Far to the galactic west, in the Segmentum Tempestus, the forge world Lankast convulsed. The geologic tides unleashed by the ork moon above it tore open vast chasms that traced jagged paths hundreds of kilometres long. Lava flows spread over the land. Entire hive cities were wiped away, hundreds of millions of lives vanishing into waves of molten rock. And in the more stable regions, on the high continental plateaus, surrounded by new seas of fire, Iron Father Bassan Terak shouted the hatred of the Red Talons. They met the ork siege of the colossal manufactoria with a rage that had its own volcanic force. Third Company’s Predator tanks hit the ork ranks with the relentlessness of a mechanised, moving wall. The orks countered from orbit. Heedless of their own casualties, they hurled rocky masses to the surface. Meteor strikes pummelled the manufactoria and iron chimneys a hundred metres tall collapsed. The eruption of the furnaces was a solar flare. The Red Talons advanced still. They had no choice. There was nothing behind them now but flame.
But it was Klostra, a planetoid not much larger than the star fortress that closed in on it, that suffered the most important attack. The inhabitants of its colonies prepared for the invasion they knew they could not stop, the invasion whose blow would resonate as far as Terra.
The sub-orbital took Wienand, Rendenstein and Krule as far as a nondescript Administratum region in the south-east sector of the Imperial Palace, half a hemisphere away from the centres of governance. Wienand trusted Krule’s judgement in his choice of the flight. If he believed none of Veritus’ agents were aboard, his track record suggested he was correct. The transport had the advantage of taking her in the general direction of her destination. She didn’t tell Krule where she wanted to go, though. She didn’t trust him that far.
The flight landed just as the moon appeared. The transport hub shook. Panic spread. Wienand transmuted the shock of the event into determination instead of despair. She and her escort managed to descend from the hub into the warrens of the underhive faster than the waves of terror. Deep below, where the star fortress could not be witnessed directly, the fear was attenuated. Once the tremors subsided, something like the desperation of normal life continued, though anxiety roiled the air.
In the warrens of the underhive, Wienand wished for something more lethal than her laspistol. Rendenstein and Krule were weapons in themselves. Wienand knew how to handle herself, but she was more dependent on the technology of death than the other two. After the assassination attempt against her on the Avenue of Martyrs, there had been no question of resupply. Anything taken from her quarters would put the lie to her apparent death. Rendenstein and Krule had moved the corpse of Aemelie, her body double, from her quarters to an alcove just off the Avenue, not far from the site of the skirmish. The intent was to make it seem that she had managed to drag herself that far after the battle. None of the assassins had survived, and there had been enough disorder for bystander accounts to be contradictory. Veritus would have good reason to believe she was dead. Aemelie’s subdermal microbeacon implants would fool bioscans, whose readings would indicate Wienand’s DNA. Only the examination of a physical sample would reveal the deception.
‘Does Veritus use body doubles?’ Rendenstein asked, the same thought occurring to her.
‘If he doesn’t, he’s a fool.’
‘He didn’t strike me as one.’
‘No.’ Veritus would learn the truth, but not right away, and that was good enough. A temporary death, and the time to make her move, was all she asked.
They stopped at an intersection of passages. They were in a zone where the functional abutted the decrepit. The walkway mechanisms still worked. Conveyors of horizontal, interlocking iron bands, they clanked, rattled and screeched as they hurried serfs along the kilometres to their duties. The frescoes on the walls were black with grime. Above and below was more of the tangle of mechanised conduits. Tarps of varying size were suspended from the girders, forming patchy ragged ceilings. They were rough sleeping areas, the closest thing more than a few of the serfs knew to a home, makeshift sleeping posts that were turning permanent for souls whose lives had become unending drudgery broken only by the briefest rest periods. At least they still had an official, if tenuous, existence from the Administratum’s perspective. Not much further down in the underhive was the realm of the forgotten, where survival was so desperate a game that the line between human and animal had been erased. Wienand planned a visit to those depths. If he were looking for her, Veritus would find her trail even more difficult to pick up down there.
‘Which way?’ Krule asked.
‘South.’ Wienand indicated the walkway.
‘If you’ll wait a moment, ma’am?’
