Courage and Honour

ONE

A traitor had once made his home among the tumbled slopes of the Owsen Hills. The late Kasimir de Valtos had dwelt in a lofty, marble-fronted villa, finely constructed and lavishly appointed with every amenity his wealth and position could provide. His extensive estate ran with game, servants attended to his every need, and the thousands of workers that slaved in his many weapon mills, engine assembly yards and artillery manufactorum could only dream of their master's luxurious lifestyle.

Wealth, position and power had been his, but now the traitor was dead and his estate was overgrowing, his palatial demesne little more than stumps of stonework scattered throughout waving fields of untended grass. Vengeful workers had looted his villa of anything worth stealing in the wake of the civil war that his schemes had unleashed. They had cast its walls to ruin and set fires where once he had plotted to become an immortal god.

Such were the dreams of men, grandiose and fleeting.

An ornamental lake rippled in the sunlight before the ruined villa, fed by an underground aqueduct linked to the wide river that flowed south from Tembra Ridge in the north. The river cut a path through the de Valtos estate, splitting into dozens of narrow watercourses as it threaded its way through the undulant terrain. Eventually, these smaller rivers came together and meandered southwards to join the Brandon River on its journey to the ocean in the west.

Though the de Valtos lands were abandoned, the landscape silent and the forests growing wild, they were far from empty. Scattered throughout the Owsen Hills, stealthy observers patiently kept watch on the many sharp-sided gullies and shallow valleys.

The traitor was dead, but his lands were still important.

A tremor in the grass was the first sign of movement, a barely discernible bow wave as a stealthy humanoid figure in olive-coloured armour ghosted slowly from the trees at the base of a low hill. It moved gracefully, crouched over, its every step carefully placed as its helmeted head swung back and forth, scanning the terrain with the patient eye of a hunter.

Or a scout, thought Uriel Ventris from his position of concealment in a tumbled fan of rocks on the slopes of the hill above the ruined villa.

Soon, other scouts followed the first from the trees, moving in pairs as they eased towards the fallen stones of the de Valtos villa. There were eight in total, their movements slick and professional.

Though the scouts advanced with a smooth, precise gait, there was something fundamentally wrong with their movements, something inhuman. Their posture was subtly different, as if their bone structure wasn't quite right or their feet were shaped differently to those of humans.

The Ultramarines had learned much of the ways of the tau and their rapidly expanding empire on the killing fields of Malbede, Praetonis V and Augura.

That experience was being put to good use here on Pavonis.

The lead scout reached the edge of the ruins, and placed a gloved hand to the side of its helmet, a tapered dome with a vox aerial on one side and a gem-like optical device on the other.

Watching the scouts spread out, Uriel saw that they had read the ground well.

Just as he had done earlier that day.

A flashing icon lit up on the inner surface of Uriel's helmet visor, an insistent urging from his senior sergeant to release the killing precision of his warriors. He ignored it for the time being. Instincts honed on a hundred battlefields were telling Uriel that the prey was not yet fully in the killing box, and the risk of their target detecting vox-traffic was too great.

No sooner had the scout finished his silent communication than a prowling vehicle with curved flanks emerged from the trees. It had the bulk of a tank, but hovered just above the ground, bending the stalks of grass as it drew close to the scouts. A rotary-barrelled cannon spun lazily below its tapered prow, and flaring dorsal engines kept it aloft with a barely audible hum.

The tank was unmistakably alien, its curved lines and silent menace putting Uriel in mind of a shark prowling the seabed.

From the intelligence files Uriel had read en route to Pavonis from Macragge, he recognised it as a Devilfish, a troop carrier analogous to the Rhino. It was fast, agile and armoured to the front, but vulnerable to attacks from the rear. Codex ambush tactics would serve them well here.

The alien tank came to a halt, and a pair of flat discs with under-slung weapon mounts detached from the vehicle's frontal fins. They hovered just above the tank, twitching sensor spines rotating on their upper surfaces.

Sniffer dogs.

Uriel glanced anxiously towards the grassy mounds spread throughout the ruins of the de Valtos villa.

Apparently satisfied that there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, the hovering discs returned to their mounts on the Devilfish, and the lead scout unsnapped a device from the rigid backpack he wore. Uriel watched as a pair of thin legs extended from the device and the scout planted it in the ground in front of him.

Lights flickered on the domed surface of the device, and Uriel's auto-senses detected a low-level pressure pulse sweep over the landscape.

Some kind of three-dimensional cartographic device? Imperial forces that had fought the tau before had christened these warriors Pathfinders, and the name was an apt one. These troops were thrown out ahead of an army to reconnoitre the ground before it and plot the best routes of advance.

The Pathfinders were working quickly, and every second Uriel delayed gave them more time to detect his warriors. The Ultramarines were in place, and, as Uriel watched the enemy scouts at work, he knew it was time to unleash them.

'Primary units, engage,' he whispered into his throat mic, knowing it was the last order he would need to issue in this engagement.

The Pathfinder's head snapped up as soon as the words left Uriel's mouth, but it was already too late for the tau.

Two Space Marines from Uriel's Devastator section rose from the rocks to the east of the ruined villa, carrying bulky missile launchers on their shoulders. The tau scattered, and the Devilfish's engines rose in pitch as the driver angled his frontal section towards the threat.

Uriel smiled grimly as the Devastators fired their weapons, the missiles swooshing through the air on arcing contrails of smoke.

The first detonated above a pair of Pathfinders as they sought to reach the cover of the trees, shredding their bodies into torn masses of butchered meat and shattered armour plates. The second slammed into the frontal armour of the Devilfish with a thunderous bang followed by a smeared explosion of black smoke and shrapnel.

The Devilfish rocked under the impact of the missile, but its armour remained intact. Its rotary cannon spooled up, and a burst of heavy-calibre shells blitzed from the weapon, tracing a blazing arc between the tank and its attackers. The ground above the villa exploded as the hillside disintegrated under the blizzard of impacts, but Uriel's warriors had already ducked back into cover.

The roaring of the cannon was tremendous, but Uriel still heard the metallic cough of two more missiles being launched. He glanced over to the west, where the other half of the Devastator section opened fire. The tank tried to reverse its turn, but the missiles were faster.

One punched through the rear assault ramp as the other slammed into the left engine nacelle. The back of the Devilfish exploded in a spray of red-hot fragments, scything down another Pathfinder. A secondary blast completed its destruction, and the blazing vehicle crashed to the ground.

Uriel rose from the rocks, and locked his bolter in the crook of his arm. Behind him, a ten-strong squad of blue-armoured Space Marines rose with him, matching his pace as he set off towards the killing ground.

The surviving aliens made for the cover of the villa, but Uriel knew they wouldn't reach it.

As the Pathfinders reached the ruined dwelling, the grassy mounds within its fallen walls shifted, and a combat squad of Ultramarines scouts cast off their camo-cloaks.

The scouts opened fire, bolter rounds punching through the lightly armoured Pathfinders, and hurling them from their feet. Two were killed instantly, and a third screamed in agony as the explosion of a mass-reactive shell ripped his arm from his shoulder.

The two remaining Pathfinders returned fire, their rifles spitting bright bolts among the scouts in dazzling bursts of light and sound. The aliens fired a last defiant burst before fleeing for the trees, all pretence of stealth forgotten in their desire to escape the trap that had been set for them.

Uriel dropped to one knee and swung his gleaming, eagle-plated bolter to his shoulder. The weapon's targeting mechanism was synced to his helmet, and he tracked the zigzagging pattern of an enemy warrior for a moment before pulling the trigger.

His bolter slammed back with a fearsome recoil, and the Pathfinder dropped, the bottom half of his right leg pulped by the shell's detonation. Seeing that escape wasn't an option, the last tau warrior halted and threw down his weapon. He turned, and began walking back towards the blazing wreck of the Devilfish with his hands in the air.

'You've gotten rusty with your targeting rituals,' said a voice at Uriel's side. 'You were aiming for the middle of his back, weren't you?'

Uriel turned, and slung his bolter. Then he reached up to disengage the vacuum seals at his gorget. Pressurised air hissed, and he lifted his golden-winged helm clear. He turned towards the speaker, a Space Marine in the livery of a veteran sergeant of the Ultramarines, his red helmet encircled by a white laurel wreath.

'I was,' admitted Uriel, 'and you're right about the targeting rituals, I fell out of the habit while I was away.'

'Best get back into the habit then, quickly.'

'I will,' said Uriel, surprised at the sergeant's caustic tone.

'We should get down there. The scouts are securing the prisoner,' said the sergeant before making his way downhill.

Uriel nodded and followed Learchus.

It felt good to lead warriors in combat, even if his involvement had been minimal once the planning had been done. Smoke from the smouldering Devilfish caught in the back of Uriel's throat, the trace chemicals triggering a number of sensory impulses within him. He tasted the abrasive compounds used to etch the insignia on the vehicle's hull, the alien lubricants used on the engine mounts, and the coarse, roasted scent of the seared crew.

Uriel ran a hand over his scalp, the dark hair cut short. A band of silver had developed at his temples, though his grey, storm cloud eyes were as sharp as ever. Cut from a classical mould, Uriel's features were angular and sharp, without the distinctive flattening common to some members of the Adeptus Astartes.

His physique was lean for a Space Marine, although, cloaked in his new armour, he was as bulky and fearsome as the rest of his warriors. The sword of Idaeus was belted at Uriel's waist, and a green cloak hung from his shoulders, secured with a pin in the shape of a white rose that recalled his last journey to Pavonis.

Uriel surveyed the utter destruction of the enemy as Learchus formed the warriors of the 4th Company into a perimeter around the site of the ambush.

Two Space Marines guarded the tau prisoner, the only survivor of the ambush, who knelt facing an upright slab with his hands on his head. A pair of Rhino APCs idled on what had once been a wide gravelled driveway. Their side doors were open, and a Space Marine gunner manned the storm bolter mounted on the vehicle's forward cupola. The kill-team of scouts gathered their photo-absorptive camo-cloaks from the ruins, cloaks that ensured the first inkling most targets had of the scouts' presence was the sound of the shot that blew their head off.

Watching Learchus issue his orders, Uriel was struck by how his friend had changed since he and Pasanius had marched from the Fortress of Hera and into exile.

Learchus had promised to look after Uriel's warriors, and he had done a fine job, rebuilding the company after the losses taken on Tarsis Ultra, and leading its warriors in battle against a host of orks on Espandor. The sergeant's orders were obeyed with alacrity and respect, and, though Uriel was sure it was just his imagination, it was as though Learchus carried himself a little taller than before.

Command had been good for him, it seemed.

Uriel beckoned to Learchus, walking towards the wreckage of the Devilfish.

'Sergeant,' said Uriel as Learchus approached and snapped to attention. Learchus hammered his fist against his breastplate, and then reached up to remove his helmet.

Learchus was everything a Space Marine should be: tall and proud, with a regal countenance that was the image of the heroes carved in luminous marble upon the steps of the Temple of Correction on Macragge. His blond hair was cropped tightly to his skull, his features wide and clearly of the most illustrious lineage.

Each of the worlds of Ultramar had differing quirks of genetics that no amount of genhancement could eradicate, making it an easy matter to identify from where a warrior hailed. Learchus was unmistakably a native of Macragge, fortress-world of the Ultramarines, and a planet from which the greatest of heroes had marched onto the pages of legend.

'Captain,' said Learchus.

'Is everything all right?'

'Everything is in hand,' said Learchus. 'Sentries are in place, enemy weapons are gathered, and I have deployed long-range pickets to watch for follow on forces.'

'Very good,' said Uriel, keeping his tone light, 'but that's not what I was asking.'

'Then what were you asking?'

'Are you planning on leaving me anything to do?'

'Everything that needs attending to is being done,' replied Learchus. 'What orders are left to give?'

'I am the captain of this company, Learchus,' said Uriel, hating that he sounded so petulant. 'The orders are mine to give.'

Learchus was too controlled to show much in the way of emotion, but Uriel saw a shadow cross his face, and guessed the reason for his stiff formality. He decided not to press the point. The company's leaders had to be seen to display unity of purpose, especially now, so soon after Uriel's return.

'Of course, sir. Sorry, sir,' replied Learchus.

'We'll talk about this later,' said Uriel, turning and marching towards the captured Pathfinder. 'Now, let's see what our prisoner has to say for himself.

The alien heard their approaching steps, and turned his helmeted head to face them. One of the Space Marine guards delivered a sharp blow to the alien's neck with the butt of his bolter, and it sagged against the stub of broken wall with a shrill yelp of pain.

The captive gripped the stonework, and Uriel saw that he had only four fingers on each hand.

'Get him up,' said Uriel.

Learchus reached down and hauled the prisoner to his feet, and Uriel was impressed by its defiant body language. This creature was from an alien species, a race utterly apart from humanity, yet the hostility in its posture was unmistakeable.

'Take it off,' said Uriel, miming the act of lifting off a helmet.

The alien didn't move, and Uriel drew his bolt pistol, tapping the barrel against the side of the alien's helmet.

'Off,' he said.

The tau reached up, unsnapped a trio of clips and a cable-feed where it attached to his armour, and lifted clear the helmet.

Learchus snatched it from the alien, and Uriel found himself looking down at the face of the prisoner.

The creature's skin was the colour of weathered lead, grey and textured like old linen, with a sheen to it that might have been perspiration. It had a curious odour, a pungent mix of smells that Uriel found impossible to place: part animal, part burned plastic and hot spices, but wholly alien.

A glossy topknot of white hair trailed from the top of its scalp to the base of its neck, held in place by gold bands studded with gems.

The alien looked up at Uriel with eyes of dull red, set deep in a flat face without any visible indication of a nose. A curious vertical indentation, like an old surgical wound or birth scar, sat in the centre of its forehead, and the cast of its features, though alien and strange, suggested that their captive was female.

The alien's amber pupils burned with hostility.

'This is a world of the Imperium,' said Uriel. 'Why are you here?'

The alien spat a brief torrent of language, a lyrical stream of unfamiliar tones and exotic multi-part words. Uriel's enhanced cognitive faculties were able to sort the streams into word groupings, but he could make no sense of them. He hadn't expected to understand the alien's language, but had held out a vague hope that it might have had a grasp of Imperial Gothic.

'Do. You. Understand. Me?' he said, slowly and carefully enunciating each word.

Once again, the captive spoke in her singsong language, and Uriel knew that she had simply repeated the words she had already spoken.

'Do you know what it's saying?' asked Learchus.

'No,' said Uriel, 'but I don't need a translator to understand the sense of it.'

'So what's it saying?'

'It sounds like name, rank and number to me. I think she's called La'tyen.'

'She?'

'Yes,' said Uriel. 'At least, I think it's female.'

'So, what do you want done with her?'

'Cuff her and stick her in one of the Rhinos. We'll take her back to Brandon Gate and put her in the Glasshouse,' said Uriel. 'I'll have a Xenolexicon servitor brought down from the Vae Victus to enable an interrogation. We need to find out how many more of her kind are on Pavonis.'

'Now think there are more?'

'Probably,' said Uriel, moving away from the prisoner. 'Brandon Gate is only sixty kilometres to the east over flat and open terrain. These hills are a logical spot for an enemy force to scout with a view to attacking. Pathfinders are the eyes and ears of a tau battle force, and I'd be surprised if her unit was operating alone.'

'If there are other units, we'll find them,' said Learchus. 'The afteraction telemetry from the Zeist Campaign helped us find this one, and if this battle is anything to go by, we shouldn't have much trouble finishing them off.'

'This wasn't a battle,' said Uriel.

'No?' asked Learchus, marching in step with Uriel. 'What was it then?'

'For all my adrenal system reacted once we engaged, it might as well have been a training exercise,' said Uriel. 'Everything about this fight was textbook, from the diversionary shot to the concealed kill-team and the fire support group.'

'And that is a bad thing?' asked Learchus. 'We executed a perfect Codex-pattern ambush; the tau were caught completely off guard. We fooled their tank crew into making a rudimentary manoeuvring error, and then we gunned down the survivors. Would that all engagements were fought with such precision.'

'I agree, but the Pathfinders were incredibly lax in their advance. From what I've heard of the battles the Chapter has fought against the tau over the last few years, it's a trait I'm surprised to find in warriors with such a reputation for being careful.'

'Perhaps they were new troops, yet to be tested in combat,' suggested Learchus.

'That's certainly possible,' conceded Uriel. 'Although it still feels strange that we destroyed them so easily.'

'We fight with the Codex Astartes as our guide precisely because the order it brings to our battles makes them seem easy to those who are not schooled in its ways.'

'I know that, Learchus. You don't need to remind me.'

'Don't I?' asked Learchus. 'You were exiled once already because you failed to heed its teachings.'

'Aye, and I saw the error of my ways on Medrengard,' said Uriel, fighting down his irritation at Learchus's words, even though he knew they were justified.

'I hope that is true.'

'I swear to you it is, my friend,' said Uriel. 'I suppose it's been so long since I fought with such sublime warriors under my command, I'd almost forgotten what it is to have the advantage in a tactical situation. For so long it was just Pasanius and myself against impossible odds.'

'Clearly not that impossible,' noted Learchus. 'After all, you both made it back.'

The Fortress of Hera. Uriel had not dared believe he would once again stand before its glittering, marble immensity for fear that the more he wanted it the more if would fade away.

Soaring walls of purest white towered above them, crowned by majestic towers capped with golden weapon-domes and lined with adamantine siege-hoardings that were as beautiful as they were deadly. Like a living structure of indescribably beautiful coral, the fortress appeared to grow out of the very rock of the mountains, a mighty edifice conceived by the genius of the Ultramarines primarch in a long-forgotten age.

It stood on the mightiest chain of mountains, a testament to one man's genius and legendary vision. As wondrous and colossal a structure as it was, the Fortress of Hera was no monument to arrogance. Rather, it was a masterpiece of design and construction that lifted the soul and reminded all who looked upon it that they could aspire to great things. It was a creation of visual poetry and magnificence that spoke to the heart and not the ego.

Uriel and Pasanius stood alone in the wide, statue-lined plaza at the end of the Via Fortissimus, the grand processional road that wound from the lower reaches of the mountains all the way to the Porta Guilliman. The great gate of the fortress was a towering golden slab engraved with the ten thousand deeds of Roboute Guilliman, and Uriel vividly remembered the awful sound of it closing behind him.

The dolorous crash of adamantium had sounded like the final sound at the end of all things, and now, as the gate slowly began to open, the illumination that shone from within was like the first light at the dawn of creation.

Behind them, the hull of the Thunderhawk that had brought them from the Grey Knight vessel in orbit creaked and popped as it cooled after its rapid descent through the atmosphere. Lifter-servitors were already unloading the power armour of the Sons of Guilliman they had brought back from Salinas, and, within moments, the gunship would depart for the cold dark of space once more.

'We're home,' said Pasanius, but Uriel was too choked with emotion to reply.

His closest friend and battle-brother was crying, tears of joy falling unashamedly from his eyes as he swept his gaze over the high walls and glittering ramparts of the fortress.

Uriel reached up and touched his face, not at all surprised to find that he too was weeping with the sheer, boundless sense of homecoming that threatened to unman him with its intensity.

'Home,' he said, as though afraid to give voice to the idea.

'Did you ever think we'd see it again?' asked Pasanius, his voice wavering and brittle.

'I always hoped we would,' said Uriel, 'but I tried not to think about it too much. I knew that if I dwelt on what we'd lost I wouldn't have the strength to go on.'

'I thought about home all the time,' confessed Pasanius. 'I don't think I'd have made it back without the hope we'd see it again.'

Uriel turned to Pasanius and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder guard. Pasanius was a giant of a Space Marine, by far the biggest Uriel had ever known, and, fully armoured, he towered over Uriel. Pasanius's right arm ended abruptly at the elbow, the limb shorn from him beneath the surface of another world by a creature from the dawn of time.

His armour had been repaired and renewed by the artificers of the Grey Knights, and, with its restoration, a piece of Pasanius's soul that had been rent asunder by his exile was made whole once more.

'We each hold on to what keeps us going, my friend,' said Uriel. 'For you it was the idea of home, for me it was the quest itself. Without that balance between us, I don't think either of us would be standing here now.'

Pasanius nodded, and swept Uriel into a crushing, one-armed bear hug. The big warrior's emotions were raw and wounded, but they were healing. They had shared adventures and horrors on their journey, and, to come through it alive, let alone whole in spirit, was a miracle of which both were suddenly and acutely aware.

Uriel felt Pasanius's massive strength and laughed.

'You're crushing the life out of me, you fool!' he gasped.

Uriel's armour had been destroyed on their quest for redemption, and he wore a simple chiton of pale blue with the sword his former captain had entrusted to him belted at his waist. Pasanius joined Uriel's laughter, the last of the darkness that had cloaked his soul banished by the bright sun of Macragge and the gift of friendship freely given.

Pasanius released Uriel as the Porta Guilliman opened further and the light from within the fortress grew in intensity.

Both warriors stood proudly to attention, their backs ramrod straight and heads held high.

They had endured their quest into the darkness at the heart of the galaxy and within the souls of men, each trial bringing them closer to this final redemption. The end of that quest was at hand, and Uriel felt his heart pound within his ribless torso as it would at the moment of battle.

Three warriors stepped from the dazzling brightness of the fortress, three giants who lived in the legends of the Ultramarines, and whose names stood for courage and honour the length and breadth of the Imperium.

Leading the trio, resplendent in the vast and terrible Armour of Antilochus, and bearing the Gauntlets of Ultramar, was Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. A warrior without peer and strategist beyond compare, Calgar was the epitome of what it meant to be a commander of the Adeptus Astartes.

At Calgar's side marched a towering warrior clad in lustrous blue armour, his head haloed with a crystalline hood. This was Varro Tigurius, Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, and Uriel felt the power of the mighty warrior's gaze upon them, a bright light that would seek out any darkness and expunge it without mercy.

To Calgar's right was the most venerable member of the Ultramarines still on active duty, Chaplain Ortan Cassius, the Master of Sanctity and keeper of the Chapter's soul. Unlike his battle-brothers, Cassius wore armour of deepest black, and where his comrades were warriors of fair countenance, the Chaplain's face was a nightmarish patchwork of scarred flesh and bionics.

As these incredible, legendary warriors marched towards them, Uriel and Pasanius dropped to their knees, their heads bowed. To stand in the presence of one of these warriors would have been an honour unmatched, but to be greeted by three such giants amongst the Astartes was truly incredible.

'You return to us, Uriel Ventris,' said Lord Calgar, and Uriel's heart soared to hear the welcome and respect in his voice. 'I had not thought to ever lay eyes on you again.'

