by C Z Dunn
‘My lord, with the greatest respect, that is a far from simple request.’ Strike had faced down Catachan devils back on his home world and lived not only to tell the tale, but also to wear its teeth on a chain around his neck. Although he’d just become aware of their existence, he would not be cowed by the Inquisition.
Dinalt rose to his full height, a few centimetres taller than the taut figure of the colonel, and moved his face so close to Strike’s that the Catachan could feel the inquisitor’s breath upon his cheeks.
‘If I so willed it, colonel, I could bring your entire regiment under my command and march every single one of them out into the jungle to find that which I seek,’ said Dinalt. From under her cowl, Brandd smirked. Tzula, who had grown to despise the woman more with each passing day, cast her a disapproving glance.
Strike pulled his shoulders back and expanded his chest. What the colonel lacked in height over the inquisitor, he made up for in girth. ‘And if that was your intention, you would have done it already.’
Dinalt arched an eyebrow.
‘You work for an organisation so secret that until you showed up on my shuttle pad, I thought it was as real as a two-metre tall ratling, a commissar with a conscience, or a necron.’
Tzula looked as if she was about to say something then thought better of it.
‘The last thing you want is ten thousand Catachans scouring the surface of Pythos for this “object” you’re after,’ Strike continued. ‘Hell, there are men standing guard outside this command centre right now who have seen the three of you and still don’t believe that the Inquisition is real, and I’m fairly confident that that’s how you’d like things to stay.’
Dinalt was visibly impressed.
‘I’m not being difficult over the Chimeras, I’m being prudent. I’ve been stuck here for three years and believe me when I tell you that all the good a personnel carrier is going to do you out in those swamps is make you a nice big coffin.’
‘Why haven’t you modified them for amphibious use?’ Brandd scoffed. ‘Surely that would have been the first thing you should have done when you became aware of your situation.’
Strike overrode his first, potentially suicidal, reaction before saying, ‘That may be how you get things done in the Inquisition but the reality for the Imperial Guard is very different, my lady. Even if we did have the necessary parts to make those modifications, we don’t have any tech-priests to carry them out. And if we had the means to ship them to a forge-world we might as well head towards the Maelstrom, which is where we were going before we got waylaid here.’
‘What happened to your tech-priests? A mechanised brigade should have had Mechanicus adepts assigned to it,’ Tzula asked.
‘They’re dead,’ Strike stated plainly.
‘What, all of them?’ Tzula responded.
‘My lady, this is a death world on a par with Catachan and casualties among my own men have still been high. Those Imperial personnel without death world training didn’t last very long. The Administratum clerks, tech-priests, even the commissars didn’t make it to the end of our first year on Pythos.’
‘An Imperial Guard regiment without commissars to instil discipline? Unheard of!’ Brandd said incredulously.
‘It’s more common than you think, my lady,’ Strike said, before adding quietly, ‘especially with us.’
‘I suppose that explains why their colonel is an insubordinate oaf,’ Brandd said turning to Dinalt.
Strike had survived the barbs of a spiker, he wasn’t about to be stung by one from the blonde inquisitor. ‘Although our tanks have proven inoperable in the local environs, a detachment of my men have tamed some of the native saurians and are using them as mounts. Not as fast as Chimeras but adept at navigating the narrow paths through the Deathglades nonetheless.’
There was a loud rap on the door of the command centre.
‘Enter,’ Dinalt said before Strike could open his mouth. Thorne opened the door, saluted sharply, then stood to one side to allow Brigstone into the room. The commander entered and saluted the colonel, eyeing the three robed figures quizzically. Brigstone seemed entirely oblivious to his haggard appearance and poor personal hygiene after a day in the saddle. Brandd gagged and put the back of her hand to her mouth and nose, eliciting a smirk from Strike. Thorne closed the door behind them.
‘My lord, this is Commander Brigstone. He leads the detachment I was telling you about,’ Strike said. Brigstone was about to salute but upon hearing the word ‘lord’ was unsure whether he should bow instead. In the end he did nothing and simply stood there.
‘This man can be trusted, yes?’ Dinalt asked.
