clawed hands, his head lowered. Blood ran from his ears, and his hands shook as infernal power
coursed through the icon, which began to vibrate and smoke, giving off an acrid, sulphurous stench.
The sounds of weapons firing and Kol Badar bellowing orders faded from Marduk’s
consciousness as the fury of the Lord of Skulls entered him, and he struggled to contain the
unrelenting waves of insane anger coursing through his body.
His muscles tensed to the point of bursting, veins bulging in his neck and arms, and he struggled
to maintain control over the bloodthirsty urges that assailed him, urging him to lash out, unmindful
of who he killed so long as the blood flowed. Blood pumped loudly through his veins, drowning out
all sounds, and his vision was red and hazy. Slowly, he gained mastery over the surge of diabolic
power, forcing it to submit to his will.
“Darr’kazar, Khor’Rhakath, Borr’mordhlal, Forgh’gazz’ar,” intoned Marduk, speaking the
true names as they formed in his mind’s eye. Daemonic voices roared in rage and hatred at his
command over them, but Marduk cared not, and continued to recite the names as they came to him.
“Borgh’a’teth, Rhazazel, Skaman’dhor, Katharr’bosch,” said Marduk, completing the eight
names that burnt red-hot within his mind’s eye. He dropped to his knees and spread his arms out
wide, throwing his head back as he spoke the words of summoning and binding.
Akkar’s body, lying on the floor with its skull a bloody ruin, began to bloat, as if his innards
were expanding exponentially, like a balloon filling with gas. His hermetically sealed Terminator
armour groaned and strained, threatening to rupture like a canister of promethium hurled into hot
coals. A tiny hairline fracture appeared in the centre of the breastplate and it quickly expanded
outwards, until, with the sickening sound of cracking bone and tendon, the armour ripped apart, like
the shell being peeled from a crustacean.
A shapeless blood-bag swelled from the fissure, flopping down onto the floor alongside the
ruptured corpse. The veined skin of the amorphous mass pulsed and heaved as something struggled
to be released from within, and the whole mass swelled as it increased in volume, growing larger
with every passing moment.
A blade pierced the birth-sac, its surface blackened as if by fire and with glowing, infernal runes
carved upon its surface. A daemon rose to its clawed feet as the skin of the blood-bag sloughed from
its body.
The daemon was one of Khorne’s minions, a foot soldier of the Lord of the Brazen Skull
Throne, and its flesh was the colour of congealed blood. It uncurled from its hunched, foetal
position as the last vestiges of its birth-sac dropped away, and it sucked in a deep breath, its first in
the material realm.
Its limbs were long and scaled, and they rippled with sinuous muscle. Its head was elongated and
bestial, and the fires of hell burned in its hate-filled serpent eyes. It hefted its immense blade in one
hand as it staggered drunkenly for a moment, getting a feel for its new, physical incarnation. The
runes upon the hellblade’s blackened surface glowed with the heat of an inferno, and as the daemon
steadied itself, becoming instantly accustomed to its new-found body and the rules of the material
plane, it exhaled, breathing out a blast of sulphurous black smoke.
Then it roared, throwing its horned head back, the infernal sound ripping forth from deep within
its tautly muscled chest with all the fury of its patron deity. It clenched its tall hellblade tightly,
quivering in anticipation of the slaughter, and took in its surroundings with malevolent eyes.
It snarled, eyes narrowing as it looked upon the red-armoured figures of the Word Bearers. Its
gaze met Burias-Drak’shal’s, and its muscles tensed as it prepared to hurl itself at the possessed
warrior, the runes upon its brazen hellblade glowing like lava.
Marduk’s carefully weighted words stabbed at the daemon like intangible blades and it recoiled,
swinging its heavy head towards the First Acolyte in hatred. It bared its teeth at its summoner, but
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Marduk’s mastery over it was complete, his will binding it more effectively than chains, and though
it fought against him with every fibre of its being, muscles straining, it was powerless against him.
There was always an element of risk involved in summoning the infernal denizens of the ether,
and Marduk would normally only beseech the warp for aid when he had the time to prepare the
correct rituals. The tiniest mispronunciation, a slip of concentration, could have catastrophic and
eternally damning results, and yet, the rewards were often worth the risk.
Eight of these bloodletters stood over the shattered corpses that had borne them. Eight was the
sacred number of the blood god Khorne, and the muscles of the daemons in echo of their patron
twitched with barely restrained rage as they waited for a command.
