Sarpedon holstered his bolter even as a scattering of blasts scored the floor armour him. He gripped his nalwood force staff with both hands and felt the psychic fire spiralling around him, forming a circuit of power that ran from the heart of his brain to the squirming nalwood in his fist. He was still a little nervous of the power inside him - he had always been strong but since the terrible events on the unnamed world and the Brokenback his psychic powers boiled hotter than ever, bubbling away in his subconscious and demanding a release.

A release like this. Like the Hell.

He focused his psychic power and forced it outwards, trained by the lens of his mind into images created to inflict pure terror. Shrieking, bat-like shapes dropped from above to tear through the Arbites on trails of crimson fire. Sarpedon concentrated and forced more from his mind until a whole swarm of them coursed through the Galactarium temple.

'Daemons!' someone yelled. The Inquisition probably suspected the Soul Drinkers were worshippers of Chaos, and had warned the Arbites to expect a daemonic threat. If they feared daemons, that was what Sarpedon would give them.

The Hell, the psychic power that had caused Sarpedon to enter the ranks of the Chapter's librar-ium, ripped into the Arbites. It was a storm of nightmares, drawing images of terror from the minds of its targets and sending those terrors swarming around them. Sarpedon was a telepath who could transmit but not receive, and his power had been honed by the librarium and his own willpower into a mental weapon the likes of which few Librarians had ever possessed. Physically it was harmless, but psychologically it was devastating. In the wreckage of the temple the effect was magnified, as Arbites out of sight of their fellow officers were pounced on by flying horrors that howled as they whipped their coils through the air above them.

Arbites were firing into the air. Many were panicking - Arbites were ideologically trained to a degree that the best Imperial Guard units could not boast, but few of them had faced daemons. Or, for that matter, a psyker as trained and powerful as Sarpedon.

'Graevus!' yelled Sarpedon 'Attack!'

Squad Graevus ran through Squads Hastis and Krydel, and Sarpedon went with them. Sarpedon had seen to it that all Soul Drinkers had been trained against the Hell through simulated battlefields on the Brokenback, so they would not be broken by it as their enemies were. Graevus sprinted into the enemy, power axe flashing in his mutated hand. His Assault Marines sent sprays of bolt pistol fire into the Arbites that was followed up with their chainblades, cutting through riot armour as if it wasn't there.

Sarpedon was in a split second later, his altered legs carrying him over a chunk of fallen marble and into the Arbites sheltering behind. He focused his power into the force staff and swiped the weapon through the first knot of Arbites he saw. He saw himself reflected in the black glass visors of their riot helmets as he sliced right through two of them at once. One officer still stood - Sarpedon impaled him with his forward leg, the bionic one, punching through his chest and flinging him back over his head.

Sergeant Graevus darted round the slab of marble and cut down the officer trying to bring his shotgun to bear on Sarpedon. All around bolter shells were blazing, cutting orange traces of fire through the air.

The din of battle was hot in Sarpedon's ears - he could hear Arbites officers yelling, trying to find one another, give orders, or just scream at the monsters hurtling at them from the air.

Squad Graevus cut through the Arbites savagely. Arbites on the roof fired down not into battered, pinned Marines but into Squad Hastis, who returned fire instantly and sent the broken bodies of launcher-armed Arbites falling to the floor of the courtyard. By the time Squad Graevus reached the front of the temple, well over a hundred Arbites were dead, wounded, or hopelessly scattered.

The Soul Drinkers followed the fleeing Arbites out of the temple and into the grounds, knowing there were still enough officers left to regroup and attack again if they were given the chance. Squad Graevus quickly disabled the Arbites APCs with krak grenades while Squad Krydel took pot shots at the Arbites scattering into the gardens.

'Leave the crews.’ said Sarpedon. 'I don't want more dead than there have to be.' He spotted the command APC on the slope near the ridge and quickly crossed the bullet-scarred earth. He hol-stered his force staff and ripped the side hatch off the side of the APC.

Inside sat the astropath. The old man showed no fear.

'You have one more message to send.’ said Sarpedon. Tell Inquisitor Thaddeus that we are not what he thinks we are. I know he cannot let us go free, but ultimately he and I are on the same side. If it comes down to it, I will have to kill him in order to continue our work. He will understand what drives us, because it is the same thing that drives him.'

The astropath nodded silently. Sarpedon left him in the APC and voxed his squads in the temple.

'The fighters cannot reach us in the dome. We need to get out onto the surface for pickup. Follow me.'

Sarpedon let the lifesign runes for the three-squad force flash onto his retina. Squad Krydel had lost two Marines, while Squad Graevus had lost one in the thick of the fight with the Arbites. Three more that could not be replaced within the foreseeable future. Sarpedon knew that many more would be lost before the harvest could begin and the Soul Drinkers could rise again.

But now they knew, at least, where they had to start. Stratix Luminae. With that information, they were one step closer to survival.

THE MAP OF the empire was an arrangement of precious stones, torn from the necklaces and earrings of Stratix's wealthy and handed as tributes to the court of Teturact. They were set out on the floor of south-western dock three, which had been appointed as the seat of Teturact's rule. Southwestern dock three was several layers down into one of Stratix's hive-stacks and was draped in tapestries of gauze torn from infected wounds, their patterns of gore and pus a gift from the legions of grateful plague-ridden. The corners of the cavernous space, beneath the docking clamps and control towers, were crammed with huddled figures that had made pilgrimages into the very presence of their lord and yet were so awed by him they could not approach. The floor was heaped with the bodies of those who had died of that awe, and pure liquid pestilence wept from the walls and dripped in a fine drizzle from the ceiling.

Teturact leaned forward on his palanquin. The four brute-mutants, so muscular even the features of their faces were obscured by folds of brawn, tilted the platform forward so Teturact could get a better look at the map. Stratix, in the centre like the star in the middle of a system, was a single blood-red ruby the size of a fist. The forge worlds were sapphires, blue as dead lips. The worlds of the front line, where Imperial Guard regiments were pouring into killing grounds swarming with Teturact's followers, were fiery yellow-orange opals. Loyal worlds were diamonds, hard and clear in their devotion to their saviour. There were hundreds of gemstones, each one a major world under Teturact's control, each crammed with souls who owed their lives to him.

Teturact had been dead for several years. His heart was just a knot of dried flesh somewhere in his dusty ribcage. Only his mind was truly alive, pulsing away beneath the tight skin of his skull and behind the rictus face with its horrible dried-out eyeballs. His body, thin and wizened with jaundiced yellow skin, was animated by will alone - his muscles had long since wasted away. Teturact was, in a very real sense, a being of pure willpower. He dominated those around him directly. Take the simple bovine minds of the brute-mutant bearers -he barely had to think to control them. Others he controlled by manipulating their circumstances until they had no choice but to obey his every wish.