Series V - The Fall

Episode VIII - Chaos Undivided

With battles both physical and political raging down on Ulis and in orbit, Chief Librarian Farus has gone aboard Inquisitor Orrick's vessel to learn the fate of the Chapter. With him is the Casket of Tears, the ancient Chaos artefact taken from the fallen Samovar von Guyen. He is anxious to see resolve the disputes at hand, but he is not the only one with much to lose – or to gain. Dark powers are watching.

Farus strode down the ramp of the Thunderhawk gunship, protected by his honour guard of four Astartes. He wore his battle armour. On the left shoulderpad was emblazoned a golden chalice and on his right was a horned skull, the symbol of the Librarium. The tabard hanging from his waist was adorned with patches and badges to denote his rank and experience. In his left hand was a secure lockbox containing the Casket of Tears.

More Astartes flanked the entrance to the hangar. They wore the dull suits of the Grey Knights, with the red letter I of the Inquisition on their chests and crimson edging on their kneepads.

He nodded to them as he passed.

They did not react. When the White Knights' delegation was through the doors they smoothly fell into step behind.

The radio built into Farus' psychic hood crackled with Josephine Orrick's voice.

"My apologies for the security, Chief Librarian," she sent.

"It is nothing," he replied.

A gun-servitor trundled out of an adjoining antechamber to lead them along the twisted labyrinth of passageways and halls. The air smelled gently of incense and the vessel was lit by artificial torches and strip-lights built into the vaulted ceiling.

Inquisitor Orrick was travelling aboard the Temple of Holy Fury, a relatively modest, two-kilometre cruiser bristling with every advanced weapon the organisation had to offer. Its interior was styled to resemble a fortress, with stone blocks making up the walls. But each step exposed its utilitarian roots: the floor was corrugated metal, bolted down by heavy rivets.

"You are being brought to my inner sanctum," Orrick explained, enigmatically. "Simply follow the servitor I have provided."

He did not send a reply. A glance at the Grey Knights behind him earned no response.

They stepped into a lift and began to descend towards the very heart of the ship. After a few moments the shutters slid apart to reveal a yawning chamber. It was easily a hundred metres from end to end, and almost fifty tall. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a building that looked as if it had been dropped in from somewhere else entirely. It resembled an ancient, arcane temple, complete with a triangular portico and long rows of columns on either side of the grand entrance. Countless wires trailed down from the gloom by the ceiling and entered the temple through holes cut into its roof.

The Grey Knights took their places on either side of the archway.

Farus went through, leaving his own men outside with them.

Inside, the wires that came through the roof were bunched up in large clusters and fed down into a sphere that hung in midair by taut ropes attached to the walls. It was humming angrily and glowing with a kind of inner strength. A single cable led from its underside and ran into a console in the very centre of the temple.

Josephine Orrick was working at it, browsing through classified files and sending them off to their destinations. She did not turn when she heard him.

"Ah," she said, and her voice echoed around them. "You are here. We have not met before."

"Yes, we have," he corrected her.

"Really?" she replied. "I don't suppose you were very memorable, then."

She clicked her fingers and another servitor appeared out of the darkness. It rolled up to them on caterpillar tracks with a golden tray balanced on spindly mechanical fingers. Sitting on the tray were two glasses of red wine.

"Would you like a drink?" she offered, turning to face him. "It's a Terran '342. Vintage."

"As you wish," he said, blankly.

"The decision is yours," she told him.

"Then the answer is no, thank you," he courteously replied.

"Did I say 342.M.41?" she asked, with a smile flickering across her face. "Let me clarify. What I meant was 342.M.29."

Farus reached out and plucked a glass off the tray.

"I thought that might change your mind," she said, coyly.

The servitor trundled back out of sight.

"This is my first time drinking wine from twelve thousand years ago," he admitted.

"Not quite," she said. "The original bottle is stored in my personal quarters. I took a small sample a few years ago and had the replicators make a few copies. It's not bad, though. They've got the aftertaste absolutely right."

Farus took a sip.

"To me, it tastes delicious," he said.

"I suppose it wouldn't be fair of me to expect a Space Marine to know about wine," she said. "Though you are somewhat exceptional. I expected you to come here wearing a helmet in an attempt to intimidate me. What changed?"

He reached up and tapped the hood that extended above his head with an armoured finger.

"This is my psychic hood," he told her. "It amplifies my powers and protects me from the Chaos Gods. It cannot be worn along with a helmet . . . and also, I am not here to intimidate you."

"Congratulations, then," she said, with a laugh. "You're doing a fine job. And speaking of the Chaos Gods, I believe you have something for me."

"Yes," Farus agreed.

He brought up the lockbox and held it out between them. It took a second to read his genetic print from the electromagnetic weave laid over a finger of his right glaive, then the heavy bolts slid back and its lid hissed open. The Casket of Tears sat inside it, surrounding by holy tokens and relics to negate its corrupting influence.

"It's beautiful," Orrick whispered.

"It is not safe," he warned.

She gestured around them at the grandeur of the inner sanctum.

"Trust me," she said. "Nowhere is it safer than here. Give it to me."

Farus reached into the lockbox and lifted the Casket out.