Uriel looked up into Lord Calgar's face, revelling in the sight of so perfect a warrior. Marneus Calgar's features were as hard as granite hewn from the deepest quarry, yet there was wisdom and nobility within them, his eyes cold as steel and yet filled with humanity.

'Nor I you, my lord,' said Uriel, unable to keep his tears from falling.

'Varro here said we would see you again, but I didn't believe him,' said Calgar. 'I should have known better.'

'Yes,' agreed Tigurius, 'you should have. Did I not say the Sentinel of the Tower would fight alongside us when the Thrice Born is clad in flesh once more?'

'Aye, that you did, Varro,' said Calgar, 'and one day you will explain what that means.'

Calgar turned from his Chief Librarian, and placed the open palm of his heavy gauntlet upon Uriel's head. The Chapter Master's grip could crush the hardest metal, yet could cradle the most delicate glass sculpture without fear of its destruction. Uriel's life was in his lord and master's hand, yet he could think of no one to whom he would more gladly entrust his fate.

'What say you, Uriel?' asked Calgar. 'Do you return to us in glory?'

'We return to our Chapter having completed our Death Oath,' replied Uriel.

'Then you will be welcomed,' said Calgar.

'The creatures I saw in my vision,' said Tigurius, and Uriel sensed his words were laden with meaning beyond his understanding. 'The daemonic brood creatures… you found them?'

'We did, my lord,' confirmed Uriel, 'on a world taken by the Ruinous Powers. We found them and destroyed them. Our journey has been long and hard, and we have seen much that is terrible, but also much that is glorious and inspirational. I have seen men become monsters, and monsters that became heroes.'

'And you will stand with this, Pasanius?' asked Cassius with a grimace that appeared sardonic, but which was simply a fact of the hideous scars he bore. 'You did so once before, and were cast from your Chapter. That must have been a wound as grievous as the loss of your arm.'

Pasanius shrugged. 'I am whole within, my Lord Chaplain.'

'That remains to be seen,' said Tigurius, addressing them both. 'You have returned to us as brothers, but you have trodden the soil and breathed the air of a damned world. Brother Leodegarius of the Grey Knights vouches for the purity of your flesh, and his word is all that allowed you to descend to the surface of Macragge alive.'

Tigurius loomed over Uriel and Pasanius, the crystalline matrix of his hood leaping with shimmering wych fire.

'You will tell me all that occurred on your journey,' stated Tigurius, the dark pupils of his eyes crackling with the light of ancient powers, 'and woe betide you if I discover any taint in your souls.'

TWO

The enforcers were closing in on her, and she didn't have many places left to run. Her legs were tired, the air burned in her lungs, and her shoulder-length blonde hair was damp with sweat. She'd been on the run for nearly three hours, but Jenna Sharben wasn't going to be brought down without a fight.

She blinked dust from her eyes, wishing she hadn't lost her helmet in that tussle with the slab of muscle who'd tried to pin her to the wall with a net-caster. Jenna had dodged the projectile net and busted her pursuer's ribs with two quick blows of her shock maul. She'd put his lights out with a swift blow to the throat. Amateur.

Their orders were to take her alive, and that gave her the advantage.

The black of her armour was grey with dust, and she pressed herself flat against a tumbled wall as she heard a pair of enforcers run past the roofless portion of the collapsed structure she was sheltering in.

This had once been the Imperial Armoury and Arbites Precinct, but little survived save for crumbling ruins, fallen slabs of rockcrete, and precariously balanced walls and twisted gantries.

Jenna shifted into position beside the doorway and reached down to grab a handful of rock chippings. She skidded them across the ruptured floor timbers. Instantly, she heard the enforcers turn and make their way back towards her hiding place.

Jenna heard the clicking of their micro-bead vox and waited.

A grey-uniformed figure darted through the doorway, and Jenna let him go. The second enforcer immediately followed the first, and she surged to her feet, slamming her shock maul into the side of the enforcer's thigh. The man yelled in pain, and dropped to the ground, losing his shotgun and clutching his deadened leg. A second blow put him out of the fight.

Jenna followed up her attack by diving forwards as the first enforcer brought up his shotgun. She rolled beneath his shot, and slammed the butt of her shock maul into his groin. He grunted in pain, but stayed upright, which was more than she'd expected.

Jenna sprang to her feet, agile even in armour, and whipped her shock maul around and into the mirrored faceplate of the enforcer's helmet. The metal crumpled, but held, and the man dropped. Without power, the shock maul was simply a solid lump of plasteel, but there were worse things to have in your hand when trying to put someone down.

Jenna heard the sound of a shotgun being cocked, and looked up to see a lithe enforcer in a grey body-jack kneeling on a splintered stub of floor slab a few metres above her. Even with the reflective visor of the helmet down, Jenna knew the identity of this enforcer.

'Clever,' said Jenna.

She tightened her grip on the shock maul, her muscles tense and ready for action.

'You always run here,' said the enforcer. 'Why is that?'

Jenna didn't answer, twisting and hurling her shock maul at the enforcer as the barrel of the shotgun erupted in flames.

A shock maul wasn't designed with aerodynamics in mind, and her missile flew wide of the mark. Jenna tensed in expectation of pain, but she laughed as she realised that the enforcer had also missed. The solid shot had blasted into the creaking wooden floor.

The slide of the combat shotgun racked once more.

'You missed,' said Jenna, raising her hands in surrender. 'Going to have to work on your aim, Enforcer Apollonia.'

'I wasn't aiming at you,' said the enforcer, lowering the shotgun.

Jenna looked down, seeing where the impact of solid shot had destroyed the end of the joist supporting the portion of the floor she was standing on.

'Oh, hell,' said Jenna as the splintered timbers cracked and gave way beneath her.

She dropped through the floor, crashing down onto a pile of fallen stone and smashed plaster-work. Her armour took the brunt of the impact, but the breath was driven from her as she rolled over onto her side.

'Don't move,' said a breathless voice beside her, and Jenna looked up to see a tall, powerfully built enforcer standing over her, his shotgun pointed at her chest. Blinking away the lights in front of her eyes, she looked up through the billowing cloud of dust her fall had thrown up to see another weapon aimed at her through the hole in the floor.

'Nicely done, Enforcer Dion,' said Jenna, between heaving gulps of air. 'I had a feeling it would be you two that caught me.'

She pushed herself to her knees, one hand pressed to the old gunshot wound in her stomach.

'Are you all right, ma'am?' asked Dion, flicking up the silvered visor of his helmet.

'Yeah, I'm fine,' said Jenna, reaching up and unclipping the vox-mic attached to her armour's gorget, 'just a bit winded is all.'

The enforcer nodded and made his weapon safe.

'All units,' said Jenna Sharben, Commander of the Brandon Gate Enforcers, 'the exercise is over, I repeat, over. Everyone assemble in Liberation Square for debrief.'

Jenna led her trainees from the ruins of the Arbites precinct, following a winding route through mossy piles of fallen plasteel and granite facing stone towards Liberation Square. A high wall of reinforced rockcrete, topped with razor wire and studded with gunports had once surrounded the precinct, a grim, foreboding edifice in the heart of Brandon Gate that served to remind the populace of their duty to the Imperium.

Clearly, it had not been a strong enough reminder, thought Jenna.

Those were bloody days, when the influence of the cartels that were the industrial backbone of Pavonis had reached a critical mass of power and ambition, and Virgil de Valtos had attempted to overthrow Imperial rule.

Jenna had only seen the opening shots of that revolution fired.

While attempting to evacuate Governor Mykola Shonai from the Imperial palace, an aide in the pocket of de Valtos, a worm named Almerz Chanda, had shot and almost killed Jenna. An Astartes healer had saved her, and, though she had fully recovered, the phantom pain of it still troubled her, now and again.

Jenna climbed over the fallen slabs of masonry that were all that remained of the wall. A shiver passed through her as she thought back to the sight of squadrons of tanks blasting their way through the wall, their guns mowing down the surviving Judges as they crawled from the wreckage of the bombed structure.

No one had ever figured out how the agents of de Valtos were able to smuggle an explosive device inside the Arbites precinct, but however it had been managed, the resulting blast devastated the entire building, effectively ending any meaningful resistance to the de Valtos coup from the ranks of the Adeptus Arbites.

Virgil Ortega, her former mentor, had died in the fighting; a Judge of rare courage and honour, and a man whom she felt could have taught her a great deal. She dearly wished he were here now, for the training of an entirely new cadre of enforcers was not something she had anticipated when she had been posted to Pavonis.

In the days before the rebellion, each of the cartels had raised and trained its own corps of enforcers, resulting in numerous private armies that were loyal only to the cartel that paid them. These enforcers were little more than corporate sponsored thugs, who enacted the will of the cartels with beatings, coercion and scant regard for the rule of Imperial Law.

One of the first acts of the Administratum, upon establishing its presence on Pavonis following the coup, had been to disband these private militias, putting thousands of men out of work. Mykola Shonai had protested at such drastic measures, but she had been serving out the last months of her term of office and her concerns were ignored.

As the last remnant of an Adeptus Arbites presence in Brandon Gate, the task of recruiting and training a new breed of enforcer had fallen to Jenna Sharben, a task she had quickly realised was more complex and demanding than anyone had imagined.

Anyone with strong cartel affiliations was suspect in the eyes of the Administratum, and Jenna had been forced to turn away many promising recruits for past associations with blacklisted cartels. Such restrictions were galling, and cared nothing for the fact that anyone who wanted employment before the rebellion had to have been attached to one of the cartels.

Despite such setbacks, Jenna had persevered. With help from Lortuen Perjed, the Administratum aide to the governor and former acolyte of the late Inquisitor Barzano, she had managed to recruit nearly two hundred enforcers, secure them weapons, uniforms and training, and had established a headquarters in a secure facility on the edge of the city.

Their base of operations was a rundown prison facility that had been burned out and looted in the wake of the rebellion, but which had been brought back to basic functionality in the last year. Its official name was the Brandon Gate Correctional Facility, but it was known locally as the Glasshouse.

It was a far from perfect base from which to police an entire city, but it was a beginning, and every endeavour had to start somewhere.

Jenna shook herself from her gloomy thoughts as she and her trainees gave a wide berth to the blue walls of the Ultramarines battle fortress. Under the watchful gaze of its guns, they approached a checkpoint manned by Guardsmen of the 44th Lavrentian Hussars. Each of the approach routes leading into Liberation Square had such a checkpoint, a staggered emplacement of piled sandbags and rockcrete beams that housed a squad of Guardsmen in polished silver breastplates and emerald green breeches.

Banners depicting a heroic golden soldier on a rearing horse hung limply above each checkpoint, and a Chimera AFV was parked threateningly behind it.

Jenna knew the Lavrentians were tough soldiers, hardened fighters who'd spent the better part of the last seven years fighting greenskin marauders on the Eastern Fringe. Being rotated to Pavonis, far from the front lines, was a cushy number for them, yet Jenna had seen no let up in their training regime or discipline.

She heard the cocking of heavy bolters as they approached the checkpoint. The turret-mounted multi-laser on the Chimera tracked her every move, despite them having passed the same checkpoint only four hours earlier en route to their hunt/capture exercise. A captain and protection detail emerged from the emplacement, and Jenna knew he would be as thorough in his ident-checks and counts as before.

The captain, whose name was Mederic, scanned her transit tags with a wave of a data wand, and repeated the procedure for each of the enforcers as they passed beneath the watchful gaze of the gunners manning the heavy bolters.

'Good exercise?' asked Mederic, as the last enforcer was cleared.

'Could have been better,' admitted Jenna. 'It took them three hours to run me down, but they got me in the end.'

'Three hours,' said Mederic with a roguish smile. 'If I set the Hounds of the 44th on you, I'd have you bound, gagged and at my mercy in three minutes.'

'You wish,' said Jenna, reading Mederic's lingering glance at her athletic figure, which her Arbites armour did little to conceal. 'I'd have your Hounds chasing their tails.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'I'll have to put that boast to the test sometime, Judge Sharben,' said Mederic, waving her through. 'Our scouts are the best in the sector.'

'That's pride, Captain Mederic,' said Jenna defiantly. 'It doesn't suit you.'

She turned and made her way past the Chimera to catch up with her enforcers.

'I'll be in touch,' chuckled Mederic. 'Count on it.'

Mederic had irritated her, having done little to conceal his attraction to her. She told herself it was his obvious desire and disparaging of her skills that had annoyed her, but it was more than that. It was the fact that he didn't belong here. He was an outsider.

Never mind that she too was not native to Pavonis, this was her world because she had fought to defend it. Though the Lavrentians were here to safeguard her adopted home world, their presence was a visible symbol that the Imperium did not trust the people of Pavonis.

'Everything all right, ma'am?' asked Apollonia, glancing back down the street.

Apollonia was a petite woman, with cropped dark hair and wide, almond shaped eyes, who had proved to be one of Jenna's finest recruits. Many people, including Jenna, had underestimated her, but she had proven to be an object lesson in not judging people by their appearance. She was tougher than she looked, and had excelled in every area of training.

'Yes, it's fine,' replied Jenna. 'Just Guardsmen being Guardsmen.'

'The sooner they're gone the better,' said Dion, dropping back to walk alongside them.

'Secure that talk, Enforcer Dion,' warned Jenna. 'That's the kind of sentiment that will keep them here longer. Understood?'

'Understood, ma'am,' said Dion with a crisp salute.

'Apollonia?'

'Yes, ma'am. Understood.'

Jenna nodded, putting the incident from her mind as the approach road widened out and she stepped into the central plaza of Brandon Gate.

Liberation Square had once been a meeting place popular with the wealthy of Brandon Gate, a place to gather, perambulate and gossip, but since the uprising it had largely been forsaken.

Too many memories, Jenna supposed. Too many had died here.

Even now, she sometimes woke with the hate and fear-filled shouts of the Workers' Collective ringing in her ears, the sounds of booming shotguns, the screams of the wounded and dying, or the urgent sound of her pounding heartbeat.

Instead of a gathering place for the people of the city, Liberation Square was now a symbol of the planet's past failures. Some citizens still passed through it, but not many, although Jenna saw a few hundred people gathered at the centre of the square.

Looking closer, she saw why.

The crimson-painted Rhino of Prelate Culla was parked at the foot of the great statue of the Emperor from which the traitor Vendare Taloun had been hanged. Braziers burned from ebony skulls fitted to the glacis of the tank, and curling bronze organ pipes rose from behind an onyx pulpit, broadcasting hectoring words to the crowd gathered before him.

Standing tall atop his mobile shrine, Culla was a fearsome-looking preacher with an enormous fiery chainsword and bolt pistol raised to the heavens. Robed in the emerald chasuble of a predicant of the Lavrentian 44th, Culla trained for battle with the soldiers to whom he daily preached. He was a man whose appearance looked quarried from rock instead of crafted by birth, and his forked beard and tattooed, shaven head gave him a threatening appearance that was entirely deliberate.

Choral servitors in hooded smocks sang uplifting hymns, as golden-skinned cherubs, trailing prayer banners, hovered in the clouds of devotional incense that billowed from the Rhino's smoke dispensers.

In the wake of the rebellion, ships from the Ministorum and Administratum had brought hosts of new clerks, scribes and preachers to restore spiritual and bureaucratic stability to Pavonis, but none had been zealous enough for Culla, who had taken to the streets to preach his own fiery brand of the Imperial Creed.

From the sound of the crowd, Culla was already in full swing, and Jenna paused to listen.

'It behoves us all to cast out the unbeliever. Such creatures have no value whatsoever as human beings. In fact, you must not even consider them human, but as inhuman animals, since they are nothing but miserable liars, cowards and murderers!'

Culla's devotees, mainly indigent workers and itinerant labourers, were cheering at his words, and Jenna couldn't deny that the prelate's words were affecting.

The preacher swept his arms out, the fiery sword leaving bright afterimages on Jenna's retinas. 'Do not cry for the unbeliever who lives amongst you, though they may be your friend or a member of your family. No one should weep over the rotting corpse of a worthless unbeliever! What else is there to say? Nothing at all. There should be no last words, no rites and no remembrance. Nothing. Every time an unbeliever or alien dies, the Imperium is better off, and their Emperor-forsaken souls will burn forever in the depths of the warp!'

'Looks like we'll need to find another place for debrief,' noted Dion.

'Yeah, we'll head back to the Glasshouse, do it there,' said Jenna, the words of Prelate Culla and the cheers of his audience ringing in her ears.

The two Rhinos travelled south as far as Olzetyn, the City of Bridges, before turning eastwards, and then following Highway 236 northwards along the river towards Brandon Gate. The highway was well-maintained, since it was the major arterial route connecting the planetary capital and the coastal port-city of Praxedes, and the Ultramarines made good time as they completed their patrol circuit. What traffic there was on the highway gave the Rhinos a wide berth, the cupola mounted storm bolters tracking any vehicle that came too near until the driver hurriedly pulled away.

The outer suburbs of Brandon Gate were heavily industrialised belts of manufacture, sprawling districts of production, assembly and distribution, a great deal of which was now sitting idle. Some of the manufactorum still churned with the sound of machines, but many more sat empty and abandoned, their workers deprived of employment thanks to their previous cartel affiliations.

Stopping only to transfer the tau prisoner to the custody of the enforcers at the fire-blackened compound of the Glasshouse, the Ultramarines drove swiftly onwards. They passed the sheet steel walls of Camp Torum, the headquarters of the 44th Lavrentian regiment, before entering the city proper via the northern Commercia Gate.

The manufacturing hub of Pavonis had changed a great deal since Uriel had last seen it.

The city walls were reinforced with Lavrentian Hydra flak tanks, and armed patrols of green-jacketed Guardsmen in silver breastplates roamed the streets to keep the peace that Uriel and his warriors had won.

Their route took them through the financial heart of the city, where much of the trading that had made Pavonis one of the economic powerhouses of the sub-sector had been done. Uriel had time to admire the elaborate architecture of the Carnelian Exchange House, with its high towers and gilded arches, before it was lost to sight as they crossed Liberation Square.

Imperial Guardsmen controlled entry to the vast space, but the Ultramarines vehicles were not stopped, rumbling past awed soldiers making the sign of the aquila. They skirted around the giant statue in the centre of the square, where a preacher atop a crimson Rhino hectored a gathering of the faithful. Uriel's heart sank as he saw that this place, which had once been dedicated to the glory of the Emperor, was now home to the ugly practicality of roadblocks and checkpoints.

The Ultramarines had set up their base in Belahon Park, a once pristine area of greenery, lakes and rarefied beauty, but which was now an overgrown wasteland with a stagnant lake at its heart. On the park's southern edge, the spires of the iron-sheened Templum Fabricae dominated the skyline, overshadowing the more modestly constructed Library of Deshanel.

The Rhinos drove towards a modular defensive fortress of high blue walls, angled bastions and defensive turrets. Designated Fortress Idaeus, it had been constructed by the company's Techmarines and servitors next to the ruins of the former Arbites precinct. As the Rhinos approached, codex-pattern recognition protocols passed between the vehicles and the gun towers before the gate rumbled open.

The two Rhinos swept inside the fortress, and no sooner had they ground to a halt beside a trio of massively armoured Land Raiders, the most powerful battle tank in the Space Marine arsenal, than the assault ramps dropped. The drivers revved out the last of the journey from the engines, and Uriel stepped from the vehicle, rotating his head on his shoulders to loosen his muscles.

Prefabricated structures were spaced at regular intervals within the compound, the basic necessities of a Space Marine battle company at war: command centre, armoury, apothecarion, refectory and barracks. Groups of Space Marines practiced targeting rituals, while others trained in close-quarters combat in small groups under the supervision of their sergeants. Techmarine apprenta worked on the engine of a Land Raider, while tower-mounted Thunderfire cannons scanned the surrounding urban landscape for threats.

In the centre of Fortress Idaeus, held by an unmoving warrior wearing the full battle dress of the Ultramarines and a cloak of brilliant green, the 4th Company banner flapped in the wind. Depicting an iron gauntlet clutching the icon of the Ultramarines against a golden laurel, it was a symbol of courage and honour to all who fought beneath it, and Uriel felt great humility at the sight of so noble a standard.

An immaculately maintained Chimera, painted in the colours of the Lavrentian 44th, was parked beside the command centre, together with an altogether less impressive half-track, emblazoned with the white rose of the Pavonis PDF.

'Looks like we have guests,' said Learchus, coming over to join Uriel, his stride sure, and looking like he'd just stepped from the parade ground.

'Looks like,' agreed Uriel. 'Lord Winterbourne and Colonel Loic by the vehicles.'

'Do you wish me to join you?'

'Eventually,' said Uriel, 'but we must honour the banner first.'

Uriel and Learchus marched towards the centre of the company fortress, and stood before the warrior who bore the standard. His name was Peleus and his title was Ancient, a rank only ever given to those who were pure of heart and soul, and who had won the right to bear the company's banner through the fires of countless battlefields.

Peleus had carried the banner of the 4th for over thirty years. The eagle on his breastplate shimmered, and the white wings of his helmet were dazzling. Scarlet cords secured the cloak around Peleus's shoulders, and a host of oath papers and purity seals were affixed to his shoulder guards. Sunlight caught the silver and gold threading on the banner, and the pride that filled Uriel as he took hold of the fabric was like a panacea.

'The banner is a credit to you, Ancient Peleus,' said Uriel. 'It has never looked so good.'

'Thank you, my lord,' replied Peleus. 'I am honoured to bear it.'

The Space Marines Uriel had led on this latest patrol mission formed up behind him without any orders needing to be given. Uriel dropped to one knee before the banner, and his warriors followed suit, heads bowed as they acknowledged the awesome weight of its legacy. Never in its history had the banner been allowed to fall, though enemies of every stripe had sought to bring it low.

'In the name of the Emperor and primarch, whom we serve, I offer you my life and the lives of these warriors,' said Uriel, his hands clasped across his chest in the sign of the aquila. 'I offer our devotion, our skill and our courage. To the service of this banner, our Chapter and the Emperor, I offer you our lives.'

The warriors behind him spoke their own oaths, each one personal to the man that gave it, and Uriel waited until the last had finished speaking before rising to his feet. As Uriel gave his oath to the company standard, he felt a warm sense of acknowledgement swell within him, as though everything it stood for welcomed him back into the ranks of 4th Company.

He turned to Learchus. 'Set the men on their post battle ministrations and join me in the command centre when you're done.'

'Yes, sir,' replied Learchus with a crisp bow.

