Dark Apostle

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

DARK APOSTLE

Anthony Reynolds

For my brother, Nick, who always believed I could do it.

It IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred

centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden

Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the

will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the

might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass

writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of

Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for

whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that

he may never truly die.

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

TO BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold

billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody

regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much

has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the

promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim

dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst

the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and

the laughter of thirsting gods.

As Sanguine Orb waxes strong and Pillar of Clamour rises high,

The Peal of Nether shakes,

And Great Wyrms of The Below wreak the earth

With flame and gaseous exhalation.

Roar of Titans will smite the mountains and they shall tumble.

Depths of Onyx shall engulf the lands,

and then exposed shall lay

The Undercroft,

Death and Mastery.

The door shall be opened to he of pure faith

Into Darkness two descend,

Apostate and he who would be,

Into madness and confusion descend,

Restless dead and creatures old,

The Undying One to face.

Master of the cog will come in chains and tattered robes,

To become Enslaved,

To unleash the Orb of Night and Breaking Dawn.

One shall fall, he of lesser faith, he unmarked by godly touch,

His fate to remain, trapped eternal,

And for one to flee with prize in hand,

Gatemaster,

He who bears Lorgar's touch.

PROLOGUE

Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion, looked up. His noble, deathly pale patrician features, common amongst those imbued with the gene-seed of blessed Lorgar, were twisted in frustration and anger. Braziers burning within the darkness of the icy mausoleum lit his face, the flames mirrored in his eyes.

'I have read the portents. I felt the truth within the blood of the sacrifices on my tongue.'

He rounded on his silent listener, the ancient Warmonger.

'But this vision fills my head, and its meaning is unclear. I have recited the Curses of Amentenoc; I have supplicated the Great Changer with offerings and sacrifice. I have spent endless hours in meditation, opening myself up to the wisdom and majesty of the living Ether. But the meaning remains unclear.

'I am assailed by the dead, long dead, and they claw at my armour with skeletal claws. They scratch deep furrows into my blessed ceramite, but they cannot pierce my consecrated flesh. I begin to recite from the Book of Lorgar, the third book of the Litanies of Vengeance and Hate. "Smite down the non-believers and the deceived, and they shall know the truth of the words of oblivion."'

Marduk clenched his fist tightly, servo-muscles in his armour whining as his entire body tensed.

'I shatter their bones with my fists. They cannot stand against me. But they are many.'

'Calm your mind, First Acolyte,' boomed the ancient one. It was the sound of the sepulchre given voice, an impossibly deep baritone that reverberated through the still tomb, deep within the strike cruiser. Each word was spoken slowly and deliberately, amplified through powerful vox-units.

Once he had been a mighty hero who fought at the side of the greatest warriors ever to have lived. As a captain he had led great companies of the Legion against the foes of Lorgar and the Warmaster, and Marduk had studied all of his recorded sermons and exhortations. They were masterpieces of rhetoric and faith, filled with righteous hatred, and his skill at deciphering and predicting the twisting patterns of the future through his ritualised dream visions were astounding. He had fallen fighting against the archenemies, the deniers of the truth, those who followed the False Emperor in their ignorance and blindness.

'You fight your visions too hard. They are gifts from the gods, and as with all gifts bestowed from the great powers, you should receive them with thanks.'

The meagre physical remnants of the inspirational leader had been interred within the sarcophagus that lay before Marduk. Though his body was utterly ruined, he was destined to live on within the tomb of his new shell, and become the Warmonger. While the other Dreadnoughts of the Legion had slowly succumbed to madness and raving insanity, the Warmonger retained much of his lucidity. It was his faith, Erebus himself had stated, that kept him from slipping into darkness.

All the anger and frustration flowed out of Marduk, and he smiled. The face that had looked brooding and twisted with anger a moment before was darkly handsome once again, black eyes glinting.

'Pray for enlightenment, but do not be impatient and expect instant gratification,' continued the Warmonger. 'Knowledge and power will come to you, for you are on the path of the devout, and the favour of the gods is upon you. But you must let yourself succumb to the embrace of the great powers; they will buoy you, and only then will the veil be lifted from your eyes. Only then will you see what your vision means. You need not fear the darkness, for you are the darkness.'

The Warmonger flexed its huge, mechanical arms, hissing steam venting from the joints.

'My weapons ache for the bloodshed to begin anew,' the dreadnought said, massive weapon feeds aligning themselves in anticipation. 'Do we fight alongside our Lord Lorgar this day?'

'Not today,' said Marduk quietly, recognising that the Warmonger's lucidity was slipping. It was often this way.

'And the Warmaster? Do his battles against the False Emperor fare well? Has he yet dethroned the hated betrayer, the craven abandoner of the Crusade?'

The mention of the Warmaster Horus pained Marduk. He longed for the simpler days of the past, when the victory of the Warmaster over the Emperor seemed like a certainty. The memories were fresh in his mind, and his anger, hatred and outrage burned within him stronger than ever. He wished he had been at the battle of the Emperor's palace on Terra alongside the Warmonger and most of the warriors that made up the Grand Host of the Dark Apostle Jarulek, but he had not. No, in those days he had been but a novice adept sent to serve under Lord Kor Phaeron. It was a great honour, but while he fought the hated Ultramarines of Guilliman on Calth with passion and belief, he longed to be fighting the battle at the palace that would determine the outcome of the long war. Or so he had thought. The war ground on, and would never end until the so-called Emperor of mankind was thrown down, and every cursed edifice that falsely proclaimed his divinity was smashed asunder.

'The Corpse Emperor sits on his throne on Terra still, Warmonger,' said Marduk bitterly, 'but his end draws ever nearer.'

BOOK ONE:

SUBJUGATION

'From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar, the Bearer of the Word, the favoured son of Chaos, all praise be given unto him. From those that would not heed we offer praise to those who do, that they might turn their gaze our way and gift us with the boon of pain, to turn the galaxy red with blood, and feed the hunger of the gods!'

- Excerpt from the three hundred and forty-first Book of the Epistles of Lorgar

CHAPTER ONE

Kol Badar glared across the expanse of the cavaedium. The arena of worship, located deep within the heart of the strike cruiser Infidus Diabolus, was large enough to allow the recently swollen ranks of the entire Host to stand in attendance. Its curved ceiling stretched impossibly high, and immense skeletal ribbed supports met hundreds of metres above. The kathartes perched along the bone-like struts, daemonic, skinless harpies that flickered in and out of the warp. But Kol Badar's gaze did not rise to look upon the carrion feeders.

No, his scowling features were focused on the last of the warriors filing into the enormous room. From his vantage point, just one step from the top of the sacred raised dais that none but the most holy of warriors would occupy, he could see the last of the Host's champions leading their warriors into the cavaedium, to take their places for the coming ceremony. The expanse was almost full. The entire Host had been gathered. Kol Badar let his gaze wander over the serried ranks, glorying in the strength and power that his warriors exuded. None could hope to stand against such a force of the devout, and his warriors would soon prove their worth once again.

His warriors. He grunted at his own hubris. They were not his warriors. If anything, they were the warriors of the Dark Apostle, though in his words they belonged only to Chaos in all its glory. The Dark Apostle claimed that he was merely the instrument through which the great powers directed these noble warriors of faith, and that Kol Badar was his primary tool to enact the great gods' will.

Kol Badar was the Coryphaus. It was a symbolic title, granted to the most trusted and capable warrior leader and strategos of the Host. His word was second only to that of the Dark Apostle. The Coryphaus was the Dark Apostle's senior war captain, but more than this, he was the voice of the congregation. The mood and opinion of the Host was delivered to the Dark Apostle through him, and it was his duty to lead the chanted responses and antiphons from the gathered Host in ceremonies and rituals. It was also his role to lead the responses within the true house of worship of the dark gods: the battlefield.

The processional corridor that ran down the middle of the nave remained clear as the cavaedium filled. Almost half a kilometre long and laid with black, immaculate carpet consecrated in the blood of thousands, none dared to step upon this hallowed ground, but those deemed worthy, on pain of immortal torment. There were no seats within the nave: the warriors of the Legion received the word from the Dark Apostle standing, armed and armoured. Dozens of smaller sanctuaries and temple-shrines branched off from the ancient stone walls of the cavaedium, containing statues of daemonic deities, ancient texts and the interred remains of holy warriors who had fallen during the constant, long war.

An almost imperceptible, ghostly chanting whispered around the room. Lazily swooping cherubiox circled in the air, skeletal, winged creatures with sharp fangs set within childlike mouths, each carrying a flaming iron brazier. Odorous incense descended from the tusked maws of daemon-headed gargoyles towards the gathered Host. The clouds of smoke eddied and roiled in the wake of the gently weaving cherubiox.

Kol Badar stepped heavily down the altar steps, the joints of his massive, ornate Terminator armour hissing and steaming. He passed through the gates of the ikonoclast, the spiked metal barrier that separated the altar from the openness of the nave. Its wrought iron frame was decorated with dozens of ancient banners, twisted icons and trophies dedicated to the gods of Chaos, and upon its spiked and barbed tips were impaled the heads of particularly hated foes.

He prowled along the base of the altar, glaring at the warrior-brothers filing into the room, as if daring any of them to dishonour him in any way. The warriors of the Legion stood unmoving once they had taken up their positions. Almost two thousand warriors of the Word Bearers stood in absolute silence, and Kol Badar stalked back and forth along their ranks.

Two thousand was a particularly large number of warrior-brothers for a single Host. The ranks of the Host had swollen a century past, when the warriors of another Dark Apostle had been amalgamated into its ranks after their holy leader had been slain in battle. Ceremonies of mourning had lasted weeks as the Legion honoured the passing of one of its religious fathers. Jarulek had, of course, ordered the execution of all the captains of the leaderless Host for having allowed such a sacrilege to take place. It was deemed by the Dark Council on the revered daemon-world of Sicarus, the spiritual home of the Word Bearers Legion and the throne world of the blessed Daemon Primarch Lorgar, that Jarulek take in the leaderless Host, for he had an apprentice, a First Acolyte who would soon be ready to bear the mantle of Dark Apostle. When, and if, the First Acolyte became worthy of the title of Dark Apostle, then Jarulek would split the Host once more into two.

The thick features of Kol Badar's face darkened at the idea. The very thought of the bastard whoreson Marduk bearing the exalted title of Dark Apostle made Kol Badar's rage and bitterness burn fiercely within him.

The Anointed, the warrior-cult of the most favoured warriors within the Host, stood in neat ranks surrounding the raised pulpit of the Coryphaus, and Kol Badar approached them. The Anointed looked like statues, utterly still and wearing their fully enclosed, ancient suits of Terminator armour. Each suit was a relic of holy significance, and to don the armour was a great religious honour. Once a warrior-brother entered the ranks of the Anointed, he was a member for life, and with lifespans extended indefinitely through a combination of their Astartes conditioning, bio-enhancement and the warping power of the gods of the Ether, the Anointed were only replaced on the rare occasion that one of their cult fell in battle. Many of them had fought alongside Kol Badar and their holy Daemon Primarch Lorgar at the great siege of the Emperor's palace, and he knew of no finer fighting force. Unsurpassed warriors with the hearts of true fanatics, the cult of the Anointed had won countless battles for the Legion. Their glories were sung in the flesh-halls within the temples of Sicarus, and their deeds recounted in the grimoire historicals housed in the finest scriptorums of Ghalmek. Kol Badar stalked through the ranks of the elite warriors and climbed the steps to his pulpit, there to await the arrival of the Dark Apostle.

The Dark Apostle - Jarulek the Glorified, Jarulek the Blessed, a divine warrior who heard the whispered words of the gods, and communed with them as their vessel. One of the favoured servants of the immortal daemon primarch Lorgar, Jarulek truly was a bearer of the word. His furious passion and belief had brought countless millions into the fold. Countless millions more, ignorant and resistant to the words of truth, had been slain in holy war upon his order.

As much as it furthered the cause of the Word Bearers for more systems to be brought under the sway of Lorgar's word, Kol Badar much preferred the worlds that resisted. He enjoyed the killing.

Thin, spider-like limbs extended from the pulpit towards his exposed face. Fine, bladed hooks at their tips emerged and pushed into his flesh, latching beneath the skin. He closed his eyes. A large proboscis uncurled, and he opened his mouth to accept it. It entered his throat, and small barbed clamps latched onto his larynx. The proboscis expanded to fill his throat. His voice, enhanced by the apparatus, would not only carry through the vast expanse of the cavaedium, but also through the entire Infidus Diabolus, so that all within the cruiser might intone the correct responses.

He recalled the conversation he had had with the Dark Apostle mere hours earlier, and his face flushed with the thought of the rebuke he had received.

'Speak as the Coryphaus, Kol Badar, not as yourself Jarulek had scolded him gently.

Kol Badar had clenched his heavy jaw tight, looking down. 'What would you have me say, Dark Apostle?' he had asked, his voice sounding course and crude in his ears after Jarulek's velvet words.

'I would have you speak for the Host, as the Coryphaus. Does the Host accept him?'

'The Host follows your word without fault, my lord.'

'Of course. Meaning?'

'Meaning that they embrace and revere him, for it is your will for them to do so,' he had said, his voice thick.

'And speaking as yourself?' Jarulek had asked, softly.

'He is an upstart newborn risen beyond his position. He has not been with us from the start. He did not fight at our side as we assailed the cursed False Emperor's lapdogs on Terra.' Kol Badar had fumed. 'You should have let me kill him.'

Jarulek had chuckled at that. 'A newborn, I have not heard you call him that before. He has fought against the False Emperor mere centuries less than you and I, old friend.'

Kol Badar's face had darkened. 'He was not there at the start.'

'No, but a long time has passed since then: ten thousand years in the world of mortals.'

'We do not live in the realm of mortals.' Kol Badar had replied. Time held no sway over the warp: a warrior may spend a month within its unstable boundaries, emerging to find that the galaxy had changed, that countless decades had flown by. To Kol Badar, the siege of the Emperor's palace felt like mere centuries ago, not the staggering ten thousand years that had passed since that time, and his memories of it were strong.

'He has been chosen by the gods.' Jarulek had said. 'Do not straggle against their will, Kol Badar. They are unforgiving masters, and a soul like yours would be an exquisite plaything. You are my most loyal and honoured warrior - do not let your hatred of him be your ruin.'

A mournful, tolling bell echoed across the expanse of the cavaedium. Silence descended, and not a movement stirred through the massed ranks of the Word Bearers. This was the start of the exhortation, and the entire Host stood in silence, awaiting the arrival of the Dark Apostle.

Kol Badar was a warlord, a killer and a destroyer of worlds. But, along with the rest of the Host, he would wait, patient, unmoving and in silence, for the arrival of the holy Dark Apostle. If it took a minute or a week, he would stand immobile. And so he waited.

'Go,' said the voice over the comm-channel. Reacting instantly, black-armoured figures of the Shinar enforcers stepped out of the gloom of the narrow alleyway. Lieutenant Varnus levelled and fired his combat issue shotgun at the heavy locking mechanism of the rusted door. The sound of the weapon echoed deafeningly, and a fist-sized hole was punched through the metal. Varnus slammed a heavy boot into the door, swinging it violently open, and surged through, the other enforcers close behind him.

The door opened to a refuse strewn corridor, dully lit by humming glow-globes. A man sitting with his feet up on the crude synthetic table looked up, eyes wide, lho-stick hanging limply from his mouth. A second blast from the shotgun threw him backwards, slamming him against the wall in a spray of blood.

'Entrance gained,' said Varnus, opening up the comm-channel.

'All teams have entered the complex. Proceed as planned,' said the captain in reply.

'Yes, sir,' said Varnus. He mouthed an obscenity under his breath once the comm-channel was closed.

Moving in a half crouch up the corridor, he stepped quickly over the scattered piles of twisted metal and broken masonry.

'Smells like a damn sewage pit,' muttered one of the enforcers. Varnus was forced to agree. He indicated sharply to a closed door as he passed it. A pair of enforcers behind him took up positions to either side of it. One kicked it open, and the two of them moved in, shotguns raised. The sharp, focused beams of light from their helmets swung around to locate any threats. The other two enforcers in the team moved up in support of Varnus. He paused at the end of the corridor, and glanced quickly around the corner: another empty, sparse corridor, this one with a single door leading from it. Glow-globes overhead flickered weakly.

Varnus stepped around the corner and moved forwards cautiously, the focused beam from his helmet piercing the dark comers that the weak illumination of the glow globes failed to light. Rodents scurried away from the brightness. The stench was overpowering.

'Who in the Emperor's name would want to hide out here?' remarked one of his team, swearing colour-fully.

'Those who don't want to be disturbed,' said Varnus sharply. 'And cut the chatter, Landers. I'm sick of your whine.' The enforcer muttered something under his breath, and Varnus resisted the urge to turn on the big man. Focus, he told himself, and stepped towards the closer of the two doors. He heard the sound of muffled voices, a shout. He swore.

Varnus slammed his heavy boot into the door, and it collapsed inwards, its hinges long corroded. A pair of men were raising a heavy metal hatch in the floor of the room. One, his eyes filled with fear, dropped down into the darkness of the bolt-hole. The other raised an autopistol, face twisted in hatred, and raking fire spat from the end of the stub-nosed weapon. Varnus's shotgun barked, even as the bullets from the pistol ripped across his chest, and the man's head exploded in a splatter of gore.

Varnus fell back from the impact of the projectiles on his carapace armour. 'Get the other one,' he wheezed.

'I can't fit down there,' remarked Landers, shrugging his shoulders. He nodded towards the smallest of the four enforcers, a grin on his face.

'One of you damn well go! Now!' roared Varnus, pulling himself to his feet. The slight enforcer swore, seeing the eyes of the whole team on him. He placed his shotgun on the floor of the room, drew and cocked his autopistol and dropped into the darkness of the bolt-hole. The sound of the man scrambling through a metal duct echoed loudly beneath them.

Still wheezing, Varnus opened up his comm-channel.

'They are running. Undisclosed bolt-holes. Orders?'

Varnus pulled the bullets from his chest-plate as he waited for a response. He could feel the heat from the bullets through the leather of his gloves.

'Captain?' he said with some impatience. 'Did you hear me? What are our orders?'

There was a muffled grant of pain from the bolt-hole, and then the sound of three gunshots. The enforcer reappeared a moment later. 'Bastard stuck me,' he said, his hand gripped around his left arm, blood seeping between his fingers.

'Hold position. Awaiting new intel,' came the captain's terse response, finally.

'Hold position? They will have cleared out by the time we wait for new intel!'

'Hold your position, lieutenant.' The comm-bead clicked closed in his helmet.

'Frek that,' said Varnus. Yanking the last of the autopistol bullets from his chest plate, he threw them to the ground. 'Right, let's move.'

'Lieutenant?' questioned one of the enforcers.

'The bastards are getting away. We close on the target position, now. If the Emperor wills it, we may yet salvage something from this mission. Move!'

'That's what the captain's orders are, are they?' asked Landers, disbelief clear on his face.

Varnus turned quickly, stepping in close to the bigger man, and slammed a clenched fist into his face. Landers fell back, a cry more of shock than pain escaping his lips.

'I am your lieutenant, damn you, you slimy arse licker, and you will do as I damn well say,' snarled Varnus. 'Now, all of you, let's move out.'

Leading the way, Varnus pushed on deeper into the stinking, crumbling complex. He heard the others falling in behind him, and heard Landers muttering to himself. He grinned. He had wanted to punch that man for months.

The enforcers moved on, covering each other as they ghosted through the corridors and down corroded metal stairways. Varnus heard running footsteps ahead, and raised a hand, crouching low. He turned off the light on his helmet, the other enforcers following suit, and they plunged into dim, semi-light. A figure ran lightly around a corner, and Varnus reared up, slamming the butt of his shotgun into the figure's head. There was a crunching sound, and the figure dropped. Clicking his light back on, he saw it was a woman, her hair clipped short. Her eyes were open and staring, and blood seeped from her head where Varnus had struck her. An autogun was clasped in her dead hands.

