Imperial Truth minimised direct contact with the Ecclesiarchy, he knew little of the forms and practices.

‘Benedicat serviamus in regens et nos iterum.’

But even to him, the Ecclesiarch’s address sounded strange.

‘Ave Veridus est.’

There was no time to dwell on it further as the Space Marines passed through the open doors and into the Great Chamber.

The tiered auditorium was almost empty. Row upon row of flipped-back wooden pews surrounded the central dais and a woolly throng of minor dignitaries milling around their seats. As Koorland was expecting, Ecclesiarch Mesring had the podium. There was an unkemptness to his hair and dress and an almost feral fervour in his eyes as he spoke, his voice coming asynchronously from the vox-casters positioned around the chamber.

Lord Admiral Lansung and Fabricator General Kubik were the only two presently seated, the pair sniping at one another across the intervening chairs. The others moved around the main platform, stretching their legs and taking sips of purified water, half-listening to the aides, analysts and codifiers that pursued them around the base of the dais.

It was Lansung who saw Koorland first.

His face blanched as Hemisphere and Absolution spread out around the standing galleries on the outer edge of the chamber and swung their bolters to cover the dais. As well he might — the fat fool’s politicking had done more to end the Imperial Fists than any ork or Chrome. People began to cry out and went to ground amongst the pews. Daylight and Eternity hung back, spear and sword raised respectively, as Koorland marched down the aisle.

A huge statue of Rogal Dorn stood to one side. He faced the aisle, the personal guarantor of safety to all delegates to this chamber, but his gaze was turned towards the dais, ever in judgement of the successors to his god-like brothers and father.

There, Koorland stopped.

There were other doors into the Great Chamber, other aisles to the dais, but Koorland had studied his battlefield and knew what terrain it had to exploit. His armour shone bright and perfect under the lighting directed onto the statue, and the impact of standing so outfitted before his own primarch, he who was the very symbol of this chamber’s endurance, was wholly deliberate.

Udin Macht Udo pulled the Ecclesiarch from the podium. He took the lectern bar in both hands and glared into the stage lights over the fan array of vox-pickups. His braided grand admiral’s uniform was luminous white and glittered with medals, power and pomposity in bald measure. His scarred face was pink and furious, his maimed eye gleaming like a pearl in oyster flesh.

‘This assembly has heard your petition, Koorland, and dismissed it. We legislated the immediate dispersal of your Last Wall to their Chapters. Is this your idea of a coup? Will the Imperial Fists forever be remembered for the failed overthrow of the government of Holy Terra?’

Koorland took a moment to centre himself and to allow the lords to clamour down.

Instinctually, he scanned the chamber for Vangorich, an ally, but if the Grand Master was present at all then he was hidden amongst the lesser lords. His battleplate sensors called back no hostile targets. Another reason to prefer the battlefield. The words of Roboute Guilliman came to his mind then, written an age ago, at a time when such a future seemed possible for the then Legiones Astartes.

‘Space Marines would excel in peace as they excel in war, for the Emperor has crafted them to excel.’

And more even than that: he was an Imperial Fist standing his ground.

‘My duty is to the defence of Terra, and the persecution of the enemies of Man.’ Koorland did not need a vox-caster array. He did not shout, but his voice, engineered for the infinite warzones of the stars, boomed to every corner of the auditorium. ‘You call yourselves a government, but right now, Udo, what I see before me are enemies of Man.’

The High Lords’ protestations of shock and outrage served only to emphasise the schism between them. The imposing Provost-Marshal Vernor Zeck was nodding along with Koorland’s words, and sharing a glance with the equally thoughtful Inquisitorial Representatives. On the opposite side of the divide, Mesring cried murder, apostasy and worse. The Lord Commander bared his teeth and laughed.

‘You should have brought more men.’

‘Daylight,’ Koorland called. ‘What was your personal tally of kills from the siege of Eidolica?’

‘Nine hundred and eight of the greenskins, brother. A long night fought over the promethium flats of my home, and then when the sun rose and my armour burned and my bolter ran dry and my chainsword died, I killed with my fists alone as the orks sought to take the caves of the Great Basin from me.’ He turned to look at Eternity. ‘I would have killed nine hundred and eight more to hold it had my brothers’ Thunderhawks not retrieved me.’

‘Eternity. Your count from Aspiria.’

‘Thirty.’ The Black Templar turned the hawk-like beak of his helm towards his Fists Exemplar brother. ‘Though I was disadvantaged by the orks sending only their best to take my vessel. I had minutes rather than days, and nothing but my gladius with which to do it.’

Koorland smiled. Daylight’s rough chuckle filled the brothers’ private channel.

‘I command the might of the Imperium itself,’ snapped Udo.

‘Perhaps it is too grand a task, for one mortal to govern in regency of the Emperor of Man.’ Koorland selected his words as he would select targets, and from the impotent flush that came over the Lord Commander, he could see they had found their mark. Even Udin Macht Udo could not attempt to deny the truth of them. ‘By genetic birthright, and for the Imperium of Man that He built, I claim the title of Lord Commander. Stand aside, Udo, that you may serve Him without further impeachment of your honour.’

Udo sneered.

‘I will back the Angels of the Adeptus Astartes,’ growled Zeck, almost reverently, and Koorland was thankful that the Provost-Marshal had chosen this day to end his exile from the Senatorum. ‘If you can restore order to our streets and sanity to this…’ his voice trailed off, contempt showing through the symphonic grate of his augmetised throat, ‘assembly, then you will have my support.’

‘And we,’ said Veritus. The Inquisitorial Representative clumped across the dais in cream-coloured power armour to take his stand beside Zeck. The two lords were giants — to Koorland’s eyes, in more ways than one. ‘As once we rallied behind your Father in Terra’s darkest hour, we will follow you now.’

With Wienand joining her co-representative, the High Lords slowly, hesitantly, shuffled themselves.

The Paternoval Envoy, Gibran, was the first to go to Zeck’s side, then Sark, Anwar and Lord Militant Verreault. Lansung hauled his bulk out of his chair and, with an almost apologetic look to the pulpit, joined them. Even Juskina Tull seemed to snap out of whatever fugue state she had been occupying to join the drift. Tobris Ekharth wilted under Udo’s stare, moving like a man with a powering conversion beam trained on his shoulder blades, but with a smile growing lighter with every step he took.

Only Mesring and Kubik remained. The former looked on as though the goings-on of his peers were beneath him. The latter might have had his consciousness diverted to some other host for the duration of the recess for all the reaction he gave.

With a defiant growl, the Lord Commander gestured to the detachment of Lucifer Blacks that were just then entering through the north precept. They moved in, shock-glaives powered, but faltered at the sight of Eternity, his two-handed sword as long as they were tall.

More Guardsmen filed in from the east behind Koorland, blades lowered threateningly, bands of light striating the enamelled black of their armour.

‘Remove this man’s weapons and escort him from my chamber,’ snapped Udo.

The ranking Lucifer Black, an angle-drawn lieutenant with a soft beret cap in lieu of a helmet, walked towards Koorland. He pursed his lips, his toughened stare sliding off Koorland’s pauldron plate to the High Lords and back again. He threw a salute and then dropped to one knee with head bowed across his chainsword. There was a yellow ribbon knotted around the hilt.

‘It’s my honour to serve you, Lord Commander.’

Udo was boiling, good eye bulging, but he had nothing left to say.

‘You are a powerful man by your own reckoning, Udo,’ said Koorland. ‘But to my brothers and I, you are just a man. Stand down. You are done.’

‘I made this council. Lansung? Mesring? I made them.’

‘Provost-Marshal,’ snapped Koorland. ‘Please remove the former Lord Commander.’

With a crack of servo-muscular knuckles and a grin of steel, Zeck stalked forward. Udo drew himself up as if meaning to stare the cyborgised Provost-Marshal down, as he had so many others in his years of rise and rise. Then at the very last, he appeared to wither inside of his plush white admiralty jacket, in his deflation visibly shrinking by half an inch. He dropped his head. Zeck’s augmetised hand clamped over his shoulder, and aside from a whimper of pain he didn’t make another sound as the Provost-Marshal led him from the dais and into the arms of the waiting enforcers.

Koorland held his sword aloft and shouted, cheers beginning to spread through the Great Chamber and into the antechamber beyond as the reality of what the lords had just witnessed or heard sank in.

‘The next time an ork sets foot in this chamber, it will be met by the Last Wall!’

The chamber buzzed with new excitement. Koorland’s twin hearts were thumping.

The fightback began now.

Nineteen

Prax — Princus Praxa

The locomotive rattled along the damaged track, steadily slowing as it curved towards Princus Praxa.

The ork pressed up against the inside of the carriage window squeaked slowly down until Zerberyn arrested it with a firm hand to the back of its neck. A buckled sleeper jarred the carriage and touched acid to the raw tendons in his arm. These orks had been allowed to grow large, as great perhaps as those fought by the primarchs on Ullanor, and the continual buffeting made it feel heavier. With a grunt, he drew the brute back into place just as an ork sentry post flashed across the window.

Scrap metal, painted red. Belt-fed combi-weapons in huge, gauntleted hands. Then columns, bullet-chewed ferrocrete blinking past as the locomotive passed under the terminus’ flat roof. Sunlight receded, replaced by spotty lumens and the drum fires scattered over the platforms and access ramps.

Gangs of gretchin and the occasional leather-clad ork were busily loading and unloading. Zerberyn expected to see human slaves performing the greenskins’ labour, but what few humans he saw were in chained lines being fed out of dusty locomotives and into corrals. Moving in the opposite direction were big industrial storage drums, light weaponry and vehicles, and agricultural machinery. Orks in rugged yellow battlesuits showing off sneering moon glyphs oversaw the import and export with a brutish efficiency that any crude hierarchy would recognise. In another setting, Zerberyn might have been watching Administratum troopers extorting a local militia. Some kind of lumpen, enamelled currency changed hands.

The march of columns slowed as the locomotive squealed towards an empty platform.

A ten-strong mob of orks in thick red bodyplate followed the engine in, streaming down a frozen escalator from a pedestrian flyover. Some kind of boss, broader than the rest by half a metre and as dark as a Predator’s treads, waved a clenched fist for them to spread out and they did. At a barked command, two pairs clattered forwards to cover each of the carriage doors. Half of the mob hung back on overwatch.

It was organised. Professional. Not at all like orks.

Zerberyn drew his bolt pistol carefully. Columba and the rest of Veteran Squad Anatoq prepared themselves, keeping hold of the orks they hid behind with elbows, shoulders, whatever was practical.

The Tempestus Scions crammed into the vestibule and underseat areas out of sight, calmly activated their weapons’ visual augmenter beams, flexing fingers, rolling shoulders, working space enough for each man to move when the moment came. The rising hum of hot-shot packs resonated through the carriage’s metal fittings. Major Bryce angled up the reflective edge of his slate monitorum to the window and grimaced.

‘Bloody Axes,’ he hissed. ‘That’s what we call them, for the symbol on their armour. Always kill them first.’

‘Noted,’ said Zerberyn, disengaging his bolt pistol from its mag-holster.

The locomotive heaved onto its brakes and then cried shrilly to a halt. The Bloody Axes came running in, two by two. Zerberyn checked the countdown timer he had programmed into his helm display. It was locked on 00:00 and had been for half a second.

‘Brother Donbuss, are you sure that the greenskin munitions you recovered were—’

A second sun rose over the pasture desert, white and furious, light burning up the track like a runaway train. Bryce grunted and slid back under the window, but Zerberyn’s auto-senses protectively filmed over a split second ahead of time. He saw the orks on the platform turn in surprise towards the thermonuclear explosion on the horizon, then clutch their eyes and stagger out of their ordered overwatch formation.

‘Now!’

Zerberyn yanked the release cord.

The doors shuddered apart, far enough for him to force his right arm through to the pauldron and open fire. A single mass-reactive explosion ripped the shoulder from a bellowing Bloody Axe. He tracked left, fired again as its fellow brought up its gun blind, and dropped it with a spitting rupture in its chest.

At the same time, Scions in full omnishield glare protection popped the roof escape hatches, swinging up plasma weaponry and hot-shot volleyguns and raking the platform with fire.

Zerberyn got his fingers between his pauldron plate and the doors and pushed them open. He jumped two-footed onto the platform, cracking into it. A Bloody Axe flailed for him with eyes closed. A headshot exploded it, just as the window behind him shattered.

Arriving at his own decision to move now rather than wait for his captain, Columba simply fired through the window on full-auto. Propellant trails criss-crossed the platform. Mass-reactive kill-shots painted it red. With their lighter profiles, the Scions climbed easily though the broken frames. Bryce was first onto the platform, emptying a charge cell into the Bloody Axe boss’ body armour, and then scrambling behind a pillar as the blinded ork let rip with a racketing burst of fire.

Kalkator executed the creature with a single bolt-round between the shoulder blades.

The warsmith stood on the platform by the doors of the rear carriage. He threw a mock salute. The orks at that end of the platform were dead. Traitor Space Marines were disembarking to take up firing positions over the shredded remains while, in a gnarl of corrupted motors, the three Terminators formed up into a line, a wall, and advanced on the steps up to the flyover. The escalator was a natural choke point and, drawn by the gunfire, orks were already piling bodies and heavy guns up behind the bent crush barrier at the top.

Tactical Dreadnought plate had been built to withstand the worst a hostile galaxy could give out.

It withstood this.

‘Major,’ Zerberyn boomed over the screams and thunder of abused plasteel. ‘Do you know where my cousin is leading us?’

‘Yes, lord — streetside access.’

Zerberyn looked around quickly. The station was a maze of platforms, overpasses and panting locomotives that echoed with bestial shouts and weapons flare. Engines thundered through, not frequently, but at a speed and irregularity that made the tracks a genuine hazard, even for a Space Marine.

‘Do you know an alternate route?’

‘I do, lord.’

‘Then take it. We will force the direct route. Columba, take a five-man combat squad, go with him.’

With a metallic growl, the veteran-sergeant jumped into the tracks in the direction that Bryce and the Tempestus Scions were moving. Donbuss, Borhune, Nalis and Tarsus fell in with him, squeezing off controlled bursts at the orks on the far side whenever the locomotives screeching between them left space for a shot. Zerberyn turned to the Iron Warriors.

The Terminators walked into a gauntlet of missiles, bombs and explosive rounds like a vehicle’s dozer blade churning up a minefield. Kalkator and the Traitor Space Marines moved up behind them, taking snapshots over the massive head and shoulder armour of their Cataphractii brothers.

Zerberyn accorded their efficiency a grudging admiration.

Goaded beyond their febrile discipline, the orks poured over the crush barriers with a roar. Bodies exploded, ripped apart by mass-reactive rounds. The muzzle flashes of rapid-firing combi-bolters strobed in the narrow space. Beasts howled. Piped laughter boomed from helmet speakers.

Tough alien flesh met ceramite composite like knuckles flying into a riot shield. Against men, against lesser orks, the line of Terminators would have been enough, but since the death of Eidolica, Zerberyn had never seen orks like these.

A brute in black-and-white bodyplate, almost of a size with the Terminators, hammered its axe into the lead warrior’s gorget protector and bulled him aside. It roared, axe stuck in the Terminator, heaved a Traitor Space Marine up over its head and hurled him off the stair. It took a combat knife under its armpit, grunted, and elbowed the Iron Warrior so hard his plastron buckled under it. Then, severed fibre bundles sputtering with his armour spirit’s fury, the Terminator came about and pulped the rampaging ork with the crackling discharge from his power fist.

But the line had already given.

Zerberyn killed two orks with two shots. Neat. Perfect. A third he demolished with a hammer blow. Tosque and Reoch closed in alongside. Too close for bolter work, the veteran-brothers made a wall of their knives.

‘Break them,’ barked Kalkator. His chainsword chewed messily through an ork’s leg while the full-sized bolter held steady in his bionic grip kicked out bursts of semi-automatic fire into the pack. ‘Would you have our cousins think us weak?’

Growling their rancour, the Terminators slammed back into line and pushed on with visceral determination. In a blizzard of bolter fire they took the crush barrier. Traitor Space Marines spread out onto the walled flyover in both directions and immediately started firing.

‘Brother Karva, rearguard,’ said Zerberyn.

Restricted in the use of his heavy flamer by the close fighting, Karva had held back on the platform until then. Antille came up with him, firing from the chest.

‘Agreed, brother-captain.’

‘Cataphractii forward. Brothers to the flanks. Grind them under your heels.’

‘Iron within!’ blurted a heavily augmented warrior of the Chosen.

‘Iron without!’ came the return, and a shiver ran down Zerberyn’s spine.

They started forwards, like a phalanx from the Age of Bronze re-enacted from a treatise on ancient tactica. Shields forward, shields side, spears up, advancing as one.

As Guilliman had once written: man never changes, so war never changes.

Cutting themselves a path with bolter and power fist, the Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar ground through the walkway and spilled out onto a pillared concourse of polished stone. A painted fresco showing the IV Legion liberating a verdant world lit the ceiling with vivid metallics. Engaged columns, rounded in the classical High Crusade style and carved in the likeness of unhelmed Legiones Astartes, looked in from the walls. A huge baroque timepiece hung from the ceiling’s central vault. It was broken, too badly shot up even to make out the time of death.

Orks were pouring in through the large streetside doors ahead, as well as from subway accesses and smashed-up refectory rooms to either side. The space was too open for the Space Marines to take them as they had before and so they charged for the doors, firing from the hip as they ran. Sluggers and bolters chewed old stone pillars to the bone and blasted them apart.

Zerberyn and Kalkator moved together into a storm of lead so intense it was like pushing against a falling wall. Where one was forced to let up to slam a clip into his bolter, the other emptied his to cover him. Where one engaged with thunder hammer or chainsword, the other was there at his side.

It was as the Iron Warrior had said: together, they were invincible.

Zerberyn cleared the doors with a thunderstrike of his hammer and chased Kalkator into the street, pistol tracking like a restless auto-targeter.

The grand old buildings were grizzled by gunfire, their ornate blackwork twisted, pierced and scarred. The road, wide enough in this world’s heyday for a squadron of Leman Russ tanks, was filled with vehicle wrecks and blockaded at either end with garishly painted trucks and stacks of burning tyres. A fine red rain fell, gelid and horrible. He had expected it to be warm, but it wasn’t. He looked up. Blood vapour and chemicals pumped from the city’s rendering plants hazed high above street level, obscuring the chimneys and the higher rooftops. Over the rumble of running engines, he could hear a frenzied, guttural chant. He focused his Lyman’s ear, cutting away the immediacy of combat.

He had heard it before, splitting the skies of Eidolica like thunder.

The Beast.

It was everywhere, booming through some kind of public address system rigged up all over the surrounding streets. Another transmitted recording no doubt, but the thought that the ork could be near filled Zerberyn’s chest with fury.

‘This way, little cousin.’

Hugging the station’s columned frontage, Kalkator turned right and kept running. Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar followed in ones and twos, staccato bursts of bolter fire stippling the walls and barricades.

The warsmith dropped down by the rear of an agricultural sixteen-wheeler that was blocking the way. A mob of orks fired down from its iron roof, laughing, grisly by firelight. Space Marines stepped up and raked the truck in turn.

Heedless of the firefight, Kalkator closed his bionic fingers around the truck’s rear bar and strained. The massive vehicle began to tilt. The gunfire abruptly ceased as eight of the transport’s wheels were pulled away from the ground. A metallic growl strained through the warsmith’s helmet grille as he heaved the truck over and onto its side.

Iron Warriors poured through the breached barricade, laughing bitterly as they gunned down crushed and dazed orks where they lay. Tosque unpinned a frag grenade and rolled it between the wheels of the abutting vehicle. Blast debris blew out around their ankles as the Fists Exemplar followed in. Brother Karva hosed the street with promethium. Zerberyn was the last.

Looking back, he saw scores of ramshackle ork bikes manoeuvering through the roadblocks at the street’s opposite end. From the vandalised tenement habs across the way, portcullis-like sheets of metal were being withdrawn over windows and doorways. Orks roughly jammed ammo feeds into newly uncovered weapon emplacements. Seriously outfitted heavy infantry — Bloody Axes and Leering Moons — and a chugging walker that looked like a Dreadnought rumbled into the street.

Stowing his thunder hammer, Zerberyn crouched by the truck’s rear bar and took it in both hands, intending to block the way behind them. The ligaments rose up on his neck until his entire upper body shook. He let go with a gasp — the vehicle was immovable.

‘Karva, Reoch,’ he called, the strongest in his command. ‘Aid me, brothers.’

A missile screwed over their heads before either of the Space Marines had moved. The warhead’s on-board guidance spirit jinked it between wrecks and debris, and then slammed it through the flame-effect front fairing of an ork attack bike. An implosive krak detonation ripped out its fuselage, drew fire back in through its exhaust, and sent what was left of the sidecar rocketing spectacularly into the air.

‘Emperor’s speed, brother,’ voxed Sergeant Columba.

Zerberyn saw the green-lit armoured profiles of Tempestus Scions taking position amongst the ribs and angels of the station’s roof. Hot-shot and support weapon fire lashed across the wide road.

‘Many thanks,’ Zerberyn replied.

‘Give them to the major. He will make better use of them.’

‘Can you see Kalkator?’

‘To my shame.’

‘Then cover us until we are clear, then circle back and follow. I will praise you both in person.’

Columba gave a snort and signed off.

The road beyond the barricade was lit with drum fires, stripped-down vehicles of sub-human make abandoned around craters in the road. Greenskin dead exhibiting signs of mass-reactive trauma lay splattered and strewn. Zerberyn wiped chilly red condensate from his helm lenses. Drums of the sort he had seen being loaded onto trains bound for the agri-plexes were piled high in pyramidal stacks outside of warehouses. Where those outbound vessels had appeared empty, a handful of these were leaking a gelatinous paste where bolt-rounds had punctured them but not hit sufficient mass to detonate. Intermingled human skins were staked up under glowing electrical heaters. Tanneries. An acidic urine stench infused them and wafting out into the street with every flap and ripple of slow-curing flesh.

The sound of gunning engines dragged him back.

The last of the Iron Warriors were disappearing into an alley. Antille was there, waving for the rest of them to hurry.

Zerberyn slammed his shoulder into the tipped truck, with his brothers’ help sending it squealing back into place in the barricade. He backed away, clapping rust from his gauntlets, and shoved Karva and Reoch after their traitor allies.

The alley was narrow and desperately dark, wide enough for an Iron Warriors Terminator, but only just. The walls were crowded with metal escape ladders that vibrated with every bass grunt from the Beast’s augmitter network. Blended waste trickled through open sewage channels, carrying nuggets of bone, the occasional finger. Moments before, Zerberyn had thought he had seen the basest point to which human by-product could be rendered. Now, crashing headlong through knotted waste sacks and refuse drums, he was rudely re-educated.

Kalkator’s vanguard had just cleared the alley when a pair of spotlights hit them from behind the row of habs. No, not spotlights.

Headlights.

There was a squeal of tyre rubber, a turbo-charged petrochem roar, and then an armoured troop truck smashed through the two Traitor Space Marines at point and straight into the wall. The lamps flickered. Masonry pattered over the crowded troop compartment. Orks in thick, spiked armour and enclosed helms fired their guns in the air, the rear wheels still revving up swirls of red dust as the fighters piled out into the alley.

Zerberyn kicked in a side door partially hidden behind a pair of bins.

‘This way!’

He ran through into what looked like a processing plant or manufactory. Karva followed, the pilot of his heavy flamer flickering blue in the utter dark like a serpent’s tongue, then Reoch, Galen and Tosque, and finally Antille, covering the rear with tight bursts of bolter fire.

There were small windows high up in the two long walls, but these had been crudely boarded up and painted over in thick, primary colours. The skylight over the centre of the manufactorum floor had been successively stained red. It was like trying to look out from inside an artery.

The veteran-brothers activated their helm lights.

The beams stabbed up into towering lines of heavy machinery, chopped through steel ladders, and dug into the dark to glint back off meat hooks and ceiling-mounted suspensor platforms. The line was still running, conveyers clattering away unidentifiable chunks of gristle and flesh into the dark.

Surrounded by horror, Zerberyn almost forgot the Iron Warriors.

Firing on full automatic now, the Traitor Space Marines retreated inside. A warrior with a tusked helm and hellishly embellished battleplate tore a frag grenade from a clutch at his belt, leaving the pin behind, and then launched it through the open door. The confined frag blast stormed both ways down the alley and blew scraps of flesh and debris into the manufactorum. At a command from Kalkator, another slammed the door while two of his brothers dragged over a pallet loader laden with drums and jammed it up against the frame.

Zerberyn quickly cast about for another way out.

‘We can carry on, further into the complex,’ said Kalkator, striding over and clearly reading his intent. One crimson lens on his helm was fractured and flickered crazily, while grey sealant gel welled up from breach points in his battleplate like a fungal infestation. The unpainted ceramite cloaking his apostate colours made him, just for a moment, appear almost noble. ‘The bunker’s entry point is not far, but we cannot fight every ork in this city to get there.’

‘Where is it?’

‘And lessen my value to you? I am too old to be a fool, little cousin.’

‘Then go,’ said Zerberyn, ejecting a spent clip from his pistol and locking home another. Not many left now. They would have to count. ‘My brothers and I will hold them here.’

He expected Kalkator to argue. A brother of the Fists Exemplar would have, for it was as deeply in their nature to be martyrs as it was to be contrary. True to his Legion’s harsh reputation however, Kalkator accepted the willing sacrifice with a nod of his horned helm and a flicker of his shattered lens.

‘Theron,’ he growled. The most elaborately armoured of the Terminators turned in answer to his name, in a shiver of razorwire and painful iconography. There was still an axe embedded in his gorget’s fibre bundles, restricting his helmet’s range of motion. There had been no time to address it. ‘You and your brothers will remain. You will follow the Fists Exemplar’s orders as though they were mine.’

Zerberyn’s eyebrow arched. Honour from an Iron Warrior? He doubted it. More likely, the Cataphractii-pattern suits would simply slow the rest of Kalkator’s force down.

‘From honour cometh iron!’ the warsmith bellowed, backing off and summoning his warriors to follow.

As the last of the Iron Warriors moved past him, Zerberyn brought his bolt pistol to cover the alley side entrance they had left behind. This is my ground, it said in his genes’ selfish voice, the voice of every Imperial Fist that had ever occupied a fort or defended a hill. I hold it. To stop running, to turn and hold: tactical necessity it may have been but that was not why it felt right.

Tosque joined him, then Reoch, Karva, Galen and Antille, pauldron to pauldron to pauldron in an unbroken circle. Corners were weaknesses. The sturdiest redoubts had none.

A scuffling came from the alley, of steel boots and bulky weapons hitting bins. Zerberyn focused his hearing to gauge their numbers, but was immediately distracted by something else. Engines. Vehicles were circling the structure, disgorging troops. Zerberyn could hear them hammering up to the walls.

‘Fists Exemplar,’ cried Zerberyn, aiming for the door behind the rough barricade. ‘The First Wall.’

A rapid beating like that from a crooked fan rotor droned overhead and the circle of Fists Exemplar was suddenly bathed in red light. Zerberyn looked up and squinted into the floodlight shafting in through the skylight. He scowled into the glare, shifting his aim upwards even as the shadows it had disgorged dropped towards the glass.

The orks were coming.

Twenty

Prax — Princus Praxa

The skylight shattered.

Zerberyn looked up, slowly, torturously, time stretching elastically into glittering stillness as his superhuman perceptions processed the sudden sensory overload. A million bladed reflections of himself looked out in all directions. Floodlights glared white, beaten into slices by the rotating wings of a hovering aircraft. He could hear the thump of its engines, suspended in time as its downwash held it in the air. Shards of glass the thickness of his hand tumbled. He saw it all. The ceiling had not been shattered evenly. Twelve discrete points of impact penetrated it, huge black-armoured bodies punching through the skylight and trailing glass like bullets fired into water. He began to shift his aim upwards, his brain gunning towards full speed.

‘—clear!’ cried a vox-fragment as glass cascaded over the manufactory floor.

Tosque and Antille pulled into the cover of an overhead crawlway. Galen hit the ground. Still tracking his aim skywards, Zerberyn dropped to his haunches and covered his head with his arms. Glass broke against his battleplate like a thousand blades. The weight of it pushed him down. His ears filled with a crystalline rush, and he could see nothing but fragmented light and edges. He glimpsed Brother Karva. The veteran was bent backwards and backing up, squaring his chest to the onslaught to shield the volatile promethium tanks on his shoulders. Zerberyn could do nothing but yell an unheard warning into his vox-bead as a shard of reinforced glass the size of a Rhino’s troop hatch came blade-down through the faceplate of the Space Marine’s helm and staked him to the ground.

Zerberyn rolled, glass caltrops disintegrating, just as a pair of armoured boots crunched down where he had been.

It was an ork, three metres tall and almost as broad, clad in moulded black armour of some dense, energy-deflecting ceramic. Its shovel face and clawed hands were painted in black stripes. The metal parts of its multi-barrelled custom shooter had been rubbed in soot. Even its tusks were darkened. It punched the bright red release buckle of the line harness it was wearing, cables whipping up towards the broken ceiling, then levelled its weapon in one brute fist.

Zerberyn did likewise. Too slow.

The ork’s upper body vanished in a splatter of green vapour. An Iron Warriors Terminator pumped a torrent of combi-bolter abuse through its remains, turning ponderously as solid rounds spanked off his baroque battleplate.

‘Brother-captain. The door.’

With a thunderous crash of spilling drums, the metal door from the alley shoved back the barricade and orks in spiked black-and-white armour pushed through. The lead ork roared, slugger spitting out lead even as it kicked aside a barrel. Zerberyn put a bolt-round between its eyes. Antille and Galen accounted for a further one each. Tosque hosed the entryway with fire, but the orks charged into it, unloading their bulk magazines as they came.

What he would not sacrifice for Karva’s heavy flamer right now.

Apothecary Reoch stood by the veteran’s remains, his narthecium’s sampler deep into his brother’s gorget softseals and the progenoid sacs in his throat. Off-hand, he blasted one of the ork drop-troops off its feet with a bolt-round in the gut. It would take a long time for a wound like that to kill an ork. Zerberyn suspected that the Apothecary knew that.

‘Exemplars, to your duty!’ Zerberyn roared, bolt-pistol executing one bloody headshot at a time. ‘We are the wall that stands forever!’

A blast of rubble buried whatever reply he might have received.

An articulated wrecking arm smashed through the street-side wall, the ork dreadnought Zerberyn had seen outside of the terminus station stamping itself a bigger hole. It resembled a uranium waste drum painted with yellow-and-black chevrons. Its other arm was fitted with a screaming buzzsaw, burning promethium dribbling from a dangerously crowded platform of grenade launchers and flamer weaponry. A bestial cry boomed from its speakers as it swung out its wrecker arm to knock in what was left of the wall.

In a growl of engines, a refurbished Salamander command tank climbed the rubbled wall and slammed onto its glacis suspension on the manufactory floor. Glass splinters chinked across the floor or simply exploded under its mass. It growled menacingly, heaving with excess engine power, hull-mounted heavy bolter grinding about to maximise its threat angles. Its original dust-bowl camouflage had been patchily done over in red, a pair of crossed axes painted onto the side. A troop compartment that should have housed a full forward command squad of Praxian militia was filled by a single enormous ork. Its armour was blood red, massive plates swollen around a gnarled head wired in to some kind of vox-apparatus.

Zerberyn ejected his clip and slammed in a fresh one containing armour-piercing vengeance rounds.

Kill the Bloody Axes first, Bryce had said.

With an alien roar, the big ork boss took the firing toggle of the Salamander’s pintle-mounted storm bolter and blazed at the Terminators as the vehicle beneath it filled the air with fumes. The cry was answered by something more palatable, but just barely.

They were human mouths.

Soldiers in what looked like local militia fatigues, with crossed axes daubed over their flak vests and unit identifiers branded into their shaven heads, charged over the broken wall after their tank. Las-fire lashed the rumbling production line and by sheer volume forced the Fists Exemplar into cover. A las-bolt scorched Galen’s faceplate and sent him stumbling behind a conveyer.

Tosque moved protectively in front of his brother, took aim at the Salamander and, with a furious blast of white heat, unleashed the single-shot plasma charge of his combi-weapon. The crackling discharge struck under the light tank’s armour skirt and shredded its tracks. Links flapping, it slewed off to one side and crashed into a giant steel hopper that fed one part of the conveyer network. The mistreated hopper split up the side and spewed thousands of litres of partially-cleaned bone fragments and flesh scraps over the revving tank.

Reoch growled some choice words of approval. Zerberyn did not register them. In his horror — no, in the white roar of his fury — he had not taken a shot since the arrival of the human troops.

More were running in behind the wreck. Battalion strength. Maybe more. They had no hair, no teeth and their bodies marked with brands and maltreatment. This was humanity’s fate. This was why the orks waited for Terra’s surrender rather than simply levelling the world as they had Ardamantua, Eidolica, and a thousand others. They did not want another conquest.

They wanted a client race.

A trillion times a trillion, the citizens of the Imperium were numberless beyond count. As individuals they were negligible, to a certain mindset disposable even, but as a whole they were humanity. They were the gene-seed of Holy Terra, where He dwelt in His incorruptible glory.

Unbidden, the image filled his mind of the xenos breaking Eternity Gate, sweeping through the Sanctum Imperialis, and hauling the Emperor from His Golden Throne.

No. No!

He would virus-bomb every last world more than a week from Terra if that was what it took to end this. He would do it personally.

With a wordless snarl he advanced into the las-storm, flipping his pistol’s shot selector to rapid fire and mowing armour-piercing rounds through the lightly-armoured troopers. Troopers? Traitors. The outcome was bloody overkill and better than they deserved.

Around him, meanwhile, the orks’ pincers closed.

Tosque and Antille stood back-to-back, rocks of rugged grey where reds, yellows and black-and-whites crashed over, and with Exemplar stubbornness refused to give ground. Inhuman voices bellowed. Servos screamed. Bolters were abandoned now in favour of knives and fists.

Reoch pulled Galen to his feet. The latter shook a jam from his bolter, then emptied what was left of the clip into the onrushing horde. The first to reach him went down with a boltgun smashed through the side of its skull, but after that there were too many mobbing in to be sure what was being done to whom.

The battle-brother’s rune in Zerberyn’s visor display went dark.

Only the Iron Warriors were still firing. The Terminators were mobile firebases, arms outstretched, wrist-mounted combi-bolters kicking out a remorseless torrent of firepower whether there was an ork in front of their tusked helms or not.

A jet of flame flooded over the Terminators, burning promethium lighting the Traitor Space Marines up like devils as the orks’ dreadnought stomped towards them.

Beating a gold-armoured ork into the ground with a downwards smash of his hammer, Zerberyn shoulder-crushed through the mob of traitor auxiliaries to peel off three shots into the advancing dreadnought. Mass-reactive rounds splashed across a barrier of rigid blue force an inch above the walker’s yellow-and-black plate.

His heart sank.

A void shield. How could something that size generate the power to sustain a void shield?

He was dully aware of the low-calibre hits stinging his armour. System alerts rather than true pain. His adrenal glands were working too hard to let him feel that. His multi-lung had taken over long ago, pumping furiously to purge the acidity from his muscles.

The orks had taken his world from him: he would rather be damned than let the orks take this one too. But, using his battle instinct and survival, he allowed himself to consider that there might be no victory. The orks were too overwhelming, too powerful, their advantages too great even for the Adeptus Astartes to overcome.

A massive fireball rippled over the ruptured skylight.

A burst of fire from a quad-linked heavy bolter cut in from a high angle with a sound like a loose chain being mechanically spun around a crank. The ork’s ’copter peeled open and finally exploded, showering the packed melee with metallic debris. The dull grey wedge of a Thunderhawk gunship banked right and over to skirt the fireball, then descended hard towards the skylight with autocannon fire from some neighbouring building lighting its aerofoil.

Zerberyn’s vox-bead crackled.

‘Leonis, First Captain, piloting Penitence. We picked up something you left behind.’

Gold icons blinked into being on Zerberyn’s visor display as Sergeant Columba led the charge down the Thunderhawk’s troop hatch. The veteran jumped, landing two-footed in a howl of suspensors with his chainsword buried deep into an ork’s shoulder and spraying the contents of its chest over his plastron. He pivoted on the spot. A kick delivered on the underside of his boot sent a fighter in black-and-white jags cannoning through two more. Donbuss, Borhune, Nalis and Tarsus thumped down around him, a hail of hellgun fire clearing space for them to work.

Militarum Tempestus Scions pounded along the upper level catwalks, coming down roof access ladders, pumping round after round of hot-shot las into the charging greenskins. Firing on the move with a hellpistol in each hand, Major Bryce took his own advice, cutting through the Bloody Axes and their human line troops. The expression twisting his burned face was wrathful. Zerberyn understood the man all too well.

Brother Donbuss’ heavy bolter spoke with fury. Not having witnessed what Zerberyn had a moment before, the veteran-brother identified the most prominent threat and opened up on the dreadnought. The air became thunder. Shell casings showered the ground with gold. The ork walker’s void shield rippled and flared, massive force and equally massive counterforce waging full-spectrum warfare across its cylindrical frame. The dreadnought abandoned the Terminators and came about.

It extended its saw arm and, with a sound like a long tube swallowing a grenade, launched a pair of sizzling stick bombs towards Columba’s combat squad.

Donbuss took both blasts full in the chest. His plastron held together but crumpled badly, sealant gel and hypercoagulants mingling in the ruptures. The impact savaged his faceplate, tearing his helm half away. The force lifted him up and slammed him into a machinery stack. The rest of the combat squad were peeled apart and thrown to the ground like toys.

Inarticulate savagery raging from its speakers, the dreadnought stamped about and smashed a Terminator across the manufactorum with a swing of its wrecker arm. The Iron Warrior crashed through the opposite wall. Loosened masonry tumbled in, a pyre licked with promethium flames.

Zerberyn cursed. An ork covered in snake tattoos went down with a headshot. Throat punch. Headbutt. Hammer shock blasted a hole. He strode into it, his armour coated with copper glaze, following his own tracer of automatic fire.

A thick-shouldered ork in Bloody Axe colours shrugged off the bolter fire and ignited the jump pack strapped to its back. It rocketed into the air on an arc of flaming liquid propellant, and landed on a catwalk. The platform juddered under the sudden impact. Tempestus Scions fell away, firing point-blank. The ork laughed it off and set to with its powered axe.

The Scions’ wargear was impressive, but it was not power armour. They were good, but they were not Space Marines.

A second ork, and then a third, fired up jump packs to get in amongst the Scions. Bryce’s increasingly hoarse orders got lost amongst the screams, the crack of bone and power discharge. Several of the armoured troopers broke and risked the four-metre drop to take their chances on the ground.

It was no better.

The surviving Terminators had hurt the dreadnought. It flailed, tangling its arms in chain pulls and surrounding itself with a swinging flock of lift cradles and pallets, crying molten iron. A Terminator stove in the dreadnought’s mid-section with a blow from his power fist. Even as he tore the crackling gauntlet free, an ork grappled him from behind. The brute dug its claws into the gorget softseals and hauled back on the Iron Warrior’s helmet. Fire sprayed from his gauntlet-mount as he was drawn down and under.

Brother Galen traversed back out of the melee, slumped, riding the juddering conveyer deeper into the manufactory like a corpse into the crematoria. Reoch was crouched over him. His binoptics were a fell green in the fyceline haze, his bolt pistol an unwavering source of white light.

From above, the roar of the Thunderhawk’s turbofans momentarily muted the din. Glass fragments and shell casings blew out in ripples, tied to the cycling of its engine fans as it pulled away. A squadron of single-prop biplanes buzzed after it with flak spitting from their painted muzzles.

Zerberyn raised his hammer high, mentally dialling his gorget vox-booster to maximum. Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar together. They had held long enough.

‘Fall back. Everyone. Back to the gunship.’

A feral roar threatened to drown him out, and he looked back to the breached wall. An ork of truly monstrous scale, dark skin powdered with gold, crashed through the breached wall recently vacated by the dreadnought. Its muscular frame was bolted into an electric-shock yellow fighting suit half again Zerberyn’s size. Pistons wheezed. Valves screeched. Black smoke pumped the air. At first glance it was a typical ork build. Closer inspection, however, revealed a powered suit of surpassing artisanship. The plates were glossy and smooth, lines straight, edges perfect. Alternating power fields surrounded the ork with a sharp ozone burn. It flexed the arm-width digits of a three-clawed power fist, auto-loaders churning ammo belts through a massive ten-barrelled combi-weapon.

‘You die. Now.’

Its bastardised Low Gothic was kicked out of its chest, like air from a dead man’s lungs, and Zerberyn was too stunned to respond.

It had spoken. Orks did not speak.

It started to run, beating aside a steel drum that then punched straight through a support stanchion and brought an empty section of crawlway crashing down. Zerberyn ran to meet it. The ground between them trembled. He drew back his thunder hammer and roared his hatred.

They clashed like bolt-rounds hitting each other in mid-air.

Zerberyn’s thunder hammer came down on the ork’s thigh brace. The local power field blew out and the metal squealed under the stress. The ork steam-rollered through him, snatching him up in its power claw and driving him through the light metal casing of a machine stack.

With a roar like laughter, the ork dragged him from the wreckage and swung him about as though he were promethium jelly on the monster’s claws.

Even for his transhuman physiology, the g-force was tremendous. Black spots appeared in front of his eyes. He unloaded his pistol into the ork’s upper torso power field until the hammer struck an empty chamber. He had no more. Screaming, he hawked up acid from his Betcher’s gland and spat it into the ork’s face. Green smoke sizzled from its jaw, but it did not feel it.

The ork tightened its grip. The power fist’s disruption field burned off his armour layer by layer. Ceramite creaked, crunched, split. He may have screamed again. He was no longer sure. He lashed out with his thunder hammer.

He did not know what it hit, but it hit something.

The ork bellowed in pain, and the next he knew he was flying with all the power of that immense battlesuit behind him.

He passed through something metal-lined and hollow, hit the ground in a mangle of limbs and bounced once, twice, then skidded. His battleplate tore up sparks from the ferrocrete surface. He slammed up against a wall and flopped down. He saw Reoch, Antille and a number of helmed Scions, but the anonymously-armoured humans swam together.

Then the ten-centimetre-thick plasteel doors that he had just slid though clamped onto his trailing greave.

‘Reverse it,’ growled Reoch.

‘I’m trying!’ came Antille’s voice.

Zerberyn grunted, willing his mind to stop spinning, and pulled on his trapped leg. It did not move. Dirty smoke was beginning to pour out of the door’s pneumatics.

From the other side of the door, there was a bellow of fury. The ground began to shake as something massive took a run-up. Reoch inserted the fierce muzzle of his Umbra-pattern pistol into the gap between the doors. The Apothecary fired on full-auto, bolt pistol beating against the metal frames like a hammer drill.

The doors continued to try and close.

Zerberyn gave one last roar, then spasmed back to the floor in agony as the heavy plasteel cracked bonded ceramite and armaplas like steel pliers on a nut, and snapped his strengthened tibia roughly in two. His genhanced neurochemistry prevented the pain from disabling him, but it was still as close to intolerable as he had ever known. His conscious brain protectively shut itself down for a moment, his twin hearts racing to pump an endorphin rush of pain-suppressing hormones into his bloodstream.

The doors stalled about half a leg-width apart.

Zerberyn looked up, saw the sheathed chainsword hanging from Major Bryce’s hip.

The Scion read his look, unhitching the blade and thumbing the power. Adamantium teeth revved hungrily.

‘Forgive me, lord.’

‘Hurry up and do it.’

Bryce hacked down. Zerberyn roared as the motored blade ate through armour and flesh and from there into bone. Arterial spray turned his battleplate red. Chipped bone rattled everyone’s armour, flying through a pall of bitter ceramite dust. Vibrations tore through his bones. Tears welled up in the Scion’s eyes. The dust.

The human lacked the strength to finish it.

With a growl, Reoch pulled the man aside and stamped down on the back of the chainsword, driving it through Zerberyn’s leg until it stalled in the ferrocrete.

Zerberyn panted in release. His eyes blurred. His skin tingled with the effects of pain-suppressants. The Apothecary kicked Zerberyn’s severed foot out from between the jammed doors. They slammed together, just as something huge bent them out of shape from the other side.

Reoch dropped down beside him and bent immediately to work, using his narthecium’s plasma cutter to cauterise the amputation. Zerberyn grunted. His physiology was adjusted to the higher pain threshold now, and he barely felt it.

Brother Antille and the handful of Scions crowded around them. That was all.

‘Sergeant Columba, and the others?’

‘Through the back wall, following Penitence’s locater beacon,’ said Antille. ‘We were cut off from them, and so intended to follow…’ he glanced sideways at Bryce, ‘our cousins.’

Zerberyn nodded. He would have come to the same conclusion in his brother’s place. It was reassuring.

The door shuddered as something hit it. The discharging power of a disruption field caused it to fold in.

Zerberyn reached for his bolt pistol before remembering that it was empty.

‘Faster, Apothecary.’

Twenty-One

Prax — Princus Praxa

Zerberyn limped down the unlit manufactorum hallway, leaning into Brother Antille’s shoulder to support himself on his remaining foot. The darkness was near absolute, leavened only by the green beams of the Scions’ visual augmenters. It was enough to make out the old blood and las-burns on the walls. The Praxians here had fought. Bestial cries and gunfire echoed through the abandoned rooms. He tried to inject some haste into his stride, but he had yet to adapt to his altered anatomy. A human would have been killed by blood loss or systemic shock by now, but his superiority over human norms was scant consolation.

After several minutes, the rattle of orkish fire growing nearer, the corridor took a ninety-degree turn.

In place of the wall that should have been in front of them, however, was a brick pile. There had been a false wall here. Behind it, illuminated now by the six Scions’ targeting beams, was a blast door that clearly had no due place in an agri-processing facility, large enough to admit a Space Marine in Tactical Dreadnought Armour. It looked like solid adamantium.

And the Iron Warriors had left it locked behind them. Reoch stepped forward and laid his gauntlets on the door. He turned back. His augmeticised face was a glowing skull in the gloom. He shook his head.

Unbreakable.

‘What now?’ Antille murmured.

Swallowing a curse that he could not afford to let the Scions hear, Zerberyn looked away from the door, manoeuvering himself towards the rune-numeric console mounted just inside the frame. Set into the terminal alongside the keypad was a palm scanner.

Kalkator had said that the base’s concealed entrances were secured by a genetic lock. There was genetic variation enough between the IV and their hated cousins of the VII to differentiate them with a fine enough scan, but Kalkator had also said that this fortress was built early in the Great Crusade. And that had been a different time, a time when his gene-ancestors and Kalkator might without rancour have called one another friend and brother.

For long seconds he hesitated, then removed his gauntlet and pushed his palm to the reader.

A red bar backlit the panel and scanned upwards. The light disappeared. Zerberyn tensed. There was a rumble of magnetic seals decoupling and the metal-on-metal scrape of disengaging locks. Zerberyn let out a breath as the blast door slid open.

‘From honour cometh iron. Have admittance, son of my brother.’

The voice was a scratchy, ancient recording, but retained some of the power it must once have held in flesh. It was strength, indomitable iron, something that time and worse than time could never fully corrupt. Zerberyn shivered, uncertain whether he had just been given a rare gift or the darkest curse.

‘Was that…?’

‘To what circle of damnation has he led us?’ said Reoch, his voice a whispered, almost reverential growl.

Visual augmenter beams painted the wall behind the blast door with green bands. It was a circular chamber about the same size as the interior of a drop pod, large enough to accommodate twelve Space Marines in full battleplate. Controls blinked in a variety of different colours. Diodes indicated up and down. Only the ‘down’ was illuminated, a soft white. It was an elevator.

With a nod to Antille, Zerberyn led them in.

Bryce and the Scions flowed in behind him, with Reoch entering last. The Apothecary examined the selector panel. The different levels of the complex were each indicated by an ivory button marked, from top to bottom, with an incrementally decreasing numeral. Reoch shrugged and punched the lowest button.

Zerberyn would have made the same choice.

Exemplars in action and in intent. Exemplars in forethought.

The blast doors whined shut and the elevator plunged into a descent. It was practically freefall. An atmospheric insertion by drop pod could not have been quicker, and the elevator’s depth indicators flashed down in a matter of seconds. Deceleration was equally drastic. The Fists Exemplar had been engineered for high-velocity strikes, and even Zerberyn, with pain pulsing from his severed nerves, remained standing. The Scions, however, were thrown to the ground and scattered to the four walls.

Through force of willpower, Bryce managed to crawl out as the doors hissed open, threw up on the panel-steel floor and rolled onto his back. Reoch plucked him from the ground by his webbing. Zerberyn and Antille shuffled out together.

They were on a wall-bracketed companionway at the equatorial line of a vast, spherical chamber. Vermillion alert lights strobed cyclically over the polished steel walls like the daylight terminator of a planet spinning out of control around a harsh red star. He looked down over the handrail. Far, far below, contained within concentric rings of adamantium and brass, was a tank of water so cold that Zerberyn felt moisture crystallising on his face even from where he was stood. Gas bubbled through it, but the water moved strangely, sluggishly.

‘Heavy water,’ murmured Antille, the acoustics lending themselves to the soft-spoken. ‘Used in atomic weaponry.’

Turning up, Zerberyn saw pistons as wide as the legs of a Reaver Titan slide in and out of solid metal jackets with a rhythmic, grinding thunder. Cabling hung from everything like cargo webbing.

‘Three minutes to mark,’ came a dolorous warning from all around.

With Antille a willing crutch, Zerberyn hurried around the companionway to the nearest of several catwalks that projected out over the water tank. He limped down it. Reoch and Bryce followed a short distance behind.

Suspended at the chamber’s core was an instrumentation platform of some kind. Banks of cogitators and command compilers filled it, tangling into the descending mess of cables with more wires of their own. There was Kalkator, unarmed, helm mag-locked to his thigh, his face dully illuminated with code projected by the surrounding screens. A pair of Iron Warriors Chosen were there with him, similarly unarmed and occupied with operating their systems. The rest must have been engaged elsewhere in the facility.

‘What is this?’ said Zerberyn, a gauntlet finger pointed accusingly at Kalkator.

‘You know what it is, little cousin.’

‘Two minutes to mark.’

‘Exterminatus…’

Kalkator smiled thinly. ‘Nothing so incomplete. Perturabo always believed in complete solutions and he raised his sons in his image.’ He indicated the interface in front of him. Lines of unintelligible green code filled the display, surrounded by a mass of coloured wires, switches and dials. There were prominent features, however, that Zerberyn instinctively recognised as a firing sequence. ‘Nothing will remain of Prax but an asteroid field.’

‘You talk of the absolute destruction of a habitable planet.’ Bryce’s eyes were wide and unfocused, but the wrath in his voice was tight as a laser. ‘There is no graver affront against the Emperor.’

Ignoring the Militarum Tempestus man, Kalkator looked Zerberyn’s beaten battleplate up and down. The warsmith noted the way he leaned against his brother, the raspiness of his breaths, and his gaze lingered on the stump of Zerberyn’s leg.

‘Neither of us wishes for a galaxy in which the greenskins dominate, mankind just one more diminished race cruising the Halo Stars or trapped within their fortresses in the Eye of Terror. Conventional warfare will not defeat this enemy. The orks are too organised, too powerful and too fast. This world could supply billions. Even if we could take it we are too far from reinforcements to hold it. The orks would have an attack moon in orbit in days. You know this. If we are to hurt the orks then we have to hit them hard.’

‘Chapter Master Thane could request an Exterminatus,’ said Zerberyn, shaking his head. ‘But even he would not authorise the ultimate sanction on a whim.’

‘Authority?’ said Kalkator, chalky features twisting in disgust, disappointment. ‘I was led to understand that your Chapter was the first of the Imperial Fists’ successors, that you carried the blood of visionaries. Your brother Chapters must despise you for your wisdom.’

‘Such is our burden.’

‘Thane is dead,’ Kalkator pressed. ‘Magneric is dead. Your founder, Dantalion, is dead. It is the way of the galaxy to renew itself to ever lesser degree and here, now, it is just you and me, cousin.’ His hand hovered over the reader. His gauntlets were locked to his hip beside his horned helm. ‘I am warsmith of a Grand Company, a rank equivalent to that of Chapter Master. I hold seniority and the larger force. By the principles of your Codex Astartes, the decision is mine to make.’

Something inside Zerberyn snapped. He shoved Kalkator back from the command console.

‘You quote the Codex to me? You are a traitor, Kalkator. Legion Excommunicatis. By Guilliman’s laws I should kill you now, and then deliver myself to the Inquisition in chains for allowing this travesty to have continued for so long.’

‘But you won’t. Not yet. Your Imperium needs us. It needs this.’

Zerberyn clenched his fists and forcibly lowered them.

Kalkator was right.

The same infernal logic that had led to the creation of the Last Wall led now to this. It felt inevitable, and no more wrong now than it had been amidst all the good intentions and necessary evils at Phall.

A pained laugh, the bubbling hurt-filled revelation of a man who had just witnessed the dark side of the universe and returned not quite sane, pulled their focus from one another.

Unnoticed, Bryce had slipped away from Reoch and had a hellpistol in each hand. One aimed between Kalkator’s eyes. The other at the dented ceramite providing incomplete coverage of Zerberyn’s primary heart. There was no indication that he faced down lords of mankind whom he had fought alongside bare moments before. He knew only conviction, the galaxy partitioned clearly into that which fell within the Emperor’s light, and all else.

Zerberyn wondered if any Exemplar had ever thought that way.

‘Move away from the controls, my lords,’ said Bryce. The honorific emerged like a term of disparagement, a placeholder that he had yet to consider an alternative to.

Zerberyn noted the other Tempestus Scions staggering out along the companionway above, groggy but disciplined. And with no uncertainty whatsoever in their aim. One of the Chosen reached for his mag-locked combi-bolter, but a wave of Bryce’s hellpistol across his warsmith’s eyes persuaded him to move his hand away.

‘Don’t fire,’ Zerberyn ordered the Iron Warriors, raising his empty hand, and turning back to Bryce.

‘Traitor, is it? Your Imperium, is it?’ Bryce laughed again, humourless, and tightened his grip. ‘What is an Imperial world filled with the Emperor’s subjects to such as you?’

‘I am no traitor,’ Zerberyn snapped.

Bryce’s burnt mouth became a disbelieving sneer.

‘One minute to mark.’

‘I am an Exemplar,’ Zerberyn shouted. ‘My word is that of Rogal Dorn himself. This is the only way.’

Zerberyn saw the man respond to his words, watched the expression on his face change as he tried to process the complex variables. He saw the expression set. He saw the tension that gripped Bryce’s trigger finger, and reacted on instinct.

Zerberyn’s gauntlet snapped out faster even than he could think, enclosing Bryce’s augmeticised right hand. A slight squeeze crushed the Scion’s bionic up to the wrist. Bryce closed his eyes and screamed, dragging his second shot wide of Kalkator’s shoulder.

‘Please, major—’

The Scion’s skull detonated before his eyes, plastering his face in sticky red gore. Half a second later, the arm went slack and slumped in Zerberyn’s grip, but he did not think to let go. Stunned, he stared past the headless corpse. Kalkator was there, his bolter up and hot.

‘No!’

Hot-shot lashed the command hub with the savagery of truth. Wires were shredded and housings scorched, thousand-year-old cogitator units going up in fountains of sparks. The Chosen stepped past Zerberyn and opened up with a thunderous outpouring of explosive rounds.

‘No!’ Zerberyn yelled again, louder, caged by red spears and noise.

Antille jerked as though electrocuted. A searing lance angled across his back spun him half around and threw him into an interface that exploded underneath him. The veteran flew back on a nimbus of charge, rolled over the outer rail and, a minute later, splashed into the super-cooled heavy water.

‘Mark.’

The announcement was a death knell.

‘No.’

Kalkator pushed his unarmoured palm to the interface and spoke a command in a language that Zerberyn had never heard. The timbre of the deeply submerged atom engine plunged, felt through longwave vibrations in the gut rather than heard. The grinding sound of deep, mechanical reconfigurations reverberated from the walls of the spherical chamber, amplified by its acoustics so that, standing there at its core, it sounded like being inside a mechanical chronometer as it geared up to strike a long-awaited millennial bell.

The gunfire ceased. Even the Iron Warriors held their bolters close and looked around with unease.

The last surviving Scion took advantage of the lull to look down over the companionway handrail to the bubbling water below. Zerberyn felt he recognised him— the vox-officer on Bryce’s command squad during the agri-plex raid.

Horror dawning, the Scion dropped back, raising a hand to the vox-boost selector behind the cheek-guard of his omnishield. ‘Sergeant Jaskólska, Menthis. Evacuate now. Now! Raise the Commissariat and tell them that the Fists Exemplar have—’

A tight burst of bolter fire drowned out the rest.

Kalkator set his bolter down on the terminal as Trooper Menthis’ remains splashed across the curved wall. ‘I have your gunship on auspex,’ he said, as though the past minute had not just consigned billions to execution. ‘On an escape vector.’ He examined the read-out of a scorched sensorium console. ‘And Guilliman inbound.’

‘Has Penitence made contact with the fleet?’

‘I do not know. How much do you think the humans heard?’

‘I do not know.’

‘If word gets out—’

‘I know.’

Avoiding Kalkator’s eye, Zerberyn thumbed the activation switch of what, though arcane in design, looked to be a vox-unit. A garbled overlay of orkoid cant and system noise scratched through. It sounded like voices. Columba. Tarsus. Leonis. Jaskólska. Ghosts, drawn to him through electromagnetic snow.

His brothers would be made to understand that the destruction of Prax had been necessary for the greater good, if they heard it first from him. They shared a singular vision, a rare gift for reason. But Issachar? Quesadra? Bohemond?

The Inquisition?

His hand moved of its own volition, knowing even before he did it what needed to be done. Punching Last Wall protocols into the cryptex key, he hit transmit. Long seconds of alien traffic and accusing voices filled the line.

‘What are you doing?’ said Reoch. The metallic grille that covered his lower jaw made him look like a muzzled beast.

‘What any brother in possession of the same set of facts would have to.’

‘Are you sure, brother?’

Zerberyn did not answer.

He was a descendent of Oriax Dantalion: the answer was obvious.

The comm link hissed open, butchered by static, but the direct voice on the other end was recognisably that of an Eidolican serf.

‘Guilliman receiving. Last Wall codes recognised. Is that truly you, lord captain?’

‘It is, and—’ He silenced the pickup and turned to Kalkator. ‘How long do we have?’

‘Five to six hours before it is done. Thirty minutes before we no longer want to be standing on this planet.’

Zerberyn nodded and reactivated the unit. ‘And requiring immediate extraction. Repeat, immediate.’

‘Understood, lord captain. Thunderhawks are undergoing final flight checks now. I will transmit the pilots your coordinates.’

Eyes locked to Kalkator’s unflinching gaze, Zerberyn spoke again into the receiver.

‘Penitence has been commandeered by local traitor militia. Do not establish contact, and under no circumstances are they to be permitted to board.’

Kalkator nodded. He knew what it meant to betray a brother.

Zerberyn closed his eyes.

‘Shoot them down.’

Twenty-Two

Prax — orbital

Zerberyn stood at the viewport of Palimodes’ starboard observation gallery, a hand’s width from his own dead-eyed reflection, and forced himself to watch the planet die.

Grey-brown continents and green seas were now wreathed in smoky black. The stratosphere had already burnt off as surface temperatures passed a hundred Celsius and carried on climbing. The thin band of residual atmosphere stuck to the riven crust like tar. A hex-like grid of magmic fractures smouldered through the pall, fault lines, the crust splitting, less a world now than rocky islands floating apart from one another on a molten sea. Bouts of volcanism racked the major continents on which mountains still stood, each an event of epochal destruction rendered into a non-event by the periodic eruptions that ejected billions of tonnes of mantle into orbital space. A glowing cloud shrouded the planet, metals, minerals, voidship fragments, churned by its hundred-thousand-kilometres-per-hour flight and its own increasingly erratic spin. Its nickel-iron core was destabilising. Magnetic distortions caused rocky accretions to blast apart at random, like targets on a practice range, and sent the massive ork container ships caught up in the destruction spiralling between orbits with plasma tails streaming in their wake.

Kalkator had spared no detail of the likely progression. Had he not been as forthcoming, then Zerberyn would have insisted.

The planet-cracker had been fired directly into the planet’s mantle through a kilometres-long shaft sunk a thouand years before for this sole purpose. From there the warhead had slowed, drilling through a further thousand kilometres of semi-molten rock to its long-programmed detonation site at the interstitial layer between core and mantle.

Within that narrow variance of pressure and density, it had detonated.

Zerberyn had never devoted much prior thought to the complete destruction of a planetary body, but he could see that it had been enacted with a ruthlessness and a precision of detail the equal of anything that he could have brought to the task. A detonation within the core itself would only have wrecked the world’s magnetosphere, rendering it uninhabitable for decades, while at a shallower site in the mantle the resultant tectonic recoil would have been a slap on the wrist compared to what was taking place now.

The boundary layer. It had to be there. And it had taken exactly the thirty minutes that Kalkator had said it would.

The core’s greater density reflected the seismic shockwaves back upwards like sunlight hitting an ocean’s waves. The effect on the surface was cataclysmic. Tremors had become quakes and quakes upheavals that tore the world asunder, crust and core between them amplifying the seismic waves and rebounding them until the entire globe rang like a bell and the crust was a shattered ruin.

That was what Zerberyn was watching now: the penultimate phase.

He wondered how many souls had been on Prax. Ten billion? A hundred billion? It was the one variable amongst the specifics of time and forces, and it ate at him.

‘Back from me, abomination,’ he snarled, kicking back with the stump of his leg.

The servile construct screwed back on its single caterpillar track, trailing the measuring tape with which it had been sizing his foot for prosthesis. Its head was a small human skull with a parchment covering of mummified flesh, suspended above a whining motive unit by an articulated metal spine. Its ears were large, encouraged to grow along a cartilage matrix the better to receive spoken commands. Its eyelids had been removed, its mouth stapled shut. It stared at him blankly until Zerberyn, unnerved by the emptiness he saw reflected in its eyes, turned back to the viewport. With half his weight on an iron crutch, he allowed the servitor to return to fuss about his foot as if nothing had transpired.

‘My Apothecaries could furnish you with an augmetic far superior to anything your own might have access to,’ said Kalkator.

Zerberyn chose not to reply. Bad enough to have been picked up by the traitors’ gunships in the first place.

‘I will think about it. But not now.’

‘Does watching make it better, or worse?’

‘It is an act of penance.’

He could feel the warsmith’s sneer. It had a vibration all of its own that carried it across the rigorously atmosphere-controlled viewing gallery.

‘One day, Kalkator. One day you and I will be called to account for every life we destroyed here today.’

‘Not destroyed, little cousin. Sacrificed.’

In absolute silence, a flash of amber light rose up from the planet’s core and engulfed it. It happened in a split-second. Zerberyn grunted, eyes narrowing against the sudden, short-lived glare. By the time his vision recovered Prax was gone, a fading red stain on his retinas.

Sacrificed for the Imperium.

He hoped that the reward would be worth it.

Twenty-Three

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The vid-recording was grainy and poor, the field dark, the capture soundless. The borders fluctuated, spawning flurries of black snow that intermittently cloaked the figures in central view.

There were two of them. The first was clothed in heavy vestments, the skin grafts and bionic attachments of his face swollen out of proportion and stretched around a curve to fill the round of the visual feed recorder’s lens. The second was standing back, visible in profile as she glanced intermittently over her shoulder. She was a woman, slighter than the first figure, robed in Martian red and bodiced with bronze plates, her face masked by filtration tubes and optic sensors. One arm was appended with a bionic brace that twitched with digital manipulators and beam cutters and in the other she handled an arc pistol with uncommon adroitness. She looked tense. Her rebreather apparatus made it impossible to make out her lips, but from the movement of her exposed cheekbones and neck, it was clear that she was saying something. The distended curvature of her companion’s mouth opened and closed in response.

Green bars tracked the movement of his lips. Runes flickered, superimposed over the bottom of the screen, as linguistic algorithms struggled and failed to provide a translation.

The front figure turned slightly, a digital black ghost image hanging in the air for several seconds after. He said something more. The woman replied.

‘—recording yet?’

Audio as bitty as the image scrunched up from nothing to fill the feed. The laboured in-out rasp of the man’s breathing, too close to the pickups, the rhythmic sigh of industrial machine noise.

‘I… I think so,’ he said, tapping at a console.

The woman drew him back. Their afterimages mingled for a moment, before the uncooperative recording device cleared the bandwidth confusion and showed just two figures once again.

‘Grand Master. This is Clementina Yendl of Red Haven, transmitting from Pavonis Hive. With me is Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex.’ She gestured behind her. The figure nodded at his name. ‘I regret that this will be my last report. The Mechanicus know where the orks are coming from. They have had a good idea since Ardamantua at the least and probably before that.’ She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back, speaking more urgently. ‘My attempt to extract the magos and bring this information to you has failed. I can only hope this transmission reaches you before the Mechanicus shut down this section. Urquidex.’

The magos looked up sharply. The fear in his face defied the resolution quality.

‘Tell them what you know.’

He stepped forwards, then checked back as a phosphor flash lit up the background image and a loud bang crumpled through the audio.

‘They’re h—’

Koorland studied the frozen image in the data-slate: the magos looking over his shoulder in horror, the woman blurred in the act of aiming her pistol. He set the slate face down onto the large, figured wooden table, pushing aside the stack that had accumulated there over the course of the morning. Without the slightest change to his grim expression, he glared into the imagined distance.

The Cerebrium overlooked the Palace roofscape from the heights of Widdershins Tower, atmospheric and orbital craft crisscrossing the fortress skyline. Tech-crews hung in cradles from deltaform lifters in the mottled khaki of the Departmento Munitorum, servicing defensive installations that had not experienced proper maintenance since the last great programme of rebuilding instigated by Roboute Guilliman in the aftermath of the Siege. Pot-bellied troop transports shipped in Astra Militarum regiments from Triton, Ganymede, Venus, and from training bases throughout the system. Shining like a lake under sunlight undiminished by any semblance of an ozone barrier, armour units massed in the thousand-hectare rockcrete square of the Fields of Winged Victory. Lastan Neemagiun Veritus, the Inquisitorial Representative, had told him that the Emperor Himself had watched Horus Lupercal’s first landing boats come down from this very spot.

Koorland certainly felt something from the ancient Albian oak panelling and book-lined shelves. Power. Responsibility. An almost spiritual bond to his genetic heritage. But he had selected the room as his private study in large part for the view, an instinctual desire to take and hold the high ground.

Drakan Vangorich stood patiently, hands curled over the back of one of the twelve chairs tucked under the table, eyes narrowed against the sunlight streaming through the open shutters.

‘How long have you had this recording?’ Koorland asked.

‘Moments. I brought it to you as soon as I received it, lord.’

‘Your expediency is appreciated.’

‘I trusted you to do the right thing with it.’

‘Is there any more?’

‘What I know, you’ve just seen.’

Koorland clenched his jaw. If the recording had divulged the location of the orks then for the sake of unity he would have contented himself with that, and put the Adeptus Mechanicus’ actions down to simple heel-dragging. He would have dealt with them later, content in the knowledge that there might be a later. Now, that deal was off.

‘Is the Fabricator General still in the Palace?’

‘I believe that his personal shuttle departed from Daylight space port with his entourage about,’ Vangorich smiled thinly, ‘moments ago.’

Koorland sat back and scooped up another slate. It was one that he had already read and memorised earlier in the day, the sort of detail to which the human High Lords had likely never devoted themselves. He looked through it, thinking, without needing to read it again.

‘Some good news?’ asked Vangorich.

‘Astropath logs from Oort Base. Alcazar Remembered translated into the system two hours and fifteen minutes ago, immediately relaying a request to Mars for docking codes and emergency repair. A request that one hour and three minutes ago was granted with a berth cleared for them at Demus Manus port in the orbital ring. You have more than this one operative on Mars, I presume?’

Vangorich hesitated a moment.

‘Yes.’

‘Then activate them,’ said Koorland, tossing the data-slate into the pile. The Adeptus Mechanicus would give up the location of the Beast, one way or the other.

Mars — Pavonis Mons

Urquidex pounded his hands against the keypad and screamed into the receiver. The terminal was dead, remotely powered down. He bashed the keypad like an infant who had lost patience with a screen-locked data-slate and cried out in frustration. They had been so close. He spun around at the sound of a roughly human-sized metallic object hitting the floor, and flinched back against the console.

Clementina Yendl struck the attacking skitarii like a flurry of las.

The robes of her disguise made a whip-like crack with every punch and kick, and five augmented warriors were already down. Number six dropped, neck twisted around until it snapped, and she leapt over him, sliding her foot between the legs of the unit alpha as he swung a spitting taser goad. A flick of the knee sent the skitarii alpha crashing down. His weapon skittered across the floor. Yendl was already up, hooking the other leg over his shoulder and punching his arm in half at the elbow.

The alpha gave a vox-synth shriek.

With a glance over her shoulder, she ripped off her rebreather mask and took out a charging skitarius with a discus throw. Long braids of greying hair tumbled free. Blood trickled down her face from the mask’s intramuscular attachment sites. Her eyes burned with a destructive focus.

A bolt from her arc pistol sent a red-robed skitarius shivering to his knees with blue-white tendrils of electricity coursing through his body. A cyborg soldier ran at her with the stock of his rad-carbine raised like a club. She turned it on the angle of her forearm, took it from him, then spun on her knees and gutted the skitarius with a swipe of her manipulator arm. Bile and battery acid jetted from his midriff in an arc as he was spun aside.

Urquidex had never seen anything like the Assassin in his life.

An entire squad of skitarii vanguard, the techno-elite of Mars, and she had dispatched them in the time it had taken him to turn around. He almost dared to believe that they would make it to her ship and off-world after all. Almost. His mind didn’t even have the time to trigger the necessary endorphin release to let him feel it.

A stream of hyper-velocity white phosphor burned up the space where Yendl was standing. Indiscriminate shot melted through the corridor walls, the floor around her and the ceiling above. One incandescent missile punched through the right side of her chest and shattered the console. Metal and plastek erupted into white fire. Urquidex dropped to the ground, screaming, bringing up his digitool to protect his face.

Even to his own ears, his screams were nothing compared to Yendl’s.

The wound in her chest sizzled. Molten fat dribbled. She beat madly at the chemical fire and threw herself against the wall, pink smoke billowing from her mouth until her lungs were gone and there were no more screams. She flopped to the ground, eyes horrifically wide, twitching like a tortured fish.

Several seconds of agony later, Clementina Yendl died.

Through optics smeared with flesh vapour, Urquidex watched the immense cyborgised construct that had killed her rumble into view. A Kataphron Destroyer. It grumbled forward on a pair of huge tracks, the amputated head and torso of an armour-plated battle servitor providing the basic neural guidance it needed to move and kill. Its eyes were dull, mindless, its lips sutured into a rictus grimace of unfelt pleasure. The heavy weaponry grafted to the stumps of its arms pivoted from Yendl’s smouldering corpse to Urquidex.

The magos narrowed his optic apertures and pleaded with the Omnissiah for a swifter end.

‘Not him.’

The Kataphron growled to a halt and from behind it, gliding under a stinging swarm of mechadendrites, came Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken. As always, Urquidex found himself cowed by the adept without the need for anything so evolved as words or threats. He looked furious, the physical embodiment of machine power. A squad of skitarii vanguard marched in lockstep to his extended stride, red-robed, the arisen shades of the comrades they uncaringly stepped across. Their eyes glowed like coals behind their steel masks.

‘You disappoint me, magos,’ the artisan trajectorae sneered, his servo-harness adding its own snapping words of contempt. ‘You will never know how much.’

From somewhere, Urquidex found the courage to stand.

‘The soul is the conscience of sentience.’

‘The Tenth Universal Law,’ said Van Auken. ‘The misinterpretation of the Omnissiah’s wisdom is a common failing amongst the Adeptus Biologis, and no excuse for treason against the blessed machine.’

With a brusque flick of a mechadendrite, the artisan trajectorae summoned the skitarii. They surged forward. Two claimed Urquidex by either arm and pinned him back over the still-sputtering console. He could feel the heat against his back, then on his face as an augmeticised hand pushed the side of his head into the plastek.

‘The Imperium will be coming,’ he hissed through the metallic fingers covering his mouth.

A smile parted the artisan trajectorae’s Neanderthal jaw.

‘Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex, the Adeptus Mechanicus sentences you to servitude imperpetuis. I will personally ensure that only the very heaviest of armaments be grafted to whatever the metasurgeons deign to leave of you. It would be undesirable for your body to perish too swiftly.’

Urquidex struggled against the augmetised grips that restrained him, screaming for the clemency of white phosphor. Van Auken glided back.

‘You have done nothing but accelerate an outcome considered inevitable since the inception of the Grand Experiment. The Imperium will come, and they will not find the legions of Mars unprepared.’

Somehow, Urquidex’s struggles freed an arm.

He lashed his digitools across the throat of the skitarius holding his other arm. Blood splashed his rebreather, and for a moment he was free. He spun around, screaming into the vid-recorder as cold hands dragged him away by his robes.

‘Ullanor! The Beast arises on Ullanor!’

David Annandale

The Hunt for Vulkan

Prologue

Caldera — Torrens

The horde was a lava flow. It was composed of muscle and machine, but it had all the power of molten rock. It covered the landscape. What it swallowed was destroyed forever. And it was unstoppable.

The jaws gaped. They were wide enough to engulf the world. And there was hunger in them to devour his family.

On the ramparts of Torrens, Emil Becker jerked the magnoculars back and forth. He saw jaws. He saw corded arms and snarling faces. He saw the tracks of huge machines. He saw the movement of titanic, brutal power. At full magnification, the lenses could only show fragments of the enemy’s bodies and weapons. Blurred hints of the totality of violence.

The orks were already that close.

Becker lowered the magnoculars, losing detail, seeing instead the size of the horror, a huge upheaval smashing through the jungle. He could feel the wave heading towards the wall. Towards his settlement. Towards his family.

Terror was a spike in his throat. He tried to swallow it down.

On his right, his daughter said, ‘So many.’

‘Yes.’ He glanced at Karla. Her face, like his, was covered in dust from work in the tunnels below — as good a form of camouflage in the night as any other.

Her teeth showed white in the dark as she smiled. ‘Caldera tests us again, father.’

Becker looked out at the howling, grinding night again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not Caldera. Not this time.’

He understood the convulsions of the land. That was the birthright of every Calderan. The eruptions and earthquakes were the language of the planet, its sermons and its rages. Life was eternal vigilance, eternal expectation of the coming of flame, rock and ash. The pride that came with survival was the reward for being a citizen of this world.

Caldera destroyed its children, but it did so without malice. It was violently alive, and to die in its embrace was no tragedy. It was the basic reality of the world.

What advanced towards the settlement of Torrens was also violently alive. There were even sounds carried over the wind to Becker that resembled joy. It was a joy alien to Caldera and to humans. It was the joy of destruction. There was malice out there.

Approaching fast.

Torrens was a mining settlement built into the rocky western slope of a basalt plateau. At the base of the slope was jungle that stretched to the west almost as far as the capital, Laccolith. Much of Caldera was blasted rock, but here, after it had been destroyed before the coming of Imperial colonists a millennium ago, the jungle had returned, the ground fertilised by the ash from the twin volcanic peaks to the north that marked the beginning of the Ascia Rift valley.

Torrens was walled, its plasteel barrier more substantial than any of its housing. The fortifications kept the violent fauna of Caldera at bay. They would do nothing against the life that roared towards Torrens now.

The orks flattened the jungle in their advance. Their huge tanks and towering walkers smashed through trees, and behind them came the infantry. The beasts covered so vast an area that they must have numbered in the tens of thousands. The flames from the exhausts of their machines illuminated the undulations of an enormous mass. A flood of destructive muscle, come to butcher and burn.

There were still lights on in Laccolith. Becker could see the glow of the city at the horizon. It was dirty with smoke. The vox-transmissions from the capital were sporadic and filled with terror, but at least they were a sign of life. The greenskins had not razed the city and killed everyone there. Not yet. He didn’t understand why that was. What could have pulled the orks away from their prize? Not the trivial presence of Torrens.

Boredom? Becker wondered. Laccolith’s population was in the millions. Total eradication would slow the orks’ march of conquest.

The guess was a weak one. And what did it matter? The orks were coming here. Torrens would not delay them at all. It would afford the horde a diversion. An amusement.

Becker looked to his left and right. The entire length of the wall was lined with miners. Hundreds of them, every able-bodied member of every clan. There were plenty of lasrifles to go around. Caldera’s indigenous life forms mandated vigilance and armament. There were two autocannon turrets, one at each end of the west wall. The citizens of Torrens would stitch the jungle with las and shells. As long as Becker kept his gaze on his comrades, he could believe in their strength. But when he looked west again, the futility of their show of determination sank in.

‘How long do you think we can hold them off?’ Karla asked.

Becker shrugged. ‘What’s your guess?’

‘Until they kill us.’

‘Sounds right.’

‘Maybe they won’t notice us,’ Heinz Wenlandt said. He stood on the other side of Karla, a tense shadow. He was over forty, like her, but sounded twenty years younger. Not in a good way.

Karla snorted. ‘Dreamer.’

‘Why?’ Wenlandt begged. ‘We’re not in their path to anywhere.’

‘Neither is the jungle,’ Karla said.

‘We are their path,’ said Becker.

The orks proved him right a few moments later. Even though the wall was still beyond the range of their rifles, the infantry started shooting. Then the tanks and huge walkers opened fire. Their cannon shells streaked for Torrens, slashing the night with trails of flame. Becker’s shoulders hunched as the destruction shrieked out of the darkness. Shells hit the fortifications. Others arced further and landed in Torrens itself.

In the second before the blasts, Becker shouted and pulled the trigger of his lasrifle. He had no targets. He had only the will to fight before he died. Then the plasteel beneath his feet shook. The air filled with flame. The central portion of the wall exploded, a storm of wreckage punching backwards through the colony. More shells blew away chunks of the upper portion of the ramparts. The ork volley hammered the barrier to a slumping ruin.

Becker coughed, eyes and throat stinging with smoke. The skin of his neck felt baked from the proximity of the fireballs. The parapet sloped sharply to his right and he held on to one of the outward-curving spikes of the crenellations to keep from falling. Between the concussions of the shells came the screams of the wounded. Many more were already dead. But the rest were fighting. The citizens of Torrens clung to the parapet, clambered over still-settling wreckage, and rushed forwards to the battered wall to lash the enemy with bursts of las. Karla was still at his side, burning through her gun’s power pack, her temple bleeding from a glancing hit by shrapnel. Wenlandt was pale, shaking, his face sheened with sweat and fear, but he was shooting too.

We’re still fighting, Becker thought. Even less than a minute into the battle, that felt like a victory. They would fight until extinction. He would die clutching that pride.

The orks streamed from the jungle. At their head were troops on bikes and in trucks. Freed of the trees, the vehicles raced over the gentle slope of scree towards the rise of the wall. Their engines screamed their hunger. Filthy smoke billowed in the night. Blinding headlamps jerked up and down as the speeding machines bounced over rocks. Dazzled, Becker could not guess at the numbers, but the roar was deafening. The infantry ran close behind, and the heavy armour continued its bombardment.

The green tide was almost on Torrens. Becker fired, knowing he could not miss, and knowing his courage had no effect. At least the struggle left no room for grief.

And then the lead truck exploded. The fireball caught bikers, turning them into rolling, out-of-control torches. They careened into other vehicles. Another truck blew up, close by but not involved in the mounting collision. A bike rose suddenly and hurtled through the air. It crashed into more riders.

The ork advance stumbled. The flames grew higher. Silhouetted by the fire was a towering armoured figure wielding a gigantic hammer. He swung it into the grille of an oncoming truck, and the front of the vehicle crumpled as if it had slammed into a mountainside. The truck flipped end-over-end, flattening bikers and its own occupants when it crashed back to earth. The ork infantry swarmed the warrior. He obliterated them, each of his blows as devastating as an artillery shell. Ork chieftains larger than the warrior went down as quickly as their underlings.

With a great, sweeping attack, the warrior hacked a clearing through the foe. For a moment he stood alone, surrounded by corpses and wreckage, framed by fire. Becker saw him more clearly: the huge reptilian skull on his shoulder-plate, the obsidian skin and the profile of unyielding nobility.

The warrior spoke, and his voice boomed over the barbaric snarls of the greenskin war machine. ‘Children of Caldera! You fight with spirit! Fight on, and know you do not fight alone!’

In the next moment, the heavy shelling shifted its target from Torrens and fell on the lower slope. The warrior vanished. The ground became a single explosion, an eruption that went on and on until Becker’s ears were bleeding. One of the ork walkers, a twenty-metre-tall monster of shambling metal plates and weapons, its head a maw of jagged savagery, towered over the blasts and fed them with an unceasing stream of cannon fire, destroying hundreds of greenskins in the attempt to kill the single defender.

Becker’s heart clenched, hope extinguished just as it flared. But he didn’t let up with his rifle, shooting into the fire, and then into the smoke as the barrage finally ended. The warrior had won Torrens a few more seconds of existence, and he was grateful for that. He obeyed the hero’s last command. He fought on.

The ork monster took a thundering step forwards. Then it stopped. Its weapon arms jerked. The colossal chainblade on the right stopped whirring. Smoke poured out of the shoulder. A few seconds later, the left cannon limb’s shots went wild, and then it too shut down. The machine rocked back and forth, vibrating with internal explosions. Its chest blew out with a massive gout of flame, sending huge slabs of metal flying hundreds of metres through the air. The interior of the walker was an inferno. The giant warrior emerged from the ragged gap in the chest. He leapt to the ground as the machine died behind him. It was immobile now, nothing more than a gigantic furnace.

The warrior turned once more towards Torrens and raised his hammer in salute. Then he pounded across the scree, heading north. He slammed through an ork phalanx that was coming up in the wake of the barrage.

Becker’s finger still squeezed the trigger, but he was barely aware of doing so. Jaw agape, he stared as one miracle succeeded another. The warrior could not have survived, but he had, and now he was single-handedly changing the course of the flood. The greenskins lost interest in Torrens. Engines ground, infantry howled and the horde altered its course. It rounded on the warrior. It pursued the being that had hurt it. Minor streams of orks still climbed the slope, but now the miners faced a war, not extermination.

‘What…’ Karla began, but could not finish.

Becker shook his head. He had no more words for an answer than she had for a question. He did not know what he had seen. But he felt the brush of legend.

And the awe born from a glimpse of eternity.

One

Mars — Pavonis Mons

The Alcazar Remembered was at low anchor, in geostationary orbit over Pavonis Mons. Thane sat with his Fists Exemplar veterans in the troop hold of the Thunderhawk Honour’s Spear. The company was descending in a show of force, leading with multiple gunships and tanks. There had been no overt resistance from the Adeptus Mechanicus. So far.

The gunship shook. Thane tapped the vessel’s vox. ‘I trust that wasn’t hostile fire, Brother Preco,’ he said to the pilot.

‘Just turbulence, Chapter Master,’ Preco responded. ‘But I’m receiving another hail.’

‘More turbulence,’ said Abbas, sitting across from Thane.

‘More than likely,’ Thane said. ‘Patch it through, Brother Preco.’

The vox-speaker crackled, and the voice that emerged sounded like static shaped into syllables. ‘This is Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken. Approaching vessels, you are not authorised to make landfall on sacred Mars. You must reverse course at once.’

‘I am Chapter Master Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar. My orders come from Chapter Master Koorland, Lord Commander of the Imperium. His authority supersedes any you might claim, and over the Adeptus Astartes you have none at all.’

‘You should not force a confrontation.’

‘I have no intention of doing so. Turn Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex over to us, and we will depart upon the instant.’

There was a pause before Van Auken spoke again. Thane pictured gears realigning in the cold mind of the Mechanicus priest. ‘You must leave at once,’ he repeated, as if Thane had made no demand.

‘We shall speak once we have landed,’ Thane said pleasantly, ignoring Van Auken in turn. ‘Face-to-face conversations are more conducive to an understanding, don’t you think?’ He shut down the channel. To Preco, he said, ‘No further communications until we land.’

‘Understood.’

Thane became aware of a deep stillness to his right. He turned to look at Aloysian. The only sign of the Master of the Forge’s concern was the rhythmic opening and closing of the vice jaws of one of his servo-arms. The movement was slight, barely more than a vibration. It stood out against the absolute immobility of the rest of his form.

‘You are troubled, Master Aloysian,’ Thane said, speaking the obvious. How could the Techmarine not be? The mission was creating a conflict between his oaths of loyalty.

‘I am.’

‘We are not seeking war with Mars.’

‘But we may find it.’

And then what? Thane almost asked, but stopped himself. It would not do to imply a lack of trust. Instead, he said, ‘That would amuse the orks greatly. I don’t propose to give them that satisfaction. I will do everything in my power to avoid bloodshed. You have my word on that.’

Aloysian’s nod was slight. ‘I believe you, Chapter Master. But will the Mechanicus make the same effort?’

‘You are better placed to answer. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aloysian said. ‘The greater the secret possessed by Urquidex, the more desperate the priests of Mars will be to keep it to themselves.’

‘And the more vital it becomes for us to learn that secret.’

‘Precisely. So where, Chapter Master, do you see the way to avoid war?’

Honour’s Spear shook harder, hammered by the Martian wind storms. Thane accepted the interruption gratefully. He had no answer for Aloysian.

The gunship broke through the smog-choked clouds of Mars. Thane looked through the viewing block and beheld the Pavonis Mons complex reaching up for him. Somewhere in that vastness, Urquidex was being held. The volcano was almost four hundred kilometres wide, and monolithic Mechanicus architecture covered its surface completely. The slope of Pavonis Mons was a gentle one, taking hundreds of kilometres to rise fourteen, but the colossal edifices and manufactoria turned it into a twisting, spiked, aggressive prominence. The fifty-kilometre caldera sprouted a cluster of gigantic chimneys, each the size of an Imperial Navy battle cruiser. They vomited the waste of Mechanicus industry into the sky, a more noxious and violent eruption than the volcano itself had ever produced.

As Honour’s Spear descended, the details of the structures became clear. Towers that Thane had taken for manufactoria were single machines, thousands of metres high. Some rotated around each other in a slow, majestic dance. Others were the pistoning ribs of an inconceivably gigantic beast. They connected to the monstrous buttresses and vaults of the manufactoria proper, of the habs for tens of millions of servants of the Omnissiah, and of laboratoria the size of hives.

‘How will we find our quarry in that?’ Abbas asked.

‘The terrain is not unknown to me,’ Aloysian said quietly.

‘I hope we will not have to seek him,’ said Thane. ‘I hope he will be brought to us.’

‘A faint hope,’ said Aloysian.

Thane made no answer. Below, the immensity of the Pavonis Mons complex stretched its iron claws upwards.

The gunships and transports came down at the edge of the space port at the base of the south face of the mountain. Alarms wailed from the towers of the port and the spires of the complex spilling off the slope and onto the surrounding plain. The Thunderhawks disgorged troops and vehicles, then rose to fly overwatch for the company. Thane organised the deployment with an eye to a maximum display of power. The battle-brothers marched at the head of the column. The Rhinos, empty except for their drivers, brought up the rear. In between came the tanks: Land Raiders, Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds. There was the strength here to flatten a city, and there was more to come. But Pavonis Mons was more than a city. Thane hoped the initial threat would be enough. He would escalate it as required, though he hoped he would not have to do so.

But Aloysian’s logic was sound.

The column rumbled away from the space port. It followed the main transport avenue running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate. Embedded in the immense walls encircling the base of the volcano, the Tharsis Gate was the primary access point to the Pavonis Mons complex, both above and below the surface of Mars.

Cathedral warehouses and cloud-piercing manufactoria lined the avenue’s sides. Webs of monorail tubes ran overhead, forcing the Thunderhawks higher. Ochre dust blew down the canyons between the structures. A sea of Mechanicus serfs and monotasked servitors parted ahead of the Fists Exemplar, a thousand thousand pedestrians and transports funnelling into cavernous cargo and work bays, or melting into narrower streets held in perpetual night by the shadows of the towers. From the jutting rise of the complex came an angry red glow. Cataracts of molten ore fell hundreds of metres from spouts to receptacles. Thane gazed at what he had come to bend to his will: a great mechanism, too large for the eye to encompass, too powerful for even its operators to comprehend. A mountain of metal and stone rumbled and groaned.

And it cried out.

The sirens whooped, Mars warning of invaders, Mars preparing for war. At the other end of the avenue, where it opened up into the kilometres-wide Square of the Infinite Reach before the Tharsis Gate, Thane saw the Mechanicus forces gather, and then move.

‘Where did they come from?’ Raalega asked. The Tharsis Gate was shut fast.

Aloysian spread his servo-arms, taking in the industrial sprawl on all sides. ‘From everywhere,’ he said. ‘There are thousands of concealed access points just in this quadrant. The Mechanicus will reach what must be held, and provide no route for the enemy. So Mars will always be defended.’

The two forces came together in the Square of the Infinite Reach. Electro-priests and skitarii walked just ahead of Kastelan robots and their datasmiths. The robots were lumbering monsters, twice the height of their controllers. Their forms had a kinship to Space Marine power armour, but their heads were smooth eggs of metal, faces replaced with grey plates. Huge cannons rose over the metal skulls from the carapace: incendine combustors. Their power fists crackled with red and blue energy.

On the flanks rolled servitor tanks. The Kataphron Destroyers and Breachers were tracked behemoths, built up around things that had once been human. The only remnants were the shaved heads, snarling, bestial, pallid and blank-eyed, attached to machinic torsos wielding cannons and hydraulic claws.

Onager Dunecrawlers clanked up along the road at the rear of the column. Insectoid limbs carried reliquary hulls armed with eradication beamer cannons. The Dunecrawlers swivelled their weapons back and forth, aiming over the Mechanicus. Some were monitoring the Space Marine tanks. Others were tracking the movements of the gunships.

More forces were joining the Mechanicus column. Thane saw individual units emerge from manufactoria and hatches opening and closing in the surface of the roads and the square. Aloysian was correct. For the Adeptus Mechanicus, the terrain was porous, offering innumerable means of closing with an enemy. But to the foe, the ways would be shut or death traps. There was only one entrance that might conceivably be stormed and secured: the Gate.

The Tharsis Gate was a hundred metres high and wide, and at that it was half the height of the wall. An engraving of the divided skull of the Cult Mechanicus occupied the Gate’s entire surface. There was no seam, no sign of whether it parted down the centre or rose into the wall. Thane bore no illusions about opening it from the outside. The Fists Exemplar would have to pierce it.

The Mechanicus column grew as it advanced. It was a mechanised serpent of crimson robes, crimson plate, articulated metal limbs, pulsing energy and coiling mechadendrites. There was so little of the human in the display before Thane that war seemed not unthinkable, but inevitable. He thought of what Koorland had told him of Fabricator General Kubik: that the High Lord appeared to regard the ork attack on the Imperium with the detachment of an outside observer. He spoke as if Mars were not threatened, as if the orks were more fascinating than dangerous, and as if the Cult Mechanicus had an alliance of convenience with the Imperium, and nothing more.

At this moment, Koorland’s concerns had the ring of grim truth.

The Fists Exemplar and the Mechanicus stopped with less than fifty metres between them.

‘Point-blank range,’ Abbas voxed over a private channel.

‘Yes,’ said Thane. At this distance, the combined fire of the two armies could leave nothing but a huge crater. They were edging towards a catastrophe beyond war. ‘We must tread carefully.’ He switched to the command network. ‘We are not here for battle,’ he said. ‘Keep that foremost in your minds, brothers. There will be no weapons fire without my express command. The situation is fragile. We will not be the ones to engage first. But we will complete our mission.’

‘Chapter Master,’ Abbas said, ‘does the Mechanicus understand the concept of the bluff?’

‘Do you think that’s what we’re doing?’

‘No. But I hope our opponents are.’

At least Abbas had not used the word enemies.

From the towers of the manufactoria, and from the Martian war machines, vox-casters spoke from all sides. They surrounded the Fists Exemplar with the inhuman tones of Van Auken. They were the voice of a single priest, and that unity, amplified hundreds of times, gave the artisan the same authority as if he had been Mars itself.

‘In the name of the Omnissiah, go no further. Turn back now.’

If there was something Thane could count on in the present volatility, it was the precision of Van Auken’s words. He had never known an adept of the Mechanicus to use language carelessly. Van Auken had commanded, but he had not threatened. He was reserving a small space for manoeuvring.

Thane would have to make him back up. He used his vox-grille to speak, to broadcast his response to the Mechanicus warriors and to Van Auken. ‘We have our orders. They are the same as yours, from the Lord Commander of the Imperium, and in the name of the Emperor. Release Eldon Urquidex to our custody.’

‘In the name of the Omnissiah, go no further. Turn back now.’

The perfect, mechanical repetition. It might as well have been a recording. Thane knew it wasn’t. Perhaps all Van Auken had left was escalation. As did Thane.

‘Chapter Master,’ Aloysian voxed. ‘Is one magos worth the cost we are facing?’

‘Would you abandon our mission?’ Thane glanced to his left. The Master of the Forge was in the front line, a visible reminder to the Mechanicus of the fused alliance between Mars and Terra.

‘I am not suggesting dereliction,’ said Aloysian. ‘I am weighing the consequences. Which would cause more damage to the Imperium — the loss of Urquidex, or war on Mars?’

‘Your logic is faulty, Master Aloysian. The information Urquidex possesses may outweigh any disaster here.’

‘We don’t know.’

‘No. But we know our orders. We know our oaths of moment.’

Aloysian was silent.

‘I appreciate your situation,’ Thane said. ‘But…’ He trailed off and waited.

Aloysian grunted. It was a very human sound, a rare expression of emotion from the Techmarine. ‘I know what I am,’ he said. ‘I am Adeptus Astartes. I am an Exemplar. My duty is clear, Chapter Master.’

‘I have no doubt it is. I will still spare us war if it is at all possible.’

Aloysian shook his head. ‘It will not be.’

Still, I will act as though it is, Thane thought. ‘This confrontation is senseless,’ he boomed to the Martian warriors. ‘We all serve the same Imperium. We all serve the Emperor. Will you turn your back on the Imperium in its moment of peril? I will not believe this of the priests of Mars. And now we will pass.’

He began to walk forwards. ‘A steady advance,’ he ordered the company. ‘Slow. Give them time to move back. Weapons at ready, but do not address targets. We go forwards, we do not stop, but we do not fire. Acknowledge.’

Clicks came back to him over the vox.

The Fists Exemplar advanced. The space between the forces shrank.

Van Auken watched the vid-screens and hololith tables. He was in a command centre below the surface, near the core of Pavonis Mons. The screens covered the walls. Feeds updated themselves every second. Targeting data from the Dunecrawlers changed as they tracked gunships and tanks. An auspex-mechanic sat before each column of screens, summarising and condensing the slivers of situation into bursts of code, their signals running through the cogitators and into the Artisan Primus’ mechadendrites plugged into the master console. Moment to moment, he had a near-total awareness of the entire territory running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate.

‘They are advancing,’ transmitted Sicarian Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax.

‘I am aware of this development.’

‘Understood, Artisan Primus. The delay between the situational change and your orders prompted my erroneous conclusion.’

It was possible to discern a veiled insult in her explanation. Van Auken ignored it. ‘Do not allow them to pass.’

‘What means are authorised?’

‘The mass of our forces. Do not engage.’

‘Unpredictable contingencies raise the likelihood of combat to near-certainty.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes are highly disciplined. The possibilities of intemperate error are concomitantly reduced.’

‘Accepted without optimism. Query: is the risk an efficient use of resources?’

‘We have not yet ascertained the degree of the heretic Urquidex’s knowledge. Once the full extent of the damage has been ascertained, he will be mind-wiped. The Adeptus Astartes may claim him at that point. Until then, his threat outweighs all others. Premise: the Fists Exemplar are also fully conscious of the consequences of war. Their data is also incomplete. They can conceive of no escape for Terra from the orks. Theorem: conflict here while orks are over Terra will be avoided as an absolute evil.’

‘Counter-hypothesis,’ said 7-Galliax. ‘Lacking alternatives, they will stop at nothing.’

‘Possibility evaluated and dismissed,’ Van Auken said.

He watched the two forces come together. With all the variables clamouring for his attention, there was no room for doubt.

The Mechanicus closed ranks. There were only a few metres between Thane and the line of skitarii.

‘They don’t want to let us through,’ said Abbas.

‘We shall have to convince them otherwise,’ replied Thane

The solid wall of Fists Exemplar closed the gap. The Adeptus Astartes towered over the skitarii vanguard troops. The armour of these warriors was heavy by Mechanicus standards — they were more substantial and less insectoid than many of their comrades. They were still dwarfed by the Space Marines.

The Fists Exemplar did not pause. They pressed forwards, steady and inexorable as the tide. Thane kept his bolter against his chest, barrel angled up. He was not attacking, simply advancing. Skitarii rifles were pointed at him. He pushed into the barrel of the vanguard warrior before him. He took another step, forcing the other to choose between taking a step back, firing, or engaging in melee combat. The skitarius stepped back. So did the rest of the line. The Fists Exemplar moved forwards again.

Then a command must have been issued. The retreat halted, the Dunecrawlers, Breachers and Destroyers manoeuvring to form a wall of metal. The Fists Exemplar could overwhelm the skitarii physically, but they would not be able to push past the Mechanicus heavy armour without using their own.

The chances of avoiding war shrank still further.

Thane had no choice; the mission demanded he advance. He decided to take the risk of raising the stakes. He would make those augmetic eyes blink yet.

He raised Weylon Kale on the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘begin the drop.’

‘So ordered, Chapter Master.’

‘They have the physical mass to force us back,’ 7-Galliax reported.

‘Hold as long as possible,’ Van Auken said. ‘When the heavy armour comes into play, fire warning shots.’

7-Galliax’s reply was cut off by a binharic squeal from one of the auspex-mechanics.

Van Auken processed the data. He felt stirrings of something that went beyond concern. Auto-regulators sought to contain the disruptive effect of his nervous system’s injection of adrenaline. ‘Correction,’ he said to 7-Galliax. ‘We have detected launch flares from the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. All units begin warning fire. Do not hit the Adeptus Astartes. Be prepared to fall back and establish barrage fire that they cannot cross.’

The Fists Exemplar slowed. They leaned into the skitarii, their block of strength edging closer and closer to outright combat, but they did not train their guns. The tanks rolled up behind them.

Aloysian said, ‘Stalemate is inevitable.’

‘It won’t last long,’ Thane answered.

‘That is the source of my concern.’

‘Patience, Master of the Forge. Look to the skies.’

The streaks of the drop pods appeared a few moments later. They cut through the Martian atmosphere like bloody claws. There were four of them, carrying the rest of the veteran company’s strength to the field.

In the next instant, the Mechanicus forces began to shoot.

‘Hold fire!’ Thane shouted over the vox. Trigger discipline held, long enough for the Space Marines to realise the energy beams were passing overhead. ‘The…’ He caught himself. He had almost said the enemy. ‘The Mechanicus seeks to intimidate. We are not at war.’ Broadcasting again, he called to the skitarii and tech-priests, and to Van Auken, wherever he was. ‘We are not at war,’ he repeated. ‘Do not force a battle none of us would choose. Be one with us. Be one with Terra and against the orks!’

The only response was continued fire. It turned into a canopy of devastating energy. Even perfect precision could not stop it from shearing the facades of buildings. Rockcrete disintegrated. No wreckage fell. The sheer volume of the destructive beams took everything they hit apart at the molecular level.

The strobing flash of the beams played havoc with Thane’s optics. He blinked off the filters and kept pushing, driving the skitarii vanguard back towards the wall of their heavy armour. He looked up to the sky, and through the interweaving beams he saw the drop pods hurtle to the ground, coming down behind the Mechanicus forces, between them and the Tharsis Gate, catching them in a vice. Thane heard the impacts, felt the shake in the pavement. He felt the pressure mount on Van Auken.

The disaster, when it happened, seemed inevitable, an event every soul on Mars should have predicted. Thane saw it unfold with sickened dread and helplessness. Two of the Dunecrawlers rotated their hulls to send their fire over the drop pods. They did so as the last of the entry vehicles came down a few seconds behind the others. What happened was chance, not error. The terrible alchemy of war.

Because this was war. It had been from the moment Koorland ordered the Alcazar Remembered to Mars.

An eradication beam struck the final drop pod. It vaporised the outer shielding. The drop pod’s retro thrusters exploded. Thane saw the flash, the billow of flame, and the pod tilt over. Off course, it fell to the east beyond his sight, behind the canyon walls of the manufactoria. The crash of its landing was deafening.

‘Hold fire!’ Thane ordered. ‘Hold fire!’ The company obeyed, but he didn’t know if the Fists Exemplar in the fallen pod were alive, and if they were receiving. The proximity and intensity of the energy beams was interfering with vox-traffic. The voices of his brothers were disappearing in storms of static and dropped audio. He heard nothing from the damaged pod.

And then there were more explosions. There was bolter fire. A rocket slammed into the hull of a Dunecrawler.

No, Thane thought, despairing. The worst was unfolding. His wounded brothers thought they had come under attack and were responding.

The Mechanicus answered. The Dunecrawlers lowered their guns and fired towards the rear. Overhead, the canopy of destruction descended.

No room to manoeuvre now, no avoiding the worst. No more pretence. No more hope.

‘Open fire!’ Thane commanded.

Fists Exemplar and skitarii struck at each other in the same instant. The close quarters worked in favour of the Space Marines — their armour was stronger than that of the skitarii. Their mass-reactive bolt-shells shattered breastplates and helmets, blowing up the circuitry and flesh within, and the first ranks of the vanguard went down. Radium carbine bullets hammered against Thane’s armour, but his plate held against the poisonous rounds. His auto-senses warned of a massive increase in airborne radiation; if he had not been wearing his helm, his skin would already have begun to cook.

The Fists Exemplar had the momentum of the first seconds, but the Mechanicus had the overwhelming numbers. The temptation was to drive forwards while they could, but Thane knew better. The Space Marines could not depend on their power armour to see them through the enemy cohort before the heavy guns came to bear. The wrong push now would be disastrous.

Or more disastrous. He pushed the thought away, focusing on the need to survive the next few seconds, and to fight for the completion of the mission. He could not afford to consider the wider consequences of what was unfolding.

‘Fall back,’ he ordered the company. ‘Tanks, take the lead. Punch our way through.’ He swept his bolter back and forth as he started to walk backwards. The Fists Exemplar’s hail shattered Mechanicus warriors. Clouds of metal shrapnel erupted. The tanks drew level with the Space Marines. Their cannons roared simultaneously with the shriek of the enemy’s energy blasts. The Predator Roma’s Cry blew a hole through the centre of a Kataphron Breacher with its autocannon, and the servitor’s head jerked backwards in a memory of mortal agony. It was avenged a moment later when Roma’s Cry was hit by a Destroyer’s plasma culverin and a Dunecrawler’s eradicator. Energy crackled. Metal melted and evaporated. Roma’s Cry surged forwards, its fate and that of the battle-brothers within already determined. It crushed skitarii beneath its treads before it exploded. The fireball was huge, power plant and munitions destroyed in the same instant. Thane used the wall of flame as cover and moved to the right side of the avenue.

‘On me,’ he called to his brothers. ‘Flank them.’

The tank battle became a firestorm of shells and energy blasts. The explosions were continuous, filling the street. Behemoths of war hurled destruction at each other from ranges no greater than a few dozen metres. The Fists Exemplar moved through a storm of flame, smoke, convulsing energy and whirling shrapnel. The foot soldiers of both forces made way for the tanks, and the vehicles picked up speed. Even at such close range, some shots went wide, devastating the manufactoria on both sides of the avenue. Thane led his company towards a structure that was more avalanche than shelter.

‘Thamarius,’ Thane voxed to the sergeant leading the drop pod landing. ‘What is your situation?’ He called twice more before Thamarius answered, barely audible over the raging interference.

‘The Gate is holding strong, Chapter Master. We’re trying to break through with melta bombs, but it will take time. Our position is vulnerable.’

‘Hold fast, brother-sergeant. We will approach from the eastern flank.’

‘We may need more desperate means to defeat this barrier.’

‘Understood. But we are not there yet.’

If Thamarius answered, his words were lost in the static.

A Kastelan robot loomed out of the smoke. It fired its incendine combustor and a flood of ignited promethium washed over Thane’s company. Raalega took the brunt, the high-powered stream burning through the seams of his armour. It filled his helmet. Flesh and metal turned molten. As he fell, he hurled a krak grenade at the robot, slagging the behemoth’s left foot. The robot staggered, the sudden swing of its gait almost crushing the datasmith at its side. The priest died by bolter fire a moment later but the robot still advanced. Deprived of the guidance of its datasmith, it was governed by the last instructions programmed into it. It would walk and burn all before it until it was destroyed or ran out of fuel.

Bolter fire pummelled the robot. The impacts made it jerk as it walked, but its attack was untroubled. Thane ran through the flame, his heat and rad sensors shrieking red. He stepped around the robot’s heavy tread, wiping burning promethium to clear his vision, and trained his bolter on the barrel of the combustor. The gun burst. Its fuel ignited at once, shot skywards, and blew up the robot’s power pack. Thane jumped back, away from the worst of the incinerating flood. The robot burned in its own life force, stopped walking and slumped forwards, arms hanging limply. Immobilised, it became a metal silhouette in a lake of fire.

The company passed through an archway and into the manufactorium. Two of its huge chimneys had fallen, crushing the upper storeys of the central structure. The Fists Exemplar entered a ruin of iron and rockcrete, the ground level a shattered jumble. Some columns still held up the vaults for a few metres, while others had snapped like bone, and the space between the floor and thousands of tonnes of rubble was less than two metres. Shattered pipes sprayed superheated steam and burning gases through the space. Torn electrical cables as thick as Thane’s arm sparked and twisted like agonised snakes. Forges thirty metres high, cracked open, spilled molten slag across the floor. The manufactorium was a death planet in miniature, and it offered the best route to break through to Thamarius and the interior of Pavonis Mons. The heavy weapons of the Mechanicus could not enter here.

‘This complex is highly unstable,’ Aloysian said.

‘I don’t plan on staying,’ said Thane.

‘And Van Auken could decide to bring it all down on our heads.’

‘More reason for speed. And to keep him distracted.’ Thane voxed the gunship pilots. ‘We must escalate, brothers. Keep the focus of the Mechanicus on the street.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said Preco, from among the answer clicks.

The Thunderhawks screamed over the avenue, unleashing streams of heavy bolter and lascannon fire, and flights of hellstrike missiles. The tank battle raged on. The roar of destruction was unending, the curtain of flame from the explosions impenetrable. Thane led the way through the burning and the wreckage of the manufactorium. The Fists Exemplar climbed over and under rubble, battering their way through iron doors knocked askew in their frames and through walls crumbling under strain. Behind them, collapses multiplied. A mountain was settling over their heads.

They advanced well beyond the level of the Mechanicus’ front lines in the avenue. Thane estimated less than a hundred metres separated them from the final approach to the Tharsis Gate.

There was no resistance.

As they reached an open space whose floor was covered in congealing metal, Aloysian said, ‘Chapter Master, where are the skitarii?’

It was too much to expect all the infantry to be caught up in the struggle in the road. ‘Auspex?’ Thane called.

‘Nothing…’ Kahagnis voxed from midway down the phalanx.

Thane did not like the hesitation. ‘Why are you uncertain?’

‘The readings are erratic. The interference is severe. When we—’

And then nothing descended. Nothing was white noise on the vox, white noise on the optics, and a shrieking howl. Blood filled Thane’s mouth and ears. Pain stabbed into his eyes with the thousand shards of a broken mirror.

Somewhere, there was a hum. It vibrated beneath hearing. It was sharper than a blade.

And then the smell of blood. The smell of butchery.

Two

Terra — The Imperial Palace

The ork moon attacked Terra with its presence. It was blockaded and nothing could emerge, yet its reality alone was enough. It orbited the planet, renewing fear across the globe as the people turned unwilling eyes up to witness every moonrise.

And the High Lords dithered. The High Lords schemed. At the sight of them, gathered on their dais, Koorland’s cheek muscles twitched with contempt and anger.

As he walked into the Great Chamber, the Imperial Fist’s boots crunched on the powdered marble fallen from the ceiling. Every time he entered the Chamber, he saw less of the space’s glory, and more of the damage. It was no less a symbol of the state of the Imperium than it had ever been. Friezes were cracked. The r ubble of the collapsed seating tiers had not been cleared away. The fractures in the dome turned the fresco of the Great Crusade into a bitter satire.

The damage to the huge statue of Rogal Dorn was minimal. The primarch was unbowed. He gazed down on the High Lords’ dais, and Koorland thought he read disgust in the lines of his face and in the implacable eyes. How could the Praetorian not be dismayed by what the High Lords of Terra had become?

Koorland shared that disgust. But he also shared in the shame. By ousting the Lord Guilliman, Udin Macht Udo, and becoming Lord Commander of the Imperium in his place, Koorland had erased the distance between himself and the High Lords. He was of their number now. Their failures were his too, compounding his others.

The Imperial Fists, gone except for himself. And yes, he had acted, yes, he had united the Successor Chapters. Yes, the sons of Dorn once again stood on the ramparts of the Imperial Palace. But to what end? The ork moon’s tumorous presence was still in the sky, a perpetual reminder of the beast that was bleeding the Imperium. The Council was as fractious as ever. And now, instead of progress towards even a hint of a way of moving against the orks, the fault lines in the Imperium were growing into

chasms.

A poor showing.

And he had turned the running of the blockade over to the Imperial Navy. The move was necessary. The Last Wall could not be held in one place, unable to turn where the war called. Even so, the decision felt like a bad one.

Koorland mounted the dais and stopped before Kubik. The Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus was seated. He did not rise. His optics hummed as they adjusted to Koorland’s proximity.

‘There has been an astropathic message from Mars,’ Koorland said. He held a strip of vellum before Kubik. ‘Fighting has broken out. But I expect you knew that.’

‘The result was calculated at a high level of probability,’ Kubik answered. His mantid limbs unfolded, long metallic fingers taking the parchment. He examined it with little interest before returning it to Koorland. ‘You are reporting the expected, Lord Commander.’

The others in the room were less sanguine.

‘How bad is it?’ asked Drakan Vangorich, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum.

Most of the people in the chamber inspired Koorland with contempt, but Vangorich was an exception. If he had been no more successful than Koorland in forcing a consistent, successful defence against the greenskins out of the Council, his efforts had been heroic. Koorland respected him. He was wary of the man, but he trusted his wisdom.

‘I have no details yet,’ Koorland said. ‘I’m waiting on the arrival of vox-transmissions.’

‘Mars is currently fourteen-point-two light minutes from Terra,’ said Kubik.

‘Yes.’ Koorland rounded on the Fabricator General again. ‘How much damage will be done in the time it takes for new orders to be sent and received?’

If Kubik was bothered by the implications, he gave no sign. ‘You have sent armed troops onto the sacred ground of Mars,’ he said. ‘Your losses are regrettable.’

‘Regrettable?’ Tobris Ekharth shouted. The Master of the Administratum sounded querulous rather than forceful. His outrage was tinged with panic. ‘None of the other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes have seen fit to trouble themselves with Terra—’

‘The ork attacks are occurring throughout the Imperium,’ Vangorich interrupted, his tone both grim and calm. ‘We have reports of the Ultramarines engaging another attack moon over Tarentus. The Blood Angels—’

‘I don’t care about Tarentus!’ Spit flew from Ekharth’s lips. ‘I care about Terra! And where are our Space Marines? They’re battling the Adeptus Mechanicus! That is not regrettable. It is catastrophic! Is this what you call leadership?’ he demanded of Koorland. ‘You have led us into civil war!’

Ecclesiarch Mesring gasped. Inquisitorial Representative Lastan Neemagiun Veritus rose from his seat. ‘Do not use those words again,’ he hissed at Ekharth.

Koorland had difficulty gauging Veritus’ age, but he was old, his body withered inside the bulk of his power armour. His movements had energy, though, and Ekharth recoiled, leaning back as if he could push himself through his throne and away from the inquisitor.

‘The Imperium will never know civil war again,’ Veritus said. His voice was calm, measured, yet it cut the air with claws. ‘That is impermissible. To imagine otherwise is heresy.’

Mesring breathed in sharply again. Cultural memories a thousand years old pressed in on the Great Chamber, casting long shadows.

Trembling, Ekharth said, ‘Then what is it?’

Koorland was surprised the Administratum lord found the courage to push back even that much against Veritus.

‘It is something that ends now,’ Koorland said. He was still facing Kubik.

‘It is a skirmish,’ said Kubik. ‘It will end soon.’ The mechanical buzz of his voice was without intonation. He might as well have been a servitor reporting data. ‘What will you do?’ he asked Koorland. ‘I do not think you will continue to send troops after the current contingent is rendered non-viable.’

‘You have little faith in the Adeptus Astartes,’ Koorland said. ‘You think you know how this struggle will end? You are wrong.’

‘The arithmetic is beyond challenge. One company against an entire planet.’

Koorland shook his head. ‘Fabricator General Kubik,’ he said, ‘planets have fallen to a single company before. Do not mistake this for a skirmish.’ He looked at Ekharth. ‘And it is not a civil war.’

He paused. He stopped himself before he gave in to his anger. He would have liked to drag Kubik off his seat and batter the insectoid priest. He would have liked to force compliance. There was no telling how much harm the Adeptus Mechanicus had done already with the secrets it was fighting so hard to keep. But such actions would be futile, and they would ensure an even greater tragedy on Mars.

‘Fabricator General,’ he said, calm now. ‘Are you still a High Lord of the Imperium?’

Brother Scuris came apart. He was a few metres to Thane’s left. As Thane tried to clear his eyes and head, he had a vague impression of lunging, skeletal shadows that seemed to have emerged from the air itself. They wielded blades and claws, and they cut through Scuris’ armour as if it too were a shadow. Scuris’ arms fell to the ground. Blood sprayed from his gorget. Up and down the line of the Fists Exemplar, vitae jetted in powerful fountains, the massive hearts of the Adeptus Astartes warrior pumping blood far into the air. It misted the atmosphere of the room.

Thane’s vision split, doubled, blurred. He made out a line of hostiles approaching from the far end of the room. There were flashes from gun muzzles and projectiles slammed into Thane’s chest-plate. They hit with the stopping power of heavy stubbers. And everywhere there were the rapid shadows of the enemy already upon the Fists Exemplar.

The vox was a ringing howl. Communication was impossible. Defence and retaliation were not. Thane fired, sweeping his bolter in a wide parabola before him. He stepped backwards. He could not trust his agonised senses. He could trust his brothers.

Through the static came the heavy pounding of bolters. Thane’s shoulders locked with his brothers’. The Fists Exemplar formed a circle, striking back with a devastating volley. Shells punched into the walls of the manufactorium, chewing through the shadows and the advancing foe. Rockets hit the line. The Space Marines struck back at stealth with overwhelming brute force.

The white noise began to break down as the beings generating it were annihilated. Thane’s vision cleared. He saw the broken line of the Sicarian infiltrators. With their hemispherical skulls atop bodies whose limbs were narrow articulations long since absent of flesh, they were scarabs of war. They still came forwards, firing stubcarbines, broadcasting neurostatic waves, but the cumulative strength of the neurostatic assault was no longer enough. The genhanced senses of the Adeptus Astartes magnified the damage of the wave. They also adapted faster.

The lethal shadows, too, now had shape. Ruststalkers. The skitarii assassins had the same slender build as the infiltrators. They moved like razors. At close quarters, their transonic blades sliced through ceramite as easily as flesh. Unlike the infiltrators, the hum they broadcast rode up and down the frequencies, finding the vibrations to slip through the molecules of armour and bone.

But they had to get close. The Fists Exemplar pushed the skitarii back with a mass-reactive storm. Enemy bodies burst into shrapnel. Mechanicus warriors disintegrated. Shapes fell to the ground: shapes that looked like warped, metallic ruin, and yet they bled.

‘Through them now!’ Thane yelled.

He jogged forwards again, still shoulder-to-shoulder with his brothers. The Fists Exemplar became their name incarnate: a massive ceramite fist rushing into the foe, shattering the advance. Infiltrator rounds cracked Thane’s breastplate. He was running through hammer blows, but his own blows were harder. His force was unstoppable.

Half-molten slag cracked and shifted and gave way beneath his heavy steps and his boots sank into viscous heat, but he kept his footing. He kept his momentum. The Exemplars were a single entity, a battering ram come to shatter the enemy line.

More infiltrators fell. The stiletto jab to Thane’s forehead and the subaural sapping of his spirit itself faded. The vox sputtered back to life with the roar of the Space Marines’ anger. The ruststalkers closed with them, needling in like filaments to a magnet. Some of them danced between the shells. Some of them struck home with their blades. Thane heard brothers’ snarls cut short. He also heard high-pitched bursts of squealing binharic as the assassins were taken apart by retaliatory fire.

Thane hurled a frag grenade. The skitarii had little flesh for the shrapnel to pierce, but the blast fountained metal over them, melting joints and incinerating circuits. A ruststalker leaped in front of him, slashing at his helmet with its chordclaw. He jerked his head back. The claws scraped across his grille. With his right arm, he swung his chainsword diagonally down through the assassin’s neck, cutting through cables. It severed a cybernetic spine. The ruststalker’s head flew off, and Thane trampled over the body.

The Fists Exemplar collided with the infiltrators. They attacked with fury and with sheer mass, turning the Sicarians into scrap metal. The remaining ruststalkers retreated, vanishing back into the shadows.

‘Are you still holding, Thamarius?’ Thane voxed.

‘Barely,’ the sergeant answered. He sounded winded. ‘Still not through the Gate.’

‘We are almost with you.’ There was a doorway ahead. Beyond it, a narrow corridor, and the Martian daylight. The end of the manufactorium and a short run to the rear of the Mechanicus lines and the Tharsis gate.

The huge fist kept moving.

‘Our losses—’ 7-Galliax began.

‘Are known and registered,’ Van Auken interrupted.

‘We have been unable to stop the Adeptus Astartes advance through the Dolentes complex.’

‘We are fully aware.’ Van Auken’s optics skipped from vid-screen to vid-screen, processing the unfolding disaster. Extrapolated results were even grimmer. He had to shut the conflict down and do it quickly. The long-term consequences were as uncertain as the near-future ones were definite. They were also coming no matter what steps he took to stop the Fists Exemplar. There was no peace to preserve now. The political ramifications were beyond his concern. He was sending constant updates to Terra, for the use of the Fabricator General, but whatever Kubik decided had no bearing on the immediate situation. ‘Reinforcements are arriving,’ Van Auken told 7-Galliax. ‘Expect significant structural and personnel impacts.’

‘Acknowledged. We are the Machine. Let it be inevitable and manifest.’

Short-term collateral losses to the Mechanicus were regrettable. They were also ongoing. The war had to be stopped by a massive concentration of force. Sufficient escalation would stop uncontrollable escalation.

There was pure certainty in the move he had to make. Its success was less certain.

He watched the vid-screens, processing the data of the war he was trying to stop.

He realised he was experiencing desperation.

‘Your query’s answer is self-evident,’ Kubik said. ‘If I were not a High Lord, I would not be present. We would not be having this conversation.’

The Fabricator General’s answer was somewhere between being literal in the most mechanistic sense and an equivocation. Koorland hoped Kubik’s cold evasion was a sign of uncertainty. You still have nerves in there, Koorland thought. I think I struck one.

He pressed harder. ‘Your actions force my question. You have every right and duty to act in the defence of Mars, but not at the expense of the Imperium. We are not two powers. We are one. Or are you really contemplating secession?’

‘The speculation is absurd,’ Kubik said.

Koorland did not expect emotion in Kubik’s voice, so he was not surprised by the flat absence of outrage or passion. What surprised him was the momentary pause. A single metallic finger tapped once against the right arm of the throne. Something Koorland had said had jolted the Fabricator General. He had hit too close to home.

Secession? The Mechanicus wouldn’t be that mad.

And if they were?

Koorland leaned closer to Kubik. ‘What do you think is happening on Mars?’ he asked. ‘What do you think will be the consequences of the path you have chosen?’

‘The Mechanicus does not walk this path alone, Lord Commander. You are the one who sent an armed force to Mars.’

‘You forced my choice. Fabricator General Kubik, there is war on Mars as we have this debate. Even now the damage must be considerable. It will be worse. If there is no ceasefire, the struggle will continue until there is victory. Think of the cost. Think how far the consequences will reach. Perhaps this will not be civil war.’ He shot a glance at Veritus, who glowered but kept silent. ‘But Mars will be weakened. The Imperium will be weakened. Is that your desire? How much destruction will you embrace?’

No answer from Kubik, except in the tapping of his finger. It marked time, each click of metal on metal the passing of another second, another moment lost to the cascading destruction.

Messengers burst into the Great Chamber from separate doors. One ran straight for Koorland. The other was a Mechanicus acolyte.

Kubik’s finger stopped tapping. His telescoping optics flicked from the approaching acolyte and back to Koorland.

They waited in silence for the news.

More moments lost.

A few metres from the exit of the corridor, Thane halted. At the same instant, Thamarius voxed, ‘Chapter Master! Mechanicus reinforcements!’

‘I see them, brother-sergeant.’

Dunecrawlers — squadron after squadron of them, a swarm of massive arachnid walkers, moving in with a ponderous scuttle into the port area. Their eradication beamers were swinging towards the manufactorium.

‘They will leave nothing but a crater,’ said Aloysian.

Van Auken’s voice resounded across the battlefield. ‘Adeptus Astartes, surrender immediately. You have thirty seconds.’

Thane gestured the company back. He opened a channel to the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Shipmaster,’ he said. ‘I need a single bombardment cannon salvo with immediate effect at these coordinates.’

The messages were subluminal reports. As Koorland learned the full details of the battle’s beginning, he received word on the vox of another astropathic communication. It was one whose translation had posed no difficulty. There had been too much urgency in the signal from the choir aboard the Alcazar Remembered, the message too brief and simple to permit misunderstanding.

‘An orbital attack has begun,’ Koorland said.

Kubik rose. ‘End it,’ he demanded.

‘That lies with you,’ Koorland responded.

Imperial Fist and Fabricator General faced each other. The seconds ticked by in silence. The rest of the High Lords watched and said nothing. Hundreds of millions of kilometres away, destruction rained from the Martian skies.

The Dunecrawlers turned their beams on the manufactorium. The Fists Exemplar retreated from the disintegrating collapse. Walls evaporated behind them. The upper floors plummeted. The rubble that fell through the beams vanished. Tonnes of rockcrete and iron and plasteel made it through. Thane crouched against the side wal as slabs came down at an angle. Ruin pressed down on the company. He pushed upwards, straining against the weight that sought to crush him. The pressure grew as more and more of the upper structure fell.

‘Stand fast, brothers!’ he called, shouting over thunder. ‘Our retaliation approaches.’

‘It’s getting lighter,’ Kahagnis said.

‘Do not rejoice,’ Aloysian warned.

The shrieking hum of the eradicator beams drew nearer. They were stripping away the layers of rubble. Soon there would be no shelter.

Daylight appeared over Thane’s head.

He roared and turned to face the Mechanicus armour. And so he was in time to see the streak from the sky. The bombardment cannon’s shot struck the centre of the Square of the Infinite Reach. Auto-senses shutting out the glare, Thane crouched in the vanishing ruins. The blast was light and fire and the concentrated wind of a thousand hurricanes. It blew over the Fists Exemplar., who sank into their positions, clutching shattered foundations. Torn and burned fragments of the Dunecrawlers flew overhead, leaves in the wind. The wind still blowing, the glare barely faded, Thane called the charge.

Smoke and dust everywhere. In the avenue, the heavy armour struggle continued, but the Mechanicus forces, closer to the blast, had been decimated. The Space Marine tanks gained ground. Before the Tharsis Gate, there was now a wasteland with a crater a dozen metres deep at its centre. Its slopes were a landscape of unrecognisable metal fragments and broken stone.

‘Thamarius,’ Thane called as the Fists Exemplar descended the slope.

‘Still here, Chapter Master. Just.’

‘Are you in?’

‘Almost.’

Weylon Kale broke in. ‘Chapter Master,’ said the shipmaster, ‘we are under attack.’

‘How many Mechanicus vessels?’

‘Many.’

Koorland took a step back from Kubik. He spread his arms, taking in the damage to the Great Chamber. ‘Is this what we are coming to?’ he asked. ‘Will we turn the Imperium into a broken, fractured, divided shadow of what it should be? Is this how we honour the Emperor?’ He filled his lungs with air. He filled his being with righteous anger. He bellowed his denial and his loyalty in a single word: ‘No!’

The shout reverberated across the Chamber. The High Lords looked at him in silence. He saw terror in some, shame in others. Vangorich gave a slow nod of approval. Something glimmered in Veritus’ eyes and Koorland had the impression it was something like hope. He was surprised to see the old inquisitor was still capable of the emotion.

Kubik was unreadable. He had no face in the human sense. He was perfectly still.

I have your attention, Koorland thought.

He spoke to the High Lords. His voice carried to the seating tiers, to the spectators who still came to the battered room. If the minor lords and functionaries were still jockeying for political favour, their efforts must have been the result of habit rather than belief by this point. Their numbers were greatly reduced. Many had died in the Proletarian Crusade. Others had been too terrified to return in the wake of eldar and orks being present so deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace.

Koorland spoke to be heard by all. But most of all he spoke to Kubik. ‘The Imperium is tested as it has not been since the Emperor ascended to the Golden Throne,’ he said. ‘If we fail this test, we fail through disunity. We fail the trust the Emperor has placed in us. If division defeats us, we deserve no better. And if we fall, in the name of what? I stand for Terra, and I stand for Mars. Because I stand for the Emperor. I stand for the Imperium. I will walk the ramparts of the galaxy, I will repel all enemies. I know my duty.’ He dropped his voice so that only Kubik could hear. ‘Do you?’

The Fists Exemplar melted their way through the final metres of steel, and the Tharsis Gate was breached at last. The passage was just wide and high enough for the battle-brothers to pass through in single file. To the rear, the tanks had broken the last of the Mechanicus lines and were forming a defensive perimeter around the Gate, preserving the egress once Urquidex had been located.

‘Taking fire,’ Kale reported from the Alcazar Remembered.

‘How long can you hold them off while remaining at anchor?’ Thane asked, pausing at the entrance to the breach.

‘As long as you need, Chapter Master.’ Kale’s answer was an acknowledgement that there was no choice if the mission was to succeed.

‘Our thanks, shipmaster.’

A new wave of tocsins sounded. The wailing was desperate, the tone final.

Standing at Thane’s shoulder, Aloysian said, ‘They will not let us profane Pavonis Mons. They will destroy the complex with us.’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Thane said. But as he spoke, immense turrets rose to the east and west, driven upwards by pistons thick as the limbs of Titans. They supported eradication beamer macro-cannons. With glacial majesty, barrels wider than Thunderhawks began to turn and angle downwards.

Aloysian was right. The Mechanicus was ready to atomise the invaded quadrants of the Pavonis Mons complex layer by layer.

The Predators and Whirlwinds unleashed salvoes of cannon fire and missile flights at the turrets. Void shields flared with the impacts.

Thane voxed Kale as he followed Aloysian down the melted tunnel through the Gate.

‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘I need an area-wide bombardment.’

Thane felt the mission goal recede into the mists of war. Closing in was only ever-more terrible destruction.

‘Duty,’ Kubik repeated. The Fabricator General spoke slowly, pausing between the syllables, as if anatomising the word. He stood.

‘I believe in the honour of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ Koorland said. ‘I believe in its fidelity to the Emperor.’

Another silence. Not a total one. Koorland listened to the clicks and whirs and electronic humming of Kubik’s form. He imagined he was hearing the sounds of indecision, of logic circuits closing to form a pattern of choice.

Kubik said, ‘Your belief is not misplaced. I am cognisant of all my duties.’ His words were as free of human inflection as ever. There was no trace of the organic in their buzzing enunciation.

And they were filled with sudden resolution.

Kubik turned to the Mechanicus acolyte. ‘Priority extremis message: cease fire.’

Koorland tapped his vox-bead, connecting him to the master of the astropathic choir. It was no longer a question of stopping the war in time. The question was whether there was anything left to stop.

‘Target zone acquired,’ Shipmaster Kale voxed from the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Firing on your command.’

Beyond the Tharsis Gate, the Fists Exemplar found themselves in a vast structure that was both hall of worship to the Omnissiah and pathway nexus — the Grand Passage of the Fulcrumite. Galleries beyond number rose toward a vault a thousand metres away. A web of maglev tracks, dozens of levels deep, led away in all directions. The main corridor, wide enough for a phalanx of Baneblades to travel down, split in the far distance, with the right-hand branch sloping beneath the surface of Mars. The air was dark with black, oily smoke.

The rockcrete arches echoed with the bone-shaking heartbeat of machinery. The sharp, whistling crackle and thunder of energy discharges would have punctured mortal eardrums. The tocsins sounded here too, and yet the innumerable servants of the Omnissiah continued along their appointed tasks. They moved in their red robes on their insectile limbs, mechadendrites waving, travelling without panic, their goals unaltered by the fates decreed by their superiors.

The order to fire caught in Thane’s throat. He was about to lay waste to a vast region of Pavonis Mons, the explosive destruction easier for the Fists Exemplar to survive than the absolute, surgical scouring of the eradicator beams. And if the attack took out the turrets, the Mechanicus would come back with an even more devastating attack. The conflict was a firestorm. It was nothing he could stop. It had caught the Fists Exemplar and the Adeptus Mechanicus in its consuming winds, and there was nothing anyone on Mars could do to stop it. All they could do was feed it.

Fire, he thought. But he hesitated again. In the second he had delayed, the turrets had not fired. The towering walls of the Passage were intact. The region had not been stripped down to its component molecules.

Someone else was hesitating.

‘Chapter Master?’ Kale asked.

The Fists Exemplar pounded down the passage. They had no direction to pursue except down. The war had no direction except more.

But there was hesitation.

Thane had no choice. He had to seize the advantage before Van Auken did. Before the Mechanicus vessels overwhelmed the Alcazar Remembered.

‘Fire,’ he said.

But then Kale was shouting something. It took a few seconds for the words to register. ‘Astropathic communication, Chapter Master! Immediate ceasefire! Cease fire!’

The message Thane had abandoned hope of receiving. The message he wished for above all others. And for that reason, he had to distrust it.

‘Authenticate it,’ he said.

‘Authentication in progress.’

He must fight until he knew the order truly came from Koorland. That was his duty.

But Van Auken wasn’t firing either.

He placed his trust in hope. ‘Hold fire,’ he told Kale.

Three

Terra — The Imperial Palace

In the quarters he had taken for himself in the barracks of the Last Wall, Koorland played through the recording of Thane’s interrogation of Urquidex yet again. He had already watched it until he had memorised every moment of the encounter. The war had ended before the command to turn Urquidex into a servitor had been carried out, but only just. His left arm was missing. The digits on his right moved only very slightly. His skull bore the scars of preparatory procedures.

But Urquidex spoke clearly. And his words shook Koorland. The first time he heard them, he thought he was dreaming. He replayed the vid-capture, and then did so again. And again, wishing he did not have to believe what was said.

Kubik entered the Cerebrium. Koorland was already there. The Space Marine had chosen the location for their meeting, the room at the top of the Widdershins Tower having been virtually unused since the arrival of the ork moon. Most of the High Lords found the presence of the moon, visible from the casements, too much to bear. The Great Chamber preserved an illusion of security, though that mirage was now badly fractured.

Kubik did not share the same reluctance. He welcomed the chance to observe the ork base. There was always the chance, if the air was clear enough, of witnessing an alteration on its surface, of processing some form of significant data.

Kubik evaluated the stance of Koorland. He was not sitting at the circular table, but standing beside the casement that gave the best view of the ork moon. The smog was thick this evening, but the glow of the sphere was still bright. It was visible through the cover as a sickly smear. Kubik assessed the chamber and Koorland’s position in it as symbolic. This had been Udin Macht Udo’s preferred chamber of governance. The empty table, the abandoned room — signifiers of necessary changes. The sight of the moon — a reminder of the need for those changes. Koorland was demonstrating political acumen.

He was also showing Kubik considerable courtesy in keeping the meeting private.

‘I have received the report of Magos Biologis Urquidex,’ Koorland said.

Kubik inclined his head slightly. ‘It is fortunate he survived the hostilities.’ As he spoke, he evaluated his reaction to his own words. A few hours earlier, he had been ready to order Urquidex’s immediate termination rather than allow him to release the secrets he knew. Now, he discovered that he was telling Koorland the truth. He was speaking without irony. He was glad the secret was out. Its weight had been greater than he supposed. This was surprising, and required finer parsing.

‘The Adeptus Mechanicus has been attempting to replicate the ork teleportation technology.’

‘This is so.’

He and Koorland were avoiding the greater subject. They were beginning with something trivial in comparison. The truth was so enormous, it had to be approached gradually.

‘And you have been successful?’ Koorland’s tone was neutral. Kubik would have expected anger and judgement. His estimation of the Space Marine grew by another notch.

‘We have,’ he said. ‘We transferred Phobos to the opposite position of its orbit.’

Koorland said nothing for a moment. ‘This is xenos technology,’ he observed.

‘It is.’ He tilted his head. ‘Would you have us discard this possible advantage? Are there means we should not employ to win this war?’

‘I’m glad to hear you are engaged in this battle, Fabricator General.’

And this was indeed so. It was as if there had been static interfering with Kubik’s perceptions. He had viewed the struggle against the orks as if it were a sideshow, one that concerned him and the Mechanicus only to the degree that it provided interesting and useful technology. The outcome had seemed irrelevant.

He had been wrong. The magnitude of his error was disturbing. It was contrary to his sense of identity that he should be capable of a miscalculation so gigantic and so blinkered.

‘The Adeptus Mechanicus has the same interest in the defeat of the orks as the rest of the Imperium,’ he said.

‘What do you hope to achieve with the teleporter?’ Koorland asked.

Kubik had been expecting this question. He had prepared his answer in the same instant he had given the order to release Urquidex into the custody of the Fists Exemplar.

‘The Phobos test is promising, but some considerable distance from the goal. The goal would be to use the weapon of the Veridi giganticus against them. We postulate it should be possible to teleport the battle moons away, possibly destroying them in the process.’

Koorland raised his eyebrows. ‘That is very promising.’

‘We are very far from this achievement. The mass of Phobos and the hostile bodies is not comparable, and the distance Phobos was transported was negligible.’

He was feeding Koorland a mixture of truth and outright lies. The limitations he described were accurate. The goal was not. There was no sign that the range of the device could reach beyond the near orbit of the astronomical body on which it was based. To teleport the ork moon away, it would be necessary to install the instrumentation on its surface. What had been constructed on Mars spanned many kilometres. To be used elsewhere, it would have to be transported in massive sections and rebuilt. Such a project would be difficult enough without being attempted in a warzone. And not only was the machine incomplete, it had not been duplicated. It must remain on Mars. Kubik would not compromise the means of the planet’s escape from the Sol System.

And yet.

He spoke the lies, and it was difficult to do so. He caught himself beginning to speculate about other possible uses for the technology, ones that did not involve the escape of Mars. He detected a sensation in his chest that had been so long unfamiliar to him that he did not recognise it at first.

It was regret. He was conflicted. The uncertainty was new, and distressing. Since his ascension from the limitations of the flesh, his being had been defined by a perfect focus and a precision of purpose. Now the phantoms of his shed humanity were reaching for him, summoned by Koorland and the fact that Kubik’s allegiance could not be reduced to Mars alone.

If Koorland doubted Kubik’s explanation about the teleporter, he gave no sign. He was more concerned with the other truth.

The time had come to speak of it.

‘Ullanor,’ Koorland said.

The word hung in the air like the toll of a great bell.

‘Yes,’ Kubik said.

‘The origin point of the greenskin invasion is Ullanor.’

‘Yes,’ and though he had known for some time, Kubik could manage no more. The truth punched though the protective coldness of the machine to the human core he retained. The world belonged to a realm other than mere reality. It was a legend. It marked the pinnacle of the Imperium’s glory, and the origins of its tragedy. It existed as a myth. It should not exist as a destination. And the thought of it being overrun by greenskins was beyond obscene. It was absurd, a fever dream.

‘There is no doubt?’

‘None.’

Kubik wished there were, and he knew Koorland did too.

Koorland sighed. ‘You must have known what we must do. Why keep that information secret?’

‘We keep secrets very well in the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is a vital skill. Necessity has made it into a way of life.’

‘You mean you are now secretive by instinct.’

‘Instinct is foreign to the machine,’ Kubik said. ‘It is more accurate to say that secrecy is our default condition.’

‘You have not yet answered my question.’

‘The secrecy was subject to ongoing evaluation. Revelation depended on many variables. The progress of efforts against the Veridi. Visible levels of determination within Imperial forces and leadership. The means to act.’ All of this was accurate, but there was more. The retreat into cold evaluation had also been an attempt to turn away from the import of the truth. ‘Query, Lord Commander — what will be the effect of the propagation of this knowledge?’

Koorland grimaced. ‘Turmoil,’ he said.

Kubik opened his right hand, spreading his multi-jointed fingers wide, suggesting the spread of disorder. ‘A site of such significance become home to the xenos invader. The populace will not receive the news calmly. Nor can one expect the information to remain within the circle of the High Lords.’

‘True,’ said Koorland.

‘I do not believe the rest of the Council will react well.’

‘You are correct. But there comes a point where secrecy serves no purpose. The truth must be confronted.’ Koorland gestured to the casement and the glow of the ork moon. The light of Terra’s fall spread over the roofs and spires of the Imperial Palace, a slick the colour of bleached bone, and of final defeat. ‘The truth confronts us, after all. Relentlessly.’ The Space Marine’s face twisted in hate and horror.

Kubik’s cool fascination with the base had crumbled. It can end us all, he thought. The Veridi can end everything.

Kubik inclined his head once more. ‘Do you have the determination to take the course of action this information dictates?’

‘I do.’

‘And the means?’

‘Not yet.’

Koorland thought about the means. He thought about the path he must walk. The thoughts were painful. They were reminders of what he had lost, of the burden he had shouldered, and of his own unworthiness and presumption. It was arrogance enough to put himself at the head of all the Imperial Fists Successor Chapters. The course upon which he was preparing to embark was sheer hubris.

But he had no choice.

He remained in the Cerebrium long after Kubik had departed and thought through his next steps. When he doubted, he looked out at the moon, and at the empty round table in the centre of the chamber: the adversary and the absent leadership. He was still there when word reached him over the vox that the Alcazar Remembered had returned and made low anchor over Terra.

Koorland made his way from the Cerebrium to the space port beyond the Daylight Wall. On his orders, the ceremonial purpose of the space port had been discarded. Reserving the facility for the most privileged dignitaries was pointless, now that orks had walked its rockcrete landing pads. Koorland was more interested in the time saved by having his officers reach him in the most efficient way possible.

The Thunderhawk Honour’s Spear touched down with a surge of retro thrusters. Thane pulled back the side door and jumped out. He had worked on his armour during the return from Mars, and it was clean again, shining in the arc lights of the space port. There had not been time yet to repair all the damage, though — it was pitted and scarred from the conflict at Pavonis Mons. Koorland eyed the marks of fire and thought: We have done this to each other. The Imperium fought itself. Are the orks laughing? They must be.

‘Chapter Master Koorland,’ Thane said when he reached Koorland. He crossed his arms, slamming his hands against his chest-plate in an aquila salute.

‘It’s good to see you, Chapter Master Thane,’ Koorland returned.

‘I had my doubts that we would meet again,’ said Thane.

‘Understandably.’

They walked back towards the Daylight Wall.

Thane said, ‘I wish the mission had resulted in information that was less grave.’

‘It is information that we can act upon. So we are better off than we were before.’

‘The Interdictor and its escort are still unaccounted for?’

‘As is the information they carry, yes.’ The Black Templars had learned something that could be used against the orks, but Koorland had to face the real possibility that the knowledge had been lost to battle or the warp.

Thane nodded. ‘There is something else I must tell you.’

‘Yes?’

‘I hesitated.’

‘When?’

‘Moments before the order for the ceasefire came. I was about to call down a full orbital bombardment.’

‘I’m grateful you did hesitate.’ Koorland spoke with feeling. It was important Thane believe him.

Thane seemed unconvinced. ‘The day was saved by chance. The battlefield conditions dictated immediate action. I did not take it.’

‘And you would feel you had done your duty, if we were left with nothing to salvage on Mars and a growing war with the Mechanicus?’

‘Of course not. But the principle remains.’

They walked down a vast colonnade, their boot steps echoing off marble. Above them, for hundreds of metres, were layers upon layers of galleries. Guards in the livery of the Lucifer Blacks stood to attention as they passed.

‘No son of Dorn should owe his victory to luck,’ Thane continued.

‘Perhaps not,’ said Koorland. ‘But it is mere chance that I am alive. It could easily have been one of my brothers. Or none of us. Your hesitation served us well. Relentless advance is not enough in the battlefield, you know this as well as I. Sometimes we have to listen to our instincts. The disorder of war demands that we adapt and improvise. I take it you doubt your fitness to be Chapter Master.’

Thane looked ahead stonily. ‘Perhaps.’

‘I think the complete absence of such doubts is simply arrogance.’

Now Thane’s lips creased in a grim smile. ‘High Marshal Bohemond would disagree.’

‘Quite possibly. The fact remains that you made the right decision, and averted a greater disaster. Accept your victories, brother. We need them.’

Thane nodded. Koorland wasn’t sure if he was convinced, but he seemed content to let the matter drop for the moment. ‘And what do we do with what we have discovered?’

‘We go to Ullanor.’

Thane’s intake of breath was sharp. He must have known what I would say, Koorland thought. Just as he had known what he would say in response to the question Thane was bound to ask. Speaking that sentence, though, giving voice to the thought, made him realise the immensity of what he was contemplating.

We go to Ullanor.

Those words should have been inconceivable. But so was the ork occupation of the world. And so Koorland had to confront an impossible reality with an impossible act.

‘If that is where these orks are coming from, we are not in a condition to bring the battle to them,’ said Thane.

‘I know. We can’t go alone.’

He said nothing else until they reached their destination. Outside the chamber of the astropathic choir, other warriors of the Last Wall waited. Daylight, Eternity, Absolution and Hemisphere — once of the Fists Exemplar, the Black Templars, the Crimson Fists and the Excoriators, now they saluted Koorland as their new Chapter Master. They were a union come to support the summoning of an even greater one.

‘Thank you for attending, brothers,’ he said. The words were inadequate, but there were none equal to the gratitude he felt. He had lost his Chapter, yet another, equally his, had come into being.

‘The step is necessary,’ Hemisphere said.

‘That won’t make it popular,’ said Koorland.

‘Ah,’ said Thane. ‘I see.’

‘Wait for me,’ Koorland said to the five Space Marines. Then he pulled open the bronze doors, and went inside to begin the impossible act.

The ork moon was in orbit over Tarentus, circling closer. Gravity storms shook the agri world. From the huge maw of the battle moon, greenskin landing ships poured in an unending cataract. They descended through Tarentus’ atmosphere, met from the ground with volleys of skyspear surface-to-air missiles launched by Hunter battle tanks. They were challenged in the air by flights of Xiphon interceptors. In the near orbit, the fleet hurled its fury at the moon. It was the largest gathering of Ultramarines vessels in the living memory of the brothers of the Chapter.

They were holding the ork invasion, but only just. Greenskins were making landfall, but they had not broken out into the wider regions yet. However, the gravitic effects of the moon were disrupting everything the Ultramarines threw at it. They had fought the orks to an eroding stalemate, and the orks had the numbers and resources on their side.

On the bridge of the battle-barge Caracalla, Chapter Master Odaenathus watched the sear and flame of the war through the oculus. His fists were closed tight. He was holding the thought of defeat at bay. Unless he was able to shift the conditions over Tarentus in dramatic fashion, the conclusion that faced him was unavoidable. There would be no surrender, but the fate of the Imperial Fists haunted his thoughts. The unthinkable had already transpired.

And the parchment in his right fist announced it was about to happen once more.

‘Chapter Master, I have Captain Macrinus for you,’ said the Master of the Vox.

‘Private feed,’ Odaenathus said. He stepped back from the rail overlooking the bridge, moving deeper into the strategium. He kept his eyes on the oculus as he tapped the bead at his gorget. ‘Brother-captain,’ he said, ‘you have heard the call from Terra.’

‘I have, Chapter Master, but I’m not sure my astropaths have interpreted it correctly. Ullanor?’

‘The reading of my choir is the same. There is no mistake. Captain Macrinus, you are ordered to disengage immediately and make course in the Chalcedon for Terra.’

Macrinus hesitated. ‘Can the situation here afford the loss of a strike cruiser?’

In answer, a gravitic stormwave struck the Caracalla. A fist shook the massive ship and the hull shrieked. The bridge yawed back and forth. The artificial gravity fought for stability in the violent flux, as mortal serfs and servitors fell from their seats, skidding across the deck. A small gravity blister appeared on the starboard wall. Metal domed and burst upwards, catching a servitor and tearing its body apart.

Odaenathus stood firm. He felt his ship’s pain, and he also felt its anger. ‘Shipmaster!’ he called.

‘Reversing course!’

‘Maintain fire,’ Odaenathus said. ‘Keep them busy taking down our ordnance. Some may yet get through.’ To Macrinus he said, ‘Your absence will be hard. But the Ultramarines were late coming to the aid of Terra once. It will never happen again.’

‘It will not,’ Macrinus agreed. ‘So ordered, Chapter Master. We leave for Terra. Courage and honour.’

‘Courage and honour, captain.’

The Caracalla groaned again as another wave hit. The departing strike cruiser left a gap in the barrage. The ork weapons reached through it, lashing at the fleet.

‘Take us back, shipmaster,’ said Odaenathus. ‘Pull back but keep hitting.’

Ullanor, he thought. The name sounded in his thoughts like a cathedral bell. The echo of history was a dark one. He hoped he was not listening to a death knell.

The Caracalla rang once more, struck as by the hammer of a god.

The Ultramarines. The Dark Angels. The Space Wolves. The Blood Angels. Koorland had called them all.

No, he thought. You did more than call. You summoned.

He was walking with Drakan Vangorich. After Koorland had spoken to the High Lords again, he and the Grand Master had climbed the seating tiers until they reached the gallery beneath the dome. Some of its columns had fallen. The floor was uneven and fissured, but its path around the circumference of the Great Chamber was still complete. No falls of rubble forced them to turn around.

‘I assume this is about the call to the other Chapters,’ Vangorich said.

‘Yes. I know you’ve been working hard to make the Council respond with something like sense to the crisis.’

‘You’ve seen what success I’ve had. None.’

‘You have an understanding of the problems, though. Of why there is no unity.’

Vangorich nodded. ‘Too many egos. Too many agendas. Too many leaders, and too many of them weak. Their weakness infects the whole. Everyone struggling for supremacy, even when the situation makes that struggle an act of madness, even when we all know better. You were right to unseat Udo. The Council needs a clear leader. You can see the benefit already. You brought Kubik around.’

‘And what happens when I am not here?’

‘A reversion to form.’ Vangorich sounded disgusted. ‘Your influence won’t last without your presence, I’m afraid. You’ll be leading the attack on Ullanor, of course?’

‘Of course,’ he said, the words sharp with doubt.

‘You don’t think you should?’

‘My position is already one based on great presumption. I pronounced myself leader of the united Successor Chapters of the Imperial Fists, declaring my right to command other armies when I am the only one of mine remaining. Now I propose to do the same for the sons of other primarchs. The overreach is stunning, isn’t it? And I don’t even know if the call will be answered.’

‘I think it will be.’ Vangorich paused. ‘Might I offer some advice?’

‘I’ll be pleased to hear it.’

‘Leadership is symbolic as much as anything else. You are not leading the united Successors despite being the last Imperial Fist. You are leading because you are the last.’

‘I doubt that will be enough to sway the Space Wolves.’

‘It won’t,’ said Vangorich. ‘You will have to grow your symbolic worth.’

‘Is that all?’ Koorland looked between the columns, at the vast space to the floor below. I am elevated beyond my station, he thought. He had sought to ease Thane’s doubts while his own had been gnawing at him with greater and greater force. He was not a politician. He belonged in the battlefield. And now he was proposing to invade a legend, at the head of a coalition he had no claim to command.

‘I know,’ said Vangorich. ‘Simple enough, isn’t it?’

Koorland grunted. He stopped walking. He gazed on the dais below. Twelve thrones, twelve competitions. He had, for the moment, beaten the High Lords’ attempts to co-opt him to their own ends. He wished he could say he had risen above them. He saw himself in one of the thrones, a small figure, dwarfed by the space of the Chamber, insignificant in the eyes of the colossal beings depicted in the fresco above him. ‘Thank you, Grand Master,’ he said to Vangorich. ‘What I have to do is clear.’

‘If not how to do so. I’m familiar with that burden. You have my sympathies and my hopes, Lord Commander.’ Vangorich walked away.

Lord Commander. The title grated each time he heard it. It was a grimy necessity. Chapter Master was better, even though it had come to him drenched in tragic irony. Master of a Chapter of one.

There was more than one, now. The Last Wall was a reality. The title did not fit as ill as it once had. He still doubted it would be enough.

Movement to his left. He turned his head. A shadow approached, then resolved itself as Lastan Veritus stepped into the light coming between the pillars from the Chamber. ‘I don’t have to ask if you overheard,’ Koorland said.

‘It is my duty to do so.’

Koorland bit back a retort. He would not give the inquisitor anything to use for his own purposes. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have made clear my concern that the attention given to the struggle against the orks is distracting us from the battle against the true enemy.’

‘Abundantly so.’ He controlled his temper. ‘I find it curious to consider a force capable of destroying an entire Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes a distraction.’

‘I have not come to argue. I concede that the ork occupation of Ullanor is troubling in the extreme. The threats may be more entwined than I suspected.’

Now Koorland fought to master his surprise at the conciliatory tone.

‘Ullanor,’ Veritus repeated. His ancient face creased in pain. ‘The gravity of this…’ He trailed off.

‘Words are inadequate,’ said Koorland.

‘They are. I agree with your course of action, Chapter Master. You were right to send the call. But you are planning to attack a myth.’

‘I am.’

‘Maintaining unity of purpose and of force will require leadership the equal of the task. Only a myth can conquer a myth.’

‘I am well aware that I am no myth. Do you propose to make me one?’

‘No.’

‘Then I fail to see the point of this conversation. There is no myth to lead us.’

‘You are wrong. There is one.’

‘Oh?’ Koorland was sceptical. ‘Does this myth have a name?’

‘He does. Vulkan.’

The dome of the Chamber began to spin. Koorland shifted his stance to steady himself. He looked up. There in the frozen image of the Great Crusade were the figures of the loyal primarchs. He saw Vulkan, hammer upraised. Reality was turning fluid. In his mind’s eye, Vulkan descended from the fresco, called into being by Veritus.

Ullanor. Vulkan. The names of a cataclysmic past. Names that had been legends for a millennium. But one already had re-emerged into lived history.

Koorland focused his gaze on Veritus with effort. By invoking myth, the old man seemed to have moved into its realm. He was less real, and more formidable. There were immense depths here, to be approached with extreme caution.

‘And where will I find him?’ He had no doubt Veritus would have an answer.

‘On Caldera. Fulfilling an ancient oath.’

Four

Across the Imperium, Caldera

The warp convulsed. It shrieked around the Sanguinem Ignis. An agony of non-matter and raging nightmare clawed at the strike cruiser’s Geller field. The immaterium attacked with the fury of a wounded beast and the integrity of the field cracked.

‘Translating!’ Shipmaster Laeca warned. ‘Brace, brace, brace!’

‘This is no Mandeville point,’ said Sergeant Marbas. He steadied himself against the port-side wall of the strategium.

Captain Valefor grasped the command pulpit. ‘The immaterium has had enough of us,’ he said. On the pict screens that surrounded the pulpit, the cascading runes were angry red. To try to understand the warp was to try to reason with madness. But in jagged brushstrokes the image was forming of a wound in the warp, and the Sanguinem Ignis was the target of the immaterium’s vengeance.

The translation was brutal. The vessel passed from the unreal to the material in a single, severing blow. Workstations across the bridge burst into flames. A shriek ran the length of the hull, an intertwined cry of the vessel, the warp and the void together. Another scream joined it, coming from the vox-casters, and Valefor knew it for the cry of the Navigator. He felt the jolt of the transition. The shadow of non-being slashed through him and was gone, as if a monomolecular blade had cut him in half, then healed him on the instant.

Reality settled. The scream faded. The bridge was filled with the cacophony of alarms, but there was deeper silence. The engines had stilled.

‘Damage!’ Valefor demanded.

‘Warp drive integrity intact,’ Laeca answered. ‘But power to the engines—’

She was cut off by the thunder of multiple impacts. They hammered the ship even as the auspex officer reported multiple hostiles.

The oculus snapped open. The pict screens adjusted to the new inputs, and Valefor saw what was coming for them.

The Sanguinem Ignis had translated in the wake of an ork attack moon. The greenskin base had suffered damage in its journey through the warp. A quarter of its southern hemisphere had been sheared away and an explosion like a solar prominence arced out of the wound. Molten fissures spread over the rest of the sphere. But it was still at war. Immense bays were open on all sides, and the ork fleet emerged in a swarm. Three cruisers were closing with the Blood Angels, their forward guns firing. The shells were huge, dense, and solid. Mass and velocity were all they needed to tear a vessel apart. The Sanguinem Ignis’ void shields flared in protest.

A second wave of cruisers was turning to follow the first. With them came a cloud of smaller vessels, insects zeroing in on carrion.

‘The enemy’s injuries are severe,’ said Marbas.

‘But its fleet is intact. Our fight is not here,’ Valefor said. ‘I want a retreat, shipmaster. Engines full. And recharge the warp drive. Gunners, weapons free on the nearest enemy vessel.’

The engines powered up anew. The deck began to vibrate once more as the strike cruiser began its turn. The view in the oculus shifted with majestic slowness. The blunt-prowed, brutal predators closed, their fire crossing paths with that of the Blood Angels. A cross-hatching of destruction lit the void.

‘The greenskins might repair that moon,’ Marbas said.

‘They might,’ Valefor agreed. ‘I know we stand a chance of destroying it, brother-sergeant. I also know the price we would pay.’

Ork shells pounded the starboard hull. A void shield collapsed.

‘Launch bay five destroyed,’ a servitor intoned.

The screen on Valefor’s right began to list casualty reports.

Marbas joined Valefor beside the pulpit. ‘We are paying a price now.’

‘I have no doubt we will pay more. Our duty is to reach Terra. Our sacrifices must be to that purpose. Sanguinius made his ultimate sacrifice there. Our duty and our tribute call us there in turn.’

The Sanguinem Ignis gathered momentum. Valefor eyed the pict screens. He felt the fires racing down the corridors as if his own veins were burning. We do not end here, he thought. Not here, in the void between systems, cut down by a wounded enemy, in an encounter with no strategic meaning.

Sacrifice must have meaning. Hope for more was a luxury the Blood Angels had banished long ago. But they would not accept less.

The oculus image adjusted as the Sanguinem Ignis turned its back on its pursuers. Its torpedoes punched through the prow of the lead cruiser. The massive head of the beast appeared to swallow the explosions. Metal swelled, and chain reaction blasts burst through plate dozens of metres thick. The front half of the ork vessel became a volcanic eruption. Its engines drove it onwards into its own conflagration. A roiling comet of plate and incandescent gas rushed forwards, as if it would catch the Blood Angels in its expanding death. The other cruisers sailed through the lethal corona. The smaller, lighter ships sped past the behemoths and raced ahead of the Sanguinem Ignis.

‘Forward perspective,’ Valefor ordered.

The oculus blinked, accepting the feed from the bow of the ship. The greenskins were establishing a cordon. Individually, the ships were no match for the Sanguinem Ignis. Together, they were a formidable barrier. Their guns unleashed a storm of fire. Brilliant, murderous day came to the void. The Blood Angels answered with a frontal bombardment. Ork ships were vaporised.

More replaced them.

The Sanguinem Ignis picked up speed. Guns firing on all sides, it plunged into the gauntlet.

The city was slag. It had once covered half the surface of the moon, a hundred million citizens working the forges of its manufactoria. They were dead now. Habs and industry were gone. There was only an iron cemetery, a field of twisted wreckage and molten shapes that stretched to the horizon. The forms were the death of metal. The ground crunched and rang beneath Asger Warfist’s steps. All was black, except for the grey rain of ash from the sky.

The northern half of Fabrikk was destroyed. There was nothing left here to fight over. But there had never been anything the orks wanted from the start. They had come to destroy. They had come to take the moon.

‘Is this what victory looks like?’ Hakon Icegrip asked the Wolf Lord.

‘I don’t care what it looks like. I care that the enemy never sees it.’

The war had shattered Fabrikk. It was barely more than a ruin orbiting its gas giant. There were still some viable settlements near the southern pole, but their output would never be more than a shadow of what had once been. It would take very little for what small population remained to abandon the moon.

They would not, though. Even if it took force, they would remain. Fabrikk’s true value was not the weapons and vehicles it produced, but its location. It was one of the systems ringing the Eye of Terror, a strategic base that could never fall from the Imperium’s grasp.

The Space Wolves would not allow it.

Asger brought his packs to a slag heap that had once been the lead manufactorium of Fabrikk. They could hear the tramp of feet and the rumble of ork vehicles on the other side. The hunt was almost over.

‘For Russ!’ Asger shouted.

‘For the Wolftime!’ the packs answered.

They stormed over the rise. They descended on the ork horde, and they were fury and claw. They were the wind of Fenris, slashing into the ork flanks. To the south, the gunship attack continued, driving the orks forwards. To the north, Predator cannons held them back. And now Asger cut the enemy in half.

The struggle had worn both forces down to ragged cores of rage. The attack moon in the region was two systems over, the target of multiple Great Companies. The invaders of Fabrikk had left the moon and come in a fleet of cruisers. Their numbers were huge, but they were not unlimited. The orks and the Space Wolves had pummelled each other with orbital bombardments. The front lines had raged back and forth over Fabrikk, until there was nothing left of the city and the forges. All that remained was the battered armies. And now it was time for one of them to be exterminated.

The orks welcomed the Wolves. The two forces clashed as if this was their first encounter. Savagery met savagery. Asger fired bursts from his bolt pistol in a wide arc as he charged, punching through plate and muscle, crippling and maiming the brutes closing with him. He followed up with the wolf claw on his right fist, slashing throats, disembowelling. The orks pressed in harder, trampling over the bodies of their dead. They were all massive, blunt weapons of muscle and bone. The entire campaign had been against these orks, the largest Asger had ever encountered. Many of them dwarfed him. None were faster. He equalled them in ferocity and surpassed them in hate.

At his sides, Grey Hunters tore into the xenos. Bolter and blade, bolter and blade, the alternating swipes of massive paws. The Space Wolves ripped apart the ork force. The greenskins turned inwards. They rushed to impale themselves on the claws of Asger’s attack.

The numbers and the size of the orks worked against them. Everywhere the Space Wolves fired, there was a target. The greenskins could not offer massed fire in return without decimating their own ranks. As the packs tore deeper and deeper into the phalanx, the outermost ork chieftains brought heavy weapons to bear regardless of the cost and the battlefield exploded. Asger moved through fountains of flame and shrapnel and bodies in fragments. He roared, charging faster through the enemy. Directions ceased to have meaning. There was only eruption and blood. He knew the pack moved with him. Information about lost brothers flashed before his retinal lenses. The acknowledgement of loss would come later. For now the deaths were a goad.

Fire in the air. Fire in Asger’s blood. He was a blur in armour. He was a maddened beast. His lips were pulled back, his teeth bared for the taste of the blood of prey. He smelled it through the filter of his battle-helm’s grille. He smelled butchery.

‘Yes, Brother Hakon!’ he yelled over the vox. ‘This is what victory looks like!’

More fire, cleansing, liquid flame, pouring over the orks. The Space Wolves maintained close formation, tightening it when they took casualties. They were a cohesive blade in the maelstrom of violence. Overhead, the gunships closed in, cannons raking the ground. Asger abandoned himself to the kill, his world reduced to the roar of engines, the smoke of burning flesh and vehicles, the crimson spray of severed arteries.

It ended. The blood ceased to spurt. The smoke began to clear. Thunderhawks came in for a landing, and their engines cut out. Asger stood with his brothers on a field that was as dead as it had been before the battle. When he walked, he stepped on bone as well as slag. Torn flesh was draped over the jagged stumps of foundations.

Now he processed the losses. He whispered the names of the fallen brothers. There were many, added to the even greater list taken by this campaign.

This skirmish.

Adrenaline and rage leaked away. His wounds throbbed. He registered the toll ork shells and blades had taken on his armour. Exhaustion pressed down on his shoulders with the weight of a mountain.

But there was also the message. It had been transmitted during the battle. There had been no time to listen to it. No time to hear the name.

Ullanor.

The packs gathered the wounded and the dead. They stood before him, awaiting the next deployment. Asger’s exhaustion was mirrored before him in every warrior, yet they were all ready. They knew what he knew. They knew this had been a skirmish.

‘Will we be rejoining the Great Wolf?’ Hakon asked.

‘No. He is sending us to Terra. We are called to gather there, and then to make for Ullanor.’

‘Our brothers need us,’ Kaden Stormtree protested.

‘I know they do,’ Asger said. The outcome of the battle against the attack moon was far from assured. The Great Wolf’s reluctance to issue the command was clear in the tone of the voxmission.

‘Is Terra so helpless?’ Hakon was disgusted.

‘Our duty is to answer the call, and our duty is doubled,’ said Kagen Direfrost. The Wolf Priest stepped forwards, then turned to face the Great Company. ‘The true call is to Ullanor. The spirits of too many of our brothers have fallen in the shadow of the times spawned on that world.’

‘Perhaps there,’ Asger said, ‘we will rip out the heart of the Beast.’

He was called away from the bridge. Adnachiel was surprised, but he kept his face neutral. The moment was a poor one to return to his quarters, but that was where the serf said he would receive the communication, and so the Master of the Fourth Battle Company of the Dark Angels nodded and strode from the bridge. The nod was mostly for the benefit of his brothers, assuring them that they would know what was necessary in due course.

Adnachiel’s quarters were monastic. The small chamber was dark, a single lumen globe shining on a desk in one corner. The rest of the space was empty, a place of black stone and meditation. He closed the iron door behind him, strode to the desk, and picked up the vox-unit. It was not linked to the company network. Instead, it had a single line that received transmissions only from other equivalent units on other ships. It was a means of dialogue between Company Masters, and only between them.

Adnachiel thought he knew whose voice he would hear. What surprised him was that he was not speaking to the Grand Master of the Deathwing from the bridge of the Herald of Night.

‘Master Adnachiel,’ said Sachael.

‘We are coming to your aid, Master Sachael. We are entering the asteroid belt now. We have your position marked. We will attack from the orks’ rear within the hour.’

‘No. Reverse course. Do not let the enemy detect you.’

‘I don’t understand.’ The battle-barge Reprisal had been cornered by a large ork fleet as it attempted to close with the attack moon nested in the Astorias Cloud. If the system had ever had planets, they were fragments now. The asteroid belt was wide and dense, and mineral-rich. Some of the planetoids were so near to one another that mining concerns had linked them with webs of plasteel, facilitating passage and arresting the chance of collision. The ork gravity weapons had turned Astorias into a killing field. Planetoids smashed into one another. Webs became lethal tethers, yanking the bodies together. The Reprisal had attempted to close with the ork station through the maze of Astorias, but it had been caught by the fleet while still on the far side of the system’s star. Sachael was holding, but trapped. He had called for aid. The Herald of Night had answered.

Now the answer was being refused.

‘We have new information,’ said Sachael. ‘Proceed to Terra. Answer the call for aid. There will be a joint operation.’

‘With whom?’

‘The request was sent to the Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Space Wolves as well as ourselves.’

‘The Space Wolves.’ Adnachiel liked what he was hearing less and less. ‘Terra,’ he continued. ‘The Inquisition could be involved in that appeal. Its agents are thick as maggots on a corpse on Terra.’

‘We are aware of this, Company Master. But we are called. We will not fail Terra a second time. There is more. The combined forces are destined for Ullanor.’

An ill omen. The past reaching out to the present to carve new wounds. Even so, Adnachiel understood now. Over and above the principles of honour, there was a mystery that could not be ignored. The past was danger and tragedy, but it must be confronted. ‘Is there evidence of any—’

Sachael cut him off. ‘We know nothing of that kind. All we know is that we are going to Ullanor, and this cannot be mere chance. Your vessel is not in combat. You must go.’

‘And you?’

‘We will survive, or we will not. That is not your concern.’

‘The sacrifice of my brothers is always my concern.’

‘Believe me, I have no intention of being such a sacrifice.’

‘I believe you, Grand Master.’

Sachael broke off. Just before the connection ended, Adnachiel heard the grumble of blasts in the background, and a sound like a heavy wind.

Fire.

He returned to the strategium. He gave the orders for the new course. And he told his command squad of their destination. None of his brothers said anything. There was no need. The significance of Ullanor was enough.

As the Herald of Night veered off from the Astorias Cloud, the Master of Auspex picked up inbound hostile squadrons. The strike cruiser had been detected.

Good, Adnachiel thought. If he had to fight his way out of the system, he might draw enough of the enemy to ensure there would be no sacrifice.

Not yet.

The Imperium came to Caldera. Koorland and the Last Wall were aboard the Alcazar Remembered with Thane’s veterans. Flanking the Adeptus Astartes vessel were two of the Imperial Navy’s grand cruisers, Absolute Decree and Finality. Their troop holds carried regiments of the Lucifer Blacks. There were other regiments too, patchwork commands made up of the remains of the Orion Watch, the Jupiter Storm, the Granite Myrmidons, the Auroran Rifles, and more. They were the reserves of the Imperial Guard regiments that had been left behind at the time of the Proletarian Crusade. Their comrades had died in humiliation and futility. Koorland’s mission offered the possibility of restored pride as well as the hope of a myth. The reserves still on Terra were little more than a token now. It would be up to the Imperial Navy, led by Lord High Admiral Lansung’s battleship Autocephalax Eternal, to hold off an invasion.

On the bridge of the Alcazar Remembered, Thane said, ‘Your thoughts appear troubling.’

‘I’m thinking about an attack in our absence.’

‘You don’t like the odds of the High Admiral fighting it off?’

‘Do you?’

Thane grimaced.

The Autocephalax had become a symbol of failure and tragically empty gestures. Imperial Navy reinforcements had arrived in force. Koorland respected the power of the vessels shielding Terra. But he knew what the orks could do.

There had been little time to make repairs to the Alcazar Remembered. The Decree and Finality bore scars too, as did their escorts. But there were many vessels in the fleet that were undamaged. They had come from Mars, a gigantic mobilisation ordered by Kubik. The scale had pleased Koorland, and also taken him aback. Kubik had been eager to send the Mechanicus to Caldera, and Koorland wondered if he should read a desire for redemption in the Fabricator General’s rush to cooperate.

Pict screens lit up with data on the enemy dispositions. The attack moon was visible in the oculus, surrounded by ork vessels except for the face it showed to the planet. Another large fleet was positioned some distance from the moon and was sending landing ships down. Koorland watched the distant flares of engines descending to the atmosphere. That, he thought, is what the process of infection looks like. He burned to purge the disease from Caldera.

We can’t, he reminded himself. Keep focused. We are here to find the myth. All this strength is so we can accomplish that single task.

‘Auspex,’ Thane called from the command pulpit, ‘any traffic from Caldera?’

‘It’s fragmentary, Chapter Master,’ said the officer. ‘Short bursts and lots of static. Nothing coherent, but there are attempts. The interference is severe.’

‘It would be,’ Koorland said. He was looking at what the moon was doing to the planet.

‘Yes,’ Thane agreed. ‘Is that what happened to Ardamantua?’

‘No. This is different. So is that moon.’ It looked misshapen, even by the crude standards of the greenskins. It was not a sphere. It was a thick crescent.

Thane ordered a magnification on the planet’s agony.

The moon lashed Caldera with gravity whips. The atmosphere below it was a boiling cauldron of red and black and grey. Huge masses emerged from the storm and rose towards the moon.

‘Are those mountains?’ Thane asked.

‘They might be,’ said Koorland. ‘They are now.’ He followed the flight of one of the rock formations. It slowed as it approached the moon, then merged with the larger body. Now the shape of the moon made sense. It was incomplete. The orks were building their battle station by yanking up chunks of Caldera’s crust.

‘If we could destroy it before its construction is complete…’ Thane muttered.

‘Yes,’ said Koorland. ‘If we could. If we would not expend our strength in doing so. Destroying that moon would be a diversion. One we had fallen into. It would do nothing for the wider war. It would not get us to Ullanor.’

‘Agreed. So where does the search begin?’

Koorland thought for a moment. Then he asked the auspex operator, ‘Is there any pattern to the traffic you are detecting?’

‘Most of it is concentrated near the capital, Laccolith.’

‘What are you thinking?’ Thane asked.

‘Orbital defences are down. The orks have a free hand here.’ He moved to the strategium table. It displayed a hololithic map of the eastern hemisphere of Caldera. ‘Laccolith is very close to being beneath the secondary ork fleet.’

Thane joined him. ‘But not directly.’

‘No, which is odd. And there are still signs of life, however slight.’

‘I’ve never known the greenskins to leave anything functioning in a population centre they attacked.’

‘Exactly. This is anomalous.’

‘And so as good a starting point as any,’ Thane concluded.

Koorland pointed to the ships launching the landings. ‘That is our target. Punch through and make our own landings, disabling the ork invasion in the process.’

‘That will buy us some time to search.’

‘So I hope.’

Koorland turned from the display to the oculus, and watched the orks steal the being of a world. The scale of the engineering feat was staggering. It was only right that a legend should exist on a world where the impossible was already at play.

‘Is this channel secure?’ Egon Broumis asked.

‘Yes,’ said Illaia Groth. ‘I’m taking this in my quarters.’ The captain of the Finality sat at her desk and watched the hololithic representation of her counterpart on the Absolute Decree. The image jumped and flickered, but she could read the worry on Broumis’ face well enough. He was a few years older than she was, but his greying, jowled features were misleading. He looked like a well-fed Administratum official. There was little to suggest he was the veteran of dozens of engagements, but Groth had served as his lieutenant before achieving her own command of the Finality. She knew what Broumis was worth. It was out of respect for him that she had consented to take this communication without the admiral’s knowledge.

‘What do you think of Rodolph?’ said Broumis.

Zdenek Rodolph, the admiral in command of the Imperial Navy fleet escorting the Adeptus Astartes mission to Caldera. Younger than either Broumis or Groth. The son of privilege and the ward of powerful connections, Lord High Admiral Lansung not least among them. He had reached his rank with less than a quarter of the field experience of the captains. And now he had been picked by Lansung to lead the Navy on this endeavour.

‘Too early to tell.’ Groth shared Broumis’ concern. ‘We haven’t seen him tested.’ She shrugged. ‘He knows his way around a bridge.’

‘I’m not reassured. This crucial mission is in the hands of an untried politician.’

Groth’s concern took another direction. ‘What are you thinking?’

Broumis hesitated. ‘That we may have to be prepared… to take extraordinary measures.’

‘That’s mutiny.’

Broumis shook his head. His image broke up, then re-formed. ‘That’s not my intention. But if he leads us to disaster, we have to be ready, even if we’re executed for the actions we take. This is too important.’

‘The decision isn’t ours to make.’

‘Do you trust the judgement of the people who did make it?’

Groth said nothing.

‘I’m not suggesting you walk onto the bridge and shoot him,’ said Broumis.

‘Good.’

Broumis sighed. ‘All I’m asking is that we remain watchful. That we act as the battle and the needs of the mission dictate.’

Groth looked off to the side. ‘I should be on the bridge.’

‘Will you think about what I said?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘That I can guarantee.’ She ended the communication before Broumis could ask her what she meant.

She would not have been able to answer.

The Imperial attack began with a single shot, long before the ork fleet came within conventional range. It was made by a weapon the battle-barge had been modified to contain. The hull of the Alcazar Remembered hummed as the coils of the weapon’s gravimetric impellers charged. The gun was the length of the ship. The projectile was the size of a Titan. The battle-barge’s enginarium corps struggled to maintain even a minimum of stable power to the ship’s vital sectors. The strength of the void shields dropped. Across the bridge, every pict screen except those at the weapons station went black. Aloysian was in the enginarium, appraising Thane of the ship’s condition second by second. The weapon would be dangerous to use if the Alcazar was undamaged. Firing it now was madness.

Everything about this war is madness, Koorland thought. If our acts must be too, let their madness be a grand one.

Even this weapon could not pierce the protection the orks generated around the moon. But their fleet was vulnerable. Any ship was vulnerable.

The hum became a tremor. A spine-knotting whine grew. Koorland felt the entire ship reduced to a single purpose. There was nothing but the gun, nothing but the shot.

‘Now,’ Thane said.

The nova cannon fired. As the shell travelled the length of the barrel, it accelerated to near the speed of light. Its kinetic energy built up to a level defying measure. It shot out of the Alcazar Remembered. At the moment of recoil, power failed across the ship for a full second. The bridge went dark. Koorland waited in the blackness, picturing the flight.

The hull groaned as the ship snapped back to its normal state. Power returned. Vox-casters sprang to life with competing damage reports.

In the oculus, a star screamed through void towards the orks. The Alcazar had fired less than a single light-minute away from the fleet but the greenskins had detected the arrival of the Imperial ships. Some of the cruisers were pulling out of low orbit to meet the challenge. However, the formation was still concentrated.

Devastation was an art. The timing of the warhead’s detonation was crucial. Caldera was in the line of fire, and the blast would devastate the surface if it went off too late. The nova cannon was not a weapon suited to precision.

Aloysian had taken charge of the arming. He promised accuracy. Thane trusted his judgement, so Koorland did too.

The star flashed into the centre of the ork fleet, and then there was light, the light of creation’s birth and death, the light of a pure and searing end. It filled the oculus. Filters shielded the bridge from its full power, and still Koorland’s lenses snapped shut. They opened again after a few moments, and the light had become the fury of a sun. The shockwave travelled back through the Caldera System, striking the approaching Imperial fleet. It hammered void shields. The Alcazar Remembered shook with the thrum of its passage.

The raging sun became a fireball thousands of kilometres in diameter. The light faded to red and its effects became visible. The ork vessels at the centre of the blast had vanished. Others were reduced to fragments. Giants tumbled through the void, dark shells lit only by the pulse of internal explosions. One cruiser seemed to be intact and still moving to engage the Imperial force. As Koorland watched, its bow and stern halves separated, drifting off into the darkness. Other ships still had power. They tried to escape the fireball, dying before they emerged from its reach.

The fire dissipated, leaving a dull glow behind. It backlit a cemetery of colliding fragments and massive tombs. There was no counting how many smaller ships had died.

It was a blow that had broken entire enemy navies. Here, it left behind an armada. Haloed by flame, venting gases, bristling with ballistic anger, the orks left the orbit of Caldera. They came on in a single, massive wave.

They encountered a storm of Imperial torpedoes launched in the wake of the nova cannon. The fleet from Terra formed a wide spear tip, leading with the Alcazar and the grand cruisers. The Mechanicus vessels spread out on either side. Lance and cannon fire streaked towards the orks. Even clustered, they covered a wider area. But the line had thinned.

The two forces closed, running into the teeth of each other’s weapons. Evasion was pointless. There was only the hope of shields standing up long enough for the spear to punch through the wave.

A massive ork battleship angled in on a direct collision course with the Alcazar. Its prow was a battering ram a thousand metres wide and three times as long. The Absolute Decree and the Finality joined their fire to the battle-barge’s. Lance fire, rockets and torpedoes struck the ram. The accumulated blasts wrapped the battleship in flame. It came on, now on course for a head-to-head collision with the Alcazar. The three great ships hit it with a fury that could turn hive cities into craters. The ram was solid metal, as dense as a single ingot.

Four Mechanicus vessels, faster but more lightly armoured, pulled ahead of the body of the fleet, flanking the ork ship. Batteries of eradicator beams sheared into the sides of the prow where it fused with the ram.

The barrage of the Imperial ships heated the ram red.

Escorting Brute ram ships, tiny beside the battleship, flew into the Mechanicus vessels. Ork and Imperial ships disappeared, their explosions washing over the leviathan.

Seconds before the collision, the centre of the ram turned white and split. Explosions rocked the battleships further to stern. The entire vessel seemed to swell before Koorland’s eyes, as if it were a monster taking a breath before consuming its prey.

The intake of breath never ended. The ship continued to expand, driven apart by the internal pressure. Incandescence outlined gigantic plates. The battleship turned into a dying roar of flame, and the Alcazar Remembered plunged into the furnace of its death. The oculus showed nothing but the inferno of an erupting, disintegrating war machine.

The battle-barge emerged. Before it now were only smaller enemy ships, which fell before the Alcazar’s withering fire. On the sides, the movements of the remaining ork ships became disordered as they tried to manoeuvre for a counter-attack. The vessels changed direction without coordination. There were collisions. Imperial broadsides punished the orks further. The fleet maintained formation, its salvoes a continuous, disciplined wave of devastation, radiating outwards. The greenskin vessels, already damaged by the nova cannon, came apart.

The armada disintegrated. It became small packs of minor predators.

‘The main body of the enemy is responding,’ said Thane.

Koorland checked the hololithic display. The lines of projected trajectories were reaching out from the position of the attack moon. Estimated velocities and points of intersection floated next to each line, adjusting every few seconds as new readings came in.

‘They won’t abandon the moon completely,’ said Koorland.

‘They won’t have to.’ The estimated number of ships kept climbing. Already the fleet was almost the size of the one the Imperial ships had decimated.

Koorland compared the estimated time of arrival of the enemy against the time to launch point. The difference was just enough. The Imperial forces would make planetfall before the void war was re-engaged. ‘All landing ships stand by,’ he said. He looked at Thane. ‘Vulkan awaits us.’

The spear had punctured the wave.

Five

Caldera — Laccolith

The city had suffered catastrophic damage. Many of its towers had fallen. Others canted, ready to topple, or leaned against smaller buildings. A pall of smoke hung over Laccolith. Entire districts had been gutted by flame. Rocket and artillery craters marked the city with the footsteps of monsters. The outer walls had been annihilated. Their traces remained as heaps of rubble dotting Laccolith’s perimeter. There was nothing shielding the city from the jungle, and saurian predators roamed the streets.

But the city was more than a shell. Koorland was amazed by what he found. There was still a population prepared to fight. The people had not been enslaved or exterminated to the last soul. They emerged as the Imperial forces established their staging ground in the eastern sector of the city.

The space port was a ruin. The control tower had taken a direct hit from an orbital strike, and where it had stood was the centre of a deep crater which occupied almost a third of the port’s area. A small fleet of lighters had been reduced to blackened, twisted corpses. The rockcrete landing zone was pitted with shell impacts and strewn with wreckage, but it had also been built to withstand the tectonic violence of the world. It was still a large, open, relatively level area. It would serve.

Koorland had his command tent set up at the edge of the crater, out of the way of the landers and manoeuvring vehicles. He and Thane met with General Marga Imren of the Lucifer Blacks and Tech-Priest Dominus Alquist Arouar. The Lucifer Blacks made up the largest contingent of the Astra Militarum cohort, giving Imren supreme authority over the combined Guard regiments. She was visibly uncomfortable in the presence of Arouar. There was little of the Adeptus Mechanicus leader that suggested he was human at all. His body was a collection of multi-jointed limbs and metallic tentacles. His silhouette defied the eye. It recalled an ancient avian, stooped, but moved with the floating, scuttling grace of the arachnid. In her dark uniform, Imren had the rigid posture and cold pride earned by the regiment that supplied the Imperial Palace’s honour guard. She was the human at its most disciplined. Arouar was the human at its most absent.

‘This position is barely defensible,’ Imren said.

She was right. Holding off the natural predators of Caldera was a simple matter. An ork attack would be something else again.

‘We are not here to defend Laccolith,’ Koorland said. ‘This is the point from which we launch our assault, and that will be as soon as we have a target.’

‘The strategy of the Veridi giganticus is puzzling,’ Arouar said. His voice box clicked and whistled with snatches of binharic. He was poised over the strategium table. It displayed a map of Laccolith, the surrounding region, and what had been recorded of the greenskins’ positions during the landings. ‘Their behaviour is anomalous.’

‘Everything about these orks is anomalous,’ said Thane. ‘That is their norm.’

‘Agreed. However, many of their non-normative actions are unusual because of their advanced technology, considered strategy and intelligent responses. Characteristics strange in the Veridi, but logical by any other sentient measure. The ambassador caste contradicts our understanding of the race, but not the conduct of war.’ His left arm unfolded. He spread his hand, telescoping its digits until they corresponded approximately to the various ork armies marked on the map. ‘Here I observe behaviour both anomalous and nonsensical. The Veridi have abandoned Caldera’s capital, its pillage incomplete. There are no significant population centres in the directions they are pursuing. There are no targets of strategic worth.’

Imren said, ‘They aren’t conquering the planet. They’re tearing it apart.’

‘But they must have had some reason to come down,’ Koorland mused.

‘The primarch?’ Thane asked.

‘I refuse to believe they knew about his presence here before we did.’

‘And yet Ullanor…’

Koorland shook his head. ‘Even so, that is a leap too far.’

Thane did not pursue the point.

‘I agree the supposition cannot be supported,’ Arouar continued. ‘I would suggest their presence on the surface of Caldera is connected to the use of the planet we have already observed. This is the first time we have seen the construction of an attack moon.’

Koorland found the speculation unsatisfying. ‘Even if Laccolith was a target of opportunity, why abandon it before they were finished with it?’

‘Quite.’ Arouar made a fist and spread his fingers, suggesting a purposeless radiation of the ork hordes.

‘Puzzling,’ said Imren. ‘Does it help us with our mission?’

‘I don’t know,’ Koorland admitted. ‘I won’t discount its significance, though. We should also speak with local survivors.’

He met with several of them a few minutes later. They were escorted onto the base by a squad of Lucifer Blacks, and waited outside the command tent. Their uniforms were almost as ragged as their bodies, patched with strips of leather and reinforced with scrap metal. The insignia of the Laccolith Defence Militia were still visible: two converging spears creating the silhouette of a volcano. One man had carved the lines into his forehead, wearing his pride on his flesh. They were young, but their faces were lined with the sudden age of brutal experience.

‘I salute you, citizens,’ Koorland told them. ‘You have resisted well. You are alive, and so is your city.’

‘Thank you, lord,’ the man with the carved forehead said.

‘How did you drive off the orks?’

‘We didn’t,’ said a woman. ‘We were saved.’

‘By whom?’

The mortals shared a look of religious awe.

‘We don’t know,’ the first man told Koorland. ‘We only saw him at a distance.’

‘He wore power armour,’ Koorland guessed.

Blank silence from the mortals.

Koorland tapped his chest-plate. ‘Like mine.’

They all nodded.

‘But greater,’ the woman said. ‘He is a giant. Taller even than you, lord. And he cannot die.’

More nods. More awed looks.

Curious, Koorland asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘He fought so many. He should have died. I saw an entire hab fall on him.’

‘A rocket landed where he was standing,’ the scarred man said.

Every one of them had witnessed these and other moments that would have meant death for any being who fell within these mortals’ conception of human.

‘He never died,’ the first woman said. ‘We all saw him die, and we were always wrong. He always returned. Never close to where we thought he’d died. Always somewhere else. In the end, he drew the greenskins away from us.’

‘They didn’t care about Laccolith anymore,’ said the scarred man. ‘They went after him. Their entire army.’

Koorland pictured Arouar’s hand gesture over the map. The illogical pattern now made sense. He thanked the group. They left to continue rebuilding Laccolith’s defences.

And if we find the primarch, Koorland thought, and we depart with him, what happens to these people?

He knew the answer. There would be no one guarding Laccolith. All of its walls had fallen. And as the orks sent more and more of the planet’s crust into orbit to join the attack moon, the point could very well come that volatile Caldera tore itself apart.

He turned around. Thane was a few steps away. His face mirrored Koorland’s thoughts.

‘We’re fighting to save the Imperium,’ Koorland said.

‘I know. I have to wonder when the sacrifices will be enough.’

‘They are all too great.’

The Finality’s starboard broadside took out the midsection of the ork cruiser as it turned to make a ramming charge at the Absolute Decree. Admiral Zdenek Rodolph savoured the moment. He saw the greenskin vessel’s own ammunition reserves trigger still larger explosions. The upper portion of the hull blew outwards. The ship continued on its trajectory, bleeding flame and wreckage, its shape distorted as if being devoured by a greater beast.

‘Come on, damn you,’ Rodolph muttered. ‘You know you’ve been killed. Die.’

The engines had been ruptured by the spreading catastrophe. They erupted now, swallowing the rest of the ship with light of their destruction.

Rodolph grinned. And then the proximity alert tocsins wailed. Captain Groth yelled, ‘Portside! Brace!’

All too late. An ork frigate in full disintegration slammed into the side of the Finality’s command structure. The impact hurled Rodolph over the command pulpit. He bounced off a workstation. His right arm snapped and he landed on the deck with his limb twisted at the elbow and folded beneath his body. Slabs of plasteel from the bridge’s vault plunged to the deck, crushing equipment and officers. Power flickered, then surged. Electrical fires started in the smashed stations.

‘Admiral!’ Groth called. She helped Rodolph to his feet. His breath hissed through clamped teeth as his arm swung loose.

‘Get me back up,’ he said. He coughed, breathing smoke and pain.

Groth led him back up the stairs to the pulpit. As she did, the auspex master warned of more vessels incoming.

‘Bring us above the Decree,’ Groth ordered. ‘We’ll shield each other.’

The edges of Rodolph’s vision greyed. The rhythm of the grand cruiser’s barrage was muffled. He tasted blood in his mouth. This was more than a broken arm.

Someone was giving a damage report, but he couldn’t make out the words.

‘Are we…’ he started to say.

‘Still in the fight, admiral,’ said Groth.

Rodolph leaned against the pulpit. He gripped the aquila’s wing with his left hand. ‘Get me Broumis,’ he said. The feel of the iron in his hand grounded him. His head spun, but he could think.

A moment later, the captain of the Absolute Decree was on the vox.

‘Our position is untenable, admiral,’ Broumis said. ‘The orks are…’ An explosion drowned his words.

Rodolph could guess the rest of the captain’s sentence. ‘Agreed. We’ve done our duty here. The forces have made planetfall.’

‘You can’t be calling a retreat,’ said Groth.

‘No. An attack. Set course for the ork moon.’

Broumis was silent for a moment. ‘Admiral,’ he began.

‘I understand the consequence of my order, captain.’

‘Understood.’

Rodolph exchanged a look with Groth. She nodded, and relayed the command.

On the oculus, a swarm of ork frigates closed in.

‘And if the forces on the planet find the primarch,’ Groth said, ‘how will they leave?’

‘If the fleet is destroyed in this location, they are no better off. We have to try to change the conditions of the war. At the very least, we’ll keep the ork fleet occupied.’

More ork torpedoes shot through the defensive fire. The void shields held, but the kinetic energy of the hits still translated through them into a shudder that rocked the Finality. Rodolph winced and kept his feet. He clutched the aquila hard enough to cut his palm. His blood ran down the wing. ‘Let me speak to the Alcazar,’ he said. His vision was blurring again. ‘Someone get me some stimms!’ he shouted. He would not go dark before the ship. He would not. He would–

He blinked, and Weylon Kale was on the vox. Rodolph shook his head, trying to clear it. A junior officer arrived with stimms. Rodolph downed them. His vision sharpened, but so did his awareness of troubling movement in his chest. He swallowed back another taste of blood, then told Kale what he had ordered. ‘The Alcazar Remembered is not under my authority, shipmaster,’ he said. ‘But I hope you see where necessity lies.’

‘You want us to pull out of formation and remain on station.’

‘Yes. I believe most or all of the greenskin fleet will follow us in defence of the moon.’

‘I do understand,’ said Kale, though his reluctance was clear. ‘The success of the mission is paramount.’

The approaching ork frigates were joined by more. The Finality and the Absolute Decree led the Imperial fleet towards a wall of ships.

‘It is,’ said Rodolph. ‘You have our thanks.’

‘We will add our fire to yours for as long as the conflict is in range.’

‘My hope is that that will not be for long.’

The fleet moved toward the jaws of the enemy, leaving the strength of the Alcazar Remembered behind.

Early afternoon.

The Storm Eagle Deathblow streaked over the Calderan landscape. Hemisphere flew just below the cloud cover. Koorland sat in the dorsal heavy bolter turret in place of a servitor. Below him was the jungle, its canopy torn by the huge wounds of the orks’ passage. He wished for more altitude, and the ability to see more territory at a glance. But the clouds pressed down, weighed by ash and smoke. Any higher, and he would see nothing at all.

A short while ago, in the command tent, Koorland had said, ‘They’re searching for their enemy. We have to find him before they do.’

‘How will we do that?’ Hemisphere had asked.

‘That’s the question. Let’s observe what we can of separate ork forces. I hope we’ll know what we are looking for when we see it.’

‘I hope you’ll forgive me, Chapter Master, but the thread of hope is a thin one.’

‘It’s all we have. The anomaly is promising, though, and consistent with the reports of the surviving militia. So take us to the orks, Hemisphere. We’ll begin with a lateral cut across the columns as we find them. I’ll let you know if any warrant a second pass.’

‘So ordered.’

Now Hemisphere flew in an outward arc towards the westernmost ork position. The greenskins were not hard to find. The swathe cut through the jungle by each horde was massive, and the force itself was visible from a great distance. First there was dirty smoke on the horizon, and then the shapes came into view: the silhouette of a walker, then the lower hulks of battlefortresses. Then the smaller tanks and trucks. And around the vehicles, the riot of the infantry. Hemisphere skirted the eastern edge of the horde. Its movement was confused. The path of destruction leading to this location followed a straight line, but now the march seemed to have stalled.

‘They don’t know where they’re going,’ Hemisphere said.

‘No, they don’t.’

The orks were milling about, direction lost. There was what looked like the beginnings of a shift to the north-east, but some of the army was still trying to push west.

The overflight of the Deathblow renewed the orks’ purpose. The gunship was outside the range of the infantry’s weapons, but they fired anyway. It was within the reach of the anti-aircraft guns. Solid ordnance and energy beams struck at it.

‘They’re no use to us,’ Koorland said. ‘Take us to the next.’

Hemisphere angled the Storm Eagle away, pushing the thrusters. The gunship left the orks behind long before the guns could take its measure.

Koorland thought about the confusion he had seen and what the militia soldiers had told him about Vulkan’s appearances in Laccolith. ‘The primarch was here,’ he said. ‘But no longer. They’ve lost their quarry.’

‘We should watch, then, for similar patterns of behaviour with the other cohorts,’ said Hemisphere.

‘Yes. As soon as you see that symptom, move on. No point in giving them a target. And we don’t know how much time we have. These armies won’t remain separate for long.’

Hemisphere flew east, angling towards the north as he picked up another swathe. The orks he and Koorland found were as confused as the first army. The gunship flashed over them, not slowing, the brief glance all Koorland needed. These orks reacted quickly. Some of the surface-to-air fire came very close.

‘They were expecting us,’ Hemisphere said.

‘Yes,’ said Koorland. ‘They’re communicating well. More of that damned coordination they’ve developed.’

They flew past two more armies. More confusion, more chaotic pulling in two directions. Koorland saw a new pattern. The tension in the hordes was always between whatever route they had been following initially, and the north-east.

‘They’re receiving reports they don’t know whether to believe,’ he said. ‘The evidence of their senses conflicts with the communications from the other groups.’

‘If this is Lord Vulkan’s doing,’ said Hemisphere, ‘the strategy is brilliant. He’s single-handedly divided the greenskins into multiple, smaller groups that have no idea where they’re going. I wish we knew how he was doing this.’

‘By being true to his myth,’ Koorland muttered.

‘I missed that, Chapter Master.’

‘Nothing, brother. I wish I knew too. But I think we know where we’re heading now.’

‘We do.’

The Deathblow flew north-east.

Ahead, the jungle thinned as the land rose. The land, fertilised by frequent falls of volcanic ash, gave way to the barrenness of hardened lava flows. Further north, Koorland saw two massive cones with smoke pouring from their peaks, lit by lightning and the angry red of molten rock. The next force of orks were between the gunship’s position and the two volcanoes, still in the jungle and striking directly towards the peaks. This was the largest horde so far. More warbands were arriving at the rear, perhaps groups that had broken off early from the other mobs. The movement here was assured and violent. Koorland saw a bright flash towards the head of the advance.

‘Brother Hemisphere,’ he said.

‘I saw it, Chapter Master. They’re fighting something.’

Hemisphere turned the Storm Eagle towards the north.

And flew straight into a massive anti-aircraft barrage.

The orks had been waiting for them. Charging forwards to attack their unseen target, racing ahead with the single-minded ferocity and speed of their race, they had still prepared for the Deathblow’s appearance.

Hemisphere threw the gunship into evasive turns and rolls. Koorland raked the ground below with the turret’s heavy bolters, and energy bolts lashed the grey late afternoon. A lightning storm reached up from the ground to surround the Storm Eagle. The orks had assembled a battery of energy cannons, and they had waited until Hemisphere had flown within the ring of cannons before opening fire.

Hemisphere vectored the thrusters downwards. The engines shrieked with strain as the gunship shot up and banked south. A crackling beam punched a hole through the centre of the port wing and the engine stuttered. Speed bled away and the gunship dropped. Hemisphere released the wing-mounted stormstrike missiles before the ork fire could blow them up.

The gunship spiralled downwards. Koorland saw the ragged jungle canopy rush towards them, spitting ordnance. His bolter fire felt like nothing more than symbolic defiance.

Hemisphere regained control of the Deathblow. The gunship levelled off and skimmed just above the trees, brushing them. A gale of leaves and broken branches surrounded it. The orks lowered their fire, but the ship had dropped faster than they could adjust their aim. Hemisphere stayed low, strafing the ground ahead with the twin-linked assault cannon. Koorland turned his guns the same way. They unleashed an annihilating barrage ahead of them. At this speed, at this proximity, the land and the ork army were a blur. There was no chance to aim. Koorland had a brief glimpse of artillery guns ahead, and then they blew up. The Deathblow streaked into a wall of burning plasma.

Then they were through the anti-aircraft ring. Hemisphere angled the ship up again, putting distance between it and the orks. Energy beams arced after them. A rocket screamed by the turret canopy and exploded just off the port wing. The blast wave buffeted the Storm Eagle. The engine stalled again, but Hemisphere kept control of the flight. He dipped the nose, sacrificing altitude for speed, then angled hard to port, and the ork fire went off to the side.

‘I’m satisfied we’ve found our target,’ Hemisphere said.

‘So am I.’ These orks were not marching or searching. They were at war. They had an enemy. Koorland opened a vox-channel to Thane. ‘We have our target. I’m sending you the coordinates. Begin the mobilisation now.’

The Imperial advance was rapid. The orks had paved the way, destroying the jungle as they advanced, flattening all obstacles. Adeptus Astartes, Astra Militarum and Mechanicus contingents moved north on the trail the enemy had left. In less than two hours, the smoke of their vehicles was in sight. Even so, Koorland wished for more speed. He had no proof Vulkan was battling the front lines of the greenskin column. And if the primarch was there, how long could the struggle continue?

He forced the questions aside, placing them with his doubts. There was a clear path of action open to him, so he took it. Since the disaster of Ardamantua, he had been faced with one hard decision after another. Each time, the choice had been clear. Each time, the outcome uncertain.

They all still were.

But now there was the immediacy of the mission, and the fury of an assault. And for the first time since Ardamantua, he had the prospect of seeing the orks bleed.

Koorland rode with a squad of the Last Wall in one of the Rhinos the Fists Exemplar had turned over for the company’s use. The transport was in the front line of the advance. He sat in the top hatch, watching the jungle ahead, tracking the progress of the combined effort of the Adeptus Astartes, the Astra Militarum and the Mechanicus. He was closing on the orks with the power to topple worlds.

He kept the assault force in a tight fist. He assumed the orks knew the attack was coming, so planned to render their information useless with a massive, overwhelming blow. The army advanced at the speed of its infantry. Gunships flew overwatch. Tanks held their fire until the last minute. Hemisphere took the Deathblow up again, maintaining a cautious distance until Koorland ordered the attack.

‘What can you see?’ Koorland asked him.

‘The rearguard is still moving forwards. The horde’s direction is unchanged from earlier.’

‘They aren’t turning to fight us?’

‘It seems not. Either they aren’t aware of our approach or they don’t care.’

‘Then it’s time they did.’

Still he waited, until he caught his first sight of the rearmost orks. He could not hear their snarls over the clanking roar of the Imperial transports and tanks, but he saw the ferocity in their movements. They were rushing to fight an enemy thousands of metres ahead of them, ignoring the one approaching from behind.

Koorland switched to the combat network. ‘Now!’ he said.

A new volcano erupted in the Calderan jungle. Its eruption was focused. Its devastation was controlled. It was a thing of metal and ceramite, of promethium and particle beams. It was flesh and machine. It was the fury of the Imperium come to punish the xenos.

The artillery barrage reached ahead of the rearguard. Predators, Whirlwinds, Dunecrawlers, Basilisks and Wyverns fired at once. Beams, mortars, rockets and shells struck the targeted region, and a second Imperial volcano erupted in answer to the first. The middle distance turned into a firestorm that rose to the clouds. Silhouetted fragments of ork bodies and vehicles tumbled through the flames. The thunder of the salvo was like the planet itself cracking in two.

As the tanks and artillery vehicles continued the bombardment, the infantry charged the rear of the ork column. Fists Exemplar and the Last Wall poured out of Rhinos and Land Raiders. Behind them came the skitarii and the Guard. Assault squads rode jump packs ahead of the main charge and came down in the midst of orks, between the walking barrage and the battering ram of the infantry.

I am Slaughter, Koorland thought. His wall-name had been stolen from him by that terrible voice over Ardamantua. Now he reclaimed it. He struck the orks with a wall of battle-brothers and a hurricane wind of mass-reactive shells. He had brought annihilation to the enemy. He had brought vengeance. ‘I am Slaughter!’ he shouted, his bolter on full burst, and he saw a measure of justice for his murdered brothers in the butchery he unleashed.

The Imperial advance was fast, but measured, disciplined. Las, shells, electrical arcs and plasma bolts hit the orks in an unbroken wave. The assault squads spread ripples of ruin and confusion. Hundreds of metres of the enemy column collapsed into anarchy. Wherever the orks turned, they were cut down. They fought back, but there was no coherence to their response. There was order only in the manner of their deaths. The infantry charged in conflicting directions. Trucks and warbikes were caught in the crush, unable to manoeuvre, their wheels spinning over the bodies of the fallen until rockets and grenades turned them into flaming coffins.

Further on, the massive shapes of two vast walkers bulked against the sky, higher than the flames. Gunships attacked them in squadrons. Flying through the anti-aircraft fire, the Imperial flights strafed the walkers with lascannons and heavy bolters. The walkers lumbered to retaliate. They brought their heavy weapons to bear on departing aircraft only to be hit from another flank by the next squadron. As the gunships passed the walkers, they looped back to launch missiles at the ork tanks.

Koorland felt the momentum of the campaign. It was a beast upon the land, tearing into its prey. It was also a mechanism of violence, crushing the enemy with implacable precision. Three branches of the Imperium’s might fought as one, their collective forming the sinews of the beast, the gears of the machine. This was the unity so absent in the Great Chamber. The competing agendas that had led to the madness on Mars were gone. The corrupt self-interest of the High Lords and the divisions they fostered threatened the Imperium as much as the orks. But here, now, the servants of the Emperor did their duty. In this moment, the fall of the greenskins seemed inevitable, no matter how far they evolved or how advanced their technology.

The stench of the war reached Koorland through his helmet grille, the humid mix of rotting vegetation, burnt fyceline and spilled blood. In the distance, barely audible over the clamour of the battle, the saurian carnivores of Caldera snarled their fury. They were displaced. Predators far worse than they were at war.

A battlewagon reared over the bodies of infantry. Smashing the living and the dead beneath its wheels and treads, it thundered towards the front line of the Last Wall. Koorland and Daylight ran at it, splitting left and right. Its gunner swung the cannon after Koorland. The shell exploded behind him, and then he was too close. Orks leaned out of hatches, hammering his armour with shots. He turned towards the vehicle’s front at the last second, leaping up to grab the top of its siege shield. He clung with one hand and threw a frag grenade through the driver’s slit in the armour. On the right, Daylight slapped a krak to the side.

The slit spat flame and the battlewagon veered wildly. Koorland jumped away from the shield as the krak grenade went off, melting through the rear treads and the hull. The vehicle’s fuel ignited and the blossom of fire lifted the back of the wagon as it slewed. It rolled, crushing the orks in its turrets. It became a tumbling mass of shredding metal and flame, killing the orks still in its path. The Last Wall parted to let it pass.

On the flanks, the Sydonian Dragoons moved up, racing forwards on their Ironstriders. The legs of their bipedal steeds were long enough that they could have stepped effortlessly over the heads of the enemy. Instead, they smashed greenskins down with each stride. The dragoons held their taser lances pointed low. With the Ironstriders moving at full gallop, the lances stitched lines of chained incinerations.

And the rifle fire was unstinting. There was no standing against the Imperial storm. The counter-charges were brief and shattered before they could begin. There was only one direction the orks could go. They took it.

They fled.

‘The enemy is in retreat,’ Koorland shouted. ‘Drive it into the ground!’

The Imperial machine pursued. The speed of the orks surprised Koorland. Even allowing for the gap in their ranks created by the artillery, they had seemed too densely packed.

‘Hemisphere,’ he voxed, ‘tell me what you see.’

It took a moment for the pilot to answer. Koorland heard him grunt and a background burst of energy. Further ahead, the orks were still lashing at the aircraft. ‘There’s a gap between the bulk of the horde and the struggle involving the front lines. I couldn’t see it before. I think they only slowed down when we began the assault. But they’re catching up quickly now.’

Unease gnawed at the edge of triumph. But the odd greenskin strategy changed nothing. Koorland led the pursuit without pause, chewing up the rear ranks of the enemy, the cannons pounding the centre of the horde.

The jungle thinned, then ended. The ground became rockier. The terrain sloped upwards, turning into craggy foothills in advance of the two volcanoes. The horde retreated even faster. The mounted mass abandoned the slower infantry. The orks fought to climb aboard the trucks and the tops of battlewagons. Bikes and overloaded vehicles roared up the slope. The gap between the two armies widened.

Unease became alarm.

‘Stop their flight!’ Koorland ordered. ‘Land Speeders to the fore. Dominus Arouar, we need your fastest troops!’

And Hemisphere was shouting in his ear. ‘They’re not retreating! They have camouflaged positions. They—’

A new thunder of cannons drowned Hemisphere out. The orks’ heavy tanks burst from their concealment. The walkers, damaged but still fighting, turned away from the harassing aircraft and aimed their massive guns downhill. From the heights, they dropped the sky down on the Imperial forces. Koorland heard the shriek of high-explosive shells, and then he was in the air, lifted off his feet as the ground hurtled skywards. His battle-brothers and the rest of the strike force vanished in the flare of crimson and coruscating green.

He landed on his back, cracking stone. He rolled and surged to his feet.

‘Force them back!’ he voxed. ‘Artillery, take out the tanks! Our cannons outnumber theirs.’

Through the smoke and blasts, he saw the Last Wall and the Fists Exemplar climbing with him. The formation was ragged, but the fire still constant.

And the ork infantry had stopped retreating. It was digging in, returning the Imperial salvoes with a vengeance.

‘Keep advancing,’ he heard Thane order the Fists Exemplar. ‘Keep the initiative.’

Wreckage everywhere: Ironstriders twisted and smoking, mortals turned into meat, their uniforms so burned and soaked in blood there was no identifying their regiment. Through the dead and through the meteor storm of the ork barrage, the Imperial forces advanced.

Keep the initiative.

We never had it, Koorland thought.

The shadow of Ardamantua fell on him. Though he marched up the slope, though he weathered the shots scoring and pitting his armour, though he led an attack that was still disciplined, still coherent, still powerful, he felt the sickening knowledge of imminent disaster.

It was Hemisphere who first saw what was coming. It was his voice that became the messenger of doom.

‘Chapter Master! Major ork forces closing from the east and west!’

Uphill, the ork cannons paused for a moment. Wind cleared the smoke, and Koorland could see the scale of the counter-attack.

No, not a counter-attack. A trap.

To the left and to the right, armies fully as large as the one to the north closed in.

An ocean of savagery came to drown the Imperial machine.

