For Glory and Honour

Book : Warhammer 40,000

by Andy Clark

Genres: Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections; Colonization; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Great collection of action packed Space Marine stories!

Witness the might of the Primaris Space Marines in this bumper edition of novels from the Space Marines Conquests series.

In Fist of the Imperium by Andy Clark, Primaris Librarian Aster Lydorran must use his strength, will, and psychic prowess to uncover a shadowy enemy that preys upon his brothers on the planet of Ghyre.

In Apocalypse by Josh Reynolds, as the Word Bearers threaten to despoil the Ecclesiarchy seat of Almace, Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and White Scars forces combine to save the world from falling into the hands of Chaos.

And in Ian St. Martin’s Of Honour and Iron, the Dark Imperium beckons, and the Indomitus Crusade has begun: Roboute Guilliman has been resurrected, and his legions must stop the predations of the Archenemy in order to bring the human race back from the brink of ruin.

In mankind’s darkest hour, as enemies abound and the lines between diplomacy and warfare are ever more blurred, the Space Marines must prevail – for glory and honour.

Release date: August 15, 2023

Publisher: Games Workshop

Print pages: 736

Sample

PROLOGUE

 

Something moves in the empty darkness between the stars.

Monstrous shapes drift through the void like deep-sea predators winding sinuously along a lightless ocean trench. They are behemoths, huge and terrible, guided by an ineffable will that knows only insatiable hunger.

Miles-long tentacles trail behind them, barely limned by the pale rays of stars so distant they are already long dead. Chitinous plates shield fleshy innards from the killing cold. Limitless energies churn beneath that living armour, the potential for creation and destruction deific in its scope.

Yet these gods can create only to destroy. They can only want. They can only feed, and spawn, and feed again, on and on in an endless, eternal loop.

But now a storm rages. In every direction that their alien senses quest outwards, they taste it roiling and wrathful. Yet like those deep-sea predators in their fathomless trench, they are untouched by the maelstrom that spends its fury far away. They care nothing for it. It is other, insubstantial, irrelevant to them.

Their vast and singular attention fixes instead upon distant echoes that come to them through the storm, in some ways a light, in some ways a siren song, in some ways both and yet neither.

These they taste.

These they know.

These they seek.

Hidden from their prey by the incredible emptiness of the interstellar gulf, the shapes sweep onwards, relentless and impossibly swift. They will seek their prey and devour it. They will bring the end of days to another world, and another and yet more, and in doing so they will inhabit the mantle of godhead that terrified mortal beings ascribe to them. They will do this unknowing and uncaring, the thoughts and feelings and beliefs of their prey as ­ineffable to them as their will and nature is to those they devour.

They care only about their next feast.

It draws closer by the hour.

I

 

The conclave chamber rose from atop the highest spire of Hive Angelicus. Circular in shape and with arched entrances at its four compass points, the chamber’s lower level boasted klarwood panelling, brushed-copper flooring and artfully underlit armaglass cases in which were displayed symbolic relics of the planet’s proud history. Here, an ancient pattern of mining laser hung in a suspensor field. There, rough-hewn chunks of enderrium ore orbited lazily around one another, their crimson sheen the only hint of their capacity to be refined into superior-quality las-cells. Cases contained hovering arrangements of human skulls, polished until they glinted and inscribed in flowing gothic script with the names of greater mining clans.

These last macabre relics were intended to remind all who passed them of the sacrifices made by the countless generations of miners who had lived and died on the planet of Ghyre. By their noble sacrifice is our world made mighty, read the High Gothic inscription around the base of each cabinet-reliquary. Imperial Fists Sergeant Torgan marched between the cabinets with Brother Unctor at his side. He snorted as he glanced at the words proudly etched into the brass.

‘Always you do that, brother-sergeant,’ said Unctor, keeping his voice low. ‘Why?’

‘Where in a life of ignorant menial labour is there nobility or sacrifice, Brother Unctor?’ asked Torgan. ‘Roofs over their heads, nutrient gruel to fill their bellies, labour to occupy their hours and entire decades of life shielded behind bast­ions and warriors whose existence they barely perceive. These people know little of sacrifice and less still of nobility.’

‘As I understand it, the miners’ lives are hard and short,’ said Brother Unctor. ‘Without their labours the munitions shrines of forge world Shallethrax would swiftly fall silent. These people bleed for their Imperium as we do. They do their part, in their own limited fashion.’

‘Once, perhaps, but do they still?’ asked Sergeant Torgan.

‘That is the responsibility of those in the chamber above us,’ said Unctor.

‘On that we agree, brother. Let us see if they have stopped their banal bickering long enough to do their duty.’ Torgan led the way to the foot of one of the two brass-and-armaglass ramps that rose in a helical spiral from the lower level, through the mezzanine floor and into the upper chamber where the ruling conclave of Ghyre convened. He marched up the ramp between the burning braziers flanking it. As he advanced, angry voices floated down to greet him. He shot a sour glance back at Unctor, whose graven features gave away nothing.

‘…and I would remind the honoured high administrator once again that Ghyre supports eleven full regiments of airborne infantry, all of whom are trained and equipped to the highest standard that Prime Clan Kallistus can afford!’ Torgan recognised the deep and cultured tones of High Marshal Anthonius Kallistus. ‘That is to say nothing of the copious squadrons of dedicated fighter pilots who wait by their craft for the slightest sign of invasion or malfeasance, the teeming ranks of the hive militias and the exceptionally capable Enforcers under First Arbitrator Verol.’ The high marshal paused, his attention drawn to Torgan and his brother. ‘Ah! And here we see the crowning glory, our very own honour guard of Imperial Fists Adeptus Astartes!’

As Torgan emerged into the upper chamber, he saw Marshal Anthonius standing behind his podium and pointing triumphantly in his direction. He did not deign to respond to the man’s words, though Anthonius’ presumption caused him a familiar flare of irritation. The conclave of Ghyre stood in a circle around the room, each counsellor bathed by soft lumen that illuminated them, their gaggles of aides, scribes and hangers-on, and the carved stone podia that announced their titles. Torgan took in the great and good of Ghyre – the dashing High Marshal Kallistus, commander of the Ghyrish Airborne regiments, the spare and glowering High Administrator Jessamine Lunst, who the marshal had been haranguing, and the stocky, steely-haired First Arbitrator Mariah Verol, whose support the man was clearly hoping to win.

Lurking like a giant mechanical spider to Torgan’s right was Magos Geologis Mendel Gathabosis, while to his left he noted Bishop Lotimer Renwyck standing humble and unassu­ming in a street preacher’s hooded cassock.

He alone had not a single scribe or bodyguard at his side.

More figures stood further back and higher up the chamber’s curving walls, between jutting sculptures of human skeletons that brandished mining tools and burning promethium torches. These were the lords and ladies of the greater clans Delve, Tectos and VanSappen, and the two haughty spire lords Agnathio Trost of Hive Klaratos and Yenshi Hal of Hive Mastracha.

Higher still, seated upon a huge throne of brass and stone and trunked wires that jutted from the chamber’s upper wall, was Governor Osmyndri Ellisentris Kallistus XXI. Elegant and regal, she held the sceptre of office that marked her as the planetary governor of Ghyre and the ritual gilded pick that denoted her rulership of Angelicus Hive and all the mining clans who dwelt within and below it. She wore the crisply pressed and medal-laden uniform of the Supreme Air Marshal of Ghyre, which Torgan knew she had earned; the governor had been quite the ace pilot behind the controls of a Lightning fighter, skills that reputedly she had never allowed to atrophy. At her shoulder, lashed securely to a metal platform on the side of her throne, hunched the governor’s ageing seneschal, a man called Gryft.

