Contents

Cover

Recongregator – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Recongregator

by David Annandale

Lord Inquisitor Otto Dagover to Ephrael Stern:

This was about six months before I found you in the Imperium Nihilus. I did not know where you were, but I was confident that I was on your trail. You cut a swath through the darkness, Sister Superior. I learned to recognise the signs of your passage, and I don’t think you appreciate the kind they were. You experienced the fury and the destruction of the battle against the Ruinous Powers. You did not stay for the aftermath. And that aftermath was order. Stability. A chance for the system to draw breath and reknit itself, perhaps become stronger.

I don’t say certainly. I say perhaps. But perhaps is better than extinction, don’t you think?

I want to make something clear. I know my reputation. I know what is thought of those of us who call ourselves Recongregators. You may well share that opinion. The truth is you may be more like us than you think. No, no, there’s no need to protest. I won’t try to convince you. Not this time, at any rate. What I want you to understand is that those who think we act only to destroy are wrong. Our destruction is creative, as a forest fire is the catalyst for renewal. The Imperium is not what it could be, and what it must be, if our species hopes to survive.

Please remember that this principle governs all of my decisions, and all of my actions.

So. To my tale, then.

Aboard my battle cruiser, the Iudex Ferox, I arrived in the Sacramentum System. It was one in which the transmissions from its primus world were relatively orderly – not a constant scream for help. There are too many systems on that side of the Cicatrix Maledictum where there are no transmissions at all. Something had happened to bring order here, and that something, I was certain, was you. My intention was to make for Sacramentum Primus, to see what I could learn, get a sense of when you had passed through, and where you might have gone next. There was rarely anything useful to glean, but the effort was a necessary one.

I never made it to Primus. The Iudex Ferox was crossing the mid-system asteroid belt when my vox-officer intercepted a distress call from the mining habitat Anaphora. It had been the victim, apparently, of a drukhari raid.

I could not ignore this cry. I am an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos after all, even if the conditions in the Imperium Nihilus frequently meant that the battles I fought would normally have been the remit of my comrades in the Ordo Malleus. During most of the long years I was trapped in the Imperium Nihilus, xenos depredations were the least of the problems there.

Here, though, was a system that appeared to be reasserting itself, and this was a threat I was sworn to investigate. And who knew? Perhaps fate or the Emperor was pointing me to a location that might have some information about you.

As it transpired, neither fate nor the Emperor had anything to do with my arrival on Anaphora.

I ordered a hail and acknowledgment sent to the habitat, and the Iudex Ferox docked with it four hours later, next to a resupply freighter. Anaphora was a disordered conglomeration of cylindrical and disc-shaped habitat units linked by a tangle of communication tubes. It sat between three captured asteroids like a spider’s web. The planetoids, each no more than a few tens of miles in diameter, formed the points of an elongated triangle, and were held by the mining pylons of Anaphora. These drilling assemblages, the size of a manufactory, plunged like daggers deep into the surface of the asteroids. The docking hub was part of the command unit, the largest of the discs, positioned at the approximate centre of the web.

My crew was a mere skeleton of what it had been, and I left my ship alone. My power armour gives me little to fear, as well as keeping this ruin of a body of mine alive. On the other side of the airlock there was a welcoming party waiting for me. At its head was the commander of Anaphora, Hera Misharin. She took half a step back when she saw me. I am used to this reaction. I don’t know I can say that I am as feared as you are, Sister Superior Stern, but I am not a welcome figure. I know the effect of this dead face of mine, of my pointed teeth, of my lips and the mechanised hooks I use to move them. I flatter myself that when people have bad dreams about the Inquisition, I am the figure they see. We have to take our pleasures where we find them, don’t you think?

Misharin did manage to recover herself fairly quickly. ‘We are grateful that you are here, lord inquisitor,’ she said.

I did not accuse her for lying. No one has ever been grateful for the presence of the Inquisition. ‘You have been attacked by the drukhari,’ I said. I have no patience for ceremonies, except when I can put them to useful ends.

‘We believe so.’

‘You believe so?’

‘We’re not sure. There were no surviving witnesses to the attack. Sacramentum Primus needs to know definitively one way or the other before they commit any of the system’s forces to this position.’

‘I see. Then show me where the attack occurred.’

Click here to buy Recongregator.

A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Recongregator © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Recongregator, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-479-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.