Uriel turned on his heel, and made his way towards the oblong structure that served as the command centre for the company. Its sides were deep blue, and a surveyor dish rotated amid a bristling forest of vox aerials on its armoured topside. The symbol of the Ultramarines was stencilled on its side, and two Space Marines with their blades unsheathed stood at attention to either side of the entrance.

Both warriors hammered the hilts of their swords against their chests as Uriel punched in the access code and entered the command centre.

The interior was lit with a soft, green glow from the numerous data-slates fitted to the walls. Cogitators hummed with power, and, though spinning fan units on the ceiling dissipated the heat from so many machines, it was still uncomfortably warm. Binaric cant chattered in the background, a companion to the hiss of machine language burbling from the mouths of output servitors.

Techmarine Harkus sat upon a silver-steel throne at one end of the command centre, connected to the workings of the various logic-engines via hard-plugs in his arms, chest and cranium. Flickering light pulsed behind his eyes as he collated the myriad data streams being gathered by the surveyor gear on the roof and the Vae Victus in orbit.

A handful of Chapter serfs attended to incense burners, anointed the guardian of the company's technology with sacred oils and recited mantas pleasing to the spirits of the machines.

At the hub of the command centre, a hololithic projection table of dark stone was lit by the translucent holo-map that bathed the three figures gathered around it in a lambent glow.

The nearest figure to Uriel was Colonel Adren Loic, commander of the local defence forces. Since the rebellion, partial control of the armed men of Brandon Gate had fallen to an officer chosen by the Administratum, a man selected as much for his lack of cartel affiliations as for his competence as a soldier. That he was a political appointment was clear to Uriel, but what was less clear was whether he had any merit as a leader of fighting men.

The collar of Loic's cream uniform jacket was open, and his florid skin was beaded with perspiration. The man's bullet scalp was shaved bald, and he dabbed at his forehead with a wadded scarf before standing to attention at Uriel's arrival. He carried a pistol and duelling sabre at his side, though Uriel doubted he knew how to use the latter with any real skill.

Beside Loic stood two senior commanders of the 44th Lavrentians. Uriel had met them on a number of previous occasions, and both officers had impressed him. Their first meeting had been when the Ultramarines had made planetfall, the second when formalising the chain of command, and the latest when delineating sectors of responsibility.

The regiment's colonel, Lord Nathaniel Winterbourne, was a flamboyant nobleman with genteel manners and a respect for etiquette that at first made him appear effete. After their first meeting, however, Uriel quickly realised that there was a core of iron to him. Winterbourne was a commander who demanded and got the best from his Guardsmen, no matter that there was precious little glory or honour to be gained on this assignment.

Tall and rakishly thin, his emerald green frock coat seemed too large for his spare frame, yet there was an undeniable strength to the man that Uriel liked. His features bore all the hallmarks of good breeding, careful juvenat work and the eager hunger of a career soldier.

Two richly dressed aides stood discretely behind Winterbourne, one holding the colonel's emerald-plumed helmet, the other the long leashes of two wolf-like creatures: slender beasts with glossy black and gold fur, vicious looking jaws and predators' eyes. One of the creatures was missing its left foreleg, yet appeared no less aggressive for its loss.

Winterbourne was the fiery heart of the regiment, but his second in command, Major Alithea Ornella, was all business. Unsmiling and hard to warm to, Ornella was meticulous and precise, as dedicated as her colonel in ensuring that the regiment's soldiers upheld the fine tradition of the Imperial Guard. Like her superior officer, she was dressed in a long frock-coat, though she came without pets or an aide to carry her helmet.

'Lord Winterbourne, Major Ornella,' said Uriel, unconsciously addressing the soldiers in order of respect, if not proximity. 'Colonel Loic.'

'Ah, Uriel, my good man,' said Winterbourne. 'Damned sorry to drop in on you like this, but we got word that you'd had something of an encounter with alien trespassers.'

'That's correct, Lord Winterbourne,' said Uriel. 'Tau Pathfinders and their vehicle.'

'Call me Nathaniel,' said Winterbourne with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'Everybody does. Or at least I tell them to, but they never listen.'

The three-legged hound nuzzled the colonel of the 44th, and he stroked its ferocious-looking head, which was more than Uriel would have done had it come near him.

'Anyway, to business, to business,' continued Winterbourne, patting the beast. 'The damned tau infest the Eastern Fringe like burrow-ticks on old Fynlae here's hide. We've fought them before and they're slippery buggers, got to keep an eye on them or they'll be behind you in a flash. I remember once on Ulgolaa they—'

'Perhaps we should concentrate on the matter at hand?' suggested Major Ornella, smoothly forestalling her colonel's reminiscence.

'Of course, yes,' agreed Winterbourne, shaking his head. 'Talk the hind leg off a grox if Alithea didn't bring me to heel every now and then. So, these tau, where did you encounter the scoundrels, Uriel?'

Winterbourne appeared to take no offence at his underling's intervention, and Uriel stepped up to the hololith table that was projecting an image of the environs around the command centre to a radius of three hundred kilometres.

The major cities were shining blobs of light, the geographical features projected as stylised representations of mountains, rivers, forests and hills. Brandon Gate sat in the centre of the map, with Praxedes on the western coast and Olzetyn roughly at the midpoint between the two cities. Madorn lay just south of the Tembra Ridge Mountains, a great saw-toothed barrier three hundred kilometres to the north.

Further east, Altemaxa nestled amid the sprawling Gresha Forest. The Abrogas cartel had once maintained sizeable estates in this area, but a malfunctioning magma bomb from the Vae Victus had fallen there during the rebellion, obliterating many of them, along with whole swathes of forest that burned in the subsequent fires.

To the south, the slum city of Jotusburg sat isolated from the other conurbations, shunned like a reeking plague victim. The city was a blackened sump that housed the tens of thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus labourers who toiled in the Diacrian Belt, a hellish region of smoking refineries and drilling rigs that blackened the eastern and southern reaches of the continent. Where other cities had ghettoes, Jotusburg was a ghetto.

Uriel detached a light-stylus from the table, and drew a holographic circle around the Owsen Hills, sixty kilometres west of Brandon Gate. 'Right here,' said Uriel.

'Damn, that's close,' said Colonel Loic. 'That puts them practically right on our doorstep.'

'You're not wrong, Adren,' agreed Winterbourne, ignoring or oblivious to Loic's discomfort at the more senior officer's familiarity. 'Damned aliens will be sitting at our dinner table soon. What do you make of it, Uriel?'

'I think Colonel Loic is correct,' he said. 'The tau are too close and too bold for my liking. Given what I observed, they appeared to be plotting a route for a larger force.'

'Preliminary groundwork for an invasion, eh?' said Winterbourne. 'Think they can just take a world of the Emperor from us, do they?'

'We've heard nothing from sector command about a renewed offensive,' said Alithea Ornella. 'After your Chapter's victories at Zeist and Lagan, Imperial Strategos are of the opinion that the tau have withdrawn to their previous holdings.'

'The Masters of the Ultramarines came to the same conclusion,' said Uriel, 'but the fact that tau forces are on Pavonis is undeniable and unacceptable. If they are scouting routes for an army, then it follows that they are planning to invade. Perhaps not soon, but eventually. It is our duty to deny them any intelligence that will aid them in any aggression towards this world, whether the threat is imminent or merely theoretical.'

'Of course,' agreed Ornella. 'So that's what you think this is, a scouting mission?'

Uriel considered the question. 'No, I think there's more to it than that.'

'Oh?' said Winterbourne. 'So tell me, Uriel, what do you think these xenos are up to?'

Uriel looked back at the hololithic projection and said, 'I think they are here in far greater strength than encountered numbers might otherwise suggest. It wouldn't surprise me if the tau have been on Pavonis for quite some time.'

'I assure you, Captain Ventris, my PDF long-range patrols have found nothing to support that suspicion,' said Colonel Loic.

'I'm sure they haven't, colonel,' said Uriel. 'I'd be surprised if they had.'

Loic's face reddened, but Uriel held up a placating hand. 'I mean no disrespect to your men, colonel. Even we were only able to locate the tau thanks to information gained at the cost of Astartes lives on Augura.'

'I'm all for soldier's intuition, Uriel,' said Winterbourne, 'but you'll have to do better than a suspicion. Lay it out for me. Why do you think the tau are here when cleverer thinkers than us all say they've gone home to lick their wounds?'

'It's this world,' said Uriel.

'What about it?' asked Loic defensively.

'I think the nature of Pavonis makes it an attractive prospect for the tau,' said Uriel, circling the table as he gathered his thoughts. 'Before the de Valtos rebellion, it was the hub of the sub-sector trade networks. As much as the cartel system placed a dangerous amount of power in the hands of individuals unsuited to wield it, those individuals were formidable merchants as well as producers. Trade is in the blood of this world. Look at how it's ruled; the central hall of governance is called the Senate Chamber of Righteous Commerce and its chief official is the Moderator of Transactions.'

'So, how does that make it a prime target for the tau?' asked Loic.

'It fits how these aliens work,' said Uriel. 'In practically every instance where Imperial forces have fought the tau, it has been on worlds where xenos diplomats or traders have first made secret overtures to the planetary leadership through its mercantile concerns, offering co-operation and commerce. If the planet's leaders are foolish enough to accept this offer, trade links are quickly forged, and the tau influence grows as the planet's rulers become wealthy. Soon after, the tau establish a military presence, which transforms into a full-scale occupation within the space of a few months. By the time the populace realise what is happening, it is already too late, and an Imperial world has become part of the tau empire.'

'Despicable,' said Winterbourne, shaking his head in disbelief. 'To think that Imperial citizens would lower themselves to treat with xenos.'

'The tau aren't like other races you've fought, Lord Winterbourne,' said Uriel, choosing his words carefully. 'They are not like the green-skins or the hive fleets. They do not lay waste to worlds indiscriminately or seek destruction for destruction's sake. Their entire race works for the good of the species, and, in fact, there is much to admire about them.'

'But they are aliens,' protested Winterbourne, 'degenerate xenos with no regard for the sanctity of human life or our manifest destiny to rule the stars. Intolerable!'

'Indeed, and any world the tau set their sights on that does not welcome their advances will be attacked with all the fury their armies can muster. The tau offer a simple choice: either join their empire willingly, or you will be conquered and made part of the empire.'

'And you think that's what's happening here?' asked Winterbourne.

'Yes. The tau will believe that the commercial mindset of this planet's leaders makes them receptive to their advances when the time comes to begin the assimilation of Pavonis.'

'If it hasn't already begun,' pointed out Ornella.

'Exactly,' said Uriel.

THREE

Alone in his arming chamber, Uriel allowed the simple act of caring for his battle gear to set his mind at ease. Honouring the memory of the warrior who had last borne these weapons and armour into battle came as naturally to Uriel as breathing, and helped him to better process his thoughts. He worked a finely textured brush across the breastplate, taking care to work the red dust of Pavonis from between the carved feathers of the golden aquila.

As captain of a Space Marine battle company, Uriel was permitted his own chamber in the modular barracks structure: a three metre square, steel-walled cell with a compact bunk and weapons shrine on one wall, and a reversible ablutions cubicle on the other. A gunmetal grey footlocker at the end of the bed contained Uriel's few personal belongings: his training garments, his hygiene kit, a sharpening block for his sword, the glossy black claw of the stalker creature he had captured on Tarsis Ultra and a ragged fragment of an enemy battle flag he had taken on the battlefields of Thracia.

A Space Marine had no great need for privacy in the normal run of things, and shared virtually every moment of his life with his battle-brothers. Such unbreakable bonds of brotherhood allowed the Adeptus Astartes to fight as one, and to make such war as was unthinkable to mere mortals.

The rest of Uriel's armour stood in the corner of the chamber, each plate having been removed from his enhanced body and placed reverently upon a sturdy frame by a company serf an hour before.

The Savage Morticians had brutally cut the bulk of Uriel's original armour from him on Medrengard, and he had been forced to discard the few remaining fragments on Salinas. Necessity had seen him don power armour belonging to the Sons of Guilliman Chapter for a short time, but now he had another suit of battle plate to call his own.

Before leaving Macragge, when the time had come to renew his Oaths of Confraternity, the Master of the Forge had escorted Uriel into the vast, torch-lit vaults of the Armorium to choose his new armour.

Scores of armoured suits stood in the sacred repository of the Chapter's wargear like warriors on parade, and Uriel had the powerful sense that these vacant suits were simply waiting for warriors of courage to bear them into battle once more. Firelight danced upon the polished plates as Uriel reverently made his way through their ranks, knowing that the spirits of fallen heroes were silently, invisibly, judging his worth as a warrior.

Each suit was creation of forgotten science and art, any one of which it would be an honour to wear. The unique bond between armour and warrior went beyond anything that could be understood by those without the depths of faith of a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes.

No sooner had Uriel set eyes upon the gleaming plates he now polished than he had known it was the armour for him. He reached out and placed his open palm on the golden breastplate, and felt a connection to the armour on a level that he could never fully explain.

'The armour of Brother Amadon,' said the Master of the Forge approvingly, his voice little more than a hoarse croak, as though coming from a forgotten place deep within the towering warrior's chest. Only rarely did the warden of the Armorium deign to use his flesh-voice, and Uriel was savvy enough to know that the honour was not for him, but for the armour.

'Brother Amadon fell during the storming of the breach at Corinth, brought low by a barbarian greenskin warlord as he fought alongside our beloved Chapter Master.'

'Corinth,' said Uriel, unwilling to desecrate the echoing silence of the Armorium with anything above a whisper. 'The battle that took Ancient Galatan from us.'

'The same,' agreed the Master of the Forge, watching as Uriel circled the armour, feeling as though Brother Amadon's soul was speaking to him from across the gulf of centuries that separated them.

'It's magnificent,' breathed Uriel. 'I felt something similar on Salinas when I saw the armour belonging to the Sons of Guilliman, but this is so much more. It's as if… it needs me to wear it.'

'The heroic deeds of every warrior to wear a suit of armour adds to its legacy, Captain Ventris. Only when the souls of armour and bearer are in accord will each be able to achieve true greatness.'

Uriel smiled at the memory as he set the breastplate aside, satisfied that he had removed all evidence of the last few days in the field. He hung the breastplate back on the frame, and drew his sword from its battered and stained leather sheath. He supposed he could have requisitioned a new scabbard, but this was how his former captain had given the sword to him, and he was loath to change any aspect of the weapon that did not require it.

He lifted the sharpening block from his footlocker and worked it along the length of the blade, closing his eyes and feeling more alone than he could remember.

Sometimes, solitude was to be cherished, and many a warrior had found illumination within one of the Chapter Solitoriums to be found in the furthest reaches of Macragge.

This was not one of those times.

Even before his elevation to captaincy of the 4th Company, Uriel had fought shoulder to shoulder with Pasanius, one of the finest sergeants to be found within the ranks of the Ultramarines. Together, they had faced down an ancient star god, defeated a tendril of the Great Devourer, and brought down a fell champion of the Ruinous Powers.

Pasanius was his oldest and dearest friend, a brother who stood at his side through all the battles and tribulations they had faced since their earliest years.

Now, even that was gone from him.

The completion of their Death Oath was, as it turned out, simply the first step on the road to rejoining the ranks of their illustrious Chapter. Their courage and loyalty were not in question, and never had been, but they had broken faith with the Codex Astartes, and had travelled to worlds polluted beyond redemption by the foul and corrupting touch of Chaos. Uriel had fought enough of the servants of the Ruinous Powers to know that a man might earnestly believe himself free of taint, and yet carry a hidden canker in the dark corners of his soul.

No sooner had the gates of the Fortress of Hera closed behind them, than a fifty-strong escort of warriors from the 1st Company had marched them directly to the Apothecarion.

Uriel and Pasanius had been subjected to punishing procedures designed to test the purity of their flesh and detect any abnormalities in their gene-stock. Every aspect of their physical makeup was examined with greater thoroughness than that endured by potential recruits, whose bodies were examined down to the cellular level for any latent weaknesses.

Such tests were gruelling and painful, and lasted many weeks, but both warriors endured them willingly.

Eventually, the Chapter's Apothecaries declared Uriel free of corruption, his flesh as pure as it had been on his induction to the Ultramarines over a hundred years ago.

Pasanius was less fortunate.

The veteran sergeant had lost the lower half of his arm on Pavonis in combat with a diabolical alien creature known as the Bringer of Darkness, though he had fought on as Uriel faced the creature down and forced it to flee. Adepts from Pavonis had replaced his missing limb with a bionic arm, which had proved almost as effective as the one he had lost. Only later, when a greenskin warrior had smashed its monstrous blade into his forearm in the depths of a space hulk, had Pasanius realised the nature of the hideous change wrought upon him.

The silver-skinned Necrontyr warriors that served the Bringer of Darkness were fashioned from an alien form of metal that could spontaneously self-repair, undoing even the most catastrophic damage. By some dreadful transference, a measure of that power had passed into the augmetic arm grafted to Pasanius, enabling it to perform similarly impossible feats of metallic regeneration.

Ashamed, Pasanius had kept this secret from Uriel until his arm's miraculous power eventually came to light in the damned fortress of Khalan-Ghol, domain of the Warsmith Honsou. The surgeon creatures of Honsou had cut the arm from Pasanius for their dark master, taking the taint of the Necrontyr with it, but that did nothing to change the fact that Pasanius had lied to his captain - an infraction of the utmost seriousness.

Once declared free of physical taint, Uriel and Pasanius were transferred to the incense-wreathed Reclusiam, and the care of the Chapter's Chaplains. In the Temple of Correction they relived every moment of their ordeals since leaving Macragge before the magnificent, immobile form of Roboute Guilliman. Both warriors told of their adventures, time and time again, and every tiny detail was exhaustively picked apart and retold, until the guardians of the Chapter's sanctity were satisfied that they knew every detail of what had transpired during the fulfilment of the Death Oath.

Many aspects of Uriel's tale: the Faustian pact with the Omphalos Daemonium, the freeing of the Heart of Blood and the alliance with Ardaric Vaanes's renegades had raised damning eyebrows, and, though such devil's bargains were unwholesome, none doubted the noble intent of Uriel's motives in making them upon hearing the outcomes.

Uriel haltingly spoke to Chaplain Cassius of the Unfleshed, and of his failure to honour his oath to keep them safe and offer them a better life. Of all the tales Uriel told, the death of the Lord of the Unfleshed caused him the most pain. Though its eventual fate had been the only possible outcome to the creature's wretched, blighted life, the sadness of its ending had lodged in Llriel's heart and would never be forgotten.

Many aspects of their Death Oath were fantastical and beggared belief, but an Ultramarines truth was his life, and not even Uriel's detractors, Cato Sicarius of the 2nd Company being the most vocal, doubted his word or honesty. Despite this, Uriel and Pasanius had consented to truth-seekers from the Chapter's Librarius Division verifying every aspect of their odyssey at every stage of their testing.

Satisfied that their hearts were still those of warriors of courage and honour, the Chaplains sent Uriel and Pasanius onwards for the last, most crucial, stage of their testing.

The Library of Ptolemy was one of the marvels of Ultramar, a repository of knowledge that stretched back tens of thousands of years to a time when fact and certainty blurred into myth and fable. Legend told that it had been named for the first and mightiest of the Chapter's Librarians, and the breadth of knowledge contained within its sprawling depths was greater than the Agrippan Conclaves, more diverse than the Arcanium of Teleos and, it was said, contained practically every word crafted in all human history.

An entire spur of the mountain range upon which the Fortress of Hera was constructed was given over to the library. Its many wings, archives, colonnades and processionals formed a manmade peak of gleaming marble and granite to rival the highest mountains of Macragge.

The tops of soaring columns were lost in the deep shadows of the distant roof, and the floor of veined green marble gleamed like ice. Towering bookcases of steel and glass rose to unimaginable heights to either side of a central nave, each stacked with an impossible number of chained books, scrolls, info-wafers, maps, slates, data crystals and a thousand other means of information storage.

Graceful marble arches spanned the chasms between the mighty bookcases, forming separate wings and kilometres of stacks that required detailed maps or guide-skulls to navigate. Only the Chapter Librarians fully understood the layout of the library, and much of its twisting depths and dusty passageways had remained untrodden for centuries or more.

Wordless servitors clad in long cerulean robes ghosted through the echoing silence of the library, some on wheels, and some on telescoping legs that allowed them to reach the higher shelves, while other, more specialised retrieval drones floated on individual grav-plates. Servo-skulls trailing long parchments and carrying quills in clicking bronze callipers floated through the air, the glowing red orbs of their eyes like drifting fireflies in the sepulchral gloom.

Uriel had spent a great deal of time within the Library of Ptolemy in his years of service to the Ultramarines. Here, he had learned the legacy of his Chapter and its heroes as well as the broader scope of Imperial history and politics. However, the majority of his time had been spent memorising the tenets of his primarch's greatest work, the Codex Astartes.

Such thoroughness was at the heart of Astartes training. Though bred and equipped for war, a Space Marine was not simply a thoughtless killing machine wrought from the bones of ancient science. His decades of training enabled him to become more than simply a warrior. Each Astartes embodied the finest qualities of humanity, courage, honour and a capacity to fight not simply because he was ordered to, but because he knew why.

Uriel's sandalled footsteps echoed on the floor, disturbing both the dust and the reverent silence that filled the library with a heavy quality all its own. Pasanius walked beside him, likewise stripped of his armour and dressed identically to Uriel in a chiton of deepest black that was secured around his waist by a belt of knotted rope.

These were the robes of the penitent, yet the knotted belt was that of an aspirant, signifying that their trials were almost at an end. The Apothecarion had decreed their bodies free from corruption, and the Chaplaincy had found their hearts to be pure.

The final decision as to whether their names would be entered once more into the honour rolls of the Ultramarines rested upon the shoulders of Marneus Calgar, and the Chapter Master's decision would be based on the word of his Chief Librarian.

The Arcanium was the heart of the library, its approaches guarded by silver-armoured warriors who bore long polearms with shimmering blades, and whose helmets were high hoods veined with psi-disruptive crystalline webs. None had challenged them as they approached, but Uriel was not surprised, for these guardians would already know of their purpose, and could divine any ill-intent.

The interior of the Arcanium was a twenty metre square cube with an arched doorway in each wall, softly lit by thick candles held aloft in iron sconces worked in the forms of eagles and lions rampant. Its walls were constructed from bare timbers, weathered and bleached, as though reclaimed from a distant shoreline, and the floor was made of dark slate. The character of the room was quite out of keeping with its surroundings, having the appearance of a far more ancient structure that had existed long before the arrival of the library.