His actions did not go unnoticed. Thousands of light-years away, across the boundaries of time and space and outside the constraints of reality itself, dark powers awoke. With that moment of contact, ancient mechanisms were triggered and plans set in motion. A psychic signal burst out from the Sagittarius Arm and spread through the galaxy in a wave of black energy.

"Chief Librarian?" Orrick prompted, impatiently. "Give it to me."

Farus could barely hear her. He couldn't think straight. There was a faint ringing in his ears and he could taste something sour in his mouth. The world itself seemed to be twisting and changing before his eyes. He looked up from the Casket and pulled himself from his stupor for a moment, and then his vision flashed pure white. Now he was standing in the cathedral aboard the Glory of Russala, but it was not as he knew it. It resembled the vision that the Casket had given him in Fastunhive, when he had confronted Samovar von Guyen: cracked and crumbling walls, shattered windows and an endless carpet of dead Astartes covering the tiled floor.

"All this will came to pass," a voice hissed.

Farus whirled around.

The Executioner stood before him, ever inch as intimidating in death as he had been in life. Curling horns had burst from his temples and a pair of green eyes blazed through the darkness beneath a tall hood. The half-light gleamed off his steel-capped boots.

"You are dead," Farus gasped, struggling to summon the words.

"I live on," von Guyen whispered. "This body was never my host."

Farus' eyes widened.

"The Casket," he realised. "It must be destroyed."

"For me to die, yes," von Guyen purred. "But you will not destroy it. Instead, it will destroy you. When we last spoke, I told you that everything had changed."

"Nothing has changed," Farus insisted.

"That was a lie then," von Guyen said, simply, "And it is a lie now. Let me show you."

In a second, the vision was gone. Farus was sucked through dimensions and back to reality. But the world he came back to was not the world he had left. He was standing in the inner sanctum with the Casket of Tears under his arm and his bolt pistol held out before him in his right hand.

Orrick was facing him. Her eyes were blazing with psychic energy. He hadn't realised she was gifted as well, but that was the least of his concerned. His movements were not his own.

"I should have guessed you would turn," she spat. "You would not be the first. I knew it would happen the moment I detected the Tau code in Captain Jarfur's suit."

Farus fought desperately to overcome the forces imbuing him.

"Jarfur's suit?" he managed to get out. "You met him?"

"Of course I met him," she said, innocently. "I was the one who killed him."

"I am being held to blame for that crime," Farus snarled.

At an unspoken order from her, the gun-servitors rolled forward from the darkness around them.

His bolter barked once for each of them. They reeled away in showers of oil and sparks.

"You heretic!" he roared, gaining more control with each passing second. It was not the dark forces of Chaos that were guiding his hand now, but his own rising anger.

"Heretic?" she said. "I wear the signet ring of the Inquisition. I hold the authority of the Emperor of Mankind. Jarfur was the heretic, not me. Interaction through aliens by any means is a crime powerful by communication. Thus far I have received word of a conspiracy by some among your Chapter to bring down their fellows, borne witness to the assimilation of Tau and Imperial code and seen you declare innocent a Marine who patently breached the Lexicon, the code you claim to live by."

He said nothing. He was shaking with rage.

"The Inquisition hereby declares you suspended of authority pending excommunication," she said, unfazed by the pistol aimed at her face. "You are to surrender your Navigators and remain in orbit of Ulis until we reach a final verdict."

"Just like that?" he asked, coldly.

"Just like that," she replied. "And since you appear to be at the centre of all this, I will be placing you under arrest as a precaution. Astartes!"

The Grey Knights guarding the entrance stepped into the temple, ready to seize him.

An unseen force picked them up and lifted them into the air. Lightning bolts materialised from tears in the very fabric of reality and flashed off their armour. Their eyes burst inside their helmets and they dropped heavily to the floor.

"What have you done?" Orrick demanded, gesturing the bodies. "You'd kill your own kind?"

"You are not taking this Casket from me," he growled.

As he spoke, he holstered the pistol and drew his power sword from the scabbard by his belt.

"Try me," she said.

His blade came down diagonally across her front.

She blocked it with her mind, drawing energy from the Warp, and their psyches met. Bright sparks showered from nothingness between them and danced and flickered around their feet. A stream of pure energy linked their temples, pulsating and flashing with an eerie inner force.

Orrick's presence in the Immaterium was strong but he was stronger. Using all his strength, he stripped away her mental defences and shredded her consciousness into millions of pieces. Her empty corpse fell, lifeless, to the floor.

The sound of heavy footfalls came from behind him. It was the four Astartes he had brought with him. Their weapons were up and at the ready but they stopped in their paces when they saw the bodies of the Grey Knights and the Inquisitor.

"Sir," one of them said. "What . . ."

"We are leaving," Farus announced. "With me, brothers."

"Where to, my lord?" he said.

"The Inquisition have turned on us," Farus lied. "We must fight our way out. I recognise that it will involve combat against your fellow Astartes, but it is in the name of the Emperor."

The Marine hesitated before answering.

"That is unacceptable," he said.

Farus rolled his eyes and summoned his psychic powers.

Good, murmured Samovar von Guyen, from inside his head. You have become that which you dread most. And your vision will become reality.