Varnus’s raised an eyebrow and pushed himself back in his chair. “Huh?”
The judge pushed something across the table towards him. It was a heavy round pin, embossed
with the aquila. He stared at it, and then looked questioningly into the eyes of the Arbites judge.
“Tomorrow, come to the palace. I have matters to attend to there, but at their conclusion I wish
to speak with you. Present this.”
And with that, the judge rose to his feet, huge and imposing, and left the room.
Varnus sat still for long minutes. Then he picked up the pin. He stood, and turned to leave,
halting when he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. He snorted in amusement and left the room.
The Infidus Diabolus left the roiling, familiar comfort of the warp, the realm of the gods, and burst
into real space. Crackling shimmers of light, colour and sheet electricity ran along its hull as the last
vestiges of the Empyrean were shaken off. The strike cruiser shuddered, its immense length
creaking and straining as the natural laws of the universe took hold of it once more.
Deep within the belly of the cruiser, Jarulek’s grand Host of the Word Bearers Legion joined
together in worship of the gods of Chaos. It was a requiem mass, a celebration of the death that they
would soon deliver, a promise of souls. It was a prayer in the darkness, a pledge of faith, an
honouring of the very real, insatiable deities of the warp.
The huge mass of the Infidus Diabolus was tiny and insignificant in the vast, cold darkness of
the galaxy. But to the doomed world that it ploughed silently towards it was death, and it closed
towards the blissfully unaware planet unerringly.
17
CHAPTER THREE
The palace of the Governor of Tanakreg was a sprawling fortress bastion that perched on a long
dormant volcanic outcrop overlooking the city of Shinar, the largest industrial city on the planet.
Shinar rolled out to the west of the fortress. Any other approach to the palace was impossible, for
sheer cliffs hundreds of metres high dropped down from the bastion walls into the blackened, acidic
oceans that dominated the planet’s surface.
Varnus held onto the railing tightly as he stared out of the vision slit of the fast moving tri-railed
conveyance. The compartment was packed with adepts of the Administratum whose access level
allowed them to move around the city freely rather than confining them to their workstations. Softskins,
he thought derisively. They were uniformly scrawny, wide-eyed and pale-faced, weakling
specimens of humanity.
Their faces and hands were unlined and soft. Most of the citizenry had a wind-blown harshness
to their craggy faces, and eyes that were practically hidden from squinting against the salt winds for
years on end. Indeed, most living on Tanakreg succumbed to salt-blindness by the time they reached
forty standard Imperial years of age. Their skin generally looked like dried, cracked parchment, the
moisture slowly sucked from their bodies by years of exposure to the harsh, salt-laced air.
Varnus was full of scorn for the privileged soft-skins able to avoid the harshness of the land.
Most of them had probably never felt the touch of the wind upon their skin. He glared at them
occasionally, enjoying the uncomfortable shuffling it caused amongst the robed adepts. Though the
compartment was densely crowded, the adepts left a good amount of space around Varnus,
intimidated, he imagined, by the enforcer uniform. He was glad of the additional room. Shinar
spread out beneath him as the tri-railed conveyance began its ascent to the palace.
He marvelled at the view. From this angle, the city almost looked attractive. Throne above, but it
was an ugly bitch of a city from every other angle, he thought. From here, the angled sails were just
rising. The winds were coming. Every building within Shinar was constructed with a metal sheet
sail that would slide out to protect the building from the worst of the salt winds. Those winds were
devastating. They could reduce a newly constructed building to dust within years if not adequately
protected. Even as it was, most of Shinar was crumbling away. But then, it was cheaper to build
anew on top of the ruins of the past than to properly maintain what was already built. He had never
understood how that worked, but he accepted it nonetheless.
From his viewpoint, as the tri-rail climbed ever higher, the vision of a million sails rising in
perfect unison was a deeply bizarre one. As the light of the blazing orange sun caught the sails, it
looked for a moment as if the whole of Shinar was burning. Varnus shivered.
Shinar spread out like a growing cancer, each week encroaching further out into the salt plains,
clawing its way ever closer to the mountains, hundreds of kilometres to the west. Varnus was
thankful that he did not still work those damnable salt fields. He was certain that he would have
been long-dead, a dried, desiccated husk had he not been picked out from amongst the other habworkers.
