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The Moon-Mines of Sciara Lone – Danie Ware

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE MOON-MINES OF SCIARA LONE

by Danie Ware

Falling to its death, the Heart of Devotion shone.

The freighter tilted, nose down. It tumbled slowly, slowly, silent and serene. It offered no wake, no smoke, no flame, only the reflected gleam of the closest star. Like some great and failing creature, it sank towards the gas giant and the bright clouds of hydrogen below.

If its machine-spirit sang, the Sisters could not hear it.

Watching it from the Arvus, Sister Augusta raised her own voice, the words of the Requiem led by Sister Superior Veradis. The Heart had been taking them home, back to Ophelia VII, but a breach in its hull had proved irreparable. Through its tunnels, hounded by vox-cries and klaxons, by flaring red lumens and by hissing, failing seals, the squad had done everything they could to evacuate the crew. And now they hung still, watching as the Heart finally perished.

Dies irae, dies illa.

Augusta knew they had not evacuated everyone. They had simply not had enough time, enough hands. Many had taken to the saviour pods, many more to the shuttles, but not all… not even nearly. And so she sang, not only for the ship, but for those souls still aboard who would meet His grace, and soon. She prayed that they died with courage, their chins lifted.

‘God-Emperor who sees all,

Who saves those who are to be saved…’

Beside her, Sister Lucienne paused in her hymnal. In a shocked tone, she said, ‘Look!’

Still singing, Augusta followed where her Sister was indicating. The next line of the Requiem came out like an exclamation.

‘Guard us, O fount of courage!’

Out there, across the star-specked void and half hidden by the vast, striped glow of the planet, there rose a single moon. It was big, perfectly round, its curved edge glittering.

‘Once the accursed have been silenced,

Sentenced to acrid flames…’

‘Truly, He has blessed us,’ Veradis said. There was an unusual note in her voice, something Augusta did not quite recognise. ‘Pilot, can you scan the satellite?’

The convoy of shuttles hung poised and waiting.

After a moment, the pilot’s voice came back: ‘Sister Superior, we are saved!’ He seemed amazed, overwhelmed. ‘Truly, this is His design. He has shown us to aid!’

‘The moon has a colony?’

‘Miners, Sister. The data’s incoming now.’ The vox crackled and jumped as the pilot gathered the information. ‘Population estimate in excess of ten thousand. There’s a full city here – a landing pad big enough to handle the shuttles, an artificially generated atmosphere…’ He paused, seemed almost on the edge of weeping. ‘Our prayers have been answered – He is with us, He has guided us. I have coordinates to land!’

‘He is always with us, pilot,’ Veradis said, her tone severe. ‘Please forward all data to my slate.’

‘Yes, Sister Superior.’

The vox cut out, leaving Augusta and Lucienne exchanging a glance, both of them now singing, radiant with faith and thankfulness.

‘Call us thus with the blessed!’

Veradis said nothing further, but took up the hymnal once more. The Sisters’ words chimed out to the convoy of waiting shuttles, to the souls still upon the Heart. Below them now, the huge ship slipped gently between the planet’s clouds. There was no oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere, no detonation, no flare of flame to mark the passing of the great ship’s machine-spirit.

And the Heart of Devotion died without a sound.

‘Maintain your vigilance, Sisters,’ Veradis said. She offered no explanation, just the command.

‘Yes, Sister Superior.’

Augusta, her red armour sealed and her helm back on, moved down the Arvus’ ramp. Around them the landing pad was bleak, all black rock and dark ferrocrete. Great swathes of cables writhed across the floor; control panels gleamed, their lights in glittering colours. As the massive steel doors began to close, dirt rose in brief, angry spirals. It glittered in the overhead lumens, spattering and scraping on the outside of their armour.

And then, at the final, echoing slam, it fell back to the floor.

‘Sister Superior Veradis.’

Striding down the hangar ramp to meet her, his boots ringing from filth-blackened metal, came a lean, rangy man, his face lined, his hair greying and tied back. He wore long boots, a casual jacket and an ingratiating smile. A wide-eyed aide walked with him, and two heavier figures, both armed.

‘Governor Ido.’

Veradis, it seemed, had scanned all the information she’d been sent. She was helm-off, but her arms were folded, her stance wary.

‘Truly, your colony is His blessing.’

‘We’re a way off the main routes, Sister.’ Ido was relaxed, affable. Completely unintimidated – apparently – by five fully armed Adepta Sororitas. Looking out over the shuttles, he said, ‘How many of you?’

‘We lost the saviour pods to the planet’s gravity well,’ Veradis told him, her tone not changing. ‘My squad are five. The crew number seventy-two, many with injuries. They will need quarters, and medical care. And I will need access to your chapel, and to your vox-array or astropath. If you would be so kind.’

It wasn’t a request.

‘Of course, of course.’ Stopping at the ramp’s end, he offered her the sign of the aquila. ‘Ave Imperator, Sisters. Your presence is an honour. We have a fully outfitted hospice here, and we’re very happy to care for your crew.’

Gravely, Veradis returned the salute.

Knowing her Sister Superior, Augusta saw the flicker of stiffness that passed across Veradis’ armoured shoulders. It was more than just wary; she seemed disapproving of the man’s unusually cavalier attitude. Yet her vox was silent and whatever she was thinking, she did not give it voice.

Augusta prayed for guidance, clarity. Show me to the Light.

Matching the governor’s conversational tone, Veradis said, ‘Your colony are miners?’

‘Promethium, Sister.’ Ido waved a glib hand, freely offering the information. ‘Our mine workings are extensive. I’m happy to show you, if you’d like to see His work being done?’

‘I must first offer thanks for our deliverance,’ Veradis told him. ‘And pray for the souls of those we lost. Those with me here are the crew of the Heart of Devotion, and the servants of the Holy Ecclesiarchy. You will give them treatment, and rest.’

‘Of course,’ he said again. ‘Luca’ – he indicated the aide – ‘will see your crew to the hospice. And if you’ll allow me, Sisters, I’ll show you to the chapel myself.’

Behind them, a sudden blare of klaxons announced the crack and rumble of the doors. They parted like an opening maw, jagged teeth on both sides. Beyond them lay the huge, shining curve of the planet, and the hanging silhouette of a waiting shuttle. Dust spat, spinning in angry tornadoes. Landing lights flared, servitors and workers ran to clear the area. The signals officer gestured directions, showing the inward route.

‘The field emitters maintain the atmosphere!’ Shouting over the noise, Ido was gesturing at the guards, one to walk with him, the other with the aide. ‘The traffic is constant, and this is a perilous place to be standing! If you would please follow me?’

