Taking Krystabel's call in the middle of the command room had only seemed logical at the time : she wouldn't have contacted me in the middle of an Ork invasion if it wasn't important, and to her credit it was. But I couldn't help but wish I had done so in more privacy. The state of dress of her hololithic projection as she passed on Emeli's warning had been quite distracting to most of the command crew (apart from the borgs of course, who had too much metal where their flesh used to be to be interested in such things).

Even the members of the USA, who were supposed to follow the precepts of the God of War, rival to the Handmaidens' patron, hadn't been able to help themselves from sneaking glances before we'd finished our exchange. Come to think of it, I hadn't been immune to it myself, though the content of her message had soon doused any thoughts her looks might have caused.

"What do you think ?" I asked Mahlone, who had been standing at my side and listening in on the whole exchange.

"We'll be on our guard," he assured me. "And keep some units in reserve to react to any emergencies."

"Good man," I told him, which given he was a Khornate cultist might have been something of an exaggeration. "At this stage, it's really all we can do."

I really wanted to leave the war room, head for the nearest shelter, and let the USA sort things out. Unfortunately, as the Liberator, that option was unavailable to me. So I discarded that thought and focused on the hololithic display of the strategic situation. Whatever else threatened us, we still needed to deal with the Orks, before they laid waste to the planet with all the enthusiasm for wanton destruction they were known for. Thanks to the various auspex systems of Emeli's Gift (a few of which hadn't survived the engagement, but not enough to really matter), we had as clear an image of the enemy's positions as could be asked for as the survivors of the orbital battle reached the ground.

Most of the Ork crafts had landed around the capital with all the accuracy of a shotgun blast fired by a underhive ganger drunk on rotgut. Their occupants were converging on us at commendable speed, though given most of them were on foot we still had some time before the arrival of their vanguard. They were also lacking any of the discipline and coordination I would have expected from the USA, let alone a Guard unit (with some proper commanders, of course, I hastened to add to the thought). Not all, however, had come for Cainopolis : some had scattered all across the planet, and I didn't envy Mahlone the job of cleaning them all out once the main bulk had been dealt with. One such cluster of dots in particular drew my attention.

"These ones," I said, highlighting them for the rest of the crowd. "They are near the Valhallan detention camp, aren't they ?"

"Yes, lord," confirmed one of the General's aides after a quick check. "And they appear to be moving in the camp's direction as well."

Why exactly the greenskins were going up the mountains instead of moving toward the nearest villages I could only guess at. Perhaps they'd seen the camp from above during their descent, and, having mistaken it for some kind of fortification, thought it to be an important target. Of course, in reality the Valhallans were completely defenceless, apart from the digging tools we'd given them for the chores that occupied much of the troopers' time.

The thought of so many Guardsmen, whose only crime had been to be horribly unlucky with their commanding officer, being at the mercy of their people's ancestral enemy made my stomach curdle. I had also gone to some not inconsiderable effort to keep them alive and well, and I was damned if I was going to let a bunch of greenskin savages make it all for naught. Of course, I wasn't going to hop onto a transport and go there myself : apart from how dangerous such a course of action would be, I couldn't be seen fleeing Cainopolis just as it was about to come under attack by the bulk of the surviving Orks.

Then, by the grace of the Emperor, I remembered something I had read amidst the endless pile of paperwork and reports that continuously grew on my desk earlier that week.

"This weapon factory here," I said, marking one of the borgs' facilities on the other side of the mountain range. "It just completed its latest weapon shipment, didn't it ?"

"It did, lord Liberator," replied one of the borgs after brief pause as he accessed the relevant data. "But the shipment was grounded upon the arrival of the xenos."

"Of course it was," I nodded. "But now that the Ork fleet is down, air traffic should be safe again. Kindly inform the factory's management that I want them to send that shipment to the Valhallan camp, so that the Guardsmen can defend themselves."

If I remembered things correctly, that shipment had initially been earmarked for the USA's reserve gear stockpiles, and contained a mix of carapace armor, lasguns and power packs, along with a dozen other miscellaneous items. Not enough to completely equip a military force from scratch, but certainly better than nothing.