A heavy table of dark wood filled the centre of the chamber. Upon this table were four enormous tomes, their spines a metre long and thick enough to enclose a book a third of a metre deep. Each book was secured to the table by a heavy chain of cold iron through the faded gold leaf edging of their leather bindings, and the pages were off-white vellum that had yellowed with the passage of millennia. Tightly wound script filled each page, each letter precisely formed and arranged in perfectly even lines of text.

Uriel took a deep breath at the sight of these books, letting the myriad aromas settle in the back of his throat and transport his mind back to the age of their creation. He tasted the tannic acid, ferrous sulphate and gum arabic of the ink, the warmth of the hide used in the vellum and the chalk used to prepare the surface to accept the ink. But most of all, his senses conjured the image of the singular individual that had penned these mighty tomes, a god amongst men, and a figure to whom uncounted billions owed their lives.

These works of genius had lived in Uriel's dreams for decades during his training, but until now, he had only been allowed within the presence of copies.

'Is that what I think it is?' began Pasanius.

'I think so,' said Uriel, stepping towards the books with an outstretched hand.

Both men stared at the enormous books, too lost in their reverence for the instructional words that had guided the Ultramarines for ten thousand years to notice that the door behind them had shut and another had opened.

'I wouldn't touch that if I were you,' said a resonant voice. 'It would be a shame if the Arcanium's defences killed you before I could pass my recommendation to the Chapter Master.'

Uriel snatched his hand away from the book, and looked up into the hooded eyes of the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, who stood on the other side of the table, though neither he nor Pasanius had been aware of his arrival.

Varro Tigurius was an imposing figure, though he stood no taller than would Uriel were he clad in his armour. Rather, it was the depth of knowledge and immense stature his rank and power conferred upon him that made Tigurius so vast and terrible.

Uriel felt a tremor of fear down his spine at the sight of the Librarian, his heavily ornamented armour bedecked with wax seals and carved script-work. Wards and sigils of unknown origin spiralled around his gauntlets and across every facet of his battle plate. A set of bronze keys hung on a thick chain around his neck, and his skull-topped staff of office seemed to glitter as though fashioned from corposant made solid.

Tigurius's eyes were infinitely deep pools, bright and glittering with wry humour, though only the Librarian ever knew the source of that amusement. His pale skin and sunken cheeks gave his features a sharp, angular edge uncommon amongst the ranks of the Astartes.

The Chief Librarian stepped towards them, and Uriel felt his skin crawl at the nearness of the mighty warrior. Though Tigurius had fought with courage and honour for the Ultramarines for hundreds of years, and had saved the warriors of the 4th Company on the desolate heaths of Boros, he was no brother as other Space Marines were brothers.

His powers and wealth of hidden knowledge ensured that he remained an outsider, even within a Chapter of warriors bound by oaths of brotherhood stronger than adamantium. To some, Tigurius was little better than a warlock, a wielder of powers more commonly ascribed to worshippers of unclean spirits or warp wyches, while to others, he was a warrior guided by the Emperor himself.

Tigurius's prescient warnings had saved the Ultramarines from destruction at the claws of hive fleet Behemoth, had predicted the approaching war fleet of Warmaster Nidar, and had sent Uriel and Pasanius to Medrengard.

As much as Uriel honoured the might, power and rank of Tigurius, he had been through too much, due to this warrior's visions, to ever truly like him.

'Centuries of wisdom are contained within these hallowed pages,' said Tigurius, circling the table, and turning a page of the nearest tome without touching it. 'Our beloved primarch wrote much of its earliest passages here as a boy. Did you know that?'

'No,' said Uriel, surprised that he did not, for every warrior of the Ultramarines studied the history of the Chapter's gene-father, memorising his life, his battles and his teachings as part of his intensive training on the road to becoming a Space Marine.

'Few do,' said Tigurius. 'It is a small part of the primarch's story, and not one I am keen to promulgate, for I enjoy the solitude of this place and do not wish it to become a lodestone for pilgrims. Could you imagine this place with thousands traipsing through it like the Temple of Correction?'

Uriel shook his head, and glanced over at Pasanius. His friend was similarly close-mouthed, the sergeant's innate understanding of when to speak and when to shut up allowing Uriel to do the talking.

'I think it would be crowded,' said Uriel.

'Crowded, yes,' agreed Tigurius, as though the idea had only just occurred to him. 'As a youth, the primarch would come here with his books to read when he wished to escape the politicking of Macragge City. Hundreds of kilometres from the nearest settlement and higher than any man had climbed upon Hera's Peak, it was the perfect place to find peace. It still is, and I intend to keep it that way.'

'Then why summon us here?' asked Uriel, surprised at the tone of his question, which bordered on the disrespectful.

'Why do you think?' countered Tigurius.

'I don't know.'

'Then think harder,' snapped the Chief Librarian. 'You are a warrior with a modicum of intelligence, Captain Ventris. I expect more from you.'

'Because of these,' suggested Uriel, pointing towards the enormous books.

'Just so,' agreed Tigurius. 'The Codex Astartes. Tell me, what do they represent?'

Uriel looked down at the books, feeling humbled and awed once again that he was in the presence of artefacts touched by the hand of Roboute Guilliman.

'They are what makes us who we are?' ventured Uriel.

'Why?'

'Why what?' asked Uriel.

Tigurius sighed. 'Why does the Codex Astartes make us who we are? After all, it is just a book is it not? What makes it different to any other text penned over the millennia?'

In that sigh, Uriel understood with sudden clarity that his fate was hanging in the balance.

The instinctive, marrow-deep, detachment most warriors felt from Tigurius as a brother was blinding Uriel to that stark fact, and he forced down his impatience at the Librarian's obtuse nature. If he failed to convince Tigurius that he and Pasanius were worthy of reinstatement, then their lives were forfeit, with only the prospect of execution at Gallan's Rock awaiting them.

He stared down at the volumes of the Codex Astartes, letting the honour of standing in their presence flow through him. He had memorised entire tracts of his primarch's works, an amount of knowledge beyond even the most gifted of mortal savants, but even that was but the smallest fraction of knowledge contained within their pages, for no one without the magnificent cognitive faculties of one of the Emperor's lost sons could ever hope to memorise its entirety.

'It is more than just a book,' said Uriel. 'Its teachings were the building blocks that laid the foundations for the Imperium in the wake of the Great Heresy. Its words were the glue that held the forces loyal to the Emperor together when the rebels were defeated.'

'Good,' said Tigurius, nodding eagerly, 'and what does it teach us, the Ultramarines?'

'It sets out the tenets by which a Chapter should be organised,' said Uriel. 'Before the Heresy, the Legions were autonomous fighting formations, equipped with their own ships, manufacturing capabilities and command authority. The Codex broke that up and set out how the Space Marines should be organised so that no one man could ever hold such power again.'

'A Space Marine learns that on his first day within the walls of his Chapter House,' spat Tigurius. 'A novice could tell me that. That is what the Codex is, but I want you to tell me what it means, what it means to you, right here, right now.'

Uriel struggled to imagine what the venerable Librarian wanted to hear, thinking back to the times he had fought with the Codex as his guide, the times its teachings had saved his life and the terrible, aching absence torn in his heart when he had forsaken it.

'Think, Uriel,' hissed Tigurius, his eyes seeming to flicker with hidden fires. 'To be in the same room as these relics of a time long gone is to be standing in the presence of history itself. Through these works, a man can reach back to a time when gods of war walked amongst men, and the founder of our Chapter led the Ultramarines in battle.'

'It is the keystone of what makes the Space Marines so formidable,' said Uriel with sudden clarity. 'Without it, we are nothing but gene-bred killers.'

'Go on,' said Tigurius.

'Without the Codex Astartes, the Imperium wouldn't have survived the aftermath of the Great Heresy. It binds every one of the thousand Chapters of Space Marines together, and gives us a common cause, a connection to the past and to one another. Every Chapter, whether they acknowledge it or not, owes its very existence to the Codex Astartes.'

'Exactly,' said Tigurius. 'It is living history, a tangible link to everything we are.'

'And that's why you summoned us here,' said Pasanius. 'To know where we come from is to know who we are and where we are going.'

Tigurius laughed. 'You do not say much, Pasanius Lysane, but when you speak it is worthwhile to listen.'

'I'm a sergeant, my lord,' said Pasanius. 'It's what I do.'

Tigurius turned another page of the Codex without touching it, and said, 'This mighty work, this legendary connection to our past and our brothers, guides us in all things, yet on Tarsis Ultra you saw fit to disregard its teachings. You broke faith with what makes us Ultramarines, and left your warriors to fight without you while you took command of the Deathwatch and flew into the heart of a tyranid bio-ship. Was that arrogance or merely hubris?'

'It was neither, my lord,' said Uriel. 'It was necessary.'

'Necessary? Why?'

'The Deathwatch commander, Captain Bannon, was dead, and his squad needed a leader.'

'Any one of Bannon's warriors could have taken command. Why did it have to be you? What makes you so special?'

'I fought with the Deathwatch before,' said Uriel.

'Could the mission have succeeded without you?'

Uriel shrugged, looking over at Pasanius.

'I don't know,' he said. 'Maybe. I know I should have stayed with my company, but we succeeded. Does that count for nothing?'

'Of course it counts,' stated Tigurius with solemn finality. 'Yes, you saved Tarsis Ultra, but at what cost?'

'Cost?' asked Uriel. 'I don't understand.'

'Then tell me of Ardaric Vaanes.'

'Vaanes?' asked Uriel, surprised to hear Tigurius mention the renegade warrior of the Raven Guard. 'What of him? I am sure you have read the transcripts from the Reclusiam. You must have heard everything about him by now.'

'True,' said Tigurius, 'but I want to hear it again. What did you offer him on Medrengard?'

'A chance to regain his honour,' said Uriel, 'but he did not take it.'

'And what became of him?'

'I do not know,' said Uriel. 'I imagine he is dead.'

'Dead,' repeated Tigurius. 'And what did you learn from him?'

'Learn from him? Nothing,' said Uriel, tiring of Tigurius constantly meeting his answers with further questions.

'Are you sure?' asked Tigurius. 'If not from his words, then by his poor example.'

Uriel thought back to Medrengard, though the memories were painful and unpleasant. The renegade Space Marines he and Pasanius fought alongside had, for a brief, shining moment, embraced their cause and journeyed into the heart of the Iron Warriors' citadel. But Ardaric Vaanes had, in the end, forsaken them, and left them to their fate.

Suddenly, it was clear to Uriel.

'Vaanes's fate could have been my fate,' he said, with the growing confidence of epiphany. 'He let ego blind him to his duty and shared brotherhood. He believed he knew better than the teachings of his Chapter.'

'Ardaric Vaanes is a classic example of a fate that can overcome even the best of us if we are not vigilant,' said Tigurius, and Uriel heard the warning in the Librarian's tone. 'Every one of us constructs self-enhancing images of ourselves that make us feel special, never ordinary, and always of greater stature than we are. This is at the core of what makes a Space Marine such a fearsome opponent, the complete and utter belief in his ability to achieve victory no matter the odds against him. It boosts his courage, his self-esteem, and protects him from the psychological tribulations of being surrounded by death and forever immersed in battle. After all, every one of us thinks we are better than the average. Isn't that so?'

Uriel nodded, though the admission was uncomfortable. 'Perhaps I once thought like that.'

'I know I did,' admitted Pasanius sourly. 'There wasn't a task I delegated that I didn't feel I'd have done better.'

'As much as they help us, these egocentric biases can be maladaptive,' said Tigurius, 'blinding us to our failings and obscuring the awful truth that people exactly like us behave just as badly in certain evil situations. You assume that other people will fall to their vices, but not you, and do not armour your soul against temptations, believing that nothing bad can affect you, even when you know how easily it can happen.'

Tigurius placed an open palm on the table, and bade Uriel and Pasanius approach.

'When you were an aspirant and you learned of the Great Heresy against the Emperor, I imagine you concluded that you would not do what the forces of the Warmaster had done. You shook your head and wondered how anyone could have travelled such a road. Am I right?'

Uriel nodded as Tigurius continued. 'Of course. I am sure you felt you simply could not have done what they did, but experience has shown that to be a lie, you can do such things. That belief is what makes us all vulnerable to such temptations, precisely because we think ourselves immune to them. Only when we recognise that every one of us is subject to forces beyond our control does humility take precedence over unfounded pride, and we can acknowledge our potential to tread the path of evil and engage in shameful acts. Tell me what that teaches you, Uriel.'

'That in the right circumstances, any one of us can fall.'

'Or the wrong circumstances,' added Pasanius.

'I fell once, because I believed I couldn't,' said Uriel, 'but on Medrengard I saw where that path ultimately leads: degradation and damnation.'

'Is that a fate you wish for?'

'No,' said Uriel with utter finality, 'absolutely not.'

'Then you have learned something of value,' said Tigurius.

FOUR

Imperial Commander and System Governor of Pavonis, Koudelkar Shonai was not, at first, an impressive sight, with his soggy physique, weak chin and receding hairline. A warrior he was not, though, as Lortuen Perjed had come to learn in the last year, his appearance was deceptive and there was a clever mind and hard heart concealed behind Koudelkar's unimposing appearance.

The second of two sons, it had been Koudelkar's brother, Dumak, who had been widely tipped to succeed Mykola Shonai as the next governor of Pavonis. However, Dumak had been slain by an assassin's bullet during one of the many worker riots in the days before Virgil de Valtos's attempted coup. In the wake of that rebellion, when Mykola Shonai's term of office was approaching its end, Lortuen had had swiftly groomed Koudelkar to take his aunt's place.

It was a far from ideal situation, but as the senior adept of the Administratum on Pavonis, Lortuen had made the best of what was left to him. Most of the cartels were tainted with affiliations to traitors, and his masters had only accepted the scions of the Shonai as candidates for the role of Imperial Commander once they had agreed with his recommendation that no outsider be appointed to the position.

It was a recommendation that Lortuen had come to regret many times, but his former master had been fond of saying that regrets were like weights; they were only a burden if you held on to them. Ario Barzano, Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, had been full of such aphorisms, but he had died at the hands of a malevolent eldar warrior beneath the northern mountains, depriving Lortuen of a thoughtful master and trusted friend.

Since then, it had been a thankless task to restrain the policies of the young Shonai governor, whose idea of careful reconstruction was to aggressively pursue trade links with off-world conglomerates and merchant houses. With little infrastructure left in place, the planet's economy was fragile at best, but Koudelkar was not a man given to timidity, and the newly reconstructed palace was forever host to delegations from nearby systems, each seeking exclusive trading rights with Pavonis.

It made for a heady, cosmopolitan atmosphere and had certainly brought revenue to Pavonis. None of which would be a problem were Lortuen not tasked with keeping track of the young governor's comings and goings. Appointed permanent Administratum observer to Pavonis after the rebellion, Lortuen was finding this assignment almost as exhausting as travelling the stars in service to an Imperial Inquisitor.

Lortuen Perjed was not a young man anymore, his body aged well past the time when juvenat work would have done him any good. His mind was as sharp as ever, but his wrinkled flesh was liver-spotted, and even a brisk walk with his ivory-topped cane would tire him out. Had there been any justice, he would have been allowed to spend the rest of his days sequestered in some distant library with nothing but the study of dusty books and quiet contemplation to occupy his time.

Lortuen closed his eyes and smiled at the prospect, but the sound of angry voices brought him back to reality with a jolt. He opened his eyes and swept his gaze around the governor's expansive meeting chamber.

He sighed, realising that his dream of a quiet retirement was an ever more distant prospect.

The Senate Chamber of Righteous Commerce was the heart of Pavonis's traditional governorship, but with the dismantling of the cartels' power it had fallen into disuse. In lieu of a formal debating chamber, Koudelkar Shonai had constructed a long, glass-panelled atrium in the heart of the Imperial palace from which to conduct his gubernatorial duties.

Though open to the skies, thanks to rotating louvres in the curved roof, mast-borne voids secured the room from attack and wall-mounted vox-dampers prevented eavesdropping. Two gene-bulked skitarii in archaic-looking breastplates, hung with fetishes and carved with binaric oaths, provided more immediate protection for the governor.

The skitarii had been a gift from High Magos Roxza Vaal, the highest-ranking Mechanicus adept of the Diacrian Belt, for the swift restoration of machine imports to the refinery belt of the south-east.

Their swollen, bio-mechanical bodies and weapon implants were capable of immense violence, harking back to a barbarous age of gladiatorial combats, and truth be told, they scared Lortuen more than the Space Marines. You knew where you stood with the Adeptus Astartes, but these cybernetic monstrosities were a law unto themselves. Both were heavily scarred and tattooed, looking more like deep-sump hive-world gangers than guards appropriate for a Planetary Governor.

A long, reflective table of polished wood from the fused remains of the Gresha Forest filled the centre of the room, and brass cogitators softly chattered along the entire length of one wall, with ticker-tape data-streams of the sector markets fluctuations, raw material prices and system currencies.

Liveried servants, for Koudelkar would not consider something as prosaic as servitors when there were men standing idle, stood holding silver ewers of wine with their heads bowed at the mirrored doors, ready to respond to their master's dictates.

The meeting, requested by Lord Winterbourne of the 44th Lavrentians, started poorly when Clericus Fabricae Gaetan Baltazar pre-empted the order of business by immediately demanding that Governor Koudelkar have Prelate Culla arrested, or, at the very least, prevented from spreading his fiery rhetoric through the streets of Brandon Gate. As highest-ranking representative of the Adeptus Ministorum on Pavonis, Baltazar objected to the stirring up of the populace at a time when unity and rebuilding were the order of the day.

Lord Winterbourne responded with a scathing remark concerning the insipid nature of the preachers within the walls of the Templum Fabricae, who seemed more inclined to preach a doctrine of introspection and quiet industry than the persecution of the Emperor's enemies.

Lortuen sat to the right of Governor Koudelkar, who seemed content to let the two men vent their frustrations. Heated words passed back and forth between the Lavrentian colonel and the Clericus Fabricae, but Lortuen let the words wash over him as he accessed his augmetic memory coils to consult the data he held on the various luminaries attending the governor.

The senior Imperial Guard commanders sat to the governor's left, formally clad in full dress uniforms, gleaming plumed helmets and scarlet capes. Lord Winterbourne had the lean, pinched look of a man used to campaigning, and Major Ornella faithfully transcribed the furious words passing between her colonel and the Ministorum priest.

Across the table from Winterbourne, and on Lortuen's right, sat Colonel Loic, commander of the Brandon Gate PDF, who in deference to his commander in chief had come unarmed. Loic observed the argument with grim stoicism, and Lortuen knew that behind the purely political appointment, Adren Loic was a dependable, if unimaginative, soldier. Which, he recalled, accounted for his selection to the post.

The ochre-robed Gaetan Baltazar sat beside Loic, resplendent in his chasuble and tall, gilded mitre. As he argued with Lord Winterbourne, Baltazar constantly worked prayer beads between his fingers.

Beside the Ministorum priest, Jenna Sharben of the Brandon Gate enforcers sat with her hands clasped tightly before her. Lortuen liked Sharben. She had been Ario's guide in the days when he had been investigating the cartels, and had proved to be a resourceful, determined woman. It had been Lortuen's directive that had seen her begin the establishment of a new cadre of enforcers, and, looking at the sunken hollows beneath her eyes, he saw the strain that role was placing on her.

As important and impressive as these individuals were, they were nothing compared to the dominating presence of the three Space Marines, who sat at the end of the table. Captain Uriel Ventris, a sergeant named Learchus, and a brutish warrior in gleaming black armour filled the room with their armoured bulk. The third warrior's helmet was worked in the form of a grinning skull, and his bellicose body language spoke volumes of his impatience and desire to be elsewhere.

Lortuen had met Uriel and Learchus before, though the other warrior was unknown to him. As pleased as he was to see Captain Ventris, Lortuen was surprised at the change he saw in him.

In Lortuen's time with Inquisitor Barzano, they had cause to fight alongside several Space Marines, many of whom had become staunch allies over the years. One facet that always amazed Lortuen was the apparent unchanging physicality of Space Marines. Though decades might pass between meetings, the genetic superiority of the Adeptus Astartes rendered them functionally ageless to the perceptions of most humans. Not so Uriel Ventris, who now carried hard-won wisdom in his eyes that spoke of horrors endured and lessons learned in blood.

Lortuen knew that look; he had seen it in his master's eyes in the months before his death.

Eventually, the argument between Winterbourne and Baltazar ended when Koudelkar slammed his palm down on the table.

'Enough!' snapped Koudelkar. 'Your prattle is hurting my ears. I have better things to do with my time than listen to you two argue.'

Gaetan Baltazar looked set to answer the governor's outburst with one of his own, but wisely kept his counsel, and simply nodded his head. Lord Winterbourne, clearly not used to anyone coming between him and a good argument, also bit his lip, and laced his hands together before him.

'Thank you,' said Koudelkar, his tone more even and placating. 'We are reasonable men, are we not? I am sure that between you, this issue can be resolved. After all, we each wish for a secure, stable world where trade can flourish and the teachings of the Imperial Creed are heard by all.'

'Of course,' said Baltazar, 'but all this predicant Culla preaches is hatred. He forgets the guidance and protection the Emperor represents. He fans the flames of fear, and that is not conducive to the stability you crave, my lord.'

'Culla is a scrapper, and a damn fine one too,' said Winterbourne. 'I've seen him go toe to toe with greenskins, come out on top, covered in blood, and then go back for more. We're out on the Eastern Fringe, Baltazar, and in case you hadn't noticed, we're a long way from Terra. The only protection we can rely on are our guns, tanks and swords.'

'Heresy!' spat Baltazar. 'The Emperor protects! A soldier like you should appreciate that.'

'Oh, be quiet, man,' said Winterbourne. 'The Emperor indeed protects, but I don't expect Him to do it all for me. What you need is a good—'

'Be silent!' barked the black-armoured Space Marine. His voice was deep and authoritative, a voice used to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. 'Did you not hear your commander? You should be ashamed of yourselves, arguing petty points of jurisdiction when you are gathered to discuss a deadly threat to your world. Captain Ventris?'

The gathering was suddenly cowed, the skull-faced warrior's outburst silencing them all in an instant. Uriel Ventris nodded his thanks to the warrior and rose to his full height, which towered over the gathered officials, and even the two skitarii.

Uriel folded his arms across his wide chest. 'Chaplain Clausel speaks bluntly, but he is right to do so.'

'A deadly threat?' demanded Koudelkar, leaning forwards and steepling his hands before him on the table. 'To what does your comrade refer?'

