by Dan Abnett
The child-thing shrieked and leapt away into the smoke and flames and struggling shapes around me. The dead Marine toppled over. The air frothed with psychic discharge and three figures ran past me in pursuit of the tiny abomination. Inquisitors. All three were inquisitors, or interrogators at least. One, I was sure, was Inquisitor Lyko.
I lowered my shaking hand. Both it, and the boltgun it clutched, were cased in psionic ice, the mechanism jammed and locked out.
I turned and found Commodus Voke standing a few paces behind me. His ancient face was contorted with internal pressure. Crusts of psipathetic frost glittered on his long black gown.
'Point. It. Aside.' His words came out as halting gasps. 1. Cannot. Hold. It. Much. Longer.'
Swiftly, I turned the boltgun aside and up into the air. With a barking gasp, he convulsively relaxed and the weapon bucked and fired. The deadly round whined away harmlessly into the sky.
Voke was sagging, the gyros in the augmetic exo-skeleton that cradled his frail body straining to manage his balance. I gave him my hand in support.
Thank you, Commodus.'
'No matter/ he said, his voice a whisper. His strength began to return and he peered up at me with his bird-bright eyes. 'Only a brave man or a fool tangles with a plus-alpha psyker/
Then I am both or neither. I was closest to the emergency. I could not just stand by.'
We were assailed by extraordinary noises from the charnel ground behind us. Gunfire, grenades, screams and the popping, surging sounds of minds fracturing reality, compressing matter, boiling atmosphere. I saw a robed man, an inquisitor or an astropath, rising slowly into the sky in a pillar of green fire, burning, shredding inside out. I saw geysers of blood like waterspouts. Squalls of hail and acid rain, localised to this small stretch of the Avenue, blustered across us, triggered by the ferocity of the psychic war.
Figures were rushing in to join that battle. Many from the ordos with their expert bodyguards, and dozens of the Adeptus Astartes. There was a vibration underfoot, and I saw that one of the towering Warhound Titans was stalking past the Spatian Gate, spitting its turbo lasers at ground targets. A series of withering explosions, mainly psyker-blasts, tore through the habitats and hive structures on the eastern side of the wide – and now infamous – Avenue.
Imperial Marauders flashed low overhead. The sky was black with smoke, all sunlight blotted out. Wisps of ash fell on us like grey snow.
This is… a great crime/ Voke said to me. 'A black day in the Imperial annals.'
I had forgotten how much Commodus Voke loved understatement.
The greater part of Hive Primaris remained lawless and out of control for five days. Panic, rioting, looting and civil unrest boiled through the streets and hab-levels of the wounded megapolis as the arbites and the other organs of the Imperium struggled to impose martial law and restore order.
It was a desperate task. The indigenous population alone was vast, but it had been swelled to an unimaginable extent by pilgrims and tourists for the Novena. Sympathetic panic riots broke out in other hives too. For a day or two, it seemed like the entire planet was going to collapse in blood and fire.
Small sections of Hive Primaris had managed to insulate themselves: the elite spire levels; the noble houses, built like fortresses; the impregnable precincts of the Inquisition, the Imperial Guard, the Astropathicus, the various bastions of the Munitorium and the Royal Palace of the Lord Commander. Elsewhere, especially in the common and general hab levels, it was like a war zone.
The Ecclesiarchy suffered particularly gravely. With the Monument of the Ecclesiarch in flames, the common masses regarded the nightmare as some holy curse, and turned in their frenzy on all the churches, temples and sacerdotal orders they could find. We learned within the first few hours that Cardinal Palatine Anderucias had been killed in the destruction
of the Monument. He was far from the only great hierarch to perish in the orgy of carnage that followed.
The recapture or extermination of the remaining rogue psykers was the first and most fundamental task facing the authorities. Ten were known to have escaped the initial battle on the Avenue of the Victor Bellum, and these had fled into the hive, sowing carnage as they went, hunted by the forces of the Inquisition and all the Imperial might that could be brought to bear in support.
