A/N: Chap 15 review responses are in my forums.


Chapter Sixteen: Maledictus Eris Super Terram

Under the harsh, unsparing light of a world with no sky, a hooded figure moved through a crowded street. He towered over those around him, but that itself was not so shocking. Humans came in many shapes and sizes, and among the sanctioned breeds, he might easily be mistaken for an ogryn under his cloak and hood.

The black void above was pierced through by a singular ring which caught the unfiltered sunlight on its rockcrete and adamantium trusses. With his genehanced eyes he could make out some of the macrocannon and lance cannon emplacements that served as the defense for Terra, which itself hung like a dirty marble just between the horizon and the ring.

Though he walked on a miniscule world, through the miracles of science so long forgotten that none alive could replicate it, Caligus' steps within the buried city bore his normal Terran weight. Though the vast, artificial canyon he walked through was open to the void, he breathed stale but livable air. This was not the case over the empty planes of moon, but in the habited portions humans could walk freely.

And though they were on the natural satellite of Terra, he moved among billions who lived and died in the hive cities buried under the regolith. They moved about him now–large groups of Astra Militarum or Navis Imperialis personnel. Adepta of every order; rogue traders or their agents. Sellers, buyers and thieves.

Luna was a natural hub for deep space travel to and from Sol. It was the staging area for more void traffic than any other world in the Imperium save, perhaps, Mars. Millions of void ships operated in the Sol System, and Terra was always at its core. Luna was the doorway.

Images of Sanguinius the Angel were strewn down the arterial way. In the kilometer deep crevice, thickly lined with shops, warehouses, militarium command posts and a thousand other points of business, he saw Ministorum dirigibles broadcasting exhortations to the faithful to praise the Emperor, and to not tolerate the witch, the mutant or the xeno to live. Praise Him, and Praise his fallen son Sanguinius!

Even many days after the Sanguinala, the fallen son's image lingered on Luna as it was on Terra below.

He already spotted three watchers trailing his every step. One was only a servitor skull, hovering at a point fifty three meters across the breadth of the crevice. Two were human; one dressed as a naval rating, the other as a Chartist merchant marine.

More than likely, there were others he had not seen yet. He continued on his path regardless of his trackers; this close to Terra all of them were likely agents of the Inquisition.

The skull, however, was from Brother Kalluin, he was sure.

He found the nearest conveyance artery down, and began his trek into the lower levels of the Circuit, as the artificial crevice that split Luna's surface was called. He wandered tirelessly for two hours, stopping to take tea he did not need. And when his tea was done, he made his way to a warehouse twenty-two levels down and stepped inside. With flex of his knees and a surge of power to the servo-fibers of his power armor, he launched himself ten meters into the air, crabbed a buttress of the ceiling and easily swung himself into an alcove before activating the cameoline in the cloak he wore.

He adjusted the heat signature of his archeotech power armor, and functionally disappeared from the world.

His trackers arrived, one after the other over the next five hours, all of which he spent motionless. A total of seven made their way into the crumbling, abandoned space. Some left trackers, others simply left seeking other clues.

As the surface of Luna fell into darkness and cold wrapped itself around the small world, he dropped easily to the floor. The tracker tried to find him, but the chemical properties of his cloak and armor prevented the small servo skull from finding him.

He went on his way.

Less than an hour later, he reached his destination. He found the place not by any sign, but by the Inquisitorial seal and the tape that hung limply from the shattered rockcrete and steel face. He ducked under the tape. Within, he found what he was looking for, though not what he expected.

He expected to find a mortal female warrior in Vrtaine battle armor. Instead, he found a mere slip of a girl in white penitent robes shivering in the cold, her head shaved save for a top knot. She looked up at him in alarm, scrambling to her feet from where she sat cross-legged on the floor.

"What does…the mind behold that the eye cannot?" She stuttered a little in alarm. He was easily twice her height and three times her girth. It seemed obvious his size terrified her.

She was a blank–a pariah without a soul. "The Imperial Truth. Be at ease, child. Where is your mistress?"

