The Ecclesiarchy suffered particularly gravely. With the Monument of the Ecclesiarch in flames, the common masses regarded the nightmare as some holy curse, and turned in their frenzy on all the churches, temples and sacerdotal orders they could find. We learned within the first few hours that Cardinal Palatine Anderucias had been killed in the destruction
of the Monument. He was far from the only great hierarch to perish in the orgy of carnage that followed.
The recapture or extermination of the remaining rogue psykers was the first and most fundamental task facing the authorities. Ten were known to have escaped the initial battle on the Avenue of the Victor Bellum, and these had fled into the hive, sowing carnage as they went, hunted by the forces of the Inquisition and all the Imperial might that could be brought to bear in support.
Two of them made it only a kilometre or two from the route of the procession, hounded every step by Imperial forces from the Avenue battle, and were neutralised by nightfall on that terrible first day. Another went to ground in a vegetable cannery in an eastern sector outhab, and was laid to siege. It cost three days and the lives of eight hundred Imperial Guardsmen, sixty-two astropaths, two Space Marines and six inquisitors to blast it out and burn it. The cannery, and the outhab for three square kilometres around it, was flattened.
There was little or no central control for our forces. Admiral Oetron, who had remained with the orbiting battlefleet as watch commander, managed to move four picket ships into geo-synchronous orbit above Hive Primaris, and for a while succeeded in providing comprehensive vox and astropathic communications for the ground forces. But by nightfall on the first day, psychic storms had blown up across the hive and all relayed reception was lost.
It was a dark and frightening period. Down in the burning streets, we subdivided as best we could into small units, functioning autonomously. Simply by dint of being with Voke, I became part of a group that made its headquarters in an arbites section house on Blammerside Street in the mercantile district. Desperate groups of citizens flocked to us, craving aid and mercy and sanctuary, and much larger gangs attacked the section house time and again, driven by fear, by rage against the Imperial machine or simply because we wouldn't let them in.
We couldn't. We were overflowing with injured and dead, far too many for the arbites surgeons and morgue attendants to manage. There was very little food, medical supplies or ammunition left, and we were also rationing water as the mains supply had been cut.
The power was down too, but the section house had its own generator.
All through the night, bottles and missiles and promethium bombs splintered off the shielded windows, and fists pounded on the doors.
By merit of his seniority, Voke was in command. Aside from myself, there was Inquisitor Roban, Inquisitor Yelena, Inquisitor Essidari, twenty interrogators and junior servants of the Inquisition, sixty troopers from the Interior Guard, several dozen astropaths and four White Consul Space Marines. The arbites themselves numbered around one hundred and fifty,
and the section house was also sheltering about three hundred nobles, ecclesiarchs and dignitaries from the Great Triumph, as well as a few hundred common citizens.
1 remember standing alone in a ransacked office of the arbites commander just after midnight, looking out through shielded windows at the burning streets and the blossoms of psyker storm that were wrenching the sky apart. I had received no word or sign of Ravenor since the catastrophe had begun. I remember my hands were shaking even then.
In truth, I believe I was in shock. From the event itself, naturally, and also from the psychic assaults I had suffered in the course of it. I pride myself on a sharp mind, but there was no sharpness to me then.
Numb, my brain kept returning to the idea that this outrage had been deliberate.
'There is no question/ Voke said from behind me, clearly reading my surface thoughts without my permission. He lifted and straightened a steel chair and sat down on it.