'There is a xenos presence on Pavonis, Governor Koudelkar,' said Uriel. 'Yet your senior officials argue and bicker while an enemy plans routes of invasion through your lands.'

Lortuen's eyes widened at Uriel's statement, shocked that such a threat had only now come to light.

'Are you sure?' he asked. 'We have seen nothing to suggest such a thing.'

'Adept Perjed,' said Uriel with a nod of respect, and Lortuen was a clever enough orator to recognise that Uriel was pausing to gather his thoughts in the face of uncertain facts. 'We ambushed a forward reconnaissance unit of tau Pathfinders in the Owsen Hills recently. It is my belief that these aliens were scouting routes towards Brandon Gate, possibly for a larger force to advance along.'

'Saints preserve us,' gasped Gaetan Baltazar, turning to the governor. 'We must mobilise all reserve units of the PDF, and deploy the 44th immediately!'

Koudelkar held up a hand and took a deep breath before answering the dismayed Clericus Fabricae. 'Calm yourself, Baltazar. A full deployment of our armed forces would achieve little save to cause panic.'

'If we are under attack, then—'

'Do we appear to be under attack?' snapped Koudelkar, rapping his fingertips on the smooth surface of the table. 'If what Captain Ventris says is true, and these are merely scouts, then we have some time to formulate an appropriate response.'

'An appropriate response would be to authorise a deployment of the 44th and to raise your alert level,' said Winterbourne. 'Then activate the Secondary and Tertiary Reserves.'

Koudelkar shook his head. 'These are delicate times for Pavonis, Lord Winterbourne. I do not expect a fighting man like yourself to understand the subtleties of planetary rule, but I am engaged in complex negotiations with several powerful subsector trading conglomerates to assure this planet's future prosperity. It would seriously jeopardise, if not utterly wreck, those negotiations were we to suddenly turn our world into an armed camp on the strength of one encounter with some easily bested aliens.'

Lord Winterbourne bristled at Koudelkar's words, his spare frame shaking with anger.

Uriel saw that anger and said, 'Governor Koudelkar, it would be a mistake to underestimate the tau. Their technology is highly advanced, and their warriors are skilful enemies.'

'So I have heard, but I notice that you choose words that suggest you are not certain of your conclusion, Captain Ventris,' said Koudelkar. 'Aside from the presence of this one unit of aliens, what proof do you have of your suspicions?'

'Nothing concrete,' said Uriel, 'but where Pathfinders are found, others are sure to follow.'

'But you have seen no sign of any others?'

'That is correct,' admitted Uriel.

'Lord Winterbourne? Colonel Loic?' asked Lortuen, 'Have either of your forces discovered any sign of these aliens?'

'We have not,' said Loic crisply. 'My long-range patrols have seen neither hide nor hair of any alien presence.'

'Nor have mine,' said Winterbourne, in control of his anger now, 'but, my lord governor, I am inclined to agree with Captain Ventris. His Chapter has experience in fighting the tau, and if he believes there are alien forces on Pavonis, then I concur that we should prepare for battle.'

'If the threat becomes credible, we will act upon it, I assure you,' said Koudelkar.

'What will it take for it to become credible?' demanded Chaplain Clausel, and even Koudelkar flinched from his razor tone. 'A tau honour blade opening your throat? An enemy battle flag planted atop the palace?

The governor composed himself in the face of the Chaplain's anger, and squared his shoulders. 'Would I be correct in assuming you killed all the tau you encountered?' he asked.

'No, there was one survivor,' said Uriel. 'We transferred her to the custody of Judge Sharben's enforcers at the Brandon Gate Correctional Facility.'

Koudelkar turned his attention to Jenna Sharben. 'And has this prisoner furnished us with any actionable intelligence or the location of any others of its kind?'

Sharben shook her head. 'No, my lord. The xenolexicon servitor has enabled us to communicate with the alien, but it has so far refused to give us anything beyond its name, rank and designation.'

'Then you must be more forceful in your questioning, Judge Sharben,' said Koudelkar, staring hard at Sharben. 'Find out what it knows, and do it quickly. Do I make myself clear?'

'Yes, my lord,' said Sharben with a curt nod.

'Are you going to mobilise our armed forces?' pressed Adren Loic. 'Given the Administratum restrictions we are under, any order to take up arms must come from the Imperial Commander and be ratified by the Administratum.'

This last, barbed, comment was directed squarely at Lortuen, and he smiled benignly.

'You sound entirely too eager for war, Colonel Loic,' said Lortuen. 'I assume you remember that those restrictions were put in place to ensure there is no repetition of the de Valtos incident.'

'De Valtos was a madman,' barked Loic. 'This is completely different.'

'Maybe so,' said Lortuen, 'but I will only ratify any deployment order if further indications of xenos presence come to light, or if Judge Sharben informs us that the tau prisoner has furnished useful information. Governor Koudelkar is entirely correct not to risk this planet's recovery and future prosperity on a suspicion unsupported by evidence.'

Uriel leaned over the table, his brow thunderous at what he would no doubt be seeing as a betrayal by a former ally. 'My warriors are not subject to the authority of the Administratum, Adept Perjed. Therefore I respectfully inform you, Governor Koudelkar, that the Ultramarines shall be assuming a war footing. I urge the armed forces of Pavonis to do likewise before it is too late.'

'Duly noted,' said Koudelkar, rising to his feet and ending the audience. 'We will reconvene in a week to discuss any further developments, but until then there will be no overt military operations beyond current deployments.'

Flanked by his towering skitarii, Koudelkar made his way from the audience chamber. As the chamber's door slid open, he turned to address the room.

'Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I am late for an appointment with my aunt, and those of you acquainted with her will know that Mykola Shonai is not a woman who likes to be kept waiting.'

Uriel sat on a marble bench in the gardens of the Imperial palace. Its surface was worn and pitted, and he remembered the last time he had sat here. Nothing much had changed, which, having met Koudelkar Shonai, surprised him, since the new governor seemed like a man not given to sentiment. The grass was freshly cut and the flowers of the garden well cared for, the scent of their blossoms providing pleasant counterpoint to the ubiquitous, burnt metal aroma of Brandon Gate's industry.

A high wall enclosed the garden, one of the few areas of the palace to have escaped extensive damage during the rebellion, and Uriel felt more at peace than he had in a long time. This was where his last expedition to Pavonis had ended, sitting before the grave of Ario Barzano, a brave man who had died to save it from a madman's nightmarish plot.

The simple headstone in front of Uriel was a plain oblong of pale stone quarried from Tembra ridge, the words carved by Uriel's own hand:

Each man is a spark in the darkness. Would that we all burn as bright.

Barzano had been a garrulous, charismatic individual, but also a dangerous one. His word and Inquisitorial authority might have seen this world destroyed, but he had been willing to take a chance to save it, and for that reason alone deserved Uriel's respect.

'I never thought I would return,' said Uriel, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, 'but it seems appropriate that we talk here, don't you think?'

'Indeed it does, Captain Ventris,' said Lortuen Perjed, appearing from an arbour behind Uriel. 'How long have you known I was there?'

'Since you entered the garden. Your cane and stoop give you a distinctive sound when you walk, adept.'

Lortuen awkwardly lowered himself to sit beside Uriel.

'I suspected I might find you here.'

Uriel shrugged. 'It seemed like the right thing to do.'

'It was.'

'You keep the garden well-tended.'

'It seemed the right thing to do,' replied Lortuen with a smile. 'After all, this world owes its survival to Ario, and to you.'

Uriel said nothing and studied Lortuen Perjed more closely, shocked by how different he appeared from the last time he had come to Pavonis. Adept Perjed had been old then, but now he seemed little more than a breath away from his grave. His skin was mottled and leathery, his hair ghostly wisps of silver clinging to his skull, and Uriel could clearly see the dull gleam of his savant augmetics behind his ear.

'You look much older than when last we were here,' said Uriel.

'These have been trying times since you left, Captain Ventris,' said Lortuen. 'The rebuilding of a planet so recently in rebellion is… exhausting work. While we're on the subject, I could say the same for you. I didn't think Space Marines aged, but time has caught up to you. I mean no offence.'

'None taken,' said Uriel. 'We age, but at a much slower rate than mortals.'

'So what happened to change you so much?'

'Things I would prefer not to talk about.'

'Ah, fair enough. I apologise for prying,' said Lortuen, resting his hands on the ivory pommel of his cane. They sat in companionable silence for a few moments before Lortuen said, 'So what do you make of Governor Koudelkar?'

Uriel looked away, clasping his hands and staring hard at Barzano's grave before answering.

'I think he is being naive, and governorship of a world on the Eastern Fringe is no place for naivety,' said Uriel. 'The tau are on Pavonis right now, and we must act expeditiously to stop them, or more lives will be lost when Koudelkar finally wakes up to the fact that the tau empire does not scout worlds without purpose.'

'You may be right, Uriel, but we are trying to rebuild this world. We are on the verge of securing a number of lucrative contracts with nearby systems. To jeopardise that would condemn Pavonis to ruin and its people to poverty for centuries to come.'

'To do nothing will condemn them to slavery,' pointed out Uriel.

'If you are right,' countered Lortuen. 'You must admit that you have not given us more than a vague suspicion that the tau plan anything immediate. Koudelkar is a businessman, and he is thinking of the future of his world.'

'Wrong,' said Uriel, rounding on Lortuen. 'He is an Imperial governor of a world of the Emperor, and he should be thinking of the danger facing his world right now.'

Uriel pointed at the gravestone and said, 'Do you think Ario would have hesitated to act? Imagine he were here right now. What would he do?'

'Ario was always one for spur of the moment decisions,' said Lortuen. 'I, on the other hand, am more considered in my deliberations. I believe we must proceed with caution, but I will meet you halfway, Uriel. I will issue readiness orders for the Secondary Reserve of the PDF.'

'And the 44th?'

'For now, their orders remain the same,' said Lortuen, pushing himself to his feet with the help of his cane. 'Foot patrols only and garrison duty. No active deployments. I do not wish to cause panic in the streets of our cities.'

'I'm sure the sight of a tau hunter cadre will do that for you,' said Uriel.

A hundred kilometres north of Brandon Gate, high upon Tembra Ridge and far above the cloud layer where the air was thin, the Kaliz Array spread itself over the tallest peaks on Pavonis, like a vast forest of pollarded trees constructed of latticework steel. The array was a jagged spine often thousand vox-masts, none less than five hundred metres high, secured by wire-wound guys anchored deep into the rock of the mountain.

It allowed long-range vox-units to function, gathering, relaying and transmitting communications traffic across the surface of the planet.

Such was its power that even interplanetary communication was facilitated, albeit with a significant time lag.

The Kaliz Array had been constructed by the Vergen cartel nearly eight centuries ago, and its structures were sheened with verdigris and required constant maintenance. The hundred adepts, techs, maintenance workers and servitors tasked with keeping the array functional were housed at Mechanicus Station Epsilon in a collection of boxy structures huddled together in the lee of a sheer cliff far below the swaying masts.

Topped with leisurely rotating dish antennas and sheltered from the worst of the biting winds, the structures were nevertheless draughty, damp and cold. Even in such uncertain times, where money and employment were scarce, rumours of brain malignancies caused by vox radiation and the inhospitable conditions ensured that only the very desperate volunteered for duty at the Kaliz Array.

Workers stationed here did their best to stay indoors at all times, but as a particularly fierce squall blew in from the north, a trio of dejected figures made their way towards a malfunctioning series of masts in a region known simply as Deep Canyon Six.

Third Technician Diman Shorr pulled his glossy slicker tightly around himself and cursed the names of everyone he knew back at Epsilon who'd managed to dodge this duty. He'd reached thirty names when Gerran tugged at his sleeve to let him know they'd finally arrived at the end of the Deep Canyon Six chain.

The mountain paths were lined with steel posts connected by jangling chains, which were notched with angular markings that allowed a tech to find his way around without the aid of a map or the need to remove his helmet. Such chain paths allowed maintenance workers to navigate the myriad routes that twisted and curved through the array without getting hopelessly lost.

Hissing rain, solid enough to almost be considered hail, battered him, and crazed the visor of his helmet in streaming patterns of dirty water as he looked into the stepped gully that wound down into the canyon. Rainwater poured down its length in a tumbling waterfall, and they were going to have to be careful not to slip and break a leg. Getting med-evac out here would be next to impossible.

His hood billowed, and the icy wind bit into his body like a scavenger worrying a bone, threatening to toss him back down the slopes they'd spent most of the day climbing. His foul-weather slicker was old and thin, and he was tired, cold and wet through. He couldn't afford to replace the slicker, and the adepts of the Machine-God seemed disinclined to care overmuch for their techs by issuing heavy-duty ones.

For the better part of ten hours, he and Gerran had slogged along the chain paths through the wind and rain from the Mechanicus Station towards Deep Canyon Six in the company of a silent pack servitor with an elongated spine, gene-bulked shoulders and a simian posture that enabled it to carry huge loads across rugged, mountainous terrain unsuitable for vehicles. The servitor carried all their food and water, as well as basic medicae kit, ropes, an all-weather vox and a pair of battered lascarbines.

'My bones are getting too old for this,' he muttered, stepping into the torrent of icy water pouring down the gully. The breath hissed from his mouth at the jolt of freezing cold.

'Did you say something?' asked Gerran, and Diman knew he'd forgotten to switch off the inter-helmet vox.

'Nothing,' he said. 'It doesn't matter. Come on, let's see what the hell's wrong with these damned masts. See if it's something that needs an adept to repair. Sooner we're back inside the better. I don't want to die of exposure out here.'

'How come we had to do this anyway?' grumbled Gerran. 'I just finished an inspection shift over on Topper's Ridge.'

'Because we're just lucky, I guess,' replied Diman, carefully picking his route downwards.

'Lucky?' asked Gerran, missing Diman's sarcasm. 'Don't feel lucky to me. I tell you, Adept Ithurn has it in for me. She knew I'd just come off a shift and she still sends me out. It ain't fair, it just ain't.'

'Well you can always quit,' said Diman, weary of the younger man's carping. Things were miserable enough without him making it worse. 'Plenty of others be willing to step into your boots. You ought to be thankful you was part of the Shonai before the fighting. Only reason you were able to keep working for the Mechanicus.'

'Yeah, well, I might just do that,' said Gerran.

Diman was about to tell Gerran not to be so foolish, but he looked through the driving rain and saw a faint glow coming from the bottom of the gully.

'Damn it all,' he hissed. 'Looks like Ithurn's already sent a crew out to fix the masts. Bloody woman doesn't know one end of a work order from the next.'

Diman let Gerran squeeze past him, and waved the pack-servitor over, the lumbering beast oblivious to the heavy rain and freezing temperatures. He rummaged in one of the panniers for the battered vox, and extended its aerial, though it was doubtful the reception would be up to much in the narrow gully. A hissing burp of static issued from the speakers, and Diman turned the volume way up to try and pick out anything resembling a Mechanicus signal.

'Typical,' he said, when all he was rewarded with was white noise. 'A thousand vox masts and I can't get nothing. Bloody thing needs junking, not a blessing.'

'Diman?' said Gerran, and he turned to see the younger man standing at the mouth of the gully, illuminated by the faint glow he'd seen earlier. 'You're gonna want to come see this.'

'What is it?' he asked. 'Another work crew?'

Gerran shook his head, and Diman sighed, turning the vox off and stowing it back in the servitor's panniers, before descending the last steps to the end of the gully and the entrance to Deep Canyon Six.

The planed rock floor stretched out for hundreds of metres in all directions, rising to steep cliffs on either side of a dark valley filled with humming generators and silver steel vox-masts. A hundred or so filled the canyon, but it wasn't the masts that caught Diman's attention.

It was the group of alien soldiers.

'I don't think that's another work crew,' said Gerran.

FIVE

There were about forty of them, a mix of armoured soldiers in olive-coloured plates of armour with long, rectangular-barrelled weapons, and others dressed in the heavy-duty coveralls of engineers or labourers. A pack of fierce-looking creatures with wiry physiques and glossy pink skin stood apart from the soldiers. Flexing crests of spines sprouted from the backs of their beaked skulls, and they carried long rifles that looked almost primitive.

The glow Diman had seen from the gully shone from a handful of flattened discs hovering above the aliens, but he was more concerned by the boxy devices the alien engineers were carefully wiring between the generator relays.

A trio of vehicles with curving sides and enormous engine nacelles hovered behind the group, blurring the air, and turning the rainwater to hissing spray with anti-grav fields. The soldiers were helmeted, but the flat, grey and utterly alien faces of the engineers were clearly visible. They worked with swift precision, and Diman saw that whatever they were doing, they were almost finished.

None of the aliens had noticed them. The warriors were too intent on the progress of the engineers and the heavy rain helped to obscure the two Mechanicus techs, but such luck couldn't hold forever.

Diman immediately recognised the significance of what this act of sabotage could mean to Pavonis, and began backing slowly towards the pack servitor and the all-weather vox.

'Come on,' hissed Diman, 'we need to get out of here.'

Gerran stood, open-mouthed, at the entrance to Deep Canyon Six, transfixed by the sight of the aliens.

'What are they,' he asked, 'and what are they doing?'

'I don't know, but it's sabotage of some kind,' replied Diman urgently. 'You want to stick around and find out? Come on, let's go.'

'Sabotage?' said Gerran, horrified. 'Why?'

'Why the hell do you think?' snapped Diman, trying to keep his voice low, even though their words were spoken over their helmet-mics. That, combined with the noise of the wind and rain, would mean it was next to impossible for the aliens to hear them. 'If they take out the DC6 generators and masts, overload traffic will clog the rest of the network in a few hours.'

Diman reached the pack servitor, and hurried to slip the lascarbine from its waterproof holster with fumbling fingers. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and unbuckled the snap fixings of the pannier, hauling on the aerial of the vox-set.

Gerran joined him and lifted the second lascarbine from its holster before setting off up the foaming, water-slick steps out of the gully. He'd climbed six metres before realising that Diman wasn't following him.

'What the hell are you doing?' asked Gerran. 'You said we had to go!'

'We do, but we need to call this in.'

'Do it when we're away, for crying out loud.'

'Shut up, Gerran.'

Diman flicked the toggle to transmit, and an angry burst of feedback squealed from the handset, deafeningly loud in the confines of the gully.

'Shit!' he cried. 'The volume!'

He mashed the power switch to the off position, but the damage had been done. 'You bloody idiot!' shouted Diman. 'Run!'

Almost immediately, the diffuse glow from the end of the canyon surged in brightness, and spots of light blazed down into the gully. Diman looked up through the rain to see a pair of the floating discs bobbing in the air above him. Lights flickered around their circumferences, and Diman knew their luck had run out.

'Sweet Capilene, mother of mercy!' cried Diman, turning and sprinting as fast as he could up the steps after Gerran, leaving the hulking pack servitor behind.

The lights followed them up the gully, and Diman felt his heart hammer like a rapid drumbeat in his chest as he fought his way through the foaming waterfall pouring down the gully. His work boots felt as though they had weights attached to them, and he fell to his knees as a blistering pulse of light flashed above him and impacted on the wall of the gully.

A blizzard of light and noise washed over him, momentarily blurring his vision, and sending a spasm of nausea through him. Diman stumbled as glowing splinters of rock showered him like grenade fragments. The wind snatched his hood away, and cold darts of air stabbed the skin of his face through the cracked plastic of his visor.

Diman threw a panicked glance over his shoulder in time to see the pack servitor brought down by a pulsing volley of blue-hot beams of light. Smoking holes were blasted clean through its meaty bulk, and Diman didn't want to think about the kinds of weapons that could inflict such damage on a pack servitor or what they would do to his body. Scrambling forms darted into the gully, but the rain and mist of blood obscured them from clear sight.

Whatever they were, they were fast.

Diman scrambled to his feet, and snapped off a couple of shots down into the gully before pushing onwards. He didn't think he'd hit anything, but perhaps his fire might keep their heads down for a while.

The flying discs still floated above the gully, and Diman fired wildly into the air, hoping to bring one down, but the damned things seemed to anticipate his aim, and flew erratic, zigzagging patterns in the air.

'Move yourself!' shouted Gerran from the entrance to the gully, and Diman almost laughed with relief. He slipped and scrambled upwards as he heard a strange sound, a clicking, scratching noise like flint on stone.

He was no more than three metres from Gerran when a blurred creature of pale pink flesh, like a giant flightless bird stretched out into the semblance of a humanoid form, rose up behind the other man. Its limbs were lean and sinewy, and its monstrous head was crested with a mass of rigid spines. The creature's arms whipped up, almost too fast to follow, and Diman saw a jagged blade erupt from Gerran's stomach.

A screeching, squawking war cry ululated from the creature's beaked maw, and it wrenched the blade from Gerran's body with a brutal twist of its wrists. Gerran collapsed, his spine severed by the blow, and the water pouring down the gully was turned red with his blood.

Twin bandoliers crossed the creature's chest, and its patterned loincloth put Diman in mind of the pictures he'd seen of feral world predators. It carried a long barrelled rifle with a cruelly curved blade fitted to either end.

Long ago training from his days in the Tertiary Reserve kicked in, and Diman dropped to one knee with his lascarbine pulled in tight to his shoulder. The creature let loose another screeching cry, and spun its rifle to a firing position.

Diman fired first, and Gerran's killer was punched from its feet, a ragged, smoking hole blasted in its chest. The ancient lascarbine hissed in the rain as it fired, and Diman hurriedly cycled the firing mechanism as he heard the strange clicking, scratching sound once more.

Beams of light swept over him from above, but he ignored them and carried on, the breath heaving in his lungs at this rapid exertion. A stuttering volley of solid rounds blasted into the rock beside him, and he ran crouched over, emerging from the gully as a shot creased his shoulder and sent him sprawling.

Diman lost his grip on the lascarbine as he was spun around by the impact. He hit the ground hard and rolled, feeling the sharp rocks tear up his overalls. His helmet was smashed from his head, and the impact left him dazed as the cold hit him like a blow.

Bright lights danced before his eyes, and Diman lifted his head, feeling blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. He tried to push himself from the ground, but his limbs were leaden and uncooperative. Screaming pain in his thigh told him he'd broken his femur.

A pack of the skinned-looking creatures emerged from the gully, and gathered around the creature Diman had shot, their movements inhumanly quick and bird-like. Their quills stood on end, with colours rippling down their lengths. One of the creatures was of greater stature than the others, with powerful muscles and a crest of bright red quills. It carried a weapon of obvious sophistication, with a short-barrelled, under-slung launcher of some kind.

