Tellos didn't live for much else - the rage was the only thing that could make him feel worth anything. Killing in the name of the Emperor was the purest form of service, and when His spirit took over Tellos there was nothing that could stop him.
His chainblades were clotted with blood. He was covered in gore from head to toe, occulobe organs secreting fluids to wash the blood out of his eyes, blood raw on his pale skin and slick against the armour on his legs. Hundreds of faces merged into one as he thrust in every direction, the Septiams trying to surround him just walking into the killing zone that radiated from him.
The more mindless Septiams were driven forward to surround and swamp him. He batted them aside or cut them in two, clambering onto the rampart formed from their bodies to hack down at the tainted troopers from above. Scores died around him, hundreds, every cut ending an undeserving life. The Assault Marines pushed the Septiams back against the gates and forced them into Tellos -those who tried to counterattack found themselves trying to duel with superhuman warriors whose armour turned away bayonets and rifle shots and whose chainblades cut through flesh, bone, and salvaged Elysian armour alike.
Tellos saw Jouryan helmets, Elysian fatigues, senators' finery and Enforcement Division uniforms, all wrapped around subhuman corpse-creatures, faces twisted with hatred and disease. Their desiccated tongues moaned and gurgled as they died. Their bones cracked and skin split, muscles ripped to rags by the chainblade teeth. It was the purest slaughter of all, corruption and decay vanquished by the Emperor's strength, Tellos's rage a link to the Emperor like a vox-line to the Golden Throne.
A heavy hand clapped down onto Tellos's shoulder and only the reflexes hard-wired into Tellos's brain kept him from driving his chainblades into the body of a fellow Marine.
Captain Karraidin's leathery, battered face snarled out of the hood of his Terminator armour. 'Damn it, Tellos! The enemy's broken! Blow these doors and get to the brig entrance!'
For a moment Tellos was enraged that the Emperor's work had been so rudely interrupted.
Didn't Karraidin realise they were surrounded by slavering, corrupted enemies?
Then he saw what Karraidin saw - Tellos was just a few metres from the inside of the compound wall, standing on a pile of bodies twenty men high, with the Septiams broken and cowering around him.
Karraidin was right. The rage could wait a while before taking over again.
He waved the two assault squads forward from where they had formed a line of steel backing him up. All carried frag and krak grenades and several had melta-bombs designed to melt through armoured hulls. The Assault Marines sprinted across the blood-slicked ground to the huge double blastdoors and attached bundles of grenades to the hinges and bolts.
Meanwhile, Karraidin's command squad swapped bolter fire with the fire points on the walls and in the barracks buildings, covering the Assault Marines as they rigged the doors and fell back before blowing them.
The blastdoors fell open in a shower of sparks, sheets of steel crashing to the rockcrete ground.
Squads Luko and Hastis entered under Karraidin's covering fire. With them was Sarpedon. 'Good work Karraidin, Tellos.’ he voxed. 'We've cleared out the buildings around the perimeter. The Jouryans are holding them. The Septiams are trapped between the Stratix and the Jouryans and they'll try to break out at any moment, so we have no time to waste.
Hastis and Luko, you're with me into the holding cells. Karraidin, hold the doors. Tellos, you're reserve. Cold and fast, Soul Drinkers, move out.'
The small strike-force Sarpedon had managed to smuggle into Septiam City split in two, Karraidin and Tellos to take up positions in the compound amongst the broken bodies of the Septiams, Sarpedon and the two tactical squads heading towards the barracks building from which intermittent fire still spattered down from roof and gun-slit windows.
Somewhere beneath that building were the holding cells, where the criminals of Septiam Torus had been held before the plague took a hold. If they had not been emptied in the chaos that gripped the city, and if there was anything left alive down there, then somewhere in those cells was Adept Karlu Grien.
NINE
FROM THE OBSERVATION deck of the yacht, the war-zone seemed calm. The stars were as hard and cold as they were anywhere else in the galaxy, and had Thaddeus not been so familiar with the torments of Teturact's rebellion it would have been easy for him to assume that all was right in the heavens.
But he knew that one tiny winking red star was actually the forge world of Salshan Anterior, where half a million Guardsmen had been surrounded and butchered on the oxide-rich plains and where the Navy was now primed to bomb the hardened workshop-bunkers into dust. One constellation was composed of unnamed dead xenos worlds where Guardsmen and tech-guard warred with tens of thousands of Teturact's cultists, battles flowing like water over planets of frozen oxygen. Gigantic fleet actions were being enacted right in front of his eyes, the blackness between the stars scattered with battleships maintaining blockades and forming up from orbital barrage runs.
The yacht's observation deck was a crystal hemisphere blistered out from the upper hull, providing an unbroken panorama of space. Several drinks cabinets and reclining couches rose from the floor and a trio of personal servitors waited attentively in case their masters showed any signs of needing something. It was an easy place to forget about war.
But Thaddeus could not forget. Lord Kolgo was probably right - he was far more experienced an inquisitor than Thaddeus would probably ever be. However, Thaddeus still had a job to do. He had made a private vow, and he could not betray himself by breaking it now. No matter what the cost.
A circular hole hissed open in the floor and a platform rose up. On the platform was an impossibly slight figure, a man so insubstantial it seemed he hardly cast a shadow. He wore a cobalt uniform trimmed with silver bullion and his frail body was topped with a curiously featureless face, smooth jet-black skin almost unbroken by eyes, nose and mouth. A length of white cloth embroidered with High Gothic devotionals was tied around his head, and the blistered, charred skin just showing on the man's forehead indicated the stresses regularly placed on the warp eye underneath.
'Navigator.’ said Thaddeus. 'I am glad you could join me.'
The Navigator smiled. Tour invitation took me by surprise, my master. I am not much used to social functions. I hope I am not found lacking.
'Not at all.’ replied Thaddeus with his friendliest smile. 'There are trillions of souls in this galaxy, it is only right that you should get to meet a few of them. Amasec? Assuming you're not on duty, of course.’ He held out a decanter and glass.
The Navigator accepted a glass of the rich, treacly amasec, which Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had probably had imported at a cost Thaddeus couldn't imagine. The Navigator took a tentative sip and seemed to appreciate the nicety.
Thaddeus looked up at the starscape. 'What do you see, Navigator?' he asked. 'Does it look anything like this in the warp?'
. It was a risk. Navigators rarely spoke of what they saw when they led ships through the dreams and nightmares of the warp and there was an unspoken taboo against asking them about it. Thaddeus reasoned that this meant Kolgo's Navigator had probably never been asked, and that it would be a relief for him to tell someone.
'It... sometimes. At first. We want it to look the same, you see. Everyone knows what space looks like, everyone who has ever seen the night sky. But after the first few moments you have to let it change. You have to begin to see the warp as it truly is. There are no rules to it - half of it is inside your head -but that doesn't make it any less real. Just by looking at it, you change it. The Astronomican is the only constant and even then it can flicker and leave you alone. All the things you see when between sleeping and waking, those are real in the warp. There are colours you can't make with light and every now and again, something... looks back at you...' He smiled again, taking another swallow of amasec. 'And you can call me Starn. Iason Starn.'