For a split second, Ekkert stared at the monster that had killed Darvill. In that moment, his feral-born brain took in the breadth of the creature's shoulders, the reach of its blood-dripping claws, the toughness of a hide whose turquoise and viridian scales glittered like dew drops on a desert flower.

And then he was moving.

Tossing aside his laspistol, he plunged away to his left, executing a tight diving roll, at the end of which he drew his longknives from their thigh sheaths. A tribal fetish signifying the eternal cycle of life and rebirth dangled from the hilt of the one in his right hand; the shrunken head of a kroot, the first xenos creature he had killed in the Emperor's service, shivered gently on the end of a piece of gut string tied to the hilt of the other.

The creature was already upon him, thick drool dripping from distended jaws. Ekkert danced away from its slashing claws, absently noting the movement of displaced air as they passed in front of his face. The creature grinned cruelly. The stench of dried blood and raw flesh hung about its head. Ekkert waited. Fighting back both the urgency of his mission and the survival instinct screaming in his limbic system, he made himself wait. Another slash. This time, Ekkert brought up his left arm, meeting the claw with a slanting cross-cut that scraped across the creature's forearm and deflected the blow. Growling, the creature swiped at him again and, again, Ekkert danced out of the way, longknives glinting in the dull interior light.

A claw stabbed. A longknife flashed in reply. Thrust. Clash. Withdraw.

Ekkert risked a glance at the rows of control lecterns against the far wall. How much time did he have? The creature charged him, its head thrust forwards, horn gleaming wickedly. Ekkert didn't have time to raise a knife and span awkwardly out of the way. Pain flared along his side as the warp-transformed beast caught him a glancing blow. The creature grabbed at his jacket, its razor-sharp claws scoring the cured ija skin. Ekkert jumped backwards, the longknife in his left hand meeting yet another dangerous swipe of the creature's claws.

The warped beast was faster than anything that bulky had a right to be. He needed an advantage – and quickly. The creature charged again, its powerful arms reaching for him. Ekkert danced away, considering options frantically and discarding them just as quickly. A height advantage would be useful, but the only thing that would serve to give it to him was the control console to his right. There was no way he would be able to get to it and climb it before the thing grabbed him.

Grunting, he brought his longknife up again, but he was a fraction too slow and the creature drew blood, a viciously sharp talon slicing a ragged ribbon of skin from his cheek. He scowled. What did Bex always say? Do the least expected thing. The least expected. An idea occurred to him and, despite the pain in his face, he smiled. It was stupid and crazy and utterly reckless. He loved it.

"Come to me, misshapen thing!" he called. "What's taking you so long?"

Ekkert had no idea if the creature could understand him, but he had injected enough contempt into his voice for it to recognise that at least.

The creature's eyes glinted maliciously. Ekkert grinned back. It lunged – so quickly that Ekkert almost didn't have time to react. Almost. Every other time it had reached for him, he had backed away, desperate to avoid its grasp. This time was different. This time he ducked and rolled forward, twisting as he did so, sliding along the blood-slick floor on his side, thrusting upwards with his right hand knife.

Even as a long-taloned claw reached down and grabbed him. The creature pulled him upright, its claw digging deep into his shoulder, where pain abruptly spiked. The sound of bone cracking punctuated its laboured breathing. Ekkert grunted and blinked, forcing himself to ignore the sickening sense of wrongness in his shoulder, forcing himself to concentrate. He had just stabbed the beast in its groin, aiming for the vestigial genitalia that nestled there like under-ripe berries. The creature had shown no sign of feeling pain, however. Its eyes burned only with an all-consuming lust for murder and the rich, metallic taste of blood. It lowered its horn, intent on piercing his throat.

In that brief breaking of eye contact, Ekkert struck. The creature tried to block his left arm, but the hunter was too quick for him. He slid his longknife under its protruding brow and buried it up to the hilt in the beast's right eye. Its claw was wrapped around his wrist, crushing the bones there into splinters in a grip so powerful that Ekkert screamed out in agony. But still he held on, working the blade deeper into the creature's brain, willing it - with all the Emperor-given hatred in his being – to die. With a last shuddering gasp of foul breath, the light in the warp beast's remaining eye was extinguished.

The creature fell back, taking Ekkert with it. The jarring impact as its body hit the rockcrete floor sent fresh shards of pain screaming through his veins. With an effort, he rolled off the creature. The hilt of his longknife jutted from the beast's face, the shrunken kroot head grinning mockingly as it dangled and bounced from its length of string.

