Halser places his finger on the trigger.

*I can save both of us,' says the prophet. His head lolls inside his bowl-shaped helmet, suspended by a pale, thin neck and a gloop of viscous liquid. The solution distorts his voice, but he tries to contort his vowels into something more human, enunciating each word carefully as though speaking to a child. He points a long, webbed finger at the man in the doorway. *They've lied to you. They have murdered us both. They knew exactly what would happen. They have always known.'

Halser follows his gaze and sees to his horror that Gideon Pylcrafte is laughing. No mouth is visible beneath his black hood, just a quivering ma.s.s of cables, but his amus.e.m.e.nt is clear. Halser's resolve evaporates. His hand falters. If Pylcrafte saw this coming, the whole mission was a lie. Halser tries to marshal his thoughts. He tries to pray, but the sound of Brother Volter's pain knifes into him, merged with the wailing of the pilgrims. The artillery grows louder until it seems the whole valley is groaning. The noise is unbearable and too loud to be just heavy guns. As the blasts ring around his head, Halser is forced to accept the truth.

The orbital bombardment has already begun.

Without Comus's protection, his mind edges quickly towards collapse. The temporal distortion has reached its zenith and the pilgrims' voices claw at his thoughts like blades across metal. He cannot be sure what is now and what was then. Simultaneously, he is leading the squad through the catacombs, slaughtering the pilgrims at the city gates and reaching the inner temple, but he knows that has already been. He stares deeper into the prophet's misshapen eyes, trying to anchor himself.

*Comus is down!' howls Brother Volter over the vox. *Dead, maybe... IaI can't be sure. They've taken the infirmary. I'm pulling back. What are your orders? Sergeant?'

Halser curses and looks back at the doorway. Time is collapsing. He has heard those words before, but how many times?

*I will not let you live,' he snaps, turning back to the prophet. The metallic ring of his amplified voice booms around the chamber. *You're an abomination.'

The prophet's bloated skull drifts to one side and splits open in a grin. *You have a ship and I have vision. The clouds are no barrier to me.' He waves at Pylcrafte. *He's wronged us both. Why should we accept our fate? We are the elect few. We have great work ahead of us. Great deeds.'

Halser shakes his head, but there is doubt kindling in his eyes. To shoot the prophet means death. Worse than that, it means failure. But what is the alternative? After everything he has seen, how could he let such a man live?

The prophet brushes his elongated fingers against Halser's power armour. They trace around a filigreed skull and he narrows his eyes. *Why did you come to Madrepore, Relictor?'

The chamber lurches and the ground shifts. The enemy fire is closing in. Centuries-old marble tumbles from the vaulted ceiling. Ten-metre eagles splinter and crack, covering the floor with vast, broken wings.

*Behold, the immutable will of the Emperor!' cries Pylcrafte from the doorway, raising his voice over the cacophony. *You're a proud fool, Sergeant Halser. This is all on your head. This is the price you pay for all your lowly, creeping misbelief and your repeated use of xenosa'

Halser silences him with a shot to the head. The blast echoes around the chamber and Pylcrafte crumples in a plume of blood. The cables in his hood twitch for a few seconds longer, then he lies still.

Halser turns away and presses his bolt pistol back against the prophet's helmet. *You're a mutant.'

*And what are you, Relictor?' The prophet's gla.s.s helmet is now splattered with Pylcrafte's blood but his voice remains defiant. He waves at the network of pa.s.sageways that lead off from his throne room. *There are weapons here. Weapons we could use.' His voice grows softer. *They lied to you, Relictor. All of them. Your fidelity is misplaced, don't you see?'

Halser grimaces as the agonised chorus grows louder: Brother Volter's desperate requests for orders, the chanting of the pilgrims, the groaning of the earth, the pounding of the guns. But worse than the noise is the doubt. How could Mortmain have tricked him? As the question torments Halser, the doubt turns to rage. Even his oldest friend does not believe in him, does not believe in his Chapter. He and his men have been sent to their deaths. Perhaps the braver act would be to listen to the prophet? *I will prove you wrong, Mortmain,' he spits. *I will make you pay.'

As his fury grows, the deja vu becomes unbearable. The prophet's words loop around the chamber, growing louder with each repet.i.tion. Halser's indecision grows and lights blossom in his head, merging with the crystals in the walls and the glyphs rolling across his visor. He sees a corona of sunlight around Ilissus, shimmering like spun gold as he breaks...o...b..t and drops down into the storm.

ENDEAVOUR OF WILL.

PART ONE.

Lochos was a beautiful city.

