‘Speak, damn you!’ the canoness seethed, slamming her armoured palms into the table.

Mortensen’s eyes were glazed, his face – like his body – lifeless. He hadn’t spoken in what seemed an age, he just sat there watching Santhonax pace the oubliette, soaking up the battle-sister’s fury. Once or twice he caught her checking her chronometer or fidgeting with her vox-piece. It was probably already too late to get off the planet’s surface and she knew it.

Despite feeling emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Mortensen felt the irresistible pull of an utterance. He felt compelled to satisfy her demand to know his mind.

‘All those people, died…’

‘Yes,’ the canoness confirmed with unusual feeling, quick to exploit the opening. ‘But not for you or because of you. There are those amongst the fighting men of the Imperium who might trade in such untruths and poison your faith with their own heretical needs and ideals. But in Gomorrah’s death, men like you found new life. You wouldn’t have become what you are, had not adversity been your making.’

‘What, a cursed cripple?’ Mortensen lamented.

Santhonax turned his chair from the table and knelt down in her armour by his side: ‘Can’t you see? This isn’t a curse, it’s a gift.’ She stroked his battle-scarred chest with the cruel tips of her gauntlet. ‘It may not be divinely ordained, but whatever you lost in your world’s calamity, you gained the ability to achieve the impossible. You succeed where others fail. You walk tall where others have fallen. You live when you should die. Adversity gave you that.’

‘The assassin?’

Santhonax nodded slowly.

‘Krieg?’

More confirmation from the battle-sister.

‘That bounty hunter on Targretta Prime?’

‘Not one of mine,’ the canoness admitted, narrowing her eyes and coming in closer, ‘but the same principle applies.’

‘Why the pretence? Heresy? Why not just come for me?’ the major goaded.

‘There are those,’ Santhonax admitted with regret, ‘that do not share our vision.’

‘Really?’ the Gomorrian teased.

The Sister of the Immaculate Flame continued unfazed: ‘They are without the steel in their soul to do what is necessary. They do not understand and consider our ideas dangerous. In turn, we ourselves stand accused of heretical ideals. Surely you can empathise with that, Major Mortensen?’

‘Let me let you in on a little secret: I think your ideas are dangerous,’ he told her straight, ‘and since you included me in them, I’ve never been more than two decisions away from a horrible death.’

‘It’s easier to avoid your accusers if you appear to be one of them. See, adversity forced me to become stronger. My pretence was part of the adversity you are enduring right at this moment, but in time I have hopes that you will outgrow my protection.’

‘Protection!’ Mortensen guffawed angrily. ‘You’ve done nothing but try to kill me or get me killed. You talk of adversity like it’s some kind of necessary evil. You’re wrong,’ he told her sourly. ‘The end of my world gave me nothing but pain. And when it finished giving me that, well, it just gave me nothing.’

‘It gave you a role to play: a life useful to the Emperor.’

‘You may revel in adversity,’ the major went on. ‘You may believe that the Imperium is all the stronger for the enemies at and within its borders, but there’s an alien war host out there who says different; who are different – because from what I’ve seen and from what I know, I don’t think they’re going to stop.’

‘Men like you will stop them,’ the canoness assured him. ‘And you will be all the stronger, sharper and more vigilant for your victory. But if there’s no enemy, there can be no victory and no one able to stand against the future foes of mankind. Greater evils.’

Mortensen shook his head, which surprised him because formerly those muscles had been all but stupefied. He pushed on, eager that the battle-sister not detect his growing mobility.

‘You talk like you can control this.’

‘Control? No. Do not take me for a fool: I’ve fought the Imperium’s enemies all my life,’ she warned him. ‘But if you study what you hate, you come to realise that mankind’s enemies can be encouraged to be predictable. And of all the wretched alien detritus that pollute the galaxy, greenskins are amongst the most predictable.’

‘You’re out of your mind, did you know that?’