Veradis gave him a curt nod and the squad fell into double file, the Sister Superior at their head, Emlyn and Leona behind her, Augusta and Lucienne at the rear. The aide, Luca, fell back to speak to the crew.

Still murmuring her prayer, Augusta paused, her gaze on the incoming vessel. The Heart’s shuttles were still moving, lifting off the pads to leave the space for any incoming traffic. The arriving vehicle was an Aquila, black and trimmed in silver; it was a planet-lit outline, carrying no insignia that she could see. Carefully, it hovered, turned, then settled in the nearest circle of lights.

She eyed it for a moment. It seemed wrong, and she couldn’t work out why.

‘Sister,’ Lucienne said across the squad vox. ‘You must keep up.’

Conscious of her lapse in discipline, she ran up the ramp. At its top, the doorway was an open arch of stone, leading out to a plain, rocky corridor. Neat lines of lumens were joined by tidy wires, and signs offered directions – entrances and exits, numerous landing pads, areas for security or processing.

How big was this place?

But the governor was still talking, expansively and cordially. The planet was Sciara Lone, he told them, the only one in the system, and it only had this one moon. Thanks to an orbital peculiarity, the moon was almost always hidden by Sciara’s shadow; it played havoc with incoming navigation. At this, he chuckled, adding, ‘We’re a difficult find, and never by accident. Your presence must be His will, Sister Superior.’

Veradis answered him, her tone flat, ‘Everything is His will, governor.’

‘Of course.’ Still smooth, he gestured at a left-hand junction, a sign that read Exitus Primaria. ‘From here, we’ll head out into the city proper. The streets can be rough, though warning you, frankly, seems unnecessary.’

‘He is with us,’ Veradis told him, with the faintest hint of disdain.

‘Of course,’ the governor said again.

Outside the port, the colony appeared immense – a sprawling mass of twisting streets, of clusters of low, stone buildings, all crammed in tight together, a thousand yellow window-lights shining.

Augusta had never visited promethium mines, but she had heard the tales. They were supposed to be places of darkness and dust and pollution, of despair and grief and hopelessness. Her Sisters Hospitaller tended to the wounded and the broken, those injured in mind and body. Many miners perished. Many more became servitors and menials, their half-healed brains built into constructs and machinery, to continue their work, in His name.

But not here. The pilot had been right – this was a city.

Still at the rear of the squad, her hand on her bolter, she made a conscious effort not to stare. But… by the Throne!

Leaving the port complex, the Sisters had paused at an upper exit, and at the top of a long set of steps. And there, rising massive above the tangle of roadways, was a titanic central mine-head, its top silhouetted perfectly by Sciara’s bright crescent. Stunned, Augusta turned her exclamation into an unspoken prayer.

By His holy name!

‘Our central mineshaft and ore processor,’ the governor told them. By his tone, he was aware of its impact. ‘There are others, but this is the largest.’

Pipes wove like wires, immense and glinting. Great stone-arched bridges carried water, or ore, or molten metals. Huge machines pounded and thundered, shaking the very air. Wheels turned, hoppers rumbled. Railways rattled, though Augusta could not see them. Vent steam hissed, harsh white breaths against the half-dark.

‘You have quite the city,’ Veradis commented, echoing Augusta’s thought.

‘Mines require more than just miners,’ the governor answered easily. ‘The moon-caps’ ice is thawed for water, so we’re entirely self-sustaining. We’re also rather… out of the way, so we need to handle our own administration.’

‘So I see.’

Crowding about the mine-head’s feet, the maze of streets seemed hewn straight from the moon’s bedrock. The buildings were low and black, tight and narrow – crammed in round the mine’s base like worshippers of its power.

Augusta had never seen – never imagined – anything like this.

‘Please,’ the governor said. ‘Our chapel is this way.’

They descended the steps, still moving in the same formation. Soon, they started to see people – traders and dealers, most staying in groups. Their skins were filthy with the ever-blowing dirt; it was ingrained in their pores, their clothes, their fingers. In places, small crowds lingered under dark stone arches, or drifted at the edges of open market squares. Light shone from doorways. Voices called and bartered; people spilled from noisy bars, shouting and shoving. Augusta even saw children, darting through the crowds and as grimy as all the rest.

Ten thousand people, the pilot had said.

Out here? She wondered what they ate, where it came from. She found herself compelled by the place, by the sheer impossibility of it. Her studies… her studies had never covered anything like this. She could not believe that the schola would omit such a thing deliberately – did they not know that such places existed? Was that why Veradis was so wary? The young Sister wanted to speak to her Superior, but Veradis had commanded them only to follow her. So Augusta obeyed the order, watching around her with an increasing holy awe.

That your grace can exist, even in such places!

The people paused as the Sisters came past. Some just stared, their gazes hard and cold. Others went to call out, were nudged by their companions. Many stood with their mouths open, riveted by disbelief. At one corner, a female voice called for someone to come out and see, to come out and see now.

But Veradis walked with her chin up, ignoring them all.

Beside Augusta and still at the rear, Lucienne said softly, ‘I have never seen a colony like this.’

‘Nor I,’ Augusta answered her.

‘It’s not much further, Sisters,’ the governor said, from the front. ‘You will be able to rest and pray.’

‘Stay close,’ Veradis growled.

She sounded almost like she expected an ambush, but still, the Sisters had seen no soldiers, no organised guard force of any kind. Not a single regulation uniform.

‘And here we are,’ the governor said, as they turned a last corner. ‘The doors are always open, and you may rest and pray for as long as you wish. Ave Imperator, Sisters.’

‘I will need to use your communications,’ Veradis told him. ‘The Heart’s astropath was able to send the message of its fall, but I must reach Ophelia VII, and my canoness.’

‘Of course.’ The governor repeated his mantra, genial as ever. ‘I’ll leave Argo with you.’ He indicated the guard. ‘When you need my help, he can find me.’

The chapel, Augusta soon saw, was shockingly unkempt.

The floor was clean, as if some servitor had hurriedly swept the place, and new electro-candles had been placed in the sconces, each one shining like fresh hope. But if there had ever been pews or a pulpit, then they were long gone, the Sol-facing window was thick with dirt, and the altar bore neither cloth nor hanging. The transepts stood empty, cleaner squares on the walls where paintings or prayer-banners had been taken away.

Looking at it, Augusta caught her breath. That His very home should be left in such disrepair!

Ordering the guard to stay outside, Veradis stalked up the aisle, her black-and-white robe snapping and fluttering. Emlyn and Leona flanked her like angry scarlet icons. The dirt had blown into the joints of their armour, and they crunched as they walked. Every step sounded furious.

‘Close the doors.’

Augusta and Lucienne turned to obey, but the huge steel doors were rusted into place. Power armour or no, they were absolutely stuck fast.