Six

Caldera — Laccolith

Smoke. Fire. Volcanic rock turned into a shrapnel whirlwind. Crashing waves of xenos muscle, blades and rifle fire. The slope caught in a hurricane of war. Directions becoming meaningless. The world disintegrating, reduced to the clamour of violent death. The vox a torrent from all the elements of the strike force.

‘Heavy weapons hitting us from the west…’

‘… the east, the east, the east…’

‘… suppressive fire on those tanks…’

‘… pushing us back…’

‘… maintain formation or I’ll shoot you myself…’

‘… consolidate Dunecrawler line…’

‘… lost…’

‘… close that gap, by the Throne, close—’

The screams of dying mortals. Chattering binharic dissolving into feedback whines. The grim calm of battle-brothers falling into sudden silence.

The choir of disaster.

The Last Wall closed ranks. The company became a ceramite barrier. Bolter shells and streams of flaming promethium slammed against the orks, exploding and incinerating flesh. At the northernmost tip of the Imperial advance, Koorland’s veterans held the ork infantry at bay.

‘They will not pass, Chapter Master,’ Eternity promised.

‘It is we who must pass,’ Koorland said. ‘Artillery,’ he voxed, ‘sustained fire to the north. All other forces, protect the artillery. We must advance!’ Their goal was almost in sight, beyond a few more ridges.

But the upper slope was hidden by ceaseless explosions. The fury of the Imperial guns thinned the ork infantry. The small-arms fire coming from the heights diminished. But the salvoes of the ork cannons were unceasing. Greenskin heavy support from the east and west now bombarded the slopes.

On the Imperial flanks, the ork infantry crashed against the Imperial forces. They broke the charge of the dragoons. Lumbering monsters in thick plate armour hurled their bulk against the legs of the Ironstriders. They toppled the steeds, then fell on the riders with power claws and killsaws, crushing metal, tearing flesh.

Skitarii could still bleed.

‘Gunships,’ Koorland called, ‘we need those artillery placements taken out.’

‘We are attacking,’ Hemisphere replied. ‘Their anti-aircraft fire is much stronger than we supposed. Two Xiphon interceptors and a Thunderhawk already lost.’

Koorland cursed. He marched forwards into the roiling flames. Overhead, eradicator beams lanced at the enemy as the Dunecrawlers manoeuvred through the Astra Militarum and skitarii infantry. The energy vanished into the maelstrom before him.

The Last Wall’s line advanced. The battle-brothers on the flanks held back the rampage of the ork infantry. Faster than they died, the greenskins kept coming, wave after wave. They ran over their dead and stormed through the explosions. In the brute savagery of the charge, Koorland saw a dual threat. Beyond the sheer power of the massed attack, it was also the reason humanity underestimated the greenskins again and again. This way of war was barely beyond the animal. It was what he would have expected of a pack of saurians. There was no way these savages could be capable of complex strategy.

No way they could have outwitted and outfought and humiliated the Imperium again and again.

No way they could have destroyed an entire Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

No way they could have trapped the strike force. Not when he had already witnessed their capabilities. Not when he knew better.

The taste of failure was bitter. The taste of shame was ash. Koorland swallowed them both. He gave himself to rage. He would not let the mission fail.

He marched into the vortex. There was no other option. There was no other path open. No choice.

He advanced as though will alone would defeat the reality before him.

It was like walking on the surface of a sun. Solid ground was an illusion. Koorland walked into eruption, into the kinetic fury of war embodied.

He was that fury too. He was the vengeance and the justice of the Imperial Fists. He was the Emperor’s war given flesh. He roared his challenge to the enemy.

The storm of war answered him with its greater voice. It mocked him. It hurled him back.

A cannon shell landed a few metres ahead. The blast knocked him to his knees. A volley followed, and everything before him vanished. The earth erupted, and he was tumbling through the flame. He landed hard. He slammed his fist into the slope, punching through rock to arrest his slide. He stood. On either side, his battle-brothers were recovering.

They had been pushed back down the hillside. The storm marched down towards them, eating the slope, a volcano opening its jaws to swallow the Last Wall.

Koorland’s retinal lenses were a riot of death and warnings. They were a single message. The way forwards was barred to him.

The stimms coursed through Rodolph’s bloodstream. They boosted his adrenaline. His eyes were clear. He could think. He’d taken several shots of painkillers and his body was distant to him, its pain merely information transmitted through heavy interference. He stood, but he did not know how long that would be possible. He was leaning against the pulpit, his left hand still locked around the aquila as if it had been soldered to the iron. His blood flowed from his palm. His breath rattled like stones in a canteen. His body was broken. He knew this. It would not last long.

‘Admiral,’ the medicae tried again.

‘I’m not interested, Feld.’

‘Without treatment—’

‘No time. Go be useful elsewhere. That’s an order.’

Plenty of wounded for Feld to tend. More all the time. Rodolph had tuned out the news of the Finality’s wounds and the casualties in the crew in the same way he had blocked the weakness of his body. All that mattered was the war outside. What mattered was what he and his cruiser could do.

The Finality and the Absolute Decree ploughed through the ork ships as through an ocean in full gale. The Imperial fleet was moving closer to the attack moon, but it was shedding ships. The two cruisers reinforced each other with their salvoes. There was never a pause in the barrage and the orks could not get close enough to ram, but their torpedoes took a toll. And the escorts were dying. The orks came at them in overwhelming numbers and picked them off one by one.

The upper right of the oculus flared. Just beyond its view, something had died.

‘The Protocol of Judgement is gone,’ said Groth.

Another of the Adeptus Mechanicus frigates. Half of the Martian fleet had been destroyed.

‘Admiral,’ voxed Broumis on the Absolute Decree. ‘There’s a gap in the enemy formations.’

Rodolph looked at the tacticarium screens. He saw what had drawn Broumis’ attention. Below the ecliptic and to starboard, only a single ork cruiser appeared. Rodolph exchanged a look with Groth.

‘Too easy,’ she said, but she had the oculus trained to that region. The greenskin vessel had taken severe hits. Its bow was cratered. One of its engines was dead. It had been left behind by its escort, which was closing with the destroyer Lord Commander Celadion. Beyond the ork cruiser was a clear run to the attack moon.

Inviting.

Three torpedoes shot through the defensive fire and struck the Finality in the stern. Rodolph felt the impact vibrate through the deck and travel up his spine. His knees sagged. As the void shields flickered, teetering on the edge of cascading failure, his body reached out for him and tried to drag him down into the mire of its pain.

He gritted his teeth. Groth was speaking. He forced himself to hear.

‘Negative,’ she was saying to Broumis. ‘The enemy concentration around us is too great. We can’t break through to that gap.’

‘I can.’

The Decree was running below the Finality, while the bulk of the ork fleet had risen above it.

‘We can make the run,’ Broumis said. ‘If you can hold them, we can smash that cruiser and reach the moon.’

‘The instant you try, the entire fleet will turn from us to you,’ Groth objected. ‘We’re only holding our own because we’re together. Divided, they’ll finish us.’

‘We’re finished anyway. What are we doing except delaying the inevitable by a short period? Our sacrifices will be in vain.’

‘Captain Broumis,’ Rodolph said. Speech was difficult. His tongue was as distant from his command as the rest of his body. Did Groth notice the delay between his thoughts and his actions?

He blinked the absurdity away. He dragged his palm over the aquila, pulling the wound open, jolting himself with another burst of pain. He would need more stimms soon. ‘Captain,’ he said again, ‘delay is the value of our sacrifice. The success of the mission will be decided on the surface of Caldera, not by what we do here.’

‘If we destroy the moon, we will be guaranteeing victory planetside.’

‘You’ll never get close enough,’ said Groth. ‘The gravity weapon will tear you apart.’

‘We’re already closer than should be possible. All of the weapon’s energies must be being used in the construction. The moon is vulnerable. Admiral, you must give the order.’

I will do no such thing, you insubordinate fool, Rodolph thought. When Groth turned to stare at him, he realised he hadn’t said the words. ‘I wuhhh…’ he said. His tongue was clumsy. It was too big. How could it fit into his mouth?

His left hand went numb. He could no longer feel the pulpit. He looked down. He saw his fingers open. He willed them closed. They disobeyed. His hand fell to his side. His knees folded. He slumped forwards. The eagle’s heads rushed to meet him. They cracked his skull. His vision filled with swarming dots of black.

Was he still falling?

No, the ship was shaking again. He was lying on the floor of the strategium. His ears were filled with lead, but he thought he heard Groth’s voice.

Yes, he did. She was bending over him, her lips were moving. She was shouting, first at him, then at someone else. Who would she be talking to?

Broumis?

Yes, Broumis. Who was doing something foolish. Who must…

Who must…

The swarming black covered his eyes. Deal with Broumis later. Perhaps he would sleep. But it was so cold.

Electronic shrieking. Those tocsins again. Not as loud as they were. That was good. Easier to sleep.

Sleep.

Then he was awake, gasping, adrenaline surging again, fire racing up his left arm and through the back of his neck. His heart hammered at his ribcage. He sat up fast. His temples throbbed.

Feld was kneeling beside him. ‘He’s back,’ the medicae said to Groth. ‘But I can’t give him another dose like that.’

‘You’ll dose me like that for as long as we have a ship,’ Rodolph snarled. He took Groth’s proffered hand and got to his feet.

The pict screen to the left of the aquila showed the dispositions of the fleet. The runes beside the representation of the Absolute Decree began to flash. The ship’s orientation was changing.

‘Broumis!’ Rodolph yelled. ‘Do not break formation!’

‘Your wounds are severe, admiral. You were unable to articulate your orders a few moments ago. You have been incapacitated, and are no longer able to command. By virtue of seniority, I am now the ranking officer in this fleet. I must take the actions that stand the best chance of leading to victory for the Imperium.’

‘You’re grandstanding, Broumis!’ said Groth. ‘There’s no glory to be had here!’

‘Hold them off us, captain. Those are your new orders. Keep their attention for as long as you can.’

‘Don’t be insane!’

‘He won’t listen,’ Rodolph said quietly. The runes on the screen kept changing. The angle between the two grand cruisers was growing. The Absolute Decree was pointing her bow down towards the ork vessel and the attack moon beyond. ‘No choice now,’ he told Groth. ‘Do as Broumis says.’ He was too exhausted to feel the rage that should be his. ‘Do what you can.’

He moved to one side of the pulpit, making room for Groth.

She stepped forwards. ‘Helm,’ she said, ‘make for the primary cluster of ships at fifteen degrees starboard. Weapons stations, concentrate fire on the lead cruiser.’

The vox clamoured for Rodolph’s attention. It was Princeps 4-Syndesi, commanding the Mechanicus ships. ‘Admiral Rodolph. We observe trajectory alterations. Please advise of tactical revisions.’

‘This is Illaia Groth,’ the captain answered. ‘I am speaking for the admiral. The Absolute Decree is proceeding alone. Form up on the Finality. Keep the enemy’s focus on our positions.’

‘Requesting elaboration. What is the purpose of the manoeuvre?’

‘To hold off disaster as best we can, princeps. Captain Broumis is proceeding against orders.’

‘Clarification accepted. Requesting our negative estimation of the approach be noted.’

Rodolph straightened. Groth let him lean forwards to answer. ‘Our estimation is the same.’

He leaned against the pulpit once more. He winced as the shell and torpedo hits became more numerous as the Absolute Decree put distance between the cruisers, making them both more vulnerable.

‘Hull breach in launch bay sigma,’ Groth said.

‘I don’t need to know,’ Rodolph gasped. ‘When we die, we die.’ He nodded at the oculus. ‘Show me what Broumis is doing.’

The orientation of the view changed. Most of the attacking ships vanished. The Absolute Decree appeared in the centre of the oculus, its engines flaring hot. Nearly eight thousand metres of war leviathan turned away from the fleet, almost twice the size of the ork cruiser coming to meet it. No other ork vessels joined the duel, and the struggle was a brief one. The Decree’s armament overwhelmed the orks’ guns and shield plating. Long before it could attempt to ram, the cruiser broke in half. Broumis kept up the barrage. The enemy ship disintegrated in a chain of plasma flares.

The path to the attack moon was clear.

‘Was he right?’ Rodolph wondered. He hadn’t doubted his decisions until now. But Broumis had far more experience. Rodolph’s strength was slipping away. Perhaps he was no longer fit to command.

‘No,’ said Groth. She widened her stance, standing firm against the hammering jolts to the bridge. ‘He was wrong.’

‘He’s getting through.’

‘The enemy’s mistake is too obvious.’

The Absolute Decree moved towards the moon. It picked up speed. All its batteries trained their fire on the target. On the surface of the moon, bright flowers blossomed.

Pinpricks.

‘Cyclonic torpedoes,’ Rodolph muttered.

As if Broumis had heard, two fateful streaks shot from the cruiser’s bow.

Rodolph held his breath. Now he hoped he and Groth were wrong. He hoped Broumis’ disobedience would save them all.

Groth was shaking her head.

‘Why not?’ Rodolph asked.

She pointed. Objects scattered throughout the near space of the moon glinted. ‘Orbital defences,’ Groth said.

A few moments later, a web of las-fire cut short the flight of the torpedoes.

More pinpricks from the Decree’s guns flickered on the surface of the moon, assaults so trivial they were ignored.

Broumis voxed them again. ‘I have ordered ramming speed. In the name of the Emperor, we surrender our lives.’

‘No!’ Groth called. ‘That won’t be enough to pierce the crust. Captain, turn around. It isn’t too late.’

‘The planetside face,’ Rodolph said. ‘The incomplete portion of the moon. It might be vulnerable.’

‘My thanks, admiral,’ said Broumis.

When Groth looked at him, Rodolph said, ‘It is too late.’ But perhaps there was a last chance to make Broumis’ gambit work.

The Absolute Decree accelerated. Its orientation changed again. Its bow began to turn towards Caldera, preparing for the swing around and into the target.

‘We can’t even see that face,’ Groth said.

‘We know what we can see is invulnerable. What else is left to try?’

She remained unconvinced. ‘You believe the ship can manoeuvre through that?’ She pointed at the huge masses of crust rising from Caldera. They were larger than the Decree.

‘What else is left?’ Rodolph repeated. The Finality was pummelled again. He heard a weapons officer confirm another ork vessel destroyed. Rodolph was in the midst of an end-game battle, but his awareness shrank to the oculus and the ponderous movements of the grand cruiser. Broumis had doomed them all. The war would end sooner because he had broken rank. All that mattered now was the tattered hope he had become.

The Absolute Decree moved closer, reaching a lower orbit than the moon. Broumis was in position to make the run at the unfinished region.

‘Why is he not being attacked?’ Groth asked.

Rodolph’s blood chilled. He would have liked to believe the space around the Decree was empty because the rest of the fleet had drawn the attention of all the enemy ships. But these orks did not make such monumental tactical errors. Not even the orbital defences were firing.

Not a single shot.

Only the moon, the Absolute Decree, and the void.

And the mountains. The flying mountains.

‘No,’ Rodolph whispered.

‘Why couldn’t we see?’ Groth said, agonised. She called to Broumis. She tried to warn him. Rodolph didn’t hear what she said. For him too, now, there was only the moon, the ship, the void. And the mountains.

It was, he realised, not a question of Broumis having to avoid the terrible masses.

The doom began in the form of a single pulse of light. A corona around the moon. The surface seemed to ripple, perception distorted by the intensity of the gravitic wave. An invisible hand grasped the rising chunk of Caldera. The rock was over twenty kilometres across, the size of a small planetoid. The grip whipped the mass away from the moon, and into the path of the Absolute Decree.

The cruiser’s orientation shifted once more. The movement was slow, minute, futile. There would be no evasion.

A mountain range smashed into the Absolute Decree. The cruiser shattered like glass. The fragments of its hull spread apart with awful grace, backlit by a billowing inferno. The warp drive erupted. Killing light filled the oculus, consuming the meteor. The shock wave travelled ahead of the hurtling fragments of ships and rock, washing over the fleets and moon. The Finality shuddered in the midst of holocaust. Rodolph saw the names of smaller ships vanish from the pict screen. After the light, darkness taking ally and foe alike.

But there were still so many orks. Even as ships collided with the wreckage of others, the armada kept attacking.

The darkness reached into the bridge of the Finality. It wrapped its fist around Rodolph’s head, squeezing, trying to force him into the night of despair and unconsciousness.

‘Keep fighting,’ he whispered. He clutched the aquila for strength. He clutched it for hope.

All he felt was cold iron.

Through the creeping dark of his pain, all he saw was the final approach of an enemy with the power of a god.

She almost didn’t see the battlewagon. A chance parting of the smoke, the luck of her glance to the east. The ork tank was some distance from her position. If not for the fires of burning vehicles, it would have been invisible in the falling night. But Imren saw it, and she saw the flash of its gun. Instinct said down. She dropped through the hatch of the Chimera.

A second later, the shell tore through the roof of the tank. It destroyed the turret. A burst of flame reached into the interior. Imren protected her head with her arms, and the sleeves of her uniform caught fire. She beat them out against the inner hull, blinked through pain and smoke. Her gunner was dead. The command table was shattered. But the Chimera was still moving.

‘Nissen!’ she called out. ‘Tell me it’s you driving!’

‘It is, general!’ Nissen shouted back from his compartment.

‘Do you still have vox capability?’ The equipment around her was ruined.

‘I do.’

‘Then you’ll relay my orders. For now, keep going.’

Imren grabbed the ragged edge of the roof and pulled herself up. She looked around at the state of the rout.

The Imperial forces were in full retreat. They had abandoned any thought of advancing. They were racing for Laccolith and the hell of urban warfare. There was no advantage to be gained, no siege to prepare, only the flight and the play for time.

This was wrong. All of it. She had come to Caldera to restore honour. She wished to repair the name of the Lucifer Blacks, guardian regiment of the heart of the Imperial Palace, battered by the eldar incursion and the brazen arrival of the ork ambassadors. Even more crucially, the pride of the Astra Militarum needed to be rebuilt after the disaster of the Proletarian Crusade. The mission to Caldera represented the first true hope for the Imperium since the start of the war.

A false hope, it now seemed. An illusion of perfect cruelty. The orks were invincible.

She looked forwards. Laccolith was somewhere ahead in the dark. It had to be close, but there was no illumination in the city. She would have little notice of its proximity until she crossed the remnants of its wall.

On all sides, the combined regiments raced through the shattered jungle. The retreat was a flight. The strategy was sound — the only course of action was to reach the urban battlefield ahead of the orks, seize it, and use the terrain to slow the enemy down. But the sense of the tactic did nothing to mitigate the humiliation. All she saw was defeat, the combined forces of the Emperor running for their lives from a triumphant, mocking foe.

The orks pressed in on either flank. The Imperials were using the cleared swathe of the jungle. The greenskins had to smash their way through the trees and dense vegetation again in an effort to keep up. They were doing well, scorching the earth with flamers, splintering trunks with the siege shields of tanks and trucks. The jungle slowed them just enough. Imren thought the strike force would reach the city in time.

Our only success will be to run from a fight, she thought.

Imren’s Chimera had been at the front of the Astra Militarum ranks during the advance. She was towards the rear during the retreat. The greater mass of infantry and vehicles streamed ahead of her. In the distance, she caught glimpses of heavy, reptilian bodies flashing in headlamp beams.

‘Nissen,’ she called. ‘What’s happening at the front?’

After a pause, the driver answered. ‘Saurian attacks, general. Packs of the beasts. They’re hitting the infantry.’

Caldera was turning on them, Imren thought. It was mocking their defeat.

Streams from the great river of the ork hordes stabbed into the ranks. The troops fought back, hitting the enemy with all the rage of savaged pride. The night around her was lit by the streaks of las and tracer fire. Three orks ran straight for the left side of the Chimera, grabbing the hull. The turret gone, Imren climbed up onto the rear portion of the roof, which had been spared the impact of the shell. She held on to a spike of twisted metal with her right hand and fired her plasma pistol into the upturned faces of the orks. She returned their snarls with her own, her hate as brutal as their joy. She burned the head off one. As it fell, it knocked one of its fellows off the hull. Both disappeared under the treads.

The third slashed at Imren with a machete. She reared back, lost her footing and fell. Her pistol clattered into the troop compartment. She kept her grip on the spike. Its jagged edges cut through the leather of her gloves. Her boots struggled to find a hold on the side of the hull.

The ork jumped on top of the Chimera. It crouched over her, grinning, its foetid breath making her eyes water. It raised the machete over its head.

Imren pulled on the spike with all her strength. She bent her arm and hauled herself up, grabbed the greenskin’s harness with her left hand, and dropped back. The sudden weight overbalanced the ork and it plunged forwards. The spike rammed through its eye and cracked out the back of its skull.

Imren climbed up the corpse. She pulled the head off the spike and pushed the body off the Chimera. She stood on the roof, her breath coming in growling heaves and looked out at the jungle, and the cauldron of struggle and flight. She saw the broken towers of Laccolith emerge from the darkness. She filled her lungs with the torrid air, with the fyceline-and-burnt-flesh stench of defeat, with all her despair and rage, and she roared.

The war answered back.

There was no line to hold in Laccolith. There was no keeping the orks out, or forcing them back. There was only the hope of bogging them down. To break up the concentration of the horde, and tangle them in the canyons of rockcrete.

A play for time. Nothing more. It wasn’t good enough. There was no end except a delay of extermination.

Koorland led the Last Wall down a narrow avenue. They had less than a minute’s lead on the orks. The artillery barrage of the city had already begun. A shell destroyed the upper portion of a hab on the right. The street filled with a cloud of powdered wall.

Marching beside him, Eternity said, ‘We can ambush them here.’

‘We keep moving,’ said Koorland. ‘We wait for word from Hemisphere.’

The word came when the Last Wall was deep into the dust cloud. And Hemisphere gave Koorland what he needed.

‘Chapter Master,’ the pilot voxed, ‘I managed another pass towards the target position. A portion of the ork army is still there.’

‘Did you see what they’re fighting?’

‘I couldn’t get near. Most of their anti-air is concentrated near that position.’

They really don’t want us to approach, Koorland thought. He opened a channel to the other commanders. ‘Our original target is still viable. The orks are using their full strength because they are desperate to prevent us from reaching it.’

‘They have been successful,’ said Arouar.

‘They have also given us the opportunity to turn that success into failure. They are following us into Laccolith.’

‘How does that help?’ Imren asked.

‘We must hold their army here while a small force makes an aerial insertion up the slope.’

Thane said, ‘The Thunderhawks will await you at the space port.’

‘We’ve defeated these orks before!’ Thane called to his company. ‘We won on Eidolica! Today, a delay is a victory.’

The Fists Exemplar had taken the main avenue cutting through the centre of Laccolith. It was the fastest route to the space port, and the most inviting path for a large force. The ork super-heavies were most likely to take this route, so the avenue was the one most important to deny to the enemy.

‘We don’t know the greenskins have any idea what Koorland is attempting,’ Aquino had said as they set up the ambush.

‘We don’t,’ Thane had agreed. ‘Should we underestimate them yet again?’

Now, Aloysian answered Thane’s shout. ‘Let the delay begin, Chapter Master.’

The Techmarine had worked fast. Under his supervision, it had taken less than five minutes to plant the demolition charges. The greenskin horde thundered down the avenue, lured by the harassing attacks of the Predators. The Adeptus Astartes tanks backed up, still firing, until they crossed the kill-zone. On either side of the street, the foundations of hab-blocks exploded.

Already weakened by the initial fighting in Laccolith, the towers collapsed, falling towards each other. They came down on the front ranks of the orks, crushing them beneath thousands of tonnes of rubble, filling the street with an avalanche of rockcrete and dust. The wall of wreckage was a dozen metres high. The assault squad landed on its peak and rained fire on the orks below. The rest of the company attacked from the structures on either side, trapping the greenskins in a lethal dead end. Gunships flew low on the avenue, raking the enemy with cannons and heavy bolters, missiles tearing into the greenskin tanks.

The orks stopped. The infantry began to pull back.

‘Do they think we’re stupid?’ Aquino voxed.

‘Keep hitting them,’ said Thane. ‘But keep a distance.’ He would not lead his men into a counter-ambush.

‘Only the infantry is pulling back,’ Aloysian said. ‘The heavy guns are moving forwards.’

At the end of the avenue, a walker and three battlefortresses advanced. Before the infantry was fully clear, they opened up. The barrage was monstrous. The Fists Exemplar pulled back as the street erupted, explosions hammering the avenue from a point fifty metres forward of the company, all the way to the barrier. Rockets slammed into the facades of the habs, bringing more buildings down. The collapses forced the Fists Exemplar into the open. Taking to the shelter of the craters, they maintained their fire on the enemy, but Thane could no longer see what effect, if any, they were having. He was shooting into explosions.

‘Pull back to the other side of the barrier,’ Thane ordered. ‘We’ll welcome them again there. Gunships, covering fire. Break this barrage.’

Aloysian slid into the same crater as Thane. ‘They’re concentrating their bombardment on the road.’

‘It’s working for them. They’re making it hard for us to move. Let them amuse themselves. At least they’re not advancing.’

‘If this is victory, it has a displeasing shape.’

‘Our victory conditions are the success of the mission.’ The truth of the words made them no less bitter. Aloysian was right. At this moment, the idea of locating the primarch felt abstract. Compounded humiliation was a reality.

Aloysian’s attention had shifted back to the orks’ tactics. ‘Why the road? The enemy has done nothing without reason.’

Thane looked behind. His battle-brothers were climbing over the rubble. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Aloysian. ‘If they have a reason, it will do them no good in our absence.’

He made for the barrier, running through the barrage. On his left, Brasidas took a direct hit. The Space Marine vanished. The mist of his blood splashed against Thane’s helm. The ground shook with impacts. Fissures spread from crater to crater.

Too late Thane realised what the orks were doing.

With a massive tremor and a howl of shattering rock, the avenue gave way. It fell into the honeycomb of lava tunnels below. Weakened by the pounding of the bombardment, the tunnels collapsed too. The chain reaction spread. A gorge opened up, running through the centre of Laccolith. It swallowed the barrier. The ground vanished beneath Thane’s feet. The Fists Exemplar plunged into the depths.

Thane dropped twenty metres. He bounced off jagged ledges and landed on an uneven field of broken stone. The force of his fall punched through rock. He stood, servo-motors in his armour catching and whining. He looked up at the sheer walls surrounding the company. There was no sure route out.

He heard the bombardment stop. The rumble of engines replaced the roar of guns. The orks were closing in on the trap they had created.

The company drew together. Thane made for the tanks, but the fall had disabled the heavy armour. The tanks were immobilised. Even if they could manoeuvre, none could be extracted from the gorge except by airlift.

However, not all of the vehicles had been wholly destroyed in the fall. Some, at least, still had working guns.

‘Tactical squads,’ Thane voxed, ‘get to street level. Do what you can. Gunships, concentrate on the super-heavies. Hold them off. Destroy them if possible.’ He turned to his brothers. ‘We can fight or we can climb.’

‘Is that a choice?’ Kahagnis asked.

‘Not really.’ Unless they climbed, annihilation was inevitable.

He climbed on top of the nearest functioning turret. It belonged to the Predator Scion of Roma. ‘Let enough of us remain with the tanks to hold the enemy at bay. The rest of you, make for the far wall. Reach the top, then cover our retreat.’

His brothers rapped their fists against their chest-plates in salute and left. There were five guns that could be used. Venerable Brother Otho stayed as well: the Dreadnought could not climb, so he became the mobile artillery. The Whirlwind Citadel’s End could still move, and Aloysian took its controls with Scuris operating its rocket launcher. The bulk of the company retreated. The rear of the canyon was five hundred metres to the south. The collapse was deep, narrow and less than a kilometre long in total.

‘We are in a barrel,’ Aloysian voxed.

‘I know it,’ Thane replied.

The orks moved their super-heavies into position. The walker arrived first. It towered over the lip of the canyon. Its squat, conical shape having none of the majesty of the Titans. It was power embodied in its most brutal, savage form. In the excess of its massive cannon and the clusters of turrets, Thane nonetheless saw a mocking kind of genius. The behemoth was the ork spirit of war: crushing feet, crushing limbs, and crushing weaponry. Thane looked up from the perspective of the Imperium trampled beneath the boots of the greenskins.

Hatred fuelled his first shot.

The Predator’s shell exploded against the walker’s armour. The hit would have reduced battlements to powder. A crater smoked in the ork machine’s carapace. The beast’s cannon arm swung downwards as if the blow had meant nothing.

The gun barrel was as long as a Rhino. The shot was like a meteor impact. The shell struck the ground just ahead of Scion of Roma and the explosion lifted the front of the tank up, flipping the Predator onto its roof. Thane leapt from the turret in mid-arc. He landed and scrambled out of the way of its fall.

Thunderhawks and Xiphon interceptors strafed the ork machines. Secondary turrets on the walker retaliated, while the primary arms remained pointed down. The massive totemic head, its eyes lit crimson, appeared to gaze into the canyon, unperturbed by the aerial assaults. Imperial autocannon fire took out smaller tanks. The battlefortresses and the walker maintained their positions and the steady bombardment. Dense clusters of anti-aircraft fire reached for the gunships.

Scuris unleashed the Whirlwind’s battery of rockets, enveloping the head of the walker in flame. Its next shot went wild. As pulverised rock rained down on him, Thane pounded over the floor of the canyon. He jumped on top of Citadel’s End as Aloysian drove forwards. The Techmarine headed for the cliff nearest the orks, below the range of the walker’s cannon.

Battlefortresses and the smaller battlewagons arrived at the lip of the gorge. Infantry set up mortar positions and a deluge of fire fell upon the Fists Exemplar. The canyon became the boiling crater of a volcano. Identification runes flashed red and then black in Thane’s retinal lenses. More brothers dying. A double explosion to the rear was another tank, blown up by a direct hit from the walker’s huge cannon.

‘Brother Aquino, what is your progress?’ Thane voxed.

At the head of the battle-brothers climbing the south wall, Aquino said, ‘Halfway there, Chapter Master. They haven’t—’

Thunder and static howl cut him off. Electrical arcs fired across the gorge, stabbing at the vertical face. Thane heard the rumble of further rock falls. Another rune blinked and died.

Citadel’s End fired again, but this time Aloysian targeted the top of the cliff instead of the ork machines. He created his own avalanche. The walker rocked forwards as the ground fell away, but its operators moved one of its huge legs in a great dragging step backwards and it staggered away from the edge. One of the battlefortresses wasn’t fast enough. It pitched down, engine screaming, treads spinning uselessly as it fell. It turned on its side, then into a ponderous roll, hauled by its own tremendous mass. It fired again in mid-flight. The shell hit the cliff wall just above Citadel’s End. Aloysian reversed, jouncing the Whirlwind off boulders and a cloud of dust billowed over the tank.

Thane left the roof. He ran through the dust to the darker mass of the battlefortress. It had landed upright. The treads were destroyed and its wheels threw up sparks as they tried to find traction on rubble, but its three layered turrets rotated southwards. They roared. Thane stared straight ahead. He refused to acknowledge further losses. He would not permit them.

Behind him, Citadel’s End fired again, eating at the ground of the ork positions, forcing them back. An energy gun exploded, filling the night with an emerald glare.

Thane pulled a melta bomb from his belt and ducked beneath the lowest cannon, scrambled over the spiked cylinder the fortress used as a siege shield, and climbed its hull. Firing his bolt pistol through a viewing slit, he was rewarded with a whining snarl of pain. He slapped the melta bomb to the top cannon, the largest, where the barrel met the turret. Then he jumped to the ground in front of the tank, daring the greenskins to take their anger out on a single enemy.

They took the bait.

The melta bomb flared then ate through the turret and barrel. The gun fired, and the battlefortress self-immolated. Molten heat reached for Thane. Burning chunks of hull spun past him.

This was a much better shape of victory.

He turned back towards Citadel’s End. Even as he did, the orks settled into new positions and hit the canyon with another massive salvo.

‘Aquino!’ he shouted.

No answer.

He called again. Aquino answered, his voice tight with suppressed pain. ‘They’re blasting the cliff away from us, Chapter Master. Progress is slow. We are taking losses.’

‘I have faith in you, brother.’

But he didn’t in the situation. The orks were bringing forwards even more mortars, even more large guns. The foot soldiers lined the circumference of the gorge, shouting with laughter. Thane only saw them in glimpses between the eruptions and the flames. They were celebrants exulting over the pyre of their foe.

Thane would fight. Aloysian would fight. Aquino and the others would fight.

And they would die.

The vox scratched for his attention — a transmission on the wider command network. He caught up to the Whirlwind once more and opened the channel.

‘Tynora 7-Galliax,’ a mechanical voice said. ‘We are approaching your position, Chapter Master Thane.’

‘Your news is welcome, princeps.’

‘Our manoeuvre is thanks to yours, Chapter Master. The principal strength of the Veridi giganticus was drawn to you. The pressure on us was relieved. We come to return the favour.’

She spoke, and then new light tore the night. Blinding phosphor blasts illuminated the ork positions and burned the infantry. The perfect razor yellow of eradicator beams cut in from east and west, burning through the flanks of the enemy armour. Two battlewagons disintegrated. Their blasts took out the energy cannons nearby. The destruction spread.

‘All guns target the cliff top,’ Thane ordered.

Citadel’s End, Brother Otho and the immobilised Predators fired within seconds of each other. Concussive hammer blows tore a huge chunk of the ground away. The new avalanche stole the road surface from beneath the orks. The battlefortresses ceased fire as they reversed course, backing over the retreating infantry.

The walker took another step back. This time, it was too slow. The surface of the road collapsed beneath it. The walker plunged head-first, firing one more time as it dropped. The wild shell punched another crater behind Thane.

The canyon roared and echoed as the leviathan’s fall triggered another avalanche of rock and gravel. The monster came to a stop at the base of the canyon, half-buried by the slide. Its cannon arm was immobile. The left arm waved its gigantic saw. The blade buzzed in the air, hungry for targets. The body shook with internal explosions, but still lived.

‘Finish it,’ Thane ordered.

The guns of the Fists Exemplar lowered their aim. They fired as one, a choir of rage and vengeance. They targeted the head, which protruded well beyond the rock fall. The walker’s armour could not withstand such a concentrated assault, and the head blew apart. The devastated neck opened into an abyss of darkness and monstrous engineering. An inferno billowed out of the chasm as the machinery tore itself apart. The walker shook harder and harder as something vital and tremendously powerful was breached. Thane took cover behind a boulder.

The monster’s death shattered the night of the gorge, killing the dark with burning day. It pulverised the rock that had buried the walker. Stone shards flew across the canyon with hurricane velocity. They whined over Thane’s position like a swarm of insects.

Thane rose when the glow of the blast faded. Still more of the cliff face had collapsed. There was a slope now to the north. Too steep for Citadel’s End, but not, perhaps, for the Dreadnought.

‘Venerable Brother Otho,’ Thane called.

‘I am with you, Chapter Master.’

Aloysian and the other battle-brothers who had manned the guns left the vehicles. Together with Thane, they mounted the slope. When they reached the top, they found the rest of the company already engaged. In the midst of the broken city, the Fists Exemplar hammered the front ranks of the orks while the Mechanicus attacked the flanks. The orks pulled back, infantry falling, vehicles destroyed. The battlefortresses were more powerful than any single one of the Imperial vehicles deployed on Caldera, but they were not invulnerable. A line of Kataphron Breachers closed with the fortress on the eastern side of the avenue. Their torsion cannons turned the matter of its armour against itself, three simultaneous hits tearing its flank open. Brother Scaevola launched a rocket through the gap. The battlefortress died, fire pouring from the viewing slits of its turrets.

The command network was a cacophony of voices. The heaviest ork force was before Thane, but the army was so massive it was fighting across the city. There was desperation in the communications from the Astra Militarum. The mortals were fighting building to building. They were being taken apart.

They are still serving, Thane told himself. They are slowing the enemy.

And here, now, in this sector of Laccolith, the orks were losing ground. This was no feigned retreat. The orks raged. They hurled themselves at the Imperials, but it was their turn to find themselves in the kill-zone. The street hampered the movement of their massed numbers. The fire from in front, from the sides and above broke each wave of assault.

Thane saw a real victory taking form.

And then the form changed, dissolved, became terrible. At the far end of the avenue, ork reinforcements arrived. More battlefortresses. Two walkers.

The earth shook with their approach.

Seven

Caldera — Beyond Torrens

The Thunderhawks Honour’s Spear and Triumph of Himalazia flew over the city. Koorland sat with Preco in the cockpit of Honour’s Spear. Through the viewing blocks, he had a disturbingly complete view of Laccolith’s agony. Rocket contrails, interlocking las-fire and explosions lit the night. The eroded skyline crumbled more with every second. The orks purged entrenched positions by razing entire regions. Preco avoided the walkers and the heaviest concentrations of enemy forces, and Koorland saw how much the manoeuvre cost him.

‘You believe you are abandoning your brothers,’ Koorland said.

‘I understand the importance of the mission.’

‘Your understanding has no bearing on your instincts, brother.’

‘No,’ Preco said after a minute. ‘It does not.’

‘You are not abandoning them. They are buying us the chance of victory. If we fought for them now, we would be throwing away their effort.’

‘Their sacrifice, you mean.’

‘Yes. Their sacrifice. A price your Chapter Master is willing to pay. If we are successful, I hope we will bring an end to the cost. Whatever happens, he has my thanks, as do you.’

Preco gave him a curt nod. ‘As I said, I understand the necessity of this course of action. It is still difficult.’

I know what it is to lose brothers, Koorland thought. He said nothing. His losses did not matter in this moment. It was important that Preco express his unease in leaving the field while his company fought. Important to acknowledge that pain, so the Exemplar could focus all the more keenly on the goal ahead.

Take us to the primarch, Koorland thought, and we will end this war.

The Thunderhawks climbed. The inferno of Laccolith dropped away. Preco swung around the worst of the struggles, and even then, crackling anti-aircraft energy slashed at the gunship.

‘They want us contained as badly as we wish to hold them,’ Koorland said.

‘A good sign,’ said Preco.

They left Laccolith behind. They flew east, then angled north as they approached a plateau. Fires guttered below. Koorland caught a glimpse of a ruined wall. Another settlement below, then, passed too quickly to tell if anything remained of it.

Preco used the twin volcanoes as beacons. Sporadic fire continued to track them from the jungle.

‘They’ve left sentries,’ Preco said, veering sharply to starboard as another gun targeted them. ‘Since when do orks stay behind when the main army moves?’

‘Since Ardamantua. Since these greenskins arose. Expect the worst always, brother. I’ve seen the worst, and I still underestimate their tactical acumen.’

Honour’s Spear and Triumph of Himalazia passed over the scarred jungle and onto the rocky terrain beyond. Ahead, the night raged. Gun and cannon fire. Bursts of flame. There was war there, on a smaller scale than in Laccolith. But no less brutal. No less desperate.

Koorland hoped the orks were as desperate as they seemed. The force left behind would have been enough on its own to take a militia-defended city. When the flames rose high, Koorland saw the silhouettes of tanks, the rush of warbikes. A large mass of infantry.

The Thunderhawks drew nearer. The confused actions of the orks became clear. There was no front line. There was no position they were attacking, and no opposing army. There were circular movements. The orks centred their attacks on a point, and the point kept moving. It cut slashes of destruction through the ork formations. Massive concussions, greater than any artillery shell, rippled out from that point.

‘Is that…?’ Preco began. He spoke softly, awed by something that could not yet be seen.

‘It must be,’ Koorland said, just as quiet. ‘That is where we must strike.’

‘We can’t land.’

‘We are prepared.’ Koorland had ordered the two squads of the Last Wall to equip jump packs. ‘Come in as close and low as you can. We’ve had enough of attacking them from the outside. This is the epicentre. The enemy has expended great effort to keep us from there. Let the orks’ defeat begin with that failure.’

Preco dropped the nose of the gunship. The black shapes of the foothills rushed in.

Koorland voxed orders to the troops in both Thunderhawks. ‘Open the side doors. We jump into the midst of the cauldron.’

A line of energy cannons opened up at the foot of the last slope. They put up a coruscating wall of destruction.

‘They really don’t want us here,’ Preco grunted. Beams cut into the port side of the hull. Honour’s Spear slewed away, engines howling as Preco strained against the controls.

Smoke entered the cockpit. Koorland blinked through the squad readouts on his lenses. The runes were steady green across the board. To port, the Triumph of Himalazia was too close to the barrage. With no room to evade, it flew straight through the beams. Flames haloed its engines. It was flying, but dropping fast.

Preco looped the Spear around and pummelled the ground with autocannon rounds. A bright flash on the ground created a narrow gap. Preco took it. The gunship flew through the curtain of anti-air fire. It shuddered violently in flight. Koorland watched the yoke buck in Preco’s hands.

‘How long can you stay aloft?’

‘For as long as necessary. You’ll have air support.’

‘My thanks again, Brother Preco,’ Koorland said. He pulled the door of the cockpit open and joined the squad for the leap.

The Last Wall plunged to earth. The two squads leapt from the Thunderhawks, jet packs streaking fire. Their bolters were on full burst all the way down. They cut orks down during their flight, and landed with the force of vengeance. Koorland shattered the spine of a greenskin warrior, the impact of his mass and velocity snapping the brute’s armour. He stomped on the struggling ork’s head, crushing it against jagged volcanic rock.

The Last Wall created a crater of flesh. The squads stood in a hole in the midst of the horde. The orks had been charging a few dozen metres to the north. For a moment, there was still a wall of xenos might between Koorland and the moving target. Confusion took hold as the orks came under attack from two points in their midst. Some of them turned to face the Last Wall. Others stayed focused on their first enemy.

For a moment.

A few seconds during which Koorland knew, but could not see, that he had reached his target. He knew what he was about to encounter, but the knowledge had no true weight. There was no visceral understanding. There could not be. He was still on one side of the barrier that separates belief in a legend from its experience.

He fired into the orks separating him from the legend. He and his brothers charged into the mass.

Koorland began to cross the barrier.

The moments passed. Belief met reality, and the shockwave killed dozens of orks.

Something struck a battlewagon. Koorland could see the upper portions of the hull from his position. There was

the sound of a single blow and the vehicle stopped dead. The rear jerked upwards, as if the forward section had been driven into the ground. A concussion wave radiated outwards from the tank’s position. The battlewagon exploded. Orks flew through the air. Koorland staggered as the wave hit him, a sudden hurricane. The blow scythed the enemy before him.

The space ahead of the Last Wall was clear. Surrounded by bodies, lit by the flames of the burning tank, the legend was there.

Time stuttered. Koorland’s senses grappled with awe. His existence before his transformation into a Space Marine was a blank. The history of that earlier being was lost. So now, for the first time in his memory, he experienced what an unenhanced mortal felt at the sight of the Adeptus Astartes.

Vulkan was a colossus, more pillar than man. He was an icon carved of granite and night, immovable as a mountain, ferocious as lava. The deep green of his armour’s scales made him a reptile sprung from the dreams and fears of humanity’s past. The forged flames of its design made him the fire of a planet’s core. The skull of one beast adorned his shoulder guard. His cloak was the hide of another. He was a slayer of myth, and he was myth incarnate. His massive hammer pulsed and crackled with energy. Koorland could not imagine lifting it, never mind wielding it. He found it even more impossible to picture anything, be it ork, voidship or world, that could survive its strike.

It was all Koorland could do not to fall to his knees. He was not alone. He was surrounded by the stunned immobility of his battle-brothers.

They did not forget their training and leave themselves vulnerable to the enemy. They were frozen for the space of a single intake of breath, and the orks in their vicinity that still lived were incapacitated for much longer. But oh, the time of that breath stretched to infinity. Though Koorland had witnessed a moon open its jaws and roar, it was only now that he felt the true touch of the sublime. A breath, and his life was in a point of culmination. His existence was already divided into two irreconcilable halves by the destruction of the Imperial Fists. Now it broke in two again. This time, the far side of the crevasse was filled with the fiery light of glory.

The breath, and then war.

No words passed between Vulkan and the Last Wall. They would come later. Now there was the necessity of battle. Koorland looked up at the drake-helm and the infernal red of its lenses. Vulkan inclined his head in a nod. Then destruction came to the foothills of Caldera once more.

The orks closed in. They fought against a storm. The Last Wall formed a circle. They became a fist, a mailed gauntlet. The horde broke itself upon its spikes. Bolter shells punched through armour and flesh. Streams from flamers incinerated brutes who tried to close within melee distance. Monsters in piston-driven armour burned in their metal shells. They died standing, and became obstacles in the path of their kin.

Vulkan swung his hammer. Each blow was a meteor impact. The night flashed with the weapon’s wrath. The earth trembled before its power. Braced now, Koorland kept his footing. The orks struggled forwards but were swept back again and again, and each time their ranks thinned. The terrain itself began to change. The battle shattered hard ridges to dust. Rivers of blood poured over arid stone. The softer lines of broken bodies covered the jagged shapes of rock. The stench of death, burned and wet, reached through Koorland’s grille. His frame vibrated with the pounding beat of the hammer. His blood rejoiced, caught by the rhythm of righteous annihilation.

‘More!’ Vulkan bellowed at the orks. ‘Send more! Still more! Will you never be enough?’

The strength of twenty Space Marines and a single primarch shattered the orks’ assault. The force that had remained to fight Vulkan had contained him, but no more. The orks had been unable to achieve victory. Now they could not avoid defeat. As the infantry numbers diminished, the greenskins tried to conquer through swiftness. The vehicles had more room to move. They could pick up speed, or as much as the rough terrain would allow.

They died all the more quickly.

Squads of bikers roared by in strafing runs. Koorland and the Last Wall lowered their aim, stitching the sides of the bikes with shells. They blasted through wheels, exploded fuel tanks. They turned the bikes into somersaulting death traps. Rolling balls of steel and fire collided with other drivers. It was destruction built on destruction. Vulkan swung his hammer sideways. The blow went through a bike and its rider without stopping. The ork machine might have been made of air.

To Koorland’s astonishment, mortals joined in the fight. They were a small group, no more than a score. They wore ragged mining clothes and wielded lasrifles. They used the folds in the earth as cover, ducking down each time the hammer came down. They clutched the ground, weathering the wind and the shockwave, then popped up again to shoot at the orks. The few greenskins they brought down had no impact on the struggle. Their presence and their survival was a miracle. They fought for their planet when the only hope of victory lay in the hands of others.

They were a wonder.

Koorland looked at them with a kind of joy.

Four battlewagons circled the fight. Then they converged, riding over the ridges at such speed they almost overturned. Their turrets blazed at Vulkan. They were in each other’s line of fire, and stray shells fountained earth before them. Two of them were burning as they closed in. Koorland pulled a krak grenade from his belt. He turned his attention from the slaughtered infantry to assist, but the tanks were already there.

Vulkan disappeared in the nexus of shell bursts. The glare faded, revealing his massive form leaping at the nearest battlewagon. A mountain sailed through the air. He landed on the front of the tank and his boots drove through its armour. The vehicle veered to the left. Vulkan raised his hammer over his head with both hands and brought it down, crushing the upper turret. The shockwave made Koorland’s head ring. Metal cried in agony, and Vulkan was already charging at the next tank as the first exploded.

Koorland fought. He brought the enemy down. He was not distracted by Vulkan’s actions. Yet he bore witness. And afterwards, when he thought of the battle, he could barely remember his own role. There was room in his memories only for the sight of a primarch’s wrath.

Vulkan ran into a battlewagon at full speed. The impact halted the tank and its forward hull crumpled. The giant of myth took the vehicle apart with two blows, and their thunder was so huge, the ammunition blasts that followed were mere echoes.

The orks did not retreat. The last two battlewagons hurled themselves at the legend, and to oblivion. The legend was indestructible. The legend was bedrock and magma. He was tectonic strength and tectonic fury. Koorland had a vision of this world having given birth to its champion, of Caldera itself striking back at the orks in retaliation for the wounds it had suffered at their hands.

The storm passed. The enemy lay dead. The rounded, wide peak of the hill and the slopes on all sides were a vast open tomb. For the first time since the war began, Koorland looked upon defeated orks. The first small measure of justice for his slaughtered brothers had been exacted. Shattered and broken bones, all burned black, blended with each other in twists of pain. The flames in the corpses of vehicles burned low. Night returned, but not full dark. With the glare of war gone, a dimmer, more diffuse glow asserted itself. It came from the clouds. They reflected the glower from the craters of the volcanoes to the north.

And beyond them, much further, was the great bleeding of Caldera. The stolen crust still rose to the skies. At this distance, the huge masses were little more than angry red sparks falling upwards. But the light of their blood still reached this far.

The surviving mortals gathered behind Vulkan. There were fewer than when Koorland had first seen them. That any lived at all was almost beyond comprehension. They were an embodiment of hope.

Vulkan faced north. He removed his helm. His face was as dark as obsidian, hard as granite, noble as marble. His eyes were black with an anger more ferocious than the snarl of his helm. But when they turned to Koorland and the Last Wall, the anger was not for them. They were curious. And wary.

Koorland bowed low and dropped to one knee. So did all the brothers of the Last Wall.

‘Rise,’ Vulkan said, his voice deep as mountain roots. ‘I see the insignia of the Seventh Legion.’ He paused, frowning as if confused by the sight of the gathered warriors. Then he blinked. The frown passed as if the question had evaporated. ‘You are honoured sons of Dorn,’ he said.

Koorland stood.

‘I thank you for joining me in this struggle,’ said Vulkan. ‘Though I don’t imagine your presence is a coincidence.’

‘No, lord,’ Koorland answered. ‘We came in search of you.’

Vulkan cocked his head. ‘And you knew where to find me. I wonder how?’

‘Inquisitor Lastan Veritus told us where to look.’

‘Veritus.’ Vulkan spoke the name slowly. ‘I see.’ He looked thoughtful, not puzzled.

‘The Imperium has need of you, Lord Vulkan,’ Koorland said.

‘Does it.’ The primarch grunted. ‘I’m sure that is the belief.’ He raised his head, looking skywards as if he could see the stars. ‘I am doubtful. There will come a time when I must return.’ His voice was hollow. ‘There will come a war. This is not that time, or that war.’

‘Orks have stood in the Great Chamber of the Imperial Palace. An attack moon is in orbit over Terra. The worlds of the Imperium burn at the hands of an enemy who has made its home on Ullanor. If not now, if not for this war, then when?’

Vulkan’s eyes blazed. ‘Ullanor?’

Koorland nodded. He gestured to the warriors of the Last Wall. ‘Already, extreme measures have been necessary. The Successor Chapters to the Imperial Fists fight under a single command.’

‘Successor…’ Vulkan began. Again there was a moment of confusion, quickly dismissed. ‘Your command?’ he asked.

‘Yes. It is my burden and my honour as the last Imperial Fist.’

Vulkan’s eyes hardened. ‘Explain yourself.’

‘On Ardamantua, the orks exterminated my Chapter. Only I survived.’

Vulkan looked off into the distance. Koorland wondered what grim mysteries the primarch contemplated.

‘Ullanor,’ Vulkan said again. Deep beneath his calm, Koorland heard a stream of pain. The world’s name would be a more terrible echo of triumph turned to ashes for the primarch than for any other living human. ‘The Emperor destroyed the ork empire on that world.’ Though Vulkan spoke quietly, his voice still resonated through Koorland’s frame.

‘Now they have returned,’ Koorland said. ‘And threaten to destroy the Emperor’s work.’

Vulkan turned his attention to the other Space Marines. ‘Tell me who you are.’

‘We are the Last Wall,’ Eternity said. ‘We answered the call of Chapter Master Koorland. Terra will not fall on our watch, and the Imperial Fists will not vanish.’

‘So,’ Vulkan said to Koorland, ‘you maintain your charge, and rebuild that which has been shattered.’

‘I must.’

‘Yes. I have known your burden.’ He nodded to himself. ‘So. Tell me what you wish of me.’

‘Other Chapters are gathering on Terra as we speak.’ Koorland hoped that was true. ‘Lead us all to Ullanor. Under your command, we will destroy the Beast.’ He gestured to the Thunderhawks coming in to land. ‘We can depart immediately.’

‘No,’ said Vulkan.

Koorland tried to articulate a response. He had imagined not finding Vulkan. He had been forced to imagine the possibility of another defeat. He had not imagined the primarch’s refusal. His awe began to give way to anger.

Vulkan spoke again before Koorland could retort. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I accept Terra’s need. I will never turn from my duty to my Father. But my duty is here too.’ He raised his arm. He pointed north, to the distant pulse of a world being taken apart. ‘I will not abandon Caldera. I swore an oath to protect it, and that oath is a thousand years old.’

‘Lord Vulkan,’ Eternity said, ‘there is little time.’

‘There never is. That changes nothing.’

‘Will you sacrifice Terra for Caldera?’

Vulkan stared at Eternity. The fire of his gaze was cold, and as hard as judgement. He took a single step to the right, putting the mortals in Eternity’s direct line of sight. ‘You have seen the people of this world. You have seen them fight. You have seen their spirit. Will you abandon them?’

‘No,’ Koorland said. ‘We will not.’ The primarch was right. To abandon the spirit shown on Caldera to oblivion would be a crime. ‘We will fight for Caldera, and we will fight for Terra.’

Vulkan’s judgement turned his way, and Koorland experienced his second victory of the day.

‘Yes,’ Vulkan said. ‘I have seen the calculus of expediency. I have seen its cost. And its corruption. This world too is the Imperium. We will not save the Emperor’s work by consigning a portion of it to destruction. That is the wrong sort of sacrifice. One that is not for us to make.’

‘Lead us, lord,’ said Koorland. ‘We will follow.’

Sacrifice, Zerberyn thought. He stood in the librarium of the Dantalion. Around him were the chronicles of the Fists Exemplar. Tomes and parchment and data-slates reached back a millennium and more, to the very founding of the Chapter. Zerberyn was in the midst of recorded honour and pride, struggle and victory. And sacrifice.

He thought of the sacrifices he and his brothers had made over the centuries. He thought of their recent ones. And he thought of the sacrifice he had imposed on others. On other loyal servants of the Imperium. And upon its citizens.

He was before the great armourglass viewport of the librarium. It was a tall oval, reaching from deck to ceiling. The battle-barge’s position would have been a low-anchor orbit over Prax, if Prax still existed. Zerberyn gazed at the emptiness that was his work, the nothing that was his burnt offering upon the altar of victory.

My crime, he thought.

His chest burned with guilt and anger.

‘That is a lesson,’ said a hard voice. It grated like an iron door. It seemed to carry its own echo, as though there were two speakers, the second voice coming from within the first, slithering into the real from a squirming abyss.

Zerberyn looked over his shoulder as Kalkator walked down the central aisle of the librarium. The Iron Warrior stopped a few paces away.

‘You’re returning to your ship?’ Zerberyn ignored what Kalkator had said. It was too close to a thought he had had been struggling to repress.

‘We are. I believe we are of one mind on matters of immediate strategy.’

‘Yes.’ Kalkator and his command squad had come aboard after the death of Prax for joint planning. The short-term necessities were clear. The original purpose in coming to Prax had not been achieved. Both ships still needed repair.

‘I’m sure you have doubts.’

Zerberyn grunted. ‘You might say that.’

Doubts? How could he have anything but doubts? Unthinkable events were succeeding each other without pause. Traitor Space Marines walked the corridors of a vessel commanded by the sons of Dorn. They were not prisoners. They were not under guard. They had been invited, and they left freely.

And now the Fists Exemplar were going to follow the Traitors. Kalkator had made contact with an outpost under Iron Warriors control. Communications were fragmentary, but it appeared the planetoid had not yet come under ork attack. It was the best destination, despite a journey through the warp that would be longer than ideal, given the damage to the vessels. Kalkator said he could guarantee safe harbour for the Fists Exemplar. Zerberyn could not offer that from an Imperial base.

He wondered if even his ship alone could approach such a port with impunity. He thought not. Not now.

‘Are you questioning your choice?’ Kalkator asked.

‘Of our destination?’

‘No.’ Kalkator nodded to the viewport. ‘Of your actions.’

He should turn his back on the traitor. He should not answer at all. If he must answer, he should say No. Whatever that implied, at least it would not reveal indecision. Doubt. Weakness. Instead, he obeyed the spirit of the perverse, and he confided in Kalkator.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How could I not?’

To Zerberyn’s surprise, he was glad of his response.

‘Exactly,’ Kalkator said. ‘How could you not?’ His scarred lips parted in a grim smile. He was a gargoyle, and worse. Zerberyn had seen him fight. He knew the brutality that lurked within the Iron Warrior. But the smile was one of understanding. ‘What were your options?’ Kalkator continued. ‘Kill your allies, or leave the world to the orks.’

‘The choice was impossible.’

‘Yet you made the correct one. The orks have lost a world, along with resources and supplies.’

Zerberyn glanced at the absence of Prax. ‘The population…’ he began. He stopped when he heard Kalkator snort.

‘What of them? Are they better off dead than under the orks?’ It was clear Kalkator found Zerberyn’s expression of concern ridiculous. His logic, though, was sound. ‘Die quickly or slowly. Those were their options. You gave them mercy.’ He snorted. ‘They were weak and didn’t deserve it. You were generous.’

‘The choice was impossible,’ Zerberyn agreed, trying to quieten his doubts.

‘I believe you have a better understanding of us now, then.’

‘What do you mean?’

Kalkator’s smile turned bitter. ‘You should come aboard the Palimodes. Peruse our librarium. Enlighten yourself. Learn the history of the Fourth Legion. It is a chronicle of impossible choices and thankless wars. While the other Legions reaped the glory and the murals, we struggled in the mud. Again and again and again, the hard decisions and sacrifice. Always sacrifice. And for what? Tell me honestly. You just struck an important blow for the Imperium. Do you expect gratitude?’

The answer came easily. ‘No.’

‘Condemnation, perhaps?’

Again, no hesitation. ‘Yes.’ He had ordered the killing of loyal forces.

‘And were you wrong?’

‘No.’ To his shock, even this answer was easy. No, he was not wrong. There had not truly been a choice at all. He had done what the war had made necessary. His doubts became anger at the injustice of being condemned for preserving the Imperium.

‘No, you were not wrong,’ said Kalkator. ‘And neither were we, time after time after time, until we finally realised our sacrifices were meaningless.’ He seemed about to say something else. Instead, he shook his head. ‘I must return to the Palimodes. We will speak again.’

Kalkator left. Zerberyn watched him go, thinking of sacrifice, feeling his anger grow into rage. Just before Kalkator disappeared through the librarium door, Zerberyn thought he heard the Iron Warrior’s voice once more. He could not have, because the sound seemed to be at his shoulder. It was less than a whisper, and more profound than a shout. It was a single word.

Brother.

Eight

Caldera — The Ascia Rift

‘They need more time?’ He was bleeding. His ship was bleeding. Rodolph started to laugh. Pain ripped through his torso and he stopped. At least his vision cleared again.

Groth was in vox-contact with Weylon Kale. ‘Yes, admiral,’ she said. ‘The shipmaster has heard from Chapter Master Koorland. They have made contact with the primarch.’ While she spoke, she kept her eyes on the tacticarium screens and the oculus. Another Mechanicus ship exploded, taking an ork attack ship with it but leaving a gap in the Finality’s flanking escort. ‘Full fire starboard,’ Groth ordered.

Rodolph reached for the vox-unit. ‘Shipmaster Kale,’ he said, ‘why is the strike force not extracting?’

‘The campaign is not finished,’ Kale answered. ‘The primarch is leading an assault to take Caldera back from the orks.’

Impossible, Rodolph thought. He stopped himself before speaking. He realised he was confronting two different impossibilities in Kale’s words. Purging the world of this ork army was one. Before long, the greenskins would destroy what was left of the Imperial fleet. Then there would be nothing to prevent overwhelming reinforcements from reaching planetside. The second impossibility was the presence of Vulkan.

He has been found. Rodolph had believed in the necessity of the mission. He had not believed in its success.

Vulkan has been found.

The impossible was true. His duty, therefore, was simple. He looked at Groth, who was waiting for him to perform that duty. He had no doubt she would have him declared unfit if he did not. She would be right to do so.

‘Tell Chapter Master Koorland we fight until victory,’ Rodolph told Kale.

‘Gladly. The Emperor guide your hand, admiral.’

Rodolph straightened. His heart skipped and hammered, strained by the stimms, yet he felt stronger. He swallowed his blood, tasting iron, tasting determination.

An ork ram ship punched through the corvette Sainted Blade. The Blade’s midsection disintegrated, her remains exploding just as the greenskin vessel was leaving the corpse behind. The blast was too much for the ram ship’s weaker rear shielding. Explosions worked their way forwards along its hull. The ork ship maintained its course for the Finality’s superstructure even as it began to come apart. It streaked over the battleship’s stern and travelled over the hull, slowing but inexorable.

‘Raise the bow!’ Rodolph shouted.

There was no evasion possible. He had his choice of disasters. He sought the lesser one.

The Finality lifted. Rodolph watched the oculus. The movement was imperceptible at first. The ram ship ate up the distance to the superstructure. Too slow, the admiral thought. He braced for the fire and the end.

Visible movement. Graceful. Massive. So gradual. The ram ship’s flight was low, very low. The spires of the hull made contact with the belly of the ork vessel. That was enough. Its nose dropped. Barely more than a fireball of travelling metal, it came down onto the Finality’s hull, striking a few hundred metres from the base of the superstructure.

Rodolph held the command pulpit and leaned against it just before impact. He remained standing as the hammer blow resounded through the battleship. The depth of the tremors told him how deep the wound was. The oculus showed everything forward of the superstructure disappear in the expanding firestorm. Across the bridge, the dull voices of servitors overlapped as they called out damage reports. Groth, face grim, tapped at the tacticarium screens until a clear summary emerged. Rodolph watched the casualty figures hit the tens of thousands and keep climbing. Power was down across two-thirds of the ship. The void shields collapsed. For close to half a minute they remained down, and ork cannon shells opened more gaps in the armour. When they returned, the shields were at less than forty per cent of their strength.

A rent half a kilometre wide had been torn in the hull. Atmosphere poured into the void. Bulkheads could not seal. Amidships, the top ten decks vented completely.

Still the casualty numbers climbed. Vacuum killed some fires. Others kept spreading, finding more air to burn. Rank upon rank of weapon batteries went dead.

‘Steering?’ Rodolph asked.

‘We still have it,’ said Groth. ‘Barely.’

And he was still standing, breathing and thinking. Still commanding. Barely. That would suffice too.

‘Maintain course for the greenskins’ moon,’ Rodolph said. He took a rattling breath. He vowed he would remain conscious until his vessel’s dissolution. ‘Keep them worried.’

Laccolith groaned with war. It burned. It cried out to wrathful night.

The Fists Exemplar split up, racing along the sides of the avenue towards the walkers. The Mechanicus guns angled their beams towards the monsters’ heads. Along the rooftops of the buildings that still stood, and on the crests of rubble mounds, the skitarii gathered and attacked the ork infantry. The walkers fired to the left and right, bringing down more structures. The power of the ork machines was overwhelming. Yet there could be no retreat from them. There was only attack.

We fight for time, Thane told himself, conscious of how little remained to him. Each second is a victory.

Then the walkers stopped firing. They took a step back. Thane blinked. It was as if the leviathans were retreating before the Fists Exemplar.

‘Chapter Master…’ Aloysian said.

‘I know, brother.’

The walkers turned around. Footstep by thunderous footstep, they headed back down the grand avenue. Beyond them came the snarl of vehicle engines pushed to the limit. The infantry was on the run. The orks were leaving Laccolith faster than they had arrived.

‘How can this be a retreat?’ said Aloysian.

‘It isn’t.’ Thane understood. ‘They’re racing to stop the Last Wall.’

The Honour’s Spear and Triumph of Himalazia flew between the Ascia Rift’s guardian volcanoes. Lava flowed sullenly down the slopes of the peaks. Their eruptions were a slow, constant release of pressure, preventing greater cataclysm. Beyond them, the rift opened up. It was a canyon thousands of metres deep, and less than two thousand across at its widest point. The Ascia valley floor was bright with the light of xenos industry.

Koorland stood with Vulkan at the open side door of the Thunderhawk. His eyes widened as the gunships dropped lower and the details of the construction became clearer. ‘Have they done this only since the assault began?’

Vulkan nodded. ‘I would have known, otherwise. They must have used more troops here than in the invasion itself.’

‘Did they know you were here?’

The idea the orks knew more about the location of the primarch than did the Adeptus Astartes was appalling. He forced himself to ask it. He must not consider anything beyond the reach of this enemy.

‘Not before they arrived, I think. I was aware of something happening in this region first. Then the attack on Laccolith began.’

‘The invasion was a distraction?’

‘An effort to keep me from here, at the least. A successful one until now.’

Koorland felt the scale of the conflict and the tactics on Caldera sink in further. Millions of orks deployed to counter a single warrior. And the orks had known to do this.

‘Still lower,’ he voxed Preco. ‘Get their attention.’

The ork facility occupied the full width of the rift. It ran for dozens of kilometres north and south. Conduits, each ten metres thick, plunged into the bedrock and ran into power junctions the size of manufactoria. Chimneys rose half the height of the canyon. They spewed smoke and ash. Their mouths glowed red. Koorland stared. He pointed. ‘Are those chimneys doing what I think they are?’

‘Yes,’ Vulkan replied. ‘They are dagger wounds in the flesh of Caldera.’ His anger smouldered like the magmatic light from the chimneys. ‘The orks have pierced the crust. They are using the energy of this world to power its own destruction.’

Even more immense conduits ran from the junctions towards a towering central point in the distance. The grand nexus was twice again as big as the other structures. To Koorland’s eyes, it was simultaneously manufactorium and a single machine. Its conical form suggested the ork versions of the Titans, but many orders of magnitude larger. It had extrusions resembling arms, but instead of cannons, the articulations released energy one moment, and in the next fed the searing light back inside its metal walls.

Pulsing arteries of incandescent blue and green and white ran from the nexus and up the rift walls. Koorland followed them with his eyes. Lining the top of the canyon, at the end of each line of power, were flaring, arcing points. After some flashes, he could just make out the shapes of huge energy coils.

Everywhere he looked, he saw the generation and deployment of inconceivable force. The engineering violated any principles he knew, yet it worked.

‘What is this?’ he finally asked.

‘The means of murder,’ Vulkan said. ‘Power is created and controlled here. It flows north.’

Koorland understood. ‘This is part of their gravity weapon.’

It was how the orks were taking Caldera apart and sending its pieces up to become part of the attack moon. The technology required a planetside base as well as the device used on the orbital base. The orks were not simply lashing the planet with their gravitic whips. They were controlling the ascent of the masses.

‘You will doubtless see more evidence of the crime further to the north,’ said Vulkan.

The passage of the two Thunderhawks was rapid, and it took several seconds for the orks to react. Turrets sprang to life across the installation. Vehicles and troops mobilised in the spaces between structures and conduits. Preco dared the fire and took the Honour’s Spear even lower, flying between chimneys. The anti-air fire was cautious by ork standards. They were taking care not to destroy their great machine.

It was moments later, with the nexus looming closer, that Koorland learned just how fast the orks were reacting to the incursion. Thane contacted him on the command network. ‘The orks are pulling out of Laccolith,’ he said. ‘They’re heading back north at full speed.’

‘Good,’ said Koorland. ‘They’re afraid of what we’ll do.’ The huge moves of the game were occurring once more. An entire army mobilising to deal with two aircraft. At last, the Imperium had the initiative in the war, forcing the orks into a reactive mode.

‘We are in pursuit,’ said Thane.

‘Good.’ Koorland relayed the news to Vulkan, then contacted Arouar. He described the installation.

‘Impressive,’ the tech-priest dominus said. ‘The possibilities it offers are considerable.’

‘Not for data collection,’ said Koorland. ‘The only focus here is the pursuit of victory. I hope there is no chance for misunderstanding.’

There was a slight pause. Then Arouar said, ‘None.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Any contribution the Mechanicus can make would be welcome.’

There was no pause this time. Koorland thought Arouar was speaking more quickly, the pace of his inflectionless words increasing with excitement. ‘We are a long way from having mastered the gravitic technology of the Veridi giganticus. Nonetheless, we know enough for me to hypothesise an intervention. It is the primarch’s purpose to break the Veridi control over the weapon?’

‘It is.’

‘Then I urge you, Lord Commander, not to destroy the installation itself. We will attempt a field experiment.’

‘Thank you, dominus. I know you will reward our trust.’

‘We will, Lord Commander.’

The nexus loomed closer, a hulk of dark metal, furnace blasts of flame, and explosive energy. The Thunderhawks came in even lower, below the range of movement of many of the turrets. They angled away from the front of the nexus, heading for the eastern edge of the installation, then turned north again just before the cliffs.

Vulkan looked at Koorland. ‘Fight well, son of Dorn,’ he said. ‘Your actions honour his name, and I will tell him so.’ He stepped out of the door before Koorland could ask him what he meant.

The primarch dropped into the night, a dark meteor of noble wrath.

Vulkan hit the earth fifty metres from the nearest conduit. He was in the darkness outside the installation, and the searchlights were all trained on the departing gunships. The rumble of industry and the bedrock groans it elicited from Caldera had covered the sound of his impact. He crouched in the small crater of his landing, motionless as a boulder, and waited. The conduits rose from the rock for twenty metres, then ran straight into the nexus. Its near wall was half a kilometre away. He caught glimpses of the ork forces mobilising for its defence as they passed underneath the conduits. Their numbers were difficult to gauge from his position, but he knew they would be high, and the physical defences of the nexus would be considerable. The orks had devastated a continent to keep him from the rift. The most sensitive point in the canyon would be protected like nothing else in the system except the attack moon itself.

The Thunderhawks passed from his sight. The wait stretched. Vulkan was patient. He could wait centuries for the fated moment of action. On this night, though, he felt the impatience of anger. The moment of Caldera’s salvation approached, but still the planet bled, still the monstrous act of engineering continued.

But it ends tonight. Let that suffice for now. And it did. He must wait for the necessary turn of the war, and so he would. He found his way back to calm through his anger. He had much practice in this. Necessary calm was forged and tempered as surely as any weapon, and hardened into cold, unbreakable steel.

Over the centuries, Vulkan had not been unaware of the currents at work in the Imperium. The divisions, the corruption, the Emperor’s dream turning black with ash. Vulkan’s disgust vied for pre-eminence with his grief. When Terra called for help, it was hard for him to hear his Father’s voice. He heard the cries of politicians, of petty connivers and their toxic power games.

Father, don’t you see what is happening? Why do you do nothing?

But the orks had returned to Ullanor. That was grave beyond the comprehension of any Terran mortal.

Then there was Koorland. In his voice, Vulkan heard something better than the squalling of the High Lords. He did hear the echo of his Father, in Koorland’s absolute allegiance to preserving the work of the Emperor. The last Imperial Fist had come to Caldera at the head of a force that united Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, the Mechanicus and the Imperial Guard. There was unity of purpose, and commitment to that purpose. And Koorland was capable of seeing that this purpose extended beyond immediate, rigidly defined goals. Vulkan declared that Caldera must be saved, and Koorland agreed. He agreed because he understood why this was necessary. Vulkan saw something precious in the new Chapter Master. Emerging from destruction, he had forged something strong. Koorland embodied a form of hope.

So Vulkan waited, and he prepared for the final battle for Caldera, and the greater war that waited beyond.

The Thunderhawks dropped the squads of the Last Wall at the northern end of the installation, flew on, then turned back to provide air support, joined by Hemisphere in the Deathblow. Koorland began the assault on the installation’s defences.

The wall was high and many metres thick. It was a patchwork of iron, plates and girders slapped together with speed and so much excess that the barrier would have stopped almost any artillery barrage. The Ascia Rift narrowed again here, and the ground rose steeply, choking off the canyon for several kilometres before opening up again. A large force would be caught in a bottleneck, movements hampered, working against itself.

Against the squads of the Adeptus Astartes, the wall was worse than meaningless. It was a liability. They punched their way through its base with melta charges. The Thunderhawks and the Storm Eagle hammered its ramparts with assault cannons, tearing apart the first of the ork defenders. The gunships strafed the wall repeatedly, holding the greenskins’ attention and preventing them from dealing with the threat below. In less than a minute, the Space Marines were inside the wall, out of reach of the enemy. The cannon fusillades continued, drawing the horde to that point, to the visible threat, away from the control nexus.

‘Minimise the damage to the wall,’ Koorland ordered the gunship pilots. ‘We want to keep it intact.’ It had been built to keep attackers outside the facility. Now it would keep the orks inside.

Two more melta bombs, and the tunnel was complete. Its sides glowed, still half-molten, as the squads reached the downslope exit they had created. Before them, the orks were already massed in the thousands. The canyon was wider on this side of the wall, though still narrow enough to reduce the orks’ advantage of numbers. The horde was deep and furious, a river of brute energy flowing between the towering conduits and sparking generators. The orks met the Last Wall with a hail of shells and fire.

Koorland and the front row crouched to give their brothers behind a clear field of fire. His squad sent focused streams of bolter fire into the foe. At the same time, Aloysian used his plasma cutter servo-arm to begin a second tunnel that began at right angles to the first, then turned south again to create a second exit. Both squads hit the orks, turning foot soldiers to bloody pulp as fast as they ran up. The orks had small targets. The Space Marines had a tide of xenos flesh before them. Every shot hit.

‘No heavy vehicles,’ Eternity grunted. He exchanged magazines so smoothly there was no interruption to the rhythm of his fire.

‘Not yet,’ said Koorland. ‘Hard to bring them forwards on this slope. They’ll be waiting for us further down.’

‘And for once they’ll be trying to move around structures they don’t want to damage.’

‘Exactly. Let them wait, or come to us.’

The orks closed in on the wall. The mass of infantry reached its base. The Space Marines pulled back a few steps inside the tunnels. The orks had no line of fire without exposing themselves. They took the risk. The greenskins charged the breaches again and again, dying every time. The war became a portrait of grinding immobility. Blood flowed over the rocky ground, and bodies burned. Deeper into the facility, engines roared with frustration. Guns beyond Koorland’s sight launched shells to no effect. They could not come close enough for targets, and the orks still believed they must preserve their wall.

Keep believing that, Koorland thought. Until we’re ready to destroy you with truth.

Vulkan waited. He was an unmoving shadow in the night, a stone among many. He read the flow of the green tide. He heard combat break out to the north. The howls of the orks moved further and further in that direction.

Vulkan waited. He was part of the landscape. There was no threat to the orks here. They had no reason to linger. The danger came from Koorland. The greenskins must protect their great machine from the enemy knocking on the wall.

Vulkan waited. Minutes passed. They turned into an hour. Combat raged, and he took no part, the better to prepare a terrible blow.

Vulkan waited. He thought about the main force of orks in Laccolith. He visualised the brutalised landscape between the city and the Ascia Rift. He pictured the news of the attack on the installation reaching the army. The response. The desperate drive back. He calculated the time of arrival. He listened to Koorland’s updates on the battle. Eventually, the orks would decide to bring down their wall. He found the balance between the charge coming from the south and the siege in the north. He located the fulcrum of the war. The point upon which a hammer would shatter a blade with a single blow.

Vulkan struck.

Nine

Caldera — The Ascia Rift

Vulkan rushed the gate of the command nexus. He held the great hammer Doomtremor high over his head. Alarms whooped with savage, rusted voices as he approached. The immense cone shimmered, its shape flickering and distorting as its protective force field pulsed and surged. Within the field, before the gate, a line of orks in heavy armour raised chainaxes. They braced for combat, but their jaws were open in mocking laughter. They did not expect a lone human to pass through the field.

Vulkan hit the invisible barrier with all his velocity, all his mass, and all the strength of his hammer. The orks learned that energy itself could scream. The force field flashed white. The shriek of a hundred tortured generators pierced the air. Vulkan raised Doomtremor with both hands then brought it down again before the glare had faded. The shield howled red, then violet. The orks at the gate covered their eyes, dazzled by the brutality of light.

Vulkan was relentless. With each blow of the hammer, the earth shook. Thunder cracked reality into hard, broken edges. The shockwave radiated across the installation. Conduits crumpled at its passage. They burst, spewing geysers of fire.

Boom. Boom. Boom. The beat of judgement, of the end of feral empires. Vulkan swung, channelling all his fury. He swung, and he was the anger of Caldera. His cloak billowed in the hurricane of his creation. He swung, and half a kilometre away, the tremors unleashed by his wrath felled a chimney. The tower swayed. At its base, stone crumbled and iron snapped. The chimney came down, dropping vertically and then forward, crushing generators below it. The night exploded with unleashed, coruscating energy. Lava flowed from the shattered base, spreading across the canyon floor. A dull orange-red glow lit the sides of surrounding structures.

The damage spread, but the nexus resisted. The power in the installation did not falter. Vulkan had not expected it would. Ork construction piled excess upon redundancy. It would take an even greater cataclysm than this to destroy the great machine. Control was what he would wrest from the hands of the orks.

Strike. Strike. Strike. A terrible accumulation, the rhythm unbreakable as the laws of the universe. At the edge of his vision, Vulkan saw orks rushing at him. The greater part of the defenders were at the wall, dealing with Koorland’s incursion. Perhaps now they had realised they had been diverted. Perhaps they would turn from that battle and head back towards the centre of the complex. They would be too late to disrupt his attack. Those who remained were too few to make a difference. They were not even a distraction. The shockwaves knocked them back. The tremors hurled them to the ground.

Doomtremor flashed, its rage the extension of Vulkan’s soul, and it shattered the force field. A prismatic explosion surrounded the nexus. The gigantic arms jerked, their energy arcs rising to the clouds in their agony. A cluster of explosions opened a rent along the top third of the cone. The night became a howling strobe of light and dark. The installation roared. An invader had breached its defences. A great danger had come.

Vulkan had come.

He strode forward. Each step was grounded. He felt the heart of Caldera reach up through his feet, through his body. The world embraced its avenger.

The orks charged. They were as tall as Vulkan and even more massive in their armour.

‘This world is under my protection,’ he snarled. ‘Trouble it no more.’

He swung the hammer sideways. One blow was enough. Armour shattered like eggshells. Bodies burst and burned.

Behind him, howls of distress and anger from more defenders, too few and too late. The chorus of alarm engulfed the complex. It was the fanfare of xenos defeat.

The primarch stood before the gate. He slammed the hammer against its centre. The iron slab, ten metres high, flew apart.

Vulkan entered the nexus. It was composed of a single vast space, a cathedral of riotous technology. Banks of coils the size of plasma drives rose toward the inner peak. Energy arced between them, creating a crackling web intense enough to fry half a continent. Huge cables from the exterior fuelled the banks with still more energy, while conduits fed the heat of Caldera’s mantle to the machine. At the centre of the cone was a pillar half the height of the structure, and fifty metres wide. It supported the control mechanisms. Scores of orks moved back and forth between monumental levers and dials. A huge greenskin engineer stood above them all on a dais, surrounded by a tangle of sparking machinery. There, Vulkan thought, was the heart of Caldera’s martyrdom. That was what he had come to destroy.

He took in the disposition of the nexus and his target in a fraction of a second. The ork engineer evaluated him in the same moment. Vulkan took a step forward, and the inner defences activated.

The turrets had a precision Vulkan had never encountered in orks before. The need to preserve the control nexus governed their function. They caused no damage to the machinery. There were dozens of them, and they all fired on the primarch. If their rotation brought the precious mechanisms within their line of fire, they fell silent until their guns had a clear bead on the primarch once more.

They hit him with a torrent of energy beams. The concentrated strength of a gas giant’s thunderstorm exploded against his chest. It forced him to take a full step back. He planted his legs and leaned into the attack. His breastplate began to glow. Lightning surrounded him as he moved forward against power that would have incinerated a Leman Russ. One step, then another. He held Doomtremor before him. It absorbed many of the hits, its head flaring and sending the excess energy outward. Vulkan directed it at the engineer. The ork’s personal force field flashed in turn. The beast raged as the onslaught did no more than slow the primarch.

Vulkan advanced. His armour’s interior temperature rocketed upward. He was inside an active volcano. A mortal’s flesh would have started to burn. He marched on, implacable, a continental plate on the move. He passed between the immense coils. He was midway towards the pillar.

He realised the ork engineer was not shouting. It was laughing. The beast pulled a lever.

The weight of a planet fell on his shoulders. He withstood the crushing force for several seconds, and then it brought him to his knees. The ork had turned the gravity weapon against him. The greenskin hurled mountains at the sky, and now it forced Vulkan down. His lungs flattened. Drawing a breath was an act of supreme strength. He growled, denying the force that sought to grind his bones to dust. He would not capitulate. He would rise. He would advance.

A power that had destroyed worlds held him fast.

Then it reversed.

He flew upward. The invisible hand whipped him against the slanted wall near the top of the cone and the impact dented the metal beneath him. Unseen mountain walls came together with him in between. His arms were flat against the surface. He strained to bring them forward. It was all he could do to keep his grip on Doomtremor. The ork laughed again, adjusted the controls, and slammed Vulkan to the floor, a meteor slaved to the greenskin’s will. Before Vulkan could get his bearings, he was flying once more. The battering and speed blurred his sense. Whether he was smashed against the wall or the floor, the crushing never relented. It grew stronger. He felt the crack of bones.

He was trapped in the fist of Caldera, the planet’s own strength turned against its will to destroy its defender.

The command nexus was visible from the wall. The structure was kilometres away, but its bulk loomed over everything around it. Now it flashed and pulsed. It cried out under the primarch’s assault. The orks reacted to its agony. The paused in their struggle to reach the breached defences. Koorland’s force kept up their bolter fire, killing dozens more in the moment of the pause. The orks milled about in momentary confusion, then began to retreat down the slope. They turned their back on the Last Wall.

‘They realise we are a diversion,’ Aloysian voxed.

‘Then we must be more than that,’ Koorland answered, speaking to the full squads. ‘The primarch must complete his mission. Ours is to keep the orks away from the nexus. We must be the threat they cannot ignore. Stop them, brothers. At any cost.’

With a roar, the Last Wall charged from the tunnels. The Thunderhawks and Storm Eagle flew low down the rise, cannons and missiles hitting deep into the ork ranks, angling in for runs at the tanks. The two squads of veterans ploughed into the enemy rearguard. ‘Forward!’ Koorland shouted. ‘We are the gladius! Stab it into the heart of the foe.’

Bolter fire annihilated the flesh ahead of him. The squad formation was narrow: two warriors abreast, sending punishing fire out on all sides. They were running downhill, with the urgency of desperate rage. The greenskins fell like chaff in the wind, before them and to either side. For a few more seconds, the orks tried to ignore the Space Marines, but too many were dying. Their speed was hampered by their numbers. The Last Wall moved faster by killing obstacles. Koorland’s double gladius strike sank deeper and deeper into the horde.

The orks began to turn again. The wound was too deep for them to ignore. The green tide sought to close over the heads of the Space Marines.

Koorland slowed to a stop. With bolter and chainsword he killed his way through muscle and iron. His foes lost distinction. It was as if he fought a single ork, killing it endlessly. He fought according the needs of each second. Block a descending axe with his blade. Shoot the brute through the chest. Turn and blast another through the head as it tried to flank him. Absorb the blow on his right. Retaliate with chainsword grinding through chest and heart.

The rage of the orks grew. Perhaps their desperation too. The infantry close in began to drop, killed by the gunfire of the ranks behind. A hail of heavy-calibre bullets pounded the squads. A rocket struck the ground a few metres to the right. It was almost a direct hit on Absolution. The blast shattered his helm and he staggered, his face badly burned. Eternity supported him and he kept fighting.

‘Brothers,’ Koorland called, ‘we fight for a greater purpose and a greater victory. Hold the foe, and the primarch will save Caldera. Salvation here means salvation for Terra. And that is a victory beyond sacrifice!’

As he spoke, he felt the truth was speaking through him. Sacrifice was a given in the existence of the Adeptus Astartes. It was the inevitable end of duty. There was no regret in such an end, but there was in meaningless sacrifice. That was no small part of the shadow of Ardamantua. The Imperial Fists had been thrown away. Their annihilation had served no purpose beyond the amusement of the Beast.

So he had thought.

He saw a different truth now. One whose reality was not assured, but he would willingly die to make it a certainty. He saw a chain leading from Ardamantua: the disaster becoming the means of uniting the Successors, the lesson he learned there fuelling his determination to call the other Chapters to Terra. Link after link of steel purpose, leading to this moment on Caldera. If he fell now but Vulkan succeeded, the defence of the Imperium would be taken up by the legend it needed. If his sacrifice led to the purge of the orks from Ullanor, that would be a reason to rejoice.

‘Fight for Vulkan!’ Koorland exhorted. ‘His victory will be the Imperium’s salvation!’

He stormed into the ork fire, slamming into the body of the horde again. He smashed a foot soldier to the ground, crushed its skull with his boots and decapitated the next ork beyond. And then, coming up the slope, he saw a trio of hulking shapes. They were boxy, clanking monstrosities bristling with weapons and mechanical arms. They were grotesque xenos mockeries of Dreadnoughts, and they had come to accept Koorland’s sacrifice.

The Adeptus Mechanicus forces split off to the east and west at the volcanic gateway to the Ascia Rift. They escorted heavy, treaded transports. Arouar had mobilised them from the space port as soon as Koorland had reported on the installation. The Fists Exemplar and the combined regiments of the Astra Militarum pursued the orks through the gap between the mountains. Thane called a halt at the top of the descent into the rift. Below, the vastness of the ork horde poured into the valley. Kilometres in the distance, flashes of tortured energy marked the nexus.

The orks were rushing for the vulnerable centre of their machine, the centre they must attack but not destroy. In their rush to bring down the intruders, they demolished their own defensive wall. Past that barrier, though, they were forced into more cautious manoeuvres. The super-heavy vehicles had slowed to a stop as they reached the first of the conduits. The battlefortresses moved slowly through the narrow avenues of the facility. The giant walkers, too wide to pass without uprooting the clusters of pipes or crushing the walls of power plants, halted at the edge. They turned around to guard the approach into the rift, becoming the new line of defence. Beyond them, the smaller vehicles and infantry swarmed forward.

The entirety of the ork army had entered the Ascia Rift. The war hinged on a moment of enormous risk and opportunity.

‘They must be held,’ said Thane. ‘No reinforcements to the north wall. They must not retake the command centre, and they must not leave the canyon until Dominus Arouar has control of the gravity weapon.’

‘We are well positioned for an artillery strike,’ General Imren voxed.

Thane shared her eagerness for retaliation on a massive scale. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We need the weapon operational. Damage must be contained. We will neutralise their Titans.’

‘Then we will deal with the rest.’

‘The battle will not be won on the floor of the rift,’ Thane told her. The mortals should labour under no illusions. The orks outnumbered and outgunned the regiments.

‘The undertaking is clear to me, Chapter Master.’

‘Then the Emperor guide your hand, general.’

‘And yours.’

Lucifer Blacks, Orion Watch, Jupiter Storm, Granite Myrmidons, Auroran Rifles, the battered and the bloody regiments of Terra stormed into the rift as if answering the first call to war. Battle horns sounded, challenging the orks to turn and face their pursuers, announcing the arrival of Imperial vengeance.

The Fists Exemplar tanks and assault squads took the lead, drawing the fire of the walkers to open the way for the regiments. The Rhinos carried the company. Thane rode in the upper hatch of his transport, watching for the moment to disembark. His target was the walker on the western side of the shattered wall. Its turrets and cannon arm fired, but their movement hesitated between a plethora of targets, the operators within the beast distracted by the strafing of Xiphon interceptors and the arcing flight of Thamarius’ assault squads. The shells hit. The ground exploded in flame one beat behind the roaring troop carriers.

The full strength of the Fists Exemplar drew that much closer to the colossal war machines.

‘Now!’ Thane voxed to the company. ‘Now now now!’

He leapt from the turret. The rear doors slammed open. The Fists Exemplar burst from the carriers.

The walkers found their targets at close range. They fired.

Thane ran through a holocaust of flame.

Imren heard the world ending behind her. It had been ending all this long night. She had had enough. If the end had come for her and for the troops under her command, then it would come for the enemy too. To the rear was the cataclysm of super-heavy cannon fire. Before her was the inferno of the horde. She expected to drown in the green tide. But by the Throne, she would go under with honour intact.

Wind buffeted the canyon. The banners of the regiments and of the Imperium flapped. Their ragged state only made their pride the fiercer. They flew high, and they were saluted by the full-throated roar of armoured fury. Leman Russ battle cannons, Taurox autocannons, Chimera multi-lasers and heavy bolters blasted the enemy infantry to shreds. Trucks and battlewagons exploded before they could turn. Rather than a walking barrage, Imren had ordered targets over a wide range, as far as the tanks could fire with enough accuracy that they would not cause critical damage to the facility. Geysers of fire and shattered bodies erupted across the canyon-filling mob. Confusion and rage rippled out of the impacts.

Columns of infantry charged into the orks, stabbing with bayonets even as they burned with las. Thousands of men and women howled. Driven by repeated retreats, defeats and the festering humiliation of the Proletarian Crusade, they were starved for revenge. In their anger, they were as savage as the orks. No urging was needed from the commissars. Every trooper was on a personal vendetta.

In the foe’s chaotic response, Imren saw contradictory orders. The facility was under attack from the north, the south and in the centre. The threats were everywhere, the priority targets unclear.

‘Choose us, xenos filth!’ Imren shouted at the burning night. ‘We are your doom! We are the great danger to your machine!’

As if they heard her over her cannons and their snarls, the orks reversed course. The tidal wave came for the Astra Militarum. It boiled through the passages between conduits rising from the ground and the generators. It flowed around the columns of Imperial infantry. It rushed to all sides of the armour. Carried in the current, rocking as they ran over the slower brutes, the battlewagons rumbled forward, their guns firing with greater abandon the closer they came.

Imren was yelling with her troops. Her throat was scraped raw. She could not hear herself over the ecstatic clamour of war. She could find no words for her rage. She gave herself over to the possession of fury. But her thoughts were clear. They were a prayer to the Emperor. As the vortex enveloped her, she thought, again and again, let this have meaning. Let this have meaning.

Let us have meaning.

‘No,’ said Alquist Arouar. Along the east edge of the Ascia Rift, skitarii and electro-priests paused in their tasks. ‘Physical connections must remain pending. Complete operations until that stage. Proceed no further until confirmation of the primarch’s success.’

He moved back from the cliff edge, tracing the web of cables running from the ork energy coil to the Mechanicus assembly. The control mechanism was large. It had taken four heavy transport vehicles to haul its components to this position, and three others had carried the means of conjunction. Kilometres of metre-thick cable spread out from the assembly, reaching out to four of the coils. Each of the ork structures was the height of a Warhound-class Titan. Each released enough excess energy to incinerate a division of infantry. The four Arouar was going to tap into were only a fraction of the total number. He extrapolated that their interconnection through the larger system would make them act in concert once he had control. Whether seizing four would be enough was the question to be tested.

He looked back at the coil, and at the network of coruscating light in the depths of the canyon. The moment was extraordinary. His multiplicity of sensors struggled to keep up with the wave of data. To be this close to the ork technology, to have the opportunity to put the theoretical work done on Mars during the war to work — to have access to the coveted machinery itself — was beyond price.

The flood of data had an undertow. In the terms of the flesh, it was temptation. It invited Arouar to submerge his consciousness in the study of the machine. If that was the final act of his being, and the data he processed made its way back to Mars, that would be a worthy form of worship of the Omnissiah.

Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax moved into his field of view, and recalled him to the necessities of the present. Her heavily armoured form was more massive than Arouar’s and more compact, its mechadendrites smaller and withdrawn within the armour’s shell. Her form had been forged for war at the expense of almost all exploratory function.

She was the reminder. The Mechanicus was at war. The Fabricator General had been explicit: the orks must be defeated. Terra must be saved. Data collection was a secondary priority. Koorland was Lord Commander of the Imperium, and his orders were to be followed.

7-Galliax gazed over Arouar’s shoulder at the assembled control machinery. ‘What is our probability of error?’ she asked.

‘Considerable,’ said Arouar. The precise calculation changed moment to moment as he observed and evaluated the behaviour of the installation. ‘Our mimicry of the ork technology is approximate in its effects. In terms of power, greatly lacking. Interface between xenos work and our own is a fraught procedure. Contamination and failure are inherent risks.’ He paused, looking over his shoulder to consider the progress of the work behind him. The assembly was complete. Its core was a based on a teleporter control, surrounded by giant capacitors and convertors. It had no power source of its own. It would use that of the weapon itself when connected, as long as there was no countervailing force still functioning.

‘What is the most favourable evaluation?’

‘A crude form of control. And a brief one.’ Even that, though, would be an immense victory. The data collected from that action alone could be the greatest achievement of the war this far.

7-Galliax nodded. She returned to the edge of the cliff. Below, battle raged. Energy flares mixed with the flashes of cannon fire and detonations, and the burning streaks of las. Arouar’s auditory receptors processed vast movement, analogous to clashing waves. The pulsations from the control nexus intensified. They became angry, their rhythm irregular. Deep, geologic vibrations travelled up from the centre of the rift. Puffs of dust rose from the ground. The edge of the cliff crumbled. The great coil trembled, its crackling bursts lashing out like the strike of a serpent.

‘Stand by,’ Arouar commanded his forces. ‘The moment of action or of defeat approaches.’ He advanced towards the core of his control assembly. It was inert but filled with gigantic potential. He settled into the throne, mechadendrites locking into place along its back and arms, fusing him with the machine. He observed the violent aurora of the canyon. He waited for its convulsions to reveal triumph or disaster.

Up. Down. Up. Down. The gravity fist turning Vulkan into the clapper of a bell, the impacts more and more ferocious. The ork engineer showing no care for the integrity of the structure. The gigantic force turned to the single task of destroying one warrior.

This is still not enough, he thought.

The enemy fears you.

The thought emerged from his deepest core. Beneath the battering pain, the constriction, and the confusion of the senses, was the immovable, the implacable, and the calm. Vulkan pulled his consciousness down into his absolute centre. There he had the patience and the resolution of mountains. He shut out damage and suffering. In the stony dark of that calm, he regained the coherence of his thoughts.

The enemy fears you.

You are a threat.

The assault grows more desperate.

Desperation is weakness.

Strike it.

Not the clapper of a bell, then. He was the hammer against the anvil. His core turned molten. The calm of the mountain became the anger of the volcano.

Erupt.

His consciousness exploded back into the full awareness of his body, and then transcended it. He observed his arc against the wall, and saw not the wound inflicted but the action he must take. And when the engineer hurled him to the floor again, he moved. He did not struggle against gravity. He acted in concert with it. He turned it into his own weapon. He punched forward with his left hand, hitting the floor, and drove his arm deep into the stone. He took root. He held Caldera. It held him back.

When gravity reversed, he remained in place.

The agony was a revelation. Forces sought to rip his body apart. He defied them. The ork had ceased to laugh, and now it froze. It stared at him, hands hovering uncertainly over its controls.

Tempered by the pain, guided by magmatic anger, Vulkan raised Doomtremor. The hammer’s wrath lit up the interior of the nexus with the blaze of a sun. Thunderhead, Dawnbringer, weapons long lost, were present to his spirit in that which he now held aloft. Their terrible strength demanded Vulkan rise. And with the reversed gravity, but against its current, he threw the hammer.

Its flight was true. A comet roared across the space between Vulkan and the pillar. It struck the platform, the impact released the energy of the throw, of the hammer, and of gravity itself. The explosion swallowed the top half of the pillar. The gravitic fist released him. He stood, and marched through a vortex of howling, chaotic lightning to retrieve Doomtremor.

The pillar ended in a jagged stump. The control mechanism was gone, vaporised along with its master. Around Vulkan, surviving orks ran in panic as their great mechanism lost all direction. The ground heaved and cracked.

Vulkan moved through a gathering storm. He picked up his hammer, braced his stance, and waited, fighting the instinct to destroy the abomination around him. If it did not find a new master within the next few moments, the storm would rip the planet open.

The shaking built.

Cracks became chasms.

The world groaned.

In the centre of the rift, the energy discharges were maddened. Arouar’s throne vibrated, presaging worse tremors to come.

‘Proceed,’ the dominus commanded.

The connections were made.

He screamed. His larynx was no longer capable of such a sound. His vocalisations had long been purged of any trace of emotion. Yet he screamed, emitting a wailing stream of binaric. His senses lit up with electric fire.

He became a god maddened by the pain of his own power.

Duty to the Omnissiah was his lodestone. His one focus was the coordinates of the ork attack moon.

In an act of prayer, he flexed his power.

And he lifted a mountain.

‘Admiral.’

The voice was distant. Rodolph could barely hear it. His body was growing cold and numb. He was dying along with his ship. He had to keep his attention on the oculus, on the sight of the moon. If his mind drifted, if his will failed, all would be lost.

‘Admiral.’

The voice was insistent. Then a hand shook his shoulder. The movement shot pain through his abdomen. He winced and looked away from the oculus.

Groth was beside him. The bridge was filled with smoke, but his crew was still on station. The Finality was still fighting. It was still approaching the moon.

‘What is it, captain?’ he managed.

‘Look, sir.’ She pointed to the auspex screen on his right.

Rodolph looked. The sensor array had picked up another mass rising from the planet towards the moon. Rodolph blinked. The mass was coming far too fast.

He grinned.

The mass became visible through the oculus a few moments later. It had risen with such velocity it was heated to red by its passage through the atmosphere. It spun end-over-end, thousands of metres long, trillions of tonnes of rock, a missile hurled at the exposed heart of the ork base. Rodolph watched it disappear into the uncompleted face of the assault moon.

It was small by comparison to the target, but so was a bullet fired into the body of a man. In the next instant, a fireball bloomed from the interior of the moon. It expanded far beyond the crescent edge, spreading until it was almost as wide as the moon. It was a sudden tumour, its uncontrollable growth killing the host. Fissures appeared across the partial globe. Fire leaked out of them. The moon was in agony.

‘Finish it,’ Rodolph said. ‘In the Emperor’s name, finish it.’

Much of the ork fleet had broken away from the Finality and formed a blockade around the open face. It was vaporised in the explosion. The path was clear for the battleship to complete its run and launch its full armament into the glowing interior.

Rodolph’s head cleared still further. He felt strength return to his body with the flush of victory.

But not all the orks had left. Those who remained kept on the attack. When the torpedoes slammed into the stern, Rodolph knew the worst before Groth told him. He felt the blow like a knife between the ribs.

‘The warp drive,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Groth answered. ‘Breached.’

‘How long?’

She spoke into the ship’s vox. Rodolph was surprised there were any survivors left in the enginarium to answer her.

Groth looked at the oculus, then back at Rodolph. ‘Not long,’ she said. ‘But long enough.’

Rodolph nodded. They understood each other. ‘Better than any ordnance,’ he said.

‘A definitive blow. A fine victory, admiral. Well fought.’

‘And you, captain. And you.’

‘Signal the Mechanicus vessels,’ Groth called. ‘They should rejoin the Alcazar Remembered. Helmsman,’ Groth called. ‘Take us in. For the Emperor!’

The crew echoed her. ‘For the Emperor!’

All batteries firing their last, marking the void with the purging light of the Imperial Navy’s power, the Finality plunged through the remaining ork vessels, completing its run, fulfilling its destiny. Rodolph watched the open face of the moon reveal itself. He saw a honeycomb of madness, construction on a gargantuan scale burning, shattered, pulsing with mortal fire. The Finality entered the maw of the wounded giant, warp reactors about to go critical. It travelled through an immensity of caves natural and artificial, of hangar bays for entire armadas, bearing with it a sun about to be born.

Rodolph gazed at what was about to be destroyed. The price he had paid for this vision seemed very little.

When the end came, in furious light, he was ecstatic.

He had taken one action. He had struck one blow. The power was building, raging, a beast about to slip its tether. Arouar’s grip on his omnipotence slipped. One more move, and then he must disengage. One more move, the one to bring an end to the power. The one Koorland had ordered him to make regardless of the situation in the canyon.

Arouar had no knowledge of the war below now. He had no knowledge of anything except the blinding absolute. So he took the action.

The Machine is all. Death to the blasphemy of the xenos machine.

Vulkan felt the change in the tremors. He felt how deep they went. He knew what was coming.

No more waiting, then. Culmination was at hand.

Koorland ducked beneath the ork dreadnought’s swing. The thing’s forearm was as long as he was tall, and it ended in a vice of revving killsaws. Another arm came in lower on the same side. Koorland stepped in closer, avoiding the saws but not the blow itself. It knocked him to the right, into the grasp of the two right arms. The claws seized him. The saws dug into his armour. He maglocked his bolter and with his free hand took a krak grenade from his belt, throwing it at the dreadnought’s viewing slit. The explosive attached itself to the metal and went off, damaging the ork’s shell.

It did not eat all the way through the armour, but the flash of its detonation stunned the greenskin wired into the mechanism. It flinched, and so did its mechanical limbs. Their grip loosened. Koorland pulled himself free. The gouges in his left flank went through his armour, all the way down to the bone.

He jumped forward before the dreadnought could react, grabbing the top of the huge head, then hauled himself up, and plunged his chainsword through the viewing slit. The blade vibrated as it cut through the body inside. Animal screams of pain turned into gurgles. Blood sprayed out of the slit, drenching Koorland’s chestplate. The war machine’s arms dropped. It stumbled forward, then stopped, inert.

Koorland dropped to the ground, grabbed his bolter and sprayed shells in a long burst, felling the greenskins that closed with him. To his right, another ork dreadnought had pinned Eternity to the ground. Its shoulder-mounted guns pummelled the veteran. The killsaws dug into him. Daylight was fighting to reach him, but the third dreadnought launched two rockets at him. The blasts took out the orks surrounding him and sent him flying. Absolution led three other battle-brothers against the dreadnought. Their relentless bolter fire and washes of flamer held it at bay.

But Eternity was dying.

Koorland ran, chainsword forward, bolt-shells scything his path toward Eternity. As he did, the earth tremors become violent. He managed to keep his feet, but many of the orks were knocked down as the ground bucked, an animal convulsing in pain. Koorland moved in awkward leaps, trusting the air instead of the surface, landing with hard stamps to keep his balance, putting more faith in luck than in the earth to be where he expected.

He closed with the dreadnought. Its mass was so great, its centre of gravity so low, that it was remaining stable through the tremors. It held Eternity fast with two of its arms and was cutting deep with the other two. Eternity’s rune was flickering between amber and red in Koorland’s retinal lens. ‘Brother!’ Koorland called to him.

‘Finish it fast!’ Eternity shouted, his voice tight with struggle and agony.

A crevasse burst open to Koorland’s left. The earth rose and fell in waves. Echoes of Ardamantua pursued him. The land in chaotic movement, the enemy overwhelming, the death of brothers looming.

But this was not Ardamantua. This was Caldera. And the orks were roaring in dismay as the planet turned against them. The quakes were not a mystery and the prologue to defeat by a power beyond his ability to grasp. The tremors were the work of the Imperium. They were the sign of victory.

And Koorland flew over the land, propelled by the furious energy of vengeance.

His shells struck the armour of the dreadnought. Not hard enough to punch through, but hard enough to draw the pilot’s attention. It held Eternity with its left limbs and turned to meet Koorland’s charge, guns blazing. Koorland ran into the fire. He exchanged his chainsword for a melta bomb, and ran through the snarling embrace of the arms, colliding with the dreadnought. It was like running into a tank, though his mass and momentum were enough to rock the monster back a step. He slapped the melta bomb against the dreadnought’s flank, then he threw himself back and over Eternity’s prone figure, shielding him.

The shaped charge ate through the ork monster. It melted iron and conduits and the flesh inside. At this proximity, the heat flash seared off the top layers of Koorland’s armour. His power pack fought to compensate, read-outs redlining in his lenses. The temperature inside his armour was enough to roast flesh. The dreadnought’s ammunition cooked off, and the war beast blew apart. Shrapnel embedded itself in Koorland’s back and arms. He rose, servo-motors catching and whining. His armour was heavy and sluggish. He fought to keep moving.

The tremors were still growing in intensity. There was not much time.

Eternity had lost his left leg below the knee. Koorland helped him stand. The wounded Space Marine took his chainaxe from his back and used the shaft as a cane, while Koorland held his shoulder. The dreadnought’s explosion had cleared some space for them.

‘Time to go, I think,’ Eternity rasped.

‘Yes.’ Across the command network, Koorland sent the order. ‘To all Imperial forces, the enemy’s defeat is at hand. Withdraw from the rift. But keep the orks contained.’ Switching to the squad channels, he said, ‘To the tunnels, brothers. To the tunnels.’

The brothers of the Last Wall fought their way back through the cauldron of orks, staggering up the slope. The land was a sea in storm. Chunks of the cliffs were falling onto the battlefield.

Koorland found he had to put his faith in the orks. He had to hope they had built their wall strong enough to withstand the storm.

‘Take the ground from under them!’ Thane ordered.

The armour of the ork walkers had withstood the fire of the Predators and the missiles of the gunships. The huge skirts of the behemoths were smoking and cratered, but so dense they still had not collapsed to expose the interior. The orks had destroyed two of the Fists Exemplar tanks. The Imperial armour was faster and more manoeuvrable than the greenskin machines, and they stayed close to the enemy, forcing the orks to risk their own destruction in the firing of the huge guns. But when the orks moved back, all it took was a single step, a lucky swing of the arm, and the tanks were exposed.

The earthquakes had begun. They were building. Remaining upright was difficult. Thane would make it even more so for the walkers.

Most of the greenskin infantry was held further into the valley, in the battle with Imren’s regiments. The Fists Exemplar destroyed the foot soldiers who had made it this far. Thane sent half the company downslope to hold back the rest. But the walkers were the problem. They needed to be stopped.

And as the tremors presaged great events to come, a barrier was needed.

The tanks lowered their guns. They blasted the land at the walkers’ feet. The shells dug deep depressions in the already wounded land. New fissures opened, joined, and spread in webs.

The ground heaved. The ground plunged.

And Koorland’s order came.

‘Acknowledged,’ Thane said.

He waited to hear the same from Imren. There was only silence from the general.

The walkers’ steps slowed, then stopped. They stood their ground, immensity holding them in place, while their gigantic arm turrets moved with jerking urgency, their shots coming faster but more erratic.

‘Chapter Master,’ Aloysian called on the feed. He and the rest of Thane’s squad were between the two walkers. The Techmarine pointed to the western monster. A third of the way up the hull, a shell impact had destroyed a gun emplacement and peeled back the piston-raised shutters that protected it.

‘I see it.’ The actual opening was small, the angle unpromising, but it was an opportunity. He eyed the overlapping shields. Their edges would serve. ‘With me, Brother Aloysian.’

They climbed. The rest of the squad provided covering fire as the other shutters opened and the orks rained shots down on the intruders.

Aloysian took the lead, climbing faster with his servo-arms. He and Thane took shots, but there was no evasion to take. It was all Thane could do to hold on to the ledges as the iron wall he climbed rocked and swayed, the operators of the walker struggling to compensate for the upheavals of the tremors.

Higher. Gravity and violent motion tried to throw them to the ground. Slugs slammed into their armour, striking at their gauntlets. Higher. The shattered gun came with reach. Smoke poured from the rent.

With less than two metres to go, a pair of orks appeared in the gap. They turned their shotguns on Thane and Aloysian. The Techmarine responded with his plasma cutter, firing the jet into the brutish faces, burning them off their skulls. The greenskins fell back, and Aloysian climbed in after them. Thane followed.

There was no time for strategy. Koorland’s warning was almost a minute in the past. Thane charged through the narrow passageway leading from the wrecked gun. It led to a network of catwalks and compartments surrounding a shaft where immense pistons and gears formed the mobile skeleton of the walker’s leg. While Aloysian cut cables and breached conduits, Thane hurled krak grenades into the shaft above and below their position. He exhausted his supply and sprayed bursts of shells in all directions. Smaller greenskins panicked. Larger ones died trying to attack. Mass-reactive shells blew apart the supports on the catwalks and they fell into the shaft, tangling gears.

The grenades went off. The damage spread. The machine shook within and without.

The floor tilted.

‘Out,’ said Thane.

The raid had taken thirty seconds.

They ran back to the gun emplacement. They climbed out of the gap, the slope of the walker’s skirt now near vertical. The walker was listing, one leg paralysed, its motion becoming erratic. The behemoth was unstable, and it was still firing. Thane and Aloysian dropped down its side, slowing their fall with quick grabs at ledges for as long as they could, then leaping the last several metres.

They landed on ground whose movement was as violent as the walker’s.

‘Pull back,’ Thane ordered. ‘Out of the rift. Suppressive fire on any enemy who follow.’ He tried to raise Imren, and this time she answered. ‘General,’ he said. ‘There is no more time.’

‘I agree, Chapter Master.’ She sounded injured. ‘There is no time. We will hold the enemy. Preserve our memory on Terra.’

Thane grimaced at the scale of the sacrifice. ‘It will be celebrated,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’ She signed off.

The Predators had ceased firing. They had shattered the land, and the walkers could not move forward without stepping into depressions that would overbalance them. The tanks now moved upslope. The pass between the volcanoes seemed desperately narrow from Thane’s position. The peaks thundered, and the clouds around them turned crimson. The eruptions had begun.

The Fists Exemplar charged between the walkers. The ork machines fired their cannons, and fired again, but the tremors were too powerful. The shells went wild, striking cliffs and mountainsides. The western walker lurched. Internal blasts beat against its interior. Thane and Aloysian stood between the two beasts until the rest of the company had passed through, then they followed. The wounded walker tried to walk. The tremors, broken land and the damage made the error a fatal one.

The walker began to fall towards its mate.

Titanic metal walls closed together over Thane’s head. A war mountain fell upon another. The monsters collided. Their limbs entangled. With grinding blasts aloft, Titan fused with Titan.

Thane and Aloysian passed from beneath their shadow, racing over the bucking, groaning earth for the waiting Rhino. The transport ground forward as the hatch slammed shut. Thane climbed through the roof turret to look back. He saw the final act of desperation, anger and madness. He saw the great cannons fire again.

The guns had no valid targets. They were aimed downward and too close to each other. The walker to the west blew up the lower reaches of the other’s armour. The eastern one created a new crater before both colossi. It turned into a widening chasm. The walkers fell forward, lodging in the gap, riven by blasts. The guns, their barrels now aiming beneath the surface, boomed again, but this time Thane knew he was hearing the start of a chain reaction, the weaponry of the monsters consuming itself in uncontrolled detonations. The walkers turned into metal volcanoes, a blazing wall of ruin across the southern access to the Ascia Rift, containing orks and humans alike inside the doomed installation.

The Thunderhawks kept pace with the convoy of Predators and Rhinos overhead. Their guns were silent. Their role now was to rescue battle-brothers from any vehicles that fell into the multiplying fissures.

The tremors shook the Rhino. Thane held tight to the turret to avoid being thrown free. On either side, the mountains raged. Rockslides roared down the faces. Lava followed, blood drawn from the night. Behind, in the pass, he watched the ork structures waver and fall, collapsing in a growing sea of flame.

And then came the immense crack of terminal rending. It was a sharp retort, but so deep and vast it drowned all other sound of war and destruction. It was the sound of the Ascia Rift opening wide its maw.

A terrible dawn broke, incandescent red, the sun rising from the centre of the canyon.

The rift parted. The great wound began in the centre. Metres wide, then tens of metres, then hundreds. It swallowed the ruins of the command nexus. It stretched its reach, longer and longer, expanding to half the length of the canyon. From it came the lava in a tide, a flood, a wall. A sea of molten rock rose to fill the rift.

It rose to swallow armies.

Imren saw it, and she smiled. She stood on her Chimera, bleeding out from a gut shot. Nissen was dead, burned when an ork rocket took out the treads and front of the hull. She was dying, but she was standing, and she was firing her plasma pistol at the enemy, and she had lived to see the victory. And so she smiled.

The victory was staggering to behold. She and her troops would become part of a legend, and that was glorious. Her soul was staggered by the sight. A lava wall thirty metres high swept toward her, and the sight was greater in her perception than the devouring heat that came before it. The orks in their tens of thousands, their tanks and their transports, their weapons and all their works disappeared in the wall. They were silhouettes of defeat, of fleeing despair, and then they were gone.

The wave was almost upon her. It took her troops. The heat set her hair alight. The light of the world’s anger blinded her. And there was pain. Inconceivable pain.

But greater than everything was the victory. Her troops celebrated as they died, and her final thoughts were of exultation.

A worthy end.

Honour is restored.

Koorland brought up the rear in the tunnel. He supported Eternity. He fired, killing the fleeing orks, denying them the last of a faint hope. The sides of the tunnel glowed with the heat. The joints of Koorland’s armour kept locking. He was dragging it almost as much as he was Eternity. But behind came the searing light of Caldera’s vengeance, spurring him on.

The wall was endless. The heat was swift and merciless. The lava flowed up the slope, devouring the horde, and then Koorland turned away. There was nothing but the killing brilliance behind him.

He staggered into the night, seconds ahead of the deluge. The Honour’s Spear was on the ground, rear hatch down, engines rumbling and eager for flight.

‘A good night’s work,’ Eternity slurred, barely conscious.

‘A great dawn,’ Koorland answered. He lurched up the ramp with his burden and collapsed onto a bench with his brother. The hatch closed and the Thunderhawk leapt for the skies.

Koorland looked through the viewing block. Lava shot out of the tunnel, a glowing finger emerging from the wall. Moments later the barrier failed. It had been strong enough to keep its builders trapped inside. Now it melted in the embrace of the lava flow. The mountainous landscape filled with incinerating light.

‘And the primarch?’ Eternity asked. ‘What of Vulkan?’

‘I have faith,’ Koorland answered.

They had returned to Torrens, as the Protector of Caldera had commanded. There was little of the mining settlement that remained. It was a location with a name, and some ruins, in which could be traced the fractured memories of a wall, of habitations, an echo of streets. But Lord Vulkan had commanded that they return, and so they had. The mere handful who had survived.

And now, standing where their rampart had been, they looked north, and saw the wrathful birth of day.

The glare of the lava flow spilled out from between the silhouettes of the twin volcanoes.

‘Will it reach this far?’ Karla asked.

The question had been on Becker’s lips too. He didn’t know.

‘If it does,’ said a voice deep as stone, ‘you will depart ahead of it, and begin anew. You know this danger. To be tempered on its anvil is your blessing as Calderans.’

Mesmerised by the flood, they had not seen Vulkan approach. He was before them now, a giant in the growing light.

‘I once brought a deluge of flame to this planet,’ he said. ‘It was a necessary destruction, and from the ashes of what had been before, Caldera was born. I then made a covenant with this world. I made no promise that I would not bring a burning flood again, but I swore to fight for Caldera.’ He raised his arm, and pointed with his hammer towards the lava. ‘Thus have I kept my oath. So will I ever.’ He gazed down on the people of Torrens. His eyes were as fierce as the lava flow, Becker thought. But they were also kind. ‘You have made me proud,’ Vulkan said. ‘You have fought well. Keep faith with Caldera as I do.’

‘We shall,’ Becker said.

‘We swear it,’ said Karla.

‘We swear it!’ One voice. All the voices.

Vulkan nodded. ‘Then I am satisfied.’

Epilogue

Terra — The Imperial Palace

The Monitus was a large, semi-circular hall at the top of the Stilicho Tower. Its huge, arcing balcony looked out towards the dome of the Great Chamber. Standing sentry on massive plinths every five metres along the balcony were monolithic, granite statues representing each of the original Loyalist Legions of the Space Marines. Each plinth held two statues, one facing towards the Great Chamber, the other casting a cold gaze down to the floor of the hall. The Monitus was the promise and reminder of vigilance. It was an unforgiving space.

The High Lords rarely set foot in it.

Valefor of the Blood Angels, Macrinus of the Ultramarines, Asger of the Space Wolves and Adnachiel of the Dark Angels were already there when Koorland arrived. The statues were three times larger than life, but the presence of the living Adeptus Astartes filled the hall. If the four commanders had been speaking before, they were silent now, and standing with some distance between them. Their faces were cold when they saw Koorland, and he knew the struggle he would have faced had he attempted to lead the expedition to Ullanor.

Koorland walked to the centre of the Monitus. ‘Brothers,’ he said. ‘I thank you for answering Terra’s call.’ Then he waited.

Behind came heavy footsteps. Vulkan entered the chamber.

The change came over the faces of the other Space Marines. Koorland saw in them the disbelieving awe he had experienced on Caldera. As one, they dropped to a knee and bowed their heads before the primarch.

‘Rise, brothers,’ Vulkan said. He strode between them to the edge of the balcony. He looked at the Great Chamber. He was silent for a full minute. Then, his voice redolent with judgement, he said, ‘I will meet the High Lords here.’

‘This is a coup,’ Tobris Ekharth complained.

Vangorich listened to the Master of the Administratum’s whine as the Council made its way up the long spiral staircase leading to the Monitus. No one else spoke. They let Ekharth bluster.

‘Koorland ousts Lord Udo,’ Ekharth continued. ‘He reforms a coherent Legion. He summons reinforcements to Terra. Then a figurehead. Then we are summoned to attend on the Astartes as though we were serfs. The primarch will not even deign to set foot in the Grand Chamber. And he makes us wait a full day before seeing us. A day! Don’t you see the pattern? Don’t you see what is happening? Koorland has returned a conqueror, and we are the conquered.’

Vangorich thought the man was on the verge of sobbing. He was desperate for an ally, for even one other High Lord to confirm his thinking. At the top of the stairs, in the antechamber to the Monitus, Ekharth jerked his head back and forth like a bird, pleading with his eyes. He found silence. He paled.

You’re more and less alone than you think, Vangorich was tempted to tell him. No one is contradicting you. They agree with you. But they won’t take the risk of saying so.

They entered the Monitus. When he saw the towering figure who awaited them, Vangorich had to stifle a gasp of awe and hope.

The silence of the rest of the Council took on a different cast. They were struck dumb. And they were terrified.

Vulkan was flanked by Koorland and the representatives of the four Chapters. The primarch had his arms folded. His eyes were stony.

Far below, in the streets and the squares and the chapels of the Imperial Palace, the people were celebrating the triumph of Caldera. The first true victory of the war. The first real sign of hope. But the sounds of rejoicing did not reach this high. There was only more and more and more silence. And something worse: judgement.

Ecclesiarch Mesring cleared his throat. He tried to speak. ‘Lord Vulkan,’ he croaked, ‘we honour your—’

‘I have spoken with Chapter Master Koorland,’ the primarch said.

Mesring froze, jaw hanging open.

‘I have spent a day and a night in contemplation of the words and deeds of the High Lords,’ Vulkan continued. ‘You should give thanks for the orks and for the threat they represent.’ He spoke calmly, and with infinite disgust. ‘If not for the need for unity, I would kill you all myself.’

Strike, Vangorich wanted to say. Strike now. Purge the rot and make something new. That is something a legend can do.

He said nothing.

Vulkan spoke again. ‘We make ready for Ullanor. You will do your duty in the preparations.’

And Vangorich sighed. The moment had passed. The High Lords were terrified, but they were calculating again. Each faction had tried to use Koorland to its ends. Now an even greater power had arrived, and the game resumed.

Even with the stakes higher than ever, the game went on. Petty beasts snapped at each other.

While on Ullanor, the Great Beast awaited.

Gav Thorpe

The Beast must die

Chapter One

Terra — the Imperial Palace

We fell and we burned. Not just one, but all. These are the ashes we are left. The splinters of broken glass left of the window through which we watched humanity die. This is not our world, but they are not strong enough. Why? What was His plan? A crumbling ruin, a cruel joke. The blood in the veins is weak. But it is blood and it will bleed. It needs to bleed. To cleanse the infection. Purgation. Pain. Nothing is achieved without sacrifice.

Was that His plan all along?

The Senatorum Imperialis had long been a circus in the eyes of Grand Master Vangorich, but of late its habit of convening meetings in different locations had turned it into a travelling show. Security, his fellow High Lords had insisted. With an ork attack moon still lurking within striking distance, albeit silenced and blockaded for the moment, it was unwise to meet in the same location on successive occasions.

He was unsure how it was more secure or morale-boosting to meet beneath the cracked dome of the Anesidoran Chapel — once such a proud statement of Imperial Faith and power — when the chapel’s mosaics and friezes bore the scars from the attack moon’s arrival.

Most of the elaborate decorum of the High Lords’ conclaves had been gradually stripped away by each episode in the growing tragedy enveloping Terra and the Segmentum Solar. Gone were the hordes of retainers, the pomp of the Lucifer Blacks in escort, the self-important clarions and gaily coloured banners.

The entourage of clerks, administrators, vox- and vid-datacordists, factotums and counsellors was much diminished, replaced in part by two companies of Lucifer Blacks in combat gear rather than ceremonial uniforms. It made the large, echoing space of the chapel’s nave seem even grander, even emptier without the attendant background noise of teeming functionaries that had used to fill it with their tapping, scribbling and murmuring.

The Imperial Palace, the whole sprawling edifice, seemed overly grandiose. At least, Vangorich felt it so. The parade grounds built for Legions stood empty. Halls dedicated to the assembly of thousands in audience lay dusty and unused. Vast wings had been erected to house the armies of administrators that had been spawned over the last millennia, while the immensity of the past was allowed to remain standing idle, each vacant shell a hollow claim to a power that had long departed.

The High Lords seemed small and frail surrounded by the vastness of the chapel, as if it represented the scale of the threat they faced. In a palace built for demigods, they seemed more insignificant than ever.

Vangorich moved in the shadows beyond the central meeting, only half-listening to the back and forth of bickering and politics. He measured each man and woman at the table, recalling plans long in motion, schemes that had been devised over many years lest the need arise.

He knew exactly how each would die, if necessary. That was his role, though none subjected to his scrutiny would care to admit as much.

Take Mesring, for example. The Ecclesiarch thought himself safe, having uncovered and possibly countered the toxin Vangorich had introduced into his system. It might be a bluff, might be that the seed of Mesring’s destruction still tainted the blood in his veins, but it mattered nothing to the Grand Master if it was not. His agents had poisoned the head of the Imperial Church once, and they could do it again. Next time it would not be for leverage, it would be quick-acting and lethal.

Then Lansung, the Lord High Admiral, saviour and failure in one body. Vangorich often tempted himself with the idea that his own hand would deliver the blow here. Of them all, Lansung’s megalomania and vainglory had caused the most damage. But it was not the Grand Master’s position to strike the fatal blow. Not always. He was the hand that held the dagger, not the blade itself.

In passing, he caught the eye of his operative amongst the minions hovering close to the High Lords. It was remarkable how so lethal an individual, one so possessed of physical strength and dexterity, could masquerade his puissance beneath the plain green cowl and cape of an Administratum adept, his size and power hidden as easily as the mono-stiletto he carried. The weapon was fashioned from gene-modified bone as hard as steel. Organic matter, invisible to any auspex currently known to the minds of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Esad Wire, the Beast, Vangorich’s right hand during the unfolding catastrophe. The Beast did not react to the brief glance of his master, his attention fixed on the proceedings of the High Lords, features hidden in the darkness beneath his cowl.

And there was Kubik, Fabricator General, head of the Cult Mechanicus. Today he was present only in hololithic representation. Perhaps he feared to attend in person after the revelations of previous gatherings. The Adeptus Mechanicus’ long-standing relationship with the Imperium of Terra had been fractious of late. Agendas had clashed, information had been hoarded, loyalties had been called into question.

Vangorich looked at the static-flecked image of the Martian overlord and wondered whether recent protestations of renewed dedication to the Imperial cause were simply more lies. In a show of cooperation, Kubik had shared — under duress — the findings regarding the ork teleporter technology and the location of Ullanor, the world from which this threat seemed to have sprung.

The Grand Master had plans and agents in place within the Adeptus Mechanicus on both Terra and Mars to extract what further information was being hidden and, if ultimate sanction was required, to strike at Kubik himself.

The only other individuals of importance were missing. Veritus and Wienand, the joint Inquisitorial Representatives, had not made any communication since Koorland’s return from his mission, and whether by choice or from the ongoing machinations of the Inquisition was not clear. It irritated Vangorich that he was unsure of their current whereabouts, but as he had found, sometimes it was best not to worry too much. Much as with his own organisation, when the Inquisition could be seen at work was when it was too late.

An approaching thunder silenced the discussion and all eyes turned to the great doors of the chapel. The Lucifer Blacks parted swiftly as a handful of commanders from the Adeptus Astartes entered, their armoured boots striking deafening drumbeats across the broken tiles. They were a few individuals, but each was the avatar of a martial power deemed so strong it had been divided, their might judged too much for a single hand to wield. And now that edict was being reversed, and might yet prove a greater threat than the orks.

Space Marines. Each dwarfed the chapel’s occupants: just the seven present were capable of killing everyone within, including the Lucifer Blacks. Except Vangorich, of course. At any given heartbeat he knew precisely which of the four escape routes he might use should the Adeptus Astartes decide that pandering to the pride and ambition of these mortals was too much effort.

Captain Valefor of the Blood Angels. Wolf Lord Asger of the Space Wolves. Chapter Master Odaenathus of the Ultramarines and Grand Master Sachael of the Dark Angels, both newly arrived on Terra, fresh come from battles in the darkest reaches of the galaxy. Their Chapters bore the names of the greatest Legions from the Heresy War, and carried that distinction well.

With them came High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars and Chapter Master Quesadra of the Crimson Fists. Both had earned glory in the battles against the orks thus far, each creating a legacy worthy of Rogal Dorn from whom their gene-seed had been created. Others were continuing the fight, in the Sol System and beyond.

And with these lords of the Space Marines arrived the last of Dorn’s sons, the remaining survivor of the Imperial Fists. Captain, Chapter Master and, lately, Lord Commander Koorland, who had resumed the use of his wall-name, Slaughter. His ochre plate had recently been repaired and repainted, but the injury of war and loss was borne in his eyes. Dark, distant, they looked upon the High Lords as though surveying pieces of furniture. A necessary but uninteresting feature of the environment.

And then came Vulkan, and suddenly the mighty halls, kilometres-long processionals and cavernous chapel did not seem so large after all.

The primarch filled the huge space, and not just with his gigantic physique; the raw presence of the Emperor’s warlord was like a force that swept all before it. A few of the High Lords stood up on reflex, some bowed, and all but Vangorich averted their gaze, however briefly.

His armour, plate worthy of a demigod and forged by his own hand, was burnished dark green and gold. In one fist he bore a hammer the size of a Lucifer Black and many times more deadly. His skin was ebon, as dark as a starless night, save for two eyes that glittered like rubies.

They found Vangorich immediately despite his attempts at being inconspicuous, effortlessly identifying and locating the greatest potential threat in the chapel. He flinched at their silent interrogation, his unfettered reaction providing the answer they sought. A hint of a smile creased the primarch’s lips for half a heartbeat. A challenge, almost.

He knew.

Vulkan knew Vangorich had a plan to kill even a primarch. The Grand Master had to, it was the inevitable logic of his position. Duty compelled him to consider such a terrible scenario.

Vulkan’s eyes moved on, releasing Vangorich from their burning intensity, the primarch’s expression sour as he took in the surroundings and the holy nature of their decoration. The giant turned his gaze back to the others. However, his next words were directed towards the Master of Assassins.

‘Grand Master Vangorich, what is our purpose in going to Ullanor?’

‘You ask me because I am the Assassin, lord primarch, which gives us our answer,’ the Grand Master replied smoothly, moving into the light, drawn forth like venom from a bite. ‘To slay the Great Beast. We know that orks follow the strongest leader. Take that away and they will fall on each other in the resulting power vacuum. The invasion will splinter and die. For all their barbaric strength, they are vulnerable to a classic decapitation strike.’

‘Had we known that Ullanor was the source, I would have directed efforts thus,’ protested Lansung. He wilted a little as Vulkan’s unforgiving gaze moved to him, but retained enough composure to redirect the primarch’s ire. ‘Had the Fabricator General not withheld such intelligence, we might have ended this sooner.’

Even across the medium of the hololithic transmitter, Kubik looked unsettled.

Vulkan said nothing, but moved to one end of the debating table as his commanders spread to either side. Vangorich tried not to think of it as an encircling manoeuvre, but he quickly reassessed his options and concluded that only two escape routes remained.

‘The full weight of Mars is being directed to support the assault of the lord primarch,’ Kubik’s voice buzzed from a vox-caster placed in front of his hazy image, ‘as swiftly as it can be mustered. Dominus Gerg Zhokuv is one of our best and most experienced commanders from the Taghmata.’

‘One of your best?’ said Vulkan.

‘The best!’ Kubik quickly answered. ‘His logistaria and strategic engrams date back to the Heresy War and earlier.’

‘The ships are ready?’ Vulkan demanded of Lansung.

The Lord High Admiral nodded without comment.

‘I have put out the call for the Frateris to assemble. Thousands of followers are ready to embark as soon…’ Mesring trailed off in the face of Vulkan’s unflinching stare.

‘That will not be necessary, Ecclesiarch.’ The primarch’s distaste for Mesring’s position made the title sound like a curse. ‘Your brand of zealotry will not serve our cause.’

Vangorich was so busy enjoying Mesring’s utter despondency that he almost missed a small reaction from Bohemond. The High Marshal glanced sideways at the primarch, and then fixed his gaze on a point on the ground for several heartbeats. Nobody else seemed to notice and Vangorich wondered what could prompt such a guilt reflex.

Tobris Ekharth, Master of the Administratum, cleared his throat. His eyes momentarily flicked from one High Lord to the next, seeking reassurance and receiving little, until they rested again on the sheaf of translucent datasheets in his quivering hands. He swallowed hard.

‘I… That is, my organisation…’ He sniffed, gripped his reports tighter and started again. The words burst forth in a breathless stream. ‘This whole process is without mandate or proper protocols, and is not in compliance with at least seventy-two per cent of the Senatorum Imperialis code, not least being the exclusion of required officials to make proper record and deliver due notification on the deliberations and ramifications of gatherings at which Imperial policy and the application of military resource of greater than regiment-strength or equivalent thereof has been debated.’

‘I am quite sure that half of those words were not in the correct order,’ said Odaenathus. ‘Are you objecting to something?’

‘This war,’ Ekharth blurted, ‘is illegal! Without proper authority. Of uncertain integrity.’ The next word was uttered with such contempt that it made Vangorich wince. ‘Unauthorised…’

‘You mentioned compliance,’ said Vulkan, folding his arms. ‘That word can mean many things. In one respect, it is something with which I am more familiar than any other in this chamber.’

‘I don’t understand,’ confessed Ekharth, looking to his companion High Lords for support or guidance.

Vangorich laughed gently and he felt their scrutiny and their antipathy. The Master of the Administratum glared at him.

‘What is so funny?’ Ekharth demanded.

‘You seek compliance, my dear Tobris.’ Vangorich looked across to Vulkan. ‘Worlds brought into the Imperial Truth during the Great Crusade were “compliant”. The lord primarch has several thousand Space Marines poised at his command, in orbit and on the surface of Terra. It is we that need to consider the nature of compliance.’

Silence followed for several seconds. Vulkan did not gainsay Vangorich’s assertion.

‘Good.’ The primarch nodded. ‘We are of one mind. Let us turn our efforts to Ullanor and the matter at hand. Now the war truly begins.’

Chapter Two

Ullanor — outer system

Peace is deception. It does not last. It cannot last. The enemy is always waiting. The fight is endless, relentless. A tide that rises. Even when it recedes it takes away. It erodes. Nagging, gnawing, grinding. Slowly, war after war, battle after battle, fight after fight, every grain dropping away, washed into nothingness. Peace is the breath between shouts. The inhalation before the gasp of pain or ecstasy. Why can we not forge peace? Forges make weapons. Only war, merciless and constant, is truth.

The Adeptus Astartes were in the vanguard.

As always.

Rapid strike vessels, cruisers and battle-barges pierced the Ullanor system, a slashing sabre to open up the orks’ defences and leave the xenos unable to counter the more ponderous but powerful blows of the Imperial Navy, Adeptus Mechanicus and Astra Militarum.

Guided by the most able Navigators of the Navis Nobilite, the ships of the Space Marines convened within days of each other, despite the usual vagaries of the warp and the ever-present ork psychic disturbance that had come to be known as the green roar. Auspex arrays scoured the system for all signs of the enemy. Weapon decks and gun turrets were poised to unleash incredible firepower. The vessels of the Space Marines pushed hard from their translation points around the perimeter of the Ullanor system.

The outer system was an anarchic tempest of asteroids, lost moons, nebulous vapour clouds and wayward comets, thrown into terrible storms by the orbits of three super gas giants. Within this navigational horror lurked relative normality. There were eight more planets, three of them lethal gas worlds, though three inner micro-planets and a frozen Terra-sized globe showed signs of low level habitation. The fourth out from the red star was the only major populated sphere — Ullanor Prime.

There were also orks. Many, many orks.

The Ullanor system was awash with starships, an armada of vessels coursing to or from the ork world in the inner system. Ships of all descriptions plied the routes from the safe translation zone far from Ullanor’s star. Alien-built freighters with ramshackle hulls encased in shimmering fields moved alongside stolen cargo haulers with sputtering void shields, bearing the insignia of Imperial merchant houses defaced by orkish glyphs. A score of warships lost against the green menace had been taken, their crippled hulls pressed into service as bulk carriers: flight decks and gun bays stripped, the weapons stolen to bolster the armaments of the escorts.

The Reprisal was the first to lie alongside one of these. A force of Dark Angels Terminators teleported across, led by Grand Master Sachael.

The heavily armoured elite of the Deathwing company faced nothing more threatening than a few dozen orks — brutish overseers that had enslaved the crew of the ship, no match for the First Company of the Dark Angels. Searching through the ship for any surviving foes, Sachael was disgusted by what they found.

The orks had shown little regard for their captives, content to give them the bare minimum of food, water and heat. The air was freezing, the rag-clad slaves close to exhaustion and death from exposure. Many hundreds had not survived, their bodies left where they had fallen, some cleared away into the disused ammunition magazines and food storage halls. Vermin and insects were everywhere, fungal growths from ork spores lying in a patina across metal bulkheads and plasteel decking.

Interviewing the captives revealed that the vessel had been overrun when the orks had invaded the Trolgeth System. Nobody knew the fate of the freshly raised regiment of several thousand soldiers IG-8112 had been carrying, except that they had been taken from the ship on ork transports in orbit over Ullanor. Since then the vessel had been making supply runs, though to and from which systems and with what cargo the battered crew remained ignorant of.

‘They drove us, saviour, drove us something wicked,’ one emaciated soul told the Grand Master, emerging from the darkness of a sub-hold, blinking in the lamplight from Sachael’s Tactical Dreadnought armour. His pallid skin was broken by sores and whip marks, bruised and grazed along the spine and shoulders where he had carried heavy loads. ‘Killed the officers first. Ate them, right in front of us. Raw and bloody, it was.’

‘They came for us, they came for us!’ squealed another unfortunate. He fell to the floor at the Grand Master’s feet, pawing at the armoured boots, drooling and wild-eyed. ‘They came for us!’

Two more moved forward and dragged him back, flinching as if expecting blows to rain down on them.

‘No Geller fields, saviour, you see?’ explained the first man. ‘They got a shield, of a sort. It softens the voices, dulls the dreams. But it don’t take them away. Not proper. Three trips we made, away and back and away again. Six journeys through the warp. More killed ’emselves than died from lack of nourishment, I reckon. Or killed others… We had to… They needed stopping.’

His gaze was haunted and he glanced down at his dirty hands. Sachael understood the meaning.

‘You gave them the Emperor’s mercy and saved the lives of your companions. There is no shame in that.’

‘Emperor defend us, that’s the truth,’ said another of the internees.

‘Is we safe?’ A woman draped in the remains of an old grain sack tottered out from the crowd. ‘Is we safe yet?’

‘More ships are coming,’ Sachael assured them. ‘The Imperial Navy. They’ll send over new officers to take you away from here.’

‘Emperor bless the Navy,’ she cried, tears welling up in her eyes. She blinked forcefully and fell to her knees, hands clasped in prayer. ‘And gratitude to the Emperor for sending His Space Marines to deliver us from evil. Great is His benevolence.’

‘Praise Him,’ others chorused, entwining their thumbs and splaying their palms across their chests in a crude approximation of the eagle of the Imperial aquila.

‘Angels of mercy!’

‘Divine guardians!’

‘Praise the Dark Angels!’

Sachael backed away, uncomfortable with their adoration. His second, Sergeant Gadariel, approached, the bulk of his Terminator armour barely fitting through the door in the bulkhead.

‘No more xenos, Grand Master,’ he reported over the vox. ‘Main hold is filled with perishable food. Thousands of tonnes. Shall we let these poor wretches have some?’

‘Not yet,’ Sachael replied, turning away from the freed slaves. ‘They need proper rehabilitation and we do not have time nor means for such measures. Lock the holds.’

‘They are starving, Grand Master.’

‘And they will have to starve for a few days longer until the Navy arrives and can post armsmen at the holds to stop them killing each other over the food.’ Sachael stepped out of the chamber, sparing no glance for the unfortunates. ‘We can brook no delays. Our greatest efforts must be spent confronting the orks.’

Such experience was repeated on many other ships boarded by the first wave of Space Marines. Like a flock scattering before wolves, the ork supply convoys split into the void as the Adeptus Astartes continued their encroachment and more Imperial ships broke warp at the system boundary. Ship commanders were caught between the need to press in-system and secure passage towards their target, and their desire to board or destroy as many of the captured vessels as they could.

The faster vessels, rapid strike craft crewed by a few Space Marines, darted across the vacuum hunting down such ships as could be easily overhauled. On many of these ships the appearance of the Space Marines, even just a handful, was enough to rouse the crews from their timidity, and they used chains, tools and bare hands to fight back against their greenskin enslavers. Thousands died in these shipborne uprisings, but many more were freed from nightmarish servitude — and those that gave their lives were considered more fortunate than those that remained on the ships that eluded the pursuit of the Space Marines.

Such actions were admirable, but with each passing hour the penetrating blow of the Space Marine attack dissipated. Flotillas became separated and escorts drawn away from their battle-barges. Ever used to independent action, the captains and masters of the Adeptus Astartes were always ready to act on their own initiative.

From aboard the Alcazar Remembered, Koorland observed this dissolution of force with some unease. Leaving Thane with orders to continue on as fast as possible, Koorland left the command bridge and descended to the armoury bay that had been rapidly reconfigured into quarters for Vulkan.

The twin sliding doors were open as Koorland approached, allowing the flaring sparks and crackle of a laswelder to pass into the corridor. He stopped at the threshold and looked within.

Vulkan was stooped over a worktable — the heavy bench had been set onto a plinth, but it still barely came up to the primarch’s waist. He was stripped down to the inner harness of his war-plate, revealing jet-black skin marked across every square centimetre with scars, tattoos and brand marks. An assortment of armoured plates, stacked crystal cells, cabling and bolts were carefully arranged on the table. Laswelder in one hand, Vulkan lifted a sheet of ceramite and inspected it closely.

‘You may enter, Koorland,’ said the primarch, not looking up from his work.

‘I am Slaughter,’ the Imperial Fist replied. ‘My wall-name.’

‘You are not on the wall now, Son of Dorn.’

‘We are the Last Wall, my lord. It is a state of mind, not a geographic location.’

‘I know,’ said Vulkan, smiling as he placed the ceramite and laswelder on the bench and straightened. ‘I was there when Dorn took the first wall-name at the last defence of the Emperor’s Palace. Do you remember what it was?’

Koorland stepped into the primarch’s chamber, which had not altered much with its change of purpose. Materials and tools lined the walls on hooks and shelves, boxes were stacked neatly beneath them. A table to one side held a few books, data crystals, a scattering of personal effects. Doomtremor lay on the bare metal, glinting beneath the lumen strips. There were no luxuries — if the primarch slept, it was on metal decking.

‘Of course, my lord.’ Koorland stopped a few metres from the bench. ‘Defiance. Lord Dorn took the name Defiance.’

‘He did.’ The primarch’s smile slipped away and his focus shifted, lost in a moment of recollection.

‘The fleet is dispersing, my lord. The orks are not fighting. They flee as soon as we approach. Even vessels obviously built as warships are avoiding confrontation if they can. The rapidity of our advance is drawing us away from the Mandeville boundary and only a few of our allies’ ships have arrived.’

‘And what do you wish to do, Koorland?’

‘I am Slaughter, my lord.’ He did not know why the primarch insisted on using his other name, but he had to assume it was not for insult. Perhaps he was trying to make some point that the Imperial Fist did not understand. ‘We need to issue orders to consolidate our positions before we push again for Ullanor orbit.’

‘A reasonable plan. Why have you not yet implemented it?’

‘I…’ Koorland frowned. ‘You are the primarch, my lord. The fleet, the warriors, they fight under your command.’

‘And I give you my full authority,’ said Vulkan. He lifted up a jar of lubricant and dipped a finger into it, the digit barely fitting. He started to apply the unguent to a metal coil. ‘You have commanded planetary landings before, Koorland. You do not need me looking over your shoulder.’

‘I would prefer… My lord, the High Lords have entrusted this expedition to us on the belief that you will command it. I have led Space Marines, but we also have Adeptus Mechanicus, Imperial Navy and Astra Militarum forces here too. Only a primarch, only you have experience leading such an armada.’

Vulkan stopped his work and drew in a breath, laying his hands flat on the table as though steadying himself, though more likely steadying his thoughts. By the accounts from Thane, Vulkan’s battle-wrath was every bit as mighty as the legends portrayed but here he was patience personified.

‘The last time warriors of the Emperor attacked this world, the force consisted of a hundred thousand Space Marines, eight million soldiers of the Imperial Army, a legion of a hundred Titans and over six hundred warships to protect the thousands of transports to carry them.’ Vulkan wiped his hands on a rag of cloth large enough to be a serviceable battle standard. ‘You have to worry about roughly a tenth of that.’

Koorland nodded, accepting the subtle chastisement, although he was still not comfortable with the task Vulkan handed him. The primarch read the reluctance in his expression.

‘That armada was led by a primarch. His name was Horus. The victory earned him the title of Warmaster.’ Vulkan’s shoulders tensed as he turned back to the work bench. He toyed with a few items, his hands deft despite their size. ‘We both know how that ended, Koorland.’

‘I am Slaughter.’ The reply was an unthinking instinct, but Vulkan snapped his gaze onto the Space Marine, brow furrowed with displeasure.

‘You are Lord Commander Koorland,’ growled the primarch. ‘You took that title freely. Now it is time to live up to it.’

Koorland stepped back, physically reeling from the rebuke as if struck. Recovering, he bowed to Vulkan, ashamed that he had disappointed the primarch. Vulkan’s disapproval was more injurious than any physical wound the Imperial Fist had suffered, the thought of it nearly as painful as the memory of Ardamantua. Swallowing hard, he resolved never to feel such disgrace again.

‘As you will it, Lord Vulkan. In your name, for the memory of Defiance and of the Lord Guilliman who first held the title, I shall continue as Lord Commander.’

Vulkan gave him a nod, a quick gesture but one that sent a surge of strength through Koorland. As easily as the primarch’s disapproval had dashed him down, his simple endorsement gave the Lord Commander renewed confidence and hope.

It was not until he was halfway back to the command bridge that he reflected on Vulkan’s words. To take Ullanor, Horus himself had commanded ten times the force at Koorland’s disposal. Koorland’s new optimism fled like sunlight at dusk.

Chapter Three

Ullanor — low orbit

The overture has begun. A while remains until the main movement begins.

Time is the enemy of peace, peace the enemy of sanity. I do not need to ponder, I have many lifetimes of sorrows to occupy me. Let us be at the matter and bring it to swift resolution.

But it is not your place any more. That was the disaster. Even before the corruption, we were poor lords. No leader save He alone should be greater than his followers. He must value them more than they value him.

Why did we not understand that before?

Melta charges turned the airlock door into slag in milliseconds, filling the corridor beyond with vapour and fiery particles. Valefor of the Blood Angels was the first through the breach, molten armaplas flecking his red armour as he pushed through the haze.

Bullets whined down the corridor and ricocheted from his war-plate while las-beams seared narrow welts across the ceramite. He lifted his pistol to reply with equal force, only for his finger to remain still — his attackers were not orks.

The volley of fire spewed towards him came from the pistols and rifles of human crew. A shotgun blazed as an armsman opened fire, spattering the Blood Angels captain with pellets.

‘Hold your fire!’ he bellowed, levelling his sword at the five Sanguinary Guard of his retinue that followed from the assault pod. Another flurry of bullets rattled around him and he returned his attention to the men in front. ‘Stop shooting, in the Emperor’s name!’

His words fell on deaf ears. Valefor’s auto-senses adjusted as the glare of entry faded, revealing more details of his attackers. They wore patched uniforms, some of them little more than rags held together by crude stitching and maintenance tape. Ork glyphs had been painted onto the fabric and the crew members wore necklaces of human teeth. Their cheeks and brows bore scars and other tribal markings.

‘Cleanse the traitors,’ spat the captain, opening fire. His shots cut through the nearest trio, spattering the bulkheads with their blood. More bolts flared past as the Sanguinary Guard unleashed their Angelus bolters, turning another dozen foes to broken flesh.

Valefor launched himself into the remaining crew, his power sword a golden shaft of light in his fist. He parted limbs and bodies with every slash and thrust, the continuing storm of fire from his companions tearing around him.

In a few more seconds they had reached an arterial corridor, emerging into a fresh conflagration of fire from all directions. On galleries above and through open doors, the crew of the boarded ship spilled forth like ants from their nest. Their calls were more like the grunting of animals, low and hoarse. The walls were clumsily painted with more ork glyphmarks, and piles of filth littered the deck. Chains and cables strung with bones and hunks of scrap metal hung from gallery to gallery in rough ornamentation.

The crew were savage, hollering and hooting as they poured along balconies and through the corridors, brandishing their weapons, firing wildly at the interlopers.

‘Orks in human bodies,’ muttered Sergeant Marbas. The veteran levelled his wrist-mounted bolter and sent a salvo of shots slashing through the closest crew.

‘This ship was not overrun in these past months of invasion,’ replied Valefor, adding his own bolts to the furious storm cutting along the corridor from his Sanguinary Guard. ‘These wretches have long been under the dominance of the greenskins.’

Marbas growled. ‘Did none stand guard for these lost worlds? Did none count their fall?’

‘I am sure reports of their loss lie somewhere on the desk of an Administratum clerk, unseen beneath tithe receipts and Astra Militarum levy charters,’ said Valefor. ‘We cannot be absolved of blame. We are the defenders of humanity — it is our watch that also fell lax.’

‘We cannot be everywhere, captain. How are we to safeguard a million worlds if they do not call for our aid?’

The crew withdrew a distance, cowed by the firepower of the Space Marines, their laspistols and shotguns of little use against Adeptus Astartes battleplate, their aim as woeful as the xenos that dominated them. The savages jeered and screeched, baring their teeth as if they had tusks and fangs like their ork masters.

Amongst the raucous cries and shouts, Valefor heard an undercurrent of another sound, a repetitive noise that grew in volume, taking over the disparate bellows and snarls. Through the roar of bolters, snap of lasguns and the shouts of the wounded and dying, he recognised a single word over and over, a guttural chant in crude Low Gothic.

‘Beast! Beast! Beast! Beast!’ The war chant echoed through the ship, accompanied by pounding fists and stamping feet, causing the entire corridor to reverberate.

‘They are lost to the Emperor,’ said Marbas. ‘They serve another, more immediate power.’

‘There is nothing to be salvaged here,’ snarled Valefor, withdrawing back into the accessway, moving out of the welter of las-blasts and projectiles.

The Sanguinary Guard followed, stepping backwards as they continued their volleys of bolts. A woman emerged from a hatch to their right, barking madly as she threw herself at Valefor, daggers improvised out of plasteel sheets in her fists. She wore daubs of black face paint, and a headscarf checked in black and white — a pattern Valefor had seen on many an ork banner. The tip of his sword found her throat even as she scrambled to her feet, snarling becoming a death rattle as she folded to the deck. Others were pushing through the maintenance shaft after her. Valefor kicked the first back into the tunnel and tossed a frag grenade into the open hatch. He stepped back as the detonation filled the small space with deadly shrapnel, then signalled to his vessel.

‘Sanguinem Ignis. We are ceasing the boarding action. When we are clear, turn this ship to plasma.’

Thane turned at the sound of the command bridge doors opening. He caught his breath as Vulkan ducked beneath the lintel. Fully armoured, he was as big as a Dreadnought and the battle-barge’s bridge, though large by human standards, seemed barely able to contain his presence. The Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar stepped to one side as Vulkan took the centre of the chamber.

Others turned at their stations — those capable of independent thought did. Thane saw veterans of dozens of battles trembling in the presence of the Emperor’s son. Several unaugmented crew muttered invocations and bowed their heads.

Thane let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

It was the primarch’s first appearance on the command deck since he had come aboard. His presence lightened Thane’s mood, reassuring and strong in equal measure. Koorland followed a few steps behind, his expression guarded.

‘Welcome to the Alcazar Remembered, lord primarch. I am sorry I did not get to extend a greeting on your arrival.’

Vulkan said nothing and eyed the main display.

‘A Salamanders strike cruiser arrived in-system yesterday, my lord,’ Thane continued. ‘They requested an audience.’

‘No,’ Vulkan replied, still examining the scanner feeds. ‘They will operate as part of the force without favour. Seeing me will only… distract them.’

‘They will be disappointed.’

‘That is all?’ the primarch said, turning to Thane. ‘A few battle stations and a handful of warships?’

‘We can detect no other orbital defences, lord primarch.’

Koorland stepped forward. ‘I have sent Chapter Master Odaenathus and High Marshal Bohemond to lead the attacks against the orbital platforms. Admiral Villiers and the survivors of the Third Coreward Flotilla are clearing out the remaining starships while Admiral Acharya creates a high orbital blockade.’ He took a breath and his gaze moved between the primarch and the screen and back again. ‘Within ten hours we will have full orbital supremacy.’

‘I see.’ Vulkan placed his hands together, palm to palm, resting against his plastron as if in prayer. He did not look pleased. ‘Are we to truly believe that we have seized Ullanor, homeworld of the Beast that has unleashed untold destruction across the Segmentum Solar, within ten days of arrival, and with the loss of only two frigates, one destroyer and less than twenty Space Marines?’

‘That is the situation at present, lord primarch,’ said Thane.

Vulkan accepted this in silence, looking at Koorland expectantly. The Lord Commander ground his teeth in thought for a short time.

‘We cannot dispute the facts as they are,’ he said slowly, considering his words. ‘Orbital dominance is assured and the ork fleet is scattered. The Imperial Navy is capable of creating an outer blockade against any counter-attack. The next phase must be surface assault. We need a war council to decide the strategy and plan of attack.’

‘Very well,’ Vulkan said with a nod. ‘By my authority, make it so.’

The primarch left, and with his departure the bridge regained something of its old dimensions, the background mood losing some of its intensity. Thane approached Koorland.

‘Why does he not issue the command himself?’ the Exemplar asked. ‘He seems… disinterested in the entire endeavour.’

Koorland laid a hand on Thane’s pauldron.

‘He is a primarch, a son of the Emperor. I do not try to guess his thoughts, but I have no doubt of his motivations. He has brought us here to kill the Great Beast, and that is what we shall do.’

‘Then I will share your confidence, brother,’ said Thane. ‘Who shall we bring to the war council?’

‘All of them,’ replied the Lord Commander. ‘Chapter Masters and command-level captains, admirals and commodores, and don’t forget Dominus Gerg Zhokuv and whichever subordinates he wishes to bring.’

‘And what is to be the strategy, brother?’

‘We find the Great Beast, attack with everything we have, and destroy it.’

The words were simple enough, but the look Koorland exchanged with Thane confirmed the Exemplar’s belief that the execution, literal and figurative, would be far from straightforward.

The lexmechanic’s voicebox had an irritating static interference that made her sibilants sound like a hissing snake. Koorland tried to ignore the aural tic so that he could concentrate on the tech-priest’s analysis. She was currently pointing with a reticulated mechanical limb at a greyish globe dominating the hololith display that hung in the middle of the briefing chamber.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the sparse light coming from the projector. The gloom did nothing to alleviate the claustrophobic conditions of a chamber built for half a dozen officers filled with twice that number and their attendants, not to mention the dominating presence of Vulkan looming over them all from beside a blinking bank of strategic cogitators. The primarch had his fingers entwined, his gaze directed off to one side, barely observing the proceedings. Removing the large brushed-steel table had not made much difference, but Koorland was glad of the little extra space that this had afforded.

He shifted his weight, agitated, aware that many of his companions were barely restraining their desire for more determined conversation, only for the sake of appearances observing the niceties of the technical reports and standard liaison protocols. Everyone had something to say but nobody was saying anything yet.

‘Electromagnetic disssturbance in the upper ionosssphere hasss led to much reflective patterning on our initial orbital ssscan data.’ At an unseen command, areas of the slowly spinning globe highlighted in orange, with trails of yellow criss-crossing sections of the remaining whited-out sphere. ‘Much of thisss interference can be traced to masssive orbital intrusssions. The ressst we expect isss generated by unssshielded indussstrial ssstructuresss on the sssurface of the planet.’

‘Orbital intrusions?’ The question was asked by Field-Legatus Otho Dorr, strategic commander of the gathered Astra Militarum forces. In terms of raw manpower, when the remainder of the transports completed the journey into orbit he would lead the largest force — nearly ninety thousand soldiers and ten thousand battle tanks and other vehicles.

‘Ship descents and ascents,’ explained another of the Cult Mechanicus adherents. He looked much like a crab perched on a hunched human body, a splay of hydraulic appendages like a ruff around his neck. ‘Poorly-shielded plasma drives in low orbit, wakes from dirty atomic propellants on shuttlecraft. That sort of thing.’

‘A lot of them,’ added the dominus.

Koorland knew that it was crude to think of martial prowess in purely physical terms. In fact, to equate pure size with military ability was ork-thought. Yet despite being logically aware of this deficiency in his judgement, he could not help but think of the leader of the Adeptus Mechanicus battle congregation as being somewhat underwhelming.

The dominus was, for the moment, a brain in a glass vessel. An armoured vessel, Koorland conceded, as Gerg Zhokuv continued his detailed explanation of the vacillations and weaknesses of starship augur arrays. Clusters of sensory nodes and rods were mechanical replacements for eyes, nose, ears and skin, linked through spiralling cables attached to sockets in the exterior of the metre-high vessel that two lumbering natal-tank Praetorians had brought to the council room. The biotic fluid inside obscured all but the dark shadow of the organ within, but occasionally Koorland could see there were rods penetrating the naked brain matter. The brain itself was distended, patched in places with inorganic plates, far larger than any normal human skull could contain.

Most disconcerting was that the dominus’ ‘voice’ actually came from the young, waxen-faced man beside the stand on which the pteknopic vessel was set. By some invisible pathway Gerg Zhokuv controlled the slack-faced servitor’s body — at least the jaw and vocal cords, for all other facial functions seemed inoperative.

‘Can you find it?’ Bohemond’s growl cut across the dominus’ lecture. ‘Where is the Great Beast of Ullanor?’

‘We have identified several potential locations, hotspots of multi-frequency activity.’ There was a pause while Zhokuv’s attendants manipulated the display, which flickered with runic lingua-technis inscriptions over several broad zones of red.

‘Each of those must be several thousand square kilometres,’ said Wolf Lord Asger. ‘And there are four of them. That’s a quarter of the planet’s surface.’

‘We need to do better.’ Koorland spoke, sensing growing unease between the Space Marines and Adeptus Mechanicus representatives. ‘We cannot attack the entire world. We are here to kill the Great Beast, not conquer Ullanor. That is a war for another time. Terra itself is threatened. Time is a luxury.’

His announcement was met with silence for several seconds. Adnachiel, a Company Master from the Dark Angels, spoke next. He pulled back the cowl of his robe and revealed a deeply lined face, grey hair cropped short. Red light glittered in one eye, the lifelike orb hiding a bionic within.

‘As nobody else seems willing to raise the point, let me ask the question that is doubtless on all of our minds.’ As he spoke he looked at Vulkan, but his gaze moved to Koorland when he received no response from the primarch. ‘Why is Ullanor so poorly defended?’

The obvious answer went unspoken for a few seconds before Bohemond offered an alternative.

‘We have seen little strategy in the orks’ movements.’ He shifted his weight, his black armour reflecting the yellow and green lights from the hololith projector. ‘Orks do not consider grander plans, they simply attack until victorious or defeated. I am not surprised that there has been no thought given to the defence of their world.’

‘That might be true,’ said Asger, ‘but for the recent example of the attack moon. I have seen the reports. The orks on the station above Terra lured in the assault, feigning weakness before striking.’

‘Had that attack been led by experienced commanders they would have foreseen the danger,’ said Bohemond.

‘And here we are,’ replied Asger.

‘So, it’s a trap,’ said Thane. He looked at the assembled officers and commanders, hoping one might offer an alternative. None of them argued, not even Bohemond.

‘A trap we cannot avoid,’ said Koorland, his expression sour. ‘Perhaps that is the intent. We cannot destroy the Great Beast without landing forces. If we are not here to kill it, we should simply return to Terra and reconsider our options.’

‘There will be no withdrawal,’ growled Vulkan. He moved into the light of the hololith, filling the room, drawing all eyes. ‘The Great Beast dies, or we do. This is how it will be. This is how it should be.’

‘What do you mean, Lord Vulkan?’ asked Zhokuv. ‘Pointless expenditure of resources must be avoided. What is to be attained by placing ourselves between the jaws of the enemy if we have no guarantee of success?’

‘You wage war with formulae and calculations, magos dominus,’ said Vulkan. He narrowed his eyes and then looked away. ‘The balance of expense versus gain, parsed through algorithms and logic engines. All is rendered into probability. I must ask you to go further. To have… faith.’

‘My lord?’ Bohemond was conflicted, his expression vacillating between confusion and eagerness. ‘Faith in what, Lord Vulkan?’

‘Ourselves, perhaps,’ the primarch replied. ‘In justice. In vengeance, if needs be. If that does not suffice, then you must have faith in me. We can do nothing more than strive for victory, even if we cannot see how we might triumph. Magos, do not take this as insult, but there are matters that exist beyond the predictable and physical. The hearts of warriors and the chances of war are not easily codified.’

‘I have never claimed as such, lord primarch,’ Zhokuv protested. ‘My successes have been built upon adaptation and reaction, the ability to respond to the unknowable when it becomes known.’

‘Then we shall have faith in the Adeptus Mechanicus, also,’ Vulkan replied with a placating smile.

‘Faith will not bring forth the Great Beast,’ Zhokuv argued through his vox-servitor. ‘Application and endeavour will locate the target.’

‘As you say, magos dominus, as you say,’ Vulkan conceded. He looked at Koorland, expecting the Lord Commander to continue.

‘Application and endeavour,’ echoed Koorland. ‘We cannot avoid a planetstrike, so we must expend no concern on that front. There is one goal alone that must drive us. To locate the Great Beast. When that is achieved we will bring such force to bear that whatever the orks think they might do, it shall pale in comparison to our fury.’

There were words and gestures of assent from the gathered council. When the others had dispersed, Thane and Koorland were left with Vulkan. The primarch had withdrawn into himself again and stared silently at the slowly revolving hololith of Ullanor.

‘You look troubled, my lord,’ said Thane.

Vulkan did not move his gaze, but replied softly.

‘Rivers follow their course. Animals follow their runs. Events follow required patterns.’ He sighed. ‘Certain confrontations are inevitable. Unavoidable consequences were set in motion the moment we chose to come to Ullanor.’

‘What consequences, my lord?’ asked Koorland.

‘None that we can evade, Koorland,’ said the primarch. ‘But we must prevail or all is lost. As I said, we must all show a little faith.’

Following the disappointing council, Koorland sought to find a little time for reflection before returning to the command bridge and the demands of his rank. Ever since he had taken up the mantle of Lord Commander it had seemed that vexation had become his constant companion.

He walked the corridors and decks of the Alcazar Remembered, but despite recent familiarity with the battle-barge it felt alien and unwelcoming. It was a ship of the Fists Exemplar, the demesne of Thane. As welcome as Koorland had been made, as much as he shared gene-seed with Thane and his battle-brothers, it was still foreign to an Imperial Fist.

His unthinking route took him away from the main decks and up towards the Navigation suite where the members of the Navis Nobilite were quartered. He did not disturb the Navigators, but turned towards the observation deck aft of their chambers. From the long starboard gallery of armourglass windows he could see Ullanor past jutting gun batteries below, the edge of a purple-grey hemisphere.

He looked at the planet for some time, no single thought coalescing, his mind moving from one concern to the next without even seeking solution — simply cataloguing the obstacles that seemed to have amassed in his path.

The thud of a heavy tread caused him to turn, expecting to see a maintenance servitor or other menial. Instead he met the concerned gaze of Maximus Thane.

‘I apologise for the disturbance, Lord Commander,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘The fleet commanders and our battle-brothers have been requesting instruction. Did you learn anything more of use from the lord primarch?’

Koorland shook his head.

‘We have not spoken further. It is clear he wishes me to fulfil the role of Lord Commander. The title is not for decoration alone even with his return.’

‘I have issued standard protocols, in your name,’ Thane said, stopping alongside the Lord Commander. ‘Straightforward requests for data, obvious fleet manoeuvres to allow the Adeptus Mechanicus to conduct survey flights. Bohemond and his Black Templars are assuming an aggressive orbital stance. It seems he is volunteering to be the spearhead of an assault.’

‘Of course he is,’ murmured Koorland. He waved a hand towards Ullanor and raised his voice. ‘Against what foe should we cast the spear, Maximus? Would Bohemond have us strike without sight? If only I had the eyes to pierce the gloom that shrouds this world.’ He turned away from the view and addressed Thane directly. ‘What matter do you need to raise?’

‘Something I think you need to know, though I cannot say if it is important or not. Events at Vandis that have been overlooked. The last transmission of Magneric — it has been gnawing at me. He was willing to risk everything to ensure it was safely conducted to Terra, but the ships had not arrived before our departure. Information so vital an honoured veteran of the Heresy War was prepared to make common cause with accursed traitors!’

‘There is nothing I can do about that, brother.’ Koorland sighed. ‘I cannot reach out my hand and pluck the missing ships from the warp, nor pull free from them the information in an encrypted data-packet.’

‘It is… an unfinished business,’ Thane said slowly, choosing his words carefully, finding it difficult to explain his thoughts. ‘And Zerberyn did not return, even though we know that the Dantalion survived the battle. It is most uncharacteristic that he did not come to Terra immediately. Our astropaths and Librarians sought for any sign of their approach before we departed but saw nothing.’

‘It is possible that both Zerberyn and others arrived after…’ The Lord Commander straightened, struck by a thought. He glanced at the planet below and then back to Thane. ‘Perhaps we do have eyes to pierce this veil, Maximus.’

For the first time in many, many days, Koorland smiled.

Maximus Thane had never previously ventured into this part of the Alcazar Remembered. There had been no reason to intrude upon the private chambers set aside for the Librarius of the Fists Exemplar. It was with a brief moment of trepidation that he paused at the threshold to the deck, one hand on the bulkhead, the other on the pistol grip at his hip as though expecting attack.

‘Is there something wrong, brother?’ Chapter Master Odaenathus asked from behind.

Thane did not look back, but knew the eyes of his companions were on him — Koorland, Adnachiel, Asger Warfist, Quesadra and Issachar. In other circumstances it would be unthinkable for such a group of officers to be absent from their commands while in orbit over an enemy world, but the orks had shown no more intent to attack than when the fleet had first broken warp. The Imperial Navy were more than capable of fending off the disjointed assaults by individual ork battleships and opportunistic flotillas.

Saying nothing, Thane stepped through into the Librarius deck, expecting to sense some change in the atmosphere or mood. Aside from his own tension, there was nothing. He looked at the wards cast into the fabric of the walls and bulkheads, psychic-shielding runes wrought as much to keep out unwanted attention as they were to contain the power of the Librarians gathered within. Should the Geller fields fail in warp transit — itself a numbing proposition — the inner wards provided a sanctum within the ship from which psychic resistance might be staged.

At the heart of the deck was an amphitheatre, the Hall of Solace. The dome above it was formed of petal-like segments lined with crystalline channels and veins, the seemingly haphazard array of blue and grey lines having a mesmerising quality when Thane looked up at them. The Hall of Solace was usually a place of solitude and calm, but today it served a different purpose.

Nearly a score of Space Marine psykers, in many colours and of varying rank, had gathered aboard the Alcazar Remembered in the ten hours since the war council. Some he had met before, such as Rune Priest Thorild from Asger Warfist’s Great Company and Lexicanium Gandorin of the Dark Angels, as well as several from the Imperial Fists successors that had gathered at Phall. Others, the gaunt-faced Blood Angel Redolphio and Carrigan Nos of the Crimson Fists among them, were known to him only by name.

Thane glanced at Koorland and received a nod of assurance from the Lord Commander. Neither had remarked on the absence of Vulkan — the primarch was keeping his own counsel for the time being and that suited Thane. As much as the presence of the lord of the Salamanders gave him heart, Thane was also slightly disturbed by Vulkan’s occasionally fatalistic utterances.

‘Shall we begin?’ asked Vaniel, the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, who had been tasked with orchestrating the psykers.

‘Why are we here?’ said Quesadra. With the others he sat on a curved bench close to one of the walls, looking down into the bowl of the Hall of Solace.

‘As witnesses,’ Vaniel replied. ‘My brother Librarians and I shall be in communion with each other and I shall be the conduit. To break through the fog of ork psychic power that envelops Ullanor we shall all need to enter a trance-like state. It is possible we will not remember that which we encounter.’

‘Though we will not touch on your minds directly,’ added Redolphio, ‘you are all warriors with strong will. Your mere presence in this place will act as a shield against disturbances and intrusions, allowing us to focus our efforts on silencing the ork psychic roar.’

‘Very well, what do you require of us?’ said Koorland.

‘Nothing more than your attention and your patience, Lord Commander,’ said Vaniel. He turned back to his companions, standing within the lines of a hexagrammic star laid into the deck with lines of lead, the cardinal points and intersections marked by jutting pillars of metal like candlesticks. Vaniel stood at the centre. Pauldrons scraped against each other as the rest of the Librarians came together in a circle around him, the space intended for half their number.

The Librarians bowed their heads. An aura of light filled the air around them, glowing from the nest of cables that splayed from the neck openings of their armour and pierced each of their heads — psychic hoods that amplified their powers. Thane realised he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly, not wishing to betray his sensitivity. His exhalation came as a faint mist. The hall had dropped several degrees in temperature. A thin rime of frost glittered at the hexagrammic nodes on the floor.

The other officers were intent on the unfolding scene below and did not spare him a glance.

Silence descended, the only sounds those of the ship around them, which quickly faded from thought. The gleam and glitter of psychic energy were made more sinister by the lack of accompanying noise. No word was spoken by the Librarians but Thane had a sense of conversation, of the connection between them growing, unseen and unheard. He listened to the whisper of their breaths, realising that they were coming together, every inhalation and exhalation moving into time with the others.

Thane leaned forward, intent. His eyes swept from one Librarian to the next, seeking any sign of strain. If anything, the psykers looked at peace, eyes closed, faces relaxed. He could see Vaniel only in profile, but the Chief Librarian’s face was slightly uplifted, as though a heavenly body above drew his unseen gaze. His eyes moved back and forth under the lids, as if reading.

‘Anger.’

The word was muttered, barely audible as it left Vaniel’s lips, but it made Thane twitch in surprise.

‘Immortal anger. Rage. A tempest.’ Vaniel’s mouth barely moved but the words grew in volume, amplified by the chamber, settling in Thane’s thoughts more loudly than the Librarian’s voice alone. A darkness passed over Vaniel’s face, like the shadow of a cloud.

Thane blinked. He looked up, and the channels of psychic crystal in the dome glowed with a consistent pale blue light. The lumen strips in the walls were equally constant.

‘A storm, a storm of wrath, a storm of fury.’

Thane felt it. Felt the anger that lapped at the minds of the Librarians like a tide breaking against a sea wall. The others sensed it too. They shifted in unease, their movement in the corner of his eye, but his attention fixated upon the psykers. He saw the shadow again, darker, lingering longer on the face of Vaniel. Thane wanted to speak out but knew that any disturbance not only threatened failure in the ritual but might compromise the psykers’ defences.

A scrape just beside him drew his glance for just a moment. Gauntleted fingers drew back along the bench, leaving ragged marks. Thane realised it was his own hand. His jaw was clamped tight, aching.

It was not just Thane and his distaste for psykers. A noticeable tension permeated the chamber, emanating from the circle of Librarians. The Space Marine officers observing the ritual all felt what Vaniel felt, sensing the savagery of the orks as well as hearing his thoughts in their minds. A brutal urgency was pushing into Thane, quickening his hearts.

‘Straining, raging, thrashing,’ Vaniel rasped. His voice was becoming more guttural, his demeanour darkened. He bared his teeth, heavy gasps punctuating his snarled words. ‘The great green powers us. The great green becomes us. We are the great green.’

The grunts and groans were not limited to the Ultramarines Chief Librarian. The other psykers channelled the primal spirit of the orks, their faces masks of bestial hate, hands forming claws or fists. Redolphio was banging the heels of his hands against his chest, each impact sending a jolt of energy through the others. Thane noticed that the Blood Angel’s incisors seemed long, fang-like. He tore his eyes away for just long enough to steal a glance towards Valefor. The Blood Angels captain was alert, leaning forward on the bench.

A growl, long and low, reverberated around the dome. Though he could not say how he knew, Thane felt it emitted from the Rune Priest, Thorild. The Fenrisian’s eyes were wide open, glowing red like embers. His beard and hair moved as though in their own breeze. The pulses of energy playing around the assembled Librarians’ psychic hoods was tainted by green sparks.

‘The city,’ croaked Vaniel. His gaze moved slowly around the room, his body turning with it. ‘The citadel. Gorkogrod. Temple of the Great… Green. A throne of rage. A blade awaits. Cannons… lie slumbering.’

As one, all of the Librarians jerked, straightening suddenly with throaty roars. Thane started in shock, and the clatter and whine of war-plate betrayed the reactions of the others.

‘The Beast arises!’ Vaniel hunched, arms hanging like an ape’s limbs, lips drawn back to reveal teeth and gums darkened by psychic power. He threw back his head and lifted his hands high, a wordless howl bursting forth. ‘Waaaaagh!’

Several of the others raised their voices in unison, creating a primordial shout that shook the hall physically and psychically.

Thorild stepped back, breaking the circle. His entire body was taut, thrumming with tension like the air around him. Ceramite shattered as talons of scarlet lanced from the Rune Priest’s fingertips.

Koorland drew his pistol and fired, the bolt hitting the Space Wolf in the back of the left arm, splintering war-plate.

‘No!’ bellowed Asger, smashing a shoulder into the Lord Commander, sending Koorland’s next shot into the far wall.

Thorild leapt, and in that moment Thane saw what the Rune Priest had sensed a moment earlier.

Vaniel drew his combat blade and pistol in a fluid movement. Roaring incoherently, he attacked, firing bolts into the face of Carrigan Nos of the Crimson Fists while he drove the point of the knife into the throat of Redolphio. Two other Librarians fell onto their companions, battering with fists wreathed in green lightning, shrieking like foul greenskins.

The other Ultramarine in the circle, Adarian, threw out a hand. A golden gladius appeared in his fist, piercing the chest of one of the ork-maddened psykers. Thorild’s claws sheared through the throat of Vaniel, almost severing his head. A detonation of jade energy erupted from the slain Chief Librarian. The shockwave hurled everyone to the ground with a howling wind and the clatter of armour. It slammed into the walls and dome where runes burned with a blinding green light for several seconds.

Thane felt himself at the centre of a storm, his body crushed by a tremendous weight, his thoughts tossed adrift by the psychic tempest. The primal roar flowed into him. Through him. He gritted his teeth, resisting the instinct to add his voice to the tumultuous bellow.

For an instant he was but one of countless billions, a single warrior in an immense army that bestrode the stars. His voice was countless voices. Countless voices were his. A single shout, a unifying war cry that drove them all, that fuelled and was fuelled from the great green sea that swept away all in its path.

The pounding of his hearts filled his ears. A growl shook Thane, welling up from his throat.

He needed his weapons. He needed to fight, to dominate, to destroy.

‘I am Maximus Thane,’ he snarled, the words coming as though dragged from his lips. ‘Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar. Son of Dorn!’

This last declaration broke him free from the lure of the savage ork spirit unleashed by the Librarians. He recovered his wits to find himself lying face down on the hard floor. He remained there for several heartbeats, steadying his thoughts before he risked standing.

Slowly he pushed himself up.

Koorland was already on his feet. He advanced on the dazed psykers, a glance at Asger warning the Wolf Lord to stay back. Thorild pushed himself away from the bloody wreckage that remained of Vaniel, covered in gore. His claws had disappeared and he held up his hands as Koorland approached with purpose.

‘Wait!’ called Thane. ‘I saw what happened.’

Koorland stopped. His eyes remained on Thorild.

‘So did I, brother.’ He motioned for Thorild to put down his hands. ‘I think we owe you a blood debt, Brother Rune Priest. Our loss would have been greater today if not for your strength.’

‘The great green… The ork psychic field is phenomenal,’ Thorild whispered. ‘All-consuming. I wanted to embrace it, become it. To unleash the beast inside.’

‘It was not simply the gestalt ork presence,’ said Adarian. The Ultramarine gazed sorrowfully at what remained of his superior. ‘It was focused, as through a lens. Not consciously directed, but… amplified?’

‘It reminded me of something,’ said Gandorin. He glanced at the surviving psykers, haunted, and received nods of agreement. ‘But I am not sure what.’

‘I do not know,’ said Adarian, ‘but I concur. The Great Beast, we felt it, just for an instant. An incarnation. A conquering spirit given giant form. All that it is to be an ork, made flesh. Nearly overwhelming.’

‘But you resisted,’ said Thane, regaining his feet. He looked at the others that had countered the ork insurgence. ‘You fought back.’

‘It met something more savage,’ Thorild growled. He tapped his chest. ‘Something in here it wasn’t expecting, a little gift of my Fenrisian heritage.’

‘I followed your call,’ said Gandorin. A brief smile. ‘Your howl was louder.’

‘What of the city?’ The question came from Odaenathus. The others had descended to the floor of the hall and waited just behind Thane and Koorland.

‘Gorkogrod,’ said Adarian. ‘We all saw it. A towering edifice, dedicated to the essence of orkdom. The Great Beast is there, I am certain.’

‘Where?’ asked Koorland. ‘Where is this “Gorkogrod”?’

‘I cannot say,’ said Adarian. The other psykers shook their heads and frowned.

‘Which part of the sun blinds you when you look upon it?’ explained Gandorin. ‘The assault was both like a lens, and diffused. We have learnt nothing in return for the losses we have suffered.’

This sombre news was greeted with silence. Thane looked at the Librarians who had been slain. Good warriors, taken from the service of the Emperor in the worst circumstance — by the hands of their battle-brothers.

‘We must shut down all psychic activity across the fleet,’ said Koorland. ‘If this was a deliberate counter-attack, the orks may target our Navigators or the primaris psykers of the Astra Militarum.’

‘There are means and places for such precautions,’ said Thorild. ‘Librarius sanctums. Navigator safe-chambers. Of course, some might not be willing to go into isolation.’

‘We will not offer them the choice,’ Koorland said quietly.

‘And the astropaths,’ added Odaenathus. ‘This close to Ullanor, we cannot risk any psychic pollution, even if the orks do not intend it.’ He looked at the corpse of Vaniel and shook his head. ‘If the will of an Adeptus Astartes Chief Librarian is not strong enough to resist, perhaps even being soul-bound to the Emperor is no defence against the rage of the Great Beast.’

Thane had not thought it possible for the mood in the hall to get any grimmer, but he discovered he had been wrong.

The Cortix Verdana hung like an inverted pyramid in orbit over Ullanor. The Adeptus Mechanicus war-forge bristled with weapon turrets and gun decks, but it was the activity in its eight flight bays that was the focus of attention. The strategium was abuzz with clattering, chattering servitors, the air thick with sacred incense issuing forth from the environmental systems in preparation for the massed launch, touching the air with the mixed scent of oil and perfume.

Gerg Zhokuv had been installed into his primary motor array, a sprawl of jointed limbs and coiled wires that gave him the freedom to move about the vast strategium deck via overhead magnetic runners. The hum of his perambulations heralded his arrival at any particular station, prompting the tech-priest overseers to sharply deliver their reports without need for request.

Bursts of machine-intelligible vox-code mixed with lingua-technis, the high notes against a background symphony of droning and whirring cogitators, metriculators and logistographs. The bubble of phageolinear pipes keeping the servitors alive was nearly lost in the hiss of hydraulics from augmented magi and the crackle of static-filled vid-screens awaiting active livefeeds from the drop-craft about to descend into Ullanor’s murky atmosphere.

‘Where is the magos veridi-exactor? I demanded his presence seven hectosecs ago!’ Zhokuv’s voice snapped mechanically from two hundred speaker grilles across the strategium, momentarily blotting out all noise.

‘He is en route, revered Spear of the Omnissiah,’ Magos Delthrak replied from a few paces behind the dominus. Zhokuv’s chief strategos was a bear of a man. His red robes barely contained the mountain of flesh and bionics within. Muscular bulges and angular jutting edges distorted the heavy fabric. The tread of metal-shod feet set the deck plates trembling with every step. Two finger-thin tentacular mechadendrites whirred out from niches between his shoulders. They gesticulated in agitation. ‘He has reached the logical limit for useful competence, dominus. I am unsure what role you foresee him adequately fulfilling. Why even have him brought forth from the datacores of Pavonis Mons?’

‘This is why I am the dominus and you are the strategos,’ rasped Zhokuv, his voice emitting from the personal address system mounted into the cradle holding his pteknopic jar.

‘I am the Barbarian’s Advocate, mighty Sun of Vengeance. It is my duty to test your theories. You should not take my disagreements personally.’

‘I do not. Your role I accept. We should ever guard against self-replication and self-verification. Your unbridled enthusiasm for your duties, on the other hand…’

A piercing siren and flashing amber lights announced the opening of the grand doors of the strategium. Each door weighed several tonnes, constructed of layered plasteel and adamantium, able to withstand atomic attack and the heaviest melta blasts. Immense engines built within the doors themselves growled into action, sliding open the massive portal. It was rare for them to operate. On this level alone there were six other smaller entryways into the strategium for the regular coming-and-going of tech-priests and menials, not to mention elevators, conveyors and two staircases linking the master deck to the other parts of the immense command core.

Against the white lumen glow beyond the doors a small figure appeared. It stood lopsided on three spindly legs, a barrel-shaped body and upper limbs currently hidden in the voluminous folds of a tech-priest’s robe. A head, or what was left of one, topped the bizarre torso. As the outlandish figure moved into the strategium, light glinted from a single natural eye set into what had once been the man’s forehead, surrounded by metal reinforcements, data-gathering spines and sensor globes.

The tech-priest stopped. His head rotated left and right several times and then his focus latched on to the dominus. He surged closer in a series of unbalanced bursts, skidding to a halt every few strides before propelling himself forward. Stopping a few metres from the overlord of the Cult Mechanicus forces, the tech-priest unfolded two crane-like arms and dipped bodily in an approximation of a bow.

‘Magos dominus, profound apologies for the tardiness of my response.’ The tech-priest’s voice was artificially modulated, the bass intonation strained through mechanical processors. ‘My navigational banks were uploaded with inaccurate charts of the Cortix Verdana. I had to inquire as to the correct route to the strategium several times. I hope I have not missed anything.’

‘Launch will commence in two hectoseconds, Magos Laurentis,’ Zhokuv replied. Quivering metal appendages waved the unstable tech-priest aside and the dominus zipped to the main command station at the centre of the master deck. He settled his carry cradle into a socket where a more able-bodied leader might have placed a command throne. He had no physical need to see the screens and displays; he could monitor all of the feeds directly through digital translation. However, the symbolism of being at the literal centre of all of the martial activity was not lost on Zhokuv. If he had possessed a more traditional corporeal incarnation, this was where he would have sat.

A gaggle of servitors blurted out the latest status updates while more of their kind ambled forward and plugged the dominus’ thicket of external interface attachments into the sockets piercing the command station. Laurentis and Delthrak arrived just as he settled his systems into the embracing mecha-consciousness of the Cortix Verdana’s primary systems. Above him an atmospheric outlet puffed a mist of pungent sacred incense into the air, responding to his subconscious desire to exhale at length.

‘Phaeton Laurentis, one of only two witnesses to survive the denouement of the Ardamantua attack,’ the dominus said to Delthrak, turning a sapphire lens towards the tech-priest, in answer to his strategos’ earlier complaint. ‘Aside from the personal experience, Magos Laurentis is also a repository for all of the data related to encounters with the Veridi giganticus since the Ardamantua attack. I understand that your lack of induction through the Magi Militarum might impair your ability to understand some of my thinking, but in this case I would think my reasoning requires no justification.’

‘He is dysfunctional, of dubious sanity, dominus,’ said Delthrak. He glared at Phaeton. ‘Unreliable.’

‘Thank you,’ said Laurentis, taking no affront from his superiors’ discussion in his presence. ‘I have come to the conclusion that reliability is an overemphasised trait. The unreliable orks appear to be doing very well thus far, to the extent that the Omnissiah might learn much from them.’

‘He also blasphemes,’ Delthrak added. ‘He was almost disassembled, a blatant neovagris apostate. A corrupting influence.’

‘The magos’ unorthodoxy is one of his greatest strengths. He is irretrievably broken, but his insights into the waywardness of the Veridi giganticus behavioural model are essential integration material. Have you not assimilated his recent Treatise on the Notional Benefits of Wrongness?’

‘One of my most radical tracts.’ A grating sound which might have been a chuckle vibrated through Laurentis’ speaker. ‘Also my shortest. I shall perform a through-check study to see if there is a correlation between brevity and anti-hierarchal asceticism.’

‘The launch commences in one hectosecond,’ announced the dominus, cutting off any further response from his strategos. The alert passed through his system without effort, his meta-consciousness overridden by the automaton will of the Cortix Verdana. As Zhokuv uttered the words, binharic cant-code throbbed from interconsciousness and out through the massive starship, setting off alerts and status demands in a cascade effect. Two hundred and forty-eight servitors roused from dormancy at his call, secondary monitor systems on-lining as his crypto-engrams flowed into their machine bodies. It felt as though he multiplied, becoming a thousandfold incarnation of himself. ‘All stations on final alert for launch!’

Delthrak and Laurentis were arguing about something, but Zhokuv ignored them, letting their words fall into a temporary memory bank for later review while he focused his will on the final preparations for the scanning mission.

Blocky triangles of gunmetal and black, the data-gatherers sat on their launch catapults and awaited the last integration protocols for their human pilots. Mostly human. While cortical automata and servitors were useful for many tasks, it was near-impossible to replicate human ingenuity and intuition in an artificial spirit. Given the circumstances — a descent into the virtually unknown, looking for an as-yet-unidentified location — logic alone would not be able to highlight the location of the Great Beast.

While the pilots plugged in their data cables and connected their brains to the machine-spirits of their unarmed craft, Zhokuv ran a thorough diagnostic of the surveyor assimilation systems. Twelve independent data-streams coalesced within the analytic framework and the dominus did not want to leave any possibility of information corruption or mis-flow. The response from the orks was, given past experience, likely to be rapid and lethal. The pilots had been briefed as such, the dominus making an effort to explain to them the value of their potential sacrifice, ensuring they were cognisant both of the honour they received in being assigned to such an important mission and the glory of the Omnissiah that went with them.

‘Two decaseconds to mission commencement. Final alert, all stations. Propulsion, bring to full orbital stasis for launch.’

Energy grids rippled across the Cortix Verdana. To Zhokuv it felt like a sudden rush of blood — as well as he could remember having such a thing, it having been over a century since anything resembling flesh had encased his consciousness. Arrestor engines and stabiliser jets fired, ensuring the massive starship was in absolute synchronous orbit with the rotation of the world below. Even a few metres out of place could render the octangulated data-feed useless, putting off readings by several kilometres or more.

Zhokuv allowed himself a moment of introspection. Fifty milliseconds, to be precise. The behemoth weight of the starship was nothing, just a fraction of its mass at the outer edges of Ullanor’s gravity well, riding the line between spiralling into the depths and slinging out into deeper orbit.

He wondered if birds felt a similar sensation, poised gliding on a volcanic thermal, riding the invisible line between flying and crashing into the fires below. Plasma pulsed through the dominus’ artificial hearts and electricity flared along wires like blood vessels. Eyes that could scan every range of radiation glared down at Ullanor, vexed by the miasma of atmospheric and artificial fugue.

‘Clear for launch. Bay doors to vacuum lock. Final status transmissions readied.’

He noticed that his subordinates had fallen silent. All eyes in the strategium capable of moving from their workstations were turned upon the banks of the main displays, now crackling with dark shadows from the interior of the flight decks.

‘Mission commence. Vent bays.’ Zhokuv felt a slight thrill himself. He had wondered if, divorced of normal human hormones, he was still capable of excitement. Apparently he was, though the experience was purely intellectual anticipation rather than instinctive reaction.

Air rushed out into the waiting vacuum as the flight deck doors swiftly opened. On some of the screens a mixture of distant stars and the purple-grey cloud of Ullanor’s sphere appeared from the visual feeds. A spike of light and radiation from full-spectrum monitors flared across others.

He silently recalled his final, personal instructions from Fabricator General Kubik.

‘Ullanor is their heartworld, the key to unlocking the secrets of the ork gravitic teleporters. Secure that knowledge for the Cult Mechanicus and you shall be immortalised as a Techtrarch of Mars, saviour of our creed. Whatever happens, we must ensure the survival and future of Mars.’

‘Blessings of the Omnissiah upon your datacores!’ Zhokuv announced, letting forth the launch transmission codes. ‘Unto the void, unto the unknown, the hopes of sacred Mars upon your shoulders!’

The launch catapults flared, hurling the recon craft into the darkness. Zhokuv felt their expulsion as a ripple across nonexistent skin, perhaps like a scorpupine ejecting its poisonous spines at a predator.

The blunt-nosed ships curved out and down from the Cortix Verdana, the momentum of their ejection taking them away while the gravity of the world pulled them down into meticulously-calculated entry patterns.

All was silent across Zhokuv’s systems for nearly a whole second. The engines of the datacraft flared, and they surged towards the planet in a dispersing cluster of sparks against the grey of Ullanor.

Chapter Four

Ullanor — low orbit

The lighting in the chamber had been switched off, leaving it illuminated only by tall candles arranged in a circle. Banners hung in the shadows and before each was set a small altar on which company relics had been carefully laid — wargear from past heroes, trophies from slain foes, artefacts connected to the Emperor, Dorn and Sigismund.

‘Upon us has been thrust a duty no other is willing to take.’ Bohemond stood in the circle of light, in front of his kneeling marshals. His blade was bared, its edge resting on the skin of his exposed left palm. The light of the candles was swallowed by the black weave of his robe, his skin dark. ‘We few, we that hold to the higher ideals of the Emperor from the wisdom of Sigismund, know a Truth far more valuable than any weapon.’

His seven subordinates looked up at him with expressions fierce with pride, eyes alight with zealous fury.

‘Long has been the path to this understanding, long have we warred in the darkness driven by ancient oath but unknowing of the Truth to which we were being drawn. As the Light of the Emperor guides ships in the warp, we must allow the Truth to guide our actions. Only from the divine will of the Master of Mankind comes our purpose. No loyalty, no oath, no duty is above that fealty.’

He slowly drew the blade across his hand, allowing thick blood to spill onto the parchment that lay on the deck at his feet, weighted with gilded skulls of assorted alien species — an ork among them. The blood spattered across the yellowing sheet and soaked into the porous material. Moving his hand, Bohemond allowed the drop to form a rough cross, the shape of the Black Templars Chapter badge.

‘From this blood we shall know the Truth, for the Emperor’s Will courses through our veins. Our hearts beat by His design. Lord Dorn, our creator’s eternally blessed son, gave unto Sigismund his gene-seed and from Sigismund the Great and the Loyal Crusade we were given form and will.’

Bohemond flicked his blade clean, the last of the blood creating fresh marks on the parchment. He sheathed the sword and crouched, examining the patterns in some detail. The High Marshal allowed the Truth to take him, his stare losing focus, his vision fogging as the spirit of the Emperor seeped into his soul, touching him with its wisdom.

The markings swam in his vision, merging and splitting, forming shapes as yet beyond discerning. Bohemond closed his eyes, allowing the memory of the blood-omens to continue to form in his thoughts, seeking the intervention of his divine master.

It came to him in a flash. The patterns became an image, the image a vision. A sword descending, piercing a world.

Its meaning was clear.

‘Praise the Emperor, for He has made His will known to us!’ declared Bohemond, opening his eyes.

‘Mark these words for remembrance, brothers!’ he whispered, looking at each of his subordinates, pleased by their resolve. ‘Trust in the Emperor at the hour of battle. Trust to Him to intercede, and protect His warriors true as they deal death on alien soil. Turn their seas to red with the blood of the slain. Crush their hopes, their dreams, and turn their songs into cries of lamentation.’

At a gesture from their High Marshal the Black Templars rose. Bohemond stooped and picked up the parchment. He tore it into strips, passing the tatters to his subordinates. Clermont fell out of line to follow his commander, bringing with him one of the large red candles that illuminated the chamber. Using the molten wax, he helped his battle-brothers to affix the bloodied parchment to their armoured pauldrons, placing each piece amongst the remains of previous purity seals.

‘Praise the Emperor. In our blood flows His will,’ each marshal intoned as he received the anointment from Clermont. ‘As our blood flows, His will is done.’

‘Return to your ships and prepare for the combat drop,’ Bohemond announced. ‘We have enough data from the initial scans to target the enemy. Let others wring their hands like timid scholars pondering their mysteries. We are the light that leads the way. The crusade continues, brothers! We are the Black Templars, the Emperor’s Sword, and in our wake shall come the Imperial Truth.’

‘We attack, High Marshal?’ asked Clermont. The castellan was excited by the prospect, not daunted. His hands trembled with anticipation, spilling drops of wax from the candle.

Bohemond smiled.

‘Indeed! Let us pray, as our bolters shall praise the Emperor soon enough.’ He bowed his head, one hand on the pommel of his sword, for no true warrior could commune with the Emperor without a weapon in hand. ‘Lead us from death to victory, from falsehood to truth. Lead us from despair to hope, from faith to slaughter. Lead us to His strength and an eternity of war. Let His wrath fill our hearts. Death, war, and blood — in vengeance serve the Emperor and the name of Dorn!’

The initial readings had been fruitful but not conclusive. Skimming through the upper atmosphere, the datacraft pieced together a rudimentary topology and energy schematic of Ullanor. The world was made up of three large continents and two oceans, one broken by a vast archipelago. These bodies of water were shallow, scarcely seas at all, and what further water remained to the planet was mostly trapped at the icy poles. The land was covered with urban sprawl, almost four-fifths of Ullanor inhabited, the density rising to an estimated several hundred thousand per square kilometre in the areas defined by the orbital surveys. It was to these huge conurbations that the datacraft headed, dividing into squadrons as they descended several kilometres through the thick clouds of vapour and pollutants.

‘Why have the orks not attacked?’ asked Delthrak. ‘We know that they possess detection systems capable of reaching beyond orbit.’

‘Insufficient data,’ chimed three of the dominus’ servitors before he could reply.

‘Our craft are unarmed. Perhaps they do not perceive them as a threat,’ Zhokuv said.

‘Orks care nothing for such niceties,’ countered Laurentis. A cable snaked from the nape of his neck to a nearby console, allowing him to monitor the dataflow in real time. ‘They relish conflict but they are also genetically programmed to dominate and destroy. However, there may be another truth hidden in your words, dominus. The lack of armament may mean the orks simply do not recognise the datacraft. It would be inconceivable to their minds that an aerocraft would not possess weapons. They might simply mistake them for orbital debris.’

As he considered this, Zhokuv slid a partial-consciousness engram through a data-transmitter, allowing him to settle part of his awareness into the implants of one of the pilots’ brains. For this close inspection he chose the lead craft of the squadron nearing the largest energy returns. Only the complete rejection of the flesh allowed him such transference — bitter experience had taught some of his body-bound predecessors that biological distraction acted as an anchor to the consciousness and caused duality-matrix problems with full engrammic integration.

Zhokuv reminded himself that he had transitioned to total pteknopic encasement to allow him to better monitor the battle-data for his command, but the perk of being able to partially experience front-line conflict in this manner also brought a certain level of satisfaction and reward.

The pilot blinked as the dominus’ presence settled into his stem implants. Zhokuv adjusted his perception systems, dialling them back to the mortal visual spectrum, and looked out of the pilot’s eyes. Witnessing an event first-hand was as important as any data-feed analysis.

The squadron broke through the cloud layer just a short time later, revealing the sprawl of the ork cities and the wastelands between. Grey dunes spread across steep hills and dells, shifting in a strong crosswind. Large patches of oxide red and verdigris-like debris marked the expanse. Processing this, Zhokuv determined that the colouration was due to staining from the decay of ancient metals — possibly structures, potentially immense machines.

This ashen wilderness was littered with fortresses and other defensive structures. Walled compounds several kilometres across loomed over fading lines of age-old highways, while spurs of stone parapet and turrets splayed like the limbs of squatting arachnids, tipped with ungainly towers of corroded metal.

Sluggish rivers of polluted water meandered through the detritus-citadels. Spectromatic feedback revealed a toxic combination of chemicals oozing from the city, acidic and deadly — at least, to humans. Though he understood the hardiness of the orkoid species, the dominus was surprised to see small towns clinging to the banks of the rivers, breaching the lakes and pools as stilt-villages, as though some sustenance might be clawed back from the oil-slicked flows.

The outer settlements and maze of roads grew thicker closer to the city, like the moons of a gas supergiant unable to escape its pull, not yet consumed by its presence. There was no single point of change, no easy delineation between not-city and city. The citadels started to merge, becoming vaster and taller, yet still only outskirts and buttresses of the urban mountain that rose up beyond.

While he rode on the physical senses of the datacraft pilot, the dominus allowed his central consciousness capacitors to analyse the ongoing stream of other data fed into dozens of the Cortix Verdana’s supracogitators. He traced a near-invisible energy stream, networking through the scattered settlements to the central mass of the city itself. There was certainly no sign of a physical transmission system on the surface, and the surveyors were unable to determine if subterranean lines carried the energy waves. Nor did there seem to be any specific generation point. A few reactors and power plants had been detected in some of the fortresses, but their grids did not extend far beyond their walls.

More confusingly, the energy flow appeared to be towards the city, not out of it. The settlements were feeding the city somehow.

With a growing sense of distasteful revelation, Zhokuv was forced to conclude that the city was built from the remains of a far larger settlement, like a star going nova that was consuming its stellar system to fuel itself. Its near-impossible bulk heaved out of the plain, separated from a high mountain range to the west by a broad river that meandered north-west to a ragged coastline fifteen kilometres from the base of the mountain.

Tecto-sonographic impulses revealed that the heart of the city delved as deep into the crust as it rose, a catacomb of thousands of square kilometres of halls and corridors, the equal of the buildings and streets above.

Unlike the shanty-keeps of the ash wastes, these buildings seemed new. Although the materials were obviously reclaimed, showing signs of corrosion and improvisation, the slab-sided structures had a more considered, fabricated look than the ad-hoc fortifications of the wasteland. The closer to the centre of the city, the more organised the layout. Wide thoroughfares and broad plazas that would be the envy of any Imperial city emerged from the discordant urban clutter of the periphery.

Even as he marvelled at this, Zhokuv registered a vocal input and identified it as coming from Phaeton Laurentis.

‘Remarkable,’ droned the tech-priest. ‘Even a cursory analysis of the structural integrity ratings reveals a complex logarithmic progression.’

‘I see it,’ said Delthrak. ‘It is an exponential inversion. What does that mean?’

‘Order from anarchy.’ Laurentis let out one of his grating chuckles. ‘An urban incarnation of the emergence of will over wild.’

The dominus briefly focused on the other squadrons, to see if they encountered similar circumstances. The other two cities, of which it seemed there were actually many more across the planet, duplicated the structure-from-disorder scale to varying degrees.

‘Manifest order!’ crowed Laurentis. His enthusiasm quickly turned to solemnity. ‘I warned about this from the outset. But I was wrong, no simple will guides this. No volition. No single vision, to be precise. It is the inherency of the native orkoid hierarchy to eventually escalate to a point where upper echelons of order realise endemically out of the semi-random appropriation of their genetic and technological inheritance.’

‘If allowed to grow to sufficient levels, a true Veridi giganticus civilisation emerges?’ Zhokuv mused. ‘A sustainable, organised culture? Is that really possible?’

‘Possibly even sentience to the point of co-existence,’ Laurentis postulated, his vocal synthesisers tremulous with the thought.

‘Impossible,’ snapped Delthrak. The Barbarian’s Advocate snorted. ‘Highly organised, I grant you. Capable of peaceful interaction with other species? Nothing in any study has ever hinted at such a possibility. Structured or not, they would see the Cult Mechanicus and humankind destroyed or enslaved.’

‘No weapons,’ added the dominus. ‘We are well within any security zone, eighteen kilometres from the city centre. No response as yet…’

Long-range visuals started to reveal the innermost areas of the city, while laser-like injection scans sent back more detailed feedback of geological, physical and structural data.

Where the outer precincts seemed heaped upon each other, almost toppling upon themselves in their efforts to cram in as much living space as possible, the city’s inner region was like the eye of a storm.

An instant later Zhokuv’s surveyor-senses felt a surge of power from below, emanating from the outer fortifications. His immediate reaction set sirens squealing through the decks of the Cortix Verdana and triggered alarms across the panels of the other datacraft. The pilot he was monitoring responded within moments, as did the others, but human reactions were simply not swift enough to avoid what happened next.

Energy flared up from the ground, flowing like a shimmering wall from hundreds of generator stations located in the outlying citadels. Four milliseconds after first detecting the eruption, Zhokuv wrenched his engrammatic presence out of the pilot’s body, but even so he felt the contact-shock of the force field’s interaction with the datacraft.

Through his assayer conduits on the Cortix Verdana the dominus witnessed an interspersed energy signature unlike anything he had encountered — part gravitic, part electromagnetic, part radiation, and part something entirely unquantifiable. The same happened in the other targeted cities, with near-instantaneous coordination between the different conurbations.

Part of him experienced the raising of the defensive shield in this detached manner, watching the intersection of the roiling wave with the physical entities of the datacraft, slicing them in half. Simultaneously, his meta-being still encapsulated in the biological systems of the pilot caught the faintest echo of the man’s interpretation of events.

It was as though a giant hand swatted him out of the sky. An impression, nothing physical to be recorded, nothing verifiable. Swatted. It was the exact feeling that vibrated through Zhokuv’s being as the tiniest portion of mortal pain started to flood the pilot’s nervous system and the dominus’ engrammatic ejection completed.

The datacraft and its companions exploded as power plants overloaded, turning each into a scattering of particles that slicked along the shimmering screens of energy that now enveloped the cities.

Wholly back aboard his starship, Zhokuv took nearly two seconds to recover from the shock of engrammatic death. He felt incomplete, disjointed. Flustered, he withdrew his other data-tendrils from the Cortix Verdana’s systems, allowing full control back to the servitors and tech-priests. He detached his auditory and visual inputs to cocoon himself in absolute sense deprivation for several milliseconds while he contemplated the experience.

Mortality. There had been no physical threat to the dominus but even the glancing experience of the orks’ power left him in no doubt that he faced a highly advanced technology. It was one matter to know as much from the reports of the attack moons and other weaponry thus far employed, but it was something far different to encounter it first-hand.

Shock gave way to remembrance of his duty to the Cult Mechanicus. Fear subsided, to be replaced with resolution and ambition.

The power arrayed against them was indeed formidable, but he would overcome the obstacles. Zhokuv would harness that power and tame the xenos technology, for the sake of Mars.

Chapter Five

Ullanor — upper atmosphere

They must find their own way, so thinks the father. Mistakes teach us, experience moulds us. Who am I to deny them this? I learnt at the feet of two fathers, and still my mistakes were grievous. I trusted. I hoped. I dreamed.

The dream became a nightmare.

Let them find their own path, wayward and wandering. They do not need my dreams to guide them astray.

Staring out of the canopy of the Thunderhawk’s cockpit, Bohemond could see the blazing entry trails of the other gunships streaking down to the surface. For a time he watched the falling stars of destruction, bright lights against the perfect deep blue of near space.

‘It is beautiful,’ he whispered.

‘The Emperor’s vengeance on swift wings, High Marshal,’ replied Eudes, in the piloting position next to Bohemond. The jet black of his armour was marked by a single red pauldron on the left, signifying his symbolic ties to Mars as a Techmarine.

‘We are the guiding light and the burning flame, brother. On our blades the xenos will learn the penalty for despoiling the Emperor’s realm. Bolt and plasma, sword and fist shall be the manner of their punishment.’

‘Glorious fate, High Marshal, to be chosen amongst the Emperor’s anointed warriors!’ crowed Eudes. ‘Those that come after shall envy us this opportunity to strike in righteousness and end the terror of the greenskins forever.’

‘Indeed they shall. The Great Beast is no such thing. A petty alien warlord preying on fools that allowed self-service to outweigh diligence. The orks are a judgement upon the laxity of the High Lords. Before the blood of the invaders has soaked into the soil of the lands they have despoiled we shall bring the Emperor’s scorn upon the vermin that infest Holy Terra.’

‘Is that not the task of the Inquisition, High Marshal?’ Eudes glanced at his commander.

Bohemond watched the flicker of plasma jets disappear into the thickening cloud bank. A few seconds later the cockpit dimmed, the view outside turned to a uniform purple-grey of diffused light. His gaze moved to the surveyor screens, the transponder positions of the other Thunderhawks marked out by red sigils on the black display. In arrowhead formation they continued to plunge surfaceward.

‘The Inquisition?’ Bohemond resisted the urge to spit his disgust. ‘Cloistered meddlers, products of the inbred politics of the Senatorum.’

‘Of course, High Marshal.’ Eudes paused, uncertain of continuing.

‘You think that I overstep the mark of an Adeptus Astartes commander, Eudes?’

‘There are covenants, oaths…’

‘Pledges are but one form of honour and duty, brother. Ours is a higher cause, our judge none other than the Emperor Himself. What mortal bondage can stay our hand when a higher calling demands action? If I had been chosen as Lord Commander our forces would not be loitering in orbit as uncertain as a novitiate at first bolter drill. Praise Vulkan, son of the Emperor, but he is not the Emperor Himself. His coddling of Koorland leads our crusade astray.’

Eudes said nothing, fixing his eyes upon the monitors and controls. He was clearly ill at ease with the words of his superior but he offered no argument that might be taken as insubordination.

‘A doubt unvoiced is a doubt doubled,’ said the High Marshal.

‘Why must we hide the Truth, Brother-Marshal?’ Eudes’ look was plaintive. ‘Why should we be ashamed of being the Emperor’s trusted heralds?’

‘Be wary, brother.’ Bohemond spoke softly. He laid a hand upon the arm of his companion, a gesture of solidarity and reassurance. ‘The Emperor has chosen us to bear this message, because we are strong enough. The others are weak. They hold His light but do not embrace it. We are the true fists of the Emperor, the inheritors of the crusade He launched across the stars. In time others will come to our cause and know the truth of it. The Master of Mankind hid His light for thousands of years until the time was right to lead humanity back to glory. What terrible labour is it to conceal our greatness for a few years so that revelation might come at the correct moment?’

‘You are right, High Marshal. It was selfish of me to doubt your wisdom.’

‘The wisdom of Sigismund, not mine. We are great because we are the sons of greatness, never forget that.’

For the next several minutes Bohemond studied the navigational data transmitted by the Adeptus Mechanicus, gathered by their scout flights just before the datacraft had been destroyed. There was barely a square kilometre of the surface that was not populated — and hence defended. Wherever the Black Templars landed they would face instant retaliation. The only plausible attack strategy was to make planetstrike in overwhelming force, obliterating the orks in the landing zone’s vicinity to allow Bohemond’s warriors to establish a working beachhead.

He reviewed possible strike locations, immediately dismissing any landing within one of the major cities. As tempting as it was to directly pierce the heart of the enemy, there was little reward in attacking the most heavily fortified areas. Instead, his thoughts were drawn to one of many strange expanses in the ash wilds — areas obviously artificially flattened but bereft of significant structures. It was likely they were sites for future settlements, cleared and prepared but the construction not yet commenced.

A signal alerted him to a communication incoming from the Abhorrence in orbit. He activated the Thunderhawk’s vox-systems. Through the hiss of distance and growing interference from Ullanor he recognised Clermont’s voice. The castellan had been left in command of the fleet assets, awaiting instruction on the primary landing site.

‘High Marshal, we are losing surveyor contact with your position,’ the castellan warned. ‘I have been told communications will deteriorate rapidly over the next five minutes, possibly be eliminated entirely.’

‘You need the target zone, yes?’

‘Affirmative, High Marshal. Our companies are waiting in their drop pods, the cascades are primed for launch. Do we have an assault site confirmed?’

Bohemond looked again at the rough cartographic intelligence. One site looked the same as any other from their current position. He closed his eyes and adjusted the viewscreen without looking, trusting in the Emperor to lead him to the best site, a silent prayer for guidance in his thoughts. He opened his eyes and picked the closest of the flat expanses, noting the grid reference.

