The Beast Arises

Chapter One Death to the Beast!

The citizens of Terra crowded the streets in their millions. They sang out their praises to the Emperor with tears in their eyes. They roared their approval until they were hoarse. After months of terror, there was victory.

Terra’s most beloved sons were coming home, and the Throneworld had found its voice.

Maximus Thane led the heroes of the Imperium, standing tall in the cupola of the Land Raider Dorn’s Fist. The Imperial Fists marched in tight lockstep, their yellow armour gleaming in the smog-choked morning of Terra. The Imperial Fists were newly gathered as brothers still, and nearly half of those who had taken up the yellow and black to fight on Ullanor had fallen, but they marched as one: Excoriator, Executioner, Iron Knight, Soul Drinker, Black Templar, Crimson Fist and Fist Exemplar had cast off their prior identities and subsumed them into the deeper brotherhood of Dorn. Old ties dissolved into the rebirth of a greater past. Continuation would be their legacy, though none outside the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes would ever know the Imperial Fists had fallen.

Behind the reformed Imperial Fists came representatives of a dozen other Chapters of the First, Second and Third Foundings. They were small contingents in the main, but in some of them were contained every remaining member of their orders. The victory against the Beast had cost the Imperium dear.

After the marching Space Marines snaked a trail of armoured vehicles ten kilometres long, all brightly painted in the honourable heraldries of the Emperor’s chosen. Behind them the ground quaked to the tread of thousands of Astra Militarum Guardsmen, macroclades of Martian skitarii, and plodding, mighty mechanisms of the Legio Cybernetica. Machines and men of every conceivable type walked proudly past the Tortestrian Gate, Ballad Gate, and Bastion Ledge. Overhead soared flights of Navy Aeronautica fighters and Chapter Thunderhawks. Above them, the dim shapes of starships at low anchor coasted across the brown sky, serene as icebergs.

Laud-hailers borne by floating platforms sang their praise to the Emperor. Servo-skulls and cybernetic constructs without number swarmed in the sky. Along every street, from every window, from balconies and suspended ways hundreds of metres above ground level, from buried halls and avenues hidden in the planet’s metal skin, the people of Terra gave thunderous voice to their gratitude.

The procession turned onto Victory Way and headed east. There, tens of millions of pallid clerks blinked in the unaccustomed daylight. The crowds were thousands deep, reducing the kilometre-wide road to a ribbon of rockcrete. Singing priests gathered in huge numbers. Shrieking herald-seraphim, set free from their roosts in the great cathedrals, soared on the thermals, chanting the names of the victorious. Light from Terra’s rising sun pierced the cloak of industrial filth that veiled her face and lit upon the sons of Dorn, birthing gold from the yellow. The roaring of the crowd intensified. It was overwhelming, deafening. The eyes of a world were upon Thane. Thane! Thane! Thane! They chanted his name like a heartbeat. Terra had returned to life.

It should have been Koorland, thought Thane, not I. It is he who deserves this honour.

If he was saddened his friend’s name was not chanted, he was grateful for the shortness of man’s memory. Soon he too would be forgotten, and another name would take the place of his. How had Koorland managed to cope with all this, he thought. How can any child of humanity?

His helmet auditory equipment and Lyman’s ear struggled to keep the noise of the crowd to tolerable levels. There would be mortals there that day deafened by the crowd’s tumult, he was sure. They would tell their grandchildren proudly that the sound of victory was the last thing they heard.

The procession ground on, already hours into its passage. More hours of noise awaited.

Victory Way opened up onto the Fields of Winged Victory, a vast space built to accommodate the armies of the Great Crusade so that the Emperor could address them. Giant vid-screens surrounded it, displaying Thane’s face to the adoring populace of the Imperial Palace. A sea of faces turned towards him as Dorn’s Fist rode into the Fields, eyes rippling to the procession’s entry point underneath a skyscraping triumphal arch. A row of twenty Titans formed an aisle to receive the heroes of the Imperium. They waited with their heads bowed. As each war machine was passed by the procession on its way towards the centre of the Fields, it rose up and gave voice through its war-horns, until the ground vibrated with their basso profundo song, the mightiest chorale in the galaxy.

Thane’s destination was an edifice three storeys tall erected specially for the occasion. Dorn’s Fist mounted the ramp winding around the outside. It was lined with the Adeptus Custodes, come out at last from the inner wards of the Palace. At each sharp corner, Dorn’s Fist swung around abruptly, until the last was taken, and the marble summit of the platform opened. A pinnacle awaited Thane, topped with a smaller platform and a lectern. As the crowd roared on, the tank’s assault ramp slammed down to crack the fresh, gleaming paving and Thane strode out. The ordinarily still, heavy air of Terra had space to move over the Fields, and a light wind teased his honour papers and oath scrips.

He emerged at the top of the pinnacle to a deafening cheer that seemed to last an age.

In front of the lectern, upon a stone bier decorated with a frieze of victorious Space Marines, lay the corpse of an immense ork. It was an impressive specimen, twice the height of Thane and clad in barbarous armour. Every time the vid-screens showed its magnified face to the masses, there came a hysterical booing, whole sectors of the Palace hissing so that it sounded as if a desert’s worth of sand spilled upon the rockcrete.

This ork was not the Beast. The example before Thane had been selected carefully by those adepts skilled in the manipulation of the human psyche. Fabricator General Kubik had offered his best magi-genetors for the task. Thane had elected to employ Grand Master Vangorich’s logistaries and Temple Vanus agents instead.

The Beast could not be too large, for it would instil fear in the people rather than dispelling it, Vangorich insisted. Nor could it be too small, for then contempt for the rulers of Terra would seep into the hearts of humanity that they were bested repeatedly by a weak foe. Thane wished the Beast itself had survived, for he was tired of subterfuge, but the Beast’s head and those of its monstrous comrades had detonated under the stress of psychic feedback, and their corpses were buried in the ruins of Gorkogrod.

The gleaming of his armour put a cast on everything he saw, tinting the red of his eye-lenses orange. The colour was a deception. He was not made to be an Imperial Fist. When he first put on the colours of the old Legion he had expected it to be temporary, but the lie had become the truth; he was no longer a Fist Exemplar. The Imperial Fists were dead, but the Imperial Fists must be seen as immortal. The Defenders of Terra could not fall.

Only months before, he had been outraged by Udin Macht Udo’s demand that the fall of the Fists on Ardamantua be kept secret. He had privately doubted Koorland’s judgement when he had warriors of the other Chapters masquerade as Imperial Fists during that other, premature victory parade. At last he understood. Some walls must be rebuilt in the night. Appearances were everything.

Thane had come to loathe politics. Far on the other side of the Fields, on another platform, were twelve stone thrones. He upped the magnification of his sensorium. The High Twelve were not yet present, but the steps were crowded with thousands of lesser lords and ladies. The sight of them made his jaw clench.

He waited. In the crowded confines of the Terran hives, the Fields were an anomaly, a perfectly square clearing over a thousand hectares in size. Thousands of men, women and armoured vehicles rumbled onto them, taking up position in perfect blocks that shimmered in a haze of exhaust heat. Thane marvelled at the display of arms, but not for the first time he was taken aback at how it was dwarfed by the accomplishments of the past. The Fields had room for hundreds of thousands more men; millions more.

Kilometres away, the great walls of the Imperial Palace stood sentinel over Terra’s screaming populace. Patches of bare adamantium gleamed where gravitic disruption had caused their decorations to tumble free, but the walls held firm. Similar signs of devastation were evident wherever he looked around the city, and these were not superficial. Broken hives, piles of rubble and twisted metal; gaps in Terra’s claustrophobic skyline opened by the gravity weapons of the attack moon. The smooth, artfully laid paving of the Fields was buckled in places, hastily and inexpertly patched in others. More signs of time’s erosion of the achievements of the past; one more step away from the dreams of the Emperor towards the nightmare of endless war.

For an hour Thane stood to attention as the sun climbed over the towering hives of Terra and the formations of troops and machinery laid themselves out line by line. The crowd unceasingly sang and shouted. Atmospheric craft and void fighters streaked overhead, releasing bursts of fireworks and scintillating displays of directed energy.

Finally, the last of the heroes took up position and stopped. An army bracketed Thane’s pulpit. Ten thousand trumpets sounded, overtaken at the last by the mass sounding of Titan war-horns. The remaining members of the High Twelve emerged. Their greeting from the crowd was muted.

‘People of Terra!’ Thane roared. His suit’s vox-systems were rerouted to giant public address systems and his voice filled the Fields louder than the death of worlds. The crowd shouted back even louder. ‘Silence!’ he commanded. His single word rippled away, an infinity of echoes carrying his voice across the planet’s surface. Before the last had died, a hush fell that carried the curious weight of a hundred billion breaths withheld. The wind that stirred his parchments and tabard blew harder, then dropped to nothing. He reached up, unclasped his helm from its softseals, lifted it off, and breathed the unfiltered air of Holy Terra.

It was stale with overuse.

‘I come before you today to announce a great triumph!’ he said. ‘The orks of Ullanor are defeated. Their leaders are no more. Already, their attack fleets fall upon each other in disarray. The Imperium is saved!’

A vast, howling cheer roared from the masses. The wind of their breath buffeted Thane again. He held up a hand, magnified and multiplied on innumerable vid-screens, and held it there until the noise once again dropped.

‘As a species, we have come close to the brink. Holy Terra itself was threatened. The Emperor was at risk!’ He pointed an accusatory hand in the direction of the Palace, making sure that his gesture encompassed the distant dome of the Great Chamber of the Senatorum Imperialis. Let the High Lords think he meant to accuse them, for he did. ‘The Lord of all Mankind, who raised humanity back up from the dark days of Old Night, who built this Imperium of which we are all citizens, who gave all to shield His species, and who sits in agony eternal to protect us still — He was in danger, He was in peril, He was failed by all of us. No more, I say. We shall never allow this to happen again!

‘This is the second time in a year that I have taken part in such a celebration,’ shouted Thane. ‘That first time, nine months ago, was premature. We were complacent even at the height of danger. This time, we celebrate true victory.’

Again that howling of a world, a nation of billions in ecstatic release from fear. Thane strode from his pulpit. The Sword of Sebastus, the Dornsblade, rang from its scabbard. Pollution-tainted Terran sunlight sparkled with renewed purity along its edge. The prismatic pommel called forth a rainbow from filth. With a crackle amplified to deific proportions, he swung the blade down. The sword shattered the creature’s crude gorget, severing the ork’s head from its bullish neck. With swift, exaggerated movements, Thane reversed, cleaned and sheathed the Sword of Sebastus and picked up the dead ork’s head in both hands. Steam rose from its cauterised neck. The deep chill of methalon preservation cooled his face as he lifted it over his head.

‘The Beast lies dead, the Imperium endures. Ave Imperator! All hail the dominion of Man!’

Maximus Thane, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, cast the head of the proxy Beast from the top of the spire. Propelled by his augmented strength, it sailed over the edge of the platform and shattered messily on the stone of the Fields of Winged Victory scores of metres below.

‘The reign of the Beast is over!’

Chapter Two Legacy of the Sigillite

Getting to the Sigillite’s Retreat through the Imperial Palace was not easy. Ancient, it had been swallowed whole by centuries of building. Wienand enjoyed the tortuous route to the hidden garden; it helped stretch out her mind and her muscles. She had been feeling twitchy ever since the third attack on Ullanor, and relished the exercise.

She ducked under an archway spidered with cracks caused by the buildings bearing down on it from above, and came into the Retreat. It hadn’t changed since she was last there — although, she reflected, it probably hadn’t changed for hundreds of years. It was the same grey, dismal place she had tracked Vangorich to months before. Very remote, very quiet, it had many qualities that recommended it as a spot for meditation and clandestine meetings, but she’d be a fool to think they were the only ones that drew the Master of Assassins there. She had no idea if this rough little space had once been frequented by Malcador himself, but his name carried enough of the resonance of history with it to make it attractive to those seeking power.

She must be mindful of Vangorich’s ambition.

He was already there, sitting openly upon the cracked wood of the split-trunk bench at the garden’s heart.

‘Red incense rises over the Tower of Philo. Drakan Vangorich wishes to see me,’ she said lightly. Her feet crunched on the dusty gravel as she made her way to the bench. Terra was so biotically compromised that in one thousand years the tree trunk had not decayed at all, only shrunk in on itself and twisted out of shape. It was an apt visual metaphor for the state of the Imperium.

Vangorich closed his book, rose and bowed. He was wearing the monkish robes he’d taken to before the attack on Terra. She gave them an amused frown.

‘Wienand!’ he said with evident pleasure. ‘I am glad you came.’

‘I am not sure how I feel about your new look, Drakan. Why did you start to wear that ridiculous habit?’

Vangorich looked down at his robes.

‘These? They present a certain cenobitic air, don’t you think?’

‘More places to hide weapons, perhaps. You are not a holy man.’

‘I have no idea what you mean, my dear Wienand. I am aiming for devout. Too many people see me as frivolous. It is time I adopted a more serious air.’

She scowled. ‘Less of the “my dear”, Drakan. Despite your overtures of friendship, you would kill me without a moment’s hesitation if you thought it necessary. Assassins don’t have friends.’

‘You are my friend, Wienand.’

‘I wish I could believe that,’ she replied.

Vangorich’s smile slipped for a fraction of a second. ‘So you don’t like my robes?’

‘I preferred the suit. Don’t deflect me. What is it that you want, Vangorich?’

Vangorich gestured to the bench. They sat together.

‘The war is over, but the struggle is yet to be resolved,’ began Vangorich. ‘The orks have been driven back, and for that the worlds of humanity can give praise. However, we both know they are not the greatest threat to the Imperium.’

‘The High Lords,’ said Wienand wearily.

‘The High Lords. A knotty problem. I preferred dealing with the orks.’

‘You are a facetious man,’ said Wienand.

‘Thank you. This crisis could have been resolved so much earlier were it not for the fragmented nature of Imperial governance. There are billions of men under arms in the Imperium, hundreds of thousands of Space Marines. Titan Legios. War fleets. Where were they all? Scattered. Leaderless, misdirected to the ends of personal interest and agenda so that when a real crisis arose they were attacked and eliminated in isolation. Under less ineffectual direction, the Beast’s rise would never have occurred. How many times did we make the same mistakes? Three direct assaults on Ullanor. I’m no tactician, but tell me that was wise.’

Wienand looked up towards the plasteel sky half a kilometre above. Windowless towers crowded the garden. What little light reached the retreat was attenuated, the environs murky. ‘This place suits you very well,’ she said. ‘So shady.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Vangorich, looking around the retreat’s tired cloisters. ‘Or rather it did. Since you uncovered it, I have taken against coming here. I don’t know why. It was my special place, but the thought of encountering someone… unexpected,’ he said with a deliberately unctuous grin, ‘took the shine off it. A shame, there are so few places I can be myself.’

She laughed at that. ‘Your self is whatever you need it to be.’

‘You’re hurting my feelings.’

‘So we’re back where we started. Making veiled threats and accusations at each other while the real problems continue their idiotic reputational struggles.’

‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ said Vangorich.

‘Then stop it,’ she said sharply. She looked into his eyes properly for the first time since she had arrived. His face softened. ‘Please. We’ve proved good allies to one another. Let’s not cast it all aside. We’re better than them.’

Vangorich nodded with relief. ‘I was hoping you were going to say that. I’m sorry, I had to check.’

‘There was no need to goad me.’

‘Goading people is part of my charm, and part of my plan.’

‘Killing people is the culmination of it,’ she retorted. ‘I take it the beheading of the ork was your idea?’

‘Naturally.’

‘I am surprised you got the Chapter Master to agree to it.’

Vangorich smoothed out his habit and made an apologetic noise. ‘Poor Thane has learned that bolter and blade are not the only weapons of war, and that not all wars are obvious.’

‘Careful there, Drakan. If you continue his education so effectively you might make him dangerous.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Vangorich. ‘They are a peculiar breed, the Adeptus Astartes, so deadly in some respects, almost childlike in others. Thane is cannier than Koorland was, less of a naïf, if you will. He has more experience, after all. I wonder how things would have gone had he been the last Imperial Fist rather than Koorland. Would this crisis have lasted so long?’

‘Koorland was more easily led. A man needs to be malleable if you would turn him into a hero. He was right for the role.’

‘The Emperor sent him at the right time,’ said Vangorich.

‘Now I know you don’t believe that,’ scolded Wienand. ‘Be careful with Thane. You cannot manipulate him. He needs to be contained.’

‘Ah, well, that might be a little tricky,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’ve asked you here because I think we should make him the Lord Guilliman.’

‘What?’ said Wienand.

‘He is dangerous, you are right. More so now the war is over. The enemy is defeated. Space Marines need enemies, it’s their whole reason for being. He’ll be looking for more soon.’

‘And you want to put him in a room where he has nobody to look at but us?’

‘Oh, I think we’re quite safe,’ said Vangorich amiably. ‘He doesn’t trust me, but he does listen. And you, you have his respect, my dear Wienand. You fought by his side. You proved yourself to him. You know, those new scars you have are very fetching.’ He looked at her meaningfully.

‘You’re suggesting that the Inquisition table the motion that he take the post? No,’ she said.

‘I was actually thinking you should do it. But the Inquisition, yes, the right hand of the Emperor Himself. Who could refuse that?’

‘Don’t mock me, Drakan.’

‘I’m teasing you. It’s affectionate.’

‘You can put teasing on my file along with “my dear” as things not to do to me.’ She gripped the edge of the desiccated wood. It was as hard as stone. She bowed her head in thought. ‘Veritus will not agree,’ she said, ‘but I cannot deny that your plan is appealing. Thane in charge of the Senatorum might put a stop to the squabbling, at least for a while. He is more than a Space Marine, more than a son of the Emperor, he is the slayer of the Beast. The saviour of the Imperium.’

‘He is a symbol,’ said Vangorich. ‘Seeing as we’re out of primarchs, he’ll have to do.’

She couldn’t stop a smile at the thought of the reactions of the others. ‘They could say nothing against him. Thane would have the backing of every man, woman and child in the whole of the Imperium.’

‘You’re coming round to the idea, I can tell,’ said Vangorich.

‘I am not sure. Putting so much power into the hands of one man, at the height of his popularity?’

‘Just like Horus?’

‘That is exactly what Veritus will say,’ she said.

‘Only I can’t imagine someone like Thane going bad. Can you? Tell me truthfully.’

‘Power corrupts,’ said Wienand. ‘There is a reason why the Emperor created the Senatorum Imperialis to rule. The Imperium was too much even for Him alone.’

‘And like so many things since the time of the Great Crusade, it’s worked just marvellously,’ said Vangorich. ‘The Emperor was not infallible. Thane is no primarch. His rule won’t last forever, and the Imperium needs a steady hand for a while. We need reform. He can push it through.’

‘Reforms you suggest?’

He shrugged. ‘Or you. Tell me it makes no sense, and I will drop the issue. You agree with me though, and I know you can handle Veritus.’

She paused, and became suspicious. ‘There is something you are not telling me,’ she said. ‘What play are you making, Drakan?’

He became serious. ‘The play I am making is for stability at a time when we so desperately need it. The Beast nearly finished us, Wienand. Neither you nor I believe things can go back to the way they were. You know this isn’t about personal power. It never has been. I am not made that way. If I were, I would never have been recruited as an Assassin, nor would I have been elevated to Grand Master.’

‘Psych screening doesn’t always work.’

‘But you know me.’

‘I’m afraid I do, all too well.’

They looked at each other, neither willing to drop eye contact. Wienand broke their silence.

‘Verreault and Lansung will not agree to this,’ she said.

Vangorich smiled.

She gritted her teeth. If she was at the point of making individual objections that could be dealt with one by one, she’d lost the argument.

‘I’ll handle them. They will back your proposal. So will I. Zeck will too. He understands the situation. All I have to do is convince one more and we will have a majority.’

‘How can you be sure of Verreault and Lansung? They will be the biggest opponents to the idea. They have the most to lose.’

‘I am sure they will back you,’ he said confidently.

‘Do I want to know?’

‘Mmm, I don’t think so,’ said Vangorich.

Wienand bit her bottom lip. It wasn’t clear there was any other way. ‘I’ll consider it, but it will not be without cost.’

‘And what would that cost be, Inquisitorial Representative?’

Her face hardened. ‘Don’t be disingenuous, Drakan.’

Vangorich passed three cowled menial priests on the stairs leading to the Monitus. When he walked through the high marble gate he was gratified to see that his orders had been obeyed. The Monitus, empty of all but dust until a few days ago, had been attracting increasing numbers of pilgrims since the fall of the Beast. They had all been removed.

There was but one other living being in the Monitus that evening. Surrounded by his noble antecessors rendered three times life-size in stone, Thane looked entirely in place. He stood at the centre of the semicircular balcony that led out from the hall, framed against the dirty warmth of Terran skies. He was one of the heroes of old come back to life and stepped down from his plinth to survey the modern age with sorrowful eyes. Vangorich pitied him. Such was the fate of all heroes, their lives short, their souls captured in stone, their reputations used to rebuke generations yet to come. All of them would be disappointed to see the dream they had fought for.

‘Vangorich. High Lord,’ Thane said. He bowed his head.

‘Lord Thane,’ Vangorich returned his courtesy. He pulled out a blocky box from under his robes.

‘What is that?’ said Thane.

Vangorich waved the device. ‘An audio damper. Nothing sinister.’

‘Put your silence field away. You’ll talk to me openly or not at all,’ said Thane. ‘I’ve no appetite for subterfuge.’

‘As you wish,’ said Vangorich. He had had the place swept for listening devices earlier that day. He was sure nobody would be listening. And if they were, what they might learn would not help them. Never act, Vangorich held, until it is too late for anybody to do anything about it.

Thane looked around the ranks of heroes. They were paired, back to back, one looking down at the floor, the other staring sternly at the dome of the Great Chamber. Thane’s own eyes followed the stone gaze of the statues and settled on the house of the Senatorum, and he half turned away from the Grand Master to share their view.

‘What is it that you want from me, Lord Vangorich?’ said Thane. ‘Summoning me here, where so much of import has occurred these last months, surrounded by the warriors of the great Legions, you can only be hoping to make some sort of point.’

Vangorich went to look out over the vista of the Palace. He leaned on a marble balustrade eroded by the corrosive air and drummed his fingers. The dome looked so fragile, like a bald head ready to be cracked. Only fate had preserved it from the shattering of the ork attack moon.

‘Providence played a part in preserving the Great Chamber, don’t you think?’ Vangorich said. ‘The Emperor watched over it, I am sure.’

‘I am unconvinced by your piety.’

‘I pray daily, my lord.’

‘Koorland told me. In the Chapel Ordinary. I am sure the common people are most affected by your display of humility. Not I. You do not believe in the Creed. I can tell.’

‘That’s an interesting observation.’

Thane made a dismissive noise deep in his throat. ‘My kind knew the Emperor when He walked among us. You are not so far divorced in time from the founders of the Officio Assassinorum yourself. There have been, how many, twenty Grand Masters since your order was founded?’

‘Eleven,’ said Vangorich. ‘We Assassins become adept at staying alive.’

‘You are too rational for faith. I’ll not play your games, Grand Master. I am not Koorland. The war is over. I tire of Terra.’

‘No, you are not Koorland,’ agreed Vangorich.

‘Then tell me why I am here. Speak plainly to me as Thane, not as your puppet. Koorland was a great hero, but he heeded you too closely. I am weary. The Imperial Fists, my Chapter,’ he added, with a touch too much stress, ‘are battered. We may be brothers in blood but we must learn to be comrades. I have much to do and little time to do it in.’ Thane stalked forwards, ceramite boots scratching the porphyry floor, to stand over Vangorich.

Vangorich rested on the stone rail. He was a fraction of Thane’s armoured weight, yet he was easy in the Chapter Master’s presence, a poisonous spider as deadly as the great cat in whose shadow it lurked.

‘Well then, I shall get to the nub of it. You might be done with Terra, but Terra is not done with you. Wienand is going to propose you as Lord Guilliman. You should accept.’

Thane blew out a prodigious sigh. ‘Politics. I will not do it.’

‘I suspected you might say that. That’s why I called you here.’

‘I am not a politician. Ask the Ultramarines. I belong on a wall facing outward against our enemies, not sequestered in the keep surrounded by vipers.’

‘The Ultramarines mourn the loss of their master. They have their own realm to look to.’

‘We mourn our master too. I will not do it, Vangorich.’

‘I see. A shame. Oh well.’

‘I am glad you do not press it.’

Vangorich looked at the fantastical, miniature landscape of the worn rock and traced it with his finger. ‘Ask yourself, what happens when the Traitors come forth from the Eye of Terror again, or if the eldar become resurgent?’ said Vangorich.

‘So you are going to press it,’ said Thane.

‘What happens,’ said Vangorich, raising his voice, ‘Emperor forbid, if the orks find a new Beast? Or if another xenos threat arises? We became lax. Ullanor should have been levelled, or better yet, destroyed. The site of the greatest victory of our supposed god, and what, we forget where it is? Our leaders neglect the defence of our frontier in favour of chasing more riches or shiny medals for themselves? It’s insanity, you know it. The Senatorum Imperialis is broken. We need something else while it is restored to something approaching the Emperor’s vision.’

‘I will not play medicae to Terra’s ills when there is much work to be done beyond this system. The Emperor never intended that the Adeptus Astartes rule over common humanity. Our role is in its defence, and in furthering the Emperor’s glory.’

‘You’re going to leave,’ stated Vangorich.

Thane’s blocky transhuman face registered something akin to disdain. ‘You quickly come to that conclusion? There are hundreds of worlds in the thrall of the orks. Thousands of fleets. Dozens of attack moons. They must all be dealt with. The Beast is dead, but if one warlord gains traction a fresh ork crusade could build. In its weakened state, the Imperium will crumble. There are many armies and fleets scattered across the galaxy. They must be reorganised and motivated to fight back. The campaign to cleanse the stars of orks will take decades, and it must be done now.’

‘See, our fears coincide!’ exclaimed Vangorich. ‘You will be in a better place to deal with it as a High Lord. You will make an excellent Lord Guilliman.’

‘I cannot afford the delay.’

‘What is a few more weeks? Then you can be on your way.’

‘You propose that I assume the office, then depart?’ Thane looked at him in puzzlement.

‘The threat of your return will be enough to keep them in line.’

‘A few weeks saw us delivered of Magneric’s intelligence. Had we had that sooner, the first assault on Ullanor would have been the last. Koorland would live. Many of my brothers would remain in service. A few weeks is everything, Grand Master. You, the deliverer of the perfectly timed blade, know this full well.’

‘Days then,’ Vangorich said reassuringly. ‘Put the house in order, then head out to employ your talents where they are needed. There are many here on Terra who could rule in your stead and—’

‘Many as in one?’ Thane clapped his armoured hands slowly together. The clash of metal rang off the statues. ‘Who do you propose, Vangorich, yourself?’

‘No! No,’ Vangorich shook his head. ‘Good grief, no. I belong in the shadows. I was thinking… Veritus? I’d suggest Wienand, but she wouldn’t do it. She is like you, chafing to get back to her business now the crisis is past.’

‘Veritus because he will object to my appointment.’

Vangorich grinned. ‘You’ve become good at this.’

‘A Space Marine who cannot judge a battlefield and adapt himself accordingly is not worthy of his battleplate,’ said Thane. ‘The Senatorum is as deadly a warzone as any.’

‘Of course, Wienand will need mollifying. I suspect she might want the role herself, and if you give to it Veritus she may be outraged. It wasn’t so long ago that the Inquisitorial Representatives were trying to kill each other. Might I suggest your first act as Lord Guilliman should be to transfer control of the Deathwatch permanently to the Inquisition?’

‘I was thinking of disbanding it,’ said Thane, ‘along with the Last Wall.’

‘Ah good, I was going to bring that up too. The latter has to be done. But the Deathwatch have proven their utility. They serve very well in building bonds between your Chapters. You have become a little, well, estranged since the Second Founding, and the Third didn’t help.’

‘I do not—’

‘If you would indulge me, Chapter Master,’ said Vangorich. ‘The addition of a Chapter-strength force of Space Marines to the Inquisition’s arsenal will greatly shore up their authority, and further keep the High Lords’ minds focused where they should be: on the business of government, and not on their own estates.’

Thane stared down at him dubiously. Their faces were so heavy, thought the Grand Master, that it was too easy to see the Adeptus Astartes as stupid.

‘Come now. You know the rules very well,’ Vangorich went on. ‘The reformation of the Imperial Fists and that presentation to the High Lords in the Plaza Decamerata? Masterful work. You already have them in retreat. Take on the mantle of Lord Guilliman and put them to flight. The Imperium needs you, Maximus Thane. Now is not the right time for another mortal man to lead.’

‘And what do you gain from all this, Master of Assassins?’

‘Nothing. I get nothing. I get not to assassinate anyone, that is what I get. Keeping the peace is always my first intention, Chapter Master. I assure you of that.’ He tapped Thane’s plastron. ‘A threat loses its power once it is acted upon. I am a threat. Like I said, I belong in the shadows.’

Terra breathed again. The Great Chamber swarmed with lesser lords. It was even busier than usual, packed out with planetary delegations from beleaguered worlds. How quickly the vermin boil out of their hiding places when the storm has passed, Vangorich thought. A short while ago, he had regretted the absence of the least lords and all the others. Now he saw in them yet more potential for delay. Once, wider democracy had worked, but these were different times.

Nevertheless, today they were needed.

The building was in the throes of repair. Piles of rubble had been cleared away. Collapsed tiers of seating were roped off, the process of dismantling them half completed. Walls unknown to daylight for a thousand years stood exposed. Scaffolding rose up the sides of the dome, catwalks crisscrossed its vaulted expanse. Lines of fresh, pale plaster crept up along cracks. All menials had been dismissed while the Senatorum was in session, except the fresco painters, who must work their paints into the damp plaster before it dried. They sent black looks at the gathering lords, as if it were they who had invaded the painters’ workspace and not the other way around.

Really, it would have made more sense to hold a closed meeting of the High Twelve in the Clanium Library, or the Cerebrium, but a full session was required. Vangorich had spent several exhausting days making sure that it occurred.

Otherwise, the Great Chamber remained as it had been before the crisis. Floating constructs traversed the wide open space under the dome. The dais still rotated at its glacial pace. Dorn still glared down upon the seats of the High Lords. Vangorich looked up at the primarch’s face while the others dealt with their armies of aides and subordinates. He suppressed a smile at the thought of his Temple masters arriving here and mobbing him. Naturally, he only appeared alone. There were over a dozen Officio agents in the chamber, several embedded in the retinues of his fellow High Lords. He remained forever grateful that they could not bother him directly. He was a loner by inclination.

Everything hinged on the next few hours. He trusted Dorn’s glower would prove sufficient motivation to his gene-son to do the right thing.

The wait for proceedings to begin was the most tedious part of the day. Thousands of lesser lords and adepts filed into the intact galleries. Prefecti by the cohort, consularies by the gross. Vangorich slipped into a meditative trance, his hearing flicking from conversation to conversation. Ekharth was flustered, as well a man tasked with putting right the material damage done to Terra and its domains might be. Lansung was defiant, but it was a shell. Verreault was cowed, spending his time brooding over his own failures. Zeck’s augmetic face was unreadable. Kubik had come back from Mars, but his body was still.

The others behaved according to their character. Juskina Tull was a mental wreck, a blank face swamped by outrageous finery. She had developed a small tic around her left eye. The defeat of the Beast would force her to confront her failure with the Proletarian Crusade soon. Vangorich didn’t expect that to turn out well. Reports from his Temple Vanus infocytes indicated that her own people thought so too, and that a struggle among the Chartist Captains was already developing. Should she fall, he doubted the organisation would retain its place among the High Twelve.

Dissent among the Chartists, and a vacuum at the high table. More problems. Anwar, Sark and Gibran were becoming closer, the two psykers pulling the Paternoval Envoy into their circle. They had the warp in common, after all. This little triumvirate concerned him only slightly. Gibran held real power, but the other two were functionaries at heart, fiercely defensive of their adepta’s influences for no good reason — both the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Astronomican were essential to the Imperium. Neither of them posed any risk.

‘Vangorich.’ The phlegmy, ancient voice of Veritus broke into his semi-trance.

‘Ah, Veritus, how are you?’

Veritus loomed over him in his cream power armour, so Vangorich stood. Veritus’ wrinkled face stared at him defiantly from its protective apparatus. He looked so small in there.

‘This idea of yours, it cannot be,’ said Veritus. ‘You are playing a dangerous hand.’

‘Wienand told you, did she?’ said Vangorich.

‘She intends to go through with it, against my recommendation.’

‘A pity. I am sure if you were to re-examine the issue, it would make sense to you,’ said Vangorich.

‘A Space Marine should not sit on the Council. This reformation of the old Legion is ample evidence why.’

‘The first Lord Guilliman was, well, Lord Guilliman,’ offered Vangorich. ‘There is precedent.’

‘He was a primarch,’ said Veritus. ‘And perhaps the only one suitable to the role. Horus’ betrayal of the Emperor is the history you should be looking to here. Do not invest a Space Marine with such power over mortal men!’ Veritus was close to shouting in his face, his words carrying over the numbing hubbub of voices filling the chamber.

‘Sorry, but I don’t agree. Look, a couple of the others are beginning to pay attention to our business. Let’s say we debate this in the proper forum, when this session commences? Let’s put it to a vote.’

Veritus glared at him. ‘You cannot control him.’

‘Veritus! Why would I want to control him?’

‘You’re a liability,’ said Veritus. His armour whined as he stepped around the dais to take a seat by Wienand. Since Koorland’s death, there was one free.

‘Ekharth, when are we going to get started?’ called Zeck.

‘We’ll get started—’ began the master of the Administratum. The thump of ceramite boots on stone interrupted him.

‘Now?’ suggested Vangorich lightly.

Maximus Thane strode towards the dais, the crowds parting before him. He came escorted by a full squad of Imperial Fists First Company veterans, their armour heavy with battle honours. Cast icons of the Chapter hung from chains on their pauldrons. The yellow of their armour was almost obscured by gilding, badges and emblems.

‘Chapter Master! Good of you to join us,’ called Vangorich.

‘What can we do for you, Lord Thane?’ said Ekharth. Without a Lord Guilliman, he had asserted his adeptus’ seniority and appointed himself temporary chair. Such a snivelling, reactive little man ordinarily, he had become swelled with pomposity, like a toad.

‘I will speak with the High Lords,’ said Thane. He stopped by the rotating dais.

‘Impossible,’ said Ekharth. ‘The business of the Senatorum Imperialis is about to commence in full session. You have no seat here. We have petitions to hear from hundreds of worlds. You must wait your turn.’

‘I shall not,’ said Thane. ‘This will not wait.’

‘You must go, Thane,’ said Ekharth, his face flushing crimson.

So he has a backbone, thought Vangorich. That might prove problematic. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I motion that we bring forward other matters from the end of the session to now?’

‘We have not begun!’ said Lansung exasperatedly.

Vangorich shot him a warning look. The Lord Admiral seethed.

‘Seconded,’ said Wienand.

Anger bubbled up through the cracks in Ekharth’s mask of self-importance. ‘This is most irregular.’

The background chatter of the crowd hushed as the lesser lords and planetary delegations caught notice of the growing confrontation.

‘Call a vote. We are the High Lords. I rather thought we could conduct our business as we see fit. Let’s get it out of the way.’

‘Very well!’ said Ekharth. Along with his new backbone, he had acquired an orb of black granite that he slammed into a cup of the same. The clack of the gavel snapped through the chamber like a cannon shot. Bobbing servo-skulls swung their attention to the dais. The High Lords shooed away their remaining servants and subordinates. The conversation in the chamber dwindled to a breathy silence. ‘I bring this meeting of the Senatorum to order! We shall vote on undertaking other business first.’

Vangorich raised his hand, as did Wienand, Anwar, Zeck, Verreault and, after a cocked eyebrow from Vangorich, Lansung.

‘Carried!’ said Ekharth angrily. ‘What do you want to table, Vangorich?’

‘Not me,’ said Vangorich. He held out a hand to Wienand.

Wienand hesitated. Veritus was staring at her so hard the blue veins in his temple pulsed.

‘I move that we appoint Maximus Thane to the head of this Senatorum as Lord Guilliman,’ she said.

Her words were met with resounding cheers from the lesser lords that almost drowned out Vangorich’s seconding of the motion, despite the voxmitters amplifying his voice.

Ekharth went purple. He really has had no idea, thought Vangorich. ‘Vote then!’ he said, cracking his spherical gavel petulantly. ‘For.’