‘I fear they will not move, Sister,’ Lucienne said, after struggling. ‘It must have been many years since…’

The end of the sentence hung unsaid, too terrible to contemplate.

Veradis gave a snort, sceptical and irritated. ‘Very well, then. Sisters, attend. We must offer Him thanks for our deliverance and consider our next actions very carefully.’

Stopping at the foot of the altar steps, she knelt to the unseen image in the window. The others joined her, all five Sisters kneeling in a line. Augusta found His absence deeply–

No, not absence, she corrected herself, for you know that He is here, as He is everywhere. But this, this was a travesty. Shivers of heresy stole down her forearms, and she raised her voice, harmonising with her Sisters.

‘Through storm, war and bloodshed, we stand fast,

Awaiting the moment of Your call.’

‘Blessed be their memories,’ Veradis said, as the hymn came to an end.

The squad echoed her, the prayer for those they had lost. After a moment, the Sister Superior came back to her feet.

‘Very well’, she said. ‘Our prayers have cleared my heart. He has shown me lucidity, and how we will proceed. Leona and Emlyn, you will stand guard at the hospice. Augusta and Lucienne, you will return to the port and secure the shuttles. I will utilise the moon’s communications, and send a message to the Order. This place unsettles me, and yet…’ She paused, as if thinking. ‘Yet I feel no taint, no witch, no overt threat. No xenos invasion, nor loitering, ancient foe. Until His path is revealed fully to us, we will proceed with both vigilance and caution.’

Augusta wanted answers, a full briefing as to her Sister Superior’s suspicions, but Veradis’ expression was closed, dark as thundercloud.

‘Walk in His grace, Sisters, and maintain vox-contact. Attend to your duties, and I will know everything you learn.’

At the port, the flotilla of the Heart’s Arvus shuttles had been parked away from the landing pads, the line of them now back against the rearing dark stone of the wall. There was little illumination, but both Sisters could see technical crew, each one bearing a pin-light and many with attachments that glinted as they worked.

Augusta strode down the metal ramp but was stopped by a heavily built man, both hands ending in arrays of augmetic tools.

‘The shuttles sustained some damage, Sisters,’ he said. ‘We’re happy to help, do anything we can. In His name.’

‘Then you will get out of my way,’ she told him, emulating Veradis’ absolute certainty.

The man grinned briefly, gold tooth flashing. ‘There’s no need for you to be concerned. They’re in good hands, here.’

Lucienne was beside her. ‘That was not a request.’

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re giving us orders, now?’

Augusta’s temper flared. ‘You will stand away, and you will stand away now. We are the Adepta Sororitas, and we go where He bids.’

The man gave a jerk of his chin, and several more figures surrounded them. They were all heavily built, but still bore no uniforms, no marks of rank, nothing.

‘You should stay in your chapel, Sisters. Your shuttles are in good hands.’

This was intolerable. Augusta might be young, but she had never seen people react this way. Kneel, yes; plead for absolution, yes; be overcome with awe and religious wonder, yes. But this, this defiance… Everything in her wanted to raise her bolter. With an effort, she held her rage down. The Sister Superior had said ‘caution’.

Instead, she stepped forward, fearless. Closing one red-armoured gauntlet in the front of the man’s battered, grox-leather jacket, she propelled him smack into the railing, bending him over the drop.

‘Are you deficient?’ The words were a snarl. ‘I said, “You will stand away.” My orders are to secure our shuttles and that is exactly what I will do, in His name. Do I make myself clear?’

The man bared his teeth, something between a grimace and a sneer. He seemed more angry than scared. Lucienne was glaring at the rest of them, one hand on her bolter. They had spread out, surrounding her completely.

Why were these men not afraid? If they started trouble, Lucienne would break all four of them like so many jabbering grots. Why did they have no insignia, no rank or identification?

Strangling her confusion, she tried to think. By Your grace and mercy, show me to the Light!

Shaking the man until his teeth rattled, she repeated, ‘We will see our shuttles. Now.’

The man had been watching her, studying her face. He drew in a breath, and calmed his expression. Then he met her eyes and said, very deliberately, ‘Your shuttles are being repaired, Sisters. They are in good hands. Please understand that we can’t have people wandering loose in the hangar, there are too many opportunities for accidents.’

A gesture, and the others fell back.

Augusta gripped the man harder. ‘Do not lie to me.’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’ He was emphatic and his gaze did not leave hers. His eyes were dark, apparently sincere. ‘My commands come straight from the governor himself. Surely, you can see the sense of the ruling?’

His gaze was clear, the reason in his voice sounded real.

In His name! What was going on here?

Across the vox, Veradis’ voice reported success: she had sent a message to the Order. By her tone, she was surprised, almost as if she had expected the governor to do… what?

Again, Augusta prayed for clarity. She did not understand this, yet the disquiet in her heart was growing. The Sister Superior had said to be cautious, but about what? If there was no enemy here, then why had the chapel been abandoned?

But Veradis was still speaking. ‘Sisters, report. Emlyn, Leona, have you located our injured crew? Augusta, are our shuttles secure?’

Across the hangar, the doors gave a crack and a growl, splitting down their centre. Rumbling, they began to roll back. Dust flew. Flood-lumens played on the black-and-silver Aquila as it rose and turned. Again, that sense of unease: what was it about that shuttle that was bothering her?

And then, there it was. As the light of the planet’s crescent gleamed through the doors, so it brought the flare of His wisdom, His light in the dirt and the darkness. Thanks filled her heart like a threnody – that He could touch her, even here!

Like the guards, the shuttle bore no insignia. No blessings, no prayers. There had not been a single image of Him, a single devotion, not anywhere. And the chapel!

It was like a shock, a jab of true and holy realisation. Every world, every moon, every city, every planet of the Imperium – it bore His likeness. His honour and faith and loyalty. Some of those likenesses may be ancient, or interpreted by the planet’s people, but still – He was always there.

Within your heart and without, He is ever-present!

Her pulse thundering now, Augusta still had one red fist in the man’s jacket. Four more of them yet surrounded the Sisters; everything seemed frozen, caught in the glare of her sudden understanding.

It was absence beyond words. Loud as a shout, empty as a vacuum. Amid her thanks, Augusta offered penitence for not realising this before – how had she missed it? Something so fundamental? Had she permitted herself to be overcome by the moon’s strangeness? Or the fall of the Heart? Such a lapse was unforgiveable.

But now, the planet-light of the Heart’s fall had shown His very will.

‘Sister…’ the man said.