Two of them made it only a kilometre or two from the route of the procession, hounded every step by Imperial forces from the Avenue battle, and were neutralised by nightfall on that terrible first day. Another went to ground in a vegetable cannery in an eastern sector outhab, and was laid to siege. It cost three days and the lives of eight hundred Imperial Guardsmen, sixty-two astropaths, two Space Marines and six inquisitors to blast it out and burn it. The cannery, and the outhab for three square kilometres around it, was flattened.
There was little or no central control for our forces. Admiral Oetron, who had remained with the orbiting battlefleet as watch commander, managed to move four picket ships into geo-synchronous orbit above Hive Primaris, and for a while succeeded in providing comprehensive vox and astropathic communications for the ground forces. But by nightfall on the first day, psychic storms had blown up across the hive and all relayed reception was lost.
It was a dark and frightening period. Down in the burning streets, we subdivided as best we could into small units, functioning autonomously. Simply by dint of being with Voke, I became part of a group that made its headquarters in an arbites section house on Blammerside Street in the mercantile district. Desperate groups of citizens flocked to us, craving aid and mercy and sanctuary, and much larger gangs attacked the section house time and again, driven by fear, by rage against the Imperial machine or simply because we wouldn't let them in.
We couldn't. We were overflowing with injured and dead, far too many for the arbites surgeons and morgue attendants to manage. There was very little food, medical supplies or ammunition left, and we were also rationing water as the mains supply had been cut.
The power was down too, but the section house had its own generator.
All through the night, bottles and missiles and promethium bombs splintered off the shielded windows, and fists pounded on the doors.
By merit of his seniority, Voke was in command. Aside from myself, there was Inquisitor Roban, Inquisitor Yelena, Inquisitor Essidari, twenty interrogators and junior servants of the Inquisition, sixty troopers from the Interior Guard, several dozen astropaths and four White Consul Space Marines. The arbites themselves numbered around one hundred and fifty,
and the section house was also sheltering about three hundred nobles, ecclesiarchs and dignitaries from the Great Triumph, as well as a few hundred common citizens.
1 remember standing alone in a ransacked office of the arbites commander just after midnight, looking out through shielded windows at the burning streets and the blossoms of psyker storm that were wrenching the sky apart. I had received no word or sign of Ravenor since the catastrophe had begun. I remember my hands were shaking even then.
In truth, I believe I was in shock. From the event itself, naturally, and also from the psychic assaults I had suffered in the course of it. I pride myself on a sharp mind, but there was no sharpness to me then.
Numb, my brain kept returning to the idea that this outrage had been deliberate.
'There is no question/ Voke said from behind me, clearly reading my surface thoughts without my permission. He lifted and straightened a steel chair and sat down on it.
'Accidents happen, warplanes crash!' he cried. 'But these turned and attacked. Their assaults were deliberate/
I nodded. At least one of the Lightnings had crashed into the Warmas-ter's entourage and another had come down amongst the files of the Inquisition. No one yet knew how many of my institution had been slain, but Voke had seen enough of it to know that as many as two hundred of our fellow inquisitors had been obliterated.
I remembered the conversation that had turned around my dining table, the speculations about those p
owerful forces who would oppose Hono-rius's bestowment.
'Is this the first act in a House war?' I said. 'The Ecclesiarchy, or perhaps great dynasties, trying to thwart Lord Commander Helican's advancement of the Warmaster? His elevation to Feudal Protector would not have been popular with many, powerful factions/
'No/ he said. Though I'm sure that's what many will think. What many will be supposed to think/
Voke looked at me intently. 'Freeing the psykers was the point/ he said. There is no other explanation. The Archenemy struck to cause mayhem and allow the prisoners to escape, and to wound the section of the parade that was most able to contain their escape/
'I won't argue with that in principle. But was freeing the psykers the point itself, or simply a means to an end?'
'How so?'