At its side was a hideous trio of quadrupeds that must surely have escaped from a realm of nightmares. They resembled nothing so much as skinned wolves. Their pink flesh glistened in the rain, and manes of spines stood erect on their powerfully muscled shoulders. Diman whimpered in fear as he saw that they shared evolutionary roots with their masters, having the same spine of rigid quills and jagged, beak-like jaws.

The red-quilled leader emitted a series of high-pitched squawks and whistles.

In response, two of its pack knelt by the body of the dead beast, and began attacking it with long-bladed knives, carving off strips of flesh and gulping them down. Within moments, they had efficiently butchered the body, and passed out dripping chunks of their former comrade's flesh to each member of the pack.

Diman felt his gorge rise at the sight, the blood of the slain beast drooling from their beaked jaws as they threw back their heads and screeched to the sky. He sobbed as the alien hounds joined the macabre chorus.

Redquill barked something in his vile alien language, and the three hounds sprinted over the rocks towards Diman.

He tried to pull away, but knew it was hopeless as his leg flared in unbelievable agony. The monstrous hounds screeched at him as they bounded over the rocks, their jaws frothing with thick saliva.

Diman expected the searing pain of their bites, but, instead, they circled him with their heads low and their jaws wide, hissing and spitting. Their breath was hot, and reeked of dead flesh and rancid milk. He closed his eyes and curled himself into a tiny ball, prayers he'd learned as child spilling from his lips.

'Emperor, who act with me in all things, protect your humble servant…'

A powerful hand flipped him over onto his back and seized him by his neck. The reek of alien flesh caught in the back of Diman's throat, and he gagged at the pungent, oily sweat of the creature.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a pair of milky white eyes without pupils, set deep in an alien skull topped with spines that had deepened from red to crimson. Fear like nothing he had known seized him.

'Redquill,' he said.

The creature cocked its head to one side, a thin membrane nictitating across its eye. Its jaw worked, and a grating, clicking sound emerged from its beak. It repeated the sound several more times until Diman realised that it was trying to repeat what he had said.

He nodded and smiled through the pain, hoping and praying that this moment of connection might save his life. At last, the monster seemed to have mastered the vowel sounds, and it croaked, 'Radkwaal…'

'Yes,' nodded Diman. 'You. Redquill.'

'Radkwaal,' said the creature again.

It turned its head towards its fellows, and squawked the name Diman had given it, followed by a further series of clicks and whistles.

Any hope that Diman's fleeting communication might have saved his life was snatched away as the creatures drew their butcher knives.

Brandon Gate Correctional Facility covered a square kilometre and had a total of twenty guard towers encircling its perimeter. Within its boundaries, it was a small city, partitioned into five walled enclosures, each designed to hold a particular kind of prisoner, but which presently served as vehicle pools and firing ranges.

Only a thousand prisoners were held here, although the facility had once held close to twenty thousand unfortunates within its hellish interior. Though much had changed since the rebellion, the prison was no less horrendous a place to be sent, either as a guard or as a prisoner.

A circular tower stood in the centre of its open yard, ringed with mosaics and bas-reliefs of uplifting scripture and religious imagery intended to inspire the rehabilitation of its inmates, but which only served to give them a focal point for their hatred. Atop this tower was a polarised glass dome, from which the enforcers could command a panoramic view of the city, and which gave the facility its more usual name of the Glasshouse.

Stuck on the edge of Brandon Gate beyond the Commercia Gate like an afterthought, the facility had an unsavoury reputation, even before the de Valtos rebellion, as a place of torture and execution. It had been a favourite dumping ground for undesirables rounded up by the cartel's enforcers for any activity deemed a crime by their paymasters.

Those unwise enough to demand rights for workers injured in the line of duty, or to voice any opinions on the cartels deemed subversive, would soon find their doors smashed down in the middle of the night. Squads of enforcers would drag them from their beds and toss them into the hellish confines of the Correctional Facility.

In the wake of the rebellion, many of its former inmates had escaped when vengeful relatives and friends attacked the prison complex, and looted it of anything of value. The prison had been brought back to operational use by Jenna Sharben's newly established enforcers in lieu of any other facility capable of handling criminals. Conditions within its mouldering cells and debris-strewn enclosures made it resemble something from an active warzone instead of a functioning centre of law enforcement.

The corridor Jenna Sharben walked along was dim and thick with dust, the sputtering lumen strips set into glass blocks in the wall barely providing enough illumination to avoid the tangled piles of inert cabling and debris. Water pooled on the floor, and the stench of mould and a thousand filthy cells hung like a miasma upon the air.

Enforcer Dion walked alongside her. Jenna suspected that, in time, he would make an enforcer of which Brandon Gate could be proud. He was cut from a rugged cloth, his manner powerful yet fair and even-handed. Like her, he carried his helmet in the crook of his arm and had his shock maul strapped across his back. Dion and Apollonia were the best she had trained, and, by their example, the tarnished reputation of the enforcers would be restored to one of honesty, integrity and justice.

'So, what's the word from on high?' asked Dion as they drew near the cell where the alien captive was being held. The Ultramarines had deposited the prisoner a couple of days ago, and a xenolexicon servitor the day after, though it hadn't helped with getting any actionable intelligence from the prisoner. 'The word is that it's time to get tough,' said Jenna. 'What does that mean, exactly?' asked Dion. That was the big question, thought Jenna.

'It means that Governor Koudelkar wants information from the prisoner,' she said, leaving out the part where she felt that the governor wasn't too interested in how that information was obtained. That didn't seem like a message that ought to be literally carried down the chain of command.

'So what sort of information are we after?' asked Dion.

'Anything we can get,' said Jenna. 'If the Ultramarines are right, and the tau are on the verge of invasion, then we need to bring the governor some hard evidence of that.'

'And you know how we do that?' asked Dion. 'I suppose you had training in interrogation techniques in the Adeptus Arbites.'

'I did,' agreed Jenna, 'but those techniques require time and the eventual co-operation of a prisoner. One we don't have, and the other, we're not likely to get any time soon.'

'Then what's our game plan?'

'We go in hard and see what we get,' said Jenna, turning a corner and halting before a steel door fitted with a mag-lock that was obviously new. Two enforcers stood outside, and both snapped to attention when they saw Jenna.

She pulled on her helm and said, 'Put your helmet on, and slide the mirror visor down.'

'What for?'

'Just do it,' said Jenna. 'It makes it easier.'

'For the prisoner?'

'No,' said Jenna, 'for us. And once we're inside, no names.' She turned to the guards at the door. 'Open it up,' she said.

The door was opened, and Jenna and Dion stepped through into a windowless room that reeked of stale sweat and a pungent, alien smell that was deeply unpleasant for its very unfamiliarity. The cell was bare rockcrete, the walls scratched and defaced by the hundreds of lost souls held there over the years. Incense burners sat in each of the cell's four corners, emitting aromatic smoke inimical to xenos creatures, though they did little to counter the noxious odour of the room's occupant.

Enforcer Apollonia stood at the back of the cell with her hands behind her, the mirrored visor of her helmet pulled down. The tau sat on a stool with her strange, four-fingered hands laced before her in her lap.

Sitting opposite, its hands laced in front of it in imitation of the prisoner's posture, was the xenolexicon servitor the Ultramarines had provided. Robed in a pale blue chiton with gleaming implants and a well-maintained flesh tone, the bio-mechanical hybrid was a fine example of the Mechanicus's skill.

Its ears had been replaced by broad-spectrum receptors, and the lower half of its face was a nightmarish melange of moving parts formed from brass and silver. Designed to mimic the mouth shapes of a dozen different alien races, its jaw was a bulbous mass of constantly rotating, shifting metal with artificial mandibles, teeth and a multitude of artificial tongues that could adapt its structure to match that of the subject.

Jenna stood beside the xenolexicon servitor and addressed the prisoner. 'I am going to ask you some questions. It would be better for you if you were to answer them truthfully. Do you understand me?'

The servitor's mouth clicked and whirred as it formed the internal anatomy of a tau mouth and repeated the words she had said in the alien's language, a language that was strange, and bore little resemblance to any human tongue. Briefly, Jenna wondered how the builders of the servitor had known what structure to construct in order to form the word groups and syllables of the tau language.

Study and dissection of tau skulls, she supposed, untroubled by the thought.

Although the flat features and lack of a nose made it difficult to read the tau female's facial expression, Jenna thought she detected a faint revulsion on her face. Was the servitor's rendition of its language so bad?

The prisoner said the phrase she had been saying since they'd put her in the cell, the words rendered tonelessly by the servitor.

'My name equals La'tyen Ossenia. Shas'la of Vior'la Fire Warrior team Kais.'

Jenna circled the prisoner, drawing her shock maul from the sheath on her back. 'I see. You think you're being a good soldier, but all you're doing is making this harder for yourself. You're going to tell us what we want to know, and, the sooner you do, the easier this is going to be for you.'

Once again, the servitor relayed her words, and once again it repeated the phrase the prisoner had said countless times before.

'My name equals La'tyen Ossenia. Shas'la of Vior'la Fire Warrior team Kais.'

Jenna slammed her shock maul against the prisoner's lower back, and she fell to the floor with a wordless cry of pain. Another couple of swift strikes to the shoulder and hip had the tau prisoner curled up in a tight ball of pain.

Jenna rolled the tau female onto her back with her boot, and planted the tip of her shock maul against her throat. She took no pleasure from such violence, but such was the role in which she had been cast, and she would play it to the best of her ability.

'That's a taste of how bad things are going to get for you if you don't co-operate.'

She heard the servitor translating her words, and pressed down harder on the captive's chest. 'That was without the shock field activated. Imagine how much pain you'll be in when I turn it on.'

Three times more, Jenna asked the tau questions, and each time received the same answer.

'My name equals La'tyen Ossenia. Shas'la of Vior'la Fire Warrior team Kais.'

Each obstinate refusal to answer only infuriated Jenna more. Didn't the creature realise that she was trying to spare it pain? She delivered stinging blows to the captives knees, stomach and ribs, each carefully weighted to cause extreme pain but no long term damage.

After half an hour of beatings, Jenna hauled the prisoner to her knees, and thumbed the activation stud on her shock maul. She held the humming weapon in front of the prisoner's face, and was gratified to see a trace of fear enter her amber eyes.

'Still won't talk, eh?' said Jenna, nodding to Dion and Apollonia. Then it's time for the gloves to come off.

The screams of the tau prisoner echoed throughout the Glasshouse long into the night.

The two aircraft banked around a jutting headland of rock, hugging the mountainside, and flying high across the craggy landscape in a roar of engine noise. Nap of the earth flight was impossible so close to the Kaliz Array, for vox-masts appeared over the horizon without warning, and could easily tear a wing from an unwary aircraft.

One of the flyers was a bulky gunship, its wings bristling with missiles, and a multitude of guns studding its frontal sections and upper deck. This was a Thunderhawk, the workhorse of the Adeptus Astartes, and an aerial chariot without equal. Its armoured skin was a vivid blue, the glacis beneath the pilot's compartment emblazoned with a brilliant white inverse omega symbol of the Ultramarines with a golden eagle set upon it.

The second aircraft was a smaller Aquila-class lander, its swept forwards, eagle-wing design giving rise to its honourable name. Its wings and side panels bore the golden horse heraldry of the 44th Lavrentian Hussars, and its pilot was careful to keep close to the larger Astartes gunship.

Both bled speed as they drew near a wide canyon cut in the rock, and set down in a wash of flaring retros and rock dust. The landings were difficult, the aircraft buffeted by high winds blowing over the mountains from the north, but these pilots were the best, and within moments, both gunship and lander were safely down.

The assault ramp on the front of the gunship dropped, and a host of Space Marines emerged, dispersing swiftly from the troop compartment, and assuming defensive positions around the aircraft. Nearly thirty warriors of the Ultramarines fanned out from the gunship, forming up in a Codex deployment pattern.

Uriel jogged down the ramp of the Thunderhawk, his bolter held loosely at his side, and his sword a reassuring presence at his hip. A light rain pattered his armour, but he didn't feel the cold or wet.

'Looks quiet,' said Learchus at his side.

'It does indeed,' replied Uriel, scanning the ground before him and forming a mental map in his head, 'but I'd expect that.'

Learchus nodded, and set off to join the scout squad forming up on the western edge of their deployment zone without another word. Uriel stepped from the ramp of the Thunderhawk onto the Tembra Ridge Mountains, his enhanced faculties for spatial awareness identifying the best positions to occupy; from where an effective assault could be launched or defence mounted.

Without orders needing to be issued, each squad of Ultramarines was already positioning itself correctly, and Uriel felt proud to be part of such an awesomely effective fighting machine.

Chaplain Clausel took up position with his assault squad, warriors who went into battle with bulky jump packs fitted to their armour. These allowed them to take the fight to the enemy and descend upon them from the skies on wings of fire. They were Astartes of the highest calibre, warriors who excelled in the brutal whirlwind of close-quarters fighting. As ferocious as they were, assault troops were not mindless killers, but carefully chosen fighters with an innate understanding of the ebb and flow of battle.

An Assault Marine knew when to smash the enemy with force, and when to withdraw.

Clausel had said little to Uriel since his return from his Death Oath, and every now and then he would catch the Chaplain's stern, uncompromising glare upon him. Which, he supposed, was entirely fair. After all, this mission was as much to test Uriel's ability to command his warriors as it was to ensure that the hard-won peace was holding.

Techmarine Harkus, detached from the command centre and incongruous in his red armour and hissing servo harness, ministered to the Thunderhawk, ensuring that the rough landing had not offended the aircraft's spirit. The black and white of the Icon Mechanicus stood out on Harkus's right shoulder guard, while the blue of the Ultramarines remained on his left. The sight of an Ultramarines warrior in armour that bore another's heraldry sat ill with Uriel, but the union of the Adeptus Astartes and the Mechanicus of Mars was an ancient one.

Uriel set off towards the canyon ahead of him, as the Aquila lander lowered its internal compartment to the ground and Lord Winterbourne emerged, resplendent in his green frock coat, high boots, golden helmet and ebony walking cane. Growling and pulling urgently on their leashes were the two hound creatures that accompanied the colonel everywhere he went. Uriel had learned that they were called vorehounds, and their noses darted from side to side as they sniffed the wet rocks.

Four Lavrentian storm-troopers, in gleaming golden breastplates and carrying bulky hellguns, shadowed their colonel, followed by a robed scribe with clicking quill-armatures and a glassy-eyed vox-servitor.

'Uriel,' said Winterbourne, 'good of you to help out. My lads were itching for some action, but it would take us quite some time to get up here, what? You and your fancy gunship are a real boon.'

'Happy to help, Lord Winterbourne.'

'Nathaniel,' said Winterbourne automatically. 'Damned unusual business this.'

'Yes,' agreed Uriel, enhancing the thermal imaging display of his visor to better penetrate the shadows of the mountain. 'Unusual and conspicuous.'

'Seems to support your suspicions, does it not?'

Uriel nodded. 'If you're going to attack someone, first knock out their communications.'

Reports had come to the Ultramarines command centre of a system-wide failure in a great many of the planetary vox-networks. Such glitches in the system were common enough not to raise immediate suspicion, but the timing of such a failure immediately raised a red flag in Uriel's mind.

The Kaliz Array was hundreds of years old, and the Adeptus Mechanicus and local technicians had their hands full maintaining its venerable generators and relays. It would take days for PDF units or Guard forces to reach Deep Canyon Six, the location the Adeptus Mechanicus had identified as the source of the initial system failures. Uriel had immediately offered the services of the Ultramarines.

'So, how do you want to do this?' asked Winterbourne.

'We go in expecting a fight,' said Uriel. 'We will take one approach down, you and your men will take the other. If there are any enemy units there, we destroy them and see what damage they have done.'

'Simple. I like it,' said Winterbourne, fighting to hold the vorehounds at his side. 'Damn it! Germaine! Fynlae! Heel!'

The beasts paid their master no heed, and continued to tug at their leashes, foam gathering at the corners of their mouths and their desperate barking echoing from the mountainside.

'What is the matter with them?' asked Uriel.

'Damned if I know,' cursed Winterbourne. 'Heel! Heel, I say!'

With a final surge, the vorehounds broke free of Winterbourne's grip, and bounded across the rocks towards the nearest gully leading down into Deep Canyon Six. Uriel and Winterbourne set off after them, with the storm-troopers hot on their heels.

It didn't take long to catch up to the hounds, one of which sniffed the ground and growled at the entrance to the gully. The three-legged beast circled a patch of rocks downhill, eagerly barking with feral hunger. Winterbourne caught up to his pets, and struck at their flanks with his walking cane.

'Damned unruly beasts!' he shouted, gathering up their leashes and hauling their choke chains tight. 'No discipline, that's your problem. I ought to have you shot.'

Uriel knelt by the ground the vorehounds had been sniffing, and ran his fingers over the slick rocks. His enhanced vision and auto-senses could already detect the lingering residue and aroma of an all too familiar substance.

'Blood,' he said.

'Human?' asked Winterbourne, and Uriel nodded. 'Yes, and no more than a day or so old.'

'How do you know that?'

'The smell's too fresh. Any longer and the rain would have washed away all traces of it. Your hounds aren't the only ones with sharp senses, Lord Winterbourne.'

'That bodes ill,' said Winterbourne, handing the reins of his vorehounds to the vox-servitor, and drawing his sword, a magnificently fashioned sabre with a curved blade and a network of crystalline filaments worked along its length that crackled with fire.

Uriel passed the word of what the hounds had discovered to his warriors, and there was a noticeable shift in the posture of the Ultramarines, each warrior now expecting battle instead of merely anticipating it.

'I suggest you join your soldiers, Lord Winterbourne,' said Uriel. 'It is time to move out.'

'Just so,' said Winterbourne, unsnapping the catch on the holster at his hip. The colonel of the Lavrentians drew his sidearm, a simple laspistol with a matt black finish. The weapon was standard issue and old, very old, but clearly well cared for. Uriel was surprised at the lack of ornamentation on the weapon, having seen many a colonel seek to impress with the ostentation of their battle gear.

Winterbourne saw his look and smiled.

'It was my father's pistol,' he explained. 'Got me through a few damned tight scrapes, let me tell you. I look after it, and it looks after me.'

Uriel nodded to Winterbourne's storm-troopers and left the colonel to their care. He jogged over to his squad, and quickly ran through the pre-battle ritual of preparedness. Each warrior inspected the battle gear of one of his brothers, checking armour and weapons that had been checked thrice already, but which were checked again because that was the Ultramarines way.

When the icons for each of his squad members flashed green on his visor, Uriel broadened his scope of view, seeing icons flashing to life for every warrior under his command. All were ready.

Chaplain Clausel approached, and Uriel offered his hand.

'Courage and honour, Chaplain Clausel,' he said.

'Courage and honour, Captain Ventris,' replied Clausel, leaving Uriel's hand unshaken.

'My warriors will go in through the gully,' said Uriel, masking his irritation at Clausel's manner. 'Your assault troops will await my signal to manoeuvre.'

'Remember the teachings of the Codex,' said Clausel. 'It will guide you in all things.'

'I will, Chaplain,' promised Uriel. 'You do not need to worry about me. Librarian Tigurius reminded me of my duty to the teachings of our primarch.'

'Aye,' agreed Clausel. 'I'm sure he did, but Tigurius cannot see everything.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means he wanted you back within the ranks of the Ultramarines,' said Clausel, 'for his own reasons as much as for the good of the Chapter.'

'You doubt me, Chaplain?' asked Uriel. 'My honour is intact, my loyalty undoubted. The senior masters of the Chapter agreed on it.'

'Not all of them,' said Clausel, turning away. 'Just know that I remain to be convinced that your return is a good thing. Fight well and you may yet persuade me that one who fights within the Great Eye can come back unchanged.'

'I am not unchanged, Chaplain,' whispered Uriel as Clausel rejoined his warriors.

Uriel put the grim Chaplain's words from his mind, and issued his orders. The Scouts would remain with the Thunderhawk while Uriel would lead one squad through the southern gully towards the base of the canyon. Lord Winterbourne and his storm-troopers would take the northern approach. Chaplain Clausel and his assault troops would climb to the top of the cliffs that overlooked the base of the canyon and await Uriel's order to deploy.

Uriel drew his warriors close, Learchus at his side, and stared into the darkness of the gully that led down through a narrow cleft in the rocks to shadow. He remembered the last time he had travelled into these mountains with war in his heart.

He and his warriors had dropped thousands of metres into a deep core mine, and had faced the Bringer of Darkness in a forgotten tomb built when the galaxy was young. Ario Barzano had died there, and Pasanius had lost his arm, a grievous wound that had brought him nothing but pain and punishment.

A punishment that had seen Uriel go to war without his dearest friend.

SIX

A cold wind blew down from the east, the bite of a harsh Macragge winter easing up now that spring was breaking and the snows on the lower slopes were melting. The landing platforms sat near the foot of the mountains upon which Ptolemy's Library and the Sword Hall were built, the eastern winds an omen of changing times and good fortune.

Uriel did not feel fortunate as he marched from the upper cloisters to a flight of marble steps that led down to where the 4th Company stood in ordered ranks before five Thunderhawk gunships. Steam rose from the edge of the platforms, the aircraft growling as the Techmarines feathered their engines. The banner held proudly aloft by Ancient Peleus flapped noisily in the wind.

Over a hundred warriors in the dazzling blue of the Ultramarines stood as still as statues on the platform, their arms locked by their sides and their heads held high as they awaited the order to embark on this latest mission. The Chaplain, Techmarines, Apothecaries, artificers, drivers and pilots, and ancillary company staff had gathered for the official Company Commencement. Not since the 4th Company had deployed to Tarsis Ultra had its duly-appointed captain led it into action, and such a moment demanded recognition.

Uriel had dreamed of this ever since he and Pasanius had been banished from Macragge, and now that it was here, he found that redemption tasted bitter. For this new beginning marked the first time he had been forced to leave a battle-brother behind.

Escorted by four armed Vanguards, Pasanius had come to bid Uriel farewell in the company chapel the previous evening as he prepared to don the armour of Brother Amadon for the first time. Uriel was clad in a form-fitting under-suit, and was surrounded by four red-robed artisan-apprenta from the Armorium.

Uriel had prepared his flesh with fasting, oils and physical exertion.

His soul was steeled with reflection and speaking the catechisms of battle.

He was ready to be clad in the armour of a Space Marine, and the apprenta recited binaric cants pleasing to the Machine-God as they applied sacred oils to the hard plugs that allowed the armour to interface with his body.