Steel spires burned silver in the sun of Olympia. Rivers of mercury ran through the streets, winding between the forges and the temples of that warrior-world's oldest ancestors. Minarets and steeples competed to reach the sky. Mosaiced streets glittered and hearth-fires glowed deep red in the shadows between the foundries. From mountainside to seash.o.r.e the city stretched, encompa.s.sing a thousand generations of Olympia's past, and a million dreams of her future.

Statues of mighty armoured men of war stood atop every important building. The new G.o.ds of Lochos, the icons of a pious world, they were the emblematic of the new galaxy and the Great Crusade that was to unite it. They were exemplars of what humanity could one day become. They were the Iron Warriors.

This was the sight that beamed down on Shon'tu as he knelt upon the sacrificial stone. The warsmith had never knelt to any man, but he knelt now, because it was in deference to something more than a man. The vision of Lochos, the lost capital of Olympia, filled him with something that might have been emotion. He could not properly remember it, because it had been ten thousand years since he had last felt joy, or sadness, or anything so petty as that. Iron within, he had told himself then. Iron Without. Never again will there be anything in this soul but the iron of purpose and the steel of fury.

Perhaps it was regret he felt. It might have been longing that flickered across Shon'tu's barely-human features, the few fleshy parts of his face almost crowded out by the steel jaw and the studded metal cranium. The man that later became Shon'tu had been born in Lochos. That man's memory remained in Shon'tu. He remembered when he left it to join the Great Crusade of the wretch he would later know as the False Emperor, the Corpse-G.o.d. He remembered when he returned. He remembered when it fell.

Lochos was dead. Olympia was dead. But its spirit still lived.

*I kneel,' said Shon'tu.

*Stand,' replied the Spirit of Lochos.

Shon'tu stood up, armour clanking and whining, letting off jets of steam from its archaic motors. The Spirit of Lochos filled the whole ritual chamber, giving the impression that the chamber carried on for dozens of miles in every direction. In truth it was a small patch of holy ground set aside within the confines of the Ferrous Malice, consecrated with battlefield trophies offered up by the Iron Warriors. The ship was a relic of a previous age, pitted and scarred by the millennia, as gnarled and vicious as the Iron Warriors who rode in it. It was more than a machine or a weapon a it was cruel and self-aware like an animal trained to attack. Every piece of it was consecrated in battle, but the ritual chamber had been set aside solely for Shon'tu. The sacrificial stone was one pried from the streets of Lochos and bathed in the blood of its people long ago. Shon'tu had poured his own blood a though little enough remained in his body a onto it.

*I was born in the streets of your city,' continued the Spirit. *My birth pangs were the screams of its people. In the deeds of the Iron Warriors alone I live on. To you alone I grant my presence.'

*The dying words of a hundred oracles brought us here,' said Shon'tu, *to this place beside the Eye of Terror. They spoke of havoc and bloodshed to be wrought.'

*They did not lie, warsmith.'

*Then how shall we find it?'

Battles were raging in the streets of Lochos now. Citizens and soldiers facing the s.p.a.ce Marines of the Iron Warriors. Each Warrior was like a walking bastion, invulnerable to the fire and blades of his enemies, blazing death from his guns. The Purging of Lochos was a time of horror and betrayal, but it was also the time when the Iron Warriors had realised the weakness of the Emperor and his new order. It was the birth of Shon'tu's Legion, a sacred time, a forging in fire. The vision of the city reddened as the streets ran with blood.

*The Eye has opened,' said the Spirit, *and Chaos pours forth. Many of the Corpse-G.o.d's lackeys are isolated and alone, though they do not yet know it. Two star forts guard a gateway into the Eye. The Bastion Inviolate and the Endeavour of Will. If they are attacked, there are none to help them save a few. Their loss will strike a grievous blow, for deprived of them the Imperium will not recapture the region without a crusade of a magnitude beyond its capacity to mount. But this concerns you less than those who hold them now.'

*Who?' said Shon'tu.

The bodies were being heaped up now in the squares and crossroads of Lochos. Good men and women, portrayed as rebels and traitors by the Emperor, whose deaths were demanded to prove the loyalty of the Iron Warriors. Instead, the betrayal compelled loyalty only to the powers of the warp, the G.o.ds of Chaos, of whom the Spirit of Lochos was a messenger.

*The Sons of Dorn,' replied the Spirit of Lochos. *The Imperial Fists.'

