Who is Alpharius?

It took heroic effort just to stand up from where the blast had thrown her. But arise she did, and when she saw the Astartes incapacitated by the rubble all frailty left her demeanour. She threw out her hands, and let out a bestial roar of triumph, screaming her victory into a rainy night-sky now visible through the ruined roof. Everyone in her philia and two others besides lay dead around her; they'd been torn apart by bolt shells, or wrecked by the brutal application of post-human force. Shockingly, impossibly, the decapitated body of one of the mighty Qarnu Anšar was behind her, slain in the first moments of combat. And the intermingled limbs of three loxatl broodmates were admixed with the rubble atop the Astartes: one of them self-detonating their own ammunition had brought the building down on the bastard's head. But she was alive, she was Mighty; and she'd see this skull taken for the Throne.

She dragged herself over the strewn remains of the roof, clambering onto what once must have been the Astartes' chestplate, picking up her late katogaur's beat-up plasma pistol as she went. Soon she stood over the ravaged marine, aiming the pistol directly at his head. Almost tenderly removing his shattered helm, she asked:

"You fought well, Astartes. Who are you? I would know whose soul I offer to Khorne."

Still somehow sneering despite his ruinous state, the Space Marine just about managed to meet her gaze as he whispered

"I... am Alpharius!"

Before his head lolled away, his strength spent. The Pactsman solemnly nodded her head before pulling the trigger. As she did all went white, the plasma cell overloading and taking with it these last two survivors of a titanic struggle.

"Freeze; go back three frames."

Wardum Sig-En did as instructed, taking the pict-feed back to just after the marine's head lolled to the side. In so doing his visage had lined up near perfectly with the security pict-taker, allowing Sig-En to get an enhanced image of his face. Ideally framed as he now was one could clearly see that this marine was bald, with olive skin and angular features. There was no denying it - the image was identical with the one Sig-En himself had dug up from their archives. The name matched, and so did the face. The Sherden Pact had killed a Primarch.

"... By all the blood in the river!"

Ereshkigal Demigaur broke the small conference room's silence. Despite the ordinariness of their setting, the room felt heavy, leaden to the point of being oppressive. They were in the command suite of 64th Philia's HQ, currently based on Erēni in the Southern Utnapishtim theatre. Even here in a relatively well placed district of Hive Erēni-Zeta-Phi, and despite the superlative efforts of the corner office’s overworked filtration unit, the air was disgustingly polluted. This was not helped by the fact that the two senior warriors in the room were smoking lo-sticks as if they were going out of fashion. What’s more, the room was dark to facilitate the projection display that Sig-En was maintaining, with the projector itself occupying the nondescript conference table placed between Ereshkigal and Durun’s seats. Such a paltry place simply could not bear the weight of the moment.

For it was not just the physical locale that made the atmosphere feel so dense -- the contents of this meeting were so highly classified that only Ereshkigal Demigaur, her High Sirdar, Durun, and the slave Wardum Sig-En had been allowed in; everyone else was under strict instruction not to interrupt for any reason short of planetary invasion. And even then, Sig-En would clearly need to be sacrificed to ensure operational secrecy before the meeting concluded. Because what they had just witnessed was unprecedented, and if word got out it would affect the entire sector. They had checked with the Office of Ceremonial Calculations; in the whole history of the Sanguinary Utnapishtim they had nothing with which to even compare reaping a Primarch's soul for Khorne. The implications of what had transpired here, if they confirmed it, would be felt throughout the Empire.

In her head Ereshkigal was already composing the urgent memorandum to be sent back to command on Uruk. She would detail how it was nigh miraculous that the security-pict-capture had survived the plasma blast at all, surely to be taken as a sign of Khorne’s special favour for 64th Philia. She would include the archival images of the Primarch Alpharius, and have her wardum analysts include some graphs - they did so love graphs on Uruk - demonstrating the extreme unlikeliness of this degree of facial overlap by coincidence. She would not, of course, call any explicit attention to the fact that it was warriors under her command and on outer-hab-district patrol per her orders that had managed this monumental feat. But she would none the less make sure this fact was salient to any keen reader. Even if this had just been a random enemy Astartes infiltrating the Empire, having taken them out would merit reward. For there to be credible evidence that it was nothing less than a primarch? Well, a promotion to Damogaur, and into some position more central to the Empire than this smog-ridden backwater, surely awaited her.

"We must take this directly to the Etogaur -- this could secure his Apotheosis!"

Ereshkigal’s revelries were interrupted by Durun High Sirdar. Looking over to him she was surprised to see he was literally agog, nigh babbling in his enthusiasm. This childish glee ill suited the hulking brute of a man, the high sirdar clearly having earned his rank the old fashioned way. He made an odd pair with the elegant, aristocratic Ereshkigal. But in their short time together the two had formed an effective command unit, apparently connecting on some spiritual level despite their differing aesthetics. (A shared love of cruelty, the wardum unlucky enough to serve 64th Philia would whisper among themselves when out of earshot.) But even if Ereshkigal found his manner both surprising and distasteful, he was right about the urgency of this news. Any competent bloodmage would be able to secure a place at Khorne's side from a Primarch's soul. If the ritual blessings of such a sacrifice could be properly harnessed then Gilgen Etogaur stood on the cusp of immortality.