Painfully, Ekkert half-rolled over onto his side, his injured hand stretched feebly away from him. Darvill's corpse lay just within his field of vision, smears of red on its waxen face. Ekkert fumbled with the vox bead at his throat, the movement of his good hand sending more waves of pain surging through his shoulder.

"Bex…" he said hoarsely. "Bex."

Her voice, distorted by the vox transmission, seemed flat and distant in his ear.

"Love…"

Perhaps it was the pain. Perhaps it was the gentle beeping of the control lecterns arrayed in a short row behind him. Perhaps it was the sound of her voice. Tears pricked his eyes and he struggled to keep his voice level.

"Bex… the controls… whatever you want me to do… I… my hand…"

"Love…" Bex's voice was cool, reassuring. "Listen to me. I'll talk you through it."

Awkwardly, he rolled over, bringing his knees up to his chest and tucking his injured wrist in just above them. Trying to ignore the small flowers of agony that blossomed within him at the slightest movement, he straightened up into a kneeling position. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he half-shuffled half-slid towards the control lecterns.

The machine spirits of the ancient instruments, encased in wood and brass, hummed and chittered. Small lumens glowed and blinked.

He could not feel his left hand.

"Bex…" he gasped. "I…"

"I know." Her voice was a whisper now. "I know."

He inched closer to the nearest lectern, his right hand stretching out towards it. He didn't know whether he would have the strength to pull himself up, but he knew his duty. He knew he would try.

Another inch. His fingers brushed cool metal. Another. He grasped the edge of the brass-cased lectern. His palm was slick with sweat and blood and his grip slipped for a moment. Involuntarily, he cried out in pain. He tried again. Licking his lips, he tensed the muscles in his forearm, preparing to pull himself into a standing position.

From the cool night beyond the open doorway, a powerful engine howled.

"No…" whispered Ekkert, blinking back tears of pain and frustration. "No…"

"Love… what's happening?"

The howling grew into a roar, bestial, triumphant. It increased in volume and Ekkert screamed as it became clear that the source of the sound was hovering at some point above him – above the functional roof of the control block.

"No!"

"Ekkert… what is it?"

"Too late… too… late!"


At the controls of the Termagant, Varl allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. Below the ship, the space port was spread out like a child's toy. Fire crews disgorged from bulky tenders, doing their best to contain the blaze that engulfed the terminal. Varl imagined the smell of crisping flesh, the shrill screams on scorching air. He shivered with pleasure.

Through the Termagant's viewing port he glanced at the port's control complex. The reinforced glass of the tower's east side had not survived the explosion. Idly, he moved the ship forward until he could see the figures scuttling like insects within it.

Even now, they would be trying to contact Phrysia Secundus' orbital defences, transmitting recognition codes, sending orders. The Termagant was sleek and compact, built for speed, but it was not some toothless leisure yacht. With a casual, deliberate motion, he flicked a set of switches on the gunnery lectern to his right.

It was time to make good his escape. No one would stop him.

No one.


"That went well."

Brecht glanced up sharply. A figure stood just a few feet away, grey armour glinting in the light of the double sun. Violet flashed briefly in its face as it turned its impassive gaze towards him.

"You," said Brecht flatly.

"Me. We. Us." The figure took a single step forwards. "Perhaps we should move our conversation beyond the exclusive use of personal pronouns." It paused. "Although they are a useful place to start."

"So, you're a grammatician as well as a warrior."

The figure shifted its gaze to the body of the boy at Brecht's feet. "And you are a fool."

Brecht bristled, but kept quiet. The suns beat down upon his back. The leather greatcoat was heavy and uncomfortable, but he would not take it off. Could not, perhaps. He glanced at the boy's body. Its pale blue eyes were a reproach to him and he did not really understand why. He'd done worse things than kill children, after all. Much worse.

"Really?" The figure in the Astartes plate armour was closer to him now. Brecht looked up into eyes that shone with a violet light. "Is that what you think?" The Space Marine sighed. "Perhaps you really are lost."

Brecht's hands had become tightened fists in his coat pockets. With an effort, he relaxed them.

"Who are you?"

"That really is the wrong question."