'We are close,' said Varnus.

Carefully descending another flight of metal stairs, the enforcer team could see a flickering of orange light coming from below. The stink of promethium filled their nostrils.

Reaching the landing below, the team was faced with a single, heavy door standing slightly ajar, its plasglass window smashed through. Flames could be seen on the other side.

'Quickly,' hissed Varnus, and the enforcer team entered the room. It was a large, square space, and one of the glow-globes in the ceiling exploded as flames touched it. Couches and chairs were ablaze, as was a low table covered in papers and documents. The walls were lined with bunks and desks, and a makeshift kitchen had been constructed in the eastern corner. The figure of a man, oblivious to the sudden appearance of the enforcers, was liberally upending the contents of a metal can across a table on the far side of the room.

Varnus hissed, motioning for his team to lower their weapons. 'Take him, no guns,' he mouthed to Landers. The enforcer nodded, the confrontation of minutes earlier forgotten, and moved swiftly towards the figure. Feeling the presence behind him too late, the man turned just as Landers's thick arms wrapped around his neck, locking him firmly. He was dragged back across the room, and slammed face first onto the floor, his arms held painfully behind his back. The man struggled in vain, and Landers dropped his knee into the man's back, pinning him in place.

Varnus ran across the room and picked up one of the sodden papers that covered the promethium doused table. It was a detailed schematic map. He swore as he saw what it detailed.

'Get these damn flames out now! This whole place could go up at any second!' Varnus hollered. He opened up his comm-channel. 'Captain, this is Lieutenant Varnus. You need to get in here. Now,' he said, moving back towards Landers and the captive.

He knelt down beside the pinned captive and turned his face roughly towards him. The man's features were twisted in hatred and pain.

'What in the Emperor's name were you planning here?' Varnus said quietly.

The captive spat, eyes blazing with fury.

'What do you make of these, lieutenant? Gang markings? I don't recognise them,' said one of the enforcers.

Varnus looked to where the man motioned with his head. A crude tattoo was visible where the captive's dark brown overalls had been torn at his left shoulder. Ripping the heavy cloth fully away from the man's body, he gazed upon the emblazoned design: a screaming, horned daemon head surrounded by flames.

'I don't recognise it either, but it looks like some kind of damn cult marking to me,' said Varnus. He swore silently to himself.

CHAPTER TWO

Burias walked with a warrior's grace as he stalked through the dark, musty smelling halls of the Infidus Diabolus, impatient for the slaughter that was soon to come. His armour was a deep, bruised red, edged in dull, brushed metal. It was an exhibit of exceptional craftsmanship, each heavy ceramite plate fitting perfectly over his powerful, enhanced body.

He could not recall a time when his sacred armour had not been a part of him. He had laboured over every coiling engraving covering the auto-reductive armour plates, had painstakingly whittled the words of blessed Lorgar along the burnished reinforcement bands that circled his forearms, and had carved the words of the gods themselves around the rim of his heavy shoulder plates. The sacred Latros Sacrum, the symbol that represented the Word Bearers Legion was embossed on his left shoulder. A bronze, stylized representation of a roaring, horned daemon surrounded by flames, it represented all that the Legion and Burias stood for, all that they believed in and all that they killed for.

He wore no helmet for the upcoming exhortation. His vicious, deathly pale face was unmarked by scars, a rarity for a warrior who had fought in as many campaigns as he had, and it was framed by long, oiled black hair.

With each step, the heavy butt of the icon that Burias held in his left hand slammed into the polished, black-veined, stone floor, the sharp sound echoing around him.

The icon was a thick staff of spiked, black iron. It was almost three metres tall, taller even than him, and loops of heavily ornate bronze encircled its shaft. These loops were inscribed with litanies and epistles, sacred words of the Daemon Primarch Lorgar. It was topped with a glistening, black, eight-pointed star, the points of the symbol of Chaos barbed and sharp. In the centre of the star was a graven image of the sacred Latros Sacrum.

Burias had received the honour of becoming icon-bearer with great pride, and he had the privilege of walking before Marduk, the First Acolyte, and Jarulek, the Dark Apostle, leading them to their positions in the ceremonies of worship and sacrifice. He had performed this sacred duty for many years, and the esteem he had earned from his warrior-brothers as a result was great.

He paused before he began his ascent up a grand set of curving stairs. The staircase was wide enough for twenty Space Marines to walk side by side, and its curving balustrades were highly ornate and picked out in bronze, crafted by some unknown hand countless aeons past. Two intimidating statues glared at any wishing to climb the steps, monstrous, coiling daemons said to strike down those with unworthy hearts.

Raising his head high, Burias began the long climb, his footfalls on the cold stone echoing up into the gloom of the arching ceiling hundreds of metres above. Ghostly chanting flowed down upon him, the sound of dozens of servitor eunuchs, forever ensconced in hidden pulpit-casings, intoning the canticles of blessed Lorgar in never-ending cycles.

Reaching the top of the grand staircase, Burias continued on towards a pair of gigantic, arched doors on the opposite side of a long gallery. Huge, stone tablets lined the walls of the gallery, each more than twenty metres in height and covered in intricate, precisely carved script, just a part of the Book of Lorgar, said to have been carved by the Dark Apostle Jarulek.

At the far end of the gallery, at either side of the great doors, stood a pair of warrior-brothers, the two chosen to act as the honour guard accompanying the First Acolyte to the exhortation. Each wore long robes of cream over their blood-red armour, and stood static in their positions, bolters held clasped across their chests. Tall curling horns extended from the helms of the warriors, and the pair made no reaction as Burias crossed the gallery to stand before the great doors.

A partially hidden side door clicked open, and a shuffling, robed figure emerged. Bent almost double, the figure's face was obscured beneath its hood, and it bore a brazier upon its back from which strong smelling incense smoke wafted in thick clouds. Sickly thin, grey-fleshed, shaking hands clasped a metal lidded bowl, and as the awkward figure hurried towards him, Burias raised his arms out to either side. The attendant lifted the lid on the bowl, revealing a stiff brush sitting in oil. Burias stood impassively as the shuffling figure daubed his armour with the sacred cleansing oils, stretching to reach his arms. Its duty done, the figure turned and retreated back within the sanctity of its den. Idly, Burias wondered for how many centuries the pathetic creature had performed this duty.

He pushed such thoughts from his mind as he strode forwards and placed a hand upon one of the great doors. Perfectly weighted, it swung open noiselessly at his light touch. Without pause, Burias entered the sanctum of the First Acolyte, the door sliding shut behind him.

The entrance room was sparsely decorated, with little ornamentation. Arched doorways led off to other parlours and rooms of worship, and on the other side of the large room hung a curtain of bone beads, leading to a smaller antechamber. Burias was always intrigued by the floor when he entered this room, and he stared down at it in awe. The entire floor space had been constructed in a clear, glass-like material, and beneath it was a gigantic stone-carved, eight-pointed star. Around the star, a red liquid writhed and boiled with a life of its own, and as he watched, faces and hands appeared within the viscous substance, clawing at the smooth glass beneath him. He grinned at the pained and angry expressions of the beings within. He imagined that they looked at him jealously, walking freely without containment as he was. Once, he had asked Marduk what they were. Are they daemons trapped within, he had questioned? Marduk had replied that they were, in a sense. He called them the Imaginos, and he claimed that they were but reflections that mirrored the inner daemons of those that looked upon them. A face manifested itself right beneath Burias's feet, and ripped its smiling face open, revealing a snarling and spitting visage beneath. Burias laughed softly, and snarled back at the creature.

'Is it time already Burias?' asked the powerful voice of Marduk, the First Acolyte, from behind the curtain.

'It is, First Acolyte.' Burias replied. He could just make out the shadowy form of his master behind the beaded curtain, a large, dark silhouette kneeling within the slightly raised small room beyond.

'A shame. I was experiencing some most lucid dream visions. Most enlightening,' said the voice. 'Come closer, Burias.'

Obeying his master's order, he strode across the room. Up close, he could make out the details of the bone beads, seeing that they were tiny skulls. Were they real, shrunken with sorceries? He wondered, as he had done a million times before.

'Surely the exhortation will be such that any regrets as to its timing will be soon forgotten,' suggested Burias.

'Sometimes I think you should lead the sermons, such a golden tongue you have,' said Marduk. The shadow of the holy warrior rose to its feet and rolled its shoulders, loosening muscles that had been immobile for long hours of prayer and meditation. He angled his neck from side to side, producing cracking sounds, and turned around. With an imperious sweep of a gauntleted hand, the First Acolyte brushed the beaded skull curtain aside and stepped down into the room. Burias instantly lowered his gaze respectfully. Coiling smoke followed in Marduk's wake, and Burias could taste the dry, acrid incense in the back of his throat.

Eyes downcast, he saw that the Imaginos had fled. He could feel the closeness of the First Acolyte: the charged air, the electric taste of the gods that hung upon him. Truly, he was chosen of the gods, and Burias relished the sensation.

'You can look up now, Burias, your reverential obeisance has been witnessed,' said Marduk, a sarcastic tone tingeing his words.

Burias raised his gaze to meet his master's flinty, cold eyes. 'Have I angered you, First Acolyte?'

Marduk laughed, a harsh, barking sound.

'Anger me? But you are always so careful with your displays of respect. How could you have possibly angered me, Burias?' Marduk held Burias's gaze, dark humour in his eyes. 'No, you have not angered me, my friend,' he said, turning away. 'My mind is… occupied. The dream visions are coming to me more frequently since leaving the Maelstrom, the closer we draw to the planet of the great enemy.'

'Your power grows, First Acolyte,' said Burias, looking at Marduk's strong profile, his skin so pale it was translucent.

'And yours with it, my champion.' Marduk growled.

Burias grinned ferally. 'That it does.'

Marduk's head was ritually shaved, except for a long, braided length of black hair that sprouted from his crown. A network of criss-crossing, blue veins pulsed beneath his flesh. Cables and pipes pushed through the skin at his temples, and his teeth had grown into sharp fangs over the centuries. He was truly a terrifying warrior to look upon, and his armour was bedecked with honorifics and artefacts of religious significance. Burnished metal talismans, tiny shrunken skulls and Chaos icons hung from chains on his ornate, deep red armour. A scrimshawed bone of the prophet Morglock was strapped to his thigh with padlocked chains, and extracts from the Book of Lorgar, scratched upon human flesh, hung from his shoulder pads.

'And how is Drak'shal today?' asked Marduk, looking deep into Burias's lupine eyes.

'Quiet. But I can feel he is… hungry.'

Marduk laughed. 'Drak'shal is always hungry. It is his nature. But I am glad he is not strong today: today is no time for him to come to the fore. Keep him in check. His time will come soon enough.'

'I look forward to it. He so likes to kill.'

'Yes, he does, and he does it very well. But come now, we must not keep the Dark Apostle waiting.'

The pair left the sanctum, Burias leading the First Acolyte in silence, the icon held out before him, reverentially clasped in both hands. The honour guard fell into position a step behind. They walked through twisting corridors and up further flights of stairs until they came to a great, golden door, details picked out in relief. Once there, all four of the Word Bearers warriors dropped to one knee and bowed their heads. They waited in silence for several minutes before the doors before them were thrown open.

'Arise,' said a dangerously softly spoken voice.

Raising his eyes, Burias looked upon Jarulek, the Dark Apostle of the Host. Bedecked in a black robe that covered much of his ancient, blood-red armour, he was neither particularly tall nor broad for one of the Legion. Outwardly, he projected none of the sense of brutal power that Kol Badar exuded, nor the potent vitality that Marduk possessed. Nor did warriors fear him for the lethal savagery that Burias knew lurked only barely beneath the surface of his own demeanour.

It was perhaps the confidence of one who knew that the gods themselves sanctioned his actions that made warriors tremble before him, or perhaps it was the absolute belief in what he did, the fire of faith that burned within his soul or whatever of it was left, for it had long been pledged to the ravenous gods of Chaos. Whatever it was, Jarulek inspired fear, awe and devotion in equal measures. His words were spoken softly and deliberately, but on the battlefield his voice would rise to a powerful howl that was terrifying and inspiring to hear.

Every centimetre of Jarulek's exposed pale skin was covered in the hallowed words of Lorgar. Tiny, intricate script was inscribed perfectly across his flesh. Litanies and catechisms ran symmetrically down each side of his pale, hairless head, and his cheeks, chin and neck were sprawled with passages and curses. There was not a place upon him where you could place a data-stylus and not be touching the hallowed words of the great daemon primarch. Devotions, supplications, orisons, they extended over Jarulek's lips, inside his cheeks and across his tongue. Not even his eyes had been spared, citations of vengeance, hate and worship scribed on the soft, glutinous jelly of those orbs. He was a walking Book of Lorgar, and Burias was in awe at his presence.

'Lead the Dark Apostle forth, Icon Bearer,' intoned Marduk. Six additional guards of honour stepped into place around Marduk and the Dark Apostle, and together with the pair accompanying Marduk they represented the eight points of the star of Chaos.

'First, we worship,' said Jarulek. 'Then we kill a world.'

'I risk my men in there, and I am told to forget all about it?' spat Lieutenant Varnus. 'There is some kind of cult organisation operating in Shinar, perhaps across the whole of Tanakreg. We are just getting close.'

Varnus glared across the plain metal desk at Captain Lodengrad. The captain looked of middling years, but it was hard to gauge. He could have been forty, or a hundred and forty, depending on how much augmetic surgery he had been subjected to. Certainly he didn't appear to have aged in all the time Varnus had known him.

There were no features within the blank walls of the interview room other than the desk, the two chairs and the door. One wall was mirrored, and Varnus stood glaring at his tired and angry reflection. He knew that a trio of conjoined servitor twins stood beyond the mirror, recording and monitoring every movement made and every word spoken in the room. His heartbeat, blood pressure and neural activity were being analysed and recorded on a spooling data-slate, the details noted down by fingers ending in needlelike stylus instruments.

'Sit down, lieutenant,' said the captain.

'You seriously want me to go back on patrol and just forget everything I saw in that damned basement?'

'No one said anything about you going back to work, lieutenant,' said the captain. 'You disobeyed a direct order, and you struck a fellow enforcer.'

'Oh, come on! If I had obeyed your direct order, sir, the whole place would have gone up in flames. And Landers is a loudmouth cur. He was questioning my order. And he reports directly to me, if I recall correctly.'

'Sit down, lieutenant,' said the captain. Varnus continued to stare at his own reflection. 'Sit down,' the captain repeated, more forcefully.

'So what, are you going to kick me out? Send me back to work the damnable salt plains? Like before you recruited me?' Varnus sat back down and folded his arms. 'You knew what I was when you gave me this job. If you didn't want that, then you should never have pulled me out of the worker-habs in the first place.'

'Forget about all that, lieutenant. I'm not getting rid of you just yet. I'm just telling you to forget everything about what you saw in that basement. It is no longer our concern.'

'Not our concern?' exclaimed Varnus. 'That was no group of isolated, small-time, hab-gangers, captain. The information they had was highly classified material: maps, plans, schematics. They had plans of the damn governor's palace, for Throne's sake! You know what would happen if they managed to get explosives within the palace? They could knock out the entire city's power in one go, and what would happen then, captain? It would be bedlam: rioting, looting, murder. It would take a lot more enforcers than you have to put all that down. The PDF would have to be brought in. It would be absolute bedlam.'

'Are you quite finished, lieutenant?' asked the captain.

'Um, let me think. No. No, I'm not actually.'

'Well, hold onto those thoughts. There is someone here who may be able to answer them,' said the captain, rising to his feet. Varnus raised an eyebrow. 'I'm sick of listening to you, lieutenant. I'm going to get some caff. Wait here.'

The captain walked to the door and knocked twice. The door opened a moment later, and he left the room.

Varnus pushed his chair back and placed his feet on the table. He closed his eyes. He was so damn tired.

The door opened a few moments later. Varnus didn't bother to open his eyes. He sighed dramatically.

'It's Varnus, isn't it? Lieutenant Mai Varnus.' The voice was hard, and the lieutenant dropped his feet from the table, standing to look up into the face of the newcomer.

The man was big, bigger even than Landers, and he was dressed in the severe black uniform of an Arbites judge.

Throne above! An Arbites judge!

The blood rushed from Varnus's face, and he licked his lips.

The judge walked around Varnus and sat down in the seat recently vacated by the captain. His jaw was thick and square, his nose flat against his face and his brow heavy and solid. In all respects the judge looked hard and unrelenting. His intimidating physical presence was further enhanced by heavy ablative carapace armour and by the severe black uniform he wore over it.

'Sit down, lieutenant,' he ordered forcefully, his eyes cold and dangerous, his voice deep.

Varnus sat down warily.

'What you discovered, it is not within the jurisdiction of local enforcers. It is within the jurisdiction of Imperial law, Arbites law.'

Varnus frowned darkly.

'However, I have been reading your record,' continued the judge. 'It was… interesting reading. The Arbites could use a man like you, lieutenant.'

Varnus's raised an eyebrow and pushed himself back in his chair. 'Huh?'

The judge pushed something across the table towards him. It was a heavy round pin, embossed with the aquila. He stared at it, and then looked questioningly into the eyes of the Arbites judge.

'Tomorrow, come to the palace. I have matters to attend to there, but at their conclusion I wish to speak with you. Present this.'

And with that, the judge rose to his feet, huge and imposing, and left the room.

Varnus sat still for long minutes. Then he picked up the pin. He stood, and turned to leave, halting when he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. He snorted in amusement and left the room.

The Infidus Diabolus left the roiling, familiar comfort of the warp, the realm of the gods, and burst into real space. Crackling shimmers of light, colour and sheet electricity ran along its hull as the last vestiges of the Empyrean were shaken off. The strike cruiser shuddered, its immense length creaking and straining as the natural laws of the universe took hold of it once more.

Deep within the belly of the cruiser, Jarulek's grand Host of the Word Bearers Legion joined together in worship of the gods of Chaos. It was a requiem mass, a celebration of the death that they would soon deliver, a promise of souls. It was a prayer in the darkness, a pledge of faith, an honouring of the very real, insatiable deities of the warp.

The huge mass of the Infidus Diabolus was tiny and insignificant in the vast, cold darkness of the galaxy. But to the doomed world that it ploughed silently towards it was death, and it closed towards the blissfully unaware planet unerringly.

CHAPTER THREE

The palace of the Governor of Tanakreg was a sprawling fortress bastion that perched on a long dormant volcanic outcrop overlooking the city of Shinar, the largest industrial city on the planet. Shinar rolled out to the west of the fortress. Any other approach to the palace was impossible, for sheer cliffs hundreds of metres high dropped down from the bastion walls into the blackened, acidic oceans that dominated the planet's surface.

Varnus held onto the railing tightly as he stared out of the vision slit of the fast moving tri-railed conveyance. The compartment was packed with adepts of the Administratum whose access level allowed them to move around the city freely rather than confining them to their workstations. Soft-skins, he thought derisively. They were uniformly scrawny, wide-eyed and pale-faced, weakling specimens of humanity.

Their faces and hands were unlined and soft. Most of the citizenry had a wind-blown harshness to their craggy faces, and eyes that were practically hidden from squinting against the salt winds for years on end. Indeed, most living on Tanakreg succumbed to salt-blindness by the time they reached forty standard Imperial years of age. Their skin generally looked like dried, cracked parchment, the moisture slowly sucked from their bodies by years of exposure to the harsh, salt-laced air.

Varnus was full of scorn for the privileged soft-skins able to avoid the harshness of the land. Most of them had probably never felt the touch of the wind upon their skin. He glared at them occasionally, enjoying the uncomfortable shuffling it caused amongst the robed adepts. Though the compartment was densely crowded, the adepts left a good amount of space around Varnus, intimidated, he imagined, by the enforcer uniform. He was glad of the additional room. Shinar spread out beneath him as the tri-railed conveyance began its ascent to the palace.

