The edifice ruptured and blew out. Light-shock lit the hemisphere. A towering column of white ash-smoke rose, folding into a fifteen-kilometre torus-shaped cloud.
The sight was stunning, shocking. Bequin and I gazed at it. A few heartbeats later it was repeated behind us, forty kilometres distant, as another saruthi edifice was annihilated.
The edifice on whose smoothly curving upper surfaces we now stood was undoubtedly going to go the same way soon. Even now, I knew, the co-ordinates were being loaded into the fleet's gunnery servitors.
We ran along the lip of another curved segment. Afterburners red against the black smoke, more dropships came in, heading towards cheering, gesticulating huddles of Mirepoix infantry out on the flats. I was astounded at the selfless courage of the dropship crews. Spatian's bombardment wasn't waiting for them to move in and pull out. They were risking everything to make the surface run and retrieve as many troopers as they could.
'Gregor!' Bequin shouted in my ear.
I turned. Down the shell-form span of the roof behind us, Molitor and his henchman had appeared out of the blast hole. Unsteady, they scrambled up after us.
A las-shot whined past me, kissing the pearly surface and leaving a burn-scar.
'The primer, you whoreson bastard! Give me the primer!' Molitor yelled.
I gave him a full clip of bolt rounds instead.
The first of the thundering tracer shots splintered chunks out of the edifice roof. Then I hit and exploded his left thigh, his belly and his throat.
Konrad Molitor bucked and twitched as the rounds tore through him, and then fell. His mauled body slid down the curve of the roof and disappeared, leaving a smear of blood behind it.
His henchman advanced, heedless of the shots, throwing off his hooded robe.
He was naked beneath it. Tall, well muscled, with a golden cast to his skin. His face was handsome and tiny residual horns sprouted from his skull.
His eyes were blank.
My prophetic dreams were made flesh.
Terror seized me, turned my heart inside out.
TWEJMTY-SIX
Cherubael.
The brink.
Exterminatus.
The blank-eyed man – though in truth he was not a man, but a daemon in human form – strode up the shining curve towards me. The glowing octahedron of the saruthi's unholy text was clasped in one nimble hand.
'I would like the primer now please, Gregor.'
What are you?'
'This is no place for introductions/ He gestured about himself. Lances of annihilation blasted down into the mud-flats nearby.
'Humour me…' I managed.
Very well. My name is Cherubael. Now, that primer. Time is ticking away.'
Time will always tick away/ I said. 'Who made you?'
'Made me?' The blank-eyed man smiled at me duplicitously.
'You're… a daemonhost. A conjured thing. Tell me who made you and who commanded you and Molitor to come after this prize… and I might give you the primer/
He laughed and licked his thin lips with a glossy forked tongue.
'Let us both be abundantly clear about this, Gregor. You will give me the primer. Either you will hand me the primer now, or I will come over to you and take it. And break every bone in your body. And rape that girl at your side. And break every bone in her body too. And then drag your jiggling carcasses down into the chamber below and string you both up on the
hooks, and burn out your agony centres as I wait for the bombardment to flatten this place/
He paused.
'Your choice/
You've been in my dreams for a long while now. Why is that?' I pressed.
'You are gifted, Gregor. And time is not the arrow that humans like to think it is. A second in the warp would show you that. Why, a second in the four-dimensional habitats of the saruthi should have proved it too. Your dreams were just nightmares of something yet to happen/
'Who made you?' My voice was insistent. His answer was the one I least expected, and it left me all but stunned.
The Holy Inquisition made me, Gregor. A brother of yours made me. Now, for the last time, give me that-'
The daemonhost swung around suddenly as voices called out from lower down the roof. Brother-Captain Cynewolf was clambering up out of the blast hole, flanked by Midas and another Deathwatcher carrying the limp form of Titus Endor.