"Was it an attempt to liberate the psykers… or was this just an act of extreme violence against the Imperium that the release of dangerous psykers was meant to exacerbate?'
'Until we know what was behind it, we can't answer that/
'Could the psykers themselves have done it? Manipulated the minds of the pilots?'
He shrugged. We can't know that either. Not yet. The Warmaster might have been guilty of bravado in displaying his prisoners, but he would have made certain security around them was seamless. I must suspect an outside hand/
We said nothing for a moment. Honorius Magnus himself had barely survived the crash-blast and was undergoing emergency surgery aboard a medical frigate at the navy-yard. No one yet knew if Lord Commander Helican was alive. If he was dead, or if the Warmaster died of his injuries, then Chaos would have won a historic victory.
'I suspect an outside hand too/ I told Voke. 'Perhaps another psyker or psykers, trailing their colleagues here to stage an escape/
He pursed his lipless mouth. The greatest triumph of my life, Gregor, capturing those monsters in the name of the Emperor… and look what it becomes/
You can't blame yourself for this, Commodus/
'Can I not?' He squinted at me. 'In my place, how would you feel?'
I shrugged. 'I will make amends. I will not rest until every one of these wretches is destroyed, and order restored. And then I will not rest until I find who and what was behind it/
He stared at me for a long time.
What?' I asked, though I had a feeling I knew what was coming.
"Ґou… you were close to the scene, as you said to me. Closer than many, and shielded from the worst of the destruction by the bulk of the Spatian Gate/
'And?'
"STou know what I want to ask you/
"You thought you'd start with me. I'm too tired, Voke. I stopped to honour the admiral's tomb/ **
He raised one eyebrow, as if he sensed I didn't really believe it myself. But at least he did me the courtesy of not ripping into my mind with his much more powerful psychic abilities to scour out what truth might be there. We had reached an understanding through our encounters over the years, and were now even when it came to owing each other our lives.
He knew me well enough not to press this.
Not now, at least.
An interrogator hurried into the room.
'Sirs/ she said. 'Inquisitor Roban wishes you to know that we have made contact with one of the heretics/
As far as could be learned, the rogue was an alpha-plus psyker called Esarhaddon, one of the leaders of the coven. Sowing tumult and woe in his wake, he had fled into the hive with a group led by Lyko and Heldane in pursuit. Heldane had managed to contact one of Voke's astropaths with a scrambled summons for help.
Voke, Roban and I headed out into the hive streets with a kill team of sixty that included the four White Consuls. Their squad leader was a
particularly large sergeant called Kurvel. We travelled on foot through the debris and smoke. Gangs of citizens jeered and pelted missiles at us, but the sight of four terrible Space Marines kept them at bay.
Esarhaddon, Voke warned me, was a being of dreadful intellect and not to be underestimated. When we saw the monster's choice of bolt-hole, I understood what Voke meant.
The noble family of Lange was prominent in the aristocracy of Thracian Primaris, and kept an ample summer palace in the east sector of Hive Pri-maris, near to the mercantile quarter where they had made their fortunes.
The palace rose proud of the lowhab streets around it, swathed in its own force bubble.
This had been one of the city areas we had supposed to be secure. With their power and resources, noble houses should have been able to protect themselves for the duration of the unrest.
But not against Esarhaddon. He was inside, with all the resources of the palace to protect him.
We met Heldane on the western approach road to the palace. He had a team of about twenty with him. The street itself was littered with bodies, most of them citizens.
'He's controlling the crowds as if they were puppets/ Heldane said curtly, with no word of greeting. Waves of them keep coming at us, preventing us getting to the garden walls and the servants' annex along there.'
As I may have said, I had little time for Inquisitor Heldane. A very tall, grim man, his face an unsightly mass of scar tissue since an encounter with a hungry carnodon back on Gudran. He'd been Voke's pupil when I had first met him; now he was a full inquisitor, with mental powers, it was said, that exceeded even his old master's. As I saw him there, I shuddered. He had undergone extensive surgery, not to disguise the damage to his face, but to exaggerate it. His skull seemed to have been extended into an almost equine shape, with a snout-like mouth full of blunt teeth, and dark, murky eyes. Fibre-wires and fluid tubes braided his cranium in place of hair. He wore plasteel body armour the colour of blood and carried a segmented power glaive.
