‘Oh crap,’ Chetta breathed. She took a quick check on the position of the Astronomican, that great beacon of psychic light and noise radiating out from Terra to guide the Imperium’s starships through the shifting morass of the immaterium. The Solarox had been knocked off course from its planned route to Vorlese, where House Brobantis had its primary holdings, but not far. It wouldn’t take much time to get them back into the most favourable currents, on course to return home as quickly as possible. After all, she had a husband to bury, and important decisions to make. There was little point in going to all the trouble of arranging Azariel’s death in order to carefully steer her adopted house away from his plotted route, only to then not capitalise on it.

And yet, despite it all, Chetta was still a dutiful citizen of the Imperium. Some things were more important.

‘This is Lady Chetta Brobantis,’ she said, relaxing her grip on the past. Now she knew where she was looking, she could see the ugly wound that still pulsed in the warp’s fabric. It wasn’t near, as she comprehended such things, but it wasn’t far either. In fact, she was fairly sure she knew where it was in relation to the material universe, and that unnerved her. ‘We have a new heading. Prepare to alter course on my mark.’

‘Are we far off course, my lady?’ Anja replied.

‘I said we have a new heading, captain,’ Chetta said firmly, rolling her neck in an attempt to loosen some of the tension in it. ‘Vorlese is going to have to wait. Unless I miss my guess completely, something has just sucked an entire planet into the warp. I rather think we should go and find out what’s occurring.’

Shadow-Walker

Shadow-Walker

He stepped off the transport shuttle, a lone man in a long weathercoat and a rebreather mask: unremarkable garb, such as anyone might wear to head into the Smog Deeps of Ascension City, down near the planet’s surface where the pollution clung thick and sticky around the base levels of the great tenement blocks and chrome-chased windscrapers of Vorlese’s capital. He stepped off the transport shuttle and filed through the perfunctory customs checks using the identity documents in the name of Radimir Niklau, easily able to demonstrate that he was not in possession of any contraband items or xenos lifeforms. He stepped off the transport shuttle, a lone man in a crowd of hundreds, each with their own purpose and destination.

He stepped off the transport shuttle and walked down the ramp even though, strictly speaking, he had no need to do any such thing.