Above them all a half-finished mural of the Emperor glower­ed down in judgement. For thousands of years that ceiling had been a stained-armaglass dome that had looked out upon the stratospheric blue and star-studded black of Ghyre’s skies. The night sky had been poisoned, now. Those who looked too long upon the tainted stars ran mad. A hurried edict had seen the armaglass slathered with layers of black paint to preserve the precious minds of Ghyre’s ruling elite, and work had begun to paint a fresh fresco of the Emperor enthroned. It was only half done, but already Torgan’s superior

eyesight could pick out where the paint was blistering and peeling as though assaulted from without.

The skies, it seemed, resented being shut out. The Rift would not be ignored.

Torgan marched across the concave floor of the upper chamber, performed a smart about-face before the stanchions that held aloft the governor’s throne and brought his boltgun up across his chest with a clang. Unctor fell in beside him, and the two Imperial Fists stood, eyes front, still as statues carved from granite.

‘The conclave welcomes Brother-Sergeant Torgan and Brother Unctor of the Imperial Fists Fifth Company,’ croaked Seneschal Gryft, his words amplified by his throat augmetics to echo around the chamber. Quill-fingered adepts clustered around High Administrator Lunst wrote in perfect synchronicity, the combined scritch of nib on parchment a harsh susurrus. Their mistress waited a moment longer to be sure that neither Torgan nor the first arbitrator was about to speak in support of Marshal Kallistus. Satisfied, she drew herself up to her full, considerable height, and her ocular implants flashed.

‘We here assembled are all aware of the military strength of Ghyre’s defensive regiments, high marshal,’ she said. Her voice was clipped, her consonants hard, like the struck keys of a cogitator. ‘However, what we have seen in the last two cycles has been unprecedented. Might I first remind you that those cycles themselves must now be estimated by digital choristry and astro-sidereal comparative augury, since the…’ She paused, clearly searching for the most appropriate phrase. ‘Malign phenomena have rendered the traditional marking of the days impossible. Article the first…’

The high administrator held out a hand without looking.

A scroll thumped into it, proffered from behind by one of her many adepts. As it always did, the sound caused a muscle beneath Torgan’s right eye to twitch with annoyance. He knew what came next.

Lunst unrolled the scroll in a puff of dust and read aloud. ‘The conclave to be reminded of the epidemic of dark omens, dire portents, doomsayers, nightmares, mutational degeneracy and unsanctioned zealotry throughout Hives Angelicus, Klaratos and Mastracha and their dependent mining complexes that commenced on cycle eighty-eight thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four, sub-cycle eight-six-one, and has proceeded with no signs of abatement or remission.’

‘I would remind the high administrator that my arbitrators have contained and quelled a record quotient of civil disturbances within the last cycle alone,’ said First Arbitrator Verol, her voice stern and hard as iron.

‘The conclave to record that neither offence nor criticism was intended by my utterances,’ said the high administrator, sounding singularly unapologetic. Again, that muscle twitched beneath Torgan’s eye.

‘They believe themselves to be sparring within some gladiatorial ring,’ he murmured so quietly only his brother would hear. Torgan briefly imagined how these preening fools would look caught amidst the gunfire and mayhem of a real battlefield, and the thought brought him some small comfort.

Lunst furled the scroll with a snap.

‘Article two,’ she proceeded, another scroll thumping into her hand and unfurling in front of her. ‘The conclave to take note of the severe disruption to the planet’s astropathic conclave and the plethora of confirmed and suppressed malefic manifestations across Ghyre in the sub-cycles since the astrological phenomena appeared in the night sky.

‘Article three.’

Snap, thump.

‘The conclave to consider the substantial disruption to intra- and inter-system shipping that we have seen in the last cycle, the reported faltering of the holy Astronomican and the prolonged period, only now beginning to abate, of astropathic silence from any planet or other Imperial void-borne installation beyond Ghyre’s immediate stellar vicinity. The conclave to consider before passing judgement in this matter that we still do not possess the requisite corroborated data to fully comprehend what this period of sidereal and stellar disruption represents, or what it might presage.’

So much posturing, so much hemming and hawing, thought Torgan. How the Chapter can call watching over

his dusty flock of peacocks an honour, Dorn only knows.

‘Article four.’

Snap, thump.

‘The conclave to note the, to date, twenty-three per cent net reduction in mining output and efficiency from the clan mining complexes that–’

‘Amendment. The reduction in efficiency was last cogitated at twenty-two point eight seven two per cent,’ came the grating voice of Magos Geologis Gathabosis, overriding by sheer volume the high administrator’s report. ‘Servitor mining units and all blessed geoexcavational machineries continue to operate within previously decreed tolerances. Fault lies with biological components. Exponential increase in predatory fauna growth of eighteen point four per cent since astrological phenomena manifestation. All appropriate measures and binharic prayers have been applied to the macro-purgation firethrowers to hold back hostile flora and fauna variables, but effectiveness has been reduced by a vari­able degree across the northern continental landmass.’

‘So you’re saying it’s the jungle’s fault for growing more quickly?’ asked High Marshal Kallistus disparagingly.

‘Correction. Needless oversimplification of a complex biological variable intended to undermine and make ridiculous my logical conclusions. Comment discarded as irrelevant sociopolitical manoeuvring,’ responded the magos. Torgan had to fight to keep the corner of his mouth from quirking up. ‘Further and more substantial biological component failure observed amongst labour units of the mining clans. Moral dissolution, underperformance, extraneous social exchange and increased behavioural divergence from allocated duties noted as a detrimental variable throughout eighty-three per cent of clan labour forces,’ finished Gathabosis, and Torgan’s ghost of a smile was banished.

Whispers of the unrest amongst the miners had reached his ears through contacts he and the previous honour guard sergeants had cultivated over the years. What he had been unable to gauge was whether the increasing civil unrest amongst the planet’s labouring class was due to the massive increase in warp storm activity and the concurrent malign disturbances of the planet’s populace or whether some other moral rot was spreading. He felt that old, familiar itch in his trigger finger, and not for the first time wished he had an honest foe to turn his bolter upon.

Perhaps it had taken root before any of this began, before he and his squad even came to Ghyre – Torgan had seen the rise of Chaos cults before, had put them down himself with bolt and blade. He would suffer no such failure of the Imperial system while he stood watch.

It seemed that the representatives of the great clans had unpicked the criticisms implicit in the magos’ rambling spiel. Lord Dostos Delve leaned forward over his podium, his ­jewelled rings clinking against the stone, his thick black brows drawn down beneath his heavy cowl.

‘Clan Delve continues to labour as hard for the Imperium as we always have!’ he barked. ‘It can hardly be the fault of my people if the jungle is allowed to close off the mine trails and encroach upon the pit heads! What you call behavioural divergence is simply my folk forming militias so that they might protect themselves from coilthorn and the mist-beasts when your skitarii overseers vanish into their bunkers without a word. Let the conclave be aware that we have lost twenty-six miners in the last sub-cycle alone to being burned by the magos’ macro-purgators while trying to fight back the jungle!’

Even the laxest of Astra Militarum regiments can lose that many soldiers in the space of a heartbeat, yet here you are bellowing and beating your chest as though you were some martyr to the Imperial cause, thought Torgan, wrestling down his contempt for Dostos Delve. Evidently his feelings were echoed by the magos’ own, insofar as a servant of the Omnissiah could experience feelings at all, as he rebuffed Delve’s posturing without pause.

