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  ‘Where’s Joaqhuine?’

  ‘The Idolatress is on her way. Was that wise, my lord?’ Klute put to Czevak over the din of the Salamander’s struggling engine.

  ‘Was what wise?’ Czevak answered, having already forgotten the previous episode.

  ‘To alienate the Ordo Hereticus.’

  Both men smiled at Klute’s choice of words, a crooked smirk somehow finding its way through Czevak’s crumpled face.

  ‘Valentin Malchankov is a monster: a Puritan, a Monodominant, a maniac. Unfortunately, the Holy Ordos have need of such men.’

  ‘But, he threatened your life, sir.’

  ‘What’s left of it.’

  ‘Can we afford such enemies?’ Klute asked, driving the point home. ‘I mean, my lord, presumably we lost the extra manpower you were requesting.’

  ‘If we have truly discovered the Kaela Mensha shrine chambers then we shall not need the extra resources, nor need to worry about Malchankov and his idle threats.’

  The Salamander finally moved out of the Ordo Xenos camp and headed across the quagmire which served as a road. As the vehicle passed across an improvised embankment, they came upon a skirmish. Klute saw gas-masked Death Korps Guardsmen on horseback, attempting to rescue several of their hardy steeds as the screeching animals were dragged below the surface of a sinkhole. The Death Riders proceeded to dismount and hammer the sand with las-blasts from their Lucius-pattern rifles. Several granular explosions later, the Guardsmen and their steeds were set upon by three hulking eurypterids, freshly emerged from the dunescape. The sea scorpions were top of the food chain on Darcturus and the only species of the myriad of proto-world creatures that ventured onto land.

  The clinker-plated monstrosities looked like giant lice – all razored pincers and primitive stingers, with underbelly cilia-spines constantly embedded in the sand, tracking the vibrations and movements of their prey. Since the arrival of Imperial forces on their bloodied shores, they had developed a particular taste for horsemeat, but mainly feasted upon Confessor-Militant Caradoq’s frater labourers. As the Guardsmen slipped and sank in the moving sands, the eurypterids sliced up the terrified, Krieg-bred steeds. Las-bolts bounced from the alien beasts’ armoured shells and in the end it took a grenade launcher to knock one of the horrors onto its back and a Death Korps sergeant to go to work with his chainsword on the monstrous underbelly of the thing.

  As the other two were joined by a third and then a fourth, crawling up out of the sinkholes, Klute drew Czevak’s attention to the scene.

  ‘Should we assist?’ the interrogator asked, placing a hand on his medicae satchel.

  ‘Drive on,’ the High Inquisitor told the Death Korps driver without a second thought. The Inquisition’s business was too important to be delayed by the death of common Guardsmen. ‘If we can unlock the secrets of eldar soul transference, their spiritual mechanism of divine incarnation, then imagine what those that follow us could achieve?’ the High Inquisitor continued, picking up his previous line of enquiry. ‘We could pave the way for the resurrection of the God-Emperor, for surely if a mortal man can become a god, then a god may indeed become a mortal man?’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘We could transfer the spirit, the very being of the God-Emperor into the body of another. A pulpit in flesh, from which the Emperor can guide the Imperium once more, lead from the vanguard of humanity and complete his glorious Great Crusade. The hands and lips of another delivering the words and deeds of a god.’

  ‘My lord, forgive my questions – but I have many. If such a thing were possible, what would happen to the Astronomican under such circumstances? A mortal man could not sustain such a wonder – a wonder upon which the entirety of the Imperium relies. And what of the dangers of corruption? If such a being were mortal, would it not be susceptible to the temptations of within or without, as all mortal men are? We would, after all, be using the warp practices of an ancient and alien race to achieve this.’

  ‘You sound like Grand Master Specht.’

  ‘No, my lord. I believe in what we are doing here. To have questions is not to disbelieve. I believe in the God-Emperor but, be assured, I’d have plenty of questions for him should I meet – be praised – his mortal incarnation.’