He marvelled at the view. From this angle, the city almost looked attractive. Throne above, but it was an ugly bitch of a city from every other angle, he thought. From here, the angled sails were just rising. The winds were coming. Every building within Shinar was constructed with a metal sheet sail that would slide out to protect the building from the worst of the salt winds. Those winds were devastating. They could reduce a newly constructed building to dust within years if not adequately protected. Even as it was, most of Shinar was crumbling away. But then, it was cheaper to build anew on top of the ruins of the past than to properly maintain what was already built. He had never understood how that worked, but he accepted it nonetheless.

From his viewpoint, as the tri-rail climbed ever higher, the vision of a million sails rising in perfect unison was a deeply bizarre one. As the light of the blazing orange sun caught the sails, it looked for a moment as if the whole of Shinar was burning. Varnus shivered.

Shinar spread out like a growing cancer, each week encroaching further out into the salt plains, clawing its way ever closer to the mountains, hundreds of kilometres to the west. Varnus was thankful that he did not still work those damnable salt fields. He was certain that he would have been long-dead, a dried, desiccated husk had he not been picked out from amongst the other hab-workers.

The tri-rail came to a shuddering halt. A giant, tentacle-like satellite clamp reached out and fastened to the exterior of the conveyance, and the doors hissed open amongst blasts of steam and smoke. The adepts surged from the carriage, their reticence to be near Varnus apparently gone as they bustled and pushed past him, shuffling down the long corridor within the middle of the tube-like tentacle.

Filing along amongst the bustling crowd, Varnus was half carried to a great, domed reception hall. Around a hundred other tentacle tubes spilled out their cargo of humanity into the vast hall. It was seething with people, almost all garbed in robes of various shades, from grey to dark brown, and every variety of off-white and puce in between.

Looking up through the transparent dome-top, he could see the mighty walls of the bastion fortress, beyond which stood the palace proper. Those walls were immensely thick, some fifteen metres worth of reinforced plascrete. He could see half a dozen massive turrets, huge batteries of heavy calibre cannon pointing towards the heavens.

Thousands of workers, Administratum adepts, politicians and servants were joining long queues. Bored palace guards armoured in regal blue semi-plate oversaw the masses as they filtered past servitors processing their data passes. Only once through the checking station could they pass on into any of the hundreds of offices, temples, shrines or manufactorums that were located in the volcanic rock beneath the palace. It was a city within a city. And built far beneath all of this were the giant plasma reactors that powered all of Shinar.

With a sigh, Varnus joined the queue that he thought looked like it was moving quickest, though he knew it would doubtless turn out to be the slowest. He prepared himself for a long wait.

'You are certain that the traitor will succeed?' growled Kol Badar, his critical gaze watching the Legion's warriors in the vast bay below. Led by their champions, hundreds of Word Bearers marched in orderly squads up the embarkation ramps and entered the bellies of the transport craft. Most were Thunderhawks, their hulls the familiar clotted-blood red, some were older Stormbirds, but there were dozens of others that had been salvaged or claimed by the Legion on their many raids from the ether. More than one had been discovered adrift in the warp, their crews slaughtered by the denizens of the realm when their warp fields had failed. The Infidus Diabolus had no need of such warp fields, the Word Bearers embracing the creatures of that unstable realm.

'He will succeed,' stated Jarulek flatly.

'If the traitor fails then the enemy's air defences will be fully operative. The Deathclaws will be annihilated.'

Jarulek turned towards the towering form of his coryphaus, his eyes flashing.

'I have said that the traitor does not fail. I have seen it. Board your Stormbird. Go kill. It is what you do well.'

Governor Theoforic Flenske sighed and fingered the sugared sweetmeats on his tiny, porcelain plate. They were his favourites, and they normally gave him small moments of joy in his otherwise long, drawn out and exhausting days.

He had always known that being governor of Tanakreg was going to be a stressful and thankless task, and was quite comfortable with that. He knew that he was admirably suitable for the role, and that he had best served the Emperor by taking on the position. He was utterly devoted to the Imperium, and was very happy to serve it as best he could. But this accursed bickering! It was going to be the death of him! He popped a sugar-coated nut into his mouth and closed his eyes briefly. It was a moment of escape. He crunched down on the nut, the sound echoing loudly in his head. He opened his eyes quickly, flicking his gaze around the table to see if anyone had noticed.

Dozens of advisors, PDF officers, politicos, consultants and members of the Ecclesiarchy were sitting around the long table. This was a gathering of the most powerful individuals on Tanakreg, but for all their importance and rank they argued like children, and Governor Flenske felt a headache building behind his eyes.

'Some cool water, my lord?' asked a quiet voice at his ear. Flenske nodded his head, thankful as always for the attentiveness of Pierlo, his manservant and bodyguard. Each of the people sitting at the council table had a small team of aides standing to attention behind their high-backed, velvet seats, though these little coteries were each distinctly different from one another. Behind the colonel and his majors of the PDF were stern-faced adjutants, their uniforms crisp. Behind the jabbering politicos, bureaucrats, adepts and ministers were servitor lexographers that recorded their words, long mechanical fingers scratching their masters' diatribes onto tiny rolls of unfurling paper, and punching holes in data-coils. Lesser priests and confessors stood behind the high ranking members of the Ecclesiarch, their eyes downcast. Kneeling at the side of the cardinal, who was sweating in the full regalia of his office, were a pair of shaven-headed women, their mouths sewn shut. They wore the aquila upon their chests, and bore seals of purity stitched into their pale robes.

Sitting quietly at the table amongst the throng was the scarlet-robed Tech-Administrator Tharon. He wore a twelve toothed cog upon his breast, the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and his right eye had been replaced with a black lens piece that whirred softly as it focused.

The Arbites judge stood with his back to the proceedings, looking out through the tinted, floor to ceiling plex-windows over the city spread out below. His arms were folded and he made no move, nor any comment, as the items on the agenda were discussed. Barring his helmet, he wore his full suit of carapace armour beneath his heavy black coat. A large autopistol was holstered conspicuously on his hip; there was no one within the palace with the authority to claim his weapon. His immobile presence made Flenske sweat, and the governor dabbed at his forehead, glancing over at the judge's back every few moments. The presence of a member of the Adeptus Arbites spoke of serious matters indeed, but he had no idea what it was that the judge sought in his cabinet meeting.

'Friends, please,' he began, his trained and subtly augmented voice carrying out over the din. Despite his unease at the unexpected appearance of the judge, his voice was self-assured and practised. 'Adept Trask, please summarise your point concisely. Leave out the rhetoric,' he said, a generous smile upon his face. 'It seems to irritate the colonel.'

Polite laughter greeted his comment, and Adept Trask rose again to his feet, clearing his throat. He lifted a slate and began to read from it. The governor coughed markedly, interrupting the dull voice of the small man, who looked up from his slate expectantly.

'A summary of your point, minister,' said the governor, still smiling, 'as in one that you can say out loud in less than an hour of our precious time, perhaps?'

The adept did not know whether to be insulted or not, but seeing the governor smiling at him still, he gave a nervous smile of his own and flicked through the thick wad of papers on his slate. Moron, thought Flenske.

'In… in summary,' the adept began, 'there have been seventy-eight raids across Shinar in the last three weeks, and two hundred and twelve insurgents have been detained by the enforcers. The situation is under control.' The adept sat back down quickly.

'Under control? Are you of sound mind, adept?' asked a robed, skeletally thin bureaucrat. 'We are overran with riots and demonstrations, all linked to insurgent activity, and getting worse every week! Situation under control? I beg to differ. The enforcers are unable to control Shinar any longer. I mean no slur against them, but they do not have the resources or men to contain the insurgents.'

The aging Minister for the Interior, Kurtz, raised his hand to speak. He was a stocky, powerful man despite his age, but he had lost the use of his legs decades earlier and was confined to his powered chair. Once he had been an officer in the PDF and a captain of the enforcers, before he had been deprived of the use of legs. He was a tough old fighter, renowned among Flenske's ministers for his stubbornness, and most considered him a crude man with none of the refinement that came from proper breeding. The governor sighed as he saw the thick pile of documents that Kurtz held in his hand.

'The honoured Bureaucrat of the Third speaks the truth. I have been reviewing the various reports that show the activities of these so-called insurgents. They are far more organised and widespread than any here give them credit for.'

There were snorts of derision from around the table, and the governor fixed his gaze on Kurtz.

'What is this evidence then, noble minister?' he asked, flicking a glance towards the judge.

'Extensive details of Shinar and the Shinar Peninsula. Focused map work showing the valleys and paths that lead through the mountains.'

There were more snorts of derision around the table.

'You mean the enforcers found some maps, minister?' asked the governor. 'They needn't have raided insurgents just to find maps, man. I'm sure that our cartographers could have loaned them some.'

'They have detailed layouts of your palace, governor, including.' Kurtz said firmly, looking down at a map layout in front of him, 'the location of passages that show up on no unclassified map of the palace. Passages leading into your bedchambers, for instance.'

The governor swallowed whole the nut he had been gumming, and several of the figures at the table stood, their voices raised. He felt his manservant Pierlo lean in close behind him.

'Shall I go and change the combinations on the access passage to your personal chambers, my lord?' he asked quietly.

The governor nodded, and the man slipped out of the room.

'From the evidence garnered by the enforcers,' continued Kurtz, raising his voice over the clamour in the room, 'it is my belief that these covert groups are coordinating acts of rebellion and sedition that threaten the stability of Shinar. These are not isolated groups of rebel salt workers that are trying to avoid paying taxes. This is a well supplied and armed group of organised insurgents that have integrated covertly into the institutions of Shinar and beyond.'

He held up a schematic map.

'This shows unsanctioned construction of a considerable size in the Shakos Mountains, not three hundred kilometres from where we sit. I believe this is a staging post, a training facility perhaps.'

'Minister, these documents, I would like them to be studied by my own people. Please pass them on to my aide once this meeting is concluded.'

'Governor?' said Kurtz, his face incredulous. 'You… you do not wish to act upon the information I have gleaned immediately?'

'I will act, minister, when and if I deem it to be appropriate to do so,' the governor said forcefully.

'Now,' he said. 'Colonel? I hear that the PDF is having some problems at the present?'

'I regret that that is so, governor. The Commissariat has been forced to execute a number of officers for… various infractions. And as for the insurgents, I recommend that we pull more of the PDF ranks into Shinar. I believe the popular unrest can be stemmed with a martial presence.'

'Popular unrest?' burst the minister of the interior. 'This is coordinated cult activity, governor, not popular unrest,' he spat. 'It is my belief that these insurgents are worshippers of the Ruinous Powers, and that…'

'That is enough, minister!' hollered the governor. He felt the pain behind his eyes increase, and he took another sip of water. 'I will not have such talk bandied without irrefutable proof!' He took a deep breath. 'Thank you, colonel,' he said. He turned towards the sweating cardinal. 'And the Ecclesiarch? Holy cardinal, what do you say?'

'More citizens are attending the sermons than ever, governor. I attribute it to the nearing conjunction of planets. Scaremongering propaganda has been spread through the lower hab-blocks claiming that it signals the end of the world. The superstitious salt farmers are afraid.' The cardinal shrugged his thick shoulders, 'Ergo, more citizens on pews in the daily hymnals.'

The governor grunted. 'It certainly seems to me that this rise in insurgency, the riots, the scaremongering, it all relates back to the conjunction. It's just a damn planet passing, for Shinar's sake! Why under Throne is it such a big deal?'

'The red planet of Korsis circles our system in an aberrant, elliptical orbit, and on occasion it passes extremely close to Tanakreg. On very rare occasions, Korsis passing us coincides with a conjunction of sorts, when all the planets in our system are aligned. The last time this happened was ten thousand, two hundred and ninety-nine years ago. Such a conjunction will occur in less than three months time,' said a bespectacled, robed man.

'Thank you, learned one,' said the governor sharply. The pain behind his eyes was becoming almost unbearable.

'If it pleases you, governor,' said the tech-administrator, 'I would like to return to the substation. I was in the process of blessing the machine-spirits of the turbines when your request for my presence came through.'

'Fine, fine, go,' said the governor, waving his hand.

The Arbites judge turned around, his face emotionless. The room went deathly quiet, and the severe figure let the silence grow. The governor felt his stomach knot.

'I have heard enough,' the judge said finally, the sound of his voice making Flenske flinch.

Varnus was bored. Once he had finally been filtered through the checking facilities on the sub-ground floor, then the third floor, the eighteenth and finally the ground floor of the palace proper, he had been subjected to a rigorous security check from the regal, blue-armoured palace guards. They had requested his weapons, and he had realised that he would be denied access if he refused to give up his side arm and his power maul. With some reluctance he handed them over. He had even been forced to relinquish his helmet - ''comm security'', apparently.

He had been directed to a small alcove, there to await the Arbites judge. It was a small corridor space linking two grand galleries, and there were dozens of other plaintiffs and officials already sitting there, their eyes glazed. He took a seat at the far end of the corridor alcove.

It had been hours, and he was deathly tired of the whole thing. There was an impressive staircase on the other side of one of the grand galleries that the alcove opened onto, and he watched it with boredom. A heavy guard presence prevented anyone from climbing the stairs. Those that even began to approach backed away after seeing the guards. At the top of the stairs was a massive pair of double-doors, with another set of guards holding tall, high powered las-locks, vertically to attention. They didn't move, and their faces were stoic. They must be as bored as he was, he thought.

With a click he saw one of the large doors open briefly, and a man exit. The guards barely looked at him as he lifted the hem of his red robe and quickly descended the stairs. Some tech, he thought, as he saw the Mechanicus symbol on his chest and the bionics of his left eye. The man looked flustered, and he hurried to the bottom of the stairs, looking left and right frantically. A man that Varnus had not noticed before stepped out to meet him, and the tech began to talk animatedly. The other man shushed him, and Varnus recognised him as the one who had exited the same room earlier. The enforcer instantly disliked him: he looked like yet another arrogant, officious noble. The pair hurried off, and Varnus sighed.

The governor licked his lips and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face as the imposing Arbites judge stared across the room at him, his face a cold, expressionless mask.

'The local enforcer units have been sapped of resources and manpower over the last decade as a direct result of the policies of the governorship, and as a result it is unfit to deal with the insurgent threat. This speaks of gross and inexcusable incompetence.'

The accusation hung in the air, and none around the table dared make a sound. Governor Flenske felt his world contract and heat rising up his neck. His eyes flicked around the table before him. No one met his gaze except Minister Kurtz.

'I'm… this… perhaps we… misread the severity of the… the situation. Nothing that cannot be rectified, I assure you,' said the governor, his voice sounding hollow and weak in his own ears.

'Shinar risks falling into anarchy and rebellion. The security of the city is compromised, and this is an unacceptable situation. The time for bureaucratic pandering is over. Governor Flenske, I find you in contempt of your duties. You are to be replaced by a stewardship until a more suitable governor can be instated. I am locking down Shinar in a state of martial law until the insurgency has been eliminated and the city secured.'

The governor's face paled, and he felt his chest tighten. He tried to speak, but he couldn't find the words, and his mouth napped open and shut in rising panic.

The judge pulled his large, black autopistol from its holster and pointed it at the governor. Never before had a weapon been levelled at him, and Flenske felt rising warmth in his trousers. He realised that he had soiled himself, and he felt shame as he stared in horror and panic at the barrel of the pistol.

'With the power vested in me by the Adeptus Arbites I hereby remove Planetary Governor Flenske from his position.'

'No, no…' began the governor.

The autopistol barked loudly. Three rounds punched through Flenske's forehead and the back of his head exploded. His body was thrown backwards to the ground as his chair overturned beneath him. Three empty shell casings fell to the marble floor with a musical, tinkling sound, and smoke rose from the barrel of the gun before it was smoothly replaced in its holster.

The judge walked around the table, his boot steps echoing loudly across the room. Giving the governor's body a push with his heel, he righted his chair and sat down at the head of the table.

'I want all local PDF units retracted to Shinar,' he stated to the pale-faced group of individuals staring at him in shock and horror. 'I want a lock down of all traffic into and out of the city, and I want armed checkpoints set up along all main thoroughfares. I want an indefinite curfew instated: any individual found on the streets after curfew is to be shot. The palace is to be secured: I want no one coming in or going out without my say-so. Contact the twin cities and order their local PDF units to be recalled within the city boundaries. Tell them to be ready for potential hostile activity.'

He glanced around the table, his gaze hard.

'We have a lot of work to do, and I am not here to play your little political games. I am here to bring this city back to order in the name of the God-Emperor. I am here to avert disaster, if at all possible.'

Governor Flenske's blood pooled out beneath his body. There was shocked silence around the room. No one dared move. The acrid smell of the gun's discharge was mixing with the stink of blood.

'Tanakreg teeters on the brink of destruction,' said the judge. 'This group is its only possible salvation.'

Then the room exploded, turning into a roaring inferno. Everyone in the chamber was instantly slain as the force of the detonations ripped the room apart. The marble floor exploded into millions of tiny shards and the synth-hardened plex-windows shattered outwards. The force of the blast rocked the entire palace and oily, black smoke billowed from the rising ball of flame that burst from the shattered windows.

Varnus was thrown back through the alcove corridor from the force of the blast that smashed aside the huge doors, throwing them off their hinges and hurling the guards through the air like rag dolls. Varnus was thrown back over ten metres, flying clear of the corridor and smashing to the gallery floor, amid a tangle of burning rabble and flesh. Dimly, he heard blaring alarms, and then he heard nothing.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kol Badar glared around at his warriors, all members of the cult of the Anointed. The most vicious, faithful and dangerous warriors within the Host, he had wanted them to accompany the Dark Apostle on his drop assault, but Jarulek would not hear of it. Their Terminator armour was too bulky for a lightning assault on the palace, he had said, and Kol Badar had reluctantly agreed with him. It just did not feel right, though. He had always fought at the side of the Dark Apostle with his elite brethren.

The horned helmets of the Anointed looked daemonic under the glowing, red lights within the cramped hold of the Land Raider, and Kol Badar knew that he too looked like some malevolent daemon of the warp in his ornate battle-helm. Barbed tusks protruded like monstrous mandibles from his ancient helmet, which was crafted in the likeness of a snarling, bestial visage. The massive tank roared across the plains of the planet Tanakreg, hauling its deadly cargo ever closer to the central battle lines of the pathetic Imperials.

He was disappointed with the enemy, but then, he could not expect any more from them. The Imperium had grown weak.

The Host was borne from the Infidus Diabolus in scores of smaller vessels, angry hornets swarming from their nest towards their foe. They had landed on the planet surface as the harsh, orange sun was setting and stormed the first defensive line, taking it within an hour. The Anointed, borne within the belly of revered Land Raiders, had assaulted up the steep embankments to take the most heavily defended sections, slaughtering all in their path.

The enemy artillery was next to useless against the powerful tanks, and the remainder of the Host rampaged through the breaches carved by the Anointed and set up their own heavy weapon teams atop the earthworks, raining death upon the Imperials mustered beyond. They marched relentlessly through the trenches, killing and mutilating, and taking bunkers and strong points at will. Kol Badar had been disgusted to see hundreds of the Imperials flee before the Legion, seeking the false safety of the second defensive line. That second line had fallen almost as quickly as the first, once its emplaced guns had been silenced. The third line broke almost as swiftly.

There remained only the last line, the one closest to the city. The glow of the Imperial city could be seen over the horizon. This last defensive line was the shortest of the four, and had more emplacements than the first. Kol Badar hoped that it would prove somewhat more of a challenge.

So far there had been little satisfaction in these battles: they had been nothing short of massacres. The estimate was somewhere in the realm of fifteen thousand enemy troops slain, and around five hundred tanks, aircraft and support vehicles destroyed. The losses amongst the Word Bearers had been minimal.