She released him and stepped back, watched the Aquila as it headed slowly for the airlock. His face, His image, should have been upon those doors. It should have been upon the overhead mine, the shining tower that spiked at the planet as if to pierce its curve and deflate it, leaving liquid light spilling downwards through the streets…

But no, it had carried no banners, no lore, no rituals. No shrines, no Mechanicus delineations, no diagnostic screens nor offerings to the Omnissiah. Even the control panels in here… they bore no prayers, no words of sanctification or of blessed and holy ritual.

Veradis had been wary from the beginning, but the forces here were not corrupted. There was no sign of the Ancient Foe. They were just…

Thugs.

The word came with a touch of amazement: she had read about places like this, she had studied them on her slates! Her tutors had told her that they existed, but she had found the idea almost incredible – the places in the Imperium that dared duck His law. Enemies, she understood – heretics, cultists, xenos… But this!

Something in her said, They have fallen from His grace. They should be purged.

From the lightning and the tempest…

Over the vox, the Sister Superior was still speaking. ‘Sisters! What is your delay? Report!’

Augusta said, ‘The shuttles are being repaired, Sisters. But…’ She had intended to ask if Veradis wished her to check them more closely, but Emlyn’s voice cut across her own.

‘Sis… prior! Cr… issing, …peat, crew …ing! We are–’

The channel cut dead, leaving Augusta and Lucienne standing there, staring at each other, wondering what had just happened.

Veradis barked, ‘Sisters. All of you to my location…’

But Augusta and Lucienne were surrounded.

‘Sorry,’ the man said. ‘Change of plans.’

Released, he had shifted attitude completely. No longer trying for sincerity, he was brash, smirking. The tools on his hands had whirred to threat and life, to edges and sparkle and teeth. More of the figures were closing, now – ten, fifteen. Some carried bolt pistols, but most had mêlée weapons, a crackling, jingling assortment of chains and blades and gauntlets.

‘You cannot fight us,’ Lucienne said, incredulous.

Over the vox, Augusta said, ‘Sister Superior, we are assailed.’ She was angry with herself: the man had lied to her, and she had been on the edge of believing him. ‘I fear… I fear our shuttles may be compromised.’ The words felt like a confession.

‘Understood,’ Veradis said. ‘Deal with any resistance and convene on my location.’

The leader barked an order and the ring of heavies closed. Not drawing her bolter, Augusta dropped to a combat crouch, watching them as they ranged around her. A fist went for her visor, a whirling blade for her chest; both struck her armour with force, but they could not break the ceramite.

She backhanded the first one, sending him sprawling; kneed the second in the groin. This was ludicrous, how could these thugs even hope to take on two fully armoured Sisters of Battle? Lucienne headbutted a third, sending him backwards with his legs weak and his face split open.

Our Emperor, deliver us! The Litany came from them in words of pure, holy elation.

But the thugs just pressed closer, still apparently unworried by the Sisters’ fighting prowess. Their eyes shone, hard and cold. Had they been taking something? Stimms, or worse?

It didn’t matter. She blocked another strike, breaking the arm and hammering the woman face first into the dirt. Lucienne took out another, lifting him bodily and throwing him over the railing.

He hit the floor, didn’t move again.

But there, a resting shuttle was starting its engines. It was a big vehicle, heavy and unfamiliar. And, unlike either the Arvus or the Aquila, it was carrying enough ordnance to put a hole in a planet.

They wouldn’t. Not on top of a promethium mine…

She wasn’t going to take the chance. Shouting to Lucienne, ‘With me!’ she broke past two of the circling thugs and leapt the railing cleanly, landing hard but rolling easily, her armour taking the impact. She heard Lucienne come after her, but did not turn; she was racing for the shuttle, catching sight of its pilot through the front viewport. The woman was a local, dirt-skinned and angry, her face twisted by a long scar.

She was absolutely going to aim her arsenal at the ramp.

‘Shit!’ the thug leader bawled. ‘Move!’

Not that it would do them any good.

Veradis’ voice barked in the vox; Augusta could hear sounds of combat. Emlyn, too, her signal still breaking. It seemed that the game was up. The governor had tried to play them, and failed. He had lied about the shuttles, may well have misled the Sister Superior over her vox-message – the missing crew, however, was not something he could conceal.

And where had they gone?

Augusta did not have time. She offered a prayer for their safety, the Litany still blazing from her as she threw herself at the lifting shuttle.

From the scourge of the Kraken!

Catching the base of the still-open door, she swung by her hands for a moment, the servos in her armour whirring. Then she hauled herself up and over and straight into the face of the woman in the pilot seat.

Below her, Lucienne was dealing with the rest of the thugs – several of them had leapt the railing after the Sister. She seemed to be enjoying herself, singing in glorious, righteous rage and hammering them down, one after another.

Our Emperor…!

Augusta had been right about one thing – weapons or not, they were no match for a fully armoured Adepta Sororitas.

But the shuttle was coming about.

No time. She grabbed the pilot, snagged the edge of her leather and yanked. The pilot had not belted herself in, and she toppled sideways out of the chair. The shuttle swung and slewed, sending them both tumbling. The woman had a knife and was trying to shove the point in the joints of Augusta’s armour – for all the good that would do. Grabbing her, Augusta dragged her bodily across the floor of the cockpit and towards the door. The woman clung on, spitting and swearing, but a boot in her face knocked her cold. She lost her grip, and out she fell.

Grabbing the joystick, praying for His wisdom and for the machine-spirit of the shuttle, Augusta tried to bring it under control.

But she had no idea what she was doing.

Only one thing for it. Roaring a warning at Lucienne, she hurled herself from the cockpit, scrambled to get away. And the machine tumbled, crashing nose first even as the Heart had done.

Augusta came up from darkness like she had come up from the Font’s immersion. A circle of light became a hospice illumination, and then a medical bed. Beside her, Lucienne was praying, her helm off and her gauntleted hands clasped before her. As Augusta moved, she looked up.

‘Sister! By His grace, you’re awake!’

Augusta’s head ached terribly, but she ground herself into proper focus and sat up.

In your grace and mercy…

She seemed uninjured.

‘Don’t move,’ Lucienne said. ‘When the shuttle detonated, it knocked you cold.’ She grinned. ‘The pirates didn’t fare so well.’

‘We’re still…?’

‘Yes, we’re still here. Though Veradis has taken command until a ship can reach us. She executed the governor, along with his senior staff. And Emlyn found our crew in the mine lift, being taken down to the tunnels. She and Leona have taken them to the chapel, where they have been put to cleaning.’

Augusta’s expression must have given her confusion about what had transpired away, because her Sister chuckled.

‘It’s a rogue outpost, Sister. Not an overt enemy of the Imperium, but definitely not paying its tithes. And it’s not promethium, either. The mines are precious metals, gold and silver, being quietly traded to the wealthy and influential, all across the void. The amassed fortune will be supervised by the Ecclesiarchy.’