‘I make no apology for biological attrition in the application of optimal cleansing patterns,’ said the magos. ‘Were your labour units simply to–’

‘They are not labour units

 – they are men and women of the Imperium!’ barked Clan Lord Alamica Tectos, banging her augmetic fist down atop her podium.

‘Repetition. Were your labour units simply to proceed along their allotted work patterns, they would not overlap with the purging cycle at any point,’ said Gathabosis.

‘You’re asking our people to shuffle through danger like mindless servitors, to simply ignore the encroaching threats, to die without even fighting back,’ shouted Clan Lord Torphin Lo VanSappen, his nasal voice shrill with outrage.

‘I reiterate my observation to the conclave that upgrading all labour units to servitors would increase ore outputs by three hundred and fourteen per cent, while simultaneously eliminating all of the performance issues heretofore enumerated,’ said Gathabosis.

This elicited fresh howls of outrage.

Torgan bit down on his temper as Agnathio of Klaratos spat accusations at the impassive magos geologis, while Yenshi of Mastracha querulously called into question the loyalties of the isolationist Clan Tectos for the third time that sub-cycle.

‘Order in the conclave!’ shouted Seneschal Gryft hoarsely, banging his electro-gavel against his resonator plate until the sound thundered through the chamber. ‘There will be order in the conclave!’

‘Thank you, seneschal,’ said High Administrator Lunst into the resultant silence. ‘There was, in fact, a point I was attempting to convey.’

‘Point you were labouring to death, more like,’ Torgan heard the high marshal mutter under his breath, and again he had to quash a slight grim smirk.

‘In all of its history, Ghyre has never known such uncertainty and faced such potential for an as yet unspecified catastrophe,’ Lunst finished.

‘As yet unspecified? Is that what you want us to tell the wider Imperium, if we can even reach them through… whatever this is?’ snapped Marshal Kallistus.

‘If the rest of the Imperium is even still out there,’ said the first arbitrator sotto voce.

Torgan stiffened at this and growled, preparing to remonstrate with the first arbitrator for the dishonour her remark cast upon his Chapter and his kind, protocol be damned. Yet before he could speak, another did so in his stead.

‘My lady first arbitrator, do you doubt?’ asked Bishop Renwyck, his soft voice carrying across the chamber like a cold breeze. ‘Is there even the seed of doubt in your heart, in any of your hearts, that the wider Imperium has ceased to be? That we are, as some cry in the streets, the last loyal world? Messages begin to reach us once again, do they not? Is this not proof enough for you?’

Verol stiffened. ‘No, of course not, bishop. I do not doubt. Let the conclave note that my comment was ill-considered pessimism brought on by irritation at these continued arguments. It was unbecoming, and I request it be struck from the records.’

Seneschal Gryft nodded and harrumphed.

Scritch, came the combined swipe of dozens of quill-fingers striking in unison.

Torgan eased back, though he kept his glowering gaze fixed upon the first arbitrator. From her hunched posture and the way she looked anywhere but at him, he was quite sure she felt its heat.

‘The Emperor forgives you, of course,’ said Renwyck, his firm, calm voice betraying nothing of his comparative youth. He sounded supremely confident, Torgan thought, utterly sure in his faith. ‘We must, however, be wary of heresy at this testing time, however unintentional it might be, however innocent a wayward thought or bleak utterance might appear. Now is the hour in which we must show strength and conviction in the face of these trials, which have surely been sent by our glorious Emperor to test our mettle and prove our worth. Note, high administrator, that I say we must show strength, not the wider Imperium. If Emperor-sent trial this be, then it is not our place to appeal for aid from others who may even now be enduring their own tests of faith. Do you imply that Ghyre cannot stand alone, that our might or our faith is lacking?’

‘I imply nothing of the sort,’ snapped Lunst, visibly unfazed by Renwyck’s questioning. ‘The data all supports

the supposition that there is a potentially violent upswell amongst the planetary labour population, and that deviant groups, mutant cults and terrorist cells are at work even now throughout the planet’s infrastructure. You have all heard, by now, of the instances of violence instigated amongst Klaratos Hive’s underslums and at several mining complexes by those claiming to fight for Imperial overthrow in the name of a being they call “Father”? You have heard of this being they call Shenn, also known as the three-armed gunman, seen the profane graffiti claiming that he offers the populace salvation? This cannot be allowed to continue. With all of the detrimental circumstances I have already listed, it surely becomes obvious that it is our duty as the ruling body of this planet to request military aid in rapidly rooting out and quelling any and all insurgency.’

Torgan’s eyes narrowed as the delegates continued to argue in ever more vociferous terms. He thought carefully about all that he was hearing, about the whispers that had reached him from his informants. He appreciated that to cry for help because of unsubstantiated reports, to needlessly draw off reinforcements from openly prosecuted Imperial war fronts, would be an unforgivable error of judgement. His pride, too, rankled at the thought of Ghyre calling for aid. The miners were restless, the mutants were forming militias, and dissidents had sabotaged a few outlying Imperial holdings. Surely he and his four battle-brothers alone should be the equal of such a disparate and dissolute threat?

Yet Torgan had fought the Emperor’s wars for over a century; his hard-won warrior’s instinct was needling at him that there was more he could not see. The sergeant was becoming increasingly convinced that there was some greater pattern at work here, some greater threat, and that to delay in the face of such danger would prove dereliction of the worst sort.

Then again, he thought, can we even call for help should we wish to? They say the darkness is fading, that the astronomican has been glimpsed again at last, but is that any guarantee that the surviving Ghyrish astropaths could force a message through the empyric distortion that still tortures the void? It has been long cycles since we were able to contact the Chapter, or they us.

He realised Dostos Delve was even now belabouring that very point.

‘…and what then, if we rupture the minds of our planet’s astropaths trying to force out a message they cannot send? If they claim the empyrean is clearing, then I say let it clear, give it time! And, as the revered bishop and honoured high marshal suggest, give us time to set our own planetary affairs in order without resorting to wasteful and potentially costly hysteria.’

‘Hysteria?’ cried the high administrator. Before the delegates could begin another round of bickering, there came the sharp ring of metal striking metal from above. Torgan looked up, as did the delegates of the conclave. He saw Governor Osmyndri Kallistus striking her pick and stave against one another slowly and deliberately. She looked down upon them, her old soldier’s features unreadable, the half-painted Emperor peering one-eyed over her shoulder.

‘Let the conclave acknowledge that we have heard and considered their words,’ she said. Her voice was stern and commanding, and even Torgan found his attention captured by the intensity of her gaze. ‘We thank you all for your contributions to this session and remind you that your capacity is purely advisory in nature. It shall be our final decision whether or not the current situation merits an attempt to send word to the wider Imperium for aid.’

A direct rebuke, Torgan thought, but not uncalled for. Still, for the governor to openly give voice to her authority was out of character. In the year that Torgan had known her, he had never found Governor Kallistus to be anything other than entirely composed and self-assured in the quality and security of her rule. She must be deeply concerned, he thought, to wield her power so openly.

All waited on her word, faces turned up to regard their governor. Torgan wondered what was going on behind the carefully neutral expressions of the delegates. Did any harbour agendas of their own? Undoubtedly, most likely all of them; Torgan’s experience with the Imperial ruling classes was unfortunately extensive and had never left him with much more than a general sense of abiding contempt that exceeded even that he felt for the sheep who formed their flocks. They all sought power and advancement. Few but the Adeptus Astartes had the clarity and selflessness to understand what was truly at stake and fight not for themselves but for the good of the Imperium. Yet these people did not see that, he thought grimly. The

noble warri­ors of the Space Marine Chapters were little more than living weapons in their eyes – terrifying, certainly, even awe-inspiring, but no less biddable or limited than any other military force.