‘Centuries reducing garrisons on the Burdock Worlds. Generations spent thinning fleet deployments along the Kintessa Gauntlet. Enceladus drew millions of able-bodied fighting men out of sector – an unnecessary crusade providing a hole in the fence, as it were. Don’t misunderstand me, it had to be a very big hole, but orks can’t resist an opening like that. Studies of greenskin invasions and unintentional strategic weaknesses long taught us that.’

‘You…’

‘And those before me,’ Santhonax informed him. ‘Gomorrah was bold – even by ork standards. We’d never seen tactics like that before. That hulk was colossal and more than enough to sunder a world – but we never expected it to actually strike the planet. Genius, really. As a hive-world, Gomorrah would have supplied the lion’s share of recruits required to repel an invasion of the system. It was then we truly realised we’d chosen wisely. The warlords of the Gargasso Deeps proved on that day their suitability for this venture. We could trust their intention to unify and push coreward on a green tide of unthinking alien brutality: funnelled through the weakened inroad of worlds making up the Kintessa Gauntlet and spilling out upon an unsuspecting Segmentum Solar.’

‘You–’

‘Could have stopped it? Yes. But why should we? This will be the greatest alien incursion the galaxy has ever seen. It will galvanise generations to action, across hundreds of worlds, and make thousands more like you.’

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Mortensen marvelled with sickening horror. Something about the quality of the major’s accusation stopped the fanatic in her tracks.

‘Explain,’ she finally ordered.

‘They’re not greenskins,’ the storm-trooper spat at her. He let his words sink in. ‘You’ve damned not only yourself and me. You’ve damned us all. This alien host will sweep down on Terra and if you and your secret society have strategically crippled Kintessa as you say, then nothing is going to stop it.’

‘You’ll stop it,’ Canoness Santhonax put to him, her words laced with the fire of the faithful.

‘Why tell me this?’ Mortensen asked with rising anger. ‘I’ll expose you – inform the authorities.’

‘We are the only authority,’ the battle-sister reasoned, flashing her insane eyes at him. ‘You, as I’ve painted you, are a traitor and a heretic. But in any case, were that to come to pass, I expect I’d be long dead.’

‘And your warped superiors and associates – what of them?’

‘As I’ve tried to tell you: we’re all here to be tested.’

Mortensen bored into her with cold, furious eyes and made his play. ‘Well, my test is over. I’d rather be in someone’s crosshairs than part of some raving scheme to feign galactic destruction – especially one that’s gone as spectacularly awry as this one. I’ll sit here and die before lending credence to your sick theories of delusion and, well, I never thought I’d be the one saying this but, heresy.’

The canoness came in close, her potent eyes fixing the major with a piercing glare. Mortensen met them with his own brand of cocky truculence. A minute must have passed like this: the canoness appraising both the major and the situation, the holochron clearly twitching on her wrist. She could see he meant it. Mortensen did all he could do. He waited. Waited to see if she would grant him his wish.

Then it happened.

Santhanax folded. Her finger moved to her vox-earpiece.

‘Purity Control, this is the canoness…’ Her face creased with annoyance and confusion as the seconds went by without a response. ‘Purity Control,’ she repeated before cycling through the open channels. As she hit the fourth the creases softened and her lips pursed. Even Mortensen could hear the unmistakable crash of gunfire across the vox-waves.

The major enjoyed her momentary uncertainty.

Santhonax clicked her fingers, bringing her battle-sisters out of the cell shadows, and tuned her vox into an alternative channel. ‘We’re leaving,’ she simply notified the person on the other end. The pressure door in the ceiling gave a hydraulic wheeze and squirted gas from nozzles situated around the bulkhead rim. The trapdoor opened upwards and a robust wire ladder fell, unravelling itself to the floor.

The two sisters hauled Mortensen’s body out of the chair, putting each arm across their sinewy shoulders and toned necks. The canoness put the sole of one boot on the first wire step. The sisters approached with Mortensen supported between them.

‘When we get back to the ship, you can ask the other specimens in my personal collection: you die when I say you die,’ Santhonax told the major evenly.

Mortensen gave her a conceited smile. ‘Life’s a bitch. Mind you, I’m told it takes one to know one.’