‘So…’ Amid the pounding in her skull, it took a moment to coalesce. ‘That’s why they couldn’t let us leave?’

‘They needed to delay us, put us at ease, and then try and take us down. The idea was to sabotage the shuttles, send us back into orbit and then – boom! – to the Throne.’ She spread both hands in a gesture of explosion. ‘But Veradis knew, right from the beginning, that there was–’

‘Something wrong, Sisters.’ The Sister Superior was at the doorway, her helm off but full armour still on. Her face was a study of stern disapproval. ‘Once again, Sister Augusta, you manage to tangle yourself in some unlikely exploit. They do seem to follow you, do they not?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

Augusta tried to sit up, but the Sister Superior waved a hand. ‘Stay where you are. It is His blessing that you survived at all, and I want you back to fighting fitness as soon as possible. Taking your consciousness, Sister’ – she raised an acerbic eyebrow – ‘was His way of preserving your life. And you will thank Him for this gift.’ The eyebrow stayed as she contemplated Augusta’s supine form. ‘It seems He has larger plans for you, Augusta Santorus.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ She felt herself flushing. ‘I will pray.’

‘I should think so.’ Moving into the room, Veradis examined both Sisters with a critical eye. ‘So, tell me. What made you think that we were endangered? You did not examine the shuttles closely?’

‘No, Sister,’ Augusta said.

A hospice orderly bustled over, checking screens, and Augusta took time to think about her answer, phrasing it carefully.

‘He… sent a sign, Sister,’ she said at last. ‘An Aquila, black and silver but unmarked by blessing or prayer. And when it caught Sciara’s light it… it was a key, unlocking both truth and understanding. It is to my shame that I did not perceive the situation earlier.’ Her cheeks warmed further and she lowered her gaze.

‘This is outside your experience, Sisters, both of you. Such places as these – they exist, but you are young, you will not have seen such things before. Your perceptions do you credit.’

Augusta and Lucienne spoke almost in unison. ‘Thank you, Sister.’

‘The galaxy is wide,’ Veradis said. ‘And our tests many. In His name, we slay the foes of the light – the Great Enemy, the xenos, the witch, the heretic. These foes are distinct. They are easy to spot, and to eliminate.’ She stopped, eyeing the orderly until the young woman scuttled out. ‘But there are times when foes may take a different form, subtle and pernicious. Here, we must work with wit and perception, not just the fire of our weapons. He presents us with many trials, Sisters – and such times test our patience, and our discipline. They may even be the most trying times of all.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ they said again, in unison.

Her gaze passing from face to face, Veradis nodded. ‘Good. Now, as it may be some days before we can return to Ophelia VII, I have retrieved a data-slate from our shuttle. Sister Augusta, you will study the Thorn Treatise, and pray for the courage and wisdom of Mina herself. And you, Sister Lucienne, you will accompany me. This moon is still riddled with corruption and we have work yet to do.’

About the Author

Danie Ware is the author of the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin, The Rose in Anger and the short story ‘Mercy’, all featuring the Sisters of Battle. She lives in Carshalton, South London, with her son and two cats, and has long-held interests in role-playing, re-enactment, vinyl art toys and personal fitness.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.

‘I was there at the Siege of Terra,’ Vitrian Messinius would say in his later years.

‘I was there…’ he would add to himself, his words never meant for ears but his own. ‘I was there the day the Imperium died.’

But that was yet to come.

‘To the walls! To the walls! The enemy is coming!’ Captain Messinius, as he was then, led his Space Marines across the Penitent’s Square high up on the Lion’s Gate. ‘Another attack! Repel them! Send them back to the warp!’

Thousands of red-skinned monsters born of fear and sin scaled the outer ramparts, fury and murder incarnate. The mortals they faced quailed. It took the heart of a Space Marine to stand against them without fear, and the Angels of Death were in short supply.

‘Another attack, move, move! To the walls!’

They came in the days after the Avenging Son returned, emerging from nothing, eight legions strong, bringing the bulk of their numbers to bear against the chief entrance to the Imperial Palace. A decapitation strike like no other, and it came perilously close to success.

Messinius’ Space Marines ran to the parapet edging the Penitent’s Square. On many worlds, the square would have been a plaza fit to adorn the centre of any great city. Not on Terra. On the immensity of the Lion’s Gate, it was nothing, one of hundreds of similarly huge spaces. The word ‘gate’ did not suit the scale of the cityscape. The Lion’s Gate’s bulk marched up into the sky, step by titanic step, until it rose far higher than the mountains it had supplanted. The gate had been built by the Emperor Himself, they said. Myths detailed the improbable supernatural feats required to raise it. They were lies, all of them, and belittled the true effort needed to build such an edifice. Though the Lion’s Gate was made to His design and by His command, the soaring monument had been constructed by mortals, with mortal hands and mortal tools. Messinius wished that had been remembered. For men to build this was far more impressive than any godly act of creation. If men could remember that, he believed, then perhaps they would remember their own strength.

The uncanny may not have built the gate, but it threatened to bring it down. Messinius looked over the rampart lip, down to the lower levels thousands of feet below and the spread of the Anterior Barbican.

Upon the stepped fortifications of the Lion’s Gate was armour of every colour and the blood of every loyal primarch. Dozens of regiments stood alongside them. Aircraft filled the sky. Guns boomed from every quarter. In the churning redness on the great roads, processional ways so huge they were akin to prairies cast in rockcrete, were flashes of gold where the Emperor’s Custodian Guard battled. The might of the Imperium was gathered there, in the palace where He dwelt.

There seemed moments on that day when it might not be enough.

The outer ramparts were carpeted in red bodies that writhed and heaved, obscuring the great statues adorning the defences and covering over the guns, an invasive cancer consuming reality. The enemy were legion. There were too many foes to defeat by plan and ruse. Only guns, and will, would see the day won, but the defenders were so pitifully few.

Messinius called a wordless halt, clenched fist raised, seeking the best place to deploy his mixed company, veterans all of the Terran Crusade. Gunships and fighters sped overhead, unleashing deadly light and streams of bombs into the packed daemonic masses. There were innumerable cannons crammed onto the gate, and they all fired, rippling the structure with false earthquakes. Soon the many ships and orbital defences of Terra would add their guns, targeting the very world they were meant to guard, but the attack had come so suddenly; as yet they had had no time to react.

The noise was horrendous. Messinius’ audio dampers were at maximum and still the roar of ordnance stung his ears. Those humans that survived today would be rendered deaf. But he would have welcomed more guns, and louder still, for all the defensive fury of the assailed palace could not drown out the hideous noise of the daemons – their sighing hisses, a billion serpents strong, and chittering, screaming wails. It was not only heard but sensed within the soul, the realms of spirit and of matter were so intertwined. Messinius’ being would be forever stained by it.