‘Transmitting target data to you, brother-castellan.’ Bohemond entered the coordinates and despatched an encrypted signal to the Abhorrence. ‘Immediate drop. Your assault wave will make planetfall no more than three minutes after our touchdown.’

‘We have your target data, High Marshal. Confirmed that assault wave will make planetfall at the target location in twenty-eight minutes.’ The link crackled for several seconds and then Clermont spoke again. ‘I have, per your orders, informed the Lord Commander of our intent to secure a landing zone and asked for his support. I have also contacted the other commanders. Quesadra, Antilipedes and Valefor have pledged support for the attack, and I will pass on the target data as soon as we launch. Issachar has made a qualified promise of secondary attack, dependent upon his review of the landing zone data. Odaenathus will only act on orders from the Lord Commander. I assume the Salamanders will follow Vulkan’s will, whatever that turns out to be. I have yet to receive responses from the others.’

‘Have you heard from Thane or Koorland?’

‘The Lord Commander has contacted us. I passed him the same information as the others, but he demands to speak with you. I have a vox-feed ready to link if you are willing, High Marshal.’

‘Very well, brother, I will speak with him. Continue with the assault as planned.’

The vox snarled and hissed for a few more seconds and then went quiet, signifying contact had been established with the Alcazar Remembered.

‘Lord Commander, you are speaking to High Marshal Bohemond.’

‘I demand that you call off your planetstrike immediately, Bohemond!’ Koorland sounded strained, though the poor quality of the link might also have been responsible for the flutter in his voice. ‘You have no authority to launch this attack.’

‘I am High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars, recognised as Chapter Master by the Senatorum Imperialis. I know well how far my authority extends, and yours, Lord Commander.’

‘We cannot attack piecemeal, brother.’ Koorland’s attempts at conciliation sounded equally as forced as his assumed authority. ‘We must coordinate our strategy with the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Mechanicus. This impetuous assault will gain us nothing.’

‘You wish to talk of strategy, Lord Commander? You said yourself that we can do nothing from orbit. Why waste time? The longer we hold back our fury the more we allow the orks opportunity to prepare their defences. We are the Space Marines of the Emperor. We lead, others follow. Koorland, it is time to lead!’

Koorland did not reply immediately, the delay in transmission caused by more than simple distance. It was in such moments that Bohemond was pleased to possess the Light of the Emperor. Hesitation was doubt made manifest and he harboured no doubts. Listening to the static, Bohemond thought the Lord Commander might hear the thoughts of the Master of Mankind, hoped that perhaps the divine will made itself manifest in the mind of the Imperial Fist.

Evidently, it did.

‘We will launch a full assault in support of your attack.’ Koorland’s sigh was just about audible. The vox-link was worsening by the second.

‘It is a wise commander tha—’

‘By my word, Bohemond, this matter is not concluded. You are subject to my command and specific orders will be forthcoming.’

The vox-hiss was almost overwhelming.

‘Affirmative, Lord Commander. For the Emperor!’

Any reply Koorland might have made was lost in the surge of static. Bohemond turned to Eudes and smiled.

‘Justice prevails. The Emperor provides, brother.’ He switched the vox to general address, his words carrying to the hundred Black Templars of the strike force. ‘We are dark vengeance clad in light. We are the purging of the weak. We are the irresistible ending. Glory to the sons of Sigismund, for the Emperor has seen fit to deliver us in righteousness to the heart of the cause.

‘What happy tidings, that we be so blessed by the Emperor to stand upon the brink of His vengeful storm, the lightning that shall strike His foes asunder. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand taller when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Ullanor. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil toast his companions, and say “Tomorrow is the Remembrance of Ullanor.” Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say “These wounds I had on Ullanor.” And all will rejoice in his glory. The Emperor watches us, brothers. No fear. No pity. No remorse!’

Kilometres above, the drop bays of a dozen Black Templars battle-barges and strike cruisers opened. They coughed forth the second assault wave and the battle for Ullanor began.

Koorland pounded his fist on the plasteel of the door, the blows echoing down the corridor, resounding within the chamber.

‘Lord Vulkan!’ He slammed his hand against the door again, already irritated by the primarch’s lack of response to his vox-hails. ‘Lord Vulkan!’

Gears wheezed and the door cranked open, revealing the primarch standing at the threshold with one hand on the controls, towering over the Lord Commander. Koorland stepped back, his agitation suddenly cowed by the dominating presence.

‘There is a reason I have not answered your communications, Lord Commander Koorland,’ growled the primarch. He turned away and Koorland relaxed slightly, as though released from an invisible grip. Vulkan waved towards his work bench where his hammer lay on the top, the innards of its head splayed across the surface. ‘I have my own labours to attend to. What is so urgent that it demands my personal attention?’

‘The attack on Ullanor has begun.’

‘That seems… precipitous. I have monitored the data-channels, I saw no indication that the location of the Great Beast has been identified. Where are you attacking?’

‘Bohemond has launched an assault on the planet.’ Koorland uttered the words as calmly as possible, not wishing to show discomfort in front of the primarch. He swallowed hard, his annoyance at Bohemond’s challenge to his authority overtaking his vexation at Vulkan’s self-imposed solitude.

‘A reconnaissance-in-force, Lord Vulkan,’ he continued. ‘Adeptus Astartes companies will secure ground and then we will establish the location of the Great Beast from intelligence gathered on the surface. The Adeptus Mechanicus and Astra Militarum will commit their forces when the primary target is located.’

Vulkan raised his eyebrows as he looked back, leaning over the table. His fingers continued to work at the exposed cables of his weapon, pushing them back into the head of Doomtremor.

‘You are making a landing without exact knowledge of the Great Beast’s whereabouts?’

‘I…’ Koorland had nothing to offer. He shook his head and looked away, unable to meet the primarch’s inquiring look. ‘The initiative was Bohemond’s, not mine, lord primarch.’

‘I see.’ Vulkan finished his work quickly and set his hammer aside. He pulled forward a screen on an articulated arm and his fingers danced over the runepad below. Without looking at him, Vulkan gestured for Koorland to approach. ‘These are the findings from the Adeptus Mechanicus flights, yes?’

Koorland looked at the screen and nodded.

‘There are still three possible sites,’ he said. ‘Nothing pinpoints a specific location. All we have from the psychic scan is a name. Gorkogrod. The landing is blind, to all intents. Interference is still wreaking havoc with surveyors and communications. The only option is to seek out what we want on the ground. We can take prisoners, find out where Gorkogrod is located.’

‘A justification, after the event,’ Vulkan said quietly. ‘Bohemond has forced you into premature action. He has already chosen your “only option”.’

‘Perhaps,’ conceded Koorland. He clenched a fist. ‘We cannot afford the luxury of blame at this moment. What has happened cannot be changed. The consequences have to be dealt with. Bohemond has a point, lord primarch. Time is not our ally. We must commit to action sooner rather than later. We do not know how long until the orks attack Terra again. Perhaps even now the Throneworld is assaulted.’

Vulkan held his hand up to the flickering screen, as if communing with it, fingers not quite touching its surface. His brow knotted in thought and relaxed.

‘Here,’ he declared. ‘This is Gorkogrod. Here you will find the Great Beast.’

Koorland looked. Vulkan had chosen one of the cities approached by the Adeptus Mechanicus flights. By coincidence, it was the closest to Bohemond’s impending planetfall.

‘Are you sure, Lord Vulkan? Why this one?’

Vulkan looked sharply at him and he flinched, fearing he had angered the primarch.

‘Is my word not enough, Lord Commander Koorland?’

‘Should it be?’ Koorland asked cautiously. He had no desire to anger the primarch further, quite the opposite, but Vulkan’s manner and actions since his return had been erratic. ‘I do not mean to doubt your word, Lord Vulkan. There is so much at stake, I need to be certain. How can you know that this is the place?’

‘You must learn to show a little faith, Koorland.’ Vulkan pushed away the screen and folded his arms. ‘And you must also learn that certain things happen in a certain way. War has a pattern, a form. It follows specific paths to known ends. We seek confrontation with the Great Beast. That confrontation will occur. The narrative of war demands it.’

‘I still don’t understand. What narrative? War is not a story, Lord Vulkan.’

‘War is always a story, Koorland, told by the victors, shaped by the survivors.’ The primarch sighed, not in frustration but resignation. ‘The orks respect only power. To defeat the orks requires a greater power. Our presence here, our attack, is a challenge to the Great Beast. Never forget that it is an ork, nothing more. It must prove itself, it can do nothing but show its dominance over a foe. It can no more resist the lure of battle than a predator can resist the urge to pounce for the kill.’

‘That does not explain how you can know that this city is Gorkogrod, Lord Vulkan.’

‘More than fifteen hundred years ago, the Great Crusade of the Emperor came to this world. Horus himself bested the warlord that ruled here, and a great triumph was held in honour of the victory. On this world, the orks were broken. On this world, humans proved their dominance.’

‘And the orks have reclaimed it…’ Koorland moved past the primarch and looked at the conglomeration of lines and figures that denoted the ork city. ‘This world was lost again generations ago, but nobody noticed. The orks have taken it back. But there is something more. Zhokuv’s tech-priests posit that this latest expansion is a new phase of war. The cities have cannibalised smaller settlements to grow.’

‘A catalyst, a signal,’ said Vulkan. ‘Symbols matter, Koorland, especially to the primitive minds of the orks. The narrative, the story of Ullanor. One rises, others follow, greater than any for fifteen hundred years. Where would such a creature build its capital?’

Koorland considered the question, trying to imagine the thought processes of an ork. To prove it was the most powerful, it had to overcome the biggest foe, be the most important thing on the planet.

‘The Triumph…’ Koorland looked at the screen again. ‘This is where the Triumph ended?’

Vulkan nodded.

‘Here the Emperor stood, greatest warlord of all time. Here nine of His sons stood, lauding their father. Here He named Horus as Warmaster. We know what happened next.’ Vulkan tapped the screen, the sound like a normal man’s fist thudding against a window. ‘Places remember such events. Worlds are marked by the passing of such beings. Where the Emperor treads, legends follow. Where else would an ork civilisation start? Where else but at the very place where it ended?’

‘Yes, I see it,’ said Koorland. He activated a vox-link to the command bridge. ‘Thane, Gorkogrod has been located. Inform the fleet, we have a target point.’

The narrative of war. The story of the orks. He looked at Vulkan, marvelling at the primarch’s perception. It seemed obvious in reflection, as most great insights did.

Where would the tale of Ullanor move next? What other chapters would unfold before a new legend had been created?

Chapter Six

Ullanor — low orbit

The main flight deck of the cruiser Divine Right thrummed with idling engines and echoed to the clatter of ratchet cranks and the whine of loader servitors fitting hellstrike missiles to the wings of six Lightning air superiority fighters. Tech-priests performed their final chants and benedictions, activating the machine-spirits of the aircraft in turn. They formed into two lines flanking the path from the pilots’ quarters — a guard of honour, censers spilling fragrant smoke, oil-tipped rods raised in salute to those that would guide the machines down to Ullanor.

Six silver-masked figures emerged from the ruddy gloom of the suiting chamber. Their dark-blue flight suits bulged with pressure lines and reinforcement studs. Two acolytes of the Cult Mechanicus fell in step behind each of the anointed air-warriors, murmuring the blessings of the Machine-God upon their life support systems, daubing the holy oils of Mars onto the rubberised skin of their suits.

Thus consecrated to guide the vessels of the Omnissiah, the pilots climbed up the ladders of their machines while the engines of the Lightnings were fired by ignition rods. The idling of motors intensified to a growl. Final rites were grated by vocalisers and modulated tongues, praising the artifice of man and the beneficence of the Machine-God. Armoured canopies whined closed, sealed with elongated hisses.

The tech-priests and their semi-aware attendants rapidly left the flight deck, vacuum-proof heavy doors sealing the bay behind them. Red lights flashed in warning as the outer portal opened like a castle portcullis rising, the trapped air evacuating into the void in a gale.

Jets flaring, the Lightnings sped out one after the other, dipping towards the orb of Ullanor. From other ships across the fleet more scatters of plasma-jets were emerging, hundreds of craft speeding towards the planet.

A few dozen kilometres from atmospheric entry one of the Lightnings peeled away, guidance jets spitting fire as it veered towards the northern pole.

‘Hiedricks? What are you doing?’ demanded the squadron commander, Corbrus. ‘Return to formation immediately!’

There was no response.

‘I don’t know how you conducted business aboard the Impregnable, Hiedricks, but in my squadron you obey immediately! Return to formation or we will shoot you down!’

The rogue Lightning’s engines burned brighter as it accelerated. Corbrus’ long-range vox crackled into life.

‘Hawk squadron, report status,’ came the inquiry from the Divine Right. ‘We are monitoring an unauthorised manoeuvre.’

‘The new pilot that came over from the Impregnable, Hiedricks, just broke formation, command. Permission to pursue and engage.’

‘Negative, mission takes precedence. Continue to allocated patrol coordinates and provide additional interception cover for Adeptus Astartes forces on the surface.’

‘Understood,’ replied Corbrus, reluctantly. He watched the last spark of the Lightning dipping towards atmospheric entry and consulted his nav-pad. At that trajectory, Hiedricks seemed to be heading directly for the major ork city, the one called Gorkogrod. If Hiedricks was deserting, he was picking the worst place possible to do it.

Twenty-two minutes later, Hawk Four swooped into the outskirts of Gorkogrod. A kilometre above the surface, the pilot ejected, leaving his aircraft to spear into the ork shanty surrounding the main city. Ammunition and hellstrike missiles detonated with a blast that levelled buildings for eighty metres, sending a pall of smoke and dust boiling into the thick air.

Deftly manipulated grav-chute suspensors carried the pilot away from the burning wreckage of his Lightning. He landed amongst a tangle of scrap and broken masonry where a cluster of buildings had recently been torn down. Several small greenskins that had been scavenging the debris snarled and spat at him as he landed, brandishing lengths of pipe and improvised daggers.

The pilot pulled free a needle pistol and opened fire, every shot putting a toxin-laden shard into the eye of each of the five gretchin. They spasmed as they fell, shrieks stifled by the blood bubbling from their lungs.

The man took off his helm and stripped off the flight suit, revealing muscle-cladding synskin. It rippled as he activated its cameleoline coating, the surface becoming a blur of metallic shades and dark brown. He gathered up the corpses of the dead aliens and thrust them beneath a sheet of corrugated steel.

Retrieving several other weapons he had concealed within the pilot’s gear, Esad Wire hid the uniform with the bodies and set off towards central Gorkogrod.

Chapter Seven

Ullanor — primary landing zones

The crack of detonating missiles announced the arrival of the Black Templars. Lascannon beams and the bark of autocannons greeted the orks that scurried from their ugly barrack blocks, heading towards a ring of improvised anti-aircraft emplacements set about the edge of the huge crater.

Three Storm Eagles descended, weapons scouring the aliens and buildings scattered on the waste ground surrounding the flat expanse. Above them a pair of Thunderhawk transporters swooped groundwards, each bearing a Predator tank in its grip.

Thick dust and ash swirled as retro-thrusters fired, slowing the Thunderhawks over the last few metres of their landing. Before the extended hydraulic legs had touched down the assault ramps opened, spewing forth the warriors of Bohemond.

The High Marshal bounded forward, every leap covering two dozen metres with the aid of bursts from his jump pack. His honour guard followed a few metres behind, chainswords whirring.

Other squads fanned out across the crater, their bolters snapping as they gunned down greenskins skulking in the cover of revetments and trenches dug into the crater wall — fortifications that were poorly positioned, directed outwards to protect the crater.

Their warrior cargo disgorged, the Storm Eagles lifted off in a fresh gale of grit and flame, their renewed storm of fire levelling several more bunkers and hovels. The transporters took their place, dropping their battle tanks, tracks already spinning, the last couple of metres. As the Predators landed they lurched forward in spumes of dust, turret and sponson locks disengaging to allow their gunners to open fire. Heavy bolter rounds and concentrated autocannon salvoes added to the storm of destruction tearing along the crater walls.

Bohemond’s squad reached the incline just as a hellstrike missile streaked overhead to pierce an armoured gun turret turning in their direction. The detonation tore the emplacement apart from within, scattering burning metal and charred ork flesh over the bare rock of the crater edge.

The High Marshal’s jump pack easily took him over a chest-high retaining wall. Plunging into the trench beyond, he landed on a greenskin, the impact shattering its skull beneath his armoured boots even as his sword cleaved through the neck of another.

The rest of his honoured veterans crashed into the fortifications, hewing through the aliens within. Snarling greenskins and black-armoured warriors turned the entrenchment into a boiling melee while more blasts and bolts screamed overhead.

It took twenty seconds to clear the first stretch of trenchline.

‘Is that the best these scum can offer?’ roared Eddarin. The sergeant tore the head from an ork corpse and with a snarl threw it at the burning fortifications further up the slope. ‘We came seeking warriors and found juveniles and cripples!’

Bohemond saw that it was true. Most of the bodies were of smaller greenskins, poorly armoured and armed. The few that seemed to have attained mature size and weight sported prosthetics and bionics, some so crude as to be simple hooks and plain metal peg legs.

‘Gun garrison, poor duty for an ork,’ said Bohemond.

‘Such is the number plaguing the Segmentum Solar, perhaps all of their true warriors have deserted this waste-hole,’ said Eddarin, sounding disappointed by the prospect.

Bohemond pointed with his sword to the building-covered mountain reaching over the horizon, the city obscured by distance and the shimmer of its force field.

‘Foes enough await our righteous intentions, brothers,’ said the High Marshal. ‘The Great Beast lurks within that city and with the Emperor as my witness I declare the abomination will fall to the blade of a Black Templar. As Sigismund upon the bloodied fields of Terra, so we shall seek out the strongest foes and overcome them.’

He moved his blade towards the sky, where the black dots of descending drop pods were visible against the low clouds. With them emerged bulkier shapes, more Thunderhawk transporters laden with Rhino armoured carriers and other vehicles.

‘We push on to Gorkogrod, High Marshal?’ asked Eddarin, moving to the edge of the trench.

‘Not yet. Temper your zeal, brother-sergeant,’ replied Bohemond. ‘We hold the landing zone until our allies in the Navy have deposited the regiments of the Astra Militarum. We are the sharp spearpoint, but the weight of the haft must follow us today.’

Eddarin looked up at the crater’s edge and Bohemond could imagine his sergeant’s desire to continue the attack, his longing to take the fight to the enemy and punish them for their innumerable transgressions against the Emperor.

‘Justice will be done, brothers, vengeance will be served,’ he assured his warriors. He gestured towards the remaining buildings. ‘Ensure nothing lives that does not call the Emperor master.’

Bohemond activated his jump pack and bounded from the trench, angling towards the burning buildings ahead. Around the crater, black-armoured warriors pushed through the fire and ruin.

‘The highway is secure, Lord Commander.’ Odaenathus used the high-powered vox-unit of his Land Raider command tank to transmit his report. Even though only fifteen kilometres separated him from Koorland’s position, the vox-breaking interference reduced the range of his war-plate’s communicator to a few hundred metres. Contact with orbit was virtually non-existent.

‘Astra Militarum landings are progressing on schedule,’ he continued. ‘Armoured, artillery and infantry companies are awaiting our advance.’

‘Understood, Chapter Master,’ came Koorland’s crackle-broken reply. ‘You are authorised to conduct the second phase. Companies from Issachar’s command will rendezvous at the primaris target grid in three hours.’

‘Affirmative, Lord Commander.’

Odaenathus shut down the transmitter and replaced his helmet. Pushing open the upper hatch of the Land Raider, he climbed out onto the roof to survey the unfolding scene.

The Ultramarines were a cordon of blue describing an arc nearly two kilometres long, a wall of armoured warriors between the landing zone and Gorkogrod some twenty kilometres away. His auto-senses picked up the faint bark of bolters as squads continued to clear the surrounding wasteland of xenos. Thunderhawks, Whirlwind missile launchers and Land Speeders were extending the Ultramarines’ perimeter, pounding alien fortifications, weakening them in preparation for the armoured assault of Predators, Vindicators and Land Raiders that Odaenathus would lead. Overhead roared Imperial Navy bombers, destined for targets further along the main arterial route into the ork city.

There seemed little response from the orks. Considering a large enemy force had landed within striking distance of their capital, the counter-offensive by the greenskins had been minimal. Lacklustre. All that the Ultramarines commander knew of the greenskins told him that they were voracious fighters, lusting for battle. Even if some grander strategy was desired by the Great Beast, it seemed unlikely to overrule the base instincts of the orks in the immediate vicinity. The lack of response left Odaenathus feeling ill at ease, unable to test his theories but aware that all was not as it appeared.

Adeptus Mechanicus bulk servitors cleared the wreckage of the buildings turned to rubble by the Ultramarines’ attack, ploughs and pneumatic shovels turning masonry, metal and dirt into earthworks for the Astra Militarum engineers to fortify while simultaneously clearing more landing zone for the next wave of transports.

Of the stronghold that had squatted on the ridge two hours earlier, only broken debris remained. Ork cadavers were treated like the rest of the waste, unceremoniously dumped into pits dug into the polluted earth, a task that had been assigned to the punishment platoons of the Astra Militarum landing forces. They laboured with scarves tied over their bare faces, sweating despite the chill of the uplands. Black-coated commissars watched them closely, never slow to shout admonishment at any that seemed to slacken in their labours.

Naval drop-ships formed an inner boundary, seventeen of them so far, as many again still arriving from orbit. Some were tank carriers, flat and broad, with wide doors that allowed their cargoes to disembark three abreast. The troop barges were longer and narrower, hundred-strong columns of infantry emerging at the double.

‘A labour misspent, Brother Chapter Master.’

Odaenathus turned at the metallic growl of Ancient Selatonus. The Dreadnought approached from the right, the top of his armoured plates almost level with the roof of the Land Raider. Encased within the plasteel, ceramite and adamantium giant were the system-sustained bodily remnants of a Space Marine, a great hero from the battles of Calth-That-Was.

‘Misspent, Venerable Brother?’ Odaenathus reviewed his dispositions and could see nothing amiss. ‘What labour goes awry?’

‘Siege lines… Supply corridors… These are the works of an occupying force, Chapter Master,’ the Dreadnought said, every word from his vocalisers heavy with artificially intoned gravitas. He raised a claw-tipped power fist and pointed towards the distant objective. ‘We come to kill the Great Beast. Our sojourn here will not last long, in victory or defeat.’

Odaenathus thought about this for several seconds, reviewing the situation. It was a planetary landing on an unprecedented scale. There were protocols and doctrines to ensure all passed smoothly. He caught himself, realising the error of his logic. The landings were unprecedented by his experience, but for a veteran of the Heresy Wars they were a straightforward incursion.

‘What counsel would you share, Ancient One?’ he asked the Dreadnought.

‘Speed in all things, Chapter Master. The Astra Militarum are capable of fending for themselves. We should strike for the city as soon as possible.’

The Chapter Master nodded and moved back to the hatch. He needed to request fresh orders from the Lord Commander.

From the observation platform of the Praetor Fidelis, Field-Legatus Otho Dorr could more clearly see the odd topography of the landing zone. From orbit it had looked like a series of eight mesas, each rising a few hundred metres from the wastelands’ mean level. On the upper gallery of his Capitol Imperialis command vehicle, itself forty metres high, the regularity, the sheer flatness of the surrounding rocky plateaus, struck him as conspicuous.

The immense war engine rumbled on, its tracks leaving metre-deep trails of compacted ash and dust. Around the Praetor Fidelis smaller tanks and assault gun squadrons moved away from the landers, following the command vehicle like the tail of a comet. Sentinel walkers and Rough Rider companies moved ahead to scout the best route for the Praetor Fidelis and more super-heavy tanks descending in the next wave.

A sudden vibration silenced the chatter of vox-operators and junior officers. Dorr felt the movement again, a shift in the ground significant enough that it could be felt through the grinding of the Capitol Imperialis’ tracks and the constant rumble of its engines.

‘Galtan!’ His staff lieutenant snapped to attention at the sound of his name. ‘What was that? Contact the tech-priests immediately. I want…’

The next tremor caused the lumen fittings to sway from the ceiling. Several of the deck’s occupants had to grab their consoles to stop themselves tipping from their stools. Dorr swayed with the movement, stumbling as he took a step towards the reinforced windows.

Looking down he saw that several of the surrounding vehicles had bogged down, caught as shifting dunes slid into newly formed dells littering the canyons between the plateaus.

‘Sir, look at the rock faces!’

Galtan’s call drew the field-legatus’ gaze to the cliff a few hundred metres directly ahead of the Praetor Fidelis. Boulders tumbled in a shower of dust. Through the murk of the landslide he saw racks run up the length of the rock. Stone split along unseen fault lines, thousands of tonnes of rock shearing away as something beneath — within — moved.

Alarm sirens shrieked from half a dozen positions as the ground lurched again, tipping the Capitol Imperialis to the left. Men and women tumbled across the observation deck and mechanical howls of protests shuddered through the war machine as drive systems tried to continue pushing the tilting Praetor Fidelis into the growing drifts of rock, sand and ash.

‘All drives to idle!’ barked Dorr.

‘Sir…’ Galtan’s hand tugged at the field-legatus’ brocaded sleeve. ‘You have to come to the gyro. I’ve ordered full staff council evacuation.’

‘You’ve ordered…?’

‘My prerogative, field-legatus.’ The junior officer signalled to a stern-faced commissar standing by the stairwell that led up to the flight platform atop the command vehicle. ‘Strechan will look after you.’

‘Come with me, sir.’ Strechan’s tone suggested he would brook no argument. His hand on the butt of a shock maul indicated he was also willing to take physical measures to ensure the field-legatus’ safety.

Dorr allowed himself to be hurried up the stairs. Emerging onto the flight platform he saw that the Capitol Imperialis had heeled over almost twenty degrees. The recon gyro — a four-rotored flyer capable of carrying five men in addition to the pilot — was still tightly gripped by landing claws.

‘What is happening?’ Dorr demanded, stepping away from the gaggle of officers surging up the stairs behind him.

Strechan looked as though he might intervene but stopped as the field-legatus directed a glare at him.

‘You may have the authority to detain me, commissar, but I would think twice about exercising it.’

The towering rock plateaus were falling to pieces, revealing glinting metal beneath. Like petals unfolding, huge plates hinged down, unleashing crushing deluges of rock onto the men and tanks between. Looking behind, Dorr could see one of the massive structures fully opened. Where there had been a mesa of solid stone — so he had thought — he could see a pointed dome at least a hundred metres across. It was painted in huge checks of red and black.

‘Is that…?’

‘Yessir,’ Galtan said hurriedly, seizing hold of the stunned field-legatus’ belt to drag him towards the open doors of the gyro. The blades started to spin, the whine of motors almost lost under the tumult of falling rocks and the shrieks of pulverised tank armour. The cacophony swallowed the screams of the dying, their last cries passing unheard forty metres below.

Bundled into the gyro, Dorr had not even strapped on his safety harness when the engines pitched to a shriek and he felt the craft lift away. Already at an awkward angle, the gyro sheared sideways towards the grey-and-black avalanche, until the pilot heaved the flyer into a swift climb. A cloud of choking ash and dust mixed with exhaust smoke swept through the still-open door of the compartment, coating uniforms, lips and skin with powdery residue. The updraught shook the gyro, its rotors rattling through stone splinters.

The field-legatus shouldered past Galtan, noting that Commissar Strechan had remained behind on the stricken Capitol Imperialis. Through the murk, wiping grit from his eyes, Dorr looked out of the ascending gyro, able to see across the expanse of the landing zone.

He could not credit his own senses at first, but the impossible forced its way into recognition. Where there had been rock and wilderness, now Dorr watched eight missiles push up from their silos, each defying sanity with their size.

‘We have to warn the others,’ he croaked, swallowing dust.

A captain manning the vox-station looked at him, the blood drained from his face. He was holding the speaker-piece against his ear to listen over the continuing storm of noise.

‘They already know, sir. By the Throne, they already know…’

Like a cornered animal, Ullanor bared its fangs.

Years of psychodoctrination meant that Captain Valefor could not panic. Vigorous mental conditioning and genetic therapy had eliminated biological fear. Even so, as a cocktail of hormones and stimulants raced through his bloodstream, as twin hearts thundered into accelerated life and his tertiary lung inflated to flood his system with oxygen, the biological call to action that seared through his body and thoughts came very close.

The desert had swallowed six Astra Militarum drop-craft already, the yawning chasm that had split the basin still widening. Dust and ash flowed like water into the breach, dragging tanks and men with it. Ruddy light, the gleam of the abyss itself, burned from the new crevasse, and with it came an ear-piercing screech of tortured metal.

The plain was shifting under his feet, toppling columns of soldiers that had been advancing from the landing barges. He could feel himself moving slowly to the right without taking a step. He watched as a Leman Russ tank tilted, trapped against a boulder. Hatches slammed open as the crew tried to scramble to safety. Too late, too slow, they fell into the gaping rift with their vehicle.

The vox was a thrum of meaningless noise, every general channel and frequency overloaded. He shut down all but the Adeptus Astartes feeds. The garbled bursts were replaced by clipped, efficient reports and unruffled commands. The relative quiet allowed him to focus on the immediate situation.

Valefor’s auto-senses brought to him the insistent bellows of officers and the terrified shouts of dying Guardsmen. Many of the Astra Militarum infantry were breaking ranks, fleeing towards the distant lip of the basin. Commissars did their best to prevent the retreat becoming a rout — the Blood Angel could hear them exhorting their men to keep weapons and packs, ordering them to drag their heavy bolters and lascannons, autocannons and mortars through the undulating dunes of ash and dirt.

A slew of rocks and earth was building up against the walls of the hollow, forming a ramp for some of the vehicles to drive over while men clambered through the churning debris. Many disappeared beneath the surface, while others were bloodily crushed by rolling boulders or suffocated by erupting clouds of dust.

‘Our forces are clear, captain.’ Marbas was at Valefor’s shoulder, golden armour coated with dark grey ash. He waved a hand towards red-liveried Rhinos, Predators and Land Raiders just visible through the whirling dust-storm. ‘What are your orders?’

Valefor could see that the chasm was now nearly fifty metres wide. Several of his Land Speeder crews had already taken it upon themselves to act as lifeboats, skimming dangerously close to the rolling stones and earth, laden with Guardsmen clinging to every handhold. Valkyries and Vendettas in the colours of the Imperial Navy and the Coltain XV Air Dragoons skimmed to and fro, their hoverjets kicking up even more ash and soot. The men and women aboard hauled up as many fellow soldiers as they could, filling their troop compartments to bursting. Here and there brave pilots set their machines down so that wounded soldiers could be loaded aboard. Valefor saw a Vendetta crushed like a rations can as a boulder twice the size of a troop transport tumbled into it.

‘Get the Thunderhawks, rapid evacuation.’ Valefor watched as a ring of drop pods vanished into the depths. He had landed in one just a few hours earlier.

He turned and waded back down into the basin. His auto-senses flickered through various modes until they settled on thermal, picking out the fleeing men and women like flares at night. A gaggle of soldiers struggled towards him a few metres away. The swirling ash was like quicksand, dissolving underfoot. Valefor heaved the closest man out of the mire as easily as an adult lifts a child, almost throwing him towards the basin’s edge. Another cradled a broken arm, blood staining his light blue uniform.

Valefor saw the injury and knew that the soldier would not fight again. He stepped past, ignoring the man’s pleas for help. Other Blood Angels followed, advancing into the raging storm to help the beleaguered Imperial Guardsmen.

‘Concentrate on the uninjured,’ Valefor voxed to his companions. The mounting dirt was heaped up almost to his knees. The captain kicked himself free and looked around at the devastation. From the long-range broadcasts on the vox he knew that their predicament was far from unique. ‘We’re going to need every able-bodied soldier.’

Chapter Eight

Ullanor — low orbit

Once more, dear friend, once more. Now is the moment.

Nearly all of the Cult Mechanicus personnel were already on Ullanor or in atmospheric transit. Aboard the Cortix Verdana the eruption of surface defence systems burst across the sensors as a stream of alerts and surveyor spikes. With two-thirds of his divisible consciousness plugged directly into the assessor arrays to monitor the ongoing landings, Gerg Zhokuv felt it like a burning sensation racing through his being.

‘It is… astounding,’ said Laurentis, gazing at the images arranged on the visual displays. Hundreds of installations appeared, massive thermal plumes and energy signatures like celebration lights flickering on the screens. Around the cities the force fields gleamed, encompassing entire settlements. ‘Not an attack moon. An attack planet?’

‘Thousands of soldiers are dying,’ Delthrak snapped in response to his fellow tech-priest’s enthusiasm. ‘Our assault is crumbling before our eyes.’

The surge of signals from orbital and ground-based data-feeds crackled lightning-like through Zhokuv’s synapses, the equivalent to a blinding, deafening pulse. They emerged in a wave from a battery of outposts almost directly below the Martian ship’s orbital arc.

‘We are being targeted!’ the dominus roared across the vocal and sub-aural channels of the war-forge.

‘By what?’ inquired Delthrak, tapping into the data-stream.

Zhokuv did not have to reply.

His subconscious reaction directed power to the main void shield generators and shut down reactor plasma inlets as he braced the starship for the inevitable attack. Anti-torpedo las weapons thrummed into life, though they were of virtually no use against surface-launched missiles. The targeting arrays would not have time to adjust in the moments between the projectiles breaking atmosphere and striking the ship in low orbit. Damage teams and repair servitors were despatched to their emergency positions while the more vulnerable parts of the ship were evacuated completely except for servitor personnel.

A vessel the size of the Cortix Verdana had no chance of evading the incoming attack. Instead, the ship assumed its maximum defensive posture, the equivalent of curling into a foetal ball and awaiting the worst.

They did not have to wait long.

Less than a minute after detecting the first defence activations, Zhokuv sensed a ripple of energetic particles erupting from one of the ground installations. In less than a second the beam struck the Cortix Verdana.

‘Gravitic attack!’ The warning raced through the ship’s systems. Klaxons blared. Those that could made fast to whatever they could hold.

The wave of anti-gravitic energy passed through the void shields without effect. It slammed into the planetwards decks, instantly crumpling metres-thick armour, tearing chunks of plasteel and adamantium from their housings.

The physical damage was significant, but worse still, the beam ruptured the basic fabric of the gravity well, dragging the ship towards Ullanor. The sudden acceleration created a form of weightlessness on board, overpowering even the artificial gravity. Personnel and equipment were sent flying from the decks, slamming into ceilings and bulkheads as though caught on an aircraft in horrendous turbulence. Zhokuv felt pressure doors bursting and vacuum seals shredding under the immense forces.

The dominus knew from all previous reports that even the massive engines of the Cortix Verdana could not resist the power of the gravity beam. Instead he diverted all remaining energy to the physical defences and energy shields.

‘Atmospheric entry in thirty seconds,’ groaned an alarm-servitor.

The strategium was a scene of chaos, tech-priests and servitors thrown like dolls as another wave of impossible gravitic energy flared along the Cortix Verdana. Zhokuv had no time to spare for the broken bodies littering the deck — every navigational shield and altitude jet burst into life at his command, easing the massive starship into a better angle of entry.

Even so, the flare of frictional heat from the thickening atmosphere overloaded the ship’s sensors. Blinded, the flagship of the Adeptus Mechanicus plunged into Ullanor’s skies.

‘Launch everything!’ bellowed Koorland. ‘Anything that can drop, get it off the ships. Any vessel that has already despatched must break orbit immediately.’

Thane was already barking commands at the vox-officer, demanding reports from the surface. Warning alerts wailed into life as the Alcazar Remembered took evasive action. The battle-barge fired its main engines, heading towards Ullanor in an attempt to break the target lock that had overloaded its surveyor systems a minute earlier.

‘Incoming missiles,’ growled Thane from a monitor station. ‘A dozen at least.’

The flat areas chosen as landing grounds by their forces had in fact been the covers to immense silos of anti-ship guns and missiles. Not just physical missiles targeted the orbiting fleets — powerful gravitic manipulators were turning ships inside out, pulling them down to fiery deaths in the atmosphere or tossing them into deep space. Strangely pulsating green rays sliced warships in two while cluster-missiles engulfed descending drop-ships with thousands of detonations, and rapid-firing flak guns smashed apart plummeting drop pods.

‘We can’t stay here,’ snarled Koorland. He started towards the door of the command bridge. ‘Alert all combat personnel to prepare for launch. Drop pods and Thunderhawks.’

‘We’re evacuating, Lord Commander?’

‘Attacking, while we can.’

‘And Lord Vulkan?’ asked Thane, following his Lord Commander. The remaining Space Marines left their positions, their roles handed to unaugmented officers and servitors. Fists Exemplar across the ship would be doing the same. Every warrior ready for combat would be at his drop-station in minutes.

‘I will speak with him myself,’ said Koorland. He took his helmet from his belt as the doors wheezed open. With a last look at Thane he fitted the helm.

‘Brace for impact.’ The mechanical tones of the alert servitor across the shipwide vox did nothing to convey the urgency of its message. ‘Impact imminent.’

Koorland grabbed a bulkhead, pressing close to the plasteel. The others found similar handholds and waited.

Three seconds later the ork missiles erupted around the battle-barge in a storm of fire and metal. Void shields flared black and blue, warp-shunting what they could before their generators overloaded, exploding with showers of sparks in the bowels of the ship.

The Alcazar Remembered shook from prow to stern as the remaining energy and debris slammed into its starboard side. The entire ship lurched. Lights flickered. Koorland felt as much as heard the rip of tortured metal shuddering along the length of the battle-barge.

Damage reports flowed through the vox but he cut them off and signalled the quarters of the primarch. Unlike before, Vulkan responded immediately.

‘The orks have woken up,’ said the primarch.

‘A quarter of the fleet is already in ruins, my lord,’ replied Koorland. He hit the call rune for the conveyor and chains rattled in the shaft beyond the heavy doors. ‘They hit us exactly when we could do the least about it, mid-drop.’

‘And your strategy, Lord Commander?’

‘We have to complete the drop, Lord Vulkan. Our ships cannot stay in orbit and survive.’

‘The army will be stranded on Ullanor.’ Koorland heard the grinding noise of the primarch’s chamber doors across the link. ‘While these weapons remain active there can be no return from the surface.’

‘That does not concern us, does it?’ Koorland said. The conveyor arrived and he wrenched open the door. He and the others crowded into the cage within. Thane operated the controls, taking them down to the launch decks.

Memories crammed into Koorland’s thoughts as tightly as the warriors in the conveyor. Of Ardamantua. His brothers penned in, dying by the score with no escape. The buzz of suppressed vox-traffic reminded him of the confused warnings and alerts of that dreadful day.

‘Lord Commander?’ Vulkan had been speaking. ‘Koorland, respond.’

‘It is of no concern,’ the Imperial Fist said, pushing back any thoughts of his Chapter’s demise. ‘The orks were ready, no matter what. The dilemma has not changed. Attack, or return to Terra. We came to Ullanor with a single purpose. That mission remains. The Beast must die!’

Bohemond watched with mounting incredulity as the barrels of three immense cannons emerged from the splitting crater. Secondary guns broke free of rock cladding in the surrounding hills. Within seconds they opened fire, spewing a torrent of exploding shells and pulsing blasts into the drop-ships bringing down the Astra Militarum forces.

He looked up into the sky and saw drop-craft burning, falling like meteors. Showers of debris rained down, some pieces as large as battle tanks. Charred skeletons and bloody body parts fell too, striking terror into the squads of Guardsmen fleeing the carnage.

The main cannons boomed into life. Bohemond’s auto-senses blotted out the ear-shattering noise but the shockwave threw hundreds of Astra Militarum fighters to the ground, screaming as their eardrums burst. The wave swept onwards, tipping armoured vehicles and sending Land Speeders and Navy aircraft into mad spins. Bohemond’s armour registered the wash of pressure over him with a row of amber warning sigils.

The High Marshal could just about track the supersonic course of the shells towards orbit but in moments they were lost in the high cloud. His eye was drawn to the upper reaches, his disbelief increased. A scarlet comet fell, larger than anything he had ever seen. Increasing the resolution of his auto-senses, he magnified the view.

The descending ship was wreathed in fire, trailing broken plates and corpses like smoke. In general shape it was an inverted pyramid, a stepped ziggurat of many levels. He could see the blazons of the Adeptus Mechanicus in many places and realised it was the flagship of the dominus.

Despite its calamitous fall, the ship was not without control. Bohemond could see that its trajectory was flattening sharply, some mechanism of the Cult Mechanicus lessening the speed and incline of its course. Distance and size made its rapid descent seem almost stately.

The Cortix Verdana hit the ground many kilometres away, just beyond the horizon. The ork cannons fired again even as a bright flash of detonating plasma lit the distant sky.

Bohemond turned away from the fallen ship and voxed his warriors.

‘The xenos have hidden their holes well, my brothers. Now they are revealed and our vengeance will be swift.’ He activated his jump pack and bounded back towards the crater. ‘In attacking, they have left themselves vulnerable. Into the breach they have opened! Destroy the guns! Praise those that slay in the Emperor’s name!’

Esad Wire, known to a few by the title of Beast Krule, let the body of the greenskin slip to the ground, its throat crushed. His synskin suit was hidden beneath a few scraps of clothes and armour he had looted from other targets. The silhouette they gave him was more of a disguise than the shifting cameleoline, though he could not hope to look like an ork. He had smeared a little of their filthy blood and spoor over himself to cover his own scent, having been briefed on orks from the Officio Assassinorum’s mission data repositories. Despite its limits, his rough silhouette had confused the greenskins he had encountered long enough to get in range with weighted fists or needle pistol.

Grand Master Vangorich had expressed the uniqueness of the mission — rarely was an operative of the Assassins despatched to slay a non-human target. Their purview was far more concentrated on the rogues and rebellions within the Imperium.

In fact there was almost nothing about the orks at all in the archives, and Vangorich had drawn in favours from the Inquisition to supplement their records.

Krule stepped over a corpse, past two other dead orks that had been lounging by their armoured wagon. The complacency of the aliens — the sheer casualness they showed in the face of a massed human attack — worried him as he pulled himself up into the driver’s position. Settling into the bucket seat, he looked over the crude pedals and controls, working out where throttle and gearing systems were located.

He heard a dull, distant thunder that he instantly recognised as the retort of a large cannon. It continued for some time, many guns firing not quite in unison. He waited to hear the corresponding explosions in the city but nothing came, yet the fusillade continued.

Perplexed, he stood up, the better to see over the corrugated iron and broken plastek rookeries of the ork shanty piled up on the foot of the mountain that was Gorkogrod. The haze of the force dome gave everything beyond the city’s borders a greenish cast. Streaks of shells disappeared into the cloud. Looking left and right the Assassin saw the flashes of other weapons — beams and blasts and oscillating green waves from emplacements somewhere beyond the city’s semi-derelict outskirts.

He had seen drop-ships descending all afternoon, accompanied by the occasional shower of artificial meteors when the Adeptus Astartes had made secondary drops. The Assassin had paid it no mind. He had been expecting floods of alien warriors to pour from Gorkogrod to fend off the attacks, and had hoped to use such activity and confusion to slip through the ork city. Now the lack of response from the orks was explained. He had seen no defences as he had brought his commandeered aircraft down, but could see that the firepower being unleashed into the sky and towards orbit was devastating.

Dropping down into the seat, Krule started the engine. Its throaty roar accompanied a cough of oily smoke from the pierced exhausts flanking the machine. He slammed his foot onto the throttle pedal and sped out of the courtyard and into the street beyond, crashing through a crowd of greenskins that had emerged from their hovels to stare at the anti-orbital attacks. One bounced from the large iron buffer on the front of the battlewagon; another went jolting under a wheel.

Ignoring their death-cries, Krule powered the vehicle uphill, heading as fast as he could towards the inner city.

Chapter Nine

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

I dared what others could not. I knew what awaited me in the inferno and I stepped willingly into the flames. No other could. As above, so below, the fight without and the battle within. Endless torment, unending perseverance. Not one of my brothers could have done it, in body or in mind. It was my agony alone to suffer.

For what? For maggots to erupt from the corpse of greatness, devouring blindly the very thing that sustains them, consuming all until is spent. The Imperium is a husk; even the rot has eaten itself.

The city was ringed with fire. Devastation caused by crashing ships and burning debris spread far into the wastelands that surrounded the ork capital — wastelands that had not been empty of life, but concealed a profusion of orks beneath rock and ash.

‘Be thankful for small boons,’ said Vulkan. Thane looked from the Thunderhawk at the fires and wreckage. The primarch spoke from the main compartment, making the already over-filled space even smaller with his bulk. Thirty-five more Space Marines had managed to fit into a space intended for thirty, even with the primarch. Similarly laden, every drop pod, gunship and shuttle on the Alcazar Remembered had been despatched within minutes of the first ork attack.

‘Small boons, lord primarch?’ asked the Fists Exemplar Chapter Master.

‘Our fall from grace has killed no small number of orks as well.’

‘Forgive me, my lord, for taking little comfort in that fact.’ Thane activated the powerful vox of the Thunderhawk to contact his battle-barge. The signal was surprisingly clear when Shipmaster Weylon Kale responded. Evidently much of the vox-clutter had been deliberately created by the orks to mask their anti-orbit weapons.

‘Substantial damage, Chapter Master,’ Kale reported in response to Thane’s inquiry. ‘But we have attained higher orbit. It seems that the initial attack was a massive drain on the power grid of Ullanor and their targeting systems are having trouble tracking us at this distance.’

‘How much of the fleet has survived?’ asked the Lord Commander, sat next to Thane.

‘Half of the warships, barely any transports. We are also detecting increased activity from the ork vessels in the system. It seems they will try to pick over the scraps. Admiral Acharya has taken command for the Imperial Navy. He assured me that they can cope with the void threat for the time being.’

‘Low orbit is out of the question,’ said Thane. ‘We cannot risk any more ships even for the benefit of orbital firepower.’

‘Agreed,’ said Koorland. ‘We have perhaps one more opportunity to strike with everything — we cannot waste it.’

‘You have a strategy, Lord Commander?’ Vulkan shifted his bulk and looked through the door into the command deck.

‘I do, Lord Vulkan. What I said before still holds true. We must attack as swiftly as possible. Our mission has become threefold. We must determine the exact location of the Beast for an overwhelming concentration of force. We cannot be tricked into thinking a whole world is arrayed against us. It will take time for the orks to mobilise any force of note from the other cities and move them to our battlezone. We must use what strength we can to break into Gorkogrod and destroy the Great Beast before we are overwhelmed.

‘In order to do that we must first disable the force fields and weapons protecting the city against orbital support. Also, we need to disrupt the gathering ork armies so that both of the previous objectives can be achieved before the massive weight of ork numbers can be brought to bear.’

Vulkan nodded his approval.

‘A sure course of action, Lord Commander. The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes must bear the brunt of the assault on the city. As much as it seems counter to your ethos, I would spare the Chapters the brunt of the fighting before then.’

‘I can think of several commanders that will not like the idea of holding back,’ said Koorland.

‘Bohemond, for one,’ said Thane. ‘And there will be others of similar thought. Those that supported his pre-emptive strike spring to mind.’

‘What happened was unavoidable,’ Koorland replied, staring out of the canopy. Night was falling, the darkness lit by plasma fires and the occasional jade glow of defence beams and scarlet of missile trails, the sunset obscured by columns of black smoke. ‘Whether today or tomorrow or the day after, we would have landed and the orks would have revealed their intent. Perhaps the High Marshal’s attack was not so rash. Had the orks had time to prepare even further for our landings we might not have the period of relative grace we have now. There has been little sign of enemy movement on the ground to exploit our predicament.’

‘Why?’ said Vulkan. ‘The city must house thousands of orks. Why has the Great Beast not unleashed its horde on our remnants before we can gather ourselves?’

‘I feel that you know the answer to that already, Lord Vulkan,’ said Thane.

Koorland shook his head.

‘The Great Beast does not need to strike. It knows that we come for it. We do not face a childish mind, but a calculating leader. It will let us bleed ourselves on the walls of its fortresses before it wipes the remains from the planet.’

‘That fails to comfort me, too,’ said Thane.

‘Which is why we cannot expend our best,’ Koorland said quietly, looking at Vulkan. ‘Dross and slaves may man the defences, but their guns will slay Space Marines as surely as they will combat servitors and Astra Militarum.’

‘It is not the place of the Adeptus Astartes to hide behind the shields of others,’ said Thane, not believing the strategy his superiors discussed.

‘Nor shall they,’ said Vulkan. ‘If Bohemond wishes to be the point of the spear, let him. Guardsmen and skitarii will not breach the city, but the Black Templars might. Lord Commander, I appreciate the sentiment but you mistake the intent of my words. We cannot fight a war of attrition. We must trust to others to guard our backs while we turn every thought to piercing Gorkogrod.’

‘Very well, lord primarch. The Astra Militarum and the Cult Mechanicus will provide the weight behind our shaft. The Adeptus Astartes shall dare the ire of the orks.’

Koorland spoke with certainty, but Thane could not tell if it was simply the habit of the commander or genuine confidence. As the Thunderhawk touched down among the broken and burning remains of the fleet, he felt no particular reason to be hopeful.

‘Let it not be said that we were found wanting when the Lord Commander called upon us!’

Vox-casters across the warzone relayed the field-legatus’ words to his devastated, demoralised regiments. It was all he could do to summon the spirit to address them, ensconced just below the main turret of his new command vehicle: the Dorn’s Ire, a Baneblade-class super-heavy tank. He considered the naming of the tank a good omen, but he knew there were those in his staff that thought otherwise. Of late, the legacy of the Imperial Fists primarch had suffered in reputation.

‘Our goal is clear, our resolve unbroken,’ he continued. He looked at one of the displays carrying a visual from the external pict-feeds. Ahead of the Baneblade, columns of tanks forced their way through the smashed remains of the city outskirts. Chimera infantry fighting vehicles carrying armoured squads followed, ready to deploy their platoons in support of the battle tanks. ‘We are to be the shield to the Space Marines, the rear guard that will allow them to be the blade that prises open the defences of the city, so that all of us can bring the battle directly to the Great Beast.’

Artillery batteries of hastily mustered multiple rocket launchers and self-propelled guns started to lay down a barrage of fire across the line of advance. Manticores launched their hail of missiles into the ruins while Basilisks pounded out shell after shell, flattening any building left standing by the rain of destruction that had fallen from orbit. Daring radioactive fire, companies from the Elran Fourth Pioneer Corps had salvaged a trio of Deathstrike launchers from their drop-carriers, but Dorr was conserving their deadly vortex warheads for the time being.

The bombardment was fierce, but nothing like the tempest of shell and rocket he might have hoped to unleash had his force landed intact. But big guns would not win this war. The initial reports from rocket and bombing attacks by Imperial Navy Marauders suggested that the power shields protecting Gorkogrod would be as impervious to ground-based weapons as they were to aerial and orbital attacks. Such information had been paid for by the lives of the air crews, shot down by an iron ring of anti-air defences around the outskirts of the ork city. Even this showed the depth of cunning of the Great Beast, having remained dormant long enough to allow the Adeptus Mechanicus flights to approach and to draw the attack of the Emperor’s servants.

As was almost universally true, it would require soldiers on the ground to force their way into the city. That was the purpose of the Astra Militarum. Given how many had already died it seemed likely that none of his brave Imperial Guard would leave Ullanor. A less experienced commander might have given his soldiers hope and allayed their fears. Dorr knew better. He knew that any soldier of the Imperium worth the name, any true servant of the Emperor that had passed through the firestorm unleashed against them, cared nothing for survival now. Whether for themselves or worlds lost or dead comrades, the Astra Militarum would fight to punish the orks and give their lives in the effort. The commissars reported barely any desertions despite the disaster that had beset the landings.

Dorr was not surprised. Even for those of low resolve, where was there to run? The only option was to fight as hard as possible to survive.

The majority of the foe came in savage mobs of infantry, emerging from massive fortifications of which the surface bastions and citadels had been but the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of kilometres of city extended beneath the ash dunes. Much of it had been collapsed by fallen starships, but a maze of tunnels and chambers remained, populated by hordes of greenskins ready to burst free almost anywhere.

The main battle cannon of the Dorn’s Ire thundered into life, hurling its massive shell into a building flanking the line of advance. Its lascannon sub-turrets spat white flares while heavy bolter sponsons sent out an almost constant stream of fire at the alien brutes skulking in the ruins.

The bulk of the army advanced on foot, keeping pace with the broad-sided Baneblades, Stormblades and other super-heavies. Lasguns strobed red beams through the clouds of dust and grit while ork slug-throwers and energy weapons flared in reply. Scout teams in camouflaged fatigues surged ahead, their bayonets at the ready. Behind, smartly-uniformed troopers advanced in rank beneath fluttering standards and Imperial aquilas, defiant in the face of the orks’ weapons.

Sentinel scout walkers stalked the ruins, their multi-lasers and autocannons picking out scattered groups of greenskins. In return, xenos tank-hunters sowed deadly anti-vehicle mines and lay in wait with short-ranged but powerful rocket launchers. Ork nobles twice the size of any unaugmented human led counter-charges with blazing-headed axes and growling chain weapons. They led hundreds of orks in bloody close assaults to cut down the servants of the Emperor by the score, before the fire of surviving Guardsmen slew them or drove them back into their holes.

Bulky-suited Deltronis fire teams with heavy flamers accompanied pairs of Hellhound flamethrower tanks, burning the greenskins from their lairs. In turn they were supported by specialist tunnel fighters brought from the hive cities of Hermetica. These ex-hive gangers were barely civilised, regarded as savages by many of their fellow regiments, but in the close confines of the ork weapon-site tunnels their barbarity was an advantage, matching the orks for sheer viciousness if not size and strength.

Demolisher tanks and siege bombards advanced behind the outer cordon of Leman Russ tanks. Where the enemy massed in some bastion or bunker unbreached by the carpet bombing of the Navy and the rolling barrage of the artillery, the wall-breakers moved forward and unleashed their fortress-busting salvoes.

A whine of alarms brought Galtan and two subalterns into the chamber, ready to throw themselves on top of the field-legatus. A few seconds passed and then impacts rang on the Baneblade’s hull — a pattering of detonations that spread from the engine blocks behind and passed directly along the entire tank. Galtan visibly flinched, eyeing the vaulting of the reinforced ceiling that held up the turret.

‘What was that?’ asked one of the junior officers.

‘Strafing run,’ said another.

‘What happened to our anti-air guns? Where are those damned Navy interceptors?’ Galtan moved towards the vox-panel, but Dorr stopped him with a raised hand.

‘They are protecting the squads on the tip of the attack, lieutenant.’ Dorr shooed the staff officer away with a wave of his hand. ‘A place far more suitable than guarding this armoured behemoth, regardless of the rank of its crew. This is the closest you’ve been to a battle, isn’t it, Galtan?’

‘I have had the privilege of serving on the command staff of three general-rank officers, field-legatus.’

‘From a Capitol Imperialis or in orbit, yes?’

Galtan swallowed hard and examined his fingernails.

‘Yes, field-legatus.’

‘It is not an accusation,’ Dorr assured him. ‘I am certain you served with distinction. I do not claim any particular experience at close quarters myself. I earned my rank in the artillery regiments of Aldarast. Even so, it is important that we keep calm, no matter how hot things get around us.’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘I do have one suggestion though, lieutenant.’

‘Sir?’

‘There will be a time when the fighting gets close and dirty, when perhaps you and I even are required to remember our basic training and fire a weapon in anger. When that time comes, assure me of one thing, Galtan.’

‘Anything, sir. My dedication will not fail, nor my courage.’

Dorr pointed to the empty holster at the lieutenant’s hip.

‘Remember to bring your laspistol.’

The strategium and inner chambers of the Cortix Verdana had been constructed as an armoured core, protected not only by a reinforced structure but also an onion-like, multi-layered field system. The central structure resembled the pyramid shape of the ship but on a much smaller scale, barely a hundred metres high, tilted at a sharp angle among a tattered cocoon of tangled cables, splintered walls and ruptured bulkheads. It was perhaps only due to these additional measures that Magos Laurentis was alive to loiter amongst the wreck of the war-forge with the other upper-hierarchy tech-priests, while the bulk of the ship and its crew lay scattered and burning over several square kilometres of devastated ork city.

A cadre of several hundred skitarii — the dominus’ personal guard — held a perimeter just half a kilometre from where Laurentis watched the unfolding battle. Beyond them heavier engines of war waged their own fight — two Warlord Titans of the Legio Ultima had landed close to the crash site, another likely reason for Laurentis’ continued mortal existence. The towering avatars of the Machine-God’s wrath put forth an ear-splitting, blinding storm of fire from their immense rocket launchers, volcano cannon, turbolasers and macro-cannons, reducing clanking ork transports to careening piles of slag, obliterating mobs of aliens in blossoms of immolating fire.

Smaller war machines held the other approaches. Moving between the fume-wreathed remains of the engine decks and the glassy crater that had been a plasma reactor, a Warhound scout-class and two Reaver Battle Titans in the dark green and gold of the War Griffons supported maniples of red-armoured automaton warriors from the Legio Cybernetica. Any orks cunning, persistent or lucky enough to survive the ire of the Titans were hunted down by hulking mechanical brutes, targeted by raging bursts from incendine combustors or crushed with crackling power fists. Volkite blasts and the muzzle flash of macrostubbers added to the hellish glow of the flame-shrouded battle. Tracer rounds left actinic trails against a backdrop of the fading dusk while incendiary missiles burst in blooms of incandescent wrath.

The silhouette of a rare tri-legged Punisher-class Titan blocked out the sky above, standing guard over the upper ranks of Martian nobility with tezlan accelerators gleaming. The containment fields of its underslung plasma annihilator vibrated through the ground, and Laurentis’ bionics, like a heartbeat.

Such protection did not render them immune to harm. Ork heavy guns had started shelling the Cult Mechanicus forces as they had assembled on the site of their fallen commanders. Stray rockets continued to sputter and spit past, detonating against the black metal of the war-forge’s inner sanctum.

His recent near-fatal experiences had inured the magos to any anxiety concerning self-preservation, but he sensed the unease of his companions. He had no doubt that they would have preferred to stay within the armoured shell of the strategium block, but that was impossible. The glitter of las-cutters and corona of phase fields illuminated the interior as a full recovery phalanx attempted to free the dominus from the half-collapsed decks. Monotask servitors with cranes and heavy mechanical lifters pried apart the wreckage, red-robed tech-priests overseeing the oddly brutal-yet-delicate operation.

Delthrak’s transmitter was a constant stream of coded orders, a rat-tat-tat barrage of signals that flitted through a sub-channel of Laurentis’ auditory backups.

‘Please stop that, it is impossible to think with the racket,’ Laurentis told the Barbarian’s Advocate. ‘I am trying to metriculate.’

‘Someone has to coordinate the defence while the dominus is discommoded,’ replied Delthrak.

Laurentis could not see well after his most recent reconstruction, but from what he observed there was nothing to be done that wasn’t already under way.

‘I would also suggest that you cease distracting our line-commanders with this constant inanity,’ the magos continued. ‘They are far more experienced than you or I in these matters.’

‘You have no rank here,’ Delthrak snapped back. ‘In fact, you have become utterly irrelevant.’

A particularly large and multicoloured explosion to their right drew everybody’s attention. Just a few hundred metres away the red-armoured carapaces of several Kataphron warrior-constructs stood out starkly against the white ash and grey dust. Their weapons chattered, muzzle flare visible even at this distance when they engaged another foe, as yet out of sight past the scraps of the forge-ship littering the blasted hillsides. Until large numbers of infantry arrived, there would be gaps in the defensive enclosure — Titans were more properly suited to levelling cities than picking off infantry assaults.

A rocket whined overhead and crashed a few hundred metres away, behind the tech-priests. Another followed, striking closer. The deafening blast of a war-horn from the looming Punisher — the Modus Destructor — warned those below that it was moving. Skitarii squads scattered and the tech-priests moved closer to the inner shell as the gigantic construct stepped forward. The shell of an ork building collapsed under its clawed foot as the Titan settled in its new position.

Turning about its waist axis, the Modus Destructor brought its twin accelerators to bear on some target out of sight of Laurentis. A high-pitched wail split the air moments before the weapons lit up with a burst of azure light. Laurentis’ inhuman sight picked up pulses of electromagnetic charge as a hail of hundreds of solid missiles flared into the darkness, shredding whatever engines or batteries had launched the rockets.

The magos caught a burst of vox-traffic emanating from the innards of the broken strategium. Tech-seers and servitors moved out of the structure, dragging twisted plates and carefully-sliced support struts with them.

‘The dominus has been freed,’ said Delthrak, decoding the data-stream microseconds before Laurentis. The Barbarian’s Advocate’s auto-synapses had not endured the turmoil that had battered Laurentis since he had been despatched to Ardamantua.

The cabal of ranking Cult Mechanicus huddled together as they approached the broad docking doors that had been freed by the work teams. Sputtering temporary lights lit the insides of the bay, casting an inconsistent crimson-and-amber gleam.

The deck floor shuddered, settling under a fresh weight, the crash of metal reverberating from the open hold. A large shadow eclipsed the internal light. A second later Dominus Zhokuv strode into view.

His pteknopic casing was hidden from view, located somewhere in the depths of the plates of armourplas, ceramite and plasteel. Twice as tall as a Space Marine Dreadnought, the dominus’ war body hunched on dog-legs. Two volkite cannons flanked the central coffin housing Zhokuv’s physical remains. Beneath this sarcophagus, field-sheathed power saws extended on articulated arms. A tangle of mechadendrites curled from under the carapace plates, tipped with a variety of appendages for fine motor work. The sparkle of an omnidirectional power shield caused the air to sputter with ionised particles, forcing the tech-priests back several paces as the giant walker emerged into the night. Two eye-like searchlamps sprang into life, bathing the assembled Cult Mechanicus with multi-spectral light.

‘Praise the Machine-God!’ Laurentis joined in with the hailed chorus, feeling an uncharacteristic surge of relief at the sight of the Cult Mechanicus commander. He reasoned it was simply the cessation of Delthrak’s chatter that had ended his discomfort.

A burst of high-velocity data speared into Laurentis’ cortical analysis cells, apprising him of the entire strategic situation in less than two seconds. Zhokuv had not been idle during his enforced absence, having assimilated the data-feeds of the remaining Adeptus Mechanicus assets and interfaced with the strategic and tactical systems of the Imperial Navy, Adeptus Astartes and Astra Militarum. It included every last detail until moments before his emergence, down to the level of individual squad auspex readings detected by the massive augur arrays of the war-forge. It was too much for Laurentis to comprehend as raw data, his afflicted brain instead summarising the mass of information in vaguely visual terms — a ring of green around the red runes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, while a black thunderbolt speared towards the ork city followed by a blue shield.

‘The plan is simple, my learned companions,’ the dominus boomed through his address systems. ‘The Space Marines will seize approaches into the city interior. The Astra Militarum will hold the ground they take and shield them against counter-attack from the rear and flanks. Our task, blessed be the Omnissiah, is to locate and disable the anti-bombardment shield and anti-orbital weapons protecting Gorkogrod.’

‘Would it not be better to spearhead the attack with our Titans?’ suggested Delthrak. Laurentis could not tell if he was simply fulfilling his role or expressing personal doubts.

In reply, the dominus remotely opened a specific data-packet in the cogitators of his minions. Laurentis reeled as the contents of the packet unfurled through his thoughts.

‘Analysis of the ork brute-shield,’ said Zhokuv. ‘It combines the same energetic and gravitational properties as many of the grand weapons we have encountered previously, and those that assailed us in orbit, but utilised in a different fashion. Any void shield or power field we possess that contacts the ork brute-shield will detonate. We cannot send our engines through it with their fields deployed, and to do so without would see them destroyed in minutes by the orks within.’

‘What if we cannot destroy the shield, dominus?’ asked Delthrak.

‘There is no retreat, no possible evacuation under present conditions. The Omnissiah will curse our existence and our infantry and vehicles will be forced to assault without Titan and orbital support.’

‘They will die,’ said Laurentis.

‘Yes, they will. Which is why we must not fail. Mars demands success, even at the cost of our lives.’

Laurentis turned his attention from the dominus and focused on the mountain of lights that denoted the distant ork city, shimmering as though behind a heat haze. Lit from within by innumerable lamps and fires, studded with cannon-encrusted pinnacles and towers, Gorkogrod looked like a massive, squatting beast.

Chapter Ten

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, outer defences

This again? It all resolves the same way, in blood and mayhem and the courageous or lucky surviving to another day.

Can a legend not just stay dead?

A night and a day of relentless fighting meant that Koorland no longer heard the thump of exploding shells and the crackle of bolters and lasguns. He was as deaf to it as the roars and groans of the orks and the growing prickle at the nape of his neck that increased with proximity to the brute-shield.

He vaulted over the broken remains of a courtyard wall, landing messily in the bolt-ruined corpses of the orks that had been defending the barrier a minute earlier. Thane and his Fists Exemplar moved through the rubble to either side. Lascannon and autocannon fire flared and shrieked overhead from the Land Raiders and Predators pushing up behind the Space Marines’ thrust. Further out, companies from the rest of the multi-Chapter taskforce speared into the desolation unleashed by the big guns of the Astra Militarum and the bombs of the Navy.

The setting sun carved stark shadows from the jutting remnants of walls and stairwells, the heaps of collapsed roofs, making dark pits of exposed cellars and sub-levels.

A distinct crack sounded through the din of other battle noise, sharper than thunder, longer than the report of a cannon. An instant later a bolt of red flew past the advancing Space Marines, striking a Crimson Fists Predator. The blast passed through the turret armour, leaving a neat hole. Its exit through the engine block was far more explosive, turning fuel and batteries into an incendiary blast that shot out ten metres, scattering flaming shrapnel.

In seconds the other vehicles returned fire, tracing the trajectory of the attack to an armoured bunker that squatted over the ruins on an outcrop of bomb-cratered rock. Lascannon beams and shells ricocheted harmlessly from a gleaming wall of energy that sprang into life around it.

The squads pushed on, concentrating their bolter fire on the orks still holding the ruins ahead. Corkscrewing rockets and rapid-fire bullets whined out of the dust clouds in reply.

The ork gun fired again, this time slashing through the frontal armour of a Vindicator tank that had been crawling forward, its demolisher cannon intending to breach the gates of the fortifications guarding the gun tower. The muzzle flare of smaller weapons sparkled along revetments and from firing slits, the fusillade lashing down at the brightly-armoured warriors pushing through the smoke and rubble.

‘We cannot afford to lose more armour!’ Quesadra’s vox-carried assessment was as accurate as it was brief.

‘Air support?’ suggested Thane. ‘Knights?’

‘Anti-air batteries still active,’ replied Koorland. ‘The Knight battalions are supporting the western flank. Analysis has revealed a weakness in the orks’ chronobiology. They seem to be more sluggish around twilight. We need to be at the shield-line by dusk. We’ll have to do this ourselves.’

A shadow swallowed Koorland as Vulkan caught up with him. The primarch paid no attention to the weapons fire exploding all around them, turning his helmeted head left and right as he surveyed the scene.

‘Armoured gate, Lord Commander,’ Vulkan told Koorland. Bullets skipped from his plastron and shoulder pauldrons as he raised to point a little to the right.

Koorland looked, magnifying his suit’s auto-senses. Through the swirl of grime and smoke he could see the portal, hidden between two craggy outcrops surrounded by mounds of broken masonry and tangled metal.

The ork emplacement fired again, turning a second Predator to slag and broken armour plates.

‘We must pull the armour back, brother-commander,’ said Thane, coming up from behind Koorland, two squads of Fists Exemplar with him.

‘Vehicle support, withdraw five hundred metres,’ Koorland announced over the vox. ‘Devastator squads attend for new orders.’

Bohemond arrived out of the battle fog moments later, leading nearly two hundred black-armoured Space Marines — his personal guard bolstered by warriors drawn from other companies. He did not pause but broke out of the ruined buildings across the square beyond, into the teeth of the ork defensive fire. Several of his Space Marines fell to a converging storm of heavy weapons fire, yet the High Marshal’s warriors gained ground quickly and took up firing positions from which they could target the orks ringing the hill-bunker.

‘Advance!’ called Koorland, taking advantage of the Black Templars assault. The Lord Commander surged across the shifting piles of rubble, Vulkan striding alongside. Koorland’s sprint finished in the cover of a broken archway just a hundred metres from the fortification’s gatehouse.

The force shield sparked and flared as Devastators levelled their heavy bolters and lascannons at the portal. Secondary turrets mounted on the pinnacles of rock flanking the gate opened fire, pulverising rubble and armour with rapid bursts of blue plasma. Dragging their dead and wounded companions with them, several Space Marine squads were forced back into the ruins.

‘We cannot just stay here,’ snarled Bohemond. ‘Koorland, give the order to attack!’

Koorland hesitated, trying to find another way of opening up the fortress.

‘What manner of Lord Commander are you?’ Bohemond continued. ‘Lord Vulkan, I have held my tongue, but now I must speak. Our brother of the Imperial Fists would barely make the rank of Chapter Master in better times. Why do you support him as Lord Commander?’

The primarch said nothing.

‘We’re still outside their field,’ remarked Thane. ‘How do we breach the gate?’

‘With this,’ said Vulkan, brandishing Doomtremor. He looked at Bohemond and tossed the weapon onto a pile of rubble a few metres ahead of their position. ‘High Marshal, prove to me you are worthy of my support instead of Koorland.’

Bohemond did not hesitate, but burst from the ruins. A single blast from his jump pack took him to the massive hammer. Seizing the haft in both hands, he tried to lift Doomtremor. It barely rose a few centimetres, servos whining in the Black Templar’s armour. A second later he dropped the hammer and staggered away.

‘Any others?’ Vulkan announced. He pointed at Quesadra. ‘Crimson Fist, would you be Lord Commander instead?’

‘If you will it, lord primarch,’ replied the Chapter Master.

Bullets pinged from the rubble as he advanced. Bohemond stepped back with a shake of the head.

‘It is a trick, brother, nothing more.’ The Black Templar stalked back to his warriors while Quesadra strained to lift the primarch’s hammer without success.

Koorland watched all of this in silence, wondering what Vulkan was trying to prove.

‘Lord Commander, your turn,’ said the towering warrior, waving a hand towards Doomtremor.

‘You wish me to use your hammer to break the gate of the fortress, Lord Vulkan?’ said Koorland, holstering his pistol. ‘Is that the challenge?’

‘It is.’

Koorland looked at Doomtremor and then the gate and back to the power hammer. It was clear none but Vulkan had the strength to lift it conventionally. The Lord Commander raised a hand to the Fists Exemplar beside him.

‘Thane, bring your squad with me.’

Koorland set off over the rubble, the Fists Exemplar in tow. At his direction, Thane and two others helped him take up Doomtremor, like a siege ram of ancient times.

‘Cover fire!’ ordered Koorland, breaking into a run, the others matching his pace. The remaining Fists Exemplar poured what fire they could towards the slits and ramparts of the gate-crags.

Bullets spitting past them, explosions tearing up dirt and brick in their wake, Koorland’s assault team dashed between the crag-towers, lifting Doomtremor to their shoulders. Bolt impacts and lascannon blasts spattered them with splinters and molten rock from the walls above.

‘Now!’ Koorland told his companions. They hurled Doomtremor as a javelin. Head wreathed in lightning, the hammer struck the gate like a thunderbolt. Metal shattered under the impact, the detonation of power shearing the entire gate from its mounting.

The Lord Commander and his warriors drew their weapons to open fire at the stunned orks within, stepping into a mist of molten steel. Koorland felt the tread of Vulkan approaching a second before the primarch passed, snatching up Doomtremor to wade into the greenskins with broad sweeps of the gleaming hammer.

‘There is more to the rank of Lord Commander than being the best fighter, Bohemond,’ the primarch called out, voice stern. ‘Great warriors follow the greatest leader.’

Chapter Eleven

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The anarchic sprawl of the outer city butted up against larger, more purpose-built edifices in central Gorkogrod. The maze of overlapping roofs and walkways, the cable runs and subterranean tunnels, winding alleys and semi-derelict construction sites that had enabled the Assassin to move this close abruptly stopped.

Heading into Gorkogrod, Esad Wire found evidence of the workforce that had built the city: human corpses, left out where vermin and smaller greenskins picked at flesh and bones. Not only humans had given their lives in the labour — a few eldar and species he could not identify shared the mass graves with the Emperor’s servants. He came across filthy, half-collapsed cage-houses and cell blocks that must have held thousands of slaves in this quarter alone. The orks’ smaller cousins, the gretchin, had claimed these prisons in the shadow of the great fortresses of their overlords, and turned them into shanties that were home to hundreds of screeching, bickering aliens.

He ditched the buggy about four kilometres from where he had taken it. Contrary to their previous apathy, the orks had mustered from their barracks and shanty-houses when starships started falling from the skies. On foot his progress was slower but more assured, but now he faced a fresh challenge.

Beast Krule had hoped that the fall of night would assist him, but the roads of the inner city were lit with bright lamps while searchlights cut the sky to aid the anti-aircraft guns that jutted from the roofs like the thorns of a bush. The orks were out in numbers, hundreds trudging down into the ghetto, as many riding on battlewagons, trikes, buggies and other vehicles. He had seen nothing of the larger war engines, but he knew that they had to be somewhere, possibly using a more accessible route out of the city.

Crouched in the shadow of a chimney stack, Krule watched the near-endless procession of aliens going past. It seemed to him as much a carnival as a war mustering, reminding him of the ranting, self-flagellating zealots that sometimes gathered outside the great shrines that had been erected in worship of the Emperor. There were banners and icons depicting orkish faces, surrounded by glyph-runes he could not decipher, which he assumed might be devotions and prayers.

Quite a lot of the orks seemed to be drunk — at least as far as Krule could tell with his limited experience. They had barrels and bottles that they repeatedly drank from, slopping thick liquid into large cups and raising them in toast to each other. Gretchin scurried everywhere, fetching and carrying weapons, ammunition, roasted meat on skewers, shiny baubles and everything else beside. They clung to the footplates and roll bars of the wagons, and scampered underfoot through the crowds of marching orks, some of them clearly selling wares, others simply trying not to be trodden underfoot.

Krule jumped to the next roof. He had cast off his orkish disguise in favour of a return to cameleoline stealth and unhindered agility. From this new vantage point the Assassin could see further up the broad street, to a pair of reinforced towers flanking the highway. There didn’t seem to be actual gates, but the road was barred by a body of ork warriors in what appeared to be uniforms — nothing quite so elaborate as the dress style of the Astra Militarum, but the two dozen or so xenos wore black flak jackets reinforced with rivets, and square back banners emblazoned with sigils of a red fist.

These guards patrolled back and forth, clubbing lesser warriors seemingly at random, sometimes stopping a truck or buggy to extract information or possibly bribes from those aboard.

If there was one blessing to be found in the mobilisation, it was that Krule knew he would not be heard. The orks’ laughter and shouts competed with the snarl of engines. On the open beds of some of the transports orks drummed with more enthusiasm than rhythm, and thrashed at amplified string instruments, chanting and bellowing along to their battle-music. Others listened to portable vox-casters, a horrendous cacophony blaring from speakers attached to their vehicles or carried by diminutive assistants.

Krule’s eye was drawn to a peculiar couple of orks a little distance from the gate. The two of them stood on crates and shouted at the passing greenskins from their vantage point. A crowd of gretchin holding placards filled with ork glyphs surrounded them. Sometimes one of the orks would reach into a sack and scatter handfuls of shells and bullets into the crowd while the other bared its fangs, raised its hands in the air and shook its fists even more vigorously. Many of the greenskins stopped to pick up the thrown ammunition, clasping the bullets in their fists and bellowing approval to the two orks. More gretchin tumbled and fought through the legs of their betters trying to get as many of the gift-shells as possible, snapping and clawing. The Assassin watched this behaviour for several minutes until he realised what the cajoling, bullet-scattering orks were doing.

They were preaching.

While the great minds of the Imperium had been focused on anticipating what new machines and warriors might emerge from this accelerated development of the orks, none had considered the emergence of other social constructs such as music and entertainment. And just as the Ecclesiarchy had risen in power in recent centuries, so it seemed that religion was also emerging in the ranks of the orks.

Beast continued towards the divide between shanty and city proper. He moved away from the main thoroughfare to where it was darker. Beneath the shadow of the great fortress-buildings ringing the upper mountain, the narrower roads were choked with rocks, metal, rubble and trash — detritus thrown down from roofs and storeys above or simply left heaped where it had been discarded during construction of the inner city.

The compounds and shanty-terraces were abandoned but Krule was pleased to see that the buildings were still mostly intact and butted directly up to the outer walls of the higher citadels. The foundations were made from a type of ferrocrete, soft enough for his reinforced fingers to make handholds.

A spidery darker shadow in the night, Beast Krule climbed.

It took several minutes, moving past lit windows and iron-railed walkways, until he reached a rampart isolated from any view of the upper fortifications. He pulled himself over the ledge and onto the walkway.

A door swung open to his right, spilling blue light onto the rampart. Krule’s cameleoline shifted rapidly, trying to adjust from total darkness to the grey of artificial stone. Something grunted in the doorway, stepping out.

Krule sprang, lancing his mono-stiletto through the ork’s left eye, piercing the brain. He rode the body down as it crashed to the hard floor. He looked up, finding himself at the threshold of some kind of guard room or barracks dorm. Three orks sat around a table tossing glyph-marked tiles, moving small metal effigies across a triangular board. Steaming mugs sat beside their game, along with bowls that held chewed bones and remnants of other food.

The orks looked up at the commotion, red eyes widening in shock.

Combat stimms flooded his body. Krule threw himself into the room, his needler coughing projectiles into the face of the ork furthest from the door. The alien warrior slumped, twitching as anti-xenos toxins shut down its organs. The closest ork rose from a sagging couch, tugging madly at the pistol in its belt. The Assassin’s fist found its gaping mouth, shattering its jaw and crushing its throat with a spray of thick blood.

The third pushed itself towards another door, or rather the vox-set visible in the room beyond, shouting a warning. Krule felled it with more needler fire and burst into the adjacent chamber.

Two gretchin manned the communications system. They spun on their stools. Krule snapped the arm of the one reaching towards a vox-pickup and kicked the other into the wall. Half a second later his fists cut short their horrified squeaks and hisses.

Crouched in the doorway, he waited and listened.

A minute passed. Nothing came.

Krule stalked back to the exterior and glanced down to the outer city. The lamps and lanterns of the orks made rivers of fire pouring towards the distant plains. Looking further still he could see the small stars of aircraft jets and the red blossoms of artillery detonations. The view crackled and sparked where shells and missiles hit the force field protecting the city. Many would die in the assault, thousands or tens of thousands, but it was unavoidable. The greater the fury thrown at the city, the more opportunity for Krule to get to his target and strike.

The best way to help mankind in the grander scheme, and those battling for Gorkogrod, was to kill the Great Beast.

Invigorated by these thoughts, Krule started to climb again, seeking a vantage point from which he would be able to plan the next phase of the infiltration.

Chapter Twelve

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

As he ripped free his sword from the ork’s gut, blood sprayed across Bohemond. His tabard was already soaked in the gore of his foes, clinging to the black enamelled plates of his armour. He stepped to the right, letting the body slump atop the other corpses piled around him, bringing up the long blade to stop the swing of a power-wreathed claw.

‘We are but vessels for a divine wrath!’ the High Marshal bellowed to his warriors. ‘Into us is poured the ire of the Emperor and in our veins it boils. Your blade is His blade, your blood is His blood.’

Bohemond stepped inside the reach of the ork and slammed the brow of his helm into its jaw, snapping teeth and bone. The alien’s snarl turned to a howl of pain. Bohemond ducked its clumsy swipe and hacked his sword into the exposed midriff, his blue-gleaming blade slicing easily through layers of studded metal plating. Drawing the sword out, he spun and chopped, severing the creature’s arm.

Beside him, Clermont was firing his bolter into the ruins on the far side of a collapsed bridge, the rest of the castellan’s squad providing more cover fire. The river that gurgled below was so choked with filth, bodies and debris that it was impossible to tell if it had ever been fresh or was just an exposed sewer. It steamed in the heat of the midday sun.

Just ahead of Bohemond a shell detonated against the remains of the bridge’s arch, showering him with fist-sized chunks of rubble. Stonework swayed and then collapsed, tumbling down the short ravine to dam the river even more.

‘Incoming vehicles,’ warned Brother Derneicht. ‘Multiple sig—’

The auspex-bearer was cut off by a massive tracked battlewagon rearing up over the mounds of rubble beside him, a huge spiked roller turning on arms mounted at its front. The machine slammed down into the rubble, crushing Derneicht and another Black Templar beneath the roller. Pieces of flesh and shattered ceramite flew in all directions as the behemoth churned towards the other squads. It was easily as large as a Land Raider, two turrets flanking a high-sided driver’s cab, their heavy weapons spitting rounds into the Space Marines.

Their engines a higher-pitched scream, three warbikes hurtled over the crest behind the battlefortress, wide-slung chainguns spewing haphazard salvoes. A fourth sped into view, jumping over the ridge. A shot from Clermont took off half the rider’s head and the warbike crashed flaming into the mess of broken masonry.

‘With me! Let not the size of the foe weight your thoughts,’ Bohemond roared, sprinting towards the battlefortress. From a slatted troop compartment behind the turrets, more orks threw stick-bombs at the onrushing Black Templars. Explosions and metal fragments engulfed them, but Bohemond pressed on through the smoke and dust.

He slightly misjudged the position of the battlefortress. It loomed out of the smoke, accelerating hard, just a few metres away. Jump pack flaring, Bohemond leapt, clearing the deadly cylinder. Behind him Brother Cadrallus was not so fortunate, and disappeared beneath blood-slicked, rubble-choked spikes.

Bohemond hewed through the retaining cage of the driver’s armoured cab, peeling back the roof like the lid of a ration tin. The driver looked up, firing a pistol with its free hand, the other chained to a thick-rimmed steering wheel. Bullets cracked from the High Marshal’s faceplate.

The cab was too confined for Bohemond’s blade. He punched down with all of the weight and strength of his battleplate, crushing the ork’s head with a single blow. An axe skittered across Bohemond’s pauldron and he turned, sword licking out instinctively to slash the face of his assailant. The ork fell back with a whine of pain. Other greenskins clambered out of the transport cage, climbing over whirring tracks and spinning turret gears.

With jump packs shrieking more Black Templars arrived, bodily landing on some of the orks, blades and pistols hacking and roaring to cut down others. A particularly well-armoured foe pulled itself out of the turret behind Bohemond and threw itself at him, bearing them both over with its momentum. They rolled twice, metal buckling under their bulk. Bohemond’s hand struck a trembling exhaust stack, jarring his blade from his grip. It dangled over churning treads, linked to his wrist by a length of gilded chain, just centimetres from being drawn into the grinding road wheels powering the track.

Pinning the Black Templar’s other hand beneath its bulk, the ork smashed the haft of its axe into Bohemond’s face, cracking his left eye-lens. It drew its arm back for another blow.

Clermont was there as the axe head reached the apex of its backswing. His armoured boot crashed into the side of the ork, knocking it over. Three rapid rounds from the castellan’s bolter obliterated the alien’s chest, bolts punching through armour to detonate inside the creature’s ribcage.

The battlefortress still careened onwards, the slumped driver’s body taking it in a curve towards the rubble-choked waterway. Drawing up his sword, Bohemond stood. He looked down the ridge from the extra height of the engine deck, to where a pall of smoke and dozens of vague silhouettes betrayed the approach of even more vehicles.

He leapt from the mobile fortress, his battle-brothers following. They landed awkwardly in the hillocks of broken stone and shattered corpses. A few seconds later the ork tank disappeared over the lip of the waterway. The crash of its descent masked the increasing growl of engines drawing closer.

Two warbikes still raced around the Space Marines, their autocannons blazing, chased by a storm of bolter flares from the encircled Black Templars. Large humanoid shapes appeared from the murk — more orks, piloting Dreadnought-like walkers with heavy weapons and pincer-clawed arms. One strode past Brother Sigurd, brushing the Space Marine aside with a back-handed blow. While bolts sparked from its armour the walker swiped at Bohemond, trying to seize hold of his arm. He dodged the clumsy attack and, sword in both hands, set about hacking away the offending limb.

‘Signal Dorr,’ he barked at Clermont. ‘We need that flying column of tanks he promised us. Without air or war machine support inside the shield, we cannot hold.’

The High Marshal rolled aside as the ork walker tried to shred him with a point-blank burst of weapons fire. He cut the cables of its legs, pinning it in place with a spray of dark hydraulic fluids.

‘Retreat, High Marshal?’ Clermont sounded incredulous. ‘What about taking not one step back?’

‘Sometimes, castellan…’ Bohemond paused while he rammed the full length of his sword between two armoured plates, piercing the walker with a metre and a half of power-field-encased blade. Something shrieked inside the machine and its metal limbs rattled with sympathetic death throes. Bohemond dragged out the sword, blood hissing from its field.

‘Sometimes, castellan,’ he started again, ‘you need to take a step back to get a proper swing.’

Galtan continued to read from the list scrolling across the face of his data-slate, rocked left and right as the Dorn’s Ire swayed and lurched over hills made of levelled buildings.

‘Twenty-three aircraft remaining, including four strategic bombers. Tech-priests are working as fast as possible to bring the Scornful back to battle-readiness. We really could do with that Stormblade at the moment.’

‘That’s enough of what we have, or rather don’t have. What about the enemy?’ said Dorr. He swung his chair towards the plate of the cartolith, its surface flickering with tiny holograms of runes depicting the latest dispositional data.

The gunners in the secondary sponsons opened fire. On external pict-feed displays Dorr saw that they were raking the burning wreckage of several ork heavy transports, ensuring nothing had survived the battlecannon blasts that had destroyed them a few minutes earlier. Galtan waited patiently for the din of their fire to stop.

‘Super-heavy tanks and walkers… nothing Titan-class as yet, field-legatus,’ he replied between bursts of dual heavy bolters. ‘A surprising lack of air power, but more than compensated for by a plethora of anti-aircraft rocket batteries and self-propelled guns.’

‘And the brute-shield,’ one of the subalterns added with a grimace.

‘Yes, best not to forget that,’ said Dorr. He returned his attention to Galtan. ‘What about infantry?’

‘In all honesty, we’re outclassed, field-legatus. We lost half our companies in the orbital strike. Starting from such a poor base, we could never match the orks’ numbers. Without the Space Marines we would never have reached this far.’

Dorr absorbed this brutal assessment in silence, rubbing his whiskered chin. His valet and personal kit had been lost with the Praetor Fidelis, along with a company of his best storm troopers and the majority of his logistical and strategos teams.

‘On the other hand,’ Galtan added with forced cheerfulness, ‘if it wasn’t for us, the Space Marines would have been overrun within hours.’

‘We’re stretched too thin,’ the field-legatus remarked, waving a hand towards the strategic display. ‘This was supposed to be a concentrated thrust into the city. The ork attacks have dragged us out to the flanks, pulling us away from the Space Marines.’

‘A quirk of the city’s layout, field-legatus,’ said Galtan.

‘Yes, I know that!’ snapped the field-legatus, banging a fist on the console panel. He drew in a breath, shaking his head. ‘This city is not as ramshackle and anarchic as it looks, is it? Kill-channels, underground supply routes, layered defences. A well-planned structure hiding under hovels and scrapyards!’

‘We believe we have engaged a significant part of the ork forces, field-legatus,’ said another subaltern — one with curly hair and bright blue eyes, called Festria or Fenestris or something like that. ‘Far more than we should have been able to, considering our deplorable state at the outset. The Adeptus Mechanicus have been making far swifter progress.’

‘Yes, Zhokuv’s latest communiqué suggested as much,’ said Dorr. He leaned his chair back, crossing his arms. ‘Perhaps they could have spared us a Knight or two, maybe even a Titan.’ He sighed. ‘There’s nothing more to be done, except press on where we can and hold ground where we cannot.’

And hope the warlords of Mars can bring down the field before we are destroyed, he added to himself.

Chapter Thirteen

Ullanor — outer Gorkogrod

Sometimes the dream returns. A fantasy. A phantasm. Just one more year. One more year before Davin. What might have been? What might we have accomplished? Another year before Ullanor, perhaps. Another year in the presence of the Emperor, another step closer to the victory He had seen.

But it was false, even then. Do not tell me about falsehood. It lies in the hearts of all men and women, waiting to be nurtured by vanity and lies.

But if mankind were not weak and broken, that would be even more dreadful.

Though the reach of the magos dominus’ mightiest engines stopped at the brute-shield, they were not without impact. The nobles of the Knight Houses had long sworn fealty to Mars, and on the battlefields of Ullanor they adhered to those ancient oaths through the fiercest fighting.

A dozen metres tall, the ancient walkers of the Knight Scions stalked the ruins of Gorkogrod seeking the enemy wherever they could be found. Unhindered by the broken terrain, the massive Knight suits pushed forward where tanks could not, carving into the enemy and laying waste to the city itself.

Knights Paladin led the line, their battle cannons breaking ork mobs as easily as they crumpled the armour of tanks and transports. Chainswords several metres long were more than a match for the claws and buzzsaws of ork heavy dreadnoughts and mega-armoured nobles. With the Paladins came Knights Errant with thermal cannons to vaporise metal and flesh, the flanks of their squadrons secured by darting forays by paired Knights Lancer.

Directional ion fields crackling under incessant barrages from ork artillery and tank guns, the towering Knights Castellan and Crusader were bastions around which the infantry of the Adeptus Mechanicus could hinge their attacks. Battle servitors and carapace-suited skitarii flooded the ruins, a wall of red every bit as relentless as the ork waves that crashed against them.

The Great Beast showed its cunning here also, harbouring its forces well, committing them only when needed. Where the Knights strode, infantry and light vehicles attempted to speed past to strike into the rear of the advancing Cult Mechanicus. Where the Knights were not, the weight of battlefortresses and super-heavy stompers — war engines a match for any Imperial Knight in bulk and firepower — was pressed hardest. But no amount of raw strategy could guard against the meticulous encroachment of the Martian warriors, guided by machine intelligences and the most sophisticated battle-augurs.

Zhokuv wielded the men, servitors, tanks, automata and war engines like an overseer of a manufactory, driving them on hard but weighing every loss against potential gains, seeking efficiencies with ruthless precision. Like the gears of a machine the Martian army continued to grind on. Sometimes the Mechanicus overpowered the orks through sheer force of guns, machines and men. At other times they used superior logistics to draw the greenskins into ambushes or outpace them with rapid flank attacks that cut them off from their support coming from the inner city.

Block by block, street by street, the Adeptus Mechanicus took Gorkogrod, until the lead echelons of Kataphron cyborgs and Praetorian heavy servitors were a kilometre inside the brute-shield. Thousands of Martian veterans swarmed forward to occupy abandoned bunkers, while tech-priests and magi seized and analysed what they could of the ork technology in the hopes of discerning some secret of how the brute-shield worked or was powered.

Much to the dismay of his less bellicose advisors, Zhokuv left the command headquarters protected by the Warlord Titans and sought to view the new front line in person. Escorted by Knights Warden and Knights Castigator of House Taranis, the dominus sallied forth in his battle shell.

Riding behind in a tracked armoured car, Laurentis and others of the inner cadre looked in awe at the devastation that had been brought to Gorkogrod. Of the city they had seen on the initial scans and vid-streams, only the inner reaches remained. The mountainside was littered with ruins and the remnants of war engines both human and ork. Shell craters were criss-crossed by seared trenches from volcano cannons, marked by glassy bowls of plasma detonations.

They were no more than fifteen hundred metres from the brute-shield, which could be clearly seen as a shimmering curtain cutting across the rubble-strewn ridge ahead. Picking up urgent broad-channel transmissions from the vanguard companies, Zhokuv ordered his retinue to stop.

‘What is it, dominus?’ asked Sir Valek, piloting the Knight Warden Red Warrior. He brought his machine to a halt astride the broken highway, its gatling cannon and missile launcher poised to deliver a blistering fusillade at anything approaching from the city centre.

‘Ork counter-attack, rapid advance against our positions,’ Zhokuv informed his companions, broadcasting to the magi and pilots. To the Knight Scions, he added, ‘Move forward and engage.’

‘We are tasked with your protection, dominus,’ Sir Valek protested.

Zhokuv voxed back, sending a chastisement code into the system of Valek’s Knight that marked the machine and pilot for censure at a future date. ‘The surest way to guarantee our safety is a swift end to this mounting assault.’

The Knight pilots confirmed their orders and strode ahead, weapons at the ready. Zhokuv patched his visual feeds into the data-receptors of the Red Warrior, as he had done with the scout-craft at the start of the planetary assault. He felt the limbs of the ancient war machine bunching and flexing as if they were his own, glorying in the sensation of power emanating from his reactor. Valek’s presence was like a fly on his back, barely noticed in the midst of the war machine.

Ahead, flurries of explosions lit the landscape — detonations unlike anything they had seen since landing. Coruscations of green energy flowed upwards like flames in slow motion, carrying with them avalanches of debris. It took a moment for Zhokuv to adjust to the perspective of the Knight. As he did so, calculating the range to the closest detonation, he realised that some of the lumps of debris were Kataphrons and battle tanks, tossed into the air like the toys of a petulant child.

Shapes larger than Knights bulled their way through the buildings, brushing them aside with their bulk. Small arms and heavy weapons were equally ineffective against their power fields, sparks of red against the immensity of the new war engines. Anti-tank cannons strobed las and tracers into the ruins, shredding stone and soldier with equal ease. Massive belly guns belched fire and sent tank-sized shells crashing into the waves of red-armoured skitarii falling back from the assault.

The Great Beast had finally despatched its gargants.

Zhokuv immediately transmitted a withdrawal order to the beset infantry phalanx, channelling the command via the Red Warrior to boost its reach. Needing no further encouragement, robed tech-priests, clanking cybernetica constructs and Martian soldiers broke cover and flowed back down the city-mountain in droves, but the gargants paid them little heed. They continued on, emerging from the brute-shield to take on the assembled Knight squadrons.

The fire of the macro-cannons and gatling blasters of the Knights lit the lead gargant from base to head, power fields flickering with scarlet lightning. The ork war machines returned fire, bolts of energy and ripples of shells slamming into the gleaming ion shields of the Martian walkers. Wayward las-beams and cannon strikes ripped swathes through the few buildings still standing, turning multi-storey fortifications and half-broken towers into falling rubble and billowing dust clouds.

Yet for all he strained the sensory array of the Knight Warden and scanned back and forth across the data-streams, Zhokuv could find nothing that explained the extraordinary detonations and anarchy that had heralded the counter-attack. The Red Warrior advanced another hundred metres, its guns targeting the failing energy defences of the closest gargant. The dominus spied smaller war engines rumbling and striding through the clouds of exhaust and dust that swathed the gargants.

Some were tracked or wheeled battletowers, arcs of green lightning forking from their summits. With them came more gargants, amongst their rockets and guns crane-like appendages that fired crackling emerald stars. Fronds of wreathing jade flame wrapped around Kataphrons and skitarii, dragging them into whirling maelstroms of devastating energy.

Advancing past the gargants which duelled with newly-arrived Titans, the battletowers turned their otherworldly powers upon the Knights. Against physical attacks their ion shields provided some protection, but many were struck by phantamagorical bolts that passed straight through such defences, turning armour inside out, as though invisible hands ripped them asunder from within.

Flurries of psychic energy pummelled the plates of a Knight, crushing it into the ground with repeated blows that buckled armour and bent internal struts like grass. Waves of fire rippled out from a trio of battlewagons connected to each other by sparking cables. The inferno of psychic energy licked up the legs and body of a Knight Castigator, causing the ammunition of its bolt cannon to explode in the hopper. Zhokuv felt the loss of connection with the pilot as he was burned alive inside the cockpit.

Together the gargants and psychic engines advanced again. In their wake came a flood of maddened orks, frothing and spitting, each as large as a common ork chieftain. Huge detonations of psychic power wracked the Cult Mechanicus lines, leaving blasted craters in their wake looking oddly like trails of monstrous footsteps.

Faced with such a combination of brute power and insidious attack there was nothing Knights or skitarii, tech-priests or Kataphrons could do except pull back.

Rune Priest Thorild sensed waves of anger emanating from the primarch. Fully armoured, expression concealed within his dragonet helm, his body language spoke of repose, but the emotions leaking through the iron will of Vulkan said otherwise.

On hearing the news of the Adeptus Mechanicus setback, the gene-father of the Salamanders had demanded a Thunderhawk and as many Librarians as could be quickly mustered. The Lord Commander had argued that if the Space Marines could penetrate deeper into the inner city on another front, the Great Beast would be forced to pull back its greatest war engines and psykers to combat the threat. But such logic only triggered a rare outburst, a direct order from the primarch, evidence of Vulkan’s barely contained wrath.

Cowed, Koorland had assembled from the Chapters to hand the small company that rode with the primarch towards the heart of the ork offensive. Other Space Marine forces followed to provide a more physical back-up to the Librarians’ otherworldly powers. Bohemond had not outright refused to join the mission, but had made it clear he wanted no part of it, claiming the need for his presence elsewhere was greater.

The Space Wolf also felt the presence of the others — Gandorin and Adarian most strongly, but also lesser-ranked psykers of several Chapters. The remaining survivors of the first connection with the orks had been charged to watch the other psychic assets of the force, to ensure no further contamination from the raging psychic power of the orks.

‘Pardon my asking, Lord Vulkan, but I cannot help but sense you are taking this personally,’ said Epistolary Kalvis of the Crimson Fists. ‘Given experience in earlier interaction with the background ork psychic presence, is this wise?’

Vulkan did not turn his head.

‘We must fight fire with fire,’ he said quietly.

None of the other Librarians spoke, but Kalvis persisted, perhaps feeling it was his duty to speak out, or simply holding a personal unease at their immediate future.

‘What exactly do you intend, Lord Vulkan? It pains me to say, but we cannot match the psychic might of the orks.’

‘You just have to contain them long enough for me to kill them,’ growled the primarch. He straightened and looked at the assembled psykers. ‘During the Great Crusade we met many strange creatures and warp-born horrors. We knew little of psychic power and its true source, for the Emperor had chosen ignorance to be our shield against temptation. But we knew enough. That some foes cannot be beaten by bullets and blades, but with the power of the mind. In His wisdom He did not tell us of daemons and gods, of course.’

Thorild shifted nervously. He knew of what the primarch spoke. The others were similarly uncomfortable, sharing the belief that such matters, such entities were not for casual conversation. Vulkan seemed oblivious to their unease, or uncaring of it, and continued.

‘But the Emperor had a secret army to combat the threat of the psychic and the daemonic. His Sisters of Silence, we called them. Anti-psykers trained as warrior-maidens. One in trillions, each of them, but across the great vastness of humanity they were number enough. What I would give for a company of the Silent Sisterhood now…’

‘I do not think the Sisters of Silence have survived, lord primarch,’ said Gandorin.

‘We will do what we can,’ said Thorild, ‘but we risk further ruin if we dare too much, lord primarch. To treat too long with the powers of the Great Beast is to open ours—’

‘Do not speak to me of temptation and powers, rune-wielder,’ Vulkan said heavily. The eyes of his helm seemed to take on a different gleam, but it had to be a trick of the Thunderhawk’s lighting. ‘When you have looked upon the face of your brothers and seen strangers, when you have seen the entire galaxy burn for the whims of Dark Gods… Or stood for an eternity at the breach to keep the ravening powers from destroying all that you love…’

‘We have incoming counter-air fire, Lord Vulkan,’ announced the pilot. ‘Where do you want to set down?’

‘Get as close as you can,’ the primarch replied. He stood up and moved to the front assault ramp, head bent beneath the ceiling of the troop deck. ‘There will be no need to land.’

The muffled thump of flak shells and the rattle of shrapnel on the hull mixed with the growl of the engines. The pilot moved the gunship in tight turns to evade the worst of the incoming fire but Thorild felt the anxiety of his brothers even above the mounting anticipation of the primarch.

‘Do all that you can to suppress their powers, that is all I ask,’ Vulkan told them. ‘Keep close, shield me with your thoughts.’

He opened the main ramp, air screaming into the troop compartment. Thorild could see the ruined city whipping past a hundred metres below. Titans and Knights duelled with gargants and stompers, heavy weapons pounding out destruction, tank-sized fists and blades that could demolish buildings smashing and slamming against each other. Skitarii and greenskins ripped into each other in firefights and desperate melee across broken buildings. Flickering psychic fires spewed and monstrous apparitions thrashed above the ork horde on the edge of vision.

Almost directly below them waddled a great gargant, thirty metres tall, its huge rotund hull jutting with pylons and copper coils that crackled with green sparks. Upon its shoulders several ork psykers were chained, absorbing the latent savagery of the greenskins around them. Thorild could feel the power churning around the machine. Even as he detected the release of psychic energy a flare of green lightning spat from the psykers, lancing into a column of battle tanks that tried to hold back the ork offensive.

Thorild could feel the wider ork psychic presence like a living thing, seething at the attack on its city, bloating and growing with rage at the human invasion.

‘The harder we attack, the stronger the ork psychic effect becomes,’ said Adarian, sensing it also.

Thorild nodded. He moved up beside Vulkan.

‘You knew the Wolf well, my lord?’ he asked.

‘We were friends as well as brothers,’ Vulkan replied.

‘And you trusted him, Lord Vulkan?’

‘Several times with my life and the lives of my sons.’

‘Then trust me, son of the Wolf. We will not fail you.’

The primarch looked at him and nodded. A second later, he threw himself from the assault ramp.

Thorild watched Vulkan fall, Doomtremor trailing sparks like a comet. The primarch had timed his jump to perfection, hitting the upper deck of the gargant, the impact sending him crashing through the tower and through the armoured plates into the depths below.

A roar of instinctual protest swelled up from the orks’ psychic manifestation, but in the depths of the gargant the primal shout was quickly silenced.

‘Now, brothers,’ Thorild commanded, opening his thoughts to the other Librarians. ‘Let us show this savage, and the primarch, what the Adeptus Astartes are truly capable of.’

Thorild launched his spirit into the roiling green mass of the ork aura, the minds of his companions on his heels appearing in his thoughts as a snarling wolf pack. He sensed rather than saw Vulkan bursting out of the collapsing gargant, already sprinting towards a battletower just behind it.

Gleaming psychic fangs shredded the green claws coalescing around the primarch. The wolves of the Emperor howled their challenge to the Great Beast.

Chapter Fourteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

And at the end we must face the fact that immortality is a greater burden than mortality. The long death, a slow diminishing of meaning. Why curse us with the knowledge, with the fate that we would outlive all that we built? Did He think to outfox entropy itself?

Was it a pain that He had to share? Companions for eternity, empty totems raised up in memory of those lost in the mists of five hundred lifetimes.

And now I am the one that stands alone and I can take no more of it. There is no healing the wounds of the soul.

Stealth had to be sacrificed for speed on occasion. Gore-drenched, Beast Krule’s cameleoline had been of little effectiveness for the past hour anyway. With this thought, he dropped out of the duct he had been using, landing in a clean, whitewashed corridor. Oddly clean, for orks, he thought. Chanting echoed from both directions, slow but forceful.

The ork palace-complex — factory, cathedral and fortress combined — was vast but he could hear the muted rumble of detonations, which told him that the other Imperial forces were getting ever closer.

Even if he could not strike down the Great Beast before they arrived at the gates to the citadel, the Assassin’s presence would cause confusion and indecision, which would aid the Adeptus Astartes and their allies in their final onslaught.

A pair of orks turned a corner ahead and he opened fire with the alien weapon he had salvaged from his last victim, gunning them down in a flare of rapid energy blasts. Moving past their smouldering corpses, he turned towards the echoing roar of ork voices. Another greenskin emerged from a doorway right in front of him, gnawing at a bone with its chisel fangs. It barely had time to grunt its surprise before his stiletto pierced its chest.

The ork lashed out, Krule’s blade still wedged into its ribs. Its fists cracked against the side of the Assassin’s head, dazing him. Cursing the resilience of all greenskins, Beast Krule pulled himself free of the hands grasping for his throat and retaliated with a hammerblow punch of his own, caving in the top of its skull and brain.

Stepping over the corpse, Krule noticed in detached fashion that the food still gripped in its fist looked like a small green-skinned arm, a couple of fingers attached with bloody sinew at one end.

The corridor took him to a large balcony overlooking a hangar-like space. Half a dozen orks leaned on a metal rail as they looked into the depths. At one end of the vast hall was a large statue made of overlapping metal plates, heavily riveted, in the form of a giant squatting ork. It was covered head-to-foot in heavy armour, its fists clad in clawed gloves the size of battle tanks. The walls were stone, made of large blocks each carved with an ork glyph — the story of the rise of the Great Beast, perhaps.

There were more galleries above, below and opposite, lined with bellowing orks. The aliens were all as large as nobles or bigger, many of a size to match the archive descriptions of army warlords. They were heavily armed and armoured, bearing the blazon of the red fist he had seen on banners and walls across the palace.

And below were thousands more, perhaps tens of thousands, a sea of gigantic alien beasts. They chanted and grunted in unison, waving their weapons, whipped into a zealous frenzy by some unseen orator at one end of the massive space. The huge cathedral shook with stamping feet and the girder-vaulted ceiling rang with a deafening shout of praise.

Krule staggered back until his spine touched the cold stone of the wall. Through the fog of stimulants the raging orks were a sea of brutal monsters, their chants distant but deafening.

He had expected an elite guard, but the creatures that thronged the hall were terrifying, far beyond the plans of Vangorich. To the orks, might made right, and the creature that ruled over such a mass of alien nightmares had to be mightier than anything the Imperium had encountered for an age.

With cold dread washing away the vestiges of the stimm-fugue, Beast Krule realised that his mission was impossible.

Worse still, the entire endeavour could not possibly succeed, not against such a force defending a near-impregnable fortress. The Lord Commander, the lord primarch, tens of thousands of Space Marines and soldiers would die before ever setting foot near the Great Beast.

Thought after thought raced through the Assassin. Years of training and experience crumbled when confronted by the sheer horror of the Great Beast’s power. How could the Imperium possibly win against such alien fury incarnate? The war was folly. There was no triumph to be had, only the slim chance of survival.

His breathing became ragged, the tension and fatigue of days crowding into his weary body, all resolve dissipating at the sight of the task ahead.

One of the greenskins just a few metres from Beast Krule sniffed the air heavily and turned its flat head towards him. At the same moment, something large eclipsed the light behind Krule.

Instinct rolled him aside, the crackling fist centimetres from his face prickling his skin with energy discharge. His evasive manoeuvre took him out onto the balcony, closer to the other orks. They turned, glowering and snarling.

The creature that had attacked almost blocked the whole entrance with its bulk. It was dressed in a thick hide coat reinforced with straps of metal and rivets the size of a man’s fist. It wore a kilt of the same, and heavy steel-capped boots up to its knees. It swung the power claw again, forcing Beast Krule to duck.

The Assassin fired the stolen ork gun, blasting a fusillade directly into the chest of the alien blocking his escape. Metal and leather turned to smoke and steam, and flesh boiled as the ork stumbled back, staggering to one knee.

With just a split second to act, Beast Krule leapt. Using the knee of the downed ork as a step, he vaulted over the wounded alien. It snatched at his ankle as he passed, but momentum carried him over its shoulder. Landing heavily, he tumbled to his feet and started running.

Action cleared away his dread. A fresh purpose filled him. Anger at himself for his weakness spurred him to renewed effort. Krule’s mind still burned with what he had seen in the temple-chamber, and with images of what would happen when that army was unleashed against the unsuspecting Space Marines.

They were so close now, Koorland could almost reach out and touch the immense walls of the central citadel. Progress had been slow, tortuous even, every metre gained inside the brute-shield paid for with death and hardship. And the warriors of the Emperor had paid dearly. Of the Space Marines that had survived to reach the surface of Ullanor, a third had been lost. Amongst the ranks of the Astra Militarum the casualty rate was at nearly fifty per cent. Following the psyker-bolstered offensive of the orks, stopped only by Vulkan’s direct intervention, the Adeptus Mechanicus had suffered even more. The host of Mars had been reduced to a handful of Titans and seven fully functional Knights, and these war machines could not pass the brute-shield unmolested.

Countless orks had fallen, their bodies a green carpet under the boots of the Space Marines and the treads of Astra Militarum tanks. Where days before they had clashed over a broken field of rubble, now the Emperor’s servants and the Great Beast’s savages contested for piles of blood and bones, mounds of shattered vehicles and burning gargant wrecks.

If the next kilometre was anything like the last, there would barely be any Imperial force left to break into the citadel proper.

‘Nothing worth fighting for was taken easily,’ Vulkan told him, perhaps sensing his mood. ‘The orks have bled as much as us. More. Much more.’

‘We have been too slow, Lord Vulkan. Too slow.’ Koorland smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘They are massing behind us. Three landing sites have been overrun. Two more are surrounded.’

‘It was never our intention to leave,’ the primarch reminded him. He seemed more than resigned to this fact. Rejuvenated almost. Vulkan had shown more heart for the fight after the disastrous landing than before. The Lord Commander had suspicions about the primarch’s motives, but his doubts were vague and of no consequence to the immediate future.

Koorland looked up at the forbidding city-palace and the ring of walls, turrets, towers and gatehouses. Idol-statues topped some of the buildings, of polished gold and chrome. Huge standards the equal in size of any Titan kill-banner flapped along the ramparts. And cannons. Cannons by the hundred.

His gaze slid further upwards, to the oppressive, half-seen crackling dome of the brute-shield. The Lord Commander felt claustrophobic looking at it. He could not shake the idea that, like the rest of Ullanor, its intent was not so much to keep attackers out but to trap them within.

Inside with the Great Beast.

The brute-shield had shrunk a few kilometres, its generators overrun by the Imperial advance. But it still protected the inner city from the ships in orbit, as did the massive guns, missiles and energy cannons within.

‘We have to get into the citadel,’ Koorland declared. He selected the channel to address the Chapter Masters and other force commanders. ‘Prepare for the final assault.’

Chapter Fifteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

We delude ourselves with promises of a better tomorrow. ‘If only…’ begins the mantra of the weak. We must strive without hope of cessation of effort. We must hold ourselves above ambition, seeking to excel but not to conquer. To build is a fleeting experience, while destruction is eternal. Build not for tomorrow but for today. Fight not for your future, but for the present. The past becomes meaningless in such consideration, but we cannot break free from its shackles.

The universe knows what must happen but panders to whims that wish otherwise. Recognising inevitability is not fatalism. How I loathe this waiting.

As when two pugilists step back by tacit consent to draw a breath before recommencing their fight, a lull descended upon the ork city. While the Lord Commander arrayed his broken companies into new formations and Field-Legatus Dorr drew up his reserves to support the next thrust, the Adeptus Mechanicus scoured the outer city of the remaining pockets of orks to secure the line of attack.

Laurentis had argued, possibly a little too vehemently, that the destruction of the brute-shield was still the paramount objective of the Cult Mechanicus, which was how he found himself tasked with leading an expedition to discover how to do just that. Guarded by maniples of cyber-constructs and several platoons of skitarii, watched over by the Knight Paladin Greyblade, he picked through the remains of an ork tower close to the original line of the shield. Taking pict-captures and data readings, he examined the spread of debris and attempted to divine the purpose of several chambers and broken machines within.

‘It is an amplifier,’ he said aloud. He gestured at Jeddaz, a minor tech-priest who had been assigned to him as attendant for some unknown dereliction of duty. Laurentis pointed to the drops of metal on the walls — conduits for something. ‘Here, look. These were a network, melted by whatever blast broke the tower. High-intensity melta residue everywhere, a Knight’s thermal cannon I would say. And these rooms, they housed battery cells of some kind.’

‘But there are no conduits or projectors,’ Jeddaz replied with a sigh. He turned over flattened pots and broken furniture with his mechadendrites, what remained of his face curled in a distasteful sneer as though rifling through effluent.

‘Magos, I am detecting an aerial approach on an unexpected vector,’ Sir Phaldoron warned from the Greyblade.

‘An air raid?’

‘A single craft, coming out of the inner city.’

‘Is it heading towards us?’

‘Its course will bring it close. Anti-air batteries in the main force are preparing to engage.’

Laurentis shunted the data-stream from the Knight into his cogitator back-ups, thinking to add the information to the vast repository on the orks he already carried. As he did so, he noticed that the flight path of the aircraft was unlike anything he had recorded from the greenskins.

He tried to quantify what he found. Orks were headlong, instinctual fighters. Their pilots were mostly crazed speed-cultists who valued the thrill of high velocity as much as battle itself. The incoming craft was being… circumspect.

‘No!’ shouted Laurentis, jamming the Greyblade’s communications channel with an override signal. He scrambled out of the bunker and up a pile of gore-strewn ruin, his three mechanical legs making hard work of the incline. He searched the skies and saw the blot that was the incoming aircraft.

‘Is it broadcasting any signals? Any identifiers?’

‘Why would it…’ The Knight Scion trailed off. ‘There is a low-frequency radio transmission, magos.’

‘Send it to me.’

‘It could be—’

‘Send it to me! And tell the anti-air to hold fire!’

The Knight Scion obeyed, broadcasting the intercepted transmission into the dataflow of Laurentis. The magos opened up the compact data packet and translated it to audio.

‘…must not attack. Overwhelming counter-assault is ready. Is anyone listening to this? I am Esad Wire of the Officio Assassinorum, agent of Lord Vangorich. My mission is sanctioned by Inquisitorial representation. I must speak to the Lord Commander and lord primarch immediately! Do not attack the citadel! For the love of the Emperor and Mankind, do not attack!’

Surrounded by Chapter Masters, the Assassin was certainly not the most intimidating individual gathered in the bombed-out ruin of an ork storehouse. The presence of Vulkan made his lack of size even more apparent. But Assassins did not rely on physique alone. There was a tension in every movement of Esad Wire, an underlying energy about to be unleashed. Koorland recognised it from his own brothers when preparing for battle — the storm beneath a calm sea.

Esad Wire sat on a broken plinth, his black bodysuit slicked with blood. Most of it was the thick gore of the orks, but some of the Assassin’s own leaked through a number of tears in the synskin suit. His shoulders were hunched with fatigue, a finger tapping on one knee with nervous energy.

His eyes were hard as flint, pupils glittering with augment systems. Koorland could also smell a trace of biomechanical oil and artificial sanguinary fluids, indicating internal bionics as well. No surprise, of course, given that all Officio Assassinorum personnel were physically boosted in some fashion. The hidden nature of Wire’s augmentations meant that his role was clearly one of disguise and infiltration.

His breath stank of stimm residue and an aura of antiseptic coagulant surrounded the Assassin. As he shifted, a wound opened under his ribs, a fresh trickle of blood dribbling out onto his synskin sheath. The Assassin didn’t seem to notice. His attention moved from one Space Marine to the next and then on again, constantly scouring his surroundings and their occupants.

Esad Wire had crash-landed the ork fighter almost on top of the Imperial lines, demanding audience with the commanders. Secured by Crimson Fists, he had said nothing until the representatives of the allied factions had arrived. The scene for the audience was grim — the broken stone underfoot was smeared with the blood of orks, their corpses and body parts still wedged between chunks of rubble. The ceiling had collapsed, letting the mid-afternoon sun lay deep shadows across the proceedings.

‘By what right were you sent into our forces?’ demanded Odaenathus.

‘Is that really the issue, Chapter Master?’ the Assassin replied. He grimaced and took in a ragged breath. ‘My orders came directly from Lord Vangorich, in concert with members of the Inquisition. Does it matter how or why? I tell you again, I have seen inside the ork city. The force that remains is overwhelming. Stronger than anything you have yet encountered. You cannot attack.’

‘Why did you not continue your mission to kill the Great Beast?’ asked Vulkan. ‘Surely that was more important than warning us of any danger. If you killed the target, our losses become inconsequential.’

‘I could not reach the Great Beast,’ Esad Wire admitted with a shake of the head. His eyes lost their focus for a few seconds, seeing something that was only memory. ‘I barely breached the outskirts of its sanctum. It was even more luck that I got out again. Tens of thousands of giant orks, armed as well as your elite companies. But that is not the worst. There is more than simply a warlord guiding this force. It is something far grander. A demagogue, a high priest perhaps.’

‘An emissary of an ork god?’ Bohemond spat the words, his fingers tight on the hilt of his sword. ‘Folly! Do not attribute the trappings of civilisations to their primitive antics.’

‘I have seen their temples and preachers,’ the Assassin replied sharply, his gaze still moving from one Space Marine to the next, never stopping. Koorland noticed his defiant stare did not extend to Vulkan. ‘I have witnessed the ceremonies, the rituals and sermons of their creed. This is holy war to the orks, every bit as zealous as that ill-fated, ridiculous Proletarian Crusade.’

‘That changes nothing,’ said Vulkan. ‘If anything, it reinforces the importance of the Great Beast. If we slay the orks’ demigod, we break them.’

‘I agree,’ said Wire. ‘But I tell you without a word of a lie that we cannot reach the monster this way.’

‘It’s been baiting us the whole time,’ Thane suggested, ‘trying to draw us in at every turn. This last trap might be the final one.’

‘It’s an ork, it wants to fight,’ Bohemond interjected. ‘It is a smart ork. But do not give it more credit than that. It simply wants to fight on its own ground, its own terms.’

‘We cannot let it,’ said Koorland.

‘It offers us no option, Lord Commander.’ Vulkan stood up, as though about to leave. ‘Must I say it yet again, you must have some faith, Koorland. If there is a single lesson I need you to learn, it is that there is no final defeat while you hold true to the service of the Emperor. We cannot give in to despair, no matter what happens. Even when it seemed that Horus could not possibly lose, those of us loyal to the Emperor continued to fight. Even when there was not even a vision of what winning might look like, we refused…’

Vulkan bowed his head. His voice trailed away, shoulders hunched by some personal, painful memory.

‘We cannot out-brute the orks!’ snarled Esad Wire. He lifted his hands imploringly. ‘It is why we have lost every battle so far. It is why we will lose everything if we do not think harder rather than fight harder! Lord Vangorich sent me as his agent. Stop fighting a war and start thinking like Assassins!’

Bohemond growled something incoherent and Vulkan shook his head in disgust.

‘You have a suggestion, Assassin?’ asked Koorland.

‘If you cannot get to the target, bring the target to you. Draw it out and then strike.’

‘The Great Beast has resisted all military challenge so far,’ said Vulkan, looking back at them. ‘What could possibly draw it out of its fortress that we have not already done?’

‘I’ve seen inside the palace.’ The Assassin spoke quietly and quickly. ‘Ullanor cannot sustain itself. If you think we must fight time as much as the enemy, the orks have it worse. They may have driven us from orbit, but not a single supply ship has landed in days. You see no sign of it here, but the warehouses, the great stores of the palace are virtually empty. Not even fresh water. Their supplies are so low, the orks are cannibalising each other. They’ve eaten all of the human slaves and started on their own. I saw the remains. The weak link in the chain is the need for support from the tribute worlds in the surrounding systems. Ullanor’s air and water are polluted, its food resources scarce.’

‘Blockade is not an option, we need a swift victory too,’ said Koorland. ‘The ork relief armies will be upon us in three days at the most.’

‘Then bring them to their knees in one,’ said Esad Wire. ‘Find the remaining stores and break them, whatever the cost.’

Vulkan returned, nodding. His demeanour had changed again, once more the resolute, proud warrior.

‘Yes, that would work. Draw out the Great Beast and then we strike with everything.’

Koorland knew that it really would not be so simple, and was sure that the primarch was not naive either. But faith required a plan, no matter how hopeless.

A scrape of metal on stone and the hiss of pneumatics drew everyone’s attention to the Cult Mechanicus representative — Magos Laurentis. The bizarre-looking tech-priest had listened to the exchanges without comment, but now stepped forward, limping slightly.

‘If I might make a suggestion, commanders…’

Chapter Sixteen

Ullanor — high orbit

Thane strode off the ramp of the Thunderhawk, glad to feel the deck of the Alcazar Remembered beneath his boots again despite the grim circumstances and his immediate prospects of survival. Laurentis scuttled after him, chattering to himself in an irritating mix of Gothic and lingua-technis. The magos had expounded at length on the flight up to high orbit, regaling Thane with his outlandish theories on the brute-shield, the Great Beast and orkdom in general.

The Chapter Master was pleased to see Weylon Kale waiting for him beyond the opening flight deck doors.

‘Shipmaster, please assimilate the targeting data carried by my companion and disperse the firing solutions through the fleet as itemised in the attendant records.’ Thane waved Laurentis forward and the magos proffered a coil of cogitator tape which Kale took without comment. ‘The fleet has manoeuvred as ordered?’

‘It has, Chapter Master,’ Kale replied, falling in beside his commander, jogging to keep up with Thane’s long strides. Laurentis clanked and clicked behind them, his head rotating rapidly from left to right and back as he took in his surroundings. ‘But I do not understand. All scans show that the defensive field is still operational. If we move into attack range the orks will open fire, but the city is still protected.’

‘Fluctuations, shipmaster,’ said Laurentis. He accelerated to come alongside the officer. The tech-priest’s head turned ninety degrees to regard Kale with his remaining eye. ‘Study of the field when the first attack occurred has revealed that in order for weapons within the city limit to open fire, the field had to drop. It is not a one-way barrier! With the damage inflicted on the orks’ capabilities, and further targeted strikes during the first window of opportunity, we have hypothesised that we can return fire within the temporal lapse of the protective layer.’

‘Return fire?’ Kale sounded dubious. ‘We have to let them shoot at us first, Chapter Master? This is an untested hypothesis?’

‘Yes,’ said Thane. They reached a conveyor port and stopped. He looked at Kale, understanding the man’s reluctance but in no mood for explanations or speeches. ‘We cannot bring the field down in its entirety but we can do a lot of damage. As well as brute-shield projection sites and weapon positions, we will destroy much of the city’s storage facilities, pipelines and energy grid. We will drive the orks out, even if it costs the fleet to do so.’

Kale said nothing else as they rode to the command bridge. He headed directly to the weapons consoles and then the vox-officers, handing over the carefully constructed attack solution prepared by Dominus Zhokuv and his best strategos. It maximised the amount of fire the ships would be able to pour down onto the city in the shortest time possible.

‘We’re ready, Chapter Master,’ announced Kale. ‘Commands have been transmitted and acknowledged.’

‘Commence the attack, shipmaster,’ Thane replied quietly.

The Alcazar Remembered powered on with the other surviving ships, a makeshift flotilla of Space Marine battle-barges and strike cruisers, Navy battleships, frigates and destroyers, Martian hemiolia and penteres. Several minutes passed before the Fists Exemplar flagship passed the invisible boundary that took them into range of the surface weapons. Another thirty seconds later and the call came from the augur array technicians.

‘Targeting signals detected, Chapter Master. Multiple surface sources.’

‘Ork void assets are incoming, Chapter Master,’ another officer reported.

‘Signal Admiral Acharya, he needs to keep those orks off our backs, whatever it takes,’ replied Thane. ‘All crew to firing stations, prepare for surface bombardment.’

He heard Kale mutter to himself as the shipmaster flexed his fingers into the sign of the aquila.

‘Emperor protect us from the schemes of tech-priests…’

Chapter Seventeen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The growl and grumble of hundreds of engines shook dust from the ruins. Exhaust fumes from the assembled tanks of the Astra Militarum swathed the rubble of Gorkogrod with an oily mist. Close to the front of the three columns of fighting vehicles — not right at the front, Field-Legatus Dorr knew well his place within the grander scheme of the plan — Dorn’s Ire rumbled forward, accompanied by Leman Russ battle tanks, Chimera transports and Demolisher siegebreakers.

The deep red livery of Martian command vehicles broke the camouflage and grey of the Astra Militarum. Through the gloom strode the remaining Knights, ion fields gleaming, the rubble shifting and shuddering under their tread.

And last came the Titans, ponderous and magnificent, dwarfing even the war machines of the Knight Houses, their lamps shining like beacons in the pre-dusk gloom. The two Warlords led, followed by the Executor, flanked by the smaller Titans moving in echelon to the right.

War-horns sounded the challenge to the orks, a wave of sound that eclipsed all others for several seconds, shattering the last pieces of glass in broken windows, causing debris dunes to shift and tremble.

Dorr, sitting in the open hatch of the main turret to watch the awesome engines, covered his ears. He marvelled that he could feel the ground shake with each tread even through the bulk and vibration of the Baneblade.

Zhokuv advanced alongside the super-heavy tank, his piston-legged battle-rig carrying him easily over the broken ground. Further into the smog the remaining infantry forged through the broken city, some twenty-two thousand Imperial Guardsmen, skitarii, Space Marines and cybernetica. Dorr could see nothing of them, but knew they were there from the murmur of Galtan and the subalterns passing updates to each other on the command deck below.

Behind and above, the last few squadrons of Valkyries and Vultures, Lightnings, Thunderhawks, Marauders and other aircraft loitered just outside the range of the anti-air weapons that ringed the central citadel.

All was poised, the giant many-limbed and multi-headed creature that was the Emperor’s war machine waiting for the moment to pounce.

‘You know, for the first time since arriving on Ullanor, I actually think I know what we’re doing,’ Dorr confessed to Zhokuv. ‘That we’re all moving towards the same purpose now.’

No answer was forthcoming from Zhokuv. The dominus’ reply was forestalled by a sudden flicker in the smog ahead. Green lightning raced across the clouds, illuminating the ruins with a jade glow. Watching this, Dorr’s heart raced. Had the tech-priests’ assertions been right?

With a last crackle of emerald fire, the brute-shield dropped.

Seconds later, before even a cry of triumph had left Dorr’s lips, the sky erupted with missiles, las and coruscating blasts of energy racing up towards the void.

‘Sound the charge!’ Dorr dropped down into the turret, slamming the hatch closed. He wriggled past the gunners and through the accessway to the command deck.

‘I’m glad I was never a tanker,’ he muttered when he emerged into the space beyond, already nearly full with staff officers.

He almost fell into his chair as the Dorn’s Ire gathered speed, the acceleration unexpected rather than rapid. The vox was alive with confirmations of the advance commencing, the voices of tank commanders and platoon officers, Titan Princeps and Knight Scions overlapping and competing. The surge of noise from the Baneblade’s engines and the feeling of motion and power filled Dorr with urgent excitement.

‘One way or another, by nightfall we’ll know,’ he told the others.

‘Know what, field-legatus?’ asked a subaltern.

‘Whether we actually have a chance at killing the Great Beast.’

Valefor and his Blood Angels formed a red tip to the spear of the Imperial attack. Through circumstance and fortune, the warriors of Baal Secundus had suffered the least in the preceding battles, though they had still lost a quarter of the Space Marines that had arrived at Ullanor six days earlier.

Sergeant Marbas had fallen the day before, leaving only Rabael and Micheleus as the surviving members of the Sanguinary Guard. Their golden armour was much battered, patched by the Chapter Techmarines with raw grey ceramite and dull metal, the fibre bundles and servos exposed in places. Along with Valefor and his guard, Blood Angels Terminator veterans led the attack into the buildings under the shadow of the fortress-palace — a force of Space Marines that would punch through the ork defenders across a narrow front and turn behind them, trapping the aliens against the following column of Space Marine and Astra Militarum tanks. Elsewhere, other Chapters were doing likewise, piercing the defending army at several points to occupy them while the biggest war machines moved on the storage sheds and weapon silos.

Rockets flared up to the heavens and long cannons boomed out a storm of anti-orbital fire, their fury matched only by the descending ire of the fleet above. Lance strikes and plasma bolts fell upon Gorkogrod less than a kilometre from the Space Marine offensive, guided by signals from Scout squads and Land Speeders. Bombardment cannons on the Space Marine vessels unleashed thunderous salvoes against the ork city. The air-to-surface weapons of the Adeptus Astartes flattened entire blocks and warehouses, pulverised ramparts and towers, and immolated fuel depots and power stations with rare phosphex warheads.

Into the tempest charged the Blood Angels, the name of their primarch on their lips.

‘In memoriam Sanguinius! We are the wrath, we are the vengeance!’ cried Valefor, blade aloft. Sporadic small-arms fire flashed from the roof and upper windows of a cargo facility ahead. The burned-out remains of an orbital lifter sat on the flat landing pad beside the warehouse. A rocket sputtered past the Blood Angels captain and detonated against the Tactical Dreadnought armour of a following Terminator. The veteran shrugged off the blow without breaking stride, his storm bolter lifted to return fire with a blaze of bolts.

Smashing shoulder-first through the large metal freight door, Valefor led his Blood Angels inside.

The warehouse was all but empty — of supplies, at least. Hundreds of gretchin and orks crowded mezzanines and walkways, their fire suddenly engulfing the Blood Angels as they entered. Valefor fired back with precise, short bursts from his pistol while behind him the Terminators raked longer fusillades into the foe, the growl of storm bolters accompanied by the bass snarl of an assault cannon.

Valefor did not slow his run, heading directly into the knot of orks skulking around the last few crates and barrels at the back of the warehouse. His sword split the haft of an axe swung at his face while bolts from his pistol ripped out the wielder’s chest. Bellowing the war cries of the Chapter, the last two Sanguinary Guard fell on the other orks. Jump packs howling, they leapt up to the upper gantries, crashing through the metal like ascending comets. Vambrace-mounted Angelus bolters chewed bloodily through the greenskins pouring down fire from above while their glaives parted bodies and limbs.

The Blood Angels continued on, erupting from the back of the warehouse, pouring out across the street towards the next building. Even as the orks still alive inside the warehouse moved to follow, Predators and Land Raiders arrived, laying waste to the building with heavy weapons fire while Astra Militarum Valkyries and Ultramarines Land Speeders targeted the Blood Angels’ next objective.

‘Keep moving!’ bellowed Valefor. Out in the open again he could see that the fire from orbit was less intense than just ten seconds earlier. Much of the ground fire had been silenced too, but the barrage from the starships was waning fast. A glance back confirmed a wave of Leman Russ and other Astra Militarum tanks bursting into the newly-seized streets, and behind them the far larger shadows of Knights and Titans loomed through the murk.

The blaze of immense guns flashed in the gloom. Habitation blocks and a large viaduct about three kilometres beyond the Blood Angels’ right flank exploded with shell, plasma and volcano cannon impacts, collapsing and toppling in a plume of fire, smoke and dust. Valefor heard the cheers of the Imperial Guard half a kilometre behind as they swarmed into the breach made by his Space Marines.

He headed for the next building. After days of fighting over ruins, it seemed jarring to see intact walls, windows still glazed, doors and gates still barred. A row of tenements, factories and forts half a kilometre wide delineated the expanse between the extent of the Imperial force’s previous attack and the crashing orbital fire. This was the line the Space Marines had to pierce before the brute-shield was restored. It was impossible to tell how many orks held those buildings, but Valefor’s orders from the Lord Commander had been concise and clear — break through as swiftly as possible.

Debris from the smashed viaduct rained down as the Land Raider Crusaders forming the plunging fist of the Black Templars attack roared down the rubble-strewn streets of Gorkogrod. In the lead vehicle Bohemond listened to the bang and rattle of impacts on the assault carrier’s upper armour, mixed with the higher-pitched ping of bullets.

‘Do not think that the enemy target us without retort,’ he voxed to his warriors, referring to the gauntlet of fire through which the column raced. Missiles and energy bolts screamed and whined around the five armoured transports. ‘The stalwarts of the Astra Militarum shall see the Emperor’s justice delivered to those that resist His divine will.’

The Crusader briefly left the ground as it sped over the remains of a collapsed wall, causing Bohemond to pause. He braced himself, waiting for the jarring impact of the seventy-tonne behemoth crashing down. Suspension and road wheels screeched in protest and the ten Space Marines sharing the compartment with him swayed in their restraints. Steadying himself against the firing cradle, where Adolphus manned the twin assault cannons atop the hull, Bohemond heard the gunner laughing.

‘Joyous is the occasion on which we can deliver the Emperor’s punishment,’ the High Marshal continued, slapping Adolphus’ leg. He pulled himself up to the roof cupola and slammed open the hatch. Seizing hold of the storm bolter mounted there, he added its fire to the raging storm from hurricane bolters, lascannons, heavy bolters and autocannons scything along the buildings to either side. ‘Every bolt and blast is a rebuke by the Emperor! Every foe slain is vindication of our existence! Forget not that the Emperor Himself subjugated this world for mankind. Be mindful that noble Dorn himself, gene-father of Holy Sigismund, trod these lands.’

He rotated in the cupola, bringing the fusillade of bolts against a sandbagged gun position on the roof of a building ahead. The bags split and exploded, the orks behind them flung back by a tight cluster of detonations.

‘We fight for ground no less sacred than that of Terra itself. Here the Triumph of Ullanor was held, to mark the greatest victory of humanity. That memory is tarnished, that victory undone by the foul greenskins that occupy this city. When we are done, when the Great Beast is slain and Holy Terra restored to renewed glory, a fresh Triumph shall be held in honour of the Master of Mankind, for His ire grants us success today. We follow in the steps of giants and shall not be judged poorly by it!’

Chapter Eighteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The anti-orbital barrage was sporadic — the few last rockets and the occasional pulse of crackling energy. Twelve minutes after the offensive had begun, the flash and boom from the last exchange of orbital fire dissipated. Three seconds later the brute-shield crackled back into life over Gorkogrod. Tank battles and firefights continued to rage below, but the Imperial line had been moved forward several kilometres to within direct-fire range of the outer palace fortifications.

Koorland headed to join the spearpoint of the attack in a Thunderhawk. Lascannon blasting, the heavy bolters unleashing their last rounds into the orks swarming away from the massive offensive, the gunship swept over central Gorkogrod. Koorland could see that the majority of the Imperial forces had moved inside the barrier. In particular the Titans and Knights were fighting at full effectiveness with void and ion shields intact.

Trails of broken tanks and flame-wreathed war engines marked the routes of attack, and in places he could see mounds of Astra Militarum dead and handfuls of bright Space Marine armour left in the wake of the quick advance. Smoking craters, ork corpses and partially collapsed buildings looked as if great claws had raked through the inner city towards the central palace-fortress.

The cost on the ground had been considerable, but lower than he had feared. He signalled the Alcazar Remembered and inquired after the success of the bombardment and status of the fleet.

‘Eighty per cent of targets damaged or destroyed, Lord Commander,’ replied Thane. ‘I ordered the remains of the fleet to pull back to high orbit, it seemed pointless losing more ships for those last few storehouses.’

‘I concur. Losses?’

‘Severe.’ Thane took a long, audible breath. ‘Do you want the details, Lord Commander?’

‘What sort of transport capacity is left, assuming that we can kill the Great Beast and get off this abominable planet?’

There was no reply for several seconds. Koorland hoped the delay was due to the need to gather the information rather than Thane’s hesitation to break bad news.

‘Dedicated Adeptus Astartes vessels could carry our remaining ground forces. Three thousand berths. Of the Imperial Navy, there’s room for perhaps twelve thousand troops. Unsure regarding the Adeptus Mechanicus capacity. They have several Titan transports left that could house thousands but very little food and other supplies for soldiers.’ Thane paused, leaving Koorland with nothing but static for a few seconds. ‘Of course, given our losses on the ground, that’s not really an issue any more, is it?’

‘No,’ the Lord Commander agreed. ‘Very well, have the fleet prepared to conduct retrieval operations when needed. If Esad Wire’s assessment is true, this will be a hard night for the orks. If it wants to maintain any control, the Great Beast will have to s—’

‘Lord Commander!’ The cross-force channel crackled with static from an emergency override. Koorland recognised Field-Legatus Dorr’s voice. ‘We have a new problem.’

He snapped his attention back to the city and needed no further explanation from the commander of the Astra Militarum. The centre of Gorkogrod was changing. Buildings and walls were folding, revealing massive portals opening into the ground.

From a thousand metres in the air Koorland had an almost perfect view, watching incredulously as large ramps opened in the ground to disgorge a tide of orks, fully armoured in plates of dull black, banners of the red fist flying above them.

They marched. Marched like the proudest Imperial Guardsmen. Dozens of massive battle tanks erupted from other enclosures, many-turreted monstrosities each the size of a Baneblade, their high-sided compartments carrying even more of the Great Beast’s elite companies.

And dreadnoughts. And stompers. And gargants, some larger than the mighty Warlord and Executor Titans that were at the forefront of the Adeptus Mechanicus attack.

Parts of the city were also moving. Upward.

Like barges drifting away from their moorings, whole building tops detached themselves. Pulses of green light enveloped their undersides — more evidence of the advanced gravitic capacities the orks had somehow discovered. Koorland counted at least fifty of the hovering platforms.

The palace remained, squatting at the top of the mountain, the full extent of its walls and bastions revealed. From the angle of Koorland’s view the entire complex looked like a single inter-linked construction, resembling nothing so much as a four-hundred-metre tall, crouching ork god carved in gigantic blocks of stone and skinned with metal plates.

Koorland could scarcely believe the sudden change in the city, and the sheer scale of the Great Beast’s last reserves was breathtaking. But it was neither of these things that gave the Lord Commander a momentary pause. He had known of the giant orks from Esad Wire’s testimony, though the reality was far greater than the threat. Koorland had witnessed first-hand the devastating new technologies of the orks, so it was not the weaponised city that struck him cold.

Two simple facts burned bright in his thoughts. The first was that the Great Beast had held back these forces despite the ruination of its city and the deaths of tens of thousands of its followers. The ruthlessness might be expected of any ork warlord, but the patience such a strategy betrayed was something no greenskin commander had ever previously demonstrated.

The second thought, the one that really made Koorland question the chances of victory, was that the Great Beast had recognised immediately the strategy the Imperial forces were enacting and had reacted with overwhelming force. The moment the first strikes had rained down on its supply depots the creature had known what Koorland and his army intended.

Just as at every stage since the commencement of the planetfall and assault, the Great Beast had simply been biding its time.

Gutting another foe, Bohemond noticed the ground trembling. At first he thought it was his Crusader’s engine, but the Sigismund’s Pride was stationary fifty metres behind the High Marshal, blasting its assault canons and hurricane bolters into the remnants of an ork gun pit.

‘The Assassin was a liar,’ spat Clermont as he hewed the head from another ork, its blood spattering against the life fluid of so many others drying on the castellan’s armour. ‘These warriors are no worthier foe than the scum we have slain for the past days!’

More orks spewed from the gutter-ramp ahead, their shrieks as wild as their firing. Bohemond and his guard met the fresh onslaught with bolters and blades, and for another few minutes the fury of close combat absorbed the thoughts of the High Marshal. It was a shout from Clermont that brought him out of his battle-trance to notice the wide shadow moving over the fallen buildings and corpse-choked street.

He looked up to see a massive platform floating impossibly over the ruined skyline, a hundred-metres-long oblong slab that gleamed with jade energy. On its back it carried five metal towers, and struts like gangplanks jutted from every level.

The hovering fortress slid to a halt a hundred metres above Bohemond’s force. Lascannon blasts from the Land Raiders flickered from its shimmering field. A circle opened in the centre of the bizarre engine, flaring with paler green light. A disc of energy descended from the opening, a crowd of heavily armoured orks clustered on the pulsing light as though it was a solid thing.

The Black Templars opened fire, bolters and heavy weapons strafing back and forth across the extending cylinder of light. From towers atop the construct emerged more armoured foes, the spark of power weapons and plasma chambers stark against the darkness of the flying keep. Brighter flares lit the sky as the orks jumped, falling down towards the Black Templars with green bursts of fire from their flight packs.

The drop-troops landed first, crashing into the Space Marines with bursts of plasma fire and sweeps of wickedly serrated power axes. Eddarin launched himself at them, several squads following his counter-attack.

The Black Templar hammered his chainsword against the raised power fist of a greenskin. His cry was of joy more than surprise. ‘It’s raining orks!’

If any servant of the Omnissiah or Emperor had doubted that the final battle for Gorkogrod had begun, those doubts were drowned by the growl of engines, the pounding of terrible cannons and the bellows of ten thousand gigantic mega-armoured orks.

The main cannon of the Dorn’s Ire had run out of shells in the push across the boundary of the brute-shield, and it was reduced to lascannons and bolters against the incoming tide. The same was true of many of the field-legatus’ super-heavy tanks, such had been the need for their guns in the prior days of battle. Normally they would have been resupplied by orbital drops, but any such action had been impossible given the lethality of the anti-orbital defences. Knights and Titans were not so limited, but the engines of the Adeptus Mechanicus were hard-pressed against the fresh surge of ork gargants and stompers.

‘I fear these foes may be the match of us,’ Dorr confided over his secure channel to Dominus Zhokuv. ‘The damage was done with the first blow, and we simply don’t have the guns to face these giants.’

‘Your fear is ill-founded, field-legatus,’ came Zhokuv’s clipped reply. ‘Trust ever in the artifices of the Machine-God to deliver us from harm.’

‘We have already lost one of the Warlords and the other is beset by foes,’ said Dorr.

‘I speak not of Titans, but of a far newer addition to the arsenal of the Machine-God,’ declared the dominus. ‘If you would direct your attention a kilometre to the west…’

Dorr adjusted the auspex and vid-capture feeds to look at where the dominus indicated. Something enormous was advancing slowly through the rubble and shattered walls. It was longer than any of the ork sky-barges, carried on huge track units larger than battle tanks. Much of the superstructure was taken up with an immense cylinder surrounded by building-sized cabins and kilometres of scaffold and walkways.

‘Are those…’ Dorr looked again. ‘Those tracks are from the Praetor Fidelis! What have you done to my Capitol Imperialis, Zhokuv?’

‘The Praetor Fidelis has been given new life in a more functional form, field-legatus,’ crowed Zhokuv. ‘The reactors and tracks were very useful in my grand design. The weapon you might not recognise. We salvaged it from the wreckage of my forge-ship. A plasma accelerator.’

‘You mounted a starship cannon on the bastardised remains of my command vehicle?’ Dorr was not sure whether to cry or laugh. He opted for the latter.

‘Behold the great device of the Omnissiah’s retribution,’ declared Zhokuv. ‘Witness the power of the Machine-God’s wrath. Pay homage to the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus! Be in awe of the majesty of Ordinatus Ullanor!’

At the conclusion of the dominus’ speech, the newly constructed Ordinatus opened fire. A scintillating stream of plasma blasts erupted from its weapon, striking the closest of the mega-gargants menacing the Imperial lines. Energies capable of overloading the defensive screens of voidships burst through the power fields of the gargant in moments. Energy shields parted in a collapsing shower of red lightning and green flares, the layers of fields evaporating in moments. The final blasts of the salvo tore through the gargant’s plated shell — armour a tenth the thickness of a warship’s hull.

Engines and ammunition detonated inside the brutal machine, scattering tank-sized debris and shrapnel through the mobs of orks marching in its shadow.

One minute and forty-five seconds later the Ordinatus had recharged, its next target reduced to smoking slag by another fusillade of incendiary blasts.

‘I’ll light a hundred votives for the Omnissiah myself,’ Dorr promised the dominus.

Chapter Nineteen

Ullanor — central Gorkogrod

What is the point of an ork? What mishap of evolution or derangement of design would bring forth a creature entirely possessed of the need to conquer?

What purpose can it serve beyond destruction? And in such state it can serve no other purpose but its own eventual destruction.

Was that… Was there ever any future for us? Were we intended as nothing more than destroyers?

And at the end I become what I must. A beast to face a beast.

Blue lightning forked in all directions from the ork battle-tower. The psyker-carrying engine had been brought to a halt by the combined efforts of Rune Priest Thorild and two of his Librarius strike team, but the alien machine was proving difficult to finish off — not least because the background psychic presence of the orks still threatened to overload any human that tried to tap directly into the warp, limiting the psykers’ strength.

‘Khofus, draw out its spite,’ the Space Wolf called to his companion from the Excoriators. His next words were directed to Epistolary Conneus of the Ultramarines. ‘Use your power to shield Khofus from the worst. I will target the connection point.’

So instructed, the Librarians raced into action. Khofus stepped from the ruins and threw another blast of lightning at the weirdtower. Its psychic aura bulged outwards to form a green tentacle that lashed at the Excoriator. Khofus inverted his psychic draw, tapping into the stuff of the ork attack, fixing the lunging protrusion upon himself. As the green energies enveloped Khofus, Conneus threw his psychic might into the mind of his companion, bolstering the defences of his psychic hood to prevent the burning tendrils of orkish energy from burrowing into mind and flesh.

Thorild charged from cover, pushing his soul-fire into the head of his rune axe. The blade flared with blue light as he leapt up onto the structure of the immobilised tower and swung at the wavering tendrils of energy streaming from it. As the edge of the blade bit he let free his power, allowing it to surge into the ork psychic miasma.

A shock of feedback ran through him, body and soul, but he fought through the instant of pain and poured forth his rage. He let himself fall to the tossing sea that was the swelling of ork psychic potential into which the battletower tapped. Through that ocean of primal force pushed Thorild, just one of many swirls and counter-currents trying to break the immense tide.

As he moved against the churn of the current he noticed that all the energy was being drawn inward like an immense maelstrom, converging on a central point that was swelling with obscene power.

He let his psychic might explode in a devastating blast. His axe hewed through the intangible fabric of the tower’s psychic aura and crashed through physical armour, slicing deep into the black-painted metal. The attack thundered through the machine and he leapt clear as psychic energy erupted with the howling of a wolf, tearing the ork contraption apart from the inside.

‘Lord Commander,’ he voxed, the image of the psychic tidal swell throbbing in his thought. ‘Lord Commander!’

‘Thorild, what is it?’

‘Something is stirring in the palace. The Great Beast, I think. The ork psychic potential is accumulating massively. It will not be long before…’

Koorland did not catch the end of the message as the Space Wolf’s voice trailed away. Over the jutting ruins, the Lord Commander saw something immense moving up from the centre of the city.

‘I see it too, Rune Priest.’

At first it looked as though the entire palace had risen. After a moment, Koorland realised it was just the central portion, what he and the others had taken to be a temple. It was like the gargants in shape, a bulky, rotund idol, but so much larger in size as to defy belief. Gravitic projectors and thundering jets lifted the edifice above the surrounding buildings. It was so much larger than any war machine the orks had sent before that it defied the senses, blotting out the setting sun with its bulk.

Guns and rocket batteries studded its surface, alongside dish-shaped gravity weapons and outlandish energy cannons. Fluctuating fields encased the black-and-white behemoth. What appeared to be a dome pushed upwards, revealing itself as a grimacing ork face wrought in plates of riveted metal and smooth stone.

Buildings crumbled under the wash of energy. The city turned to dust like a bow wave before the advance of the titanic effigy-machine. Thunderhawks, Valkyries and Lightnings swooped and fired, their missiles, shells and bullets coursing across the temple-gargant’s fields, leaving after-sparks of dissipating power but nothing more. Hastily redirected artillery boomed out, rocket batteries and guns throwing their devastating weight against the onslaught of the Great Beast’s mobile fortress. Like the air strikes, they achieved nothing save to engulf the citadel in a curtain of emerald power.

A few kilometres away, Ordinatus Ullanor roared its anger again. A hail of plasma bolts smashed into the temple-gargant. Fields crackled and spat, but the construct continued to advance unblemished.

The vox crackled with another transmission from Thorild.

‘Lord Commander, I can feel the hate building. I think the temple-gargant is about to unleash s—’

Again his warning came too late. The eyes of the temple-gargant lit with pale green force. Twin beams of dazzling power lashed across the city, running the length of Ordinatus Ullanor. Plasma chambers exploded, turning the Adeptus Mechanicus engine into an artificial sun that engulfed an area half a kilometre across, turning buildings, men and orks to vapour.

‘We can’t stop it,’ Koorland whispered. ‘We have no defence against that kind of power.’

From amidst a sea of greenskin bodies, Vulkan watched the emergence of the sanity-defying ork engine. The sky burned with the impacts of rockets, shells and las-blasts, surrounding the floating temple with a star-like corona. Its eyes gleamed as the main weapon recharged while torrents of fire streamed down from scores of emplacements and heavy cannons.

The Great Beast had sent its best and now it had been forced to reveal itself.

The primarch smiled.

Soldiers of the Imperium died by the thousand and fled the Great Beast’s wrath in even greater number. Agents and artifices of the Omnissiah were worthless against the might of the orks’ mechanically rendered god. Titans and Knights fell before the crushing power of the temple-gargant. Those Martians and their subject troops with the will to retreat did so. The tech-priests and cybernetica held fast, even against the overwhelming logic of withdrawal, constructed or engineered by choice or intervention to respond only to the commands of their overlords. Dominus Zhokuv would see the affront against the Machine-God destroyed or else be destroyed himself in the effort.

Dorr did his best to maintain a line against the encroachment of the massive war-edifice. His tanks pounded the last of their shells into its armoured belly as it swept overhead, while the infantry battalions left to him battled to resist fresh waves of armoured orks discharged from keeps on its flanks. Having fought so hard to reach the temple, now it came for them and there was nothing they could do but dig in and die fighting.

The Space Marines attacked.

Koorland rode with Vulkan in the lead Storm Eagle, along with Thane, Bohemond and their attendant retinues.

‘As then, so now,’ said the primarch. If not actually enjoying the blooms of anti-aircraft fire, the clatter of shrapnel on the hull and the whine of air across the cracked canopy, he was certainly invigorated by the circumstances, more focused than at any time since their arrival.

‘As when, lord primarch?’ asked Koorland.

‘The Great Crusade, of course,’ replied the gene-father of the Salamanders. ‘Or the Heresy Wars. And the Scouring. Not since those days have our brothers been tasked with such a momentous labour, nor responded with such ferocity.’

‘Like old times?’ suggested Thane.

‘Exactly that.’

Squadrons of other gunships packed with the surviving warriors of the Adeptus Astartes followed, along with dozens of transports and support craft commandeered from the Imperial Navy and Astra Militarum. Each was filled to capacity with Space Marines. Below them assault troops bounded forward with jump pack-assisted leaps, crashing through the remaining ork resistance. Land Speeders of many patterns with more Space Marines clinging to their sides wove through the desolation. All that had survived the fighting thus far converged on the Great Beast’s last bastion.

Fists Exemplar, Black Templars, Soul Drinkers, Ultramarines, Executioners, Dark Angels, Crimson Fists, Excoriators, Salamanders, Space Wolves, Blood Angels. And one Imperial Fist.

In all the panoply of a dozen Chapters, the last three thousand heroes of the Adeptus Astartes launched their final assault.

Chapter Twenty

Ullanor — temple-gargant sanctum

Momentum. Direction. Ruthless aggression. These are the true weapons of the victorious. Hesitation is defeat.

And we hesitated. When the guns of our brothers roared, shock laid the first blow. We were lax and they were not. The war lasted seven years, but the dream was destroyed in that first second. What was left worth fighting for after? Pride. Foolish pride.

Caestus assault rams that Koorland had kept in reserve now flew past the lead transports in the final seconds before contact with the objective. Their melta charges and reinforced prows smashed through the walls of the temple-gargant in blasts of super-heated air and vaporised metal. Squads deposited within the structure pushed into the waiting foe with blades, bolters and grenades, forcing beachheads fifty metres into the mechanical behemoth.

Volleys of fire from the gunships raked across the mobs of orks crowding the surface of the war machine, rockets and bullets flaring up towards them as they descended. A few Imperial Navy fighters and bombers flew final passes above and below the focus of the Space Marine attack, plasma-tipped missiles and heavy bolters incinerating and shredding even more defenders. Turrets spat torrents of shells and las-blasts, exacting a deadly toll for the bravery of the crews.

In rapid waves the Space Marine gunships despatched their cargoes into the breaches created by the assault rams, while ad hoc transports deposited more squads into the ramparts and walkways of the temple-gargant’s exterior to seize conventional ingress points.

Koorland kept close to Vulkan. The primarch did not pause for a moment, his hammer in constant motion as he waded into the orks crewing the temple-gargant. Mega-armour shattered under the blows, power claws and energy blasts bouncing from the ancient war-plate forged by his hand.

Koorland had a little time to take stock of his surroundings, and was surprised by what he saw. He had expected the usual ork technology — clanking pistons and gears, hissing steam pipes, the stench of oil and corroded metal.

Instead the interior of the temple-gargant was almost pristine. The walls were chrome-like, painted with friezes of simple black and white dags or check patterns. Embossed plates of glyphs marked many doorways and junctions — signs, he realised with some shock. Doors slid open with faint purrs. The lights were a pale blue with barely a flicker of power flow.

In fact there seemed to be very little in the way of outward energy sources. Everything hummed and gleamed with its own radiant light, the same strange power that fuelled all of the new ork technology.

He had little enough time to process the importance of this observation. The needs of the mission were far more pressing.

Hundreds of Space Marines forced their way into the hovering edifice, charging into brutal combat with the Great Beast’s monstrous elite. Terminators and Dreadnoughts led the assault in many places, their heavier armour weathering the fire of the orks to allow their power-armoured brothers to gain a foothold, weapons filling the corridors and chambers with continuous hails of fire.

There were few foes that survived the charge of Vulkan, but many adjoining corridors and halls spilled forth their own flood of raging greenskins as the primarch thrust fast towards the heart of the impossible war engine. Armed and armoured with the best from the slave-lines of Ullanor’s manufactories, these creatures were as deadly as Esad Wire had warned.

Yet they were confronted at the fore by seven Chapter Masters and twice as many more Space Marines of high rank and great prowess. Many of Vulkan’s companions carried artefacts dating back to the Heresy Wars and earlier — swords, hammers, maces and shields that first saw battle during the Great Crusade and even the Unification Wars. They cut down the orks with plasma pistols, volkite carbines and thermal blasters forged on Mars before any of their Chapters had been founded. And each warrior was already a renowned hero amongst his brothers, his life a succession of great victories and campaigns that would grace future rolls of honour. Their names and titles would be lauded by generations to come.

Koorland felt humbled by such company, but in that time of unrelenting madness, a seeming eternity in which he waded into a sea of screaming ork faces, he finally understood the meaning of Vulkan’s assertions.

He had faith.

In himself. In the choice of the primarch to take him as his heir-in-command, above all others present.

And he had faith in his battle-brothers. If ever a band of warriors could triumph against the odds ranged against them, they had been gathered here. If there were any weapon in the armoury of the Imperium that Koorland could choose to wield at that moment, it would be three thousand warriors of the Adeptus Astartes.

And, lastly but most keenly, he had faith in Vulkan. The primarch was a vital energy every bit as powerful as the one against which they were set. Perhaps it was destiny or some other impulse that drove Vulkan, but whatever the cause he seemed set on a course and knew exactly where to lead them.

Into the depths of the temple-gargant, racing towards a confrontation with the Great Beast.

They came upon a large hall at least two hundred metres long and thirty high. Here the lights were dimmed, a respectful ochre that bled orange shadows behind the advancing Space Marines. The greater part of the force had created a cordon and held back the ork counter-attack while Vulkan, Koorland and their companions, accompanied by a mixed-Chapter company two-hundred strong including the cadre of Librarians, pressed ahead for the final assault on the Great Beast.

The sides of the hall were piled with detritus several metres deep. Tattered cloth, bent metal spars and splintered wooden poles made strange shapes in the gloom. The footfalls of the Space Marines echoed from the metallic walls and ceiling, loud against the backdrop of weapons fire resounding through the corridors behind.

‘What is this?’ asked Thane, moving to one of the trash piles. He pulled free a piece of cloth several metres long. He turned it, a richly embroidered sheet slashed and burned, golden thread glimmering in the light. Words were stitched into the design, human words, above a double-headed eagle. ‘It’s the aquila. By the Emperor…’

All of the rubbish was made of broken standards, torn and hacked and desecrated by the orks. Metal eagles and lightning bolts adorned some of the poles, bent and hammered out of shape.

‘From the Triumph,’ growled Vulkan, ripping free a rag of banner. It bore the icon of the Blood Angels Legion.

‘I know this design,’ he whispered. ‘It was the personal banner of Captain Nemedeus. I knew him from the Artagean campaign. His whole company died during the Ullanor assault.’

Valefor rushed forward and laid a hand reverently upon the cloth. ‘One of our greatest sacrifices. I bear his sword still!’

They continued past the broken, heaped remains of mankind’s last victory over the orks of Ullanor. The far end of the hall was not a wall but two immense doors fashioned from grey and black marble into a grimacing ork face, layered with precious metals studded with gems.

‘The breaking of the banners, I understand,’ said Quesadra. ‘But this kind of ornamentation is not in the aesthetic of the orks.’

‘Look at the floor,’ added Koorland. ‘It is polished granite.’

‘From the parade ground along which the victorious armies of the Emperor marched,’ said Vulkan. He gestured towards the doors as they neared. ‘And doubtless this is from some other structure associated with the Triumph.’

Koorland thought the primarch sounded wistful.

‘The high point of the Great Crusade,’ Vulkan continued. ‘The culmination of decades of war. The beginning of the end, we used to think. But we did not realise what that meant, how true those words would be. Such hope, such greatness, was the height from which we fell. Here we built the tallest pinnacle before the deepest drop. If only the orks knew what ruin they wrought here.’

He fell silent, and in the absence of his voice the hall gently rang with the retort of weapons in the surrounding corridors and chambers.

‘An attempt at humiliation,’ said Bohemond. ‘An empty gesture.’

‘An assertion of power,’ Vulkan corrected him, ‘stated by the Great Beast to its own kind. When we slay it, our statement will be louder still.’

When the Space Marines were halfway down the hall a shudder rumbled through the chamber. Two broad portals slid open, one on each side of the gateway. Metallic clanks and thudding steps heralded the arrival of a pair of identical stompers. They were fashioned as grotesque caricatures of orks, rotund mechanical beasts with guns and saw-blades for arms, the head of each almost scraping the high ceiling. They were painted in red and black with splashes of bright yellow, festooned with Titan kill-banners looted from the display of the Ullanor Triumph. Koorland recognised the icon of the ancient and honoured Fire Wasps Legio.

Koorland barked orders even as the machines opened fire. The Space Marines split, Vulkan and one contingent heading for the engine on the right, Koorland and the rest to the stomper on the left.

An explosion engulfed three battle-brothers while large-calibre rounds screamed through half a dozen more. Bolts flared through the dim light, a storm of small detonations wreathing each war machine.

Koorland fixed his attention on the target ahead, trusting to Vulkan to deal with the other mechanical giant. Eye-like lamps blazed into life and its head turned towards him, as though specifically seeking him out. He could see ork crew loitering on the shoulder gantries, firing their sidearms while the massive gun of the right arm adjusted aim amongst much gear-grinding and chain-rattling.

‘Melta bombs!’ he cried, taking a fist-sized charge from his belt.

The stomper’s main cannon roared again, flame and fury engulfing more of the Space Marines just behind Koorland. His armour registered the wash of heat from the detonation but he ignored the amber warning flashes.

The stomper took a step, exhaust smoke billowing as engines rumbled. It swung its right arm, a wicked chainblade thrice as long as Koorland was tall. The whirring teeth snarled over the Lord Commander’s head. He heard the snap of shattering ceramite and a cry from Quesadra.

Glancing back Koorland saw the blade sweep on and up, bloodied teeth hurling chunks of the bisected Chapter Master across the black granite and vandalised banners. The Crimson Fists shouted their dismay and swore vengeance, the blood of their commander spattered on their armour as they charged the ork engine.

Nearing the stomper, Koorland sheathed his blade and jumped, his fingers finding purchase on the metal belly plates of the ork war machine. The metal clanged around him as others landed on the towering engine, smashing at the armour with power fists and thunder hammers, with the more staccato chime of maglocks as melta bombs were slammed into place.

Koorland pulled himself up a few more metres, to where a viewport was cut into the plates. A diminutive gretchin stared out in horror. He plunged his fist into the war machine’s chest and dragged the creature out of the hole. Activating the melta charge’s timer, he tossed the bomb into the stomper’s interior and pushed away, jumping down to the hall floor.

He had time to glance across the hall, to see Vulkan emerge from the smoking ruins of the other engine, fumes coiling around the glowing head of Doomtremor, his war-plate smeared with oil and alien gore.

The melta bombs detonated in a rippling cascade over a few seconds, turning the stomper’s metal hide into showers of molten drops, slashing through the mechanisms within with blasts of super-heated gas. Fuel stores and ammunition ignited, ripping the stomper apart with secondary detonations. The Space Marines withdrew as jagged debris and burning hunks of ork flesh rained down onto them.

Vulkan was already at the gate, standing before the portal with Doomtremor held aloft ready to strike.

Before he even started to swing his weapon, a line of light appeared between the doors and the portal swung away, opening inwards to the sanctum beyond, flooding the outer hall with bright, pale green light.

Koorland and the others followed the primarch over the threshold, weapons ready. Koorland checked on his small force. About a third had fallen to the stompers’ attack. He could hear fighting from beyond the hall, getting closer. The rearguard was collapsing.

The chamber past the gateway was most definitely a power generator of some kind. Koorland was reminded of the plasma chambers of Imperial fortresses and starships, the walls lined with pipes and crackling cables, in this instance thick bundles of coppery wire strewn like garlands that hissed and sparked with green energy. The air throbbed with latent power. Koorland could feel the vibrations through his armour.

But it also put him in mind of the Ecclesiarchy shrines. Past the mechanical aspects, the walls had the same decorations as much of the rest of the temple-gargant — glyph plates and stark mosaics, painted geometric designs and pictorial murals. The chamber was semicircular, about thirty metres across, the focus of the arrangement an ork idol sitting upon an ornate chair.

The statue was at least ten metres tall, in a square-arched alcove filled with the green light of ork power. Its body was encased in thick layers of plate, intricately wrought and carved with orkish designs. A bull-horned helm with a mock tusked face encased the head. Two claws each the size of a Space Marine rested on the arms of the chair.

‘Master of Terra…’ muttered Odaenathus.

‘Speak not of the Throneworld in this place,’ growled Bohemond. ‘What further mockery is this?’

A plethora of cables hung from the armoured form of the idol, fizzing with power. It was clear that the statue was the centre of the power generation system, though by what means Koorland did not know. He looked to the Rune Priest, Thorild.

‘Is this the centre of the psychic presence?’

‘The power of the waaagh suffuses this place,’ replied the Space Wolf, with some evident effort, his voice strained. ‘It is both the vortex and the sun, the consumer and the creator.’

Koorland looked sharply at the psyker, remembering the ork-possession that had beset some of the other Librarians. The Space Wolf seemed in control of himself, merely being poetic in his choice of words.

‘Let us destroy the reactor and find the Great Beast,’ declared Thane, stepping towards the energy-shrouded god-effigy.

‘Where are you?’ Bohemond called, stalking after the Exemplar. ‘False priest to an artificial god! No Great Beast here, just alien impostors!’

The air buzzed with a surge of power. An inhuman shriek echoed around the chamber and all eyes turned to Thorild, the source of the terrible cry. He shuddered, lightning arcs of green power spewing from his psychic hood, his runestaff burning with jade flames. Moments later the other Librarians collapsed, screaming in most un-Space Marine fashion, cries of utter terror and agony ripped from them.

Gandorin staggered wildly, flares of green sparks arcing from his helm. He stopped a few metres from Koorland, face twisted in a terrifying snarl. A second later his head exploded, showering brain matter and skull across the Lord Commander.

Disgusted, Koorland turned on the idol as the smoking corpses of the psykers clattered to the floor. Bohemond roared, the chains binding his sword to his wrist rattling as he raised his weapon in challenge.

‘Face us, coward! Your death has arrived, false prophet of a doomed race. Ullanor shall be razed again, and none shall remember the Great Beast.’

With a drawn-out creak, the statue stirred.

Bohemond took a step back.

Koorland felt the other Space Marines crowding closer as the idol’s eyes became stars of green fire. He looked away and his grip loosened on his weapons, and it was only when he felt the presence of Vulkan looming up beside him that he was able to look at the animating effigy again. The primarch stood with legs slightly apart, hammer held up like a shield.

Power flared and pipes hissed while cables and wires detached from the idol with fountains of emerald sparks. Clanking and whirring, the immense machine rose up from its throne and took a step out of the alcove, twice as tall even as Vulkan.

‘We destroyed your other engines,’ said Thane, brandishing his sword. ‘This will be no different.’

Koorland looked up at the living idol, filled with foreboding. Black and white checks adorned the effigy, the face painted a deep red. At its full height, the thing seemed even bigger, swamping the primarch with its bulk, a monster of moulded plates and jutting spikes covered with writhing, coiling fronds of power.

‘It isn’t a war machine,’ Koorland told the others, the words almost choking him. ‘It’s a suit of armour.’

Chapter Twenty-One

Ullanor — temple-gargant sanctum

Survival begets sacrifice. How long have You sat immobile, my Father? They speak in Your name and know nothing of Your mind. Is this what You wanted? I cannot countenance such a thing. It is a travesty of the Imperial Truth, the epitome of all that we wished to vanquish. Venal, selfish, corrupted. Did we not show the way brightly enough? Did our blood not wash the wounds clean?

Why do You not speak out? Father, why have You forsaken me?

‘The Great Beast must die, whatever the cost.’

The last words to leave Odaenathus’ lips were painfully prescient. The Great Beast threw out a flame-wreathed fist and a blast of power smashed into the Ultramarines Chapter Master, smearing his remains across several metres of granite. For a couple of seconds, Koorland couldn’t drag his eyes from the droplets of molten armour and the stain of blood-grease that had been his fellow commander. All that he was, all that he might be, had been ended with contemptuous ease.

Koorland looked again at the Great Beast, a manic laugh threatening to burst free as he considered the impossibility of taking on such a foe.

‘Destroy the generator,’ snapped Vulkan. He stepped past, hefting Doomtremor in one hand. ‘Orks love to fight. I’m going to give the Great Beast exactly what it wants.’

The tone of the primarch left Koorland no choice — a command that reached into his heart and head and could not be gainsaid. Even had he the inclination to defy Vulkan, he had no time. The gene-father of the Salamanders threw himself at the gargantuan ork, his hammer a blue star against wreathing clouds of green fire.

At Koorland’s command the remaining Space Marines poured fire into the arcane technology of the reactor. Bolts, volkite flares and melta bursts rippled across the screen of shimmering energy that covered the mass of machinery surrounding the Great Beast’s throne. The green curtain broke into constellations of small stars, rippling and surging with energy flux.

‘More!’ roared Koorland, loading a new magazine into his pistol. The juddering snarl of assault cannons and bark of bolters drowned out the boom of Doomtremor striking the Great Beast’s armour and the shriek of power claws raking across Vulkan’s war-plate. The converging fire of the taskforce was a near-solid stream of energy and metal. The reactor field writhed and buckled, building to blinding intensity, but did not break.

Vulkan and the Great Beast reeled to one side and then the other, smashing titanic blows against each other. Sparks and lightning fountained from the plate of both warriors. Their movement exposed the throne alcove of the reactor.

‘There is another way,’ declared Valefor. He dashed past the melee between the two behemoths and slashed his sword against the brute-shield. Green-black energy flared, throwing the Blood Angel twenty metres, his plate ripped apart. Koorland suppressed a cry of woe, his grief tempered by a slight movement from the crippled Blood Angel.

‘He still lives!’ one of Valefor’s warriors declared, kneeling beside the fallen hero.

How long do any of us have? Koorland wondered, looking at the ongoing struggle between the Great Beast and Vulkan. In the presence of such demigods, what worth were the efforts of simple mortals?

Taking up Doomtremor in both hands, the primarch ducked beneath a swinging strike from the Great Beast and threw all of his weight behind his next blow. The head of the hammer crashed against the thigh of the immense ork, the thunderous sound of the blow lost amidst a deafening bellow of pain. The Great Beast staggered, a lightning-tipped claw lashing out to rip across Vulkan’s chest, peeling apart the outer layer of his plastron.

The Great Beast recovered almost immediately, warding away the primarch’s next blow with an upraised arm. It kicked hard, a monstrous foot connecting with Vulkan. The impact sent the lord of the Salamanders spinning away, his chestplate buckled even more.

‘Target the ork!’ shouted Thane, turning his weapon on the Great Beast.

The fusillade of the Space Marines engulfed the warlord with the same intensity as the reactor. And with similar lack of effect. Vulkan staggered to his feet, ripping away his broken plastron to reveal a layer of banded armour beneath.

The Great Beast turned to face the primarch. It raised a hand and beckoned mockingly with a finger.

‘Lord Koorland!’ Vulkan circled, moving his hammer to the left then the right, adjusting his stance constantly to mask his next attack. The Great Beast stepped and turned, keeping the primarch and Space Marines in view.

‘My lord?’ Koorland advanced, weapons at the ready.

‘Leave! If I cannot end this here, none of us can. I know what to do, but it will be the end of us all if you stay. You must survive. You are the Imperial Fists, the Last Wall. And you are Lord Commander. Do not let the High Lords squander our victory, nor make vain my sacrifice.’

Over the crackle of the generator and the thud of the Great Beast’s steps Koorland could hear shouts — ork and human — echoing along the outer hall. The sound of gunfire and crashing blows was almost in the hall itself. He looked at the primarch, and then to the immensity of the Great Beast.

Could Vulkan possibly prevail?

And he remembered Vulkan’s assertions since the beginning. Faith, belief, the importance of symbols. He, Koorland, was the sole survivor of Ardamantua, the Lord Commander and heir to the likes of Dorn and Guilliman.

And he realised that Vulkan had known this moment would come from the time he had first heard of the Great Beast. An immovable object required an unstoppable force to match it. Neither primarch nor warlord could prevail.

But that was not Vulkan’s plan.

Koorland looked at the primarch, his massive frame rendered to mortal proportions by the immensity of his foe. It was more than size alone that gave Vulkan his power. Into him the Emperor had put every artifice and effort to create the most sublime warrior — a figure of imagination and myth as much as brute strength.

Intellect beyond Koorland’s understanding guided that power. A mind that had witnessed all of the glories and horrors of the galaxy through nearly two millennia of constant war.

A warrior who had seen his gene-sons slaughtered by their battle-brothers, who had taken up arms against his own brother demigods for the Emperor.

What could Koorland know of an immortal’s mind and reasoning?

Vulkan perhaps sensed the attention of the Lord Commander. He looked at Koorland with eyes that had seen more than any other human soul. What was it Koorland saw in them? Pain? Yes, but not of the physical kind, not from the marks upon armour and flesh. It was the agony of wisdom. An ache of many centuries.

And in that gaze Koorland came to know what Vulkan had always known, and saw the intent of the Emperor’s last loyal son.

The Great Beast roared, a deafening wall of sound matched by a flare of power rippling through the generator crackle. The glow of the warlord’s claws brightened and became flames. Vulkan swung his hammer again, fending off the next blow. A tempest of sparks erupted where weapons clashed.

‘All forces, evacuate the objective,’ Koorland announced over the command vox. ‘Immediate fighting withdrawal from the temple-gargant.’

Most of his companions started towards the doorway. The Blood Angels heaved up Valefor and carried him from the chamber. A score or so of the Space Marines stayed where they were. Black Templars.

Bohemond moved in the opposite direction, blocking Koorland’s path.

‘What fresh insanity is this?’ spat the High Marshal, barely audible over the tumult of Vulkan and the Great Beast. ‘The lord primarch needs us.’

‘He does not,’ Koorland answered calmly. He stepped to go past the Black Templar. Bohemond grabbed the Lord Commander’s arm.

‘We swore to die for the Emperor. We do not retreat! We are not cowards!’

Koorland’s fist hit Bohemond square in the faceplate. The blow knocked the High Marshal crashing to the floor. The other Black Templars took steps towards their commander, blades and bolters raised.

‘I am your Lord Commander!’ The rage boiled from Koorland, allowed free vent after so much loss and frustration. No more could he withstand the jibes and barbs of the Black Templar’s scorn. The endorsement of the lord primarch was enough. Koorland no longer cared for the affirmation of Bohemond and could certainly not spare the thought or effort required to continue seeking it. He pointed the tip of his blade at the downed warrior. ‘Refuse me again and your life is forfeit, by my hand or word.’

Bohemond lay where he had fallen, shamed. Koorland turned his back on the High Marshal and strode away.

‘If you want to die, stay here. If you want to serve the Emperor, come with me.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

There was never an external threat to mankind that we could not overcome. The greatest foe always lies within. That is the only lesson to be learned. No matter how bleak times become, the power to prosper or fall is held in the breast of every man and woman. The chain is as strong as the weakest link, but mankind has the Emperor to bear the weight of all. And it was from within that the deadly blow was dealt. Deadly. A lingering death, fifteen hundred years of slow pain. How much longer until the corpse admits its demise? Longer than I can bear to witness any more.

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

The Great Beast was an elemental force. Vulkan could feel the pressure of its power lapping against him like heat, an embodiment of the raw and raging instincts of the orks. Although he remembered little of his almost ceaseless labours against the daemons of the Dark Gods during the Heresy War, the primarch recalled enough to know that one did not win such a fight. It was victory merely to sustain it.

He caught a claw with the haft of Doomtremor, muscles and armour fibre-bundles straining against the warlord’s brutal strength. Vulkan shifted his weight, widening his stride as he heaved off the Great Beast’s next attack, moving quickly to his other foot to avoid the monstrous ork’s return swing. He smashed Doomtremor against the greenskin’s armour, its fire-shrouded head bouncing from energy-charged plates.

‘In your ignorance, do you see what you have wrought?’ Vulkan said, swinging his hammer again. ‘Your kind should have stayed dead where we buried you.’

They exchanged more blows. Vulkan struggled to keep his footing against the hammering impact of every strike, but slowly circled to his left, manoeuvring the ork into position.

‘You moved too soon,’ Vulkan continued. ‘Had you but the patience of true intelligence you would have seen that another decade, perhaps two, and the Imperium would have crumbled easily. And to strike at the Throneworld… You have roused a different beast, one that will see you crushed.’

The Great Beast surprised him. It did not draw back its fist, but reached out and snatched him by the throat. War-plate groaned under the pressure of the ork’s fierce grip, tightening around Vulkan’s windpipe. He rained blows against its arm as the warlord pulled back its other fist for a blow that would take off the primarch’s head. As the claw powered towards his face, Vulkan switched the focus of his attack, slamming Doomtremor into the oncoming fist.

The explosion of competing powers parted the two combatants, flinging Vulkan into the wall and sending the Great Beast staggering across the floor, spiked boots gouging furrows in the stone.

The ork shook its arm and hand, numbed by the impact. Vulkan blinked hard to clear his spinning vision.

‘But you are not the real threat,’ the primarch snarled, pushing to his feet. He spun Doomtremor in his palms, sizing up his opponent. ‘You are the distraction that will allow the true enemy to surge forth again.’

The two giants hurled themselves at each other. The Great Beast crushed the bodies of fallen Chapter Masters underfoot. Vulkan threw Doomtremor at the last moment, casting the burning hammer into the Great Beast’s face. Armour buckled and split and the hammer whirled away across the chamber.

Vulkan wheeled past the stunned ork, but not so swiftly that he avoided its next punch, which caught him square in the gut and launched him a dozen metres through the air. Turning his crash into a roll, Vulkan regained his feet.

Its helm was a mess, but the ork now stood between the primarch and his weapon.

The flames around one of the Great Beast’s gauntlets flickered away. It reached up and tore free the remnants of its helmet, tossing the mangled armour aside. Its head was enormous, with tusks and fangs like swords. The Great Beast regarded Vulkan with deep red eyes, a permanent scowl furrowing its brow.

‘You are right, son of the Emperor,’ it said. The voice was deep, guttural, but unmistakably speaking Imperial Gothic.

Vulkan was so taken aback by this utterance that he barely dodged the blast of power that erupted from the Great Beast’s out-thrust fist.

‘Your empire is on its knees. We shall be its death.’ The Great Beast glanced over its shoulder and turned back to the primarch with what Vulkan believed was a smile. ‘And just like your Emperor, you have thrown away your most powerful weapon.’

The Great Beast lowered its head and charged with a roar, green flames bursting from its fists. Vulkan leapt aside and threw a hand out towards Doomtremor, activating the miniature teleport link he had fitted into its head and his gauntlet. With a crack of splitting air, the hammer appeared in his fist. He swung hard, aiming for the side of the Great Beast’s head.

The blow bounced from thick skull, Doomtremor’s power field ripping skin and flesh down to the bone, searing a streak across the Great Beast’s scalp.

The ork lumbered away. A pulse of power flooded from it in a shockwave, staggering Vulkan as he readied for his next strike.

The Great Beast straightened, thick blood pouring down its face, a visible crack in the side of its skull.

‘Are you feeling tired yet, son of the Emperor?’ it asked. Green coils of energy snaked up to its face, flowing over the wound, healing the gash in a few seconds. The Great Beast laughed. ‘Is that the hardest you can hit me?’

‘I don’t have to hit harder,’ Vulkan replied. ‘I just have to think quicker.’

Their last exchange had brought the Great Beast back in front of the massive throne alcove in the heart of the reactor. The primarch hurled himself full force, tackling the warlord in the midriff to take them both into the pulsating green aura of the energy field.

At the moment of entry, Vulkan felt the overwhelming nature of Ullanor pouring into him. He witnessed and participated in the unimaginable orkishness of Ullanor, feeling himself drawn out into a web of waaagh power stretching across many star systems, the pulsing tendrils feeding back into his being even as his presence radiated energy into those around him.

That power echoed back through time, past the Horus Heresy to the primordial origins of the orks themselves. He was one with the nature of the orks, and saw for the briefest moment two green-skinned behemoths battering each other with bare fists at the dawn of time before even mankind was born.

The sensation of something around his throat dragged Vulkan back to the present, staring into the rage-filled eyes of the Great Beast. Both claws were on his throat, squeezing the life from the primarch.

Having seen the nature of the waaagh-force that bound the orks together, guessing at its nature from his own dark experience of Chaos, Vulkan was struck by a revelation. All things were interconnected. The orks seemed random but they were not. They were emergent. Trial and error always began with wildness and accidental circumstance, but it honed and refined. It evolved.

As the orks had evolved of late — hyper-evolved in the accelerating presence of the Great Beast — so their strategy had evolved. From gargants to hulks, to attack moons, to Ullanor itself — a progression that, once revealed, could be followed back to its base in the most simple of ork constructions.

And the same was true of all their acts.

Learn through action. Trial and error.

The attack moons were not battle stations, or at least not merely battle stations. They were test shots, dry runs sent out into the void as the orks tinkered and improved their gravitic engines.

And once the technology had been proven they needed to find a target. The Great Beast had not struck early, it had struck a bargain. It would avenge the abused spirit of the orks, it would crush the Emperor that had humbled orkdom. On the crescendo of such a victory its power would be unlimited and it would ascend to rule of the galaxy.

And now, Vulkan realised in that instant of feverish thought, they had found Earth. They had located the Throneworld and humanity had proven itself incapable of fighting back.

The attack moon over Earth was a beacon as much as a vanguard. Ullanor, the whole world, was the same thinking writ on a planetary scale — a base of billions of orks. It had been armed and protected like an attack moon. Could it also be moved across star systems like one? If Terra was the target…

There really was no way to stop the Great Beast by any conventional means.

Such power could not be destroyed, only diverted. Feeling the last gasps of breath escaping his body, Vulkan let his thoughts flow again. He reached out into the undulating waaagh, tapping into that warp-born part of himself that had been for every primarch a blessing and a curse. He allowed his primal essence to mix with that of the orks, his Emperor-created body absorbing the surge of energy like a sponge.

He allowed the pure orkishness that had killed so many Librarians to infuse his body. Vulkan felt the Great Beast tense, its thoughts moving to him with tectonic slowness as it realised something was amiss. It tried to pull back the waaagh, to wrest the raw orkish power from the mind of the primarch.

Vulkan only had a moment before he lost the battle, before the power of the orks and the last dregs of his life were both spent.

With failing muscles, he thrust Doomtremor into the face of the Great Beast and detonated the power field generator.

The last of the transports lifted away, a battered Thunderhawk in the livery of the Salamanders. Its original occupants had died in the fighting, determined to fight to the last close to their primarch. Now it carried the Lord Commander, two Chapter Masters and a wounded captain of the Blood Angels. High company in dire circumstances.

Koorland looked down at the dwindling city below from the open ramp, his thoughts at a standstill. His gaze roved over the mounds of dead and the broken ruins where tech-priests and skitarii, tanks and Guardsmen still battled for no reason other than survival. Drop-ships were coming for them, but few would get off Ullanor.

He could have done no more, he was certain of it. Had he done enough? Had he done the right thing? Koorland knew that only history would make that judgement, but he had to believe in the truth of Vulkan’s assertion.

‘Lord Commander! The temple-gargant!’

Thane’s call drew Koorland’s attention back to the inner city. A shuddering wave of green power flowed out from the temple-gargant. The floating citadel was listing heavily, its front bastions carving a ruinous path through what little remained of the city centre as it descended. The entire structure writhed with green flames, and at the heart of an inferno of raw energy Koorland thought he saw flickering images of two immense beings, locked together in an embrace of mutual destruction.

The bubbling shockwave crackled out for several kilometres, passing over and through everything. Koorland watched as it overtook the last remnants of Adeptus Mechanicus and Astra Militarum trying to flee the devastation. Tanks and cybernetica were tossed like grains of sand. Roaming ork mobs were taken up in the wave, borne up into the green cloud like flecks of flotsam on an incoming tide.

Stretching nearly a kilometre across, the detonation rapidly slowed and then stopped.

Koorland held his breath for several seconds as the immense green hemisphere wavered, balanced perfectly between expansion and retraction.

Then the field collapsed.

In seconds the implosion raced back to the temple-gargant, scouring clear everything that had been encompassed in its girth, ripping Gorkogrod down to the foundations and swallowing the pinnacle of the mountain with its ravening energy.

The temple-gargant split asunder, crashing into the scourged ground spouting pillars of green fire and storms of jade lightning, breaking apart into hundreds of hab-block sized chunks, scattering masonry and metal.

Just before the Thunderhawk passed into the cloud cover, Koorland could see the ork armies amassing around the capital, a ring of smoke and darkness several kilometres deep. Millions of orks from across Ullanor, poised just half a day from pouring into Gorkogrod. There was no chance of going back.

‘Is it dead?’ asked Thane, leaning around the Lord Commander to look at the devastation wrought by the temple-gargant’s destruction. ‘Did Vulkan kill it?’

‘Have faith,’ replied Koorland.

Epilogue

Terra — outer system

Koorland was in the strategium when the Alcazar Remembered broke warp back in the Sol System. Transit back to the Terran system had been swift, the warp-roar of the orks momentarily quelled. A few hundred Space Marines had made the journey with him. Perhaps ten times that number from the Astra Militarum, Imperial Navy and Cult Mechanicus had been lifted from the city before the orks had reclaimed it.

Nobody had felt like celebrating a victory.

The strategium was tense. There had been no confirmed contact with Terra. It was impossible to know whether the strike had been in time. Were they simply returning to the ashes of the Throneworld?

Koorland did not think so. When the time came, the Great Beast would have led the attack. He had learnt as much from the actions of Vulkan.

‘Any transmissions?’ he asked Kale.

The shipmaster shook his head.

Thane was with him. So many were not. The Exemplar remarked as much.

‘They will be honoured, each one,’ the last of the Imperial Fists replied. ‘They were all heroes of the Imperium, from the mighty such as Odaenathus who fell against the Great Beast itself to the first Guardsman who died in the planetstrike. And Vulkan, his passing shall be mourned for millennia. Without each and every one of them we could not have prevailed. It is our duty that their deaths are not squandered. We have shown what we can do, when united in ambition, and led with purpose. The orks have shown us how broken we had become. The wounds are still raw but it is not too late to tend them, brother.’

‘Lord Commander, I am detecting a powerful transmission,’ one of the deck officers announced. ‘Source origin is Terran orbit. Looped signal. All major channels. I’m going to—’

The officer stood up straight, face ashen, headset falling to his console. His terrified gaze moved to Koorland while his mouth continued to work silently, unable to form the words needed.

‘On audible,’ the Lord Commander snapped. The officer’s trembling finger activated a rune.

The speakers crackled into life, and from them issued a deep, grating voice, slowly repeating the same words.

‘I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter!’

David Annandale

Watchers in death

Prologue

The void

The Imperium’s eyes did not sleep. They did not blink. Even as the body convulsed with agony, wounded to the core by the Beast, the eyes watched. Organic or augmetic, sentient or servitor, the eyes watched the human galaxy without rest. They were everywhere.

Almost everywhere.

They were not here.

Here was night in its purest form. The black of the void was profound, an abyss of infinite depth, the sparks of the stars merely cold, jagged stabs. There was no true light here. There was only its dust, its ashes, the glint of the past that was years and centuries and thousands of millennia old.

No light. No warmth.

No watchers.

But if there had been, they would have seen the ork fleet surround the dark world. The orks did not make planetfall. They bombarded the surface with missiles and shells. They scorched it with energy beams. The ground ran with molten tears. Glows of orange and crimson, false sunrise and false sunset, spread their rage across the land. The planet shook. It cried out in its pain.

The orks’ target weathered the bombardment. It did not cry out. It was implacable in its silence.

And the orks did not land.

They battered the world with even greater ferocity. They brought light to the planet, and it did nothing but burn and shatter.

But they did not land.

The hurled their hatred at their target. They sought to make it scream and die. It remained silent.

Yet it answered the orks. It answered with fury.

One

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The silence crept through the halls and into Koorland’s mind. There was no lack of noise in the chamber, but the silence found the cracks between the hiss of steam, the crackle of energy, the clanking of mechadendrites. The silence was strong. It was filled with the dead, and with futility. Koorland wondered if this same silence had blanketed Terra in the wake of the Proletarian Crusade. It was a quiet deeper than mourning, more powerful than despair. It had followed him from Ullanor. It had been waiting for him on Terra.

Its weight was crushing.

The chamber was part of a bulbous chapel on the west side of the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor’s exterior wall. The space was an ecumenical one, an architectural statement of the essential identity of the Imperial Creed and the Cult of the Omnissiah. The Black Templars of the Last Wall had insisted the decryption of the visual feed occur on sacred ground. Its transmission had been among the last acts of a Venerable Brother, and it had emerged from a battle where many Black Templars had died.

The chapel did double duty as site of worship and laboratorium. It would serve. The Mechanicus adepts fed the data through cogitators, assisted by Black Templars serfs. The air was thick with incense.

The operation was performed under the supervision of Eternity. He was of the Last Wall now, and wore the colours of the Imperial Fists, but he had come from the Black Templars. His arms were folded, his head bowed in reverence.

Koorland watched from the rear of the chapel with Thane. They were alone. Eternity had refused to allow any of the High Lords to bear witness, and Koorland did not blame him. Their presence would have disturbed the solemnity of the ceremony. Though Koorland did not care for the religiosity of the ritual, he accepted it. Even if he hadn’t, he would have barred the High Lords. There was no place for them and dignity to coexist.

‘Any speculations?’ Koorland asked Thane.

‘None.’ The Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar spoke with a grim, flat tone. He sounded like a man bracing himself for the worst.

‘We know it is important. And to our advantage, if it emerged from a victory against the orks.’

‘I know,’ said Thane, as if Koorland had pointed out what he most dreaded.

Koorland said nothing else. Thane was surrounded by his own version of the crushing silence. Koorland could not dispel his own. There was nothing he could do for the Exemplar.

The silence settled over them. The chanting of the tech-priests and the crackle of energy discharges did little to pierce it. Koorland watched the ritual, but barely saw it. His vision narrowed to a dark tunnel. His consciousness sank into the tunnel and he stayed there, numb. The suffocation of the silence held off the piercing blade of loss, guilt and defeat for the moment. It was not a respite. It was only a different quality of pain.

He was so far in the tunnel he didn’t realise at first that he was being addressed.

‘Lord Commander Koorland,’ the voice repeated, its augmetic larynx buzzing.

Koorland blinked. The chapel snapped back into place about him. He looked down at the adept. Her name was Segorine. A cluster of servo-arms, segmented so that they flexed like tentacles, emerged from her torso. Her face was a steel mask dominated by compound eyes.

‘The decryption is complete,’ Segorine said.

‘Thank you,’ said Koorland. He and Thane followed her down the chapel aisle to where the other tech-priests waited. Behind the altar, a large pict screen pulsed with snow.

‘Faith,’ said Eternity.

Koorland waited.

‘Faith,’ Eternity said again. ‘That is what we are about to witness. That is what will grant us victory against the Beast.’

‘I see,’ Koorland said, noncommittal.

Segorine snaked out a limb to a control panel built into the altar. She depressed a dial, and the screen came to life. The images flickered and jumped, and the muzzles of beam weapons flared everything to white. Explosions broke up the picture.

But the worst distortion came from unleashed psychic energy. Koorland saw the Black Templars at bay, fighting hard against the ork horde. He saw the greenskin psyker, its power ferocious, seeming to destroy reality along with the images. He saw the Black Templars pray as they fought. The sound was a riot of distortion, a grating rhythm barely recognisable as gunfire. Breaking through in fragments were deep, sonorous chants, magnified by vox-casters. The voices of faith travelled across destruction and time to frame their moment of victory.

For a moment, the sound cleared altogether. The yowls of the orks and the concussions of the guns vanished. There was only the stern, martial prayer of the Black Templars. The energy flares of the witch stuttered, then spread out as if they had hit a wall. They curled away from the Space Marines. Koorland leaned forward, astonished. Arcing waves of power slammed back into the greenskin psyker. The beast’s mouth opened wide, its face contorted, and still there was only the sound of the chanting. The ork’s eyes burst. It exploded into flame. The energy flashed across the frame of the feed, utterly uncontrolled, blasting every ork to ash. The energy storm swallowed up the chanting. The chapel filled with a shattering feedback shriek, and the visual feed disintegrated.

The screen returned to snow, then went black.

‘The visible energy,’ Thane said slowly. ‘I didn’t see it come from the Black Templars.’

‘No,’ Koorland agreed. ‘It was all from the ork psyker.’ To the tech-priests he said, ‘Will you play that back again? Slowly.’

They watched. At the end, Thane said, ‘Are the orks and their witches linked?’

‘In some way, they must be,’ said Koorland. He could see no other interpretation. The psyker’s death had triggered the immolation of the horde.

‘So if we can target their psykers…’

‘A possible weakness, yes.’ Koorland turned to Eternity. ‘That was not the work of a single warrior, was it?’ Certainly not a Librarian. The Black Templars allowed no psykers within the ranks of their battle-brethren.

‘That was the faith of all my brothers present in that battle,’ said Eternity. ‘A collective strength.’

‘Against a single ork witch,’ said Thane.

‘Its fall destroyed its entire force,’ Eternity pointed out.

‘Yes,’ said Koorland. ‘Yes, it did.’

If only we’d known. The words came to him unbidden, a canker on his soul. He tried to push them away. He tried to tell himself the Imperial tactics on Ullanor would not have been altered, but his grief would permit no such comfort.

If only they had known. They would have fought differently. They would have made a greater priority of finding and taking out the ork psykers. They would have targeted the source of greenskin strength and turned it into a weakness.

He thought of Vulkan. The primarch had wished for the aid of the Sisters of Silence. He had recognised the need for a strong counter to the psykers.

He must have known, Koorland thought. He tried again to tell himself that they would not have fought any differently.

He knew that wasn’t true.

Neither were many things, he thought, that he had been telling himself of late. He had worked hard to maintain an illusion of self that made it possible for him to carry the responsibility he had shouldered. It made it possible for him to lead. But he had led nowhere except to disaster. He had nothing but contempt for the High Lords. At this moment, though, he was not sure how he was any different from them.

He forced himself to focus on the moment. ‘We may not see the key to the weakness in this data,’ he said. ‘But it is a weakness, and we will exploit it.’

But an hour later, he was still thinking about difference, his mind chasing itself in a toxic spiral. He walked alone on the ramparts of Daylight Wall, looking up into the night of Terra. There was a strong wind, and the sulphurous clouds over the Imperial Palace roiled, broke and reformed. In the gaps of their anger, the light of two moons reached down. Luna was a narrow, waning crescent. The reflected glow of the ork attack moon was paler, colder and more baleful. That threat was over, or at least contained. The orks were gone, the moon blockaded. But it was still a presence in the Terran sky, an insult and a wound to the heart of the Imperium. No enemy, even defeated, should ever have come so close.

He pictured another moon. He pictured several. Next time, the orks might not hold back from deploying their gravity weapons against Terra. They might have lost interest in conquest. They had been bloodied on Ullanor. Their vengeance might well take the form of total destruction.

And even if the moon was dead, it was not silent. It roared. I AM SLAUGHTER. I AM SLAUGHTER. I AM SLAUGHTER. The broadcast was ceaseless. It was gigantic. It would take nothing for Koorland to open a vox-channel and hear it.

He chose not to, but the reality of the shout was another poison in the toxic silence. The words of the Beast hammered at Terra, breaking down the spirit of its citizens. The roar mocked the sacrifices on Ullanor. It declared the futility of every Imperial endeavour to stop the orks. Every great quest, every journey, every challenge, every hard-won battle and shard of hope — they all meant nothing. What did they have to show for Caldera, for Ullanor? Even their victory against the moon was turned into mockery.

Koorland grieved, and so did all the world. He did not know fear, but he knew its cancer possessed every mortal soul on Terra.

The battlements of Daylight Wall were built upon many terraces. Turrets and cannon emplacements on multiple levels faced the east, so many it seemed they should be able to kill the rising sun if it dared to challenge the Emperor. Koorland walked along the top. He took up a position between the crenellations and looked down at the bristling strength below him. Not long ago, this perspective would have renewed his sense of duty and of purpose. Now he observed the defences and thought: Not enough.

The guns were insufficient.

So was he.

The approaching footsteps were quiet, more from a desire not to disturb than not to be heard. Koorland turned to the right. Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, walked down the wide avenue of the wall towards him. There was enough room between the battlements for a Baneblade to pass, and the Assassin was a tiny figure in the night. On either side, the relief sculptures of the crenellations celebrated Imperial might. Heroic figures cut down their foes with sword and gun. Koorland’s eyes went back and forth from the brutal strength of the stone to the wiry Grand Master. In the contrast, he felt a glimmer of inspiration. It passed before he could discern its shape.

Vangorich nodded to Koorland as he drew near. ‘A homecoming?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘Daylight Wall Company is gone. And my duty is no longer named by a single battlement.’

‘It was never limited to that, though.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Koorland sighed. ‘But there was great order in that naming. Symbols have powerful meaning.’

‘As does their loss,’ Vangorich said quietly.

‘Yes.’ The annihilation of Daylight Wall Company was of little importance next to the loss of a Chapter. And what was even that compared to the death of a primarch?

‘I’ve seen the recording,’ Vangorich said.

‘For all the good it does us now.’

Vangorich gave him a sharp look. ‘Defeatism doesn’t suit you, Lord Commander Koorland.’

‘Neither does naïveté,’ Koorland said.

Vangorich was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘It isn’t that long since we last spoke on this wall.’

‘It isn’t, and I don’t come here seeking to have my morale boosted by you.’

‘It would be an odd thing to do, given my particular duty.’

Koorland grunted.

‘I hope, though,’ Vangorich went on, ‘that you will listen to counsel.’

‘I know what you would have to say about being a symbol.’

‘And you would deny its truth.’

‘I would deny my fitness to serve as that symbol.’

‘Would you deny your duty to do so?’

‘You know I would not,’ Koorland growled. Duty and fitness were very different things, and he resented Vangorich’s blurring of the two.

‘No,’ the Grand Master said. ‘You have never turned from your duty. You have always done it. You did it on Ullanor too.’

‘To no end.’

‘And who would have been better suited? Who should have led instead?’

Koorland didn’t answer.

‘Vulkan left much of the campaign in your hands, didn’t he?’ Vangorich said.

‘He did.’

‘Was he wrong? Did he err?’

Koorland looked down at the Grand Master and glared. Again he said nothing. He could not bring himself to say aloud that Vulkan had been mistaken. He would not question the final decisions of the last primarch.

‘I’ll take your silence as a no,’ Vangorich said.

‘You’re playing a game with words,’ said Koorland. ‘It isn’t amusing and it isn’t useful.’

‘You’re right,’ Vangorich said, his tone suddenly sharp. ‘There would be nothing useful in a game. The High Lords have proven this many times over, and as far as I can tell, they’re very much intent on proving it yet again. I am not playing at anything. What we need right now is clarity, don’t you agree?’

‘I do.’ He grimaced. ‘We could have used the clarity of Magneric’s information on Ullanor.’

‘Exactly. Obfuscation, illusion, denial, ignorance, they have brought us disaster.’

So has everything else, Koorland thought. He said, ‘Your point, when you reach it, will have to be an impressive one, Drakan.’

‘Did Vulkan speak to you before the end?’

‘He did.’

‘And?’

Koorland took a deep breath. He let it out with a shudder, as if it could expel the burdens and memories that had built up like a toxic cloud inside his chest. ‘He ordered me to carry on.’

‘That was all?’

‘He called me Lord Commander. He said I was the Imperial Fists.’

‘And you would dismiss those words?’

Koorland shook his head. ‘It isn’t that simple.’

‘I see nothing simple in what I am suggesting. I see that you have a great burden to carry, one that is enormously complex. It is yours, however. You shouldered it after Ardamantua. You have carried it since. Vulkan reaffirmed your duty to carry on. It is your burden, because you have the strength for it. The primarch saw you are the leader we need now. So do all your brothers. Across the Chapters.’

Koorland narrowed his gaze in disbelief.

‘Your doubt has no place here, Lord Commander,’ Vangorich said. ‘Unless your information is more complete than mine. Has there been a challenge to your leadership? Has one of the surviving Space Wolves stepped forward to declare himself the alpha of the campaign?’

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘And I would thank you to refer to those Space Marines with greater respect. They have sacrificed much.’

‘All have,’ Vangorich said softly. ‘And the mission was a disaster. Yet there has been no challenge. There is a reason for that. They see what Vulkan saw. They await your orders.’

‘My orders.’

‘I assume you aren’t going to wait for the orks to attack first.’

Koorland felt the corners of his lips pull back. After a moment he realised something like a smile, cold and hard and hungry, had appeared on his face.

‘You’re very good at what you do,’ he told Vangorich.

‘I have to be.’

Koorland studied the Grand Master. ‘Perhaps we should learn from you,’ he said. As he spoke, the feeling of inspiration returned. It was stronger now. Closer to being something he could articulate.

‘What do you think I could teach you?’

‘Precision,’ Koorland said. The idea had almost formed. ‘You rely on few to do work that affects many.’

‘Precision is the correct word,’ said Vangorich. ‘What is necessary is not overwhelming force. What is needed is the right weapon and the right target.’

‘Which we have lacked,’ Koorland muttered.

‘The weapon or the target?’

‘Both. We thought we had found the Beast on Ullanor. Vulkan gave his life to slay it. And now…’ He pointed at the attack moon.

I AM SLAUGHTER, said the silence.

Koorland felt the words without hearing them. He saw Vangorich wince, and knew the Grand Master felt them too.

‘The Beast survived?’ Vangorich asked.

‘No. It can’t have. Yet something with its voice lives on. And that palace on Ullanor…’

‘Yes,’ said Vangorich. He understood. The horror was not lost on him.

‘They are creating an empire,’ Koorland said. ‘They plan to build it on the ashes of our own.’

Vangorich nodded. ‘The ambassadors,’ he said.

‘What about them?’

‘More evidence of the construction of an empire. The greenskins are evolving the classes that will be needed for an empire to function.’ He nodded to himself again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘no matter what died on Ullanor, the force of the Beast lives on. We have to consider what this means for our strategy.’

‘Our attack was too blunt. We were not a surprise. The orks knew what was coming, and prepared for us.’

‘What do you conclude, then?’

‘We need to keep looking for the Beast. In whatever form the guiding power of the orks exists, let us call it that. If we destroy it…’

‘The ork empire will fall,’ Vangorich finished. ‘A decapitation. You need to commit yourself to that, Lord Commander.’

‘We are. We were. We have to change our methods, though. If we come at the orks again as we did, even if we could assemble such a force again, they will win again. They outnumber us, and they outgun us.’ The last admission was the hardest. The entire history of the Imperium’s fight against the orks had involved the superiority of humanity’s technology against the orks’ vast tide of savagery. Recognising that the orks’ technology had outstripped the Imperium’s was a perpetually reopened wound. It had been the most basic fact of the war since Ardamantua, but speaking the words aloud sounded perilously close to capitulation. Not to face that reality would lead to true defeat. ‘We have to hit them another way.’

The inspiration that had teased the edge of his consciousness burst upon him. It had the clarity of revelation. He had known the same certainty when he had called for a unified command of the Imperial Fists Successor Chapters. Then, as now, the epiphany had come in the wake of devastating loss. Then, as now, he saw his course of action allowed for no doubt. He might question his own worthiness. He knew he would. But the path to follow shone before him.

He did not look at what he must do as cause for hope. It might yet fail. It was, instead, the thing that must be done. It was the one move left that the orks might not be able to counter.

‘Sometimes,’ Vangorich said, unknowingly giving voice to Koorland’s revelation, ‘a single knife can be more effective than a broadsword.’

‘Yes,’ Koorland said. ‘Yes. As your Officio has shown throughout its history. I’m interested in your tactics, Drakan. We need to learn from them. That is the counsel I would welcome from you.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes are not assassins,’ Vangorich said. He sounded cautious. ‘There are paths we must be careful not to take, if we do not want to repeat mistakes a thousand years old.’

‘We aren’t assassins,’ Koorland agreed. He respected Vangorich, but more, the Grand Master was the one member of the High Council for whom he felt anything even remotely approaching trust. He respected Veritus and Wienand, but he did not trust either. They were too immersed in the political machinations of the ordos. Veritus, in particular, he did not trust to act as the needs of the immediate crisis dictated. But now, as Vangorich spoke, Koorland saw the politician emerge in him. His caution was genuine. Even so, Koorland sensed an instinctive territorial defence.

Vangorich did not have to worry. Koorland had no interest in assassination. Decapitation was still the goal. And now he could imagine a new means to that end.

‘I don’t want to know about your organisation, your weapons or your specific tactics,’ Koorland said. ‘I want to hear about the broader strategy. Your philosophy of war.’

Vangorich gave him a half-smile. ‘You think the Officio Assassinorum goes to war?’

‘Of course it does, even if it might use a different name.’

Vangorich parted his hands, conceding the point. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Tell me about the knife, and how it strikes.’

Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Wienand sat in the lowest gallery of the Great Chamber. She had what amounted to a private stall. It had not been built as such; rather, a large fall of rubble had sectioned this small area of the benches from the other tiers. None of the minor lords who still attended council sessions had attempted to lay claim to it. Many likely did not even know about it. The heaps of tumbled marble and rockcrete shielded it from view of the other tiers. It was easily visible only from below, on the floor of the Chamber. If any of the nobility or Administratum officials were aware of this corner, they ignored it, preferring not to sit alone, and so Wienand had it for herself. She was unseen by the other spectators, and she had a good view of the dais.

Around the Chamber, the banners of the Imperium hung at half mast. So did every banner on every spire of the Imperial Palace. Green bands adorned the arms of the High Lords and of the spectators. The Council, the Palace and all of Terra mourned the loss of the last primarch.

Wienand knew that for many, it was not a pure form of grief. It was coloured by too much fear.

Veritus sat with the Council. Wienand was the joint Inquisitorial Representative, but she was content to be away from the dais today. The truce with Veritus was holding. They had not signed a peace accord, but they had found a way of working together. She could make her voice heard again, and, more importantly, she could watch the Council work through its contortions. Being at one remove from some of the debates was useful. It granted her perspective. She could observe the currents of the struggles, the developing fault lines, the weaknesses and pressure points.

All information was useful, she thought. All knowledge was power. In the present crisis, there were limits to what anyone, in the Council or outside it, could accomplish. She was determined to push against those limits. She would do what was needed to safeguard the Imperium.

Koorland, she could see, held fast to the same philosophy. The last Imperial Fist’s armour was polished, but bore the marks of the battle on Ullanor. The ceramite was cracked from bullet impacts, scarred by blades, scorched by flame. Koorland’s face bore the traces of almost as many wounds. His genhanced physiology had healed them, the new flesh roughened and thick. Koorland towered over the High Lords, but it was more than his height that made him the dominant force on the dais. It was more, too, than the fact he had fought and bled for the Imperium. He was not the only veteran on the dais. Abel Verreault, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard, Lord High Admiral Lansung, Vernor Zeck, the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites — all had their own scars of war. Zeck had lost much of his original flesh.

Perhaps it was the degree of Koorland’s sacrifice. Perhaps it was the scale of his loss, immeasurably beyond the trivialities of corporeal injury. He had lost his Chapter. And now, after the almost inconceivable casualties on Ullanor, after the death of the last primarch, what he had not lost was his inflexibility of purpose and his aura of command. What he announced to the High Lords had the weight of law.

They’re going to fight you on this one, she thought. They’re going to fight very hard indeed.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Tobris Ekharth, Master of the Administratum. ‘You’re talking about a united mission of the Adeptus Astartes? How is that different from what was already attempted on Ullanor?’

Wienand stifled a cynical chuckle. Koorland had barely begun to lay out his vision, and Ekharth was interrupting. Perhaps he was already confused. She didn’t think so. He was already anticipating where Koorland was going, and was impotently trying to stop him from speaking those words.