The tri-rail came to a shuddering halt. A giant, tentacle-like satellite clamp reached out and
fastened to the exterior of the conveyance, and the doors hissed open amongst blasts of steam and
smoke. The adepts surged from the carriage, their reticence to be near Varnus apparently gone as
they bustled and pushed past him, shuffling down the long corridor within the middle of the tubelike
tentacle.
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Filing along amongst the bustling crowd, Varnus was half carried to a great, domed reception
hall. Around a hundred other tentacle tubes spilled out their cargo of humanity into the vast hall. It
was seething with people, almost all garbed in robes of various shades, from grey to dark brown,
and every variety of off-white and puce in between.
Looking up through the transparent dome-top, he could see the mighty walls of the bastion
fortress, beyond which stood the palace proper. Those walls were immensely thick, some fifteen
metres worth of reinforced plascrete. He could see half a dozen massive turrets, huge batteries of
heavy calibre cannon pointing towards the heavens.
Thousands of workers, Administratum adepts, politicians and servants were joining long queues.
Bored palace guards armoured in regal blue semi-plate oversaw the masses as they filtered past
servitors processing their data passes. Only once through the checking station could they pass on
into any of the hundreds of offices, temples, shrines or manufactorums that were located in the
volcanic rock beneath the palace. It was a city within a city. And built far beneath all of this were
the giant plasma reactors that powered all of Shinar.
With a sigh, Varnus joined the queue that he thought looked like it was moving quickest, though
he knew it would doubtless turn out to be the slowest. He prepared himself for a long wait.
“You are certain that the traitor will succeed?” growled Kol Badar, his critical gaze watching the
Legion’s warriors in the vast bay below. Led by their champions, hundreds of Word Bearers
marched in orderly squads up the embarkation ramps and entered the bellies of the transport craft.
Most were Thunderhawks, their hulls the familiar clotted-blood red, some were older Stormbirds,
but there were dozens of others that had been salvaged or claimed by the Legion on their many raids
from the ether. More than one had been discovered adrift in the warp, their crews slaughtered by the
denizens of the realm when their warp fields had failed. The Infidus Diabolus had no need of such
warp fields, the Word Bearers embracing the creatures of that unstable realm.
“He will succeed,” stated Jarulek flatly.
“If the traitor fails then the enemy’s air defences will be fully operative. The Deathclaws will be
annihilated.”
Jarulek turned towards the towering form of his coryphaus, his eyes flashing.
“I have said that the traitor does not fail. I have seen it. Board your Stormbird. Go kill. It is what
you do well.”
Governor Theoforic Flenske sighed and fingered the sugared sweetmeats on his tiny, porcelain
plate. They were his favourites, and they normally gave him small moments of joy in his otherwise
long, drawn out and exhausting days.
He had always known that being governor of Tanakreg was going to be a stressful and thankless
task, and was quite comfortable with that. He knew that he was admirably suitable for the role, and
that he had best served the Emperor by taking on the position. He was utterly devoted to the
Imperium, and was very happy to serve it as best he could. But this accursed bickering! It was going
to be the death of him! He popped a sugar-coated nut into his mouth and closed his eyes briefly. It
was a moment of escape. He crunched down on the nut, the sound echoing loudly in his head. He
opened his eyes quickly, flicking his gaze around the table to see if anyone had noticed.
Dozens of advisors, PDF officers, politicos, consultants and members of the Ecclesiarchy were
sitting around the long table. This was a gathering of the most powerful individuals on Tanakreg,
but for all their importance and rank they argued like children, and Governor Flenske felt a
headache building behind his eyes.
