We prepared ourselves for the approaching war. It was going to be arduous, and, unlike most campaigns, not divided into two sides. I observed training sessions, impressed by the efforts and the discipline. I even had the terrifying pleasure of watching Captain Cynewolf s kill-team conduct a target-decoy hunt through the hold levels. We were ready. Ready as we'd ever be.
In the ninth week of transit, Lord Inquisitor Rorken and Admiral Spatian issued a joint declaration, officially enforced by will of the Ecclesiarchy A Mandate To Purge 56-Izar, as the term and parameters are understood in the Imperial codes. That was the seal on the action. There was no turning back now. We were heading through the immaterium at high warp to invade and, if necessary, destroy the saruthi world.
Through my weeks of convalescence, I dreamed little. But on the last night before our arrival at 56-Izar, the blank-eyed, handsome man returned to stalk the landscape of my dreams.
He was talking to me, but I couldn't hear his words, nor understand his purpose. He led me through drafty halls in a ruined palace, and then departed silently into the dream wilds beyond, leaving me alone, naked, in a ruin that tottered and crumbled down onto me.
The saruthi were in my dreams too. They rose through the brick debris of the collapsed palace effortlessly, finding angles and pathways that I could not see. The multiple nostrils on their swaying heads flared as they got the taste of me. Their skulls coruscated with energy…
* * *
I woke, soaked with night-sweat, more out of my wide bed man in it. Dislodged bolsters were scattered over the floor.
The vox-link on my night stand was beeping.
'Inquisitor Eisenhorn?'
'Sorry to wake you/ said Madorthene. 'But I thought you'd want to know. The fleet exited the immaterium twenty-six minutes ago. We are entering invasion orbit of 56-Izar/
T W E N TY-T H RE E
Invading the invasion.
Bent angles.
In the gardens of the saruthi.
The war had already begun.
56-Izar hung like a pearl in space, milky white and gleaming. Vivid flashes and slower blossoms of destruction underlit its translucent skin of cloud. The heretic fleet had arrived two days ahead of us, and had begun its assault of the planet.
I kept thinking of it as Estrum's fleet, but it wasn't of course. I'd made certain of that. This was Locke's battle fleet now, I was sure.
The thirteen ships had blockaded 56-Izar in a non-standard but effective conquest pattern. Serial waves of their fighter-bombers, interceptors and dropships rained down on the planet and the orbiting heavies bombarded the surface wim their entire batteries.
They detected our battle-pack the moment we came out of warp. Their picket ships, the heavy destroyers Nebuchadnezzar and Fournier, wheeled round to protect their hindquarters. Admiral Spatian held our battle-pack off orbit and chased the frigates Defence of Stalinvast, Emperor's Hammer and Will of Iron straight in to clear the way.
On their heels, he sent out the massed fighter squadrons of the expeditionary force, and diverted the battleship Vulpecula to engage the enemy flagship, a heavy cruiser named the Leoncour.
The Emperor's Hammer and the Will of Iron pincered and torched the Nebuchadnezzar after a brief but fierce exchange. The explosion lit the void.
The Defence of Stalinvast and the Fournier locked each other tightly in a longer, slower dance of warships, and eventually slammed together, squeezing boarding parties and naval security units into each other's hulls.
The locked ships tumbled away, in an embrace of death.
The Vulpecula raced forward and misjudged the Leoncour's evasion, suffering a trio of broadsides. Coming about, spilling debris into the gulf, the Imperial battleship raised its guns and hammered the Leoncour so hard and so furiously that the enemy flagship broke up and blew out like a dying sun.
Limping, the Vulpecula turned slowly and began its long-range harrying of the enemy ships closer to the target world's atmosphere. Spatian committed the rest of his group then, ranging them forward in a three-pronged division, of which the central and largest was headed by the majestic
