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The Book of Change – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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THE BOOK OF CHANGE

by Danie Ware

The incoming message was brief.

Thrown out across the void, soaked in horror, framed by screams. The figures were flickering, hololithic phantoms: Astra Militarum, their combat fatigues and flak armour dirty and stained. They bore rifles, bristling outwards at something that Marissa could not see, but that reflected in their eyes like pure panic.

‘They’re coming,’ they said, static and desperation in every word. ‘They’re com–!’

Barks of orders, the crash of a shattered door. Streaks of las-fire as the enemy burst in upon them. Slashes of claws and steel; red splatters, sudden across the half-light. The full-throated scream of a man in unendurable pain. Cries for mercy–

Then: nothing.

The air fizzed, empty, where the projection had been.

Marissa Khorvayne, her armoured arms folded, her head bared to the steady gleam of the ship’s lumens, nodded once at the message’s end. Turning to the young lieutenant, his uniform in crisp contrast to the bloodstained green and brown of the vanished hololith, she said, ‘And that is all?’

The young man blinked, his own fear tangible.

‘My apologies, inquisitor,’ he said. ‘We have been scanning the vox-channels as per your instruction, but that’s the only solid data we’ve managed to retrieve. The 12th Black Knot Company were stationed upon Kuron VI four Solar months ago, their brief to investigate the ruin. Contact ceased–’

‘I am aware of the mission’s parameters.’ Tall, severe, her face a pale, cold mask, her hair a heavy cascade, she regarded the officer until he flinched, rubbing his hands uneasily as if to wash his foolishness away.

He let out his breath, made an effort to lift his chin. ‘I can play it again, if you–’

‘There is no need,’ she told him, her tone ice. ‘Its content is clear, my suspicions confirmed. We will increase speed.’ The words were not a request.

‘I will inform the captain, ma’am. The Courage of Stadius is at your dis–’

‘Of course it is.’ As an inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, Marissa had the right to demand any course of action, in His name – to command troops, Naval or otherwise; to take control of a planetary authority, up to and including the rank of governor. She walked around the still-crackling emptiness, studying it as if she could see into its heart, its dreams, its fears.

The horrors it had not revealed.

Ah, the voice in her head said softly, answering her unspoken questions. It was deep and rich, like a plucked string, but less like reassurance than it was the caress of the darkness itself. As you surmised, this is the hand of the Ancient Foe – its touch and taint, soaking and staining. You feel it, I know how acutely. You must carry your light. His light. My light. Burn it into their eyes, child, and sear them from the very world they pollute. Then, your target will be exposed.

The low thrum filled her mind, her soul; she welcomed and embraced it.

Oh yes, she told it in return. I will face them, fearless. I will send them, screaming, back to the very hells from which they came. And I will laugh.

The internal voice was her own, and His blessing. It was guide, mentor, purpose. It had been with her for as long as she could remember, from her earliest days upon Ghorlos, carrying her through the terrors of the Seventh Watch Massacres and into the care of her mentor, Inquisitor Hrake. It had sustained her throughout her training and his death, enabled her to take up his mantle and the torch of the Emperor Himself.

It had also made her pure, strong, untouchable by the Enemy. And this – this! – was exactly the kind of mission for which she had been born, forged, annealed. She was His word, His vengeance. And she would cauterise any trace of Chaos, right back to the planet’s very rock.

And further, if He commanded.

I feel your rage, child, the voice said. My faithful, my daughter, my blood, my blade…

She closed a hand around her rosette, hanging loose on its chain; gripped it until its hard edges scraped against the ceramite of her gauntlets.

The officer was still watching her, poised on his toes like prey, as if he didn’t know whether to flee or to wait for more orders.

‘Captain Curtia understands your need for swiftness,’ he offered. ‘She says it will be less than two Solar days.’

Marissa could feel the great ship around her, its metal and spirit groaning like some vast and semi-slumberous creature, now stirring to creaking wakefulness. Its distant engines thumped and thundered, shaking through the steel of its bones.

‘Good,’ she told the officer. ‘I will retire to my quarters and brief my staff.’ She met his gaze full-on. ‘Do not disturb me, lieutenant.’

The officer paled, but said only, ‘Ma’am.’

Ruin and dust, and now stalked by the Enemy… and the thing I came so far to find…

Marissa leaned forward and clicked off the hololith, let the cloud of static gutter and fade.

They would see the real fears, soon enough.

Planet Kuron VI.