‘There is one voice of experience that has not yet spoken, and whose thoughts we would hear before we make our decision,’ said Governor Kallistus. ‘Brother-Sergeant Torgan, what say you of this?’

Torgan blinked in surprise, the cynical bent of his thoughts thrown off by the unexpected enquiry. He could almost feel Unctor’s quiet amusement and made a mental note to chastise his battle-brother later.

‘My lady governor, the duty of myself and my brothers is to serve as protectors,’ he said. ‘We are not politicians here to advise.’ His distaste for their role was clear in his inflection.

‘In the first instance, brother-sergeant, we would consider the provision of sound strategic advice in the matter of the planet’s defence to be a natural and implicit extension of your remit,’ said the governor. ‘In the second, please do not insult the dignitaries here gathered by implying that one of the Emperor’s own Angels of Death does not possess an informed and uniquely post-human opinion upon the wider strategic implications and potential causal links between the myriad troubles that now beset this world. We would hear that opinion, brother-sergeant, before making our decision.’

Torgan studied Governor Kallistus, his brow furrowed.

‘Of course, my lady governor,’ he said. ‘It is my belief an astropathic message should be sent directly to my Chapter, requesting aid.’

Cries of outrage burst from around him, but Torgan simply spoke louder, his booming voice easily overriding those that sought to challenge him.

‘The message should be sent without delay.’

Seneschal Gryft’s gavel banged against its resonator plate again, forcing the dignitaries into resentful silence. Torgan could feel them straining at their leashes, ready to attack him or each other again the moment they got the chance. He felt the angry glares of the high marshal, of the first arbitrator and assembled clan lords. They impacted him no more than a laspistol might wound a Baneblade.

For some reason, it was not so easy to ignore the steady, appraising gaze of Bishop Renwyck, whose expression was unreadable.

‘It would please us if you could explain the reasoning behind your suggestion,’ pressed Governor Kallistus. ‘It is no small thing, to appeal directly to a Space Marine Chapter for aid. What if this turns out to be a situation that we can handle on our own? Would there not then be censure most severe for wasting the precious time of the Adeptus Astartes?’

‘Do not question my understanding of the demands placed upon my Chapter, lady governor. Nor the authority I possess as regards communicating with them as I see fit,’ barked Torgan. ‘The threat is greater than currently visible – of that I am certain. There are insurgents reported in all three of Ghyre’s hives. That suggests numbers. They have struck at Imperial holdings despite the efforts of the arbitrators and Ghyrish regiments to prevent them. That implies organisation and access to military-grade weaponry. Most disturbing, they all claim fealty to the same entity, “Father”. That implies widespread organisation and a heretical faith. Couple that with the warp storm activity the assembled dignitaries are all too frightened to name, and I see the first stirrings of planet-wide insurrection. If we delay, it won’t be disruptions to quotas, it will be war, perhaps disaster.’

‘And if you are wrong, sir?’ demanded Marshal Kallistus.

Torgan locked eyes with the marshal, fury roaring within him. The man quickly averted his gaze.

‘Then the censure will be mine alone, human.’

Governor Kallistus struck her stave against her pick once, twice, thrice as ritual demanded, the symbolic echo of picks striking rockfaces all across Ghyre’s single, vast continent.

‘The people of Ghyre are loyal, faithful and true. We believe that they find satisfaction and value in their honest toil, and that they are as dedicated servants as the Emperor has ever known. Therefore, if corruption has spread through even such a loyal and worthy people as these, we believe that it must be a perilous and powerful heresy indeed. The

esteemed high administrator and brother-sergeant are correct in their assessments. By the pronouncement of Governor Osmyndri Ellisentris Kallistus XXI, in the sight of the ruling conclave of Ghyre and by the authority of the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind, we do this day approve the composition and despatch of an astropathic call for aid directly to the Imperial Fists Space Marine Chapter. Let there be contained within it the particulars of the threats that we face, and full and frank expression of the urgency that Brother-Sergeant Torgan of that same Chapter believes that it merits.’

Quill-fingers scritched on parchment. A flight of servo-skulls detached themselves from the workings of the governor’s throne and whirred away on grav-impellers to transmit her commands directly to the necessary organs of governance.

She continued, ‘In the interim, let the spirelords return to their hives and look to the neutralisation of these insurgent elements within our society. Let the high marshal and first arbitrator put their full forces at the disposal of the lords of clan and hive that we might do everything in our power to combat the spreading rot and withstand the darkness both within and without. Let the holy men of the Imperial faith pray for our salvation in this hour, and let the servants of the Omnissiah look to the maintenance of our quotas by whatever means they must. So have we spoken, and so shall it be done.’

Muttering spread through the conclave chamber, building rapidly through a rumble and into a roar of agitated conversation. Aides and scribes scurried off into the shadows, departing the chamber through heavy plasteel security bulkheads to carry their masters’ instructions hither and thither. Torgan watched them go, a frown creasing his brow.

‘What of us, brother-sergeant?’ asked Unctor, sub-vocalising so that only Torgan would hear him. ‘Do we stand watch over the governor? If you are correct about how far the rot has spread on this world–’

‘I am, and no, we do not,’ replied Torgan. ‘The governor has a great many bodyguards in her employ, but a bare handful of mortal warriors stand watch over the astropathic sanctum. If the enemy are organised enough to strike, they will strike there.’

He set off across the upper chamber, making for the ramps with Unctor at his shoulder. As he went, he felt the level gaze of Bishop Renwyck following him all the way out.

II

 

The Dutiful soared through Ghyre’s cold blue skies. It was a sizeable shuttle, Heraldus class, and it was en route to the upper spires of Hive Angelicus to deliver medicae personnel to the astropathic sanctum. A message was to be sent off world, a cry for aid. It would be a trying endeavour. The lives of the planet’s precious astropaths must be safeguarded at all costs.

The Dutiful’s capacious hold was packed, but not with the medicae personnel it should have contained. Those unfortunates, along with their assigned pilots, had met a swift and comparatively merciful fate before their craft could depart its landing pad. In their place was a force of nearly one hundred neophytes and acolytes of the Cult of the Wrything Wyrm. They wore miners’ rubberised enviro-suits patched here and there with scavenged plates of flak armour and decorated with daubed cult sigils. Most cradled crudely machined autoguns or dangerous-looking mining tools. Many wore curved blades that dangled from their webbing, the coiled wyrmform glyph industrially stamped into each one.

The more human amongst these men and women could have strode down any street in the hive’s Laboritas district and raised no comment. Their more gifted brethren, however, would have sent the ignorant masses fleeing in panic at the first sight of their hairless and elongated heads, their fanged mouths, the segmented and chitinous bone that layered their limbs and the talons that tipped their fingers. This was to say nothing of the spare, three-armed figure of Shenn the gunman, who stood silent and inscrutable in their midst, his features echoing those of the purestrain Blessed. The Star Children gave generously, but the blinkered slaves of the Imperium saw only monstrosity where in truth beauty lay.

That was not their fault, of course.

They would all be educated in time.

