For the first time in remembered history, Minos was at war with itself.
The vast Manufactoria of the industrial world were dependant on a constant flow of materials from the rest of the Torredon Gap and beyond, from the fuel which kept the gears turning to the raw, unprocessed ore which was turned into weapons and commodities for merchant ships to carry toward distant worlds. But, with the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy and the collapse of order in the Subsector, that flow had petered out almost completely as trade across the Subsector died out. The wheels of industry had ground to a halt, and millions of workers suddenly found themselves with nothing to do.
By itself, this was a problem, as it was a well-known truism in the Imperium that idleness among the lower classes fostered disquiet, and disquiet bred corruption. But then the Administratum lords of the world decided that, since the workers were no longer working, they shouldn't get their food stipends, which they traded every day for the bowls of nutrient paste which fed them and their families. This wasn't a rationing measure meant to stretch supplies : the food stores of Minos were well-stocked, to ward against famine should the Warp Storms or pirates cut the regular shipments from the agri-world of Emperor's Chalice required to sustain its billions-strong population. No, this decision was reached for purely procedural reasons, following the exact letter of regulations instead of exercising even the most basic level of common sense or decency.
As anyone who didn't have their nose stuck in an accounting book could have predicted, the announcement was met with disbelieving shock by the population, quickly followed by panic and outrage. Rumors of the Navy's withdrawal, which had previously been more or less contained through ruthless if typical information control, spread like wildfire.
People could endure hardship. If told that this was the will of the God-Emperor, they would do it gladly, finding pride in their sacrifice. But they would not endure their children starving while food sat on shelves in storage. The first riot happened less than twenty-four hours after the announcement, and while the local law enforcements, called Shieldbearers, managed to disperse it through the liberal use of shock mauls and tear gas, it was far from the last. The fourth riot was the one where the Shieldbearers finally broke ranks and ran for their lives, and the one whose maddened, hungry mob broke into the closest refrigerated warehouse to pilfer its contents.
Chaos didn't truly begin, however, until the building hosting the planetary central administration was stormed by rioters, and the Administratum adepts who had made the decision dragged in the street and beaten to death, along with the Governor and every member of his government who hadn't escaped in time.
After that, civil order had collapsed planetwide, with what cooler minds might have regarded as suspicious rapidity – but by that time, those were few and far between on Minos, and they were preoccupied with more urgent matters, such as survival.
Within weeks, the remnants of the Shieldbearers, the rioters, and the surviving nobles and their personal guards, all clashed in the continent-spanning streets and boulevards of Minos. Manufactoria and hab-blocks were set ablaze. Agitators called for the people to cast off the yoke of Imperial rule, while others prayed to the Master of Mankind for deliverance.
It was mayhem. It was anarchy. And it was to this that the Protectorate fleet arrived one day, emerging from the Warp at the system's edge.
"Well, this is a fine mess," I said out loud, looking at the central hololith on the Worldwounder's bridge.
It would be a lie to claim that Minos was beautiful, even from orbit. Millennia of industrial activity on such a massive scale had turned the planet's seas into toxic sludge, and a permanent pollution cloud hung over the world like a shroud. Not even the vast distances of space could make the swirls of brown and black smoke look like anything less than filthy smears on a once-pristine pearl.
As an industrial world, Minos' continents were almost completely covered in sprawling factories and hab-blocks for the workers, mixed together in ways I couldn't help but think would expose the civilians to unhealthy levels of pollutants. Which was something I knew a truly devout servant of the Imperium wouldn't have let concern him, and I silently mourned how far I had fallen from my tutors' ideals since leaving the Schola Progenium.
The distaste of the Slawkenberg-born around me for the state of the world was obvious on their faces. To them, this was yet another example of the Imperium's corruption, that it would force billions of its citizens to dwell in such a place. Nevermind the fact that the demands of a million worlds and countless war fronts made such places an absolute necessity in order to keep Mankind safe : they were used to the borgs' heretekal approach, which I had deliberately sabotaged in order to keep the Protectorate from being able to resist any real effort by the Imperium to reclaim its territory (with admittedly questionable results).
