‘So, the Inquisition finally deigns to pay us a visit.’

The woman was old, and her words embodied the arrogance that emerges in those nearing the end of their life. Her black robes, trimmed with red cloth and discrete silver chains, marked her out as a high-level administrator within the Ecclesiarchy, rather than a member of the priesthood itself. She was flanked by two hooded teens in black robes devoid of ornamentation and held together at the waist by a length of knotted rope, likely novitiates serving as her aides. Though their thick hoods concealed much of their faces, Helena could see they were aghast at their mistress’ flippant attitude towards the Prime Agent. Helena herself stood behind Agent Lafayette and to her left, with Corporal Al’Said mirroring her on the right. The Agent cocked her head in surprise, shifting the nest of wires that emerged from her scalp before disappearing behind her collar. Before she could articulate a response, the old woman held out her hand and spoke again.

‘On behalf of the office of Cardinal Cadiz I welcome you to the Quixote memorial Basilica. I am the Mistress of Records here, Sabina Benevente.’

Helena jumped in shock at the name, before fumbling about in the folds of her own dark grey robes for her concealed pistol, offering a silent prayer that neglect had not rusted the springs. To her right, Corporal Al’Said moved with a far more professional grace, raising his Hellgun and placing himself in between the Agent and the threat. Agent Lafayette offered little in the way of a physical reaction, but Helena saw her right hand tighten its grip around her staff.

‘You have an unfortunate name, Madam Benevente.’

‘What I have are unfortunate feet.’

The two children cowered behind their mistress, looking about ready to turn and run with every sentence the old woman said.

‘Club feet, to be precise. The nobility doesn’t like it when their daughter comes out a cripple; I couldn’t fight, and there was a chance I may pass my genetic deviance onto any children I had, so I was shipped off to the Ecclesiarchy at age eight to spend the rest of my life far from the public eye. It’s more common than you’d expect, though no one would ever admit it.’

‘It seems a blessing in disguise.’ Lafayette spoke, ‘Without your disability, you would have died with your family.’

‘Indeed, I suppose the shoe is on the other foot now.’ The Benevente woman continued, ‘I cannot say I really knew them, anyone I remember from the family died long before your little band arrived, but I mourn the loss all the same. Now then, shall we put away our guns and continue; your girl there looks like she’s holding a rabid cat, not a pistol, and I’m worried she will do herself an injury.’

Helena blushed, hoping her red cheeks were hidden beneath her hood, but kept her pistol raised until a dismissive wave from Agent Lafayette had both her and Al’Said standing down. The former noblewoman led them through the twisting corridors of the Ecclesiarchies Cathedral-City, a jumbled mess of architecture that had grown up over millennia to accommodate the spiritual needs of a growing population and the administrative necessities that accompanied them. Helena found the site slightly unnerving; in many ways it was laid out in much the same way as the Administratum compound of her youth, but there were subtle differences that were unmissable to her trained eye. Every surface was in some way ornamented, be it the corridors of ornately carved stone whose ceilings were an unbroken string of evocative frescoes depicting a never-ending stream of pilgrims or the gilt wooden panelling that divided the offices. Servo-skulls, a rare but omnipresent sight in the Administratum, moved about in great swarms a dozen strong, broadcasting hymns and spraying the halls with incense as they went about their duties. A flock of cherubim moved irregularly down the length of the hall, held up by discrete grav-packs hidden amidst decorative wings. The flying infants moved like a drunken mess, careening off the walls and nearly colliding with the Prime Agent, who looked at the grotesque display with open disgust.

‘Lousy little shits.’ The Mistress of Records exclaimed, dodging the flock with a practiced grace. ‘Their logic engines are always failing, and they practically eat through our budget in maintenance costs, but people seem to expect this sort of thing. I’m convinced they’re a joke by one of those mechanical lunatics that went out of hand. Whenever we sent them off for servicing, I’ll wager they have a good laugh at our expense, hissing and whirring in that disgusting language of theirs.’

They meandered down this endless labyrinth, at times walking atop great balconies built along the tops of grand temples whilst passing at other times through great underground ossuaries stacked high with human bones. Such was the nature of life in a Hive that this varied journey took place without any change in altitude on their part. The endless expanse of ceilings comforted Helena, who had spent far too long under the seemingly endless expanse of open sky for her liking recently. Still, as welcome as it was to be back within the comforting steel and concrete of a proper city, Helena found her mind drifting to thoughts of her mistress, who still walked ahead of her, meeting the Cleric’s endless remarks with a stoic silence.

