I had no choice.
His shot tore through the shoulder padding of my storm coat. My bolt exploded his head, spraying blood across the rusty metal eagle on the wall.
Pandemonium.
The veterans leapt to their feet firing wildly scattering, running.
I threw myself flat as shots tore out the wall plaster behind me. At some point Fischig and Midas burst in, weapons blazing. 1 saw three or four veterans drop, sliced through by silent needles and another six tumble as shotgun rounds blew them apart.
Traves came down the aisle, blasting his old service-issue lasrifle at me. I rolled and fired, but my shot went wide. His face distorted as a needle round punched through it and he fell in a crumpled heap.
Wrex and her fireteams exploded in. Flames from some spilled accelerants billowed up the wall.
I got up, and then was throw back by a las shot that blew off my left hand.
Spinning, falling, I saw Lund, struggling to make her prosthetic fingers work the unmodified trigger of Traves's lasgun.
My bolt round hit her with such force she flew back down the aisle, hit the wall, and tore the Imperial aquila down.
Not a single veteran escaped the Guildhall alive. The firefight raged for two hours. Wrex lost five men to the experienced guns of the Sameter Ninth veterans. They stood to the last. No more can be said of any Imperial Guard unit.
The whole affair left me sour and troubled. I have devoted my life to the service of the Imperium, to protect it against its manifold foes, inside and out.
But not against its servants. However misguided, they were loyal and true. However wrong, they were shaped that way by the service they had endured in the Emperor's name.
Lund cost me my hand. A hand for a hand. They gave me a prosthetic on Sameter. I never used it. For two years, I made do with a fused stump. Surgeons on Messina finally gave me a fully functional graft.
I consider it still a small price to pay for them.
I have never been back to Sameter. Even today, they are still finding the secreted, hidden bodies. So very many, dead in the Emperor's name.
MALLEUS
For Kyle Foster and the Taken, wherever you may be.
BY ORDER OF HIS MOST HOLY MAJESTY THE GOD-EMPEROR OF TERRA
SEQUESTERED INQUISITORIAL DOSSIERS AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY
CASE FILE 442:41F:JL3:Kbu
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CLASSIFICATION: Primary Level Intelligence
CLEARANCE: Obsidian
ENCRYPTION: Cryptox v 2.6
DATE: 337M41
AUTHOR: Inquisitor Javes Thysser, Ordo Xenos
SUBJECT: A matter for your urgent consideration
RECIPIENT: Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken, Inquisition High Council Officio, Scarus Sector, Scarus Major
Salutations, lord!
In the name of the God-Emperor, hallowed he his eternal vigil, and by the High Lords of Terra, I commend myself, your Highness, and hope I may speak plainly, in confidence, of a delicate matter.
To begin generally, my work on Vogel Passionata is now complete and my noble duty to the Great Inquisition of Mankind discharged successfully. My full, documented report will follow in a few days, once my savants have finished compiling it, and I trust that your Highness will find it satisfactory reading. To summarise, for the purpose of this brief missive, I am proud to declare that the malign influence of the so-called wyrd-kin has been expunged from the hive cities of Vogel Passionata, and the inner circle of that obscene xenophile order broken forever and put to cleansing flame. Their self-proclaimed messiah, Gaethon Richter, is himself dead by my hand.
A matter, however, has arisen from this. I am troubled by it, and unsure as to the best course of action. For this reason I am writing to you, Highness, in the hope of receiving guidance.
Richter did not go without a fight, as you might expect. In the final, bloody throes of the battle, as my combined forces stormed his fastness beneath the main hive, he called forth to oppose us a being of dreadful power. It slaughtered nineteen of the Imperial Guardsmen assigned to my purge-team, as well as Inquisitor Bluchas, Interrogators Faruline and Seetmol, and Captain Ellen Ossel, my pilot. It would have slain me too, but for the strangest mischance.
