Thaddeus had decided long ago not to rise to the Pilgrim's baiting. If he wasn't so useful, Thaddeus would have refused to accept him into the strike force when it was first assembled by the Ordo Hereticus. But the feel the Pilgrim had for the soul of the renegade Chapter was one of the few edges Thaddeus had.
They came to a bulkhead in the form of a massive set of bronze double doors. Thaddeus spoke a codeword and the doors swung open. Thaddeus and the Pilgrim stepped through into the cavernous space. The bridge of the Crescent Moon was suspended above the engineering decks, so the navigational consoles and command pulpit looked down on the massive spinning plasma turbines that churned away a hundred metres below. The engine-gang, pale-skinned red-eyed men who rarely emerged from the depths of the ship's engines, could be seen scuttling between the turbines, making adjustments in anticipation of the Crescent leaving orbit and putting into the warp.
Thaddeus had no flag-captain. He commanded his own ship. Servitors were slaved into most of the consoles so they could relay his commands directly. The platforms of the bridge held only the servitors, Thaddeus and the Pilgrim, Sister Aescarion, and Colonel Vinn of the Hereticus storm troopers.
'Sister, colonel.’ said Thaddeus briskly. 'Our course is for the Subsector Therion. Have your troops make ready for warp travel.’ At his words the servitors twitched as they fed his commands into the Crescent's machine-spirit. 'A space hulk is an environment not to be taken lightly. You may be required to put your troops at considerable risk.’
'We have chased ghosts for too long.’ said Aescarion. 'My Sisters will give thanks for the opportunity to bring some purity to the place.’
'The men of the Hereticus Storm regiment will be ready.’ said Vinn. Vinn had been mindwiped several times owing to the things he and his men had seen as they fought the Hereticus war against witchery and corruption. He had been forced to learn the ways of fighting several times in the course of his life and the result was a wealth of experience and battle instinct that he did not remember receiving but which made him an effective leader and an unquestioning Imperial servant. His bland features hid utter ruthlessness and beneath the black and red storm trooper fatigues he was covered in scars from the many near-suicide missions he had led.
The regiment, actually a vast body of men dispersed across uncountable Inquisitorial retinues and fortresses, had been seconded to the Ordo Hereticus for so long that they now had nothing to do with their parent Imperial Guard at all, instead being raised at Hereticus's request and trained in Inquisitorial facilities. Thaddeus had five platoons, over two hundred men, in the Crescent Moon's cargo holds, every one of them rigorously conditioned to face any horror with their assault-patterned lasguns, and perform the most gruesome of tasks at Thad-deus's request.
Thaddeus ascended the short flight of steps to the command pulpit that overlooked the banks of servitor-manned consoles and monitors. He tapped the subsector code into the glowing lectern display and a line of coordinates flashed up, streaming into the half-minds of the servitors as they in turn input the commands that would have the Crescent Moon's machine-spirit direct the ship through the warp. The ship's lone Navigator, a recluse named Praxas who had not left his cramped quarters in the ship's prow for months on end, would even now be preparing to gaze onto the warp and guide the ship through its treacherous currents.
'Has he had some insight?' Sister Aescarion enquired. She was standing by the pulpit and watching the Pilgrim, who was looking down on the rumbling engines as the engine-gang got them started.
'He seemed confident the hulk has something to do with the Soul Drinkers.’ replied Thaddeus. 'I have reason to trust his judgement.'
'I understand that I am under your command, inquisitor, and that he and I will be called upon to fight the same battle. But it makes me uneasy that I have so little idea of who or what he is.'
Thaddeus smiled. 'Sister, do you think me a radical? You should not believe the rumours you hear. We are not all daemon-baiting madmen in the Inquisition. The Pilgrim is not a monster.'
Sister Aescarion did not return his smile. She had gained a reputation as a dependable commander of battle-sisters working alongside the Inquisition, and she would have heard more than enough rumours. Many of them were true - Thaddeus had himself been involved in clearing up the mess left by the Eisenhorn heresies and the destruction of the rogue Hereticus cell on Chalchis Traxiam. 'The Sisters wonder, inquisitor.’ she said. 'That is all. They must be certain they are commanded by those who have the same depth of faith as they do. Idle chatter undermines the purity of faith and it would be better for me if you were more open about your companions.’
'The Pilgrim can be trusted, Sister. You have my word on that and this is all you need. Now, you should make sure your Sisters are prepared for departure, we will be in the Empyrean for some weeks.’
Sister Aescarion nodded curtly and strode off the bridge, the boots of her black lacquered power armour clacking on the metal floor of the bridge. Colonel Vinn followed her, stepping smartly as if on the parade ground.
The preparations took little time. Thaddeus valued the Crescent Moon partly because the procedures for beginning a major warp journey, which on an Imperial battleship could take days of tech-priest ministrations, could be handled in hours. Soon the massive engines roared and lit the bridge from beneath with the bright orange plasma glow. The flaring particle scoops folded into the cylindrical body of the ship and blue-white bolts of energy arced off the hull. The Crescent Moon drifted out of high orbit and the warp engines fired.
The inhabitants of the agri-world looked up to see a tiny bright star winking suddenly in the sky and then disappear. One of them, Adept Chloure, sighed a prayer of gratitude to the Emperor that the visitors had not taken him with them, and turned back to the never-ending mountain of paperwork.
TWO
THE SKY HAD turned dark over Eumenix. The whole hive world was locked in a perpetual twilight, lit only by the weak orange glow of the heatsink exhausts and the flickering, dying lumospheres that were winking out one by one as the planet died. Over Hive Quintus, home to a rapidly decreasing population of almost a billion, it rained greasy ash as the pyres of the dead begin to tower over the looted palaces of the nobles. The hive city's screams could be heard for kilometres around - wailing sirens of Arbites riot control tanks, the shriek of collapsing tunnelways as hordes of citizens tried to flee the latest hotspot, roars of explosions as looters tripped booby-traps or overladen tramp shuttles crashed on takeoff from makeshift pads.
And the smell. Burning, certainly - it could hardly be otherwise when fire was the only thing that could keep anything clean any more. And spilt fuel. And panicked sweat. But there was something else, sweet but caustic: a smell that made noses wrinkle and eyes water. It steeped the entire city from the pleasure-galleries to the underhive, to the endless maintenance warrens and the gold-plated halls of trade. It seeped out into the barren wastes between cities. Even in the wilds outside the city, those who tried to flee by land could smell it, and just before the seething pollution flats claimed them they knew it was the stink of death. And not just the ordinary death that wandered Hive Quintus constantly - this was the stench of the plague.
Some had called it the white death, or the underhive pox, or spirit rot. The doctors who tended to the city's ailing aristocracy invented long, complex High Gothic names for it. But by the time old Governor Hugenstein had succumbed, his body a mass of seeping welts, along with his family and most of his staff, it was known simply as 'the plague'.