Helena did not know what had transpired during her mistress’ meeting with the Inquisitor, and it wasn’t her place to find out, but she had unmistakably been affected by whatever had been said. Upon returning to her staff at the Precinct-Fortress, Agent Lafayette had shut herself in her office for five hours with only her new Psyber-Eagle for company. The Eagle itself had been let loose upon reaching the Cathedral-City and was busying itself hunting smaller prey amongst the great spires and flying buttresses, the twin-headed bird no doubt sending the priesthood into fits of religious fervour. Helena had not intruded upon her mistress during those five hours, to do so would have been wholly inappropriate, and when she had finally emerged her face had been a picture of carefully-maintained composure. Helena was worried, her duty bound her to the Prime Agent come what may and if she was about to collapse then Helena would inevitably follow her.

Eventually their mismatched party reached a small antechamber with offices on either side and a vault door of black metal at the centre, flanked by two statues of women holding a book and a key respectively. The door itself was a masterpiece of engraved metal depicting a great circular tower that reached up to the heavens, with tiny figures bearing scrolls climbing up the sides. The door was bordered by arcane machinery bearing a host of purity shields and a faint shimmer in the air that suggested the presence of a void-shield. Though the Agent’s party showed no outward reaction to the magnificent chamber, their host still looked back at them with smug satisfaction at their opulent surrounding.

‘A fine place, wouldn’t you say? Few things in this universe are more precious than knowledge, and we work hard to ensure it is well protected. This door leads to the Catacombs of Knowledge, where all our written records are stored. Everything from the annual budget of the smallest parish temple to paper copy of the annual report sent on to the Sector Patriarch. That wonderful carving depicts an ancient Terran myth, the tower of Babel. The legend says it was built by humanity as an attempt to leave Terra for the stars. Religious scholars believe it to have been built by the Emperor in a time before the Imperium, as an attempt to uplift humanity.’

Once again Agent Lafayette appeared unimpressed and simply turned from the vault door to face the Mistress of Records.

‘I need full access to all your reports on local deviation from the Imperial Creed, particularly those from around 4,000 years ago. I will also need every record from the Ordos Famulos from the same. My Adjutant will handle the details.

‘Yes, Madam.’ Helena stammered before immersing herself in the familiar world of data.

The next few hours passed as a blur, first Helena and the two Ecclesiarchy aides worked their way through the cogitators in the antechamber, parsing through thousands of files and trying to identify which ones were relevant based solely on the stored title and abstract. Once they had narrowed down their search to a mere eight-hundred and seventy-six documents, Helena had her own staff of adepts brought in, and they all waited expectantly before the titanic vault door.

Madam Benevente stepped forward, holding a tiny golden key, and a priest in white robes joined her, holding his own, identical, key. As one they inserted their keys into a small hole on the base of the two statues that flanked the vault door. In a bright flash of purple light, the void shield disengaged, and the sound of innumerable gears grinding against each other began to emanate from the heavy door. Gradually the turning gears ceased their motion, growing quieter and quieter until, in absolute silence, the door split down the centre of the tower and opened.

Behind it lay a great cylindrical tower that descended down almost a kilometre. The Catacombs had been built within one of the great spinal-pillars that supported the weight of the hive itself, and ten meters of heavy steel separated the open heart of the archive from the rest of Nova Iberia. Staircases criss-crossed the open heart of the pillar, leading to endless bookshelves built into the walls. Servo-skulls moved up and down this chamber at will, keeping the shelves clear of dust and moving to access the records requested by the Inquisition.

Helena paused atop the highest balcony, looking down a kilometre of endless shelves, and found herself overawed. All her life had been spent in and amongst data and for her this was more magnificent than any of the sights she had seen as they passed through the Cathedral-City. This dingy cylinder of endless bookshelves was a temple of knowledge, and Helena and her staff were mere pilgrims come to bask in its holiness. They moved throughout its tiered floors in utter silence, handling ancient parchment in gloved hands or with the aid of metal augmetics, so as not to damage the fragile parchment. For hours on end they poured through their treasure. It was like panning for gold; most of the documents were worthless, everyday reports about irrelevant events, and endless list of arranged marriages and stolen gossip.

Roughly half of the files were the annual reports filed by the Ecclesiarchy on the divergence of Nova Iberia from the Imperial Cult. There were a million worlds in the Imperium, and though they were united by their belief in the God-Emperor as a divine being, there was little between that to connect them. On some worlds the population believed the emperor dwelt within their star, or atop their tallest mountain hidden behind the clouds, on others the emperor was the genetic ancestor of all mankind, whilst other believed him to be an ancient human who ascended to Godhood. The Ecclesiarchy itself preached in accordance to the teachings of the Lectitio Divinitatus, but to bring the differing faiths of the Imperium in line with their orthodoxy would be an impossible and foolish task. Instead, the different religious norms upon the worlds of the Imperium are logged and sent on to the higher levels of the organisation. The Ecclesiarchy then modifies their approach accordingly. A priest from a world laden with images of the God-Emperor would therefore modify his approach on a world where such a thing is seen as heretical.