A ruined hive world, orbiting far out from a tiny, blue-white star. Founded and then abandoned during the Forging, its main habitation was a vast and maze-like tangle, ruined upon its surface and descending far below into the planet’s forgotten, granite depths. Once, there had been billions of people here – clerks, administrators, labourers. No one of any consequence, but the tiniest of cogs, driving bigger wheels, and bigger wheels, and ultimately, the bureaucratic engines of the Imperium. Four Solar months before, the 12th Black Knot Company had been despatched from Galeria with reconnaissance orders, to explore and assess.

There was no need to waste a stronger force on a world that offered so little. After all, there were always more cogs.

Marissa however, had a deeper purpose.

In her quarters, she stood at a second hololith, this one of the planet itself, turning silent and serene in the centre of the room. Occasional points of interest flared out from the gently rotating sphere – the governor’s palace, the space ports, the immense warrens of cubicles and dormitories that were the central Administratum complex.

Carefully, she noted each one, indicated that her retinue should do likewise.

They did not argue.

At her shoulder – Sergeant Kezia Gale. Ex-Militarum herself, an older woman who’d once had a reputation for ruthless in-the-field leadership. Later, she’d been one of the few survivors of the horrific tyranid massacre on Telestis; she’d been known to howl in her sleep, haunted by monsters. Under Marissa’s charge, however, she’d transformed her night-time terrors to daytime actions, and now she hunted those monsters with a focus that verged on demented.

At the control panel – Adept Din-14. He was small for a priest of the Mechanicus, his multiple legs bent beneath his scarlet cloak. One dark-skinned hand moved over the panel, deft and assured; the other was already plugged in, its metallic fingers extended. His face, still flesh and eerily beautiful, was bathed in the screen-light, and his lips moved in prayers to the Omnissiah.

These two were familiar, trusted. The others…

Lounging back against the far wall – Syn, a Callidus Temple assassin. The woman was typical of her type, though she lacked the Temple’s more elite hardware. She was slight, wiry, wary, her eyes as hard as the blades she carried. She had botched a job, and been seconded into Marissa’s employ.

And lastly, standing frowning at the planet’s details, the other newcomer – Aris Manistallis Mundas, once an Administratum official himself. He was a pale man, round of belly, bald of pate and already sweating, though the environmentals were set to an ambient temperature. Despite his appearance, however, this mission was his area of knowledge, more so than any of the rest.

The rumour went that he had once read The Litany of the Devouring Hollow – a text of Chaos from the days of the Horus Heresy and soul-taintingly blasphemous, enough to scar and tear one’s thoughts, to leave them wounded and bleeding. How such a thing had come into his possession, Marissa did not know, and had not asked.

She simply needed him, his insight. And, like the assassin, he was expendable.

Glancing at her, Mundas mopped his brow with an already grubby kerchief. ‘I would suggest, ma’am,’ he said, his tone habitually apologetic, ‘that we commence our search at the Administratum complex itself. The background of the message suggests a style-three-zero-seven-six cubicle, used by clerks from levels seven through fifteen–’

‘Agreed.’ The adept’s tone was flat, his brown eyes now closed. ‘Landing pad four-one-eighty, district designation nine point five. Chances of successful progression: ninety-three per cent. It is adequate.’ His perfect lips precisely completing each word, he continued to pray, offering his litanies to the screen, and to the spirit of the great ship.

Mundas nodded, putting the kerchief in a pocket. He was still sweating.

At Marissa’s gesture, the sergeant snapped orders into the vox – timings, weapons, logistics. She had no need for Marissa to describe the details: Gale knew the inquisitor’s operational parameters like the back of her lasrifle.

The assassin still lounged, ice-hard eyes moving from face to face, saying nothing.

Marissa eyed her briefly, but she too understood.

She understands all too well, the voice told her, amused. Her part will come.

In their midst, the ruined planet continued to turn, its noted landmarks lunging from its surface one at a time, as if they clawed outwards for the group’s very souls.

Stone dust, dark and chill and fine.

Marissa had removed her gauntlet and the dust scratched between her fingertips. The opening shuttle-bay doors had driven it hard into the corners, along with a lifetime of other debris – the rusting parts of cogitators, tangles of corroded wires. A single forgotten boot.

Around them, the bay was huge, resonant and hollow, its lumens all but dead. The shuttle’s lights had stretched phantoms from its corners, shadows rising and gibbering as the vehicle had come in to land, and then, as they’d turned off, reaching up to swallow it completely.

Now, the emptiness was all but pitch-dark, echoing to their breaths. The air thronged with suggested terrors, and a rising sense of fear and dread.

There were things here.

Somewhere.

Waiting.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Kevin Chin and Alex Boyd.

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