The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

Malcador referred to it as his study. He liked to have select meetings here at the heart of a three-dimensional astrolabe, claiming it gave him a perspective too easily forgotten in the bowels of the Imperial Palace. He’d refused the tower’s reconstruction on the principle of needing somewhere ‘less militant, less miserable’ to think when he was alone. Despite Dorn’s rank as Praetorian of Terra, Malcador’s will had won through. It remained a rare needle of artisanal beauty in the Palace now reborn as a fortress.

Several of the most powerful men and women of the loyal Imperium stood around the circular hololithic table in the heart of the tower-top librarium. They were surrounded by the priceless scrolls and relics of a hundred lost cultures, from the oldest of Old Earth to the many that had faded out of existence during the Dark Age of Technology. Wooden carvings, broken statue fragments of white stone and black rock, scrolls encased in stasis fields, pistols and rifles and swords long since given over to rust and the patina of time’s mercies – it was an eclectic collection to say the least.

Six souls stood opposite one another. Six souls deciding the fate of an empire. Whatever was decided here would go on to be disseminated throughout the Imperium’s byzantine hierarchy, or sealed away behind seals and sanctions forever.

Diocletian looked at each of the hierarchs in turn, gathered around a table with no sides, so that all were rendered equal: Fabricator Locum Trimejia of Mars; Malcador, the Imperial Regent; Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists; Kaeria, Oblivion Knight of the Silent Sisterhood; Captain-General Constantin Valdor of the Ten Thousand; and Diocletian himself.

He had not seen the Mechanicum’s new high priestess before. Trimejia was a stick-thin revenant hooded and cowled in Martian red, showing nothing but her skeletal silver fingers at the ends of her robe’s sleeves and a featureless faceplate in the shadows of her hood. She spoke only through the vox-grilles of the three servo-skulls orbiting her on tethered, hazard-striped cables. Three voices in unison, all artificially female.

‘The Fabricator General requests word from the guardians of the Great Work.’

‘We bring word,’ Diocletian replied, gesturing to the World Eaters helm on the central table. ‘And evidence.’

‘The Adnector Primus no longer conveys reports to the Fabricator General,’ Trimejia pressed. ‘Zagreus Kane, blessings upon him, believes our representative in the Great Work has met his end in the course of service to the Omnissiah.’

‘Kane believes right,’ Diocletian replied. ‘The Mechanicum forces within the webway answer to their divisional overseers now. Adnector Primus Mendel was killed several days ago in the fall of a tunnel nexus.’

‘Inconvenient,’ said Trimejia’s three servo-skulls.

‘Tribune Endymion led a counter-attack to bring aid to the survivors. He recovered Mendel’s body.’

‘An irrelevancy,’ the tech-priestess blurted back. ‘His mortal remnants are of no value to the Mechanicum. At most, his organic matter will be reprocessed for servitor sustenance fluid packs.’

Diocletian bared his teeth, resisting the urge to curse at the Martian witch. Good men and women had died in that counter-attack.

Dorn, a warrior-king among the Space Marine Legions, wore no armour. In his pale robe he looked monastic and austere, radiating a halo of impatience. He had his battles to plan and fight. He had his own wounds to lick. The stern patrician of the Imperial Fists, adamant in his cold-eyed sincerity, never lifted his gaze from the Custodian and the Sister, side by side.

‘Report in full,’ he commanded them.

Diocletian bristled at the order and caught sight of Kaeria’s subtle shift in posture. The Sister stood with her arms crossed over her breastplate, moving a single finger in a miniscule twitch. Her fingertip rested against the lightning bolt engraved on her bicep plating.

‘You think me blind to your coded warnings to one another, Oblivion Knight?’ Dorn asked Kaeria.

Kaeria showed no sign of attempting a reply. Diocletian answered for her. ‘She was merely cautioning me against a show of temper at your presumption, Lord Dorn. Only one man may give me orders. You call that man “Father”.’

The primarch watched them both, unblinking, before finally nodding with the curtest gesture of his head. ‘A thousand matters pull at my mind. Your point is made. Please continue.’

‘There is little to say,’ Diocletian admitted. ‘The last waves that struck the tunnels reaped a significant toll. All of the ground we claimed within Magnus’ Folly is swarming with the aetheric invaders, and we are being beaten back to the walls of the Impossible City. We can hold Calastar far more easily than we can maintain our grip on the outward tunnels. For now, the link between the webway and the Imperial Dungeon remains stable: the Mechanicum-made routes through the city’s catacombs remain sheathed in the Emperor’s protection and cleansed of aetheric activity.’

‘For how long?’ asked Dorn.