Warsmith Shon'tu was silent for a moment, watching the carnage in the city. He remembered being there. He remembered taking part in it. Somewhere he was there in the vision, striding from house to house, killing everything that dared move. The same bolter that hung at his waist had shed blood that day. The same combat knife sheathed on his chest. The same hands.

Then, Warsmith Shon'tu began to laugh.

*It's the Ferrous Malice.'

The man who had spoken, Cartographer Skune, was dwarfed by the s.p.a.ce Marines who stood beside him. In the gloom of the Bastion Inviolate's command deck, wearing the golden armour of his Chapter, Castellan Lepidus looked more like a statue carved from amber than anything that had once been a man.

*You are certain?' said Lepidus.

*As certain as can be,' replied the Cartographer. His rank was high among the unaugmented humans who crewed the star fort, but his deference to the s.p.a.ce Marine was clear. He could not look Lepidus in the eye, as if Lepidus were some holy relic and Skune's eyes were unworthy to look upon him. *The ship profile is very old and somewhat corrupt, but the correlation is clear.'

Lepidus stood at the head of the command table, which took up the centre of the deck. The deck resembled the interior of a castle on some feudal-level world, with shields and swords hung on the stone-clad walls beside tapestries of the star fort's battles, the holo-projectors and station controls hidden within the huge hardwood table. Around the edge of the chamber sat the crew, their dark blue uniforms and golden fist emblems marking them out as unaugmented men and women who served the Imperial Fists Chapter.

*Prepare the machine-spirit for war and bring all weapons on-line,' said Lepidus. A smile crept onto his face. *And alert the astropath. Send a communication to Strike Fleet Helios informing them of our position. Include a note for Captain Lysander. Let him know that if he is quick, he might have the chance to pick over the corpses we shall leave in our wake.'

Castellan Lepidus had earned his role in command of the Bastion Inviolate with several episodes of intense violence levelled against the Chapter's foes. His armour was in the form of a fortress, the ceramite collar worked into ornate battlements and his greaves b.u.t.tressed like foundations. It was hung with trophies of the enemies whose lives he had taken a ears from a greenskin warlord, delicate wraithbone trinkets from a fa.r.s.eer of the eldar, teeth and vertebrae from a host of malformed aliens. He clapped a fist to his chestplate.

*I have a s.p.a.ce kept here,' he said, *for a part of the heretic who helms the Ferrous Malice. Many of us have sworn to take him down, and I shall be the one to keep that oath. Some finger or jawbone, a rib or a hand, it does not matter! Some piece of Warsmith Shon'tu shall hang here.' He turned to the crew already working at the various command helms, bringing up the many weapons systems of the star fort. *Rejoice, you sons and daughters of mankind! This day you shall serve your Emperor by giving him the head of an Iron Warrior! The head of Shon'tu!'

Deep in the heart of the star fort, infernally hot and lit by the winking green lights that studded the menhirs of black datamedium, Techmarine Korgon waited for the machine-spirit of the Bastion Inviolate to unfurl. The intelligence was encoded in the millions of sheets of datamedium, untold trillions of calculations in every fraction of a second weaving together to create a sentience as old as the Imperium. Forged in the age before the Emperor had united humanity, the Bastion Inviolate had acc.u.mulated more battle-wisdom than a whole Chapter of s.p.a.ce Marines could boast.

From a well lined with black crystal a swarm of flickering motes rose, glowing blue and green. They coalesced into a shape that could have represented something alive, perhaps a serpent squirming in knots or a colony of polyps. Or it could have been an expression of something mathematical, a fractal constantly splitting and turning in on itself.

*Bastion!' called out Techmarine Korgon. *We are at war!'

*Who,' demanded the machine-spirit, *is the enemy?' Its synthesised voice filled the datacore of the Bastion Inviolate. The spirit was known to be curt and crude, constantly angry about something.

*The Iron Warriors,' replied the Techmarine. The servo-arm on his armour's backpack inserted a dataprobe into a socket on the crystal wall behind Korgon, inputting the data the star fort's sensorium had collected on the enemy ship. *The Ferrous Malice, known to be the flagship of Warsmith Shon'tu. Less than half an hour ago it emerged into real s.p.a.ce within striking distance of us.'

*Filth-licking dogs!' spat the machine-spirit. *Would that I had hands to wring their necks! Would that I had bowels that I might void them on their corpses!'

There was a reason Techmarine Korgon tended to converse with the machine-spirit alone. He was used to its temperament, but the same could not be said of the other Imperial Fists and Chapter crew who staffed the Bastion Inviolate. *You echo our own sentiments,' he said. *The Ferrous Malice is a Castigation-cla.s.s grand cruiser and is a formidable foe. We ask that you lend your wisdom to the battle sure to come.'