Vangorich, Wienand, Zeck, Verreault, Lansung and Anwar again voted. After a moment’s consultation, so did Gibran and Sark. Kubik raised a mechanical hand in silence, then went back to whatever it was that really interested him.

‘Against!’ said Ekharth. He raised his own hand quickly, then snatched it down. He stared at the table in defeat.

‘Welcome to the Senatorum Imperialis,’ said Vangorich to Thane. He bowed his head. ‘My Lord Guilliman.’

The chamber shook to the cheers of the massed lesser lords as Maximus Thane took his seat at the head of the table.

Chapter Three Exemplars of the Imperium

Zerberyn ran at the ork blocking the companionway down to the enginarium, bowling it over the railing and into the churning machinery below. He fired into the face of the one behind, blasting the back of its skull apart. Vaulting over its tumbling corpse, he buried his chainsword in the head of a third. A burst of heavy bolter shots felled three bigger orks coming up the steps.

‘There it is!’ voxed Sergeant Solomon Torr. ‘I have the xenos mechanician in sight.’

Runes flickered over Zerberyn’s faceplate. A red signum dot pulsed on the miniature cartograph of the spaceship’s interior. The ork commander was in a large room suspended above the thundering ship’s engines.

‘Squad Torr, follow!’ he ordered.

Squealing ork slaves scattered before him. He did not waste his ammunition on them, and they died under his boots. He rounded a corner to see a heavy blast door grinding into place. His hand went to his belt and came away empty. His last melta bomb had been spent three bulkheads back. ‘Melta!’ he called.

Space Marines clattered down the stairs behind him, taking up fire positions along the rickety safety rail. Their weapons panned back and forth, laser targeters gleaming in the dark.

‘Melta!’ Zerberyn called again, his patience gone.

Brother Rosdane shoved his way down the stairs, banging into the backs of his brothers in his haste. ‘Here, First Captain.’ His plain, unmarked armour was covered in dark ork blood, bright grooves scratched into the surface where enemy fire had been deflected.

‘Burn us a way in,’ Zerberyn ordered. ‘Squad Torr, firing lines!’

He took a step back as Rosdane adjusted the focal length of the melta and levelled the slotted muzzle of the gun at the door. The rest of his squad formed up, bolters level. The foetid atmosphere of the ork hulk shimmered in front of the meltagun, then with a whooshing roar the door burst into flame. Thick gobbets of burning steel ran from the breach, draining in lethal drips through the mesh of the catwalk. The bright spot of heat spread, until the whole of the door glowed white. All of a sudden, it collapsed wetly, spraying sparks and droplets of molten metal.

‘Fire!’ shouted Zerberyn.

His warriors let loose together, sending a barrage of bolts through the door before the smoke of its destruction had cleared. Zerberyn leapt through.

‘Follow the First Captain!’ shouted Sergeant Torr.

They emerged into a storm of bullets. Rounds screamed off Zerberyn’s armour in a blaze of sparks. Orks came out of the smoke and dark, and he cut them down. Behind them was a huge, squat-bodied ork engineer, the mockery of a Space Marine’s servo-harness attached to its back.

Boltguns barked around him, felling the xenos, as Zerberyn charged to attack. This fleet’s strange vessels and bizarre weaponry were the creations of this monster. He was the lord of the armada. Kill him, and what little cohesion the force had would collapse.

There was no point, Zerberyn realised. They had chased him from his bridge, he was cornered. They could have set the charges and left. The orks lacked the organisation they had shown only weeks ago. But he wanted to kill it. He needed to.

It raised a blocky pistol and fired. A round as big as a human fist punched a fresh dent into Zerberyn’s plastron and knocked him off his feet. A tall ork reared over him, a growling chainaxe raised over its head. Before it could strike its chest blew out and it fell down dead. Zerberyn recovered and got back to his feet, bolt pistol spitting.

His rounds smacked into an energy field surrounding the ork engineer and exploded harmlessly. It bared its massive yellow fangs at him and raised its weapon. Zerberyn dodged, taking a hit on the greave as he dived aside. The strength of the weapon was so great the plate buckled. On his faceplate, a warning rune blinked. A tiny schematic of his armour flickered up, his lower left leg glowing amber.

The ork mechanic roared. The last of its bodyguard died, blown apart by seven simultaneous bolt hits. Squad Torr trained their weapons on the engineer, advancing on it as they fired. The creature’s energy shield flared under the strain and gave out with a bang. Zerberyn jumped at it, his sword swinging. The ork roared and hammered down with the whirring attachments of its harness. Zerberyn parried one with the flat of his blade and sheared the other away. Black oil pumped from the harness’ hydraulics.

The ork swung its pistol around. Like so many of its monstrous kind its strength was undone by sluggishness, and Zerberyn chopped hard, separating its hand from its body. Howling in outrage, the ork threw itself at Zerberyn, bearing them both to the floor. Zerberyn’s boltgun was knocked from his grasp. His chainsword was no use and he dropped it to grapple with the monster. His eye-lenses filled with the slavering jaws of the ork as it bit furiously at his face. His fingers slipped on waxy skin. The thing grabbed him around the throat and squeezed. The pressure was immense, crushing his neck through his softseal. Zerberyn scrabbled for his combat knife. He unsheathed it, fought it past the ork’s flailing stump. The ork batted at his hand. Ivory fangs snapped on his forearm.

With muscle-cracking effort, Zerberyn bucked under the creature, shifting it enough to drive the point of his blade into its eye. The ork mechanician continued to roar for a second. Zerberyn saw his death in its face, but then the light went out in its remaining eye, and it slumped.

His brothers heaved the dead beast off him. Sergeant Torr extended a hand.

‘Have you worked out your anger, brother-captain?’ he said.

‘Watch your tone, brother,’ said Zerberyn. He allowed himself to be hauled back up.

‘Perhaps you are still in need of battle,’ said Torr. ‘But we are done here and should leave.’

‘I thank you for letting me slay the beast alone,’ he said.

‘A worthy opponent,’ said Torr. ‘Your order, First Captain?’

‘Cripple the engine. Krak, meltagun, anything we have left.’

Zerberyn opened a line to the other Fists Exemplar upon the ship. He scrolled through the icons of the five squads. Most were green, a couple tending to amber. Casualties were light. ‘The ship’s captain is dead. All squads fall back to extraction point. Hail Shipmaster Marcarian. We are returning to the Dantalion.’

Zerberyn ran into the ork hangar, a wide metal hole haphazardly floored by welded plates, shielded from the void with a buzzing yellow integrity field. Two squads waited by the Thunderhawks Aegis of Alcazar and Pride of Oriax, snapping off disciplined volleys of fire into the corridors leading into the bay. The transports faced inward, away from the freedom of space, their front and rear ramps down. Their cheek-mounted heavy bolters twitched, lest any ork be foolish enough to come around their fronts. Orks fired sporadically from the gallery circling the bay, but they were few and quickly fell to grenades and missiles when they showed their faces. Mounds of greenskin dead choked the hangar doors.

His warriors’ guns zeroed in on Zerberyn as he thundered back into the bay followed by Squads Torr and Nubius, held a moment, then tracked away to find other targets.

‘Odrazar, we leave as soon as the others join us,’ Zerberyn ordered his pilot. ‘Begin preparations to depart now!’

As soon as the order was given the Thunderhawks came to life, their engines thrumming in anticipation of flight. The deck vibrated at their awakening.

Communications crackled in through his helmet vox. Squad Escoban reported that the shield generators had been destroyed, Squad Rodrian that the main reactor was rigged to explode. Zerberyn and his squads joined the firing line of the raiding party rearguard and awaited their comrades.

They came soon, Squad Escoban first: two brothers hauling their wounded sergeant between them, four more covering each other in pairs. Fire, retreat, cover, fire, retreat, cover, fire. Zerberyn selected their squad icon in his suit’s faceplate. It was tending from green to amber. It expanded, pushing out squad level detail for the rest of his taskforce and listing the brothers individually. Nine had set out, seven returned.

Rodrian came next. Their squad marker was red. Only four of eight remained. All were wounded.

‘Board the transports!’ shouted Zerberyn. The nineteen warriors already with him raised their weapons. Squads Rodrian and Escoban ran past, Sergeant Escoban dragged up the ramp leaving a trail of rapidly clotting blood.

The orks came after them. There were dozens as opposed to hundreds, their numbers thinned, but they were still dangerous. Many were lesser varieties of the ork technical class, while others wore massive harnesses covered in an unlikely array of guns. They flooded onto the deck, brandishing bizarre energy weapons that they wasted no time in using. A beam of searing ruby light pulsed out, neatly bisecting Brother Irken. Another dead. Twelve warriors lost in this battle alone.

‘Kill them all!’ roared Zerberyn. He needn’t have expended his breath — his brothers were already responding, riddling the ork crew with mass-reactive fire. The Thunderhawks’ anti-personnel weapons opened up, stitching so many lines of light across the hangar that Zerberyn found it hard to see Pride of Oriax from his position at the foot of Aegis of Alcazar’s front ramp. So many orks were hit that their atomised flesh misted the air. The walls were repainted dark red.

‘Squad Torr, board!’ ordered Zerberyn. Torr led his men aboard Pride of Oriax, two of them covering the rest as they thundered around to the front of their craft and up the assault ramp. Beams of barely focused light and small, hissing rockets scored the hull as the door swung shut. One impacted inside. A flash, and a jet of fire suppressant, then the hatch was shut and the Pride of Oriax was lifting off, engines in rocket mode, blasting out blades of blue-white fire. Its blunt rear penetrated the crude integrity field with an electric crackle and it was away into the void, swinging about, all engines engaging, and racing away from the flagship.

The orks fell back, sniping at the Fists Exemplar from the doorways and gallery. A lascannon blast slammed into the roof of the Aegis of Alcazar, bringing down a shower of molten ceramite and calling forth the voice of a tocsin from inside. Another of Zerberyn’s brothers fell, a smoking hole punched through his face. The others bore the hail of bullets and micro-missiles stoically, firing calmly back.

‘Evacuate!’ ordered Zerberyn. His men broke their line and pounded up the ramp. Zerberyn was last aboard, still firing outward as the Thunderhawk’s ramp closed. His warriors set themselves into their flight restraints. Zerberyn pushed past them, up into the rear compartment and on into the flight deck. Odrazar and his co-pilot were strobed by the light of gunfire flashing through the canopy. Bolt-rounds continued to chug from the forward mounts, dismembering orks foolish enough to chance the bay again.

‘Captain,’ Odrazar acknowledged Zerberyn.

‘Brother. Time to leave.’

Aegis of Alcazar reared up and back. The roar of the engines outdid the crackle and boom of the orks’ strange weaponry. Sailing backwards, it breached the integrity field and turned away, running along the side of the ork ship. Gunfire blasted from multiple mounts, forcing Odrazar to jink between their streams of shells and energy.

All was silent. The void brought peace. The ork ship vented its fury voicelessly. The rumble of the craft and the quiet conversations of active machines filled the cockpit.

Odrazar banked around and opened up the engines to maximum, and the flagship fell away behind them. Burrok’s World rolled into view, its marbled clouds and seas stained with the black smoke of worldwide fire. Burrok’s World was yet another nowhere planet beset by the greenskins. They attacked indiscriminately, invading whatever place they happened across. The world had little strategic significance for either orks or humans, but Zerberyn would gladly fight them wherever they were. The opportunity for resupply the battle presented was a secondary consideration to him. He wished only to slay orks.

‘There is an energy spike on the ork flagship, captain,’ the Thunderhawk’s co-pilot said. Zerberyn went to the ship’s operations desk. With his backpack on, he could not sit in its empty chair, but he keyed the display, selecting the Thunderhawk’s aft augurs.

The ork flagship was a brute of a thing, with a prow as blunt as an ork’s jaw welded to a long, rickety body that gave it the overall appearance of a predatory oceanic life form. When the Fists Exemplar had tackled it initially, it was powerful and proud, protected by an energy field that Space Marine ordnance was powerless to penetrate. Now the projection vanes were wilting, the field they generated was out and the ship suffered under the bombardment of the Space Marine fleet.

Slowly, the craft began to fall towards Burrok’s World. Zerberyn smiled as fire like solar flares burst from the haphazard array of vents and exhaust ports around the engine stack, and it turned, presented half its belly to his inspection. Explosions rippled from gun decks and fighter bays, catching the smaller craft fleeing it in their fires. In typical orkish fashion, the guns continued firing to the very last, but madly, targeting nothing. The mindless biting of a wounded animal.

The void sheeted white as the mechanician-admiral’s junk ship exploded into a maelstrom of spinning debris tortured by crackling green lightning. A weak shockwave of expanding gases tilted the Thunderhawk. The hull pinked and tinkled with a hundred micro-impacts. When the viewscreen’s image returned, in the flagship’s place was a crowd of fizzing sparks that went out one by one. Burning wreckage hurtled away into the void or scorched fiery trails into the upper atmosphere of the planet. In moments there was no sign the ork ship had ever existed.

Zerberyn remained in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit as it crossed the void towards the Dantalion. The ork fleet was well into the process of transformation into a debris field. With their admiral dead, the flotilla broke in all directions. Lightstorms flashed as the fleeing ork ships were picked off one by one. Engine stacks blew into greasy, roiling balls of fire.

A victory, but another costly one. The Guilliman moved sluggishly, half its engines lightless. The Excelsior was dead, her broken hull shining with short-lived fires and the departure thrusts of lifeboats. He called up the casualty lists in his faceplate from the taskforce noosphere. Twenty-nine dead brothers and thousands of serfs. He unfocused his eyes from the list, but left it scrolling across his view of the disintegrating ork ships.

A bleeping interrupted his thoughts.

‘First Captain, we have an incoming message from the surface,’ said Odrazar.

‘Survivors?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Zerberyn stood taller. ‘Excellent news! Turn us about. We are in no danger now. Let us descend to the surface and see these people our blood has saved.’

The Thunderhawks of the Iron Warriors and the Fists Exemplar landed together upon the shattered landing fields of Turos port. Zerberyn, Honorius, Reoch and five others stepped out into a landscape of utter devastation. The space port was in ruins, substantial terminal buildings and hangar spaces broken into untidy heaps of rubble. Beyond the rockcrete aprons the vegetation was burned back to ash. Columns of smoke held up a sky of black clouds. The light of the sun was obscured, the horizon stained red and orange with the fires of burning cities.

Against the odds, mankind had survived the orks there. A delegation of a dozen battered, dirty soldiers waited for the Space Marines when they walked down the assault ramp. They were streaked with soot and old blood, their uniforms tattered. Several were not soldiers, but civilian guerillas bearing weapons of the dead. Their leader wore a necklace of large orkish teeth. In him the light of defiance burned brightest.

‘My lord,’ he said, and knelt with fearful reverence. ‘It is you who destroyed the ork fleet?’

‘It was. My brothers run the last few out of the system as we speak.’

There were more figures two hundred metres away, a small crowd watching nervously in the lee of a half-burned warehouse. ‘Rise. Do not kneel.’ Zerberyn looked around at the ruined landscape. ‘You are this army’s general?’

‘Lieutenant, my lord. The generals are all dead.’

‘Look at me. What is your name?’

‘Cadraig, my lord.’ The man lifted his head. He looked Zerberyn unflinchingly in the eye-lenses, but remained kneeling. He was scared; Zerberyn could practically taste his fear. ‘I was an officer in the militia. You have saved us.’

‘You saved yourselves,’ said Zerberyn. ‘How did you prevail?’

‘We did not prevail. We were near defeat. It is three months since the orks came, and we have been fighting all the while. They… they took most of us. There are not so many of us left, but those that are alive still took an oath not to lay down our arms until we were all dead. We swore not to let a single other person be taken. We owe it all to Penderyn. He raised our spirits when our will was broken. He roused us to fight back when the regiments of our defence force were crushed. At his command we struck at them from hidden places. We bled their supply lines. We did what we could. It was not enough.’ The man bowed his head.

‘You have done more than most,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Where is this Penderyn? I would speak with him.’

‘He is dead, my lord.’

‘A shame. But you have done well. You are free now. Raise a monument to him and be thankful.’

Zerberyn looked to Kalkator’s craft. The warsmith had yet to emerge. An uneasy feeling passed through him.

‘My lord, might I beg to ask a question of you?’

‘Yes. By all means. You have earned my attention.’

‘Why were we left to fight alone? Not a single one of our requests for aid went answered. We had lost faith in the Emperor. We thought He had abandoned us, until now.’

‘The galaxy burns,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Your world is one of a thousand assailed.’

He would have said more. The man’s plight moved him. For the first time in months he saw a human being who had not lost his wits, or thrown his lot in with the orks, or allowed himself to be made livestock, but who had fought bravely, and nearly won.

The ramp to Kalkator’s Thunderhawk descended, hissing compressed gases. The lieutenant watched Kalkator as he approached over the pitted landing apron. The warsmith stamped down the ramp to stand next to Zerberyn.

‘Your prayers have been answered. We have come, but freedom does not come cheap.’

‘My lord?’ said Cadraig uneasily. His eyes shifted from Kalkator to Zerberyn and back again, the fear in them growing.

With a sudden chill, Zerberyn realised that Cadraig looked at he and Kalkator the same way. Fear and awe. There was no difference in his regard. And why should there be? Their metallic liveries were stained with soot and blood, with no markings clear to tell them apart. In Cadraig’s eyes they looked the same.

‘Aid such as ours requires payment. Our fleets are battered, our supplies low,’ said Kalkator.

‘Of course, my lord,’ said Cadraig. ‘You are welcome to rest here. We will give you what we can.’

‘You will give us everything,’ said Kalkator menacingly. ‘Food. Water. Munitions. All of it.’

Cadraig got falteringly to his feet. The men behind him looked up uncertainly.

‘We have so little. We shall starve.’

‘If you do not give us what we demand, we shall take it,’ said Kalkator. ‘Are there children among you?’

‘My lord!’ said Cadraig in alarm. ‘We swore not to let any more of our people be taken.’

One of Cadraig’s men caressed the firing mechanism of his gun. Kalkator caught the tiny movement and turned to address him.

‘I would not advise resistance. We will take one hundred of your strongest boys. Now. We do you a great honour. We are not orks. We shall not eat them, but raise them above the fragile state of base humanity. Your sons will be Legiones Astartes.’

‘Legiones?’ said Cadraig. A dawning realisation crossed his face. Weapons were raised. ‘Who are you?’ he said suspiciously.

‘We are members of the Fists Exemplar Chapter of Space Marines,’ said Zerberyn. He took a step forward. ‘We are loyal servants of Terra.’

‘You are. I am not.’ Kalkator plucked his pistol from his belt. Cadraig’s men raised their weapons fully. Kalkator trained his gun upon Cadraig. Servo-motors whined in the cheeks of the Iron Warriors Thunderhawk, bringing heavy bolter sponsons to bear.

‘One hundred youths,’ said Kalkator. ‘As much food as you can gather. Bring it here tomorrow morning, or we shall rain fire down upon this world that shall make your engagement with the orks appear trivial. Now go!’ The last words he amplified to godlike levels, and the men flinched and turned, and ran away. The crowd by the ruined terminal building looked on nervously.

Reoch laughed drily.

‘Brother,’ Kalkator said to Zerberyn. His use of the word had lost its ironic edge.

‘Why?’ said Zerberyn. ‘Why do we have to take everything? They would have supplied us well without complaint.’

‘You know why,’ said Kalkator, holstering his pistol. ‘My Great Company is a fifth the size it was before this began. I have lost all my holdings. Three worlds were mine to command, and now I have but one. A single further setback, and I shall be reduced to the status of a wandering beggar. I have lost most of my fleet, many of my machines. We are low on stores and munitions. I need recruits, I need food to feed them, or my brotherhood will die.’

‘There is no need. They would have given to you freely.’

‘Not everything. Now I get it all.’

‘You take their children! You are as good as killing them.’

‘I am not killing them. Shooting them would be killing them. What do you care, Zerberyn?’ said Kalkator, turning to look on the Exemplar fully. ‘The expression of disdain for common humanity has stamped itself into your face so deeply your own serfs have begun to fear you. How many have we seen reduced to livestock, or turned feral under the influence of the Green Roar? One pocket of defiance and your resolve crumbles.’

‘When man is at his best, it puts us in our proper place,’ said Zerberyn. ‘I was made to defend them. When I defend those who are worthy of my efforts, I see who I am. These people deserve our respect.’

‘They have my respect,’ said Kalkator. ‘Humankind isn’t often at its best. Not enough. You will come to understand that, if you have not already. Look at them, grovelling at the feet of the idols of a man who professed not to be a god, then allowed himself to be worshipped as one. We are saving them from the pernicious creed of the Emperor’s lies. If humanity is to survive it must help itself. The Emperor is deaf to the pleas of his faithful, but there are other gods who answer prayers. Mankind will not endure as these feeble examples, but as legionaries. The people of this world have proved themselves fine warriors. We do them a great honour in taking them into our Legions, brother.’

‘I am not a legionary!’ said Zerberyn.

‘Are you sure?’ said Kalkator slyly.

‘Your intention was to cleanse the systems around Immitis. Why have we come so far back into Imperial space?’

‘You would prefer it if we didn’t hunt orks?’ Kalkator said. His voice, rich and sardonic, made Zerberyn’s muscles tense. ‘Why are you so angry, brother? Do you think your loyalist brothers treat their charges any better? Be thankful. If it were not for your moderating influence, we would have taken their children and killed them all. You reminded me that a little mercy can be useful. Some of those wretches may live. They fought well against the orks, for mortals. Let them toil, let the struggle to survive harden them further, and then let them raise new offspring. It will be worth our while revisiting this place in fifty years or so. Yes, a good result. This will be a fine recruiting world. Thank you, Zerberyn, for your wise counsel.’

Kalkator strode back to his gunship, laughing. Zerberyn stared at the ragged crowd at the edge of the field. Some of the men from Cadraig’s group were shouting and pointing. He considered going to them, calling his ships and having them blast the Palimodes from the sky. The Iron Warriors ship was outnumbered four to one. The end would be quick. Numerous scenarios ran through his head. Victory would be assured, but survival would not be.

He could not turn on Kalkator. Not until the Beast was dead and the orks driven back. Until that came to pass, he needed the Iron Warriors. It was as simple as that; this was the lesser evil.

Teeth clenched, he turned on his heel and ascended the ramp of the Thunderhawk.

Much as it made him seethe, Kalkator was right. The Fists Exemplar required supplies and recruits. Zerberyn had agreed to set them on this course of action. He had evaluated it, tested it, and decided it was the correct solution. There were orks everywhere. Since that last desperate message from Euclydeas of the Soul Drinkers, he had heard nothing more from the Last Wall. He had to work with what he had. For the time being, that meant Kalkator.

A Fist Exemplar was never wrong.

Chapter Four The crusade of iron

The Phalanx defied description. Ship was not a big enough word for the home of the Imperial Fists. Fortress made no allowance for its grace and ability to travel between the stars. It could be defined in several ways: as fortress-monastery, temple, relic, the single biggest warp-capable object in all the Imperium, a symbol of Imperial might, battle-fortress. But none adequately captured the reality in words. Human speech was too limited.

Phalanx’s mass blotted out the stars. On the sunward side its spires and towers were lit in brilliant sunlight. The muzzles of thousands of guns protruded from weapons ports. The broad rectangles of hangars and flight bays patterned its decks between enormous effigies of heroic Imperial Fists. On the dark side its shadows were absolute, its bulwarks rimed with void frost. None knew its origins. Legends had it that Dorn himself had built the fortress as the ultimate expression of his skill, or that he had found, adrift in space, a relic of the Dark Age of Technology. Whether built by the primarch or ancient engineers it had been Dorn’s, and the marks of his artifice were all over it. The station had taken damage during the final attack on Ullanor, but it was so huge that the signs of its wounding were not apparent to the naked eye. Phalanx remained one of the most impressive sights in all the dominions of man, a defiant statement against the cold horrors of void and warp.

The High Lords communicated little as they and their retinues flew towards Phalanx aboard the Potus Terrae. They kept to their quarters, each brooding on their own summons. The time for scheming was past. They must play the waiting game. Until the last half-day Phalanx grew slowly, then suddenly it expanded in size until it became a wall across the sky. Vangorich received overtures from several of the other Lords, but ignored them until, only a few hours out from the Imperial Fists fortress-monastery, he sent word to the Inquisitorial Representatives to join him for refreshments in the observation deck.

Veritus and Wienand were already present when Vangorich arrived. They looked outwards at the giant foredecks of Phalanx obliterating half the sky. Cyber-constructs buzzed around, augur attachments blinking, sniffing the air. Articulated instruments capable of detecting toxins at one part per hundred million in the ship’s gas mix flickered in and out of their housings like tongues. There were storm troopers in Inquisitorial black at every door and every thirty paces along the lengthy plasteel and stone gallery. Vangorich didn’t have a single agent among them. Veritus wore his power armour as usual. Wienand looked striking in a tight doublet and breeches, her iron grey, cropped hair coloured silver in the stark sunlight.

‘The idea was to enjoy a quiet moment together before the bickering begins again,’ said Vangorich. ‘I see you preferred a party.’

Veritus swung about, his armour whining. A puff of life-extending gas hissed from around his neck seal.

‘Caution is our watchword,’ he said.

‘What about mistrust?’ said Vangorich.

‘Don’t bait Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘These are only precautions.’

Vangorich took a tray of three goblets from a menial whose eyes, mouth and ears were banded over by constricting iron. Beneath the implants, the organs of sight, speech and hearing were excised, replaced with crude augments that gave such unreliable perceptions of the world that the servant could never have described what he had seen and heard, even had he been capable. There were a number of such mutilated menials attending the party. No servitors, for their programming was too easy to compromise. If he thought about it, and he sometimes did, Vangorich found their deliberate disablement distasteful. But it was necessary.

He stopped before another servant who filled the goblets with dark wine. He carried them over to the inquisitors, set the tray on an ornate table and held up one goblet to Veritus.

The inquisitor curled his lip. ‘Do I look like a fool?’

‘You don’t, Lastan, and I would not take you for one, therefore this wine is safe. I am sure your constructs here would detect any attempt on my part to poison you.’

‘I will not drink with you, Drakan,’ said Veritus. ‘There are poisons no device can find.’

‘Fair enough. Wienand? You still trust me, don’t you?’

‘Did I ever trust you, Vangorich?’ she said distantly.

‘Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have so much company. You are hurting my feelings. This is very fine wine. Venusian. Very rare.’

‘I will drink, but I’ll take that one there,’ said Wienand, picking up one of the goblets still on the table and bidding the serf pour again.

‘Thank you. I feel a little less offended.’ He raised the goblet he had offered to Veritus and knocked it against Wienand’s. Veritus snorted.

‘Why have you called us?’ said Veritus. ‘Are you attempting to shore up your power before we go in to see the Lord Guilliman? I’d expect that sort of behaviour from Ekharth or Lansung, not you.’

‘Did they send you messages too? They sent me messages. I didn’t answer them,’ said Vangorich.

‘They did. We didn’t,’ said Wienand.

‘Now, I thought you might say that. So, you answered my message. That suggests to me that we have some common ground,’ said Vangorich.

‘Maybe,’ conceded Veritus. ‘But you are becoming ever more slippery, Grand Master. Your schemes to put Thane in Lord Guilliman’s throne were overt and sloppy. We only went along with it—’

‘Because you agreed?’ interrupted Vangorich. ‘More common ground then.’

Veritus groaned slightly and sank into his armour.

‘What is it you want?’ said Wienand.

‘It’s impressive, isn’t it?’ said Vangorich. ‘Phalanx, I mean.’

‘You are changing the subject,’ said Wienand.

‘I am, but as is my usual way I will get to the point.’

‘Which is?’ said Veritus.

‘Humour me,’ said Vangorich. ‘That’s not my point, obviously. Just look at Phalanx. Huge, magnificent, terrifying, but like so many other Imperial works, its initial impression hides a sorry truth. No such thing can be built now in the Imperium. Phalanx is vast, and yet it is not so large as the smallest of the ork attack moons. Like so many of the supposedly overpowering weapons our Imperium possesses, for much of the war it was absent, kept in deep space between Venus and Earth. Do you know, it was denied participation in the battle over Terra because its mass would have proved its own worst enemy when confronted with the gravity lashes of the orks? Thane risked it in the Third Battle for Ullanor where Koorland would not, and look at the damage it has sustained. One only has to look at what became of the Throneworld’s orbital defences to see how useless large ships or stations were against the orks. And there is a further thing.’

He stepped closer to Wienand and pointed with his wine. ‘Those docking piers, there are hundreds of them. They hold space for the battlefleets of scores of Chapters. But the dozen belonging to the Imperial Fists look lost amid those soaring towers. The halls within will be similarly empty. At their height, the Legiones Astartes each had tens of thousands of Space Marines. The half a thousand that comprise today’s Imperial Fists would be swallowed up by that fortress a hundred times over. There was a term used in ancient times: a paper tiger. Now, a tiger was—’

‘I know what a tiger was, Vangorich!’ said Veritus.

‘Well then. So you see, this giant weapon was no danger to the orks. How do you suppose our enemies see us now? We look at Phalanx, at our armies and our Space Marine Chapters, and we see the glorious past. But we do not live in the past. We live now. Our enemies — the xenos, the followers of the dark, old gods — they look at us and they see weakness.’ He stamped his foot upon the deck. ‘Down there is the cause of that weakness. We cannot let this happen again.’

‘You are drifting close to treason,’ said Veritus. ‘We will not be complicit in the extermination of the High Lords of Terra. Attempt such an act, and the Inquisition will be forced to move against you.’

‘You see? Straight away you threaten me. I am proposing no such thing as assassination. I am performing my role, Lord Inquisitor, as a balance. All I ask is that we three work together to make sure that whatever it is Thane asks of us, the Senatorum does it correctly. We cannot afford to squabble. Look at us! We cannot build another Phalanx. We no longer understand our own science. We no longer even understand what our own Emperor wanted from us. The Imperial Truth? The Imperial Creed? Which is right?’

Veritus’ lips thinned at that.

‘Were our ancestors to come from out of the past of the Dark Ages, if they penetrated the veils of Old Night and stepped into the present, they would laugh at us. Our enemies laugh at us. Soon they will stop, and the feasting will begin. Work with me. Keep the Imperium alive.’

Veritus and Wienand looked at one another. Wienand raised her eyebrows at Veritus.

‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Our alliance continues. But we are but two votes between the three.’

‘It’s all we need,’ said Vangorich.

A tocsin started up a frantic bleeping.

‘Warning, atmospheric pressure dropping. Vacate the observation gallery. Vacate the observation gallery,’ said a droning voice.

‘There we are, as if in evidence. Even this ship is old and worn out,’ said Vangorich.

A service door clanked upwards, releasing a spider-legged servitor from its cradle with a gush of gas. Its organics jiggled horribly to the march of its mechanical legs as it clambered up the gallery wall towards the source of the leak.

‘Stabilising atmosphere,’ said the droning voice.

Veritus stared at Vangorich suspiciously. ‘Probe 93/4A, scan for introduced toxins.’

A servo-skull swept over them, speeding from one end of the long gallery to another.

‘None detected,’ it said with its synthesised voice.

‘See?’ said Vangorich.

‘Very well,’ said Veritus. ‘Our alliance holds, for now.’

The inquisitors departed, their warriors marching out behind them. It amused Vangorich that four of them retreated backwards, covering the Grand Master all the way until they were out of the door. He saluted them with his goblet.

Vangorich remained with the deaf, dumb and blind servants, drinking up the wine, until Phalanx swallowed the Potus Terrae in its cavernous foredeck. Potus Terrae was not a small ship, but the size of a light cruiser. The space it flew into had berths for a dozen more of similar size. They were all empty.

Vangorich stood deep in thought for a few minutes, then took an anti-intoxicant and hurried away to prepare himself.

Priests, savants, servants and household troops accompanied the High Lords in great number. They met together in the grand atrium of the ship by the main docking portal. The ornate panels were already flung wide and a gloriously decorated docking corridor was locked on to the side of the ship. A delay was incurred by squabbling over precedence, in which order the Lords should depart the ship and head the procession to meet with the Lord Guilliman. An hour of close argument concluded with a smug Ekharth being given the lead position. Flanked by lines of Lucifer Blacks, his entourage strode down the docking tunnel and out into the main concourse.

Vangorich, predictably, had been given the last position in the parade, which suited him fine, even if it did only intensify his opinion that the High Lords were beneath his contempt. He had no attendants so he emerged alone from the tunnel to find the rest of the High Lords blinking idiotically on the docking concourse.

Potus Terrae was lavishly appointed. During his career Vangorich had had occasion to visit some of the richest halls on Terra and many other worlds. In short, he was no stranger to luxury — but the interior of Phalanx gave him pause.

The domed ceiling was over a hundred metres high, split into panels painted in exacting detail with murals of the victories of the Imperial Fists Chapter and its father Legion. The dividers were decorated with gold and precious stones from across the galaxy, and the dome was crowned with a dazzling light carved from a single enormous diamond thirty metres across. Its hard, geometric facets split the sunlight into dozens of intersecting rainbows, creating a prismatic display that delighted and confused the eye in equal measure. Four docking tunnels exited into the hall besides the one the High Lords had used. Between them were broad reliefs carved in alien marbles, depicting heroes of Dorn’s line in action. The floor was an exercise in magnificence, a huge mosaic of interlocking swirls at whose centre was inlaid a giant VII.

An honour guard of Imperial Fists veterans awaited the High Lords around the VII in an open circle. Their armour was flawless and lapped to a high shine, their weapons gleaming; purity seals and honours crisp, red stripes on their helmets and red aquilas on their chests. In the Plaza Decamerata Vangorich had been impressed by Thane’s display. Now more than ever he realised that the Imperial Fists were more than the brothers in the armour. They were the armour, the colours, the weaponry and the relics. The men inside were irrelevant; that they were all of Dorn’s line was all that mattered. The Imperial Fists lived again. As long as Phalanx remained, or there was a single brother gifted with Rogal Dorn’s genetic legacy, they could never die. They were not a wall to break the enemies of humanity, but the idea of a wall: a wall that would never fall, could never be torn down, and that would forever be manned.

Ideas cannot die.

The veterans’ captain stepped forward and undid his helm, revealing a battered face criss-crossed with scars. A tattoo of a gothic cross covered his forehead. A Black Templar once, now an Imperial Fist.

‘My lords, I am First Captain Berengard. The Lord Guilliman, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, Maximus Thane bids you welcome to Phalanx!’

‘We are ready to see him,’ declared Lansung pompously. ‘Where is he?’

‘He awaits you, my lords. This way.’

In perfect synchronicity, the Imperial Fists turned about face. The two ends of the circle wound past each other and the Space Marines formed a square, their captain at its head, and began to march. The Lucifer Blacks, Naval armsmen of the Royal Barque, skitarii of Mars and other troops of the High Lords fell in behind the Adeptus Astartes with admirable smoothness. Less smooth was the rearrangement of the remainder of the High Lords’ retinues. Ekharth’s staff made an undignified scramble for lead position, tangling themselves with Juskina Tull’s staff who, being voidsmen and women, had wandered a little way to admire this most massive of vessels. The Ecclesiarchy entourage to the High Lords lacked direction now the Ecclesiarch was not on the Council, and got under everyone’s feet. By the time it was all arranged, the warriors of the Imperium were halfway out of the hall, exiting through a monumental arch crowded with stern-faced Space Marines and the fallen enemies of mankind.

They ascended a staircase wider than an expressway, lit only by baroque lumen globes held upon golden pillars. In the darkness above, finely finished stone echoed to the calls of airborne creatures roosting amid half-glimpsed statues. Despite the life forms, the steps and stairwell were unsoiled.

Vangorich laced his fingers behind his back and sauntered up to join the Inquisitorial delegation. There were only half a dozen men and women serving the two inquisitors, all Wienand’s. His Inquisitorial convocation aside, put together with the express purpose of eliminating Wienand and disbanded soon after, Veritus was never accompanied. Vangorich nodded at Raznick and Rendenstein, Wienand’s bodyguards. The acknowledgement made the younger inquisitor redden. Raznick had fared poorly against Vangorich’s team on Mars.

‘Is all this fortress so ornate?’ Vangorich asked conversationally. ‘It’s more of a palace than a castle.’

‘The primarch was a being of great artistry in many areas. What did you expect?’ said Veritus.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Vangorich. ‘Something draughtier.’

The stairs led into a hall kilometres long. Arrayed along its cloistered sides were the arms, armour and the mortal remains of extinct xenos species and subjugated human cultures. Worn plaques of brass over each cabinet detailed the time of their earning. Those nearest the stairs bore dates from before the Ascension of the Emperor and were marked with compliance designations from the Great Crusade.

