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  The huntress sensed she was reaching the end of this skin’s lifespan. Already, the chambers through which she moved were the domains of the chosen elite, with clothing becoming increasingly ostentatious and more expensive. The apparent courtesan graced her way through the carnival of colours, her stolen eyes flicking in predatory need.

  Noblewoman to noblewoman, priestess to priestess, courtesan to courtesan.

  None of them suited. None would allow her to finish what she had begun.

  She needed another skin. Soon.

  The door to the Navigator’s chambers ground open on rough hydraulics. Nothing on this ship worked right. Octavia checked that her pistol was holstered at her hip, and left through the only portal leading out of her room. Her attendants, whom she despised as much as she loathed the ship itself, bustled around her, imploring her to return to her chambers.

  She wanted to shoot them. She really, really wanted to shoot them. The most normal of them couldn’t pass as a human even in poor lighting. It looked at her, smiling with too many teeth, clasping its hands together as if in prayer.

  ‘Mistress,’ it hissed. ‘Return to chambers, mistress. For safety. For protection. Mistress must not be harmed. Mistress must not bleed.’

  She shivered under its beseeching touch. Hands that possessed too many fingers stroked her clothes, and worse, her bare skin.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.

  ‘Forgive me, mistress. A thousand apologies, most sincere.’

  ‘Get out of my way, please.’

  ‘Please return, mistress,’ it pleaded. ‘Do not walk dark places of ship. Stay, for safety.’

  She drew her pistol, sending the creatures scurrying back.

  ‘Get out of my way. Now.’

  ‘Someone comes, mistress. Another soul draws near.’

  She stared into the blackened corridor outside her chamber, lit by weak illumination globes that did nothing to defeat the darkness. The figure emerging from the gloom wore a jacket of old leather, and carried two heavy pistols at his hips. A hacking blade – the kind of weapon one might find in the hands of a jungle world primitive – was strapped to his shin.

  Half of his face glinted in the reflected light. Augmetic facial features, the most obvious of which was a red eye lens, were of expensive and rare craftsmanship. The human side of his face twisted in a crooked smile.

  Octavia returned it.

  ‘Septimus,’ she said.

  ‘Octavia. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but that was the roughest ride through the Sea of Souls I’ve ever had to suffer through.’

  ‘The ship still hates me,’ she scowled. ‘Why are you here? Keeping me company?’

  ‘Something like that. Let’s go inside.’

  She hesitated, but complied. Once they were back in her chamber, she ensured the door was locked. Anything to keep her annoying attendants away.

  Octavia could, if one was being generous, be considered beautiful. But beauty needs light and warmth to bloom, and these were both denied to the young Navigator. Her skin was the unhealthy pale of unclean marble, marking her as a member of the crew aboard the lightless battleship, the Covenant of Blood. Her eyes were losing all colour as her pupils grew accustomed to remaining forever dilated. Her hair, once a tumbling fall of healthy dark locks, was a ragged mess held into false order by a ponytail.

  She looked across to Septimus, who was absently picking his way through piles of discarded clothes and old food cartons.

  ‘Look at this mess. You are a filthy creature.’

  ‘Nice to see you too. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘You know why I’m here.’ He paused. ‘Talk of your attitude is beginning to spread. You’re making the crew uneasy. They worry you’re going to enrage the Legion because you can’t follow orders.’

  ‘So, let them worry.’

  Septimus sighed. ‘Asath Jirath Sor-sarassan.’

  ‘Speak Gothic, damn it. None of that whispery Nostraman, thank you. I know you were swearing. I’m not a fool.’

  ‘If the crew worries, they might take matters into their own hands. They’d kill you without a second thought.’

  ‘They need me. Everyone needs me. Without me, the ship has no Navigator.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Septimus slowly. ‘But no one wants tension with the Legion. Things are always on the edge, but when someone starts to breed difficulties? The crew has lynched troublemakers before. Dozens of times.’