And then, of course, there was the ongoing civil war, which wasn't doing the world any favor. Telling the proles they couldn't eat if they didn't work and they couldn't work wasn't quite the stupidest thing I had ever heard : I had spent too long on Slawkenberg under the rule of the Giorbas and forced to attend official ceremonies by my position for that to be the case. But it was close to the top all the same. I could only hope that whichever short-sighted, crown-pinching bureaucrat had made the abysmally stupid decision was among those who had gotten lynched in the ensuing riots.
We had arrived in-system a little over twenty-four hours ago, long enough for the fleet to travel from the Mandeville Point to orbit. The local Space Defense Force hadn't even tried to stop us : not only wouldn't they have stood a chance, but Areelu had easily been able to convince their captains that we were on a pirate-hunting expedition across the Gap. She had pointed to the presence of the Rossinante and Jewel of the Void, still bearing clear sign of battle damage but sailing in formation with the rest of our fleet, as evidence of our recent success.
As it had turned out, the Bloodied Crown vessels had passed through the system on their way to Sanguia, and though they hadn't wasted time attacking the system, the SDF were still understandably relieved to hear of their defeat, since they would have been next on the chopping block. Their commanders had bought Areelu's lie wholesale, and were all but stumbling upon one another in their attempts to help us.
Which still left the question of what to do about Minos. There was no way I could justify us simply ignoring it and leaving to pursue Auric, not without doing catastrophic damage to the expedition's morale. In the time since our arrival, rumors of what was happening on the planet's surface had already spread across the fleet, aided by the efforts of Krystabel's and Harold's cultist associates before I'd even realized what they were doing.
Not that making sense of this mess was easy. The SDF had been our main point of contact, as they had stayed out of the civil war by virtue of not wanting to open fire on the planet from orbit (and with the Governor and most of his staff dead, there wasn't anybody left with the authority to order them to in any case). They had done their best to keep track of things, but they weren't trained for that kind of work. They had sent their data over when Areelu had asked, and our social experts (meaning Harold and Krystabel) had been pouring over it ever since, as had General Mahlone's own military analysts.
"Alright," I said, turning to look at the two cultists. "Tell me what we are dealing with here."
They glanced at one another, then Krystabel inclined her head slightly, letting Harold go ahead first.
"By our current best estimates," began Harold, "there are around sixteen different factions present on Minos. The remnants of the loyalist forces are still active and in communication with each other, but they lack a coherent command structure or a plan of action. From the transmissions we've intercepted and decoded, there appears to be a lot of disagreement as to who has seniority and should hold overall command."
The members of the war council were too dignified to snigger at this mention of Imperial incompetence, but I could feel their smugness all the same. I shook my head, letting some of the sadness I felt show on my face – the Liberator, after all, was supposed to care for the people of the Imperium, and such disunity didn't serve anyone.
Well, anyone who wasn't us. Not exactly a pleasant thought, but not one I could avoid, either.
"How disappointingly predictable," I said aloud. "What else ?"
"We believe we've located where the tech-priests have gone to ground," said Krystabel. "They have regrouped inside one of the main generatoria in the northern hemisphere, and their defenses are killing everyone who tries to get close."
"Power is still running through the lines, though," I noted. That much was obvious from orbit, even through the pollution clouds : had the power been cut, entire sections of the world would have been plunged into darkness. I shivered internally at the thought of the panic and anarchy such a thing would cause, and gave silent thanks to the Omnissiah that, despite the madness that had befallen their world, the tech-priests of Minos were keeping to their sacred duties.
"Yes, Warmaster," Harold confirmed. "The tech-priests are broadcasting looped warnings to all the other factions to stay clear of the generatorium, regardless of their allegiance. Several rebel groups which tried to approach were eliminated by combat servitors and arcs of redirected power, and one of the PDF units still active approached before withdrawing without making contact."
