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The xenos writhed in agony and was sealed inside an enclosed containment space.
A squad of elite Legion veterans under Chaplain Korol’s command was assigned to the escort.
Aboard the Fidelitas Lex, on the other side of the ship, Lorgar was attuning himself to psychic power.
Psychic power, plainly put, is a form of sorcery, only a little more dangerous than ordinary sorcery, and stronger by about a billionfold.
Golden flames ignited across Lorgar’s palm: a physical manifestation of his psychic power.
What exactly is a psyker?
A psyker is a being that demonstrates the ability to harness psychic force.
Many races count such individuals among their number, while others possess no innate connection to psychic ability whatsoever and never produce psykers, the C’tan and the Necrons among them, who hold psykers in contempt and have engineered warriors designed specifically to seek them out and destroy them.
Some races, like the Aeldari, are innately gifted with psychic ability from birth.
The power psykers wield takes many forms, ranging from predicting an enemy’s movements to projecting devastating bursts of psychic energy.
Some can even enhance troops to strike with greater destructive force.
The earliest human psykers were powerful beings known as Shamans, yet after that age, psykers would vanish from human knowledge for thousands of years.
They first appeared among humans in great numbers at the close of M22, representing the future of humanity: the ideal form into which mankind would evolve, stronger, more intelligent, more capable.
Psychic mutation grew increasingly common across the human population, heralding the emergence of a new psychic race.
This new race was still fragile.
Its members lacked the psychic fortitude needed to resist the dangers of the Warp.
They were simultaneously a threat to the Imperium and a blessing to it.
Left unchecked, psykers posed a potential danger to the entire world.
Much of the Inquisition’s mandate was devoted to hunting them down.
The Imperium ensured that psykers were suppressed, tracked, and controlled.
Those strong enough were recruited into Imperial service, filling the vital roles of Astropaths and sanctioned psykers.
The weakest were destined to serve humanity through the Astronomican, as sustenance for the Emperor of Mankind, or to have their frontal lobes excised and join the numberless ranks of Servitors.
A small number were taken to the Obsidian Fortress of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, where an unknown fate awaited them.
Those who were tainted were purged and executed before ever reaching Terra.
The Imperium classified its own psykers by level of psychic ability.
This system was known as the Assignment, with each grade indicating the measure of psychic strength.
An Omicron-level psyker might possess only a faint, subconsciously activated capability.
An Alpha-level psyker was capable of bisecting a Titan.
Lorgar had only just begun to draw upon his psychic power, and already the force he wielded was sufficient to rival an Alpha-level psyker.
If he wished it, he could single-handedly weather an entire orbital bombardment and strike back with psychic force.
Lost in thought, Lorgar picked up a training blade and pressed his burning palm flat against the steel.
Flames erupted along the blade’s full length in an instant, searing fire wrapping every edge in a sheath of light.
He felt the power coursing through it, sufficient to wound the very soul.
After testing it briefly, Lorgar set the blade down.
The moment it left his hand, the flames died instantly.
He rolled his shoulders, about to make use of the ship’s Virtual Reality systems for further training, when First Captain Rockefeller walked in.
“My Primarch.” Rockefeller saluted.
“What is it, Rockefeller?” Lorgar turned to look.
“My lord, we have taken an enemy crew member alive.
Chaplain Korol is conducting the interrogation.” “Let’s go, then.
We’ll have a look.” Lorgar pulled on a clean white robe and walked out of the training chamber.
“Confess, xenos!” Chaplain Korol was conducting the interrogation, and what passed for an interrogation amounted, in practice, to several dozen swings of a crozius.
The Astartes had also attempted to obtain memories of the xenos’ home world by consuming its brain matter.
The procedure was known as the Omophagea: the organ sits within the spinal cord between the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, used to absorb an organism’s genetic material and retrieve its memories after ingestion.
The condition of this particular xenos, however, was peculiar.
Before anything else, they needed to determine where its brain actually was.
Judging by the shape of its head, the creature’s brain was either extraordinarily small, or simply not located in its head at all.
Korol stood before it.
The armour that had once been a dignified deep grey now looked more like a butcher’s apron, caked in dried and freshly applied fluorescent blue ichor, fragments of minute biological tissue embedded deep in the engraved crevices of the ceramite.
Before Korol was the last captive: a xenos officer seized from the depths of the bridge, one who might carry intelligence of considerable value.
It was fastened to a cold metal frame by heavy chains, held at an angle of excruciating torment.
Its pearlescent white carapace was covered in scorch marks from energy burns and deep depressions left by physical implements.
The compound lenses of its multifaceted eyes had gone dim and shattered.
Its beak-like proboscis opened and closed feebly, producing intermittent, death-rattle hisses.
Korol had just finished a round of “questioning.” The tool set down was fitted with a heating element and a precision drill, still glowing red and dripping with liquefied biological tissue.
Brow furrowed behind the helmet.
The xenos’ physiology.
Its stubborn will.
Or rather: its extreme, species-deep terror of its own fate.
Whatever the cause, it had exceeded expectations.
Their psyche appeared to be anchored to some form of strange collective consciousness network, which greatly resisted conventional physical interrogation.
Korol could tear apart their flesh.
But efficiently prying open that protected mental barrier, and extracting clean navigational data from it with any precision, was another matter entirely.
Neural-stripping, perhaps?
Or connecting part of its nervous system to the ship’s Cogitator for a forced overload-read?