  ‘They wouldn’t try that with me.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘No? If they thought it would please the Legion, they’d hang you from a gantry in the engineering deck, or beat you to death and flush your body from an airlock. You need to tread with care. Talos is off the ship. When First Claw isn’t on board, be cautious in how you deal with the Legion and the crew.’

  ‘Don’t give me this crap,’ Octavia snapped. ‘I was under more strain than you can even imagine. For Throne’s sake, the Geller field was dying. The ship was moments from falling apart.’

  Septimus shook his head. ‘Sometimes, you still forget where you are. Your talent spares you the worst treatment, but you’re still a slave. Remember that. Delusions of equality will get you killed.’

  ‘You’re as bad as those things that try to keep me sealed in here. I’ve survived three weeks without Talos watching over me. A few more hours won’t make any difference’.

  She paused for a moment before changing the subject. ‘Any word from the surface?’

  ‘Nothing yet. As soon as they vox confirmation, I’ll bring them back on board. It’s close to noon in the capital city. The High Priest will be speaking soon. Won’t be long now.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know what they’re actually doing down there?’

  Septimus shrugged.

  ‘What they always do. They’re hunting.’

  At the heart of Toriana, capital city of the world below, the masses waited for their leader. The plaza of the Primus Palace was flooded with an ocean of humanity – ninety thousand men, women and children. Each family had been carefully selected by the government’s Departmento Culturum and marched to the gathering by armed enforcers.

  Above the sea of cheering faces, an ornate balcony jutted from the palace’s side. Ten figures stood in motionless silence, enduring the crowd’s roars, with rifles clutched over armoured chestplates. Faceless black visors and carapace armour the colour of old blood marked these soldiers as the Red Sentinels, elite guard of the High Priest himself. The back-mounted power packs carried by each one hummed with suppressed tension, bonded to the ammunition sockets of their hellguns via thick, segmented cables.

  The Sentinel leader kept up a constant stream of muttered words into the vox-network, checking on the position of his sniper teams situated on nearby rooftops. All was in readiness. Should trouble arise from the crowd, the Sentinels and the enforcers on the streets had enough firepower to paint the marble floors red and reduce the plaza to a charnel house.

  The air itself thrummed as a Valkyrie gunship hovered overhead, its adamantium hull turned amber by the midday sun, and its cannons seeking targets in the windows of adjacent buildings. Satisfied, it moved away on growling engines, bathing the Red Sentinels below in a heated wind of thruster wash.

  The Red Sentinel captain spoke a final order into the vox, and the massive double doors behind him opened. At the first sight of the robed figure walking onto the balcony, the crowd erupted in praising cheers.

  High Priest Cyrus was the wrong side of middle age, and his fine encarmine robes looked painted onto his porcine form. Jowls shook as he raised fat hands to the sky.

  ‘My people!’ he proclaimed.

  The High Priest, once Imperial Governor of this world, licked his lips as he bathed in the cheers rising to meet him. His was a solemn duty; to herald in a world free of Imperial taxation and tithe. A world under his rule, aided by the council of cardinals, known collectively as the Benevolence.

  ‘My people, hear my words!’ he c
ontinued. ‘We stand at the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity! No more shall we hurl our faith and fortunes into the furnace of Imperial slavery. No more shall our world suffer alone, ignored by the Imperium of Man. No more shall we struggle through famine and civil war, led into folly by self-serving ministers appointed by distant Terra.’

  Cyrus paused, waiting until the cheers died down before he continued. ‘This is the age of the Benevolence! The new faith! The Benevolence encircles us all, in hope and trust. Faith in one another! Faith in other worlds that have thrown off the same shackles! Shoulder to shoulder, we stand defiant against the oppression of the past!’

  The crowd roared, as Cyrus had known it would. Already, they were chanting his name as their saviour, their saint.

  ‘Brothers and sisters, sons and daughters! We are free, united far from the reach of the hated False Emperor! I… I…’

  He never finished the sentence. The fat man staggered, gripping the balcony’s railing. The Red Sentinels moved as one, their rifles up and panning for threats. The cheering from the crowd was drowned in confusion.

