The first of the bodies stirred, dragging itself from the side of one of the corpse-mountains and tumbling down the slope. It knocked other bodies down with it and they stirred, reaching out dumbly with gnawed fingers. Limbs reached from the slopes until whole mountains were stirring and the first of the bodies struggled to its feet and began to walk.

Teturact could feel the seething as the whole ship began to awaken. The people of Stratix had pleaded, begged, for him to save them from death, and he had done so in return for their souls. Now he was extending the bargain to those he had not saved the first time round, the dregs of Stratix's charnel pits. The tombship was more than a place of worship for Teturact - it was a weapon of war, the deadliest he could create. It was the vessel for an army that did not need to eat or sleep, that would follow unques-tioningly, that would never flee and could fight to the death because they were already dead.

Teturact's master plan, the infection and salvation of an empire, could only go so far. Sometimes, he had known all along, he would have to intervene directly and take the fight to the enemy. The tomb-ship was his means of doing so. Now his enemies had struck closer to home than even he had imagined, driving into the Stratix system itself, daring to defile Stratix Luminae - and Teturact had created the tombship for just such an offence.

The mountains were now shifting heaps of human beings, struggling to clamber from beneath one another, teeth and nails gouging, brackish blood running in streams across the fighter deck floor. Many of them shambled closer, dressed in the rags of workers' overalls, regal finery, soldiers' fatigues and everything in between. Teturact's brute-mutants raised him high and his vast mind took in the faint pinpricks of guttering light that were the minds of the dead.

He took every one of those points of light and snuffed them out one by one, replacing them with the unblinking black pearls of his own mind. The final phase of the ritual was Teturact's own - to make these awakened dead answer solely to his will. They were now no more than his instruments, to be controlled as if they were his own limbs. He stretched his mind out and did the same to the bodies waking throughout the ship, until he felt tens of thousands of mind-slaves connected to him like parts of his own shrivelled body.

The pitiful resistance of the Imperium seemed more laughable than ever. How could anyone claim Teturact was not a god? He had created an army and controlled them utterly. He was master of billions and billions of worshippers. There was no greater calling. Soon, when his empire stretched across the stars, it would be complete and Teturact would take his place in the pantheon amongst the gods of the warp.

1 A tiny part of his mind reached out to the controllers on the bridge. His orders were the last they would ever receive.

He commanded that the tombship be taken into low orbit around Stratix Luminae. Then he •demanded that the shields be dropped and the hull of the tombship be allowed to disintegrate in the planet's atmosphere. He already knew how the ship would break up, the parts that would land intact and the remaining fighter craft and shuttles that would fly out of the wreckage. He knew which parts would split open and rain down an army on the frozen surface.

It was a beautiful thing, his tombship. But it was just a single building block in the immense cathedral of his empire. It was a small thing for it to be sacrificed, when the prize would be the sanctity of the world where Teturact himself was born.

ELEVEN

'EMPEROR PRESERVE us.’ said Sister Aescarion. 'That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen.'

Inquisitor Thaddeus had to agree. The long-range sensors on the Crescent Moon were transmitting a visual composite directly onto the viewscreen on the bridge, and it was not pretty. Stratix Luminae was in the background, looking like a huge eye without a pupil. In the foreground hung a truly hideous thing, a ship that was as diseased as any of the unfortunates on Eumenix. Pustules the size of slands spat plumes of bile out into space. Hull )lates oozed out of the superstructure, straining under the ship's corpulent mass. Lance batteries were rusted gun barrels sticking out of orifices ringed with scabs. The engines bled pus and the entrances to the fighter decks had deformed into lipless drooling orifices that mouthed dumbly and vomited clouds of debris, corpses and filth.

The ship was huge, larger by magnitudes than the Crescent Moon. It had to be a full-scale battleship -there might have been an Emperor-class under there somewhere.

'Bridge, do we have this profile stored?' asked Thaddeus.

The servitors at the consoles spent a moment calculating, wire fingers clattering on the keyboards of their mem-consoles.

'Battlefleet Stratix had three Emperor-class battleships.’ came a tinny, synthetic voice. 'The Ultima Khan was reclassified heretic and reported destroyed at Kolova. The Olympus Mons and the Dutiful are unaccounted for.'

'It doesn't matter what it used to be.’ said Colonel Vinn unexpectedly. 'It's orbit is too low. It'll be breaking up within the hour.’

'Maybe so, colonel.’ said Thaddeus, 'but this is too much to be a coincidence. Bridge, what do we have following us?'

Another moment's pause. Then, 'Two light cruisers, designation unknown, heretic probable. Cobra-class escort squadron, again heretic. Unknown attack craft and merchantmen.’

'If we're being trailed by that many and we're still this far out.’ said Thaddeus, 'then the Soul Drinkers will have been spotted, too. They're on Stratix Luminae already and the Enemy is close behind them.’

'Let them fight one another?' suggested Vinn.

'Unless they're in league.’ replied Aescarion with bitterness, spitting out the words as if she longed for the Soul Drinkers to be under Teturact's command so she could destroy them all the more justly.

Agreed.’ said Thaddeus. We will not have another chance to bring them to bear. But we can't land right on top of them. If they're landing troops we'll be blown out of the sky even if this ship has broken up by then. Bridge, get me landing solutions, far away from that battleship to get down in one piece. Colonel, how's our armour?'

'Enough APCs for the Sisters and remaining men.’ said Vinn. Thaddeus felt the sting even through the man's expressionless voice - the best of his men were dead, shot or frozen stiff at Pharos. 'We weren't expecting to run a mechanised assault, inquisitor.’

'It'll do, colonel. We just have to get there, the rest we'll make up as we go along. Sister, colonel, you both understand the enemy we will be facing. The Soul Drinkers are probably under-strength but they are still Space Marines. We cannot destroy them all, but we have an advantage in that they want something at Stratix Luminae and must make themselves vulnerable to get it. They will probably be engaged by other forces so we will have the luxury of picking our targets.’

The first of those targets.’ came that familiar half-machine voice from the rear of the bridge, 'is Sarpedon.' The Pilgrim emerged from the bridge entrance. Thaddeus didn't know how long he had been there - though every member of the strikeforce had to be fully briefed, he had privately wished to have this talk with Aescarion and Vinn alone. But the Pilgrim seemed able to shadow everything he did.

'Sarpedon is the key.’ continued the Pilgrim. He walked slowly up the bridge until he stood between Aescarion and Vinn, and Thaddeus saw the repulsion pass over Aescarion's face. 'Sarpedon is their weakness, and he knows it himself. Without him there will be no purpose. Without him, even if he is the only one to die here, the Chapter will fragment to be hunted down one by one. All other targets are secondary.’