by Ben Counter
'You may not have that luxury, justicar.' said Durendin as Alaric turned to leave. 'Given what was found at the Gaolven Belt, catching Valinov may have been just the first step.'
THE ORDO MALLEUS had taken the rings of Saturn shortly after the inception of the Inquisition, and had turned them into its own unofficial domain. The lord inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus ruled Saturn's moons absolutely, because that was the only way they could ensure the security of their facilities. The Malleus controlled some of the most dangerous artefacts, texts, and people in the galaxy. The immensely complicated geometry of Saturn's rings means it was all but impossible for any enemy force to penetrate the thousands of turbolaser defences that bristled from asteroids captured by Saturn's gravity. The ordo controlled the only reliable way in and out of the rings, the naval fortress on the outermost major moon Iapetus.
Mimas, the closest major moon to the vast swirling mass of Saturn, was disfigured by an immense impact scar covering a quarter of the surface. Built into that crater was the Inquisitorial prison where the worst of the worst were held in complexes of isolated cells with psychic wards woven into the walls, guarded by gun-servitors and a regiment of Ordo Malleus storm troopers.
Encaladus, the next moon out from Mimas, housed the Inquisitorial citadel, a vast and imposing palace where the lord inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus held court and the most senior of the ordo's inquisitors maintained personal estates.
Tethys was the location of the Librarium Daemonicum, the repository of dangerous knowledge gathered over thousands of years of fighting the darkness. The Librarium was completely hidden from the surface - thousands of void-safe cells and galleries of crammed bookshelves filled a sphere hollowed out of the moon's core. Untold millions of tomes, data-slates, scrolls and pict-recordings were refrigerated to preserve delicate pages and unstable datacores. Access to them was given only on the authority of the lord inquisitors themselves, and the more restricted sectors formed some of the most sensitive locations in the galaxy.
Titan, the largest moon, concealed beneath its thick orange atmosphere the immense fortress-monastery of the Grey Knights, covering the surface as if the whole moon had been carved with a pattern of towers and battlements.
The docks of Iapetus, the furthermost major moon, extended kilometres out into space and were always hosts to whole roosts of cruisers, escorts and battleships, including the strike fleet of the Grey Knights and enormous Imperator-class battleships requisitioned from the Battlefleet Solar.
It was only by controlling this miniature empire that the Ordo Malleus could ensure the safety of the terrible knowledge it collected and the dangerous individuals it captured and imprisoned. It was this security that meant Valinov's possessions could be isolated and contained. It was here that Inquisitor Briseis Ligeia could examine them properly.
A THIN, PALE blue-grey light filled the research floor, weakly illuminating the reams of books and data-slates that filled shelves lining walls one hundred metres high. Spider-like archiver servitors scurried up the walls on thin metal legs, the fleshy once-human parts scanning book spines and labels for the Malleus research staff who spent their lives poring over ancient texts for their Inquisitorial masters. Many higher-ranking Malleus inquisitors had a personal researcher or two on Tethys, whose sole purpose in life was to find obscure and potentially vital information on the enemies of the Emperor.
The many floors suspended between the immense cliffs of bookshelves were mostly empty. A few pale, large-eyed researchers were hunched over crumbling tomes, gun-servitors hovering over their shoulders in case the knowledge they were exposed to overcame their minds. Their breath coiled in the air and they all wore close-fitting thermosuits; the temperature was kept too low for a human to survive more than a few minutes.
Inquisitor Ligeia preferred it when it was quiet. It leaves her more room to think. A tiny guide-servitor droned on ahead of her, weaving through the various workstations and down a couple of flights of steps to where Valinov's possessions had been assembled for her. Ligeia wore bulky furs and an overcloak trimmed in ermine - she affected the clothing of an extravagant Imperial noble because that was who she was, or at least had been. She wore rings outside her tharrhide gloves and her boots were of the finest pygmy grox leather. She had been pretty once, but that was a long time ago and life had hardened her soul enough for it to show on her face. She was still imposing, and she liked the fact that people would react to her appearance first. It meant that she would be underestimated - a fact that had saved her many times.