"My lord, are you sure this is wise ?" asked Jafar, in the closest he had ever come to questioning my judgment since Slawkenberg had decided it would rather take its chances with the Dark Gods than the Giorbas. Well, openly questioning it at least : as the leader of the cultists of Tzeentch on the planet, I had no doubt he had thought me crazy plenty of times, but thankfully the sheer volume of bureaucratic work that went with running a planet seemed to have kept him too busy to plot anything in response.

"Wise ? Probably not," I admitted with a shrug. "But it's certainly the only honorable choice, given that we can't divert any USA units to defend the camp at the moment." Seeing that he wasn't entirely convinced, I continued : "I gave these men my word that we would treat them right when they surrendered, Jafar. That included keeping them safe from the retribution of their own masters, meaning that they are under my protection. Making them fight our enemy for us is already stretching the spirit of that oath too thin for my liking, and I will not have them do so with nothing but shovels, rocks and harsh language."

"I see," he said, nodding sagaciously and no doubt already constructing an elaborate scheme in his head in an attempt to see through what he was certain my hidden, real motives must be. "Then I can only hope they will prove worthy of your generosity."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure they will," I replied, glancing at Jurgen. My aide was still as impassive as ever, but I thought I saw the hint of an approving smile on his lips. "If there's one thing you can trust the Valhallans with, it's killing Orks."

As for what would happen after the Orks were dead and the Guardsmen still had all that shiny new wargear, well, that was a problem for the future. Having a bunch of Imperial troopers waging a guerilla campaign against the Liberation Council would do some damage to my image, true, but I should be able to spin it as me being overly trusting and merciful, only to be taken advantage of by the Imperials. There was only so much damage the survivors of Karamazov's disastrous campaign could do to Slawkenberg (although I'd need to be careful of assassination attempts, given my position as the rebellion's figurehead), and the presence of such a resistance would hopefully make any future Imperial reclamation efforts smoother.

The order was transmitted at once. According to the borgs' estimates, the shipment should arrive around half an hour before the Ork warband reached the camp. The rest would be in the hands of the Valhallans themselves : in the meantime, I had problems to deal with closer at hand – up to three thousands of those, in fact, based on the latest data. At least Mahlone looked to be on top of things, moving the USA units mobilized to defend the capital to meet with the approaching horde.

"Lord Liberator," one of the borgs chirped in. "Your own custom suit of armor is ready."

I blinked in confusion. "My what ?"

"The suit of power armor you authorized Magos Tesilon-Kappa to construct for your personal use," the cyborg explained. "Tesilon-Kappa had it brought here to make the final adjustments."

"Well, that was nice of them," I said, meaning every word. I had no intention of getting anywhere near the shooting, of course, but the thought of an added layer of protection between my miserable hide and the Orks certainly sounded appealing. I turned to look at Mahlone : "I trust you can handle things in my absence, General ?"

"Of course, Lord Liberator !" He replied, snapping a brief salute before going back to doing his job. Jafar sent me short nod as well, before returning to the task of making sure every shelter in the capital was still secure and there wasn't any issue with the hundreds of thousands of people packed inside.

With that, I left the war room, following the tech-priest, Jurgen at my side. Soon, we arrived at a hangar, where a number of USA troopers were making final checks on their equipment before departing for the city's borders to face the Orks. And there, in the center of the room, was my 'armor'.

Tesilon-Kappa had promised me a custom suit of power armor, but this was nothing of the sort. Apart from its scarlet color, it had little in common with the suits worn by the elite of the USA in recent weeks. It was huge, standing higher than a Sentinel walker, though it was much bulkier, reminding me of nothing so much as the images of Astartes Dreadnought I had seen, if sleeker in design. A truly massive chainsword hung at its belt, and a heavy bolter was built into its left forearm, though there was still an articulated gauntlet at the end, presumably to wield the chainsword two-handed. The quartered circle of the Liberation Council had been engraved on its chestplate, which with a gesture from the tech-priest gently split open to reveal a padded cockpit.