Scowling, Brecht looked at the boy's body once more, at the dagger in its chest, at the eyes that stared but did not see. For the first time in a long while, he felt a strong sense of shame. Of inadequacy. Perhaps reliving the horrors of Carnus had left him vulnerable, had left him open to the suggestions of this… whatever he was. Yes. That was it. Perhaps…

"Self-delusion is never a particularly attractive trait – particularly in a man of your intelligence." The Astartes was closer still, close enough to touch. His face was lined, the skin weathered like the bark of an ancient tree. There was not a trace of frailty in his aged face. His eyes narrowed, thunder clouds building in their violet depths. "Think, Inquisitor! There isn't much time. What have you learnt?"

Again, Brecht's gaze was drawn to the dead boy.

"I don't… I don't…"

The Astartes' voice was quiet, almost gentle. "If you cannot be honest with yourself, you will not understand. You will never understand. And you must understand, Inquisitor. You must."


"We've got to close it somehow. I…" To Livia, Heriati was only a vague shape veiled in twisting strands of glowing fibre.

If you cannot be honest with yourself…

"Heirati, can you really not hear that?" She felt an unreasoning terror growing in her chest, heard the shiver of panic in her voice. "Heirati?"

… you will not understand…

"Heirati? Talk to me! Please!"

In a split second, she saw Heirati's laboratorium draped in strand upon strand of paper coating the workbenches and arcane experiments they supported in drifts of coruscating light. She saw those strands uncoil and flex, reach out towards her, motes of dust glistening in the air, each one a universe of madness and delirium and swelling, fecund corruption. She blinked. The shape behind the veil of light had not moved.

"Heirati!"

A voice spoke then and although she recognised it as Heirati's, Livia knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was someone – something – else that was talking to her.

"Sisssssterrrrr…"

Her hand flew to the vox bead at her throat.

"This is Livia. Clearance code Gamma Theta Three. Moral threat…"

The strands of light began to move, gently swaying as if in a summer breeze.

"Sissssterrrrr…"

"… repeat. Moral threat. This facility is compromised. Initiate…"

… you must understand, Inquisitor.

Her heart was pounding and things were moving all around her, the shadows cast by the undulating fibres shifting and changing in bewildering patterns that made her nauseous.

"Initiate…"

"Sissssterrrrr…"

The shape behind the workbench was moving, passing through the strands of light and the bench itself as if it was a mere phantom, an insubstantial illusion.

Tears were wet against her cheeks. She had been about to say something, hadn't she? Something important.

"Vivienne?" she said, her voice small. The strands of light wove their pretty patterns all around her.

A shape loomed out of the light. A rustling like the turning of many pages filled the air.

You must understand!

"Please," she whispered. "Please… help me…"

Something reached out towards her and a shadow fell across her tear-streaked face.

"Sisssterrrr…" said the thing that was not Heirati. "He… issss coming…"


The shrill insistent blaring of the purity alert cut through the tension of the med-bay. Dranguille swore but kept her laspistol trained on the Inquisitor's still form.

"What's going on?" yelled Thesk, edging towards the door.

"Stay put!" growled Dranguille. "All of you! The stormtrooper platoon can handle the situation. We stay here!"

Her breath billowed out in front of her on the freezing air. Brecht was serene, untouched by the panic all around him. He might have been sleeping were it not for those life signs that indicated his psychic activity.

"He's… he's all over the place," murmured Torvald, his eyes hollow. "He should be awake. Or dead, maybe. But not this. I… I don't know." He shrugged helplessly and Dranguille gave him a withering glare, before returning to her vigil by Brecht's bedside, the primed laspistol steady in her hand.


In a side ward, away from the tense tableau arranged around the Inquisitor's bed, a Sister of Battle lay quietly. Unconscious. Still.

The medicae-servitor at the foot of her bed monitored her vital signs with impassive efficiency, a soft regular beeping emanating from its chest unit.

Slowly, by increments that were so small as to be almost undetectable, Sister Elinore's breathing grew heavier, more pronounced. The medicae-servitor swung its polished brass and chrome skull towards the Sister's head and stopped, perfectly still, its functions suspended by a force for which it had no name and which its lobotomised brain could never hope to understand.

In her bed, Sister Elinore of the Order of Our Martyred Lady opened her eyes.


Pain burned in his shoulder and wrist, but desperation lent Ekkert the strength to pull himself to his feet and stumble towards the control room door. The flames that engulfed the terminal were angry and bright against the dark night sky, but it was not the gouts of orange that held his attention, nor the distant screams drifting across the rockcrete on the stiff night breeze.

The Termagant hung before the control tower on pillars of shimmering air, its muffled thrusters issuing a faint menacing whine.

