CHAPTER FIVE

The Devil’s Boondocks

I

Like a ghost ship Dread Sovereign rode the swells and troughs of the Spetzghastian stratosphere, tossed this way and that in the turbulence of low orbit. Almost spectral in the powerful stealth fields that bathed her streamlined hull, the corvette haunted the skies above the massive mercantile world.

Krieg formed a silhouette against the cloister deck’s stained glass observation port, legs apart and hands behind his back. The thin, azure brilliance of Spetzghast flooded in through the clear glass forming St. Valeria the Younger’s crusader shield and threatened to swallow him whole. Beyond, Spetzghast’s mighty ring system dominated: the planet’s system of multitudinous shepherd moons keeping the miasma of tumbling rock and ice in check. Here, the jaundiced smear that was Algernon sat suspended like a bad omen, with the battle-scarred surface of Illium passing nearby – crossing the terminator into a brief Spetzghastian night. Below the corvette was the object of his fascination: the naval carrier Deliverance, hanging like a bird of prey over one of the mercantile world’s polar mega-sprawls.

After several hours of gum-spittle castigation and tongue-lashing from an unusually animated Udeskee about almost getting himself killed on his first day, the regimental commissar had given Krieg an administrative errand to run on the Purgatorio. Leaving his superior to vent further wrath on Guardsmen Snyder and Goinz, who had been summoned to the commissar’s quarters after him, Krieg made for his transport. Undoubtedly Udeskee would finish what Krieg himself had started on the fabricator moon and devise suitable punishments for the men. Dead or alive, they were to be made an example of.

Instead of the flagship, however, the humpshuttle he was supposed to be piggy-backing set out worryingly for the blank carpet of deep space in between two of Spetzghast’s main rings – the so called Quirini Division. Here under its stealth shielding, Dread Sovereign was waiting for him.

He was escorted straight to the colossal cloister decks of the Adepta Sororitas – somewhere he’d never been before – and told to wait outside Canoness Santhonax’s personal chambers.

The great bronze doors rolled aside on dampeners and Krieg turned to find himself being approached by a solitary figure leaving the chambers. She wore a tight-fitting body glove of obsidian sheen that jealously clung to every curve, leaving next to nothing to the imagination, and sable robes of some lighter-than-air material that streamed behind her like a trail of smoke. When light from the cloister lamps finally invaded her elegant hood the cadet-commissar was finally privy to the ebony lustre of the stranger’s face. It wasn’t the joy the rest of her body had been: half had the bewitching Imperial dignity of discipline and importance; the rest was a collapsed mess of sunken bone, knotted muscle and the rumpled flesh that covered it.

She in turn displayed absolutely no interest in the cadet-commissar: her eyes never deviating from their intended course along the cloister deck and within moments she was gone, her strident steps taking her out of sight.

‘Enter,’ came that burnished voice: its lightest touch commanding immediate obedience. Santhonax.

The canoness’s personal chambers were a vaulted realm of devotion and shadow. Ancient artefacts adorned the walls, relics of priceless Imperial history balanced on isolated plinths, tapestries dangled from the dizzying ceiling illustrating the order’s innumerable wars of faith. Krieg’s boots clicked across flagstones of jet that shattered into a mosaic in the centre of the chamber depicting St. Valeria the Younger and the Nine Virgins of the Apocalyse.

‘My personal collection,’ Santhonax told the commissar as she joined him from the shadows. Krieg surveyed the canoness’s collection of arch-heretics and iconoclasts. ‘I’m sure that you’ve heard of the infamous Cardinal Krabbé,’ Santhonax said as she passed an aged cleric in shredded, blood-soaked robes. He was hanging from the ceiling on a set of wicked hooks and chains that were embedded in his back-flesh from his scalp to his shins. His encrusted beard dangled towards a gently gathering pool of literal blood, sweat and tears.

The canoness pushed him gently as she passed, eliciting a desperate moan from the heretic as he gently rocked and the hooks went to work on fresh flesh.

Next was a tubular plas tank full of a thin, liquid murk – a sloshing filth of blood-threaded puce. An oxygen pump beat rhythmically on one side of the tank, feeding something inside air through a corroded metal pipe. ‘Xenobi Quordaiyn – the Butcheress of Banzai,’ Santhonax informed Krieg. ‘The end of my predecessor: I promised that I would never be the end of her…’

The cadet-commissar leaned in to get a better view through the effluence. A single palm thrashed out against the plas causing Krieg to jump back. The hand was skinless and raw: ligaments, veins and in some places bone were all on show. It retracted as fast as it had appeared. ‘Molecular acid,’ Santhonax told him. ‘The weakest I could find. She’ll be slowly dissolved over a thousand years – less than she deserves.’