  ‘My boy – all I know is this,’ Czevak preached, ‘in those precious few years running up to and during the Great Crusade, more progress was made by humanity than in the thousands of years that followed. Many of the evident truths we have come to live by and rely upon in the 41st Millennium were established in those times. The Imperium and its manifest purpose became more than just an idea in that golden age, it became the very fabric of reality that we take for granted here and now. Everything between the dark days of the Heresy and this very hour has been a hiatus. Men like Specht and Malchankov – fearful in their different ways – are like maggots in the decaying flesh of the Imperium, living off the promise of history but never to be instrumental in the realisation of its future potential. Today, Raimus, we shall be part of that realisation. How big a part remains to be seen.’

  The Salamander hurtled down into the artificial shallows of Zone Omega West. Jutting up from a flooded excavation area was part of the shattered remains of the Uthuriel craftworld. The osseous fluidity of the architecture was unmistakably eldar in origin and the crystalline darkness of its wraithbone surface matched the other excavated remains that Czevak had had his forces uncover and investigate. Curvaceous towers and arches dominated the structure, bearing the bold swirl of alien runes and glyphs, all marked out in a different shade of darkness. The Death Korps engineers had been instructed by the High Inquisitor to search for a very specific set of markings, which up until now they had failed to find on any of the remains. Markings in the eldar’s ancient tongue that signified the part of their vast city-vessel dedicated to Kaela Mensha – the Shrine of the Bloody Hand.

  As soon as the find had been confirmed, the frater labour force excavating it had been evacuated and the only evidence that a small army of pious workers had been there were the abandoned shovels and buckets littering the flooded pit into which the Salamander descended. Planks of sodden wood demarcated pathways and fortified archaeological trenchworks. Platoons of Death Korps Guardsmen fought in the shadow of small mountains of excavated, wet sand that sagged at the pitside. Up to their thighs in the black, tidal shallows, the Guardsmen waded in their sodden trenchcoats, firing volleys of las-bolts into the agitated waters. The dig site had displaced a nest of eurypterids; they had no intention of surrendering their territory to the Imperials, and the Death Korps had been forced to fortify the excavation with heavy weapons teams along the flooded coastline. To prevent the excavation site from becoming damaged, Czevak had forbidden the use of artillery, and this meant that the Lesser Procta Cenobists had slogged to the constant chatter of heavy bolters tearing up the shallows and the pincered monstrosities emerging from them.

  The echo of such activity filled the air as the Salamander reverse-tracked and skidded to a halt outside of the dark structure. Deathwatch Space Marines stood nearby like ominous pieces of architecture in their own right, their armour gleaming like tenebrous beacons of certain death. Only their shoulder pads bore any trace of colour – on one side the insignia of their varied parent Chapters and on the other the markings of their Ordo Xenos calling.

  A group of Death Korps engineers was gathered at an elliptical arch that was the seeming entrance of the derelict structure, garrisoned by a lieutenant and his infantry platoon. The lieutenant came forward as Klute and the inquisitor stepped down from the vehicle and saluted – the only feature distinguishing him from his fellow masked Guardsmen were the stripes on his sand-spattered coat. Like his men, he bore a thirteen digit designation on his chest rather than anything as personal as a name.

  ‘Melta charges are in place, High Inquisitor; ready on your order,’ the lieutenant called through his mask. ‘Excellent work, lieutenant. Continue in your efforts to secure the perimeter. Colonel Magrellan has
reinforcements on their way from the eastern zones,’ Czevak informed them.

  The Deathwatch approached in silence. At first Klute thought he was sinking in the sand, but in reality it was the sheer size of the Space Marines, growing with every step, that disorientated the young interrogator.

  Captain Hektor Quesada of the Aurora Chapter took off his helmet, fixing the High Inquisitor with a single eye of gunmetal grey. The other was tightly bandaged and spotted with blood. His hair was cropped short and shone like freshly wrought steel.

  ‘Inquisitor Czevak.’

  ‘Captain. You and your team are a most welcome addition to our endeavour.’

  ‘As I understand it, we are to safeguard your person and neutralise any alien threats,’ the captain confirmed with words that rumbled from somewhere deep inside his reinforced chest.

