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Commisar Ciaphas Cain - hero of the Imperium and renowned across the sector for his bravery and valour - is sent to help maintain order on an outpost world on the borders of Tau space. But when the alien ambassador is murdered and the situation quickly spirals out of control, Cain and his regiment of Valhallans find themselves in the middle of a war. As the Imperial Guard struggle to contain worldwide civil insurrection, can the wily Commisar Cain identify the real villian before the planet is lost to the Imperium forever ?
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A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL
FOR THE EMPEROR Sandy Mitchell
Sandy Mitchell «For the Emperor»
To Judith, for everything.
Sandy Mitchell «For the Emperor»
IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battleflects cross the daemon‐infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio‐engineered super‐warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever‐vigilant Inquisition and the tech‐priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever‐present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants ‐ and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re‐learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Sandy Mitchell «For the Emperor» Editorial Note: What, for want of a better phrase, I will henceforth be referring to as the ʹʹCain Archiveʹʹ is, in truth, barely deserving of so grandiloquent a title. It consists merely of a single dataslate, stuffed full of files arranged with a cavalier disregard for chronology, and to no scheme of indexing that Iʹve been able, to determine despite prolonged examination of the contents. What can be stated with absolute certainty, however, is that the author was none other than the celebrated Commissar Ciaphas Cain, and that the archive was written by him during his retirement while serving as a tutor at the Schola Proge‐nium. This would pin the date of composition to some time after his appointment to the faculty in 993 .M41, from occasional references to his published memoirs (To Serve the Emperor: A Commissarʹs Life), which first saw the fight of day in 005.MAZ, we can. safely conclude that he was inspired by the process of writing them to embark on a fuller account of his experiences, and that the bulk of the archive was composed no earlier than this. His motives for so doing we can only guess at, since publication would have been impossible, indeed, I placed them under Inquisitorial seal the moment they came to light, for reasons which should be immediately apparent to any attentive reader. Nevertheless, I 6efieve t