The final abomination in the canoness’s personal collection was simply a portrait. A mercury daguerreotype of the kind popular at the Guethenoc Gate: a funereal image of an angelic infant, a newborn, at rest in a tiny wicker coffin. Some kind of mystic Mechanicus apparatus was fixed to the rear of the frame, emanating a headache-inducing hum and causing the antique capture to impossibly flick and shimmer.

The canoness leaned in close. ‘And him: his name hasn’t been spoken in a millennium and I’ll be damned before I’m the first to let it pass my lips. I’ll spare you a similar curse.’ The nalwood frame creaked ominously. ‘Oh, do be quiet,’ Santhonax spat at the haunting image.

Krieg waited respectfully before a simple throne at the top of the chamber as the canoness took to her seat. Her strange bodyguard, the young girl with the unsettling eyes, sat on the step at the canoness’s foot, beneath an iron tripod, her tender years at complete odds with the antique armour she wore. Under an equally archaic crusader shield on display in the tripod’s ornate arms the girl played a delicate game of cat’s cradle with the prepubescent fingers of a stone cold killer.

‘Ma’am,’ Krieg began, ‘may I ask if you received my report regarding the situation on Illium?’

The canoness seemed preoccupied with her own thoughts momentarily and stared at the cadet-commissar blankly.

‘Your ladyship, the fabricator moon has been completely overrun,’ Krieg informed her, intent on communicating the serious nature of the situation. ‘This is no longer a case of subjugating a rebellion. Orks in those numbers so far in-system, without an invasion fleet: it’s unheard of. And these greenskins behave like no brutes I’ve ever fought: organisation, discipline, strategy. Like I said: the cult killings; the ‘Doomsday Brethren’; Spurrlok’s agricultural freight charters; the rebellion on Illium – all connected. Now, full-scale alien invasion.’

‘Calm yourself, cadet,’ Santhonax soothed. ‘Inquisitor Herrenvolk has these intrigues in hand. The 364th Volscian Shadow Brigade can handle the slog work.’

‘But ma’am, in my report–’

‘I read your report: it was a pleasant work of fiction,’ the canoness suddenly turned on him. Gone was the warmth that had lit up her pin-decorated face whilst perusing her heretical collection. Krieg felt like the sun had just disappeared behind a cloud. ‘All that should concern you are the actions of that heretic major of yours. According to your measured narrative, Major Mortensen ignored your threat assessment of the situation on Illium, he put a blade to an Imperial commissar’s throat and then proceeded to blunder his way through a mission that cost unnecessary lives and Guard resources…’

‘It’s complicated,’ Krieg admitted, a rush of mixed feelings and confusion flushing his chest.

‘The man is clearly a criminal incompetent and you should have administered justice when you had the opportunity,’ Santhonax shrieked. ‘I should have you bathed in acid for your own incompetence.’

Krieg swallowed hard. This wasn’t one of Kowalski’s tedious remonstrations or Mortensen’s bullish threats: she meant it.

‘He then did what you seemed unable to do and made a Guard-orchestrated attempt on your life…’

‘I have no evidence that…’

‘…and went on to accomplish further deeds of remarkable courage and endurance, adding further fuel to a dangerous myth and recruiting ever more willing rank and file acolytes to a fallacious hero cult.’

‘He was asked to pull assets out of enemy held territory against insurmountable odds and an incalculable, unforeseen alien threat,’ Krieg stated with forced calm. ‘What can I tell you? He got the job done. As yet I have witnessed no actions of direct cowardice, incompetence or cult activity. From a Redemption Corps point of view, the mission was a success.’

‘A Redemption Corps point of view?’ the canoness burst incredulously.

‘Look, with the right example…’

‘Your example, Cadet-Commissar Krieg? It seems your example isn’t particularly trustworthy,’ Santhonax told him, her words a chilled indictment. ‘You’ve just spent the past few moments lending credence to heretical suggestions of this man’s indestructibility.’

‘Indestructibility? I can only report what I saw.’

‘You were on that aircraft, weren’t you, commissar?’ the battle-sister asked.

Krieg could see where this was going.

‘Mortensen saved your life, didn’t he? How does that make you feel – are you too now beholden to him? Have you become an acolyte?’

‘I would eat the barrel of my own pistol if I thought such a suggestion could be entertained,’ the cadet-commissar shot back.

‘But you won’t make the major swallow his for his own heresies?’

‘Look, I hate the bastard,’ Krieg informed her honestly. ‘When he slips up, I’ll be there waiting for him. I’ll bring him in and you’ll have the justice you crave.’ The leather of the commissar’s gloves creaked as Krieg tensed his fists by his sides. ‘But we do this by the book. Any thug can kill. If we give in to temptation and take avoidable shortcuts then it makes us no better than the scum we’re after.’

