The Imperial Truth

by Laurie Goulding

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor's glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father's light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor's light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor's genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire.

  Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended. The Age of Darkness has begun.

  CONTENTS

  HANDS OF THE EMPEROR

  by Rob Sanders

  THE PHOENICIAN

  by Nick Kyme

  BY THE LION'S COMMAND

  by Gav Thorpe

  THE DEVINE ADORATRICE

  by Graham McNeil

  LORD OF THE RED SANDS

  by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ALL THAT REMAINS

  by James Swallow

  HANDS OF THE EMPEROR

  Rob Sanders

  THE CAVERNOUS CORRIDORS of the Imperial Palace echoed with the rhythmic clatter of armour plate. The foot knights of the Legio Custodes marched with brazen purpose, the synchronised movement of ceramite and gold an elevated heartbeat in the hallowed halls. It was the sound of tranquil urgency - of vigilance, noble and true.

  Shield-Captain Enobar Stentonox was part of that vigilance, and had been for a long time. Today was different, however. Today he felt his own heart beating to the same rhythm as his marching step. Today he had the Palace watch: his first. For twenty-four hours, the security of the Imperial Palace - and by extension, of the Emperor himself - was in Stentonox's hands.

  More than just a wonder crafted in blood and stone, the colossal Palace was many things to many people. To the Custodian Guard it was both security-sanctum and protectorate. To the primarch Rogal Dorn it was a bastion to fortify. To the army of ambassadors and Administratum officials that swarmed its halls, it was the heart of human governance. To the trillions of citizens on Ancient Terra and the worlds beyond, it was the centre of the known galaxy. As Master of the Watch, Stentonox would need to meet the competing demands of such roles, whilst maintaining the inviolate preservation of the Emperor's person within the Palace's mighty walls.

  The shield-captain's steps were long with pride, but also heavy - not just with the ceremonial bulk of his plate, but also the crushing burden of his responsibilities. As his rattling stride took him through the Belvedereon Great Hall, he passed a marble statue of the Emperor. Couched in metaphor, it depicted the Emperor at the Declaration of Unity, balancing Terra upon one globed shoulder. For a moment, Stentonox allowed himself the indulgence of equating the honour and encumbrance to his own.

  As the Great Hall became the Colonnade Simulacrux, Stentonox's march fell into step with the party of Custodians making their brisk way up the vaulted and pillar-lined passage. The architectural theme of the Great Hall had spilled out into the colossal space, and many heroes of the Unification Wars - including members of the Emperor's personal guard - were immortalised in the stone of the columns. One of these giants also strode up the grand colonnade in the flesh, leading the party that Stentonox had joined.

  Constantin Valdor.

  A loyal Terran, Captain-General of the Legio Custodes and Chief Custodian of the Emperor of Mankind - in that order - he walked the lofty corridors of his master's fortified palace. Brazier light dappled the golden brilliance of his battleplate, while the red of his robes honoured the blood historically spilled in the effort to safeguard his Emperor.

  Stentonox suspected that there would be a great deal more blood spilled in the near future.

  Flanked by members of his Ares Guard, Valdor was attended upon, at Stentonox's arrangement, by the Sentinel-Securitas Justinian Arcadius. Like a small continent, the dimensions of the Palace were broad and wide, but the Captain-General's itinerarium - known only to a few, including the Master of the Watch - now placed Valdor in the Upper Ward, which was where Stentonox had intended to meet him for the dawn report. Like a wall of beaten bronze perpetually at their back, the Custodian Dreadnought lndemnion trampled up the corridor with hydraulic menace. Its aged hull streamed with the aegis honours and ribbon banners of its own decorated service to the Emperor.

  Despite the early hour. the Captain-General had a smile for Stentonox, though the shield-captain doubted that Valdor had seen the inside of his personal chambers in several days. 'Your first Palace watch?'

  'Yes, Captain-General,' Stentonox confirmed.

  'Then I wish you a quiet duty,' Valdor said. 'Though they rarely are.'

  'If you have any advice to offer, Captain-General, then I would be glad of its guidance.'

  The Chief Custodian grunted with good humour. 'Don't get too attached to your protocols and regulata. Schedules are usually shattered by the second hour. Think of the solemn observance of our responsibilities as written in stone - but freshly inscribed in volcanic rock. Each day brings new challenges that test our routines, fresh eruptions that turn the cold certainty of ritual and order to situations that are fast moving and fluid. You must live the contradiction of being adaptable, and yet unyielding. And know that the word that will fall from your lips most often today will be "no". Anything else, shield-captain?'

  'No, Chief Custodian.'

  'Then let us proceed with the dawn report.'