The Imperial Fists marched them more than a kilometre along this hall, past a seemingly endless succession of mementos. Models, fragments of metal, captured vehicles, stuffed alien beasts went by until even Vangorich struggled to assimilate it. The Space Marines took an abrupt left-hand turn through another archway. The trophy corridor continued on past this exit so far that its end was lost to perspective.

A short corridor led them to a second staircase, smaller but just as grand in decoration, that switched back and forth upon itself. The High Lords went on doggedly. More than a few of them were old beyond the natural span of men, kept alive by anti-gerontic drugs and augmentations. Lansung was a fighting man, but out of shape. Vangorich found it no trouble, nor did Wienand. Kubik’s robes brushed the ground; he seemed to hover along above the floor, which, thought Vangorich, he could well be doing. Tull strode forwards yet still seemed hesitant, as if she might trip at any moment. Sark, Anwar and Ekharth struggled. Zeck projected tension that suggested he wanted to break into a run. Verreault kept marching, his face grim as he attempted to control his limp.

For the ancient Veritus it was a trial. Though his armoured legs rose and fell without slowing, his face paled and sweat collected on his lip.

For an hour and a half they walked up stairs and down corridors until they were hopelessly disoriented. At no time did they see any sign of human life aboard the Phalanx except those Space Marines that led them. Somewhere, there would be servitors, menials, Chapter serfs by the thousand. Thane had kept them out of sight. He presented the Phalanx as a ghost ship, a mausoleum where the past decayed, atom by atom, under its layers of polish.

They went into a corridor whose roof was glazed with armourglass. In this part they saw damage, sections where the glass had been broken and the battle shutters left closed. In one place the marble facing had gone, and the less noble stone revealed behind was cracked and half melted. The floor there was riven by a chasm bridged over with plasteel plating.

They stopped before a gate that, though immense in scale, was modest compared to some they had passed through.

‘Lord Guilliman Thane is within,’ said First Captain Berengard. Two veterans took the handles and pushed wide the doors. ‘Your retinues will wait. We have a hall prepared with refreshments for them.’

‘My men will accompany me!’ insisted Ekharth, his protestation ridiculous in the face of the scarred, much-decorated captain.

‘They will wait, and be refreshed,’ insisted Berengard.

‘Let them be, Ekharth,’ called Vangorich. ‘As if these soldiers with us could stop the Space Marines should they decide to kill us, which I am sure Lord Thane does not intend. Allow your men their leisure — they have marched admirably and deserve a rest from our tedious debates.’ The other High Lords split in reaction into those who laughed at Ekharth, and those who were outraged at Vangorich’s disregard for decorum.

‘If the business of government bores you, Grand Master, perhaps you should not have done so much to involve yourself in it!’ blustered Ekharth.

‘It is not boring to me, I find everything you say in particular to be most fascinating. I think only of those of us who are forced to listen and not take part.’

‘You are on Phalanx, my lords,’ said Berengard. ‘There is nowhere safer. The Lord Guilliman wishes to conduct this most sensitive of business in total privacy.’

‘You will be allowed to listen, I am sure. Private but for the ears of the Adeptus Astartes!’ said Gibran.

‘Not at all, my lord. Only the Lord Guilliman will remain, I assure you, High Lords. Now,’ said Berengard, holding up his hand to direct them. ‘Please proceed within. The Chapter Master is waiting.’

For the first time, Vangorich saw the mortal servants of the Imperial Fists upon Phalanx. Dozens of them issued from hidden servants’ doors, garbed in yellow, shaven-headed and bearing a tattooed fist on their left cheeks. Fifteen of them were armed and armoured in dark yellow carapace. Warrior serfs.

‘Please, this way,’ said the serfs’ spokesman. A large door was opened down the hall. Tantalising smells wafted out. The High Lords stood firm, however, looking at each other uneasily.

‘For the love of Terra, are we going to stand here all day?’ growled Zeck.

‘I shall dismiss my men. I have nothing to fear from the keepers of Terra’s walls,’ said Verreault eventually.

‘I too,’ said Lansung. The Lord Commander Militant and the Lord High Admiral purposefully did not look at Vangorich.

‘Very well then!’ said Ekharth shrilly. ‘I shall dismiss my servants.’

There was some tension from those others attending upon the High Lords, and they left their lords unwillingly. Wienand dismissed her entourage with a curt nod. Raznick left with several backward glances, Rendenstein with not a one. The soldiers and Naval armsmen saluted and crisply manoeuvred. If only the High Lords would behave so well, thought Vangorich. There was more muffled debate and pointed looks.

‘We are hardly covering ourselves with glory here,’ Wienand whispered to him.

‘All hail the mighty High Lords of Terra,’ Vangorich murmured back.

Finally, the High Lords arranged themselves into a group that suited everyone and walked through the door. Vangorich went at the back, a wolf shepherding sheep. He gave Berengard a broad smile as he passed. The First Captain frowned back. He knew a threat when he saw one.

The doors swung closed. The Senatorum Imperialis was in session.

Thane awaited them in a circular chamber walled for much of its circumference with sweeping, plain glass. There was a single mullion in the centre, a statue of a Space Marine, his hands clasped around his sword. The art required to make such broad expanses of glassteel sufficiently strong to withstand the void, let alone battle, was great indeed. In the elegant simplicity of it, Vangorich saw the hand of Rogal Dorn himself. The chamber was at the edge of a cliff and the carved expanses of stone and metals receded into the distance on either side. Spires and weapons batteries cluttered the view forward.

In contrast to many of the chambers they had seen in Phalanx, this was neither large nor ornate. A fine-grained black stone made up the floors, ceiling and those parts of the walls not fashioned from glass. A large, circular table made of the same stone filled half the internal space. Lumens set into the wall and the centre of the ceiling struck angular reflections from the stone’s finish. Twelve chairs sized for unaltered human beings were set at the table, these made of black wood. A single chair made for a Space Marine brought the number up to thirteen. Thane occupied it. He was fully armoured, his helmet and boltgun resting on the table in front of him. There was no rawer statement of power.

‘Lords. Welcome to Phalanx. Please, sit.’ He held out his hand to indicate the chairs.

The High Lords took their seats, approximating their positions back on Terra. Verreault and Lansung sat together, Verreault hesitating before taking a place by the Lord Guilliman. Zeck was an uneasy satellite to their alliance, drawn in by their adepta’s collective employment of force more than personal common cause. Ekharth sought reinforcement to his words through proximity to Zeck. Tull sat next to Gibran for their mutual interest in the void. Vangorich, who sat where he pleased outside the Great Chamber, upset Sark and Anwar by seating himself between them and Zeck. Wienand took a seat by Anwar. Veritus sat between her and Thane, even his power-armoured body made small by the presence of the transhuman.

‘I trust you will forgive me for the extra chair, but I thought it impolite to make Veritus stand again,’ said Thane.

No one answered.

‘We are meeting here so that you are under no illusion that what I dictate shall be made law.’

‘My lord…’ began Anwar.

‘You will wait, Lord Astropath. I thought Koorland rash to enter the high politics of Terra. I have been convinced otherwise. Let me make myself clear, it is your self-interest that made this disaster possible.’

‘How dare you, Chapter Master. What do you know of government? You are a warrior,’ said Verreault.

‘Now I am a High Lord. Explain to me, as a man new to politics, exactly where were the armies of the Imperium when the orks devastated worlds, Verreault?’

‘Heth’s responsibility!’ said Verreault.

‘And yours, once he was killed. His failures were compounded by yours. At least Heth died honourably. More than can be said for you, Lansung. You showed courage. You fought, but of all of the Lords here, you bear the most culpability. Your fleets should have brought word of the gathering of the orks. They should have acted in concert. Instead, you spent your years politicking to replace Udin Macht Udo. The debacle at Port Sanctus is but the least of your errors. You, my lord, were chasing glory at the expense of our species.’

‘How dare you impugn my honour?’ exclaimed Lansung.

‘And how dare you suggest you have any!’ shouted Thane. The High Lords fell quiet. ‘The only sense you showed was to hold back your flagship from the disastrous Proletarian Crusade. You are a fine naval tactician, Lansung, and a good strategist. Both abilities deserted you when you put yourself first. You are many things, but a good politician is not one of them.’

As much as Vangorich had enjoyed watching Lansung squirm in the past, he took little pleasure in it then. Lansung had lost weight. His complexion had once been ruddy, now he was grey, his bellicosity bled out of him along with his fat. He was a beaten man. Surely Thane could see that he had lost his confidence and that he should be replaced. Such a man was not suitable to lead the navies of the Imperium. Lansung would become hesitant when he should be bold, and rash when he should be cautious. Every successful large-scale engagement would only be another step towards catastrophe.

Thane turned his attention upon Tull next. ‘And that crusade… A fine sentiment, the desire to fight no matter the odds. But the odds would have been so much better, had any of you had the sense to consolidate the Imperium’s core worlds and withdraw a reasonable force to Terra to defend it. A billion armed men could have been within the Sol System in days. That was not the action taken. Instead, what? Scribes. Functionaries. Menials. An army of innocents sent to the slaughter. The level of ineptitude on display here defies all logic.’

‘The moon was over the Palace, it could have struck at any moment. We had no choice,’ said Tull. She spoke quietly; her heart wasn’t in her objection.

‘You would have, had Lansung here not squandered half the Imperium’s warfleets in pointless tit-for-tat actions. Koorland was right to blockade the moon. He acted well, you acted without thought. Our entire species could have been enslaved. “As you excel in war, so shall you excel in peace,” Roboute Guilliman, the first to hold this office, said of we Adeptus Astartes. For most of my life I have thought him wrong. There is no peace. There is only war. I thought there was no need for Space Marines to involve themselves in the ruling of the Imperium. I was wrong. With power left in the hands of men and women such as you, disaster will befall us all.’

The High Lords looked aghast.

Lansung swallowed hard. ‘What are you proposing?’ he said. ‘A coup?’

‘You are Horus returned!’ said Zeck.

‘He does not intend to eliminate us,’ said Sark. ‘I would sense it.’

Anwar smiled, a ghoulish expression on his emaciated, eyeless face.

‘Elimination? I propose nothing of the sort,’ Thane said in disgust. ‘This system of governance was devised by the Emperor Himself. I am not so arrogant as to propose it be undone. Where it has failed, it has failed because it has not been adhered to properly. The Senatorum Imperialis has met in secret for too long. This is my first decree, that the Great Chamber shall be brought back into use permanently. No more meetings in closure. There are not sufficient checks upon the ambitions of individuals among the High Twelve without involvement of the other High Lords and the lesser lords. Too much effort is expended by the masters of lower ordos, adepta and officios in seeking the patronage of the High Twelve. While the High Twelve themselves are without the scrutiny of the wider government, they are free to neglect their duty to the Imperium in favour of duty to their adepta, or worse, their own personal glory.’

‘Closed sessions were only introduced, my lord, to speed the decision-making process in the wake of the First Black Crusade,’ said Ekharth tremulously.

‘Six hundred years ago and more. Extraordinary measures have a habit of becoming ordinary,’ said Thane. ‘This decree will ensure a more proper adherence to the intentions of the Emperor.’

‘You said decrees, Lord Guilliman,’ said Kubik. ‘Enumerate them for our edification.’ He chose a placating, human voice for this, surprising Vangorich. Kubik had only ever used his harsh, machine voice in the Grand Master’s hearing. ‘If you could lay out the contents of this meeting for us, then we shall be better equipped to proceed and enact your wishes, highest of Lords.’

Thane gave the Fabricator General a considered look. Kubik’s own games had played their part in the Imperium’s near downfall. ‘I have but three in total. Once they are done, they are binding. After that, we shall move on to the business of rebuilding. New fleets need to be commissioned, new armies raised. Terra’s fortifications must be rebuilt. Thousands of worlds are ruined. All must be restored. This will be your life’s work from now on. Service to the Emperor and the Imperium shall be restitution for your crimes of vanity. Is that clear?’

The High Lords looked at him wordlessly.

‘These then, are my other decrees. My second is that there shall be a Fourth Founding of Space Marine Chapters. We are too few to effectively defend the Imperium. A thousand years after the Heresy, our numbers are a fraction of what they once were. To allay your concerns, I swear that I do not intend to reform the Legions. The Last Wall will be disbanded. So much power cannot be one man’s to command, I think we can all agree with that. Instead, we shall raise as many new Chapters as we have gene-seed in the great vaults of Terra to sustain. This must be done swiftly. I shall issue a proclamation as Lord Guilliman and as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists that all Chapters shall release a portion of their veterans to provide the initial basis for this founding, the greatest since the First. Gene-seed tithing will be doubled for the next century to replenish the vaults. When it is done, there will be hundreds of Chapters to ring the Imperium in adamantium and ceramite instead of dozens.’

‘Can such a thing be accomplished?’ asked Ekharth.

‘If the genetic material exists, then yes. As a pledge of our continued fealty to Terra, the Adeptus Mechanicus shall undertake to outfit all new Chapters with full armoriums and warfleets, I so submit,’ said Kubik silkily.

‘Your offer is appreciated,’ said Thane. ‘I am pleased I did not have to demand.’

‘The defence of Terra is the defence of Mars, Lord Guilliman,’ said Kubik.

‘Are we all agreed?’ asked Verreault.

‘We must not rush into this,’ said Veritus. ‘We must, we must…’ He drew in a huge breath, his entire body shuddering with the effort.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Wienand.

Veritus held up a hand and shook his head.

‘Leave me be!’

‘Do we have any choice, Lord Inquisitor?’ asked Gibran. ‘If we do not agree, what of it? The Lord Guilliman decrees!’

‘Why would we not agree?’ said Zeck. ‘This is the plainest sense. More Space Marines mean greater security.’

‘But who shall they answer to,’ gasped out Veritus.

‘Are there any more objections?’ asked Ekharth. There were not. ‘Then it is done. Lord Thane?’

‘My third, and final decree,’ said Thane. ‘I will be a crusading lord. The Imperial Fists shall no longer stand upon a wall and look out on our enemies and defy them to come to us. We shall be a mobile fortress, moving ever forward to crush those who would spurn the will of the Emperor, whether they be known or unknown. Dangers cannot be waited upon, but must be rooted out and destroyed ere they pose a risk. Never again shall an enemy of the Imperium enter the orbit of Holy Terra. This we swear! For what use is a wall if all the lands about it are laid waste and occupied by the hateful foe? No longer will we stand in one place. No longer will we take wall-names, but we shall become a wall for the whole Imperium. Phalanx will leave before the end of the week, and I will be taking the Imperial Fists with me.’

Immediate uproar greeted this statement.

‘You are the defenders of Terra! It is your Chapter world!’ exclaimed Anwar, his head swinging to and fro as if he would capture Thane in his empty eye sockets.

‘You defy convention, and the wishes of the Emperor,’ said Ekharth. ‘Imperial Fists have stood upon the walls of the Palace since the Heresy!’

‘And we shall no longer,’ said Thane. He placed his hand, palm flat, on the table. The gentlest click of ceramite upon stone silenced the High Lords more effectively than a bolt-shot. ‘Listen to me, my lords.’

‘The traditions and obligations of your Chapter aside, you are the Lord Guilliman,’ said Verreault harshly. ‘You cannot simply abandon your responsibilities.’

‘As you Lords abandoned yours?’ said Thane. ‘I am mindful of the need for direction within the Senatorum. A weak Lord Guilliman is a bigger danger than the most self-interested of High Lords, and an absent lord is the weakest lord of all. But I shall bring my strength and authority to the beleaguered worlds of the Imperium, to free them from alien tyranny, and speed their reconstruction. Therefore, I require a representative among you, whom I shall raise over the others and invest with my authority to act upon my behalf. Should Terra be threatened, we shall return. But I expect my labours to be long. I may never see the Throneworld again.’

Vangorich looked forward to sinking back into the shadows again.

‘Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, shall be my voice and my hand. I hereby invest him with all my authority. He is to be heeded and treated with as if he were myself.’

Ah, thought Vangorich.

‘Any of you who have misgivings, do not fear.’ Thane gave Vangorich a steely look. It was nothing to the poisonous glare Wienand gave him. ‘The threat of my return will be enough to ensure his good behaviour.’

Five days of intense debate followed. The High Lords were given chambers near to the small conference room. Their entourages were thinned to the bare minimum and their lives were run to the harsh schedule of the Adeptus Astartes. Isolated, kept from their servants and wholly at the mercy of Maximus Thane, the negotiations were concluded quickly. When the High Lords emerged dazed and exhausted from their discussions, many matters had been decided. The details of Terra’s rebuilding, the raising of new regiments, an Imperium-wide survey of what remained after the attacks of the orks, a pledge from the Inquisition to reorder itself, and not least the beginning of the Fourth Founding, all were examined in depth. What would once have taken months, if it were finished at all, was concluded before the week was out.

A day’s feasting followed. The Imperial Fists were as exacting in their leisure as they were in their business. The bottomless stores of Phalanx were opened, fine victuals from the length and breadth of the Imperium were served, while the newly reconstituted Imperial Fists deepened their bonds of brotherhood and entertained the lords of Terra with dazzling displays of gladiatorial skill.

All was done. Phalanx readied to depart. The lords of the other Chapters that made up the Last Wall came and went. Whole fleets hung in the void by the giant star fort while their masters conferred with Thane. The flotillas of the Space Marines were greatly diminished. Some Chapters were down to a handful of ships, but they were proud, and they were ready.

Over the course of the next few days, the Lord Guilliman broke from his arranging of the Chapters’ deployment to speak with each of the High Lords alone. Kubik was first, and when his conference was done he left alone aboard a swift Mechanicus pentere.

Zeck insisted he be next because he was needed on Terra. Thane indulged him, and he departed after their meeting also, as did Wienand and Veritus. Lansung had the ships of the reforming Segmentum Solar fleet parade past Phalanx before joining them on his flagship, Autocephalax Eternal. Only a few of the High Lords remained behind after their conferences. Ekharth and Gibran sought constantly to win Vangorich over with honeyed words. The others avoided him.

Finally, Vangorich was summoned. Thane had left him to last, with a sufficient space between the previous meeting and his own to upset a lesser man’s ease. Vangorich was not bothered in the least.

It happened so. Vangorich was exploring an enormous library of rare texts when three Imperial Fists marched him up a hundred stairs without saying a word besides ‘Thane will see you now.’

‘Now I know how a condemned man feels,’ Vangorich said, glancing back longingly at the books.

The Space Marines ignored him.

The Chapter Master was in a private strategium atop one of the central towers of Phalanx. Its sweeping views put Vangorich in mind of the Cerebrium on Terra. Out beyond the countless gun barrels and docking piers, ships moved in number. It was almost enough to persuade Vangorich that the Imperium retained some strength.

Vangorich announced himself with a cough. Thane would have heard him already, but the Chapter Master was making a point of studying the pile of papers on his desk and the multiple hololithic star systems hanging at eye level in the room. ‘You wanted to see me, Lord Guilliman?’ Vangorich asked.

Thane looked up, and Vangorich reconsidered his opinion. The Lord Guilliman looked genuinely distracted. ‘You are here. Good. I will not keep you long, Lord Protector, and I apologise for your long wait. Ground must be prepared before tactics are discussed.’

‘I am your tactic?’ Vangorich said mildly.

‘You are aware of that. You’re not the only game player on Terra, Grand Master. It is time to show your mettle.’

‘I do love a challenge,’ said Vangorich. He looked about for a chair, but all of them were sized for Space Marines.

‘Kubik. You must watch him closely,’ Thane said bluntly.

‘I had intended to,’ said Vangorich. ‘His empire within an empire has shown alarming separatist tendencies. But he is the most powerful of all the High Lords, and his most annoying characteristic is that we need him more than he needs us.’

Thane grunted in affirmation.

‘That’s why you did not publicly dress him down as you did the others,’ said Vangorich. ‘You are getting good at this.’

‘Diplomacy is an art I am having to learn fast. The Adeptus Mechanicus are not completely a part of the Imperium, although we treat them as if they are. And though Kubik honoured the ancient alliance between Mars and Terra towards the end, that was not inevitable.’

‘He only did it when he had been found out. If he had not been found out, though?’

‘You see my concerns.’

‘Oh, Lord Thane, I share them!’ exclaimed Vangorich. ‘Still, the priests of Mars have gained a lot of knowledge from the xenos. It might be that they are satisfied with what they have learned.’

‘Or they changed their minds when they realised that they could not survive on their own,’ Thane said. ‘For the time being, our two realms remain interdependent, but I do not trust the Fabricator General. This new knowledge must not be kept from the Imperium, they hoard too much to themselves already. He has agreed to deploy the xenos tech in the destruction of Ullanor.’

‘You’ve asked him to destroy it?’

‘It lies too far from our current borders to be watched effectively,’ said Thane. ‘I will not have it forgotten again. If the orks returned once, they could do so in the future. Ullanor shall be wiped from the galaxy.’

‘I am amazed you convinced Kubik to do that,’ said Vangorich. ‘I am impressed, as a matter of fact. There is a lot of xenotech upon the planet he would dearly love to possess.’

‘The priests of Mars cannot be allowed to have more of the orks’ devices. It is not only because their power must be held in check. They risk corruption. There is a psychic mark on the machines of the ork. On Ullanor, the Beast reached out into the minds of our warriors and destroyed their reason. My Librarians fear a vestige of the Beast’s rage may taint their artefacts forever. Allowing such into the hands of the Adepts of Mars is unacceptable. Kubik might see the sense in ridding the galaxy of Ullanor, but whether he does or doesn’t, destroying it will be a test of his loyalty,’ Thane went on. ‘He will be forced to use his new devices in plain sight.’

‘I doubt Kubik does anything he does not wish to. Or that does not benefit him.’

Thane looked down at Vangorich. ‘Make sure he complies. If there is any deviation from the plan to destroy the world, contact me immediately and I shall return to deal with him.’

‘So war with Mars is still a possibility,’ said Vangorich. ‘I don’t suppose I need to tell you we cannot afford it.’

‘I shall trust in the Emperor that it does not come to that. Kubik will comply. I have made it clear to him that his loyalty to the Emperor is under question. If he were willing to risk a direct confrontation between Mars and Terra, it would have occurred by now. They have weighed the options, seen the consequences, and found the status quo to be the better choice. But still, stay aware of whatever schemes he might concoct.’

‘As you wish, my Lord Guilliman. I shall gladly do as you command,’ said Vangorich.

‘Tomorrow, you shall wield a power neither of us wanted in my name.’

‘You have had similar, my lord, in the Last Wall. The power you wield as Lord Guilliman is no different to that.’

‘I disagree. It is entirely different,’ said Thane. ‘I do my best to rid myself of both. I have dispatched the sons of Dorn to scour the galaxy. Many return to their home worlds to begin their efforts there. Besides the new Chapters, all existing Adeptus Astartes forces have suffered casualties and must replenish and re-arm. We are no different. Three thousand potential neophytes are en route to Phalanx from Terra. This mass method of selection is unusual, but it will serve. Phalanx is amply equipped with testing grounds, so they will undergo trials as soon as we commence our journey. There is much to be done. The Chapter Masters will rally what troops they can near their home systems and begin reconquest and rebuilding.’

‘I imagine Verreault choked on his moustache when you told him that.’

‘Damn him and his predecessor,’ said Thane darkly. ‘The disorganisation that led to this debacle is over. Verreault can watch and approve, or he can be replaced.’

‘I have been informed of the intentions of the Crimson Fists, Excoriators, the remaining Iron Knights and the rest, but where will you go, my lord?’

Thane smiled admonishingly at Vangorich. ‘You are not stupid, Vangorich. I suspect you have already guessed. Although I am no longer a Fist Exemplar, I owe an honour debt to see that the Chapter does not die. We go to Eidolica one final time. It is as good a place to start my crusade as any.’

‘Are you sure it is the best course of action, my lord? There are systems of higher strategic value nearer and in greater need.’

‘The sons of Dorn do not abandon each other and they do not neglect their legacy. I have an obligation. I do not expect you to understand.’

Vangorich laced his hands together in the deep sleeves of his robes. He was treading dangerous ground. ‘So might I ask, my lord, have you had any word from your brothers of the Fists Exemplar?’

That made Thane uncomfortable. His fists clenched. ‘None. They were last seen at the Vandis System. I guess your opinion, Lord Protector. You suggest they are dead, but I saw them make the Mandeville point myself, and so I cannot accept that First Captain Zerberyn’s force is destroyed until it is presented to me as a solid fact. They are unaware of it, but they are the Fists Exemplar now. It would be a tragic irony if my resurrection of the Imperial Fists doomed my original order to extinction. That is a possibility that I have to consider. If so, a new brotherhood shall take Eidolica as its home. If one Chapter can be resurrected, so might others.’

‘I understand. If more of us showed such solidarity then maybe this would not have happened.’ Vangorich stood a little taller, presenting an aspect of himself he usually hid by careful posture and body language. Maximus Thane knew Vangorich was dangerous, but for a moment he saw clearly who he was dealing with: an intelligent, careful man, the worst kind of killer. ‘I will oversee the rebuilding of Terra. I shall ensure your wishes are adhered to, my lord.’

Thane looked out through the armourglass over the spires and peaks of Phalanx. ‘I am trusting you to make this work, Vangorich. You have implied many times that one man might make a better ruler than twelve Lords. I honestly have no idea if you truly wished Veritus to be that man. It does not matter. Now is your chance to prove theory. Lead them wisely, and remember Kubik is not the only High Lord I would return to Terra to replace.’

Chapter Five The fate of Ullanor

Mariazet Isolde wore the shape of a shuffling Adeptus Mechanicus menial priest convincingly. She hobbled her way through red-lit decks crammed with servitor crew, her false implant broadcasting forged Adeptus Mechanicus identification codes. She had Yendl to thank for those. Without the Temple Vanus infocyte, the cell would have been discovered a long time ago. Isolde missed her expertise; operating on Mars had become difficult since Yendl’s death.

She wasn’t confident she could maintain the pretence, but her death did not matter. Only the mission did. She was to bear witness to the destruction of Ullanor from within the Mechanicus ship.

The Ark Majesty was immense, a huge inverted pyramid staffed by hundreds of thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests and their lobotomised slaves. No one paid her any attention. She went at a measured pace, not wishing to bring attention to herself as a shirker or someone in an unusual hurry. The command deck was her goal. Isolde was circumspect in her work, and she was on her highest level of alert.

Clanking men-machines lumbered past her, wheezing aseptic breath. Choirs of lowly adepts sang hymns to placate the spirit of the Ark Majesty’s many machines while higher-ranking priests conducted inscrutable rituals. Isolde walked by.

She took the least-used ways upward, transit tubes used mainly by servitors. Their blank-eyed stares passed over her with no more interest than if she’d been an empty fuel canister. Her codes, marking her as a member of Kubik’s personal household, gave her access to most areas of the ship, except the command deck. Getting in there was the difficulty.

The fabric of the Ark Majesty thrummed to the song of titanic energies as the Adeptus Mechanicus prepared for the conclusion of their Grand Experiment. Not, as secretly planned, the removal of Mars from the Sol System, but the destruction of the orks’ capital, a fitting test of the new and terrifying matter displacement technologies plundered from the greenskins. Odd whoops and growls sounded from vents and shafts as she passed them. The vibrations of the ship changed in frequency and violence as the vast banks of teleporters grafted to the Ark Majesty’s frame were cycled up and down in repetitive test runs.

She neared the centre of the vessel where the command deck was situated. The Adeptus Mechanicus favoured burying their command sections deep in their craft for maximum survivability. There was a paucity of windows on an ark vessel. All sight was provided remotely, by the grace of the Machine-God. A corridor with a pronounced declivity led down to the cradle housing the command decks. She slowed. Her identity would take her no further.

Streams of adepts went to and fro, passing from side rooms and engine halls to join the ceaseless flow of augmented humanity. The number of servitor crew declined as the number of adepts increased, until close to the great reinforced blast doors of the command deck the tech-priests outnumbered the mindless cybernetic constructs three to one. Those servitors that were present stamped past in large groups headed by genetors-primus. A few others were heavy combat drones stationed at strategic points. These comprised the torsos of dismembered men plugged directly into track units, their arms replaced by potent weaponry.

She scanned the crowds until she found what she was looking for. A middle-ranking magos metallicus transmechanic with a face of flesh. It was crucial her mark have no obvious facial augments; that would be too hard to mimic. On a starship the metallicus’ principal duties were confined to repairs. A busy man in a battle, but today he would have little to do. He headed with purpose down a narrow gangway. Isolde followed, striding after him as if she had always intended to go that way.

The gangway opened up into a large, tiered hall. On each level the walls were studded with heavy copper handgrips set in pairs. As she followed the magos, a troop of electro-priests came marching into the hall, singing devotional cant to the Body Electric and the Motive Force. They filed in, taking up station by the contacts and grasping them with both hands. Accidental electrical discharge buzzed and filled the space with the smell of sharp ozone.

The magos metallicus strode on through another, even bigger space, filled to within half a metre of the walls with a gigantic machine from whose depths multiple lights shone. Tech-priests moved painfully around the outside, sometimes on their knees, mechadendrites and ancillary limbs snaking out to make minute adjustments. Past this, the magos metallicus turned into a vestibule sandwiched between the corridor and a third chamber. Through the doorway into this further hall Isolde glimpsed tall plasma coils wreathed in crackling loops of green energy, and she had the notion that she looked upon technology engineered from the greenskins’.

The tech-priest went into a small door set into the wall of the vestibule. Isolde ducked through and found herself in a small storeroom hanging with neatly bunched cables labelled carefully in lingua-technis. She moved so quietly that the man did not notice her at first. When he selected a cable, turned round and saw her, the flesh of her face was already transforming itself into a passing resemblance of his own. She cast her hood back so he could see her features run. He let out a surprised electronic burble from a vox-box implanted in his neck at the sight of her.

Isolde cursed inwardly, she had not seen that augmentation. Most of the tech-priests had such things to allow them to speak the machine language, but they were not always so obvious. She killed him quickly, her exotic sword springing out from its housing on the back of her arm and taking him through the eye. Ignoring the crawling feeling as her face rearranged itself, she stripped the magos’ outer garments off and replaced them with her own, then, kneeling, pulled out a sharp knife and began to cut. His intelligence core was easy to find in his skull, which was a small blessing, for the cybernetics of the Mechanicus followed no standard pattern and it could as easily have been implanted in his leg as his head. She wiped the blood off her hand, sheathed her knife and paused. He still held the cable in his dead hand. He’d evidently got it for something, and so she spent a valuable moment debating whether to take the cable or not. In the end, she decided to leave it behind.

She checked her unit was broadcasting the dead magos’ codes, opened the door and stepped out. She allowed the door to slide shut and fried its locking mechanism, then set out for the command deck.

Fabricator General Kubik surveyed the command deck of the Ark Majesty. Here was his kingdom in microcosm, and he was well pleased with its efficiency. Men, machines and blends of the two performed their duties to the ninety-fifth percentile of perfection.

‘Provide mark. Synchronise time between target system and Ullanor System,’ he commanded.

‘Yes, prime of primes,’ intoned a crowd of tech-adepts. Tasks ordinarily performed by hard-wired servitors were being undertaken by adepts. This was an operation too important to be trusted to the monotasked. An enormous brass-handed chrono ticked down to zero.

‘Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken, prepare for planetary teleportation,’ said Kubik. ‘The time of projection is closing.’

Van Auken had been a large man before his numerous augmentations — with them, his appearance evoked a mechanical bear. ‘The corpuscarii are ready, Fabricator General. They stand prepared to unleash their life force in the service of the Omnissiah,’ he answered with exaggerated humility.

Kubik favoured him with a nod. It had been Van Auken who hit upon using the cults of electro-priests. Their intuitive manipulations of the Motive Force had stabilised the meshing of Imperial and orkish technology. This one idea had cast down all remaining barriers to success. Their recent trials had worked perfectly. The Grand Experiment was an experiment no more.

The Adeptus Mechanicus were ready to move a planet. The chrono’s hands shifted closer to the instant of success.

A grand flotilla of ships crowded the command deck’s hololith. An endless stream of data poured through Kubik’s multiple intelligence cores, filling him to the brim with delicious knowledge. Most of it was ephemeral, pointless, adding nothing to the grand store of knowledge the Adeptus Mechanicus had. The gravitic perturbations inflicted upon the ships by close proximity to each other could easily be calculated using existing formulae, as could the energy output of the combined engines of the fleet, the effects on the remaining astronomical bodies of the system once Ullanor was removed and a million other readings. As such, it was all useless, but it would never be forgotten. For the time being Kubik enjoyed the rush of it, the way a man of more usual form enjoys the pleasure of hot water pouring from a cascade.

‘Imperial Fleet shall be at safe distance in six hundred hectoseconds, prime of primes,’ said the craft’s Artisan of the Vox. Half of what was said aboard was twittered quickly in binharic, the rest in lingua-technis.

‘Planetary teleportation beam is powering,’ said Van Auken.

‘Cut vox-traffic with Imperial craft,’ ordered Kubik. ‘Artisan of the Vox, you are our line of communication with the greater fleet. Let no event or word distract us from the Omnissiah’s holy work!’

The adept did as he was ordered, but the change in noise within the command deck was negligible. ‘Chosin and Ullanor will be at optimum alignment in two hundred hectoseconds.’

‘Fleet at safe distance in one hundred hectoseconds.’

‘Prepare to engage veridian plasma engines. Electro-priest manual regulator arrays on standby,’ said Van Auken.

‘Fleet at safe distance. Lord Protector Vangorich is making a speech, prime of primes,’ said the Artisan of the Vox.

Kubik hunched at the mention of Vangorich’s name, his mechanical appendages thrashing. ‘I do not wish to hear it. His speech is without purpose. The symbolic activities of the non-believer have no interest for me. Record it. Archive it. Add it to the sum total of all knowledge. We have work of our own. Extend matter collapse beam emitter.’

The ship quaked. Rumbling clanks echoed throughout. Displays ran red and green with swift lines of datacode.

A final, echoing clunk reverberated dully around the ship.

‘Beam emitter extended,’ came the report.

Kubik tensed. In response, his gravity chair rose a few centimetres from the deck. Success depended on timing. Ullanor had to be moved at exactly the right moment to displace the existing fourth world in the target system. Every datum he possessed predicted that the original fourth planet, Chosin, would enter into a disruptive orbit that would stabilise over time, allowing Ullanor to take its original orbital track. It was an immensely complex undertaking and its calculation had required the efforts of thousands of magi logis. The possibility of destroying Chosin completely had been raised as a simpler alternative, but discarded. Its destruction would have resulted in an asteroid field of huge destructive potential right in Ullanor’s path around its new star.

Every variable had to be correct. Ullanor’s velocity would not change when it was teleported, therefore it had to move at precisely the right time so that it would fall into orbit around its new star, and pass close enough to Chosin to knock it aside without hitting it. If a single calculation were wrong and Ullanor’s survival was detected, civil war was the likely outcome.

The risk had been calculated as acceptable. Kubik wanted the world for himself. Ullanor was rich with unclaimed alien technology. The acquisition of knowledge superseded all other considerations.

‘Prepare to fire,’ said Kubik.

‘Imperial forces signalling their readiness,’ reported the Artisan of the Vox.

‘Engage all reactors. Relinquishing the holy flow to electro-priests,’ said Van Auken.

The large chrono counted down to zero, its three great hands coming together and stopping with a final, metallic clunk.

‘Let the Imperial fleet see us bring armageddon down on Ullanor!’ ordered Kubik.

The ship hummed with the songs of praise of its myriad crew. Green light pulsed from the hololith. A wavering beam of bright green energy slashed across space, stabbing into Ullanor’s smouldering equator. It spread across the orkish capital world, consuming it with bright fire.

‘Atomic decoupling matrix stabilising. Subspace transportation in forty hectoseconds,’ said Van Auken.

The chatter of machines became synchronised as tech-priests input the bewildering results of the magi logis’ calculations. A rising howl built from the teleportation engines. In their galleries, electro-priests chanted melodic cant to swell the presence of the holy Motive Force. The Ark Majesty trembled with the power building within it.

‘Quantum disassociation achieved. Matter potential neutral. Engaging subspace teleport conduits,’ said another.

Dozens of hands and mechanical appendages depressed levers simultaneously, the singing of algebraical hymns rose in volume, lingua-technis bass overlaid with a high register of binharic informational pulses. The ship’s trembling became a quaking. A deep metallic hum joined the noise of machinery and tech-priests as the fabric of the vessel resonated in harmony to the prayers of its crew and the exertions of its devices.

‘Transmit,’ commanded Van Auken in lingua-technis, Gothic and binharic simultaneously. His mechadendrites speared from his broad back into a dozen ports arrayed around and above him.