"It must be Khorne's will," the high sirdar continued, "for this to happen just as he visits the Kurite shrine!"

For just a moment Ereshkigal's eyes narrowed, before setting her face back into the cold-yet-polite demeanour she typically adopted with her subordinate. Apparently scratching her face she loosened the lapel of her dress uniform with one hand and unholstered her service pistol under the table with the other. Affecting a more casual attitude than she felt, she asked:

“I wasn’t aware our mighty Etogaur’s revised travel schedule had been declassified, when did th-ack!"

Her suspicions were resolved by Durun High Sirdar's poisoned dart lodging itself in her wind-pipe. Moving with surprising agility for a man of his bulk, he was across the table and by her body before she even hit the floor. As he checked her vitals he was dismayed to see a small but unmistakable tattoo at the nape of her neck -- it was the warband's sigil, she'd been a fellow operative of the Nameless Authority!

Bugger.

Why hadn’t Lord Shang told him he was not the only operative embedded in the Philia!? Durun was a veteran servant of the Alpha Legion, adept in their mode of warfare, and a true believer in his warband’s cause. But sometimes he couldn’t help but suspect that, so devoted was Shang to the Legion’s ancient ways, that he had the Nameless Authority engage in complex shenanigans for the mere look of the thing. Still, Durun was a professional and could admit that ultimately this was not the Lord’s fault; he had been sloppy, and there would have to be repercussions once he reported all this to his handler.

But, he thought to himself as retracted his wrist mounted dart launcher back into his sleeve and checked the lock on the conference room door, the situation was salvageable. Wardum Sig-En had let out a shrill cry, but simply cowered in the corner rather than taking the opportunity to escape. One of Durun’s medium term objectives had always been to ferment rebellion among the slave-caste; no time like the present to begin, he supposed.

"Do not fear, brother, I bring liberation. Ereshkigal was a tyrant, and she will be but the first of many to meet such an end."

Sig-En was hunched in a corner, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth. He did not look up at Durun as he stammered his reply.

"M...m...master, please, sp..spare me! I swear I shall tell no-one, oh master please!"

"I am a friend! You need not fear me, nor the retribution of the Sherden - we will make this problem disappear, you'll see."

"But they'll find out, they shall know it was you, and that I did not stop you! She was a Demigaur! Oh you know what they do to traitors, oh warp preserve us!

"Come, stand up - no one shall know! I have auspex scramblers disrupting the security pict-captures in this room" -- Durun took the small angular piece of xenos-tech out from his pocket and waved it in front of Sig-En -- "and we will tell them this was an honour duel. No one will suspect a thing, trust me brother this is a great day, the day revolution begins."

Slowly, hesitantly, Wardum Sig-En stood up, only reluctantly taking Durun’s proffered hand as if he feared it would burn to the touch.

"You are sure, master? You are certain no one can discover what you have done?”

"I am sure, but I am not your master", Durun said, smiling with all the profound sincerity that only an expert liar can convey.

"Good," Sig-En replied, his demeanour changing so totally and suddenly that Durun had no time to register it before feeling the stiletto blade lodged between his ribs. As he clutched the wound and bled out, the last words he heard were Sig-En's, whispered in his ear:

"Hydra dominatus."

Minutes later, having wiped the blood from his blade and placed it back within his robes, and pocketed Durun’s intriguing xenos device, Sig-En was preparing to leave the conference room. The next hour or so was crucial. He needed to get out of the building and link up with his contact in the resistance cell before the bodies were discovered. Ereshkigal Demigaur did indeed have a reputation for brutality, so it was unlikely anyone would dare interrupt her in a private conference with her High Sirdar. Still, there was only so late she could be before protocol demanded a check-in, and if Sig-En was going to rescue this cluster-fuck he needed to be far away from here when that happened.

He had done his best to arrange the confidential briefing materials so that whoever discovered the crime scene would be able to piece together the same story that Ereshkigal and Durun had each thought they were fooling the other into believing. If that wasn’t enough, he had left a scrawled note in the hand he’d so carefully crafted for Sig-En, rambling nonsense which amounted to fearing what Gilgen’s ascension would mean for the slaves of the Sanguinary Utnapishtim should it occur. Hopefully the Kurite operation would not be set-back by today’s unpleasantness.

Meanwhile, he was confident that the resistance cell leaders, who had been irritatingly sceptical of him so far, would now have no choice but to welcome him as a hero once word got out that he had slain the hated Ereshkigal Demigaur along with her second in command. He had been trying to gain access to this cell for months, and while this is not how he would have chosen to do it, having ensured he could take full credit for the death of 64th Philia’s command he could make do.

The last check Sig-En performed was the most important one. He had not been entirely dissembling in the fear he had shown Durun concerning the consequences of getting caught. He had seen what these Khornite barbarians do to traitors, and if escape proved impossible he had no intention of going out like that. He was reassured to find the cyanide capsule where it should be, lodged in the false tooth at the back of his mouth. Pulling up his robe to cover his head, he quietly slipped out of the conference room and closed the door behind him. Like a serpent slithering back to the safety of the long grass, he began the perilous journey to the underhive.