Santhonax stared at him through narrowed slits. They’d traded insults, accusations and warnings. Krieg couldn’t tell what she was going to do next. Probably order another tank of acid. As it was, her eyes flicked over his shoulder. The tension in Krieg’s fists instantly spread to the rest of his body as his fingers brushed the holster of his hellpistol. There was someone coming up behind him. He turned. It was his cheerless friend from the Narthex, her silver bob twinkling in the half-light and skull helmet tucked under one helmet.

The canoness was smirking; something about Krieg’s uncertainty clearly amused her. ‘Well, this is all about to be rendered moot. Major Mortensen is, as we speak, on board Purgatorio receiving orders for his next mission.’

The battle-sister handed Santhonax a data scroll, which the canoness unravelled and studied.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Where?’ Santhonax barked at the Celestian.

‘The shepherd moon of Ishtar, madam.’

‘Perfect,’ the canoness said, half to herself. Then to the Celestian: ‘My compliments to the captain. Please inform him that Dread Sovereign will need to be in low orbit around Ishtar within the hour.’

‘Should I return to Deliverance?’ Krieg put to the canoness. Santhonax ignored him.

‘Have Cadet-Commissar Krieg briefed, equipped and transported to the coordinates you have on the moon’s surface,’ Santhonax told the silver-haired battle-sister, handing her back the scroll.

The Celestian clicked her armoured heels.

‘You want me waiting for him?’ Krieg asked cautiously.

‘Perhaps even Zane Mortensen isn’t stupid enough to practise his heretical ideals directly under the nose of an Imperial commissar. Monitor the mission covertly: you will have the details, and when you observe the major act in accordance with his dark beliefs you can administer the Emperor’s justice,’ she confirmed with relish.

Krieg settled for a neutral, ‘As you wish, your ladyship,’ and lowered his head.

Escorted by the Celestian the commissar made his way from the elegantly gruesome chamber.

‘Krieg,’ the canoness called wistfully just before he reached the bronze egress. He turned obediently. ‘Major Mortensen is not to return from that moon alive: you understand me? The Emperor has never expected as much of you.’

Krieg simply nodded and left the room.

As they stood waiting at the mighty doors of a baroque elevator Krieg, who’d been silent the entire length of the cloister deck, turned to the battle-sister and asked, ‘What did she mean, “Perfect”?’

‘Excuse me?’ the Celestian replied.

‘She said, “Perfect” after you told her the mission was on Ishtar.’

‘Ishtar’s a deathworld,’ the battle-sister replied. ‘With any luck the major will be dead before you even reach him.’

‘Great,’ Krieg mumbled, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of a jaunt down to a deathworld himself. ‘What the hell are the Redemption Corps doing down there?’

With unmasked tedium the Celestian consulted the scroll once more.

‘Well,’ she told him, ‘apart from a variety of different forms of certain death to be found on the surface, Ishtar boasts only one registered settlement: a sparse collection of stilt burgs in the supercontinent interior.’

‘Stilt burgs?’

‘Homo Sapiens Gigantus.’

‘Ogryns,’ Krieg grunted. He’d worked alongside these abhuman brutes before. Storm-trooper squads were sometimes coupled with ogryn shock troops in order to spearhead assaults. The barbarian creatures soaked up a tremendous amount of firepower and at full charge were virtually unstoppable. They were the hammer, excessive and unwieldy, to the storm-troop’s chisel, skilful and precise. A stampede of ogryns could carry a storm-trooper unit a long way into the enemy lines, where the tactics and surgical execution of the specialists could do their worst. They were also clumsy and dangerous, taking orders like barely-tamed dumb animals; but with Illium drowning in a greenskin deluge and reinforcements a distant dream, the Guard was pulling on every in-system resource.

The grandiloquent doors parted revealing another visitor to the cloister deck. The entire space was dominated by a hulking form; begowned from head to toe in a ribbed, leather capote. Not a scrap of flesh or clothing was visible beneath. The voluminous hood dropped down to its belly, without so much as an eyeslit to allow its wearer to see where it was stomping. The mantle’s baggy sleeves met at the belly also, with one of the giant’s hands clearly clasped in the other beneath the material.

The goliath had ducked beneath the frame of the elevator doors, allowing a small throne – set between the monster’s shoulder blades – to pass beneath. The diminutive throne was fashioned similarly from ribbed leather and secured to the gross bulk using a thick leather harness. It carried the tiny, atrophied body of a wasted ancient, whose obscene little form in turn was swathed in a leather cloak that was part of the throne. Only his head was completely visible, the bloated cranium hovering serenely above his enfeebled body.

Krieg was not a little taken aback at finding the hulk and its charge in the elevator but when he finally turned around he found that the Celestian had fallen down on one knee, with her head angled at the floor. As the visitor’s bulk sailed past, Krieg noticed for the first time the Inquisitorial rosette dangling from a robust cord around the behemoth’s neck. Swinging this way and that, the badge of office was almost hypnotic. Realisation dawned. This was Herrenvolk.

