Eisenhorn Omnibus

to attend to such details. Nayl handed them out, a heavy scroll tube and an amulet to each of us.

'I'm convinced/ Ricci said, getting to his feet and hanging the amulet around his neck so that it hung between the purity seals of his armour.

'I am glad. Grumman?'

'I'm with you/ said the Cadian.

'A toast/ I said, raising my glass. To this cell of five. And to the others who have assisted in getting us this far/ Bequin, Aemos, Nayl, Fischig and Inshabel also saluted with their glasses.

To Farness Beta. To the end of Quixos/

The five inquisitors in the drafty keep clinked glasses.

'Farness Beta/ said Ricci. 'Remind me. Where is that?'

'In the throat of the Cadian Gate/ said Grumman. 'Right on the edge of the Eye of Terror/

TWEJNTTY-TWO

Sarness Beta.

Cherubael and Prophaniti.

Quixos.

It was early in 343.M41 before we reached Farness Beta. By then, war was bifurcating the Cadia sub-sector, and armies of sheer horror were spewing out of the Eye of Terror. Like a whirlpool of fire, the Eye dominated the skies of most gate-worlds, distended and angry, flaring more savagely than at any time in living memory. Every flash and pulse of its maelstrom was another warp hole opening, another flotilla of death unleashed. That spring was known as the Staunch Holding of the Cadian Gate, and entered the history books, as every scholar knows.

During the first months of 343, the Cadians saw off the greatest incursion of Chaos suffered in three hundred years.

It was almost as if the Archenemy knew something.

The Essene brought me to Farness champing and eager to get on. We were escorted through the immaterium by two other ships: Ricci's stately steeple of a cruiser and Voke's ancient porcupine of a warship. Endor and Grumman, along with their retinue bands, travelled aboard the Essene with me. It had been a long time since the Essene had carried so many people.

The Imperial Navy taskforce, a ten-ship squadron seconded from Battle-fleet Scarus for special operations under the remit of the Battlefleet Disciplinary Detachment, was waiting for us.

* * *

The taskforce had already been on station for a fortnight, and its reconnaissance and intelligence operations had comprehensively prepared the ground for us.

'We have a confirmed location for Pariah/ Lord Procurator Olm Madorthene told me over a vox-pict link from his own ship.

Pariah was the operational word we had set for Quixos. 'Or at least his seat of activity, anyway. I'm relaying the data to you now. Site A is what you're looking for.'

I turned from my seat on the Essene s elegant bridge and Maxilla nodded to one of his beautiful servitors. The map display flashed up on the secondary screen of my console.

'I have it/ I said, turning back to look at Madorthene's slightly fuzzy image on the main bridge display.

'It'sa table mountain called ferell sidor, literally the 'altar of the sun', up in one of the remote northern wards of Hengav province. Provincial government has declared the whole ward a Sacred Territory because the area is riddled with Second Dynasty tholos tombs. Access is supposed to be restricted to the Ecclesiarchy, the Farnessi royal families and sanctioned archaeologists. We believe Pariah obtained licenses to excavate on Ferell Sidor about six years ago, in the guise of an archaeological mission from theuniversitariate of avellorn. the local authorities are supposed to monitor such missions, but frankly they have no idea what he's up to there. If you look at the detail map…'

Yes, got it/

You can see the extent of the workings. Pariah's constructed a small town up there, alongside the pit/

The excavation is considerable…'

*We think that's where he's buried or sited this facsimile pylon. It's difficult to get a clear view. We didn't want to get too close and tip him off/

I rose from my bridge throne and stood facing the enormous image of the lord procurator's face. 'You're set?'

'Absolutely. You have a copy of my assault strategy there. Make any amendments you like/

There was no need. Madorthene's plan was economical and efficient. Officially, this was an operation by the Battlefleet Disciplinary Detachment, prosecuting leads gathered during the inquest into the Thracian Atrocity. Lord Procurator Madorthene had entered into a co-operative pact with Commodus Voke to execute the plan. In reality, his pact was secretly with me. Olm was the only non-inquisitor I had written to.

We encrypted the call-signs and command authorities for the operation, agreed the zero-hour, and wished each other luck.

The Emperor protects, Gregor/ he said.

'I hope so, Olm/ I replied.

Two hours before sunrise the next day, five hundred Imperial Guard from the Fifty-First Thracian moved in towards Ferell Sidor – Site A – from

covert forward assembly points in the surrounding hills where they had been dropped by troop ships the day before. They advanced, silently, in three prongs, the first securing the single trackway that gave land-vehicle access to the table mountain. When all three were in position, we woke Ferell Sidor up.

The frigates Zhikov and Fury of Spatian bombarded the mountain for six minutes, raising a ball of fire that lit the landscape as if the sun had come up early. In its afterglow, thirty Marauder bombers overflew Site A at low level and delivered thirty thousand kilos of high explosives.

Another false dawn.

Despite this punishing overture, when the ground troops went in eight minutes after the last bomb, resistance was furious. Madorthene had feared that the best part of Quixos's strength lay underground, wormed inside the mountain, resistant to the worst aerial assaults.

In the blazing rains of the excavation township, the Thracian troops found themselves engaging fanatical and well-armed cultists. Most wore the insignia and colours of the Mystic Path. Many were mutants. Initial reports estimated over eight hundred enemy warriors. Madorthene committed the taskforce reserve: another seven hundred Thracian assault soldiers.

By then, we were already deploying in the second wave. Medea landed Inshabel and myself on the edge of the strike zone, along with Endor and his two weapon-servitors. Ricci's shielded pinnace settled in close by, kicking up dust and delivering him and Commodus Voke, along with a bodyguard of twenty inquisitorial troops. Grumman, using a Navy drop-ship loaned by Madorthene, was the last to make groundfall, but the first to engage. Grumman's ten-man squad were all ex-Kasrkin specialists.

As we hurried forward through the backwashing smoke, our landing ships rising back into the pre-dawn sky behind us, there was a tremor and a palpable upwelling of psychic force. Frighteningly powerful waves of psyker power erupted from the epicentre of Site A, killing over thirty of the forward troops… and then suddenly cut off.

We had all anticipated Quixos would have vast psychic defences – he had, after all, been collecting psykers like Esarhaddon – and it seemed likely that active psychic assaults would be a key element of his resistance, perhaps even more significant than his daemonhosts. I had taken no chances.