In an ice-cold cogitator room in the uppermost tower of the greatest spire in Hive Castle the strike team waited, beneath towering data stacks bathed in a frigid mist. Magos Zeletrass thrived in the cold, having cast aside the last vestiges of her humanity long ago, it invigorated her machinery and sent her mind racing at a breakneck pace even as what little skin she still possessed began to crack in the cold. The Sisters of the Order of the Bloody Rose bore the cold with contemptable indifference. Their power armour separated them from the chill, and a lifetime spent in devotion to the God-Emperor had hardened their minds against any physical trial. Corporal Al’Said was a native of Tallarn, whose underground cities were only slightly cooler than the burning desert, and found the cold disconcerting, but he was insulated by layers of muscle and the massive bulk of his carapace armour. Amelia Lafayette lacked any such armour, save a cuirass that was now frozen to the touch, and shivered in silence upon a small chair in the corner of the room, clutching her psyber-eagle Hope for the warmth of his feathers.

Beyond their small corner of the palace, the forces of the Governor were making their last desperate stand against the Inquisiton. They fought a three-dimensional battle across the entire administrative section of the spire, launching hit and run attacks from suspended motorways or making their stands in government offices. The palace itself still held, the Inquisiton limited to some small section of the uppermost towers, but the rest of the spire had descended into the unrestrained barbarity that characterises civil wars.

In the spire’s metro system crowds of terrified commuters were shoved aside as the Imperialist faction used the rail lines to ferry regiment after regiment into the city. They fought on the concourse as the hidden remnants of the Death Cults fired upon them from in and amongst the crowd. Civilians were killed in their thousands not by any deliberate malice, but simply because the fighting had emerged so suddenly. On the spiralling roads that encircled the hive and provided the main means of upwards movement the Malcador Siege tanks of the PDF simply drove over the gridlocked traffic, sending their crews forward to warn people out of their vehicles. These tanks struggled their way through the city, their Colonel all too aware of the vital role they would play in the battle to come.

After brutal, close-quarters, fighting, the people had almost completely left the streets, and the Loyalist Guerrillas fled, perished or were simply ignored. The government district now swarmed with brown-uniformed PDF, storming through ancient seats of learning and power with an utter indifference. Their leader, the horrifying figure of Marshall Taimur and his plated grey armour, marched into the House of Lords, where ancient tradition decreed none may go armed, like a conquering hero and set up his command post for the siege. His men advanced from all directions, attacking along the broad avenues of the governments district, crawling their way through maintenance tunnels and rappelling down from the vaulted supports of the upper hive.

Their foe were a mixture of the green-uniformed Household Guard and the Metropolitan Constabulary, the governor’s hired thugs. Their positions ran around the entrance to the palace like a ring of forts and they endeavoured to make the towering buildings just as impregnable. The bulk-carriers of the Omnibus lines were turned on their sides to block the roads and metal panelling was torn from interior walls to seal up the windows. From their position they fired on anyone foolish enough to stay in the open, whilst the Imperialists mirrored their approach in the opposite buildings.

Despite these fixed positions, the battlefield was fluid. Small teams of infiltrators were sent forth by both sides, clearing and recapturing buildings with grenade and shotguns so that a force may lose the same building three times. Over time, the first Stormtroopers were flown in and they brought their own particular brand of viciousness. The Ministry for Energy had been the Loyalists main bastion in Imperial territory until it was systematically broken by a single fire team of stormtroopers. They dropped in on grav-chutes from the supports above, before moving in practiced silence across the roof and onto a little used balcony. A melta bomb incinerated the security door and they moved through the building firing as they went. With their Hotshot Lasguns they ignored the limits of their eyes, firing at heat sources identified by the arcane circuitry in their helmets. They left the elegant structure riddled with holes, and filled with the scent of burning flesh.

Within the palace, the small battalion of forces that stood beside Inquisitor Heydrax himself found themselves overstretched at every turn and hampered by the Governor’s unconscious form. Eventually, the Inquisitor decided to abandon the idea of holding ground and divided his force into smaller strike teams to seize key points of the palace. The power-armoured mass of the Inquisitor led the charge, lasbolts bursting harmlessly across his armour as he cleaved through his foes with a vicious speed and a detached brutality. Acting separately, these small teams were able to capture the massed anti-air batteries that ringed the palace, and so secure a route for reinforcements. The Governor was borne away in the Inquisitor’s Thunderhawk even as the first soldiers arrived on vector-thrust Valkyries or simple rotor aircraft.