"It is doubtful that my brethren care overmuch which faction ends up victorious in the struggle," said Tesilon-Kappa from where they stood. Several of their mecha-dendrites were connected to the hololith, allowing them to upload the data directly into their internal cogitators rather than through what they doubtlessly considered the inferior medium of a visual display. "I believe they are waiting for things to calm down before emerging and start the process of rebuilding."
"Probably the most sensible thing they could do, under the circumstances," I nodded, glad that someone was keeping a level head down there. "Now, what about the rebels ?"
"Unlike our own Uprising, the Minosians didn't have the advantage of the Liberator and his Council to coordinate their efforts in throwing off the yoke of Imperial oppression," Harold replied promptly. I would have scoffed at the blatant flattery, if not for the fact that I could read the Tzeentchian magus' face well enough to know that he was perfectly sincere, as were the looks of respect everyone else in the room cast in my direction at the reminder. "Their rebellion appears to have been entirely spontaneous in response to the decree that would have starved them all to death, with little thought being given to the future."
"Understandable, given they didn't have a future unless things changed," said Areelu. "Even the most desperate will fight with all they have in such a situation."
"Indeed, Lady Van Yastobaal," said Harold with a nod in her direction, before resuming his briefing.
I didn't bother paying attention to the details as he listed the various groups which had formed in the riots' immediate aftermath, once the plebs had realized that they hadn't been immediately slaughtered by the authorities as they had most likely expected. None of them appeared to be harboring heretical sympathies, though as Harold pointed out, that didn't mean much : any group with such leanings would have concealed them to avoid risking uniting everyone else against them.
Given what had happened on Slawkenberg, I had no doubt that the Dark Gods had an eye on the situation, and were already looking for potential dupes to corrupt in order to turn a perfectly understandable overthrow of a regime that had failed its duties to the God-Emperor into a Chaos rebellion.
As I had learned more about the Ruinous Powers than I was comfortable with, I had come to believe that such a thing was tragically common in the Imperium. The moments people turned from the Imperial Creed, regardless of their reasons, Chaos came creeping in through the cracks. The promises of the Dark Gods would sound very tempting to victorious rebels now faced with the prospect of Imperial retribution, and they would embrace damnation one seemingly reasonable step at a time.
With how long the Imperium took to answer most distress calls, by the time a response arrived, the well-meaning rebels, who might have risen up against a genuinely incompetent and corrupt regime (such as the Giorbas, though I suspected they had still been an extreme case), were corrupted into warped parodies of their former idealism. I shuddered to imagine how many times that story had played itself out across the millennia, until the High Lords and other Imperial worthies came to believe every single act of rebellion to be caused by Chaos and deserving of heresy's punishment.
Not that the Dark Gods were above helping such rebellions happen, of course, as I knew better than most. Hopefully, though, we would manage to keep things on Minos from degenerating into blood sacrifices, desecration of Imperial churches, and the rest of the heresies I had worked so hard to keep from happening on Slawkenberg since the Uprising.
Once Harold was done, all eyes turned on me, and I quailed internally at the expectations I could see in all of them. I knew what they were all expecting me to say, what my reputation demanded that I say. But I had no interest in getting dragged into an urban warzone.
This wouldn't be like the Cleansing of Skitterfall or the purge of the Broodspawns on Cassandron, dangerous as both of these fights had been. The factions on Minos were made of sentient, intelligent people – well, apart from whatever bureaucrats had survived, I suppose, but they weren't likely to pick up a lasgun and try to be useful for once – and that would make the planet a deathtrap. I remembered enough of my Schola tutors' lectures to know that there were few battlefields more dangerous than a city, where every window might conceal a sniper, and every intersection was a potential ambush point. The USA's power armor might be proof against nearly every weapon we could expect to find on the planet, but even it couldn't protect its wielder from things like improvised explosives or collapsing buildings.
