Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had assumed overall authority, having rose to high favour after coordinating the Lastrati Pogrom decades before. Up to three hundred inquisitors and interrogators answered directly to him and his staff, with many more forming a secret network even the Inquisition itself could not unravel.

Many were embedded in the Imperial Guard units sent to claim back disputed worlds; others tried to determine which planets would be the next to fall. Some were even reporting back from worlds that now belonged to Teturact. They sent brief transmissions hinting at unimaginable horror, of the building-sized piles of corpses and plagues that rotted men's minds. The Ordo Malleus searched for daemons and the taint of Chaos amongst the thousands of reports from across the warzone. Even the Ordo Xenos, whose authority extended to the activities of aliens within the Imperium, examined the possibilities of xenos technology in Teturact's methods.

The Inquisitorial fortress was carved into the peak of the tallest mountain on Caitaran, so high the clouds rolled past below the fortress's spaceport. It was a remnant of a civilisation the Imperium had absorbed thousands of years before. It had been a martial society with kings, lords and barons, one of whom had expended untold fortunes to carve an impregnable palace from the mountains that no army could take. He was right - no invader took its walls, but the Imperium dropped a virus bomb on it when he refused to pay fealty to the explorator units that arrived on Caitaran when the world was on the frontier of Imperial space. The planet fell almost overnight once word spread that the fortress was now protected only by a legion of corpses.

It was a good story, the sort told to initiates in the Adeptus Terra about how a concentration of effort on one selected target could do more than a massive assault on all fronts. Perhaps it was even true, and it was certainly relevant here - the majority of the Inquisitorial effort was devoted to locating Teturact and killing him so that, just like the indigenous primitives of Caitaran, the empire of pestilence would crumble in short order. Unfortunately no one knew who, what or where Teturact might be, let alone what might kill him.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't Thaddeus's problem. He was lucky Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had given him use of the facilities on Caitaran. Thaddeus had little more than pure instinct to suggest that the Soul Drinkers might be in the warzone, or at least heading for it. The Soul Drinkers had been on Eumenix, of that there was little doubt, but Eumenix had only recently become off-limits through the plague and there wasn't even definite proof that Teturact was involved - worlds had fallen to disease before without agents of Chaos being responsible.

But it made a strange sort of sense in Thaddeus's trained mind. The Soul Drinkers might even be serving Teturact. But perhaps it was more complicated than that since the forces of Chaos fought one another as often as they fought the Imperium. Though the Soul Drinkers could be anywhere, there seemed a likelihood that they were tangled in the hideous mess of Teturact's fledgling empire. So that was where Thaddeus would look for them.

Thaddeus would soon try to push his luck by receiving an audience with Lord Inquisitor Kolgo himself. But for the moment, he was just trying to eke some comfort out of the quarters the fortress staff had given him. The outer parts of the fortress had not been modernised and the mountain cold blew through them with little resistance. The furnishings were sparse and the floor freezing. The view across the mountains was extraordinary, though, and Thaddeus had been lucky to requisition quarters for himself. The storm troopers and Sisters were in the spaceport barracks, and he had obtained an infirmary suite in which he could examine what Sister Aescarion had brought back from Eumenix.

It had been six months since he had landed on Koris XXIII-3, believing that he had run out of leads on the Soul Drinkers. Now he had part of one of their corpses, and the chalice symbol on the dead Marine's pistol was testimony to his allegiance. Along with the reports from the survivors at House Jenassis, he had found the first concrete proof of the Chapter's activities since the Cerberian Field. To find it, he had paid with the life of Interrogator Shen and several dozen Arbites at House Jenassis. The inquisitor in him said that the trade had been worth it - he was surprised to find that the man in him agreed.

Thaddeus opened up the trunk at the foot of the chamber's four-poster bed. Inside was the meagre collection of hard evidence he had accumulated - a datacube and viewer containing a copy of the pict-file from the Brokenback, a charred volume of Daenyathos's Catechisms Martial salvaged from the Soul Drinkers' scuttled fleet, and data-slates containing transcripts of witness interviews. The bolt pistol lay on top in its holster.

Thaddeus picked it up - the weapon was so huge Thaddeus could only hold it in two hands, but a Space Marine carried it as a sidearm. It had an ammunition selector and twin magazines, and its casing was chased in gold. The chalice symbol of the Soul Drinkers was stamped on the handle.

'A fine weapon,' said a grimly familiar, grating voice. 'Terrible that it should be used for such evil.'

Thaddeus looked round to see the Pilgrim entering the chamber. Instantly the bare stone of the room seemed to darken and the air became even colder. The Pilgrim bore such strong determination to see the enemies of the Emperor dead, that its hate infected everything around it.

'The medicae are ready.’ the Pilgrim said, and left the room. Thaddeus dropped the pistol back in the trunk, and followed.

THE OFFICIO MEDICAE personnel stationed at the Caitaran fortress had been seconded to the Inquisition to study the various plagues that sprung up wherever Teturact cast his gaze. Thaddeus had secured the services of the Medicae pathology team consisting of two orderlies and an Adeptus Mechanicus Biologis adept. These individuals were waiting in the small infirmary when Thaddeus and the Pilgrim arrived, the faceless orderlies standing as if to attention. The adept - a stocky middle-aged woman with a very serious face and wearing a white lab suit - stood with folded arms at the head of the slab of polished granite that served as an operation table. There was a Space Marine's battered head lying on it like an offering on an altar.

'I apologise for the delay, inquisitor.’ said the adept in a clipped, no-nonsense voice. We had to ensure the specimen was fully irradiated and quarantined.’

'Understood, adept. May we begin?'

'Certainly The specimen is of an oversized male humanoid cranium, partially fleshed, severed at the axis vertebra...'

Thaddeus watched as the orderlies took scalpels and forceps from the implement trays by the side of the slab and began to pare away the rotten flesh from the skull. The adept recited the initial findings, confirming that the head was from a Space Marine and a veteran at that, judging by the single silver long service stud in the forehead. The bones of the face and cranium were scored with old scars from blades and bullets, and a bullet wound that had blown a chunk from the forehead had evidently been caused after death. The adept had the orderlies reveal tell-tale implanted organs: landman's ear - the inner and middle ear enhancement that gave a Marine sharper hearing and perfect balance. The occulobe - the organ that sat behind the eyes and gave the Marine a heightened sense of sight. The remains of the gene-seed in the throat -the sacred organ that controlled all the Marine's other enhancements and bolstered his metabolism.

'The state of the specimen suggests accelerated decomposition followed by a suspension of natural decay, similar to other specimens recovered from worlds within the disputed systems around Stratix.’