In the midst of the gathering, staring with rapt fascination out of an armaglass porthole at the glowing fog banks below, stood their magus. She affected the same miner’s garb as her brothers and sisters, though hers had never seen a day’s labour at the ore-faces. A high collar, flowing skirts and layer upon layer of elaborate decoration had been worked into her outfit by the hands of devoted faithful. Tokens of their respect dangled from cords at her neck, wrists and waist, each small metal charm representing the faith and blessings of those whose hopes she carried with her. The magus’ head was hairless, her skin a pale shade of mauve, while her eyes were two liquid umber orbs that glinted with the reflected cobalt blue of the planet’s skies.

The magus’ name was Phoenicia Jai.

‘Hive Angelicus approaching, beloved magus,’ came the voice of one of the shuttle’s pilots, crackling through the craft’s internal vox. ‘Initial airspace interrogations forthcoming and codes proffered in response. Hive command have approved our flight path and rune-designated Dutiful for priority passage. Five minutes to docking.’

Phoenicia Jai turned from the porthole with a twinge of regret. Her life had been spent almost exclusively concealed in chambers and corridors far from prying eyes. The stark blue of the upper atmosphere enchanted her, and its contrast with the whirling mists below struck her as beautiful. She had been fascinated by the pulsing lights in that sea of vapour, hinting at the bioluminescent jungles down below. Yet she wasn’t here to admire the view, Phoenicia admonished herself. Father had appointed this task to her, had given her a chance to strike back at the Imperial oppressors. She would not disappoint him.

‘You all know me,’ she said, her voice deep, mellifluous, resonant with the underlying psychic gifts that Father, and through him the Star Children, had given. All eyes turned towards her. Cultists’ blast goggles reflected her image, haloed by the hard daylight at her back. ‘I am a daughter of Clan Delve, born to the cult during the Season of Whirling Mists. I did not know my parents, could not now pick them out from amidst the labouring masses who work the ore-faces of this world. They knew that the gift they had been given by the Star Children was meant for all, and thus, selfless, they gave me up to Father’s care. They sacrificed for their beliefs. Stars’ blessings upon them.’

‘Stars’ blessings upon them,’ murmured those of her ­brothers and sisters who could vocalise in the human fashion.

‘Yet I never lacked for family, for the Cult of the Wrything Wyrm have given me all that I could ever want,’ said Jai, and the warmth in her tone was not affected. She truly loved her people, loved all those who toiled and strove beneath the lash of the Imperial oppressors. That love gave her strength. ‘All of Father’s faithful offered me succour and devotion, for I am the magus of our cult, chosen by the Star Children to prophesy their coming, blessed with their gifts that I might aid Father in preparing all for the Day of Ascension. I do not take such a charge lightly. And the Day of Ascension is coming, my friends, when the Star Children will drift down through golden skies with their arms outstretched and welcome all into their light, that we might become one with the beauty and serenity of their eternal embrace. You all know this. You have all heard me preach Father’s word to the devoted and the aspirant alike. So lucky, I am, to bring hope for something better to the toiling and the downtrodden, the sorrowful, the starving, the crippled and the oppressed.’

The murmuring around her grew in volume. A few cultists reached out with fingers of flesh or chitin to gently touch the hems of Jai’s skirts. The gesture was rumoured to bring the Star Children’s blessings, she knew, and so she let them. With her gifts, it was not difficult to sense the comfort and strength that the superstition brought them.

‘I have enjoyed every day of my task, for who could not rejoice at the chance to bring hope and happiness? Even as Primus Lhor stockpiled armaments against the Day of Ascension, as Nexos Sharrow laboured to implant faithful amongst the upper Imperial strata and Shenn the gunman brought hope to the masses with his adventures, so my task was far easier, for what was I but the font of faith for those who desired it?

But though I have enjoyed my task, now it must change. Now, like my parents before me, I must sacrifice. The Star Children expect more. The Imperial oppressors are at last waking up to their peril. Slow, lumbering, indolent and stupid though they are, at last these ineffectual fops that call themselves our leaders have realised that the populace they believed slaves are in fact their greatest foes. We have the strength to defeat them. We have the numbers, we have the weapons, and we have the faith!’

The cultists cried their agreement. They snarled and slathered. They beat their weapons against the shuttle’s bulkheads.

‘Yet in their fear the Imperial oppressors seek to cry out for aid,’ spat Magus Jai, injecting her words with a psychic nudge of disgust at the fearful weakness of the foe. She saw her followers shudder with her transferred emotion and felt satisfaction that they truly understood. ‘Father has charged me with the sacred duty of choking off that cry before it can escape into the void. I must silence them so that in this hour of darkness, sent to us by the Star Children as their blessing and their signal both, we can commence our Ascension without interruption by the heretics without. And in this task I need your aid, my faithful. Will you aid me?’

This time the outcry was louder, a roar of mingled aggression and fervent belief that sent a thrill through Jai’s soul.

‘They will fight us, faithful. Some of us will fall this day, and in dying so shall we hasten early to our Ascension, not in joy but in sorrow, shorn of our beloved brothers and sisters. And yet! And yet to sacrifice all that you have, all that you are so that Father’s great undertaking might see completion, oh faithful, what greater reward can there be? As my blessed parents gave up that which was most precious to them, so must we be willing to do no less!’

Roaring. Cheering. Chanting. The hammer and bang of work boots beating the deck and weapons hammering the bulkheads.

‘Then be ready, brothers and sisters, for we strike unveiled and unshrouded at last. Now let the Imperial oppressors see our true visage and know terror at its divinity! Stars’ blessings upon you all! Let our Ascension begin here!’

Jai snatched her tall iron stave from the shuttle’s equipment webbing and, clutching it firmly, strode through the throng of faithful to stand directly before the shuttle’s rear ramp. The wyrmform icon atop the stave thrummed with invisible psychic power, focusing and amplifying her abilities exponentially. The stave had been a gift from Father.

It all had, really, she supposed.

Behind Jai, the faithful divided into warrior bands and ran through last checks upon their weapons. Magazines slammed into autoguns and pistols with solid clacks. Industrial saws screamed then wound down to stillness as they were revved and their machine-spirits appeased. Voices muttered low, fast prayers to Father and the Star Children, some tight with excitement, some quavering with fear.

Phoenicia Jai felt no fear, nor truly excitement either. Rather, she knew the absolute certainty of victory, felt her faith burn hot in her breast at the righteousness of her cause. She knew she was ready, and she met the perils of battle at last with a calm acceptance.

Father had appointed this task to her, and she would see it done.

Sergeant Torgan was climbing the Haloed Stair deep within the hive’s astropathic sanctum when he heard the distant thump of an explosion. He spun, bolter coming up, eyes scanning for threats. Brothers Unctor and Garom echoed his motions. Around them, the men and women of the sanctum guard jumped in alarm and fumbled for their weapons. They couldn’t have heard anything from this distance, not without Adeptus Astartes

senses; they had been spooked by the sudden and eerily synchronised shift in the Space Marines’ demeanour.

Torgan keyed the vox in his armour’s gorget.

‘Brother Jashor, Brother Victus, report,’ he said. At the same time, he scanned the atrium below, richly appointed and spacious with its crystal statues and chuckling fountains. Minor officials and astropathic acolytes crossed the mosaic floor on errands of their own, some of them stumbling to a halt and looking alarmed as they saw the three hulking Imperial Fists sweeping the muzzles of their guns across the chamber.

‘Sanctum doors sealed, brother-sergeant,’ came Victus’ voice over the vox. ‘All essential personnel are within. The astropaths are undergoing final rituals of focusing before the sending. Was that an explosion?’

‘Confirmed, situation unclear,’ replied Torgan. ‘Hold position and stand guard, brothers. The ritual must be completed.’