The ship vibrated with more than the unleashing of power; reality trembled, pushing open a tear not into the warp, but into subspace, that strange, ephemeral realm that existed between the universe of energy and the universe of matter. A burst of sparks shot out from an overloaded console. A number of hololiths blinked and went out. Lumens burst. Cables ruptured, sending fatal arcs of electricity into a dozen tech-priests as the Motive Force burst free. Bangs sounded from all over the deck as machines failed. Tocsins rang, but their alarms were lost in the roar of the impossible science of the Grand Experiment.

A mighty thrumming vibrated through the bones and bonded endoskeletal augments of everyone aboard. The tumult ceased abruptly, passed over and through the ship like an ocean breaker moving over a reef. The whine of machines quieted. The vibrating faded away into ever decreasing, unpredictable aftershocks.

On the last functioning hololith, space flashed with green lightning that faded slowly. When it did, Ullanor had gone.

‘Simple and elegant,’ said Van Auken. ‘Success is assured.’

Servitors thumped forward to remove the corpses of those tech-priests who had given their lives in the service of the Machine-God.

‘Contact Lord Vangorich. Inform him that the planet has been cast into the heart of the nearest blue supergiant hyper-star. Ullanor is no more,’ said Kubik. ‘Prepare my private pentere. He will wish to congratulate me personally. Van Auken, you shall accompany me as architect of this great endeavour. Have our astropaths signal the explorator teams. Ullanor is to be stripped to the core of useful technology, commencing immediately. No trace of the orkish presence upon the world can be left. The motive engines that moved the crust must be dismantled. If the world is explored or settled, there shall be no indication that the orks were ever there. I so command it.’

‘As you command, prime of primes,’ intoned his crew.

‘All hail the Omnissiah, He that giveth knowledge so that we might perform miracles in His name,’ said Kubik. He powered his grav chair and ascended through a portal in the ceiling. There was no celebration from the crew of the Ark Majesty. They worked on without comment. Success was its own reward.

At the back of the room, Isolde headed for the door.

Isolde shed her magos metallicus disguise as soon as she was able. Reassuming the role of one of Kubik’s household adepts, she headed off to decks unused by thinking beings. Servitors congregated there in their multitudes, but Isolde passed them unchallenged, her cowled form hidden by the soft red light of the lumens.

Life support was at the minimum required to keep the servitors’ organic components alive. She was shivering by the time she found a data conduit sized for humans to access and crawled inside. With numb fingers she searched through a tangle of copper cables and shining fibre-optics until she found an unshielded line. Her dataspike slid into it easily enough, and once she had checked the crawlspace both ways for Mechanicus repair vermin, she contacted the Grand Master.

A black screen appeared on her palm-sized data-slate, the coat of arms of the Assassinorum bold in white upon it.

‘Red Haven, Mariazet Isolde, Temple Callidus,’ she said. ‘Confirm.’

‘Identity confirmed. Line checked. Line secure,’ said the slate.

Vangorich’s face appeared a second later in grainy monochrome.

‘Isolde, good to see you. Tell me now, can I believe what I just saw?’

‘Regretfully no, Grand Master,’ she said. ‘They lied. They’ve moved it, not destroyed it. They’re going to plunder it.’

Vangorich looked away. ‘Stupid,’ he said. When he looked back his eyes were hard. ‘Where is Ullanor now?’

‘I don’t exactly know. I’ve got the name and the stellar signifier. The code puts it on the edge of the Segmentum Solar, and if it’s named it’ll be on a chart somewhere. It did have nine worlds, orbiting a main sequence yellow star not unlike Sol. The code is for an uninhabited system marked for colonisation. They got quite agitated about moving Ullanor at exactly the right moment to displace the existing fourth world safely, a place called Chosin, so I don’t know if that’s of any worth as a planet. I can’t tell you any more than what I gleaned through eavesdropping. This ship has its datacore encrypted so heavily it’d take a Vanus acolyte a week to get into it. I don’t have the skills. I can’t exload to you. Verbal report only.’

‘Give me the code and name.’

‘Yes, Grand Master,’ she said. ‘PL-SS042002-9001. The prime-assumptive world is Pelucidar. The system must be named for it.’

‘Pelucidar? Never heard of it,’ said Vangorich. ‘Good work, Isolde. Severing contact now.’

The screen blinked out. Isolde stowed her data-slate, checked outside, and slipped away.

Chapter Six Holy ordos

There were gardens under the ice and rock of the Antarctic; the recreated habitats of a thousand worlds graced the deepest catacombs of the Inquisitorial Fortress. Most were small, places for the study of dangerous environments or the pharmacological benefits to be wrested from promising species, but there were those set aside for meditation. The Inquisition understood well the need for calm and clarity.

The Park of Oak was one of those places, forty hectares of vibrant green caged by skies of black Antarctic rock.

Veritus met Wienand under the gnarled branches of an ancient tree that had never seen the sun. Its leaves rustled in the unvarying breeze of ventilation ducts, otherwise the forest was silent; no bird or beast lived there. The deep quiet sharply defined the crackling of leaves under her feet and the hiss and whirr of Veritus’ life support system.

‘Wienand,’ said Veritus. He was haggard, his skin looser and paler than normal. She attributed it to the conclusion of the war against the Beast. The closure of a mission often had the same effect on her — months of high activity and adrenaline were followed by deferred exhaustion.

‘Is it time for us to resume our struggle for the seat of Inquisitorial Representative?’ she asked.

‘I hope not,’ said Veritus. He appeared disappointed that she had brought it up. He rested an armoured hand upon the trunk of the tree. ‘There are more pressing concerns.’

‘Let’s get this one out of the way, then. I’ve made my decision. I will relinquish the seat to you. My concern was the alien threat, and that is now done. It is your turn.’

Veritus was taken off guard, but composed himself before an expression of surprise could take shape. ‘You have my gratitude.’

‘You have mine,’ she said. ‘I’ve sat in the Senatorum too long. I have to think of the future. It is time I began to train a successor.’

Veritus became thoughtful. ‘Something I have neglected. I never had time to plan for that future, and yet the future is why we are here. You know that Terra was once an ocean world, inhabited by a trillion different species of life?’

‘I cannot really imagine it, Terra is so… dead,’ she said. ‘Although I have seen other oceans, it is impossible to picture them here.’

‘It was a long time ago. I am very old, Wienand, but even in my youth Terra looked much the same as it does now. But once, it was rich in life,’ said Veritus. ‘Our ancestors, for all their might, did not take care for the future.’

‘I have been lectured about that more than once by the eldar,’ said Wienand.

‘Hypocrisy is their most aggravating characteristic. The fall of their empire sterilised countless worlds,’ he said. ‘You put too much faith in them.’

‘And you too little,’ she said. ‘They are implacably opposed to Chaos, and have helped me many times.’

‘The eldar are prideful and conceited, practically blind to their own faults.’ He smiled tiredly. ‘Listen to us. You are the one who champions defence against the alien, but works with them against Chaos. I am the one who fears Chaos above all things, but lectures you about the xenos threat. Maybe we are both right. The eldar are right about one thing, we must think of the future. The Inquisition must change.’

‘So you promised Thane,’ said Wienand guardedly. ‘Did you have the right to decide that alone? Who is to say the others will agree?’

‘They will agree,’ said Veritus. ‘My question is, do you?’

‘If you are confident you can impose change, why do you need my opinion at all?’ she said.

‘Because you are still the Inquisitorial Representative alongside me. We were opposed, now we work in unity. A unified decision from us will carry much more weight.’

‘So you are not confident of change.’

‘Without you,’ said Veritus, ‘no.’ His breath wheezed. ‘I am uncommonly tired. Walk with me a way, there is a bench not far.’

He led the way down a narrow path of chipped bark. Through it and the litter of the forest floor patches of growth mesh were visible, twisted up by the actions of the trees’ roots. The more she looked, the less natural the forest became.

‘If I am to trust you, then there can be no more secrets between us,’ she said.

‘Agreed,’ said Veritus. Though they went at no great pace, he was breathing heavily.

‘Then tell me more of the Space Marine Chapter stationed on Titan that nobody, except you, appears to be aware of.’

Veritus grasped at branches as they went on, only lightly, as if he were seeking approval from them. They came to a clearing in the trees. A wooden bench made of a split tree trunk occupied the centre. Water pipes and a blinking environmental control station at the edge of the glade further undermined the nominally natural feel of the forest.

‘They are an important part of the reorganisation, and a means to convince the other inquisitors to agree to our plan.’

‘It is your plan, Veritus, and I still do not know what it is.’

Veritus had trouble lowering himself to sit. He leant on Wienand and she sagged under the pressure of his armoured grip as he sat. When he let go, it was as if the weight of the world had come off her shoulders. She sat beside him.

‘They are called the Grey Knights,’ said Veritus. ‘They are a force of warriors without peer, engineered from gene-seed taken from the Emperor Himself a thousand years ago. A last, parting gift from our god before He was taken from us to sit upon His Golden Throne.’

‘They are Adeptus Custodes then?’ Wienand rubbed her hand along the wood. Whereas the bench in the Sigillite’s Retreat was smooth and dry, the grain of this wood was rough under her touch, the strands of lignin still swollen with moisture. Although dead, it smelt fresh; a sense of life still clung to it.

‘They are greater than the Adeptus Custodes,’ said Veritus. ‘Each one is a potent psyker. Their strength is in their brotherhood. As the end approached, the Emperor foresaw a need for warriors who could stand against Chaos, incorruptible and mighty, and He made them so, the mightiest warriors beside the primarchs He ever created. For them, the daemon holds no fear. I believe that, in time, the Emperor hoped mankind would realise its psychic potential, avoid the catastrophe that struck the eldar, and end the threat of Chaos forever. In the Grey Knights, I see hope for the future. They are the pinnacle of what we could be.’

‘The eldar are psychic by nature. From what they have hinted, that sped their destruction. They tell me that we have already fallen. The Dark Age of Technology was our era of might, and even then we could not match their empire of old. They persisted for millions of years, we for mere thousands and now we slowly die.’ She thought of the Sigillite’s Retreat as she said that.

‘We rose again, and we can rise a third time. They are the spent force, not us,’ said Veritus. ‘We must believe this, or we are doomed. When you see the Grey Knights, you will understand that there is hope.’ He was trembling. His breath was shallow, and he perspired. Wienand looked at him with concern.

‘Are you ill, Veritus?’

‘I have felt better. I shall rest later. First, hear me out. There were once four of us who knew of this Chapter. The secret has been mine alone to keep for years. I do not share it lightly.’ Veritus became grim. ‘Assassination, execution, these have been the sentries to this knowledge. I have been forced to employ Exterminatus on three occasions to keep them hidden. That is how delicate the matter of their existence is. I could not call them in to fight the orks. Their psychic abilities would have proved useful, but though they are mighty, they would have fallen, and we would have lost a valuable weapon against Chaos.’

‘We needed all the warriors we could get,’ said Wienand.

‘They would not have tipped the balance. We would have won or lost with or without them. Weapons should be applied to the appropriate threat.’ He clenched his fists on his knees and turned to her. ‘And we agree there are two threats.’

‘Of the alien and Chaos,’ she said.

‘The aliens of this galaxy pose a danger. If I had not believed it before, then this war against the Beast would have convinced me. But we cannot ignore Chaos. Dealing with both is impossible under our current organisation. I believe that the remit of the Inquisition is too diffuse. We need to specialise so that our efforts can be better focused. This is my proposal, that the Inquisition adopt a bicameral nature. The Ordo Xenos shall concentrate its affairs upon alien threats. The Ordo Malleus shall devote itself to rooting out Chaos wherever it shows itself. With the Grey Knights as the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Malleus, and the Deathwatch providing a similar role to the Ordo Xenos, both ordos will be equal in power. The Inquisition will be better able to combat threats mundane and supernatural.’

‘What of those inquisitors who have no desire to specialise?’ asked Wienand.

‘There are some, but most you and I know have their own particular areas of interest. In any case, there are other dangers facing the Imperium, these two are just the largest. I am not suggesting an absolute division. The nature of these threats is that sometimes they are intertwined. Individual inquisitors will be free to move between them. Others might stay free of both.’

‘What if some of the others take to your idea and suggest the need for more ordos?’ said Wienand.

‘Then they can be constituted as and when they are needed. With the model of these two in place, I would imagine it would be easier to do so. For the time being, two will suffice. Wienand, I am speaking of creating a framework which can support inquisitors, give them access to specialist equipment and personnel, and an army to use if required. I am not speaking of imposing an absolute hierarchy on the Inquisition.’

‘But this will introduce hierarchy. It must, by its nature. With hierarchy comes oversight,’ she said. ‘Our comrades do not like to work with others looking over their shoulders.’

‘Nobody is immune to corruption. Oversight is needed. A rogue inquisitor can do so much harm.’

Wienand’s mouth twisted. ‘This change is greater than specialisation. You are suggesting a hierarchy where none exists. There is no ruling council for the Inquisition.’

‘I am not proposing a binding hierarchy. Our freedom to act as we see fit is our greatest strength. It is time the organisation we do have is formalised, that is all. We cannot rely on ad hoc quorums to guide our fate. There must be a council of the most high Inquisitorial lords.’

Wienand laughed softly. ‘The Senatorum Imperialis has exhausted my patience with councils.’

‘Ours shall be smaller, and uneven in number so that deadlock can be avoided. Until now, I have assigned the Grey Knights where I see fit. We must decide a new mechanism for their deployment. I cannot live forever. Would you put that power into the hands of another?’

She gave him a look. ‘You trust yourself, evidently.’

‘There were once four of us,’ he reminded her.

There were four founding members of the Inquisition, thought Wienand, but his being one was impossible. Even so, he must have been heir to that line, and the system of the four lords was long defunct.

‘You’re older than I thought.’

‘Much older,’ he said. ‘I…’ He blinked. ‘I… Wienand?’

‘Veritus? Are you all right?’

He gave her a puzzled look, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell from the bench to the thin, artificial soil.

Wienand knelt by him. Veritus’ face was pressed into the ground, sealing shut his nose and mouth. She tugged and tugged at his armour, but could not right him, so she rocked him back and forth until she could get to his head and turn it to one side. When he was breathing again, she spoke urgently.

‘Vox-bead, activate.’ Her wrist chimed. ‘This is Wienand. I’m in the Botanicum, the Park of Oak. I have a medical emergency. Veritus is down.’

Chapter Seven The opening of the warp

Deep in the fortress of the Iron Warriors was the Astropathicum. The name bore no relation to the meaning of the word as Zerberyn understood it. Imperial astropathic stations were very different in character.

The Iron Warriors’ sole telepath hung in her upright coffin, imprisoned by cables trailing from her skull like a shock of thick hair. Serfs from both brotherhoods worked around her, adjusting the power feed from the cables and monitoring her vital signs. The woman was not a true astropath, but a witchborn taken from their slave stock, a natural psyker, unblessed and unprotected by the Emperor. She was naked, emaciated and filthy, but deadly. The banks of crackling machinery around her were there to contain her powers.

‘Green, green, no more seen,’ she whimpered. ‘The roar goes on, and on. Loudly, quietly. Two brothers cease their fight for a time, exhausted. Red stars for eyes, two apiece.’ She giggled.

Zerberyn’s astropaths were dead. She was all they had, not that she was much use; the Iron Warriors’ witch had not made any sense in all the time they had been on the moon of Immitis.

Zerberyn listened to the witch’s babble. She still made no sense, but the fortress was changing around her. Fresh ferrocrete covered scars inflicted on the complex by the cyclical tidal tugging of Immitis VII, the gas giant the moon orbited. Zerberyn felt that pull himself when the giant planet rose, four times a day. New machinery salvaged from ravaged worlds and ships had been integrated with the ancient systems. The halls hummed with the quiet work of technology. Air filtration meant the air was purer, and this was only one of a hundred small alterations that was changing the fort from a semi-derelict to something resembling a Chapter fortress. Zerberyn was beginning to feel at home there, surrounded by Traitors. He saw them now as more than just despicable foes. They were capable warriors and builders, and though there were methods the Iron Warriors employed that he would never have dreamt of using himself, he was beginning to see their utility. That concerned him.

Someone drew near, and his thoughts fled like clouds before the wind.

Epistolary Honorius’ psychic presence filled the room, pushing at the crazed, fluctuating gifts of the witch as a fortress wall opposes the air. His physical presence was barely less imposing. The Librarian was never out of his Terminator battleplate. A wise precaution, thought Zerberyn. The Iron Warriors could grow tired of their alliance at any time.

‘First Captain, you called for me?’

The Librarius serfs genuflected to their master and went back to their work. The woman sobbed, her metal-faced handler shocked her with the savage throw of a switch, and she screamed.

‘Brother-Epistolary. A word in private.’

Black eyes gazed impassively from Honorius’ ageless, snow-pale face as he swept them over the serfs. ‘Leave us!’ he called.

Immediately the serfs began to shut down the equipment. They bowed and departed. The psyker’s overseer, one of Kalkator’s creatures, remained.

‘You too,’ said Honorius. His voice was sepulchral, his lips permanently downturned. ‘Begone.’

‘My master told me no one was to be alone with the witch.’

‘Go,’ said Honorius, with a power that could not be denied. The overseer hesitated, then left, cowering under the Librarian’s disapproval.

‘Are we alone?’ asked Zerberyn.

The Epistolary’s eyes closed. Eidolica bred men with pale skin, Honorius was among the palest. There was the merest hint of pink to his lips; without that he could have been a marble figure on a tomb.

‘No one hears us,’ he said dolefully.

Zerberyn pointed at the witch, moaning in her restraints and rolling her head. ‘The Green Roar abates. The witch speaks nonsense still, but I believe that is what she is trying to say. Is this not so?’

Honorius inclined his head but once. ‘It is, First Captain.’

‘Something has happened in the wider war. Victory must be close to hand. Have we any word from the Last Wall?’

‘None intelligible, First Captain. My Librarians are not astropaths, but we sense something, a shift in the warp. They receive fragments of messages where before there was nothing. Communication becomes clearer by the hour.’

‘We will be able to send our own messages soon?’

‘Yes, brother-captain. If the brothers of the Librarius work together, it can be done within a day or two, no more.’

Zerberyn turned back to look at the witch. His eyes narrowed. ‘And can we do so without it being intercepted?’

‘You intend to betray the Iron Warriors?’ said Honorius.

‘I intend to be cautious, Brother-Librarian. Do you disapprove?’

‘You are the First Captain. I will do whatever you command,’ said Honorius. ‘The message will not be intercepted.’ Honorius bowed and made to depart. Zerberyn halted him.

‘Honorius, you knew Oriax Dantalion.’

‘I did,’ said Honorius.

‘What would he have made of our allies?’

‘Dantalion was an inflexible and furious man,’ said Honorius. ‘He would have hated the Iron Warriors, as the enemies of the Legion and traitors to the dreams of the Emperor.’

‘And what do you make of them, brother?’

Honorius looked sidelong at Zerberyn. ‘I think that the Iron Warriors are useful, my lord.’

Zerberyn nodded. ‘I concur. Perhaps they can be saved, turned back onto the righteous path. Prepare a message. As soon as you are able, send it. Inform the Last Wall of our location, tell them to come in peace and bearing the markers of truce. It is time we readied ourselves to return home.’

Chapter Eight Vangorich decided

The final time Wienand went to meet Vangorich at the Sigillite’s Retreat, she abandoned the code of coloured smokes and contacted him openly. And she went armed.

Although she had refrained from voxing him until she was a few hundred metres from the forgotten garden, she had no chance to lay an ambush, for when she arrived Vangorich was sitting on the bench. He smiled sadly, shut his book — the same one he had been reading the last time they met — and set it down.

‘We won’t be able to use this place again,’ he said, ignoring the laspistol she was pointing at his head. ‘I suppose you knew that, contacting me on open vox like that. Everyone will know about it. Such a shame, it took me years to find it. It’s a piece of history I shared with nobody but you. Never mind. It is time I came out from the shadows a little. I always thought the Cerebrium would make a fine personal office. I will take it on; it is a beautiful room. If no one objects, of course.’ He seemed to focus on her properly for the first time. ‘Your actions, and that gun, suggest you are less than pleased with me.’

‘What did you do to Veritus?’

He feigned surprise, and that enraged her. Her finger twitched on the trigger, and it was all she could do not to shoot him in the face then and there.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stop it, Drakan!’ she shouted. She circled, searching for traps and Assassins, wishing that she’d thought more calmly and ordered a kill-team to accompany her. Instead she’d rushed to the Inquistorial Fortress’ space port and taken the first craft she’d seen to get here. She regretted her haste. ‘He’s dying.’

‘I am so sorry to hear that,’ he said, and looked like he meant it. ‘He is a little stiff, but a good man in the most fundamental of ways. It is no wonder that you two have become quite close, which is amusing really, seeing as he tried to kill you. And now you’re here, threatening to kill me for allegedly killing him. Honestly, the contradictions of this life never fail to entertain me.’

‘Drop your act, Drakan!’

He shook his head. ‘This is no act,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘This is truly who I am.’

‘Give me the antidote,’ she said. She chanced a step towards him. Vangorich sat innocently in his lifeless garden in the ossified heart of the Imperium. She thought of the synthetic forest in the Inquisitorial Fortress. As pale a reflection of the past as it was, it was still alive. In the Sigillite’s Retreat there was only death.

‘I am afraid there is no antidote,’ he said. ‘Not if he has already collapsed. It will be a matter of time now. I am sorry.’

‘You admit it, then.’

‘I believe I just did, yes,’ he said with a little shrug.

‘Why did you do it? The crisis is over. The orks are done. We should be rebuilding.’

‘And we will,’ he said. ‘Which is precisely why I had to do it. Veritus would never agree with me, you see. I wanted the poison to be an insurance policy, the way I did with Mesring. You spoilt that for me, remember? You might agree with me though,’ he said speculatively.

A cold, sinking feeling clutched at Wienand. Her pistol wavered in her hand. The High Lords. Where were the other High Lords, right now? ‘What do you mean, Vangorich?’

‘The Officio Assassinorum is a check on the follies of empire,’ said Vangorich. ‘I know what it can do, what an abuse of power it could be to use it as the Emperor intended it to be used. That is why I have avoided acting. Until now. I was hoping Veritus could be controlled — not like Mesring, you understand, I never had any respect for him. I just needed enough leverage to convince Veritus what we are doing is right.’

‘You are Lord Protector. Why do you need him under your control?’

‘I did not want to be Lord Protector. I wanted Veritus in the role, I really did. I thought Veritus would do a much better job of it than me, though of course I needed some control. Thane flushed me out, and I’ve had to act.’

‘You were going to give him an antidote, but in small doses.’

‘Yes. But I haven’t, because there’s no need now. It’s gone too far.’ Vangorich made an apologetic face, like a scholam child caught stealing sweet treats. ‘Do you think that squabbling rabble in the Senatorum would actually make things better, when all they’ve done for a thousand years is stuff their greedy faces with the wealth of the Imperium? I didn’t want this, Wienand. I had no choice.’

‘Oh, Vangorich!’ she said in despair. ‘What have you done?’

‘Only what needs to be done. Thane saw that too, I think. If I look at it in a certain way, I might even say that I have his tacit permission. Don’t you see? The Imperium is as petrified as the wood of this bench.’ He patted the wood soundlessly. ‘If it is to come into leaf again, the old wood must be disposed of, and the new given chance to germinate. Try to see it as I do: we have the opportunity to instigate a new era for mankind!’

‘You are not the Emperor, you’re not the Sigillite.’

‘One of those people can do nothing, the other is dead so long I am sure his abilities and wisdom have been exaggerated greatly. You know what time and legend can do to a man’s reputation. We can never live up to the past because we invent it to punish ourselves. It was probably no better or worse than our own era.’

‘I can’t let you do it,’ she said.

‘You’d kill me? Then who would be the assassin?’ he said. His humour was tinged with sadness. ‘Best leave that sort of thing to me. It is what I am, after all. I am trying, Wienand, not like those fools in the High Twelve. I aspire to the greatness of the past — they’re simply overawed by it. Vulkan, a son of the Emperor Himself, denounced the Council. Koorland killed Mesring. Thane made me Lord Protector. It all makes sense. They have to die. I thought you of all people would understand that.’

Vangorich stating his murderous design out loud released something savage in Wienand. She fired, putting a las-bolt through Vangorich’s forehead.

Vangorich flickered. He blinked sympathetically at her. She opened up, putting beams of light through every part of the Grand Master, but they passed harmlessly through him. The wood of the bench smouldered. She looked around for the loops and projectors of a hololith unit, but could see none. The illusion was totally convincing, the best she had ever seen, lacking the ghost-like quality the majority of projections possessed.

‘A shame,’ sighed Vangorich’s projection. ‘I thought you would probably react like that, but I was holding out hope you would not. We really should work together. Now it seems I’ve some work to win you over. No matter, you’ll see the light.’

Wienand held up her vox-button to her mouth.

‘It’s too late, Wienand, you can’t save them,’ said Vangorich. ‘The order is given. The High Lords die today.’

Chapter Nine The beheading

Long before dawn, Abdulias Anwar rose from his bed in an unlit cell. There were grander apartments in the Silent Mansions, but Anwar eschewed them. The terrible losses the Beast had inflicted had impelled him towards humility.

All astropaths were blind, but very few of them were sightless. Some pieced together a patchwork world gathered from foreseen events, apprehending their surroundings through anticipation. The more powerful might see through the eyes of other people. Some saw the world as a blinding vista of soul-light, a few sensed the echoes of the past that wove themselves psychically into the fabric of the universe. Theirs was a sad fate, constantly subjected to the ghostly replays of emotional events, many of great horror.

As the head of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Abdulias Anwar was a telepath of extraordinary ability. The human mind was an open book to him, if it were not carefully warded. His world was one of phantom shapes, a vision of sorts that wove the souls of living beings into a map of energy. It had been so long since Anwar had seen a face the memory had faded into the depths of his extraordinarily long life. Physical beauty was meaningless to him. What he did see was spiritual beauty. The souls of the living shone. Each person was a network of fibres, alive with the pulse of thought. The souls of good men were white, those of less noble tendency red. Blue indicated great sorrow, those burdened with their duties showed a dull yellow, and so on in a million hues. No man or woman was a single shade, save a rare few. Most were subtle blendings that changed from moment to moment.

From the reflected spirit light of humanity, Anwar could discern the shapes of the material world, albeit dully, a psychic false-colour rendering in blues and blacks. Behind this lurked the ever present maelstrom of the warp. Not all telepaths had the dread cosmic truth in front of them all the time like Anwar did, but he had been luckier than others and had learned to mask its presence.

Above it all was the light of the Astronomican, a constant beacon that shone through the intervening rock of Terra as if it were smoke, the bonfire of souls that bound the Imperium into one coherent entity. When he was younger, the undying blaze had kept him from sleeping. What it represented had terrified him. As he aged it had become his greatest comfort.

Only his own soul lit the way for him, the light of it coaxing meaning from the surrounding matter of his domicile. There were no servants to tend to him in the mornings any more. As part of his penance he had dismissed them. He half saw, half felt his way to his wash basin where he plunged his face into freezing water. It filled his empty eye sockets, chilling his skull. The discomfort was good. He patted around for his towel and dried his face. Then he washed himself gaspingly, and went to pray.

The arcane patterns of hexagrammatic wards glimmered all around him, defining the corridors of the Silent Mansions. Through the murk of the solid walls behind the wards, he saw the distant glimmer of soulshine. Psychic humans were flaring beacons, the more mundane sort still bright and glorious in their own way. Closer to his location there were the dim, barely-there flickers of servitors slumbering in their alcoves. Anwar had heard it said that mind-wiping was no worse than execution. The people who said such things were wrong: the souls of the servitors were trapped in bodies of dead flesh and metal. It was a fate worse even than the ocean of souls that awaited the truly dead.

His long staff tocked as he made his way to the Master’s Chapel. This room was the biggest in the Mansions, full of artworks created with psychically active substances of immense cost that only the blind could see. Anwar went before the great statue of the Emperor Resplendent and knelt.

By nature, Anwar was a spiritual man. His early life had been one of wonder, as a world no one else could see had opened to him. The Black Ships had taken that world away from him and given him another more profound, when he had lost his sight in exchange for the touch of a god. That the Emperor was divine was beyond doubt. Anwar had seen Him, a blazing soul that drowned all others with its light. The statues he had seen as a youth captured not the tiniest truth of His essence. For that one glimpse, Anwar felt himself truly blessed. He was content in all that he had done, he had served to the best of his ability and risen as far as any man of his station might go. He had a good friend in Sark. Sark was more powerful than Anwar, strong enough to keep his eyes. Sark had lived a full-blooded life before he took high office, Anwar one of monkish self-denial. But Anwar did not resent him.

He was long past any sort of envy. He had been satisfied with the role the Emperor had chosen for him, and he worked diligently to fulfil that role when immersed in the madhouse of the Great Chamber. He had watched the ridiculous power struggles within the High Lords with a species of detached bewilderment, banding together with Sark and Gibran for no other reason than to preserve his sanity. He left politics to the others, taking pride in keeping his adeptus in order, and he had been content.

He gave praise for his blessing, whispering mantras of thanks over and over.

But he should have done more. He should have been more vigilant.

For years, Anwar had also been complacent. Lately anguish replaced his contentment. He wondered, in the dead of night, if he could have foreseen the rise of the Beast. The Green Roar had built slowly, giving all the appearance of being a simple disturbance in the warp like so many in the past. The sort of storm that might last a night or a millennium, bearable nonetheless. But it had been different. He should have put resources into divining its source. Its true nature had become apparent only when the Beast attacked, and then the bestial howling of the orks had overwhelmed so many of his adepts. Communications had fallen into chaos. Now the warp was stilling again. The roaring of the ork had not disappeared, but receded into the distance like the thunder of a passing storm. Anwar was fearful. Like a storm, the Beast could return again.

‘I should have seen it coming, my Lord. I swear I will next time,’ he whispered. ‘I will be more vigilant.’

He pulled down his hood and unlaced the top of his robes. Anwar had ceased to wear the ornate garments of a High Lord, reverting to the plain green astropath’s garb. He pulled his skinny arms from the sleeves and pushed the robe down to his waist. He took up a switch, made of rare birchwood grown in hallowed arboreta. It was priceless, his sole remaining indulgence. This was his first penance.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness,’ he murmured. The crack of thin wood on flesh echoed off the chapel walls. Anwar suppressed a cry of pain.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness.’ He switched sides, whipping himself over the left shoulder.

Every day, his back burning from his flagellation, he forced himself from the Silent Mansions to the astrotelepathicum of the Imperial Palace. There he spent hours in the receiving couches, parsing messages from all over the Imperium. The majority of them were degraded by the turmoil in the warp. Disrupted chronologies were common.

Anwar was gifted still. The passing of years had dulled his abilities little. He decoded more messages than the youngest and best, and he made himself do it. Story after story of ruination, horror and savagery. This work was his second penance for his inaction. He prayed it would be enough to earn the Emperor’s forgiveness. He knew in his heart it was not.

‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness!’ he said louder, his papery voice filling with power. He hit himself harder.

‘For failing in my duty—’

The gentlest scuff of a foot on dusty stone broke his chant. A blind man hears no better than a seeing man, but he does pay attention more closely to what his ears tell him.

‘Who’s there?’ he said and turned. The nearest soul light was many rooms distant. There was nobody in the chapel with him. Still he was compelled to shout out. ‘This is the Chapel of the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica! Who is there?’

Silence. There was nobody there. There could be no one there without his seeing. Why then did the iron hand of dread squeeze his heart?

He groped for his staff and stood, robes dangling around his waist. Sightless eyes panned around the room. Far greater senses than sight showed him nothing. The hexagrams and psychic paintings on the wall glowed, disapproving faces staring down.

He froze. There, there was a disturbance in his second sight, a warping of a ward-tapestry’s silver threads. He drew in a frightened breath. The distortion moved, coming closer. As it approached it became a sucking black void that drew all light towards it, banishing it utterly.

‘Traitor,’ said a voice in a low whisper that pulled at the weft of Anwar’s soul.

‘No, wait. I am no traitor. I am a loyal servant of the Emperor!’ said Anwar. He stumbled backwards, until his back connected painfully with the edge of the altar.

‘We are the Emperor’s justice. We are the Emperor’s judgement.’ A whirring rasp of machinery came, that of a metal iris opening. The whining rise of weaponry spooling up to full power vibrated Anwar’s teeth painfully.

There was only one being this could be. A Culexus Assassin: a creature like the Sisters of Silence, born without a soul, taken, trained, honed into a killer of psykers, an abomination which could extinguish the light of a soul as easily as snuffing a candle. ‘I know your kind! Why did Vangorich not release you to fight the orks? Why do you only show yourself now? You call me disloyal? What about the Grand Master!’

A darker point of light appeared in the air at head height, totally black, the absence of everything — space, time and soul. Anwar felt his very being tugged towards it. The sensation was excruciating. Absolute terror flooded his aged heart.

‘Please! Please,’ he sobbed. ‘I know. I… I know. I could have done more. I shall! I have learned my lesson. It is not enough to fulfil the Emperor’s wishes. One must always strive to exceed them. I know this now,’ said Anwar. He slipped down the altar to kneel on the cold floor. ‘Tell the Grand Master, I know I have been remiss. I am sorry. I am ashamed.’ But his eyes could not cry, and no tears came.

‘You are guilty,’ said the pariah.

A beam of blackness cut across Anwar’s spirit sight and connected with his forehead. For the first time in his life, he was truly blind. All good sensation was driven out of him, leaving nothing but the pain as his soul was pulled slowly from his body, singing like a raw, stretched nerve.

With his mouth, and with his mind, Anwar screamed. His last psychic shout blasted out from the chapel, stunning everyone it touched for five hundred metres in every direction.

His soul dissipated into nothing. The Culexus shut off her animus speculum. Anwar’s body fell to the ground alive, but Abdulias Anwar had found a fate far worse than death.

By the time his aides and guards reached the chapel, the Culexus Assassin had long gone. She had another psyker to visit that night.

The Navigators’ Quarter was a world distinct from the rest of Terra. Though it was surrounded by the hives of standard humans, it was walled off from them absolutely. To be apart was the condition of the Navigators, on a starship or on the ground. Within the Quarter’s walls were the greatest palaces in the human galaxy, but no normal man might visit these gilded prisons for the Navis Nobilite.

From his lighter, Helad Gibran looked glumly down over the soaring spires of the Navigatorial estates, each house attempting to outdo the other with the height and splendour of its demesne. Glittering pinnacles and gardens were cut through by broad waterways and lakes protected from the polluted air of Terra by ornate domes. Near the centre was the greatest edifice of all, the Paternoval Palace. Currently in possession of House Gibran. It was all so beautiful, so excessive and so claustrophobic.

The lighter pilot zeroed in on the main docking hall of the Paternoval Palace. Its outrageously decorated spires soared overhead, embracing Gibran in their shadows. He shuddered. Gibran was not pleased to be home.

After they landed he rushed through the ritual greeting offered him by House Gibran servants in the hangar, and hurried to a mechalandau. He instructed its simple machine-spirit to take him to his private quarters as quickly as possible.

‘As you wish, Navigator,’ its unpleasant voice burbled. It lurched to its six feet and cantered off down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace, carrying him past lesser members of House Gibran about errands of their own. It was late, and he passed only one other of the mechanical transports. He returned the greeting of Lord Navis Orto Gibran as he approached, declined his offer to talk and take wine, and sped on.

The landau deposited him in the entrance vestibule to his apartments, a high porch and steps set into a tall window of glass that looked out onto jungle gardens. Rain jetting in regimented bursts from sprinklers high in the artificial sky rattled on the window, an incongruously natural sound in those deeps of steel and stone.

The moment he was through the door, his majordomo Erdacian came to greet him.

‘You have been gone long, my lord,’ he said. Erdacian was a Navigator, like all in the Quarter. His third eye was covered over with a strap marked with the sigil of House Gibran.

‘I wish it were wandering through the stars, Erdacian,’ said Helad Gibran. ‘I’ve wandered only so far as the Venusian Lagrange.’

‘My lord,’ said Erdacian, and dipped his head. ‘Shall I order dinner prepared?’

Silent servants came to take Helad Gibran’s outer garments, wash his hands and feet, and spray him with perfumes. Gibran put up with their ministrations impatiently.

‘Yes, and call my companions. I wish to talk of other things than politics for a while.’

‘There is a deal of work for you in your opusarium.’

Gibran sighed with displeasure. ‘I will look it over quickly. Dinner. One hour. I command it.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’

Gibran shook off the last of his servants and made for the large stairway curling around the glassteel atrium of his apartments. Erdacian followed him to the foot of the stairs.