"This is … not what I was expecting," I managed to say, more than a little taken aback.

"When Tesilon-Kappa designed this armor, they concluded that while deploying it in numbers was impractical due to the resources required for the construction of each suit, building one for your own use was only logical," said the tech-priest, sounding inordinately smug for someone using a vox-coder. At least he was keeping to the cover story for the STC database.

"And why wasn't I informed of this ?" I asked. "I was under the impression the Bringers were preparing a standard suit of power armor for me, with perhaps a few more bells and whistles, not … whatever this is."

"We are calling it the Liberator Armor," explained the borg. "It was calculated that you would reject any offer of having such a suit prepared for you, out of concern for the impact the project would have on our resources. However, after discussing the matter with the rest of the Liberation Council, Tesilon-Kappa chose to proceed with it while keeping you uninformed. I believe they wanted to surprise you with this gift, Lord Liberator."

… Well, out of all the things I could imagine the rest of the Council keeping hidden from me, this was probably the most harmless possible, though I'd rather they didn't make a habit of it. I sighed and shook my head theatrically.

"At this point, it would be childish of me to complain. But are you sure now is the time to test it ? I don't have the slightest clue how to pilot such a wondrous machine." Better throw in some praise, just to be safe.

"There is no need to worry about this," replied the borg. He briefly looked around to check there wasn't anybody in earshot and lowering his voice before continuing : "The ancients understood how to make their devices easy to use by the uninitiated far better than we do. A child could operate this armor."

Except for the small issue of not being big enough to fit the cockpit, but I took the borg's meaning. And, given there hadn't been any reports of USA troopers struggling to master the smaller power armor and that using the Panacea was as simple as injecting it as close to the problem as possible, I supposed he had a point.

"You might as well try it, sir," intervened Jurgen. "I sure would feel better if you had some protection stronger than carapace armor."

Well, I could hardly argue with that. The borg – whose name I never picked up – showed me how to get inside the Liberator Armor (Throne, I hoped I could get them to change the name, Cainopolis was bad enough), which was surprisingly comfortable.

The armor contained some kind of feedback mechanism to help me move its arms and legs as if they were my own, and once the suit was completely enclosed around me and the screens of the cockpit had flickered to life it really felt as if I had suddenly grown another couple meters. I don't mind admitting to feeling a brief rush of exaltation at the sheer sensation of power the whole thing gave me, before the coin suddenly dropped, alongside my stomach.

Now that I was inside this thing, I could think of no reasonable excuse not to join the fight against the Orks. Since the Uprising and my accidental confrontation with the fleeing Governor, I had developed a reputation for leading from the front, not helped by what had happened with the Giorba Cardinal and Commander Chenkov.

Through luck more than good judgment, I had managed to convince the USA that keeping me from throwing myself headlong into danger was their idea, but the kind of man they thought I was wouldn't let anything or anyone dissuade him from trying out his new shiny death machine in combat, especially when the city that bore my name was under attack by foul xenos trespassers.

It would be alright, I told myself. The one-sided victory of Emeli's Gift against the alien fleet was evidence that the borgs did good work, and I couldn't think of any reason why Tesilon-Kappa would want me dead and sabotage my new suit of armor. Meanwhile, the greenskins had landed in complete disorder, with nothing heavier than a handful of transports that had somehow survived their precipitous orbital entry.

I was, of course, completely wrong about that, but I had no way of knowing so at the time.


"Now dis iz fun !" Gargash bellowed as he tore another red humie in two with his klaw while firing at his friends with his big shoota, their return fire bouncing uselessly against his Mega Armor.

Unlike most humies he'd fought before, these red ones didn't hesitate to get into krumping distance. They were strong and tough, too, although not as much as a proper Ork, of course, and far from his own strength. And they had some good loot too, with some of them even wearing small Mega Armor the Mekboyz were salivating over the prospect of tearing to pieces for spare parts.

Since they had crashed on the planet, the Warboss had managed to rally a bunch of boyz, and the rest were also moving toward the humie city in any case. He'd even found a handful of Weirdboyz who had made it down, which was good given how much time and teeth he'd spent recruiting them into his warband.

