The Dark Angels were incensed.
When had the First Legion ever suffered such humiliation? A man who had learned their secrets had murdered one of their Battle-Brothers in the most brutal and insulting manner imaginable. Ansel's power armor had been stripped, his gene-seed harvested, and his body left mangled—yet his face had been intentionally preserved.
No one stopped to ask: what if the Inquisitor wasn't responsible? On this planet, there was no one else capable of silently slaying a Space Marine right outside an Inquisitorial residential zone.
The Chaplain led the remaining Dark Angels—eleven in total, including himself. Standing around Ansel's broken remains, they swore by the Emperor and the Lion that the perpetrator would pay in blood.
"My Battle-Brothers, make the enemy tremble at our name. Let them suffer through our fury. Use their flesh and bone to repay the sins they have committed."
Power swords, bolters, and power armor—the Emperor's Angels of Death stood ready to execute the enemy in His name.
"Ansel, may your soul return to the Golden Throne."
Silence fell, followed by the ignition of a roaring fire. The giant's body was consumed by the flames, and the Mid-level base would soon be swallowed by the inferno as well.
"According to our intelligence, the Inquisitor is currently in the Underhive. That is a place beyond the reach of other planetary authorities. We can surround him quickly and annihilate him."
"Good."
Six hours later, the Dark Angels had moved through hidden passages connecting the Mid-level to the Underhive. Clad in black robes, they moved rapidly through the Hive's infrastructure. These were veterans of a thousand wars; they had seen environments far more hostile and chaotic than the dregs of a Hive City.
"Auspex, find a route."
"The Inquisitor has not left. He is speaking with Underhive figures, appearing to plan a purge of the lower levels."
"Proceed with caution."
The Dark Angels infiltrated the territory controlled by the gang leader known as Iron-Face. The foolish, insignificant gang members didn't even have a chance to detect their presence.
"Watch for augmented assassins hidden in nearby buildings," the Chaplain instructed. "They are not from the Assassinorum, but they possess a degree of danger. Following the plan: Squad One takes the high ground, Squad Two blocks the retreat, the rest of you follow me inside."
The building was on high alert, but it was mostly populated by gangers—hardly a challenge.
"Target is on the fifth floor. Three of you move up from the first; we will scale the exterior walls. Leave no enemy alive."
Inside, Justice was still confirming the specifics of the Genestealer community with Iron-Face. He had decided to solve the Genestealer problem with maximum speed, but deeper investigation revealed the matter was not so simple. If Yuki was in league with the Cult, the number of enemies had essentially doubled. Justice could have called for Exterminatus or a partial purge of the Underhive, but the loss would clearly outweigh the gain. An Inquisitor could treat lives as numbers, but only if those numbers bought an advantage.
"For now, I can only bring in the Arbites and the Astra Militarum. Perhaps I should request aid from the Order of the Dying Rose; those troops rotating from Planet Stat might have more experience..."
The situation on Ender was nowhere near as dire as on Stat. Since Exterminatus wasn't necessary there, it certainly wasn't needed here. Justice was conflicted for the first time, and the reason was something outside the xenos threat. Charlie had been killed by what appeared to be an Astartes, and he had come into possession of a secret a First Founding Chapter was desperate to keep...
"This is disastrous."
He hoped the assassins sent to eliminate Yuki would be successful. Justice looked up, his eyes bloodshot. His body hadn't been heavily modified; he was still largely human. He took pride in his faith and his human form, and he believed in the intuition granted to him by the Emperor.
It was hard to say if intuition truly existed, but Justice always chose to trust it unconditionally, and it had saved him several times. A skin-crawling sensation washed over him, as if a giant holding a bolter was aiming at his back. Death felt imminent.
In that moment, Justice trusted his gut. His intuition saved him again; a bolt shell accurately struck Iron-Face's head directly across from him. Iron-Face's mask was bulletproof, but that only worked against solid slugs; against an Astartes bolt shell, it was no different from wet paper. Her entire upper torso was blown apart.
The walls were smashed open by several massive dark shadows. Within a single second, the sound of gunfire and explosions drowned out everything else. If Justice's Ogryn bodyguard hadn't pushed him aside at the critical moment at the cost of his own life, the Inquisitor would have died in the first volley.
Justice didn't dare linger. He instantly activated his final emergency measure: a finger bone of an Alpha-level psyker. This psyker had not turned entirely to ash after serving as fuel for the Golden Throne; this bone was the last trace of that individual on the world. It contained terrifying power.
Countless black psychic apparitions manifested, filled with overwhelming resentment, surrounding the Dark Angels. They lacked physical form, making it difficult for even the superhuman bodies of the Astartes to break through, and the psychic backlash caused splitting headaches.
However, after only three seconds, the Dark Angels broke through and pursued Justice in the direction he had fled. The initial ambush had failed; the Dark Angels would have to accept greater casualties to end this. But they didn't care.
The gangers and Justice's men on the lower floors had already been wiped out. Justice blew a hole in a wall and jumped into the street.
"Assassin squad?"
"In the Emperor's name, you must die."
The Justice Assassins were not true members of the Assassinorum; they had been annihilated. Large fires broke out in the surroundings. Surviving henchmen and gangers were cut down instantly; the Astartes simply crushed the mortals into pulp as they charged through.
In the distance, Yuki and Yuno watched the conflict between the Dark Angels and the Inquisitor. Everything was going even smoother than they had imagined. Thanks to the Dark Angels' loyalty and their obsession with the Legion's secret, Justice didn't even have a chance to speak of the Genestealer presence.
"This has truly blown up now," Yuno said, watching with the curiosity of a spectator.
"It doesn't matter," Yuki replied. "All we have to do is stall for twenty years. By the time the Imperium's main forces arrive, this place will be nothing but a dead world with nothing left to harvest."
The hunt continued.