Tactical information scrolled down his helmplate, near environs only. He had little strategic overview of the situation. The vox-channels were choked with a hellish screaming that made communication impossible. The noosphere was disrupted by etheric backwash spilling from the immaterial rifts the daemons poured through. Messinius was used to operating on his own. Small-scale, surgical actions were the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but in a battle of this scale, a lack of central coordination would lead inevitably to defeat. This was not like the first Siege, where his kind had fought in Legions.

He called up a company-wide vox-cast and spoke to his warriors. They were not his Chapter-kin, but they would listen. The primarch himself had commanded that they do so.

‘Reinforce the mortals,’ he said. ‘Their morale is wavering. Position yourselves every fifty yards. Cover the whole of the south-facing front. Let them see you.’ He directed his warriors by chopping at the air with his left hand. His right, bearing an inactive power fist, hung heavily at his side. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles, back forty yards, single firing line. Prepare to engage enemy breakthroughs only on my mark. Devastators, split to demi-squads and take up high ground, sergeant and sub-squad prime’s discretion as to positioning and target. Remember our objective, heavy infliction of casualties. We kill as many as we can, we retreat, then hold at the Penitent’s Arch until further notice. Command squad, with me.’

Command squad was too grand a title for the mismatched crew Messinius had gathered around himself. His own officers were light years away, if they still lived.

‘Doveskamor, Tidominus,’ he said to the two Aurora Marines with him. ‘Take the left.’

‘Yes, captain,’ they voxed, and jogged away, their green armour glinting orange in the hell-light of the invasion.

The rest of his scratch squad was comprised of a communications specialist from the Death Spectres, an Omega Marine with a penchant for plasma weaponry, and a Raptor holding an ancient standard he’d taken from a dusty display.

‘Why did you take that, Brother Kryvesh?’ Messinius asked, as they moved forward.

‘The palace is full of such relics,’ said the Raptor. ‘It seems only right to put them to use. No one else wanted it.’

Messinius stared at him.

‘What? If the gate falls, we’ll have more to worry about than my minor indiscretion. It’ll be good for morale.’

The squads were splitting to join the standard humans. Such was the noise many of the men on the wall had not noticed their arrival, and a ripple of surprise went along the line as they appeared at their sides. Messinius was glad to see they seemed more firm when they turned their eyes back outwards.

‘Anzigus,’ he said to the Death Spectre. ‘Hold back, facilitate communication within the company. Maximum signal gain. This interference will only get worse. See if you can get us patched in to wider theatre command. I’ll take a hardline if you can find one.’

‘Yes, captain,’ said Anzigus. He bowed a helm that was bulbous with additional equipment. He already had the access flap of the bulky vox-unit on his arm open. He withdrew, the aerials on his power plant extending. He headed towards a systems nexus on the far wall of the plaza, where soaring buttresses pushed back against the immense weight bearing down upon them.

Messinius watched him go. He knew next to nothing about Anzigus. He spoke little, and when he did, his voice was funereal. His Chapter was mysterious, but the same lack of familiarity held true for many of these warriors, thrown together by miraculous events. Over their years lost wandering in the warp, Messinius had come to see some as friends as well as comrades, others he hardly knew, and none he knew so well as his own Chapter brothers. But they would stand together. They were Space Marines. They had fought by the returned primarch’s side, and in that they shared a bond. They would not stint in their duty now.

Messinius chose a spot on the wall, directing his other veterans to left and right. Kryvesh he sent to the mortal officer’s side. He looked down again, out past the enemy and over the outer palace. Spires stretched away in every direction. Smoke rose from all over the landscape. Some of it was new, the work of the daemon horde, but Terra had been burning for weeks. The Astronomican had failed. The galaxy was split in two. Behind them in the sky turned the great palace gyre, its deep eye marking out the throne room of the Emperor Himself.

‘Sir!’ A member of the Palatine Guard shouted over the din. He pointed downwards, to the left. Messinius followed his wavering finger. Three hundred feet below, daemons were climbing. They came upwards in a triangle tipped by a brute with a double rack of horns. It clambered hand over hand, far faster than should be possible, flying upwards, as if it touched the side of the towering gate only as a concession to reality. A Space Marine with claw locks could not have climbed that fast.

‘Soldiers of the Imperium! The enemy is upon us!’

He looked to the mortals. Their faces were blanched with fear. Their weapons shook. Their bravery was commendable nonetheless. Not one of them attempted to run, though a wave of terror preceded the unnatural things clambering up towards them.

‘We shall not turn away from our duty, no matter how fearful the foe, or how dire our fates may be,’ he said. ‘Behind us is the Sanctum of the Emperor Himself. As He has watched over you, now it is your turn to stand in guardianship over Him.’

The creatures were drawing closer. Through a sliding, magnified window on his display, Messinius looked into the yellow and cunning eyes of their leader. A long tongue lolled permanently from the thing’s mouth, licking at the wall, tasting the terror of the beings it protected.

Boltgun actions clicked. His men leaned over the parapet, towering over the mortals as the Lion’s Gate towered over the Ultimate Wall. A wealth of targeting data was exchanged, warrior to warrior, as each chose a unique mark. No bolt would be wasted in the opening fusillade. They could hear the creatures’ individual shrieks and growls, all wordless, but their meaning was clear: blood, blood, blood. Blood and skulls.

Messinius sneered at them. He ignited his power fist with a swift jerk. He always preferred the visceral thrill of manual activation. Motors came to full life. Lightning crackled around it. He aimed downwards with his bolt pistol. A reticule danced over diabolical faces, each a copy of all the others. These things were not real. They were not alive. They were projections of a false god. The Librarian Atramo had named them maladies. A spiritual sickness wearing ersatz flesh.

He reminded himself to be wary. Contempt was as thick as any armour, but these things were deadly, for all their unreality.

He knew. He had fought the Neverborn many times before.

‘While He lives,’ Messinius shouted, boosting his voxmitter gain to maximal, ‘we stand!’

‘For He of Terra!’ the humans shouted, their battle cry loud enough to be heard over the booming of guns.

‘For He of Terra,’ said Messinius. ‘Fire!’ he shouted.

The Space Marines fired first. Boltguns spoke, spitting spikes of rocket flare into the foe. Bolts slammed into daemon bodies, bursting them apart. Black viscera exploded away. Black ichor showered those coming after. The daemons’ false souls screamed back whence they came, though their bones and offal tumbled down like those of any truly living foe.