The place was weirdly empty : in his experience, there were a lot more humies running around scared and getting in the way of a good krumpin', although it was always funny to see them run and scream in front of the Waaagh ! But while there weren't not-fighting humies (which was a concept it had taken the Warboss some time before understanding, so absurd was the very idea of someone not capable of fighting), there were plenty of fighting ones, and the battle had started as soon as they'd reached the city.

Since then, they had barely been able to advance at all. But as more and more boyz arrived from the surviving transports, eventually the tide would turn in their favor, Gargash was sure of it. Until then, he just had to have fun and keep krumpin' the red humies.

"Boss !" called out one of the boyz. "Look at dis !"

Gargash turned to look where the smaller Ork was pointing. There, tearing through a group of boyz, was another red humie, except that one was big, bigger than the beakies who sometimes fought alongside the smaller humie soldiers. In fact, it was around as tall as Gargash himself.

The Warboss smiled, showing every one of his many pointy teeth. Finally, a proper challenge.

"Dat one'z mine, boyz ! WAAAGH !"

As he charged, Gargash absent-mindedly noted all of his Weirdboyz suddenly exploding, but any annoyance he might have felt at their abrupt demise was washed away by a rush of excitement and fresh Waaagh ! energy suddenly coursing through his veins as the psychic energy the Weirdoyz had accumulated was unleashed.

"WAAAAGH !"


As the Ork Warboss charged in my direction, his war cry making the very ground tremble, I cursed inwardly, grateful that the armor hid my face from view so nobody could see the expression of panic on my face.

How was that brute still alive ?! I had seen his ship come apart under the firepower of Emeli's Gift. Nothing should've been able to survive that ! Yet here he was, unmistakable from the broadcast he'd sent announcing his arrival and intentions. Gargash Korbul himself, exactly as huge as he had looked and somehow far more threatening in person.

Up until this point, things had been going as well as I could have asked for. The suit of armor was as impenetrable to the Orks' firearms as I had hoped, allowing me to cut them down by the dozen with impunity. Despite the carnage I wrought, the xenos kept coming at me for some reason, leaving the rest of the USA forces free to flank them with overwhelming firepower. Jurgen was with the unit accompanying me, not using his psychic powers yet at my instruction (Ork psykers were rare, but they existed, and I felt better for the knowledge that we'd have a counter ready should we encounter one), limiting himself to the use of a lasgun, which he fired with an accuracy that was as remarkable as it was vengeful. And with every engagement, I had gotten more and more used to the way the armor responded to my every command.

And now, this. Judging by the pitiful sparks the handful of las-bolts that hit Korbul's armor produced, the Warboss was as threatened by my allies as I had been by his, which was yet another sign that the Emperor had a twisted sense of humor where I was concerned. In fact, the USA troopers were worse than useless in this scenario. With so many witnesses, my reputation would never survive if I just turned and ran. Although to be perfectly honest with myself I doubted I would either, given that Korbul was unlikely to just let me go, judging by the bloodthirsty expression twisting his already hideous face.

Jurgen might've been able to help, but he'd exhausted himself dealing with the xenos psykers and was currently being supported by a pair of troopers who were taking him to the back lines while their comrades provided covering fire. Which meant I was completely on my own.

Thankfully, the increased height of the armor helped keep the terror at bay. Had I been on foot, the sight of Korbul charging toward me would doubtlessly have caused me to freeze in place, leading to my quick and ignominious death. Instead, I moved on instinct, planting my feet and seizing my chainsword in a two-handed grip as I held it in a guard position.

Korbul crashed into me with what felt like the strength of a Baneblade, but I managed to hold my ground, and parried a blow from his powered claw with my chainsword, creating a fountain of sparks that did nothing to make the Warboss' features more appealing. We briefly struggled against one another, green muscle and primitive but effective servos pitted against the technology of the ancients, until I managed to disengage. He struck again, and I blocked before striking back, leaving a gouge across his shoulder armor.