But the risks were extreme, the data could be destroyed entirely in the process.
Korol turned the options over, weighing the various novel methods that might accomplish the objective.
Fingertips tapped unconsciously against the grip of the crozius.
The blood coating it had not yet fully dried.
Then the interrogation chamber’s hydraulic systems let out a smooth, pressurized hiss.
The heavy blast door slid open on both sides, and a figure walked through.
The arrival filled the entire space with an invisible yet immense presence.
Every smell in the room, blood, the stench of burning flesh, even the very air of despair, was, in an instant, diluted and subsumed by something far greater, far heavier.
It was Lorgar.
The Lord of the Legion had come.
Lorgar had no need of heavy Terminator Armour.
His very person was a moving fortress wall.
He was draped in a deep blue-grey robe adorned with intricate golden scripture and arcane symbols, worn over masterwork Power Armour.
His height was such that even a giant like Korol, clad in full Astartes plate, was required to look up.
The Primarch’s bronzed features were handsome to the point of seeming inhuman, yet carried the mark of a mind submerged in deep contemplation, and a gravity that edged toward Misericordia.
Lorgar’s gaze swept across the room, passing over the blood-smeared implements, and came to rest on the barely-breathing xenos and its interrogator.
“How does it stand?” Lorgar asked.
“Lord of the Legion.” Korol snapped out of thought at once and dropped to one knee almost by instinct, heavy armour striking the metal deck with a dull, resonant clang.
Korol bowed, a barely perceptible flicker of anxiety crossing the mind.
The Primarch had come in person.
Was this displeasure at the progress?
A personal disgrace, unable to complete even a task the Primarch had set.
Looking at Korol kneeling there, Lorgar found himself wondering how simply walking into a room had triggered a stress response like that.
As if he were some kind of Hakkimi.
Did he really look that terrifying?
“Rise, Korol.
No need for formality,” Lorgar said.
“It still won’t speak?” To Korol’s ears, the tone was perfectly calm, impossible to read for anger or satisfaction either way.
Korol rose quickly, servo-systems humming softly.
“My lord, its psychic architecture differs from lesser xenos strains.
There appears to be some form of collective consciousness providing support, resisting the mental collapse that physical suffering would ordinarily induce.” “Give me another half hour.
I will attempt neural overload—” The words came out slightly faster than usual.
Korol was afraid the Primarch might judge the efficiency lacking and consider the Legion’s honour diminished by it.
“No, no, no, Korol.” Lorgar cut off the words gently, gaze still fixed on the xenos’ shattered skull.
“You have done very well.
That is enough.” “What comes next — leave it to me.” As he spoke, the Primarch raised one hand.
The hand was perfect, powerful, proportioned far beyond any Astartes, as though it were the masterwork of a classical sculptor’s highest ideal.
An indescribable energy began to emanate from the palm.
The air around it warped faintly as psychic power converged, and a hum arose, barely audible, like the resonance of a billion tiny hymns.
Then, slowly and gently, Lorgar pressed that palm, gathered with invisible force, down upon the xenos’ skull, scarred and slicked with ichor.
“Come, xenos filth.” His voice dropped into a deep resonance that pierced the eardrum and reached directly into the depths of the soul.
“Tell me your home world.
Show me…
the most deeply hidden nest of your kind.” The words had barely fallen when everything changed.
Within the Primarch’s deep eyes, those eyes that seemed capable of seeing through all things, a blaze of light like molten gold suddenly burst forth.
Pure psychic power made manifest.
The outward sign of supreme mental force tearing through the barrier of reality itself.
Two pillars of golden light appeared to shoot from his eyes, flooding the space before him in brilliant radiance, suffused with an inhuman, awe-inspiring pressure.
And simultaneously, a psychic force as vast and unstoppable as a tidal wave surged through the hand pressed against the xenos’ skull, crashing violently into the furthest depths of that pitiful creature’s consciousness.
Lorgar’s absolute force came down directly on the xenos’ memories like a pair of great hands rampaging freely through its inner world, crushing everything in reach.
“Ungh — AAAAAHHHHH—!” The xenos captive erupted in the most final, most piercing, most indescribable shriek of its life.
The ultimate death-cry of a soul forcibly torn open.
Memories violently ransacked.
Consciousness utterly incinerated.
Its body convulsed and spasmed wildly in the chains, every limb pulling taut as iron, the compound lenses of its eyes shattering one by one beneath the golden radiance.
And at that same moment, Lorgar’s free hand rose.
Golden psychic power flowed and gathered at his fingertips like a docile flame, rapidly weaving and constructing an impossibly complex, impossibly precise three-dimensional star map.
Countless pinpoints of light, stars.
Nebulae drifting like faint wisps of gauze.
Gravitational curves tracing invisible ripples through space.
Navigational coordinates running like threads of gold.
All of it grew rapidly more complete, more clear, as the Primarch forcibly extracted information from the xenos’ collapsing mind.
Chaplain Korol and the other Word Bearers present held their breath, as though witnessing a miracle.
They watched the psychic star map grow more detailed by the second, system after system marked, route after route illuminated, until at last, a particular star system was highlighted.
The planet at its center glowed with an ominous, pale light.
The target.
The enemy’s home world.
“Found it.” Lorgar let the xenos’ corpse drop.
“Now, bring devastation down upon their home world.” ➤ Next: Retribution Delivered in the Emperor’s Name