The lascannon sponsons of the Land Raider screamed as they fired. The tank did not slow, and hit a slight rise at speed. There was a moment of weightlessness as the front of the tank became airborne before slamming back down to the ground. Dull explosions and detonations could be heard, the sound muffled by the roar of the engines and the screaming of the lascannons. The vehicle rocked as explosive shells struck its thick, armoured hide, and Kol Badar growled.

The Land Raider began ploughing up a steep incline, and Kol Badar knew that they were at the earthworks. High calibre rounds pinged off the exterior but the powerful machine had carried the Word Bearers across much deadlier battlefields on a thousand worlds, transporting them safely against far worse than these weakling Imperials could muster.

A glowing, yellow blister light began to flash, and Kol Badar pulled off the hissing coupling that held him to his seat and flexed his power talons.

'In the name of the true gods, Lorgar and the Dark Apostle,' he roared. 'Anointed! We kill once more!'

The elite cult warriors roared back, and the assault ramp of the Land Raider slammed down as the immense tank drew to a sudden halt near the top of the incline, steam hissing out into the cold of night.

After the muffled dullness within the belly of the Land Raider, the noise of the battlefield was deafening, as cannons boomed, boltguns thumped rhythmically and the screams of dying Imperials echoed across the salt plains.

Kol Badar led the Anointed onto the field of war, roaring like a primeval god. His archaic combi-bolter, its muzzle sculpted to resemble the fanged maw of some fell creature, coughed fiery death as he strode heavily forwards. His first shots ripped a grey uniformed soldier in half, and dozens more were torn apart by the gunfire of the Anointed.

The night was lit up as thousands of weapons fired, and Kol Badar could see the immense enemy bulwark stretching from horizon to horizon. Tens of thousands of uniformed PDF troopers stood along the defensive line, and hundreds of tanks and armoured units added cannon fire to the barrage.

He had chosen this place to attack the enemy for it was their most heavily defended point along the bulwark. A decisive strike that shattered their defences here would demoralise them completely.

Streaming las-fire lit up the night as the Imperials tried desperately to drop even a single one of the Anointed. The hulking Terminator-armoured figures strode to the top of the bulwark, walking straight through the frantic gunfire. Their own weapons ripped through the cowering ranks of the lightly armoured PDF troopers, the protection of their dug-in positions rendered useless.

A score of Land Raiders disgorged more of the Terminators at the top of the earthworks, and the butchery began in earnest. Kol Badar dropped down heavily over the lip of the corpse-strewn defensive position and raised his bolter to mow down a team of men working to reload an artillery piece. They were ripped to pieces, blood spraying.

Reaper autocannons roared along the line of the bulwark, the rapid firing, high-powered weapons tearing through the lines of reinforcements rushing to stem the breach in their lines. The high velocity rounds from the potent weapons tore up the defensive line and reached a battery of artillery pieces. The guns were instantly engulfed in a huge explosion as the armour piercing autocannon rounds ignited stacks of high-explosive shells. The fireball rose high in the sky, and further explosions answered it as other Anointed warriors struck further gun batteries.

'Warmonger, lead the Host forward,' growled Kol Badar, opening a comm-channel to the Dreadnought. 'Come join the slaughter, my brother.'

'Sir! we are being massacred! They won't die! Emperor save us, they just won't die!'

Captain Drokan of the 23rd Tanakreg PDF cursed and licked his dry lips as he ordered the comm-channel closed. What could he do? There must be a way to salvage something out of this disastrous engagement, but he was damned if he knew what it was. He turned to his adjutant, who looked absolutely terrified, his face pale and his eyes staring.

'Val! Anything from the colonel? From any of the damn officers?'

The pale-faced adjutant shook his head, and Drokan cursed once again.

There had been no warning of the attack. The Emperor alone knew what had happened to the listening posts that skirted the system: a sudden attack like this just should not have been possible!

But it was happening, and it was all too real. And somehow Drokan had found himself the most superior ranked officer, cut off from the upper echelons. Him, Anubias Drokan! Never a dedicated student of tactics or strategy, he had risen to the rank of captain more because of his family's status and his own skill with a sword than through any real competence. It was only the PDF, damn it! Father had wanted him to join the ranks to give him a bit of hardness about him, he had said. A few years of service: he had never expected to be on the front line of a full-scale planetary assault!

Think, man. Think! What should he do? He had four companies of the 23rd with him here (dying here, he thought), but what other regiments were close by? There was the 9th and the 11th, but his adjutant had been unable to contact them on the comms. He assumed they had already been engaged and destroyed by the enemy.

He had to get the other nearby regiments to pull away from the last line, pull back to Shinar. That's what his superiors would do, he thought. Shinar, the palace, the governor; they were what needed protecting. Feeling slightly buoyed, Drokan turned to his adjutant once more.

'Put out a blanket message to all Shinar PDF regiments. Tell them to pull back to the city. The 23rd will hold them here for as long as we can. We will buy them as much time as possible.'

The adjutant gaped. 'We are to hold here? That's suicide!'

'Pass the damn message! Shinar is more important than the 23rd!'

With shaking hands, the adjutant began to relay the message. The captain shouted to the driver of the Chimera to head towards the battle. The man gunned the engines and the vehicle roared across the salt plains.

The men of the 23rd had never seen active service. War had never come to Tanakreg, and the only time the PDF had been required to use live ammunition had been to quell a minor insurgency within Shinar some four decades earlier. Most of the PDF soldiers had never fired on a live target.

Still, Drokan felt clear-headed suddenly. Yes, he would hold the enemy here. He pulled his laspistol from its holster. Just like his men, he had honed his skills on the target field, though he had never fired a shot in anger or defence. But I am a renowned swordsman, he told himself, patting the ornate chainsword at his hip. He had fought in countless tourneys, and had won several medals.

'Ca… Captain Drokan?' said his adjutant. 'The other regiments… they are not responding. Not one of them. I… I think we may be the last regiment within a thousand kilometres of Shinar.'

The captain frowned. 'Ah,' he said, 'I see.' He felt strangely calm. 'Well, pick up my family standard. We go to fight alongside the men.'

The adjutant gaped at the captain.

'Come on, boy!' urged Drokan. The younger man unclipped his safety harness and scrambled across to the other side of the command Chimera. He opened a stowage compartment, and removed a long black case. He straggled with the ornate clasps, but finally popped them open, and pulled out the captain's family standard. It was furled tightly around a telescopic pole. With a nod, the captain leant back in his seat as his Chimera took them into the maelstrom of battle.

Kol Badar strode along the fortified line, gunning down dozens of terrified PDF troopers, their puny bodies torn apart by the force of his combi-bolter. Reaching an enclosed bunker emplacement, he ripped the sealed blast door from its hinges and stooped to enter. It housed half a dozen men and three, rapid firing heavy bolters that were pumping fire into the advancing lines of the Host.

Kol Badar gunned them all down, the walls of the emplacement splashing with their blood as he raked them with fire. Ripping another blast door from its housing, Kol Badar exited the emplacement and began killing once more.

Looking down over the plains beyond the last defensive line, he saw scores of APCs moving forwards in a desperate last-ditch attempt to hold back the Word Bearers. Salt dust kicked up behind the approaching vehicles, and lascannon fire and krak missiles streamed towards the Imperial vehicles from the heavy weapon teams that had gained the bulwark. Several of the advancing vehicles exploded spectacularly, spinning end over end as fuel lines were penetrated.

The Chimera APCs roared to a halt, and over a thousand PDF reserve troopers emerged, las-fire stabbing towards the Word Bearers. Smiling, Kol Badar strode down to meet them.

He knew that subtlety and strategy were not needed, just killing and more killing. It was what his warriors excelled at.

He strode onwards through the hail of gunfire, spraying boltrounds left and right. The salt plains were turning a deep red colour as the porous granules soaked up the gore.

'Tanakreg 23RD!' shouted PDF Captain Drokan. 'Drive them back!' The soldiers screamed as they ran, their lasguns firing and bayonets readied. The captain's adjutant found himself shouting along with them. Hefting the captain's unfurled banner in one hand he began firing his laspistol, even though he could not yet see the foe.

Suddenly he saw the enemy, and he wished that he had not. They were huge, making the PDF soldiers look like children.

They were all going to die, he realised.

Kol Badar raised an eyebrow within his fully enclosed helm as he saw the soldiers running towards him, an officer at their forefront brandishing a roaring chain blade. The towering warlord didn't even bother to raise his combi-bolter, and he began stalking towards the fools running at him and his Anointed warriors. Las-rounds thudded uselessly into him as the distance closed. The officer lifted his chainsword high, his face defiant. Kol Badar almost laughed out loud.

The warlord swatted the blade away dismissively with the back of his power-talon, breaking the man's arm in the process, and clubbed the officer down into the ground with a blow from his combi-bolter. He stamped down heavily on the mewling wretch, and the man's skull shattered like a pulverised egg.

The Anointed cleaved into the PDF troopers, ripping limbs from sockets, tearing heads from bodies. The Coryphaus saw Bokkar drive his chainfist into the body of the diminutive PDF standard bearer, lifting him up into the air before the whirring blades cut the boy in half. The Anointed warrior turned his heavy flamer on the fallen standard, the fabric consumed instantly under the intense heat.

Las-fire sprayed across his back, and he hissed in pain and anger as one of the beams caught him in the back of his knee-joint. He turned and gunned down one of the PDF troopers before they disappeared beneath an inferno of flames, screaming horribly. Kol Badar nodded his head towards the Anointed warrior Bokkar, who acknowledged the Coryphaus with a nod of his own, before his heavy flamer roared again, engulfing another group of soldiers.

Heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, and Kol Badar turned towards the huge form of the Warmonger, the Dreadnought dwarfing even him as it walked through the carnage, potent cannons pumping fire towards enemy vehicles in the distance.

'It is good to crush the enemy on the field of war once more, but this is no battle, Kol Badar,' the ancient war machine boomed. There were few within the Host that would dare call the warlord by his name, but the Warmonger was amongst them. They had fought at each other's sides for millennia. Indeed, Kol Badar had been the Warmonger's Coryphaus when the warrior had been Dark Apostle.

'The enemy is weak,' agreed Kol Badar. 'How I yearn to face a worthy foe,' he added, turning his gaze up into the void of the heavens.

'You think Astartes will come?' boomed the Warmonger hungrily.

'No, I think not,' sighed Kol Badar. 'As much as I wish to face them once more. The Dark Apostle has said that in none of his dream-visions did he see any Astartes come to this world to do battle with us.'

'But minions of the Corpse Emperor will come, will they not? They will come to do battle?'

'Oh, they will come, my friend. They will be marshalling their forces even now.'

'But not Astartes?'

'No, not Astartes.'

'Bah,' snorted the Warmonger. 'It will be just mortals then.'

'Yes, mortals,' said Kol Badar, still staring up into the night sky, as if he could pierce the heavens with his angry gaze. 'One can only hope that they will come in force. At least then there may be a worthy battle.'

The Warmonger stomped off, its cannons firing once more. He saw the daemon engines clawing over the bulwark, multi-legged and spitting great gouts of flame from their maws, while others busied themselves tearing apart enemy tanks with contemptuous ease.

Kol Badar began to follow the Warmonger, to rejoin the battle once again. No, he reminded himself, this was not battle. This was a slaughter.

Varnus coughed, causing a searing, sharp pain in his side. Smoke was all around him, and bodies. No, not just bodies: body parts. He pushed himself to his feet, gasping at the pain that seemed to erupt all over his body, and his head reeled. He put a hand to his forehead and felt wet blood there, but the worst pain was in his side. It was slick with blood, and he winced as he loosened the clips holding his chest-plate in place. He hissed as he pulled out a long shard of metal that had pushed up under the body armour and into his side. He dropped the bloody shard to the floor. Still, he was alive, which was more than could be said for the others splayed out on the chamber floor.

The blast had ripped through the palace, and smoke and dust rose from piles of rubble. The walls were blackened in part, and ancient wall hangings were ablaze. Many of the bloody bodies strewn around him were also on fire, and the stink of burning flesh and fat almost made him retch. Varnus coughed painfully and he felt the floor beneath his feet shake as another blast somewhere else in the palace detonated.

The sound of shouting reached him, and he staggered towards it, away from the inferno that was blazing behind him. A trio of palace guards ran past along an adjoining corridor, and he hurried along in their wake. He felt another explosion rock the floor beneath his feet and increased his pace, wincing against the pain. He had to get out of this part of the palace.

Staggering along through the smoke that seemed to be thickening around him, he followed the direction that he thought the guards had taken. He limped through a half open door, entering a service corridor usually closed to those frequenting the palace. He passed a palace guard lying dead on the ground, a gunshot wound in the man's head. He leant down and picked up the guard's long-barrelled las-lock. It was heavy and unwieldy in his hands, but it was a weapon none-the-less.

Rounding a corner, Varnus saw a pair of palace guards standing over a fallen man. He wore a plain, cream coloured robe, identical to any number of anonymous bureaucrats that worked within the palace. Seeing him, the guards shouldered their weapons. Varnus held up his hands.

'I'm an enforcer. What the hell is going on?' Varnus managed.

'Insurgents,' said one of the guards. 'Our commander has called us out onto the upper battlements. You had best come with us, enforcer.'

Varnus nodded his head and hurried along after the guards as best as he could. Through winding passages they passed, through hissing blast doors that their pass-cards gave access to. They climbed a set of steel stairs, and finally passed through a heavy door to emerge upon the high battlements of the palace bastion. The door slammed shut with grim finality behind them.

It was night. No, it was almost dawn, Varnus realised. How long had he been unconscious?

He saw masses of PDF soldiers garrisoned along the battlements and smaller groups of blue-armoured guards. They were rushing all over the bastion, the whole area seething with soldiers. Many were firing over the battlements at unseen foes on one of the multiple lower terraces of the bastion, and streaking lasgun fire answered them. Men crouched behind other sections of the battlements as rocket propelled grenades struck the walls, and they were raked by heavy gunfire. Men were shouting, and with the cacophony of gunfire and explosions, it seemed to Varnus that he had escaped the burning section of the palace only to enter a hell of a different kind.

Pain lanced through his side and Varnus grimaced, holding his hand to the bleeding wound.

'I'm fine,' he wheezed as he saw the guards accompanying him hesitate, caught between aiding him and joining the gun battle.

'Go,' he said, making the decision for them.

Floodlights lit up the battlements as if it were daylight, and Varnus, leaning heavily on his salvaged las-lock, staggered across the open area to take cover below the thick crenellations. He risked a quick glance down towards the sprawling, ugly city.

There was a series of lower terraces below the battlements upon which he stood, but beyond them he could see dozens of fires burning all across Shinar, and he could hear a steady thump of explosions coming from all over the city. From over the horizon, he thought he could see dim flashes.

'Emperor preserve us,' said Varnus quietly as he crouched back down behind the crenellations.

He started as one of the enormous air defence turrets along the battlements suddenly came to life, hydraulic servos whirring as the massive cannons rotated, the barrels angled high. What next? thought Varnus, as more of the turrets rotated their giant cannons heavenward.

The floodlights that lit the whole area flickered suddenly, then died. The lights of the entire palace turned off as the potent plasma reactors beneath it went dead. A fifty-block radius around the palace went black instantly, swiftly followed by the rest of the city. Las-fire and tracer rounds flashed through the darkness.

The air defence turrets went off-line.

Without the glare of the lights, crouching, as he was in pitch darkness, Varnus could see what the turrets had been turning towards before they had died.

They looked like stars at first, but they burnt bright orange, and they were getting larger. What the hell were they? Meteors?

Whatever they were, they were approaching the palace with sickening speed. Varnus could almost feel the heat of the objects as they plummeted from the heavens.

Death rained down upon Shinar.

CHAPTER FIVE

Marduk smiled, exposing his sharp teeth as the Deathclaw drop-pod hurtled down through the atmosphere of Tanakreg. The First Acolyte felt savage joy as the g-forces pulled at him. Burias grinned back at him like some feral beast from across the other side of the plummeting attack transport. Marduk pulled on his helmet, hearing the hiss as it slid solidly into place around his gorget, and breathed in the recycled air of his power armour deeply.

He savoured these moments, the thrill just before battle commenced. He knew that Borhg'ash, the daemon bound within the archaic chainsword at his side, felt his anticipation for the bloodshed that was soon to erupt for the weapon was vibrating slightly. It too hungered for battle.

Warning lights flashed, and Marduk felt the powerful retro-thrusters scream as they kicked in. He howled, the vox amplifiers fitted to his ornate helmet further enhancing the potency of the daemonic sound. The other Word Bearers joined in with howls of their own as their systems were filled with a sudden rush of adrenaline administered by their power armoured suits. Marduk relished the sensation of the combat drugs flooding his system.

'Into the fray once more, my brothers!' bellowed Marduk. The other nine warriors strapped into the Deathclaw roared their approval. 'We are the true bearers of the righteous fury of the gods!' Another roar. 'And in their name, we kill! Kill! And kill again!'

With that the Deathclaw struck, smashing into the ground with bone jarring force, stabiliser claws embedding deeply. Infernal mechanics grinded as the drop-pod was lifted up on its four claws, and the bladed arcs of the circular floor slid back with a hiss.

Marduk was first out of the Deathclaw, his heavy boots slamming hard onto the cracked plascrete, the booming of his vox amplifiers sounding out over the barking of his bolt pistol.

'Hate the infidels!' he roared, his pistol kicking in his hands as he fired. 'Hate them as you kill them! Hate them with your bolter and hate them with your fist!'

The towering hulk of the Deathclaw had slammed into a crenellated, terraced balcony on the upper face of the palace. Other drop-pods screamed down from above, their hulls glowing with the heat of the rapid descent. Seeing the enemy around him and feeling the fear emanating from them, Marduk licked his lips.

He thumbed the activation rune blister on his chainsword and it screamed into life. He could feel it trembling in his hand with barely suppressed hunger, and he gritted his sharpened teeth as he felt the weapon bond with his flesh, tiny barbs piercing his armoured palm.

There were uniformed soldiers all around them, scattered across the cobbled open area atop the crenellated defensive structure. Not that it was any defence against enemies that landed in their midst, thought Marduk as he fired his bolt pistol into the soldiers. They were falling away in terror from the Deathclaws that were landing with titanic force all around them.

'Death to the False Emperor!' he roared, charging into the midst of the foe. He carved left and right, hacking and rending flesh with his screaming chainsword. Blood sprayed out as he tore through the PDF troopers.

Blood and brain matter sprayed across Burias's twisted visage as he swung the heavy, barbed icon two-handed into the face of a soldier, and Marduk knew that the change would be upon him shortly. Good, he thought. Let the mortals see the face of the daemon and know that hell beckoned them.

The Word Bearers ripped though the PDF troopers, and Marduk saw a group of blue-armoured warriors standing together, long lasrifles held to their shoulders.

'With me my brethren!' he roared as he raced across the blood drenched cobblestones towards them. The soldiers fired, and las-fire streaked past Marduk's head. With a roar of animal fury he was amongst them. His chainsword ripped flesh and armour apart with ease, and he felt that the beast bound within the chainsword was pleased at the bloodshed. It pulled at his arm, urging him to seek more death for its whirring teeth. It has been too long since you tasted the blood of the heathens, he thought.

Blood welled in the carefully designed catchments of the weapon and was sucked eagerly into its inner workings. Veins pumped and throbbed along the length of the chainsword as the beast within fed. Power surged through Marduk, flowing from the daemon weapon as it grew in strength. He cleaved Borhg'ash into the chest of another victim, its sharpened teeth ripping apart flesh and ribs in a shower of gore.

The change came over Burias suddenly. His face seemed to ripple and shimmer like a mirage on a horizon. His features flickered back and forth between his own and the horned, bestial face of the daemon Drak'shal. He opened his mouth wide as his lips curled back, exposing sharp fangs and a long, flicking, bruised purple tongue. His bolt pistol dropped from his hand and was instantly retracted to his hip, the length of chain linking the weapon to his belt withdrawing automatically. His index and forefingers fused into thick, bladed talons, and he gripped the icon two-handed once more. Burias dropped into a low, bestial crouch, even as he seemed to grow in stature as the daemon's power increased.