‘Understood,’ said Victus.

‘Brother Garom, reinforce Jashor and Victus,’ Torgan ordered.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ said Garom smartly, spinning and jogging up the remaining steps before vanishing through the gilded portal at their head.

‘My lord, do you detect some threat?’ asked the lieutenant of the sanctum guard. He clutched his lasgun tightly and managed to look both nervous and stoic. The lieutenant’s vox operator pressed a hand to the earpiece of her helm, and her eyes widened.

‘Hostiles in docking hangar six,’ she reported, her gaze flicking between Torgan and her lieutenant as though she were unsure which to address. She settled on the huge Space Marine in his glinting yellow armour. ‘They disembarked from the reserve medicae shuttle. There’s dozens of them…’ She paused, and Torgan thought for a moment that her eyes might pop right out of her skull with alarm. ‘They’re… not all human, my lord,’ she gasped.

‘How in Throne’s name did they hijack the medicae shuttle?’ demanded the lieutenant. Torgan didn’t like the note of panic in his voice. ‘How can they be here?’

‘Irrelevant,’ barked Torgan. ‘What is the enemy’s estimated strength?’

‘My lord, the hangar sentries are reporting dozens, perhaps hundreds,’ said the vox officer.

‘Channel?’ asked Torgan, pointing at her earpiece.

‘Tarsus sigma two,’ she replied, and Torgan patched his vox directly into the sanctum guards’ tactical channel. He winced, finding it clogged with half-coherent shouts for aid, cries of alarm and the tinny hammering of gunfire.

‘What of the automated defences?’ asked the lieutenant. ‘The servitor guns should be slaughtering them!’

‘They deactivated them,’ said Torgan, frowning as he listened to the panicked shrieks of the defenders. ‘One of your officers deactivated the sentry guns, spiked the controls then shot himself.’

The lieutenant paled further.

‘Vox, contact Spire command and request immediate reinforcements,’ he snapped. ‘Everything they have!’

His vox operator shook her head in frustration.

‘Nothing but static on the external channels, and… something…’ She gave a hiss of pain and ripped the earpiece from the side of her helm, casting it away as though it had burned her.

‘Some kind of jamming,’ she slurred, and Torgan saw the veins blackening all down one side of her face. Her eyes rolled into her head and she collapsed.

‘My lord, what is–’

Torgan spoke over the horrified lieutenant, issuing orders into his vox-bead.

‘Brothers, Unctor and I are moving to interdict invaders. Hold your positions. Do not attempt external vox transmission – the enemy have compromised it somehow.’

Torgan removed his helm from where it hung mag-locked to his belt and lowered it over his head, expression grim. The helm’s seals hissed then clicked as it locked into place. Torgan’s autosenses flickered crimson across his vision then settled.

‘My lord, my warriors are yours to command,’ said the lieuten­ant, having evidently pulled himself together and recalled his training. ‘Tell us how best to aid you.’

‘Rally them,’ replied Torgan, his voice now harsh and vox-amplified. ‘Clear civilian impediments. Protect the sanctum. Do not get in our way.’

With that, he set off at a loping

run, down the stairs and across the atrium towards docking hangar six. Unctor ran with him. Gaggles of frightened scribes scattered from the Space Marines’ path. Behind him, Torgan heard the lieutenant’s shouts as the man attempted to enforce order on what was about to turn into a stampede.

The Imperial Fists ran along richly appointed corridors and down brass-handled stairways, past elegant portraits and crystalline windows that looked out onto the mountainous spires of Hive Angelicus. They bulled their way through chambers where the innumerable robed adepts of the astropathic sanctum fled this way and that in panic. Gunfire could now be heard ringing along the corridors over the crash of overturning furniture and the screams of terrified acolytes.

‘Clear a path!’ roared Torgan, vox-amplifying his voice to carry over the sounds of bedlam. Terror-stricken figures spilled aside like water, clambering over one another to get out of the Space Marines’ way. A few froze dumbstruck at the sight of the massive armoured warriors bearing down on them, only to be cut down from behind as a volley of autogun rounds ripped its way through an arched doorway. Blood puffed into the air. Robed figures crumpled. Fresh screams rang around the room.

On Torgan’s autosenses, targeting runes flashed into being and cogitational data scrolled through his peripheral vision.

‘Contact second level, multiple hostiles, engaging,’ he reported over the squad vox. Then, as bullets sparked and whined from his power armour, he switched to his helm’s vox-grille and bellowed, ‘For the Emperor!’

Torgan raised his bolter, sighted on the handful of mutated-looking miners dashing down the corridor towards him, and squeezed his trigger. His boltgun bucked in his hands as it spat self-propelled miniature warheads at his assailants. Each shot streaked away on a contrail of fire to connect with the bodies of the attackers. The bolt shells punched through the miners’ bodysuits and, micro-cogitators detecting that they had penetrated deep within their targets’ bodies, detonated.

The floor, walls and ceiling of the corridor turned dark red with an explosion of bloody matter.

‘More of them,’ barked Unctor, adding his fire to Torgan’s. Bolts hammered down the corridor and blasted more insurgents apart at its far end. ‘You were right, brother-sergeant,’ he continued. ‘The attack has fallen here. How did they know to strike now?’

‘Someone in the conclave is not what they seem,’ replied Torgan. ‘Whatever this is, brother, its tendrils reach far.’

‘You were right to push for the sending,’ said Unctor.

Torgan grunted in response and checked his auspex. He muttered a prayer to the device’s machine-spirit and gave it a distinctly unritualistic shake in the hopes of clearing its display. ‘Reports of movement in multiple corridors and chambers around us,’ he said. ‘Insurgents are pushing up along multiple vectors. We are the only serious resistance they’ve met.’

Torgan cursed. If the sanctum guards could have kept the attackers bottled up in the hangar until the Imperial Fists reached them, the situation could have been contained. Now, though, it was like trying to hold back water with his bare hands.

‘We cannot hold them here,’ said Unctor.

‘No,’ replied Torgan. ‘We rally on our brothers. The sanctum guard will not stop them, but they may still slow the attackers down, if only by their deaths.’

He turned back, retracing his and Unctor’s steps at a flat run. Questions whirled through Torgan’s mind. How many assailants were they dealing with? Was it just cultists, or did they face other, more heretical threats? The vox operator’s fate suggested the latter. How long would it be before someone detected the attack and sent reinforcements?

Torgan sped through another doorway and into the atrium he had left scant minutes earlier. He was greeted by a blizzard of fire that rebounded from his armour like storm rain. Alarm runes flashed amber in his peripheral vision as shots punched through to inflict stinging wounds, one in his left arm, another in his torso.

One band of insurgents

crouched three hundred yards to his left, behind an ornamental fountain of prodigious size. A smaller group was halfway up the Haloed Stair, hidden amidst bullet-riddled sanctum guard bodies.

‘Stairs,’ Torgan voxed Unctor before stepping from cover and striding towards the fountain. Behind him, Brother Unctor surged through the doorway and rained fire into the cultists on the Haloed Stair. Meanwhile, Torgan levelled his bolter, thumbed his shot selector to auto and let rip. Bolts hammered out, streaking across the chamber and blitzing fountain and cultists alike. Marble exploded into clouds of whizzing shrapnel. Water and blood ran in torrents. Claw-limbed freaks were tossed through the air, their bodies blasted open or torn to shreds. Several more shots hit Torgan, one ringing his helmet like a bell, and then the last surviving insurgent broke from cover and ran, not away but straight towards the sergeant.