‘All of my men can be trusted, lord,’ Strike countered.
The inquisitor addressed Brigstone directly now. ‘These beasts you have tamed. Do you have enough of them to carry the six of us?’
The tank commander was momentarily confused, but remembered what Goldrick had said about there being others still on board the shuttle.
‘We have a few spare arbosaurs that we’ve tamed, my lord, but they are tricky beasts to ride, certainly for a novice,’ he said to Dinalt’s dismay before adding, ‘They are quite large creatures, though, and it would be possible to double-saddle them and have your people ride with mine.’
Dinalt’s mood, which had been sombre and business-like ever since he’d entered the command centre, lightened. ‘Excellent. There’s that Catachan adaptability I’ve heard so much about. How soon can you have the beasts ready, commander?’
‘I’ll make sure my men are ready for you at dawn’s first light.’
Dinalt nodded his appreciation at the colonel.
‘Lord inquisitor?’ Strike said, causing Brigstone to grow pale at the realisation at who he had just been speaking to.
‘Yes, colonel.’
‘My men will do everything in their power to make sure you and your team make it back in one piece. Can I count on you to ensure the same for my men, lord?’
The inquisitor shared a look with the two women before answering. ‘Naturally, colonel. I will treat your men as if they were my own.’ With that he swept from the room, cape billowing behind him. The two women started to follow him out but Brandd stopped on the threshold and turned back to the colonel.
‘Colonel “Death” Strike? I take it “Death” is an honorific and not your given name?’ Brandd asked.
‘It is. One earned during my previous campaign against the insurgents of Burlion VIII.’
‘Hmm. Amusing,’ she scoffed.
‘I don’t understand. In what way is it amusing, my lady?’
‘The native tongue of the Burlion System is a variant of an old Franbaric dialect if I’m not mistaken.’
‘That’s right. It’s spoken on the dozen core worlds and several of the outlying moons.’
‘Then your honorific does not mean what you think it means.’
Strike remained calm, unsure if the woman was trying to bait him again. ‘No. What does it mean?’
‘It’s a portmanteau word. The “de” part means “from” or “of the”, while “ath” means “dirt”. Literally translated it means “from the dirt”,’ she said with a grin before following Dinalt out of the command centre.
Tzula followed close behind her but she too stopped and spoke to the colonel. ‘I’d like to say she grows on you over time but she really doesn’t.’ The smile that followed was warm and genuine and she shared it with Brigstone too. ‘The Ordo Malleus is grateful to you and your men for your cooperation, colonel,’ she added before taking her leave.
‘Piet. You and your men go and get your heads down but I want you all to report to me before first light so I can brief you before your mission,’ said Strike.
‘Understood, sir,’ Brigstone said, saluting.
‘And cut that crap out. It may impress the “Most Holy Ordo” but it does nothing for me.
Brigstone smirked and moved his hand away from his head before nodding his farewell to Thorne and heading bac
k down to the barracks.
‘Would you like me to get the men to stand down from battle stations, sir?’ the major asked once Brigstone had closed the door.
‘Not yet, Thorne. Keep the regiment on full alert until I order otherwise.’ Strike stared out of the viewport at the rear of the command centre to where the first of Pythos’s moons was beginning to rise into the black night sky. ‘They may claim that they’re here on a mission of discovery but if only a fraction of the things I’ve heard about the Inquisition are true, trouble won’t be far behind them.’
Chapter Two
829959.M41 / The Deathglades. One hundred and seventeen kilometres south-east of Atika, Pythos
‘I never claimed it would be easy to find,’ Brandd said, pulling her robes tight to shield herself from the driving rain. On the saddle in front of her, Kotcheff drove the arbosaur on from beneath a waterproof poncho while the beast itself plodded on, seemingly oblivious to the torrential downpour.
Another arbosaur moved up alongside Kotcheff’s, Brigstone deftly navigating the narrow walkways that threaded through the swamp but were now in danger of being washed away altogether. Seated behind him, the hooded figure of Dinalt replied. ‘This jungle is vast. Even if we sought something the size of a city, we could spend a lifetime hunting for it and still find nothing. Are you certain your interpretation was correct?’
