Chapter 220: Purification Protocols

As a fully sanctioned Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, Inquisitor Bellona was under no obligation to obey an expulsion order from Lord Castellan Creed, the supreme commander of Cadia.

The seal of the Inquisition conferred near-absolute authority in the Imperium. Her word could silence a planetary governor or condemn a regiment.

But a formal accusation that her experiment endangered the Cadian Gate in wartime could bring scrutiny from her own peers. Creed could not compel the Order of Inquisition to investigate her, but he could give other Lord Inquisitors a reason to demand it. Such an inquiry could be slow, intrusive, and potentially ruinous.

Bellona knew what such an inquiry could cost her. Her jaw tightened, then she inclined her head stiffly in acknowledgment and turned to leave.

"Lord Castellan, Lord of Talon... farewell."

As she reached the threshold of Creed's command chamber, she paused and glanced over her shoulder at Qin Mo, her gaze sharp and unreadable.

Qin Mo made no effort to hide his distrust. Bellona smiled faintly.

"I had thought you were someone more open-minded, willing to embrace progress and innovation for the good of humanity. Clearly, I was mistaken."

"There's a difference between accepting progress and welcoming death," Qin Mo replied coldly.

Bellona chuckled lightly, then swept out of the chamber, her acolytes and adjutant falling into step beside her.

One of them, a young male psyker clad in sanctioned robes, cast a lingering look over his shoulder at Qin Mo. Qin Mo did not return the gaze.

He had long forgotten the psyker's name, but remembered his gift for reading minds.

More alarmingly, the psyker could even probe the minds of blanks, untouchables whose null auras normally disrupted psychic interaction. Against a talent like that, Qin Mo would hesitate to rely even on Yoan's protection.

Allowing a group like that to wander near Cadia unchecked was inviting disaster. Qin Mo watched until the last of them had passed through the door.

"I don't agree with the Inquisitor's methods either," Creed said, cigar clenched between his teeth, "but the number of unsanctioned psykers on Cadia keeps growing. If the Black Ships don't arrive soon... we may lose control of the situation."

"Agreed," Qin Mo said gravely. "We must purge the unsanctioned psykers from Cadia. I have a method."

Creed had reached a similar conclusion, but lacked a viable approach. Cadians might produce only one or two deserters in a billion, but courage offered no protection from an uncontrolled awakening. A loyal soldier could hide the first symptoms as readily as a coward, especially if he knew what reporting them might cost. One frightened psyker, concealed somewhere beneath a bastion, could undo everything its defenders had fought to save.

Psychic gifts could lie dormant for years, emerging during puberty, under stress, or near a Warp anomaly. The first signs might be telekinesis, uncontrolled telepathy, or dreams that breached the veil. Reporting them meant confinement and the Black Ships, with no guarantee of surviving the journey or being judged fit for training.

"We can use the Celestial Engine to deploy a planetary scan array. It can map out every single lifeform on Cadia," Qin Mo said.

Creed's eyes lit up.

"But there are two problems," Qin Mo continued. "First, what do we do once the psykers are identified? I can help you exile them, or deploy compliance drones from the Celestial Engine to terminate them. You must choose."

The gleam in Creed's eyes dimmed. He looked down and silently puffed on his cigar.

The newly emerging psykers across Cadia were not enemies. Most were shock troopers who had fought for the Imperium, some of them heroes. An awakening did not erase that service. Was he truly to execute them en masse?

He wondered how many would recognize Talon's machines and stand waiting for instructions.

He considered exile. Talon's transports could get them off the surface quickly enough, but someone still had to provide secure confinement, trained guards, and a vessel capable of holding them until they could be handed over to the Black Ships. The Astra Telepathica's prison vessels had wards and specialist crews for a reason. Until he could arrange proper custody at the other end, he would just be sending the danger elsewhere. With the resources available, he estimated at least two months to organize and complete the operation, while new psykers were emerging daily.

Creed drew on his cigar again. He had just refused to let Bellona sacrifice these people on an untested theory. He could not promise they would live simply because her plan was worse.