'Eisenhorn/ he nodded, noticing me. It was like having a warhorse shake its head in my direction.
They're coming again!' The cry went up from Heldane's men. Down the street, moving through the fire spills, figures were lurching towards us.
Weapons! Stand ready! Heldane had spoken, but not with his voice. His psychic command shook through our skulls and some of our own troopers looked dismayed.
Missiles rained down on us, and the Interior Guardsmen raised an umbrella of riot shields. Small arms fired at us too, and an arbites near me fell with his knee buckled the wrong way.
Our attackers, some hundred or more, were hive citizens, blank faced and moving like marionettes. As Heldane had reported, some monumental
psychic force was making puppets out of them. The smoky night air ionised with the psionic backwash.
I take no pleasure in actions like the one that followed. The beast Esarhaddon was forcing us to fight innocent civilians just to protect ourselves.
Maybe he thought we'd shrink from the task and leave him alone.
We, however, were the Inquisition.
Kurvel led his White Consuls at the front, banging their weapons against their chest-plates and howling defiance through their helmet speakers. I saw a promethium bomb strike one and shatter, swathing him in liquid flame. He simply strode on.
We fired over the mob's heads, trying to break them, but they had no will of their own. Our firing became kill-shots. In ten minutes, we had reluctantly added a fair number to the planet's rising death toll.
That brought us to the corner of the street, facing the high walls of the garden and the edge of the palace's iridescent force shield itself.
I could hear a low chuckling in my head.
Esarhaddon.
Where's Lyko? I heard Voke ask Heldane psychically.
He took a team around the front to try and disable the force wall.
You idiot!' I said, out loud, looking over at Heldane. This monster can control a crowd that big and you mind-speak this close to him?'
This monster/ Heldane replied, 'can read every mind in the city and beyond. He knows what we're all doing. There is no point in secrecy. Just effort. Is that beyond you?'
'How long until the next attack?' Kurvel asked,
reloading his weapon.
They've become less frequent since we first arrived/ replied Heldane. 'However long it takes Esarhaddon to mind-search the surrounding habs and recruit another puppet force. He's having to cast his net wider each time/
'How did he get in there?' Roban asked.
Heldane simply shook his head and shrugged. Roban, a robust inquisitor of middle years dressed in brown and yellow layered robes, was a good man, though I didn't know him well. But he was an outspoken Xanthanite and the ultra-puritan Heldane had little time for him.
Voke and Heldane fell to discussing possible assault plans with Kurvel as the soldiers around us formed a defensive position.
This is a damned thankless task/ Roban said to me. 'I don't even know why we're here!'
'Cannon fodder/ said his youthful interrogator, Inshabel, bluntly, and it made us both laugh.
There has to be something…' I said. I took out my pocket scope and tried to read the energy patterns and spectrums.
'You!' I called to one of the arbites in our party, a grizzled precinct commander in full riot gear.
'Inquisitor?'
What's your name?'
'Lucius, sir.'
'Dear God-Emperor!' I sighed again and Roban laughed once more.
'Okay, Luckless – this palace must come into your precinct's patrol area.'
'Yes, sir.'
'So street security around it is your responsibility.'
'Again, yes sir.'
'So… just as a matter of procedure, your section house will have on file the shield type and harmonics for the palace, in case of emergencies/ In my experience, it was standard protocol for any arbites precinct to know such things about key structures within their purview.
'It's classified, sir.'
'Of course it is,' I sighed again. 'But now would be a good time.
He got on his vox-link and after a lot of effort, managed to get a channel open to the section house.
'You're on to something, aren't you?' Roban asked me.
'Maybe/
The wily Inquisitor Eisenhom-'