The Space Marine looked at Ekharth, his face stony with contempt.

‘I have proposed no such thing,’ Koorland said. ‘I am calling for the creation of a new force entirely. We cannot use a blunt weapon against the orks. We must strike with precision, swiftly, giving them no chance to mount a defence. Our force will be composed of independent kill-teams. The members of each kill-team will be determined by the needs of the mission and will be drawn from across the Chapters.’

‘Independent to what degree?’ Zeck asked, sceptical.

‘Completely autonomous with regards to the completion of the mission. Answerable to a centralised command.’

‘And whose command would that be?’

‘Mine.’

‘Not the Council’s?’

Wienand was impressed Koorland did not snort in disbelief. ‘No,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Zeck.

‘This is monstrous,’ said Mesring. The Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum spoke with a trembling voice. The tremor was so pronounced, he barely managed a croak. His skin had a bad sheen to it. When he leaned close to the other Lords, their faces twitched as if they were holding their breath.

Before Mesring could speak again, Juskina Tull jumped in. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘It is monstrous.’

The authority of the Speaker for the Chartist Captains had been in ruins since the disaster of the Proletarian Crusade. Wienand wondered if she saw an equivalence in Ullanor, and a chance to regain ground at Koorland’s expense.

‘Monstrous,’ Koorland repeated.

‘You are using this crisis for the political gain of the Adeptus Astartes,’ Tull said. ‘We have not forgotten why the Legions were broken up into the smaller Chapters. And now you would bring together all the Adeptus Astartes under a single authority, answerable only to you?’

Koorland’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are wilfully misunderstanding me,’ he said. He spoke calmly, but Wienand could hear the rumble of anger in his deep voice. ‘The force will consist exclusively of mission-specific kill-teams. These are not armies. They will not be engaging the orks in great fields of battle. That is the strategy that has failed us. We must think otherwise, and wage a new kind of war, or face annihilation.’

‘Of course you are not proposing unification,’ Lansung said. ‘You know the Council would never accept it. Furthermore, the casualties on Ullanor were too great to permit a mass assembly. You are being disingenuous. We can see where this path leads. Once these teams are formed, there will be nothing provisional about them. Consolidation will follow.’

Vangorich snorted. ‘You’re taking a lot for granted,’ he said. ‘So the Blood Angels and the Ultramarines will happily consent to submit to the authority of the lone Imperial Fist?’

Lansung waved the objection away. ‘If the plan is moving ahead, then the internal politics have been resolved.’

‘This is a coup!’ Ekharth shouted. ‘It will not succeed! We will not allow it!’

‘Monstrous.’ Mesring had not moved on from his initial judgement. The Ecclesiarch stood up from his seat, quivering, shaking his head back and forth like a wounded animal. ‘Monstrous, monstrous.’

‘Why?’ Vangorich asked.

Mesring snapped his mouth shut. Still quivering, he looked at Vangorich with wide, nearly maddened eyes. He stared at the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum for several long seconds. Then he said, ‘It cannot work. It will never work. It is against the divine will. It must never be attempted. It is unholy. Unholy.’ He paused. He looked up at the dome of the Chamber. ‘Unholy,’ he said again, more quietly, more to himself than to Vangorich.

Wienand leaned forward, watching Mesring carefully. There was something wrong with him. She couldn’t tell if the shaking was due to mental paroxysm or physical debilitation. Perhaps both. There had been fear in the look he had given Vangorich, yet his need to speak his truth had won out. Only his truth sounded odd. The other High Lords articulated their fears, and Wienand thought they were wrong. How they imagined the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves surrendering their independence was beyond her, but she could understand the logic of their anxieties. From her vantage point, just far enough away to see the entire Council at a glance, she could picture the High Lords as game pieces on a regicide board, the moves of one blocking and shaping the moves of the others, the ones with the least current power feeling they were the most vulnerable, and so making the most aggressive attacks.

Mesring, though, was puzzling. She should have been able to place him easily. He should, in this context, have been one of the more quiet members of the Council. The Ecclesiarchy had little to say when it came to strategy. As long as the orks were defeated, its power was unlikely to be diminished. Its only true fear should be the triumph of the greenskins.

So why was he frightened? she wondered. What possible threat would the kill-teams be to him?

Why? she wondered.

No, she corrected herself. She was asking the wrong question. It was assuming Mesring was acting out of the same self-preserving, territorial motives as the other High Lords. The assumption was wrong. Mesring’s dismay at Koorland’s plan was genuine. Wienand saw true religious horror in his reaction. He believed in what he was saying.

How could this possibly be against the Emperor’s will? That was the question to ask.

It had no answer.

The other High Lords were wrong-footed by Mesring’s reaction too. They did not appear to know how to respond. Even Tull was thrown off. She had tried to build on his horror from a political perspective. She clearly did not know how to do so from the perspective of faith. Wienand wasn’t sure of the depth of Tull’s piety, but it didn’t matter. Whatever theological turn Mesring had taken, no one else present could follow him.

Abdulias Anwar ignored the Ecclesiarch completely. The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica spoke as calmly as Koorland. His voice was a barely audible sibilance, insinuating rather than commanding. It wrapped itself around Wienand’s will and tried to make itself one with her consciousness. She was used to being on her guard in the presence of Anwar, and she raised mental barriers, consciously pushing away the words of the telepath. She saw the slight shifting of positions on the dais as the other High Lords assumed their own forms of wary readiness.

‘I cannot speak to matters of faith,’ Anwar said. ‘I will speak to matters of principle. What the Lord Commander of the Imperium proposes is the destabilisation of the governance of the Imperium.’

Relief washed over the Council. Anwar had returned sanity to the debate. The ground was familiar once again. The opposition was clear. One after another, the High Lords railed against Koorland. They were unified in their accusations. Wienand found the unity significant. They were frightened. They saw his plan as a power play, not a strategy. They attributed their own motives to him.

The war, she saw, had taught them nothing.

Not all the High Lords spoke. Kubik and Veritus were quiet. The Fabricator General’s servo-motors clicked. His optics whirred as they turned from one member of the Council to another. Most of the time, his attention was on Koorland. Veritus was just as intent on the Space Marine. They were listening and evaluating. They did not support his position, but they did not take a stand against it. They were seeing possibilities, Wienand thought. So was she. The potential for Koorland’s force beyond the immediate need was amorphous.

‘Cross-Chapter kill-teams will have no reason to exist beyond the present crisis,’ Koorland was saying now. ‘There will be no need for them, and the circumstance that makes their formation possible will cease to hold sway.’

‘You cannot believe that,’ Zeck said. ‘If you go ahead with this madness, you will create a precedent. A pretext will always be found to keep the teams in place. That’s why this can’t happen even once.’

Correct, Wienand thought. On this point, the High Lords were right to be worried. If the kill-teams were successful, there was no way such a weapon would be put away.

If they were successful, she thought. Then what?

The great potential refused to come into focus. The force had to be a reality first. She had to witness what it could do. Then she would know what else it might accomplish, and perhaps how it might be controlled.

‘Vote, then,’ Koorland snapped. ‘Vote and be damned.’

The High Lords voted. Vangorich supported the plan. Kubik and Veritus abstained. The others voted against it.

Koorland did not hide his disgust. ‘You’re fools,’ he said.

‘We would be to fall into your trap,’ Ekharth said, smug in victory.

Wienand waited for Koorland to punch the little man’s head from his shoulders. The act would have confirmed the High Lords’ worst suspicions, but it would have been warranted. Instead, Koorland strode from the dais.

‘What do you plan to do?’ Zeck called.

Koorland stopped. He faced the Council. His stillness became dangerous. Wienand was acutely conscious of what he could do to the High Lords if he were not holding himself back.

‘I will do what must be done,’ Koorland said. And as he turned once more to go, he added, ‘So will you.’

‘I understand your frustration,’ Alexis Mandrell said, speaking into the vox-unit on his desk. ‘I share it. But unless and until Admiral Lansung issues new orders, here we are.’ The captain of the cruiser Sybota, commanding the blockade of the attack moon, was in his private quarters. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. Another twenty-four-hour cycle had been completed, and it had been another cycle of routine exercises. The endless broadcast of I AM SLAUGHTER from the moon was unchanging. Mandrell had ordered the transmission blocked from all ships for the sake of morale, instituting an hourly verification that there had been no change in the message.

There was none.

‘The task is dull,’ he said. ‘It’s still necessary.’

‘I’m not questioning that,’ replied Captain Makayla Ochoa, of the frigate Cyzicus. ‘It’s the decisions that have made this necessary I don’t understand. Such a large concentration of forces in this vicinity when reinforcements are desperately needed elsewhere…’

‘You aren’t the first to notice this, captain.’

‘You don’t say.’ Ochoa had two decades more experience in the field than Mandrell, but her family was a far more minor noble house than his. They had served together in the Navy long enough that they acknowledged the political realities of the differences in their advancement with amused cynicism. Ochoa took the liberty of being as insubordinate as she pleased with Mandrell in private. He accepted this liberty as her due.

‘I do say,’ he answered.

‘You have family connections to Lansung…’ Ochoa began.

‘Stop!’ Mandrell held up a hand as if Ochoa could see him. ‘No. No. There’s no point, and I’m not using what capital I might hypothetically have to push for something that will go nowhere at best and result in embarrassment at worst.’

‘Yours?’

‘That I could survive. I mean the Lord High Admiral’s. Do you think it’s by his choice that we don’t destroy that xenos hulk? The Mechanicus wants it. If the Lord High Admiral has not ordered us to destroy it, it’s because he can’t. I’m not going to put him in the position of having to admit that. I like my command. If it were possible to send us elsewhere, he would have done so.’

‘Really.’ Ochoa did not sound convinced.

‘Really.’ Mandrell did his best to be emphatic. In truth, he wasn’t sure. The Imperial Navy’s dispositions had been erring on the side of caution since the start of the war.

‘So keeping a massive fleet presence in the vicinity of Terra, where it is unlikely to suffer any losses, has nothing to do with shoring up his position on the Council?’

‘No. Captain, you will cease this line of questioning.’ Their vox-communication was encrypted, but Mandrell did not trust it that much.

Ochoa snorted. ‘My apologies,’ she said. Dryly.

‘We’ll see all the combat we could hope for,’ Mandrell said. He was telling the truth, though he suspected Ochoa would interpret his words differently than how he thought of them. He was not displeased to be assigned to a pointless blockade. The Sybota had been on no more than the edges of the engagements with the orks, and that had been enough. He did not think he was a coward. He simply did not see the value in plunging into battles where the only likely outcome was annihilation. Let the Adeptus Astartes take the lead in suicidal missions. That was their strength. Let the Imperial Navy consolidate gains and hold reclaimed systems. There was no dishonour in that service.

He couldn’t dispute Ochoa’s contention that resources were misallocated, but he had seen enough campaigns to know there was nothing new there. If poor deployment decisions were to continue, he would prefer them to work in his favour.

‘So we’re here indefinitely,’ Ochoa said. ‘How are we—’ She stopped. ‘What was that?’

‘What did you…’ Mandrell began. Then he heard and felt something that began as a deep, rattling vibration. It ran through the deck and wall of the Sybota. The data-slates on his desk drummed against the surface. The vibration ran up through the frame of his chair and through his spine. It grew stronger. A sweeping vertigo shook him, and he almost slid to the ground. He switched the vox to the bridge channel. ‘What is happening?’ he bellowed.

He couldn’t hear his own voice. The rattle had built to a piercing metallic scream. The entire ship howled in agony. Blood burst from Mandrell’s nose and ears. The vertigo grew worse. He clutched the desk, disoriented as his sense of up and down spiralled. He forced himself upright and staggered towards the door of his quarters, weaving with every step. As he reached the door, a colossal boom cut through the Sybota’s shriek. The sound was so vast it sucked the air from his lungs. He fell to his knees. The deck heaved. He dragged himself forward, clutched at the doorway and hauled himself up.

He stumbled into the corridor. The echoes of the boom faded, swallowed by the grinding scream of metal and the thunder of cracking stone. The walls, deck and ceiling of the corridor buckled. Pulverised marble filled the air. Mandrell coughed, inhaling dust and smoke. The lumen orbs flickered off and on. Ruptured conduits spewed steam and flame. He made his way forward, unable to see more than a few metres ahead. He saw the shapes of crew moving through the haze, trying to run. They flailed as the deck rose and fell like an ocean in a storm. The agony of the vessel was deafening. Mandrell could hear no voices or warning klaxons. The silhouettes of his crew were pantomimes of crisis.

The weight was sudden, terrible, crushing. It came upon Mandrell like the fall of a huge wave. It smashed him to the deck. His ribs cracked. His nose and teeth shattered. He was immovable, held fast to the deck by his own impossible mass. Struggling against the prison of gravity, he raised his head just enough to look ahead. He could do no more, but even this victory was enough. It meant he saw what happened next.

The scream of the Sybota was transcendent. The cracking was the sound of a world coming apart. Power failed. The lumen orbs flickered out. The corridor went dark, lit only by the flicker of spreading flame. Then, summoned by the cracking and the grinding, a new light burst into brief, monstrous life. Mandrell stared into a blinding flare of fire and energy discharges. And then there was the wind, blowing past him with a hurricane’s roar. And then there was the cold.

Wind and cold, because the Sybota tore in half.

Mandrell stared in wonder and horror. He had that much time. His final breath was long enough for him to see the fore section of the cruiser fall away from the aft. He saw all the exposed decks of his vessel. He saw plasma explode along the edges of the wound. He saw thousands of crew and troops float off into the void, tiny figures, insignificant, a tumbling swarm. He saw the dark of the void snuff out the flames, but the light did not die at once. The void shields went first, their end a chain reaction of brilliant ferocity, the ship’s defences exploding outward, failing after the hull itself.

The Sybota was a broken bone, its two halves slowly turning away from each other. The vision was immense. Mandrell witnessed a death so great, his own end was meaningless. The seconds that remained to him were consumed with bleak wonder.

Then the wind ceased, and there was only the dark, and the merciless, terminal cold.

Ochoa reached the command gallery above the bridge in time to see the Sybota break in two. The ork gravity weapon had lashed out from the attack moon, a single whip of unfurled, impossible force. It had seized the cruiser, and its grip was doom. The beam had sideswiped the Cyzicus. The blow had been nothing, the mere wake of the passing force. It had still been enough to disrupt the frigate’s artificial gravity, hurling Ochoa back and forth against corridor walls as she ran for the bridge. Klaxons still wailed, and the screens next to the oculus were filled with the red script of damage reports.

‘All batteries,’ Ochoa said. She got no further before there was another bright flash in the upper left quadrant of the oculus. The entire superstructure of the destroyer Iron Castellan vanished in the killing light. The ship began a slow roll out of formation. What looked like a small mountain had materialised in the vessel’s core, its rocky peaks projecting out of the stern and the upper portions of the hull. Ochoa stared for several seconds at the impossible vision. Just before the greater flash came, consuming the vessel entirely, she understood.

Teleportation, she thought. They teleported a chunk of the attack moon into the Castellan.

‘Signal all ships,’ Ochoa shouted to Gliese, the officer of the vox. ‘Open fire on the moon with all batteries, all torpedoes. Destroy it.’

Gliese turned to look up at her. ‘We have orders to—’

Damn Lansung and damn the Mechanicus. If those fleshless cultists wanted the greenskin toys, they could put them back together again. ‘You have new orders from me. The responsibility is mine. Now do as I say or I’ll shoot you where you stand.’

Gliese saluted and opened a channel.

‘All vessels, open fire,’ Ochoa said. ‘Full batteries, full torpedo launches. Destroy that moon.’

‘By whose authority…’

That was Huf, squawking from the frigate Steadfast Contrition.

‘By mine,’ Ochoa told him. ‘As most senior surviving captain. Open fire, Huf, or do you want the greenskins to crush your ship?’

Huf clicked off.

Moments later, Ochoa saw the streams of shells and torpedoes streak from the blockade towards the attack moon. Imperial ordnance cut through the dark of the void. No one else questioned the order. The other captains had probably already been issuing their commands. They knew what was at stake.

The barrage was immense. It was also too late. Before the first torpedo struck the surface of the moon, its terrible maw began to open once more. The shouting, raging corpse had come back to life. From its interior came a swarm of ork ships. Interceptors, fighters, bombers and torpedo ships raced for the blockade. Dozens were caught by the oncoming artillery. The near space of the attack moon became a fiery nimbus of superheated plasma and disintegrating metal. Hundreds more greenskin vessels shot through the curtain of destruction.

Ochoa stared at the oculus, at the oncoming storm of predators. Almost unconsciously, her hand moved to the tacticarium table at her side. She tapped the command vox-unit, tuning to the huge band of frequencies broadcasting the roar of the Beast.

She had no wish to hear it. Yet the need to face the full truth of the moment was too strong. She had never turned from battle. She had always sought the full measure of duty.

But there was more that directed her actions at that moment. The gaping maw of the ork base transformed the inanimate into a living skull. The face had a monstrous pull. Its power was absolute. Ochoa felt her insignificance before the presence of the active, murderous sublime.

Behold me, that gaping visage commanded. You bow before a god of stillness. I am a god of speed and violence. I am present. I am ascendant.

She turned the vox on to hear the actual voice, to blot out the words the sight of the moon tried to insinuate into her soul.

Ochoa vowed to herself she would fight the reality of the threat, and her spirit was the equal to its false divinity.

‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ boomed through the command gallery. ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ It seemed the moon itself was shouting in the bridge. ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ And slaughter came from the moon, scything into the blockade fleet. Hundreds of ships descended on the frigates and destroyers. The Imperial cannons shifted from attack to defence. Every ship visible in the oculus flashed bright with straining void shields and the dissipating fireballs of destroyed ork craft. The attackers perished in droves. But more and more and more emerged from the maw, an endless curse from the god of violence.

‘I AM SLAUGHTER! I AM SLAUGHTER! I AM SLAUGHTER!’

The word became truth, and the truth burned the fleet.

Koorland walked the edge of the dais in the Great Chamber. He would not take his seat. He would not even stand by it. He would not associate himself with the High Lords. He understood that the realities of his position made the division he wished to enact a false one; he was part of the political machine of Terra now, whether he chose to admit it or not.

It would be close to a lie to say he accepted these facts. It was enough to say he knew them to be true. Today, he had to distance himself as much as he could from the rest of the High Lords. He was too disgusted to count himself of their number. If he sat in that chair, he might even derive the wrong sort of satisfaction from the inevitable turn the debate would take. He detested that temptation. It soiled and corrupted. If Koorland gave into it, he would truly be able to count himself a High Lord.

The thought was revolting.

He saw the sharp features and steel-grey hair of Wienand in her tier seat. Once again, she had decided to put some physical distance between herself and the other Lords. Vangorich and Veritus were in their seats. Koorland half-wondered how they tolerated their positions. Whatever else he might say of Veritus, the inquisitor was a faithful servant of the ordos and of the Imperium. Koorland had no doubt he always acted from a foundation of firm belief. Perhaps Veritus’ convictions were his form of armour. His need to pull the levers of power as he saw fit kept him in the political game. And Vangorich was the hunter on the political fields. He was where he needed to be.

Koorland was not. At least, not yet. If the High Lords would cease their posturing and accept what they all knew they had to accept, he could get on with his real duty — directing the blade that would decapitate the orks.

But the posturing must happen. Its inevitability was as certain as Daylight Wall.

‘How can they be back?’ Ekharth was saying. ‘How can the orks be back? The moon was dead!’ He pointed a trembling finger at Koorland. ‘You said it was dead!’

Of course I did, Koorland might have said. That’s why I demanded a blockade be maintained. He said nothing. Arguing with the little man would be a form of defeat. It would be descending to the level where nonsense was seriously debated.

‘Teleportation,’ Kubik said, more to himself than to Ekharth. He nodded his head, in satisfied agreement with his own deduction. ‘Confirmed by reports of the destruction of the Iron Castellan. The Veridi giganticus must have employed their teleportation technology to repopulate their attack base. The infiltration capabilities are impressive. So much more to learn.’ He abandoned all pretence of speaking to the Council and began to dictate into a recording unit built into one of his arms. ‘Effective range remains the question. Based on present knowledge, it appears to be effectively unlimited. Without any indication of the origins of teleported bodies, we are forced to the most extreme hypotheses in the interests of strategic extrapolations.’ His flat, machinic tones managed somehow to sound regretful. He switched into the whistles and screeches of binary.

‘Can your teams stop this?’ Lansung asked Koorland. His fleet was bleeding and dying. Already, a third of the vessels surrounding the moon had been destroyed. Lansung sounded desperate.

‘They will,’ said Koorland.

‘How do you know?’ Ekharth shouted. ‘This has never been done before! You have nothing to go on.’

Koorland stopped pacing. This time he would speak. He turned slowly to face Ekharth. ‘They are Adeptus Astartes,’ he said. ‘I have that to go on. I need no more.’

‘But…’ Ekharth began. He trailed off and looked away from Koorland’s glare.

Koorland faced Lansung. ‘How long can the blockade hold?’ he asked.

‘Not long.’

‘I noticed you have pulled the Autocephalax Eternal back to orbit around Terra. And that you are not sending reinforcements.’

‘We can’t. If the orks break through—’

‘When, you mean,’ Vangorich corrected.

‘The defence of Terra is paramount,’ Lansung said.

‘Of course,’ Koorland said. What the Lord High Admiral said was true. It was also convenient. Lansung’s reluctance to commit the flagship Autocephalax Eternal to combat had moved far beyond the craven into a realm so contemptible it did not have a name.

‘The kill-teams must act quickly,’ Lansung said.

‘They will,’ Koorland said.

Mesring had been staring into the middle distance, distracted by inner visions Koorland couldn’t guess at. Now the Ecclesiarch started in his seat. ‘We have not voted!’ he said. ‘Nothing has changed! What was monstrous before is just as monstrous now.’

Silence from the other High Lords greeted Mesring’s outburst. He looked from one to another, pleading for support that had evaporated.

Zeck sighed. ‘What assurances do we have this will not be your coup?’

Vangorich laughed. ‘And would you believe those assurances if you had them? Would they mean anything coming from any of you?’

Zeck said, ‘You find our circumstances amusing?’

‘Hardly,’ said Vangorich, suddenly cold. ‘Your responses to them, though, are quite another matter.’

‘Only one response interests me,’ Koorland. Even there he was stretching a point. He had little interest in anything the Council might say or do. He was here out of brute necessity and for no other reason. ‘You know what you have to do. Vote or be damned.’

‘You knew,’ Ekharth said, sullen with revelation. ‘You knew the orks would come back. You arranged this crisis. Now we have no choice but to embrace your rule as our salvation.’

‘Shut up, Tobias,’ said Tull. She sounded just as sullen, but where Ekharth was slipping into outright paranoia and speaking from genuine fear, in Tull’s voice Koorland heard suspicion shaped by frustrated ambition. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘No!’ Mesring shouted. ‘We must not let this pass! It is blasphemous!’

For the first time in the proceedings, Veritus spoke. ‘How?’ he asked.

Mesring hesitated. ‘It is blasphemous,’ he said again. He looked away from the inquisitor. He shrank against the back of his seat, staring at the floor.

Koorland frowned. Mesring’s objections bothered him more than Ekharth’s. The form they took made no sense. Koorland did not understand what was behind them, and that worried him.

The High Lords voted.

Mesring was the only one opposed. Even Ekharth, seeing himself isolated, joined with the others in voting with Vangorich. Veritus and Kubik abstained again. They seemed, Koorland thought, to have deliberately moved themselves to the sidelines. They were observers of an event whose end result could not be affected by their participation, and so they chose to guard their neutrality. They would bear watching. The power games of the High Lords never ceased, and it was the silent ones who were most formidable. They were the ones who, if they had not already seized an advantage, saw the potential of one within their grasp.

The Council feared Koorland’s long-term plans. He wondered how the consequences of what he was about to set in motion would serve Kubik and Veritus. Like the Council, he had no choice.

Koorland left the dais without a word.

Three

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Robed, Abathar gazed at the armour he was about to don once more, and thought of the task ahead. He was standing on the precipice of meaning. He needed to understand the nature of his leap, and his armour was the key to that understanding. He knew this at a deep level, one without words — one at the same depths as that which resonated with the needs of the machine-spirits when he listened to their rages and pains.

Outside the Techmarine’s armorium, footsteps rang up and down the corridors of the Imperial Palace barracks reserved for the Dark Angels. He heard the careful tread of Chapter-serfs. He heard the mechanical trudge of servitors. He heard the metallic cacophony of repairs, the murmur of prayers, and the whisper of oaths. Shadows, flickering in torchlight, moved over the armour and its folded servo-arms. The restless dark was deep, rich with imminent knowledge.

The revelation was approaching.

The sounds of the mobilisation seemed hollow and sparse. So many empty armoria and meditation cells. So many brothers lost. It would be easy to hear, in the diminishment, the echo of defeat. After a loss, a smaller muster, a weakened force.

That would be a lie, he thought.

It was true the combined Chapters on Terra could not attack the orks as they had before. It was true the new strategy Koorland had proposed was the product of necessity.

‘Not the full truths,’ the Techmarine muttered.

‘Lord?’ one of his armament serfs asked. They were standing by, waiting for him to permit them to return to their work of repair. His armour had escaped critical damage on Ullanor, but it had been badly scorched by vehicle-mounted flamers. It was blackened across most of its surface. The livery of the Dark Angels awaited restoration.

‘Wait,’ Abathar said.

The full truth was that Koorland’s plan would be a small deployment even if the disaster of Ullanor had never occurred. The plan had come into being through necessity, but its shape surpassed necessity. It was a new thing. In the demands it placed on the members of the kill-teams, it was an extraordinary thing. Abathar thought about the Space Marines at whose side he would be fighting. An Ultramarine. A Blood Angel. A Space Wolf. The composition of the teams was astounding. It would never have been possible before Ullanor.

Here again, was a product of necessity, and again the form of the act surpassed what was forced and entered into the realm of true daring and unprecedented innovation. Small squads of uniform composition would have been understandable. There were enough survivors of each Chapter to have mounted operations on that scale. But Koorland was urging them all to go further. The orders were to forge squad-level bonds with Space Marines who were strangers to him and to the ways of his brothers. At least one, he would have regarded with so much suspicion he would have refused to be in the same room as that warrior in other circumstances.

The circumstances were beyond extraordinary. So was Koorland’s plan.

‘He is asking us to become something new,’ Abathar said.

The squads were born of death, and their mission was death. They would be a lethal blade beaten to a point in the forge of tragedy.

Abathar watched the shadows on his armour, darkness shifting over black. The shadows appeared to him to be the shadows of his lost brothers. The fallen of Ullanor called to Abathar and to all the Adeptus Astartes making ready to wage war in a new way. Look upon us, they said. Witness us, and strike in our name. See our death, and stand guard in our stead. See our death, and visit it upon our enemies.

Born of shadow, Abathar thought, we become shadow. We are the eye of death.

He knew what he must do.

‘Continue,’ he said to the serfs. ‘But the armour needs new colours.’

The man and woman looked at each other, then at Abathar, confusion spreading over their features.

‘Restore the right pauldron,’ Abathar said. It must remain as it was, the icon of the Dark Angels pristine, the pride of brotherhood and Chapter still announced to the universe. ‘Paint the rest black.’

‘Lord?’ the woman said again.

‘You heard me.’

It had been over a thousand years since the Chapter had worn black livery. This darkness would be different, Abathar thought. It was the black of mourning. The black of anger.

The black of the death witnessed and delivered.

Koorland found the Fabricator General in the laboratorium of the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor. Kubik was examining Magneric’s data-feed again. When he saw Koorland approaching, he gestured to the three tech-priests attending him. They bowed and withdrew through doors at the far end of the chamber, angular limbs pistoning under their robes as they left.

Kubik turned off the feed as Koorland approached. ‘What do you wish, Lord Commander?’ he asked.

‘I want to talk to you about the ork teleportation technology. I want us to use it against the attack moon.’

‘That will not be possible,’ said Kubik.

‘Because it won’t work?’

‘The Adeptus Mechanicus is not the Departmento Munitorum, Lord Commander.’ The voice was flat, mechanical, inhuman. And still it was contemptuous.

‘Are we to rehearse our grievances once more?’ Koorland asked. ‘I had hoped we had put them in the past for the sake of the Imperium. You did not deny us the use of the gravity weapons on Caldera.’

‘That technology was deployed by the adepts of the Mechanicus in that conflict. I heard no mention of their presence in your proposal.’

‘Nor did I make one.’

‘Then we have no more to say.’

‘I’m surprised, Fabricator General. The teleportation of a body as large as the attack moon holds no interest for you, then?’

Kubik’s stillness was the closest thing to uncertainty Koorland had ever detected in the High Lord.

‘You are not planning to use the technology as an augmentation of our current teleportation capabilities?’

‘No. Not primarily. We are going to teleport the moon out of this system.’

Kubik hesitated. It frustrated Koorland that he could not tell if the Fabricator General was evaluating the feasibility of the plan or formulating a lie.

‘The possibility of success is minimal,’ Kubik said at last. But he seemed less resistant now. He was being captured by the challenge of the problem.

‘Why?’

‘Our understanding of the technology is imperfect. Our adaptation is partial. The teleportation of Phobos was limited to repositioning it within its established orbit. The energy expenditure was of a magnitude very rare in a single action, requiring considerable resources on Mars. You wish to move a much larger body a much greater distance. We cannot transport the energy sources of Mars to the attack moon.’ There was a squeal of binary. ‘I amend my estimation. The operation is impossible.’

‘We used the orks’ energy sources against them on Caldera. We tapped into their grid to power the gravity weapon. We will do that again now.’

Kubik straightened in interest and surprise. ‘Employ the attack moon’s power to generate its own teleportation?’

‘Precisely.’ Koorland was aware of Kubik’s optics examining him closely.

‘The proposal is intriguing,’ said Kubik. ‘It has the merit of providing a testing ground for our advances.’

‘It isn’t a proposal,’ Koorland said. ‘It’s an order.’

Kubik regarded him in silence, except for the low hum of servo-motors and calibrating sensors.

‘This is what must be done,’ said Koorland. ‘We will neutralise the ork base once and for all. The Council has been too generous with regards to the desires of the Mechanicus. You had your chance to study it. Now here we are, with the orks on our doorstep once more, and the Navy falling before them. You have no more choice in obeying this order than I have in issuing it.’

Kubik’s digits flexed and curled, flexed and curled. He said nothing.

He was still silent when Koorland left. But he had not refused again.

The initial muster for the kill-teams was held in the Monitus. Abathar had no difficulty in understanding the choice. The hall, with its statues of all the loyalist Legions, represented the ultimate unity of the Adeptus Astartes. He saw meaning in its position, so high above the Great Chamber. It was here, too, that Vulkan had shamed the High Lords. It was a fitting place for the beginning of the new venture, and of a very particular kind of unity. One, he had heard tell, that the High Lords feared.

He arrived alone, following the orders of Grand Master Sachael.

‘You are Dark Angels,’ Sachael had told the survivors assigned to the kill-teams, ‘but for the length of this mission, you will also be something else. You will fight with warriors you might have regarded as strangers, in any other situation. You cannot do so now. You will join them as brothers. So you must arrive at the Monitus alone. In this manner, you are not departing a squad or a company. You are joining something else.’

Abathar reached the top of the Stilicho Tower and entered the Monitus. He slowed as he approached his assigned position toward the centre of the balcony. He was not the first to arrive. A figure was standing at the rail, next to the Ultramarines statue, looking down at the roofs of the Imperial Palace. The right pauldron showed the icon of the Space Wolves.

But the armour was black. Abathar stopped three paces away. The Space Wolf heard him and turned around. Abathar faced the weathered, bearded features of Asger Warfist. The Wolf Lord blinked in surprise.

Neither Space Marine spoke. They acknowledged the importance of the moment with a solemn silence. Then Abathar said, ‘This is not chance.’

Warfist nodded slowly. ‘It is fate.’

When Abathar had entered the Monitus, there had been the low, echoing murmur of conversation. Now the sound was fading. Abathar saw Warfist’s eyes shift, looking past him to the rest of the hall. They widened. Abathar turned.

There were more warriors in black armour. Abathar counted four others. Not many, but enough to be significant. Enough to prove the truth of Warfist’s words. Fate was at work here. Its hand was visible to every warrior in the Monitus.

All conversation ceased. The only sound was the rap of boots against marble as the Space Marines in black moved to their positions. They were the focus of attention in the hall. Abathar felt the force of a dozen gazes fall on him. He was not troubled by the scrutiny, for he was as astonished as everyone else. He stared as hard as any of the others.

A seventh warrior in black arrived, this one a Blood Angel. Then an eighth, an Ultramarine.

Time in the Monitus paused. The hall filled with the power of significance.

Warfist stepped forward. He moved to the centre of the hall. He spoke, the wind-cured rasp of his voice stretching across the Monitus.

‘Bear witness, brothers!’ he called. ‘Mark what is happening! This is a day the Imperium will remember.’ He was one Space Marine among many, yet in declaring the importance of what was happening, he became its nexus. All eyes turned to Warfist. All voices spoke to him.

‘An omen,’ said another Space Wolf on the other side of the hall.

‘It is more than that,’ Warfist said.

‘We have done this,’ said Abathar. ‘It is not visited upon us. We have taken this action. We have made this choice.’

‘And the choice has weight beyond the acts of a single brother,’ Warfist continued. ‘One choice, multiplied. This is a truth.’

‘So it is,’ said a Blood Angel nearby. Abathar recognised him as Forcas. He had seen the name on the list of members of his designated kill-team. Forcas’ armour was still red. ‘Can any of us doubt this truth? When it appears to us so clearly, and with such force?’

‘Was this truly a choice, then?’ Abathar wondered. ‘We were guided by the same circumstances, impulses and realities.’

‘Perhaps we have made our own omen, then,’ said Warfist. ‘If we have, its weight is all the greater.’

Forcas was nodding. ‘I will do as you have done,’ he said.

‘As will I,’ the other Space Wolf shouted.

The call was taken up. The Monitus rang with the oaths of a grim unity. The individual squads came together. The assembled Space Marines formed an arc before Warfist and the great statues.

Abathar observed his fellow warriors with growing awe as the moments succeeded each other with ever greater import. There was never doubt as to the ultimate unity of purpose of all the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. Every battle-brother, no matter how estranged he might be from those in another Chapter, stood for the defence of the Emperor. On Ullanor, there had been the forging of many forces into one devoted to a single immediate goal. Here, though, was something else again. Here, the unity was not institutional. It was being forged at the level of the individual. There would be friction between members of the kill-teams. Abathar had no illusions about himself, or how he would feel fighting in the same squad as a Space Wolf.

And yet…

What is this thing we are becoming?

Born of death. Forged in death. Living memoria of lost brothers, returning in anger.

‘What are we?’ Warfist roared. The question demanded an answer, but it was shouted with the certainty of the inevitability of that answer.

‘We are witness!’ said Forcas, and Abathar heard his thoughts present and past being spoken by others.

Here, now, we are one, he thought. We are this new weapon.

‘We watch from death,’ said the Ultramarine in black.

We are vigilance.

We are vengeance.

We are the judgement come for the xenos challenger.

There was such clamour in his mind, in his soul and in the hall that Abathar could not tell if the words came from within or without. Perhaps they were both. Internal need had led to an external manifestation on his armour, and on that of other battle-brothers. They were the example. They were the clarity of black.

Space Wolf, Dark Angel, Blood Angel and Ultramarine had spoken with a single voice.

‘We are the Deathwatch!’

The words rang out above the others, given strength by their iron truth. It was a moment before Abathar realised the voice was his.

‘Deathwatch!’ Warfist repeated.

‘Deathwatch!’ said Forcas.

Deathwatch. The word, the name, the truth was shouted by every warrior in the Monitus. It was the moment of creation. That which had been shattered on Ullanor had taken on a new shape, renewed of purpose.

Deathwatch. It was a blade aimed at the throat of the Beast.

The clouds parted. The attack moon appeared, as if in anger at the challenge. The roars grew louder yet.

Deathwatch.

Abathar shouted the name, and it was a mission. It was a calling. It was an identity. Sachael had been correct. Abathar was a Dark Angel. Nothing would change that. Nothing could. But he was also this new thing. As his armour bore the colours of two allegiances, so did his being. There was no contradiction. The Deathwatch was formed of disparate pieces, and it would depend on their separate identities to create its own.

What have we become? The full answer would come in time. But the name was here, defined by the crucible of sacrifice and vengeance. The one and the many had become synonymous.

Deathwatch.

The refrain was a thunder strong far beyond sound. It shook the Stilicho Tower. It cracked the air over the Imperial Palace. It rose to the sky. Towards the attack moon. It was an answer to the endless shout.

I AM SLAUGHTER, the Beast exulted.

And the warriors of many Chapters said, Fear us.

‘You want me to go back,’ Galatea Haas said.

‘Yes,’ Koorland said.

They were in the barracks of the Adeptus Arbites. Despite her rise in rank, Haas spent most of her time in this quadrant. Her authority now extended to most of the Arbitrators still in the continent-sized palace. She was Proctor of the Primus Imperialis Division, and she looked exhausted. The numbers of the Adeptus Arbites had been so badly cut by the Proletarian Crusade that their efficiency was a shadow of what it had been. Haas’ office reflected the constraints under which she laboured. It was bare except for a battered desk, a wooden chair, an equipment footlocker, and a massive vox-array.

Koorland found himself comparing the officer before him to the Grand Provost Marshal in the Great Chamber. He did not doubt Zeck’s skill. His ability to process vast amounts of data was more than impressive, and he had a keen strategic mind. It was the uses to which Zeck’s skill was put that inspired Koorland’s contempt. Had Zeck ever been something more than the political animal he was now? Koorland had his doubts. To become a High Lord, Zeck would have had to concentrate first and foremost on the goals of his ambition. His effectiveness as an administrator would have been a by-product of his personal desires. In Haas, Koorland saw a career take the form of a calling. He recognised her driven gaze. It was a product of duty and of loss.

She greeted the news that she was being asked to return to the attack moon with a grim, tight-lipped calm, as if she had been expecting this conversation. She did not ask if she had a choice. She said, ‘You’re going inside again.’

‘Yes, deeper. Small teams. This will be an infiltration.’

‘I see. What is my role?’

‘We will be looking for control centres and power sources. You are more familiar with the interior than anyone else still living.’

‘I understand.’ She tapped her shock maul where it hung from her belt. She took a breath. ‘I shall be ready to embark when you command.’

‘Thank you, proctor. It would have been understandable if you had been reluctant.’ Understandable, though reluctance would not have kept her on Terra. She was needed, and Koorland had been prepared to order her participation in the mission. Presenting her with a request first had been a courtesy, and a mark of his respect for what she had survived and what she had accomplished. He was pleased the request had been enough.

‘Reluctant?’ Haas said. ‘May I speak freely, Lord Commander?’

‘Please do.’

‘The prospect of returning there fills me with horror.’ She spoke calmly, her voice and her gaze steady. There was a faint twitch in her right eye. It was the only expression of what she was really feeling. ‘But I joined the Proletarian Crusade for a reason. I had a task, and that task is incomplete.’

‘Your commitment to duty is admirable.’

Her mouth twisted. ‘I’m not a saint,’ she said. ‘I lost my friends. I saw…’ She faltered. The twitch became more pronounced. ‘When the mountains moved…’ She looked past Koorland, at something colossal. He knew what she was remembering — billions of civilians and troops crushed, turned into a towering wave of blood. He knew what had happened on the surface of the moon. He had not witnessed it, though he had seen other horrors on Ardamantua. He could empathise without being able to experience the precise nightmare. They had each gathered their individual scars.

‘You want revenge,’ Koorland said.

Her gaze sharpened again. She gave him a curt nod. ‘I want to see the greenskins die in the same numbers. And I want to be responsible for that.’

‘You will be,’ Koorland promised.

The embarkation of the kill-teams took place in the Inner Palace’s pocket space port. There were three squads heading for the attack moon. Each was to board a Thunderhawk bound for the Dark Angels strike cruiser Herald of Night, which waited at low anchor to take them through the warzone. The ship was the fastest of the Adeptus Astartes vessels present over Terra.

Vangorich watched the departure from the far western edge of the landing pad. The hot wind from the first of the Thunderhawks’ turbofan engines blew his hair back. His eyes were painfully dry. Beside him, Wienand raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare as a gunship turned on descent, its engines bright as suns in the pre-dawn gloom.

‘They’re all in black,’ Wienand said, looking at the thirteen Space Marines.

‘I’ve heard the change started with a few, and the others followed suit.’

‘You have thoughts?’

‘Koorland’s force already has a distinct identity. Before the first battle.’

‘A good sign, wouldn’t you say?’

‘For the task ahead, definitely.’

Wienand cocked her head. ‘Interesting hedge. Wasn’t this your idea in the first place?’

‘It was,’ he conceded.

The Thunderhawk’s embarkation ramp lowered. Koorland crossed the landing, coming from an eastern entrance to the space port. He stopped in front of the gunship and faced the kill-teams. Thane was with him. Their armour was not black.

‘Here’s a difference,’ Wienand said.

‘Understandable,’ said Vangorich. ‘The continued existence of the Imperial Fists hangs by a thread. I can’t imagine Koorland would do anything to downplay the memory of the Chapter.’ The Imperial Fists livery was already the colour of mourning, he thought.

‘Brothers,’ Koorland said, his voice amplified by vox-casters around the periphery of the landing pad, ‘you have earned my thanks many times over during the course of this war. You have fought, you have sacrificed, and you have followed me. What I see before me is something for which I cannot, in good conscience, express gratitude. To do so would be the height of arrogance. You have found the true meaning of our actions on this day. The Last Wall rose from ashes. So has the Deathwatch.’

‘It has a name,’ Vangorich said to Wienand. ‘I’ve heard it more than once now. I didn’t anticipate that when I spoke to Koorland. I didn’t expect the identity to form so quickly or so definitively.’

‘That’s a problem?’

‘The differences between a conception and its execution can be a source of unease.’

‘I can’t believe you’re backing down from your position in the Council. You fought hard for this operation.’

‘I know,’ said Vangorich. ‘And I still believe in it. This is our best hope now.’

‘I’m still hearing but in your voice.’

‘We are many, and we are one,’ Koorland was saying. ‘Today we will strike the greenskins in a manner they cannot anticipate, and in a manner that already surpasses anything I might have hoped for.’

The roar of the assembled Deathwatch forced Vangorich to wait before responding. When the noise subsided, Wienand spoke first. ‘Surpassing hope isn’t necessarily a good thing, is it?’ she said.

He managed a tight, grim smile. ‘Do you think it’s entirely healthy for you to know me that well?’

‘For you or for me?’

Either, he thought. He shrugged. ‘The name. The colours,’ he said. ‘The black. I wasn’t expecting any of that. So coherent an identity so soon…’

‘The other High Lords anticipated this. Or something very similar.’

‘True. That doesn’t mean they were right about this force’s long-term significance.’ He became aware that Wienand was looking at him sharply.

‘Altering livery isn’t something the Adeptus Astartes do lightly,’ she said.

‘No. It may be a necessary gesture for this attempt to succeed.’

Wienand snorted. ‘You don’t believe that’s all it is.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘We’re witnessing the start of something that is going to be with us for a long time,’ Wienand said. ‘That’s what is bothering you, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ said Vangorich.

‘You don’t really believe Koorland is planning a coup, though, do you?’

‘I don’t.’ Vangorich sighed. ‘It’s not what he intends that’s the problem. It’s the thing he has created. The more successful the Deathwatch is, the more difficult it will be to disband. And Throne, we need it to be successful. But afterwards, what then?’

‘You just implied you trusted Koorland.’

‘If he doesn’t survive,’ said Vangorich. ‘If his successor sees more potential for the Deathwatch than the immediate crisis…’

‘Pessimist,’ Wienand said.

‘Pessimism is my duty,’ said Vangorich. He looked at her. ‘You don’t seem worried.’

‘I think you’ve been in the presence of the High Lords for too long, Drakan. They’re a bad influence. Their thinking is constricting yours.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m more intrigued by the possibilities than the dangers.’

‘You think the Council’s anxieties are groundless?’

‘I didn’t say that. If we consider them in the right light, they may in fact be the key to the possibilities.’

‘Which are?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

Koorland had finished speaking and the first of the kill-teams had followed him into the Thunderhawk. It lifted off, and a second gunship descended to take on Thane and the next squad.

‘I think we need to see how this day plays out first,’ Wienand said. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘I do,’ said Vangorich. She was right. And he did still believe in the effort under way. There were no other options left. Koorland had listened to his advice, and had adapted the philosophy of the Officio Assassinorum to the crisis, and to the Adeptus Astartes.

He had forged his blade.

‘We are directing the primary data-feeds to your vox-frequency,’ Adnachiel told Koorland.

‘I am receiving them. Thank you, Company Master. I wish I could be on the bridge with you.’

‘You are where you need to be,’ Adnachiel said. Inside a Thunderhawk, inside a landing bay, he thought. He respected Koorland. He accepted his authority as Lord Commander. For the combined efforts of the Chapters to maintain cohesion, centralised command was needed. Between the traditional calling of the Imperial Fists as the defenders of the Terran wall, and Koorland’s status as both a unifier of Successors and a warrior without a Chapter, he was the logical, least objectionable choice for that position.

Adnachiel also accepted the reasons for the Deathwatch. He supported the action. He expected the battle-brothers he had seconded to the kill-teams to commit fully to the effort, and to the cooperation with warriors from other Chapters, no matter what Chapters they might be.

He accepted all the necessities of the struggle against the Beast. Even so, he preferred Koorland to be in a position where Adnachiel had some control over the information he received. The Herald of Night was the necessary ship to make the run to the attack moon. It was not necessary that there be any presence on its bridge that was not a Dark Angel.

There were no visual feeds to the Thunderhawk, but Adnachiel ensured Koorland had a channel to the command vox and received a constant update of ship positions relative to the Herald. He would know the state of the battle. He would know when the moment came for the launches.

The strike cruiser cut through the void, closing in on the burning region of the attack moon.

‘The Imperial Navy still has the orks contained,’ Shipmaster Aelia said.

Adnachiel grunted. ‘They’re holding them only because this is the greatest concentration of ships to destroy,’ he said.

The tacticarium screens flickered as they adjusted to the constant changes. The positions of Navy vessels changed slowly compared to the darting swarm of ork ships. Their status changed far more quickly. Green icons flashed amber, then red, then vanished. The frigates and destroyers that made up the blockade fleet were far from being the largest at the Navy’s command, but each was still over a kilometre long, with crews numbering in the tens of thousands. The pace at which they were disappearing from the sight of the Herald’s auspex array was disturbing. The orks were feasting on the Terran fleet. There were fifteen destroyers, almost as many frigates, and scores of escorts still in the fighting. Nowhere near enough.

Adnachiel had to hope they would feast a little longer. He resented the necessity for that hope. His anger spurred his determination to see the moon destroyed.

He looked back and forth between the screen readouts and the cloud of battle visible in the oculus. A battle cluster was forming, growing tighter. The Imperial ships were converging as they sought to provide supporting fire for each other. The orks battened on the higher concentration of prey. The blockade still surrounded the moon, but as the Navy fell, gaps opened. The orks were not coming through them yet, but instead they appeared to be intent on the total annihilation of the blockade.

‘Commander, we have a possible course plotted,’ Aelia said.

‘Show me,’ Adnachiel said.

The mortal pressed a key on her command throne stationed just below Adnachiel’s pulpit. An arcing path appeared on the oculus, cutting through one of the gaps to bring the Herald of Night close to the surface of the ork base.

‘No,’ Adnachiel said. ‘The target is the interior.’ The nearest approach of Aelia’s route would force the kill-teams to breach a surface thick enough to be a planetary crust, or travel to the open maw. That would take too long, giving the orks too much time to detect and counter the attack. ‘The jaws are our goal.’

Ork interceptors still streamed from the vast launch bay. The grotesque mouth opened and closed in an imitation of speech. It was the Beast’s shout given visual form. It gaped wide, narrowed, then gaped again. It never shut completely.

‘Use the gap between the vessels,’ Adnachiel said. ‘Enter the battle by that path, then cut through to the maw. Maximum speed, continuous fire.’

‘So ordered,’ said Aelia.

The Herald of Night plunged towards the war. It was larger and more powerful than any ship still in the battle, and its approach altered the gravitational tides of conflict. Adnachiel tracked the readings and the oculus display. In his mind’s eye, he saw the full shape of the struggle. He saw the shifting currents, the networks of fire, the ripple effects of actions large and small. The cloud began to bulge towards the Herald. The movement was slow. The orks were becoming aware of what was closing in, but they were already engaged. The reinforcements coming from the moon turned in the direction of the strike cruiser. Some were destroyed by crossfire within moments of their emergence. Others became caught in the maelstrom of the war. Still others kept their heading.

‘The enemy has seen us,’ Aelia said.

‘And I see them,’ Adnachiel answered. ‘Maintain course. We will meet them and crush them.’

The strike cruiser entered the gap. To port and starboard, above and below the course of the ship, the void burned and screamed. The edges of the oculus flashed with lance and torpedo fire. Ignited plasma billowed towards the centre of Adnachiel’s vision. In the upper right of his view, a dozen ork interceptors dived towards the core of the destroyer Unstinting. Its void shields fell. Its hull, already compromised, erupted. A new star burst from the centre. Destroyer and interceptors vanished in its roiling embrace. Edging in from the left was an intersecting web of fire between two frigates as they struggled to cut down the horde of greenskin ships that circled them like feasting insects.

The gap between the battles had looked like empty void from a distance. Now it revealed itself to be a graveyard of broken hulks and dying gas flares. It was dense with ruin. The Herald of Night struck the corpses of ships with its prow. A huge tomb of ragged metal half a kilometre long tumbled end-over-end along the Herald’s length towards the superstructure. The void shields strained under the impacts, but held. Adnachiel saw the ruin fill the oculus, then vanish as the feed redirected to sensors on the other side of the obstacle.

The hulk slammed against the superstructure. The impact reverberated through the hull. Adnachiel felt it in the walls of the bridge and in the deck. The Herald of Night was moving fast, and the mass of the hulk was huge. The first red icons of damage reports appeared on the tacticarium screens.

‘Anomalous gravity readings,’ Aelia announced. At the same moment, strange waves swept through the ship and Adnachiel felt himself weighed down, then pulled upward as if he might fly to the dome of the bridge. Conflicting forces pressed against him. His Lyman’s ear resisted the disorientation, but still his sense of the vertical fragmented. It spun. He held steady. Below, officers and serfs lost their balance. Some fell from their seats. Servitors jerked upward and then down against banks of consoles. The hull groaned.

Adnachiel saw new meaning in the shape of the path. The orks’ gravity weapon had swept through these coordinates, a scythe for ships. The reports reaching Terra from the battle had indicated it was active, but in a limited fashion. Its area of effect was narrow. Its strikes were sporadic.

The orks were back, but the injury inflicted on them before was real, Adnachiel thought. The base was weaker.

The Herald of Night’s run was a wager. There was no pretending otherwise. But if the aftershocks of the weapon were still being felt, it had been used very recently. Adnachiel disliked wagers. War had too much chance in it already. To willingly engage with it was a form of moral carelessness. His hand was forced, though. And everything about the Deathwatch mission was a wager.

But the fading gravity effects were promising. If he must wager, perhaps he was making a good one. The Herald of Night ploughed onward through the debris field, speed undiminished. Ahead, Adnachiel saw a path to the curve of the attack moon’s surface. ‘Hard to port,’ he ordered. ‘Fire at will.’

‘Hard to port,’ Aelia confirmed.

The Herald’s bow turned from the darkened path towards the cloud of lethal light, and its batteries acquired targets and fired. The first ork interceptors came into range and died. The hull shook as the ship entered a zone of overlapping shockwaves. Hostile targets closed in.

‘Master of the Vox,’ Adnachiel called, ‘begin a broadcast to all Imperial vessels.’

‘Transmitting,’ Master of the Vox Enger confirmed.

‘Ships of the Imperial Navy,’ Adnachiel said. ‘We come to drive a blade through the heart of the greenskins. Hold the xenos. Do not allow them to deflect the blow.’ He paused. ‘End vox-cast,’ he told Enger.

Now the surviving officers of the blockade knew their situation. The Herald of Night had not come to reinforce them. Instead, their role was to support its mission.

If any still lived at the end of this day, they would receive the gratitude of the Imperium for their service.

The view in the oculus shifted, reflecting the changes to the Herald of Night’s course. The orb of the attack moon moved to the centre. It was partially obscured by the explosions of ships and the pinprick flashes of guns. Its maw snarled, hate made of stone and iron. The base grew larger.

‘How close…’ Aelia began.

‘As close as we are able,’ Adnachiel said. He shifted his stance in the pulpit, bracing for the inevitable lash of the gravity weapon, balancing risks, riding the lethal edge of the wager. If the Herald of Night took the full force of what the orks were capable of, the mission would end before it had begun. But he had to get the Deathwatch into proximity with the target.

‘Get us in a direct line with the jaws,’ Adnachiel said. If the gravity weapon fired, the orks would destroy all the ships they were launching. He did not think they would use it unless desperate. The war was still running their way. The blockade was coming apart like the rotten wall it was.

More and more interceptors closed in. The Herald’s batteries could not take them all down — they were fast. Their construction seemed crude, brutal shapes hurtling through the void, and they were not agile, but they absorbed more damage than Imperial ships of comparable size. They came at the strike cruiser with the murderous intent of guided meteors.

The Herald had left the false calm of the gap for the heart of the storm. Vast engines of destruction warred with machines of shrieking speed. Death lashed out over distances of tens of thousands of kilometres. The strike cruiser became the centre of gravity of the conflict. Ork and Imperial ships converged in response to its movements, and leviathans and lightning found a single focus. The space of the battle constricted.

Beam weapons and torpedoes slammed into the Herald. Crippled ork fighters hurled themselves against its shields as they died. In the oculus, the void became a strobing storm of explosions and energy discharges. The void shields rippled and flashed, red and searing violet.

The attack moon was huge. Its circumference surpassed the edges of the oculus.

‘Lord Commander Koorland,’ Adnachiel voxed. ‘Are you ready to launch?’

‘We are.’

‘Opening bay doors.’

Adnachiel stared straight ahead, at the void and the gaping rage of the target. In the corner of his eye, he saw the multiplying red of damage icons. He ignored them. He felt each shake and tremor of the ship as a personal blow. He stood fast, willing his ship forward. He knew its injuries. Let it know his determination.

The jaws were opening again. The interior of the ork moon filled the centre of the oculus. Adnachiel glared at the hunger of fire and darkness.

‘Launch!’ he shouted. ‘Launch!’

One more klaxon added its voice to the cacophony of warnings on the bridge. It was the only sign of the departure of the Thunderhawks until Koorland spoke again.

‘You have taken us to the threshold, brother,’ he said. ‘Now we have crossed it.’

‘Strike hard.’

‘The orks will feel our blow even on Ullanor.’

‘Bow up!’ Adnachiel roared. ‘Take us over the pole.’ He would make the orks pursue the prize of the Herald of Night. He would be their target. He would draw their eyes away from the insignificant ships flying into the moon.

Strike hard, he thought again. Strike hard.

Four

The ork attack moon

The three Thunderhawks flew into the maw. They came in low, beneath the flights of the ork fighters, and close to the port side of the jaws. They entered the throat of the monster, a colossal shaft reaching straight down to the centre of the moon. Energy flashed outside the viewing blocks as they crossed the threshold.

Inside the Reclaimed Honour, the Ultramarine Simmias said, ‘Some form of containment field. They’re maintaining their atmosphere.’

‘You’re impressed,’ said Koorland.

‘I am respectful of an opponent’s capabilities,’ the Techmarine said. ‘Doing less would lead to faulty theoreticals and disastrous practicals in battle.’

‘And what do you deduce that we don’t already know?’ Hakon Icegrip asked. The Space Wolf had not donned his helmet yet, and the low snarl of his breathing was audible in the hold. He was taut with impatience.

‘I deduce that all aspects of this base are receiving large amounts of power,’ Simmias said, unmoved by the challenge in Icegrip’s question. ‘Theoretical — much of the damage we inflicted before has been repaired, at least in terms of tactical effects. That is a lot of energy to devote to the preservation of atmosphere in a launch shaft.’

The Honour shook. Proximity warnings sounded. Koorland looked through the viewing block. The Thunderhawk was flying so close to the inner wall that it had clipped protruding scaffolding. The walls were crude, uneven, and they whipped by at such speed there could be no evading minor obstacles. The three gunships were travelling through thickets of ragged ends of iron and rock. They were not taking fire yet. Koorland dared to hope they had entered undetected.

‘What do you think, Simmias?’ the Blood Angel Vepar asked, pointing to the teleport homer on the Techmarine’s back. ‘Will it work?’

‘I can’t say. Too much of this technology is unfamiliar.’

He sounded suspicious. Koorland couldn’t blame him. The Imperial device had been modified so heavily it was barely recognisable. It was less bulky than the standard model, but had sprouted a tangle of cables and brass spheres.

‘The device is xenos-tainted,’ said Hanniel.

Koorland turned to the Dark Angels Librarian. ‘Of course it is. And we will use its taint to purge the larger one.’

‘While teleporting ourselves back to the Herald?’ said Icegrip. ‘There isn’t even a platform.’

‘Once powered, the machine will respond to the signal from the ship’s teleportation pad,’ Simmias said. ‘It is the Herald’s device that will call us back, while the ones we place on the moon will send it away. Theoretically.’

‘Theoretically,’ Vepar repeated.

Koorland glanced at Haas. She had said nothing since the launch from the Herald of Night. She stared out the viewing block, her face grim with pain and stony determination as she returned to her prison. As he watched, he saw her jerk, as if in bleak recognition. He didn’t think it could be. She had never seen the launch shaft.

Even so, at the same moment, the pilot Nithael voxed, ‘Approaching primary target.’

‘How close can you get us?’ Koorland asked.

‘I see a major avenue. It looks clear.’

‘Take it.’

The Reclaimed Honour slowed. The wall became less of a blur. Its details became clear as the gunship turned into a passageway wide enough for a battalion of tanks. The edges of the opening were broken, as if the tunnel had been cut here by violent action. The kill-team shed grav-harnesses and stood. The Thunderhawk came to a rapid halt, landing with a blast of exhaust nozzles. The forward ramp dropped, and the first of the Deathwatch squads stormed down onto the tunnel floor. Koorland led his squad and Haas off while the gunship lifted off again.

‘Good hunting,’ said Nithael. ‘I will await your return.’

‘Fly well, brother,’ Koorland told him. He watched the Honour turn back towards the shaft. There was a glow coming from it, dark and red illumination from the engines of the passing interceptors still heading out to fight the blockade. The other two Thunderhawks should be finding their landing targets very soon. The Reclaimed Honour’s departure was a good omen. Perhaps all three would exit the moon and return to the Herald of Night.

Perhaps this mission was not completely mad.

The tunnel they were in was almost wholly dark. A few guttering lumen globes dangled from cables. They were widely spaced. Between them hung the broken husks of many others.

‘This region is no longer used,’ Simmias said. He gestured at the cables. ‘There is illumination here by chance, not design. The power is going everywhere, even where it is no longer needed.’

‘But what was this used for?’ said Vepar. ‘Wherever it begins, it leads only to the shaft. What use is that for vehicles?’

‘The tunnel is for construction,’ Haas answered. ‘They build fast. The big passages allow them to mobilise quickly.’

‘Indeed,’ said Koorland. ‘Look how quickly they rebuilt after our attack.’ To Haas, he said, ‘There have likely been considerable changes. We have an approximate location on the auspex. Do you think you can take us there?’

‘I haven’t been there, but I can show you the best way to get around.’ She moved further along the tunnel, sticking to the right-hand wall. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing up.

There was an opening just below her head height on the wall. Haas reached up and pulled herself inside. Koorland and the others followed. It was just large enough for a Space Marine to walk in a crouch. There was no light here at all, though Koorland’s helm lamp picked out more tangles of cables and conduits on the low ceiling of the passageway.

‘I’ve seen the little creatures use these,’ she said. ‘There’s room for many of them, and these shafts keep them out of the way of the large orks.’

‘Vermin,’ said Icegrip.

‘Cunning vermin,’ Hanniel answered. ‘They will need to be silenced quickly. The point is not to bring the full horde down on us. We are coming as a shadow among the greenskins.’

The Space Wolf grunted, acquiescing. ‘A shadow with teeth,’ he said.

Koorland showed Haas the auspex. The readings were marked by numerous power surges. Three were singled out — two were close together, one much larger than the other. The energy source furthest away was the known quantity. It fluctuated moment to moment, winking out of existence then becoming explosively bright, more intense than any other signal on the screen. It was the gate. The orks had reopened it. The third kill-team would close it again, this time forever.

The other two targets were the ones whose locations were approximate guesses, reached through a combination of analysis of power signatures and Haas’ memories of her imprisonment. Koorland pointed to the larger of the two clustered targets. This, he hoped, was the attack moon’s power source. ‘Can you find the way?’ he asked.

‘I think so. I only saw it once. But there is a kind of order to the pathways here. Things flow to and from that location.’

‘Show us, then,’ said Koorland.

The shadows with teeth moved off.

The Penitent Wrath dropped Thane’s squad on a rough platform just outside a tunnel so ragged it would have seemed natural if the walls had not been made of patched-together stone and iron. The five Space Marines entered the crevice. It made a sharp turn almost immediately, then another, its path nothing more than a fault line between walls. Within seconds, the squad vanished from sight of the launch shaft.

The passageway angled left, then dropped down, and kept sloping downward.

‘This is taking us in the wrong direction,’ Asger Warfist said.

‘I know,’ said Thane. The extrapolated target was a control complex, located above the presumed power source. The mission was already riddled with uncertainty and guesswork. Moving down and away from the goal only added to the frustration. Thane played his helm lamp over the walls ahead, looking for any kind of exit.

‘There,’ said Abathar.

Thane stopped and looked up at the spot the Dark Angels Techmarine had isolated. Twenty metres up, where the sloping walls of the tunnel almost met, two openings faced each other.

‘No bridge,’ said Straton, the Ultramarine. ‘Do the greenskins leap over the gap in the dark?’

‘I suggest this passage is a result of a shift in the walls,’ Abathar said. ‘That tunnel is not likely to be still in use.’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Forcas. The Blood Angels Librarian pointed to a spot on the floor of the fissure, directly below the broken tunnel. Three ork bodies lay broken, smashed open against the raised, jagged edges of metal plating.

‘How do we get up there?’ Straton asked.

Thane watched Abathar examine the right-hand wall. Its surface was rough, a contusion of folds and cracks. He fired up the plasma cutter on his right servo-arm and played it against the wall. The light stabbed at the eyes in the gloom. It took only a few seconds for the cutter to melt through the stone and metal and form a rough handhold. Abathar looked at his handiwork, then back upward. ‘The lean of the wall is unfortunate, but acceptable. We can climb.’ He raised the servo-arm and burned another ledge into the wall.

It took ten minutes for Abathar to cut a ladder all the way to the top. Once inside the tunnel, Thane found the path hewing much more closely to the desired heading. Warfist strode at his side. Though he wore his helm, Thane could sense the Space Wolf’s impatience for battle in the quick jerks of his movements. He was holding himself back, though, and Thane noticed him checking on the movements of the rest of the squad, especially Abathar, weighed down by the cumbersome teleport homer. Given the history of tension between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves, Thane was pleased to see this automatic gesture on the part of Warfist. It made the black of the Space Marines’ armour more than a gesture. They were functioning as a team.

The creation of the Deathwatch livery had struck a resonant chord in Thane’s soul. He had seen an echo of the formation of the Last Wall. But that had been the coming together of Chapters who were all sons of Dorn. The Deathwatch was something else again. He did not know if it was more profound, or more meaningful. He did not try to guess at its consequences, though he knew they would be real, and far-reaching. He had pondered whether he too would change the colour of his armour. He had decided against it. He was part of the Last Wall, and its continued existence was necessary. It was about more than victory. It was about rebuilding.

The Deathwatch, he thought, was both simpler and more complex. It was the forging together of forces so disparate, in some cases so alien to each other, that loyalty to the Emperor was the only common bond. It did not exist to build, Thane thought. Not in the same sense as the Last Wall. But as he travelled the darkness of the attack moon, the colours of his own armour almost as shadowy here as the black of his squad, he was part of the Deathwatch blade. We do not stand guard, he thought. We are not the sentinels on the rampart.

We watch only to find the moment to strike. We are destruction.

They reached an intersection. The tunnel split into five paths. Thane stopped and consulted the auspex. The energy reading was to the left of their position, and two of the paths looked promising. All had cables running down them.

Since disembarking from the Penitent Wrath, Thane had heard the heartbeat of the attack moon. It was as deep and hard as a continent, irregular in its rhythm yet colossal in its strength. It had grown much louder since they left the crevice, booming now down all the tunnels. Dust shook from the roof of the passageway. There were other sounds too — a clamour of bestial snarling, the clangs of heavy blows, the high-pitched squeals of the vermin-like creatures that swarmed in menial servility around the feet of the orks.

‘We should wait,’ Straton said.

‘For what?’ Warfist asked, his patience stretching taut.

‘A frequency of traffic might point us to the correct route.’

‘That’s leaving things to chance at best,’ Warfist scoffed. ‘And wait how long? The success of the other two operations depends on us.’

‘Five minutes,’ Thane said.

Two minutes passed. Koorland’s voice came over Thane’s helm vox. ‘Squad Gladius, this is Sword. What is your status?’

‘Still searching.’

‘We have found the power source. Awaiting your action.’

‘Understood. What about the gate?’

‘Squad Crozius is also in position.’

‘We will take the target shortly.’ He vowed they would, if he had to punch his way through the interior walls of the moon.

‘Good. The Emperor protects.’

‘The Emperor protects.’

In the fourth minute, brutish voices sounded closer in the far left passageway. Thane held up an arm, waiting a few seconds more. The noises came closer. The other paths were silent. Warfist was right — Straton’s surmise was barely more than a guess. But the direction of the tunnel was correct, and there was little else to go on.

The bobbing glow of portable lamps appeared in the tunnel.

Thane lowered his arm.

Warfist shot forward, fists tight, arms extended, lightning claws at the ready. Thane and Straton followed, each with gladius drawn. The kills had to be silent. Forcas and Abathar brought up the rear.

Warfist rounded a curve in the tunnel. The voices became snarls of alarm. As Thane reached the curve, a shout was cut off, turning into a wet gurgle. He heard a sound like heavy bags of meat slapping against rock.

He made the turn. Warfist was in the centre of a group of about a dozen orks. Two lay dead. He had plunged into the centre of the greenskins and was fighting the largest. It was taller than Warfist, its head brushing against the roof of the tunnel. A huge wound gaped in its throat and its jaws were wide in near-silent, choking fury. It swung a massive hammer at the Space Wolf. Warfist jabbed with his left claws, sinking them deep into the greenskin’s arm at the elbow. He twisted. The greenskin’s hand opened, nerveless, and the hammer fell to the tunnel floor. A second later, so did the ork’s lower arm.

The other orks charged the kill-team. Thane pulled back his blade, then struck forward with servo-aided force. The gladius stabbed all the way through his target’s throat and out of the back of its neck. Thane slashed sideways. The ork’s head, half-severed, lolled back. Blood geysered; the body fell. Thane leapt over it and grasped another ork by the face. The beast jerked back in surprise and Thane yanked it forward. The greenskin chopped futilely at his armour with a heavy cleaver before Thane rammed the gladius into its chest. He angled the blow upward, drove the blade higher, cutting through gut and heart.

Beside him, Straton took down two more orks in swift, cold, precise strikes. A handful of others were still rushing forward. They were snarling in rage, and in their fury they were not shouting in alarm. Anger was the norm among orks. Even if those snarls reached others, they would not pay attention as they would to a summons.

Abathar’s plasma cutter burned through a pair of skulls. Warfist gutted the giant and turned back to impale the last of the attacking greenskins through the spine. That left the smaller, scuttling creatures. Their squeals were drowned out by the snarls of their masters. They fled, scrambling over the corpse of the monster, fast in their panic. Just a few metres ahead, Thane saw what looked like burrows in the stone. If the tiny xenos reached those holes, they would be impossible to follow. He reached for his boltgun, willing to risk the noise of concussion blasts.

Forcas stepped forward, right hand outstretched, energy crackling from his psychic hood and down his arm. Lightning flashed from his fingertips and struck the vermin, searing them to ash. There was a sharp crack of thunder. The smell of burned ozone filled the tunnel. The air rippled with the after-effects of dissipating warp power. Warfist’s wolf-headed helm turned from the smoking remains of the creatures towards Forcas. If he was disgusted by the Blood Angel’s sorcery, he refrained from saying so.

‘We have gained some time,’ Straton said. ‘But we have little to spare.’

‘Agreed,’ said Thane.

They moved quickly down the corridor. The pounding of machines and the violent discharge of energy grew louder, covering the sound of their boots as they ran. The tunnel twisted, then came to a stop.

It opened into a huge cavern. From this position, Thane could see only a small portion of its upper reaches. Ahead was a rough metal ramp leading up to what appeared to be a massive promontory that jutted out into the space of the cavern. At the top of the promontory was a roofless structure. The tops of its walls were angular, as if it were a jagged iron crown and energy coils rose from the corners, leaning out over the void. Innumerable cables ran from the base of the structure and into the air below the promontory, or down its slope into other tunnels opening up on the wall along its base. Some were as thick as Land Raiders. Searing light flashed from inside the structure. Energy arced and snapped from the coils, and the booms of the discharges were deafening.

In the gaps in the walls, figures moved back and forth, silhouetted by the pulsing light within. They were large. Their forms were strange, built up with something artificial that had the wrong shape for armour.

There was activity up and down the ramp as hordes of the tiny greenskins hauled wagons of equipment up, and burned-out debris back down. The creatures were urged to greater efforts by orks wielding shock prods.

‘A clear run to the top,’ Warfist said over the vox.

Thane eyed the traffic on the ramp and agreed. These orks were not a serious obstacle. ‘The alarm will be raised,’ he warned. ‘Our time will be limited.’

‘What time we have will depend on Squad Crozius,’ said Straton.

‘The timing of all three squads is critical,’ Forcas said. ‘We must have faith in them, and they in us.’

‘For Terra and the Emperor, then,’ said Thane. ‘For the Deathwatch!’

‘For the Deathwatch!’ the squad shouted, voices amplified by vox-casters.

Warriors in black stormed out of the tunnel and up the ramp, into the rising shriek of orks.

‘Ingenious,’ said the Blood Angels Techmarine Gadreel. ‘Despite the damage the Last Wall inflicted, the orks have managed to amplify the power of what remained.’

‘I have had more than enough of their ingenuity,’ said Iairos.

The Ultramarines sergeant had led Squad Crozius to a small tunnel that ended three metres up from the floor of the gate chamber. Based on the reports of the first engagement, a large portion of the cavern must have fallen in. It was still well over a kilometre wide, but to the right of the kill-team’s position was a massive collapse. It looked as if a mountain had fallen on the machinery that powered the gate.

Where there had been three Titan-sized horns, now there was only one, a monstrous patchwork that appeared to have been assembled from the wreckage of the previous three. Its balance was precarious, its upper half thicker than the lower, and its peak was a colossal, trifurcated claw. Countless support chains now ran from the horn to the walls and slope of rubble. The horn trembled and vibrated from the energies fed to it and summoned by it. Eldritch light exploded and imploded in the centre of the claw. Every time the burning force collapsed in on itself, there was a cave-filling flash on the platform at its base, and another war party of orks appeared.

‘There is our primary target,’ said Gadreel. He pointed.

To the left of the tunnel, an enormous power cable six metres thick entered the cavern. A short way to the right, it split into myriad smaller cables, running power to the hulking machines that, in turn, provided energy and direction to the functioning of the gate.

‘They are vulnerable,’ said Valtar Skyclaw. The Space Wolf Rune Priest looked up at the horn. ‘The unclean energies here are on the cusp of overwhelming their material constraints. We will destroy this gate forever.’

‘Not until we claim its power source,’ Gadreel said.

‘Aye,’ Skyclaw admitted.

‘Where is Gladius?’ the Dark Angel Vehuel asked.

‘Nearly in position,’ Iairos said. Until the power was shut off temporarily, they could not attempt to splice into the main cable and link it to Gadreel’s teleport homer.

‘How long will it take to cut into that?’ asked Eligos, the second Blood Angel.

‘Not long,’ said Gadreel.

‘Attacking control centre,’ Thane called over the vox. ‘Stand by. Stand by.’

Time accelerated and slowed at once. With Thane’s call, the mission entered the narrow window of success. The timing of the actions required from all three squads came down to a matter of seconds. Sword and Crozius could not take their targets until the power flow was under the control of Gladius. Thane’s squad would not be able to hold their position if Crozius did not stop the reinforcements from arriving. Crozius could not risk destroying the gate without also destroying its teleport homer.

The allotment of seconds crawled as Iairos took in the variables of the battlefield. He saw the vectors of action and their possible consequences. He waited, forced to guess at the moment and duration of Thane’s success.

So many unknowns.

Theoretical: action must be predicated on the known skill of allies.

Practical: attack at the opportune moment based on the presumption of skill.

He gave Thane a few more precious seconds.

Then he leapt from the tunnel, leading Squad Crozius towards the main cable’s junction.

The moon’s power plant was the size of a city. The cavern was so huge that Koorland could not make out the far walls. Haas brought Sword to an entrance on the floor of the cave. Her sense of how the shafts worked had been accurate, and the squad had moved quickly. They had encountered a few groups, quickly despatched, of the dwarfish greenskins.

Now the Deathwatch was surrounded by generators larger than hab-blocks. They were hulking machines, squat despite their height. It was impossible to see more than a few hundred metres in any direction. The generators sat at all angles on the cavern floor. The paths running between them were wide, but never straight for more than a few dozen metres.

A tangled forest of cables ran between the generators. They trembled and convulsed with surges. Sparks flew from flawed junctions and haloes of lightning crackled down their lengths. The din was immense, a deep, continuous tremor that vibrated deep in Koorland’s chest. The sound was so thick, it tried to stop his hearing. The sharp snap of energy cut through the tremor with a searing arrhythmia. The cavern rumbled and shrieked with the roars of beasts and the hiss of serpents. It rang with the endless, grating choir of xenos industry.

‘There is the power of a small sun here,’ Simmias said as they paused at the entrance. ‘We cannot cut in blindly.’

‘And we come to steal this energy, not to destroy it,’ said Koorland.

In the flashing gloom, orks clambered up and down the generators. The energy production was so violent, every few moments Koorland saw an electrocuted greenskin tumble from the heights of the machines.

‘There are so many generators,’ Vepar said. ‘How can we let Gladius know which node to shut down for us?’

‘We take the nearest,’ Simmias said. ‘Damage it, but do not destroy it.’

Vepar turned to the Ultramarine. ‘That smacks of messy improvisation.’

‘There is no perfection in this situation,’ Simmias told him. ‘The practical is constructed from the necessary.’

‘Improvisation, in other words,’ Vepar said. Koorland thought there was a glint of amusement in his tone.

Thane’s declaration of war came through the vox. ‘We go now!’ Koorland shouted.

Squad Sword raced towards the nearest generator. The labouring orks saw the Space Marines and Haas and roared in surprise and rage. From the ground and from the scaffolding of the generators, they opened fire. The rain of bullets was disorganised. The aim was wild.

Hakon Icegrip took the lead of the charge, ripping through orks with frost blade and bolt pistol. He howled as he ran, the fury of his voice a terrifying, distorted rasp from his vox-casters, a monstrous cry at once animal and machine. The squealing orklings fled before him. Icegrip gave their masters no time to respond. He ploughed through an explosion of blood and flesh.

Haas was not far behind him. She sprinted from enemy to enemy, her shock maul at full power, its blows immobilising and burning the orks before she finished them with autopistol rounds to their skulls. She was shouting, but Koorland could make out no words. Her cries were a pure expression of vengeance and rage. She had returned to the moon to avenge a defeat, and to purge her nightmares of the billions dead.

Vepar moved in tandem with Koorland. The Blood Angel used his bolter, cutting down orks that tried to close in on the flanks of Icegrip and Haas. Vepar fired in precise short bursts. Every pull of the trigger counted. Where he looked, greenskin heads burst apart. There was a careful art to his kills, a restrained wrath channelled into a perfection of aim, as if something worse were held in check by the force of discipline. Hanniel and Simmias followed at a more measured pace. They were no less destructive, their bolter fire systematic.

The run from the tunnel to the generator covered hundreds of metres in a single, relentless burst of speed. As the squad approached the huge device, Simmias’ fire turned from the orks to the generator. He shot at the junction points on the near facade, blowing away cables. They fell, lashing back and forth. Hanniel reached out for the orks on the scaffolding. An eldritch storm bellowed over the generator, wher two lightnings entwined and fought, the warp against the materium. Orks screamed, incinerated by the warring forces, their corpses dropping, falling to ash before they reached the ground. The generator was enveloped in coruscating power.

The kill-team reached the base of the generator, tore through its defenders, then rounded a corner. Ahead was a cable twice Koorland’s height.

‘There,’ said Simmias. ‘That one.’

‘Thane,’ Koorland voxed. ‘We have our target. Do you see it? Shut it down!’

The ork engineers were ready for Gladius. Thane and Warfist burst across the threshold first. Three engineers faced them. They were large beasts, made even larger by the harnesses they wore. Power coils and portable generators rose from the greenskins’ shoulders and backs like the arcing spines of saurians. The air around them shimmered. Static broke out across Thane’s auto-senses as they reacted to an overload of energy. He had trouble focusing on the targets. Their image juddered, a cracking mosaic, and his lenses fought to stabilise. He paused and fired. His shells exploded on contact with the orks’ force fields.

Warfist snarled with frustration and rage. He hurled himself at the nearest engineer and the force field flared from the impact of the lightning claws, then collapsed with a deafening concussion. Warfist grappled with the ork. It struck him with a heavy tool that resembled a fusion of a shock maul and a plasma cutter. Electricity and flame washed over the Space Wolf’s armour.

The other two orks came at Thane with similar weapons. He maglocked his boltgun and raised his chainsword, throwing himself at the closest ork, using his mass and velocity against the barrier of the shield. He felt the resistance as an invisible force that pushed against him and stabbed through his armour and his body with powerful jolts. A vibrating numbness suffused his limbs. He pushed on, the chainsword sparking and shrieking. There was a blast, and his blade moved quickly again. He brought it down on the ork’s skull and cut it in half before it could hit him with its weapon.

Warfist punched through the shocks and flame and jammed his lightning claws through his opponent’s throat. Before the third ork could attack either Space Marine, Abathar entered the control centre and hit the beast with his power axe. Two energy fields collided. The interior of the centre blazed with their fury, then the axe blade broke through. It severed the largest of the ork’s energy coils. The harness exploded, consuming the ork and hurling Abathar back out of the entrance. He was back in the next breath.

Outside, Forcas and Straton held off the orks seeking to retake the centre. The speed of the counter-attack did not concern Thane. He had expected such a response as soon as Gladius had attacked. What worried him was its strength. The orks already numbered more than a hundred. The choke point of the ramp and the lack of shelter gave the Deathwatch an advantage, but two defenders would not be able to hold off the horde for long. Warfist lunged out of the doorway to join them.

Koorland’s report came over the vox.

‘Sword is ready,’ Thane told Abathar. The Techmarine nodded and approached the control surfaces of the centre. They were crude and massive, like everything else fashioned by orkish hands, but Thane regarded them with more wariness than contempt. The power the orks wielded belied the rough construction.

There is technology here that is beyond our own, he reminded himself. The controls were a conglomeration of huge, clumsy levers, switches and buttons. They flashed with bursts of energy. Thane could not tell if the flares were overloads, short circuits, or if they were deliberate. Since the giant coils at each corner of the centre gave off so much excess, it was as if the centre were caught in a perpetual storm. Thane had no way to guess if the small blasts from the controls were by design or not.

Beyond the control surfaces, there was no wall. The centre was perched on the very edge of the promontory. Thane had a perspective of the entire power plant, of kilometres of colossal, linked generators. From this height, he felt as if he were looking into a cauldron of lightning. He could see no order to the construction. It seemed to be haphazard, machines piled atop machines, connections as superfluous as they were dangerous.

How were these beings a threat? he wondered. How had they not destroyed themselves? How could any of this work? How had it not blown up the instant it was activated?

The questions multiplied, though he knew there would be no answers. The Mechanicus might know them. Perhaps not. The answers did not matter. The action did.

Seconds had passed since the death of the ork engineers. Thane contained his impatience as Abathar examined the controls. The seconds were precious. Yet a mistake would be catastrophic.

Abathar was cautious. His helmet moved back and forth as he scanned the controls. He touched nothing, though Thane sensed the speed of his evaluation. After a few moments, his attention focused on a section of the controls to the far left. He looked back and forth between the cavern and the technological jumble before him. ‘There,’ he said. He pointed to flames at the extreme left of the cavern. ‘That is a true fire.’

Thane looked. Abathar was right. The flickering light also suggested flames close to the ground. All the other flashes Thane could see came from no lower than the cables, midway up the flanks of the generators.

‘A generator in distress,’ Abathar said. He moved his hand to a switch. Just above it, sparks flew with a surprisingly steady rhythm. ‘That,’ the Dark Angel said, ‘is what passes for a remote alarm with these brutes.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘As sure as I must be.’ He flipped the switch.

The sparks ceased. Exposed wiring glowed red, then went dark.

‘Sword, this is Gladius,’ Thane voxed. ‘We believe we have cut the power to your generator. Please confirm.’

‘Confirmed,’ Koorland said after a moment. ‘Splicing in.’

Thane turned to Abathar. ‘And the gate?’ he asked.

The Techmarine had already moved to the other end of the control banks. ‘The machines grow brighter towards the right,’ he said. ‘There is a higher intensity of power gathering there. We must seek the greatest current.’

Thane looked off to the right, following the pattern of light. The flares converged at a blinding point that pulsed in and out of existence. ‘I see it,’ he said.

‘As do I.’

‘But it is not damaged.’

‘There appears to be a rough concordance between the position of the generators and their controls here. A crude organisation, perfect for these brutes.’

These brutes who perform wonders we cannot hope to emulate, Thane thought. Even so, Abathar’s logic was sound. The orks combined brutishness and ingenuity in a manner that defied comprehension. It was necessary simply to accept the fusion and attempt to counter its effects.

Abathar wrapped his gauntlet around a lever the size of a bolter. He nodded at Thane.

‘Crozius,’ Thane voxed, ‘we are attempting to cut the power to the gate.’

‘We are ready,’ said Iairos.

Abathar pulled the lever. It moved with a foul metallic grinding, as if the end of the shaft went all the way to the core of the attack moon. An ear-shattering klaxon sounded. Scores of crackling warning flares shot up from the consoles around the lever.

‘You have angered the ork machines,’ said Thane.

‘Good.’

In the distance, the searing point dimmed to an ember, then went out.

‘The gate is closed!’ Iairos shouted, triumphant. ‘The gate is closed!’

Thane grinned. He imagined he could hear a howl coming from the throat of every ork on the moon as their device ceased to respond to their commands. He checked the clip on his bolter. ‘Now we wait on the others,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you can convince the orks to have patience,’ said Abathar. He unshouldered the teleport homer and extended its mechadendrites. His servo-arm’s plasma cutter sliced open a portion of the control surface, exposing a madness that Thane could barely qualify as technological. Abathar began linking the homer to the madness.

‘On what basis can we expect that to work?’ Thane asked.

‘On faith,’ Abathar answered. ‘The Mechanicus has made this a human device, but the taint of the xenos remains. On this day, that taint is necessary. It will permit the union of the homer to the greenskin network.’

‘Then you have my faith and my hope,’ Thane said. ‘The Emperor protects.’

‘The Emperor protects.’

Thane clapped Abathar on the pauldron and made for the door.

Outside the control centre, a green wave surged towards the ramp.

Iairos fired his bolter in a wide, repeating arc. Greenskin chests and skulls burst apart. Bodies fell on bodies. A mound of corpses grew. He timed his kills carefully. Theoretical: each foe killed at the right moment becomes a new obstacle to the others. Already he had created a protective wall of flesh taller than a man, blocking the left-hand and forward approaches to Squad Crozius’ position.

Behind him, Gadreel had cut into the housing of the giant cable. Where it began its branching into the smaller lines, he was connecting the mechadendrites of the modified teleport homer. The device would draw upon multiple branches of power.

‘How long?’ Iairos called out.

‘Nearly there.’

On the right, Vehuel and Eligos added to the wall of bodies. Skyclaw stood atop the mound, the centre of a shrieking storm. Winds flattened the orks as they struggled to close with the kill-team. Lightning struck them down when they dared to attack the Rune Priest. His axe blade shone a brilliant, frigid blue. Ice flew on the wind, sharp as steel, lacerating flesh, slashing faces. Orks staggered on the top of the mound, blinded by ice shards. They screamed, holding their eyes. Blood poured from between their fingers. Iairos did not waste shells putting those brutes down. When they came within Skyclaw’s reach, he decapitated them with a single, wrathful stroke of his runic axe.

‘A grand battle!’ Skyclaw shouted. ‘Son of Guilliman, you have led us to a rare feast!’

‘We will avenge the dead of Ullanor yet,’ said Eligos.

‘By the will of the Emperor,’ Iairos said. Yet he felt the pressure of passing time. The gate was dark, and the orks’ attention was divided by the simultaneous attacks on three fronts. The squads were benefiting, Iairos thought, from the uncertainty over which target was the most important, the most vulnerable. The orks were fighting blindly, for the moment without the direction that had made them so lethal on Ullanor. But the confusion would pass, and they were still mustering ever greater numbers of reinforcements. Greenskins poured out of every tunnel entrance. They converged on Crozius at a run. They died on the near approach.

For now.

Iairos calculated his team was at the edge of what it could hold off. And once Gadreel’s task was complete, they would be facing a much greater flood of the enemy.

‘Done,’ said Gadreel. ‘Let us bear witness now to the will of the Omnissiah.’

‘Thane,’ Iairos voxed. ‘Let the current flow.’

The orks were concentrating their fire now. With Sword no longer moving, the attacks were becoming more and more focused and savage. Desperate too, Koorland wanted to believe. He wanted the orks to know doom was rushing for them. He wanted them to know fear. He wanted them to know fate had turned its back on them at last.

Simmias had cut through a slab of the generator’s shielding. While he spliced the teleport homer into the inner workings of the machine, Koorland, Vepar and Haas held the ground attacks off. Icegrip had climbed up to the cable network. The lines were thick enough to walk on, and he raced over the network, taking down the ork gunners. Xenos blood rained on the cavern floor. Bodies hailed down upon their kin. Hanniel’s warp lighting lashed out again and again, burning more of the greenskins above.

And still the enemy fire became more and more focused. Solid rounds pounded against Koorland’s armour. Some of the rounds were large enough, the hits direct enough, to punch through the ceramite. He blinked off the damage warnings. There was no shelter, and nowhere to go until the task was done.

Haas’ armour was shattered over her chest and shoulders, though she still had her helmet. She kept moving, dodging from one end of the squad’s position to the other. Her shouts had become a raspy snarl. Her breath was pained. Her shots counted, though. She fought with the purpose of a warrior certain of her death, and as certain that she would take the enemy down with her.

‘Now!’ Simmias shouted.

‘Now!’ Koorland repeated into the vox. ‘Thane! It must be now!’

‘Turn the power back on!’ Thane voxed to Abathar. The roar of the attacking orks was too great for him to make himself heard otherwise. He did not look back. Standing above Forcas, Straton and Warfist, he sprayed bolter shells down the ramp into the rising tide. The four Space Marines killed the greenskins by the score, but the tide still grew. The orks charged over heaps of bodies. There were thousands of them massing at the base of the ramp, the press of the mob pushing them on. Their horde was so dense, it pushed even the dead forward.

There would be no retreat through the tunnels.

Squad Gladius slowed the orks. Each second was a victory, Thane thought. Each second might be the victory.

The orks did not engage in massed fire, wary of destroying the centre they had come to save. If they had, Gladius would have already lost.

There was a huge flash behind Thane. For a moment, the ramp and its combatants were lit in negative colours.

‘Power restored,’ Abathar reported. ‘The devices are charging.’

The gate burst into life. A foul, captive star blazed in the grip of the horn. It vanished, and an emerald explosion on the platform released a mob of heavily armoured orks and a tank into the cavern. The tank had a massive, spiked siege blade. It thundered off the platform in a cloud of black promethium smoke. Its hulking silhouette bristled with guns. Iairos saw it barrel across the cavern floor and knew the mission’s strategy had become desperate.

‘If they start using heavy armour…’ said Vehuel.

‘They may be willing to sacrifice what we have seized,’ Iairos finished.

The tank’s blade struck the wall of bodies. The rampart was taller than a Space Marine now. It toppled forward, a carrion wave. Skyclaw turned towards the vehicle. The storm gathered around him. It surrounded him with a gleaming, whistling shroud of razor ice. He shot his arms forward and the storm screamed with all its concentrated strength into the tank. Ice slashed through every gap in the armour, tore the plating, and shredded the crew. The tank swerved, out of control, but its turrets still barked. A shell slammed into Skyclaw. It hurled him from the remains of the corpse wall. He hit the cavern floor with such force he cracked stone. The storm died.

The Space Wolf’s icon blinked an ominous amber in Iairos’ helm display.

The tank was still moving. Iairos ran forward, his bolter on full auto-bursts. He held the gun in one hand, and with the other he unclipped a frag grenade. He jumped up the fallen wall, hurling the grenade through a rent in the armour. The cab of the vehicle exploded. Torn bodies flew out of it. The tank rode over the wall and then stopped, a new obstacle.

The gate flashed again. More orks appeared. And more tanks.

A snarl erupted from a vox-caster. It was a sound that began as something vaguely human, rising until it became a monstrous shriek of hunger. It was nothing but need, a drive that was beyond human, beyond animal. At first Iairos thought he was hearing the wolf howl of Skyclaw. But the Space Wolf had not moved.

The sound came from Eligos.

The Blood Angel had left his position to the right of Gadreel. He tore over the ground towards the nearest group of orks. They were racing to finish off Skyclaw, who had risen to his knees. Eligos pounded past the Space Wolf, chainsword drawn, and plunged into the orks, blade roaring. He did not fight as he had before. Gone was the elegant exactitude of his violence. He was worse than a butcher. His blows were savage, careless, lethal. The roaring from the vox-caster cut off as he shed his helmet. His face was contorted. It was a rictus, his teeth bared as if they would devour hunger itself.

Eligos was not rescuing Skyclaw. But his whirlwind of violence blunted the orks’ attack long enough for Skyclaw to regain his feet, lift his bolt pistol and shoot back. Iairos and Gadreel rushed to his position. Vehuel moved in more slowly, maintaining a wide field of fire, cutting back at the advance of the horde for another second, and another second.

Iairos stood at Skyclaw’s side, blasting at the enemy. Gadreel ran to Eligos. The Techmarine called to his brother, shouting his name over and over. Eligos did not respond. He tore the orks apart. The tide closed in on all of them, a constriction of foul smell, brutal muscle, drooling fangs and misshapen blades. A vibrating chainaxe cut into Iairos’ flank. He spun into the hit, firing as he turned. The stream of mass-reactive shells pulped the features of his attacker and the orks on either side.

Gadreel blinded one ork after another with his plasma cutter. He called and called his brother’s name in vain. Iairos did not understand the nature of the frenzy that had taken Eligos, but at this stage he almost welcomed it. The Blood Angel fought with such reckless fury he was forcing another small pause on the ork advance.

Iairos stood back to back with Skyclaw, a wall of huge, green brutishness before him. The Rune Priest’s breathing on the vox was ragged. The readout of his life signs was still flashing amber.

The teleportation device was still charging. A hum filled the cavern. It was gargantuan. It was in the walls, the floor, the air. The entire moon vibrated. A terrible song was coming into being. Soon it would have a voice.

‘A few moments more,’ Gadreel voxed. ‘A few—’

Light.

Light of breaking. Of dissolution. Of shattering, of edges, of fragmentation.

The end of here and the end of there. Death of space. Death of time.

Death.

Light of breaking.

Light of breaking.

All bro

ken.

Koorland gasped. Blood filled his mouth and his lungs. He was standing in the centre of the teleportation platform of the Herald of Night. Haas was on her hands and knees, shaking with enough force to fracture bone. All the squads were present. The other Space Marines seemed as unsteady on their feet.

He had never experienced a teleportation like this. He had been ripped into nothing, then reassembled, and every particle of his being remembered the pain of destruction and rebirth. Between the two lay an infinitesimal portion of a second that was as wide as aeons.

The hum was still growing. He could feel it even this far from the moon, through the hull of the strike cruiser.

He commanded his body to move. It obeyed with reluctance. With limbs of crumbling rockcrete, he walked from the teleportation platform. By the time he and his brothers reached the bridge, he could run again.

In the oculus, the moon was still there. The homers had functioned as Kubik had promised. They had locked on to the sensors in the armour and transported the tiny mass of the Deathwatch kill-teams before they had gathered the full power needed to send the ork base out of the sector.

‘Why has it not gone?’ Haas whispered. Her teeth chattered. She did not yet have control over her body.

‘It will. We are victorious.’ Koorland said this even as he watched the explosions of the void war. Nothing was finished.

But the teleporters worked. They were working. They had triumphed.

Staring at the moon, Simmias said, ‘That is… unexpected…’

The mountains, canyons and plains of the ork base were suffused with a shifting, retina-slashing glow. And they were moving. The mountains rocked back and forth. Peaks collapsed in on themselves. The canyons of iron pulled wide, the crust of the moon tearing like flesh. The plains heaved as if inconceivable leviathans were struggling to the surface.

‘What is happening?’ said Koorland.

Simmias shook his head. ‘The theoreticals of the technology do not account for this. The disassembly of the material body is instantaneous.’

‘It didn’t feel like it,’ said Haas.

‘This geomorphic distortion is abnormal.’

‘Shipmaster,’ Adnachiel said, ‘pull us back.’

Simmias said, ‘There is no distance we can reach. Our fates have already been decided.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Vepar.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Koorland repeated. He barely heard his own voice. He watched the vast agony take the moon. He saw dissolution approach.

We have done this to you, he thought. We have ended you. We are victorious.

There had been few triumphs in this war. If this was his last one, he would enjoy it.

The end came first as a brilliance that consumed the spectrum. Koorland’s lens shutters slammed down, but not fast enough. He saw the absolute light still.

The shutters opened again, and let him see the moon’s end. Half the sphere had vanished. What remained looked like a skull cut cleanly along a diagonal line. That form held just long enough for Koorland to understand what he was seeing. Then it erupted.

A swarm of asteroids hurtled through the void. The shattered surface tore through the warring ships.

He had begun coming to the Cerebrium again. Mesring did not let any of the other High Lords know. They did not come because of what they feared to see. They hid from the light of the ork moon under the cracked dome of the Great Chamber.

Mesring came to see the very thing that kept them away. The top of the Widdershins Tower pierced the clouds more often than any other point of the Inner Palace. Mesring was confident of being alone here, and of being able to contemplate the moon.

He saw the flash. Suddenly, there was an impossible shape in the heavens. Then it flew apart.

Mesring gaped. He stared. His mind was blank except for an inchoate horror.

The great light faded. Where the moon had been was a sudden blackness, the return of the void.

Smaller flashes and glints surrounded the absence where the moon had been. Some of the glints grew stronger. They became more consistent. Their number grew.

He understood nothing. He was bearing witness to a transcendent death, and his thought could not encompass it. He stood at the casement, his body numb, all his awareness focused on a point hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.

The points came closer. The glints became shards of white light. Still he did not understand.

He stayed where he was, fear and horror and helpless anger combining in an alchemy of madness.

He was standing there, blank, lost, when the fragments of the moon entered Terra’s atmosphere and the night caught fire.

The bones of the attack base fell on Terra. Flaring molten red from their descent through the atmosphere, they hammered the continental expanse of the Imperial Palace. Where there was night, titanic explosions created day. Where there was day, millions of tonnes of ash and dust blanketed the sky and brought down a reign of night. Sectors the size of hive cities vaporised. Millions looked up in the final seconds of their lives, and saw the mountains of iron and stone come for them. Millions upon millions more knew nothing. They moved through their entombed lives, far from any view of the sky, ignorant until the blow, the fire, the cathedrals turned to ash, the towers’ crushing fall.

Shockwaves annihilated ramparts. Winds of hundreds of kilometres an hour raged outward from the craters. Firestorms were a hundred kilometres wide. The dead at impact were fortunate in their ignorance or their momentary horror before oblivion. The victims of flame and wind and burial knew terror. Death came to them with great fear and pain.

Victory was choking, burning, suffocating, dying.

Victory was the most terrible destruction for a thousand years.

The greater meteor swarm spared the precincts of the Inner Palace. Small fragments fell closer, pulverising roofs. They slashed the night with streaks of fire. One struck the Widdershins Tower a glancing blow, shattering the plex-glass windows of the Cerebrium.

The big strikes fell beyond Mesring’s view of the horizon. The huge fragments vanished, and then he saw the awful sunrises of fireballs. The glow of devastation was the hammer blows of a wrathful god. Then the wind and the dust came for him, reaching into the Cerebrium with a furnace blast. He screamed, then. The hand of the Beast itself had come to claim him. He fell to the chamber floor, abandoned to a monstrous transcendence.

He was not found for two days. Even then, he was still screaming.

Five

The Immitis System

They reached the Immitis System, and it was burning.

The Fists Exemplar translated out of the warp shortly after the Iron Warriors. The Palimodes was already in combat. A single ork ship was attacking the base in the system. It was a leviathan, much larger than the Iron Warriors strike cruiser, larger even than the Fists Exemplar battle-barges. It was a hulking shape, wider than the Dantalion and Guilliman combined. A black, snarling, metal beast of war, a thing of shields like tectonic plates and volcanic weaponry, it orbited the industrial moon of the system’s gas giant. The ork ship battered the surface with a barrage of torpedoes. Ranks of immense cannons jutted out beneath its hull, running the entire length of the ship. They fired shells the size of Thunderhawks.

At this distance, the moon appeared in the Dantalion’s oculus as a metallic tangle. It was only a few hundred kilometres in diameter. Industrial works covered the entire surface. The gravity was too weak to sustain an atmosphere, and the belching of thousands of chimneys floated off into the void. The grey mass of twisting pipelines and manufactoria was lit now by blossoming fire.

‘Shipmaster Marcarian,’ Zerberyn said from the bridge pulpit, ‘set course for the starboard flank of the enemy.’ The Palimodes had engaged the port. ‘Weapons masters, target shields and weapons.’

Marcarian looked up from the throne. ‘Not the engines?’

‘No. The vessel’s orbit is too close to the moon. Anything like a plasma detonation might destroy… our goal.’ His hesitation was brief, and he hoped it was not noticed. He had been uncertain how to refer to the moon. It was a world of slave manufactoria controlled by the Iron Warriors. He had just ordered the preservation of a Traitor possession.

Of course you have, he thought. We need the resources to make repairs. I am honour-bound to aid Kalkator for the moment. And I do not intend to destroy a second world on this mission.

The reasons were good. The reasons were true.

They also sat uneasily in his heart.

Marcarian communicated Zerberyn’s orders to the rest of the flotilla, and the Fists Exemplar vessels adjusted their course. The ork battleship had not reacted to their presence yet. They had the luxury of planning an attack.

‘Master of the Vox,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Hail the Palimodes. Command channel.’

‘So ordered.’

‘Your arrival is welcome, if tardy,’ Kalkator said a moment later.

The Iron Warrior’s grim humour made Zerberyn’s neck muscles tense. It seemed to carry a presumption of brotherhood, one that Zerberyn was unable to reject as fully as he knew he should. He responded as if Kalkator had said nothing. ‘You cannot risk the destruction of the enemy.’

‘We cannot,’ Kalkator agreed. ‘Not in its current position.’ The effect of the warsmith’s voice was diminished by the distortions of the vox. Even so, it was harsh, the sound of spikes against a millstone.

‘You plan to board it?’

‘We do. We will be in position to attack the bridge shortly.’

‘If your ship survives long enough.’

‘Quite.’

The orks were hitting the void shields of the Palimodes with punishing broadsides. The strike cruiser was surrounded by a desperate flaring of red. Like the Dantalion, the damage it had already sustained was considerable. It would not be able to take much more.

‘We will launch boarding torpedoes to aft starboard to coordinate with your attack,’ Zerberyn said. ‘We will work our way forward and silence their guns.’

‘Then we shall meet on the bridge,’ said Kalkator, and signed off.

Zerberyn became aware of a presence to his right. ‘What is it, Brother Mandek?’ he said.

‘We are fighting alongside the Traitors again?’

‘Yes,’ Zerberyn said. He was unable to keep all the irritation from his voice. ‘Why are you asking? We travelled with them to Immitis. Or did you think we were following them in order to lay an ambush?’

Mandek gazed at him levelly. Zerberyn had been given command of the mission by Thane, but Zerberyn and Mandek had held the same rank until a few days before that. Mandek appeared to want Zerberyn to remember this. ‘I needed to hear it said,’ he said.

‘Why?’

Mandek frowned. Instead of answering directly, he said, ‘I’ve just come from the astropathic choir.’

‘Why?’ Zerberyn said again.

‘I wanted to know if there had been any message sent to the Chapter Master.’

And again, Zerberyn said, ‘Why?’

‘You have not communicated with him since we began travelling this path with the Traitors, have you?’

Was Mandek refusing to name the Iron Warriors, Zerberyn wondered, or was he simply choosing to state what they were until Zerberyn acknowledged that truth?

This was not the time, he thought. There was a slippery tightness in his chest.

‘What is your point?’ Zerberyn said. He gestured at the oculus. ‘We are entering battle.’

‘There has been another message from Chapter Master Thane,’ said Mandek.

‘Oh?’

‘We are ordered to return to Terra with all haste.’

‘So we shall.’

Mandek blinked.

‘Do think the flotilla can travel that distance through the warp and arrive intact?’

‘No,’ Mandek admitted.

‘Then we will make repairs first. Or are you suggesting we ignore the ork battleship before us?’

The dark look Mandek gave the oculus suggested he wished the Iron Warriors and the orks the pleasure of each other’s company.

‘We cannot go far in our present condition,’ Zerberyn insisted.

These are all true things, he thought. All of them.

‘Is there a message for the Chapter Master?’ Mandek asked.

‘Yes. That we have heard, and proceed as ordered.’

‘You will inform the astropathic choir of this message?’

Zerberyn forced himself not to bristle. ‘No,’ he said. He met and held Mandek’s gaze. ‘You will.’

Mandek nodded, satisfied. ‘So ordered.’

They were both pretending now that the decision had been entirely Zerberyn’s.

‘Good. Let’s kill some orks first.’

The boarding torpedoes from the Fists Exemplar flotilla drilled through dozens of metres of shield. They burrowed through the skin of the ork vessel like worms through earth.

Outside the hull, the vessels of the Fists Exemplar and the Iron Warriors had the battleship surrounded. The strike cruisers Paragon, Implicit and Courageous were so heavily damaged they had to keep further back and within the shelter of Dantalion and Guilliman, but they too pounded the enemy with cannon fire. The orks had no need for void shields. The vessel’s plating was so thick, so dense, that shells burst against it with little effect. It retaliated, redirecting some of its firepower from the bombardment of the moon to target the ships.

Zerberyn felt the blasts of the gargantuan cannons as his boarding torpedo ground its way forward. He was in the flesh of the enemy, and it shook with each concussion of its immense turrets. ‘Shipmaster,’ he voxed, ‘all torpedoes are breaching the target. What is your status?’

‘Our shields are at the limit,’ said Marcarian. ‘The hits are counting.’

‘Get some distance. I want something to return to when we are done here.’

‘So ordered.’

The torpedoes burst through the outer hull. They came out in emptiness. Zerberyn and his squad were suddenly weightless as the torpedo dropped. It struck hard, and its front hatch blew open. Zerberyn lunged forward, bolter held out before him.

The torpedoes had arrived in the lower third of a gallery that stretched for over a kilometre towards the bow of the vessel. Multiple levels of catwalks ran along the bulkheads. They led to the entrances to the turrets. The centre of the hull was a criss-crossing of metal platforms, bridges and ladders. In the vastness of the space, the web looked gossamer-thin. Orks swarmed over the structure like insects, running transport trains of shells to the guns, carrying materiel and tools as the web crumbled and shook with every blast of the guns.

They had taken the orks by surprise. Enemy fire was sporadic. The greenskins raged, hurling blades. They overturned their transports, derailing them and sending them and their contents hurtling down on the invaders.

‘Destroy it!’ Zerberyn ordered. He dodged a rain of gears heavy enough to crush a mortal. ‘Tear this structure down!’ He threw krak grenades at the base of the nearest scaffolding. Up close, the strength of the construction was clear. The girders were all at least a quarter of a metre thick. It was the obscene power of the cannons and their recoil that subjected them to such inconceivable stress. Ahead and behind Zerberyn, his brothers used more krak grenades and melta bombs.

The explosives went off within seconds of each other. A score of detonations turned the anchor points along a long section of the starboard base to liquid. The blasts melted through the bases of four supports rising from the bottom deck, and their collapse triggered a chain reaction. The tangle of metal web fell. Cables snapped and catwalks whipped away from bulkheads. Orks were crushed beneath thousands of tonnes of falling iron. The interior of the battleship echoed and rang with the avalanche of metal and the howls of the dying. The flow of ammunition for the entire section ended. The guns would soon fall silent.

Zerberyn led the charge towards the bow. The Fists Exemplar alternated between firing into the gunnery compartments in the starboard bulkhead and triggering further collapses of the scaffold. They had left the boarding torpedoes hundreds of metres behind before the orks mounted a true counter-attack.

They came from the upper cannon emplacements to starboard, and from all levels to port, pouring out of hatches and tunnels. The furious green tide flooded the gallery.

‘Keep advancing!’ Zerberyn ordered. ‘We’ll kill the guns, then finish off the crew.’

Squad formation tightened. The Fists Exemplar became their name. They were a fist of ceramite, a fist over a hundred battle-brothers strong, a fist that punched through the enemy, leaving blood and flame in its wake. The density of bolter fire was ferocious. On the flanks, flamers washed jets of ignited promethium over the greenskins. Zerberyn inhaled the smell of burning xenos flesh even through his rebreather. The pungent stench crumbled beneath the purging burn of fuel.

The orks shot and slashed at the formation. Their own crowd worked against them. They cut each other down with their own guns. They could not bring their mass to bear unless they isolated battle-brothers. The fist kept advancing, killing orks with every step. It was a long, slow, inexorable blow. The greenskins threw themselves against the formation and died.

‘They are doing our work for us!’ Mandek voxed.

He sounded energised by the combat. Zerberyn glanced back. Mandek was close to his position, flamer reducing the enemy to ash. He fought with exuberance, and that was the battle-brother Zerberyn knew — the firebrand on the battlefield, not the worried soul he had seen on the bridge of the Dantalion.

‘Then we should make them work harder yet,’ Zerberyn said.

The leading edge of the fist formation threw more krak grenades ahead. They melted flesh as well as iron, and the collapse of the scaffold web spread.

Ten metres from the end of the gallery, after the last of the cannon enclaves, there was a large door in the starboard bulkhead. Zerberyn had just passed it when it blew open. Three monstrous orks stormed out. As big as Dreadnoughts, they were clad in armour that mirrored that of their vessel. They were huge, massively shielded. Two of them wielded what appeared to be power chainfists and claws large enough to peel open the hull of a Land Raider. They flanked the third, who had a flamer nozzle on either arm. It bellowed in eager rage and bathed the Fists Exemplar in fire.

The assault was a flaming deluge that swept over the formation. The temperature inside Zerberyn’s armour rocketed and fire covered his helmet. He could see nothing except the burning red. He fired towards the position of the orks, shooting blind, as did all his brothers for many rows of the formation.

‘Rush them!’ Zerberyn ordered. The flamer would be useless to the ork at point-blank range.

He ran to his right, still firing, still blinded by the unending stream of liquid flame. He could hear the roars of the giant orks over the din of battle, and that was enough of a guide. He pulled out his chainsword, revved its engine and thrust the whirring blade forward.

He collided with a moving wall. The impact stopped both him and the wall. The wall growled. It hit him from the side with something massive. He flew back and to his right, landing in a heap of fallen iron, outside the wash of the flamer, and he could see again.

The ork’s flamers launched the promethium with a pressure as high as the volume was enormous. It enveloped most of the Fists Exemplar’s formation. The fist had changed direction, had lost some of its coherence, and the flanking orks were smashing into it with their massive power limbs. The flamer ork turned off its weapon as the flaming mass it had created closed in to grapple with it. The greenskin attacked with piston-driven arms. It hands were strong enough on their own to rip a man in half.

Zerberyn was at the edge of the formation. Smaller orks surrounded him. He kept his back to the wreckage and climbed a few steps, gaining elevation. He severed arms and heads with his chainsword, holding back the tide while he looked for the opportunity to take down the giants.

He climbed another step. An ork leapt for him, arms outstretched to pull him back down into the greenskin cauldron. Zerberyn slammed the hilt of his chainsword onto the ork’s skull. He shoved its head down with such force that the beast impaled its throat on a spur of shattered girder. The ork twitched and writhed, helplessly pinned. Its blood poured down the jutting metal angles.

The flames were dying down, and the Fists Exemplar could see again. Bolter shells blasted away chunks of ork armour, but the giants had not slowed at all. Dead battle-brothers, bodies crushed and dismembered, lay at their feet. The flamer ork lunged down and seized a Space Marine. It lifted him clear of the formation.

It held Mandek. His left arm was pinned by the ork’s grip but his right was free, and he thrust his chainsword through the ork’s jaws. The beast uttered a choking shriek, tightening its grip convulsively. The sword cut through its throat. Mandek strained and hauled the blade to his right. The upper half of the ork’s head slid to the ground.

The body twisted to Mandek’s left as it began to fall.

Zerberyn had a clear shot at the fuel tanks on its back. He sent a full burst of shells into their centre. His brothers nearest the ork stepped back as the tanks exploded. The blast stunned the other two orks. The flash was dazzling, but Zerberyn’s auto-lenses flickered over his eyes, blocking the glare. Now he and his brothers had a few seconds of advantage where they could see and the greenskins could not.

A huge gout of flame erupted over one of the giants. The inferno flowed through every chink in its armour. The ork became a screaming, towering torch, flailing its arms, as blind as its foe had been moments before. The Fists Exemplar surged forward again, pressing their advantage.

The monster began to go down under the concerted assault.

The body of the flamer ork was still standing, like a monstrous idol that refused to topple. And it still held Mandek in its death grip.

Zerberyn leapt off the rubble. He smashed and cut his way through the stunned enemy, rejoining the formation. He skirted the edge of the fist, wielding his chainsword like a scythe, parting muscle and tendons. Orks fell before him, but he was wading in a muck of grasping limbs and blades. Too slow, too slow, he thought.

The seconds fell away, sluggish and fatal.

Mandek was cutting through the dead ork’s armoured limb. His chainblade sent out showers of sparks.

Too slow, too slow.

Behind Mandek, the third monster reached out with a claw. It hammered its power fist on the deck. Battle-brothers threw themselves out of its path. The blow was so powerful the deck rippled like water. Zerberyn stumbled as the surface beneath his boots dropped and jerked.

He reached the flames of the burning ork, and he could move faster. He slipped under the arms of the dead ork. He looked up into the leering face of the remaining giant.

A straight shot. Up through the jaw guard of its helm and into its eyes.

He brought up his bolter.

Too slow. Too slow.

The ork’s power claw closed around Mandek’s head.

Zerberyn fired.

The claw snapped shut.

The ork’s face disappeared. Its skull disintegrated. The hail of shells knocked the remains back in its helm with explosive force. This greenskin did not remain standing after it was dead. It fell backward. The closed power claw dropped away from Mandek’s headless corpse.

The giants were dead. The number of the other orks was dwindling.

Then Kalkator’s voice was on the vox, that double voice of ancient warrior and of something else even older, that voice of an enemy, yet that voice strangely welcome. ‘We have taken the bridge, Zerberyn,’ he said. ‘What is your status?’

‘The starboard guns are silenced, or soon will be,’ Zerberyn said. He took up his position at the head of the formation once more. The Fists Exemplar moved forward, grinding the orks into the deck. ‘The ammunition flow is disrupted. We will be moving to the port side now.’

‘We will join you there. The ship will soon be ours.’

‘Good.’ Zerberyn blinked the channel closed.

He looked forward to his left and to his right as he advanced, shoulder to shoulder with his brothers through the smouldering wreckage of the gallery. They were leaving brothers behind. At the rear of the formation, Apothecary Reoch would be retrieving the progenoid glands of the fallen, preserving their genetic legacy and the continuity of the Fists Exemplar. The brothers had not fallen into oblivion, and they had not fallen in vain. Their deaths gave him sorrow. He found acceptance in the thought of their gift to the future.

It was Mandek’s death that bothered him. Zerberyn had been unable to save him. There was nothing more he could have done. He knew this to be true.

And yet…

I did everything possible. No one could have saved him.

He repeated these truths to himself as if they were weak, and must be reinforced or else they would fracture and turn into lies. He repeated them in the hope they would bury his awareness of the other thing he was feeling.

Relief.

Mandek’s oblique accusations were silenced now. So were the questions he had asked.

And the astropathic message to Thane would not be sent.

He could not be saved, Zerberyn thought. Snarling, he blasted a charging ork’s torso to shreds.

He could not be saved.

He could not be saved.

Every step of the march through the gallery, Zerberyn repeated the words. They began as a refrain. Gradually, they became something more. Something very like a prayer.

He could not be saved.

He could not be saved.

There could be no salvation.

Six

Terra — the Imperial Palace

On Daylight Wall, Koorland watched and listened to the night. He had hoped to return to find the silence banished. Instead it was waiting for him, between the sounds of celebration, coiling around the lights in the dark.

This is the victory I have brought you, Koorland thought. Perhaps the citizens of Terra did not feel the silence. Or perhaps they were trying to banish it. Koorland could make no such pretence.

The silence of the dead regarded him from the depths of the night.

There were fires burning out there, but they were the bonfires of celebration and thanksgiving. The flames of destruction caused by the moonfall had been extinguished. Most of them. Towards the equator, one of the firestorms still burned. And the devastation would take centuries to repair.

In orbit above Terra, there was more damage. The void war had ended with the destruction of the moon. Many Imperial Navy vessels had been destroyed. Others barely limped back to port. At least the ork interceptors had been obliterated by the shockwave of the moon’s explosion.

Earlier in the day, in the Great Chamber, Koorland had listened to Tobris Ekharth read the tally of victory. Hundreds of millions dead. Entire regions of the Imperial Palace had vanished. Some of the craters were ten kilometres wide. So much dust had been thrown into an atmosphere already dark with pollutants, day had been banished for years to come. Terra cycled through the heavy gloom of evening to the most profound night. Ash fell across the globe, white and grey and black, an accumulation of dry, gritty snow.

When Ekharth had finished, Koorland looked at Kubik. ‘Why did this happen?’

‘The analysis of this event is ongoing,’ the Fabricator General said. ‘We may be years from a definitive answer.’

‘Then give us a theory.’

Servos hummed. Kubik inclined his head. ‘Our adaptation of ork technology is still imperfect. We postulate that we failed to account sufficiently for the variance between our modifications and the originals. It is possible the teleportation of the moon would have been successful had the devices been powered entirely by our own energy sources. The attempted integration, however, failed.’

‘The xenos and the human cannot coexist,’ Veritus said quietly.

‘Well observed, inquisitor,’ said Kubik. ‘We might hypothesise a technological conflict. One that was resolved with the teleportation of only one half of the moon.’

‘To where?’ Koorland asked.

‘We do not know.’ Kubik waved his mechanical fingers. ‘The destination is unimportant. Given the energy released, we may presume that what vanished met the same fate upon arrival as that which remained.’ The fingers coiled into tight spirals. The gesture looked very like frustration. ‘These reasons for failure remain conjectural. We will need considerably more experimental data to obtain a more complete understanding of where we succeeded and where we failed. It is unfortunate that none of our sensors survived.’ His optics turned to Koorland. The gaze felt accusatory.

‘The equipment on the Herald of Night was destroyed?’ Lansung asked.

‘Scanning and recording devices were,’ said Koorland. ‘All circuits were melted when the kill-teams were teleported back to the ship.’

‘Very unfortunate,’ Kubik said. ‘Very unfortunate.’

Koorland had felt little sympathy for Kubik’s disappointment at that moment. He felt even less now. The crowd noises that reached his ears were the voices of people who had experienced true loss, not the private disappointment of the Mechanicus.

Yet the citizens of Terra were celebrating. Ceremonies were being held in every chapel and cathedral. The dead were mourned, and the Emperor was thanked. The ceremonies began in the false day and continued into the hard night. With the coming of night, the festivals began too. In the courtyards of hab complexes, on roofs of manufactoria, in the streets and in the marketplaces, the crowds gathered. They sang their praise of the Emperor. They celebrated the valour of the warriors who had destroyed the face in the sky, the face that had mocked them, threatened them, and shouted ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ at the world for so many days. They celebrated the fall of the face of the Beast. They celebrated as if the war had been won.

Koorland did not begrudge the people their celebration. That they could rejoice at all was cause for hope. But there was a sound he did not like. He had heard it since he had landed, after the Thunderhawks had escaped the meteor storm. He heard it now: two syllables that rose between the prayers to the Emperor. He heard his name.

He was the hero of Terra. He had returned bloodied from Ullanor, only to wreak vengeance on the Beast and banish it from the skies. He was the author of this victory.

Koorland accepted he was the author of this night. He wondered whether it was proper to call it a victory. A battle had been won, at the cost of a new catastrophe. And the war was not won. He had only destroyed one of the Beast’s masks. The true monster was still on Ullanor, enthroned in the capital of his newborn empire.

‘Congratulations, Lord Guilliman.’

Koorland winced at the use of the title. He glanced to his right. Veritus had joined him at the rampart. Koorland grunted. He didn’t ask how Veritus had known he would be here. He did wish it was Vangorich who was standing there. ‘For what, inquisitor?’ he asked.

‘For the Deathwatch. For its official recognition by the High Lords.’

‘That was nothing more than what the Council had agreed to, prior to the mission.’ Mesring, he was sure, would still have objected. But Mesring had not been present in the Great Chamber. He was, it was said, resting. If so, that was an improvement over raving and screaming. Koorland saw no downside to the Ecclesiarch’s collapse.

‘In any event,’ said Veritus, ‘you have what you wanted.’

Koorland refused to rise to the bait. ‘If you truly believe that was my intent, you are a fool, and I don’t believe you are.’

Veritus nodded once. ‘Politics are never your intent, Lord Guilliman.’ He emphasised the title, reminding Koorland of what he had become, whether he liked it or not. ‘But politics are your effect. You imposed your will on the Council. They accepted the temporary formation of the Deathwatch, and now that it has proven itself, they are forced to accept its permanence.’

‘Permanence? You think the other Chapters will consent to its existence beyond the end of the war?’

‘And do you think no further crises will arise which would create the need for it?’

This was not a debate Koorland was interested in having. Especially not with the Inquisitorial Representative.

‘What I think,’ he said, ‘is that you did not seek me out to offer congratulations.’

‘No.’ The old man’s gaze was lidded and dark. ‘The Deathwatch did well on the attack moon. Your strategy against the Beast is sound. I am curious, then. How will you use it on Ullanor? How will you decapitate the orks?’

Again Koorland wished Veritus away and Vangorich present. He did not trust the inquisitor. Even though he would reveal his plan of attack to the Council, he recoiled from the idea of Veritus having advance knowledge of it.

Koorland shrugged. He had no plan for Veritus to learn. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

He was surprised to hear Veritus express sympathy. ‘I do not envy you the responsibility of this decision. We live in a dark age. The orks are stronger and more advanced than they have ever been, and the Imperium cannot do what once it could. We have fallen far.’

The admission took Koorland aback. It seemed that it was Veritus who wished to speak. Behold a wonder, he thought. The Inquisition seeks to unburden itself.

‘I have read the chronicles,’ Koorland said, hoping to prompt more from Veritus.

‘They are far from complete. So much has been forgotten in a thousand years.’ Veritus paused. ‘There are archives…’ he began, hesitated again, then continued. ‘During the Great Crusade, we would have had the means to counter the Beast’s weapons.’

‘I can well believe it.’

Veritus changed the subject abruptly. ‘Have you thought about how the Deathwatch will neutralise the ork witches?’

‘What do you mean?’ Koorland asked, wondering how much Veritus knew.

‘I have seen the Black Templars’ data,’ the inquisitor said. ‘The witches, I would think, are key. Kill them, and you have your decapitation.’

Koorland sighed. Why did he think there was anything he knew that Veritus did not? ‘True,’ he said.

‘How will the Deathwatch destroy them?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said again. Dark laughter welled up from his chest. ‘Like you said, if this were the Great Crusade, we would have the means. Vulkan mentioned a special force — anti-psykers called Sisters of Silence — who would have been sent against the witches.’

‘The Sisters of Silence,’ said Veritus. ‘So named for the vow of silence. They were warriors of a particularly rare sort. They were psychic blanks. Their mere presence disrupted a psyker’s ability.’

‘You seem to know quite a bit about them.’

He wondered how. The archives of the Inquisition were deep, their memories long. But Veritus had the knowledge so easily at hand. Veritus nodded, but offered no explanation.

‘Such a force would be a gift from the Emperor,’ Koorland said. ‘If we could neutralise the greenskin psykers, then decapitation would be possible. But as you say, we have fallen since the days of the Great Crusade.’

Veritus was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Not all have fallen.’

‘Who hasn’t?’

‘The Sisters of Silence.’

‘They still exist?’

Veritus nodded. ‘I believe so. Some.’

Where? Koorland tried to say. His tongue refused to obey him. The silence he had confronted since Ullanor rushed towards him, and it was not the thing he had believed. It was not the judgement of the past. It was the presence of fate.

‘Where?’ he managed, speaking not to Veritus, but to the silence.

‘Do you believe him?’ Thane asked.

‘Do we have a choice?’ Koorland replied.

They were in Thane’s quarters, in the small office outside his meditation cell. There were the bare necessities for command — a desk, two chairs, a vox-unit. A stained-glass portrait of Dorn covered the lone window.

The warriors of the Last Wall were stationed in the Imperial Fists barracks at the base of Daylight Wall. There were too many empty cells, Koorland thought. Too many reminders of compounded loss. At least some were occupied.

‘He hasn’t given us much to go on,’ said Thane.

‘I don’t think he has much more.’

Thane shook his head. ‘The Inquisitorial Representative is urging you to seek a myth, using a few uncertain clues as a guide. This really was Veritus?’

‘And he wishes to accompany you.’

‘How reassuring. He…’ Thane stopped. ‘Me?’ he said.

‘This won’t be the only Deathwatch mission,’ said Koorland. ‘We can’t attack Ullanor yet, but there are other targets that will make a difference. Mine is the ultimate responsibility and command for the whole. I must remain here. So yes, you and Squad Gladius.’

Thane frowned. He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘I will do as you command, of course,’ he said.

‘But you have another concern.’

‘As Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar, yes.’

‘What is it?’

‘I have repeatedly ordered the return of the rest of the fleet. Especially after our losses, we need the reinforcement to fulfil our duty of defence of Terra.’

‘Spoken like a true son of Dorn,’ said Koorland.

‘I ask to be nothing else.’

‘Repeated orders, you said?’

Thane nodded. ‘Most recently just before we departed for the ork base.’ He picked up a parchment and presented it to Koorland.

‘Is that the response?’ Koorland asked as he took it.

‘No. It’s a message from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica confirming that there has been no response.’

‘You have had no news from them?’

‘Nothing more recent than what the Black Templars relayed.’

‘The worst may have befallen them.’

Thane nodded again.

‘That doesn’t satisfy you,’ said Koorland.

‘I have considered that possibility. It could well be the truth. I was cut off from that portion of the fleet, and there were Traitors in the field as well as orks. Even so. All the ships destroyed without being able to send a single message?’

‘That does seem unlikely,’ Koorland admitted.

‘That unlikelihood in those particular circumstances concerns me.’

‘With justification,’ said Koorland. ‘However, what action can you take?’

Thane grimaced in frustration. ‘None,’ he said.

‘You are needed on this mission more than you are on Terra,’ Koorland went on. ‘And as I told you, Veritus is going too.’

Thane let out a bark of mirthless laughter. ‘We aren’t just going where an inquisitor points us. We will be led by the Inquisitorial Representative himself. We will trust a High Lord not to take us to destruction?’

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘We aren’t going to trust him at all. He knows the way to where he thinks you may find the Sisters of Silence. Use his information. Listen to what he has to say. But the mission is yours. You are a Chapter Master leading Adeptus Astartes. The Deathwatch is not the Inquisition’s to command.’

‘Agreed. He’ll try to assume that authority, though. That’s a certainty.’

‘His tactics do not appear to be subtle. So far, at least. His power grabs have been accompanied by a clear belief in his entitlement. All the same, be wary, especially when you find the Sisters.’

‘You mean if, don’t you?’

‘No.’ Koorland spat the word out. If he denied the possibility of failure with enough force, perhaps he could will what the Imperium needed into existence. ‘They must be found. Without them…’ He stopped himself. Had he been about to say that unless the myths were discovered to exist, the war was hopeless? No. He would not permit himself so unworthy a thought. But oh, the weight of the defeats. It grew and grew, his shoulders straining to hold it up. Even the victories were partial, and came at so great a cost they were difficult to regard as triumphs. And so many victories led only to greater defeats. He and Thane had already found one myth, only to lose Vulkan forever on the blood-soaked ground of another legend.

And now another search. Once again on the sword point of desperation.

‘No,’ Koorland said again. ‘When you find them. You will.’

‘Because I must,’ Thane said. His face was lined with sorrow. He looked over at the stained-glass portrait of Dorn. ‘Do you think, when this war has run its course, we will have destroyed all the myths that were left to us?’

‘If we do,’ Koorland said, ‘we will create new ones. If we have to embody them ourselves.’

On the landing pad of the pocket space port, Wienand approached the warriors of Squad Gladius. ‘Politics,’ she said, ‘is a disease.’

The Space Marines were preparing the Penitent Wrath to leave from the only launching facility within kilometres of the barracks that had not been devastated by the meteor storm. They would be departing within hours. Veritus had not joined them yet. Wienand had guessed he would not arrive until shortly before the launch.

Thane and the warriors in black looked at her, motionless.

‘You have no love for politicians,’ Wienand continued. ‘Look where the Council has brought us. But politics are inevitable. There is no cure for the plague, and no immunity. Look at yourselves. The Deathwatch is political in its elements, and deeply so in its effect.’

‘Why are you here, inquisitor?’ Thane asked.

‘I’m here to contain the damage of your current infection.’

Warfist growled. ‘You think we would accept a second inquisitor on this mission?’

‘When that inquisitor is myself, yes.’ She walked across the launch pad, stopping near the gunship’s ramp. ‘I notice you take for granted that I know the nature of your mission.’

‘If you’re here,’ Abathar said, ‘then you know.’

‘No games,’ said Warfist. ‘State your intent or leave us.’

‘I’ve already stated my intent. And you are all playing the political game whether you admit it to yourself or not. But you’re right, I should be clear. You know Inquisitor Veritus and I do not work hand in glove.’

‘You are both inquisitors,’ said Forcas.

‘Which did not stop him from attempting to have me assassinated. He did succeed in having me deposed as Inquisitorial Representative.’

‘And?’ said Thane.

‘You should think of me as a check against his game.’

There was silence as the Space Marines exchanged glances. She waited in their midst. She did not withdraw to give them privacy. They would have to grow used to her presence. She watched them think through what she proposed. She had no authority here. She could only be invited. But if Thane, as mission commander, requested her presence, Veritus would not be able to overrule him.

‘Why do you wish to come?’ Straton asked.

Because there is great potential in what the Deathwatch is and does, she thought. Because I won’t let Veritus seize that potential for himself. What she said was, ‘Because I need to see what you will find.’ That, too, was the truth.

Vangorich had told her what Koorland planned. ‘The Sisters of Silence,’ she had said. She had never expected to speak those words. Years before, in the vaults of the Inquisition’s fortress, she had read about them, and many other organisations that might or might not have existed in the far reaches of time. She had never believed the order still endured. There was no reason to do so. The Sisters had vanished into a myth-shrouded past. What they represented…

She had not yet allowed herself to articulate what they meant, because the hope of their reality still felt like a forbidden one. Yet when she had spoken to Rendenstein about what Vangorich had told her, and what she planned, she had seen in her bodyguard’s face the same need, the same desire to hope, and the same caution. Rendenstein understood.

Thane was wearing his helmet. Wienand could not see his expression. But in the slight cocking of his head, she thought there was understanding.

‘You found one legend,’ she told him. ‘I need to be there when you find another.’

A low, weary chuckle emerged from the helm’s vox-grille. ‘Is that all?’

She grinned. ‘What do you think?’

Seven

Sacratus

The Sacratus System was a dark one. It was in an isolated sector in the eastern region of the Segmentum Pacificus, far from trade routes. It lacked any strategic value. The sun that shone on Sacratus was so distant, the light that reached the shrine world was frozen. It was the glint of ice, and the memory of solitude. The sluggish winds of the planet’s thin atmosphere stirred nitrogen snows over the roofs of mausoleums as large as manufactoria. The architecture reminded Thane more of an encrustation than of solemn remembrance. Sepulchres and vaults and chapels were built into and atop one another, tumours of granite and marble connected by tendrils of staircases.

Squad Gladius and Wienand followed Veritus down the staircases. The route was labyrinthine and patchwork, flights descending for hundreds of metres or less than five. Sometimes Veritus chose a direction that climbed back upwards for a few minutes, then he would take a sudden turn downwards again. Sometimes he would pause and consult his data-slate. For the most part he walked without hesitation.

‘He is sure of his way,’ Straton said.

‘Very,’ Thane agreed. ‘What do you know of this world?’ he asked Wienand.

She walked just ahead of the squad, a few steps behind Veritus.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I had never heard of it before now.’

‘You have not been looking at the correct records,’ Veritus said without looking back. The old man took the stairs with a surprisingly limber gait, even in his environmental suit.

‘Oh? And which ones were those?’

Veritus didn’t answer.

Eventually the staircases were no longer in the open air. The Deathwatch moved past and through shrines that had been buried by the others.

‘This is an underhive of remembrance,’ said Forcas.

Thane shone his light over the statuary. ‘What era is this from?’ he asked Veritus.

‘The Great Crusade,’ Veritus said, ‘and a few centuries after. Then it was forgotten.’

Thane supposed he should not be surprised. Sacratus was off the trade routes. There were no habitable planets in the system and it had no strategic value. He could imagine the memory of the world fading until it was a name on mouldering lists. That did not explain how Veritus knew of its existence.

At last they reached a door guarded by two caryatids in ancient armour. Their mouths were covered by grilles in the form of Imperial eagles.

‘You’ve been here before,’ said Wienand.

‘No,’ Veritus replied.

They passed through the high arch between the caryatids. A domed space lay beyond. Sarcophagi ringed the periphery, and statues lay in repose on each tomb. They wore the same armour as the tomb’s guardians. Veritus pointed upward.

‘There,’ he said. ‘That is what we’ve come to see.’

The Space Marines directed their lamps at the dome. Its fresco, dim with age and frost, depicted a group of female warriors. Cloaks billowed behind their armour, blending together, becoming thunderclouds edged with fire. The women held their swords upraised, converging towards the centre of the dome, where a red sun blazed.

‘The stars,’ Abathar said.

‘Yes,’ said Veritus. ‘That is what we came here to learn.’

The red sun was at the centre of a pattern of stars, Thane now saw. ‘A chart,’ he said.

‘Of where?’ said Wienand.

‘Of the location of Vultus,’ Veritus said. ‘One of the principal fortresses of the Sisters of Silence. This one is close to the edge of Imperial space. If unsanctioned psykers hoped to find refuge at the frontier, they were mistaken.’

‘What makes you think we’ll find them there?’ Thane asked.

‘I have accounted for the other, less remote fortresses. They are all abandoned.’

‘That doesn’t explain why this one won’t be,’ said Wienand.

Veritus shrugged. ‘That is where we must go,’ he said.

The Herald of Night’s Navigator identified Vultus’ system as Extorris. When the strike cruiser translated from the warp, the red giant filled the oculus with sullen crimson light.

‘Hostile contacts!’ the Master of the Auspex called out.

‘The orks are here?’ said Adnachiel.

‘Yes, lord.’

Thane stood with the rest of the squad and the two inquisitors around the tacticarium table. He watched the pict-screens light up with the configurations of the enemy deployment. The orks had a small fleet stationed above a moon of the gas giant fourth from the star.

‘Two battleships,’ Adnachiel said from the pulpit. ‘Five cruisers.’

‘What are they doing out here?’ Wienand wondered.

‘Saving us time in our search,’ said Adnachiel. ‘We know where we are heading now.’

‘Lord,’ said the auspex officer, ‘the vessels are not attacking.’

‘What?’

‘We are picking up heat emissions suggesting launches, but no bombardment. We are also detecting some launches from the moon’s surface.’

‘Missiles?’

‘No, too slow. I would suggest orks returning to the motherships.’

Adnachiel turned around to face Thane. ‘This is your search,’ he said. ‘Your determination.’

‘This doesn’t sound like combat,’ said Thane.

‘It does not,’ Adnachiel agreed. ‘It sounds like the end of an engagement.’

We can’t be too late, Thane told himself. If the orks had won so easily, their search had been pointless from the start.

‘We need to see for ourselves,’ he said.

‘Why are the orks here?’ said Abathar. ‘The question is significant.’

Thane nodded. ‘We need to go in.’

Adnachiel kept the huge orb of the gas giant between the Herald of Night and the ork fleet. Shipmaster Aelia brought the strike cruiser as close to the atmosphere as possible, deep within the planet’s ferocious magnetosphere. The Penitent Wrath launched just over the horizon from the greenskin ships. Qaphsiel, the Thunderhawk’s pilot, skimmed the cauldron of the emerald atmosphere until he had a straight shot up to the planetside face of the tidally locked moon.

The satellite was a small one, a craggy barren rock not much more than a hundred kilometres in diameter. Qaphsiel flew low above the surface, twisting through jagged canyons.

‘If you have any knowledge of the fortress,’ Thane said to Veritus, ‘it would be useful to hear it.’

‘You know as much as I do,’ the inquisitor said. ‘My knowledge ended on Sacratus.’

‘Then you will remain with the Penitent Wrath until we have a secured position.’

‘No,’ Wienand said. ‘We will follow with all due caution, but we’re coming with you.’

‘Why?’ Thane asked. He indulged in some heavy irony. ‘Don’t you trust us?’

‘We need to see,’ Wienand said, and Veritus nodded.

Thane disliked the unanimity the inquisitors were showing. Wienand’s tone, though, was more urgent. When she said we, it sounded like I. He thought about trying to force them to stay. He decided against it. If they got themselves killed, he would not mourn the loss.

The surface of the moon became more deeply scarred as the Thunderhawk drew nearer the fortress. The canyons were narrow, deep and interconnected. Soon the Penitent Wrath was flying through a landscape as cracked and shattered as glass, as if the gunship were approaching the site of a great blow.

Qaphsiel took the Thunderhawk up out of one gorge, then immediately dropped into a crevice no more than fifteen metres wide and hundreds deep. It cut almost directly towards the coordinates where the Herald of Night’s long-range auspex scans indicated Vultus stood. Thane felt the webbing of his grav-harness strain as Qaphsiel took hard turns between the rock walls.

A few minutes later, the crevice opened up into a deep, narrow bowl.

Looking through a viewing block, Wienand said, ‘This was a world shaped to their purpose.’

‘Indeed,’ Thane agreed.

Rising from the bowl was an immense column. It towered a hundred metres above the lip of the bowl, and it was over a kilometre wide. Vultus sat like a bird of prey on its peak. The fortress had been carved out of the rock of the column, the dark stone shaped into harsh towers. Their facades were perfectly vertical. Their angles, little eroded after a thousand years, were sharp as blades.

Qaphsiel flew just above the floor of the bowl as he closed in on the column. The orks appeared to have landed in the area beyond the bowl and on the launch pads Thane could see projecting from the column and the base of the fortress. As he watched, a ship lifted off one of the platforms. It trailed a long stream of fire in the thin atmosphere.

‘They’re leaving,’ Wienand said.

‘Some of them.’ Qaphsiel had gone into a steep climb. The features of Vultus were becoming clearer. So were the shapes of other ork vessels, their wings overhanging the edges of the platforms.

‘They can’t help but see us soon,’ said Veritus.

‘If they look,’ said Abathar.

‘I have a target for insertion,’ Qaphsiel said over the gunship’s vox. ‘The defence batteries directly above us.’

‘A good choice,’ Straton said. ‘There are no landing platforms on this face of the fortress.’

Unless the orks were using the guns. Thane brushed away the pessimistic thought. Whatever the orks wanted with Vultus, he did not believe they had come to seize it and hold it against non-existent enemies.

‘Make ready,’ Thane said. He detached the grav-harness. He stood. Leaning against the sharp angle of the ascent, he moved to the side door and slid it back. A hot wind raged through the troop compartment. The Deathwatch squad gathered behind him.

The Penitent Wrath levelled off as it reached the height of the fortress. A domed building hulking in the centre of the complex gave Thane the impression of a structure closed in on itself. Its nature seemed to float ambiguously between refuge and prison.

There were windows in the towers. They had all been smashed. Wedges of armourglass glinted like teeth in the red light of the sun.

Qaphsiel lowered the Thunderhawk over a gun emplacement halfway up. The platform was wide, and ran most of the length of the facade. Silent cannons waited to destroy any enemy who would dare approach Vultus. The enemy had come, though. The enemy was doing what it willed, and the guns remained silent.

Squad Gladius jumped from the gunship. The Penitent Wrath dropped back down the column, and Thane led the way at a swift march to the nearest entrance. The plasteel door had been smashed down from the inside.

The passageway beyond was dark. The fortress had no power. It was inert as dead as the rock of its walls. Aggressive life moved through the tomb, though. Brutes growled in the distance. Things smashed. But there was no gunfire. There was no battle.

‘The Sisters of Silence are not here,’ Forcas said.

‘There would be fighting,’ Wienand agreed.

‘And I would feel them,’ said Forcas. ‘I would feel the pressure of the psychical null.’

‘This is futile,’ said Warfist.

‘The cannons we passed have not been serviced for a long time,’ Abathar put in. ‘It is highly unlikely the orks have defeated the Sisters. Vultus has been abandoned. Perhaps for centuries.’

‘Our search ends here, then?’ Straton asked.

‘Perhaps not,’ said Wienand. ‘The dome on Sacratus showed us the way here. Maybe this dome has a similar message.’

The chances seemed remote to Thane. But we have to find them, he thought. Any possibility was worth exploring. ‘We make for the dome, then,’ he said. ‘Silent kills. We have not come to fight an entire ork fleet.’

Warfist growled low in his chest, the sound predatory in anticipation. He took point, lightning claws extended. The rest of Squad Gladius drew blades. Wienand took out her laspistol. ‘I’ll use it only if we are discovered,’ she said.

Veritus carried no weapon.

‘You are not very formidable, inquisitor,’ Warfist said.

‘In combat, no,’ said Veritus. ‘Nor am I a fool.’

Yet here we are, Thane thought.

They moved into the corridor. The walls were bare, the shredded remains of tapestries lying at their base. The first intersection was littered with overturned pedestals and smashed statuary. A severed head, its mouth covered by the same eagle grille as the caryatids of Sacratus, stared at the ceiling, judgement hard as the void in its blank eyes.

The route to the dome was obvious. The passageway from the gun emplacements ended at a corridor wide as an avenue. Traffic would once have moved rapidly from one end of the citadel to the other, down great halls radiating like spokes from the dome. Vehicles had come down this route very recently. The air stank of spent fuel. The walls were marred by wide scorch marks, and for as far as Thane could see in the light cast by their helms, broken statues lay on the floor.

‘The vandalism is systematic,’ Forcas said. ‘There is hatred here.’

‘The orks recognise the threat of the Sisters of Silence,’ said Veritus.

‘How?’ Wienand asked. ‘Have they encountered them before?’

‘These ork witches are powerful,’ said Forcas. ‘Perhaps, as a collective, they can sense the presence of a threat somewhere. They’re searching too. Seeking to destroy the threat, and any trace that it ever existed.’

From far down the corridor came growls and the sounds of smashing stone.

‘We will not surprise them on this route,’ Warfist said. He turned off the wide hall at the first opportunity, finding a narrow passage running parallel, and loped ahead of the rest of the squad. He had removed his helm, and he paused at intersections to sniff the air.

The further the Deathwatch went, the louder the ork din became. The sounds bounced off the stones of Vultus, redirected by the whims of the architecture.

‘Auspex?’ said Thane.

‘Unhelpful,’ Abathar replied. ‘The biomass is too large and mobile, and we do not know the floor plans of this fortress. I cannot narrow the enemy’s location and movements to specific halls.’

Warfist held up a hand. Helm lights switched off. Thane blinked through to thermal sight. Warfist was motionless.

‘Approaching,’ the Space Wolf voxed. He prowled forward, a silent giant, then turned left into another branching corridor and vanished.

Thane waited. Sounds grew sharper. Booted feet were coming closer. The snarls were close, not echoes. Metal scraped against stone. Thane’s lenses picked up heat silhouettes. Then light reappeared. A large group of orks came down the corridor at a fast march. They shouted at each other as they dragged their blades along the engravings on the walls. The lead ork wielded a jagged cleaver in each hand. The beast was large enough to gouge both walls as it ran.

‘Take them,’ said Thane.

Forcas struck first. The blow was silent. Its effect was not. The lead ork stumbled. It screamed. It dropped its weapons and clutched its head. It fell to its knees. The mob behind it milled in confusion. The agony of their leader held the greenskins’ attention. They did not shine their lights further down the corridor. They did not think to suspect an attack.

The leader’s howls became a hissing rasp, pain exceeding the body’s ability to express it. Scalding blood erupted from its eyes and ears and mouth. Crimson steam filled the hall. The chieftain’s body fell forward at the same moment that Warfist hit the orks from behind. He jabbed out with his lightning claws, stabbing through the necks of two greenskins at once. Thane heard his satisfied grunt on the vox.

Thane and Straton rushed on, Abathar and Forcas following more slowly. The orks heard the pounding of ceramite boots and finally looked up, much too late. Thane and Straton cut into the greenskins with chainswords. The snarl of the blades rattled the stones of the hall, yet it was of a kind with the howls of the orks and the roar of their weapons. The orks’ guns were still strapped to their belts. They had thought they were alone in the fortress. Thane wanted the delusion preserved for the rest of the force.

‘No firearms,’ he voxed to the squad.

‘Good,’ said Warfist.

Thane ran his blade through the chest of one ork. He yanked it from the falling corpse with such violence that the edge of the blade plunged into the shoulder of the ork to his right, severing the arm, then grinding through the beast’s spine. Straton clashed with a greenskin almost as big as the dead leader. He angled his chainsword and cut through the head of the ork’s hammer, so the xenos weapon fell into two halves, and the Ultramarine’s blade continued downward, cleaving the monster’s skull.

Abathar’s plasma cutter burned through eyes and throats, the hiss of its beam unheard in the tumult. Forcas boiled the blood of another ork. Warfist killed two more before the rest of the mob at last realised death had come for them in both directions. They lashed out, and they were strong in their rage.

The Deathwatch was precise.

Thane and Straton pressed in hard. There was no room in the narrow passage for the orks to find their footing and use their mass. They had no momentum behind their blows. An axe crashed against Thane’s helmet. His ears rang. He brought his chainsword up through the ork’s gut. The huge body shuddered. There was a second, weaker blow of the axe before it fell from dead fingers.

Squad Gladius waded deeper into the greenskins. Thane’s senses were submerged in the thick, liquid stench of gouting blood and greenskin musk. Claws and blades and tusks and straining muscle tried to fell him. He cut the tide back. He and his brothers in black forced it down. Ultramarine doggedness meshed with Space Wolf savagery, with Blood Angel precision and Dark Angel relentlessness. The machine rendered the orks to bloody meat. Thane had seen the fusion of battle philosophies on the attack moon, in the desperation of that struggle. He saw it again now, the interlacing occurring automatically, triggered by the moment of conflict. As the last of the orks fell, he began to understand why the Council felt so threatened by the Deathwatch.

This was a new force for war.

Wienand watched the five Space Marines take apart a score of orks in a matter of seconds. She realised Veritus was looking at her. ‘What is it?’ she said as the squad moved on. Her boots splashed through a pool of blood.

‘That skirmish didn’t mean anything,’ said Veritus.

‘Your point?’

‘Any squad of Adeptus Astartes would have made short work of those orks.’

‘I see,’ she said, as if she accepted what Veritus was saying. Her interest in the Deathwatch threatened him, she thought. Good.

Veritus was right. He was also obfuscating. The importance of what Wienand had watched lay not in the challenge this group of orks had presented, but in the manner the squad had eliminated them. The disparate operated in unison, forming a lethally efficient whole. That was what was important.

The Deathwatch encountered two more ork patrols on the way to the dome. Warfist varied the route, switching corridors every few junctions, sometimes backtracking or travelling laterally for a brief period before returning to the original heading. The orks went down quickly each time, with no shots fired. The rest of the orks in the fortress never had the chance to learn what had come among them.

This deep in the fortress, they were surrounded by the clamour of the orks rampaging through chambers and halls, smashing all they found. The infernal choir of xenos roars was a mixture of triumph, rage and frustration. The orks had come to destroy an enemy that had vanished from these halls centuries before.

The Deathwatch entered the main hall again for the last hundred metres before the entrance to the dome.

‘We should wait,’ Forcas said. ‘There is a battle ahead that it will serve no purpose to engage.’

‘Ork witches?’ Thane asked.

‘Yes,’ said Forcas. ‘Several.’

‘The auspex indicates a large horde,’ Abathar said.

Warfist snorted. ‘I can hear it, Techmarine.’

The squad withdrew into an alcove. The entrance to the dome glimmered with light from the space beyond. Wienand could make out the movement of hundreds of large bodies. The dome rang with bestial shouts. There were flashes of energy too, which made her skin crawl. The flares were powerful, the colours somehow inherently inhuman. At intervals, the clamour of the mob faded and individual ork voices rose to prominence. The horde was listening. Wienand listened too, to the sound of the greenskin witches. There was no sense to the language, but she could hear the power. She glanced at Forcas. Deep in the shadows of his psychic hood, his eyes glittered. His concentration was ferocious.

These were the voices they must silence, Wienand thought. She felt the tension in the squad as the warriors held back from battle. They understood the necessity of restraint. And they resented that necessity.

‘How long must we wait here?’ Warfist growled.

‘Until they go,’ said Thane.

The Space Wolf growled. ‘This is shameful.’

‘Shame,’ said Forcas, ‘would come in failing the mission by rushing into a pointless fight we could not win.’

Warfist muttered something Wienand could not make out. Then he was silent again.

It was several hours before the orks tired of the dome. They streamed out of multiple doors. Three armoured transport vehicles thundered past the squad’s alcove. Behind them came well over a hundred orks. After they passed, Wienand could hear the fading sounds of other parties heading out in other directions from inside the dome.

Quiet fell at last beyond the doorway. Thane waited another few minutes, then nodded and led the way into the dome. In the distance, Wienand could still hear the orks ransacking Vultus. There was also the deep roar of ships taking off from the landing platforms. The greenskins were not yet done with the fortress, but the departure was accelerating.

She wondered if the orks had found a destination.

The Space Marines played their helm lights over the hall beneath the dome. They fanned out across the vastness.

‘What are we looking for?’ Straton asked.

‘Anything,’ said Thane.

‘The orks didn’t leave anything,’ Warfist observed.

The floor was a mass of wreckage. Wienand assumed there had been statuary here, but there was nothing left of it now. She had to clamber over mounds of rubble to reach the centre of the hall.

There had been something large there before, but now there was only a massive heap of ruined stone. There were angled chunks of marble and vague shapes suggestive of massiveness. A colossus of the Emperor, perhaps. A figure to tower beneath the dome, to inspire with majesty. Gone now, reduced to nothing, significance turned to dust.

Veritus wandered between the mounds a little distance away. Wienand called to him. ‘If we find nothing, then what?’

No answer.

You thought the Sisters of Silence would be here, didn’t you? she thought. You don’t have an option beyond this.

‘There’s nothing up there,’ Straton said.

Wienand craned her head back. The squad’s beams moved over the interior of the dome soaring far above. There was no fresco as there had been on Sacratus. There was nothing at all. Only darkness.

‘Did the orks destroy what was there?’ Thane asked.

‘It would appear not,’ Abathar said. ‘The stone itself is black. I perceive some smoke damage, but not much else.’ A few moments later he said, ‘There is evidence of scoring. The dome may have been scraped.’

‘By the orks?’ said Thane.

‘No. The scoring is beneath the smoke. It was done centuries ago.’

‘There’s no gallery,’ said Wienand. The walls of the hall rose uninterrupted to the base of the dome. ‘No way for the orks to get up there.’

‘And no reason for them to do so,’ Warfist said. He sounded disgusted. ‘This is futile.’

Wienand was still looking up at the hemisphere of darkness when the beams went away, and so she saw the light that stayed behind.

‘Wait,’ she said. She stared, wondering if she was hallucinating. There was a silvery glow around the base of the dome. It was so faint, it vanished when Wienand looked directly at it. She focused her gaze instead on the crown. The silver grew stronger in her peripheral vision. She perceived brighter points and the hint of tracery. ‘There is something. A faint phosphorescence.’

The Space Marines and Veritus moved towards her position. They turned off their lights. The hall fell into pitch darkness. Wienand could see the glow more clearly now. She could look at it directly, though she saw nothing more than the most fragile gossamer of grey. ‘Those are stars,’ she said. ‘It’s another chart.’

‘One that someone sought to obliterate,’ said Abathar.

‘Can you make a record of it?’ Thane asked.

‘Yes. It is too faint for pict inscription, but I am making a copy of the stars’ positions relative to each other.’

‘Will that be enough for the Navigator?’

‘We will hope it is.’

‘I see nothing in the centre,’ said Straton. ‘Is something missing? Is it possible all that remains is the edge of the chart?’

‘Unlikely,’ said Abathar. ‘The scoring cuts across the full height of the dome. The phosphorescence is limited to the lower third. There is…’ He trailed off.

‘What is it?’ said Thane.

‘I am uncertain. The pattern I have recorded is suggestive, but we will have to wait for confirmation aboard the Herald of Night.’

‘Suggestive of what?’ said Thane. ‘I trust your conclusions, Brother Abathar.’

‘If this is a chart, it points to nothing at all.’

‘You mean there is no direction?’ said Veritus. ‘Or that it is unreadable?’

‘Neither, inquisitor. I mean as I say — nothing. The crown of the dome is between systems. There truly is nothing there.’

Eight

The Western Reaches of the Segmentum Pacificus — the void

The Herald of Night came to the nothingness and found hordes. Instead of dark, there was the flare of engines, the flash of launches and guns, the streak of missiles. The orks besieged a point where there should have been emptiness.

There was a single planet in the starless night. It was a rocky mass, so cold its atmosphere was frozen, sullen snow. But the orks had brought heat to the world. Their bombardment melted nitrogen and methane. It pounded the surface to a molten orange, as if the greenskins sought to turn the world into a flowing, liquid hell.

But the world resisted. It remained solid. And the target of the orks’ hatred struck back.

‘Lance fire from the surface,’ said Adnachiel. He pointed to a spike of icons on a pict screen, and looked around the tacticarium table at the Deathwatch and the inquisitors. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘By the Throne, I don’t think I can credit it even now. But I congratulate you. We have found our myths.’

‘At war,’ said Thane. ‘The orks have found them too. Before us.’

‘They wasted no time,’ said Straton.

‘No,’ said Adnachiel, ‘these are not the orks we saw over Vultus. The ships are different. The fleet is larger.’ He paused, his eye caught by a change on the pict screen to the left of the table. He grunted. ‘Cannon fire from the surface now too. And the orks have just lost an escort vessel. Impressive.’

‘But insufficient,’ Thane said.

Adnachiel nodded. ‘There are heat signatures of landing craft. The greenskins are attacking on the surface as well.’ He frowned. ‘What I do not understand is, if they already knew the location of the Sisters of Silence, what interest did they have in Vultus?’

‘Fear,’ said Veritus. ‘Or something very like it. The orks sense the threat the Sisters of Silence represent. They seek to destroy all trace of them.’ He pointed to the centre of the tacticarium table. The hololithic display of the planet had an illuminated target. Its coordinates marked the focus of the orbital bombardment and the ork landings, and the origin of the surface fire. The Herald of Night was as yet too distant for the auspex array to form an image of the fortress itself. But the citadel was there, its existence confirmed by the conflict. ‘The orks cannot know that this is the one place in the galaxy where the Sisters of Silence may be found. They must attack every trace of them they find.’

Warfist bared his teeth. ‘If this is true, so much the better. The thought of orks feeling threatened cheers me enormously.’

‘It proves the importance of our mission,’ Thane said. He examined the relative positions of the strike cruiser and the ork fleet. ‘What is your evaluation?’ he asked Adnachiel.

‘Worse than Vultus. This ork fleet is not much larger, but that one was already large enough. There are no planets to use as cover for our approach. The orks will see us coming, if they have not already detected our presence. If we fight…’ He stopped for a moment.

‘No one doubts your skill or the strength of your ship,’ said Thane.

‘I hope no one doubts my intelligence, either,’ Adnachiel replied. ‘The numbers and the forces are what they are. We can fight. We cannot win.’

‘We have not come all this way for a pointless sacrifice,’ said Warfist.

Adnachiel gave the Space Wolf a curt nod. ‘Quite,’ he said.

‘Then our attack must be in two stages,’ said Thane. ‘We must neutralise the fleet before we engage with the orks planetside.’

‘Obviously,’ said Wienand. ‘But what is the plan to do that?’

Thane had no illusions about the situation. He could see many ways for it to end in disaster, and knew there were many more he had not imagined. Even so, his lips pressed into a taut smile. ‘I thought it was clear,’ he told Wienand. ‘We are going to destroy an ork fleet.’

‘The Herald of Night?’

‘No. The Deathwatch.’

Five Space Marines in a single boarding torpedo came for the fleet. The launch of the torpedo, from the limit of its range, signalled the opening of a new front for the orks, though they did not know it. Abathar steered at an angle away from the Herald of Night, putting distance between the torpedo and its source. The Deathwatch streaked through the void, a lone missile directed at a fleet, beneath notice as the greenskins poured their wrath on the world below them.

The target was the largest of the battleships at the centre of the ork formation. Thane watched the readout of the vessel grow on the torpedo’s navigation pict screen. The representation began as a single point. It became an outline, then an ever-more detailed schematic in red lines. Icons for possible attack points multiplied.

‘Have you chosen?’ Thane asked.

‘Yes,’ said Abathar. His servo-arm pointed at the screen, to the junction of the immense engine block and the rest of the hull. The vessel narrowed slightly there. The battleship’s construction was a brutal monumentalism, a welding together of the massive. But still there was a junction. The shielding and the hull would be thinner. And the location was close to the goal.

‘Good,’ Thane approved. ‘And the ship’s position?’

‘Within an acceptable risk,’ Abathar said. ‘The defensive fire from the planet is pushing the greenskins back. They are substantially further from the surface than the enemy over Vultus.’

‘Far enough, then.’

‘Within an acceptable risk,’ Abathar said again.

They had no choice, Thane thought. There was no other way of dealing with the ork fleet. What would be an unacceptable risk? he wondered.

Nothing.

The action was necessary. It was the only alternative to assured defeat.

‘Time?’ he asked.

‘One hundred seconds,’ Abathar told him.

Thane voxed Adnachiel. ‘We are about to make our attack,’ he said.

‘Very well. We will delay engagement until your signal if possible. The Emperor protects.’

‘The Emperor protects.’

Behind Thane, Forcas said, ‘We are establishing a precedent.’

Thane turned around. Forcas was looking at the teleport homer on Abathar’s back.

‘The means we are using,’ Forcas went on. ‘The tools. The weapons.’

‘You think we should not employ them to defeat the orks?’

‘The devices are… impure,’ Forcas said. He used the word with the conviction of someone who was given to meditating on its meaning and implications. ‘Using them has a cost. We have seen that already.’

‘They aren’t made by xenos hands,’ Thane reminded him, though images of the cratered Imperial Palace flashed before his mind’s eye. ‘They are still productions of the Mechanicus.’

‘Their derivation is suspect.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Straton put in, ‘they are authorised.’

‘Even under the eyes of the Inquisition,’ said Warfist. He appeared to take sour enjoyment from the irony.

Forcas gave a solemn nod, acknowledging the points. ‘Yet the fact remains the technology originates with the greenskins. The taint cannot be expunged through adaptation. We are conscious of its danger. We are using it in extremity. Would any of you wish this technology to have widespread adoption by Imperial forces? By all the Chapters? By the Astra Militarum?’

The others were silent, their faces grim.

‘No,’ said Thane. Forcas was right. Already they’d had ample reason to distrust the ork-derived technology. Thane imagined the propagation of its use, and realised he was picturing a plague.

‘There must be a balance,’ Forcas said. ‘I acknowledge the necessity that forces our hands today. Yet we must limit the moral harm.’

‘Restrict the use of such weapons to the Deathwatch,’ said Straton.

We. The Deathwatch. They were speaking as a unified force, Thane realised. And they were discussing situations that extended far beyond the current mission. He had agreed with Koorland that the Deathwatch was a temporary measure. In many ways, it had to be. He knew his involvement was limited. His responsibilities as Chapter Master made it so. Nor could he imagine any of the Space Marines before him adopting the black livery permanently. They, too, would return to their Chapters.

And yet.

We. The Deathwatch.

There was something permanent here.

‘Fifty seconds,’ Abathar said, recalling Thane to the moment.

The boarding torpedo had no viewing blocks. The pict-screens above the steering controls were Thane’s only window onto the battlefield. He watched the columns of icons and coordinates change as Abathar aimed the torpedo at its target. The bombardment was intensifying. There were more and more landing ships descending to the surface. Damage runes were also appearing with greater frequency. The defenders of the starless world were exacting a price from the invaders.

All of the ork fire was directed at the planet. The Herald of Night had not been detected.

‘The Emperor does protect,’ Thane said. ‘He does indeed.’

‘Brace for impact,’ Abathar warned.

Thane stood firm against the coming blow.

The boarding torpedo hit the port side of the engine block’s junction. Violent rattling shook the torpedo hull as the drill head ground its way through the immense barrier. There were no void shields, only a monstrous excess of metal between the Deathwatch and their prey. The grinding went on for several minutes. Squad Gladius stood in a line before the hatch door, ready for the moment to storm out of the torpedo. Abathar’s head was cocked as if he were listening for nuances in the cries of iron agony.

‘We are nearly through,’ the Techmarine said.

Thane lifted his bolter.

The torpedo jerked forward, grinding air, then stopped. The hatch blew open. Squad Gladius charged out from below the drill head. The torpedo had broken through into a corridor running fore and aft. The battleship rang with the incessant beat of its bombardment. There was a group of orks to the right, frozen in surprise. Gladius cut them down with a sustained burst of bolter fire and the orks died before they could react.

The corridor was wide and high, yet it felt crowded by the tangle of enormous conduits that made up its ceiling. The walls on either side were an assembly of mismatched and misshapen iron slabs, held together by an exuberance of rivets the size of Thane’s fist. Past the bodies of the orks, the passage continued a hundred metres into the engine block before it ended at a blast door.

There were no other orks in sight. ‘These seconds are ours,’ Thane said. ‘Let us make good use of them.’

The Deathwatch moved swiftly down the hall, Abathar in the lead. The Techmarine paused just short of the blast door.

‘A Dreadnought could pass through that,’ Straton said.

‘I choose not to,’ Abathar said. He was looking at the conduits above his head. ‘A struggle for the enginarium will not serve.’

‘Assuming it lies beyond that barrier,’ said Thane.

‘The presence of a blast door in this location of the hull suggests it does.’ Abathar took a step to his right. He pointed at the conduits. ‘So do these.’ He was under the largest. It was nearly three metres wide. Water dripped from cracks and clumsy welds. ‘This one,’ he said. His servo-arm reached upward. He used his plasma cutter to slice through the metal in a circle while the rest of the squad trained guns down the corridor. A few seconds later, a large iron disc clattered to the deck. A stream of brown water poured down. A hot wind, foul with a mix of xenos musk and burned fuel, blew from the gap.

‘Ventilation,’ he said, sounding both satisfied and offended. ‘Ventilation and cooling. The greenskins’ conception of the machine is obscene.’

‘Though powerful,’ Forcas said.

‘This is so.’ To Thane he said, ‘This will be my route.’

‘Very well. We will keep their attention focused elsewhere.’

Abathar took hold of the edge of the hole with the servo-arm’s claw. He pulled himself up until he could grasp the edge with his gauntlets and disappeared into the conduit, heading in the direction of the engine block.

‘Now the guns,’ Thane said.

There was the long, booming thunder of another volley. The corridor shook. Warfist laughed. ‘They will not be difficult to find.’

Abathar moved through the long darkness of the conduit, facing into a burning gale. He tasted the air through his rebreather grille, laden with particles of soot and unrefined promethium. He was conscious of how offensive this machine grotesquerie was to the Omnissiah. He would make the destruction of this ship a worthy offering.

The pipe stretched on and on. The wind grew stronger. He would find his goal at the source of the wind, he was sure of this. It was consistent with the paradox that was ork machines. They were a confounding mix of inconceivably advanced technology and constructs so crude that they should not have functioned at all. This conduit felt like it had been built by creatures who had heard of cooling and ventilation systems, but had no idea of how they actually worked. Yet on his back was a device that was an even more imperfect attempt to mimic technology far beyond the capabilities of the Imperium. The miraculous and the barbaric mixed with no reason, no order.

It would be his privilege to erase it from existence.

As the wind became stronger, so too did a sound that resembled the breathing of a gigantic beast. Close, Abathar thought. He was nearing the core of the ship’s enginarium.

After another thirty metres, dim red light worked its way into the conduit. A bit further on, and the conduit became a nexus for dozens of pipes. There were now also many holes in the main conduit. Perhaps they were prepared for other shafts yet to be constructed. Perhaps they were intended to admit air from the chamber beyond. Whatever their purpose, they let in the pulsing, flickering red. Beyond the junction, fans spun. Abathar could see only a portion of one. Its blades must have been thirty metres long.

Abathar crouched beside a circular grille in the floor of the conduit. Below him, in the red glow, incomprehensible machines clustered. They sparked, they smoked, they chittered at each other as if they were alive. Abathar waited. If there were orks about, they had little reason to approach this particular configuration of machinery. He cut the grille free, and dropped through.

He landed in a nest of cables and shadows, a mire of technical perversity. It stretched for dozens of metres in every direction. The only illumination was the crimson, and Abathar turned around until he could see its origin. He was in a chamber large enough to contain the dome of Vultus several times over. In the far distance a massive shape loomed, as huge as myth. In its centre, a grille opened and closed, revealing and concealing the crimson heart of power, a miniature red sun, enslaved and turned into the motive power for the ship.

Many levels of catwalks ran along the walls of the chamber. Precarious spans stretched through the air to connect to the heart of the enginarium and to other, lesser monoliths. Orks swarmed along the catwalks, welding gaps, replacing cables, tending to control consoles bristling with levers that would have needed two mortals to pull. Power flashed at faulty junctions, incinerating orks. Other greenskins were electrocuted by flailing cables. Their shrieks mixed with the braying laughter of their kin, who then moved to complete the lethal maintenance work or die in their turn. Hordes of the dwarfish greenskins hauled the bodies away or dragged bundles of equipment at the command of their hulking masters.

Abathar had landed on the top of one of the secondary power sources. He was fifteen metres up from the floor of the enginarium, and six from the nearest catwalk. Heaps of tangled, metre-thick power cables sheltered him from sight. A few steps to his right, in the direction of the catwalk, was the base of an energy coil, ten metres high, which leaned out over the edge of the generator. The angry red power spiralled along its length.

Yes, he could do what needed to be done here.

Abathar removed the teleport homer from his back. He looked at the device differently than he had in the attack moon. Then he had been carrying untested technology, whose workings and morality were unclear. Now he saw the machine for what it truly was. It was a weapon, one whose use put more than its target at risk.

He had said nothing during the debate on the boarding torpedo. He agreed with Forcas, though. There were weapons that should never be deployed except by the Deathwatch. They must be kept within the confines of that structure, belonging to none of the Chapters, usable only in very specific circumstances. He distrusted the device, yet he would use it now for the Imperium, and in its destruction remove its unclean being from the sight of the Omnissiah.

Abathar moved towards the power coil. He was more exposed here, but the coil would have the energy concentration he required. The plan was not to teleport a moon this time. He did not have to tap into the full strength of the ship’s engines. Even so, an enormous level of energy would be unleashed. He stayed low and in the shadows, a machine among machines. There was a serpent’s nest of cables attached to the base of the coil. He scanned the radiation with the auspex until he found those that were drawing power from the coil rather than feeding it. His servo-arm claw yanked one after the other from the base.

A warning klaxon sounded a harsh, animalistic braying across the enginarium. Up and down the walls and the deck below, lightning flashed from wounded machines. Overloads and short circuits took more orks by surprise. Greenskins shrieked and burned. Others roared with alarm and raced to regain control of the unravelling systems.

Abathar’s actions were having an impact. He was on borrowed time now. The orks were seeking the source of the malfunctions. They would find him soon. He disconnected one more cable, then began the process of linking the teleport homer to the power coil.

He was finishing the first connection when a trio of orks ran down the catwalk towards his platform. They scrambled over the wall of cables and spotted Abathar where he crouched over the homer. They were just out of range of his plasma cutter. He trained his boltgun on them, and shot two into pieces before they could move. The sound of gunfire disappeared in the chaos of the klaxon and the booming beat of the engine. For a moment, Abathar thought he had gained another few seconds for his task.

The third ork jumped from behind the falling bodies, onto a cable heap, then launched itself at Abathar. He fired, catching the greenskin in the shoulder, knocking its flight to the left. The ork went over the side of the generator. Spraying blood, it tumbled end over end. It dropped twenty metres and landed head-first, snapping its neck. But it howled a warning all the way down.

Other orks heard. They saw the fall. They shouted, pointing, and the alarm spread. From across the enginarium, the orks abandoned their stations. The horde closed in on Abathar.

The rest of Squad Gladius followed the seismic pounding of the cannons. There was no time for stealth, and no need for it. Thane wanted the orks to know they were under attack, and he wanted them looking at the wrong threat.

The Deathwatch warriors tore through the halls and up the levels of the battleship at a run. Orks fell before them, leaves in a storm. Gladius struck with such speed that no warning could be issued. The orks were not prepared for battle on their own ship. Their weapons were sheathed. Their guard was down. They died by the score. The Deathwatch left a wake of shattered bodies and decks awash in xenos blood.

The cannons were two levels up from the boarding torpedo. The chamber was cavernous. Colossal guns, their barrels six metres in diameter, moved back and forth in the upper space above the Space Marines’ heads, pistoning with each recoil. The blasts rang through Thane’s bones. The chamber vibrated, blurring before Thane’s eyes with the steady drumbeat of the bombardment. Beneath the monstrous cylinders, gunnery crews worked the controls. The stations were bulky, grotesque complexes, spitting steam and sparks. The air roiled, thick with the stench of struggling bodies, ozone and spent explosive.

Thane, Straton and Warfist charged the nearest crew. Through a gap between Thane and Straton, Forcas unleashed a storm of crimson lightning. The warp energy hit the greenskins and their controls with explosive fury and both burned. Their station blew up, hurling shrapnel and fire across the chamber. Flames licked along cables and ignited pools of fuel. Black, choking smoke spread through the space, cutting visibility. The surviving crew turned on the rushing squad. Warfist reached them first. A greenskin managed a quick burst of its gun, the shells bouncing off the Space Wolf’s armour, before Warfist impaled it through the eyes with his lighting claws. Then he was speeding towards the next position.

Thane strafed the remaining orks with bolter fire while Straton climbed the ruin of the controls, up articulated scaffolding. He affixed a melta bomb to the cannon, then dropped down. Thane and Forcas had already moved on, catching up with Warfist.

The Deathwatch used speed against the orks. The surprise of the attack, the explosion of the station and the spreading fire had them off balance. Their retaliation was clumsy. They rushed, and missed.

Speed. Precision. Purpose.

Four Space Marines charged hundreds of orks, and the orks were on the defensive.

Thane and Forcas provided covering fire for Warfist as he closed with the second position. He gutted the orks that blocked his path, and jumped onto the scaffolding. Straton added his bolter fire to the hail, holding down the crew until Warfist had placed his melta bomb.

Then Warfist leapt away from the cannon and joined Straton and Forcas in giving Thane the cover he needed to sabotage the third cannon. Forcas lit up the chamber with more bolts of warp energy, spreading fires and ripping orks apart with eldritch lightning, but now he avoided destroying the controls. Bolter fire, too, no longer hit the stations.

His bomb in place, Thane jumped down from the scaffolding. The rush had stopped. There were more cannons ahead, but the orks had rallied. The crews clustered around the next station, a barrier of rage, and their gunfire had the volume now to be effective.

‘Well enough?’ Warfist asked.

‘Well enough,’ said Thane.

The Deathwatch retreated. The Space Marines laid down bursts of bolter fire behind them, but that was the lure. The true weapon was speed. The orks pursued, perceiving triumph as their enemy fled. The greenskins were fast, but the shells slamming into their bodies slowed their charge. The gun crews wore no armour, and the mass-reactive ammunition shredded their bodies. For the first several seconds of the chase, the orks died faster than they could charge. Then their numbers told, and they advanced on the wings of hate.

As Thane had planned.

The orks reclaimed the gunnery stations on the run. Crews resumed firing while the larger body continued the pursuit.

This too, was as it should be.

Thane brought up the rear, looking back, waiting for the moment. It came when the third cannon, having recoiled after its shot, moved outward once again. The second cannon was crewed once more, and about to roar back to life. ‘Now!’ Thane yelled. He pulled the trigger on his detonator. A moment later, so did Warfist.

Incandescence lit the chamber. First one, then the other melta bomb detonated, burning through the barrels of the cannons. First one, then the other gun fired just as the integrity of the barrel was destroyed.

First one, then another monstrous shell exploded inside the weapons.

The cannons flew apart. Thunder so huge it had physical force slammed the orks down. Shrapnel like jagged storm shields flew through the chamber. Flame engulfed the space. And now Straton triggered his bomb too. The cataclysm smashed into the weakened first cannon, and the barrel fell. It smashed down behind the Deathwatch, a wall six metres high.

Thane lost sight of the other Space Marines. He ran through fire, the world was fire, and the world disintegrated. The deck whiplashed. He flew through the fire, the world of fire. He landed on collapsing metal. He kept his feet and ran on.

To the rear, the explosions continued. Destruction spread, feeding greedily. Another cannon erupted, and deeper in the hull, a shell was triggered by the impacts of the blasts. It set more off. The battleship groaned as a chain reaction tore apart the interior of its port side.

Thane passed through the entrance of the gun chamber. The flames reached ahead of him, but he could see the rest of the Deathwatch now, and he could see the stairs leading back down the levels, back towards Abathar.

A great thunder resounded. An earthquake shook the battleship, hurling orks from catwalks. One of the connections to the teleport homer broke free. The cable slashed back and forth, spraying lightning. Abathar seized it with the servo-arm claw. He struggled to reattach it and finish the rest of the assembly. The tremors became even more violent, knocking many of the greenskins off their feet, slowing their attack. Some managed to cling to the side of the generator and climb up to his position. Bestial faces came over the edge just as he was closing the last of the circuits. Without releasing his work, he turned the plasma cutter on them.

The power coil wavered back and forth. Metal groaned. The crimson energy flickered, then steadied.

The explosions continued. Abathar had the sense of the battleship suffering wounds at a profound level. Had it been an Imperial ship, its machine-spirit would have been screaming. Abathar grunted with satisfaction. Well done, brothers, he thought. He finished his work, and the homer began to charge. The red glow spread over its cylinders.

Abathar turned from his work in time to put bolt-shells into the skulls of three more orks climbing the generator. On the deck, the greenskins had found their feet. Not all of them were trying to reach him now. The blast doors on all levels of the enginarium were grinding down. Streams of orks flowed through them, rushing to fight the true threat, or so they thought.

‘Gladius,’ Abathar voxed, ‘it is time we departed.’

‘On our way,’ Thane replied. ‘What is our best approach?’

Abathar looked up at the conduit that had brought him here. Though new fissures had appeared in its surface, it still appeared sound. ‘The way I came.’

‘We won’t be alone.’

‘Understood.’

He gunned down a group of orks running across the catwalk towards him. Bullets smacked against his armour and dug into the cabling around him. Some greenskins had chosen to shoot from positions atop other generators. He moved closer to the catwalk, drawing their fire away from the power coil and the teleport homer. He had to save ork technology from being damaged by its creators. He stood tall, weathering the hits, placing his return fire carefully, pulping skulls at a distance.

The mercy was that the orks labouring in the enginarium were not the largest or most heavily armed warriors. They were here because they were forced to be by their stronger brothers. Outnumbered scores to one, Abathar held his ground.

The homer charged. The ship’s tremors began to diminish. Abathar sensed time running out.

‘Gladius,’ he began, about to urge haste. He didn’t finish. On the deck below, time ran out.

A monster strode through the blast door. It was twice the height of a Dreadnought. Its armour was so thick, it seemed to be wearing the hull of a Land Raider. It carried a gun larger than an autocannon.

‘Gladius,’ Abathar said again, ‘there is no more time.’

‘Hold fast,’ Thane replied.

Abathar moved to his right, behind the wall of cables once more, further away from the power coil. He braced himself to fight the unstoppable.

The behemoth pulled the trigger. Its gun spat a thudding barrage of solid slugs. They smashed through generator walls and cut through cables. They set off a string of explosions and fires, a line of destruction marking the arc of the monster’s aim. The beast brought the gun up towards Abathar’s position. It was indiscriminate in its fire. It did not care what it destroyed. It revelled in the mad joy of devastation.

The conduit above Abathar shook with the tread of heavy boots and the concussion of bolter fire.

Abathar aimed his bolt pistol at the ork’s skull. He targeted the gap in the armour where the tusked jaw snarled. He fired. The shells smashed the ork’s fangs. They punched into the back of its throat.

It barely noticed.

The monster’s cannon shells pounded the cable barrier apart. Massive blows struck Abathar in the chest and threw him backwards. He fell in a tangle of wreckage, his armour cracked, servo-motors slipping and stuttering.

The other four members of Squad Gladius dropped out of the conduit. They fired back into it. The pipe trembled from the weight of the pursuing horde. It began to sag.

Abathar pushed himself to his feet. The giant ork had paused to examine its handiwork. Abathar forced movement into his legs and made for the teleport homer.

‘It must be now,’ he said.

The Deathwatch gathered around the homer. Orks poured from the conduit. The giant aimed its gun at the power coil. It fired again as Abathar triggered the homer.

And then, there truly was no more time.

Nine

The void — Nadiries

As before, the human and the ork made war in a realm of energy. For an immeasurable moment, the last stop before disaster, the clash of technologies was a stalemate, and the tiniest sliver of the power was channelled in its proper path. The homer responded as it was designed to do, and transferred the Deathwatch from the ork battleship to the Herald of Night. Then the stalemate collapsed. The forces of the human and the ork technologies destroyed each other in their rage. Half the vessel’s engine block vanished, disassembled past the subatomic. What remained erupted. An event far more traumatic than rupture struck the engine core. A star was cut in half. It died howling.

A shockwave produced by the severing of reality flashed across the ork fleet. The battleship vanished in a supernova cry of light. The wave blasted the nearby ships to fiery dust. Further out, it snapped escorts and cruisers in half. The wave lost force quickly as it travelled and the outer elements of the ork fleet survived. Barely. Ships floated in the void without power. Atmospheres vented through huge rents in the hulls. Fires swept through entire levels, never to be extinguished.

The Herald of Night emerged from the deep dark to bring judgement on what remained.

The dislocation seized Thane again. The ripping apart, the disintegration of identity one with the annihilation of reality. The transfer was so much more brutal than with unmodified Imperial teleporters. In the wrench of the process came the sense of a monstrous excess of energy. Of something unleashed. And of a danger to the soul.

The device was bestial. It was unclean.

It was also gone.

Thane blinked, acknowledging his and his squad’s return to being on the Herald of Night. They shook off the sickness of the translation and made for the bridge. There they joined Adnachiel, Wienand and Veritus in the strategium. They watched the end of the ork fleet through the oculus. Veritus looked grim, disturbed by what he’d seen. Wienand seemed both awed and thoughtful.

‘And so it is accomplished,’ she said. ‘Five Space Marines have destroyed a fleet. Impressive.’

‘There is a cost to these actions,’ Forcas said. He was breathing heavily. He spoke with a great effort of calm, as if he were still struggling to hold his identity together. His fangs were bared. He kept his gaze on the deck. ‘The means we employed… Such things cannot be undertaken lightly.’

‘Agreed,’ said Wienand. ‘Proper safeguards must be put in place.’

Thane glanced at her sharply. She looked back, face carefully neutral.

He chose not to ask her what she meant. The mission was paramount. ‘What have we learned about the situation planetside?’ he asked Adnachiel.

‘Auspex scans have confirmed the coordinates of the fortress. We have bought the defenders a little time.’

‘No more than that?’

‘The orks landed a large invasion force. The fortress’ defences no longer need to be aimed at the fleet, so there is no division of fire. But that will not be enough.’

‘I sense you’re about to tell me something most unwelcome.’

‘We have been picking up a concentrated energy signature. The orks have something very large approaching the fortress.’

‘How large?’

‘To judge from these readings, a giant walking machine, an ork Titan.’

I was right, Thane thought. That was not welcome at all. ‘Can we attempt an orbital bombardment?’

‘Not with any assurance of preserving the fortress,’ Adnachiel said. ‘The orks’ intent with their bombardment was purely destructive.’

‘While ours is not. Understood. Thank you, Master Adnachiel.’

Thane turned to the others. ‘We have a siege to break and a Titan to kill,’ he said.

The Penitent Wrath descended to the surface of the dark planet. The battlefield was still heated by the ork bombardment, and the temporary atmosphere was an orange-brown haze lit by the explosions of shells and the streaks of energy weapons. Qaphsiel flew as low as he dared over the orks, bringing out the details of the enemy from the great night. The region surrounding the fortress was an obscurity filled with a brutal, shifting mass. The flash of cannons illuminated the greenskins for a fraction of a second. If they knew about the destruction of their fleet, they did not appear to be troubled by it. This was an army on the march to victory.

That victory had not yet come, though, and Thane now saw how the fortress had held out for as long as it had. The keep was built at the top of a solitary peak. The mountain rose from the centre of a crater kilometres wide, as if the molten fountain from an asteroid impact had congealed back to rock in mid-flight. The slopes were steep, almost vertical, and jagged. Towering above the bowl of the crater, the fortress covered the entire peak. It was even more jagged than the mountain. It was a cluster of towers, walls fused together, rising one above the other. At the centre, the tallest spire stabbed at the infinite night. From a distance, it looked thin and sharp as a sword blade. The lower ramparts were studded with automated turrets. They rotated back and forth, cannons raining destruction on the orks below.

The greenskins raged at the base of the mountain. There was no path up. The infantry tried to climb, but was defeated by the cliffs and the punishing fire from above. They retaliated with their artillery. Hundreds of cannons and mortars battered the mountain and the fortress. They resisted. They stood fast. But the constant attack eroded the walls. It hammered at the mountainside, triggering rockslides. Given enough time, Thane thought, the mountain would be hit until there were handholds up its entire height, or the peak would be shot through and come crashing down into the crater, the fortress falling from the darkness of the sky to the darkness of the ground. Or, the last ork would finally be blasted to dust by the wall guns.

Given enough time.

There would not be enough time. The orks had no patience. They were bringing forth a monster to end time.

The ork Titan was sixty metres tall. It too was a mountain, one of iron. It lumbered across the crater, rocking side to side with each step. Its shape was squat in spite of its height. Thane pictured the walkers the Last Wall had fought on Caldera. This was many times larger. Its head alone was larger than the dome of Vultus. The Titan was fashioned in the shape of a monstrous ork, and Thane could well imagine the machine would inspire the worship of the infantry scurrying like insects at its feet.

An energy cannon emerged from the monster’s right eye, turning its mere gaze into a holocaust. There were other turrets all along its shoulders and flanks. But they were not the worst danger. One of its limbs ended in another energy weapon, claw-shaped, an electrode three metres long between the tips. The other arm was a double-barrelled cannon the size of the ones the Deathwatch had destroyed on the battleship. From the centre of its bodily mass another gun protruded, even larger.

The central gun fired. The flash illuminated the entire battlefield. Thane caught a frozen glimpse of thousands of orks exulting in the roar of their monstrous machine. The shell slammed into the mountainside. The explosion was gigantic. Boulders flew like hail. A dust cloud rose, then fell in the weak atmosphere.

The mountain trembled for long seconds after the impact. The ork Titan took another few steps, then fired again at the same spot. It raised its huge gun arm and let loose two more shots in quick succession.

Thane was sure he saw the mountain weaken. He knew he had not. He could see little of the battlefield beyond flashes, except for those vehicles with lamps. The Titan was well illuminated. It was a thing of brutish glory, and the orks wanted it celebrated.

And yet…

The power of the blasts unleashed by the ork Titan convinced him the fortress was not long for this world.

‘Take us above the Titan,’ he told Qaphsiel. ‘As close as you can.’

‘So ordered.’

Qaphsiel flew in from behind. The colossus continued its slow, steady, relentlessly destructive walk. There would be nothing left by the time it reached the mountain. As the Penitent Wrath closed in, Abathar said, ‘There. By the left-hand shoulder. A platform.’

‘Agreed,’ said Thane. He turned to the inquisitors. They wore armoured environment suits. ‘You are ready?’ They were to enter the citadel and speak with the Sisters of Silence. He did not relish the thought of an inquisitor making first contact with the order, but there was no choice. ‘Once the Titan is destroyed, we can coordinate the Sisters’ exit from the fortress.’

‘You are assuming they will agree to do so,’ Wienand said.

‘I am assuming nothing. But you know as well as I do that the Imperium needs them to agree.’

Wienand nodded.

‘They will agree,’ Veritus said.

‘I envy your certainty,’ said Thane. He thought about what it meant to have obliterated the traces of their existence, and to have retreated to a location so absolute in its isolation. He did not think an agreement would be easy to obtain. Qaphsiel had been hailing the fortress since the Penitent Wrath had begun its descent. The only hint of an answer had been the appearance of a single point of illumination at the highest point of the citadel.

The Thunderhawk dropped lower. Qaphsiel took it in at a steep dive. Veritus and Wienand were held firmly by their grav-harnesses. Abathar opened the side door and the Deathwatch stood before the opening, ready to jump. There was only a slight wind. The atmosphere was beginning to freeze again. Nitrogen snow blew inside the gunship. A cold beyond words came in with it.

The temperature could not reach Thane through his armour. The readouts of his auto-senses told him what it was. Yet he sensed it, too. The dark and the cold of the nameless world cried out with such force it was as if there were a huge wind, howling loss at the cosmos. This was a place beyond mourning, beyond the grave. Abandonment, rejection, betrayal, judgement, punishment — they were all part of the great night. They were, he thought, the very mortar of the fortress.

The shoulders of the ork Titan were broad and flat, landing pads, Thane guessed, for aircraft. They were clear except for a single anti-air cannon at the rear of each pad. The barrels were long, stretching across half the length of the shoulders. The Penitent Wrath roared towards the left-hand pad. In the last moments of the approach, the orks finally realised there was an airborne enemy in the field. The turrets began to turn. The cannons opened fire immediately, when they were still facing away from the gunship. Their massive shells burst in the air, brief suns in the endless night. Qaphsiel pushed the Penitent Wrath harder, racing against the left turret’s rotation.

Still behind the Titan, the Thunderhawk dropped below the shoulder, then came back up, flying level. The platform came closer. The turret was a third of the way through its rotation. In another moment, the length of its barrel would be in the gunship’s flight path.

Thane braced. He heard the whine of the turbofans as they began to alter the ship’s trajectory. Qaphsiel fired the retro-nozzles, slowing the flight. The deck angled up. Thane began his leap with the landing pad still ahead. He was in the air just as the Thunderhawk passed over the edge of the Titan’s shoulder. He and the squad landed, rolling off the momentum. The engine whine became a scream. The Penitent Wrath climbed sharply, pushing up with all the force of its turbofans. Its nose passed over the cannon. The anti-air guns fired interlocking streams of shells, but the gunship rose faster than the orks could adjust their aim. It flew on, higher, gathering yet more speed as it made for the high spire of the fortress.

Thane rose to his feet. His Deathwatch brothers at his side, he ran towards the Titan’s head. The platform tilted up and down with each rocking step of the weapon. The head was a massive, grimacing icon of a monstrous deity. It was surrounded by a rampart of teeth, the gaps between them like huge, clumsy crenellations. Their construction was as rough, patchwork and monolithic as the rest of the monster. Thane found plenty of handholds. Gladius climbed the teeth and dropped into the space beyond. It was wide as a town square.

In the head’s left eye, heavy-calibre guns opened up. Their fire swept across the empty space towards the Deathwatch.

Close in, the fortress was just as angular and bladed as it had appeared from a distance. The towers were clusters of close-standing spikes. They made Wienand think of a forest of lightning claws jutting from mailed fists. Turrets tracked the Penitent Wrath as it climbed the heights of the fortress. They tracked, but they did not fire.

‘A good sign?’ Wienand said to Veritus.

‘Not the worst, at least.’

The high tower had a small landing pad just below its tapered peak. It was the site of that single, harsh light. Qaphsiel approached it slowly. A gun mounted into the wall of the spire followed silently. The Thunderhawk came down on the pad. Wienand approached the open side door. The gun, five metres up, was pointed directly at her. She jumped down to the flagstones. Veritus followed her. The gun did not move.

Far below, the monstrous ordnance of the Titan struck the mountainside. The tremors reached all the way up.

At the other end of the platform was an iron door. In the landing lights of the Thunderhawk, it was a stark black, glinting with methane frost. Wienand walked to the door. There were no handles. She stifled the impulse to knock. They know we’re here, she thought. Veritus stood beside her. ‘Now what?’ she asked. ‘Did you have a speech prepared?’

Veritus shook his head. The harsh light mounted on his helmet bleached his features. The shadows of his face were deep as canyons. As he gazed at the door, so utterly closed and cold, he did not resemble the dangerous inquisitor Wienand had struggled against on Terra. He did not look like the zealot who had sent assassins after her. He looked like a very old man, one who had seen too much, who stood at the brink of despair, and who had to fight hard not to fall into its abyss.

No, he did not have a speech.

Wienand wondered again why Veritus had insisted on coming. To observe the Deathwatch? Certainly. There was much to know there. There would be matters to prepare as a consequence. But here, why come to this locked door? He could have just as well waited aboard the Herald of Night.

Perhaps he had come to bear witness. So had she. Though she felt another need as she stood here like a supplicant. She did not know what she should call it. She recognised the imperative, though. Even if Thane had not turned this part of the mission over to her, she would still be here.

A minute passed. Then another. Silence deeper than the absence of sound, a silence of the soul, hard and cold, surrounded the tower. At last, Wienand said to Veritus, ‘You must go.’ When he started to object, she interrupted him. ‘You know I’m right. You can’t be here.’ She looked back at the Penitent Wrath. ‘That can’t remain idle. It needs to be elsewhere. You need to not be here.’

Veritus looked at her. His face was still, unreadable. His eyes were nothing but glinting black. In the end, he nodded and walked back to the gunship.

‘Leave me,’ Wienand voxed Qaphsiel.

‘Understood.’

She faced the door. She didn’t look as the gunship took off. Light faded. There was only her helmet lamp now, and the night pressed close. The silence gathered weight. Wienand’s awareness of the war faded. There was only the door, and the myth behind it. She could not summon the myth. She could not make the door open. But she could wait. To stand here and meet the tower’s silence with her own was the most direct action she had yet taken in this war.

Then the silence changed. There was no noise in the thinning, falling, snowing atmosphere. But the silence changed, because there was movement. Frost cracked. The shadows changed.

The door opened.

From the dark of the Titan’s eye, massive stubber fire battered the Space Marines. They fought back with light. Forcas stretched out his arms. Energy flashed from his fingers, golden and pure, a blaze of righteousness in the night. The light became a wall. It was a shimmering nobility. The orks trained their fire onto the barrier. The shells exploded against the golden aura. Forcas strained. The shield trembled, flickered for a moment, then held.

‘Get beneath the guns!’ Thane yelled. ‘They’re our way in.’

The Space Marines broke left and right. Forcas stayed where he was, preserving the shield, holding the orks’ focus. Thane and Warfist went left around the wall, ran back into the dark. It was lesser, the glow of Forcas’ barrier spreading over the entire open area before the Titan’s skull. The Space Marines were visible to the gunners, but the barrier was the lure, dazzling them, frustrating them as it resisted their shells. On the other side of the wall, Straton and Abathar had almost reached a point directly underneath the eye turret.

The barrier flickered again, buckling under the sustained fire. In another moment, Forcas would be exposed.

The eye was three metres up the wall of the skull. Abathar fired upward with his plasma cutter. He sliced through the barrel of one of the guns. The weapon exploded. Straton threw a grenade through the socket. There was a second blast. The eye glared red at the night, blazed as ammunition cooked off, then went dark.

At the base of the head, a door in the shape of a maw rose with a deafening metallic screech. Orks boiled out of the opening. Thane and Warfist strafed them with bolter fire and hurled frag grenades into their midst. The charge stumbled into chaos, giving Forcas time to run across the space to join Straton and Abathar.

Thane and Warfist kept moving, and kept shooting. More and more orks were rushing from the maw. They become a flood, and there was no more holding them back.

‘We’re clear,’ Straton voxed.

‘Go!’ said Thane. He nodded at Warfist, who ran the rest of the distance to the eye. Thane paused long enough to throw two more grenades into the orks and hit them with a wide spray of shells. The orks were lightly armoured. They were the servants of their god-machine, not infantry, and Thane killed many. They were also legion, and their undisciplined shots were counting. Bullets hit him, a cascade of blows, driving him back.

‘We’re in,’ Warfist said.

Thane ran. He’d bought the squad the time it needed. Now the rest of Gladius poured fire on the orks from inside the eye, covering Thane. He maglocked his bolter to his thigh and leapt. Warfist caught his arm and pulled him inside.

The turret was a space of twisted, burned metal and carbonised flesh. The doorway out was blocked. Abathar hauled the wreckage out of the way while the others fired down on the orks as they tried to climb. Forcas created another golden shield over the opening of the eye. The orks screamed, enraged by the desecration of their icon as well as the barrier to their weapons.

Abathar had the way clear. Beyond was a narrow corridor leading deeper into the head. Thane said, ‘We have to kill the greenskins that direct this abomination. Can you take us to them?’

‘I can speculate about where they might be,’ Abathar replied.

‘That’s all I can ask. Lead us.’

Abathar plunged into the dark, cacophonous shadow. Thane followed. Straton stayed to plant a melta bomb. When the light of Forcas’ shield winked out, a more searing brilliance followed. The ceiling of the turret fell in, and the eye was blinded forever. The Deathwatch moved into the Titan, seeking its brain.

The hall at the top of the spire was circular. Vaulted, stained crystalflex windows faced every direction. With no illumination outside the fortress, the windows were lit by their own art. The mosaics depicted warriors destroying the enemies of the Emperor. Many of the foes wore psychic hoods. Their faces were contorted grotesques. Their eyes blazed with the fires of the warp, and the fires died before touching the warriors in armour of gold, of red, of black. Some of the windows depicted vessels, black against the black of the void, distinguishable only because they were outlined by the same phosphorescence that limned the figures of the other mosaics. The interior of the spire was lit the same way. The narrow, pointed dome was yet another star chart.

This one was of the entire Imperium. But the chart was old. It was the Imperium as it once had been, not as it was now. The faint trace Wienand had seen in Vultus was sharp here as a razor to the eye. In the night of the world, the cold silver was stark, nearly blinding, and without forgiveness.

The voice of the woman before Wienand was just as cold, just as lacking in mercy. It was the sound of silver.

‘Why have you come to Nadiries?’ she said.

Answering was difficult. It was painful to be in the presence of these women. An aura of nothing, of suffocating blankness squeezed Wienand’s soul. She felt as if something had murdered her unconscious mind. She was diminished. If this was her experience, she could not imagine the agony a psyker would suffer in this hall.

What had Wienand expected? Was it this? Was it to see the Sisters of Silence arrayed before her in this solemn amphitheatre?

No.

They wore dark, hooded robes, filigreed in the cold silver. They were wrapped in the void, upon its black the wordless voice of the stars and their memories of endless sacrifice. While Wienand struggled to speak, they pulled back their robes and hoods. The army of silence appeared before her in armour of gold, of red, of black.

Had Wienand expected to face the Sisterhood for the first time like this, standing in the centre of the amphitheatre, facing judgement colder, more pure, than that of the Inquisition?

No.

What had she expected? She did not know. But most of all, she had not expected to be alone, to know that it would be her words on which the success or failure of the mission would depend.

She had also not expected the Sisters of Silence to speak.

At last she managed, ‘We have come to seek your aid.’

‘We?’

‘The Inquisition, which I represent. The Adeptus Astartes, who are fighting at this moment to save Nadiries.’ She paused for a moment. ‘We is every citizen of every human world. The Imperium seeks your aid.’

The woman stared at her. Her armour was crimson. So were the optics that had replaced her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as devoid of light as the world.

Wienand estimated there were fifty Sisters of Silence present. Some wore helmets. Many did not. Their heads were clean-shaven except for a single long rope of hair. Some bore electoos of the Imperial aquila on their brows. Ritual scars marked their cheeks. Almost all the Sisters wore grilles over the lower halves of their faces. Some had helms with ornate rebreathers that concealed their features entirely. They had new faces of metal. All of the designs connoted a form of silence, though one that found expression in actions so final, they exceeded the power of mere words.

‘The Imperium seeks our help,’ said the warrior with the crimson stare. She spoke with a flat, deathly tone. ‘I am Kavalanera Brassanas, Knight Abyssal of Purgatory Squad, and it has been many centuries since the Imperium made it clear the aid of my order was not desired. I find this request hard to credit.’

‘And even more difficult to trust,’ said a Sister behind Brassanas. Her armour was black. Her face was one of those entirely concealed. Her voice resonated metallically behind the mask.

‘I agree with Knight Obsidian Drevina,’ said Brassanas.

‘The entire Imperium is besieged by orks,’ Wienand said. ‘They have technology beyond anything we possess. They have destroyed whole worlds. They smashed the Imperial Fists. The Imperium will fall without your aid.’

No emotion. No answer. Time fell into the dark. There was a faint movement of the Sisters’ fingers. They were speaking to each other, Wienand realised. She felt as if she were witnessing the discourse of tombs. They use their cant, she thought, but they speak too. Why?

Brassanas said, ‘Perhaps it is time for it to fall.’

Wienand gaped. But the shock made pieces fall into place. The Sisters had turned their backs on the Imperium, as they had turned from silence. ‘You renounced your vows,’ she said. ‘Was it that easy to abandon the Imperium?’

‘Our vows were to the Emperor,’ Brassanas replied. ‘And to the Imperium He created. The corruption you serve is not that Imperium. We still serve the Emperor. We still stand guard against the witch.’

‘We do not recognise the simulacrum that has replaced the Emperor’s dream,’ said Drevina.

‘That is the true betrayal,’ Brassanas said. ‘Let it fall.’

‘Let it fall,’ Drevina repeated.

‘Let it fall,’ the other Sisters echoed. ‘Let it fall. Let it fall.’

The whispered chorus chilled Wienand because it had the ring of justice. In this hall, there was moral authority of a kind never dreamed of in the Great Chamber. Wienand thought of the High Lords, and saw only the rightness of Brassanas’ verdict.

And yet…

In that verdict, Wienand saw the way forward.

‘Vulkan would have agreed with you,’ she said.

‘Vulkan,’ said Brassanas.

Wienand sensed a stir in the hall, though no one moved. ‘The primarch had no love for the High Lords. He saw the corruption. He knew the High Lords and all their works to be worthy only of contempt. Yet he fought for this Imperium.’

‘Vulkan was with you?’ said Drevina.

‘Fought?’ said Brassanas, emphasising the past tense.

Wienand nodded. ‘He died fighting the orks on Ullanor.’

A gasp rippled through the theatre.

‘Vulkan is dead,’ Drevina said, and her whisper was a mourning cry.

‘Vulkan is dead,’ the other Sisters repeated. ‘Vulkan is dead.’ The words tolled. The echoes grieved.

‘Ullanor,’ Brassanas said, sounding the word slowly. ‘The orks have returned to Ullanor. Then perhaps the end has truly come.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Wienand. ‘But Vulkan fought it.’

Brassanas said nothing.

‘If the Imperium falls, if Terra falls,’ Wienand pursued, ‘what of the Golden Throne?’

Still nothing.

‘What of your vow to the Emperor? And is this to be your legacy? The destruction of everything the Sisters of Silence have fought so hard to protect? Because you refused to help when you possess the key to defeating the orks?’

‘We possess the key?’ said Brassanas. ‘Explain yourself.’

‘The ork witches,’ Wienand said. ‘Destroy them, and we destroy the Beast.’

Brassanas stared at her for several long moments. Then she said, ‘We will deliberate. You will be taken to the lower gates to await our decision.’

‘No!’ Wienand shouted. There could be no deliberation. There was no choice. There was only duty. ‘How long will you deliberate? Until the orks tear down your gates?’

Brassanas watched her.

‘I too have been betrayed,’ Wienand said. ‘I have seen the corruption first-hand. I know exactly what it is I am defending. And I will defend it to my last breath. I will not let the Imperium fall into silence.’

‘Sacred or profane,’ Drevina said to Brassanas. ‘We must choose our silence.’

Brassanas nodded. She threw her cloak back over her shoulders, revealing the power claw on her left arm.

Now there were other echoes in the hall. They were the ratcheting clanks of magazines slammed home, and the impact of boot heels on stone. One by one, the unforgiving saints of the Imperium began their preparations for war.

The ork engineer’s gun unleashed a torrent of energy. The coruscating beam struck Thane, surrounded him, and lifted him from the deck. It threw him back between two immense spinning columns. Each was ten metres in diameter, and grooved. They moved back and forth along a horizontal slot in the deck, grinding together, then pulling back. Thane bounced off the pillar to his left, then fell into the ragged tear in the deck. He clung to the edge. Below him, the darkness shrieked with massive, incomprehensible machinery. If he fell, he would be reduced to pulp and splinters of ceramite in moments.

On either side, the spinning pillars closed in. The residual energy from the gun’s strike pulsed and jittered through his armour, and it would not obey his muscles’ commands. He held on to the ledge, but he couldn’t move.

The columns spun nearer.

There were three ork engineers in the control centre of the Titan. Abathar’s speculation had proven correct. He had led Squad Gladius upwards through the ork Titan’s head, winding through corridors tangled with power conduits and clanging with exposed gears to this point, just above the energy-cannon eye.

A hatch opened in the forehead of the Titan to reveal the land below and the mountain ahead. The space was vast yet crowded, a maze of pistons and chains, of machinery that spread like a cancer, yet somehow moved the Titan forward and directed the aim of its weapons. The engineers laboured in a multi-levelled nest of levers and arcing power sources. Each ork worked at its level, but when Gladius attacked, two of the engineers retaliated with energy weapons. The third clambered up and down the control levels, frantically throwing switches and working the dark machinic sorcery that kept the Titan advancing.

The force field protecting the engineers held back Straton’s shells. Warfist raced through the chamber, gutting the greenskins commanded by the engineers and slicing cabling in half. The second engineer hit Abathar with his beam weapon. The Techmarine was seized by a gravity whip, and the ork propelled him out of the hatch. The claw of his servo-arm clamped around a thick cable as he flew, and he hung on. The ork held the trigger down, its weapon glowing with heat. It shook Abathar back and forth, trying to dislodge his grip and send him falling far to the ground below.

A score of orks had rushed Forcas, overwhelming him with sheer mass, pushing him into machinery where he had no leverage. As Thane struggled to pull himself up, he heard a feral roar. Greenskins staggered back. The Blood Angel tore through them with his chainsword and a howling fury Thane had sensed just beneath the surface of his rigid, pious calm. His face was covered in the enemy’s blood. He raised a fist surrounded by a halo of scarlet warp energy. Both ork engineers trained their weapons in his direction. They fired at the same moment he unleashed his incinerating blast. The two forces collided halfway across the chamber. The explosion was blinding.

The Titan tilted violently to one side. The deck slanted. It was enough for Thane to push himself out of the trap. The columns clashed together behind him and the space marine rounded on them, facing a wall of grinding, whirling metal. He threw a melta bomb at the intersection of the pillars and thumbed the detonator at the same moment. The explosive went off before it could be sucked into the vortex. There was another dazzling flash.

Thane stumbled away, regaining control of his limbs. The columns spun into the melting heat of the explosive. They fused with each other, and their huge mass pulled them in the opposite directions of their spin. A huge, shuddering jolt ran through the Titan. From the decks below came the sounds of screams and the vibration of blasts.

The warring lightning faded between Forcas and the orks. The Blood Angel was still standing, but his armour was badly scorched. His face was a mass of burned meat. He staggered forward, still snarling. One of the engineers had fallen, smoke rising from its blackened corpse.

Abathar pulled himself back inside the Titan’s head. He charged the engineers’ nest and swung his power axe at the straining shield. Warfist looped around and rammed his shoulder into the field at the same moment. Straton’s shells never let up. The two remaining greenskin engineers had just enough time to know what was coming and roar a brutish denial.

They were dead moments later.

The molten bedlam of the columns screamed. Its fire spread along the cables. They melted. They convulsed like maddened serpents. Electrical fury lanced through the space and the fused columns spun still faster as they shattered restraints. The whirl reached beyond them. It took the chamber. It seized the Titan. Thane felt a world roar into a vortex.

The ork Titan was going mad.

The entrance behind Thane, the one through which Squad Gladius had entered the control hall, had been destroyed by the maelstrom of the columns. There was another one in the far wall. ‘Seal the door!’ Thane shouted into the vox. There would be no chance for any ork to attempt to regain control of the Titan.

Straton and Abathar ran through the monstrous clamour of the growing destruction. Abathar melted the door along its seams while Straton placed charges across the ceiling. Thane and Warfist turned to Forcas. The Blood Angel’s snarls were inaudible in the thunder of disintegrating metal. His movements were sluggish. They guided him towards the hatch.

The door burst open, the crush of orks overwhelming the seals before Abathar could complete them. He turned plasma cutter and power axe against the horde. He was surrounded by a flood of blood and greenskin muscle.

‘Do it now!’ Thane heard him vox Straton.

The Ultramarine set off the charges. The blasts brought down shrieking machinery and slabs of metal. They crushed flesh. Abathar disappeared under tonnes of burning wreckage with the horde.

The deck tilted thirty degrees. It threw Forcas, Thane and Warfist against the outside wall. Straton grabbed a spur of rubble, kept his feet and hauled. Metal shifted. The centre of the rubble glowed white. It trembled, then began to collapse from the heat of the plasma cutter. Abathar reared out of the mass. His left arm hung limp, but he punched at his prison with servo-arm and axe.

The deck rocked back, then to the sides. The rotation grew more violent. The spin gathered momentum. The columns had become a blinding mass of self-destruction, and still they spun and spun and spun. The flames were everywhere. There would be no salvation for the Titan. Soon there would none for the Deathwatch either.

‘Qaphsiel,’ Thane voxed. ‘We need extraction. Make for the crown of the Titan.’

‘Understood.’

Warfist went through the hatch first. He hacked at the shielding with his power claws, carving a path up. Forcas sagged against Thane, but he had ceased snarling, and he reached out and grabbed the sides of the hatch. A cloud of fire swept over them. Blinded, Thane felt Forcas begin to pull, and he added his strength to the Blood Angel’s, guiding him into the air.

‘Straton,’ he voxed. ‘Abathar.’ He looked back, but he could no longer see them. The control chamber was darkness and flame and heaving movement.

‘We are here,’ Straton answered. ‘We are following.’

Thane climbed outside. Fire erupted from the eyes of the Titan. Above him, Warfist was helping Forcas towards the crown. Thane waited until he saw Straton emerge from flame and smoke, then Abathar behind him. Then he climbed.