"She begs forgiveness, Lord. She had to attend another of your brethren. But she provided what you sought. May I approach, Lord?"

He bent down to be more approachable, and even still his head topped hers. "Please do so."

Tentatively, she shuffled forward with a data chit in her hands. "The footage was from the warehouse across the artery, Lord. High fidelity, no audio. Activated when the Inquisitor and his people came. It…was one of ours, with Empyric sensoria as well."

Naturally, the ancient Sisters of Silence would wish to know of any psykers on their home world. Even if the Order had long been forgotten by Terra, Caligus and his brethren remembered their sisters.

"You have my thanks, sister, as does your mistress."

The girl bowed awkwardly. He doubted she was even pubescent, yet, if she had yet to take her Vow of Tranquility. She almost ran from the storefront.

He did not wait, and slipped the tiny data chit into the vambrace of his armor. The armor's dedicated cogitator quickly wedded with the security protocols of the chit, and in moments he watched the events of one month ago unfold.

A young woman, dressed in the robes of a low-level adepta, entered the front of what appeared to be a bio-import business. The long legacy of the gene-cults of Luna still found echoes in such enterprises.

The timestamp of the footage skipped half an hour, when an Inquisitor arrived by Rhino armored transport with a squad of Tempestus Scions, three battle sisters and half a dozen other motley members of his retinue. They charged into the building in a combat formation.

The security footage was unable to capture the first few moments of combat, but it most certainly detected the swirling cloud of dark purple and red etheric light as a chaos sorcerer demolished the front of the structure and exposed within a fully armored son of Magnus. The traitor marine was making quick work of the Inquisitor and his band, striking them down with balefire and lightning that destroyed the level above them, as well as the buildings on either side.

Some of the loyalists landed shots, but they were not enough against the monster. He struck them all down. When no Imperial remained standing, the Chaos sorcerer walked back deeper into the damaged business, and emerged with the same woman from before. The side of her head had been smashed cruelly, and she hung insensate with a badly twisted leg from the monster's hands.

The sorcerer said something as he drew a short gladius and brought it toward the woman's face.

A burst of white-gold light erupted so suddenly Caligus took a step back. It should not have shocked him–he was physiologically and psychologically conditioned not to startle. And yet the light shocked him as it appeared between the chaos marine and the badly injured mortal woman.

The psychic energy of the manifestation blasted the chaos sorcerer away like a discarded toy, and the injured woman dropped painfully to the burned rockcrete floor where she did not move. From within the golden glow, Caligus made out a feminine figure with wide-spread wings. A face turned to look directly into the security picter and his heart thudded loudly in his chest.

He recognized the woman! He recognized a face he'd been sent out into the stars millenia ago to guard. Hope is lost in the trees.

Caligus felt his heart slow just as quickly as it sped, while his mind struggled to accept what just happened. He heard a woman's voice speaking. The picter had no sound; there was no audio data available on the chit. And yet the golden manifestation somehow spoke to him through the picter screen; through the data chit; through an entire month of time.

The Warp was at work, he had no doubt. If he did not recognize the face, he would have thought it the work of the Great Enemy. But he knew that face. He'd seen it once, over six thousand years before when the last received the emperor's dream message, and went broad to do His will.

This train of thought ended when he heard a muffled scream; in a span of a heartbeat he determined the vector of the sound. The initiate. He turned to follow, and with a thought-pulse activated thermal sensoria in his helm and detected the joint heat flares of power armor just beyond the fallen rubble of the storefront.

He rushed forward, punching through the rockcrete sufficient to send the ambusher flailing across the arterial passage. The woman cried out in pain; but her armor appeared well-crafted enough to preserve her. He sensed more attackers and spun into them, drawing an ancient crozius. He did not activate its power field–he had a suspicion of who his ambushers were, and was interested in what they had to say.

So instead of killing the dozen or so troopers, he simply flattened them in two long swings.

"Stop in the name of the Emperor!"

At last, the one in charge made himself known. Tall, gaunt and sickly, the inquisitor revealed himself. He was flanked by an obvious assassin.

Caligus knew him. "You are Phalias," he said. "Navradaran's inquisitor. Call off your dogs, and release the initiate to return to her sisterhood."