For several panic-filled heartbeats, the two of us continued to exchange blows, damaging each other's armor but doing little real damage. To my not inconsiderable surprise, I was holding my own, the time I had spent sparring against USA troopers unexpectedly helping me deal with an opponent of around my size but with more muscle mass. Korbul was clearly used to fighting, but who knew how long it had been since he'd fought someone his own size – even had he encountered a Space Marine, they would've been tiny compared to his bulk.

In the end, though, for all my superior swordsmanship and the advantages provided by the armor I wore, Korbul had far more real battle experience than I did, and he hadn't risen to the command of an Ork army without acquiring a certain low, bestial cunning. He struck high with his powered claw, aiming at my head, and when I moved to parry shifted his posture to grab my right arm and twist it around. Given the nature of his melee weapon, I could easily free my whirring blade, but the manoeuvre had left me open for a precious few seconds.

Before I could react, he raised his other arm, which was holding some kind of bolter-looking firearm with a muzzle so large I could have put my arm inside it had I not been wearing Tesilon-Kappa's not-so-little surprise. Time slowed down to a crawl as the weapon filled my field of view, but there was nothing I could do but reflexively close my eyes as Korbul pulled the trigger with a triumphant grin as he shot me in the face at point-blank range.

This close, the noise was almost deafeningly loud. To my unspeakable astonishment and relief, however, I didn't reopen my eyes to find myself in front of a very ticked-off Emperor. Instead, I was treated to the far less dignified sight of Korbul blinking dumbly at my failing to be turned into a cloud of gore and metal scrap, before looking at his gun with furrowed eyebrows and shaking it around like a tech-priest performing the rites of maintenance on a recalcitrant piece of machinery. Somehow, the armor had held against the shot, though judging by the cracks on the view screen and the various icons flashing an urgent red I could tell it had been a close thing.

Not wanting to waste the miracle of engineering which had saved my miserable hide, I took advantage of my enemy's momentary distraction at once. Falling to one knee with a groan of protesting servos, I freed my chainsword and rammed it up into one of the weak spots my repeated battering had created in Korbul's armor. The energized field surrounding it sparked and shorted out, and the blade bit deep into his flesh before I ripped it out in a torrent of blood whose stench nearly overpowered my senses as it filtered in through the cracks in my own wargear.

And still, despite having been gutted, Korbul kept standing, though his sudden immobility made it clear it was an effort to do so.

"Dat waz … a good fight … humie," the beast managed to say through the blood pouring out of his mouth. It was hard to be sure, what with the blood and the fact that he was an Ork, but he appeared to be smiling, as if he'd truly enjoyed our duel, regardless of the outcome.

Madness. Even the Khornate lunatics would be angry in such a position, having been defeated in single combat after their entire fleet came apart around them. But then again, nobody had ever claimed that Orks were sane.

I swung my oversized chainsword, and the Warboss' head tumbled free of his shoulders. Aware of the watching crowd and the need to play up to my reputation, I caught the hideous thing in my left hand and held it aloft, before setting the volume of my armor's vox-speakers to maximum while also opening a general vox-channel :

"Korbul is dead !" I shouted, putting every bit of bravado I could fake into the words, a feat made easier by the adrenaline still coursing through my body. "Victory is is our reach ! Forward, warriors of Slawkenberg ! Forward into glory !"

A roar rose from the troopers around me, reminding me rather uncomfortably of the Orks' own bloodthirsty screams. The sight of their dead leaders appeared to break the greenskins' morale, and they started to flee, before being promptly run down or shot in the back by the USA.

I tossed Korbul's head away and considered giving chase, but my armor was too badly damaged for me to join the pursuit in any case, so it was a moot point. At this stage, it was nothing more than a big, slow target, so it was time for me to get out of it. Thankfully, the borg had taken the time to tell me how to activate the exit mechanism before sending me off to fight the xenos invaders with all the enthusiasm one would expect of the glorious Liberator.

I had just emerged from the armor and landed on solid ground where my palms suddenly started tingling, as I felt very exposed all of a sudden. If there really was a hidden enemy using the greenskins as a distraction, I could hardly think of a better moment for them to strike than when we thought we'd already won the day.

