barracks and get their side of it. Colonel Dakar, with me.”
The command bunker was emptied, left to Rezail and Nisri as they shouted. The only people left
outside were the medicae, who were tending to the wounded.
“Colonel Dakar,” Rezail shouted, “I shouldn’t be the one reminding you about your duties! The
mere fact that you’d have me shoot Nubis, who clearly had nothing to do with Raham’s death,
proves to me that you’ve forgotten your duties to the Emperor.”
Nisri’s face contorted into a hateful scowl. “I know my duties as a soldier better than you,
political officer. Sergeant Raham’s record as an NCO was peerless. Sergeant Nubis’ record, if you’d
taken the time to examine it, is earmarked with disciplinary actions. He could have been a lieutenant
or a major by now, but he always finds trouble.”
“And yet,” Rezail said, “Sergeant Nubis was stopping his own man from shooting your
tribesmen in the back. And how do you repay him for saving the lives of your men? By demanding
his execution! Your judgement is impaired. Battalion Commander Iban Salid’s judgement is
impaired. Frankly, I would execute the whole lot of you for putting your petty, vindictive feud ahead
of your duties to the Emperor. Since we’ve been stranded here, we’ve already lost three qualified
officers and at least a dozen men… and none to the enemy! We’ve fought nobody except one
another! One another, damn it!”
The anger left Nisri’s body. He seemed to deflate, the life vacating him in a rush. He steadied
himself against the desk. Rezail had to stop as well, his head swimming from dehydration, from
hunger and from the fatigue Neither of them said anything. There was nothing left to say; the
situation seemed hopeless. They were trapped on a desert world with no apparent hope of rescue.
For the moment, it felt like they’d come here to die.
6
The compound seemed deserted. There was no unauthorised movement, and all off-duty personnel
were confined to their barracks while Commissar Rezail spoke to each platoon in turn. A
Guardsman sang a prayer hymn to the love and devotion of the Emperor, over the loudspeakers
mounted on the building. His throaty voice echoed in the lonely desert, and his words melted into
one another to form the river of a melody that washed the ears and soothed the jagged heart.
Turk did one last sweep of the two barracks belonging to the Banna, before heading to the lone
tent tucked at the foot of the wall. After a quick glance around, he ducked inside and immediately
fell into the arms of Kamala Noore. There was nothing to say at the moment. They fell into the each
other’s embrace.
Nisri sat in the darkness of the command bunker. The solitary lights of the only two remaining
active control slates bathed him in their blinking wash.
“You’re overdue by several hours,” Nisri said, not bothering to look up. “I can’t afford to send
out search parties.”
“The desert provides me with all I need,” Sergeant Ballasra said, coming down the three stone
steps. “I heard what happened. Raham dead?”
“Saving the quartermaster’s life. I wish to be left alone.”
“I know, but this is not the time for such privileges, not when your tribe needs you.”
36
Nisri shook his head. “My tribe… I’m in danger of losing my command. Commissar Rezail
would be within his rights to assume command. Do not speak of such things, not now, not after
what’s happened.”
“Was it not said,” Ballasra said, “that we would find a new world… a paradise free of the heretic
Orakles and iconoclasts? Here,” Ballasra said, handing Nisri his canteen, “taste the waters of
paradise.”
Nisri stared into Ballasra’s eyes and saw, for the first time in ages, the spark of joy. Something
had enraptured Ballasra, and it sang to Nisri as well. He took the canteen and was surprised at its
weight. He hadn’t felt a full canteen in months. He smelled the clean water and drank its cool
freshness. This was not distilled water; this was not stale drink. He could taste the rock over which it
had flowed in the heavy minerals that clung to his tongue. Ballasra smiled at Nisri’s mystified
expression, and produced a curved red knobbly fruit. Ballasra sliced off a piece with his knife and
offered it to Nisri.
“Here, eat from the gardens of paradise.”
The fruit was meaty and succulent, and thick with red juice that dribbled down Nisri’s chin. He
laughed, a quick bark that echoed off the walls, and devoured the fruit down to the rind.
“I have found us our world,” Ballasra said. “All that remains is for you to lead your tribe there.”
37
CHAPTER FIVE
“Thank the Emperor for His blessings,
And surely you must thank him for your misfortunes.”
—The Accounts of the Tallarn by Remembrancer Tremault
1
Day Eighty.