‘What of my Lady Mossa Belisarius-Gibran?’

‘Schedule breakfast for us tomorrow. I shall see her then, not before.’

‘She was most insistent she speak to you as soon as you arrive, my lord.’

‘Tomorrow, Erdacian!’ Gibran called down from the balcony. ‘I wish to look over the gardens for a while. Inform the Paternova’s Master of Admissions that I have returned. If he will meet with me in the afternoon, then I am humbly at his disposal.’

‘My lord.’

Gibran went into his opusarium and shut the door behind him. He rested against the smooth wood, closed his eyes and let out a long, weary breath. The High Lords he could handle, even the Paternova himself, but speaking to his wife tonight was one task too far.

He stood. The lights were off. Soothing green light reflected off the jungle through the room’s large rose window. On the far side of the room was a set of upholstered doors. Beyond them were his bed, his concubines and his collection of fine off-world wines. He was in the mood to enjoy all three. First, he wished to look on his garden, a collection of ancient Terran plants which existed nowhere else.

But to look over the garden, he must stand by his desk. His treacherous eyes were dragged to the piles of work atop it. It was a large desk, but not a scrap of its surface could be seen, buried under a pile of data-slates, documents and flimsies a metre high. His shoulders sagged.

He looked to the exit. He could walk away and pretend he had not seen. He took a step forward, his hand reaching up involuntarily for the door and the pleasures beyond.

He stopped. The stacks of work waited. His warp eye throbbed. He was a fool to come this way. Sentimental, wanting to look upon the gardens. There were no pure pleasures in this world that duty could not spoil.

‘Warp take it all,’ he said. He pressed the button on his vox-cuff. ‘Erdacian. I shall be late for dinner.’

‘Yes, your grace.’

Gibran sat down with a heavy sigh. With a wave of his hand he decreased the opacity of the window until it was totally clear. Artificial rain lashed against it, making the jungle foliage bob with its pounding. At least he might take some pleasure in that.

The work was consuming. It never stopped. If it was not the business of the Imperium, it was the business of his House. He was not the Novator, but he was responsible for ratifying the breeding programmes of his own closest relations. A good quarter of the documents concerned matches and marriage contracts. Many more were reports from Gibran Navigators scattered across space by the war against the Beast. The saddest was the shortest, a list of known and probable losses for his and allied Houses. He held the slate for far longer than it took to read it.

The rain drummed hard on the window. On the other side of the dome encompassing the garden, Sol was slipping out of the smoggy sky.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Damn it! Erdacian! Erdacian! Whoever that is, send him away!’ Gibran bellowed. ‘I’ve got a stack of work here that stretches to Cypra Mundi and back! Erdacian?’ Cursing, he put the slate back on the desk and swore as he chased his vox-link around his wrist. When he pressed it, there was no answer to its musical chime. ‘Erdacian, where are you?’

The door opened a crack, slashing the carpet with a spear of yellow lumen light from the landing.

‘Erdacian?’

Gibran’s hand strayed for the pistol under his desk. His fingers were brushing the holster, when a familiar voice stayed his hand.

‘He is not here, cousin,’ said his visitor.

‘Dovrian Ofar, is that you?’ he said with relief. He relaxed.

‘It is I.’

‘Why did you not announce yourself?’

‘I was passing. I heard you’d come back and, you know, stopped by to surprise you.’ Dovrian shrugged. ‘I rang and rang the bell, but Erdacian was nowhere to be seen. I bring you refreshment where your lax servant has failed.’

Gibran snapped on his desk lumen. Dovrian was Gibran’s fifth cousin, three times removed, the product of three generations of marriage planning that had brought about a fruitful alliance between House Gibran and House Ofar. Careful breed matches meant his genetic code was predominately that of House Ofar, and as such would have looked freakish to standard human eyes. Spindle-limbed and willowy-tall, his skin had a bluish cast and an uncomfortable translucency that hinted at the squirmings of the muscles beneath. His third eye was bound with red cloth, as was House Ofar’s custom. Discreet hydraulic calipers aided his movement, for the Ofars were void-adapted, force-bred for service on Rogue Trader ships, ultra-light packet ships and other far-ranging vessels. The Ofar palaces were in an orbital habitat around Jupiter, and they seldom ventured anywhere that had more than one-quarter Terran gravity, including the manned decks of the vessels they guided.

Dovrian was reckoned of uncommon strength among his clan for the fact he could walk on Terra at all. It was this physical attribute that the Gibran blood had contributed, and as planned, it was also why he had been chosen as the Ofarn Ambassador to the Court of the Paternova. The plan had been to create an Ofar who was of Gibran descent to support House Gibran in the byzantine politics of the Quarter, but good breeding only went so far in determining the traits of an individual Navigator. In a society fond of high living and displays of wealth, Dovrian Ofar had a reputation as a rake, and so teetered alarmingly on the knife blade between asset and liability.

He was, however, good company, and he knew his drink. In his hand he carried an octagonal bottle of Europan salt brandy, a particular favourite of Gibran’s.

‘A gift to welcome you home.’

‘I will not be staying long in the Quarter,’ said Gibran. ‘There is too much to do.’ He waved his over-large hand at the piles of documents on his desk.

‘I can see.’ Dovrian’s exoskeleton hissed as he came closer. ‘May I? Terra’s pull is a burden on my limbs I haven’t yet grown accustomed to.’

Gibran nodded. Dovrian dragged over a chair and sat. ‘That is better. I miss the void.’

‘Me also, and my yearnings grow deeper of late.’ Gibran fetched two glasses and set them down in front of his cousin. ‘Come on then, pour. When I do not complete this work, I can blame you.’

‘Ah, I knew I had a use.’ Dovrian uncorked the brandy and poured it. The sharp, briny smell of it prickled Gibran’s tastebuds.

‘To your health.’ Dovrian raised his glass in salutation.

Gibran drank. The brandy was fine, very fiery and salty.

Dovrian put his own glass down untouched and topped up Gibran’s glass.

‘Drink up, cousin, you never know which will be your last day. These have been testing times for us all.’

‘Praise the Emperor to that!’ said Gibran. He downed the brandy in one gulp and gasped appreciatively, a delightful tremor travelling up his spine from his stomach to his shoulders.

‘Any day these last months could have been your last, my last, the last day for everyone.’ Dovrian gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘We came this close.’ He held up his long, mutant’s fingers, thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart. He smiled again, equally without humour.

‘You are not drinking?’ said Gibran.

‘No. I am not drinking.’ He pushed the glass away from him with his long fingers. ‘Helad,’ he said after moment, ‘the Paternova is displeased.’

The glass paused at Gibran’s lips. ‘How displeased?’

The delightful tremor did not stop, but increased and turned painful. Gibran’s shoulder shook. He set the glass down on the desk. His hands trembled so much he knocked it over. It fell with a muffled thud on the thick carpet, staining it with the sticky liquid.

‘You have poisoned me!’

‘I have,’ said Dovrian.

‘But, but you cannot take my place.’

‘I can, and I will. Lord Vangorich has made a pact with the Paternova. It is settled.’

‘How… how did he speak with him without going through me?’ Gibran said. Seven hundred years of life and decades of staring into the warp had rendered him immune to fear, so he thought. He had been wrong.

Dovrian spread his hands apologetically. ‘I provided the conduit. It was a risk to me to even attempt it, but your performance has been so woeful I was confident of success. The price for my ascension is your death. I am sorry. I am fond of you. It is nothing personal.’

‘You traitor, you…’ Gibran reached under his desk with weak hands for his pistol. The holster was empty. His throat constricted. He stood, his legs almost buckling.

‘Why?’ he croaked. ‘Your strain is not even gravity adapted. Living here will kill you.’

‘You are gravity adapted, but life here has still killed you.’

‘Your every day will be agony.’

‘Perhaps, but I am marooned here anyway. You made me to suffer. Power will dull my pain.’

Gibran spluttered and choked. He could barely breathe. ‘Erdacian. Erdacian!’ His voice was a painful whisper.

With the last of his strength he stumbled drunkenly towards the doors, forcing them open by falling against them. He staggered out onto the balcony. It was empty. His servants had deserted him.

Choking on frothing sputum that tasted of blood, Helad Gibran fell to the floor. Dovrian stood over him. Gibran tugged with nerveless fingers at his warp eye cover, hoping to reveal it and blast Dovrian with the fell energies it contained. But the scarf would not come loose, and his hand ceased to obey his brain. He slid to the floor, his limbs loose as string.

‘I am now the Paternoval Envoy to the Senatorum Imperialis,’ said Dovrian. ‘The youngest in all history. Can you imagine?’

Gibran was past hearing. Dovrian stepped over his twitching corpse. A new world order was dawning.

Juskina Tull sat limply in her bedchamber as her handmaid Anastay brushed her hair. She no longer took pleasure in the murals on her walls. Representing four-fifths of Imperial territory, they were huge spacescapes, the nebulae and planetary systems on them gleaming by cunning means, each celestial body shifting as the hours of the day passed to represent their position in the heavens relative to one another. Where perspective and positioning permitted a view of the stars as they were seen from Terra, fanciful beasts curled around the points of light, drawn from the dozens of zodiacs dreamed up across the ages. Humanity had always looked to the stars and dreamed, even in the worst of times. At night, when she lay in bed, the murals made it seem as if she floated through space. It had been a marvellous feeling.

If she wished, she could call up the positions of Chartist ships in the areas depicted, so the murals served a purpose partway between art and strategic tool. She had always preferred them as art, spending long hours staring into abyssal depths, picking out the stars of the worlds she had visited. It was her meditation, her way of purging the cares of the day and focusing on what she was, the mistress of the free merchant fleets of the Imperium.

Now they gave her only shame. The dark between the pinpricks of distant suns held an unquenchable terror, and yet still she could not stop looking.

Her nights were full of the screams of dying men and women, crushed upon the ork attack moon. She hadn’t been on the surface, but she could imagine. During the day her mind was troubled by flashes of bloodied faces and screaming orks. She had been one of the lesser players of the great Imperial game, but an enthusiastic one. No more. Her mind was numbed with horror. She stifled a sob.

Anastay ran the brush through her hair.

‘Hush, mistress, be still, be calm. We are nearly done. Am I hurting you?’

Tull wanted to speak, but she was deep in sorrow. She shook her head mutely.

‘Put aside your cares then.’

Hiss, hiss, shush shush, went the brush.

‘I have done such a terrible thing,’ Tull said softly.

‘Hush. Do not dwell on it.’

‘I do not sleep.’

‘Heavy are the burdens of power,’ said Anastay.

Tears welled from Tull’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. ‘I failed in my responsibility. I overreached. I have embarrassed my adeptus, and caused the loss of millions of lives. All so that ork could laugh at us, and that horrible face in orbit…’ She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Anastay set the brush down on the table and came around Tull’s front. She grabbed Tull’s wrists gently and pulled them away from her face. Anastay was very old.

‘Do not be sad, you have much to live for. You shall recover. You are strong, and beautiful.’

Tull smiled through her tears. ‘Not now.’

‘You could be old like me. Better to stay beautiful forever.’

‘That is impossible.’

‘Then enjoy it now, before it fades. In time, you will be old and wrinkled as I.’ Anastay gently pushed Tull around so that she faced the mirror above her dressing table. ‘See, such fine hair, not grey. Such perfect skin and bone structure.’

Tull looked into the mirror. The contrast between the lady and her servant was striking, horribly so. She imagined becoming that repulsive. The truth was that Tull was almost certainly many years older than Anastay, but anti-gerontic drugs and rejuvenat therapies could not stave off age forever.

‘My father was a remembrancer, did you know that?’ said Anastay.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Tull.

‘He was very fond of ancient history. Really ancient history, the cultures of Roma and Nihon from the first and second millennia. Do you know, in ancient times, when a warrior or official failed, they would kill themselves? They would take their gun, or their sword, poison, or a razor and they would end their lives, just like that. They must have been very brave to do that, I always thought, to banish dishonour with their own sacrifice.’

‘Yes, they must.’ Her eyes strayed to a drawer in her table. Inside was her pistol, unworn for many years since she had left active service. The drawer was open a crack. She didn’t remember taking out her gun. She had not for a long time.

‘My lady,’ said Anastay, putting her hands on Tull’s shoulders. ‘It is better to be strong, to face your failures and overcome them, to rise to the challenge that disgrace presents us, and prove ourselves better.’

‘But I am not strong,’ said Tull. ‘I was, but I am not any more.’ She put her hand over Anastay’s. It was hot and soft.

‘Then you must be brave,’ said Anastay. She squeezed Tull’s hand. ‘I shall draw your bath, my lady.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tull. ‘You have always been a great comfort to me.’

Anastay departed, leaving Tull alone below the shifting, hololithic skies.

Thane, the Lord Guilliman, had accused her directly of incompetence. She had had faith in the Emperor, she had trusted He would aid her in her crusade. He had not. Mesring had had no faith either, and that had dismayed her. But Thane was no follower of the Imperial Creed. The Adeptus Astartes were gross deformations of the human form, but they were made by the Emperor Himself. How stupid she had been. Thane was right, he was closer than she could ever be to the Emperor. Gods could not help them, mankind should help itself. Where she had thought she had faith, she had exhibited a child’s belief in the infallibility of her parents, nothing more.

She looked at the drawer. She was naive, foolish. She had nothing more to offer. Perhaps she had enough strength left in her to be brave.

The drawer slid out easily. Her pistol lay in a cavity fitted perfectly to its form. It was nothing exotic, a simple laspistol, but of great value to her. It had been a present from her father when she took command of her first ship. The gun was expensive, of course, chased with iridescent gold etched with looping patterns.

Her trembling fingers brushed it. Dishonour, that was the word Anastay had used. She pulled the gun from the drawer. The feel of its weight in her hand and the smoothness of the rosewood butt brought back memories. Most were good, proud moments. All they did was make the shame of the present seem sharper.

She thumbed on the power. The battery indicator ticked up from red through to green. Funny. Her father always bought the best, but she would have thought the battery would have run flat during its time in the drawer.

Many guilty lives had been claimed by the pistol. Mutinous crewmen, pirates, xenos raiders. What was one more? The muzzle was cool on her temple. Anastay would not hear the shot over the thundering of the bath water. Tull hoped someone else found her. The handmaid had been the closest thing she had to a friend.

The stars shifted above. Once more she took pleasure in their beauty. She smiled before she squeezed the trigger.

Her skull muffled the discharge.

In the ablutorial down the hall, the bath ran and ran until it overtopped, spilling water and flower petals upon the floor.

Anastay had returned to her temple, her mission complete.

The Tower of Autumn was inconspicuous as the spires of Terra went. A bastion swallowed by the rebuilding of the city a thousand years ago, it no longer served a defensive purpose. Being too hallowed to be given over to other uses, it remained as a dusty monument to the siege of the Imperial Palace.

Verreault grimly looked up from its loopholes. Not far away was the Widdershins Tower, and the Cerebrium at its summit.

‘Come away from the window,’ said Lansung.

‘No one will see me.’

‘I don’t like it. I don’t like you staring up there. Vangorich has been using it as his personal lair, I hear. Skulking in there when he thinks no one is watching. He has been for some time. I’ll bet it is crowded with listening devices and vid-capture units.’

‘Probably. Certainly,’ said Verreault. ‘Does it matter? Did you ever use it?’

‘No. Mesring did, I think. Do I look so foolish?’

‘We have all been foolish to let that snake slither into our company,’ said Verreault. ‘He sat among us as if he were a member of the High Twelve until he was actually made one. He’s always been there, poking and prodding.’

‘Imagine if we’d have given Rosarind, Mendem, Hardiman or any of the other lesser High Lords the same access.’

‘We wouldn’t,’ said Verreault. The Cerebrium was featureless through the ever-present smog of Terra. Faceless as an assassin, he thought.

‘Abel, come away from the window, please!’ said Lansung.

Verreault sighed but relented. He limped over to the table where Lansung sat. It was made of iron, circled by nine seats to represent the nine loyalist primarchs of the Heresy war. None were designed to be sat in. They were oversized and bolted to the ground too close to the table. He lowered himself into one anyway, wincing as he bent his bad knee.

‘Neither of us are getting any younger,’ said Verreault. ‘I should retire.’

‘I am more concerned with neither of us getting any older,’ said Lansung irritably. ‘Retiring won’t save you from Vangorich’s killers. In making him Lord Protector, Thane might as well have handed him a license for our executions.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t maybe me, Abel. You wouldn’t be here if you thought your head safe.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘This is not the Senatorum. We have no room for equivocation. Stop the maybes and the perhapses. You must commit. Are you with me or are you not?’

‘Yes, yes. Of course I am.’ Verreault gave his ally — friend was too much of a stretch for Lansung — a reassuring nod. ‘Keep your head, man.’

‘Damn it!’ Lansung slapped his hat upon the table; it was an artisan’s cap. Both of them were disguised as commoners, though they bore arms no common man could possibly possess. A cloud of dust rose to sparkle in the dirty sunlight. ‘All this, all these years of service to be accused of treachery. What do the Adeptus Astartes know of governance? They are killers. It is all they know.’

‘Where is Ekharth?’ said Verreault. ‘Shouldn’t he be here by now?’

Lansung pulled a pocket chronograph out. ‘He is late. I advised him to take a circuitous route. He will have become lost. I’ve never seen him without a dozen servants. The man’s hopeless.’

‘Vangorich may have got to him already.’

‘He’ll be here,’ said Lansung.

They had nothing more to say. The raucous noise of Terra’s traffic and industry rumbled in through the unglazed loopholes. The smell of their own fear settled in the room. The Autumn Tower had seen fierce fighting. Many heroes had been made there. Verreault offered a private apology to their ghosts for his own cowardice.

The door creaked. Lansung half leapt from his chair, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Verreault drew his bolt pistol.

‘Ekharth?’

The door squealed wide. A breathless Ekharth, smeared in rust and dust, came through it.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ said Lansung, eyes widening at the Master of the Administratum’s dirty finery. ‘What if you were followed?’

Ekharth laughed through his panting at their disguises. ‘Do you think playing dress up would help us?’

‘Did you come alone?’ said Verreault. He kept his bolt pistol in his hand.

‘I did, I did. I got a little lost,’ said Ekharth. ‘One is not used to arranging one’s own affairs.’

‘Sit! We lack for time,’ said Lansung.

‘I have guessed why you wish to see me.’ Ekharth sat, equidistant from the other two so they formed the points of a triangle.

‘Vangorich,’ said Verreault. His voice strangled on the name.

‘His appointment is dangerous, I agree,’ said Ekharth.

‘He forces our hand,’ said Lansung. ‘Vangorich seeks to govern in all but name. He has threatened us to win our support. Our entourages were infiltrated. Assassins disguised as our closest bodyguards have been at our sides for the Emperor alone knows how long. Months.’

‘Years, even, Lansung. We should not underestimate him,’ said Verreault.

‘We should not!’ said Ekharth. He panicked. ‘Has he done the same to me? Are my family all right? I… I must go.’

‘Calm down, Tobris. Stay seated.’

‘He will have similar plants in all the High Lords’ households.’

‘Even Wienand’s, even the Navigator’s,’ said Ekharth. His eyes boggled. Sweat beaded his face.

‘Definitely. His men are everywhere,’ said Verreault.

‘You are sure?’

‘We have seen it. Their faces melted and changed in front of us,’ said Lansung. ‘Polymorphine.’

‘I saw it too,’ said Verreault. ‘He has used the threat of them to garner our support.’

‘I had wondered why you voted with him recently,’ said Ekharth. ‘What are you proposing?’

‘Like any enemy, he must destroyed,’ said Lansung.

‘Killed,’ said Verreault.

‘Assassinate the Assassin? Are you sure?’ said Ekharth.

‘We have no other choice,’ said Lansung. ‘Our adepta have their own killers. Vangorich has no monopoly on death.’

Ekharth’s face changed in an instant, from panic to laughter. He opened his mouth wide and laughed so loudly the chamber rang with the sound of it.

‘He’s gone insane,’ said Verreault. ‘I knew we shou—’

An overpowered laspistol went off, the displacement crack muffled by a megathule modulator. Verreault fell face forwards onto the table. As he died, his fingers tightened, sending a bolt shooting past Ekharth’s head. It buried itself in the wall and exploded, scattering a spray of hot iron. Ekharth did not flinch at the impact. Lansung shrank in on himself, hands upraised.

Ekharth stood, laspistol trained upon Lansung in a rock steady grip, though a fragment of shrapnel hissed in the skin over his eye.

‘You are not Ekharth,’ said Lansung.

‘My, my. The people mutter about your idiocy. I had thought them wrong, it is the way of the ruled to rail against rulers. It appears they were not. Obviously, I am not Ekharth. Stand up.’ The man who was not Ekharth jerked his gun. ‘Move. Take my place here.’

‘And if I do not?’

‘I’ll shoot you and then drag you here. If you want to survive this, I advise you to comply. Move, Lord High Admiral.’

‘This is treason! Vangorich cannot hope to get away with this.’ Lansung stood up, his hands over his head.

‘I believe he can, though what I think doesn’t matter. I am a tool. He is the artist. Now sit.’

The Assassin waved Lansung into the chair. Still covering the Lord High Admiral, he walked around the table, took up Verreault’s bolt pistol in his left hand and crouched down to the level of the table. When he pointed the bolt pistol at Lansung, it was situated exactly where it would have been had Verreault been alive and still holding it.

‘What are you doing?’ said Lansung, his face blanching.

‘From your own lips you condemn yourselves. There is no escape from this. You are to die a traitor, Lord High Admiral.’

Lansung rose from the chair. ‘You said I would survive!’

‘I implied you would. Goodbye.’ The Assassin fired. Lansung’s protests went unsaid. The bolt-round hit him in the heart, obliterating the organ and with it, the life of Lord High Admiral Lansung.

The Assassin sprayed the guns with a geneticide that wiped all trace of his use of them away. He waited for the chemical agent to become inert, then placed the guns into the hands of the two dead High Lords. Then he peeled off the thin layers of flesh-coloured synskin that covered his arms to the elbow, placed them in a loophole and set them alight with a melta beam, burning them twice so that only fine ash remained. He blew this away to join the rest of the particulate matter clogging Terra’s skies. They’d find no fyceline discharge on him now, if they dared to look.

He ruffled his hair, hyperventilated to redden his face, then keyed his vox-button. Ekharth’s servants waited for him at the foot of the tower.

‘Help! Help!’ he said in Ekharth’s voice. ‘High Lords Lansung and Verreault have murdered each other!’

Chapter Ten Krule’s judgement

Beast Krule observed the street from a stanchion of a monorail, crushed into the space between bracket and trackbed that allowed the rail to flex on its pneumatic suspension, although a carefully placed block of adamantium prevented it from doing so for the time being. Apart from a slightly bumpy ride for the commuters riding between the Archive Menorum and their tribal hab-towers, there was no indication Krule was there, down in the underhive of the Antipodean Minoris region. He was shielded from the street by the architecture of the transit line and from augurs by the electricity sputtering from the monorail’s fraying cables.

It was extremely uncomfortable, but comfort had never been a consideration in an Assassin’s career. Lurking had been his lot in life. Even while monitoring traffic in Tashkent Hive, he had been watching unobserved. If there was a time in his life when he hadn’t hidden, he didn’t remember it. The Venenum Temple had been dark. When he hadn’t been training to fight or to poison, he had been training to hide. That was his role, to hide and strike in close and depart, and he was good at it.

The land here had been mountainous before it had been covered over. Rather than level the peaks, the architects of the hive had simply boxed them in, creating this small underworld. The metal sky of the higher levels pressed down hard on the mountain stumps. An angle of stone and filthy metal defined the boundary of the underhive. Ancient structures from the dawn of mankind’s history slumped against the giant supporting columns of the hive above. Rotting rockcrete slums closed in his perceptions to this one dirty street, washed by effluent rain and frequented by nobody he would like to meet. He had been waiting a very long time, and Krule was getting nervy.

Ordinarily, Krule asked no questions about a particular play, beyond those that would help him refine the mission. This time there was a question that niggled him as he waited in that noisome space.

Why did Vangorich want Vernor Zeck dead? Vangorich confided a lot in Krule, but not everything. Krule had seen how ineffectual the High Lords had become, he understood Vangorich’s frustration. But why Zeck? Zeck had been no worse than the others, and in Krule’s estimation, he had been a sight better than most of them. Most of the High Lords were either good at running their adepta but not very good at politics, or the reverse. Zeck was among maybe three of the High Twelve that were good at both. The Grand Provost Marshal did not take much for himself in the way of riches and prestige. He did his duty, in fact, he did more. He took as much interest in the local Arbitrators of Terra as he did in the more prestigious, star-spanning lawgivers of the Adeptus Arbites. The fact that Krule was watching over some run-down sub-precinct at the back end of the world, and not stalking the halls of a palace, was proof of that.

A facility for the common touch and an interest in all levels of his organisation might not be the only reasons Zeck was there. It could also signify something else; it could be proof that Zeck knew he was being watched. Better to be attacked surrounded by seasoned urban warfare specialists than soft servants in the high hives. If that was the case, then Krule’s gambit here was not going to work. He was going to have to go in and finish the job personally.

Zeck’s private vehicle waited outside the sub-precinct, protected by four Adeptus Arbites armoured suppression transports. It had been on the curb for hours. That was the first issue provoking Krule’s nerves. The second was the inexorable train of thought that thundered through his mind as often as the monorails shuttling dead-eyed scribes between the only two buildings they’d ever see.

It went like this. If Zeck was judged worthy of termination, a fate Krule thought he did not deserve, then why not all the High Lords? And if all the High Lords were in line for assassination, then the reason Krule was here might be that his own specialisation best equipped him to deal with the massively augmented Grand Provost Marshal. But it could also be that Vangorich wanted Krule out of the way while his grand plan played out. That was bad news, because it meant Vangorich had lost his trust in his favoured weapon.

Vangorich’s trust was not something Krule wished to lose. If Vangorich was shutting him out, it would be a short step to shutting him down.

He returned his attention to the mission. There was only the mission, he had been taught that since his earliest years. There was no higher authority than the Grand Master. He repeated this to himself until it made a nonsensical babble in his mind, and yet his doubts grew stronger.

What if Vangorich wanted him dead too?

The sound of a poorly maintained door sliding open drew his attention back to the sub-precinct. Krule held up his magnoculars to his eyes. A man who looked very much like the Grand Provost Marshal got into his private transport. A second later, this same man was comprehensively gassed by the toxin microdevice Krule had secreted in its chassis. Green fog billowed from the vehicle, corroding everything it touched.

As alarms blared the length of the street and Arbitrators flooded from the building, Krule reviewed the pict capture of his magnoculars. The man was too broad, too short; only by millimetres, but there it was. The heat pattern of his organics did not match the data files contained in the magnoculars.

That was not Zeck.

Screeching tyres sounded up the road. An armoured speedster sent up clouds of blue smoke as it burned synthrubber on the potholed hardtop. Someone was panicking.

‘That is Zeck,’ said Krule.

He unfolded himself from his hiding place and dropped six metres to the ground. He yanked a piece of scrap plasteel from the side of the monorail pylon, uncovering a high-powered motorbike.

Less than a second later, he was in pursuit, Arbitrators shouting and firing ineffectually as he roared off after the speedster.

The light car raced along the underhive streets at breakneck speed, hurtling down the road, driving straight at piles of garbage and blasting them apart. The speedster took a right-angle turn down a narrow lane into a slum. Filthy shacks squatting in the ruins of dead civilisations were shattered by the ground car’s prow. The dispossessed scattered in every direction. Krule jinked around them skilfully. The driver was good, but no one was as good as Krule.

The speedster accelerated towards a bridge over a riverbed dry of water for dozens of centuries. The rusting supports of the bridge whipped past. To the left was an ancient seabed, the braided marks of the dead river’s outflow still visible under cluttered piles of junk. A little further out, where the seabed flattened, the hive bottom rested directly on Terra’s rock. A wall of plasteel higher than a cliff hurried the horizon near. Dirty windows looked over the stone and filth of Terra’s true self.

In the bottom of the wall was a neglected transit tunnel edged with dirty hazard striping. Placards indicated it led to the upper levels of the Nozaylant hive. No one in the underhive was wealthy enough to own private transportation, and no one from above would want to go there. The road was as empty of traffic as the river was of water, its toll gates derelict.

Sensing escape, the driver accelerated the speedster. Krule opened the throttle on the bike, sending it hurtling after with an animal roar that reverberated around that small metal hell. The car approached the tube. Krule depressed a button on his bike’s handlebar, sending a compact rocket streaking from the front fairing. It hit the car’s rear-right wheel just as it was nearing the tunnel and blasted the wheel free, sending it burning and bouncing off the abandoned road into a cluster of ruins that must have been twenty thousand years old if they were a day. The car bucked, slewing off the road, and impacted with a fatal crunch into the edge of the tunnel. Krule decelerated. He drew his pistol and leapt off the bike, leaving its machine-spirit autodrive to take it away from him.

He rolled as he landed, coming up with both hands on the gun. His sleeveless, skintight mission suit was covered in filth from his wait. His hair itched. Krule was not in a good mood.

The flames of ruptured fuel cells burst from the car’s engine compartment. A pathetic machine whining came from its on-board systems, the sound of a terrified prey animal.

He went to the driver’s station first. The windows were opaque from the outside, and he couldn’t see in. Holding his pistol in one hand, he punched his adamantium-reinforced fists through the window, grabbed the door and ripped it free. A man who can rip a car door off, he thought, and I was helpless against the orks of Ullanor.

Krule realised he was allowing his frustrations of the last months to distract him, and that nearly cost him his life. He was too slow putting a frozen needle of toxin into the head of the driver.

The rear door of the car burst off in a shower of glass. Krule turned as it flew through the air and landed with a bang on the road, dragging a trail of sparks from the rough surface. That delay could not be regained. Half a second, but that brief span of time would have enabled him to fill Zeck with toxin needles if he hadn’t been thinking about orks.

Zeck’s bionic hand slapped Krule’s gun hard, breaking it and sending it wheeling through space to be lost in the detritus of man’s forgotten past.

‘Krule. The Grand Master’s pet,’ said Zeck. He hauled himself from the wreck of the car and the remnants of his uniform fell burning from his body. His torso, exposed, revealed how much of Vernor Zeck’s original body remained, and it was a low proportion of the whole. All of his left side had been replaced with banded plasteel, from below his sternum to the tips of his fingers. His right arm possessed a little more of his birth organics, being augmetic only below the shoulder. Both of his legs were mechanical. The few patches of skin uncovered by metal were livid with fresh burns. Zeck appeared not to feel them.

‘I will not fall to that serpent.’ Zeck wrenched a piece of metal from the car and threw it at Krule’s head.

Krule dodged, put himself into a guard position and backed away as Zeck advanced.

‘Traitor!’ roared Zeck. ‘You would slay a High Lord?’

He charged at Krule. The Assassin sidestepped. Zeck’s fist punched a blow into the rockcrete road that would have shattered a man’s ribcage to mince.

‘I have been ordered to terminate you. My wishes don’t come into it.’

‘A man who obeys orders without thought is as much a traitor as one who thinks treason for himself. Your master would usurp the rule of the Imperium. You are as culpable as he.’

‘I’ve been given orders only to kill you,’ said Krule. He shouldn’t talk to his marks, but his misgivings were resurfacing.

Zeck swung again. Krule ducked the blow. A grinding sound came from Zeck’s left knee. The crash had done its damage.

‘Then surely you must care for your own life as much as you do for your duty,’ said Zeck. ‘Vangorich will end you once this is over.’

Krule paused. Zeck spoke Krule’s own thoughts aloud.

Zeck’s fist pounded into Krule’s chest. The metal in his ribs flexed, cracking the bone it was bonded to, and he was sent staggering back. Zeck laughed and drew back his fist. Krule caught it in his own hands, twisted, straightened the Grand Provost Marshal’s arm into a lock. Servo-motors whined as he pushed, but Krule’s musculature was as enhanced as his skeleton, and slowly he forced Zeck to the ground.

‘The problem with this model of augmetic is that although it is very strong, the shoulder attachments are quite weak in this one direction,’ said Krule, and slammed the heel of his hand hard into Zeck’s shoulder. Zeck roared in pain. He swatted at the Assassin with his free hand, but Krule took the blows, and he pushed harder and harder.

With a wrenching crack, Zeck’s left arm buckled around the joint. The plasteel ruptured. Wires fizzed and the arm fell limp. Krule released it. The Provost Marshal staggered to his feet, but Krule spun and kicked hard at his weakened knee joint, shattering it, and Zeck fell to the ground again.

‘When I put someone down, they stay down, Zeck.’ He lifted his metal-bonded fists and prepared to deliver the final blow.

‘Wait! Wait!’ cried Zeck. ‘You paused. You know he will kill you.’

‘We’ve all got to die sometime,’ said Krule.

‘But why like this, in dishonour? What of your oaths of loyalty?’

‘I owe my loyalty to the Grand Master, no other man.’

‘That is untrue! You owe your loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind, not to Drakan Vangorich. Think, Krule! Your Officio is a check on the others. But where is the check on the Assassins? Vangorich has gone rogue. Is this how you want to spend your life? Murdering those who disagree with Vangorich? He doesn’t need to do this. Thane appointed him Lord Protector. His only reason can be that he wishes to rule alone.’

Krule lowered his hands.

‘You see it!’ Zeck said, encouraged. He pulled himself up, resting on his good knee. ‘You’ve got to stop him, Krule. You’re the only one who can get close to him. The rest of us are finished. If he has sent you after me, the most loyal of the Emperor’s servants, then not one of the High Lords will see the week out.’

‘I think that’s why I’m here,’ said Krule. ‘He sent me away. He guessed I wouldn’t agree.’

‘And you discover this now?’

‘I am not as intelligent a man as Drakan Vangorich, do you think he’d have me around if I were?’ Anger rose up in him. He shook his head and began to pace. ‘It won’t work. I’m next on his list. I better disappear.’

‘You’ve got to try. If he takes over the Imperium, it will be a disaster. No one man can rule. Finish his reign before it begins and call back the Lord Guilliman. You will be a hero.’

‘Do you think I care about fame, heroism? Do you think I want a statue?’ Krule laughed. ‘I’m an Assassin!’

‘Then think about the future of the human race. If you don’t care about that, then what have you been killing for? You’re nothing but a monster.’

Krule stepped back. The ruined face of Zeck remained awkwardly upturned. Zeck looked like the monster, not he. But true monstrousness was worn on the inside, the way Horus and his brothers had hidden their treachery. Krule might get away and live a life on some backwater world, always looking over his shoulder. That would make him no better than Vangorich, complicit in his treachery by his refusal to act.

‘All right. All right. I can’t face going back to Tashkent anyway. I’ll act the loyal attack dog and then I’ll bite him hard. But I need proof I killed you. It’s the only way he’ll swallow the lie and let me get near to him.’

‘Take what you need,’ Zeck said. The relief in his voice was palpable.

‘You’re not going to like it.’ Krule pulled out a monofilament garrote from his utility belt.

‘Wait! Stop! There must be another way.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Krule, ‘but I’m going to need your head.’

Chapter Eleven Red Haven

Saskine Haast walked into the great stores of the palace of the Fabricator General. Servitors clomped about, mindlessly performing whatever it was they were programmed to do. Whenever she saw an adept, she ducked out of sight until they had passed. They were no one of any consequence, but such low-ranking people tended to be insufferable busybodies, taking such pride in their inconsequential work that they would report the slightest thing out of place. They bemused Haast. She could understand it if they behaved so for favour, but she had spent some time now among the servants and bondsmen of the palace, and most of them appeared to lack any iota of ambition. They had been extremely hard to hide among, and she had come close to discovery. She checked her impatience. So close to being freed from the tedious role that had been forced upon her, she was in danger of making a mistake.

The palace’s store was immense, and stocked with all manner of things. There were those tech-priests who still ate, and so there was room after room of hyper-chilled larders. The machine as well as the flesh of such creatures needed sustenance, and so there were also kilometres of shelving taken up with chemical drums and vats of elixirs, spare parts and raw materials. These items for the maintenance of Kubik’s extensive household did not interest her. She needed the deeper stores. Kubik’s personal laboratory was incorporated into the palace and it was served by its own complex of receptaculae. Beyond them were the cavernous cellae, where treasures from all over the Martian empire were kept: rare technologies, organisms and resources. But what she needed was closer to hand.

She followed stairs down into the chemical stores of the palace, passing huge tanks full of liquids and silos of powder. She checked the location of the object on her data-slate and slowed. She was getting close.

