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Chapter One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Host follows your word without fault, my lord.’

‘Of course. Meaning?’

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

‘And speaking as yourself?’ Jarulek had asked, softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Who in the Emperor’s name would want to hide out here?’ remarked one of his team, swearing colourfully.

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

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

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

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

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

Still wheezing, Varnus opened up his comm-channel.

‘They are running. Undisclosed bolt-holes. Orders?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lieutenant?’ questioned one of the enforcers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We are close,’ said Varnus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The captive spat, eyes blazing with fury.

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marduk laughed, a harsh, barking sound.

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

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

‘And yours with it, my champion,’ Marduk growled.

Burias grinned ferally. ‘That it does.’

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

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

‘Quiet. But I can feel he is… hungry.’

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

‘I look forward to it. He so likes to kill.’

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

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

‘Arise,’ said a dangerously softly spoken voice.

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

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

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

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

‘First, we worship,’ said Jarulek. ‘Then we kill a world.’

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

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

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

‘Sit down, lieutenant,’ said the captain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Are you quite finished, lieutenant?’ asked the captain.

‘Um, let me think. No. No, I’m not actually.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throne above! An Arbites judge!

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

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

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

Varnus sat down warily.

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

Varnus frowned darkly.

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

Varnus raised an eyebrow and pushed himself back in his chair. ‘Huh?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Three

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

Varnus held onto the railing tightly as he stared out of the vision slit of the fast moving tri-railed conveyance. The compartment was packed with adepts of the Administratum whose access level allowed them to move around the city freely rather than confining them to their workstations. Soft-skins, he thought derisively. They were uniformly scrawny, wide-eyed and pale-faced, weakling specimens of humanity. Their faces and hands were unlined and soft. Most of the citizenry had a wind-blown harshness to their craggy faces, and eyes that were practically hidden from squinting against the salt winds for years on end. Indeed, most living on Tanakreg succumbed to salt-blindness by the time they reached forty standard Imperial years of age. Their skin generally looked like dried, cracked parchment, the moisture slowly sucked from their bodies by years of exposure to the harsh, salt-laced air.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He will succeed,’ stated Jarulek flatly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were more snorts of derision around the table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He held up a schematic map.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fine, fine, go,’ said the governor, waving his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, no…’ began the governor.

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

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

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

He glanced around the table, his gaze hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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