‘My interpretation was flawless!’ Brandd snapped. ‘I’m certain my interpretation was flawless, Lord Dinalt,’ she corrected in a more level tone, suddenly aware of whom she was addressing.
It had been a week since Dinalt, his cohort and the Catachans had set out from Atika and, despite their mounts, progress had been painfully slow. No more than a couple of hours would pass before some threat would be thrown up by the jungle and precious time would have to be spent dealing with it before they could move on. If it wasn’t hungry saurians trying to make a meal of them, it was clouds of poisonous marsh gas or pit-trap glades barring their passage. The rain had been a new development, the skies opening after they’d broke camp that morning, but after hours of constant drenching, moods had darkened and tempers had begun to fray among the inquisitor’s retinue. The Catachans, sheltered under their ponchos, seemed as unconcerned by the weather conditions as their mounts.
‘If the auspex reads true, we should know if she’s right in the next few hours,’ Tzula said from the rear of the reptilian caravan. Unlike Brandd, Liall, Chao and Dinalt, Tzula was at the reins of her own arbosaur, her privileged upbringing on her home world meaning most of her formative years had been spent on the back of similar creatures.
It had been much to Brandd’s chagrin that Tzula had taken to the beast like a natural and the blonde inquisitor’s disgust at having to ride with Kotcheff was palpable. She’d barely said two words to the Catachan since they’d left Atika and the man wore a bandage around three broken fingers on his left hand. This was not as a result of the predations of the Deathglades but as a consequence of placing his hands a little too low below Brandd’s waistline while helping her down from the arbosaur when they made camp on the first night.
‘And besides,’ Tzula said, taking her beast through the shallows of the swamp to draw alongside and then overtake Kotcheff and Brandd’s mount. ‘If we don’t find anything we can always have her executed for incompetence.’ K’Cee, his hairy arms wrapped tight around Tzula’s waist, flashed a big toothy grin at the other acolyte as they passed her by. Brandd narrowed her eyes and scowled at the xenos.
‘If we are going to find whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll be tomorrow now,’ Brigstone added. Despite a week spent in the saddle with Dinalt, Brigstone and his men still had absolutely no idea what the inquisitor sought, such was his level of secrecy. The Catachans could be trusted implicitly to get Dinalt and company through the jungle but that trust extended no further. ‘Sun’s going down, so we’ll make camp at the next clearing we find with some degree of shelter.’
‘Agreed,’ Dinalt said. While Brigstone had full control of traversing the Deathglades, there was no doubt as to where command of the mission lay.
A sudden burst of heavy bolter fire from the head of the formation drew everybody to an abrupt halt.
‘Creepers,’ Mack yelled over his shoulder. ‘Just creepers.’ Behind him on the saddle, sodden robes clinging to his slight frame, Liall rocked back and forth, hands clamped firmly over his ears. Cautiously, the bulky Catachan placed his palm on the astropath’s shoulder and gently shook him. To everybody’s surprise, instead of freaking out Liall moved his hands away from his head.
‘Has it gone? Did you get it?’ Liall asked.
‘I know your eyes don’t work too good, Liall, but it wasn’t no saurian. It was just creepers.’
‘You got them though, didn’t you? They’re gone now?’
Mack smiled. ‘I got them good.’
Though reluctant to share a saddle at first, in the days since they’d left Atika, Liall had formed a bond with the young Catachan to the point where they were almost inseparable. Conversation between the pair was sparse but they always sat together when it came time to open the ration packs and when it was Mack’s turn to patrol the camp perimeter, Liall preferred to go out on patrol with him rather than sleep.
Zens’s arbosaur drew alongside them. ‘Sheesh, why don’t you two get a tent,’ said Chao, rainwater pouring off the brim of his hat and onto the back of Zens’s poncho. ‘I know I can’t wait to make camp and get Zens here out of these wet things.’ The female Catachan scoffed derisorily and tapped the arbosaur’s flank with her heel, spurring the beast on.