*My wisdom?' snapped the machine-spirit. *Wisdom counts for nothing against such a foe! No, it is hatred that will count! Rage! They stew in their filth and imagine our heads on spikes. But I'll split their hull open with my lance fire and turn them into frozen mist! My servitors will string their entrails on my battlements! Whatever foetid data festers in their systems, I'll delete it zero by one and sc.r.a.pe that ship bare! Long ago the Ferrous Malice opened its machine-spirit up to traitors and daemons! Whatever's left, I'll kill. You'll be lucky if there are any Iron Warriors left on whom to practise your aim.'

*Then I shall cede the primary weapons to you, machine-spirit,' continued Korgon. *And retain the defensive systems under the command of my crew that you might focus on the enemy. I have ordered them to make ranging shots ata'

*Quiet!' bellowed the machine-spirit. The fractal of light flattened and spread out, the holo-image rippling over the Techmarine's armoured form and up the crystalline walls. *I can hear them.'

*Hear them?' said Korgon. *They are still beyond medium sensorium range. We can barely pick up any comms at all.'

*They are here,' said the spirit. *I can taste them. I can smell their filth! Filling the radio spectrum with their ordure! Flooding the data network with seething rot! Techmarine, this is no physical a.s.sault! I am... I am besieged!'

The fractal darkened. Flecks of yellowish light flickered like fireworks in the datacore. A tendril of fractal spilled against the edge of the well, like a weary hand steadying a battered fighter.

*Bastion!' said Korgon in alarm. *Speak! What ails you?'

*Witchcraft!' spat the machine-spirit. *Daemon-magic! Flee this place, Techmarine! Flee! These rancid frag-holes, these rot-belching vermin, they have undone me! Ten thousand years, an entire age of Imperium, and now by these cowards I am undone!'

The whole datacore shook. Shards of black crystal fell as the stacks of datamedium fractured. The floor tilted and split, creva.s.ses opening around Korgon's feet.

*What must I do?' shouted Korgon over the din of tearing metal.

*Go! Now! Run! Take my guns and blast them from the void!'

*I cannot leave you! I have my duty!'

*Your duty is the destruction of our foes!'

Tendrils of yellow-green light were writhing through the steel of the deck and the crystal of the datamedium now, like snakes squirming beneath the surface of black ice. Korgon fell, the deck breaking under him, and he grabbed at the shards of metal to keep himself from sliding into the well.

The fractal was shimmering between black and sickly yellow-green, a semblance of tormented features shuddering across it. There was something else in in there with it, too, something dark and sinuous, smoky coils wrapping around the machine-spirit to strangle and constrain it.

Korgon scrabbled to his feet and backed away from the struggle. The daemon-coils snagged around his feet and arms but he broke them, breaking into a run as he headed for the exit that would take him into the maintenance sections of the Bastion Inviolate. A hand half composed of greenish light and half seething darkness grabbed the dataprobe on the end of the Techmarine's servo-arm and wrenched it towards one of the datamedium stacks. The probe stabbed into the black crystal and the servo-arm glowed bright as a torrent of data stormed through it.

Korgon's back arched as his muscles convulsed. Bones cracked. His lips peeled back from his teeth and his eyes rolled back, his body shuddering. Foam flecked around his mouth.

*Techmarine!' yelled the machine-spirit. *My brother!'

Korgon's body deformed under the convulsions of his own muscles. The ceramite of his armour buckled. Where it split, blood flowed.

Where the armour was torn, eyes bulged, veined and filmy, staring madly. Korgon the man disintegrated, replaced with something awful and inhuman.

The machine-spirit of the Bastion Inviolate bellowed in anguish and pain. As one the stacks of datamedium shattered, shards of crystal howling on a gale of shredded information. The daemon-shadow slithered over everything and a well of darkness erupted in the heart of the star fort.

Death came to the Bastion Inviolate beneath a veil of shadow and flesh.

Castellan Lepidus outlived the command deck crew by a handful of seconds. They were asphyxiated as the machine-spirit lost control to the data-daemon and the airlocks and bulkhead doors were slammed open. The air shrieked out of the star fort, dragging many crew with it, kicking out blindly as they were thrown out into the void. Those who held on died in the next moment, blood vessels rupturing, lungs bursting, their blood coughed out into a frozen mist in the sudden cold.