Las-beams speared next, and the space between the wall top and the scaling party filled with violence. The daemons were unnaturally resilient, protected from death by the energies of the warp, and though many were felled, others weathered the fire, and clambered up still, unharmed and uncaring of their dead. Messinius no longer needed his helm’s magnification to see into the daemon champion’s eyes. It stared at him, its smile a promise of death. The terror that preceded them was replaced by the urge to violence, and that gripped them all, foe and friend. The baseline humans began to lose their discipline. A man turned and shot his comrade, and was shot down in turn. Kryvesh banged the foot of his borrowed banner and called them back into line. Elsewhere, his warriors sang; not their Chapter warsongs, but battle hymns known to all. Wavering human voices joined them. The feelings of violence abated, just enough.

Then the things were over the parapet and on them. Messinius saw Tidominus carried down by a group of daemons, his unit signum replaced by a mortis rune in his helm. The enemy champion was racing at him. Messinius emptied his bolt pistol into its face, blowing half of it away into a fine mist of daemonic ichor. Still it leapt, hurling itself twenty feet over the parapet. Messinius fell back, keeping the creature in sight, targeting skating over his helmplate as the machine-spirit tried to maintain a target lock. Threat indicators trilled, shifting up their priority spectrum.

The daemon held up its enormous gnarled hands. Smoke whirled in the space between, coalescing into a two-handed sword almost as tall as Messinius. By the time its hoofed feet cracked the paving slabs of the square, the creature’s weapon was solid. Vapour streaming from its ruined face, it pointed the broadsword at Messinius and hissed a wordless challenge.

‘Accepted,’ said Messinius, and moved in to attack.

The creature was fast, and punishingly strong. Messinius parried its first strike with an outward push of his palm, fingers spread. Energy crackled. The boom generated by the meeting of human technology and the sorceries of the warp was loud enough to out-compete the guns, but though the impact sent pain lancing up Messinius’ arm, the daemon was not staggered, and pressed in a follow-up attack, swinging the massive sword around its head as if it weighed nothing.

Messinius countered more aggressively this time, punching in to the strike. Another thunderous detonation. Disruption fields shattered matter, but the daemon was not wholly real, and the effect upon it was lesser than it would be upon a natural foe. Nevertheless, this time it was thrown backwards by the blow. Smoke poured from the edge of its blade. It licked black blood from its arm and snarled. Messinius was ready when it leapt: opening his fist, ignoring the sword as it clashed against his pauldron and sheared off a peeling of ceramite, he grabbed the beast about its middle.

The Bloodletters of Khorne were rangy things, all bone and ropey muscle, no space within them for organs. The false god of war had no need for them to eat or breathe, or to give the semblance of being able to do so. They were made only to kill, and to strike fear in the hearts of those they faced. Their waists were solid, and slender, and easily encompassed by Messinius’ power fist. It squirmed in his grip, throwing Messinius’ arm about. Servo motors in his joints locked, supplementary muscle fibres strained, but the White Consul stood firm.

‘Tell your master he is not welcome on Terra,’ he said. His words were calm, a deliberate defiance of the waves of rage pulsing off the daemon.

He closed his hand.

The daemon’s midriff exploded. The top half fell down, still hissing and thrashing. Its sword clanged off the paving and broke into shards, brittle now it was separated from its wielder. They were pieces of the same thing, sword and beast. Apart, the weapon could not survive long.

Messinius cast down the lower portion of the daemon. There were dozens of the things atop the wall, battling with his warriors and the human soldiery. In the second he paused he saw Doveskamor hacked down as he stood over the body of his brother, pieces of armour bouncing across the ground. He saw a group of Palatine Sentinels corner a daemon with their bayonets. He saw a dozen humans cut down by eldritch swords.

Where the humans kept their distance, their ranged weapons took a toll upon the Neverborn. Where the daemons got among them, they triumphed more often than not, even against his Space Marines. Support fire rained down sporadically from above, its usefulness restricted by the difficulty of picking targets from the swirling melee. At the western edge of the line, the heavy weapons were more telling, knocking daemons off the wall before they crested the parapet and preventing them from circling around the back of the Imperial forces. Only his equipment allowed Messinius to see this. Without the helm feeds of his warriors and the limited access he had to the Lion Gate’s auspectoria, he would have been blind, lost in the immediate clash of arms and sprays of blood. He would have remained where he was, fighting. He would not have seen that there were more groups of daemons pouring upwards. He would not have given his order, and then he would have died.

‘Squad Antiocles, engage,’ he said. He smashed a charging daemon into fragments, yanked another back the instant before it gutted a mortal soldier, and stamped its skull flat, while switching again to his company vox-net. ‘All units, fall back to the Penitent’s Arch. Take the mortals with you.’

His assault squad fell from the sky on burning jets, kicking daemons down and shooting them with their plasma and bolt pistols. A roar of promethium from a flamer blasted three bloodletters to ash.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius commanded, his words beating time with his blows. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles to cover. Devastators maintain overhead fire.’

Squad Antiocles drove the enemy back. Tactical Space Marines were retreating from the parapet, dragging human soldiers with them. An Ultramarine walked backwards past him, firing his bolter one-handed, a wounded member of the Palatine Guard draped over his right shoulder.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius roared. He grabbed a human by the arm and yanked him hard away from the monster trying to slay him, almost throwing him across the square. He pivoted and punched, slamming the man’s opponent in the face with a crackling bang that catapulted its broken corpse over the wall edge. ‘Fall back!’

Mortal soldiers broke and ran while Squad Antiocles held off the foe. Telling to begin with, in moments the assault squad’s momentum was broken, and again more bloodletters were leaping over the edge of the rampart. The Space Marines fired in retreat, covering each other in pairs as they crossed the square diagonally to the Penitent’s Arch. The mortals were getting the idea, running between the Adeptus Astartes and mostly staying out of their fire corridor. With the fight now concentrated around Squad Antiocles, the Devastators were more effective, blasting down the daemons before they could bring their weight of numbers to bear upon Antiocles. Sporadic bursts of fire from the retreating Tactical Marines added to the effect, and for a short period the number of daemons entering the square did not increase.

Messinius tarried a moment, rounding up more of the humans who were either too embattled or deaf to his orders to get out. He reached three still firing over the parapet’s edge and pulled them away. A daemon reared over the parapet and he crushed its skull, but a second leapt up and cleaved hard into his fist, and power fled the weapon. Messinius pumped three bolts into its neck, decapitating it. He moved back.

His power fist was ruined. The daemon’s cut had sliced right through the ceramite, breaking the power field generator and most of the weapon’s strength-boosting apparatus, making it a dead weight. He said a quick thanks to the machine’s departed spirit and smashed the top of his bolt pistol against the quick seal release, at the same time disengaging the power feeds by way of neural link. The clamps holding the power fist to his upper arm came loose and it slid to the floor with a clang, leaving his right arm clad in his standard ceramite gauntlet. A century together. A fine weapon. He had no time to mourn it.