“Some cool water, my lord?” asked a quiet voice at his ear. Flenske nodded his head, thankful as
always for the attentiveness of Pierlo, his manservant and bodyguard. Each of the people sitting at
the council table had a small team of aides standing to attention behind their high-backed, velvet
seats, though these little coteries were each distinctly different from one another. Behind the colonel
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and his majors of the PDF were stern-faced adjutants, their uniforms crisp. Behind the jabbering
politicos, bureaucrats, adepts and ministers were servitor lexographers that recorded their words,
long mechanical fingers scratching their masters’ diatribes onto tiny rolls of unfurling paper, and
punching holes in data-coils. Lesser priests and confessors stood behind the high ranking members
of the Ecclesiarch, their eyes downcast. Kneeling at the side of the cardinal, who was sweating in
the full regalia of his office, were a pair of shaven-headed women, their mouths sewn shut. They
wore the aquila upon their chests, and bore seals of purity stitched into their pale robes.
Sitting quietly at the table amongst the throng was the scarlet-robed Tech-Administrator Tharon.
He wore a twelve toothed cog upon his breast, the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and his right
eye had been replaced with a black lens piece that whirred softly as it focused.
The Arbites judge stood with his back to the proceedings, looking out through the tinted, floor to
ceiling plex-windows over the city spread out below. His arms were folded and he made no move,
nor any comment, as the items on the agenda were discussed. Barring his helmet, he wore his full
suit of carapace armour beneath his heavy black coat. A large autopistol was holstered
conspicuously on his hip; there was no one within the palace with the authority to claim his weapon.
His immobile presence made Flenske sweat, and the governor dabbed at his forehead, glancing over
at the judge’s back every few moments. The presence of a member of the Adeptus Arbites spoke of
serious matters indeed, but he had no idea what it was that the judge sought in his cabinet meeting.
“Friends, please,” he began, his trained and subtly augmented voice carrying out over the din.
Despite his unease at the unexpected appearance of the judge, his voice was self-assured and
practised. “Adept Trask, please summarise your point concisely. Leave out the rhetoric,” he said, a
generous smile upon his face. “It seems to irritate the colonel.”
Polite laughter greeted his comment, and Adept Trask rose again to his feet, clearing his throat.
He lifted a slate and began to read from it. The governor coughed markedly, interrupting the dull
voice of the small man, who looked up from his slate expectantly.
“A summary of your point, minister,” said the governor, still smiling, “as in one that you can say
out loud in less than an hour of our precious time, perhaps?”
The adept did not know whether to be insulted or not, but seeing the governor smiling at him
still, he gave a nervous smile of his own and flicked through the thick wad of papers on his slate.
Moron, thought Flenske.
“In… in summary,” the adept began, “there have been seventy-eight raids across Shinar in the
last three weeks, and two hundred and twelve insurgents have been detained by the enforcers. The
situation is under control.” The adept sat back down quickly.
“Under control? Are you of sound mind, adept?” asked a robed, skeletally thin bureaucrat. “We
are overran with riots and demonstrations, all linked to insurgent activity, and getting worse every
week! Situation under control? I beg to differ. The enforcers are unable to control Shinar any longer.
I mean no slur against them, but they do not have the resources or men to contain the insurgents.”
The aging Minister for the Interior, Kurtz, raised his hand to speak. He was a stocky, powerful
man despite his age, but he had lost the use of his legs decades earlier and was confined to his
powered chair. Once he had been an officer in the PDF and a captain of the enforcers, before he had
been deprived of the use of legs. He was a tough old fighter, renowned among Flenske’s ministers
for his stubbornness, and most considered him a crude man with none of the refinement that came
from proper breeding. The governor sighed as he saw the thick pile of documents that Kurtz held in
his hand.
“The honoured Bureaucrat of the Third speaks the truth. I have been reviewing the various
reports that show the activities of these so-called insurgents. They are far more organised and
widespread than any here give them credit for.”
There were snorts of derision from around the table, and the governor fixed his gaze on Kurtz.
“What is this evidence then, noble minister?” he asked, flicking a glance towards the judge.
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“Extensive details of Shinar and the Shinar Peninsula. Focused map work showing the valleys
and paths that lead through the mountains.”
There were more snorts of derision around the table.
“You mean the enforcers found some maps, minister?” asked the governor. “They needn’t have
raided insurgents just to find maps, man. I’m sure that our cartographers could have loaned them
some.”
“They have detailed layouts of your palace, governor, including.” Kurtz said firmly, looking