Ligeia was not a born fighter, although she had seen her fair share of scrapes. She was an investigator, a scholar, schooled by the best institutions noble money could afford. The Ordo Hereticus had taken her directly from the nobility of Gathalamor, finding that her skills with information overcame the unease some of them felt at her growing psychic abilities. The Ordo Malleus had headhunted her because of her facility with ancient or cryptic texts. She had stayed, becoming a more and more valued assistant to various Malleus inquisitors until she had attained the rank herself, all the time honing her psychic power. The Ordo Malleus were mostly typically bull-headed daemonhunters with weapons and armour to rival the Grey Knights themselves, charging into battle with the unholy, but Ligeia's weapon was knowledge. A psychic Malleus inquisitor was supposed to hurl bolts of lightning or banish daemons with a word, but Ligeia's powers were geared towards understanding and perception.
Without Ligeia, untold atrocities would have unfolded without the Ordo Malleus even suspecting them. Perhaps Valinov was planning something that would not be stopped with his capture.
Ligeia took a seat and the guide-servitor flitted off again. No gun-servitor approached, because one of the privileges of Ligeia's office was the trust the lord inquisitors placed in her willpower. A suppressor field she carried switched off the defences in her immediate vicinity, so the signature of her psychic abilities would not bring sentry guns out of the walls. In front of her were lain the items found in Valinov's personal chambers and upon his person when he was captured, much of it still bloodstained or scorched by bolter rounds. Valinov's clothes, deep red robes extravagantly trimmed with silver, had a large ragged hole in one arm. Ligeia remembered from the briefing that Valinov had been wounded. It was a measure of his strength that he had survived the shock of a bolter round against unarmoured flesh. All these items had been assembled by the research staff at her request, in the condition that they had been found on Valinov's asteroid.
Valinov had been armed with a custom hunting las, a holdover from when he worked within the auspices of the Ordo Malleus. It was a beautiful weapon, the casings and barrel enamelled in deep blood red with the details picked out in gold. The power pack was similarly custom-built and was heavily overcharged going by the scorching on the barrel. Valinov had carried a wrackblade, too, a sneaky little weapon that looked like a combat knife but hid a neurowhip processor. The same blade had turned Interrogator Iatonn's entrails to mush. All very expensive and very rare.
Ligeia ignored the weapons. They had been checked by psyker séance and were free of any taint. What interested Ligeia were the documents. There were a couple of data-slates, a handful of scrolls tied with what looked like lengths of sinew, and a large book. The data-slates were schedules and inventories for the fortress - they indicated how well Valinov had organised what amounted to a benighted band of fanatics, but little else.
The scrolls looked more interesting. They were covered in cryptic messages in cramped handwriting, complex diagrams of pantheons or magic spells, transcriptions of chants and descriptions of ceremonies. Ligeia held her hand over the tattered parchment and let her perception bleed out of the inside of her head and down into the paper, weaving around not just the shape of the letters and diagrams but the meaning that infused them. She had discovered the power while in the schola back on Gathalamor when she was still a child, and though the Sisters who taught her had told her it was witchery she h
ad been lucky to be recognised not as a threat but as a strong and useful psyker. It was one of the paradoxes at the heart of the Imperium: the Imperium was terrified of psykers, men and women whose powers touched the warp and formed a bridge for dark things to come through into real space; but it also depended on psykers, like the astropaths who transmitted telepathic messages or psychic inquisitors like herself who did with their minds what no man could do with weapons.
The meaning on the scrolls was a faint, flitting thing, vague and frustrating. Ligeia suspected it might be some complicated code but the deeper she reached the more she came across a barrier of meaninglessness. The scrolls meant nothing. Their only purpose was to look impressive. True rituals of the Chaos gods would have lit up her psychic perception like fireworks.