The limestone rock formations seemed incongruous in the surrounding desert. They simply
appeared, as though alien, displaced. They were massive, ten storeys tall and thick in girth. Red,
green and orange shrubs grew around their base, in thick clusters, and the air carried an earthy musk.
It was the smell of moisture.
A wide tunnel mouth nestled at the roots of the pillars, almost shielded by them, as if Khadar
had started to yawn, and had forgotten to stop. The tunnel mouth was large and pressed into the
earth like a thumbprint. Three Chimeras could drive into her, shoulder to shoulder, with little risk of
bumping against one another. As it was, one Chimera was already sheltered inside the cavern’s
mouth, gathering food and water for transport back to camp.
The tunnel branched into a delta of smaller passages, some large enough to accommodate the
chicken-legged Sentinel walkers under the command of Major Hussari. Bio-phos paint and lumetubes
illuminated the main tunnel, consigning the remainder to darkness. The corridors eventually
stopped, leading back up to the surface, or reconnecting to the main passages. A mere handful dug
down deep into the stone, eventually ending in what the Guardsmen had designated “Cavern
Apostle”, and that was only the beginning of the network of giant caves.
Apostle was huge, like the grand hall of the battle fleet’s cathedral ships. The ceiling arched high
above the floor, while stalagmites and stalactites reached low and high. In a few places, thick
columns that tethered sky and earth broke through the deep deposits of loam covering the ground.
Captain Toria, who possessed some skill in caving, explained that the caves were formed from
water passing through soft limestone, eating away at it until it formed chambers. He called them
solution caves, and theorised that, given the dry river beds that scarred the surface, Khadar was once
a water-fertile world. Over time, the rivers ate through the limestone, forming an underground
network of tunnels, exposing reflective pyrite flakes that glittered and improved any ambient light.
Over the millennia, erosion turned the tunnels into caves, and any water that evaporated from the
heat condensed on the walls and ceilings and dribbled down in thick rivulets. Given the strength and
thickness of the larger streams, Toria theorised that there were more caverns such as this, filled with
a sea’s bounty in mineral-rich waters.
What Captain Toria was at a loss to explain, however, was how the cavern could hold a rich,
verdant jungle, an ecosystem unlike any the Tallarn had ever seen.
2
38
Kamala Noore stood on a high ledge overlooking the jungle canopy of Cavern Basilica. The cavern
remained largely unexplored and partially dark, save for patches of bioluminescence. Thousands of
light strings, which seemed to shine a soft white, glowed along the ceiling. Someone told her they
were creatures that used their light to lure insects in for the feast. Kamala hesitated; did someone tell
her, or was it another random thought plucked from their minds? She couldn’t tell. It was hard to
focus.
Several metres below her, the canopy glowed slightly, the fronds tipped with yellow glow bulbs
that sent a sparkle across the jungle. Foliage rustled and the trees shifted, the bulbs dancing. She
could hear the whines of the Sentinels’ servo-motors as they explored their new environment, their
guide torches flashing through the breaks in the canopy.
Unable to pierce the gloom with her eyes, her mind seemed to scramble wildly through the
caverns, unfocused, untethered. Since arriving on Khadar, Kamala had been searching for some sign
of an Imperial presence, of a massacre, but there was none. With the exception of a survey team that
had made a cursory examination of the planet ages ago, Khadar remained pristine and inviolate.
It wouldn’t be the first time a psyker had received distorted images and misidentified them, but
this felt different. There was a ghost of something in the air, and it was maddeningly elusive. It
slipped through her fingertips and haunted her with the haze of dead faces. She could almost see an
Imperial banner half-buried in sand. She could almost see the vague faces with their dead eyes that
stared up at the sky, but, like a name that was on the tip of the tongue, it remained formed and
unformed. It was never complete, and without it, she felt incomplete.
Whatever it was that Kamala believed was missing, she felt that the caves were critical to it. She
reached out and sensed the enormity of the cave system. They spread out for dozens of kilometres,
maybe more, and they pulled at her, stretched her thin. As always, the answer rested just beyond her
grasp.
A brush of boots against the ground brought Kamala out of her reverie. She didn’t need to turn
around to know that it was Turk. With a nod, he dismissed the two Guardsmen watching her. Nisri
wouldn’t allow her anywhere unescorted, the fear of psyker corruption a steady refrain in a psyker’s
life.
