Contents

Cover

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

RAISED IN DARKNESS

THE EXORCISM OF KARSA V

VOVA’S CLIMB

THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES

THE LAST KNIGHT: PART ONE

THE LAST KNIGHT: PART TWO

RESPITE’S END

CASTLE OF THE EXILE

BEST DEATH WINS

Regula’s Story

Consus’ Story

Amulius’ Story

NO QUARTER

THE KARSHARAT ABOMINATION

A FIRSTBORN EXILE

JOURNEY OF THE MAGI

GREEN AND GREY

WHERE DERE’S DA WARP DERE’S A WAY

BLACKOUT

THE SPIRIT OF COGS

CITY OF BLOOD

EMPRA

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

THE WEIGHT OF SILVER

THE EMPEROR’S LIGHT

THE THIRTEENTH PSALM

First Reflection

Second Reflection

Third Reflection

Fourth Reflection

Fifth Reflection

Sixth Reflection

WHAT WAKES IN THE DARK

SOLACE

TURN OF THE ADDER

THE UNSUNG WAR

NO HERO

THE EMPEROR’S WRATH

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER

MERCY

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Indomitus’

A Black Library Publication

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 might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.

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. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.

There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

RAISED IN DARKNESS

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Aftermath – Interrogation session one

They’d set the chair up, when Inquisitor Vulpern arrived. The subject was already installed, and a patient Mechanicus acolyte was testing the connections, running power down the cables to watch his muscles jerk. With his gag still in place, the only sound was the crackle of power and a strained grunting. It would not do, after all, to upset the technicians. There were only so many of them rated for this kind of work, and it was felt that their stomachs, though literally cast iron in many cases, lacked the strength for a true excruciation.

Also present: Inquisitor Jerrin. ‘Ah, this is a pleasant surprise!’ she exclaimed. ‘Shall I have the acolytes bring a second seat in?’

Vulpern gave her an urbane smile. ‘I’d assumed these loose ends fell to me.’

Jerrin brandished her writ, heavy with seals. The acolyte’s glassy gaze pitched between them, then he scuttled from the room with a hiss of building pressure.

‘I was given a remit to take the lead where I thought it appropriate,’ Jerrin said pleasantly. ‘I am not, of course, suggesting that you might be less than committed.’

She waited for him to take offence, but he shrugged tiredly. ‘You go ahead. If I’ve prised off a fingernail once, I’ve done it a thousand times, and it’s a formality here, anyway. I’m glad to have you take the tedium of it. Perhaps I can learn from your technique.’

Her eyes narrowed, suspecting mockery, but Vulpern just called for a chair, giving absolutely no window into his thoughts. There should be someone, at the end. Someone who doesn’t just hate.

‘Well, then.’ Jerrin rounded on the subject at last. ‘Let’s start with when Inquisitor Harghesh came to your filthy little world.’

Shargrin Inquisitorial intercession – Investigatory stage

Inquisitor Harghesh had not been hunting treason. He’d come to Shargrin to judge whether the planet’s tithe could be increased, given an upsurge in crop yields. Since the advent of the Cicatrix Maledictum had crippled the Imperium, every world was on the anvil to do what it could for the realm of man. Forge worlds turned out munitions, mining worlds ground ore, teeming feral and feudal worlds gave up whole kingdoms and tribes to the regiments, and agri-worlds like Shargrin fed them all. Except someone always went hungry, and holding back from the Emperor was treason sure as worshipping the Dark Gods.

Harghesh had sent one brief astropathic communique back. And then he and his retinue had vanished.

The Imperium had moved on, in its leviathan manner. The report had travelled through the warp, lagging across space tortured by the scar-line of the Cicatrix Maledictum, before languishing on one desk or another until it reached Vulpern’s own. Where, amongst the productivity figures and the demographics data, he noted a sentence, outwardly casual but freighted with import to an Inquisitorial eye. A sentence designed not to spark alarm, even in the astropath who had sent it.

…the existence of certain regular and persistent physiological deformities…

A suspicion, that was what it meant. A suspicion Harghesh would have gone on to investigate. Regular and persistent: not the taint of Chaos but no less dangerous for all that.

By the time Vulpern read those words, Harghesh had been missing for over a year. Vulpern, Jerrin and a full Deathwatch force were en route for Shargrin within hours of someone finally reading Harghesh’s last transmission.

Vulpern knew agri-worlds. Swathes of leathery-leaved crops packed together, horizon to horizon, so that never an inch of the earth could be seen, or else stepped tiers of paddies, the water tinted orange and violet by rank chemical fertilisers. Platoons of machines marching and turning as they harvested with a discipline that recalled the Adeptus Astartes. Nature, in other words. Shargrin looked like a death world. The surface was black rock covered with prickly coats of lichen constantly lashed by storms. Nobody lived there. Even the lichens probably didn’t enjoy it very much.

Certainly the lichens died, and their remains got scoured from the rocks by the rain and carried inside the labyrinth of caves that riddled the planet’s outer layer, where their collective decay fed a vast fungal ecosystem – from lakes of slime to mushrooms big as hive world hab-blocks. Amongst the profusion were edible species that could be minced up and boiled into tar, then rendered into great rubbery slabs. These, salted with preservatives and liberally laced with mood-stabilisers and anti-psychotics, were Shargrin’s contribution to the wellbeing of the Imperium.

Vulpern’s drop-shuttle muscled through the shoving of the weather until they reached a circular sinkhole four miles across, rimmed with cascading waterfalls. His stomach clenched as they fell into the vastness of it, spiralling towards the turbulent lake below before the pilot sent them scudding across the surface towards the shelter of the port. Up in orbit, his staff had already exchanged pleasantries with planetside Administratum and requested the governor’s presence, all open pomp and circumstance. Vulpern had taken out his best robes, the gold of the Emperor’s eagles somewhat tarnished. Old regalia for an old man.

He was aware he didn’t cut quite the figure he used to, half tempted to suit up in armour and military honours. The last blessing of heavy mail was that it hid the hollowing chest, the filling belly. He hadn’t shaved, either. His lean, lantern-jawed face always looked half flayed when he scraped away the stubble. I should grow a beard. Or would that change make his peers search his face and personnel record for deviation?

You didn’t make many friends in the Inquisition. And if you lasted forty years in the trade then most of those you did have ended up dead, and sometimes it was you who made them that way.

He had a couple of Deathwatch Space Marines at his back when he walked out into the rain, a black umbrella shadowing his face. He hadn’t known what sort of welcome a governor of Shargrin would be able to muster, but the man had done decently well. A couple of squads of planetary guard in dress uniforms, a clique of clerics singing an accented version of the 79th Hymn of Imperial Praise. The governor himself was a stocky man who marched forwards and saluted like a soldier. Linus Donaghl was no unctuous bureaucrat, but a war hero capping a remarkable career. Bluff enough to look an inquisitor in the eye, certainly. His eyes flicked to the looming Space Marines: not the escort he’d have expected for one weather-worn inquisitor’s visit.

Vulpern mustered a thin smile. ‘The galaxy has a thousand ways of betraying your trust, governor. Forgive an old man his worries.’

They walked down the doubled line of guardsmen, Donaghl upbraiding a couple on their uniform. There were refreshments, but Vulpern preferred not to get as far as drinks until he’d ruled out the possibility of assassination, especially on a planet full of fungi. And something had happened to Harghesh.

The rain beat down on his umbrella, and the heads of everyone else, for a good half-hour until Imperial ritual was satisfied, when they could at last go indoors like civilised people.

The crash of the water sealed away by sliding doors, Donaghl rounded on him. ‘Inquisitor, you are of course welcome to Shargrin. All my resources are at your disposal.’ As per your mandate. ‘I’m going to be blunt, if I may.’

‘Please do,’ Vulpern invited.

‘I know why you’re here,’ Donaghl told him. ‘Just like your colleague last year. You’re upping our tithe.’

Vulpern’s face remained entirely neutral.

‘Our output has increased by fifteen per cent year on year,’ Donaghl told him flatly. ‘I have made sure the Imperium is fed. I have exceeded expectations. A miracle, when you consider the conditions on this world.’

‘Some would say there are harsher worlds to govern than one given to agriculture,’ Vulpern noted mildly.

‘Some might perhaps not have read my reports,’ Donaghl spat out. ‘Five thousand strains of fungus in these caverns, inquisitor. Over a thousand are harmful to humans in some way. Poisons, diseases, allergic reactions, species that are happier growing in human flesh than the damned soil. Read my census returns and look at life expectancy, infant mortality. Just because they don’t class it as a death world doesn’t mean Shargrin doesn’t want to kill you. And still I’ve increased our yield every year of the last decade. But some clerk on some world where they don’t farm mushrooms every hour of the sunless day has looked at those reports and decided we can still give more. Am I correct, inquisitor?’

Vulpern was trying very hard not to grin, because it was a long time since anyone had just gone off at him like this, governor or not. ‘You can take the soldier from the Militarum,’ he noted. ‘But not the Militarum from the soldier.’

Donaghl paused, eyes narrow, wrong-footed. ‘You’re pleased to joke.’

Vulpern nodded. ‘Honestly, it’s a pleasure. So often we inquisitors have to work hard to get people to be honest with us.’ He let the words hang there, seeing the man consider a response, finally receiving a small, grudging nod.

‘Fair,’ Donaghl admitted, and some of the aggression went out of him. ‘We may as well sit down, and you can tell me what the Emperor demands and I can try to explain why we’re already giving as much as we–’

‘That’s not why we’re here.’ Vulpern watched the man’s face for any twitch, but Donaghl just waited for more intel, like a good officer. ‘You mentioned my colleague, Inquisitor Harghesh. I am indeed following in his footsteps, but not in the matter of the tithe. There is some confusion over precisely when and how – and indeed whether – he left your hospitality.’

Donaghl frowned slowly, thinking back a year. ‘I’m certain he did,’ he started, and then added, ‘though that may be only because he paid no more visits, having ruled that we could give more. I will have my clerks send for the dockmaster’s records.’

That was when the messenger ran in, cassock flapping damply, hotfoot from the shuttle. They’d had word from the other party, Jerrin’s people. Because all this song and dance had been to cover up the initial investigation she’d been about. Her sampling.

The messenger pressed a strip of parchment into his hand and he looked over the coded punch marks.

Processing Station Malador. Found: regular and persistent physiological deformities.

‘Governor,’ Vulpern said. ‘Gather your escort. Let’s see something of your world.’

They reached the Malador station by one of the myriad rain-chewed waterways that lay beneath the surface of Shargrin. This one was relatively level, and they skimmed along in three flat-bottomed craft balancing an inch off the water, Donaghl’s people poling them along with repulsor-staves.

Malador cavern was a ring of usable land about a lake, water constantly funnelling in from above, and away to deeper vistas. Vast aquaculture harvesters drifted across its surface, sidewheels turning lazily as they harvested mycelia sargassums. At the lake’s far side, the processing plant was a vast windowless box built into the rock.

Jerrin had turned up with ten Deathwatch and her Imperial writ, and seized fifty of the plant’s workforce, hustling them into some hastily contrived quarantine for ‘examination’. The off-duty workers outside were talking worriedly about plague.

Of the fifty, twenty-nine were packed into a side room, cleared of deformity but unaware of what was going on. The final batch had turned out to be the problem. When they’d been asked to strip, there had been resistance. Matters had escalated. Seven were in custody but the rest were dead following the Space Marines’ over-keen defence. Jerrin had laid out three corpses on a stilled conveyer belt for their delectation.

The first two might almost have passed for human. It was a big Imperium, after all, and growing up working in the vats on a planet full of mushrooms wasn’t a recipe for health. There was an ugly, bruise-coloured tone to their skin, not remarkable until you saw the matching pair together. Their heads, once stripped of protective gear, were oddly elongated. One had red eyes, now staring blind and angry at the ceiling, but then most of the workers had worn goggles. Easy to miss.

The last had three arms.

‘You’d not have known, to look,’ Jerrin said, lounging against the edge of the belt, a lean, hard woman in carapace armour. ‘Just a bit of a belly, maybe.’

The arm was not human. It emerged from a cancerous whorl of hard skin beneath the corpse’s ribs, ridgy with chitin, jointed like an insect’s. The hand was a trio of curved claws six inches long.

‘Is this…’ In the silence, Donaghl’s voice dwindled to a whisper, ‘Chaos?’

‘An evil less potent but no less insidious,’ Jerrin announced. ‘You’ve got xenos, governor. And they’ve been here a while.’

Donaghl went still. ‘Then we destroy them. Root them out, at minimum cost to our work here.’

‘You think it’ll be that easy?’ Because Jerrin was all about flicking the noses of the locals.

‘We have tithe quotas. Or there are forge worlds who starve.’ Donaghl wasn’t giving an inch. ‘I’ve fought xenos, inquisitor. We’ll deal with this.’

‘For now, let’s inform the populace that we’re containing an infection,’ Vulpern said. ‘We’ll send teams to sample the other major work caverns. This taint needs numbers to hide it.’

‘And Malador?’

‘We’ll take some prisoners, ask some questions,’ Jerrin said. ‘After that, it burns.’

Vulpern wouldn’t have been so bold, but the words were out now.

Donaghl blinked. ‘This is thirteen per cent of our processing output.’

‘Rebuild,’ Jerrin told him. ‘No price too high to stamp out the taint of the xenos, isn’t that right?’

They were getting a lot of looks from the workers by the time they got back to the boats. Much of their audience hadn’t taken off their goggles. Most still wore their work hoods: their baggy overalls that might hide a multitude of sins. They looked on their governor, on the Space Marines, especially the inquisitors, without love.

Vulpern stepped onto the boat, feeling the repulsor field shift with his weight. He wouldn’t have ordered the mass incineration, but he couldn’t argue with Jerrin in front of the locals. There were several thousand employed in the Malador cavern. Families lived here, in chambers carved back into the rock or worked within the broad stems of gigantic fungi. Children worked alongside their parents. There would be another way. Perhaps the cult has concentrated here, grown up like a cancer about some chapel or den. He’d seen it before. This infestation had certain paths of growth and behaviour known to the Inquisition. A concerted strike against their leaders, some public executions. Deploy a cadre of preachers to reaffirm the Imperial faith. It needn’t be…

A massacre.

He glanced at Jerrin and knew that she was already composing a post-massacre report, and that the Inquisition would only welcome it. And he’d done the same. Many times, many worlds, just the same. The sickness he felt at the prospect was just another kind of infection, even if it came from nowhere but inside him.

They set out back over the water. Vulpern managed vox contact with the shuttle on the third try, sending a message for relay to the orbiter above. Phase two of the cleansing, the cautious feeling out of how far the disease had spread through the body.

The roar of the water harvesters resounded around the cavern, coming back to him from all sides. He barely noticed its fluctuations until the soldiers in the lead barge cried out. Vulpern’s head snapped up to see one of the huge machines had changed course, and its idling progress had become a full-on charge, a bow wave streaming either side of the rotating blades at its prow.

‘Another course, now,’ he snapped, grabbing Donaghl’s shoulder. The governor was already pointing, shouting directions to their helmsman, their boat scooting off across the choppy surface of the water, the second craft following. Vulpern craned his neck, waiting for the lead boat to manage its own turn. They were slow, though. The guardsmen in the fore were trying to disable the harvester, lasgun fire refracting harmlessly off its iron flanks.

He heard the shrieks, saw men and women hurl themselves into water laced with tangling fungal strands. The whirling blades came down on the boat and splintered its plastek hull to shrapnel, the crew diving to their doom or becoming sudden mists of red as the machinery took them.

Their own boat was being carried far from the harvester’s reach, the current dragging them into a tunnel leading down into the planet’s bowels, twisting away at a corkscrewing angle. Donaghl had taken the helm himself, jaw jutting as he wrestled to keep the craft above water that had no interest in staying beneath them.

He saw the boat behind them start to fishtail, about to slam shatteringly into the tunnel wall, only the skill of the crew saving it. After that, his own progress held all his attention, whirling through the dark, past the corpselight of luminous fungi, shooting out into open space with no certain up or down.

And then they were abruptly gliding across a pool of water still as glass, save for the ripples of their passage. A vast torrent fell from near the cave’s ceiling, to be lost in the depths with barely a bubble. Great puffball globes cast an undersea light across a scene as alien in its calm as their progress had been in its violence.

Jerrin sat up and brushed her armour down ostentatiously. ‘Bracing,’ she remarked. ‘Something tells me the locals might be onto us.’

Vulpern was looking for the other boat, seeing it punting over, complement intact. ‘Glad you had a bolthole lined up, governor,’ was all he said.

‘I was clearing out vermin down here, four years back,’ Donaghl said flatly. ‘The fungus throws up mobile forms. You have to get to them fast, before they start preying on the workforce. I’m afraid it’s a long walk back up.’

There were steps cut into the rock, slick with mould. Water ran down them in a constant churn, making every step at once a slogging effort and, as they ascended, an ever-worsening risk of falling. Vulpern almost went once, his long career in the balance as one of the Adeptus Astartes snagged his robe and hauled him wordlessly back in. The Space Marine kept a gauntleted hand on his arm, after that.

And, after a hundred and seventeen steps, there was just another cavern, another shallow lake fed from above, feeding to below, another set of water-eroded steps towards the distant, fickle promise of light. If Jerrin hadn’t been there, he’d have begged a rest, but he knew her eyes were on him as she made amendments to the half-composed report in her head. Cursing her to the warp, he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other for however long it would take.

A squad of guardsmen were waiting for them, by then, with a couple of Inquisitorial aides from the shuttle. Back to business. Vulpern felt like he wanted to lie down for a week. Jerrin was taking pains to show just how easy she was finding it.

He almost missed the signs. One of the guardsmen stepped forward to help the old inquisitor into the open, here within sight of the port docks. A hand on his arm, a hand on his shoulder, a respectful tilt of the head. A third hand with a dagger. A fourth with a fist of curved claws. It could have been over as quickly as that.

Vulpern was old, though. It meant he’d been faster, and he’d been tougher, but it also meant that people had failed to kill him a lot.

No room to leap back, so he took the dagger-wrist and the chitinous joint that housed the talons and just rolled forwards, his shoulder crunching into what didn’t feel like ribs. The assassin hissed. There were human teeth in that mouth, and a second layer of needle fangs, flicking from the gums. The man’s tongue darted at his face like a sting.

He got a knee on the claw, feeling one barb draw a line of blood from his thigh. Holding the dagger back, he dragged his bolt pistol out left-handed. The man had his humanoid hands about Vulpern’s neck.

The detonation of the bolt-round served to alert anyone still oblivious that he was in trouble. It wasn’t enough to stop the killer, but a thorough decapitation courtesy of the watch-sergeant’s chainsword served as the last word in the argument.

Vulpern pointedly stood without taking any of the proffered hands. ‘We may just have to go straight to stage three,’ he said to Jerrin, trying to keep his voice steady.

Aftermath – Interrogation session two

Vulpern sipped his tea. The planet where these leaves had grown was ash now. He’d had a part in it. Another sacrifice for the prolonging of Emperor and Imperium.

Jerrin was on the fourth time round with the same questions. What did you hope to gain? Surely you knew you were on the wrong side? Who helped you? The same mumbled replies, with the hooded scribe scratching them down. Pointless. But the asking and the answering weren’t the point. The point was that it was prescribed, amongst the ten thousand pages of the Inquisition’s protocols. Conceivably it was a deterrent, though as the Inquisition would make no external report, Vulpern wasn’t sure who was to be deterred.

Us, perhaps. Who would make a better heretic than an inquisitor? But he suspected it wasn’t even that. It was the machine of empire, comprised of such a quantity of moving parts that things were just done. The Mechanicus were right, in their blinkered way: that the machine went on was all.

Shargrin Inquisitorial intercession – Military intervention stage

‘Ease up on him,’ Vulpern murmured to Jerrin as they waited in Donaghl’s chambers. ‘No sense making more enemies than we have to.’

‘He’ll serve or he’ll suffer,’ she told him. ‘I thought you’d know that motto.’

‘You read his record.’ But he suspected it wouldn’t matter. Jerrin was ambitious, and these days that meant conspicuous displays of devotion to the cause.

He studied the man as he came in, the soldier in official’s robes. Donaghl had been a lieutenant in the Imperial Guard, back in the day, thrown into a doomed fight against the craftworld aeldari for reasons more to do with incompetent superiors than Imperial policy. The regiment had been smashed. Donaghl and a handful of others were left behind, covering the retreat. He’d been caught. End of story.

Except the craftworlders had also been pulling out and, in the confusion, Donaghl had slipped his cell. In the full expectation that he’d never see another human face again, he’d killed every xenos he could find. He’d ended up on a crippled ship, three-quarters dead and surrounded by corpses. Where, against all odds, a rogue trader looking for salvage had discovered him. Now the Life Of Donaghl was a minor footnote in the archives, extolling unceasing resistance to the alien even in the face of oblivion. Guardsmen carried medallions with his name. And the man himself had been pensioned off here for a quiet life.

‘Malador cavern is isolated,’ Donaghl reported. ‘I’ve placed checkpoints at every path around the two neighbouring facilities to discourage travel. Your Space Marines have disembarked and are moving on Malador. Our detachment of the Seven Hundred and Fifth will meet them on arrival.’ The Deathwatch convoy would be taking a roundabout route, driving through dry passageways, avoiding the most direct tunnels and any traps laid there.

‘I’d only ask’ – the words seemed drawn from Donaghl with hooks – ‘that you give orders to minimise damage and needless casualties amongst the population. Burn the xenos to the ground, but–’

‘Soft, governor?’ Jerrin broke in before Vulpern could take the initiative. ‘The innocent are glad to burn, so long as they are kindling for the guilty.’ Her smirk vanished when Donaghl stormed right up to her, close enough that one of their attendant Space Marines had his weapon levelled at the man’s forehead.

‘Not soft,’ the governor ground out. ‘I have my duty, as you have yours. A thousand humans lost to the xenos is your failure. A thousand dead of starvation is mine. Leave me my factories, my equipment, my workers.’

‘Better a hundred worlds starve than one is lost to corruption,’ Jerrin told him coldly. ‘Purity is all.’

‘We will take all steps we can,’ Vulpern broke in loudly. ‘But this is not your local fungal vermin, governor.’

‘Just identify those touched with this taint,’ Donaghl said flatly. ‘I will second my entire staff to the effort. Burn the afflicted, preserve the rest.’

‘But we are not dealing with an affliction,’ Vulpern explained tiredly. ‘It is a cult. Listen, there was a single creature, once. Genestealers, you’ve heard of them? Not just denizens of abandoned ships and far planets. One of them reached your world, found your people. It fed. It infected them with its nature. Adults finding odd marks on their bodies, strange thoughts in their heads – I’ll wager you’ve enough fungal conditions here that it went unnoticed. Then children born – hideous, alien, yet children still, and who does not love their children? Hidden away, a shameful secret. But then parents of the afflicted find they are not alone. And those children are strong, gifted, wise, even. And each generation better at masking its abnormalities, more human on the outside, though perhaps not within. And out of this knot of deformity, those who told your people they were destined, chosen. Perhaps they even dressed it in the robes of the Emperor, but the shape of the god beneath was alien. And it’s a powerful thing, to tell people they’re special. People live hard lives. The Emperor demands much, and can never give as much as He wishes.’ The old words, said so often. ‘Imagine being told there was another path to salvation. Imagine if your priest, instead of exhorting mere faith, could bare his chest and show you a concrete sign the new age was dawning. That the universe truly cared about you.’

Donaghl’s lip curled and he was obviously about to make some derisive remark about anyone fool enough to trust the xenos, but another messenger dashed in breathlessly, proffering a curled strip of code.

Vulpern scanned it briefly and bared his teeth. The Deathwatch convoy was under attack, ambushed at a choke point by an organised force of locals out of the next cavern from Malador.

And by a rogue element of the planetary guard. The troopers had defaced the Imperial insignia on their vehicles, he read. They had banners depicting a spiralling worm-shape, bristling with fangs. The watch-commander reported that progress towards Malador had stalled. Reinforcements were being called in.

He met Jerrin’s gaze. ‘Send sampling parties to the further caverns, two, three removed from Malador,’ he told her. ‘Let’s hope this is something we can contain.’

She nodded then said, as though she hadn’t heard him, ‘They’ve brought the incendiaries down from the orbiter. I will give the commander authorisation.’

‘Inquisitor,’ Donaghl said sharply. ‘Many of our crops here are extremely flammable. And the people of Malador… this cult is a minority.’

‘Kindling,’ she told him. ‘And now, governor, a complete list of your staff here, if you will.’

He blinked. ‘And why?’

‘Because the cult is insidious, governor, and that’s twice they’ve been waiting for us. Speaking as an inquisitor, I have questions.’

The main Deathwatch advance took nine days to reach Malador, bitterly opposed all the way. The locals used strategic cave-ins, raised barricades and contested every yard of ground. They fought with lasguns and knives, with agricultural machinery, with fungal toxins and explosive spore mines. And within their ranks lurked the true enemy, the hybrids with their extra limbs, their armoured skin and inhuman speed, pairing gun and blade with fang and talon. And yet the Deathwatch had seen worse, and they ground on, trusting to their armour and their iron discipline. Vulpern took regular reports. Nobody could talk through a day’s bloody business in such a matter-of-fact way like Space Marines. Looking at their blunt features, Vulpern had a sense of a deformity almost akin to that of the cultists. Not Chaos but its opposite, as though an innate human variability had been ground out of them, only the ideal of the warrior left behind.

By that time, the two neighbouring caverns to Malador had been isolated as well, though the Space Marines lacked the numbers to advance on all three. Teams led by Inquisition aides had detected some xenos infection in further caves, but it was minimal. Jerrin had followed Harghesh’s last coordinates and found the heart with her initial sampling.

And she’d been right about the intelligence leaks, too. They’d lost sampling teams and the Deathwatch manoeuvres were being countered, the locals always ready to ambush. The battle was being carried by superior discipline and heavier armament, but the ill-equipped cultists were constantly shifting to anticipate every move. And Jerrin was working her way through the entire Administratum staff and half the local guard officers. She hadn’t found a culprit yet, but her efforts were disrupting everyone else’s attempts to do their job.

A costly failure, therefore, and a younger, more ambitious Vulpern would probably have been compounding matters by writing up uncomplimentary reports, so as to make his own efforts more creditable. Instead of which he was just trying to do his job. Which left Jerrin free to say what she wished about him in her reports. That was how it went. You could be loyal, or you could make an ostentatious show of loyalty, but there weren’t enough hours in the day to do both.

Jerrin had just stormed out of the office he’d co-opted as his own, having stormed in a moment earlier to complain that none of the locals were cooperating with her. She’d slapped down a sheaf of papers on the desk, each one a testimony to some clerk or functionary she’d racked. ‘The cult,’ she’d declared, ‘is right here with us.’

It seemed indisputable. Two days before, Jerrin had survived her own brush with assassination, which had only honed her fervour.

‘And what do you do? Just sit here!’ she’d added.

‘I’ve been looking for patterns. Deathwatch is ready to move in at Malador now, by the way.’

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘Us to stopper the leak,’ he said mildly. ‘To avoid any more surprises.’

‘Tell them to burn it all. And I don’t care if word of that gets to the cult. Let them know the fires are lit for them.’

‘Yes,’ Vulpern agreed sadly. ‘That probably is inevitable.’

It was time for his meeting with the governor, after that. The nine days seemed to have added nine years to the man’s face as he’d dealt with the closure of his farms, the defection of his subordinates, the fact of the xenos cult erupting from the soil of his world.

‘But it’s the endgame now,’ Vulpern confirmed. ‘The Space Marines are going in.’

‘Please.’ Donaghl kneaded at his face. ‘Preserve what you can. You know the Administratum will make no allowance for this, when they come demanding their tithe.’

Vulpern hardened his heart. ‘Governor, this is the taint of the alien. We uproot it and salt the earth, or it will grow again. And we will start with Edrigor.’

Donaghl went still. ‘Edrigor is not infected.’

‘According to our sampling teams it is. We will purge Edrigor. With fire. And then we will move inwards. Malador last of all. No refuge for the xenos, governor. Just as when you fought the aeldari. You left not one of them alive.’ Remembering the approving descriptions of the scene when they’d found the man. The twisted, delicate bodies of the aliens, their men, their women, their young. And Donaghl, injured, scarred, rocking back and forth, chainsword still clutched in his hands.

‘Not one,’ the governor echoed, and then, ‘I thought you were the reasonable one.’

Good inquisitor, bad inquisitor, thought Vulpern. Except nobody really believes in a good inquisitor. ‘We are all servants of the Emperor,’ he remarked blandly, and went to give his orders to the watch-commander.

The next day, he received the expected report from a Space Marine detachment sent off to the tunnels outside Edrigor. They’d stopped a convoy of locals. Not cultists, and few weapons amongst them. Families, mostly; children. People carrying what they could of their lives and getting the hell out, because word had been passed to them that cleansing fire was coming for their homes.

Vulpern’s mistake was going alone to confront the man. True, he went armoured and armed, as he’d been going everywhere since the assassin, but sometimes he forgot the weight of years that slowed him down.

He found Donaghl in the governor’s suite, one wall rolled up to reveal a pict screen, where grainy images of the day’s fighting were stuttering through their paces. Vulpern caught glimpses of an overturned Rhino, the proud eagles of its mouldings beheaded and vandalised. Deathwatch Space Marines lumbered forwards, step by power-armoured step. A host of men and women rushed in armed with drills and saws and lascutters, led by a blue-purple creature more than half-xenos, worm-standard clutched in a taloned hand.

‘Inquisitor,’ the governor said quietly, not turning.

‘They caught refugees evacuating Edrigor,’ Vulpern observed. ‘We weren’t going to burn it, by the way. Detected cult infiltration was low enough to be contained.’ Although Jerrin might, now.

Donaghl nodded, eyes still on the screen. Vulpern saw a woman there take the standard from the hybrid’s dead claw, waving it as bolter fire erupted close by her. Her face held such serene conviction.

‘How is it,’ Vulpern asked politely, ‘that you, of all men, should come to be the xenos’ quisling?’

Donaghl turned at last.

‘This post wasn’t a reward,’ he said quietly. ‘Everyone thinks it’s a grand job, governor of a planet after all that soldiering. But I told you what life is like here. They gave me a failing world, borderline habitable, and told me to make it work. Do you know how I discovered the cult, inquisitor? I looked where the yield was highest, where the people worked hardest and produced most. Because that taint, that filth that got into them, it breeds strong backs and hardy bodies. But it’s more than that. Like you say, it’s not just a disease, it’s a creed. You know when people work hardest?’

‘I have some idea, professionally,’ Vulpern confirmed.

‘You’re wrong,’ Donaghl told him. ‘It’s not fear. Fear makes people want to look like they’re working, for as long as they know you’re watching. People work best when they’re content, inquisitor. When they have something that gives them a reason to live. The cult tells them they’re worth something. That they have a purpose beyond the daily grind. And so the cult and I came to an arrangement, and together we fed the Emperor’s people.’ His face twisted in sudden rage and Vulpern took a step back, hand to his pistol.

‘I could have given you scapegoats,’ the man spat. ‘I could have sent you from here secure in the knowledge you’d done your job. But no, your friend had to start talking about burning everything. And another point the cult and I agree on is preserving our people.’

Vulpern felt a desperate sadness. ‘Governor, do you have any idea what these genestealer cults are? Just as you feed the Imperium with the produce of this world, so the minds behind the cult would have you feed other mouths. Alien mouths, governor. Unthinkable hungers dwell between the stars, waiting to be called down by their faithful. And they will not simply take your damned fungi. They will scour this world to the rock. That is what the cult is preserving your people for.’

For a long three seconds Donaghl just stared at him, and then replied, ‘But until then, the work gets done.’

Vulpern choked. ‘Until then?’

‘You have seen the galaxy, just as I have,’ Donaghl told him, a muscle twitching at the corner of his mouth. ‘There might be an ork fleet come with the next dawn to destroy everything we’ve built here. The work of heretics might snuff out the sun. There is no certainty. The Imperium is a blind machine hurtling into infinity. We…’ – the jag of grief in his voice showed nowhere on that soldier’s face – ‘are motes of dust in the face of eternity. I cannot control tomorrow, but until it happens, I can ensure the work gets done, and that we are fed today.’

The set of his expression changed then, and Vulpern understood that the second assassin had found him.

When he turned, he saw that he had grossly underestimated the situation. This was no human with a toxin-blade or a needler, nor even a hybrid with extra limbs and a predator’s fanged grin. The thing that faced him was four-armed, hunched forwards, its body encased in interlocking plates of carapace. The head was almost eyeless, mostly jaw and lashing tongue. The first pair of hands were those murderous talons, but the second pair were still brown, human, the nails bitten raggedly short by alien teeth. Xenos filth, he thought, and at the same time, Somebody’s child.

It went for him. He got two shots off but the creature’s speed made nothing of the distance between them. There were Space Marines two rooms away. They’d hear. He just had to survive until then.

The first claw tore into his armour, snagging in the ruined metal. The second drove for his face and he held it off, punching the creature, trying to buck it off him. It took his wrist with those horribly human hands. The jaws gaped, trying to angle past his shoulder guard so it could shear his face off cleanly.

The power sword made a barely audible hum as it cut away first the free talon and then everything above the jaw from the genestealer’s head. Vulpern hadn’t even known that Donaghl owned one.

He got to his feet, feeling the creak of abused ribs and the trickle of blood inside his ruined armour. His bolt pistol was levelled, but the governor simply powered down the blade and set it on his desk. Behind him, on the screen, the Space Marines were driving forwards, smashing the barricades, breaking apart the knots of cultists before the images glitched into static.

Aftermath – Interrogation session three

After Jerrin was done, Vulpern shifted his seat so he was beside the big chair, the one reserved for subjects. Donaghl’s laboured breathing filled the room. Jerrin had been sure to preserve him for the execution that would follow. As set down in protocols.

‘Vulpern?’ Donaghl had no eyes to see him, but perhaps the man recognised the scent of his tea.

‘I’d wanted to spare you this,’ the inquisitor told him, ‘but…’ But Jerrin had the writ. But they don’t trust me with this any more. They don’t think I’m sound.

‘Did you see them fight, Vulpern?’ Donaghl whispered. ‘My people?’ His smile was a terrible, ruined thing. ‘They were so fierce. They knew they couldn’t win, but they fought… I’ve been there. I fought the xenos, seeking nothing but death. People who believe in something fight so hard. Even if what they believe in is a lie. But you understand that, inquisitor.’

Vulpern’s cue to challenge him, to trumpet the virtues of the Imperium. He let his silence speak for him.

‘When they found me, they told me I was a hero,’ Donaghl whispered. ‘To fight on against the darkness once the last light’s been extinguished. What’s more Imperial than that? And yet when they sent me to Shargrin I saw only people being extinguished so that the dark could perpetuate itself. Mushrooms, inquisitor. We are all mushrooms to the Emperor. Kept in the dark, fed on lies, harvested, processed and fed to the next crop, over and over. Us, the Guard, even the Space Marines, mushrooms. Better to rise up, in the end. Better fight today than accept all those tomorrows. Or perhaps the Emperor’s loyal Inquisition has something to say?’

But Vulpern just sat beside him and sipped at his tea, mute: a man whose business was asking questions, and who had no answers.

THE EXORCISM OF KARSA V

Matt Smith

It had been three weeks since the Palacea Aeternum had fallen. The cult had struck without warning, traitors within the palace guard turning on its loyal defenders and claiming the seat of Karsa V’s governance in a single night of violence. Ever since, roving bands of cultists had been taking civilians from their homes and dragging them to the palace. No demands had been made, no ransom for their safe return. The frightened populace could only guess what happened to those who disappeared beyond the walls.

In response, the elite Karsan Cazadores patrolled the streets. Major Nico Abatido’s squad found one such band of cultists as they fled from the villa of House Beldier, and set off in pursuit. The nearest cultist carried a woman slung over his shoulder who beat on his back, but he paid her no heed. Abatido’s armoured boots crunched through the smouldering ash that coated the street. He raised his lasgun without breaking stride and fired. Abatido’s shot struck the cultist, punching a hole through his ragged robes, and he fell. The woman he had been carrying screamed as she fell with him. Abatido kept running.

‘Hesqez, check her,’ Abatido ordered. Two more robed figures fled down the street ahead of him, each dragging another Karsan citizen with them.

He fired again but these cultists were further away, blending into the thin grey smoke that had become a permanent feature of the spire’s streets. His shots flew wide.

‘Emperor above, lend strength to my legs that I may stand before your enemies, and to my arm that I may cast them down,’ Abatido said to himself. He pumped his arms and drove himself into a sprint. His muscles felt renewed by the words of the litany, and he was invigorated further as he heard the accelerating cadence of the boots behind him. Weighed down by their hostages it was near impossible for the cultists to outrun the Cazadores. Abatido cast aside thoughts of despair as he closed with the enemy. The figures began to loom large and clear. He fired his lasgun, but the familiar staccato punch of a heavy stubber made his head snap up, throwing off his aim. The stubber threw up spouts of gravel as the gunner turned the weapon upon him.

‘Cover!’ Abatido barked. He dived behind a fallen pillar. He looked back to see his unit finding sanctuary amongst the shattered facades of what had once been the lower senate offices. All but one of them. Alvez had been behind Abatido and was caught in the open. The major could only watch as the heavy stubber tore him apart.

‘Emperor damn you!’ He peered over the pillar and sprayed fire into the shell of a theatre. The heavy stubber returned fire, muzzle flaring, allowing Abatido to confirm the gunner’s position. Third floor, fifth window. He rested the barrel of his lasgun across the edge of the pillar, slowed his breathing and squeezed the trigger.