She halted at a long row of identical cylinders, taller than two men and held in frames of yellow metal embellished with castings of the Machina Opus. She searched out the datastamps at the top of each one, the laser reader on her slate bipping as it scanned the patterns of binaric lines and dots. They were full of pressurised methalon, all but one.

‘001100011110,’ she said, and double-checked the number sent to her by Mariazet Isolde. This was it. The cylinder was sealed and must be cut open. If the information was wrong, she’d be doused in supercooled liquid and suffer an agonising death. She did not hesitate, and produced a lascutter from inside her stolen robes. It was then, lascutter in hand, that she was interrupted.

‘01-Devore, what by the Omnissiah are you doing down here?’

Saskine Haast tensed at the high, piping voice of Vorid Chume, Kubik’s steward.

‘This is not your designated place of service. Please submit immediate summary report as to your last movements. Today and yesterday will suffice.’

‘I regret I cannot, master,’ Haast said humbly, secreting the lascutter in her sleeve.

‘Hmmm, your binharic projector is still non-functional?’

‘Yes, my master.’

Chume glided down the aisle, his long, serpentine fingers entwining with one another and disengaging repetitively. ‘Really, it is two months! This is most irregular. I will look into it myself. Tell me then verbally why you are here.’

‘I am awaiting a delivery of replacement parts for the master’s somnarium, steward,’ she said.

‘You will not find them here! You are very far from the correct store.’

‘I am lost, master,’ she said, feigning embarassment.

Chume was not deceived. His green glass augmetic eyes whirred as they focused on her face.

‘You are lying!’ he said. ‘This is modus unbecoming. You shall be reported and dealt with. You are in a high security area. This is an offence punishable by mind wipe. I am summoning the palace guard.’

‘If you must.’

Chume let out a shrill squeal as Haast cast off her cloak, revealing a supple, synskin-clad body underneath. She activated the lascutter and slashed it across Chume’s throat. His squeal became a gurgle, and he fell down, spraying artificial blood and lubricant.

An alarm sounded some way off.

‘Throne,’ said Haast. She turned to the cylinder and set to work.

Tybalt the Abolitiate dwelt in darkness. He dreamed no dreams. For him, there were periods of death with peaceful nothing inbetween.

The time for peace was over.

He came awake, activated by the last of his shouted trigger words. Warm liquid flushed around him, carrying methalon suspension fluid from his casket out of drains at the bottom. His body temperature rose quickly. He flexed his hand. The neurogauntlet’s five claws ticked on glass. He reached for his thigh where his executioner pistol was holstered and drew it.

His casket was at an angle. Light from its regulating machinery bathed his skull-masked face, supplementing the weak lumen-glow admitted by a gash in a metal surface where a triangle of plasteel had been peeled back. His casket was in a cylinder. He heard shouting, smelled blood, sensed the deadly prickle of radium ammunition.

Under his death’s head rictus, Tybalt grinned.

Insanity was the logical end result of a life like Tybalt’s, frenetic violence followed by enforced suspension. A normal man would not have survived long, but Tybalt was far from normal. It was not that his brain had been altered, or his body packed with implanted technology; what suited him to his role was not what had been done to him, but what he was. When Tybalt was born the sense of empathy human felt for fellow human was missing. Tybalt cared only for the suffering of others, not their tears or their stories. No smile could move him, only terror.

Tybalt had been born to kill. It was a trait the Assassinorum was only too glad to exploit.

Roaring like an animal, he drew back his gauntlet and thrust it forwards. The distance his fist travelled was minimal; the glass shattered anyway, destroyed by a combination of enhanced strength and carefully inculcated skill. Ripping and rending, he sliced the frame of his casket away, leaving its machines to die smoking. Shearing through the metal of the empty methalon cylinder, Tybalt climbed howling into the fray.

His emergence brought a moment of silence. A clade of elite skitarii gathered at each end of an aisle lined by cylinders. Haast was crammed in between two of the storage units. Bodies of cybernetic warriors that had strayed too close lay broken on either approach.

The targeting unit on Tybalt’s backpack rose up, its glassy eye taking in a 270-degree view of his surroundings and swivelling about to complete the picture. A miniature cogitator in the backpack calculated all attack vectors, ranking the opposing Martians in order of threat. Targeting reticules danced all over the faceplate screen of his skull helm. Combat stimulants pumped into his system in massive quantities, elevating his metabolism and mind to superhuman heights. The battle took a microsecond to observe, evaluate and process.

‘Eversor!’ said one of the skitarii. Their rifles opened fire again. Tybalt ran. He was fast, the low gravity of Mars made him faster. An inhumanly high leap sent him crashing among the cyborgs.

With his neurogauntlet flashing, Tybalt set about his deadly work.

Alarms blared all over Kubik’s palace. The sounds of battle grew nearer. Heavily armoured myrmidons enclosed the Fabricator General in a phalanx of steel-caged flesh as they hurried him from his apartments to the main gate, but he was not safe.

Lesser priests came running behind, shouting out status reports with emotionless efficiency. There were a dozen Assassins, one said; there are only two, said another. More broadcast frequent updates to the situation on Terra: the other High Lords were dead, and now Vangorich was coming for him.

An explosion rumbled beneath their feet. In its wake, masonry clattered. Dust blew on a chemical wind.

Kubik screeched angry orders in swift binharic, sending his servants scurrying away. He had been assured the remaining Assassins would be caught. They were not, and now they were in his palace. Those responsible for this failure would be rendered down to components, if he survived.

‘Prime of primes, we have an armoured transport waiting at the main gate,’ said the myrmidon lord, Primus-Ultra Gangovich. They marched down the great staircase of the palace, the weapons mounts of the myrmidons swivelling as they tracked potential ambush sites. By the open gates, Mechanicus troops of all kinds looked out, weapons ready.

‘The Fabricator General comes!’ a seneschal shouted. ‘Hail the Omnissiah!’

More cybernetic Martians joined Kubik’s group, shielding their high priest with their own flesh and metal. They swept towards the door. On the plaza outside, a clade of Onager Dunecrawlers squatted around a legged, armoured transport, waiting to bear Kubik away.

‘Get the prime to the walker!’ ordered Gangovich. Heavily armed skitarii poured out of the palace. Kataphron battle servitors rolled into position around the plaza. The walker’s door dropped and Kubik was hustled towards it.

When he was ten metres from the door, the walker exploded. Shrapnel scythed out, felling the lead elements of Kubik’s bodyguard. Others crowded around him as a shot rang out, striking down a myrmidon who had placed herself in front of Kubik barely in time. Another shot cracked across the plaza, and another myrmidon died. Its head removed, its body mindlessly stamped away.

Kubik’s enhanced mind went into overdrive. The scene was a total loss. Skitarii primes shouted orders. Weapons of the most potent sort blazed in every direction, but the shots kept coming, each a kill. The shooter moved constantly. Every time their position was located, they had gone, and another shot sounded. Kubik’s bodyguard were being whittled away fast.

‘My lord, this way!’ someone said. Arms and mechanical appendages pulled at him, dragging him back into the palace. A shot hit an Onager with an audible plink. A moment later the construct exploded, slaughtering dozens of the Omnissiah’s faithful.

‘We will take you to Port Fabricata,’ said Gangovich. ‘We must get you out of the palace.’

‘No!’ Kubik managed. They were in the hall again, away from the doors. Outside, the shrieking discharge of high-energy weapons carried on unabated. Kubik extricated himself from the manipulators of his would-be saviours. ‘I will go to the chamber of the diagnostiad. I will be safe there. It is inviolable.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ Gangovich said, and Kubik was again hustled away.

Kubik arrived in an antechamber to the diagnostiad by one-man bullet lift, whisked there through a depressurised transit tube. The palace was a long way away, and Kubik began to relax. Outside the diagnostiad, troops of all Mars’ many varieties mustered to protect the approach. Not only Kubik needed defence, but also the tech-priest choir who made up the core of the Martian world-mind.

A metre-thick wheel door separated the bullet lift from the diagnostiad. Disgengaging its complex security protocols calmed him. By the time the door rolled open again, he had begun to formulate a plan. He went into the great sphere, the door rumbling closed after him, and walked around the giant needle that housed the primary interface throne. The whispering voices of the hundreds of mind-linked tech-priests hissed on the air. Quiet. Safety. With a sigh, Kubik stooped. The weight of Mars was on him and he must know what occurred in the palace.

He attempted to open a datalink from his mind to the Martian noosphere. Nothing happened. Internal diagnostic checks indicated no malfunction in his augments. He went to a console embedded in the main gateway. He bent over it, and inserted a probe into an access socket. Immediately, he uncovered the problem.

There was but one conduit for the Motive Force and dataflow in and out of the chamber. Impossibly, somebody had put a block on it.

He retracted his mechadendrite from the console into his robe and made for the door. There was always a member of the Synod on duty there, watching over the machines.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said a voice behind him. ‘I got in here, don’t you think I would have taken the precaution of isolating you? He’s dead. It is a fine, fine place to hide, the diagnostiad. Only a couple of ways in, only one way out. And only one data line. A good idea of yours to come here, if only I hadn’t have been waiting.’

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ said Kubik. He turned to find the Grand Master of the Assassinorum behind him. ‘I am honoured. You came yourself.’

‘Well, you’re an important man, Fabricator General.’

Vangorich was wearing the robes of one of the muttering components of the diagnostiad. Kubik searched for an empty alcove. Sure enough, he found one. In Vangorich’s hand was a light needle pistol with an underslung plasma caster. It looked like something specifically devised to kill the master of Mars.

‘You knew I would do this,’ said Kubik. ‘That I would come here.’

‘Knew?’ said Vangorich. ‘I planned it! I am the Grand Master of Assassins, after all. One would hope such a person might be good at their job. But then, who can tell in these trying times? So few people seem to be fit for their office.’

‘You cannot kill me,’ said Kubik.

‘Can’t I? Your servants are distracted, and they are looking in the wrong place. We have plenty of time.’

‘Gloating before execution is the primary cause of failure of seven per cent of despots,’ said Kubik.

‘I’m not going to gloat,’ said Vangorich. ‘We’re going to talk. Actually, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen, but it’s not gloating.

‘You know, I was raised in Temple Venenum. We are a subtle Temple, not like the others with their guns and alien technology and psychotic super-warriors. Ours is more genteel, we follow the way of guile, of poison, though not exclusively so. Take Krule, I am sure you have heard of him. He is of my Temple. He prefers to use his fists, but I, I have always had an affection for poison. It is so discreet. Poison a man and he won’t even know he’s been murdered. You can change the course of a river with the careful removal of a stone. That is the Assassin’s task. With poison, nobody need ever know who moved it.’

‘How apt,’ said Kubik. He was using his emotionless machine voice. ‘You are poison, Vangorich, corrupting everything you touch.’

Vangorich smiled, pleased with the comparison. ‘I never had you for a dealer in metaphor, Fabricator General. I do like to think I am subtle, like poison, but I am no corrupter. I prefer to think of myself as a healer. Many poisons are medicine, only at too high a dose are they deadly.’

Kubik bleeped in indignation. ‘The removal of the Grand Master from the High Twelve was done for sound reasons. We were remiss to allow your reinstatement.’

‘You were right to bring me back. It should have been done sooner.’

‘So that you might install yourself as ruler?’

‘So that I might prevent the deaths of billions of Imperial citizens,’ said Vangorich. ‘I have not assassinated very many people myself for a long time, Kubik. I am going to make an exception for you. Of all the petty, self-serving, childish behaviour I have witnessed on the Senatorum Imperialis, yours has been the worst by far. I was willing to forget and forgive, move forward with the Senatorum and rule correctly according to the will of the Emperor, however hopelessly idealistic His plans were. But then you had to disobey Thane and move Ullanor. That is what set me on this course of action. In a way, you are responsible for the deaths of the High Lords. Before you made your last greedy error, I was planning on just bullying you all to work together, but you made me realise I’d be better off without the lot of you. I don’t know what I should have expected, I suppose. You did want to secede from the Imperium. I’m an optimist, that’s my problem.’

‘That which is not a part cannot secede.’

‘Semantics. Without the Imperium, the Empire of Mars is dead, and vice versa. We are one people, and that will not change no matter how many times you say otherwise. You are a High Lord of Terra, and you betrayed your office and your Emperor-Omnissiah many times over.’

‘You cannot kill me with impunity.’

‘I can,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’m going to give you a choice. Poison comes in many forms, and not all of it is deadly to living organisms. There are poisons for machines, too. When I sent Red Haven here, I had my infocyte Yendl secrete a dataphage in the Martian noosphere. Now, there are formidable defences in your data vaults, but we of Venenum are clever. The phage has had time to mature, to learn its enemy. It’s been there for months, gathering information to make itself as deadly as it possibly can be. The noosphere has become a home from home. Every lock and keyhole, window and door is known intimately to it.’

Kubik’s mechanical limbs twitched. ‘You will topple an empire to teach me a lesson. Vanity.’

‘Of course not,’ snorted Vangorich. ‘I’m outlining your options. The first is this. You do nothing, I shoot you in the head with this gun which carries a neurotoxin so potent it will burn out every last organic nerve remaining in your body, and then I release the phage into the world-core. It may result in the destruction of Mars as a functioning civilisation, or it may just destroy billions of terabytes of very valuable information. Either way, it is a circumstance you will want to avoid.’

‘And the other alternative?’

‘You voluntarily shut down. After giving me your intelligence core, of course. The thing is, I don’t want you around any more, Kubik, but I would rather that everyone else thinks you are still in charge. It’ll be easier for all concerned that way.’

‘You wish me to kill myself and acquiesce to a replacement who will take my identity?’

‘That’s it. You must ask yourself, what is more important to you — yourself, as an individual, or the continued existence of thousands of years of knowledge?’

Kubik made a strange sound, a flurry of bleeps and twittering. It took Vangorich a moment to realise that the Fabricator General was laughing.

‘You cannot succeed in this. Give yourself up, Vangorich. I assume you have succeeded in disposing of our colleagues on the Council. Stop here. You have rooted out the rot. My death will accomplish nothing.’

‘It will make me feel a lot better,’ said Vangorich. ‘I do so hate a traitor.’

He straightened his gun arm, levelling the pistol at Kubik, and held up a device in the other. ‘Give me your intelligence core, or I swear I will kill this world while you watch.’ Vangorich stared at Kubik, his thumb ready over a button that could wipe away the accumulated wisdom of millennia.

‘You are bluffing.’

‘I assure you I am not,’ said Vangorich. ‘And you cannot afford to assume I am.’

Kubik wilted. ‘You have me,’ he said finally. ‘You slight my loyalty to the Imperium and ask me to prove my loyalty to Mars. Here it is, then, the last act of a true servant of the Omnissiah.’

Kubik threw back his hood, revealing a head underneath made entirely of metal. He cast down his rod of office and depressed a panel on the side of his skull. A fingerwidth column rotated and withdrew from his head. He pressed out the centre of the column and held it out to Vangorich.

‘My intelligence core. The essence of who I am is encoded herein.’

Vangorich came forwards and took it. He passed it over a machine at his belt that beeped and shone green. Vangorich put the intelligence core in his pocket. ‘You are finally doing the right thing.’

‘You will pay for this, in time,’ said Kubik, his voice slurring.

‘Maybe I will, but you are paying for your sins first. Goodbye, Fabricator General,’ said Vangorich.

The indicator lights of Kubik’s augments dimmed and went out. His limbs folded in on each other and he slid gracefully to the floor.

When he was down, Vangorich filled him with toxin needles.

‘A man’s work is never done,’ said Vangorich. He strode from the muttering diagnostiad into a small chamber lined with cogitator banks. A single, immovable red glass eye stared out from their centre. Vangorich stood in front of it and leaned in.

‘Come on, Kubik, I knew about this last bolthole. I can’t have you exloading your consciousness once I’ve gone.’ He tutted. ‘Don’t you know non-organic intelligence is forbidden? This really is the end for you.’

Whistling a jaunty tune, Vangorich got down on his hands and knees and yanked wires out of the cogitators until they stopped working. Then he took out a compact melta bomb and set it to go off where the connections had been thickest.

Just to be sure.

Chapter Twelve Voice from the past

The Medicae Heroum was eerily quiet and smelled of unguent and healing agents. Machine glow lit up the treatment bays punched into the wall. Of the twenty, three were occupied by injured Inquisitorial agents. Veritus was situated in the very last. Wienand trod carefully, wary of disrupting the calm of the ward. Tanks of brightly coloured fluids bubbled in decorative brackets. Her servo-skull escort floated behind her. A second detached itself from an alcove in the wall and floated to the first. Wienand paused as the two exchanged security codes. The medicae skull swung about. A compact augur embedded in the polished bone of its eye socket swept her up and down with a broad beam of red light. An arcane, psychically sensitive pict unit in the other eye took a snapshot of her soul. A mechadendrite whipped out and jabbed her with a needle. She winced as it drank her blood.

‘Wienand, Marguerethe A, genetic imprint confirmed,’ said the skull. ‘Aura imprint confirmed. Security clearance Ultima Black confirmed. Welcome, Lady Inquisitor.’ Its machine-spirit satisfied, the medicae servo-skull withdrew to its alcove. Nestled inside, it became just another part of the room’s decoration.

The Coroner General of the Inquisition himself treated Veritus. Dressed in severe black robes, he waited for Wienand at the foot of Veritus’ bed.

‘Lady Inquisitor,’ said the coroner.

‘How is he?’

‘He will be dead soon,’ the coroner said baldly. ‘There is nothing we can do. Vangorich was thorough with his poison. The Inquisitorial Representative’s body is undergoing cellular collapse. I have tried every sanctioned technique and treatment, and a few that are not. He does not have long. I have interred him in a stasis field at his request, because he wished to speak with you before the end. Alone. I am sorry, Representative.’

The Coroner General bowed his head and departed.

Through the blue shimmer of the stasis field, Veritus looked impossibly small and frail. His armour had been removed and he was swaddled in bright white sheets.

Hesitantly she shut off the field, knowing that in doing so she signed his death warrant. Wienand had seen many people die in the course of her duty. They had never troubled her. This one death of a man who had tried to kill her did.

The field vanished like ice from a heated window. Veritus drew in a long rasping breath. His mouth gaped and his eyes rolled before he settled himself.

‘Wienand?’

‘I am here, Veritus.’

Age had him firmly now. He appeared so ancient that he should not be alive, his skin sagging so much his skull was visible beneath it. But his mortal frame contained life yet, and he fixed rheumy eyes on her and smiled.

‘I half expected Vangorich.’

‘So you know it was him,’ she said.

‘The conclusion did not require a great leap of logic. How long have I been suspended?’

‘Five days,’ she said. ‘I came as quickly as I could. There have been complications.’

‘Vangorich has assassinated the rest of the High Lords.’

Wienand nodded. ‘Most of them. Lansung and Verreault were set up to look like they murdered each other. Their bodies were discovered by Ekharth, but it is probable he is an Officio Assassinorum plant. Sark and Anwar had their souls sucked out by a member of the Culexus Temple. Gibran was killed within the Navigators’ Quarter in what looks like an internal squabble between the Houses.’

‘Vangorich’s hand will have mixed that pot.’

‘I don’t doubt it. The same can be said of Tull’s death. She killed herself, but I believe she was encouraged. She had a longstanding servant who vanished the night of her death. Zeck was killed by Krule. Only Kubik seems to have escaped, and I cannot be sure if he has. He may have struck a deal with Vangorich, the Paternova certainly did, but Vangorich held Kubik and Lansung most responsible for the ork crisis. If I know him, he will have gone after the Fabricator General zealously. And there is, of course, you,’ said Wienand. She laced her hands behind her back and averted her eyes, uncomfortable at the emotion she was showing. Then she remembered that was a particular posture of Vangorich’s and put her hands at her side.

‘I make the full house. I expected him to move against me, I attempted to prevent it, but I underestimated his cunning,’ said Veritus.

‘The poison, how did he administer it to you?’

‘On the Potus Terrae, in the observation gallery. It was the only opportunity he had. My own quarters were hermetically sealed.’

‘But you drank no wine nor took anything else from his hand.’

‘You did,’ said Veritus, ‘and you live. The wine was not poisoned.’

‘The pressure leak,’ said Wienand. ‘But our servo-skulls detected nothing in the gas mix that should have caused you harm, and like the wine, I was exposed. I am still fine. I have been thoroughly examined.’

Veritus nodded weakly. His papery skin rasped on the crisp sheets. ‘The gas mix was non-toxic on its own, but it contained an agent that reacted with the compounds my suit produces for me to breathe. A single molecular binding altered my serums to a form indistinguishable from the benevolent variety, but enough to turn them deadly in my system. It reversed my anti-gerontic medicines, so they attacked my genetic code where they should have preserved. By the time I was ill enough to notice, the damage was irreparable. I am too old to recover from this.’ He laughed drily. ‘Vangorich is clever. He used what was keeping me alive to kill me.’

‘Then I am at risk too,’ said Wienand. She began to pace. ‘I should stay away from the Palace. If I take refuge here in the Inquisitorial Fortress I should be safe enough. From there, I can set the Inquisition to eliminating him.’

‘Not yet. You cannot kill him. You must let him live.’

‘What?’ said Wienand, ceasing her pacing in surprise.

‘Vangorich will have contingency plans, he will have a means to govern. We have none. Remove him now, and civil war will engulf the Imperium. His cover-ups may look sloppy to us, but the doubt they will sow means nobody will trust anybody else. Succession struggles will tear the adepta apart. At this time in history, it will result in the dissolution of the dominion of man, and an end to our species. You must come to an arrangement with him.’

‘He will kill me.’

‘He will not. Wienand, he does not want you dead. I had the wine tested. It contained an antidote.’

‘But the poison was tailored to you, I was not at any risk.’

‘He went out of his way to protect you. Wienand, he has affection for you. You must work with him, for the time being. You are his weakness. He respects you, but his personal feelings cloud his judgement.’

‘I know how he feels,’ she said softly. ‘He would kill me regardless.’

‘He would. So you must not give him any reason to. You must bide your time. Convince him you are sincere in your support, only then will you be able to strike.’

‘That might take years,’ said Wienand.

‘Then so be it. Stability and continuity are what we need now. Let Thane have his Founding and the worlds of the Imperium rebuilt. Only through strength can we resist tyranny, and now we are weak.’

‘You don’t agree with what he has done, do you?’

‘Do you?’ countered Veritus. ‘Both of us have spoken of removing the High Lords in the past, though they rule by fiat of the Emperor Himself.’

Wienand thought a moment. ‘I cannot agree with his actions. He behaved unilaterally. Thane effectively made him regent of the Imperium. He did not need to go so far.’

‘In my opinion it was Thane’s appointment that emboldened him to do so.’ Veritus drew in a sharp, painful breath. He did not have long. Wienand knelt by his side.

‘His plan was to have you be Lord Protector, not he, or so he told me.’

‘A lie or a truth, it doesn’t matter. If I had been appointed, Vangorich would have dangled an antidote to the poison in front of me. He would have taken measures to ensure I didn’t refuse it. The only material difference is that he rules openly rather than manipulating events as he planned, and you are in the position I would have been in, supporting him for fear of something worse. I apologise for that, it is a heavy burden.’ Veritus paused a moment, coming to a decision. A fresh resolution. ‘Wienand, I must tell you things now that no other person alive knows.’

‘You have more secrets?’ she said.

‘My secrets have secrets,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Vangorich may have the best interests of the Imperium at heart, but he will fail. No man can rule the Imperium alone. You must keep the Inquisition independent until this episode is over. Remain vigilant against corruption. No one is immune. I have seen how Chaos can take the best of us. I was there on the Vengeful Spirit when the Luna Wolves were corrupted from within.’

‘The Vengeful Spirit? The Luna Wolves?’ Wienand frowned. ‘The Warmaster Horus’ ship? That’s impossible! No standard human has lived so long.’

‘I have. I did. I am over fifteen hundred years old.’ He reached out with his hand. When Wienand took it, he surprised her with the power of his grip. ‘I knew him, Wienand, I knew the Warmaster. Horus did not begin as anything other than a loving son of the Emperor, but he was proud and he was arrogant, and so when he was tested, he did not have the strength to resist. Do you not see? If he fell, anyone can. There are holes in the armour of the mightiest man. The influence of Chaos is pernicious, it is a slow poison. A man might think he does great good, when he does terrible evil. You must, you must…’ he took in a heaving breath. His eyes locked on to Wienand’s and he held her hand so tightly the bones ground together. Death hovered close at hand and when he spoke again, he did so quickly.

‘You must make sure the Inquisition does not lose its focus. The threats of the material universe are nothing when set alongside the dangers of Chaos. It can strike any time, corrupt any heart. The road to damnation is travelled with small steps and the paving is engraved with noble intentions. By the time we look up from our feet we find ourselves staring into the furnaces of damnation.’

‘No one of any influence like Horus’ has fallen to Chaos since the Heresy,’ said Wienand.

‘Our vigilance has weakened. There have been others, planetary governors among them, who have heard Chaos’ siren call. It is only a matter of time until someone of higher station treads the infernal trail beaten by the Warmaster. Beware of the Adeptus Astartes. They are our greatest defenders, but they can become greater enemies. They are not equipped for failure. I am afraid the end of this crisis may beget more terrible problems than we have endured yet. If the Space Marines fell to Chaos once, they might do again. The Luna Wolves… they… they showed me how it can happen,’ he gasped. ‘They were brought low by pride and false grievance. Their turning damned the Warmaster. Always look to the masses as well as the figureheads. Chaos strikes at both.’

‘I shall. I will!’

‘Do not lose heart. The lures of Chaos are manifold,’ he said, panting shallowly. ‘The powers of the Dark Gods are terrifying, but they are not boundless in their might, and they are opposed. There is light in the universe. You must have faith. The Imperial Creed is the truth, Wienand. I have seen the power of the Emperor at first hand, the way He shields us. He watches us all, He protects us. Never forget that. Even now, as He sits entombed upon the Golden Throne, He is with us. I take comfort in that, although I have seen so much that would test the most pious. My successor, the one you will choose to lead the Ordo Malleus, they must be pure. Anyone who opposes Chaos directly is exposed to its temptations. The finest soul can be blackened. They must be kept honest, focused not on their duty, but why they do their duty. Do you understand me?’

Wienand nodded. ‘I do.’ She looked down at the wizened example of humanity in the bed, so emaciated and frail his body made but a wrinkle under the sheets. She looked into his face wonderingly. Could a man truly live 1,500 years?

‘Now, there is something I have to give you. Press your palm to mine. Quickly!’

She shifted her grip on his hand. Veritus spoke swift words under his breath. Wienand cried out as a sharp pain stabbed into her palm, growing hot to the point of agony.

‘Hold still! Bear the pain! I pass to you the key to Titan. Without it, you will not be able to enter the monastery there.’

The pain grew. Wienand gritted her teeth. It reached a crescendo and she gasped.

‘You must go to Titan,’ said Veritus. ‘Seek out the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. Seek out Janus! Pass on to him our plans and tell him they have my blessing.’

His breath rattled in his chest. His eyes slid closed.

‘Is it true?’ she whispered. ‘Did you really know Horus?’

‘It is the truth,’ said Veritus. With a last effort, he pulled on Wienand’s hands, his knuckles white, half lifting his frail body. His face lost some of the lines of pain, becoming open and lighter. He smiled, pleased to share his great secret at last. ‘My name was Kyril Sindermann. I was chief iterator to the Sixty-Third expedition of the Great Crusade. I was present when Horus abandoned the love of the Emperor for the lies of the enemy. I was there as the Luna Wolves were corrupted from within. I was there at Isstvan III when brother turned on brother. I endured the Siege of Terra, and I knew Saint Euphrati, the first of the saints, as a friend.’

He sank back into the mattress.

‘And…’ he gasped. ‘And…’

Wienand leaned in. His last words were as arid and hushed as wind blowing over sand.

‘And I was there the day the Emperor slew Horus.’

A last, wheezing breath passed from Veritus’ lungs, followed by a thread of bloody dribble. His heart fluttered under the sheets, then stilled.

Wienand bowed her head. On impulse, she planted a kiss on Veritus’ — on Sindermann’s — dry forehead. As she pulled free from the dead man, she saw an open, bloodless wound in his palm. Her own twinged in sympathy and she rubbed at it. There was a small scar transecting the lines of her hand. Beneath it, she felt the lump of an implanted device.

She must go to Titan. But first, there was someone she must set free.

Chapter Thirteen A new order

Vangorich stood up from the high table and raised his hands. ‘My lords and ladies of the Adeptus Terra!’ he proclaimed. His amplified voice boomed through a Great Chamber packed to capacity. Every tier of seating was full. Where the chairs had been removed, men and women stood. He looked up to a sea of expectant faces. ‘I am pleased today to address you as the new Lord Protector of Terra.’

The chamber erupted in uproarious cheers. Vangorich basked in them before silencing the crowd with a downward wave of his hands. ‘Thank you for your approval. It is some time since this Council has been so fortunate as to reign with the full backing of the estates of the Imperium. We are here before you with a new High Twelve. Sadly, our Lords of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Astronomican have retired from public life, the psychic strain of the Beast having proved too much for even their powerful minds to encompass safely. The losses of this war have been grave, and they continue still.

‘I ask you to join with us in memoriam for Juskina Tull, whose bravery and faith in calling the Proletarian Crusade bought Terra many valuable hours before the arrival of the Last Wall could deal with the ork moon orbiting the Throneworld. Lady Tull has taken her own life. She believed herself a failure, but we shall remember her as a valiant heroine.

‘The changes go further, my friends, as you can see from the people arrayed at this table with me here. You will notice the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites Vernor Zeck has also gone. He has relinquished his post on the Council to better aid the reconstruction efforts of the Imperium. Lansung and Verreault are no more.’ He became theatrically solemn. ‘I was due to instigate an investigation into their affairs. Already the Adeptus Fidicius have uncovered grave irregularities in Lansung’s accounting for the running of the Imperial Fleet. At this stage, we can only assume he argued with his partner in these crimes Abel Verreault, who will forever be known for his sluggish response to the orkish threat, and, after an argument, they killed each other.’

Hush greeted this announcement. ‘And so, allow me to introduce the new High Twelve of the High Lords of the Senatorum Imperialis.’ He held out his hand to a man on his right, a balding, square-set fellow whose face was crossed with a livid purple scar. ‘Oskar Lowis, new Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum.’ He indicated a woman next to Lowis. ‘Iryss Gelthor, recently segmentum commander of the Obscurus Fleet, now Lord High Admiral. We all know Hektor Rosarind, whose position as Lord of the Imperial Estates will be invaluable at this time of reconstruction. Lady Wienand remains as Inquisitorial Representative.’

He smiled at Wienand. She glared stonily back at him, making no attempt to hide her feelings about Vangorich’s performance. Doubtless she would challenge him as to whether anyone in the chamber believed what he was saying. Some would, the rest would not care. She didn’t understand people like he did. They didn’t care about intrigue or the truth. They cared about their own positions, knowing that they were ruled and that they could continue with their petty power games unmolested.

‘Fabricator General Kubik returns to us from his forges on Mars,’ he said. ‘Master of the Administratum Tobris Ekharth thankfully returns also,’ he went on, bowing slightly to the Assassin who wore Ekharth’s face. ‘The Paternova of the Navis Nobilite has blessed us with a new envoy, Dovrian Ofar. In recognition of her service in the defence of Terra, Arbitrator Haas joins us as Zeck’s deputy. Henceforth she will be addressed as Lady Speaker for the Grand Provost Marshal.’

Vangorich had his doubts about Haas, but she was popular with the masses; there were demands that she be sainted, and he could use that. He went through the remaining pair. First was Ecclesiarch Ostulus — called in from the other side of the galaxy, he was sufficiently humble at his elevation to actually take his role seriously, and divorced enough from the politics of Terra to be easily manipulated. Vangorich could not risk telepaths upon the High Twelve, and so neither the Adeptus Astra Telepathica nor the Astronomican had retained their seats. Instead, he gestured to the last figure at the table, a mountain of muscle and armour, capped with a tall helm. ‘Captain-General Beyreuth of the Adeptus Custodes, the first time his august brotherhood have had a say in the government of Terra. It is only fitting that it should be so!’ he said emphatically.

Thunderous applause greeted the announcement. Vangorich suppressed a smile. He could get used to this. ‘Alas, there is much that needs to be done. I will not bore you lords and ladies with the terrible labours we of the High Twelve must endure. You have your own adepta and officios to run, the correct functioning of which is of inestimable importance to the recovery of the Imperium. We shall therefore be submitting a broad plan of reconstruction, reconquest and reconsolidation of our devising,’ by that, Vangorich meant his devising, ‘to you for approval. Then let us shoulder the numbing detail. For the next eighteen months, the Senatorum will not meet in full session as we have become accustomed to again recently. But rest assured, this is purely an emergency measure. As soon as the damage is put right, then the Great Chamber will resonate to the voice of democracy again!’

This was less enthusiastically greeted. Most of the crowds cheered, but a proportion did not. Knots of people were debating, gesturing at the High Table. These were the seeds of rebellion. It was the time to drive the reality of his power home. Vangorich sent a sub-vocal signal to his assets.

‘My lords and ladies! A further change, and then we must begin the serious efforts of debate and voting. The Lucifer Blacks, who so faithfully served this house since the time of the Heresy, have been disbanded.’

Outright shock greeted this pronouncement. Vangorich ploughed on regardless. ‘Their time of glory is past. Their inability to stop the eldar before the warriors of Captain-General Beyreuth were forced to step in was inexcusable. It is the nature of institutions to outlive their usefulness,’ he said pointedly. ‘Let us remember them for the heroes they were, and not the faded sentries they had become. Security for this house and the Imperial Palace shall now rest with the Officio Assassinorum!’ he shouted. As he did, three hundred Assassins stepped out onto the balconies around the hall. Faceless in their combat masks, armed with exotic weapons, they had exactly the effect Vangorich anticipated.

Everyone looked. Few people spoke.

‘I declare this first session of the new Senatorum Imperialis open!’ He stared full into the stony, disapproving face of Rogal Dorn. ‘Let the Emperor and His primarchs look favourably on all we shall achieve.’

The Cerebrium was mercifully quiet. Outside its many windows the life of Terra went on as it had since the ascension of the Emperor. But something fundamental had changed, and Vangorich was its architect. He needed time to think, but he wasn’t about to get it.

Beast Krule was sitting behind Vangorich’s new desk, Vernor Zeck’s lifeless head in front of him. Krule had his fingers laced above the head, his hands obscuring much of his own face. Krule’s eyes were unfriendly, that much was apparent.

‘Krule! What are you doing sitting in the dark there?’

‘I brought Zeck’s head. My mission is accomplished, Grand Master,’ he said.

Vangorich shook his head and grimaced. ‘You are a fine fighter, Beast, but you don’t hide your opinions. You know, it’s that sort of truculence that had you recommended for Temple Venenum’s close-combat school. I can’t imagine you quietly poisoning feasts, can you?’ Vangorich approached slowly. Krule didn’t move from Vangorich’s seat, but watched him with glittering eyes.

‘I listened to your speech,’ said Krule.

‘Oh?’ said Vangorich. He went to a drinks cabinet and poured himself a glass of brandy. The miniature augurs embedded in his rings sampled the vapour coming off the liquid. They did this automatically, over everything he ate or drank, even though the Grand Master prepared all his food himself.

‘Do you think any of them actually believed that?’ said Krule.

‘No. It doesn’t matter, though.’

‘And those creatures of yours on the Council…’

‘I’d hardly call Beyreuth a creature! Come on, Krule! I’m rather proud he agreed to join. Convincing Beyreuth was a monumental effort, the Custodes swore some time ago to remain detached from any duty beyond the guarding of the Emperor’s mortal remains. I had to visit him five times and say the words “eldar before the Eternity Gate” over and over again before he agreed to take the seat.’ He replaced the decanter in the cabinet. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.

‘Assassins all over the Palace. Every man will know himself watched,’ said Krule.

‘They’ve always been there, they’re just in the open. They’re a safeguard.’

‘But now the people know they’re there. That’s a different sort of safeguard. That’s a threat.’

‘So you don’t want a drink. Fine.’ Vangorich dropped into a large chair. ‘Do stop speaking so slowly. It’s a sign you’re thinking, and right now I wouldn’t advise too much of that.’

Krule looked around the room, never completely taking his eyes off the Grand Master. The table that had accommodated the High Twelve had been removed and much of the furniture replaced.

‘This is a fine place to run an empire from. Not showy, modest. You’d never think a tyrant worked here.’

‘I’m a man of simple tastes,’ said Vangorich testily. ‘Krule, I know why you’re here.’

‘You don’t trust me.’