The chapel was a long, vaulted space of silver stone, brightly lit with a dozen flaming brands and the glow from a rose window set high on the western wall. Firelight reflected from the walls, and from the burnished battle-plate that hung on a sturdy frame before a great statue that stood in the curved chancel. Rendered in polished bronze by the hand of Mellicae, the greatest warrior artificer of the Ultramarines, the towering form of Roboute Guilliman stared down at Uriel with eyes fashioned from sapphires the size of a Space Marine's fist.

The Vanguards led Pasanius into the chapel with their weapons bared, and it broke Uriel's heart to see his friend so ignobly treated. The apprenta backed away from Uriel with their heads bowed as Pasanius halted before him, still dressed in the black chiton of the penitent. Like Uriel, he had been found free of corruption in flesh and soul, but, for the crime of failing to disclose the truth of his infected arm, he had been judged guilty of breaking the Chapter's Codes of Rectitude.

'You can go,' Uriel told the warriors escorting Pasanius.

'We are ordered to remain with the prisoner at all times,' said one of the Vanguards, a black-bladed sword held across his shoulder. 'He begins his sentence at sunset.'

Each of the Vanguards was clad in armour forged by masters of their craft, decorated with gold and silver trims, and polished to a reflective finish. No two were alike, yet each warrior had earned the right to wear such armour on uncounted battlefields, through acts of valour that would be unbelievable were any save a warrior of the Ultramarines to relate them.

'This man is a hero of courage and honour,' said Uriel. 'You will not address him as ''prisoner'' in my presence again. Is that understood?'

'Yes, my lord,' said the Vanguard. 'Our orders come from Chaplain Cassius himself.'

'I am sure Pasanius is not going to try and escape,' said Uriel dryly. 'Are you?'

'No,' said Pasanius. 'I'm in enough trouble as it is without adding attempting to escape to my list of crimes.'

For breaking the Codes of Rectitude, Pasanius had been sentenced to a hundred days in the Chapter cells and to endure exclusion from the ranks of the 4th Company for the time it took Macragge to orbit its sun. In addition, he had been reduced in rank from sergeant to battle-brother. To be kept apart from his brothers for even a day longer than necessary was a punishment as severe as any that could be meted out to a warrior of the Ultramarines.

'We will wait for you outside, brother,' the Vanguard told Pasanius as they withdrew from the chapel.

'I'm obliged to you, and I'll be with you directly,' Pasanius assured them as the heavy wooden doors of the company chapel closed behind the veteran warriors.

'You'll want help with that,' said Pasanius, nodding towards the armour.

'I have the apprenta from the Armorium,' said Uriel, indicating the robed acolytes who waited at the foot of the statute.

'Apprenta?' scoffed Pasanius. 'What do artisans know about the wearing of battle plate? No, you need a brother warrior to fit you into that armour. It's only right and proper. After all, this is the nearest I'll get to power armour until you get back.'

Uriel turned towards the apprenta and said, 'Leave us.'

The robed acolytes bowed and made their way from the chapel of the 4th Company.

'A hundred days,' said Uriel when they were alone. 'It's not right.'

'Don't be soft,' chuckled Pasanius. 'I'll do a hundred days no problem; it's no more than I deserve. I lied to my brothers, and more importantly, I lied to you. It's a just punishment. You and I both know it, and I'm not going to complain about it.'

'You're right, I know,' said Uriel. 'You'll be missed within the ranks.'

'I know,' said Pasanius without arrogance, 'but you've good men there as sergeants. Venasus, Patrean… Learchus.'

'I've heard good things about Learchus from the men,' said Uriel. 'You read the honour rolls after the 4th's deployment to Espandor?'

'I did,' confirmed Pasanius, kneeling to remove the first section of the armour from the rack. 'A gargant and a greenskin horde. Not bad.'

Uriel laughed at the understatement in his friend's tone. 'It was a grand achievement, Pasanius, as you well know.'

'Yes, but it galls me we weren't there for it,' said Pasanius. 'It feels wrong, knowing our warriors went into battle without us. It feels like we let them down.'

'We did, but the past is done with, and I have a company to lead. When this expedition to Pavonis is over, you'll be reinstated to the ranks, and we'll fight side by side once more.'

'I know that, Uriel,' said Pasanius. 'Just…'

'Just what?' asked Uriel when Pasanius didn't continue.

Pasanius looked uncomfortable, and glanced towards the sealed doors of the chapel.

'Come on,' pressed Uriel. 'Out with it.'

'It's Learchus.'

'What about him?'

'Watch him.'

'Watch him?' said Uriel. 'Why? Because his accusations saw us condemned? You know he was entirely correct to speak up.'

'Yes, and I hold no grudge against Learchus for that,' said Pasanius. 'It took courage for him to do the right thing, I see that now.'

'Then what?'

Pasanius sighed. 'Learchus promised he would look after the company until our return, and by the looks of things he's done a grand job: fine recruits, hard training and warriors we can be proud of. Not only that, he led them all into battle on Espandor against a horde of greenskins that would have tested the mettle of a veteran battle company.'

'Then what troubles you?'

'No one expected us to come back alive, Uriel,' said Pasanius. 'Learchus was one of the few who did, but even he had begun to believe us dead. On Espandor, he got a taste of proper command and he liked it. I'm thinking that with us long gone, he figured he'd be the logical choice to take command of the 4th.'

'And then we returned,' finished Uriel.

'Exactly,' said Pasanius. 'Now don't get me wrong, Learchus is a great warrior and I trust him with my life, but he'd be less than human if there wasn't some part of him that didn't resent your reinstatement.'

'I think you are wrong, my friend,' said Uriel.

Pasanius shrugged. 'I hope so, but enough talk, let's get this armour on, eh?'

Uriel nodded, and, piece by piece, Pasanius clad him in the armour of Brother Amadon. He began with the boots, and worked up to the greaves on Uriel's shins and the cuisse plates protecting his thighs. The locking belt snapped together around Uriel's hips, and, once the power coils were attached, Pasanius reverently lifted the eagle and skull-stamped breastplate and fitted it over his chest.

As each segment of armour was fitted to Uriel's body, Pasanius recited the actions the armour had been part of, speaking the names of heroes long dead and battles long since fought. Every honour won and every plaudit earned was spoken, and, soon, both warriors were giving voice to the armour's illustrious heritage.

The plates protecting Uriel's upper arms came next, together with the pauldrons, vambraces and gauntlets. With his arms sheathed in plate, Pasanius lifted the heavy, auto-reactive shoulder guards, and allowed the armour's fibre-bundle musculature to mesh with the internal gyros and motors within.

Lastly, Pasanius hefted the heavy backpack that provided power to the armour, and the heat exchangers that allowed it to function. Uriel felt its immense weight, and tensed his muscles, but no sooner was the backpack mounted than the armour hummed with life, and energy flowed through Uriel.

He felt the bio-monitoring dendrites link with the hard plugs implanted in his flesh, and his muscles swelled with power. His awareness of his body's subtle rhythms heightened, and he became one with the armour. It was an extension of his flesh that enabled him to fight and move as though clad in the lightest chiton, yet would protect him from the slings and arrows of a hostile galaxy.

Uriel remembered a similar sensation when being clad in the armour of the Sons of Guilliman on Salinas by the artificers of the Grey Knights, but that was a pale shadow of this experience. The battle plate that had protected him during the fighting within the House of Providence was merely borrowed and no bond had formed between him and the armour.

This was different. This was a level of connection that Uriel had not felt since he had first been honoured with his own armour many decades ago. That sense of unity was like a forgotten golden memory coming to the surface, made all the sweeter for its sudden reappearance.

As the armour came to life around him, Uriel felt light-headed as the legacy of heroic endeavours, of which it had been part, filled him. The expectation of honourable service and duty applied to them both, and Pasanius took hold of his shoulder to steady him.

'How does that feel?' asked Pasanius.

'Like I've come home,' said Uriel.

Pasanius nodded, and looked up past the mighty figure of Roboute Guilliman to the fading red glow shining through the rose window. Uriel watched his friend's face harden as the sun set over the distant mountains.

'It's time?'

'It is,' said Pasanius.

Uriel extended his hand, and Pasanius shook it, wrist to wrist, in the grip that symbolised the bond between warriors who had fought and bled in defence of the human race. Pasanius pulled Uriel into an embrace, his enormous frame almost a match for Uriel in his armour.

They had been friends even before their ascension to the Ultramarines, and the bonds of loyalty between them were as enduring as any the legends told of the long lost primarchs.

They were closer than friends, closer than brothers.

They were Astartes.

'I'd better go,' said Pasanius, nodding towards the chapel doors. 'They'll be waiting.'

'I'll bring the 4th Company back soon,' said Uriel, his voice choked with emotion. 'We'll hardly be gone. It's only a short tour to Pavonis to make sure the peace is holding.'

'I know,' laughed Pasanius, 'and I'll be waiting.'

'Courage and honour, my friend.'

'Courage and honour, Uriel.'

Uriel stepped onto the landing platform, and marched to stand before the warriors of the 4th Company. His warriors were armoured in their battle plate, their faces hidden by their helmets, yet each was known to him.

Space Marines might look faceless and identical to mortal eyes, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each warrior was a hero in his own right, one who had his own legends and a roll of honour that was as magnificent as anything that could be invented by all the poets and taletellers of the Imperium.

It was an honour to stand before them as their captain, and Uriel recognised that this moment was one he would never forget. To have travelled to the places he had seen, and to have survived the horrors he had endured was an achievement few could match, and the pride he felt was for himself, too.

Uriel stood erect as another figure descended the steps that he had just come down, a giant of a man clad in armour of brilliant blue from which a golden cloak billowed like a great wing in the wind.

Marneus Calgar, Lord Macragge, marched towards Uriel with his normally stoic and craggy features open and filled with joy. The Chapter Master of the Ultramarines halted before Uriel, and looked him up and down with a critical eye.

Calgar's legendary deeds were known across all human space, heroic battles that painted him as a mighty warrior who crushed entire armies before him and toppled the mightiest of foes with but a glance. Truth be told, Marneus Calgar was no taller than Uriel, though his shoulders were broader and his waist thicker.

The Chapter Master was a brawler to Uriel's swordsman.

Marneus Calgar was a giant, but it was the sheer power and dynamism within him that made him so. Vitality and strength seemed to ooze from his pores, and just being near Marneus Calgar energised those around him with surety of purpose and determination.

Daemons of the eldar and the Ruinous Powers had fallen before Calgar, and some, jealous of his stature and tally, called him proud, but Uriel knew that was not so. The pride that drove Calgar was that which drove all warriors of noble virtue to war, the defence of those who could not defend themselves.

'Brother Amadon's armour,' said Calgar, his voice rich with approval.

'Yes, my lord,' said Uriel, standing tall and with his shoulders back.

'It looks good on you,' nodded Calgar, reaching out to touch the brilliant white ''U'' on Uriel's shoulder guard. 'The last time I saw you armoured thus it was without heraldry, and you were leaving to an unknown destiny.'

'That was another life,' said Uriel. 'I see now why we have our code.'

'I know you do. Varro told me of your words within the Arcanium, and he is a good judge of the hearts of men. He says you have learned what you needed to learn.'

'I have,' agreed Uriel. 'Some lessons are learned the hard way.'

'Some men need to learn their lessons that way or they're not lessons at all.'

'And what lesson will this mission teach?' asked Uriel.

Calgar smiled and leaned in close so that only he could hear his words. 'It will teach those who watch from above that you are a true warrior of Ultramar.'

Uriel nodded, and looked over Calgar's shoulder towards the gallery where the Masters of the Chapter currently on Macragge had gathered to watch the 4th Company's departure. Here were the warriors who had once sat in judgement of him, but who now gathered to see him become one of them again.

Agemman of the veterans stood at the forefront of the masters, his noble features brimming with pride, and Uriel gave an almost imperceptible nod of respect to the Regent of Ultramar. This great warrior had spoken to Uriel the night before judgement was pronounced upon him. It had been Agemman who had convinced Uriel to accept his punishment for the good of the Chapter, and for that he would forever be in the First Captain's debt.

Beside Agemman were three of the battle captains of Macragge, Masters of the Ultramarines and guardians of the Eastern Fringe. Their names were legend, their deeds mighty and their honour boundless: Sicarius of the 2nd, Galenus of the 5th and Epathus of the 6th.

Of all the warriors here gathered, only Sicarius's eyes were as cold as a winter sky, his unflinching gaze never leaving Uriel as the 4th Company snapped to attention in unison, the sound like a hundred hammers slamming down.

'Lead with courage and honour, and you will win over your doubters,' said Calgar, following Uriel's gaze.

Uriel hammered his fist against the eagle upon his breastplate.

'Permission to depart Macragge, my lord,' he said.

'Permission granted, Captain Ventris,' replied Lord Macragge.

The roar of the Thunderhawks' engines surged in volume, and Uriel gratefully took the hand his Chapter Master offered him.

'It is fitting that this mission should be to Pavonis,' said Marneus Calgar.

'I remember,' said Uriel, 'my first mission as captain of the 4th Company.'

'Let us hope that this tour is not as eventful.'

'As the Emperor wills it,' said Uriel.

The base of the canyon was planed smooth, and Uriel recognised the application of Mechanicus scale meltas in the rippling, liquid texture of the rock. Lingering rain pooled in the darkness of Deep Canyon Six, and shadows from the high cliffs kept the temperature low. Patches of thick scrub, and wiry clumps of overgrown mountain gorse clung to the edges of the canyon. Tendrils of clammy fog drifted through the upper reaches of the forest of vox-masts that filled the canyon.

Uriel kept still and scanned the canyon. Nothing moved save streams of water pouring from cracks in the rock and the windblown undergrowth, yet Uriel had the acute feeling he was being watched.

Every one of his senses told him that this canyon was deserted, yet ones he could not name told him just as clearly that he and his warriors were not alone. He eased from the stepped gully that had brought them from the Thunderhawk's landing site, and the rest of his squad moved out with him. Two hundred metres to the north, he could see Lord Winterbourne's green frock-coat emerge from a narrow gap in the rocks, his storm-troopers forming a protective cordon around him. Uriel shook his head as he saw one of the storm-troopers holding the leads of the vorehounds. Taking unruly pets like that into a potential firefight was madness.

Uriel held his bolter out before him, scanning left and right, and allowing his auto-senses to gather information on his surroundings. The air had an electrical tang to it, which wasn't surprising, but it also had a strange, meaty aroma that the softly falling rain couldn't entirely mask.

'Combat formation,' ordered Uriel over the internal vox-network. 'Primus envelop right, Secundus left. Nice and slow. Harkus, you're with me.'

Proximity to the huge mast array was degrading communications, and his words were overlaid with squalls of biting static. To ensure there were no misunderstandings, Uriel placed his right fist in the centre of his chest and moved it in a slow outwards arc. He transferred his bolter and repeated the gesture with his left fist, slowly advancing towards the vox-masts.

The Space Marines spread out, Uriel and five warriors curving their route to the left as Learchus led the others along the contours of the canyon walls. Uriel advanced with Harkus at his side. The Techmarine had a bolt pistol drawn, and carried a cog-toothed axe, reminding Uriel that, despite his loyalty to Mars, Harkus was a warrior of the Ultramarines first and foremost. The armature limbs of his servo-harness were drawn in tight, soft spurts of gas venting from exhaust ports on his back.

'What can you make out?' asked Uriel, knowing Harkus would see the terrain in a very different way to the rest of the formation.

'The arrays are non-functional,' said Harkus, his voice flat and devoid of tone. A whirring lens apparatus clicked into place over the Techmarine's right eye. 'The residual flux readings tell me the generators are still functional, and…'

'And what?' said Uriel, holding up an open palm and pulling it down to his shoulder.

Instantly, his warriors halted and dropped to their knees with weapons trained outwards.

'I can see a number of attached devices that do not belong on this equipment,' said Harkus, scanning his head from side to side.

'What kind of devices?'

'Unknown, but they are not of Imperial manufacture.'

'Tau?'

'The energy patterns match previously encountered xenotech,' confirmed Harkus.

Uriel passed the word to Clausel and Winterbourne. 'Looks like the tau have definitely been here.'

'We have the northern approach covered,' said Winterbourne.

'In position on the ridge above,' reported Clausel. Uriel looked over to Learchus and nodded.

Both combat squads moved out, advancing carefully towards the array of vox-masts. The air snapped and fizzed with discharge, and Uriel's auto-senses were fluctuating wildly with the distortion and interference generated by the masts. An army of greenskins could be hidden within a hundred metres of him and he wouldn't know it. With a thought, he disengaged all but the most basic of his auto-senses, knowing that his instincts for danger would serve him better.

Step by step, they drew closer to the array. Uriel could see the devices that Harkus was talking about attached to the base of around fifty of the vox-masts and a few of the generators. Rectangular in shape, they were about the same size as a Space Marine backpack and formed from a hard, plastic-looking material. Etched into the surface was a circle that encompassed a smaller circle drawn from the larger circle's apex.

Uriel recognised it as a tau icon that represented one of their settled worlds, but he had no idea which one. 'What are they?' asked Uriel.

'I cannot answer that with certainty, Captain Ventris,' replied Harkus, the arms of his servo-harness unfolding and flexing like a collection of scorpion tails. 'Not without disassembly and study.'

'Then give me your best guess.'

Harkus didn't move, but the arms of his servo-harness seemed to shrug, as though the very idea of an acolyte of the Machine-God guessing at something was abhorrent. The light behind the lenses of Harkus's helmet flickered as the Techmarine accessed the vast wealth of knowledge implanted in his augmetics.

'Assessment: the interference in the vox networks suggests they are jamming devices, which would explain the build up in unknown spectra of wavefronts I am detecting.'

'Can you disable them?'

'Potentially,' replied Harkus, 'if I can ascertain the power source of the devices.'

'Do it,' said Uriel.

Harkus crouched before the nearest of the devices, the servo-arms of his harness extending a number of strange devices and tools. Uriel left the Techmarine to his work, and moved to where Learchus held his combat squad in readiness for action.

'Re-form the squad,' ordered Uriel. 'Set up a perimeter and hold at a hundred metres.'

Learchus nodded and asked, 'What are those things?'

'Harkus thinks they're jamming devices.'

'Tau?'

'Yes. I recognise the markings on them.'

'This should be all we need to make Governor Shonai mobilise his armed forces,' said Learchus. 'Not even he can ignore this.'

'I hope so,' said Uriel. 'I just pray we're not too late.'

No sooner were the words out of Uriel's mouth than the devices attached to the vox-masts exploded.

Fire and light surged out and upwards in a series of percussive detonations. Uriel was hurled from his feet by the blast wave, and slammed into Learchus. The two of them were smashed to the ground, and Uriel felt the breath driven from him. He lost his grip on his bolter and tasted blood.

A handful of red icons flashed to life as his armour registered breaches. His visor was opaque, an automatic reaction to the blinding light, but it was already returning to normal.

He was lying on his back, looking up at the high cliffs of the canyon and the flaring remnants of a blooming cloud of debris. Shards of broken metal and rock were raining down, and he could hear a terrible groan of tortured metal.

Uriel quickly checked the status icons of his squad, and was relieved to see that everyone was alive. Shaking off the disorientation, Uriel rolled to his feet and saw his bolter a few metres away. He retrieved it quickly, and checked for the rest of his warriors.

Pulverised rock dust billowed around Uriel, and he heard a sharp snapping sound, like the crack of a whip, which was quickly followed by a succession of identical sounds.

At first, he thought they were gunshots, but a second later he realised what he was hearing.

'Move!' he shouted. 'Get to the canyon walls!'

The smoke twitched in front of him, and he threw himself flat as a whipping guy wire slashed through the air above him like a scythe blade. Another sliced past, and then another. Uriel pushed himself to his feet, and ran towards the edge of the canyon as metal buckled and the towering vox-masts began to fall.

The huge towers twisted as the high winds and gravity did their work, tonnes of metal crashing down in a graceful, almost leisurely fashion. Height and proportion rendered the vox-masts slender and delicate, but they were incredibly solid pieces of engineering, and slammed down with the force of artillery strikes.

One after another, the masts thundered to the ground amid the noise of snapping wires and screaming metal. The canyon shook with the power of the impacts, and Uriel staggered like a drunk as he fought through the chaos of destruction. Something struck his shoulder-guard, and he stumbled, dropping to one knee under the weight of the blow.

A snapped spar of metal hammered into the rock beside him, like a spear hurled by a vengeful god, followed by chunks of spalled metal and shattered rock. Uriel swore and pushed onwards, weaving a Codex evasion pattern before realising that it would be ineffective against randomly falling debris.

He felt the presence of others around him, but could only identify them through the icons on his visor, such was the thickness of the dust thrown up.

At last, Uriel reached the edge of the canyon and pressed his body against the rock wall. Looking around, he could see other members of his squad. They were battered and scarred by the explosion, but appeared otherwise unhurt.

'Rally on me!' ordered Uriel as the destruction of the vox-masts continued unabated.

His warriors formed up around him, and Uriel whispered a quick thank you to his armour as Chaplain Clausel's voice came urgently over the helmet vox.

'Uriel! Uriel, are you reading me? What happened down there?'

'Devices attached to the vox-masts,' said Uriel. 'Turns out they were explosives as well as jammers.'

'Casualties?'

'No one is hurt,' said Uriel. 'Though I cannot see Techmarine Harkus yet.'

'We shall drop into the canyon with you.'

'No. Remain where you are, Chaplain,' ordered Uriel. 'I don't want to bring anyone else in until we're sure there are no secondary charges.'

'Very wise,' conceded Clausel. 'Very well, I shall await your orders.'

Uriel shut off the link as Learchus edged towards him along the canyon wall. The sergeant looked as though he'd been through a boarding action, the frontal plates of his armour dented and scarred from multiple impacts. Blood leaked from a gash in his armour somewhere below his right shoulder. 'You're hurt,' said Uriel.

'It's nothing,' said Learchus. 'What in the name of Guilliman just happened?'

'I'm not sure. Harkus was examining the devices and, well, you saw what happened after that.'

'They must have had anti-tamper traps worked into them,' said Learchus.

'No. Harkus would have found them,' said Uriel, as a new and unwelcome thought arose in his mind. 'They were detonated manually.'

'That means the enemy is close.'

Uriel nodded. 'Take your section and see if Harkus is still alive.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to link with Winterbourne.'

Learchus passed the word, and, as his combat squad formed up, yet more sharp cracks echoed from the sides of the canyon. This time, Uriel was sure it was gunfire.

SEVEN

Koudelkar Shonai liked to think of himself as a direct man, a man who could take action when it was needed and who could be trusted not to vacillate needlessly. It was a character trait he expected in others, and his temper frayed when those around him did not meet such expectations.

