[The Cathedral of the Ascension occupies the southern hemisphere of Terra the way a city occupies a valley: not by choice exactly, but because the scale of the thing simply filled the available space over enough centuries that the distinction stopped being meaningful. It had begun as a place of worship and pilgrimage, one of the vast ecclesiastical complexes that dot the surface of the Throneworld, and it had grown outward and upward through ten thousand years of addition and expansion until what remained was something that could be mapped by district rather than by building.]
[Now it is a fortress.]
[The cult called the Dream Masters has made its last stand here, which was predictable: they needed somewhere with walls, and this was the largest set of walls available to them that was not the Imperial Palace itself. The approaches are mined and barricaded. Heavy weapons emplacements cover every primary thoroughfare. Armored vehicles, civilian and military, have been welded into position across the main gates.]
[On the outer perimeter of the vast complex, the encirclement is complete. Imperial Guard armored units have been in position since before dawn, methodical as always in their preparation. Garadon's force: Third Company, fewer than eighty Astartes, what remains after the 13th Black Crusade and no resupply, dispersed through the encirclement in combat squads at the points where the first breach will need to be made. They are ready to be the edge of the blade when the command comes.]
[The combined command is still in the planning phase.]
[Then the sky opens.]
[The Naval orbital bombardment hits without warning: massive columns of directed energy descending from the upper atmosphere in absolute silence for the first fraction of a second before the sound arrives, then the staggered concussion of each strike overlapping the last. The cult's outer defensive lines cease to exist. Buildings collapse inward. The northeastern quarter of the Cathedral complex becomes rubble in forty-five seconds.]
[Behind the bombardment, drop pods fall.]
[They come down in flames, dozens of them, the thermal shields burning cherry-red and orange as they decelerate through the lower atmosphere, and they hit hard and scatter across the cathedral grounds and the surrounding streets in a pattern that is not random. Minotaur veterans in ancient plate emerge from each one before the dust from the impact has settled. And behind them, in close formation above the battlefield, Thunderhawks and troop carriers by the score.]
[The operation that the combined command had been planning for two more days has already begun.]
[Inside the temporary command post at the outer perimeter, Garadon and Trajann Valoris stand at the same tactical display. They do not look at each other. But the glance that passes between them is the glance of two men who had been informed, in careful terms, that this was a possible outcome, and who had made a private calculation about how much of an objection they were going to raise when it happened.]
[Neither of them raises an objection.]
[The bombardment ends. The assault ends. The dust settles over the ruins of what was once the Cathedral's central district.]
[And then, across every vox-caster, every pict-screen, every public channel on Holy Terra, a signal appears.]
[It is not a cult broadcast. It is not an emergency announcement from the Palace. It carries the same technical signature as Guilliman's Primaris announcement, the address that had reached every corner of the Throneworld when the Regent first returned, and it forces its way through every channel simultaneously with the same authority.]
[On Terra, ten billion people look up at the nearest screen.]
[Inside the ruined central dome of the Cathedral of Ascension, surrounded by collapsed vaulting and the settling debris of the orbital strike, four figures stand in the open. They are older men and women, expensively dressed despite the ruin around them, and they carry themselves with the particular bearing of people who have held absolute authority for long enough that the habit of it survives circumstances that should have removed it.]
[Hamo Talion, Lord Administratum. Avilisa Drachmar, Grand Provost Marshal. Fadix, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. Bardo Slester, the deposed Ecclesiarch.]
[Behind them, you stand in your Terminator plate, holding the severed head of the Dream Masters' cult leader in one gauntleted hand with the casualness of a man carrying something he intends to put down shortly.]
[Hamo Talion steps forward to the broadcasting equipment. His voice is rich and practiced, shaped by decades of Senatorum addresses.]
["My subjects. The age of rebellion is over."]
[He pauses for a breath, the weight of the moment building. He has been rehearsing this.]
["The cultists who ravaged Holy Terra have been destroyed. As the Emperor decreed. As the Codex requires. This is the Imperium. This must always be the Imperium."]
[He is about to continue.]
[Your voice comes over him like a door closing.]