‘Of which this little display is ample proof that I was right not to!’ said Vangorich, waving his glass towards Krule. He calmed. ‘I thought that if you weren’t too heavily involved, it’d be too late for you to think about it and you’d fall into line. Evidently that didn’t work.’

‘So this is a small falling out? Don’t patronise me, Grand Master. When people lose your trust, they die. Can I trust you not to kill me?’

‘That all depends on what you do next.’ He set his drink down. ‘It’s your move, Krule, as the old cliche goes.’

‘You’re the one playing regicide, you’ve killed a number of kings. But there’s one left — you.’ Krule stood. ‘This isn’t going to be easy for me. You are the closest thing I have ever had to a father. You should have trusted me. If you had explained yourself, I might have seen it from your side.’ Krule cracked his knuckles and his neck, and took up a fighting stance.

‘You wouldn’t,’ said Vangorich softly. He too stood up.

‘No, I wouldn’t. You know me better than most, but I know you too. The worst of this is that you know what you have done is wrong.’

‘What would you have done?’ said Vangorich.

‘Reform. Reorganisation. Not this.’

‘What do you know of politics?’

‘Enough.’

‘Krule…’

‘My name is Esad Wire!’ snarled Krule.

Vangorich shook his head. ‘It’s not. It never has been. The one thing you are and will ever be is Beast Krule. From the moment they brought you to Temple Venenum, you were Krule. Esad Wire is a dead man, an illusion. Strip away the pretence, and all that is left is a killer. I’m very proud of what you are, Krule. You are the best I have.’ Vangorich undid his robes. Underneath was the same design of close-fitting suit he’d been wearing for years. ‘These robes are ridiculous. Wienand tried to tell me. She was right.’ He folded them and put them upon the chair. ‘I mean, they are very silly to look at, and don’t capture what I wanted in the slightest. But the worst of it is that they’re no good for fighting in.’

Vangorich’s age was indeterminate. Sometimes he appeared of middle years, at other times old, but he did not move like an old man. He bounded over the seat at Krule, drawing a slender-nosed pistol from nowhere. Krule dodged the first shots. Frozen toxin slivers shattered on the wooden panelling.

‘You’re slow,’ Krule said, as Vangorich landed on the other side of the room.

‘I was once the best of the Venenum Assassins. I always wanted to test myself against you.’

‘You’ll fall short,’ said Krule. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ He charged at Vangorich; his sense of time slowed by deeply implanted devices, he dodged the hypertoxin spat out by the Grand Master’s needler.

Vangorich dropped his gun. Slapping Krule’s fists aside he bent his body around the blows and moved back. Krule followed.

‘You are one of the best, the very best,’ said Vangorich. ‘This is madness. Stop. Join me.’

‘I am the best. You can’t beat me,’ said Krule.

‘I won’t have to,’ said Vangorich. He sidestepped Krule’s blurring fists again. ‘Pelagic gambit,’ he said. Krule stumbled. He shook his head. Vangorich delivered a devastating blow to the nerve cluster at the base of his neck.

Krule spluttered and staggered to the side.

‘Ordinance keystroke,’ said Vangorich.

With a yelp of pain, Krule crashed to the floor, his muscles locked solid. He balanced on his head, knee and outstretched fist, stiff as a statue that had fallen from its plinth.

‘That’s enough,’ said Vangorich. ‘Among your implants is a failsafe system. Obviously, I activated it. The key to regicide is to plan several moves ahead.’ He crouched down by Krule’s head. The Assassin’s eyes were locked open, and watering furiously. He made a strangled noise through clamped teeth. ‘It would be a shame to waste you,’ continued Vangorich. ‘I preferred you as a free thinker, Krule, you served Venenum well that way, but there is another Temple that will make good use of your talents and which does not require that characteristic. You’re going to have a little sleep. When you wake up again, we’ll have nothing to disagree about ever again, I promise.’

Chapter Fourteen Fist of iron

A Space Marine’s sleep was short, but necessary. Even the Emperor Himself could not engineer out the human need for rest.

An insistent chiming woke Zerberyn. His enhanced physiology brought him from deep slumber to full awareness in a fraction of a second. A red lumen bulb, caged in battered wire, blinked over his cell door. Accommodation for officers and line warriors alike was basic in Kalkator’s fortress. Zerberyn’s smelled of damp and fresh ferrocrete.

‘What is it?’ he said.

The vox-emitter by the door crackled. ‘Forgive me, my lord. There is a Librarium serf here to see you. He says it is urgent, your command. I swore to kill him if he was lying, but he insists it is the truth.’

Zerberyn was off his pallet and by the door in a single stride. The door slid back into the wall. Brother Rantan stood over a cowering man. Zerberyn sneered. The serfs had become more cowardly of late.

‘My lord,’ said the serf nervously. ‘You told me to come and inform you the moment the Iron Warriors’ witch started making sense. Well, she has.’

‘I will visit her immediately. Summon Honorius to the Astropathicum.’

The witch twitched in her cradle of wires and chains. She spoke rapidly and so quietly the serfs transcribing her ramblings had to lean in close. The transliterator of the Dantalion’s astropathicum stood at the other side of her, listening intently. Zerberyn’s Lyman’s ear enabled him to apprehend her words, but he could make no sense of the meaning.

‘It is still gibberish,’ said Zerberyn.

‘No, my lord!’ said the serf. ‘She speaks in a standard astrotelepathic metaphor. You, my lord, would never hear it. The method is idiosyncratic to each sender and receiver, but there is a commonality of pattern. This is one of the simplest, the first mnemonic image-words an astropath learns.’

‘Someone wants us to hear this message,’ said Honorius.

The minutes trickled by. Eventually the witch’s mumbling became fainter, and she sagged in her restraints. The transliterator had the serfs read back what they had written to him, then he nodded, took the scrolls they had produced and approached the Fists Exemplar.

‘My lords,’ he said. ‘The witch has spoken. I have a message.’ The transliterator’s face was twisted in disgust at being so close to an unsanctioned pysker, and he kept turning his head back towards her. ‘The Black Templars are coming. Our sending got through.’

‘Tell me the message. Exactly,’ said Zerberyn.

‘I cannot offer exactness,’ said the transliterator regretfully. ‘But I can convey the meaning. The Last Wall is disbanded, the Beast is dead.’

‘Inform the others, this is a day for celebration!’ said Zerberyn. The serfs lost their newly cowed nature for a moment, and stood taller. Their excitement stimulated the witch’s mind, and she moaned in her fugue.

The transliterator held up his hand. ‘If I may, my lord. High Marshal Bohemond himself comes here. One part of the message is very clear, repeated several times.’

Zerberyn’s good humour vanished. ‘That is?’

‘Death to the betrayers of the Imperium of Man. Praise be.’

‘A difficult situation,’ said Honorius drily.

‘We’ve got to get out of this fortress, meet them in the void,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Bohemond won’t pause. He will attack immediately and destroy the city. Call the First Company to me, full armour. Honorius, muster the rest of the Fists Exemplar and have them take up position to seize the fortress by force, tell the captains to be ready but not to act. Then you and I must pay a visit to the warsmith.’

The veterans of the Chapter gathered quickly. They were raw as Space Marine veterans were reckoned, with most of the First Company killed and replaced several times over in the war against the Beast, but they were formidable nevertheless, and Zerberyn could count on their absolute loyalty.

They marched openly to the centre of the fortress. The Iron Warriors responded, occupying strongpoints where they could. In other places, Fists Exemplar and Iron Warriors came face to face. Zerberyn ordered his squads to match them, man for man, and left them staring at each other, armaments ready.

The fortress’ command hub was deep in the mountainside, a spherical sub-building independently supplied with power and air. One corridor approached the armoured doors, dead straight, two hundred metres long, every square centimetre covered by automated turrets and servitor-directed heavy weapons.

The majority of the First Company halted at the end. Zerberyn marched right down it, flanked by his command squad. Guns tracked his movement, but did not open fire.

He halted beside the door. His standard bearer planted his flag firmly, the clink of the pole on the ferrocrete echoing ominously. Every weapon whirred around to cover the First Captain. The door remained shut.

A hidden vox-emitter activated.

‘At last our alliance breaks,’ said Kalkator, his voice sounding down the corridor.

‘Not so, or we would already be fighting,’ said Zerberyn. ‘I come with news. High Marshal Bohemond is on his way to this system. He intends to kill you.’

‘He is already here,’ said Kalkator. ‘He arrived an hour ago at the Mandeville point. They will be in orbit of Immitis VII in less than a day.’

‘Why was I not informed?’

Kalkator laughed, his voice taking on that strange doubling it did sometimes. The second voice sent chills down Zerberyn’s limbs. It was wholly unnatural.

‘Because of this?’ said Kalkator.

‘They are traitors by nature,’ said Brother Mardath, Zerberyn’s melta-gunner.

‘You are the ones here in full battle array!’ said Kalkator. ‘I knew of this, and I could have murdered you in your sleep, and I did not. Do you really intend to slaughter your allies, after all we have been through?’

‘No,’ said Zerberyn. ‘This is a precaution. I do not intend to kill you, but to save you.’

‘Really now,’ said Kalkator. ‘How touching.’

‘If you do not come out, Bohemond will arrive here with his crusade. Already we outnumber you. I have two hundred and fifty brothers remaining, you but ninety. We are in your fortress. We will prevail, if we are forced to cross swords.’

Silence greeted Zerberyn’s remark. He glanced at Honorius. The ancient Librarian gazed resolutely ahead.

‘What do you propose?’ said Kalkator.

‘Come with me on the Dantalion. We must meet Bohemond away from this nameless moon, in the void.’

‘An easy way to present my head to your brother.’

‘I will speak with him, make him see sense,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Leave the Palimodes here in case you need to evacuate. I will make my best efforts to ensure that does not happen.’

‘It will happen. Bohemond is a fanatic.’

‘He is a noble son of Dorn!’ said Zerberyn angrily. ‘He will listen. If we wait, he will attack. If we meet him in the void your men will have a chance to escape.’

‘You ask me to abandon a third world. I do not have an infinite supply of planetary holdings, you realise. If we lose Immitis, my Great Company will be lost.’

Zerberyn looked aside, searching for the right words. ‘Kalkator, I can see no alternative. You have fought honourably by my side. I will not allow you to be killed by Bohemond. I give you my word. Staying here is untenable. Come with me. Bohemond will not open fire on the Dantalion. You do not have a choice.’

A klaxon sounded once. The doors slid open, four intersecting triangles splitting wide to reveal Kalkator waiting on the other side, flanked by his own veterans.

‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I do not.’

‘The Abhorrence approaches,’ said Shipmaster Marcarian. His eyes moved more than those of a hale man, darting about in their cage of half-dead flesh. The serf-crew of the Dantalion had learned to read their motions well. A close view of the Black Templars flared into life in the main hololith. Zerberyn watched it with Honorius and Reoch. The Apothecary’s presence discomfited him. As their time with the Iron Warriors had dragged on, Reoch had abandoned his civilised shell, becoming more savage.

‘She has suffered in the war,’ said Marcarian, a ribbon of drool leaking from the corner of his semi-paralysed mouth. His hololith officers read his desire, and painted highlight signifiers upon the Abhorrence.

‘Gravitic lash damage, mass impact trauma,’ said the Master of the Augur. ‘Their reactor reads with a four per cent erratic pulse.’

‘She has no attendant vessels,’ said Honorius. ‘She comes to confront us alone.’

‘The Black Templars are rash for sons of Dorn,’ said Apothecary Reoch. ‘I wonder how it would be to test our bloodlines against one another.’

‘Their fanaticism outstrips their wisdom,’ said Kalkator. ‘You would win.’

‘Warsmith, I ask you to be quiet. If Bohemond knows you are on board this vessel, then this communication will be short and the results bloody. Fists Exemplar never make mistakes. Don’t prove that truth a lie.’

Kalkator bowed his armoured head in acquiescence. ‘Neither I nor my men shall say a word, First Captain.’

‘I have a request for communication, my lords,’ said the Master of the Vox.

Zerberyn stepped onto a narrow-field hololith plate. ‘Activate.’

Bohemond’s scarred face materialised in the hololith display.

‘Zerberyn! You live. I feared to find an Iron Warrior at the helm of the Dantalion.’

‘I remain in command of my own ships, High Marshal.’

‘I see the Paragon, the Implicit, the Courageous and the Guilliman remain operational. You have done well. How many of you still live?’

‘Two hundred and forty-eight of the four hundred brothers I set out with remain.’ Zerberyn felt a thrill of disquiet at disclosing his numbers.

‘I am sorry. We have all suffered gravely in this war. And yet your survival is cause for celebration! Thane has reconstituted the Imperial Fists from the Successors. You and your warriors are the Fists Exemplar.’

Zerberyn bowed his head.

‘First, the Traitors must be crushed,’ went on Bohemond, ‘then you may join with us on Thane’s crusade to slaughter the remaining ork hordes and restore the Imperium to peace. Praise be to the Lord of Mankind!’

Zerberyn felt Kalkator’s eyes on the back of his neck. He could not reply.

‘Brother?’ said the High Marshal.

‘I cannot,’ said Zerberyn tightly.

‘Explain yourself,’ said Bohemond dangerously.

‘Throughout this war, the Iron Warriors have fought alongside us. Without their support and access to their intelligence, supplies, and bases, the Fists Exemplar would have been annihilated weeks ago.’

‘Then stand aside. We shall do the job for you, if you lack the heart,’ said Bohemond scornfully.

‘That I cannot do either. I have sworn an oath to preserve the life of the warsmith and his men. Depart, and we shall join you at a rendezvous of your choosing. But the Iron Warriors will be permitted to leave.’

A savage smile turned Bohemond’s ruined face even uglier.

‘Is that a threat of action against the Black Templars, Fist Exemplar? Be careful with your words.’

‘It is what it is. I have no wish to fight you. Allow me to fulfil my oath, and all will be well.’

‘Allowing Traitors free?’ said Bohemond. ‘That is far from well! To associate with Traitors is to become a Traitor. Prepare to be boarded. I will detain you. You shall be returned to Terra to face the judgement of the Inquisition. They shall determine your fate. I shall pray that they are merciful and offer you a quick death. Contact your daemon-worshipping friends and tell them that, Bohemond comes for their heads!’

Bohemond stepped back from the projector. Its focusing loops retrained themselves on the background. Zerberyn caught a glimpse of armoured pods and flat projection platforms.

‘He’s on the teleport deck,’ he breathed.

‘My lord! The Abhorrence is powering its main weapons array,’ called out a serf.

‘They’ve raised their shields!’

‘Damn him!’ snarled Zerberyn. ‘He came in expecting to fight. Prepare for combat. All ships raise shields and prime weapons.’

Tocsins sounded. Marcarian gave out a calm string of orders. The deck crew went into swift action, bringing the Dantalion ready. ‘Activate psychic shielding,’ he concluded. The Librarium serfs began to sing in their alcoves, weaving a subtle field of protection around the command deck.

Zerberyn looked helplessly on as the Abhorrence powered forwards. Bohemond meant to pass into the middle of his fleet.

‘We have multiple launch tubes coming online aboard the Abhorrence,’ said a serf.

‘They’re locking on to our weapons batteries and engines,’ said another.

A clamour of information filled the deck, drowning out the warding songs of the choir.

‘Captain Arcos of the Fourth demands to speak with you,’ said the Master of the Vox.

‘Demands?’ said Kalkator. ‘You are losing control of your warriors, First Captain.’

Zerberyn ignored the jibe. ‘Give me hololith.’

‘What are you doing?’ said Arcos without preamble. ‘I will not attack a fellow Adeptus Astartes, have you lost your mind?’

‘You will follow orders!’ said Zerberyn.

‘I do not follow orders from Traitors. I will contact Bohemond. This has gone far enough. I stand with him.’ Arcos cut the hololithic feed.

‘My lord, I have a message from First Sergeant Rost aboard Paragon querying your orders. They’re breaking formation,’ said the Master of the Vox.

‘Hold fire!’ shouted Zerberyn. The situation was slipping from his grasp.

‘The Black Templars are firing on us,’ said the Master of the Augur.

Through the vast oculus, they saw the Abhorrence’s weapons flash in sequence along both flanks and down its spine. The main hololith display filled with blinking icons denoting incoming ordnance.

‘Shall I return fire?’ asked Marcarian.

‘No!’ shouted Zerberyn. ‘Brace for impact. Hail Bohemond again!’

‘Massive energy spike, amidships of the Abhorrence.’

Honorius held up an armoured hand to his bare face. ‘The warp is disturbed, they are coming.’

Shapes of flickering mist coalesced towards the command deck blast doors. Twelve huge shapes began to form. The choirs sang louder, and half of the Black Templars’ emerging forms rippled, the helmets of the warriors twisting and melting into the underlying flesh. Three disappeared altogether to the sound of ghostly screams. The others affected crashed to the deck in a mess of steaming metal and flesh. The remainder arrived firing.

‘So you bring your Traitor friends aboard your own ship?’ boomed Bohemond when he saw Kalkator behind Zerberyn. He marched forwards, his massive Terminator suit denting the deck plating, his weapon blasting serfs apart.

Whether it was the Iron Warriors or the Fists Exemplar who returned fire first, the result was the same. Bolts filled the air from all three sides, the banging of their release and explosion drowning out the cries of terrified serfs. Marcarian, unable to move, was reduced to bloody rags of flesh hanging from his exoskeleton. The numerous weapons built into the bridge’s walls and ceiling opened up at his death, catching the Black Templars in a murderous crossfire. Bolts spanged off their thick armour, but there were more potent weapons on the bridge. Honorius ravaged them with psychic fire, and one by one they began to fall.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Zerberyn. He moved to intercept Bohemond as he marched towards Kalkator, but the High Marshal slapped him aside. His power fist ruptured the plastron of Zerberyn’s armour, lifting him high and slamming him into a serf’s station.

‘You shall die the traitor’s death, Kalkator!’

‘You will have to catch me first,’ said the warsmith.

‘I will gladly kill you here, if that is what the Emperor demands!’ Bohemond emptied his storm bolter into the warsmith’s chest, but Kalkator weathered the storm, his armour’s superior construction protecting him.

Bohemond let out a thunderous war cry.

‘No mercy! No remorse! No fear!’ He lumbered into a charge.

Kalkator was ready. With impossible strength he slammed the High Marshal in the head, breaking the adamantium and ceramite of his armour, and sent him toppling backwards. Bohemond came to rest on the floor, struggling to get back to his feet. Kalkator advanced on him, gun out. Bohemond got onto his knees, wrenched off his helmet and cast it aside.

‘See, Zerberyn,’ said Bohemond. ‘See what you ally yourself with. This Iron Warrior is possessed of unnatural vigour! He has given himself over to fell powers to make himself mightier. You have sorely disappointed me, Zerberyn. Have you also embraced his sorcery? You disrupted the transit of my men. I should have blasted you from the void the moment I saw you.’

Zerberyn heaved himself out of a tangle of broken components and metal. His armour leaked gas from its ruptures, frothing ceramite gels bubbling around the cracks. The sounds of fighting diminished and stopped as the last of Bohemond’s Black Templars died.

The Fists Exemplar trained their guns on the Iron Warriors. A tense silence fell, too thick to be broken by the groans of the wounded and the dying.

The ship rocked and rumbled under the bombardment of the Abhorrence, but the shields held.

‘It is no sorcery. This vessel was modified to withstand the worst the Rubicante Flux could marshal. The Librarium choirs confound cross-warp teleport as easily as they do the daemon. You accuse a man who has spent his entire life fighting Chaos.’

‘You will burn for all time in the fires of the Emperor’s judgement,’ said Bohemond.

‘Call off the attack,’ said Zerberyn. ‘This ends now.’

‘Never!’ spat Bohemond. ‘I would rather die fighting than offer succour to the Traitor Legions. They are an abomination in the holy sight of the Emperor. They must be purged. If you will not do it, then I will, though I die in the attempt.’

‘See him throw his life away! Is this what you want to serve, Zerberyn? This frothing zealot? The Emperor himself denounced his own worship,’ said Kalkator. ‘He scolded the Word Bearers for seeing him as a god. And yet you will listen to the words of this man, who with his idolatory spits in the face of the Emperor you purport to follow.’

‘The Emperor is not a god,’ said Zerberyn. ‘It is you who should be censured, not I.’

‘There is another possibility, Zerberyn,’ said Kalkator. ‘Horus, Perturabo and the others were correct. The Emperor lied to us all, he denied the truth of the warp not to protect us, but to keep its secrets to himself. When it appeared his sons were stumbling too close to the truth of it, he forbade the use of Librarians. He intended all along to be a god, and he used the human race to make it happen. He was stopped just in time.’

‘Lies,’ said Bohemond. ‘The Emperor is divine. The Emperor protects!’

‘Which is it then, Bohemond?’ said Kalkator. ‘The Emperor spoke the truth, and he is not a god, and you are wrong, or he is a god, and you are right, which makes him a liar? Do you not see? He does not care about humanity, the whole purpose of his crusade was to further his own goals of ascendance. He didn’t wish to oppose the Gods of Chaos, he wanted to become one!’

‘Lies, lies!’ said Bohemond. ‘End him, Zerberyn. Turn your bridge weaponry on him and wipe his stain from the galaxy.’

‘Would you do that, Zerberyn?’ said Kalkator. ‘We are the true champions of mankind. We serve ourselves, but in doing so we preserve humanity. Might is right. To save our species we must embrace the powers of this universe, the great Gods of Chaos. We do not do this because we are evil, we do it because we must. What are you, Zerberyn? What are the Fists Exemplar?’

Oily swirls of light played through the oculus as a void shield collapsed. ‘We are a wall that defends the Imperium,’ he said dully. His heart was breaking.

‘You are a bastion in a fortress of lies, and this warrior, this Black Templar, who wears his fanaticism so openly, is its castellan. Kill him!’ urged Kalkator.

‘They will kill you too, Zerberyn, once they are done with me,’ said Bohemond.

‘We have fought alongside you for months, brother,’ said Kalkator. ‘Where were they?’

Zerberyn looked from Bohemond to Kalkator.

‘Call off the attack,’ Zerberyn said one last, hopeless time to Bohemond.

‘Never,’ said Bohemond.

A single shot was all it took. Bohemond’s head disappeared in a mist of blood, his body locked in place by his armour. Zerberyn blinked stupidly at the bolt pistol in his hand. He had no recollection of drawing it. The little litany he had for the weapon went through his head. It was Umbra-pattern. It lacked the refinement of post-Heresy models, but it was good at what it was made for and always would be. Purity through utility: that was how one proofed oneself against the unknowables of the galaxy.

Without thinking, he had made his decision. He had damned himself.

‘All ships, open fire. Destroy the Abhorrence,’ he ordered.

Faces paler than lack of sunlight could explain looked back at him.

‘Now!’

The crew moved into action. Corpses were heaved aside by repair teams. Where needed, backup stations were brought into operation. Fresh serfs were admitted onto the bridge. Zerberyn walked to the command dais and stood by Marcarian’s corpse.

‘My lord. Courageous and Implicit are breaking from attack,’ said the Master of the Augur. ‘I have reports of fighting breaking out aboard the Guilliman.’

‘Tell Captain Venthryn to contain it or it will be his head. Courageous, Implicit, come about. Open fire on the Abhorrence or be declared enemies of the Chapter.’

Arcos’ horrified face flickered into view.

‘Then we are enemies,’ said Arcos. ‘You betray your oaths!’

‘Weapons batteries, open fire on the Courageous and the Implicit,’ said Zerberyn coldly. ‘That is the price of their disloyalty.’

The void erupted with chaotic firing as the Fists Exemplar Chapter fell apart. The Implicit took a punishing broadside as it attempted to turn and flee, wrecking its engines and leaving it drifting out of control. The Courageous took a different tack, coming directly at the Dantalion with all weapons blazing. The Abhorrence’s fire redoubled, encouraged by the split in the Fists Exemplar.

‘Courageous is building to ramming speed!’ shouted the Master of the Augur.

‘He means to take us with him,’ said Zerberyn. ‘Concentrate all fire forward!’

The Courageous came down towards them, void shields flaring as they shunted the power of Dantalion’s fury into the warp. At a distance of metres, it skimmed past the Dantalion, close enough for protruding spires on both vessels to be sheared off by the pass. The Dantalion shuddered violently as Courageous burned its engines at maximum, and powered past.

‘The Courageous is escaping!’

‘Ignore it! Destroy the Abhorrence,’ said Zerberyn.

The Black Templars battle-barge was beset on all sides, fire from the Paragon, Guilliman and the Dantalion bringing down one shield after another. With a low purple light, its final void shield gave out, and the combined barrage of the three Fists Exemplar ships slammed into it. The Abhorrence came apart in a shower of fire. Apothecary Reoch cackled like a child at a victory display. Honorius stood silently, his face lit by the explosion.

‘We are fortunate. If Bohemond had commanded the Eternal Crusader, we would all be dead,’ the Librarian said quietly.

Kalkator’s gun came up to Zerberyn’s face. He pressed it lightly against Zerberyn’s temple. Its muzzle was still warm from firing.

‘Who are you, First Captain Zerberyn? Are you a Fist Exemplar still? Will you slay me as you slew Bohemond? Was all this fratricide a terrible mistake?’

Zerberyn turned. Kalkator’s boltgun slid around his face until it was in the centre of his forehead. Zerberyn pressed his face against it and stared into Kalkator’s eye-lenses.

‘A Fist Exemplar is never mistaken,’ he said. He knelt. Behind him, the crew and Space Marines of the Dantalion followed his example.

‘Iron within, iron without,’ he said.

Once free of the Immitis System, communications became possible again. The last vestiges of the Green Roar clung hard to the Iron Warriors’ home, and Arcos, captain of the Fourth Company, last loyal officer of the Fists Exemplar, suspected that was not chance. Having hauled over at an isolated mining colony, Arcos spent some time communicating with other members of the Last Wall. By these means, he discovered that Maximus Thane was at Eidolica, once home world of the Fists Exemplar. As soon as this information was known, Courageous made all speed there to find Phalanx in high anchor over the Alcazar Astra. It could have hid in the nightside of the world, but in a show of machinic sympathy with the downed star fort, Dorn’s citadel stood in the full light of the blazing Eidolican sun. The choice lifted Arcos’ battered spirit.

The joy that greeted the Courageous’ arrival at Phalanx turned sombre as it became apparent that there were no more ships coming, and there were only twenty-two surviving Fists Exemplar. The battered cruiser was escorted in with full pomp. But when Arcos exited his vessel grim-faced and demanded to be conveyed to the Chapter Master immediately, the last smiles died on lips that moved with many questions.

Arcos would provide answers to no one but Thane.

At Arcos’ request, Thane dismissed his honour guard and advisers, leaving Arcos and he alone. Thane occupied the throne of Inwit, a high seat in a massive dome devoid of any other furniture. Bathed in a shaft of diamond white light so bright it seemed distilled from the system’s deadly sun, Thane listened in furious silence to Arcos’ report. Arcos knelt to deliver it, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

‘Bohemond is dead,’ Thane said, when Arcos had finished. ‘And Zerberyn turned.’ His voice caught in his throat. Zerberyn had always been impetuous, creative in interpreting his orders, but he had been a warrior of uncommon valour. ‘Honorius too.’

‘Yes, my lord. We spent too long with the Iron Warriors. Some of their evil must have wormed its way into his heart. Apothecary Reoch is with him, and some two hundred others.’ Arcos looked up. ‘Allow me to atone. Let me rebuild the Fists Exemplar and I swear we shall become a byword for opposition to the Traitors. We shall return to the Rubicante Flux and hunt for them through the reefs of the immaterium. We shall be dauntless, and never rest. This shall be my oath.’

Thane gripped the armrests of the his throne. The shaft of light shining hard from above cast his face into craggy shadow. ‘You have sworn many oaths, Captain Arcos. You have dishonoured them all.’

‘My lord, I do not know what I can say.’

‘You can say nothing.’ The anger of Thane’s voice was awful for its calmness. ‘You have consorted with Traitors, and failed to prevent the greatest shame to befall the Adeptus Astartes since the Heresy war.’

‘Please let me atone.’

‘No. The Fists Exemplar will not be reconstituted. You and your warriors will submit yourselves to the Master of Recruits, and you shall be inducted into the Imperial Fists. A new Chapter shall be raised, and take Alcazar Astra as their home.’

‘If we are to obscure the metal of our armour with the yellow of the Imperial Fists, there will be no more Fists Exemplar left. The Chapter will die. Please let me save the memory of our predecessors. Do not let one moment of madness undo a millennium of loyal service.’

‘There will be no memory. No monuments or songs. The name of the Fists Exemplar shall be struck from Imperial records. Every mention, every honour, every report shall be hunted down and expunged from history. It is our shame that ours is the first Chapter to fall to Chaos since the Heresy. We do not deserve to be remembered.’

Arcos stood in disbelief. ‘My lord, we must be allowed to salvage the honour of Oriax Dantalion. We cannot let his legacy die here.’

‘There is no honour left!’ shouted Thane, suddenly wrathful. His armoured fist slammed into the throne arm. ‘Stubborn, prideful, convinced of our own rectitude. So arrogant we remained that when our star fort fell we would not ask for aid from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Rather defy the wrath of a star, than admit to any wrongdoing! Those were the gifts of Dantalion to our Chapter. They have served us poorly. Our record shall be erased.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Arcos. He bowed his head.

‘You should have acted, you should spoken up. There is no situation so dire as to render an alliance with the Traitors expedient, and the Iron Warriors no less. As penance, you shall descend to Eidolica. You shall oversee the destruction of the records of the Fists Exemplar. Your tears will wet the relics of our order as you consign them to oblivion. As you watch our history burn to ashes I pray you remember: the Traitor can never be called friend.’

‘My lord,’ said Arcos. ‘We shall see it done.’

‘Our name shall be forgotten. Let none speak of it evermore. We are the Imperial Fists now and forever, let that be our legacy. It is a pure one,’ said Chapter Master Thane.

No mention of the Fists Exemplar passed Thane’s lips again in his long life, and he would not tolerate the name being said in his hearing until the day he died.

Chapter Fifteen Warriors of Titan

There was a shift in the cutter’s centre of gravity, a lurch in its smooth acceleration as mass detached itself. In the cramped quarters of the cutter’s command deck, Lady Inquisitor Wienand watched the infiltration craft speed away upon a hololithic display. Its matt-black hull was lost to sight quickly. When it engaged its sophisticated baffles and augur-blinds it winked out of existence, a ripple on the stars, and then it was gone.

She made a silent prayer to the Emperor, asking if she had done the right thing.

Lhaerial Rey piloted the infiltrator. The Imperium needed allies. She hoped the harlequin might be one, some time in the future. Wienand had no doubt at all that she would get away from Sol.

There were three crew on the bridge: a shipmaster pilot, an augur and weapons operative, and a transmechanic magos. All of them wore the Inquisitorial barred I as much in their minds as they did on their clothes. They knew better than to ask questions.

Wienand retreated to her quarters. She fell into a deep and dreamless sleep of the kind she only experienced in the void, until Rendenstein came and woke her gently.

‘Lady, we approach Saturn. I thought you might like to see.’

‘Thank you.’ Wienand touched Rendenstein’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. The two of them had drifted apart physically over the long months of the war against the Beast. Having her there still brought comfort. She hoped Rendenstein understood.

Wienand had felt better. Her teeth were furred and her breath stank. She needed to stop, soon. She considered stimms to carry her through, but that road ended badly for many. She needed to become tougher. There was precious little rest in the life of an inquisitor. There would be none for her, not while Vangorich reigned in all but name.

She rinsed her mouth out with water warm from the vessel’s recycling systems and tainted with iron.

Rendenstein fell into step with her as she left her quarters. These were relatively large and well appointed. The ship, though small, was designed to carry only a single inquisitor and their retinue.

Raznick waited outside. He too fell in with her, walking at her left shoulder, Rendenstein at her right. The cutter was two hundred metres long in total, the habitable section considerably less. They were on the command deck in seconds.

Wienand stopped at the threshold of the door. Through the oculus of the ship Saturn turned serenely, its rings shining in the sunlight over a striated body the colour of recaff mixed with dairy fats. Its many moons paraded round it like pearls. Wienand had been all over the galaxy, but this world had always been special to her, if only because Saturn was forbidden. Unlike its brother Jupiter, Saturn was not ringed by orbital habitats. Remnants of those predating the Imperium added to its flock of moons, but there was nothing inhabited, no mining platforms, no gas extraction or research stations. Compared to the rest of the over-exploited solar system, Saturn was pristine.

The cutter flew around the gas giant, skimming the rings at distances as little as twenty thousand kilometres. A caramel orb rose from the shoulder of the giant, massive as a planet, dwarfing its brother and sister moons.

‘Titan, my lady,’ said the captain. He adjusted his course, pointing the sharp nose of the cutter directly at the hazy world.

Red lights and alarms flashed over every display.

‘Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind. Turn back or be destroyed. Halt,’ began a message, and then repeated on a loop.

‘Inquisitor Wienand, Marguerethe, A. Ident code Sigma Five Full Black Delta. Requesting permission to land.’

‘Code not accepted. Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind,’ said the message again. Warnings bleeped. The ship’s master of augur and arms spoke.

‘They’re locking on to us. Not much, but it’ll finish us if they fire.’

Wienand flexed her hand. The implant that had burrowed into her flesh from Veritus hampered her movement, grinding against her tarsal bones. She yanked off her glove.

‘Give me a data reader, key it in to the vox. Broadcast it to the source of that message.’

‘Yes, my lady. In what form is the data to be read?’

‘I don’t know, try them all,’ she said. More alarms went off.

‘Halt, and turn back. This world is perdita by order of the Holy Inquisition of the Emperor of Mankind. Turn back or be destroyed,’ said the message.

The master of augur and arms indicated a green panel. She flexed her hand again and spread it over the glass. The machine tried every wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum before switching to audible bands. Finally, the thing in her palm vibrated and the device chimed.

‘Halt, and—’ The message stopped.

The vox shifted. A human voice replaced the machine’s.

‘Veritus is dead,’ it said.

‘He is dead,’ said Wienand. ‘I am the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum Imperialis, one of the High Twelve of the High Lords of Terra. Veritus nominated me as his successor as liaison between the Inquisition and the Grey Knights Chapter, Adeptus Astartes, number six, six, six. I wish to meet with Supreme Grand Master Janus.’

The reply was immediate. ‘Have your ship follow these coordinates to high anchor. Lady Inquisitor, you may break orbit and descend, but only you. Fail to obey these two instructions or any further forthcoming, and your vessel will be destroyed.’

The voice snapped off. The master of augur and arms attempted to raise them again, but the void remained silent.

‘Friendly, aren’t they?’ said Raznick.

‘We should come with you,’ said Rendenstein.

‘I’ll go alone,’ said Wienand. ‘I should be safe enough.’ But she didn’t believe it.

Wienand’s ship dropped through the upper layers of Titan’s hazy gas envelope. The void was lost to sight. Saturn’s domineering presence was visible for a few seconds longer as a brown disk in the haze, and then that too was gone and she was enclosed by yellow organonitrogen murk.

Hands awkward in the gauntlets of her void suit rested lightly on the shuttle’s sticks as the roar of atmospheric entry built around the craft. Augur pulses showed nothing dangerous around her, but she scanned the close horizon through the cockpit automatically, tensely searching for hazards she couldn’t possibly see. Reflections on the visor of her suit limited what she could see as much as the organic soup of the air. Flying blind, she was reliant on the craft’s suite of sensors. The altimeter rolled down. The hull’s temperature rose. A brief period of turbulence marked her transition from the upper atmosphere to the lower. The haze thinned, becoming clouds. Through the auspex of the ship she received visual representations of the ground below, and fleeting visible-light glimpses of the landscape.

She fired the ship’s rockets, increased gain to its grav systems. Inquisitorial craft were outfitted with the pinnacle of Adeptus Mechanicus technology, and the approach was smoother than a lesser ship’s. The craft levelled out. She banked round, flying in broad circles in search of a beacon. The hull’s outer temperature plummeted now re-entry friction had stopped. Down the thermal gauge went, impossibly low; Titan was beyond cold. Wienand dropped lower, skimming over a volcano spewing ammonia-water ice. Thick, greasy snowflakes of methane-ethane splatted on the cockpit. Lakes of oily hydrocarbons passed under the ship’s keel, fed by lazy rivers.

Around she went again. Various indicators blinked amber on the ship’s flight boards. The temperature and atmosphere taxed its systems.