The commissar could hardly be blamed for not recognising the inquisitor: very few people had actually seen him. Santhonax and her battle-sisters worked in collaboration with the man and as such had more access to him than virtually anyone else. Beyond the Pontificals, he worked almost exclusively through a network of henchmen and spies that he kept on his payroll. Many claimed that he had a telepathic or telekinetic link with his closest operatives and Krieg had certainly witnessed Interrogator Angelescu, the Inquisitorial storm-troopers’ point of contact with the inquisitor, act strangely from time to time: almost as though his body and mind were on occasions not his own.

The Celestian grabbed the back of his neck with her gauntleted hand and pushed his head down into an obedient bow. Krieg instinctively allowed his eyes to travel upwards and caught a final glimpse of the inquisitor, sitting astride his humanoid steed, as he passed. One of Herrenvolk’s own oily black eyes were fixed on the commissar, peering over the back of his throne, set in a gaze as unsettling as it was unreadable.

+Koulick Krieg…+

The words rattled around inside the core of his very being. His soul seemed to expand to accommodate them. They were everywhere and he was nowhere.

+Koulick, son of Illarian, son of Spartak, son of Nestorr…+ The thoughtspeak faded and simultaneously returned a moment’s eternity later. +…Hear me…+

‘Cadet!’

The backhanded slap took him across the face like a basin of cold water. He was back – slumped in the corner of the ornate elevator with the battle-sister crouched over him, the fleeting traces of pleasure falling from her features: she’d enjoyed that.

‘What happened?’ Krieg managed, pushing with his knees and sliding his shoulders back up the car wall.

‘You’re male and you’re weak,’ the Celestian replied flatly, as one might recall an obvious fact. Then after a second’s pause to establish she meant it: ‘You fell unconscious: it’s the inquisitor. He has that effect on a lot of people – he’s, how can I put it… potent.’

‘You seem fine.’

‘I’m not you,’ the Celestian answered making the sign of the aquila. ‘Emperor be thanked.’

The elevator doors parted to reveal Dread Sovereign’s crowded flight deck. Sleek strikefighters shared the hanger with landers and Adeptus Ministorum Valkyries.

Krieg attempted to stand without the assistance of a wall. It came… slowly. The equivalent of mental indigestion still reverberated around his skull.

‘Suit up. That’s your ride,’ the battle-sister told him indicating the nearest Valkyrie. Krieg took a few unsteady steps closer, out onto the hangar. A sombre nameplate identified the aircraft as Purity Control. What the callsign lacked in finesse it compensated for in unequivocability: a book you could definitely judge by its cover. The Celestian hit the elevator floor stud.

‘Not coming to enjoy the sights?’ the commissar asked.

‘You’re going to the one place where the sights enjoy you,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘I’m going to the Pontifical’s armoury; you’re going to need something considerably harder-hitting than that a hellpistol to go hunting down there.’

The cadet-commissar’s hand went down protectively over the holster of his hellpistol and gave her a parting look of mock hurt. The doors closed. Krieg turned, alone on the flight deck, and mused thoughtfully on whether the battle-sister meant the deathworld fauna and flora or the Redemption Corps’ major.

II

Rosenkrantz had flown all manner of skies and put down on all kinds of dirt, but Ishtar had almost immediately topped the Jopallian pilot’s top-ten table of singularly weird crash landings.

It started with the drop. With Deliverance rapidly falling away above them and the Spectre plummeting for the velvet, malachite gloom of Ishtar’s thick atmosphere, the Vertigo’s velocity died and a shudder rang through the aircraft’s superstructure. It was almost as though the bird had put down, beak-first, in the ocean; Rosenkrantz knew this because she’d done just that on more than one occasion. This realisation was reinforced by the backwash of glutinous slime that cascaded up the canopy. The pilot’s initial fear was restricted visibility but the atmospheric spawn was largely transparent. Not that it mattered that much, the deeper they fell through the cloud layer the darker it got.

The engines soon began to struggle in the gaseous gloop and, one by one, the quad proceeded to short and cut out. This brought to mind a second concern: falling clean out of the sky. Despite the fact that the upper atmosphere should have had the drag-inducing qualities of a thick paste, they were still freefalling like a lead brick. A brief vox-transmission to the Urdesh Ecliptic confirmed that their partner Spectre was experiencing much the same problem.

Dark, voluminous shapes began to fill an already darkening sky. All about the aircraft, great organic balloons filled the air. Ochre bladders, packed with lighter-than-air gases and threaded through with fat, pulsating capillaries, drifted around the Spectre. Rosenkrantz guided the plummeting aircraft as best she could, through the school of drifting behemoths and down past their gargantuan filter feeding maws. To all intents and purposes they looked like giant, bloated squid, with webbed tentacles drooping for the planet surface. A sea of larvae sat suspended in the migratory spawn and the alien creatures were clearly descending on the congregated bounty. The appendages rippled gently, drawing the migrating sky-spawn up into the gossamer nets between each tentacle and then on into the gargantuan creatures’ mouths. Vertigo had been unfortunate enough to come down through the middle of the spawn-slick.