Though Ligeia spent some time examining them to be sure, she quickly came to the conclusion that the scrolls were meaningless. Valinov had probably faked them up to give to his cultists and make them think they were doing the work of the dark gods. It meant they were not ready for Valinov to introduce them to the true worship of Chaos. Probably he never would have taken them that far - they were just bolter fodder, men he could manipulate into dying instead of him. And they had died, every one of them.
Ligeia left the scrolls and pulled the book towards her. It was old and all but ruined with damp and mould. The pages were thick parchment but the bindings were ragged - Ligeia guessed that the volume had been rebound several times. There was no title. If there had been one previously, it had disappeared as the original binding peeled off.
Ligeia carefully opened the book. Even with her perception withdrawn it tingled her fingers when she touched it, as if its meaning was struggling to get out and be understood. Archaic High Gothic covered the page in front of her.
Codicium Aeternum.
Beneath the tide were written lines in an elegant hand by some transcriber-servitor hundreds of years ago.
Being a full and faithful account of the deaths of Daemons, Monstrous Prodigies and the Lords of Darkness, and accompanying extrapolations of their return from Banishment.
The seal of the Ordo Malleus was emblazoned below.
Ligeia caught her breath. This was something she genuinely had not expected. She leafed through a few of the pages. Monstrous names looked back at her. She recognised the name of Angron, the Daemon Primarch who had once been banished from the material realm in the first Battle for Armageddon. She saw Cherubael and Doombreed, N'Kari and hundreds of others, with the dates and predicted durations of their banishments noted beside. Some of those names alone would have corrupted lesser minds.
The Codicium Aeternum. By the Throne, if it was real...
It had last been seen in these very halls decades before. It had been thought simply lost, hidden somewhere in the bowels of Tethys where it had become a victim of the secrecy supposed to keep it secret. Many volumes had slipped through the gaps like that, and the Malleus had specialised knowledge hunter squads who roamed the lower recesses finding vital texts that had previously been forgotten. But that had not happened to this book - Valinov must have stolen it from the Ordo Malleus's collection when he was still in the employ of Inquisitor Barbillus, earlier than any of the signs of his corruption. He must have been working towards some terrible plan for longer than the Malleus suspected. The Codicium Aeternum was one of the most valuable reference works the Malleus possessed, listing thousands of daemons banished by the Grey Knights or the Inquisition. Emperor only knew what Valinov had meant to do with it.
Ligeia stood and waved over the guide servitor, which was hovering at a polite distance.
'Ligeia to Librarium command. We have a sensitive text, possible moral threat. Send down a containment team and let the Conclave know it's the Codicium Aeternum. Ligeia out.'
The servitor thrummed off carrying Ligeia's message to the Librarium's overseers. They would know how to contain and secure a book of such power and value. As Ligeia turned back to the table she noticed that the book had fallen open at a seemingly random page, stained with age and damp, and barely legible. One word, one name, jumped out at her, scratched in red ink by an elegant, looping hand.
Ghargatuloth.
Chapter Three
TITAN
THE GATHERING WAS called in the Fallen Dagger Hall where Grand Master Kolgano, centuries before, challenged the Grey Knights under his command to an unarmoured dagger duel and promised his jewel-encrusted Terminator armour to anyone who could beat him. Kolgano was long gone, buried with his righting dagger deep in the heart of Titan's catacombs, but the hall remained lofty and echoing.
It was used for drills, close combat training for newer recruits and sometimes, as now, for meetings between the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights.
A large round table of dark hardwood stood in the centre of the hall, flanked by rings of Malleus storm troopers in parade dress, their faces hidden by silvered masks. Inquisitor Nyxos attended most official functions with this silent, sinister honour guard, their faces never shown. He sat at the table flanked by two standing advisors, one an astropath of almost impossible age, the other a brilliant young woman rumoured to have been poached from the finest officer academy of the Imperial Navy. Nyxos himself was an old leathery warrior, wearing simple black that served to flaunt the silver-plated brackets and servo mounts that lent his frail old body immense strength and speed. His bald, liver-spotted head jutted forward like a hawk's, sharp little eyes always scanning for prey.