"Bex," he said, hoarsely. "Bex, you must…"

In the ruined control suite, Rebecca Alasynde Marielle de la Fleur stared at the dark form of the Termagant. Firelight reflected from its ebony surfaces. Small weapons ports opened along its stubby wings.

"My lady…" Jurian grabbed at her, his face ashen. "There's still time. If we go now…"

She shoved him away, her gaze fixed on the sleek, compact spaceship hovering just a few metres away from her. The ruined central window in the control tower's eastern face formed a frame which the Termagant filled. She could almost believe it was a painting, a simple vision of violent grace, set against a flickering backdrop of destruction and death. Apprehension shivered across her skin. Many times, she had imagined the moment when she would die in the Emperor's service. She had not considered this.

"Bex..."

Ekkert's voice whispered in her ear as she drew her laspistol and pointed it towards the ship.

"Bex, you must..."

She cut across him.

"Ekkert, my love..." She stared at the panes of reactive glass that shielded the Termagant's flight deck. "The Emperor calls me." With cool precision, she began to fire, pumping bolt after bolt across the distance between her and the spaceship. The shriek of the weapon was her scream of defiance. "The Emperor calls me. I will see you... Ekkert... Please remember. I..."

Flashes of laser fire lit up the flight deck of the Termagant and Varl's smile broadened. There was no way they could penetrate the reinforced plastiglass. It was time.

Deftly, his hands played across the firing lectern.

"Blood for the Blood God," he whispered, his mouth twisting into an ironic wolfish grin.


"It's time," said the Astartes with the violet eyes.

"Wait!" said Brecht. "I... I think I... Survival. We think it's about survival..."

"Go on."

The ochre plain was fading around them and a terrible pressure was building in the air. Brecht knelt by the boy, his hand reaching out to his face. Almost touching.

"And it is. But there are hopes and dreams born in innocence and the pure delight of simply not knowing."

"Yes."

The air was thick and heavy. A voice whispered in the back of his mind, a voice he recognised. Help me...

"And in our desperate... our obsessive... clinging to mere existence those hopes are..." Brecht licked his lips. He couldn't think any more. The air had closed around him. The Astartes was a mere outline, a shadow in his vision, two points of violet light flickering. Guttering.

Please...

He screwed his eyes tight shut.

"Where do those dreams go? What happens to them?" He opened his eyes with a sudden jolt of revelation. The Space Marine stood directly in front of him. Violet lightning sparked and jinked in his eyes. Brecht gasped. "Emperor! Children. This is about the children!"

The Astartes grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close, so close that the world around them was obliterated by the searing violet light streaming from his eyes.

"Inquisitor, it's time!"

Please help me...Please...

"WAKE UP!"


"I will see you... Ekkert... Please remember... I..."

Leaning against the sub-control block's exterior wall, Ekkert saw the Termagant fire, blooms of orange and lilac flowering along its wings and withering in the moment of their birth. The control tower shook under the barrage, walls collapsing and flames bursting out of shattered windows into the cool night.

"Bex!" he screamed over and over again, uncaring of the static in his ear, or the horrible dark certainty in his chest. Desperation mingled with grief that mingled with a violent rage that threatened to consume him. Through blurred vision, he saw the Termagant roar away into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, saw the control tower burn like a grotesque torch.

"Bex!" he screamed.


In the med-bay, Brecht woke, screaming.

A nearby auspex froze, its brass and plastic surfaces suddenly coated in a thick layer of ice. A blood vessel in Torvald's nose burst and his hand's involuntary movement towards his face was the only thing that saved it from being frozen in place against the metal railing of the bed.

A thick tendril of air so cold it was visible as a grey-white funnel snaked across the room towards Mbeki who didn't move anywhere near quickly enough. With a sickening crack, her chest exploded in a shower of razor-sharp crystals and she pitched forward, thick blood oozing slowly from the exposed cavity.

Thesk screamed. Torvald whimpered. Dranguille stood firm. She gazed into the Inquisitor's open eyes but saw only madness there. And a glimmer of violet light that she had never seen before. Brecht's body convulsed violently, the bed rattling. Again, the temperature dropped sharply. Frost stood out on the walls and the cold bit into her skin.

Teeth chattering, Dranguille levelled the pistol at a spot roughly between Brecht's eyes. The cold might eventually drain its power pack, but she wasn't going to give it the chance.

"I'm sorry, Aloysius," she whispered.

And pulled the trigger.

END OF BOOK ONE