The Beast Arises

‘You will,’ Vangorich insisted. ‘You do already. Every day. Remember to whom you speak, Ecclesiarch. I have been your shadow for longer than you knew you had one. You will declare a War of Faith. You will raise frater militias and mobilise your Templar forces. Your priests across the segmentum will preach this from the pulpits. This will all be done under a banner of sacred vengeance. The priests and people of Fleur-de-Fides will be avenged. You will use your influence with the Lord High Admiral — in light of the Ardamantuan Atrocity, other devastations on the edge of the segmentum, and your War of Faith — to have him recall his fleets, armadas and flotillas from the diversion of border actions and campaign crusades. To ensure the new Lord Commander Militant and committed Astra Militarum forces have the full support of Navy warships and troop carriers. To redeploy our assets across the segmentum in anticipation of xenos invasion. These greenskin successes, their barbaric new technologies, this self-named Beast: these all add up to a credible threat, not to a single world or sector but to the very core. The Imperium is in clear and present danger.’

‘You are not qualified to make that determination,’ Mesring replied. ‘And neither am I.’

‘True,’ Vangorich admitted. ‘But there are those among us who are. Those who know and have always known more about this threat to our Imperial sovereignty amongst the stars. They are fearful. I look to their fear for guidance.’

‘Then take some comfort from their interest and expertise,’ the Ecclesiarch said. ‘If they act, then why need we?’

‘You, Udo, Lansung — your inaction is defined by political advantage. They act in spite of you, but to no lesser advantage. Terrible things are done in the name of necessity. Besides — I don’t have reason to trust any of you. You will do these things I ask not because I have asked you. Not because I have threatened. You will do them because it is your duty. It is your hallowed responsibility to look to the safety and sanctity of the Emperor and His dominion. That is your only reason for being, Ecclesiarch.’

‘Lansung is his own man,’ Mesring insisted. ‘He will not allow his ambitions to be thwarted. I won’t be able to convince him to abandon wars he is already fighting. He will not break up his armadas. I can’t—’

‘You can and you will,’ Vangorich warned. ‘Many claim you to be your own man also, with power and boundless ambition. Yet here I am, using what I have to apply pressure in the right places. You will do the same. Use what you have with Lansung and find a way.’

‘Why not remove Lansung?’ Mesring suggested. ‘If he’s the problem, assassinate and replace him instead. Leave me out of this.’

‘As always, I will do what I must,’ the Grand Master admitted. ‘But if the segmentum is under threat from invasion, we are going to need Admiral Lansung and his strategic experience. It might surprise you to learn this, your eminence, but I don’t really want to kill anybody. But as I said: sometimes terrible things are done in the name of necessity.’

‘Say I agree to this,’ Mesring said with gravity. ‘Say, for the sake of argument that I even agree with a recall strategy. This degenerate xenos Beast, after all, is decimating my worlds too. What’s in it for me?’

Vangorich gave the Ecclesiarch a look of smouldering scorn and disgust. His lips tightened.

‘Why, my lord Mesring… you get to live,’ Vangorich told him. The Assassin became calmer and more dangerous with the Ecclesiarch’s every incendiary suggestion. ‘A few minutes ago I placed a toxin of unrivalled and agonising lethality in contact with your skin.’ Mesring frowned. ‘The devotion of a reverent kiss.’

Mesring looked from Vangorich’s lips to the backs of his hands, then to the floor where the plastek strip bearing the toxin lay curled and abandoned after the Assassin’s transformation.

‘You poisoned me?’ Mesring wheezed, trying to catch his breath.

‘You have three days to meet my demands,’ Vangorich told him. ‘Three days to meet with the High Lords, to use your leverage with Lansung — to have him issue the recall. Three days until you die on your knees, bleeding from your ears, nose and eyeballs, praying for a mercifully swift and painless death you don’t deserve from the God-Emperor you have served so very poorly. Upon successful completion of my demands, one of my operatives will deliver to you the antidote. If you fail, there will be no such need to do so.’

Vangorich released Mesring, before slipping the Ecclesiarch’s digital weapon from his finger.

‘I only have your word that I’ve been poisoned,’ Mesring said weakly.

‘Or that there’s an antidote if you have,’ Vangorich reminded him with chill certainty. ‘Think of it this way: you put the same trust in me as I put in you.’

‘You said that you didn’t trust any of us.’

Vangorich dropped the Jokaero ring into the basin of holy water. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He brought up the hood on his priestly robe and sank down into its darkness before walking away.