When a world is newly brought into the fold, then they may not have heard of the God-Emperor at all. In that case, sisters of the Orders Sabine work with the Missionarius Galaxia to either undermine the local faith, or convince the population that they were worshipping the Emperor in another aspect. Close to three and a half millennia ago, an Ecclesiarch on Nova Iberia had misidentified the ‘Master in the Mountains’ as a synonym for the Emperor from the planet’s pre-Imperial days. This was an impossibility, the planet was conquered by the forces of the Emperor in the days of the Great Crusade, there should been very little of the world’s original beliefs remaining. Indeed, the reference to the Master as the Emperor seems to have originated from a discussion with one of the ranking nobles of the day, likely as a cover for whatever the true origin was. The mountain range around the Raptor’s Nest had always been surrounded by myths, but the association with the ‘Master of the Mountains’ seemed to have begun only four millennia ago. Clearly an attempt had been made to deceive the Ecclesiarchy.

The second set of files were the reports of the Orders Famulos, a division of the Adepta Sororitas tasked with advising Imperial nobility. The sisters of these Orders were offered to the Noble Households of the Imperium as advisors on religious matters, and as tutors for the offspring of the nobility. They arranged marriages, resolved disputes and secretly monitored their charges for signs of instability or mutation. In that regard, the nobility of Nova Iberia was exceptional; they had next to no birth defects and their members were all physically stronger than the average noble. Helena put this down to the culture of selective breeding they had uncovered, as well as the expulsion of disabled children like Sabina Benevente. In the annotated family trees, the sisters noted that the nobility viewed physical health and athletic ability as much as political concerns when arranging marriage, an oddity in a galaxy where marriage between two spouses generations apart were commonplace.

In addition, the Orders Famulos had been unsuccessfully trying to reduce the influence of the Death Cults. The Ecclesiarchy viewed cults with suspicion; any religious organisation outside their control was a threat to their monopoly on faith, but they were also far more likely to deviate from what was acceptable. The Orders Famulos had waged a stealthy war of procedure and tradition on the Death Cults for millennia, and had succeeded in centralising the Cults under an Ecclesiarchical representative drawn from their ranks. Unfortunately, this legitimisation of the Cults had only helped spread their influence, until the entire nobility was under their sway. The records of this Cult Leader were spotty at best, until Helena chanced upon a formal ceremony for a second marriage, a distinct oddity on this monogamous world.

It seems the lead sister in the Death Cults was formally married to the reigning Planetary Governor in a private ceremony. When the sister grew too old to keep up with her subordinates, likely in a trial by combat Helena mused, the next leader would marry the Governor again. In essence, they served as the formal concubine of the governor, allowing them to act with his authority. The ceremonial rites had been filed with the Ecclesiarchy in M35, then they never appeared again in all the records. If the practice had been deliberately hidden, then it may be the smoking gun the Inquisition needed to link the governor’s office with the cults. Helena, her back aching from hours spent pouring over records, stood up as best she could and set off to find the Prime Agent.

It had been twelve hours since they first opened the vault and Helena had worked through all that time. She staggered around on unsteady legs and only the discrete exoskeleton on her hands kept them from trembling through overuse. Many senior Administratum personnel were withered old figures who stooped with a permanent hunch, were largely blind, and had long since given control of their hands over to mechanical systems. Becoming such a creature was Helena’s greatest fear, but it nevertheless seemed like an inevitability.

Prima Agent Lafayette had not helped in the sorting of data, such a skill set was beneath her, and Helena had to contract Corporal Al’Said to find out where she had sequestered herself. Helena found her in one of the many small chapels that littered the Cathedral City, tucked into every available space. She sat on her knees before a statue of some ancient saint, an intricately carved woman in the power armour of the Orders Militant who seemed to fly upwards on great stone wings. Her face was tuned up to the heavens and was illuminated through a false roof of opaque glass tiles, which glowed with a golden yellow light. This light spread through the room like golden scales and cast a heavy shadow behind Amelia, whose own head was bowed downwards.

Quite involuntarily, Helena’s shoe tapped against the marble floor and an intrusive click sounded throughout the silent chapel. Amelia sighed, her head falling even lower, before slowly standing up, using her staff to support numb legs. Her face looked to have been marred by tears, and Helena quickly lowered her gaze so as not to see her mistress in a moment of weakness.

‘Madam Lafayette,’ she spoke in the quiet whisper that holy places seem to encourage. ‘we’ve found something. A potential link between the Governor and the Death Cults.’

Helena thought she saw the faintest hint of a small dart its way across Amelia’s lips, before falling back into her usual neutral expression.

‘Good work. Send what you’ve found on to the Inquisitor’s office. Hopefully he’ll decide to bring us along when they string the bastard up.’