"General Mahlone," I said without preamble, opening a vox-link directly to the command center using the frequency reserved for the highest-ranking officers of the Liberation Council. "As you've probably already heard, Korbul is dead and the Orks are retreating. Any sign of our other visitors ?"

"Nothing as of yet – wait a moment. You, bring that into focus. Is that confirmed ? Get it on screen. Blood of the Gods, what is that thing ?!"

A cold sense of dread slithered down my spine as I heard Mahlone's exclamation. The other shoe, it seemed, had finally dropped.


The Dark Tormentor and its escorts had dropped their cloaking, right on the edge of the mon-keigh world's atmosphere. In the last few hours since the void engagement had gone so decisively in the defenders' favor, the Kabal's flotilla had moved to the other side of the planet from the Space Hulk, safe from its monstrous weaponry. The mon-keighs could see them now, but it didn't matter according to Archon Vileheart. Let them see the arrival of their betters, and feel the terror of prey before a predator. It would, still according to Vileheart, make their ultimate victory all the sweeter.

Based on the communications they were monitoring, the chieftain of the Ork warband Vileheart had manipulated into attacking this world had just been killed in single combat by the mon-keigh leader. Given what Sarevok knew of the greenskins, that actually was quite impressive if true, but that wasn't important at the moment. With the primitives convinced of their victory, now was the perfect time to crush their hope and reveal to them the true scope of their peril – such had been Vileheart's words when Sarevok had shared the news with him.

Sarevok wasn't sure he agreed with his liege's logic, but his job was to enact the Archon's will, not to question it. In fact, questioning it wasn't anybody's job, as the demonstration on the bridge had so eloquently shown all those present. Random executions were hardly uncommon among the Kabals, but Vileheart's ancient gauntlet was an especially painful way for those to go. It certainly had worked in motivating everyone, as the Kabal of Murderous Death prepared for the attack on the mon-keigh world (Slawkenberg, the Hierarch thought it was called) with renewed vigor.

Scores of Kabalite warriors were moving inside transports, ready for a swift deployment to their target. Meanwhile, the elites of the Kabal and those special forces recruited for the raid went into their own, private vehicles. The private barge of the Archon was also being readied, with the Incubi making the final checks before Vileheart himself embarked. They would, of course, find no sign of sabotage or any plot against the Archon : Sarevok had made sure of it.

The time to raid had come. They would fly across the surface of the world, and strike at the very heart of the mon-keighs' petty civilization, already thrown into disarray by the Orks' attack. They would extract the knowledge of the Panacea's location from the leaders, and take the rest as slaves. The locals had even been considerate enough to pack the non-combatants into shelters where, once their defenders were disposed of, they would be easy to harvest.

Soon, the Hierarch thought. Soon his opportunity would present itself. And when it did, he would seize it, along with everything he had dreamed of for so long. Vengeance and power would be his at long, long last.


Amberley moved through the corridors of the Drukhari ship carefully, aware that the slightest misstep would result in her being dragged back to her cell if she were lucky, and killed on the spot if she weren't … or perhaps it was the other way around. She wasn't sure. Her mind wasn't exactly at its sharpest at the moment, due to the several days she had spent in the custody of the Dark Eldars after waking from whatever tranquillizer the Harlequin had shot her with. The oppressive aura of pure, undiluted agony that suffused this entire ship didn't help either.

If she was perfectly honest with herself, she knew her escape could be attributed to her captors' stupidity rather than her own skills. Given how many prisoners the xenos raiders took back to their hellish homeland, she had expected them to know how to build cells. But the one in which she had woken up after the Harlequin's toxin faded had clearly been designed to facilitate the torture of the captive above all else.

Perhaps that was because such captives were expected to already be broken by the time they ended up there, or perhaps the Dark Eldars' addiction to sadism and cruelty had warped their minds beyond all common sense. Amberley might be a member of the Ordo Xenos, but she felt no desire to investigate that particular question, just as she would rather not know the details of the technology by which she had awakened without feeling any of the thirst and hunger she'd have expected after a prolonged bout of unconsciousness.