With a roar that was at once his own and the daemon's, Burias-Drak'shal leapt from his crouch, launching straight at a terrified PDF soldier who ineffectually fired off a frantic las-blast at the creature. Burias-Drak'shal smashed the icon down onto the man's head, killing him instantly. Nevertheless, the daemonically possessed warrior punched his fist through the man's chest and raised the dead body up into the air, letting out an ungodly roar that made the substance of the air ripple with warp spawned power.

'The gods themselves send us their aid to smite the infidels!' roared Marduk. 'Behold the majesty of their power!'

The battlements were almost clear. A blast from a lasrifle struck Marduk's helmet, and his head was jerked to the side. Snarling, he turned to face the attacker that had dared to shoot him.

Varnus swore as he waited for the las-lock to re-power. Though they fired powerful single bursts of energy, the weapons were painfully slow between firing. Still, the shot had done little more than irritate the towering monster that was leading the power armoured killers, so one more blast would be unlikely to do anything but stall the inevitable. Varnus knew that death had come to Tanakreg and that he had but moments left to live. Emperor protect my soul, he prayed.

The palace guard were being slaughtered. He saw one man explode as a bolt-round detonated in his shoulder, spraying blood around him like a mist as he fell to the ground, the entire left side of his torso missing. He saw another die instantly as one of the enemy clubbed him in the head with a bolter, the force of the blow crashing his skull as if it were glass.

The hulking fiend he had shot rounded on him, stalking through the melee, and Varnus swore. The monster towered over him. Varnus was in no way a small man, but he barely came halfway up the beast's chest. With a hum, the las-lock re-powered and he fired again at the huge Chaos Space Marine. The shot was taken in haste and was not on target. Nevertheless, it struck the beast in his wrist, and his accursed bolt pistol dropped from his hands.

Snarling in anger, Marduk cleaved the long lasrifle wielded by the infidel in two, and reached out and grabbed him around the throat with his empty hand. He felt blood seeping from his wrist where the wretch had blasted him, but it was already congealing. His hand almost encircled the man's entire neck, and he could feel the pathetic fragility beneath his fingers. Tendons and ligaments strained as he exerted pressure.

Lifting the man into the air, his feet kicking uselessly half a metre from the ground, Marduk drew him close to his helmeted visage.

'That hurt, little man,' he said, the vox amplifier booming his words into the face of the wretch, 'but this is going to hurt a lot more.'

With that, he hurled the man off the battlements.

'Your weapon, First Acolyte,' said one of the Word Bearers, and Marduk turned to accept his bolt pistol, held reverently in the warrior's hands. Without a word, he took the weapon.

Looking out over the battlements, Marduk saw scattered fighting on a lower tier of the bastion some fifteen metres below, where the broken body of the infidel he had hurled had landed. He could see fighting down there, but no Word Bearers. Curious, he thought.

'Warriors of the IV Coterie, with me,' he ordered. 'The rest of you, cleanse this level of the Imperial filth.'

'Burias-Drak'shal!' he roared, and the daemonically possessed warrior turned from his killing, gore dripping thickly from his icon, arms and mouth. 'With me.'

The twelve warriors of the IV Coterie extricated themselves from the killing, and jogged towards the First Acolyte. Burias-Drak'shal stalked along with them, breathing heavily.

Marduk launched himself over the edge of the battlements, dropping down towards the lower terrace. He landed in the midst of a firefight, and cobblestones cracked beneath his weight. He rose up to his full height as his brethren landed around him.

'Death to the False Emperor!' he roared. The shout was repeated by several dozen of the Imperial garbed warriors. Marduk saw that most of those that had shouted had ripped their clothing to expose a crude, tattooed representation of the Latros Sacrum on their shoulders, the sacred screaming daemon symbol of the Word Bearers legion.

He began laying around with Borhg'ash and his bolt pistol, carving flesh and planting bolt-rounds through bodies. He didn't pay too much attention to those he killed, and doubtless he and the warriors of the IV Coterie slew as many of their cult followers as the Imperials, but it mattered not - the souls of both would be welcomed by the gods of Chaos.

The gunfire suddenly ceased, and the remaining men dropped to their knees, gazing up at the towering Chaos Space Marines with awe and reverence. Several had tears in their eyes. The Word Bearers held their killing in check, waiting to see the First Acolyte's reaction.

All except for Burias-Drak'shal, who stepped forward and smashed the icon into the head of one of the cultists. The man's skull crumpled and he fell without a sound.

'Burias-Drak'shal,' said Marduk quietly, and the daemon warrior looked up, snarling. His entire body trembling, Burias-Drak'shal stepped back and dropped into a half-crouch, staring hungrily at the humans. Marduk too felt the urge to step forward and slaughter the weaklings, but he knew that they had their uses. Borhg'ash trembled in his hands, wishing to kill more.

'Which one here speaks for you?' asked Marduk. The cultists looked around at each other, and finally one man stood and stepped through the other cultists to approach.

'I do, lord,' said the man, his head held high.

Marduk raised his bolt pistol and shot the man in the face. Pieces of skull, brain matter and blood splattered over the remaining kneeling cultists.

'Lower your eyes when looking upon your betters, dogs, or I shall ask Burias-Drak'shal here to remove them.' Marduk snarled.

'Now, who here speaks for you?' he repeated.

A shaven-headed woman in beige robes stepped forwards, her gaze lowered. 'I do, my lord,' she said in a shaking voice.

'What is the fourth tenant of the Book of Lorgar, dog?' asked Marduk dangerously, fingering the trigger of his bolt pistol.

The woman stood in silence for a moment, and Marduk raised the pistol to her head.

'Give up yourself to the Great Gods in body and of soul,' she said quickly. 'Discard all that does not benefit their Greatness. The First thing to be discarded is the Name. Your Self is nothing to the Gods, and your Name shall be as nothing to You. Only once you have reached Enlightenment shall you Reclaim you Name, and your Self. Thus spoke Great Lorgar, and thus it was to Be!

Marduk kept the pistol raised to her head. 'What is your name?'

'I have no name, my lord,' the woman replied instantly.

'If you have no name, what then shall I call you?'

The woman faltered for a moment, biting her lip hard, acutely aware of the bolt pistol held a centimetre from her forehead.

'Dog,' she whispered finally.

'Louder,' said Marduk.

'Dog,' said the woman. 'My name to you, lord, is dog.'

'Very good,' said Marduk, lowering his pistol. 'You are all dogs, to me, and to all of my noble kind. But perhaps one day, with faith and prayer and action, you will rise in my esteem.

'Arise, dogs. Gather your arms, and prove yourselves. Walk before your betters. Joyfully take the bullets of our enemies, so that not a scratch need mar the holy armour of the warriors of Lorgar. Such is a noble sacrifice. Lead forth, dogs.'

Jarulek stepped carefully through the carnage, the script covered orbs of his eyes taking in all the details of the slaughter wrought by his warriors. Bloodied and broken corpses lay sprawled throughout the palace. The fortress-like was enormous, and every living soul within it had been slain or was in the lower atrium on the ground level in shackles. He had sent the cultists out into the city, to spread panic and misery amongst the populace, and to hunt down the last remnants of resistance. He didn't care if they succeeded or not: Kol Badar and the bulk of the Host were fast closing on the city, and they would smash any final resistance utterly.

The Dark Apostle was pleased with the attack. The palace had been taken with few casualties and the kill-count was exceptional: a good sacrifice to the gods.

Picking his way carefully up the nave of the heretical temple, he felt hatred as he raised his gaze to the towering, granite statue of the aquila that dominated the back wall. Both of the heads of the two-headed eagle had been smashed by his zealous warriors, and the tips of the wings reduced to dust.

Dozens of clergy members were nailed to the defiled aquila, thick metal spikes driven through their flesh and bone, and into the stone.

The First Acolyte, Marduk, stepped forwards to greet him. He joined the fingers of both hands together, making the stylised sign of Chaos Undivided, and bowed his head. When he raised his head, he was smiling broadly, exposing sharp teeth: the row of smaller, razor sharp incisors in the front and the larger, ripping teeth behind.

'We left them alive, mostly, Dark Apostle,' he said. 'I thought that might please you.'

Jarulek too smiled. The intense hatred that the Word Bearers had for the Imperium of man was as nothing compared to the exquisite hatred that they reserved for members of the Ecclesiarchy. He stepped closer to the debased aquila statue, looking up at the priests, who were groaning in agony. Rivulets of blood ran down the statue, funnelled by the carved eagle feathers, and Jarulek placed a finger in the crimson liquid. He raised the finger to his inscribed lips and licked it with the tip of his script covered tongue.

'It does please me, First Acolyte,' he breathed. He stepped back, hands on his hips, as if he were appraising and admiring a favourite piece of artwork. 'Yes, it pleases me very much indeed.'

'Then there is this pair,' said Marduk. Two men were dragged forward and forced to their knees with heavy hands upon their shoulders. They both kept their eyes low, not daring to look up at the Word Bearers around them. One wore a red robe, his bionic eye buzzing softly as the lens rotated. The other, the larger of the two, wore a robe of plain cream. Both had exposed their left shoulders, showing the leering daemon face of the Latros Sacrum tattooed upon their flesh.

'The one on the left disabled the air defence turrets,' said Jarulek, not taking his eyes off the priests impaled upon the statue. Marduk looked at the man. His left eye had been replaced with a mechanical augmentation.

'While the other,' said Jarulek, 'ensured that the Cultists of the Word gained access to the palace. I believe that he was the bodyguard of the governor of this backwater planet. Was that not so?' he enquired, turning his face towards the man.

He nodded his head, wisely not speaking out loud.

'I have seen your faces in my visions,' remarked Jarulek. 'And in my visions of what is yet to come, your face is there, treacherous adept of the Machine-God. But I regret to inform you, bodyguard,' he said calmly, 'that yours is not. It would seem that your part in this venture is complete.'

The man stiffened, but did not raise his head.

'But you are not yet to be made a sacrifice to our gods. No, you are not yet worthy of that honour,' said Jarulek in his velvet voice. 'Take him down to the atrium to join the slave gangs. He can spend the last weeks of his life in service to the gods, aiding the construction of the Gehemehnet.' The man was dragged away.

'You, administrator, you are to stay close to me. But first, you must remove that abomination that you wear upon your breast,' said Jarulek, pointing at the twelve toothed cog upon his chest. The man instantly removed the metal plate from around his neck and held it in his hands, not sure what he was meant to do with it now that it was removed.

'First Acolyte, take the accursed thing and see that you perform the Rituals of Defilement upon it,' said Jarulek. Marduk took the metal emblem, his face curled in disgust.

'It is no god, you know, that your erstwhile brethren pray to,' remarked Jarulek conversationally.

'My… my lord?' questioned the administrator. Marduk paused as he was turning to leave, a snarl on his face for the man daring to speak in the presence of the Dark Apostle. Jarulek raised a hand to halt the blow that Marduk was about to deal the cowering man.

'They are coming, you know, coming here, your erstwhile brethren,' said Jarulek, almost to himself, seeing the waking vision as it overlapped with his surroundings. 'Yes, they come soon. They fear that we will succeed where they failed.'

Jarulek came out of the vision, and saw that Marduk had paused, looking at him. That one's power is growing, he thought.

It was sometimes possible for one of powerful faith to experience, albeit considerably weakly, the visions that another experienced. How much had he seen? he wondered briefly, before discarding the thought.

It mattered not. What was to come was to come, and nothing could change the prophecy.

CHAPTER SIX

Days and nights blurred together into one long, nightmarish, pained existence. Varnus was plucked from death and his wounds had been tended by the horrific chirurgeons that served the Chaos Legion, even as he fought against their administrations.

They had borne him from where he had lain after the Chaos Lord had hurled him off the battlements, and placed him on an icy, steel slab. He was restrained with thick binding cords of sinew. Bladed arms had cut into him, and long, needle-tipped proboscises had plunged into his flesh. He screamed in agony as the skin and muscles of his shattered leg and arm were peeled back, and the splintered bones reset before being sprayed with a burning liquid. His veins burned with serums, and his eyes were held open with painful spider-legged apparatus, for what purpose he knew not, unless it was for him to witness the infernal chirurgeons at work.

The skin of his forehead was delicately peeled back from his skull, and a burning piece of dark metal in the barbed shape of an eight-pointed star was inserted there before the skin was returned to its position and stapled back into place.

A collar of metal the colour of blood was wrapped around his neck and soldered shut, and he was taken to join the tens of thousands of other slaves that the Chaos forces had rounded up once the occupation of Shinar had been completed. Heavy, spiked chains connected Varnus's collar to two other slaves. They too bore the mark of Chaos beneath the red-raw flesh of their foreheads.

He had found that within a few days he was able to walk, albeit with considerable difficulty and pain. He was made to work day and night, his efforts directed by horrifying, hunched overseers, garbed in skintight, black, oily fabric. The faces of the overseers were, thankfully, obscured by the same black material, though how the creatures were able to see was beyond him. Grilled vox-blasters were positioned where the creatures' mouths should be, and their fingertips ended in long needles. Varnus had felt the pain of those needles when he had stumbled one night, and the pain that they caused was far in excess of what he imagined a slaver's whip would deliver. The overseers stalked along the lines of slaves, their hunchbacked gait bobbing and awkward.

But far more terrifying than the overseers were the Chaos Marines. Whenever Varnus glimpsed one of them he was overwhelmed by the scale of the monsters and the pure aura of power and dread that they exuded.

The sense of oppression never lifted. For days, the sky was largely obscured by the immense shape of a titanic Chaos battle barge hanging in low orbit, plunging most of the city into darkness. Enormous landing craft were in constant movement between the Chaos ship and the ground, ferrying Emperor-knew what down to the planet. Then one day it was gone. Not being able to see the battle barge of the Chaos forces in the atmosphere was a small blessing amid the horror that was Varnus's existence.

The great red planet of Korsis could be seen both day and night, getting increasingly larger as its orbit drew it ever closer to Tanakreg and the time of the system's conjunction of planets.

Varnus had watched as an area somewhere in the region of a hundred city blocks was levelled by heavy siege ordnance. In a short flurry of brutal devastation, hundreds of buildings had been demolished with ground shaking force. Dust had rushed across the landscape for hundreds of kilometres all around, Varnus guessed. He no longer knew if it was day or night, for the air was thick with dust and foul, heavy, black smoke that left a residue on every surface.

Giant, smoking, infernal machines had been brought in to push aside the debris of the demolition, and along with thousands of slaves, Varnus had been forced to follow in the wake of these mechanical beasts, clearing away the smaller rubble that the machines missed. His hands had bled, and chirurgeons moving through the lines of chained Imperials had sprayed them with a dark, synthetic coating, stemming the bleeding, but not the pain.

Monstrous, polluting factories, foundries and forges were constructed, vast, vile places filled with acrid black smoke, heat and the screams of those being ''encouraged'' by the overseers and their needle hands. Titanic vats of superheated, molten rock were fed with the rubble of the demolished buildings, and what looked like bricks, though bricks on an insanely large scale, were being created in gigantic, black, metal moulds.

The corpses of those killed in the defence of Shinar were dumped in giant, stinking piles, and more bodies were pushed there by huge bulldozers, black smoke belching from racks of exhausts. Varnus thanked the Emperor that he had not been assigned to one of the slave gangs forced to strip those corpses naked before they were deposited in vast silos. He had no wish to learn what abhorrence the enemy had planned for the bodies.

Other worker teams were busy in the centre of the vast open space that had been cleared, working with smoke-belching machinery, drilling down into the earth, creating a vast hole over a kilometre wide that sank lower into the planet's crust with every passing day.

The destruction of the city was not, it seemed, complete, and on what Varnus guessed was his second week of hell, more demolitions began. The rabble created from the demolitions was brought to the smelteries in cavernous vehicles and upon the backs of thousands of slaves. Varnus completely lost track of time as he dragged and hauled twisted metal, chunks of rockcrete and stone to the vast smelteries, there to be turned into ever more giant blocks.

A sudden weight pulled at the collar around Varnus's neck and he was hauled back a step, almost dropping the chunk of rock he was bearing. He tried to keep moving, but there was a dead weight on the chain attached to his collar, and he glanced around fearfully, trying to see if there was an overseer nearby. Seeing none, he turned around and saw that the man behind him had fallen. Swearing, Varnus dropped the stone he carried to the ground and hobbled to the fallen slave, trying to pull him to his feet.

'Get up, damn you,' he swore. The punishments exacted upon the entire worker gang if one of their number slowed their progress were harsh. The man didn't move. 'By the Emperor, man, get up!'

Sudden, wracking pain jolted through his nervous system, and he heard the rasping voice on an overseer. There was a slight delay as whatever fell language the overseer spoke was translated into Low Gothic by its vox-blaster.

'Speak not the name of the accursed one!' rasped the overseer, and slammed another handful of needles into Varnus's lower back. He had never felt such pain in his life, would not even have been able to conceive of such agony. He convulsed and jerked on the ground. Abruptly the pain ceased, leaving him feeling numb.

The overseer called out something in its own rasping dialect, and another of its kind stepped forwards with a las-cutter, as Varnus shielded his salt-sore eyes from the white-hot light. The chains connected to the collar of the man who still lay unmoving on the ground were cut, and Varnus felt his own chain go slack for a moment. Then he was pulled violently to his feet by the chain, as the severed links were fused together.

The slave was dead, or close to it, and was dragged away.

Two sharp notes were blown on a whistle, and Varnus quickly picked up his dropped rock and shuffled to the side of the rained street with the other slaves of his worker gang. A detachment of blood-red armoured Chaos Space Marines marched past, and the other slaves kept their gaze lowered, as did the black clad, hunchbacked overseers.

The familiar burning feeling beneath the skin of his forehead itched, but Varnus resisted the urge to scratch at it. He had seen other slaves claw at the eight-pointed star symbols beneath their flesh, and terrible, painful welts had erupted.

A Discord, one of the floating monstrosities that accompanied every slave gang, blessedly silent for a moment as the Chaos Marines had walked by, began once again to blare its cacophony of unintelligible words and hellish sounds from its grilled speaker-unit. It hovered limply half a metre off the ground, dragging behind it an array of mechanical tentacles as it moved ponderously up and down the line of slaves. The sound was sickening, making Varnus's insides twist with nausea.

A long, drawn out whistle sounded, and Varnus once again dropped his stone and lowered himself painfully to the ground. An overseer walked along the line of seated slaves, holding a muddy brown bottle with a straw out to each of the men in turn. When it came to his turn, Varnus leant forward and sucked deeply from the tube. He almost gagged on the foul, thick liquid, but forced himself to swallow. He had no idea what it was that the bastards fed them, but it was the only form of sustenance that they were allowed.

'So, what were you before?' asked a low voice in a conspiratorial whisper, after the overseer had moved on.

Varnus glanced surreptitiously at the man next to him. They were now chained together, since the poor soul who had been chained in between them had just been dragged off. He thought that he recognised the man from somewhere, but he couldn't place the face.

'Enforcer,' said Varnus quietly.

'You got a name?' whispered the man.

'Varnus.' A whistle blew, and the slave gangers pushed themselves to their feet. 'Yours?' he risked, whispering.

'Pierlo,' said the man quietly.

Marduk was first off the Thunderhawk, striding purposefully down the assault ramp as it was lowered from the stubbed nose of the gunship. He removed his helmet and breathed in deeply. The air was thick with pollution, smoke and the taint of Chaos, and he smiled. Much had changed since he had left the city of Shinar.

For the past weeks he had been engaged against various PDF armies far from the city, ensuring that there was no military power upon the planet with the strength to launch a counter-attack against the Word Bearers. While there were still dozens of areas of resistance scattered across the planet, there was no single force that would prove a threat.

The skies were scarred with dust and smog, and the first cautious rumbles of thunder rolled across the marred heavens. The fires of industry were burning fiercely in the city below.