‘Fall back!’ he shouted. ‘Fall back to the Penitent’s Arch!’

He slammed a fresh clip into his bolt pistol. Squad Antiocles were being pushed back. The Devastators walked their fire closer in to the combat. A heavy bolter blasted half a dozen daemons into stinking meat. A missile blew, lifting more into the air. Messinius fell back himself now, leaving it to the last moment before ordering the Assault Marines to leap from the fray. Their jets ignited, driving back the daemons with washes of flame, and they lifted up over his head, leaving four of their brothers dead on the ground. Devastator fire hammered down from above. Anti-personnel weapons set into casemates and swivel turrets on the walls joined in, but the daemons mounted higher and higher in a wave of red that flooded over the parapet.

‘Run!’ he shouted at the straggling human soldiery. ‘Run and survive! Your service is not yet done!’

The Penitent’s Arch led from the square onto a wall walk that curved around to another layer of defences. His Space Marines were already making a firing line across the entrance. A gate could be extended across the arch, sealing the walk from the square, but Messinius refrained from requesting it be closed, as the humans were still streaming past the Adeptus Astartes. Kryvesh waved the banner, whirling it through the air to attract the terrified mortals. The Space Marines fired constantly into the mass of daemons sprinting after them, exhausting their ammunition supplies. Shattered false bodies tumbled down, shot from the front and above, yet still they came, overtaking and dismembering the last warriors fleeing away from the parapet.

Squad Antiocles roared through the arch, landing behind their brethren. Messinius passed between them. For a moment he surveyed the tide of coming fury. Endless red-skinned monsters filling the square like a lake of spilled blood, washing over a score of brightly armoured Space Marine corpses left behind in the retreat. Several hundred humans lay alongside them.

He opened a vox-channel to Gate Command.

‘Wall batteries three-seven-three through three-seven-six, target sector nine five eighty-three, Penitent’s Square, western edge. Five-minute bombardment.’

‘On whose order?’

‘Captain Vitrian Messinius, White Consuls Chapter, Tenth Company. I have the primarch’s authority.’ As he dealt with gunnery control, he was also datapulsing a request for resupply, and checking through layered data screeds.

‘Voice print and signum ident match. Transponder codes valid. We obey.’

The far side of the square erupted in a wall of flame. Heavy cannon shells detonated in a string along the rampart. High-energy beams sliced into the square, turning stone and metal instantly to superheated gas. The approaching daemons were annihilated. A few bolt-rounds cracked off as the last daemons nearing the Space Marine line were put down.

‘Company, cease fire. Conserve ammunition.’ Nobody heard him. Nobody could. He re-sent the order via vox-script. The boltguns cut out.

Penitent’s Square was a cauldron of fire so intense he could feel the heat through his battleplate’s ceramite. The ground shook under his feet and he considered the possibility that the wall would give way. The noise was so all-consuming the idea of speech lost relevance. For five minutes the Lion’s Gate tore madly at its own hide, ripping out chunks of itself in a bid to scrape free the parasites infesting its fabric, then, as suddenly as it had begun, the bombardment ceased.

Where the Penitent’s Square had been, a twisted mass of black metal and shattered stone remained. So formidable were the defences of the Lion’s Gate that the structure beneath had not been penetrated, but it was like this, in small bursts of destruction, that they could lose this war.

Messinius accessed the gate’s noosphere. No daemons had as yet rounded the projecting Penitent’s Spur to come up against their new position. When the attack came again, which it would, it would come from the front.

An ammunition train raced down the walkway from the fortress interior and came to a squealing stop fifty yards away. Medicae personnel jumped down. A Space Marine Apothecary came with them. Human peons rushed about with heavy sack bags full of bolter magazines, passing them out to the transhumans. Spent magazines clattered to the floor. New ones were slammed home. Messinius contacted his squad leaders, taking a quick census of his surviving men, not trusting the digits that read ‘Company Casualties 23%’ blinking in the upper right of his visual field.

Through the smoke given off by burning metal on the far side of the ruined square, he saw movement. Auspex returns tripped his armour’s machine-spirit, and it blinked warnings in his helm.

<threat detected.>

‘They’re coming again,’ he said.

‘My lord?’ A soft voice, one that did not belong in that moment. He ignored it.

‘Engage at fifty-yard range. Make every shot count.’

The ammunition train was hurriedly relieved of their allotted supplies, and sped off, bearing the worst-wounded, to aid whichever beleaguered unit needed it next.

‘Stand ready.’

‘My lord?’ The voice became more insistent.

The voidships in orbit were beginning to fire. Their targeting systems were perturbed by the boiling warp energy and the vortex in constant motion over the Imperial Palace, and many shots went wide, crashing down into the Anterior Barbican, a few falling as far out as Magnifican.

Red monsters bounded towards them, as numerous as before, as if their efforts to thin them had been for naught.

‘Fire,’ he said coldly.

‘My lord, your duty rotation begins in half an hour. You told me to wake you.’

This time he heard. Bolters boomed. Messinius froze them with a thought, and with another he shut down the hypnomat entirely.

Vitrian Messinius awoke groggily.

‘My lord,’ his servant said. Selwin, he was called. ‘You are returned from your recollections?’

‘I am awake, Selwin, yes,’ Messinius said irritably. His mouth was dry. He wanted to be left alone.

‘Shall I?’ Selwin gestured to the hypnomat.

Messinius nodded and rubbed his face. It felt numb. Selwin flicked a number of toggles on the hypnomat and it powered down, the steady glow of its innards fading to nothing and winking out, taking the immediacy of Messinius’ memories with it.

‘The wall again?’ Selwin asked.

The hypnomat’s primary use was to instil knowledge without active learning on the subject’s part, but it could reawaken memories to be lived again. Full immersion in the hypnomat required cooperation from Messinius’ catalepsean node, and coming out of the half-sleep was never as easy as true waking. Reliving past events dulled his wits. Messinius reminded himself to be guarded. He forgot sometimes that he was not on Sabatine any more. The local saying ‘This is Terra’ encompassed a multitude of sins. Spying was among them.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Personal debriefing.’ He shook his head and unplugged the hypnomat’s input cables from the neural ports set into his arms and neck. ‘Nothing new learned.’

Selwin nodded, then hesitantly said, ‘If I may be so bold as to ask, why do it, my lord, if you expect to learn nothing?’

‘Because I can always be wrong,’ Messinius said. He pointed at the hypnomat. It was a bulky machine set on a trolley, but not too big for an unaltered man to move. ‘Take that away. Inform my armourer I will be with him in a few minutes.’

Selwin bowed. ‘Already done, my lord.’

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First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.