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I stabbed at him with my mind, just to get his attention and then exploded his face with a pin-point bolt.

Emperor save me, he kept coming. I had blown the front off his skull, but he kept coming. Blind, his features a gory mess. He

stumbled across the ground towards me, his still-active mind boring into mine.

I fired again, almost panicking myself, and blew off one of his arms. Still he came on. My jacket, hair and eyelashes caught fire. My

brain was about to explode out of my skull.

A Space Marine in the colours of the Aurora Chapter came at him from behind and shredded him into pulp with his boltgun.

'Inquisitor?' the Marine asked me, his voice distorted by his helmet mic. 'Are you all right?'

He helped me up.

'What insanity is this?' he rasped.

'You have a vox-channel, Marine? Alert Lord Orsini!'

'Already done, inquisitor,' he crackled.

Behind us, the tractors exploded en masse, flinging fire and debris high into the air.

A scalded child ran past us, shrieking.

The Marine grabbed the child in his massive arms.

'This way, this way, out of danger…'

'No,' I said slowly. 'Don't… don't…'

His visored face swung up at me in confusion, the child cradled in his arms.

'Don't what?' he asked.

'Look at the brand! The mark there!' I yelled, pointing to the Malleus rune burned into the child's ankle. The hammer of witches. The

brand-mark of the psyker.

The Chaos child looked up at me and grinned.

'What mark?' asked the Marine. 'What mark are you talking about?'

'I…I…'

I tried to fight it, please know that. I tried to repel the unholy power of the child's mind as it groped into my head. But this thing, this

''child'', was far beyond my powers to contain.

Kill him, it said.

My hand was shaking, resisting, as I swung the boltgun around and shot the Marine through the head. A searing white agony flooded

my horrified being.

Now kill yourself, it suggested, chortling.

I put the smoking muzzle of the boltgun against my own temple, my vision filled with the giggling face of the child, perched on the

knee of the collapsed, headless Marine.

That's it… go on…

My finger tightened on the trigger.

'No… n-no…'

Yes, you stupid fool… yes…

Blood streamed out of my nose. I wanted to fall to my knees, but the monster wouldn't let me. It wanted me to do one thing, and one

thing only. It implored me, ripping my consciousness apart.

It was strident and it was undeniable.

I pulled the trigger.

SEVEN

VOKE, AND SPECULATIONS.

ESARHADDON.

THROUGH THE VOID.

BUT I DID not die.

The boltgun, that gift from Librarian Brytnoth, which had never failed me in ten decades of use, failed to fire.

The child-thing shrieked and leapt away into the smoke and flames and struggling shapes around me. The dead Marine toppled over.

The air frothed with psychic discharge and three figures ran past me in pursuit of the tiny abomination. Inquisitors. All three were

inquisitors, or interrogators at least. One, I was sure, was Inquisitor Lyko.

I lowered my shaking hand. Both it, and the boltgun it clutched, were cased in psionic ice, the mechanism jammed and locked out.

I turned and found Commodus Voke standing a few paces behind me. His ancient face was contorted with internal pressure. Crusts of

psipathetic frost glittered on his long black gown.

'Point. It. Aside.' His words came out as halting gasps. 'I. Cannot. Hold. It. Much. Longer.'

Swiftly, I turned the boltgun aside and up into the air. With a barking gasp, he convulsively relaxed and the weapon bucked and fired.

The deadly round whined away harmlessly into the sky.

Voke was sagging, the gyros in the augmetic exo-skeleton that cradled his frail body straining to manage his balance. I gave him my

hand in support.

'Thank you, Commodus.'

'No matter,' he said, his voice a whisper. His strength began to return and he peered up at me with his bird-bright eyes. 'Only a brave

man or a fool tangles with a plus-alpha psyker.'

'Then I am both or neither. I was closest to the emergency. I could not just stand by.'

WE WERE ASSAILED by extraordinary noises from the charnel ground behind us. Gunfire, grenades, screams and the popping, surging

sounds of minds fracturing reality, compressing matter, boiling atmosphere. I saw a robed man, an inquisitor or an astropath, rising

slowly into the sky in a pillar of green fire, burning, shredding inside out. I saw geysers of blood like waterspouts. Squalls of hail and

acid rain, localised to this small stretch of the Avenue, blustered across us, triggered by the ferocity of the psychic war.

