As the iterators did their work in the deep-valley reeducation camps, public debates and potent examples of the Imperium’s majesty were unveiled to the people of Heliosa. Lemuel studied the techniques used by the Imperial speakers, noting the armsmen discreetly placed to drag off hecklers, the native turncoat planted within an audience to reinforce the speaker’s message with loud agreement, and the unseen vox-bee that flitted through the crowds to broadcast Imperial-friendly questions to which the answers were already prepared.

Each iterator had a team of investigators, whose task it was to unearth local beliefs and traditions, which were then embellished and finally supplanted with subtly altered versions that reinforced loyalty to the Imperium. The work of the Thousand Sons in the Great Library proved to be an enormous help with this.

Magnus’ Legion hardly strayed from the library but the Word Bearers worked closely with the iterators, providing security for the camps and reinforcing the teachings with their own brand of loyalty. Lemuel found this element of compliance the most distasteful, seeing the indigenous culture of a world gradually overwhelmed by the Imperium’s doctrines like a cuckoo invading a nest. The Word Bearers version of the Imperial Truth was particularly hardline, and Lemuel soon grew weary of the hectoring rhetoric that smelled more of indoctrination than it did of education. It was rumoured that the Emperor had chastised Lorgar’s Legion in the past for such zeal, but even if that were true, it seemed the lesson hadn’t stuck.

The Imperium wasbenign. It didbring hope in the form of Unity, but the Word Bearers’ argument seemed absurdly petulant, posited along the lines of a schoolyard bully’s argument.

“We are right because we say we are right,” it said. “Agree with us and we will be friends. Disagree with us and we will be enemies.”

That was no way to win the hearts and minds of a conquered people, but what other choice was there? It rankled that this new beginning had to be won with linguistic subterfuge and outright intimidation, but Lemuel was not naive enough to believe that a populace who had fought so hard to resist the Imperium would be brought to compliance without such stratagems. It would shorten the process massively if the populace could be made to believe they were better off now than they were before.

What saddened Lemuel most was that it seemed to be working.

Lemuel was reminded of the ancient text Camille had shown him, the Shiji, a meticulous record of a grand historian that glorified the ruling emperor while vilifying the previous dynasty.

In his quieter, darker moments, Lemuel would often wonder if the Imperium was really as enlightened as it claimed.

LIKE AGHORU, AN Imperial Commander was appointed to oversee the Ark Reach Cluster and the long years of reconstruction and integration that lay ahead. Where Aghoru received a civilian administrator, Heliosa required a firmer hand. Major General Hestor Navarre was a senior officer of the Ouranti Draks, a regiment of swarthy-skinned fighters exclusively recruited from the desiccated jungle regions of Sud Merica. A career soldier of Hy Brasil, Navarre had fought his way across a hundred battlefields alongside the Word Bearers, and his appointment was greeted with sage approval.

Unlike Aghoru, scores of regiments were dispersed throughout the conquered Ark Reach Cluster. Imperial administration burrowed its way into every level of society, replacing defunct planetary rulers with Imperial delegates and the infrastructure to allow them to function. Munitorum officials calculated each planet’s worth to the Imperium, while storytellers and myth-makers travelled system-wide extolling the glorious history of mankind.

Four months after the collapse of resistance, word came that the last text of the Phoenix Crag library had been copied into the archive stacks of the Photep. A day later, the 28th Expeditionary fleet broke orbit, and Magnus the Red gave the order to make best speed for an isolated shoal of spatial debris in the galactic east of the Ark Reach.

The various shipmasters of the 28th Expedition queried the coordinates, as they were far from the calculated system jump point, but Magnus’ order was confirmed. This region of space would allow their vessels a calmer entry to the Great Ocean, and only when the fleet had reached this newly declared jump point did Magnus reveal their ultimate destination.

The 28fh Expedition had been summoned to the Ullanor system, and excitement spread through the fleet at the prospect of joining the war against the greenskin. More thrilling was the prospect of joining forces with the Emperor himself, who fought in the forefront of the campaign, smiting the savage foe alongside Horus Lupercal.

Hopes of glory to be earned and battles to be fought were dashed, only to be replaced by awe, as it became known that the campaign was already over. The war against the greenskins of Ullanor had been projected to last years, decades even.

The Emperor’s summons was not in the name of war, but of victory.

The Thousand Sons were to stand with many of their brother Legions in a Great Triumph honouring the Emperor’s victory, a spectacle the likes of which the galaxy would never see again. Under Magnus’ expert direction, the fleet Navigators plotted a razor’s course for the Ullanor system.

The Expedition fleet of the Word Bearers was deeply enmeshed in the integration of the worlds of the Ark Reach into the Imperium, and Lorgar would pull his warriors out and make for Ullanor when they were able.

Magnus and Lorgar said their goodbyes briefly, the mighty primarchs speaking words that only they could hear. But as Ahriman watched them part, he caught a flicker of Magnus’ aura, the faintest whisper of something indefinable, yet disquieting.

The last time he had seen it had been when Magnus and Russ had almost come to blows.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Triumph/The Dusk Lord/Old Friends

ULLANOR WAS A world transformed. In the hands of the greenskin it had been reduced to a rough world of reeking lairs and filth-choked encampments. Astartes war had cleansed its surface with scarifying fury that swept all before it. Yet for all its ferocity, it could not compare with the industry of the Mechanicum.

Four Labour Fleets of geoformers went to work on the rugged hinterlands that had housed the feral warlord of the savages, levelling the world’s largest continent as a stage befitting the Master of Mankind. Millions of servitors, automatons and penal battalions went to work on its construction, reducing mountains to rubble and using the debris of their grinding down to fill the lightless valleys and even out the undulant wastelands where the greenskin had lit his revel fires and thrown up his ugly fortresses of mud and clay.

What should have taken centuries took months, and as squadron after squadron of Thunderhawks of the Thousand Sons broke through the acrid clouds of smog and dust hanging over Ullanor, it was a sight calculated to take a viewer’s breath away.

The ground below was a polished granite mirror, a terrazzo landmass that shone like the angelglass of the ancient court astronomer. Vitrified craters had been melted into the landscape and filled with promethium. Searing flames turned the sky orange and sent towering pillars of smoke into the heavens. A laser-straight road, half a kilometre wide and five hundred long cut through the heart of the craters, its extremities marked by trophy posts bearing the bleached, fleshless skulls of greenskin brutes.

Almost obscured by the smoke, hundreds of enormous vessels hung in low orbit, their engines straining against the pitiless attraction of gravity. The atmosphere clashed with chain lightning from the blistering electromagnetic fields each vessel generated. Flocks of strike cruisers, fighter aircraft and bombers flew formation overhead, the roar of their engines a wordless vocalisation of primal glory.