The Dark Angels' Little Secret

The Inquisition Black Ship Gabbro hung like a silent gray giant above the shattered orbit of Azure Dawn.

The planet below, once like a sapphire, had become an ugly sphere scarred beyond recognition and wholly shrouded in a gray-brown haze of death.

Its oceans had congealed into vast toxic swamps, while the fire-cleansed scars across its land crisscrossed like a demon's claw marks.

Sporadic flames still flickered in certain depths, where Astra Militarum cleanup forces carried out the final burn orders, adding the last kindling to the planet's funeral pyre.

Extermination on the macro scale had already been completed. What followed was a thorough cleansing on the micro scale, ensuring that no Genestealer spores or mutated tissue survived, even if it meant meticulously burning the planet's remains all over again.

The broad, solemn observation window of the bridge laid the apocalyptic scene bare before Chen Xi.

He wore the black formal uniform of an Inquisitor, the insignia upon his shoulder gleaming with a hard, cold luster beneath the dim light, a symbol of the Imperium's endless legal and punitive authority.

The slight relaxation from the beginning of his vacation had vanished from his face, replaced by a weariness embedded deep in his bones and a colder resolve tempered by blood and fire.

His psychic senses stretched out like invisible tendrils. Even through the thick hull and the void, he seemed able to faintly catch the soundless wails and deathly silence left behind by the annihilation of billions of lives below.

They were not true psychic voices, but his profound awareness of destruction, the echo of a conscience unable to remain entirely silent before such an immense price.

Auregana stood quietly a step behind and to his side, like a perfect creation made of shadows and efficiency.

Her mechanical eye continuously