  ‘The inquisitor’s security is of prime importance during this mission,’ Klute added with an emphasis that disintegrated in the presence of the Deathwatch. Quesada neither ignored nor acknowledged the interrogator, instead turning to his team with a nod. They proceeded to chamber rounds in their boltguns, bless their weapons and check the seals on their power armour. As they moved about one another, Klute was privy to their Chapter insignia. An Excoriator cradled a brute of a belt-fed heavy bolter, flanked by a member each of the Crimson Consuls and Scythes of the Emperor. The Scythes of the Emperor warrior’s right arm had been replaced with a thick-set bionic appendage, rippling with bunches of telescopic tendons and hydraulic pistons. The remaining Space Marine reared up to full height, after checking the Excoriator’s helmet seals. He was tall, even by the standards set by his Deathwatch brethren and bore a clenched, silver gauntlet on his shoulder pad, identifying himself as a member of the Astral Fists Chapter.

  The roar of an engine preceded the appearance of a Death Korps Chimera bouncing over the summit of a nearby dune. Locking off its tracks, the Imperial Guard transport skidded down the slope raising its dozer blade in time to hit the bottom and tear across the dig site toward the ruins. Even before the Chimera sand-spat to a stop, its side door had rolled open.

  Klute was dazzled as a lithe figure disembarked. The reflective surface of the chest-hugging breastplate and the heavy, jangling aquila hanging about her neck caught and magnified the light of the dismal Darcturan suns.

  Joaqhuine Desdemondra was a common sight about the Ordo Xenos encampment, spending as much time on the sandy shooting ranges as in the Death Korps tent chapels. She was no less revered for this fervour, as was demonstrated in the way the Death Korps lieutenant and his platoon slapped their right knees into the wet sand and bowed their helmets. Tiny, sausage curls bounced with every step about her dark face, with full lips and big, brown eyes set in an expression of unforced calm.

  She was known simply as Saint Joaqhuine or ‘the Idolatress’ among the Guardsmen. Originally Joaqhuine was part of the Path Incarnadine, a haemovore death cult that single handedly defended the Carfax Hive on the cardinal world of Aspiratyne from the predations of the dark eldar Fell Witch and her World-Scourgers. There Joaqhuine’s death-dealing skills and supernatural abilities came to the attention of Inquisitor Furneaux – Czevak’s Ordo Xenos mentor. Furneaux determined that although her capacity for taking life was admirable, her real gift lay in resisting the inexorable finality of death. Her reported immortality was mere rumour and myth on Aspiratyne but Inquisitor Furneaux himself witnessed several of her resurrections and despite disgust at her feeding habits, swiftly assigned her as his bodyguard and henchwoman.

  Word of Desdemondra’s immortality spread among the Ecclesiarchy, and Joaqhuine – Saint Joaqhuine the Renascent as she came to be known in the Ministorum Annals – was confirmed by Confessor-Militant Caradoq as a Living Saint of the Imperial Creed. When Furneaux died during the mysterious events surrounding the Second Klestry Forest War, Czevak engaged the haemovore saint’s loyalties – as much to study her miraculous gift and its relationship to his researches as out of the need for an able bodyguard.

  Joaqhuine padded through the shallows, her breastplate framed in the lines of the khaki Death Corps trenchcoat she habitually wore. She appeared indifferent to the collective reverence. Snatching up a Lucius-pattern lasgun and a meltagun from the shoulders of two kneeling Guardsmen, Joaqhuine tossed Klute the rifle and kept the meltagun for herself. The interrogator held the grit-encrusted weapon at arm’s length for a moment before grunting and handing Czevak his spirit stone-pommelled cane. Shrugging his satchel higher up his shoulder, Klute went through the motions of priming the weapon. He knew how Joaqhuine felt about the protection offered by the brace of needle guns sitting criss-crossed on his belt – which was that they offered no protection at all.

  ‘Praise be,’ she told the High Inquisitor, flashing her implanted adamantium cuspids through her plas-mask, as she thumbed the sub-atomic primer on the meltagun.

  ‘Praise be, indeed,’ Czevak returned with a slack-mouthed smile. ‘Lieutenant, proceed,’ he ordered. The faceless Guardsman signalled to his platoon’s demolitions man, who twisted his bulky detonator. The melta charge exploded with an eye-searing flash, leaving a gaping hole of dribbling wraithbone in place of the osseous archway. An ancient darkness beckoned, a darkness that did little to dissuade the Deathwatch Space Marines from darting inside, despite their armoured bulk. With less enthusiasm, Klute ventured through the ragged hole, flanking the High Inquisitor, who stabbed his ferrouswood cane into the soft ground with Saint Joaqhuine bringing up the rear.