The mind of the Titan was dying, and its body responded with ever greater violence. The massive cannons were still firing, but the Titan’s arms were caught in a pendulum motion, the swings growing longer and more wild. The monster’s gait was a drunken, turning sway. It was a mountain falling into a dance of death.

Squad Gladius clung to the skull in storm. The Penitent Wrath skimmed the top of the Titan. Qaphsiel flew the gunship in tight circles as the Space Marines reached the peak. Warfist jumped through the side door as the Thunderhawk went by. He reached down for Forcas on the next pass. Thane held the psyker up. He was barely responsive.

‘Raise your arms, brother,’ Thane said. ‘Raise them in triumph.’

Something in Forcas heard. He obeyed. Warfist grasped his forearms and hauled him aboard. Thane and Straton followed when Qaphsiel brought the gunship around again.

One more pass now. One more brother. Thane and Straton crouched at the door to aid Abathar. The Techmarine flexed his knees and began his leap.

Metal buckled. The crown of the Titan collapsed into the vortex. Shields turned to jagged teeth. Abathar fell into the gnashing metal.

He stretched his servo-arm up as he plummeted. Thane seized the claw. The imploding skull dragged Abathar down and sought to pull Thane from the gunship. Straton clasped the arm and they both pulled.

Thane felt the jaws crush something human. The disintegration of bone shook through Abathar’s frame and into Thane’s arms. ‘We have you, brother!’ he yelled in defiance of the dying beast.

Then they did have him. They pulled him free. They dragged him aboard.

His right leg was gone below the thigh.

The Thunderhawk pulled away from the Titan. The monster was out of control now. It staggered through the mass of the ork army, crushing infantry beneath it. Its arms were a monstrous flailing, and the devastation of its guns spread across the battlefield, punching new craters in the ground as well as the mountainside. The ork invasion force turned on its own weapon. The caldera became a battlefield, a cauldron of explosives as the orks struggled against the awful power of their technology gone mad.

The Penitent Wrath flew towards the fortress.

Forcas was unconscious. Warfist and Straton wrestled him into a grav-harness. Abathar was awake. His blood slicked the deck, but his Larraman cells had already slowed the flow, coagulation building a scab over the stump. The femoral artery had pinched itself closed. Thane helped the Techmarine to a bench, then turned to Veritus. The inquisitor had been sitting silently in the troop hold. ‘Well?’ he asked.

Veritus shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘The enemy is distracted,’ said Warfist. ‘If they’re going to break out…’ He stopped. ‘What is that?’ he said.

Thane joined him at the viewing block. The mountain just below the base of the fortress was moving. ‘A gate,’ he said. A seam of light appeared in the darkness. Walls of rock rumbled apart, revealing a vehicle bay beyond. Silver illumination bathed the cliff face. Three armoured vehicles advanced from the depths of the bay. ‘Rhinos,’ Thane said.

‘How do they expect to reach the ground?’ Warfist demanded. ‘That’s a sheer—’ He stopped.

Thane’s eyes widened.

‘If those are Rhinos,’ Warfist said, ‘why are they flying?’

Engine exhausts burned red on the flanks and undersides of the Rhinos. The vehicles streaked down the mountainside, then levelled off as they approached the ground. The squadron flew over the orks, storm bolters cutting a swath of fire through them. Thane witnessed impossible, awe-inspiring technology, and it was Imperial.

Exulting, he said, ‘They are flying because they are transporting myths.’

Epilogue

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Koorland listened to the silence. It was stronger than ever. It strode above the celebrations. Its weight gathered second by second, and he knew its cause.

From the base of a staircase wide enough for thousands but forbidden to all but a few, he gazed at the towering door of the Sanctum Imperialis. He would never see what lay beyond. That was perhaps as it should be. The sublime was not for his eyes. He had not earned the right. The women who had entered a short while ago had that right. The staircase was not forbidden to them, nor was this door. There were other entrances to the Sanctum, but they were for those who would never come out again. The warriors who had climbed this staircase would also descend it.

‘Did you speak to them?’ he asked Thane.

‘Very little. They were disinclined to speak to anyone except Inquisitor Wienand.’

‘I see.’ He pushed aside thoughts for now of the power play Wienand might be preparing.

Inside the Sanctum, fifty women were passing before the Golden Throne, renewing their vows to the Emperor, and swearing themselves to eternal silence. Theirs was the quiet he was hearing. It was not a silence for which he could take credit or blame. It was not his burden, or his sacrifice, or his honour.

He gave thanks for it, though. He did not expect this silence to banish the others. Their weights would remain with him. But it might bring about yet another. Through it, the Beast would at last cease to roar.

David Guymer

The Last son of Dorn

‘All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.’

— General Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian Militarum of Ancient Terra, M2

One

Plaeos — atmospheric entry

Check 2, -00:15:21

Kjarvik Stormcrow stood in the gunship’s open hatch. One armoured boot was on the lowering assault ramp, the extended hydraulics gripped in one wolf-clawed gauntlet. The braid of heavy ork knucklebones strung through his long forelock drummed wildly on his shoulder. His pelt whipped about behind him. The unfamiliar salts of an alien sea filled his nose and mouth. Before him was grey ocean, as far as his prodigiously enhanced senses and stupefying altitude could show it. Massive waves were capped with oily pollution and stuck through with scrap metal. It made them frothy and barbed, like watching the hreindýr herds on their winter exodus across the fjords.

The phosphorus burn of auto-fire tracers stitched across the streaking blue, the loose-chain rattle of machine cannons barely audible above the roar of turbofans. The Penitent Wrath descended hard and hammered left. A propeller-driven biplane with a lightning bolt jagging down the side droned by on the right, and spat high-velocity slugs into the water. Kjarvik held on, scowling. More of the atmosphere fighters were buzzing low over the ocean on an intercept course. They were not going to make it, of course.

The ork aircraft were remarkably capable given their ramshackle design, but they had not a scrap on the Thunderhawk’s speed. And Atherias, the Hawk Lord, was good. Almost preternaturally good. His co-pilot was not too bad either.

The gunship levelled out, auto-fire crisscrossing the sky around them. Kjarvik beheld the mountainous structure that Atherias’ evasive manoeuvres had brought into view.

Bohr would have called it an island hive, or the remains of one, but Bohr had no soul.

It was a titan of the ocean underworld, the burned, bombed-out skeleton of a thing that could not die. Its skin partially regenerated with drift metal, plastek sheeting, and planks of wood, it reared up for the feast of metallics that glinted in the orbital band. Fat blimps and transorbitals buzzed around its thorny head like carrion birds.

Massive guy ropes held the teetering mountain upright, anchored within the sprawling pontoon shanties that crested and fell with the waves. The relentless wave action was converted into power by salt-corroded copper converters, fed into hab-size capacitors for storage or through fat cables towards immense desalination complexes. The dark blue water was slurped out of the ocean by the kilolitre, potable water and salts spitting out into drums for export. Fleets of ramshackle paddleboats trawled the ocean for usable scrap.

Mere months after Plaeos had fallen, the orks had made their new conquest not just viable, but valuable.

‘Twenty seconds,’ came Atherias’ voice, tinny in his ear bead.

An ork fighter came apart in a blizzard of outsized engine parts as Penitent Wrath’s lascannons neatly cut it out of the sky and set off its fuel tank. Debris spanked off the gunship’s heavy hull armour, and Kjarvik ducked back to avoid a piece of propeller that came scything across like a circular saw and took a bite out of the foot of the ramp before bouncing clear.

He looked back out, and saw the fighter’s wingman pull a turn that would have torn a Lightning interceptor in half, then spear out left. Machine-guided underwing hardpoints tracked it, mass-reactives spitting between its wobbling interwing struts as it flashed underneath the gunship then pulled into a gravity-defying vertical corkscrew that swung the fighter-bomber in behind. Kjarvik caught a glimpse of the pilot — immense musculature, bulked out in furs and squeezed into a cockpit. A huge grin split the ork’s ugly mouth beneath a set of red-lensed goggles as it mashed its firing toggles to send a stream of auto-fire gnawing through the Thunderhawk’s blocky rear armour.

A ruptured oxygen main sprayed compressed gases across the assault ramp as Kjarvik drew his bolt pistol and loosed a flurry of rounds. The gas spray cut out as Penitent Wrath’s spirit redirected her outlets. The wind cleared the ramp, and Kjarvik was able to watch as the fighter veered off with a mass-reactive wound in her upper wing before breaking up in the water.

‘Hah!’ he roared. ‘Did you see that?’

‘A lucky shot,’ Bohr chided, crackling in his ear.

‘Better to be lucky than not, I say.’

‘Ten seconds.’

The Thunderhawk responded to the heightened strain of four armoured Space Marines moving towards its rear hatch with a barely audible whine of its already howling turbofans. Kjarvik looked over his shoulder.

Baldarich pressed Phareous’ shield into his gauntlets. It was white against the fresh black of his armour and bore the emblem of a writhing snake. Phareous in turn tossed the Black Templar his broadsword. Behind them, Zarrael rammed the most vicious-looking weapon Kjarvik had ever seen across his back. He called it an eviscerator. The Flesh Tearer was massive, despite the fact he had just knelt to strap a bandolier of grenades over his thigh plate. Kjarvik had seen orks smaller.

Kill-Team Umbra.

‘Your helmet.’ Iron Father Jurkim Bohr appeared from the cockpit hatch. Whipping mechadendrites performed final checks on his battleplate and moved, apparently guided by their own spirits, to pluck spare magazines and grenades from the equipment lockers. Other tendrils snaked through the cargo webbing, moving in a weird mirror-fashion to the stride of his armoured limbs. Two women in bulky pressure suits, back-mounted grav-harnesses and underwater rebreathers flanked him.

Despite their protective coverings, their relative stature, the women possessed a presence that engulfed them all, that the Thunderhawk itself could not contain. They glided where the Iron Hand clumped, floated within a null singularity of their pariah physiology.

Kjarvik gave a pantherish snarl, and slid the black helmet over his mane as advised. It found the gorget softseals with a hiss of magnetic constrictors. It killed the wind, but it would take more than an environment seal to take the chill factor of the Sisters away. After a moment, his helm display came alive, pre-set with counters clocking local probable and relativistic time. They were all blinking rapidly down towards zero.

‘Five seconds.’

There was a time and a place for waiting. Kjarvik did not think that this was it. What was five seconds anyway?

He stepped backwards off the ramp.

The wind hit him hard and he began to fall. The thunder of turbofans and heavy bolters disappeared in the roar. He spread his arms and legs wide and let go a howl of joy. The black paint of the gunship disappeared. The wide grey of the ocean rushed up to meet him, waves rearing up as though desperate to hit him before he hit them.

Then they did, like being rammed in the chest by a Razorback, and everything became black.

Eidolica — orbital

Check 7, -00:09:01

No one had ever called the Fists Exemplar home world beautiful.

Its sun was a ball of thermonuclear rage. The daylight terminator was a line of fire ten kilometres high and twenty thousand long, a creeping barrage of photons and ultraviolet rays. Barren mountains rose high into the atmosphere, what wind the world’s torturous spin could generate insufficient to blunt them. Vast black expanses of promethium sands covered about a third of the surface in lieu of liquid oceans.

From the Storm Eagle’s open rear hatch Tyris could pick out the sprawling extraction and refinery complexes, a web of rust and piping and sporadic flare-offs that ate into the littoral boundary. A countdown timer hovered over his left eye, stretched slightly by the curve of his visor. He turned from the hatch and stepped aside. The deliberate heel-up, disengage, toe-down maglock gait came as second nature.

His own genetic proclivities, maybe, but the Raven Guard would always be more comfortable in the black.

‘Nubis. Antares.’

The Salamander and Fist Exemplar of Kill-Team Stalker clumped up to the hatch. The sun burned a white stripe along the smooth relief of their helmets, pauldrons, and the lift jets of their jump packs. They stood either side of a third figure, similarly geared with a light-variant jump pack and grav-lines. She was tall for a human, but not so tall in the company she kept. Her ornate, high-collared armour appeared gold, but the thermal membrane that had been painted over the top dulled its shine. It stretched over her bald head and braided topknot like a taut skin. The infinite depths of her eyes were shielded by a set of flare goggles.

‘Go,’ Tyris voxed.

The two Space Marines pushed themselves through the hatch and into the thin, void-boundary layer of the upper atmosphere. The Sister followed a second behind.

‘Next.’

Vega and Iaros stepped up to the breach, a second woman similarly positioned between them. If Tyris had once thought the mortal women in need of protection, then that misconception had been cleansed from him over the weeks of joint exercises and training. They were simply too valuable to go in first.

Maglocked though they were, Tyris could picture the Doom Eagle shifting from foot to foot as he would in practice, eager to be away. He had come to know them all, better than many of his own gene-brothers, and he knew therefore that the Ultramarine would hesitate on the threshold and glance back.

‘I have an ill-feeling about this, brother-sergeant,’ said Iaros.

Tyris glanced to the silent Sister, felt his gut coil at the nothing that filled her space.

‘Don’t we all.’

‘We do not,’ voxed Vega.

‘Go,’ said Tyris, lest the Doom Eagle jump alone, and once again the three warriors pushed themselves through the open hatch.

Alone inside the coasting gunship’s assault bay, Tyris moved to the edge.

He held a moment, heart swelling, eyes drinking in the view.

There was no wind. No pull of air or ding of particulates hitting the fuselage. No howl of decompression. Just inside, outside, and nothing but the liminal between them. Half an eye on his visor’s countdown timer, he spread his arms, disengaged maglock, and pitched forward.

Sunlight hit him like a bolt-round in the face. It overloaded his auto-senses and bleached his view to whites and greys. Bleeps and chimes alerted him to temperature and radiation warnings, failures in his suit’s auspex, vox, and power distribution subsystems. There was a reason that Antares cursed with a reference to ‘bright skies’. Work ceased. Cities were locked down. Even microbes could not exist on the planet’s surface during its day.

Which was why only a daylight raid would succeed.

There was no sensation of falling at all. The air was too thin to be felt. The planet was so far below him that the passing seconds brought its features no closer. He could almost reach out, and clasp a hemisphere in each gauntlet. If not for the madcap race of altimeter runes in his helmet display, he might have believed he flew. He could just about pick out the rest of his kill-team through the radiation glare. They were far below him, freefalling, but still in formation and descending fast.

He turned his head slightly and caught the Storm Eagle as it cushioned off the atmosphere and away. Twenty metres of inertially propelled metal, unpowered, it might as well have been invisible. The precision calculation required to graze a body moving at one hundred and eighty thousand kilometres per second with another impelled towards it from a trillion kilometres away staggered him.

It could only have been achieved with the cooperation of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

He looked back to the planet. He scoured it for the coordinates of the Fists Exemplar fortress. Genhanced synapses lapped at the brink of the neural cascade that would trigger his jump pack as numerals raced across his helm display towards a string of zeroes.

It had to be all together or it might as well be not at all.

Soon.

But not yet.

Valhalla — Kalinin trench

Check 3, -00:03:35

Tulwei stood up on the bike’s foot pegs and looked back over the skull and triple-forked lightning emblem on his pauldron. The command Salamander rumbled up through thick snow, pitted dozer blade ploughing up a great heap of it as if to bank up its own earthwork. Rattling caterpillar tracks threw fresh fall over the idling attack bikes of Kill-Team Tigrus as it pulled in. Its chassis trembled and growled, one big beast asserting dominance over the lesser vehicles that spat and whined around its armour skirts.

‘The one you were sent for is here, all right.’ General Sebko of the Kalinin CCCIII, ‘White Guard’, was swaddled in an ice-camouflage greatcoat with a thick fur collar, gloves, a snow-speckled cap, and snow goggles. Only the pins on his cuff and the iron in his beard distinguished him from the junior staffers bustling about the command tank’s exposed rear section. ‘The orks are dug in deep, and in numbers. It will be a slaughter, my lord.’

‘Let the slaughter be your concern. The Lord Commander’s quarry is ours.’

‘Yes, lord.’

The general had to shout to be heard, or if he was addressing one of his own unaugmented soldiers he probably would have. Earthshaker batteries thumped and thundered. The shaking ground spilled snow into trenches where tens of thousands of heavy-coated soldiers tramped over squelching duckboards. Lasguns in equivalent numbers crackled. Men shouted. Tanks roared. Guns of every calibre voiced their frustration and spite. Hatred was as thick on the air as the slush in the bottom of the tenches, and every degree as bitter.

‘The army goes over on my signal,’ Tulwei roared. He could hear over the din perfectly well. Shouting was out of consideration for the human’s ears.

The likely annihilation of the CCCIII would leave Kalinin’s northern approach wide open, but to to the general’s great credit, he simply saluted. ‘It will, lord.’

‘A full-scale assault on the ork lines will draw them out, and when they come…’ He indicated the trio of black-painted attack bikes grizzling in the snow beside his. Spitting out promethium fumes and snowmelt alongside them were the lavishly baroque gold-and-black bikes of the Sisters of Silence. One of the sidecars was empty. It would not be so for the return ride. Tulwei clapped his gauntlets together. ‘We will wait for word of the witch-breed’s position and be on him like a winter gale.’

Sebko smiled thinly. ‘Show it Valhalla’s warmth.’

Cleaning out the sidecar’s heavy bolter beside Tulwei, Sentar gave an approving chuckle.

The Valhallans’ loathing of the greenskins could have matched their own. Small wonder that their world held out while forge worlds and garrison worlds with standing forces in the billions were ground under the ork war machine like stones under the linked treads of a super-heavy tank.

Tulwei looked to his left. The Dark Angel, Vehuel, throttled his engine, a challenge in his hooded eyes. He looked to his right. The Soul Drinker, Grigorus, looked back, gauntlet over his gear stick, the other on the throttle. Tulwei grinned in anticaption of the great race to come. A countdown timer scrolled down the left-hand side of his helm display.

‘Nearly, brothers.’

And the countdown ended.

Terra — Imperial Palace

Check 0, -00:00:57

The Meridian Chamber, a little known sub-annexe of the Clanium Library, was where the fractal vagaries of Imperial time were charted and thus standardised. Here, seconds, minutes and hours were ticked off, blinked away, their passage marked by the tens of thousands of asynchronous timepieces. The four walls were divided by the four outer segmenta, each one further subdivided by sector, by subsector, and, for particularly prominent, heavily settled regions, by system. Muttering chrono-savants in dusky robes compared neighbouring pieces, meditated over astropath logs and shipping data and, where necessary, made corrections, circled by joyful cherub seraphim. Here, Imperial Standard Time was set.

Koorland, Lord Commander of the Imperium, last of the Imperial Fists, stepped smartly out of the way as one of the hunchbacked magi shuffled blindly across him. Its robes scuffed the floor. Hourglasses adorned with cyberskull motifs and filled with grains of glass swayed from a belt of woven metal. The magos approached the group of chanting acolytes that surrounded the Praeceptor, the master chrono: a scuffed leaden tank the size of a drop pod, delineating Terran time by atomic resonance exactly as it had done for the last thirty thousand years. The magos’ tools clicked and chittered over the venerable machine.

‘What is the verdict, magos?’

The adept took his time in answering. Imperial time was an arcane measure. It was fractal, ever changeable. The unimaginable distances between worlds and the time-bending effects of warp travel rendered linearity subjective at best.

But not so for the Beast. His greatest strength, the orks’ subspace propulsion technology, was also mankind’s most glaring, stone-age strategic weakness. He could move from system to system at speeds greater than the warp’s. His lines of communication were instantaneous. Koorland had but one chance to catch the orks unprepared. The Deathwatch assault on the Terran attack moon had required to-the-second timing. Accomplishing the same over interstellar distances was an exponential order of magnitude more difficult.

Fail, and he would never find them unprepared again.

After a few seconds in which hundreds of timepieces ticked out their own relativistic versions of time, the chrono-magos turned. His face was hooded, but clicked with moving parts. ‘There is a reasonable degree of probability that our times are now in synchrony.’

Koorland clenched one gauntleted fist and glanced over his shoulder.

Maximus Thane stood in front of the clock-lined wall with arms crossed, garbed in a long surplice that was as severe as a statue’s and grey as the genetic character of his eyes. He nodded once, and Koorland made a smile, some of the tension he felt disappearing in it. Some, but not all.

Everything rested on this.

‘The Lords will be waiting. Call them into the Library, brother.’

Valhalla — Kalinin trench

Check 3, 00:00:00

Officers of the CCCIII sounded out long blasts on their whistles and Valhallan soldiers fixed bayonets, pushed wobbling trench ladders to the walls and yelled, screams as formless as the steam that burst from their mouths. They began to climb. Squadrons of patched-up Leman Russ tanks rattled forward in support on cleated tracks. Marauder fighter-bombers, invisible in the blizzard, rumbled overhead.

Tulwei gunned his engine and allowed the attack bike to crunch slowly forward. He fingered his chainsword’s activation stud impatiently, waiting for the signal, and watched as it began.

Eidolica — atmospheric entry

Check 7, 00:00:00

It began.

A splutter of thrust arrested Tyris’ descent. The thrill of afterburners shivered through his armour. Then nothing. He opened his arms and glided, no sound in his helmet but his own breath, the hiss of stabilisers. Solar radiation had killed unit vox, but every warrior knew his role. The atmosphere flared with short promethium burns as the others made use of their jump packs to correct their angles.

The sun was ferocious, his visor seared to grey opacity. He could barely see the landing zone at all, the listing fortress of the Fists Exemplar, but the greenskins would have had to shut down auspex grids and seal their shutters in preparation for the dawn. What was he — a charcoal speck in the daylight furnace, a mote, invisible in the light, a streak on the white-glare armaplas sky. He was the net, the knife.

He was the Raven.

And the orks would rue the day the Lord Commander had called his brothers to the war.

Plaeos — Mundus Trench

Check 2, 00:00:00

Kjarvik’s pack lights pierced the gloom of the oceanic trench to a distance of about ten metres. Rust flakes and bits of debris, from fingernail-size down, danced from the darkness of the water column in a reflective swirl for the passing of the beams. Depth indicator runes pulsed in his helm display, bleeding redly into the hyper-pressurised backdrop on the opposite side of the armourglass.

Running across his path at roughly man-height was a ridge of dirt: pipes, buried in sediment and planktonic xenoforms. Polyps and tendrils and silvery, segmented creatures retreated from Kjarvik’s light as though the sea floor were a living thing that recoiled from his touch. He clumped around.

One of the Sisters of Silence lumbered towards him. Dozens of tiny indicator lights lit up her form and the shoal of escaping bubbles that rippled around her. Unlike the superb homeostatic systems of Kjarvik’s power armour, her suit lost most of her exhaled gases with every breath. He could function at this depth for days, without food or rest if need be, but it had already taken them half an hour just to reach the bottom of the ocean trench. She probably had the same again at best.

Her hands moved in front of her. Slowly. As though chained to great weights buried deep beneath the sea floor.

‘There is time,’ she gestured, using Adeptus Astartes battle-sign. She raised a sluggish gauntlet to point right along the run of pipes. Kjarvik blinked up a tri-dimensional gridmap of the ocean bottom, overlaid with the runes of Umbra and flowing datascreed. His eyes roved over it, absorbing it metaconsciously. Hive Mundus’ foundation levels were about five hundred metres that way. It would be a hard half-kilometre in power armour.

‘Very well,’ he voxed, and then on Umbra’s shared frequency, ‘Kjarvik. Moving to target.’ He started right, following the line of piping.

The rest of the squad called in: Bohr, Zarrael, Phareous, Baldarich, a vox-click from the second Sister of Silence. The tracker runes in his helm display confirmed their convergence on the target. The Sister followed cumbersomely behind him, breathing heavily into the vox as she struggled to keep to his pace.

Pillows of dust rose languidly from the sea bed with the stomp of his boots, his visibility dropping to eight metres, then six, then three, a shoal of glittering particulates surrounding him like carnivores around a piece of meat. He continued on augur readings, the pipes always on his left. He glanced down for a moment to check the helmet-sized dish of ceramite casing that was maglocked to his hip. It was a melta mine. Its systems responded to his armour’s auto-interrogator with a squirt of reassuringly passive signals.

A double click on his vox-channel pulled his attention back up.

His pack beams slashed the dark with silver as he looked around. He snarled in frustration. The signal came again, click click, as urgent as a non-vocal responder could be. A Vow of Tranquility was all to the good in your cloister. He disengaged his bolt pistol’s holster seals, and the weapon came away in his gauntlet in a rush of air bubbles.

He half turned, head moving a fraction ahead of his weighted body, and saw it. A black shape, smooth, shiny like oil, cut his light beam in half. He stomped back and it flashed by him, barely two metres from his face, more of it sweeping past as he pulled up his bolt pistol. His light flashed over the leviathan’s blubbery underbelly. Fins. Webbed claws. Weird, oily camouflage.

His pistol fired with a thunderous boom. A compression wave rippled out ahead of the bolt, propellant burn frothing up the water in its wake. The second explosion came a split-second later with a sudden blossom of red. The pressure held it together rather than allow it to disperse and the ragged, heavier-than-water spill slowly sank.

There was no cry of pain, no ultrasonic squeal of panic or alarm. Kjarvik watched it swim past, separating the billowing blood sac into smaller droplets with a parting swipe of its gargantuan tailfin. He had barely scratched it.

A vox-crackle spoke into his ear. ‘Did you kill a fish, brother-sergeant?’

‘First blood to me, Phareous.’

‘It only counts if you kill it,’ said Zarrael.

‘Are you using a secure squad link to keep tally?’ grumbled Baldarich. Kjarvik did not think that the Black Templar liked him very much.

The huge metal wall of Hive Mundus’ exterior shell soaked up his light beam. It was a sheer cliff face of adamantium composite, encrusted with organisms that had spent the last five thousand years evolving to break it down. Kjarvik surveyed it quickly, beam nipping left, right, up, down. Its visual appearance aligned with the schematics that the tech-priests had released to Bohr. The deep ocean had shielded the hive’s foundations from the orbital strikes that had devastated the surface, and given a base for the orks to subsequently rebuild.

But it had been weakened. Kjarvik could see the hairline fractures in the plating.

‘Kjarvik. In position.’ He uncoupled the melta mine from its hip suspensor and clamped it to the wall, voxing it in as he backed up to put some distance between himself and it. Four more confirmations came swiftly back.

‘Detonation in three,’ voxed Bohr.

Kjarvik turned to the Sister. Her blank face was illuminated by the cold square of lumen strips that outlined the edges of her pressure mask.

‘Two.’

He clasped the woman’s wrist in his gauntlet. She turned to him questioningly, and he grinned. He was the Stormcrow. The unlucky.

‘One.’

Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Check 0, 00:21:01

Tomorrow, he would be dead.

That view was Mesring’s own. His deterioration continued to baffle the mindless flow of hospitallers, physicae, and witch doctors that his personal staff summoned to his bedside. The cramps that woke him in the night to screaming agony at the passage of anything more fortifying than filtered water across his lips mystified them. As for the bouts of dizziness, the sweats, the lucid nightmares where he raved of plots and blasphemy — well, they were cause for great consternation. Every test was returned negative. Every palliative or medicament applied did nothing. It led even the most long-serving and decent amongst his staff to question whether it was simply his time. That he, Erekart Veneris Sanguinan Mesring, had served the divine Emperor for as long as He willed it.

Mesring would have sneered had he that much strength. The Emperor could not will Himself out of His own throne.

His opinion on his prospects, however, seemed to be one that his closest aides shared. He could think of no other reason, besides another ghastly hallucination, for the presence of Arch-Confessor Vitori Mendelyev beside him for his final hours.

‘This is a beautiful shrine,’ said Mendelyev. The old man took a deep breath of shriven air and candle smoke. ‘Peaceful.’ He had a soft, calming voice, an open face, both of which Mesring supposed were aids to his duties as confessor to the powerful.

‘I will not keel over on cue,’ Mesring snarled, fingernails digging into the wood back of the pew in front with his efforts at not crying out for the pain twisting in his gut. This was why he had sat in the second row when, as Ecclesiarch, the Emperor’s mortal representative on Terra, he could sit wherever he damn well pleased.

‘Of course,’ said Mendelyev, and fell silent. His eyes were closed, his lips moving soundlessly, his bald head dappled with the light of over a million candles. One for every world in the Emperor’s demesne. Mesring gave a rustling cackle, bringing the taste of old vomit back up into his mouth. Someone was failing to keep tally. There should be a few less of the things and their insufferable flickering by now.

The Cardinals’ Wake was a private sanctuary for the most senior clergy of the Adeptus Ministorum. The area was too sacred, and too sensitive, for their junior colleagues, and so even the most menial of functions from changing the oils in the scenting bowls to cleansing the colossal clerestory of stained glass were peformed by deacons and lectors, old men who could have been anointed primates of entire sectors and lived in commensurate luxury, but had instead opted to sweep the floors here. Mesring’s contempt for them was as limitless as the stars. The occasional Mechanicus adept, garbed respectfully in the palest off-white pink, worked out of sight beneath the basalt and gold statues of saints and Ecclesiarchs past, all the way back to Veneris I.

No effort was made to mask the great fibre-bundles and conduits that ran through the cathedra from the blessed machinery of the Golden Throne. It was sacred to both worlds, Terra and Mars, and the gentle susurrus of its continual operation was equally soothing to auditory systems of nerves and of wire. That was why the cardinals had held vigil here since the Emperor’s internment, and was what brought Mesring here now. Though he did not seek peace.

‘Doomed, all of you,’ he muttered, shivering, glaring at the handful of grey-haired clergy sat in silent prayer throughout the shrine. ‘Better to placate the Great Beast than trust in Him.’

‘The Emperor forgives and protects,’ said Mendelyev placidly, as though he had heard every deathbed blasphemy imagined by man.

‘It was the Emperor’s trespasses that brought the slow death to mankind. Ten millennia of decay and then final damnation. That is the loving bequest I foresee. One that only the Beast offers salvation from.’

The confessor, though bound for the same hell that awaited them all, of which Mesring now suffered but a fleeting foretaste, merely smiled. ‘In His deathless state, the Emperor reveals His divinity.’

‘Spare me. I can recite all the hypocrisy from memory.’

‘You want some new truth?’ said Mendelyev, soft still but with a firmer edge. ‘You have lived long and well, eminence. To all outward appearances you have been a paragon of the virtues of the Creed.’ Mesring caught the subtle reprimand. ‘The Emperor thinks little of self-pity. Believe me in this, eminence, that nothing eases a man’s passing like a little grace at the end.’

‘Grace,’ Mesring spat. ‘Vulkan is dead!’

The confessor shrugged. ‘As are many of his brothers.’

‘You seem remarkably sanguine.’

‘Worries are for the young.’

‘Old men dying with grace is what keeps the sheep in their pens and the wolves at the door.’

For all that they were used as metaphors in scripture wherever one looked, Mesring had never seen a wolf. They were the forest, the mountains, the night; the ancestral dread of upright apes that after a thousand generations of hive cities and nuclear winters still hadn’t lost a fear of the dark. They were what would emerge from the sump after the last lumen bulb sputtered out: not Chaos, but what Chaos made be.

Mesring blinked dizzily, realising that his voice was raised and echoing from the distant machinery, but also that a dying man couldn’t care less who he disturbed.

‘The Imperial Fists were destroyed, Vitori. It was Udo’s lie that put imposters bearing the black fist on their walls. My lie also. And Koorland upholds it. The people believe in a lie. They are all lies.’

To his surprise, tears were running down his cheeks.

Mendelyev clasped his shoulder kindly. ‘The Ecclesiarch weeps. This is good. Unburden yourself of your sins.’

‘I weep because I want to take off Vangorich’s head and stick it on a pole!’

‘Speak to me, eminence. I am here to listen, to whatever it is you need to say.’

Mesring looked up at the scrape of approaching footsteps, but it was merely a passing sexton come to relight the candles. With a cough that brought up some more blood, he reached into the sweat-soiled inner pocket of his surplice and withdrew a glass vial. It was empty. He placed it on the prayer table in front of Mendelyev.

‘What is this?’ the confessor asked.

‘The Emperor’s turned back. Poison delivered by a penitent’s kiss. An Ecclesiarch bought for a few meagre days of life.’

‘Bought?’

‘My alchemist was able to extend the final dose that Wienand supplied, but no more.’ He gestured to the empty vial. ‘Tomorrow I will be dead.’ He hissed the final word as a sudden, clenching pain overtook his self-control. His vision ran like the paint of an underhive mission in the acid rain. Something warm trickled down the inside of his leg. The Beast’s emissary to Holy Terra’s orbit had been vanquished and Mesring no longer knew where to turn. ‘Without… a… miracle.’

As if on cue — a sign, he prayed, a sign that the Emperor truly does watch and forgive — the monolithic Gates of Undying that led, ultimately, to the Golden Throne Room itself were opened and a procession of frocked men and their entourage entered.

The cortege was led by a frater swinging a jewelled censer and followed out by vestal choristers in trailing robes. The clergy were escorted by Frateris Templar in gleaming carapace, marching with ceremonial gold-plated lasguns locked to their shoulder, the cold fire of force-bayonets flickering by their ears. Mesring couldn’t tell how many there were. His eyes were too bleary to count, his mind too fuzzy to hold a number, but after a few minutes the procession tailed off and the gates were barred, physically, by the towering figure of a lone Adeptus Custodes.

The guardian was four metres tall, encased in golden artificer armour and wielding a halberd that was anything but ornamental. The Adeptus Custodes were crafted by the same artifice that had sired the primarchs, and though they were less than those demigods, they were still greater than the Adeptus Astartes. Seeing that being, Mesring felt the first stirrings of doubt at the enfeeblement of the God-Emperor.

‘You are not going to…’ hissed Mendelyev.

‘The Ecclesiarch has the authority.’

‘To make a request on behalf of another, not for himself. The Emperor’s tears are shed for His fallen warriors. They are for His warriors.’

‘He leaves me no choice. It cannot be His will for me to die like this. It cannot.’

An arch-cardinal in ostentatious white robes and jewelled mitre passed through the fug of incense and verse, dropped to one knee and kissed Mesring’s fingers. The memory of the last time Mesring had allowed that particular show of respect made his fists clench. The man’s name was Wilbran. His position of Emperor’s Chaplain was, naturally, a largely ceremonial one, but it carried tremendous prestige.

It occurred to Mesring that Wilbran’s would be high on any list of names to succeed him.

With a platitudinous greeting, the arch-cardinal stepped aside. Past him shuffled a lachrymal page with the wrung-out, worn-down look of a man who had grown old in spite of the chemical treatments belaying the onset of puberty and the death of innocence. He bore a silk cushion and on it a small golden reliquary. He prostrated himself and Wilbran opened the box. Inside was a vial, cut from a single piece of diamond, on a bed of scented tissue. It contained one droplet of glistening liquid.

Mesring’s breath caught as Wilbran lifted it reverentially and passed it to him.

The Emperor shed a tear for every one of His own that fell in battle. There was a priesthood dedicated to their collection, and just one had the power to heal a man of all wounds.

He took it, cotton-wool fingers fumbling with the stopper, and upended it over his desperate tongue.

He felt nothing.

The volume of liquid was so miniscule he did not even feel it hit his mouth. He was aware of the coiling in his gut, the fog in his brain, the thumping inside his ears. He scrunched his eyes and prayed to the Emperor to accept this one last chance to demonstrate His power. But he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

His grip tightened around the vial, and he pressed it to his forehead until it cut in.

He would not go quietly. He knew all the lies now.

And if a man as powerful as Mesring was going to fall, then the earth was damn well going to shake.

Three

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Check 0, 00:41:26

Lady Kavalanera Brassanas, knight abyssal of the Sisters of Silence, sat perfectly upright at the head of the table, hands on her armoured thighs. She was clad in antique crimson armour etched with ancient Terran designs, extinct languages, ideograms representative of concepts relevant to a mythic age. Parchment strips attached to the armour with wax seals decorated her body with an impenetrable, spiderish script. The collar of her battleplate was high, obscuring her mouth and nose and leaving only the dark-matter emptiness of her stare between her and the world. She was an untouchable, a blank, one in a trillion: a homozygous carrier of the mutant pariah gene that rendered her impervious to all forms of psyker assault. A useful trait, if an unnerving one to be around.

The High Lords, those that Koorland had demanded attend, adopted various manifestations of mental brace against the negative pressure of the woman’s mind, and the inexorable pull on their souls.

Juskina Tull and Fabricator General Kubik sat together along one side of the long table, with Admiral Lansung, Wienand and Gibran facing them on the other. Drakan Vangorich sat somewhere between attention and repose at the far end. Though not officially represented on the High Twelve, the Assassin had become as much a part of proceedings as the Lord Commander himself, and Koorland suspected that a few of his less informed peers had forgotten that they technically outranked him.

In spite of recent damage, the Clanium Library remained very much the overstuffed vanity project that Lansung had made of it. For all the Lord Admiral’s faults in matters of grand strategy and statecraft, however, given a small enough stage in which to operate he was a perfectly able military commander. The chronometric displays, hololiths, and loop projectors that had been installed at great expense in place of the books and other portable storage media that had previously filled the shelves actually, by accident or design, made for an excellent consultation chamber.

The snarling visage of an ork filled the big screens that surrounded the conference table, not frozen exactly but jerking from one millisecond to the next and then back again as though eager to be done but barred from moving on. A pair of fuzzy verticals ran though the image at the exact same spot on every display. The brute’s crusted nose and gaping mouth were up close to the capturing lens, its expression very much what one would expect from an ork having its skull crushed in a Black Templars Dreadnought’s power fist. With every twitch around the timepoint, the ork’s eyes were noticeably squashed closer together and then released back. Energetic emanations sparked from the cracks in the ork’s skull, generating strange, unsettling imagery on the data medium that became overt only when, as now, the playback was held.

Koorland was not at all surprised that everyone — barring Juskina Tull, he judged by her rapt expression — had already seen the Dzelenic IV footage. He was resigned to the fact that any information known to more than two people within the Palace’s walls quickly became common knowledge.

‘This,’ said Koorland, ‘as you are probably all by now aware, is live footage retrieved from a battle between a force of Black Templars under Venerable Magneric and an ork warband. It was returned to Terra at great cost by the Interdictor in the belief of her crew that what it shows is the weakness that we have all been looking for in the orks. Their psykers. We simply did not have the means to exploit this information until now.’

Ignoring the intrigued murmur from the Lords, Koorland reached across Lady Brassanas to depress the intercom switch set into a panel at the head of the table. ‘Brother Thane, have you located Magos Laurentis?’

‘I have. It seems he took a wrong turn at the playback control room.’

‘Please escort him in, brother.’

One of the grand paired doors creaked inwards, disturbing the roost of herald-seraphim clustered over the lintel block with squawks of Thane, Thane. The Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar held the door open and, with an oddly asynchronous click of metal ‘feet’ on the parquet tiles, Phaeton Laurentis scuttled towards the table.

There was almost nothing left of the magos who had been assigned to the Imperial Fists Second Company to study the extermination of the Ardamantuan chromes. The eye, perhaps, nestled in the centre of an insectile reconstruction of vox-thief pickups, mechanosensors and emotive carapace. That and the occasional quirk of personality. The rest was a reconstruction and, to Koorland’s mind, not one that the magos biologis, or anyone, could have deserved.

Laurentis circled the table on a tripod of articulated metal limbs that flicked up the skirts of ill-fitting robes, and distributed data packets with flicks of mechadendrites. His voice too was harshly synthesised.

‘You have begun to discuss the ork mysticus breed, correct?’ He pivoted his eyeball to Koorland, who nodded. ‘Good. Good. I apologise for my tardiness, Lord Commander, but I have studied this footage frame-by-frame one thousand and eleven times, and I have many demands on my time.’

‘As do we all,’ muttered Lansung.

Once, perhaps, Laurentis would have been human enough to note the not-so-subtle jab, but no longer. ‘As the Venerable Dreadnought-Marshal was cogent enough to recognise, the orks’ psykers are their weakness. The mind of each individual ork operates as a psychic dynamo of sorts, responsive to the ork’s mood and growing exponentially in power in the presence of other orks.’

‘The green roar,’ said Gibran, the hooded Paternoval Envoy of the Navis Nobilite, clearly more discomforted than the others by the psychic blank space generated by the knight abyssal. ‘We are familiar with the effect.’

‘The ork pyskers are able to absorb that power and release it in concentrated, directed form. As we observed on Ullanor, the harder we attack, the stronger the ork psychic field becomes. But as you have all seen…’ he gestured to the image frozen in greyscale on the pict-feed, ‘…the flow of power can be reversed.’

‘Potentially useful,’ said Vangorich, flicking through his packet, seemingly idly. ‘But we would have to draw these psykers out in order to exploit it, and the orks seem wiser than to let that happen. It didn’t happen on Ullanor.’

‘Which is why we must capture one for ourselves,’ said Koorland. ‘Ideally more than one.’

‘At least three, in fact,’ said Laurentis. ‘The Basilikon Astra and the work of the Grand Experiment have identified three ork colonies where the genotype of the mysticus subspecies has been confirmed. It is the opinion of my fellow magi biologi that the observed effect can be artificially induced. And targeted to destructive effect.’

‘An operation on this scale will require considerable manpower,’ said Lansung, with some of his usual bluster now he was on familiar ground. ‘And firepower. We are a council of twelve. We can’t in good conscience authorise that kind of operation without a full vote. Lord Verreault at least should be here to speak for the Astra Militarum.’

Tull and Gibran nodded gravely. Vangorich sat back in his chair and looked to the ceiling with a long sigh.

‘Let me be clear, so there can be no further misunderstandings.’ Koorland leaned forward. Everyone bar Vangorich and Kubik shifted noticeably back. ‘This is not a discussion. I do not ask for opinions and this is not a vote. There is no time to muster a fleet, and even if there were the unfortunate truth is that after Ullanor there is no longer the capacity to resource an expedition on that scale. We must learn to act quickly and decisively, which is why Deathwatch Kill-Teams Umbra, Stalker and Tigrus under the command of Sergeants Kjarvik, Tyris and Tulwei and supported by the Sisters of Silence have already been deployed to those worlds.’

‘Already. Deployed.’ Wienand enunciated each word as though they were too important to share a sentence.

‘You make it sound so ominous,’ said Vangorich.

‘Isn’t it?’ Wienand turned back to Koorland. ‘The Senatorum acknowledges the necessity of the Last Wall and the Deathwatch. And their effectiveness. But many of us, myself included, do not exactly like either. And now you appear to enjoy sole command of both? As I understand it you have even begun extending recruitment beyond those Chapters directly affected by the losses on Ullanor.’ She referred down to the extensive pile of handwritten notes in front of her. ‘Tyris and Tulwei are of the Raven Guard and the Storm Lords. Just how big is the Deathwatch now, Lord Commander? You can’t circumvent the Codex Astartes with loopholes.’

‘Must we have this same argument?’ said Vangorich.

‘Query,’ said Kubik, speaking in his harshly mechanised monotone for the first time since Thane had brought them all to their seats. ‘Objection has been raised to those of us not present, but what of those of us who are? Why are we here?’

‘Because I need ships. I need the best Navigators to pilot them and good men to crew them.’

As soon as Koorland said this, the atmosphere in the room changed. It became circumspect, the Lords each retreating to some private mental fief to survey its limits, what it held of value and, most importantly, what it was worth in trade. Koorland banished it back to the corners with a rap of his knuckles on the table. ‘I say again — this is not a request.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Lansung. He waved a pudgy hand vaguely. ‘There simply aren’t the ships to give you.’

‘The Autocephalax Eternal emerged from the most recent battle relatively unscathed. I will take everything. I can take no more from the Space Marine Chapters without blunting their own effectiveness.’

‘The damage to the flagship remains extensive, lord. Resources are scarce, and Mars has had… other priorities.’

‘The Synod of Mars is united in its support of Terra,’ Kubik interrupted, with a blurt of code. ‘But the Basilikon Astra suffered losses in the invasion of Ullanor and we too have few ships to offer.’

Koorland turned to the Chartist Speaker, Tull, who looked apologetically at something else and shrugged.

‘The Inquisition has ships,’ said Wienand, softly, filling Tull’s silence like a master rhetorician. ‘Experienced crews. The best Navigators in the Imperium.’

Gibran nodded, unasked-for confirmation that this was no exaggeration.

‘I will not give away control of the Deathwatch,’ said Koorland. ‘The Adeptus Astartes are not to be handed out like favours.’

‘You said yourself that the Deathwatch is too great a responsibility for one man. Even if we were to have faith in you to use them honourably, what of your successor as Lord Commander? What of theirs? No. Only the Inquisition can provide the proper authority for such a force, for it does not answer to one leader alone. I am but a representative of many, as is Veritus.’

Koorland rubbed the urge to snarl away on the back of his hand, and glanced sideways to Lady Brassanas who held his gaze with a frosty remove.

‘How many ships do you have?’

‘Several dozen operating from bases close enough to be contactable. Escorts all the way up to Black Ship class. They were built for transportion. I can’t promise it will be comfortable, but I have the capacity to transport several thousand men and their equipment wherever they need to go.’

Koorland let out a rasp of frustration. ‘Very well, inquisitor. As soon as this conference is over I will transfer full authority over the Deathwatch to the Inquisition. But these are my conditions. First, the Deathwatch is to be limited to Chapter-strength. Second, I retain the power to disband them when the current crisis is past. And third, with all respect, you are no military woman and the Inquisition is no military organisation. I will appoint a Space Marine to oversee all strategic aspects. Agreed?’

‘Do you have someone in mind for the role?’

Koorland met Wienand’s calculating eyes, too old for her young-looking face, tried to tease out what the woman was thinking. Thane had been in effective charge of Deathwatch operations since Sacratus, and was clearly the best fit for the role, but Koorland knew as soon as the thought arose that Thane, his right hand, was too close to him to be acceptable. The same might also be said of Bohemond and the other commanders of the Last Wall. He realised that even by assessing potential candidates in such a way he was making a political appointment rather than an operational one. His genhanced mind was superbly crafted to multi-task, but being forced to play the High Lords’ game, when his intent on becoming one of them had been to force them to play his, got under the skin.

‘There will be someone proven in place to oversee the next phase of the operation.’

Wienand held his gaze for a moment, then smiled lightly. ‘Agreed, then.’

Everyone suddenly looked relaxed, as though disaster had been averted with a near miss and normal service resumed.

‘Kubik,’ Koorland said, drumming his fingers irritably on the tabletop. ‘How proceeds the Grand Experiment?’

‘Entirely at the discretion of the Senatorum.’

‘He means, does it work?’ said Vangorich.

‘There have been several successful trials on both Martian moons. The investigation of the Techmarines, Abathar and Gadreel, into the failed experiment to teleport the Veridi starbase from Terran orbit was most illuminating. As was Alquist Arouar’s experience handling gravitic technology in the field on Caldera. The tech-priest dominus has been removed from military duties and transferred to the Grand Experiment. It is the conclusion of the project trajectoriae and the diagnostiad that a planetary body could be moved if so required.’

‘Mars, I presume?’ said Vangorich.

‘A logical conclusion, given that it is the only planet with the power capacity and the subspace impellers currently in place.’

‘What of Terra?’ asked Lansung.

‘Impossible. The effect on the Astronomican beacon would be enormous, and inherently unqualifiable.’

That brought a condemned silence upon them all. For several seconds, the weightiness of their responsibilities became untenable. Better several seconds than not at all, Koorland thought, though too little too late all the same. After a moment, Wienand spoke again.

‘What happens when the Deathwatch return to Terra?’

Koorland shook his head. ‘Time is critical. Each kill-team will translate to separate coordinates. Three fleets from Terra will rendezvous with them there.’

‘To what end?’

Koorland was considering how fully to answer when he heard what sounded like a body of men approaching the Library with some haste from the direction of the Cardinals’ Wake. Thane heard it at the same time, then Vangorich, the Assassin turning towards the door.

‘It is early,’ said Koorland. ‘But it could be news from one of the kill-teams.’

He rose from his chair, just as the grand doors were flung inwards and a trilling flock of herald-seraphim burst through.

Mesring, they sang, scattering over the table and circling the data-stacks. Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum.

Here to attend.

Here to attend.

Here to attend—

‘Vangorich!’ the Ecclesiarch bellowed, flapping drunkenly through the flock and clattering into the back of a trolleycart, spilling data-slates and scrolls all over the floor tiles. ‘I know you’re in here, you and your cronies. Heretics all!’ Loose wheels and weaker legs rattled along together for a few metres, while the Lords were still scraping back their chairs to obediently join with Koorland in rising.

Laurentis halted the trolleycart’s sideways trundle with one of his three limbs.

Mesring extricated himself from the trolleycart, brandishing an empty vial as though announcing a toast to a vanquished foe’s honour. If Koorland could profess amazement at how some Lords retained all evidence of good living while the billions beneath them starved, it was almost as remarkable how quickly decades of indulgence could be expunged from a man’s body. Gone were the pouches under the Ecclesiarch’s eyes, the blubber that had padded his expansive white robes, the self-reverential glow of overstated piety. In its place were glazed eyes, black teeth made prominent by receding gums, sunken cheeks whose pallor he had for some reason decided to mask with dark green kohl. His beard came out in clumps, stained with blood, wine, and vomit. He tottered on the spot and would have fallen in a second if not for the efforts of an elderly but well-built man in the robes of a senior confessor and a gaggle of sextons and fraters. They looked nervous, embarrassed. Some of them looked afraid.

Why would they be afraid?

‘You look unwell, Mesring,’ said Vangorich, his tone one that Koorland had heard used by medical orderlies in battlefield hospices. ‘Why, you look fit to drop.’

‘Suffer in hell, Vangorich. So slick. So clever.’ The Ecclesiarch paused only to hawk up a gob of blood. ‘I want the cure. I want it. I want it now.’

Koorland looked from one to the other. ‘Vangorich?’

The Assassin shrugged. ‘The pressures of his office are great, lord, the pastoral care of so many billions. The tragedy of the ork moon’s destruction still affects him, I fear.’

‘Lies!’ Mesring staggered through the clutching hands to face Wienand. ‘Tell him! Tell him how you bought me with the cure to his poison, for as long as my life had worth to you.’

Vangorich and Wienand shared a look that gave away nothing and everything.

With a frown that the genetic bequest of Rogal Dorn made furrowing and deep, Koorland turned from them and extended a hand towards the Ecclesiarch. He was a metre taller than Mesring and, in armour, four or five times as broad. He could have enclosed the man’s head in one hand.

‘If you have accusations to make, then I will hear them.’

Mesring shook his head so vigorously against his frail neck that Koorland feared he might snap it, arms aflap, striking Koorland’s gauntlet like an inebriate attacking a wall and waving the diamond vial above his head as though it meant something.

‘Mutants. Poisoners. Heretics.’ Mesring shot them all a glare, his painted face puce with consumption as he pointed finally at Kavalanera. ‘Consorts of witches.’

The knight abyssal appeared to smile but gave no other reaction.

‘Your order is barely a millennium old,’ interrupted Wienand, firmly. ‘Hers is ancient, older by far even than Lord Koorland’s, and has fought alongside the very person of the Emperor. Are the orks not enough? Must we scour the human diaspora for more enemies?’

‘Apostates. Traitors. By the Throne of Ullanor, I am surrounded!’ With a flap of his arms, Mesring parted his attendants and stumbled through them. No sooner had he done so than he spun around again and waggled a shrivelled finger. ‘There will be no corner of Terra that does not feel my fall, you mark me. I know things. The hypocrisy. The lies. The masquerade of the Fists. The death of Vulkan. The empty deviants that call themselves their leaders.’ He signed the aquila and spat blood on the floor. ‘The Emperor abandons us and with just cause.’

He turned away, looked up, and spread his arms wide as though sermonising to a planetary congregation.

‘The people will hear it all! Only by throwing down the heretic and the disbeliever and welcoming the armies of the Beast can they be saved. Praise the Beast!’ he screamed, spittle spraying from his lips, eyes rolling up into his head. ‘All praise the Beast!’

The thunderous boom of bolter discharge startled the servo-seraphs to flight. The contents of Mesring’s head and shoulders sprayed over the suddenly screaming arch-confessor holding on to the arm of a now headless torso.

Wienand opened her mouth to say something. Her gaze slid from the dead Ecclesiarch on the floor to the pistol in Koorland’s hand and she shut it again. Wise. Vangorich leaned across the table to look at the body, a strange smile on his face. Everyone else looked too stunned to react. Except for Kubik, of course. Kavalanera turned to Koorland with an arch expression, as though to question whether summary execution was now commonplace on Terra.

Koorland’s bolt pistol slid back into its mag-holster with the faintest of sighs.

He shook his head.

‘Brother,’ said Thane, still positioned by the doorway, blood on the grey hem of his habit. ‘What have you done?’

Four

Plaeos — Hive Mundus

Check 2, 00:41:11

Black water boiled across Kjarvik’s faceplate, the thunder it made no longer separable from that of the explosion. His body banged against light alloy walls and any fixed machinery bulky enough to have stood up to the flood. His pack lights slashed the walls. White metal. Dark corridors. The beams speckled dirty water. Reflective strips shone back. Section markings. Hazard stripes. Kjarvik saw it fleetingly, the way a pebble might see the villages it was carried through when spring thaw burst the great rivers’ banks. The water turned him, spun him like thread on the wyrd-spinners’ wheel, so far beyond his superhuman ability to resist that his vaunted genetic lineage seemed like a joke of wyrd.

Punch a hole in the skin of a voidship, and every man knew that what was inside was going to come out. Inflict the same on the outer shell of an island hive under a thousand atmospheres of pressure, and the luckless enemies of man might see the first bitemark of the Wolves.

A length of metal cracked him on the back of the head. A ladder. He felt the aluminium alloy bend, and on preternatural reflex snapped out an arm. He missed. The torrent had already swept him past. His wolf-clawed gauntlet dug instead into the wall and screeched through until it struck a horizontal rebar and he stopped.

He began to draw himself up.

Water hammered against his huge, barrage-like pauldrons. The current dragged on his feet with a grip of void-cold iron, the wight-fingers of so many wolf-brothers lying on Ullanor’s red snow.

Not him. He was the unlucky one.

With a howl of defiance, he broke the surface. The wall he had latched on to was part of the bulk housing of an effluxer, one enormous pump slaved to a greater assembly installed millennia ago to keep the submerged levels of the underhive dry. They had been designed to mop up pressure leaks. This was a flood fit to drown a city.

The section was a vertical maze of catwalks and gangways, vast power coils towering up through the levels. Horizontally, there was little to see before hitting a wall or an effluxer station. At its best, it would have been dank and claustrophobic, but now, floodwaters rising, it was a thousand ways in which to suffocate and die in the dark.

His arm shook, armour servos whining, and with fangs biting into his bottom lip he managed to haul his trailing arm out of the water, the Sister of Silence still held firmly in his deactivated power fist. That was the hard part.

A flick of his shoulder sent the Sister arcing over the effluxer. The warrioress flipped mid-flight to guide herself feet-first onto the catwalk. It rattled on loose fixings. The woman immediately began shedding the layers of her pressure suit to reveal ornate crimson and gold armour with a high gorget that concealed her face up to the eyes. She activated her power blade and moved off. Torquing his body against the wall, Kjarvik vaulted after her, coming down in a feral hunch where the Sister had just been.

An ork came pounding down the gantry. It looked like a worker, but was still as big as an armoured Space Marine with biceps the size of demolisher shells straining at its short leather sleeves. A toolbelt clanked at its thighs like an armour skirt as it ran, a thick-toothed metal wrench held high above its head. It blinked, dazzled by Kjarvik’s pack lights as he turned towards it. The Space Wolf shot it once through the head. The mass-reactive detonation blew out the back of its skull and flung the wretched body forward as though some part of its corpse remained desperate to bury its wrench in an Adeptus Astartes helmet.

The walkway was clear.

Reaching up to his gorget ring, Kjarvik disengaged the seals and removed his helmet with a depressurising hiss. He tossed out his hair and took a deep breath of rust, gunpowder, alien sweat, and salt corrosion. Better. His Imbiber organ could usefully extract oxygen from seawater, but the pressure of the ocean trench would have crushed his head like an eggshell. That was not to say that he would rather have his helm on.

A burst of bolter fire drew his attention away and up. All he could see of it was muzzle flare, greasily reflected by a section of wall about ten metres above. The howls of dying orks rang out from a few metres further along from that.

‘Follow,’ the Sister signed. She broke into a run, angling against the wall and then, remarkably, shifting her feet across so that for the next few strides she ran along it. Using her momentum she leapt across, grabbed hold of a hanging rung on the opposite side, twisted her body around, kicked out, and swung into a kind of backwards roll that took her up onto the next level. Her power blade whickered out, silver-blue; there was a guttural roar, and an ork’s arm bounced down between the walls.

With a snarl, Kjarvik hauled himself up the wall. At about his own height, he pivoted at the waist and leapt, free arm out wide, legs tucked in, and slammed two-footed onto the previously hidden companionway.

A solid slug winged his elbow joint and deflected into a slag chute. He turned. A flex of his hand activated his power fist. A thrumming blue disruptor field surrounded the gauntlet, and with a roar he punched it through the shooter’s belly and wrist-deep into the backing wall. The ork looked at the arm buried in its gut with brute surprise, and died.

A short way ahead, Phareous backhanded his shield across an ork’s mouth and forced it back into another. The rapid-fire flash of his shield’s storm bolter mount lit the dingy walkspace and pulped the ork with the bloody mouth. The second bellowed, covered by its kin-thing, and shoved the corpse off. The second Sister of Silence tucked in lightly behind.

Kjarvik did not know their names. Names were powerful and the Vow of Tranquility made before the Golden Throne of the Emperor protected them. But names were also useful, and Kjarvik called this one Sommer, for her warmth, and to distinguish her from Rós and her open heart. That he could make light of their presence made it no less unnerving.

A dozen deftly guided slashes from Sommer’s power blade left a half-dozen orks in ruins.

More ran around the opposite corner, war-axes flashing, barking their guttural cries. A blizzard of bolter and plasma fire cut them down. Iron Father Bohr stomped through the red mist, boltgun steaming hot. A gout of flame from his servo-harness drove the following wave back out of sight.

It was hard-fought, vicious, but that was why Thane had summoned Kjarvik Stormcrow to get it done, and why he in turn had assembled Kill-Team Umbra.

An ork with a bare chest strapped with ammo belts and an autocannon-style weapon mounted on a line of toolbins held the end of the next corridor. Spent casings clattered across the metal floor as it pumped rounds into Phareous’ shield. The mob of orks in garish red wargear that had been lying in wait just around the corner took advantage of the big gun’s suppression fire to pile in, and then the fighting really became ugly.

Phareous’ knife flashed from behind his shield. A dead ork draped over it and blocked his storm bolter. Sommer skipped back. An ork lunged for her with an axe and fell on its face. Kjarvik stamped on its head. Tusks snapped against metal. His power fist ripped the arm off another and blood sprayed the walkspace. Rós danced across him, spun, blade a blur, and opened an ork from throat to middle with a sizzling back-slash. Bohr stamped into view like walker support. A scream of his servo-arm and an ork was rammed head-first into the bulkhead. Blood erupted from its back and splattered across the opposite wall.

And always, high-calibre auto-fire banged the walls.

Kjarvik marked the set of overflow pipes stood behind heavy metal jackets along the wall leading up to the machine-gunner’s nest. He raked his claws down the face of an ork, and pounced for it. Auto-fire chased him as he leapt, one to the next, slugs spanking off the thick metal. A lucky shot — or an unlucky one, Kjarvik was unsure of the difference — penetrated, and a jet of hyper-pressurised water punched an ork into the far wall, hard enough to sever threads. Phareous, Sommer and Bohr drove the orks left on their side of the torrent mercilessly into the water, like routed enemies into the sea.

From the last jacket in line, Kjarvik tossed a grenade into the nest and leapt.

The fragmentation blast ripped the crude barricade open. Bits of smoking metal rattled back up the walkspace like the cast of a rune-priest’s mystic bones. Kjarvik flung his gauntlet clawtips over the lip of the companionway above. With a snarled breath, he pulled himself up and rolled onto one knee.

Baldarich and Zarrael were already there, having risen by another route. The state of their armour and of the floor around them was testament to their bloody progress. The two Space Marines battled back-to-back within a maelstrom of massively muscular ork fighters. The Black Templar’s greatsword moved with the lightness of a knife. Severed hands and bits of tusk flew from its edge, as if to kiss his power armour in a final show of respect. Zarrael meanwhile had his boot on the chest of a brutally sized ork whose crooked moon tattoos and rumbling megaplate marked it as a boss. It was on its knees, hollering, the Flesh Tearer’s eviscerator ripping out its neck and painting it unevenly across the companionway. Another ork barrelled towards the Space Marine’s right, looking to blindside him on the side opposite his buried weapon. Zarrael turned, face unhelmed, the sneering red gaze of an angel, and launched a hissing gob of Betchers’ acid that dropped the brute at a full twenty strides.

If the fight had been related to Kjarvik with the skilled words of another, then the tale would have been one to inspire. Two warriors, champions of distant Chapters, side-by-side and slaying the Emperor’s foes by the legion. But he was witnessing it for himself, and had not the skjald’s skill to overlook the clear disdain in which each warrior held the other.

They did not have their backs turned out of necessity. It was preference.

‘I think you have their attention!’ The bark of Kjarvik’s bolt pistol announced his arrival to the fray. The orks did not last long after that.

They ran towards another big mob that was already retreating, hemmed into a deep column by the narrow walkspace, blockish stubbers up, moving towards a set of heavy-duty plasteel floodgates. Baldarich and Zarrael shrugged off the fire, hacking into the rearguard with a psychotic zeal, each more alike the other than not.

And men called the Vlka Fenryka wild.

‘More are coming.’ Kjarvik broke off the pursuit and took cover behind a dented piston block that seemed to be part of the floodgate mechanism. Baldarich and Zarrael just kept on killing. ‘We wait for the others. We attack as one!’

Orks in clanking war-plate piled through the floodgates to shore up the retreating mob, which in turn spread out into the cover of rusty toolbins and the thick buttress struts that leaned diagonally up into the section wall. Kjarvik shifted his aim upwards as a score of greenskins, their thickly muscled torsos wrapped in ammo belts, clattered across the upper walkways.

For some reason they did not fire.

They chanted — ‘Gork! Mork! Gork! Mork!’ — and mashed the barrels of their guns on the handrail in time to the foot-pound of ork warriors below. They got louder. The stamping grew faster. ‘Gorkamorkagorkamorka!’ Kjarvik could no longer tell individual orks apart. A weight dragged on his skull, as if the ork knucklebones braided through his hair felt the same primal call. His gums ached as though some reality-bending force drew on his teeth.

With a thump of metal, the roadway bridge trembled.

An oil-skinned, web-clawed monster of horrific size slither-crawled through the floodgates. Its passage bent them outward so completely that Kjarvik doubted they would ever shut again. It was the size of a Baneblade, mocking its rattling escort of garishly painted armoured walkers with their ill-made irrelevance. Serried rows of teeth gleamed a smudgy, reflected green from within a huge, half-moon slash of mouth. Rubbery gills fluttered behind armoured flaps. Two rows of uneven spines ran down its dark, blubbery back. With a bone-capped boot planted against a spike from either row, an ork clad in a studded leather harness of monstrous size and wielding a trident-stave coiled with spitting copper wires waved about in a trance.

Its harness was painted with weird, swirled lines, and its face and hands were tattooed with branching continuations of the uncanny design. At a growled utterance, a wind blew, causing its dangling piercings to twist like wraiths on a pyre. The gantry between Kjarvik and his two brothers buckled, bent, boiling seawater spraying through the fissure. The amphibious beast dug its claws into the tortured metal and gave a wet, cavernous roar. Green energies lanced through the spiked collar bolted over its neck and spat back out like living spikes.

Kjarvik bared his fangs.

Maleficar.

He was the Stormcrow, all right. The unlucky one. He could always rely on it.

Five

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

Check 7, 00:55:37

Tyris emerged from the loading breach of the voidstorm cannon and dropped into a soundless crouch. His landing trembled out through the metal gangway. The Sister of Silence — she had not yielded her name, and Tyris had not asked for it — squatted with her back to an equipment drum. Her blade was unpowered. She raised a finger to the concealing gorget above her mouth.

The voidstorm cannon was a relic of the Fists Exemplar’s past, a legacy of Alcazar Astra’s ownership of the Rubicante Flux stars. It was a ship-killer, its wide bore one of the few access points large enough for a jump pack-equipped Space Marine. It was a squeeze even so and Tyris felt no shame in leaving the nimbler mortal to scout ahead.

With excruciating stealth, he moved.

He could feel the Sister’s eyes on him, assessing his abilities against hers, as he unwound a strip of guncloth from a kit pouch, wrapped it round the barrel of his stalker bolter and rested the weapon on the gangway’s iron handrail. He almost let out a relieved breath at the woman’s faint nod of approval.

The Raven would have been proud.

In the vast hangar below, greenskin mechanics and slave-workers crawled over bomber jets with massively oversized engines and bulbous weapons pods. There was room enough there to muster a Chapter of old, cradle-space for two-score of gunships. That space was mostly filled with tin-walled tool sheds, tent hovels in which squabbling gretchin seemed to live cheek by jowl. Rubbish was piled high. Food rotted where it lay. Promethium fuel dribbled from half-empty drums.

A big ork moved amongst the aircraft, inspecting a fuselage here, booting a laggardly gretchin there. It was garbed in a cloak of tinkling chimes and wore torcs of polished bone clapped over its muscular forearms. A spectactularly horned skull enclosed its head. It danced a little as it walked, sprinkling Eidolican promethium sand over the parked engines from a rod-like aspergillum as if in blessing. The psyker. A mob of ten burly orks strapped up with shotguns and bludgeons and slabs of armour followed close behind. Every so often, one wandered off to administer a private kicking wherever their brutal code deemed it justified.

Tyris slotted a rare-pattern tranquilliser round into his bolter, muffling the click of acceptance in his hand.

‘Stalker, positions?’

The vox whispered back.

‘Vega, to your right.’

‘Iaros, second tier.’

‘Nubis and Antares,’ came the voice of the Fist Exemplar, ‘on secondary target.’

Tyris took aim down his weapon scope, the back of the ork psyker’s ugly head blowing up to fill his crosshairs. His finger rested on the trigger. He emptied his lungs. ‘Quick and quiet. On my mark.’

He fired.

Plaeos — Hive Mundus

Check 2, 00:59:13

Seawater geysered from the breach in the flooring. The abhorrent gale that emanated from the maleficar’s throbbing head sprayed it far and wild, but to Kjarvik’s heightened perceptions the individual droplets fell slowly, like snow out of season. The Emperor’s gift to His Wolves was a hunter’s senses. He felt the sting of water on his face. He heard the floodwaters frothing up through the baffles in the floor plates. His boots were already under. He could taste salt in his mouth, on his skin even, the threat heightening his senses to that extraordinary degree. The cracks and flashes of ork weapons lit the rainstorm like subsurface explosions and carved it up with bullet trails.

Baldarich was on the other side of the geyser, black armour drenched. He spread his arms to the enemy fire as though preparing himself for the penitent’s cross. Except that his gauntlets were not empty. One held his greatsword, dropping, the other a bolt pistol, freed from maglock and sweeping up.

Kjarvik was more than human in many ways, and less, arguably, in others, but there were some things that even he could not do.

He could not move faster than a bolt-round.

‘Kneel, witch.’

Time accelerated, and the Black Templar’s pistol kicked out rounds as though it knew it was catching up. The propellant burn was intense, each rapid-fired successor brightening the last. The roar was tremendous.

The ork merely cackled like a drunk entertained by a fool. Its eyes were tranced, black with maleficarum, dark veins sprouting from its head and pulsing. In no world could it have seen what was coming and yet it saw. It saw, and Kjarvik shuddered.

He did not himself see exactly what happened, only that the maleficar appeared to pump its twanging stave once around its head, and the psychic winds were whipped into a shrieking whirlwind. The floodwaters were lifted up from the ground, drawn out of the spray, shaped by the witchstorm into a funnel that enveloped the witch and his monster like a liquid caul. Where bolt-rounds penetrated they were sprayed back, spanking off walls and walker armour and striking orks down with the random hand of a god.

‘Withdraw to my position!’ Kjarvik shouted. A weird alien thought-scream filled the vox. Their harsh insertion into the underhive had spread them too thinly. ‘Draw out the maleficar and capture. The Sisters are one level below with Phareous and Bohr.’

Baldarich paused to reload.

The growing whirlpool shook to the howl of the warp, and broke before a massive fist. It burst through the watery barrier, green, a shade that was darker still seeping between clenched fingers, knuckles dusted with boiled-off salt and trailing greenish ectoplasm and steam. It shot towards the Black Templar.

‘I walk with the spirit of Saint Magneric!’

The ceramite-splitting impact pushed Baldarich through the geyser, diagonally across Kjarvik’s cover with the psychic manifestation crackling against his plastron, and shunted him through the stack of promethium drums that had been built up across the way. The stack came down on top of him, empty drums clangouring out over the walkspace floor.

Kjarvik looked for Zarrael.

The Flesh Tearer pushed into the wind, head down, the scowl on his face rippling in spite of the arm he held protectively out in front. Powered plates rattled and whined. The kill honours affixed to his left pauldron peeled off and tore away. He ground out another step, struggled to raise his eviscerator, dropped to one knee. Waterborne debris roiled outwards from the epicentre and swallowed him. He should have been flung back like scrap metal, and it was testament to the strength of his red fervour that he was not. An ork boss in cumbersome war-plate done out in jagged black and white stripes clumped through, unaffected, leaving the mighty Zarrael kneeling like a frostbitten hopeful before the statue of Russ.

‘To my position.’ Kjarvik dialled up the power of his battleplate vox for an orbital transmission. ‘Aelia,’ he said, addressing the shipmaster of the Dark Angels strike cruiser Herald of Night that was currently in low orbit above Hive Mundus. ‘Send in backup.’ He turned to Zarrael and growled, swinging up his bolt-pistol. ‘Wait for the Sisters.’

He sprayed the witchstorm with fire, ensuring that none struck the weirdboy or his beast. He was unlucky, but he was not careless. Two bolts to the armoured boss’ left shoulder caused enough damage to disable the arm’s crude motors. It did not seem to feel it, and gave a gurgling roar as it formed a fist of its power claw.

‘Waaagh!’

Eidolica — Alcazar Astra

Check 7, 01:02:22

The shot was perfection. A single tranquilliser round to the back of the head, and the ork psyker went down as though its muscles had been turned to jelly. The stalker bolter silenced the report and muffled the flash, and the psyker’s bodyguard were pointing their shotguns at shadows as Tyris ejected the one-shot magazine and slotted in a fresh sickle-mag of more conventional rounds.

Vega and Iaros opened fire from their own positions in hiding. It took Tyris the second or third round to see where they were, hidden behind a ventilation grating and amongst an extractor assembly on the second tier respectively. Tyris had trained them well. They would return to their Chapters better warriors when their work together was done.

By the time Tyris was ready to fire again there were only two orks left, running in opposite directions, which he coolly gunned down with barely a fraction of a second between aim and shot. The Sister beside him signed her approval with a hand gesture, powered her long blade, and rocketed from the gangway on her jump pack. She landed like a cat by the downed psyker, power blade purring as it made bloody mockeries of the gretchin that came running to the psyker’s aid. Two more rocket burns from opposite wings of the hangar, and Vega and Iaros broke cover to launch themselves into the open. The Doom Eagle emptied his bolter’s clip and slammed in another as he flew.

Tyris decided to save the fuel and simply jumped the handrail.

He landed with a mighty clang on the hardened metal deck, his silenced bolter gunning down ork mechanics and their gretchin slaves with calmness and grace. He, Vega and Iaros converged on the Sister at about the same time. They formed a ring and swung their weapons outwards.

‘On three,’ said Tyris.

Orks were charging in, using the aircraft as cover. Ricochets sang from their armour.

‘Two.’

In spite of the tranquilliser round and a dose of soporific that should have placated a bull grox, the psyker was still struggling. It flapped numbly against the Sister as she fixed it to her armour with clips. It must have been four times her weight. Those blows had to hurt, but the woman ignored them. She shot Tyris a look. Ready.

‘One!’

Orks piled in from every crawlway intersection and corridor. Tyris shot one between the eyes with a stalker round. Two. Three. Chewed out a chest cavity. Blew off an arm. The muffler was still on, the selector on single shot. One got in close enough to spray Vega with blood as the Doom Eagle gunned through its chest.

‘Now!’

The shout followed the same neural pathway that triggered his jump pack. Vega gave an answering roar. A big ork with a squealing chainaxe that had cut in behind Iaros and swung back its arm disappeared like tallow before a hydrogen torch as the four of them lifted off. Tyris felt a shuddering as he rose on a column of chemical burn. He threw out a hand to grab onto the Sister’s and Vega did the same. Between the three sets of jump packs they carried the drugged ork psyker up into the air and left the howls and gunfire behind. Tyris’ armour registered an impact as a startled gretchin got lucky with a snap shot, but he did not otherwise notice the damage.

The safety rail of one of several overlooking sub-decks passed beneath them.

His downward arc carried him over the fat body of an ork fighter sporting an immense set of underwing rocket pods. He hit the ground running to bleed off his momentum. Bullets fired from below rattled dully off the aircraft’s fuselage and the underside of the deck. Iaros was already down, and pushing for the searing wall of daylight that would once have been shielded by a coherence field but that was now just a burning hole in the fortress’ adamantium outer wall.

‘Antares,’ Tyris voxed, leaving Vega and the Sister to haul up the psyker and run for the exit. He checked his visor chrono. ‘We have five minutes before the Storm Eagle returns to my beacon. It will leave with us or without in six.’

‘Understood, brother-sergeant.’

A burst of gunfire exploded in volume as a set of access doors at the other end of the sub-hangar opened up. Antares backed through them, stalker bolter held one-handed to rake the opening with fire. The second Sister retreated with him, sword flickering out where a killing blow presented itself, but otherwise exploiting the Fist Exemplar’s armoured bulk as mobile cover. The secondary target was draped across his shoulders. It was the smaller of the two psykers, not much larger than the Sister of Silence. A juvenile perhaps. Whatever the complexities involved in the extraction of two psykers from Eidolica when Lord Thane had prepared them only for one, the double reward struck Tyris as worth the risk.

He had been left with no question as to the psykers’ value to the Imperium.

Antares clubbed the restive psyker into submission with a crack to the base of the skull with his bolter’s magazine, and the doors slid shut behind him. The Fist Exemplar lumped the ork off his shoulders. Bullets rang dully on the doors’ opposite side. He sealed them with a sharp burst from his bolter’s combi-melta.

‘Nubis?’ said Tyris.

‘He is not coming,’ Antares replied, voice inflected with emotion.

‘What do you mean, not coming?’

Tyris switched frequency, and was immediately overwhelmed by the squeal of bolter feedback. There was a crackling whoosh, the Salamander’s combi-flamer, followed by draconic howls.

‘Brother?’ Tyris voxed. The mass-reactive scream was his only answer. The periodic click-pause of auto-loaders provided an opening for the occasional legible word. Most of it was curses and vengeance.

But Tyris heard the name ‘Vulkan’ at least twice.

‘Move,’ said Antares. His voice was flat. Whatever he had felt before was dead now. Like his world. ‘There is nothing left for us here.’

Plaeos — Hive Mundus

Check 2, 01:02:59

Bullets sprayed from the power claw’s digital stubbers and made wobbling metallic crumps in the aluminium housing that Kjarvik sheltered behind. He rose to return fire, but found that he was barely capable of lifting his pistol against the witchstorm. By the stabbing throb in his skull and the ache in his jaw, he felt the maleficar’s attention shift from Zarrael to him. The wind ground him back first one step, then two, ankle-deep, the water still rising. The boss ork bore down, kicking out rounds, clanking plates as wide across as the back of a Rhino and glowing like an evil sun.

Kjarvik let the psyker-wind push.

The stubber, he could take. The power claw was something else entirely.

Two steps became three, and around that third step the entire universe seemed to realign.

His preternatural senses detected nothing untoward, but for all that the thunder of crashing water and the stink of fyceline surrounded him, it felt as though the bottom had fallen away from him and left those sensations hollow. It was without flavour or colour. Silenced. The orks continued to stamp and chant, but it was no longer the cacophonous force that it had been, and smaller for being the making of a horde rather than of a single overbearing power. The wind fell away. The water funnel slapped down as though something mighty had just died.

Those were the most unsubtle effects, but the least profound. The howl, not the wolf.

The expression on the maleficar’s alien face was the opposite of whatever spiritual perturbation Kjarvik felt.

Horror, even to that obscene degree, had been engineered out of the Space Marines’ fundamental makeup with the primarchs, but even had he been still human he doubted whether he could have experienced the psychic unravelling that the witch suffered now. It must have been like opening one’s eyes and finding that the illusion of a visible reality had been a dream, or awakening with no sense whatsoever of one’s physical body.

‘Get down, brother.’

Kjarvik dropped to one knee, and a ball of superheated plasma punched the mega-armoured boss ork through the chest. It dropped in a metallic clatter as Bohr moved up. Orks on the overlooking gangways belatedly opened fire, but a full-auto blizzard of bolter fire from the Iron Father’s servo-harness mowed them down. Kjarvik hardly needed to turn around to see Sommer and Rós moving up along the edges of the walkspace, in the partial shelter offered by the catwalks above them. Phareous advanced with less caution, drawing fire from both angles to where he walked up the middle.

‘Baldarich? Zarrael?’ The Iron Snake’s words were punctuated by the bang of solid rounds on his shield.

Kjarvik turned at the familiar liquidised scream of powered adamantium teeth at work on soft tissue. Freed of the psychic winds, the Flesh Tearer had closed on the maleficar’s orca-like mount and had his howling weapon buried in the monster’s flippered forelimb. Zarrael had his mouth wide open and basked in the spray.

With a wail of something more freeing than mere pain, the amphibeast reared up on its vestigial hindlimbs. It pawed with webbed claws at its collar, throwing the psyker from its back, and almost incidentally swatted the Flesh Tearer contemptuously from the walkspace and into the water.

Though no longer wreathed in lightning, the monster was still massive, more so now that everything around it had become inexplicably smaller, and it flattened an ork walker the way a cat would flatten a mouse. It carelessly shoved a heavier fighting machine off the walkway as it limped around, then snapped at another, snatched it up in its jaws and sent it smashing through the orks that had been mobbing in behind. They had been ready to break before the psyker had arrived to bolster their belligerent spirit, and they broke now, pounding through the ruined floodgates.

The amphibeast’s rampage back through its master’s escort had left the witch untended in the middle of the walkspace, spread amidst a floating mess of bent cogwheels and split plates like a scrap heap that someone had taken the trouble to build, but then abandoned to the floods.

‘He is yours, Iron Father.’ Kjarvik turned into the sporadic fire still raining down from above. ‘Phareous, remain with the Sisters and cover us.’

‘As ordered.’

Kjarvik took position over the downed ork psyker. Despite its injuries it was very definitely conscious, but too occupied smashing its own forehead into the puddled flooring to notice him. Loose rounds from above spanked off his plate, but the fire was aimless and half-hearted.

Bohr lowered himself with a hydraulic wheeze and examined the raging maleficar’s armoured frame. The ork’s head was bigger than the Iron Father’s torso. Its leather strapping could have encased him and Kjarvik both and left room to move. He rammed a piston-enhanced fist into the side of the ork’s head for good measure, then began spooling a length of heavy-duty chain from a hopper clamped to his hip. He bent to the task. A slug hit off a flicking mechadendrite and blew out an articulation segment. ‘We need to move it now or it will drown.’

Kjarvik stood up and growled into his gorget vox. ‘Now.’

From the crowded levels above there came the squeal of metal being torn, a reverberating clang as of a square of bulkhead that had been ripped out of a wall crashing onto a companionway. The torrential whine of an assault cannon carved through the orks on the left-hand walkways like a cutting beam. From the right, a wave of fiery promethium hurled a pair of incinerated greenskins through the handrail, back from the huge, flame-lit bulk of a Dreadnought in Dark Angels green. It stamped through a ventilation grate and shredded an ork in its power fist.

The Dreadnoughts Maloch and Azazael had been inserted into the hive by drop pod once the orks’ attentions — including that of the witch — had been focused on Umbra. The Vlka Fenryka were savage when savagery was demanded, but nothing pleased them like the chance to secure a victory through cleverness.

Kjarvik looked left to where Azazael tore through the remaining orks, too hemmed in to escape. There would be no reasoning with the ancient one now. Not until every greenskin in reach was jelly under his feet. He turned to Maloch. ‘Get down here and lift. Azazael will clear our path to Penitent Wrath.’

‘You are a sly wolf, I will not deny,’ Phareous laughed.

‘We have won nothing yet,’ said Bohr. His augmetised voice was the material doppelganger to the Sister’s null-psychic chill. ‘Let us move. And pray that our brothers do as well.’

Valhalla — Kalinin, north

Check 3, 01:19:45

+++CHECK+++

+++VERIFIED+++

+++ TRANSLATIONAL DISCREPANCY CONFIRMED+++

+++18:59:02+++

Tulwei’s attack bike sped over over the pot-holed terrain. Combatants flashed through the snow and disappeared. Vehicle wrecks lay skewed on the ice, Chimera and Leman Russ hulks belching smoke. Valhallans in ice-world camouflage streamed in the opposite direction. Amplified, inhuman bellows set the snowfall to trembling. Tulwei gunned the accelerator and pulled ahead.

The approach to Kalinin had been contested for almost a year and the deep holes of Demolisher and Earthshaker shells were themselves riddled with mass-reactive craters and stubber casings. The vivid red bodywork of pursuing ork vehicles swept in and out of view. Buggies bounced over the devasted tundra, breaking, swerving, screeching through channels between the larger craters. Kill-Team Tigrus’ durable suspension and shock-responsive tyres tackled the terrain better than the orks’ overpowered machines ever could.

‘How could they have predicted our approach?’ yelled Sentar, pivoting the sidecar’s heavy bolter to maul an ork bike as though it were a ration can attacked with a fork.

‘I do not know.’ And then, voxed on the squad channel, ‘Keep to the coordinates that the general fed back.’

‘Where is the general?’

‘I lost his signal in the retreat. Keep to target,’ said Tulwei.

Vehuel’s gunner pivoted his heavy bolter until it was as close to directly backward as it could turn, and fired. A stream of accelerated rounds puffed up the ice and ripped through a mob of manoeuvring bikers. Snowmelt and bits of engine housing rattled down over the surrounding craters, not nearly enough to fill them. A truck packed with bawling ork warriors ploughed into the hole and flipped over. More vehicles veered around the obstacle and gunned the throttle. Scores of bikes, half a dozen troop trucks and half-tracks were just behind. The orks bellowed, mad with speed, firing wild with sidearms and mounted weaponry, pennons flapping madly from whipping flagpoles.

For all the machines’ technical failings, their raw acceleration was incredible.

‘Where is the psyker?’ Tulwei shouted, and swung a left between two particularly deep, thermically glassed impact craters. Grigorus zipped after him, then the Sisters of Silence in their sleek-bodied vehicles, and finally Abathar and Vehuel on bikes at the rear.

A dark smudge appeared under the snow ahead. It was at the point where the two craters were at their closest, practically touching, barely metres apart. It grew out of the ice as he raced towards it: a battlewagon, parked side-on to Tulwei’s approach and effectively blockading the pass. The orks piled into the back hooted and shot into the air as Tulwei yelled a curse and swerved.

His bike skidded on the ice. White snow, black truck, round and round. As he wrestled with his steering bars, he saw an armour-fronted ork gun ’copter rise up over the lip of one of the craters like the breaching topfin of a shark. Its gun mounts blazed. Shells chomped through the ice towards the snarled-up bike squadron, loud, slow, as though its underslung machine cannons were driven by a hand-crank that spat out rounds. The stream of fire carved through Grigorus and Abathar and slugged the ice on the other side before either of them had a chance to reverse. The lead Sister slammed into Grigorus’ back and died in a cartwheel of black and gold. The second had time to swerve, and sped away from the pile-up, bouncing and skidding as she brought her bike under control.

Tulwei turned into the spin and screeched out of it, gunning for the hovering ’copter just as a krak missile corkscrewed from a shoulder launcher carried by one of the orks in the battlewagon and disintegrated Vehuel’s machine. The Dark Angel tumbled into the ice.

Of the Sister of Silence there was no sign but a brake mark at the lip of the crater.

Firing up at the ork ’copter with his bolt pistol as it veered and began to climb away, he slowly reduced speed. He stopped, surveying the wreckage, aware of the ork fighters storming over the ice from their battlewagon. Ork bikes rumbled in from the other side in low gear.

A trap. They had known he was coming.

Without a word between them, Sentar opened fire on the bikes. Tulwei loosed rounds into the charging infantry.

Kalinin was going to fall. The Imperium could follow.

He could only hope that someone had succeeded where he had failed.

Six

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Check 0, 01:02:09

Koorland’s armour was polished, perfect, garlanded with every honour and citation ever worn by a Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, so high a yellow that it sparkled under the wall-bracketed lumen bulbs like gold. If his predecessor, Cassus Mirhen, had ever encased himself in such ostentation then Koorland would have thought him ridiculous. No one laughed now. He was just himself beginning to realise that perhaps they were right not to. It had been Ullanor that had changed him, standing in Vulkan’s presence, hearing his words. The primarch had taught him the power of symbols.

Ironic, if that were not too light a word, that the Imperium’s darkest day since Isstvan should be the day on which Koorland, last of the Imperial Fists, finally understood his role.

Senatorum ushers and Palace staff with pinched faces and grubby uniforms waited fractiously by the staircases to the Great Chamber’s few standing galleries that remained open. Hektor Rosarind, the Chancellor of the Imperial Estates, had outlawed the use of water for washing. Koorland had even heard of Chartist vessels returning to the asteroid belt and the Jovian moons in search of water ice and — the odd floating rock aside — they had been exhausted millennia before the Great Crusade. The tired officials drifted out of the way as Koorland walked towards the Great Chamber.

No one made a path for himself like a Space Marine with a purpose.

‘Word is in from Kill-Team Stalker,’ said Thane, marching in step behind his left shoulder. ‘The Adeptus Astra Telepathica interpreted the message this morning, and it was handed to me personally by Anwar’s staff.’

‘Thank him for his alacrity and tell him to begin forwarding messages to the Inquisition from now on. Meme-banks containing the kill-teams’ rendezvous coordinates, and our subsequent destinations, will be couriered to your ship at once.’

‘This clandestine skulking sits ill with me,’ muttered Bohemond.

The two Chapter Masters walked a step behind, garbed in plain robes. Those of the Fist Exemplar were grey, the Black Templar’s bone white, a black surplice over the top with the Sigismund cross emblazoned across the breast. In accordance with convention, the pair had surrendered their arms to the Lucifer Blacks before entering the Inner Palace, but Bohemond, as always, retained the Sword of Sigismund, belted at his side. The High Marshal regarded the genuflecting mortal dignitaries with a curl of his melted lip, his lidless augmetic eye picking them off one by one.

‘I despise every second,’ he finished.

‘The Beast must not be allowed to become aware of our plans,’ Koorland said. ‘Not until it is too late.’

‘I am scarcely aware of them. How then can I fairly call them plans?’

‘You will have coordinates of your own, brother. I trust you will be with me at the finish.’

Bohemond’s good eye spasmed. ‘You will find Abhorrence there ahead of you.’

‘I will hold you to your word, brother.’ He glanced over the other shoulder. ‘I will be making Alcazar Remembered my flagship. You will cede the remainder of your fleet strength to Issachar’s command.’

Thane bowed in acquiescence. There was no pride in the Chapter Master. Disaster had stalked the Fists Exemplar since the outbreak of the great Waaagh. They had lost their home world, Eidolica, half their fleet at Vandis, been further diminished by the battles for Mars, Caldera, and then Ullanor. They were the wider Imperium in microcosm. They no longer had the capacity to conduct this scale of operation alone.

‘For Dorn, brother.’

Bohemond watched his brother Chapter Master depart with a scowl, arms crossed over his surplice, and glanced towards the heavy adamantium-reinforced oak doors at the corridor’s end. They trembled slightly under the low bass bombardment of a powerful augmitter system. A few dulled words drifted down the corridor like smoke from an impact crater.

‘We need to talk about the Ecclesiarch.’

The reminder brought Koorland a flare of renewed anger and guilt. The anger was partly at himself, the resentment of which only goaded his temper further. ‘He left me little choice.’

‘Regardless, your actions leave a hole that needs to be filled, and now. It is in times of darkness and privation that the words of the witch or the heretic will be heeded. The people need certainty. They need the guidance of their Ecclesiarch.’ He dug into his habit and brought forth a data-slate. ‘At my invitation, the Adeptus Ministorum have provided a list of potential successors.’

With a sigh, Koorland stopped walking. He turned, enclosed his brother’s shoulder in one etched and damascened gauntlet.

The Black Templars’ conversion to their own variant of the Imperial Creed had, for some time, been the most open of open secrets amongst the sons of Dorn. Perhaps it would be better to stamp down hard, now, before such practices could embed and pervert. Vulkan had shown him a better way, and he would not have the Black Templars recalled as the sons of Dorn who had stumbled down the Word Bearers’ path.

‘The Emperor neither recognised His own divinity, nor encouraged His worship. Indeed, He enforced the opposite point with more than mere words. Such practices will no longer be sanctioned in His Imperium.’

The ruined, semi-augmetic face that glared back at him was expressionless, but the flesh eye bulged with an emotion that Koorland did not believe he had ever felt and did not recognise. Bohemond’s voice was quiet, like a melta beam, as he withdrew the slate and returned it to the fold in his habit. ‘Tell that to Magneric.’

Koorland let his breath out slowly.

It had been too late to save Lorgar too.

Furious suddenly, he turned and flung an arm towards the Great Chamber’s heavy doors. A handful of Chapter serfs in dulled yellow habits stood there with hands clasped, surrounded by a full squad of Lucifer Blacks in mirror-black ballistic carapace and softly humming shock-glaives.

‘Open the doors,’ Koorland boomed, stunning the hallway to silence. ‘I did not summon the people to hide from them.’

Great tiers of seating rose above Koorland on all sides as he strode down the processional to the dais. There were several other aisles through the auditorium seating, bringing in lesser lords, military officers, and senior officials from other wings of the Inner Palace, but most of them were roped off. Rubble was heaped up, sometimes covered with banners, but the attempt at concealment only made the wounds more obvious and drew the eye, from a deep-seated human instinct for self-preservation, to the ceiling. A piece of alien moon-rock extruded through the angelic frescoes. Most of the larger fragments from the attack moon’s destruction had missed the Palace or been broken up by the air-defence grids. This was one of the smaller ones. It was about the size of a Land Raider.

A large circular dais lit from multiple rigs and occupied by twelve high-backed chairs dominated the centre of the auditorium. It rotated slowly, almost imperceptibly, like the slow tick of a bomb mechanism, but Koorland’s genetics had been painstakingly coded to render him acutely conscious of such subtle changes.

The noise of several thousand, a fraction of what the intact arena could have held, rose exponentially as Koorland’s arrival was noted. Word spread. The clamour grew. Even with his great genetic gifts he could not separate the individual voices that cried out to him, but he recognised the fear and the doubt that Bohemond had diagnosed, the desperation for some sliver of hope. Whole districts had been lost to hive quakes and the calamities wrought by the unintended destruction of the ork moon. Millions had died in the Proletarian Crusade. Millions more had perished since. Rare skills had been lost forever. People starved. Families froze in the rubble of their homes for want of the fuel or blankets or warm food that Terra had long since exhausted the raw materials to manufacture for itself.

But here stood an Imperial Fist, the golden embodiment of endurance.

A symbol.

Koorland felt the weight of their attention. A tingle on the back of his neck, under the grizzled skin between his temples and eyes. Was this what Rogal Dorn had felt when he had manned the defences of Terra against the Arch-Heretic? Was it a feeling that the Emperor Himself would have recognised, as He stood upon this very site to declare His Crusade to retake the galaxy for mankind? The feeling that the world about them was about to be changed.

Tobris Ekharth of the Administratum currently had the podium, but stalled mid-sentence as Koorland took the steps onto the dais. The small man coughed nervously into the forest of pickups, scratchily echoing himself to every corner of the ruined colosseum. He dabbed a few droplets of sweat from his forehead on an embroidered cloth and leaned unnecessarily into the pickup field, blinking under the lights.

‘This extraordinary session of the Senatorum can now commence, convened at the special behest of Koorland, Lord Commander, in the wake of the death of High Lord Mesring, Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum.’ Eckharth cleared his throat once more and hurriedly ceded the podium.

Koorland nodded his acceptance of it.

To his left, six chairs stretched out in a staggered line. Lansung, Verreault, Wienand sitting with Veritus standing behind her like an empty suit of armour, Gibran, Sark and Anwar. And to the right, six more. Tull, Kubik, Zeck, Ekharth as he nervously took his, and two more that stood empty. One belonged to him.

And so, ultimately did the other.

He held that empty seat in his gaze. The banner of the Adeptus Ministorum flapped limply from a rig above it.

‘The Ecclesiarch is dead,’ he began, drawing his eyes from the chair to stare out into the lights, their enhanced musculature adapting quickly and painlessly to the glare. ‘He was killed. Here. By my hand.’ His gaze rose, tier by tier of sudden gasps and mortified silence. ‘He thought to frighten you with truth, but what his church has forgotten is that the Emperor… is… truth!’

He straightened in a whir of servos and looked to those currently sat behind the dais, his own augmitted voice booming ‘truth!’ back to him.

‘Believe that you are better than the Ecclesiarchy has allowed you to be. As the Emperor believed. Many of you will have been here the day that the great Vulkan returned to us. Who remembers the joy they felt at the reunion, the hope?’

Murmured cries of assent began to circulate, the rustling of leaves compared to his augmeticised thunder. His voice became a growl.

‘Know then that it was a joy he did not share. Vulkan did not recognise the Imperium he saw on his return. He saw the values that the Emperor had given us, that he and his brothers had fought for, corrupted or cast aside. He made plain to me his opinion of those that have led you so low.’

The rest of the High Twelve looked distinctly uncomfortable. Only the heavily augmented and thus nigh-unreadable faces of Zeck and Kubik showed anything approximating support. No matter. The tide of history had receded for a time, but now it came again and the Lords could turn or they could be swept away.

He turned back to the fan array of pickups, thumped the lectern with a powered fist to emphasise his next words.

‘Mankind. Is. Better.’

He looked down over the cushioned pews of the minor lords. They would have taken their seats today as the men with most to gain from a reordering of the High Twelve. For all their power, the cocoons of influence that kept them clothed and well fed, they were far more terrified of him than their starving households were of the orks. All but one or two.

Koorland nodded grimly to the familiar faces in the crowd.

‘I know that you are afraid. I know that you suffer. I know that you do not expect me, being as I am, to understand, but know this — I would give my life for any one of yours, as would Vulkan in my place. Mesring feared the Beast, and he was not wrong to do so. I have seen the Beast’s power.’ He licked at lips that were suddenly dry, blinked in the light. ‘I was there when Vulkan fell.’

The Great Chamber erupted with anger and panic, outraged denials transforming the auditorium into a cauldron of noise. One voice was indistinguishable from another, but he could see people screaming, red-faced, others leaningagainst the chair back in front in fervent prayer. Lansung looked white enough to pass out. To his right, Verreault was on his feet, remonstrating with a junior clerk in the third row, though over what, Koorland could not make out. The primarch’s death was no secret. Nothing so profound that had been witnessed by so many could be kept so, but Koorland suspected that most would not have believed the tales until now. He raised his hands and shouted them down.

‘This is truth! No lie can diminish it. Only through facing a truth can we hope to make it good. Vulkan fell, but not in vain. In his name we build a new Imperium. In his name we fight for a new future for mankind, the future that the Emperor dreamed that you would one day have.’ He did not say we. For the Adeptus Astartes, there would always be war. ‘Free of threats from without. Free of lies spread from within.’ He turned towards the empty chair, and pointed at it. ‘It begins here.’ And back. ‘The Adeptus Ministorum will no longer be counted amongst the High Twelve. Their privileges are revoked, their holdings to be levied for men and materiel the same as any other ministry of mankind. We will rebuild!’

Stunned silence made a vacuum in the shape of an ovation, a black hole of stilled incomprehension. He had expected…

He had no idea what he had expected. But he had spoken the truth.

He pushed himself from the lectern, as unaccountably furious as he had been when he had barged through those doors. As when he had executed Mesring. As when he had received the recording that, had he seen it a little earlier, might have saved a primarch’s life. The Lords looked up at him like chastened children, terrified of a suddenly violent, superhuman father.

‘You will join me in the Cerebrium in fifteen minutes. The High Twelve is overdue a change.’ He nodded to the empty chair, and then made his way towards the doors. ‘See that that banner is taken down. And someone summon Vangorich!’

Seven

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Check 0, 03:55:16

Drakan Vangorich eased his hands along the carved wooden armrests of his new chair with some considerable pleasure. It was a beautiful thing, all braids and shine, and little bits of gold where the wood met that outrageously forgiving cushioned back. Europan, if he wasn’t mistaken, somewhere around the middle third of M3. He sighed and sat back into it. The leather squeaked in a pleasing fashion.

The window across from the sceptrewood table and antique marble handwash basin opened onto an acrid swirl of fortress spires, lighting twinkling in the smog layer like stars. The many faces of the Emperor looked on from marble walls, friezes carved in rare woods. Artworks hung in golden frames: portraits of women mostly, and not, to put it delicately, in a fit state of dress for their current altitude. Weird, black-skinned statuettes stood on pedestals.

Vangorich studied one for a moment, its proportions artistically imprecise, only looking up when a serving girl, recruited, it seemed, on the grounds of aesthetic perfection, approached through the thick carpet bearing a refreshment tray. Vangorich held up a glass, she filled it with something pink and fragrant from a platinum ewer, and he idly swirled it as she left.

He had visited Mesring’s apartments before, of course, but it felt different this time.

He knocked back the oddly tasteless wine and let the enzyme grafts lining his mouth and throat do their work, cleansing the liquid of alcohol and other toxins before it hit his stomach. Then he set the glass neatly on the table.

‘How does it feel to be one of the Twelve, then, sir?’ asked Beast Krule.

‘Very much the same as before, actually. Power is less about what’s given to you than what you take. And besides, it’s only provisional.’

Krule stood to one side of the table, between a statuette and a pedestal bearing a pottery fragment. A ripple of torso broke the cameleoline illusion of stillness and a data-slate slid across the table. The high varnish barely even whispered ‘friction’ until Vangorich trapped it under his fingers.

He turned it over, face up, and took a long look at the seal.

‘Where did you get this?’

Krule shrugged.

Vangorich picked up the slate. The Black Templars seal had already been bypassed.

‘A list of possible Ecclesiarchs,’ Krule said. ‘Drawn up by the Adeptus Ministorum at Bohemond’s request. Give me the night and I can whittle that list down for you. The High Marshal too, naturally.’

‘Eager for a little light exercise?’

‘The High Marshal’s going to be a problem, sir, in the long run. We both know it.’

‘And there I was thinking you wanted a contest with arguably the greatest warrior in the Adeptus Astartes. No.’ Vangorich tossed the slate back across the table. ‘No. I’m prepared to give the new Ecclesiarch the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Very… magnanimous, sir.’

‘Thank you, but I have enough here on Terra to deal with the entire Ecclesiarchy leadership a hundred times over without needing to call on my best. No.’ He leaned in, and Krule inched forwards. ‘The Twelve’s meeting with Koorland was about more than my investiture, overdue as it was. He’s gathering his assets for some kind of covert strike. To draw the Beast out, I presume. Inquisition, Militarum, Deathwatch, even the Mechanicus — he’s assembling an execution force for which he wants the deadliest men he can get, and so naturally I recommended you.’

‘Too kind, sir.’

Vangorich flashed a modest grin and sat back. ‘I’d go myself, but I can’t oversee everything in person. I hope to get a message to the Culexus Temple, but it’s a long way away from here and who knows if they’ll receive it in time. I’d like to have something to offer Koorland on his return, something to keep Wienand and the Lady Brassanas on their toes. That temper of Koorland’s is the only thing keeping them all off each other’s backs right now, but seeing me across the table from now on might remind them of the knife at their throats.’

‘Metaphorically, of course.’

Vangorich felt his smile subtly alter. He had a cultivated public image of urbanity, but the smile he wore now was of a man who spent every day in a mask, the sort of smile that no one wanted to see on the face of a Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. ‘Metaphorical knives, you’ll find, cut every bit as sharp. Mesring’s fate won’t be soon forgotten.’

Krule nodded reluctantly.

‘Second thoughts?’

‘Koorland wasn’t the only one on Ullanor when the primarch died. A primarch, sir.’

‘Alcazar Remembered breaks orbit in an hour. Be on it.’ Vangorich slid a briefing packet back across the table. Krule scooped it up in his big hand and turned away. ‘Keep him alive, Krule, whatever his plan is. Right now, he is the Imperium. Oh, and one other thing—’ A shimmer against the portrait on the wall near the door betrayed the movement of Krule’s head. ‘Be sure Wienand keeps herself out of trouble.’

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Check 0, 04:13:39

‘You disapprove.’

Wienand stood with hands clasped behind her back, watching the Inquisitorial gunboats that slowly crisscrossed the Palace skyline through the silvered tint of the armourglass. Their black, slab-hulled bodies patrolled the surrounding spires, weapon hardpoints twitching, the deceptively ponderous sweep of their rotors mirrored across plasteel and glass. She watched a moment longer, then looked over her shoulder when she got no reply.

‘You have a way of being silent when you disapprove.’

Veritus nodded stiffly, the pallid skin of his neck creaking like old leather. ‘I can think of wiser places to be than on the Abhorrence in the middle of a new Crusade.’

‘It’s not exactly my first choice.’

‘Sigismund was a maniac. Even the Sigillite was overheard saying so. His successors are almost worse, striving to preserve a philosophy they lack the wit to inherit or the skill to prosecute. They will be at the forefront of any battle, and your protection will be far from their priority.’

Wienand’s ghostly reflection in the glass smiled in amusement. It was not so very long ago that she and Veritus had been trying to kill one another. ‘Koorland has ceded control of the Deathwatch, but through gritted teeth, and the Deathwatch will know it. I will have to earn their respect before they will follow an order without first taking it to Koorland or Thane.’

‘Or the new Watch Commander.’

‘Or him.’

The armourglass rattled as a gunboat passed close, flak turrets smoothly tracking it until it was gone. ‘Koorland is charismatic but naïve. I don’t doubt that his first act after the current crisis ends will be to dissolve the Deathwatch as he has always claimed he will.’ She turned fully from the window, hands still clasped behind her. ‘I can’t let that happen.’

‘Why?’

Wienand was pacing before she realised it. She could never sit while others stood, and Veritus almost never sat. Others assumed it good manners on her part, but that was only a front. A seated individual had further to move to react to a threat than a standing one. And she didn’t trust Veritus quite that much.

‘For the Imperium. The Inquisition is too important to fight amongst itself, or to depend on the resources of others, and our current arrangement seems to work well. You and those that think as you do attend to the Chaos threat, and I to that of the alien. Perhaps it’s time it was formalised into something permanent, so that an argument over who or what represents the greater threat to mankind will never again cripple us as it nearly did.’

Veritus nodded, accepting the unspoken charge.

‘Consider the possibilities,’ Wienand went on. ‘An alien-hunting strike-force that pools the greatest talents of the Space Marine Chapters, one that can be deployed anywhere in the galaxy, to arenas too hostile even for an Inquisitorial rosette to provide safety.’

‘That is a tremendous amount of power for you to wield. Power that you promised the Lord Commander would be shared.’

She took a deep breath and stopped pacing, turning to face Veritus fully. ‘Perhaps that power could be balanced by a force of Chaos hunters drawn along similar lines.’

Veritus’ suit sucked and wheezed around his corpse neck like a ventilator. It blew out an odour of cinnamon-scented oils and formaldehyde, and made the cuneiformed papyrus strips hung from his armour flutter like spirits with secrets. His eyelids fluttered drily. It was a tic, the tired rattle of an ancient cogitator, one that Wienand had come to associate with the deep dredging of ancient memory. ‘There is a Space Marine Chapter, based on Titan, that might serve.’

For a moment, Wienand found herself at a loss for words. She turned back to the window and looked out over the scarred, quake-blistered skyline.

‘An entire Chapter? Here? What in the name of the Throne were they doing while orks invaded Terra and Mars threatened outright rebellion?’

‘They have… special interests. Their existence is known only to a few.’

Wienand was long resigned to the fact that Veritus specialised in things known only to a few.

‘I will make the necessary overtures,’ he said after a moment, his lips animating to peel open in something too cadaverous and black-centred to be called a smile. ‘And I will ensure that power does not rush too strongly to Vangorich’s head. Though he flatters himself to think so, Malcador he is not.’

‘Don’t worry about Drakan. It’s out there, with Koorland, that things hinge now. He’s been fixated on the High Lords’ problems for so long that I think the changing centre of gravity has passed him by.’

The old inquisitor’s lips settled back into their corpselike repose. His eyes, now unblinking, found the reflection of hers. ‘Do not forget Krule. I doubt that Vangorich intends to be a complete bystander.’

‘I will have Raznick with me.’

‘Take more.’

‘There will be more waiting.’

‘You suspect. Koorland reveals nothing of your destination.’

‘Though it’s with a fleet of Inquisitorial barges that he intends to get there. I will be as safe as I can be.’

For a long spell, Veritus was silent, and Wienand feared that she was the focus of another unspoken reprimand. ‘Look out for him. For better or worse, Koorland is the only thing that holds the Imperium together.’

‘You don’t sound convinced that it is better.’

Veritus snorted, a crackling wheeze like the start of an old recording. ‘His diagnosis that the Imperium is not what it once was or was intended to be is correct, but, though it is not my place to question a primarch, Vulkan was missing for a thousand years. He lacked certain facts. The Emperor’s ambition for mankind was the product of an innocent time.’

‘Making this, what, a guilty one?’

It was a joke, but Veritus just looked at her, eyes dead, a slight curl to his upper lip.

‘Emperor watch over you both,’ he said, when he was ready. ‘I will be here when you return.’

Terra — orbital

Check 0, 05:22:46

Cold white vapour lay over the floor of the flight deck like a sub-zero froth, clinging to the thighs of the void-suited tech-serfs that hurried through it. The grinding closure of the anterior blast doors behind Thane’s back drew a ripple through the stew that lapped at the drab grey ceramite of his greaves.

He crossed the length of the deck. The hard grey mullions between launch bay doors passed slowly on his right, the rust-swathe crescent of Terra’s southern hemisphere dominating the spaces. There were no clouds. Terra no longer had a water cycle to speak of, but he could see gun-blimps, sub-orbital platforms, rad-harvesters, drifting across the slow-turning world like something robotically similar.

As he walked, a matt-grey Thunderhawk broke the coherence field in a squeal of spasming countervalencies and roared a few dozen metres over his head, turning tortuously on its axis before coming down in a marked bay in a blast of coolant vapours.

Incoming transports disgorged armoured Space Marines, or serfs laden with gear and pushing pallets stacked with equipment crates. Others were in the process of take-off, ferrying visiting officials and liaison staff back to their own ships.

Thane ignored the bustle, heading for the group of three gunships that were in the process of being unloaded at the far end of the deck. They were as devoid of Chapter icons and embellishment as any Fists Exemplar craft, but they were black. Quartermaster Heroth stood in the fountaining vapours with a clipboard tucked under one arm, glittering void suit made stiff with cold, and personally shook the hand of the more human of the disembarking passengers.

Thane recognised the Assassin, Krule, his big hand currently crushing the wincing Quartermaster’s, a light kit bag slung over the same shoulder. The magi, Eldon Urquidex and Phaeton Laurentis, he knew also. The latter scuttled down the boarding ramp on his tripod assembly, accompanied by a servitor pushing a tracked cart containing a set of lead containers marked with the Cog Mechanicus and cautionary runes in Low Gothic and binharic. Urquidex moved serenely a short distance behind. His left arm had been replaced with a bulky augmetic. His head was bald, bar-stamped and still scarred from the aborted surgical process of lobotomisation. His telescopic optics and facial grafts made the magos’ emotions alien to Thane, but the periodic twitch of his digital bionics seemed to betray his nerves. The ranger alpha seconded from the Taghmata to safeguard Mars’ investment met Thane’s regard with hard lenses of machined glass. Steam hissed from the blue-glowing cells of the plasma caliver in his articulated hands.

Kavalanera Brassanas and half a dozen of her Sisters gathered together, detached, parchment strips fluttering under the idling turbofans, in silent communion. About twice that number, Thane knew, would be distributed across Abhorrence, Punished, and the Anokrono. Six more hopefully waited at their separate rendezvous coordinates.

Leaning against their depowering gunship were two more that Thane did not know.

A pair of hugely muscular ogryn, their sloping brows almost level with the gunship roof, grunted at each other in their slow, sub-Gothic dialect. Their khaki vest tops hung open over slab-muscled chests and glittered with newly minted Ullanor campaign pins, Aquila Company patches, and numerous greatly loved honorifica for valour.

This was Koorland’s kill-team: the thirty or so that would succeed where the Emperor’s millions had failed.

‘The Lord Commander ordered me to find quarters for this group,’ said Heroth, still massaging his hand as Thane approached.

‘So I’ve been informed. Any further orders?’

‘No, lord.’

Thane grunted, somewhat disappointed, then looked up towards the tremendous metallic impact that rang against one of the gunship’s troop ramps.

‘Thane!’

The welcome came as a feline snarl from the closest gunship’s open hatch. A Space Marine in Deathwatch black bedecked in skull tokens and animal pelts walked down the ramp with his helm in his hands and the easy, nonchalant stride of an alpha wolf. He looked from side to side, seemingly idly, as he descended, an apex carnivore sizing up these other beasts that grazed on its plain.

Thane noted that even the skitarius looked away.

The first ever Watch Commander of the Deathwatch swept off the ramp, and thumped Thane with an embrace that had his gyros whirring to compensate. Thane awkwardly returned the bear hug, overwhelmed by raw animal charisma and the damp scent of musk. Thumping his rerebrace violently, the Wolf Lord pulled back. He smiled. His look might have been described as thoughtful, considered even, were it not for the set of sharp, overly long fangs.

‘Well met, Asger. Warfist’

‘And you, cousin.’ He slid one long arm across Thane’s shoulders and crushed his pauldron to his chest, a purring growl rolling from the back of his throat. ‘I never thought I would need to shake the hand of so many I have never met in one day.’

‘You grow accustomed to it.’

‘See my gladness at being here for just this one day. My ship translated into system barely six hours ago and I am already wearied by it.’ He turned to show the new crest on his armour. Thane could still smell the paint. ‘Though some idea of what the role of Watch Commander entails would have been welcome.’

‘If it makes you feel better, I am not sure either.’

Asger snorted, amused, as Thane’s gorget bead chimed. He held up a finger to forestall any further conversation. ‘Thane here.’

‘Lord Commander Koorland reports aboard, lord.’ The vox-whisper barely made it through the interference bands, but Shipmaster Weylon Kale was an old hand. A little inevitable physical deterioration was a fair price for almost three centuries of experience. ‘The shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior also report ready. Lord Bohemond’s flotilla has cleared the exit lanes and is under way for the Mandeville point, and Lord Issachar signals that he now waits only on us.’

‘Inform Punished that we are ready.’

‘Signalled, lord. Lords Cuarrion and Verpall forward their regrets.’

Asger smirked, his hearing sharper even than Thane’s, and good enough to pick out the scratch of another man’s gorget bead over the flight deck’s clamour. ‘I do not envy the Iron Knight his chance to play guard dog over Terra, though I envy the Crimson Fist the opportunity to warm Koorland’s seat in the Great Chamber even less.’

Thane chose not to comment.

The loss of Quesadra remained too raw to properly acknowledge whatever difficulties his successor faced in filling his boots. So complete had been the Crimson Fists’ destruction on Ullanor that Cuarrion had barely made sergeant before his elevation to Chapter Master. They would stand guard over the Palace under Chapter Master Vorkogun and his similarly depleted Executioners, alongside the sentinels of the new-formed Imperial Fists.

‘There is also a personal communication for you, lord, from the Anokrono.’

Leaving Heroth to his duties with a nod, Thane withdrew to a stack of munitions crates beneath a little-used catwalk where it was marginally quieter than the rest of the deck.

‘Put it through.’

There was a click as the shipmaster switched channels and then a garbled hiss, the signal no longer a wired ship line but a ship-to-ship transmission through an intensely busy orbital space. There were vox-protocols, but they were poorly enforced and civilian transports rarely adhered to them.

‘Forgive the indulgence, Brother Thane,’ spoke the uncommonly cultured tones of Euclydeas, Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers. ‘But after our last meeting I felt a “good luck” was in order.’

‘It is welcome.’ Thane and Euclydeas had fought side-by-side on Ullanor, two of seven Chapter Masters that had formed Vulkan’s vanguard into the Great Beast’s temple-gargant. A day that would live on in future histories, if the Imperium endured to retell it.

He sighed. Quesadra was not the only one to fall. Odaenathus of the Ultramarines had also been slain, a mantle that was still to be taken up.

‘We will both need plenty of it,’ Thane said, ‘I have no doubt.’

‘Agreed, and I intend to buy my share with ork blood.’

‘I hope to fight beside you again come the end, brother.’

‘Likewise. I have already spoken with Issachar. My fleet will follow you out. For Dorn. For the Emperor. For freedom.’

There was a click, and then silence as the Chapter Master severed the line.

‘To the war then,’ said Asger.

‘To test Koorland’s new weapon.’

‘I have heard of it. And if it does not work as he hopes?’

Thane gestured to the row of towering launch bay doors and their view of Terra, as though this alone explained everything. ‘Then nothing changes.’

Eight

‘The Emperor protects. Kill every last one.’

— attributed to Ezekyle Abaddon, Ullanor Crusade, M31

Incus Maximal — orbital

Check 5, 2017:09:28

It always took a ship’s real space systems a few minutes to recover but, despite his own post-Geller-collapse nausea, Urquidex had been sufficiently drilled in the procedure to get himself aboard the Thunderhawk and strapped in when it had occured. The skitarii ranger, Alpha 13-Jzzal, had checked his harness, then slotted in alongside.

The post-event syndromes made Urquidex’s mind squirm as though his skull had been opened for an augmentation procedure that he had not submitted to, memories of his time on the lobotomisation slab, implanted electrodes making his skin tingle and his limbs jerk. He could taste vomit in his mouth and thought he could smell it on his robes. There had barely been time to realign his senses to the restored reality before the Blood Angel, Gadreel, had guided the gunship from its hangar.

But then, Space Marine physiology tolerated translation better.

‘Are you all right, magos?’ asked the Inquisitorial storm trooper, a colonel named Rothi, in the opposite harness, holding on to the vertical bars.

Urquidex nodded, trying hard not to be sick again as the Thunderhawk passed through her parent ship’s void shields with a bump. Thrust rippled through his flesh organics as the gravitational forces pushed him hard against the restrictor bar.

Seeking something fixed to settle his churning stomach, his telescoping eyestalks sought out the nearest viewing block. Behind them, more troop ships streaming from its launch bays, the castellated bulk of the Inquisitorial flagship, Verisimilis, was a bulwark of darkness against the steady light of the stars. More heavily armed than the standard Black Ship template, and several times more massive than the spartan menace of Alcazar Remembered, the Inquisitorial flagship had been born black. Enveloped by an aegis of literal and metaphysical wards, and with a standard crew complement now supplemented with Deathwatch Space Marines, it was as formidable a foe as any, at arm’s length or in close.

The gunship altered course and the view swung. Inquisition and Excoriator ships crowded the orbital anchorages of a pearly hyper-industrial ice world. Drop pods smoked a small slice of the upper atmosphere in blacks, greens, and reds. A few other vessels were mixed up with them. Though no expert in Adeptus Astartes vexillology, Urquidex recognised warships of the Blood Angels, Aurora Chapter, and the Brazen Claws. They had been hastily, in some instances partially, reworked in black. The realisation of just how much manpower and materiel it would require to convert a million square metres of just one void-scarred warship to Deathwatch black had clearly come too late for some.

A vast manufactorum tender of the Basilikon Astra hove to alongside an Aurora Chapter cruiser with a spitting contusion from a gravitic lash in her port quarter. Manipulator claws and laser sculptors were setting to work, cutting and cauterising, even as the Space Marine vessel disgorged drop pods. The visible Navy and Mechanicus ships he could count on his one hand. They hung back from the planet.

The planet was one he had visited before, though he had never yet personally set foot on it. He had been part of the sample-retrieval mission dispatched after its fall. The memory did not settle his stomach at all.

An alien growl and a clank of chain drew his attention from the viewing block.

The Veridi mysticus was bolted to the wall, chains running through thick iron hoops that had been welded to the deck. Even tranquillised, it was terrifyingly strong. The storm troopers shifted in their seats. In slots designed for the transport of superhuman warriors they looked like nervous children at an adult’s table.

‘Be calm,’ said Tyris and the outward display of nerves diminished. Huge and fully sealed in his black armour, the Raven Guard surveyed the mortal soldiers. Under the infernal red of his lenses they found another object for their fear.

‘Yes, lord,’ said Rothi.

Urquidex glanced to the warriors either side of Tyris that made up the reformed Kill-Team Stalker. He was not yet adept at telling armoured Space Marines apart, and recognised them from their training exercises by Chapter marking — or lack thereof — more than any other feature. Hakon Icegrip of the Space Wolves. Vega of the Doom Eagles. Gadreel of the Blood Angels. Numines of the Fists Exemplar.

Unlike the others, the Fist Exemplar’s wargear carried no markings.

Urquidex could speak at length on the nature and variation of biological hierarchies. He could explain how the Leo of ancient Terra asserted their dominance over a breeding pool, or the socio-genetics of Veridi giganticus’ rigidly absolutist dominance structure. The ancient eldar too, from the few fragmentary treatises he had seen, held to a model of subservience and command that, for all its inherent alien-ness, was more remarkable for its similarities to human norms than its differences. Even amongst the adherents to the Cog Mechanicus, the exact same structure could be seen in the makeup of the Synod, the diagnostiad, and the alpha station of the Fabricator General himself. The instinct to dominate was as fundamental to biological life as the nucleotidal structure that underlay it. This man was quite plainly a leader.

A discussion of the flaws inherent to Oriax Dantalion’s philosophy would have made a fascinating diversion just then.

With a sullen growl, the ork psyker lunged for him.

Chains rattled and pulled taut and the huge beast clattered to the deck. The storm troopers swore. Alpha 13-Jzzal struck it across the jaw with the butt of his plasma caliver. Drugged as it was, ork as it was, the psyker almost certainly didn’t feel the blow, but there was force enough in his cyborgised guardian’s arm to put it back on the deck. It drooled where it lay. One poorly-focused eye rolled drunkenly around Urquidex.

He suspected that the ork was less interested in him than the trio of gold-armoured women beside him.

Urquidex was accustomed to the company of emotionless beings, but something about the warrior women chilled him. It was deeper even than the unease he felt in the presence of a mind-wiped servitor. It was visceral, basic; an aversion to something alien that was recognised directly by the soul rather than filtered by imperfect organic senses.

‘Can you tranquillise it again?’ said Rothi.

Urquidex nodded.

‘Remain harnessed, magos,’ said Tyris.

‘Crossing thermosphere,’ said Gadreel, the Techmarine’s voice coming through the internal vox.

‘Armour up,’ said Rothi. ‘Helms on. And check seals. It’s a cold world down there.’

Incus Maximal — orbital

Check 5, 2017:55:31

‘All drop-ships away, all gunships landed and redeploying to engage targets. Lord Issachar signals limited resistance thus far.’

Shipmaster Weylon Kale walked the gangway from strategium to command throne under the choral backing of cherubiam serfs of the Fists Exemplar Librarius. Koorland grunted acknowledgement. The tac-screens and data-displays showed the same information.

‘Ork vessels?’

‘Engaged or destroyed, lord.’

‘No sign of anything breaking away?’

‘Navy and Basilikon Astra have the Mandeville point under blockade.’

Koorland reformatted the data-display at his armrest to call up a bi-dimensional gridchart of the planet’s orbital band. Thirty to forty green icons represented ork ships. They were construction vessels and bulk haulers rather than true warships, though all were armed to some capacity and making a fight of it. At slightly under a quarter of the numbers, Space Marine and Inquisition ships were represented in Chapter colours and black respectively. They were true warships, and green icons disappeared fast.

Also in green, but larger, were the planet’s orbital facilities. The handful of weapons platforms that had been in orbit no longer had the power output or the mass to return an auspex signal. The installations currently showing up on Alcazar Remembered’s screens were dry docks, assembly yards and fuel depots, low-priority targets that the flotilla had ignored while green icons still crowded the board.

At Koorland’s swiped command, the image on the main oculus altered to one from a starboard viewer. It showed a tangle of aerials and macro-turrets, blanched with void frost, and, through it, one of the orbital shipyards. It was crescent-shaped, one face tidally locked to the planet and the other bristling with empty slipways. The ‘skull’ section of an Opus Machina had been crudely redone in green. Bulky weapon retrofits spewed macro-ordnance. The fire appeared to be manually targeted, much of it sprayed hopefully into space. Impacts flared violet and indigo from the forward shields of the Blood Angels cruiser that manoeuvred alongside. A full broadside from the Space Marine vessel blasted several hundred metres from the shipyard’s void-facing side and sent explosions rocking through the rest. The cruiser fired reverse thrusters, gunners reloading for a second volley. A much-reduced volume of fire blistered her shields.

‘Launch a shuttle with a message for the Sanguine to break off her attack.’ The blanket denial broadcast that all fleet elements were transmitting made direct ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground communication impossible. ‘Remind all captains and shipmasters, static facilities are to be disabled only. Dispatch Terminator squads to take recordings, but their orders are not to engage.’

‘And how do you propose they do that?’ said Thane.

The Chapter Master was lit up by the pale glow of the command deck’s vox-turret. He had no specific purpose here. Kale controlled the ship, Issachar the fleet and ground forces, Koorland himself had strategic command. For want of anything better to do, Thane monitored the hardline comm-booths for updates from their planetside forces, and coordinated with the shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior.

Koorland put his brother’s uncharacteristic attitude down to frustration, and perhaps a little wounded Chapter honour. Most of the Fists Exemplar First Company and all of their Tactical Dreadnought suits had been lost with Dantalion. Out of respect for his and his Chapter’s losses, Koorland chose to let it lie.

‘Have Asger mobilise the necessary squads. And remind him that he is not to deploy in person.’ The reminder was necessary. Koorland knew where he would rather be had his position not prohibited it. ‘I want him monitoring the feeds from those facilities.’

‘I will remind him, lord.’

Koorland thought he detected some satisfaction in his brother’s voice. Nothing ameliorated a sense of frustration like spreading it around. Teleportation signals lit up the tactical displays, energy usage spiking on several Inquisitorial ships. He tapped impatiently at the snowy data-display.

‘And have one of our low-flying craft relay a message to Issachar. Tell him the weapon is inbound. He needs to draw the orks into the target area and quickly if we are to have a worthwhile test.’

Incus Maximal — Hyboriax Cryoforge

Check 5, 2018:09:01

Issachar could not see the orks yet. The landing zone was surrounded by bronzed manufactorum walls and by the ice-capped pylons through which ran a sky-blackening net of power lines. Cog Mechanicus icons re-cut with tusks, box chins, glowering eyes, and beret-style caps glared down from towering basilicae. A ranting xenos voice blasted out from augmitters set up amongst the buildings. The roadway hissed under an acid snow that tumbled through mechanised guttering, spraying out of corroded effluent pipes in kilometre-high glitterfalls that disappeared through successively narrower-spectrum rainbows to the unseen sump-layer below.

The local topography was of immense containers that had been broken open and scattered, ordnance potholes from the initial invasion that the orks had not bothered to fill. Yawing cranes swung in the jetwash of overflying gunships. The headlamps of three-score rumbling vehicles lit the ground in harsh white streaks, the periodic wash of electricity through the lines temporarily inverting light and shade.

Issachar could not see the orks. Not yet. But he could hear them.

Gunfire rattled far away. The crump of rockets. Bikes and buggies growled through the surrounding districts. He could even hear the orks themselves, and not the cracked voice being pumped through the augmitters. The forward squads were already engaged, just on the far side of those manufactorum walls.

‘Orders from Alcazar Remembered, brother-captain.’

Brother Orgos of the First approached over the debris-strewn roadway. His armour was rad-pitted. The vox-antennae of his high-powered pack array twanged with countervailing winds, the occasional snap of voltage leaping towards the overhead cables. ‘Koorland demands we engage with all haste.’

Issachar laughed. ‘Tell him that it would be my pleasure.’

Armoured fist squadrons of the Astra Militarum, the merged veterans of the Ullanor invasion, and Inquisitorial storm troopers shivered in column to the front, tracks and armour frosted with a yellow-brown ice of sulphates, fluorates and hydrochlorates. Demolisher siege tanks and Hellhounds grumbled at the head of each column. Fully-enclosed Sentinels with armoured canopies strode the flanks, overwatch provided by heavy weapon teams ensconced behind shockboard barricades set up on top of the crumpled superheavy crates. With a sequential whoosh of castellan guided missiles, Whirlwinds loosed. The missiles twirled and parted and spun together, the incendiary barrage crumbling an effluviam stack several kilometres due north.

The main armoured elements of the Excoriators were already engaged in support of the rapid forward advance. Vox-chatter from the various squad and company-level channels spoke over one another into his helmet feed. His Lyman’s ear could pluck one from the chaos without difficulty.

‘Hab-block clear. moving on—’

‘Ork vehicles flanking via tau processional—’

‘Entering Hyboriax Primus. Heavy fire—’

Issachar could see the mons temple through the bruised swirl of snow. It had suffered damage concomitant with massive orbital bombardment, but the fortified edifice still stood, some of the damaged wings reconstructed in less than sympathetic fashion. Cannon platforms and bright red runway strips for the take-off and landing of the orks’ big, multipurpose fighter-bombers spidered out from the cracked minaret, like tentacles emerging from a black-veined egg sac.

It was there that the ork forces would be concentrated.

Issachar raised his fist and a pair of serfs in ivory and red habits hoisted the Escharan standard from a crossbar above his personal Land Raider, Tyrant.

‘Inquisition forces to hold. All other units advance on my command.’

Nine

Incus Maximal — Mons Primus

Check 5, 2020:59:24

Acid snow was already beginning to pile up around the Thunderhawk. Urquidex hoped to take that as a positive sign, meaning that they planned to return for it. The gunship continued to disappear as he was hustled away from it, and that was when he realised. It had been expended to bring them down and was now being abandoned so as not to double the risk of discovery with a second flight. The ubiquitous Thunderhawk was the cheap, standard template design workhorse of the Adeptus Astartes, as easily thrown to the ice in the name of necessity as any organic servant of Him on Terra.

The air temperature was beyond freezing, and yet the snow burned where it touched bare skin. He pulled up his hood. Storm troopers in glassy black carapace and cold-weather survival gear crunched through the snow; two dozen of them together hauled the truculent ork by its chains. Steam billowed from its mouth and icicles of saliva bearded its jaw. The Sisters surrounded them like a warding hex, power blades spitting in the falling snow, causing the brute to snap and lunge and claw at its temples only for the chains around its wrist to yank taut and bring half a dozenstorm troopers skidding towards it.

The Space Marines of Kill-Team Stalker, Urquidex could no longer see. They had pushed well ahead and the sub-zero conditions had frozen his optics on near-view.

The landing pad projected from the upper bulge of the Mons Primus. It led onto a long ambulatory with great arched windows, detailed in brass, alternating from one side to the other. They ran down it, the drugged ork determining their pace. Snow swept in through the left-hand windows. They had previously been glazed by a conversion field that would have converted the impact of each flake of snow into glorious, eclectic light. Urquidex could see the emitters. They were unpowered now, several of the arches cracked. The siege-savants of Incus Maximal had authorised the destruction of the planetary capital in a bid to stem the ork advance onto the planet’s last Mechanicus enclaves. There had been no time to complete the sacrilege. The wreckage of the Ark ship Contrivenant still drifted in orbit.

The view from the left now was frozen, and dark because of it. Flickering exchanges of fire lit the silhouettes of forge basilicae, as if in crude mea culpa for the destruction of the conversion field. The traces of explosions went largely unremarked: a wink of light there, the dim rumble of a collapsing superstructure there.

By the time Urquidex saw the doors at the end of the ambulatory, the Thunderhawk was just another lump, indistinguishable from any of the forgotten lumps around it. Urquidex’s digitools twitched through a signum-code rendition of the Last Rites.

Hakon and Numines held the doors as Tyris, Vega and Gadreel surged through.

The ambulatory led to a covered chamber, and the first greenskins that Urquidex had seen alive.

There were six of them, gathered around a metal barrel of cleansing spirit with the lid torn off, sitting on sturdy tables as if they were benches. Their necks were as thick as iron hawsers. Their biceps were the size of promethium drums. Urquidex was wholly unprepared for their brute immensity. The intense fungal stench overpowered even the astringent chemicals.

A volley of silenced bolt-rounds dropped them before any of them could so much as grunt and Tyris and Vega powered through, smashing the tables aside to make way. Urquidex followed in behind the storm troopers and Sisters and looked around while his optics warmed through.

It was a narthex. Here was where pilgrims would congregate to wait, pray and suffer the requisite physical deprivation to earn the Omnissiah’s admission to the temple proper. The columns were bronze. The floor and ceiling were ribbed and the walls were decked with cabling. Pistons glided in and out of their sleeves, but they were without function, symbolic of the perpetuity of the Machine-God’s power. The distant pops of gunfire echoed through the chamber.

Tyris voxed a whispered ‘all clear’. The other Space Marines started after him with a startling lack of sound.

Urquidex pointed the way, bypassing the ascensor, to the penitent stairs at the far end of the hallway, doubting for a moment that he had seen the orks alive at all.

Just six corpses. No different to the tens of thousands shipped to Mars for dissection.

The penitent stairs led to a corridor, its walls adorned with tablet slabs stating the Universal Laws, and then on to another set of stairs. The metal newel rattled loosely as the Deathwatch powered ahead. Urquidex was only halfway up and feeling the lactate burn in his limbs when the roar of bolter fire carried down.

A dozen orks were dead and sprayed roughly over the atrium’s cuneiformed bronze walls when Urquidex stumbled onto the scene, but twice that number were still fighting.

They were machine-ork perversions, xenotech abominations of an engineer class. Slug bullets sprayed from crane-limbed servo-harnesses. Plasma blasts ripped craters out of the walls. Vega dropped to one knee behind a devotional font and disgorged a jet of flaming promethium from his bolter’s combi-attachment. An ork engineer wheezed through the flames, shuddering armour harness alight. It didn’t seem to notice. A multi-barrelled volleycannon attached to its fighting suit with swaying ammo belts began to whine, then to howl, and the font disintegrated. Vega and Numines went down. Icegrip took a glancing hit to the pauldron just as he was swinging up his frost blade. Tyris’ return fire spanked off the ork’s armour like rain hitting a drum.

Urquidex had just starting screaming, metal splinters from the destroyed font lodged in the organic attachers of his eye, when he felt Alpha 13-Jzzal’s cyborgised frame slam him against the wall. The skitarius grunted as bullets riddled his titanium exoskeleton. A squad of storm troopers formed up behind him and opened fire. Las-fire stitched the atrium, brutally impressive as a laser display and as wasted as one on the thick skulls of the orks.

The boss ork shrugged off the troopers’ attentions, beat one in half with a twist of its power claw, then lost the arm to the downward stroke of a Sister’s blade. She withdrew a step, pivoted on her toes, and with terrifying grace, backhanded the ork’s head from its shoulders. Her sister stood protectively over Urquidex and the growling ork psyker as the third took the fight to the orks. Tyris, Gadreel and Icegrip fought hard to match her battle-grace.

The last engineer had backed itself into a corner. It took a short burst of bolt-rounds to the gut, which then erupted from its back and painted a streak on the wall as it slid down it. Vega rose, clutching his hip, liquid sealant bubbling up from the rents in his armour.

‘I can continue,’ he rasped.

Numines didn’t rise. Gadreel crouched over him for a second, fingers to his throat, and spoke a prayer to honour the Fist Exemplar’s lost gene-seed. Tyris was already thumping towards the great set of double doors that the orks had been guarding. There was no stealth now.

The stylised plasteel was no match for the Space Marine’s powered strength and he shouldered the doors apart without breaking stride. In fact he was still speeding up, bolter up and firing again before the doors had slammed back into the walls. Vega, Icegrip and, a moment later, Gadreel walked into the return fire without the slightest hesitation.

Urquidex was awed. Here was the Omnissiah’s glory, expressed through biological perfection and the genetic mastery of the God-Emperor of Man.

‘Squads alpha and beta, left and right,’ roared Colonel Rothi as men surged forward, and held a hand to Urquidex to indicate that he should remain exactly where he was. ‘Delta on me, cover the payload, go.’

The Apse Mechanicus was a technological marvel in copper, polished mica, and gold, crosshatched by gunfire and smoke. At a prosaic level it resembled a temple of the Creed, but the pillars that upheld the vaulted ceiling were not monofunction stone, but great pipes that trembled musically with the Omnissiah’s breath. The Machine-God Himself was represented in sanctified metal at the end of the nave. It was more than just a statue. Its miraculous mechanics had breathed Motive Force into the lights, the energy fields, and provided Hyboriax its heat. It ran still, its isolation splendid, but its outward connectors had been hacked out of the walls. A necklace of human ribs hung from its cog-toothed neck. A crown of bent metal sat crooked on its head.

Squads alpha and beta lacerated the defiled space with las-beams. Orks built like armoured walkers turned around as though unexpectedly spat upon. A missile screwed across the nave from a crude shoulder-mounted launcher and wasted two men to armaplas scraps and flesh lather. Alpha 13-Jzzal’s caliver deoxygenated the air with rippling volleys of superheated plasma that left two orks as molten husks. Overheat runes glowed a dangerous amber as the weapon steamed off into the cold. Rothi roared. The troopers focused their fire, and twenty-plus convergent beams managed finally to punch one of the xenos brutes down.

Luckily for the mortals, the Space Marines had the orks’ attention.

Tyris advanced at speed towards the right transept, going column to column. Controlled bursts punched the orks cleanly down as they moved towards him. Wild returns ripped open the ornate pipes, mangled them as though grenades had blown them apart from the inside. Vega meanwhile advanced slowly down the centre, his limp growing more pronounced with every step. Heavy gunfire slugging his battleplate, he dropped to one knee and rolled a grenade down the aisle between two blocks of plug-in banks.

It burst into a thick pall of smoke. Tyris disappeared but for the muffled sound of him. Vega became a ghost. Urquidex could barely make out the silent Sisters beside him. Without his optics he doubted they could see him as well, but they appeared as unflustered by their sudden blindness as they were by everything else.

‘The weapon must be deployed as close to the centre as is possible,’ said Urquidex. ‘If the test is to yield meaningful data then it must be done properly.’ He looked back. Rothi was there. He had one hand pressed to his ear, the other cupped over his mouth.

‘Lord Issachar, come in. Lord Issachar—’

One of the storm troopers left dragging the payload cursed as it began to pull back against them.

‘It needs another dose!’

‘No,’ Urquidex replied. Xenos species reacted unpredictably to human pharmacopoeia. Even sub-breeds could show eccentricities of response. He began to see why Kubik had recommended him for this mission. Few if any knew as much about Veridi genetics as he did. ‘It must be as conscious as possible. I don’t know how the somnambulum might interfere with its psychic powers.’

‘Then release it now!’ yelled the storm trooper. The ork was small relative to others of its species, but more than equal to the five men left holding it. The soldier’s arms were wound through the chain and his feet braced, but he and his comrade beside him were being drawn back regardless.

‘Here, then,’ said Urquidex, and signalled as much to the one Sister of Silence still beside him. She took a step back.

He took a deep breath.

Fortunate that he was in a house of the Omnissiah.

He wanted his prayers heard.

Ten

Incus Maximal — Hyboriax Primus

Check 5, 2021:45:02

The Land Raider’s glacis ramp crashed down into the rubble. Issachar was first out, shredding an ork in thick red body plate with a burst of bolter fire. Another ork pushed through the girdering that had fallen across a window. He bracketed it with bolter fire until it dropped. Something pulled the blocking metal aside and lobbed in a grenade. The frag burst shook floor and ceiling, but Issachar barely felt it. Space Marines encased in wounded artificer armour and draped in scripture stomped towards windows and doors, weapons blazing.

The Land Raider had ridden through the tin wall and disgorged Issachar’s honour guard directly into a manufactorum complex attached to Hyboriax Primus. It was a shell, but it was cover and provided firing lines over the primus road and from the back onto the ork bikers flanking on secundus.

The big doors onto primus came down on their acid-corroded hinges, an ork walker bulldozing through and walking into the atmosphere-sear of Tyrant’s sponson lascannons. The smoking can spouted fire and crashed to the floor. Ork warriors poured in behind the wreck, bellowing and hooting and firing wildly into the air. Tyrant raked them with its glacis heavy bolters, body parts slapping into puddles of their own liquefied tissue. High-yield mass-reactives perforated the walker’s gouting shell with hollow thunks and exploded, showering the orks still behind it with boiling shrapnel. Even the tank’s commander popped the cupola hatch and added to the outpouring of firepower with its pintle-mounted storm bolter.

The honour guard were still laying down thinning fire from the windows, leaving it to Issachar to deal with the xenos inroad in person.

He crushed an ork’s spine with a blow from his power axe. Filled another with a close-range volley that tore it apart. An ork almost twice his size waded through the Land Raider’s bullet storm. It had a crossed axe branded on a box-magazine of a jaw, a lumpen bionic wedged into the crease of one eye. It barged him sideways and they grappled, servos whining, gears clunking.

He was Chapter Master of the Excoriators. He had served Katafalque as First Captain for a century. He had fought the enemies of mankind for nearly seven hundred years, and the Astronomican would cease to shine before he would fall at the hands of an ork.

He spat Betchers’ acid on its chest-plate, then slammed his forehead through the dissolving metal. The ork roared, in surprise, not pain, and released its grip on his power axe enough for him to molecularly disrupt the brute’s skull with force fit to topple a wall.

Chapter vox chattered in his ear the whole time, telling him exactly where and how badly they were being beaten.

‘Order all forces back to the secondary extraction zone,’ he voxed, calmly, bolt pistol eviscerating the next monster to test its luck against his fury and lose. ‘I will not sacrifice what little we have left for a test.’

‘Chapter Master.’ Orgos made a line for him from Tyrant, where he had been coordinating with air support. ‘Payload is signalling. They are ready to—’

There was a crack, and the Space Marine fell with a slugger round still embedded in the side of his helm. Issachar snarled and stepped over him.

He had lost too many brothers to be moved by one more.

Incus Maximal — Mons Primus

Check 5, 2021:58:15

Urquidex nipped in smartly behind the ork’s back and stabbed it in the side of the neck with a hypodermic. It roared, and instinctively tried to bite off his hand, but it was still groggy and snapped a few centimetres shy of his hastily withdrawn digitools. The storm troopers braced. There had been no way to drill for the actual detonation. All they had to go on was the Dzelenic IV recording and they looked duly terrified.

The ork psyker was growing increasingly lucid. With a furious bellow, it dragged on the chain around its muscular right arm and pulled the storm trooper holding on to it off his feet. He slid along the floor on his chest carapace and the ork stamped on his head.

‘Throne!’

The storm trooper escort detail cried out in alarm. One drew a laspistol and had singed the ork’s chest before Urquidex shouted for him to stop. The ork pounded on its chest with its free arm and grabbed hold of the chains around its left arm and its neck.

With a crack of energy discharge, the Sister of Silence severed its arm just below the shoulder. She regarded Urquidex frostily as the psyker howled. Gore turned the edge of her power blade a fizzing purple. Taking advantage of the ork’s momentary distraction, the storm troopers unclasped the chains from their carapace and started to wind them through the data-pews either side of the aisle.

Meanwhile, squads alpha through delta were firing blindly into the roiling smoke.

The Doom Eagle, Vega, fell out of the smog and hit the floor with an ork on top of him. The troopers tattooed it with las as it smashed the back of the Space Marine’s helmet into the floor. From somewhere, Urquidex could hear the cry of a wolf, the powered whine of a Techmarine’s servo-harness.

Good. The harder they attacked, the stronger the psychic field would become.

The more devastating the explosion.

The ork psyker hollered and struggled around towards the Sister of Silence, the source of all its pain.

‘Now!’ shouted Urquidex, but the Sister was already vanishing into the smoke. Her high gorget hid her mouth, but from the movement of her skin and the shape of her eyes, Urquidex was certain that she smiled.

The effect of her departure on the psyker was profound.

The ork’s eyes took on a glassy inner light. Its shoulders tensed and bulged with swollen musculature. Urquidex had no equipment for the measurement of the uncanny, but he could feel the force that built inside of its skull. It was the pressure in the air that grew in the wake of a storm. The creak of a dam.

The diagnostiad had theorised, on forensic analysis of the Dzelenic IV recording, that the surge of energy that followed a psychically neutered ork psyker being suddenly exposed to a large group of its kin would have catastrophic results.

The storm troopers felt it coming in the rattling of their chains. They abandoned them and started to run. The ork was free, but it made no move to join the fight. It clapped its remaining hand to its face as if to contain the swelling of its head. Bolts of energy spat from its nose, mouth, ears. The flesh of its forehead stretched as its cranium pushed through. Its skull creaked, split, and then burst open, spraying Urquidex and the fleeing storm troopers with brain matter and whizzing bone.

The shockwave hit Urquidex like a force stave and flung him back, up the aisle, and into the wall with a wetly organic crack. A numbing flash of excruciation centred somewhere around his upper spine, and he flopped to the floor minus the use of his limbs. His digitools gave a peripheral nervous twitch.

Courtesy of a massive opiate dump from his cortical implants he remained conscious, and quite by chance in a position that faced down the aisle.

The detonated psyker somehow still stood, wobbling on the spot, blood firing upwards in spurts from its splayed-open neck. The corpses of the escort squad lay in a psychic blast crater of tangled data-pews.

Vega was dead too, insofar as it was possible to make that determination. Urquidex had just noticed him when the ork that straddled him gave a jerk and violently evacuated the contents of its brainpan over a wide area of floor.

The ork slumped over the Space Marine and Urquidex smiled weakly. A string of wet detonations and splashes of red ran through the smoke. The psychic shock chained through the orks. Heads exploded. Inhuman souls blasted from hulking bodies. An ork mechanic staggered across the aisle, headless, guided on by his mega-armoured suit, and crashed through a stained glass window. Acid snow billowed through, pinching out the blooms of promethium fire that rose from the plummeting ork’s flamers. Through the open window, Urquidex heard something explode. A suddenly untended incendiary, perhaps? Or did the battle for Hyboriax Primus continue?

Inside the Apse Mechanicus, however, the silence was devastating. Urquidex heard a last bolt-casing tinkle to the ground. Colonel Rothi’s vox-set crackled with distant chatter. Icegrip clumped through the ruddy smoke and sniffed the air in search of more foes, and then gave a lopsided grin.

There were none.

Incus Maximal — orbital

Check 5, 2022:01:11

The rare strain of unfettered emotion swept the turreted command stations of Alcazar Remembered. Communications, auspectoriae, drive; men and women in glittering void suits rose from their fortress chairs, beating hands together and cheering. Even the cherubiam serfs in their null-shielded podia had fallen, if not quiet, then helplessly in with the general wave of elation. For once in their servile existences, the focus of their songs was not the warp-soothing verses of the Librarius, but the images and accompanying screed that scrolled across the main viewer.

‘Massive ork casualties,’ reported Kale, doing his best to keep his tone level and failing. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips and his hands were clasped a little more tightly than usual behind his back. ‘Early estimates from ground forces put their losses in the tens of thousands.’

Another wild cheer broke out. Even the old shipmaster allowed himself a smile. Koorland suppressed the desire to join the celebrations, or relax, and sat forward.

They had won nothing yet.

‘Details, magos.’

‘Noospheric interlink to Magos Urquidex’s data tether established,’ reported Laurentis, tinnily, unmoved by the exuberance of the tacticae staff around him, or by the serf who dropped onto her knees to throw a hug around his boxy chassis. ‘Stand by.’

The magos scuttled around the strategium desk, which had been modified to his own specifications. Twitching implementer rods projected a functional noosphere. A control board packed with dials hung lopsided from one end by a bundle of fibre-optics, and pinged with periodic sampling of said noosphere. Other parts did things that Koorland could not imagine, all under continuous manipulation by Laurentis’ mechadendrites.

‘My colleague reports partial success. Satisfactory. Reports of fighting in Hyboriax. Uplink from the Excoriators and other ground forces remains patchy, but it would appear that the blast effect was restricted to the Mons Primus and its immediate surrounds.’

Koorland glanced over to Thane. ‘Orbital facilties?’

‘Terminator squads heavily engaged, brother. No effect that I can tell.’

‘Bring them back aboard Alcazar Remembered, and then destroy those platforms. Send retrieval boats for Issachar’s force. I want helmet feeds compiled and supplied to Asger and Laurentis at once. Discontinue the blanket denial broadcast and begin ordering the fleet for immediate translation out.’

‘Aye, lord.’ The communications liaison serf slid her headphones back over her ears and sat back down, even as her station colleagues continued to celebrate.

‘I was hoping for more,’ Koorland muttered.

‘I will have to confer with Magos Urquidex and analyse the data gathered from the ground forces,’ said Laurentis. ‘Lord Tyris and any surviving members of the insertion will also need to be thoroughly interrogated. The psyker was the smallest and weakest of the three, however. That was why it was selected for a trial detonation. It is possible that further calibration of an admittedly improvised detonation procedure could result in improved blast yields.’

‘That is what I want, magos. It is what I need. More and better. I want to scour worlds. I want to ravage fleets. Do you understand me?’

‘I will commence data inload at once.’

‘I look forward to your preliminary report.’ Koorland turned to the communications turret. ‘Has the denial broadcast dissipated?’

‘Almost, lord.’

‘Then send word to the astropaths to make contact with Bohemond and Euclydeas. It is time for the final test.’

Eleven

Immitis VII — Moon

Check 9 [UNVERIFIED LOCATION], -:-:-

The psyker seized, bringing a haze of ferric red from the industrial clamps that held her pallet upright against the stone wall. Her scalp was stapled with adaptor plugs, dark cabling flexing and bowing as she struggled. Foam flecked her lips. Her eyes were wide and staring, though what it was that held her mind’s attention, Zerberyn could not hazard. In the matt of hoops and cabling above her, a lumen filament blinked on and off inside a cracked blue bulb. The witch’s fits were already becoming less frenzied, every abortive jerk against her restraints increasingly synchronised to that grubby flash of blue.

‘The soul is empty. It is dry. The green roar is heard across the stars. Drink deep of it. Drink deep.’

‘It is gibberish,’ said Zerberyn, a ghost-white giant encased in ceramite of unpainted grey.

‘The message doesn’t yet make sense to her,’ whispered the tonsured Librarius serf beside him. ‘Her mind is interpreting the psychic impulse as best as it is able.’

‘So far!’ she screamed, blood trickling from one nostril. ‘Why are you so far from home?’

More serfs in the plain grey habits of the Fists Exemplar Librarius hurried around her, making adjustments to flow regulators in her cranial plugs, tightening straps, or receiving instruction from the clicking instruments to which she was connected by peripheral and lumbar plugs. An overseer in baroque gunmetal-grey robes and bronze trim, a bondsman of sorts, offered sharp words of direction, but was largely content to let the serfs perform the labour. Various parts of his exposed flesh had been dug out and replaced with smooth iron grafts, presumably to excise the early stigmata of mutation. A brand of ownership, like a coal-black tattoo, was cut cleanly in half by one such metal plate on the side of his face.

The woman and her handler were the property of Warsmith Kalkator.

‘Are you even one of us, brother?’ The cage rattled with the violence of her efforts.

The words made Zerberyn’s neck itch, and the Iron Warriors bondsman growled instructions to his Fists Exemplar counterparts. Zerberyn looked up to where the cable bundle fed into a hole in the ceiling. White daylight fell through.

‘Join me,’ the psyker whispered, sinking into her restraints and turning her head sharply from side to side. ‘A red star. A world of fours.’

The overseer took her glistening wet hand, leant through the cage and listened as she whispered something in his ear.

‘We are the Last Wall. The Last Wall. The Last Wall…’

It went on. Zerberyn swore.

‘Find me when she begins to talk sense.’ Zerberyn enclosed the Librarius serf’s shoulder in a gauntleted hand. He towered over the mortal. The barest effort on his part would have broken ribs, torn muscle, crushed a lung, and not a shred of guilt would have haunted him at having done so. The serf swallowed. ‘Tell only me.’

‘Only you, lord. Of course.’

The corridor from what they laughingly now called the astropathicum was a worn-out stretch of ferrocrete blocks with freeze-thaw cracks in the mortar. Stacked building materials littered the floor, runes painted next to gashes in the wall or partial collapses of the ceiling with colours that indicated priority. Doorways without doors led to side chambers where serfs of the two Chapters — Legions? Zerberyn had ceased to worry over how he and his allies described one another — conducted basic repairs. In others, surplus equipment from Guilliman, Excelsior, Paragon, Courageous, Implicit, and from Palimodes had been stockpiled. Paired quartermaster serfs, one from each affiliation, took inventory, assessing how their meagre resources might be most efficiently shared.

From one, the scent of counterseptic hit Zerberyn well before his dully echoing footsteps carried him to the threshold. A dozen muscular youths from the local slave stock were laid on gurneys, stripped down, unconscious. One had been opened up, blood splattering his surgical robes in a perfect line from his throat to his sternum. Apothecary Reoch said nothing as Zerberyn walked past his door, giving him only the sullen flash of binoptics above an expressionless metal grille.

A short set of steps curved downwards forty-five degrees to the left. Zerberyn could not help but admire the design’s innate defensibility, based on the premise that ninety per cent of mortal human assailants would prefer to wield a close-combat weapon in their right hand.

It led to an archway large enough to accommodate a Terminator. The ferrocrete was sanded smooth.

Zerberyn walked through it and a sweeping turret opened out before him, large enough to land a Stormbird or to site heavy artillery. Its two-metre-high ramparts followed three-quarters of the circumference of a circle, until each end cut into the sides of the mountain into which the Iron Warriors had built their old fortress.

Sentinel servitors with low-oxygen enhancements looked out over the feeble atmosphere. Thousands of effluviam stacks broke the thin layer to belch toxic waste gases directly into the void. Behind the swaddling layer, the storm-wracked bulk of the gas giant Immitis VII seethed like a judgemental eye.

From the echoes of hammering, drilling and welding, Zerberyn knew that Forge-Brother Clathrin and his Iron Warriors counterpart would be conducting the serious work of shoring up the outer perimeter, retrofitting the back-up void bank hacked out of Implicit’s systems into the old fort’s age-withered grids. The older men of the manufactory slaves, the women, the younger boys, trimmed wires, sawed timber, shaped stone. The occasional whimper or cracked lash echoed up through the layered fortifications.

Zerberyn found the forced labour distasteful, but it was hardly the worst thing he had done in the name of necessity since becoming de facto lord of the Fists Exemplar. They had been slaves of the Iron Warriors long before his arrival, so what harm had he brought them? None.

He squinted in the dim, but unaccustomed daylight as Epistolary Honorius and Kalkator’s Apothecary, Barban, approached him.

Honorius was wearing Terminator plate without a helmet, his pale face like a pearl in a hard, dark shell of constrictor rings and armoured cabling. The Epistolary was paler even than Zerberyn, which was in itself disconcerting. Zerberyn’s skin was without pigment as he was the child of a world whose sun could kill, but Honorius was more ancient than he, and his recruitment predated the settlement of Eidolica by five centuries. His eyes, by contrast, were as black as the void beyond the Astronomican. He was a pressure on the psyche, a force against Zerberyn’s mind. Flickers of what could otherwise only be sensed steamed from the immensity of his armour plate like the corona of an eclipse.

Zerberyn aside, no one had worked more closely alongside their new allies than the Epistolary.

‘What news?’ said Honorius. The subtle power woven through the old warrior’s deep voice never failed to give Zerberyn pause.

‘Nothing yet. But it is the Last Wall.’

‘Then the fight continues. Good.’

‘Of course it continues. Do you think that brothers of ours would surrender?’

‘Do you intend to rejoin them?’ said Barban.

The Apothecary’s gunmetal and bronze battleplate was extensively modified and appended with bionics. A pair of bulky, muscular youths, perhaps eleven or twelve standard years of age, hovered behind him. They looked sickly from blood loss and enforced genhancement. There had been no time to assess the men for worth or for biological compatibility. As much as they needed strong walls, they needed strong warriors to hold them. Zerberyn examined the two neophytes. Their throats and chests were scarred from the implantation procedure. Both were already showing bruise-like discolourations to their skin, the first dermal deposits that would, over time, develop into the black carapace that would enable them to wear power armour. Zerberyn could not tell just from looking whether they were Iron Warriors or Fists Exemplar.

Presumably Reoch knew.

Zerberyn drilled the Iron Warrior with his gaze. Neither spoke.

‘My lord!’ came the relieved gasp of the Librarius adjutant, stumbling down the steps and onto the sunlit rampart. He offered the Epistolary a low bow and turned breathlessly to Zerberyn with his report. ‘The communication is from Euclydeas, lord.’

‘The Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers,’ said Honorius, one eyebrow lifted, peeling the infinite black lens a little wider. ‘Our absent brothers join the war. Perhaps all is not yet lost.’

‘What does it say?’ said Zerberyn.

‘A call for aid. They are beset, lord, by orks in great number.’

‘How far?’

‘The next system. Coreward.’

‘Reachable,’ said Honorius.

‘Just,’ Zerberyn corrected. Barban was watching them both without expression, as though assessing their decision. ‘Tell no one of this,’ he said, turning to the mortal serf. ‘You are to ignore all further attempts at communication from this source.’

‘But lord—’ Honorius began before falling silent.

On some deep, human level, it troubled Zerberyn that one so ancient and powerful could be silenced by a glance from him.

‘We are not ready yet, brother,’ he said, listening to the sounds of forced labour that continued far below his feet. ‘When we are strong again, then we will make our presence known.’

Twelve

‘Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.’

— the remembrancer Thucydides, pre-M0

The void

The conference room aboard Alcazar Remembered was as puritanical as Koorland had come to expect. It was oval in shape, its walls bare metal, its space dominated by a sturdy metal table and chairs enough for fifty warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. Hololith crystals studded the unpolished surface at intervals, returning the dim illumination of the ceiling lumen points like chipped glass. It was in this room that an argument over whether orbital barrage or drop strike was the surer method of pacifying the capital world of the abhuman Kivor Enclavium had famously brought Oriax Dantalion and Sigismund to blows, Koorland had learned (Shipmaster Weylon Kale being a remarkably informed historian). ‘I knew there was some life to these stone men,’ the Death Lord, Mortarion, commander of the compliance mission, was reported to have said as he pulled brother from brother.

If true, it was a damning indictment of them all, and another story altogether.

Two dozen Deathwatch sergeants were gathered in and around the available chairs. Koorland recognised the Raven Guard, Tyris, who had performed so superbly on Incus Maximal, in muted conversation with a Brazen Claw who must have travelled with Abhorrence, for Koorland did not know his name. The red-haired Wolf, Kjarvik, laughed harshly over the subdued chatter at some tale of Asger’s. The Watch Commander, for reasons known best to himself, had his boot on Oriax Dantalion’s austere table, hands afloat in demonstration of some grapple manoeuvre.

Issachar and Thane walked amongst them, speaking little, thus far avoiding a reprise of Sigismund and Dantalion’s infamous bout.

Field-Legatus Otho Dorr of the Ullanor Veterans, Astra Militarum, stood against a wall and sipped at a glass of clear wine. It was a plant fermentation product formulated to complement the nutrient gruel favoured by the Fists Exemplar. Despite all that he had survived on Ullanor and before, a social encounter with so many looming Adeptus Astartes clearly had him mortified. If he was hoping for the wine to loosen some of those nerves then he was due another disappointment. Intoxication was but one of the many things that the Fists Exemplar disapproved of.

Confessor-Militant Rawketh was arguably a natural companion under such circumstances, but the commander of the freshly raised Ecclesiarchy drafts stood alone by the viewports, captivated by the massed bow lights and engine flares of the combined fleets.

Phaeton Laurentis’ attempts at making small talk with Weylon Kale and Dominus Gerg Zhokuv appeared to be a waste of the magos’ synthised breath. The brain of the ancient dominus bubbled thoughtfully in its armoured jar. Kale, meanwhile, listened politely, but was finding it difficult to keep himself every few seconds from checking the vox-pin in his collar or glancing at the ship lights in the viewports. The coordinates Koorland had provided them were deep inside the orks’ burgeoning empire. The old shipmaster felt the phantom itch of sensor ghosts on the back of his neck whenever he turned his back on the viewports.

Two seats around from the table’s head, Kavalanera Brassanas sat, straight-backed, straight-armed, hands flat on the table, staring into the nothing between her and the bulkhead and through it to the fleet anchorage beyond. Wienand laid a hand on the knight abyssal’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear as she sat down beside her. The inquisitor’s aides spoke around them, exchanging slates, comparing notes, while the Assassin, Krule, lowered himself into the chair directly opposite. His muscles were tensed, his jaw firm, seemingly set on matching the Sister’s light-year stare and rising high in Koorland’s estimation simply for possessing the self-belief to imagine that he could.

All of it stopped as Koorland entered. The only sound was of the doors hissing shut and the seclusion field re-engaging with a hum. With one exception, those yet to be seated abandoned their conversations and found chairs.

Koorland’s muscles instinctively tensed for combat as Bohemond strode towards him and grabbed his forearm. He clasped it tight, and closed the fingers of his left gauntlet over his right hand, pulling Koorland in close. The High Marshal’s witch-burned face was a grimace of uncompromising wrath, but the embrace was fit for a brother.

‘I tire of waiting,’ he said.

‘Part of me doubted that you would wait,’ said Koorland, returning the pressure to the other warrior’s vambrace. ‘We did not part on best terms.’

‘Time spent alone with the void is time spent alone with one’s thoughts. That is why it is to be avoided.’ His augmetic eye clicked as it focused on Koorland’s. ‘But I came to question the direction you might lead us all without me beside you. I will be your Chaplain, brother, your evangelist, particularly if you tell me that you do not want me.’

Koorland smiled stiffly and gestured Bohemond to his seat. ‘I welcome it, brother.’

It was only then, as he pulled out his own chair at the head of the table, that Koorland noticed the expectancy that hung over them, camouflaged beneath the quiet. All eyes, all ears, were on him: the Emperor’s finest, all hanging on his word. Leading the Senatorum had been little preparation. These were people he respected.

‘Where is Euclydeas?’ Tyris asked before Koorland had sat down. ‘Antares and Iaros of my squad took the third ork psyker to the Soul Drinkers’ rendezvous coordinates. Iaros was to become sergeant of the new Kill-Team Ultima.’

‘The best we can assume is that for some reason the Soul Drinkers never received our message, or that their voyage against the Green Roar has proven longer and more turbulent than ours.’

The absence of a third of the combined fleet’s strength sunk in with a moment’s solemnity. The worst that they could assume needed no reminder from Koorland. He had been exacting in assigning the Black Templars and Soul Drinkers to rendezvous coordinates in the most strategically unimportant and underpopulated sectors in the vicinity. But the Segmentum Solar was close to being overrun. The possibility that Euclydeas had been killed or had destroyed the meme-bank containing the coordinate fragments to prevent its capture could not be discounted.

That was why he had separated the fleets in the first place.

‘What we have will suffice. It will have to, because there is nothing else. We are already out of time.’ His gaze moved down the table, two opposing rows of hardened faces. ‘Most of you will have observed the test on Incus Maximal. Some,’ a nod to Tyris and Issachar, ‘witnessed it first-hand. Others,’ a glance to where Wienand and Bohemond sat, ‘will have received the logs.’

A pantherish panting, something like a laugh, came from Kjarvik’s throat. He leaned forward, bone-braid dreadlocks knuckling across the table. ‘And impressive watching they were. It surprises me to say, but it actually made the effort of capturing them in the first place worthwhile.’

‘Agreed,’ said Tyris, to much solemn nodding from his brothers-in-black.

‘Incus Maximal was a test,’ Koorland said and the approving mutters dropped away. ‘Densely populated, lightly defended, but numbers enough to make any undertaking by conventional forces too costly to contemplate. Until now, of course. Laurentis, please.’

The magos rose slightly, not sitting so much as squatting into his tripod. ‘Magos Urquidex and I have thoroughly analysed the results of the first test detonation. Impressive though the results were, and in accord with our expectations from the Dzelenic IV data, my colleague and I are in agreement that the output could have been greater. The trial subject suffered a grievous injury in the moments prior to detonation, which we conclude may have dampened its connection to the ork psychic field. Furthermore, the greenskins native to Incus Maximal were not the largest specimens thus far encountered, nor was Lord Issachar’s force given the resources or the remit to stoke the orks’ psychic strength more fully. It is our conclusion that complete planetary wipe-out could be a possibility.’

‘You mean to cleanse a planet — good.’ Asger Warfist nodded approvingly. ‘Which is to be the lucky world?’

‘Magos,’ said Koorland and gestured with an empty hand across the table.

Laurentis pivoted on the spot and and telescoped a digital manipulator to activate the panel of switches mounted on the wall behind him. The lumen points dimmed. The hololith crystals in the table flickered and began to brighten, emitting a fuzzy white light from which emerged the ghost shape of a rotating spheroid. It was a planet, and the stuttering projection slowly began to stabilise as it spun about its slightly tilted axis.

Shocked murmurs from around the table. Even the Adeptus Astartes had not been engineered beyond a mortal’s capacity for surprise.

The planet was crenellated, buttressed, ironclad, mountains of rockcrete and plasteel rising from the pole-to-pole spread of inhuman habitation where mountains had no natural right to stand. Vast orbital rings of manufactories, dry docks and weapons platforms girdled the planet’s equator like crude analogues of the great space ports of Mars. Power fields and atmospheric distortions induced by the planet’s artificial seismology were displayed as periodic washes of colour. As the cogitators built into the table warmed through, the hololith filled in the projection with surface definition. Brackets locked on to features of interest, turning with the world as it spun: field projectors, megabatteries, a tangle of wire-trace lines showing tectonic boundaries where powerful xenos technologies could manoeuvre those surface plates to effect the rearrangement of whole continents or the rapid redeployment of billions.

Ullanor.

‘Vulkan threw everything the Imperium could give to him at that world and he failed,’ said Asger, voice soft. ‘What do you hope to achieve by trying again with a fraction of what the primarch had?’

‘There is no denying that the Imperium no longer has the men or the ships to launch an invasion on that scale again, or that there can be no replacement for Vulkan. I am not he. Those of us that are left to try and succeed where those heroes failed must become more than the numbers we bring with us.’ Koorland spread his hands to gesture not just to those present, but to the ships beyond and the many thousands they carried. The misshapen leer of the Beast, built in colossal facsimile into the very face of his throneworld, glared from the hololith with each rotation. ‘Here is where mankind stands. Or here is where it falls.’

‘I’m almost afraid to ask,’ said Wienand. ‘But how?’

‘I have to agree,’ said Kale. ‘We have less than a tenth of the fleet strength that the primarch commanded. Ullanor’s ground-to-orbit batteries will cripple us before half our troops can be moved planetside.’

‘Those weapons were devastating only because we were unprepared, an element of surprise that they will not enjoy a second time.’ Koorland turned to Asger. ‘We know the location of the orks’ defences, and it will be the responsibility of the Deathwatch to neutralise them.’

‘I’d like to help coordinate that, if I may,’ said Wienand, to a few chuckles from the Deathwatch sergeants sat nearest to her. Her expression in reply was frosty.

‘Ullanor will be no place for civilians,’ said Koorland. ‘Certainly not for High Lords.’

‘I am not the highest Lord in attendance, Lord Commander, and I know how to look after myself.’

Asger grinned through his fangs, looking sideways at the inquisitor. His chuckle was rather more approving than that of his subordinates, but then the Space Wolves had always been impressed by nerve. ‘She has you there, Koorland. What is that now, twice?’

‘Very well,’ said Koorland. ‘If you must, then on your head be it. You will take your lead from Asger. What commands he gives, you follow.’

‘Of course.’

Asger nodded to the hololith. ‘If the fleet is to remain out of weapons range then we will not be able to deploy from drop pods.’

‘We have gunships.’

‘What of the brute-shield?’ spoke Dominus Gerg Zhokuv, the voice arising from the waxen-faced servitor that stood by his pteknopic vessel. ‘It was impenetrable, and undoubtedly restored to full operation by now.’

‘As we discovered, the orks must lower the shield for a few seconds each time they fire their guns. While the bulk of the fleet remains out of range, some… sacrifices will need to be made to ensure the orks lower their shields. Long enough for a gunship to get through.’

‘Do not neglect their fleet-based defences, brother.’ Issachar pointed to the weapon silos and fighter launch bays that studded the hololithic world’s orbital ring.

‘They will be your responsibility,’ said Koorland. ‘You will have full command of the combined fleet while ground forces deploy into the beachhead that the Deathwatch will secure. Fists Exemplar, Black Templars, Excoriators — they will be the second wave.’ He nodded to Dorr, Rawketh, and Zhokuv. ‘Adeptus Militarum and the Mechanicus war machines to follow. Meanwhile, the Deathwatch with support from the Sisters of Silence will seek out and secure corridors through which the main force can proceed to assault the palace complex.’

‘I find no fault in your courage, Koorland,’ said Asger. ‘But a bold heart notwithstanding, this plan is little different to Vulkan’s. The Deathwatch alone will not tip the scales and nor will your new weapon. Whatever the magos believes, it is a stretch to imagine one witch eliminating every ork on Ullanor.’

Koorland’s stern expression twitched as murmurs of agreement arose from the other Deathwatch sergeants and the Astra Militarum. Koorland suppressed whatever empathy he might have felt for their situation, but he did not enjoy dispatching brave men, brothers, to almost certain death. He leaned forward, silencing the hubbub with no other gesture than that.

‘None of you are wrong. Overwhelming force has not given us victory before today and it will not now. We must deliver our weapon to the place at which it will be most devastating, to the one thing that the orks cannot afford to lose.’

Extending his palm outwards he summoned the rotating hololith, the planet shrinking as it moved towards his hand. It continued to rotate, the perspective hovering above it, parts of it beginning to fall away: zooming and focusing onto the fortified palace complex that the great Vulkan had died trying to crack. It looked like a crouching idol, four hundred metres tall, slabbed into ork features with metal and stone. Those outer fortifications faded back as the image passed inside. The interior mapping was good. Ongoing in-situ scans by embedded carto-savants of the Adeptus Mechanicus during the prior invasion had seen to that. The fact that Krule had personally verified much of it was invaluable.

The hololith continued to strip away layers until what remained, still turning in time with the spin of the world, was a single, huge room. The poorly defined outline of a giant throne stood in the centre of it.

‘Now, let me tell you what I will be doing.’

Thirteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The second invasion of Ullanor began with a sacrifice. A shower of meteors marked the offering: fireballs, some hundreds of metres across, burned through the upper atmosphere and blasted against Gorkogrod’s brute-shields in a blaze of elemental colour. Some of them were recognisable as voidship remnants. The Dark Angels cruiser, Herald of Night. The Navy frigate, Cyzicus. The Inquisitorial escort, Perseus Banshee.

Skeleton crews, crippled ships, but losses keenly felt. Sacrifices painfully offered.

But they were willing, and they had fulfilled their role.

Penitent Wrath descended hard through a web of metal plankways and scaffold-like flak-towers. Glowing crossfire stitched across her hull and over her dorsal cannon. Combat thrusters burned white from driving evasive manoeuvres through a terminal descent. A black-painted gunship of the Aurora Chapter, Lance of Ultima, lost a tail-wing to a torrent of flak and crashed through the flat, oxide-red roof of an ork block where it exploded. Another was eviscerated mid-air, spilling Space Marines and crew over the abyssal drop like chaff dropped from the belly of a fighter craft.

Like planetary reformations in miniature, segmented metal shutters were clunking up to reveal secondary firepoints, huge-barrelled guns emerging from riveted walls and scaffolds and cranking into position. The opening phase of the first invasion of Ullanor had been quiet, characterised by Imperial circumspection and orkish cunning. Not this time. The Imperium knew now what surprises the orks had in store and where they were hidden.

And the orks knew that they had no reason to hold back.

A Blood Angels gunship met a cloudburst of fragmentation rockets and auto-fire and disintegrated as though it had been driven through a wall.

With no ordinary skill on the part of Atherias, the pilot, Penitent Wrath dropped between the crisscrossing lines of fire and responded in kind. Heavy bolters strafed the gun ports, hammering on the hardened metal, lascannons punching through as the Thunderhawk pivoted around her centre and dropped landing struts. Retro-thrusters fired, scorching the metallic surface beneath and bringing the gunship shuddering to a hover.

Two metres off the ground, turbofans howling with vertical strain, her assault hatch whined open and Kjarvik Stormcrow finally felt his boots on the ground of Ullanor. He took a deep breath of the burned, carcinogenic air. He had missed the last invasion, fighting back the greenskins in the Segmentum Obscura under the Fell-Handed.

He would not be so unlucky again.

The polluted sky was ashen and thick, riven by fire. It was raining metal, crumpled casings and bits of aircraft pattering down over the circular iron platform onto which Stormcrow and his kill-team swiftly deployed. It was some kind of landing pad, large enough to accept one of the big twin-rotor ork ’copters or a supply boat. Three ramps ran off from it, only a line of barbed-wire spikes that flexed in the turbofan outwash between them and a stupefying fall. One each to left and right led down towards partially fortress-fronted shacks. The third ramp was twice as long, slightly wider, and wobbled upwards to the primary objective.

Tactica-savants had designated it a collapser beam, for reasons that Kjarvik did not need explaining. It was a lumpen bristling of defensive ironwork surmounted by a towering edifice of suspensor rods and power transfer coils. An enormous cannon, longer again than its entire housing, pointed belligerently up at the sky. Entrance was via a set of heavy red doors plastered with glyphs. A great bar had been set up across them, spiked, wired in, and sparking with alternating current.

With a burst of propellant, twin missiles shrieked from the Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints and blasted the door to smithereens.

Kjarvik was already sprinting for it as the gunship lifted off, a parting burst of heavy bolter fire chewing up the walls around the fort’s firing slit windows.

‘Bring them the Emperor’s wrath,’ voxed Atherias, as the Thunderhawk swung back into the web of tracers.

Kjarvik did not reply. His attention was focused on gunning down the two leather-strapped greenskins that stumbled out of the smoking ruin of their doorway.

More were pouring out of the blockhouse structures to either side and piling onto the walkways, and straight into the storm bolter and eviscerator of Phareous and Zarrael. The sounds from that direction reminded Kjarvik of lumps of gristle thrown at a wall to see what would stick.

He ignored them, dropped his shoulder, and charged through what was left of the gate.

His vision became smoke, tangled spurs and spitting flame. The roars and gunfire merged and then morphed into the pop of cooling metal. And then he was inside. Baldarich, none improved for his humbling on Plaeos, was already there, power sword flashing in the dark. Flames licked the Black Templar’s armour. Smoke coiled through Kjarvik’s beard and hair like fishbone clips. His lungs shut themselves down. His next breath drew an oxygen-poor stew of ash and explosive compounds into his multi-lung.

It was the firing chamber, directly beneath the collapser beam. Ork mechanics crowded ladders and gantries. Gretchin wielding wrenches ran at the Space Marines with hissing faces and fell to contemptuous sweeps of Baldarich’s blade.

Automatic fire from Kjarvik’s bolt pistol drilled through thick ork skulls and hunched shoulders, painting the smoke with explosive splashes of red. His aim shifted from ladder to ladder as the orks dropped down, as fast as he could think. Half-second burst and move. Howls and thunder. Half-second burst and move. The air reeked of fyceline. His ammo counter blinked a warning. He squeezed off another burst, a charging mechanic so close that its forehead almost touched the muzzle.

Bad luck. He activated his power fist.

There was a clang of metal on metal, and Kjarvik glanced sideways to see Bohr beside him. The Iron Hand had planted his staff into the ground as if to make of himself a tripod and deploy the full arsenal of his servo-harness. Kjarvik made a laughing sound in the back of his throat as bolt-rounds, hell-beams, plasma ejectiles and raging gouts of flame finished off what he had not been able to. The burn painted the Iron Father a harsh white, steeping the cavities of his complicated bionics in shadow as though the ancient veteran could smile again.

‘Firepower,’ he grunted, his harness winding down, gun barrels spinning off heat. ‘It is always the solution.’

Kjarvik afforded his brother-in-black an elaborate bow. The sounds of chain weaponry and bloodcurdling shrieks delivered in an angel’s voice filtered in from the outside, and vox-chatter from his open channel scratched out of his gorget bead. Landers reported the safe arrival and deployment of ground troops. Deathwatch sergeants requested Sister or armour support, called in air strikes, and reported neutralised objectives with coupled requests for redeployment.

‘We are being made to look slow,’ Kjarvik hissed as Bohr hefted his staff and clumped heavily towards the base of the weapon’s generatorum housing. The Iron Father placed the charges: melta bombs, just like before.

Kjarvik was backing up, voxing in a demand for extraction.

Bohr nodded as he strode towards him. ‘On to the next.’

The brute-shield over Gorkogrod had failed.

Maximus Thane thudded down the landing ramp of his heavy transport, leading out seventy-three Fists Exemplar of the Sixth, Seventh, and his own Second. Company structures had largely disintegrated, and yet the last seventy-three clung to that final emblem of their identity as though it were more precious than the gene-seed of Dorn that each warrior carried inside. From the ramp’s clanging metal to solid tarmac, the Fists Exemplar poured out into the orks’ guns, merging with similar debarkments of Excoriators and Black Templars.

Valkyrie and Vendetta sorties had cleared a landing zone from a previously identified sector of relatively high topological stability. The orks had used it as an airbase, comprising several score parallel runways from which they had quickly been able to establish aerial supremacy over the battle for the nearby palace supercomplex. Not this time. This time, the orks’ fighter and bomber wings were charred wrecks on the runway or smouldering still in their hangars. Thick coils of ugly black smoke choked the sky. It was a churn of black over black, pulsed with thumping volleys from the landers’ flare cannons.

In anticipation of the Deathwatch’s success, the Adeptus Astartes drop-ships had wasted no time in setting down. The bulk Astra Militarum landers were still up there however, crisscrossing trails of flak and duelling aircraft lighting up the next wave of transports.

In howls of descent thrusters the heavy landers crunched down on top of stricken aircraft. Locking clamps blew, ramps slammed into the ground, and from container after container, mortal troops emerged with a collective roar that stirred mankind’s spirit to war.

In such moments, Thane could see why some of his brothers saw the guiding hand of divinity behind His great crusade.

Scores of regiments from worlds Thane would never know, united only by the common misfortune of having served in the last Ullanor campaign, moved up behind the Space Marine vanguard. They were slower, but numerous. Thane’s suit auspex could only provide an estimate, but it was a big one — close to a hundred thousand men, give or take. Sentinel walkers strode ahead, combing the bordering structures with multi-laser fire, accompanied by Imperial Knights. The Astra Militarum regiments were joined by skitarii cohorts, servitor mobile weapons platforms and Legio Cybernetica support, emerging from their gothic transorbitals without the cry of their base human counterparts but with a group precision that was, in its ordered refutation of the chaos of the battlefield, just as affirming. A fleet of supertransports brought down heavier Martian engines.

Baneblades pushed through the aircraft wreckage. Shadowswords powered their infamously slow-charging main guns. The last survivors of Legio Ultima, the mighty Warlord Decimus Ordinatus and her escort — a battered Warhound called Helfyre, bathed in purple static emitted by its intermittent void bank — made the ground shake as they advanced into Gorkogrod.

Before the Great Waaagh of the Beast had begun, Thane would have called this army the greatest he had ever seen, a force fit for the command of a warmaster, or perhaps, in extremis, the lord of a great Chapter such as Odaenathus or Sachael. A lot could change in one year. It was astonishing to think that it was only that long ago that he had been pushing traitor remnants deeper into the Rubicante Flux, no more to his flag than a handful of ships and a hundred warriors.

A lot had changed, and this world had changed it. Thane had been in Vulkan’s vanguard ahead of a force not in the ten of thousands but closer to the millions. A transhuman could not hear his own voice for the thunder of tanks, and the march of whole Legios of Titans had made the horizon itself seem to move.

Ahead of him now was a heavy articulated truck, with giant exhaust stacks and spiked wheels in the orkish preference. It was bent inwards at the coupler to form a ‘v’ shape, and incoming fire was spanking off the metal sides. Thane waved his command squad into cover. Brothers Kahagnis and Abbas moved to bull bar and rear fender respectively and laid down fire for the Black Templars and Excoriators that continued to pound past. Thesius pulled himself up onto the driver’s cabin, turned as Thamarius threw up his battle-brother’s autocannon, then got down to one knee and blazed over the charging Space Marines.

‘To the palace. Fast and hard!’

Thane thumped into the side of the truck’s trailer section without slowing down, so hard it lifted half an inch off its nearside wheels. He turned his back against it, auto-senses taking in the mass of Astra Militarum and mechanised support pushing up to secure the Space Marines’ gains. He switched to long-range vox.

‘Issachar, this is Thane. Estimate ninety per cent of forces landed. Advancing towards the palace on primary schedule.’ Static hissed across the channel. A Valkyrie gunship jetted overhead. ‘Issachar!’

The Valkyrie’s tail-wing seemed to pop. Promethium smoke spewed out of it as it dropped, corkscrewing over and over before disintegrating on impact with the ground without even so much as an explosion. A rust-coloured ork jet blasted through the smoke cloud, wings wobbling as it banked and strafed across the Black Templars advance with twin hails of high-powered shot.

‘Issachar!’

He gave up. He looked at the sky. The fleet must still be too far out, hence the lack of drop pod reinforcement. Fitting one boot between the solid rubber tyre and the hellishly scratched mud guard, he climbed up onto the vehicle’s slug-holed rear container. Keeping low, he looked across the field of wreckage and blast craters, auto-senses crowding his helm display with threat markers and tactical screed.

Gun emplacements in the control towers. Orks in heavy battlegear mustering behind pre-prepared chokepoints. Fast attack vehicles closing in. The ground between the outermost runway and the access roads was a killing field, and the Space Marines were breaking down into combat squads to maximise their use of cover. The palace was fifteen kilometres due north, a gauntlet of bunkers, tank traps and enfilading fire zones.

Dorn himself could not have done better.

‘A frontal assault is still foolhardy and predictable,’ Thane had argued. Watch Commander Warfist, he recalled, had nodded sagely, prompting several others around the conference table to do likewise. ‘It was tried once and it failed.’

‘Foolhardy and predictable is what the orks have come to expect from the Imperium,’ Koorland had answered, with that strained but confident smile that he wore now most days. He had grown into his crown. Sometimes, he seemed to forget that he wore it at all. ‘Let them see again what they expect to see.’

‘To the palace!’

Thane stood and waved the massed army forward, just as a massive explosion blew out the back wall of a structure that butted onto the airbase.

A spiked grinder wheel appeared through the dust, followed in a rattling of tracks and loose bolts by a super-heavy ork battlefortress. Battlecannons mounted on rotable turrets belched smoke while orks manning pintle-mounted machine guns on its rampart-like upper sections exchanged fire with what must have been the Deathwatch kill-teams deployed ahead to secure the flanks. Their fire discipline took out a few machine-gunners and was successfully holding up the vehicle’s infantry support, but it would take more than a smattering of lascannons and multi-meltas to put a terminal stop to a monstrosity on that scale.

‘For the Emperor!’ Thane bellowed as the first Chimeras rumbled into range. Koorland called the men Ullanor Veterans. They proudly called themselves the Ullanor First. Thane called them Ullanor survivors. They looked afraid.

They did not look afraid enough.

‘I need you to lead the assault, brother,’ Koorland had said to him, after Asger and the others had left and they were just brothers, alone, at his table. ‘Our success rests on my survival, and my survival rests on yours.’ He had put his hand on Thane’s shoulder and squeezed. Not hard. Enough to bid a brother farewell. ‘I would rely on none but a true son of Dorn to survive long enough.’

Ullanor — orbital

Koorland backed ponderously into the teleportation slot. It probably did not matter which way he faced once the teleport cycle was under way, but he wanted to be in a position to monitor his squad and in Terminator armour he was too bulky to turn around once inside.

Fidus Bellator was a relic of antiquity, the first of the Indomitus suits fashioned in the closing years of the Heresy War, a gift from the Black Templars to the last of the Imperial Fists. His field of view was narrower than he was accustomed to from wearing power armour, mobility around the neck sacrified in favour of massive protection over that area and the shoulders. What he could see, however, was virtually enhanced by the armour’s adaptive auspex, augmented with outlines and false contrast, every movement of his eyes tracked by icons, brackets and informative screed.

Power was at maximum. Armour integrity was at maximum. The ammunition count to his integrated storm bolter was at maximum.

In their own two alcoves, back-lit by the slow-powering blue hum of the slot’s dematerialisers, Bohemond and Asger were similarly, though less magnificently, clad in Tactical Dreadnought plate.

Asger’s was draped in a snowy white pelt, ritually scratched with kill tallies and symbols of luck and warding. His armour was fitted with a back banner pole from which the Wolf Lord would have flown his personal heraldry, but from which the Watch Commander had hung a swatch of plain black cloth. He wore a pair of lightning claws. Bohemond’s black plate was immaculately picked out in silver, hung with prayer strips and lengths of pure white fabric bearing the Sigismund cross. Hailing from a martial tradition with a common root to Koorland’s own, he was similarly armed with storm bolter and power sword, the peerless Sword of Sigismund already free of its scabbard.

Those two needed little reassurance from him.

The two ogryns, Olug and Brokk, however, had filled the confines of the teleportation chamber with their panicked odour. For all their fearsome, greater-than-human appearance, the pair had been close to a full-blown panic attack until Commissar Heliad Goss, formerly of the Minglor XVII ogryn auxilia, had been found from amongst the Ullanor Veterans billeted aboard Alcazar Remembered and at the last minute reassigned to Koorland’s force. He was in the slot between them, reciting children’s prayers from memory, interspersed with simple words of encouragement. They were still sweating, but were not about to rip through the conduits for a way out which was a marked improvement.

In the remaining six slots, Krule and the Space Marines of Kill-Team Stalker prepared themselves for teleport in whatever manner brought them comfort.

Alcazar Remembered had two teleportation decks. The chamber itself might have been cramped, wall space bulked with slots for twelve Terminators, the floor a trip hazard of power cabling and hoses, but the technology was astonishly power-hungry and demanded the sacrifice of an entire deck to its generators. Kavalanera’s squad was in the other chamber. They were the ones that could not be risked. And due to the inevitable shipwide systems drain that followed a teleportation cycle, Koorland and his squad would be on their own for several minutes at least.

Krule looked up from his prayers. ‘Answer me honestly, Space Marine. Are you afraid?’

‘You do not refer to the orks, do you?’ said Asger.

The Assassin was quiet a moment. ‘No.’

‘Fear was purged from our hearts with the making of the blessed primarch,’ said Bohemond.

‘Indeed,’ said Koorland as the energy brackets running through the alcoves built to lumen-strip brightness, the hum becoming equivalent in volume to what one might experience by passing the bulkhead onto main drive. There was a tremor in the walls. ‘And yet, I am terrified every time.’

For some reason, the Assassin seemed comforted by his admission.

‘Coordinates locked. Systems charged.’ Shipmaster Kale’s voice echoed through the chamber’s augmitters, like a stone dropping deep, deep down a bottomless well. ‘We will be powerless for up to half an hour, but Issachar has the orbital defences well engaged, and surface scans indicate that the Deathwatch have been successful in eliminating the ground-based weaponry targeting our orbit. Bulwark and Faceless Warrior will escort us in. We are ready up here, lord.’

Koorland closed his eyes and muttered an invocation to the Emperor’s protection.

But he did not hesitate.

He could already picture in his mind the throne room of the Great Beast that Krule had described to him.

‘Commence.’

Fourteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, inner palace

Teleportation was an experience that Koorland counted, his own near death on Ardamantua and subsequent bloody resurrection very much included, as one of rare horror.

Every atom in his body felt as if it had been electrified, charge repulsion baring his basic substance to the warp, then the quarks and gluons that constituted those creaking atoms, separating, separating, until he was a physical thing only in the abstract. He was atomic spaces, constrained only by the memory of nuclear cohesion. He was a nebula cloud, spread across the infinite, haunted by the unbearable thought of one day collapsing to form a star.

Then movement. But without body. It felt like his soul was forced through an electrostatic mesh. Like gruel being strained through muslin, but the substance was what was caught in the membrane, and he was the discoloured diluent that trickled through. From that weak suffusion of molecular memory and psychic tangling, there came a reformation.

And it was a, not the. Everything was contingent.

What emerged, and how, was in the lap of the gods.

The blinding light of teleportation faded, the disembodied sense of half-remembered dread following slowly, like blood trickling through a drain. Koorland’s primary heart was pounding, as though he had been engaged in some extraordinary struggle that he could not now recall. The teleportation chamber was gone. In its place, displayed by his suit’s auto-senses in augmented definition, was a dank, flame-lit room.

The ruddy heat of open stoves was reflected in the beaten metal fronts of cabinets, from the brutally large blunted implements that hung on pegs from the walls. Half-heartedly mopped-up bloodstains smeared the floor and the surfaces. Pots bubbled, ill-fitting lids chattering. A hunk of meat, what looked like a sawed-through stretch of vertebral column dipping from the end, dripped fat onto a sizzling element and rotated on a jerky mechanical spit. Koorland’s armour recorded the intense heat while insulating him from it, and the effects of the uncertain light were evenly filtered and restored.

The smell, however, was all too readily imagined.

Asger Warfist lowered his lightning claws. A wary sniff crackled through the unit vox, instinctual in spite of the total environment seal of Tactical Dreadnought armour.

‘This is no throne room.’

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

Inquisitor Wienand tapped her foot impatiently as a gang of servitors broke open a crate and spilled wirefoam cladding across the floor. It contained a portable vox-caster. Another was being installed directly opposite, part of two banks of units being wired up in series. Inquisitorial technical staff opened diagnostic channels and made expert reconfigurations inside open panels stuffed with what looked, to Wienand, like tangles of cabling. A magos supervised, hunched under his — or her, difficult to tell — acid-stained red robes. The occasional flicker of a servo-appendage switched across to furiously undo and redo someone’s work.

‘Castellan Clermont’s strike force coming under heavy fire in sector Twelve-B,’ said one of the vox-operators.

‘Twelve-B?’ said Wienand. ‘Do they plan to take the palace on their own? Redeploy Kill-Teams Godwyn and Phobos to clear the adjoining blocks, and raise the castellan if you can.’

‘Yes, Representative.’

The vox-breaking interference between surface forces and fleet was something that Imperial forces had been forced to contend with during the previous invasion. At Wienand’s insistence, and Asger’s approval, something had been done about it.

The chamber that her small command detail had occupied as a surface monitoring post was a level between levels in one of the hundreds of gretchin hab-towers that prickled the cityscape in the palace’s immediate vicinity. To supply their ork overlords with workers, Wienand assumed. Terra was organised with similar considerations in mind.

This particular floor was unoccupied, empty but for thick shock-absorbent clamps and structura-mimetic columns that enabled this structure and others like it to remain upright through the awesome stresses of tectonic rearrangement or subspace translation. The tower was the tallest in the battlezone that wasn’t part of the palace itself, and had been selected for that reason. Servitors and techno-magi trailed clumps of cabling and complex adaptor tablets behind them to exposed wall panels. From there, they cross-connected Wienand’s equipment through the tower’s own messy electrical system to the dishes, antennae and non-geometric pylons that flourished over the spiretop like fungoid weeds.

Veritus would have found the cross-wiring of technologies a borderline act of heresy. But that was why the ancient inquisitor had remained on Terra, and let her operatives do the work that he could not.

From the lower-level access ramps there came the sputtering hiss of superheated metal. A servitor with a melta-tool fitted to its wrist in place of a hand and a fuel canister integrated into its spinal column welded the zig-zagging door seal together, calm under fire as only a thorough lobotomisation could make something that had once been human. The muffled roar of two twin-linked heavy bolters from the other side of the door did not trouble it in the least.

The fate of the two Praetorian-class servitors was of far less concern to the servitor than it was to Wienand.

‘I seem to recall Lord Warfist telling you to observe from behind our assault.’ The Deathwatch sergeant, Kjarvik Stormcrow, stood with crossed arms, deliberately in the middle of a team of workers trying to assemble a tactical hololith where he was standing. His long bone-braided hair spread over the dark curves of pauldron and gardbrace. Several weeks aboard Abhorrence had acclimated Wienand to the stature and bearing of the Adeptus Astartes. But they were all far from alike. The Black Templars held themselves tall, unbending, like pillars of rockcrete with proud, human faces. The Space Wolf was not like that. He was ever so slightly hunched over, an animal at its ease, his annoyance at Umbra being drawn from active assignment to safeguard the Inquisitorial Representative on as-yet-untried authority an unguarded glimmer in his inhuman eyes.

‘Do you always do as Lord Asger tells you?’

‘Often,’ said Kjarvik, then grinned.

Wienand made herself smile in turn. She might just win these warriors’ respect yet.

‘Initial soundings from the auspex,’ said Raznick, veering loosely between the hurrying workers to approach.

He was wearing a long coat over a dull-green flak jacket surplus to some regiment or other from the Ullanor Veterans. There was a brace of pistols holstered at his hip, needle and las, and a sleeve for a power maul. The battery pack for a two-person refractor field was clamped over his right buttock, the emitters set into a pair of braces worn over his ballistic vest. Bodyguarding for the Inquisitorial Representative was testing work at the best of times.

Kjarvik regarded him like a bear at once amused and annoyed by the barked challenge of a dog. The Inquisitorial aide swallowed and turned to Wienand.

‘Issachar has the ork fleet engaged, but is keeping them at arm’s length. Losses appear light on both sides. Alcazar Remembered and her escorts are in geostationary orbit above the corridor opened up by the Deathwatch.’ A nod to Kjarvik that the Wolf acknowledged with a snarl. ‘From the power signatures, it looks as though one teleportation cycle has been completed.’

‘Koorland’s first squad is inside,’ Wienand summarised.

‘On schedule.’

Wienand frowned. She wasn’t ready to start taking Koorland’s undemonstrated ability to outwit the Beast on faith. ‘We should have them on vox by now.’

‘We’re almost finished here, Representative,’ said one of the workers at the hololith array.

A dozen men were busily boxing up the device’s exposed innards while a second magos canted the final start-up rituals. Eldon Urquidex helped where he could. The magos biologis limped slightly. A string of bionic vertebrae now ran down his neck, a gunmetal accoutrement to match the left arm, the right hand, and the surgical plates in his skull.

The hololith powered up. Ullanor’s wrinkled topography flickered into being as a spectral green overlay, rapidly filling up with blips as it liaised with the auspexes to present troop dispositions. Wienand watched the shift in the tide of Veridi red with her heart in her mouth. Her first thought was to instruct the adept to shut the device down and begin his rituals again. Its spirit had been improperly awakened. It had to be. Only her trust in the two magi’s superior knowledge kept her from doing so.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Kjarvik grunted.

‘The orks are disengaging, falling back towards the palace fortification.’ The voice was Raznick’s, his summation unnecessary. Wienand had eyes, and the great withdrawal of red across the hololith like a receding tide spoke for itself.

‘This is no rout,’ said Kjarvik, indicating with jabs of his power fist’s wolf-claws to where overwhelming numbers still hemmed in the frayed wedge of gold that represented Maximus Thane’s contingent. ‘They have left enough force behind to hold up the Guard.’

‘But why not crush them? Why pull back at all? Why…’ Wienand waved her hand as if to summon the absent thought. The boom of heavy bolters from the other side of the doors was an urgent distraction that she could do without.

A symphony of audially-coded alarm signifiers began to chime from the auspex units. ‘Force fields have just gone up inside the palace, Representative,’ came the report.

‘Inside?’

‘Yes, nothing projected outward that I can detect.’

‘What on the Throne… Can we raise Koorland?’

A shake of the head. ‘Some kind of signal deflection. The force fields, I think. I don’t know.’

‘Then raise Issachar. See what the fleet’s guns can do about it.’

‘No response from Punished!’

‘Try another ship.’

A tense moment later and several rows of shaken heads told Wienand that the answer was the same. The magos held up his digital manipulators in what was either a residually organic gesture of ignorance or an affectation painstakingly developed for maximal functionality as a human liaison. ‘The fleet is in range of this structure’s communications array. Supposition: we are too close to the palace, the electromagnetic output from its force fields is interfering with our equipment.’

‘Contact Thane,’ Wienand scowled, feeling her command of the situation unravelling fast. ‘Do it now. He’ll have no idea what’s going on, and he might at least have the chance to fall back and regroup. No point walking into a slaughter for no good reason.’

The operator looked up from his vox-caster. He looked broken.

‘We can’t reach our ground forces either?’

A solid thump from the other side of the lower access doors interrupted them, and the roar of four heavy bolters abruptly became that of two. Wienand would not have thought that the difference would have been so obvious. Stray slugs tapped on the welded door, almost politely.

The last weapon-servitor would not hold for long, and then Wienand would see close up just how impolite an ork could be.

‘Madame inquisitor,’ called the ranking officer monitoring the auspex staff. ‘More ships entering auspex range.’

‘There shouldn’t be any more ships.’

‘Ork ships. A hundred signatures, at least. They must have been waiting on the planet’s auspex dark side.’

Wienand felt a chill rise up through her and whisper round the base of her skull. The monitoring station had fallen deathly quiet, but for the much diminished thunder of heavy bolters. She swallowed, unable to articulate the cornered-animal sensation that had come over her with the appearance of those ork ships.

‘What should we do?’ asked Raznick.

Dumbly, she looked around the silent chamber, her eyes drawn inevitably, water running downhill, to Kjarvik’s yellow, vertically transected pair. She took a deep breath, felt it steady her nerves, and did not blink. She still had a task to perform, even if the total lack of long- and medium-range vox made that task impossible.

‘Leave everything,’ she said, directed at the two magi, and then to Kjarvik and Raznick: ‘Contact any gunships in range and have them pick up the remaining kill-teams. I’m going to have to direct things in person.’

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

As Koorland had suspected, the pre-teleportation position and facing of his squad members had had little bearing on how they were now deployed. The twelve of them had rematerialised into two half circles, facing outwards, a row of blue-white burners and butchery tools between them. He, Asger, Krule and the ogryn, Olug, had the two semi-circles’ four ends. Commissar Goss was being violently sick. Koorland did not know if it was the teleportation or the stench, but he doubted that either would have been easy on a mortal’s stomach.

‘Where are we?’ said Asger. ‘Why are we not where we are supposed to be?’

With a blink-click over the activation rune jittering yellow in his helm display, Koorland bade his armour’s spirit to summon a tri-d cartolith of the palace complex. It wavered into being a moment later, filling the left side of his display with a slowly rotating image. It took a few minutes to interface his armour’s locator beacon with the cartolith and pin his current location to the display, towards the top of the labyrinthine tangle of corridors.

‘About four hundred metres from the throne room, though the corridors in this section are a mess.’

‘What happened?’

‘Force fields on my auspex,’ said Bohemond. ‘A scatterfield too, perhaps? Our teleport must have been redirected to avoid it.’

Koorland blew out a relieved breath. The teleport systems incorporated safety protocols to prevent incorporation into solid matter or other violent means of rematerialisation, but even First Company veterans did not hold much trust in those. He was glad to see they had functioned now, even if they had moved his squad some way from his target. ‘What of Kavalanera’s team?’

Asger shrugged. Only his exposed head moved. ‘If this is the nearest area to the throne room large enough for twelve men then the Sisters will likely be redirected here.’

‘How long to teleport?’

‘Chronos do not operate during the teleportion cycle,’ said Bohemond. ‘I cannot contact Alcazar Remembered to correct. Outward channels appear to be jammed.’

‘Then we must clear the area,’ said Koorland, sharply. ‘Or else there will be no telling where the others will appear. Krule, can you find your way to the throne room from here?’

The Assassin was subconsciously scouring his surrounds for threats and targets, but responded to the question with a curt nod and pointed to one of two doors. He was a large man, by mortal standards, but moved with a balletic grace. The firelight scattered against his synskin.

‘Sergeant Tyris, escort him and secure the passage. We will follow.’

The Deathwatch Space Marines, ogryns, commissar, Terminator-encased Chapter Masters, and one Assassin exited the chamber. Koorland stopped under the lintel bar and turned ponderously to look back.

He had felt a prickling on the back of his neck.

The air in the orks’ butchery chamber shimmered and folded, a kneading of the warp space liminal that broke the warm, surface-hardened crust of normalcy to which mankind thought it clove and mixed it with darkness. The tear existed for a fraction of a second, and in a splurge of ionisation that left Koorland’s eyes and throat stinging in spite of his protection, it was sealed, and twelve additional figures now stood where there had been none.

Kavalanera and five of her sisters stood in a ring with power blades drawn and charged. Torn pages of ancient scripture fluttered from their armour in the air-cycled breeze of a voidship they no longer occupied. Two were in the same antique carmine as the knight abyssal, designating them, presumably, as belonging to the same sub-order of the Sisters of Silence. The other three wore black plate with golden trim, led by a knight obsidian by the name of Drevina.

The chilling effect on Koorland’s brain of the pariahs’ mere existence in the same room was every bit as profound as the teleportation cycle that had preceded it.

The women surrounded the ork psyker. It was far larger than the Incus Maximal test subject and its muscles swelled against the chains that bound its wrist and throat. Three enormously reconstructed draught-servitors supplied from Verisimilis’ loading decks had the ends of the chains clamped in vice-hands. Another lesson from Incus Maximal. The servitors were more than strong enough to keep the struggling ork restrained, and they would not react to personal danger the way the Inquistorial storm troopers had.

Laurentis scuttled around them on his three metal legs, ducking under flexing chains, monitoring pulse and breathing and stabbing the ork’s thick hide with digital probes for reasons of his own. The grizzled ranger, Alpha 13-Jzzal, watched the ork psyker’s occasional lunges with a dispassionate eye, motionless but for the optic pulse of the complete-wavelength scan with which he concurrently swept the room.

‘Scan complete,’ grated Alpha 13-Jzzal. The words were synthesised by a throat implant, and emerged with an artificial cadence that involved neither the movement of the ranger’s jaw nor the making of eye contact. ‘Infrared and X-ray sweeps reveal nothing in the vicinity.’ His head turned sharply towards Koorland then, faceted metal reflecting the firelight on a dozen different planes. ‘Past behaviour suggests the high likelihood of a trap.’

The same thing had occurred to Koorland, and he had decided equally quickly that it did not matter. They were committed now. There was no alternative.

Ullanor would be annihilated. Or Terra would be.

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

Shards of sharpened debris from ork fragmentation bombs scythed across Thane’s armour. Bent nails. Metal scraps. Direct hits drove shrapnel at him, hard, licked by fire. Cloudbursts clotted the sky with whizzing screws and blades, raining indiscriminately over all. The high-tempo thump of heavy guns boomed through the frag storm. Thane’s battleplate recorded hits as he advanced through the rubble: prangs, stings, chips to unpainted ceramite that brought sealant gel hissing over lodged bullets.

His umbra-pattern bolter answered back with more decisive effect. His helmet auto-senses compensated for the confusion of debris, filtering, ghostly reticules floating amongst the blizzarding buckshot. Bolter fire bracketed the faceplate ghosts one by one and blood sprayed from within them. Orks tumbled out as though pushed out in surrender, rolling with the unspent momentum of their charge, tracked by bolt and las until what lumped to a halt was an urecognisable ruin.

Thane drilled a bolt-round through a mouth that was somehow still sucking on air. The ork made a grunting sound, the subsequent detonation pasting Thane’s right greave with gore as he stepped over it.

‘Thesius, Agrippus, heavy weapons left and right.’ He pointed a gauntlet that was hatched with sealant scars towards a high, spiked tower. Burning rounds spat back and forth. He ducked instinctively from the whistle of an artillery shell. ‘Venerable Brother Otho, take a squad and help the Excoriators clear that tower. I want a corridor cleared for the Imperial Guard to follow. We are too thinly spread.’ The Earthshaker round thumped through the side wall of a building and spewed fire high back across the street. The famous aftershock rattled the entire connected superstructure.

The Excoriators had broken into the barracks blocks to the east, but had become mired in heavy urban fighting. Gun nests covering the bridgewalks and exits had them pinned in the complex’s near-side corner while hit-and-run attacks by aerially deployed ork shock troops, coordinated with armoured units on the ground, slowly ate into that slim territorial gain. But the Excoriators would hold. Venerable Brother Otho would see to it.

To north and west, the Black Templars continued to drive deep. Before passing out of vox-contact, Castellan Clermont had voxed in from a position almost three kilometres from Koorland’s teleport coordinates. Practically on the walls. But the Black Templars had been so intent on pressing forwards that entire mobs of orks had been able to slip through and assault the Fists Exemplar flank.

Thesius’ autocannon mowed them down before they could come within twenty metres. Brothers Tolemy, Preco, and Zaul moved into the kill-zone, cutting into the building fronts with precise bursts of bolter fire. None of them saw the shell before it landed. Thane did. It was unworthy of them, a lumpen metal casing for something incendiary, lobbed carelessly from a shanty block as if from a trebuchet, but it blasted a mighty hole out of the ground as well as any handcrafted munition blessed by the priests of Mars.

And just like that, the galaxy had sixty-nine Fists Exemplar.

‘There are few of us left,’ Thane had said, looking through the viewport at the dense stellar clouds of the galactic core in which the Ullanor star shone with a bright, beguiling innocence. ‘Barely enough to continue.’

Koorland had joined him. The lumen bars in the mullions accentuated the grey in his hair. ‘We are sons of Dorn, brother. We do not surrender.’ He had tapped his throat, Thane remembered, the progenoids held there, the last precious gene-seed of his Chapter. ‘That is the burden the primarch has placed on us. He knew we could shoulder it. We stand while all around us falls, and because we stand, others will stand with us.’

‘Call for Apothecary Antonius,’ yelled Thamarius, because every Fist Exemplar carried in his make-up the conceit of command.

Antonius was of the Excoriators, attached to the remnant Fists Exemplar to perform that most vital function in the absence of a surviving Apothecary of their own.

‘Press the attack,’ Thane ordered, emotionless, gunning down an ork that appeared in an unglazed window even as his brothers turned their helms to him in surprise.

They would stand while all around them fell. They wore no colours, they showed no pride, but to a transhuman man they were the truest sons of Dorn.

‘Whirlwinds!’ he shouted. ‘I want that block brought down!’

Thane could see the greater picture despite the slaughter. He knew the mathematics. The Chapter had been hit too hard, its gene-stocks depleted beyond their ability to propagate a viable genetic population. The Last Wall stood, but the Fists Exemplar were already finished.

A column of Deathwatch vehicles, scuffed paintwork revealing the bright green of the Aurora Chapter, trundled up towards the front. The rubble was causing them difficulty, the cavalcade advancing at less than walking pace behind a pair of Vindicators specially modified with urban clearance dozer blades. Both of the glacis modules were pocked by bullet holes. One of them was on fire. The desultory whistle of castellan missiles and lascannon stabs were all they could give back.

With a sonic clap and a promethium roar, an atmosphere fighter, with rippling flames chased in paint down its stub nose, dropped through the frag clouds and strafed the armour column with a linked pair of underwing quad-autocannons. High volume anti-personnel rounds spanked and rattled along armour plates, blood splashing across the turret of a Razorback as its commander vainly tried to track the jet with his pintle mount, and then in a rumble of afterburn it raced northwards into ork-held territory.

Two or three kilometres in that direction, where it had been driven to keep pace with the Black Templars advance, Thane could see the great fifteen-metre-high pyre that had been Helfyre. In the glare of that inferno, the invincible Decimus Ordinatus shimmered in a liquid caul of purples and greens, tormented from every angle by sustained fire.

As Thane watched, the Warlord raised an arm stained with pyrotechnic bruising, the diverted power causing its gatling blaster to glow like a birthing sun. The massive weapon began to spin, superfast, oddly silent against the cacophonies more immediate in Thane’s ears, and disgorged a blast of energy that carved the nearest of the offending gun towers in two. That beam of light was, in fact, a torrent of several million high-power las-beams per second, and the combined effect was devastating. The Titan dragged its arm diagonally across its body, chewing downwards through the blasted structure and overloading the shields of the pot-bellied ork gargant that had been sheltering behind it.

The gatling blaster gave out with a sputter of light and a spent whir of barrels as the remains of the gun tower crumbled down over the bright yellow body of the unshielded gargant. The ork machine drove through it, a lunatic grin in brilliant yellow over its crude orkish face. Behind it came several more. Decimus Ordinatus shook the earth with a backward step.