  The huntress smiled as she watched. The timing had been perfect; the venom delivered the very moment this false prophet dared to decry the God-Emperor. The crowd had seen it. The hololithic image feeds had recorded it, so the whole planet had witnessed it. Now they knew the price of blasphemy and secession.

  The digital weapon concealed on her gauntlet was only good for a single shot, one sliver-dart, rich with neurotoxin. The targeting laser was flashless, and easily powerful enough to pierce the heretic’s silk robes. She’d fired it right into his spine, and none of the Red Sentinels were any the wiser.

  The High Priest tumbled forwards and he pitched over the balcony’s edge. He didn’t scream as he fell, for he was already dead.

  The huntress smiled behind her faceless visor, moving with the other Red Sentinels, feigning panic and anger to mirror theirs. She disliked the bulky armour they wore, but the skin was a necessary one. The Sentinel she’d killed to acquire it had put up a reasonable fight – for an unaugmented human, at least.

  The huntress made a show of scanning for enemy targets on balconies of adjacent buildings, relishing the panicked voices jabbering over the vox. In a matter of minutes, she would be able to leave this wretched gathering and make her way back through the city, in readiness to abandon this world forever.

  She was already making her way to the double doors when the sun fell dark, and heavy engines whined behind her. The huntress turned, her eyes narrowed, her heart starting to beat faster.

  Five shapes dropped from the sky. Armoured in massive suits of power armour, they thudded down onto the balcony. Flame and smoke retched from the thrust generators on their backs, and helms with painted skulls for faces watched her with unerring focus. Not the other Red Sentinels. Just her. These warriors had been waiting on the roof, knowing she would make her move.

  Each of the figures raised a bolter clutched in dark gauntlets.

  ‘Assassin of the Callidus Temple,’ intoned one, his voice a growl through his helmet’s vox-caster. ‘We have come for you.’

  There was no thought of fighting. The huntress turned and ran, preternatural agility blurring her form like quicksilver. Sentinel armour rained from her as she sprinted back through the palace, discarded as fast as she was able.

  She heard them giving chase. The clanging thuds of ceramite boots on mosaic floors. The coughing bursts of jump packs breathing fire, propelling the warriors down the halls faster than the huntress could run. Bystanders, innocent or otherwise, cried out as her pursuers cut down anyone in their way.

  She heard the throaty crashing of bolters, and weaved across the detonating ground where shells hit home. She leapt as she ran, knowing they were targeting her legs, seeking to bring her down by an explosive shell to the back of the knee.

  One shell impacted on the huntress’s calf, but spun aside, deflected by her synthetic skin armour. Another exploded against the wall by her shoulder, sending chalky debris clattering over her face. Still, she ran.

  When a shell finally struck home, it took her in the meat of the thigh. Despite years of pain resistance training and narcotic compounds introduced into her bloodstream to deaden her nerves, the agony was unrivalled. The huntress howled as she went down, her thigh reduced to nothing more than a ruin of hanging flesh and muscle stripped from the bloodstained, broken bone.

  Spitting curses, she clawed herself forwards, vicious even in futility. She had enough of a lead to drag herself to her feet, and round the next corner in an awkward, limping run.

  Her flight to safety lasted mere seconds. As she rounded the corner, shoving her way through a milling crowd of servants, two immense, dark forms brought her to the ground. Her muscles stung with chemical enhancement, straining against the armoured warriors pinning her to the floor. She went to draw her blade from her thigh sheath, only to scream in frustrated rage when she realised the scabbard and blade had been torn from her body when the exploding shell struck her leg. She yelled fresh curses as her reaching forearm was smashed under the boot of another traitorous warrior.

  She writhed under their oppressive strength, losing control in her anger, not even realising her face was flowing into the visages of a dozen women she’d killed in the last two days. From above, she heard the leader of the warriors speak while his men held her down.

  ‘My name is Talos of the Night Lords Legion. And you are coming with me.’

  The huntress opened her eyes, feeling them ripe with stinging tears. The first thing to grace her senses was pain, jagged and unfamiliar in its intensity. Everything below her spine ached with sickening pulses in time to her heartbeat.