‘You got him, sir,’ Martinez called to him. Abatido looked back to see her lowering her magnoculars.

‘Move up!’ Abatido ordered, breaking cover to continue his pursuit. As the Cazadores moved, small-arms fire spat back at them. Abatido saw the light-grey uniforms of Karsan riflemen, traitors from within the planet’s sworn defenders. He shot one of them before taking refuge on the corner of a side street. The Cazadores accounted for more as they pressed forwards, disciplined marksmanship winning out over weight of fire, but it made little difference. Eight of Abatido’s squad remained, and even with the losses the Cazadores had inflicted, Abatido estimated thirteen of the enemy still lived. They were dug in and Abatido could see where they had arranged the bones of the broken city into effective fortifications. He could dig them out, but it would take time that they didn’t have.

A frag grenade from Martinez sailed overhead and killed two cultists. In the newly emptied space Abatido could see the kidnappers escaping into the distance. Anger welled up inside him and he squeezed his lasgun tightly as he fired and blew an insurgent off his feet. He clasped his knife and tried to calculate the likelihood of success if he charged the line. Could he break through and continue the pursuit before it was too late?

The sounds of engine noise overhead broke his concentration. It was coming from behind the Cazadores and closing fast. Valkyries, he thought, but it was so loud it had to be a whole flight of them. Looking up, Abatido could see only a single craft descending from orbit. At a distance he could make out its long, boxy silhouette. He knew that shape; he had seen it once before, long ago. Gunfire slackened as friend and foe alike looked up to the sky. As the ship passed overhead, Abatido could make out the deep crimson of its hull and the symbol of a horned skull upon its flanks. He didn’t recognise the insignia, but he remembered the designation of the craft. Thunderhawk. It passed overhead, uncaring of the battle taking place below and soon flew out of sight. Abatido was the first to fire again, slaying two more cultists as they gawked at the sky.

‘Push forward!’ Abatido ordered. ‘Drive them out!’

Disciplined bursts of las-fire blew cultists back from their barricade. The heat wave from Marvaro’s flamer touched Abatido’s skin and he knew the fight was over, but he had lost sight of the remaining kidnappers.

‘Split up. Search teams. There is still time.’

The squad split up and set to their tasks without question. Martinez fell in beside Abatido and they surged onward. Karsavaal was a vast city. With each minute that passed the chances that they would find their targets grew slimmer.

‘It’s been too long, major, they’re gone. We should regroup and head back,’ said Martinez.

‘Not yet, have faith.’

They rounded the corner onto a wide street littered with the husks of battle tanks. At its end, the curtain walls of the Palacea Aeternum loomed over them. They were an architectural marvel, a thousand feet high, decorated with fine devotional carvings. Even its defences were beautiful, gilded gun-servitors with angelic porcelain masks set back into ornate alcoves. Though he was struck as always by the wall’s majesty, the movement of cultists between the wrecked tanks still caught Abatido’s eye.

‘There,’ he snapped, pointing into the distance a split second before breaking into a sprint, Martinez half a step behind. They fired as they ran but their shots flew wide. The cultists rounded the end of the street and passed out of sight. Between the outer walls of the Palacea Aeternum and the nearest buildings was a hundred yards of open ground designed to act as a killing field. The cultists ran into it without fear, knowing that gun-servitors wouldn’t target them. Abatido rounded the corner, came to a halt and raised his lasgun. He sighted the enemy and fired. His shot flew wide as Martinez pulled him down behind a gutted Leman Russ.

‘What are you doing?’ Abatido objected, but he was cut off by a burst of heavy bolter fire that detonated where he had been standing seconds before.

‘They’re gone, Nico,’ said Martinez.

Abatido clenched his fist, raised it and slammed it against the tank. More lives had been lost to the Palacea Aeternum.

‘I believed the Emperor was with us,’ said Abatido.

‘Perhaps He is. Look,’ said Martinez, pointing around their cover to one of the thick stone ridges that lined the walls like a ribcage. High up, almost out of sight, was a break in the stone where uncovered metal was illuminated by pulsating blue light.

‘It’s exposed,’ said Abatido.

‘Vulnerable,’ Martinez added.

‘Fall back. The general needs to hear about this.’

Slayer’s Hand set down on a landing pad on the perimeter of the space port. As the access ramp opened, Sergeant Jago Sabarren of the Exorcists looked out. Ahead of him, soldiers in grey uniforms hurried into position while a line officer barked orders. Beyond them a senior officer in an indigo uniform was striding towards the Thunderhawk, surrounded by bodyguards and scribes. The ramp touched down and Sabarren descended, accompanied by his brothers. The mortal soldiers before them had formed two lines, creating a path for the new arrivals. Their officer ordered them to keep their eyes ahead, but few were able to obey. To see but one of the Adeptus Astartes in one’s lifetime was nearly unheard of. These men now stood in the presence of twenty.

The senior officer strode purposefully towards them. He was short and wide, seemingly around half a century old but with a complexion that suggested juvenat treatment. He snapped to attention. Sabarren wondered if he was trying to appear taller or show off the rows of medals pinned to his breast. Likely both, he concluded.

‘Most revered Adeptus Astartes. Welcome to Karsa V. I am General Torres. Elected commander of the Karsavaal Defence Corp. I was not prewarned of your arrival.’

‘A necessary precaution,’ Sabarren replied. ‘I am Veteran Sergeant Sabarren.’

‘An honour. If you would follow me, I will brief you on the situation.’ Torres turned on his heel and marched away. His bodyguards matched his step as his scribes scurried to keep up. Sabarren didn’t move.

‘Not yet,’ said Sabarren. ‘I am awaiting a final report from my Scouts.’

‘Your Scouts?’ asked Torres, turning back.

‘They have been operating in this city for four days, but growing atmospheric interference has prevented them from reporting to my ship. They will arrive shortly.’

‘You must be mistaken. If there was any military presence in Karsavaal besides my own forces I would know about it.’

‘About face! Present arms!’ the line officer barked, and the row of riflemen spun on their heels and raised their weapons. Sabarren looked out over their heads. Approaching was a figure draped in a camouflage cloak. Beneath it he wore lightweight armour the same deep red as Sabarren’s.

‘Stand down!’ Sabarren ordered, his voice booming through the external vox of his armour.

The Scout approached. If he had been bothered by the row of lasguns pointed at him he showed no sign. The guns lowered and the soldiers parted to let him through. He came to stand in front of Sabarren.

‘Scout-Sergeant Iskender,’ said Sabarren, ‘have you found him?’

‘Yes, sergeant. We have confirmation of the target within the palace grounds.’

‘And have you found a means of access?’

‘No, sergeant.’

‘I see. Remain with Sergeant Aronin on the ship. I will speak with the general.’

Sabarren turned his attention back to Torres. ‘Let us speak privately.’

Torres nodded curtly and entered the space port’s command centre, Sabarren and his squad close behind. The Space Marines peeled off one by one, taking up defensive positions along the way. When they reached the strategium, Brothers Yanis and Illias turned to stand guard over the entrance as Brothers Ahmik and Nadir followed their sergeant inside.

The strategium was a dome-shaped chamber illuminated by a lumen plate in the centre of the ceiling. The floor was dominated by a hololithic projector. The chamber’s circumference was lined with cogitator banks. General Torres came to a halt on the far side of the projector. ‘This is the most secure room in the city.’

Sabarren looked about at the adepts attending the cogitators and the guards standing to attention between them. ‘Leave us.’

‘Belay that,’ said Torres. ‘You may be Adeptus Astartes, sergeant, but these people are under my command.’

Sabarren looked down at the general and paused, giving the mortal time to look back into the inscrutable green lenses of his helmet. ‘It is necessary.’

Torres hesitated. Though the pause was subtle, little passed Sabarren’s perception and it was clear that the general needed time to steel himself before contradicting him further.

‘I do not see how. I believe it is important that my staff hear what you say.’

Sabarren removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. The change in Torres’ expression was immediate. ‘Do you trust everyone in this room, general?’

Torres wavered, fixated on the sight before him and caught off guard by the question. ‘I do,’ he said, straightening his jacket in an attempt to recompose himself.

‘Then you may keep each of them you know by name.’

‘Of course,’ Torres said with confidence, but Sabarren noted panic in his eyes as he looked at each of the scribes and guards in turn. Relief crossed his features as he settled upon the nearest of the guards, a broad-shouldered female in carapace armour. ‘This is Captain Zorion. Head of my security detail.’

Sabarren looked at her impassively then returned his gaze to Torres, looking on expectantly. Torres once again scanned the room desperately. He hurriedly stepped towards an adept, a hunched male in grey robes.

‘This is Adept Ocara,’ he said.

‘Ocaro,’ the adept corrected, drawing a look from Torres that was equal parts anger and fear.

‘Enough,’ Sabarren said. ‘They stay. The rest go.’

Torres looked up at him, puffing his chest out as Sabarren had come to expect. ‘The adepts go. The guards stay.’

Torres felt unsafe. This was good. ‘Very well,’ said Sabarren. He watched the adepts leave and waited until the doors had sealed behind them. ‘Given the manner of this city’s downfall you must understand the need for secrecy.’

‘I do, of course. And may I say how pleased I am that you are here, sergeant. To have the Adeptus Astartes at one’s disposal is a significant boon, but I fear you have made an unnecessary voyage. Circumstances here are under control.’

‘You are mistaken.’

Torres looked stunned. Sabarren imagined the general had not been told such often in his life. The look of surprise on his face turned to annoyance. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘The war here is not under control. You have allowed this city to be brought to the brink of devastation and, most importantly, my brothers and I are not at your disposal.’

‘No? Then I fail to see–’

‘Because you have not yet ceased speaking long enough for me to explain,’ Sabarren said harshly. The room fell silent.

‘Adept Ocaro,’ Sabarren began, ‘display the Palacea Aeternum.’

‘Yes, lord,’ the adept replied, and approached the hololith console. A model of the palace appeared in translucent blue light.

‘This is the centre of the heretical uprising that has taken hold of your city.’

‘I assure you that though the insurgents have taken control of the Palacea Aeternum, they have been contained there also. We will stamp them out.’

‘Heed me, general. They are not contained, they are waiting. Without our intervention you will all be dead long before your siege is successful.’

Sabarren saw the tightening in Torres’ jaw. He was frustrated, but though he opened his mouth to speak he reconsidered.

‘My brothers and I will infiltrate your palace. We will end your war. It would be my choice not to involve you. However, our time is limited, and my Scouts have been unable to find a means of access. I require all data you have on the palace. My brothers will interrogate your staff. We will have strict instructions for those we deem trustworthy.’

‘Sergeant, this is still my–’ Torres began, but he was interrupted as the briefing room doors were thrown open. A Karsan soldier entered, Brother Illias close behind.

‘My apologies for the interruption, brother-sergeant,’ said Illias, ‘but this one brings information that may be of value.’

Sabarren looked from Illias to the newcomer to Torres. ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

‘Major Nico Abatido. Commander of my elite Cazadores.’

‘Very well. Major Abatido. Report.’

Abatido had felt emboldened as he entered. He had looked into the eyes of two of the Emperor’s angels and convinced them to let him pass. This confidence had drained from him as he looked upon the face of the warrior standing across from General Torres. His features were brutish, bisected by an ugly scar. His scalp was covered in tattooed rows of symbols that Abatido didn’t recognise but which hurt him to look at. His eyes were an unnerving steel grey, starkly contrasting with the darkness of his skin. Something was making Abatido nauseous. He didn’t know if it was the heady scent of holy unguents or something else. The room felt cold and airless, as if something were draining the life from it. He almost didn’t register that the Space Marine had spoken to him, and stared blankly.

‘Sergeant Sabarren and I would both like to hear your report, major,’ Torres prompted him. The familiar voice snapped Abatido from his trance and he hurriedly collected his thoughts.

‘Yes, sir. I may have found a way for us to access the Palacea Aeternum.’

Abatido approached the hololith. ‘Adept Ocaro, bring up Section Delta-Two.’

The adept nodded and the hololith zoomed in to a section of the palace’s defensive wall.

‘More hostages were taken this morning. My team pursued the insurgents but were unable to prevent them from escaping. Before returning, however, Corporal Martinez and I observed damage to the curtain wall here,’ said Abatido, reaching into the display to point.

‘The palace’s void shield pylons,’ said Sabarren.

‘Yes, my lord, and the damage to the wall has left a part of this pylon exposed.’

‘This is where we launched our last assault. I believed it was a failure,’ said Torres.

‘We all did, though it seems now that the Emperor blesses us with an opportunity. If we are able to destroy the pylon, we will create a hole in the void shield that we can exploit.’

‘That does not account for the aerial defences. An insertion by Valkyrie remains out of the question,’ said Torres.

‘There is a detail you have yet to acknowledge. Destroying a void shield pylon will cause a greater detonation that will inflict catastrophic damage to the wall. Following its destruction, a ground assault may be possible,’ said Sabarren.

‘Unfeasible. It will take too long to clear the debris. The defensive turrets will cut us apart before we breach the perimeter.’

‘For an armoured assault this would be true, but my brothers and I will attack on foot,’ said Sabarren.

‘An infantry assault? Are you aware of the defences that lie within the castle grounds?’ said Torres.

‘We are Adeptus Astartes, general. We will overcome.’

‘The point remains that we must destroy the pylon first. Where, major, is it exposed?’

‘Approximately five hundred feet up,’ said Abatido. As he spoke, Ocaro input the new data. A marker appeared on the hololith around halfway up the wall.

‘And how large is the exposed area?’

‘I estimate five feet high and three feet wide,’ said Abatido.

Torres shook his head. ‘I thank you for your report, but this information does us no good. The opening is too high to approach on foot or strike from the ground. There is nothing we can do.’

‘There is,’ said Sabarren.

Abatido saw the frown crease General Torres’ forehead.

‘And what is that?’ said Torres with a politeness Abatido could tell he was struggling to maintain.

‘You have access to gunships. You will use them,’ said Sabarren.

Torres scoffed, his calm facade beginning to crack. ‘Adept Ocaro, please display the Hydra batteries.’

On the hololith display, picked out as red wireframe models, eight Hydra autocannon batteries appeared, either on the top of the wall or positioned within the palace grounds.

‘An aerial assault is out of the question. Any aircraft approaching the palace is guaranteed to be destroyed. Even were that not the case, gunships have little greater chance of landing the strike necessary than our ground forces do.’

Sabarren approached the hololith. ‘We are not in a position to indulge such concerns. You will have your gunships engage the batteries atop the wall. These will divert fire, allowing another unit to position itself close enough to attach explosives directly.’

‘Madness,’ protested Torres. ‘They will be left entirely vulnerable.’

‘They will have to be swift. Even so, you are likely correct. Regardless, there is no other way.’

‘No. I will not throw away good men on such a foolhardy plan.’

‘General, what is the population of this city?’

‘Close to a billion by the last census.’

‘Then that is how many you condemn to death should you fail to act, yourself included and the rest of this world soon after. This mission is our only chance to prevent this.’

‘General,’ said Abatido, ‘I don’t relish the losses this plan entails either, but I also believe it’s the only way. Didn’t we both stand beside Preacher Bayani and pray to the Emperor for deliverance? Now we stand beside His angels. It is proof that He heard us. Don’t the preachers also tell us that those who sacrifice themselves in His name are the most beloved of his servants?’

If one trait matched General Torres’ stubbornness it was his ambition. Over years of service Abatido had learned this better than most. Torres had designs on high political station once his military career was over, and he was loath to let a chance to prove his piety pass him by. Abatido could see the general’s defiant look soften in the face of his self-interest.

‘Very well,’ Torres conceded. ‘Perhaps Sergeant Sabarren is correct. I will see to the preparations and–’

‘I am not yet done,’ said Sabarren.

‘We have agreed to your terms. What is left to discuss?’ asked Torres.

‘Once we are within the palace grounds, my brothers will see to the full deactivation of the void shield. Once our mission is complete, it will be necessary for you to destroy the palace.’

‘Destroy the Palacea Aeternum? I will do no such thing! It has stood for eight millennia. I will not be the one to see it fall.’

‘My lord,’ said Abatido, ‘is our mission not to reclaim the palace?’

‘No, forces you are incapable of dealing with are at work here. That is why we have come. We will see to their destruction, but your inaction has allowed their taint to fester. All trace of them must be scoured from your world or all we do here will be for naught. Am I understood?’

‘You are, lord Astartes,’ said Abatido. ‘But what of Governor Acin and the hostages? Will you free them?’

‘Your governor is dead.’

‘You cannot know that for certain,’ said Torres.

‘No, but you should hope that I am correct. It is the most merciful fate he could have suffered. This is not an arbitrary demand. It is a necessity for the good of your world and the Imperium, so you will do as I command.’

‘As you insist,’ said Torres.

‘Good. My brothers and I are prepared. Contact me when your forces are ready,’ said Sabarren.

Abatido watched as Sabarren left. Immediately he felt better. His nausea subsided and after a few deep breaths the headache that had formed behind his eyes began to recede.

‘Prepare your warriors, major,’ said Torres. ‘Let us show them some true Karsan mettle.’

Abatido saluted. ‘It would be my honour, general.’

‘Dismissed.’

Night had fallen. Sabarren stood in the broken street analysing the terrain and the palace defences as he waited for the attack to begin. The order had been given and Sabarren could hear the sound of approaching gunships. His squad stood around him. Squad Aronin waited a short distance to his left, and beyond them were the neophytes. Behind the Exorcists the Karsan forces had gathered. General Torres was there, surrounded by his retinue, along with Major Abatido and forty of their elite soldiery.

‘You are certain Belphegor is inside?’ came the dour voice of Sergeant Aronin.

‘I trust Sergeant Iskender’s reconnaissance. Moreover I can feel his presence, as I am certain you can also,’ replied Sabarren.

‘Ever since we arrived. Its malevolence grows.’

The sound of engines grew in intensity and Sabarren watched as two flights of gunships flew overhead.

‘It begins,’ he said.

Abatido watched the aerial battle unfolding through his magnoculars, whispering a prayer for the gunship crews as one by one they fell. For a time, it had seemed hopeless, but he clung to a scrap of hope as he watched one of the Valkyries take up position by the pylon. He could not see how the crew fared: the access ramp was turned away from him and his view was blocked by the hull of the ship itself. His heart sank as he saw the defence guns turn upon it and tear it apart. He mistook the first explosion as the Valkyrie’s engines detonating. Then there had been a second, a third and a fourth, tearing along the pylon’s length.

‘They’ve done it,’ said Martinez grimly, lowering her own magnoculars.

‘Perhaps,’ said Abatido, ‘but we must yet hope that the Emperor smiles upon their labour.’

Abatido watched as chain detonations ripped through the stone. Arcs of electricity danced along the length of the pylon as it began to glow. It brightened and the discharge of energy grew wilder. A Vendetta gunship was struck by artificial lightning and spiralled into the ground. More energy lashed out and the core of the pylon grew so bright that Abatido was forced to avert his eyes.

‘Look away!’ he called out as the pylon detonated.

The explosion was so intense that Sabarren’s auto-senses struggled to cope. Momentarily he was rendered blind and deaf as his armour’s spirit cut him off from the world to protect his organic senses. Even though he stood hundreds of yards away, the shock wave hit Sabarren with enough force to stagger him backwards. As his senses returned, Sabarren watched as jagged blocks of masonry the size of Dreadnoughts fell from the sky. They crashed through buildings, turned tank carcasses to ash and buried themselves in the road. His helmet adjusted for the cloud of rock dust that filled the air. He growled with dissatisfaction. The explosion had torn a wide fissure in the wall, yet the bottom two hundred feet, Sabarren estimated, remained intact.

‘Perhaps it has grown too dark here for even the Emperor to look down upon us,’ said Sergeant Aronin.

‘Of that I have no doubt. Withdraw to Slayer’s Hand. Scout Sergeant Iskender.’

The Scout sergeant hurried up to him. It was clear that without the protection of full power armour the effects of the explosion had been more severe for him. Iskender squinted as he looked up at him. ‘Yes, sergeant?’

‘We rely upon you now. Advance with haste.’

‘We will not fail,’ Iskender replied, beating his fist against his chest in salute. Sabarren returned the gesture. Iskender gathered his squad. They wrapped their cloaks around themselves and made towards the palace. Sabarren then turned and followed Squad Aronin in the opposite direction. They passed Karsan soldiers who had been thrown to the ground before the first of them regained their feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Torres called out. Sabarren turned to see the general being helped up.

‘See for yourself, general,’ he said, pointing towards the palace. ‘The wall stands strong enough to deny a ground assault and my brothers and I are not equipped to scale what remains.’

‘Then what? You cannot quit the field.’

‘As we speak, my Scouts advance upon the palace while the rest of us return to our ship. They will destroy whatever defences remain to allow us to make an aerial insertion.’

‘Your Scouts? There are only five of them. What can they accomplish?’

‘They are the best prepared for the mission at hand.’

‘We will accompany them,’ said Major Abatido.

‘You will not. Your forces should withdraw and await orders to destroy the palace.’

‘We can help you,’ Abatido asserted. ‘I do not doubt the capability of your Scouts, but together we can disable their defences faster and deny the enemy time to redeploy.’

‘There are powers at work here that are beyond your understanding,’ said Sabarren. ‘Should you interfere you will only jeopardise the mission, and you will not return.’

‘So you have said, sergeant,’ said Torres, ‘and I grow tired of your condescension. Karsa V is a world of civility and learning. I say it is time you tell us what it is we are up against.’

‘The fact that you ask only attests to your ignorance. There is more to the galaxy than even your most learned scholars know, for to look too deeply is to invite insanity. That will be the fate of any mortal who enters the palace. Should you send your men in I will be forced to ensure they do not return. Withdraw. This is the last I will say on the matter.’ With that, Sabarren returned to his brothers and walked away.

General Torres was quiet for a long time. It was clear to Abatido that he was waiting until he thought the Space Marines were out of earshot.

‘Do you believe what the sergeant says?’ asked Torres.

‘I do, but I know for certain that it is my duty to rescue our people,’ Abatido replied.

‘Can you scale the wall, major?’

‘We have grapnel launchers available, general.’

‘Then go.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Picking their way through the debris, Scout Squad Iskender crossed the palace’s killing field without drawing the attention of the enemy’s gun-servitors. They scaled the wall, diamantine-tipped grappling claws giving them purchase on the sheer rockcrete. No sooner had Iskender pulled himself over the ridge than he could feel the coalescence of Chaotic energy that saturated the palace grounds.

‘Do you hear them?’ Neophyte Darius asked, coming to stand beside him. ‘The whispers of temptation.’

‘I do.’

‘Already the warp promises me power if only I would draw my blade and plunge it into your back.’

‘I know. It has made me such promises also. Remember Chaplain Nathanael’s teachings,’ said Iskender, raising his voice enough that the rest of the squad could hear him. ‘The whispers will only grow stronger the further we go. Keep Melchior’s Litanies of Denial upon your lips, keep hatred in your heart, and allow only thoughts of the mission into your mind. This is where you prove the strength of our will, that you may one day take the final test and ascend to the true ranks of our Chapter.’

‘Sergeant,’ said Gordias, who was looking back over the killing field.

‘What is it?’

‘There are Karsan soldiers following us,’ said Gordias, pointing down at the figures running from cover to cover.

‘They move well for mortals,’ said Darius.

As he spoke, Iskender could hear the sound of gun-servitors shifting in their alcoves. ‘Not well enough,’ he said as the palace defences opened fire.

Abatido hit the wall at a full sprint. Turning back, he could only watch as heavy bolter turrets churned up the kill-zone. Streams of explosive bolts chased the Cazadores as they flitted between the husks of tanks and chunks of stone. The plan had started well. Moving in small groups, the Cazadores had covered much of the distance to the wall. Then they had been spotted. The first he knew of it was Hesqez being blown apart beside him. Voices shouted over the vox as more were caught off guard in the open and cut down. It was a tribute to the Cazadores’ discipline that it did not turn into a rout.

Abatido had considered aborting the mission, but he had not defied one of the Emperor’s angels in the name of duty only to run from it. The way the turrets were inset in the wall meant they had a minimum range, creating a safe zone directly beneath them; however, the explosion had thrown debris far and left little close to the wall itself. This meant that the final stretch to safety was also the most dangerous. Abatido had ordered his soldiers forwards, and he had been the first to make the final desperate crossing. Now he could only watch. Each warrior gunned down tore at his soul, and he prayed for theirs.

When all had passed, and the guns fell silent, twenty-six Cazadores remained. With Squad Primus in the lead they launched their grapnel hooks and began to climb. Abatido was the first to reach the top, and his arms burned as he pulled himself into the base of the fissure.

‘Do you feel that?’ asked Martinez as she pulled herself over the ridge and regained her feet.

Abatido did. It was a change in the air. It had become close, oppressive and charged somehow.

‘I do. I expect it is a residual field from the pylon. It is still trying to operate despite the damage. We shouldn’t linger here too long,’ said Abatido. In truth, he knew that was only one possible explanation. He considered Sabarren’s warnings. Was this the force the Space Marine had spoken of? If Abatido couldn’t understand it, how would he know if he felt it? He moved ahead and Martinez followed. The base of the fissure was jagged like a boulder field and they had to scramble the sixty feet to the far side. He tasted blood in his mouth and tried to remember being struck or biting his tongue but couldn’t. He spat to clear the taste, but it had no effect. He looked out at the Palacea Aeternum on the far side of the fissure. It was an edifice of majesty and strength befitting of the governors of Karsa V. Built from white marble, its walls were decorated with intricate carvings of devotional scenes and moments from the planet’s history. Even the scorch marks and bullet holes could not fully rob the building of its splendour. Along with the damage, though, the walls had been daubed with crude symbols using substances Abatido didn’t want to consider. He didn’t understand their meaning, but a part of him wished more than anything that he did.

‘I can’t bear to see it like this,’ said Martinez.

Abatido had known Martinez for decades. They had been in the same class at the Academia Militarum and had both been chosen to serve in Governor Acin’s honour guard, before Abatido had been tithed to the Astra Militarum and shipped off-world. They were both from the minority of the planet’s inhabitants who had actually seen the Palacea Aeternum, and Abatido had never expected he would see it again. It was a bitter irony that he had been allowed to return to Karsa V only to see it defiled so grievously. ‘Me neither,’ he said, ‘but this is the very sacrilege we are here to avenge.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes want to raze it to the ground,’ Martinez said mournfully.

Abatido looked her in the eye. ‘They do. Perhaps it is for the best.’

‘How can it be?’

‘Sergeant Sabarren says it is beyond our understanding. We should give the Emperor’s angels our trust.’

‘I fear I cannot,’ said Martinez quietly. ‘They disturb me. They are nothing like the stories my grandmother used to tell.’

‘Then put your trust in me,’ Abatido said earnestly.

‘I always have, Nico,’ said Martinez.

Abatido heard a whisper, and his head snapped around towards it. Marvaro was there, close behind him.

‘What did you say?’ Abatido asked.

‘Nothing, sir,’ Marvaro replied as he joined them at the edge. He said something else that Abatido didn’t hear. Abatido was considering what shape the blood splatter would make if he pushed Marvaro from the ledge and watched him fall. He pictured it spraying out in all directions like rays of light shining from a star. He staggered back, clamping his hands behind his back to prevent them doing anything he didn’t want them to, and tried to shake the intrusive thought from his head.

‘Are you okay, sir?’ Marvaro asked as Martinez placed her hand on Abatido’s shoulder.

‘I’m fine,’ he lied. ‘Just got a little vertigo.’

‘You’re a Cazador,’ said Martinez, ‘you don’t get ver–’

‘I said I’m fine,’ Abatido snapped. Martinez and Marvaro shared a concerned look, and each took a step away from him. Abatido thought to apologise but was distracted by the sound of more Cazadores crossing the gap.

‘Hurry up,’ he ordered. ‘The longer we take, the more of a defence the insurgents will be able to muster. Serrano,’ he said, pointing to his vox-specialist, ‘have you been able to contact the Space Marine Scouts? We need to coordinate our efforts.’

‘Negative,’ said Serrano. ‘The Space Marines use an encrypted channel that I can’t access.’

‘Throne,’ Abatido cursed. ‘Somebody get eyes on them. We serve no purpose here if we only retread their ground.’

It was too dark to know for sure if anyone was concealed in the grounds below them, but as he scanned the area Abatido saw movement near the palace, illuminated by the soft glow of the light through shattered windows. The defenders were mustering.

‘I don’t see them, sir,’ said Martinez.

‘Me neither,’ added Marvaro.

‘We’ll have to trust our instincts and pray that the Emperor guides us. We are out of time, look,’ Abatido said, pointing out at the armed rabble coming their way. ‘Get those grapnel hooks over here. Squads Primus and Secundus will descend together. Squads Tertius and Quartus, provide cover.’

The Cazadores set to work. They were the most rigidly drilled and efficient troops in Karsa’s military, but now they moved as sluggishly as untrained conscripts. Grapnel hooks were secured against the inside ridge of the wall. As the first of them began their descent there was an explosion off to Abatido’s left. Where moments before there had been a Hydra battery there was now a mess of smouldering metal.

‘I think we found them,’ said Martinez.

In the palace grounds, the defenders who had been approaching the Cazadores’ position redirected towards the explosion.

‘They’ve made us an opening. Let’s not waste it. Head towards the emplacement to the right, beyond the servant’s gate.’

In quick succession the members of squads Primus and Secundus abseiled down into the palace grounds and fanned out into a defensive perimeter. Squads Tertius and Quartus fell in behind them as shouts of alarm rose from the direction of the sundered Hydra. Ensuring that each squad leader could see him, Abatido snapped off a series of hand signs, and together the Cazadores advanced on their target. Between the breach and the servant’s gate was open ground and the Cazadores concealed themselves in the shadow of the walls.

As they proceeded Abatido found himself struggling to concentrate. He looked around at the warriors nearest him and found them glancing about nervously. They looked paranoid, jumping at shadows like cadets on their first combat assignment. There was a booming explosion on the roof of the palace as another Hydra battery was destroyed. Most of the Cazadores ducked low, sinking into what shadows had not been illuminated by the blast. Others gawped, frozen like animals in the lights of a cargo hauler. They’d no doubt have been spotted had the nearby patrol not diverted itself, rushing back towards the palace.

Next to Abatido, Trooper Romo raised his weapon with a glazed look in his eye. Abatido placed his hand on the barrel of the rifle and lowered it, shaking his head at the trooper, who took long seconds to acknowledge him. Once the patrol had moved away the Cazadores pressed on. Beyond the servant’s gate was the cemetery. While the ruling members of House Acin and their direct descendants were entombed in catacombs beneath the palace, lesser cousins and favoured servants were given the honour of being buried within the palace grounds. As the Cazadores passed the first row of tombstones, Martinez stopped in front of Abatido.

‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

‘Hear what?’ Abatido replied.

‘That scream. How could you not hear that scream?’ Her face was a mix of confusion and disbelief, a knife’s edge away from panic.

‘There was no scream, Eldra,’ he said, but as he looked around it became evident that Martinez had not been the only one to hear it. ‘Stay the course.’ He didn’t believe his words had provided her any reassurance, but to her credit Martinez obeyed.

It was testament to House Acin’s paranoia that even this sacred ground was fortified. The Hydra stood a short distance ahead, protected by four pintle-mounted heavy stubbers. Abatido fell in beside Marvaro behind an unornamented mausoleum.

‘Flank right. Take Squad Quartus with you. Get close and torch them. We’ll overrun them when their backs are turned,’ Abatido ordered, but Marvaro wasn’t listening. His head was craned like he was listening for something, and Abatido felt an urge to crash the stock of his lasgun into his nose for his lack of discipline.

‘It’s so…’ Marvaro started but trailed off as he stepped absent-mindedly out of cover. Abatido reached out to grab him, but this time he heard the scream. It sounded like the anguish of a thousand tortured souls. He dropped his lasgun and clamped his hands tight over his ears. It was so loud that it hurt and drowned out all other sounds around him. When it stopped it left his ears ringing, and he felt tears flow down his cheeks. He wiped them away and found blood now streaking his fingers. He saw a bullet-ridden mess of a body on the floor in front of him, all that remained of Marvaro. The insurgents were shouting, and the air was filled with chipped stone as heavy stubbers and autoguns blew holes in the tombstones. Abatido looked for his squad leaders but though he was able to spot each of them, none of them looked to him for orders.

‘Squad Quartus! Flank right!’ he cried out towards Lieutenant Venna in an attempt to regain some kind of order, but there was no response. Some of the Cazadores were still showing signs of cohesion but they were fighting their own battles in small groups, covering one another as they pressed the attack, and they were sloppy. Abatido saw a trooper advance only for the lasgun of the soldier covering him to whine low before he reached his destination, and he was gunned down a moment later. Mistake by mistake, the disunited attack was picked apart. Counter to Abatido’s typical level-headed nature he felt rage at the sight of his soldiers’ disregard for their training. He barely registered a second explosion upon the roof of the palace as he reloaded his lasgun, raised it to his shoulder and stepped out from behind the mausoleum. He charged down the row of tombstones, firing wildly.

‘Throne take you! Burn for your heresy!’ he cursed indignantly.

Solid slugs from autoguns struck his chestplate, robbing him of his momentum and breath, and he dropped behind a headstone carved in the likeness of Saint Cecilia. He dared a look from behind his cover. He had closed enough to see the faces of the defenders. Though dressed in the uniforms of Karsan riflemen they fought like marauders, snarling and cursing in a language Abatido didn’t recognise but knew was not native to his homeworld. He hated them, but as gunfire forced him back into cover his gaze returned to his own soldiers. Their own faces were contorted with anger. Where small groups had been whittled down to defiant individuals, the survivors fought like zealots. Abatido watched Trooper Elvenga reload his lasgun only to stand up and fire it from his hip on full-auto. He blazed back and forth, shouting incoherently until the moment a heavy stubber silenced him. In every direction he heard screaming, and experience told him his force was on the brink of collapse. He had to do something.

‘Emperor above. Lend strength to–’ he began, reciting the Litany of Righteous Endurance, the words committed to memory decades earlier, but invasive voices robbed him of his concentration.

Bleed them! Crush them!

They were aggressive and malicious. Loud enough that they could be heard over the cacophony of battle, even over the sound of his own thoughts. They barred his mind to the refuge of piety and extolled him to violence. In a moment of weakness he stood again and blazed at the defenders.

‘Die!’ he cried.

For a second the voices quietened to a harsh whisper and Abatido was able to witness with clarity as Trooper Heslen, frag grenades in each hand, charged the enemy line. He was screaming and blood was pouring from his ears. He was struck by a fusillade of weapons fire but drove through it, heedless of the pain. He dived over the barricade and the grenades detonated. Only then did Heslen’s screaming end.

Get up! Run! Kill!

The voices bayed for greater displays of violence. Heslen had destroyed one of the heavy stubber turrets and killed several of the insurgents, clearing a hole in their line. Already the Cazadores were charging into the breach. Abatido saw Martinez at their head. He did as the screams demanded and ran to join them. He dropped his lasgun as he broke into a sprint. He dived as he reached the barricade, throwing himself over it head first and tackling a traitor to the ground. The man’s rifle fell from his hands and skittered across the floor. He looked up at his attacker as he scrambled to get out from beneath him. Abatido looked down into maddened, blood-crusted eyes. The insurgent cursed as he reached for Abatido’s throat. Abatido drew his knife and plunged it into the insurgent’s chest with both hands. He leaned his body into it, driving the blade to the guard and bringing himself eye to eye with the wretch he had slain.

Yes! Again!

The screams had grown quiet as Abatido killed the cultist. Now he was dead they demanded more. Abatido looked for another victim. All around him the Cazadores were butchering the last of the insurgents. There were none left to kill. He saw Martinez as she slammed a traitor back against the Hydra, driving her knife into his belly over and over. She withdrew the blade one last time and the body flopped to the ground. She locked eyes with Abatido and with her blood-slick knife in hand, she charged. She hit him before he could get to his feet, throwing him onto his back. Abatido managed to get his foot underneath her and flipped her over his head.

‘Martinez! What are you doing?’

Kill her!

She landed with a thud, but no sooner had Abatido regained his footing than she was up and lunging at him again. Martinez had always been a skilled bladeswoman, dextrous and precise. She showed none of that now, slashing at him wildly. Abatido backed away desperately, trying to duck and parry her blows.

‘Eldra, stop!’ he demanded, but still she came for him.

‘You did this! You brought us here to die!’

Kill her! Bleed her dry!

‘No!’ Abatido cried. He looked to the rest of the Cazadores for help, but none was coming. Some stared absently into space; others were huddled into balls, shaking and moaning. Other fights had broken out, and most disturbingly some watched him with indifference or glee. His distraction cost him and Martinez’s knife bit into the flesh of his leg. He fell back and she loomed over him, ready to deliver a killing blow. He kicked out desperately, knocking her down to one knee. She lunged again but the second was all he needed. He had drawn his pistol and fired. Abatido’s sidearm was a Naval-pattern autopistol. He had blessed the bullets himself with holy water, and as he pulled the trigger the screams fell silent. The madness left Eldra Martinez’s eyes a split second before the bullet entered her forehead. Abatido looked at the body of his friend slumped at his feet. He tore his eyes away, unable to bear looking at it any longer. The gaze of every Cazador was upon him. Awareness had returned to the eyes of the vacant, the huddled and crying pushed themselves to their feet, and fights abruptly ended. Lieutenant Edvar approached him.

‘I had to,’ said Abatido.