‘After today there might be no children of Dorn,’ Thane had said. Not in argument, but the words needed to be said. They were greater than him.

‘No wall stands forever, brother, but I think that our father’s legacy was always about more than us. If Vulkan taught me anything it was to have faith. Humanity will prevail as it always has. It is for those like us to ensure that it is so.’

Thane cursed on the Eidolican day as something unseen but earth-shakingly massive impacted somewhere in the conurbation, near enough to rattle his boots against the ground. He dropped to one knee in a crater and unloaded his magazine, speaking evenly and calmly into his helmet vox.

‘This is Force Commander Thane to all units still receiving — consolidate at the second marker and await—’

A rocket screamed across from a tower block and struck the lead Vindicator side-on between the dozer blade and the track. The explosion flipped it over, with fingers of flame and nails of smoke, onto its back, smashing through the glacis armour of the vehicle behind.

‘—Brother Agrippus!’ Thane finished, debris raining down.

His battle-brother tracked the aim of his heavy bolter round to the right and speared the crude rocket’s winding smoke tail with bunker-busting incendiary rounds. Thane saw a burly ork with a flared missile tube under one arm running window to window. Behind Thane’s back, the rest of the Aurora Chapter’s armour column snarled up into a congested huddle of vehicles behind the stricken Vindicator. Angry shouts and engine growls. The ork shooter crashed through a side wall and into an alley just as Agrippus’ heavy bolter tore up the last window in the row. It dropped, hanging onto its missile tube as though it doubled as a jump pack, and thumped two-footed onto the rear-axle suspension of a waiting truck. Wood and metal shards sprayed over the vehicle as it roared into a wheelspin and rattled off between the blocks, bolt-rounds spanking from its rear fender.

Thane’s Lyman’s ear tuned to the sounds of ork vehicles: fighters being picked up and redeployed, unhappy about it by the tone of their xenos grunts, but obedient to their leaders. He mentally reconfigured his mindmap of the battlefield. The orks were refocusing their forces along a narrower front, digging in somewhere just ahead of the Black Templars advance.

‘They are withdrawing.’

‘An unlikely but predicted variable,’ said Brother Kahagnis. ‘Substitute strategem is staged advance, pull Black Templars back and extend flanks with Astra Militarum units. Draw the orks onto us again.’

Thane took a moment to consider, to elevate his mind above the anarchy of the battlefield, to perceive in it the connections of cause and effect as every Fists Exemplar initiate was taught. Every possibility was considered. Every variable already had a strategy in place to counter it.

There had been no regicide sets on Eidolica, and no one would ever challenge a Fist Exemplar to a game of strategy.

These orks had shown a fondness for feints and counters.

Perhaps it was time to show them something they did not expect.

‘Vulkan had faith in you, brother,’ Thane had answered.

‘He had faith in us all.’ Koorland had turned from the window then, and lain a gauntleted hand on Thane’s shoulder. Half his face was dark, shielded from the viewport’s lumen bars like a planet’s night side. ‘As do I. We fight to the last. We are the ultimate realisation of the hopes of mankind, and by our virtues do we hold humanity’s leaders to account. In heart and mind, we never waver.’ He released his grip and appeared to sigh though made no sound. ‘The real work begins tomorrow and the day after. We will rebuild the Imperium, brother. If one day the Khan or the Raven should be found as Vulkan was, if the Emperor should awake, then I would have the Imperium that they find be one of glory and not despair. I would make our father proud.’

‘Pull back the Black Templars. But then throw everything onto the Excoriators’ flank. Even the reserves.’

‘That is not the correct strategem for this set of conditions,’ Kahagnis argued.

Thane’s expression was immobile as rock as he regarded the spires and gun turrets of the idolatrous palace complex, still several kilometres away. The orks knew that Koorland was inside and somehow, though he had not yet worked the problem through that far, his and Koorland’s roles of lure and trap had become reversed. Were it in his nature to do so, he might have smiled.

‘The objective is the same, brother,’ said Thane.

Kill the Beast.

It did not matter who did it, and Thane had no intention of becoming the last son of Dorn.

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, inner palace

The ogryn, Brokk, punched the locked door. Ripples of blue-green force spilled outward from the giant abhuman’s grinding knuckles and the force field cloaking the door gave an ozone sputter. The ogryn’s muscles bulged as he tried to force it. Sweat soaked his khaki vest. After a few seconds of straining, the ogryn withdrew his hand and shook out his seared knuckles, dog tags and chains clinking against the spit-polished campaign medals sewn into his jacket breast. Laurentis’ plasma cutters had failed to make a mark either. So had Asger’s lightning claws.

To look at the door was to look at something clearly ork. The metal was thick, and clamped in the middle by a meaty lock in the shape of a bull-horned greenskin. The black and white diagonal stripes were garishly done, the brush strokes occasionally veering off the line to create a weird, kaleidoscopic pattern. The doors, however, were well balanced on their runners. The join was perfectly centred. And then there was the force field.

Laurentis lifted an extensor that emerged from his robes on an articulated limb and tapped on the door at various points, like a medic manoeuvring his stethoscope as he palpated a patient’s chest. Small flowerings of counter-force rippled from around his bladed metal probe.

‘Supposition: a nanolayer force field, similar in concept to the adamantine surface layer of Thunderhawk or Land Raider armour.’ He tapped it again and watched the spread of colours. ‘Fascinating.’

‘Can it be broken?’ asked Koorland.

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘Can you break it?’

‘Oh. I think not. Not without further investigation.’

Koorland nodded in acceptance — though his helm, bonded to his plastron and pauldrons, did not translate it well — and turned ponderously around.

The corridor was of the same unidentifiable metal as the door, super-resistant, unmarked by the scrape of a lightning claw or the frustrated discharge of a commissar’s plasma pistol, but minus the paintwork or the energy field. It was remarkably clean. There was no light source that any of them could detect and there was no sign of external power generation. Every surface just seemed to glow with a soft, bluish light. Embossed plates and glyphs marked junctions and doorways.

Kavalanera and her sisters filled the corridor with raised swords, a shield of exquisite war-plate and power-edged blades between Laurentis and Alpha 13-Jzzal and the servitor-restrained ork psyker. Asger held the rear. The second ogryn and Commissar Goss stood at one of the junctions. This door was unshielded and Bohemond was already on the other side with Kill-Team Stalker.

Koorland glanced again at the cartolith. His current location was identified by a small pulsing icon, buried deep in a labyrinthine subterranean structure that more nearly resembled the root system of a tooth, than anything obviously palatial. Passageways spread out from his position like capillaries. It looked like they were in the midsection of a raised structure, one of several fortified edifices that ringed the Beast’s throne room. His best guess put them a hundred metres or so above it and about twice that horizontally.

‘The strange thing,’ Krule appeared by Koorland’s pauldron and gestured to the open door, ‘is that that’s the more direct route.’

‘The palace itself is movable. Are you certain?’

‘I wouldn’t open my mouth otherwise.’

‘A trap,’ Alpha 13-Jzzal said again, a vox-loop growl.

Koorland wondered if Rogal Dorn had smiled when he had first set foot on Sebastus IV. ‘Of course it is a trap.’

‘If I might propose a theory?’ Laurentis scuttled around from the locked and shielded door to face Koorland, audio receivers extending from his cranial structure as if, in some remotely human way, to present himself fully at the Space Marine’s disposal.

‘I remember a time when you would not have cared to ask first,’ said Koorland.

‘I have, on occasion, been made aware that my hypotheses are not at all times relevant or welcome.’

‘They are today, my friend. Speak.’

Laurentis blinked and lowered his eyeball, a gesture of humble gratitude. ‘The sole purpose of our mission is the assassination of the Beast, correct?’

Koorland nodded.

‘To eliminate the one target that the enemy cannot afford to lose,’ Laurentis quoted, in paraphrase, then prodded Fidus Bellator’s huge pectoral aquila with a manipulator claw. ‘It occurs to me that the Beast could have had a similar thought.’

‘The mission is compromised,’ said Alpha 13-Jzzal. ‘You have been lured here.’

Koorland regarded the cyborgised warrior sternly. The skitarius knew, because Koorland had shared the data himself, of the calculus-logi’s latest prognoses. Terra had been calculated to collapse in a matter of weeks. The most optimistic upper limit of statistical deviation had the greater Imperium continuing as a unified entity for only another few months at best. These facts were no secret. Let the ugly face of failure inspire the mortals to sacrifice all, as Thane and the Last Wall did mere kilometres away.

‘It changes nothing.’

‘We should at least contact Thane or Issachar,’ said Krule. ‘Or both. If you’re right then vox-silence is clearly unnecessary.’

‘Impossible,’ came Bohemond’s voice-amplified reply from the adjoining corridor. The Black Templar clumped back into view, bulging armour plates blued by the odd, rinsing light. ‘External vox is being blocked. Did Koorland not tell you?’

Krule puffed out his cheeks. ‘Then I suppose I’m with that.’ He jabbed his head sideways towards Alpha 13-Jzzal. ‘I’ve been this way before without losing outside contact. It has to be deliberate.’

‘I assume then that your opinion is the same,’ said Bohemond.

Krule’s expression was stony. His eyes widened slightly and the whites began to turn red. Without appearing to move, his musculature noticeably swelled under his synskin bodyglove. Chronaxic implants, Koorland reasoned, threat responsive, doping the Assassin’s already enhanced physiognomy with a sharp increase in metabolism. Krule grinned like a snake.

‘We came all this way. I brought all my favourite knives.’

‘Kill ork fur Empror,’ rumbled Olug, slowly.

Koorland felt his heart warm with gratitude.

‘Signal on my auspex,’ growled Asger, suddenly. ‘Fifty metres. That way.’ He pointed one set of lightning claws down the corridor. Kavalanera and her sisters made ready with a swift rustle of oiled plates. ‘Closing with some haste.’

‘How many?’ said Koorland.

‘Enough for me.’

‘It seems that the auspex is working after all,’ said Laurentis, happily.

‘Ave bloody Omnissiah,’ muttered Krule.

‘Praise Him,’ Laurentis agreed.

‘Break through them,’ suggested Alpha 13-Jzzal. ‘While we are still capable of salvaging the weapon. There is no way of ascertaining from here whether this route to the throne room will not be similarly warded.’

But somehow, Koorland knew that it would not be. The Emperor lit the galaxy through the Astronomican: was it not then possible that He watched over His children in spirit?

‘Krule, Tyris, you have point. Bohemond, with them. Asger, you know what to do if the orks catch up.’ The Wolf Lord flexed his lightning claws eloquently. ‘Goss, covering fire. Lady Brassanas, Laurentis — you’re with me.’

Fifteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The Fists Exemplar, and those of the VII Legion that were their genetic forebears, had fought in some of the Imperium’s defining battles. They had defended Terra from the Arch-Enemy, fought in the Consus Drift campaigns. Oriax Dantalion himself had been at the primarch’s side through the slaughter of the Iron Cage. But Maximus Thane doubted that so much honour had ever been earned by so few as during the second battle for Ullanor.

He wondered if enough of them would be alive at the finish for their exploits to be remembered half as long as those names of legend.

It had been Assault Marines of the Seventh Company, in concert with their brothers of the Black Templars, that had taken the fight to the primary fortress blocking the palace’s eastern aspect and broken it open. It had been bike squads led by Forgemaster Aloysian that had led the Aurora Chapter tanks through the orks’ minefield and allowed them to crack the greenskins’ defensive lines of trenches and bunkers. When an armoured witch-tower, wreathed in green lightning and trundling forward on massive tracks, had delivered the deathblow on Decimus Ordinatus and turned its psychic fire upon the Deathwatch vehicles, it had been Brother-Sergeant Aquino of the Second who had led the kill-squad of Sisters of Silence to nullify it from within.

The galaxy would never again know his like.

As for Thane himself, he was too humble to keep a personal tally, but his helm display recorded it for him: three hundred and eighteen kills for three hundred and nineteen rounds expended. It had been him to lead the sortie that crippled the orks’ flak guns, and him that then called down the finishing blow.

The Icarus supercarrier, several kilometres of runstrip mounted over many windswept tiers upon two sets of awesome tracks, had been held in reserve with the Field-Legatus’ Leviathan and escort. Scant minutes after Thane’s voxed authorisation, dozens of low-flying Marauder bombers and Vulture gunships had turned what remained of the palace approach to ash and glass, dust under a Space Marine’s boot.

There had been nothing left but a handful of survivors, crawling cockroach-like in the rubble of apocalypse, to prevent the hundred and twelve Demolisher siege tanks of the Ullanor Veterans forming up into one long, slowly advancing firing line and opening up against the palace’s outer wall with the full fury of mankind.

The orks’ fortification was staggeringly vast. Superhard metals plated its sloped face. Energy fields flickered in ugly opposition to the shells and explosions that broke along its length. Fixed gun turrets raked the ground, even as shield overloads drove cracks through ablative plating and exposed bare rockcrete to the massed gunnery of the Astra Militarum. The wall crumbled.

Maximus Thane was the first to cheer.

Everything started to move forwards. On first impression it was as though the planet’s artificial tectonics were undergoing one of their gross scale rearrangements, but the sky was still, the ground was still, it was everything else that was moving. Every man, every vehicle was suddenly rushing towards the breach in the wall as though the planet was a voidship and they had just punched a hole in their own hull. Those that had been closest to the breach were the first to enter; no deeper thought went into it than that. They were the orks now.

A tactical squad of Excoriators advanced through the rubble, into a pall of dust that sparked with torn electrics and bolter fire. The grey ceramite block of Venerable Otho moved with them, crunching forward, figure-of-eighting spirals of fire spraying from the Dreadnought’s heavy flamer.

Thane joined the headlong rush over the shattered cityscape, unloading his bolter onto the breached section of wall, wildly skewing his accuracy ratios though he did not care. The urban terrain was post-apocalyptic: masonry in jagged lumps as though cut from passing asteroids and dropped from the sky, dismembered statues of armoured orks fifty metres high and brandishing chainaxes and heavy weapons. Vehicle wrecks, blackened, on their sides or in pieces; bunkers with smoke pouring from gun slits.

A Chimera ground over the loose earth on rattling metal treads, noisily passing Thane as he ran through a jumble of rockcrete blocks and wire. It had become separated from the rest of its armoured fist squadron by the terrain, slowed, but was steadily growling through the gears as it rumbled over the last of the major blast craters and saw open ground.

Thane turned and chased it, up a wobbling ramp of metal sheeting and onto the roof of a bunker. The Chimera was just accelerating away as Thane leapt, arms pulling on air as if to drag him forward, and thumped onto its armoured back. His boots made a hollow clang. The vehicle’s acceleration almost pitched him backwards, but he activated maglock to secure himself, swayed, then clumped forwards to grab hold of the handrail that circled the turret cupola. One-handed, he ejected the hot sickle magazine from his bolter and punched the weapon against his ammo-belt to insert a fresh one.

The Chimera gave a crunching, low-gear roar as it hit the rubbled section of wall, crashed through a metre-thick spit of standing masonry at the summit and then slewed freely, almost sideways, into the palace’s outer bailey. It trembled on its suspensors and then growled forwards in search of a site to unload. Its spotlight blinked on, a high-wattage lumen bulb spearing white light into the murk. Hull-mounted lasguns pivoted and fired. Its turret multi-laser traversed, cables swaying, and split the air with a crackling volley of beams.

Thane deactivated maglock and jumped down, crunching into gravelly ground as the Chimera reversed its tracks to pivot on the spot, spraying las-beams, and then rumble off in a new direction. He swung up his bolter and started firing.

Dust hung over everything. Spilled blocks cluttered the ground, a randomised topography of foxholes and trenches through which ork and man waged recreations of greater wars. Shield emitters, torn from the wall, struggling for function, flooded the air with sparks and fire. Landmines geysered tanks and rockcrete high into the air. Unexploded munitions went off. Distant walls, thicker, higher, more heavily defended even than those that had just been broken, echoed to the reports of gunfire.

Thane drilled an ork through the neck, splattered its blood over a rockcrete block, got another in the knee, stepped on its chest and shot a bolt between its eyes. A roar. An ork ripped through the smog, swinging an axe. Thane sided the blade on his bolter. The weapons came apart with a ring of metal, leaving shocked fingers. The ork blundered through into Thane and knocked them both to the ground. Icons flashed up minor damage; servos whirred and Thane struggled to his feet. The ork smashed into him again, but this time Thane was ready. He brought up his dented bolter and put four rounds point blank into the ork’s chest.

It exploded, wetly separating legs from head, and Thane thumped the bolter’s heavy stock, a crushed bolt-round spitting from the sickle magazine. Umbra-pattern. Practically indestructible. As close to a Chapter symbol as the Fists Exemplar came.

Armoured warriors of the Excoriators and Black Templars surged past him, war cries reverberating from helmet vox-casters. Those in ivory and red advanced into ork fire in disciplined lines like one-man tanks, laying down withering volleys as they moved. Their brothers moved in fits and bursts, pausing to hack through ork counters with gladius and power sword before dashing on.

‘All units forward!’ Thane yelled, amping his helmet’s vox-caster to maximum and striding up onto the silver-blue carcass of an Imperial Knight for a better view.

His auto-senses did their best to filter out the interference, figures emerging from the fog like black ghosts in a purgatory of grey, filled in with auspex-generated outlines that struggled to keep up. Assault Marines and Astra Militarum sappers assaulted the walls. He could see the controlled flare of jump packs, the sputter of portable shield racks, the cry and boom of ordnance pouring off the walls. Massed tanks growled together in the lee, recoil rocking them back as they slammed high-explosive shells into the base.

There was no time to regroup and adopt a more considered approach. They had pushed through the orks, yes, but they had certainly not beaten them. There were millions of fresh fighters out there, caught out of position by Thane’s flank attack, that were probably being piled into trucks and raced into new positions at the army’s rear even now. The only option was to push forward, to break the orks’ second wall before they could be smashed against it.

It was not war as the doctrines of Dorn or even Guilliman would have it, but it was exhilarating.

Everyone, Thane decided, should push forcibly against their nature at least once before the finish.

He turned to look up at the wall itself, just as a lobbed shell, trailing spurts of fire from an overpowered rocket, smashed through the top of a struggling Shadowsword tank and blew it to pieces before its main gun had a chance to fire. Black Templars wearing bulky jump packs held a beachhead on the parapet, backs forced to the rampart by several mobs of huge orks in steam-powered armour suits. As he watched, a boss ork with a shrilling buzz-saw and a pair of dribbling flamers bolted to its gauntlet chewed through a Space Marine’s right-hand jet flue and butted him off the parapet. The warrior broke on the rockcrete lumps below.

One breach was all they needed. Just one.

Sub-vocalising to his armour’s simplistic spirit he called up the army’s general channel, to coordinate some of the firepower that was labouring up towards the walls, and winced at the unexpected onslaught of orkish voices that emerged from his earpiece. Blink-scrolling through the frequencies found them all similarly blocked. Thane’s best supposition was the greenskins were using the full wavelength to coordinate their own unruly defense rather than actively blocking the Imperials’ communications. He set his vox to active scan, the exquisite properties of his Lyman’s ear allowing him to filter the overlapping noises into distinct sounds. He could not make out any specific headquarters location from background sounds, not could he understand the language, but there was one voice amongst the profusion that he knew immediately, as though a recognition marker had just flagged it up on his helm display.

It was guttural, unclean, the loudest and most strident, and also the deepest, as though delivered from a chest wider than the armoured body of a Dreadnought.

The Beast was near.

There was a loud roar of freshly gunned engines, and an exuberant hammering of gunfire that chewed into the crumpled shoulder of the Knight that Thane was standing on. Before he could think, battle-bred instincts loosed a four-round trigger-squeeze in the right direction, the bolts spanking off the snarling front radiator of a half-track laden with burly close-assault fighters. A dozen more of the ramshackle vehicles roared up behind it, packed with troops and guns, mouldings plastered with dust, powering up through a sally port under the wall that had been partially blocked with spoil and debris.

‘Ork vehicles inbound from a tunnel in grid section epsilon-nine,’ Thane voxed, jumping down from the shoulder of the Knight and pushing his bolter round its chewed-up rear plating, then returning fire. If any of his units were holding open comms under that xenos diatribe, he had no idea, or if they would be able to hear him if they were. But he had little option but to try. ‘Surrounding sections hold and counter. Repeat, hold and counter. Take that tunnel.’

Concentrated fire drove Thane back into cover. They were not aiming at him, of course. He was one Space Marine sheltering behind a wreck, and a Fist Exemplar, indistinguishable in undecorated ceramite from any battle-brother under his command.

Sparks rattled across the glacis plate of the drab grey Predator tank that rolled over the tangled rubble at walking speed, keeping step with the combat squad of Fists Exemplar advancing under the cover of its guns. A blast of its twin-linked lascannons slagged a high-sided armoured truck. Return fire cost it its left sponson and a turret antennae cluster. It growled to a stop, the Space Marines taking up positions around its bulk and laying down fire. Thane recognised Kahagnis, Abbas, Agrippus and his autocannon, Thamarius and Xeres. Brother-Apothecary Antonius of the Excoriators knelt by the Predator’s ruined gun, narthecium buried in the neck of fallen Sardonis, a plasma burn where an arm and a large part of a chest should have been.

Thane pulled himself in behind the body of the Knight, taking advantage of the cover to pull his mistreated bolter to his chest, eject the sickle magazine and slam in a fresh one with a red strip along the base to indicate that it contained armour-piercing vengeance rounds. He could feel the ding of bullets striking the far side of his cover. He could hear the rumble of engines, getting louder.

He stepped out of cover, side-on, bolter swinging upwards in one smooth motion in time with the flashed appearance of that overloaded half-track. He prepared to fire, but before he could rake the speeding vehicle’s flank with bolts he felt a hot downwash of air, like a fiery hand pressing down from above, and the half-track drove into a wall of heavy weapons fire. Quad-linked heavy bolters tracked back and forth, shredding the vehicle like paper. Thane dropped to one knee and turned his head away as a quartet of hellstrike missiles dropped from the black-painted Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints, flared, and then whistled through the vehicle formation, sending metal plates and smouldering remains billowing skyward.

Ground dust blew out from the lowering Thunderhawk in ripples, tied to the cycling of its engine fans. It hovered above the height of its landing struts and dropped its doors, squads of Inquisitorial storm troopers in glossy black carapace and visors tramping down the assault ramp and into a covering posture around the gunship. Thane saw another blunt wedge of black armour thunder overhead, strafing the ground with heavy bolters and turbolasers, with flak from wall-mounted air defences lighting up its aerofoil.

His vox-bead gave a long, power-boosted whine and the orkish voices receded. ‘Lord Thane,’ said a female voice. ‘This is Wienand. Are you hearing me now?’

‘I hear you!’ Thane ducked back into cover as a third gunship powered in low, spraying dust and gravel. He did not ask what the inquisitor was doing here when she had been directly instructed to remain behind the lines. She had followed her own counsel as any Fist Exemplar would have. ‘I did not realise we had any kill-teams still airborne.’

‘We have some remarkable pilots.’

‘The Beast is near, inquisitor. He is directing the defences himself, probably on short-range comms. Do you think your pilots are good enough to get us over the walls?’

The line went quiet a moment, presumably while the inquisitor conferred with her squad. It crackled back to full, static force.

‘Lord Atherias tells me that he’s excited to try.’

Sixteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, inner palace

The cartolith still floated on Koorland’s helm display. The icon representing his present coordinates was a heartbleed of gold, nine-tenths of the way down a zig-zagging stair that had multiplied the descent by a factor of twenty or more. Ork design. Two hours and they were still to breach the throne room. But they were close. A doubled stream of mass-reactive shells burned from his storm bolter, ripped open the drab blue and black chest-plate of an ork twice his weight in muscle, and strobed monstrous horned shadows along the walls. Dark gore splattered Koorland’s lenses. In tri-d, it was as though the palace schematic ran with blood.

‘One more turn and we are there,’ he called out to the kill-team and the others, his breathing remaining slow and deep even after two hours of intense hand-to-hand combat.

Blocks of screed and infographics reporting on his armour’s combat systems made fluid passes across his faceplate, kept in constant motion by the targeting reticules that pushed them aside to keep his vision uncluttered.

Battery reserves low. Ammunition nearly depleted. Armour compromised. No matter.

They were almost there.

Bohemond was already at the turn of the stair, surrounded by hulking orks that hacked at him with chainaxes and powered maces: fend, fend, strike, and push forward, nigh-invincibility allied to earth-shattering moments of power, the timeless fighting style of the Cataphractii.

Tyris was just behind, firing muffled rounds of stalker-variant ammunition into the densely packed mob. Gadreel and Icegrip fought hand-to-hand, servo-arm and frost blade, smiting and hacking. The Ultramarines Simmias and Straton, replacements for Numines and Vega, fallen on Incus Maximal, were a step behind, firing from the chest.

Brokk had an ork by the throat, ten centimetres off the ground and turning blue. His bicep was a swollen mass of veins and anger, faced creased by gun shadow, caught in a rictus of hatred for the alien. Olug’s ripper gun brought thunder into the confined space, spraying out bullets until the robust weapon clicked empty. The maddened ogryn took the gun two-handed and clubbed the closest ork to the ground with it. In his fury, Koorland saw the common thread that ran through every member of his squad: man, woman, abhuman, Space Marine.

One Emperor. One Imperium. One mankind.

‘Could you please avoid killing so many,’ said Laurentis, modulating his voice to a whining pitch that ogryns and bolter fire could not reach. ‘The weapon requires live Veridi to serve as detonators.’

Krule rolled his eyes, artfully massaging the selector of a palm-sized executor pistol: bolt-rounds shattered the weak joints between armour plates, needle killshots punctured dense green hide.

‘There are plenty more, magos,’ said Koorland.

Asger’s panting chuckle returned through the shared feed, along with the crack of lightning.

‘Take the stairs!’ Koorland bellowed, punching his sword’s blued edge through an ork’s chest-plate and forcing another step towards Bohemond and the others before more orks stepped up to stop him. He snarled.

Spotting the shift in his tactical display, Koorland glanced left as Kavalanera broke from the rest of her sisters. The women fought in uncanny unison to defend the bound ork psyker. The servitors dragging it along between them were mammoth but ill-suited to combat, though more than a few stray shots bound for the ork psyker smacked into vat-grown, plasteel-reinforced flesh. Drevina and the other Sisters adapted their blade routines to Kavalanera’s absence smoothly. The knight abyssal veered towards the handrail on the left-hand side of the stair and vaulted over it.

Koorland saw the parchment strips affixed to her armour flutter up as she dropped onto the orks charging up the stairs. Her power blade lashed out in perfect figures of eight, hacking orks limb from limb as they ran at her or past. Every part of her body moved with the minimum of effort and the maximum of effect: grace, poise, a ballet of slaughter performed in absolute quiet but for the howls of dismembered orks. Unnerved by their own brutish sense of the pariah in their midst, the orks began to waver.

The break in the influx of fresh combatants allowed Koorland to push onto the turn of the stair. Bohemond blink-sent a greeting rune to his helm display. Two walking tanks side-by-side, with relic blade and storm bolter they drove the orks back, round the turn and onto the final flight. Beyond Lady Brassanas, Koorland saw the doors.

They were large, but by the standards of neither human nor ork were they worthy of a centre of power. They were plain metal, unadorned except for a few furtively scratched glyphs in the frame. A service entrance, for gretchin and slaves.

For humans.

Koorland wondered if it was some kind of symbolism as much as its own desire for this confrontation that had led the Beast to direct them along this route. Conquest had never been enough, or the hives of Terra would have been aflame long ago. It was holy war. It wanted mankind’s capitulation, its humiliation. Vulkan had explained to him that when dealing with orks all things came down to dominance. The primarch had also repeatedly impressed on him the need to have faith, in himself, in his brothers, in the spirit of man.

‘For Dorn. For Vulkan. For the Golden Throne of Terra!’

Freed from the immediate fighting, the two ogryns opened up on the uncertain orks. Commissar Goss seared them with bolts of plasma, and Alpha 13-Jzzal joined him with raking volleys of his heavier plasma caliver.

‘Protect yourself, sister,’ yelled Tyris, as he pulled a clutch of frag grenades from his hip holster. Gadreel and the rest of Kill-Team Stalker did likewise, and Kavalanera plunged her sword into an ork’s chest and then ducked beneath it as it fell.

The air became metal. The frag blasts were too minor a flurry to inflict anything more than irritation on such armoured behemoths but iron shards were as pernicious as sand and, propelled with force, would work their way into anywhere. They got into eyes, into ammo slits, points of weakness that the orks could have protected, had function been as important to them as effect.

Humanity was not the only race with weaknesses.

Koorland raised his sword as an icon of man, as Asger and Bohemond pushed past and battered open the doors.

Into the chamber of the Beast.

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, inner palace

Penitent Wrath looped over the palace rooftops like a seabird with wings full of winter gale. She swung slowly on her axis, round and round, torn electrics spitting from the hole that gaped in her wing, coming in by some miracle on one turbofan and descent thrusters.

The section of roof high above the throne room of the Beast was flat as a frozen lake, spiralling in panorama across Kjarvik’s view. One black gunship was already down and unloaded, warriors in grey and in ivory and red spreading from it like cracks in the ice. Another burned up in the sky as it flew over, wreckage dropping over the spiked parapet in a death spiral. His vision swung from metal roof to cloudy sky and back again, both the same ruddy umber, fire and ash, one a beaten reflection of the other.

Kjarvik held onto the assault ramp’s hydraulic supports as centrifugal force tried to throw him out. He looked down. He felt no nausea or disorientation. His physiology was immune to that.

‘It is not going to get any closer,’ said Baldarich.

Kjarvik released his boot maglocks with a snarl. There was no need to jump. The gunship’s spin flung him out from the ramp, arms beating at the air like his namesake crow.

The gunship groaned as its back end swung away and its nose came back around. Kjarvik could see Atherias and Bohr through the armourglass, locked into restraint harnesses, fighting with the guide sticks. Penitent Wrath whipped around on its sole functioning turbofan and swept further out. Metres from the rooftop. Centimetres from the edge. Kjarvik twisted bodily, and smacked face-first into the roof. He rolled sideways a way, bled off his momentum, and came up on all fours with the exception of the one hand that hovered over his mag-holster. The sheet metal gave a crumping wobble where his weight had depressed it. His long hair and pelt whipped about in the high-altitude wind.

He sniffed. Dead orks. Engine oil. Burning.

A massive thump rumpled through the metal as Zarrael impacted like a drop pod without retros. The Flesh Tearer crunched two-footed into the roof, right boot breaking through to the greave. Actuators and suspensors responded after a second’s delay, dispersed the impact throughout his armour, plate to plate, servos whirring like dynamos as he violently kicked his leg free. Phareous hit a moment later, a few metres off, then Baldarich, coming in on the tips of his toes with a swordsman’s poise.

Penitent Wrath convulsed as her rear end swept over the parapet, attitude control jets burning blue to white, hot enough to hold her shuddering in place while two dozen Inquisitorial storm troopers poured out. They held a perimeter with lasguns aimed up and out as Inquisitor Wienand and her bodyguard, Raznick, hurriedly dropped out after them. Raznick supported Urquidex under one arm even as he marked threat angles with his laspistol.

The last few storm troopers were following up at the end of the ramp when the Thunderhawk’s last turbofan blew out. The engine housing vomited oily yellow flames and rotor shards, and the unresisted control thrusters suddenly hammered the gunship sideways.

Men fell, screaming, rolled across the roof like bones tossed from a cup or flailed over the edge. Others were thrown back into the troop bay or hung onto the now upside-down ramp by the fingers. Shorn of any uplift, Penitent Wrath crashed into the roof, bowing it permanently, and shrieked back on thrusters until it crashed into the soaring stretch of curtain wall that rose from that side.

Kjarvik had memorised the cartoliths, as they all had. If they were accurate and he remembered truthfully, then this was the south face of the palace’s innermost defences, an iron ring of brute firepower and hypertechnology that defended the Beast’s throne room against attack from the ground and from the air.

Penitent Wrath’s machine-spirit finally expired and she fell quiet. Steam rose from the tracked tears she had left in the roof. Smoke gouted from her blasted engine.

Phareous lowered his shield and ran for the downed gunship, voxing Atherias and Bohr. A few greenskins littered his path but their threads had been well cut and hard, mown down by the Thunderhawks’ anti-personnel guns or dispatched by the sons of Dorn.

‘We have located an access ramp down into the palace, and from there, with luck, to the throne room of the Beast.’ Maximus Thane’s war-plate boosted his voice over the thunder of flak guns and the shrapnel rain. Kjarvik knew of him from the Deathwatch’s very first missions. He was good. He spoke plainly. Kjarvik respected him enormously, and he was not alone in doing so.

Half a dozen Fists Exemplar and an Apothecary of the Excoriators followed Thane from his Thunderhawk, Zarrael and even Baldarich falling in behind the Chapter Master as he neared.

‘How far?’ asked Kjarvik.

Thane shrugged, a whine of servos. ‘Less than two hundred metres.’ He pointed over the fortress wall, the guns still spitting fire and energy bolts at the Deathwatch gunships trying to land closer. ‘Koorland’s teleport coordinates are just on the other side of that.’

‘Does his teleport homer still signal?’

‘I cannot raise the fleet to find out.’

‘On the bright side, the Beast will be distracted by Koorland and—’ Kjarvik waved a gauntlet vaguely in the direction that most of the muted booms were coming from ‘—and whoever it is now in charge down there. He will not be expecting us.’

As he spoke, another black gunship set down on landing struts, and another, just as a hellstrike missile from a third whistled through the air and obliterated a gun-nest, crowning the main source of flak with fire and scattering the neighbouring roofs with debris. More Deathwatch deployed from their open assault ramps: black-armoured, elite, packing combi-weapons and wargear for any occasion. He recognised several of the sergeants from the mission briefing.

Zarrael gave a twitching nod in the direction of Penitent Wrath, and Kjarvik looked that way. Wienand walked towards them, Raznick in close beside her, crowded by black-armoured mortal troopers — hreindýr displaying their antlers to a Fenrisian wolf. The inquisitor had changed out of her grey dress-suit during the flight, and into the same glossy black fatigues and hardened carapace worn by her storm troopers. She had a laspistol, but left it in its holster, content to cede her protection to the twenty-plus guns of her guards.

‘A neat fit,’ said Kjarvik, indicating her slighter frame relative to the muscular Inquisitorial storm troopers.

‘I came prepared.’

Raznick pushed Urquidex ahead of him, and now the magos was close, Kjarvik saw that he was pulling a small equipment cart behind him. Its wheels rattled on the bent metal roof. Lights blinked in no particular sequence, and wires flounced between what looked like a specialist vox-set and the plug-in sockets in the back of Urquidex’s neck. His eyes twitched randomly. He muttered a guttural alien gibberish under his breath, as though something primordial whispered in his ear. Drool trickled down his chin as he mumbled, too intent on sharing the profundity of what he heard to remember to swallow.

‘What is wrong with him?’ said Baldarich, voice thick with distaste.

‘He is parsing the orks’ communications for an indication of the Beast’s location,’ said Wienand. ‘When Thane told me that he could pick out the Beast’s voice from the palace transmissions, I was reminded of the linguistic matrix developed by Magos Laurentis to translate the Beast’s attempts at communication on Ardamantua. Urquidex possessed the necessary cranial implants to access his language centres, and he kindly volunteered.’

‘I am sure he did,’ said Kjarvik.

‘It. Is. Curious,’ said Urquidex, the human words forced between the brutish alien sounds that spilled from his cortex. ‘Multiple. References. To. Beast.’ His eyes were screwed shut, eyelids flickering as if in a troubled dream. ‘Unsure. Where. It. Is.’

‘Deliberate misdirection?’ Thane suggested.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then we split our forces,’ said Wienand quickly. ‘Hit them all. The Fists Exemplar and Excoriators take half, while I and the Deathwatch will take the other. If nothing else, splitting up will keep the orks off-balance, possibly give Koorland and Kavalanera a chance to deploy the psyker.’

‘You?’ said Thane. ‘Representative, I do not believe—’

‘Don’t “Representative” me, Maximus. You lead your men and I intend to lead mine.’

Thane shot a glance at the Deathwatch. There were just under thirty of them, the finest warriors from nine different Chapters. The best that Kjarvik had ever fought beside.

‘I suppose I have little choice,’ said Thane.

‘Less than that. Now let’s go.’

‘Is one location more likely than another?’ said Thane, and turned to Urquidex.

‘Not. Significantly. But. One. Is. Source. Of. Most.’ He shuddered, jaw clenched over a truculent ‘Tra’ sound that apparently did not exist in the greenskin vocabulary. ‘Transmissions.’

‘Then I shall take that one. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Wienand. ‘Assign teams and Urquidex will instruct them on where to go.’

Thane nodded and turned to order his men into combat squads. As soon as he was facing the other way, Wienand clasped Urquidex’s shoulder and, under the pretence of helping him walk, whispered something in his ear. But none of the Space Marines on the rooftop had keener ears than the Space Wolf.

‘My team takes the most probable location.’

Kjarvik shook his head and readied his wargear.

Bad luck. It was a curse.

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, throne room

The ork psyker gave a roar of supplication as the heavy draught-servitors hauled the creature into the great throne room of the orks. Laurentis scuttled under the chain to stab another dose of sedative into its leg. It barked and tried to kick back at the magos, but the dumb servitors dragged it inexorably forward. Signing to her sisters to close in around their charge, Kavalanera drew in behind it, raised her arm up and placed her hand to the back of the psyker’s neck, where it joined its head. It shuddered in bleak horror, some combined effect of the paralytic in its bloodstream and the pariah gene that cored its subconscious like a frost blade to the soul. Even so, it continued to ramble and growl. It dropped to its knees as though begging forgiveness and had to be dragged the rest of the way by its wrists.

That display alone would have been enough to convince Koorland that he was in the right place. But he knew this room. Krule had described it perfectly.

In the centre of the stupefyingly vast space was a circular dais, much like the centrepiece of the Great Chamber of Terra, though this example of the form was larger again, grander again. Six enormous thrones faced outwards in a ring, so that the one immediately opposite Koorland was out of view. And the one that faced him…

‘Stop!’ he roared, and, cued to his voice, command the servitors halted.

The ork psyker writhed on the floor.

‘This is the chamber,’ said Krule.

Behind the Assassin, Alpha 13-Jzzal and the ogryns held the doors with thumps of meat and fiery blasts of plasma. Kill-Team Stalker spread out, taking positions in the crop-circle patterns of pits surrounding the podium that might have been analogous to rows of seating.

Koorland clumped forward to join Bohemond and Asger.

Like him, they were staring up at the dais.

Enthroned in its titanic chair was a gigantic, armoured ork, nearer in size to a gargant than any common greenskin. No plate was of the same material or colour as the next, but all were threaded together with an intricate web of alien designs. Its head was bare: flesh, dark green, ridged like tree bark, and swirled nightshade blue with tattoos. Gauntlets the size of Koorland’s plastron clasped the throne’s arms. Calloused lips and painted tusks parted in a grin.

It had been waiting for them.

Koorland felt a chill in his soul.

With a clanking of armour, the Beast rose from its throne.

‘Emperor preserve us,’ cried Commissar Goss, turning from the mob at the door and lowering his plasma pistol in horror. The commissar was a last-minute addition. He would not have been briefed on events on the temple-gargant of the Beast.

Koorland became aware of jeering from above. He turned his faceplate to look up over his right pauldron.

The walls of the throne room were stone, black and white, made of large blocks carved with ork glyphs. Scores of iron-railed galleries jutted out. They were identified with glyph plates and a quick glance was enough to tell Koorland that there were only six unique pictograms in total. An iron-tusked ork on a disc of red; a red sun with an ork’s face; a crooked yellow half-moon; an angular serpent; a skull crossed by bloody axes; a horned blue ork’s head backed by bones. The galleries marked by that last symbol were lined with bellowing orks. The aliens were all as big or bigger than any Koorland had yet encountered beside the Beast itself. They were heavily armed and armoured, their gear a dull blue bearing the blazon of the death’s skull.

War machines flanked the galleries, great gargants, symbols of status as much as sentinels. Their enormous rivet-iron frames boasted only the largest and most complicated weapon mounts. The paint daubed across their bodywork and the jewels that studded their armour matched the glyph art of the chamber. None was smaller than a Reaver Titan, and most were considerably larger. In some cases the ork engineers had resorted to extending their machine outwards to outdo a rival engine. They were fortress walls on spiked tracks.

Koorland’s mind flashed back to Ardamantua and the powerful warrior forms that had torn from the ground in swarms when their principal nests had been threatened.

These orks were their warrior forms. Their Daylight Wall.

Their Adeptus Custodes.

The mosaic floor shuddered as the Beast took a step off the dais. It was titanic, three times Koorland’s size, and Asger and Bohemond seemed to shrink in accordance with its bulk. Koorland’s biology had passed far beyond the grasp of fear, but he comprehended the enormity of his task.

Here was the Great Beast. The ork that had contested Vulkan in single combat and survived the primarch’s end.

What chance did Koorland have?

The Beast grunted something orkish to the bound psyker, then passed its gaze over the three Terminators. It settled on Koorland, the instinctual recognition of one apex beast for another. Its eyes were like red suns caged. Its voice was the shattering of worlds.

‘Slaughter.’

Seventeen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, throne room

Koorland stepped forward. An uncommon thrill of anticipation passed through him, an electric shiver, as if his body had been conditioning itself these past weeks and months to the cocktail of emotions that the moment of triumph would bring. Koorland’s gene-heritage would not let his face show it. He could not in fact remember the last time he had truly laughed or even smiled from his heart, though he assumed that he had, once. Even on frozen death worlds, mortal children still laughed. And as the Emperor’s distant light was his judge and witness, they always would.

Bohemond moved across his path, a pace ahead, sword raised as if to bar Koorland from the Beast and vice versa with his body and with his blade.

‘You would be my champion now as well?’ said Koorland on a private channel. ‘I am Lord Commander. It is my right to face the Beast alone.’

With a gruff murmur of assent, Bohemond ponderously backed up and lowered his blade until the tip scraped the mosaic tiles in front of him. Koorland watched him go, nodded his gratitude though no one could see it behind his fixed helm and gorget, and caught Kavalanera’s gesture.

‘Now?’

Koorland could guess that the Beast had some understanding of Low Gothic, but he doubted the greenskins were familiar with Adeptus Astartes battle-sign. He moved his hugely armoured fingers in reply.

‘Not yet.’

It was as complex a message as sign language could convey while wearing Terminator armour, but the knight abyssal signalled her understanding. She gestured to Laurentis. The ork psyker thrashed against the armoury servitors as Laurentis scuttled warily through with a stimm dose slurping into a hypodermic appendage.

At the door, Alpha 13-Jzzal and the ogryns were still battling to hold the orks back.

The harder we hit them, Koorland thought, the stronger the psychic field becomes.

The harder we hit them…

‘I am Slaughter,’ said Koorland, turning to the Beast. ‘I am the Lord Commander of the Imperium of Man, and I have come to kill you.’

The Beast did not laugh. It should have done, but it did not.

It swung up its arm.

An impossible array of firepower had been assembled into a triple-tiered gantry around its wrist. Two bolted-together battlecannons formed the mainstay. That twin-link was surrounded by autocannons, heavy flamers, rocket launchers, and multi-barrelled weapons of ork make that Koorland had never seen on any battlefield and could not identify. Ammo-belts and power hoses swung side to side as it took aim. It barely had to. In its open gauntlet was a pulsing trigger switch, onmi-linked to that awesome battery.

It clenched its fist.

Thunder struck. A star was born. Worlds collided.

Asger’s emergency vox blinked up an unnecessary warning on Koorland’s helm display, the same moment he felt Bohemond’s shoulder guard barge him out of the way.

The firestorm that engulfed the Black Templar would have rivalled a super-heavy tank squadron. Koorland did not see it fall. He was already stumbling away under Bohemond’s shove, the blast that struck still mighty enough to throw him down and shatter the lens of his right eye. Power failed to numerous systems and was rerouted. Servos whirred as Fidus Bellator aided its wearer in driving their mammoth weight back up. He looked back.

Bohemond was broken, leaking sealant. The mosaic he covered was pulverised. His rune in Koorland’s fractured visor was a warning amber.

The orks looking on bellowed thunderous approval, stamped their feet, beat their fists on the iron handrails. The galleries trembled, but the engineering expertise on display was sound and there was no danger of their stanchions buckling.

Asger flourished his lightning claws and howled back at them. Krule was more forthright. The Assassin lifted his executioner pistol and drilled a mass-reactive round through an ork’s head. The explosive bolt burst through the back of its skull, and the ork pitched over the rail and thumped into the floor.

For half a second the jeering stopped.

Then the Beast gave a roar that could have cracked armourglass and, as though it were the blow that shattered the dam, the ork elites began pounding down the stairs.

Koorland gave a tight little smile.

Yes. Hit them harder.

The Beast clanked through the pall of its own almighty weapons discharge. Auto-loaders clicked and whirred. Barrels spun off heat. Drum hoppers chewed through belts. Little hatches opened up in the brute’s armour, rubber conveyors porting heavier ordnance towards the battlecannons and rocket launchers. Koorland emptied his storm bolter’s clip into the gantry, seeing a weak spot in the array of loader mechanisms, but the mass-reactive explosions rippled purple-green across an energy field about a metre ahead of the great ork’s armour. The effect rose diagonally along the Beast’s chest as Koorland traversed his aim and moved ponderously aside.

Keep moving.

Fidus Bellator had kept him alive this long, but it was a millstone now, denying him the one advantage that might have bought him as much time as he needed — manoeuvrability.

The Beast opened up as it closed the distance. Auto-rounds and stabbing bolts of green energy mauled the tiles around Koorland’s boots and burst against his armour. The Beast broke into a thumping run, hollering even as its wrist-battery kicked out a storm of abuse, muzzle flare lighting up its face like a tusked horror from a nightmare. Koorland aimed the last round in his magazine and fired, aiming for the eye. The mass-reactive burned up in a vibrant death against the energy shield. Koorland backed ponderously, to mitigate what he could of the Great Beast’s forward momentum. He brought his power sword to a position of guard.

As it had been for Vulkan, so too then for him.

The fate of mankind would be decided hand-to-hand.

The ork swung up its combat weapon. It was a spiked vibro-mace, its head the size of a Space Marine. The haft was twice as long as Koorland. The arm added half that length again. All of it swung at Koorland with primarch-killing force. He was too slow to avoid it, and he knew without needing to try that a parry would not even be worth the attempt.

He was not a primarch.

The mace struck him in the shoulder and launched him across the chamber like a kicked stone. The vibro-blast was a parting gift, an extra metre or so of lift and a drilling numbness down the arm before he smashed into the wall. He fell to the floor on hands and knees, dust crumbling over his shoulders. Targeting reticules spilled over the spidery cracks in his faceplate as they sought locks. His armour emitted a complaining whine as he struggled to get himself back up.

The harder we hit them…

If only Koorland knew how to hit them.

Tyris flicked his bolter’s shot selector to automatic. It felt like time. Orks were flooding down the stairs from the galleries, through arches flanked by sentinel gargants, and into the throne room in their hundreds. He raked one stair, picking his shots still even as his trigger finger kicked them out faster than a mortal man could follow. One ork dropped with a bolt through the mouth, mass-reactive explosion blasting its skull back out through its visor, but the rest of the clip clanged off thick armour and rippling force fields. The Beast aside, they were the biggest greenskins he had ever seen. He reloaded.

‘Simmias, Straton — cover left. Gadreel — forward. Icegrip, with me.’

The warriors of Stalker were a firebase, a wall of bolter fire, but the orks were too big and too well armoured to be held at bay.

Kavalanera and her sisters sallied and drew back, fighting like warrior angels to defend the ork psyker. Tyris had known they could fight, but finally unleashed they were magnificent. They killed like bolts from the heavens, righteous judgement withdrawn the instant it was delivered to leave the orks railing at smoke or left for another ephemeral hand to strike down. Watching Kavalanera herself was like watching the armoured avatar of silent death, summoned forth for one final battle in the Emperor’s name. The enormous servitors did not fight, and for that reason the orks had not thought to attack them yet. They were like stakes in the ground. Laurentis hid behind one, lashing out with a converted power emitter, arcs of current that the rampaging greenskins did not even feel.

At the door, the fight had never stopped.

Commissar Goss’ chainsword banged furiously against an ork’s armour, adamantium teeth fighting for purchase like a man running on ice. He foamed at the mouth, cap on the floor somewhere, grey hair streaming wild as he discharged his plasma pistol into the ork’s chest. It ignored the shot, hacked off the commissar’s arm with its own whining axe-blade, then delivered a boot to the chest that broke the man and heaped him on the ground three metres back. Olug bellowed fury and mashed the butt of his ripper gun through the ork’s face. Brokk held the door single-handedly, wrestling with a mega-armoured ork almost his size. The strain on both faces was incredible. Even over the chaos of melee, Tyris could hear matched sinews creak.

Alpha 13-Jzzal cooly raked the ork mobs with plasma until an axe smashed through the back of his exo-skull. The skitarii ranger dropped with an electrical shiver and then self-destructed, an ultra-near-range implosion from a subdermal melta device taking out his killer’s arm. Asger finished the ork with a decapitating sweep. His lightning claws crackled and spat.

The Wolf Lord’s howl echoed from the rapidly emptying galleries.

It was drowned out by the rumble of engines.

The great gargants standing sentinel around the throne dais revved to full power. Exhaust stacks belched black smoke. Not, Tyris suspected, because the orks lacked the technological capability to engineer something cleaner, but because they enjoyed the sense of power that only a rumbling engine gave. With a discordant blast of war-horns, the war machines started haphazardly forward.

‘Now?’ Tyris voxed, though he doubted Koorland was in a position to respond.

Koorland pushed himself fully upright, back to the wall, as the Beast thudded towards him and swung. Koorland dropped heavily to one knee. The mace blew the wall apart. Vibrations drove deep cracks as high up as the gallery above his head. It swayed alarmingly as several brackets popped their bolts.

He stabbed at the Beast’s belly. It did not even bother to block. The power field nullified the sword’s disruption field, and the blade skittered harmlessly over riveted plates. The Beast used its wrist-battery like knuckle dusters — two-tonne knuckle dusters, worn by a giant. The blow hammered so hard into Koorland’s faceplate that it fried the shock circuits and smacked his head back into the padding. He crunched into the wall. The rim of the helmet bit through the gorget softseals. Atmosphere hissed in and Koorland’s visually augmented array went black.

On the second effort, he managed to tear the helm from the mangled gorget, then gave a deep roar of defiance as the Beast’s knee crushed into his plastron.

Fidus Bellator cracked like a block of stone struck along a plane of weakness. The breath was forced from his chest, his multi-lung supplying his physiology with oxygen in its absence. Systems alerts, mechanical and biological, blurted from mangled audio sounders in his gorget rim. The Beast ground him under its knee.

Koorland gritted his teeth, partially buried in rubble, and calmly ejected his storm bolter’s empty magazine. The Beast levelled its whirring wrist-battery. Not ten centimetres from Koorland’s face. He did not blink.

‘I defy you to my dying breath. Mankind defies you.’

A shriek of punctured metal startled him, expecting instant death as he was, and the dark blade of a power sword sheared through the giant ork’s thigh plate from behind. Koorland laughed then.

The Sword of Sigismund.

The Black Templar’s armour was cracked up the middle, marked by a jagged line of raw ceramite where it had been sealed. Sparks trailed from an exposed power cable near his elbow. He turned a twist on his relic blade and pulled it back. Blood sprayed. The Beast arched its back and howled in pain. It lashed back with its vibro-mace, but the surprise of being injured threw it off and it failed to account for the fact that the High Marshal stood barely in line with its hips. The weapon sailed over Bohemond’s helmet, but the Beast’s knuckles nevertheless caught him a glancing blow that stunned his systems and crashed him to the floor. Blood from what must have been a severed artery in the Beast’s thigh continued to spurt across Koorland’s body.

Koorland felt the pressure on his chest ease as the Beast drew in its wounded leg.

He stepped out of the wall. Half fell. Damaged sections of armour powered down as he stood, the tremendous drag of his Terminator plate like pushing against a moon. He slotted a fresh sickle magazine into his empty storm bolter. Dragonfire rounds. The nearest to hand.

He looked up at the Beast with eyes that swam in and out of focus.

The harder we hit them, the stronger the psychic field grows.

‘For Vulkan,’ he rasped, then opened a channel to Kavalanera. ‘Now.’

The Sister acknowledged with a click.

‘I will relish this moment forever, Beast.’

With Kavalanera leading, the Sisters broke from combat. It was there that Koorland saw the problem they had failed to foresee. The Sisters of Silence were mobbed in close combat by scores of the Beast’s bulkiest elites. Exquisitely as the women fought, as hard as Tyris and Stalker fought to pull them out, they simply could not bring the armoured hulks down fast enough to escape. Even so, Koorland felt a buzz of escalating force that tightened the skin of his forehead.

To Koorland’s astonishment, the staggered withdrawal actually appeared to be a boon in disguise. The psyker was absorbing power slowly, soaking in far more than it could have had it all come down on it in a rush. Its eyes rolled back. Its lids juddered as though electric current was being run though its chains. Froth boiled from its locked jaw. Veins bulged up from its body and turned a mouldy black as it seized uselessly in its restraints.

Clutching its head, the Beast turned round on its good leg.

With a grunt it raised its wrist-battery and fired.

The torrent of bullets and las and weird gravitic blasts mowed through two of the servitors and half a dozen ork elites. Suddenly released, the ork psyker flopped about on the floor like a suffocating fish. The bullet storm howled towards the seizing psyker and would have shredded it had Drevina not thrown herself into its path at the final second. She danced for a moment, then her ravaged body fell on top of the ork’s and the barrage swept on. It took another crimson-armoured Sister in the knee and dropped her. She did not break her vows even to cry out.

The Beast cursed as its myriad barrels whined empty and the auto-loaders set to work.

The remaining Sisters of Silence continued their fighting withdrawal and then, as their injured sister was still dragging herself away from the ork psyker, it detonated.

The ork’s mouth opened wide, a choking, gurgling sound trapped deep in its throat. Its head began to shake, like a loose bolt under pressure. Its eyes opened wide and bulged as though staring into the vivid core of the Primordial Annihilator. Koorland saw an ephemeral green shape swirl above the ork’s head. Sparks flew from its nose. It arched itself on the floor and then its head burst, slamming the back of it hard into the ground and spraying the mosaic tiles with blood and bits of skull.

The psychic blast wave tore the flesh from the last servitor and whipped around the wounded Sister like boiling water around a rock.

Emerald lightning sprayed from the glistening nub of the ork psyker’s exposed brain stem, like watching a weed flourish and die in accelerated playback, like current leaping from a broken wire in search of earth.

It found it.

Asger howled in triumph. Koorland had strength left only to remain upright. That felt like triumph enough.

Psychic feedback raced through the fighting ork mobs with the speed of lightning, a darting witchstorm manifested by the xenos’ collective mind that reached through the eyes into their skulls and tore out their souls. It ripped through the mob, a chain of cranial detonations following messily where it passed. A blood splatter suddenly painted the greasy driver’s window of a gargant from the inside. The war engines ground to a halt. One toppled over. Wet bursts and a pelleting sound evocative of skull fragments on metal sounded from the staircases leading up the galleries and the doors behind Olug and Brokk.

A snaking bolt snapped across the Beast’s tusked jaw, and it dropped to one knee, clutched the sides of its head in both hands and gave vent to a howl of pure, mental agony.

Then it looked up at him and snorted. Its eyes flared like wild things.

Something had gone wrong.

The wounded Sister.

Koorland aimed his storm bolter, range point blank, inside the Beast’s shield bubble, and unloaded the entire magazine into the ork’s face. Pyroclastic jelly burst over the ork’s armour and burned. With a dribbling howl, it knocked the storm bolter from Koorland’s gauntlet with a swipe of its left hand.

Largely unarmoured and unpowered, Koorland felt the reinforced bones of wrist, arm and shoulder shatter under the force. The storm bolter thumped into the wall and skidded off along the floor. His mind blacked itself out to block the pain.

Everything vanished but the feel of the power sword in his other hand.

The Beast slumped back, dazed. Its face was molten wreckage, eyeless, nostrils merged into one flapping gill, wobbling polyps of congealed fat hanging from its lips. It was blind as Koorland drew his blade back one-handed, imbued it with every last straining sinew of Dorn’s stubbornness, and then rammed it through the Beast’s open mouth. The Great Beast spasmed once, mighty enough even in its death throes to rip the sword’s grip from Koorland’s hands as it crashed face-first into the tiles.

And was still.

The whole throne room was still.

Koorland sank to the ground, a sudden weakness of the knees flushing out the battle-anaesthesia that had kept him on his feet for far longer than this one encounter. It was done. He had done it. His brain was, if anything, as numb as his body, and it refused to process the magnitude of what that meant.

He had succeeded where a primarch had failed.

They had succeeded.

Through the jangling tinnitus in his ears, he heard Tyris’ shout of congratulation. He saw Krule saunter across, a smile on his face as he spat on the Beast’s corpse. Surprising that the Assassin had been so close during the fight without Koorland noticing. If he had to guess, he would say that Krule had been protecting him. Laurentis emitted a joyful data-squeal, so overcome that he had slipped into binharic. Asger howled, though not like before. This was for the dead and for a victory to end all victories. It sent a shiver down Koorland’s spine, and he smiled for what felt like the first time in his post-human life, shaking with the withdrawl of adrenaline and the delayed creep-back of pain.

‘We won,’ he said.

What more was there to say than that?

Bohemond reared up over the fallen Beast then, on his knees, and impaled the ork’s heart with his blade. He sagged into it, took a moment, then withdrew a hand to disengage his helm’s gorget seals. It came away with a hiss of magnetic suction. Hands around the cross-hilt of his relic-blade, already on his knees, he bowed his head.

‘The primarch was right to entrust this role to you, brother. Forgive me my doubts, they were unworthy of a servant of the Emperor. What you have made be this day is the greatest victory since the destruction of Horus. If I achieve nothing more in my own service it will be to see your name spoken for eternity in the same esteem as Sigismund himself.’

Koorland took his brother’s hand and the two Space Marines allowed their weight to help the other stand.

The new Imperium began here.

As Koorland clasped the Black Templar’s fizzling elbow seal to congratulate him in kind, he saw the great doors at the far, far end of the throne room thrown open. He heard clamouring alien voices, the clank of a giant, armoured stride, and knew that he had been wrong.

About everything.

Eighteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod, throne room

They had been wrong. So wrong. Koorland saw that now. He looked to the circular dais in the centre of the throne room and its six thrones. Six. He looked to the galleries and, again, six, unique identifiers that marked them apart. Illogical extrapolations ran through his mind as though the gates between what ‘could’ and what ‘could not’ be had been lifted. This was not like the ork empires of the past, not even the last true Waaagh of Urlakk Urg, carried by the iron rule of its single omnipotent ‘emperor’ figure.

There was not one Beast, and there had never been.

There were six. Prime-orks. Each a father to one legion within the whole.

From his position where the defeated ork had thrown him, some way around the circumference of the throne room from the slave’s entrance by which they had entered, Koorland could see the throne that had previously been hidden. It was larger than the others. It was covered with skins and furs, and adorned with black and white checks. As Koorland beheld it, struck by the familiarity of that particular pattern of black and white, the grinding clank of moving armour reached a crescendo and a second Beast passed through the massive main doors.

A second prime-ork.

Or was it the first?

It was greater in stature than the ork Koorland had just fought and encased in armour that was both heavier and more splendid, intricately wrought plates adorned with those black and white jags. A helm with a tusked face made a gory red with encrusted stones enclosed its head. It looked over the ruined gargants to either side of the gate, the hundreds of messily slain orks around the throne room, and emitted a rumbling growl like the war-horn of a Titan. Its gaze set upon the fallen prime-ork and it started forwards. Koorland felt the ground shake. The air around the brute whined as its gauntlets burst into writhing green flame.

This was the ork that had fought Vulkan.

Koorland cursed himself for not seeing it, but then why should he? How could he have reasoned that there could have been more than one Beast?

The how of it did not matter.

He was an Imperial Fist — he should have considered everything.

‘Defend your Lord Commander!’ Bohemond roared, and Kill-Team Stalker opened fire at the same instant, shooting from the chest as they moved at a steady walk to intercept. Bolt-rounds scattered off the prime-ork’s shields. Melta beams and plasma bolts from combi-attachments sizzled across them.

Kavalanera and her three sisters that remained able swiftly overtook Bohemond’s thumping progress. Olug and Brokk bellowed, not far behind. The women flowed across the ogryns and each other, crimson and black, like streams of coloured plasma under the fluctuating control of a multivariate magnetic field, but the prime-ork ignored their power blades as though they were insect stings. Olug barrelled into the great ork’s chest and bounced off. The prime-ork simply walked through him, breaking the ogryn’s hip under its boot, then swatted Brokk contemptuously aside on the edge of its gauntlet. Kavalanera continued to harry. With a growl, the prime-ork drew its gauntlets apart, the fires burning white-green and high, and then thumped them together. There was an implosive clap and a wave of force washed out and knocked the lightly armoured Sisters down.

Koorland heard the change in the thunder of bolter fire. It was missing, cracking along the wall above Koorland’s head. He saw one strike a bracket. The metal plate blew out and the stanchion buckled. The last holding up the gallery.

The whole structure fell away from the wall with a crunch of broken stone.

Bohemond drew sharply up. Asger, too, converging from another angle.

The prime-ork looked up, and the dropped gallery cracked in half over its helmet. Its force field flashed out with a burned stink of ozone and it sank under several tonnes of rock and iron and greenskin dead. Koorland saw the veiled threat of a humanoid shape sprint up one half of the gallery floor and vault up to the prime-ork’s shoulder. Krule. Koorland’s auto-senses were dead, and if they had been unable to track the Assassin before then his eyes had no chance now.

Krule appeared to have a sword in his hand, a long blade that phased in and out of material reality. With silent efficiency, the Assassin buried the weapon in the prime-ork’s neck. The phase blade passed through the prime-ork’s armour as though it just wasn’t there, but either lacked the length to do the same to the greenskin’s throat or found its flesh a tougher prospect.

The prime-ork began to rise, rubble tipping from its shoulders in almighty crashes. It was coated with powder. Bolt-rounds from the kill-team spanked off its unshielded armour.

A vicious twist of the neck sent Krule flying.

The Assassin twisted like an aerial gyro, landed in a roll, drew his executioner pistol and squeezed off bolt-rounds even as he spun. Their effect was no different to those of the Deathwatch.

It was impervious, imperious, and it continued towards Koorland and its beaten brother like an armoured locomotive.

‘Wither before the Emperor’s light, abhorrent,’ cried Bohemond. His ponderous stride bore him into the prime-ork’s path. Tactical Dreadnought armour weighed several tonnes. The vectoral force of a charging Space Marine Terminator was equivalent to being struck by a moving tank, but the prime-ork shunted him aside as though the battleplate was a hollow practice cast.

Asger Warfist slashed across the back of the prime-ork’s legs with similar luck. An up-clip of the giant’s spiked heel left the Wolf Lord on his back.

The last of the Imperial Fists squared himself defiantly. One leg was fully armoured, the other just a knee joint and a boot with some fluid-hydraulic wiring connecting the two to his hip. His torso was a patchwork of missing plates, his gorget ring mangled into a grimace of tortured adamantium. His gun was gone, the arm that would have wielded it useless anyway.

‘Daylight Wall stands forever.’

He lunged for the prime-ork’s groin with his sword. The disruption field was stuttering, caused by power outages from near continuous use, but come the final reckoning that did not matter. The prime-ork took the blow blade-on to its gauntlet palm and trapped it. The monster yanked the relic blade from Koorland’s grip with a strength that was simply irresistible and then, holding it by the blade, struck the grip across its thigh plate. The metal shattered into a dozen pieces.

With a grunt of satisfaction, it cast the last piece aside, planted its boot heel into Koorland’s chest, and shoved him to the floor.

It ground its boot in. Koorland’s solid rib-plate cracked under the weight. His vision turned spotty and black, but his hearing remained sharp.

Its voice was like death from orbit.

‘I am Slaughter.’

After murdering a path through several flights of stairs to reach the broad stone block corridor, Kjarvik’s vox-link with Kill-Team Stalker came back. They were close. He knew that because contact with Clermont, the fleet, or with Thane was still out. At first, his snarled demands for an update were looped back in a growl of static-chopped voices. Then buzzarding cries, barely human in their grief or their anger or both. The second thing Kjarvik knew was that they had failed.

The reasons for that were obvious.

Orks of an especially large breed blocked Umbra’s run on the vast arched gateway at the end of the corridor. They were bulked out in black and white megaplate, appropriately armed for urban combat with powered battle-saws, flamers, and high-volume stubbers.

Under other circumstances, Kjarvik might have doubted his ability to break through such heavy brutes in such numbers, but for once, the luck-spinners spared the Stormcrow a rare smile. The orks had been marching on the gate themselves, too hemmed in now to properly turn and fight the force that struck at their backs.

A blow from Kjarvik’s power fist obliterated a mega-armoured boss from waist to neck. A full magazine of vengeance rounds slowed down another. Blood matted his beard. His braids stuck to his head. Zarrael’s eviscerator was a near-constant meat shriek, white noise above the grunts and the howls and the thunder of heavy firepower. Baldarich’s sword made ribboning flurries of gore. Bohr murdered orks by the dozen with plasma and flame. Phareous’ shield was slick, his bolter still firing. The Iron Snake advanced in a crouch, Atherias walking behind and blazing over his head with bolter and servo-harness. The weapons flashes caused the brilliant purple and gold of his pauldron plate to shine. The Inquisitorial storm troopers made their contribution, pinpoint flurries of las hosing the inevitable gaps that Baldarich and Zarrael’s savagery left behind. Raznick came just behind them, shielding Inquisitor Wienand with his body, whatever neuro-enhancements he had been given allowing him to fire his brace of pistols entirely independently and with astonishing accuracy.

What all of that splendid slaughter told Kjarvik was that they had failed.

The psyker bomb had not worked.

The howl he gave was that of a wolf for its master, and burned his throat like a jawful of winter. He was unsurprised to hear the cries of lamentation from those around him.

‘Push through to the throne room,’ urged Wienand, covering her vox-bead with one hand whilst shooting with her laspistol. ‘Something has gone wrong. I have to see.’

Kjarvik did not need to see. He could already smell the red snow.

With a frenzied gargle, Zarrael tore out an ork’s throat with his bare teeth, dissolved the face of another with a gob of Betcher’s acid, and kicked himself a path to the gate. It was thirty metres high, as dense with imagery as any cave wall on Fenris, but the Flesh Tearer’s wrath cowed its grandeur. It was what lay beyond that put fire under them all.

Kjarvik rushed in behind with a howl, the rest of Kill-Team Umbra at his back, ready to administer the duty for which Koorland had brought them together.

They brought death to the alien.

Once before, Laurentis had witnessed the end of the Imperial Fists. It seemed horribly fitting that he should bear witness again.

He was aware of the Deathwatch and Inquisitorial storm troopers that came in firing through the main doors.

He was aware of the Beast — and it was the Beast, he had no doubt. The titanic ork withdrew its foot from Koorland’s chest, and then, with a rumble of mockery booming from the hollow spaces of its visor, it reached up to unhook its helmet from its gorget. Its flesh was a blackish green, crusted like scar tissue or lignified plant matter. The look it gave Koorland was at once contemptuous and triumphant. Helmet held underarm, it gave the remaining Space Marines and their efforts a derisive look.

It turned and walked away with a sneer.

Once more mankind handed up its best, and again the caprice of the gods had accepted that sacrifice and repaid it in blood.

Asger Warfist howled after it in futility as the Beast waded back into its bodyguard.

The Space Wolf led Kill-Team Stalker and the Sisters of Silence into the attack, Kill-Team Umbra falling on the assaulting mob from the rear. Laurentis was aware of the battle. Retribution so savage and total that even in the narrow-band focus of grief, Laurentis could not have missed it entirely. His eye was blinkered with sorrowful code. His ears carried the nothing whistle of a fluid-pump that did not beat. His small mechanical body was numb in a way that went beyond what its makers had intended.

Glory to the Ominissiah.

He was aware of Bohemond, on his knees and weeping unashamedly over Koorland’s broken body.

In a way that only one whose sensory apparatus was removed from their largely organic brain could experience, Laurentis was aware of it all. It took place in another reality, a noosphere of data-irrelevancy in which he had no interest and had lost the rites to access. All that felt real at that moment lay within the ruin of human flesh and golden-yellow ceramite draped through Bohemond’s arms.

Koorland had not just been humanity’s great symbol of hope. He had been Laurentis’ friend.

‘He needs an Apothecary,’ said Bohemond. The Black Templar wasn’t really looking at Laurentis at all. Much like himself, the Space Marine existed in his pocket space of grief. Behind them a battle raged.

They were both aware of it.

‘There is none,’ said Laurentis.

He knew more about Space Marine biology than most non-Space Marines could profess. He could pinpoint the secondary heart, the oolitic kidney, the pre-stomach. He knew enough to ask the right questions. Not enough to help his friend in any way. Trying not to think too much about what he did, he prodded Koorland’s purpled throat with a digital manipulator. Sensory feedback flowed back through its synthetic axon fibres. Fluid oedema. Larraman coagulation. Crushed cartilage. Like scrunching one’s finger through packing plastek. The incongruous likeness made him squirm and he withdrew the appendage.

The prime-ork had known exactly what had to be destroyed. To eliminate the one thing its rival could not afford to lose.

‘I think… I think that…’

‘No!’ said Bohemond. ‘No, I will not accept it. The line of Dorn must live on.’

Laurentis deployed his extensors for a second examination, this time preparing a full suite of electro-probes and echo-feelers. More out of due diligence than hope. As he extended his tools, a terrific explosion shook the ceiling, ferocious enough to force him to notice it. He rolled his eyeball up and saw light.

The ceiling was cracked. A second detonation blew a hole in it and brought a cataract of frescoed rubble pieces the size of battle tanks crashing down. Immediately under the downfall, the great dais of the six prime-orks was crushed. Spotlights swiped the throne room’s scarred mosaic, followed by the thunderous reports of heavy bolters and the empty prang of return fire from the ground. The signature, circular roar of turbofan engines angled for vertical lift.

An intense beam shone in Laurentis’ eye as it tracked. He blinked, but in the split-second before, he saw a pair of Deathwatch-black Thunderhawk gunships descending through the breached ceiling. They spat fire. Heavy bolters. Lascannons. Too tight for missiles. Lord Thane stood on the assault ramp, waving the embattled storm troopers and Deathwatch aboard.

With no one else of a mind to step into Koorland’s still-warm boots, Inquisitor Wienand gave the order to retreat.

Laurentis was aware of it.

Barely.

But only when Asger Warfist lifted him up under one arm and Bohemond reverently raised Koorland’s body did he pay it any mind.

They had lost.

The last son of Dorn was dead.

Epilogue

‘The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.’

— the remembrancer Thucydides, pre-M0

Ullanor — orbital

Candles flickered, wavering to the hull-dispersed groan of shield hits. The scent and the ethereal haze of incense swirled around the chamber, in and out, with the soft breath of the air cyclers. The small chapel of Alcazar Remembered was buried deep within the heart of the battle-barge. Reliefs portraying the works of the Emperor and the VII Legion were sparse on the walls. A single, unpainted statue of Rogal Dorn stood behind an altar, flanked by a pair of candelabra and an oil-burner made of plain, simple brass.

The last of the Imperial Fists lay in state. The Chaplaincy serfs had done their best with the damage. His shattered torso had been oiled and bound and hidden under full honours. His relic plate had been reassembled and polished until it shone like gold in heaven. His eyes had been closed. The Fists Exemplar no longer had a Chaplain, but the mortals had risen to fill the void and excelled. Perhaps humanity could prosper without the Space Marines after all, as Koorland had suggested they one day must. The space-time cocoon of a stasis field shimmered like a thermal blanket. It made it appear as though Koorland was resting, but somehow it was easier to believe that he was dead.

In the brief time that Thane had known him, he had never seen his Lord Commander rest.

The chapel had space for two dozen Adeptus Astartes, half that if they were in armour, as Thane was. Bohemond and Issachar stood beside him. The High Marshal was in almost as bad a shape as Koorland. He seemed almost angered by that, each slow, deliberate breath coming hotter than the last. The Excoriator’s armour bore no new scars, tasked with fleet command aboard Punished while Thane and Bohemond were engaged on the planet. Whether or not he was plagued by the same sense of dereliction as Thane, the ancient Chapter Master’s face showed nothing.

If he had been but a little quicker…

If he had been able to re-establish contact with that gunship wing just two minutes earlier…

It should have been Thane that had died. Or Bohemond even.

Anyone, but Koorland.

Thane returned to Koorland’s face. He leaned forward, ignoring the tightening stiffness that pulled on his side and made him want to wince. He looked deep into the set of the Imperial Fist’s jaw.

It was not reproach.

‘He looks peaceful.’

‘He looks angry,’ said Bohemond. ‘The Imperium is but half remade. The Emperor’s vision, Vulkan’s admonition — his work is unfinished.’ Thane thought the words disingenuous, since none had protested Koorland’s mission of revivification more sternly. ‘When we return I will stand before the Golden Throne and call a new Crusade in his name.’

‘From whom?’ said Issachar. ‘From where? And with what ships will you transport them? The Navy, the Mechanicus, the Inquisition — we run low on resources, brother.’ Issachar looked down at Koorland. The Excoriator was reserved where Bohemond was reckless, proud where Thane was modest. He was, it was at times easy to forget, more experienced and decorated in war than either of his junior brothers. ‘We must fortify,’ he said. ‘And prepare for the inevitable. We will break the ork’s back over the walls of Terra, just as our ancestors broke the Arch-Traitor.’

Issachar looked at Bohemond. Bohemond looked at Thane. Thane looked at them both. His thoughts placed Verpall, Cuarrion and Vorkogun, and Euclydeas too if the Soul Drinker still lived, interchangeably in their place.

He would not have the Last Wall repeat the mistakes of the High Lords before them. That would be an affront to Koorland’s memory. Whatever power struggles were to follow, he wanted no part of them. He was a Fist Exemplar above all else. There was not a system in his body that had not in some way been modified to serve him better in war, and through him, the Imperium. Always the Imperium.

That sense of duty alone was the ambit of his ambition. It was something that perhaps only one of Oriax Dantalion’s descendents could understand.

Mankind was better.

It deserved better.

Rob Sanders

Shadow of Ullanor

Capturing…

It is a law inflexible, that whatever circumstances fail to destroy a species only serve to enhance it further. Early scientists, wading through their own ignorance, came to understand this in observing the long-lost species of Ancient Terra. Our first primitive steps into the Sol System and the systems beyond confirmed these observations on other worlds. During the Stellar Exodus and the Golden Ages of Expansion, the principle was proven again and again in the dominant xenos species we encountered and studied. We discovered it in the mythological cycles and emergence of the eldar. In the extinction and terrible rebirth of the ancient necrontyr. In the genetically engineered barbarism of the orks.

Every species thinks of its development — its destiny — as its own. This is forward-looking vanity, for those who look back know that we are nothing more than the product of dark and desperate times. A species should embrace its doom. Own it. Acknowledge the part it plays in crafting body, mind, and our presence on planes beyond. The skies have long shown us the way. As the light of distant stars, thousands of years in the travelling, shone down on Ancient Terra and the surface of the Red Planet, we might have seen our fate reflected. While we were still but gawping savages, the ancient races of the galaxy were already fighting by the light of alien suns. Failing. Succeeding. Growing stronger. For only the strong survive.

Strength has many forms, however. The crumbling empire of the eldar and the tombs of the necrontyr may ring with the silence of ages, but only a fool would think their threat consigned to the dusty pages of history. They have been tried and they have been tested but they exist on. They have learned the lessons of calamity. They live the determination of a survivor race. Unlocked potential resides within the horror of their alien flesh.

Some say it is heresy to suggest such things, but like the light of those distant stars, truth finds its way through the obfuscation and darkness of ignorance. Humanity is here and we are no different. Like the eldar, our empire has faltered and we have fallen. Like the necrontyr, we have had to adapt. In many ways, though it might seem abhorrent to admit it, we share the most with the orks. To humanity, they are a plague threatening to engulf the galaxy. To others, we are no different. A scourge of soft flesh and barbarous technologies, whose stated objective — announced with bombast to the void — is to cleanse the stars of xenos presence and assimilate all into an empire. Like the orks, our dominion ebbs and expands. Our strength and appetites grow. In our every defeat lie the seeds of future victories.

First comes the darkness and the thunder, and then the light of the dawn, terrible and true.

One

Segmentum Solar — Coreward Sectors

Worlds ablaze. A decimated empire. A galaxy of green.

If some extragalactic species — some xenos presence, blissfully unknown — had turned its attention to the realm of man, that was what they would have found. An Imperium hollow and without hope. A people scattered, screaming and fleeing for their lives. Planets trailing the smog of destruction through the void. A broken dominion.

The orks were everywhere. They were legion, and they terrorised their victims like monsters of myth. Their brutal technologies were the heralds of apocalyptic doom. Their sheer number was insurmountable. They were a green tide rising, swallowing hive worlds whole. Entire fleets plunged into the depths of their ramshackle barbarity, never to be seen again. The greatest armies of a millennium, uncounted regiments of the Astra Militarum, skitarii legions and Frateris Militia hordes, became nothing more than a bloody sludge through which ork billions stomped as they butchered their way across planets large and small.

High Admiral Thaddeon Trassq, flag officer of the Battlefleet Solar-Rimward, held a thousand battle cruisers and escorts on station in the Fantine Nebula, uncertain of his orders while the surrounding worlds of the Phadrian Cluster burned. Too late the High Admiral realised that his armada was hiding in the path of a different ork fleet entering the subsector. Led by vanguard space hulks that tumbled ahead of the fleet like the colossal chunks of a disintegrating comet, the orks smashed through the tight formation of the Imperial vessels. As battle cruisers and heavy frigates were pushed aside and overwhelmed, a trailing swarm of capsules, landers and assault boats descended upon their majestic wrecks.

In the Nazarex System, millions of agri-worlders perished with their crops as the sudden appearance of a monstrous ork attack moon threw the Praedial Worlds into gravitational chaos. Planets drifted out of their delicate orbits, some spinning towards their colossal sun while others were flung into the frozen darkness of the void.

Entire swathes of Imperial space were left derelict and lifeless in the wake of the destruction. Subsectors crowded with Imperial worlds became planetary mass graves. Smashed cities streamed with smoke, staining the heavens an acrid black. Corpses and body parts hung from vanes and cables, off baroque architecture and shattered statues — testament to the barbarity of the towering monsters storming through streets and structures.

The cardinal world of Koryban-Proctor and cemetery moons of Pulchra V, VI and VII were but shattered remnants, hollowed by the complete eradication of their priestly populations. The Hearth Worlds had been silenced, the boom of their industry and might no more. The colossal forges were now but mountains of scrap among the vapour forests, to be pillaged by the invader.

The creature they called the Beast was everywhere. His monstrous strength was in the brute swing of every primitive blade. His fury could be heard in the crash of rattletrap weaponry. His world-devouring madness could be seen in the fang-faced savagery of the hulking abominations that butchered in his name. The Imperium tottered before his alien wrath and the green inferno that swallowed planet after doomed planet.

Subsectors went dark like candles snuffed out in a cavern. Draznak. Phaal. Trega. Moebius. Solon. Quintarsus. Vulkhano. Battles blazed in the void about the sector Naval base of Gnostangrad and across the Chatasma Deeps. Mandeville points became the sites of horrific ship-to-ship collisions as desperate captains fought to make their jumps into the warp. Others attempted to do so without their Navigators, becoming forever lost in the empyreal storms beyond.

For other worlds the wait for Imperial assistance had simply been too long. Citizens and planetary governors had gone agonising months without word from their sector capital systems or even Terra itself. Urgent and repeated astropathic requests for assistance had been drowned out by announcements of alien invasion and catastrophic military failure in neighbouring systems and subsectors. Worlds without standing regiments of the Astra Militarum or stationed flotillas of Navy cruisers feared the worst in the face of obliteration. Many planets had lost their system ships and planetary militias to the authority and recalls of distant admirals and lord marshals.

Facing their doom in the swarms of space hulks and brute craft entering the system, miserable frater militias were disbanded and surface-to-orbit weaponry silenced. The baroque hives of Eidolon V rang with the screams of madness as the Beast’s unbearable psychic presence shattered minds. On final instructions from Ecclesiarch Mesring, sent shortly before his death, the shrine worlds of Fidessa Secundus and Pontefax XIII were urged to surrender themselves to the alien fury roaring its way across the void. Priests and pilgrims allowed the madness into their hearts, yielding their faith to the apocalyptic power of the Beast. By the time the orks arrived to decimate the towering statues and cathedra, all strata of Ecclesiarchal society on the shrine worlds had surrendered themselves to the Beast’s alien supremacy. On the industrial world of Trantis Di-Delta, the worker clans didn’t even need the intervention of a disgraced High Lord of Terra. They let the alien madness in unbidden and supplicated themselves before the arriving ork warlords, constructing from their communal visions a colossal representation of savage greenskin gods. The monstrous statues, plasma-welded together from assembly line materials, pleased the orks but they didn’t save the clansmen, who were swiftly butchered and sacrificed to the self-same gods.

So much death. Destruction untold. Worlds fell before the irresistible and unreasoning might of the Beast. Populations were slaughtered, Imperial citizens blasted apart, cleaved in two and torn limb from limb by hulking monstrosities. Planets that should have been notations in history books and the sites of grand last stands for colossal Imperial armies instead became only cemetery worlds of shallow graves. Armadas of ancient, cathedralesque battleships were turned into debris fields of scrap and frozen bodies drifting through the blackness. Great star forts and space stations were smashed aside before the might of the ork fleets, sent tumbling towards the surface of the planets about which they held station or into the blaze of system suns. In their wake the merciless creatures left dead worlds of ash, rotting bodies and smouldering scrap.

And those were the fortunate ones. As the green tide crashed on through the segmentum, pockets of systems and worlds were left unmolested. Already swarming with sheltering merchant vessels and freighters, the planets in these areas were overrun by arriving refugees. Order had long since broken down on such worlds but their populations were unified by hope — hope that the greenskin blight of brawn and technological calamity might pass them by. But the orks — creatures of absolute, insatiable appetite — had no such intention.

For the astropaths of the Imperium, around whom planetary governors, Imperial commanders and the captains of isolated vessels gathered, the scale of the horror was painfully apparent. Everyone was desperate for information, news of successes and plans for a coordinated counter-offensive. What the psykers dared not report was that the Segmentum Solar was growing increasingly silent, as astropaths died with the worlds to which they were assigned. For thousands of light years about the Sol System, fleets reported decimation, Imperial armies their annihilation and planets their end. The astropaths could not find it in themselves to tell the terrified and hopeless that no help was coming. That the status conferred by rank, title or planetary tithes could do them no good, or that the remaining armadas were being held back for the strategic defence of Terra and its surrounding systems. Battleships and grand cruisers maintained formation. Colossal troop carriers held at the ready, laden with regiments of Astra Militarum who had no orders to take back doomed worlds, alongside great Ark Mechanicus vessels and mass conveyors laden with Titan god-machines, whose fury lay dormant in vast hangars.

Of organised resistance mounted across the void, the astropaths knew little. Unremembered heroes were too busy fighting and dying where they were to offer assurance to distant victims cowering under green-tinged skies. While common humanity — the Guardsmen, the priests, the hivers, adepts, farmers and servitors — died in their droves, survivors looked to the stars for deliverance. They prayed to the God-Emperor for help and the sons of His mighty sons for salvation. What had the galaxy fought for, a thousand years before, if not for the unity of the Adeptus Astartes? Surely, the Space Marine Chapters would gather as they had done in times past, their strength a shield to protect the weak and defend their Emperor. They did not, however. They could not.

The orks were everywhere. Their attack moons appeared above Adeptus Astartes home worlds. Space hulks smashed into recruitment worlds. Fleets of barbaric craft drifted unannounced into systems in which Space Marine Chapters already fought Traitors and the xenos menace of other invader species. Librarians of all Chapters received calls for assistance all at once. Space Marine companies and strike cruisers were despatched across the void, responding to ancient accords or to reports of unimaginable destruction and warnings from their own sentry stations and outposts. Like dry parchment the void blotched green with enemy intrusions, the appearance of attack moons and armadas. There were so many reports and enemy fronts that Space Marine Chapters, already spread thinly, were forced to prioritise their engagements. As the darkness flashed with void battles and annihilations, the green tide rose, swallowing planets, systems and subsectors. Adeptus Astartes companies, battle-barges and strike cruisers became cut off from the command structures of their own Chapters, and Chapters became cut off from one another.

Driven by some feral instinct and reports of changing xenos migration patterns, the Space Wolves started returning to Fenris in droves. With their home world in the path of a vast enemy armada, the Wolves found themselves in a bitter void battle within their own system against thousands of attack ships carrying millions of orks. Meanwhile, the Ultramarines, used to fighting off ork Waaaghs! at the borders of Ultramar, were swift to respond. As the gargantuan scale of the invasion and the appearance of ork fleets within their domain became apparent, the Ultramarines were recalled from across Ultima Segmentum. With them came companies from the Genesis Chapter, Novamarines and Inceptors, intent on purging Guilliman’s empire of the xenos threat. The Dark Angels, spread across scores of subsectors on various undertakings, struggled to reform and offer a counter-offensive, instead fighting for their lives and those of any civilian populations near where squads and strike cruisers found themselves.

To the galactic north, south, east and west, the Adeptus Astartes fought for survival in the wreckage of a decimated Imperium. While citizens screamed and greenskins roared, the Angels of Death defended dying worlds and struck at the heart of invasion armadas. Drowning in a sea of green death, Space Marines struggled on. Squads were slaughtered without ceremony. Companies were lost attempting to reach the Sol System. Entire Chapters tried to come to Terra’s aid, attempting to break out of ork blockades and rampaging cordons that cut off whole sectors. All failed.

Only the Imperial Fists had been swift and strategic enough to summon their successor Chapters in force to the core systems before the enemy had swarmed the inner segmentum. Only the Imperial Fists had been wise enough to seek the aid of the only living primarch and courageous enough to strike with him at the heart of the ork empire. Only… the last Imperial Fist was dead, slain by the monstrous ork that had made the Imperium his plaything and the galaxy his own. In that one horrific moment, everything changed. The last Imperial Fist had died and hope died with him. A Chapter of the First Founding had been exterminated: the Defenders of Terra were no more.

If the citizens of the Imperium, for all their suffering and screaming, could comprehend such a thing, they would have lost their minds. Every exhausted Guardsman would have laid down his lasgun. Every captain of every vessel would have walked from their command decks. Every Space Marine would have been forced to confront a truth buried deep: that they might have been engineered to be superior exemplars of their species, but in the evolutionary arms race with the greenskin plague, they had lost. For if one Chapter could be destroyed then they all could — and without the Adeptus Astartes, the Imperium was doomed.

Two

Terra — the Imperial Palace

The sun rose over the Imperial Palace.

Rays of light felt their way through the towers, citadels and hives beyond. The elegant architecture of the surrounding fortifications was cast in shadow, while the lamps punctuating the battlement walkway began to dim. Drakan Vangorich walked the ramparts of the Celantine Wall, the tails of his robes gliding along the polished stone. The Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum weaved through the clutter of rare and decorative plants, many of them of off-world origin, and beneath streaming red pennants. He passed statues of long-forgotten Thunder Warriors and monoliths listing in gold the tribes, clans and techno-barbaric warlords gathered under the Emperor’s banner at the end of the Wars of Unification.

Where the battlements widened into a platform overhanging a breathtaking drop from the Palace walls, Vangorich found smooth stone blocks serving as benches, but he did not sit. Instead he stood before the crenellations with his arms folded and his hands buried in his sleeves. A casual observer might have imagined the Grand Master of Assassins to have hidden weapons in there. He did, in fact — but the truth was that it was an unconscious habit, one that he had indulged in increasingly over the past months. He might have been a killer, the overlord of an army of similarly deadly agents of the Imperium, but he was still human and not immune to the anxiety of the times. Vangorich feared no man living or dead, and even held his nerve in the towering presence of humanity’s finest, but the Beast was a raging hurricane of green death swallowing the galaxy, and any man would be a fool to stand fearlessly before the apocalyptic savagery of such a creature.

Vangorich looked down between the crenellations and gave a shiver in the morning chill. It seemed like an unimaginably long way to fall. Stretching his neck in his hood he looked up, glad that the terrible shape of the ork attack moon no longer hung in the heavens. Beyond the dawn skies the Grand Master knew that there was the cold, black void — within which was an empire of broken and besieged worlds. Now, as a High Lord of Terra and with a seat on the Council of Twelve, Vangorich received daily and comprehensive reports: astropathic intelligence gathered from thousands of worlds, star forts, fleets and systems. Robed aides brought him piled stacks of data-slates on a daily, indeed hourly, basis. The reports were no different to those that Vangorich had acquired for himself, previous to his appointment as a High Lord. Now they simply carried an official seal.

His station had changed Drakan Vangorich, despite his best intentions. Palace intrigue and the political games he played seemed more important than ever, given that the tiniest ripples created by the High Lords — for good or for ill — had the power of tsunamis out across the Imperium. Now with a seat at their table himself, Vangorich felt not just the power of his new position but the crushing weight of responsibility. In this terrible game, the Beast held all the cards and had bet every wretched greenskin life on the likelihood that the Imperium would fold. That it would be consumed, as ever, by petty conflicts of its own making and therefore be ripe for destruction. The Beast knew its opponent well.

It was the combination of such feeble bureaucracy and an enemy the like of which the Imperium had never seen that had convinced the Grand Master of the need for action. Intervention. Drastic change — in himself and everyone else. He was convinced that now was the time for such determination. Every delay cost not lives but entire sectors. Every poor decision was not just a political setback but could break the collective will of humanity. Every failure carried with it not only horrific collateral damage but the very real possibility of existential doom. The Beast was coming and Terra was far from ready. His fellow High Lords and the common citizens of Terra were unified in only one thing: they both would only truly realise the need for such readiness with orks in the corridors of the hives and the palaces of the mighty.

It was time for decisive action from people with the backbone to act — High Lords who truly understood that their own private empires and armies were nothing without the Imperium, and that the Imperium was on its knees. High Lords like him.

A pair of Excoriators Space Marines approached along the battlements. Their plate, like the ramparts upon which they strode, was battle-scarred and annotated, a commemoration of the time when their brothers had held the wall against the besieging forces of the Warmaster, centuries before.

Between them they escorted a member of the Ecclesiarchy, a cardinal who cut quite an imposing figure even next to the two Space Marines. Cardinal Creutzfeldt was tall and heavy-set, but carried the extra weight well. He wore his robes and mitre with grizzled authority, while his large belt jangled with smouldering censers and tomes bearing chunky locks. In a tattooed hand he held a crosier that was crowned with a furiously burning brazier.

‘Eminence,’ Vangorich acknowledged.

Up close, Creutzfeldt’s face was a fearful mess. Horrific scars, long-healed, ran down the right side of his face like the tributaries of a delta. They twisted half of his mouth into a permanent snarl. A patch, decorated with the symbol of the Ecclesiarchy, covered his right eye. Creutzfeldt had served as a Ministorum priest in the ranks of the 401st Vymbari Pontificals, earning his scars against the orks of Fendrik’s World in an extended engagement that had all but claimed the regiment.

‘My lord,’ Creutzfeldt returned. Having taken a spear to the chest against the selfsame orks, his voice was a rasp. Still strong with a warrior’s pride and used to carrying a cardinal’s authority, he felt slightly awkward in expressing deference to a High Lord of Terra. Being used to sycophants and flatterers, many on the Council would have taken umbrage at such reservation. Men like Creutzfeldt made them nervous — men who had seen some of the Imperium and had suffered with it.

Vangorich liked him. He was exactly what the Grand Master needed.

‘My condolences,’ Vangorich said, ‘on your great loss, cardinal.’

‘My thanks,’ Creutzfeldt said. ‘With so many weighty matters on the mind of a High Lord, it is kind of you to spare a thought for the people of Aquillius.’

‘And for Fleur-de-Fides before,’ Vangorich added. After losing the cardinal world of Fleur-de-Fides to the Beast, Creutzfeldt had been reassigned to the seat of Aquillius but before he could even reach his new world, it too had been taken by the orks. ‘Tragedies both.’

‘Thank you, my lord.’

‘I have asked you here, Abriel — may I use your first name?’ Vangorich said. He didn’t wait for the cardinal to answer. ‘I have asked you here to consult with you about a very important appointment. As you no doubt have heard, Ecclesiarch Mesring was… removed from office.’

‘High Lord Mesring’s faith was tested,’ Creutzfeldt said, his voice rasping with unforced hatred. ‘He failed that test. He failed his God-Emperor, all Terra and the Imperium of Man. His release was a mercy the xenos-worshipping sack of wine did not deserve. Forgive me, my lord.’

‘No, please,’ Vangorich said. ‘These are emotive matters. His betrayal must have been a shock. With billions of the Emperor’s faithful subjects looking to the Ecclesiarchy for leadership, it would be unwise to leave High Lord Mesring’s seat empty for too long.’ He didn’t make mention of Koorland’s decree that the head of the Adeptus Ministorum no longer counted among the High Lords; he didn’t need to.

‘The orks are a grave threat, indeed,’ Creutzfeldt agreed, after a long uncomfortable pause. ‘If the people are to prevail against them, if their faith is to carry them through these terrible times, then they need to be shepherded to higher spiritual ground. Structures need to be maintained. Figureheads visible. Leadership unquestioned.’

‘This is why I am talking to you, Abriel,’ Vangorich said, looking off into the sunrise, ‘among other strong candidates in the ranks of the priesthood. I have been charged with finding an appropriate replacement. An Ecclesiarch for these dark times.’

‘You have spoken to Malachai?’ Creutzfeldt asked. ‘Shraile? Gorlandriaz?’

‘Among others,’ Vangorich said. He hadn’t, but he would not be drawn on the matter. Vangorich took his responsibility seriously but if the Imperium survived the greenskin apocalypse, then he would need a High Lord of the Adeptus Ministorum that he could control. He needed continued influence in at least one seat that was not his own. Creutzfeldt might indeed be that man but the Grand Master of Assassins had little intention of giving up the seat just yet.

‘Of course.’

‘I would be interested to hear your opinion on our present circumstances,’ Vangorich said.

‘I have fought the orks,’ Cardinal Creutzfeldt told him. ‘There is not a species in the galaxy, among all the rancid xenos-filth that pollutes the void, as mindlessly destructive. They live to fight. To kill. To be the end of all about them. And these invaders — the ones that are extinguishing our worlds one by one across the segmentum, led by this monstrous Beast — they are a breed apart. They are like no adversary we have ever faced. I am a humble servant of the God-Emperor and even I do not feel it heretical to claim that even He would have struggled to contain this threat.’

‘As a humble servant of the God-Emperor,’ Vangorich echoed him, ‘do you feel that we could be witnessing the end of the Imperium?’

Creutzfeldt looked at Vangorich, who in turn stared grimly into the rising sun.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ the cardinal said, ‘but I feel that question to be a double-edged sword.’

‘It is a simple enough question,’ the Grand Master said absently.

‘If I tell you, without doubt, that we can exterminate the green plague,’ Creutzfeldt said, ‘as any in my position might be tempted to do, you would discount me as a fool living the fantasy of an Imperium long past.’

‘And if you tell me that we are doomed?’ Vangorich asked.

‘Then I would be a fatalistic fool,’ said Creutzfeldt, ‘of no use nor ornament to you or the Imperium.’

Beneath the glorious dawn, Drakan Vangorich came to a decision. He turned to the cardinal.

‘Then forget who I am,’ the Grand Master said. ‘Let me be but one amongst billions. A terrified soul, looking to my confessor for guidance, for comfort, for a truth Imperial. Cardinal, let me unburden my soul to you.’

Vangorich knelt before Creutzfeldt on the ramparts, his hooded head lowered.

‘As you wish, my lord,’ the cardinal said, making the sign of the aquila above the Grand Master of Assassins. ‘For even the strongest are allowed their doubts and fears. A man would not be a man without them. Speak, then, my lord. As if speaking before the God-Emperor Himself, who sees all, who knows all. Unburden your soul.’

‘I have lived a life of deaths,’ Vangorich told him. ‘All necessary. All in service of a stronger Imperium.’

‘The Emperor’s realm was built upon such necessities,’ Creutzfeldt said.

‘I am a blade,’ the Grand Master said, ‘in a box of blunt tools. Tools that seek to dull my edge.’

‘We all live to be of use, my lord.’

‘For so long, I have embodied the fears of others. But now I live my own.’

‘As do we all.’

‘And now all your fears are mine also,’ Vangorich said. ‘I bear the burden of the man who would act, who could act — but does not, in the forlorn hope that others will come to their senses and do what must be done.’

‘It will happen.’

‘I am not so sure,’ the Grand Master said. ‘And I become less sure, every day.’

‘The Imperium has stood for thousands of years, my lord,’ the cardinal assured him.

‘And I fear it will not last the passage of a single year more,’ Vangorich admitted. ‘We have seen our armies decimated and our fleets smashed. Impregnable fortress worlds have fallen and the industry of forge worlds is silenced. By the hour, we lose not ships and soldiers to the Beast but hive worlds and subsectors. Up until now Terra has been a healthy world in a gangrenous empire. But the orks are coming. The green tide rises about us. Terra is doomed, and with it, the Imperium of Man.’

‘I fear you underestimate the fortitude of the Emperor’s subjects, my lord,’ Creutzfeldt said.

‘As those subjects have underestimated the orks?’ the Grand Master returned. ‘I know it might not be a common sentiment to hear uttered within these hallowed halls, but the Imperium has a long history of overestimating itself.’

‘Well, my lord,’ the cardinal said, uncomfortable with such truths, ‘you would know better than I. I might not know much, but I know that the Imperium still stands.’

‘True,’ Vangorich said. ‘But for how long, Eminence? Fleur-de-Fides stood in honour of the Emperor but months ago. As did Aquillius. Now they are but mountains of smouldering masonry, turning silently in the void.’

‘But Terra,’ Creutzfeldt said, ‘is called Ancient for a reason.’

‘We stand on walls,’ Vangorich reminded him, ‘that barely a thousand years ago were crumbling before the might of the renegade Warmaster. You talk of the endurance of the past. I, like the rest of the Imperium, cannot afford that luxury. I live the threats of the present. The fears of the future.’

‘My lord…’

‘Forgive me,’ Vangorich said. ‘I go too far. You see kneeling before you a man at odds with himself and all else. I blame the High Lords for their intransigence and politics. The people for their blindness. Myself for sitting idly on my talents.’

‘I see that,’ Creutzfeldt said. ‘All the Emperor asks of us is that we act in accordance with our unique gifts. You are a man of action. My advice would be to act.’

‘Thank you for your honesty,’ Vangorich said. He lowered his hooded head and half nodded to himself. He had reached a dark decision. ‘I know that could not have been easy, especially in the viper’s nest of faith and politics that is the Imperial Palace. Eminence, would you do me one last service?’

‘Of course, Grand Master,’ Creutzfeldt told him.

‘Would you bless me?’ Vangorich said. ‘I feel the need for the Emperor’s benediction in these dark times.’

‘It would be my honour,’ the cardinal said.

Creutzfeldt put his tattooed hand on the crown of the Grand Master’s hooded head, speaking the benedictions and blessings of the God-Emperor as Vangorich knelt before him. As the cardinal drew back his hand, the Grand Master rose.

‘A thousand thanks,’ Vangorich said, ‘for your confidence and your service to a beleaguered Imperium.’

‘If there is anything more I can do to serve the Imperium,’ Creutzfeldt said, lowering his head, ‘then do not hesitate to call upon me.’ He brought a fat thumb up to his lips. A tiny cut bled on the digit and the cardinal sucked it clean.

‘As you say, cardinal,’ Vangorich said, ‘woe betide the foe that underestimates the Imperium of Man. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are other matters that demand my attention.’

‘My lord,’ Creutzfeldt said, bowing and backing away from the Grand Master. He turned and tapped his way along the battlements with his smouldering crosier.

Vangorich watched him go. The cardinal would be making his way through the monstrous halls and chambers of the Palace, back to the Ecclesiarchal quarters set aside for his visit. There he would take ill and crash to the polished floor of his chambers. For where bullet and blade had failed to fell Abriel Creutzfeldt on Fendrik’s World, a microscopic pinprick of lethal poison would end the cardinal. He would be found dead, his heart having finally given out after the many trials of his hard and illustrious life.

Vangorich regretted the decision. He liked Creutzfeldt. As he knelt before him, the poison-tip slivers of crystal he wore in his hair waiting to pierce his hood and the cardinal’s unsuspecting flesh, he had wavered. The cardinal would have made an excellent High Lord of the Adeptus Ministorum, an Ecclesiarch the floundering Imperium deserved and needed. Unfortunately, Vangorich’s need for secrecy and security trumped all other concerns. He had let his guard down. Expressed genuine fears and given voice to thoughts a High Lord of Terra could not afford to have. He could not allow word of such weakness to leave the cardinal’s lips, and so he asked for a blessing, and the cardinal’s hand on his head.

As ever, Vangorich was a walking arsenal of silent death. If he were to be searched — a scandal for a High Lord of Terra — the Adeptus Custodes would find no blades or pistols. He carried disguised and concealed weaponry that the blunt security measures of the Palace were ill-equipped to detect. He had made a choice to deploy that weaponry and to end an ally he could not now afford to have.

These were the dark choices of a man of his station, and it was time to make more. While humanity died by the world and the Adeptus Astartes fought for their superhuman lives, Drakan Vangorich would not allow Terra to fall. Like a colossal edifice tottering on faltering supports, the Imperium needed to be strengthened. Reinforced. Structural weaknesses would be torn out and new foundations established. It needed men and women who would lift a smashed Imperium upon their shoulders, rather than cowards content to wander through the wreckage full of fears and excuses, cowards who hid within the walls of their Emperor’s fortress — dead men walking everyone else to their doom through the halls and corridors of the Palace.

Vangorich thought on the bodies he would have to step over to secure such a future. With worlds dying, primarchs dying, First Founding Chapters being exterminated to a man, Drakan Vangorich wasn’t sure that anyone would notice.

Three

Inwit — the Splintering Land

Cold. Dark.

The nightside of Inwit was a swirling black storm of pain and numbness. Out on the ice wastes, away from the baroque glory of the hives and the welcome warmth of a distant sun, there was a solemn gathering. When the Adeptus Astartes entered a system or descended upon a world, such arrivals were usually accompanied by destruction and bombast. With orbital bombardment and the descent of drop pods. With death.

Not so with Inwit. The ice world hung glistening in the void, its peace left reverently undisturbed. It was an important world of the Imperium. A capital of a system cluster. A sector Naval base. The assembly ground for local Astra Militarum regiments.

The status of these establishments meant little to the Space Marines. What did matter was the history of the frozen world, for it had witnessed the arrival of a primarch. Inwit had been the hallowed home world of Rogal Dorn.

It had been appropriate, therefore, following the horrifying events on Ullanor, that the bearers of Dorn’s genetic legacy should congregate on Inwit. In silence. In mourning. In unity. The Imperial Fists had been destroyed. The last of their noble number had lost his life, and with him a Chapter of the First Founding had been lost to the Imperium. Only their Successors remained, each Excoriator, Crimson Fist, Black Templar, Soul Drinker, Executioner, Iron Knight and Fist Exemplar carrying with him all that was left of the Imperial Fists. All that was left of Dorn. So there, on the dark side of Inwit, in the flesh-searing cold, the Successors of the Imperial Fists gathered to honour their fallen brethren.

Without informing the planetary governor, the Admiral of the Fleet or the ruling huscarls, Adeptus Astartes frigates made their silent and sombre approach before deploying their gunships. Using their training and knowledge of Inwit’s defences, representatives of the seven Successor Chapters made atmospheric entry on the dark side of the planet without being detected. It was not difficult for the Space Marines, especially with every eye and augur directed at the void in expectation of the Beast’s coming. The rolling in of the green tide. The arrival of the apocalypse.

Coming in low across the predator-stalked wilderness that was the Splintering Land, Thunderhawks homed in on a ritual beacon — a beacon announcing in code the impromptu inception of the Feast of Blades. As reigning champions, the Fists Exemplar had the right to announce the Feast. With the Imperial Fists destroyed and the Chapter Masters of the Successors due to meet, Thane could think of no better way to commemorate the loss of their noble brothers.

Sending for the Sword of Sebastus — the blade awarded to the Chapter whose champion emerged victorious — Thane had summoned the Chapter Masters of the Imperial Fists Successors to Inwit. Dorn had become a man there; more than a man. He had led his Legion into the Heresy and into the trials of the Iron Cage that had been waiting for them thereafter. He emerged carrying the Sword of Sebastus, a weapon that came to be known as the Dornsblade. It was the honour of Chapters victorious in the Feast of Blades to receive the relic-weapon’s custodianship. With their reigning champion, Kalman Volk, lost on Eidolica, Thane decided to honour all three of Volk, Chapter Master Koorland and the Dornsblade by taking the champion’s place himself.

Thane stepped out onto the frozen floor of the arena. Without his plate, the Chapter Master was a rime-encrusted sculpture of scars and muscle. On this occasion, it had been decided that the combatants should fight not in power armour, but in carapace armour, as had been the tradition in ages past. In their frozen fists each gripped a simple gladius, weapons taken from the frigates’ fighting cages. While still holding an edge, the battered blades were notched and simple in design. With every member of every Successor Chapter needed to defend the Imperium, no one wanted to risk an accidental death.

Pain had been the path of the Imperial Fists, however. They indulged their agonies in the pain-glove, on their fortress battlements and in the bloody siege-breaking assaults for which they were famous. While deaths were undesirable during any Feast, the ceremony demanded that the combatants gave each other their best. That meant the brutality of bruises, sliced flesh, smashed teeth, broken bones and sense knocked clean from skulls. Through the infliction of such pain, one battling participant upon another, each Space Marine sought to achieve communion with their brothers and their primarch.

It was snowing. Flakes sizzled on the roaring braziers that burned about the arena, their guttering flames struggling in the stormy darkness. Beneath his boots, Thane felt the ice creak. The arena had been hastily hewn from the bleak landscape of the Splintered Land. Black mountains rose about them on all sides, and the hollow between had been decorated with blocks of ice to create an arena of frozen angularity. While blocks were used to create obstacles within, the ice forming the arena’s exterior was crowded with the silhouettes of Space Marines. The armoured shapes of Crimson Fists standing with Fists Exemplar. Soul Drinkers side by side with Executioners. Iron Knights holding their own before the storm while Excoriators exchanged solemn encouragements with Black Templars. Chapter serfs and servitors of all the Chapters moved about their masters, seeing to their sparse needs. Gunships idled on the terraced mountainsides, providing heat and shelter for those that needed it. Meanwhile, the icy maelstrom and perpetual darkness closed in, the Feast of Blades all but lost in the howl and bluster of Inwit’s fury.

Stabbing his blade into the ice, Thane knelt down and scooped up a handful of snow. Rubbing it between his palms, he washed the blood of previous opponents from his hands. Something felt broken in his left forearm, his right eye was swollen and bloodshot, while the ragged slice across his chest was knitted together with ice. All over, his flesh burned with the deep cold of the planet. Thane felt the eyes of the gathered Space Marines on him. Chapter Masters like Cuarrion and Verpall, looking on with grim approval. Fists Exemplar, a cold pride thumping in their chests. Champions broken and bested by the Chapter Master, like Stormon Valdred of the Black Templars and Morion Abermort from the ranks of the Iron Knights. Gasparian Riguez, representing the Crimson Fists, was still unconscious.

Thane pulled his gladius from the chill embrace of the arena floor. It had come to this. The Excoriator, Dathan Tychor, and himself, ready to smash each other into the frozen surface of Dorn-blessed Inwit, in honour of a fallen Chapter. He felt the surrounding Space Marines feeding off the torment and expectation. They had to do something with their bottomless grief. Their superhuman rage. Their brotherly love.

Opposite, Chapter Master Issachar was conferring with his champion. With his words stolen by the wind, Thane nonetheless saw him nod his respect through the darkness and snow. Thane nodded back, as Sergeant Tychor jumped down from the ice blocks delineating the arena. As the Excoriator trudged through the snow towards him, Thane could see that the Space Marine was taller than he, and broad. His face and chest were a branching and bifurcating pattern of stapled scars, funnelling in towards the ragged tissue of his right arm. The limb was missing. Instead, the flesh was fused to a heavy-duty shoulder socket and a bionic replacement for an arm. It was an old cybernetic, dented and scuffed, but the sergeant looked like he had been attached to it a long time and knew how to use it.

An Excoriator called out from the surrounding crowd before throwing a blood-stained gladius through the gelid air. It flew blade over pommel across the arena. Tychor had broken his gladius in his previous battle against the Crimson Fist, Riguez. For a moment it looked like Tychor was going to let the gladius fly by, until, with a sudden movement, the champion snatched it out of the air with his bionic hand. To make matters worse, as he stood before Thane, he passed the blade from his right hand to his left and then back again. Clearly ambidextrous, the sergeant finally settled on his left hand for the gladius, leaving the bludgeoning metal of his bionic fist free. He gave the Chapter Master a grim and disarming smile of confidence.

‘Dorn demands your best,’ Thane told the Excoriator. It was almost an order. ‘I demand it too, brother.’

‘You will get it,’ Tychor assured him. ‘Every swing of my blade shall honour Koorland and his Imperial Fists. I won’t disappoint you.’

The mangled Excoriator lifted his blade and with a grim nod Thane tapped the end of his gladius against it. Taking several steps back through the snow the two Space Marines began to circle one another. Tychor gave the Chapter Master the confidence of a good-natured smile, frozen to his face like a mask. In return Thane had for the Excoriator the grim rawness of a bloodshot eye. He blinked as the pair of them circled, the snow swirling into his face.

Within the space of that blink, Tychor had passed his blade back to the metal digits of his right hand. With the speed of his bionics, he swung for Thane. The Chapter Master was faster, however and slipped straight into a powered turn. He had expected his opponent to make the most of the blinding snow and had heard the whine of the bionic’s servos milliseconds before the Excoriator had unleashed its hydraulic fury.

As he turned, Thane brought his own blade around in a clean and savage riposte. He intended to slash the edge of his weapon across the flesh of Tychor’s exposed back, leaving him with another precious scar. The bionic arm came around again, however, batting Thane’s blade aside with enhanced power and speed. Thane felt the force ring through the metal of his gladius, and then the gut-wrenching thud of Tychor’s boot in his midriff.

The Chapter Master grunted and stumbled back. The Excoriator wasn’t done with him, however. He came at Thane again and his gladius flashed in the guttering brazier light, coming down with pneumatic certainty. Thane smashed the blade aside again and again, the broken bone in his arm throbbing with every impact.

Abruptly their swords locked, the frozen metal of the weapons sliding down each other. The blades stuck in the deep cold of Inwit’s night. Thane capitalised, grabbing Tychor’s hilt-clutching hands in his own. Turning, he hauled the hulking Excoriator over his shoulder. The brutal throw sent the sergeant crashing into the ice. Tychor recovered quickly, rolling off his augmented shoulder and back onto his feet.

Thane ran at him, jumping to one side and jabbing in with his weapon. With a shower of sparks, Tychor smashed it aside with the back of his bionic hand. The duel devolved into a sequence of merciless manoeuvres: muscular bodies arching, arms reaching, blades clashing. With the sword in his left hand, the sergeant weaved, stabbed and slashed at Thane. The Chapter Master moved his own blade through a sequence of desperate deflections, turning and bringing the gladius over his head and behind him to protect his back. As the battle intensified, Space Marines on the surrounding ice blocks leaned in. The tip of Thane’s blade nicked the Excoriator above the eye, while the sergeant’s own opened up the muscle on Thane’s shoulder.

With blood in Tychor’s eyes, Thane pressed his advantage. Holding the gladius with both hands he brought down the blade with a cleaving motion. Tychor stumbled back, holding his bionic arm up to absorb the blow. Denting the forearm’s metal with the force, the Chapter Master aimed to repeat the manoeuvre — to cut through the armour and workings of the augmented limb, if he had to. The sergeant absorbed the power of the blow and with clenched teeth pushed against the blade, knocking Thane back.

The Fist Exemplar’s back hit an ice block situated in the middle of the arena, hard enough to leave cracks in the surface. Suddenly, Tychor was everywhere. Pinning Thane to the block with his sweeps and stabbing motions, the Excoriator crowded his opponent. Thane ducked and leaned out of the path of the blade as it carved up the ice at his back. The tip of the gladius hissed into the surface of the block as a manoeuvre designed to skewer him through the midriff went wide. The bionic fist came in like a hammer, narrowly missing Thane’s head and smashing free fragments of ice.

With the pair of Space Marines enveloped in a cloud of ice crystals, Thane passed his gladius between his hands and turned it about. Clutching the hilt, he braced his forearm behind the blade. As the pneumatic swing of the Excoriator’s bionic arm came in again, Thane was ready for it. While the power behind the blow almost knocked him into the ice, the squealing, sparking edge of the blade took the impact. Coming back up off his bending knees, Thane hammered his right fist home in Tychor’s stomach. It was like hitting stone, but after a second and third gut-pounding slug to the midriff, Thane forced his opponent back.

With grimaces of pain and determination carved onto their frost-burnt features, Thane and Tychor fought on. Their bodies became a camouflaged pattern of red as their blood steamed and froze to their skin. As Chapter Masters, battle-brothers and serfs watched the titanic battle, they were forced from their positions on the block wall of the arena as the two opponents fought their way along.

Thane didn’t know what drove the Excoriators sergeant. He had bested Chapter champions and was now holding his own against a Chapter Master. Thane cursed himself for such a foolish dismissal. His bruised bones and sliced flesh testified to Tychor’s natural skill and battlefield experience. What were sergeants and captains — and Thane had faced both in the arena — but the Masters of Chapters in waiting? He could be exchanging blows with a future Chapter Master of the Excoriators. How could Koorland have possibly known that one day he would be Master of his own Chapter?

What had started as a noble battle of ceremony and bladework had turned into a savage brawl. Neither Exemplar nor Excoriator wanted to concede the fight — not with the spirits of their Imperial Fists brothers watching over them. The Excoriators had a reputation for indomitability, earned long ago when they still wore the legionary yellow of the Imperial Fists. They were attrition fighters in the noblest tradition, their craft learned on the walls of the Imperial Palace, defending their position against blood-crazed World Eaters and the thunder of the Iron Warriors. Thane doubted that a champion like Dathan Tychor knew how to surrender.

Thane and the Excoriator slashed and pounded each other about the arena, the cold scalding them back to their senses as their bodies crashed into ice blocks and the frozen floor. Thane became aware of voices and movement from around the arena. Fists Exemplar were calling out their protestations. Excoriators were arguing with them. Ishmael Korda, the Apothecary of Thane’s Second Company, had even dropped down into the arena, ready to administer treatment. Thane slowed the thud of his hearts and allowed a hand to come up. He held an outstretched palm to his Fists Exemplar, to Apothecary Korda, and to Chapter Master Issachar — who also seemed ready to call off his champion.

Taking an agonising breath, Thane looked up at Sergeant Tychor. He could see a cold determination in his eyes. Dorn’s determination.

‘Submit,’ the Excoriator said, his words an entreaty lost in the storm.

‘And dishonour us both?’ Thane returned before the pair once again clashed frozen blades.

Like the battered, blood-streaked Excoriator, Thane was at the epicentre of a galaxy of pain. In the mirror of Tychor’s blade he saw reflected the faces of the greenskin invader, hulking monsters of tusks, blood-red eyes and alien barbarism. Each staggering blow of the bionic fist became the quake of world-shaking ordnance or the planet-tearing upheaval of gravitational weaponry. Thane’s body was a field of battle, the burning agony of each wound in his freezing flesh like notations on a map. Engagements fought and primarchs lost. In Tychor’s furious features he thought he saw the ghost of Koorland’s own — the last Imperial Fist fighting his way into a future that belonged to someone else, leading a spectral Chapter, a fallen brotherhood, into eternity.

Koorland was not there and neither were his Imperial Fists. Only their noble Successors, fighting on. Honouring their name and upholding their traditions. Beneath the scorched surface of his own armour and the blue, ivory, grey and black of his brothers’ plate burned the yellow of a Legion unbroken. For a moment, amongst the fury of crashing blades, the crunch of snow and grunts of superhuman exertion, Thane felt the wisdom of the primarch. Rogal Dorn — loyal, unflinching and resolute. The shield of Terra and most trusted of the Emperor’s sons. Dorn, who had railed against the breaking of his mighty Legion and purged his grief with battle and pain. Amongst the savage bladework and the agony of his wounds, the Chapter Master felt a flash of inspiration. An idea hot from the heart. From the abyssal darkness of his breast, where hope had gone to die, sprang forth a concept fully-formed and burning with possibility.

‘Wait,’ Thane found himself saying, but the damage had already been done. He had become distracted and Tychordid not waste his opportunity. The Excoriator’s blade smashed Thane’s from his frozen hand. Before Thane had chance to register the manoeuvre, Tychor’s sword was hauled back and came thrusting for the Chapter Master’s stomach. Thane grabbed for the sergeant’s arm and the pair fought for control of the weapon. The tip of the blade pushed on through, into the flesh of Thane’s muscular side. Tychor heaved at the blade, while the Chapter Master held him back.

The sergeant was powerfully built and burned with an indomitable will. He had brought honour to himself and his Chapter in the arena. For Thane, however, there was more at stake than the honour of a single battle-brother, or a thousand such. With a snarl he powered Tychor’s arm back and pulled the tip of the blade from his bleeding side.

‘I have something of yours,’ Thane told his opponent. With agonising and incremental movements he pressed the gladius blade back at the Excoriator. With a final thrust Thane forced the tip of the sword into the champion’s scarified flesh, between his shoulder and the fused interface of the replacement limb. Tychor roared as the blade sank through his muscle. ‘Have it back.’

Thane didn’t stop there. He twisted the gladius blade within the sergeant’s flesh, drawing a howl from the Excoriator. The bionic limb locked in place as the turning gladius prised its interfaces from nerve and bone.

Thane threw himself around, wrenching the hilt of the impaling blade away from the sergeant. With the horrible popping of bone and interface lines, he tore the bionic limb free of its anchorage. As the metal limb crashed to the arena floor, sparking and twitching, gore spattered from the ruined shoulder.

He pointed the gladius at Tychor. ‘Submit, brother.’

Silence replied. Thane held the blade, its point dimpling the side of the champion’s throat. He would not ask again. He had been right about the Excoriators. The sergeant would have rather died than submitted in the arena, and Thane would need such qualities in the weeks and months to come. He had no intention of beating them out of a worthy opponent.

Thane looked to Chapter Master Issachar. The Excoriator was halfway into the arena, with his Space Marines and Bohemond of the Black Templars.

‘Enough?’ Thane said, his voice hoarse with pain and exertion.

Issachar nodded.

Thane tossed the gladius into the darkness of the storm and held out his hand. Blinking blood and snow from his eyes, the Excoriators champion took it. The Chapter Master drew the indefatigable sergeant to him with the handclasp of a brother, and as he did so, another arena was created about them. Not of block and ice, but of flesh and honour. Chapter Masters and their Space Marines closed in, followed by attendant serfs and servitors. They came up behind Thane and Tychor, laying cloaks of yellow loosely across their frost-burnt backs. Apothecaries moved in to tend to their champions’ wounds.

‘Then I see no reason why the honour of victory cannot be shared,’ Thane announced to them all. He saw immediate discomfort in the Excoriator’s eyes. The sergeant’s pride would never allow him to accept a victory unearned. ‘Shared between all the descendants of Dorn — all the worthy Successors of his Imperial Fists. For beneath our plate are we not all still Imperial Fists? Was not their blood the same as our own — the blood we have spilled at this Feast, in this arena, in their memory?’

‘What are you saying?’ Issachar of the Excoriators asked, looking to Cuarrion, Euclydeas, Bohemond, Vorkogun and Verpall each in turn before returning his gaze to Thane.

‘That we should undo what has been done,’ said Thane. ‘There is not a brother among us who, if he could, would not have sacrificed all to save Koorland, the Imperial Fists or the Emperor’s Imperium. What if we can?’

‘How?’ Issachar pushed.

‘By carrying out the primarch’s wishes,’ Thane told them. ‘We all know how it wounded Dorn to break his Legion. The grief of it never left him. Imagine how he would have felt to see this day come to pass. Imagine what he would do now, if he could have attended this Feast. What he would tell us. Of course, the loss of the Imperial Fists will be remembered — will be honoured by all the Chapters here present. But all of the Chapters here were Imperial Fists once… and could be again.’

He let the idea sink home. The pain and trials of the arena battle had lent Thane clarity and some scintilla of the primarch’s wisdom. He allowed the Space Marines and their Chapter Masters a moment to take in the enormity and significance of what he was proposing.

‘The Imperium is not ready to lose a First Founding Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes,’ Thane said, ‘let alone the Defenders of Terra. Not now. Not with the galaxy collapsing around it and an alien armageddon to still face. And why should the people of the Imperium ever know? Why should they ever experience such fear and uncertainty? We can be their shield and protect them from these truths, just as we shall protect them from this galactic predator.

‘Let every Successor give back a little of what it took to build their honoured Chapters — in vessels, weapons, battle-brothers and plate. And for Dorn’s sake, let that plate be painted yellow.’

Thane looked around the gathering. At Verpall and Bohemond, who nodded solemnly. At Vorkogun and Euclydeas, their faces set in stern approbation. At Cuarrion of the Crimson Fists, who even ventured a grim smile. At Chapter Master Issachar, who strode forward to take the Sword of Sebastus from the serf who had brought it forth.

The sword’s elegance was its simplicity. Crafted from a single piece of adamantium, its pommel was a prism and its crossguard was stamped with the numerals VII. Its blade was polished to a mirror finish. Issachar held the weapon up before the gathered Space Marines. For a moment, Thane saw his battered reflection in the blade. That moment ended as Chapter Master Issachar gave the Dornsblade to him.

‘For Dorn’s sake?’ Issachar said. ‘For Dorn’s sake, let the best of us — victorious in the Feast and brother to all of us — take his rightful place as Master of the Imperial Fists. Let his name be carved into the bones of Rogal Dorn, and let no son of Dorn speak beyond our brotherhood of this again.’

With grave reverence, Maximus Thane took the offered Sword of Sebastus. There were no words for such an honour and so the Space Marine marked the moment as his primarch would have done: with silent solemnity.

‘What now, Chapter Master?’ Issachar asked finally, the storm intensifying about them.

‘Now we return to Terra,’ Thane said, in syllables of steel. ‘To gather our strength. For the Imperial Fists and their Successors go to a war the like of which we have never seen.’

‘And what of the mistakes of the past,’ Issachar asked, ‘and of history repeated?’

‘As our brotherhood has come together,’ Thane said, ‘so must humanity. Send for your Epistolary. I need to send word to Terra. I must speak with the High Lords.’

‘And you think that they will listen?’ Issachar said.

‘No,’ Thane admitted. ‘But that is because we do not speak their language. We need political animals, men of leverage and influence who do. If we are to open closed minds and release our full potential then we are going to need a hammer and a pry bar.’

‘Who do you have in mind?’ Issachar asked.

The Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists considered.

‘We must contact Kubik, the Fabricator General,’ Thane said at last, ‘and Grand Master Vangorich.’

Four

Ophidium System — Arx Meridia telepathica matrix

First Captain Zerberyn stood on the command deck of the battle-barge Dantalion, taking in the destruction. The Ophidium System was no more. It had been a trading hub of ancient commercial significance. Dominated by the hive world of Bucolica Mundi and near a hundred orbiting agri-moons, it was rumoured that the system fed half the sector.

It did so no longer, however. Gone were the fleets of merchant vessels and bulk freighters. Gone were the audit stations, the void storage depots and the orbital docking facilities that Bucolica Mundi wore about its fat belly like a belt. Gone was the planet itself. Torn apart by the orks’ gravitational weaponry, the hive world now drifted through the system as an ever-expanding blizzard of shattered rock and billions of frozen bodies. The Shepherd Moons had fared little better, their delicate orbits thrown into disarray. While some were flung off into the void, their worker populations freezing to death along with their livestock, others burned in the closing embrace of the raging Ophidium sun.

In the hive world’s place, Zerberyn saw an ork attack moon. A monstrosity of rock, rusted metal plating and gigantic weaponry. Upon its surface, a red, clenched greenskin claw had been roughly painted — not unlike the clasped gauntlet that identified the First Captain’s own vessels as belonging to the Fists Exemplar. About the moon, like the swirling stellar material of some newly formed star, a maelstrom of fragmented planetary rock and monstrous ork attack craft circled. Like a hurricane passing through the void, through enemy armadas and systems, it scoured Imperial subsectors clean of life.

‘I will repeat myself,’ Mendel Reoch hissed through his half-helm. ‘This is ill-advised.’

As if to echo the Space Marine’s view, the Dantalion shuddered briefly with the impact of a piece of debris that had found its way through the turrets.

‘Your opinion is noted, Apothecary,’ the First Captain said from the command pulpit.

‘The Chapter Master must be warned,’ Valric Lasander said. ‘Terra must be warned. These monstrosities have a weakness. It must be exploited.’

Reoch pointed towards lancet screens full of destruction and the enemy fleet that had wrought such calamity. ‘I am not seeing weakness out there. You are seriously suggesting that you want to take our ship into that?’

‘Of course not,’ Lasander admitted, ‘but we must reach the telepathica matrix so we can get word to Chapter Master Thane, and that is worth any risk.’

‘It’s comforting to know that I am surrounded by wrong-headed fools who would rather throw away lives than think,’ Reoch said, irritably.

‘Apothecary…’ Zerberyn began.

‘Don’t underestimate Chapter Master Thane,’ Reoch told him, glancing at Lasander to include him too in the rebuke. ‘He probably already has the information you risk so much to impart, and even if he does not, it will not matter. The Fists Exemplar will not allow this threat — this Beast — to prevail. Like him, we should be marshalling our strength and taking the fight to the orks.’

Lasander stepped aside and wordlessly offered a gauntlet towards the devastation of the Ophidium System and the ork attack moon.

‘Obviously, I don’t mean to make our stand here,’ Reoch said. ‘That would be suicide.’

‘Your faith in Thane is well-placed,’ Zerberyn said, ‘but just as there are procedures to follow on the surgical slab, there are protocols to follow in times of war.’

‘Protocols.’ Reoch’s tone was skeptical.

‘Yes,’ Zerberyn told him. ‘I know you are eager to get back to fighting the orks, but you would use a chainsword where a las-scalpel is required. I have seen you strategise, pick your enemies and triage the wounded. That is all I am doing here, Apothecary. Favouring the strategy that yields the most effective outcome. With knowledge of the aliens’ susceptibility to psychic assault, Terra might be secured, the Imperium unified and the Beast brought down.’

‘That may be, but we are not seeing much unity out here,’ Reoch retorted.

‘Explain yourself, brother,’ Zerberyn demanded.

‘I am saying that the Imperium should get the heroes it deserves,’ the Apothecary told them.

‘My lord,’ Lasander protested.

‘Let him speak,’ the First Captain said.

‘You were there,’ Reoch said. ‘You saw the regimental mutinies at Archangelus. Commodore Beauchamp’s refusal to abandon his station and join our number. The silent Mechanicus, too busy fortifying their forge worlds to accompany us in a counter-offensive.’

‘There might be other reasons for that,’ Lasander said, looking between the Apothecary and Zerberyn. ‘We keep ill company.’

‘The Iron Warriors are the only ones fighting alongside us,’ Reoch said simply.

‘They are not to be trusted,’ Lasander insisted.

‘Maybe not,’ Reoch said, ‘but that is not for you or I to decide.’

‘It makes me uneasy to hear you speak of them with such favour,’ Lasander said.

‘Like you, I favour the strong,’ the Apothecary said. ‘The Adeptus Astartes have always known the flaws of humanity. Its weakness, in body, spirit and mind. We know them for greed, politics and the indulgence of their fears. When humanity isn’t falling before its foes, it is selling out its allies.’

‘Betrayal?’ Lasander said. ‘You want to talk about betrayal? Phall? Sebastus? Terra?’

‘And what of the Rancora Deeps, Krastengrad and One-Twenty-Five-Twenty?’ Reoch countered. ‘Loyalties are but matters of time and place — and the High Lords of Terra are only loyal to themselves. Their ships stand off. Their armies flee. Their faithful embrace the worship of this Beast. How can we fight this alien invasion with that? We fought side by side with the Iron Warriors during the Great Crusade, as we do right now. Kalkator’s vessel sits under our guns and we have done nothing. Why? Because the First Captain knows that right now, a living Iron Warrior is worth more to our cause than a dead one. We need his warriors, their weapons and their assets. Let’s not waste them here in the service of protocol.’

A hololithic display crackled to life nearby, its signal hissing and warping with every void-borne rock to strike the Dantalion. The spectral form of Warsmith Kalkator presented itself on the command deck, battleplate a rust-mottled pattern of tarnished silver and stripe.

‘The Palimodes, First Captain,’ Shipmaster Marcarian said, stepping to one side.

‘You have something to report, Iron Warrior?’ Zerberyn said with impatience.

Kalkator let the suggestion that the Fists Exemplar were in charge of their joint venture pass. ‘Only that this was ill-advised,’ the Iron Warrior said.

Lasander looked to Reoch, but the Apothecary shrugged as if to say that he had told them so.

‘My vessel has sustained damage in the debris field. Repairs are necessary and urgent,’ Kalkator continued.

‘How long will this take?’ Zerberyn asked.

‘It will take us no longer than three hours to repair the damage,’ Kalkator said. ‘I would curse the decimation in this system, but I suspect that it is the only thing keeping our ships from being discovered by the orks.’

‘Very well,’ the First Captain said. ‘We shall proceed to the telepathica matrix and relay our warning to Terra.’

‘You will find no redemption there, Son of Dorn,’ the Iron Warrior said. ‘Not for words and not for actions. The galaxy is short on second chances — and you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Take it from one who knows.’

‘I am doing this, Iron Warrior,’ Zerberyn told him. ‘It is no less in your interest than mine that Terra defeats the orks.’

‘Agreed,’ Kalkator said, ‘for I much prefer fighting Imperials than greenskins. Though in truth, you both seem to like fighting yourselves.’

‘Three hours,’ Zerberyn said, moving the uncomfortable exchange on.

‘Do what you must,’ Kalkator said, ‘but once my repairs are made, I and my ship are taking leave of this deathtrap system.’

‘Such fearful assessments are not your reputation,’ Lasander said.

‘I fight the orks on my own terms,’ Kalkator told him. ‘What would you have us do? Defend a pile of void-strewn rubble? Mount a suicidal siege on that attack moon with insufficient men and vessels?’

‘No,’ Zerberyn admitted.

‘Then do not waste my time with your own fearful assessments,’ Kalkator said. ‘Palimodes out.’

The hololithic transmission faded to static and then to nothingness. Lasander grunted his derision.

There was a good reason why the orks, in their devastation of the system, had not discovered the Arx Meridia installation. The telepathica matrix was stationed in orbit close to the Ophidium star. Within the relative chill and darkness of colossal protective shielding, it was safe from the radioactive inferno of the sun. Lost, from without, in the blinding glare and static of the star, it remained safe from the invading attentions of the orks.

As they ploughed on through the blaze, the temperature aboard the Dantalion rose. Void shields crackled and pulsed while the command deck was flooded with blinding light from the bridge lancet screens. As the battle-barge fell in behind the orbiting station and the glowing metal of its protective shield, everything returned to blotched darkness. Upon the Dantalion’s approach, Zerberyn could see that beyond the baroque system ships of Adeptus Astra Telepathica, one other vessel was docked to the station.

‘Master Marcarian?’ the First Captain said.

‘It looks as if she belongs to the League of Black Ships,’ the shipmaster said, leaning in over deck serfs, servitors and consoles. ‘The Athymian Astra, my lord.’

‘A tithe ship?’ Lasander said.

‘For unbound psykers, yes,’ Marcarian confirmed.

‘She must have been levying the system when the oks attacked,’ Reoch said, ‘then sought shelter at Arx Meridia.’

‘Communications?’ Zerberyn asked.

‘From the station?’ the shipmaster said. ‘No, my lord. Nothing.’

‘Our reputation precedes us,’ Reoch mused.

‘Shipmaster,’ the First Captain said, ‘dock with the station.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Lasander,’ Zerberyn went on. ‘Have a squad meet me down in the airlock vestibule.’

‘You shall have my best, First Captain — Sergeant Vasmir.’

‘And continue with your long-range augur sweeps,’ Zerberyn ordered.

‘You are still going over there?’ Reoch asked.

‘We are going over there, Apothecary,’ Zerberyn said, making for the command deck elevator. ‘We need to find an astropath, and the souls on that station and the crew of the Black Ship may need our aid.’

Locking harsh gazes with Lasander, Reoch turned to follow the First Captain.

In the airlock vestibule that rang with the reverberating boom of battle-barge and station coming together, they were met by Titus Vasmir and his squad. The five Space Marines checked each other’s scorch-patterned plate before moving on to their own boltguns. A serf arrived in the vestibule with Zerberyn’s helmet, gladius and pistol, before exiting as steam vented about the Fists Exemplar. The docking had been successful.

‘First Captain,’ Vasmir acknowledged.

‘Flanking positions,’ Zerberyn ordered as the lock opened, making it clear that Vasmir’s squad was to perform the duty of an escort.

With Squad Vasmir marching either side and the sergeant in front, Zerberyn and Apothecary Reoch entered the telepathica matrix station. Within, Arx Meridia seemed like a haunted cathedral. The astropaths and their servants kept a dour and functional installation, largely dominated by dormitory cells, choir halls and techno-arcane equipment designed to relay and augment the astropathic talents of the station’s psykers. Since astropaths were blind, decorative features were restricted to hexagrammatic wardings, relief symbols and textured tapestries.

‘No reception party?’ Reoch said, both suspicious and insulted. ‘Or word from the choir-master?’

The facility appeared to be deserted. No robed astropaths. No adepts or station bondsmen. Not even servitors. ‘Where is everyone? Could the station have been attacked?’

‘No bodies, either,’ Zerberyn said, before adjusting his vox-channel. ‘Lasander?’

‘Captain?’ the Veteran Sergeant crackled back.

‘Are there any signs that the orks have already been here?’

‘Stand by,’ Lasander said, then a moment later: ‘The Athymian Astra shows battle damage down her flanks and engine column, but I’m assuming that was the cost of reaching the station. It doesn’t look like ork fire, though. Too precise. Arx Meridia itself is untouched.’

‘Make our announcement,’ Zerberyn said.

‘You might think we had already done that,’ Reoch commented.

The Fists Exemplar were traversing a scriptorium. A long, tall room, its walls were lined with bookcases stuffed with dusty tomes and scrolls. Desks and stools lay upturned all around. Above their heads, raised galleries and walkways projected from the shadows.

‘Arx Meridia matrix,’ Lasander’s voice boomed down the length of the cavernous chamber. It seemed that communications were being run through the facility’s vox-caster system. ‘This is the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Dantalion, First Captain Zerberyn in command. The Space Marines of the Fists Exemplar require an audience with the station choir-master. Present yourselves.’

Zerberyn slowed, the Space Marines of Squad Vasmir with him. The sergeant and Reoch took a few more steps before turning.

‘First Captain?’ Vasmir said.

‘What is it?’ the Apothecary asked.

‘I thought I heard something,’ Zerberyn told them. ‘Sergeant, auspex — give me a sweep of the surrounding chambers.’

With Reoch looking around and Sergeant Vasmir going to work on his multi-scanner, the First Captain heard the sound of the squad’s gauntlets creaking about the grips of their boltguns.

‘Multiple signatures,’ Vasmir called out. ‘Ambush pattern!’

The gloom of the scriptorium suddenly became a storm of las-blasts and fury. Cooking the air, criss-crossing beams of energy seared into the plate of the Fists Exemplar. With flash-scarring and smouldering craters decorating their armour, the Space Marines fell into an immediate defensive posture against one of the walls. Powerful las-beams burned their way across the hall from all directions. Surrounding their First Captain, Squad Vasmir took their positions, boltguns primed and ready.

‘What are your orders, my lord?’ Sergeant Vasmir called.

Zerberyn lifted his head to peer around the chamber. He could see dark shapes in carapace moving along the raised galleries and out of the gloomy corridors adjoining the scriptorium. They wore power packs on their backs, enhancing the effectiveness of their weaponry. The lenses of their helmets burned the red of judgement as they took cover and rested their lasguns against corners and on toppled tables. Zerberyn realised that if they had reached the end of the hall they would have been caught in a bloody ambush.

‘Captain!’ the sergeant urged.

‘Hold your fire,’ Zerberyn growled.

‘What?’ Reoch said, turning on his captain. ‘We’re being fired upon.’

‘This must be a misunderstanding,’ Zerberyn said. ‘I will not take the lives of loyal Imperial troops over an error of judgement. If your system was swarming with orks then you might be over-ready with your weapons yourself.’

Reoch drew his bolt pistol.

‘It is,’ the Apothecary said, ‘and I am.’

‘Sergeant?’ Zerberyn said.

‘They appear to be Inquisitorial storm troopers,’ Vasmir said before a stream of light tore over his head. ‘Probably from the Black Ship,’ he added.

‘What are the Holy Ordos doing firing upon us?’ Reoch asked.

‘Captain,’ Lasander said over Zerberyn’s helmet vox. ‘I am getting reports of firing aboard Arx Meridia. Do you require reinforcements?’

‘Negative,’ Zerberyn said. He didn’t want to add to the havoc and confusion within the station. ‘Stand ready, but do not intervene unless I send word.’

With the air warming around them and the floor cratered with glowing impacts, Zerberyn fired three shots into the chamber ceiling. As he expected, the highly trained storm troopers retreated behind cover as chunks of metal and plascrete cascaded down in front of them.

‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn called, taking advantage of the break in the blazing ambush. ‘Stand your men down. I am Zerberyn, First Captain of the Fists Exemplar. I have information vital to my brothers securing Terra from the alien threat. It is imperative that I make contact with them. I need to commandeer the abilities of this station’s astropathic choir to do so.’

After a few moments of tense silence, the storm erupted again, with beams searing into stone and over their heads. One las-blast found its way to glance off Reoch’s pauldron, spraying the Apothecary’s half-helm with glowing cinders of ceramite.

‘Cease firing or die!’ Reoch called out.

‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn repeated. ‘The credentials of your order will not be able to protect you from the Adeptus Astartes.’

‘My lord,’ Sergeant Vasmir said. ‘They’ve been isolated. They could have taken leave of their senses…’

‘Or have already surrendered themselves to the xenos faith,’ the Apothecary said, ‘for which there is only one cure.’

Suddenly the scriptorium was silent again. The gloom of the hall returned, with the lasrifles of the storm troopers snapping to a stop in unison.

‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn called again.

‘He is not in command here, captain,’ a voice crackled across the vox-casters around them. ‘I am.’

‘Identify yourself,’ Zerberyn commanded.

‘Darghastri,’ the voice came again, ‘of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition.’

‘Then you will know, Lord Darghastri,’ Zerberyn said, ‘that we fight on the same side, for the same cause. That the Beast is our common enemy. Put aside your weapons and your men will not be harmed, I give you my word.’

‘Your word, eh?’ Darghastri said. ‘What would the word of a traitor be worth these days? Probably little more than a greenskin’s, I would think.’

‘Vasmir is right,’ Reoch said. ‘He’s gone insane.’

‘It is unwise to insult the Adeptus Astartes,’ Zerberyn told the inquisitor.

‘I dare say you are right, but you have fallen from the Emperor’s grace,’ Darghastri said.

‘Lord Darghastri,’ Zerberyn called. ‘The Adeptus Astartes are not in the habit of issuing warnings — but as a courtesy, I am doing so. To you, Lord Inquisitor. A final one. Lay down your weapons and surrender this facility to the Fists Exemplar, or suffer the Emperor’s wrath in bolt and blade.’

‘I can’t do that, captain,’ the inquisitor told him. ‘And neither can you. For the Emperor’s wrath is reserved for the enemies of His holy Imperium. For you, captain, and your traitor-hearted Space Marines.’

‘You shall pay the price for such accusations and false reports,’ Zerberyn growled.

‘At least the price shall not be my immortal soul,’ Darghastri said, before telling his storm troopers: ‘Destroy them.’

Zerberyn gritted his teeth behind the grille of his helm.

‘These servants of the Imperium have given themselves over to madness,’ he said to his men. ‘The order is given. Kill them. All of them.’

The Fists Exemplar advanced upon their new-found enemies. Like the closing of a ceramite trap, Zerberyn and his Space Marines turned the storm troopers’ ambush into a bolt-storm that rolled back towards the soldiers. The armour of the Fists Exemplar soaked up the blasts of lasrifles. With patches of their plate glowing with the insistence of gunfire, they hammered the troopers back with merciless bursts from their weapons. Beyond, they could hear urgent orders being called between the soldiers as they moved to take different positions about the end of the scriptorium.

It couldn’t save them. Within the blink of an eye the Fists Exemplar were upon them, the mortals looking down the sights of pistols and boltguns. With cold certainty of purpose, the Angels of Death lived up to their name. Bolt-rounds came blasting at the Inquisitorial storm troopers with a speed and accuracy they could never match. With suprahuman reflexes and a lifetime of training, the Space Marines blew ragged holes through chests and skulls, turning carapace armour and helmets into bloody mulch. Rounds exploded out of the backs of the soldiers, spattering the floor and furniture with gore. The force of the impacts lifted them off their feet and slammed them into the bookcase-lined walls. Before they even had time to hit the ground the Fists Exemplar had turned, aimed and delivered another death-dealing blast at their next victim. All the while beams of energy seared the air about them and left scorched craters in their plate.

To their credit, the storm troopers did not break. They died as they had lived. Precisely. Economically. Sergeant Vasmir unleashed the devastation of his boltgun on full automatic, turning hiding soldiers into a mess that was barely recognisable as human. With the troopers in the hall dead, Vasmir ejected his empty magazine and slammed in a new one.

Beyond, orders had turned into panicked shouting. An Inquisitorial storm trooper ran out from an adjoining corridor, clutching a plasma gun, and Zerberyn and Reoch both turned their pistols on him. As bolt-rounds tore the trooper’s body apart, the globe of superheated energy blazing forth from the plasma gun streaked away from the weapon. Like a tiny, blinding sun it struck Vasmir in the throat, bubbling ceramite and vaporising flesh into nothingness. The sergeant dropped with an armoured clatter, his auspex sliding across the floor.

The First Captain and Reoch reached the end of the scriptorium, taking positions on either side of the end of the corridor. Zerberyn took a moment to replace the magazine in his bolt pistol. The Apothecary holstered his own weapon and drew his chainsword from where it sat across his back. Gunning it to life, he thrashed the monomolecular teeth. Looking down at the dropped auspex on the floor nearby, Zerberyn could see the Inquisitorial forces withdrawing up the passage at the sound.

The First Captain looked back down the hall. The thunder of Squad Vasmir’s bolters had fallen silent, the hall emptied of foes. Zerberyn held up three armoured digits at Reoch. Then two. Then one.

Surging around the corner with powered steps, the Space Marines were met with a storm of las-beams that cut up the length of the corridor. Their battleplate smoked with the seething caress of suppression fire. The beams kept coming, the gloom of the corridor flashing like a warning strobe. Zerberyn heard the repetitive snap of a volley gun and felt a succession of powerful las-streams take him in the cabling of his midriff.

Squeezing the trigger, Zerberyn sent bolt-rounds rocketing into the storm troopers holding the passage. His shots tore through carapace, flesh and bone, blasting Darghastri’s highly trained troops into flailing corpses. Advancing past his captain, Reoch brought his chainsword up with skill and determination and swept the razored teeth of the blade through the soldiers, who were desperate to get off a last few las-blasts before the Apothecary reached them. Even Inquisitorial storm troopers lost their nerve as this death came at them.

Reoch moved through Darghastri’s troops with the precision of the surgeon he was. He opened soldiers up from jaw to hip, the chainsword chewing through flesh. He struck heads from shoulders and cut down through the lines connecting weapons to power packs.

The mortals were no longer retreating, they were fleeing. Zerberyn continued his fire. As bolt-rounds punched through the Inquisitorial storm troopers, they dropped to the floor until a single soldier remained — the trooper carrying the volley gun. With the smouldering muzzle aimed at the First Captain, he pulled back on the trigger. The weapon was silent, however. Reoch had sliced through the gun’s power cabling during his devastating onslaught.

Zerberyn looked back down the corridor. He saw Squad Vasmir stepping over the body of their sergeant, and turned on the remaining trooper with sudden fury, a cold vengeance that was equal parts indignation and indulgence. He slammed his pistol into its holster and grabbed the soldier savagely by the throat. As his powered gauntlet closed on the storm trooper’s neck, Zerberyn leaned in. So close to the struggling soldier’s helm, the Space Marine could hear Darghastri still giving orders. The First Captain realised that the inquisitor had been watching the whole firefight through the glowing red lenses of his men. Zerberyn positioned himself in front of the trooper’s optics.

‘There is but one Space Marine for every world in the Imperium,’ Zerberyn announced, for the inquisitor’s benefit. ‘This madness has cost me another of my brothers. While we fight among ourselves, worlds are being lost to the invader. For my battle-brother and the worlds he might have protected, you must die, inquisitor.’

With that, Zerberyn crushed the bones in the trooper’s neck and tossed his body away like a rag doll.

Mendel Reoch came up beside his captain.

‘Where are the astropaths?’ the Apothecary asked.

‘If I must guess, Darghastri has them in the Black Ship,’ Zerberyn said, his voice a hollow rasp. ‘But we need them.’

‘The Athymian?’ Reoch said.

‘Yes,’ Zerberyn said. He changed the channel on his helmet vox. ‘Lasander.’

‘Here, captain,’ Lasander responded from the bridge of the Dantalion.

‘Send me two more squads, and your second-best sergeant,’ Zerberyn ordered. ‘We are going to storm the Black Ship.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Zerberyn was silent as he made his way through the Arx Meridia station. While Apothecary Reoch kept his chainsword idling and Squad Vasmir moved from corner to corner, aiming their boltguns in advance of their progress, the First Captain didn’t seem to care. As they approached the reception antechambers of the Black Ship’s docking station, Zerberyn’s men were joined by Squads Torr and Escoban. Sergeant Solomon Torr was a veteran of Gamma-Hydrata and the Silent Wars. He had come ready with men and equipment to breach the airlock of the Athymian Astra. They didn’t need such measures, however, because as Zerberyn entered the antechamber for the starboard lock he found the barbican airlock to the Black Ship open.

Zerberyn held up a fist, bringing his Space Marines to a halt. The squads assumed positions on the airlock, their boltguns ready, while the First Captain slowed to a stop. The opening was not crowded with Inquisitorial storm troopers. Instead, three figures waited for the Space Marines.

The first was a robed, emaciated specimen of a man, raw-eyed and twitchy. His skeletal hands glowed with otherworldly energies. The second sat in a tracked throne, a shaved and muscular wretch. Despite his brawn, his face betrayed the simple wonder of a small child. Both bore the savage brand of the Inquisition on their foreheads — the mark of forced recruitment. Zerberyn knew that inquisitors often travelled on the Adeptus Astra Telepathica’s Black Ships, searching for psychic recruits to join the Holy Ordos. The third was restrained in an upright containment casket, criss-crossed with heavy chains, their face and form unseen within.

‘I advise caution, my lord,’ Reoch said. ‘They’re witchbreeds.’

Zerberyn nodded. He now had even more reason to regret having lost all of his Librarians.

‘Correct,’ a voice rang out across the antechamber, and the inquisitor stepped out from behind the upright containment casket. Darghastri was an aged wreck of a man, half machine and half rejuvenat-mangled flesh. The inquisitor’s dark robes and hood hid ugly armour. Buried in a stained, unkempt beard and held in a gap-toothed mouth was a tapering pipe that wreathed the old man in ghostly smoke. He walked around before the psykers with the sighing hydraulics of a bionic leg, steadying himself with a metal walking stick. He wore a holstered bolt pistol on his belt.

‘Inquisitor…’

‘First Captain,’ Darghastri acknowledged.

‘You are so ordered,’ Zerberyn said, ‘to hand over the astropath choir assigned to this station. For if you do not, with the Emperor’s own thunder, I will take them by force.’

‘The matrix personnel are under my protection,’ the inquisitor said, ‘and that is the way they will remain.’

Zerberyn snarled. ‘Brothers, advance.’

Squads Vasmir, Escoban and Torr stepped forward with their boltguns to blast the inquisitor and his three psykers into oblivion. Weapons barked their fury. Bolt-rounds tore through the cool air of the chamber. A metre in front of Darghastri and his gathering, the rounds stopped as though they had hit an invisible wall and showered to the deck. The Fists Exemplar intensified their fire, targeting the inquisitor, but to no avail. Bolt-rounds simply dropped before Darghastri to form piles on the metal floor before him.

The inquisitor lifted his walking stick. The pommel was crafted into a metal skull. As Darghastri flicked down the jaw with his thumb, a long flame rose up from the crown of the skull and from it, he re-lit his pipe. He jabbed the stick at the emaciated psyker, who held his glowing fists out at his sides.

‘I only travel with the Athymian Astra,’ the inquisitor said, ‘but as with any ship, you get to know your fellow travellers. Zygmunt Fesse here was part of a hive-world tithe from the Farrow Worlds. Before devoting his talents to the Holy Ordos he held off two battalions of his home world’s local militia and Imperial Navy airstrikes for three days. He has a talent for survival.’

‘His talents won’t be enough to save you, inquisitor,’ Zerberyn told him.

Darghastri pointed his walking stick at the musclebound psyker trapped in the tracked chair.

‘As there will be no escape for the Emperor’s enemies,’ the inquisitor told him. ‘Four-One-Seventy-Five here was transferred from the Dreadhaven penal colony on Panoptica XIII. Kept getting through the security measures. Doors. Bars. Chains. Sentry guns. They don’t work on him. Panoptica’s a dead rock, so there was nothing outside but sun-bleached stone. Still, he earned his place aboard the Athymian as now he earns his place in my retinue.’

Darghastri ejected his bolt pistol’s magazine and tossed the weapon into the seated psyker’s lap. The witchbreed set upon the weapon like a toy to be examined and explored. Within moments, the gun fell apart in his hands.

The inquisitor clicked at 4-1-75. Getting the psyker’s attention off the disassembled pistol, he pointed at the Fists Exemplar. A childish smile of delight passed across the psyker’s features. The deck began to clatter with components. While the Space Marines aimed their weapons at the inquisitor and his psykers, the boltguns fell apart in their gauntlets. Rounds rained to the floor, alongside the internal working parts of the weaponry. Eventually the barrels, breeches and grips of the boltguns and pistols clanged to the deck.

As Reoch’s pistol fell apart on his belt, pieces tumbling from his holster, he stepped forward. With a snarl he gunned his chainsword and advanced.

‘Apothecary,’ the inquisitor said, moving along the line to the final psyker. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Wouldn’t do what?’ Reoch asked. ‘Wouldn’t step through your defences and hack you and your witches limb from limb?’

‘This is Thessda,’ Darghastri said, sliding open a narrow panel at the top of the containment casket, revealing the face of a woman. Her eyes were misted, but ravenous for sights unseen. Not knowing what powers she possessed, or what the inquisitor might do, the Apothecary slowed to a stop.

‘The guards named her,’ the inquisitor said. ‘She won’t be tamed for my service, but might still do the Emperor’s work. Under the right circumstances. Circumstances like these, captain. The Athymian found her on the feral world of Karnach. Upon arrival, the Black Ship found most of the population of the capital city dead, drowned. Her powers had blossomed with womanhood, and now, whatever she sees, she is driven to manifest. It must have rained — a rare occurrence on Karnach. Thessda flooded her entire city, and drowned thousands of her tribespeople. They tried to blind her to curtail her powers. But she can still see… a little. If something were to be held up close. A flame, say.’

Holding his walking stick up to the containment casket, Darghastri depressed the skull’s bottom jaw and produced a flame from the pommel. The rogue psyker’s eyes started to focus on the flame, and the casket began to rock.

Reoch looked back at his captain.

Zerberyn simply stared at the inquisitor and his collection of witchbreeds. ‘What is it that you want?’ he asked.

‘I want to serve my Emperor,’ Darghastri told him. ‘To my last dying breath.’

‘There is no one clad in this plate that feels differently.’

‘I very much doubt that,’ the inquisitor hissed.

‘Inquisitor,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Can’t you see what is happening? To this system. The sector. The Imperium? The orks are everywhere. They hang over Terra like an ill omen. You must allow me access to the astropathic choir. I have intelligence vital to our success against the alien invader.’

‘So that you might spread your poison to the stars,’ Darghastri said. ‘I think not. You will not be allowed to commandeer this station — for the astropaths here are the servants of the God-Emperor. You will not be allowed to enter the Athymian Astra to use the astropaths or to plunder its mutant cargo — for they are the God-Emperor’s bounty.’

Zerberyn’s lips wrinkled into a snarl. The First Captain knew that the inquisitor meant every word. That he would unleash the full destructive potential of his psykers upon them if pushed.

‘Squads Escoban, Vasmir, Torr,’ he said. ‘Do your duty.’ He heard the sound of combat blades being drawn as the Fists Exemplar made ready to storm the Black Ship.

‘Oh no, captain,’ the aged inquisitor said. ‘I can’t allow you to do that. You are traitors to the Imperium and must be purged. It is the reason for the Inquisition’s very being. I am nothing in the grand scheme of gods and emperors. But you, captain, and your men? If I let you go, you will go on to wreak havoc across a thousand worlds.’

‘Emperor willing, yes,’ Zerberyn said, ‘upon the barbarian greenskins.’

‘No, captain,’ Darghastri said. ‘I’ve seen the company you keep. You travel in consort with traitors. And I got a good look at them, captain — for it was your Iron Warriors compatriots who fired upon the Athymian Astra, some months since. This vessel still bears the scars of that engagement. We were fortunate to get away with our lives. If it hadn’t been for the havoc of the orks, I doubt we would have done so.’

‘You have seen what we face,’ Zerberyn said, stepping forward and gritting his teeth. ‘The Imperium is a candle, about to be snuffed out.’

‘There is no common ground to be held between those loyal to the Emperor, and traitors. Only degrees of denial and darkness,’ Darghastri told him.

‘I am First Captain of the Fists Exemplar. Gene-sired of Rogal Dorn,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Scourge of the Imperium’s enemies. True servant to the Emperor of Mankind.’

‘There can be no accord between you and me, captain,’ Darghastri said, ‘as there should not have been between the Fists Exemplar and the Iron Warriors. That is why I must destroy you, captain — even as I destroy myself.’

Darghastri passed the flame before the view-slit of the metal casket. The misty eyes of the psyker within lit up, and the girl let out an abysmal shriek of excitement and terror. The thrill of light in the darkness. The dread of what she was about to do.

Suddenly everything became light and noise. Thunder crashed through the empty telepathica matrix station. Girders tore. Decks shattered. Flames roared through the antechamber and the access corridor. Zerberyn watched as his Fists Exemplar were taken from him, swallowed by the rolling inferno that felt its way through the starboard section of Arx Meridia.

And then, without warning, they returned. Delivered from destruction, the Space Marines found themselves washed clean of the plate-scorching flame. Sucked back through their number, the firestorm disappeared. In confusion, Zerberyn turned around to see the flames recede. About him the station superstructure was shaking violently, prompting him to grab for a pipe-lined wall with his gauntlet.

With the fire went the airlock and the antechamber’s exterior wall. Flame and shearing sections of station hull were sucked out into the void. With the wall gone, Zerberyn could see the hull of the Athymian Astra. Explosions rippled down the length of the Black Ship, sweeping through the command deck, quarters, engineering and containment. As flame briefly blossomed through the vessel’s decks, the ship collapsed in on itself.

The station’s atmosphere howled past Zerberyn. He felt Reoch lifted off his feet by the fury of the evacuating air and the failing artificial gravity of the damaged section. He grabbed for the Apothecary, Zerberyn’s ceramite-clad fingers reaching out for Reoch’s own. Hooking the fingertips of their gauntlets together, the First Captain anchored himself to the wall. Hauling the Apothecary close and allowing him to gain purchase on the pipes also, Zerberyn watched the wreck of the Athymian Astra peel away from the station.

‘Lock boots to the deck!’ Zerberyn called across the vox to the Fists Exemplar. Engaging the magnetic soles of their armoured boots, the Space Marines resisted the venting atmosphere and the cold embrace of the void. As the decimated Black Ship fell away, Zerberyn watched Inquisitor Darghastri and his psykers disappear into the blackness of space, the deck tearing asunder beneath them.

‘Captain,’ Lasander called back across the vox. ‘The station is destabilised. I am struggling to maintain pressure and docking integrity. You must withdraw. I have brothers waiting for you at the airlock.’

Using the magnetic soles of their boots, the Fists Exemplar made the difficult journey back through Arx Meridia. All about them, Zerberyn and his Space Marines could hear the agony of the station. The superstructure groaned and the orbital facilities began to turn out of their alignment. Rolling out of the protection of its stellar shielding, the station increasingly became exposed to the monstrous heat of the sun. Its hull glowed white and sections disintegrated before the fury of the star, flame flooding halls and complexes. With the unfolding inferno at their backs, Zerberyn led the Fists Exemplar off the shattered station and through the main lock of the Dantalion. Space Marines and serfs in environment suits waited to assist them there.

‘We’re on board,’ Zerberyn told Lasander across the vox, catching his breath. ‘Detach.’

‘Detaching,’ Lasander reported back. ‘Captain.’

‘What is it?’ Zerberyn shot back with annoyance. So much had happened aboard the station that he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts — even just for a moment.

‘Long-range augur scans reveal ork attack craft closing on our position,’ Lasander told him.

‘What are the Iron Warriors doing?’

‘They’re leaving the system,’ Lasander said. ‘They’re making for the Mandeville point.’

Zerberyn looked at Apothecary Reoch and the Fists Exemplars with him in the airlock.

‘Follow them,’ he ordered.

Five

Luna — Somnus Citadel

The Thunderhawk Pharosian dropped down towards the bleak, grey dust-deserts of Luna. Flying over mountains and the towers of installations, the scorch-plated gunship roared across void-black skies. Luna had a history stretching back almost as far as Terra, and the grand gothic architecture of its sun-baked facilities and installations seemed in a constant state of renewal and improvement. Derelict fortresses and the ruins of palaces dating back to the Heresy provided the foundations for newer, baroque structures that had sprung from the decimation to reach for the stars. Everything was covered in a harsh dust, the colour and consistency of gunpower, while the searing orb of Sol reflected off the moon-rock architecture.

The Pharosian banked down between towers and palace spires, then streaked across a desert sea towards the Somnus Citadel, the Inquisition’s base of operations. Leaving behind a disturbed trail of dust, the Thunderhawk sizzled through the citadel’s atmosphere shielding before weaving between its towers and fortifications. Great defence lasers tracked the Pharosian’s progress, while Inquisitorial gunships were scrambled to escort the Thunderhawk around restricted facilities. Accelerating across the sprawling expanse of the citadel installation, the Space Marine craft left the gunships in the wake of its afterburners.

Beyond the towering indomitability of the Inquisitorial citadel, the Thunderhawk dropped towards a much older structure. Shimmering in solar radiation, the gothic ruins of a minor palace rose up to meet the Pharosian. A circuit around the structure revealed that it was not merely another derelict and long abandoned facility. Light shone from within the crumbling structure of its austere halls and the glassaic of its window-ports. Shuttles sat in its domed crater-silos. Now that the Silent Sisterhood had returned to Luna, these ruins were serving them as a basic facility.

Dropping down through the atmosphere shielding of the pressurised dome, the Thunderhawk came in to land. Like the sealed-off sections of the derelict palace, the silo-crater benefitted from an atmosphere and artificial gravity. As the Thunderhawk touched down it created a small storm of grit and dust about it. Its nose ramp began to open, revealing Chapter Master Maximus Thane. Like the Thunderhawk and the two Space Marines escorting him, the Chapter Master wore the colours of the Fists Exemplar. As the gunship touched down, Thane stepped off the ramp and crossed the silo landing plaza. Crunching through the dust, he strode with power and purpose. It was not just that time was of the essence. Thane now knew what he was going to do with the time he had left. The days, weeks or months before the Beast made his monstrous push for Terra. With the green tide rising up through Segmentum Solar, flooding core systems with apocalyptic alien ferocity, the arrival of further attack moons or the convergence of ork armadas into some kind of super-fleet seemed inevitable.

As he marched across the plaza, Thane could see the towers of the palace framed in the light of Holy Terra. The glorious, besmirched jewel at the heart of the Imperium, Terra hung defiantly in Luna’s austere skies. Its smog-streaked cloud cover was pierced by capital hives and smothered by orbital plates, geo-synchronous stations and star forts. The blizzard of monstrous vessels about the planet gave the impression that it was being viewed upon a static-laced screen. Even so, the sight stirred his heart. Everything Thane had done, and more importantly was going to do, was in service of the Throneworld and the God-Emperor who ruled an empire from its modest magnificence.

As Thane passed another Thunderhawk, this one clad in ivory, battle-scarred plate, he was joined by Sergeant Dathan Tychor. Like the Chapter Master, the Excoriator had recovered from his wounds. While his battered armour was the same, his bionic arm — repaired and reattached — gleamed in the lunar sunlight.

‘As you requested, Master Thane,’ Tychor said. ‘The High Lords await your pleasure in the palace reception hall.’

‘I am indebted to you, brother,’ Thane said. ‘You may return to the Phalanx. There is still much to be done. Captain Oberon will have need of you.’

‘Thank you, Chapter Master,’ Tychor said.

As two Excoriators gunships lifted off from the plaza, turning the silo into a swirling haze of dust, Thane walked between a pair of palatial barges — system craft usually reserved for High Lords and visiting dignitaries. It had been these craft that Tychor’s gunships had escorted to Luna. Baroque wonders of beauty and excess, the barges came with their own security details. While the first was surrounded by ceremonial cybernetic soldiers, garbed in glorious, gold war-plate and crimson cloaks, the second was all but unattended. A single muscular figure waited on the colossal ramp, dressed in black bodyglove and hooded cloak. He sheltered from the lung-shredding dust just within the palatial compartment-quarters.

At the silo barbican, Thane and his Fists Exemplar passed a pair of sentries. Sisters of Silence in half-helms, bronzed plate and furs nodded their acknowledgement to the Chapter Master. Within, Thane saw two High Lords of Terra, standing with Lady Kavalanera Brassanas, commander of the Silent Sisterhood. Kavalanera, standing in her plate of ancient crimson, signed a greeting. Since retaking their vows, the Sisters communicated only through their own language of subtle signs and hand signals. Not unlike the battle-sign used by the Adeptus Astartes, it hadn’t taken Thane and his officers long to master the basics.

As he got closer to Brassanas, Thane felt a part of himself wither inside. A shiver ran through him — an unusual sensation for a Space Marine, let alone a Chapter Master. As a member of the Silent Sisterhood, Brassanas was a blank, what psykers called an untouchable. While they were highly trained warriors in their own right, the mere presence of a Sister of Silence was an anathema to all witchbreeds and daemons whose powers flowed from the warp. Brassanas’ own ability to nullify psychic energy was considerable — Thane wasn’t even a psyker and still, proximity to the Sister-Commander made him feel strange. Uncomfortable even. He personally liked Kavalanera Brassanas, but being around her filled him with a bottomless sensation of spiritual revulsion. As he arrived, the Sister-Commander nodded a silent acknowledgement.

The first High Lord was Kubik, the Fabricator General of Mars: an ornate fusion of man and machine, whose augmentations were lost in his rust-coloured robes and the darkness of his hood. The Fabricator General sensed Thane’s approach and turned, his revolving optics changing colour and orientation. Drakan Vangorich, meanwhile, was dressed in the sombre finery of a High Lord, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum favouring blacks, greys and robes with room to conceal the tools of his trade. Gone was the quirk of the Grand Master’s lip or the knowing glint of his eye — features that had been in evidence the last time Thane had seen him. Something had changed in Vangorich. He looked every bit as serious as a man should be having attained his station.

‘My lords,’ Thane greeted them as his Fists Exemplar peeled off to stand to one side. ‘Lady Brassanas. Thank you for meeting me here. Mars or the Phalanx would have been inappropriate, given what has happened previously and what I intend us to discuss. The Imperial Palace, even more so.’

Brassanas signed an acknowledgement. With his haptic translators, Kubik had no problem understanding the Sister. Similarly, Vangorich with his trained talents had wasted little time in familiarising himself with the Sisters’ sign language.

Thane looked to the Fabricator General, but Kubik seemed as cold and consistent as the machine he mostly was. Given the recent conflict between the Adeptus Astartes and the priesthood of Mars, Thane had expected some haughty indignation at a summons, perhaps even outrage. At very least a rehearsed objection.

‘Proceed, Chapter Master Thane,’ Kubik said simply, the metallic echo of his voice accompanied by the brief flicker of revolving optics. As Thane looked to Vangorich, the Grand Master extended his arm as an invitation to speak.

‘Would you walk with me?’ Thane asked. ‘I have something to show you.’

Lady Brassanas led the way through the palace installation. Within an elevator of mirrored metal that dropped down below Luna’s surface, Thane turned to the others.

‘You have heard, of course,’ he said, ‘of the death of Chapter Master Koorland.’

‘With the loss of the primarch and our failure to destroy the alien Beast, a triptych of woes,’ Vangorich said.

Tragedy upon tragedy, Lady Brassanas signed.

‘Despite their best efforts, the Imperial Fists failed the Imperium and themselves,’ Kubik said. The words were difficult for Thane to hear, but hear them he knew he must if he were to bring the High Lords together.

‘As I believe the Imperium failed them,’ Thane said. ‘Our efforts against the Beast have been the thrust of a spear, with the Imperial Fists as the tip of that spear. Except everyone else behind that thrust let go, believing some other group or institution would be there to follow the strike through. This is why the Beast lives on, our killing thrust wasted. It is why the spear tip shattered and the Imperial Fists were lost.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes,’ Kubik said, ‘have a history of rash action and reaction — as had the primarchs that gene-sired them. The priests of Mars are slow to act but effective in their execution.’

We have much to learn from each other, Lady Brassanas signed, if we are to defeat this threat.

‘For me,’ Drakan Vangorich said, his lips unsmiling and face unusually taut, ‘direct action is the remedy for the myriad afflictions ailing the Imperium. For a long time I waited for such action. I do not blame Chapter Master Koorland or Primarch Vulkan for their failures. At least they tried. I, like billions of other Terrans and countless Imperial citizens, wait again. We wait for a man who will act. Who will step forth and do what needs to be done. History records many such men. The bold and the resolute, who push to the fore just as the Imperium needs them. Are you such a man, Chapter Master Thane?’

‘I am,’ Thane told Vangorich, with steel in his eyes. ‘Lady Brassanas is, of course, right. If history can teach the sons of Dorn anything, it is humility. We cannot act alone. The Adeptus Astartes are one piece in the great puzzle that is the Imperium. Without others at our side, we are nothing — as the Imperial Fists are now. Every brother of the Last Wall aches to avenge his brothers but I take the Fabricator General’s view. It is better to take a little time, gather our strength and act as one.’

‘But we have no time,’ the Grand Master of Assassins told him. ‘Another attack moon could appear over Terra at any moment. The Beast’s fleets invade the core systems. The orks will swamp us.’

‘But we have a little time,’ Thane pressed as the elevator rumbled along the deep shaft, ‘and I intend to use it wisely.’

‘How?’ Vangorich asked, his words like a presented blade. ‘For if the Adeptus Astartes will not act — decisively — then other steps will need to be taken, to ensure all institutions play their part in the dark times to come.’

‘And they will, Grand Master,’ Thane told him, ‘for I go to the High Lords not to appeal for their assistance — for the full weight of their power, influence and forces they command — I go to demand it.’

‘Koorland and Vulkan could not achieve that,’ the Fabricator General said. ‘What makes you think you can? Now, with a First Founding Chapter lost and the faith of the people broken?’

‘Firstly,’ Thane said, ‘I do not intend to make the loss of the Imperial Fists public. As you observe, the morale of the people and their leaders is fragile. We don’t want panic.’

‘There would be no panic on Mars,’ Kubik assured him.

‘Or in the Temples of the Officio,’ Vangorich added.

‘Or here,’ Thane said, bowing his head to Lady Brassanas. ‘But secondly, we are not Koorland and Vulkan. They observed the sanctity of the Council. They played the political games of the Palace and lost. I do not intend to do that.’

The Adeptus Astartes have not imposed their will in such a way since the days of the Heresy, the Sister-Commander signed. To compel the High Lords to action? I fear history will not remember you kindly for this strategy.

‘If to act is damnation and inaction equally so,’ Thane told her, ‘what will it matter?’

‘If we fail,’ Vangorich added, ‘there will be no one to remember.’

‘You take responsibility?’ Kubik clarified.

‘For my actions,’ Thane said, ‘and those of my Chapter.’

Thane looked to the Sister-Commander and the two High Lords. As Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, Thane would already have the nominal support of the Council to coordinate the defence of Terra and destroy the Beast. Kubik, Vangorich and Brassanas would, of course, work out what he intended to do. Thane had honoured his promise to his brothers in not informing them in so many words, but at the same time he knew he could rely upon their discretion. Kubik sat on bigger secrets than the resurrection of a Space Marine Chapter in his Martian vaults, while anyone told by the Grand Master of Assassins would almost certainly end up dead. As for the Sister-Commander, Thane was sure that Lady Brassanas would keep her silence.

‘How is this to be done?’ Kubik asked, his voice the metallic hush of a conspiratorial utterance.

‘The head must be cut from the serpent,’ Vangorich said.

‘Or rather, heads from the hydra,’ Thane said, ‘since it was discovered that there is more than one Beast. They all must die.’

‘The logic holds,’ Kubik agreed, ‘now as it did then. These Veridi, while monstrous in size and territorial appetite, are still creatures of simple hierarchy. While warlords of sufficient ferocity and psychic presence endure, the invaders will retain their cohesion and technological supremacy.’

‘Divide and conquer,’ Thane said. ‘We can prevail against fragmented fleets and orks intent on fighting themselves as much as the Imperium. We cannot prevail while the Beasts of Ullanor endure. That is why we have to return to Ullanor.’

The elevator eventually reached its destination, far below the surface of Luna. Lady Brassanas led the way into the rocky chamber beyond.

Immediately outside the elevator, Brassanas met with another senior Sister in distinctive silver armour. The pair exchanged a brief conversation through deft signs made with their gauntlets. The Sister looked to Thane and the High Lords, her steely gaze lingering suspiciously on the Chapter Master. Thane bowed his head briefly in acknowledgement. Exchanging nods with Brassanas, the silver-clad Sister left her commander and took her place in the elevator, bound for the lunar surface.

The chamber was dark and Thane’s armoured footfalls clanged on the metal walkway leading from the elevator. The bronzed mesh and rail of the companionway appeared to be made of a copper-threaded alloy. As they walked after Brassanas, they came upon more Sisters of Silence. These warriors were clad in similarly bronzed plate, furs and cloaks, with blades at their side and boltguns in their gauntlets. They were stationed along the walkway like sentinels, standing in silence and darkness.

After exchanging a brief interplay of signs with one of the Sisters, Brassanas took lantern-like lamps from a rack and handed them to Thane, Vangorich and the Fabricator General. Switching them on, the party bathed the walkway in a red light. They could see that the route extended through the open space of the chamber, high above the cavern floor. Ahead, the mesh walkway divided into junctions and crossways, as well as flights of steps leading to upper and lower levels. Sisters of Silence stood straight and with their eyes closed in the darkness, not flinching at the red light of the lamps or acknowledging the passing of their Sister-Commander. Their concentration remained unbroken. At the centre of the structure of walkways was a small cluster of cages — all different shapes and sizes, all made of the same bronzed metal.

As the red light of the lamps ghosted through the bars of the cages, hulking creatures were revealed within, greenskin monstrosities that dwarfed the Sisters guarding them. Three of them. Stripped of armour and decoration, the orks were draped in thick chains. Though starved and restrained, they were still anything but docile: all claws, muscle and trapjaw teeth. The brawn of their chests rose and fell as they clutched the bars of their cages.

As the red light felt its way through their gargoylesque forms, the creatures became increasingly aware of the new arrivals. Nostrils twitched, beady red eyes flickered and saliva dripped from tusk-crowded mouths, and the orks roared their hostility.

In amongst the snapping and the savage ferocity of the creatures, Thane thought he heard something else. A monstrous force of alien obscenity and fury. The sound of distant destruction, pulling him in like a black hole. It was the Beast — reaching out, as it had done before, across the galaxy. It filled Thane’s mind with momentary madness, and a dread feeling of the horrors to come. Then, it was gone.

Vangorich leant in with his lamp. Suddenly, one of the orks launched itself at the cage wall, dragging its chains along with it. It heaved back and forth on the bars with its jagged claws, making the metal bars groan in protest. The rabid thing’s eyes lit up with a blazing green light. Sparks of ethereal energy showered from its dagger-filled maw and arcs of strange power coursed across its flesh and sinews.

Expecting such a reaction, Lady Brassanas and the Chapter Master stood their ground. Kubik’s optics whirred around with surprise, changing colour and intensity, while the Grand Master of Assassins stepped back, his hands within his robes on what Thane imagined to be concealed blades and pistols. The actions of the first ork prompted the other two into a similar frenzy of rage, and they threw themselves savagely at the cage walls and floors. Ethereal energies dribbled from the orks’ noses and ears, and green lightning arced between their bodies. Their roars rustled the robes of the High Lords, while the hulking monsters’ efforts to get to Thane, Vangorich and the Fabricator General shook the walkway structure.

‘These are the psychic specimens?’ Vangorich said. ‘The creatures whose abilities you used against the orks in the last attack on Ullanor?’

Yes, the Sister-Commander signed. Like psychic mutants amongst humanity, they are outcasts. Unpredictable. Difficult to control.

‘So much so,’ Kubik added, ‘that the psychic energy they harness from gatherings of their kind can overload the conduit creature. This results in an explosion of stored energy and the death of the specimen.’

Following the last attack on Ullanor, Lady Brassanas explained, we had one left, which the Soul Drinkers handed over into our custody. Since then, two more have been secured by the Deathwatch.

‘There are three creatures in total, then?’ Vangorich said.

‘And only three,’ Thane said, ‘so we shall have to make them count.’

As they spoke, the orks raged beside them, crackling with otherworldly energies.

The cages are shielded with holy wards, Brassanas reassured Kubik and the Grand Master. And my Sisters’ presence keeps the creatures’ psychic powers in check. You are safe here.

‘On Ullanor it will be a different matter,’ Thane told the two High Lords. ‘I know that you have seen specimens dissected but we wanted you to see this for yourself, so that you can see what the sons of Dorn will be up against on that distant planet. The size and ferocity of these xenos, and their relentless instinct to butcher and kill.’

These specimens have been stripped of their strength and their weaponry, the Sister-Commander signed. But they are still dangerous.

‘These, now, are but feral creatures,’ Thane said. ‘The ones we will face on Ullanor have blades and blasters, armadas of attack ships and gravitic technologies of mass destruction. They will have armoured moons at their disposal and hordes without number at their command.’

A howl of metal made Kubik turn suddenly. In its fury, one of the orks had managed to bend one of the bars of its cage just enough to squeeze its hand through, and was grasping with a malformed claw at the Fabricator General’s robes. Lady Brassanas snatched her silver-bladed sword from her belt and lopped the broken claw off at the wrist, prompting the ork to retract the gushing stump of the limb.

‘Well, I’m convinced, Chapter Master,’ Drakan Vangorich told him. ‘What do you need to ensure the destruction of the Beast and its forces on Ullanor?’

‘Everything we have left,’ Thane told the Grand Master honestly. ‘I will not repeat past mistakes and overestimate my own forces while underestimating yours. My plan is to leave the Last Wall protocol in place, so that Terra remains protected by the sons of Dorn. I will personally lead the entire Chapter of Imperial Fists to Ullanor in the Phalanx, with the aim of storming the Beast’s palace and cutting the ork hordes across the galaxy off from their command structure. Without their leaders, the invader fleets will fragment. Armies will turn on themselves. Their warlords should revert to observed behaviours, fighting for supremacy amongst their ranks. This should give us time to reform, regroup and raise an expanded Deathwatch to enact a plan of eradication.’

‘But…’ the Fabricator General said.

‘But,’ Thane echoed, ‘we cannot do that without the full commitment of Imperial forces in support. We need everything that’s left. Beyond the Last Wall protocol and a skeleton force providing a sentinel defence of the core systems, I’m going to need whatever remains of the Imperial Navy, the Mechanicus fleet, the Astra Militarum, the god-machines of the Adeptus Titanicus and the skitarii legions. Naturally, Lady Brassanas has already pledged her Sisters of Silence to the assault.’

‘And leave the core systems and Terra exposed?’ Kubik said.

‘They are already exposed,’ Vangorich said.

‘The Grand Master is right,’ Thane agreed.

‘An Assassin knows when to commit his full resources to the attack,’ Vangorich said.

‘An attack that must, of course, succeed,’ Thane said. ‘Or the Fabricator General’s fears will become reality.’

The Silent Sisterhood will do what we have always done, the Sister-Commander signed. We will stand between the Emperor and His enemies. Dying, if we have to, in order to see the Master of Mankind safe.

‘They, along with the deployment of these alien psykers,’ Thane said, ‘will be essential in disorientating the Beast’s vast army of defenders and bodyguards. If the last attack taught us anything it is that the ork psykers draw their destructive power not just from the numbers of their kind in the vicinity but the length of time they are exposed to them. Like batteries, we need to give them time to charge their energies before unleashing them to create a backwash of psychic power. This will give my Space Marines the opening they need to fight their way through the palace and obliterate the Beast.

‘We will need vessels to punch our way in through the fleets of attack ships swarming the Ullanor System. We will need Titans to occupy gargants and ground forces to keep a planetary horde of orks off our backs. Even your Assassins will be needed, Grand Master.’

‘The talents of my Temples will be at your disposal, Chapter Master,’ Vangorich said.

Thane, Lady Brassanas and the Grand Master looked to Kubik.

The Fabricator General’s optics whirred and turned slowly in his hood, as though his cogitators were handling changing numbers of great size and importance. Finally the Fabricator General spoke.

‘The Adeptus Mechanicus have not forgotten the lessons the Veridi have taught us in fire and thunder,’ Kubik said. ‘The Ordinatus Ullanor might have been decimated by the monstrous machines of the alien but the priesthood of Mars can do better than vessels, Titans and Legions. You will, of course, have whatever the forge world principal and its empire can provide. But let me confide in you the questionable, as you have confided in me. Since encountering the Ullanor orks and their unique weaponry, my priesthood have been hard at work studying and attempting to replicate their technologies. We have met with some limited success and have managed to adapt and manipulate the orks’ gravitic weaponry to displace large asteroids and small moons.’

‘Displace?’ Drakan Vangorich echoed, his voice trailing off in amazement.

‘Yes,’ Kubik said. ‘In tests conducted within uninhabited systems, our technologies managed to knock small planetoids out of their orbits and propel them towards other planetary bodies. Inertia and the natural pull of gravity do the rest.’

‘You have this much mastery of the aliens’ technology?’ Thane asked.

‘A limited application,’ Kubik cautioned. ‘In a specific time and place. We could, for example, launch asteroids and small moons from the system’s edge, to smash through the greenskin fleets and impact upon the surface of Ullanor with varying degrees of accuracy. By the time your Adeptus Astartes arrive, Chapter Master, the defences of Ullanor will have been dealt a significant blow.’

Thane extended his gauntlet. The Fabricator General took it with the bionics of his own master-crafted appendage. The Chapter Master looked to Lady Brassanas, who nodded her agreement. Vangorich had a weak smile for the Space Marine, a little of his dark confidence returning. Thane returned the gesture.

‘In a few minutes,’ the Grand Master said, ‘we have managed to get more agreed than a century of Council meetings and Palace intrigue.’

Thane’s smile thinned. He didn’t like the sound of that, or the precedent it set. It was too late to go back, however. There was too much at stake in the present to worry about the future.

‘One thing,’ Kubik said. ‘How shall the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Commander Militant be similarly compelled to lend, without question, their remaining ships and soldiers to this venture?’

Drakan Vangorich’s wolfish smile widened further. He looked like a watch dog who had, at long last, been let off the leash.

‘Leave that to me,’ the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum said.

Six

Terra — the Imperial Palace

It was evening. The sun was setting and thin cloud hung like a veil across the skies. Above, the lights of orbital plates, stations and upper atmospheric skyforts twinkled through the haze. Below them a sundered world turned. Hive cities had crumbled and crashed to the ground, blanketing the lower districts in dust. The ork attack moon might have been destroyed but millions had died in the defence of Terra. Death hung in the air. Shadows seemed longer and the darkness deeper.

Spirits too had been broken. News of failure and successive tragedies had plunged the hearts of billions into abyssal dread. It was a terror all but the most ancient had never known. The Astra Militarum and the Imperial Fleet — the Imperium’s bastion amongst the stars — had been smashed. The military might of Mars and the Red Planet’s Titan Legios had met their match. The Emperor’s Angels had failed to bring the Beast to his knees and even a primarch had been lost to the green tide as it came sweeping in to swamp the core sectors and drown Holy Terra in a deluge of alien savagery and destruction.

Still, the Imperial Palace stood defiant. It was like a galaxy of stars, every security lamp, glassaic window and loophole blazing with the light of occupation and industry. An army of serfs and servitors criss-crossed mighty halls, corridors and precincts. Adepts and scribes went about their bureaucratic business. Warriors of the Adeptus Custodes stood sentinel about the fortifications while important personages of every rank and station took meetings in conference halls, auditoria and star chambers, talking about everything and nothing. Even the High Lords of Terra haunted the dusty corridors and grand quarters of the Imperial Palace, for the Palace was to be found at the heart of the Throneworld and Terra at the heart of the Imperium of Man. No place in the galaxy bustled with such status and significance. It was a gothic crown of architectural magnificence, within which the mind-numbing business of a fading Imperium was conducted. Hive cities towered about the Palace walls. Titan god-machines shook the ground of their assigned avenues with ceremonial patrol circuits. A glittering blizzard of landers, shuttles and atmospheric craft passed overhead, funnelling into restricted flight paths.

On the Plaza Decamerata, Drakan Vangorich moved through the crowds. There was an atmosphere, something sombre and rehearsed. Still, gatherings of such number and in such majestic surroundings had the ability to send a flutter through the stomachs of even the jaded aides and clerics. It wasn’t just the number, it was the identity of those in attendance that stirred the soul. The entire Council was present, High Lords of Terra in luxurious robes, furs and best bionics. Like newly formed planets in a field of debris, they seemed to accrete growing mobs of followers. Some were serfs carrying furniture, attendants and advisors. Most were sycophants and opportunists. Adepts and officials who had High Lords they had waited months to meet with out in the open. The gathering on the Plaza Decamerata might have been a ceremonial engagement, but it still provided the chance to do business and press agendas.

Like these bureaucratic parasites, Vangorich was also working, but while other High Lords indulged and ignored, the Grand Master strode with purpose through the crowds. No flatterers mobbed him. No minions followed him in train. Talk became direct and economical. The Grand Master could get things done instead of spending his days wading through Palace bureaucracy. Unlike the other members of the Council, his robes were dark and simple, extravagant only in their depth.

The Plaza Decamerata was by no means the largest of the Palace plazas. It didn’t even come close. It still took the Grand Master thirty minutes or so to reach his seat. Situated in the western upper precincts, the plaza had always been a favourite of Vangorich’s. An elevated court, it boasted the monstrous fortification of the Boenician Wall on one side and views of Hive Valatyne on the other — one of the more handsome hives of the capital. The venerable Warhound Titans Canis Romula and Canis Rema towered over its bustling expanse, brought in specially to lend the ceremony an aura of significance. The Plaza Decamerata was ordinarily reserved for theatrical celebrations rather than Astra Militarum parades or Aeronautican flyovers. It was primarily used for entertainment and light-hearted distractions for dignitaries and the occasional High Lord and their staff: off-world acrobats, xenos menageries and colossal troupes of dancers. This, despite the fact that the grand atrium at the head of the plaza fielded twelve stone thrones.

Drakan Vangorich went to take a throne on one end of the line but found Fabricator General Kubik there already, resplendent in robes of crimson fabric and silvered mail. A skitarii honour guard stood nearby, flanked by a pair of combat-servitors, the grotesque fusion of their bodies disguised with ceremonial trappings. Taking the throne next to Kubik, Vangorich offered a slight bow from the depths of his hood.

‘Fabricator General.’

‘Grand Master.’

Vangorich looked out across the plaza. It was one thing to invite the High Lords of Terra and then watch as one by one they consented to attend, unwilling to be outdone by other members of the Council. The horde of adepts, aides and bureaucrats occupying the vast plaza in their dun robes was something else. Usually lord scriveners, sub-secretaries and adjutants were not invited to such gatherings, and the repulsion could be seen on the High Lords’ faces as they negotiated the crowd. Vangorich enjoyed watching them squirm.

The vox-bead in Vangorich’s ear chirped. Beast Krule was calling in. By the clarity of the vox-signal, Vangorich assumed he was near. Casting a practised eye across the multitudes he spotted Krule moving through the crowd in the simple robes of a scribe. With his bulk thus disguised the Assassin felt his way through the masses, attaching himself to the train of one High Lord and then the next. He moved within the protective canopies of storm troopers, between genetically-enhanced bodyguards and through dark throngs of Inquisitorial henchmen. Vangorich knew Krule to be an operative who never wasted an opportunity. He assumed that the Assassin wanted to show him how close he could get and how exposed the other High Lords were. He wanted to show his master what could be achieved.

Vangorich, meanwhile, had managed to lose two tails in the crowd — unobtrusive ghosts dressed as ceremonial serfs. They probably belonged to Wienand, but Vangorich couldn’t be sure. Another — a servitor-that-wasn’t — had offered the Grand Master a drink but in addition had placed a tiny listening device on his robes. That had been clumsy, and likely to have been someone else. Dropping the device into the drink — some kind of warmed, spiced wine — the Grand Master had deposited the chalice on the next meandering servitor’s tray.

His enemies on the Council would do anything to catch an unguarded whisper, or the exchange of intelligence between the Grand Master and his Assassins. Such efforts were undertaken as much in self-defence as from the desire to know Vangorich’s secrets. Each High Lord present wished to know what he was planning for them.

While an annoyance, Vangorich appreciated the theatrics. It fitted their location, the Plaza Decamerata having played host to celebrated savants, authorised remembrancers and great-companies of actors. Vangorich had seen both Klastragar Part II and The Witch of Galatae here, as well as The Massacre at Montalaban Fields, in which the Company of the Chartist Captains dramatised the atrocity death for death on the plaza expanse.

Now the plaza was going to play host to an entirely different kind of theatrics. Vangorich saw Gibran, Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators, exchange pleasantries with Juskina Tull, Speaker for the Chartist Captains, before the both of them settled. Wienand and Veritas of the Inquisition leant in conspiratorially. Their eyes darted across each other’s shoulders while harsh whispers were exchanged. Master Anwar of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica felt his way to his throne, while Tobris Ekharth, Master of the Administratum, scowled at approaching attendants, forcing them into a retreat. Vernor Zeck, Lord High Admiral Lansung and the Lord Commander Militant simply sat in grizzled displeasure. As the High Lords took their time and eventually their seats, the gathered thousands grew quiet.

Adeptus Custodes warriors watched from the ramparts of the Boenician Wall and the Warhound Titans boomed to stillness. Beneath the feet of the multitudes, the stone rumbled. Millimetre by grating millimetre, the plaza floor began to part. Adepts and scriveners cried out and jumped to safety as a gap began to open between them. For many, it was the most exciting thing to ever happen to them and they stared down into the trembling depths with awe. It was as if they had become part of the entertainment.

Crowds moved aside, individuals reaching out in their robes to steady themselves as they rode out the quake of the parting stone. Dust cascaded down into the dark chasm opening in between, and High Lords stood up from their thrones to get a better view. Bodyguards swept in to put themselves between their masters and harm’s way. Vangorich looked to Kubik, who said nothing. The Grand Master nodded for the both of them. He had seen different shows and spectacles performed on the Plaza Decamerata but he had never seen the elevated precinct open. It was quite a sight.

Some of his compatriot Lords were similarly impressed. Most tried to peer down into the rumbling darkness, while several even clapped. The stresses of war and xenos doom were momentarily forgotten in the distraction of the plaza. It was what the venue had been built for. As Vangorich caught sight of the vision below, the Grand Master of Assassins smiled. The High Lords paled, but the crowds began to cheer.

Rising up through the gap created by the parting plaza, riding a colossal platform of stone, were armoured figures. Many armoured figures, stretching across the platform as far as the eye could see. As the thunder of the rising floor echoed to a stop, the reverent cheering grew louder. Before the horde of lowly scribes and augmented adepts, there had appeared rank upon rank of Adeptus Astartes. More than any Palace menial had ever seen in one place. Aides and advisors took the appearance of the Space Marines as an indication that some kind of parade was to take place.

The High Lords knew better, however. They knew that such a gathering meant something else entirely. Something impossible. As they took their seats again, with grim faces and steely eyes, the celebratory cheering began to fade. Taking their masters’ solemn reception as an example, the crowds stood back in a collective silence that swept the plaza.

The Adeptus Astartes warriors didn’t move. They were like statues, or columns of standing suits of power armour. Each boltgun and piece of plate gleamed with the fresh attentions of Techmarines and artificers. Re-set banners billowed in the breeze above noble captains and command squads. Indomitable sergeants stood to attention at the fore of their own squads. At the head of the column was a company decked in Tactical Dreadnought armour and monstrous weaponry.

To the High Lords, it appeared to be an army of Space Marines. To Kubik, who rapidly counted their number, and Vangorich who guessed the true nature of what he was looking at, the assembly was a full Chapter of Adeptus Astartes. Not the mixed number of Space Marines that made up the Last Wall but a single glorious Chapter, standing tall and together in the presence of the High Lords of Terra. It was a truly terrifying sight. A vision that captured the imagination and took away the breath.

The singular, most striking feature of the Chapter, however, was not their number or presentation. It was the colour of their honoured plate. The adepts and scribes had cheered because they did not know what they were looking at, but each High Lord of Terra had received the briefs from Ullanor. Intelligence of the catastrophic losses suffered there. Reports of the death of Vulkan, the Emperor’s son. Word of Koorland and how he had met his end. The last thing the High Lords of Terra expected to see, towering above the plaza in perfect formation, were the Imperial Fists — the sons of Dorn resurrected and presented at fighting strength before them. The Council, like the surrounding crowds, were bathed in the glorious, golden plate of the Chapter. Its indomitable strength and grim resolve.

What they could not know, and what both Vangorich and Kubik suspected, was that each venerable suit of armour had been repainted to honour the spirit of a lost Imperial Fist. A warrior lost to the Imperium. Betrayed by the High Lords’ failure. Doomed by the orks’ success. A thousand Space Marines and their captains, selected from the battle-hardened ranks of the Excoriators, the Crimson Fists, the Black Templars, the Iron Knights, the Soul Drinkers, the Executioners and the Fists Exemplar. Punctuating their number was the black plate of Chaplains, the bone white of Apothecaries, the blue of Librarians and the red of Techmarines. The plaza, however, was a vision of gold. The noble yellow of Dorn’s honest plate — each suit’s pauldron adorned with the black fist of the primarch himself, clenched in cold fury. In unity. In victory.

Vangorich watched the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists step forth from the gallery of armoured statues, his Terminator armour a monstrous sight to behold. Ornate and golden, it looked as impregnable as the Phalanx itself. The ground shook at the Chapter Master’s mighty step. As he approached the line of thrones, several High Lords vacated their seats and took cover behind them.

He stopped before the only throne to have remained empty. That which would have belonged to Lord Commander Koorland. The Space Marine gave the remaining members of the Council the pugnacious glower of his helm and allowed spidery arcs of power to cascade from the pair of gleaming black power fists that he held at his sides. The cyclone missile launcher mounted over his hood and pauldrons clunked ominously to priming, its sensor array blinking with readiness. At odds with the bombast of the suit, the crackling fists and missile launcher, a simple adamantium short sword sat mag-locked to the Chapter Master’s belt. A ceremonial weapon, Vangorich assumed, noting the numeral VII crafted into the blade — a symbol denoting Rogal Dorn’s glorious VII Legion and the Defenders of Terra.

A pair of Chapter serfs, garbed in yellow half-robes and carapace, came forth. The Terminator Space Marine’s helm hissed and vented streams of equalising pressure as the serfs unlocked the seals on the honoured item and took it away. Revealed was the grim visage of Maximus Thane, formerly Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar — now presented to the High Lords of Terra as the Master of the Imperial Fists.

Within moments, High Admiral Lansung was on his feet, the folds of his braided uniform and cloak ruffled. As he snatched his extravagant tricorn hat from the dusty rolls of his wig, the High Admiral’s existing sneer deepened. Beside him Abel Verreault, the Lord Commander Militant, was also on his feet, jangling with medals and bionics. Snarling through his scars, the High Lord glared at Thane with an ornate replacement optic.

‘This is an outrage,’ Lansung said. ‘Has the Chapter Master no shame? Is this how he honours the memory of brothers fallen?’

‘How dare he?’ Verreault chimed in. ‘How dare he field the Adeptus Astartes here? Before the Palace wall at Chapter strength, in flagrant disregard of protocol and historical precedent?’

‘It is simply not done,’ Lansung said. ‘Such demonstrations have no place here.’

‘This had better not be some crude attempt to intimidate the Council,’ Verreault said.

‘If Lord Commander Koorland were…’ Lansung said.

‘Which he is not,’ the Lord Militant added.

Vangorich watched the interchange with interest. Lansung and Verreault’s words withered before the sight of the Chapter Master. Towering over them, like a living fortification in his battleplate, Maximus Thane seemed to be beyond them. Beyond the concerns of Palace politics and expectation.

And most of all, beyond his remit. The Grand Master understood why the pair of High Lords were on their feet. While Vangorich had tarried in filling the Ecclesiarch’s seat, that belonging to the fallen Koorland — and the office of Lord Commander that went with it — was now open. Like Verreault and the High Admiral, Vangorich lived in the shadow of such opportunity. It drew them in like a collapsing star. Status. Power. Doom. Both Lansung and Verreault saw themselves as candidates to be honoured with such a title — especially at a time of war and catastrophe.

As Wienand and the Grand Provost Marshal went to join them, Thane stamped down on the plaza with his boot. The thrones shook, and the High Lords with them. The quake sent Wienand and Vernor Zeck back into their seats. The High Admiral and Lord Verreault followed, falling back and thudding into their thrones.

Chapter Master Thane turned around, presenting his armoured back to the High Lords. The powered movement drew a gasp from several members of the Council, who couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Vangorich tensed. If one of the High Lords did something stupid — like call for the Adeptus Custodes and decry Thane and his Space Marines as traitors — then things could escalate quickly. The Grand Master wouldn’t allow such a thing. Thane must be given time to speak.

Vangorich watched as the Chapter Master addressed the plaza. His voice boomed about the Space Marines, High Lords and underlings alike, relayed from his suit to vox-casters situated about the precinct.

‘Brothers,’ Thane said, ‘lords and citizens of mighty Terra. Listen to me now — as you would to the Master of Mankind and his ministers of fate. For through our veins runs the blood of Rogal Dorn, as through his, the blood of the Emperor flowed. Before we were favoured with the Emperor’s blessing — before we were shielded with angel’s wings — we were as you are now. Of common flesh. Of uncertainty and questions eternal. I tell you this to remind us all that we are all interconnected. That we rely one upon the other. That we achieve nothing alone.’

The Grand Master watched Thane begin to pace up and down the plaza, his armoured boots sending quakes through the thrones of the High Lords of Terra.

‘Earlier,’ Thane said, his words carrying far and wide across the plaza, ‘I spoke at length to select High Lords. We talked of matters of Imperium and state. Of the vanquished ork attack moon and our challenges on the Beast’s monstrous home world, where heroes fight to bring an end to this vast and terrible conflict.’

Vangorich watched High Lords scowl and whisper amongst themselves, ignorant of such a meeting. As the Chapter Master went on, he drowned the Council members’ protests in thunderous proclamations of his own.

‘It was a long meeting,’ Thane told his audience, ‘as meetings concerning matters of consequence tend to be. While listening to the High Lords’ counsel, I noticed a spider crafting a web across the casing of an arch. Every time a scribe or servitor passed beneath, the web was damaged and torn. As I listened to the wisdom of our High Lords, I watched this tiny creature repair the structure it had created. Time and again, forces beyond its control, or even understanding, tore the web to shreds. Time and again, the spider crafted its home anew. Our lives are like the threads in that spider’s web. Each one connected to hundreds more, relying upon each other for strength and stability. Our Imperium is like the spider’s web. Myriad worlds connected by an intricate network of shipping lanes, interstellar trade routes and Navy patrols.

‘But when something crashes through that web, like the xenos invaders — this Beast we have come to know as our deadly foe — strands snap, structures collapse and the web hangs in disarray. The spider, however, knows nothing of fatigue. He has no indulgence for the loss of hope. The futility of his efforts is an alien concept — as it is with us. The Imperium of Man has stood for more than a thousand years because of such resolution and industry. Billions live within our web of protection. Worlds might be lost to the mutant. Subsectors fall silent at the arrival of alien invaders. Routes fall prey to warp storms and pirates. The Imperium endures. It will always endure while there are loyal subjects of the Emperor to sustain its majesty. From ages of darkness and strife we have returned. We lived the dread days of Heresy and loss. We shall survive this green plague.

‘Our victory over the alien shall be marked in statues on the Palace arcades, in monuments of commemoration crafted from the ruin of a thousand worlds and in memories passed from Terran father to Terran son. We shall never forget the rising of this Beast, the destruction he has wrought and the unbreakable will it took to defeat him — but first, we must defeat him. We must strike at the heart of his empire, as he has done to us. We must return to Ullanor, a planet infested with the alien, at the heart of a system swarming with the foe. The surrounding sectors are decimation and barbarity, awash with attack moons and monstrous fleets of greenskin craft.

‘We have stood in the blood and dust of Ullanor and failed. But during the Emperor’s Great Crusade, we raised the battle standards and banners of victory over Ullanor. The difference then was that we were united under the Emperor’s gaze. We were humanity resplendent, fighting together for a common cause. The vessels of the Imperial Armada, the god-machines of the Mechanicum — the Space Marine Legions, and the millions of the Imperial Army. We were as one, with the indomitable will of the Imperium behind us. We have proved that nothing can stand before such a collective will — and nothing ever shall. That is why we return to Ullanor — glorious in our unity, assured of our victory and ready to reassert our dominance in the galaxy once more.

‘Let me hear you, now. Let my Imperial Fists — who go to war in your name — hear your brotherly love. Let the Master of Mankind in His Palace hear your pride in His dominion. Let the Beast across the void hear your fury and defiance.’

Drakan Vangorich felt the plaza tremble with the wild roars of desiccated adepts and soulless scribes. Dust fell from servile robes as blood thumped once again through withered hearts. An army of petty bureaucrats found themselves and what it meant to be human with Thane’s words echoing about them. His rallying call had awoken them, as if from some smothering nightmare of crumpled vellum, data-streams and meetings eternal. They were men and women once more, not just augmented collators, servants senseless to impending doom. The orks seared into reality for the Palace clerks, administrators and scriveners. They were not merely digits on a data-slate or the subjects of dictated scrolls. They became creatures of alien flesh and blood. A living, breathing menace. A reality in which they found their deepest fears. A monstrous vision upon which to project their hatred.

In those moments of bellowing affirmation, the Grand Master watched the Palace servants forget the petty jealousies of their masters, the politics and game-playing. It all became so simple. The Imperial Fists — with the Astra Militarum, the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Mechanicus at their side — would destroy the green plague at its source. They would emerge victorious upon Ullanor and deliver Holy Terra from alien destruction because they had to — because every war ever fought by the forces of humanity had allowed for a moment like this. A moment in which those that were left pledged their all to a future unknown. A moment in which survivors found their voice in the silence of empires all but conquered, and declared with one voice that they were forever.

Vangorich looked to Thane. The Chapter Master stood tall amongst the triumphant cacophony. Adepts shook their staffs of office while scribes flapped scrolls in the air. Beyond, the Grand Master saw that the ramparts of the Boenician Wall were crowded with silhouettes, similarly waving. Whole sections of the Palace had ground to a halt as serfs and servants of the Administratum stopped to listen to the Master of the Imperial Fists — a Chapter whose glorious plate, like the rising of a new dawn, had once again appeared on their hallowed plazas and precincts. Members of the Adeptus Custodes looked on as the bells of the Ascension Tower and the Campanilius Cursus rang out, all but drowned in the earth-shaking horns of the Warhound Titans. For a moment, the setting sun broke through the rust-stained clouds of the capital, bathing the Imperial Fists in a golden light.

With the announcements of Canis Romula and Rema booming across the plaza, Vangorich left his throne, and Kubik followed him. The High Lords were out of their seats and in uproar but their carping remonstrations and threats made little impression upon the crowd — most of whom could not hear their masters. None spoke to the Grand Master of Assassins. None tugged at his robes or unleashed their bluster upon him. None asked him to join them in their outrage. While Kubik was courted, the Fabricator General gave them the impassive blankness of the machine.

As Thane turned around to address them directly once more, Vangorich and the Fabricator General reached the bottom of the atrium steps. Both turned crisply in their red and black robes to regard the Council, flanking the looming magnificence of the Chapter Master. The High Lords grew still, the violent indignation screwing up their faces remaining fixed. Wienand and the Provost Marshal looked grave. Standing with Thane, Vangorich saw that the High Lords were looking at him. Usually they averted their gaze but now they stared at the Grand Master of Assassins with horror and dread. While the Legions of the Adeptus Astartes and the might of the Mechanicus caused hearts to hammer in chests, it was the declaration of Vangorich’s intentions that chilled the blood pumping through them.

Several members of the Council went to speak, but Wienand silenced them with a gesture. Nothing would stop High Admiral Lansung and Abel Verreault. With a swish of their heavy cloaks and the creak of boots, the pair left the atrium by a side-arch, to be joined by storm troopers and a Naval honour guard. From there, Lansung and the Lord Militant made their way off the Plaza Decamerata and back into the labyrinthine safety of the Palace.

Vangorich looked to Thane. Like Kubik, the Chapter Master didn’t take his eyes off the remaining High Lords. He nodded. Vangorich obeyed. Turning, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum strode after Verreault and the High Admiral, his black robes swishing after him like a ill wind. As he left the plaza and the dumbfounded Council, Vangorich activated the vox-bead in his hood.

‘Krule?’

‘I have them,’ the Assassin told him. ‘They are going by way of the Tortestrian Gate.’

‘We shall engage them in the Vangora Quarter,’ Vangorich told Beast Krule. ‘Meet me there.’

It did not take the Grand Master long to reach Krule and the High Lords. He found them walking through a cluster of little-used halls in the upper east wing of the Bastile-Autronomica. The boots of the High Lords echoed with urgency through the vaulted chambers, while the pair blustered their indignation and self-importance.

Like one of the many spectres rumoured to haunt the Bastile-Autronomica, Vangorich appeared in a grand archway. Verreault’s storm troopers saw him first and ran forward to encompass the Lord Militant in a canopy formation. Verreault and the High Admiral slowed to a stop in the middle of the hall. The Naval armsmen took position around Lansung, levelling their las-carbines at Vangorich. The High Lords looked the way they had come, back along the footprints they had left in the dust. There they found Beast Krule, leaning against the pillars of the grand entranceway from which the prints led.

‘You dare to bar our way?’ Verreault shouted across the hall at Vangorich.

‘I dare to walk the corridors and halls of the Emperor’s mighty Palace,’ Vangorich said, ‘and speak to whom I find there.’

‘We have nothing to say to you,’ Lansung told him, ‘or your Adeptus Astartes compatriots.’

‘You can both make all the high-minded speeches you like,’ Abel Verreault warned him, ‘but the great armies of the Imperium — their lord marshals and regimental commanders — answer to me and me alone.’

‘And even if they didn’t,’ Lansung said, ‘you couldn’t possibly muster their strength. Not without the might of the Imperial Fleet. Thane may conjure the ghosts of the Imperial Fists but he seeks death among the ruins of Ullanor alone. For without the Astra Militarum and the vessels to transport them, he condemns his Imperial Fists to an early doom.’

‘I whole-heartedly agree,’ Vangorich told them, approaching. ‘That is why the Chapter Master has engaged me. To impress upon you the importance of your role in the great victory to come. You are going to save the Imperium, my lords: for your God-Emperor and for us all.’