Indeed, two stormtroopers were holding the young girl by her arms, though it was obvious she'd fought.

Lord Inquisitor Hovash Phaelias of the Ordo Xenos relaxed somewhat when he heard Navradaran's name mentioned. "And where is Lord Navradaran?"

"Doing his duty," Caligus said. "Release the sister. I will not say it again."

Phaelias nodded to his men, and the initiate turned and sprinted away. Behind Caligus, the woman he'd struck was picking herself up. Though inquisitor's flattened retinue stared with various expressions of concern over how easily Caligus dealt with them, he did not care.

"Walk with me, Inquisitor. I do not have unlimited time."

"Lord…" The woman proved to be a battle sister, clad in the black power armor of her order, with the gene-modded white hair and fleur de lys tattoo on her cheek.

"This one is Custodes, Skeld," Phaelias said. "Even out of armor, if you've ever seen one fight, you would have no doubt. It is an honor, Lord. May I be so bold as to ask what you are doing here?"

"You may ask." Caligus began to walk back the way he came, toward his waiting flier. The Lord Inquisitor would either walk with him, or be left behind with his stunned troopers.

The Inquisitor motioned to his retinue, and quickly fell in a step behind. "Lord Navradaran assisted me in a sensitive investigation," the mortal began. He knew better than to make demands of the Custodes–Navradaran had at least trained him that well.

"Your pet xenos was discovered. One of your brethren was involved."

"So Lord Crowl told me," Phaelias said. "In my quest to hunt the creature down, I discovered a conspiracy at the highest levels. Evidence that the Mechanicus complex served as the entry-point to Terra, but from there the xenos was taken into a district close to the Eternity Walls. But more than that…I do not believe the xenos came alone."

"Explain."

"The site had been cleaned up quite thoroughly, save for one bolter shell casing that was lost in a crevice. Lord, my psyker found lingering traces of warp energy. My colleagues in the Order Hereticus tell me that the casing was for a Traitor marine hellfire bolt."

Caligus began to see the connection. "And were similar casings found here, on Luna?"

Phaelias formed a grimace that on another might be called a smile. "Precisely, Lord. And yes, we know for sure the creature that Lord Norquis encountered was a traitor marine of the Thousand Sons. One was found, but I believe another successfully infiltrated Terra."

This was not a surprise to Caligus. Kalluin knew of the Luna infiltration, and warned Caligus that it was merely a distraction. "You seek this other one?"

"We do, Lord. We believe the traitor may try to infiltrate the palace as the Drukhari did…"

Caligus felt cold in his bones. "No, Inquisitor. The traitor would not seek to enter the palace after the Drukhari brought our defenses to alert. He has another mission. Tell me what you know of Amelyta Rothid."

The Inquisitor slowed his step a fraction, only to have to push himself to catch up. "I know she was the only survivor of the site we just left, Lord. I know that she was one of the last people to be alone with Lord Inquisitor Adamara Rassilo, and there is some concern over what role she might have played in Rassilo's…compromised status."

The Inquisition did not know how Rassilo died? At least, not all of it. "Do you hunt this traitor marine?"

"Lord, I do."

Caligus finally slowed, giving the gaunt mortal an opportunity to catch his breath. "I serve the Emperor's expressed will. I, too, seek this second traitor. You shall assist me. Gather your retinue, and let us hunt."

Lord Inquisitors were unaccustomed to receiving orders. Navradaran had once described the entire order as a massive herd of rabid felines. His statement was as much a test as an order.

Though Phaelias took a moment to process, to his credit he overcame his own conditioning and nodded. "Agreed, Lord. We may part ways in time, but we both do the Emperor's work. I shall gather my people. If I may be so bold, I've received intelligence of a transport vessel found abandoned in the ash wastes of a hive city in the old Mericum district. The location was to be my next point of investigation."

"Merican. Where?"

"Botan Hive, Lord."

"Then lead the way, Inquisitor."

~~Revelation~~

~~Revelation~~

Amelyta Rothid, second child of Archduke Reginal IX Rothid of Botan Hive, Ancestral Mericum District 5 Prefect.

