Through bleeding eyes Sergeant Dagan saw a gigantic blue figure striding across the room towards him. He heard the psyker scream something in a language that he didn't understand, as blood spurted from its eye-sockets. And then the creature's head exploded, and Dagan blacked out.

In their assault on Antipax and the Citadel, Iron-Father Gdolkin had not lost one of his men. The worst injury any of his warriors had sustained was the mind-flaying at the hands of the Shinarii rogue psyker, and Sergeant Dagan and his men were already beginning to recover from the ordeal, thanks to the ministrations of Librarian Melchor.

With their hold on the Citadel broken, the remaining pockets of Shinarii resistance had been rooted out and put down quickly and effectively by the Iron Hands and the Governor's PDF troopers.

Within a matter of days the situation was returning to normal. But now they were tied up in a cycle of recriminations and backstabbing squabbles, petty blame-passing and excuse-making, which frustrated Gdolkin. He was a man of action, not of words. And besides, it was clear to him where the blame lay. It was a Planetary Governor's responsibility to see that the world entrusted to his care and supervision was policed and governed appropriately. For a cult like the Shinarii to gain such a strong foothold, being able to threaten the security of Herod in its entirety, Governor Sardis had failed in his duty to the Emperor and should pay the price accordingly.

But the organisations that made up the Imperium were as much subject to the wily manoeuvrings of politics as they were bastions of strength, valour, honour and retributive vengeance; as much affected by the political wranglings as they were the whims of Chaos or the predation of xenos races.

Governor Thaslos Hellek Sardis was weak, and if it had been Gdolkin's place to sit in judgement over the man who had allowed such an uprising to occur effectively unchallenged, he would have executed him there and then. But to do so would only serve to destabilise the political situation on Herod still further. He had been lucky to escape the crucifixions, considering how many other members of the government bodies based in Antipas had been victims of the cultists' cruel executions.