MAGISTER - CHAPTER 1
Enforcer-Sergeant Marius kicked down the door, readying his autogun. The Syndicate needed to be taken out, and their extermination was the most pressing duty upon this blasted, accursed world.
The door fell to the floor of the decrepit manse, revealing a rotting, old foyer with aged hololith-portraits and crumbling, putrefying walls.
"We're in," Marius stated on the vox-bead, knowing that the rest of his squad would be following him into the old, decrepit mansion. The Enforcers had received a lead two weeks ago, telling them that this mansion was part of a major Syndicate plan. It didn't matter what it was, it needed to be taken out and annihilated.
Enforcers Augustus, Julius and Gaius followed, readying out the big guns. Several Enforcer gravcraft were also flying near it, missile pods and autocannons locked and loaded.
This was overkill.
That was when the enemy came.
Men in dark robes, with face-concealing hoods, they rushed towards the Enforcers, wielding mono-knives, auto-pistols and other crude weaponry.
The Enforcers fired at the cultists, autoguns and shotguns mowing them down, but before long they ran out of ammo, and had to resort to their pistols. Gaius used his flamer, making the dry wood of the ancient manse burn, setting the cultists alight.
Marius winced as he heard their screams of agony, their frantic flailing around and the crackle of hungry flames.
"I love the smell of Promethium in the morning," Gaius said, before setting his flamer to work again, setting the mansion alight with crackling, greedy flames.
More cultists came, ignoring the screams of their dying brethren, firing their auto-pistols and stabbing their mono-knives in a desperate attempt to take out the Enforcers.
Blood ran in rivers as the Enforcers fought a fighting retreat to the door of the manse, more cultists coming, continuing their insane, senseless attack, stepping over the bodies of their former allies (at least Marius supposed so) and wading through their blood without showing a trace of fear.
As Marius went out, he gave the order.
"Destroy the mansion!" he shouted to the comm-net, and the missiles started to rain down, explosions ripping the mansion apart in a burst of pyrotechnic madness.
The cultists were gone, and so was the mansion.
Marius was definitely requesting a reassignment to the desert after all this.
The Astropathic Choir's roof was a work of art.
It depicted the Emperor, blessed be his name, striking down a terrible, draconic serpent, against a background of saints and angels singing in celestial harmony. Below, the dark hordes of daemons were recoiling in agony and terror as they were cast down into the Seven Hells of Chaos.
7 times 7 were the number of the Astropaths in the Choir, who provided Babylon V with the means to communicate with the greater Imperium, sending and receiving countless numbers of messages.
The saboteur did not care about that, of course. He saw the ranks of Astropaths, attached to their feeding tubes and kept in their pods, as nothing more than an obstruction, an obstacle, to his master's goals.
And they were to be removed.
Slowly, carefully, he poured the vial's contents, a green liquid, into the central repository of water that the Astropaths drank from their tubes.
It spread, like a poison through the bloodstream, into the Astropaths' bodies, through the feeding tubes, and into their brains. The neurons ceased to fire, and the Astropaths died.
The computers monitoring their brain impulses flat-lined, the life-signs stopped. Nobody went into the Astropaths' chamber, save for the yearly inspections - as a result, no-one would enter for a year.
And that would be long enough to find the Death of Light.