  Immediately, training took over from disoriented instinct. She had to learn her whereabouts, then escape. Nothing else mattered. Her vision focused, resolving the blurred gloom into a semblance of clarity.

  The chamber was intentionally dark, kept that way by low-burning wall globes. With no furnishings beyond the table she lay upon, it had all the charm of a prison cell. The huntress tried to rise, but her limbs wouldn’t answer. She could barely even raise her head.

  She became aware, at last, of rasping breath, with the teeth-aching rumble of active power armour.

  ‘Do not try to rise.’ The voice was the same rasping growl as before. ‘Your legs have been amputated, as have your arms below the elbows. You are conscious only because of chemical pain-inhibitors flushed into your bloodstream.’

  The armoured figure came into view, stalking to the edge of the table. Its face was a battered war helm, the visage painted bone-white to resemble a human skull, and a rune from a filthy, forgotten language etched into its forehead. Across its breastplate, an Imperial eagle was ruined by ritual scarring, the holy aquila symbol no doubt profaned by the heretic warrior that wore it.

  ‘You will not escape this chamber,’ said the figure – Talos, she guessed. ‘You will never return to your temple. There is no fate for you beyond the walls of this cell, and so I grant you a choice, assassin. Tell us what we wish to know, and earn yourself a quick death, or tell us after we have subjected you to several hours of excruciation.’

  The huntress spoke through blood-flecked lips, her voice a ghost of its former strength.

  ‘I will die before speaking secrets to a heretic.’

  Even through the vox-crackle, the reply was tinged with amusement. ‘Everyone says that.’

  ‘Pain… pain is nothing to me,’ said the huntress.

  ‘Pain is nothing to you when what remains of your body is flooded with inhibitor narcotics,’ replied Talos. ‘The interface nodes implanted along your spinal cord will change your perception of pain soon enough.’

  ‘I am Jezharra,’ she said defiantly, ‘daughter of the Callidus. You will get nothing from me, fallen one. Nothing but curses heaped upon your worthless life.’

  Talos laughed.

  ‘Stronger souls than yours have cracked in our claws, assassin. No one resists. D
o not make me do this.’

  ‘How did you know I would come?’

  ‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘I am a prophet of the Eighth Legion. In moments of affliction, I can see along the path of a future yet to come.’

  ‘Sorcery,’ spat Jezharra. ‘Black magic.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it worked, did it not?’

  ‘You think yourself cunning for arranging that ambush? For luring a daughter of the Callidus to this backwater world, and baiting the trap with a cult’s high priest?’

  ‘Cunning enough to have you here, at my mercy, with your arms and legs severed by my brothers’ chainblades.’

  ‘My death is meaningless,’ Jezharra sighed. ‘My life was lived in service to the Golden Throne, so do what you will. Agony will never twist me into a traitor.’

  ‘Then you have chosen,’ said Talos. ‘These are your final moments of sanity, released from pain. Enjoy them while you can.’

  ‘I am Jezharra, daughter of the Callidus. My mind is inviolate, my soul unbroken. I am Jezharra, daughter of the Callidus…’

  The huntress grinned as she chanted the words. The warrior turned, addressing another presence in the room, a figure the bound assassin couldn’t see.

  ‘So be it. Excruciate her.’

  Jezharra, the huntress, resisted for seventeen days. It was by far the longest any human had lasted under the Legion’s interrogation. When she broke at last, little remained of the woman she’d been, let alone the consummate killer.

  She wheezed secrets from split lips, the words forming vapour in the chamber’s freezing air. Once she had said all she needed to say, she lay slack in her restraints, trying to summon the strength to beg for death.

  ‘The… Uriah System.’

  ‘Where in the Uriah System?’ asked Talos patiently.

  ‘Uriah… is a dying star. Temple is… on the planet… farthest from it. Three. Uriah… Three.’

  ‘What of the defences?’ pressed Talos.

  ‘Nothing in orbit. Nothing permanent. Local… local battlefleet patrols nearby.’

  ‘And on the surface?’