At the same time, I couldn't simply tell the rest of the war council that this wasn't our problem, or that we had more important matters to attend to, and order the fleet to leave and continue its journey. Fortunately, I had managed to come up with a solution. All I needed to do was present it in a way that the heretics around me would buy it, and after all those years that was something I had become distressingly good at.
"The people of Minos cry out for Liberation, and it is our duty to answer," I began, and everyone nodded approvingly, as I'd known they would. "They need our help, both to complete their breaking free of the Imperium's shackles, but also to survive now that their masters have abandoned them and left them to their fate."
An industrial world couldn't survive without regular food shipments anymore than Cassandron itself could have before we'd shared the nutrient-paste-making technology with its population. Minos' total population was lower than that of a proper hive-world, but it still numbered in the billions, and was far too polluted to support an agriculture capable of feeding itself. The food stores might prevent starvation for a time, but eventually they would run out, and what would happen then would make the current anarchy look like a dispute between court ladies over tea.
Fresh off our efforts to prevent precisely such a nightmarish scenario on Cassandron, everyone present understood that implicitly.
"However," I continued, every eye returning to me at once, "at the same time, the threat of Auric's foul experiments cannot be ignored. Pacifying Minos will be a long and arduous task, and that is time we cannot risk giving the insane Director of the Bloodied Crown."
Again, this was nothing less than the truth. If, as we suspected, Auric had figured out a way to replicate the effects of prolonged Warp exposure on latent psykers, I didn't want to see what he would do once his back was driven to the wall by the death of most of the shadow cartel's leadership.
"Therefore, we will split up our forces," I declared, before forging ahead : "the bulk of the fleet will remain here and proceed with the Liberation campaign, while the Worldwounder will continue the hunt for Auric's laboratory."
While leaving so much of our flotilla behind wasn't my preferred course of action, in this particular scenario, I was convinced it was the right move. If the might of the Worldwounder and the forces aboard wasn't enough to deal with the Bloodied Crown's Director, then I doubted that bringing the rest of the fleet would help.
As the meaning of my words registered, a wave of unease swept over the gathering of heretics.
"My lord," General Mahlone eventually called out to me, looking like he wasn't sure he believed what he'd just heard. "Do you mean to leave Minos to us, then ?"
"Precisely," I nodded. "I have faith that, by the time I return, you will have dealt with the situation here and put an end to the conflict on Minos."
"We won't disappoint you, Lord Liberator," said Mahlone, puffed up with self-importance at the honor he believed I was bestowing upon him and the others. Around him, the rest of the war council followed suit, although I didn't miss the quick glare Krystabel directed at Areelu for some reason.
"I know you won't," I lied with a smile on my face.
It took time to set everything up, of course. Even though I believed it to be the best course of action available to me, the thought of leaving the USA to fight without me being there filled me with dread. I was terrified that, by the time I came back, I would find Minos turned into a charnel pit, with the Khornates piling up the skulls of Imperial citizens in the streets and chanting my name in ruinous praise.
I knew, objectively, that such a thing was extremely unlikely, but I still made sure that the Handmaidens and Tzeentchian magi left behind to help coordinate efforts were fully aware that under no circumstances were they to resort to daemonic summoning or any other sorcerous manipulation of the people of the industrial world. I didn't go quite so far as to tell them I would kill them myself if they broke my proscriptions the moment my back was turned, but I implied it as strongly as I dared.
While I wasn't there, General Mahlone would be in charge of the armed forces and the overall campaign. Krystabel, Harold and Tesilon-Kappa would advise him and spearhead diplomatic overtures to the fractious rebel groups. This would be the first time any of them operated on another world without me present to monitor them, and while in practice this would be little different from how things normally ran on Slawkenberg, all of them seemed to be taking it very seriously.
