Table of Contents Cover Title Page Warhammer 40,000 Prologue Book One: Perdus Skylla Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Book Two: Ghosts Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Book Three: She Who Thirsts Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Epilogue About The Author Legal eBook license Warhammer 40,000 It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever- present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. PROLOGUE It felt like his body was on fire. Every nerve ending was awash with agony. He had never dreamed that such excruciating torment could be possible. A shadow leant over him, the image of death itself: skeletal, hateful, merciless. Eyes as black as pits bored into him, savouring his torment. ‘Your suffering is only just beginning,’ it promised, its voice matter-of-fact and even. Needles plunged into his veins. Then the prisoner heard a cry, the bestial roar of an animal in pain, and it took him a moment to realise that it originated from his own raw throat. Blades slid from the tips of Death’s long fingers and sliced through his skin, each deft incision drawing forth a wave of pain. Blood welled beneath each cut and was hungrily sucked up into tiny tubes attached to the grooved scalpel blades. The tubes ran along the back of Death’s fingers and joined the protruding veins on the backs of his hands, feeding the filtered vitae into its bloodstream. ‘Give in to the pain,’ it said calmly. ‘Beg for mercy.’ He gritted his teeth, and felt the metallic taste of blood on his lips. The vision of death leant closer. ‘Fear me,’ it whispered, and fresh agony jabbed through his body. A needle appeared in front of his left eye, its barbed tip dripping with fluid. His muscles strained to turn away, but his head was held fast, and he could do nothing as the needle was pushed agonisingly slowly into the soft tissue of his eyeball. He hissed as it slid through his pupil and deep into his cornea. The prisoner whispered something, and his tormentor turned, straining to hear. ‘You will never break me,’ the prisoner said again, this time with more force. ‘Pain holds no fear for me.’ ‘Pain? You know nothing of it yet,’ said his tormentor calmly. Flaps of skin were teased back, exposing the vulnerable flesh beneath. Nerve endings were seared and his body jerked spasmodically as agonised muscles tensed involuntarily. His primary heart palpitated erratically and the needle in his eye twisted, grinding against the inside of the socket. ‘You will come to fear me, in time,’ mused the softly spoken image of death, plucking at his captive’s exposed tendons, making the fingers of his left arm twitch. ‘We are in no rush.’ Memories struggled to surface on the edge of the prisoner’s mind. He tried to grasp them, but they were as elusive as shadow, taunting him, just out of reach. Fresh agonies assailed the captive as dozens of barbed needles stabbed into his spinal column, sliding between his vertebrae and plunging into the tender flesh within. Darkness rose to claim him, but he fought it with all his being, straining to possess the elusive memories that hovered just beyond his reach. Abruptly, a name rose to his lips from the very depths of his being. His name. ‘Marduk,’ he whispered. Fresh strength flowed through him as the dam holding his memories at bay broke. He smiled, his sharp teeth stained with blood. ‘My faith is strong,’ Marduk whispered hoarsely. ‘You will not break me.’ ‘Every living thing can be broken,’ said his tormentor, black eyes gleaming. ‘Everything begs for death come the end. You and I, we will find that point together. You will beg come the end. They all do.’ ‘Not in this lifetime,’ snarled Marduk. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he succumbed to darkness, a bloody grin on his face. BOOK ONE: PERDUS SKYLLA ‘In true faith there is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough shadow to blind those fools that don’t.’ – Apostate Evangelistae Paskaell CHAPTER ONE Machion-Dex, Procurator of the Adeptus Mechanicus archive facility of Kharion IV, strode across the grilled deck, his footsteps echoing loudly through the enclosed space. Ten expressionless skitarii warriors marched in a protective cordon around him, hellguns hard-wired into their brainstems held at the ready in black-gloved, augmetic hands. The procurator came to a halt mid-deck, alongside an array of cogitator banks that rose from the floor. A blank data-screen reflected his image back at him. A servitor, nothing left of its original body other than a head and torso of morbidly pale flesh, was plugged directly with the logic-engines. Ribbed tubes connected its eye-sockets to the data-slate, and clusters of wires and cables ran from its severed torso into the machine’s innards. The skitarii warrior-units broke into two groups and stepped out to either side of Machion-Dex to form a corridor, their movements in perfect, robotic synchronicity. They moved to within a metre of a strip of yellow and black hazard stripes upon a plate bisecting the room. Their heavy boots stamped as they came to attention, awaiting their next command. Machion-Dex folded his arms across his chest. He wore a vermillion tabard over a black bodysuit, its hems stitched with bronze wire, and his head was shaved to the scalp. Cables and clusters of wires sank into the flesh around the base of his skull, and a tattoo of a cogwheel, half black and half white, was emblazoned on his forehead. ‘Initiate lock-down,’ he said to the servitor, which twitched in response. A series of red glow-globes began to strobe, and to the sound of wailing klaxons, heavy-duty plasteel blast doors, half a metre thick and containing a sandwiched core of interlaced adamantine, slammed down from the ceiling in front of the procurator and his entourage. Secondary layers of reinforced ceramite dropped down on either side of the main blast doors with a crash, and tertiary armoured plates of thirty-centimetre thermaplas slid from wall recesses, slamming together with titanic force. Pistons wheezed as arcane locking mechanisms rotated and clinched shut, sealing off the sole entrance into the installation of Kharion IV. Not even half a kiloton of military grade explosive would be able to penetrate those doors without destroying half of the asteroid that the installation was embedded within. The blaring klaxons stopped abruptly, along with the flashing red warning lights. ‘Connect screen feed,’ said Machion-Dex, and the servitor twitched again. The blank data-screen before the procurator burst into life, covered in a snowstorm of static. Machion-Dex murmured a blessing to the Omnissiah and pressed a ritualistic sequence of buttons upon the data-slate’s side panel. A green, pixellated image of the room beyond the blast doors appeared on the screen’s surface. The procurator folded his arms, and the fingers of his right hand began to tap a nervous rhythm on his bicep as he waited for his guest’s arrival. The walls of the room beyond the blast doors were scorched black, and half a dozen automated heavy flamers rotated in their mounts, aiming towards the circular bulkhead on the far wall. The pilot-flames of the weapons burnt hot white on the green data-slate screen. There was a shuddering clang beyond the bulkhead as the access artery connecting to the docking facility clamped into position. There followed a burst of super-heated steam that partially obscured Machion-Dex’s view of the audience room, and a pair of lights located above the bulkhead began to rotate, sending shadows dancing across the fire-blackened walls.