Qin Mo waited. The trolley problem had seemed a good deal tidier when the people on the tracks were imaginary.

"Use the drones," Creed said grimly. "I am the Lord Castellan. My duty is to the many."

"Understood. There's something else you should know," Qin Mo said, glancing through the window at the fortress towers. "The scanning array will detect everything: every life-sign, every structure, every weapon. Cadia will be laid bare."

Creed understood immediately. Even an Imperial Navy captain could not survey Cadia's defenses at will. The restrictions protected the fortress world's defenses from the next commander who decided his oath to the Emperor had become inconvenient. Creed had survived the Volscani betrayal at Tyrok Fields, where supposed reinforcements had slaughtered the Cadian high command. He needed no reminder of what a trusted ally could do.

Allowing Talon's forces to perform such a scan could expose Cadia's military secrets. Qin Mo might not fear reprisal from the Inquisition, but Creed would be held accountable.

Creed considered the consequences for a heartbeat, then took out a quill and parchment and began writing.

"If victory demands a price, I'll pay it," he muttered. "By my authority as Lord Castellan, I formally authorize your scan."

Qin Mo watched him writing in silence. After a while, he asked, "Aren't you worried I might be using this to gain Cadia's military secrets for my own ends?"

Creed's quill stopped. He looked up at Qin Mo.

Every bastion, every defensive grid. With those coordinates and Talon's teleportation technology, Qin Mo could put troops inside the defenses instead of fighting his way through them. If Talon turned traitor, Creed doubted Cadia would survive twenty-four standard hours.

He dipped the quill again and resumed writing.

"Both the Astra Militarum and the Imperial Navy are filled with officers who mistrust your people. Every hour I receive new petitions demanding your expulsion from the system," Creed said without looking up.

"But I trust you. Most Cadians trust you. When our brothers and sisters look up from their trenches and bastions and see the silhouettes of Talon starships in the sky, they see hope. They see allies."

Creed finished writing two copies of the authorization, one for himself and one for Qin Mo. If the Inquisition challenged the scan, the Lord Castellan's signed order would establish who had requested it and accepted responsibility.

But Qin Mo did not reach for the document. Instead, he relayed a command through the Command Nexus to the Stone Men aboard the Celestial Engine:

"Commence planetary scan of Cadia. Initiate psyker purge."

Moments later, scanning pulses swept through Cadia's atmosphere. Across the world, scalps prickled and hair stood on end.

The scan soon expanded to other worlds in the system, locating psychic signatures for the Stone Men to check against sanctioning records. The unsanctioned psykers were marked for the drones.

Over seventy unsanctioned psykers were identified and tagged. Not many, for now. But the number continued to rise.

The Micro-Eye of Terror did more than provide a route for enemy fleets. Even under the Celestial Engine's suppression, it was leaking Warp energy into the system and beyond, forcing latent psychic gifts to the surface. People who had survived the invasion were becoming dangers to everyone around them without ever leaving their homes or their posts.

Dimensional apertures opened above Cadia. Black clouds poured through them, dense swarms of compliance drones dispatched from the Celestial Engine.

The drones fanned out, each zeroing in on a tagged psyker's location.

The first killings came without gunfire. The drones exploited a hazard the transport safeguards were designed to prevent: separation of body and soul. A localized teleportation burst cast the soul into the dimensional void, leaving the body intact and lifeless. A person could fall in the middle of a sentence, without a wound to explain what had happened.

Qin Mo considered it a mercy compared with the alternatives.

But not all went quietly. Some fled at the sight of the drones; others lashed out with powers they scarcely understood. Those who resisted met plasma fire or a sudden, crushing increase in gravity. The machines killed them on the spot and moved on.

Civilians watched in horror as friends slumped lifeless in the street, their eyes open, their bodies unmarked. Hands reached to lift them, then hesitated as the drones turned toward another target. In some districts, riots broke out. In others, priests declared it divine judgment.

The purge had begun.

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