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IT’S THREE MORE days of training in the firing range, on the combat mats and in the mock-up of the tau battle dome before the Colonel informs us that contact has been made with the alien vessel. We assemble in the briefing auditorium, where the Colonel issues us with clothes chests with our disguises. We lug them back to the rooms and prepare for the shuttle. In my trunk are four brown robes, typical of an Administratum flunky. I understand the choice when I put it on and pull the hood up – it hides my face in complete shadow, obscuring the tapestry of scars that covers my face and head. I’ll be Brother Kage then, I tell myself with a bitter smile. Probably the only scribe who can’t read or write in the Imperium.
There are amused looks from the others as we assemble in the docking bay. Oriel is dressed in a very grandiose and over the top dress uniform, hung with gold cording and medals. The red jacket is almost painfully bright, crossed by a garish yellow sash. Just the sort of pompous and totally meaningless display of opulence you might expect from one of the Imperium’s ruling elite. The Colonel wears a severe black suit, with a long-tailed coat draped over one arm. Tanya wears a long dress of deep blue, tight at the waist and high at the neck, her hair cropped really short. Oriel explained that she’s posing as a member of the Sisters Famulous, a branch of the Ecclesiarchy that provides housekeepers and chatelaines to the Imperial nobility. Trost, Strelli and Quidlon wear less extravagant versions of Oriel’s uniform, while Moerck is dressed in plain white leggings and a white shirt with a soft leather jerkin over the top, looking every bit the gentleman. Oriel walks over to us and gives us each the once over.
‘Will you all relax and try not to look like soldiers?’ he says with an annoyed scowl.
‘This isn’t going to work if you keep standing at ease like that and quick march everywhere. Remember, you’re civilians!’
We look at each other, and I see that it’s true. I try to purposefully slouch a bit more, as do the others. I cross my arms and hide my hands in the sleeves of my robes, as I’ve seen various Departmento Munitorum scribes and their like do over the years. It’s kind of uncomfortable really, and I walk back and forth a bit, trying to get it to feel natural. I feel horribly vulnerable without my arms free and the hood obscuring most of my arc of vision.
‘Take shorter strides, Kage, you are not on a cross-country march!’ the Colonel calls out to me, from where he’s stood at the ramp to the shuttle. I look over at him and he nods, gesturing for me to try it out. I pace the length of the shuttle bay, some two hundred metres each way, keeping my steps half what I’m used to, and I feel like I’m tottering about like a small child. I bend my back a bit more, leaning my chin down into my chest
and try it again and it feels a bit more natural, my gait more like the image I have in my head of Clericus Amadiel, the Colonel’s scribe on the last mission.
When Oriel is satisfied that we don’t stand out like a squad of highly trained soldiers pretending to be diplomats, we get all of our kit on board the shuttle and settle in for the ride. The mood is tense and nervous. None of us have any weapons. If the tau take a disliking to us, there’s not a thing we can do to stop them killing us out of hand. I can understand why, though: if this is a peaceful delegation, it’ll raise a few eyebrows if we turn up with a small arsenal. That’s if the tau have eyebrows, I suddenly think to myself, making myself smile. We’ve not seen a single picture of them. They could be big bags of gas or tentacled squidgy blobs for all I know. I guess from the fake battle dome that they can’t be too different from us, physically I mean. I let my mind wander with thoughts like these, preferring to put any thought of the upcoming mission out of my mind.

It’s a dream. A nightmare, in fact. I can tell, because I know I went to sleep on my bunk as normal, wrapped in a thin grey blanket, and there’s no other way I could have ended up plummeting down a chasm into a roaring inferno. But it’s not really a nightmare, because I’m calm about the whole thing. I should have been terrified as I plunged down into the fiery depths, falling through smoke, my skin burning from my flesh, the flesh blowing away from my bones as ash.
It’s a warp-dream, horribly real in every sensation, more lifelike than life itself. Everything is sharper, clearer, more bright and focussed. Through eyeballs that have long since exploded into steam, I can see the cracks and crannies of the chasm wall, and small red eyes peering back at me through the fumes. The wind that screams into my cindered ears is sharp and loud. The flames that lick up from below, bursting forth from a river of boiling magma, are searing hot.
So why is there no pain? Why am I not afraid?
I don’t feel as if I’m dying, just changing. I was once a clumsy, pain-ridden, but now I am unfettered by its restrictions and my soul is allowed to burst free. Wings erupt from my back, and suddenly I’m soaring on the thermals, swooping and diving amongst the rising flames.
I laugh, though there is no sound. I delight in the freedom, the ease of movement as I climb upwards through the smoke and then kick my legs back and dive headfirst towards the inferno. The heat washes over me like a soft caress; the blistering heat is like the warm touch of a lover awakening me.
And then something shudders within me. Something casts me free in the same way that I freed my own body. It takes my wings with it and soars up out of sight, leaving me falling towards the flames.
The terror starts then. It wells up from the pit of my stomach and a scream is wrenched from my lips. My horror bursts forth in a wordless screech as the heat blisters my entire being.
Unimaginable pain infuses me; every fibre of my soul suffers vibrant agony. Perhaps this is damnation. Maybe this is the Abyssal Chaos that I am doomed to be thrown into once my mortal life is ended. To know joy, liberty, and then have it taken away as I am damned for my sins – that is true torture.