"The brother fell to chaos corruption and murdered the father. Amelyta ran away to join the Adepta Sororitas, but was identified as a low level psyker and sent to the Schola Psykana. From there, to the Schola Progenium. Recruited by Lord Inquisitor Norquis at age 18."

Something of Brother Kalliun's tone made Caligus consider the man's words intently. He sat in his flier as he began the long flight back to Terra, and used the opportunity to follow up with the ancient Eye of the Emperor. "What marks this in your mind, brother?"

"Utterly unremarkable," came the response. "Her psyker talent is weak, barely manifesting as intuition, or so her file says. Her physical prowess was unremarkable enough that her drill abbess recommended her for the Orders Famulous. She wrote that the child would never be a warrior, but might make a passable teacher."

"And yet…?"

"And yet hand-picked even before graduation by a Lord Inquisitor who had the ear of the Inquisitorial Representative. And when she failed and got her entire inquisitorial retinue killed, she again was requested by name by another Lord Inquisitor–who also has the ear of the Inquisitorial Representative."

"Who, brother?"

"Lord Inquisitor Abrin Moro. He served as an acolyte of Kleopatra Arx centuries ago, following the conclusion of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. He is at Botan Hive, and his file indicates he knew the Rothid family. Rothid is there, just recently arrived."

"The Inquisitor believes the second traitor marine is also at Botan Hive."

"On Terra of all worlds, little is happenstance. Did she find the traitor on Luna, or did he find her?"

"I shall find out. Thank you, Brother."

The briefest glance showed the Inquisitor and his retinue were flying two thousand meters to his port side, and slightly ahead. They flew in a converted Thunderhawk transport, replete with the Inquisitorial skull-form on its hull.

~~Revelation~~

~~Revelation~~

Hive cities pierced the clouds, some rising into the mesosphere to brush the void. Botan Hive had five separate spires, but one of them did indeed rise so high it served as a void port for ships too large to easily make planetfall. The other four rose beyond the clouds, but ended before leaving the atmosphere entirely.

The price of such height, though, was a vast wasteland that surrounded the superdense structures. On other worlds, such wastelands would be the haunts of mutants or desperate fallen. On Terra, with more human beings than any other place in the cosmos, the ash wastes of Botan Hive were, themselves, densely packed with hab towers, manufactoria and basilicas that were built up over the constant flow of waste from the hive itself.

As they came down toward the coordinates Phaelias provided, carefully threading the needle between endless canyons of rockcrete, steel and hopelessness, Caligus could see scavengers moving across the scree flow in search of precious metals or other items that might be of some use to the scrap buyers.

They stared up with dull eyes from bald, misshapen heads at the two vast ships that braved the shadows of the underwater fields.

Phaelias' people landed first. Mortal stormtroopers poured out of the Thunderhawk transport, forming a cordon and quickly establishing situational control. They stumbled over the uneven, equally unstable footing of the debris field.

The inquisitor walked flanked by the first was the Sororitas, Skeld on one side, and a strikingly pale-skinned, muscular hierophant on the other. Skeld carried her custom-made bolter pistols in both hands, her helm on and the glowing lenses undoubtedly set to infrared and false color respectively. The hierophant wore his Ecclesiastical robes like armor, and carried a staff topped with the aquila, but empowered almost like a crozius.

Phaelias climbed into the missing transport and almost instantly coughed. "This is the vehicle," he said. "I can smell the xenos stench. Dark eldar, I'm sure of it. Likely the same Crowl and Navradaran encountered under the palace. More, I can feel it. Its machine spirit has been twisted. The pilot was a devotee to the dark powers."

Caligus bones burned. He began cycling through various visual scans within his helmet, searching for some path the traitor may have taken.

"Inquisitor, do you know one Abrim Moro?"

Phaelias left the transport and approached, moving carefully over the debris. "Ah. So you think Rothid might be involved after all?"

"Either the cause, or a target," Caligus said, deciding to share. "It would be easier for you to contact him. He should be our next destination."