It wasn’t long until the inevitable happened – Vertigo’s wing tip tore through one of the bloated balloon sacks, dragging the peaceful monstrosity through the skies beside them until alien and aircraft parted, sending the Spectre spinning for the surface.

The Spectre’s controls suddenly slackened as the aircraft punctured another cloud layer. The slime was gone, but was immediately replaced by a thin drizzle that foamed as soon as the tiny droplets hit the canopy plas. From unusually slack the stick became increasingly rigid and Rosenkrantz could hear the now familiar sound of an engine dying.

Benedict told her that the flaps had frozen, which seemed incredible since as far as the pilot could make out they were gliding through the downpour towards what looked like primeval jungle below. There was nothing else she could do: voxing that the crew should brace for impact, Rosenkrantz fought to keep the nose up and slapped the Spectre’s swollen belly down in the heart of the alien rainforest.

Which was where they now found themselves.

Rosenkrantz unclipped the harness and massaged her bruised shoulders. It could have been worse. On Arborsia IV she’d had to put down amongst the titanwoods of Shadebarrens: the trunks had simply torn the wings out of the aircraft and a branch had cleaved in the reinforced plas of the cockpit canopy, impaling her newly assigned co-pilot.

An incoming vox-transmission confirmed that the Ecliptic had put down mercifully close by but had failed to level out and had lost a wing to the impact, rendering them combat inoperative. The crew were injured but alive, and its fire support Centaur payload was intact. The second bird was a wreck, however, rapidly sinking into the chemical mire beyond and was in the process of being evacuated and abandoned.

Leaving Benedict to a more detailed assessment of their own aircraft’s status, the Jopallian pilot slid down the companionway ladder and into the hold. It was chaos. The fire support Centaur that had been strapped down in the Spectre’s belly had unsurprisingly broken loose in the crash. Nauls was busy with the armoured vehicle, the moody chief cutting it free of the mesh racks at the rear of the bay with a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters. Before it had buried itself in the webbing it had smashed into the compartment wall killing one of Rask’s Shadow Brigade Guardsmen outright – an officer by the look of him. The Redemption Corps had fared a little better in the crash: Sarakota had some broken ribs and a suspected punctured lung, meaning he was now declared mission-inactive and required constant mask-bagging from one of Vertigo’s gunners. This had been a temporary arrangement set up by the Second Platoon’s medic until the sniper could reach a medical bay. Sergeant Minghella would have seen to the storm-trooper’s needs himself had it not been for the fact that he was a crash casualty also, knocked senseless by the bouncing fire support vehicle as it smashed around the compartment. He’d been unconscious ever since – breathing but unresponsive – and had been strapped into his own stretcher on the Spectre bay floor.

A small group of gangers huddled around their fallen Shadow Brigade officer. They were as motley as any of the 364th Rosenkrantz had come across when it came to field dress and equipment. All of the hivers wore the cerise sashes of their calling but the group in the hold shared three distinctive features: drab khaki trench coats, clean-shaven heads and glares of open hostility directed at the pilot as she passed.

Her own remaining gunners sat hunched against their heavy bolters, establishing a killzone around the crashed aircraft: with Rosenkrantz at the helm, this had become almost routine. She touched Spreckels on the shoulder.

‘The major?’

He nodded to starboard and Rosenkrantz made her way down the bay ramp. A thoroughly alien environment was waiting for her.

Mangrove was the only word she could find to describe it, but it wasn’t like any she’d seen before. She’d landed in all kinds of forests and swamps on a myriad of worlds and no matter how different, they all had one thing in common: the unmistakable abundance of organic life. The fresh bouquet of new growth; the stench of decay. There was none of that here. Just a potent, chemical sterility.

There were trees everywhere, but no wood and no chlorophyll. Everything on Ishtar had a lucent, heliotropic glaze. The trunks were the equivalent of frosted glass and the leaves and foliage choking the spaces in between were like crystalline flint. Vertigo itself had actually come to rest upon a pyre of the shattered material. Not that it was easy to see: thick cloud cover doused the forest in a twilight haze and airbrushed the canopy with a coral corona.

Pontiff Preed stood on the edge of the ramp, peering out across this strange, new world through his single lens.

‘They blame me,’ she said as she joined him in the doorway.

‘You did what you could. We all give the Emperor thanks for that. No one is exempt from dying, sister,’ the Pontiff rumbled gently.

‘Not everyone around here seems to share that sentiment.’

‘You talk of Mortensen. That’s just superstitious claptrap.’ With some difficulty he moved his robust bulk in closer and in a conspiratorial hush told her, ‘I believe in the Creed and I believe in the good major. You know that, but there are those who twist both to their own fervent ends.’