In addition to the USA, the Minos campaign would also see the first deployment of the Cassandron units which had joined us on the hive-world. The Vampires and their PDF escorts would be under Mahlone's command, and treated the same as the rest of the USA forces which would take part in the planetary operations – albeit with some restrictions to keep the proles from discovering their true nature and descending into perfectly understandable panic at the presence of blood-drinking mutants in their midst.
I worried about all the ways in which this could go wrong, but if the Vampires turned out to be unreliable, then it was better to find out as soon as possible. And, since I wouldn't be there, Akivasha couldn't blame me for any issue – nor would she be able to react violently.
Among the USA, Lieutenant Nathan's platoon had been selected for the dubious honor of accompanying me. From what I'd gleaned in our brief conversation on the matter, they thought it was an acknowledgement of their bravery during the boarding of the Jewel of the Void, and looked forward to getting some payback on Auric for sending the wyrds their way. It was obvious that the Lieutenant was haunted by how there'd been nothing he could do as his people burned to ash in front of him, and how Akivasha and I had needed to deal with the would-be assassins ourselves while he and his unit stood there, paralysed.
I didn't want him to take stupid risks in a misguided attempt to reclaim his honor, though, not while I might need to hide behind him. So I made sure he understood that hadn't been his fault (which was true), and he still had my full confidence (which wasn't, but he didn't need to know that).
Hektor also insisted on accompanying me, and I agreed without hesitation. Suture was already going to come with the Worldwounder and Areelu, and I was of the opinion that one could never have too many Astartes to hide behind.
"You will need to be cautious," I advised Mahlone during our final meeting. "I suspect there is more at play here than what we can see."
I had little idea at the time of how prescient those words would end up being : mostly, I was unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that surely the Administratum wasn't that incompetent as to lose an entire world to rebellion in such a stupid manner, and there was something else at play. The rest was me covering my own backside by making a show of worrying so that no one could blame me if things went wrong in my absence – and if they didn't, I was confident nobody would remember my overabundance of caution.
Before we left, I gave one last speech that was broadcast across the fleet, telling them that while I regretted not being able to lead them in battle once more, I trusted them to do the Protectorate proud. I played into my image as a modest leader, joking that they didn't need me to hold their hands, before reminding them that the people of Minos weren't the enemy, and that we were here to help them, not kill them.
The last thing I did before departing the Minos system was contact Zerayah back on Slawkenberg. I'd already informed Jafar that I'd be out of touch for some time, but I wanted to tell her in person too. She wasn't happy about learning that I would be unable to call her again, but she understood that it was inevitable. She did extract a promise that I'd be careful when dealing with Auric, which I was all too happy to give her.
And then we were gone. The Worldwounder entered the Warp, and we were cut off from the rest of the expedition and the greater Protectorate for the duration of the trip. The Navigator wasn't sure how long the journey would take, as the route we were following barely existed at all. I found that rather worrying, but Areelu assured me her three-eyed mutant knew his craft well enough to see us through.
Once again, the sudden isolation really helped me realize how used I had become to the ansibles' miraculous technology. For the rest of the galaxy, star-spanning communication was a matter of weeks if not months, using astropathic choirs to relay messages across the void's unthinkably vast distances. Not for the first time, I resolved to make sure that the Imperium gained the benefits of this amazing technology as soon as possible.
Days passed aboard the Rogue Trader vessel, indistinguishable from one another. To keep my mind from wandering into places I'd prefer not to visit, I busied myself as best I could, spending my days training, walking around the ship, talking with the USA officers present aboard and making sure they believed I trusted their skills, and entertaining little Lucia by drawing on my experience with Zerayah at her (apparent) age, while my nights were almost uniformly spent in her mother's company.
It was during one of these nights that I was suddenly awakened by what I can only describe as a sudden lurch in the very fabric of reality. One moment I was sleeping, Areelu in my arms after a very pleasant evening, and the next she and I were both wide awake, our hands moving to the weapons we both kept close to hand out of not-so-paranoid habit.