The palace had changed. The spires and towers that had once formed the silhouette of the bastion had been ripped down, replaced with brutal spikes and barbed uprights, and corpses were strung up all over them. Marduk saw that the skinless forms of the kathartes, the daemonic, cadaverous furies that accompanied the Host, were perched amongst the corpses. The vicious harpies screeched and fought amongst themselves for the prime perches. The powerful air defence turrets had been returned to activation, and they scanned the heavens. That was good: it would not be long before the Imperial fleet arrived.

Purple-red veins pulsed beneath the surface of the once plain, pale grey, plascrete walls of the upper bastion, and Marduk was pleased to see the symbols of all the great gods of Chaos artfully painted in blood on the walls of the galleries he passed through.

He nodded to the honour guard flanking the vast glass doors, and walked past them out onto the large, opulent balcony. Jarulek, surveying the ruin of a city below, did not acknowledge his approach.

Marduk strode to the Dark Apostle's side and knelt down beside him, his head lowered. After a moment, Jarulek placed his hand upon the kneeling warrior's head.

'The blessings of the dark gods of the Immaterium upon you, my First Acolyte. Rise,' said the Dark Apostle. 'You return having accomplished that which I requested,' he said. There was no hint of a question in the remark, since there would be no need for Marduk to return had he not completed the task appointed him.

'There is no fighting force upon Tanakreg that can interrupt the preparations, my lord,' said Marduk. 'I bring with me near to five hundred thousand additional slaves to aid in the construction.'

'Good. The slaves of this planet are weak. More than a thousand of them perish every day.'

'The Imperials are all weak,' said Marduk emphatically. 'We will smash those soon to arrive, as we smashed the pitiful resistance on this planet.'

'I have faith that you are correct, we will smash these new arrivals. Individually they are weak, yes,' said Jarulek, 'but together, they are not so. It is only through division that we weaken them. This is why we must always propagate the cults. When the Imperium fears the enemies within its own cities, that is when it is the most vulnerable.'

'I understand, my lord,' said Marduk, 'though I do not believe that your Coryphaus sees it so?'

'Kol Badar does not need to. He is the warlord of the Host, and he fulfils that role perfectly. Rarely has the Legion seen such a warrior and strategos,' he said, turning his disconcerting gaze towards Marduk for the first time since they began speaking. 'He brought in well over a million slaves from his attacks against the cities in the north, you know,' said Jarulek softly, watching his First Acolyte carefully. 'He is and always will be a better warrior than you.'

Marduk tried to remain composed, but his jaw clenched slightly. He saw the dark amusement in Jarulek's eyes. The Dark Apostle kept watching him, seeming to Marduk to enjoy making him feel uncomfortable, as he always did.

'You still feel the shame, don't you?' asked Jarulek, cruelly.

'I could have beaten him,' said Marduk, 'if you had given me the chance.'

Jarulek laughed softly, a bitter, cruel sound. 'We both know that is a lie,' he said.

Marduk clenched his fists, but he did not refute the Dark Apostle.

Jarulek placed a forceful hand on one of Marduk's battle-worn shoulder pads and turned him towards the view over the rained city.

'Beautiful, is it not? The first stones of the tower have been laid, the ground consecrated with the death of a thousand and one heathens, and the blood mortar is setting. The tower will breach the heavens, the gods will be pleased, and this world will be turned inside out.' He turned towards Marduk, a hungry smile on his scripture covered lips. 'The time draws near. "As Sanguine Orb waxes strong and Pillar of Clamour rises high, the Peal of Nether shakes, And Great Wyrms of The Below wreak the earth with flame and gaseous exhalation. Roar of Titans will smite the mountains and they shall tumble. Depths of Onyx shall engulf the lands, and then exposed shall lay The Undercroft, Death and Mastery."'

The First Acolyte's brow creased. There was not one of the great tomes of Lorgar that he had not memorised in its entirety, nor any of the scriptures of Kor Phaeron or Erebus that he did not know word for word. As First Acolyte, he was expected to know the words of the Legion as well as any Dark Apostle did. Any time that he was not killing in the name of Lorgar or aiding the Dark Apostle in the spiritual guidance of the Legion was spent in study of the ancient writings, as well as the required ritualistic penitence, self-flagellation and fasts. He prided himself on his knowledge of the Sermons of Hate, and the Exonerations of Resentment, as well as thousands upon thousands of other litanies, recitations, curses, denunciations and proclamations of the Dark Apostles through the history of the Legion. He had spent countless hours poring over pronouncements, predictions and prophecies witnessed in ten thousand trances, visions and dreams. Marduk had even studied the scrawled recollections and scribed ravings of those warrior-brothers possessed by daemons, words straight from the Ether, seeking the truth in them. And yet he had never before heard the prophecy that Jarulek quoted.

'It is not written in any of the tomes within the librariox aboard the Infidus Diabolus,' said Jarulek, seeing the look on Marduk's face. 'Nor is it written anywhere within the great temple factories of Ghalmek or the hallowed flesh-halls of Sicarus. No,' said Jarulek smiling secretively, 'this prophecy is scribed on only one tome, and it resides in none of those places.'

Marduk felt his frustrations grow.

'A fleet of the great enemy draws close,' hissed Jarulek, his eyes narrowing.

'I have felt no tremor in the warp indicating their arrival,' said Marduk, knowing that he was particularly sensitive to such things.

'They have not yet left the Ether. But I feel their abhorrent vessels pushing through the tides of the warp. They will arrive soon. I have sent the Infidus Diabolus back to the warp.'

'You do not wish to engage the enemy fleet as it emerges?' asked Marduk.

'No.'

'You do not seek to engage them in the warp?' he asked, somewhat incredulously.

'No, I have no wish to risk the Infidus Diabolus in a futile battle of no consequence.'

'No battle against the great enemy is of no consequence,' growled Marduk. 'So Lorgar spoke, and so it is to be.'

'Speak to me in such a tone again and I will rip your still beating twin-hearts from your chest and devour them before your eyes,' said Jarulek softly.

Jarulek held Marduk's gaze until the First Acolyte could look no longer and dropped to his knees, his head down.

'Forgive me, Dark Apostle.'

'Of course I forgive you, dear Marduk,' said Jarulek softly, placing his hand upon the First Acolyte's head.

Marduk felt a sudden lurch. By the way that the Dark Apostle withdrew his hand, he knew that he had felt it too. He had felt that same feeling countless times, though much stronger in intensity, as the Infidus Diabolus dropped out of warp space. Jarulek stepped away, and Marduk stood.

'The great enemy,' said the Dark Apostle, 'has arrived.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn of the 133rd Elysians crossed his arms over his chest as he surveyed the flickering pict-screen. The image was hazy at best-at worst, nothing could be made out at all. He shook his head.

'Your pict-viewer is of inferior quality, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos. His voice was monotone, and barely sounded human at all. 'The level 5.43 background radiation of the planet c6.7.32 and Type 3 winds disrupt its capabilities.'

'Thank you, that is most helpful, Magos Darioq.' Havorn replied.

'You are welcome, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos, clearly not registering the sarcasm in the middle-aged general's tone. The large form of Colonel Boerl, the commander of the Elysian 72nd and Havorn's second in command smirked.

The techno-magos, one of the pre-eminent members of the Adeptus Mechanicus of far distant Mars, was a massive, augmented being. It was hard to know where the human ended and the machine began. No features could be discerned underneath the low hood, just an unblinking red light where an eye had once been.

From the back of his red robe, two huge, mechanical arms extended over his shoulders like a pair of vicious, stinging tails of some poisonous insect. Another pair of servo-arms extended around his sides. Formidable arrays of weaponry, heavy-duty machinery, power lifters and hissing claws were constructed into them. The staff of office of the techno-magos was incorporated into one of the servo-arms, a long-hafted, double-bladed power axe topped with a large, brass, twelve-toothed cog, the symbol of the Machine-God. Dozens of mechadendrites hovered around him: long, metallic tentacles fused to the nerve endings of his spine. They were tipped with dangerous looking, needle-like protrusions and surprisingly dextrous grasping claws.

The man's organic arms were wasted, useless things that he held crossed over his chest. It looked like they lacked the strength to grasp anything any longer, and they were held immobile. Clearly they had been made redundant by the hovering mechadendrites and servo-arms.

A diminutive, robed figure the size of a child stood before the magos, though nothing could be seen of its form within its deep hood. It appeared to be connected to the Mechanicus priest by cables and wiring. A floating servo-skull hung above the techno-magos, mechanics covering the right-hand side of its cranium. Its unblinking, red eye watched the goings on within the command centre unerringly.

With a slight shake of his head, Havorn squinted at the pict-screen again. Bleary images flickered across the viewer of massed bulk carriers sinking slowly through the atmosphere of Tanakreg, with escorts of gunships flying in figure-of-eight patterns around them. It was hard to make out, but Havorn had seen scores of similar landings, and he could see exactly what was occurring in his mind's eye.

Imperial Navy attack craft, a variety of interceptors, fighters and assault boats, would have swarmed from their launch bays aboard the twin Dictator Cruisers, the Vigilance and the Fortitude, like a cloud of angry insects. As the first of the mass transports detached from the cruisers and began sinking slowly through the atmosphere, it was these Imperial Navy craft that were its first line of defence.

As the atmosphere was broken, vast bay doors on the descending transports would retract, and flights of Valkyries would emerge like circling buzzards, descending towards the surface of the planet in advance of the wallowing mass transport ship. Thunderbolts and Lightning fighters would scream from the still-descending transport to ensure air superiority. The Valkyries would sweep low over the ground and the first Elysians to step foot on the world would rappel swiftly from the gunships to secure the landing zone.

A wide perimeter would be quickly secured, the rapidly deployed Elysians establishing strong points along their line with quickly dug-in heavy weapons.

More troops would rappel to the surface and smaller, breakaway transports would detach from the massive bulk of the main ships on the descent, dropping in heavier support to bolster the perimeter defences: rapidly moving Sentinel walkers and Chimera infantry transports bearing cargos of specialist Elysians.

Havorn had no doubt that the landing was proceeding smoothly and as planned, and a glance at the data-slates being updated every few seconds with fresh information confirmed this. The perimeter had been established well within the usual expected time-frame, and Sentinels were already scouting beyond the landing zone, seeking out possible threats invisible from the air.

The pict-image flickered again, but it was clear that the last of the mass transports had landed. Dust rose around the ships as their immense weight was lowered onto the earth. Havorn could imagine the rumbling beneath the feet of the men already on the ground as the ships landed and their titanic cargo-doors dropped open.

He raised a hand to his long, greying moustache. Landings were always stressful; the mass transport ships were such tempting targets. He was pleased, though somewhat surprised, not to have had any sightings of the enemy. That was a blessing. A shudder of revulsion ran through him as he thought of the foe that his soldiers would soon be facing.

Chaos Space Marines, the most dangerous and hated of foes: traitors and betrayers who had turned their backs on the light of the Emperor and sold their souls to devils and eternal damnation.

The Space Marines, were the most elite warriors of the Imperium, each genetically modified to become giants among men, perfect machines of death with bodies created to withstand wounds that would kill a lesser man ten times over. In every respect they were superior to regular warriors. They were stronger, tougher and faster. Add to that the awesome protective and strength enhancing properties of their power armour, their unparalleled training and the best weapons that the adepts of Mars could construct, and you had the most powerful fighting force in the galaxy, and the most dangerous.

The Space Marines were meant to be the warrior elite of humanity that brought stability to the galaxy with bolter and sword in the name of the God-Emperor of mankind. But more than half of their number had turned their backs on the Emperor, embracing the sentient darkness and malice of the Empyrean.

The Elysians were soon to face these accursed traitors on this dead-end planet. His men would be fighting the genetically modified monsters, the results of a deadly experiment gone horribly wrong when they turned upon the Emperor. Havorn had fought alongside loyalist Adeptus Astartes many times, and their involvement in those wars had ensured that tens of thousands of Imperial Guardsmen had lived, but he would never trust them as he would trust any of his men.

Why are we on this accursed planet? he fumed, his face impassive. He was not one to question orders from the Lord General Militant, but he resented being left in the dark as to the reasons.

Still, it mattered little. The enemy was here, and wherever it raised his treasonous head, the snake must be cut down. It was just that Havorn knew that this world must be of some hidden importance for the 133rd and the 72nd, in their entireties, to have been drawn off from the Ghandas Crusade to retake it: important, but not important enough, it seemed, to have drawn one of the loyalist Space Marine Chapters to the world.

Tanakreg was a backwater planet dominated by black, acidic seas. There were only two main land-masses on the world, and only one of those was inhabited. An inhospitable and desolate land dominated by salt plains and high ranges of mountains, it seemed to Havorn to be a planet that the hated forces of Chaos could damn well keep if they wanted it so much.

The Planetary Defence Forces had been overwhelmed contemptuously quickly, a fighting force of two hundred thousand soldiers, defeated within days by a force that could not have been more than three thousand. But those three thousand were Astartes, he reminded himself, and he surmised that traitors on Tanakreg had aided them. It sickened him that people could turn on their own like that.

'Brigadier-general,' said Colonel Boerl, 'the perimeter is secured and primary bulk transports landed. The secondary perimeter is being established and will be operational at any moment.'

'Thank you, colonel,' said Havorn. He turned to the representative of the Mechanicus.

'Techno-Magos Darioq, you may order your own transports to descend, if you wish,' he said.

'Thank you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' replied the magos in his mechanical monotone. 'I will leave you now to return to my ship, to oversee the landing.'

Gyro-stabilisers hummed as the magos turned to leave. His footsteps were slow and heavy, clanking loudly on the metal-grilled floor plates of the command station aboard the battleship. Clearly, his legs were either augmented or had been completely replaced with bionics in order to bear the colossal weight of the harness. Mechadendrites floated freely around him, and a small, wheeled contraption, joined to the Tech-Adept by ribbed cables and wiring, trailed behind him. The floating servo-skull hovered in the room briefly before following its master from the command station.

'A word, before you leave, Tech-Adept,' said Havorn. The red-robed, towering figure turned around slowly.

'Yes, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn?'

'I am intrigued: what is it about Tanakreg that interests the Mechanicus so? It is rare to see such a gathering of Martian power.'

'The Adeptus Mechanicus supports the armies of the Emperor in all endeavours, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy on this planet c6.7.32.'

'You bring with you a force the likes of which I have never seen on a battlefield before: why is it that this place, of all the planets in the galaxy, is of such particular interest to the Mechanicus?'

'The Adeptus Mechanicus supports the armies of the Emperor in all endeavours, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy on this planet c6.7.32.'

'That does not explain a thing and you damn well know it,' said Havorn, his voice rising. 'What I am asking is why?'

'The Adeptus Mechanicus supports—' began the techno-magos, but the brigadier-general cut him off.

'Enough! Leave my command station and my ship, and see to your damned landings.'

'Thank you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos.

The brigadier-general's face was hard as the Adeptus Mechanicus priest left. Then he swore loudly and colourfully.

The Chaos infested, polluted atmosphere was killing him. The foul smoke from the infernal machines spewed into the skies, and Varnus's breath was heavy and wet with fluid. Several times he had thought he had felt things crawling within his lungs, and he had hawked and coughed until blood had run from his tortured throat. Then the cursed, black-clad overseers had inflicted pain on him, stabbing him with their needle claws, and he had writhed with agony.

His eyes were weeping constantly, and a painful, mottled rash had developed around his neck and wrists. The eight-pointed metal star beneath the skin of his forehead pained him, and he imagined that the hateful thing was fusing to his skull, becoming a part of him. The thought was sickening.

The broken bones of his arm and leg had healed well, however, and though they still pained him, he had almost regained his full range of movement.

He wiped the back of his mortar encrusted hand across his eyes as another layer of immense stone blocks slammed into place, the sound booming out over the rained city of Shinar. The tower was being erected at a ferocious pace, one layer of the huge bricks at a time. Giant, insect-like cranes swung around and lowered their cables to the ground to grasp the next round of blocks in their barbed claws, belching smoke and dripping oil.

Varnus stared into the booth of the closest crane with his sleep deprived, exhausted eyes. The pilot of the machine may once have been human, but was far from that now. It hung suspended within its cabin prison by dozens of taut wires and cables hooked painfully through its skin with vicious barbs. Ribbed pipes extended from its eye sockets and from its throat. Its legs had atrophied to a point that they were little more than withered stubs protruding from its torso, and with long, skeletally thin fingers it plucked at the wires suspending it. He tore his eyes away from the foul sight.

A sharp note sounded across the worksite, and black-garbed overseers prodded thousands of slaves forwards, off the scaffolds and onto the top of the stone slabs. Varnus and Pierlo stepped onto the wall of the round tower, and waited for the mortar hose to swing in their direction.

Other slave teams within the shaft of the Chaos tower toiled far below. Though the tower was only around thirty metres from ground level, the inside of it had been drilled down into the core of the earth twice that distance, and Varnus felt a surge of vertigo pull at him. Every time he looked over that edge, he had an impulse to hurl himself over, but he resisted these urges. He would fight death for as long as he was able: he wanted to be alive to see the Chaos forces utterly destroyed. He believed fervently that help would come to deliver Tanakreg from this hated foe.

Other slaves had not been able to stop themselves leaping from the walls of the tower, but it gained them little. The chains that linked around the slave's necks were bolted to the scaffolds at intervals and those slaves that slipped, or hurled themselves off the edge, seeking an escape from their hellish existence, ended up dangling against the inside wall of the tower. Normally, they would drag a handful of other slaves with them. It was not usually enough to kill them. The only chance a slave had was to throw himself with as much force as he could muster and pray that his neck snapped. Still, if he survived, the punishments at the needle-clawed hands of the overseers were severe, and meted out not only to the instigator, but to all those who were dragged over the edge with him. Such was the fear of these punishments, that any slave that looked as if he might try to end it all was restrained by his fellow captives and forced to continue with his servitude.

The thick weight of the mortar hose swung into position above Varnus with much hissing and steaming of pistons, and Pierlo and he reached up, pulling the hose across so that it hovered above the middle of the stone block. Thick, gruel-like mortar began to emerge in congealed lumps from the end of the hose, slowly at first, then faster, piling in the centre of the stone block. A deep pile of the foul substance was deposited before the hose, clanking and steaming, swung away from them to a pair of neighbouring slaves. Varnus and Pierlo dropped to their knees to spread the mortar evenly across the surface of the stone with their hands.

The mortar that held the stones in place smelt foul and was a sickly shade of pink. Varnus tried not to look too closely at the disgusting substance after he had found human teeth in it some time earlier.

That was where the dead of Shinar ended up, he had realised with horror. They were ground up into a thick paste, bones and all, and turned into this foul blood-mortar.

He was smeared in the stuff, from head to toe, and he tasted the hateful, metallic tang of it on his tongue, and smelt its repugnant stink in his nostrils.

A Discord hovered nearby as the slaves worked, its tentacles hanging limply as it blared a hellish cacophony of sound from its grilled speaker. An evil collection of voices chanted something in a language that Varnus hoped never to understand amidst the garbled, daemonic sounds, bellows and sibilant whispers that blasted from the infernal thing. Varnus, he imagined a voice whispering sometimes amidst that din, his quietly spoken name almost hidden beneath the garbled, Chaotic roars and screams. Not a moment went by when the slave's eardrums were not assaulted by the insane sound. Kill him, he heard a reasoned voice say, in amongst the jumbled shrieks, horrified moaning, ceaseless chanting and the drone of static that was emerging from the Discord.

Varnus and Pierlo finished smearing the blood-mortar across the top of the stone slab just as another sharp note rang out, and they hurriedly stepped back onto the scaffold. Shrieks of agony rang out from those slaves that had been deemed too slow as they were disciplined by the overseers.

The slaves held onto the metal spars of the scaffold as it shook. The outside wall of the tower was not perfectly smooth, but rather was slightly stepped, each block overlapping the one below by half a hand-span. After every twenty layers of stones were laid, the mechanical scaffold would climb those narrow steps, pistons steaming as the spiderlike legs of the framework pulled it further up the growing structure. It was an ingenious creation, Varnus had been forced to admit, though he hated it to the core of his being.

