The Beast Arises

While some would later deem the Lord Commander Militant’s inexperience in both the galactic theatre and the daedal politics of the Imperial Palace a factor in a catastrophe both unfolding and unappreciated, others would lay responsibility at the doors of the lords Udo and Ekharth. Only they truly had the pieces of the puzzle in their hands. Their blindness came not of inexperience, but of veteran pedantry. Amongst the dire threats already presented to the Imperium, the myriad planetary tragedies and enemies innumerable — the evolving calamity heralded by the Ardamantuan Atrocity was but one atrocity among many.

‘A toast: to Beta-Novax…’

‘…Fleur-de-Fides.’

‘Beta-Novax was yesterday.’

‘To Fleur-de-Fides, then.’

Resplendent in Navy dress uniform, Admiral Lansung was bold and broad. His jacket was the blue of the deepest oceans and the golden waterfalls of his epaulettes tumbled from his thick shoulders. He parted the gathering like a capital ship on manoeuvres before joining Lord Commander Udo and Ekharth at the Ecclesiarch’s altar. Fraters moved through the group of significants, handing out fortified amasec and attending to the gathering’s petty conveniences. One by one, the Twelve approached the Anesidoran altar, where Ecclesiarch Mesring delivered a blessing. Dipping his chubby digits into the ash of incense, Mesring used his thumb and finger to smear an aquila on the foreheads of the presented worthies.

About them, the wolfish Wienand circled. She had respectfully left her bodyguard at the chapel archway and now she watched and drifted, her eyes narrowing sharply beneath her precisely cropped fringe. She absently took a glass of amasec from a passing frater and exchanged greetings with the Paternoval Envoy Helad Gibran without looking.

Wienand went through the motions. She drank in celebration of the feast day. She took her blessing. She bore her soot sigil. All the time the Inquisitor was watching. Thinking. Reaching determination. The Imperium was ailing and vulnerable to attack. The great men and women of the Imperium before her had grown like a cancer about their responsibilities. The Inquisition was the cure. They would surgically trim the tumorous lethargy and self-interest from the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace in order to save the body politic. Strategies were in play. Pressure was being directed. Wheels turned within wheels, taking the Imperium in the right direction.

She looked up at the stained-glass representation of the God-Emperor behind Mesring and the attendant savant-priests that never left his side. It was her job — her sacrosanct duty — to further the Inquisition’s myriad interventions and keep the Imperium on the right track. She despised surprises. She prided herself on being the most informed personage in the chamber, and wished to remain that way.

Surprises had a horrible way of manifesting in such meetings, however. In meetings of the Senatorum and of course, the meetings of members’ agents in the darkness of hive basement sections and underlevels. Wienand was still breaking in Raznick, her new bodyguard. Her former escort-operative’s smashed body had been dicovered in the bowels of a Tashkent mag-lev terminal. He had underestimated his quarry. It had served as a useful reminder to Wienand not to underestimate hers.

Her predacious movements were not lost on another of the chapel’s predators. As Mesring’s priests and fraters fell to prayer and the Ecclesiarch joined the rest of the Twelve, he was met with commiserations and faux-concern over the loss of the shrineworlds of the Jeronimus Fyodora cluster and the cardinal world of Mesring’s own ordination: Fleur-de-Fides. Some dangers, like the unfolding greenskin crisis in the rimward sectors, were obvious. Some dangers liked to remain hidden. Some hid in plain sight. One thing was certain: the Anesidoran Chapel of the Imperial Palace, clouded with the lethal ambitions of both predators and prey, was one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy.

SEVEN

Terra — the Ecclesiarchal Palace