Brother-Captain Lysander read the latest report, twelve pages of documentation saying that, in essence, they knew nothing of the whereabouts of the Sword of Lycurgas. He put down the report, and took a sip of the cup of warm bloodwine that had been sitting on his huge earth-oak desk. The desk was a relic, and was astronomically expensive. To the right person, it could have bought a city, harkening back as it did to a time when trees still grew wild on Holy Earth. It was a heavy thing, many millenia old, and just as sturdy as the day it was made.

He hung his head slightly, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the fingers of his left hand. His head was pounding, as it always did when he ignored the requirements to sleep. For a week and a half, in this case. Being a marine had its perks. But then, one was still human. Sort of. And the night was pressing down on him, at that moment.

He sighed loudly. His mind was wandering, again. And when it did, it always came back to the same point. Ed Haruman was missing. Perhaps the most promising up and coming Deathbringer officer since… well, himself, if Lysander shunned false modesty.

He'd done well through a whole string of engagements, but come to Lysander's attention during the opening engagements against orks during the Third Armageddon War. Haruman had taken command of his squad when the foot of a squiggoth had flattened his sergeant. That squad had held the northern approaches to the phoenix bridge until two regiments of Imperial Guard arrived to push northwards towards several 'rok' landing-sites. Haruman's squad had taken six casualties, two of which were dead, including the sergeant. The heavy bolter barrels had fired almost constantly for days, and the weapons had fused to the armoured hands of their bearers through overheating. But they had held the bridge open, Brother Haruman coordinating the orbital bombardment by Imperial warships in low orbit.

And the Imperial Guard had been forced to use their tanks to clear away the mounds of ork corpses, piled eight deep in sections. The orks never again came that close to taking the bridge. Brother Haruman became Brother-Sergeant Haruman. And he just got better from there.

Beta-Mithrax VI made him, however. Lysander watched Haruman, by then a brother-lieutenant, lead his platoon with stunning success, taking minimal casualties throughout the gruelling six months of combat with orks, heretics of the Alpha Legion, and marines of the White Hellions chapter, who had turned their back on the Imperium. Six Deathbringers had died under Haruman, of the thirty that had fought under him. By the end of that campaign, Lysander had recommended Haruman for the Crux de Humanitate, and a promotion to brother-captain.

But now, he was lost to the warp, as far as Lysander was able to tell. And, more importantly, along with over a hundred space marines, more than twelve thousand bondsman, and one of the Chapter's three battlebarges.

Mindful of Lysander's concern for his protégé, Master Ragarik had tasked Lysander and his 2nd Company to investigate the missing company, and, if possible, take any action required to resolve the matter, at Lysander's discretion.

But the problem was that they couldn't find a problem. The Sword of Lycurgas and its crew compliment had just vanished. The Imperial Navy had reported a complete halting to any and all raiding activity by the Free Enterprise, so the generally held consensus was that the Sword had managed to destroy it. But it had not confirmed its operation, nor asked for retasking, nor made any communication at all, in fact.

The trail was easy to follow, to a point. Cadia, where it took on supplies after the campaigns there. South to the fleet yards at Cypra Mundi, for repair and refit. Gathalamor. Picked up in warp-transit by defence arrays around Ophelia IV, still heading towards the galactic south, and the Maelstrom patrol routes. Contacted shortly thereafter by Imperial Navy astro-telepathic broadcast from Macharia. Responded. Then went on a merry jaunt throughout that whole area of the Imperium, rendezvousing briefly with a Dark Templar strike cruiser, shortly before transmitting a final communication to Lycurgas, time stamped 4189906M41. High command had waited nearly three months before becoming concerned. Now, it was 2270906M41. And the Deathbringers chapter, as a whole, was exceptionally concerned.

Lysander muttered to himself. A battlebarge didn't simply disappear. The last message, perhaps, was their best clue. 33 days ago, give or take. Their location was given, as was their intended course of action, the name of the sender, in this case Adept Van Prof…

And all of sudden a course of action came to him. Sudden insight, like a bolt from the Emperor, shone bright in his mind.

Adept Van Prof was an astropath, broadcasting a message to a facility, rather than a specific individual. Therefore, other Imperial ships would have picked up the message, even though they'd have been unable to decode it. If they were following standard Imperial procedure, they'd have recorded the time, and point of origin…

Other Imperial ships, such as a Dark Templar strike cruiser, for example.

Lysander depressed the comm-stud on his desk, then spoke into the receiver.

"Have High-Adept Vikrano meet me at the Reliquary."

There was a brief pause before a response came back over the intercom.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but the High-Adept is asleep and…"

"Then wake him. Have him send a message to Nadgazad. Tell the Dark Templars that we are coming."

Lysander closed the channel, then walked to his wardrobe, and donned the flowing black-on-gray robes of a Deathbringer brother-captain. Then, fabric flowing behind him, he made for the entrance to his quarters, pausing briefly at the intercom-point. Once more, he depressed the comm-stud, and spoke into the grille.

"Muster the 2nd Company, and ready the Leonidas. We move at dawn."