The diseases - and there were many, to keep any one cure from harming his cause - were just a part of it. They were the catalyst. It was the force ofTetu-ract's will that was his real weapon. And that force of will had won him a mighty empire such as the Black Crusades themselves had rarely won.

Many of the worlds on the chart were emeralds, green with potential. They were worlds that had only just begun the traumatic process of bending to Teturact's will. On some, the plague was only just making itself known, spread by Teturact's agents devoted to bringing enlightening disease to governors and hive-scum alike. Others were nearly ripe, and Teturact would soon leave the seat of his power on Stratix to bestow life upon the infected through the sorcery he could wield over disease.

One emerald caught his eye. It was near the front line, and would provide a great strategic advantage in anchoring a stretch of space that could easily be turned into a massive warzone if he wished it.

Colonel, he spoke to the shadows, his voice a rich psychic boom since he could not speak with his own rotted vocal chords.

A human form shambled towards Teturact, and bowed before the palanquin. It was draped in bloody bandages but beneath them tattered crimsons showed, with the glints of silver bullion trim and a chest full of campaign medals. Colonel Karendin had been little more than a butcher even before the plague had taken him - Teturact had left his mind mostly intact and he served to oversee the military situation in the empire.

What of this world? Teturact pointed a spidery finger at the strategic emerald.

'Eumenix?' replied Karendin, voice hissing thick with spittle. 'It is nearly ready to fall. The governor is dead, they say. The Arbites have fallen. No ship has left for many weeks. A billion have drowned in blood and bile already'

Then I will go there next, said Teturact. .’ want this world, and with as little delay as possible.

'If you leave now, saviour, the planet will be ripe when you arrive. I could have your flagship prepared at once.'

Do so. Teturact settled back into the upholstery of the palanquin. Our empire grows, colonel. Like the disease, our worlds multiply. Do you see how we infect?

'Oh yes, saviour!' hissed Karendin. A faint gaggle of agreement came from the pilgrims huddled in the shadows. 'Like the plague itself, a plague on the stars!'

See to it that the court can be embarked within the day, said Teturact, losing interest in the colonel's blandishments.

Eumenix. A fine world to take, a hive world teeming with infected who would rise up and worship him when he promised them release. Such a fine world, indeed, that would greet him as a saviour, and die for him as a god.

SISTER BERENICE AESCARION was sixty-three years old. She had spent fifty-three of those years consecrated as a daughter of the Emperor, her body conditioned and her mind purified with diligence and atonement so she could serve as a soldier of the Emperor's church. She had been taken from the Schola Progenium where orphans of Imperial servants were raised, then brought into the presence of the preachers and confessors of the Adeptus Minis-torum. They had filled her mind with the revelations of the Emperor, but she had not been afraid. She had heard of the horrors of apostasy and unbelief that opened the doors to sin and corruption, but she had not despaired.

The hellfire confessors had not reduced the girl to tears. The words of the preachers had left her inspired, not cowed. She had the willpower to join the ranks of the Sisters, and during her novicehood amongst the Orders Famulous it had become apparent that she also had the physical endurance and zeal to join the Orders Militant.

Her faith had never left her. Never, though she had fought across the galaxy, following the banner of the Order of the Ebon Chalice from the abbey on Terra itself to the edge of Imperial space. In her later years she had tracked down and killed the Daemon Prince Parmenides the Vile, and in doing so had acted in a precarious alliance between the Sisters of Battle and the Inquisition. She had acquired a reputation as one of the few Sisters who could navigate the tangled question of church and Inquisitorial authority without losing sight of the ultimate enemy - Chaos, the darkness the Emperor still fought with the strength of his spirit. So when Inquisitor Thaddeus had requested a taskforce of Sisters to be assembled from a number of Orders Militant, it was Sister Aescarion he had asked to lead it.

Canoness Tasmander had asked Sister Aescarion to take on leadership of the Ebon Chalice, but she had turned down the office of canoness. Aescarion had fought her whole life, and she was too old to do anything other than keep fighting. It was the only way she knew her faith could become something more than mere words - that same faith that had made her a Sister in the first place, that had driven her to vanquish Parmenides and countless other enemies of humanity. It was the same faith that was being sorely tested in the depths of Eumenix.

Eumenix. If ever the Emperor's light had been taken from a world, it was this. She had never seen a world so utterly desolate of hope, and she had seen some terrible things. Eumenix was a grim illustration of what could happen in the absence of faith.

Aescarion watched as Interrogator Shen, his massive bronze carapace armour tarnished by the week-long trek through the filth and horror of Hive Quintus, moved warily down the steep shaft that led deeper into the lower layers of the hive. The air was infernally hot for the geothermal heatsinks were nearby, and everything stank. On the surface Sister Aescarion and her squad had seen mouldering mountains of corpses and their diseased reek seemed to permeate the whole planet - sweet and sickening, pure rot and corruption.

Down here, the heat made it worse. For several days Shen and the Sisters had been moving into the depths of the hive and now they were dozens of levels down, near the last possible Imperial institution in Hive Quintus. The Arbites and the governor's palace had fallen, the cathedral was a burned-out shell and the offices of the Administratum had been the first to fall when the madness began. The Adep-tus Mechanicus geological outpost in the lower reaches of the hive was the last possible nugget of resistance, and last place where the reports of escaping Soul Drinkers might be confirmed.

That had been weeks ago. Thaddeus had passed on the news as quickly as he could, but had entrusted the actual investigation to Interrogator Shen while he himself sifted through the Brokenback and the wreckage of House Jenassis. Both Shen and Aescarion held out little hope for finding anything alive in Hive Quintus - at least, not alive in the normal sense.

The architecture this far down was cramped and twisted: the compressed, distorted relics of the settlements on which Hive Quintus had been built. Discoloured moisture ran down the walls, filtered down through a hundred floors of decay. Ruptured power conduits covered everything in a dank mist. Plague-rats the size of attack dogs writhed through the twisted metal. The groaning of the settling city was punctured by the screams of yet another life being snuffed out, one amongst billions on the nightmare of Eumenix.

The corridor angled downwards and bent sharply up ahead. Shen drew his inferno pistol from its holster and moved up to the corner, the boots of his carapace armour crunching through the crystallised filth that encrusted the floor. Sister Aescarion followed, bolt pistol drawn, as did the Seraphim she had chosen to accompany her on the mission. One of them, Sister Mixu, had been at her side for over a decade. The others had been supplied by their own Orders, and all fought with twin bolt pistols in the tradition of the Seraphim squads.

Shen led the way round the corner. The corridor flared out into a ragged cavity, like a hole torn by a bomb blast clean through layers of the warren-like lower levels. Murky water pooled on the uneven floor and pale vapour gouted from ruptured pipelines overhead.