A WARHAMMER 40,000 OMNIBUS
EISENHORN
DAN ABNETT
A Black Library Publication
Xenos and Malleus copyright © 2001, Games Workshop Ltd.
Hereticus copyright © 2002, Games Workshop Ltd.
Missing in Action first published in Inferno! magazine,
copyright © 2001, Games Workshop Ltd. Backcloth for a Crown Additional
first published in Inferno! magazine, copyright ® 2002, Games Workshop Ltd.
This omnibus edition published in Great Britain in 2004 by
BL Publishing,
Games Workshop Ltd.,
Willow Road , Nottingham ,
NG7 2WS, UK .
10 98765432
Cover illustration by Clint Langley, based on original artwork by Adrian Smith.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Black Flame, BL Publishing, Games Workshop, the
Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and
images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop
Ltd 2000-2004, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All
rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN13: 978 1 84416 156 0 ISBN10: 1 84416 156 0
Distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas , New York , NY 10020 , US .
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque, Surrey , UK .
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
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It IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries
the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods,
and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly
with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold
billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody
regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has
been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of
progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future
there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,
only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the
laughter of thirsting gods.
Contents
Introduction 8
Xenos 11
Missing in Action 249
Malleus 269
Backcloth for a Crown Additional 511
Hereticus 531
Introduction
Once, when asked where he got his ideas, David Mamet replied, 'I think of them'. In a similar vein, when asked where she got her energy from, my daughter Lily answered, 4Voolworths.' Ba-dum tish!
Rather less quick-witted than either of them, I regularly struggle when I get asked about ideas and their origins, and usually come up with some old cobblers about 'sometimes, if I'm on a train, things just occur to me…' or 'you never know when an idea's going to hit you…'
