‘I do not care for statues. He must go. The High Lords must reign once more.’
‘They must,’ Wienand said. She turned the book over again, running slender fingers over its page edges. ‘Vangorich did not wish to be a tyrant. He set out with the best of intentions. The pressure of running the Imperium has driven him quite mad, I fear. It did not help him that I never could return the affection he had for me. So maybe I am as responsible for his excesses as you.’
Thane said nothing. Matters of the heart were a mystery to him.
‘This book,’ she said, holding it up. It had a grubby, blue canvas cover. ‘He used to read it in the Sigillite’s Retreat. It is the Sayings of the Sigillite, with notes on the apocrypha.’
‘What of it?’
She set it down. ‘I merely underline my point. He set out to do what he could,’ she said.
‘Where is he, Wienand?’
‘He has fled to Temple Eversor in the Aktick. He is waiting for you there.’
‘Is this a trap?’
‘Not one I am setting, if that is what you are suggesting. I stayed here to tell you this information so you’d be forewarned. He knows I would tell you this. From his point of view, it is a trap whether you go in blindly or with your eyes open. He knows you will go there, no matter what I say.’
‘We have seen no Eversor acolytes here. Where are they?’ said Thane.
‘They are with him. All of them. That is the trap.’ She smiled one last time. ‘Goodbye, Maximus Thane.’
Thane placed his fist on his chest, bowed, and left.
When he was halfway down the stairs, the Cerebrium exploded.
Thane reviewed the casualty reports from the battle in the Palace. Half of the Space Marines had fallen. It was hard to credit that mortals could inflict such losses.
Ten Thunderhawk gunships left the Fields of Winged Victory while the battle in the Palace raged on. The Assassins had wisely left the gunships alone, but in the confines of the city they were deadly, and they were everywhere. Thane had no idea how many of them there were, and the fighting spread out across the whole central district of the Palace and beyond. Theoretically, the Assassins could fight a covert war for years; realistically the only way to stop them would be to have a new Grand Master order them to lay down their arms. Though their numbers dropped by the hour, they fought on in pockets.
Thane was grateful for Wienand’s preparatory efforts to ensure that Vangorich could not rouse the population of Terra against him, and even more glad that the Adeptus Custodes had decided to remain neutral. The Assassins were trouble enough, and even though people were off the streets in the central districts, Thane’s strategos serfs and his own best guesses put the casualties among civilians well into the thousands. In the more distant parts of the Palace it was far worse, with many of them still attempting to go about their business, driven by duty and fear to reach their places of service. Battles burst into vast scriptoria where thousands laboured. Artisanal workshops became the sites of brutal firefights. It was inevitable people would die.
Thane added their deaths to the tally of Vangorich’s sins as the Imperial Palace dropped away under the Thunderhawk.
Layers of brown smog cloaked the Palace but could not hide the sheer immensity of it. The Palace was more than a city, it covered the site of the old continent of Europa from north to south, spilling out into the dry seabeds. At six thousand metres, the lower portions were lost to view, the higher towers and spires thrusting up through the polluted air like islands in a dirty sea. The Thunderhawks turned towards the pole and rose higher. Auspex sweeps pinged repeatedly in the cockpit but Terra’s substantial anti-orbital and anti-aircraft firepower remained inactive.
Vangorich was completely isolated.
As they flew over the Palace and towards the dirty ice fields of the north, Thane called the battle-barge Storm of Might and ordered Scout teams to land nearby and guide orbital strikes on the temple.
‘Precision only, remove its air defences, target the barracks. Do not destroy it,’ he concluded his orders. ‘I will take Vangorich alive. He must answer for his crimes.’
The Space Marines put down in a plaza still smoking from a stray lance hit. Defence laser towers burned at the four corners of the temple. Temple Eversor occupied the planed-off summit of a mountain near to the magnetic pole. A dreary vista of exposed seabed and eerily sculpted sails of ice caked in dirt and pollutants receded into the distance.
The temple staff were dead. Their bodies were scattered wherever Thane looked. A few had been killed by the Space Marine reconnaissance teams, but most had no visible injuries, but exhibited signs of poisoning of a dozen different kinds.
‘Who did this?’ asked Thane’s standard bearer.
‘He has. Vangorich slaughtered his followers,’ said Thane. ‘He is insane.’
Cold wind blew over the arid landscape. Thane marshalled his one hundred and fifty warriors. The main temple was ahead.
Setting the Scout teams to guard the Thunderhawks, the battle-brothers of three Chapters advanced.
The entrance to the temple was deceptively small and unassuming, but the first hall was as grand as a cathedral. Stone blocks with no visible names upon them acted as memorials to the unsung heroes of the Imperium. More temple staff lay dotted around, their skin green, mouths thick with frothed saliva. The Space Marines spread out. Ahead, a broad stairway led downwards into the main part of the temple; an extensive underground complex of training chambers, barracks, surgeries, cells, hypnosariums and huge machine rooms. Thane had his warriors check them all, though he knew in his gut they would be deserted by all but the dead.
Vangorich waited for them in the depths of the temple, a spider at the heart of its web. He was in the largest hall of all, dominated by monumental statuary and massive glassaic windows whose colours were dulled by the black rock behind them. A vaulted ceiling stretched a hundred metres above their heads, supported on a row of columns running down the walls where they divided the spaces between the windows into cylindrical alcoves, fifty either side of the hall.
Vangorich sat on the steps of a dais at the end of the hall, one knee upraised, his elbow resting on it and his hand cupping his chin. Once so neat and well presented, he had become filthy and unkempt. His nails were long and ragged, and his hair lank. He had become thin, but there was still a hint of his old strength visible in the sinewy cords of his neck and wrist. Though old by the standards of mortals, he was without mechanical aid. He was still dangerous.
‘Drakan Vangorich,’ pronounced Thane. ‘I am here to arrest you for high treason to the Imperium of Man, and gross abuse of privilege that goes against the fundamental principles of Imperial government.’
Vangorich yawned. ‘You always said you’d come back. Here you are, making good on your threat.’ His voice had a new, wild edge. ‘You took your time.’
‘I never intended that you rule alone,’ said Thane. He stepped closer, and drew his power sword. Its field glowed faintly in the gloom.
‘I discovered fairly quickly that it was either rule alone, or not rule at all,’ said Vangorich. ‘The Senatorum was ungovernable. I had to act. Kubik moved Ullanor, that’s why I had to kill them. It’s still out there, not too far from Terra.’
‘Why did you not recall me? Why did you kill them all?’
‘Because you would not have come back,’ said Vangorich. He stood up, his stale scent wafting out to Thane. ‘I did my best. You should have ruled, Thane, you would have done better. But you wanted your crusade. I didn’t want to be Lord Protector.’