‘I-I know,’ said Edvar, offering him her hand and helping him to his feet, ‘I think she was…’

‘We all are. The Space Marines warned us. We shouldn’t have come.’

Edvar took a step back, biting hard on her bottom lip. She stood to attention. ‘What are your orders, sir?’

Abatido looked around, trying to remember where exactly they were and why they were there. The Hydra battery loomed over them. ‘Destroy this,’ he said, gesturing to the gun emplacement. ‘Then we will go inside and do whatever we can.’

‘Major, I-I don’t think… The screams. You hear them too, don’t you?’ Edvar asked, her resolve already breaking.

‘Pray, lieutenant.’

‘What prayer, sir?’

‘Whatever you can still remember.’

Edvar nodded and started to gather what explosives the Cazadores still carried, picking them from the bodies of the dead. In a couple of minutes, krak grenades had been fixed and set for a timed detonation.

‘Gather whatever you can carry,’ Abatido ordered as the Cazadores fell in around him. ‘Let us see this to the end. For Karsa and the Emperor.’

‘For Karsa and the Emperor.’

As they began to walk away the moment of quiet that had fallen over them was passing. The screams returned.

Closer! Yes! More killing!

‘Emperor above,’ Abatido said clearly, ‘lend strength to my legs that I may stand before your enemies, and to my arm that I may cast them down.’

Behind him the rest of the Cazadores took up the litany, and together they headed into the palace.

Sabarren was standing behind Techmarine Uziah in the cockpit of Slayer’s Hand when the vox burst into life.

‘Sergeant Sabarren,’ said Iskender over a cacophony of solid slugs and las-fire, punctuated by the booming of bolter fire, ‘the enemy has us surrounded on the palace roof, but the Karsans have destroyed the last of the defences. You are clear to approach.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said Sabarren, turning to his pilot. ‘Take us in.’ The Thunderhawk rose from the space port and raced towards the Palacea Aeternum, pulverising debris in its downdraught. As it shot through the breached wall, two Hellstrike missiles launched, obliterating a pair of servitor-slaved autocannon emplacements on the palace’s perimeter. The Thunderhawk decelerated hard as it swept in close to the palace, heavy bolters scouring cultists from the roof. The assault ramp lowered and Sabarren walked out onto it.

‘Sergeant Iskender,’ he said into his vox as Squad Sabarren cut down the last of the heretics assailing the Scouts. ‘You are clear. Rendezvous with Sergeant Aronin. See to the deactivation of the void shield and enforce a perimeter. Allow no one to escape.’

‘Acknowledged, sergeant.’

Slayer’s Hand set down. The heretics were already mustering to repel them, led by officers in golden carapace armour. Man-portable missile launchers sent explosive projectiles into the gunship’s flanks, but though they sheared armour, they caused no significant damage. The Exorcists deployed and were struck by a wall of las-fire. They advanced unperturbed, bolter shells tearing apart the gathered defenders with contemptuous ease. Heavy stubbers fired down at them from the upper levels. Sabarren saw Brother Joram expertly guide a frag missile through a window, destroying the first. Sabarren returned fire at the second, his brothers adding their bolters to their leader’s. The mass of explosive bolts pulverised everything in the vicinity, and the second heavy stubber fell silent as Squad Aronin accounted for more.

With the heavy guns neutralised, Sabarren charged the enemy ahead. In the face of the Exorcists even the enemy’s warp-afflicted minds compelled them to flee. A golden-armoured leader in Sabarren’s path barked threats to his soldiers in an attempt to maintain order. Sabarren lowered his shoulder and hit him with a backhanded strike that took his head from his shoulders. Sabarren searched for his next target but found every heretic nearby already slain.

‘Sergeant Aronin, you have your orders – go, we will end this.’

Squad Aronin broke off and set to their own mission as Sabarren led his brothers to the palace’s main entrance. The face of the Palacea Aeternum was heavily fortified even in times of peace and the traitors had been busy securing it further. The Exorcists struck side-on as they rounded the east wing of the palace. A missile from Brother Joram tore the barrel off the nearest autocannon turret. The defenders rushed to repel the coming attack, only making themselves more vulnerable as Illias unleashed the wrath of his flamer. The conflagration flowed over the defences like a wave, setting all it touched ablaze. The burning traitors screamed and flailed, crashing into one another and spreading the fire like a virus. The Exorcists threw aside stone barricades and stomped over the smouldering bodies of the dead, executing the last of the defenders as they fled for perceived safety beyond the palace’s grand doors.

Beyond the threshold was an imposing staircase. It was painfully steep, each step too big for the comfortable stride of a mortal human. Desecrated statues of Imperial heroes stood sentinel along the staircase’s length. Sabarren set foot on the first step, and an assortment of weapons fire rained down on him as cultists rose from behind fortified bannisters on the first floor. It was too weak to penetrate his armour but strong enough en masse to slow him down. He began to chant the First Canticle of Hatred, feeling the words empower his body with righteous fury, and his brothers took up the chant behind him. Their opening volley struck heretics from the defence line, and Sabarren relished the moment that Illias’ flamer incinerated those that remained. Another line of defences had been established on the second floor. The first shots from the Exorcists cut down more of the traitors, but as they closed further, shots that had been bound to strike true instead detonated harmlessly yards from their targets. Sabarren felt the air swell with psychic energy. A figure made himself visible in the centre of the steps. He was pale and gaunt with platinum-blond hair that hung unnaturally around him. Sabarren knew him at once for what he was. His hand was raised defiantly, a mocking smile upon his face.

‘You are too late, soulless ones. My master saw your shadows in the void,’ he said. His voice was high-pitched, and laced with spite.

‘I have no words to share with you, witch,’ Sabarren replied. He strode effortlessly up more steps, firing another volley of bolts that once again detonated harmlessly in front of their targets.

‘Very well. My master has honoured me with the duty of slaying you, Jago Sabarren, and I am not so foolish as to fail him!’

Lightning leapt from the psyker’s outstretched fingers, racing towards Sabarren. He felt it seeking his mind. The hexagrammic wards inscribed upon his flesh and armour warmed. The lightning dissipated around him leaving only harmless arcs of electricity dancing across his plate.

The psyker’s snarl turned to fear. ‘Activate the mind slaves!’ he ordered and fell back, floating up the steps to the final line of defences another storey higher. The Exorcists continued firing on the closest traitors. Some shots were still deflected by the psychic shield, but others broke through, the Exorcists’ munitions etched with counter-sorcerous runes that strained the barrier with every impact. More heretics died, and as Sabarren passed the second level an elite soldier in gold raised a bolt pistol. The sergeant blew his arm off at the shoulder before he could use the weapon, and put a second shot into his chest.

Realising the futility of their defence, some of the heretics broke and fled. The closest were slain as they struggled to clamber up the stairs, but their deaths bought time for those ahead. Bolts detonated over their heads or struck the edges of the steps, showering the cultists with powdered marble. The Space Marines pursued them beyond the second defence line. Sabarren grabbed a traitor Guardsman by the collar and threw him backwards down the stairs. The man screamed until he hit the bottom with a wet crunch. More gunfire rained down, Astra Militarum-issue bolt weapons punctuating the hail of las-fire. A round struck Sabarren’s pauldron, sending shooting pains down his arm. He returned fire one-handed, driving the heretic back into cover.

‘Press forwards, brothers, with all haste,’ he voxed. ‘We cannot allow them to blunt our advance.’

Around him Squad Sabarren moved on to the Second Canticle of Hatred and drove themselves forward with even greater vigour. A cultist ahead of Sabarren stumbled. The Space Marine stamped down on his back as he shot another just steps from the safety of the line.

‘Watch them flee like the rodents they are,’ Sabarren snarled. He recognised the sound of mechanised tracks a second before the source rolled into view. Two heavy gun-servitors, their right arms replaced with plasma cannons. They fired immediately. Joram was hit first, his missile launcher evaporating along with his arm. Yanis was struck in the chest and thrown backwards, tumbling heavily down the steps. Sabarren’s helm display informed him that his brother was dead before he reached the bottom. There was too much open ground between the Exorcists and the third defence line. With a reluctant growl he gave his next order.

‘Back,’ he said, and the squad withdrew behind the second line. More plasma fire burned overhead, scorching paint from helmets and pauldrons. The Exorcists returned fire, but the angle was steep and bolts struck armour plating or flew overhead. ‘Warp take them,’ Sabarren cursed. It was obvious that to advance would cost him the lives of more of his brothers, but as he waited he could feel the energies coalescing in the throne room. He had hoped that with a moment to regroup a plan would present itself, but none came. Though it pained him to make such a sacrifice, Sabarren realised there was no other way. He would give the order to charge. Before he could speak, a new sound mingled with the plasma fire. Lasguns, but not the poorly maintained weapons of the enemy: these shots whined with power. Sabarren looked up, and though he could not identify their source, he saw the first of the gun-servitors struck by a series of bright beams that left its head dangling by its augmetic components.

‘Draw blades,’ Sabarren ordered as he maglocked his bolter to the small of his back, replacing it with the power maul locked to his hip. ‘Forward. Take their position.’

The Exorcists broke from cover, thundering up the steps. The second gun-servitor fired, striking Brother Cain, who kept fighting for several more steps before collapsing forwards. Sabarren threw a frag grenade that detonated inches above the automaton. The blast shredded its head and shoulders and set its chest aflame. He vaulted the third defence line to find the traitors caught in a swirling melee with the Karsan Cazadores.

He swung his maul single-handed at the first enemy. The upswing caught the traitor beneath the ribcage and pulverised it. The back swing smashed a cultist’s head from his shoulders and sent his body spinning through the air. Around Sabarren the Exorcists set about destroying the enemy with blades and armoured fists. The Cazadores fought with a savagery he had rarely seen before in mortals loyal to the Imperium. Skilled bladework and unarmed combat mixed with acts of barbaric violence. It was clear that the corruption here had tainted them, as he knew it would.

In the face of the combined onslaught the heretics were on the verge of being overwhelmed. Undoubtedly, they already would have been were it not for the psyker in their midst. He stood in the centre of the maelstrom surrounded by elites armed with powered rapiers. As Sabarren crushed another heretic with his maul, he saw a Cazador slip between the guards and thrust at the psyker with a knife. The witch reached out and the incoming attack stopped mid-strike, halted by unseen force. The psyker grabbed his attacker by the face and the Cazador roared in pain until he died. The psyker let him fall, and Sabarren saw the cultist’s handprint left on his victim in burned flesh.

‘Brothers, I will destroy the witch.’

Sabarren caved in a cultist’s face with the haft of his maul and drove forwards. He reached the first of the guards, who thrust at him with his rapier. Sabarren struck the thin-bladed sword with his maul and shattered it. The guard looked up in horror as the sergeant headbutted him. He felt the guard’s skull cave in and his spine snap. Sabarren caught him as he fell and threw him aside.

Then only the psyker was ahead. He had just sent the burnt husk of another Cazador spinning through the air on tendrils of forked lightning when Sabarren reached him. The psyker turned upon him too late. The sergeant grabbed the witch by the throat and lifted him effortlessly overhead. The witch clawed at his fingers while lashing at Sabarren with his mind. Both actions were futile. In his periphery, Sabarren saw his brothers slay the last of the psyker’s retinue, and beyond them, the Cazadores tearing apart the last of the cultists.

‘Curse you, soulless one,’ the psyker spat, coughing and struggling for breath. ‘Curse you and your ingratitude, you who have felt the warp’s greatest gifts and denied them! You are far too late. He comes. Already he crosses the threshold. The Prince of Burning Skies approaches.’

With a clench of his fist Sabarren shattered the witch’s spine. He dropped the body and stepped over it, making for the throne room above.

‘Sergeant Sabarren,’ said a voice behind him.

The Space Marine stopped and turned round, looking down at Abatido. ‘You should not be here.’

Abatido took a step closer to him. ‘I know. I have been a fool,’ he said. Abatido looked away from the Space Marine and to the few of his soldiers remaining. Sabarren followed his gaze. They were broken, nursing las-burns and stab wounds, and there were none whose eyes or ears weren’t bleeding.

‘Whispers or screams?’ Sabarren asked.

He saw Abatido flinch before the major’s eyes met Sabarren’s. ‘Screams,’ he said.

‘You all hear them?’

‘Yes, we all… Martinez. I had to kill her myself.’

Sabarren nodded knowingly. ‘Your intervention was timely and well received. You have earned the right to die fighting. We shall end this together.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Abatido said, and he followed Sabarren to the throne room.

As he crested the final steps to the throne room, Sabarren saw his target. Belphegor. The Master of Possessions wore an ancient suit of power armour, jet black and trimmed in burnished gold, beneath a robe the colour of sun-bleached bone. His helmet had been twisted into a facsimile of a four-horned goat skull. He stood upon a plinth at the back of the room in front of the throne. His staff stood unnaturally beside him. At his feet knelt a man in a soiled indigo suit. Belphegor cradled him under the chin with one hand and held a curved dagger in the other. He was chanting in a language Sabarren recognised but did not speak. No sane man did.

‘The governor!’ one of the Cazadores cried. Inside, more cultists were spread around the room. Though no physical lines joined them, Sabarren could see at a glance the invisible bonds that connected them and the esoteric shapes they formed. There was a captive kneeling before each one, all of whom had been ritually mutilated in some way. As soon as the Exorcists entered the room Belphegor’s incantation reached a crescendo, and the sorcerer plunged his dagger into the governor’s neck. At the same time, as one, the cultists slit the throats of their captives. Each heretic held their sacrifice by the head, allowing their blood to flow freely to the floor. The pools spread unnaturally, reaching for one another, forming the markings that Sabarren had seen in his mind. One of the Cazadores roared and shot the nearest cultist in the head. He fell and the blood from his cranium mixed with that of the sacrifices.

‘Stop!’ Sabarren ordered. The rest of the Cazadores had raised their weapons but froze at his command. Only at this moment did Belphegor look down from the dais.

‘Sabarren,’ he said, ‘you’re too late.’ He spoke with two voices: one deep and booming, the other thin and mocking, as if more than a single entity existed within his physical form.

‘I did not come to talk, Belphegor.’

‘Good. There is nothing left to say. Another world dies beneath your watch, Jago Sabarren. The Prince of Burning Skies will see to that.’ Belphegor grasped his staff and raised it.

‘No,’ Sabarren cried defiantly, aiming his bolter. His brothers did the same and fired. Belphegor dropped the governor’s body and raised his now empty hand. A wall of steaming blood rose from the ground. Where the bolts struck it they melted. With his own weapon thundering, what control Sabarren had had over the Cazadores was gone and they set upon the remaining cultists. The throne room broke out into a brutal firefight.

On the dais, Belphegor slammed the haft of his staff down into the governor’s blood. Multicoloured flames spread across the scarlet fluid like it was promethium. Those who stood too close were caught in the blaze. Cazadores and cultists alike screamed as the fire consumed them. As fast as they had spread, the flames drew back to the staff. Where the blood had been fresh moments before, now it was black. When the fire reached the staff it spread in a ring around Belphegor’s feet, then erupted into a pillar. The ceiling caught fire and spread in an instant, a burning sky. The flaming pillar receded with a final wave of fire that made Sabarren raise his hand to cover his eyes. When he looked back, Belphegor was gone.

Sabarren wanted to scream. He wanted to curse and damn the sorcerer in every language of reality and the warp, but there was no time. He saw what was happening on the dais. Flickering embers danced at the foot of the governor’s throne. They found his body. It began to burn, and as it did it started to move. The governor pushed himself to his knees then, unsteadily, his feet. He stumbled. His clothing and hair burned away. When he raised his head, his eyes were smouldering coals. One of the Cazadores shot him. The lasgun burned chunks of flesh from the body. The wounds flickered with flames, but what had once been Governor Acin made no sounds of pain. The creature that wore his skin raised its hand and a gout of fire leapt from the palm. The Cazador was incinerated and fell to ash.

Though it now wore the body of the governor, Sabarren knew the creature for what it was. Belphegor had summoned a daemon, and it was using the governor’s form to bridge the gap between reality and the warp. It staggered as it descended the steps. It was weak still, but it would only grow stronger, feeding on the energies that suffused the palace. It had already begun. The governor’s human form was growing, pulsating as its limbs and torso lengthened, but gained no mass, leaving it unsettlingly lean and sinuous. The Exorcists fired upon it. Bolts inscribed with unicursal hexagrams tore flesh from its body. The daemon growled with anger but showed no signs of pain. It turned its hand to them and unleashed another gout of flame. Sabarren felt it wash over him. The wards on his armour glowed orange and those on his skin burned like fresh brands. When the daemon relented the Exorcists still stood. The daemon peered at them as if bemused. Then it roared with a voice like a roiling furnace.

‘We must cast it out,’ said Sabarren.

More gunfire erupted from behind him. A wave of cultists stormed the throne room’s entrance. Sabarren saw the last of the Cazadores gunned down. Ahead of him, emerging from the doors at the rear of the room, more heretics led by gold-armoured elites flooded in.

‘Brothers, deal with the mortals,’ he ordered. ‘I will destroy the abomination.’

Acknowledgement runes flashed on his visor. Bolters roared.

‘By my will I deny thee, by my heart I spurn thee, by my hand I destroy thee,’ Sabarren intoned. ‘Fiend of emptiness, to the void I cast thy blackened soul.’

Abatido turned towards the sound of footsteps. Before he could raise his weapon, he was hit. Las-fire cut through his leg and pulled him to the ground. He saw the remaining Cazadores die as he fell. Forty souls he had led through the breach and forty souls he had lost, yet he still lived. Those soldiers died to save their home. Abatido would not allow himself to join them until he knew their sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. His pistol had fallen from his grip, now only his knife remained. With a grunt of anguish Abatido got up. He saw what had once been Governor Acin launch itself at Sergeant Sabarren, taking two loping strides then simply gliding towards him and raising a mutated, birdlike talon to strike. Sabarren lifted his bolter in defence but the creature’s talons cut clean through it, shearing it in two. Before it could strike again Abatido had reached it, and he plunged his knife up under its ribs. The daemon stopped, looking down at him before swatting him away with the back of its claw. The last thing Abatido knew was his body flying backwards through the air. Then everything went black.

Major Abatido was dead, this Sabarren knew, but in the moment the daemon was distracted the sergeant had drawn his power maul. It thrummed with energy this close to a warp entity, even before Sabarren activated its power field. As the daemon turned towards him Sabarren struck it a blow that threw it into the steps of the dais. Around them his brothers were holding back the cultists that sought to overwhelm them, but to Sabarren there was only the daemon. He charged, maul held high and the words of the Liber Exorcismus on his lips. The daemon was back upright, now floating a foot off the ground. Horns had begun to form upon its brow. It flowed around Sabarren’s attacks with the elegance of dancing flames, then struck him in the chest with both talons. The blow sent Sabarren staggering. The daemon followed it with a psychic attack. Though the assault was invisible to the eye, Sabarren perceived it as a wall of fire that rose before him then crashed like a wave. Rather than washing him away, the wave broke around Sabarren and he stood unmoved. The daemon gave him the curious look again.

‘Yessss… rememmmmbeeeer,’ it hissed. Its speech slurred as though it was unused to forming words in a human mouth. Sabarren lunged at it again and while the daemon evaded his strikes, he drove it back. A backhanded swing arced towards the daemon’s head and it only narrowly turned the blow aside with one of its talons. Its fingers were torn off, but it punched its other claw through Sabarren’s pauldron, the points biting into the flesh of his shoulder. The daemon pulled its claw free and Sabarren swung back single-handed. The daemon caught his wrist and twisted it, almost breaking Sabarren’s grip on his weapon, then it drove its talon, already reforming on the stump of its arm, up under his chestplate.

The daemon lifted Sabarren from the floor, rising with him, then threw him to the ground. The sergeant’s impact cratered the marble. Then the daemon fell upon him, talons stabbing towards his eyes. Sabarren twisted and the attack narrowly missed, striking down the side of his head. It tore through his helmet and his auto-senses went black. He felt blood welling in deep gashes down the right side of his face. Still on his back, he swung his maul, hitting the daemon in the abdomen and driving it away. Sabarren pressed the head of the maul into the ground and pushed himself to his feet. With his free hand he unsealed the broken remains of his helmet and set it down.

‘Yesss, I remember you. Exorcisssssst.’ Sabarren didn’t reply. He had no words to exchange with the abomination.

The daemon made a pained coughing sound that Sabarren took as laughter. ‘Whaaaat? No wooords? No threeeats? Goood. No true power do you have over meeee. I have slain thy kin before, upon the Barrens of Ul’kx. Feasted on burning flesh atop the Citadel of Ashen Bones. Yes. Many have I slain. Many have I burned and devoured, Exorcisssst.’

Rage rose in Sabarren’s thundering hearts. He wanted nothing more than to lunge at the daemon once again and strike at it until it was destroyed, but a thought stayed his hand. Memories of lessons long passed. Upon Erisees the Exorcists had tasted defeat at the hands of a daemon the Chapter’s records named Fi’ax’ra’fel, who had burned the world’s populace and built towers of their remains. Librarian Thaddeus had once told him of a battle upon the desert world of Ul’kx. The daemon was not lying. It was a known and ancient enemy of the Chapter. It had slain many of his brothers across millennia of battle. Warriors far greater than he. Sabarren slumped to his knees, letting his head fall.

‘It is you, Fi’ax’ra’fel, Ogenthrath, Vex’akr’ta.’

‘Not one my truuuue naaame, humaaan.’

‘My brothers,’ Sabarren said, letting the power maul fall from his grip.

‘Yesss, your brotherssss.’

Sabarren looked up. ‘They will have questions for you.’

He launched from the ground with such force the stone split beneath him. In three strides he was upon the daemon, his consecrated combat blade in hand. He tackled the daemon, snatching it out of the air and driving it into the throne. With one hand he forced the daemon’s face into the aquila sculpted upon the throne’s top rail. The daemon’s stolen flesh burned as Sabarren carved the first sigil of binding into its chest. It howled in pain and slashed at him. Sabarren drove his knife through the palm of its hand. A psychic blast struck him. Where before it had been a wave, now it was a battering ram and it threw him to the foot of the steps. The daemon leapt from the throne and landed on top of him. It drove a taloned hand into the right side of his abdomen. Sabarren gritted his teeth and rolled onto his side, pinning the daemon’s talon inside him. As it tried to strike again, Sabarren trapped its other arm under his and carved the second sigil of binding into its chest.

The daemon ripped itself away and blood poured from the wound in Sabarren’s side. He got up. Pain-suppressors flooded his system, but the blood still flowed. He tackled the daemon again, lifting it onto his shoulder then driving it into the ground. He began to carve the mark of servitude into the daemon’s abdomen, but it lashed out, cutting through his gauntlet and knocking the knife from his grip. Sabarren grabbed it by the throat and headbutted it. Its head snapped back, and Sabarren bathed his hand in the blood that flowed from his own wound. Pinning the daemon’s head back by its jaw, he daubed the mark upon its body with his thumb. The daemon drove a psychic blade into Sabarren’s mind. He felt it glance off his mental defences, but the impact made his head swim and the daemon threw him back before floating upright once again.

‘You think you can claim dominion over me?’ it bellowed with indignant fury as Sabarren reclaimed his footing. It spread its arms wide. Flames from the burning ceiling poured down into it. The daemon absorbed them, its pallid skin glowing orange from within and its smouldering eyes burning like torches. Then it unleashed them, and Sabarren was consumed by the inferno.

A man sat slumped against a wall. He did not know who he was, where he was or how he came to be here. All he knew was pain. He looked down at his body and found that his abdomen had been torn open. Blood stained his legs and hands. All around him was violence, dominated by two demigods doing battle at the room’s centre. Each was terrifying and painful to look upon, but the cuirass of the giant in red armour bore the symbol of a two-headed eagle. The deepest part of his shattered mind still recognised its holiness. He was an ally and so the monster he faced was the man’s enemy. He hoped the red giant might defeat it alone, but as the giant was consumed in flames the man knew it was his duty to help him in any way he could. The man knew he was dying, but perhaps he had strength left to make his death matter. Fighting through searing agony, the man got to his feet.

Sabarren breathed heavily. Though the daemonfire had passed he felt it burning him still beneath his smouldering armour. The daemon loomed over him. His knife was now a pool of liquid metal beside him. The blood that had poured from his abdomen was dry and flaked away at his touch, his wound cauterised by the unholy heat. His means of completing the binding ritual were lost. He had failed Karsa V, just as he had failed Vaygangard.

‘Do you wish for death yet, Exorcist?’ the daemon taunted him.

‘No.’

‘Gooood.’ It had grown taller still, horns cresting its head like a crown. ‘Because there will be no such release for you. I will take your essence and keep it within me. You will see my works made manifest and know they were made possible by your weakness.’

As Sabarren stared at the daemon with grim defiance he saw someone leap onto its back. It was Major Abatido, soaked in his own blood. He grappled with the daemon as if trying to choke it. As it thrashed, Abatido’s bloodied hands smeared across its face, painting the creature’s flesh crimson. The daemon flung Abatido away and he landed with a crunch of broken bones at the foot of the throne.

Sabarren took his chance. He threw himself at the Prince of Burning Skies, incanting the words of the Daemonica Malefica Custodia. The cursed language dried his throat and made his tongue bleed. Driving his thumbs into the daemon’s burning eyes, he blinded it and bore it to the ground. It slashed at him, the frantic attacks of a cornered animal. They cut into his face and drew sparks from his armour. Knelt upon its chest, in the dying blood of Nico Abatido, Sabarren daubed Soloman’s Master Sigil of Enslavement. The daemon thrashed and cursed him; then it fell still, unconscious. The body it had sought to use to enter the mortal plane would now serve as its prison. The fires above them receded and died out.

Sabarren got to his feet. In the face of their otherworldly lord’s defeat, the remaining cultists turned to flee. Bolter fire chased them, its roar not quite loud enough to cover the sound of bodies breaking as they fell down the grand steps. Nadir came to Sabarren’s side.

‘Brother-sergeant, you are hurt,’ he said.

Sabarren waved him away. ‘I will live.’

‘Belphegor?’

‘Has evaded us once again. I have claimed another in his place.’

Nadir looked down at the creature Sabarren had imprisoned. He said nothing, simply nodded knowingly.

‘We are done here. We will leave immediately.’

Nadir acknowledged him as Sabarren turned away. The sergeant crossed the floor to the steps beneath the throne and looked down at Abatido. He lived but it was clear he was drawing his final breaths. His body was broken, and his eyes stared into space without comprehension.

‘You have my gratitude,’ Sabarren said. He unclasped his torn right gauntlet. Where the daemon’s talons had rent his armour the edges were sharp. Sabarren cut the end of his thumb. Blood welled. He reached down and painted a simple rune, said to provide protection to the souls of the fallen, upon the Cazador’s brow.

‘May the Emperor know your name, Nico Abatido.’

Slayer’s Hand rose from the grounds of the palace.

‘Get me General Torres,’ Sabarren said to Uziah.

‘Channel is open, brother.’

‘Who is this?’ Torres’ indignant voice was clear despite the vox static.

‘You are aware that Sergeant Aronin was successful in disabling the void shields,’ Sabarren replied. ‘Has the bombardment begun?’

‘No, sergeant, it hasn’t, and it won’t. I have changed my mind. The Palacea Aeternum has stood on Karsa V for millennia. I will not–’

‘Your men are dead. Major Abatido, all of them. They fought bravely and died so that we might defeat the evil that festered there.’

‘Major Abatido went in there to save our people and reclaim the palace.’

‘Perhaps at first, but he was naïve then as you are now. Before he died he understood the truth. All of the Cazadores did. Do not dishonour their sacrifice by allowing the palace to stand.’

‘I have no desire to dishonour my men, sergeant, but this is a Karsan matter and it will be decided by Karsan governance. I thank you for your service but your involvement in this matter is over.’

‘Believe me when I tell you that I am the kind face of this request. Should I report that the palace stands, others will seek to know why. They will demand answers and they will recognise no authority beneath the Emperor Himself. I trust you know of whom I speak. Is that your wish?’

‘No,’ said Torres through a low growl. ‘Very well. I will give the order.’

As Slayer’s Hand left the planet’s atmosphere, Basilisk tanks began the painstaking process of razing the Palacea Aeternum. The Thunderhawk flew overhead allowing Sabarren to see the artillery shells strike, blowing structures to rubble and rubble to dust. Beneath it all would be buried the bodies of dozens of loyal Karsan soldiers and hundreds of heretics. No trace would remain of the desecration that happened there. The only evidence of what truly occurred now lay in a warded black coffin, gripped firmly in the hold of Slayer’s Hand. It would be returned to the Basilica Malefex, where the Exorcists would teach it fear.

VOVA’S CLIMB

Noah Van Nguyen

Sentence the principal. Sentence the accessories. Report.

The mantra helped Vova focus despite his searing pain. Criminals – Noth’s planetary enforcers – had buried a slug in him in Foundation. After Vova sentenced them, he plugged his kidney with combat foam, dragged his fallen arbitrators beside the enforcers’ corpses, and began the long climb back.

The enforcers had been acting on the orders of Governor Laiana, who conspired to betray Noth. Vova had twelve hours to put the arch-traitoress down before her ally, Lord Truan – the self-proclaimed Saint Truan – saved her.

Nobody was above the law. Nobody above suspicion.

The iron ratchet of stubbers seized Vova’s attention. A firefight, between patrolling Nothi militia and Middlen District’s local gangers. Tracers spilt from a barricade manned by soldiers in unkempt fatigues, their heavy stubber hungry for more ammo. Down the alley, muzzle flashes and strident laughter answered each burst.

Noth’s street gangs were supposedly on their last legs after a prolonged repression, but these still had fight in them. A metal taste curled Vova’s tongue, more than just leachate misting above. Today he needed that fight.

Vova analysed the cramped alley and the gunshot percussion. Middlen had never seen a right angle in its life, but its tortuous streets possessed agitating regularity, uncoiling throughout the district along recognisably perfect ratios. Shootouts would quickly devolve into standoffs.

Vova had to see who he was dealing with. He groped through empty magazine pouches and grenade hooks on his belt until he reached a vox-hailer salvaged from Kirillian’s lockshield. He connected the vox-hailer to his battery, vox-bead clicking in his ear.

‘Citizens.’ Vova’s stentorian voice blasted through the dark alley. ‘This is Regulator Vovamir of the Adeptus Arbites. Cease your disturbance. Report for sentence.’

The hornet buzz of incoming fire ceased, and Vova frowned. Only small-timers ran from the Arbites. He needed bona fide cut-throats. He needed the kind of twisted-steel offenders whose rap sheets would make a penal legionnaire blush. Vova couldn’t deputise the militia; their orders ultimately trickled down from Laiana.

Then again, small-timers didn’t fight militia, and no way had these gangers survived Noth’s repression by hiding. Lord Truan would have made that impossible.

Vova needed to draw the gangers out. He had to offer them an opening.

He scrapped his vox-hailer and gathered his Vox Legi-pattern shotgun. He advanced, sluggish but relentless, leaning with his weapon’s weight. ‘Militia! Report!’

The soldiers craned their heads. Toxic effluvium stained Vova’s boots as he stamped through an abandoned decon checkpoint from before authorities fathomed the district’s sanitary despair. He stopped and scanned the squad from behind the black mirror of his visor. Muted bawling usurped the lingering quiet, echoing through the hab-slums. More militia dawdled from the brickwork ghettoes into the alley stablights, wads of crumpled cash filling their breeches.

The animals were pillaging Middlen. Not a serious offence, but that didn’t blunt Vova’s chagrin. Either suspects or perpetrators, Stavril always said. All of them. The old-timer’s slogan rang true.

A soldier in a weathered flak jacket and rugged fatigues holstered her laspistol and approached. ‘Corporal Matova, Second Security Corps. Good to see you kickin’. Been lookin’ for you.’

Vova was unsurprised. ‘Regulator Vovamir, Arbites Circuit Judiciary. Who sent you?’

The corporal’s helmet clattered down, and she smoothed her uneven hair. ‘Command. They heard about the attack in Foundation. Our orders are to escort you to Saint Truan’s Scions for debrief.’

Vova resisted the urge to laugh. As a man of ill humour in a bad situation, it wasn’t hard. Laiana must have heard the ambush went south, then sent her minions to clean up. Meeting Truan’s Inquisitorial Scions was out of the question; they would only try to stop Vova.

The coward in Vova craved to explain his conundrum to the soldiers, but he was already treading a fine line. His Arbites badge might turn them to his cause, but they weren’t simply looters. They were accessories to Laiana’s treason.

Vova was no confessor. It wasn’t his job to understand the criminal, nor forgive him. Vova’s duty was to punish infractions of Imperial law. He couldn’t compromise that.

Time for Vova to fly his colours, hope Middlen’s gangers responded. ‘You’re out of your jurisdiction, corporal.’

The corporal followed Vova’s gaze to the creased Thrones in her cargo pockets. Her eyes flickered. ‘Just keepin’ the filth in order. It’s tasked from higher.’

Vova cocked his head. ‘And you think that means you’re innocent?’

The corporal’s bemusement caved into disbelief. Her fingers floated to her holster. ‘This don’t violate Imperial law.’

‘Banditry? No. But I have a traitor to judge, and you’re accessories to her crime.’

The corporal’s eyes widened. Her stupefied gunners gaped from the barricade.

Vova’s lips hardened. ‘Knowing how you’re about to resist, you might as well be accomplices.’

The corporal fumbled for her holster. Vova seized her wrist and ignited his shock maul. Energy crackled along the head, stinging the air with the reek of burnt hair from his last judgement.

‘“All subjects deserve fair trial before verdict.”’ Vova recited the court statute from memory. ‘I charge you as accessories to treason. I find you guilty. The sentence is death.’

The baffled corporal jerked back, pulling Vova closer. ‘Treason?’

Warmth bubbled within Vova. A purer pleasure than all the warp-damned fantasies of mankind, and a fire hotter than the worst hell of a guilty man’s conscience. There was nothing more gratifying than executing the Emperor’s justice, and nothing better than doing it by the books.

Vova smashed the maul into the corporal’s skull. Her brains sprayed from the rupture, baptising him, and she collapsed.

He wasn’t nearly as fast as he thought. The remaining militia raised their autoguns and rattled out a staccato chorus of gunfire. Caseless ammunition punched into Vova’s carapace, more painful than Abbess Herman’s beatings in the schola progenium. The impacts bowled him down, coat-tails sailing behind him.

Middlen’s gangers didn’t let Vova down. More gunfire exploded around them. Sinewy brutes in furnace plate and brawny sludgemen from Foundation’s sump-lakes mounted the barricade. The scummers had approached during the lull in the firefight, then assaulted once Vova provided an opening.

Vova’s gut wound screamed as he rose. The gunfire had struck his Vox Legi, probably saving his life, but the shotgun was scrapped. Vova cut the sling, then tore Matova’s laspistol from her holster. He raised it and cranked the trigger. Instantaneous beams seared from the muzzle, dashing across the barricade, leaving new craters sizzling in soldiers’ flak jackets.

Some went to ground at the hiss of las-fire, but most were swamped in the melee. Scummers wrestled the soldiers’ weapons away, then stomped them into the rockcrete, shivving those who resisted with sharpened plasteel shards. Unidentifiable body fluids puddled into the alley run-off, and a cordite burn prickled the air. The street smelt better than it had.

The combat didn’t take long. Victorious gangers surrounded their fallen prey. Soon they would catch the scent of the intruder in their lair. If Vova didn’t move quickly, he would meet the same fate as the militia.

He marched forward and fired, coat-tails whipping behind him. The scummers recoiled, but when Vova lowered his pistol, scorched flowers blackened the street beneath the last soldiers’ faceless skulls.

Vova marked the blinking time in his visor. ‘Sentence conducted. Appropriate.’

The gangers inched closer. Their pupils were wide from stimm use, and their faces glimmered with photoreactive tattoos. The obvious barbarity of career offenders sullied them. If they weren’t Imperial crimes, Vova couldn’t care less.

A scrawny woman with close-trimmed hair jostled forward. Her face shone with Middlen’s chemical sweat, but her spruce furnace plate and tidy fatigues suggested a warrior’s discipline.

She gave Vova an expectant glare. ‘Might as well shoot us, too. Before we gut you.’

The circle closed, but Vova’s gambit had worked. He had their attention.

He thumbed charred scalp from the crevices of his shock maul and slotted it to his maglock. ‘You aided in the sentence of these perpetrators. Now I need your help apprehending the principal. What’s your name?’

She ignored Vova’s question. ‘Stop talking like you gotta riot team behind you. What’s stopping us from carving you up and leaving you for the scavvies?’

Vova could almost taste her contempt for holy law and her gangers’ thirst for violence. They were perfect. ‘I’m here to sentence Governor Laiana to death.’

Disbelief rippled across the crew. Brutal intrigue glinted in the woman’s eyes. ‘Name’s Harkeen. Talk, judge. Talk quick.’

Vova hesitated. Legal precedent justified deputising militia and civilians – but gangers? Vova didn’t know where this act fell, and that screamed he shouldn’t do it. In the divine body of the Emperor’s Law, the end never justified the means. Arbitrators who believed so were abstractionists, worse than heretics, and Vova was no inquisitor. Lord Truan could try to engineer extra-judicial cause for protecting Noth’s governor, but Vova’s jurisdiction was shackled by the letter of the law.

If Vova’s conduct today was not immaculate, someone would soon be sentencing him.

But he had to take the chance. He’d mulled it over for hours, and this was the only way to close the case. Besides, few regulators had committed as many statutes to memory as Vova. If any arbitrator could trust their judgement, it was him.