Torgan had a moment to note the creature’s inhuman features, its hunched body and extra arm. His autosenses flashed a crimson alert rune as they detected the primed mining charges the creature was brandishing. He heard its inhuman shriek, appealing to some deity or cult leader, Torgan knew not who.

‘In Father’s name!’

Torgan put a single bolt into the cultist’s right fist, triggering the mining charges it clutched. The explosion was fierce enough to drive him back a step and momentarily white-out his autosenses. Hot blood spattered his armour and smoke billowed around him.

As his autosenses cleared, Torgan turned away from the blazing crater that was all that remained of his assailants. He was in time to see the crimson beam of a mining laser reach out from the top of the Haloed Stair and spear clean through Unctor’s helm. The Imperial Fist stiffened, his last few bolt shells flying wide to blow apart a statue of Governor Kallistus, then collapsed, all but decapitated.

‘Throne,’ snarled Torgan, and snapped off a volley at the handful of cultists at the top of the stair. One shot took the laser-wielder in the gut and blew him to pieces, but his comrades vanished through the doorway and out of sight.

Torgan didn’t waste time checking on Unctor; his brother was dead, and the time for mourning and the extraction of gene-seed would come later. For now, the atrium’s flickering lumen and the building sense of pressure behind Torgan’s eyes suggested that the sending had begun. He had to eliminate the insurgent attackers and ensure that the ritual could be completed.

Torgan ran across the atrium and took the Haloed Stair two steps at a time, reloading his bolter as he went.

‘Brothers, report,’ he spat into the vox.

‘Contact, brother-sergeant,’ replied Brother Victus. ‘Insurgents pushing in from three directions. I am covering the south entrance to the sanctum annex, Garom the east, and a complement of sanctum guard have the west.’

‘Brother Jashor?’ asked Torgan, pounding down another richly appointed corridor scattered with the corpses of sanctum guard and insurgents.

‘Incapacitated – insurgent with an industrial saw disembowelled him, brother-sergeant.’

Torgan cursed silently.

‘Hold them, brother. I am thirty seconds out,’ he said.

‘In Dorn’s name, brother-sergeant,’ replied Victus, and cut the link.

Torgan burst into the next chamber, a shrine to the Imperial faith illuminated by hundreds of flickering candles. He almost ploughed headlong into a pair of insurgents who were manhandling a heavy metal case stamped with a serpentine spiral design. The first fell to Torgan’s clenched gauntlet, the punch snapping the heretic’s neck. As the carved chest clanged to the flagstones, the second insurgent drew an autopistol and unloaded it point-blank into Torgan’s faceplate.

White-hot pain flooded the sergeant’s skull as a lucky shot found his eye lens and punched into his skull. Pain blockers flooded his system. Runes flashed madly. Torgan staggered, snarling,

, registering that he could now see only through his right eye. Blood drizzled inside his faceplate. He tasted it on his lips.

The insurgent’s features twisted in a triumphant leer.

‘Meet your doom, oppressors!’ he screamed.

‘I shall leave that to you,’ spat Torgan, and shot the cultist through the head. More blood sprayed, dousing the nearby candles.

Torgan spared the carved chest a glance. A fresh surge of alarm pierced his haze of pain and disorientation.

‘That is a demolition charge, big enough to bring down a spire,’ he breathed. There was no time to render its machine-spirits inactive. He would have to hope that slaying the weapon’s operators had been enough for now.

Torgan pressed on, feeling the tight pain of his hyper-efficient blood clotting around his grievous head wound. The bullet was lodged somewhere behind what remained of his left eye, and had no doubt inflicted damage to his cortex, but his post-human anatomy was compensating as best it could. He was an Imperial Fist, he reminded himself, as waves of nausea and dizziness flitted through his body. He was built to endure when all else failed. It would take more than some heretic’s bullet lodged in his skull to slow Larrus Torgan.

Another corridor. Another chamber, this one a ritual medi­tation space meant for the astropaths to ready themselves in. Its calm serenity was spoiled by the bloody bodies strewn across its broken furnishings, the bullet holes and las-burns in its walls and the cacophony of gunfire that rang from the half-open brass doors on its far side.

The lumen flickered again. Torgan tasted bitter iron, then something so sweet as to be rotten. He smelled fresh-cut grass mingled with promethium fumes and heard snatches of something that might have been laughter but might also have been hysterical screaming.

Brain damage? Psychic phenomena? Something of both?

He did not have time to decipher. Instead, Torgan shouldered open the door to the sanctum annex and plunged into the war zone beyond. The annex was, in truth, a corridor of substantial width and ornate decoration that encircled the astropathic sanctum at ground level. Several doorways led into it from different directions, and it seemed likely that the enemy had flanked the annex and attacked through all three. However, they would all be converging on the single doorway to the sanctum proper, a thirty-foot-high slab of bronze-chased adamantine currently out of sight to Torgan around the curve of the annex.

The corridor was a ruin. Its rich crimson carpets were blood-drenched and, in places, ablaze. Its thick, armoured inner walls were marred by las-burns and spattered with more blood. Several of the stained-glass windows set near the ceiling had been cracked by gunfire, and a mixture of freezing air and diamond-hard light spilled through.

As Torgan emerged he saw insurgents to his left, their backs to him as they pressed the attack on the sanctum door.

‘For the Emperor!’ he bellowed, and unloaded his bolter into them. With his maimed vision, Torgan’s accuracy was not what it should have been, and several of his bolts flew wide. Several more found their mark, however, and cultists exploded in puffs of gore.

‘Brother-sergeant, make haste,’ voxed Brother Victus. ‘There is a psyker with them. I–’ Victus’ transmission cut out, and Torgan’s face drew down into a scowl of fury.

To unleash witchery here while the sending was in progress was recklessness of the worst sort. Even he knew that much.

Torgan stormed forward, his armoured feet pounding against the carpeted flagstones, his bolter barking its wrath. An insurgent came at him with a howling industrial saw and he shot the

 mutant down, leaping over the spinning blades of the weapon as it spilled from nerveless fingers. Landing, he put bolts into two more insurgents then swept past several wounded members of the sanctum guard, who stared at him with wild eyes.

A door to Torgan’s left burst open and more cultists poured through it, autoguns blazing. He took the shots on his shoulder guard and flung a frag grenade into his enemies’ midst. It detonated with a loud bang and flung shredded bodies through the air.

The sanctum’s door came into view. The air was heavy with the thunderstorm tension of the sending beyond, everything crawling with a kind of greasy electric tingle. Torgan took in Brother Jashor slumped against the sanctum’s door, holding his guts in with one hand and firing a bolt pistol with his other. He saw Brother Victus standing over his comrade, bolter hammering. Brother Garom lay nearby, his plasma gun inches from his open gauntlet, his armour riddled with dozens of bullet holes. A handful of sanctum guards were kneeling around them, firing their lasguns desperately. They were using their own dead for cover.

Beyond them, a statue had been toppled to form a makeshift barricade. A couple of dozen insurgents crouched behind it, filling the air with gunfire. Torgan saw her in their midst, the psyker that Victus had warned of. Her dark eyes gleamed like pools. Her stave was raised, and unnatural forces were shimmering from it to further shield her comrades from the loyalists’ fire.

Torgan didn’t slow. He levelled his bolter at the psyker and let fly. His bolts tore through the air and detonated against her shield, hard enough to blast her off her feet.

The cultists let out an enraged howl and surged over their barricade in a seething mass.