A s.p.a.ce Marine could survive the void for a while. It was not the void that killed Lepidus. It was the face that bulged up from the deck under his feet, its lines carved hard from the steel, huge gla.s.sy black eyes unblinking as Lepidus was dragged down into its yawning mouth by hands of data-shadow. The Castellan was drawn into a pit of gnashing blades, the throat of a steel serpent lined with jagged teeth, and swallowed whole by the abomination conjured from the substance of the Bastion Inviolate. His shouts of defiance were swallowed by the vacuum and his life winked out as his body was shredded and crushed down there beneath the deck.

The scene was repeated all across the star fort. The fort's small detail of Imperial Fists were ground to paste or impaled on fingernails of steel from hands that unfolded from the machinery around them. Others followed the crew out of the airlocks, tumbling through s.p.a.ce, alive for the moment but certain to die as their armour's air supplies ran out. They had the last sight of the Bastion Inviolate, of the way its ornate arches and b.u.t.tresses folded in on themselves to form huge faces, of the enormous filmy eyes that stared from the wounds opening up in the star fort's hull.

As they died, they saw the Bastion Inviolate die too. In its place was created something much, much worse.

Sometimes, Captain Lysander's thoughts turned to sacrifice.

The first lesson he had learned as a s.p.a.ce Marine was sacrifice. The man who had begun his training under the Chaplains of the Imperial Fists was long gone now, replaced by someone who was more a legacy, an embodiment of his Chapter, than a human being; but Lysander still remembered what he had learned. In battle, nothing can be won without sacrifice. Be it the expenditure of a single bullet or the death of a whole world, victory had to be paid for somehow.

Sacrifice was foremost in his mind now as he regarded the tactical map of the region surrounding the Eye of Terror. In the immediate vicinity of the Eye, grey icons marked worlds which had been sacrificed to the tide of Chaos that had flooded from the Eye. There were the graveyards of vast armies and planetary populations, billions fallen to the Chaos-worshipping heretics who called themselves the soldiers of the Black Crusade. Prominent battles and naval actions shone bright in the holo-display, all of them marking ma.s.s sacrifices to the possibility of victory by Imperial commanders. Some had been successful. Most had not, and the campaign around the Eye was one of containment. The Chaos spearhead had to be blunted. If it burst through in force from the Eye and crashed through the cordons the Imperial Navy had thrown around it, the Black Crusade would make for Terra herself.

That would not happen. The Imperium would sacrifice everything it had to keep it from happening. The Imperial Guardsman or Naval crewman might not understand that. He might equate victory with survival, in the way that the small-minded Imperial citizen had to just to stay sane. But Lysander understood.

Lysander contemplated this in the tactical orrery of the strike cruiser Siege of Malebruk. The ship had been sent from Fleet Helios, the Imperial Fists fleet guarding one of the approaches from the Eye. It was all the fleet could spare. Any moment now the fleets of Chaos could approach and force the Imperial Fists to a naval battle. Lysander himself was an a.s.set that the Imperial Fists could ill afford to have anywhere but in the heart of battle a but his task was more important even than to lead his brother s.p.a.ce Marines of Fleet Helios.

His task was to confirm that Warsmith Shon'tu really was dead.

Lysander's vox-link chirped behind his ear.

*Speak,' he said.

*Captain,' came the voice of the ship's commander, Chrystis. *We are exiting the warp. All indicators green.'

*Contact the Bastion Inviolate and the Endeavour of Will as soon as we are in real s.p.a.ce,' said Lysander. *Have us battle-ready. The fight will have been joined and may still be going on. We must be ready to lend our guns.'

*Yes, captain,' replied Chrystis. *Breaching real s.p.a.ce now. The Emperor protects.'

The tactical orrery, clad in bra.s.s and inscribed with the cogs and stylised enginework of the Adeptus Mechanicus, shuddered as the Siege tore through the veil between the warp and reality. For a split-second the architecture of the orrery shifted; impossible angles ghosted across its architecture as reality protested at the intrusion. Then the moment was over and the Siege was back in reality.

The holo-display winked out and was replaced, the ship's immediate vicinity being picked out in light. The Endeavour of Will was surrounded by flickering icons representing its small garrison of Imperial Fists. A star a handful of light hours away, with dead moonlets and a band of asteroids. Long-defunct explorator platforms.

There was no Bastion Inviolate.

*Comms coming in,' came Chrystis's voice over the vox. *It's garbled. Distress beacons everywhere from the Endeavour.'

*What of the Bastion?' demanded Lysander.

*Nothing,' said Chrystis. *We're searching for it. It's not putting out anything, not even static beacons.'

*Find it,' said Lysander.

*Yes, captain. Should we hold position?'