‘You know what I can do,’ Vova said. ‘Laiana’s guilty of treason. Assist me, Harkeen. See the Emperor’s justice dispensed.’

Somebody behind Harkeen racked a looted autogun. She tightened her kit, shot Vova a dark look. ‘What’s in it for us?’

Vova pointed up. Middlen’s false night shimmered with leachate mist and reflected light pollution. The district was a step above Foundation, but certainly no paradise. ‘Don’t pretend you like it down here. Laiana’s crackdown has you hiding in the dregs, living on crumbs. I’ll end it.’

Harkeen cackled. ‘Business as usual, you mean. No more militia raids. No more enforcers, no bogus charges.’

Vova nodded. ‘Provided there’re no violations of the Lex Imperialis.’

Harkeen raised her eye. ‘Let’s not pretend anyone gets away with those.’

Vova liked Harkeen.

Moreover, he knew she’d agree before she did. Laiana’s rule had been a holocaust for Noth’s underhives. If Vova failed to sentence her, Secundus’ hive gangers were fuel for the crematoriums. The fact they hadn’t already terminated him spoke volumes.

‘Count us in,’ Harkeen said. ‘I’ll recruit muscle in Vaults and Runway. Stovepipes is hell, though. No saying what they’ll do.’

If Truan’s Scions were on the prowl, Vova would need more than just muscle. ‘Get the word out,’ he said. ‘If you have enemies, make amends. I need everyone you can get.’

Harkeen narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s your plan?’

Vova retrieved a fallen autogun and thrust it into a waiting ganger’s arms. The less they knew, the better. ‘We’re going to climb, Harkeen. To the top. We’re going to sentence a traitor to death.’

The deputies promptly salvaged the militia’s weapons, then chuckled when Vova made them stack the dead soldiers into a neat row. All things, Stavril said, must be better after we find them.

Law would return to Noth Secundus.

Runway’s porter guilds piled Vova’s team into a rusty cargo lift, rattled the grate shut, and sent the elevator groaning up Secundus’ megastructure. Arbites codes provided uphive access, reducing a weeks-long journey into an hours-long tramp. Meanwhile, Harkeen spread the word using every channel possible. A blackplate’s coming for Governor Laiana – and he needs our help.

On most worlds, the Arbites’ appearance sent criminals scrambling for the shadows or their sluggers, but Vova promised deliverance. Laiana had built a menacing reputation torching Noth’s criminal underworld, even enlisting an inquisitor’s assistance. Lord Truan’s terrifying competencies had helped sanitise the Primus underhive a decade ago.

Secundus was next. The proto-hive was a half-realised dream of monumental scale, hardly a century old, designed to be built in stages from the ground up. According to court precedent, which Vova had yet to memorise, that was probably heresy, but after everything he had learned about Laiana’s conspiracy, heresy almost seemed like a minor charge.

The team humped along a sooty avenue crowded with motorised carts, stacked furnaces and throngs of foundrymen. Hunchbacked porters stared beside ore conveyers, and smut-cheeked smelters in filthy aprons shot even dirtier looks. Stovepipes was a clanking, pounding oven, working overtime to supply material for the Primus manufactoria. The foundry teams moonlighted as gangers, squeezing turf wars into scheduled break cycles before returning to impossible production quotas.

No one looked ready for that now. ‘Stovepipes has been pacified,’ Vova said.

Harkeen wagged her chin side to side. ‘Stovepipes is ready to blow, judge. The forges’ve felt Laiana’s boot. Got their stubbers set on her. You’re their chance to pull the trigger.’

Vova glanced around. ‘So where are they?’

‘Gathering. You saw the militia in Middlen. Crews play it safe, or they’re dead. Stovepipes won’t let us down. Or they’ll kill us.’ Harkeen winked. ‘No telling which.’

Vova took that in his stride. Without more bodies they were dead anyway. ‘Two dozen scummers makes no difference. I need two hundred.’

‘I’d rally two thousand, but it’d take a week. You gave us hours.’

Vova raised his brow. ‘Two thousand seems generous.’

‘People know me,’ Harkeen said. ‘I was a captain. Twenty-First Uret Tigers, before my commissar said protecting our troops was cowardice. I’ve been training the underhive crews to fend off the militia.’

‘Charitable of you.’

‘It wasn’t charity. I’d prefer to let ’em die, but times are tough. We work together.’

Vova was more interested in Harkeen’s service record. Commissars graduated from the schola progenium, like him. Their judgements were trustworthy. ‘Were you charged?’

Harkeen winced, then peeled her sleeve back. A ligature was branded onto her pale, sweaty flesh: ‘CC’.

Censura cowardis. A death sentence. A minor miracle Harkeen had survived her commissar’s sentence, but this explained why a former Astra Militarum captain was slumming around Noth’s gutters at the head of hive scum.

‘I refused to send my company into a grinder,’ Harkeen said. ‘Warp-fragged commissar didn’t understand.’

Vova shook his head. ‘You’re no coward. I saw you fight.’

Harkeen shrugged. ‘Everyone breaks the law before the end, judge.’

Vova wrinkled his nose, but he couldn’t fault her for the truth. His own decisions today chipped at his judicial credibility. Harkeen now joined a growing body of evidence against the arbitrator. If deputising hive scum was dubious, then sparing a branded coward was criminal. Vova hadn’t afforded the same mercy to the militia, and they hadn’t even known what they’d done wrong.

This was not the day’s first controversy. Vova needed Harkeen to close his case. He would do what he must, then hope no enquiries followed.

Massive conduits rose from Stovepipes’ foundry floor into the choking fumes above, girding the superstructure. The precise arrangement of the district’s namesake conduits called to mind the harmony of a solved equation. Normally Vova might value that decorous sense of order, but an alien perfection defiled Stovepipes. The dizzying coils of Middlen’s streets had disturbed him the same way.

True hives required the hard hand of the law to be set right, but this was more than just Laiana’s repression. Noth Secundus had imported its order from elsewhere.

After the emergence of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the Arbites Circuit Judiciary was organised to re-establish Imperial law along the Eastern Fringe. Noth became an early destination following reports of impending treachery. Servitors within Secundus’ palace croaked communiques from t’au probes on low-band vox. Sleek xenotech stamped in alien composites grew common uphive, symptomatic of a spiritual cancer. Rumours abounded that xenos propagandisers had infiltrated the superstructure to preach their obscene creed, the Greater Good.

All evidence regarding Noth’s investigation smouldered in Vova’s perfect memory. Without his report, the Circuit wouldn’t have time to conduct a second investigation before moving on. But if Vova reported without sentencing Laiana, Lord Truan would spirit her to safety before the Circuit could intervene.

Truan. The radical’s hypocrisy tore Vova’s insides up worse than that enforcer’s slug in Foundation. Truan might have served the Holy Ordo Malleus, but he’d also obstructed the investigation into Laiana’s treachery. The plaster saint had seconded Circuit arbitrators to pacify Secundus’ crime-ridden underhive, then refused to let them dispense justice in the Palace.

Confronted time and again, Truan always hid behind the authority of his Inquisitorial rosette. Fed up, Vova moved against his orders. The Foundation ambush was soon after.

Gunfire snapped through Stovepipes’ industrial clamour. Foundrymen cursed and scuffled off, shedding forge aprons and furnace gloves like evidence. Storm troopers liveried in crimson and onyx tramped out from behind the nearest conduit. Stylised sigils – a bronze ‘I’ inset with an ivory skull – adorned the breast of every trooper. The emblem of the Holy Ordos, unmistakable to any who feared death.

The next salvo shredded gangers and foundrymen indiscriminately. Vova’s deputies scrambled for cover as more Inquisitorial Scions emerged from behind smelters, shielded from Stovepipes’ heat by their bodysuits, weapons chanting. A third team established a base of fire from an overhead gantry, suppressing Vova’s team.

Gangers returned scattered fire, and Vova cursed at the sight of the Scions’ weapons. Angular carbines with unnatural symmetries had replaced their standard-issue hellguns. Pipe-like plasma rifles glowed with energy too pristine to be Imperial. Vova parsed the weaponry’s t’au origins from memorised Circuit briefings. The possession of xenotech was prohibited without Mechanicus research authorisation.

Lord Truan had desired a sharper knife, and Laiana’s treason had opened a closed door. Vova suspected as much, but the affirmation still caught him wrong-footed. They had gone too far.

The Scions clearly outgunned Vova’s team. Harkeen thumped out a few well-placed stub gun shots and glowered, ready to carve Vova from sump to sternum. ‘Can’t help but notice Scions shooting at us, judge! You set us up?’

Vova growled, drawing his pistol. ‘They came for me.’ If the storm troopers outflanked them, they had twenty seconds before they were dead. Vova wasn’t sure how to slow them down, but killing their leader couldn’t hurt. His team could slip away in the confusion.

The Scions reduced their rate of fire and darted through cover, manoeuvring. Vova glimpsed a familiar figure disappear behind a smelter. Sergeant Falk, his face brutal with old scars, an Inquisitorial seal tattooed on his forehead.

‘Regulator!’ Falk shouted, his Scions trickling closer. ‘Don’t make things worse. We’re bringing you in!’

Vova doubted he could turn Falk, but he needed to keep the sergeant talking. ‘The law’s been broken, Falk! Laiana sold Noth out. She killed my team for investigating.’ Vova slipped cover to cover, searching for Falk’s position.

‘Evidence?’ Falk said.

‘Your weapon, for one.’ Vova squeezed off a las-bolt before stray fire sent him sprawling. ‘That’s xenotech.’

‘Xenotech? You don’t say?’ Not the reaction Vova hoped for. Falk already knew. ‘You made a mistake continuing your investigation, regulator. Laiana’s under the protection of the Holy Ordos. Beyond your reach.’

Nearby, foundry workers gathered behind furnaces, hungrily watching the gunfight. Vova bristled at their inaction. ‘No. She’s not.’

‘Look at you, regulator. You joined the filth you were meant to purge! I can’t decide if I should bury you, or wipe you from my boot!’

Vova placed Falk behind the closest ventilator main. He readied his weapon, but a fist of energy punched into his cover, showering him with hot steel.

He was pinned. Dying this close to the end felt criminal. Noth’s treasoners would escape justice, and the world would submit to the t’au. Xenos law would desecrate the Emperor’s anointed soil.

A gantry Scion shouted down to Falk. ‘Sergeant! Contacts on multi-scan!’

Vova’s ears perked up beneath his helmet.

‘Where?’ Falk said.

‘Everywhere.’

Vova glanced at Harkeen. She met his gaze, grinning. Her gangers drew crude blades and braced their salvaged autoguns.

Burly foundrymen surged onto the floor from behind bulky crucibles and slag conveyers. Chainweapons screamed to life, and sluggers clacked like cymbals. More underhivers flooded forward, swinging chains and spud jackers, slurring disparate gang mottos. Secundus had answered Harkeen’s call.

Vova rushed forward. He barged past Falk’s cover as the sergeant reached for his vox-torc. Vova pushed his laspistol into Falk’s gut, then fired. Falk’s eyes bulged, and he stumbled back.

‘Wipe this from your boot.’ Vova shoved his laspistol into the entry wound and harpooned the sergeant with a second shot. Falk thudded down, groaning and staring at his aerated innards.

The tumult of gunfire and stimm-crazed battle cries eclipsed Stovepipes’ chugging conveyers. Scatterguns pelted rusty grates, shredding the precarious metalworks. The disciplined Scions answered with volleyed pulse-fire. They were hot-forged daggers, trained to protect the Imperium through the power of faith and the force of arms – but the hive gangers were the furnace itself. One brute sawed a Scion in half with a looted heavy stubber, firing from the hip like it was normal. Others clubbed Scions with spud jackers and wrought-iron staves, moaning as downmarket stimms sluiced through their bloodstreams. Harkeen took command of the chaos and screamed orders to the sallying hive scum. For every dead ganger, ten coursed forward, but Vova had no idea if they’d be enough. Xenotech-armed Inquisitorial Scions were not planetary militia.

Vova aimed at the nearest gantry and pumped the trigger. The Scions’ overwatch dived for cover, and Vova scrambled up. Another Scion trained his weapon, but Vova fired first, scalloping the trooper’s head open.

A third Scion levelled his rail rifle, its barrel humming with compressed hypermagnets. The weapon was unwieldy, and Vova was close. He dodged as it fired. The ghost of the rifle’s supersonic round steamed beside Vova, and he glanced down. The shot had sheared half of his hand away.

He burnt the pain for fuel and blasted the Scion’s neck open. Without thinking, Vova retrieved the fallen rail rifle and danced his mangled paw along the receiver. By the time he finally ejected the spent capacitor and reloaded another cartridge, he caught up to himself.

This was Schedule One Xenotech. Even holding it was a crime.

Vova scanned the foundry floor. The Astra Militarum couldn’t muster as fast as these cut-throats had flooded Stovepipes. Harkeen’s greedy savages had already begun scavenging the dead. Scions retreated through the forges, desperate to regain the initiative, but gangers outflanked them at every turn, instinctively familiar with the foundry labyrinth.

Falk stumbled across the killing floor, still alive. If he hadn’t been obstructing justice, Vova might have been impressed. The sergeant dawdled between piled corpses and overturned carts, hand covering the hole Vova had drilled through him. Falk raised his square pistol to the back of the loudest ganger on the floor. Harkeen was too busy pretending she was still a company commander to see him.

Thunder cracked, and Falk toppled. A vapour trail smoked between Vova’s rail rifle and the skewered blister that had been Falk’s head. When Vova lowered the rifle, his breathing was ragged. He’d fired to save Harkeen, but that didn’t absolve him.

The fighting drew to a close, and the shouts in Stovepipes faded. Secundus’ multifarious gangs receded to the foundry’s sooty avenue. Furnacemen hefted modded welding torches and home-made clawfists. Vaults and Runway thugs stood nearby, tribal scars perforating their scalps, metal fangs replacing their teeth.

A storm roiled within Vova. This horde had answered his summons – but judging from their dead, they still weren’t enough. Falk’s Scions had punched above their weight, and there were more where they came from. If Truan would go this far to protect the governor, Vova was damned.

Worse, the shadow of abstraction tainted his case. Vova eyed the rail rifle in his hands, now a troubling burden.

‘Judge.’ Harkeen sauntered below the gantry. ‘I know what you can do – but I know what they can do, too. If the Saint’s onto us, we don’t stand a chance. We gotta hide.’

The surviving gangers gathered, coherent enough to listen. Vova’s words were a mandate. ‘No one hides from Lord Truan. He would find you. But if we deliver my judgement, the Arbites closes its case. We depart this world.’

‘You don’t get it.’ Harkeen mashed her face into her palms. ‘What good is all that if we end up in the Saint’s torture rooms?’

Vova pointed to the carcasses populating the foundry floor. Their pooling blood glistened with reflected forgelight. ‘You didn’t do all this because you had a choice. You have one shot at surviving today. Me. If we don’t finish, Laiana’s henchmen will come for you.’

The disparate hive scummers rumbled their agreement, but Vova knew Harkeen was right. Even if he sentenced the governor, no one would escape Truan’s retribution. Not with such little time. Not with so few.

Not if they did this by the books.

Vova leaned the blasphemous rail rifle against the gantry railing and rustled through a fallen Scion’s medkit, wrapping his hand. Somewhere behind them lay the line he shouldn’t have crossed. Statute and precedent didn’t cover this. Compromises had to be made. Stavril would judge him afterwards, but the Emperor’s Law must be upheld.

‘I’ll take care of Lord Truan,’ Vova said. ‘It’ll be difficult without backup, but when I’m done, you’re free to do as you please.’ Vova glimpsed Harkeen’s brand. Revulsion surged through him. ‘As long as it’s legal.’

Whatever Harkeen’s relationship had been with the others, she spoke for all of them now. ‘I’ve never seen anything like those weapons they used. Tell me you got a plan.’

Vova’s gaze returned to the rail rifle. The weapon’s pencil-thin barrel components were sturdier than they looked, but even to a man as fastidious about straight lines as Vova, the perfect geometries were an eyesore.

He tugged a saucer-shaped grenade from the dead Scion’s kit. ‘I do.’

The governor’s court was an empty cathedral. The wretched stink of torch oil mingled with a cordite zing, and Noth’s eternal surface storm splashed through the chamber’s shattered stained-glass windows. Closer to the smashed plasteel doors, dead Nothi enforcers cluttered the floor beside the motionless bodies of Harkeen’s gangers. The other crews had drawn away Truan’s and Laiana’s forces, harassing them across the proto-hive.

Vova pushed his laspistol into the layered circlets of Governor Laiana’s hair. ‘Final statement?’

A confession spilt from her parchment lips. ‘There is a Greater Good. Let Noth Secundus stand testament. They built this for us.’

Vova squeezed the trigger. Light glared off his visor as the cauterised goo of Laiana’s brain spattered his glove. She fell, robes gathering around a shape unnatural with the implants that had sustained it.

‘Appropriate.’ Vova maglocked his laspistol, then eyed the master vox-array within the governor’s throne. Only one suspect remained at large.

Vova’s helmet pickup amplified ponderous footsteps. Truan ascended the governor’s dais, then halted before a prodigious panel of stained glass. An enormous warsuit overwhelmed Truan’s narrow features, its plates embossed with votive reliefs dedicated to the Ordo Malleus. Noth’s surface lightning limned the negative space of his lurking hulk, and smoke wisped from a censer at his waist, drugging the air.

Truan surveyed the desolate court. ‘I couldn’t believe the vox traffic, yet here you stand. You have become enduring pests, arbitrator.’

Vova retreated down the dais, eyes fixed on Truan’s overlarge power hammer. ‘My team’s dead. Only I am left.’

Truan was unmoved. ‘I heard claims otherwise. A judge, marching at the head of a downhive army. They fared poorly, it seems.’

Vova spared a glance over his shoulder. ‘They’re gangers.’

‘You were resourceful, arbitrator. But tell me, what did you hope to accomplish?’

‘To judge perpetrators. To report.’

Truan grimaced at the pile of dyed chambray and tech-riddled corpseflesh which once ruled Noth. ‘Then your job is half-complete. A report’s unlikely since I’m going to kill you. Laiana’s relationship with the blueskins allowed me a close look at powerful secrets.’

‘Illegal secrets. The possession of xenotech is punishable by death.’ The truth soured on Vova’s lips, but he was prudent enough to omit his own guilt.

‘My mandate exists beyond the ambit of the law,’ Truan said. ‘I fight a greater foe.’ A terrifying shadow passed over Truan, and Vova feared what he would see. The man had spent two lifetimes hunting for the truth. Vova had painted his hands red that day.

‘If we break our own rules, we’re no better than savages,’ Vova said. ‘That’s chaos.’

Truan sneered. ‘What do you know of Chaos?’

His vitriol gave Vova pause and he inched further back.

Truan didn’t budge. His expression softened. ‘You knew you would die today. I admire that. I’ll pray for your misguided courage, arbitrator. Let the Emperor bear witness–’

‘Agreed. I hereby charge you with the illegal barter of xenotech and as an accessory to Governor Laiana’s treason. I find you guilty, Truan. The sentence is death.’

Compared to perpetrators Vova had judged before, Truan was unflappable. A death sentence was nothing compared to the past horrors he must have witnessed. ‘You jest.’

Vova shook his head. ‘We shared our legal opinion after the Circuit’s arrival. Laiana was a traitor. You ordered us to drop the investigation.’

The dais creaked beneath Truan’s mountainous warsuit. ‘That is within my power.’

Vova clenched his teeth. ‘No, Truan. We investigated Laiana. Followed black-market deals to Foundation and released small-timers for statements. The case is airtight. You set me up, but I sentenced everyone you put in my way. Now I’m here to close this case.’

Truan reached for his rosette – a wrought-iron skull skewered by a stake, resembling an ‘I’. ‘And here’s the best part.’

‘Here it is, Truan. You are no saint. You aren’t even an inquisitor. Your conclave defrocked you years ago for the very reason the Circuit came to dispense justice. Xenotech. A radical inquisitor made enemies of his puritan peers. Even Lord Coteaz refused to conjure a defence for his former pupil.’

Truan’s face stilled. ‘I’ve heard no word of this.’

‘The Rift smashed the sector’s communications.’

‘But I seconded you. I command you.’

Again, Vova shook his head. ‘I disobeyed your orders for a reason, Truan. We used your secondment to get closer. That’s all.’

Truan’s gaze grew bleak. ‘I am no traitor, judge.’

‘No. But you are impersonating an inquisitor. I have so many charges against you, I could make you into a servitor if I wanted. You’re lucky. I’m only going to kill you.’

Naked rage rankled the disgraced inquisitor’s features, but Vova was far from pleased. Unfamiliar compassion, rueful and tonic bitter, poisoned his usual delight. Truan’s only crime was his conviction.

Truan bellowed, his thruster mods and enhanced servos launching him forward. He landed with unnatural grace, sweeping his power hammer forward. A modified storm bolter erupted from Truan’s shoulder mount, then disappeared behind a curtain of fire.

Vova scrambled back and tripped over a prone ganger. Explosive ammunition pocked the hewn stone where he’d stood. He rolled, his ruined hand bronzing the puddled rainwater from outside – but he had succeeded. Truan was in the kill-zone. Now Vova just had to survive.

‘I pity you.’ Truan refreshed his grip on his power hammer. ‘I pity the conclave in Formosa. You lack imagination. Nothing is sacrosanct, arbitrator. I shield the Imperium from entities fouler than blueskin upstarts. I’ve fought the Archenemy my entire life. Gibbering monstrosities and horned devils. The governor was a traitor, yes. I would have dealt with her – but I need this xenotech. T’au innovation must serve the true war! You’re too rigid to see. Too unyielding. You’re brittle steel, broken before you’re bent, and you’re nothing like me.’

Servos within Truan’s shoulder-mount loaded fresh ammunition into the storm bolter. ‘Your investigation’s finished. I’ll rally my army. I’ll cleanse your judiciary, then call the Formosa Conclave to task. My duty demands everything, arbitrator. How could you ever understand?’

Vova rose, pain shooting through his midriff like a second bullet. ‘I understand completely.’

He wanted to say more – because it was true. He sympathised with Truan. Vova had walked in Truan’s footsteps, all the way up this infernal proto-hive, and it had broken him as much as Truan had broken the law.

The man simply wanted to do his job. He had been willing to get his hands dirty for it, but so had Vova. For the first time, Vova pitied an offender. Vova was a criminal, too.

Those words escaped him, and the moment slipped away. A ganger moaned, crawling and trailing blood, not nearly as dead as he should have been. The storm bolter’s fusillade had wounded the floored scummer.

Truan’s brow curled, then epiphany brightened his gaze.

A trap.

The railgun’s deafening report split the air. A vapour trail streaked between another lurking ganger and Truan, but a miraculous square of light materialised and deflected the shot.

More xenotech, Vova realised. Truan’s warsuit had energy shielding.

The rail rifle gunner cursed and cast her smoking weapon aside. Truan’s automated storm bolter returned a withering suppression, chopping the ganger into bloody gobbets.

Harkeen dragged herself up and charged a salvaged xenotech grenade. More scummers in furnace plate and banded synth-leather rose from the dead. They carried nailbats, improvised flamers and cheap sluggers. Truan had helped Laiana burn the underhive to the ground. Now it had come for revenge.

Harkeen lobbed her grenade beneath Truan. It clattered and throbbed with electromagnetic pulses, disarming the warsuit’s xenotech mods. The profane shield flared like a sun, then dematerialised. So much for close looks at powerful secrets, Vova thought.

Truan carried his armour’s tremendous weight, its limbs grinding with each movement. Blue ghosts crackled around his impaired power hammer. Harkeen’s ambush had been flawless, but her gangers were only human, and Truan was a cornered beast. Wherever his hammer landed, scummers crumpled.

As gangers swarmed the disgraced inquisitor, Vova lumbered to the discarded rail rifle. He cradled it in his bad arm, carefully replaced the heat sink, and took aim.

‘Nothing is sacrosanct!’ Truan roared, mouth frothing. ‘Brittle steel, arbitrator!’

Truan’s insult carried the sting of an unwelcome truth. Before the Noth investigation, Vova couldn’t break the rules if he tried.

Vova pressed the trigger, and a second trail of superheated air speared through Truan’s face. The hypervelocity shot smashed his jaw and pulled his eyes into his skull, unfurling his brains along its remaining trajectory. Apostate zeal splashed across the governor’s dais, and the warsuit toppled, cracking the stone.

Vova dropped his rail rifle. He doffed his helmet, tossing it aside before ambling towards the governor’s throne. He keyed his Arbites access into the throne’s gilded vox-receiver, and a woman’s voice emerged from the static.

‘Code match. Stavril. Report, regulator.’

Vova thumbed the receiver. ‘Investigation complete. Sentence conducted.’

‘Understood. Appropriate?’

Vova didn’t hesitate. ‘Appropriate. Initiate Protocol Aftermath.’

‘En route, Vovamir. Stand by.’

Vova dropped the receiver and flopped onto the throne. As the surviving deputies recovered, the vultures among them began scavenging. The others gravitated towards Vova and the dais.

Harkeen bustled forward. ‘We did it!’

Vova nodded. ‘Go, Harkeen. Help the foundrymen. Laiana’s militia will slaughter them without you.’

Better if they all died together. Vova liked Harkeen, but she was a liability. After today, an enquiry was inevitable. Vova could spin the employment of gangers and xenotech as oversights, but if Stavril discovered Vova knew about Harkeen’s brand and spared her anyway, he’d be sentenced as an abstractionist.

Vova couldn’t afford that. He had a job to do, and he planned to be doing it for a very long time.

‘Let ’em burn.’ Harkeen winked. ‘Business as usual, judge. As promised.’

Vova grimaced. ‘Business as usual, then.’ He pointed to Harkeen’s arm. ‘Your brand’s a death sentence.’

Disappointment pooled in Harkeen’s eyes, and defeat drowned the triumph in her smile. She’d been judged before and knew where he was going with this. She reached for her stub gun, but Vova drew first. Las-fire streaked through her brow, and she buckled.

Vova peered at the others, daring them. ‘You’re not yet suspected in the commission of crime against Imperial law.’

Uncertainty flitted in their stimm-drunk glares. The savage code of the underhive demanded they collect Vova’s scalp, but they were survivors. Without Vova there could be no protection from the Circuit arbitrators and tithed enforcers bound to fall upon Noth like locusts.

For if the t’au had designed Secundus, the proto-hive required purifying flame. Noth would pass into the hands of a proven Imperial servant after a stint of martial law. Everything depended on how long the Circuit’s purge lasted, and whether or not the Ordo Xenos got involved. One thing was certain: Laiana’s repression would look humane before the end.

Vova had spared the gangers for a reason. He pointed to the empty cathedral, now a butcher’s mansion, and their eyes followed. ‘Put the bodies into lines,’ Vova said.

This time nobody laughed.

THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES

Steve Lyons

Whenever Nirri closed her eyes, she saw them.

They massed at the borders of her dreams, scratching to get in. She was terrified of what they might do if they succeeded.

The nightmare creatures were as black as shadow. Their forms were inconstant like shadows too, always in oily flux. They melted away when Nirri turned her mind’s eye upon them, only to reform in its corners. They left behind no more than a suggestion of a claw or a slavering maw or a baleful glare.

In the waking light, the creatures faded – like shadows, like dreams – but the terror never did. Nirri knew, she always knew, that the creatures were real, because she could never have imagined anything so awful.

And even when her eyes were open, she heard them.

She could still hear the nightmare creatures scratching.

Nirri woke up with a start, again.

Relief flooded through her for a second. Then she remembered where she was.

Manacles held her wrists and ankles. Heavy chains bound her to an iron ring sunk into a bulkhead behind her. She couldn’t lie down, only sag into a half-crouch, and even then not for long before her legs and shoulders ached.

Nirri blinked as harsh light strobed across her face. She winced as a discordant screech drilled into her nerves. Her face was itchy with sweat. She felt she had only slept for a minute or two. Her temples throbbed with tiredness.

There were creatures here too, in the waking world, lurking between the stabbing lights. Nirri had seen enough of them to know what they were. They were mutants. Not as terrible as the other creatures, perhaps, but she feared them nevertheless.

Some were disgustingly misshapen. Others kept their corruption a secret, held deep inside themselves. They were creatures just like her; and the chains and the lights and the terrible noises were meant to subdue them, and her.

She had woken from one nightmare into another.

‘Please,’ Nirri begged, ‘you have to let me speak to someone.’

Six hunchbacked, grey-faced servitors moved among the mutants. They wheeled a rusted tank between them, hosing the floor with grey nutrient slop. Nirri reached out to them, but the chains brought her hands up short.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t deserve to be here.’

A servitor turned its head towards her. Its augmetic eye clicked and whirred, its iris widening in appraisal of her, but it showed no expression.

‘And there are… creatures. Out there. They’re almost through. Someone has to be warned. They have to know what I have seen.’

The servitor nudged a quivering mound of slop with its toe. ‘Eat,’ it said.

‘Don’t you see? Can’t you understand?’ Nirri’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. ‘We’re all in terrible danger. I saw a ship, a great black ship – this ship – and it was being torn apart.’

But the servitors had turned their backs as others vied for their attention. They were pleading, as had Nirri, for their freedom. They weren’t like these others, they insisted. They sounded pathetic.

The servitors had few thoughts of their own. Their dull brains were able to retain only simple instructions. It was almost impossible to get through to them, as she knew well by now. Still, she always had to try.

Then she saw another figure, framed in the open doorway to the hold. A roaming light beam flared from a sculpted bronze breastplate. The figure – a woman, Nirri realised – stood with an air of easy authority. A closed helm concealed her features; from this, a crest of violet hair erupted, tumbling down her back, matching her shimmering cloak. She wore a sword at her hip.

This was Nirri’s chance, at last. A chance to reach someone who might understand her. She opened her mouth to call to the bronze-helmed woman, yet for some reason her words caught in her throat and almost choked her. She didn’t know why. Something about the woman felt wrong, in some fundamental way. As if she had no right to be standing there at all.

A fresh burst of noise made Nirri flinch in physical pain. The strobing lights shifted, cycling through a range of nauseating hues, and when she looked for the watcher at the door, there was no sign of her.

The servitors were leaving too, having carried out their orders. They closed the heavy, circular hatch behind them, engaging its locks with a series of echoing clunks. Nirri called after them, hopelessly, holding back tears, but she couldn’t remember what she had wanted to say to them.

Something about a nightmare she had had?

‘Perhaps it wasn’t real,’ she breathed to herself. Like the bronze-helmed woman might not – could not, as she thought about it now – have been real. Between the lights and the noise and the tiredness, she didn’t think she could tell any longer.

How many nights had she been here? she wondered.

She remembered how hungry she was. She half crouched and scooped up grey slop in her hand. She gulped it down before her tongue could taste it. She had found this was the best way. The food, if it could be called that, was drugged to keep her docile, but she didn’t care. For the hundredth, the thousandth, time, she accepted her helplessness. All she could do was pray for this torture to end.

Nirri closed her eyes tightly. She concentrated on her prayer, on her faith in the Emperor, and she tried to expand this to fill her head. She tried to blot out the screeching sounds and the lights that hammered on her eyelids, and the plaintive whimpers and occasional screams of her cellmates.

She could endure the waking nightmare no longer. So she took refuge from it – in the only place she could.

In her dreams, Nirri was a child again.

She was safe in her family’s cosy hab-unit, sharing a bed with her brother and sisters. She enjoyed learning at the scholam, and hearing how the Emperor looked after her at morning and evening temple.

She longed to wallow in those happy times forever. But the shadows were always there, waiting beneath the surface, and no matter how she tried to ignore their scratching, they always dragged her back to darker days.

Nirri relived her parents’ scornful looks, their hurtful words, their tearful attempts to beat the evil out of her. She lay on her stomach on the bed that had been her comfort, her refuge from the world. She hugged her threadbare pillow as she listened to raised voices in the outer room.

They had argued bitterly, so many times, about her. So many unforgivable words had been traded. So much blame. So much guilt.

She dreamt of the night before her fifteenth birthday. The night the enforcers had dragged her out of bed in front of her terrified siblings. Her parents had watched in stony-faced silence, immune to her pleas and her promises to try harder.

Nights in a lonely, squalid cell flashed by. Now Nirri was in chains, being walked across the rockcrete of a space port landing zone, along with dozens more like her. No, she insisted fiercely, even in the dream where nobody could hear her, I am nothing like them!

‘There’s been a mistake,’ she tried to tell them as she was herded up the loading ramp of a transport ship. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’ But her tiny voice was lost amid the hubbub of others making the very same claim.

Out in the void, the Black Ship had waited for them.

She could picture it clearly: a vast cathedral, hanging impossibly against a star-flecked backdrop. It was black like shadow, black like the nightmare creatures, and it seemed to swallow any light that dared try to expose it.

It had swallowed Nirri’s smaller transport too. Trapped in an airless, windowless cabin, she hadn’t ever been able to see it. She wondered, then, where the image in her memory had come from. Perhaps she had only imagined it?

Grim-faced storm troopers had marched the prisoners to the containment hold. Nirri thought she had heard that they were bound for Holy Terra. The thought of that would have excited her once. She would have felt honoured. Now, she felt ashamed and afraid – and most of all confused, always confused.

If she were really a… She couldn’t bring herself to think the word.

If there was really something wrong with her, if she was tainted, then why had they not just locked her up forever? Or put her out of everyone’s misery?

In her dream, the nightmare creatures attacked the Black Ship. Nirri tried to hold them back by force of a teenager’s stubbornness alone. She wasn’t nearly strong enough. The barricades around her dream world shattered, and the creatures swooped like carrion birds upon the void-black hull.

She couldn’t tell how numerous they were, but they seemed to be everywhere at once. The Black Ship juddered and listed with the impact of their bodies, and she could feel it, feel every blow in her bones. Claws sliced through thick armour plating like knives through tissue paper, and fire blossomed from the Black Ship’s engines.

Nirri woke herself up screaming.

It took her a second to realise that everyone else was screaming too.

Her feet were whipped out violently from underneath her. She fell into the bulkhead behind her, knocking her head. The lights, the awful dazzling lights that she had grown to hate, were abruptly extinguished. She almost welcomed the absolute darkness, until she wondered what shadows it might conceal.

The groans and shrieks of tortured metal assailed her, and she was thrown over again and again as she scrambled for something to hold on to, to steady herself.

She found the ring through which her chains were threaded. She gripped it tightly with both hands. Another powerful shock convulsed the deck plates, and Nirri hit her head again and wrenched her shoulder.

I must still be asleep, she thought, still dreaming. The pain in her head and shoulder told her otherwise, which meant that something even worse was happening.

Her nightmare had come true.

She thought the buffeting would never end.

When it did, at last, Nirri was breathless and bruised all over.

Some mutants had been badly hurt. She heard them groaning and weeping in the darkness; a couple were calling for help that they must have known would never come. Gradually, lighting was restored – just pale red emergency lumens – and she picked out their huddled, trembling shapes around her.

Nirri was glad to be alive. She had feared the ship might fracture like an eggshell, and that would have been the last she knew.

‘Do you hear it?’ intoned an older man, his features gaunt, his eyes a milky shade of white. ‘Do you hear it? Do you?’

The question wasn’t directed at Nirri specifically, but no one else was paying any attention. ‘Hear what?’ she asked, her voice emerging as a deathly whisper.

The man nodded sagely. ‘That’s right.’

It took her a moment to realise what he was getting at. ‘The engines,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t feel the engines any more. The engines have stopped.’

The gaunt man threw back his head and barked with laughter. It was an unpleasant, spiteful sound that made Nirri want to cry like the others.

She wanted to run. She strained at her chains in a way she hadn’t in days. She planted her foot against the bulkhead and tried to wrench the iron ring free. For a heady second, she felt it beginning to give way, its moorings weakened. But the ring held fast, and she remained its helpless captive.

She gave in to the protests of her muscles. She rested her forehead against the cool bulkhead. She closed her weary eyes, but immediately threw them open again in horror. No longer did the nightmare creatures scratch at the borders of her dreams. Now they ran through them, triumphant.

‘They’re here,’ she gasped, and to Nirri’s surprise, the words were taken up by the mutants – her fellows – around her, swelling into a ragged but almost reverent chant.

‘They’re here. They’re here. They’re here. They’re here.’

A long time passed.

A relative peace had descended. Nirri’s body saw a chance to sleep. She fought it, because she knew what would be waiting for her. She was thinking more clearly than she had in quite some time. Her brain had been fogbound, but now the miasma had lifted. This was a mixed blessing, as her thoughts were full of dread.

‘The Emperor protects us,’ she assured herself, over and over.

This ship was full of His soldiers. They could surely deal with any threat. It was what they were trained for. Nirri was still just a girl, really. No one could expect anything of her. It wasn’t her responsibility.

From time to time, she heard distant, disjointed barks that might have been gunfire. Proof that the storm troopers of the Emperor’s Inquisition still fought to protect her. Proof that there was still hope. Unless she was imagining the sounds.

The next sounds she heard were real enough. The heavy locks of the hatch were disengaged, and it was thrust forcefully open. Nirri couldn’t breathe. She squinted through the darkness, desperate to see who – or what – was on the other side, to see what her fate would be. One of the mutants shrieked in terror.

Two storm troopers marched into the containment hold. Dull plates of carapace armour were strapped over their bulky fatigues. Their helmet visors were lowered, hiding their eyes. Respirator masks hung from straps about their necks. They wielded the heavy, long-nosed firearms that Nirri had heard referred to as ‘hellguns’.