‘Fight!’ roared Torgan. ‘Do not let them through! Fight for the Emperor! Fight for Dorn!’

Autoguns and lasguns flashed. The corridor was lit by the mad strobe of muzzle flare and flames. An improvised fire bomb shattered amidst a knot of sanctum guards, and they staggered back screaming and burning before being picked off by gunshots. Brother Victus waded into the charging cultists, swinging the butt of his gun in brutal arcs. A savage brawl broke out between cultists armed with picks and clubs and the last few sanctum guards with their lasrifles and bayonets. Torgan threw himself into the fight, gun butt swinging and feet lashing out, breaking another insurgent with every blow.

He would not let the sending be disrupted. He would not let these heretics win. There could be no defeat, no surrender, only victory at any cost.

Magus Jai rose to her feet, heart hammering. She was shaking with shock, adrenaline and outrage. She had almost perished. The filthy Imperial oppressor had almost slain her, and in defending herself she had been forced to stop protecting her brothers and sisters. Now they were dying. Worse, she still couldn’t raise Haxis and J’Gath; without their demolition charge the sanctum could not be destroyed, as it surely must be. Her finely attuned psychic senses left her in no doubt as to what was happening beyond that doorway. Even now, she was failing Father in this most vital of tasks.

‘I will not allow them to prevail, Father, I promise you,’ she hissed. ‘Victory, at any cost.’

It could not be allowed.

It would not.

Jai was not a military strategist, but even she could see that the arrival of yet another cursed Space Marine had turned the tables in her enemies’ favour. They were veritable monsters, towering armoured behemoths who simply would not die. Her brothers and sisters were spending their lives dearly, but it was the armoured might and firepower of the Space Marines that would prevail here.

Then she had it.

Jai focused on the newcomer, the warrior with the shattered faceplate. She raised her stave double-handed and pointed it at him, then called upon every ounce of the power that the Star Children had given her. She sent the full force of their will questing out like a tendril, winding and coiling through the air before it punched deep into the Space Marine’s wounded mind. Jai felt resistance like nothing she had ever known. She gritted her teeth and growled deep in her throat as she felt blood spill from her nostrils. It was like trying to force her bare hands through a solid fortress wall, every moment of pressure more agonising and unyielding than the one before, every second promising the terrible snap as she crushed herself against her enemy’s mental defences. He staggered, his helm turning slowly in her direction. His limbs shuddered as he brought his boltgun up. Its muzzle yawned dark and cavernous amidst the mayhem of the battle. Jai cursed and redoubled her efforts, feeling agony race through her mind as she pushed herself past every sane

 limit.

‘I will not fail you…’ she gritted out between clenched and blood-flecked teeth. ‘I will not.’

The Space Marine’s mental defences collapsed so suddenly that Jai physically staggered forward and thumped into the fallen statue. The sense of release was blessed relief, and she felt a smile twist her mouth as she drove her will deep into the undefended meat of the oppressor’s mind. For a moment he staggered as she fumbled, unfamiliar with the psycho-indoctrinated architecture of his thoughts. Then she had him. With a twitch of her mind Jai swung the barrel of the Space Marine’s boltgun around. With another she squeezed his trigger. Bolts roared out and splattered the last of the sanctum guard across the carpeted floor.

‘Feel Father’s wrath, filth of the oppressor!’ cried Jai, and her surviving followers gave victorious shouts.

The other two Space Marines spun in shock, but they did not fire, still struggling to comprehend just what had happened.

Too slow, she thought, and squeezed her puppet’s trigger again. The bolts flew wide, one clipping the still-standing Space Marine, two more punching into the sanctum’s door and blasting craters in its surface.

He was still fighting her, she realised. It felt as though she were wrestling with a giant, physically and mentally straining to bend him to her will, terrified that at any moment he would break free with bone-shattering force. It was precipitous, painful, yet somehow exhilarating.

The pause had been enough for her surviving brothers and sisters to rally. One unloaded her autogun into the exposed innards of the wounded Space Marine, finishing him off in a gory spray. Three more flung themselves at the last unharmed giant; an energised mining pick hit him in the side of the knee. Autogun rounds stitched his chest-plate. A curved blade swept up under his chin.

All three of her comrades met a violent demise seconds later as their blows clanged from the Space Marine’s armour. He picked Kolv up by the throat and snapped his neck, before putting bolts into Sherva and Gixnis and blowing them apart.

Phoenicia Jai screamed, wrenching at her puppet’s strings. He hurled his gun end over end through the air. It struck his brother’s helm and staggered the warrior long enough for Jai to achieve her true aim. Her puppet bent down, straightened up and unleashed the howling fury of his fallen brother’s plasma gun.

‘You will all pay a thousand times over for the blood you have spilled,’ said Jai, and clenched her mind again.

The shot lit the corridor white. A crackling orb of plasma slammed into the last loyal Space Marine and burned through his chest-plate. White fire burst from his helm’s eye lenses. Smoke boiled from the grievous wound in his chest and he crashed back against the sanctum doors. Jai sent another thought-spike and her puppet pulled the trigger again. Another blast erased his brother’s helmed head and sent the remains of his corpse sliding to the floor, the slagged metal of his power armour glowing.

‘Damn. Y-you. Heretic…’ grated the puppet, and she felt fresh pain within her mind as he fought to swing the weapon to bear upon her.

‘You are the heretics, you and your monstrous Imperium. The Star Children spit on your corpse Emperor,’ she snarled, and sent one more thought-barb into her enemy’s mind. Jai felt exultation and satisfaction as he unwillingly brought the plasma gun up and pressed its white-hot muzzle against the underside of his helm. Smoke rose. Metal melted and drooled. She caught a whiff of cooking flesh and realised that she was holding her victim on the brink, enjoying his searing agony. And why not? How much pain had these monsters inflicted upon her people over hundreds and hundreds of years?

Yet she was wasting time, she realised. Every second that passed was longer for the enemy to send out their distress call. Disgusted with herself, Jai twitched her victim’s trigger finger. His helmed head vanished in a howl of white light and his armoured body crashed down onto its back with a last spasm.

Magus Jai felt the exhilaration of her powers drain away and suddenly found herself leaning on her stave in exhaustion. Her limbs shook. They were so heavy she could barely lift them.

She looked around at her last few warriors, at the handful of late arrivals led by Shenn, even now spilling into the annex. She wiped blood from her lips with one robed arm and gestured down the corridor.

‘Find out what happened to Haxis and J’Gath,’ she croaked. ‘Bring the charges and get them set, now! We demolish the sanctum with the astropaths still inside and then we retreat.’

As her followers rushed to do her bidding, Jai allowed herself to sink down against the statue as exhaustion and frustration washed over her. She felt a knot in the pit of her stomach that was little eased even when her comrades voxed to let her know they had found the charges and were deploying them.

This attack had not gone as it should. She knew that; the Space Marines should have been watching over the governor, not standing between her and her objective. Father would understand – he would not be angry with her. She was more than a little surprised that she had defeated them at all. Surely they must have grown complacent during their long cycles of inaction. She realised that Father had chosen well his moment to strike.

Yet none of that changed the fact that she had been too slow. Perhaps she would still stop the Imperials from forcing their message through. Perhaps it would not get through at all – perhaps the Star Children’s miraculous aid would prevent it.

The risk could not be taken. Jai knew that, as would Father, and Lhor, and all the rest of them.

The Day of Ascension could no longer be delayed. For good or ill, it began here, now.

Pride welled within Phoenicia Jai. For she had started the last war that Ghyre would ever know.