As the Keeler Comet blasted out of the immateriality of the Eye, it became apparent that it too had changed. A blood-red beacon, it appeared to wander with a mind of its own and trailed in its wake the Pilgrim and his Cholercaust Blood Crusade. The daemons, cultists and World Eaters seemed to believe that the cursed comet embodied the will of their Chaos god and would lead them across the stars in a celebration of slaughter, right to the Imperium’s finest and Holy Terra itself.
That was until the comet appeared in the skies of a tiny cemetery world in the Praga subsector. Until the Cholercaust came to Certus-Minor and the Blood God’s butchers became the butchered.
A shadow screamed above. The thunder of engines passed straight through Quast and an involuntary instinct shocked the approbator into ducking his head and dropping into a crouch amongst the rot. The wash of the thruster trail bathed the area about Quast in a dry heat. Squinting through the blaze of afterburning engines, the acolyte stood and watched the craft rocket across the corpse-strewn necroplex before banking and taking in the ruins of Obsequa City in a double pass.
Even serving in the ranks of the Holy Emperor’s Inquisition, Quast had only seen such a craft once before. It was a Thunderhawk gunship, the Adeptus Astartes’ fearsome steed amongst the stars. Spinning around, the approbator saw that another had punched through the sheen of pearly cloud, dropping silently like the first in a controlled free-fall, thrusters ready to snatch it from gravity’s embrace and slingshot the gunship across the cemetery world surface. A swarm of gunships followed, spearing down through the heavens in formation, before peeling off to take position above the killing fields, around the demolished city.
‘Sir, the vessel has made itself known to us,’ the vox-bead in Quast’s ear announced.
‘Proceed.’
‘Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Cerberus. Golden Throne, she’s huge.’
‘To which Chapter does this blessed vessel belong?’ Quast pushed.
‘The Excoriators, approbator.’
Quast nodded. It made sense. Among the warped and wretched servants of Chaos, the acolyte had come across numerous Adeptus Astartes dead, all armoured in the holy plate of the Excoriators Chapter. The defenders of a doomed world.
‘Have the captain greet the Cerberus and inform the battle-barge commander of our presence in orbit and on the planet surface. Extend my compliments and that of the ordo, then beg an audience for myself with the ranking Adeptus Astartes among their number.’
‘What are the Emperor’s Angels doing here, sir?’
‘I do not know,’ the approbator admitted, ‘but I intend to find out. Quast out.’
The acolyte left the Valkyrie and its storm trooper contingent and struck out across the slaughter. He walked for the ruined city and the gathering of gunships that hovered with ominous intent above the carnage. Clambering across the twisted dead and the expanse of tombstones beneath, Quast spoke into his meme-vox.
‘The Excoriators,’ he said, out of breath. ‘Battle-brothers of the Great Dorn’s seed. Their reputation is for fearsome feats of stamina and attrition. The Codex Astartes records the Excoriators as created from the ranks of the Imperial Fists post-Heresy, during the dark days of the Second Founding. This in recognition of their stalwart defence of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra.’
The approbator’s eyes settled upon a particularly horrific visage, daemonflesh that leered murderous lust at Quast, even after its destruction and banishment. For a moment the corpse-thing held his horrid attention before the acolyte forced his eyes closed and stumbled on across the battlefield. ‘The Excoriators are listed in the Mythos Angelica Mortis as one of the Astartes Praeses,’ Quast continued, ‘those Space Marine Chapters charged with the solemn duty of guarding the Eye of Terror and the vulnerable regions of Imperial space bordering.’
He slipped a small pair of magnoculars from the folds of his robes and scanned the dun-white lengths of the Excoriators Thunderhawks. ‘Markings indicate the presence of the Third, Sixth and Eighth Companies. Three companies and a Chapter battle-barge suggests an undertaking of extreme importance. Cross reference with Telepathica transmittal 44L-21-Digamma/Theta, intercepted from the Stroika-Six Observium Array.’
The approbator attempted to make his presence known to the nearest Thunderhawk. He held up his ordo identification and waved his arm at the craft. The pilot took little notice of the tiny Quast, amongst the bodies and funeral sculpture, and the craft held its station above a corpse-strewn blast crater. The lead Thunderhawk, the scout ship that had preceded the formation of gunships, took another pass, however, once more prompting Quast to crouch down in the blood and the mire.
Grit and grave dust whipped up about the approbator, and turning, Quast came to regard the Thunderhawk that had led the formation down through the thick cloud cover. Its prow section drifted up behind him, hovering like some great predator. Quast stood up in the beast-craft’s sights, his robes thrashing about him in the squall of its engines. The tempest invested cadavers with momentary life as bodies trembled and mortis-stiff limbs rocked in the backwash of the Thunderhawk’s thrusters.
Once again Quast held out his identification, finding himself turning and stumbling as the Thunderhawk circled, the craft’s tail gliding around while the armoured cockpit, heavy bolters and troop section remained fixed on the approbator. The gunship’s engines, landing gear and weaponry gleamed with sacred oils and clear maintenance; however, its armour was sallow and abused. The flash-scarring of las-blasts accompanied soot-smeared missile strikes and a nosetip-to-tail mauling of bolt plucks and heavy-gauge auto-fire.
As the bay ramp opened, Excoriators Space Marines filed down the incline and dropped to the ground below in two flanking lines. The Excoriators moved with solemn purpose, the compact brutality of their boltguns breaking up the curvilinear lines of their ceramite. The plate itself was a dirty ivory – shabby in appearance against the polished gleam of the torso cabling – and above the scorn of their half-moon helmet grilles, a pair of dark optics burned with resolution.
The battered cream of their armour became immediately splattered with the ichor of the dead. With the crouch landing of each armoured Angel, Quast fancied he could feel the flesh below him quake. As the gunship circled, the deploying Excoriators began fanning out, boltguns aimed at the carpet of carnage and helmets methodically scanning from left to right. Turning his magnoculars on the other Thunderhawks, Quast found that they too had delivered their Adeptus Astartes payloads to the battlefield about the smoking remains of Obsequa City. And they too seemed to be doing more than a reconnaissance sweep. The Excoriators were looking for something. Or someone.
As the howling wind grew about him, Quast lowered the glasses. The Thunderhawk had completed its deployment and now closed on the approbator. The last thing that the acolyte wanted was confusion, or to cause offence, and so he kept his ordo identification stretched out in front of him, that the living arsenal of the Emperor knew that he was no enemy of the Imperium.