Following the success of their desperate mission to Salvation's Reach, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and the Tanith First race towards the strategic forge world of Urdesh, besieged by the brutal armies of Anarch Sec. However, there may be more at stake than just the planet. The Imperial forces attempted to divide and defeat their enemy, but with Warmaster Macaroth himself commanding the Urdesh Campaign, it is possible that the Archenemy's attack has a different purpose - to decapitate the Imperial command structure in one blow. Did the Warmaster allow himself to become an unwitting target? And will Gaunt's Ghosts be able to protect him from the assembled assassins and war machines of Chaos?