"What was that ?" I asked.
Before Areelu could answer, the door to the chamber slammed open, and Jurgen and Malicia burst in, weapons at the ready. Before Areelu or I could say anything, they checked the room, before Malicia moved on to the rest of the suite while Jurgen stayed close by.
"What's going on ?" I asked him. Neither Areelu nor I were outraged at this breach of our privacy, but we were surprised all the same.
"Warp-breach, sir," replied Jurgen. "Daemons. I can feel them."
Well, frak. Next to me, Areelu let loose a stream of curses of surprising viciousness for a lady of her prestigious position.
"Bridge, this is the Lady Captain," she called out after putting her comm-bead into her ear. "Tell me what's going on."
There was a brief pause during which she listened to the report of her crew, then she turned toward me, her expression grim :
"Jurgen is right. The Geller Field was briefly breached just now. It was only a temporary breach, thank the Gods, but we have reports of daemonic presence in the lower decks. They haven't got to anywhere important for now, but it's only a matter of time – and they are killing my crew. I have to to go down there and banish them."
"I'll go with you," I told her, and she nodded as if that had never been in doubt – which, truth be told, it hadn't. No matter my feelings on the matter, I simply had no choice. I had to join the fray, or risk losing the respect of not just Areelu and Jurgen, but every single person aboard the Worldwounder who had bought the lie of Cain the Liberator. In addition, it was a given that our best warriors would go, and I'd feel a lot better having them around me rather than sitting alone in a room, wondering if the next incursion would happen right there.
Thankfully, Jurgen wouldn't let me go without first putting on my armor, so I didn't have to charge into a daemonic incursion while in my nightclothes. Areelu also put on her own suit of gently purring armor and grabbed her blue metal staff out of the sealed vault in which it rested in between her needing it. The artefact gave me the creeps, but if we were going to face daemons, I wanted her to have every one of her witching tools with her.
By the time we were prepared, Areelu's people had finished putting together a purging force which would hopefully be enough to deal with the situation, and which had gathered in a nearby hall where we rendezvoused with them. They were armored with shock mauls, boarding shields, shotguns, and flamers : the kind of wargear you would need for the close-quarters battle of the inside of a starship, as well as for the cleansing that would follow.
Suture and Hektor were there too, having apparently been training together when the breach had happened, as well as a contingent of Van Yastobaal household troops. Lieutenant Nathan had also arrived with his full platoon, bringing our numbers to just under a hundred armed men and women, and I was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic. The USA had fought daemons before : first in Skitterfall, and more recently on Cassandron, and acquitted themselves well in both cases.
Akivasha also suddenly appeared – one moment I had been considering whether to risk sending someone to her quarters to ask for her assistance, the next she had been there, causing Malicia to nearly draw her blades in surprise, which would have ended badly for her, before checking the movement as she recognized the Volkihar Paragon.
Together, we marched toward the depths of the ship, following the household troops, who knew the ship better than any of us. We walked down corridors lit with the red of emergency lumens, and went down mass conveyors normally used to carry cargo across the ship – the elevators used by the crew weren't large enough to accommodate our war party all at once, and none of us were stupid enough to split our forces unless there was no other choice.
The lower decks of the Worldwounder reminded me a lot of the underhive of my youth, all cramped corridors and ancient technology none of the locals understood. Said locals were cowering in the darkness, hiding from the monsters rampaging in their home. I felt a sudden, unexpected spike of anger at the thought : regardless of how well Areelu ran her ship, these people's lives were already difficult enough without being hunted by infernal horrors.
The deeper we went, and the closer to our destination, the more signs of the breach we could see. I could glimpse faces on the metal walls, contorted in agony and weeping bloody tears. I was certain I could hear whispers in the constant background noise of the ship, which I'd long since grown used to, but whenever I tried to isolate them and determine their source or meaning, they faded away.