He nodded back at the group of hivers gathered around their fallen officer. They were Volscian – their tattoos and red sashes confirmed that – but their distinct trench coats and shaven heads marked them out as different. Their demeanour was stoic and solemn and lacked the underhive twitchiness and up-front bravado that characterised the other Volscians. One stood among them, giving quiet orders and instructing the others in how best to extricate the dead Guardsman’s body from his mangled harness. Sergeant’s stripes adorned one stout shoulder and fat wrinkles gathered at the back of his bald neck. His dark flesh glistened in the Ishtarian twilight.

‘Lijah Meeks,’ Preed informed her softly.

Meeks turned his head eerily to one side, as though he’d heard his name. Thick-rimmed glasses sat on a fleshy nose, beneath which his pink lips curled.

‘What’s with the heads and coats?’ Rosenkrantz asked warily. Most of the Volscians resisted the concept of uniformity.

‘Second Platoon has a fundamentalist streak,’ Preed told her. ‘Ardentites, as far as I can tell. Some kind of Thorian incarnationist faction.’

‘Religious freaks?’ she put to him. His nose wrinkled. ‘No offence,’ she added.

‘None taken, sister. They are not of my flock. Ardentites look for evidence of the divine in those around them. They believe that when the God-Emperor fell He disseminated His gift. He believed the best way to protect humanity in His absence was to hide His power – His talents – among chosen individuals across the galaxy, so that they may individually serve His interests and, as a collective phenomenon, hold back the darkness that threatens to engulf mankind.’ The Pontiff sighed. ‘The coats are gang throwbacks. House Zlaw: threw in their lot with the Redemptionists for a time, then kind of outgrew them. The heads are merely an emulation: a mark of respect to the major himself.’

‘And what does the major make of Meeks and his boys?’

‘He thinks they’re psych-jobs who probably have a little too much time on their hands. But they’re useful. Rask knows the 364th: he probably figures that troops that idolise the major are marginally less of a mission-risk than those out to frag him. After the debacle on Illium with the new commissar, you could hardly blame him.

‘But if you’re asking me if Mortensen “believes”, I have no facts to give you. He’s an extremely capable soldier with some extraordinary talents, but it’s not for me to say if they are “divinely ordained”. What I can tell you is that these ideas are not politely entertained in the higher echelons of the Ecclesiarchy and many might consider them heresy.’

A shiver worked its way across the pilot’s shoulders as she recalled their encounter with the Inquisitorial corvette above Spetzghast.

Suddenly Meeks was among them, the hiver’s silent steps carrying him across the troop bay in the space of a moment’s inattention.

‘Pontiff,’ the sergeant uttered with a respectful bow of his head. To Rosenkrantz he merely gave a savage flash of the eyes through his thick lenses, before stepping out into the smashed landscape, disappearing under the starboard wing.

‘Thanks,’ Rosenkrantz said to the priest before stepping out herself. Her first footfall slipped as her flight boot splintered a piece of crystalline bark and slid towards the continuously foaming waters that lapped up against the shattered shore. Preed’s stubby fist was suddenly there on her arm, holding her up and her foot just clear of the supercooled, chemical brume.

‘Take care, lieutenant,’ he said, setting her right on the glassy bank. ‘This is a deathworld, after all.’

She nodded further gratitude.

It was only a few steps to the wing but it was enough to sample her new environment. The smashed trees crunched underfoot and sinister waters spumed up between the cracks. Some of the crystal canopy remained intact above the aircraft and drizzle collected amongst the jewellery on the branches and fell in fat droplets from above, spattering her flight jacket and chilling her to the bone. The ambient temperature was actually reasonably mild but the droplets frosted instantly on the leather. She jumped slightly as a blue-white beam of energy arced between the trunks of two nearby trees, forcing Rosenkrantz to put her back against Vertigo and sidle along the fuselage and under the wing. Every time a beam sizzled between two of the outlandish trees, it set in motion a chain reaction of electrical arcs, passing from one plant to another, lighting up the gloom of the glass jungle. After reaching a light show crescendo the forest would fade to darkness again, waiting for another trunk to gather enough charge to begin the phenomenon again.

‘I could have done with more reconnaissance data on this deathworld,’ she announced to the group of Guardsmen gathered under the wing. ‘That kind of information comes in useful.’ Conversation died in their throats. Flanked by Conklin and Vedette, Mortensen was peering intently through a pair of magnoculars up and out of the crystal canopy and along the surrounding relief.

Captain Rask stood nearby, leaning against the shattered trunk of a tree. Sass and the captain were studying a data-slate, angling it this way and that to make sense of the carto-pict they were studying. Meeks stood by looking on intensely.

‘What difference would it have made?’ Mortensen hypothesised from behind the magnoculars.