Regardless of the answer, she had made her bid for freedom after an overheard conversation between the guards. She could've escaped earlier, but that would have left her stranded on a Dark Eldar vessel in the middle of space. The snippets she'd been able to translate thank to her rudimentary knowledge of the Eldar language (well, not so rudimentary, but the dialect used by the dark kin of Commoragh had little in common with the Craftworld language she'd learned) indicated that they were in the process of raiding a human world. She had no idea which world it was, but this was likely her one and only chance of returning to the Imperium before her captors returned to the Dark City, at which point a quick death at her own hands would truly be her best option.

The xenos had deprived her of her equipment, but clearly they were more used to handling terrified civilians and traumatized Guardsmen who had just witnessed their comrades torn to shreds by agonizing weapons, rather than Inquisitors. They had missed the sub-dermal weaponry Amberley had arranged to have implanted in her body years before, precisely for a scenario such as this (most of the time, Inquisitors who were captured by those they investigated were just killed, but sometimes you got lucky and the heretic in question was stupid or arrogant enough to want to gloat to a captive audience).

With those devices, breaking her restraints and slitting the throat of the Dark Eldar standing watch had been almost insultingly simple. Now, of course, she needed to find a way off this accursed ship –

"Well, this is unexpected. I thought I would have to arrange your escape from your cell myself."

Amberley spun on her heels to find the very same Harlequin – or another one wearing the same ridiculous outfit – standing behind her. The pistol it had used to shoot her hung at its belt, and its hands were joined in front of it in a mocking clap.

Her finger hovered above the activation trigger for her sub-dermal weapon (without the advantage of surprise, it would be a long shot, but it was the only one she'd got), then the meaning of its words hit Amberley, and the Inquisitor hesitated.

"The Archon of the Kabal of Murderous Death is preparing to go to the planet in person," it continued. "I can help you sneak aboard his barge, if you like."

"What game are you playing, xenos ?" she asked, speaking plain Gothic. It probably knew she could speak its tongue, but she didn't want to embarrass herself with her faulty pronunciation – and besides, she refused to give it the satisfaction of making the effort.

"No game, I assure you, oh inquisitive lady," it declared, putting a hand on its heart. "I do only what I must, so that all can play the parts the audience expects of them."

That did fit with what Amberley knew of its breed, although what gain it could hope to achieve she had no idea. Regardless, given her situation, she didn't exactly have the luxury of choice.

"Very well," she said tersly. "But mark my word, xenos : I will make you pay for capturing me in the first place."

The Harlequin merely chuckled, which admittedly wasn't the reaction she'd hoped for, nor the one most people or aliens she had encountered had when she threatened them like that.

"I do believe that you will soon have far more pressing concerns, lady Vail. But in the meantime, please, follow me."


AN : This early chapter is brought to you by the new Cain novel, Vainglorious, whose audiobook I've just finished at the time of publishing.

For those who missed my post on Spacebattles : the shadow in the Warp Emeli is talking about is not the Shadow in the Warp cast by the Tyranid hive-fleets. While I do plan to have Cain face off against the Great Devourer at some point in the story, it's a bit early for that. My apologies for not making it clearer in the text that it was something else.

The Liberator Armor is based on the Praetor Armor, from Doom Eternal : The Old Gods, except with a chainsword and storm bolter instead of an energy sword and shield. Oh, and the head piece doesn't have horns. If someone more talented with Photoshop (or just actual, genuine drawing) than I want to try to create an image of what that looks like, please do.

And yes, this means I gave Cain the armor of the Dark Lord of Hell. Why ? Because it's funny, that's why. And also yes, we can only dream of the day we design user interfaces as friendly and convenient as the engineers of the Dark Age of Technology.

Finally, once again my characters have forced me to alter my plans going forward. In this case, it's Amberley's entire arc which has left me scratching my head wondering how things are going to end.

I blame the Harlequins for that one. But don't worry, I'm sure something will come to me that seems obvious in retrospect.

I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Don't expect the next update to be in two days, though.

Zahariel out.