Amalathians take our name from the conclave at Mount Amalath. Our endeavour is to maintain the status quo of the Imperium, and we work to identify and destroy any persons or agencies that might destabilise the power of the Imperium from without or within. We believe in strength through unity. Change is the greatest enemy. We believe the God-Emperor has a divine plan, and we work to sustain the Imperium in stability until that plan is made known. We deplore factions and in-fighting… Indeed, it is sometimes a painful irony that our beliefs mark us as a faction within the political helix of the Inquisition.
We are the steadfast spine of the Imperium, its antibodies, fighting disease, insanity, injury, invasion.
I can think of no better way to serve, no better way to be an inquisitor.
So you have me then, pictured. Gregor Eisenhorn, inquisitor, puritan, Amalathian, forty-two years old standard, an inquisitor for the past eighteen years. I am tall and broad at the shoulders, strong, resolute. I have already told you of my force of will, and you will have noted my prowess with a blade.
What else is there? Am I clean-shaven? Yes! My eyes are dark, my hair darker and thick. These things matter litde.
Come and let me show you how I killed Eyclone.
TWO
The dead awake.
Betancore's temper.
Elucidations by Aemos.
Iclung то the shadows, moving through the great tomb as silendy as I knew how. A terrible sound rolled through the thawing vaults of Processional Two-Twelve. Fists and palms beating at coffin hoods. Wailing. Gurgling.
The sleepers were waking, their frigid bodies, sore with hibernation sickness, trapped in their caskets. No honour guard of trained cryogeneers waited to unlock them, to sluice their organs with warming bio-fluids or inject stimulants or massage paralysed extremities.
Thanks to Eyclone's efforts, twelve thousand one hundred and forty-two members of the planet's ruling class were being roused early into the bitter season of Dormant, and roused without the necessary medical supervision.
I had no doubt that they would all suffocate in minutes.
My mind scrolled back through the details my savant had prepared for me. There was a central control room, where I could disengage the ice-berth locks and at least free them all. But to what good? Without the resuscitation teams, they would fail and perish.
And if I hunted out the control room, Eyclone would have time to escape.
In Glossia code, I communicated this quandary to Betancore, and told him to alert the custodians. He informed me, after a pause, that crash-teams and relief crews were on their way.
But why? The question was still there. Why was Eyclone doing this?
A massed killing was nothing unusual for a follower of Chaos. But there had to be a point, above and beyond the deaths themselves.
I was pondering this as I crossed a hallway deep in the west wing of the Processional. Frantic beating sounds came from the berths all around, and a pungent mix of ice-water and bio-fluid spurted from the drain-taps and cascaded over the floor.
A shot rang out. A las-shot. It missed me by less than a hand's breadth and exploded through the headboard of an ice berth behind me. Immediately, the frantic hammering in that berth stopped, and the waters running out of its ducts were stained pink.
I fired the Scipio down the vault, startled by the noise it made.
Two more las-shots flicked down at me.
Taking cover behind a stone bulkhead, I emptied a clip down the length of the gallery, the spent shell cases smoking in the air as the pumping slide ejected them. A hot vapour of cordite blew back at me.
I swung back into cover, exchanging clips.
A few more spits of laser drizzled past me, then a voice.
'Eisenhorn? Gregor, is that you?'
Eyclone. I knew his thin voice at once. I didn't answer.
'You're dead, you know, Gregor. Dead like mey all are. Dead, dead, dead. Step out and make it quick.'
He was good, I'll give him that. My legs actually twitched, actually started to walk me clear of cover into the open. Eyclone was infamous across a dozen settled systems for his mind powers and mesmeric tone. How else had he managed to get these dark-eyed fools to do his bidding?