His temper was fraying now. It had been two days since he had arrived at Galtrigil, the sprawling ancestral home of the Shonai family, and his aunt's promised business venture had yet to materialise.

The Shonai estates nestled in a basin of undulant hills at the western end of Tembra Ridge on the shores of Lake Masura, comprising over five thousand hectares of ornamental gardens, forests and hidden follies. The magnificent house, all turrets, towers and arches, had been built nearly a thousand years ago by the founder of the Shonai Cartel, Gait Shonai, and was an opulent palace of marble, steel and glass. It had been a wonder of its day, a monument to wealth and status, but it now felt like a prison.

His mother and aunt dwelt here, and the friction their relationship generated made a house that had once been bright and full of laughter feel like a mortuary. Koudelkar had spent the better part of the last two days promenading the lakeside gardens and terraces in order to escape. The fresh air was invigorating, the scenery spectacular, and, best of all, it kept him from the frosty atmosphere within the house.

Though he was patently in no danger at Galtrigil, protocol, and that damned old fool Lortuen Perjed, demanded that he be accompanied at all times by his brutish skitarii and a squad of heavily armed Lavrentian soldiers. His mother hated having armed men in the house, and even his normally unflappable Aunt Mykola seemed nervous around the skitarii. Given the internecine strife that had torn at Pavonis some years ago, he supposed that was understandable.

Koudelkar stopped beside a carved wooden bench that looked out over the lake, a glittering expanse of frigid water fed by glacial melt-water that poured down the flanks of Tembra Pudge. The sun was midway through its descent into the west, and the surface of the water foamed with whitecaps. A stiff wind sprang up as he took a seat, carrying the bite of cold from mountains that reared like jagged fortress walls to the north.

He remembered golden summer days, running through the gardens and swimming in the lake with his brother, but that was a long time ago, and Koudelkar forced the memory from his mind. Dumak was dead, killed by an assassin's bullet intended for his aunt, and the pain of his murder was still strong. His mother had never really recovered from the loss, and a seed of resentment had built in her heart towards her sister.

More than the solitude and respite from his relatives' carping, the spectacular vista afforded Koudelkar the opportunity to process the multifarious transactions and business deals he was negotiating.

Many of the deals were with off-world clients, powerful guild entities in nearby systems, and even one in a neighbouring sub-sector. He had come to Galtrigil at the behest of his Aunt Mykola, who had promised him a meeting with a representative of powerful business interests with a great desire to work with the Shonai and assure Pavonis a prosperous future.

Koudelkar had been sceptical, and had the proposition come from anyone other than the former Planetary Governor of Pavonis, he would never have agreed to meet with this man. The meeting had been scheduled two days ago, but the representative had failed to arrive at the appointed time, much to Koudelkar's chagrin.

He had been on the verge of returning to Brandon Gate, but Aunt Mykola had persuaded him to stay, reminding him that no one could predict exactly when a ship might arrive from a distant world.

Reluctantly, he had agreed to stay, and had spent the last two days taking the air and restoring his soul in the sculpted wilderness of his family's estates. Truth be told, he was glad to be away from Brandon Gate. The city had become more of a barracks than the thriving metropolis he fondly remembered from before the troubles. The Administratum's policy of branding those with suspect cartel affiliations had put a great many people out of work, and resentment towards the planet's new masters was simmering beneath the surface.

Naivety and false expectations had squandered many of the opportunities that had arisen in the wake of the de Valtos coup, and it would not take much to reignite the flames of rebellion. It astounded Koudelkar that supposedly intelligent people couldn't see that. The populace were hungry and frightened, which made for a potent mix of discontent. People without coin in their pockets and food in their bellies were capable of almost anything.

As much as he had berated Gaetan Baltazar and Lord Winterbourne concerning the fiery rhetoric of Prelate Culla, he knew that he would need to order the colonel of the 44th to restrain the man. He was stirring up a hornet's nest of unrest, and that could only end badly.

The business deals he was attempting to put together would bring much needed employment to Pavonis, and the personal esteem that came from earning a living would ease much of the building pressure amongst the populace.

Aunt Mykola promised that this deal could ease the suffering of the people and bring undreamed of prosperity to Pavonis. It sounded like grand hyperbole, but his aunt had always had a silver tongue when it came to swaying people to her cause.

His ruminations were interrupted when he heard the familiar shuffle, click, shuffle of Lortuen Perjed. The old man was wrapped in the thick brown habit of an adept of the Administratum, yet still seemed troubled by the mildness of the early evening, and the hand that grasped the top of his cane was white.

'What do you want?' asked Koudelkar, not bothering to hide his irritation at this interruption. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'

'Your aunt sends for you,' said Perjed.

Koudelkar sighed. 'What does she want now?'

'She says that the representative you are here to meet is on his way.'

Uriel jogged through the smoke and dust of the vox-masts' destruction, his bolter held loosely across his chest. He could pick out little through the haze, but the snapping exchange of gunfire was getting louder, as was a high-pitched, skirling screeching sound. Amid the after-echoes of the detonations, Uriel could pick out the heavy bark of hellguns, as well as the sharper crack of a weapon type he didn't recognise.

He saw shadows moving in the clouds of dust ahead, and caught a flash of light reflecting from a gold breastplate. He angled his course towards it. The strange screeching sound came again, louder this time, and Uriel swung his bolter up, moving forwards and the weapon's barrel scanning in tandem with his gaze. A man screamed in agony, a horrible shriek that was abruptly cut off.

The warriors accompanying Uriel spread out, their weapons raised. Four were equipped with bolters similar to his, while the fifth carried a bulky flamer, its wide nozzle hissing with a cone of heat.

A shot ricocheted from Uriel's armour, a solid round, but he continued without a break in his stride. He didn't think the shot had been aimed at him.

Emerging from the dust of the explosions and into the smoke of battle, Uriel saw that Winterbourne's scribe and vox-servitor were dead, killed by the explosion or mangled in the cascade of falling debris. Uriel was relieved to hear the clipped tones of Lord Winterbourne directing the fire of his soldiers. His storm-troopers were still fighting, trading shots with a swarming pack of pink-skinned aliens, whipping spines trailing from their bizarre avian skulls.

'Kroot,' snarled Uriel, recognising the aliens as a mercenary race in thrall to the tau.

They moved as though their muscles were rapidly uncoiling springs, bounding and leaping with a hideously unnatural gait. The horrid screeching sound was coming from them, and they wielded long rifles shaped like black-powder weapons used by feral world barbarians.

Nathaniel Winterbourne fired his battered laspistol from behind the cover of a tangle of fallen metal. His frock coat was in tatters, and his helmet had been torn from his head. Blood coated the right side of his face and streamed from a long cut on his arm, but the wiry colonel still raged at the foes before him. His hounds stood beside him, barking furiously at the kroot.

One of the kroot vaulted the debris sheltering Winterbourne, the jagged blades fixed to the ends of its rifles slashing for his head. Winterbourne shot the creature square in the face, the blast tearing away most of its skull. The momentum of the kroot's leap carried it onwards, and it's corpse bore the colonel to the ground.

The vorehounds savaged the body, and Uriel moved on as he saw Winterbourne pick himself up, his jacket stained with the alien's blood. The distinctive hard bangs of bolter-fire joined the cacophony of battle, and a handful of kroot were instantly cut down, blown in half or simply exploding under the impact of the shells. Dozens more survived the fusillade, their squawking war cries rising in urgency and ferocity.

A storm-trooper dropped as a solid shot took him low in the gut, and another fell as a kroot fighter slammed a serrated blade into his chest. Uriel drew a bead on the killer, a heavily-muscled beast with a flaring crest of red quill-spines, but it bounded clear of its victim with a throaty screech, and Uriel lost sight of it in the billowing dust.

The intensity of gunfire was building, and Uriel felt a trio of impacts on his armour, but none were serious enough to trouble him. Kroot were swarming over the storm-troopers, and yet another was brought down, hacked down by four kroot with bloody beaks and stabbing knives. A shadow moved beside Uriel, and he swung around as a hissing kroot warrior hurled itself at him.

Uriel caught it in midair, his iron grip closing around its throat as its blade scored down his breastplate. One swift twist and its neck snapped. It died without another sound. A second beast came at him from his right. Uriel dropped the dead kroot, spinning and drawing his sword in the same motion. The blade sang out in a golden arc and neatly beheaded his attacker.

Uriel quickly scanned the combat, his enhanced battle-sense reading the ebb and flow of the fight in a moment. Liquid fire bloomed from the flamer, and a host of alien warriors shrieked in pain as they were immolated. Bolter-fire beat a merciless, relentless tattoo, and only occasionally did the sharper crack of the alien weapons pierce its symphony of destruction.

'Forward!' shouted Uriel. 'Take the fight to them! Chaplain Clausel, we need your warriors! To me! Now!'

His Space Marines were shooting and killing with methodical precision, moving and firing with the practiced ease of the galaxy's finest warriors. The surviving storm-troopers were fighting hard, but the kroot were too many for them to contain.

The commander of the Lavrentians was fighting a pair of kroot warriors blade to blade, and though the wiry colonel was holding his own, Uriel saw that he wouldn't last much longer. Uriel ran through the fighting to join Winterbourne, cutting down the first of the colonel's opponents with his sword, and putting a bolt-round through the other's chest.

Winterbourne swept his sword around and gave Uriel an elaborate bow, his face breaking open in an expression of relief.

'My thanks, Uriel,' gasped Winterbourne. 'I'm obliged to you. I don't think I could have held them much longer.'

'We're not out of this yet,' said Uriel as a handful of kroot came at them. Uriel scooped up the corpse of one of the aliens and hurled it at the charging beasts. One was tripped by the body, but the others easily sprang over it. Uriel surged to meet them.

A blade snapped against his armour, and he smashed his shoulder-guard into the kroot's chest, pulverising its ribcage and hurling it back. He felt a rifle blade hook around his leg, and stepped into the attack, stamping down on the weapon. It snapped, and he thrust his sword into the kroot's belly, tearing it upwards and out through its collarbone.

It fell with a horrendous screech of pain as the kroot Uriel had tripped with the corpse sprang to its feet. Winterbourne's sword lanced out and tore through its chest, but no sooner had he delivered the deathblow than he was punched from his feet by a powerful beast with foaming jaws and slashing claws.

At first, Uriel thought one of the colonel's hounds had turned on its master, but then he saw that the creature was lithe and wrought from the same stock as the kroot. Its jaws snapped shut on Winterbourne's arm, and the man's scream of pain was hideous.

Uriel had no time to aid the colonel as the remaining two kroot attacked. One fired its rifle at point-blank range, the round impacting on Uriel's breastplate and leaving a perfectly round dent in the centre of the eagle. Uriel's sword swept up and hacked the alien's weapon in two as the second monster, the heavily-muscled creature with the crest of red quills, slammed the butt of its weapon against Uriel's helmet.

The alien hound's eyes were like cloudy pearls, and they locked with Nathaniel Winterbourne's as it bit through the heavy fabric of his uniform jacket. Blood streamed down his sleeve, and he felt its fangs close on the bones of his forearm. He kicked out at the vile beast through the haze of agony as he fumbled for his pistol.

The weapon had fallen from his grip when the creature bore him to the ground and might as well have been a hundred kilometres away. His sword was buried in the chest of another alien and just as far out of reach. He kicked and punched, but the beast was oblivious to his attacks. Winterbourne cried out as he saw another two alien hunting beasts barrelling through the smoke and dust of battle towards him, their jaws wide and ready to tear him apart.

They never reached him.

Two black and gold bullet-like forms intercepted them in a flurry of snapping fangs and tearing claws. Winterbourne's heart swelled as his faithful vorehounds, creatures he'd acquired during a deployment to Vastian's World, leapt to his defence. Germaine rolled in the dust with one of the hounds, while Fynlae, scrapper Fynlae who'd lost his leg in the storm of an artillery strike on Boranis, faced off against the other.

Fresh agony coursed down Winterbourne's arm, and he reached up with his free hand to jab his fingers into the eyes of the attacking beast. It yelped in pain, and relaxed its grip a fraction. He tore his limb from its jaws in a welter of blood, and scrabbled over the rock towards his fallen laspistol. His hand closed on its grip as an immense weight landed on him, pinning him to the ground.

He smelled the hot, rank breath of the creature on his back. Saliva sprayed from its jaws and spattered the back of his head. He tried to roll the beast off, but it was too heavy. Before it fastened its jaws on his neck, the weight was suddenly gone, and he felt a growling, howling scrum of fur and flesh thrashing behind him. Winterbourne propped himself up on his good arm, seeing Fynlae locked in a battle of fang and claw with the alien beast.

His vorehound's missing leg had not dimmed its ferocity, and it fought in a frenzy to protect him. Bared teeth flashed, and blood sprayed into the air. The alien hound gave a screeching yelp of pain, and Winterbourne let out a wordless shout of pride as Fynlae ripped its throat out.

Winterbourne glanced over his shoulder, and his heart sank.

Germaine was dead, her belly torn open and her eyes staring glassily at the sky, but so too was her killer, the vorehound's jaws locked around its throat. The beast that Fynlae had faced earlier was dead, its face a mask of blood where the old, war-scarred hound had crushed its skull in his jaws.

Behind the dead animals, Captain Ventris was on his knees, struggling with a pair of kroot fighters. One circled the combat, darting in to stab at Uriel's armour with a long-bladed knife, while a brute of a monster with a crest of flaming red spines attempted to drive its rifle-blade into Uriel's neck.

Uriel's bulk was so much greater than the kroot's, that it should have been a mockery of a competition, but the alien's powerful physique was proving to be a match for that of the Space Marine.

Winterbourne raised his pistol, fighting to hold it steady as the creature forced its long blade towards Uriel's throat.

Mykola Shonai had aged in the years since Pavonis had been saved from the insurrection of Kasimir de Valtos. Her grey hair had turned white, and, though the sharpness of her green eyes was undimmed, a genetic defect in her retinal structure meant that she was an unsuitable candidate for ophthalmic surgery, and was now forced to wear eyeglasses to see much beyond her immediate surroundings.

In her long cream robes, she looked like a matronly famulus, but Koudelkar knew her well enough not to let her appearance fool him into underestimating her intelligence. She had once ruled a planet of the Emperor and such an achievement was not to be taken lightly.

His aunt was pacing along a marble flagged path in the south arboretum when he found her. She claimed she did her best thinking when she paced, and when she turned to face him, the excitement that radiated from her was palpable. The air in the arboretum was hot and humid, and Koudelkar could see his bodyguards sweating in their heavy armour, though the skitarii seemed unaffected. He wondered if they could alter their metabolism to better cope with changing environments.

Evening sunlight shone through the treated glass walls and ceiling, creating a sweltering environment better suited to raise the plants cultivated from the few stems recovered from the wasteland of the Gresha Forest.

She rushed over to him and looked him up and down. 'You'll be changing into your dress uniform, won't you?'

The words were phrased as a question, but Koudelkar knew his aunt's mannerisms well enough to know that it was actually a statement. Mykola brushed at his shoulders and shook her head.

'Yes, I think so. You'll want to make a good impression,' she said.

'A good impression on whom?' asked Koudelkar, stepping away from her fussing.

'The representative, who else?' she said, as if he were being obtuse, and began straightening his hair with a moistened palm.

Koudelkar threw Lortuen Perjed a confused glance. 'Adept Perjed told me he was just about to arrive.'

'Hmm… oh, yes, of course,' said Mykola, straightening his jacket. 'Oh well, this will serve, I suppose.'

'You want me to make a good impression on a man I don't even know,' said Koudelkar, prising away her hands. Aunt Mykola always fussed over him, more than his mother ever did, but this was extreme, even for her. 'Does he even have a name?'

'Of course he does.'

'Then what is it?'

Mykola hesitated, looking away for the briefest moment, but Koudelkar read the unease in her body language. 'He's called Aun.'

'Aun?' asked Perjed, with a sharp intake of breath. 'What manner of name is that?'

Mykola shrugged, as though the nature of the representative's name was a matter of supreme indifference to her. 'It's an off-world name, Adept Perjed. It's strange, I know, but no stranger than ours are to him, I expect.'

Koudelkar decided he'd had enough of his aunt's evasive answers and looked her straight in the eye.

'Well, does he have a last name? And who or what does he represent? You know, you've told me next to nothing about this person or how you know him. You've spun me a grand tale of how he can offer Pavonis great things, but unless you tell me who he is and what organisation he represents, then I am leaving right now.'

Mykola folded her arms and turned away from him. 'You're just like your grandfather, do you know that?'

'If you mean I'm not about to put up with vague answers to specific questions, then I suppose I am. Don't change the subject or try and make me feel guilty. If I am going to do business with this person then I need to know more about him. I cannot negotiate from a position of ignorance.'

Mykola turned to face him, and he almost backed away from the steely resolve he saw in her eyes.

'Very well, you want to know the truth?'

'I do.'

'You'll see it's for the best,' said Mykola, glancing over at his bodyguards and Lortuen Perjed, 'but you're not going to like it at first.'

'I assure you, Aunt, I like lies even less.'

She nodded and said, 'I've never lied to you, Koudelkar, but I've deliberately shielded you from some knowledge until the time was right.'

'That sounds like more evasion,' said Koudelkar. 'The right time is now, so get to the point.'

'I'm getting there if you'd let me,' snapped Mykola, walking towards him. 'Aun represents a collective from the Dal'yth sept.'

'Dal'yth?' hissed Adept Perjed. 'Emperor's tears, what have you done, woman?'

'Be quiet, you insolent little man,' snapped Mykola.

'Never heard of them,' said Koudelkar, alarmed by Perjed's exclamation.

'That shouldn't surprise you,' said a voice behind him, and Koudelkar recognised his mother's caustic tones.

'Keep out of this, Pawluk,' said his aunt.

Koudelkar sighed in exasperation. His mother and aunt sharing the same room was like putting two hungry tigers in a cage. Why they insisted on living in the same house, even one large enough for them to avoid each other, was a constant puzzle to Koudelkar.

Pawluk Shonai's face was as pinched and hostile as ever, her lifeless grey hair pulled back in a tight bun. He felt the tension ratchet up a notch. Despite the warmth of the arboretum, a distinct chill entered with his mother.

For an amused moment, Koudelkar wondered if the plants would suffer from the chill. 'Hello, Mother,' he said. 'Won't you join us?'

His mother linked her arm with his and glared at his aunt. 'Well?' she asked.

'Well what?' asked Mykola.

'Aren't you going to tell him? About this Aun?'

'Tell me what?' asked Koudelkar.

His aunt pursed her lips, and Koudelkar could see her anger threatening to boil over. 'I was just about to tell him, Pawluk.'

'Governor,' said Lortuen Perjed urgently, 'we must get you out of here.'

'Why, what's going on?'

Before Perjed could answer, Koudelkar heard the approaching thrum of engines from outside the house. He looked up and saw three aircraft swoop over the glass roof of the arboretum. Waving fronds, leaves and climbing flowers obscured the details of them, but it was clear that they were of a design he had never seen before.

'What manner of craft are these?' he asked. 'I don't recognise the pattern.'

'Governor,' repeated Perjed. 'We have to go. Now.'

The aircraft were a drab olive colour and striped with camouflage patterns, but Koudelkar could make out little else of their shapes. Two appeared to be smaller, wedge-shaped fighters and the third was a four-engine transport craft of some sort. Each was gracefully proportioned and flew with a grace and an agility that was quite out of keeping with any Imperial aircraft in which Koudelkar had flown.

As the smaller fighters circled overhead, the transport craft rotated on its axis and descended through the growing dusk towards the stone terrace beyond the arboretum on a rippling column of distorted air. Mykola threw open the large doors leading to the terrace and beckoned him to follow her.

His aunt's evasive answers, and Adept Perjed's insistence that he leave, gnawed at his resolve. He looked down at his mother, alarmed at the panic he saw there.

'I didn't know until today, I swear,' she said. 'She made me promise not to tell you.'

Deciding that it was time he find out what was going on, Koudelkar walked out onto the terrace, warm gusts from the aircraft's descent billowing his coat and hair. Perjed, the Lavrentians and skitarii followed him, and he spotted that they carried their weapons to the fore with the safeties off. He shielded his eyes from flying grit as a wide ramp lowered from the transport craft's rear and an armoured machine stepped from its brightly lit interior.

It was humanoid, standing at least twice the height of a man and was a thing of beauty. Fashioned from plates of what looked like olive green ceramics, it was constructed with a fine sense of craftsmanship as well as aesthetics. Its rectangular head mount turned towards him, and, though it resembled nothing so much as a remote picter, Koudelkar felt sure there was intelligence lurking behind the blinking red light of its lens.

Was this a machine at all, or was it crewed by a living creature? It was certainly large enough for someone to pilot. At first glance, the machine looked like an automated loader servitor, but the lethal-looking weapons mounted on each arm told Koudelkar that this creation was not designed for labour, but for battle.

His appreciation of the machine's construction evaporated, and his mother's grip on his arm tightened. Koudelkar felt some of her fear transfer to him as he saw that the Lavrentians had their hellguns aimed squarely at the machine's chest, and that the implanted rotary cannons of the skitarii were spooling up.

Koudelkar realised that the situation could turn ugly very quickly, and struggled to project an air of calm authority. Two identical machines followed the first, each moving with a smooth grace and autonomy not normally found in mechanised creations, finally convincing Koudelkar that the fighting machines were crewed by living pilots.

His mouth was dry with tension, but he turned to his bodyguards and said, 'Hold your fire, but be ready.'

The three machines stepped to the right of the aircraft and another three emerged from its interior, taking up position to the left. Koudelkar knew nothing of their capabilities, but felt sure that, in a firefight, he and his men would come off worst.

'Mykola,' he hissed, 'what have you done?'

'What needed to be done to save our world from being taken from us by outsiders,' said his aunt, sending a withering glance towards Adept Perjed as she strode towards the aircraft. Its rear engine nacelles rotated into a lateral position in line with the running lines of the hull, and his aunt halted at the bottom of the ramp as a slender figure appeared at the top.

The figure was clad in long robes of white and gold with a shimmering crimson weave, and its head was framed by a high collar of enamelled silver and crimson. It carried a short, caramel-coloured baton topped with a glinting gem in each hand, holding them crossed over its chest. Its face was grey, the colour of a winter sky at dusk, and its flat, alien features were devoid of expression.

His aunt bowed to the figure, and then turned towards him.

'Koudelkar, allow me to introduce Aun'rai of the Dal'yth sept and envoy of the Tau Empire,' she said.