Nothing about the 41st millennium is in any way amusing. The death toll of the average day numbers in the billions of humans, even excluding the casualties of war. Pirate raids, ganger conflicts, starvation, daemonic incursion, xenos treachery, and many more horrors besides besiege every planet in the Imperium of Man. The lucky few, those who never experience tragedy or death on the scale of those most illustrious theaters which cater to propaganda more befitting a xenos Kalabite's sensibilities than a man's, live their days working endlessly to staff the imperial war machine. Every waking moment spent supplicant to the God Emperor, for fear of what makes the darkness its home. Every breath from birth to death taken with reverence to the Corpse God.
And yet, despite the trillions, or possibly quadrillions considering the Administratum's difficulties, of people living, breeding, and dying in this drudgery, there are those whose tales are told far from where they venture, and long after they pass. And occasionally, if the listener happens to be lucky, those tales can provide a fleeting amusement, to divert from this crushing obligation they toil under.
Far above the poisoned seas and soot-blackened crust of Ebriea II, drifts the The Fortuitous Augury. It glitters like a jewel from the light of the binary stars that dance through the void, as it orbits the sole inhabited world of the system. Past the innumerable communications antennas and point defense weaponry, through dozens of meters of plasteel and ceramic, lay the bridge, wrought in gilt and rare woods from distant planets.
At the helm of this great space-faring vessel is captain Ezequiel Traggat Procopius, a rogue trader of some renown, from Obscurus to Pacificus his touch is felt, and the shadows he casts are long. At his left hand are some of his most trusted advisors, though neither are truly beholden to him. A missionary of the Ecclesiarchy by the name of Ligarius Found, consumed at times by sheer zealous rage and at others by deep and abiding compassion, his emotional volatility is at once his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. The other is the void-master, Maglin Bolfa, whose skill in piloting ships, hard-won in the Imperial Navy, is matched only by the size of his commission from the dynasty and his fragile ego.
These three men, and the vital others that work ceaselessly in the echelons of the command deck, as well as the tens of thousands of nameless crewmen that have been conscripted, born, or damned to serve the Augury, have come to this system for the purposes beyond serving the Imperium of Man. The planet below is waging a fierce war against the rebellion in the heart of every man. The rural workers and hive scum have committed the foulest of heresies, rising up against their betters with the aid of daemons and xenos alike.
Yet here, in the heart of open sedition, there is opportunity for profit. The Imperial Guard takes time to muster its vast legions, and the Imperial Navy longer still; help for Ebriea II would normally arrive far too late to do anything but take the planet back in a most bloody fashion, commit those citizens that survive to purging fires, and possibly leave a token population behind to rebuild.
By intercepting the astropathic cries of the planetary governor, Ezequiel hopes to install his own men in the place of the current ruling class, and subtly take the planet as his own. No member of the Administratum contests who sits in a governor's chair, only demanding that the planet's tithes continue to flow. To take control, the Rebel must be quelled immediately, the nobility must be dealt a massive blow, and the Imperium at large must be mollified. Luckily, these goals can all be met in a single decisive action.
Deep within The Fortuitous Augury, beyond the armor and armament that would dazzle an ork freebooter, below the warp drives that would shame an eldar dragonship, and between the massive Gellar Field generators that befuddle the incursions of the daemonic host, stands a chapel. It, like all other things on this grand vessel, is decorated to the point of near gaudiness. Were it not for the history that pours off of every surface therein, the richness of this church would be obscene. Millions of people, over the course of thousands of years, have been at this altar, have sat in those pews, have gazed upon the relics, and their faith has soaked into every bejeweled decoration and every pious leering skull. To walk these hallowed isles is to skirt the very ages, and it is with a pneumatic hiss that the docking clamps release and techpriests begin their duties.
A team consisting of the final members of the dynasty's flagship cadre, the seneschal and the explorator, have stolen down to the surface of the planet to gain valuable tactical information. The seneschal, Diocletian Merisier, is no less important for not being among the three on the bridge. His position as the right hand of Ezequiel dictates that he be far more active in the field, and far less available for advice and alternative options, despite his excellence in both. Instead, he is trusted to carry out the will of the dynasty, and in this, he has done well: extracting a hundred-odd individuals of no particular import from cities and hives all over the planet.
The explorator, Thoren Laski, though sworn to none beyond the Omnissah, has proven himself to be an asset of considerable import to Ezequiel. His work after disembarking the shuttle has been byzantine and infinitely perplexing to all others, as supplicating the machine spirits across planetary distances is a delicate job, one that would have been impossible but for his abilities. He has acquired the enemy's once-secure vox traffic, their deployment plans, their every thought and emotion; and with all of this, the input of the refugees, and the help of his cognitive implants, he has ascertained the location of the Rebel's most holy of holies.
The Rebel, according to those rescued from his wrath and those kidnapped from his armies among the hundred and thirty souls aboard the shuttle, was a clever breed of devil, and had sunk hooks deep into their enemy's command structure, liberally seeding the nobility with conspirators and well-sharpened knives waiting for an opportunity. In doing so, however, they assumed they were to have quite awhile before outside help arrived, and as a result of the same weakness that made the Rebel to begin with, they had laxly allowed the greatest concentration of their planners and leaders to end up nearly next door to their opposites.
It is this flaw in the character of man, Ligarius pondered, that keeps us from the purity of focus and strength of will He holds. And as he sat aboard one of the oldest war ships in the sector, gazing down at that stinking, polluted hive world, that veritable jewel of an inhabited, viable planet, that bastion of hubris and heresy and potential profit, he was handed a series of charts by Maglin. With careful perusal, and the help of an antique reading glass, Ligarius found it good, and nodded, before handing them back.
Maglin gave the order.
Twenty souls have gathered in the chapel, their time nearly at hand. The techpriests had long since gone, their rites and preparations for what was about to occur finished at last. These chosen, blessed few were to be the first, and final message to the Rebel from on high, the response of an angry Father to his unruly children, the everlasting word of a shepherd to his flock. As they entered, the doors ponderously, inevitably, swung themselves shut, sealing with the snap-hiss of vacuum pressurization. As the glyphs above the doors counted down, the choir began.
Above, in the bridge, all was still, as over the vox sang the hymns of the God-Emperor, as some of his most beloved children were cast from the ship, never to return. The cathedral, hundreds of meters tall and twice as long, is hurled through the atmosphere of Ebriea II through magnetic propulsion, friction scorching plasteel and ceramic walls and doors. Its parabolic arc terminating at, and detonating, the imperial governor's palatial estate. The impact destroys much of the surrounding hive-city, the spaceport, and the most extravagant and luxurious estates on the planet. With a clap of thunder as the orbital drop-cathedral comes to rest, the Rebel is finished.
Massive church bells ring their doleful tones as the doors of the congregation are flung open. A dozen voices raise themselves in harmony over massive vox casters built into the towering spires, and on every vox network previously cajoled by Thoren. And it is here, at the dawn of the fiftieth day of open rebellion, that the words are heard:
Ding Dong mala mortuus est,
quem veteres strigam,
impii strigam,
Ding Dong impiorum strigam mortuus est!