Figures were rushing in to join that battle. Many from the ordos with their expert bodyguards, and dozens of the Adeptus Astartes.

There was a vibration underfoot, and I saw that one of the towering Warhound Titans was stalking past the Spatian Gate, spitting its

turbo lasers at ground targets. A series of withering explosions, mainly psyker-blasts, tore through the habitats and hive structures on

the eastern side of the wide - and now infamous - Avenue.

Imperial Marauders flashed low overhead. The sky was black with smoke, all sunlight blotted out. Wisps of ash fell on us like grey

snow.

'This is… a great crime,' Voke said to me. 'A black day in the Imperial annals.'

I had forgotten how much Commodus Voke loved understatement.

THE GREATER PART of Hive Primaris remained lawless and out of control for five days. Panic, rioting, looting and civil unrest boiled

through the streets and hab-levels of the wounded megapolis as the arbites and the other organs of the Imperium struggled to impose

martial law and restore order.

It was a desperate task. The indigenous population alone was vast, but it had been swelled to an unimaginable extent by pilgrims and

tourists for the Novena. Sympathetic panic riots broke out in other hives too. For a day or two, it seemed like the entire planet was

going to collapse in blood and fire.

Small sections of Hive Primaris had managed to insulate themselves: the elite spire levels; the noble houses, built like fortresses; the

impregnable precincts of the Inquisition, the Imperial Guard, the Astropathicus, the various bastions of the Munitorium and the Royal

Palace of the Lord Commander. Elsewhere, especially in the common and general hab levels, it was like a war zone.

The Ecclesiarchy suffered particularly gravely. With the Monument of the Ecclesiarch in flames, the common masses regarded the

nightmare as some holy curse, and turned in their frenzy on all the churches, temples and sacerdotal orders they could find. We

learned within the first few hours that Cardinal Palatine Anderucias had been killed in the destruction of the Monument. He was far

from the only great hierarch to perish in the orgy of carnage that followed.

THE RECAPTURE OR extermination of the remaining rogue psykers was the first and most fundamental task facing the authorities. Ten

were known to have escaped the initial battle on the Avenue of the Victor Bellum, and these had fled into the hive, sowing carnage as

they went, hunted by the forces of the Inquisition and all the Imperial might that could be brought to bear in support.

Two of them made it only a kilometre or two from the route of the procession, hounded every step by Imperial forces from the Avenue

battle, and were neutralised by nightfall on that terrible first day. Another went to ground in a vegetable cannery in an eastern sector

outhab, and was laid to siege. It cost three days and the lives of eight hundred Imperial Guardsmen, sixty-two astropaths, two Space

Marines and six inquisitors to blast it out and burn it. The cannery, and the outhab for three square kilometres around it, was flattened.

THERE WAS LITTLE or no central control for our forces. Admiral Oetron, who had remained with the orbiting battlefleet as watch

commander, managed to move four picket ships into geo-synchronous orbit above Hive Primaris, and for a while succeeded in

providing comprehensive vox and astropathic communications for the ground forces. But by nightfall on the first day, psychic storms

had blown up across the hive and all relayed reception was lost.

IT WAS A dark and frightening period. Down in the burning streets, we subdivided as best we could into small units, functioning

autonomously. Simply by dint of being with Voke, I became part of a group that made its headquarters in an arbites section house on

Blammerside Street in the mercantile district. Desperate groups of citizens flocked to us, craving aid and mercy and sanctuary, and

much larger gangs attacked the section house time and again, driven by fear, by rage against the Imperial machine or simply because

we wouldn't let them in.

We couldn't. We were overflowing with injured and dead, far too many for the arbites surgeons and morgue attendants to manage.

There was very little food, medical supplies or ammunition left, and we were also rationing water as the mains supply had been cut.

The power was down too, but the section house had its own generator.

All through the night, bottles and missiles and promethium bombs splintered off the shielded windows, and fists pounded on the

doors.