Varnus squatted atop the shuddering structure, holding on tight. Pierlo grinned at him, his eyes lit up feverishly. He guessed the man was losing his mind, for he almost seemed to be enjoying the hellish work. It took almost ten minutes for the framework of the scaffold to reposition itself, and it was the only real break that the slaves got until the shift rotation. The Discord blared its hateful sound.

'So what was it that you did before?' whispered Varnus. He knew his fellow slave's name, knew that he had lived his entire life in Shinar and that he had fathered no children. But he did not know what the man had done before the occupation. It was almost as if the man had been avoiding the subject, and Varnus had been waiting for this moment to ask him directly.

The blood-mortar smeared man looked away. 'What did you do?' whispered Varnus again, more forcefully. Betrayer, he thought he heard amidst me horrific sounds blaring from the speaker of the Discord.

'I was a manservant and bodyguard.' Pierlo said, his eyes flicking left and right madly, and it suddenly clicked where Varnus had seen him before.

'I have seen you before,' he said. Pierlo looked around sharply, his eyes blazing with unnatural heat. He shook his head vigorously.

'No, I have,' said Varnus, 'in the palace, right before the explosion.' Kill him. Betrayer.

Varnus shook his head and held his hands over his ears, moaning, trying to get the sound of the voices out of his head. This place and that damned Discord were driving him insane. Pierlo was not the only one losing his mind.

'You okay?' he heard Pierlo ask dimly, and he nodded his head.

'Someone will come.' Varnus said to himself. 'Someone will come to liberate Tanakreg.'

Pierlo giggled hysterically, shaking his head. 'No one will come. We will die here and our souls will join with Chaos.'

Anger filled Varnus suddenly, hot and quick. 'Don't say such things! The Emperor's light will protect us in the darkness.'

'Chaos calls us, brother. Can't you hear its voice?'

The Discord blared its monstrous sound.

Kill him.

Varnus closed his eyes tightly, and rocked back and forth slightly, trying to blot out the hideous din.

'Someone will come,' he said to himself. He felt the hated symbol embedded in his forehead writhe. He imagined that feelers from the vile thing were pushing through his skull, entering his brain.

He prayed to the Emperor, his mouth moving silently, but the harsh, discordant babble of the Discord seemed to get louder. The sound of the deep voices chanting within the noise pounded at his eardrums.

Someone will come, he thought. They had to.

A hiss of pain emerged from Marduk's pallid lips as the chirurgeons removed the vambraces of his power armour from around his forearms with their spiderlike, long, metal fingers. Patches of skin were ripped from his flesh as the curved armour plates were removed, and pinpricks of blood covered the areas of the skin that remained. Tiny, barbed thorns lined the inside of the vambrace: Marduk and his sacred armour were slowly becoming one. It was not uncommon amongst the Legion.

The hunched chirurgeons scraped and bowed before him, and shuffled off to place the bloody pieces of ceramite armour on a purple, velvet cloth alongside his gauntlet and under-glove. Marduk clenched his fists before him, looking at the translucent, bloodied and pockmarked musculature of his arms. They seemed almost unfamiliar to him.

Kol Badar led the morbid, monotonous chanting of the Host, and it carried across the open ground, accompanied by the pounding cadence of giant, piston driven hammers striking great metal drums. The roars and hellish screams of the heavily chained, restrained daemon engines mingled into the din of worship. Throughout the city, the sound of the ritual would be blaring from the daemon amps that accompanied the slave gangs.

Jarulek stood atop the altar, his blood-slick arms raised high as he rejoiced in the sound of worship washing over him. Burning braziers lit the altar and thick clouds of incense rose from the maws of bestial, brazen gargoyles. In the distance behind him was the Gehemehnet, the tower rising at a rapid pace. A hundred slaves knelt along the front of the altar, adding their own music to the cacophony of sound. They were restrained, their wrists bound to their ankles behind them, and they stared out at the gathered congregation of Word Bearers, their faces twisted in terror, anguish and despair.

Jarulek walked behind the line of kneeling slaves. He grasped the hair of one, pulled his head back and slashed his throat with a long, ceremonial knife. Already, hundreds of throats had been cut with that knife that day. The slave gasped, a wet, gurgling sound, and his lifeblood sprayed from the wound. He was pushed off the front of the altar by a pair of Word Bearers honoured to have been chosen for the duty, and the bound, dying man fell amongst the bloodless bodies piling within the metal trough at its foot. Hunched overseers dragged another slave forward to take his place, and Jarulek stepped to the next victim, swiftly cutting his throat, and he too was pushed from the altar.

The blood of the sacrifices ran down the inside of the trough and drained into a catchment where it pooled before being pumped through a twisted pipe that extended out to a large basin positioned before Marduk. It bubbled as it was filled with the warm lifeblood, and he dipped his bare arms into it.

Kol Badar was the first to step forward, still chanting, and Marduk reached up to the warlord's forehead with a bloody hand. He drew the four intersecting lines that formed the Chaos star in its most basic form across the Coryphaus's brow with his thumb. The huge warrior then closed his yellow, hate-filled eyes, and Marduk placed a bloody thumb mark on each eyelid.

'The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother.' Marduk intoned, and Kol Badar wheeled away. The next in line was Burias, the warrior's vicious, handsome face framed by his slick, black hair. He dropped to his knees before Marduk, an aspect of the ceremony that Kol Badar had been unable or unwilling to perform in his bulky Terminator armour. Marduk drew the star of Chaos upon his forehead and placed his thumbs to his eyelids.

'The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,' Marduk intoned, and Burias filed away. The entire Host was to be marked, blessed by the gods before they entered sacred battle once more.

He felt the daemon stir within the chainsword at his side as blood dripped from his gore-slick forearms onto the hilt. Marduk smiled as he applied the blood to the face of a towering Anointed warrior. Soon, dear Borhg'ash, he thought.

Over the course of the next hour, Jarulek slashed the throats of hundreds of slaves, their sacrifice offered up to the glory of the gods of Chaos, and the stench of blood and death was strong. The droning chants of the Host continued unabated, and the last warrior-brother was blooded.

Jarulek descended imperiously from the altar, drenched in blood, and stepped lightly down the stairs, his long, ceremonial skin cloak flowing behind him. The entire Host dropped to one knee as the Dark Apostle reached the ground, and even the raging daemonic engines were cowed by the powerful figure. He walked towards Marduk, and the Dark Apostle raised the First Acolyte's head with gentle pressure under his chin. Jarulek drew the lines of the Chaos star upon Marduk's forehead and placed his bloody thumbprints against the skin of his eyelids.

His skin burned where the blood was smeared, pulsing with energy and potency. Opening his eyes, he saw that colours appeared more vivid than before, and he could clearly see a shimmering aura, the power of Chaos, surrounding the Dark Apostle like a ghostly, gossamer shroud. That power could always be felt when in Jarulek's presence, but it was rarely seen.

'The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,' intoned Jarulek, his voice silken. Marduk rose to his feet and followed Jarulek as he strode back in front of his gathered warriors towards the altar steps. Kol Badar fell into step alongside Marduk, and without missing a word, Burias took over leading the ponderous chant of the Host.

Solemn and in silence, the Coryphaus and the First Acolyte followed the Dark Apostle back up the altar stairs. The Dark Apostle turned to face the gathered Host, and the pair stood a respectful distance back from him.

A chirurgeon shuffled forwards, accompanied by hunched, robed figures dragging a stepped platform behind them. The platform was placed before the Dark Apostle, and the chirurgeon climbed awkwardly atop it. Hissing steam, the platform rose until the robed figure stood at chest height to the Dark Apostle.

The chirurgeon then set to work, the blades and needles of its fingers piercing the flesh of Jarulek's face. Biting claws gripped the skin, holding it taught as the black robed figure sliced through Jarulek's pale flesh, cutting a neat strip from first one cheek, then the other. Blood ran freely from the wounds, before its flow was staunched by the tainted cells within its make up. The chirurgeon bowed and handed the two strips of flesh to the Dark Apostle.

Jarulek stood, holding the two rectangular, bloody ribbons high in the air for all to see. The pounding of mechanical drums ceased and Burias led the chanting of the warriors to a close.

'I honour these two warriors with passages from the Book of Lorgar, carved from my own flesh.' Jarulek said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the gathered mass. Already the red-raw rectangles on his cheeks were healing. Within a day the skin would be smooth and unmarked: two small patches of pale skin amidst a sea of scripture.

Marduk stepped forwards in front of Kol Badar, smirking at the flash of anger in the Coryphaus's eyes, and the skin of his left cheek was cut away by the chirurgeon. Speaking a blessing, Jarulek placed the scripture carved from his own skin upon the wound. There was a tingling, painful sensation as the flesh of the Dark Apostle knitted to his own. Bowing his head, he stepped aside.

'Go forth, my warrior-brothers,' said Jarulek once the second scripture had been fused to Kol Badar's cheek. 'Go forth, and kill in the name of blessed Lorgar, and know that the gods of Chaos smile upon you!'

CHAPTER EIGHT

Icy winds whipped at Marduk as he stood silhouetted atop the mountain ridge watching the approach of the Imperial scout vehicles below. The two-legged walkers, each manned by a single crewman, were climbing along a rocky ravine, making far faster progress than could be achieved by a man on foot. Clearing over three metres with each step, the walkers were making good progress, stepping easily over cracks in the rocky ground that fell away beneath them for hundreds of metres.

He had no concern about being spotted. A mere human eye would be unable to pick him out at such a distance, and the rocky terrain and gale force winds would make the crude sensors of the sentinels almost completely ineffective.

'Shall we gun the fools down?' asked Burias. 'The havocs of the VI Coterie have lascannons trained on them.'

'No, let the dogs down there take them,' said Marduk, indicating with a nod towards the figures waiting in ambush.

The three sentinels continued along the ravine, completely unaware of the cultists waiting in the rocks. A screaming rocket streamed through the air, slamming into the exposed cabin of the rearmost walker, which was annihilated in the billowing explosion.

The cult warriors wore pale cloaks as camouflage against the densely packed rock salt that was as hard as any stone, and they billowed out behind the men as they peppered the sentinels with las-fire.

The Imperial walkers began to edge backwards and returned fire, strafing the rocks with autocannons. Several of the cultists fell back as bullets ripped through their cloaks, but they had chosen a good place from which to launch their ambush and the rocks took the brunt of the fire.

One cloaked figure sprinted across the lip of the ravine, bullets spraying at his heels, and threw himself from the high rocks. He landed sprawled atop the roof panel of a sentinel and rose to one knee, a long blade appearing in his hand.

The sentinel crewman leant from the cabin, an autopistol raised, and fired off a quick burst across the rooftop of his cabin. The cultist grabbed the man's arm, pulling him further out of the cabin, and plunged his knife down into the man's neck.

The autocannon on the last sentinel went quiet as a lucky shot slammed into its pilot's head.

'Not bad,' grunted Marduk, as he began the descent towards the victorious cultists.

Karalos looked up sharply as he heard the shout. Brushing his long, unkempt hair back behind his ears with his blood-splattered hand, he sheathed his knife and stood atop the motionless Imperial sentinel. The mutilated, bloody corpse of the Imperial soldier was forgotten as he shielded his eyes to see what the commotion was.

His jaw dropped as he saw the two colossal, red-armoured warriors walking through the ravine towards his band of the faithful.

'Get everyone together,' he ordered. 'The Angels of the Word have come, as the Speaker foretold.'

The cultists' base of operations was high in the mountains, hidden from view from the sky by pale tarpaulins that draped over the low structures. Every member of the cult within Shinar had spent some time at the Camp of the Word, the old Speaker had told Marduk.

The Speaker was a withered man, the flesh all but wasted from his almost skeletal frame. He was blind, his vision long lost to the biting salt of Tanakreg. To Marduk he had looked pathetic.

'Bring me a hundred of your strongest warriors,' he had ordered the old man, 'and send the rest of your cultists out into the passes. The enemy will be soon be upon us.'

He had grown bored as the old man had babbled on, and had eventually put a bullet through his head. The one hundred men on their knees before him had not made a move as the shot had rung out, and Marduk had seen that Karalos had smiled as the old man was slain. Marduk liked the man: he had the soul of a true warrior of Chaos, even if he was just a wretched mortal.

'You men are blessed indeed.' Marduk said, 'for you have been chosen to receive a great gift, a boon of the great majesty of the warp. It is the Calling, and you are to be the hosts.'

Marduk began to chant, his voice effortlessly mouthing the difficult, unearthly language of the daemon. He felt the creature Borhg'ash within his chainsword stir at his words.

The kneeling men were surrounding by dozens of burning blood-candles, the light of their flames the only thing holding the darkness of the room at bay. They flickered as Marduk continued his incantation, the flames straining in towards the First Acolyte.

Whispers could be heard, flittering around the dark edges of the room, and Marduk welcomed them, for they spoke of the arrival of the Kathartes. The flickering of the candles increased, and a howling sound began to circle the gathered group as Marduk's voice rose.

The blood of the Speaker, pooling out on the floor of the room, began to bubble, and Marduk knelt and placed both hands in the rapidly heating liquid.

Marduk continued to speak the words of the Calling and stepped towards the kneeling figure of Karalos, placing a bloody hand on either side of the man's head. He held onto his head firmly, feeling the skull compress beneath his hands, and continued his complex incantation.

Karalos began to writhe and twitch, but Marduk did not release his grip, holding tightly to the man's head. The cultist's eyes began to bleed and blood seeped from his ears, but still Marduk continued to chant and clasp the man. He could feel the power of the warp opening up, its strength pulsing through his hands into the boiling brain of the man beneath him, but Karalos made not a sound, silently welcoming the beast that was emerging within his flesh.

With a final barked stream of daemonic words, Marduk pushed Karalos away from him. The man stood for a moment twitching, blood streaming from his eyes, before he fell to the ground, writhing and convulsing. A flickering blur seemed to overlap the thrashing figure, flashing between the body of a mortal man and the insubstantial form of something distinctly other. His tongue bulged from his mouth and he arched his back unnaturally, before breaking into severe muscle contractions that threw his body across the floor. Bones broke under his exertions and his spine twisted horribly, tendons and sinews tearing and ripping. The other men stood hurriedly and backed away from the wildly jerking man, horrified fascination and devotion on their faces.

The man's flickering flesh bulged unnaturally, as if things held within were trying to burst free, and he scratched frantically at the skin of his face, ripping bloody rents. The bones of his fingers lengthened and pushed through the skin of his fingertips, curving out into sharp talons, and he ripped at his skin and clothes, tearing them off in bloody strips.

He rolled over and over on the ground, ripping and tearing at his flesh frenziedly, every muscle of his body straining. Blood vessels bulged on his neck and at his temples, and he lacerated his skin with his long talons as he continued to spasm and convulse soundlessly.

His teeth lengthened into fine points and he bit into his own shoulder, ripping off chunks of meat.

Marduk smiled and crossed his arms over his chest.

The thing that had been Karalos entered even more frantic convulsions, ripping and tearing at its flesh, until it finally went still. It lay for a moment, bloody and broken, before it picked itself up from the ground and crouched, its skinless face turned towards the First Acolyte, staring at him with eyeless, bloody sockets. Almost its entire bloodied musculature was displayed, and only patches of raw, red skin clung to its frame. The hazy flickering still overlapped the creature, blurring its image slightly and hurting the eye.

An extra, backwards bending joint had formed in the lower leg of the daemon creature, in the manner of a bird, and long talons emerged from its toes. With a sickening, wet cracking sound, a pair of long, skeletal wings unfolded from the monster's back, sheets of bloody skin hanging limply between the bloody bones.

Opening its sharp-toothed, lipless maw wide, the daemon creature hissed hollowly at Marduk, like some newly hatched chick crying to its mother for food. He smiled broadly, the flickering candlelight glinting in his eyes.

'Karalos is no more,' spoke Marduk. 'He gave up his mortal vessel selflessly that this katharte might come into existence.'

The gathered men stared at the daemon with wide eyes. The air tasted electric: like the taste of Chaos.

'Now, all of you will selflessly give yourselves up to Chaos as good Karalos did,' said Marduk, 'for that is what I wish, and through my words you hear the desire of the gods themselves.'

The gathered men glanced warily at each other. 'Well,' said Marduk to the daemon clawing at the floor in front of him, licking itself with a long, barbed tongue, 'call the flock.' The men in the room fell to the ground as one, blood running from their eyes and ears, and they began to convulse.

'It's not right,' said Sergeant Elias of the 72nd Elysian storm troopers, hotly. 'We are the damned elite. We are not meant to be the grunts of the Imperium, plodding through the mud and crap getting gunned down in droves. We ain't that kind of regiment. We are…'

'The glory boys?' suggested Captain Laron wryly. The captain was a big, blond haired soldier, born of pure Elysian stock. Brash, strong and proud, he was the perfect captain for the brash, strong and proud storm troopers of the 72nd. If any other soldier or officer had spoken to him in such a way he would have had the man disciplined, but Elias had been his comrade for decades. He had fought alongside the man long before he had been captain, or even sergeant.

'Damn right we are!' said Elias with considerable passion. 'It's the job of the other regiments to grind mindlessly up the centre. We are the elite, fast in and fast out.'

'I'm sure the camp women appreciate that, sergeant.'

Elias laughed at that. 'But you know what I mean, sir. We don't have the sheer number of men or tanks to fight a conventional frontal assault, not against this enemy.'

'Who said we would be fighting a conventional frontal assault? The brigadier-general is not a damn fool.'

'I know that he is not, sir, but… I still don't know why we didn't just drop on Shinar and have this whole thing over with as soon as possible.'

'We do that and the entire damn regiment would be slaughtered. The air defences of Shinar are strong. Don't be thickheaded, Elias. Use your brains for a change and stop thinking with your damn balls!'

Elias grinned suddenly. 'I do have a big old pair of balls though, captain.'

'The sentinels on recon reported yet?'

'Another hour before the next report, sir.'

'Well, keep Colonel Boerl informed. If they see any enemy movement, report in immediately. We must secure those highlands. The brigadier-general says the enemy may be up there already. If that's the case, then without artillery support to make the bastards keep their heads down, we will be weathering the storm trying to land. If they are up there, it is not going to be easy to take it off them.'

'If anyone can take it off them, it'll be the 72nd,' said Elias, turning towards his superior. The captain was looking out across the plains to where the Adeptus Mechanicus battle force was making ready to move out.

'What do you make of them, sir?' asked Elias, indicating the massing Adeptus Mechanicus tech-guard with an incline of his head. Ever more of the disturbing warriors and war machines of Mars were disembarking from the wide-bodied Mechanicus loaders.

Captain Laron curled his lip in distaste. 'Never seen a concentration of them like this.'

The earth boomed as another of the massive cargo-transports of the Mechanicus landed, throwing up a cloud of salt grit. Hulking, slow moving, tracked crawler vehicles emerged from transports that had already landed, each led by a procession of censor waving, red-robed adepts of the Machine-God. From others came more of the pale fleshed tech-guard soldiers, marching in perfect, rectangular phalanx blocks, ten deep and a hundred wide.

Those phalanxes that had already disembarked were arrayed in their rigid formations, standing stone still on the salt plains, awaiting further instruction. Laron was certain that if no instruction came, they would stand unmoving, arrayed as they were until the cursed salt winds buried them. Even then, he supposed that the mindless things would be still, awaiting instruction.

From a distance, they might have been mistaken for regular Imperial Guard infantry platoons, though an observant onlooker would see that they were far too still to be completely human. They stood in serried ranks with lasguns held motionless over their chests, and many of their faces were all but obscured by deep visored helmets.

On closer inspection, many of the tech-guard soldiers looked less like Imperial Guardsmen and more like semi-mechanical servitors.

