Document under seal. Extract From the Decrypted Personal Files of Inquisitor Hyronimus Drake.
Possible evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake.
Cross-reference to Exhibit 107D-21H (Report to High Inquisitor Toll).
Walk in the Emperor’s Light.
Things are worse in this system than even I feared. The roots of heresy run deep. My agents have interrogated many of the locals and they have a faith in the Angel of Fire that is stronger even than their faith in the Emperor.
My necessarily brief attempts to grasp the history of the local cults have revealed some very disturbing things. The true Imperial cult in this system was long ago subsumed and subverted by the Cult of the Angel of Fire. Its priesthood was diminished until it played a minor role in ritual and rule.
Once I had hopes that the cult might provide a link between our force and the local community, that its leaders could be encouraged to take on the role of advocates for our ways and spearhead the reclamation of this world. This may prove more difficult than I had imagined. No priest of the cult of the Emperor has more than a limited role, and they are not respected by the populace as the priests of the Angel are. Worse yet their ritual and liturgy have been contaminated by long subservience to the Angel Cult. It will be a very long time before this can be changed.
I have prayed and warded my soul and studied the texts of this cult that have fallen into my hands. They are written in High Gothic like the testaments of the True Faith that superficially they resemble.
Many disturbing things have emerged. The role of the Emperor and His holy works has been relegated to the background. He is still portrayed as the font of wisdom and legitimacy, but His role in the parables is that of a remote and distant figure. All of the emphasis in the texts is placed on the part of the Angel of Fire and its saints and prophets. They are portrayed as the intercessors between humanity and the Angel just as the Angel is portrayed as the messenger between them and the Emperor.
This is not the worst of it. It has become obvious that many members of the Cult of the Angel are unbonded psykers. They have caused many casualties among our troops and shown themselves to be beings of considerable power. It is as if the cult deliberately encouraged and cultivated the use of psychic powers and promoted their wielders within its ranks. This raises many dreadful possibilities, not the least being contact with the daemons of Chaos. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the cultists of the Angel have been channelling power from somewhere and I have my suspicions as to the nature of the power on which they are calling.
When I consider the nature of the terrible sacrifices that were made and the structure of the cult who oppose us, I am reminded of many other worlds that have fallen to the most awful of heresies.
Despite the fact that the believers of this world claim to be following a power of light, there is a growing darkness here that needs to be opposed. I pray for the strength to do so.
‘You ready for when we meet the bastard?’ Anton asked, glaring around the interior of the Chimera. A score of troops looked at him. It was cramped in the compartment and his voice seemed too loud. There was no question of who the bastard was. He could only mean one person: a preacher of the Angel of Fire. The armoured troop carrier raced through the street. There had been another sighting and we had been sent out to break it up and take prisoners if we could.
I pumped the shotgun. It was audible within the armoured hull even over the roar of the vehicle’s engines. ‘What do you think?’
I had listened to all the stories. There were few things that the survivors always agreed on. Las-fire did not slow the psykers. It made them stronger. Grenades might work. They might not. No one really knew. All we knew was that the psykers died eventually but they took a lot more of our boys with them.
‘I think the best thing to do when we meet one is back right off,’ said the New Boy. He was looking serious now, more serious than he had ever done since he first joined us. A few weeks of fighting in the streets and listening to horror stories about rebel psykers had put him in a nervous frame of mind. He was doing his best not to show it.
‘You might well be right,’ said Corporal Hesse. He had raised his voice so that everybody could hear him. ‘If you see one of them, keep your distance. Don’t fire lasguns at him. Use any physical projectile weapons you have and wait for the heavy weapons to come up. They’ll take the bastard down.’
He sounded calm and confident but I knew him too well to be fooled. There was a shiftiness about his eyes and a refusal to meet my gaze that told me he knew that I knew as well.
‘They are getting stronger,’ the Understudy said. The words just came out in his odd rasping voice. They were toneless. He did not sound frightened but he did not sound particularly sane either.
‘Sir?’ said Corporal Hesse.
‘The psykers are getting stronger. The reports keep coming in. It came down from Headquarters. Something is making them more and more powerful. They are feeding on something or something is feeding them.’
Hesse kept looking at him, waiting for some piece of reassurance. None came. The Understudy just rasped on. ‘If we meet one, pin him down. Wait for heavy weapons, reinforcements or our own psykers. Split up. Don’t stay in groups. It just makes it easier for them to burn us down with area effects. Don’t take cover in the AFVs either. The last few of the Flame worshippers have been powerful enough to take out a Manticore.’
‘Anything else, sir?’ I asked. I had to admit I was curious in a morbid fashion.
‘They’ll most likely be accompanied. It seems they have acquired retinues now, guardians who are just as prepared to throw away their lives as the heretic preachers. Some of them will be carrying combustible pyrite. They’ll throw themselves among us and the psyker will detonate the package.’
This was new. ‘Not heard of that one before,’ Anton muttered.
‘That’s because none of the units who have encountered them have survived. The intelligence was only put together afterwards by field investigation units.’
The Chimera lurched just like my stomach. This was not the sort of thing that I wanted to hear. None of us did. The Understudy just kept talking. ‘It seems they have found a way to keep their psykers alive and still inflict enormous casualties on us.’
In one way it was good or it ought to have been. It should have made the preachers less frightening. It showed they had some regard for their own lives. It didn’t though.
‘There are other reports,’ the Understudy added, almost as an afterthought. Every man present was silent. All of us stared at him. Anton licked his lips. ‘These have not been confirmed but it seems that some of the pyrite carriers have been transformed.’
‘Transformed, sir?’ Hesse asked.
‘They become monsters of living flame; avatars of the Angel of Fire, some of the reports call them.’
‘He really doesn’t want us here, does he, sir?’ Anton said.
‘Who, Antoniev?’
‘The Angel of Fire, sir.’
‘It does not matter what the Angel of Fire wants,’ the Understudy said. ‘It matters what the Emperor commands.’
I believed him. The way he said it, you had to. The Chimera ground to a halt. The metal blast doors were thrown open. We deployed into the street.
They were waiting for us to show up. Our Chimeras had rumbled up to the plaza where a heretic was preaching sedition. Around us massive hab-blocks loomed. Great sign-boards still showed images of the Angel of Fire, flickering animated scenes from its holy books, miracles performed by its saints, burning-headed fanatics exhorting belief.