“Found anything?”
“No,” she replied, staring out across the jungle. “Some animals and I — I wish I knew more.”
“Well, all we need to know is that the Emperor has delivered us from harm. There is enough
food and water, to last us for forever.”
“Praise be to the Emperor,” Kamala said, her voice barely a whisper.
Turk stood next to her. He glanced around, ensuring they weren’t being watched.
“What is it, my love?”
“I — I don’t know. I feel stifled, suffocated. I can’t focus. Something is pulling at my senses.”
“What?” Turk asked. His fingertips touched her hand.
“I don’t know,” she said. She quickly squeezed his finger before letting go. “I feel like I’m
enjoying the last peace I’ll ever know.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Can’t I?” she asked. A flicker of psychokinetic electricity flickered across her skin. She seemed
embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but whoever sent the mortis-cry… he stood here as well, looking out
across the same jungle. It’s as if he was here a few seconds ago. Did I just miss him?”
“You’ve found the expedition?” Turk asked.
“Just the whispers of their ghosts. No, not even that. It’s as if I’m seeing… hearing the echoes of
their ghosts. It’s as if whatever killed them didn’t even leave behind enough of them to matter.
Please, don’t leave me alone.”
Turk nodded and held her hand gently.
39
3
The Sentinels crashed through the jungle, using their cannons to push branches and swathes of vines
out of the way. Their torch lamps burned brightly, illuminating their surroundings. Major Hussari
and his pilots marvelled at the jungle with its thick green trunks, giant fronds that brushed against
the cockpit’s open frame, vines that girded the massive columns and walls, and thick roots growing
from the soft loam. Captain Toria had surmised that the surface rivers had left behind thick deposits
of fertile earth. In some places, where the vegetation was barest, rock and limestone peeked through,
but in the places where trees were thickest, Toria estimated that the soil was dozens of metres deep.
The major was under strict orders not to burn or clear any paths through the jungle, a point
Colonel Dakar seemed feverishly adamant on. Hussari did as instructed, though the going was far
too slow. At this point, they were better off on foot, like Ballasra and Toria’s squads.
“Runner Two, what’s on auspex?” Major Hussari called into his micro-bead.
“Runner One, the jungle’s thick, but we’re coming up on a shallow stream forty metres ahead.
After the stream, there’s a wall with what appears to be a large cavern opening. It’s a big one. Shall
I designate it Devotion?”
“Negative, not yet,” Hussari responded. Toria warned us we might encounter maze caves with
wall segments and partial half-walls. “Let’s make sure it’s another cave first and not part of
Basilica.”
“Understood, Runner One.”
Suddenly, “Nobody move, nobody move!” Runner Two shouted.
It was too late. Runner Three, moving ahead of the pack through a small gap in the trees, had
entered what appeared to be a clearing. Hussari was almost through the gap when a sharp crack
echoed across the cavern. Runner Three vanished in an instant as the ground disintegrated beneath
his bird’s feet.
The clearing was a crevice covered by a thin layer of limestone. Runner Three screamed in his
micro-bead as his walker fell. Seconds later, his bird crashed to the ground and exploded.
Major Hussari managed to pull on the steering levers in time, back peddling from the chasm that
was opening at his feet and barely avoiding Runner Two.
“I’m sorry, major,” Runner Two said. “Auspex didn’t pick it up until it was too late.”
“This is Runner One to base.”
“Acknowledged, Runner One. Did we just hear an explosion?”
Hussari sighed. “Confirmed. We lost a bird. Warn the other squads to watch their step. Auspex
doesn’t pick up crevices until it’s too late.”
“Acknowledged. Return home, Runner One.”
Major Hussari switched off his micro-bead. Both Sentinels lowered themselves to the ground,
kneeling on reverse-articulated legs until their cabins were a metre off the jungle floor. Hussari and
Private Amum Bak flipped open their canopy frames and dropped to the jungle floor. They
approached the lip of the chasm, carefully, and peered down. Smoke billowed up from the wreckage
of the fallen bird while the fire lit the surroundings. It wasn’t just a chasm, it was a rift in the ceiling
of another jungle filled cavern. Fortunately, the forest was too wet for the fire to spread.
“By the Orakle’s beard,” Amum muttered. “How big is this place?”
4
The tropical forest in Apostle was thin in comparison to the deeper jungles. The air was also more
