The Lord of the Unfleshed paused, as though to relish what he was about to do. He leaned in close to Verena Kain and though he whispered the words, they echoed in the skulls of everyone within the compound.

'You were there.'

Then he hurled her into the white heat of the flames.

Uriel cried out, a wordless exclamation at the horror of this murder, and the Lord of the Unfleshed tipped back his head to let loose a terrible, roaring howl of desperation. The creature turned his wounded, blistered, face to Uriel and the look that passed between them was intimate, a moment of shared repulsion.

The Lord of the Unfleshed dropped its face and the moment of connection was over as the multitude of minds that had taken over the workings of the Unfleshed tightened their grip.

There was no gunfire anymore. The compound was silent, but for the anguished cries of dying soldiers. The Lord of the Unfleshed roared and called his tribe to him as Uriel staggered through the bloody debris of the battle.

'Why?' he shouted. 'Why did you need to do this?'

The Lord of the Unfleshed looked up and the white light of vengeance burned there like fiery comets in his eyes.

'Because they were there,' he said. 'All must be punished.'

With that dreadful pronouncement, he turned away, leaping through the gap in the wall blown by the explosion of the generator building. The remaining Unfleshed swiftly followed him, and Uriel saw that they were moving towards the simmering city of Barbadus.

With awful certainty, Uriel knew that this night's bloodshed was not over.

Leto Barbaden watched the fires raging to the north of his city from the highest garret of his private library. He knew the source was the Screaming Eagles' compound, but he felt nothing for the men and women he knew must be dying beneath the pall of smoke, a dark smudge against the night sky.

He knew the reasons for the attack, but cared little for them. The people of Barbadus were venting their aggression against their conquerors. It was the only reaction the corpse of a beaten populace could make against their rulers, the last, spastic, gasps of a body that did not yet know it was dead.

That it was only natural was no excuse, however, and he had already ordered more units onto the streets to keep the peace, with force if need be. He would have order, even though blood would be spilt and lives lost to enforce it.

Barbaden turned away from the shielded window and laced his hands behind his back as he descended the iron screw-stair to the main floor of the library. He had known that the early years of his governorship would be difficult; it was the lot of great men to deal with difficult times, but it was a measure of their greatness how they dealt with them.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the marble floor of the library, taking a deep breath of the musty odour of his books, papers and manuscripts. He had painstakingly assembled the books over decades of war, transporting them from campaign to campaign. The solid, reassuring feel of the facts and figures bound to their pages were a constant comfort to him and he slid a gold-spined volume from the shelf, a biography of Solar Macharius, as he made his way to his drinks cabinet.

He had always admired the great Lord Solar, a man of singular vision and determination who was only undone by the cowardice of lesser men. It was the curse of genius that, so often, their greatness was thwarted by the shortcomings of their contemporaries. Lord Solar Macharius had reached the edge of known space, had stood at the very edge of the galaxy, and had dared to meet the gaze of the halo stars.

Only tremulous men who laughingly called themselves warriors had prevented him from conquering those stars for the Emperor. Only the weakness of spirit of his followers had prevented Macharius from achieving his true potential. Leto Barbaden had long ago decided that no such weakness, in him or others, would hold him back from achieving his greatness.

He poured a generous measure of raquir before sitting in the room's only chair and opening the smooth, vellum pages of the book. His beloved words stared out at him, their beauty containing immutable facts and the course of history in every cursive line and illuminated letter.

Leto Barbaden loved to read volumes of history, the more detailed the better, for he was a man to whom the minutiae of history were the choicest sweetmeats. History was written by the victors, an aphorism as old as time, and thus Leto Barbaden knew that his position in history was assured, at least on this world.

Where others might see cruelty, he saw strength of will.

Where others saw coldness and lack of emotion, he saw resolve.

Leto Barbaden knew he was humanity without the drag of conscience or emotion.

He embodied reason and logic uncluttered by emotion, for emotion was a failing of those without the courage of their convictions.

Some might call him a monster, but they were fools.

This was a harsh, grim galaxy and only those who could detach themselves from the ballast of emotion could rise above such petty concerns as morality or right and wrong to do what needed to be done.

He had known that since Colonel Landon had been killed at Koreda Gorge along with his senior officers. The men had called him Old Serenity, a name Barbaden found absurd. How could a name like that be suitable for a man who made war his profession?

Landon would not have had the stomach for the conquest of Salinas. His passions were too close to the surface and he cared too deeply for his men to have succeeded. To Landon, bringing his men back alive in the face of the steel teeth of war was all important, but Leto Barbaden knew that if there was one resource the Imperium was not short of, it was manpower. Machines and weapons were precious commodities, but soldiers could always be replaced, and so too could populations.

It was a truth Barbaden had come to early in the war against the Sons of Salinas, realising that no matter how many people he killed, there would always be more. People were ugly, brutish confections of meat, bone and desires, living sordid little lives and breeding like flies as they went about their pointless lives.

It seemed inconceivable that no one else was able to see this, that life was nothing to be valued so highly.

He alone had understood this stark fact when he had ordered the destruction of Khaturian, knowing that the scale of such killing would so inflame his enemy's passions that they would have no choice but to meet him in battle.

Sylvanus Thayer, who had proved to be a worthy adversary until the death of his family, had led his warriors into an unwinnable battle, and Barbaden smiled as he remembered the sight of the scorched battlefield that had seen the Sons of Salinas destroyed.

Once again, emotion had destroyed a potentially great general.

He read for another hour, sipping his raquir and flipping to quotes from Solar Macharius that he had long ago memorised. His finger trailed down the page until he found his favourite.

'There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival,' he read aloud. 'Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.'

Barbaden smiled as he read the quote, recognising the genius inherent in those few words.

Brevity and clarity were traits he admired and attempted to emulate.

A knock came at the door and he said, 'Enter.'

The doors opened and the frock-coated Eversham entered, his face pale and his steps hurried. Barbaden lifted his head from his book, seeing that his equerry carried an encrypted data-slate and noting his unkempt appearance.

'Your formal attire is somewhat dishevelled, Eversham,' said Barbaden. 'Smarten up before I have you broken down to kitchen scrubber.'