‘Well, we could have expected…’

‘The unexpected? You’re not shipping out with the Volscian 1001st now, flight lieutenant,’ the major returned. ‘We’re Redemption Corps: we move fast and with purpose. We get to it.’

‘Krieg was right,’ Rosenkrantz informed him with mock realisation. She let the insult go home before continuing: ‘You hit Illium unprepared. You were lucky to get your men out alive, let alone the targets. You’re making the same mistakes here.’

‘No,’ the Gomorrian told her, unfazed. He came out from behind the glasses. ‘Just a few new ones. What’s the bird’s status?’

Rosenkrantz glared at him. Then, finally: ‘The intakes are completely flooded with whatever we came down through and if that’s not bad enough for you, the quad appears to be frozen solid. The only engine with any signs of life whatsoever is this one…’ She kicked at the thruster behind Mortensen, ‘and that’s not going to be enough to get us off the ground.’

The major nodded gravely. ‘Now, would someone return the favour,’ Rosenkrantz put to them, ‘and tell me what we’re even doing here. This need-to-know crap is wearing thin.’

Rask looked up from his slate: ‘Forty-eight hours ago, upon my recommendation, Field Marshall Rygotsk despatched Commander Qvist, a Departmento Munitorum officer, to the planet surface with a small recruitment force, seconded from the Spetzghastian Mercantile Militia. Qvist’s orders were to swiftly establish contact with the indigenous primitive inhabitants and begin processing populations for immediate extraction and Imperial indoctrination.’

‘They didn’t come back…’ the pilot interrupted, filling in the blanks.

‘Nothing has been heard from the mission since its departure. Of course, I feel responsible for Qvist: he’s relatively inexperienced and he was despatched upon my recommendation; but the brigadier needs these ogryns to augment our forces on Illium. Something’s gone wrong here.’

‘Something’s gone wrong… here,’ Rosenkrantz informed him, yanking a thumb at her downed bird. The officer shook his head.

‘This is the Spetzghastian back yard: that’s why I sent Qvist down with Mercantile Militia. The platoon guide was a Sergeant Lompock, Mercantile ogryn auxilia. They know the rudimentaries about Ishtar, its dangers. This is something else.’ Rask turned grimly. ‘Sergeant?’ he announced.

Meeks cleared his throat. ‘Lieutenant Gomez is dead, sir.’

‘Poor wretch,’ Conklin announced. An epitaph it wasn’t. Mortensen raised an eyebrow, letting the magnoculars fall on their strap.

‘Israel Gomez was a good Guardsman and a devoted Imperial servant,’ Rask told Meeks. The Volscian nodded slowly. ‘Lijah, I’m giving you Second Platoon. We’re in a bit of a spot here and I need you to keep the men focused. You get my meaning?’

‘Loud and clear, captain.’ The sergeant’s voice lacked enthusiasm but was thick with honesty. ‘We’re right behind you and the major, here.’

Mortensen gave Rask an uneasy look, clearly uncomfortable with the Volscian hero-worship. He was ready to move on. ‘Sass, where are we?’

The adjutant stared back at the slate he was carrying.

‘We can’t be too far off the landing zone,’ Rosenkrantz offered, staring around the alien jungle as the rain intensified. ‘We were virtually on top of the coordinates you gave me when we left Deliverance.’

‘Thing is,’ Sass began, ‘the map doesn’t exactly reflect what I’m seeing here.’ Mortensen stuck out one hand and Sass went to pass the pict on.

‘Let me see that,’ Rosenkrantz said, snatching the topographic slate from Sass’s grubby paws. He frowned but she had, after all, a great deal more experience reading contours and orbital data than any of the corpsmen.

As she attempted to make out the confusing imagery on the slate a dark figure appeared in the clearing the fallen aircraft had created and padded its way carefully across the smashed crystal and gushing chemical potholes.

His colours identified him as a storm-trooper but his forehead studs marked him out as an Autegan. The Autegan Tactical Rangers were a deathworld regiment and the major had clearly understood that an Autegan’s experience would be invaluable on a world like Ishtar. On Autega, the Rangers’ main duties were scouting the least perilous paths across the planet’s lethal environs and providing mounted escorts to the pilgrim trains that continually moved between the cities and the shrines. As he approached, a double-barrelled grenade launcher rested across one carapace shoulder.

‘What have you got for us, Eszcobar?’ Mortensen put to him as the deathworlder leaned against the underside of the Vertigo’s wing.

‘Beautiful,’ the Autegan began, although with his thick accent it was difficult to tell whether he was complimenting his surroundings, cursing them, or both. ‘Silicon rainforest: it’s like walking through broken glass.’ He angled his armour to reveal bloody gashes in his jacket, thighs and calves. ‘I found the Ecliptic. She’s due west. I told the crew to remain with the Centaur.’ The deathworlder sniffed and spat. ‘I only got about fifty metres in, but it wasn’t just the foliage that stopped me. This whole area is just one big flood plain. Most of it’s submerged, which wouldn’t be a problem except that it’s not water.’