  As Stentonox took his Captain-General through the matters of the day, with Arcadias filling in the blanks, his mind moved from one weighty consideration to another. The morning alone was an agitated crowd of duties and responsibilities to push through, each vying for his urgent attention. There were defensive vulnerabilities created by the Warmason's work on the Byzan Wall. One of Valdor's auricenvoys, Abhorsiax, was returning from Old Aethiopia, where the Chief Custodian had sent him to arbitrate the labour wars that had broken out between the Danakil mineral conglomerates and Hive Abyssin. The recently trialled protectorate rotations operating out of the Dolorite quad-bastions still required refinement. Consuls from the Collegia Titanica were requesting a baptismal Palace walk-by, involving the newly constructed Warlord-class Battle Titan Vigilantia Victrum, which the Chief Custodian was almost certain to reject out of committee. Papers, references and pict-files on the forty or so Palace sub-ambassador appointees still required the Chief Custodian's seal. A consignment of breaching munitions due for delivery to the Palace armouries had understandably not materialised from Mars, but the consignment's replacement order had similarly not arrived on schedule from the forge world of Phaeton. The Legio Custodes fleet of orbital monitors were well overdue an inspection. The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites had requ
ested an audience to discuss the dangers posed by a number of seditionist movements, all speaking against the Emperor, as well as a recent incident involving a troubled citizen firing a shot at one Palace's street-level barbicans, only to be killed in return fire by the Custodian foot knight on duty there. Witchseekers of the Silent Sisterhood were convening to discuss the maintenance of the Palace defences that no one could actually see - the Emperor's immaterial security measures. Beyond these existing matters of gravity, both Stentonox, as the Master of the Watch, and the Chief Custodian had several dozen lesser meetings and consultation sessions - more, now that the shield-captain had completed his watch report.

  'Thank you,' Valdor said to the shield-captain. 'Arcadius, is there anything else?'

  As the sentinel-securitas checked his lists, their group approached a towering sentry gate. The arch's barricade was raised and hung over a pair of Aquila Terminators like a bad omen. The bulkheads were one of the many improvements that Rogal Dorn had approved for the Palace interior. Every grand design and architectural flourish now had to be adapted to new purpose: the high, decorative archways occurring at intervals down the arterial corridors were now tri-layered barricade-bulkheads, that would come down in the event of wall-breaches and slow the advance of an enemy force through the Palace.

  The sentries bowed low - despite it being difficult to do so in their Tactical Dreadnought plate - and rested their helmets against the ceremonial halberds they clutched before them. As the Captain-General, sentinel-securitas and Master of the Watch passed, the pair rose back to their impressive height, resuming their silent vigil like gargoyles.

  Arcadias only had one other order of business: a report that Stentonox had requested himself.

  'The nodical-session Blood Games are almost at an end,' Arcadius told them, and Valdor nodded with approval. With intelligence pointing to a security threat that was only growing in imminence, the Captain General had doubled the theatre-diagnostic, pitting the best he had from the ranks of the Legio Custodes against the Palace defences. The sentinel-securitas examined both failures and near-successes to anticipate possible enemy strategies and review the Emperor's security. With the galaxy in turmoil and Valdor's days increasingly dominated by actual threats rather than hypothetical ones, the Chief Custodian had less time for the tactical rituals. It had been Stentonox's relative success in a previous round of the Blood Games that had elevated him to shield-captain, and he thought to rekindle the Chief Custodian's appetite for updates. It had worked.

  'Any surprises?' Valdor asked.

  'Jerichstein was intercepted in Hive Persepol,' Arcadius confirmed. 'Ran into some trouble with an entire precinct of Arbitrators. Nicator was taken by one of our gunships during a pursuit over the Caucasus. A servo-drone picked up Einocratus while mapping a section of ancient sewerage trenches beneath the Palace. The Fourth Ward fire was started by Caesarion, and Gesh was responsible for the Black Sentinels and foot knights missing from their sentry-points in the hanging gardens. But they both failed isometrics at the Cantica-Consentrica, Barbican East. I fear they were working together, which is of course prohibited by the rules of the Games.'

  'The enemy won't play by our rules,' Valdor said. 'Will they, Stentonox?'

  'It is difficult enough to get our allies to do so, most of the time,' the shield-captain offered.

  'Exactly,' Valdor agreed.

  'Which is why I've taken the unusual step of both commending and censuring the pair of them simultaneously,' Arcadius said.

  Valdor laughed. 'Kalibos?'

  Taken climbing the Maximillias Wall - previously identified as a weak spot in our surveillance,' the sentinel-securitas informed Valdor.

  'Did you not favour the Maximillias Wall with your infiltration?' the Chief Custodian asked Stentonox.

  'The Espartic Wall, my lord.'

  'Not an easy climb,' Valdor said.

  'Difficult by design. Soon to be made impossible,' Stentonox said, nodding to Arcadius and adding a mental note to his duties for the day.

  'But Kalibos was taken?'

  Arcadias confirmed it. 'But he did not concede easily. Four of my sentinels are in the infirmatory.'

  'And Zantini?'

  'Made it through to the Halls Econium disguised as a plenipotente from the Technovingian Sovereignty, but the new frequency fields installed beneath the flags unmasked him.'

  'But they're getting closer,' Valdor admitted.

  'Their near-successes honour us,' Arcadius said. 'But with every cycle of the Games we learn more of the arts of infiltration. The weaknesses and complacencies our enemies will use against us.'