Despite their training, it was clear that the rest of the group was also spooked – even Areelu and Malicia, the former probably because she knew what these signs portended, the latter because Drukhari had little experience with matters of the Warp. Only Hektor and Suture looked unconcerned, but given that one of them had spent an eternity in the Eye of Terror and the other was a renegade Astartes of unknown origins, that was little comfort.
I was rescued from these dark thoughts when, suddenly, next to me (a position I'd assumed as naturally as I could, since it let me stay in the middle of our group while looking like I was protecting her) Areelu cursed, before signalling for a halt and turning in my direction.
"I've just heard from the bridge," she said. "There has been another breach."
"Where ?" I asked, fearing the worst.
"The Enginarium," she told me.
This wasn't quite the worst case scenario (that would have been the bridge having already fallen), but it was close. If the Enginarium fell, then, if we were very lucky, we would be forced out of the Warp in the middle of nowhere. With the ansibles and Areelu's knowledge of sorcery, we might be able to get help before starving to death. Far more likely, however, we would all die in a fiery explosion as the immense reactor serving as the beating heart of the Worldwounder was damaged by the daemons, with the survivors ending up thrown into the Warp, unprotected and at the mercy of its denizens.
Needless to say, something had to be done, and fast. But the Enginarium was too far from our current position. My hive-rat's instinctual grasp of three-dimensional spaces told me as much. We would never make it in time, even if we ran all the way there – which would only make us too exhausted to be of use in any case.
There was only one option, I decided. I turned toward Akivasha, trying to think of the best way to phrase my next words. Out of all of us, she was the only one likely to reach the Enginarium in time and still be able to deal with whatever daemonic horrors awaited there.
"Lady Akivasha," I began, but before I could beg her, she nodded, frowning with displeasure, but clearly knowing what I was about to ask and why it was necessary. She glared at Jurgen and Malicia in silent warning not to let me die while she was gone, and left without a word, disappearing down the maze of corridors.
I blinked, surprised despite having already seen what the Paragon was capable of several times, then shook myself. I had to trust that Akivasha would be able to deal with the situation in the Enginarium – in the meantime, I had my own Warp breach to deal with, no matter how much I didn't want to.
"Let's keep moving," I told everyone else, and we resumed our descent into the bowels of the Worldwounder.
Almost an hour later, we found the daemons inside a vast space that appeared to have been a chapel to the God-Emperor before its desecration. Despite Areelu's allegiance to the Chaos God Tzeentch, I knew that most of her crew was ignorant of their mistress' heresy, and she let them worship as they pleased rather than go on a purge of her own people – not out of any lingering loyalty to Him on Earth, mind you, but rather out of simple pragmatism. Replacing the Emperor-worshipping crew would be a costly endeavour, and their presence helped hide her own treachery when dealing with the Imperium.
The statue of the Emperor at the far end of the chamber had been thoroughly desecrated now, however. It was daubed in blood and gore, and its face had been broken off, leaving the icon faceless, unable to witness the carnage wrought upon His domain. My gaze was quickly drawn away from the sight, however, as far more dangerous blasphemies attracted my attention.
Tall, hulking figures with red scaled skin, hoofed feet, and long black horns and longer black blades stalked across the deck. The air shimmered around them like it did above the roads of Slawkenberg on a warm summer day. Even from this distance and through the rebreather on my helmet, I could smell the appalling stench of carnage and furnace heat that emanated from them.
"Bloodletters," grunted Hektor. "The footsoldiers of the War God."
"I don't care what they are," hissed Areelu. "They have killed my crew. They'll pay for that."
The amount of spite in her voice surprised me. Looking around, I saw the same expression of barely controlled fury on the exposed face of every Van Yastobaal guard, in the way the USA troopers were clutching their weapons tightly. And, though they were silent, I read the tension in Suture's and Malicia's body language, the barely restrained urge to charge and start killing. But it wasn't until my eyes fell on Jurgen and I saw the faint traces of lightning crackling around his armored hands that my stomach dropped.
