Every centimetre of Jarulek's exposed pale skin was covered in the hallowed words of Lorgar. Tiny, intricate script was inscribed perfectly across his flesh. Litanies and catechisms ran symmetrically down each side of his pale, hairless head, and his cheeks, chin and neck were sprawled with passages and curses. There was not a place upon him where you could place a data-stylus and not be touching the hallowed words of the great daemon primarch. Devotions, supplications, orisons, they extended over Jarulek's lips, inside his cheeks and across his tongue. Not even his eyes had been spared, citations of vengeance, hate and worship scribed on the soft, glutinous jelly of those orbs. He was a walking Book of Lorgar, and Burias was in awe at his presence.
'Lead the Dark Apostle forth, Icon Bearer,' intoned Marduk. Six additional guards of honour stepped into place around Marduk and the Dark Apostle, and together with the pair accompanying Marduk they represented the eight points of the star of Chaos.
'First, we worship,' said Jarulek. 'Then we kill a world.'
'I risk my men in there, and I am told to forget all about it?' spat Lieutenant Varnus. 'There is some kind of cult organisation operating in Shinar, perhaps across the whole of Tanakreg. We are just getting close.'
Varnus glared across the plain metal desk at Captain Lodengrad. The captain looked of middling years, but it was hard to gauge. He could have been forty, or a hundred and forty, depending on how much augmetic surgery he had been subjected to. Certainly he didn't appear to have aged in all the time Varnus had known him.
There were no features within the blank walls of the interview room other than the desk, the two chairs and the door. One wall was mirrored, and Varnus stood glaring at his tired and angry reflection. He knew that a trio of conjoined servitor twins stood beyond the mirror, recording and monitoring every movement made and every word spoken in the room. His heartbeat, blood pressure and neural activity were being analysed and recorded on a spooling data-slate, the details noted down by fingers ending in needlelike stylus instruments.
'Sit down, lieutenant,' said the captain.
'You seriously want me to go back on patrol and just forget everything I saw in that damned basement?'
'No one said anything about you going back to work, lieutenant,' said the captain. 'You disobeyed a direct order, and you struck a fellow enforcer.'
'Oh, come on! If I had obeyed your direct order,
'Sit down, lieutenant,' said the captain. Varnus continued to stare at his own reflection. 'Sit
'So what, are you going to kick me out? Send me back to work the damnable salt plains? Like before you recruited me?' Varnus sat back down and folded his arms. 'You knew what I was when you gave me this job. If you didn't want that, then you should never have pulled me out of the worker-habs in the first place.'
'Forget about all that, lieutenant. I'm not getting rid of you just yet. I'm just telling you to forget everything about what you saw in that basement. It is no longer our concern.'
'Not our concern?' exclaimed Varnus. 'That was no group of isolated, small-time, hab-gangers, captain. The information they had was highly classified material: maps, plans, schematics. They had plans of the damn governor's palace, for Throne's sake! You know what would happen if they managed to get explosives within the palace? They could knock out the entire city's power in one go, and what would happen then, captain? It would be bedlam: rioting, looting, murder. It would take a lot more enforcers than you have to put all that down. The PDF would have to be brought in. It would be absolute bedlam.'
'Are you quite finished, lieutenant?' asked the captain.
'Um, let me think. No. No, I'm not actually.'
'Well, hold onto those thoughts. There is someone here who may be able to answer them,' said the captain, rising to his feet. Varnus raised an eyebrow. 'I'm sick of listening to you, lieutenant. I'm going to get some caff. Wait here.'
The captain walked to the door and knocked twice. The door opened a moment later, and he left the room.
Varnus pushed his chair back and placed his feet on the table. He closed his eyes. He was so damn tired.
The door opened a few moments later. Varnus didn't bother to open his eyes. He sighed dramatically.
'It's Varnus, isn't it? Lieutenant Mai Varnus.' The voice was hard, and the lieutenant dropped his feet from the table, standing to look up into the face of the newcomer.
The man was big, bigger even than Landers, and he was dressed in the severe black uniform of an Arbites judge.
Throne above! An Arbites judge!
The blood rushed from Varnus's face, and he licked his lips.
The judge walked around Varnus and sat down in the seat recently vacated by the captain. His jaw was thick and square, his nose flat against his face and his brow heavy and solid. In all respects the judge looked hard and unrelenting. His intimidating physical presence was further enhanced by heavy ablative carapace armour and by the severe black uniform he wore over it.
'Sit down, lieutenant,' he ordered forcefully, his eyes cold and dangerous, his voice deep.
Varnus sat down warily.
'What you discovered, it is not within the jurisdiction of local enforcers. It is within the jurisdiction of Imperial law, Arbites law.'
Varnus frowned darkly.
'However, I have been reading your record,' continued the judge. 'It was… interesting reading. The Arbites could use a man like you, lieutenant.'
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
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. Soft-skins, he thought derisively. They were