Verreault kept turning. As he swept his cloak around he looked between Krule and the Grand Master of Assassins.

‘Call off your dog,’ the Lord Militant said, ‘or I will order my men to put him down.’

‘I shouldn’t worry about my man,’ Vangorich said as he walked towards the High Lords. ‘I would worry about your own.’

Panic spread across the faces of Lansung and Verreault. Armsmen and storm troopers became twitchy, moving their high-powered weaponry off Beast Krule and tracking it across both their own ranks and the ones opposite.

‘Vangorich!’ the Lord Militant roared, drawing a master-crafted pistol from beneath his cloak. It was all baroque barrels and antique finery. As it hummed at the Grand Master, Lansung pulled an extravagant dress blade from his scabbard.

It was all over in moments, the flash of lasguns lighting up the hall. It was unclear who fired first. Either a storm trooper or an armsman opened fire upon members of the opposite party. Beams proceeded to criss-cross the open space, searing into troopers and the High Admiral’s honour guard. Peerless marksmanship on both sides and the close range ensured that the firefight was brief. Bodies dropped to the dusty floor all about the two High Lords, the craters in their chest carapace glowing.

Unfazed by the fury of the blinding exchange, Beast Krule had unslipped a pistol of his own and blazed away. Aiming through the gunfire and confusion, the Assassin blasted Verreault’s pistol into a shower of scorched components. His second shot took a storm trooper through both helm and head. As the Guardsman fell away, Krule sent his final blast at Lansung’s ridiculous blade. With a blinding flash, the ornate sword was knocked from the High Admiral’s hand and sent skidding across the hall floor. As the whoosh of las-fire died away, Lansung and Verreault looked down at their dead men and then at each other. Both were of advancing years, but they were still at their hearts military men. Seeing abandoned las-carbines on the floor, the pair went for the weapons.

‘Rise,’ Vangorich commanded.

The High Lords staggered back as a storm trooper and a Navy armsman got back to their feet. Scooping up their weapons and kicking away others, the two bore no evidence of damage or injury. Whereas the other bodies on the floor displayed searing blasts to the chest and helm, the two standing before them remained untouched.

‘What in the damnable Eye is going on?’ Lansung rumbled.

‘Vangorich,’ Abel Verreault spat, ‘what is the meaning of this?’

‘It is a demonstration, my lords,’ the Grand Master of Assassins told them. ‘Sleeper cadre Black Glass: identify.’

The armsman’s patrician features began to ripple and twist. To Lansung and the Lord Militant’s revulsion, his face began to change. Muscles spasmed and rearranged under face-flesh, while the stature of the honour guard became slight and shapely. With the las-carbine still held upon Lansung, the armsman became an armswoman before the High Admiral’s eyes. From beneath the severity of a regulation haircut, dark eyes burned with lethal intelligence.

‘Augustra Phex, my lord,’ the Assassin said. ‘Temple Callidus.’

By the time the storm trooper had removed his helm, the features beneath had also transformed into those of a young woman. She leant into her las-carbine and pointed the weapon at Abel Verreault.

‘Kitrid Vaunce, Grand Master,’ she said, without taking her eyes off the Lord Militant. ‘Temple Callidus.’

‘You dare to place your monstrous infiltrators in my ranks?’ the Lord Militant growled.

‘Damn you, sir,’ Lansung said.

‘As the pair of you dare to monitor the comings and goings of my Temples from orbit,’ Vangorich said, ‘and try to stalk my clade snipers with inferior marksmen of your own.’

‘We will not be intimidated,’ Verreault told the Grand Master. ‘You cannot threaten us, Vangorich. We are beyond your reach, especially with the segmentum in peril.’

‘I don’t need to threaten you,’ Vangorich told them, his words like shattered glass. ‘I only need to kill you. Cadre, enact your protocols.’

Augustra Phex and Kitrid Vaunce slipped easily into a grotesque transformation. Bones crunched. Sinew tore. Fat and muscle ballooned. They grew in height and heft. Their chins and faces grew fat. Vaunce became the mirror image of the battle-scarred Lord Militant, while Phex’s skin grew lined and weather-beaten like the High Admiral’s. Even their eyes changed colour, making the pair indistinguishable from the High Lords.

‘Lord Militant,’ Vaunce addressed Verreault in his own gravelly voice.

‘High Admiral,’ Phex said, touching her temple in a playful salute as the shock of hearing his own voice played out across Lansung’s face.

‘I could execute you right here,’ Vangorich told the pair, ‘in the Imperial Palace, and no one would be any the wiser. I could replace you with my Assassins and have the Astra Militarum and the Imperial Navy under my control.’

‘Who could conceive of such a monstrous thing?’ Lansung said.

‘Who indeed?’ Vangorich said. ‘With one command I could rid the Imperium of two sacks of rancid wine and use your influence to bring the Council on board with Chapter Master Thane’s plan. With your stationed fleets, High Admiral, and your mustered billions, Lord Militant, the Imperial Fists just might stand a chance against the foe and snatch Terra from the jaws of the Beast.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Verreault asked, his voice betraying the tremor of a man who had thought through his enemy’s battle plan and found it to be sound. Lansung stared at the Grand Master, his great chest rising and falling.

‘That is really down to you, my lords,’ Vangorich said. ‘It is your fingers on my triggers. I take solace in the fact that your deaths won’t be my responsibility — though you should know that they would weigh very little on my conscience.’

‘What do you want?’ Lansung asked.

‘I want your cooperation, gentlemen,’ Vangorich said with a wolfish smile which died on his face as he carried on speaking. ‘I want you to live up to the Emperor’s expectations. I can replace your aged flesh but the experience that has put lines upon that flesh would still be lost to the Imperium, should I have to take drastic measures. Your knowledge and military skill are the only things of worth to me. They are the reason you are alive. What do I want? I want sentinel regiments allocated to the subsector, as well as core fleets to remain on station about the capital system. They will coordinate with the Adeptus Astartes of the Last Wall to shield Terra and the Emperor from the enemy should our attack on the Beast fail.

‘It will not fail, however. For you will mobilise every available warship and transport, every battle company and battalion, to accompany the Imperial Fists to Ullanor. If you hold back so much as a stretcher-bearer or fleet tender, I will issue the order for your assassination. Augustra and Kitrid here will be waiting upon it. They will be every Guardsman, every armsman and officer that you see about you — in place and waiting. Waste no time in flushing them out, for they are not the only members of the Black Glass cadre. My operatives are everyone and everywhere. Each is ready to take your worthless lives and replace you at a moment’s notice. So tell me, my lords — do we have an accord?’

Lansung and Verreault looked wretchedly at one another and then at the Callidus Assassins, who were like reflections in a crystal clear mirror.

‘We do,’ the High Lords answered, their voices laden with dying anger and doom.

‘Good,’ Vangorich said, nodding to himself at a job well done. He enjoyed the moment: the High Admiral and the Lord Militant, finally doing as their duty required of them. ‘Very good.’

Seven

Ullanor Sector — 44 Thoosa

Thane pushed himself through the rocky corridors and across the cavernous chambers of 44 Thoosa. The asteroid was a labyrinth of darkness and zero-gravity, allowing even the Chapter Master in his Terminator plate to move effortlessly through its rocky heart.

44 Thoosa had been selected from the Golgashir asteroid field and hollowed out by heavy servitors above the fabricator moon of Abythica Prime. Shielded by an intense debris field, the tiny forge world had been missed by roving ork fleets, and selected as one of the six staging points for the Imperial attack upon Ullanor. Thane had had his Imperial Fists travel there to be met by Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken, whom Fabricator Kubik had entrusted with the experimental gravitational technologies the Adeptus Mechanicus had developed from recovered ork equipment.

Within a wide ring of colossal node-installations hanging above the fabricator moon, 44 Thoosa tumbled through the path created by the gravitational node fields, orbiting the planet. The asteroid was busy with scaffolding and orbited in turn by work stations and servitor ships. With alterations made and its precious cargo installed, the asteroid gathered speed as it moved between the alternating nodes. Pulled onwards by the gravitational forces of the adapted ork technology, the colossal piece of rock spun with increasing velocity around the fabricator moon.

Utilising Artisan Van Auken’s calculations, power to the gravitational ringway was cut and 44 Thoosa was thrown out into the void like a tossed bolas, heading at carefully calibrated speed on a trajectory for the planet Ullanor. The last of six successful test launches using asteroids from the Golgashir field, 44 Thoosa followed in the path of its rocky predecessors. Like a comet breaking up into a meteor storm, the asteroids plunged towards the homeworld of the Beast; 44 Thoosa, however, was the only one to carry the forces of the Imperium.

Also repairing at Abythica Prime had been what remained of Battlefleet Solar-Spinward. Comprised of ancient battleships, grand cruisers and fleet carriers, the armada had been bolstered with escorts and heavy frigates from Zanaheim, as well as Abythican ark cruisers of the Zeta-Iota battle group. Newly reassigned as Attack Group Thoosa and placed under the command of Lord Admiral Evelyn Napier, the fleet’s instructions were to follow the asteroids in through the outer systems of the alien stronghold sector at sub-light attack speed, while protecting the heavy transports, troop carriers, ark freighters and mass conveyors from the swarms of ork assault craft Thane expected to find there.

Fighting fire with fire, Thane had chosen to transport most of the Chapter, along with Kavalanera Brassanas’ Sisters of Silence and the ork psykers, to Ullanor aboard the asteroid. Crashing into the planet, in emulation of the orks’ own devastating tactics, Thane aimed to take advantage of the widespread destruction and chaos by holding and expanding the decimated landing zone with landed armour, Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum, skitarii legions and battle-automata. Utilising orbital strikes and Navy air support, he also hoped to get the god-machines of the Legio Intrafex down on the ground. All the while, Thane and his Imperial Fists would besiege the orks’ palace and the Sisters of Silence could unleash the power of a greenskin psyker upon the apocalyptic monstrosity the galaxy had come to know as the Beast.

Launched from other fortress worlds and forge worlds situated about the Ullanor systems, five more attack groups were surging through the void towards the stronghold system. Magos Dominus Gerg Zhokuv led one attack group from Dynax-Abultra, the dominus’ experience in commanding Adeptus Mechanicus forces during the previous attack on Ullanor seen as invaluable. Another benefitted from having High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars leading the charge. One even carried a High Lord of Terra. Wienand of the Inquisition had decided to accompany her Adeptus Mechanicus adviser Eldon Urquidex and a force of Deathwatch Space Marines under their watch commander, the Space Wolf Asger Warfist. The last attack group followed in the wake of the mighty Phalanx itself, with Tenth Captain Decarion fortifying the colossal craft with the Scouts of the Tenth and two demi-companies of Imperial Fists.

Arriving at the distant Mandeville points of outlying systems, thousands of vessels converged upon Ullanor, their engines blazing at attack speed. The Imperial Navy had deployed the last of its battleships and grand cruisers, leading patchwork armadas of scrambled vessels made up of system squadrons, patrol groups, flotillas and sector fleets. Legendary capital ships had even been hastily refitted and brought out of retirement: the Emperor Ascendant, and the Astra Glorianus that had been serving as a prison hulk amongst the rings of Tetra-Bithia. Flanked by cruisers, heavy frigates and destroyers they escorted the great ark ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus and bulk freighters transporting the apocalyptic war machines of the Adeptus Titanicus. Fat troop ships carrying Astra Militarum regiments travelled alongside ark freighters transporting skitarii legions to war and Navy carriers primed with interceptors, strike fighters, bombers and gunships. Other institutions had contributed what they could. The Ecclesiarchy had sent along Ministorum transports, overladen with hastily recruited frateris militias. The Adeptus Arbites had despatched a small number of precinct ships and counter-insurgency craft while Drakan Vangorich had contributed several cladeships, carrying some of the deadliest killers in the Imperium.

Thane and his attack force were prepared to give the orks no quarter and no respite from catastrophic destruction. As the monsters staggered through the ruins of their own world, the Chapter Master would visit on them doom upon doom before baptising the newly formed Imperial Fists in dust, blood and battle.

Scraping the golden yellow of his Terminator plate against the rocky wall, Thane pushed out across the cavernous gloom of the asteroid’s central chamber. Hollowed out at the heart of 44 Thoosa, it had been nicknamed the Nexus. Adamantium frameworking and field generators had reinforced the chamber for the rough landing to come. Artisan Van Auken had crafted the rocky body to be an asteroid within an asteroid, the inner core benefiting from anti-gravitational technologies shielding it from the worst of the planetary impact, and the outer core designed to absorb the worst of the contact destruction.

It was here in the Nexus — pressurised and supplied with a basic atmosphere — that the Space Marines, Sisters of Silence and alien prisoners would ride out a planetary impact. It was here, amongst the hurried adaptations of the Adeptus Mechanicus and by the good grace of their technological invention, that they would attempt to survive the unsurvivable.

Above him, the cavern ceiling housed a small cluster of cages. The three monstrous orks from Luna, hardy beyond understanding, clawed their way around their cages in the zero-gravity. Their eyes and mouths blazed with ethereal power, while arcs of psychic energy sizzled across green flesh and the bars of their prison. Their fang-filled maws were open and their ugly faces contorted about ferocious roars.

Lady Kavalanera Brassanas drifted down from the cavern ceiling in her crimson plate, accompanied by the Sister in silver that Thane had encountered in the lunar caverns. They stopped gracefully before the Chapter Master.

‘Status, Sister?’ Thane said, looking up at the monstrosities above. Ethereal light blazed within the cages and crackled across the bars.

The prisoners grow in power and agitation, Brassanas signed back, the closer we get to Ullanor.

Thane nodded gravely. ‘Can they be contained?’

The outer systems are swarming with the enemy, Brassanas told him, each creature a psychic reservoir from which these monsters draw their power.

‘This is a good thing, yes?’ Thane put to her. ‘The longer the charge and greater the number of orks, the greater the power. The greater the power, the greater the destruction to be wrought upon the greenskins.’

To a point, Brassanas signed.

Thane sensed her caution. ‘Can they be contained, Sister?’ he repeated.

The Sisters of Silence will not fail, Chapter Master, Brassanas assured him.

‘My lord,’ Honoured Brother Tychor said as he approached Thane, moving around the equipment with the Chapter’s new battle standard clutched in his gauntlet. The banner was tall and proud. While the fabric glinted with gold thread, the shaft and crossbar of the standard were crafted from silvered adamantium, each of the four ends terminating in a sculpted fist.

In recognition of his bravery in the Feast of Blades, Thane had appointed Dathan Tychor both Chapter standard bearer and his personal champion. Leading an honour guard of former Excoriators, hand-picked by Tychor himself, he had responsibility for the Chapter Master’s person on the field of battle. While Tychor’s plate gleamed newly golden yellow, his bionic arm still held the battle-scarred sheen of age and bloody employment.

‘Epistolary Zoldt and the Chief Librarian have word for you from Attack Group Sisyphax,’ Tychor reported now.

‘My lady,’ Thane said to Brassanas, nodding in farewell, before following the standard bearer.

In the zero-gravity of the cavernous chamber, Tychor and the Chapter Master made swift progress. They glided across ranks of Imperial Fists, each standing to attention in transportation cradles. They waited in silence. Hungry for battle. Ready for the havoc to come.

They found Epistolary Zoldt at a communications station. Zoldt was prevented from using his psychic powers in the presence of the Sisters of Silence, and Thane could only imagine what agony it was for the Librarians to be in the presence of a null like Kavalanera Brassanas. Even without the use of his powers, however, Thane had found a duty for the Epistolary, nominating Zoldt his chief communications officer.

Along with installing the transportation cradles, chamber reinforcements and tethers, Artisan Van Auken and the Adeptus Mechanicus priests at Abythica Prime had ensured that Thane could coordinate the colossal forces at his command. A hololithic vox-station relayed directly to the monstrous Phalanx, similarly closing on Ullanor. With most of the Chapter deployed for battle on board 44 Thoosa, the Imperial Fists Space Marines left aboard the mobile fortress-monastery were Captain Decarion and his Tenth Company, two further demi-companies, a skeleton complement of Techmarines, and Chief Librarian Azmachai and his Epistolaries. Decarion was charged with the defence of the fortress-monastery and leading Attack Group Sisyphax. He commanded one hundred Space Marine Scouts made up of a mixture of neophytes taken from all six Successor Chapters of the Imperial Fists and one hundred battle-brothers, with two thousand battle-ready serfs and servitors.

Azmachai and his Epistolaries, meanwhile, had the responsibility of astropathically communicating the Chapter Master’s orders to all under his command. Away from the nullifying influence of the Silent Sisterhood, the Chief Librarian could relay orders to astropaths aboard Lord Admiral Napier’s flagship, the Apocalypse-class battleship Master of Mankind, and the Ark Mechanicus Buenaventura, commanded by Dominus Gerg Zhokuv. At much greater distances, Azmachai also sent and received astropathic messages from choirs aboard the flagships of the other attack groups converging upon Ullanor, each leading fleets that trailed their own tumbling asteroids.

‘Brother Zoldt?’

‘The Chief Librarian for you, Chapter Master,’ Zoldt said, his voice strained with the burden of being surrounded by the Silent Sisterhood.

The warping hololithic representation of Azmachai suddenly crackled into focus. The Chief Librarian stood encased in a hooded suit of blue Terminator armour, swathed in golden robes. He jabbed his force staff at deck serfs that Thane could not see, giving them a haughty scowl. As he moved, the lines on his haggard face ran to deep shadow, while a milky eye blinked with constant agitation.

‘Chapter Master,’ the Chief Librarian said. ‘I have much to report.’

‘Proceed, old friend.’

‘Attack Group Perditor has had their force bolstered by a reserve flotilla under Commodore Beauchamp,’ Azmachai said.

‘I get the feeling that is the only good news you have for me, Librarian.’

‘Indeed, Chapter Master,’ Azmachai said. ‘Perditor has run afoul of an attack moon on their approach through the outer systems. They have experienced heavy loses, including the capital ships Rex Resurgam and Voidhammer.’

‘Admiral Lumaresq is lost?’

‘Flag Captain Emes now commands, Chapter Master,’ Azmachai told him.

‘What of Attack Groups Idas and Verita?’

‘Idas is coming up through the Acheronias,’ the Chief Librarian told him. ‘Dominus Zhokuv has sent word that the systems there are decimated. Charted worlds are gone with only a debris field remaining. He suspects that the Acheronias region might have been used as a testing ground for the ork gravitational weaponry.’

‘Can they make it through?’ Thane asked.

‘They endeavour to do so, my lord.’

‘And Verita?’

‘Sporadic contacts with enemy flotillas in the Scorpicon Nebula,’ Azmachai said. ‘Several escorts have become separated from the main fleet in the dust clouds.’

‘Have Watch Commander Warfist and the Deathwatch leave them,’ Thane ordered. ‘We cannot afford to slow our approach. Out here, hesitation is death. The commanders of those vessels will have to act under their own initiative. Now tell me: have we had any further contact with Attack Group Phaethon?’

‘Nothing, my lord,’ Azmachai told him. ‘Group Phaethon’s approach lay through some of Ullanor’s satellite and stronghold systems. Last reports were of the destruction of a number of troop carriers. I regret to inform you that the 3001st Arphistran Rifles, the Varsine Dragoons 3rd Battalion and the Ypresian Free Companies are all lost to us. Commodore Tregorran identified an ork vessel on the Sartovian Drift,’ Azmachai said, ‘last seen at the Battle of the Hartzhaven. A space hulk mounting experimental weaponry, codenamed Green Herald. Since Tregorran’s identification of the vessel, I have heard nothing from the commodore or his captains.’

‘Bohemond?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Keep trying,’ Thane urged the Chief Librarian.

‘Of course,’ Azmachai said. ‘I do, though, have reports for you from your own group.’

‘Proceed.’

‘The troop carrier Pronteus has been boarded,’ the Chief Librarian reported. ‘The orks are employing long-range teleporter technology. The 3rd Royal Vortiga carry a contingent of abhuman auxilia that have proved successful in keeping the enemy from the bridge. The carrier is managing to keep pace.’

‘Any losses?’

‘We lost the bulk freighter Bellico and the three Titans it was carrying to a ramming action, while the battle-damaged frigate Duke Castagir detonated her engines, clearing our rearguard of attack ships. The sacrifice was a noble one but the enemy still pursues, however, and in growing number.’

‘And Attack Group Sisyphax?’

‘I am happy to report that the Phalanx and Fleet Sisyphax have fallen in behind you, Chapter Master,’ the Chief Librarian said. ‘Captain Decarion has asked me to pass on his assurances. She has not a scratch and he intends to keep our fortress-monastery that way. He has had occasion to exercise the gun crews, however, and sent three ork battle cruisers into the asteroid surface.’

‘We felt the impact detonations,’ Thane confirmed.

‘Several cruisers have broken off from the attack, following the mauling,’ Azmachai told him. ‘The Lord Admiral’s captains are requesting permission to pursue.’

‘Absolutely denied,’ Thane said. He knew it went against an officer’s every instinct to watch an enemy all but destroyed limp away to safety, but he could not allow a few hothead captains and commanders to break formation and threaten the integrity of a coordinated attack.

‘No vessel is to break off from the fleet — and that goes for all other attack groups also. We are to be the hammer’s swing: unswerving and true.’ Thane looked out across the hundreds of Imperial Fists in the chamber, each waiting for an opportunity to prove himself to his Chapter Master, to honour the noble yellow of his plate and his Chapter’s history.

‘When we strike, we strike together — and when we do, we shall shatter this barbarian empire. Only then will the galaxy ring with our victory.’

Eight

Ullanor System — 44 Thoosa

Impacts upon the surface of 44 Thoosa had become increasingly regular as the colossal rock rolled through the void, ever closer to the stronghold world of the monstrous Beast. Ork attack ships, brute cruisers and great carriers of the greenskin horde were smashed into oblivion as the asteroid ploughed through the swarming system.

When Chief Librarian Azmachai announced that they were entering the Ullanor System, Thane decided that he needed to see it for himself. Having visual feed signals transmitted from the Phalanx and vanguard vessels of the fleet, he watched their approach on the hololithic projector.

The darkness of space was tinged green with the grotesque presence of the invader. The Chapter Master felt his jaw clench behind his faceplate. The scale of the xenos contamination was appalling. Here, within the borders of the God-Emperor’s Imperium, Ullanor had festered like an old wound. What had once been lauded as one of the greatest engagements of the Great Crusade advertised itself to the galaxy as a failure. The orks had not been wiped out on Ullanor. They had not been defeated. Like a fever untreated, they had returned with a vengeance. Each planet and moon of the system was a blot, a swarming miasma of monstrous craft. Rust-buckets of ungainly accretion, boasting bulbous engines and bristling with weaponry. Bastardised warships, cobbled together from the wrecks of Imperial vessels. Weaponised chunks of rock and debris.

The crowning glory of the madness was Ullanor itself. A beast of a planet, it sat like a barbarian warlord among satellite supporters. A place that burned the eye with its xenos taint and ached with the mindless violence of alien brutality. Thane forced himself to stare at its horror. Beneath the impenetrable haze of craft and orbital detritus that buzzed about the planet like angry insects swarming, the Chapter Master knew what was waiting for them. A writhing carpet of green. A planetary horde of savage abominations. Pole to pole orks, their brute workshops and the heretical technologies they spawned.

Their target, however, or certainly the general target that Artisan Van Auken had aimed 44 Thoosa for with his mind-bending calculations, was the city named Gorkogrod: the stronghold of the Beast. An equatorial fortress-palace the size of a small continent, it was the alien warlord’s seat of power and savage authority in a contested galaxy. It was from this monstrous stronghold that the Beast advertised his presence and supremacy. Technological abominations had been perfected in his barbaric honour. Trillions of orks had converged upon the system in their hulks and attack ships, augmenting the billions teleported there and those spawned under the Beast’s own banners. The doom of his psychic invitation even reached out to humans on Imperial worlds. Citizens, local flotillas and Astra Militarum garrisons went mad and defected to the orks before their hulks and derelicts even broke system, before ending up as slaves in a growing alien empire.

Thane couldn’t tear his eyes from the spectacle. The planet even seemed to call to him. Across the frozen silence of space, he fancied he heard the raving ferocity of the orks. A rising cacophony of snaggle-tusked fury and bloodlust unbound, coming together in a mind-splitting roar, Thane once again heard the Beast. Like a beacon of infectious, alien insanity, the Beast’s furious presence seemed to reach out from Ullanor.

Thane closed his eyes and blinked both the spectacle and the Beast’s monstrous roar from his thoughts. He did so because he was a Space Marine and he could. He was engineered to be stronger in both body and mind. The Beast had infected entire worlds with his alien madness, however, and commissars on board fleet carriers had reported hundreds of Guardsmen from scores of different regiments lost to such insanity. Chief Librarian Azmachai had reasoned that it was a psychic expression of the Beast’s barbaric desire to conquer the galaxy, a territorial advertisement, wielded — like all things by the orks — as a weapon. The Chief Librarian knew not, however, how to combat such a potent phenomenon.

Faith, Thane had told him, ordering his company Chaplains to conduct battle blessings on the sons of Dorn as the asteroid approached.

‘Look at what we have done,’ Thane said, half to himself.

‘We did not do this,’ Tychor replied, before the crackling hololithic image of Azmachai could speak. ‘The orks need no assistance in polluting the dark reaches of the galaxy. They are the plague, we are but the cure.’

‘Brave words, brother,’ Thane said, ‘and worthy of a Chapter standard bearer. I fear they have been here spoken before, however. By our father… and our father’s father.’

‘You blame them?’

‘If they were here, to see this,’ Thane said, ‘knowing that the claws of these beasts are slick with the blood of the Imperial Fists? I think that they would blame themselves.’

‘You are here,’ Tychor said, ‘seeing this. Living this. What do you think?’

‘I think that we are being punished for our lack of vigilance,’ Thane said. ‘I think it has happened before and will happen again. The galaxy is vast and deep but it belongs to humanity. It is our responsibility. Our burden. We cannot afford to be complacent.’

Cycling through the hololithic visual feeds, Thane saw the vessels of the two attack groups rocketing up behind. With engine columns blazing, the Imperial ships kept pace with the asteroid and held a defensive formation. Admiral Napier and Captain Decarion had formed two lines of battle with the majestic battleships, grand cruisers and Adeptus Mechanicus ark ships under their command. While the Admiral led one column with the Master of Mankind, Decarion led the other with the monstrous Phalanx. Between them, the vessels offered protection to the convoy of bloated troop carriers, skitarii ark freighters and mass conveyors that the warships were escorting.

The fleet was like a colossal fortification moving through the void, vessels ancient and indomitable presenting towering walls of titanic gunnery. Boasting Guardsmen, cybernetic soldiers and combat servitors numbering in the millions, as well as the apocalyptic engines of war, it should have been more than a match for the enemies of humanity. Faced with Ullanor itself, however, with its nebulous blizzard of ships and continent-swallowing hordes, it didn’t seem enough. Not nearly enough.

While 44 Thoosa in itself raised neither suspicion or alarm amongst the orks — the system being used to its fair share of comets and meteorite storms — the trailing formations of Imperial warships were another matter entirely. Drawn to them like predators to a game trail, ork attack craft swarmed the capital ships, attempting to match their reinforced hull plating against Imperial firepower. Crash-capsules and rocks rolled through turret fire, while hammerheaded battle cruisers attempted to plough on through lance beams and cannon blasts. The disciplined broadsides of the Navy warships washed the orks back in a tsunami of light and heat, but the junkers just kept coming.

As the 44 Thoosa tumbled on through the ork system, Thane watched the other asteroids ahead of them closing in on the ork planet. The smallest of them struck an attack moon on its way in-system, resulting in a blinding light of impact that faded to the molten glow of scarred rock. The destruction was horrifying. While the asteroid survived, it had been deflected and Thane estimated that it would barely graze the atmosphere of the target planet. His blood chilled at the prospect of 44 Thoosa doing the same in the crowded system. He didn’t need Chief Librarian Azmachai to tell him of the hell-storm of rock and debris that the asteroid must have been shedding, straight into the path of the fleet.

The Chapter Master marvelled at the sight of the other asteroids and the technological ingenuity it must have taken Artisan Van Auken to put them on such a course. As the leading pair spun through the void, they were followed by a third, as ugly a piece of rock as ever graced the galaxy. Monstrously bulbous and irregular, it was also the largest of the asteroids that the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus had gravitationally propelled towards Ullanor. The massive rock piled on through flotillas of ork attack vessels, decimating stationed terror ships and crashing through star forts.

Thane and Tychor watched the pair of vanguard asteroids strike the planet. The Chapter Master’s hearts thumped in his chest and his spirit soared as the two bodies, so graceful in their approach, smacked into Ullanor like a pugilist delivering an almighty left-and-right. The planet trembled and the points of impact glowed hot with tectonic fires. Blast waves rippled out, turning the swarms of attack ships into tangled wrecks. As the skies rained debris and shattered gun platforms, waves of corpses, broken and aflame, were blasted back across the land. Within horrific moments it was over, the impact sites ablaze with melted rock and devastation. The ugly rock that followed struck the planet only just behind, and bathed the ork world in a corona of destruction.

‘Burn,’ Thane hissed through his helmet grille. Fleets annihilated. Imperial worlds torn apart. Populations enslaved. He felt all such atrocities in his chest and yearned for vengeance. ‘Burn, you monsters.’

He watched, chafing for action, as Ullanor grew before him. 44 Thoosa would be the next to smash into the greenskin world, right on top of the palace stronghold of Gorkogrod. Intelligence gathered upon the two doomed previous attacks told the Chapter Master that the Beast’s lair spanned a small continent. It was all colossal fortifications and monstrous architecture, as alien as it was formidable. Within the walls were precincts kilometres across, choked with weapons factories, titanic workshops, fungus plantations, holdings of greenskin livestock and encampments for vast hordes of ork warriors. Of the destruction wrought by the previous two attacks, however, there was no sign. The orks had rebuilt their monstrous fortifications. Colossal alien giga-weaponry and vast factory complexes were everywhere.

‘Time?’ Tychor asked.

‘It’s time,’ Thane answered.

The Chapter Master was beginning to feel the slight drag of planetary gravity on his suit. He reached down with the toe of his armoured boot. It crunched into the grit of the chamber floor as his own weight began to reassert itself.

Above, the ceiling of the chamber was ablaze with coruscating bolts of psychic power. The three cages could barely be seen through the otherworldly energies. Lady Brassanas and her Sisters slowly descended with the effect of gravity.

‘Lady Brassanas, get your Sisters to their landing cradles,’ Thane told her as he strode towards the communications station. ‘Brother Zoldt, general order — all attack groups to take station above impact site. Orbital strikes and Aeronautica to secure landing zones towards the site perimeters. Have Captain Decarion launch his Thunderhawk Transporters with armour payloads. I want our Land Raiders and gunships on the ground following our landing, followed by drop-ships to deploy Astra Militarum and skitarii troops. A foothold must be established before we can bring down the heavy armour and Titans.’

‘What about upper-orbital enemy attack ships and gun platforms?’ the Epistolary asked.

‘All vessels will have to engage while offering orbital support fire and deploying ground troops,’ Thane growled with some annoyance. ‘Tell the captains they will not have the luxury of ordered engagement here. The orks won’t wait on protocols and I won’t wait on the orks. Their first priority is to get troops and war machines down on the ground. Make sure that all attack group commanders understand.’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

‘Open vox-channel,’ Thane commanded. ‘All Imperial Fists.’

‘You’re patched through,’ Zoldt confirmed.

‘Brothers,’ Thane began, ‘we have arrived in deep, in the embrace of the enemy’s stronghold world. We are not the first to make this attack but for good or ill, we shall be the last. The enemy is expecting us. Their warriors will be hungry for our blood. Their weapons will be loaded to bursting and their great blades serrated and sharpened. Their world-spanning fortifications will be ready for our coming.

‘Have no doubts. We will lose ships, we will lose armour; we will lose valiant men and women, loyal servants of the Emperor. And yes, we will even lose our own brothers. There is no other path open to us. But the Imperial Fists will endure, as we always have. The paint on our plate is honourable and fresh. Below us on Ullanor is a green inferno. A baptism of fire. And we shall endure the horror. We shall survive this xenos apocalypse. We shall carve a victory as yet unwritten into the flesh of our foe with bolt and blade. We shall find and destroy the Beast, this thing whose every breath mocks us, and burn his home world, as he has done to so many of humanity’s own. For the second time, Ullanor shall be cleansed of alien taint. Like the Imperial Fists, this planet will be delivered and reborn. As your Chapter Master, in word this is my decree. Now in action I command you to prosecute it.’

‘For the glory of Dorn!’ Tychor roared across the channel, clenching his gauntlet into a fist and hammering it against his breastplate. Company upon company of Space Marines did the same, the vox-channel crackling with the thunder of a thousand Imperial Fists returning the standard bearer’s call.

Tychor and Thane took to their cradles with the rest of the Chapter Master’s honour guard, their powered armourlocked in a standing position. Behind them was Emmerich Berengard, Captain of the First, and Eckhart, the veteran sergeant who led his command squad. The First Company was mostly made up of former Black Templars, like Berengard himself. They stood in grim silence behind their captain and Chapter Master.

‘Ready for the fight of your life, First Captain?’ Thane asked across the vox.

‘It has been my life’s work to purge this galaxy of the alien, Chapter Master,’ Berengard said. ‘Live or die, I could wish for no better reward for my service.’

It was a suitably grim response from a grim man. Berengard’s plate gleamed golden yellow just like the rest of his brothers, but beneath it the captain was nothing but scar tissue. Having been burned from head to toe in the Promethium Wars, Berengard had lost his skin and any last vestiges of good humour.

‘Master Vorstecht,’ Thane called across the vox, ‘report. Are we ready for impact?’

‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ the Master of the Forge told him. ‘All battle-brothers, with weapons and plate, caged in their cradles.’

‘Very good,’ the Chapter Master returned. ‘Prime the detonators.’

A sound rumbled through 44 Thoosa — the excruciating fracturing of rock. Going from the deep cold of space to the friction of atmospheric entry, the surface of the asteroid was heating. Thane’s plate detected the first indications of moving air and a rising temperature. Wind howled through the hollows and tunnel-riddled interior of the asteroid.

‘Stand by,’ Thane snapped into the vox as rock trembled beneath the anchorage of his cradle. Dust rained down from the Nexus ceiling and the walls of the cavern shook. The gravitational forces of Ullanor tore at 44 Thoosa as the asteroid plummeted towards the surface.

The Chapter Master prepared himself for impact. The Adeptus Mechanicus at Abythica Prime had done what they could to counter the dreadful forces at work. The cavern reinforcements. The cradles. Field generators. Anti-gravity technologies designed to cushion the inner core and Nexus from the planetary collision wracking the asteroid’s rocky shell. Even the launching of 44 Thoosa had been calibrated to make the landing survivable. Artisan Van Auken aimed to have the asteroid retain its structural integrity upon impact, unlike the other asteroids which had been launched at Ullanor at maximum velocity.

Such considerations should have offered reassurances to Thane, but plunging towards the planet surface, all he could think of was the fate of his new Chapter. It would be a cruel fate indeed if the Imperial Fists were to burn in the baptism of their first engagement. He shouted further assurances to his battle-brothers, but his words were lost to the roar of atmospheric friction.

Impact.

For a minute — several minutes — Thane could not speak.

His body had been engineered to take all that the galaxy could throw at him, but this was something else entirely. As 44 Thoosa hit the surface of Ullanor, the cavern shook and cracks ripped through the rock. Support struts were torn out of their foundations. Grit rained from the ceiling, pitter-patting across the surface of the Chapter Master’s plate. Dust choked the air and lamps died, plunging the Nexus into darkness. Even the ork prisoners had been knocked semi-senseless within their cages, abruptly ending the psychic lightstorm above the heads of the Imperial Fists.

Every bone in Thane’s body reverberated with the asteroid’s sudden impact, as he was flung back against his supporting cradle by the unimaginable forces of the graceless landing. Blinking sense back into his jarred mind, the Chapter Master found his honoured plate to be urgently reporting a deluge of data. Environmental warnings, integrity assessments and damage reports, mostly. His Tactical Dreadnought armour sparked, while the landing cradle was a ruin about him.

Getting the thumbs of his gleaming black power fists beneath the frame, Thane heaved. The cradle had nothing left and broke away in his grip, allowing him to stumble forward. The floor felt different beneath his boots, tilted at a strange angle. Based upon the weight distribution of 44 Thoosa, Artisan Van Auken had made an estimate regarding the orientation it would assume as soon as it was in the embrace of Ullanor’s powerful gravity. It had only been an estimate, however, and the asteroid seemed to have settled upon an incline.

‘Tychor,’ Thane called through the darkness. ‘Report. Can you hear me?’

‘Barely, my lord,’ the standard bearer replied, his voice cracked across the vox.

‘First Captain?’ Thane said. ‘Come in.’

‘To the end,’ Berengard growled, shaking off his own injuries and rising from his cradle.

‘Suit lamps,’ Thane ordered. At once, the Nexus was criss-crossed with beams that cut through the murk of the cavern. With light, Thane could make out a collapse, where both the cavern wall and adamantium supports had given way. ‘Zoldt?’ When the Epistolary didn’t answer, the Chapter Master repeated his call.

‘My lord,’ Zoldt managed.

‘Communications?’

‘The station is shattered, my lord,’ Zoldt reported.

‘We will have to rely upon suit arrays,’ Thane said. ‘When the Phalanx achieves high orbit, I want a vox-channel through to Captain Decarion as soon as possible. This is imperative, do you hear me, brother?’

‘Acknowledged, my lord,’ the Epistolary voxed back.

The Chapter Master shook his head within his helm and blinked the last of the disorientation away. They were there, on Ullanor. In the midst of a raging nest of greenskin barbarity, at the heart of an alien empire. They would need to act fast. They would need to be resolute. Everything relied upon their indomitable spirit and the tradition of victory on which the reputation of the Imperial Fists was built.

Turning, Thane saw his companies had fared little better than himself. Plate that had gleamed golden yellow moments before now sparked and was covered in dust. Imperial Fists extricated themselves from landing cradles with powered force, before checking their weapons for damage or obstructions. From the way they moved, he could tell some of the Sisters had suffered in the rough landing, but they attended to each other and their alien charges with the efficiency and determination he had come to expect. Taking their positions about the buckled cages, they stood sentinel over the ork psykers.

‘Captains, report in,’ the Chapter Master commanded, ‘and check for casualties.’

‘Berengard, First, reporting in.’

‘Karlito, Second, present and ready.’

‘Company Apothecaries, see to your injured,’ Thane said.

‘Oberon, Seventh, ready, Chapter Master.’

‘Captain Brondal, reporting in.’

‘Master Vorstecht,’ Thane voxed, ‘I want status on warsuits and armour, right away.’

‘Aye, my lord.’

‘Storn of the Ninth, standing by.’

The Chapter Master listened for his remaining captains. After Gortez, Uzziah and Valdanor, he expected to hear Saul Abramach, formerly of the Excoriators, but the call never came.

‘Captain Abramach, report in,’ Thane said.

‘Chapter Master, I regret to inform you that the captain is dead,’ a steely voice returned.

‘Chaplain Ishcarion?’

‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ the Chaplain said. ‘He was killed during the collapse. Two battle-brothers go with him.’

Thane nodded to himself. The insertion had been a high-risk strategy and he had known there were going to be battle-brothers amongst the ranks of the Imperial Fists that would pay for his decision. The Chapter Master could only hope that vastly more orks had lost their lives as a consequence of their apocalyptic landing.

‘Understood, Chaplain,’ Thane returned. ‘Take charge there amongst the ranks of the Eighth.’

‘Affirmative,’ Ishcarion returned.

‘Apothecaries, report numbers of casualties and identify your dead. The Chief Apothecary will ensure that their gene-seed is recovered and their spirit lives on in our ranks.’

They didn’t really have time for such luxuries, but Thane couldn’t treat the Chapter’s first battle dead with disrespect. They would all have to hurry, however: their entrance might have been cataclysmic but there was no way of telling how long it would take the orks to rally.

The criss-crossing beams of suit lamps suddenly picked out a hulking figure, dropping from the ceiling. Carrying itself with primordial, brutal grace, the monster landed with assurance. Its cage and chain anchor had broken free in the crash. The lamps of Thane’s honour guard flashed at the creature to reveal its green face and yellowing tusks. The ork bellowed its alien fury at the Imperial Fists, before smashing one of the honour guard aside with a back-breaking crunch. Its heavy chains whipped about around it.

‘Alive!’ Thane called as the boltguns of the honour guard came up. ‘I want it alive.’

Dathan Tychor was suddenly there, the golden fabric of the Chapter standard flapping between the honour guard and their enemy. Knocking the barrels of the boltguns aside with a thrust of the battle standard, Tychor brought it immediately around like a hammer, smashing the ork senseless with the impact of the crossbar’s sculpted fist. As the monster tried to reassert itself, Tychor drew back the standard and then jabbed it forward, shattering the snaggle-fanged maw of the roaring thing. Turning with power-armoured grace, the standard bearer sent the banner fluttering across the heads of the honour guard and their Chapter Master before landing another skull-hammering blow with the adamantium fist on the other end of the crossbar. This time the creature went down, knocked unconscious by Tychor’s relentless assault. As the Sisters of Silence swept in, dragging heavy chains and manacles to clasp on the alien brute, the standard bearer turned to Thane.

‘It’s still alive.’

Turning around, the Chapter Master marched back towards the Imperial Fists, who were out of their landing cradles and forming up. Above, he could hear the remaining ork psykers raging and howling in their cages. In the gloom of the cavern, three battle brothers approached him, each clad in plate of different colours.

‘Three casualties only, Chapter Master,’ Chief Apothecary Delgado informed him, ‘including Captain Abramach.’

‘He will be sorely missed in this venture,’ Thane said solemnly.

‘Their gene-seed has been recovered.’

‘Injured?’ Thane asked.

‘Twenty-two,’ Delgado told him, ‘spread across five companies. None incapacitated. All able to take part in the battle ahead.’

‘Good,’ Thane said. ‘Thank you, Chief Apothecary. Master Vorstecht, what of our combat capabilities?’

‘All Centurion warsuits ready for deployment, Chapter Master,’ the Master of the Forge said.

‘Good, for they shall be needed. I thank you for your efforts, Master Vorstecht. I fear that further damage waits for your venerable machines on the field of battle.’

‘It is our honour to serve, Chapter Master.’

‘Chapter Master,’ Epistolary Zoldt said, ‘Orbital contact established. Captain Decarion for you. Channel psi-sigma.’

Thane nodded and adjusted his vox-channel.

‘Captain, we’re blind down here,’ he told Decarion. ‘I need a status report.’

‘Praise the primarch,’ Decarion said, his words warping across the poor transmission, ‘for your safe delivery and that of the Chapter. It is havoc up here. Phalanx’s batteries and turrets are all firing at full capacity, and still there are attack ships everywhere. Crash-capsules, ramming ships and landers constantly try to board us. My company stands ready to repel the orks when that happens — and it will happen, Chapter Master. It will not take the enemy long to focus their teleporters on us.’

‘Understood, captain,’ Thane said gravely. He could hear the drum of the distant guns. ‘And what of our own forces?’

‘Stormtalon gunships, drop pods and Thunderhawk Transporters are on their way down to you carrying Land Raiders,’ Decarion said. ‘The Deathwatch is inbound. Drop-ships and conveyors are descending now. The Lord Admiral had to send the Titans down with the skitarii and regimentals. The ark freighters are too exposed. Our carriers are attempting to achieve low orbit to deliver their fighter and bomber wings, but ground based macrocannons — the biggest I’ve ever seen — are making that difficult. Napier’s battle cruisers are offering bombardments of their own but he has already lost the Agamemnos and Saint Solomon. Buenaventura, also, has been crippled. Dominus Zhokuv is being evacuated.’

Thane grunted. For the magnificent Ark Mechanicus to be crippled, monstrous vessel that it was, the void battle must be unimaginably intense. He knew that every moment counted. Every second on the planet’s surface cost the attack groups above lives and vessels.

‘Attack Groups Idas, Verita and Sisyphax all have troops and armour on the surface,’ Decarion reported. ‘Princeps Senioris Grimaldi is desperately trying to get his Titans unloaded, dispensing even with ritual observances and weapons testing. Our augurs, however, show the heat signatures of several Titan-class war machines firing up to move on their position. Lord Marshal Rothenberg and Magos Reductor Ohmnix both report colossal numbers of enemy troops. The ork artillery is relentless, powerful but inaccurate. Their vehicles are rolling scrap. Ground forces display little organisation beyond being hordes that rally about larger chieftains and champions. These hordes, however, stretch to the horizon and are devastating in number and at close quarters.’

‘They converged back upon the impact sites?’ Thane asked.

‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ Decarion confirmed. ‘Just as they flood back towards your position. You have little time, my lord.’

Thane nodded. ‘Heavy reinforcements?’

‘Yes, my lord. The heaviest — and in great concentration.’

‘Where are the reinforcements coming from?’ Thane demanded.

‘The fortress precincts about your position,’ the captain told him. ‘Your arrival demolished a large number of factories and fortifications but the largest is seven kilometres to the south.’

‘The target?’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

Thane turned to Tychor. ‘We have missed our aim by seven kilometres.’ If the asteroid had struck the hub of Gorkogrod with the Beast within, their mission would already be over.

‘Captain Decarion,’ Thane continued, ‘the Imperial Fists are to attack the palace, at Chapter strength. The assault will be swift and bloody, and the Phalanx will have the honour of lighting our way. Take station above our position and power up your lances.’

‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ Decarion said. ‘We shall carve the Chapter an avenue of destruction.’

Thane realised that the chamber was becoming bathed in an infernal glow. Molten rock was beginning to bubble up through the rocky floor. Upon colliding with Ullanor, both the surface of 44 Thoosa and the landing site had melted with the heat of impact.

‘Captain Storn,’ Thane called. ‘Attend to that, if you please.’

Storn was Captain of the Ninth and a former Iron Knight. Within moments he had directed his Devastators to move into position. The cavern briefly lit up with the launch of missiles. Hitting the rock just above the openings with krak missiles, Storn’s Imperial Fists demolished part of the cavern and buried the magma-bubbling breach in collapsing stone.

‘Captains,’ Thane voxed across the open channel, ‘it is time. The Imperial Fists go to war. Final checks and observances. Ready your companies. Master Vorstecht?’

‘Chapter Master?’

‘Fire the detonators.’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

Nine

Ullanor — Ground Zero

Maximus Thane stood amongst the rubble of 44 Thoosa.

Charges placed about the asteroid superstructure by the Adeptus Mechanicus at Abythica Prime had allowed the Imperial Fists to choose their exit points. Firing the detonators above the small lake of molten rock in which the wreckage of the asteroid sat, the Chapter prepared to step out onto the doomed surface of Ullanor.

Thane waited as Thunderhawks deposited Land Raiders, Land Speeders and bikes down onto strips of steaming black rock.The devastated land about the mountainous remains of the asteroid was clouded with black dust and glowing with molten rock that bubbled in strips and shallows. From what he could see, it was a landscape of twisted, smouldering devastation. Scorched sand and wildfires. Wreckage. Rubble. Broken bodies.

The Second Company, under the famed former Crimson Fist Konrade Karlito, marched their Centurion Assault squads out onto the wasteland, each step of the mighty warsuits crushing grit and shattering the heat-baked stone. Formations of Stormtalon gunships roared into position above their allocated companies.

As Imperial Fists, in their soot-besmirched plate, moved into formation, Emmerich Berengard came up behind the Chapter Master. The Terminators of the First Company were deploying, their storm shields and thunder hammers held in close. The grizzled Berengard carried a monstrous power sword, which stood almost as tall as the Terminator Space Marine himself.

Lady Brassanas skidded down smouldering scree with a squad of her Sisters of Silence. Between them they dragged one of the ork psykers in chains. The thing roared and clawed at them but the Sisters hauled at it, wrangling the creature back into position.

‘It is the lowest form of life,’ said Berengard, with disgust.

‘It will be even lower when we have done with it,’ Tychor assured him, holding the company standard above the warriors of Thane’s honour guard.

Thane let them have their words. Their genetically bred bravado. It was almost a ritual. Before battle, while Guardsmen cursed and prayed and the servants of the Omnissiah climbed inside their great war machines, the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes talked about what was and what would be. The destruction they would bring to their xenos enemies and the honour of being the Emperor’s Angels.

The shattered rock trembled under the Chapter Master’s boots. From out of the charge-blasted exit stomped a Dreadnought, painted in midnight black. It trailed frayed honours and was draped with chains that jangled with its every thumping step. Strips of vellum hung like a tabard between its heavily armoured legs, while a roaring brazier burned on each shoulder. A cracked and browning skull sat in a hooded socket, each eye aglow, and the gilded wings of the Imperial aquila spread across its battle-plate.

‘The High Chaplain has awoken,’ Captain Berengard announced.

The monstrous machine thundered past the Chapter Master before coming to a stop, its automotive engines rumbling. A living shrine, Chaplain Bachorath had been entombed in his sarcophagal battle-suit for longer than Thane had been alive. While the Chapter had its full complement of company Chaplains, all drawn from the different Successor Chapters, the venerable Bachorath had been given the title of High Chaplain in honour of both his many years of service and the number of foes that had fallen before his hulking form.

When he spoke — a voice that issued from vox-casters and boomed with age, experience and madness — the sound carried across the smoke-wreathed desolation.

‘Where?’

The Chaplain-Dreadnought’s brutal chainfist growled to life, while his twin-linked assault cannons cycled. High Chaplain Bachorath did not know where he was or the year into which he had been awoken. He did not know the nature of the enemy beyond. He did not even seem to care that he was standing among the ranks of the Imperial Fists rather than his own Chapter. All he knew was that he had been called to serve. To kill in his Emperor’s name.

‘Everywhere, High Chaplain,’ Thane told him.

The Chapter Master scanned the swirling black obscurity of the crash site. He peered through the choking dust that glowed an infernal red with the light from the molten surface below. The auto-senses of his Terminator helmet cycled through different spectra before settling on a false-colour filter representing target signatures.

Thane took a moment to absorb what he saw. The horizon was not just blotched with enemies. It positively blazed with approaching targets. Hordes upon hordes of hulking monsters, charging for 44 Thoosa — the mountain that had appeared upon their savage world and levelled forts, workshops and hundreds of thousands of warrior greenskins. Clan kin, whom the barbarian orks of the neighbouring fortress precincts had seen disappear in a thunderous tsunami of dust, flame and unstoppable force.

His vision picked out the serrated outlines of rabid green mobs that stretched as far as his armour’s spirit could see: horned helms, spiked armour, monstrous augmentations, ragged banners and barbed chainswords held high. Thane could see rolling gunfortresses, belching heat and smoke, with warbikes chewing up the rocky ground and surging ahead. Hunchbacked walkers, dragging hydraulic claws and shoulder-mounted artillery, were lost in the shadow of an ork gargant — a towering horror of layered metal and enormous weaponry. Even at such a distance, the thing shook the ground with its hydraulic step. Coming up behind the weaponised effigy, scrambled from some nearby base, Thane could see enemy aircraft thundering in: pot-bellied bombers and junk fighters that were little more than jet engines with wings.

The Chapter Master’s hearts beat hard at the sight. The Imperial Fists had levelled a small corner of the Beast’s empire, a vast, walled precinct of his continental palace. The monster would not stand for that. He would do what the Imperials had done when the ork fleets and attack moons had left worlds burning in their wake — he would send his best.

And like the Imperial Fists, like the Space Marines of the Deathwatch and mighty Vulkan himself, its best would die. Spilling from surrounding strongholds and the fortress-palace of Gorkogrod itself, the green hordes aimed to close the gap — to flood the devastated landing zone with firepower, muscle and savagery. Gunfortresses and scrap-tanks would ride roughshod over the interlopers. Bombers would obliterate the crash site. The gargant, both an effigy to savage gods and a palace sentinel, had been despatched to crush them.

Thane didn’t have the time or manpower to stop such apocalyptic weapons of destruction. He could not allow drop-ships, conveyors and their precious cargo of fighting souls to be swallowed up by the green maelstrom. The Chapter Master had established a toe-hold right in the middle of the Beast’s barbarian empire. He would not lose it to a counter-insurgency, not even an attack of such overwhelming strength that it swept in towards them like a natural force.

All about him, Thane knew that the Imperial Fists were seeing what he was seeing.

‘And here you wait,’ High Chaplain Bachorath’s voice crackled from his vox-casters, the scorn in his tone like a cutting edge.

‘Did you used to favour the sparring cages, High Chaplain?’ Thane asked.

‘I did,’ the Chaplain-Dreadnought told him, unsure as to whether the new Chapter Master was levelling some kind of insult at him. ‘And if I were to favour them now, I would be able to tear the cage — bars, opponent and all — out of the auditorium.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Venerable Chaplain,’ the Chapter Master said. ‘Brothers of my ilk favoured fist over blade.’

‘The pugilist’s path,’ Bachorath said. ‘I, too, have broken my honoured brothers’ heads in my day.’

‘Then you know,’ Thane said, ‘that the knock-out blow is often struck out of opportunity. Opportunity created by an intentional opening. An invitation that cannot be resisted. You put your opponent where you want him — in the devastating path of your fist.’

‘That is as may be,’ the High Chaplain said, his vox-hailed words echoing about the shattered remains of 44 Thoosa, ‘but my auto-senses tell me that we are standing upon a multitude of paths and on all of them we are the ones about to be devastated.’

‘Just be ready to do the Emperor’s work,’ Thane told the Chaplain. ‘Brother Zoldt, how far out are the drop-ships?’

‘Two minutes, Chapter Master,’ the Epistolary told him across the vox-channel.

‘And, at present speed, how long until the enemy vanguard reach our position?’

‘The same.’

Thane stood and waited. The dust and smoke began to thin. The strips of molten rock bubbled and spat, and the roar of the enemy grew louder about them. The titanic steps of the gargant. The coughing and rumbling of monstrous engines. Savage battle cries. Soon the silhouettes of the ork hordes could be made out in the haze. Hulking chieftains towered over their followers, bellowing their alien rage and shooting into the sky with belt-fed weaponry. Bikes screamed ahead. Gunfortresses fired their mighty cannons blind. The sky was filled with the drone of closing aircraft. The cave entrance that the Imperial Fists had blasted in their asteroid transport was cast into the shadow of the great gargant. Shells, from both the titanic walker and the ork armour, smashed into the side of 44 Thoosa. Grit and shattered rock rained from the impacts down onto the Imperial Fists, drumming off their plate.

‘Chapter Master, I must insist…’ High Chaplain Bachorath said, his words bouncing around the mountainous exterior of the asteroid.

‘Hold position,’ Thane ordered across the vox. Gunship-deposited Land Raiders idled. The powerful engines of Space Marine bikes chugged. Stormtalon gunships swooped in, the launchers of their missiles aimed over the ranks of Imperial Fists. Company by company, they held position about the broad cave entrance, their boltguns, pistols and heavy weapons aimed at the oncoming storm of green flesh and carnage.

‘My lord, that gargant…’ Tychor said, but Thane ignored the standard bearer. He could hear the flap of the Chapter battle standard in the backwash of the gunship engines.

‘Drop-ships and conveyors on final approach,’ Epistolary Zoldt reported. Above, beyond the drone of approaching bombers and the roar of his own gunships, the Chapter Master could hear the descent engines of the gigantic drop-ships, each carrying Astra Militarum regiments and macroclades of skitarii soldiers. Beyond them he could make out the even deeper rumble of mass conveyors bringing down the god-machines of the Adeptus Titanicus.

‘We must attack,’ High Chaplain Bachorath insisted with a growl of his automotive engines.

‘Hold,’ Thane said. He licked his lips. The enemy were everywhere. He could hear the roars of monsters astride warbikes and the crash of gunfire coming into range. The ground before the Imperial Fists ranks erupted in sparks, showering stone and the splatter of molten rock.

‘My lord?’ Emmerich Berengard said, even the grizzled Templar stirred to question his Chapter Master’s orders and sanity. Thane nodded. He had drawn the enemy in. It was time to deliver the killing strike.

‘Lady Brassanas,’ Thane said. ‘Our foe is in range and in great number. Now is the time, Sister. Do what our bolts and blades cannot.’

Thane looked back grimly at Tychor and Berengard, while the High Chaplain’s autoloaders primed with a sequence of clunks that seemed to underscore his doubts. Brassanas led her Sisters of Silence out from under the shadow of the asteroid. Picking their path carefully through the channels of molten rock, they heaved along the monstrous ork psyker until they were clear of the Imperial Fists. At Brassanas’ sign, the Sisters backed from the creature in a crescent. Letting the chains run to their full length, they secured the creature to a mangled girder. The monster became the nexus of a blaze of ethereal power. Bolts of psychic rage snapped between it and the rocky floor, searing with growing intensity.

As the Silent Sisters moved away, back to the safety of the waiting Imperial Fists, the psyker became a dazzling nova of otherworldly energy, spidery arcs sizzling about it. It tried to lunge free of its restraints to no avail.

Thane looked back and forth between the blinding light of the ork psyker and the rabid advance of the alien hordes. His plate’s systems registered the first slugs of the ork vanguard plucking at his Terminator armour. Dathan Tychor held the Chapter standard high and took his position with the honour guard around his Chapter Master. The barrels of High Chaplain Bachorath’s assault cannons whirred to life, in readiness for the storm to come. Chainswords growled in unison amongst the battle-brothers of the Eighth Company. Across the Chapter, missiles primed in their launchers. Multi-meltas and plasma guns hissed to readiness. Heavy bolters and boltguns cleared with a thunk. First rounds were loaded into breeches. Barrels were aimed. Ceramite fingertips rested on triggers.

‘Now, damn it…’ Thane growled. The words were almost a plea.

Suddenly the intensifying lightstorm about the psyker died. Thane felt his stomach flip with the backwash of otherworldly emptiness. With tens of thousands of orks converging on the impact site, their mere presence feeding the psykers with ethereal power, the ork prisoner had become a weapon of mass destruction. Without the intensity of the nullifying field about it, the colossal psychic energies building within the creature blasted the monster’s head from its shoulders in a fountain of gore.

And then followed the ugly heads of the closing attackers. The crazed warrior orks on the front line died in droves even as they charged at the Imperial Fists with reckless bloodlust, their boots hammering on several steps more as their bodies crumbled and their heads disappeared in blasts of blood and brain. As ork carcasses crashed down into the dirt, green ethereal energies crackled from the stumps of the necks and briefly across their bodies before dying away.

The effect of the Silent Sisters’ retreat became clearer as the forward ranks of orks stopped shooting. They dropped their weapons and clutched their heads and tusks. A bestial shriek arose from each before their heads started exploding, shooting gore into the skies of Ullanor. As a red mist descended upon the greenskin hordes, the forward ranks collapsed. The cacophony of gunfire began to die away. The headless corpses of ork riders fell from careering warbikes. The cannons of battlefortresses fell silent before the tanks drifted into their own allies. Ploughing through mobs of armoured greenskins, the vehicles mulched orks in their tracks and smashed into each other, resulting in spectacular explosions and a storm of shrapnel.

The surviving orks and their hulking chieftains were at first unperturbed by their falling comrades. It was normal for ork vanguard troops to fall before enemy gunfire. The following warriors barged past crashing corpses to get to the front line, where their savage gunfire or barbed bladework might find an enemy. Instead they found a furious bolt-storm of nearly a thousand Imperial Fists unleashing their blessed weaponry. Missile launchers streaked destruction into the oncoming hordes while the assault cannons of Stormtalon gunships chewed through the thinning enemy ranks.

Before long the ork army had stopped in its tracks. The air was heavy with gore and the ground carpeted with alien corpses. Battlewagons slid down into bubbling hollows of molten rock, melting in the magma, their headless crews still slumped inside. Above the Imperial Fists, the great gargant had frozen. Its colossal workings moaned, the mournful drone of metal upon metal and frozen hydraulics echoing about 44 Thoosa. The mighty vehicle tottered. Gravity and the weight of its monstrous weaponry was dragging it over. Without living crew to correct the war machine’s fall, the towering effigy of alien ingenuity went over on its side. The titanic walker shattered as it hit the ground, pulverising greenskin bodies and filling the sky with an excruciating boom whose echoes seemed to hang in the air.

With the gargant toppled and the field of battle a bloody haze of ork bodies, Thane heard the drop-ships and conveyors of the fleet descend. The landing zone was easy to find, painted red in the gore of warrior foes for kilometres about the crashed asteroid. Silent slaughter greeted the landing gears of the mighty drop-ships. Wreathed in steam and venting gases, the colossal Astra Militarum and skitarii transports sat upon the bloody ground as following craft, including the huge orbital conveyors of the Adeptus Titanicus, made their final approach. Moments later, Navy strike fighters screamed across the sky, banking and circling the carnage surrounding 44 Thoosa.

The Imperial Fists stood there amongst the death and destruction, their guns heavy with bolts unfired and their plate pristine. As the noble yellow of their armour and idling vehicles misted red with the drifting blood of the battlefield, the remaining Sisters of Silence left the asteroid with the two surviving ork psykers chained between them.

Stepping forward through the ranks of his honour guard and from beneath the standard, Chapter Master Thane stood next to High Chaplain Bachorath. Beyond, through the thinning dust and the blood-stained skies, he could see the distant fortress-palace of the Beast. The vast, jagged monstrosity of stone and metal plating appeared to have suffered some superficial structural damage as a result of the asteroid’s impact. Gorkogrod still stood, however: its colossal architecture, reinforced walls and fat citadels still towering above the clanlands and desolation of Ullanor.

Thane smacked a clenched black power fist against the Chaplain-Dreadnought’s thick plate.

‘Now we attack,’ Thane told him.

The Chapter Master began to issue orders to his captains and companies across the vox. ‘Bikes and Land Speeders to reconnoitre ahead of the main force. Land Raider columns to take position along our flanks. We move as a Chapter. We move as one. Companies, form up. Captain Karlito, your Second Company Centurions are to take vanguard and set the pace. Captain Brondal,’ Thane said, ‘the rearguard belongs to the Sixth. You are to have the Chapter’s back.’

‘As ever we shall, Chapter Master,’ Mace Brondal returned.

‘Lady Brassanas, look to your prisoners,’ Thane said. ‘They travel under the Chapter’s protection until their talents are ready to be deployed.’

‘The plan, Chapter Master?’ First Captain Berengard said, hefting his mighty blade.

‘Is simple,’ Thane said. ‘We are the bolt discharged from the gun — direct and unstoppable. We punch through the alien host, puncturing plate, rupturing flesh and breaking bone.’ He looked up at the shapes of black Thunderhawks dropping down out of the sky. ‘The Deathwatch will eradicate any orks that try to close the gap behind us. The Guardsmen and Adeptus Mechanicus will clear anything that remains. Like the bolt, the Adeptus Astartes will fly straight and true. Our target is the Great Beast of Ullanor, and let no wall, weapon or creature stand in our path. For we are the Imperial Fists — the living weapons of the Emperor.’

It was a glorious sight to behold. Near one thousand sons of Rogal Dorn, marching to war. With Karlito’s Centurions setting the steady pace, company upon company held stalwart formation behind. Land Raiders rumbled beside the Imperial Fists, mulching through the bodies of headless orks and barging derelict battlewagons aside. Captain Gortez rode ahead with the Land Speeders and heavy-set bikes of the Fifth Company, while Brondal’s Tactical squads covered the Chapter’s rear. All the while the gun-laden towers and jagged walls of Gorkogrod rose before the Imperial Fists.

As Thane trudged through the sea of bodies and the burning rubble left behind by the city-levelling power of the asteroid impact, Epistolary Zoldt kept him apprised of the status of the various forces attacking Ullanor. The Titans of the Legio Decimata were raining destruction down upon the precincts near 44 Thoosa’s impact site, levelling cannon-bristling fortresses, monstrous factories and the shanty workshops that belched smoke in between. Princeps Senioris Grimaldi had managed to field his Titans from mass conveyors and bulk landers that were swiftly overrun by greenskin hordes. At the price of an entire legion of skitarii soldiers and combat-servitor ship sentinels, the god-machines Deus Domitor, Divinitata Excelsii and Imperator Ultimatum were allowed their freedom. Although denied the ritual observances that usually heralded the awakening of their machine-spirits, the annihilation on offer in the palace precincts was enough to satisfy them. With the Deus Domitor damaged by enemy bombing runs and the wild strikes of ork artillery pieces, Grimaldi awaited drop-ships carrying what remained of the 201st Zenobian Regiment of Foot, in the hope that the Guardsmen and those that followed could establish a foothold in the apocalyptic wasteland left behind by his Titans and retake the landers.

Lord Marshal Rothenberg, meanwhile, had managed to unload his armour in the devastation following one of the cataclysmic asteroid strikes, but the terrain in which he had put down was difficult. Leman Russ variants, heavy battle tanks and Baneblades from patchwork contingents of the Delphriq Cataphracts, the 1st Gorgonian Ironclads, the Nymnal Adamaticlax and Brontaghast IVth Armoured had all deployed together to punch through the ork hordes and their inferior battlefortresses. Progress was slow, however, as the tanks became bogged down in the extensive delta system of a heavily polluted river that had run through the devastated precinct. The river was choked with fungus and ork bodies from the asteroid impact, and the going was made worse by the toxic sludge from a vast factory complex further upstream. The delta turned to blood, mud and mulch beneath the tracks of Rothenberg’s armour, forcing the lord marshal to deploy the remnants of the 39th Lundran Indentured — the only infantry regiment currently at his disposal — in helping to dig out sinking Leman Russ battle tanks.

Then came the second wave — orks whose gunfortresses and battlewagons turned out to be no better adapted to the environment than Rothenberg’s own division. With both ork and Imperial armour intermittently stuck in the heavy metal mire, mud-thrashing tanks became small islands from which Guardsmen and greenskins exchanged vicious fire. Like a honey trap, the thunder of Imperial cannons drew creatures on foot and within the patchwork plating of battlewagons for kilometres around, turning the engagement into an ever bigger mess.

Magos Reductor Ohmnix was having better fortune in a range of volcanic mountains just to the north. The nest of peaks reached up from the lands beyond the Beast’s palace. They had been fortified to form a surface-to-orbit macrocannon emplacement and a line of surrounding strongholds, whose artillery sat in installations carved in the mountainsides. As well as being military fortresses, the strongholds stained the sky with black smoke belched from workshops and weapons factories, the orks’ colossal forges utilising the magma chambers of the surrounding volcanoes.

Magos Ohmnix’s initial assessment had told him that the embedded fortresses would require days to take, even with the small contingent of self-propelled artillery, bombards and siege mortars under his command. Fortunately for the tech-priest, the impact of one of the asteroids had initiated a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions that flooded the interior chambers of the mountains with lava. With hundreds of thousands of orks already fleeing the stronghold, the magos reductor used his monstrous artillery on the mountainsides. Thousands of tonnes of dislodged rock and debris crashed down the slope breaking and burying the escaping orks. Deploying skitarii rangers aboard Mechanicus Valkyries, Ohmnix had his cybernetic soldiers pick off the hundreds of hardy greenskin survivors that had escaped the disaster.

As Grimaldi, Ohmnix and Rothenberg attempted to get footholds in the area about the asteroid impact sites, they were followed down by the meagre stream of reinforcement ships sent by Dominus Zhokuv and Admiral Napier. Colossal drop-ships carrying Astra Militarum regiments, skitarii macroclades, and remnant armour formations belonging to both negotiated the storm of atmospheric gun platforms, ork attack ships, grapplers and fat cruise missiles launched from ground silos on the planet’s surface. Legio Cybernetica ark freighters, transporting maniples of battle-automata, and mass conveyors ran the gauntlet of crash-capsules and ramming craft as they attempted to get their precious few ancient and honoured god-machines down to the landing site intact. Even faithships carrying the ravening militia armies of the Ecclesiarchy attempted to run the ork blockade, alongside the sleek Temple craft of the Officio Assassinum that were used to a more clandestine insertion.

As Zoldt’s blizzard of reports came in, it became clear to Thane just how far the odds were stacked against them on Ullanor. Drop-ships carrying surviving regiments of Guardsmen were being blasted out of the sky by rocket silos. Hastily refitted Imperial battle cruisers were tumbling from orbit aflame. The attack groups had managed to carve out landing sites in the swarming multitudes of the Beast’s continental hordes, but an entire planet was coming down on them. While the remaining carriers and ark freighters continued to send drop-ships and landers with small regiments and skitarii half-legions, they could not match the reinforcements summoned by the Beast on his own world. Tribes of nomadic ork warriors mounted on bikes and wartracks. Cavalcades of tanks and battlefortresses under the command of the Beast’s most monstrous chieftains. Millions upon millions of ork warriors, summoned from every foetid corner of Ullanor, drawn to the battle and their Beast by the apocalyptic arrival of humanity on their soil.

As the sun lowered on the horizon, a hazy orb that smeared the sky with blood and dust, the central stronghold of the Beast’s palace could be made out. It was a towering, ugly silhouette of jagged irregularity — serrated battlements, armoured towers, the barrels of vast superguns and alien architectural bombast. Its construction was both martial and monstrous, boasting exotic surface — to-orbit weaponry, massive gargant assembly workshops and tribal sub-citadels.

As the sunlight disappeared, the flashes of the space battle above became clear. The darkening firmament became a rune-bank blinking with alerts and warning lamps. However bad it was on the surface, it would be worse in the void. The system was choked with attack ships, crash-capsules and hulks. Ork boarders filled derelict craft to the rivets and orbited Ullanor, waiting for the call to war. While the Imperial Fists were the sword thrusting for the Beast’s alien heart, the Navy battle cruisers and Mechanicus arkships were the shield, with the mighty Phalanx weathering the worst of the punishment.

As Navy Lightnings shrieked overhead and battle-scarred Marauder aircraft tore through the sky in dog fights with enemy flyers, flaming ork attack ships tumbled out of the benighted heavens. Blasted to wrecks in the disciplined broadsides of grand cruisers and smashed aside by the fortress-monastery, vessels plummeted broken-backed and glowing with the heat of re-entry. They struck the blasted lands of Ullanor, creating fountains of rock and wreckage that rocketed skyward. A colossal derelict plunged spectacularly down through the heavens, breaking in half after some kind of brutal ramming action. Zoldt informed his Chapter Master with heavy heart that the wreck was the venerable Mars-class battle cruiser Tyrant’s Light. Hitting the surface of Ullanor, the flaming remains of the majestic vessel rolled across the path of the Chapter, forcing Captain Gortez to recall bikes and Land Speeders that had streaked ahead of the advancing column of Imperial Fists.

The battle-brothers of the Second Company trudged on in their Centurion suits, followed by veterans in Tactical Dreadnought armour. The companies of the Imperial Fists marched to war, flanked by rumbling Land Raiders. Before them the palace-fortress grew — a jagged monstrosity of a fortification, all towers, ugly stone and thick armour plating. The stronghold was an architectural abomination, smothered in overlapping energy shielding and protective fields. In some places the monstrous fortification was unshielded and open to the sky. In others it benefited from triple shielding, able to resist the most determined of attacks. While the broken corpses and shattered structures smouldering beneath their boots were testament to the destructive power of the asteroid’s impact, the Beast’s fortress seemed to have weathered the worst of the devastation.

‘Captain Gortez, Chapter Master,’ the vox chirped.

‘Proceed, captain.’

‘Third wave enemy forces,’ the former Crimson Fist reported, ‘leaving the palace.’

‘Form up,’ Thane ordered, waving the tank column on.

It did not take Thane long to see the reinforcements. A coordinated attack. It made sense. The Beast would rather his forces face the Imperial Fists outside of Gorkogrod’s walls than within them and indeed he had designed his palace this way, so that the progress of any invaders might be frustrated by enormous barriers cutting the continental palace into numerous kill-zones. Warbikes and gun-mounting buggies leapt the fortress’ jagged walls in a constant stream of outriders, no doubt intended to flank the approaching Imperial Fists. Ork aircraft borne on sets of serrated rotor blades took to the air from the palace compounds, the chug of their engines and beat of their blades echoing across the desolation. Each carried beneath it a huge piece of ordnance, almost too heavy for the craft to get off the ground. Meanwhile, on the smoking wasteland about them, hatches set within rocky bunkers began to open, pushing aside smouldering wreckage and baked earth. Hulking orks dressed in heavy armour and bearing brute cybernetics and monstrous weaponry began to pour from the hatches.

‘Artillery,’ Captain Berengard called out to his First Company veterans as big guns and mortars within the fortress walls began hurling explosive shells into the air.

Thane frowned. The orks knew where the Imperial Fists were heading. As he had drawn the xenos in to kill them earlier, now the orks were doing the same — inviting the Space Marines along the path of least resistance, straight into annihilation.

He had not brought the Imperial Fists this far to be caught in the jaws of an alien trap. He wasn’t going to be outflanked and blasted to oblivion within striking distance of the palace walls. The Beast was attempting to hit the Space Marines from both sides and from above. Thane thought on the jumping bikes, the rotor-bladed junkers, the orks flooding the wasteland from the subterranean tunnels running out from the palace. There was something else. The enemy had further doom to visit upon the Imperial Fists.

‘Fifth Company, hold!’ Thane roared across the vox. ‘Gortez, halt your advance!’

It was too late. The first of the captain’s bikers had been storming towards the palace walls, intent on reconnoitring the fortifications before the arrival of the Chapter. Several Imperial Fists bikes and their riders rocketed up into the air in an explosion of grit and flame.

‘Bright skies,’ Thane swore, the Eidolican oath rising unbidden to his lips. The mines had not even been particularly well hidden, as Gortez had confirmed moments later. Spiked like fat sea-urchins, they had been buried in shallow earth waiting for an enemy to wander into the field. Perhaps they had been put in place after the initial attacks on the palace. Perhaps entire precincts were booby-trapped. Thane had no way to know if the entire palace was surrounded by minefields, but he did not have time to test such a theory. He needed to get his Imperial Fists inside to do the job they had come to Ullanor to do. Slay the Beast.

As artillery landed indiscriminately across the plain, emerging orks were thrown into the air in blossoming balls of flame. They seemed not to care how many of their own they lost, as long as their fire found Space Marines. A shell dropped among Captain Uzziah’s Fourth Company, blasting four Space Marines to bloody pieces and knocking the rest of the company to the ground in a storm of shrapnel.

‘Zoldt,’ Thane called angrily. ‘Get me Captain Decarion — now.’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

Thane pointed up at the Stormtalon gunships hovering noisily above the companies with their missile launchers armed. Rotating his armoured finger around and then jabbing it at the ork aircraft, the Chapter Master watched the gunships leave their companies and peel off to meet the approaching junkers in the air. They were overtaken by Thunderhawks painted in midnight black. Hellstrike missiles streaked away from the wings of the Deathwatch gunships, blasting apart ork bike formations and gun buggies. Heavy bolter fire from the Thunderhawks’ flanks tore up the smouldering wasteland, ripping through heavily armoured warriors emerging from hatches in the ground. As the gunships circled the battlefield, rearguard squads of Deathwatch Space Marines ran up behind the Imperial Fists formations.

‘We have your back, brothers,’ a Fenrisian voice barked across the vox. A voice Thane recognised as belonging to Kjarvik Stormcrow, whose Deathwatch squad had been instrumental in securing two of the ork psykers for use in the attack.

‘Land Raiders,’ Thane voxed, ‘you are authorised to offer suppression fire. Companies Oberon and Valdanor to support. Captain Storn, your Devastators front and centre. All other companies, keep up the pace.’

‘The Phalanx for you, Chapter Master,’ Epistolary Zoldt told him.

‘Decarion, are you on station?’ Thane demanded.

‘My lord, we’ve had some complications,’ Captain Decarion confessed. Over the channel Thane could hear the sound of combat shotguns.

‘The Phalanx has been boarded?’ Thane asked, his voice edged with concern. He saw the helms of other Imperial Fists turn at the prospect. ‘Status, captain!’

‘The Phalanx has sustained damage, Chapter Master,’ Decarion told him, ‘but is still operational. The orks are throwing everything at us. Literally: they’re using their star forts and gun platforms to make suicide runs at the fortress-monastery as they orbit. While our turrets and cannons kept boarding capsules and ramming ships at bay, we were struck by an orbital shipyard and the alien craft being assembled within. As we became tangled in the scaffolding, orks from the vessel flooded the perimeter decks.’

‘Captain,’ Thane said. ‘The Imperial Fists need the Phalanx. We need her lances for an orbital strike. We need her bombardment cannons to break the palace open. Do whatever you must, but we need the Phalanx back on station and we need it now.’

‘Understood, my lord,’ Captain Decarion voxed back.

Above the advancing Imperial Fists the gunships strafed left and right, their assault cannons blazing. Enemy aircraft laden with fat ordnance banked this way and that, their own blasting weaponry raining empty shells down on the desolation below. Cutting through the light armour of the flyers with their forward guns, the Space Marine gunships finished the craft with precision marksmanship. Rockets tore away from the Stormtalons as they expertly flew through serrated rotor blades and heavy gunfire. Several aircraft detonated, a larger fireball following almost immediately afterwards as their ordnance exploded also. Others peeled off, streaming black smoke from their workings and compartments, before plummeting into the ground to create flaming craters.

As the Chapter advanced towards Gorkogrod, Thane knew they were running out of room to manoeuvre. With ork artillery dropping from the sky and the minefields before them, it would only be a matter of time before the ork forces moved up behind to cut them off from the rest of the advancing Deathwatch under Watch Commander Warfist, and the surviving portions of Attack Group Thoosa. Looking up, Thane saw the sky briefly lit up by a flare in the pin-pricked darkness of the void.

‘Zoldt?’ the Chapter Master called.

‘Reports confirm it to be the Lex Immaculata, fleet carrier,’ the Epistolary told him moments later. ‘A hit upon her engine column at point-blank range.’

Thane thought about the swarming havoc of the space battle raging above their heads. With vessels all but smashing into one another in the confines of orbit, he doubted whether much of the gunnery was anything other than point-blank.

A wild round ricocheted off his pauldron, from a mob of armoured orks throwing their monstrous forms at the Chapter flanks. Imperial Fists from the Third and Seventh Companies had climbed up onto the Land Raiders to offer a bolt-storm in support of the tanks’ flamestorm cannons. As the rolling Land Raiders presented a curtain of fiery doom to the attacking orks, turning towering monsters into thrashing infernos of skin-melting agony, the riding Space Marines fired through the flames and into the creatures beyond. A chance artillery impact turned two of the Land Raiders into infernos of their own, blasting the fiery wrecks from the ground to land on their roofs and sides. Imperial Fists ran in to assist their brothers but both the crews and the Space Marines firing from the roofs were beyond help.

‘Fifth Company, withdraw,’ Thane commanded as Captain Storn’s Devastator squads ran up through the ranks of the Imperial Fists. As Gortez and his men rode back to the Chapter, Storn’s Space Marines took position in their stead with their heavy weapons. As buggies and greenskins on warbikes rode at the Imperial Fists the Ninth Company opened fire. Missiles streaked off into buggies, blasting them apart. Heavy plasma guns sent orbs of superheated gas straight through the engine columns of vehicles, causing them to roll to a steaming stop, while heavy bolters carved furrows across the orks, tearing their ragged bodies from seats and saddles. Lascannons cut surging warbikes in half, while those that did make it through the storm of destruction were turned into a smeared fusion of flesh and metal by the blast of multi-meltas.

Tychor ran at his Chapter Master, the standard bearer hitting Thane’s Terminator plate with the powered force of his own suit. Thane was knocked back as a piece of ork artillery hit the Imperial Fists’ front ranks. High Chaplain Bachorath stumbled on his pistons and hydraulics. The bodies of Sisters of Silence were flung into the air in their slender bronze plate and flaming cloaks. The ork psykers went wild, tearing at their chains and the remaining Sisters. Chief Apothecary Delgado ran in, his bone-white plate smeared with soot. A second shell, following the first on its random trajectory, came down, blasting Delgado back off his feet. Several First Company veterans had parts of their Terminator plate sheared from their bodies, while Berengard’s second, Sergeant Eckhart, became an armoured silhouette writhing in flame. Brother Alverez, the Second Company’s Apothecary, ran over to check on Delgado but the Chief Apothecary was dead, his body a shattered mess.

For a moment, a terrible dread crept into Thane’s heart. That he had doomed them all with such a bold strategy, this strike straight to the heart of the greenskin empire. That the Imperial Fists would be lost… again.

‘Zoldt,’ Thane roared. ‘Call it in to Captain Decarion. Lance strikes. Full spread. I want a path cleared to the target and then I want every piece of ordnance — every warhead on board the Phalanx — dropped on the outer wall of the palace. Do you hear me?’

‘Affirmative, Chapter Master,’ the Epistolary said, staggering away from the remains of a Land Raider that an ork bombard had just turned into a flaming wreck.

‘We have reached the edge of the minefield, Chapter Master,’ Captain Storn reported as his heavy weapons Space Marines jogged to a halt.

‘All stop and close in,’ Thane ordered, prompting their perimeter of Land Raiders to crunch to a standstill. Track to track, the tanks put a wall of armour between their brothers on foot and the orks pouring from dusty hatches situated in the desolation around the minefield.

‘Brother Stormcrow,’ Thane called across the vox.

‘How can the Deathwatch aid you, Chapter Master?’ Kjarvik Stormcrow called back.

‘The mighty Phalanx will pound the palace, but the fortifications are triple-shielded in places.’

‘Our Thunderhawks report large generator structures further along the palace wall perimeter,’ the Fenrisian reported. ‘Leave it to us.’

Thane looked behind him as Deathwatch squads peeled off across the smouldering wasteland, protected by black Thunderhawks making strafing runs along their position. About the Imperial Fists formations, hulking orks in heavy armour advanced behind shields the size of bulkheads. Behind, more greenskins — drunk on battle and the prospect of tearing Space Marines apart — sprayed the Land Raiders with a stream of slugs from their outlandish guns. Crude rockets spiralled through the night air, sometimes wheeling off into the sky and sometimes juddering the tanks with their armour-cracking impact.

‘Captain Uzziah, split the Fourth by squads to support the Third and Seventh on the Land Raiders,’ Thane commanded. ‘Chaplain Ishcarion, have your Assault Marines cut down anything that gets through our perimeter.’

Behind him, Thane could hear Gortez and Brondal’s companies fiercely ensuring that the Chapter wasn’t cut from the rest of Attack Group Thoosa. Land Raiders nearby suddenly rocked as muscle-bound orks slammed into them with their shoulders. While the tanks’ flamestorm cannons turned huge swathes of the foe to ash and charred bone, the orks’ numbers were such that many inevitably got through. Captain Valdanor and his Imperial Fists blasted heads and horned helms from shoulders as the orks tried to break the perimeter. Space Marines from the Fourth Company, running up to join Valdanor on the Land Raiders, hammered those that got through on their approach, with Chaplain Ishcarion’s Assault squads carving up what was left with the sweep and thrash of chainblades. Another wild shell landed on the right flank, bouncing several tanks on their tracks.

Circled by angry bikes and buggies, the Imperial Fists were holding their own against the hulking orks pouring from the subterranean hatches. Blocked from advancing by the minefield, the sons of Dorn simply had to suffer the destruction raining down on them from the palace artillery. With battle-brothers blasted apart and Land Raiders turning into storms of shrapnel and flame, Thane peered down the flank of the palace wall. Deathwatch Thunderhawks were being blown out of the sky by ork macrocannons. Those gunships that did manage to fire off their lascannons and bombardment cannons sent blasts into the giga-generators powering the palace’s overlapping fields.

‘Phalanx!’ Thane yelled into his vox, as the perimeter fields began to collapse. ‘I need that—’

And everything turned to blinding light. Imperial Fists in their armoured suits became scorched silhouettes and orks melted away in the stunning blaze. As Thane’s eyes and auto-senses adapted, he saw lance beams searing down from the sky and striking the palace wall. Somehow Decarion had managed to hold off the boarding orks and get the fortress-monastery back on station above the palace of the Beast.

The world rocked beneath the Chapter Master’s boots. In blasting a breach into the fortified rock and armour plating of the unshielded palace wall, the Phalanx’s lances had super-heated the ground of the perimeter. The field of mines before the wall was detonating in a chain reaction, shattering the wall’s foundations and causing sections of it to topple. Vanguard Imperial Fists attempted to retreat but were blasted off their feet by the force of the rippling detonations. Space Marines in Centurion suits were knocked down while Land Raiders closest to the minefield were rolled onto their backs by the blasts.

Charging orks were turned to ash on the wind. One moment they were ferocious alien predators, behemoths of fang and muscle — the next they were gone, scoured from existence. Those monsters not caught in the apocalyptic blaze were blasted aside by the shockwave of the lance strikes. They crashed into the sides of the Land Raiders with bone-shattering force. Space Marine bikes were knocked over, Land Speeders spun and bobbed in the air and Imperial Fists slid from the roofs of tanks, knocked off by the backwash of heat.

Thane felt the quake of explosions beneath his armoured boots. The Chapter Master steadied Tychor, who was desperately trying to put out flames that were swirling about the battle standard. The air about them was thick with smoke. Space Marines emerged from cover like soot-caked revenants. Thane was about to issue an order when another apocalyptic boom erupted about the Imperial Fists. This time it emanated from below the ground. Something had detonated in the tunnels beneath them, those same tunnels the armoured orks had emerged from to flank their attackers. The palace and surrounding precincts were so bewildering in their architecture and monstrous in function that the rippling explosions could have originated from anything: subterranean promethium depots, ammunition dumps or even the trapped gases of an overloaded waste system.

But it made no difference either way. With nowhere for the power of the explosion to go, it ripped up through the ground, spouting streams of flame. Thane felt the ground give way beneath him and then he was falling amongst tonnes of rubble, everything ablaze with the blinding light of venting flame, deafened by the ear-splitting rumble of the world breaking up about him. Finally there was stillness, dust and darkness.

Thane lay there for a moment, blinking himself back to his senses. His leg hurt. One of his optic helm displays was alerting him to a hundred different problems, while the other was dead. Hooking the thumbs of his power fists under the great piece of rock laying across him, Thane heaved the boulder off him. With an effort, he got himself to his feet — not easy in Terminator plate. A pauldron of his suit had been stove in by falling rock, his helm was cracked — including a shattered lens — and the hydraulics of his leg sparked with damage. As he limped about he found himself surrounded by ghosts in the dust and haze. Suit lamps picked out groups of Imperial Fists heaving stone and vehicle parts off the trapped bodies of their brothers.

As his honour guard located and surrounded him, the Chapter Master saw Captain Berengard and members of the First Company digging High Chaplain Bachorath out of the rubble. Lady Brassanas and her Sisters of Silence were struggling with one rabid ork psyker attempting to make an escape. The second was dead, having been crushed beneath huge pieces of shattered masonry.

Soot-stained Apothecaries moved among the battle-brothers, rendering succour to the wounded and removing the gene-seed from the dead. Thane crunched through the collapse, helping to right Terminators and Centurions whose thick armour had allowed them to survive the fall.

Through the thick dust and darkness the Chapter Master saw Tychor helping a battle-brother up a rubble incline, heading towards him. In his gauntlet he clutched the standard, the banner hanging miserably from its broken crossbar. As the two Space Marines got closer, he recognised the second as Epistolary Zoldt.

Thane shook grit from his plate as the dust settled. He stood in a rock-strewn depression. It looked as if a section of the outer palace grounds and sub-level foundations had collapsed under the force of the underground explosion. Thane and his battle-brothers, picking themselves up out of the rubble, found themselves in what remained of a tunnel that ran beneath the palace. Shattered rock and smashed vehicles sat like small islands in a river of filth that had burst its banks. The surface of the foetid liquid had crusted over with dust and the heat of the firestorm that had swirled down the tunnel, but the waters were rising where the rubble had created a dam.

He heard his battle-brothers calling to each other and their captains across the vox. Whereas much of what remained of the First and Second Company were down in the pit with him along with Brassanas’ shattered Sisters, the one remaining ork psyker, and Chaplain Ishcarion’s Assault squads, Storn’s Devastators were above them, gathering about the lip of the crater with Uzziah and Valdanor’s men.

Thane stood on the shoreline of a tide of rising filth. They were in some kind of primitive sewer — a network of rough-hewn tunnels that made use of existing cave systems and caverns that ran under the core palace and central precincts. Looking up through the shattered foundations of the palace wall, he could see the thick armour plating, bolted to the exterior, still glowing with the heat. Both the wall and floor of the precinct had suffered from the chain reaction of the lance strike, detonating mines and subterranean explosion. Blackened and blistering stone cracked and crumbled as acrid smoke billowed from the fortifications.

Thane marvelled that the palace-fortress had sustained so little damage as a result of the lance strike. While it was huge, the stronghold looked like a nightmare of armour-plating, jagged accretions and rough masonry — not unlike the mighty space hulks the orks used to move from system to system, and like the hulks, Gorkogrod was a great deal more resilient than it looked. But with a hole blasted into the subterranean tunnel network, Thane and his men now had another way in.

‘Captain Berengard,’ Thane called. Through the dust, the former Black Templar appeared, splashing through the stinking shallows in his Terminator plate.

‘What is your assessment?’ asked Thane, indicating the dark, gaping entrance before them.

‘These tunnels are oriented towards the palace,’ the First Company captain said, ‘radiating outwards under the precincts. This could work in our favour. We should take advantage of this good fortune.’

‘Zoldt?’ Thane called. ‘Report.’

‘Captain Decarion and our fleets have been reinforced, my lord,’ the Epistolary said.

‘Bohemond…’ Thane said, looking at Berengard. He gave the First Captain a slow nod. ‘Our Black Templar brothers have arrived.’

‘In orbit and aboard the Phalanx,’ Zoldt said. ‘Caught between the sons of Dorn, the enemy boarders have been annihilated.’

It was the stroke of good fortune they had been hoping for. Reinforcement from above and an opening below.

‘Inform the commanders at the landing site,’ Thane said, ‘that we have created a breach. I am ordering all Attack Group Guard regiments, skitarii legions, automata — any fighting man, woman or construct — into the palace. Once unloaded, have the Titans of Legio Intrafex secure both the landing site and the route to the palace. They are to exterminate enemy reinforcements from surrounding precincts and supply convoys bound for the palace hub.’

‘Chapter Master, they report gargant formations closing in from the southern precincts,’ Zoldt said.

‘Then they’re going to have to deal with them as well,’ Thane answered. ‘Navy bomber wings to support.’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

Thane looked up through the clearing fug at the Imperial Fists righting themselves in the rubble and gathering above on the crater lip. He could see Captains Storn, Valdanor, Uzziah and Gortez looking down at him.

‘Whether we survive this dreadful day or not, the Beast must die,’ the Chapter Master told them. ‘By our fire from the sky or the cold steel of our blades, the Beast must die. Brothers, we must be as one. One mission. One Chapter. One empire — the Imperium of Mankind. Second Company to lead, advance with Centurions and armour. The Attack Group will need an entry point. Something we can hold and advance from. Brothers, let us be the adamantium fist that punches straight through these walls, these walls behind which our craven enemy hides. Let us drag him into the light and destroy him for all the galaxy to see.

‘We shall take the low road, brothers, and rise up like vengeance from beneath. This Beast thinks he is safe behind his walls and shielding. We shall show him how wrong he is. Our mighty guns shall pound this fortress from above while the sons of Dorn shall shake its very foundations with their fury. Beasts rise and they shall fall, but the Imperium of Mankind is forever.’

Ten

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

Maximus Thane had experienced a lifetime of war. He had lived the blood-splattered insanity of battle. The hum of powered armour. The crash of boltguns. The ugly sound of enemies coming apart. He had gone toe to chainsword-wielding toe with Ezrah Geddon, Arch-Heretic of Praetis-Prandia. He had blasted his way through the deviants and piratical raiders of the fallen eldar at the Ferrospire. He had slaughtered the greenskin invader on the hallowed sands of his own homeworld of Eidolica and on Ullanor’s cursed earth. Little could have prepared him for the carnage that took place during the fight to gain entrance to the orks’ palace.

As the Imperial Fists made their way along the subterranean tunnels, Thane had initially found the darkness and quietude unsettling. The battle above them was a distant, muffled afterthought. Deathwatch Space Marines and descending Black Templars fought side by side, their shared hatred of the alien like a torch leading them through the gargantuan architecture of Gorkogrod’s inner precincts.

Mixed contingents of Astra Militarum from scores of shattered regiments were pushing on through wall-to-wall orks. Shock troops took districts building by building, while storm troopers and airborne companies rappelled to roofs from hovering Valkyries. Battle-automata stomped alongside skitarii soldiers who crackled with radioactivity. Sentinels stalked through the carnage while Leman Russ tank companies rolled up through the dragways, demolishing ork junkers and fortifications. Frater militia mobs swarmed creature after creature, bludgeoning and burning the xenos while Vindicare Assassins moved across the roofs of grand alien architecture, blasting huge holes through warlords and mega-bosses with their Exitus rifles.

Feral world scouts scalped the aliens with their knives, while the blue-blooded officers of spireborn regiments directed tracked mortars, bombards, Marauder airstrikes and orbital fire from the sky in an effort to pound the way ahead into cataclysmic ruin before the arrival of vanguard troops. All the while, Thane’s bloody and battered companies advanced along the rough tunnels and cave systems of the sewer.

Liquid filth moved slowly down excavated channels, carried onward by a downhill incline and great water wheels. It seemed few orks were interested in frequenting the sewer system. Those that did were ragged ferals, who, while still hulking in size, fell easily before the chainswords and bolt pistols of Chaplain Ishcarion’s Assault squads. The river of filth was, however, choked with alien fungus and swarming with tiny greenskin runts whose eyes glinted in the darkness. Terrified of the approaching Space Marines, they fled before them, shrieking in alarm. Little ammunition was wasted on these wretches but Thane had no doubt that the miserable creatures would quickly carry news of their presence to their larger cousins.

Thane ordered his men on at double time, still hoping to retain the element of surprise. The Space Marines left the rumble of battle above them behind, drawn on instead by the regular pounding of the palace’s mighty cannons. Like a beacon, the boom of the gargantuan alien weaponry told the Imperial Fists where they needed to be.

When they were right underneath the thunder, Thane directed the last of Captain Karlito’s Assault Centurions to lead the way, boring their way into the bowels of the palace with their siege drills. Here, they ran into heavily armed orks, plated in slablike armour and wielding monstrous heavy weapons. Working around, Thane directed the Eighth Company Assault squads to flank the monsters and enter the bloody fighting while the Chapter Master led the rest of his force up through the rough-hewn levels of the palace-fortress.

With boltguns clunking empty and battle-brothers of all companies forced into close combat with the hulking monsters of the palace, Thane’s Space Marines fought their way up staircases, through gauntlets and chambers crowded with the most monstrous of orks. There was no time — for thought, for action or to catch one’s breath. Orders were monosyllabic and roared across the vox amid the thunder of battle. The palace halls were packed wall-to-wall with frothing orks, and these were not even the towering monsters the Adeptus Astartes had met offworld, despatched by the Beast to bring death and destruction to every corner of the Imperium. These were greater yet: warrior greenskins, minor warlords in their own right, who by virtue of their monstrous size and savagery had earned a place at the side of the Beast. They were creatures of hulking green brawn and the scars of myriad wars fought across scores of conquered systems, and there were thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Their fangs were sharp and their tusks were long. Their flesh was tattooed and dyed with clan colours, their frames — that dwarfed even Space Marines — were draped in thick and ugly plate, bristling with spikes. Helms were extravagantly horned and weaponry was obscene in its size and brute design. The creatures bawled their barbarian rage from the black holes of their open mouths, and their beady red eyes burned with territorial fury.

Leading from the front, Thane was the battering ram that smashed through gargantuan doors and armoured sentries. Crushing skulls in the clasp of his mighty black fists, he knocked hulking orks back through walls with a single strike. He smashed snaggle-tusked chieftains into the ground and swung wide, knocking ugly heads clean off shoulders. The storm bolters of the First Company veterans thundered about him, forcing the attacking orks back away from their Chapter Master. Captain Berengard carved a path of destruction through the brutes with his power sword, while battle-brothers forsook their empty boltguns to team up on the towering monsters, slashing and stabbing desperately at green flesh with their combat blades. As ork Dreadnoughts and heavily armed walkers stomped into battle, guns wildly blazing, Storn’s Devastators answered the call, blasting them back with missiles and blinding fury from their lascannons and heavy plasma guns.

Thane’s mind was nothing but ork monsters and the deaths he foresaw for them. Swinging the crackling doom of his power fists, the Chapter Master made such imaginings reality, punching and smashing his way through the Beast’s palace guardians. He broke monsters and buried killsaw-wielding creatures in the fortress floor.

Thane killed without thinking. Like the orks, the Imperial Fists were now acting on primitive instinct. The instinct to survive and see their enemies sundered. Bolt-rounds hammered into the iron-hard hides of alien creatures at point-blank range. Pistols were emptied at tusk-filled faces. Heavy weapons lit up the claustrophobic havoc with the flash and thunder of Imperial Fists Devastators. Powered plate showered with sparks as the wild fire of greenskin guns sent torrents of slugs at the Space Marines. The proud yellow of Imperial Fists plate soon became a soot-streaked, blood smeared camouflage pattern of craters where ork lead had burrowed into ceramite.

All the Chapter Master could hear was death. The mindless fury of towering orks running straight into the blasts of heavy flamers. The screams of his battle-brothers across vox-channels that sizzled with suffering. The thud of butchers’ blades chopping down through plate and genhanced flesh. Thane’s captains led their companies through the labyrinth of tribal halls and antechambers. Each pushed his men on to find routes through the carnage, clearing gauntlets and blasting through walls. As each company found bloody success, the others would follow, funnelling through body-lined archways before spreading out again through the gunfire-crashing, axe-swinging pandemonium.

Orks burst from doorways about the vanguard companies, roaring their delight as they blasted at the Imperial Fists with their belt-fed weaponry. Some even attempted to barge through the Space Marines with their monstrous bulk and huge serrated blades. All they found was death. As the orks ran at their attackers, the chests of Centurions blazed with the hurricane bolters set about their chestplates. Within moments, bounding, blade-wielding warriors were turned to bloody mulch. It didn’t stop the orks, however. Driven on by primal instinct and the thrill of combat, the hulking monsters just kept on coming. Stamping through the remains of unfortunates who had fallen before them, they charged the Space Marines.

The chaos and confusion had been Thane’s world for hours. He fought for his life and the lives of his brothers and sisters about him, all of them lost in a deluge of greenskin barbarity.

Then suddenly, there were no more foes to fight. Breaking through the back of their ranks, Thane found himself where he had never thought to be: the throne room of Gorkogrod. The very centre of the ork empire. The cavernous chamber was still. Six thrones towered above Thane, facing outward in a circle from their places on a great dais. Like the galleries opposite each one, they were decorated with rough banners and standards, each stone throne augmented with metal plating and serrations. Each was carved with its own glyphs and sigils, presumably marking out different clans and tribes.

Damage from previous engagements within the throne room was evident from the scaffolding that dominated a shattered roof section. But it was still well defended. Battle-scarred gargants loomed over the arriving Space Marines, their engines and weaponry roaring to life.

Tychor battered his way through the remaining orks to join his Chapter Master, the battle standard of the Imperial Fists held high. Zoldt was not far behind, with Captain Berengard and his hammer-wielding Terminators stomping up beside them. Lady Brassanas and her remaining Sisters struggled to drag the captive psyker through on its chains, watched over by the brute threat of High Chaplain Bachorath and his whirring assault cannons. As they entered, the Imperial Fists aimed their all-but-empty weaponry up at the gargants. Even with full magazines and power packs, the Space Marines’ weapons could not have hoped to pierce the thick plate of those mighty war machines.

Thane looked about the colossal throne room. Its galleries were empty, as were its monstrous thrones. Only the gargants, towering above the Imperial Fists, seemed to display any evidence of life.

‘The sons of Dorn have come for you, Beast of Ullanor,’ the Chapter Master called about the cavernous chamber. ‘I have come for you. It is time, Beast. It is time to face your doom in the Emperor’s Angels of Death. In his Imperial Fists. In me.’

With the rumble of gargant engines about him and the clunk of loading magna-bore weaponry, Thane approached the Sisters of Silence and the last ork psyker. The alien’s eyes wept the brilliance of otherworldly energies and dripped with spidery threads of green power. The Chapter Master peered into the darkness of the throne room’s gargantuan exits. In their depths he saw the movement of monstrous beasts, colossal ork warlords of extravagant tusk and fang. In the galleries above, the shadows solidified into more massive orks — tribal chieftains and their warriors, wielding chunky weaponry and heavy, serrated blades. They pushed forward, but made no move to attack.

‘Fight me, monster!’ Thane called out. ‘Fight me for Ullanor. For Terra. For the galaxy.’

The Chapter Master turned, and what remained of his glorious Chapter turned with him. Thane felt the quake of the alien’s step. The monster that had felled Vulkan, and in killing Koorland had doomed the Imperial Fists to extinction, was coming to meet him. Dust and debris rained from the chamber ceiling with each heavy stomp of the gigantic ork’s boots.

Ducking into the chamber, the Beast of Ullanor entered the throneroom. The towering ork looked down at the Imperial Fists. It stared at the Space Marines with, Thane thought, a look of amused disdain.

It was huge, like a death world reptile that had grown so large that it had no natural predators. Green muscle. Mounds of furs. Plates of black and white armour as thick as a gargant’s hull. Like its palace, the Beast’s brutish form crackled with defence fields and protective shielding. With colossal claws wreathed with green fire, it lifted a great horned helm from its head to reveal the tusked and scar-mangled horror of its face. Eyes that burned with doom. Monstrous fangs too large and warped for its massive jaws. Green skin cracked with age and scarring.

On the balconies above, the watching orks shouted and howled in adulation of their ultimate champion.

Thane glanced over at the last ork psyker, which Lady Brassanas and the remaining few Sisters were struggling to control. It was a monstrous brute covered in the scars and markings of a tribal shaman. It was wreathed in a blinding nimbus of ethereal energies like a star about to go supernova. It thrashed against its chains, driven into a frenzy by its surroundings and the presence of so many other orks.

‘The galaxy totters,’ Thane told his battle-brothers. ‘but Dorn is with us and the Emperor guides our hand. The Beast must die!’

The throne room became a raging bolt-storm of vengeance. Imperial Fists squeezed the triggers of boltguns, heavy bolters, storm bolters and pistols. Their weapons spoke with the last of their fury. Lascannons and multi-meltas sent streams of death at the colossal monster. Nothing phased the creature, however. Bolts ricocheted harmlessly off its sizzling force fields, and those that did manage to penetrate overloading patches sparked off armour as thick as a frigate’s hull. Beams shimmered from the energy field and the detonations of missiles bloomed uselessly against the Beast’s shielding.

The Beast of Beasts thundered forward. It seemed monstrously amused, not only at Thane and his words but at the useless rage of the Imperial Fists’ weaponry. With an almighty swing of its hugely muscled arm, it brought a colossal, green-wreathed fist down on Thane.

‘No!’ Tychor yelled, running towards his Chapter Master. Barging Thane aside, the standard bearer disappeared — hammered into the floor by the towering monster. The impact of the ork’s fist ripped through the chamber like a thunderclap. Gore splattered across the chamber floor. Sickened to his stomach, Thane pointed the finger of his power fist at the Beast.

‘Again!’ the Chapter Master roared.

The half-demolished chamber lit up. Storn and his Ninth Company unleashed the devastation of their heavy weapons. Missiles struck the Beast, exploding against its shielding, while balls of superheated plasma raged off it. The heavy bolters of Second Company Centurions chewed into the crackling force field while beams of pure energy struck the monster from arm-mounted lascannons. Assault squads of Space Marines ran forth with the thrashing teeth of their chainswords held high, while Imperial Fists of other companies emptied their boltguns and threw grenades at the Beast in hatred and fury.

Thane watched the monster emerge from the vortex of destruction. Nothing could stop it. Stamping down furiously on the charging Space Marines of the Eighth, the Beast went wild. With fists of blazing green fire it smashed squads aside, breaking them within their plate. It back-smacked charging sergeants into the stone of the walls and snatched up battle-brothers in its ferocious claws. Some it threw with lethal force into the throne room floor. Others it pulverised, allowing gore to leak down between its green fingers.

Space Marines in Centurion war-plate were smashed to bloody pieces. Instant death greeted Terminator veterans who were struck from the ground and across the chamber. Within a handful of furious moments, the greenskin giant had painted the throne room with the blood of Dorn. Smashed plate. Body parts. Imperial Fists torn in half. It was a slaughter. One moment High Chaplain Bachorath was a raging Dreadnought, roaring from his vox-casters and emptying his assault cannons at the Beast; the next he was smouldering scrap, as the hulking abomination put its armoured boot straight through him.

In a moment of horror, the Beast brought his blazing fist around, smashing it through the squad of Sisters of Silence. Like broken dolls their bodies flew across the chamber, leaving only their leader holding on to the alien psyker’s chain. The creature tried to break away, forcing the Lady Brassanas to wrap her length of chain about a column for leverage.

The Chapter Master turned just in time to see the Beast’s lethal fist hurtling towards him. The bone-shattering impact took Thane off his feet and across the throne room, where he crashed to the ground and skidded through the bodies of dead Imperial Fists. He struggled to catch his breath, but even his multi-lung was struggling to sustain him. His armour’s diagnostic systems were dead but he was fairly certain that his arm was broken. The breastplate of his Terminator armour had been smashed open down to his black carapace.

Within moments the Beast was looming over him. It stared down at him with the contempt of a barbarian god and brought its flaming fist around to deliver one last crushing blow. Thane did the only thing he could. One half of his cyclone launcher was a crumpled mess, but the other was still functional. Arming its remaining missiles, the Chapter Master blasted them ceilingward. They struck the partially demolished roof of the throne room, and rock and scaffolding crashed down upon the Beast.

With debris raining down about him, Thane tried to roll over and crawl away. One of his power fists was smashed and the Chapter Master had to fire the locks and purge the weapon. Clawing at the chamber floor, he fought to haul himself out of the path of the collapsing ceiling.

Rising like a behemoth of the deep, the enraged Beast shrugged off the mound of masonry in which it was buried. Still aflame with green brilliance, the giant ork reached out with its colossal claws. Snatching up Thane, the monstrous Beast lifted him up to its furious face. Green flame raged about him as the monster’s claw tightened, crushing plate and bone. With a bellow of alien rage, the monster prepared to slay a second Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists.

Squeezing his hand down between the Beast’s titanic grip and his ruined plate, Thane got his fingers to the Sword of Sebastus where it sat mag-locked to his belt. Resting his palm against the Dornsblade — the weapon wielded by the primarch himself — Thane pushed the blade down into the flesh of the Beast’s palm. The ghost of a snarl passed across the monster’s mouth, and Thane felt the grip about his waist slacken slightly. Tearing the Sword of Sebastus up, he thrust the weapon at the creature’s face. The tip of the blade thudded into one of the Beast’s blood-red eyes, before Thane tore it free of the ruined socket.

The monster shrieked. Its grip tightened once more with pulverising force as the pain broke its concentration. It howled at the chamber ceiling, a terrible sound that shook the very foundations of the palace.

The Beast’s claws suddenly opened, allowing Thane to crash to the floor. It was an ugly fall but from the ground, Thane watched the Beast of Ullanor stumble back. It clawed at its face and blinked gore from its punctured eye.

Looking around, the Chapter Master saw Lady Brassanas. She was heaving at the heavy chain, the links biting into the column like a pulley. Her movements were restricted by the armoured bodies on the ground and the stumbling footfalls of the Beast. It was clear to Thane that she and the captive ork were locked together in a dance of death, neither able to escape the other. With one final haul of the chain, the Lady drew her own glinting blade.

As the last Sister of Silence slid down onto her knees she momentarily locked eyes with Thane. In that moment, the Chapter Master understood what she was going to do. The ork psyker needed to be activated. Right here and now. Right next to the alien abomination that held the Imperium in its bloody claw. Thane nodded grimly to her. With the determination of a true servant of the Emperor, Lady Brassanas nodded back, and made the sign of the aquila.

Grasping her knife, she turned the hilt about in her gauntlet and rested the tip of the blade against her stomach. She closed her eyes, and with a supreme effort of will thrust the knife into her abdomen. Even in her last moments of agony, the Silent Sister never uttered a sound.

Thane knew she was dead when the ork shaman fell to its knees and clutched its grotesque skull. With the nullifying effect of the Sister’s presence gone, and being in such close proximity to the Beast and so many other of its brother greenskins, the psyker’s head blasted apart with the force of a small bomb.

The Beast of Ullanor felt the effects of the psychic backwash immediately. Forgetting about the agony of its eye, the warlord grabbed at its head and fell back into the ruin of a throne. It bellowed. It raged. Blood gushed from its nostrils and ears. Then — incredibly — it died. With a fountain of gore and colossal shards of skull, the Beast’s head exploded. Its arms fell down at the sides of the throne with a thud, before the hulking body of the monstrous warlord fell still.

The effect beyond was instantaneous. Shrieks could be heard from within the gargants as the crews of the war machines succumbed to the psychic backwash of the psyker’s overload. The barrels of gargantuan weaponry drooped and the walkers’ engines died. In the galleries and chambers beyond, Thane heard greenskins die horribly as the feedback effect blasted their ugly skulls from their armoured shoulders. In the darkness beyond the remaining lesser Beasts were rocked by the resonance, clutching their heads before the great ugly skulls detonated in their grasp. A psychic shockwave ripped through the chamber. The palace. The planet. Feeding back through the monstrous connection the Beasts had with their savage hordes, a chain reaction of gore-fountaining destruction rolled through the ork warhost.

Thane lay for a moment in the silence, his only movement the rise and fall of his shattered chest. It was over. The Beast of Ullanor was dead. He felt… nothing.

Slowly, he became aware of sounds coming across his vox. Across the crackling channels he could hear shouts and cheering, faint at first, then becoming louder. The battle was over. The Imperial forces fighting inside the palace and beyond had witnessed the heads of their enemies explode in an endless chain reaction that stretched across the whole planet, leaving their headless bodies crashing to the ground.

Thane could not find it in himself to indulge in such jubilation. The orks’ leader was dead; the Imperium was saved. That was enough for a son of Dorn.

With excruciating agony he forced his body and shattered plate up. The throne room floor was covered with the armoured bodies of Imperial Fists. The dead, the dying and the broken. Holding himself awkwardly, Thane limped towards the body of Lady Brassanas and knelt beside her, resting the tip of his blade on the ground for stability. There he waited and became one with his pain.

Eleven

Terra — the Imperial Palace

Dawn broke over the Imperial Palace and once more, Drakan Vangorich found himself enjoying the feeble rays that felt their way through the hive-world smog of the capital. Another dawn meant that he was still breathing. He had lived another day and might live through another still. His enemies were either dead, or lived on in frustration and fear. In a life of death, there was a great deal that could be accomplished in a single day.

Vangorich sat for a while. Somewhere above his head, across the vastness of the void, men and supermen were dying. Alien monsters were being fought. The destiny of empires was being decided. And yet for Vangorich, the Beast — the horrific enemy who had brought the Imperium to its knees — had become a necessary evil. The greenskin apocalypse was a warning to humanity not to become complacent, that the Imperium of mankind was but one of many powers vying for control of the galaxy. There would only ever be war, and the Imperium had to be ready for such challenges, with capable leaders worthy of the God-Emperor’s trust. Men like Thane, like Koorland… like himself. Men who would not flinch from doing what had to be done.

The Imperium had always been an unwieldy entity. Even with His warlord sons to oversee peace across His realm, the Emperor had allowed His people and His domain to slip away from him. And now, barely a thousand years since the terrible civil war that had turned the Imperium into a galactic battleground, the rot had returned.

A self-righteous torpor dominated everything. Terra had long been buried in scrolls, reports and data-slates burdened with more information than could ever be read or responded to. Mars was a runaway monitor train with no one at the controls. The planets of the Imperium were like fruit spoiling on a tree. Heresy and mutation were a canker running wild. One by one worlds and sectors were forgotten and allowed to shrivel on the stalk. Meanwhile the aggressive alien species of the galaxy would routinely tear through the branches, gorging themselves on the precious fruit. Species like the orks, that had been forgotten as backwater barbarians until the Beast had arisen to lead them.

Whereas Horus had been the half-forgotten threat of the past and the Beast the peril of the stormy present, Vangorich wondered what other dangers lay ahead for humanity. What revenants and warped monstrosities might the dread Eye of Terror vomit forth? What of the xenos? The orks had smashed the Imperium into a flaming wreck. What alien civilisations — forgotten, long dead or dying — were awaiting a cataclysmic resurgence? What of the species yet to achieve sentience, and monsters of the void yet to be discovered? Vangorich suspected that even if humanity survived the Beast, a weakened Imperium would embolden other warlords and galactic predators to take their opportunity for glory. Every broken world was a smouldering mountain of rubble, in whose shadow the wretched citizens of the Imperium would toil to rebuild their cathedrals, their cities and their lives. A living advertisement in stone and flesh that humanity was vulnerable to attack.

Such disturbing thoughts had led a restless Vangorich to walk the walls of the Palace. Finding himself in the inner arcades, he watched the bleary sun break the horizon from the Investiary. Here, the mighty primarchs had been immortalised in stone.

Mighty no more, they were now but memories. Their statues stood on towering plinths, bearing stone weapons and sculpted in poses of action and agency. It was the way the Imperium chose to remember them. The communal lie. The feeble-minded had little time for uncomfortable truths. From the lowliest gutter wretch to the lords of surrounding smog-wreathed spires, all carried the memory of the primarchs with pride. They were the sons of the Emperor, the warlords responsible for a golden age. Their shoulders, like pillars, had held the Imperium up above the flood of alien filth that washed through the galaxy.

They did not remember them as the squabbling siblings they had truly been, their hearts beating with jealousies and resentments that ran even deeper than those of mortals. They saw them as the pinnacle of human development — magnificent specimens with minds of tactical superiority and the engineered bodies of demi-gods. But everything about them had been superhuman, including the bitterness and hatred they harboured for one another. It amused Vangorich somewhat that the ancient architects had positioned the primarchs’ plinths in a ring about the circular arcade, so that they might regard one another — stony-faced — in an eternal stand-off.

Their choices and their inability to act until it was too late had been the doom of men a thousand years before. The primarchs were gone now — all of them. And in their place sat pompous oafs on thrones, great not of mind or body, but of reach. The High Lords of Terra had unrivalled power and influence. Like the primarchs, the Lords could damn the Imperium with a single decision. The galaxy was theirs to neglect. As the rising of the Beast had proven, their hunger for power and petty politicking had made the Imperium vulnerable. They had made humanity weak. Their existence had been, was and would continue to be a threat to everything the Emperor had worked so hard to build.

Lansung and Verreault held the Imperium to ransom with their ships and their soldiers. Kubik’s true allegiance belonged not to the Imperium but to the Machine-God and Mars. Wienand was free to pursue any dark agenda she wished, ready to see corruption in all who stood in her way, while Vernor Zeck was content in his blindness to the actual corruption before his very eyes. As for Gibran, Sark, Anwar, Tull and Ekharth — their crimes were dangerous incompetence. Their entangled institutions were a house of tarot cards upon which the future of the Imperium was written. When they were at their most needed, their structures had nearly collapsed, and the dominion of mankind with them. This category would no doubt also include whoever was elected to fill the seat of Ecclesiarch, for there were only such men to choose from. Who could know which of these parasites would be chosen for the seat of Lord Commander? All would crave such a position, for leeches always sought out the richest veins from which to feed.

This would not stand, Vangorich decided. He would not be remembered by history so. He would not be some footnote at the bottom of a vellum scroll, buried in a dusty vault. He would not be cursed for his inaction. He was there. A frequenter of the Palace. A member of the Council. An entrusted servant of the Emperor. He could achieve more in a day than even the most powerful Imperial subjects could in a score of lifetimes. The Imperium had been brought to its knees, and might not survive at all. Even if Thane returned victorious, it could not be rebuilt upon the weak foundations the High Lords of Terra would provide. The Emperor’s dominion in the galaxy had to be inviolable and absolute. It had to be strong, and such strength came from an adamantium will — the will to act and see the Imperium’s future preserved.

Vangorich stopped to look up. Mighty Vulkan, cast in stone, stood above him, his hammer held high. The expression on his face was one of potent resolution — like a smouldering volcano, building to blow. On the next towering plinth along, Rogal Dorn cast his grim unsmiling visage down upon the Grand Master. Dour. Intractable. Indomitable. So many of his sons had been lost in the war against the Beast. Those of Dorn’s bloodline, more than anyone else, had paid for the High Lord’s abuses. Looking up at him now, Vangorich found it uncanny how closely Koorland had resembled his genic father.

Vangorich thought on Koorland’s execution of Mesring and nodded to himself. He considered Vulkan’s wise words and his condemnation of the High Lords. A primarch had denounced the Council as unfit for purpose. The son of a primarch had demonstrated how such a problem might achieve resolution. They were not traitors to the Imperium or madmen. They were heroes.

The Grand Master of Assassins shivered as the last of the dawn’s scattered rays penetrated his deep hood. A cold front had moved in over the Palace, carrying with it dirty clouds and acidic rain that sizzled upon the marble. The capital was in for a storm, it seemed. It might have been a new dawn above the Palace and for the Imperium, but thunder was rolling in.

Guy Haley

The beheading

Chapter One

Death to the Beast!

The citizens of Terra crowded the streets in their millions. They sang out their praises to the Emperor with tears in their eyes. They roared their approval until they were hoarse. After months of terror, there was victory.

Terra’s most beloved sons were coming home, and the Throneworld had found its voice.

Maximus Thane led the heroes of the Imperium, standing tall in the cupola of the Land Raider Dorn’s Fist. The Imperial Fists marched in tight lockstep, their yellow armour gleaming in the smog-choked morning of Terra. The Imperial Fists were newly gathered as brothers still, and nearly half of those who had taken up the yellow and black to fight on Ullanor had fallen, but they marched as one: Excoriator, Executioner, Iron Knight, Soul Drinker, Black Templar, Crimson Fist and Fist Exemplar had cast off their prior identities and subsumed them into the deeper brotherhood of Dorn. Old ties dissolved into the rebirth of a greater past. Continuation would be their legacy, though none outside the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes would ever know the Imperial Fists had fallen.

Behind the reformed Imperial Fists came representatives of a dozen other Chapters of the First, Second and Third Foundings. They were small contingents in the main, but in some of them were contained every remaining member of their orders. The victory against the Beast had cost the Imperium dear.

After the marching Space Marines snaked a trail of armoured vehicles ten kilometres long, all brightly painted in the honourable heraldries of the Emperor’s chosen. Behind them the ground quaked to the tread of thousands of Astra Militarum Guardsmen, macroclades of Martian skitarii, and plodding, mighty mechanisms of the Legio Cybernetica. Machines and men of every conceivable type walked proudly past the Tortestrian Gate, Ballad Gate, and Bastion Ledge. Overhead soared flights of Navy Aeronautica fighters and Chapter Thunderhawks. Above them, the dim shapes of starships at low anchor coasted across the brown sky, serene as icebergs.

Laud-hailers borne by floating platforms sang their praise to the Emperor. Servo-skulls and cybernetic constructs without number swarmed in the sky. Along every street, from every window, from balconies and suspended ways hundreds of metres above ground level, from buried halls and avenues hidden in the planet’s metal skin, the people of Terra gave thunderous voice to their gratitude.

The procession turned onto Victory Way and headed east. There, tens of millions of pallid clerks blinked in the unaccustomed daylight. The crowds were thousands deep, reducing the kilometre-wide road to a ribbon of rockcrete. Singing priests gathered in huge numbers. Shrieking herald-seraphim, set free from their roosts in the great cathedrals, soared on the thermals, chanting the names of the victorious. Light from Terra’s rising sun pierced the cloak of industrial filth that veiled her face and lit upon the sons of Dorn, birthing gold from the yellow. The roaring of the crowd intensified. It was overwhelming, deafening. The eyes of a world were upon Thane. Thane! Thane! Thane! They chanted his name like a heartbeat. Terra had returned to life.

It should have been Koorland, thought Thane, not I. It is he who deserves this honour.

If he was saddened his friend’s name was not chanted, he was grateful for the shortness of man’s memory. Soon he too would be forgotten, and another name would take the place of his. How had Koorland managed to cope with all this, he thought. How can any child of humanity?

His helmet auditory equipment and Lyman’s ear struggled to keep the noise of the crowd to tolerable levels. There would be mortals there that day deafened by the crowd’s tumult, he was sure. They would tell their grandchildren proudly that the sound of victory was the last thing they heard.

The procession ground on, already hours into its passage. More hours of noise awaited.

Victory Way opened up onto the Fields of Winged Victory, a vast space built to accommodate the armies of the Great Crusade so that the Emperor could address them. Giant vid-screens surrounded it, displaying Thane’s face to the adoring populace of the Imperial Palace. A sea of faces turned towards him as Dorn’s Fist rode into the Fields, eyes rippling to the procession’s entry point underneath a skyscraping triumphal arch. A row of twenty Titans formed an aisle to receive the heroes of the Imperium. They waited with their heads bowed. As each war machine was passed by the procession on its way towards the centre of the Fields, it rose up and gave voice through its war-horns, until the ground vibrated with their basso profundo song, the mightiest chorale in the galaxy.

Thane’s destination was an edifice three storeys tall erected specially for the occasion. Dorn’s Fist mounted the ramp winding around the outside. It was lined with the Adeptus Custodes, come out at last from the inner wards of the Palace. At each sharp corner, Dorn’s Fist swung around abruptly, until the last was taken, and the marble summit of the platform opened. A pinnacle awaited Thane, topped with a smaller platform and a lectern. As the crowd roared on, the tank’s assault ramp slammed down to crack the fresh, gleaming paving and Thane strode out. The ordinarily still, heavy air of Terra had space to move over the Fields, and a light wind teased his honour papers and oath scrips.

He emerged at the top of the pinnacle to a deafening cheer that seemed to last an age.

In front of the lectern, upon a stone bier decorated with a frieze of victorious Space Marines, lay the corpse of an immense ork. It was an impressive specimen, twice the height of Thane and clad in barbarous armour. Every time the vid-screens showed its magnified face to the masses, there came a hysterical booing, whole sectors of the Palace hissing so that it sounded as if a desert’s worth of sand spilled upon the rockcrete.

This ork was not the Beast. The example before Thane had been selected carefully by those adepts skilled in the manipulation of the human psyche. Fabricator General Kubik had offered his best magi-genetors for the task. Thane had elected to employ Grand Master Vangorich’s logistaries and Temple Vanus agents instead.

The Beast could not be too large, for it would instil fear in the people rather than dispelling it, Vangorich insisted. Nor could it be too small, for then contempt for the rulers of Terra would seep into the hearts of humanity that they were bested repeatedly by a weak foe. Thane wished the Beast itself had survived, for he was tired of subterfuge, but the Beast’s head and those of its monstrous comrades had detonated under the stress of psychic feedback, and their corpses were buried in the ruins of Gorkogrod.

The gleaming of his armour put a cast on everything he saw, tinting the red of his eye-lenses orange. The colour was a deception. He was not made to be an Imperial Fist. When he first put on the colours of the old Legion he had expected it to be temporary, but the lie had become the truth; he was no longer a Fist Exemplar. The Imperial Fists were dead, but the Imperial Fists must be seen as immortal. The Defenders of Terra could not fall.

Only months before, he had been outraged by Udin Macht Udo’s demand that the fall of the Fists on Ardamantua be kept secret. He had privately doubted Koorland’s judgement when he had warriors of the other Chapters masquerade as Imperial Fists during that other, premature victory parade. At last he understood. Some walls must be rebuilt in the night. Appearances were everything.

Thane had come to loathe politics. Far on the other side of the Fields, on another platform, were twelve stone thrones. He upped the magnification of his sensorium. The High Twelve were not yet present, but the steps were crowded with thousands of lesser lords and ladies. The sight of them made his jaw clench.

He waited. In the crowded confines of the Terran hives, the Fields were an anomaly, a perfectly square clearing over a thousand hectares in size. Thousands of men, women and armoured vehicles rumbled onto them, taking up position in perfect blocks that shimmered in a haze of exhaust heat. Thane marvelled at the display of arms, but not for the first time he was taken aback at how it was dwarfed by the accomplishments of the past. The Fields had room for hundreds of thousands more men; millions more.

Kilometres away, the great walls of the Imperial Palace stood sentinel over Terra’s screaming populace. Patches of bare adamantium gleamed where gravitic disruption had caused their decorations to tumble free, but the walls held firm. Similar signs of devastation were evident wherever he looked around the city, and these were not superficial. Broken hives, piles of rubble and twisted metal; gaps in Terra’s claustrophobic skyline opened by the gravity weapons of the attack moon. The smooth, artfully laid paving of the Fields was buckled in places, hastily and inexpertly patched in others. More signs of time’s erosion of the achievements of the past; one more step away from the dreams of the Emperor towards the nightmare of endless war.

For an hour Thane stood to attention as the sun climbed over the towering hives of Terra and the formations of troops and machinery laid themselves out line by line. The crowd unceasingly sang and shouted. Atmospheric craft and void fighters streaked overhead, releasing bursts of fireworks and scintillating displays of directed energy.

Finally, the last of the heroes took up position and stopped. An army bracketed Thane’s pulpit. Ten thousand trumpets sounded, overtaken at the last by the mass sounding of Titan war-horns. The remaining members of the High Twelve emerged. Their greeting from the crowd was muted.

‘People of Terra!’ Thane roared. His suit’s vox-systems were rerouted to giant public address systems and his voice filled the Fields louder than the death of worlds. The crowd shouted back even louder. ‘Silence!’ he commanded. His single word rippled away, an infinity of echoes carrying his voice across the planet’s surface. Before the last had died, a hush fell that carried the curious weight of a hundred billion breaths withheld. The wind that stirred his parchments and tabard blew harder, then dropped to nothing. He reached up, unclasped his helm from its softseals, lifted it off, and breathed the unfiltered air of Holy Terra.

It was stale with overuse.

‘I come before you today to announce a great triumph!’ he said. ‘The orks of Ullanor are defeated. Their leaders are no more. Already, their attack fleets fall upon each other in disarray. The Imperium is saved!’

A vast, howling cheer roared from the masses. The wind of their breath buffeted Thane again. He held up a hand, magnified and multiplied on innumerable vid-screens, and held it there until the noise once again dropped.

‘As a species, we have come close to the brink. Holy Terra itself was threatened. The Emperor was at risk!’ He pointed an accusatory hand in the direction of the Palace, making sure that his gesture encompassed the distant dome of the Great Chamber of the Senatorum Imperialis. Let the High Lords think he meant to accuse them, for he did. ‘The Lord of all Mankind, who raised humanity back up from the dark days of Old Night, who built this Imperium of which we are all citizens, who gave all to shield His species, and who sits in agony eternal to protect us still — He was in danger, He was in peril, He was failed by all of us. No more, I say. We shall never allow this to happen again!

‘This is the second time in a year that I have taken part in such a celebration,’ shouted Thane. ‘That first time, nine months ago, was premature. We were complacent even at the height of danger. This time, we celebrate true victory.’

Again that howling of a world, a nation of billions in ecstatic release from fear. Thane strode from his pulpit. The Sword of Sebastus, the Dornsblade, rang from its scabbard. Pollution-tainted Terran sunlight sparkled with renewed purity along its edge. The prismatic pommel called forth a rainbow from filth. With a crackle amplified to deific proportions, he swung the blade down. The sword shattered the creature’s crude gorget, severing the ork’s head from its bullish neck. With swift, exaggerated movements, Thane reversed, cleaned and sheathed the Sword of Sebastus and picked up the dead ork’s head in both hands. Steam rose from its cauterised neck. The deep chill of methalon preservation cooled his face as he lifted it over his head.

‘The Beast lies dead, the Imperium endures. Ave Imperator! All hail the dominion of Man!’

Maximus Thane, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, cast the head of the proxy Beast from the top of the spire. Propelled by his augmented strength, it sailed over the edge of the platform and shattered messily on the stone of the Fields of Winged Victory scores of metres below.

‘The reign of the Beast is over!’

Chapter Two

Legacy of the Sigillite

Getting to the Sigillite’s Retreat through the Imperial Palace was not easy. Ancient, it had been swallowed whole by centuries of building. Wienand enjoyed the tortuous route to the hidden garden; it helped stretch out her mind and her muscles. She had been feeling twitchy ever since the third attack on Ullanor, and relished the exercise.

She ducked under an archway spidered with cracks caused by the buildings bearing down on it from above, and came into the Retreat. It hadn’t changed since she was last there — although, she reflected, it probably hadn’t changed for hundreds of years. It was the same grey, dismal place she had tracked Vangorich to months before. Very remote, very quiet, it had many qualities that recommended it as a spot for meditation and clandestine meetings, but she’d be a fool to think they were the only ones that drew the Master of Assassins there. She had no idea if this rough little space had once been frequented by Malcador himself, but his name carried enough of the resonance of history with it to make it attractive to those seeking power.

She must be mindful of Vangorich’s ambition.

He was already there, sitting openly upon the cracked wood of the split-trunk bench at the garden’s heart.

‘Red incense rises over the Tower of Philo. Drakan Vangorich wishes to see me,’ she said lightly. Her feet crunched on the dusty gravel as she made her way to the bench. Terra was so biotically compromised that in one thousand years the tree trunk had not decayed at all, only shrunk in on itself and twisted out of shape. It was an apt visual metaphor for the state of the Imperium.

Vangorich closed his book, rose and bowed. He was wearing the monkish robes he’d taken to before the attack on Terra. She gave them an amused frown.

‘Wienand!’ he said with evident pleasure. ‘I am glad you came.’

‘I am not sure how I feel about your new look, Drakan. Why did you start to wear that ridiculous habit?’

Vangorich looked down at his robes.

‘These? They present a certain cenobitic air, don’t you think?’

‘More places to hide weapons, perhaps. You are not a holy man.’

‘I have no idea what you mean, my dear Wienand. I am aiming for devout. Too many people see me as frivolous. It is time I adopted a more serious air.’

She scowled. ‘Less of the “my dear”, Drakan. Despite your overtures of friendship, you would kill me without a moment’s hesitation if you thought it necessary. Assassins don’t have friends.’

‘You are my friend, Wienand.’

‘I wish I could believe that,’ she replied.

Vangorich’s smile slipped for a fraction of a second. ‘So you don’t like my robes?’

‘I preferred the suit. Don’t deflect me. What is it that you want, Vangorich?’

Vangorich gestured to the bench. They sat together.

‘The war is over, but the struggle is yet to be resolved,’ began Vangorich. ‘The orks have been driven back, and for that the worlds of humanity can give praise. However, we both know they are not the greatest threat to the Imperium.’

‘The High Lords,’ said Wienand wearily.

‘The High Lords. A knotty problem. I preferred dealing with the orks.’

‘You are a facetious man,’ said Wienand.

‘Thank you. This crisis could have been resolved so much earlier were it not for the fragmented nature of Imperial governance. There are billions of men under arms in the Imperium, hundreds of thousands of Space Marines. Titan Legios. War fleets. Where were they all? Scattered. Leaderless, misdirected to the ends of personal interest and agenda so that when a real crisis arose they were attacked and eliminated in isolation. Under less ineffectual direction, the Beast’s rise would never have occurred. How many times did we make the same mistakes? Three direct assaults on Ullanor. I’m no tactician, but tell me that was wise.’

Wienand looked up towards the plasteel sky half a kilometre above. Windowless towers crowded the garden. What little light reached the retreat was attenuated, the environs murky. ‘This place suits you very well,’ she said. ‘So shady.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Vangorich, looking around the retreat’s tired cloisters. ‘Or rather it did. Since you uncovered it, I have taken against coming here. I don’t know why. It was my special place, but the thought of encountering someone… unexpected,’ he said with a deliberately unctuous grin, ‘took the shine off it. A shame, there are so few places I can be myself.’

She laughed at that. ‘Your self is whatever you need it to be.’

‘You’re hurting my feelings.’

‘So we’re back where we started. Making veiled threats and accusations at each other while the real problems continue their idiotic reputational struggles.’

‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ said Vangorich.

‘Then stop it,’ she said sharply. She looked into his eyes properly for the first time since she had arrived. His face softened. ‘Please. We’ve proved good allies to one another. Let’s not cast it all aside. We’re better than them.’

Vangorich nodded with relief. ‘I was hoping you were going to say that. I’m sorry, I had to check.’

‘There was no need to goad me.’

‘Goading people is part of my charm, and part of my plan.’

‘Killing people is the culmination of it,’ she retorted. ‘I take it the beheading of the ork was your idea?’

‘Naturally.’

‘I am surprised you got the Chapter Master to agree to it.’

Vangorich smoothed out his habit and made an apologetic noise. ‘Poor Thane has learned that bolter and blade are not the only weapons of war, and that not all wars are obvious.’

‘Careful there, Drakan. If you continue his education so effectively you might make him dangerous.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Vangorich. ‘They are a peculiar breed, the Adeptus Astartes, so deadly in some respects, almost childlike in others. Thane is cannier than Koorland was, less of a naïf, if you will. He has more experience, after all. I wonder how things would have gone had he been the last Imperial Fist rather than Koorland. Would this crisis have lasted so long?’

‘Koorland was more easily led. A man needs to be malleable if you would turn him into a hero. He was right for the role.’

‘The Emperor sent him at the right time,’ said Vangorich.

‘Now I know you don’t believe that,’ scolded Wienand. ‘Be careful with Thane. You cannot manipulate him. He needs to be contained.’

‘Ah, well, that might be a little tricky,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’ve asked you here because I think we should make him the Lord Guilliman.’

‘What?’ said Wienand.

‘He is dangerous, you are right. More so now the war is over. The enemy is defeated. Space Marines need enemies, it’s their whole reason for being. He’ll be looking for more soon.’

‘And you want to put him in a room where he has nobody to look at but us?’

‘Oh, I think we’re quite safe,’ said Vangorich amiably. ‘He doesn’t trust me, but he does listen. And you, you have his respect, my dear Wienand. You fought by his side. You proved yourself to him. You know, those new scars you have are very fetching.’ He looked at her meaningfully.

‘You’re suggesting that the Inquisition table the motion that he take the post? No,’ she said.

‘I was actually thinking you should do it. But the Inquisition, yes, the right hand of the Emperor Himself. Who could refuse that?’

‘Don’t mock me, Drakan.’

‘I’m teasing you. It’s affectionate.’

‘You can put teasing on my file along with “my dear” as things not to do to me.’ She gripped the edge of the desiccated wood. It was as hard as stone. She bowed her head in thought. ‘Veritus will not agree,’ she said, ‘but I cannot deny that your plan is appealing. Thane in charge of the Senatorum might put a stop to the squabbling, at least for a while. He is more than a Space Marine, more than a son of the Emperor, he is the slayer of the Beast. The saviour of the Imperium.’

‘He is a symbol,’ said Vangorich. ‘Seeing as we’re out of primarchs, he’ll have to do.’

She couldn’t stop a smile at the thought of the reactions of the others. ‘They could say nothing against him. Thane would have the backing of every man, woman and child in the whole of the Imperium.’

‘You’re coming round to the idea, I can tell,’ said Vangorich.

‘I am not sure. Putting so much power into the hands of one man, at the height of his popularity?’

‘Just like Horus?’

‘That is exactly what Veritus will say,’ she said.

‘Only I can’t imagine someone like Thane going bad. Can you? Tell me truthfully.’

‘Power corrupts,’ said Wienand. ‘There is a reason why the Emperor created the Senatorum Imperialis to rule. The Imperium was too much even for Him alone.’

‘And like so many things since the time of the Great Crusade, it’s worked just marvellously,’ said Vangorich. ‘The Emperor was not infallible. Thane is no primarch. His rule won’t last forever, and the Imperium needs a steady hand for a while. We need reform. He can push it through.’

‘Reforms you suggest?’

He shrugged. ‘Or you. Tell me it makes no sense, and I will drop the issue. You agree with me though, and I know you can handle Veritus.’

She paused, and became suspicious. ‘There is something you are not telling me,’ she said. ‘What play are you making, Drakan?’

He became serious. ‘The play I am making is for stability at a time when we so desperately need it. The Beast nearly finished us, Wienand. Neither you nor I believe things can go back to the way they were. You know this isn’t about personal power. It never has been. I am not made that way. If I were, I would never have been recruited as an Assassin, nor would I have been elevated to Grand Master.’

‘Psych screening doesn’t always work.’

‘But you know me.’

‘I’m afraid I do, all too well.’

They looked at each other, neither willing to drop eye contact. Wienand broke their silence.

‘Verreault and Lansung will not agree to this,’ she said.

Vangorich smiled.

She gritted her teeth. If she was at the point of making individual objections that could be dealt with one by one, she’d lost the argument.

‘I’ll handle them. They will back your proposal. So will I. Zeck will too. He understands the situation. All I have to do is convince one more and we will have a majority.’

‘How can you be sure of Verreault and Lansung? They will be the biggest opponents to the idea. They have the most to lose.’

‘I am sure they will back you,’ he said confidently.

‘Do I want to know?’

‘Mmm, I don’t think so,’ said Vangorich.

Wienand bit her bottom lip. It wasn’t clear there was any other way. ‘I’ll consider it, but it will not be without cost.’

‘And what would that cost be, Inquisitorial Representative?’

Her face hardened. ‘Don’t be disingenuous, Drakan.’

Vangorich passed three cowled menial priests on the stairs leading to the Monitus. When he walked through the high marble gate he was gratified to see that his orders had been obeyed. The Monitus, empty of all but dust until a few days ago, had been attracting increasing numbers of pilgrims since the fall of the Beast. They had all been removed.

There was but one other living being in the Monitus that evening. Surrounded by his noble antecessors rendered three times life-size in stone, Thane looked entirely in place. He stood at the centre of the semicircular balcony that led out from the hall, framed against the dirty warmth of Terran skies. He was one of the heroes of old come back to life and stepped down from his plinth to survey the modern age with sorrowful eyes. Vangorich pitied him. Such was the fate of all heroes, their lives short, their souls captured in stone, their reputations used to rebuke generations yet to come. All of them would be disappointed to see the dream they had fought for.

‘Vangorich. High Lord,’ Thane said. He bowed his head.

‘Lord Thane,’ Vangorich returned his courtesy. He pulled out a blocky box from under his robes.

‘What is that?’ said Thane.

Vangorich waved the device. ‘An audio damper. Nothing sinister.’

‘Put your silence field away. You’ll talk to me openly or not at all,’ said Thane. ‘I’ve no appetite for subterfuge.’

‘As you wish,’ said Vangorich. He had had the place swept for listening devices earlier that day. He was sure nobody would be listening. And if they were, what they might learn would not help them. Never act, Vangorich held, until it is too late for anybody to do anything about it.

Thane looked around the ranks of heroes. They were paired, back to back, one looking down at the floor, the other staring sternly at the dome of the Great Chamber. Thane’s own eyes followed the stone gaze of the statues and settled on the house of the Senatorum, and he half turned away from the Grand Master to share their view.

‘What is it that you want from me, Lord Vangorich?’ said Thane. ‘Summoning me here, where so much of import has occurred these last months, surrounded by the warriors of the great Legions, you can only be hoping to make some sort of point.’

Vangorich went to look out over the vista of the Palace. He leaned on a marble balustrade eroded by the corrosive air and drummed his fingers. The dome looked so fragile, like a bald head ready to be cracked. Only fate had preserved it from the shattering of the ork attack moon.

‘Providence played a part in preserving the Great Chamber, don’t you think?’ Vangorich said. ‘The Emperor watched over it, I am sure.’

‘I am unconvinced by your piety.’

‘I pray daily, my lord.’

‘Koorland told me. In the Chapel Ordinary. I am sure the common people are most affected by your display of humility. Not I. You do not believe in the Creed. I can tell.’

‘That’s an interesting observation.’

Thane made a dismissive noise deep in his throat. ‘My kind knew the Emperor when He walked among us. You are not so far divorced in time from the founders of the Officio Assassinorum yourself. There have been, how many, twenty Grand Masters since your order was founded?’

‘Eleven,’ said Vangorich. ‘We Assassins become adept at staying alive.’

‘You are too rational for faith. I’ll not play your games, Grand Master. I am not Koorland. The war is over. I tire of Terra.’

‘No, you are not Koorland,’ agreed Vangorich.

‘Then tell me why I am here. Speak plainly to me as Thane, not as your puppet. Koorland was a great hero, but he heeded you too closely. I am weary. The Imperial Fists, my Chapter,’ he added, with a touch too much stress, ‘are battered. We may be brothers in blood but we must learn to be comrades. I have much to do and little time to do it in.’ Thane stalked forwards, ceramite boots scratching the porphyry floor, to stand over Vangorich.

Vangorich rested on the stone rail. He was a fraction of Thane’s armoured weight, yet he was easy in the Chapter Master’s presence, a poisonous spider as deadly as the great cat in whose shadow it lurked.

‘Well then, I shall get to the nub of it. You might be done with Terra, but Terra is not done with you. Wienand is going to propose you as Lord Guilliman. You should accept.’

Thane blew out a prodigious sigh. ‘Politics. I will not do it.’

‘I suspected you might say that. That’s why I called you here.’

‘I am not a politician. Ask the Ultramarines. I belong on a wall facing outward against our enemies, not sequestered in the keep surrounded by vipers.’

‘The Ultramarines mourn the loss of their master. They have their own realm to look to.’

‘We mourn our master too. I will not do it, Vangorich.’

‘I see. A shame. Oh well.’

‘I am glad you do not press it.’

Vangorich looked at the fantastical, miniature landscape of the worn rock and traced it with his finger. ‘Ask yourself, what happens when the Traitors come forth from the Eye of Terror again, or if the eldar become resurgent?’ said Vangorich.

‘So you are going to press it,’ said Thane.

‘What happens,’ said Vangorich, raising his voice, ‘Emperor forbid, if the orks find a new Beast? Or if another xenos threat arises? We became lax. Ullanor should have been levelled, or better yet, destroyed. The site of the greatest victory of our supposed god, and what, we forget where it is? Our leaders neglect the defence of our frontier in favour of chasing more riches or shiny medals for themselves? It’s insanity, you know it. The Senatorum Imperialis is broken. We need something else while it is restored to something approaching the Emperor’s vision.’

‘I will not play medicae to Terra’s ills when there is much work to be done beyond this system. The Emperor never intended that the Adeptus Astartes rule over common humanity. Our role is in its defence, and in furthering the Emperor’s glory.’

‘You’re going to leave,’ stated Vangorich.

Thane’s blocky transhuman face registered something akin to disdain. ‘You quickly come to that conclusion? There are hundreds of worlds in the thrall of the orks. Thousands of fleets. Dozens of attack moons. They must all be dealt with. The Beast is dead, but if one warlord gains traction a fresh ork crusade could build. In its weakened state, the Imperium will crumble. There are many armies and fleets scattered across the galaxy. They must be reorganised and motivated to fight back. The campaign to cleanse the stars of orks will take decades, and it must be done now.’

‘See, our fears coincide!’ exclaimed Vangorich. ‘You will be in a better place to deal with it as a High Lord. You will make an excellent Lord Guilliman.’

‘I cannot afford the delay.’

‘What is a few more weeks? Then you can be on your way.’

‘You propose that I assume the office, then depart?’ Thane looked at him in puzzlement.

‘The threat of your return will be enough to keep them in line.’

‘A few weeks saw us delivered of Magneric’s intelligence. Had we had that sooner, the first assault on Ullanor would have been the last. Koorland would live. Many of my brothers would remain in service. A few weeks is everything, Grand Master. You, the deliverer of the perfectly timed blade, know this full well.’

‘Days then,’ Vangorich said reassuringly. ‘Put the house in order, then head out to employ your talents where they are needed. There are many here on Terra who could rule in your stead and—’

‘Many as in one?’ Thane clapped his armoured hands slowly together. The clash of metal rang off the statues. ‘Who do you propose, Vangorich, yourself?’

‘No! No,’ Vangorich shook his head. ‘Good grief, no. I belong in the shadows. I was thinking… Veritus? I’d suggest Wienand, but she wouldn’t do it. She is like you, chafing to get back to her business now the crisis is past.’

‘Veritus because he will object to my appointment.’

Vangorich grinned. ‘You’ve become good at this.’

‘A Space Marine who cannot judge a battlefield and adapt himself accordingly is not worthy of his battleplate,’ said Thane. ‘The Senatorum is as deadly a warzone as any.’

‘Of course, Wienand will need mollifying. I suspect she might want the role herself, and if you give to it Veritus she may be outraged. It wasn’t so long ago that the Inquisitorial Representatives were trying to kill each other. Might I suggest your first act as Lord Guilliman should be to transfer control of the Deathwatch permanently to the Inquisition?’

‘I was thinking of disbanding it,’ said Thane, ‘along with the Last Wall.’

‘Ah good, I was going to bring that up too. The latter has to be done. But the Deathwatch have proven their utility. They serve very well in building bonds between your Chapters. You have become a little, well, estranged since the Second Founding, and the Third didn’t help.’

‘I do not—’

‘If you would indulge me, Chapter Master,’ said Vangorich. ‘The addition of a Chapter-strength force of Space Marines to the Inquisition’s arsenal will greatly shore up their authority, and further keep the High Lords’ minds focused where they should be: on the business of government, and not on their own estates.’

Thane stared down at him dubiously. Their faces were so heavy, thought the Grand Master, that it was too easy to see the Adeptus Astartes as stupid.

‘Come now. You know the rules very well,’ Vangorich went on. ‘The reformation of the Imperial Fists and that presentation to the High Lords in the Plaza Decamerata? Masterful work. You already have them in retreat. Take on the mantle of Lord Guilliman and put them to flight. The Imperium needs you, Maximus Thane. Now is not the right time for another mortal man to lead.’

‘And what do you gain from all this, Master of Assassins?’

‘Nothing. I get nothing. I get not to assassinate anyone, that is what I get. Keeping the peace is always my first intention, Chapter Master. I assure you of that.’ He tapped Thane’s plastron. ‘A threat loses its power once it is acted upon. I am a threat. Like I said, I belong in the shadows.’

Terra breathed again. The Great Chamber swarmed with lesser lords. It was even busier than usual, packed out with planetary delegations from beleaguered worlds. How quickly the vermin boil out of their hiding places when the storm has passed, Vangorich thought. A short while ago, he had regretted the absence of the least lords and all the others. Now he saw in them yet more potential for delay. Once, wider democracy had worked, but these were different times.

Nevertheless, today they were needed.

The building was in the throes of repair. Piles of rubble had been cleared away. Collapsed tiers of seating were roped off, the process of dismantling them half completed. Walls unknown to daylight for a thousand years stood exposed. Scaffolding rose up the sides of the dome, catwalks crisscrossed its vaulted expanse. Lines of fresh, pale plaster crept up along cracks. All menials had been dismissed while the Senatorum was in session, except the fresco painters, who must work their paints into the damp plaster before it dried. They sent black looks at the gathering lords, as if it were they who had invaded the painters’ workspace and not the other way around.

Really, it would have made more sense to hold a closed meeting of the High Twelve in the Clanium Library, or the Cerebrium, but a full session was required. Vangorich had spent several exhausting days making sure that it occurred.

Otherwise, the Great Chamber remained as it had been before the crisis. Floating constructs traversed the wide open space under the dome. The dais still rotated at its glacial pace. Dorn still glared down upon the seats of the High Lords. Vangorich looked up at the primarch’s face while the others dealt with their armies of aides and subordinates. He suppressed a smile at the thought of his Temple masters arriving here and mobbing him. Naturally, he only appeared alone. There were over a dozen Officio agents in the chamber, several embedded in the retinues of his fellow High Lords. He remained forever grateful that they could not bother him directly. He was a loner by inclination.

Everything hinged on the next few hours. He trusted Dorn’s glower would prove sufficient motivation to his gene-son to do the right thing.

The wait for proceedings to begin was the most tedious part of the day. Thousands of lesser lords and adepts filed into the intact galleries. Prefecti by the cohort, consularies by the gross. Vangorich slipped into a meditative trance, his hearing flicking from conversation to conversation. Ekharth was flustered, as well a man tasked with putting right the material damage done to Terra and its domains might be. Lansung was defiant, but it was a shell. Verreault was cowed, spending his time brooding over his own failures. Zeck’s augmetic face was unreadable. Kubik had come back from Mars, but his body was still.

The others behaved according to their character. Juskina Tull was a mental wreck, a blank face swamped by outrageous finery. She had developed a small tic around her left eye. The defeat of the Beast would force her to confront her failure with the Proletarian Crusade soon. Vangorich didn’t expect that to turn out well. Reports from his Temple Vanus infocytes indicated that her own people thought so too, and that a struggle among the Chartist Captains was already developing. Should she fall, he doubted the organisation would retain its place among the High Twelve.

Dissent among the Chartists, and a vacuum at the high table. More problems. Anwar, Sark and Gibran were becoming closer, the two psykers pulling the Paternoval Envoy into their circle. They had the warp in common, after all. This little triumvirate concerned him only slightly. Gibran held real power, but the other two were functionaries at heart, fiercely defensive of their adepta’s influences for no good reason — both the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Astronomican were essential to the Imperium. Neither of them posed any risk.

‘Vangorich.’ The phlegmy, ancient voice of Veritus broke into his semi-trance.

‘Ah, Veritus, how are you?’

Veritus loomed over him in his cream power armour, so Vangorich stood. Veritus’ wrinkled face stared at him defiantly from its protective apparatus. He looked so small in there.

‘This idea of yours, it cannot be,’ said Veritus. ‘You are playing a dangerous hand.’

‘Wienand told you, did she?’ said Vangorich.

‘She intends to go through with it, against my recommendation.’

‘A pity. I am sure if you were to re-examine the issue, it would make sense to you,’ said Vangorich.

‘A Space Marine should not sit on the Council. This reformation of the old Legion is ample evidence why.’

‘The first Lord Guilliman was, well, Lord Guilliman,’ offered Vangorich. ‘There is precedent.’

‘He was a primarch,’ said Veritus. ‘And perhaps the only one suitable to the role. Horus’ betrayal of the Emperor is the history you should be looking to here. Do not invest a Space Marine with such power over mortal men!’ Veritus was close to shouting in his face, his words carrying over the numbing hubbub of voices filling the chamber.

‘Sorry, but I don’t agree. Look, a couple of the others are beginning to pay attention to our business. Let’s say we debate this in the proper forum, when this session commences? Let’s put it to a vote.’

Veritus glared at him. ‘You cannot control him.’

‘Veritus! Why would I want to control him?’

‘You’re a liability,’ said Veritus. His armour whined as he stepped around the dais to take a seat by Wienand. Since Koorland’s death, there was one free.

‘Ekharth, when are we going to get started?’ called Zeck.

‘We’ll get started—’ began the master of the Administratum. The thump of ceramite boots on stone interrupted him.

‘Now?’ suggested Vangorich lightly.

Maximus Thane strode towards the dais, the crowds parting before him. He came escorted by a full squad of Imperial Fists First Company veterans, their armour heavy with battle honours. Cast icons of the Chapter hung from chains on their pauldrons. The yellow of their armour was almost obscured by gilding, badges and emblems.

‘Chapter Master! Good of you to join us,’ called Vangorich.

‘What can we do for you, Lord Thane?’ said Ekharth. Without a Lord Guilliman, he had asserted his adeptus’ seniority and appointed himself temporary chair. Such a snivelling, reactive little man ordinarily, he had become swelled with pomposity, like a toad.

‘I will speak with the High Lords,’ said Thane. He stopped by the rotating dais.

‘Impossible,’ said Ekharth. ‘The business of the Senatorum Imperialis is about to commence in full session. You have no seat here. We have petitions to hear from hundreds of worlds. You must wait your turn.’

‘I shall not,’ said Thane. ‘This will not wait.’

‘You must go, Thane,’ said Ekharth, his face flushing crimson.

So he has a backbone, thought Vangorich. That might prove problematic. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I motion that we bring forward other matters from the end of the session to now?’

‘We have not begun!’ said Lansung exasperatedly.

Vangorich shot him a warning look. The Lord Admiral seethed.

‘Seconded,’ said Wienand.

Anger bubbled up through the cracks in Ekharth’s mask of self-importance. ‘This is most irregular.’

The background chatter of the crowd hushed as the lesser lords and planetary delegations caught notice of the growing confrontation.

‘Call a vote. We are the High Lords. I rather thought we could conduct our business as we see fit. Let’s get it out of the way.’

‘Very well!’ said Ekharth. Along with his new backbone, he had acquired an orb of black granite that he slammed into a cup of the same. The clack of the gavel snapped through the chamber like a cannon shot. Bobbing servo-skulls swung their attention to the dais. The High Lords shooed away their remaining servants and subordinates. The conversation in the chamber dwindled to a breathy silence. ‘I bring this meeting of the Senatorum to order! We shall vote on undertaking other business first.’

Vangorich raised his hand, as did Wienand, Anwar, Zeck, Verreault and, after a cocked eyebrow from Vangorich, Lansung.

‘Carried!’ said Ekharth angrily. ‘What do you want to table, Vangorich?’

‘Not me,’ said Vangorich. He held out a hand to Wienand.

Wienand hesitated. Veritus was staring at her so hard the blue veins in his temple pulsed.

‘I move that we appoint Maximus Thane to the head of this Senatorum as Lord Guilliman,’ she said.

Her words were met with resounding cheers from the lesser lords that almost drowned out Vangorich’s seconding of the motion, despite the voxmitters amplifying his voice.

Ekharth went purple. He really has had no idea, thought Vangorich. ‘Vote then!’ he said, cracking his spherical gavel petulantly. ‘For.’

Vangorich, Wienand, Zeck, Verreault, Lansung and Anwar again voted. After a moment’s consultation, so did Gibran and Sark. Kubik raised a mechanical hand in silence, then went back to whatever it was that really interested him.

‘Against!’ said Ekharth. He raised his own hand quickly, then snatched it down. He stared at the table in defeat.

‘Welcome to the Senatorum Imperialis,’ said Vangorich to Thane. He bowed his head. ‘My Lord Guilliman.’

The chamber shook to the cheers of the massed lesser lords as Maximus Thane took his seat at the head of the table.

Chapter Three

Exemplars of the Imperium

Zerberyn ran at the ork blocking the companionway down to the enginarium, bowling it over the railing and into the churning machinery below. He fired into the face of the one behind, blasting the back of its skull apart. Vaulting over its tumbling corpse, he buried his chainsword in the head of a third. A burst of heavy bolter shots felled three bigger orks coming up the steps.

‘There it is!’ voxed Sergeant Solomon Torr. ‘I have the xenos mechanician in sight.’

Runes flickered over Zerberyn’s faceplate. A red signum dot pulsed on the miniature cartograph of the spaceship’s interior. The ork commander was in a large room suspended above the thundering ship’s engines.

‘Squad Torr, follow!’ he ordered.

Squealing ork slaves scattered before him. He did not waste his ammunition on them, and they died under his boots. He rounded a corner to see a heavy blast door grinding into place. His hand went to his belt and came away empty. His last melta bomb had been spent three bulkheads back. ‘Melta!’ he called.

Space Marines clattered down the stairs behind him, taking up fire positions along the rickety safety rail. Their weapons panned back and forth, laser targeters gleaming in the dark.

‘Melta!’ Zerberyn called again, his patience gone.

Brother Rosdane shoved his way down the stairs, banging into the backs of his brothers in his haste. ‘Here, First Captain.’ His plain, unmarked armour was covered in dark ork blood, bright grooves scratched into the surface where enemy fire had been deflected.

‘Burn us a way in,’ Zerberyn ordered. ‘Squad Torr, firing lines!’

He took a step back as Rosdane adjusted the focal length of the melta and levelled the slotted muzzle of the gun at the door. The rest of his squad formed up, bolters level. The foetid atmosphere of the ork hulk shimmered in front of the meltagun, then with a whooshing roar the door burst into flame. Thick gobbets of burning steel ran from the breach, draining in lethal drips through the mesh of the catwalk. The bright spot of heat spread, until the whole of the door glowed white. All of a sudden, it collapsed wetly, spraying sparks and droplets of molten metal.

‘Fire!’ shouted Zerberyn.

His warriors let loose together, sending a barrage of bolts through the door before the smoke of its destruction had cleared. Zerberyn leapt through.

‘Follow the First Captain!’ shouted Sergeant Torr.

They emerged into a storm of bullets. Rounds screamed off Zerberyn’s armour in a blaze of sparks. Orks came out of the smoke and dark, and he cut them down. Behind them was a huge, squat-bodied ork engineer, the mockery of a Space Marine’s servo-harness attached to its back.

Boltguns barked around him, felling the xenos, as Zerberyn charged to attack. This fleet’s strange vessels and bizarre weaponry were the creations of this monster. He was the lord of the armada. Kill him, and what little cohesion the force had would collapse.

There was no point, Zerberyn realised. They had chased him from his bridge, he was cornered. They could have set the charges and left. The orks lacked the organisation they had shown only weeks ago. But he wanted to kill it. He needed to.

It raised a blocky pistol and fired. A round as big as a human fist punched a fresh dent into Zerberyn’s plastron and knocked him off his feet. A tall ork reared over him, a growling chainaxe raised over its head. Before it could strike its chest blew out and it fell down dead. Zerberyn recovered and got back to his feet, bolt pistol spitting.

His rounds smacked into an energy field surrounding the ork engineer and exploded harmlessly. It bared its massive yellow fangs at him and raised its weapon. Zerberyn dodged, taking a hit on the greave as he dived aside. The strength of the weapon was so great the plate buckled. On his faceplate, a warning rune blinked. A tiny schematic of his armour flickered up, his lower left leg glowing amber.

The ork mechanic roared. The last of its bodyguard died, blown apart by seven simultaneous bolt hits. Squad Torr trained their weapons on the engineer, advancing on it as they fired. The creature’s energy shield flared under the strain and gave out with a bang. Zerberyn jumped at it, his sword swinging. The ork roared and hammered down with the whirring attachments of its harness. Zerberyn parried one with the flat of his blade and sheared the other away. Black oil pumped from the harness’ hydraulics.

The ork swung its pistol around. Like so many of its monstrous kind its strength was undone by sluggishness, and Zerberyn chopped hard, separating its hand from its body. Howling in outrage, the ork threw itself at Zerberyn, bearing them both to the floor. Zerberyn’s boltgun was knocked from his grasp. His chainsword was no use and he dropped it to grapple with the monster. His eye-lenses filled with the slavering jaws of the ork as it bit furiously at his face. His fingers slipped on waxy skin. The thing grabbed him around the throat and squeezed. The pressure was immense, crushing his neck through his softseal. Zerberyn scrabbled for his combat knife. He unsheathed it, fought it past the ork’s flailing stump. The ork batted at his hand. Ivory fangs snapped on his forearm.

With muscle-cracking effort, Zerberyn bucked under the creature, shifting it enough to drive the point of his blade into its eye. The ork mechanician continued to roar for a second. Zerberyn saw his death in its face, but then the light went out in its remaining eye, and it slumped.

His brothers heaved the dead beast off him. Sergeant Torr extended a hand.

‘Have you worked out your anger, brother-captain?’ he said.

‘Watch your tone, brother,’ said Zerberyn. He allowed himself to be hauled back up.

‘Perhaps you are still in need of battle,’ said Torr. ‘But we are done here and should leave.’

‘I thank you for letting me slay the beast alone,’ he said.

‘A worthy opponent,’ said Torr. ‘Your order, First Captain?’

‘Cripple the engine. Krak, meltagun, anything we have left.’

Zerberyn opened a line to the other Fists Exemplar upon the ship. He scrolled through the icons of the five squads. Most were green, a couple tending to amber. Casualties were light. ‘The ship’s captain is dead. All squads fall back to extraction point. Hail Shipmaster Marcarian. We are returning to the Dantalion.’

Zerberyn ran into the ork hangar, a wide metal hole haphazardly floored by welded plates, shielded from the void with a buzzing yellow integrity field. Two squads waited by the Thunderhawks Aegis of Alcazar and Pride of Oriax, snapping off disciplined volleys of fire into the corridors leading into the bay. The transports faced inward, away from the freedom of space, their front and rear ramps down. Their cheek-mounted heavy bolters twitched, lest any ork be foolish enough to come around their fronts. Orks fired sporadically from the gallery circling the bay, but they were few and quickly fell to grenades and missiles when they showed their faces. Mounds of greenskin dead choked the hangar doors.

His warriors’ guns zeroed in on Zerberyn as he thundered back into the bay followed by Squads Torr and Nubius, held a moment, then tracked away to find other targets.

‘Odrazar, we leave as soon as the others join us,’ Zerberyn ordered his pilot. ‘Begin preparations to depart now!’

As soon as the order was given the Thunderhawks came to life, their engines thrumming in anticipation of flight. The deck vibrated at their awakening.

Communications crackled in through his helmet vox. Squad Escoban reported that the shield generators had been destroyed, Squad Rodrian that the main reactor was rigged to explode. Zerberyn and his squads joined the firing line of the raiding party rearguard and awaited their comrades.

They came soon, Squad Escoban first: two brothers hauling their wounded sergeant between them, four more covering each other in pairs. Fire, retreat, cover, fire, retreat, cover, fire. Zerberyn selected their squad icon in his suit’s faceplate. It was tending from green to amber. It expanded, pushing out squad level detail for the rest of his taskforce and listing the brothers individually. Nine had set out, seven returned.

Rodrian came next. Their squad marker was red. Only four of eight remained. All were wounded.

‘Board the transports!’ shouted Zerberyn. The nineteen warriors already with him raised their weapons. Squads Rodrian and Escoban ran past, Sergeant Escoban dragged up the ramp leaving a trail of rapidly clotting blood.

The orks came after them. There were dozens as opposed to hundreds, their numbers thinned, but they were still dangerous. Many were lesser varieties of the ork technical class, while others wore massive harnesses covered in an unlikely array of guns. They flooded onto the deck, brandishing bizarre energy weapons that they wasted no time in using. A beam of searing ruby light pulsed out, neatly bisecting Brother Irken. Another dead. Twelve warriors lost in this battle alone.

‘Kill them all!’ roared Zerberyn. He needn’t have expended his breath — his brothers were already responding, riddling the ork crew with mass-reactive fire. The Thunderhawks’ anti-personnel weapons opened up, stitching so many lines of light across the hangar that Zerberyn found it hard to see Pride of Oriax from his position at the foot of Aegis of Alcazar’s front ramp. So many orks were hit that their atomised flesh misted the air. The walls were repainted dark red.

‘Squad Torr, board!’ ordered Zerberyn. Torr led his men aboard Pride of Oriax, two of them covering the rest as they thundered around to the front of their craft and up the assault ramp. Beams of barely focused light and small, hissing rockets scored the hull as the door swung shut. One impacted inside. A flash, and a jet of fire suppressant, then the hatch was shut and the Pride of Oriax was lifting off, engines in rocket mode, blasting out blades of blue-white fire. Its blunt rear penetrated the crude integrity field with an electric crackle and it was away into the void, swinging about, all engines engaging, and racing away from the flagship.

The orks fell back, sniping at the Fists Exemplar from the doorways and gallery. A lascannon blast slammed into the roof of the Aegis of Alcazar, bringing down a shower of molten ceramite and calling forth the voice of a tocsin from inside. Another of Zerberyn’s brothers fell, a smoking hole punched through his face. The others bore the hail of bullets and micro-missiles stoically, firing calmly back.

‘Evacuate!’ ordered Zerberyn. His men broke their line and pounded up the ramp. Zerberyn was last aboard, still firing outward as the Thunderhawk’s ramp closed. His warriors set themselves into their flight restraints. Zerberyn pushed past them, up into the rear compartment and on into the flight deck. Odrazar and his co-pilot were strobed by the light of gunfire flashing through the canopy. Bolt-rounds continued to chug from the forward mounts, dismembering orks foolish enough to chance the bay again.

‘Captain,’ Odrazar acknowledged Zerberyn.

‘Brother. Time to leave.’

Aegis of Alcazar reared up and back. The roar of the engines outdid the crackle and boom of the orks’ strange weaponry. Sailing backwards, it breached the integrity field and turned away, running along the side of the ork ship. Gunfire blasted from multiple mounts, forcing Odrazar to jink between their streams of shells and energy.

All was silent. The void brought peace. The ork ship vented its fury voicelessly. The rumble of the craft and the quiet conversations of active machines filled the cockpit.

Odrazar banked around and opened up the engines to maximum, and the flagship fell away behind them. Burrok’s World rolled into view, its marbled clouds and seas stained with the black smoke of worldwide fire. Burrok’s World was yet another nowhere planet beset by the greenskins. They attacked indiscriminately, invading whatever place they happened across. The world had little strategic significance for either orks or humans, but Zerberyn would gladly fight them wherever they were. The opportunity for resupply the battle presented was a secondary consideration to him. He wished only to slay orks.

‘There is an energy spike on the ork flagship, captain,’ the Thunderhawk’s co-pilot said. Zerberyn went to the ship’s operations desk. With his backpack on, he could not sit in its empty chair, but he keyed the display, selecting the Thunderhawk’s aft augurs.

The ork flagship was a brute of a thing, with a prow as blunt as an ork’s jaw welded to a long, rickety body that gave it the overall appearance of a predatory oceanic life form. When the Fists Exemplar had tackled it initially, it was powerful and proud, protected by an energy field that Space Marine ordnance was powerless to penetrate. Now the projection vanes were wilting, the field they generated was out and the ship suffered under the bombardment of the Space Marine fleet.

Slowly, the craft began to fall towards Burrok’s World. Zerberyn smiled as fire like solar flares burst from the haphazard array of vents and exhaust ports around the engine stack, and it turned, presented half its belly to his inspection. Explosions rippled from gun decks and fighter bays, catching the smaller craft fleeing it in their fires. In typical orkish fashion, the guns continued firing to the very last, but madly, targeting nothing. The mindless biting of a wounded animal.

The void sheeted white as the mechanician-admiral’s junk ship exploded into a maelstrom of spinning debris tortured by crackling green lightning. A weak shockwave of expanding gases tilted the Thunderhawk. The hull pinked and tinkled with a hundred micro-impacts. When the viewscreen’s image returned, in the flagship’s place was a crowd of fizzing sparks that went out one by one. Burning wreckage hurtled away into the void or scorched fiery trails into the upper atmosphere of the planet. In moments there was no sign the ork ship had ever existed.

Zerberyn remained in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit as it crossed the void towards the Dantalion. The ork fleet was well into the process of transformation into a debris field. With their admiral dead, the flotilla broke in all directions. Lightstorms flashed as the fleeing ork ships were picked off one by one. Engine stacks blew into greasy, roiling balls of fire.

A victory, but another costly one. The Guilliman moved sluggishly, half its engines lightless. The Excelsior was dead, her broken hull shining with short-lived fires and the departure thrusts of lifeboats. He called up the casualty lists in his faceplate from the taskforce noosphere. Twenty-nine dead brothers and thousands of serfs. He unfocused his eyes from the list, but left it scrolling across his view of the disintegrating ork ships.

A bleeping interrupted his thoughts.

‘First Captain, we have an incoming message from the surface,’ said Odrazar.

‘Survivors?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Zerberyn stood taller. ‘Excellent news! Turn us about. We are in no danger now. Let us descend to the surface and see these people our blood has saved.’

The Thunderhawks of the Iron Warriors and the Fists Exemplar landed together upon the shattered landing fields of Turos port. Zerberyn, Honorius, Reoch and five others stepped out into a landscape of utter devastation. The space port was in ruins, substantial terminal buildings and hangar spaces broken into untidy heaps of rubble. Beyond the rockcrete aprons the vegetation was burned back to ash. Columns of smoke held up a sky of black clouds. The light of the sun was obscured, the horizon stained red and orange with the fires of burning cities.

Against the odds, mankind had survived the orks there. A delegation of a dozen battered, dirty soldiers waited for the Space Marines when they walked down the assault ramp. They were streaked with soot and old blood, their uniforms tattered. Several were not soldiers, but civilian guerillas bearing weapons of the dead. Their leader wore a necklace of large orkish teeth. In him the light of defiance burned brightest.

‘My lord,’ he said, and knelt with fearful reverence. ‘It is you who destroyed the ork fleet?’

‘It was. My brothers run the last few out of the system as we speak.’

There were more figures two hundred metres away, a small crowd watching nervously in the lee of a half-burned warehouse. ‘Rise. Do not kneel.’ Zerberyn looked around at the ruined landscape. ‘You are this army’s general?’

‘Lieutenant, my lord. The generals are all dead.’

‘Look at me. What is your name?’

‘Cadraig, my lord.’ The man lifted his head. He looked Zerberyn unflinchingly in the eye-lenses, but remained kneeling. He was scared; Zerberyn could practically taste his fear. ‘I was an officer in the militia. You have saved us.’

‘You saved yourselves,’ said Zerberyn. ‘How did you prevail?’

‘We did not prevail. We were near defeat. It is three months since the orks came, and we have been fighting all the while. They… they took most of us. There are not so many of us left, but those that are alive still took an oath not to lay down our arms until we were all dead. We swore not to let a single other person be taken. We owe it all to Penderyn. He raised our spirits when our will was broken. He roused us to fight back when the regiments of our defence force were crushed. At his command we struck at them from hidden places. We bled their supply lines. We did what we could. It was not enough.’ The man bowed his head.

‘You have done more than most,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Where is this Penderyn? I would speak with him.’

‘He is dead, my lord.’

‘A shame. But you have done well. You are free now. Raise a monument to him and be thankful.’

Zerberyn looked to Kalkator’s craft. The warsmith had yet to emerge. An uneasy feeling passed through him.

‘My lord, might I beg to ask a question of you?’

‘Yes. By all means. You have earned my attention.’

‘Why were we left to fight alone? Not a single one of our requests for aid went answered. We had lost faith in the Emperor. We thought He had abandoned us, until now.’

‘The galaxy burns,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Your world is one of a thousand assailed.’

He would have said more. The man’s plight moved him. For the first time in months he saw a human being who had not lost his wits, or thrown his lot in with the orks, or allowed himself to be made livestock, but who had fought bravely, and nearly won.

The ramp to Kalkator’s Thunderhawk descended, hissing compressed gases. The lieutenant watched Kalkator as he approached over the pitted landing apron. The warsmith stamped down the ramp to stand next to Zerberyn.

‘Your prayers have been answered. We have come, but freedom does not come cheap.’

‘My lord?’ said Cadraig uneasily. His eyes shifted from Kalkator to Zerberyn and back again, the fear in them growing.

With a sudden chill, Zerberyn realised that Cadraig looked at he and Kalkator the same way. Fear and awe. There was no difference in his regard. And why should there be? Their metallic liveries were stained with soot and blood, with no markings clear to tell them apart. In Cadraig’s eyes they looked the same.

‘Aid such as ours requires payment. Our fleets are battered, our supplies low,’ said Kalkator.

‘Of course, my lord,’ said Cadraig. ‘You are welcome to rest here. We will give you what we can.’

‘You will give us everything,’ said Kalkator menacingly. ‘Food. Water. Munitions. All of it.’

Cadraig got falteringly to his feet. The men behind him looked up uncertainly.

‘We have so little. We shall starve.’

‘If you do not give us what we demand, we shall take it,’ said Kalkator. ‘Are there children among you?’

‘My lord!’ said Cadraig in alarm. ‘We swore not to let any more of our people be taken.’

One of Cadraig’s men caressed the firing mechanism of his gun. Kalkator caught the tiny movement and turned to address him.

‘I would not advise resistance. We will take one hundred of your strongest boys. Now. We do you a great honour. We are not orks. We shall not eat them, but raise them above the fragile state of base humanity. Your sons will be Legiones Astartes.’

‘Legiones?’ said Cadraig. A dawning realisation crossed his face. Weapons were raised. ‘Who are you?’ he said suspiciously.

‘We are members of the Fists Exemplar Chapter of Space Marines,’ said Zerberyn. He took a step forward. ‘We are loyal servants of Terra.’

‘You are. I am not.’ Kalkator plucked his pistol from his belt. Cadraig’s men raised their weapons fully. Kalkator trained his gun upon Cadraig. Servo-motors whined in the cheeks of the Iron Warriors Thunderhawk, bringing heavy bolter sponsons to bear.

‘One hundred youths,’ said Kalkator. ‘As much food as you can gather. Bring it here tomorrow morning, or we shall rain fire down upon this world that shall make your engagement with the orks appear trivial. Now go!’ The last words he amplified to godlike levels, and the men flinched and turned, and ran away. The crowd by the ruined terminal building looked on nervously.

Reoch laughed drily.

‘Brother,’ Kalkator said to Zerberyn. His use of the word had lost its ironic edge.

‘Why?’ said Zerberyn. ‘Why do we have to take everything? They would have supplied us well without complaint.’

‘You know why,’ said Kalkator, holstering his pistol. ‘My Great Company is a fifth the size it was before this began. I have lost all my holdings. Three worlds were mine to command, and now I have but one. A single further setback, and I shall be reduced to the status of a wandering beggar. I have lost most of my fleet, many of my machines. We are low on stores and munitions. I need recruits, I need food to feed them, or my brotherhood will die.’

‘There is no need. They would have given to you freely.’

‘Not everything. Now I get it all.’

‘You take their children! You are as good as killing them.’

‘I am not killing them. Shooting them would be killing them. What do you care, Zerberyn?’ said Kalkator, turning to look on the Exemplar fully. ‘The expression of disdain for common humanity has stamped itself into your face so deeply your own serfs have begun to fear you. How many have we seen reduced to livestock, or turned feral under the influence of the Green Roar? One pocket of defiance and your resolve crumbles.’

‘When man is at his best, it puts us in our proper place,’ said Zerberyn. ‘I was made to defend them. When I defend those who are worthy of my efforts, I see who I am. These people deserve our respect.’

‘They have my respect,’ said Kalkator. ‘Humankind isn’t often at its best. Not enough. You will come to understand that, if you have not already. Look at them, grovelling at the feet of the idols of a man who professed not to be a god, then allowed himself to be worshipped as one. We are saving them from the pernicious creed of the Emperor’s lies. If humanity is to survive it must help itself. The Emperor is deaf to the pleas of his faithful, but there are other gods who answer prayers. Mankind will not endure as these feeble examples, but as legionaries. The people of this world have proved themselves fine warriors. We do them a great honour in taking them into our Legions, brother.’

‘I am not a legionary!’ said Zerberyn.

‘Are you sure?’ said Kalkator slyly.

‘Your intention was to cleanse the systems around Immitis. Why have we come so far back into Imperial space?’

‘You would prefer it if we didn’t hunt orks?’ Kalkator said. His voice, rich and sardonic, made Zerberyn’s muscles tense. ‘Why are you so angry, brother? Do you think your loyalist brothers treat their charges any better? Be thankful. If it were not for your moderating influence, we would have taken their children and killed them all. You reminded me that a little mercy can be useful. Some of those wretches may live. They fought well against the orks, for mortals. Let them toil, let the struggle to survive harden them further, and then let them raise new offspring. It will be worth our while revisiting this place in fifty years or so. Yes, a good result. This will be a fine recruiting world. Thank you, Zerberyn, for your wise counsel.’

Kalkator strode back to his gunship, laughing. Zerberyn stared at the ragged crowd at the edge of the field. Some of the men from Cadraig’s group were shouting and pointing. He considered going to them, calling his ships and having them blast the Palimodes from the sky. The Iron Warriors ship was outnumbered four to one. The end would be quick. Numerous scenarios ran through his head. Victory would be assured, but survival would not be.

He could not turn on Kalkator. Not until the Beast was dead and the orks driven back. Until that came to pass, he needed the Iron Warriors. It was as simple as that; this was the lesser evil.

Teeth clenched, he turned on his heel and ascended the ramp of the Thunderhawk.

Much as it made him seethe, Kalkator was right. The Fists Exemplar required supplies and recruits. Zerberyn had agreed to set them on this course of action. He had evaluated it, tested it, and decided it was the correct solution. There were orks everywhere. Since that last desperate message from Euclydeas of the Soul Drinkers, he had heard nothing more from the Last Wall. He had to work with what he had. For the time being, that meant Kalkator.

A Fist Exemplar was never wrong.

Chapter Four

The crusade of iron

The Phalanx defied description. Ship was not a big enough word for the home of the Imperial Fists. Fortress made no allowance for its grace and ability to travel between the stars. It could be defined in several ways: as fortress-monastery, temple, relic, the single biggest warp-capable object in all the Imperium, a symbol of Imperial might, battle-fortress. But none adequately captured the reality in words. Human speech was too limited.

Phalanx’s mass blotted out the stars. On the sunward side its spires and towers were lit in brilliant sunlight. The muzzles of thousands of guns protruded from weapons ports. The broad rectangles of hangars and flight bays patterned its decks between enormous effigies of heroic Imperial Fists. On the dark side its shadows were absolute, its bulwarks rimed with void frost. None knew its origins. Legends had it that Dorn himself had built the fortress as the ultimate expression of his skill, or that he had found, adrift in space, a relic of the Dark Age of Technology. Whether built by the primarch or ancient engineers it had been Dorn’s, and the marks of his artifice were all over it. The station had taken damage during the final attack on Ullanor, but it was so huge that the signs of its wounding were not apparent to the naked eye. Phalanx remained one of the most impressive sights in all the dominions of man, a defiant statement against the cold horrors of void and warp.

The High Lords communicated little as they and their retinues flew towards Phalanx aboard the Potus Terrae. They kept to their quarters, each brooding on their own summons. The time for scheming was past. They must play the waiting game. Until the last half-day Phalanx grew slowly, then suddenly it expanded in size until it became a wall across the sky. Vangorich received overtures from several of the other Lords, but ignored them until, only a few hours out from the Imperial Fists fortress-monastery, he sent word to the Inquisitorial Representatives to join him for refreshments in the observation deck.

Veritus and Wienand were already present when Vangorich arrived. They looked outwards at the giant foredecks of Phalanx obliterating half the sky. Cyber-constructs buzzed around, augur attachments blinking, sniffing the air. Articulated instruments capable of detecting toxins at one part per hundred million in the ship’s gas mix flickered in and out of their housings like tongues. There were storm troopers in Inquisitorial black at every door and every thirty paces along the lengthy plasteel and stone gallery. Vangorich didn’t have a single agent among them. Veritus wore his power armour as usual. Wienand looked striking in a tight doublet and breeches, her iron grey, cropped hair coloured silver in the stark sunlight.

‘The idea was to enjoy a quiet moment together before the bickering begins again,’ said Vangorich. ‘I see you preferred a party.’

Veritus swung about, his armour whining. A puff of life-extending gas hissed from around his neck seal.

‘Caution is our watchword,’ he said.

‘What about mistrust?’ said Vangorich.

‘Don’t bait Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘These are only precautions.’

Vangorich took a tray of three goblets from a menial whose eyes, mouth and ears were banded over by constricting iron. Beneath the implants, the organs of sight, speech and hearing were excised, replaced with crude augments that gave such unreliable perceptions of the world that the servant could never have described what he had seen and heard, even had he been capable. There were a number of such mutilated menials attending the party. No servitors, for their programming was too easy to compromise. If he thought about it, and he sometimes did, Vangorich found their deliberate disablement distasteful. But it was necessary.

He stopped before another servant who filled the goblets with dark wine. He carried them over to the inquisitors, set the tray on an ornate table and held up one goblet to Veritus.

The inquisitor curled his lip. ‘Do I look like a fool?’

‘You don’t, Lastan, and I would not take you for one, therefore this wine is safe. I am sure your constructs here would detect any attempt on my part to poison you.’

‘I will not drink with you, Drakan,’ said Veritus. ‘There are poisons no device can find.’

‘Fair enough. Wienand? You still trust me, don’t you?’

‘Did I ever trust you, Vangorich?’ she said distantly.

‘Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have so much company. You are hurting my feelings. This is very fine wine. Venusian. Very rare.’

‘I will drink, but I’ll take that one there,’ said Wienand, picking up one of the goblets still on the table and bidding the serf pour again.

‘Thank you. I feel a little less offended.’ He raised the goblet he had offered to Veritus and knocked it against Wienand’s. Veritus snorted.

‘Why have you called us?’ said Veritus. ‘Are you attempting to shore up your power before we go in to see the Lord Guilliman? I’d expect that sort of behaviour from Ekharth or Lansung, not you.’

‘Did they send you messages too? They sent me messages. I didn’t answer them,’ said Vangorich.

‘They did. We didn’t,’ said Wienand.

‘Now, I thought you might say that. So, you answered my message. That suggests to me that we have some common ground,’ said Vangorich.

‘Maybe,’ conceded Veritus. ‘But you are becoming ever more slippery, Grand Master. Your schemes to put Thane in Lord Guilliman’s throne were overt and sloppy. We only went along with it—’

‘Because you agreed?’ interrupted Vangorich. ‘More common ground then.’

Veritus groaned slightly and sank into his armour.

‘What is it you want?’ said Wienand.

‘It’s impressive, isn’t it?’ said Vangorich. ‘Phalanx, I mean.’

‘You are changing the subject,’ said Wienand.

‘I am, but as is my usual way I will get to the point.’

‘Which is?’ said Veritus.

‘Humour me,’ said Vangorich. ‘That’s not my point, obviously. Just look at Phalanx. Huge, magnificent, terrifying, but like so many other Imperial works, its initial impression hides a sorry truth. No such thing can be built now in the Imperium. Phalanx is vast, and yet it is not so large as the smallest of the ork attack moons. Like so many of the supposedly overpowering weapons our Imperium possesses, for much of the war it was absent, kept in deep space between Venus and Earth. Do you know, it was denied participation in the battle over Terra because its mass would have proved its own worst enemy when confronted with the gravity lashes of the orks? Thane risked it in the Third Battle for Ullanor where Koorland would not, and look at the damage it has sustained. One only has to look at what became of the Throneworld’s orbital defences to see how useless large ships or stations were against the orks. And there is a further thing.’

He stepped closer to Wienand and pointed with his wine. ‘Those docking piers, there are hundreds of them. They hold space for the battlefleets of scores of Chapters. But the dozen belonging to the Imperial Fists look lost amid those soaring towers. The halls within will be similarly empty. At their height, the Legiones Astartes each had tens of thousands of Space Marines. The half a thousand that comprise today’s Imperial Fists would be swallowed up by that fortress a hundred times over. There was a term used in ancient times: a paper tiger. Now, a tiger was—’

‘I know what a tiger was, Vangorich!’ said Veritus.

‘Well then. So you see, this giant weapon was no danger to the orks. How do you suppose our enemies see us now? We look at Phalanx, at our armies and our Space Marine Chapters, and we see the glorious past. But we do not live in the past. We live now. Our enemies — the xenos, the followers of the dark, old gods — they look at us and they see weakness.’ He stamped his foot upon the deck. ‘Down there is the cause of that weakness. We cannot let this happen again.’

‘You are drifting close to treason,’ said Veritus. ‘We will not be complicit in the extermination of the High Lords of Terra. Attempt such an act, and the Inquisition will be forced to move against you.’

‘You see? Straight away you threaten me. I am proposing no such thing as assassination. I am performing my role, Lord Inquisitor, as a balance. All I ask is that we three work together to make sure that whatever it is Thane asks of us, the Senatorum does it correctly. We cannot afford to squabble. Look at us! We cannot build another Phalanx. We no longer understand our own science. We no longer even understand what our own Emperor wanted from us. The Imperial Truth? The Imperial Creed? Which is right?’

Veritus’ lips thinned at that.

‘Were our ancestors to come from out of the past of the Dark Ages, if they penetrated the veils of Old Night and stepped into the present, they would laugh at us. Our enemies laugh at us. Soon they will stop, and the feasting will begin. Work with me. Keep the Imperium alive.’

Veritus and Wienand looked at one another. Wienand raised her eyebrows at Veritus.

‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Our alliance continues. But we are but two votes between the three.’

‘It’s all we need,’ said Vangorich.

A tocsin started up a frantic bleeping.

‘Warning, atmospheric pressure dropping. Vacate the observation gallery. Vacate the observation gallery,’ said a droning voice.

‘There we are, as if in evidence. Even this ship is old and worn out,’ said Vangorich.

A service door clanked upwards, releasing a spider-legged servitor from its cradle with a gush of gas. Its organics jiggled horribly to the march of its mechanical legs as it clambered up the gallery wall towards the source of the leak.

‘Stabilising atmosphere,’ said the droning voice.

Veritus stared at Vangorich suspiciously. ‘Probe 93/4A, scan for introduced toxins.’

A servo-skull swept over them, speeding from one end of the long gallery to another.

‘None detected,’ it said with its synthesised voice.

‘See?’ said Vangorich.

‘Very well,’ said Veritus. ‘Our alliance holds, for now.’

The inquisitors departed, their warriors marching out behind them. It amused Vangorich that four of them retreated backwards, covering the Grand Master all the way until they were out of the door. He saluted them with his goblet.

Vangorich remained with the deaf, dumb and blind servants, drinking up the wine, until Phalanx swallowed the Potus Terrae in its cavernous foredeck. Potus Terrae was not a small ship, but the size of a light cruiser. The space it flew into had berths for a dozen more of similar size. They were all empty.

Vangorich stood deep in thought for a few minutes, then took an anti-intoxicant and hurried away to prepare himself.

Priests, savants, servants and household troops accompanied the High Lords in great number. They met together in the grand atrium of the ship by the main docking portal. The ornate panels were already flung wide and a gloriously decorated docking corridor was locked on to the side of the ship. A delay was incurred by squabbling over precedence, in which order the Lords should depart the ship and head the procession to meet with the Lord Guilliman. An hour of close argument concluded with a smug Ekharth being given the lead position. Flanked by lines of Lucifer Blacks, his entourage strode down the docking tunnel and out into the main concourse.

Vangorich, predictably, had been given the last position in the parade, which suited him fine, even if it did only intensify his opinion that the High Lords were beneath his contempt. He had no attendants so he emerged alone from the tunnel to find the rest of the High Lords blinking idiotically on the docking concourse.

Potus Terrae was lavishly appointed. During his career Vangorich had had occasion to visit some of the richest halls on Terra and many other worlds. In short, he was no stranger to luxury — but the interior of Phalanx gave him pause.

The domed ceiling was over a hundred metres high, split into panels painted in exacting detail with murals of the victories of the Imperial Fists Chapter and its father Legion. The dividers were decorated with gold and precious stones from across the galaxy, and the dome was crowned with a dazzling light carved from a single enormous diamond thirty metres across. Its hard, geometric facets split the sunlight into dozens of intersecting rainbows, creating a prismatic display that delighted and confused the eye in equal measure. Four docking tunnels exited into the hall besides the one the High Lords had used. Between them were broad reliefs carved in alien marbles, depicting heroes of Dorn’s line in action. The floor was an exercise in magnificence, a huge mosaic of interlocking swirls at whose centre was inlaid a giant VII.

An honour guard of Imperial Fists veterans awaited the High Lords around the VII in an open circle. Their armour was flawless and lapped to a high shine, their weapons gleaming; purity seals and honours crisp, red stripes on their helmets and red aquilas on their chests. In the Plaza Decamerata Vangorich had been impressed by Thane’s display. Now more than ever he realised that the Imperial Fists were more than the brothers in the armour. They were the armour, the colours, the weaponry and the relics. The men inside were irrelevant; that they were all of Dorn’s line was all that mattered. The Imperial Fists lived again. As long as Phalanx remained, or there was a single brother gifted with Rogal Dorn’s genetic legacy, they could never die. They were not a wall to break the enemies of humanity, but the idea of a wall: a wall that would never fall, could never be torn down, and that would forever be manned.

Ideas cannot die.

The veterans’ captain stepped forward and undid his helm, revealing a battered face criss-crossed with scars. A tattoo of a gothic cross covered his forehead. A Black Templar once, now an Imperial Fist.

‘My lords, I am First Captain Berengard. The Lord Guilliman, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, Maximus Thane bids you welcome to Phalanx!’

‘We are ready to see him,’ declared Lansung pompously. ‘Where is he?’

‘He awaits you, my lords. This way.’

In perfect synchronicity, the Imperial Fists turned about face. The two ends of the circle wound past each other and the Space Marines formed a square, their captain at its head, and began to march. The Lucifer Blacks, Naval armsmen of the Royal Barque, skitarii of Mars and other troops of the High Lords fell in behind the Adeptus Astartes with admirable smoothness. Less smooth was the rearrangement of the remainder of the High Lords’ retinues. Ekharth’s staff made an undignified scramble for lead position, tangling themselves with Juskina Tull’s staff who, being voidsmen and women, had wandered a little way to admire this most massive of vessels. The Ecclesiarchy entourage to the High Lords lacked direction now the Ecclesiarch was not on the Council, and got under everyone’s feet. By the time it was all arranged, the warriors of the Imperium were halfway out of the hall, exiting through a monumental arch crowded with stern-faced Space Marines and the fallen enemies of mankind.

They ascended a staircase wider than an expressway, lit only by baroque lumen globes held upon golden pillars. In the darkness above, finely finished stone echoed to the calls of airborne creatures roosting amid half-glimpsed statues. Despite the life forms, the steps and stairwell were unsoiled.

Vangorich laced his fingers behind his back and sauntered up to join the Inquisitorial delegation. There were only half a dozen men and women serving the two inquisitors, all Wienand’s. His Inquisitorial convocation aside, put together with the express purpose of eliminating Wienand and disbanded soon after, Veritus was never accompanied. Vangorich nodded at Raznick and Rendenstein, Wienand’s bodyguards. The acknowledgement made the younger inquisitor redden. Raznick had fared poorly against Vangorich’s team on Mars.

‘Is all this fortress so ornate?’ Vangorich asked conversationally. ‘It’s more of a palace than a castle.’

‘The primarch was a being of great artistry in many areas. What did you expect?’ said Veritus.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Vangorich. ‘Something draughtier.’

The stairs led into a hall kilometres long. Arrayed along its cloistered sides were the arms, armour and the mortal remains of extinct xenos species and subjugated human cultures. Worn plaques of brass over each cabinet detailed the time of their earning. Those nearest the stairs bore dates from before the Ascension of the Emperor and were marked with compliance designations from the Great Crusade.

The Imperial Fists marched them more than a kilometre along this hall, past a seemingly endless succession of mementos. Models, fragments of metal, captured vehicles, stuffed alien beasts went by until even Vangorich struggled to assimilate it. The Space Marines took an abrupt left-hand turn through another archway. The trophy corridor continued on past this exit so far that its end was lost to perspective.

A short corridor led them to a second staircase, smaller but just as grand in decoration, that switched back and forth upon itself. The High Lords went on doggedly. More than a few of them were old beyond the natural span of men, kept alive by anti-gerontic drugs and augmentations. Lansung was a fighting man, but out of shape. Vangorich found it no trouble, nor did Wienand. Kubik’s robes brushed the ground; he seemed to hover along above the floor, which, thought Vangorich, he could well be doing. Tull strode forwards yet still seemed hesitant, as if she might trip at any moment. Sark, Anwar and Ekharth struggled. Zeck projected tension that suggested he wanted to break into a run. Verreault kept marching, his face grim as he attempted to control his limp.

For the ancient Veritus it was a trial. Though his armoured legs rose and fell without slowing, his face paled and sweat collected on his lip.

For an hour and a half they walked up stairs and down corridors until they were hopelessly disoriented. At no time did they see any sign of human life aboard the Phalanx except those Space Marines that led them. Somewhere, there would be servitors, menials, Chapter serfs by the thousand. Thane had kept them out of sight. He presented the Phalanx as a ghost ship, a mausoleum where the past decayed, atom by atom, under its layers of polish.

They went into a corridor whose roof was glazed with armourglass. In this part they saw damage, sections where the glass had been broken and the battle shutters left closed. In one place the marble facing had gone, and the less noble stone revealed behind was cracked and half melted. The floor there was riven by a chasm bridged over with plasteel plating.

They stopped before a gate that, though immense in scale, was modest compared to some they had passed through.

‘Lord Guilliman Thane is within,’ said First Captain Berengard. Two veterans took the handles and pushed wide the doors. ‘Your retinues will wait. We have a hall prepared with refreshments for them.’

‘My men will accompany me!’ insisted Ekharth, his protestation ridiculous in the face of the scarred, much-decorated captain.

‘They will wait, and be refreshed,’ insisted Berengard.

‘Let them be, Ekharth,’ called Vangorich. ‘As if these soldiers with us could stop the Space Marines should they decide to kill us, which I am sure Lord Thane does not intend. Allow your men their leisure — they have marched admirably and deserve a rest from our tedious debates.’ The other High Lords split in reaction into those who laughed at Ekharth, and those who were outraged at Vangorich’s disregard for decorum.

‘If the business of government bores you, Grand Master, perhaps you should not have done so much to involve yourself in it!’ blustered Ekharth.

‘It is not boring to me, I find everything you say in particular to be most fascinating. I think only of those of us who are forced to listen and not take part.’

‘You are on Phalanx, my lords,’ said Berengard. ‘There is nowhere safer. The Lord Guilliman wishes to conduct this most sensitive of business in total privacy.’

‘You will be allowed to listen, I am sure. Private but for the ears of the Adeptus Astartes!’ said Gibran.

‘Not at all, my lord. Only the Lord Guilliman will remain, I assure you, High Lords. Now,’ said Berengard, holding up his hand to direct them. ‘Please proceed within. The Chapter Master is waiting.’

For the first time, Vangorich saw the mortal servants of the Imperial Fists upon Phalanx. Dozens of them issued from hidden servants’ doors, garbed in yellow, shaven-headed and bearing a tattooed fist on their left cheeks. Fifteen of them were armed and armoured in dark yellow carapace. Warrior serfs.

‘Please, this way,’ said the serfs’ spokesman. A large door was opened down the hall. Tantalising smells wafted out. The High Lords stood firm, however, looking at each other uneasily.

‘For the love of Terra, are we going to stand here all day?’ growled Zeck.

‘I shall dismiss my men. I have nothing to fear from the keepers of Terra’s walls,’ said Verreault eventually.

‘I too,’ said Lansung. The Lord Commander Militant and the Lord High Admiral purposefully did not look at Vangorich.

‘Very well then!’ said Ekharth shrilly. ‘I shall dismiss my servants.’

There was some tension from those others attending upon the High Lords, and they left their lords unwillingly. Wienand dismissed her entourage with a curt nod. Raznick left with several backward glances, Rendenstein with not a one. The soldiers and Naval armsmen saluted and crisply manoeuvred. If only the High Lords would behave so well, thought Vangorich. There was more muffled debate and pointed looks.

‘We are hardly covering ourselves with glory here,’ Wienand whispered to him.

‘All hail the mighty High Lords of Terra,’ Vangorich murmured back.

Finally, the High Lords arranged themselves into a group that suited everyone and walked through the door. Vangorich went at the back, a wolf shepherding sheep. He gave Berengard a broad smile as he passed. The First Captain frowned back. He knew a threat when he saw one.

The doors swung closed. The Senatorum Imperialis was in session.

Thane awaited them in a circular chamber walled for much of its circumference with sweeping, plain glass. There was a single mullion in the centre, a statue of a Space Marine, his hands clasped around his sword. The art required to make such broad expanses of glassteel sufficiently strong to withstand the void, let alone battle, was great indeed. In the elegant simplicity of it, Vangorich saw the hand of Rogal Dorn himself. The chamber was at the edge of a cliff and the carved expanses of stone and metals receded into the distance on either side. Spires and weapons batteries cluttered the view forward.

In contrast to many of the chambers they had seen in Phalanx, this was neither large nor ornate. A fine-grained black stone made up the floors, ceiling and those parts of the walls not fashioned from glass. A large, circular table made of the same stone filled half the internal space. Lumens set into the wall and the centre of the ceiling struck angular reflections from the stone’s finish. Twelve chairs sized for unaltered human beings were set at the table, these made of black wood. A single chair made for a Space Marine brought the number up to thirteen. Thane occupied it. He was fully armoured, his helmet and boltgun resting on the table in front of him. There was no rawer statement of power.

‘Lords. Welcome to Phalanx. Please, sit.’ He held out his hand to indicate the chairs.

The High Lords took their seats, approximating their positions back on Terra. Verreault and Lansung sat together, Verreault hesitating before taking a place by the Lord Guilliman. Zeck was an uneasy satellite to their alliance, drawn in by their adepta’s collective employment of force more than personal common cause. Ekharth sought reinforcement to his words through proximity to Zeck. Tull sat next to Gibran for their mutual interest in the void. Vangorich, who sat where he pleased outside the Great Chamber, upset Sark and Anwar by seating himself between them and Zeck. Wienand took a seat by Anwar. Veritus sat between her and Thane, even his power-armoured body made small by the presence of the transhuman.

‘I trust you will forgive me for the extra chair, but I thought it impolite to make Veritus stand again,’ said Thane.

No one answered.

‘We are meeting here so that you are under no illusion that what I dictate shall be made law.’

‘My lord…’ began Anwar.

‘You will wait, Lord Astropath. I thought Koorland rash to enter the high politics of Terra. I have been convinced otherwise. Let me make myself clear, it is your self-interest that made this disaster possible.’

‘How dare you, Chapter Master. What do you know of government? You are a warrior,’ said Verreault.

‘Now I am a High Lord. Explain to me, as a man new to politics, exactly where were the armies of the Imperium when the orks devastated worlds, Verreault?’

‘Heth’s responsibility!’ said Verreault.

‘And yours, once he was killed. His failures were compounded by yours. At least Heth died honourably. More than can be said for you, Lansung. You showed courage. You fought, but of all of the Lords here, you bear the most culpability. Your fleets should have brought word of the gathering of the orks. They should have acted in concert. Instead, you spent your years politicking to replace Udin Macht Udo. The debacle at Port Sanctus is but the least of your errors. You, my lord, were chasing glory at the expense of our species.’

‘How dare you impugn my honour?’ exclaimed Lansung.

‘And how dare you suggest you have any!’ shouted Thane. The High Lords fell quiet. ‘The only sense you showed was to hold back your flagship from the disastrous Proletarian Crusade. You are a fine naval tactician, Lansung, and a good strategist. Both abilities deserted you when you put yourself first. You are many things, but a good politician is not one of them.’

As much as Vangorich had enjoyed watching Lansung squirm in the past, he took little pleasure in it then. Lansung had lost weight. His complexion had once been ruddy, now he was grey, his bellicosity bled out of him along with his fat. He was a beaten man. Surely Thane could see that he had lost his confidence and that he should be replaced. Such a man was not suitable to lead the navies of the Imperium. Lansung would become hesitant when he should be bold, and rash when he should be cautious. Every successful large-scale engagement would only be another step towards catastrophe.

Thane turned his attention upon Tull next. ‘And that crusade… A fine sentiment, the desire to fight no matter the odds. But the odds would have been so much better, had any of you had the sense to consolidate the Imperium’s core worlds and withdraw a reasonable force to Terra to defend it. A billion armed men could have been within the Sol System in days. That was not the action taken. Instead, what? Scribes. Functionaries. Menials. An army of innocents sent to the slaughter. The level of ineptitude on display here defies all logic.’

‘The moon was over the Palace, it could have struck at any moment. We had no choice,’ said Tull. She spoke quietly; her heart wasn’t in her objection.

‘You would have, had Lansung here not squandered half the Imperium’s warfleets in pointless tit-for-tat actions. Koorland was right to blockade the moon. He acted well, you acted without thought. Our entire species could have been enslaved. “As you excel in war, so shall you excel in peace,” Roboute Guilliman, the first to hold this office, said of we Adeptus Astartes. For most of my life I have thought him wrong. There is no peace. There is only war. I thought there was no need for Space Marines to involve themselves in the ruling of the Imperium. I was wrong. With power left in the hands of men and women such as you, disaster will befall us all.’

The High Lords looked aghast.

Lansung swallowed hard. ‘What are you proposing?’ he said. ‘A coup?’

‘You are Horus returned!’ said Zeck.

‘He does not intend to eliminate us,’ said Sark. ‘I would sense it.’

Anwar smiled, a ghoulish expression on his emaciated, eyeless face.

‘Elimination? I propose nothing of the sort,’ Thane said in disgust. ‘This system of governance was devised by the Emperor Himself. I am not so arrogant as to propose it be undone. Where it has failed, it has failed because it has not been adhered to properly. The Senatorum Imperialis has met in secret for too long. This is my first decree, that the Great Chamber shall be brought back into use permanently. No more meetings in closure. There are not sufficient checks upon the ambitions of individuals among the High Twelve without involvement of the other High Lords and the lesser lords. Too much effort is expended by the masters of lower ordos, adepta and officios in seeking the patronage of the High Twelve. While the High Twelve themselves are without the scrutiny of the wider government, they are free to neglect their duty to the Imperium in favour of duty to their adepta, or worse, their own personal glory.’

‘Closed sessions were only introduced, my lord, to speed the decision-making process in the wake of the First Black Crusade,’ said Ekharth tremulously.

‘Six hundred years ago and more. Extraordinary measures have a habit of becoming ordinary,’ said Thane. ‘This decree will ensure a more proper adherence to the intentions of the Emperor.’

‘You said decrees, Lord Guilliman,’ said Kubik. ‘Enumerate them for our edification.’ He chose a placating, human voice for this, surprising Vangorich. Kubik had only ever used his harsh, machine voice in the Grand Master’s hearing. ‘If you could lay out the contents of this meeting for us, then we shall be better equipped to proceed and enact your wishes, highest of Lords.’

Thane gave the Fabricator General a considered look. Kubik’s own games had played their part in the Imperium’s near downfall. ‘I have but three in total. Once they are done, they are binding. After that, we shall move on to the business of rebuilding. New fleets need to be commissioned, new armies raised. Terra’s fortifications must be rebuilt. Thousands of worlds are ruined. All must be restored. This will be your life’s work from now on. Service to the Emperor and the Imperium shall be restitution for your crimes of vanity. Is that clear?’

The High Lords looked at him wordlessly.

‘These then, are my other decrees. My second is that there shall be a Fourth Founding of Space Marine Chapters. We are too few to effectively defend the Imperium. A thousand years after the Heresy, our numbers are a fraction of what they once were. To allay your concerns, I swear that I do not intend to reform the Legions. The Last Wall will be disbanded. So much power cannot be one man’s to command, I think we can all agree with that. Instead, we shall raise as many new Chapters as we have gene-seed in the great vaults of Terra to sustain. This must be done swiftly. I shall issue a proclamation as Lord Guilliman and as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists that all Chapters shall release a portion of their veterans to provide the initial basis for this founding, the greatest since the First. Gene-seed tithing will be doubled for the next century to replenish the vaults. When it is done, there will be hundreds of Chapters to ring the Imperium in adamantium and ceramite instead of dozens.’

‘Can such a thing be accomplished?’ asked Ekharth.

‘If the genetic material exists, then yes. As a pledge of our continued fealty to Terra, the Adeptus Mechanicus shall undertake to outfit all new Chapters with full armoriums and warfleets, I so submit,’ said Kubik silkily.

‘Your offer is appreciated,’ said Thane. ‘I am pleased I did not have to demand.’

‘The defence of Terra is the defence of Mars, Lord Guilliman,’ said Kubik.

‘Are we all agreed?’ asked Verreault.

‘We must not rush into this,’ said Veritus. ‘We must, we must…’ He drew in a huge breath, his entire body shuddering with the effort.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Wienand.

Veritus held up a hand and shook his head.

‘Leave me be!’

‘Do we have any choice, Lord Inquisitor?’ asked Gibran. ‘If we do not agree, what of it? The Lord Guilliman decrees!’

‘Why would we not agree?’ said Zeck. ‘This is the plainest sense. More Space Marines mean greater security.’

‘But who shall they answer to,’ gasped out Veritus.

‘Are there any more objections?’ asked Ekharth. There were not. ‘Then it is done. Lord Thane?’

‘My third, and final decree,’ said Thane. ‘I will be a crusading lord. The Imperial Fists shall no longer stand upon a wall and look out on our enemies and defy them to come to us. We shall be a mobile fortress, moving ever forward to crush those who would spurn the will of the Emperor, whether they be known or unknown. Dangers cannot be waited upon, but must be rooted out and destroyed ere they pose a risk. Never again shall an enemy of the Imperium enter the orbit of Holy Terra. This we swear! For what use is a wall if all the lands about it are laid waste and occupied by the hateful foe? No longer will we stand in one place. No longer will we take wall-names, but we shall become a wall for the whole Imperium. Phalanx will leave before the end of the week, and I will be taking the Imperial Fists with me.’

Immediate uproar greeted this statement.

‘You are the defenders of Terra! It is your Chapter world!’ exclaimed Anwar, his head swinging to and fro as if he would capture Thane in his empty eye sockets.

‘You defy convention, and the wishes of the Emperor,’ said Ekharth. ‘Imperial Fists have stood upon the walls of the Palace since the Heresy!’

‘And we shall no longer,’ said Thane. He placed his hand, palm flat, on the table. The gentlest click of ceramite upon stone silenced the High Lords more effectively than a bolt-shot. ‘Listen to me, my lords.’

‘The traditions and obligations of your Chapter aside, you are the Lord Guilliman,’ said Verreault harshly. ‘You cannot simply abandon your responsibilities.’