“Well?” asked Marduk, his voice infused with power. “Go.”
As one, the eight lesser-daemons of Khorne threw themselves into the corridor, like rabid packdogs
unleashed from their tethers. They roared their daemonic fury as they charged into the massing
genestealers, their hellblades carving burning arcs through the air.
The aliens leapt to meet the daemons head on, talons ripping and tearing at bodies formed of the
stuff of Chaos, alien speed and strength pitted against the diabolical fury of the god of battle and
murder.
His limbs quivering with the residual power of the summoning, Marduk swung around and
stalked towards Darioq-Grendh’al, who had almost completed cutting his way through the bulkhead.
With a barked order, infused with the essence of the immaterium, Marduk forced the defiled
magos aside and slammed the flat of his boot into the bulkhead. It buckled under the blow, and
another kick sent it smashing inwards.
Marduk’s blood was up, and he stepped through the portal, brandishing his daemon blade, ready
for anything.
A robed figure sat cross-legged on the floor, and it looked up as the First Acolyte stormed into
the enclosed, darkened room.
Marduk crossed the distance in three steps, and grabbed the figure by the neck, lifting it a metre
off the ground and slamming it back against the far wall.
“Tell me you are the one I seek, and you shall live to draw another breath,” said Marduk.
The figure’s legs kicked uselessly in the air, and Marduk peered closely into its round, hairless
face. Neural implants bedecked its bald head like feral ornamentation, and a fist-sized, cog-shaped
badge of the Adeptus Mechanicus was fused to its forehead, puckering the skin.
The figure struggled to draw breath.
“Speak,” commanded Marduk. “What is your name, dog?”
“Daenae,” came the gasped reply.
Marduk grinned within his skull-faced helmet. The figure’s kohl rimmed eyes bulged, and
feminine lips grimaced beneath his torturous grip. Marduk released his crushing hold, and the
explorator crumpled to the floor at his feet.
“I do not know who you seek,” gasped the woman, her voice hoarse, “but my name is Daenae,
Explorator First Class Daenae of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and you are a traitor of the Imperium.”
“You have no idea how pleased I am to have found you, woman,” said Marduk.
Explorator Daenae was of stocky build and considerable girth. Her waist was thick and strong, and
her bosom heavy. Even had Marduk been more familiar with mortals, or cared, he would have been
unable to gauge her age, for she had been extensively altered by juvenat surgery, one of the only
vanities in which she indulged.
Her body was not augmented to nearly the degree of Darioq’s, and what augmentation she had
was relatively subtle. Both arms had been enhanced with mechanical bionics, though they had been
fashioned such that their mechanised nature was not initially obvious, and she bore a slim-line
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power-source on her back that was a fraction of the size and weight of the immense generator that
Darioq required to power his servo-harness and largely mechanised frame.
Power couplings linked her backpack to her bulky forearm bracers, within which were stored her
tools. Neural implants allowed her to access these tools with a thought, extending lascutters, dataspikes
or power drills behind her fist as required.
Her eyes opened wide as the bulky form of Darioq-Grendh’al entered the room.
“Darioq?” she whispered hoarsely. “By the blessings of the Omnissiah, is that you?”
“Darioq is still here,” said the magos, and Marduk smiled to see the explorator recoil from the
voice, interlaced with the voice of the daemon Grendh’al.
“He is pleased to see you, Explorator First Class Daenae,” continued Darioq-Grendh’al,
“originally of the Konor Adeptus Mechanicus research world of UL01.02, assigned to cl4.8.87.i,
Perdus Skylla, for recon/salvage of the Dvorak-class interstellar freighter Flames of Perdition,
which reappeared within Segmentum Tempestus in 942.M41 and crashed onto the surface of
cl4.8.87.i, Perdus Skylla, in 944.M41 after being missing presumed lost in warp storm anomaly
xi.024.396 in 432.M35.”
“What have they done to you?” asked the explorator in revulsion.
“Enough,” interjected Marduk. “I have it on the authority of the magos that you are in
possession of knowledge that I would own.”
“What?” asked the explorator. “Me? You think I have knowledge that great Darioq, my master,
does not possess? Surely you are mistaken.”
Her voice fairly dripped with scorn.
“The knowledge I seek is in regard to a xenos artefact, an artefact taken from the necrontyr.”
“I know nothing about any xenos tech,” said the explorator emphatically. “Nothing.”
