The low sun was at their backs, and the sky was a shade of deep blue, broken with a few long lines of grey-white clouds. High up, the moons were visible as ghosts, but what caught his eye were the lights.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. They were lines of fire, thread-thin, marching slowly across the heavens towards the far horizon. There were lots of them, a dozen or more at his count. It was hard to be certain. They were reflecting sunlight as they fell.

‘Invasion,’ said someone, and the word was almost a sob.

‘The Warmaster!’ Leon turned and saw the red-faced woman again. She was stabbing her finger at the air. ‘He’s coming down from orbit!’

‘They’re heading in the direction of the capital,’ said another bystander. ‘Isn’t that how they do things? Droppers or something, they call them. Packed full of soldiers and weapons!’

‘Drop-pods,’ Leon corrected, half to himself.

‘What was that, boy?’

Leon turned to the woman. ‘No, I mean, I don’t think–’

‘You’re the expert all of a sudden then, are you?’ she retorted, glaring at him.

‘I’ve read books,’ he replied weakly, and pushed on before she could speak again. ‘I mean, we don’t know what that is. The lights in the sky… they c–could be meteorites. I’ve seen them many–’

The woman’s pinched face stiffened. ‘Don’t talk rot!’ She glared at Leon’s father. ‘Ames, is your boy as big a fool as he sounds? See it right there!’ She kept pointing upwards. ‘The Legiones Astartes have come!’

The youth looked to his father for support but Ames was shaking his head; and again the townsfolk were all talking at once, and whatever he said went ignored.

+++Broadcast Minus Eight Weeks [Solar]+++

THE TRAIN OF empty cargo capsules passed through the ultraviolet anti-bacteria field and out of the throat of the Skyhook, the complex handling claws and mag-rail points snapping back and forth. Occasional flashes of sparks and running lights cast weak, sporadic illumination inside the depot complex at the foot of the space elevator. An identical train of pods moved in the opposite direction, these ones laden with vac-sealed sheaves of freeze-dried crops. With a grind of gears, the line of six capsules mated to the ascent line and they rose up the steep ramp until the train was moving vertically. The drive-head engaged and the pods raced away, up towards the night. In two hours’ time, they would be in the microgravity zone of the loading station in low geostationary orbit. There, mechanical menials would unload the train and move the cargo to a staging area, ready to await the arrival of the next interstellar freighter. The operation went on without a human hand in the process.

Across the yard, the other, empty pods ground to a sudden halt as they moved beneath the unblinking eye of a terahertz-wave scanner. An alert horn hooted twice and the train shunted sideways, all six pods opening automatically. Chem-nozzles on spidery manipulator arms unfolded from the ceiling and began to probe the interiors of the capsules, coughing spurts of caustic foam into the darkened corners. The sensor had detected something inside one of the pods, and initiated a pest-control subroutine. It wasn’t unknown for creatures from other biospheres to make their way through the loading–unloading process, and off-world vermin had the potential to wreck a colony’s entire ecosystem.

Nothing alive was meant to find its way up or down the Skyhook, no passengers, only inert cargo. The single landing strip out in Oh-One that could be considered a space port was the sole point of contact between off-worlders and the colony, although it was very rarely used. The transports that came for the planet’s bounty occasionally off-loaded supplies, but mostly they came to gather up the harvest and take it away. The crews of those vessels didn’t bother to venture down to the surface; they let their cogitators handle the business of arrival and departure. No one wanted to stay near Virger-Mos II any longer than they had to.

The nozzles found their target and bracketed it with bursts of hot liquid; but the life-form inside walked through the boiling rain and clambered out onto the floor of the depot. The automated system was not programmed to anticipate anything like intelligent behaviour from a xenos pest, and so did nothing as the man doffed the plastoid oversuit that had protected him from the chill, folding it away in a case on his back.

He removed the backpack and separated it into two discrete sub-cases, and after a few minutes of preparation, he walked on. The new arrival casually made his way across the depot, taking care to skirt the autonomous loaders, until he reached one of the few human-accessible maintenance bays. It hadn’t been used in decades, and it was an effort to get the doors open; but once he was done, the man was able to make his way out of the facility and onto the mainway.

Because his masters had trained him exceptionally well, no one in Town Forty-Four saw him; at least, not until he wanted them to.

He’d changed into a commonplace, but well appointed, traveller’s robe, and after crossing around the edge of the township, he doubled back and approached from the east. He would appear to be walking in from across the plainslands, out of the warm, dusty evening.

It wasn’t necessary for him to ask directions or even consult the detailed topographic map copied from the files of the Departmento Terra Colonia. Every town like this one was the same; not in a literal sense, not in the manner of the lay of roads and of houses, but in character. The dynamic of the settlement matched those on dozens of other human worlds; the personalityof the place, for want of a better word, was alike.

Even as Mendacs let himself be drawn towards the lights and the noise coming from the tavern, he was opening up his senses to Town Forty-Four. He wanted to know it; and in many ways, he already did.

He entered the hostelry and was immediately aware of every eye upon him. That came as no surprise; an unannounced visitor in a remote township such as this one was akin to a minor miracle. Even as he crossed the room to the auto-bar on the far side, conversations were starting up, loaded with speculation about who he was or where he might be from.

He ordered a bottle of a coarse local beer from the mechanical tending the counter, and waited for the first of them to gather enough courage to approach. He took care pouring the ale into a glass, using the moment to discreetly survey the room. There were pushpull chairs and gaming tables here and there. Regicide seemed popular in this place, and that was good; it gave him a point of commonality with the locals that he could exploit.

Perhaps a third of the beer was gone when, at last, a man spoke to him. ‘Pardon, esquire,’ he began, inclining his head. ‘Silas Cincade. Can I ask if you’re from the Tolliver ranches?’

It was a poorly concealed gambit intended to draw him out, but it was exactly what he wanted. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he replied, with a smile. ‘My name is Mendacs. I’m, ah, passing through.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Cincade, although it was clear he didn’t. ‘Have you ridden in? I have stables for any rovers.’ Mendacs caught the aroma of engine oil on the man.

He gave a shake of the head. ‘I walked. From the next settlement.’

Cincade’s eyes widened. ‘From Two-Six? That’s quite a hike!’

‘Two-Six,’ Mendacs repeated, with a nod. ‘It is. And dry with it.’ He gently modified his tone, dropping the softer, more educated manner of a core worlder to emulate something closer to the rough-edged vowels of the mechanic’s colonist accent. ‘I admit it gave me a thirst.’ He saluted with the beer, and Cincade nodded back with a knowing smirk, ordering the same for himself.

‘Cuts the dust, that’s truth.’

Mendacs saw that Cincade’s compatriots – a chubby man, a youth and a dour fellow in a tunic – were sat around a gaming table, trying not to appear interested in the newcomer. ‘I’d like to take the weight off me,’ he went on, gesturing at the bags he carried. ‘Get a little distraction into the bargain.’