‘Come on,’ Brigstone said. ‘That clearing up ahead looks pretty well sheltered.’ He urged his beast forward, followed by the others.
Less than an hour later, a half dozen tents stood pitched towards the edge of the modest clearing, rain spattering off their roofs causing puddles to form around the pegs and guy-ropes. With proximity alarms placed at regular intervals deep within the jungle, the Catachans sat around a small fire tucking into the roasted carcass of a small saurian they’d caught and playing cards, except for Furie who was on first patrol duty. Liall and Chao played with them, the blind astropath rubbing his thumb over each card dealt to him to identify the suit and rank. K’Cee watched their game in between stripping down and rebuilding Brigstone’s lasrifle, and every once in a while would draw the ire of the assembled card players by shaking the rainwater from his fur with such vigour that he not only drenched them but almost extinguished the fire too.
Coming so close to the revelation that the Inquisition were not the mythical organisation they’d previously believed them to be, the Catachans’ acceptance of the small xenos had been relatively straightforward and taken in stride. Aside from a few occasions where the owners of weapons had taken umbrage at K’Cee’s ‘borrowing’ of them, the death worlders grew to tolerate him. Once they realised how effective his modifications had been, they started treating him almost as if he was one of their own.
On the opposite side of the clearing, beneath the shelter of vast leaves high up in the jungle canopy, Dinalt, Tzula and Brandd huddled around a smaller fire studying the tome that had not left Brandd’s side since the day she, Dinalt and nearly a full battalion of Cadians had battled across a daemon world to take possession of it. Dinalt, Brandd, Chao, Liall and K’Cee escaped with both the book and their lives. The other half of their strike team and thousands of Imperial Guardsmen did not.
‘I still have my doubts about your interpretation of the text, Brandd. If this is indeed the Hellfire Tome, then why does it tell us exactly where to find the stone? The written works of the Ruinous Powers usually come veiled in deceit and lies, not as point-by-point guides to finding unholy artefacts,’ Tzula said, precipitation streaking down the sleeves of her bodyglove. Her robes hung suspended between two tree branches drying in the warmth of the fire.
‘It doesn’t say “exactly” where the stone is, only where it is likely to manifest on any given occasion,’
Brandd said, contemptuously. ‘Based on previous appearances and using the formulae in the tome, I have a seventy-one per cent certainty that the Hellfire Stone is at those exact co-ordinates.’ She pointed at the portable auspex unit strapped to Tzula’s belt. ‘Though for how long, I cannot be certain.’
‘And you’re happy to go along with this?’ Tzula said to Dinalt.
‘If there was only a one per cent chance of finding the stone, I still would have done everything I’ve done, spent all those lives.’ There was a solemnity to Dinalt’s voice that neither woman had heard. ‘It will be another forty years before it manifests within the material realm again. We have the means to destroy it.’ He motioned to the knife sheathed in Tzula’s belt. ‘If we now find ourselves with the opportunity then we must act.’
For the majority of Mikhail Dinalt’s almost two centuries of service to the Golden Throne, he had been fixated with the Hellfire Stone, a debased artefact with rumoured power prodigious enough to open a portal directly to a point deep within the Eye of Terror. That its power remained only rumour was thanks in no small part to the vigilance and duty of Dinalt. As a junior interrogator, he and his then master, Thaddeus Lazarou, had infiltrated a cult bent on activating the stone and brought it down from within. Their mission was successful but Lazarou suffered grievous wounds. As the old inquisitor lay dying in his apprentice’s arms, Dinalt was made to swear that he would devote his life to ridding the Imperium of the stone’s threat.
Quickly rising to the rank of inquisitor, Dinalt dedicated himself to unearthing the secrets of the Hellfire Stone with a zeal befitting a far more seasoned agent of the Ordo Malleus. Where cults sprang up in veneration of the stone, Dinalt was there to put them down. Where Traitor Astartes warbands sought to harness the stone’s power for themselves, Dinalt was there to counter them. And where scrolls, scriptures and tomes surfaced with even the merest mention of the Hellfire Stone, Dinalt was there to claim them.