Marduk glowered at her, and then looked up at Darioq-Grendh’al.
“A direct answer, magos,” said the First Acolyte, empowering his voice with command. “Does
she have the key to unlock the device?
“She does,” said Darioq-Grendh’al.
“What?” asked the explorator. “I don’t know anything! He lies!”
“He cannot lie, not to me,” said Marduk. “You are coming with us. Your secrets will be
revealed. My chirurgeons can be very convincing when I need them to be.”
“I do not lie! I know nothing!” said the explorator fiercely as Marduk yanked her to her feet.
“We have to move,” said Kol Badar from the doorway.
“You are certain that she has what we need?” hissed Marduk to Darioq, shaking the explorator
like a rag doll. “I sense no lie in her words.”
“I am not lying,” said the explorator emphatically.
“Quiet,” said Marduk, twisting her arm sharply, snapping the bone.
“I am certain,” said Darioq-Grendh’al, “but she speaks the truth.”
“You dare speak in riddles to me, magos?” growled Marduk.
“Explorator Daenae speaks the truth because she does not know that the knowledge is locked
within her brain unit. Magos Darioq implanted it within her sub-dermal cortex without her
knowledge, for safe-keeping, before he ejected her from his service, and we do not need to take her
with us to extract it.”
Marduk’s scowl changed to a smile.
“Ah, Darioq-Grendh’al,” he said, “I think I might be starting to like you.”
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The body of Explorator Daenae lay face down on the floor, in a pool of tepid blood. The top half of
her head had been removed and cast aside and her skull cavity was empty.
“You are done?” asked Marduk impatiently.
Darioq-Grendh’al sealed the bell jar, which now held the explorator’s brain, joining the others
that emerged from the back of his hunched, perverted body. Viscous, purple-hued liquid filled the
receptacle, and dozens of needle-like proboscis connectors pierced the brain.
“One moment, while the neural pathways connect,” said Darioq-Grendh’al. The gently waving
mechadendrite tentacles attached to the corrupted magos’s spine quivered, and the magos’s head
twitched to one side. Darioq-Grendh’al uttered a low, mechanical groan, and a shiver ran along what
flesh remained of his once-human body as the explorator’s brain connected.
A veritable tidal wave of information flooded through Darioq’s consciousness as the neural
connections fired.
Memories, emotions and thoughts that were not his own flickered through his consciousness.
Neural pathways in the explorator’s brain that had been dead for almost forty seconds during the
transplant reconnected, and Darioq-Grendh’al plumbed their depths, driving towards the secrets that
he had locked there decades earlier. Daemonic tendrils burrowed through the brain, re-forging the
severed brainstem, and the knowledge was released in a wave of data.
Eight hundred years of knowledge deemed unfit for study by the High-Magi of the Cult
Mechanicus: necrontyr, hrudd, eldar, borrlean. Knowledge of xenos tech that had been lost for eight
hundred years was recovered in an instant.
Unannounced, a yearning dredged from the locked away depths of his brain-core resurfaced,
dragged from beyond self-imposed restraints: a yearning, a thirst, a need for knowledge, a yearning
that had long been restrained, castigated and repressed within the constrictive bounds of the Adeptus
Mechanicus.
The quest for knowledge and understanding would begin afresh, this time with willing,
supportive patrons that would not tether him/them with rules, regulations, outdated morals and
archaic beliefs.
“It is done,” said Darioq-Grendh’al.
“Good. You have what you need to continue your study of the Nexus Arrangement?” asked
Marduk hungrily.
“It has all become clear to us,” agreed Darioq-Grendh’al. “We have what is needed to unlock the
xenos tech device.”
“Then let us get the hell off this damnable moon,” said Marduk.
Kol Badar took point, leading the bloodied warriors through the labyrinthine corridors of the Flames
of Perdition towards their submersibles. The Word Bearers moved swiftly, not wishing to linger
within the xenos-haunted wreck any longer than necessary.
Distant daemonic roars filtered through the darkened hallways as the bloodletters continued their
frenzied rampage. Such summoned daemons had only a finite existence in the material plane. If
their physical bodies were not killed, they might last a day before their substance unravelled. They
were tools for the First Acolyte to use and discard as he saw fit, and they had served their purpose.
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Twice, the Word Bearers were ambushed en route, genestealers launching blinding attacks that
saw two more warriors injured, one sustaining a deep wound in his side that would have killed a