The mutants hadn’t seen their gaolers in days. They greeted them with hisses, vile blasphemous insults and phlegm. Thinking of her own treatment, Nirri almost couldn’t blame them. But there were worse things than these two soldiers out there, far worse.

‘Which of you,’ a trooper demanded, ‘predicted the warp storm?’

‘We know one of you did,’ the other added. ‘You spoke to the servitors about it. Which of you was it?’

Nirri had thought she couldn’t be any more scared. She had been wrong. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t have owned up if she had wanted to. She was dreadfully aware, however, that every mutant eye in the room – or so it seemed – had turned slyly upon her. They marked her out as plainly as any confession.

The troopers were upon her in three strides. They released her manacles and caught her in brawny arms when, as it turned out, Nirri couldn’t stand unaided. They slung one of her arms around each of their necks. She found her voice, enough to squeak, ‘What do you want with me?’ but they gave her no answer.

Nirri was hauled away, roughly, feet dragging on the floor.

Then, a shape rose up between her and the hatchway. She recognised the gaunt, white-eyed mutant she had spoken to before, only now his eyes were smouldering. Light exploded from him, both blinding and deafening. The storm troopers recoiled, losing their grip on Nirri, and she fell to her hands and knees.

As her vision cleared, she saw the troopers on their knees too, moaning and clutching their heads. The hold reverberated with the clanking of chains, as a seething mass of mutants strained to reach their reeling tormentors. A mere few were able. Their bony hands tore at the troopers’ fatigues and scratched their faces, while the rest had to content themselves with more insults and threats of increasing violence. The clanking and the shouting and the moaning built into a cacophony.

Suddenly, it ended. The mutants’ voices, and their spirited struggles, subsided. They shrank away into the darkest corners of the hold, and Nirri felt a strong urge to shrink away too, though she wasn’t sure to where nor even from what.

And then she saw. Three more figures had stepped into their midst.

Another pair of storm troopers flanked the bronze-helmed woman from before. Her sword was drawn in implicit threat. Black light coruscated along its gleaming blade, as if following invisible veins in the metal.

Nirri’s eyes itched. This close to the woman, she found it hard to even look at her. Her gaze just wanted to slide off her, to deny her very existence.

Only the gaunt man held his ground. His nostrils flared as he turned towards the newcomer. He raised his hands, and arcane energy crackled about his palms. Nirri had never seen anything like it before and was appalled. But then the energy flickered and sputtered and died, and the man’s white eyes were eclipsed by a shadow of fear.

A pair of much darker eyes flashed behind the polished bronze helm. A sword blade flashed through the air. Then something hit the floor about a foot in front of Nirri, with a heavy, wet thump.

She shrieked, recoiling from the gaunt mutant’s severed head.

The stricken troopers had recovered their wits. They were standing again, their pistols drawn. The mutants were the ones moaning and writhing now.

‘Keep your heads down,’ the first trooper warned them. ‘Don’t even look at us. I swear to the Emperor, I will burn out the first pair of eyes I see.’ Such was the pall of despair upon the hold that the warning felt superfluous.

Nirri was hauled to her feet again. ‘This is the one, ma’am,’ a storm trooper reported to the bronze-helmed woman. ‘This is the one that made the prediction.’

Nirri’s skin crawled as dark eyes appraised her coolly. She looked away from them. Then the woman made a series of short, sharp gestures with her hands, and, as one, she and the four storm troopers turned and swept out of the containment hold, taking their young captive with them.

Nirri remembered the Black Ship’s vaulted gangways.

They were as broad and high as city streets. Her escorts’ booted footsteps echoed back to her from every direction. Still, they made her feel claustrophobic.

It may have been the colour scheme: dull black, made eerie by the red lighting. Or perhaps it was the design. Pipes, gantries and bristling hatchways punctured the walls with stubborn brutality. Sharp-edged generators grumbled and fumed to themselves. It may have been the arcane wards scratched into every surface, some freshly smeared with blood as if in tribute. Or the Adeptus Astra Telepathica’s eye symbol, reputedly blind and yet glaring ruthless judgement from locking wheels and dusty banners. Nirri felt as if that eye could see into her soul.

She felt trapped, as if the whole world were hemming her in. Trapped with the bronze-helmed woman, who was marching alongside her. Her impossible presence made Nirri’s stomach churn and brought bile to her throat.

Two storm troopers scouted ahead of the group. They crouched at every corner, weapons drawn, to check that nothing lay in wait on the edge of their perceptions. They couldn’t search every shadow, however, and Nirri’s eyes also probed the gloom around her, fitfully. The other two troopers maintained their grips on her, though she had regained some feeling in her legs now. She hurried to match step with them, in preference to letting them drag her.

Nobody spoke a word to Nirri, even when she found the nerve to ask them what they wanted with her. The troopers had their own conversations, though. They grumbled into their collars and listened to voices she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t follow much of what they said. She could only tell that a bloody battle was raging.

‘Confirmed. Yes, we are on our way up. Yes, with the astropath.’

Was that a reference to her? What did it mean?

‘The starboard side of Sector Four. Yes, understood.’

‘Reaper Squad is under attack. Repeat, Reaper Squad–’

‘Is Sector Three clear? Urgent information, please.’

‘Is anyone else receiving Reaper Squad?’

‘Yes. Yes, confirmed. Need an urgent status for Sector Three, please.’

‘Can anyone else reach Reaper Squad?’

‘Pardon me, ma’am.’ One of the storm troopers addressed the bronze-helmed woman. ‘The starboard edge of Sector Four is open to space. We have to divert. Fighting is especially heavy in sectors Five through Eight, so–’

‘Ma’am, Reaper Squad is in trouble,’ the other trooper interrupted. ‘They are less than half a mile ahead of us. No one else can reach them. May I request that Trooper Kimble and I–’

The bronze-helmed woman made a series of gestures, as she had in the hold. The storm trooper was able to interpret them, clearly. He nodded, disappointed. ‘As you will, ma’am. Our mission must take precedence.’

‘Sector Three is confirmed clear to enter,’ his partner reported.

A fresh flurry of gunfire broke out, somewhere ahead of them. It was definitely closer than it had sounded before. Much closer.

Nirri could hear other sounds too. She heard screaming. It sounded like the screamers were… not just dying, although they certainly were, but more afraid than any trained warrior of the Emperor had any right to be.

She heard the crumps of several explosions, shaking the deck plates under her feet. Then there was silence. Her six-strong procession took a sharp turn down another gangway and continued on their journey. The trooper to Nirri’s right spoke into his collar again, in a hollow, emotionless tone.

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘They were loyal and faithful warriors. I pray to the Emperor that He will protect their souls.’

‘Not that way!’ cried Nirri, suddenly.

When she was ignored again, she tried digging her heels into the ground. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t… They… Wait!’ The storm troopers renewed their grip on her, sweeping her along.

Nirri’s legs stopped working altogether, without warning. She felt as if some dark force had sprung up in front of her, closing around her more tightly with each step she was forced to take. It was stifling her.

She had to make her captors understand. They had to let her turn back.

Then a screeching roar assailed her ears, as the shadows came to life. As she had known they must. The gangway filled with oily shapes, forever shifting – only they were never where Nirri’s eyes rested, always in the corners of her vision.

She glimpsed the suggestion of a claw, a slavering maw, a baleful glare…

The shadows flapped and whirled about her little group. They lashed out with a talon here, a forked tail there. It was like being in the eye of a shadowy hurricane, whipped by its stinging winds.

That was until something undeniably solid wrenched one of the storm troopers away from her. It happened in the space of a single, frenzied heartbeat. The remaining trooper let go of Nirri to strafe the shadows with blazing-hot rounds from his hellgun. Most of them exploded against the surrounding bulkheads.

Nirri fled.

She didn’t stop to think about it. Every single nerve impulse she possessed screamed at her to do it. It didn’t matter that she was running from those who could protect her, running into the shadows. She couldn’t help herself.

The bronze-helmed woman pointed after her with a stabbing finger – and the storm trooper understood and pursued her, bringing Nirri down with a flying tackle.

‘No! No,’ she sobbed. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Even now, when the creatures were upon them…

She could only think of one reason, and she angrily denied it. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault,’ she insisted. ‘I didn’t let them in.’

She was pinned to the cold metal floor. She quickly saw that it was useless to resist. Her full strength would have paled against the trooper’s, whose armoured weight lent him an extra advantage. Nirri lay on her stomach, panting in helpless terror, as her worst fears played out in front of her face.

The first storm trooper was on the floor, still fighting. As shadows swooped upon him, they were met by his gun’s explosive flashes. Their violent light split the shadows asunder. The bronze-helmed woman had drawn her sword, which she wielded with consummate skill. Its blade, too, cleaved the darkness, too quickly for Nirri to follow, burning light trails into her retinas.

Wherever these lights were not, however, the shadows regrouped. Congealing into nightmare shapes once more, they renewed their vicious attacks. Claw marks appeared across the fallen trooper’s chest, shredding his armour. He was trying to stand, but was battered back down by barbed appendages, tearing at his newly exposed flesh, bathing themselves in clouds of his blood.

The other two troopers, the scouts, had returned from ahead. Their guns spat out great gouts of holy fire. The trooper with whom Nirri lay fired when he could too, when he could be sure of not striking an ally through the ever-shifting morass.

Nirri prayed to the Emperor to guide the soldiers’ sights and bless their blades. What else could she possibly do?

She closed her eyes and prayed for the nightmare to end. She had thought there might be peace behind her eyelids. She had thought her dreams must be emptied of creatures by now. She could not have been more wrong. There were more of them than ever, their scratching like nails on a blackboard. She stared at a spot on a nearby bulkhead, instead, and tried to see nothing but its dullness.

A storm trooper screamed, and it was the worst sound she had ever heard. One of his fellows called for reinforcements in an urgent, breathy tone, but his voice was strangled by a gargling moan. Conversely, the shrieks of the nightmare creatures had adopted a triumphant tone. The relentless cracks of gunfire deadened Nirri’s ears, which she welcomed as a minor mercy. Her nostrils twitched at the acrid smell of weapons discharge, and the iron tang of spilt blood.

She felt herself hauled to her feet. ‘What are you–’ she protested, but was stifled by a gauntlet clamped across her mouth.

Her captor bundled her back the way they had come. Another scream pursued them. Nirri resisted the urge to turn her head. She didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to, look. If she didn’t witness the carnage then perhaps, somehow, it wouldn’t have happened. Her mind’s eye painted a grisly picture for her, even so. A picture fit to make an Inquisitorial storm trooper run – though not for long.

Nirri stumbled, and a shadow stole up behind her.

She felt its hot, spittle-flecked breath on her neck. She heard the snick of a claw being plunged into sinew and muscle.

She felt the storm trooper stiffen beside her, heard his sharp intake of breath. She saw the trooper’s eyes widen, bulge and pale. Thick rivulets of blood welled over his lip, and the suggestion of a claw protruded from the trooper’s chest. Then he toppled forwards onto his face, a shadow riding his back all the way down.

The trooper hit the deck plates with a heavy clang of arms and armaments.

Nirri was already running again.

She didn’t know what good it would do her. She fully expected to be cut down at any moment. She marvelled as each foot fell in front of the other, each one an increment of precious ground gained, as the shadows receded behind her.

She ran until her legs ached, until her lungs felt like they would explode.

She ran because, this time, there was no one left to stop her.

She had no idea where she was.

She remembered running, but she didn’t remember stopping.

All Nirri could hear was her own heartbeat, like a hammer. She willed it to be quieter. If only she was quiet, perhaps the nightmare creatures wouldn’t find her.

She had wedged herself into a gap behind some throbbing hunk of metal. A maintenance gantry ran over her head, concealing her from any eyes above. The red lights flickered and cut out for minutes at a time. She knew she should have been grateful for the darkness, but she found it oppressive.

Nirri wasn’t alone in the dark.

She sensed the creature, rather than seeing it or hearing it.

It clung to the gantry’s underside, two feet above her. Its rheumy eyes glared at her from beneath a cracked, folded, leathern wing. Its massive jaw leered open to reveal two rows of sharp, bloodied teeth.

Or so she imagined it. The red light snapped back on and chased the shadow away, but she knew it had been there. It had been real.

There seemed no point in hiding now. She eased herself out from behind the machine. She stood in the gangway, blinking, hugging herself against the numbing cold. She had only just noticed the freezing temperature. What should I do? She didn’t know.

Why had the creatures spared her? Should she be relieved or afraid? What if they had other plans for her? What if – and this thought really chilled her heart – they had judged her an ally of sorts? What if they had seen something inside her, something akin to their own terrible natures?

A dusty banner swayed above her head. The image of an eye glared down at her in silent accusation. What did it see inside her? she wondered. What did the Emperor see? The soldiers should have slain me, she thought.

Then, why had they not?

Nirri found herself retracing her steps.

Her feet, as before, didn’t want to obey her commands. What choice did she have, though? Her nightmares had spared her, but for what? To drift in the wreck of the crippled Black Ship forevermore? Or until she succumbed to cold and hunger?

She made herself go on.

She faltered at a four-way junction. She couldn’t remember which way she had come in her blind panic. She felt her breathing start to quicken again. She calmed herself and looked, not with her eyes but with her mind.

One route felt different to the others. It felt like the one not to take. So, she prayed to the Emperor for courage and chose that route. She knew she had been right when she smelt blood and burning ahead of her. The odour made her stomach sink. She knew now that she had come back here for nothing.

The first corpse she came across was the trooper who had tried to escape with her. He lay face down in a pool of his internal organs. Where were you taking me? Nirri yearned to ask him. What did you want with me, so important that you would abandon your comrades to keep me alive?

No answer would come from that quarter.

Nirri walked a little further, tentatively. She picked out the shapes of other storm troopers, strewn across the gangway. They had been left to rot where they had fallen.

One of the bodies twitched. She hurried towards it, a flame of hope in her heart. A groan of dismay escaped her lips as she found the sole survivor of the massacre.

The bronze-helmed woman lay staring up at Nirri. Her sculpted breastplate had been shredded. Her breathing was shallow.

She still felt wrong, and now Nirri understood why.

She could see the woman, hear her ragged breaths. She could smell her blood and sweat. She couldn’t feel her presence, however. Not in the way that she could feel the presence of others. The disconnect between what she could sense and what she knew unsettled her. She didn’t want to be here, with this… this soulless creature, but who else could answer her questions?

Bravely, Nirri crouched beside the bronze-helmed woman. ‘What do I do?’ she whispered. It seemed the only question that mattered.

The woman reached up to her helm with trembling hands. She removed the top part of it. The face she revealed was surprisingly normal. A tattoo of eagle feathers followed the curve of her right eyebrow. The helm’s lower grille remained in place like a restraint, a metal gag. The woman’s dark eyes met Nirri’s own and commanded their attention. Her hands clutched at Nirri’s filthy tunic in silent appeal.

She couldn’t speak.

The realisation hit Nirri like a punch to the guts. The only woman who had the answers she sought, only she could never reveal them.

‘It’s just,’ she blurted out, ‘what if I brought the creatures here? I’ve been seeing them for months, for years, in my dreams, and now… You must have chosen me, of everyone in the hold, for a reason. Like you think I’m responsible too. But I swear, I am loyal to the Emperor. I just want to… If I can help, if there’s something I can do, I’ll try my very best to do it. Just, please, tell me what I ought to do.’

The light in the woman’s dark eyes was fading. She gestured with her hands, and Nirri felt tears welling up inside her.

Then she realised that the bronze-helmed woman was pointing.

She pointed along the gangway. The way that she and the others had been going when the creatures had attacked them. She also pointed upwards. ‘Yes, we are on our way up,’ a soon-to-be-dead soldier had said. ‘Yes, with the astropath.’

The woman’s eyes fluttered and closed for the final time.

Nirri took her hands and laid them on her chest, across each other.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

Nirri heard heavy footsteps tramping towards her.

She heard low voices too. They were definitely human.

She stepped out into the light at the centre of the gangway. She waited to be found.

She had been walking for what seemed like an age. The only people she had encountered – if you could call them that – had been a handful of servitors. They had reverted to carrying out menial, now entirely pointless, tasks. She had tried to talk to them, but they had just gaped at her, uncomprehendingly.

She had tried to maintain a straight course, but the Black Ship’s labyrinthine layout had thwarted her. She had also shunned the bad-feeling gangways, even when it meant a sizeable diversion. She had lost her way more times than she could count.

She had kept on going, however, and climbed when she had the opportunity. She felt she was close to her objective.

A squad of storm troopers appeared ahead of her. She counted eight of them. They came to a halt when they saw her, snapping up their rifles. She had expected as much and she wasn’t afraid. She stayed as still as she could and raised her hands.

The troopers appeared to be unscathed, but she sensed a weariness about them. They were tired of fighting shadows. Their leader sent two of them towards her with a curt gesture. ‘Be careful,’ he warned them. ‘The Occluding Sphere no longer protects us.’

‘What do you think she is?’ an acolyte asked.

‘A mutant, clearly,’ said another, ‘but how did she get out of the hold?’

Rough hands seized Nirri again, frisking her for weapons. She had considered taking a gun from a fallen trooper, but she wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

The rest of the squad moved up and surrounded her. One of them muttered something into his collar, then reported to his leader. ‘Sounds like the crew are expecting this one, sergeant. She was in the custody of the Silent Sisterhood.’

‘No longer, evidently,’ growled the sergeant. He marched up to Nirri, until they stood nose to nose. His face twisted into a scowl of contempt, and she saw that his nose had been broken too often to heal properly.

The sergeant’s glare was fixed on Nirri, but he spoke to the troopers behind her. ‘Take no chances with this one. If it makes a threatening gesture or tries to speak to any of us, or if it looks at you the wrong way, blow out its knees.’

He turned and marched stiffly away, barking an order over his shoulder to his squad: ‘Bring it to the bridge.’

Nirri’s first sight of the bridge took her breath away.

It occupied a massive, vaulted space at the summit of the ship. It reminded her of the splendour of her local temple: stained glass and fluted columns and inlaid gold glistening in scented candlelight. The temple had been half the size of this, however, and modestly furnished in comparison.

Nor had the temple had control panels set into its ancient wooden surfaces.

The place was awhirl with activity. Dozens of grey-clad people were scurrying about. Their fingers traced runes carved into the walls, which lit up green with electronic burbles – or more often red with disparaging honks. They checked and rechecked readings from the panels. They reeled off strings of numbers to each other, which only made them more unhappy. Their faces were as grey as their uniforms, etched with hopelessness.

Nirri’s eye was drawn to one point in particular. A crack in a stained-glass pane. Light seeped in through it, but it possessed a peculiar quality. It seemed to shift in colour and intensity, so that the more she looked at it, the less she was able to describe it. She felt she could almost touch the light, mould it in her hands. She felt she had to touch the light.

She reached out to it. She took an involuntary, faltering step towards it. She was brought up short by the storm troopers holding her arms.

One of the men in grey had noticed Nirri. He was older than most, the skin of his face tanned and crinkled. He had badges of rank across his chest. ‘Is that…? Is that the…?’ He looked her up and down with a mixture of doubt and distaste.

‘We found it wandering alone in Sector Twelve,’ said the acolyte sergeant.

‘You must be mistaken. It can hardly be more than an infant.’

‘I’m almost sixteen.’ Nirri mouthed the words defiantly, but had no voice.

‘This is the one the Silent Sisters chose.’

‘You mean it’s the best they could do.’ The grey man took a handful of Nirri’s hair and pulled it back, making her wince. He rubbed a callused palm across her forehead, as if searching for something. He sighed in exasperation.

‘As I understand the situation…’ the sergeant ventured.

The grey man nodded, scowling. ‘We have nothing to lose.’ He summoned two grey-clad colleagues, indicating Nirri to them. ‘Show our new astropath to the chair,’ he instructed them.

The two crewmembers exchanged a nervous glance. Then they led the way across the bridge. The storm troopers hauled Nirri after them. A sudden dread had seized her, however, and she began to struggle. ‘Wait. Wait,’ she gasped.

She twisted her head towards the glowering squad leader. ‘They’re coming,’ she insisted. ‘They followed us here. I can feel them.’

The acolyte sergeant jerked his rifle as if to carry out his earlier threat. He must have seen something in Nirri’s eyes, however – something he believed – for instead, he ordered his squad to split up and guard the exits.

Nirri, in the meantime, was led to a large, padded seat.

A figure lolled in it: a mutant, to judge by its prominent cranial lumps. It had no eyes, just sockets filled with masses of weeping, black scar tissue. She thought it dead, until it let out a little moan and dribbled down its chin. The crewmembers gripped it by the shoulders and tipped it onto the floor, unceremoniously. Wires were torn from the mutant’s skull in the process, in a welter of blood.

The storm troopers pushed Nirri into the seat. She protested as the crewmembers fastened leather restraints around her wrists. They gathered up wires with bloody needles on their ends. They thrust the needles into the back of her neck. She was barely aware of any of this, however.

She found herself facing the cracked window, and its strange light flooded through her eyes and filled her brain. It drove out the nightmare shadows. It occurred to Nirri that no one else would look at the light. They shielded their eyes when it was in their field of vision. The light was dangerous to them, she felt this strongly.

It was dangerous to them – and to her?

‘Do you think it’ll work this time?’

‘Not a chance. This one is a child. It’s completely untrained.’

‘It only needs to give us a nudge. Before… before it died, the Navigator–’

‘Said we were stuck halfway out of the warp.’

‘Halfway, though. And they can’t follow us back into realspace.’

‘Know what I think will happen when we throw that switch?’

‘It might just work. A little nudge. We might just–’

‘I think the little mutant’s brain will burn.’

The voices came to her from a long way away, as if through water.

The sounds of the storm troopers’ hellguns seemed even more distant. Another battle had begun. A battle in which one side had infinite numbers. A battle that raged only yards away from Nirri, where she sat bound and helpless. Even so, she felt as if it had nothing to do with her. A feeling of calmness had enveloped her. The light had grown until it filled her vision, until it blotted out her other senses, until there was nothing but the light. Like nothing else mattered.

She knew what she had to do. For the first time – the first time in her life – it all made sense.

Before she could act on her new-found knowledge, however, she heard another voice say, ‘Emperor preserve us!’ The wires plugged into the base of her skull surged and the voice that had spoken before had been absolutely right.

Nirri’s brain burnt.

She was still screaming, some days later.

She woke with a start, and relief flooded through her for a second. Then she remembered where she was.

She was manacled in the containment hold, back with the mutants. Her legs and shoulders ached from maintaining a half-crouched position. Harsh light strobed across Nirri’s face, and a discordant screech drilled into her nerves. Her throat was raw.

A hunchbacked, grey-faced servitor had prodded her awake. It hosed the floor between her feet with grey nutrient slop. She looked down at it, blinking dully. How long had it been since she had eaten? She couldn’t remember.

‘I don’t understand,’ she croaked. ‘How…? Why…?’

She could feel the throbbing of the Black Ship’s powerful engines.

‘I dreamt… I know we were attacked. We were trapped between realms, and there were creatures. In the shadows. I did not imagine the creatures.’

She didn’t know who she was trying to convince. The servitor’s augmetic eye clicked and whirred as it regarded her, but its expression remained dead. She pleaded with it, all the same. ‘Tell me you remember the creatures.’

The servitor jabbed a finger at the slop on the floor. ‘Eat,’ it said, and it turned its back on her.

I don’t understand, she thought. Everything is as it was before. How can that be? If we are alive, I must have saved us all… mustn’t I? How can that not have made a difference? How can they still doubt me, doubt my faith? Unless…

It was hard for her to think. Her mind pounded with the memories of a desperate battle, but the memories were already fading. Like shadows. Like dreams. No. I refuse to let that happen. She clung to what her heart knew was real. She had saved them all, saved the soldiers, saved the crew, and they had to remember.

Unless…

She caught the white-eyed gaze of the gaunt-faced mutant. ‘All gone now,’ he moaned to himself. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, hugging his knees. ‘Gone away. Gone away. But not gone far.’

It happened, Nirri told herself, without a trace of doubt. Even if it only happened in my mind – it was no less real for all that.

She could hear the creatures again. She heard them scratching, felt them straining at the edges of her senses. They were trying to invade her mind once more – they always would – but she would always hold them back. Her days of denying her nightmares were over. For the Emperor would never have visited the nightmares upon her without also giving her the strength to resist them.

Nirri would be brought to Holy Terra soon. She would be examined, the extent and nature of her mutation determined. Many eyes would peer into her soul, and they would judge her. They would find that she had not been cursed. She had been blessed. And they would listen to her, then.

Everyone would have to listen to her.

She would be trained in the use of her abilities. She would learn how to follow the path chosen for her by the Emperor.

It would be her honour to fight the shadows for Him.

THE LAST KNIGHT: PART ONE

Gavin G Smith

Lacutus’ dead eye hurt, and he’d been riding so long that he feared his inner thighs had turned to leather. He gently pulled the reins to bring Augustus to a halt on the crest of the ridge that looked down onto Innsport. Lacutus reached forward to scratch between Augustus’ ears. To his mind the tireless, intelligent destrier was the best horseflesh ever to come out of the flatlands east of Landfall. He turned his attention back to Innsport. He was half-surprised to see it was still there, though mostly rebuilt, like many of the towns and villages on Leucosia after the destruction wrought by the warp storms that had plagued the system. Lacutus tried to avoid looking at the part of the sky where he knew he would see the Siren’s Storm. It would look faint in the daylight, a scar on the bright cerulean blue, but he could still feel it, like a malevolent presence. Unconsciously he touched the patch over his left eye. The pain was a reminder of his shame.

Lacutus knew that to have withstood the storms, Innsport must have a network of shelters dug into the steep hill that rose up from the waterside on which the town was built. The settlement overlooked a natural harbour guarded by stark grey cliffs on either side. The worked-stone waterside was home to a small fleet of fishing boats. The most singular thing about the harbour, however, was the crashed, semi-submerged, derelict spacecraft blocking well over half of the entrance to the bay.

Lacutus pulled the telescope out of his saddlebag and held it up to his remaining good eye. He was no judge of such things, but if he had to guess, he suspected that the spacecraft was of human design and had crash-landed there more than half a century ago. Perhaps the craft had been spat out of the warp by the intermittent storms that had cut Leucosia off from the rest of the Imperium, their patron forge world, Metalica, and seemingly the light of the Emperor Himself. In part he was pleased that the rumours of the crashed ship were true and that the wreckage seemed reasonably intact. It would provide Lydia with an opportunity to scavenge the ship for tech that could be used to get Wargod, the Honaratus family’s sole remaining Knight Errant, up and running. On the other hand, the presence of the spacecraft made him feel very uneasy indeed. The bounties of the warp storms were seldom a blessing. Augustus, perhaps picking up on his rider’s unease, snorted, his ears going up. Lacutus patted the destrier’s flanks, though he had little in the way of comforting words for the animal.

Lacutus turned the telescope on the village itself. There were only a few people wandering the dry mud streets, mainly women and children. All of them shuffled around, busy at some task or another, even the youngest. That said, they all seemed hale and whole of limb from what Lacutus could see of them. No obvious aberrations. Lacutus rubbed his dead eye. It had been the lashing tendril of a warp-spawned horror that had taken it from him. He could still feel the sting of it, even now, more than three years later. Worse than the pain of his dead eye was the sting of shame he felt every time he thought of that fight. He had been less than useless in the final battle with the warp spawn. The battle that had so badly damaged Wargod and almost killed his father. He collapsed the telescope and put it back into his saddlebag. Then he loaded both bows on his double crossbow with two of the special bolts that Lydia had made him.

‘Come on, boy,’ he said to Augustus, urging the destrier forward with a gentle tap of his heels.

The people he saw in the narrow, hard-packed dirt streets, between the strangely uniform wattle-and-daub hovels, barely cast an eye his way as Lacutus rode into Innsport. He tried to get a look at their faces but with little success. The place stank of fish, but that was to be expected.

He made his way towards a two-storey longhall in the centre of town. He reckoned he would find someone of authority there, if they weren’t out fishing.

‘You!’ he said to what he assumed was a hunched old woman, though it was difficult to tell as she was so heavily wrapped in skirts, shawl and headscarf, despite the heat of the day. The old woman stopped and angled her head towards Lacutus, though not enough for him to see her face. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

She just pointed at the longhall.

‘Go and fetch them for me,’ he told her, his voice all but a hoarse rasp, his throat dry from the road.

She said nothing. Instead she shuffled towards the longhall.

Lacutus felt eyes on him. He glanced around. Nearby, people had stopped what they were doing and were watching him, but when he tried to meet their eyes, they looked down again. He was sure it was something other than the simple deference the peasantry owed to someone of his station.

After what felt like a long time, a strange figure emerged from the longhall. He wore a very fine, ornate robe and leaned on a gnarled but well-polished hardwood staff. The man was tall, thin, with a sallow complexion, sunken cheeks and a somewhat bulbous head. There wasn’t quite enough there to suggest he was a warp-spawned mutant of some kind, but it was enough to make Lacutus wary. His hand moved closer to the hilt of his somewhat temperamental power sword, Woundthirst.

‘I’m Elderman Fisher,’ the figure said. ‘Welcome to Innsport.’

‘Well met,’ Lacutus replied, though it wasn’t a sentiment he was particularly feeling. ‘I am Sir Lacutus Honaratus of Landfall. I am re-establishing contact with all our outlying settlements now that the storms have passed.’

If the elderman was in any way intimidated by the tall, heavily built, armoured figure then he gave no indication of it.

‘I see, a relative of our good and noble Lord Governor Ignatius Honaratus, perhaps!’

Lacutus frowned.

‘Ignatius was my grandfather, he has been gone these thirty years. I never met him. I am the son of Lord Governor Forganus Honaratus the Third.’

A flicker of annoyance crossed the elderman’s face. As this happened Lacutus felt a spasm of pain in his ruined eye.

‘Do you not bow to the knight of an Imperial House in Innsport?’ Lacutus asked, leaning forward. It wasn’t something that particularly bothered him but he was wondering if the lack of respect for his rank was indicative of something else.

‘Get off your horse.’

Lacutus straightened up.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Your pardons, my lord, I’m out of practice. Get off your horse!’

Too slow, Lacutus reached for the hilt of Woundthirst, but it was as though some invisible force was pummelling him, crushing his will, squeezing. Resistance was agony, but he fought as hard as he could until he half-dismounted, half-fell from Augustus’ back.

The elderman’s eyes were a solid mass of black. There was nothing human about them now.

‘Now you kneel!’ the elderman cried, pointing his staff at Lacutus.

The knight cried out, curling up in a ball in the dirt. Not even the warp spawn’s lash had hurt like this. He heard Augustus’ screaming neigh, and was thrown into shadow as the destrier reared. He heard the sound of a shod hoof meeting a skull. Suddenly Lacutus was pain-free and able to move.

The elderman was staggering backwards, a bloody dent in his bulbous skull. Lacutus wrenched Woundthirst from the sheath strapped to Augustus’ saddle. Mercifully the power sword hummed into life when he activated it. Lacutus sliced downwards, a hurried two-handed blow. The blade clove Fisher from shoulder to near-waist. Purple ichor from inhuman internal organs splattered the knight. Lacutus pushed the elderman off his blade with his boot. Somehow the creature was still alive. Lacutus raised Woundthirst high, again, to deliver the killing blow just as the creatures exploded out of two nearby hovels. They were purple-skinned, with armoured carapaces and long, sharp, pointed tongues lolling out of their mouths. They charged on all six clawed limbs towards Lacutus. He had a moment to make a choice. He could kill the elderman and die himself, or escape and warn his father of the xenos threat here.

He vaulted onto Augustus’ back. The horse needed little urging and immediately burst into a gallop. Lacutus sheathed the sword with some difficulty. Then he swung around in the saddle until he was facing backwards. The creatures were gaining on him through the dust that Augustus was kicking up. Lacutus unclipped the double crossbow and brought it to his shoulder. He squeezed the tickler once, shifted aim, and then again. If he hadn’t practised this trick so many times Lacutus was sure that he would have missed, but his aim was true, despite firing from the back of a galloping horse. The bolts slammed into the vile xenos and, moments later, exploded, sending one of them tumbling sideways through the air, the other careening through the wall of a hovel. He suspected it wouldn’t be enough to kill the powerful creatures but he prayed it would slow them down enough so that he could escape. He spun round in the saddle again, and gave thanks to the Emperor for Augustus.

Lacutus had ridden day and night across the eastern plains. He had pushed Augustus as hard as he dared, but despite the destrier’s remarkable endurance, the mighty horse had started to flag. Lacutus was all but asleep in the saddle as they reached the foothills of the Grey Sentinels. Beyond the foothills lay the snow-capped, forest-clad majesty of the mountains.

Landfall Castle was nestled amongst the foothills. The castle sprawled across several hilltops. Built from the colony ship dispatched from Terra during the Dark Age of Technology, the castle had been strong enough to act as a shelter since the appearance of the Cicatrix Maledictum, when the tendrils of the Siren’s Storm had reached for them. The city of Landfall had not done as well against the depredations of the warp, however. There was little left of the city other than blackened rubble. The survivors had moved into the castle, living in its tangle of corridors and multiple courtyards.

Lacutus was too busy trying not to fall out of the saddle to pay any attention to the blackened, salted earth of the plague pit where they had burned the infected, the cultists and the diseased minions of Nurgle. The constant pain in his ruined eye was reminder enough.

He was barely aware of crossing the drawbridge, of the guards hailing him but letting him pass through the curtain wall’s gatehouse, of them doing the same as he passed through the inner wall’s gatehouse. He was only peripherally aware of the runner racing ahead, though he was so bone weary he couldn’t work out who the boy was going to fetch.

‘What you do to Augustus?’ The voice was an aggrieved low bass grumble. Ten feet of bestial-featured corded muscle towered over horse and rider. Lacutus tried to look up at the ogryn. He wore a thick leather apron, his exposed skin stained by soot from the forge. Then the ogryn lunged forward to catch Lacutus as he slid from the saddle.

Lacutus steadied himself against the ogryn’s bulk.

‘You ride Augustus too hard!’ the ogryn protested. He had one hand ready to catch Lacutus again. Augustus was nuzzling against the other. Despite the ogryn smith’s ferocious appearance, he had a way with animals, particularly horses, and particularly Augustus.

‘Look after Augustus, Kark,’ Lacutus managed, ‘I need to see my father.’

Lacutus vaguely remembered staggering past the near-empty Sanctuary, the resting place of his ruined birthright. He made his way towards the great hall in the central keep. He felt the eyes of the peasants on him as he passed. He waved away castle guards who approached as though to help. It was important that he did this himself.

The guards were at least good enough to push open the doors to the great hall. It was like walking into light. The stained-glass window, depicting the Emperor’s defeat of the arch-heretic, Horus, had been positioned to catch the light of the early-morning suns.

His father turned to face him.

‘Lord governor.’ In public the proper form had to be followed, despite exhaustion.

His father dropped the parchment he was examining and started towards his son, concern on his face.

‘Genestealers,’ Lacutus managed. The last thing he saw before he passed out was the look of abject horror on his father’s face.

‘You’ve been using yourself hard.’ His father’s voice sounded old and worn.

Lacutus opened his eye to look up at the lord governor’s gaunt, lined face. His father, a once strong-limbed, tall man, full of energy, was now diminished, bent and frail. He had not been the same since the last time he had piloted Wargod. The strain of the fight with the diseased warp spawn three years previous had almost killed him. The fight had robbed his father of his vitality and he had seemed to age overnight. Lacutus blamed himself.

‘Genestealers!’ Lacutus cried, grabbing his father’s robe. He was almost ashamed to notice that Fisher’s robe had been finer.

His father motioned for him to calm himself.

‘You said so before you collapsed,’ his father reassured him. ‘I’m going to ask you this once, my son. Are you sure?’

Lacutus understood the need for the question. All they knew of the terrible clawed changelings had come from stories told by the last representative of the Ecclesiarchy that Leucosia had seen, before they had been cut off from the Imperium. Again.

‘Yes,’ Lacutus told him. ‘I was chased by at least two of the genestealers. It was as Deacon Ullas said.’ He managed to sit up. His muscles ached but he felt well rested, though he was hungry again.

‘Light of the Emperor,’ his father sighed.

Lacutus was desperately trying to remember the stories the fat deacon, drunk on his father’s mead, had told them. He could not remember the exact details but he suspected that the presence of the six-armed genestealers meant that the xenos had been on Leucosia for generations, though he had no idea how many.

‘Father, you have to call the yeomanry.’

‘I have done so,’ his father told him.

Lacutus was gratified by this; his father had taken his word on faith. Calling the yeomanry this close to harvest wouldn’t have been a decision taken lightly.

‘You will march our forces to Innsport?’ Lacutus asked. Even as he said this he thought of the futility of steel against the ferocity of the purestrain genestealers – against the power of Elderman Fisher.

‘No, you will, my son,’ his father said, standing up and pacing the ancient plasteel floor.

‘Father…’ Lacutus started.

‘I am too old,’ his father told him, ‘and we both know it.’

Lacutus wanted to argue, he wanted to turn time back three years, as heretical as that thought might be, but he knew his father was right. His father had never been a particularly easy man to read; he had been too calm, too used to negotiations where it wouldn’t profit him for others to know what he thought. Lacutus, however, knew him well enough to recognise that the lord governor was deeply worried.

‘Is there something else, father?’ Lacutus asked.

‘You weren’t the only rider I sent out. None who went north and east to the coast have returned. The problem may be more widespread.’

Lacutus tried to work out just how many of the foul creatures there could be. How many people had survived the storms only to fall to the xenos?

‘How could this happen?’ he asked himself.

