The twenty-seven survivors of the artefact's destruction - Brother Zorian having been flattened beneath a falling slab of tunnel roof- piled into the Thunder-hawk and as soon as they all were in, before the boarding ramp had even been raised, the Iron Eagle took off, before it too was crushed under the collapsing face of the mesa.

'What now, Iron-Father?' Gdolkin heard Brother Yergen ask over the comm.

'We head back to Antipax. I believe that Magos Thule will no longer have any reason to remain on Herod, now that the Bei'bul Stone has been destroyed.'

* * *

The earthquake lasted for a total duration of three minutes thirty-three seconds. The tremors were felt even back in Antipax half a continent away, but at the quake's epicentre the face of Herod was changed irrevocably, a massive sinkhole forty kilometres wide spreading out across the desert, to a depth of five hundred metres.

The effects of the Bei'bul Stone's destruction did not stop there. The rippling energy-wave of its detonation passed through the atmosphere, continuing out into space; onward, ever onward, unceasing.

Two hundred light years away, a million million leagues beyond the fringes of the Herod system, at the roiling rim of the Eye of Terror itself, something began to stir within the flickering blood-red nebula cloud of the spatial anomaly referred to as the Araken Anomaly.

Red-eyed Araken.

Raging Araken.

Warpstorm Araken.

ARAKEN

The forces of warp space rage like the mightiest ocean, and if a mortal could perceive the sound of that realm, he would hear every noise in the universe voiced simultaneously, and would be driven utterly and profoundly insane by the experience.

- The heretic Elijah of Mephisto V

NINE

GHOSTS OF THE WARP

In high orbit over Herod

'Commander on the bridge!' the yeoman of the watch announced in a strident bellow as Iron-Father Gdolkin strode into the command nave of the Iron Hands' strike cruiser Ajax, bodyguard-servitors Joab XIII and Ishmael 192 following two paces behind. There was the crashing ring of the Space Marines present coming to attention as the thrall-technicians and hard-wired servitors continued with their work about the bridge.

Gdolkin acknowledged Brother Lagan of the watch with a curt nod and then, before doing anything else, approached the bronze statue of the great primarch. Ferrus Manus's hands were plated silver, as was traditional with icons of the Chapter. Gdolkin made his obeisance, making the sign of the aquila over his chest as he did so. Then he rose and approached the main command pulpit of the bridge.

'As you were.’ he said, and the Iron Hands went about their business again.

Hovering in front of the pulpit was the unmistakable form of Iron-Captain Strake, the true commander of the Ajax. He had been with the vessel since the Grailsword Campaign against the alien eldar one hundred and eleven years previously. At that time, however, he had still had his legs. It wasn't until three years later, when during its darkest hour the Ajax had been crippled and almost destroyed in battle against a tyranid hive-fleet, that Captain Strake had suffered appalling disabling injuries to match.