Something was very, very wrong here. Anger in the moment before battle was a perfectly natural response – at least it was for humans : I'd no idea whether the same applied to Drukhari. But this was more than that. My escort, on whose effectiveness depended my safety, was behaving like a bunch of penal troopers hooked up on slaught.
Given we were approaching a nest of daemons spawned in the depths of the Warp as echoes of fury and bloodshed, it didn't take an Inquisitor to figure out what was going on.
"Control yourselves, all of you," I barked in my best Commissarial voice. "Don't let these creatures' influence twist your will. You are soldiers, not barbarians ! Act accordingly !"
There was a pause, during which I worried my authority wouldn't be enough to drag them back to sanity, but then, by the Emperor's grace (or that of someone else), it worked. Nobody relaxed, we were still faced with a bunch of soulless monsters from the Sea of Souls, but some of the crazed tension dissipated and discipline reasserted itself.
"Thank you, Ciaphas," said Areelu bashfully.
"You're welcome," I replied on reflex.
Unfortunately, while my outburst had prevented the forces around me to turn into battle-crazy lunatics, it had also attracted the attention of the Bloodletters away from their play with the corpses of their victims. They turned in our direction, their monstrous faces contorting into what a madman might have considered smiles – but before they could charge us, one stepped forward, and they all recoiled, letting it go first.
It was tall. Taller than me, taller than the other daemons around it, taller even than Hektor and Suture. In its left hand, it held a blade like that of its kindred, though larger and decorated with metallic spikes that would have looked ridiculous on a mortal weapon. From its back hung a cloak of skulls, Human, Ork, Eldar, and many other xenos breeds I didn't recognize.
Tall as it might be compared to its already far too large kin, it was still far smaller than Hash'ak'gik or Gurug'ath had been. And since its manifestation hadn't required massive, planet-wide rituals, it had to be less powerful than either of the two greater servants of Nurgle I had fought in the past.
And yet, looking upon it, I felt a sense of dread deeper and more visceral than even these two had conjured within me, impossible though it seemed. It looked straight at me with eyes that were twin pits of hellfire, and terror came over me like a suffocating shroud. I stood there as darkness closed in around me, until there was only the infernal champion and the promise of death it exuded.
Then it opened its mouth, revealing impossible long fangs, and spoke :
"I am U'Zuhl," it called out, each syllable clawing at my brain. "Skulltaker, Herald of the Blood God and His Sacred Executioner. And I have come for you, Ciaphas Cain."
AN : As I thought when the Muse first demanded it, having Akivasha accompany Cain is proving something of a challenge, since she is very, purposefully overpowered. But if I remind myself that the Liberator's enemies presumably know about her, I think I can justify stuff like the breach in the Enginarium. Yes, it's blatantly done to draw the scary Vampire Paragon away. But wouldn't you do the same if you were in U'Zuhl's place ? Exactly.
We'll see how much I can stretch this particular joke at Cain's expanse before it gets old. In the meantime, he has a Herald of Khorne to deal with.
One of the criticisms I've seen often levied against 40K is that every rebellion against the Imperium turns out to be caused by Chaos or xenos infiltration. Personally, I've always thought there are two ways to think about this : the first is the one described by Cain in his inner monologue, where the Dark Gods are watching for any successful rebels and turn them to Chaos through their manipulations. The other is more subtle, and it requires you to remember that the Imperium is, above all, good at one thing : keeping its people in line. The entire modern Imperial hierarchy is built to prevent another Horus Heresy, and after ten thousand years, it has gotten very, very good at keeping order. Would-be rebels face impossible odds, and in such a situation, they need any help they can get to succeed. There are probably countless rebellions across the Imperium unaligned with the Ruinous Powers or the various xenos races, but we never hear about them because they fail and get mercilessly crushed.
(This last paragraph/rant may or may not be foreshadowing about Minos.)
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and suggestions.
Zahariel out.