‘The people turned from the light of the Emperor,’ his father told him. ‘In the cold and the dark, as the storms raged far above, they prayed that the water would not become contaminated, that the machine-spirits in the mulch vats would not fail them. Perhaps some prayed to the wrong god.’

Talk of prayer reminded him of Lydia.

‘Wargod?’ he asked.

His father just shook his head. The Knight Errant still wasn’t working, it seemed.

Lacutus nodded, then struggled out of bed and moved to the arched window. He was high enough in the central keep to see out over both walls towards the Sentinels. The river tumbled out of the mountains, the mist obscuring his view of the falls, and flowed down the steep ravine that ran along the west side of the castle. Lacutus sometimes thought of Leucosia, particularly Landfall Province, as a beautiful body riddled with disease. The view over the mountains was in contrast to the twisted, burned remains of the city just outside the castle’s eastern wall. The landscape looked timeless but Lacutus knew from bitter experience it was protean when touched by the storms. Who knew what corruptions existed up in the high mountain passes. Lacutus shook himself out of his musings.

‘We could search for Vervius,’ he suggested. The mountains had made him think of the old astropath.

‘We don’t even know if the system is navigable again,’ his father said.

Vervius had deserted them after their battle with the cult of disease. It had become too much for the ageing psyker. Before he had sneaked out of the castle, he had implied that one more use of his abilities and he would succumb to the voices in the warp. His desertion was a gross dereliction of duty. There had been reported sightings of the old astropath here and there, mostly from the hardy gnarlherds in their high pastures in the mountains. His father had sought to find Vervius but Lacutus did not think he had tried too hard. He suspected his father wanted to leave his old friend in peace. Vervius could call for help, however, assuming that help was even capable of reaching them.

‘I will leave you to dress and break your fast,’ his father said. ‘Join me when you are ready and we will continue to plan.’

Lacutus nodded.

His father crossed his chambers, making for the door. Lacutus couldn’t help but notice how loose and wrinkled the skin round his father’s interface plugs was.

‘Father,’ Lacutus said. His father stopped and turned to face him. ‘I do not fear these creatures…’ he continued.

‘I know that.’

‘But I do not know how to fight them with what we have.’

His father nodded. ‘Nevertheless, we must,’ he said. Then he left.

Lacutus crossed to the chest pushed up against the wall. Woundthirst lay scabbarded across it. His shield, Faith, made by Lydia from scavenged adamantium taken from a long-since-destroyed Knight Errant, and his crossbow were leaning up against the wall. Lacutus drew the sword, turned towards where he knew distant Terra lay in the sky at this time of year and knelt down. He spent a moment looking at the familiar High Gothic runes inscribed on the blade, then he closed his eyes and began to pray to the light of the Emperor.

Wargod looked like an ancient warrior in the stillness of the cathedral-like Sanctuary. The narrow windows let in only a little light to the cavernous space. The Knight Errant was a silent suit of battle-scarred armour standing, huge, in one of the many alcoves. Once the Sanctuary would have been full of such war machines, but the depredations of time, the storms, and in the long past, the futility of internecine feuding and duels, had slowly whittled the Knights Errant down. Thunderblade and Queen of Blood had both been destroyed, their pilots – an aunt-once-removed and a distant cousin – killed, fighting the forces of the Plague God, and now only Wargod was left.

Wargod still wore the scars of his last battle. The warp spawn had certainly left its mark on the war machine. The Knight had fallen amongst the burning ruins of Landfall City. Lacutus’ father had nearly died that day. It had taken all of Lydia’s ingenuity and an oxen train to tow Wargod back to the Sanctuary and winch him upright in his alcove. It felt like their only hope if – no, when – the genestealers came.

Lacutus glanced upwards. Just under the domed roof above the Sanctuary lay the Chamber of Echoes. Lacutus rubbed the back of his neck. He knew he should have interface plugs in his flesh by now. He was past his eighteenth birthday, but there had been little point while his father had been vital enough to pilot the Knight Errant, and now Wargod might well be dead. Truth be told, Lacutus feared the Chamber of Echoes, as he feared Wargod’s machine-spirit and the ghosts of his ancestors within the Throne Mechanicum. In the face of the warp spawn he had been found wanting.

‘Is it true?’ The voice came from high above, echoing down through the stillness of the Sanctuary.

Lacutus looked up and saw Lydia lowering herself hand over hand down a knotted rope. She was short, shaven-headed and wore much-patched robes with many pouches for her inherited sacramental tools. He could make out the outline of her tattoos under the omnipresent oil, grime and sweat. Lydia had copied them from the skin of Volgad, the last sacristan that Metalica had been able to send. He had been her master before he had fallen victim to the plague.

Lydia reached the ground and came to stand before him, hands on her hips. She was never one to give deference to his rank, but for his part they were friends.

‘Genestealers,’ he told her. She looked mystified. ‘Clawed changelings.’

‘I thought those were just a tale to frighten children.’

Despite the beauty of Leucosia, Lacutus wasn’t sure that the children of his world needed made-up horrors to frighten them.

‘No, of course they’re real,’ Lydia muttered a few moments later. Lacutus nodded towards Wargod. He knew they needed the Knight Errant but there was still that trickling sense of fear, that pressure he felt from the Chamber of Echoes and its ghosts far above him.

‘I’ve conducted all the rituals, made sacrifice to the Omnissiah to appease the machine-spirits and your ancestors, but I’m no sacristan.’ Lydia hung her head. Lacutus reached out to grip her shoulder. She intended to travel back to Metalica and train with the fabled Adeptus Mechanicus the next time their ships were able to make it through, but none had come for a very long time now.

Lacutus looked up at Wargod. He was not sure what he feared most – that Wargod was dead, or that he lived and Lacutus would have to undergo the Ritual of Becoming. Lydia took him by the back of his neck. He was so surprised by her familiarity that he didn’t even remonstrate with her.

‘Your fear will kill you,’ she told him and nodded up towards the Chamber of Echoes. ‘I think we need to put the interface plugs into you sooner rather than later.’

‘And you know how to do this?’ Lacutus asked.

‘Volgad dictated extensive guidance to me before he died,’ she told him, letting go of the back of his neck, which now felt dirty and gritty.

He did not feel particularly reassured by the idea of amateur implant chirurgery.

‘Sir Lacutus!’ a voice cried from the huge open doorway. Lacutus and Lydia turned to see one of the castle guards. ‘Your pardon, sir, but I think you should see this.’

‘What are we looking at?’ Lydia asked. They were standing on the eastern curtain wall, gazing out over the charred and twisted remains of the city to the plains. Beyond the horizon lay the coast.

Lacutus snapped open the telescope and scanned the plains beyond the ruins of Landfall City. It took a moment but he found the reason for his summons. There were thousands of them. At this distance, even through the telescope, they looked like insects. They moved with a strange hunched lope towards the castle. Lacutus handed Lydia the telescope and turned to the captain of the guard, who was standing next to him.

‘Omnissiah preserve us,’ Lydia whispered.

‘Send riders out, get anyone out there back inside the castle. Under no circumstances are the riders to engage with the creatures. Then raise the drawbridge, close the gates and drop the portcullises – lock us up tight. Send a runner for my father, another to get my armour and weapons from my room. Have the yeomanry line the walls and send their commander to me, and I want the artillery observers up here as well. Tell them they fire only when the creatures are in killing range,’ Lacutus finished. The captain nodded and moved away to put Lacutus’ orders into action, but Lacutus called him back. ‘And captain – make sure you have people watching in every direction, including the west wall. This may be a feint.’ The captain nodded again and went about his duties.

Lydia handed the telescope back to Lacutus.

‘The trebuchets, we could arrange a little surprise for them,’ she told him, raising her voice to be heard over the shouted orders.

‘Not yet,’ Lacutus said as he watched the closing creatures through the telescope; he was appalled at the speed, how much closer they were already. The creatures had too many arms, some ending in vicious claws, but they also carried crude swords, clubs, maces, axes and even spears. These were not the pure xenos that had chased him from Innsport. Instead these were hybrid creatures. Their heads were bulbous, distended, and favoured their alien parents, though some had more human features. They continued to move inexorably towards the castle. Lacutus lowered the telescope and turned towards Lydia. ‘If there is anything else you can do to bring Wargod back to life…’

Lydia spent just a moment too long silent before nodding. He knew she had tried everything. She turned and headed down the steps, squeezing past the yeomanry and their longbows as they made their way up from the killing ground between the curtain and inner wall.

The yeomanry were a militia that consisted of every able-bodied person between the age of fifteen and seventy from the province. Membership was mandatory, as were the weekly longbow drills, not that many complained. Being able to defend their herds and flocks with a longbow was as useful for the farmers as it was for the alpine gnarlherds. As well as their bows most of the yeomanry were proficient with sword and spear, or at the very least staff and dagger. The yeomanry made up the bulk of their force, and though they were only a civilian militia the folk of Landfall Province came from hardy stock.

The rest of their forces were formed of the castle guard. These were professional soldiers, all trained to use sword, shield, spear and crossbow, and many of them could also fight from horseback. There were specialist artillerymen amongst the guard as well. They manned the mangonels and ballistae, and the huge trebuchets in the courtyards behind the inner walls. There were a few other household knights like Lacutus himself, but most had ridden out on similar missions to his own, and either weren’t due to return yet, or were suspiciously long overdue.

‘Sir.’ The provincial commander of the yeomanry was an ancient, toothless plains herdsman named Gult. He might have been old, but a life of hard work had left him still strong enough to bend a bow. More importantly, he commanded the respect of his subordinate officers and his rank and file.

‘I want your men ready to loose as soon as they are in killing range, and killing range only,’ Lacutus told him. Gult just nodded. ‘Who’s your best shot?’

‘One-Arrow Nokes,’ Gult told him.

‘Send him to me.’

Gult grinned toothlessly, as if he found something amusing, and shouted for Nokes.

Riders galloped out of the main gate, heading off in various directions to call those remaining outside the walls back into the castle. Mostly the horsemen were calling back scouts for the yeomanry and artillery, who were measuring distances and marking them on the few remaining landmarks in the ruined city.

Nokes turned up. She was a wiry, six-foot-tall woman of about fifty. Lacutus suspected she was a high-pasture gnarlherd, and she looked as though she were made of old leather. She just nodded to him.

‘Stay with me,’ Lacutus told her.

‘Sir?’ It was one of the artillery observers. ‘Pitch?’

Lacutus gave the question some thought. It was tempting to send barrels of flaming pitch into the ranks of the hybrid monsters sprinting towards his home. He suspected, however, that they would need all the pitch they had stockpiled when the genestealer forces had closed with the castle, when they were at the walls. On the walls. The very thought gave him a shiver.

‘Sir Lacutus!’ The cry came from one of the towers that were interspersed along the castle wall every hundred yards or so. ‘Ballista?’ Each of the towers had either a ballista or mangonel atop it.

‘Not yet,’ Lacutus called up and then turned back to the observer. ‘Stone-shot,’ he told the man. Stone-shot made sense to use against an enemy that was essentially infantry, and they had more of it than any other kind of ammunition for the trebuchets. Then his hand shot out between the battlements. ‘Check your range, man!’

The observer, startled, turned and looked out over the ruins of Landfall City. It seemed the observer had underestimated the speed of the hybrids as well. They were close now. Lacutus’ disgust at the inhuman ravening horde, this twisting of human flesh by alien monsters, was written all over his face.

‘Four hundred yards!’ the observer called; it was repeated by another observer on the inner wall and then again by the individual trebuchet commanders. ‘Three hundred and fifty yards!’ the observer cried, just a tinge of panic in his voice.

‘Notch!’ Gult cried, his order repeated along the battlements by his subordinate commanders. It looked like a ripple was running through the yeomanry as they drew arrows from their quivers and notched them on their bowstrings.

Lacutus could hear the thunder of thousands of sprinting feet, but other than that the rapidly approaching horde made little noise.

‘Three hundred yards!’

Lacutus heard the fear in the observer’s voice. He heard the range repeated and the cry of ‘Launch!’ from the courtyard. He glanced behind him to see the thick arm of the huge trebuchet rise up and then disappear behind the inner wall, as six tonnes of counterweight whipped the sling on the end of the arm and launched the weapon’s payload into the air.

‘Loose!’ Gult cried, and again a ripple passed down the battlements as the order was repeated and the yeomanry drew their bows, momentarily dimming the light as they filled the sky with arrows arcing towards the hybrid horde.

There was an explosion of earth as the first barrel of stone-shot hit the ground, sending hybrids tumbling through the air. The barrel burst, scattering the stones contained inside. Lacutus saw hybrids go down, but many of them got back up again.

And then the hybrid charge simply stopped, as though they had received a silent order. The arrows studded down, for the most part, just in front of them. Had they kept going they would have run straight into the hail. A few of the arrows reached the genestealer ranks and fewer still found their mark. A couple of hybrids fell but most seemed to ignore the arrow or arrows sticking out of them.

‘Two hundred and fifty yards,’ the observer said quietly.

It was just beyond the killing range of the longbows. The trebuchets and the mangonels could reach it by firing lighter payloads, but it would not be an efficient way to use their ammunition.

‘Louder,’ Lacutus told the observer.

The man shouted the range out the second time.

The runner returned, sweating and gasping for breath but bearing Woundthirst, Faith, Lacutus’ mail hauberk and his double crossbow. He started to wriggle into his hauberk.

He looked at the waiting hybrids, wracking his brain, trying to remember what the drunken deacon had told him. The creatures were swaying like corn in the breeze, but Lacutus suspected it was anticipation. What was clear was that they had some silent way to communicate, like psykers did.

His father was clambering the steps up the curtain wall. He looked as out of breath and sweaty as the runner had been, though he was moving a lot more slowly. Kark, the ogryn smith, trailed after him. The other six members of Kark’s family, who made up the small ogryn community in Landfall, followed the smith. All of them wore steel half-helms and breastplates, and carried door shields in one hand and wielded huge hammers in the other.

Members of the yeomanry made room for their lord as he moved to the battlements to look out at the thousands of hybrids just out of effective range. Lacutus continued to pull his mail on as his father studied their enemy.

Lacutus was tightening his belt, making sure his surcoat was straight, when his father lowered his telescope and offered it to his son. Lacutus shook his head and found his own, extending it. He saw the cloud of dust on the horizon first. Next he noticed the oxen trains pulling the trebuchets, easily the same size as their own, and wagons, presumably full of supplies. Huge, misshapen monstrosities, not much smaller than an ogryn but with too many limbs, pushed four siege towers towards the castle. Then he saw the thousands upon thousands of troops that marched with the enemy army. These at least moved like humans. Finally he saw the palanquin, itself the size of a large wagon. It was being carried by the same kind of monstrosities that pushed the siege towers. Lacutus had no idea what was inside the palanquin but it disquieted him somehow, even from so far away. His eye was hurting again.

‘Fisher,’ Lacutus practically spat. The elderman had emerged from within the palanquin and was standing on a platform at the head of the vehicle. Lacutus was less than pleased that he could see no trace of the near-fatal wound he had dealt Fisher in Innsport. The elderman turned towards the castle and Lacutus couldn’t shake the feeling that Fisher was staring straight at him.

‘Ballista on the tower!’ his father called. Whatever else, he still had a strong voice. ‘Can you reach the palanquin?’

‘Sorry, my lord,’ the ballista crew commander called back.

There were creatures moving around Fisher’s feet but they were too small and far away for Lacutus to make out properly.

‘The hill, just behind the palanquin,’ his father said.

Lacutus shifted the telescope away from Fisher’s hated features and focused on the hilltop. His blood ran cold. He saw purestrain genestealers moving low and predatorily; there were dozens of them. The hybrids they could fight, but he wasn’t sure they had weapons that could hurt the purestrains. These were creatures that gave even the Emperor’s own holy warriors pause. It felt like looking at his own death.

‘Emperor preserve us,’ he muttered, earning a sharp look from his father.

‘Did you see the more human-looking ones? Many of them were carrying crossbows,’ his father told him. ‘They and the siege engines will provide cover but it will be the hybrids that come to scale our walls.’

That made sense, but Lacutus noticed his father hadn’t mentioned the purestrains; if they climbed like they ran it wouldn’t take more than a few of them to get into the castle, and they would tear the yeomanry and castle guard apart.

‘They must have been preparing for this for a long time,’ Lacutus said.

‘Your discovery must have forced their hand. I dread to think what would have happened if we’d had no warning,’ his father said. Then he turned and made for the steps. ‘Hold the wall,’ he told Lacutus. ‘I’m going to speak with Lydia.’

‘Father!’ Lacutus called after him. The lord governor paused and turned. ‘We may yet need to find Vervius.’ Lacutus left it unsaid that finding Vervius would become all the more important if Lydia could not fix Wargod. His father made no reply but continued down the steps.

Lacutus turned back and realised that Nokes was watching him.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘Do you know something about Vervius?’

Nokes took a few moments, as though reluctant to answer.

‘Some here might,’ she said finally.

‘Where want us?’ Kark asked Lacutus. Lacutus had all but forgotten the group of huge ogryns taking up much of the battlements.

‘Spread your people out, one between each of the towers on the eastern wall. Anything comes over the wall, you kill it,’ he said.

Kark concentrated for a moment, thinking through his order, and then nodded. He started grabbing members of his family and pushing them in the direction he wanted them to go. Finally he turned back to Lacutus.

‘I think I stay here with you,’ Kark told him.

Lacutus nodded. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Kark, wielding his hammer, might be the only thing between him and death at the claws of one of the genestealers.

Lacutus ducked behind the merlon as a barrel full of stone-shot exploded against the wall. He heard screams and saw yeomanry torn off the battlements, falling into the killing ground between the two walls. He watched flame blossom over the battlements further down the wall as a barrel full of pitch exploded against it. There was more screaming, and more bodies tumbling off the battlements, these ones on fire. Bolts tore through the air all around them. He could see smoke rising from the courtyard. The trebuchet closest to them on the other side of the inner wall was burning. The genestealers’ siege weapons, throwing lighter payloads further, had been surprisingly accurate.

On the other side of the crenel Nokes risked loosing an arrow, and then ducked back behind the wall as she was answered with crossbow bolts for her troubles.

Teams of neophytes sheltered behind crude pavise shields. They kept up a near-constant barrage of crossbow bolts from equally crude windlasses. As Lacutus watched, one of the pavise shields was sundered by a spear-sized bolt fired by one of the tower ballista teams. A vengeful yeoman cut down the fleeing neophytes in a hail of arrows.

The four siege towers, pushed by the huge aberrations, were inching their way towards the eastern wall.

More crossbow bolts forced Lacutus to duck back behind the merlon before he found a target. The towers were a significant worry. The castle was surrounded by a dry moat on three sides and protected by the river gorge to the west. That meant the bridge at the top of each tower would be exposed to the defenders, but as soon as one of them reached the battlements it would be only a matter of time before the curtain wall fell. The purestrains remained the biggest threat, however, though so far they had stayed by Fisher, as if protecting the palanquin. The archers were already concentrating their fire on the aberrations but to little avail.

Lacutus swung around, crossbow at the ready. An elongated, purple-skinned face appeared in the crenel gap. Its long, sharp tongue extended past rows of sharp teeth. Lacutus gave a cry of surprise and squeezed the tickler, loosing the bolt right into the hybrid’s face.

‘Ladders!’ he cried, another face appearing in the crenel, a clawed arm reaching over the wall. Lacutus unloaded the crossbow’s second bolt into its face. ‘Kark!’

Lacutus dropped the crossbow and grabbed for his shield, left leaning against the wall. Straightening up he saw one of the hybrids climbing through the crenel. Hissing, it threw itself at him. Lacutus managed to bring Faith up. The impact of the hybrid landing on the shield almost knocked him off the battlements. Lacutus went down on one knee and bent. He heard claws scrabbling on adamantium, and the creature slid off and into the killing zone between the two walls. He knew the yeomanry on the inner wall’s battlements would already be loosing arrows at the creature.

Lacutus made to stand but then ducked as a hammer flew overhead and caved in the face of another hybrid standing in the crenel. Nokes loosed an arrow and a hybrid standing on the merlon next to Kark fell back.

‘The pole!’ Lacutus screamed at the ogryn as he tore Woundthirst from its scabbard and tried to activate it. Nothing happened. Today it appeared Woundthirst was just a sword, albeit one that never lost its edge. Lacutus thrust the point forward into another climbing hybrid’s face and it fell away.

Kark grabbed one of the long forked poles, almost knocking Lacutus off the battlements as he did so. He thrust the pole forward, knocking another climbing hybrid out of the crenel, and then used the fork to hook the top of the ladder. The ogryn’s enormous strength easily pushed the ladder away from the wall.

The flight of a crossbow bolt opened up a cut on the side of Lacutus’ face, the head narrowly missing him. He ducked back behind the merlon. They had to do something about the siege towers or it was all over.

‘Nokes!’ he shouted. She ignored him momentarily as she loosed another arrow, then she moved behind a merlon as well, looking over at him. Lacutus pointed south along the wall. ‘Go to the next tower with a ballista, tell them to attach a line to a broad-head bolt and put it into the tower closest to us!’ Nokes nodded and set off. ‘Kark, stay here!’ The big ogryn grunted his affirmative.

Lacutus slung his crossbow over his shoulder and headed north along the battlements towards the closest tower. The air was full of crossbow bolts. He kept Faith up and heard the bolts bouncing off the shield. Arrows, loosed blind by the yeomanry on the inner wall, flew overhead. He reached the entrance to the tower and scrambled up the plasteel stairs, past the wounded and runners sent for more ammunition.

He came out onto the tower and paused for a moment to take in the full panorama of the battle. He watched as ladders were pushed up against the wall, the hybrids already climbing them. He watched the genestealers’ trebuchets launch flaming barrels of pitch. Moments later a huge ball of fire blossomed up somewhere south of him, behind the inner wall. One of the barrels had found a supply of their own incendiaries.

The biggest problem remained, however, the siege towers inching forward.

Lacutus dropped his shield and reloaded his crossbow with two of Lydia’s special bolts. He gestured for the ballista commander to join him. The man crouch-ran over to him as bolts shot overhead. Lacutus told him what he wanted.

‘We have a bodkin loaded now!’ he shouted over the din.

‘Kill one of the large creatures pushing the tower, the closest to us!’

The man nodded and scampered back to his crew. The wood of the ballista’s frame was studded with crossbow bolts.

Lacutus crossed to one of the crenels and put his foot on it. He was looking out over the battlements. He took aim at an aberration pushing the tower that was closest to him. He squeezed the tickler, then again. He heard the clang of the ballista firing behind him, felt the wind from the huge bolt passing him. The ballista bolt passed Lacutus’ own in the air. The crew’s aim was true. The bolt ran the huge creature through, bursting out of its back. Lacutus’ bolts hit, one blasting a huge chunk of flesh out of the creature’s side, the other an arm. The creature staggered but didn’t go down. The tower had almost reached the top of the dry moat.

The ballista crew loaded a broad-head bolt with a line attached. Lacutus took the other end of the line and attached a grapple to it. He shouted a warning to the defenders on the inner wall and then threw the grapple over the battlements. Then he reloaded his own crossbow and took opportunistic shots whilst the ballista was cranked back. One of the crew screamed and fell back as a crossbow bolt took him in the cheek; he staggered away spitting blood and teeth but finally the ballista was ready. The ballista commander pushed the rest of the line off the tower so it wouldn’t bisect anyone when it went taut.

‘Loose!’ the commander cried.

The huge broad-head bolt shot out of the weapon, and once again the crew’s aim was sound. The bolt flew through the thick wood of the siege tower and into its interior. Lacutus hoped it had skewered a few of the hybrids that had been clambering up the inside of the siege engine. The tower had stopped on the edge of the dry moat. At the top of the wheeled structure a bridge was extending towards the curtain wall.

‘Pull the line!’ Lacutus screamed at the defenders on the inner wall. ‘As much weight as possible!’

Down on the battlements Kark grabbed the line, braced his legs against the wall and pulled with all his might. His huge, corded, ogryn muscles were bulging like they might burst with the effort.

Moments later another line was shot from the ballista he’d sent Nokes to, two towers along. It hit the same siege tower. The tower was bottom-heavy but it was on wheels, and some of the weight would shift as the hybrid horde scrambled up it, eager to be the first over the wall. Both lines were taut. Lacutus didn’t need it to move very much, just enough… The tower inched forward. There seemed to be confusion amongst the aberrations; too late they tried to halt the tower’s progress. The front wheels went over the lip of the dry moat and the whole structure toppled forward, hitting the castle wall and breaking in two.

Further south, one of the surviving trebuchets flung a smoking, oddly shaped object at another of the towers. The object landed close to the tower and there was an almighty explosion that almost knocked Lacutus over. He was sure it must have blown some of their own people off the battlements. The siege tower was lifted into the air and torn apart. It took the defenders a moment or two to recover from the shock, but then a ragged cheer went up. It had been another one of Lydia’s surprises: ancient unstable ordnance, probably intended originally for one of the Knights Errant, jury-rigged to explode and launched by a particularly brave trebuchet crew.

There were still two more towers moving, their bridges reaching out over the moat towards the battlements, and now the enemy’s trebuchets were concentrating on the ballista towers. More and more ladders were going up against the wall. The dry moat boiled with hybrids clambering over each other in their haste to reach the battlements and get amongst the defenders.

‘Move!’ Lacutus screamed as a smoking barrel of pitch arced towards the tower he was on. He dived for the hatch. Fire chased him down the plasteel stairs. He heard screaming above and saw a burning body plummet past one of the arrow slits as the ballista crew died.

Coughing, almost blinded by smoke, he managed to make it down the stairs and back out onto the battlements. He heard clanking, a heavy chain being wound. Appalled, he realised that it was the outer gatehouse’s portcullis being raised. He ran to the closest crenel and stuck his head out, oblivious to the crossbow bolts flying around him. He was even more horrified to see the drawbridge being lowered. In quick succession he thought that the hybrids had taken the wall, that his troops had rebelled and were foolishly trying to surrender, or even that some of the more human-looking hybrids had infiltrated the castle.

‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Draw it back up!’

Yeomanry and castle guard alike stared at him as though he were mad, but none made a move to action his orders. He looked out again and saw hybrids surge towards the drawbridge over the dry moat, many of them leaping for it despite the murderous hail of arrows.

The drawbridge had finally lowered. A shadow fell across the hybrid horde as they came to a halt. Then they turned and started to run, and then they simply ceased to exist. Even up on the wall Lacutus felt the wall of heat hit him as the fleeing hybrids were vaporised.

The heat haze subsided and Wargod stepped out onto the drawbridge. Lacutus stared. A ragged cheer went up from the defenders on the curtain wall, those that weren’t busy fighting the hybrids that had made it up onto the battlements. The Knight Errant’s thermal cannon projected a haze of hot, silent death. The carapace stub gun fired into the fleeing genestealer forces. There was an explosion of earth as the Knight’s chainsword roared into life and struck out at the fleeing enemy creatures.

There was a moment of exultation, but just a moment. Beyond the main gate, one of the remaining siege towers had extended its bridge, and hybrids were boiling over it and onto the curtain wall battlements, despite the deadly hail of arrows.

Wargod turned and lifted his thermal cannon. It looked as though the siege tower had lifted itself into the air, burst into flames and then torn itself apart.

The war machine went after the fourth and final siege tower with his chainsword. The weapon’s whirring teeth bit into the wooden structure, cutting through it with ease, spilling hybrid bodies like blood. The top half toppled over. Wargod kicked the heavy bottom half into kindling and proceeded to stamp on the fleeing aberrations, the heavy stubber firing all the while.

The Knight Errant turned his armoured head and looked back at the hybrids in the dry moat as they scrambled up the siege ladders. Lacutus could feel Wargod’s steps through the wall as the war machine picked up pace, running back towards the castle wall. He leapt up into the air and landed amongst the hybrids, pulping some underfoot. The Knight stamped his way north along the dry moat, the thermal cannon creating a constant heat haze as the hybrids were vaporised. The power of the cannon was such that flesh became steam. Siege ladders were kicked off the wall, or cut away, the teeth of the mighty chainsword scoring the plasteel wall of the castle. Those hybrids who escaped Wargod’s stamping feet, the heat and the sword, were torn apart by the heavy stubber as they tried to flee.

Wargod turned his attention south, feet now sticky with pulped alien flesh. Trebuchet-flung rocks bounced off the war machine and barrels of burning pitch exploded over his armour, wreathing parts of him in flames. It just added to the Knight’s air of invincibility. It was to the crossbow-wielding neophytes’ credit that they vainly shot bolt after bolt at the war machine. The cloud of missiles sparking uselessly of his armour was so thick it looked like a swarm of stinging insects. Wargod raised the thermal cannon casually and burning pavise shields fell to the ground. He used the weapon to clear the moat south of the drawbridge. Lacutus felt the weapon’s heat, saw the earth itself catch fire – watched his father, as the indestructible god of war, stride through the flames. Then, as one, the genestealer forces turned and ran.

Amongst the flames, Wargod looked towards the palanquin on the hill behind the genestealer lines. He took a faltering step out of the burning dry moat. Lacutus thought nothing of it, but then Wargod hesitated. He did not pursue the fleeing hybrid hordes, wreak havoc amongst their siege engines, and take fire and blade to Fisher and whatever horror lurked within the palanquin. Instead Wargod made his way back towards the drawbridge. Lacutus could not understand why his father would not press home his advantage. There was just the slightest stagger as the Knight stooped under the gatehouse, and then Lacutus realised what was happening. He turned and ran for the steps.

He reached the Sanctuary just as Wargod came to a stop in the alcove. Lacutus raced up the stairs that ran around the wall, making for the Chamber of Echoes high above.

He had nearly reached the chamber when the door opened and his father, dressed in the armour he wore to pilot Wargod, to become one with the Knight Errant, staggered out of the chamber clutching his left arm. Even as Lacutus reached for him, his father collapsed, sliding down the stairs high above the Sanctuary. Lacutus threw himself to his knees, cradling his father in his arms. The lord governor reached for Lacutus’ face, mouth moving as though he was trying to say something, and then died.

Lacutus knelt there for what seemed like a very long time, too numb for tears. Far below him he could see where the wounded had been laid out on the floor of the Sanctuary. He could hear people running up the stairs towards him. He was vaguely aware of Lydia standing over him, tears in her eyes.

‘My lord…’ she started.

Her words beat through his fugue. Lydia was talking to him. His father, his invincible, wise, ever-present father, was dead. He was now the lord governor. The fate of Leucosia was his responsibility, and though his father had routed the xenos forces, at the expense of his own life, there were still thousands of genestealers left beyond the walls of the castle. He could do no less than his father; he would give his last breath for those he was now honour-bound to protect. He just did not know if it would be enough.

THE LAST KNIGHT: PART TWO

Gavin G Smith

The chemical reek of the mask that covered his face, and the strong smell of charcoal and vinegar, nearly overwhelmed Lacutus Honaratus, knight and scion of the Honaratus family, governors of the planet of Leucosia. The claustrophobic mask and the clumsy suit he wore were contraptions of Lydia’s, designed to allow them to move around in the plague-ridden city of Landfall. To protect him, and those members of the city guard who’d volunteered to accompany him, from the rot. He could barely feel Woundthirst’s hilt through the thick gloves.

He could see with both eyes again. Around him, the city burned. Wargod and Queen of Blood stalked through the flames. The Knights towered over the rotting buildings as the structures succumbed to the fire. Thunderblade had fallen three days past. The Knight Errant’s power would be sadly missed.

They had a simple plan. Vervius had discerned the source of the corruption to be the sewers beneath one of the city’s fouler slaughterhouses. Obtaining the information had not been without risk to the astropath. In doing so he had fallen to some mystery ailment himself. The lord governor had ordered Vervius locked in his quarters, and guards stood ready to purify the chambers with fire if need be. Lacutus would take his men into the slaughterhouse and try to draw out the evil, hopefully distracting what lay there long enough to give Wargod the advantage of a surprise attack. Lacutus had seen the eyes of the older men who had volunteered. They knew they were going to die.

‘What is your sin?’

More than anything he was surprised that he could hear the voice so clearly through the hood.

The man walked next to him wearing no protection from the rot. Lacutus recognised him, though he had never met him. Lord Governor Ignatius Honaratus, his father’s father.

‘Fear,’ Lacutus told him.

His grandfather shook his head as though disappointed.

‘Fear is every warrior’s companion,’ he said and then turned down an alley and walked away from Lacutus.

One of the castle guards, a sergeant, grabbed Lacutus to get his attention, pointing down the street towards the slaughterhouse. Pustulent creatures, formed from the diseased victims of the rot, shambled down the street towards them. They wore their glistening, diseased innards like skirts. Lacutus tasted bile in the back of his throat. They would once have been people he’d known, spoken with – perhaps even family of the men who stood with him.

‘What is your sin?’ another ancestor asked him.

‘Doubt!’ Lacutus cried as the plague-ridden creatures charged. Woundthirst was still in his hand, though the ancient and temperamental power sword had decided not to activate this day.

His ancestor just spat and walked away in disgust.

They had fought their way to the slaughterhouse. Inside, the floor looked like a pustule of rotting flesh. Small, obese, horned daemons burst from buboes growing out of the pustule, swarming towards Lacutus and his men. The guards hacked them down as fast as they could, splattering themselves in the diseased ichor that leaked from the creatures.

It felt like every step of the way another ancestor had appeared to ask him what his sin was, each visitor more aggressive than the last, each more dismissive of his answers.

‘What is your sin?’ It was his father that screamed the question in his face now. Lord Governor Forganus Honaratus was dressed in the armour he would have been wearing when he died inside of Wargod.

The pustule burst. Dripping, whiplike tendrils flailed out of the wound. Broken horns upon a hunched back appeared as a huge daemon rose, newborn, from the plague pit.

‘Cowardice,’ Lacutus said quietly as his men were torn apart by the plague-lashes, the little daemons falling on them to feast. ‘I froze,’ he told his father even as one of the tendrils reached out for him.

The plague-lash made a ruin of his eye, threw him back through the air. He landed outside, frozen in fear, his men being torn apart all around him.

His father bent over him, anger and disgust warring on his face.

‘You have learned nothing! Your weakness sickens me and damns our people!’

Lacutus threw himself out of the Throne Mechanicum and onto the dusty floor of the Chamber of Echoes. He tore his helmet off, vomited and then howled. It was the keening of a wounded animal. It was too much. The weight of his responsibilities, all those people looking to him simply to live unpolluted by alien corruption. He had failed the Ritual of Becoming, to bond with the machine-spirit that lived within Wargod. The ritual had taken him back to the worst day of his life, three years gone now, and he had been found wanting in the eyes of his ancestors, a failure that effectively doomed his people.

His father, the former lord governor, was dead. Killed piloting Wargod to save Landfall Castle, besieged by the military forces of an extensive genestealer cult. Leucosia had long been cut off from the Imperium by the Siren’s Storm, and technology had largely died on the world but for a few powerful exceptions. Both the genestealer cultists and the humans who fought them did so with blade and crossbow, spear and bow. Now the xenos were biding their time, building more siege towers.

Lacutus, now lord governor himself, slumped back against the throne, the ancient technology that contained the ghosts of his forbears. He knew he was no coward. His father had taught him that acting despite fear was the true meaning of courage, but on that day he had failed, and they had lost Queen of Blood and very nearly Wargod. Not that Wargod’s continued existence mattered, as he had been judged unworthy to pilot the Knight Errant. If anything, his real cowardice was that he had always known his father was there to make the hard choices. He had relied on this. He had not learned what it meant to make such decisions himself.

Lacutus reached behind to touch the newly implanted interface plugs. He had been relieved when Lydia’s amateur chirurgery hadn’t left him paralysed, but the flesh around them was still tender and sore. Yanking the jacks out of them as he’d thrown himself from the throne hadn’t helped.

The Chamber of Echoes was still. Full of the thrones of Knights long since destroyed, each containing their ghosts, it was a machine mausoleum of the spirit. Motes of dust hung in the air. Lacutus could clearly see his father’s footsteps in the thick covering upon the ground, from the day he had made his final walk. The drag marks from when his body had been taken out of the throne. His body now lay in the family tomb deep beneath the chapel. Lacutus wondered if it might not have been better if the Ritual of Becoming had ended in his own death. The ritual had driven mad, even killed, better men, but it had let him live: apparently he was of sound mind, with the exception of his self-pity. He pushed himself to his feet. Without Wargod the defenders had one chance, and that chance was as slim as a razor.

Lydia was waiting for him at the top of the spiral stairs that ran around the wall of the Sanctuary. The tall, echoing space was once home to many Knights, but now only Wargod remained: an ancient, battle-scarred warrior standing silent sentry in his alcove. Lacutus couldn’t shake the feeling that the ancient Knight Errant was watching him, judging him, though he felt much more responsibility to the ranks of wounded that covered the floor of the huge structure.

Apprentice to the last sacristan, Lydia was covered in machine tattoos underneath the grease coating her skin. Despite her lack of formal training it had been she who had coaxed Wargod back to life after three long years of hard work, though she could not make the ion shield work again.

She was also Lacutus’ friend, despite their difference in station. She knew him well enough to read the failure on his face. She opened her mouth to say something, but Lacutus could not hear words of comfort today.

‘I’m going to find Vervius,’ he told her as he passed her on the wide stairs. He would have the old astropath use his powers to call for help.

‘Has the ritual broken your mind?’ she demanded, then had to run after him to keep up with his long legs. ‘You’re needed here.’

He stopped and turned to face her.

‘Why? Wargod has rejected me. There is nothing I can do on the wall that the captains of the guard and the yeomanry aren’t capable of, and unless we do something, we’re just waiting to be overrun.’ Lacutus continued down the stairs.