["Is this the High Lords' Imperium, then? Or the Emperor's?"]
[You take one step forward. The broadcasting equipment picks up the sound of Terminator plate moving. Talion turns his head toward you, and his expression crosses from surprise into something that is recalibrating its interpretation of the last four months very quickly.]
[You are looking past him at the camera.]
[The other three High Lords are doing their own recalculation. Drachmar and Slester exchange a look. Their eyes have the quality of people who have just identified a variable they failed to account for. Fadix remains still, which tells you more about his quality than the other two: he had already considered this possibility, which means he has been watching you more carefully than you had assumed. He will need to be handled first.]
[But not yet.]
["I would like to invite these High Lords, and everyone watching on the other end of this broadcast, to witness a scene. A reckoning." You look at the camera for one more moment, then let your gaze settle on Talion. "Consider this the opening act."]
[From among the High Lords' retinue, figures move.]
[They have been there throughout: four of them, blending into the crowd of servants and aides with the perfect ease of people who have spent their entire careers being invisible in plain sight. Now they are not invisible. Their shapes are changing as they move, the black bodygloves shifting, the careful disguises releasing the bodies beneath into something closer to their true operational form. Callidus Temple assassins, Officio Assassinorum's finest infiltrators, each one shaped for years to occupy a position of harmless proximity to a specific target.]
[Guilliman's appetizer.]
[Drachmar and Slester are handled in seconds. Fadix does not move, which was the correct decision: the assassin assigned to him makes eye contact, and Fadix reads correctly that the Callidus has been in his household for longer than he knew. He stands very still.]
[Talion is under your hand before he can take a full step in any direction. Your gauntlet closes on his shoulder and holds him where he is.]
["Your rebels are accounted for," you say quietly, close to his ear, while above you the dome broadcasts the scene to every screen on the planet. "But the reckoning for what you actually did, the resources diverted, the people left to die, the machinery you built to outlast every reform, that is the main course. I prepared it myself."]
[From the nave behind you, the ramp hatches of the grounded troop carriers open.]
[What comes through is not additional Primaris. What comes through is families.]
[Men and women in fine clothing, children who do not understand what is happening. Elderly relatives and young attendants. They are being herded by Minotaur warriors in power armor with a care that is precise rather than gentle, assembled in visible groups on the ruined floor of the cathedral.]
[You watch Talion look at them.]
["The families of the Grand Provost Marshal. Every member we could identify, including one I suspect she thought we would not find." You move your gaze along the groups. "The former Ecclesiarch's inner circle. His closest associates. His household staff, who knew his habits and kept his confidences." A pause. "The Lord Administratum's bloodline, three generations. The infant in that woman's arms arrived yesterday. I understand congratulations were not yet public."]
[Talion makes a sound. It is not a word.]
["I need to tell you something before we conclude this." Your voice drops further, intended for him alone, though the broadcasting equipment is still active and the words carry across the planet. "I am not Moloc. I borrowed his body, with his awareness and consent, under the Emperor's guidance. What I am is the kind of Primarch who means it literally when he says that the full accounting is coming."]
[He begins to plead.]
[You do not listen to it.]
["Your Minotaurs served well," he manages, "I gave you resources, support, for all these years, the Legion owes you nothing, but surely..."]
[You drop the cult leader's head. It falls and rests against the rubble without ceremony.]
[Your second hand comes up. Both gauntlets close around Hamo Talion's throat with the unhurried certainty of something that has already happened, and you pull, and it is done, and the spine comes with it, and you hold the head at arm's length toward the nearest broadcasting lens.]
[The dome is silent except for the sound of the feed transmitting.]
["This is the price of betraying the Emperor and the Imperium of Man. No rank provides exemption. No title provides immunity. No years of service purchase this."]
[You turn from the camera.]
["Minotaurs. Imperial Fists. Ten Thousand. Sisters of Silence."]
[Your voice goes to command pitch, the volume that carries across a battlefield.]
["The full reckoning begins now. In the name of the Regent Guilliman. Under the protection of the Holy Emperor."]
[A breath.]
["Kill them all."]
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