BY MERIT OF his seniority, Voke was in command. Aside from myself, there was Inquisitor Roban, Inquisitor Yelena, Inquisitor

Essidari, twenty interrogators and junior servants of the Inquisition, sixty troopers from the Interior Guard, several dozen astropaths

and four White Consul Space Marines. The arbites themselves numbered around one hundred and fifty, and the section house was also

sheltering about three hundred nobles, ecclesiarchs and dignitaries from the Great Triumph, as well as a few hundred common

citizens.

I remember standing alone in a ransacked office of the arbites commander just after midnight, looking out through shielded windows

at the burning streets and the blossoms of psyker storm that were wrenching the sky apart. I had received no word or sign of Ravenor

since the catastrophe had begun. I remember my hands were shaking even then.

In truth, I believe I was in shock. From the event itself, naturally, and also from the psychic assaults I had suffered in the course of it. I

pride myself on a sharp mind, but there was no sharpness to me then.

Numb, my brain kept returning to the idea that this outrage had been deliberate.

'There is no question,' Voke said from behind me, clearly reading my surface thoughts without my permission. He lifted and

straightened a steel chair and sat down on it.

'Accidents happen, warplanes crash!' he cried. 'But these turned and attacked. Their assaults were deliberate.'

I nodded. At least one of the Lightnings had crashed into the Warmaster's entourage and another had come down amongst the files of

the Inquisition. No one yet knew how many of my institution had been slain, but Voke had seen enough of it to know that as many as

two hundred of our fellow inquisitors had been obliterated.

I remembered the conversation that had turned around my dining table, the speculations about those powerful forces who would

oppose Honorius's bestowment.

'Is this the first act in a House war?' I said. 'The Ecclesiarchy, or perhaps great dynasties, trying to thwart Lord Commander Helican's

advancement of the Warmaster? His elevation to Feudal Protector would not have been popular with many, powerful factions.'

'No,' he said. 'Though I'm sure that's what many will think. What many will be supposed to think.'

Voke looked at me intently. 'Freeing the psykers was the point,' he said. 'There is no other explanation. The Archenemy struck to

cause mayhem and allow the prisoners to escape, and to wound the section of the parade that was most able to contain their escape.'

'I won't argue with that in principle. But was freeing the psykers the point itself, or simply a means to an end?'

'How so?'

'Was it an attempt to liberate the psykers… or was this just an act of extreme violence against the Imperium that the release of

dangerous psykers was meant to exacerbate?'

'Until we know what was behind it, we can't answer that.'

'Could the psykers themselves have done it? Manipulated the minds of the pilots?'

He shrugged. 'We can't know that either. Not yet. The Warmaster might have been guilty of bravado in displaying his prisoners, but he

would have made certain security around them was seamless. I must suspect an outside hand.'

We said nothing for a moment. Honorius Magnus himself had barely survived the crash-blast and was undergoing emergency surgery

aboard a medical frigate at the navy-yard. No one yet knew if Lord Commander Helican was alive. If he was dead, or if the Warmaster

died of his injuries, then Chaos would have won a historic victory.

'I suspect an outside hand too,' I told Voke. 'Perhaps another psyker or psykers, trailing their colleagues here to stage an escape.'

He pursed his lipless mouth. 'The greatest triumph of my life, Gregor, capturing those monsters in the name of the Emperor… and

look what it becomes.'

'You can't blame yourself for this, Commodus.'

'Can I not?' He squinted at me. 'In my place, how would you feel?'

I shrugged. 'I will make amends. I will not rest until every one of these wretches is destroyed, and order restored. And then I will not

rest until I find who and what was behind it.'

He stared at me for a long time.

'What?' I asked, though I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

'You… you were close to the scene, as you said to me. Closer than many, and shielded from the worst of the destruction by the bulk of

the Spatian Gate.'

'And?'

'You know what I want to ask you.'

'You thought you'd start with me. I'm too tired, Voke. I stopped to honour the admiral's tomb.'

He raised one eyebrow, as if he sensed I didn't really believe it myself. But at least he did me the courtesy of not ripping into my mind

with his much more powerful psychic abilities to scour out what truth might be there. We had reached an understanding through our