‘We don’t know if Vervius is alive,’ Lydia said, almost jogging to keep up.

‘We don’t know he’s dead.’

Lacutus had reached the bottom of the stairs and was making for the huge arched opening that allowed easy egress for Wargod and the Knight Errants that had gone before him. He walked out under bright blue skies, both suns shining down on them like a pair of mismatched eyes. Instinctively, he did not look up at the part of the sky where he knew he would find the scar on reality that was the Siren’s Storm. Its tendrils were forever reaching for Leucosia, and it was responsible for the warp storms that wracked the planet and frequently cut the system off from the rest of the Imperium of Man.

‘Even if he is alive and still capable of using his powers, we don’t know if the system is navigable!’

‘And again, we don’t know it’s not,’ Lacutus muttered as he strode across the courtyard towards the gatehouse in the inner wall.

Lydia stopped. Lacutus glanced behind to see her hands on her hips in a gesture of anger that he knew so well. He continued walking.

‘Lacutus Honaratus, stop right now and listen to me!’

Lacutus sighed but came to a halt. He turned to face Lydia. Everyone else in the courtyard – yeomanry militia with their longbows; guards; boys and girls, too young to fight, ferrying sheaves of arrows; even Kark, the huge ogryn smith at his forge built against the inner wall – stopped and turned to see what the furore was about.

‘You are lord governor now,’ Lydia said, though it was clear that she had noticed just how much attention she was calling to them.

Lacutus closed the distance between them.

‘Though that apparently doesn’t stop you from haranguing me publicly!’ he hissed.

‘They need you here to… to… reassure them.’ Even as she said the words, it was clear from Lydia’s expression that she knew how weak they sounded.

‘I know,’ he told her. She was right. Morale was crucial, especially now, with his father gone.

‘Send someone else,’ Lydia told him.

‘Who?’

‘One of the yeomanry, a gnarlherd who knows the mountains.’

‘I know the mountains,’ he told her.

‘Not like they do…’

‘None of them can match me on horseback, and this will need to be done quickly. Besides, Vervius is not going to listen to a member of the yeomanry.’ Lacutus wasn’t entirely sure that the astropath would even listen to him. Vervius had deserted his position after complaining that he was too old and weak to continue. The astropath had felt that one more attempt to use his powers would see him fall to the corrupting influences within the warp.

‘How will you even get out?’ Lydia demanded.

‘The sally port in the western wall,’ he told her.

‘They’ll have it guarded.’

‘Very probably,’ Lacutus conceded.

‘The genestealers could already have creatures up in the mountains looking for Vervius themselves.’

Lacutus frowned at this. ‘How would they know?’ he asked.

‘Think, Lacutus. How accurate was their artillery fire? They targeted the trebuchets in the courtyards behind the walls. They dropped a barrel of burning pitch into one of our own incendiary supplies, and some of them look almost human.’

‘You think they’ve been inside the castle before?’ he asked.

Lydia just nodded. It made sense. Lacutus discovering the genestealers in Innsport, what now felt like so long ago, may have forced them to act before they were fully ready, but it was clear that they had been preparing for this for a very long time.

‘That is all the more reason to deny him to the enemy.’

Lacutus continued towards the gatehouse. Lydia fell in next to him but remained quiet. They walked through the shade of the gatehouse and into the killing ground between the inner and curtain walls. They climbed the steps to the curtain wall’s battlements, sharing a few words and nods with the yeomanry and guards they passed on the way.

Lacutus looked out over the ruins of Landfall City. Burned three years ago during the warp plague, the area had once again become a battleground. It was covered in the bodies of dead hybrids and neophytes from the initial attack. The genestealer cult’s forces seemed to care little for their dead, and even the carrion-eaters avoided their alien flesh.

The enemy were camped just beyond the effective range of the castle’s remaining trebuchets, mangonels and ballistae, and the yeomanry’s lethal longbows. They had not attacked in two weeks, but nor had they been inactive. Six nearly finished siege towers rose from the enemy camp like broken fingers. Lacutus extended his telescope and looked to them. Hybrids and neophytes swarmed over the siege engines as they aided in their construction. In the first attack, the enemy had possessed only four towers, and had it not been for Wargod the castle would have been overrun.

Lacutus shifted his telescope to a huge palanquin on a hill behind the main genestealer lines. Elderman Fisher – the black-eyed, bulbous-headed creature that seemed to be some kind of high priest for the xenos forces – was exhorting the swaying purestrains that surrounded the palanquin. Lacutus knew that the moment the genestealers committed to battle, it was all over, and he suspected they would do just that when the next attack came. Without Wargod there was little the defenders had that could touch creatures capable of tearing apart even the Emperor’s most dangerous warriors. So whilst it was good the purestrains were busy, it was also disconcerting. He wanted to know what was more important than destroying their enemies.

‘What do you think they’re doing?’ Lydia asked him.

‘Praying,’ he told her, though he was far from convinced this was the case. ‘Why? What do you think they’re doing?’

Lydia gave the question some thought.

‘Calling to something. Something worse.’

Gult, the grizzled commander of the yeomanry, had found a gnarlherd amongst his men who told Lacutus that a strange old man was living in a bothy in one of the high mountain pastures. Kark, the ogryn smith, had brought the lord governor Augustus, his destrier and, as far as Lacutus was concerned, the finest horse to ever have been bred on the Eastern Plains. Despite his size and bestial visage, Kark had a way with horses and loved Augustus. He had warned Lacutus to look after the destrier and not to ride him as hard as he had when returning from Innsport to warn Landfall about the genestealers.

Lacutus had left by a sally port in the western wall, leading Augustus down a narrow path into the gorge to cross the river at what could only laughingly be called a ford. They had made their way up the steep path on the other side to find hybrids waiting to ambush them. One-Arrow Nokes had been watching over them from the wall, however. The best shot in the yeomanry, she hadn’t allowed the hybrids to get close to Lacutus and Augustus.

Now horse and rider navigated the narrow and often steep mountain tracks up into the Grey Sentinels. More than once he found himself looking down on Landfall Castle. It looked oddly peaceful. No smoke rose from it today beyond that of the castle chimneys. The damage inflicted in the first assault was out of view, as Lacutus looked at it from the west. He could see the genestealer forces beyond the castle, but they were still for the time being. He peered through his telescope at the palanquin again. Elderman Fisher was nowhere to be seen, but the purestrains remained, crouched, as though in supplication to whatever horror the palanquin hid.

In the bright skies of another deceptively perfect day on Leucosia, the light of the largest sun dimmed – only a little, but enough to be noticeable. Lacutus looked up, shading his remaining good eye. He saw it silhouetted against the bright star’s light: a living ship, vast enough that he could see it clearly, even this far away. It felt like a clawed hand had gripped his heart. Now he knew what Fisher and the purestrains had been doing. Lydia had been right. This must be what they were calling. He wondered how much time they had left.

Lacutus had ridden as fast as he dared, often over treacherous ground, up into the mountains. He hadn’t risked riding by night. Instead, he led Augustus until fatigue and the terrain made it too difficult to do so.

Lacutus found the pasture on the second day, a wide-open but hilly expanse bordered by a strip of alpine woods that lay between the pasture and the snowline. Set against the grey and white of the stark Sentinels, the whole scene could have been quite picturesque, but for the nausea-inducing scar in reality that was the Siren’s Storm hanging in the clear blue sky overhead. He had been told that the bothy lay in the woods just north of the pasture. It was a cold but crisp day. Lacutus looked around for any signs of Vervius. For a moment all he saw were a few of the large, goatlike gnarls; then he noticed wisps of smoke rising from the woods just beyond the treeline.

Lacutus could see Augustus’ breath, and his own, in the noticeably thinner air as horse and rider weaved their way through the evergreens towards the source of the smoke. The bothy was a tiny cottage, little more than a hut. Moss grew between the irregularly shaped stones used in its construction, and it had a thatched roof. The window shutters were closed against the cold. Lacutus considered calling out but decided to ride around the bothy first, to make sure there wasn’t another exit that Vervius could use to try and escape. He kept his distance from the house, so that the old astropath wouldn’t hear him, though if he was still using his psychic abilities he must surely know of Lacutus and Augustus’ presence.

It was Augustus who warned him of others as they made their way quietly around the bothy. The destrier froze, one ear going up. Lacutus felt the horse tense under him. Augustus was well trained enough not to make a noise, but Lacutus knew the horse had sensed something, something predatory. They were behind the bothy, looking down the slope through the trees towards the little hut. Rider and horse were very still now. At first, Lacutus saw nothing. Then, from out of the undergrowth at the base of an ancient tree, a figure emerged. From his position behind the figure, Lacutus could make out the elongated skull and third arm of a hybrid. A moment later, he saw another hybrid move from a concealed position and head towards the bothy as well. Lacutus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. His eye hurt. Something wasn’t right here, but he knew that if the hybrids reached the bothy then any hope that Vervius might help them died.

Lacutus snapped the visor on his helm down and kicked Augustus into a gallop. They plunged down through the woods, the lower branches of the trees whipping at them. He drew Woundthirst and tried to activate the temperamental power sword, but to no avail. Both hybrids were now running towards the bothy.

Lacutus saw a blur in the air to his left. He managed to bring Faith up in time, and the crossbow bolt glanced off the shield. The second bolt hit his helmet, denting but not penetrating it. Lacutus felt like he’d been hit by a hammer. His vision blurred and he had a strong urge to vomit. He only just managed to keep hold of his sword. He shook his head, trying to clear it as Augustus bore down on the first hybrid. Lacutus held Woundthirst across his body, point down; Faith he held high and away from himself. He felt another crossbow bolt bounce off his shield as he reached the first hybrid. He swung Woundthirst upwards, the blade of the ancient sword tearing through the hybrid’s back along its vertebrae, splitting open its bulbous head and lifting it off its feet. He continued to move the sword, bringing it down on his right, bisecting the skull of the second hybrid.

He saw a neophyte fly from a tree ahead of him and bounce off the trunk of another hard enough to break its spine. Lacutus couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. There was movement from his left; something hit him hard, and he was torn from Augustus’ back. He hit the ground winded, tumbling. He’d lost Woundthirst but somehow managed to hold on to Faith. He pushed himself onto one knee, still fighting for breath. He saw Woundthirst lying in the dirt a few yards away. Beyond his sword, a purestrain genestealer crouched low to the ground, alien eyes glaring at him. Lacutus realised it was already dead.

He lunged for Woundthirst, fingers wrapping around the hilt of the sword as the creature pounced. He managed to get Faith between himself and the purestrain. The creature hit the shield hard enough to send Lacutus flying through the air. He somehow kept hold of his sword and shield, and had the presence of mind to bring the shield up just as the purestrain landed on it. He was appalled to hear the scream of twisted metal as the creature’s claws tore into the adamantium. The purestrain’s hooked tongue whipped over the shield, trying to find a way into his helmet, and purchase in his flesh. Lacutus said a quick prayer to the Emperor and tried to activate Woundthirst again. The sword hummed into life. Faith was torn away from him. Lacutus wrenched the sword between him and the purestrain, and the creature impaled itself on the blade in its hurry to get to him. In a frenzy, Lacutus scrambled out from under the thrashing xenos, yanked Woundthirst free and hit the purestrain with the power sword until it stopped moving.

Lacutus stared at the genestealer. He was covered in its ichor and shaking like a leaf. He only counted five limbs. He wondered if it had been one of the purestrains that had chased him out of Innsport when he had first stumbled across the xenos infection.

Augustus returned to him, nuzzled him, but he didn’t respond. He felt numb. He knew he should be dead. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t. The only possible explanation he could think of was that by activating Woundthirst, the Emperor had answered his prayer. It took an aggrieved neigh from Augustus to bring Lacutus out of it. Then he heard the screaming and remembered that there was another crossbow-wielding neophyte around. Lacutus grabbed Faith. There were rents in the adamantium from the purestrain’s claws, but it was still just about serviceable as a shield.

Searching around, he quickly found the source of the screaming. A second neophyte was thrashing in the dirt to the sounds of his own bones breaking. He looked like a piece of paper being crumpled up by some terrible invisible force. Lacutus stared at the dying neophyte, an expression of distaste on his face, but he struggled to find any sympathy for the foul creature, its humanity forever polluted by the alien taint. He put it out of its misery with a thrust of his sword.

‘Vervius!’ Lacutus cried. He’d seen the astropath’s powers demonstrated before, though never so murderously.

‘I’m not going back,’ Vervius said, stepping out from behind one of the evergreens.

Lacutus had thought it impossible for the astropath to look any older than he had the last time he’d seen him, a year ago. He was tall, despite the stoop, painfully thin and, like Fisher, hairless – though unlike the elderman, his near-translucent skin was wrinkled like old parchment. Vervius slid down his staff to sit on a moss-covered fallen tree trunk.

‘You swore an oath, you do not have a choice,’ Lacutus told him, anger at the astropath’s dereliction of duty warring with pity at the old man’s fragile state. He was worried that Vervius wouldn’t survive the ride back. He couldn’t imagine how he’d survived in the wilderness.

Vervius took a moment. He smoothed his dark, tattered robes.

‘You don’t know how lucky you are here,’ he said.

‘There are genestealers at the gates of our home,’ Lacutus said, moving closer to the astropath.

‘Your home. I was taken from mine by the Black Ships so very long ago. My service to the Emperor took me all over this miserable galaxy. This is by far the most beautiful place I have ever visited, but it’s a lie, isn’t it?’

Lacutus stared at Vervius, not sure where he was going with this. He was eager to return but preferred to reason with the fragile old man.

‘I watched you in the days after the daemon took your eye–’

‘You’re blind,’ Lacutus said, even as Vervius turned his sightless eyes on him.

‘You couldn’t look at it, could you?’

Lacutus resisted the urge to glance up at the warp storm.

‘The Siren’s Storm, indeed. Leucosia draws you in with its beauty and then traps you, treats you to all the bounties of the warp.’ Vervius pointed upwards. ‘That’s not a sky, it’s a caul, and all the horrors of existence are pressing against it, waiting to be born. And I can feel them there every moment of my existence.’

‘You have been in the presence of the Emperor!’ Lacutus protested.

‘He is little more than a living corpse.’

The contempt in the astropath’s voice was nearly too much for Lacutus. He came the closest he’d ever been to striking his father’s oldest friend.

‘That is heresy!’ he spat instead.

‘What would you know of it, boy?’ Vervius demanded.

‘The Emperor is the light, the beacon that guides us…’

‘To a life of toil and death for nearly all who live.’

‘Because the alternative–’

‘Is too horrible to contemplate, and yet some still embrace it.’

‘Have you already fallen?’ Lacutus demanded, reaching for his sword.

Vervius raised a hand in a placatory gesture.

‘Calm yourself. I prefer the repose of oblivion over corruption, but I think I have listened closely enough to the whispers from beyond the caul to be a good servant still. You’re not giving me a choice though, are you?’

Lacutus shook his head, troubled by the astropath’s words.

‘You wish me to try and call for help?’ he asked. Lacutus nodded. ‘Though the Imperium have forsaken this place, though this world is a trap.’

‘If the genestealers are allowed to get a foothold here then worse will follow.’

‘The storms. The cult of Nurgle, not three years past. Now genestealers. It’s just a matter of time, you know that.’

Lacutus did not truly understand this. He had listened to the old astropath’s stories at his father’s knee. Heard him tell of the dark glories of the Imperium of Man, and speak in awe about being in the presence of the Emperor, of being soul-bound to a living god. More than anything it had been Vervius’ stories and his father’s readings, rather than the ramblings of some drunk deacon, that had cemented Lacutus’ faith in the Emperor. He kneeled in front of the old astropath.

‘Then we fight until we die, and every xenos we take with us is one less that troubles humanity.’

Vervius looked at him, tears in his sightless eyes.

‘It never ends,’ he said, his voice breaking.

‘That does not matter.’

‘Then know this. The next time I call out across the warp, I will fall. I am not strong enough, Lacutus.’

‘Then I will stand over you,’ Lacutus told him, ‘and the last thing you shall know is Woundthirst’s merciful touch.’

Lacutus felt the kiss of despair as he looked down into the river gorge that ran along the western wall of Landfall Castle. It was crawling with genestealers. Teams of hybrids with ladders; the neophytes with their huge pavise shields, so clumsy on the steep gorge path. They were no real threat to the castle, but they tied up some of the defenders, pulling them away from the eastern wall and blocking Lacutus’ access to the western sally port. He sagged in his saddle. There had never been much hope, but now he couldn’t see a way into the castle.

‘What now?’ Vervius asked. He had ridden behind Lacutus. They had travelled as fast as Lacutus had dared. He had half expected the old astropath to expire from the sheer exertion of it, but Vervius endured. It had still taken them half a day longer than the initial journey up to the high pasture. Lacutus was relieved that the curtain wall had not fallen, though smoke rose from many parts of the castle, a number of the ballistae and mangonels seemed to be no longer functional, and only one of the trebuchets was still launching boulders and barrels of stone shot and pitch over the walls.

Lacutus had no answer for Vervius. He could not see a way into the castle. Even if he survived riding through the genestealers, the defenders could not risk opening the gates for them. He wracked his brain trying to think of a solution, as he knew his despair at the situation was merely another weapon wielded by the enemies of humanity.

‘I could try to contact your father,’ Vervius said.

‘My father is dead,’ Lacutus told him, dismounting.

‘I’m sorry.’

Lacutus could hear the grief in the old astropath’s words. Vervius and his father had been friends.

He moved round to see to Augustus, calming the destrier, who was still nervous of Vervius’ unnatural presence. He drew the horse’s face to his own, and Augustus nuzzled against him.

‘One more time, old friend.’

Then he drew his sword, kneeling and praying, feeling Vervius’ blind eyes upon him as he did so.

Augustus’ hooves were thunder against the wooden planks of the bridge that crossed the River Andress. The only advantages they had were surprise and the destrier’s speed. Woundthirst hummed in his hands, the sword’s eagerness to taste xenos flesh seemingly growing with Lacutus’ devotion to the Emperor, but they rode by the hybrids. The sword only struck if those within reach posed a threat, like the neophytes with their powerful windlass crossbows. He had strapped Vervius to him. The astropath wore Faith across his back, and only his frail legs were really vulnerable. It felt good, exhilarating, to be riding towards the army of thousands that besieged his home. It was the freedom that came from knowing you were going to die. The freedom of one more gallop with Augustus.

Most of the hybrids were down in the dry moat, trying to scale the wall. Since the first attack the genestealer forces had made crude shields to be held over the attackers’ heads, but the hybrids were not natural shield users. As he galloped, Lacutus was aware of oil being poured from the castle walls, followed by a blossoming fireball as a flaming arrow lit the oil.

A lone hybrid charged them, but Lacutus rode him down, Augustus barely breaking step as the creature fell under his hooves.

The neophytes had noticed them now. The first incoming crossbow bolts were loosed in haste, but Lacutus knew it would only take a moment for them to calm themselves, to lead the shot. He found himself more worried about Augustus than himself. The destrier did not deserve to suffer. This was the moment, however, that all the defenders along the curtain wall’s battlements, north of the main gate, started loosing at the neophytes. The constant barrage of arrows forced the crossbow teams behind their pavise shields, any that tried to target Lacutus risking death at the hands of yeomanry sharpshooters. Lacutus watched as a ballista bolt shattered a pavise, and the neophytes that had been sheltering behind it were cut down in a storm of arrows. Augustus trampled their corpses as they passed.

Then Lacutus saw the towers, all six of them, inching towards the curtain wall south of the main gate. Then he saw the hybrids scaling their ladders as the castle’s defenders concentrated on providing cover for Lacutus and Augustus’ mad dash. Then he saw the mass forming between them and the main gate, a number of the huge aberrations amongst them. It was over. Lacutus took some consolation from the fact that they had littered the ground around the castle with dead xenos. Before he reached the mass of hybrids, neophytes and aberrations in front of the main gate he had decided he would kill Vervius, so he did not suffer, and let Augustus go, though he feared his loyal destrier would not leave his side.

Then the drawbridge started to lower.

At least half of the genestealer horde in front of the gate surged towards it, leaping for the drawbridge, trying to clamber onto it, many of them cut down by the archers on the curtain wall overlooking the gate.

Lacutus could hear the portcullis creaking open. He wanted to scream at them, call them fools; couldn’t they see that he wouldn’t make it?

Crossbow bolts were whipping past him. It was only a matter of time before he or Augustus were hit. He could hear the sound of battle atop the curtain walls. The hybrids had found purchase there.

The drawbridge had finally lowered. For a moment he had the mad thought that someone else was piloting Wargod, but then the portcullis was raised and the ogryns marched out, seven of them, the mighty Kark in the centre, his kin on either side. The yeomanry poured arrows into the hybrids on the drawbridge. The guards on the battlements fought desperately against the hybrids from the siege towers, trying to buy the archers just a little more time. The hybrids ran at the ogryns’ huge door shields, leaping at them, only to be driven into the ground by mighty warhammers. Even as he galloped towards them, Lacutus could not quite believe what he was seeing. The sheer power of the ogryns as they cut a swathe through the hybrids, their seemingly impenetrable wall of shields pushing the massed hybrids back one step at a time.

‘For the guv’nor!’ Kark yelled, and the hammers came down again.

Augustus leapt into the back of the press. Hybrids went down under the destrier’s hooves. Augustus almost lost his footing but managed to recover. Lacutus hacked to the right and left for all he was worth, Woundthirst hungry in his hand. One of the aberrations, towering over the surrounding hybrids, was nearly at the shield wall. Lacutus stood on the saddle, oblivious to Vervius, still strapped to him, and leaned forward, stabbing out with Woundthirst. The power sword practically slid into the back of the aberration’s skull.

‘Open!’ Kark shouted. Then he and another ogryn, Kark’s son, pushed their door shields out at right angles, opening a hole in the shield wall and in doing so making themselves vulnerable. Lacutus rode through the gap.

‘Close!’ Kark shouted behind Lacutus. Augustus was galloping towards a wall of spears in the hands of terrified-looking guards waiting inside the curtain wall’s gatehouse.

‘Back!’ Kark shouted.

The guards parted for Augustus. Lacutus reined the destrier to a halt. Two guards cut Vervius free and lifted him off the horse. Lacutus couldn’t tell if the astropath lived or not. He swung his leg over Augustus’ head and slid to the ground. It was only then he noticed that Augustus had taken two crossbow bolts in his forequarters, and yet the brave destrier had not stopped. He slapped Augustus’ flanks. The destrier took off at a gallop. Lacutus knew the animal would find his way to the stables, but now he had to kill something.

He stalked towards the back of the guards’ line of spears. There were hybrids between the retreating ogryns and spearmen now. Some must have made it through the same gap in the ogryn line Lacutus himself had ridden through. In their desperation to get into the castle the hybrids had charged the spearmen rather than attack the ogryns’ backs. As Lacutus picked up his pace he saw the spearmen’s line start to buckle as the three-armed alien monsters threw themselves at the guards in a frenzy. Lacutus charged the hybrids, hewing left and right, Woundthirst cutting through alien-polluted flesh, more butchery than sword-craft. Lacutus was screaming, hybrid blood dripping from him. He felt the spearmen push forward, heartened by their lord as he matched the hybrids’ ferocity with his own. Spears and crossbow bolts rained down through the gatehouse’s murder holes, and more hybrids fell, until there were no more.

The ogryns had made it back inside the gatehouse and were holding the line just behind where the portcullis would fall. Lacutus was aware of someone behind him shouting for the portcullis to be dropped. Then everything happened very quickly. An aberration had fought its way to the front of the hybrid press, and swung its huge two-handed pick at Kark’s skull. Kark got his shield in the way but the pick caught the top of it. The aberration pulled the pick back hard. Kark was yanked forward. The portcullis fell so fast that Lacutus knew its chains had been cut. Kark was on the wrong side of it.

‘Advance!’ the guard sergeant commanding the spearmen ordered. The ogryns threw themselves at the portcullis, stooping to try to lift the huge plasteel grate, their enormous muscles bulging fit to burst. The guards reached the portcullis and thrust their spears through, ramming them into hybrid flesh, pushing them back and clearing room for Kark. The ogryn had already lost his shield. In the brief moment he’d been surrounded his armour had been torn to pieces; he was bleeding from multiple wounds, crossbow bolts sticking out of him. He was still standing, however, and the aberration lay at his feet, its head squashed flat.

‘C’mon then!’ he shouted at the hybrids trying to dodge the guards’ spears to get at the ogryn. ‘For the guv’nor!’ the ogryn screamed, and waded into the hybrids. It was this honouring of his family, more than anything, that made Lacutus understand that he had to do something. He turned and ran back through the gatehouse.

Out in the killing ground between the two walls he paused for a moment to take in the situation on the battlements. South of the gatehouse, where the enemy had concentrated their siege towers, the hybrids had gained the wall. The defenders on the inner wall were pouring arrows and crossbow bolts into the attackers. Some of the neophytes, however, were using their crude pavise shields to cover the hybrids as they pushed their way north along the walls, forcing the guards back towards the gatehouse. It was only a matter of time before the curtain wall fell. There were ladders spanning the gap between the two walls that the curtain wall defenders could use to flee, and when the hybrids tried to follow the ladders could be thrown down or destroyed.

Lacutus ran up the steps just north of the gatehouse. Nokes was waiting for him on the battlements. It made sense that she would have been covering his approach to the castle.

‘Come with me,’ he told her. Nokes followed him into the gatehouse tower, and they ran up the stairs.

Lacutus came out into the bright sunlight atop the tower. He glanced south along the battlements. The guards couldn’t retreat quickly enough. They were being torn apart by the claws and crude iron blades of the hybrids. He turned back to focus on the ballista crew. Their weapon was loaded but they all remained still, staring at the battlefield, visibly shaken.

Lacutus moved forwards and looked down through the crenel. It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at. The hybrid horde had come to a stop. Kark was still on his feet, but even from here Lacutus could see the ogryn was breathing hard, blood pooling at his feet. He still held his hammer at the ready, however. The hybrids were parting to let something pass through them. At first Lacutus thought it was one of the purestrains, only it was much larger and much more terrible to behold. Vicious-looking spikes grew through its thick, armoured carapace. It had claws like sword blades, its segmented tail ending in a scythe-like stinger. Yet it wasn’t the creature’s appearance that frightened Lacutus. It seemed to radiate awe. None of the defenders were firing on it. Lacutus already knew their arrows would do nothing. He knew it had to be the creature from inside the palanquin, Fisher’s master. That was when Lacutus realised that the genestealers were just toying with them. They could not fight this. Lacutus didn’t look towards the sun, he didn’t need to: he could feel the presence of the vast living ship as it closed with his planet.

The huge genestealer came to a halt a little distance away from Kark.

‘I’s going to squash you, bug,’ Kark told the thing. He didn’t hesitate. He just started walking towards the creature.

A ragged cheer went up from the defenders on the curtain wall north of the gatehouse. It was silenced when Kark dropped his hammer and came to a halt, swaying in place as though drunk. The huge genestealer then turned. Kark staggered after him, seemingly in a trance, as if the creature had put an invisible leash around the ogryn’s neck.

‘Nokes,’ Lacutus said.

She leaned her longbow against a merlon and moved towards the ballista’s trigger mechanism.

‘We’ll do it,’ the ballista team commander said, stepping in front of her. Nokes just punched him, putting him on his back. The rest of the team got out of her way. She aimed the ballista. Lacutus was acutely aware of the fight on the battlement getting closer and closer.

‘Which one?’ Nokes asked.

‘Kark,’ Lacutus managed. He closed his good eye but still heard the crack of the ballista. He did not need to look to know that Nokes had hit her mark, that Kark was dead. Better that than whatever fate the genestealers had planned for the noble and loyal ogryn.

‘We could have done that,’ the ballista team commander said.

‘He told me to do it,’ Nokes replied.

What followed the death of Kark had been a blur. They had fought their way down the tower as the hybrids reached it. Then they had made a precarious escape across the ladders that ran over the killing ground, whilst the archers on the inner wall covered them. Vervius had lived, however. After seeing the genestealer’s leader, Lacutus couldn’t shake the feeling that the astropath’s survival was just fate toying with him.

Vervius’ chamber was a simple cell. The only decoration was a banner depicting the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Vervius was sat up in his cot. His chalk-white skin was beaded with flop sweat, and he was shaking like a leaf. His tattered robes had been slit, and Lacutus could see the astropath’s bandaged and splinted left leg. The only reason Vervius was awake at all was because the chirurgeon had given him an infusion of yaln root to dull the pain.

Vervius had a board on his lap and there he lay the ancient crystal wafers of the Emperor’s Tarot. They were little more than an aid to concentration. Vervius favoured their imagery in the formation of his messages. Their symbolism was widely known and easy to understand. He drew the Hulk, the Great Host inverted, the Shattered World, the psychoactive cards responding to the touch of the astropath’s mind, each image symbolic of the message he was trying to send.

Lacutus stood over him. Two of the castle guards, both bearing bandaged wounds like so many of the castle’s defenders, stood by the door to Vervius’ quarters.

Vervius finished arranging the cards and looked up at Lacutus. He wasn’t sure how much of the shaking was from the astropath’s wound and how much was fear. Vervius was clearly terrified.

‘Remember my father’s sacrifice,’ Lacutus told him. It may have been a cruel thing to say. It was certainly a manipulative thing to say. If Vervius was right then the astropath was not just looking at his own death but damnation as well. It couldn’t be easy to act in the face of such certainty, but whether it was Lacutus’ words or the astropath’s own resolve, Vervius looked down at the cards and started to concentrate, repeating a mantra in High Gothic to himself.

Nothing happened for a very long time. Then suddenly Vervius’ back arched in a way that should have made the astropath scream in agony. A series of vicious spasms wracked Vervius’ body, contorting it in unnatural ways. Horrified, Lacutus heard bones snapping, the crunch of vertebrae grinding together.

‘Fool! You should have submitted to my will when you had the chance.’

Lacutus went cold as he recognised Elderman Fisher’s voice – except it sounded tortured, torn from Vervius’ mouth.

‘The immaterium is closed to you. You live beneath the shadow in the warp. The great Harvester is coming. Your flesh belongs to us!’

Lacutus had heard enough. Woundthirst offered Vervius succour by separating the astropath’s head from his body.

‘Burn him and salt the earth where his ashes fall,’ Lacutus told the guards.

Lacutus strode towards the Sanctuary dressed in his father’s armour once more, the suit his father had worn when he had become one with Wargod. The siege had come to a stalemate. Genestealer forces held the inner wall but had to shelter behind the pavise shields that now lined the battlements or risk death at the hands of yeomanry archers or the castle guard’s crossbowmen. Lacutus knew that the stalemate would only last until the purestrains were committed to the battle. The palanquin had held a throne that appeared to be made of bone. The monster that had come for Kark now sat openly upon it. The purestrains lay around it like a pack of hunting dogs.

Lacutus had felt something change, with the living ship moving ever closer, with the genestealers’ master finally revealed. He had felt his soul oppressed. He knew that if he felt it then all his people felt it, even as they fought the genestealer forces from the inner wall, or tended the wounded, or were tormented in a moment’s grabbed sleep. The light of their largest sun continued to dim. Lacutus looked up, shading his remaining good eye. The living ship, silhouetted against the sun, was large enough that all could see it, even this far away. That alone should have broken his… their will. Surely the battle was over now? Yet Lacutus found himself smiling. He had heard the anger in Fisher’s voice, fear even. Vervius had managed to send the message before he was cut off. It was a slim hope, but that was all they had ever had. Now they were just playing for time.

Lydia was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs that led to the Chamber of Echoes. She watched him approach. Lacutus paused by her.

‘The spirits will kill you if you try again,’ she told him.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at the hundreds of wounded, some dying, and those already dead, lying on the Sanctuary floor.

‘They could have killed me, broken my mind. Instead they left me whole. I have to believe that’s for a reason.’ He didn’t tell her the lesson that Kark’s death and the genestealer lord had taught him. His doubts and fears were irrelevant. They always had been.

The moment the hatch closed behind him, the moaning of the wounded and the sounds of battle were silenced. Lacutus was alone again amongst the dust and dead thrones of warriors long since departed. The faint grey illumination lit the Chamber of Echoes like it was dusk.

He made his way through the dust, following, once more, his father’s footprints. He reached the Throne Mechanicum that belonged to Wargod. He knew that doubt and fear could kill him in the Ritual of Becoming, but that was a secondary consideration to the service he owed his people.

He spent a moment looking at the throne. Then he sat down. For a moment he wondered if this was cowardice. Had he abandoned the fight? But if Fisher had told the truth, and the silhouette of the living ship against the sun would certainly seem to suggest he had, then they would need Wargod. Not to win, not even to survive, but to slay as many of whatever abominations were coming next before they died. One day, the Emperor would hear how his people had fought genestealers armed only with bows, spears and swords.

Jacks snaked out of the throne. They slid into Lacutus’ plugs. There was a momentary sense of violation as the metal slid into his body, and then he left the Chamber of Echoes.

There was no fear, this time. Why would there be? This had happened three years ago. He had torn off his mask, the sweet cloying smell of rot threatening to overwhelm him. He’d torn off the heavy gloves to get a better hold of Woundthirst as he fought the warp plague’s diseased minions in the street. He ignored the screamed questions of his ancestors; they were just distractions as he made his way towards the slaughterhouse. Towards his failure.

Disease had taken hold of his flesh but that did not matter either. The Ritual of Becoming would either kill him, or it wouldn’t.

Again he fought his way to the slaughterhouse. Again the pustulent daemon rose. Again his father appeared and demanded to know his sin. As the daemon’s lash flicked out towards him, again Lacutus lowered his sword and turned to face his father. Everything seemed to slow down.

‘The whip took my eye and I was thrown outside. My men were just ripped apart,’ he told his father. This time the daemon’s plague-lash passed through him as a ghost. On the other side of the slaughterhouse, the rotting, growth-covered wall bulged and then burst inwards. Wargod waded into the pustule. The tiny, obese plague-creatures were torn apart by heavy stubber fire. The daemon’s flesh blistered and exploded, heated by the Knight Errant’s thermal cannon; the chainsword bit into diseased flesh. The daemon swung its huge rotting blade. Lightning crackled as it hit Wargod’s ion shield, but diseased muscles bulged and the servant of Nurgle forced its weapon through.

‘And Wargod was badly damaged,’ his father said. ‘We are all wounded in war, but that is not your sin.’

Lacutus turned to look at his father.

‘I don’t care,’ he said.

‘What?’ his father demanded.

‘I don’t care what my sin is. I don’t care if I am weak, or if I’m strong enough for you. I care about the people out there on the castle walls, fighting and dying. I care about whatever else is coming – that thing in the sky that the genestealers have summoned. You want to judge me, you want to find me not worthy, do as you please, but you will kill me after we have walked out to face our enemies, or I will know that it is Wargod who is the coward, not I.’

His father rocked back on his heels as though slapped. Behind the ghost, the slow-motion titanic battle between Wargod and the daemon raged.

‘How dare…’ he started.

‘My father was a practical man, and we do not have much time.’

His father stared at him for a moment or two. Lacutus steeled himself for another tirade, but then the expression on his father’s face softened and he stepped forward to embrace his son.

‘Your mother would have been proud of you,’ he whispered in his ear, ‘and I could not be more so.’

Lacutus returned the embrace, and then he screamed as agony lanced through his eye. There was an impact, something large hitting the ground nearby. The rockcrete rippled, almost taking their feet from them.

‘What was that?’ Lacutus demanded, breaking the embrace.

‘Feedback from Wargod’s sensors,’ his father told him.

‘I cannot stay here all night. If I do, we are already lost.’

His father closed his eyes.

‘Wargod may yet kill you,’ he said when he opened his eyes again. ‘Remember, this is not a weapon. You are Wargod, the Knight is your body.’

Lacutus opened his eyes as the throne was sinking down into Wargod’s superstructure. There was a moment of dislocation and then he became Wargod. He felt every last bit of damage, old or new, as a wound. He felt the Knight’s years as an ache deep in his bones. He was ancient but mighty and the battlefield belonged to him. His senses expanded out beyond the Sanctuary, the castle. He was aware of the deep impact crater amongst the ruins of Landfall City, the biological horror uncoiling within, the other spores raining down from the vast living abomination speeding through the darkness of space towards his world.

He stepped forward experimentally, and Wargod moved. Then he was striding out of the Sanctuary to the sound of the wounded cheering him on. All along the inner wall the defenders stood frozen as they looked out at the fresh horror that had landed amongst the ruins. Lacutus – no, Wargod – knew it was only the beginning. If his planet was to be overrun, if they were to fall abandoned and alone, then all that mattered now was the manner of his destruction, how many dead he left in his wake. Then he could rest, like Thunderblade, like Queen of Blood, and all his other brother and sister Knights, long since fallen.

As the defenders on the wall heard Wargod they turned to see him approaching the inner gate, and they too cheered. Whatever else came, whatever else happened, Wargod knew he must slay this new enemy. The people of Landfall deserved it.

The portcullis was raised and Wargod stooped to enter the cramped gatehouse. The inner gate was opened and his thermal cannon greeted the hybrids and the few aberrations trying to take advantage of the Knight’s egress. He turned their flesh to superheated steam, then stepped out into the killing ground between the walls and made it live up to its name. Then he turned his attention to the curtain wall lined with the neophytes’ pavise shields as they loosed bolt after bolt at the defenders on the inner wall.

Wargod killed north and south along the battlements to the extent of the thermal cannon’s range. Despite all the ancient Knight Errant’s aches and pains he felt exhilaration at the sheer power of the thing, wondering how he had lived without it until now. Wondering how he could have feared this. Realising that it didn’t matter if his deal with Wargod led to his death because he had lived long enough to feel this power.