At Nyxos's side sat Inquisitor Ligeia in impressive noble regalia, looking more like an elegant family matriarch at a society ball than a hunter of daemons. She carried the mouldering Codicium Aeternum in a small portable void-safe to keep its delicate pages from crumbling.
Grand Master Tencendur entered, wearing his customised Terminator armour. He had removed his helmet, revealing a face with a broad, strong jaw and plenty of frown lines. He was accompanied by his own squad of Terminators and by Justicar Alaric, reunited with his repaired wargear and walking behind the squad.
Alaric had been fully debriefed by Tencendur and had briefly spoken with his squad. They had begun the process of mourning for their fallen battle-brothers. Encalion and Tolas had been allotted niches in the catacombs of Titan where their bodies would rest, shrouded until the time came for the Emperor's servants to join him once more. Brother Lykkos was undergoing intensive training with the psycannon that Tolas had once carried. The other Marines would carry their battle-brothers in the funeral parade, and Alaric would have to speak in their remembrance. He had spoken for fallen brothers before, but this time would be harder than the others.
In time, new recruits would be picked to join Alaric's squad, and eventually they would replace the fallen. But that would not happen soon. Until then Squad Alaric would be two men short as a reminder of the threats they had always to face.
'Grand master.' said Nyxos, rising from his seat in respect. His servos whirred slightly. 'My apologies for the short notice. Many protocols had to be waived.'
'I understand that sensitive material was recovered from Valinov's possessions.' said Tencendur, his voice inhumanly deep and gravelly thanks to the ruinous throat wound that had nearly killed him back when he had been a justicar. 'Were it not suitably important I am sure you would not have asked to meet me here at all.' I Nyxos indicated Ligeia, who placed the book on the table and pushed it towards Tencendur. She ran her thumb along the gene-lock and the void-safe snapped open, revealing the mould-blotched cover of the Codicium Aeternum. The grand master walked up to the table and reached over, picking up the book in his surprisingly dextrous gauntlets and turning over the cover carefully. He read the title off the first page.
'We believe Valinov stole it before his treachery became obvious.' said Nyxos as Tencendur leafed through the stained pages. 'In itself it is not dangerous, hence we can remove it from the protections of the Librarium. But the information it contains is of a most disturbing nature considering it was possess
ed by a Radical.'
'Do you know why he stole it?'
'Valinov has not yet told our interrogators anything,' said Nyxos. 'Mimas has the best excruciators in the ordo and he may crack in time, but that will not happen overnight. We can make some guesses, however. Ligeia?'
'The Codicium,' began Ligeia in a knowing, upper-class voice that contrasted with the hard-bitten growls of her fellow daemonhunters, 'contains the names of many thousands of daemons along with descriptions and dates of their banishments. As beings of pure energy many of them cannot be permanently destroyed, only sent back to the warp until they can reform; we believe the Codicium was first compiled in an attempt to systematically monitor their returns. Of course, the ways of Chaos are anything but systematic but the authors were thorough, at first. Many of the entries are incomplete or damaged but there is one in particular that I have determined was of particular interest to Valinov.'
Ligeia had placed a marker between two of the pages. Tencendur opened the book to the right page and stopped.
'Ghargatuloth.' he said simply.
'Ghargatuloth.' repeated Ligeia, 'was banished from the material realm a thousand years ago on Khorion IX by Grand Master Mandulis.'
'And he was banished.' said Tencendur as he read, 'for a thousand years.'
'You understand why we thought this was of such importance.' said Nyxos.
Tencendur closed the book and placed it back on the table. 'What do you need?'
Nyxos consulted a data-slate handed to him by his advisor. 'We all know what is happening at Cadia, Grand Master. The Eye of Terror has opened and Cadia could fall. The ordo needs me there to conduct interrogators still operating on Chaos-controlled territory so I cannot lead a response myself. Inquisitor Ligeia will have authority over this operation. On her behalf I am requesting that you assemble a Grey Knights strike force with all possible haste for her to use as she sees fit in investigating the possibilities this information suggests.'