The Loyalists were now cut off from above and below and, as the first repurposed anti-aircraft missiles rained down on them from above, they withdrew from their extended positions to the palace itself. There they stayed, holding their ground with fatalistic tenacity, until their lines were finally broken. It was the tanks that tipped the balance. After a long and arduous climb, the colossal forms of Malcador heavy tanks rolled down the promenade. Lasbolts and stub round pinged of the first of the tanks, a Defender pattern, as it crossed the broad expanse of Unification Square before blasting open the great doors of the palace with its squat demolisher cannon. Unwilling to stop its advance, the tank then ground the great staircase into a powdery mess is it ascended through the ruined doors into the entrance hall itself. Its five heavy bolters spit fiery death in all directions as the first columns of infantry followed it. Though the defenders fought on, they were disheartened and proved easy pickings to the Imperialists.

In the aftermath of the battle the Adeptus Arbites launched raids across the planet, mopping up the last of the Loyalist sympathisers. The Government Sector lay in ruins, and with it lay the last remnants of the old order of Nova Iberia. It was only in the aftermath of this victory that anyone thought to unseal the strike team from their icy tomb.

The study had once belonged to the Governor’s seneschal. It was a cosy little room off the main avenues of the palace, with a desk and office chair upon which the old man would have engaged in the business of running the household, as well as a deep armchair before a large fireplace, where he would spend his evenings with a tot of amasec and some fine literature. The seneschal was dead, or soon to be, and Amelia had claimed the comfortable room for herself the moment she had staggered shivering from the cogitator room. She sat in the rich leather armchair before a roaring fire, created from the seneschal’s office chair and ignited with judicious use of a laspistol. Hope perched on the armrest, beads of water dripping down from his frozen wings, and the two of them simply waited in silence as their bodies were warmed back into some semblance of life. In time, her duties would inevitably draw her away from this cosy chair and warm fire but for now Amelia was simply enjoying a brief respite from all the events of the past few weeks.

Occasionally, faint footsteps sounded their way through the heavy oak door but none had yet broken her solitude, instead fading off into the distance. The palace that had so recently been filled with the soldiers engaged in a life or death battle now played host to a thousand adepts, tearing through its chambers in search of information and secrets, an act just as destructive to the beautiful complex as the pitched battle. The adepts were a source of both fascination and slight unease to Amelia; they seemed to live in a separate reality to her, one of numbers and data that they could pull information from just as Amelia could pull at the fabric of the warp. She was literate, her parents had seen to that, but her training had focused more on unlocking the secrets of her mind rather than using it for more mundane things such as complex mathematics or data analysis. Sometimes this gap in her knowledge unnerved her, but she had seen those who allowed those to be consumed by the search for knowledge, their backs hunched over, their eyes decayed into blindness and their skin permanently stained by a lifetime of ink.

As she thought on this, Amelia came to suspect that it is human nature to be consumed by your duties. The servants of the Administratum deliberately suppressed their individuality in favour of becoming creatures of pure data until it inevitably consumed them, Magos Zeletrass had cast aside her body and neglected her rotting flesh in order to gain closer communion with machines. She had seen countless soldiers throw away their lives in warfare; even if they returned, they still left some part of themselves on the battlefield. It was impossible to imagine the Inquisitor as anything less than he was now, what had happened to him to change him from an ordinary man into the calculating monster he had become, had he even noticed the change? Most terrifying to comprehend was the thought that she too might end up losing herself to the powers she could wield. Would her psychic abilities slowly drive her insane, or force her to withdraw from the world into her own mind?

A sharp tapping at the door interrupted brought her back to reality and she sighed as her train of thought slipped away. She was utterly unwilling to leave this comfortable place until it was absolutely necessary and so she bid the knocker to enter. To no great surprise, it was the diminutive figure of Adjutant Brazier who slipped in before stopping a respectful distance from Amelia. The girl had been brought in with the rest of the adepts, but Amelia had no idea how she had found her, perhaps it was some secret lore of the Administratum.

‘Madam, the Inquisitor requests your presence in the north solar.’

‘He’s asking after me?’ Amelia remained seated.

‘He’s called a meeting of all the senior staff to lay out the next moves.’

The chair was comfy, the fire was warm, and Amelia still didn’t want to move.

‘I don’t know where the north solar is.’

‘I can take you there, madam.’

Damn her, Amelia thought, damn her sense of direction and damn her sense of duty. Still, she was right. Amelia had larger obligations than this fireplace. With a thought, she directed Hope to perch on her shoulder, the eagle taking care to ensure his razorlike talons didn’t cut through his owner’s coat, before easing herself out of the armchair, feeling twice her age. She followed Helena in a fugue down twisting corridors and up spiralling stairs. The girl had been in the palace for two hours, at most, and yet was already unerringly familiar with the layout. The complex was vast, and it took them half an hour to reach the great stateroom that the Inquisitor had chosen as his meeting place. Helena left Amelia at the door; it was not her place to hear what was said within.