  'Any Custodians outstanding?'

  'One,' Arcadius told Valdor and the shield-captain. 'Belisarius.'

  Stentonox prided himself on knowing all of the Custodians he worked with, but he knew some better than others, and Belisarius he barely knew at all.

  'His genotrace was identified by syn-grids in the Kaspasian Basin,' Arcadius continued, 'at Sinai-Persis and Hive Saqqara. Travelling west, away from the Palace. Perhaps his approach was compromised by these recent captures.'

  As they approached the giant statue-lined galleries of the Bronze Arcade, the burnished doors of the Heliosicon Tower parted to reveal the large grav-carriage and its pair of passengers. Sister-Commandress Duesstra Edelstyne was a blistering vision in silver plate and rich furs.

  An ornate half-helm covered her stapled lips, the vaulting nose guard of which cut between the dark intensity of her eyes. At her side stood a shaven-headed novice glossator.

  As a Sister of Silence, Edelstyne was Confidente-Tranquil to Lady Krole herself and ranking maiden among the Raptor Guard allocated to the Palace's First Ward. Her sisters were stationed throughout, attending meetings in silence and standing sentinel in the halls and corridors, not unlike their Custodian counterparts; in many ways, her role was analogous to Stentonox's own. While providing empyreal protection in the Palace against witchbreeds and their invasive, immaterial probings, the Sisterhood's warriors were also welcome additions to the Palace security forces.

  But this necessitated coordination, and an obligatory meeting Edelstyne and the Master of the Watch. Stentonox had scheduled the time and the place but this was neither. He acknowledged the silent stab of her glare with a nod, but turned his attention back to the Chief Custodian. 'Sounds like Belisarius just doesn't want the game to end,' Valdor said.

  'But then again, who does? Monitor his progress. Keep me posted.'

  Arcadius nodded. 'Thank, Chief Custodian.'

  'And good luck to you, shield-captain'.

  'Thank you, Captain-General,' replied Stentonox. He saluted before Valdor, Indemnion and the Ares Guard peeled off into a chasmal corridor.

  'Commandress,' Stentonox boomed across the arcade. 'What can I do for you?'

  Her gauntlets signed out a rapid series of gestures, the speed and insistency of which even the shield-captain could interpret as urgent. From the tender lips of the novice glossator came the translation.

  'Shield-Captain Stentonox. There is something you should see.'

  THE HELIOSICON TOWER was one of the tallest thrusting skyward from the Imperial Palace. It was so called because of the views it commanded of the Terran sun rising above the chromatic haze of atmospheric pollution. The bulbous minaret at the top boasted not only its own donjon and signum-complex, but also crenellated terraces outfitted both decoratively for observation, and defensively with interceptor missile launchers.

  As the bronze doors slid open, Stenonox strode out onto the first terrace, accompanied by Arcadius and the two women. A Custodian tower sentry fell briefly to one knee as the Master of the Watch passed, but Edelstyne and her novice followed without acknowledgement, the sunlight glinting off their polished battle plate. Edelstyne signed.

  'There.' The novice glossator pointed out to the south-west.

  Stentonox followed her direction out over the haze, across the excavation-mauled plateaus of the Himalazia. Something was emerging from th
e tarnished clouds beyond. Something huge.

  From its size, it could only be one of Terra's great orbital plates, grazing the planet's upper atmosphere and moving slowly, but surely, over the mountain peaks. While each orbital plate was different - no less the victims of hideous engineering enhancements and ungainly accretions than the hives that housed billions at ground level - this one reminded Stentonox of some colossal, flattened jellyfish. The greater metropol-platform was like a parasol, with a nest of sky docks, stratomoorings and the orbital's gravitic engine column hanging down through the clouds beneath it. From the shape of its silhouetted outline, the colossal plate looked like Arcus, one of the smaller orbital conurbatia.

  What alarmed the shield-captain was the fact that the swarm of tugs and shunt-craft manoeuvring the humongous plate seemed to be dragging it towards the Imperial Palace.

  Stentonox and Arcadius exchanged glances of simultaneous realisation and alarm.

  'Patch me through to the signum-complex,' the shield-captain ordered. Arcadius nodded and conferred briefly with the tower sentry.

  A voice came across the encrypted vox-channel. 'Signata-Heliosicon for the Master of the Watch.'

  'This is Shield-Captain Enobar Stentonox,' he replied. 'ldent - Tarantis, Halcyon, three-fifty-two, sixty-four. Confirm.'

  'Confirmed, shield-captain. Standing by.'

  'Heliosicon,' Stentonox said. 'I am on the battle-terraces of your tower and I am looking at what appears to be an orbital about to breach both Palace air and void-space. Confirm for me, please'.

  'Confirmed, shield-captain. We have orbital plate Arcus on a Himalazian approach vector.'

  'Negative, Heliosicon lower, negative. Orbital plates do not have trajectory clearance to pass over the Imperial Palace'.

  'Arcus Orbital has clearance, shield-captain,' the tower voxed back. 'Special dispensatorial order, Metacarp Three-Sixteen.'