  The lamps on the Space Marines’ armour sliced up the blackness within, the beams pointing and pivoting in synchronised manoeuvres, as the Deathwatch advanced through the alien environment. The strike of the High Inquisitor’s cane punctuated the kill team’s progress. There was no way of telling how far the ruins extended out to sea and beneath the oily waves. When the Uthuriel craftworld crashed into Darcturus, it had shattered into an unknowable number of colossal fragments and derelict ship sections were spread across the surface of the planet. The runes on the exterior of the wraithbone were indicative of the section Czevak was looking for, but the dimensions of the section itself were unknown.

  The Deathwatch kill team went about their deadly business, clearing one dark space after another in the curvilineal world of arciform chambers and conduits through which they advanced.

  Klute snapped on the filthy spot lamp hanging under the barrel of his lasrifle and scanned the obscurity of their surroundings. The wraithbone walls and floor were smooth and glistened with coolness. The dark surface of everything soaked up the light and glimmered with an inner, emerald translucence. The air was cool and oxygen rich and both Klute and the Idolatress found that they could slip off their plas-masks.

  ‘High Inquisitor,’ Captain Quesada called.

  Czevak limped forward on his cane, his suspension suit gurgling and chuffing with its cryogenic preoccupations.

  ‘That’s it,’ Czevak said after a moment’s pause.

  ‘What’s it?’ Klute asked, picking up on the hesitation.

  ‘Something about the orientation of the runes,’ Czevak answered – a distracted murmur.

  Klute’s spot lamp showed the smooth curves of the passageway ending in a wide arch, the floor of which adjoined the ceiling. Czevak chuckled to himself in the blister-helmet.

  ‘It’s upside down,’ the High Inquisitor informed everyone. ‘The section must have landed on its back – the floor is the ceiling.’

  In their alien surroundings Klute was taking little for granted; strange orientations were the least he expected from a ruined section of an eldar vessel. Something crawled across the interrogator’s shoulder. He span in the darkness, only to find Joaqhuine’s hand there. She pulled him to one side and presented the muzzle of her meltagun to the sealed archway.

  ‘No need for such fireworks, my dear,’ Czevak assured the Idolatress as he extracted the spirit stone from the fixture on his cane. The High Inquisitor hobbled up between the mountainous Astral Fist and his Deathwatch
captain and, with confidence, slipped the spirit stone into an imperceptible slot to one side of the arch.

  The dark wraithbone of the archway fluttered with a phantasmal glow, feeling its way through the translucence. Czevak waited. The Deathwatch remained still. Joaqhuine scanned the danger of the open darkness behind them while Klute watched, entranced, as what he could only imagine was the spirit of a former Uthuriel inhabitant coursed through the matrix of the wraithbone’s soulstructure. The archway opened, not downwards as Klute might have expected for a doorway opening out onto the ceiling, but apart as a myriad of black-bone discs that rolled away and aside.

  ‘Kaela Mensha,’ Czevak announced to the revealing gloom beyond. ‘The Shrine of the Bloody Hand’.

  The Deathwatch shuttled in, one after the other, under the bolter sights of the previous Space Marine. Joaqhuine and Klute flanked Czevak, the interrogator sticking close to his master, lasgun raised and the feeble spot lamp beaming around the surroundings of the new chamber. With the meltagun supported in one arm, Joaqhuine fished around in the pockets of her Death Korps coat, producing a flare tube. Slam-igniting it against her knee, she fired the pyrotechnic and tossed it out into the inky open space.

  The chamber flickered in the blinding flash of the flare. It was a sight to behold. Even the Deathwatch Space Marines slowed to an awe-inspired snaking of the eyes.

  In the roof of the shrine was a gargantuan throne. Standing on the ceiling, the Imperials had to crane their necks skyward to take in the floor and the vision above them. Sitting in the throne, equally resisting the colossal force of gravity imposed on its unthinkable mass, was a giant figure. Its mighty metal claws clutched the arms of the throne in suspended rage and its armoured body, bloody and bronzed, supported the grandiose exaggerations of the vision’s helmet. It had the proportions of a god, yet the nightmare appearance of something alien, unholy and warp-furious.