‘What is it?’

‘Some kind of supercooled chemical soup seeping up through the planet crust.’ He pointed up into the drizzle. ‘Which accounts for the frost on the fuselage. This and the fact that the trees themselves seem involved in some kind of electrical defence mechanism of their own, and you basically have an environment pretty inimical to human life.’

‘You’re telling us that we can’t traverse this terrain,’ Conklin confirmed.

‘Frozen alive, cut to pieces or electrocuted: you decide,’ Eszcobar replied, impressed. He regarded Mortensen. ‘I’m not saying it can’t be done, major. But the losses would be astronomical.’

‘What about the Centaurs?’ the master sergeant suggested.

‘They’d offer protection from the foliage and the cryogenic drizzle, but wouldn’t get past the trees.’

‘But this stuff is as brittle as anything,’ Conklin said, stamping his boot down on a piece of crystalline bark that obligingly shattered to prove his point. He gestured around. ‘Look at what the bird did.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be inside a Centaur when one of these discharges hits the hull exterior,’ Meeks mused.

‘So what are you saying? We pull out?’ Conklin cried incredulously.

‘Bad intelligence,’ Rosenkrantz said, flipping Sass back the nonsensical slate, ‘and no possible way to reach the targets – if they’re alive which, now that we’re here, I very much doubt. Damn right we should pull out. Vox Deliverance and request an evacuation.’

The pilot’s assessment was met with a hail of testosterone-fuelled objections. Only Vedette and the major remained silent throughout, the Gomorrian back to peering through his magnoculars.

‘She’s not wrong,’ he mumbled, drawing a gaze of disbelief from his master sergeant. The major turned on the pilot. ‘But he’s right. Redemption Corps don’t run. There’s more at stake here than Rask’s young commander and a few Merc Militiamen. We’re going to need those ogryns on Illium. For the ogryns, we need to make contact with the recruitment party.’

The major’s calm logic went some way to soothe the tension crackling between the pilot and the gathered Guardsmen. Nearby a loud snap of piezoelectric power vaulted between a splintered trunk and the tree line beyond, bathing them in a powerful – if brief – wave of sterile heat. All eyes were on the searing arc as it set in motion another blazing lightshow.

‘Besides, we’ll have more to worry about if we stay put.’ He passed the magnoculars to Vedette and pointed up at the silhouetted highlands above. ‘What does that look like to you?’

The Mordian took the glasses and aimed them up at the distant horizon. The magnoculars steadied with sudden realisation.

‘Gun emplacement,’ Vedette confirmed with satisfaction.

‘We’re not alone on this moon.’

‘Ogryns?’

‘Certainly looks makeshift,’ Conklin replied, now staring through the glasses.

Mortensen put them out of their misery. ‘Greenskins.’

‘Here?’ Rosenkrantz asked, wondering why even orks would choose to visit such a hostile corner of the galaxy.

‘Which is why we can’t fix our position on the charts,’ Sass put forward, a sense of relief evident in his voice. ‘These,’ the storm-trooper pointed up through the canopy at the irregular highlands beyond, ‘are not natural features. That is probably an ork rok.’

If Rosenkrantz had felt vulnerable before, the possibility of being surrounded on all sides by greenskin megafortresses, bristling with large-bore artillery and shot through with subterranean airbases, did not put her at ease.

‘Guess we know what happened to Commander Qvist,’ Conklin muttered at Rask.

‘If they’re here,’ the pilot began, ‘well, that means the entire system has to be infiltrated.’

Mortensen gave her one cocked eye. ‘You think so?’

‘They probably saw us come down,’ Eszcobar insisted.

The major looked up at the sky, unconvinced. ‘In this? Perhaps. But I don’t think any of us want to be here, should our greenskinned friends decide to dump a ton of ordnance on our position. How’s the Ecliptic?’

‘Totalled,’ Rosenkrantz confirmed. ‘The crew are fine – no fatalities. They’ve recovered Gundozer but the bird is slipping rapidly into the flood plain.’

‘How long to get this beast off the ground?’

Rosenkrantz shrugged. ‘We could use flame units on the thrusters, but clearing the filters; that could take hours.’

‘Okay,’ the major nodded. ‘Then you’ve got your work cut out. We’ll get out from under your boots. I need this bird in the sky as soon as is humanly possible.’

‘Think I want to remain here one moment longer than that?’ Rosenkrantz replied.

‘Sass, Eszcobar: ignore the surrounding relief and plot me a route to those coordinates.’

‘You want us to use the waterways?’

‘Yeah,’ Mortensen affirmed. Rosenkrantz saw a flash of inspiration cross the major’s features. ‘I got an idea.’