Servitors existed in every facet of Imperial life, fulfilling all manner of menial, dangerous tasks, but to see so many of them gathered together in one place for the sole purpose of war was highly disturbing to the Elysians. Servitors were neither truly alive nor truly dead. They had been human once, but all vestiges of that humanity had been long lost. Their frontal lobes had been surgically removed and their weak flesh improved upon with the addition of mechanics. These varied depending on the task that they were required to perform. They might have had their arms removed and replaced with power lifters or diamond-tipped drills the size of a man's leg to work in one of the millions of manufactorums across the Imperium, or be hard-wired into the logic engines of battle cruisers to maintain the ships' support functions.

The tech-guard soldiers arrayed upon the plains were created specifically for the arena of war. Amputated arms had been replaced with heavy weaponry, and targeting sensors and arrays filled the sockets where fleshy eyeballs had been plucked. Power generators were built onto the shoulders of some, and they stood immobile beside gun-servitors, cables and wiring trailing between the pair. Others had single, large servo-arms replacing one or more of their removed limbs, giving them an ungainly, limping gait as servos straggled under the weight. These mechanical arms were as easily capable of ripping a man's head from his shoulders as lifting heavy equipment, and some bore oversized rotary blades or power drills that could cut or punch through the heaviest of armour.

Amongst the phalanxes were smaller contingents of heavier, tracked servitor units. The lower bodies of these servitors had been removed so that they had become one with their means of conveyance. These bore heavier payloads of ammunition that spooled into the large, multiple barrelled cannons that replaced the organic right arms of the servitors.

In between the ranks of Martian foot soldiers were tracked crawlers, one for every phalanx. They were Ordinatus Minoris crawlers, and each was the length of three Leman Russ battle tanks. They had two, wide track units, one at the front and one at the rear, and between these was supported the mass of the war machine. Heavy girders and steel struts supported huge weapons, and each crawler had dozens of red-robed adepts and servitors as crew. Steel ladders rose to the control cabins that were offset from the main guns. Laron did not recognise the weapons that these behemoths of steel and bronze bore, but the massive, steaming couplings and humming generators upon their backs spoke of immense contained power.

But these were as nothing to the sheer scale of the crawler that was emerging slowly from a lander of truly giant proportions.

'Emperor above,' said Elias. 'Would you look at the damn size of that thing!'

It bore a resemblance to the Ordinatus Minoris crawlers in the way that a fully grown adult bears a resemblance to its mewling newborn. It rolled forward on what must have been sixteen tracked crawler units, led by a stream of tech-priests. The size of the smaller tracked crawlers were rendered insignificant next to the immense vastness of the Ordinatus machine.

It was the size of a city block and was protected with thick layers of armoured plating. More than ten storeys of platforms rose up around the massive central weapon that the Ordinatus supported, a weapon the size of a small cruiser that ran down the entire length of the immense machine. Criss-crossing lattice works of steel supported gantries running around the circumference of the weapon, and a pair of quad-barrelled anti-aircraft guns rotated atop the control cabin above the highest deck level. Giant, claw-like, spiked arms were held aloft on either side of the Ordinatus, and Laron guessed that the huge piston engines behind them would drive them into the ground when the Ordinatus was readying to fire, to give the machine additional stability. That a thing that size needed stabilising legs was testament to the awesome power that it could unleash.

'Impressive,' said Laron somewhat reluctantly.

The sergeant put a hand to his ear as his micro-bead clicked.

'The Valkyries are ready and waiting, captain. They fly on your say-so.'

'Good. Colonel Boerl will be joining us on the drop.'

'I feel safer already.'

'Cut the crap, Elias,' snapped Laron. Even with Elias, he had his limits. The colonel of the 72nd was a hardened veteran, and he would hear nothing against the man.

'Let's go take those damn highlands.'

He raised his crozius before him. Blood hissed along the length of the hallowed staff of office, boiling and spitting under the surging electricity coursing up the haft. Once it had represented faith in the Imperium, belief in the Emperor and the optimistic confidence that the Crusades pushing out from great Terra would bring enlightenment to the galaxy.

Spitting, he sneered at the pathetic sentiment. Now he stood on Terra once more, as the greatest battle in the history of mankind was unfolding.

His crozius was dedicated to beings of far greater power than the deceitful Emperor. It represented faith as it always had, inspiring devotion and fervour in the Legion as it smote the non-believers, but this was a far more pure faith than merely a shallow belief and optimism that looked to a bright future for mankind.

This was true faith. The Emperor had been wrong. There were omnipotent gods in existence, and they wielded power beyond imagining. No cold, distant deities that watched the plight of their followers from afar, these gods were active and could affect a very real physical presence in the galaxy.

His crozius had been consecrated in the blood of those sacrificed to these great powers, ignorant fools who would not accept or embrace the true powers within the universe.

And now he fought on Terra, alongside holy primarchs, mighty heroes and noble warriors who had embraced the true faith.

The eager young Captain Kol Badar looked at him, passion and fervour in his eyes. His First Acolyte, the clever Jarulek, looked to him for the word to engage. Raising his sanctified crozius of the true faith high into the air, he incanted from the Epistles of Lorgar. With a fiery roar, the Word Bearers of the XII Grand Company launched themselves once more into the bloody fray.

The Warmonger was stirred from his thoughts of battles long past as his receptive sensors picked up faint reverberations in the air from over the horizon to the east.

'The enemy approaches, First Acolyte Marduk,' he intoned via vox transmission. 'The brethren wait in readiness.'

BOOK TWO:

CONTENTION

'Victory attained through violence is victory indeed. But when the enemy turns on itself - that is the essence of true, lasting victory!'

- Kor Phaeron - Master of the Faith

CHAPTER NINE

The night was lit up with hundreds of lancing beams of lascannons and super-heated streams of plasma. Flames coughed from the barrels of autocannons, and fast burning missiles hissed across the sky, leaving spirals of smoke in their wake.

Storm clouds rumbled overhead, the sound all but drowned out by the din of battle. Rain began to fall over the mountains in driving sheets.

Massive, eight-legged daemon engines strained at the chained restraints locking them in place, each infernal machine overseen by a dozen attendants. They roared into the night sky, metallic tendons bulging, and blazing comets of deep red fire burst from the daemonic hell-cannons built into their carapaces, screaming up towards the Imperial aircraft as they strafed in once more.

Lascannons speared up through the darkness. Flames burst over one of the low-flying Imperial fighters as a wing was shorn off, and it spiralled down into a ravine where it exploded deafeningly. The cockpit of another was ripped apart as lascannons punched through it, and the fighter exploded in mid air, debris and flames raining down along the ridge top. The cover of night did nothing to hamper the warrior-brothers of the Legion, nor the daemons that infused their deadly war machines. The darkness was pierced equally well, whether it was due to genetic modification and acute auto-senses or daemonic witch sight.

A nearby ridge erupted in a series of rising explosions as a stream of bombs struck, and Marduk swore. The enemy had brought in far more air support than even Kol Badar had expected. The fool had not predicted this.

Arcing beams of spitting multi-lasers strafed along the ridge, accompanied by the resonant, barking thud of rapid-firing heavy bolters. Rock and dust were kicked up, and one of the daemon engines was obliterated in a screaming inferno. The fiery explosion rose high into the air, but was sucked back down sharply as the daemon essence of the machine was returned to the warp.

Marduk growled as bullets ripped up the earth less than a metre from where he stood, rocks ricocheting off his ancient, deep-red armour, but he continued to stare angrily down towards the broken ground below his vantage point. While the enemy occupied Marduk's forces, holding the high ground with strafing runs and bombing attacks, other aircraft had hovered briefly beyond the range of the Word Bearer's fire and disgorged their human cargoes. With his targeters at full zoom, Marduk had seen the Guardsmen rappel from these hovering aircraft, disembarking onto the rough ground. He had lost sight of them as they traversed the massive cracks and faults, but he knew that they were climbing slowly towards him in a vain attempt to take the commanding location. Doubtless, hundreds of similar aircraft had dropped their cargoes of Guardsmen all along the rough ground behind the ridges occupied by his warriors, and were even now climbing up. Fools, he thought. No matter how many of them there were, did they really think that mere mortals could dislodge Astartes? Their arrogance was astounding.

'We have engaged the enemy, First Acolyte Marduk,' came the vox transmission from the Warmonger.

'Acknowledged,' returned Marduk as yet another strafing run of aircraft screamed overhead, peppering the Legion with gunfire. 'Take them down, havoc teams,' he snarled into his local vicinity vox.

'Movement,' said Burias, his witch sight keener than the eyesight of the other Chaos Space Marines.

'Where?' barked Marduk, squinting his eyes where the Icon Bearer pointed.

'There, lord. Looks like around… eight Imperial platoons, plus heavy weapon platoons.'

'Bah, the wretches won't get anywhere.'

Burias lowered his head deferentially, rainwater running down his pale face. 'With respect, lord, their mortars could prove… vexing. If they make the rocks there,' he said, indicating a crop of sharp boulders, 'they could lob their shells over the lip of the ridge, and it would be… irritating for us to remove them from the position. And they bear lascannons as well, First Acolyte.'

'You fear their guns, Burias?' asked Marduk.

'No, First Acolyte, I am merely making an observation.'

'It sounded weak to my ears,' growled Marduk, but he saw the sense in what his Icon Bearer had said. 'Choose a small team from one of the coteries. Get around behind those mortars and clear them out of the rocks, if they make it that far.'

Burias's face split into a feral grin. 'I will take members of my brethren, if it pleases you, First Acolyte.'

'Fine. Go.'

'Thank you, First Acolyte,' said Burias, handing his icon to Marduk. Its bulk would merely hamper his mission.

'Take out the guns, and then move to the rear of these weaklings. If there are any of them left,' remarked Marduk.

Burias dropped to one knee swiftly, before stalking off through the gunfire to gather his warriors.

'Good hunting, Burias-Drak'shal,' the First Acolyte said.

Corporal Leire Pyrshank held the controls of the Marauder bomber tightly in his gloved hands as he guided the massive aircraft through the darkness. The dark clouds far beneath the aircraft crackled with lightning, and the massive red planet Korsis hung in the black sky overhead, so close that he imagined he could land the heavy bomber there if he wished.

He also wished that he couldn't hear a thing over the roaring drone of the four turbine engines, but unfortunately he could.

'You'd think they were the High Lords of Terra, the way they acted,' said Bryant's incessant voice in his ear. The navigatius operator seemed incapable of remaining silent for more than a few minutes at a time. 'Bit on the dim side, though. All brawn and light on the brain matter. Still, the way they held themselves, looking down on us Marauder crewmen, I was happy to clean them out. The stupid frakker couldn't have had nothin! But he stayed in. I think it was only 'cos he was a damn glory boy storm trooper, didn't want to fold to the likes of me. He didn't say a word when I won, neither. One of his eyes just sorta twitched, and he stormed away from the table, taking his muscle-bound cronies with him. Five ration packs, a bottle of amasec and five lho-sticks I took off them. Oh, you missed a great game, Pyrshank, a great game indeed.'

'How far to the target?'

'A while yet. Man, it was good. Ended up drinking the whole bottle of amasec with Kashar, you know, that bomber-tech girl from the 64th? Did I show you the scratches she left on my back? That girl,' said Bryant, 'she's really something.'

'How about you cut the damned chatter and concentrate on your screens, huh?'

Bryant merely laughed. 'Thirteen five to target.'

The navigatius operator leant up against the side window of the cockpit and whistled in awe. 'Damn, I'm glad I'm not down there in that mess. I haven't seen a firefight like this since Khavoris IV, and the Guard units there suffered something like eighty percent casualties. The whole mountain range is lit up.'

'It happens in times of war, Bryant,' said Pyrshank. 'I can't see a damned thing out here.'

'Just use the nav-screens. You don't need to see a damn thing. Ten five to target.'

There was a moment of blessed silence. If you could call the deafening noise of four "ear bleeders" silence. That was when he felt the cockpit rock, as if with a sudden impact.

'What the hell was that?' asked Bryant.

'I dunno,' said Pyrshank. 'Could have been some bird, I 'spose.'

'Pretty damn high for a bird,' replied Bryant. 'Have you seen any birds on this salt heap of a planet?'

'No,' said Pyrshank. The entire breadth of indigenous wildlife of the cursed planet seemed to consist of the brine-flies that thrived in vast clouds along the banks of the salt lakes, and the tiny grey lizards that ate the brine-flies.

The cockpit shuddered once more, and there was a tearing sound of shearing metal.

Bryant released the clips of the harness crossing his shoulders and removed his rebreather mask. He pressed himself against the cold side window, trying to look down the side of the bomber's fuselage.

'What in the Emperor's name was that?' he asked.

'Herdus, can you see anything out there?' said Pyrshank into his comm unit. There was no response from the front-gunner, who sat in the forward facing turret just below the cockpit.

'Herdus, can you see anything?'

Bryant swore, and Pyrshank looked over at him. His eyes widened as he saw the skinless creature grinning in at him from outside the cockpit window.

'Throne!' he uttered, recoiling from the hideous visage. Bryant fell back from the window, a cry of horror and shock escaping his lips.

The creature began scrabbling at the corners of the cockpit window, its long talons scratching at the edges of the clear panels. Finding no opening, it reared its skinless head back and slammed it into one of the panels of the window with sickening force.

Pyrshank swore as he realised he had turned the bomber into a dive, and he pulled sharply at the controls. He saw motion behind him and turned his head to see Bryant, a laspistol in his hand. Before he could shout, the navigatius operator fired, and a neat hole was seared through the window and into the creature. It screamed horribly, but the sound was lost amidst the roaring of the air rapidly evacuating the cockpit. The roaring died as quickly as it had begun and Pyrshank saw that the horrifying creature had inserted a long, bloody talon into the neat hole.

A second later, the entire window panel was ripped clear and the skinless daemon crawled into the cockpit.

Without his harness, Bryant was ripped out of the bomber instantly, sucked out into the icy, airless night. Pyrshank struggled frantically with his own harness, escape from the hideous creature his only thought.

He felt his stomach heave and he vomited inside his rebreather unit. But it didn't matter. The daemon grabbed his neck, talons biting deeply.

With a powerful movement, Corporal Leire Pyrshank's throat was ripped out. As the Marauder bomber began its steep dive towards the gathering storm clouds and mountain peaks below, the Katharte kicked away from the aircraft, leathery wings beating hard.

'Shall we engage them, First Acolyte? They are within bolter range,' said a warrior-brother by vox transmission.

'Not yet,' said Marduk. 'Wait until they are closer. Conserve your bolts.'

'As you wish, First Acolyte,' replied the man.

The aeronautical barrage had, if anything, intensified. They were trying to make them keep their heads down as the Guardsmen below advanced, Marduk reasoned. But then moments ago it had ceased entirely, just as the Guardsmen below were almost in position. It didn't make much sense, but then Marduk had long stopped trying to make sense of the Imperium. He would never understand those who chose to worship the shattered corpse of an Emperor whose time was long past rather than embrace the very real gods of Chaos.

From the reports coming in, it looked as if somewhere in the realm of a hundred aircraft had been confirmed destroyed. Around ten bombers had fallen from the darkness of high atmosphere, crashing to earth. Marduk had smiled as he felt the Kathartes kill.

He could see the Guardsmen clearly, their faces all but covered by their grey-blue helmets and dark visors. Sheets of rain drove against them.

Bolter fire barked suddenly, and Marduk turned with a snarl to see which champion had allowed his coterie to open fire.

'Ware the sky,' came a vox from the Warmonger, and Marduk cursed again. He looked up into the heavens to see hundreds of dark shapes dropping like stones. He raised his bolt pistol and began to fire.

Colonel Boerl held his arms clasped tightly to his side as he plummeted through the darkness out of the storm clouds towards the flashes of gunfire marking the target ridge below. Icy cold air and rain whipped at him as he fell, and his heart raced with the thrill.

Forty-two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven drops, and over three hundred combat drops, the most of any Guardsman within the 72nd. And still it gave him an adrenaline rush like nothing else he had ever experienced.

He and the other drop-troopers had launched themselves from their Valkyries at extreme high atmosphere, around forty kilometres above the ground, higher even than Marauder bombers operated when unleashing their deadly payloads. It was necessary to jump from such a height in order to avoid detection. Breathing through respirators, their bodies enclosed in tight-fitting jumpsuits beneath their reinforced carapace armour, the storm troopers had been free-falling for well over five minutes, reaching terminal velocity within the first thirty seconds of the drop, and leaving the cracking sounds of sonic booms in their wake as they hurtled towards the ground at phenomenal speed.

The ground was rising up with astounding swiftness and Boerl made ready. The arms of the grav-chute were automatically timed to unfold and engage at the last possible moment, and he watched the click counter in his visor drop as he neared the ground.

Pulling his arms out and splaying his legs suddenly, he slowed his descent fractionally and spun himself expertly in the air. The grav-chute engaged, barely five metres above the ground, and his descent dropped in an instant to a safe speed.

His hellpistol was already in his hand, and Boerl rolled expertly as he hit the wet ground, rising to one knee and blasting the over-charged laspistol into the back of a towering, power armoured figure. With a flick of his hand, he nudged the release button on his bulky grav-chute, and it dropped to the ground behind him. His storm troopers landed around him, rolling smoothly to their feet, and began laying down a blanket of fire with their hell-guns. Super-heated air hissed as Sergeant Langer unleashed the power of his meltagun, the white-hot blast scything through the ceramite armour of another enemy.

The other Guard units would be pushing up at the enemy from below, just entering range as the drop-troopers landed. They were well drilled, and he knew that the timing would be perfect. The micro-bead in his ear confirmed this expectation and he made his commands, short and clipped, as he ordered the platoons to converge. The enemy were strong, but they were vastly outnumbered. The Elysians would have the position within the hour.

He was leading one contingent of the 72nd storm troopers, the other two arms of the elite regiment landing at the other main targets.

Tearing the respirator mask from his face, it retracted automatically into the chest unit of his carapace armour. 'For the Emperor and the 72nd!' he bellowed, his powerful voice carrying over the frantic sound of battle.

He drew his power sword in one swift movement as a huge, dark-red armoured warrior lashed out at him with a screaming chainaxe, and he raised his blade to block the swing. The unholy strength behind the blow was immense and he was knocked backwards even as his humming weapon carved into the axe, sparks and shearing metal screaming as chain teeth were ripped apart. The massive brute raised its heavy foot surprisingly fast and kicked Boerl squarely in the chest.

He was knocked back once again, stumbling over the rocky ground. It felt as though a track had hit him, all the breath knocked from his body. The Chaos Marine loomed over him, savouring the kill. He threw his sparking chainaxe to the ground and raised his bolt pistol to execute the colonel. A blast of las-fire struck his knee joint and Boerl heard a deep, rambling growl of anger as the Chaos Marine's leg gave out beneath him. Swinging his bolt pistol around, the traitor fired and a storm trooper was killed instantly as the bolt-round exploded in his chest cavity.

His sacrifice was not completely in vain, however, for it allowed the colonel a moment to gather himself, and he surged forwards, slashing his shimmering blade across the warrior's chest, cutting through ceramite easily and scoring a deep wound.

The blow would have killed any lesser man, but the Chaos Marine was Astartes, and he grabbed Boerl around the throat, crushing the life out of him. Frantically, he thrust with his power sword, the blade entering the warrior's gut, sliding easily through his body and emerging from his back. Still the warrior continued to fight, and Boerl began to see stars before his eyes. He managed to raise his hellpistol, pushing it into the Chaos Marine's neck, slipping it between armour plates, and he fired once, twice. Hot blood spurted from the wound, spraying Boerl's face, his skin burning.

The grip around his neck slackened, and he kicked back from the massive warrior, who even on his knees was the same height as the colonel. Still the warrior was not dead, and he raised his bolt pistol. Gathering as much strength as he could muster, Boerl swung his power sword into the warrior's armoured head, the humming blade embedding deep in his skull. At last the warrior fell, the power sword slipping easily from the wound, blood spitting as it boiled on the superheated blade.