‘Correct,’ a voice rang out across the antechamber, and the inquisitor stepped out from behind the upright containment casket. Darghastri was an aged wreck of a man, half machine and half rejuvenat-mangled flesh. The inquisitor’s dark robes and hood hid ugly armour. Buried in a stained, unkempt beard and held in a gap-toothed mouth was a tapering pipe that wreathed the old man in ghostly smoke. He walked around before the psykers with the sighing hydraulics of a bionic leg, steadying himself with a metal walking stick. He wore a holstered bolt pistol on his belt.
‘Inquisitor…’
‘First Captain,’ Darghastri acknowledged.
‘You are so ordered,’ Zerberyn said, ‘to hand over the astropath choir assigned to this station. For if you do not, with the Emperor’s own thunder, I will take them by force.’
‘The matrix personnel are under my protection,’ the inquisitor said, ‘and that is the way they will remain.’
Zerberyn snarled. ‘Brothers, advance.’
Squads Vasmir, Escoban and Torr stepped forward with their boltguns to blast the inquisitor and his three psykers into oblivion. Weapons barked their fury. Bolt-rounds tore through the cool air of the chamber. A metre in front of Darghastri and his gathering, the rounds stopped as though they had hit an invisible wall and showered to the deck. The Fists Exemplar intensified their fire, targeting the inquisitor, but to no avail. Bolt-rounds simply dropped before Darghastri to form piles on the metal floor before him.
The inquisitor lifted his walking stick. The pommel was crafted into a metal skull. As Darghastri flicked down the jaw with his thumb, a long flame rose up from the crown of the skull and from it, he re-lit his pipe. He jabbed the stick at the emaciated psyker, who held his glowing fists out at his sides.
‘I only travel with the Athymian Astra,’ the inquisitor said, ‘but as with any ship, you get to know your fellow travellers. Zygmunt Fesse here was part of a hive-world tithe from the Farrow Worlds. Before devoting his talents to the Holy Ordos he held off two battalions of his home world’s local militia and Imperial Navy airstrikes for three days. He has a talent for survival.’
‘His talents won’t be enough to save you, inquisitor,’ Zerberyn told him.
Darghastri pointed his walking stick at the musclebound psyker trapped in the tracked chair.
‘As there will be no escape for the Emperor’s enemies,’ the inquisitor told him. ‘Four-One-Seventy-Five here was transferred from the Dreadhaven penal colony on Panoptica XIII. Kept getting through the security measures. Doors. Bars. Chains. Sentry guns. They don’t work on him. Panoptica’s a dead rock, so there was nothing outside but sun-bleached stone. Still, he earned his place aboard the Athymian as now he earns his place in my retinue.’
Darghastri ejected his bolt pistol’s magazine and tossed the weapon into the seated psyker’s lap. The witchbreed set upon the weapon like a toy to be examined and explored. Within moments, the gun fell apart in his hands.
The inquisitor clicked at 4-1-75. Getting the psyker’s attention off the disassembled pistol, he pointed at the Fists Exemplar. A childish smile of delight passed across the psyker’s features. The deck began to clatter with components. While the Space Marines aimed their weapons at the inquisitor and his psykers, the boltguns fell apart in their gauntlets. Rounds rained to the floor, alongside the internal working parts of the weaponry. Eventually the barrels, breeches and grips of the boltguns and pistols clanged to the deck.
As Reoch’s pistol fell apart on his belt, pieces tumbling from his holster, he stepped forward. With a snarl he gunned his chainsword and advanced.
‘Apothecary,’ the inquisitor said, moving along the line to the final psyker. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Wouldn’t do what?’ Reoch asked. ‘Wouldn’t step through your defences and hack you and your witches limb from limb?’
‘This is Thessda,’ Darghastri said, sliding open a narrow panel at the top of the containment casket, revealing the face of a woman. Her eyes were misted, but ravenous for sights unseen. Not knowing what powers she possessed, or what the inquisitor might do, the Apothecary slowed to a stop.
‘The guards named her,’ the inquisitor said. ‘She won’t be tamed for my service, but might still do the Emperor’s work. Under the right circumstances. Circumstances like these, captain. The Athymian found her on the feral world of Karnach. Upon arrival, the Black Ship found most of the population of the capital city dead, drowned. Her powers had blossomed with womanhood, and now, whatever she sees, she is driven to manifest. It must have rained — a rare occurrence on Karnach. Thessda flooded her entire city, and drowned thousands of her tribespeople. They tried to blind her to curtail her powers. But she can still see… a little. If something were to be held up close. A flame, say.’
Holding his walking stick up to the containment casket, Darghastri depressed the skull’s bottom jaw and produced a flame from the pommel. The rogue psyker’s eyes started to focus on the flame, and the casket began to rock.
Reoch looked back at his captain.
Zerberyn simply stared at the inquisitor and his collection of witchbreeds. ‘What is it that you want?’ he asked.
‘I want to serve my Emperor,’ Darghastri told him. ‘To my last dying breath.’
‘There is no one clad in this plate that feels differently.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ the inquisitor hissed.
‘Inquisitor,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Can’t you see what is happening? To this system. The sector. The Imperium? The orks are everywhere. They hang over Terra like an ill omen. You must allow me access to the astropathic choir. I have intelligence vital to our success against the alien invader.’
‘So that you might spread your poison to the stars,’ Darghastri said. ‘I think not. You will not be allowed to commandeer this station — for the astropaths here are the servants of the God-Emperor. You will not be allowed to enter the Athymian Astra to use the astropaths or to plunder its mutant cargo — for they are the God-Emperor’s bounty.’
Zerberyn’s lips wrinkled into a snarl. The First Captain knew that the inquisitor meant every word. That he would unleash the full destructive potential of his psykers upon them if pushed.
‘Squads Escoban, Vasmir, Torr,’ he said. ‘Do your duty.’ He heard the sound of combat blades being drawn as the Fists Exemplar made ready to storm the Black Ship.
‘Oh no, captain,’ the aged inquisitor said. ‘I can’t allow you to do that. You are traitors to the Imperium and must be purged. It is the reason for the Inquisition’s very being. I am nothing in the grand scheme of gods and emperors. But you, captain, and your men? If I let you go, you will go on to wreak havoc across a thousand worlds.’
‘Emperor willing, yes,’ Zerberyn said, ‘upon the barbarian greenskins.’
‘No, captain,’ Darghastri said. ‘I’ve seen the company you keep. You travel in consort with traitors. And I got a good look at them, captain — for it was your Iron Warriors compatriots who fired upon the Athymian Astra, some months since. This vessel still bears the scars of that engagement. We were fortunate to get away with our lives. If it hadn’t been for the havoc of the orks, I doubt we would have done so.’
‘You have seen what we face,’ Zerberyn said, stepping forward and gritting his teeth. ‘The Imperium is a candle, about to be snuffed out.’
‘There is no common ground to be held between those loyal to the Emperor, and traitors. Only degrees of denial and darkness,’ Darghastri told him.
‘I am First Captain of the Fists Exemplar. Gene-sired of Rogal Dorn,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Scourge of the Imperium’s enemies. True servant to the Emperor of Mankind.’
‘There can be no accord between you and me, captain,’ Darghastri said, ‘as there should not have been between the Fists Exemplar and the Iron Warriors. That is why I must destroy you, captain — even as I destroy myself.’