‘Where are you,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

A nav beacon lit up on her main display, pulsing bright yellow in a tangle of contour lines. Breathing a prayer of relief, she swung the ship around and locked on to the location, relinquishing control to the ship’s machine-spirits. The craft flew over more of the strange, mottled landscape. Titan appeared habitable when viewed from safety. It was a lie. If she stepped outside without her suit she’d die. She had seen airless worlds and death planets, and worlds consumed perpetually by fire, but never had she had cause to come somewhere as cold as this. Titan exceeded all parameters Terran life had set itself. It was hard to imagine Space Marines living there.

Jagged peaks of ice appeared ahead. At such temperatures, water took the place of rock. Low gravity allowed tectonic upthrust to make them oddly tall. They were fairy peaks, something from a child’s tale.

The ship flew right at them. Wienand looked long at the approach vector, described on a glass screen as a tunnel of boxes rushing over the representation of the ship. She looked back at the mountains, seeing no sign of any structure. Perhaps this was how the Grey Knights dealt with unwanted visitors. Staged accidents were easier to brush away than unexplained weapons discharge.

An ice cliff came at her, black as night and harder than granite. She held her breath. At five hundred metres, green light shone from no discernible source, illuminating a gate of plain plasteel for less than a second before blinking out. The gate vanished again, the cliff becoming totally black in the hydrocarbon snow. Wienand let the ship fly right at it, trusting the light to be an invitation to an open way, and not a quick route to death.

The gate was open. Her lighter’s beams shone into a small, rectangular space, big enough to accommodate a single Space Marine gunship, no more. She swore loudly and slammed on the front jets to full burn. A smooth ice wall rushed at her, then she stopped abruptly, slamming painfully into her seat restraints.

A flashing light drew her attention to a datascreen. Her ship had been caught in a gravity sling like a ball in a glove.

‘Land,’ said a voice through the vox.

She activated the ship’s landing cycle and the sling shut off. Her lighter touched down on a metal floor. A moment later it began to sink down a shaft. Hardened plasteel runners were embedded directly into the rock-ice. Every thirty metres dim yellow lumens punctuated the shaft, the only lights besides those of her ship.

The elevator came out into a huge cave. The platform touched down and rotated. Metallic clanks sounded underneath her, and the ship was conveyed sideways, then backwards, and brought to rest in a docking bay carved from the ice of the moon. There were many of these stalls, each one occupied by a Thunderhawk in a bluish-silver livery.

Wienand waited in her restraints for further instruction. ‘Hello?’ she said into the vox. ‘What do I do now?’

Receiving no reply, she decided to leave. The gauge showed the temperature in the hangar to be minus-fifty degrees, warmer than the surface, still ultimately deadly.

The ship’s ramp opened. She punched open her belt locks and exited into the hangar. It glowed with soft blue light under which the Thunderhawks slept, glittering with carbon frost. Water ice furred their heraldry of a book transfixed by a sword. There were other ways into the hangar, she saw, and other kinds of ship. A broad ramp led lower into the icy bedrock, marked with the imprints of tank treads.

She turned around, seeking a way out. Seeing none, she went to the cave wall where she found a door, hidden by a natural camouflage of frost.

‘This is Inquisitor Wienand, I have done as instructed. Are you going to leave me here?’ The imperiousness of her voice in the silent chamber abashed her.

Lights blinked over the door. With a sighing groan, it cracked open, shedding plates of ice and showers of hoarfrost upon the threshold.

Beyond the door stood a Space Marine unlike any other she had ever met. He was ageless in the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but carried an air of great venerability that outmatched even that of Veritus. His face was leathery, tanned by the light of myriad suns, and wrinkled with fine lines. The skin was folded with age over his eyes, one of which had a pronounced squint — the mark of an old injury, perhaps — and his forehead was a mass of long-service studs.

In the deadly cold he was barefoot and wore simple robes. Plumes of steam blew from his nostrils with each steady breath. Despite his great age he was tall and proud, his physiology distorted by his enhancement, neural plugs glinting in the grotesque musculature of his arms, but it was his psychic potency that took her aback. Wienand was no psyker, although many inquisitors were, but still she could feel his power emanating from his eyes. A nimbus of light from some internal source shone around his head. Wienand was overwhelmed by a sense of the holy; this was a warrior saint. She was one step from the Emperor Himself, and she fought the urge to prostrate herself before him.

‘I am Supreme Grand Master Janus of the Grey Knights,’ he said. He looked on her.

She felt the touch of his mind on hers and she shivered.

‘I am Inquisitor Wienand. I bring you news of a reorganisation within our ordos, and the formation of an order of specific relevance to your brotherhood.’

‘Sindermann told me this day would come. I grieve for his passing. He was an old friend and will be missed. But it is best not to dwell on the past. What has gone cannot be helped, only the future may be saved. I sense now is the time for new friendships.’ He stood aside, and held open his arms in welcome. ‘You may enter, Lady Inquisitor Wienand. Come, we have much to discuss.’

Chapter Sixteen Fury of the Space Marines

Four hundred Space Marines came to Terra. A company each from two of the newly founded Chapters, the Halo Brethren and the Sable Swords. Flying with them were two hundred Imperial Fists of the First, Fourth and Fifth Companies. This time, the crowds were not out to meet them.

‘I thank you for the honour of leading this expedition, Lord Thane.’

Unhelmeted, Qublicus Amar, lord of the Sable Swords, was forced to shout over the noise of the Thunderhawk as it battled its way down through Terra’s atmosphere. ‘It has been said that you should lead it. The Imperial Fists have accrued many battle honours since the fall of the Beast.’

‘Not I,’ said Thane. He did wear his helmet, and his vox-grille boosted his voice. ‘Vangorich was my error. I have come to put it right, but I should not be the one to lead. My judgement regarding the Grand Master is compromised.’

Amar resettled himself in his drop cradle. The Thunderhawk banged and leapt as it encountered a pocket of rising warm air.

‘It is over a century since you last trod the Throneworld’s surface, you could not have predicted what happened. A new golden age approaches, Thane, and your efforts are to thank. Beyond Terra, the Imperium has recovered. Hundreds of worlds have been reclaimed and rebuilt. The armies of the Imperium are larger and better organised. New fleets ply the stars and the warp, while the eyes of the Inquisition are everywhere alert to new threats. It will soon be time to crusade again, and expand our borders in the name of the Emperor.’

‘All you say is true. But Terra itself, and many other worlds have suffered. That is on me. I cannot lead this expedition.’

Thane would speak no more of it, and Amar let him be to check his equipment one final time.

Thane had expected a fight, but the taskforce did not get one. Kubik greeted them cordially from Mars. No fire was loosed at them by star forts or solar defence ships. The new orbital fortresses greeted the Space Marines and offered their fleet berths.

Several tense hours ensued after the fleet put in to high orbit over Terra. A party of High Lords met with Thane and Amar aboard the High Wall, a new Goliath-class star fort in orbit over the Palace. After swift negotiation, twenty Thunderhawks flew to the surface. Thane suggested Amar have the gunships put down in a ring in the Fields of Winged Victory. It seemed apt somehow. The paving was dirty and cracked, the spires surrounding it tarnished and in ill repair. Thane had a feeling this neglect was only a taste of what there was to come.

Unopposed, Thane and Amar walked down the ramp of the gunship and onto Terra’s hallowed surface. Squads of Space Marines spread out in defensive order. Land Speeders dropped from passing transports made controlled descents to the surface then raced off into the Palace.

‘My lords Chapter Master,’ said Captain Ethratan, Second Captain of the Sable Swords. ‘There are no signs of an enemy anywhere.’

Thane looked around the Fields. They were a good place to land, so big ambush was impossible. ‘Everyone wants Vangorich gone. We’ll suffer no attention from the Adeptus Militarum, Arbitrators or Adeptus Custodes,’ he said to Ethratan and Amar. ‘But there will be opposition. Vangorich’s Assassins are loyal to him, and he has expanded his officio since I was last here. Be careful. Watch the shadows. This will not be an easy fight.’

‘Understood, my lord,’ said Amar.

Dissatisfied, Thane watched Amar head out; Amar should have more confidence. The members of the newer Chapters were too deferential to him, and it made him uncomfortable. Warriors that adulated their heroes could be led astray by the wrong leader. If the likes of Ethratan or Amar knew that the Imperial Fists had briefly fallen, they might not be so worshipful.

A Thunderhawk transporter came down slowly, engines roaring, Dorn’s Fist slung in its cradle. It released its cargo claws three metres above the ground, dropping the Land Raider onto the Fields. The assembled forces of the three Chapters spread out in groups, heading into the deathly quiet city.

Dorn’s Fist was the very Land Raider in which Thane had arrived in triumph at the Fields a century before. He boarded the great vehicle. Reversing the course he took on that day, he headed for Bastion Gate and rode for the Widdershins Tower.

They passed through without incident, the Bastion Gate’s bristling weapons arrays inactive. The lights were out in the wall tunnel, and beyond. There were no people on the streets. There was an expectant quiet everywhere. Terra wanted rid of Vangorich, but it irked Thane that the worthies of the Throneworld were too spineless to do it themselves.

The buildings of the Palace were in various states of disrepair. Some still bore the scars of the ork attack. Instead of proper reconstruction, vast sums of money had been spent on great monuments, from whose half-finished edifices hung the corpses of those who had displeased the Lord Protector. The dead were more evident than the living. Tall informational posters adorned every major intersection and transit station, laying out the duties of the Terran citizen. The penalties for failing to comply were invariably death.

The Great Chamber’s domed roof rose pregnantly from the surrounding blocks and spires. Still they saw no one.

It was as Thane neared the Widdershins Tower that the first shot was fired. A vox-chime, ultimate priority, rang in his helmet.

‘Lord Thane! Chapter Master Amar is dead!’

‘Report.’

‘An exitus round took him as we were deploying to search the Great Chamber. We’re under heavy fire. There are numerous hostile contacts.’

‘Fall back into cover,’ he ordered. ‘I shall assume command.’

Thane’s fury grew. The first casualty, and it was a Chapter Master. It appeared he was to be responsible for Vangorich’s overthrow after all. He ordered augur sweeps and airstrikes on the areas around the Great Chamber to clear the way for the Sable Swords.

And then hell broke loose.

Thane leaned around a corner and let off a quick burst of three bolts. He received a punishing exitus round in his pauldron that shattered its autoreactive mechanisms in exchange.

‘Get a missile launcher up here!’ he commanded. His faceplate was full of flashing runes. Imperial Fists warriors were embattled all around the Widdershins Tower. Vindicare Assassins shot down at them from the rooftops with virtual impunity. Callidus operatives attacked in free-flowing squads of three, slashing their phase swords through power armour and darting back into cover before they could be cut down. Thane had penetrated into the foyer of the tower. The lifts were all dead, no power was within. The entry had the run-down, neglected feel that had been reported from all over the city.

Thane retreated a few metres, rotated his arm and grimaced. The mechanisms in his armour ground horribly. Three other Space Marines took his place and fired up the stairs. One was downed after firing only twice, smoking holes drilled through each of his hearts.

‘Missile approaching.’

Space Marines moved out of the way, making as much use of the limited cover as was possible. Every exposed stabilisation nozzle, elbow or foot drew a shot.

‘Make way for him!’ commanded Thane. The missile launcher bearer, Brother Arkhis, crouched by Thane’s feet. ‘On three,’ said Thane. ‘We shall fill this stairway with bolts. You must aim true, brother.’

‘I have a lock on the Assassin’s position, my lord,’ said Arkhis.

‘Very good. Make it count. On three, two, one.’

Thane and four others leaned out, sending out a wall of bolts. Arkhis stepped into the middle of the stairs, activated his stabilisers and fired.

The missile roared off, lighting the dark stair with its exhaust flare. A ball of flame rolled back down towards them as it detonated over the target. Bits of debris rattled off their armour.

Arkhis remained where he was. ‘He is dead,’ he said.

Thane looked up, his sensorium overlay settling on a corpse torn in half some hundred steps up the staircase.

‘He is,’ said the Chapter Master. He slapped the warrior on the shoulder. ‘A good shot, bravely done.’

‘My lord!’ called Arkhis as Thane headed off up the stairs. ‘Perhaps you should not go first?’

‘If I fall, there are others who will kill the Grand Master for me. Vangorich skulks behind others. That is not my way.’ So saying, Thane bounded up the steps.

Three more Assassins fell before Thane made it to the top of the tower. The antechamber outside the Cerebrium was quiet, the sounds of the combat going on at every level of the buildings around the Widdershins Tower muted. In battle-stained armour, Thane trod a thick carpet past displays of flowering plants. He looked back to the warriors following him, three Imperial Fists and two Sable Swords, held a finger to his visor grille and tapped at the housings of his vox-pickup, then shook his head. There were precious few who could break the encryption of Space Marine squad communication. Vangorich was one of them.

By battle sign Thane had his warriors array themselves around the Cerebrium’s priceless wooden doors. It seemed a shame to kick them in.

The doors flew back under the blow from Thane’s boot. The Cerebrium was beyond, outfitted as a private office for someone who loved books. They lined every wall, hiding the wooden panelling. Behind the large desk, her back to the window, was Inquisitor Wienand.

‘Wienand,’ said Thane. ‘Where is Vangorich?’

Thane looked much the same as he had a century ago. Wienand was unrecognisable. The handsome woman Thane had last seen had become wrinkled, her features distorted by harsh anti-gerontics and the hardships of an inquisitor’s life. Her eyes were sunken and ringed with brown flesh. A scar ran across her face from her left temple to her chin, cutting through her nose and lips. Her hair, once iron grey, was a brilliant white.

She smiled. ‘I have become old,’ she said, apologetically. ‘I’ll bet under that helmet you have not changed at all.’

Thane made to come forwards, his bolter up.

‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Drakan assumed you would come here, to his office this last century. It is rigged to explode as soon as anyone attempts to leave it.’

Thane stopped at the threshold. ‘You are within.’

‘I needed a way to convince you of my sincerity. I will not live past the end of the hour — whether I am killed by your hand or by Vangorich’s, it makes no difference. Do you think me a traitor, Chapter Master?’

‘Yes,’ said Thane. ‘Vangorich executed the High Twelve, he left you alive and in office. When he installed puppets and doppelgangers to do his bidding, you and Kubik remained in power. When they too failed to be biddable and he dissolved the Council, you and Kubik were set free.’

‘Not free, not completely,’ she said. ‘And Kubik is dead. He has been for a hundred years.’

‘Then with whom was I speaking when we put in at Mars?’

‘Eldon Urquidex,’ she said. She picked up a book and turned it over in her hands. Four boltguns were trained upon her. Thane raised his hand and gestured his men back. ‘Vangorich took Kubik’s datacore, implanted it in Urquidex and convinced him to impersonate Kubik, although he’s been doing it so long now I think he’s forgotten who he was. From a certain point of view, Urquidex is Kubik.’

‘It doesn’t matter who he is. He supported Vangorich. You are both traitors,’ said Thane.

‘You are not blameless,’ said Wienand. ‘You made Vangorich Lord Protector. You have been absent for a century, crusading so zealously it blinded you to what was happening on Terra. You must have known Vangorich had executed the High Lords, though he tried to keep it from you. I tried to tell you often enough myself. You must have received some of my messages, but you did not return to put an end to his reign. Is that not an act of treachery?’

Thane shrugged. His damaged pauldron hitched. ‘He was doing a reasonable job of ruling Terra, so I believed. He has outlived his usefulness, and that is my fault, but it is my duty to kill you nevertheless.’

‘I am not a traitor, Thane. No one stands against you, the Assassinorum aside, because I have worked for weeks to bring together the adepta of Terra. Before that, while you were off washing your failures away with blood, I have been at Drakan’s side moderating his worst excesses. I was all for trying to bring him down, but Veritus convinced me not to. He said that Vangorich had outplayed us all, and that removing him would be worse than the alternative of letting him rule. A single voice sings clearer than an unharmonious chorus, and there was no chorus as unharmonious as the Beast-era High Lords. We haven’t done badly. We restored Terra, and refortified it. We have seen dozens of the worlds ravaged by the orks rebuilt and reincorporated. Mars works in unity with the Imperium again, and he did not interfere with your Fourth Founding. The armies of man are stronger than at any time since the Heresy.’

‘That is why I did not return.’

‘Then it is your fault. These last twenty years have been different. His edicts have become bizarre. There have been needless massacres. Population relocation for no reason. Appointment of unsuitable candidates to planetary governorship. Worlds starve as he redirects resources here for vain works. Terra was rebuilt, but he would turn it into a bauble while its real needs go untended.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘The biggest statues he erected are of you and Koorland.’

‘I do not care for statues. He must go. The High Lords must reign once more.’

‘They must,’ Wienand said. She turned the book over again, running slender fingers over its page edges. ‘Vangorich did not wish to be a tyrant. He set out with the best of intentions. The pressure of running the Imperium has driven him quite mad, I fear. It did not help him that I never could return the affection he had for me. So maybe I am as responsible for his excesses as you.’

Thane said nothing. Matters of the heart were a mystery to him.

‘This book,’ she said, holding it up. It had a grubby, blue canvas cover. ‘He used to read it in the Sigillite’s Retreat. It is the Sayings of the Sigillite, with notes on the apocrypha.’

‘What of it?’

She set it down. ‘I merely underline my point. He set out to do what he could,’ she said.

‘Where is he, Wienand?’

‘He has fled to Temple Eversor in the Aktick. He is waiting for you there.’

‘Is this a trap?’

‘Not one I am setting, if that is what you are suggesting. I stayed here to tell you this information so you’d be forewarned. He knows I would tell you this. From his point of view, it is a trap whether you go in blindly or with your eyes open. He knows you will go there, no matter what I say.’

‘We have seen no Eversor acolytes here. Where are they?’ said Thane.

‘They are with him. All of them. That is the trap.’ She smiled one last time. ‘Goodbye, Maximus Thane.’

Thane placed his fist on his chest, bowed, and left.

When he was halfway down the stairs, the Cerebrium exploded.

Thane reviewed the casualty reports from the battle in the Palace. Half of the Space Marines had fallen. It was hard to credit that mortals could inflict such losses.

Ten Thunderhawk gunships left the Fields of Winged Victory while the battle in the Palace raged on. The Assassins had wisely left the gunships alone, but in the confines of the city they were deadly, and they were everywhere. Thane had no idea how many of them there were, and the fighting spread out across the whole central district of the Palace and beyond. Theoretically, the Assassins could fight a covert war for years; realistically the only way to stop them would be to have a new Grand Master order them to lay down their arms. Though their numbers dropped by the hour, they fought on in pockets.

Thane was grateful for Wienand’s preparatory efforts to ensure that Vangorich could not rouse the population of Terra against him, and even more glad that the Adeptus Custodes had decided to remain neutral. The Assassins were trouble enough, and even though people were off the streets in the central districts, Thane’s strategos serfs and his own best guesses put the casualties among civilians well into the thousands. In the more distant parts of the Palace it was far worse, with many of them still attempting to go about their business, driven by duty and fear to reach their places of service. Battles burst into vast scriptoria where thousands laboured. Artisanal workshops became the sites of brutal firefights. It was inevitable people would die.

Thane added their deaths to the tally of Vangorich’s sins as the Imperial Palace dropped away under the Thunderhawk.

Layers of brown smog cloaked the Palace but could not hide the sheer immensity of it. The Palace was more than a city, it covered the site of the old continent of Europa from north to south, spilling out into the dry seabeds. At six thousand metres, the lower portions were lost to view, the higher towers and spires thrusting up through the polluted air like islands in a dirty sea. The Thunderhawks turned towards the pole and rose higher. Auspex sweeps pinged repeatedly in the cockpit but Terra’s substantial anti-orbital and anti-aircraft firepower remained inactive.

Vangorich was completely isolated.

As they flew over the Palace and towards the dirty ice fields of the north, Thane called the battle-barge Storm of Might and ordered Scout teams to land nearby and guide orbital strikes on the temple.

‘Precision only, remove its air defences, target the barracks. Do not destroy it,’ he concluded his orders. ‘I will take Vangorich alive. He must answer for his crimes.’

The Space Marines put down in a plaza still smoking from a stray lance hit. Defence laser towers burned at the four corners of the temple. Temple Eversor occupied the planed-off summit of a mountain near to the magnetic pole. A dreary vista of exposed seabed and eerily sculpted sails of ice caked in dirt and pollutants receded into the distance.

The temple staff were dead. Their bodies were scattered wherever Thane looked. A few had been killed by the Space Marine reconnaissance teams, but most had no visible injuries, but exhibited signs of poisoning of a dozen different kinds.

‘Who did this?’ asked Thane’s standard bearer.

‘He has. Vangorich slaughtered his followers,’ said Thane. ‘He is insane.’

Cold wind blew over the arid landscape. Thane marshalled his one hundred and fifty warriors. The main temple was ahead.

Setting the Scout teams to guard the Thunderhawks, the battle-brothers of three Chapters advanced.

The entrance to the temple was deceptively small and unassuming, but the first hall was as grand as a cathedral. Stone blocks with no visible names upon them acted as memorials to the unsung heroes of the Imperium. More temple staff lay dotted around, their skin green, mouths thick with frothed saliva. The Space Marines spread out. Ahead, a broad stairway led downwards into the main part of the temple; an extensive underground complex of training chambers, barracks, surgeries, cells, hypnosariums and huge machine rooms. Thane had his warriors check them all, though he knew in his gut they would be deserted by all but the dead.

Vangorich waited for them in the depths of the temple, a spider at the heart of its web. He was in the largest hall of all, dominated by monumental statuary and massive glassaic windows whose colours were dulled by the black rock behind them. A vaulted ceiling stretched a hundred metres above their heads, supported on a row of columns running down the walls where they divided the spaces between the windows into cylindrical alcoves, fifty either side of the hall.

Vangorich sat on the steps of a dais at the end of the hall, one knee upraised, his elbow resting on it and his hand cupping his chin. Once so neat and well presented, he had become filthy and unkempt. His nails were long and ragged, and his hair lank. He had become thin, but there was still a hint of his old strength visible in the sinewy cords of his neck and wrist. Though old by the standards of mortals, he was without mechanical aid. He was still dangerous.

‘Drakan Vangorich,’ pronounced Thane. ‘I am here to arrest you for high treason to the Imperium of Man, and gross abuse of privilege that goes against the fundamental principles of Imperial government.’

Vangorich yawned. ‘You always said you’d come back. Here you are, making good on your threat.’ His voice had a new, wild edge. ‘You took your time.’

‘I never intended that you rule alone,’ said Thane. He stepped closer, and drew his power sword. Its field glowed faintly in the gloom.

‘I discovered fairly quickly that it was either rule alone, or not rule at all,’ said Vangorich. ‘The Senatorum was ungovernable. I had to act. Kubik moved Ullanor, that’s why I had to kill them. It’s still out there, not too far from Terra.’

‘Why did you not recall me? Why did you kill them all?’

‘Because you would not have come back,’ said Vangorich. He stood up, his stale scent wafting out to Thane. ‘I did my best. You should have ruled, Thane, you would have done better. But you wanted your crusade. I didn’t want to be Lord Protector.’

‘You did,’ said Thane. ‘You lied for so long that you cannot stop. You lied even to yourself. Look into your innermost self, Grand Master. I believe you will find that you intended to rule all along, and I was blind not to see.’

Vangorich smiled, exposing dirty teeth. In the smile, the lines around the mouth, the set of the head, there was a flash of the man he had been.

‘Give me time, everything will be set to rights. Protecting the Imperium and protecting humanity are not always the same. I will make it better, you will see.’

Thane looked at the filthy Vangorich. His suaveness, intelligence and wit were gone. Time was cruel to mortal men. What bit at Thane the most was that Vangorich was right, he should have stayed. He had set personal honour over duty.

‘It is too late. You failed in your ambition as you failed your Emperor,’ said Thane. ‘It is time for you to step down, Vangorich. Come and face judgement. You shall be tried by the new High Lords of Terra. Justice served shall be a warning to all those who think themselves mightier than the Emperor’s will.’

Vangorich stood and laughed, clapping in delight.

One hundred and fifty boltgun slides were racked back.

‘What a marvellous speech,’ he said. ‘But no, I must decline. You see,’ he said impishly, ‘you are making a terrible mistake.’

‘I made my mistake a hundred years ago,’ said Thane. ‘I should have heeded your suggestion, and let Veritus lead the Senatorum.’

‘You’re making another one now,’ said Vangorich. His eyes gleamed with incipient madness. ‘And it shall be your last.’

A klaxon blared its rising-falling song. Blinking lights shone in the alcoves along the temple walls. A hundred capsules rose from the floor into them, rotating amber lights on their tops. They locked into place with loud thunks. Swirling gas filled each, lit with blue light. Inside them were the indistinct forms of human bodies, clad in tight-fitting synskin. In an asynchronous cacophony, the gas vented from the capsules.

‘This is Temple Eversor,’ said Vangorich. ‘Allow me to introduce its acolytes.’

The Space Marines opened fire, shooting at the capsules, but they were made of centimetres-thick armourglass, and though they cracked and fractured, they did not break. One by one the shapes inside came alive, twitching gauntlets raking against their prisons.

The doors opened, releasing more methalon fumes into the room. Water vapour condensed in the chilled air, cloaking everything with a dense, freezing fog. The warriors around Thane disappeared into coils of white. Thane activated false-colour heat vision. He saw his men. The Eversors were as cold as the gas, and he did not see them coming.

Boltguns went off all around him; somewhere he heard Vangorich’s insane laughter.

The fight that followed was one of the hardest of Thane’s life. Black-suited killers reared up in the mist, moving too fast for him to hit easily. The shouts of battle-brothers rang in his helmet. Space Marines came into sight, only to be cut down by the flashing finger blades of Temple Eversor’s crazed killers.

‘Fall back to the door!’ ordered Thane. ‘Defensive cordon!’

His dwindling men formed up around the entrance, back-to-back, boltguns blazing. A handful of Eversors got behind them, causing great loss before they were cut down. Casualty screed scrolled endlessly on Thane’s faceplate display. Black, skull-masked Assassins darted in and out of view, clawing men down. In their turn, the Assassins died messily, blasted apart by mass-reactives or detonated by uncontrollable bio-feedback when their hearts stopped. Such was the force of their explosions that Space Marines went down, battleplate holed by fragments of hyper-velocity bone shards and armour.

‘Keep them back!’ yelled Thane. ‘Keep them back!’

Executioner pistols fired, loud brazen boltguns one moment, silent toxin needlers the next.

The Eversors pressed nearer. Fighting became close and desperate, and the firing discipline of the Adeptus Astartes collapsed. The group disintegrated into individuals fighting for their lives in melee. At close quarters Vangorich’s killers excelled. The warriors fighting at his side became fewer, going from one hundred, to seventy-five, to fifty, to twenty, to ten.

Thane battled on, his power sword the flaring dividing line between his life and death. He parried and cut, but his blows cleaved only the mist. The Assassins were faster than the wind, near impossible to hit. They fought in a frenzy that appeared at first to lack control, but after a time Thane discerned a pattern to their combat, and was awed by their skill.

His actions became reflexive, time blurred. Only rarely had Thane fought so hard. As a Space Marine he regarded himself as the pinnacle of the transhuman type. The Eversors, though unstable mentally and physically, challenged that belief.

Thane fought with a dancing monster with a blue death’s head for a face. It leapt around, howling like an animal. After minutes of duelling, Thane spotted a weakness in its attacks and brought his sword up, hilt first, swinging the point up and through the Eversor’s stomach wall and gutting it. Before it died, it slashed down with its neurogauntlet. Monomolecular blades sliced through ceramite and plasteel, biting into Thane’s flesh. Toxins surged from micropores all up the blades, pumping into the Chapter Master’s body.

He roared in agony. He had never felt such pain. He stumbled and fell to his knees, paralysed by the poison.

When his body had purged the toxins sufficiently for him to move, he looked up, his eyes streaming with tears. The mist was clearing. He heard a final round of gunfire, a scream, and the clash of power armour falling to the floor.

A dark shadow fell across Thane’s face. An Eversor stood over him, ready to deliver the final blow.

‘Halt!’ called Vangorich. He walked through the last dispersing tendrils of mist. ‘You have lost, Chapter Master Thane, and it is your life that is forfeit.’

‘No,’ said the Eversor, and stood back. Trembling with the effort of disobeying its programming, the killer pulled its skull mask from its face. Yanking cables from its head, it cast the mask aside. Most of the flesh of the face beneath had been peeled away, replaced with close-fitting augmetic devices. Elsewhere there was naught but shining, polished bone inscribed with devotional text. But there was just enough of the features left for Thane to recognise him.

‘Krule!’ he said.

Through a mutilated mouth, Krule managed to speak.

‘My name is Esad Wire,’ he said.

He stood aside, leaving Thane a clear shot at Vangorich.

Thane raised his bolt pistol.

Vangorich’s eyes widened. He held up his hands. ‘Wait! Did you ever hear the story of the end of Konrad Curze?’

‘No more stories, Drakan,’ said Thane, and ended Vangorich’s life with a single bolter shell.

Swaying, feeling nauseous from the residue of the poison in his blood, Maximus Thane stood. He gripped his wounded arm. He was alone amid a carpet of broken bodies, Space Marine and Assassin alike. He called out for survivors, but no voice answered. Relief flooded him when he voxed the Thunderhawks and found all was well outside.

‘Send the Apothecaries. They have a harvest of sorrow ahead of them,’ he said. He turned away from Vangorich’s broken corpse. Too weary to raise his sword, he dragged it across the ground as he walked unsteadily back towards the stairs and the daylight beyond.

Of Esad Wire, there was no trace.

Chapter Seventeen A matter of control

To the psychic sight of Eldrad Ulthran the skein was a living being, a complicated braiding of the life threads of every living thing in the galaxy. The main flow of fate resembled the corded trunk of a tree. From its mighty sides grew innumerable branches. Most were small, looping back to rejoin the main course of destiny; many more withered and died before long, the potential choices that predicated them so unlikely they would never come to be, or the creature intended to set those events in motion meeting its end before it could. Others branched many times into complex networks of possibility all their own. A few of these split the skein, forming mighty boughs upon the tree of fate. Sometimes a single choice could dictate a different future entirely.

It was upon these that Ulthran dwelt as his bodiless mind flew along the twisting ways of the future. Farseers were consumed utterly by the drive to preserve their craftworld, but Eldrad Ulthran’s calling was higher. He ignored the fates of maiden worlds, crone worlds, true stars, exodite clans, pirates, dark kin and craftworlds. Planets burned and kindreds were snuffed out in myriad futures. These extinctions pained him, but they were only a small part of the game and he could not afford to be distracted. He played at fate because he saw a greater prize than simple survival. Eldrad Ulthran would have the glories of old restored and Chaos’ influence banished from the material realm. There was no other goal worth aiming for; all others led ultimately to death and damnation.

A cracking roar announced the splitting of the skein. A new forest of possibilities grew rapidly out from the trunk. Familiar as he was with the skein, like no other being in the galaxy, Ulthran rarely saw such a dramatic reconfiguration of potentiality born before him and he followed it eagerly. Tendrils of individual fates, vanishingly small, sprouted from the main path, growing long with incredible velocity, wrapping around each other, twisting themselves into thicker and thicker ropes of complex interaction. These came together, and again, until the fates of worlds and sectors were bound up with one another, all generated from the actions of the galaxy’s uncountable creatures.

The wave front of possibility and its fronds of maybes raced away from Ulthran. Beneath him, more cords were being joined, wrapping around each other in tight embrace until in their coilings Ulthran descried the fates of entire species. A moaning rolled through the timeless spaces of fate. The other half of the fork, the original from his perspective, blackened and died, its unformed might-bes disintegrating into unrealised motes of chance and fragments of unfulfilled cause and effect.

He paused. Turning about, he looked back at the skein towards the present. He had outpaced the now by some days, but the origin of the split was only hours ahead of the present, and it approached swiftly, a boiling wall of yellow light that rushed unstoppably towards the future. When it encountered the What Might Be, it solidified it into the glimmering of What Is, a moment so short it could not be measured. When the present passed on by the skein was still and clear as glass, the dead times of What Was.

Ulthran looked down at where the split had occurred, now no more than a slight kink in the skein. He raced downward, into it, passing through the endless threads of individual lives, his powerful mind inadvertently tasting their short-lived joys and lasting pain. So many billion human existences, twined mostly with their own kind, but touching here and there against the fates of other creatures including the eldar, often disastrously.

He hunted to find the cause of the change, his practised astral eyes darting from deaths and births to the explosions of suns.

The rumble of the approaching present grew louder as he located the source of the change. One thread, one death.

Drakan Vangorich, master of the Imperium, was about to die.

Ulthran rapidly examined all possible futures for the Grand Master’s thread, but though they began as many, they all converged on that one point, when a Space Marine in yellow armour would put a bolt between Vangorich’s eyes.

Racing back to the surface of the skein entire, Ulthran looked ahead, to where the ghost of the dead futures yet lingered as a dying swarm of particulate maybes. That had been a bad future, the slow decline of the human Imperium, the resurgence of Chaos, the probable death of the eldar, but woven in amongst the doom were gleaming threads of salvation. These Ulthran had resolved to pursue, and he had been confident of success despite the grim nature of the predominate fates. But all of that had gone.

Behind him the present rushed on. Ulthran looked to the new future. Less certain, more fraught. The chances of survival were more numerous, the opportunity of restoration far more remote. Time stretched away unbrokenly. Ulthran saw his own fate weaving in and out of it until it was lost to sight among the uncountable tomorrows. The roar of the now thundered, waterfall-loud. A great shock hit his body and Ulthran was engulfed, carried along upon the wave of actuality towards futures he had not yet assimilated. It was time to leave, before he was consumed.

Eldrad Ulthran opened his eyes. His runes slowed their spinning in the air and sank to the crystalline floor around him. There, one by one, they came to a wobbling halt, fell and clinked to a standstill.

‘Drakan Vangorich is dead,’ he said aloud. His voice echoed weirdly through the forest of crystal trees of Ulthwé’s Dome of Seers.

His death was foreseen, replied a disembodied voice.

The skein is changed, said another.

Among the groves of trees were half a dozen silent, vitreous statues of eldar farseers, those psykers whose bond to the craftship’s heart had become too much to ignore, and whose spirit fled their flesh to join the infinity circuit while still alive. Their voices were hard to tease apart. Though they spoke individually, their words blended into one another’s speech. Male voices became female or something inbetween. They might speak all together, then split as they disagreed. Eldrad Ulthran knew all their names as he had known them all in life, but without joining in direct psychic communion with them it was impossible to identify which soul spoke.

‘We go on,’ said Ulthran. ‘The mon-keigh are aware of the threat of Chaos, they will continue the struggle.’

One thousand five hundred cycles ago you sought their destruction, and through it the extinguishment of Chaos, said another voice.

‘The Cabal did. I did not. I only ever sought our survival,’ said Ulthran.

The Cabal are gone. The Cabal did not have the best interests of the children of Eldanesh at heart. We were used. The trees pulsed with dancing witchlight, their boughs raced with the thoughts of the dead.

‘Yes. The only way our species is to survive is through the support of humanity. Our fates are inextricable. If they fall, so shall we.’

You chase ever-diminishing possibilities of salvation. We should depart this starwheel and begin anew elsewhere.

‘Even were that possible, and we are not assured that it is, then what? The Primordial Annihilator knows no limits. Time and space mean nothing in the Othersea. If we travel to another starwheel, we will take our daemons with us. She Who Thirsts will be waiting wherever we go. Our fate is here, with this place, for good or ill. Many fates are possible. If we guide them wisely, we shall prevail.’

You do not have the power of the Acuity. You do not have the foresight of the Cabal. We stand alone. Your actions could doom us all. The mon-keigh have proven again that they will not be manipulated. They will see us all dead before the end. Already it is two thousand cycles since the fall. Every pass brings us closer to extinction. The lights in the crystal danced with agitation. A period of instability awaits the humans’ empire, and they may not recover. If they do, they shall hunt us to destruction.

‘Not all threads say this is so.’ Ulthran picked up his helm and held it under his arm. ‘Humanity is our best chance, but it is not the only one. There are many more worlds of the krork,’ said Ulthran. ‘Beasts never die, they are only banished. The cry of “Mag Uruk Thraka” echoes still in the Othersea. Should one rise again, the greenskins may yet fulfil their original purpose. New races may evolve in time. There is hope while we live.’

You are arrogant. You are but one alone against eternity.

‘One mind is sometimes all it takes to change fate,’ Ulthran said defiantly.

The lights dwindled. The dead farseers retreated into the core of the worldship. The crystal dome took on its dark, marmoreal air again. Other craftworlds had lighter aspects, but Ulthwé never forgot, forever in mourning for an empire lost.

Eldrad Ulthran would not mourn. He would see the days of greatness return, no matter how long it took.