‘As you Lords abandoned yours?’ said Thane. ‘I am mindful of the need for direction within the Senatorum. A weak Lord Guilliman is a bigger danger than the most self-interested of High Lords, and an absent lord is the weakest lord of all. But I shall bring my strength and authority to the beleaguered worlds of the Imperium, to free them from alien tyranny, and speed their reconstruction. Therefore, I require a representative among you, whom I shall raise over the others and invest with my authority to act upon my behalf. Should Terra be threatened, we shall return. But I expect my labours to be long. I may never see the Throneworld again.’

Vangorich looked forward to sinking back into the shadows again.

‘Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, shall be my voice and my hand. I hereby invest him with all my authority. He is to be heeded and treated with as if he were myself.’

Ah, thought Vangorich.

‘Any of you who have misgivings, do not fear.’ Thane gave Vangorich a steely look. It was nothing to the poisonous glare Wienand gave him. ‘The threat of my return will be enough to ensure his good behaviour.’

Five days of intense debate followed. The High Lords were given chambers near to the small conference room. Their entourages were thinned to the bare minimum and their lives were run to the harsh schedule of the Adeptus Astartes. Isolated, kept from their servants and wholly at the mercy of Maximus Thane, the negotiations were concluded quickly. When the High Lords emerged dazed and exhausted from their discussions, many matters had been decided. The details of Terra’s rebuilding, the raising of new regiments, an Imperium-wide survey of what remained after the attacks of the orks, a pledge from the Inquisition to reorder itself, and not least the beginning of the Fourth Founding, all were examined in depth. What would once have taken months, if it were finished at all, was concluded before the week was out.

A day’s feasting followed. The Imperial Fists were as exacting in their leisure as they were in their business. The bottomless stores of Phalanx were opened, fine victuals from the length and breadth of the Imperium were served, while the newly reconstituted Imperial Fists deepened their bonds of brotherhood and entertained the lords of Terra with dazzling displays of gladiatorial skill.

All was done. Phalanx readied to depart. The lords of the other Chapters that made up the Last Wall came and went. Whole fleets hung in the void by the giant star fort while their masters conferred with Thane. The flotillas of the Space Marines were greatly diminished. Some Chapters were down to a handful of ships, but they were proud, and they were ready.

Over the course of the next few days, the Lord Guilliman broke from his arranging of the Chapters’ deployment to speak with each of the High Lords alone. Kubik was first, and when his conference was done he left alone aboard a swift Mechanicus pentere.

Zeck insisted he be next because he was needed on Terra. Thane indulged him, and he departed after their meeting also, as did Wienand and Veritus. Lansung had the ships of the reforming Segmentum Solar fleet parade past Phalanx before joining them on his flagship, Autocephalax Eternal. Only a few of the High Lords remained behind after their conferences. Ekharth and Gibran sought constantly to win Vangorich over with honeyed words. The others avoided him.

Finally, Vangorich was summoned. Thane had left him to last, with a sufficient space between the previous meeting and his own to upset a lesser man’s ease. Vangorich was not bothered in the least.

It happened so. Vangorich was exploring an enormous library of rare texts when three Imperial Fists marched him up a hundred stairs without saying a word besides ‘Thane will see you now.’

‘Now I know how a condemned man feels,’ Vangorich said, glancing back longingly at the books.

The Space Marines ignored him.

The Chapter Master was in a private strategium atop one of the central towers of Phalanx. Its sweeping views put Vangorich in mind of the Cerebrium on Terra. Out beyond the countless gun barrels and docking piers, ships moved in number. It was almost enough to persuade Vangorich that the Imperium retained some strength.

Vangorich announced himself with a cough. Thane would have heard him already, but the Chapter Master was making a point of studying the pile of papers on his desk and the multiple hololithic star systems hanging at eye level in the room. ‘You wanted to see me, Lord Guilliman?’ Vangorich asked.

Thane looked up, and Vangorich reconsidered his opinion. The Lord Guilliman looked genuinely distracted. ‘You are here. Good. I will not keep you long, Lord Protector, and I apologise for your long wait. Ground must be prepared before tactics are discussed.’

‘I am your tactic?’ Vangorich said mildly.

‘You are aware of that. You’re not the only game player on Terra, Grand Master. It is time to show your mettle.’

‘I do love a challenge,’ said Vangorich. He looked about for a chair, but all of them were sized for Space Marines.

‘Kubik. You must watch him closely,’ Thane said bluntly.

‘I had intended to,’ said Vangorich. ‘His empire within an empire has shown alarming separatist tendencies. But he is the most powerful of all the High Lords, and his most annoying characteristic is that we need him more than he needs us.’

Thane grunted in affirmation.

‘That’s why you did not publicly dress him down as you did the others,’ said Vangorich. ‘You are getting good at this.’

‘Diplomacy is an art I am having to learn fast. The Adeptus Mechanicus are not completely a part of the Imperium, although we treat them as if they are. And though Kubik honoured the ancient alliance between Mars and Terra towards the end, that was not inevitable.’

‘He only did it when he had been found out. If he had not been found out, though?’

‘You see my concerns.’

‘Oh, Lord Thane, I share them!’ exclaimed Vangorich. ‘Still, the priests of Mars have gained a lot of knowledge from the xenos. It might be that they are satisfied with what they have learned.’

‘Or they changed their minds when they realised that they could not survive on their own,’ Thane said. ‘For the time being, our two realms remain interdependent, but I do not trust the Fabricator General. This new knowledge must not be kept from the Imperium, they hoard too much to themselves already. He has agreed to deploy the xenos tech in the destruction of Ullanor.’

‘You’ve asked him to destroy it?’

‘It lies too far from our current borders to be watched effectively,’ said Thane. ‘I will not have it forgotten again. If the orks returned once, they could do so in the future. Ullanor shall be wiped from the galaxy.’

‘I am amazed you convinced Kubik to do that,’ said Vangorich. ‘I am impressed, as a matter of fact. There is a lot of xenotech upon the planet he would dearly love to possess.’

‘The priests of Mars cannot be allowed to have more of the orks’ devices. It is not only because their power must be held in check. They risk corruption. There is a psychic mark on the machines of the ork. On Ullanor, the Beast reached out into the minds of our warriors and destroyed their reason. My Librarians fear a vestige of the Beast’s rage may taint their artefacts forever. Allowing such into the hands of the Adepts of Mars is unacceptable. Kubik might see the sense in ridding the galaxy of Ullanor, but whether he does or doesn’t, destroying it will be a test of his loyalty,’ Thane went on. ‘He will be forced to use his new devices in plain sight.’

‘I doubt Kubik does anything he does not wish to. Or that does not benefit him.’

Thane looked down at Vangorich. ‘Make sure he complies. If there is any deviation from the plan to destroy the world, contact me immediately and I shall return to deal with him.’

‘So war with Mars is still a possibility,’ said Vangorich. ‘I don’t suppose I need to tell you we cannot afford it.’

‘I shall trust in the Emperor that it does not come to that. Kubik will comply. I have made it clear to him that his loyalty to the Emperor is under question. If he were willing to risk a direct confrontation between Mars and Terra, it would have occurred by now. They have weighed the options, seen the consequences, and found the status quo to be the better choice. But still, stay aware of whatever schemes he might concoct.’

‘As you wish, my Lord Guilliman. I shall gladly do as you command,’ said Vangorich.

‘Tomorrow, you shall wield a power neither of us wanted in my name.’

‘You have had similar, my lord, in the Last Wall. The power you wield as Lord Guilliman is no different to that.’

‘I disagree. It is entirely different,’ said Thane. ‘I do my best to rid myself of both. I have dispatched the sons of Dorn to scour the galaxy. Many return to their home worlds to begin their efforts there. Besides the new Chapters, all existing Adeptus Astartes forces have suffered casualties and must replenish and re-arm. We are no different. Three thousand potential neophytes are en route to Phalanx from Terra. This mass method of selection is unusual, but it will serve. Phalanx is amply equipped with testing grounds, so they will undergo trials as soon as we commence our journey. There is much to be done. The Chapter Masters will rally what troops they can near their home systems and begin reconquest and rebuilding.’

‘I imagine Verreault choked on his moustache when you told him that.’

‘Damn him and his predecessor,’ said Thane darkly. ‘The disorganisation that led to this debacle is over. Verreault can watch and approve, or he can be replaced.’

‘I have been informed of the intentions of the Crimson Fists, Excoriators, the remaining Iron Knights and the rest, but where will you go, my lord?’

Thane smiled admonishingly at Vangorich. ‘You are not stupid, Vangorich. I suspect you have already guessed. Although I am no longer a Fist Exemplar, I owe an honour debt to see that the Chapter does not die. We go to Eidolica one final time. It is as good a place to start my crusade as any.’

‘Are you sure it is the best course of action, my lord? There are systems of higher strategic value nearer and in greater need.’

‘The sons of Dorn do not abandon each other and they do not neglect their legacy. I have an obligation. I do not expect you to understand.’

Vangorich laced his hands together in the deep sleeves of his robes. He was treading dangerous ground. ‘So might I ask, my lord, have you had any word from your brothers of the Fists Exemplar?’

That made Thane uncomfortable. His fists clenched. ‘None. They were last seen at the Vandis System. I guess your opinion, Lord Protector. You suggest they are dead, but I saw them make the Mandeville point myself, and so I cannot accept that First Captain Zerberyn’s force is destroyed until it is presented to me as a solid fact. They are unaware of it, but they are the Fists Exemplar now. It would be a tragic irony if my resurrection of the Imperial Fists doomed my original order to extinction. That is a possibility that I have to consider. If so, a new brotherhood shall take Eidolica as its home. If one Chapter can be resurrected, so might others.’

‘I understand. If more of us showed such solidarity then maybe this would not have happened.’ Vangorich stood a little taller, presenting an aspect of himself he usually hid by careful posture and body language. Maximus Thane knew Vangorich was dangerous, but for a moment he saw clearly who he was dealing with: an intelligent, careful man, the worst kind of killer. ‘I will oversee the rebuilding of Terra. I shall ensure your wishes are adhered to, my lord.’

Thane looked out through the armourglass over the spires and peaks of Phalanx. ‘I am trusting you to make this work, Vangorich. You have implied many times that one man might make a better ruler than twelve Lords. I honestly have no idea if you truly wished Veritus to be that man. It does not matter. Now is your chance to prove theory. Lead them wisely, and remember Kubik is not the only High Lord I would return to Terra to replace.’

Chapter Five

The fate of Ullanor

Mariazet Isolde wore the shape of a shuffling Adeptus Mechanicus menial priest convincingly. She hobbled her way through red-lit decks crammed with servitor crew, her false implant broadcasting forged Adeptus Mechanicus identification codes. She had Yendl to thank for those. Without the Temple Vanus infocyte, the cell would have been discovered a long time ago. Isolde missed her expertise; operating on Mars had become difficult since Yendl’s death.

She wasn’t confident she could maintain the pretence, but her death did not matter. Only the mission did. She was to bear witness to the destruction of Ullanor from within the Mechanicus ship.

The Ark Majesty was immense, a huge inverted pyramid staffed by hundreds of thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests and their lobotomised slaves. No one paid her any attention. She went at a measured pace, not wishing to bring attention to herself as a shirker or someone in an unusual hurry. The command deck was her goal. Isolde was circumspect in her work, and she was on her highest level of alert.

Clanking men-machines lumbered past her, wheezing aseptic breath. Choirs of lowly adepts sang hymns to placate the spirit of the Ark Majesty’s many machines while higher-ranking priests conducted inscrutable rituals. Isolde walked by.

She took the least-used ways upward, transit tubes used mainly by servitors. Their blank-eyed stares passed over her with no more interest than if she’d been an empty fuel canister. Her codes, marking her as a member of Kubik’s personal household, gave her access to most areas of the ship, except the command deck. Getting in there was the difficulty.

The fabric of the Ark Majesty thrummed to the song of titanic energies as the Adeptus Mechanicus prepared for the conclusion of their Grand Experiment. Not, as secretly planned, the removal of Mars from the Sol System, but the destruction of the orks’ capital, a fitting test of the new and terrifying matter displacement technologies plundered from the greenskins. Odd whoops and growls sounded from vents and shafts as she passed them. The vibrations of the ship changed in frequency and violence as the vast banks of teleporters grafted to the Ark Majesty’s frame were cycled up and down in repetitive test runs.

She neared the centre of the vessel where the command deck was situated. The Adeptus Mechanicus favoured burying their command sections deep in their craft for maximum survivability. There was a paucity of windows on an ark vessel. All sight was provided remotely, by the grace of the Machine-God. A corridor with a pronounced declivity led down to the cradle housing the command decks. She slowed. Her identity would take her no further.

Streams of adepts went to and fro, passing from side rooms and engine halls to join the ceaseless flow of augmented humanity. The number of servitor crew declined as the number of adepts increased, until close to the great reinforced blast doors of the command deck the tech-priests outnumbered the mindless cybernetic constructs three to one. Those servitors that were present stamped past in large groups headed by genetors-primus. A few others were heavy combat drones stationed at strategic points. These comprised the torsos of dismembered men plugged directly into track units, their arms replaced by potent weaponry.

She scanned the crowds until she found what she was looking for. A middle-ranking magos metallicus transmechanic with a face of flesh. It was crucial her mark have no obvious facial augments; that would be too hard to mimic. On a starship the metallicus’ principal duties were confined to repairs. A busy man in a battle, but today he would have little to do. He headed with purpose down a narrow gangway. Isolde followed, striding after him as if she had always intended to go that way.

The gangway opened up into a large, tiered hall. On each level the walls were studded with heavy copper handgrips set in pairs. As she followed the magos, a troop of electro-priests came marching into the hall, singing devotional cant to the Body Electric and the Motive Force. They filed in, taking up station by the contacts and grasping them with both hands. Accidental electrical discharge buzzed and filled the space with the smell of sharp ozone.

The magos metallicus strode on through another, even bigger space, filled to within half a metre of the walls with a gigantic machine from whose depths multiple lights shone. Tech-priests moved painfully around the outside, sometimes on their knees, mechadendrites and ancillary limbs snaking out to make minute adjustments. Past this, the magos metallicus turned into a vestibule sandwiched between the corridor and a third chamber. Through the doorway into this further hall Isolde glimpsed tall plasma coils wreathed in crackling loops of green energy, and she had the notion that she looked upon technology engineered from the greenskins’.

The tech-priest went into a small door set into the wall of the vestibule. Isolde ducked through and found herself in a small storeroom hanging with neatly bunched cables labelled carefully in lingua-technis. She moved so quietly that the man did not notice her at first. When he selected a cable, turned round and saw her, the flesh of her face was already transforming itself into a passing resemblance of his own. She cast her hood back so he could see her features run. He let out a surprised electronic burble from a vox-box implanted in his neck at the sight of her.

Isolde cursed inwardly, she had not seen that augmentation. Most of the tech-priests had such things to allow them to speak the machine language, but they were not always so obvious. She killed him quickly, her exotic sword springing out from its housing on the back of her arm and taking him through the eye. Ignoring the crawling feeling as her face rearranged itself, she stripped the magos’ outer garments off and replaced them with her own, then, kneeling, pulled out a sharp knife and began to cut. His intelligence core was easy to find in his skull, which was a small blessing, for the cybernetics of the Mechanicus followed no standard pattern and it could as easily have been implanted in his leg as his head. She wiped the blood off her hand, sheathed her knife and paused. He still held the cable in his dead hand. He’d evidently got it for something, and so she spent a valuable moment debating whether to take the cable or not. In the end, she decided to leave it behind.

She checked her unit was broadcasting the dead magos’ codes, opened the door and stepped out. She allowed the door to slide shut and fried its locking mechanism, then set out for the command deck.

Fabricator General Kubik surveyed the command deck of the Ark Majesty. Here was his kingdom in microcosm, and he was well pleased with its efficiency. Men, machines and blends of the two performed their duties to the ninety-fifth percentile of perfection.

‘Provide mark. Synchronise time between target system and Ullanor System,’ he commanded.

‘Yes, prime of primes,’ intoned a crowd of tech-adepts. Tasks ordinarily performed by hard-wired servitors were being undertaken by adepts. This was an operation too important to be trusted to the monotasked. An enormous brass-handed chrono ticked down to zero.

‘Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken, prepare for planetary teleportation,’ said Kubik. ‘The time of projection is closing.’

Van Auken had been a large man before his numerous augmentations — with them, his appearance evoked a mechanical bear. ‘The corpuscarii are ready, Fabricator General. They stand prepared to unleash their life force in the service of the Omnissiah,’ he answered with exaggerated humility.

Kubik favoured him with a nod. It had been Van Auken who hit upon using the cults of electro-priests. Their intuitive manipulations of the Motive Force had stabilised the meshing of Imperial and orkish technology. This one idea had cast down all remaining barriers to success. Their recent trials had worked perfectly. The Grand Experiment was an experiment no more.

The Adeptus Mechanicus were ready to move a planet. The chrono’s hands shifted closer to the instant of success.

A grand flotilla of ships crowded the command deck’s hololith. An endless stream of data poured through Kubik’s multiple intelligence cores, filling him to the brim with delicious knowledge. Most of it was ephemeral, pointless, adding nothing to the grand store of knowledge the Adeptus Mechanicus had. The gravitic perturbations inflicted upon the ships by close proximity to each other could easily be calculated using existing formulae, as could the energy output of the combined engines of the fleet, the effects on the remaining astronomical bodies of the system once Ullanor was removed and a million other readings. As such, it was all useless, but it would never be forgotten. For the time being Kubik enjoyed the rush of it, the way a man of more usual form enjoys the pleasure of hot water pouring from a cascade.

‘Imperial Fleet shall be at safe distance in six hundred hectoseconds, prime of primes,’ said the craft’s Artisan of the Vox. Half of what was said aboard was twittered quickly in binharic, the rest in lingua-technis.

‘Planetary teleportation beam is powering,’ said Van Auken.

‘Cut vox-traffic with Imperial craft,’ ordered Kubik. ‘Artisan of the Vox, you are our line of communication with the greater fleet. Let no event or word distract us from the Omnissiah’s holy work!’

The adept did as he was ordered, but the change in noise within the command deck was negligible. ‘Chosin and Ullanor will be at optimum alignment in two hundred hectoseconds.’

‘Fleet at safe distance in one hundred hectoseconds.’

‘Prepare to engage veridian plasma engines. Electro-priest manual regulator arrays on standby,’ said Van Auken.

‘Fleet at safe distance. Lord Protector Vangorich is making a speech, prime of primes,’ said the Artisan of the Vox.

Kubik hunched at the mention of Vangorich’s name, his mechanical appendages thrashing. ‘I do not wish to hear it. His speech is without purpose. The symbolic activities of the non-believer have no interest for me. Record it. Archive it. Add it to the sum total of all knowledge. We have work of our own. Extend matter collapse beam emitter.’

The ship quaked. Rumbling clanks echoed throughout. Displays ran red and green with swift lines of datacode.

A final, echoing clunk reverberated dully around the ship.

‘Beam emitter extended,’ came the report.

Kubik tensed. In response, his gravity chair rose a few centimetres from the deck. Success depended on timing. Ullanor had to be moved at exactly the right moment to displace the existing fourth world in the target system. Every datum he possessed predicted that the original fourth planet, Chosin, would enter into a disruptive orbit that would stabilise over time, allowing Ullanor to take its original orbital track. It was an immensely complex undertaking and its calculation had required the efforts of thousands of magi logis. The possibility of destroying Chosin completely had been raised as a simpler alternative, but discarded. Its destruction would have resulted in an asteroid field of huge destructive potential right in Ullanor’s path around its new star.

Every variable had to be correct. Ullanor’s velocity would not change when it was teleported, therefore it had to move at precisely the right time so that it would fall into orbit around its new star, and pass close enough to Chosin to knock it aside without hitting it. If a single calculation were wrong and Ullanor’s survival was detected, civil war was the likely outcome.

The risk had been calculated as acceptable. Kubik wanted the world for himself. Ullanor was rich with unclaimed alien technology. The acquisition of knowledge superseded all other considerations.

‘Prepare to fire,’ said Kubik.

‘Imperial forces signalling their readiness,’ reported the Artisan of the Vox.

‘Engage all reactors. Relinquishing the holy flow to electro-priests,’ said Van Auken.

The large chrono counted down to zero, its three great hands coming together and stopping with a final, metallic clunk.

‘Let the Imperial fleet see us bring armageddon down on Ullanor!’ ordered Kubik.

The ship hummed with the songs of praise of its myriad crew. Green light pulsed from the hololith. A wavering beam of bright green energy slashed across space, stabbing into Ullanor’s smouldering equator. It spread across the orkish capital world, consuming it with bright fire.

‘Atomic decoupling matrix stabilising. Subspace transportation in forty hectoseconds,’ said Van Auken.

The chatter of machines became synchronised as tech-priests input the bewildering results of the magi logis’ calculations. A rising howl built from the teleportation engines. In their galleries, electro-priests chanted melodic cant to swell the presence of the holy Motive Force. The Ark Majesty trembled with the power building within it.

‘Quantum disassociation achieved. Matter potential neutral. Engaging subspace teleport conduits,’ said another.

Dozens of hands and mechanical appendages depressed levers simultaneously, the singing of algebraical hymns rose in volume, lingua-technis bass overlaid with a high register of binharic informational pulses. The ship’s trembling became a quaking. A deep metallic hum joined the noise of machinery and tech-priests as the fabric of the vessel resonated in harmony to the prayers of its crew and the exertions of its devices.

‘Transmit,’ commanded Van Auken in lingua-technis, Gothic and binharic simultaneously. His mechadendrites speared from his broad back into a dozen ports arrayed around and above him.

The ship vibrated with more than the unleashing of power; reality trembled, pushing open a tear not into the warp, but into subspace, that strange, ephemeral realm that existed between the universe of energy and the universe of matter. A burst of sparks shot out from an overloaded console. A number of hololiths blinked and went out. Lumens burst. Cables ruptured, sending fatal arcs of electricity into a dozen tech-priests as the Motive Force burst free. Bangs sounded from all over the deck as machines failed. Tocsins rang, but their alarms were lost in the roar of the impossible science of the Grand Experiment.

A mighty thrumming vibrated through the bones and bonded endoskeletal augments of everyone aboard. The tumult ceased abruptly, passed over and through the ship like an ocean breaker moving over a reef. The whine of machines quieted. The vibrating faded away into ever decreasing, unpredictable aftershocks.

On the last functioning hololith, space flashed with green lightning that faded slowly. When it did, Ullanor had gone.

‘Simple and elegant,’ said Van Auken. ‘Success is assured.’

Servitors thumped forward to remove the corpses of those tech-priests who had given their lives in the service of the Machine-God.

‘Contact Lord Vangorich. Inform him that the planet has been cast into the heart of the nearest blue supergiant hyper-star. Ullanor is no more,’ said Kubik. ‘Prepare my private pentere. He will wish to congratulate me personally. Van Auken, you shall accompany me as architect of this great endeavour. Have our astropaths signal the explorator teams. Ullanor is to be stripped to the core of useful technology, commencing immediately. No trace of the orkish presence upon the world can be left. The motive engines that moved the crust must be dismantled. If the world is explored or settled, there shall be no indication that the orks were ever there. I so command it.’

‘As you command, prime of primes,’ intoned his crew.

‘All hail the Omnissiah, He that giveth knowledge so that we might perform miracles in His name,’ said Kubik. He powered his grav chair and ascended through a portal in the ceiling. There was no celebration from the crew of the Ark Majesty. They worked on without comment. Success was its own reward.

At the back of the room, Isolde headed for the door.

Isolde shed her magos metallicus disguise as soon as she was able. Reassuming the role of one of Kubik’s household adepts, she headed off to decks unused by thinking beings. Servitors congregated there in their multitudes, but Isolde passed them unchallenged, her cowled form hidden by the soft red light of the lumens.

Life support was at the minimum required to keep the servitors’ organic components alive. She was shivering by the time she found a data conduit sized for humans to access and crawled inside. With numb fingers she searched through a tangle of copper cables and shining fibre-optics until she found an unshielded line. Her dataspike slid into it easily enough, and once she had checked the crawlspace both ways for Mechanicus repair vermin, she contacted the Grand Master.

A black screen appeared on her palm-sized data-slate, the coat of arms of the Assassinorum bold in white upon it.

‘Red Haven, Mariazet Isolde, Temple Callidus,’ she said. ‘Confirm.’

‘Identity confirmed. Line checked. Line secure,’ said the slate.

Vangorich’s face appeared a second later in grainy monochrome.

‘Isolde, good to see you. Tell me now, can I believe what I just saw?’

‘Regretfully no, Grand Master,’ she said. ‘They lied. They’ve moved it, not destroyed it. They’re going to plunder it.’

Vangorich looked away. ‘Stupid,’ he said. When he looked back his eyes were hard. ‘Where is Ullanor now?’

‘I don’t exactly know. I’ve got the name and the stellar signifier. The code puts it on the edge of the Segmentum Solar, and if it’s named it’ll be on a chart somewhere. It did have nine worlds, orbiting a main sequence yellow star not unlike Sol. The code is for an uninhabited system marked for colonisation. They got quite agitated about moving Ullanor at exactly the right moment to displace the existing fourth world safely, a place called Chosin, so I don’t know if that’s of any worth as a planet. I can’t tell you any more than what I gleaned through eavesdropping. This ship has its datacore encrypted so heavily it’d take a Vanus acolyte a week to get into it. I don’t have the skills. I can’t exload to you. Verbal report only.’

‘Give me the code and name.’

‘Yes, Grand Master,’ she said. ‘PL-SS042002-9001. The prime-assumptive world is Pelucidar. The system must be named for it.’

‘Pelucidar? Never heard of it,’ said Vangorich. ‘Good work, Isolde. Severing contact now.’

The screen blinked out. Isolde stowed her data-slate, checked outside, and slipped away.

Chapter Six

Holy ordos

There were gardens under the ice and rock of the Antarctic; the recreated habitats of a thousand worlds graced the deepest catacombs of the Inquisitorial Fortress. Most were small, places for the study of dangerous environments or the pharmacological benefits to be wrested from promising species, but there were those set aside for meditation. The Inquisition understood well the need for calm and clarity.

The Park of Oak was one of those places, forty hectares of vibrant green caged by skies of black Antarctic rock.

Veritus met Wienand under the gnarled branches of an ancient tree that had never seen the sun. Its leaves rustled in the unvarying breeze of ventilation ducts, otherwise the forest was silent; no bird or beast lived there. The deep quiet sharply defined the crackling of leaves under her feet and the hiss and whirr of Veritus’ life support system.

‘Wienand,’ said Veritus. He was haggard, his skin looser and paler than normal. She attributed it to the conclusion of the war against the Beast. The closure of a mission often had the same effect on her — months of high activity and adrenaline were followed by deferred exhaustion.

‘Is it time for us to resume our struggle for the seat of Inquisitorial Representative?’ she asked.

‘I hope not,’ said Veritus. He appeared disappointed that she had brought it up. He rested an armoured hand upon the trunk of the tree. ‘There are more pressing concerns.’

‘Let’s get this one out of the way, then. I’ve made my decision. I will relinquish the seat to you. My concern was the alien threat, and that is now done. It is your turn.’

Veritus was taken off guard, but composed himself before an expression of surprise could take shape. ‘You have my gratitude.’

‘You have mine,’ she said. ‘I’ve sat in the Senatorum too long. I have to think of the future. It is time I began to train a successor.’

Veritus became thoughtful. ‘Something I have neglected. I never had time to plan for that future, and yet the future is why we are here. You know that Terra was once an ocean world, inhabited by a trillion different species of life?’

‘I cannot really imagine it, Terra is so… dead,’ she said. ‘Although I have seen other oceans, it is impossible to picture them here.’

‘It was a long time ago. I am very old, Wienand, but even in my youth Terra looked much the same as it does now. But once, it was rich in life,’ said Veritus. ‘Our ancestors, for all their might, did not take care for the future.’

‘I have been lectured about that more than once by the eldar,’ said Wienand.

‘Hypocrisy is their most aggravating characteristic. The fall of their empire sterilised countless worlds,’ he said. ‘You put too much faith in them.’

‘And you too little,’ she said. ‘They are implacably opposed to Chaos, and have helped me many times.’

‘The eldar are prideful and conceited, practically blind to their own faults.’ He smiled tiredly. ‘Listen to us. You are the one who champions defence against the alien, but works with them against Chaos. I am the one who fears Chaos above all things, but lectures you about the xenos threat. Maybe we are both right. The eldar are right about one thing, we must think of the future. The Inquisition must change.’

‘So you promised Thane,’ said Wienand guardedly. ‘Did you have the right to decide that alone? Who is to say the others will agree?’

‘They will agree,’ said Veritus. ‘My question is, do you?’

‘If you are confident you can impose change, why do you need my opinion at all?’ she said.

‘Because you are still the Inquisitorial Representative alongside me. We were opposed, now we work in unity. A unified decision from us will carry much more weight.’

‘So you are not confident of change.’

‘Without you,’ said Veritus, ‘no.’ His breath wheezed. ‘I am uncommonly tired. Walk with me a way, there is a bench not far.’

He led the way down a narrow path of chipped bark. Through it and the litter of the forest floor patches of growth mesh were visible, twisted up by the actions of the trees’ roots. The more she looked, the less natural the forest became.

‘If I am to trust you, then there can be no more secrets between us,’ she said.

‘Agreed,’ said Veritus. Though they went at no great pace, he was breathing heavily.

‘Then tell me more of the Space Marine Chapter stationed on Titan that nobody, except you, appears to be aware of.’

Veritus grasped at branches as they went on, only lightly, as if he were seeking approval from them. They came to a clearing in the trees. A wooden bench made of a split tree trunk occupied the centre. Water pipes and a blinking environmental control station at the edge of the glade further undermined the nominally natural feel of the forest.

‘They are an important part of the reorganisation, and a means to convince the other inquisitors to agree to our plan.’

‘It is your plan, Veritus, and I still do not know what it is.’

Veritus had trouble lowering himself to sit. He leant on Wienand and she sagged under the pressure of his armoured grip as he sat. When he let go, it was as if the weight of the world had come off her shoulders. She sat beside him.

‘They are called the Grey Knights,’ said Veritus. ‘They are a force of warriors without peer, engineered from gene-seed taken from the Emperor Himself a thousand years ago. A last, parting gift from our god before He was taken from us to sit upon His Golden Throne.’

‘They are Adeptus Custodes then?’ Wienand rubbed her hand along the wood. Whereas the bench in the Sigillite’s Retreat was smooth and dry, the grain of this wood was rough under her touch, the strands of lignin still swollen with moisture. Although dead, it smelt fresh; a sense of life still clung to it.

‘They are greater than the Adeptus Custodes,’ said Veritus. ‘Each one is a potent psyker. Their strength is in their brotherhood. As the end approached, the Emperor foresaw a need for warriors who could stand against Chaos, incorruptible and mighty, and He made them so, the mightiest warriors beside the primarchs He ever created. For them, the daemon holds no fear. I believe that, in time, the Emperor hoped mankind would realise its psychic potential, avoid the catastrophe that struck the eldar, and end the threat of Chaos forever. In the Grey Knights, I see hope for the future. They are the pinnacle of what we could be.’

‘The eldar are psychic by nature. From what they have hinted, that sped their destruction. They tell me that we have already fallen. The Dark Age of Technology was our era of might, and even then we could not match their empire of old. They persisted for millions of years, we for mere thousands and now we slowly die.’ She thought of the Sigillite’s Retreat as she said that.

‘We rose again, and we can rise a third time. They are the spent force, not us,’ said Veritus. ‘We must believe this, or we are doomed. When you see the Grey Knights, you will understand that there is hope.’ He was trembling. His breath was shallow, and he perspired. Wienand looked at him with concern.

‘Are you ill, Veritus?’

‘I have felt better. I shall rest later. First, hear me out. There were once four of us who knew of this Chapter. The secret has been mine alone to keep for years. I do not share it lightly.’ Veritus became grim. ‘Assassination, execution, these have been the sentries to this knowledge. I have been forced to employ Exterminatus on three occasions to keep them hidden. That is how delicate the matter of their existence is. I could not call them in to fight the orks. Their psychic abilities would have proved useful, but though they are mighty, they would have fallen, and we would have lost a valuable weapon against Chaos.’

‘We needed all the warriors we could get,’ said Wienand.

‘They would not have tipped the balance. We would have won or lost with or without them. Weapons should be applied to the appropriate threat.’ He clenched his fists on his knees and turned to her. ‘And we agree there are two threats.’

‘Of the alien and Chaos,’ she said.

‘The aliens of this galaxy pose a danger. If I had not believed it before, then this war against the Beast would have convinced me. But we cannot ignore Chaos. Dealing with both is impossible under our current organisation. I believe that the remit of the Inquisition is too diffuse. We need to specialise so that our efforts can be better focused. This is my proposal, that the Inquisition adopt a bicameral nature. The Ordo Xenos shall concentrate its affairs upon alien threats. The Ordo Malleus shall devote itself to rooting out Chaos wherever it shows itself. With the Grey Knights as the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Malleus, and the Deathwatch providing a similar role to the Ordo Xenos, both ordos will be equal in power. The Inquisition will be better able to combat threats mundane and supernatural.’

‘What of those inquisitors who have no desire to specialise?’ asked Wienand.

‘There are some, but most you and I know have their own particular areas of interest. In any case, there are other dangers facing the Imperium, these two are just the largest. I am not suggesting an absolute division. The nature of these threats is that sometimes they are intertwined. Individual inquisitors will be free to move between them. Others might stay free of both.’

‘What if some of the others take to your idea and suggest the need for more ordos?’ said Wienand.

‘Then they can be constituted as and when they are needed. With the model of these two in place, I would imagine it would be easier to do so. For the time being, two will suffice. Wienand, I am speaking of creating a framework which can support inquisitors, give them access to specialist equipment and personnel, and an army to use if required. I am not speaking of imposing an absolute hierarchy on the Inquisition.’

‘But this will introduce hierarchy. It must, by its nature. With hierarchy comes oversight,’ she said. ‘Our comrades do not like to work with others looking over their shoulders.’

‘Nobody is immune to corruption. Oversight is needed. A rogue inquisitor can do so much harm.’

Wienand’s mouth twisted. ‘This change is greater than specialisation. You are suggesting a hierarchy where none exists. There is no ruling council for the Inquisition.’

‘I am not proposing a binding hierarchy. Our freedom to act as we see fit is our greatest strength. It is time the organisation we do have is formalised, that is all. We cannot rely on ad hoc quorums to guide our fate. There must be a council of the most high Inquisitorial lords.’

Wienand laughed softly. ‘The Senatorum Imperialis has exhausted my patience with councils.’

‘Ours shall be smaller, and uneven in number so that deadlock can be avoided. Until now, I have assigned the Grey Knights where I see fit. We must decide a new mechanism for their deployment. I cannot live forever. Would you put that power into the hands of another?’

She gave him a look. ‘You trust yourself, evidently.’

‘There were once four of us,’ he reminded her.

There were four founding members of the Inquisition, thought Wienand, but his being one was impossible. Even so, he must have been heir to that line, and the system of the four lords was long defunct.

‘You’re older than I thought.’

‘Much older,’ he said. ‘I…’ He blinked. ‘I… Wienand?’

‘Veritus? Are you all right?’

He gave her a puzzled look, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell from the bench to the thin, artificial soil.

Wienand knelt by him. Veritus’ face was pressed into the ground, sealing shut his nose and mouth. She tugged and tugged at his armour, but could not right him, so she rocked him back and forth until she could get to his head and turn it to one side. When he was breathing again, she spoke urgently.

‘Vox-bead, activate.’ Her wrist chimed. ‘This is Wienand. I’m in the Botanicum, the Park of Oak. I have a medical emergency. Veritus is down.’

Chapter Seven

The opening of the warp

Deep in the fortress of the Iron Warriors was the Astropathicum. The name bore no relation to the meaning of the word as Zerberyn understood it. Imperial astropathic stations were very different in character.

The Iron Warriors’ sole telepath hung in her upright coffin, imprisoned by cables trailing from her skull like a shock of thick hair. Serfs from both brotherhoods worked around her, adjusting the power feed from the cables and monitoring her vital signs. The woman was not a true astropath, but a witchborn taken from their slave stock, a natural psyker, unblessed and unprotected by the Emperor. She was naked, emaciated and filthy, but deadly. The banks of crackling machinery around her were there to contain her powers.

‘Green, green, no more seen,’ she whimpered. ‘The roar goes on, and on. Loudly, quietly. Two brothers cease their fight for a time, exhausted. Red stars for eyes, two apiece.’ She giggled.

Zerberyn’s astropaths were dead. She was all they had, not that she was much use; the Iron Warriors’ witch had not made any sense in all the time they had been on the moon of Immitis.

Zerberyn listened to the witch’s babble. She still made no sense, but the fortress was changing around her. Fresh ferrocrete covered scars inflicted on the complex by the cyclical tidal tugging of Immitis VII, the gas giant the moon orbited. Zerberyn felt that pull himself when the giant planet rose, four times a day. New machinery salvaged from ravaged worlds and ships had been integrated with the ancient systems. The halls hummed with the quiet work of technology. Air filtration meant the air was purer, and this was only one of a hundred small alterations that was changing the fort from a semi-derelict to something resembling a Chapter fortress. Zerberyn was beginning to feel at home there, surrounded by Traitors. He saw them now as more than just despicable foes. They were capable warriors and builders, and though there were methods the Iron Warriors employed that he would never have dreamt of using himself, he was beginning to see their utility. That concerned him.

Someone drew near, and his thoughts fled like clouds before the wind.

Epistolary Honorius’ psychic presence filled the room, pushing at the crazed, fluctuating gifts of the witch as a fortress wall opposes the air. His physical presence was barely less imposing. The Librarian was never out of his Terminator battleplate. A wise precaution, thought Zerberyn. The Iron Warriors could grow tired of their alliance at any time.

‘First Captain, you called for me?’

The Librarius serfs genuflected to their master and went back to their work. The woman sobbed, her metal-faced handler shocked her with the savage throw of a switch, and she screamed.

‘Brother-Epistolary. A word in private.’

Black eyes gazed impassively from Honorius’ ageless, snow-pale face as he swept them over the serfs. ‘Leave us!’ he called.

Immediately the serfs began to shut down the equipment. They bowed and departed. The psyker’s overseer, one of Kalkator’s creatures, remained.

‘You too,’ said Honorius. His voice was sepulchral, his lips permanently downturned. ‘Begone.’

‘My master told me no one was to be alone with the witch.’

‘Go,’ said Honorius, with a power that could not be denied. The overseer hesitated, then left, cowering under the Librarian’s disapproval.

‘Are we alone?’ asked Zerberyn.

The Epistolary’s eyes closed. Eidolica bred men with pale skin, Honorius was among the palest. There was the merest hint of pink to his lips; without that he could have been a marble figure on a tomb.

‘No one hears us,’ he said dolefully.

Zerberyn pointed at the witch, moaning in her restraints and rolling her head. ‘The Green Roar abates. The witch speaks nonsense still, but I believe that is what she is trying to say. Is this not so?’

Honorius inclined his head but once. ‘It is, First Captain.’

‘Something has happened in the wider war. Victory must be close to hand. Have we any word from the Last Wall?’

‘None intelligible, First Captain. My Librarians are not astropaths, but we sense something, a shift in the warp. They receive fragments of messages where before there was nothing. Communication becomes clearer by the hour.’

‘We will be able to send our own messages soon?’

‘Yes, brother-captain. If the brothers of the Librarius work together, it can be done within a day or two, no more.’

Zerberyn turned back to look at the witch. His eyes narrowed. ‘And can we do so without it being intercepted?’

‘You intend to betray the Iron Warriors?’ said Honorius.

‘I intend to be cautious, Brother-Librarian. Do you disapprove?’

‘You are the First Captain. I will do whatever you command,’ said Honorius. ‘The message will not be intercepted.’ Honorius bowed and made to depart. Zerberyn halted him.

‘Honorius, you knew Oriax Dantalion.’

‘I did,’ said Honorius.

‘What would he have made of our allies?’

‘Dantalion was an inflexible and furious man,’ said Honorius. ‘He would have hated the Iron Warriors, as the enemies of the Legion and traitors to the dreams of the Emperor.’

‘And what do you make of them, brother?’

Honorius looked sidelong at Zerberyn. ‘I think that the Iron Warriors are useful, my lord.’

Zerberyn nodded. ‘I concur. Perhaps they can be saved, turned back onto the righteous path. Prepare a message. As soon as you are able, send it. Inform the Last Wall of our location, tell them to come in peace and bearing the markers of truce. It is time we readied ourselves to return home.’

Chapter Eight

Vangorich decided

The final time Wienand went to meet Vangorich at the Sigillite’s Retreat, she abandoned the code of coloured smokes and contacted him openly. And she went armed.

Although she had refrained from voxing him until she was a few hundred metres from the forgotten garden, she had no chance to lay an ambush, for when she arrived Vangorich was sitting on the bench. He smiled sadly, shut his book — the same one he had been reading the last time they met — and set it down.

‘We won’t be able to use this place again,’ he said, ignoring the laspistol she was pointing at his head. ‘I suppose you knew that, contacting me on open vox like that. Everyone will know about it. Such a shame, it took me years to find it. It’s a piece of history I shared with nobody but you. Never mind. It is time I came out from the shadows a little. I always thought the Cerebrium would make a fine personal office. I will take it on; it is a beautiful room. If no one objects, of course.’ He seemed to focus on her properly for the first time. ‘Your actions, and that gun, suggest you are less than pleased with me.’

‘What did you do to Veritus?’

He feigned surprise, and that enraged her. Her finger twitched on the trigger, and it was all she could do not to shoot him in the face then and there.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stop it, Drakan!’ she shouted. She circled, searching for traps and Assassins, wishing that she’d thought more calmly and ordered a kill-team to accompany her. Instead she’d rushed to the Inquistorial Fortress’ space port and taken the first craft she’d seen to get here. She regretted her haste. ‘He’s dying.’

‘I am so sorry to hear that,’ he said, and looked like he meant it. ‘He is a little stiff, but a good man in the most fundamental of ways. It is no wonder that you two have become quite close, which is amusing really, seeing as he tried to kill you. And now you’re here, threatening to kill me for allegedly killing him. Honestly, the contradictions of this life never fail to entertain me.’

‘Drop your act, Drakan!’

He shook his head. ‘This is no act,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘This is truly who I am.’

‘Give me the antidote,’ she said. She chanced a step towards him. Vangorich sat innocently in his lifeless garden in the ossified heart of the Imperium. She thought of the synthetic forest in the Inquisitorial Fortress. As pale a reflection of the past as it was, it was still alive. In the Sigillite’s Retreat there was only death.

‘I am afraid there is no antidote,’ he said. ‘Not if he has already collapsed. It will be a matter of time now. I am sorry.’

‘You admit it, then.’

‘I believe I just did, yes,’ he said with a little shrug.

‘Why did you do it? The crisis is over. The orks are done. We should be rebuilding.’

‘And we will,’ he said. ‘Which is precisely why I had to do it. Veritus would never agree with me, you see. I wanted the poison to be an insurance policy, the way I did with Mesring. You spoilt that for me, remember? You might agree with me though,’ he said speculatively.

A cold, sinking feeling clutched at Wienand. Her pistol wavered in her hand. The High Lords. Where were the other High Lords, right now? ‘What do you mean, Vangorich?’

‘The Officio Assassinorum is a check on the follies of empire,’ said Vangorich. ‘I know what it can do, what an abuse of power it could be to use it as the Emperor intended it to be used. That is why I have avoided acting. Until now. I was hoping Veritus could be controlled — not like Mesring, you understand, I never had any respect for him. I just needed enough leverage to convince Veritus what we are doing is right.’

‘You are Lord Protector. Why do you need him under your control?’

‘I did not want to be Lord Protector. I wanted Veritus in the role, I really did. I thought Veritus would do a much better job of it than me, though of course I needed some control. Thane flushed me out, and I’ve had to act.’

‘You were going to give him an antidote, but in small doses.’

‘Yes. But I haven’t, because there’s no need now. It’s gone too far.’ Vangorich made an apologetic face, like a scholam child caught stealing sweet treats. ‘Do you think that squabbling rabble in the Senatorum would actually make things better, when all they’ve done for a thousand years is stuff their greedy faces with the wealth of the Imperium? I didn’t want this, Wienand. I had no choice.’

‘Oh, Vangorich!’ she said in despair. ‘What have you done?’

‘Only what needs to be done. Thane saw that too, I think. If I look at it in a certain way, I might even say that I have his tacit permission. Don’t you see? The Imperium is as petrified as the wood of this bench.’ He patted the wood soundlessly. ‘If it is to come into leaf again, the old wood must be disposed of, and the new given chance to germinate. Try to see it as I do: we have the opportunity to instigate a new era for mankind!’

‘You are not the Emperor, you’re not the Sigillite.’

‘One of those people can do nothing, the other is dead so long I am sure his abilities and wisdom have been exaggerated greatly. You know what time and legend can do to a man’s reputation. We can never live up to the past because we invent it to punish ourselves. It was probably no better or worse than our own era.’

‘I can’t let you do it,’ she said.

‘You’d kill me? Then who would be the assassin?’ he said. His humour was tinged with sadness. ‘Best leave that sort of thing to me. It is what I am, after all. I am trying, Wienand, not like those fools in the High Twelve. I aspire to the greatness of the past — they’re simply overawed by it. Vulkan, a son of the Emperor Himself, denounced the Council. Koorland killed Mesring. Thane made me Lord Protector. It all makes sense. They have to die. I thought you of all people would understand that.’

Vangorich stating his murderous design out loud released something savage in Wienand. She fired, putting a las-bolt through Vangorich’s forehead.

Vangorich flickered. He blinked sympathetically at her. She opened up, putting beams of light through every part of the Grand Master, but they passed harmlessly through him. The wood of the bench smouldered. She looked around for the loops and projectors of a hololith unit, but could see none. The illusion was totally convincing, the best she had ever seen, lacking the ghost-like quality the majority of projections possessed.

‘A shame,’ sighed Vangorich’s projection. ‘I thought you would probably react like that, but I was holding out hope you would not. We really should work together. Now it seems I’ve some work to win you over. No matter, you’ll see the light.’

Wienand held up her vox-button to her mouth.

‘It’s too late, Wienand, you can’t save them,’ said Vangorich. ‘The order is given. The High Lords die today.’

Chapter Nine

The beheading

Long before dawn, Abdulias Anwar rose from his bed in an unlit cell. There were grander apartments in the Silent Mansions, but Anwar eschewed them. The terrible losses the Beast had inflicted had impelled him towards humility.

All astropaths were blind, but very few of them were sightless. Some pieced together a patchwork world gathered from foreseen events, apprehending their surroundings through anticipation. The more powerful might see through the eyes of other people. Some saw the world as a blinding vista of soul-light, a few sensed the echoes of the past that wove themselves psychically into the fabric of the universe. Theirs was a sad fate, constantly subjected to the ghostly replays of emotional events, many of great horror.

As the head of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Abdulias Anwar was a telepath of extraordinary ability. The human mind was an open book to him, if it were not carefully warded. His world was one of phantom shapes, a vision of sorts that wove the souls of living beings into a map of energy. It had been so long since Anwar had seen a face the memory had faded into the depths of his extraordinarily long life. Physical beauty was meaningless to him. What he did see was spiritual beauty. The souls of the living shone. Each person was a network of fibres, alive with the pulse of thought. The souls of good men were white, those of less noble tendency red. Blue indicated great sorrow, those burdened with their duties showed a dull yellow, and so on in a million hues. No man or woman was a single shade, save a rare few. Most were subtle blendings that changed from moment to moment.

From the reflected spirit light of humanity, Anwar could discern the shapes of the material world, albeit dully, a psychic false-colour rendering in blues and blacks. Behind this lurked the ever present maelstrom of the warp. Not all telepaths had the dread cosmic truth in front of them all the time like Anwar did, but he had been luckier than others and had learned to mask its presence.

Above it all was the light of the Astronomican, a constant beacon that shone through the intervening rock of Terra as if it were smoke, the bonfire of souls that bound the Imperium into one coherent entity. When he was younger, the undying blaze had kept him from sleeping. What it represented had terrified him. As he aged it had become his greatest comfort.

Only his own soul lit the way for him, the light of it coaxing meaning from the surrounding matter of his domicile. There were no servants to tend to him in the mornings any more. As part of his penance he had dismissed them. He half saw, half felt his way to his wash basin where he plunged his face into freezing water. It filled his empty eye sockets, chilling his skull. The discomfort was good. He patted around for his towel and dried his face. Then he washed himself gaspingly, and went to pray.

The arcane patterns of hexagrammatic wards glimmered all around him, defining the corridors of the Silent Mansions. Through the murk of the solid walls behind the wards, he saw the distant glimmer of soulshine. Psychic humans were flaring beacons, the more mundane sort still bright and glorious in their own way. Closer to his location there were the dim, barely-there flickers of servitors slumbering in their alcoves. Anwar had heard it said that mind-wiping was no worse than execution. The people who said such things were wrong: the souls of the servitors were trapped in bodies of dead flesh and metal. It was a fate worse even than the ocean of souls that awaited the truly dead.

His long staff tocked as he made his way to the Master’s Chapel. This room was the biggest in the Mansions, full of artworks created with psychically active substances of immense cost that only the blind could see. Anwar went before the great statue of the Emperor Resplendent and knelt.

By nature, Anwar was a spiritual man. His early life had been one of wonder, as a world no one else could see had opened to him. The Black Ships had taken that world away from him and given him another more profound, when he had lost his sight in exchange for the touch of a god. That the Emperor was divine was beyond doubt. Anwar had seen Him, a blazing soul that drowned all others with its light. The statues he had seen as a youth captured not the tiniest truth of His essence. For that one glimpse, Anwar felt himself truly blessed. He was content in all that he had done, he had served to the best of his ability and risen as far as any man of his station might go. He had a good friend in Sark. Sark was more powerful than Anwar, strong enough to keep his eyes. Sark had lived a full-blooded life before he took high office, Anwar one of monkish self-denial. But Anwar did not resent him.

He was long past any sort of envy. He had been satisfied with the role the Emperor had chosen for him, and he worked diligently to fulfil that role when immersed in the madhouse of the Great Chamber. He had watched the ridiculous power struggles within the High Lords with a species of detached bewilderment, banding together with Sark and Gibran for no other reason than to preserve his sanity. He left politics to the others, taking pride in keeping his adeptus in order, and he had been content.

He gave praise for his blessing, whispering mantras of thanks over and over.

But he should have done more. He should have been more vigilant.

For years, Anwar had also been complacent. Lately anguish replaced his contentment. He wondered, in the dead of night, if he could have foreseen the rise of the Beast. The Green Roar had built slowly, giving all the appearance of being a simple disturbance in the warp like so many in the past. The sort of storm that might last a night or a millennium, bearable nonetheless. But it had been different. He should have put resources into divining its source. Its true nature had become apparent only when the Beast attacked, and then the bestial howling of the orks had overwhelmed so many of his adepts. Communications had fallen into chaos. Now the warp was stilling again. The roaring of the ork had not disappeared, but receded into the distance like the thunder of a passing storm. Anwar was fearful. Like a storm, the Beast could return again.

‘I should have seen it coming, my Lord. I swear I will next time,’ he whispered. ‘I will be more vigilant.’

He pulled down his hood and unlaced the top of his robes. Anwar had ceased to wear the ornate garments of a High Lord, reverting to the plain green astropath’s garb. He pulled his skinny arms from the sleeves and pushed the robe down to his waist. He took up a switch, made of rare birchwood grown in hallowed arboreta. It was priceless, his sole remaining indulgence. This was his first penance.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness,’ he murmured. The crack of thin wood on flesh echoed off the chapel walls. Anwar suppressed a cry of pain.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness.’ He switched sides, whipping himself over the left shoulder.

Every day, his back burning from his flagellation, he forced himself from the Silent Mansions to the astrotelepathicum of the Imperial Palace. There he spent hours in the receiving couches, parsing messages from all over the Imperium. The majority of them were degraded by the turmoil in the warp. Disrupted chronologies were common.

Anwar was gifted still. The passing of years had dulled his abilities little. He decoded more messages than the youngest and best, and he made himself do it. Story after story of ruination, horror and savagery. This work was his second penance for his inaction. He prayed it would be enough to earn the Emperor’s forgiveness. He knew in his heart it was not.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness!’ he said louder, his papery voice filling with power. He hit himself harder.

‘For failing in my duty—’

The gentlest scuff of a foot on dusty stone broke his chant. A blind man hears no better than a seeing man, but he does pay attention more closely to what his ears tell him.

‘Who’s there?’ he said and turned. The nearest soul light was many rooms distant. There was nobody in the chapel with him. Still he was compelled to shout out. ‘This is the Chapel of the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica! Who is there?’

Silence. There was nobody there. There could be no one there without his seeing. Why then did the iron hand of dread squeeze his heart?

He groped for his staff and stood, robes dangling around his waist. Sightless eyes panned around the room. Far greater senses than sight showed him nothing. The hexagrams and psychic paintings on the wall glowed, disapproving faces staring down.

He froze. There, there was a disturbance in his second sight, a warping of a ward-tapestry’s silver threads. He drew in a frightened breath. The distortion moved, coming closer. As it approached it became a sucking black void that drew all light towards it, banishing it utterly.

‘Traitor,’ said a voice in a low whisper that pulled at the weft of Anwar’s soul.

‘No, wait. I am no traitor. I am a loyal servant of the Emperor!’ said Anwar. He stumbled backwards, until his back connected painfully with the edge of the altar.

‘We are the Emperor’s justice. We are the Emperor’s judgement.’ A whirring rasp of machinery came, that of a metal iris opening. The whining rise of weaponry spooling up to full power vibrated Anwar’s teeth painfully.

There was only one being this could be. A Culexus Assassin: a creature like the Sisters of Silence, born without a soul, taken, trained, honed into a killer of psykers, an abomination which could extinguish the light of a soul as easily as snuffing a candle. ‘I know your kind! Why did Vangorich not release you to fight the orks? Why do you only show yourself now? You call me disloyal? What about the Grand Master!’

A darker point of light appeared in the air at head height, totally black, the absence of everything — space, time and soul. Anwar felt his very being tugged towards it. The sensation was excruciating. Absolute terror flooded his aged heart.

‘Please! Please,’ he sobbed. ‘I know. I… I know. I could have done more. I shall! I have learned my lesson. It is not enough to fulfil the Emperor’s wishes. One must always strive to exceed them. I know this now,’ said Anwar. He slipped down the altar to kneel on the cold floor. ‘Tell the Grand Master, I know I have been remiss. I am sorry. I am ashamed.’ But his eyes could not cry, and no tears came.

‘You are guilty,’ said the pariah.

A beam of blackness cut across Anwar’s spirit sight and connected with his forehead. For the first time in his life, he was truly blind. All good sensation was driven out of him, leaving nothing but the pain as his soul was pulled slowly from his body, singing like a raw, stretched nerve.

With his mouth, and with his mind, Anwar screamed. His last psychic shout blasted out from the chapel, stunning everyone it touched for five hundred metres in every direction.

His soul dissipated into nothing. The Culexus shut off her animus speculum. Anwar’s body fell to the ground alive, but Abdulias Anwar had found a fate far worse than death.

By the time his aides and guards reached the chapel, the Culexus Assassin had long gone. She had another psyker to visit that night.

The Navigators’ Quarter was a world distinct from the rest of Terra. Though it was surrounded by the hives of standard humans, it was walled off from them absolutely. To be apart was the condition of the Navigators, on a starship or on the ground. Within the Quarter’s walls were the greatest palaces in the human galaxy, but no normal man might visit these gilded prisons for the Navis Nobilite.

From his lighter, Helad Gibran looked glumly down over the soaring spires of the Navigatorial estates, each house attempting to outdo the other with the height and splendour of its demesne. Glittering pinnacles and gardens were cut through by broad waterways and lakes protected from the polluted air of Terra by ornate domes. Near the centre was the greatest edifice of all, the Paternoval Palace. Currently in possession of House Gibran. It was all so beautiful, so excessive and so claustrophobic.

The lighter pilot zeroed in on the main docking hall of the Paternoval Palace. Its outrageously decorated spires soared overhead, embracing Gibran in their shadows. He shuddered. Gibran was not pleased to be home.

After they landed he rushed through the ritual greeting offered him by House Gibran servants in the hangar, and hurried to a mechalandau. He instructed its simple machine-spirit to take him to his private quarters as quickly as possible.

‘As you wish, Navigator,’ its unpleasant voice burbled. It lurched to its six feet and cantered off down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace, carrying him past lesser members of House Gibran about errands of their own. It was late, and he passed only one other of the mechanical transports. He returned the greeting of Lord Navis Orto Gibran as he approached, declined his offer to talk and take wine, and sped on.

The landau deposited him in the entrance vestibule to his apartments, a high porch and steps set into a tall window of glass that looked out onto jungle gardens. Rain jetting in regimented bursts from sprinklers high in the artificial sky rattled on the window, an incongruously natural sound in those deeps of steel and stone.

The moment he was through the door, his majordomo Erdacian came to greet him.

‘You have been gone long, my lord,’ he said. Erdacian was a Navigator, like all in the Quarter. His third eye was covered over with a strap marked with the sigil of House Gibran.

‘I wish it were wandering through the stars, Erdacian,’ said Helad Gibran. ‘I’ve wandered only so far as the Venusian Lagrange.’

‘My lord,’ said Erdacian, and dipped his head. ‘Shall I order dinner prepared?’

Silent servants came to take Helad Gibran’s outer garments, wash his hands and feet, and spray him with perfumes. Gibran put up with their ministrations impatiently.

‘Yes, and call my companions. I wish to talk of other things than politics for a while.’

‘There is a deal of work for you in your opusarium.’

Gibran sighed with displeasure. ‘I will look it over quickly. Dinner. One hour. I command it.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’

Gibran shook off the last of his servants and made for the large stairway curling around the glassteel atrium of his apartments. Erdacian followed him to the foot of the stairs.

‘What of my Lady Mossa Belisarius-Gibran?’

‘Schedule breakfast for us tomorrow. I shall see her then, not before.’

‘She was most insistent she speak to you as soon as you arrive, my lord.’

‘Tomorrow, Erdacian!’ Gibran called down from the balcony. ‘I wish to look over the gardens for a while. Inform the Paternova’s Master of Admissions that I have returned. If he will meet with me in the afternoon, then I am humbly at his disposal.’

‘My lord.’

Gibran went into his opusarium and shut the door behind him. He rested against the smooth wood, closed his eyes and let out a long, weary breath. The High Lords he could handle, even the Paternova himself, but speaking to his wife tonight was one task too far.

He stood. The lights were off. Soothing green light reflected off the jungle through the room’s large rose window. On the far side of the room was a set of upholstered doors. Beyond them were his bed, his concubines and his collection of fine off-world wines. He was in the mood to enjoy all three. First, he wished to look on his garden, a collection of ancient Terran plants which existed nowhere else.

But to look over the garden, he must stand by his desk. His treacherous eyes were dragged to the piles of work atop it. It was a large desk, but not a scrap of its surface could be seen, buried under a pile of data-slates, documents and flimsies a metre high. His shoulders sagged.

He looked to the exit. He could walk away and pretend he had not seen. He took a step forward, his hand reaching up involuntarily for the door and the pleasures beyond.

He stopped. The stacks of work waited. His warp eye throbbed. He was a fool to come this way. Sentimental, wanting to look upon the gardens. There were no pure pleasures in this world that duty could not spoil.

‘Warp take it all,’ he said. He pressed the button on his vox-cuff. ‘Erdacian. I shall be late for dinner.’

‘Yes, your grace.’

Gibran sat down with a heavy sigh. With a wave of his hand he decreased the opacity of the window until it was totally clear. Artificial rain lashed against it, making the jungle foliage bob with its pounding. At least he might take some pleasure in that.

The work was consuming. It never stopped. If it was not the business of the Imperium, it was the business of his House. He was not the Novator, but he was responsible for ratifying the breeding programmes of his own closest relations. A good quarter of the documents concerned matches and marriage contracts. Many more were reports from Gibran Navigators scattered across space by the war against the Beast. The saddest was the shortest, a list of known and probable losses for his and allied Houses. He held the slate for far longer than it took to read it.

The rain drummed hard on the window. On the other side of the dome encompassing the garden, Sol was slipping out of the smoggy sky.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Damn it! Erdacian! Erdacian! Whoever that is, send him away!’ Gibran bellowed. ‘I’ve got a stack of work here that stretches to Cypra Mundi and back! Erdacian?’ Cursing, he put the slate back on the desk and swore as he chased his vox-link around his wrist. When he pressed it, there was no answer to its musical chime. ‘Erdacian, where are you?’

The door opened a crack, slashing the carpet with a spear of yellow lumen light from the landing.

‘Erdacian?’

Gibran’s hand strayed for the pistol under his desk. His fingers were brushing the holster, when a familiar voice stayed his hand.

‘He is not here, cousin,’ said his visitor.

‘Dovrian Ofar, is that you?’ he said with relief. He relaxed.

‘It is I.’

‘Why did you not announce yourself?’

‘I was passing. I heard you’d come back and, you know, stopped by to surprise you.’ Dovrian shrugged. ‘I rang and rang the bell, but Erdacian was nowhere to be seen. I bring you refreshment where your lax servant has failed.’

Gibran snapped on his desk lumen. Dovrian was Gibran’s fifth cousin, three times removed, the product of three generations of marriage planning that had brought about a fruitful alliance between House Gibran and House Ofar. Careful breed matches meant his genetic code was predominately that of House Ofar, and as such would have looked freakish to standard human eyes. Spindle-limbed and willowy-tall, his skin had a bluish cast and an uncomfortable translucency that hinted at the squirmings of the muscles beneath. His third eye was bound with red cloth, as was House Ofar’s custom. Discreet hydraulic calipers aided his movement, for the Ofars were void-adapted, force-bred for service on Rogue Trader ships, ultra-light packet ships and other far-ranging vessels. The Ofar palaces were in an orbital habitat around Jupiter, and they seldom ventured anywhere that had more than one-quarter Terran gravity, including the manned decks of the vessels they guided.

Dovrian was reckoned of uncommon strength among his clan for the fact he could walk on Terra at all. It was this physical attribute that the Gibran blood had contributed, and as planned, it was also why he had been chosen as the Ofarn Ambassador to the Court of the Paternova. The plan had been to create an Ofar who was of Gibran descent to support House Gibran in the byzantine politics of the Quarter, but good breeding only went so far in determining the traits of an individual Navigator. In a society fond of high living and displays of wealth, Dovrian Ofar had a reputation as a rake, and so teetered alarmingly on the knife blade between asset and liability.

He was, however, good company, and he knew his drink. In his hand he carried an octagonal bottle of Europan salt brandy, a particular favourite of Gibran’s.

‘A gift to welcome you home.’

‘I will not be staying long in the Quarter,’ said Gibran. ‘There is too much to do.’ He waved his over-large hand at the piles of documents on his desk.

‘I can see.’ Dovrian’s exoskeleton hissed as he came closer. ‘May I? Terra’s pull is a burden on my limbs I haven’t yet grown accustomed to.’

Gibran nodded. Dovrian dragged over a chair and sat. ‘That is better. I miss the void.’

‘Me also, and my yearnings grow deeper of late.’ Gibran fetched two glasses and set them down in front of his cousin. ‘Come on then, pour. When I do not complete this work, I can blame you.’

‘Ah, I knew I had a use.’ Dovrian uncorked the brandy and poured it. The sharp, briny smell of it prickled Gibran’s tastebuds.

‘To your health.’ Dovrian raised his glass in salutation.

Gibran drank. The brandy was fine, very fiery and salty.

Dovrian put his own glass down untouched and topped up Gibran’s glass.

‘Drink up, cousin, you never know which will be your last day. These have been testing times for us all.’

‘Praise the Emperor to that!’ said Gibran. He downed the brandy in one gulp and gasped appreciatively, a delightful tremor travelling up his spine from his stomach to his shoulders.

‘Any day these last months could have been your last, my last, the last day for everyone.’ Dovrian gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘We came this close.’ He held up his long, mutant’s fingers, thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart. He smiled again, equally without humour.

‘You are not drinking?’ said Gibran.

‘No. I am not drinking.’ He pushed the glass away from him with his long fingers. ‘Helad,’ he said after moment, ‘the Paternova is displeased.’

The glass paused at Gibran’s lips. ‘How displeased?’

The delightful tremor did not stop, but increased and turned painful. Gibran’s shoulder shook. He set the glass down on the desk. His hands trembled so much he knocked it over. It fell with a muffled thud on the thick carpet, staining it with the sticky liquid.

‘You have poisoned me!’

‘I have,’ said Dovrian.

‘But, but you cannot take my place.’

‘I can, and I will. Lord Vangorich has made a pact with the Paternova. It is settled.’

‘How… how did he speak with him without going through me?’ Gibran said. Seven hundred years of life and decades of staring into the warp had rendered him immune to fear, so he thought. He had been wrong.

Dovrian spread his hands apologetically. ‘I provided the conduit. It was a risk to me to even attempt it, but your performance has been so woeful I was confident of success. The price for my ascension is your death. I am sorry. I am fond of you. It is nothing personal.’

‘You traitor, you…’ Gibran reached under his desk with weak hands for his pistol. The holster was empty. His throat constricted. He stood, his legs almost buckling.

‘Why?’ he croaked. ‘Your strain is not even gravity adapted. Living here will kill you.’

‘You are gravity adapted, but life here has still killed you.’

‘Your every day will be agony.’

‘Perhaps, but I am marooned here anyway. You made me to suffer. Power will dull my pain.’

Gibran spluttered and choked. He could barely breathe. ‘Erdacian. Erdacian!’ His voice was a painful whisper.

With the last of his strength he stumbled drunkenly towards the doors, forcing them open by falling against them. He staggered out onto the balcony. It was empty. His servants had deserted him.

Choking on frothing sputum that tasted of blood, Helad Gibran fell to the floor. Dovrian stood over him. Gibran tugged with nerveless fingers at his warp eye cover, hoping to reveal it and blast Dovrian with the fell energies it contained. But the scarf would not come loose, and his hand ceased to obey his brain. He slid to the floor, his limbs loose as string.

‘I am now the Paternoval Envoy to the Senatorum Imperialis,’ said Dovrian. ‘The youngest in all history. Can you imagine?’

Gibran was past hearing. Dovrian stepped over his twitching corpse. A new world order was dawning.

Juskina Tull sat limply in her bedchamber as her handmaid Anastay brushed her hair. She no longer took pleasure in the murals on her walls. Representing four-fifths of Imperial territory, they were huge spacescapes, the nebulae and planetary systems on them gleaming by cunning means, each celestial body shifting as the hours of the day passed to represent their position in the heavens relative to one another. Where perspective and positioning permitted a view of the stars as they were seen from Terra, fanciful beasts curled around the points of light, drawn from the dozens of zodiacs dreamed up across the ages. Humanity had always looked to the stars and dreamed, even in the worst of times. At night, when she lay in bed, the murals made it seem as if she floated through space. It had been a marvellous feeling.

If she wished, she could call up the positions of Chartist ships in the areas depicted, so the murals served a purpose partway between art and strategic tool. She had always preferred them as art, spending long hours staring into abyssal depths, picking out the stars of the worlds she had visited. It was her meditation, her way of purging the cares of the day and focusing on what she was, the mistress of the free merchant fleets of the Imperium.

Now they gave her only shame. The dark between the pinpricks of distant suns held an unquenchable terror, and yet still she could not stop looking.

Her nights were full of the screams of dying men and women, crushed upon the ork attack moon. She hadn’t been on the surface, but she could imagine. During the day her mind was troubled by flashes of bloodied faces and screaming orks. She had been one of the lesser players of the great Imperial game, but an enthusiastic one. No more. Her mind was numbed with horror. She stifled a sob.

Anastay ran the brush through her hair.

‘Hush, mistress, be still, be calm. We are nearly done. Am I hurting you?’

Tull wanted to speak, but she was deep in sorrow. She shook her head mutely.

‘Put aside your cares then.’

Hiss, hiss, shush shush, went the brush.

‘I have done such a terrible thing,’ Tull said softly.

‘Hush. Do not dwell on it.’

‘I do not sleep.’

‘Heavy are the burdens of power,’ said Anastay.

Tears welled from Tull’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. ‘I failed in my responsibility. I overreached. I have embarrassed my adeptus, and caused the loss of millions of lives. All so that ork could laugh at us, and that horrible face in orbit…’ She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Anastay set the brush down on the table and came around Tull’s front. She grabbed Tull’s wrists gently and pulled them away from her face. Anastay was very old.

‘Do not be sad, you have much to live for. You shall recover. You are strong, and beautiful.’

Tull smiled through her tears. ‘Not now.’

‘You could be old like me. Better to stay beautiful forever.’

‘That is impossible.’

‘Then enjoy it now, before it fades. In time, you will be old and wrinkled as I.’ Anastay gently pushed Tull around so that she faced the mirror above her dressing table. ‘See, such fine hair, not grey. Such perfect skin and bone structure.’

Tull looked into the mirror. The contrast between the lady and her servant was striking, horribly so. She imagined becoming that repulsive. The truth was that Tull was almost certainly many years older than Anastay, but anti-gerontic drugs and rejuvenat therapies could not stave off age forever.

‘My father was a remembrancer, did you know that?’ said Anastay.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Tull.

‘He was very fond of ancient history. Really ancient history, the cultures of Roma and Nihon from the first and second millennia. Do you know, in ancient times, when a warrior or official failed, they would kill themselves? They would take their gun, or their sword, poison, or a razor and they would end their lives, just like that. They must have been very brave to do that, I always thought, to banish dishonour with their own sacrifice.’

‘Yes, they must.’ Her eyes strayed to a drawer in her table. Inside was her pistol, unworn for many years since she had left active service. The drawer was open a crack. She didn’t remember taking out her gun. She had not for a long time.

‘My lady,’ said Anastay, putting her hands on Tull’s shoulders. ‘It is better to be strong, to face your failures and overcome them, to rise to the challenge that disgrace presents us, and prove ourselves better.’

‘But I am not strong,’ said Tull. ‘I was, but I am not any more.’ She put her hand over Anastay’s. It was hot and soft.

‘Then you must be brave,’ said Anastay. She squeezed Tull’s hand. ‘I shall draw your bath, my lady.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tull. ‘You have always been a great comfort to me.’

Anastay departed, leaving Tull alone below the shifting, hololithic skies.

Thane, the Lord Guilliman, had accused her directly of incompetence. She had had faith in the Emperor, she had trusted He would aid her in her crusade. He had not. Mesring had had no faith either, and that had dismayed her. But Thane was no follower of the Imperial Creed. The Adeptus Astartes were gross deformations of the human form, but they were made by the Emperor Himself. How stupid she had been. Thane was right, he was closer than she could ever be to the Emperor. Gods could not help them, mankind should help itself. Where she had thought she had faith, she had exhibited a child’s belief in the infallibility of her parents, nothing more.

She looked at the drawer. She was naive, foolish. She had nothing more to offer. Perhaps she had enough strength left in her to be brave.

The drawer slid out easily. Her pistol lay in a cavity fitted perfectly to its form. It was nothing exotic, a simple laspistol, but of great value to her. It had been a present from her father when she took command of her first ship. The gun was expensive, of course, chased with iridescent gold etched with looping patterns.

Her trembling fingers brushed it. Dishonour, that was the word Anastay had used. She pulled the gun from the drawer. The feel of its weight in her hand and the smoothness of the rosewood butt brought back memories. Most were good, proud moments. All they did was make the shame of the present seem sharper.

She thumbed on the power. The battery indicator ticked up from red through to green. Funny. Her father always bought the best, but she would have thought the battery would have run flat during its time in the drawer.

Many guilty lives had been claimed by the pistol. Mutinous crewmen, pirates, xenos raiders. What was one more? The muzzle was cool on her temple. Anastay would not hear the shot over the thundering of the bath water. Tull hoped someone else found her. The handmaid had been the closest thing she had to a friend.

The stars shifted above. Once more she took pleasure in their beauty. She smiled before she squeezed the trigger.

Her skull muffled the discharge.

In the ablutorial down the hall, the bath ran and ran until it overtopped, spilling water and flower petals upon the floor.

Anastay had returned to her temple, her mission complete.

The Tower of Autumn was inconspicuous as the spires of Terra went. A bastion swallowed by the rebuilding of the city a thousand years ago, it no longer served a defensive purpose. Being too hallowed to be given over to other uses, it remained as a dusty monument to the siege of the Imperial Palace.

Verreault grimly looked up from its loopholes. Not far away was the Widdershins Tower, and the Cerebrium at its summit.

‘Come away from the window,’ said Lansung.

‘No one will see me.’

‘I don’t like it. I don’t like you staring up there. Vangorich has been using it as his personal lair, I hear. Skulking in there when he thinks no one is watching. He has been for some time. I’ll bet it is crowded with listening devices and vid-capture units.’

‘Probably. Certainly,’ said Verreault. ‘Does it matter? Did you ever use it?’

‘No. Mesring did, I think. Do I look so foolish?’

‘We have all been foolish to let that snake slither into our company,’ said Verreault. ‘He sat among us as if he were a member of the High Twelve until he was actually made one. He’s always been there, poking and prodding.’

‘Imagine if we’d have given Rosarind, Mendem, Hardiman or any of the other lesser High Lords the same access.’

‘We wouldn’t,’ said Verreault. The Cerebrium was featureless through the ever-present smog of Terra. Faceless as an assassin, he thought.

‘Abel, come away from the window, please!’ said Lansung.

Verreault sighed but relented. He limped over to the table where Lansung sat. It was made of iron, circled by nine seats to represent the nine loyalist primarchs of the Heresy war. None were designed to be sat in. They were oversized and bolted to the ground too close to the table. He lowered himself into one anyway, wincing as he bent his bad knee.

‘Neither of us are getting any younger,’ said Verreault. ‘I should retire.’

‘I am more concerned with neither of us getting any older,’ said Lansung irritably. ‘Retiring won’t save you from Vangorich’s killers. In making him Lord Protector, Thane might as well have handed him a license for our executions.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t maybe me, Abel. You wouldn’t be here if you thought your head safe.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘This is not the Senatorum. We have no room for equivocation. Stop the maybes and the perhapses. You must commit. Are you with me or are you not?’

‘Yes, yes. Of course I am.’ Verreault gave his ally — friend was too much of a stretch for Lansung — a reassuring nod. ‘Keep your head, man.’

‘Damn it!’ Lansung slapped his hat upon the table; it was an artisan’s cap. Both of them were disguised as commoners, though they bore arms no common man could possibly possess. A cloud of dust rose to sparkle in the dirty sunlight. ‘All this, all these years of service to be accused of treachery. What do the Adeptus Astartes know of governance? They are killers. It is all they know.’

‘Where is Ekharth?’ said Verreault. ‘Shouldn’t he be here by now?’

Lansung pulled a pocket chronograph out. ‘He is late. I advised him to take a circuitous route. He will have become lost. I’ve never seen him without a dozen servants. The man’s hopeless.’

‘Vangorich may have got to him already.’

‘He’ll be here,’ said Lansung.

They had nothing more to say. The raucous noise of Terra’s traffic and industry rumbled in through the unglazed loopholes. The smell of their own fear settled in the room. The Autumn Tower had seen fierce fighting. Many heroes had been made there. Verreault offered a private apology to their ghosts for his own cowardice.

The door creaked. Lansung half leapt from his chair, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Verreault drew his bolt pistol.

‘Ekharth?’

The door squealed wide. A breathless Ekharth, smeared in rust and dust, came through it.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ said Lansung, eyes widening at the Master of the Administratum’s dirty finery. ‘What if you were followed?’

Ekharth laughed through his panting at their disguises. ‘Do you think playing dress up would help us?’

‘Did you come alone?’ said Verreault. He kept his bolt pistol in his hand.

‘I did, I did. I got a little lost,’ said Ekharth. ‘One is not used to arranging one’s own affairs.’

‘Sit! We lack for time,’ said Lansung.

‘I have guessed why you wish to see me.’ Ekharth sat, equidistant from the other two so they formed the points of a triangle.

‘Vangorich,’ said Verreault. His voice strangled on the name.

‘His appointment is dangerous, I agree,’ said Ekharth.

‘He forces our hand,’ said Lansung. ‘Vangorich seeks to govern in all but name. He has threatened us to win our support. Our entourages were infiltrated. Assassins disguised as our closest bodyguards have been at our sides for the Emperor alone knows how long. Months.’

‘Years, even, Lansung. We should not underestimate him,’ said Verreault.

‘We should not!’ said Ekharth. He panicked. ‘Has he done the same to me? Are my family all right? I… I must go.’

‘Calm down, Tobris. Stay seated.’

‘He will have similar plants in all the High Lords’ households.’

‘Even Wienand’s, even the Navigator’s,’ said Ekharth. His eyes boggled. Sweat beaded his face.

‘Definitely. His men are everywhere,’ said Verreault.

‘You are sure?’

‘We have seen it. Their faces melted and changed in front of us,’ said Lansung. ‘Polymorphine.’

‘I saw it too,’ said Verreault. ‘He has used the threat of them to garner our support.’

‘I had wondered why you voted with him recently,’ said Ekharth. ‘What are you proposing?’

‘Like any enemy, he must destroyed,’ said Lansung.

‘Killed,’ said Verreault.

‘Assassinate the Assassin? Are you sure?’ said Ekharth.

‘We have no other choice,’ said Lansung. ‘Our adepta have their own killers. Vangorich has no monopoly on death.’

Ekharth’s face changed in an instant, from panic to laughter. He opened his mouth wide and laughed so loudly the chamber rang with the sound of it.

‘He’s gone insane,’ said Verreault. ‘I knew we shou—’

An overpowered laspistol went off, the displacement crack muffled by a megathule modulator. Verreault fell face forwards onto the table. As he died, his fingers tightened, sending a bolt shooting past Ekharth’s head. It buried itself in the wall and exploded, scattering a spray of hot iron. Ekharth did not flinch at the impact. Lansung shrank in on himself, hands upraised.

Ekharth stood, laspistol trained upon Lansung in a rock steady grip, though a fragment of shrapnel hissed in the skin over his eye.

‘You are not Ekharth,’ said Lansung.

‘My, my. The people mutter about your idiocy. I had thought them wrong, it is the way of the ruled to rail against rulers. It appears they were not. Obviously, I am not Ekharth. Stand up.’ The man who was not Ekharth jerked his gun. ‘Move. Take my place here.’

‘And if I do not?’

‘I’ll shoot you and then drag you here. If you want to survive this, I advise you to comply. Move, Lord High Admiral.’

‘This is treason! Vangorich cannot hope to get away with this.’ Lansung stood up, his hands over his head.

‘I believe he can, though what I think doesn’t matter. I am a tool. He is the artist. Now sit.’

The Assassin waved Lansung into the chair. Still covering the Lord High Admiral, he walked around the table, took up Verreault’s bolt pistol in his left hand and crouched down to the level of the table. When he pointed the bolt pistol at Lansung, it was situated exactly where it would have been had Verreault been alive and still holding it.

‘What are you doing?’ said Lansung, his face blanching.

‘From your own lips you condemn yourselves. There is no escape from this. You are to die a traitor, Lord High Admiral.’

Lansung rose from the chair. ‘You said I would survive!’

‘I implied you would. Goodbye.’ The Assassin fired. Lansung’s protests went unsaid. The bolt-round hit him in the heart, obliterating the organ and with it, the life of Lord High Admiral Lansung.

The Assassin sprayed the guns with a geneticide that wiped all trace of his use of them away. He waited for the chemical agent to become inert, then placed the guns into the hands of the two dead High Lords. Then he peeled off the thin layers of flesh-coloured synskin that covered his arms to the elbow, placed them in a loophole and set them alight with a melta beam, burning them twice so that only fine ash remained. He blew this away to join the rest of the particulate matter clogging Terra’s skies. They’d find no fyceline discharge on him now, if they dared to look.

He ruffled his hair, hyperventilated to redden his face, then keyed his vox-button. Ekharth’s servants waited for him at the foot of the tower.

‘Help! Help!’ he said in Ekharth’s voice. ‘High Lords Lansung and Verreault have murdered each other!’

Chapter Ten

Krule’s judgement

Beast Krule observed the street from a stanchion of a monorail, crushed into the space between bracket and trackbed that allowed the rail to flex on its pneumatic suspension, although a carefully placed block of adamantium prevented it from doing so for the time being. Apart from a slightly bumpy ride for the commuters riding between the Archive Menorum and their tribal hab-towers, there was no indication Krule was there, down in the underhive of the Antipodean Minoris region. He was shielded from the street by the architecture of the transit line and from augurs by the electricity sputtering from the monorail’s fraying cables.

It was extremely uncomfortable, but comfort had never been a consideration in an Assassin’s career. Lurking had been his lot in life. Even while monitoring traffic in Tashkent Hive, he had been watching unobserved. If there was a time in his life when he hadn’t hidden, he didn’t remember it. The Venenum Temple had been dark. When he hadn’t been training to fight or to poison, he had been training to hide. That was his role, to hide and strike in close and depart, and he was good at it.

The land here had been mountainous before it had been covered over. Rather than level the peaks, the architects of the hive had simply boxed them in, creating this small underworld. The metal sky of the higher levels pressed down hard on the mountain stumps. An angle of stone and filthy metal defined the boundary of the underhive. Ancient structures from the dawn of mankind’s history slumped against the giant supporting columns of the hive above. Rotting rockcrete slums closed in his perceptions to this one dirty street, washed by effluent rain and frequented by nobody he would like to meet. He had been waiting a very long time, and Krule was getting nervy.

Ordinarily, Krule asked no questions about a particular play, beyond those that would help him refine the mission. This time there was a question that niggled him as he waited in that noisome space.

Why did Vangorich want Vernor Zeck dead? Vangorich confided a lot in Krule, but not everything. Krule had seen how ineffectual the High Lords had become, he understood Vangorich’s frustration. But why Zeck? Zeck had been no worse than the others, and in Krule’s estimation, he had been a sight better than most of them. Most of the High Lords were either good at running their adepta but not very good at politics, or the reverse. Zeck was among maybe three of the High Twelve that were good at both. The Grand Provost Marshal did not take much for himself in the way of riches and prestige. He did his duty, in fact, he did more. He took as much interest in the local Arbitrators of Terra as he did in the more prestigious, star-spanning lawgivers of the Adeptus Arbites. The fact that Krule was watching over some run-down sub-precinct at the back end of the world, and not stalking the halls of a palace, was proof of that.

A facility for the common touch and an interest in all levels of his organisation might not be the only reasons Zeck was there. It could also signify something else; it could be proof that Zeck knew he was being watched. Better to be attacked surrounded by seasoned urban warfare specialists than soft servants in the high hives. If that was the case, then Krule’s gambit here was not going to work. He was going to have to go in and finish the job personally.

Zeck’s private vehicle waited outside the sub-precinct, protected by four Adeptus Arbites armoured suppression transports. It had been on the curb for hours. That was the first issue provoking Krule’s nerves. The second was the inexorable train of thought that thundered through his mind as often as the monorails shuttling dead-eyed scribes between the only two buildings they’d ever see.

It went like this. If Zeck was judged worthy of termination, a fate Krule thought he did not deserve, then why not all the High Lords? And if all the High Lords were in line for assassination, then the reason Krule was here might be that his own specialisation best equipped him to deal with the massively augmented Grand Provost Marshal. But it could also be that Vangorich wanted Krule out of the way while his grand plan played out. That was bad news, because it meant Vangorich had lost his trust in his favoured weapon.

Vangorich’s trust was not something Krule wished to lose. If Vangorich was shutting him out, it would be a short step to shutting him down.

He returned his attention to the mission. There was only the mission, he had been taught that since his earliest years. There was no higher authority than the Grand Master. He repeated this to himself until it made a nonsensical babble in his mind, and yet his doubts grew stronger.

What if Vangorich wanted him dead too?

The sound of a poorly maintained door sliding open drew his attention back to the sub-precinct. Krule held up his magnoculars to his eyes. A man who looked very much like the Grand Provost Marshal got into his private transport. A second later, this same man was comprehensively gassed by the toxin microdevice Krule had secreted in its chassis. Green fog billowed from the vehicle, corroding everything it touched.

As alarms blared the length of the street and Arbitrators flooded from the building, Krule reviewed the pict capture of his magnoculars. The man was too broad, too short; only by millimetres, but there it was. The heat pattern of his organics did not match the data files contained in the magnoculars.

That was not Zeck.

Screeching tyres sounded up the road. An armoured speedster sent up clouds of blue smoke as it burned synthrubber on the potholed hardtop. Someone was panicking.

‘That is Zeck,’ said Krule.

He unfolded himself from his hiding place and dropped six metres to the ground. He yanked a piece of scrap plasteel from the side of the monorail pylon, uncovering a high-powered motorbike.

Less than a second later, he was in pursuit, Arbitrators shouting and firing ineffectually as he roared off after the speedster.

The light car raced along the underhive streets at breakneck speed, hurtling down the road, driving straight at piles of garbage and blasting them apart. The speedster took a right-angle turn down a narrow lane into a slum. Filthy shacks squatting in the ruins of dead civilisations were shattered by the ground car’s prow. The dispossessed scattered in every direction. Krule jinked around them skilfully. The driver was good, but no one was as good as Krule.

The speedster accelerated towards a bridge over a riverbed dry of water for dozens of centuries. The rusting supports of the bridge whipped past. To the left was an ancient seabed, the braided marks of the dead river’s outflow still visible under cluttered piles of junk. A little further out, where the seabed flattened, the hive bottom rested directly on Terra’s rock. A wall of plasteel higher than a cliff hurried the horizon near. Dirty windows looked over the stone and filth of Terra’s true self.

In the bottom of the wall was a neglected transit tunnel edged with dirty hazard striping. Placards indicated it led to the upper levels of the Nozaylant hive. No one in the underhive was wealthy enough to own private transportation, and no one from above would want to go there. The road was as empty of traffic as the river was of water, its toll gates derelict.

Sensing escape, the driver accelerated the speedster. Krule opened the throttle on the bike, sending it hurtling after with an animal roar that reverberated around that small metal hell. The car approached the tube. Krule depressed a button on his bike’s handlebar, sending a compact rocket streaking from the front fairing. It hit the car’s rear-right wheel just as it was nearing the tunnel and blasted the wheel free, sending it burning and bouncing off the abandoned road into a cluster of ruins that must have been twenty thousand years old if they were a day. The car bucked, slewing off the road, and impacted with a fatal crunch into the edge of the tunnel. Krule decelerated. He drew his pistol and leapt off the bike, leaving its machine-spirit autodrive to take it away from him.

He rolled as he landed, coming up with both hands on the gun. His sleeveless, skintight mission suit was covered in filth from his wait. His hair itched. Krule was not in a good mood.

The flames of ruptured fuel cells burst from the car’s engine compartment. A pathetic machine whining came from its on-board systems, the sound of a terrified prey animal.

He went to the driver’s station first. The windows were opaque from the outside, and he couldn’t see in. Holding his pistol in one hand, he punched his adamantium-reinforced fists through the window, grabbed the door and ripped it free. A man who can rip a car door off, he thought, and I was helpless against the orks of Ullanor.

Krule realised he was allowing his frustrations of the last months to distract him, and that nearly cost him his life. He was too slow putting a frozen needle of toxin into the head of the driver.

The rear door of the car burst off in a shower of glass. Krule turned as it flew through the air and landed with a bang on the road, dragging a trail of sparks from the rough surface. That delay could not be regained. Half a second, but that brief span of time would have enabled him to fill Zeck with toxin needles if he hadn’t been thinking about orks.

Zeck’s bionic hand slapped Krule’s gun hard, breaking it and sending it wheeling through space to be lost in the detritus of man’s forgotten past.

‘Krule. The Grand Master’s pet,’ said Zeck. He hauled himself from the wreck of the car and the remnants of his uniform fell burning from his body. His torso, exposed, revealed how much of Vernor Zeck’s original body remained, and it was a low proportion of the whole. All of his left side had been replaced with banded plasteel, from below his sternum to the tips of his fingers. His right arm possessed a little more of his birth organics, being augmetic only below the shoulder. Both of his legs were mechanical. The few patches of skin uncovered by metal were livid with fresh burns. Zeck appeared not to feel them.

‘I will not fall to that serpent.’ Zeck wrenched a piece of metal from the car and threw it at Krule’s head.

Krule dodged, put himself into a guard position and backed away as Zeck advanced.

‘Traitor!’ roared Zeck. ‘You would slay a High Lord?’

He charged at Krule. The Assassin sidestepped. Zeck’s fist punched a blow into the rockcrete road that would have shattered a man’s ribcage to mince.

‘I have been ordered to terminate you. My wishes don’t come into it.’

‘A man who obeys orders without thought is as much a traitor as one who thinks treason for himself. Your master would usurp the rule of the Imperium. You are as culpable as he.’

‘I’ve been given orders only to kill you,’ said Krule. He shouldn’t talk to his marks, but his misgivings were resurfacing.

Zeck swung again. Krule ducked the blow. A grinding sound came from Zeck’s left knee. The crash had done its damage.

‘Then surely you must care for your own life as much as you do for your duty,’ said Zeck. ‘Vangorich will end you once this is over.’

Krule paused. Zeck spoke Krule’s own thoughts aloud.

Zeck’s fist pounded into Krule’s chest. The metal in his ribs flexed, cracking the bone it was bonded to, and he was sent staggering back. Zeck laughed and drew back his fist. Krule caught it in his own hands, twisted, straightened the Grand Provost Marshal’s arm into a lock. Servo-motors whined as he pushed, but Krule’s musculature was as enhanced as his skeleton, and slowly he forced Zeck to the ground.

‘The problem with this model of augmetic is that although it is very strong, the shoulder attachments are quite weak in this one direction,’ said Krule, and slammed the heel of his hand hard into Zeck’s shoulder. Zeck roared in pain. He swatted at the Assassin with his free hand, but Krule took the blows, and he pushed harder and harder.

With a wrenching crack, Zeck’s left arm buckled around the joint. The plasteel ruptured. Wires fizzed and the arm fell limp. Krule released it. The Provost Marshal staggered to his feet, but Krule spun and kicked hard at his weakened knee joint, shattering it, and Zeck fell to the ground again.

‘When I put someone down, they stay down, Zeck.’ He lifted his metal-bonded fists and prepared to deliver the final blow.

‘Wait! Wait!’ cried Zeck. ‘You paused. You know he will kill you.’

‘We’ve all got to die sometime,’ said Krule.

‘But why like this, in dishonour? What of your oaths of loyalty?’

‘I owe my loyalty to the Grand Master, no other man.’

‘That is untrue! You owe your loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind, not to Drakan Vangorich. Think, Krule! Your Officio is a check on the others. But where is the check on the Assassins? Vangorich has gone rogue. Is this how you want to spend your life? Murdering those who disagree with Vangorich? He doesn’t need to do this. Thane appointed him Lord Protector. His only reason can be that he wishes to rule alone.’

Krule lowered his hands.

‘You see it!’ Zeck said, encouraged. He pulled himself up, resting on his good knee. ‘You’ve got to stop him, Krule. You’re the only one who can get close to him. The rest of us are finished. If he has sent you after me, the most loyal of the Emperor’s servants, then not one of the High Lords will see the week out.’

‘I think that’s why I’m here,’ said Krule. ‘He sent me away. He guessed I wouldn’t agree.’

‘And you discover this now?’

‘I am not as intelligent a man as Drakan Vangorich, do you think he’d have me around if I were?’ Anger rose up in him. He shook his head and began to pace. ‘It won’t work. I’m next on his list. I better disappear.’

‘You’ve got to try. If he takes over the Imperium, it will be a disaster. No one man can rule. Finish his reign before it begins and call back the Lord Guilliman. You will be a hero.’

‘Do you think I care about fame, heroism? Do you think I want a statue?’ Krule laughed. ‘I’m an Assassin!’

‘Then think about the future of the human race. If you don’t care about that, then what have you been killing for? You’re nothing but a monster.’

Krule stepped back. The ruined face of Zeck remained awkwardly upturned. Zeck looked like the monster, not he. But true monstrousness was worn on the inside, the way Horus and his brothers had hidden their treachery. Krule might get away and live a life on some backwater world, always looking over his shoulder. That would make him no better than Vangorich, complicit in his treachery by his refusal to act.

‘All right. All right. I can’t face going back to Tashkent anyway. I’ll act the loyal attack dog and then I’ll bite him hard. But I need proof I killed you. It’s the only way he’ll swallow the lie and let me get near to him.’

‘Take what you need,’ Zeck said. The relief in his voice was palpable.

‘You’re not going to like it.’ Krule pulled out a monofilament garrote from his utility belt.

‘Wait! Stop! There must be another way.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Krule, ‘but I’m going to need your head.’

Chapter Eleven

Red Haven

Saskine Haast walked into the great stores of the palace of the Fabricator General. Servitors clomped about, mindlessly performing whatever it was they were programmed to do. Whenever she saw an adept, she ducked out of sight until they had passed. They were no one of any consequence, but such low-ranking people tended to be insufferable busybodies, taking such pride in their inconsequential work that they would report the slightest thing out of place. They bemused Haast. She could understand it if they behaved so for favour, but she had spent some time now among the servants and bondsmen of the palace, and most of them appeared to lack any iota of ambition. They had been extremely hard to hide among, and she had come close to discovery. She checked her impatience. So close to being freed from the tedious role that had been forced upon her, she was in danger of making a mistake.

The palace’s store was immense, and stocked with all manner of things. There were those tech-priests who still ate, and so there was room after room of hyper-chilled larders. The machine as well as the flesh of such creatures needed sustenance, and so there were also kilometres of shelving taken up with chemical drums and vats of elixirs, spare parts and raw materials. These items for the maintenance of Kubik’s extensive household did not interest her. She needed the deeper stores. Kubik’s personal laboratory was incorporated into the palace and it was served by its own complex of receptaculae. Beyond them were the cavernous cellae, where treasures from all over the Martian empire were kept: rare technologies, organisms and resources. But what she needed was closer to hand.

She followed stairs down into the chemical stores of the palace, passing huge tanks full of liquids and silos of powder. She checked the location of the object on her data-slate and slowed. She was getting close.

She halted at a long row of identical cylinders, taller than two men and held in frames of yellow metal embellished with castings of the Machina Opus. She searched out the datastamps at the top of each one, the laser reader on her slate bipping as it scanned the patterns of binaric lines and dots. They were full of pressurised methalon, all but one.

‘001100011110,’ she said, and double-checked the number sent to her by Mariazet Isolde. This was it. The cylinder was sealed and must be cut open. If the information was wrong, she’d be doused in supercooled liquid and suffer an agonising death. She did not hesitate, and produced a lascutter from inside her stolen robes. It was then, lascutter in hand, that she was interrupted.

‘01-Devore, what by the Omnissiah are you doing down here?’

Saskine Haast tensed at the high, piping voice of Vorid Chume, Kubik’s steward.

‘This is not your designated place of service. Please submit immediate summary report as to your last movements. Today and yesterday will suffice.’

‘I regret I cannot, master,’ Haast said humbly, secreting the lascutter in her sleeve.

‘Hmmm, your binharic projector is still non-functional?’

‘Yes, my master.’

Chume glided down the aisle, his long, serpentine fingers entwining with one another and disengaging repetitively. ‘Really, it is two months! This is most irregular. I will look into it myself. Tell me then verbally why you are here.’

‘I am awaiting a delivery of replacement parts for the master’s somnarium, steward,’ she said.

‘You will not find them here! You are very far from the correct store.’

‘I am lost, master,’ she said, feigning embarassment.

Chume was not deceived. His green glass augmetic eyes whirred as they focused on her face.

‘You are lying!’ he said. ‘This is modus unbecoming. You shall be reported and dealt with. You are in a high security area. This is an offence punishable by mind wipe. I am summoning the palace guard.’

‘If you must.’

Chume let out a shrill squeal as Haast cast off her cloak, revealing a supple, synskin-clad body underneath. She activated the lascutter and slashed it across Chume’s throat. His squeal became a gurgle, and he fell down, spraying artificial blood and lubricant.

An alarm sounded some way off.

‘Throne,’ said Haast. She turned to the cylinder and set to work.

Tybalt the Abolitiate dwelt in darkness. He dreamed no dreams. For him, there were periods of death with peaceful nothing inbetween.

The time for peace was over.

He came awake, activated by the last of his shouted trigger words. Warm liquid flushed around him, carrying methalon suspension fluid from his casket out of drains at the bottom. His body temperature rose quickly. He flexed his hand. The neurogauntlet’s five claws ticked on glass. He reached for his thigh where his executioner pistol was holstered and drew it.

His casket was at an angle. Light from its regulating machinery bathed his skull-masked face, supplementing the weak lumen-glow admitted by a gash in a metal surface where a triangle of plasteel had been peeled back. His casket was in a cylinder. He heard shouting, smelled blood, sensed the deadly prickle of radium ammunition.

Under his death’s head rictus, Tybalt grinned.

Insanity was the logical end result of a life like Tybalt’s, frenetic violence followed by enforced suspension. A normal man would not have survived long, but Tybalt was far from normal. It was not that his brain had been altered, or his body packed with implanted technology; what suited him to his role was not what had been done to him, but what he was. When Tybalt was born the sense of empathy human felt for fellow human was missing. Tybalt cared only for the suffering of others, not their tears or their stories. No smile could move him, only terror.

Tybalt had been born to kill. It was a trait the Assassinorum was only too glad to exploit.

Roaring like an animal, he drew back his gauntlet and thrust it forwards. The distance his fist travelled was minimal; the glass shattered anyway, destroyed by a combination of enhanced strength and carefully inculcated skill. Ripping and rending, he sliced the frame of his casket away, leaving its machines to die smoking. Shearing through the metal of the empty methalon cylinder, Tybalt climbed howling into the fray.

His emergence brought a moment of silence. A clade of elite skitarii gathered at each end of an aisle lined by cylinders. Haast was crammed in between two of the storage units. Bodies of cybernetic warriors that had strayed too close lay broken on either approach.

The targeting unit on Tybalt’s backpack rose up, its glassy eye taking in a 270-degree view of his surroundings and swivelling about to complete the picture. A miniature cogitator in the backpack calculated all attack vectors, ranking the opposing Martians in order of threat. Targeting reticules danced all over the faceplate screen of his skull helm. Combat stimulants pumped into his system in massive quantities, elevating his metabolism and mind to superhuman heights. The battle took a microsecond to observe, evaluate and process.

‘Eversor!’ said one of the skitarii. Their rifles opened fire again. Tybalt ran. He was fast, the low gravity of Mars made him faster. An inhumanly high leap sent him crashing among the cyborgs.

With his neurogauntlet flashing, Tybalt set about his deadly work.

Alarms blared all over Kubik’s palace. The sounds of battle grew nearer. Heavily armoured myrmidons enclosed the Fabricator General in a phalanx of steel-caged flesh as they hurried him from his apartments to the main gate, but he was not safe.

Lesser priests came running behind, shouting out status reports with emotionless efficiency. There were a dozen Assassins, one said; there are only two, said another. More broadcast frequent updates to the situation on Terra: the other High Lords were dead, and now Vangorich was coming for him.

An explosion rumbled beneath their feet. In its wake, masonry clattered. Dust blew on a chemical wind.

Kubik screeched angry orders in swift binharic, sending his servants scurrying away. He had been assured the remaining Assassins would be caught. They were not, and now they were in his palace. Those responsible for this failure would be rendered down to components, if he survived.

‘Prime of primes, we have an armoured transport waiting at the main gate,’ said the myrmidon lord, Primus-Ultra Gangovich. They marched down the great staircase of the palace, the weapons mounts of the myrmidons swivelling as they tracked potential ambush sites. By the open gates, Mechanicus troops of all kinds looked out, weapons ready.

‘The Fabricator General comes!’ a seneschal shouted. ‘Hail the Omnissiah!’

More cybernetic Martians joined Kubik’s group, shielding their high priest with their own flesh and metal. They swept towards the door. On the plaza outside, a clade of Onager Dunecrawlers squatted around a legged, armoured transport, waiting to bear Kubik away.

‘Get the prime to the walker!’ ordered Gangovich. Heavily armed skitarii poured out of the palace. Kataphron battle servitors rolled into position around the plaza. The walker’s door dropped and Kubik was hustled towards it.

When he was ten metres from the door, the walker exploded. Shrapnel scythed out, felling the lead elements of Kubik’s bodyguard. Others crowded around him as a shot rang out, striking down a myrmidon who had placed herself in front of Kubik barely in time. Another shot cracked across the plaza, and another myrmidon died. Its head removed, its body mindlessly stamped away.

Kubik’s enhanced mind went into overdrive. The scene was a total loss. Skitarii primes shouted orders. Weapons of the most potent sort blazed in every direction, but the shots kept coming, each a kill. The shooter moved constantly. Every time their position was located, they had gone, and another shot sounded. Kubik’s bodyguard were being whittled away fast.

‘My lord, this way!’ someone said. Arms and mechanical appendages pulled at him, dragging him back into the palace. A shot hit an Onager with an audible plink. A moment later the construct exploded, slaughtering dozens of the Omnissiah’s faithful.

‘We will take you to Port Fabricata,’ said Gangovich. ‘We must get you out of the palace.’

‘No!’ Kubik managed. They were in the hall again, away from the doors. Outside, the shrieking discharge of high-energy weapons carried on unabated. Kubik extricated himself from the manipulators of his would-be saviours. ‘I will go to the chamber of the diagnostiad. I will be safe there. It is inviolable.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ Gangovich said, and Kubik was again hustled away.

Kubik arrived in an antechamber to the diagnostiad by one-man bullet lift, whisked there through a depressurised transit tube. The palace was a long way away, and Kubik began to relax. Outside the diagnostiad, troops of all Mars’ many varieties mustered to protect the approach. Not only Kubik needed defence, but also the tech-priest choir who made up the core of the Martian world-mind.

A metre-thick wheel door separated the bullet lift from the diagnostiad. Disgengaging its complex security protocols calmed him. By the time the door rolled open again, he had begun to formulate a plan. He went into the great sphere, the door rumbling closed after him, and walked around the giant needle that housed the primary interface throne. The whispering voices of the hundreds of mind-linked tech-priests hissed on the air. Quiet. Safety. With a sigh, Kubik stooped. The weight of Mars was on him and he must know what occurred in the palace.

He attempted to open a datalink from his mind to the Martian noosphere. Nothing happened. Internal diagnostic checks indicated no malfunction in his augments. He went to a console embedded in the main gateway. He bent over it, and inserted a probe into an access socket. Immediately, he uncovered the problem.

There was but one conduit for the Motive Force and dataflow in and out of the chamber. Impossibly, somebody had put a block on it.

He retracted his mechadendrite from the console into his robe and made for the door. There was always a member of the Synod on duty there, watching over the machines.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said a voice behind him. ‘I got in here, don’t you think I would have taken the precaution of isolating you? He’s dead. It is a fine, fine place to hide, the diagnostiad. Only a couple of ways in, only one way out. And only one data line. A good idea of yours to come here, if only I hadn’t have been waiting.’

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ said Kubik. He turned to find the Grand Master of the Assassinorum behind him. ‘I am honoured. You came yourself.’

‘Well, you’re an important man, Fabricator General.’

Vangorich was wearing the robes of one of the muttering components of the diagnostiad. Kubik searched for an empty alcove. Sure enough, he found one. In Vangorich’s hand was a light needle pistol with an underslung plasma caster. It looked like something specifically devised to kill the master of Mars.

‘You knew I would do this,’ said Kubik. ‘That I would come here.’

‘Knew?’ said Vangorich. ‘I planned it! I am the Grand Master of Assassins, after all. One would hope such a person might be good at their job. But then, who can tell in these trying times? So few people seem to be fit for their office.’

‘You cannot kill me,’ said Kubik.

‘Can’t I? Your servants are distracted, and they are looking in the wrong place. We have plenty of time.’

‘Gloating before execution is the primary cause of failure of seven per cent of despots,’ said Kubik.

‘I’m not going to gloat,’ said Vangorich. ‘We’re going to talk. Actually, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen, but it’s not gloating.

‘You know, I was raised in Temple Venenum. We are a subtle Temple, not like the others with their guns and alien technology and psychotic super-warriors. Ours is more genteel, we follow the way of guile, of poison, though not exclusively so. Take Krule, I am sure you have heard of him. He is of my Temple. He prefers to use his fists, but I, I have always had an affection for poison. It is so discreet. Poison a man and he won’t even know he’s been murdered. You can change the course of a river with the careful removal of a stone. That is the Assassin’s task. With poison, nobody need ever know who moved it.’

‘How apt,’ said Kubik. He was using his emotionless machine voice. ‘You are poison, Vangorich, corrupting everything you touch.’

Vangorich smiled, pleased with the comparison. ‘I never had you for a dealer in metaphor, Fabricator General. I do like to think I am subtle, like poison, but I am no corrupter. I prefer to think of myself as a healer. Many poisons are medicine, only at too high a dose are they deadly.’

Kubik bleeped in indignation. ‘The removal of the Grand Master from the High Twelve was done for sound reasons. We were remiss to allow your reinstatement.’

‘You were right to bring me back. It should have been done sooner.’

‘So that you might install yourself as ruler?’

‘So that I might prevent the deaths of billions of Imperial citizens,’ said Vangorich. ‘I have not assassinated very many people myself for a long time, Kubik. I am going to make an exception for you. Of all the petty, self-serving, childish behaviour I have witnessed on the Senatorum Imperialis, yours has been the worst by far. I was willing to forget and forgive, move forward with the Senatorum and rule correctly according to the will of the Emperor, however hopelessly idealistic His plans were. But then you had to disobey Thane and move Ullanor. That is what set me on this course of action. In a way, you are responsible for the deaths of the High Lords. Before you made your last greedy error, I was planning on just bullying you all to work together, but you made me realise I’d be better off without the lot of you. I don’t know what I should have expected, I suppose. You did want to secede from the Imperium. I’m an optimist, that’s my problem.’

‘That which is not a part cannot secede.’

‘Semantics. Without the Imperium, the Empire of Mars is dead, and vice versa. We are one people, and that will not change no matter how many times you say otherwise. You are a High Lord of Terra, and you betrayed your office and your Emperor-Omnissiah many times over.’

‘You cannot kill me with impunity.’

‘I can,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’m going to give you a choice. Poison comes in many forms, and not all of it is deadly to living organisms. There are poisons for machines, too. When I sent Red Haven here, I had my infocyte Yendl secrete a dataphage in the Martian noosphere. Now, there are formidable defences in your data vaults, but we of Venenum are clever. The phage has had time to mature, to learn its enemy. It’s been there for months, gathering information to make itself as deadly as it possibly can be. The noosphere has become a home from home. Every lock and keyhole, window and door is known intimately to it.’

Kubik’s mechanical limbs twitched. ‘You will topple an empire to teach me a lesson. Vanity.’

‘Of course not,’ snorted Vangorich. ‘I’m outlining your options. The first is this. You do nothing, I shoot you in the head with this gun which carries a neurotoxin so potent it will burn out every last organic nerve remaining in your body, and then I release the phage into the world-core. It may result in the destruction of Mars as a functioning civilisation, or it may just destroy billions of terabytes of very valuable information. Either way, it is a circumstance you will want to avoid.’

‘And the other alternative?’

‘You voluntarily shut down. After giving me your intelligence core, of course. The thing is, I don’t want you around any more, Kubik, but I would rather that everyone else thinks you are still in charge. It’ll be easier for all concerned that way.’

‘You wish me to kill myself and acquiesce to a replacement who will take my identity?’

‘That’s it. You must ask yourself, what is more important to you — yourself, as an individual, or the continued existence of thousands of years of knowledge?’

Kubik made a strange sound, a flurry of bleeps and twittering. It took Vangorich a moment to realise that the Fabricator General was laughing.

‘You cannot succeed in this. Give yourself up, Vangorich. I assume you have succeeded in disposing of our colleagues on the Council. Stop here. You have rooted out the rot. My death will accomplish nothing.’

‘It will make me feel a lot better,’ said Vangorich. ‘I do so hate a traitor.’

He straightened his gun arm, levelling the pistol at Kubik, and held up a device in the other. ‘Give me your intelligence core, or I swear I will kill this world while you watch.’ Vangorich stared at Kubik, his thumb ready over a button that could wipe away the accumulated wisdom of millennia.

‘You are bluffing.’

‘I assure you I am not,’ said Vangorich. ‘And you cannot afford to assume I am.’

Kubik wilted. ‘You have me,’ he said finally. ‘You slight my loyalty to the Imperium and ask me to prove my loyalty to Mars. Here it is, then, the last act of a true servant of the Omnissiah.’

Kubik threw back his hood, revealing a head underneath made entirely of metal. He cast down his rod of office and depressed a panel on the side of his skull. A fingerwidth column rotated and withdrew from his head. He pressed out the centre of the column and held it out to Vangorich.

‘My intelligence core. The essence of who I am is encoded herein.’

Vangorich came forwards and took it. He passed it over a machine at his belt that beeped and shone green. Vangorich put the intelligence core in his pocket. ‘You are finally doing the right thing.’

‘You will pay for this, in time,’ said Kubik, his voice slurring.

‘Maybe I will, but you are paying for your sins first. Goodbye, Fabricator General,’ said Vangorich.

The indicator lights of Kubik’s augments dimmed and went out. His limbs folded in on each other and he slid gracefully to the floor.

When he was down, Vangorich filled him with toxin needles.

‘A man’s work is never done,’ said Vangorich. He strode from the muttering diagnostiad into a small chamber lined with cogitator banks. A single, immovable red glass eye stared out from their centre. Vangorich stood in front of it and leaned in.

‘Come on, Kubik, I knew about this last bolthole. I can’t have you exloading your consciousness once I’ve gone.’ He tutted. ‘Don’t you know non-organic intelligence is forbidden? This really is the end for you.’

Whistling a jaunty tune, Vangorich got down on his hands and knees and yanked wires out of the cogitators until they stopped working. Then he took out a compact melta bomb and set it to go off where the connections had been thickest.

Just to be sure.

Chapter Twelve

Voice from the past

The Medicae Heroum was eerily quiet and smelled of unguent and healing agents. Machine glow lit up the treatment bays punched into the wall. Of the twenty, three were occupied by injured Inquisitorial agents. Veritus was situated in the very last. Wienand trod carefully, wary of disrupting the calm of the ward. Tanks of brightly coloured fluids bubbled in decorative brackets. Her servo-skull escort floated behind her. A second detached itself from an alcove in the wall and floated to the first. Wienand paused as the two exchanged security codes. The medicae skull swung about. A compact augur embedded in the polished bone of its eye socket swept her up and down with a broad beam of red light. An arcane, psychically sensitive pict unit in the other eye took a snapshot of her soul. A mechadendrite whipped out and jabbed her with a needle. She winced as it drank her blood.

‘Wienand, Marguerethe A, genetic imprint confirmed,’ said the skull. ‘Aura imprint confirmed. Security clearance Ultima Black confirmed. Welcome, Lady Inquisitor.’ Its machine-spirit satisfied, the medicae servo-skull withdrew to its alcove. Nestled inside, it became just another part of the room’s decoration.

The Coroner General of the Inquisition himself treated Veritus. Dressed in severe black robes, he waited for Wienand at the foot of Veritus’ bed.

‘Lady Inquisitor,’ said the coroner.

‘How is he?’

‘He will be dead soon,’ the coroner said baldly. ‘There is nothing we can do. Vangorich was thorough with his poison. The Inquisitorial Representative’s body is undergoing cellular collapse. I have tried every sanctioned technique and treatment, and a few that are not. He does not have long. I have interred him in a stasis field at his request, because he wished to speak with you before the end. Alone. I am sorry, Representative.’

The Coroner General bowed his head and departed.

Through the blue shimmer of the stasis field, Veritus looked impossibly small and frail. His armour had been removed and he was swaddled in bright white sheets.

Hesitantly she shut off the field, knowing that in doing so she signed his death warrant. Wienand had seen many people die in the course of her duty. They had never troubled her. This one death of a man who had tried to kill her did.

The field vanished like ice from a heated window. Veritus drew in a long rasping breath. His mouth gaped and his eyes rolled before he settled himself.

‘Wienand?’

‘I am here, Veritus.’

Age had him firmly now. He appeared so ancient that he should not be alive, his skin sagging so much his skull was visible beneath it. But his mortal frame contained life yet, and he fixed rheumy eyes on her and smiled.

‘I half expected Vangorich.’

‘So you know it was him,’ she said.

‘The conclusion did not require a great leap of logic. How long have I been suspended?’

‘Five days,’ she said. ‘I came as quickly as I could. There have been complications.’

‘Vangorich has assassinated the rest of the High Lords.’

Wienand nodded. ‘Most of them. Lansung and Verreault were set up to look like they murdered each other. Their bodies were discovered by Ekharth, but it is probable he is an Officio Assassinorum plant. Sark and Anwar had their souls sucked out by a member of the Culexus Temple. Gibran was killed within the Navigators’ Quarter in what looks like an internal squabble between the Houses.’

‘Vangorich’s hand will have mixed that pot.’

‘I don’t doubt it. The same can be said of Tull’s death. She killed herself, but I believe she was encouraged. She had a longstanding servant who vanished the night of her death. Zeck was killed by Krule. Only Kubik seems to have escaped, and I cannot be sure if he has. He may have struck a deal with Vangorich, the Paternova certainly did, but Vangorich held Kubik and Lansung most responsible for the ork crisis. If I know him, he will have gone after the Fabricator General zealously. And there is, of course, you,’ said Wienand. She laced her hands behind her back and averted her eyes, uncomfortable at the emotion she was showing. Then she remembered that was a particular posture of Vangorich’s and put her hands at her side.

‘I make the full house. I expected him to move against me, I attempted to prevent it, but I underestimated his cunning,’ said Veritus.

‘The poison, how did he administer it to you?’

‘On the Potus Terrae, in the observation gallery. It was the only opportunity he had. My own quarters were hermetically sealed.’

‘But you drank no wine nor took anything else from his hand.’

‘You did,’ said Veritus, ‘and you live. The wine was not poisoned.’

‘The pressure leak,’ said Wienand. ‘But our servo-skulls detected nothing in the gas mix that should have caused you harm, and like the wine, I was exposed. I am still fine. I have been thoroughly examined.’

Veritus nodded weakly. His papery skin rasped on the crisp sheets. ‘The gas mix was non-toxic on its own, but it contained an agent that reacted with the compounds my suit produces for me to breathe. A single molecular binding altered my serums to a form indistinguishable from the benevolent variety, but enough to turn them deadly in my system. It reversed my anti-gerontic medicines, so they attacked my genetic code where they should have preserved. By the time I was ill enough to notice, the damage was irreparable. I am too old to recover from this.’ He laughed drily. ‘Vangorich is clever. He used what was keeping me alive to kill me.’

‘Then I am at risk too,’ said Wienand. She began to pace. ‘I should stay away from the Palace. If I take refuge here in the Inquisitorial Fortress I should be safe enough. From there, I can set the Inquisition to eliminating him.’

‘Not yet. You cannot kill him. You must let him live.’

‘What?’ said Wienand, ceasing her pacing in surprise.

‘Vangorich will have contingency plans, he will have a means to govern. We have none. Remove him now, and civil war will engulf the Imperium. His cover-ups may look sloppy to us, but the doubt they will sow means nobody will trust anybody else. Succession struggles will tear the adepta apart. At this time in history, it will result in the dissolution of the dominion of man, and an end to our species. You must come to an arrangement with him.’

‘He will kill me.’

‘He will not. Wienand, he does not want you dead. I had the wine tested. It contained an antidote.’

‘But the poison was tailored to you, I was not at any risk.’

‘He went out of his way to protect you. Wienand, he has affection for you. You must work with him, for the time being. You are his weakness. He respects you, but his personal feelings cloud his judgement.’

‘I know how he feels,’ she said softly. ‘He would kill me regardless.’

‘He would. So you must not give him any reason to. You must bide your time. Convince him you are sincere in your support, only then will you be able to strike.’

‘That might take years,’ said Wienand.

‘Then so be it. Stability and continuity are what we need now. Let Thane have his Founding and the worlds of the Imperium rebuilt. Only through strength can we resist tyranny, and now we are weak.’

‘You don’t agree with what he has done, do you?’

‘Do you?’ countered Veritus. ‘Both of us have spoken of removing the High Lords in the past, though they rule by fiat of the Emperor Himself.’

Wienand thought a moment. ‘I cannot agree with his actions. He behaved unilaterally. Thane effectively made him regent of the Imperium. He did not need to go so far.’

‘In my opinion it was Thane’s appointment that emboldened him to do so.’ Veritus drew in a sharp, painful breath. He did not have long. Wienand knelt by his side.

‘His plan was to have you be Lord Protector, not he, or so he told me.’

‘A lie or a truth, it doesn’t matter. If I had been appointed, Vangorich would have dangled an antidote to the poison in front of me. He would have taken measures to ensure I didn’t refuse it. The only material difference is that he rules openly rather than manipulating events as he planned, and you are in the position I would have been in, supporting him for fear of something worse. I apologise for that, it is a heavy burden.’ Veritus paused a moment, coming to a decision. A fresh resolution. ‘Wienand, I must tell you things now that no other person alive knows.’

‘You have more secrets?’ she said.

‘My secrets have secrets,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Vangorich may have the best interests of the Imperium at heart, but he will fail. No man can rule the Imperium alone. You must keep the Inquisition independent until this episode is over. Remain vigilant against corruption. No one is immune. I have seen how Chaos can take the best of us. I was there on the Vengeful Spirit when the Luna Wolves were corrupted from within.’

‘The Vengeful Spirit? The Luna Wolves?’ Wienand frowned. ‘The Warmaster Horus’ ship? That’s impossible! No standard human has lived so long.’

‘I have. I did. I am over fifteen hundred years old.’ He reached out with his hand. When Wienand took it, he surprised her with the power of his grip. ‘I knew him, Wienand, I knew the Warmaster. Horus did not begin as anything other than a loving son of the Emperor, but he was proud and he was arrogant, and so when he was tested, he did not have the strength to resist. Do you not see? If he fell, anyone can. There are holes in the armour of the mightiest man. The influence of Chaos is pernicious, it is a slow poison. A man might think he does great good, when he does terrible evil. You must, you must…’ he took in a heaving breath. His eyes locked on to Wienand’s and he held her hand so tightly the bones ground together. Death hovered close at hand and when he spoke again, he did so quickly.

‘You must make sure the Inquisition does not lose its focus. The threats of the material universe are nothing when set alongside the dangers of Chaos. It can strike any time, corrupt any heart. The road to damnation is travelled with small steps and the paving is engraved with noble intentions. By the time we look up from our feet we find ourselves staring into the furnaces of damnation.’

‘No one of any influence like Horus’ has fallen to Chaos since the Heresy,’ said Wienand.

‘Our vigilance has weakened. There have been others, planetary governors among them, who have heard Chaos’ siren call. It is only a matter of time until someone of higher station treads the infernal trail beaten by the Warmaster. Beware of the Adeptus Astartes. They are our greatest defenders, but they can become greater enemies. They are not equipped for failure. I am afraid the end of this crisis may beget more terrible problems than we have endured yet. If the Space Marines fell to Chaos once, they might do again. The Luna Wolves… they… they showed me how it can happen,’ he gasped. ‘They were brought low by pride and false grievance. Their turning damned the Warmaster. Always look to the masses as well as the figureheads. Chaos strikes at both.’

‘I shall. I will!’

‘Do not lose heart. The lures of Chaos are manifold,’ he said, panting shallowly. ‘The powers of the Dark Gods are terrifying, but they are not boundless in their might, and they are opposed. There is light in the universe. You must have faith. The Imperial Creed is the truth, Wienand. I have seen the power of the Emperor at first hand, the way He shields us. He watches us all, He protects us. Never forget that. Even now, as He sits entombed upon the Golden Throne, He is with us. I take comfort in that, although I have seen so much that would test the most pious. My successor, the one you will choose to lead the Ordo Malleus, they must be pure. Anyone who opposes Chaos directly is exposed to its temptations. The finest soul can be blackened. They must be kept honest, focused not on their duty, but why they do their duty. Do you understand me?’

Wienand nodded. ‘I do.’ She looked down at the wizened example of humanity in the bed, so emaciated and frail his body made but a wrinkle under the sheets. She looked into his face wonderingly. Could a man truly live 1,500 years?

‘Now, there is something I have to give you. Press your palm to mine. Quickly!’

She shifted her grip on his hand. Veritus spoke swift words under his breath. Wienand cried out as a sharp pain stabbed into her palm, growing hot to the point of agony.

‘Hold still! Bear the pain! I pass to you the key to Titan. Without it, you will not be able to enter the monastery there.’

The pain grew. Wienand gritted her teeth. It reached a crescendo and she gasped.

‘You must go to Titan,’ said Veritus. ‘Seek out the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. Seek out Janus! Pass on to him our plans and tell him they have my blessing.’

His breath rattled in his chest. His eyes slid closed.

‘Is it true?’ she whispered. ‘Did you really know Horus?’

‘It is the truth,’ said Veritus. With a last effort, he pulled on Wienand’s hands, his knuckles white, half lifting his frail body. His face lost some of the lines of pain, becoming open and lighter. He smiled, pleased to share his great secret at last. ‘My name was Kyril Sindermann. I was chief iterator to the Sixty-Third expedition of the Great Crusade. I was present when Horus abandoned the love of the Emperor for the lies of the enemy. I was there as the Luna Wolves were corrupted from within. I was there at Isstvan III when brother turned on brother. I endured the Siege of Terra, and I knew Saint Euphrati, the first of the saints, as a friend.’

He sank back into the mattress.

‘And…’ he gasped. ‘And…’

Wienand leaned in. His last words were as arid and hushed as wind blowing over sand.

‘And I was there the day the Emperor slew Horus.’

A last, wheezing breath passed from Veritus’ lungs, followed by a thread of bloody dribble. His heart fluttered under the sheets, then stilled.

Wienand bowed her head. On impulse, she planted a kiss on Veritus’ — on Sindermann’s — dry forehead. As she pulled free from the dead man, she saw an open, bloodless wound in his palm. Her own twinged in sympathy and she rubbed at it. There was a small scar transecting the lines of her hand. Beneath it, she felt the lump of an implanted device.

She must go to Titan. But first, there was someone she must set free.

Chapter Thirteen

A new order

Vangorich stood up from the high table and raised his hands. ‘My lords and ladies of the Adeptus Terra!’ he proclaimed. His amplified voice boomed through a Great Chamber packed to capacity. Every tier of seating was full. Where the chairs had been removed, men and women stood. He looked up to a sea of expectant faces. ‘I am pleased today to address you as the new Lord Protector of Terra.’

The chamber erupted in uproarious cheers. Vangorich basked in them before silencing the crowd with a downward wave of his hands. ‘Thank you for your approval. It is some time since this Council has been so fortunate as to reign with the full backing of the estates of the Imperium. We are here before you with a new High Twelve. Sadly, our Lords of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Astronomican have retired from public life, the psychic strain of the Beast having proved too much for even their powerful minds to encompass safely. The losses of this war have been grave, and they continue still.

‘I ask you to join with us in memoriam for Juskina Tull, whose bravery and faith in calling the Proletarian Crusade bought Terra many valuable hours before the arrival of the Last Wall could deal with the ork moon orbiting the Throneworld. Lady Tull has taken her own life. She believed herself a failure, but we shall remember her as a valiant heroine.

‘The changes go further, my friends, as you can see from the people arrayed at this table with me here. You will notice the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites Vernor Zeck has also gone. He has relinquished his post on the Council to better aid the reconstruction efforts of the Imperium. Lansung and Verreault are no more.’ He became theatrically solemn. ‘I was due to instigate an investigation into their affairs. Already the Adeptus Fidicius have uncovered grave irregularities in Lansung’s accounting for the running of the Imperial Fleet. At this stage, we can only assume he argued with his partner in these crimes Abel Verreault, who will forever be known for his sluggish response to the orkish threat, and, after an argument, they killed each other.’

Hush greeted this announcement. ‘And so, allow me to introduce the new High Twelve of the High Lords of the Senatorum Imperialis.’ He held out his hand to a man on his right, a balding, square-set fellow whose face was crossed with a livid purple scar. ‘Oskar Lowis, new Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum.’ He indicated a woman next to Lowis. ‘Iryss Gelthor, recently segmentum commander of the Obscurus Fleet, now Lord High Admiral. We all know Hektor Rosarind, whose position as Lord of the Imperial Estates will be invaluable at this time of reconstruction. Lady Wienand remains as Inquisitorial Representative.’

He smiled at Wienand. She glared stonily back at him, making no attempt to hide her feelings about Vangorich’s performance. Doubtless she would challenge him as to whether anyone in the chamber believed what he was saying. Some would, the rest would not care. She didn’t understand people like he did. They didn’t care about intrigue or the truth. They cared about their own positions, knowing that they were ruled and that they could continue with their petty power games unmolested.

‘Fabricator General Kubik returns to us from his forges on Mars,’ he said. ‘Master of the Administratum Tobris Ekharth thankfully returns also,’ he went on, bowing slightly to the Assassin who wore Ekharth’s face. ‘The Paternova of the Navis Nobilite has blessed us with a new envoy, Dovrian Ofar. In recognition of her service in the defence of Terra, Arbitrator Haas joins us as Zeck’s deputy. Henceforth she will be addressed as Lady Speaker for the Grand Provost Marshal.’

Vangorich had his doubts about Haas, but she was popular with the masses; there were demands that she be sainted, and he could use that. He went through the remaining pair. First was Ecclesiarch Ostulus — called in from the other side of the galaxy, he was sufficiently humble at his elevation to actually take his role seriously, and divorced enough from the politics of Terra to be easily manipulated. Vangorich could not risk telepaths upon the High Twelve, and so neither the Adeptus Astra Telepathica nor the Astronomican had retained their seats. Instead, he gestured to the last figure at the table, a mountain of muscle and armour, capped with a tall helm. ‘Captain-General Beyreuth of the Adeptus Custodes, the first time his august brotherhood have had a say in the government of Terra. It is only fitting that it should be so!’ he said emphatically.

Thunderous applause greeted the announcement. Vangorich suppressed a smile. He could get used to this. ‘Alas, there is much that needs to be done. I will not bore you lords and ladies with the terrible labours we of the High Twelve must endure. You have your own adepta and officios to run, the correct functioning of which is of inestimable importance to the recovery of the Imperium. We shall therefore be submitting a broad plan of reconstruction, reconquest and reconsolidation of our devising,’ by that, Vangorich meant his devising, ‘to you for approval. Then let us shoulder the numbing detail. For the next eighteen months, the Senatorum will not meet in full session as we have become accustomed to again recently. But rest assured, this is purely an emergency measure. As soon as the damage is put right, then the Great Chamber will resonate to the voice of democracy again!’

This was less enthusiastically greeted. Most of the crowds cheered, but a proportion did not. Knots of people were debating, gesturing at the High Table. These were the seeds of rebellion. It was the time to drive the reality of his power home. Vangorich sent a sub-vocal signal to his assets.

‘My lords and ladies! A further change, and then we must begin the serious efforts of debate and voting. The Lucifer Blacks, who so faithfully served this house since the time of the Heresy, have been disbanded.’

Outright shock greeted this pronouncement. Vangorich ploughed on regardless. ‘Their time of glory is past. Their inability to stop the eldar before the warriors of Captain-General Beyreuth were forced to step in was inexcusable. It is the nature of institutions to outlive their usefulness,’ he said pointedly. ‘Let us remember them for the heroes they were, and not the faded sentries they had become. Security for this house and the Imperial Palace shall now rest with the Officio Assassinorum!’ he shouted. As he did, three hundred Assassins stepped out onto the balconies around the hall. Faceless in their combat masks, armed with exotic weapons, they had exactly the effect Vangorich anticipated.

Everyone looked. Few people spoke.

‘I declare this first session of the new Senatorum Imperialis open!’ He stared full into the stony, disapproving face of Rogal Dorn. ‘Let the Emperor and His primarchs look favourably on all we shall achieve.’

The Cerebrium was mercifully quiet. Outside its many windows the life of Terra went on as it had since the ascension of the Emperor. But something fundamental had changed, and Vangorich was its architect. He needed time to think, but he wasn’t about to get it.

Beast Krule was sitting behind Vangorich’s new desk, Vernor Zeck’s lifeless head in front of him. Krule had his fingers laced above the head, his hands obscuring much of his own face. Krule’s eyes were unfriendly, that much was apparent.

‘Krule! What are you doing sitting in the dark there?’

‘I brought Zeck’s head. My mission is accomplished, Grand Master,’ he said.

Vangorich shook his head and grimaced. ‘You are a fine fighter, Beast, but you don’t hide your opinions. You know, it’s that sort of truculence that had you recommended for Temple Venenum’s close-combat school. I can’t imagine you quietly poisoning feasts, can you?’ Vangorich approached slowly. Krule didn’t move from Vangorich’s seat, but watched him with glittering eyes.

‘I listened to your speech,’ said Krule.

‘Oh?’ said Vangorich. He went to a drinks cabinet and poured himself a glass of brandy. The miniature augurs embedded in his rings sampled the vapour coming off the liquid. They did this automatically, over everything he ate or drank, even though the Grand Master prepared all his food himself.

‘Do you think any of them actually believed that?’ said Krule.

‘No. It doesn’t matter, though.’

‘And those creatures of yours on the Council…’

‘I’d hardly call Beyreuth a creature! Come on, Krule! I’m rather proud he agreed to join. Convincing Beyreuth was a monumental effort, the Custodes swore some time ago to remain detached from any duty beyond the guarding of the Emperor’s mortal remains. I had to visit him five times and say the words “eldar before the Eternity Gate” over and over again before he agreed to take the seat.’ He replaced the decanter in the cabinet. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.

‘Assassins all over the Palace. Every man will know himself watched,’ said Krule.

‘They’ve always been there, they’re just in the open. They’re a safeguard.’

‘But now the people know they’re there. That’s a different sort of safeguard. That’s a threat.’

‘So you don’t want a drink. Fine.’ Vangorich dropped into a large chair. ‘Do stop speaking so slowly. It’s a sign you’re thinking, and right now I wouldn’t advise too much of that.’

Krule looked around the room, never completely taking his eyes off the Grand Master. The table that had accommodated the High Twelve had been removed and much of the furniture replaced.

‘This is a fine place to run an empire from. Not showy, modest. You’d never think a tyrant worked here.’

‘I’m a man of simple tastes,’ said Vangorich testily. ‘Krule, I know why you’re here.’

‘You don’t trust me.’

‘Of which this little display is ample proof that I was right not to!’ said Vangorich, waving his glass towards Krule. He calmed. ‘I thought that if you weren’t too heavily involved, it’d be too late for you to think about it and you’d fall into line. Evidently that didn’t work.’

‘So this is a small falling out? Don’t patronise me, Grand Master. When people lose your trust, they die. Can I trust you not to kill me?’

‘That all depends on what you do next.’ He set his drink down. ‘It’s your move, Krule, as the old cliche goes.’

‘You’re the one playing regicide, you’ve killed a number of kings. But there’s one left — you.’ Krule stood. ‘This isn’t going to be easy for me. You are the closest thing I have ever had to a father. You should have trusted me. If you had explained yourself, I might have seen it from your side.’ Krule cracked his knuckles and his neck, and took up a fighting stance.

‘You wouldn’t,’ said Vangorich softly. He too stood up.

‘No, I wouldn’t. You know me better than most, but I know you too. The worst of this is that you know what you have done is wrong.’

‘What would you have done?’ said Vangorich.

‘Reform. Reorganisation. Not this.’

‘What do you know of politics?’

‘Enough.’

‘Krule…’

‘My name is Esad Wire!’ snarled Krule.

Vangorich shook his head. ‘It’s not. It never has been. The one thing you are and will ever be is Beast Krule. From the moment they brought you to Temple Venenum, you were Krule. Esad Wire is a dead man, an illusion. Strip away the pretence, and all that is left is a killer. I’m very proud of what you are, Krule. You are the best I have.’ Vangorich undid his robes. Underneath was the same design of close-fitting suit he’d been wearing for years. ‘These robes are ridiculous. Wienand tried to tell me. She was right.’ He folded them and put them upon the chair. ‘I mean, they are very silly to look at, and don’t capture what I wanted in the slightest. But the worst of it is that they’re no good for fighting in.’

Vangorich’s age was indeterminate. Sometimes he appeared of middle years, at other times old, but he did not move like an old man. He bounded over the seat at Krule, drawing a slender-nosed pistol from nowhere. Krule dodged the first shots. Frozen toxin slivers shattered on the wooden panelling.

‘You’re slow,’ Krule said, as Vangorich landed on the other side of the room.

‘I was once the best of the Venenum Assassins. I always wanted to test myself against you.’

‘You’ll fall short,’ said Krule. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ He charged at Vangorich; his sense of time slowed by deeply implanted devices, he dodged the hypertoxin spat out by the Grand Master’s needler.

Vangorich dropped his gun. Slapping Krule’s fists aside he bent his body around the blows and moved back. Krule followed.

‘You are one of the best, the very best,’ said Vangorich. ‘This is madness. Stop. Join me.’

‘I am the best. You can’t beat me,’ said Krule.

‘I won’t have to,’ said Vangorich. He sidestepped Krule’s blurring fists again. ‘Pelagic gambit,’ he said. Krule stumbled. He shook his head. Vangorich delivered a devastating blow to the nerve cluster at the base of his neck.

Krule spluttered and staggered to the side.

‘Ordinance keystroke,’ said Vangorich.

With a yelp of pain, Krule crashed to the floor, his muscles locked solid. He balanced on his head, knee and outstretched fist, stiff as a statue that had fallen from its plinth.

‘That’s enough,’ said Vangorich. ‘Among your implants is a failsafe system. Obviously, I activated it. The key to regicide is to plan several moves ahead.’ He crouched down by Krule’s head. The Assassin’s eyes were locked open, and watering furiously. He made a strangled noise through clamped teeth. ‘It would be a shame to waste you,’ continued Vangorich. ‘I preferred you as a free thinker, Krule, you served Venenum well that way, but there is another Temple that will make good use of your talents and which does not require that characteristic. You’re going to have a little sleep. When you wake up again, we’ll have nothing to disagree about ever again, I promise.’

Chapter Fourteen

Fist of iron

A Space Marine’s sleep was short, but necessary. Even the Emperor Himself could not engineer out the human need for rest.

An insistent chiming woke Zerberyn. His enhanced physiology brought him from deep slumber to full awareness in a fraction of a second. A red lumen bulb, caged in battered wire, blinked over his cell door. Accommodation for officers and line warriors alike was basic in Kalkator’s fortress. Zerberyn’s smelled of damp and fresh ferrocrete.

‘What is it?’ he said.

The vox-emitter by the door crackled. ‘Forgive me, my lord. There is a Librarium serf here to see you. He says it is urgent, your command. I swore to kill him if he was lying, but he insists it is the truth.’

Zerberyn was off his pallet and by the door in a single stride. The door slid back into the wall. Brother Rantan stood over a cowering man. Zerberyn sneered. The serfs had become more cowardly of late.

‘My lord,’ said the serf nervously. ‘You told me to come and inform you the moment the Iron Warriors’ witch started making sense. Well, she has.’

‘I will visit her immediately. Summon Honorius to the Astropathicum.’

The witch twitched in her cradle of wires and chains. She spoke rapidly and so quietly the serfs transcribing her ramblings had to lean in close. The transliterator of the Dantalion’s astropathicum stood at the other side of her, listening intently. Zerberyn’s Lyman’s ear enabled him to apprehend her words, but he could make no sense of the meaning.

‘It is still gibberish,’ said Zerberyn.

‘No, my lord!’ said the serf. ‘She speaks in a standard astrotelepathic metaphor. You, my lord, would never hear it. The method is idiosyncratic to each sender and receiver, but there is a commonality of pattern. This is one of the simplest, the first mnemonic image-words an astropath learns.’

‘Someone wants us to hear this message,’ said Honorius.

The minutes trickled by. Eventually the witch’s mumbling became fainter, and she sagged in her restraints. The transliterator had the serfs read back what they had written to him, then he nodded, took the scrolls they had produced and approached the Fists Exemplar.

‘My lords,’ he said. ‘The witch has spoken. I have a message.’ The transliterator’s face was twisted in disgust at being so close to an unsanctioned pysker, and he kept turning his head back towards her. ‘The Black Templars are coming. Our sending got through.’

‘Tell me the message. Exactly,’ said Zerberyn.

‘I cannot offer exactness,’ said the transliterator regretfully. ‘But I can convey the meaning. The Last Wall is disbanded, the Beast is dead.’

‘Inform the others, this is a day for celebration!’ said Zerberyn. The serfs lost their newly cowed nature for a moment, and stood taller. Their excitement stimulated the witch’s mind, and she moaned in her fugue.

The transliterator held up his hand. ‘If I may, my lord. High Marshal Bohemond himself comes here. One part of the message is very clear, repeated several times.’

Zerberyn’s good humour vanished. ‘That is?’

‘Death to the betrayers of the Imperium of Man. Praise be.’

‘A difficult situation,’ said Honorius drily.

‘We’ve got to get out of this fortress, meet them in the void,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Bohemond won’t pause. He will attack immediately and destroy the city. Call the First Company to me, full armour. Honorius, muster the rest of the Fists Exemplar and have them take up position to seize the fortress by force, tell the captains to be ready but not to act. Then you and I must pay a visit to the warsmith.’

The veterans of the Chapter gathered quickly. They were raw as Space Marine veterans were reckoned, with most of the First Company killed and replaced several times over in the war against the Beast, but they were formidable nevertheless, and Zerberyn could count on their absolute loyalty.

They marched openly to the centre of the fortress. The Iron Warriors responded, occupying strongpoints where they could. In other places, Fists Exemplar and Iron Warriors came face to face. Zerberyn ordered his squads to match them, man for man, and left them staring at each other, armaments ready.

The fortress’ command hub was deep in the mountainside, a spherical sub-building independently supplied with power and air. One corridor approached the armoured doors, dead straight, two hundred metres long, every square centimetre covered by automated turrets and servitor-directed heavy weapons.

The majority of the First Company halted at the end. Zerberyn marched right down it, flanked by his command squad. Guns tracked his movement, but did not open fire.

He halted beside the door. His standard bearer planted his flag firmly, the clink of the pole on the ferrocrete echoing ominously. Every weapon whirred around to cover the First Captain. The door remained shut.

A hidden vox-emitter activated.

‘At last our alliance breaks,’ said Kalkator, his voice sounding down the corridor.

‘Not so, or we would already be fighting,’ said Zerberyn. ‘I come with news. High Marshal Bohemond is on his way to this system. He intends to kill you.’

‘He is already here,’ said Kalkator. ‘He arrived an hour ago at the Mandeville point. They will be in orbit of Immitis VII in less than a day.’

‘Why was I not informed?’

Kalkator laughed, his voice taking on that strange doubling it did sometimes. The second voice sent chills down Zerberyn’s limbs. It was wholly unnatural.

‘Because of this?’ said Kalkator.

‘They are traitors by nature,’ said Brother Mardath, Zerberyn’s melta-gunner.

‘You are the ones here in full battle array!’ said Kalkator. ‘I knew of this, and I could have murdered you in your sleep, and I did not. Do you really intend to slaughter your allies, after all we have been through?’

‘No,’ said Zerberyn. ‘This is a precaution. I do not intend to kill you, but to save you.’

‘Really now,’ said Kalkator. ‘How touching.’

‘If you do not come out, Bohemond will arrive here with his crusade. Already we outnumber you. I have two hundred and fifty brothers remaining, you but ninety. We are in your fortress. We will prevail, if we are forced to cross swords.’

Silence greeted Zerberyn’s remark. He glanced at Honorius. The ancient Librarian gazed resolutely ahead.

‘What do you propose?’ said Kalkator.

‘Come with me on the Dantalion. We must meet Bohemond away from this nameless moon, in the void.’

‘An easy way to present my head to your brother.’

‘I will speak with him, make him see sense,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Leave the Palimodes here in case you need to evacuate. I will make my best efforts to ensure that does not happen.’

‘It will happen. Bohemond is a fanatic.’

‘He is a noble son of Dorn!’ said Zerberyn angrily. ‘He will listen. If we wait, he will attack. If we meet him in the void your men will have a chance to escape.’

‘You ask me to abandon a third world. I do not have an infinite supply of planetary holdings, you realise. If we lose Immitis, my Great Company will be lost.’

Zerberyn looked aside, searching for the right words. ‘Kalkator, I can see no alternative. You have fought honourably by my side. I will not allow you to be killed by Bohemond. I give you my word. Staying here is untenable. Come with me. Bohemond will not open fire on the Dantalion. You do not have a choice.’

A klaxon sounded once. The doors slid open, four intersecting triangles splitting wide to reveal Kalkator waiting on the other side, flanked by his own veterans.

‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I do not.’

‘The Abhorrence approaches,’ said Shipmaster Marcarian. His eyes moved more than those of a hale man, darting about in their cage of half-dead flesh. The serf-crew of the Dantalion had learned to read their motions well. A close view of the Black Templars flared into life in the main hololith. Zerberyn watched it with Honorius and Reoch. The Apothecary’s presence discomfited him. As their time with the Iron Warriors had dragged on, Reoch had abandoned his civilised shell, becoming more savage.

‘She has suffered in the war,’ said Marcarian, a ribbon of drool leaking from the corner of his semi-paralysed mouth. His hololith officers read his desire, and painted highlight signifiers upon the Abhorrence.

‘Gravitic lash damage, mass impact trauma,’ said the Master of the Augur. ‘Their reactor reads with a four per cent erratic pulse.’

‘She has no attendant vessels,’ said Honorius. ‘She comes to confront us alone.’

‘The Black Templars are rash for sons of Dorn,’ said Apothecary Reoch. ‘I wonder how it would be to test our bloodlines against one another.’

‘Their fanaticism outstrips their wisdom,’ said Kalkator. ‘You would win.’

‘Warsmith, I ask you to be quiet. If Bohemond knows you are on board this vessel, then this communication will be short and the results bloody. Fists Exemplar never make mistakes. Don’t prove that truth a lie.’

Kalkator bowed his armoured head in acquiescence. ‘Neither I nor my men shall say a word, First Captain.’

‘I have a request for communication, my lords,’ said the Master of the Vox.

Zerberyn stepped onto a narrow-field hololith plate. ‘Activate.’

Bohemond’s scarred face materialised in the hololith display.

‘Zerberyn! You live. I feared to find an Iron Warrior at the helm of the Dantalion.’

‘I remain in command of my own ships, High Marshal.’

‘I see the Paragon, the Implicit, the Courageous and the Guilliman remain operational. You have done well. How many of you still live?’

‘Two hundred and forty-eight of the four hundred brothers I set out with remain.’ Zerberyn felt a thrill of disquiet at disclosing his numbers.

‘I am sorry. We have all suffered gravely in this war. And yet your survival is cause for celebration! Thane has reconstituted the Imperial Fists from the Successors. You and your warriors are the Fists Exemplar.’

Zerberyn bowed his head.

‘First, the Traitors must be crushed,’ went on Bohemond, ‘then you may join with us on Thane’s crusade to slaughter the remaining ork hordes and restore the Imperium to peace. Praise be to the Lord of Mankind!’

Zerberyn felt Kalkator’s eyes on the back of his neck. He could not reply.

‘Brother?’ said the High Marshal.

‘I cannot,’ said Zerberyn tightly.

‘Explain yourself,’ said Bohemond dangerously.

‘Throughout this war, the Iron Warriors have fought alongside us. Without their support and access to their intelligence, supplies, and bases, the Fists Exemplar would have been annihilated weeks ago.’

‘Then stand aside. We shall do the job for you, if you lack the heart,’ said Bohemond scornfully.

‘That I cannot do either. I have sworn an oath to preserve the life of the warsmith and his men. Depart, and we shall join you at a rendezvous of your choosing. But the Iron Warriors will be permitted to leave.’

A savage smile turned Bohemond’s ruined face even uglier.

‘Is that a threat of action against the Black Templars, Fist Exemplar? Be careful with your words.’

‘It is what it is. I have no wish to fight you. Allow me to fulfil my oath, and all will be well.’

‘Allowing Traitors free?’ said Bohemond. ‘That is far from well! To associate with Traitors is to become a Traitor. Prepare to be boarded. I will detain you. You shall be returned to Terra to face the judgement of the Inquisition. They shall determine your fate. I shall pray that they are merciful and offer you a quick death. Contact your daemon-worshipping friends and tell them that, Bohemond comes for their heads!’

Bohemond stepped back from the projector. Its focusing loops retrained themselves on the background. Zerberyn caught a glimpse of armoured pods and flat projection platforms.

‘He’s on the teleport deck,’ he breathed.

‘My lord! The Abhorrence is powering its main weapons array,’ called out a serf.

‘They’ve raised their shields!’

‘Damn him!’ snarled Zerberyn. ‘He came in expecting to fight. Prepare for combat. All ships raise shields and prime weapons.’

Tocsins sounded. Marcarian gave out a calm string of orders. The deck crew went into swift action, bringing the Dantalion ready. ‘Activate psychic shielding,’ he concluded. The Librarium serfs began to sing in their alcoves, weaving a subtle field of protection around the command deck.

Zerberyn looked helplessly on as the Abhorrence powered forwards. Bohemond meant to pass into the middle of his fleet.

‘We have multiple launch tubes coming online aboard the Abhorrence,’ said a serf.

‘They’re locking on to our weapons batteries and engines,’ said another.

A clamour of information filled the deck, drowning out the warding songs of the choir.

‘Captain Arcos of the Fourth demands to speak with you,’ said the Master of the Vox.

‘Demands?’ said Kalkator. ‘You are losing control of your warriors, First Captain.’

Zerberyn ignored the jibe. ‘Give me hololith.’

‘What are you doing?’ said Arcos without preamble. ‘I will not attack a fellow Adeptus Astartes, have you lost your mind?’

‘You will follow orders!’ said Zerberyn.

‘I do not follow orders from Traitors. I will contact Bohemond. This has gone far enough. I stand with him.’ Arcos cut the hololithic feed.

‘My lord, I have a message from First Sergeant Rost aboard Paragon querying your orders. They’re breaking formation,’ said the Master of the Vox.

‘Hold fire!’ shouted Zerberyn. The situation was slipping from his grasp.

‘The Black Templars are firing on us,’ said the Master of the Augur.

Through the vast oculus, they saw the Abhorrence’s weapons flash in sequence along both flanks and down its spine. The main hololith display filled with blinking icons denoting incoming ordnance.

‘Shall I return fire?’ asked Marcarian.

‘No!’ shouted Zerberyn. ‘Brace for impact. Hail Bohemond again!’

‘Massive energy spike, amidships of the Abhorrence.’

Honorius held up an armoured hand to his bare face. ‘The warp is disturbed, they are coming.’

Shapes of flickering mist coalesced towards the command deck blast doors. Twelve huge shapes began to form. The choirs sang louder, and half of the Black Templars’ emerging forms rippled, the helmets of the warriors twisting and melting into the underlying flesh. Three disappeared altogether to the sound of ghostly screams. The others affected crashed to the deck in a mess of steaming metal and flesh. The remainder arrived firing.

‘So you bring your Traitor friends aboard your own ship?’ boomed Bohemond when he saw Kalkator behind Zerberyn. He marched forwards, his massive Terminator suit denting the deck plating, his weapon blasting serfs apart.

Whether it was the Iron Warriors or the Fists Exemplar who returned fire first, the result was the same. Bolts filled the air from all three sides, the banging of their release and explosion drowning out the cries of terrified serfs. Marcarian, unable to move, was reduced to bloody rags of flesh hanging from his exoskeleton. The numerous weapons built into the bridge’s walls and ceiling opened up at his death, catching the Black Templars in a murderous crossfire. Bolts spanged off their thick armour, but there were more potent weapons on the bridge. Honorius ravaged them with psychic fire, and one by one they began to fall.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Zerberyn. He moved to intercept Bohemond as he marched towards Kalkator, but the High Marshal slapped him aside. His power fist ruptured the plastron of Zerberyn’s armour, lifting him high and slamming him into a serf’s station.

‘You shall die the traitor’s death, Kalkator!’

‘You will have to catch me first,’ said the warsmith.

‘I will gladly kill you here, if that is what the Emperor demands!’ Bohemond emptied his storm bolter into the warsmith’s chest, but Kalkator weathered the storm, his armour’s superior construction protecting him.

Bohemond let out a thunderous war cry.

‘No mercy! No remorse! No fear!’ He lumbered into a charge.

Kalkator was ready. With impossible strength he slammed the High Marshal in the head, breaking the adamantium and ceramite of his armour, and sent him toppling backwards. Bohemond came to rest on the floor, struggling to get back to his feet. Kalkator advanced on him, gun out. Bohemond got onto his knees, wrenched off his helmet and cast it aside.

‘See, Zerberyn,’ said Bohemond. ‘See what you ally yourself with. This Iron Warrior is possessed of unnatural vigour! He has given himself over to fell powers to make himself mightier. You have sorely disappointed me, Zerberyn. Have you also embraced his sorcery? You disrupted the transit of my men. I should have blasted you from the void the moment I saw you.’

Zerberyn heaved himself out of a tangle of broken components and metal. His armour leaked gas from its ruptures, frothing ceramite gels bubbling around the cracks. The sounds of fighting diminished and stopped as the last of Bohemond’s Black Templars died.

The Fists Exemplar trained their guns on the Iron Warriors. A tense silence fell, too thick to be broken by the groans of the wounded and the dying.

The ship rocked and rumbled under the bombardment of the Abhorrence, but the shields held.

‘It is no sorcery. This vessel was modified to withstand the worst the Rubicante Flux could marshal. The Librarium choirs confound cross-warp teleport as easily as they do the daemon. You accuse a man who has spent his entire life fighting Chaos.’

‘You will burn for all time in the fires of the Emperor’s judgement,’ said Bohemond.

‘Call off the attack,’ said Zerberyn. ‘This ends now.’

‘Never!’ spat Bohemond. ‘I would rather die fighting than offer succour to the Traitor Legions. They are an abomination in the holy sight of the Emperor. They must be purged. If you will not do it, then I will, though I die in the attempt.’

‘See him throw his life away! Is this what you want to serve, Zerberyn? This frothing zealot? The Emperor himself denounced his own worship,’ said Kalkator. ‘He scolded the Word Bearers for seeing him as a god. And yet you will listen to the words of this man, who with his idolatory spits in the face of the Emperor you purport to follow.’

‘The Emperor is not a god,’ said Zerberyn. ‘It is you who should be censured, not I.’

‘There is another possibility, Zerberyn,’ said Kalkator. ‘Horus, Perturabo and the others were correct. The Emperor lied to us all, he denied the truth of the warp not to protect us, but to keep its secrets to himself. When it appeared his sons were stumbling too close to the truth of it, he forbade the use of Librarians. He intended all along to be a god, and he used the human race to make it happen. He was stopped just in time.’

‘Lies,’ said Bohemond. ‘The Emperor is divine. The Emperor protects!’

‘Which is it then, Bohemond?’ said Kalkator. ‘The Emperor spoke the truth, and he is not a god, and you are wrong, or he is a god, and you are right, which makes him a liar? Do you not see? He does not care about humanity, the whole purpose of his crusade was to further his own goals of ascendance. He didn’t wish to oppose the Gods of Chaos, he wanted to become one!’

‘Lies, lies!’ said Bohemond. ‘End him, Zerberyn. Turn your bridge weaponry on him and wipe his stain from the galaxy.’

‘Would you do that, Zerberyn?’ said Kalkator. ‘We are the true champions of mankind. We serve ourselves, but in doing so we preserve humanity. Might is right. To save our species we must embrace the powers of this universe, the great Gods of Chaos. We do not do this because we are evil, we do it because we must. What are you, Zerberyn? What are the Fists Exemplar?’

Oily swirls of light played through the oculus as a void shield collapsed. ‘We are a wall that defends the Imperium,’ he said dully. His heart was breaking.

‘You are a bastion in a fortress of lies, and this warrior, this Black Templar, who wears his fanaticism so openly, is its castellan. Kill him!’ urged Kalkator.

‘They will kill you too, Zerberyn, once they are done with me,’ said Bohemond.

‘We have fought alongside you for months, brother,’ said Kalkator. ‘Where were they?’

Zerberyn looked from Bohemond to Kalkator.

‘Call off the attack,’ Zerberyn said one last, hopeless time to Bohemond.

‘Never,’ said Bohemond.

A single shot was all it took. Bohemond’s head disappeared in a mist of blood, his body locked in place by his armour. Zerberyn blinked stupidly at the bolt pistol in his hand. He had no recollection of drawing it. The little litany he had for the weapon went through his head. It was Umbra-pattern. It lacked the refinement of post-Heresy models, but it was good at what it was made for and always would be. Purity through utility: that was how one proofed oneself against the unknowables of the galaxy.

Without thinking, he had made his decision. He had damned himself.

‘All ships, open fire. Destroy the Abhorrence,’ he ordered.

Faces paler than lack of sunlight could explain looked back at him.

‘Now!’

The crew moved into action. Corpses were heaved aside by repair teams. Where needed, backup stations were brought into operation. Fresh serfs were admitted onto the bridge. Zerberyn walked to the command dais and stood by Marcarian’s corpse.

‘My lord. Courageous and Implicit are breaking from attack,’ said the Master of the Augur. ‘I have reports of fighting breaking out aboard the Guilliman.’

‘Tell Captain Venthryn to contain it or it will be his head. Courageous, Implicit, come about. Open fire on the Abhorrence or be declared enemies of the Chapter.’

Arcos’ horrified face flickered into view.

‘Then we are enemies,’ said Arcos. ‘You betray your oaths!’

‘Weapons batteries, open fire on the Courageous and the Implicit,’ said Zerberyn coldly. ‘That is the price of their disloyalty.’

The void erupted with chaotic firing as the Fists Exemplar Chapter fell apart. The Implicit took a punishing broadside as it attempted to turn and flee, wrecking its engines and leaving it drifting out of control. The Courageous took a different tack, coming directly at the Dantalion with all weapons blazing. The Abhorrence’s fire redoubled, encouraged by the split in the Fists Exemplar.

‘Courageous is building to ramming speed!’ shouted the Master of the Augur.

‘He means to take us with him,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Concentrate all fire forward!’

The Courageous came down towards them, void shields flaring as they shunted the power of Dantalion’s fury into the warp. At a distance of metres, it skimmed past the Dantalion, close enough for protruding spires on both vessels to be sheared off by the pass. The Dantalion shuddered violently as Courageous burned its engines at maximum, and powered past.

‘The Courageous is escaping!’

‘Ignore it! Destroy the Abhorrence,’ said Zerberyn.

The Black Templars battle-barge was beset on all sides, fire from the Paragon, Guilliman and the Dantalion bringing down one shield after another. With a low purple light, its final void shield gave out, and the combined barrage of the three Fists Exemplar ships slammed into it. The Abhorrence came apart in a shower of fire. Apothecary Reoch cackled like a child at a victory display. Honorius stood silently, his face lit by the explosion.

‘We are fortunate. If Bohemond had commanded the Eternal Crusader, we would all be dead,’ the Librarian said quietly.

Kalkator’s gun came up to Zerberyn’s face. He pressed it lightly against Zerberyn’s temple. Its muzzle was still warm from firing.

‘Who are you, First Captain Zerberyn? Are you a Fist Exemplar still? Will you slay me as you slew Bohemond? Was all this fratricide a terrible mistake?’

Zerberyn turned. Kalkator’s boltgun slid around his face until it was in the centre of his forehead. Zerberyn pressed his face against it and stared into Kalkator’s eye-lenses.

‘A Fist Exemplar is never mistaken,’ he said. He knelt. Behind him, the crew and Space Marines of the Dantalion followed his example.

‘Iron within, iron without,’ he said.

Once free of the Immitis System, communications became possible again. The last vestiges of the Green Roar clung hard to the Iron Warriors’ home, and Arcos, captain of the Fourth Company, last loyal officer of the Fists Exemplar, suspected that was not chance. Having hauled over at an isolated mining colony, Arcos spent some time communicating with other members of the Last Wall. By these means, he discovered that Maximus Thane was at Eidolica, once home world of the Fists Exemplar. As soon as this information was known, Courageous made all speed there to find Phalanx in high anchor over the Alcazar Astra. It could have hid in the nightside of the world, but in a show of machinic sympathy with the downed star fort, Dorn’s citadel stood in the full light of the blazing Eidolican sun. The choice lifted Arcos’ battered spirit.

The joy that greeted the Courageous’ arrival at Phalanx turned sombre as it became apparent that there were no more ships coming, and there were only twenty-two surviving Fists Exemplar. The battered cruiser was escorted in with full pomp. But when Arcos exited his vessel grim-faced and demanded to be conveyed to the Chapter Master immediately, the last smiles died on lips that moved with many questions.

Arcos would provide answers to no one but Thane.

At Arcos’ request, Thane dismissed his honour guard and advisers, leaving Arcos and he alone. Thane occupied the throne of Inwit, a high seat in a massive dome devoid of any other furniture. Bathed in a shaft of diamond white light so bright it seemed distilled from the system’s deadly sun, Thane listened in furious silence to Arcos’ report. Arcos knelt to deliver it, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

‘Bohemond is dead,’ Thane said, when Arcos had finished. ‘And Zerberyn turned.’ His voice caught in his throat. Zerberyn had always been impetuous, creative in interpreting his orders, but he had been a warrior of uncommon valour. ‘Honorius too.’

‘Yes, my lord. We spent too long with the Iron Warriors. Some of their evil must have wormed its way into his heart. Apothecary Reoch is with him, and some two hundred others.’ Arcos looked up. ‘Allow me to atone. Let me rebuild the Fists Exemplar and I swear we shall become a byword for opposition to the Traitors. We shall return to the Rubicante Flux and hunt for them through the reefs of the immaterium. We shall be dauntless, and never rest. This shall be my oath.’

Thane gripped the armrests of the his throne. The shaft of light shining hard from above cast his face into craggy shadow. ‘You have sworn many oaths, Captain Arcos. You have dishonoured them all.’

‘My lord, I do not know what I can say.’

‘You can say nothing.’ The anger of Thane’s voice was awful for its calmness. ‘You have consorted with Traitors, and failed to prevent the greatest shame to befall the Adeptus Astartes since the Heresy war.’

‘Please let me atone.’

‘No. The Fists Exemplar will not be reconstituted. You and your warriors will submit yourselves to the Master of Recruits, and you shall be inducted into the Imperial Fists. A new Chapter shall be raised, and take Alcazar Astra as their home.’

‘If we are to obscure the metal of our armour with the yellow of the Imperial Fists, there will be no more Fists Exemplar left. The Chapter will die. Please let me save the memory of our predecessors. Do not let one moment of madness undo a millennium of loyal service.’

‘There will be no memory. No monuments or songs. The name of the Fists Exemplar shall be struck from Imperial records. Every mention, every honour, every report shall be hunted down and expunged from history. It is our shame that ours is the first Chapter to fall to Chaos since the Heresy. We do not deserve to be remembered.’

Arcos stood in disbelief. ‘My lord, we must be allowed to salvage the honour of Oriax Dantalion. We cannot let his legacy die here.’

‘There is no honour left!’ shouted Thane, suddenly wrathful. His armoured fist slammed into the throne arm. ‘Stubborn, prideful, convinced of our own rectitude. So arrogant we remained that when our star fort fell we would not ask for aid from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Rather defy the wrath of a star, than admit to any wrongdoing! Those were the gifts of Dantalion to our Chapter. They have served us poorly. Our record shall be erased.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Arcos. He bowed his head.

‘You should have acted, you should spoken up. There is no situation so dire as to render an alliance with the Traitors expedient, and the Iron Warriors no less. As penance, you shall descend to Eidolica. You shall oversee the destruction of the records of the Fists Exemplar. Your tears will wet the relics of our order as you consign them to oblivion. As you watch our history burn to ashes I pray you remember: the Traitor can never be called friend.’

‘My lord,’ said Arcos. ‘We shall see it done.’

‘Our name shall be forgotten. Let none speak of it evermore. We are the Imperial Fists now and forever, let that be our legacy. It is a pure one,’ said Chapter Master Thane.

No mention of the Fists Exemplar passed Thane’s lips again in his long life, and he would not tolerate the name being said in his hearing until the day he died.

Chapter Fifteen

Warriors of Titan

There was a shift in the cutter’s centre of gravity, a lurch in its smooth acceleration as mass detached itself. In the cramped quarters of the cutter’s command deck, Lady Inquisitor Wienand watched the infiltration craft speed away upon a hololithic display. Its matt-black hull was lost to sight quickly. When it engaged its sophisticated baffles and augur-blinds it winked out of existence, a ripple on the stars, and then it was gone.

She made a silent prayer to the Emperor, asking if she had done the right thing.

Lhaerial Rey piloted the infiltrator. The Imperium needed allies. She hoped the harlequin might be one, some time in the future. Wienand had no doubt at all that she would get away from Sol.

There were three crew on the bridge: a shipmaster pilot, an augur and weapons operative, and a transmechanic magos. All of them wore the Inquisitorial barred I as much in their minds as they did on their clothes. They knew better than to ask questions.

Wienand retreated to her quarters. She fell into a deep and dreamless sleep of the kind she only experienced in the void, until Rendenstein came and woke her gently.

‘Lady, we approach Saturn. I thought you might like to see.’

‘Thank you.’ Wienand touched Rendenstein’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. The two of them had drifted apart physically over the long months of the war against the Beast. Having her there still brought comfort. She hoped Rendenstein understood.

Wienand had felt better. Her teeth were furred and her breath stank. She needed to stop, soon. She considered stimms to carry her through, but that road ended badly for many. She needed to become tougher. There was precious little rest in the life of an inquisitor. There would be none for her, not while Vangorich reigned in all but name.

She rinsed her mouth out with water warm from the vessel’s recycling systems and tainted with iron.

Rendenstein fell into step with her as she left her quarters. These were relatively large and well appointed. The ship, though small, was designed to carry only a single inquisitor and their retinue.

Raznick waited outside. He too fell in with her, walking at her left shoulder, Rendenstein at her right. The cutter was two hundred metres long in total, the habitable section considerably less. They were on the command deck in seconds.

Wienand stopped at the threshold of the door. Through the oculus of the ship Saturn turned serenely, its rings shining in the sunlight over a striated body the colour of recaff mixed with dairy fats. Its many moons paraded round it like pearls. Wienand had been all over the galaxy, but this world had always been special to her, if only because Saturn was forbidden. Unlike its brother Jupiter, Saturn was not ringed by orbital habitats. Remnants of those predating the Imperium added to its flock of moons, but there was nothing inhabited, no mining platforms, no gas extraction or research stations. Compared to the rest of the over-exploited solar system, Saturn was pristine.

The cutter flew around the gas giant, skimming the rings at distances as little as twenty thousand kilometres. A caramel orb rose from the shoulder of the giant, massive as a planet, dwarfing its brother and sister moons.

‘Titan, my lady,’ said the captain. He adjusted his course, pointing the sharp nose of the cutter directly at the hazy world.

Red lights and alarms flashed over every display.

‘Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind. Turn back or be destroyed. Halt,’ began a message, and then repeated on a loop.

‘Inquisitor Wienand, Marguerethe, A. Ident code Sigma Five Full Black Delta. Requesting permission to land.’

‘Code not accepted. Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind,’ said the message again. Warnings bleeped. The ship’s master of augur and arms spoke.

‘They’re locking on to us. Not much, but it’ll finish us if they fire.’

Wienand flexed her hand. The implant that had burrowed into her flesh from Veritus hampered her movement, grinding against her tarsal bones. She yanked off her glove.

‘Give me a data reader, key it in to the vox. Broadcast it to the source of that message.’

‘Yes, my lady. In what form is the data to be read?’

‘I don’t know, try them all,’ she said. More alarms went off.

‘Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind. Turn back or be destroyed,’ said the message.

The master of augur and arms indicated a green panel. She flexed her hand again and spread it over the glass. The machine tried every wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum before switching to audible bands. Finally, the thing in her palm vibrated and the device chimed.

‘Halt, and—’ The message stopped.

The vox shifted. A human voice replaced the machine’s.

‘Veritus is dead,’ it said.

‘He is dead,’ said Wienand. ‘I am the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum Imperialis, one of the High Twelve of the High Lords of Terra. Veritus nominated me as his successor as liaison between the Inquisition and the Grey Knights Chapter, Adeptus Astartes, number six, six, six. I wish to meet with Supreme Grand Master Janus.’

The reply was immediate. ‘Have your ship follow these coordinates to high anchor. Lady Inquisitor, you may break orbit and descend, but only you. Fail to obey these two instructions or any further forthcoming, and your vessel will be destroyed.’

The voice snapped off. The master of augur and arms attempted to raise them again, but the void remained silent.

‘Friendly, aren’t they?’ said Raznick.

‘We should come with you,’ said Rendenstein.

‘I’ll go alone,’ said Wienand. ‘I should be safe enough.’ But she didn’t believe it.

Wienand’s ship dropped through the upper layers of Titan’s hazy gas envelope. The void was lost to sight. Saturn’s domineering presence was visible for a few seconds longer as a brown disk in the haze, and then that too was gone and she was enclosed by yellow organonitrogen murk.

Hands awkward in the gauntlets of her void suit rested lightly on the shuttle’s sticks as the roar of atmospheric entry built around the craft. Augur pulses showed nothing dangerous around her, but she scanned the close horizon through the cockpit automatically, tensely searching for hazards she couldn’t possibly see. Reflections on the visor of her suit limited what she could see as much as the organic soup of the air. Flying blind, she was reliant on the craft’s suite of sensors. The altimeter rolled down. The hull’s temperature rose. A brief period of turbulence marked her transition from the upper atmosphere to the lower. The haze thinned, becoming clouds. Through the auspex of the ship she received visual representations of the ground below, and fleeting visible-light glimpses of the landscape.

She fired the ship’s rockets, increased gain to its grav systems. Inquisitorial craft were outfitted with the pinnacle of Adeptus Mechanicus technology, and the approach was smoother than a lesser ship’s. The craft levelled out. She banked round, flying in broad circles in search of a beacon. The hull’s outer temperature plummeted now re-entry friction had stopped. Down the thermal gauge went, impossibly low; Titan was beyond cold. Wienand dropped lower, skimming over a volcano spewing ammonia-water ice. Thick, greasy snowflakes of methane-ethane splatted on the cockpit. Lakes of oily hydrocarbons passed under the ship’s keel, fed by lazy rivers.

Around she went again. Various indicators blinked amber on the ship’s flight boards. The temperature and atmosphere taxed its systems.

‘Where are you,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

A nav beacon lit up on her main display, pulsing bright yellow in a tangle of contour lines. Breathing a prayer of relief, she swung the ship around and locked on to the location, relinquishing control to the ship’s machine-spirits. The craft flew over more of the strange, mottled landscape. Titan appeared habitable when viewed from safety. It was a lie. If she stepped outside without her suit she’d die. She had seen airless worlds and death planets, and worlds consumed perpetually by fire, but never had she had cause to come somewhere as cold as this. Titan exceeded all parameters Terran life had set itself. It was hard to imagine Space Marines living there.

Jagged peaks of ice appeared ahead. At such temperatures, water took the place of rock. Low gravity allowed tectonic upthrust to make them oddly tall. They were fairy peaks, something from a child’s tale.

The ship flew right at them. Wienand looked long at the approach vector, described on a glass screen as a tunnel of boxes rushing over the representation of the ship. She looked back at the mountains, seeing no sign of any structure. Perhaps this was how the Grey Knights dealt with unwanted visitors. Staged accidents were easier to brush away than unexplained weapons discharge.

An ice cliff came at her, black as night and harder than granite. She held her breath. At five hundred metres, green light shone from no discernible source, illuminating a gate of plain plasteel for less than a second before blinking out. The gate vanished again, the cliff becoming totally black in the hydrocarbon snow. Wienand let the ship fly right at it, trusting the light to be an invitation to an open way, and not a quick route to death.

The gate was open. Her lighter’s beams shone into a small, rectangular space, big enough to accommodate a single Space Marine gunship, no more. She swore loudly and slammed on the front jets to full burn. A smooth ice wall rushed at her, then she stopped abruptly, slamming painfully into her seat restraints.

A flashing light drew her attention to a datascreen. Her ship had been caught in a gravity sling like a ball in a glove.

‘Land,’ said a voice through the vox.

She activated the ship’s landing cycle and the sling shut off. Her lighter touched down on a metal floor. A moment later it began to sink down a shaft. Hardened plasteel runners were embedded directly into the rock-ice. Every thirty metres dim yellow lumens punctuated the shaft, the only lights besides those of her ship.

The elevator came out into a huge cave. The platform touched down and rotated. Metallic clanks sounded underneath her, and the ship was conveyed sideways, then backwards, and brought to rest in a docking bay carved from the ice of the moon. There were many of these stalls, each one occupied by a Thunderhawk in a bluish-silver livery.

Wienand waited in her restraints for further instruction. ‘Hello?’ she said into the vox. ‘What do I do now?’

Receiving no reply, she decided to leave. The gauge showed the temperature in the hangar to be minus-fifty degrees, warmer than the surface, still ultimately deadly.

The ship’s ramp opened. She punched open her belt locks and exited into the hangar. It glowed with soft blue light under which the Thunderhawks slept, glittering with carbon frost. Water ice furred their heraldry of a book transfixed by a sword. There were other ways into the hangar, she saw, and other kinds of ship. A broad ramp led lower into the icy bedrock, marked with the imprints of tank treads.

She turned around, seeking a way out. Seeing none, she went to the cave wall where she found a door, hidden by a natural camouflage of frost.

‘This is Inquisitor Wienand, I have done as instructed. Are you going to leave me here?’ The imperiousness of her voice in the silent chamber abashed her.

Lights blinked over the door. With a sighing groan, it cracked open, shedding plates of ice and showers of hoarfrost upon the threshold.

Beyond the door stood a Space Marine unlike any other she had ever met. He was ageless in the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but carried an air of great venerability that outmatched even that of Veritus. His face was leathery, tanned by the light of myriad suns, and wrinkled with fine lines. The skin was folded with age over his eyes, one of which had a pronounced squint — the mark of an old injury, perhaps — and his forehead was a mass of long-service studs.

In the deadly cold he was barefoot and wore simple robes. Plumes of steam blew from his nostrils with each steady breath. Despite his great age he was tall and proud, his physiology distorted by his enhancement, neural plugs glinting in the grotesque musculature of his arms, but it was his psychic potency that took her aback. Wienand was no psyker, although many inquisitors were, but still she could feel his power emanating from his eyes. A nimbus of light from some internal source shone around his head. Wienand was overwhelmed by a sense of the holy; this was a warrior saint. She was one step from the Emperor Himself, and she fought the urge to prostrate herself before him.

‘I am Supreme Grand Master Janus of the Grey Knights,’ he said. He looked on her.

She felt the touch of his mind on hers and she shivered.

‘I am Inquisitor Wienand. I bring you news of a reorganisation within our ordos, and the formation of an order of specific relevance to your brotherhood.’

‘Sindermann told me this day would come. I grieve for his passing. He was an old friend and will be missed. But it is best not to dwell on the past. What has gone cannot be helped, only the future may be saved. I sense now is the time for new friendships.’ He stood aside, and held open his arms in welcome. ‘You may enter, Lady Inquisitor Wienand. Come, we have much to discuss.’

Chapter Sixteen

Fury of the Space Marines

Four hundred Space Marines came to Terra. A company each from two of the newly founded Chapters, the Halo Brethren and the Sable Swords. Flying with them were two hundred Imperial Fists of the First, Fourth and Fifth Companies. This time, the crowds were not out to meet them.

‘I thank you for the honour of leading this expedition, Lord Thane.’

Unhelmeted, Qublicus Amar, lord of the Sable Swords, was forced to shout over the noise of the Thunderhawk as it battled its way down through Terra’s atmosphere. ‘It has been said that you should lead it. The Imperial Fists have accrued many battle honours since the fall of the Beast.’

‘Not I,’ said Thane. He did wear his helmet, and his vox-grille boosted his voice. ‘Vangorich was my error. I have come to put it right, but I should not be the one to lead. My judgement regarding the Grand Master is compromised.’

Amar resettled himself in his drop cradle. The Thunderhawk banged and leapt as it encountered a pocket of rising warm air.

‘It is over a century since you last trod the Throneworld’s surface, you could not have predicted what happened. A new golden age approaches, Thane, and your efforts are to thank. Beyond Terra, the Imperium has recovered. Hundreds of worlds have been reclaimed and rebuilt. The armies of the Imperium are larger and better organised. New fleets ply the stars and the warp, while the eyes of the Inquisition are everywhere alert to new threats. It will soon be time to crusade again, and expand our borders in the name of the Emperor.’

‘All you say is true. But Terra itself, and many other worlds have suffered. That is on me. I cannot lead this expedition.’

Thane would speak no more of it, and Amar let him be to check his equipment one final time.

Thane had expected a fight, but the taskforce did not get one. Kubik greeted them cordially from Mars. No fire was loosed at them by star forts or solar defence ships. The new orbital fortresses greeted the Space Marines and offered their fleet berths.

Several tense hours ensued after the fleet put in to high orbit over Terra. A party of High Lords met with Thane and Amar aboard the High Wall, a new Goliath-class star fort in orbit over the Palace. After swift negotiation, twenty Thunderhawks flew to the surface. Thane suggested Amar have the gunships put down in a ring in the Fields of Winged Victory. It seemed apt somehow. The paving was dirty and cracked, the spires surrounding it tarnished and in ill repair. Thane had a feeling this neglect was only a taste of what there was to come.

Unopposed, Thane and Amar walked down the ramp of the gunship and onto Terra’s hallowed surface. Squads of Space Marines spread out in defensive order. Land Speeders dropped from passing transports made controlled descents to the surface then raced off into the Palace.

‘My lords Chapter Master,’ said Captain Ethratan, Second Captain of the Sable Swords. ‘There are no signs of an enemy anywhere.’

Thane looked around the Fields. They were a good place to land, so big ambush was impossible. ‘Everyone wants Vangorich gone. We’ll suffer no attention from the Adeptus Militarum, Arbitrators or Adeptus Custodes,’ he said to Ethratan and Amar. ‘But there will be opposition. Vangorich’s Assassins are loyal to him, and he has expanded his officio since I was last here. Be careful. Watch the shadows. This will not be an easy fight.’

‘Understood, my lord,’ said Amar.

Dissatisfied, Thane watched Amar head out; Amar should have more confidence. The members of the newer Chapters were too deferential to him, and it made him uncomfortable. Warriors that adulated their heroes could be led astray by the wrong leader. If the likes of Ethratan or Amar knew that the Imperial Fists had briefly fallen, they might not be so worshipful.

A Thunderhawk transporter came down slowly, engines roaring, Dorn’s Fist slung in its cradle. It released its cargo claws three metres above the ground, dropping the Land Raider onto the Fields. The assembled forces of the three Chapters spread out in groups, heading into the deathly quiet city.

Dorn’s Fist was the very Land Raider in which Thane had arrived in triumph at the Fields a century before. He boarded the great vehicle. Reversing the course he took on that day, he headed for Bastion Gate and rode for the Widdershins Tower.

They passed through without incident, the Bastion Gate’s bristling weapons arrays inactive. The lights were out in the wall tunnel, and beyond. There were no people on the streets. There was an expectant quiet everywhere. Terra wanted rid of Vangorich, but it irked Thane that the worthies of the Throneworld were too spineless to do it themselves.

The buildings of the Palace were in various states of disrepair. Some still bore the scars of the ork attack. Instead of proper reconstruction, vast sums of money had been spent on great monuments, from whose half-finished edifices hung the corpses of those who had displeased the Lord Protector. The dead were more evident than the living. Tall informational posters adorned every major intersection and transit station, laying out the duties of the Terran citizen. The penalties for failing to comply were invariably death.

The Great Chamber’s domed roof rose pregnantly from the surrounding blocks and spires. Still they saw no one.

It was as Thane neared the Widdershins Tower that the first shot was fired. A vox-chime, ultimate priority, rang in his helmet.

‘Lord Thane! Chapter Master Amar is dead!’

‘Report.’

‘An exitus round took him as we were deploying to search the Great Chamber. We’re under heavy fire. There are numerous hostile contacts.’

‘Fall back into cover,’ he ordered. ‘I shall assume command.’

Thane’s fury grew. The first casualty, and it was a Chapter Master. It appeared he was to be responsible for Vangorich’s overthrow after all. He ordered augur sweeps and airstrikes on the areas around the Great Chamber to clear the way for the Sable Swords.

And then hell broke loose.

Thane leaned around a corner and let off a quick burst of three bolts. He received a punishing exitus round in his pauldron that shattered its autoreactive mechanisms in exchange.

‘Get a missile launcher up here!’ he commanded. His faceplate was full of flashing runes. Imperial Fists warriors were embattled all around the Widdershins Tower. Vindicare Assassins shot down at them from the rooftops with virtual impunity. Callidus operatives attacked in free-flowing squads of three, slashing their phase swords through power armour and darting back into cover before they could be cut down. Thane had penetrated into the foyer of the tower. The lifts were all dead, no power was within. The entry had the run-down, neglected feel that had been reported from all over the city.

Thane retreated a few metres, rotated his arm and grimaced. The mechanisms in his armour ground horribly. Three other Space Marines took his place and fired up the stairs. One was downed after firing only twice, smoking holes drilled through each of his hearts.

‘Missile approaching.’

Space Marines moved out of the way, making as much use of the limited cover as was possible. Every exposed stabilisation nozzle, elbow or foot drew a shot.

‘Make way for him!’ commanded Thane. The missile launcher bearer, Brother Arkhis, crouched by Thane’s feet. ‘On three,’ said Thane. ‘We shall fill this stairway with bolts. You must aim true, brother.’

‘I have a lock on the Assassin’s position, my lord,’ said Arkhis.

‘Very good. Make it count. On three, two, one.’

Thane and four others leaned out, sending out a wall of bolts. Arkhis stepped into the middle of the stairs, activated his stabilisers and fired.

The missile roared off, lighting the dark stair with its exhaust flare. A ball of flame rolled back down towards them as it detonated over the target. Bits of debris rattled off their armour.

Arkhis remained where he was. ‘He is dead,’ he said.

Thane looked up, his sensorium overlay settling on a corpse torn in half some hundred steps up the staircase.

‘He is,’ said the Chapter Master. He slapped the warrior on the shoulder. ‘A good shot, bravely done.’

‘My lord!’ called Arkhis as Thane headed off up the stairs. ‘Perhaps you should not go first?’

‘If I fall, there are others who will kill the Grand Master for me. Vangorich skulks behind others. That is not my way.’ So saying, Thane bounded up the steps.

Three more Assassins fell before Thane made it to the top of the tower. The antechamber outside the Cerebrium was quiet, the sounds of the combat going on at every level of the buildings around the Widdershins Tower muted. In battle-stained armour, Thane trod a thick carpet past displays of flowering plants. He looked back to the warriors following him, three Imperial Fists and two Sable Swords, held a finger to his visor grille and tapped at the housings of his vox-pickup, then shook his head. There were precious few who could break the encryption of Space Marine squad communication. Vangorich was one of them.

By battle sign Thane had his warriors array themselves around the Cerebrium’s priceless wooden doors. It seemed a shame to kick them in.

The doors flew back under the blow from Thane’s boot. The Cerebrium was beyond, outfitted as a private office for someone who loved books. They lined every wall, hiding the wooden panelling. Behind the large desk, her back to the window, was Inquisitor Wienand.

‘Wienand,’ said Thane. ‘Where is Vangorich?’

Thane looked much the same as he had a century ago. Wienand was unrecognisable. The handsome woman Thane had last seen had become wrinkled, her features distorted by harsh anti-gerontics and the hardships of an inquisitor’s life. Her eyes were sunken and ringed with brown flesh. A scar ran across her face from her left temple to her chin, cutting through her nose and lips. Her hair, once iron grey, was a brilliant white.

She smiled. ‘I have become old,’ she said, apologetically. ‘I’ll bet under that helmet you have not changed at all.’

Thane made to come forwards, his bolter up.

‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Drakan assumed you would come here, to his office this last century. It is rigged to explode as soon as anyone attempts to leave it.’

Thane stopped at the threshold. ‘You are within.’

‘I needed a way to convince you of my sincerity. I will not live past the end of the hour — whether I am killed by your hand or by Vangorich’s, it makes no difference. Do you think me a traitor, Chapter Master?’

‘Yes,’ said Thane. ‘Vangorich executed the High Twelve, he left you alive and in office. When he installed puppets and doppelgangers to do his bidding, you and Kubik remained in power. When they too failed to be biddable and he dissolved the Council, you and Kubik were set free.’

‘Not free, not completely,’ she said. ‘And Kubik is dead. He has been for a hundred years.’

‘Then with whom was I speaking when we put in at Mars?’

‘Eldon Urquidex,’ she said. She picked up a book and turned it over in her hands. Four boltguns were trained upon her. Thane raised his hand and gestured his men back. ‘Vangorich took Kubik’s datacore, implanted it in Urquidex and convinced him to impersonate Kubik, although he’s been doing it so long now I think he’s forgotten who he was. From a certain point of view, Urquidex is Kubik.’

‘It doesn’t matter who he is. He supported Vangorich. You are both traitors,’ said Thane.

‘You are not blameless,’ said Wienand. ‘You made Vangorich Lord Protector. You have been absent for a century, crusading so zealously it blinded you to what was happening on Terra. You must have known Vangorich had executed the High Lords, though he tried to keep it from you. I tried to tell you often enough myself. You must have received some of my messages, but you did not return to put an end to his reign. Is that not an act of treachery?’

Thane shrugged. His damaged pauldron hitched. ‘He was doing a reasonable job of ruling Terra, so I believed. He has outlived his usefulness, and that is my fault, but it is my duty to kill you nevertheless.’

‘I am not a traitor, Thane. No one stands against you, the Assassinorum aside, because I have worked for weeks to bring together the adepta of Terra. Before that, while you were off washing your failures away with blood, I have been at Drakan’s side moderating his worst excesses. I was all for trying to bring him down, but Veritus convinced me not to. He said that Vangorich had outplayed us all, and that removing him would be worse than the alternative of letting him rule. A single voice sings clearer than an unharmonious chorus, and there was no chorus as unharmonious as the Beast-era High Lords. We haven’t done badly. We restored Terra, and refortified it. We have seen dozens of the worlds ravaged by the orks rebuilt and reincorporated. Mars works in unity with the Imperium again, and he did not interfere with your Fourth Founding. The armies of man are stronger than at any time since the Heresy.’

‘That is why I did not return.’

‘Then it is your fault. These last twenty years have been different. His edicts have become bizarre. There have been needless massacres. Population relocation for no reason. Appointment of unsuitable candidates to planetary governorship. Worlds starve as he redirects resources here for vain works. Terra was rebuilt, but he would turn it into a bauble while its real needs go untended.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘The biggest statues he erected are of you and Koorland.’

‘I do not care for statues. He must go. The High Lords must reign once more.’

‘They must,’ Wienand said. She turned the book over again, running slender fingers over its page edges. ‘Vangorich did not wish to be a tyrant. He set out with the best of intentions. The pressure of running the Imperium has driven him quite mad, I fear. It did not help him that I never could return the affection he had for me. So maybe I am as responsible for his excesses as you.’

Thane said nothing. Matters of the heart were a mystery to him.

‘This book,’ she said, holding it up. It had a grubby, blue canvas cover. ‘He used to read it in the Sigillite’s Retreat. It is the Sayings of the Sigillite, with notes on the apocrypha.’

‘What of it?’

She set it down. ‘I merely underline my point. He set out to do what he could,’ she said.

‘Where is he, Wienand?’

‘He has fled to Temple Eversor in the Aktick. He is waiting for you there.’

‘Is this a trap?’

‘Not one I am setting, if that is what you are suggesting. I stayed here to tell you this information so you’d be forewarned. He knows I would tell you this. From his point of view, it is a trap whether you go in blindly or with your eyes open. He knows you will go there, no matter what I say.’

‘We have seen no Eversor acolytes here. Where are they?’ said Thane.

‘They are with him. All of them. That is the trap.’ She smiled one last time. ‘Goodbye, Maximus Thane.’

Thane placed his fist on his chest, bowed, and left.

When he was halfway down the stairs, the Cerebrium exploded.

Thane reviewed the casualty reports from the battle in the Palace. Half of the Space Marines had fallen. It was hard to credit that mortals could inflict such losses.

Ten Thunderhawk gunships left the Fields of Winged Victory while the battle in the Palace raged on. The Assassins had wisely left the gunships alone, but in the confines of the city they were deadly, and they were everywhere. Thane had no idea how many of them there were, and the fighting spread out across the whole central district of the Palace and beyond. Theoretically, the Assassins could fight a covert war for years; realistically the only way to stop them would be to have a new Grand Master order them to lay down their arms. Though their numbers dropped by the hour, they fought on in pockets.

Thane was grateful for Wienand’s preparatory efforts to ensure that Vangorich could not rouse the population of Terra against him, and even more glad that the Adeptus Custodes had decided to remain neutral. The Assassins were trouble enough, and even though people were off the streets in the central districts, Thane’s strategos serfs and his own best guesses put the casualties among civilians well into the thousands. In the more distant parts of the Palace it was far worse, with many of them still attempting to go about their business, driven by duty and fear to reach their places of service. Battles burst into vast scriptoria where thousands laboured. Artisanal workshops became the sites of brutal firefights. It was inevitable people would die.

Thane added their deaths to the tally of Vangorich’s sins as the Imperial Palace dropped away under the Thunderhawk.

Layers of brown smog cloaked the Palace but could not hide the sheer immensity of it. The Palace was more than a city, it covered the site of the old continent of Europa from north to south, spilling out into the dry seabeds. At six thousand metres, the lower portions were lost to view, the higher towers and spires thrusting up through the polluted air like islands in a dirty sea. The Thunderhawks turned towards the pole and rose higher. Auspex sweeps pinged repeatedly in the cockpit but Terra’s substantial anti-orbital and anti-aircraft firepower remained inactive.

Vangorich was completely isolated.

As they flew over the Palace and towards the dirty ice fields of the north, Thane called the battle-barge Storm of Might and ordered Scout teams to land nearby and guide orbital strikes on the temple.

‘Precision only, remove its air defences, target the barracks. Do not destroy it,’ he concluded his orders. ‘I will take Vangorich alive. He must answer for his crimes.’

The Space Marines put down in a plaza still smoking from a stray lance hit. Defence laser towers burned at the four corners of the temple. Temple Eversor occupied the planed-off summit of a mountain near to the magnetic pole. A dreary vista of exposed seabed and eerily sculpted sails of ice caked in dirt and pollutants receded into the distance.

The temple staff were dead. Their bodies were scattered wherever Thane looked. A few had been killed by the Space Marine reconnaissance teams, but most had no visible injuries, but exhibited signs of poisoning of a dozen different kinds.

‘Who did this?’ asked Thane’s standard bearer.

‘He has. Vangorich slaughtered his followers,’ said Thane. ‘He is insane.’

Cold wind blew over the arid landscape. Thane marshalled his one hundred and fifty warriors. The main temple was ahead.

Setting the Scout teams to guard the Thunderhawks, the battle-brothers of three Chapters advanced.

The entrance to the temple was deceptively small and unassuming, but the first hall was as grand as a cathedral. Stone blocks with no visible names upon them acted as memorials to the unsung heroes of the Imperium. More temple staff lay dotted around, their skin green, mouths thick with frothed saliva. The Space Marines spread out. Ahead, a broad stairway led downwards into the main part of the temple; an extensive underground complex of training chambers, barracks, surgeries, cells, hypnosariums and huge machine rooms. Thane had his warriors check them all, though he knew in his gut they would be deserted by all but the dead.

Vangorich waited for them in the depths of the temple, a spider at the heart of its web. He was in the largest hall of all, dominated by monumental statuary and massive glassaic windows whose colours were dulled by the black rock behind them. A vaulted ceiling stretched a hundred metres above their heads, supported on a row of columns running down the walls where they divided the spaces between the windows into cylindrical alcoves, fifty either side of the hall.

Vangorich sat on the steps of a dais at the end of the hall, one knee upraised, his elbow resting on it and his hand cupping his chin. Once so neat and well presented, he had become filthy and unkempt. His nails were long and ragged, and his hair lank. He had become thin, but there was still a hint of his old strength visible in the sinewy cords of his neck and wrist. Though old by the standards of mortals, he was without mechanical aid. He was still dangerous.

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ pronounced Thane. ‘I am here to arrest you for high treason to the Imperium of Man, and gross abuse of privilege that goes against the fundamental principles of Imperial government.’

Vangorich yawned. ‘You always said you’d come back. Here you are, making good on your threat.’ His voice had a new, wild edge. ‘You took your time.’

‘I never intended that you rule alone,’ said Thane. He stepped closer, and drew his power sword. Its field glowed faintly in the gloom.

‘I discovered fairly quickly that it was either rule alone, or not rule at all,’ said Vangorich. ‘The Senatorum was ungovernable. I had to act. Kubik moved Ullanor, that’s why I had to kill them. It’s still out there, not too far from Terra.’

‘Why did you not recall me? Why did you kill them all?’

‘Because you would not have come back,’ said Vangorich. He stood up, his stale scent wafting out to Thane. ‘I did my best. You should have ruled, Thane, you would have done better. But you wanted your crusade. I didn’t want to be Lord Protector.’

‘You did,’ said Thane. ‘You lied for so long that you cannot stop. You lied even to yourself. Look into your innermost self, Grand Master. I believe you will find that you intended to rule all along, and I was blind not to see.’

Vangorich smiled, exposing dirty teeth. In the smile, the lines around the mouth, the set of the head, there was a flash of the man he had been.

‘Give me time, everything will be set to rights. Protecting the Imperium and protecting humanity are not always the same. I will make it better, you will see.’

Thane looked at the filthy Vangorich. His suaveness, intelligence and wit were gone. Time was cruel to mortal men. What bit at Thane the most was that Vangorich was right, he should have stayed. He had set personal honour over duty.

‘It is too late. You failed in your ambition as you failed your Emperor,’ said Thane. ‘It is time for you to step down, Vangorich. Come and face judgement. You shall be tried by the new High Lords of Terra. Justice served shall be a warning to all those who think themselves mightier than the Emperor’s will.’

Vangorich stood and laughed, clapping in delight.

One hundred and fifty boltgun slides were racked back.

‘What a marvellous speech,’ he said. ‘But no, I must decline. You see,’ he said impishly, ‘you are making a terrible mistake.’

‘I made my mistake a hundred years ago,’ said Thane. ‘I should have heeded your suggestion, and let Veritus lead the Senatorum.’

‘You’re making another one now,’ said Vangorich. His eyes gleamed with incipient madness. ‘And it shall be your last.’

A klaxon blared its rising-falling song. Blinking lights shone in the alcoves along the temple walls. A hundred capsules rose from the floor into them, rotating amber lights on their tops. They locked into place with loud thunks. Swirling gas filled each, lit with blue light. Inside them were the indistinct forms of human bodies, clad in tight-fitting synskin. In an asynchronous cacophony, the gas vented from the capsules.

‘This is Temple Eversor,’ said Vangorich. ‘Allow me to introduce its acolytes.’

The Space Marines opened fire, shooting at the capsules, but they were made of centimetres-thick armourglass, and though they cracked and fractured, they did not break. One by one the shapes inside came alive, twitching gauntlets raking against their prisons.

The doors opened, releasing more methalon fumes into the room. Water vapour condensed in the chilled air, cloaking everything with a dense, freezing fog. The warriors around Thane disappeared into coils of white. Thane activated false-colour heat vision. He saw his men. The Eversors were as cold as the gas, and he did not see them coming.

Boltguns went off all around him; somewhere he heard Vangorich’s insane laughter.

The fight that followed was one of the hardest of Thane’s life. Black-suited killers reared up in the mist, moving too fast for him to hit easily. The shouts of battle-brothers rang in his helmet. Space Marines came into sight, only to be cut down by the flashing finger blades of Temple Eversor’s crazed killers.

‘Fall back to the door!’ ordered Thane. ‘Defensive cordon!’

His dwindling men formed up around the entrance, back-to-back, boltguns blazing. A handful of Eversors got behind them, causing great loss before they were cut down. Casualty screed scrolled endlessly on Thane’s faceplate display. Black, skull-masked Assassins darted in and out of view, clawing men down. In their turn, the Assassins died messily, blasted apart by mass-reactives or detonated by uncontrollable bio-feedback when their hearts stopped. Such was the force of their explosions that Space Marines went down, battleplate holed by fragments of hyper-velocity bone shards and armour.

‘Keep them back!’ yelled Thane. ‘Keep them back!’

Executioner pistols fired, loud brazen boltguns one moment, silent toxin needlers the next.

The Eversors pressed nearer. Fighting became close and desperate, and the firing discipline of the Adeptus Astartes collapsed. The group disintegrated into individuals fighting for their lives in melee. At close quarters Vangorich’s killers excelled. The warriors fighting at his side became fewer, going from one hundred, to seventy-five, to fifty, to twenty, to ten.

Thane battled on, his power sword the flaring dividing line between his life and death. He parried and cut, but his blows cleaved only the mist. The Assassins were faster than the wind, near impossible to hit. They fought in a frenzy that appeared at first to lack control, but after a time Thane discerned a pattern to their combat, and was awed by their skill.

His actions became reflexive, time blurred. Only rarely had Thane fought so hard. As a Space Marine he regarded himself as the pinnacle of the transhuman type. The Eversors, though unstable mentally and physically, challenged that belief.

Thane fought with a dancing monster with a blue death’s head for a face. It leapt around, howling like an animal. After minutes of duelling, Thane spotted a weakness in its attacks and brought his sword up, hilt first, swinging the point up and through the Eversor’s stomach wall and gutting it. Before it died, it slashed down with its neurogauntlet. Monomolecular blades sliced through ceramite and plasteel, biting into Thane’s flesh. Toxins surged from micropores all up the blades, pumping into the Chapter Master’s body.

He roared in agony. He had never felt such pain. He stumbled and fell to his knees, paralysed by the poison.

When his body had purged the toxins sufficiently for him to move, he looked up, his eyes streaming with tears. The mist was clearing. He heard a final round of gunfire, a scream, and the clash of power armour falling to the floor.

A dark shadow fell across Thane’s face. An Eversor stood over him, ready to deliver the final blow.

‘Halt!’ called Vangorich. He walked through the last dispersing tendrils of mist. ‘You have lost, Chapter Master Thane, and it is your life that is forfeit.’

‘No,’ said the Eversor, and stood back. Trembling with the effort of disobeying its programming, the killer pulled its skull mask from its face. Yanking cables from its head, it cast the mask aside. Most of the flesh of the face beneath had been peeled away, replaced with close-fitting augmetic devices. Elsewhere there was naught but shining, polished bone inscribed with devotional text. But there was just enough of the features left for Thane to recognise him.

‘Krule!’ he said.

Through a mutilated mouth, Krule managed to speak.

‘My name is Esad Wire,’ he said.

He stood aside, leaving Thane a clear shot at Vangorich.

Thane raised his bolt pistol.

Vangorich’s eyes widened. He held up his hands. ‘Wait! Did you ever hear the story of the end of Konrad Curze?’

‘No more stories, Drakan,’ said Thane, and ended Vangorich’s life with a single bolter shell.

Swaying, feeling nauseous from the residue of the poison in his blood, Maximus Thane stood. He gripped his wounded arm. He was alone amid a carpet of broken bodies, Space Marine and Assassin alike. He called out for survivors, but no voice answered. Relief flooded him when he voxed the Thunderhawks and found all was well outside.

‘Send the Apothecaries. They have a harvest of sorrow ahead of them,’ he said. He turned away from Vangorich’s broken corpse. Too weary to raise his sword, he dragged it across the ground as he walked unsteadily back towards the stairs and the daylight beyond.

Of Esad Wire, there was no trace.

Chapter Seventeen

A matter of control

To the psychic sight of Eldrad Ulthran the skein was a living being, a complicated braiding of the life threads of every living thing in the galaxy. The main flow of fate resembled the corded trunk of a tree. From its mighty sides grew innumerable branches. Most were small, looping back to rejoin the main course of destiny; many more withered and died before long, the potential choices that predicated them so unlikely they would never come to be, or the creature intended to set those events in motion meeting its end before it could. Others branched many times into complex networks of possibility all their own. A few of these split the skein, forming mighty boughs upon the tree of fate. Sometimes a single choice could dictate a different future entirely.

It was upon these that Ulthran dwelt as his bodiless mind flew along the twisting ways of the future. Farseers were consumed utterly by the drive to preserve their craftworld, but Eldrad Ulthran’s calling was higher. He ignored the fates of maiden worlds, crone worlds, true stars, exodite clans, pirates, dark kin and craftworlds. Planets burned and kindreds were snuffed out in myriad futures. These extinctions pained him, but they were only a small part of the game and he could not afford to be distracted. He played at fate because he saw a greater prize than simple survival. Eldrad Ulthran would have the glories of old restored and Chaos’ influence banished from the material realm. There was no other goal worth aiming for; all others led ultimately to death and damnation.

A cracking roar announced the splitting of the skein. A new forest of possibilities grew rapidly out from the trunk. Familiar as he was with the skein, like no other being in the galaxy, Ulthran rarely saw such a dramatic reconfiguration of potentiality born before him and he followed it eagerly. Tendrils of individual fates, vanishingly small, sprouted from the main path, growing long with incredible velocity, wrapping around each other, twisting themselves into thicker and thicker ropes of complex interaction. These came together, and again, until the fates of worlds and sectors were bound up with one another, all generated from the actions of the galaxy’s uncountable creatures.

The wave front of possibility and its fronds of maybes raced away from Ulthran. Beneath him, more cords were being joined, wrapping around each other in tight embrace until in their coilings Ulthran descried the fates of entire species. A moaning rolled through the timeless spaces of fate. The other half of the fork, the original from his perspective, blackened and died, its unformed might-bes disintegrating into unrealised motes of chance and fragments of unfulfilled cause and effect.

He paused. Turning about, he looked back at the skein towards the present. He had outpaced the now by some days, but the origin of the split was only hours ahead of the present, and it approached swiftly, a boiling wall of yellow light that rushed unstoppably towards the future. When it encountered the What Might Be, it solidified it into the glimmering of What Is, a moment so short it could not be measured. When the present passed on by the skein was still and clear as glass, the dead times of What Was.

Ulthran looked down at where the split had occurred, now no more than a slight kink in the skein. He raced downward, into it, passing through the endless threads of individual lives, his powerful mind inadvertently tasting their short-lived joys and lasting pain. So many billion human existences, twined mostly with their own kind, but touching here and there against the fates of other creatures including the eldar, often disastrously.

He hunted to find the cause of the change, his practised astral eyes darting from deaths and births to the explosions of suns.

The rumble of the approaching present grew louder as he located the source of the change. One thread, one death.

Drakan Vangorich, master of the Imperium, was about to die.

Ulthran rapidly examined all possible futures for the Grand Master’s thread, but though they began as many, they all converged on that one point, when a Space Marine in yellow armour would put a bolt between Vangorich’s eyes.

Racing back to the surface of the skein entire, Ulthran looked ahead, to where the ghost of the dead futures yet lingered as a dying swarm of particulate maybes. That had been a bad future, the slow decline of the human Imperium, the resurgence of Chaos, the probable death of the eldar, but woven in amongst the doom were gleaming threads of salvation. These Ulthran had resolved to pursue, and he had been confident of success despite the grim nature of the predominate fates. But all of that had gone.

Behind him the present rushed on. Ulthran looked to the new future. Less certain, more fraught. The chances of survival were more numerous, the opportunity of restoration far more remote. Time stretched away unbrokenly. Ulthran saw his own fate weaving in and out of it until it was lost to sight among the uncountable tomorrows. The roar of the now thundered, waterfall-loud. A great shock hit his body and Ulthran was engulfed, carried along upon the wave of actuality towards futures he had not yet assimilated. It was time to leave, before he was consumed.

Eldrad Ulthran opened his eyes. His runes slowed their spinning in the air and sank to the crystalline floor around him. There, one by one, they came to a wobbling halt, fell and clinked to a standstill.

‘Drakan Vangorich is dead,’ he said aloud. His voice echoed weirdly through the forest of crystal trees of Ulthwé’s Dome of Seers.

His death was foreseen, replied a disembodied voice.

The skein is changed, said another.

Among the groves of trees were half a dozen silent, vitreous statues of eldar farseers, those psykers whose bond to the craftship’s heart had become too much to ignore, and whose spirit fled their flesh to join the infinity circuit while still alive. Their voices were hard to tease apart. Though they spoke individually, their words blended into one another’s speech. Male voices became female or something inbetween. They might speak all together, then split as they disagreed. Eldrad Ulthran knew all their names as he had known them all in life, but without joining in direct psychic communion with them it was impossible to identify which soul spoke.

‘We go on,’ said Ulthran. ‘The mon-keigh are aware of the threat of Chaos, they will continue the struggle.’

One thousand five hundred cycles ago you sought their destruction, and through it the extinguishment of Chaos, said another voice.

‘The Cabal did. I did not. I only ever sought our survival,’ said Ulthran.

The Cabal are gone. The Cabal did not have the best interests of the children of Eldanesh at heart. We were used. The trees pulsed with dancing witchlight, their boughs raced with the thoughts of the dead.

‘Yes. The only way our species is to survive is through the support of humanity. Our fates are inextricable. If they fall, so shall we.’

You chase ever-diminishing possibilities of salvation. We should depart this starwheel and begin anew elsewhere.

‘Even were that possible, and we are not assured that it is, then what? The Primordial Annihilator knows no limits. Time and space mean nothing in the Othersea. If we travel to another starwheel, we will take our daemons with us. She Who Thirsts will be waiting wherever we go. Our fate is here, with this place, for good or ill. Many fates are possible. If we guide them wisely, we shall prevail.’

You do not have the power of the Acuity. You do not have the foresight of the Cabal. We stand alone. Your actions could doom us all. The mon-keigh have proven again that they will not be manipulated. They will see us all dead before the end. Already it is two thousand cycles since the fall. Every pass brings us closer to extinction. The lights in the crystal danced with agitation. A period of instability awaits the humans’ empire, and they may not recover. If they do, they shall hunt us to destruction.

‘Not all threads say this is so.’ Ulthran picked up his helm and held it under his arm. ‘Humanity is our best chance, but it is not the only one. There are many more worlds of the krork,’ said Ulthran. ‘Beasts never die, they are only banished. The cry of “Mag Uruk Thraka” echoes still in the Othersea. Should one rise again, the greenskins may yet fulfil their original purpose. New races may evolve in time. There is hope while we live.’

You are arrogant. You are but one alone against eternity.

‘One mind is sometimes all it takes to change fate,’ Ulthran said defiantly.

The lights dwindled. The dead farseers retreated into the core of the worldship. The crystal dome took on its dark, marmoreal air again. Other craftworlds had lighter aspects, but Ulthwé never forgot, forever in mourning for an empire lost.

Eldrad Ulthran would not mourn. He would see the days of greatness return, no matter how long it took.

Content

Warhammer 40000
The Beast Arises

History of changes

Dan Abnett I, Slaughter

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Rob Sanders Predator, prey

Capturing…

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

Gav Thorpe The Emperor expects

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

David Annandale The Last Wall

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Guy Haley Throneworld

One The Last Wall gathers

Two The Palace of the God-Emperor

Three Krule’s dance

Four Before the Throne

Five Woman in the moon

Six Dance’s end

Seven A conversation with Terra

Eight The calculation of suspicion

Nine The Last Wall attacks

Ten The gate

Eleven Servant of the Beast

Twelve In pursuit of vengeance

Thirteen Iron and faith

Fourteen The dead of Mars

Fifteen Lord Guilliman’s decree

Sixteen The welcoming of heroes

Seventeen War in the dust

Eighteen Red Haven minus one, plus one

Nineteen Witch

Twenty Faith and iron

Twenty-One Three partings

David Guymer Echoes of the Long War

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

David Annandale The Hunt for Vulkan

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Epilogue

Gav Thorpe The Beast must die

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

David Annandale Watchers in death

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Epilogue

David Guymer The Last son of Dorn

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Epilogue

Rob Sanders Shadow of Ullanor

Capturing…

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Guy Haley The beheading

Chapter One Death to the Beast!

Chapter Two Legacy of the Sigillite

Chapter Three Exemplars of the Imperium

Chapter Four The crusade of iron

Chapter Five The fate of Ullanor

Chapter Six Holy ordos

Chapter Seven The opening of the warp

Chapter Eight Vangorich decided

Chapter Nine The beheading

Chapter Ten Krule’s judgement

Chapter Eleven Red Haven

Chapter Twelve Voice from the past

Chapter Thirteen A new order

Chapter Fourteen Fist of iron

Chapter Fifteen Warriors of Titan

Chapter Sixteen Fury of the Space Marines

Chapter Seventeen A matter of control