The solar had been built onto the side of one of the towers, and two thirds of its curved walls looked out onto the vast expanse of Hive Castle before ending in the rich blue where the sea met the sky. An ornamental piano lay amidst scattered musical instruments, and two tiers of seats had been built against the windowless section of wall, giving some indication as to the room’s prior purpose. The seats were already filling with the more mundane of the Inquisitor’s acolytes whilst those whose frames were too heavy, or too misshapen, for the wooden seats stood around on the floor. The low murmur of conversation permeated the room, but Amelia knew practically no one here. She spotted Magos Zeletrass standing before the benches and greeted the tech-priest before stepping up to the seats, picking a spot in the back with fewer acolytes around her.

Her efforts to isolate herself proved useless as a familiar, ornately dressed, figure swing into the seat beside her. She turned to she the wolfish grin of Interrogator Filburn, his bright white teeth silhouetted against his rich brown skin. Though the Inquisitor’s actions at the Raptor’s Nest had mollified her somewhat, she still resented him for taking over her investigation.

‘Good afternoon, Mademoiselle, I trust the battle was not too arduous.’

Amelia reflected threat she would have a far easier time hating the Interrogator if he wasn’t so inconveniently friendly and polite. There was something about his earnest happiness that was almost contagious.

‘I made it through alright, Interrogator, Magos Zeletrass found a secret passage, so we missed most of the fighting.’

The Interrogator laughed, a hearty and honest thing as far from condescension as possible.

‘I’d hardly say you stayed out of it, I saw you slot that pyrokinetic from across the room and from what I hear you took out a whole room of fanatics.’

‘I took out a room of drugged up slaves, if you want the truth. I spent most of the battle freezing to death in a sealed cogitator room, them the last hour warming myself back to life in front of a fire.’

‘Ah well, such are the realities of battle. I myself once had to fight my way through the engine decks of a cruiser, where only the Tech-Priests can tread. I must have sweated away half my bodyweight before I was done.’

Amelia burst into laughter at the image, his happiness really was infectious. Unfortunately, it was cut short as the Inquisitor entered the room, all the seated acolytes rising in respect before being waved back into their seats. The Inquisitor. Accompanied by his crusader bodyguards stood at the centre of the room, beside a grand piano, pausing to look out the vast windows at the city below before turning to address his followers.

‘The Governor has been taken to the Silent Observer for questioning, the Household Guard have been obliterated and the Government district is now under our direct control. This mission has been a resounding success, take pride in it.’

The Inquisitor’s words bolstered the spirits of his audience, and he paused for a moment to le the mood sink in.

‘But, in our moment of triumph we must not forget about the task that now lies ahead of us. In a single morning, we have destroyed the last remnant of the Government of this planet. We must move fast if we are to ensure all we are trying to build here does not fall apart amidst civil unrest.’

‘Our first priority is finding replacements for the civil servants who kept the various state organisations of this world running. Much of their duties can be temporarily seconded to the Administratum, and the Astropathic choir will send out a signal requesting more adepts to fill the gaps. It will, however, be some months before any can arrive.’

‘Within the hive, the Constabulary have proven themselves little more than the Governor’s private thugs. To that end, I am declaring Marshal Law and deploying the PDF, under the command of the Arbites, to maintain order.’

‘The next problem we face is more subtle, but will only get worse with time. We can secure the planet’s administration by patching up the gaps, but the planet’s leadership has been utterly obliterated. The House of Lords, Nova Iberia’s legislature, lies empty, its members dead or in hiding and with the Governor taken the planet lacks any executive.’

‘To remedy this, I am creating a Provisional Government comprised of influential figures from across the system. This planet holds a large number of highly influential people who, due to their common heritage, have been denied overt authority and as such resented the previous government. Those of you not engaged in critical infrastructure work will be sent to recruit these people to a council of oligarchs, whilst the Governorship is to be given to Rear-Admiral Said, as the senior most surviving military figure.’

‘We have gained a wealth of knowledge from this place, but it will take our analysts some time to decode it. The mystery of this world must wait until we have brought it back to some semblance of order.’

What followed was a long meeting as the Inquisitor listed off each acolyte’s individual task. Some were to go to government departments, to assume temporary control over the planet’s administration. The harvest still needed to be brought in, and the steel tithe was almost ready to be sent off world. Others would take up command of PDF regiments, enforcing martial law across the entire planet and continuing the war against the remnants of the nobility. The remainder were tasked with recruiting the planet’s new elite. A list of names was displayed with candidates from all walks of life, PDF officers, local government officials, wealthy businessmen and even the leadership of organised crime on the planet. The remaining acolytes, Amelia included, were sent to recruit these figures into the service of the Imperium if they could be found, and if they proved trustworthy.