"Agreed," the Inquisitor said easily enough. "Commander Dalamar, place charges. Vaporize that ship, and then we make for the…which spire was Moro in?"

"Gimel, Lord," Skeld said, hovering near the older inquisitor as always.

"Precisely. We are of differing ordos, and he has a reputation as a Gallentist, so we do not travel in the same circles. But he should have the courtesy to receive us, if nothing else. Send the request on, Skeld."

"Yes, Lord."

Returned to their separate transports, they lifted up from the ash wastes and burned hard to free themselves of the dense thicket of hab towers, warehouses and squatter villages until the reached the dense, smog-filled air. He followed Phaelias' transport as it turned toward the Gimel Spire.

They were just a kilometer away from the nearer Bet Spire when the yellow-gray clouds overhead bloomed red, like bursts of slow flame. Caligus made out odd lines that took on a deep, vivid red glow, as if he were looking at the arteries of some giant beast that smothered the sky with its body.

The effect was not local–not a singular explosion or warp event. The instrumentation of his flier went insane with warning runes and flashing icons and screaming electronic warbles of distress as the horizon turned violently red for as far as he could see. Private, secure vox channels flashed runes few outside the palace would ever see, and they reported the same planet-wide.

Ahead, a flash of red lightning, thick and pulsing and impossibly slow, struck the Inquisitorial transport. Through the vox he could hear screaming as the port side thruster assembly exploded violently and threw the transport into an uncontrolled spin.

Caligus acted instinctively, shooting his flyer forward. Though built for a Custodes, it lacked the gothic ornamentation and ostentation normally reserved for the eldest companions of the Emperor. It was an ancient beast, counting more years than those the Emperor spent on his throne, and it harnessed power few modern craft could imagine.

He brought it into the tilting port side of the craft and carefully slowed the other ship's spin. "Lord, you are insane for such a maneuver, and we're thankful for it! There is a landing cradle on Bet!"

Caligus pinged an acknowledgement but did not bother to speak. He monitored vox channels from the local authorities, and was disturbed to see that it was not just the warp storm that spontaneously arose. Somehow, massive unrest seemed to be burning through all five of the Hive City's major spires.

The Thunderhawk crashed with a violent twisting of steel and the shattering of rockcrete. The landing cradle that hugged the outer sides of the Bet Spire bent precariously under the blow, but held long enough for the transport to flip lengthways onto its roof. Caligus brought his own flier around to a matching landing cradle nearby.

Beyond, as far as he could see, void and aircraft were being randomly swiped from the atmosphere.

When he reached the transport, stunned, injured troopers were pulling their fellows out. Phaelias wore a conversion field that, with his armor, provided him good protection. The Sororitas, Skeld, likewise was unharmed, as was the silent, slim assassin in her cameoline armor.

With the darkness already growing, the blood-red clouds took on a sinister, sanguine aspect. Lightning flashed all around them.

The landing cradle stood atop a rounded tower on the lower eastern quadrant of the spire, kilometers away from the Gimel Spire that was their destination. As Caligus watched, a rounded hab tower that rose out of the spire's steep surface half a kilometer above and away flared as an explosion ruptured its side. Though others in the gloom could not see, his transhuman eyes tracked falling bodies.

Similar events began playing out across the mid- and lower sections of not just of this spire, but as far as his transhuman eyes could see. Almost instantly, as the warp storm struck, the fires of heresy and rebellion ignited across the entire HIve City.

Nay, across the whole of Terra.

The inquisitor's force of forty stormtroopers was reduced to thirty due to the crash. The Commander, Dalamar, barked orders to those that remained.

Phaelias stumbled toward Caligus. "Lord, what do you make of this?"

"A coordinated attack on Terra," Caligus said without hesitation. "The Imperial Palace is being secured, but…the Astronomicon has gone dark."

Nearly, Skeld gasped and made the sign of the aquila while praying. The Hierophant hefted his staff and shouted prayers to the Emperor.

Hovash Phaelias of the Ords Xenos surveyed his team, then his surroundings. "It seems there is but one direction to go, Lord."

"Agreed. Onward!"