He ducked into the outer gatehouse. Sparks flew as his chainsword cut through the portcullis, and he stepped out into the ruins amongst the genestealer dead. As he straightened up he saw huge explosions of dirt behind the genestealer lines as more spores fell, delivering his planet’s doom.

Despite the power he felt, it still gave him pause as he watched the creature rise from the vast impact crater dead ahead of him. It was covered in a thick, bone-like armour. It had six limbs, each ending in a long scythe-like claw. It rose up on its serpentine lower body, smoke venting from holes in its back. It bent low and then reared, opening its mandible-surrounded mouth wide in a hissing scream. Wargod could feel the panic on the inner wall behind him.

The Knight Errant raised his thermal cannon and advanced on the creature, but there was another explosion of dirt, and the ground shook as the xenos dived into the very earth itself. Wargod felt the tremors under his armoured feet as he looked around, searching for sign of his foe.

The creature burst out of the earth at Wargod’s feet. He stumbled then screamed as lightning-wreathed sickles tore into his metal flesh, shredding adamantium armour, burning out ancient systems. Some distant memory that was Lacutus felt the air on his skin, the claws rending so deep they tore open his womb of technology. The creature started to wrap itself around the Knight. Wargod could not bring his thermal cannon to bear. Its tail coiled around the Knight’s legs, its darting sting puncturing armour.

Wargod lurched forward and fell. The creature wound itself around the Knight Errant, climbing his body with its tearing claws. As it reared up, its segmented mouth split open, and then it darted forward to bite the Knight’s head. Wargod saw his death, but somehow he managed to get his thermal cannon limb under the creature’s jaw, holding it back. The Knight screamed, bioelectricity coursing over him, through him, as the adamantium teeth of his chainsword bit into the bone-like armour. He forced the blade deeper and deeper into the creature’s body, creating a fountain of purple ichor. The creature tried to disentangle itself from him, to slither away. Wargod threw himself bodily at it as the xenos started to burrow into the earth. He rammed the chainsword into the wound it had already made, pushing it through the creature, pinioning it until he could bring the thermal cannon to bear. Then he fired the weapon again, and again, and again until what was left of the creature was still.

‘Fisher!’ Wargod howled. The Knight Errant managed to struggle to his feet and take a faltering step towards the bone throne, then another. The throne atop the hill overlooking the genestealer lines was empty. The lord of the genestealers and his purestrain minions ran from Wargod. Fisher tried to do the same, but the elderman was not nearly as fast. Wargod fired his thermal cannon even as he started to fall. The bone throne ceased to exist and Elderman Fisher became so much superheated vapour.

And Wargod fell to the ground.

Lacutus emerged into the dimming light as the smallest of the suns sank behind the horizon. He had half expected to be torn to pieces by hybrids, or some new horror fallen from the sky, as he had pulled himself through the vast rents in brave Wargod’s metal flesh. Despite, or perhaps because he had felt the Knight Errant’s death, he was strangely phlegmatic about the possibility of his own imminent demise. It did not come to pass, however. He collapsed onto Wargod’s still-hot armour, looking up, watching falling spores leave trails of fire across the bright blue sky. The Siren’s Storm was brighter now against the darkening sky, though somehow less frightening. Lacutus’ dead eye no longer hurt, either.

He managed to roll onto his side. The genestealer forces were fleeing. Running to the east towards the coast, following the purestrains and their lord. He didn’t understand. With Wargod fallen, why weren’t they attacking? There were more contrails, these ones more direct, faster-moving, chasing the falling spores, destroying them in fierce explosions when they caught them. The air felt like it did in the moments before a storm, and Lacutus found himself lying in the shade.

At first he thought the dark shape high above him was another living monstrosity come to plague them, but it resolved itself into something vast and wrought by humans. Lightning played around it as it sank through the atmosphere, dropping towards them even as its weapons reached out to destroy the falling spores. Lacutus could make out the symbol on the bottom of the huge ship: a fist holding a hammer. Vervius’ message had got through. Lacutus knew that within the armoured bulk of the forge world’s ship waited part human, part machine skitarii warriors. They would be eager to face the alien horrors still raining from the sky. Lacutus heard cheering from the castle. He started to laugh. They still lived, and the Legio Metalica had come.

RESPITE’S END

Marc Collins

Respite was a world without night.

There was only eternal industry, the flare from spire-chimneys as they rendered the sky a greasy near-neon smear. Poison light bled into Arlen Cedano’s chambers, as the shutters rose with their telltale clatter, and the first chimes sounded at the shift change.

Arlen glanced up from his writing desk, vaguely amused to notice the time. He had sat down to amend his notes at the end of the manufactorum cycle and now the dawn sirens were droning out across the complex. ‘Foolish of me,’ he muttered and stood, stretching. He was no longer a young man, and yet he often found himself working through the night – poring over shipping schedules, alchemical formulations and research proposals. He reached into a drawer and drew out an auto-narcotic phial, looking at it with weary familiarity. ‘Foolish of us, old friend.’ He braced his hand against his throat, and let the needle bite.

He felt the concoction hit his bloodstream in a rush of liquid fire. His pupils contracted madly in chemical sync, and his vision blurred. He blinked away tears, and ran one hand over his bare, suddenly sweating, scalp. Prime, he called it, an inoculation against idleness. The great macro-medicae forges of Respite had borne many fruits down the peaceful years of service, and Prime possessed the greatest utility – for workers in their multitudes, or singular minds such as his. He let his hands clench, flex, clench again.

The fog lifted, and he paced to the ablutionary chamber. He splashed his face with cold water, ignoring the chemical tang of it on his lips, shaking himself. He could feel the sensation of every droplet on his skin with almost terrifying clarity. Arlen looked at his haggard reflection in the mirror: grey eyes, the lines in his pallid skin. He sighed softly and wondered how long rejuvenat and determination would keep him going.

The insistent pulse of a message alarm startled him as he dabbed at his damp skin, and he grabbed a tunic before heading to the door. When it opened, a dark-haired aide was looking at him expectantly. Her arms bristled with data-slates and report wafers. She smiled apologetically. ‘Forgive me, medicae primus. I didn’t wish to disturb you so early, but matters require your attention.’ She held them out, and Arlen nodded distractedly. There was something at the edge of awareness, a whispered summons scratching at his mind. He looked at her, and she smiled, unaffected. Unaware.

‘Thank you, you are to be commended.’ The girl beamed. ‘Have them brought to my office. I have business to attend to first, then I shall be with you. Time and tithe wait for no one.’

‘As you will, medicae primus.’ She bowed, turning away from the door, and Arlen looked back with a sigh. It never ends, but then would I want it to?

Arlen walked the corridors of Valderos Macro-Alchemical #1, crowds of menials parting around him as they trudged towards shift work. Cleansers idled as they scrubbed at the floors, jaws slack while brushes scratched against the cold stone and steel. Only the occasional worker nodded to him, acknowledging him by rank or name, their minds sharper.

The facility sprawled across Respite, a body carved of metal and willpower, fuelled by the ceaseless movement of labour. Crowds passed by winding filtration systems that glowed with strange inner lights, pipes weaving upwards with capillary grace. They moved under heaving coolant plants, with their mists and vapours, nestled like organs. The chill never crept into his bones; he felt nourished as he passed through it, tasting a semblance of the void’s comforting embrace.

While the herd continued on, Arlen turned down a narrow side corridor, through the workings of the factorum itself. Lume-globes burned low and red as he passed below their stunted light, beneath the great vanes of stills and macro-alembics. He stood before a door, ornate and gilt-edged, letting his fingers drift down the heraldic device set into its centre. A familiar sight across these stars, across the manifold worlds of men. He traced its twinned heads and sharp edges, the reassuring depiction of a healer’s helix, then to the wings behind it. It was a powerful symbol, one to endure even the most bestial of wars that threatened them. Before it he stood taller, a strength filling him that no chemical stimulant could ever replicate. Arlen held up his wrist and a scanner recognised the coiled electoo with a chirrup. The door opened, and he stepped forward into the sanctum.

The chamber before him was older than the rest of the manufactory that had risen around it – a gnarled bone bracing the flesh of the future. These had been the early laboratoriums, where the Creed had flourished, and they had grown in the intervening years. Rationality vied for space with religious trappings, islands of science amidst the air of temple superstition. Great containment tubes rose like columns, studded with wires. Things moved in the murk, or hung limp and unresponsive. Attendants and physicians bustled from one bench to another, considering results, or hunched over blood-slicked vivisection tables. Arlen smiled to see it, the labours of his kind. He shrugged off his tunic, extended his arms, and medic-serfs moved wordlessly to dress him.

The first sensation was the needle’s sting along his spine, the cold metal of the armature against his skin – pain and numbness joined in the joy of re-communion. One serf held it as it bonded, while the other fitted the collar about his neck. There was another click-hiss of connection, nestling over the morning’s injection site. Arlen rolled his neck slightly, adjusting to the weight of the device. He looked down as he heard the clatter of glass, and the last components locked across his shoulders. The chem-globes and bio-dispensers adorned him like the baubles of some ancient king, or a beast’s warning colours. The final attendant handed him a fresh tunic and coat, and he accepted them both. ‘Thank you, my children,’ he whispered, and they responded with a zealot’s awe.

‘It is our honour, biophagus majoris.’

Arlen passed beneath arches of black iron and bone, the interred remains of the first martyrs to the new Vejovian science that had reinvigorated their world. Some were stunted things questing for perfection, while others bore smooth, flowing crests. They were an inspiration. Every time he passed, he understood their sacrifice, the progress of the Creed writ in death. He moved beneath the eyes of evolution until he came to the chamber’s core, and the fragment of genetic purity around which their efforts orbited.

Vector Phi, their magus, was awe-inspiring. She floated in the amniotic tank, suspended somewhere between angelic rapture and burgeoning chrysalis. Her flesh was pale, hairless, coloured only by the violet fluid that surrounded her. Glassy eyes stared through him, un-seeing and all-seeing. Her awareness dwarfed him, forced him to his knees. He heard the whispered voice again as she graced him with the communion of the broodmind rather than base flesh-speech, his mind expanding in unity with hers.

+Arlen, my child, my father.+ He smiled; so many of the later generations, the ruling aspects of the cult, had been forged of his genetic experiments, given life in nutrient tanks and splice dishes. They were as much his children of the needle, as they were scions of the Helix. +How do our civilian concerns fare?+

‘Well. Yes, quite well.’ His head remained bowed, unwilling to look up at her avataric perfection. ‘Exports remain steady. There have been no external inquiries.’ He paused, weighing his words. ‘We have overcome the setbacks from last month’s meteorite impact. Queveron Production Hub has repaired the damage and restored itself to full operation. Void anti-emetics and pain-relief supplies have been dispatched to the Fifteenth Hydran Rifles at Rathla. All saturated. Within the year, we will have them.’

+Admirable. Within and without, our strength grows. The Deucalion Expanse knows the enlightenment of the Credo Vejovian, and the blessing of the Twisted Helix. He is pleased.+

Arlen looked up at her words, as something stirred in the darkness behind the great tank. The bloated shadow moved with a power and intelligence unmatched upon Respite, so graceful that he had not even noticed its approach. A primal shard of divinity, the pinnacle of their ambitions. The core of their faith nosed the air, tongue lolling from its mouth as though it could taste him. The progenitor watched him for a moment and he felt its scrutiny. Before it he was laid bare. He felt its psychic touch recede, and then it retreated through another arch of brick and bone. He finally allowed himself to breathe at the passing of a god.

‘If it pleases you, I have arranged for the next rounds of inculcations. Support staff, mostly. Those who show promise despite the soporific intake. Hard workers all, minds yearning for purpose.’

The voice burbled with mirth inside his skull. +So even-handed with your blessings, Arlen. Your dedication shames many others. Though you must remember the credo – there are kin, and kine. Not all deserve our gifts, we must–+ She paused, hesitating as the first bells rang. Arlen had never heard them before, the muted, ancient alarm, dredged up as though from nightmare.

‘What is that? Those bells never ring.’ He looked around, as other biophaguses and their attendants started, confused. Guards straightened, while others clutched at helical symbols or muttered prayers.

+It has not sounded since our earliest days here. It is the Bell of Sorrows. It heralds disease within our blessed protectorate.+

‘That’s impossible. We have sheltered them from harm, we have kept the people hale.’

Arlen blinked, shook his head.

‘There is no sickness here.’

Respite had known no ailment since the Twisted Helix caught it within its coils; a healthy populace was compliant and well prepared for the inevitable days of Biological Sublimation. Biophaguses maintained the drug regimens and clinics that kept them healthy, but there was always a divide.

It was as Vector Phi had said; there were kin and there were kine – exalted luminous beings and the base and bestial flesh. They were weak, fundamentally mortal, but a threat in their flailing multitudes. The Helix-touched could not afford to see them sicken, panic and die. Arlen gathered a small squad of sanctum guards, leading them towards the lower wards and the alarm. Whatever else he was, he was still a healer.

The tunnels beneath the mega-manufactories were inconstant, littered with dead ends and alcoves. Dust and cobwebs hooded the lights, pipes gurgled with runoff, and strange fogs coiled up from vents and drains.

Arlen and his escort pushed on towards the source of the disturbance, sanctified men all. Vox-links clicked as they moved, the guards talking amongst themselves. Worrying. The sound of the bells carried eerily, drawn out and made stranger by the acoustics of the underway. They wound their way down, spiralling into the darkness and the rot.

As they moved, the sounds of the alarms faded, beneath a low atonal moaning. The sounds of human agony, the dull bleating he had learned to live with. ‘This way,’ he breathed, and the guards followed without hesitation. The front two raised their lasrifles, while others dragged crates of medical supplies. They passed nests where acolytes had gathered, the blessed misshapen, to watch their intrusion. The acolytes nosed the air and keened, aware of the wrongness in their world.

We have ensured that this world is a paradise for those who toil for us! We have kept them quiescent. Tended their every need. How could this happen? Arlen could not put aside the doubts. Had they erred?

The door ahead lay half-open, and Arlen saw the bodies as he entered. Most were writhing, ever in motion. They coughed, spluttered and moaned, thick mucus streaking their chins or pooling on their chests. Bleary, bloodshot eyes looked up at him, full of pain and the yearning for comfort.

‘Pater!’ one of them crooned as he noticed Arlen, and the cry was taken up by the others. The air rang with the chorus of it, abating the sounds of agony. The rhythm of the word was like the pounding of a heart. Pater. Pater. Pater!

‘Hold still.’ Arlen muttered, his hand on the weeping man’s shoulder, while fussing with the injector. He forced it to the victim’s neck, depositing a mild anaesthetic while another needle dipped, and drew blood. He had to keep them calm, but he needed to understand. Was it contagion from the works? Chemical taint? Or from off-world? A darker cause?

There was a strange buzzing, like the wings of insects, though he hadn’t noticed any on his initial inspection. The sound danced around the chamber; growing, changing, clarifying. He heard… laughing? He rounded on his aides. ‘There is nothing amusing here!’ They looked at him like he was mad, but he heard it. Again. The thick, mocking laughter flowed, and he became sickly aware that it was coming through his vox-bead. The man he was tending to spasmed, convulsing in seizure. Arlen struggled to hold him down, battered by bucking limbs. He jerked back as a fist collided with his skull. ‘Hold him!’

Still there was the laughter. Hateful, tormenting, resolving slowly into a voice.

‘Oh, Arlen.’ It whispered, curdled like old milk and ancient spite. Arlen looked around at the patients. They had fallen deathly still; faces locked in rictuses, hideous strychnine grins. The guards shook and prodded at them, before retreating. Shaken. Terrified of the shadow of death.

‘Do you like my opening move, in our little game?’

He sat alone in his private laboratorium, feverishly working over schemata and diagrams. He had torn the sacred, many-limbed depiction of Vejovian Man from the wall, replacing it with the documents that categorised the disease they faced. It was a coiled, terribly effective thing: morphogenic, hyper-infective. The only thing with similar adaptability was the holy germ-seed itself. He looked at the sprawl of data, spread across the walls like crawling mould. His stomach clenched; for a moment he feared the sickness was already within. Outside he could sense the psychic wailing of the broodmind, the frenzied communion between Vector Phi and the progenitor. If this continued, he would likely have to decant her.

‘Arlen?’ The voice hissed from the vox-emitter bolted into his desk, and he jumped back as though burned. ‘I know you can hear me, Arlen. You alone are worthy of my attention here, such as it is. Do me the favour of at least engaging.’

Arlen hesitated. He scribbled a single word on a scrap of paper and slammed it against the window to the outer sanctum. An assistant started at the sudden noise, blinked as he read the note, and then scurried off. Arlen waited till he was gone before picking up the broadcast horn. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

‘Who am I? Well that is the question, isn’t it? Who are any of us truly? Are you Arlen Cedano, medicae primus of the salve-world of Respite? Biophagus majoris of the oh-so-holy touched of the Helix? Or just a man, flailing at the dark, convinced he is the light?’ The toxic laughter burbled up again, filling the chamber in a heavy fug of bleak joy.

‘You seem to know a lot about my world and my work. I should at least know the name of my admirer. This virus, it’s your doing?’ He gestured idly at the paper-colonised wall, more for his own benefit than his tormentor.

‘Jast.’ The word oozed out like an exhalation. ‘You may call me Jast. It has served me long enough, it will suffice a trifle more.’

‘And what is it you want, Jast?’

The laughter returned, cruel and barbed. ‘Isn’t it obvious, Arlen? I want the world.’

‘The world?’ Arlen blinked. ‘A little artful biochemistry won’t pry it from us. We are of the blood Vejovian – we have wrought divinity. You kill mind-dulled cattle – a loss certainly, but you cannot think to shake our order from the earth.’

It laughed again, and Arlen found himself despising the sound. Its crawling curdled sweetness. Wet and cloying like new rot. ‘There is a broken beauty in you, Arlen. I have watched your world blossom from the bosom of malady, seen you pump poison and panacea into the Imperium’s veins. Against such potential must the future be tested.

‘You have skill, Arlen. Let us cast it to the crucible. In suffering is advantage born.’

Death no longer scared Mortuary Clerk Dorval. It was an old friend, one he had looked in the eye a hundred times. The bodies before him, though, represented something else. A defilement beyond death.

The symptoms were odious. Widespread necrosis, threaded through the organs to the point where it seemed the result of a long wasting sickness rather than a sudden total systemic collapse. Strange tumours flowered throughout the chest cavity of his current subject, and he lifted them cautiously with the blade of his scalpel.

‘I’ve never seen a disease state quite like this before,’ he muttered. His breath was close and tight in the confines of his respirator hood, the glass visor fogging. The anti-contamination gear made his movements clumsy, laboured, like walking underwater. It irked him. When the danger had passed he would petition Medicae Primus Cedano for a transfer; the older man had mentioned advancement before, induction into the mysteries of his special projects. He had put in his time, and he would be rewarded. He–

Dorval froze. There was a noise drifting through the mortuarium, a low rustling just out of sight. He turned, looking around, but he was alone. Alone with the dead. The drawers were silent, the cadaver-bags still on their slabs. There was only the cold tile, and the background reek of preservatives. He was safe; the dead could not hurt him.

He was turning back when it came again – louder, more insistent. The sound resolved, became familiar. He watched as the bags suddenly juddered and jerked, contents hideously in motion. There was a muted banging from within the drawers as limbs flailed at their confines, feet beating against the steel. He stumbled backwards, knocking over a tray of implements. Scalpels and bone-saws skittered across the tile. He felt something wet fill the suit with the stink of his own shame, barely able to stop sobbing.

He only began to scream when the body rose up before him and took hold of him.

‘Yes. Of course. I understand.’ Arlen had stopped truly engaging twenty minutes before. He gave token responses, and instead took notes as Jast rambled, threatened and cajoled. He was a determined orator, that much was clear, veering from pathological doctrine and religious fervour to intimate details of how he would vivisect the entire cult. Arlen only looked up when the door opened, and Heinrich sat opposite him.

The cult’s clamavus, born of the Word Helical, was an odd sight in repose. His armour thrummed and clicked as it processed massed inloads of data. He toyed with the keypad chained at his wrist, fingers in constant motion. His eyes struggled to focus, and when they did they were black, pupils dilated as the information sieved through him. ‘Your note found me. What do you require, biophagus majoris?’

‘I’ve told you before to call me Arlen.’

‘And I have told you before that hierarchy must be respected. How we order data is important – it shapes society, and so shapes victory.’ He huffed, leaning back. The wan light of the chamber caught on the angular cast of his skull, making clear the gene-gifts of his generation. ‘I ask again, you wished to see me? Why?’

‘This.’ Arlen waved his hand at the ongoing broadcast. ‘There is an intruder. He’s the source of the virus plaguing the underworks, the canker that threatens everything.’

‘Are you there, Arlen?’ The voice intruded again, and Arlen gestured for Heinrich to listen. ‘Am I boring you? I would hate to think that you were not invested in this experiment of ours. You will be soon. The seeds are already planted, and when they blossom it shall be into a garden, worthy of his name. Stronger, and better. You should be proud, as you co-father the future.’

His hand hovered over the horn. Heinrich nodded, and Arlen took it up again, hearing the click as it engaged. ‘I am here, Jast. I simply had to take down your… sermon. A most interesting faith that you practise. You must put great stock in it, to think that it can deliver you all that we possess.’ He looked up; Heinrich was fussing with vox-baffles and signal splicers, brow furrowed as he carefully turned a dial. ‘We will have the measure of your sickness. There is nothing that science cannot overcome. In the embrace of our most sacred gift, there can be no true infirmity of the flesh. There is only the Helix.’

‘Shall we put that to the test? The next phase beckons. I have learned so much already.’ Somewhere another klaxon began to ring. Automated voices joined it in a grating chorus, and Jast’s laughter slithered behind the machine-parroted words.

Contagion. Contagion. Alert. Contagion in Core Mortuarium.

‘Here is the game, Arlen. I will move, and you will oppose. Equals, opposites, as simple as a regicide board. Revelation is always painful, I know this myself, but in time you will all thank me, as I thank you.’

The line went dead. He looked up at Heinrich, who broke from his work to return Arlen’s gaze. ‘He’s savvy, I’ll give him that.’ Heinrich breathed deeply. ‘Hiding himself in our own systems, like a parasite. I can find him, but it will take time. Some creative systems analysis.’

Arlen swallowed hard, reached into the desk drawer, and drew out an autopistol. ‘Find him.’ The words left his lips in a snarl. ‘Find him, while I undo what he has done.’

The mortuarium passages were cold and silent, lined with drawers, littered with abandoned trolleys. Arlen’s makeshift fire-team pushed through the clutter, ten men of the Helix with flamers primed. Their leader, a hulking brute named Johan, grinned as he jostled the weapon, thrusting it at every shadow.

‘Careful,’ Arlen hissed. His gun was in his hand, its weight reassuring. There was a solidity to it that he clung to, beset as they were by the microscopic and the ephemeral. If Jast or his agents showed their faces, then he would end them. He would burn them from his world, cast the ashes before the progenitor and call it what it was. Justice.

Sometimes, one fought with needle, knife and vaccine; other times, the steady sword hand was required. Either way, the infection was driven out.

As they rounded the corner towards the Core Mortuarium, the group paused. A laboured shuffling greeted them, coming from the doors to the main chamber. The doors rattled open and a figure stumbled through, blood coating his containment suit, a ragged hole at the throat where something had torn through the material and the flesh beneath. Every weapon was raised as the figure sluggishly regarded them, dead eyes staring, already grey and unblinking. Arlen found himself thinking of Vector Phi’s penetrating gaze. Bile rose in his throat at the blasphemy of it. His blood chilled. He knew this man, he was certain.

‘Dorval?’ he whispered. The dead thing turned, hearing without understanding, without knowing itself. It gave a snarl, shambling with greater urgency, arms outstretched, hands clasping. He could sense its feral hunger, the complete absence of any human sapience.

His hand was up before he was aware of it, already firing. He unloaded the pistol into the thing that had once been a colleague, someone he might one day have called brother. Arlen watched it falter, tumble, hitting the ground with a bloody thud.

‘Burn it!’ he snapped, surprising himself with his own vitriol. Johan grunted his assent and lumbered forward, tanks sloshing as he hefted the weapon. There was a splutter, like a consumptive’s cough, and the flamer belched cleansing fire. The body crisped in the inferno as Johan directed the stream of burning flame onto it. The tiles blackened beneath it, cracking in the sudden furnace-rush of heat. He was so focused on the task that he never saw the other corpse as it barrelled through the doors towards him.

The pox-thing hurled itself through the flames, slamming against Johan as its arms wrapped around him. The man struggled, lost control of his weapon. There was the squeal of buckling metal as the cabinets were doused in fire, mixing with Johan’s screaming. The corpse was one of the plague victims – its limbs emaciated, stomach distended with gaseous rot, gums drawn back over cracked teeth. It bit at him, blood spraying as it caught the artery, locked onto him like an animal. Arlen had no time to reload, his limbs were seized with shock. He could only watch as Johan grabbed for the fuel tank, and tugged the stop free.

The sharp smell of promethium drove back the stench of decay. The corpse looked up from the ruin of Johan’s neck, from the flesh already beginning to putrefy, suddenly aware of the danger. They all ignited as the vapours caught, a sudden burst of light and sound that drove Arlen back onto the tiled floor. He flailed in panic, beating at the flames that had caught on his coat. More of them stalked through the tumult, passing through the fire that had consumed their fellows. It was almost as though they were learning, adapting. An immune response crafted from disease and ruin.

They laughed as they advanced – a brittle chuckle that was not their own bubbled up from ruined throats, behind the chorus of impossible wings. Arlen could see things writhing in their violated flesh, scuttling beetles and fat maggots boiling from their loose skin. He staggered to his feet, turning and running from the lurching horror. The others fell back behind him, flamers roaring as they sought to hold some semblance of a line, to create a buffer zone between themselves and the monstrous dead. Arlen made it through the airlock to the medicae wing, hitting the biological contamination override. The door slid shut with a heavy thud, locking mechanisms whirring. His hand was locked on the panel, fingers finding the right combination of buttons to enact the purgation protocols.

Something wet and heavy hit the glass, smearing it with fluids. Vasily, another of the soldiery, tried to wipe the blood from the viewport, mouth contorted in a scream as he pounded at the glass. It was soundproof, Arlen could not hear his desperate begging. His fear. His sense of betrayal. Arlen shook himself, took one gulping breath, and held the switch down.

Silence reigned. Arlen looked at the viewport, where Vasily was no longer standing. The dead, old and new, advanced like puppets. They watched him with cataracted eyes, babbled and laughed unheard. The victims mocked him, their skin already sloughing from the flesh below. They were becoming monstrous, not exalted by the Helix and the progenitor’s gift. They were not worthy of the final sublimation, and that weakness shamed him. It was an insult to all their work. Arlen pushed the final button.

Sirens sounded, high and shrill, as superheated chemicals rushed from the sprinklers. There was a flash of irradiated light and heat, the fail-safes engaging one by one, before the final gurgle of fire-suppressant foam. He held the button, eyes closed, until he heard the scream of evacuating air, venting the toxicity of the chamber beyond. He slumped against the wall, beating his fists against the iron and tile of the door frame.

‘You bastard,’ he spat, ‘look what you have driven me to.’

He was not sure how he had returned to his sanctum, who had carried him up from the toxic depths and then left him in silent contemplation. Sometimes he imagined he had dragged himself up through the hell below, as the rolling decontamination worked its way through the mortuarium. A cleansing flood, a necessary exsanguination. Draining the wound of its potency, and Jast of his vigour.

The laughter haunted him. He heard it everywhere: in the squeak of the door, in the rattle of a trolley’s wheels, in the static of the vox. A dormant infection, waiting to surface. His hand trembled against his desk, fingers drumming erratically as he struggled to maintain his composure. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard Jast’s voice and saw his monstrosities. Arlen raised both hands, pressed them over his eyes and tried not to scream.

A knock startled him, and his eyes snapped open to see Heinrich watching from the doorway. It did not last long, the man’s eyes slipping away as if it hurt to look at Arlen. As though he were tainted by his experience.

‘You recover? Good. We have work to do.’ His armour burred as he walked, pacing the room with feral insistence. Heinrich’s hands were always in motion, a focused echo of Arlen’s nervous tremor.

‘I’m not sure what I have to contribute. You weren’t there, Heinrich. You cannot imagine.’ He shook himself again, before the ghosts of the past day could lunge from the shadows, trailing ash and fire. ‘It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It seemed…’ He paused, struggling to find the words. ‘Something out of a children’s fable. A thing so inimical to life that it pushed beyond the known.’ He shuddered to speak the words.

‘I am close, Arlen.’ He looked up at Heinrich’s use of his name. The other man saw his look and his lips tightened as he tried to suppress a smile. ‘You have been in shock, I understand familiarity is important in those circumstances.’ Before Arlen could reply he pressed on. ‘We are close. His encoding is a fiercely ancient breed, but I know we are gaining upon him. I have narrowed it to three outlying manufactory facilities. Soon we will–’

‘And what of his works, Heinrich?’ Arlen winced as he pushed himself up and out of his chair. Every muscle ached, his skin gleamed with an addict’s sheen of sweat. He had been idle far too long, nothing to brace his system, nothing to fight his injuries. ‘Have there been other incidents?’

Heinrich had the decency to look away, hesitant. ‘There have been reports of the sickness spreading. Your decontamination was thorough, exacting. This is something else, another exterior vector. The sooner we pin him down, the quicker we can expunge his taint.’

‘Leave me.’ Heinrich looked at him as he said the words, but did not move. Arlen let his eyes drift down, like an ashamed child. ‘I am so very tired, clamavus. This pursuit wearies me. I am not made for it, no wrath-shaped primus. I simply wish to rest.’

Heinrich sighed, shaking his head as he turned for the door.

‘Perhaps when you are better recovered, biophagus majoris, we can discuss how best to proceed.’

Heinrich left and Arlen sat alone, idly toying with a quill; scribbling vague notions onto parchment, as though his musings could fight the infection before it consumed his world. He knew he had been evasive, but Heinrich could not understand. None of them could. He was locked in a battle for their bodies and their very souls. Without him there would be no sublimation, only the slow decay. Only the long, cold death that stalked below.

He reached out for the broadcast horn. ‘Jast?’ He spoke the word in a whisper, afraid that it would bring an answer. ‘Do you hear me, Jast? I saw it. I looked your faith in the face. A hideous thing. Your words, they could not convey–’

‘It means so very much to me that you have borne witness, Arlen.’ The voice dissolved into giggling, a childish sound at odds with his guttural voice. ‘Illumination brings agony, as it did for your comrades. Whether wrought from mortal flesh, or infused with notions of divinity.’

‘Don’t talk to me of divinity, you know nothing of it. Your worship is abomination–’

‘Abomination? A haughty claim from one such as you. You have shaped monsters of your own. Some wear their faces plainly, others hide behind smile and syringe.’ Jast’s voice oozed from the vox like smoke, coiling with a suffocating weight. ‘I have seen so many talents come and go. Luminaries of every creed of mortal science – you could almost say that I have nurtured them, tested them for the days of wrath and horror to come. Cause and cure, growing together, all the stronger for it. Do you feel tested, Arlen? Do you think that you have offered enough?’

‘In all honesty? I think you enjoy this casual cruelty. You would kill a world if it entertained you, and pick nothing of worth from the ashes.’

‘I have done so, many times. But the galaxy is a place of wonderfully diverse ways to die. They flow like poison from Vejovium, Respite, a dozen other worlds, and they corrupt multitudes. You see blessing, and I see opportunity.’ He sighed, wistful for a moment.

‘All fathers will inevitably fail you, Arlen. Be they primarch, patriarch or progenitor.’ Arlen stiffened. His fingers stopped drumming, clenching into a fist. To threaten the progenitor, the wellspring of their faith and power, the gift of Vejovium…

‘You’ve been failed before, have likely failed in turn.’ He smiled as he spoke the words, surprised at his own conviction. ‘You think we’re the same, that we can learn from each other. You’re wrong.’ Arlen began to write, his thoughts coalescing. He felt lightning in his veins, his mind and hands finally acting in unison. Formulae bubbled forth, etched onto the parchment alongside the scribbles of his doubt. It might work. An answer. An inoculation.

‘We are from the same cloth. I have studied with theologians of the biological, true masters of disease and counter-immunity. They would put your bloodline to shame, no matter your innovation. You could have a place amongst them, if you are stalwart in your participation.’ Gloating silence descended again, drawing out. Jast seemed almost hesitant as his voice came again. ‘Arlen?’

Arlen was not listening. His fingers were locked around the quill, so tight he felt they might bleed. He worked feverishly, the voice becoming a pleading background note. He rose and threw open the door, passing notes to questioning subordinates. Their eyes grew wide behind goggles, and they scurried off to oblige. The flow of work revolved around his office, a hive of frantic activity punctuated by his proclamations.

When he emerged days later, the world was changed. His own functionaries moved in their unceasing toil, automata crafted from flesh and set to motion by his hand; the frantic grinding of mortar and pestle, the turgid flow of chemicals through glass and steel. Bio-alembics hissed as they decanted into chem-crucibles, staining the air red in gasps of vapour, and the biophaguses chittered their enthusiasm. They looked up at his passing, nodding eagerly. All was proceeding well.

Around them moved other forces. More and more of the cult’s power had mobilised in martial force, through hidden passageways and augmented work schedules. They siphoned their way to the heart of the world’s true industry, their time at hand. Sea-green and purple armour glimmered in the light of the lume-globes and braziers. The Helix was worked into the plate, or styled as jagged tattoos upon their flesh. They checked and rechecked their weapons, anticipating that the world might end around them at any moment.

Arlen moved through them, like a predator through shoals, until he stood again before the central tank. He went to his knees, waiting for her voice. There was no light. No sound. He was about to look up when the hand trailed along the base of his neck, comforting and chastising at once.

‘Arlen.’ Vector Phi breathed, and her voice was a balm on his raging soul. He felt shame well within him; he had not been there. So consumed with vendetta that lesser hands had decanted the magus. ‘Your war is coming to an end, Arlen. The war of needle and knife. Now, we rise up in our own defence. We spare the herd, and we exalt the Helix.’

‘Exalt the Helix!’ The words came unbidden all around him, and he felt them leave his own lips. There was a clanking, grinding sound and he looked up to see the progenitor leering from the top of the tank like a gargoyle. Beneath its gaze, he felt transformed. Illuminated.

All fathers fail…

Jast dogged his every thought, infecting them with doubt. Arlen rose, fixing his gaze upon the progenitor. ‘I have served, I continue to serve. Everything is in place, my solution to our problem is synthesising. Simply a matter of contrasting his design methodology against our own, tweaking a number of ongoing lines of enquiry.’ He smiled in what he hoped would be a reassuring manner. ‘When we march to war, mortals and exalted together, we shall be armed to face down the future. We shall bear torches to dispel the darkness with the raw fire of faith.’

‘Beautifully said.’ Heinrich spoke as he moved to stand at Arlen’s shoulder. His scrambler arrays clicked and whirred, his hailer whined with the yearning to amplify his words, yet it was his aura that had grown stronger and stranger. It was the whispered clicking of the broodmind, reaching into reality, to guide and nurture. It embraced them, and even when he did not speak, Heinrich’s lips moved in constant rhythm. Where Vector Phi was a spear of psychic might, Heinrich cast forth a net of hushed prayer. No, not prayer. Communion.

‘We have him, biophagus. Queveron Hub. It is there he likely made planetfall, and there we will purge him. All his works will crumble.’ Heinrich nodded, and it seemed to Arlen as though it was more to convince himself than anyone else. ‘This world has but one master, one creed!’

‘One master.’ The dull repetition thrummed behind them. ‘One creed.’

‘There will come a moment in proceedings where you will receive my signal, Heinrich.’ Arlen kept his voice level, his eyes fixed upon the clamavus.

It cannot be this easy, he thought. He would not allow himself to be found like this.

‘In that instant, the chemicals shall be released and the infection will be purged from our midst, as though it had never been.’

When the symptoms confirm a disease state, then you know how it will be treated… But what if it is not as obvious as it appears?

‘The progenitor blesses all who conquer madness with holy reason, who anoint the worthy, abhorring the base. You please us, Arlen.’ Vector Phi’s voice was saccharine, slick devotion where Arlen’s was bitter, curdled with obsession. ‘You will release the many-blessed and the gene-wrought to fight at our side. You are their father, they will heed you.’

‘They will heed me.’ He nodded, his hands balled tightly into fists. ‘They will do the work of the divine, magus. Of that you may rest assured.’

The chambers below the sanctum were damp, echoing and badly maintained. Standing before the iron door, Arlen could hear the low ebb of breathing, the quiet cooing as something moved in the shadows beyond. He reached up, pulled a key from his pocket, and began to unlock the door.

The door had always felt unnecessary, there more for the comfort of others than because of any real fear of escape. He had never had cause to fear them. The unblessed would think them mistakes or malignancies. He did not. In them, Arlen saw the richness of their genetic legacy. Mutation and overexpression had occurred, yes, but that was not a failure. It was simply another aspect of their glorious cycle.

The children of flux slunk from the shadows. First came a twisted metamorph, feeder tendrils spilling from its lower face, with limbs like great scythe blades. Another spat a gobbet of bio-acid and flailed at the air with a whiplike appendage. The gaggle crowded in about him, clicking and snarling as they sniffed the air. They scattered as their larger kin unfolded from the darkness, dominance enforced with graceless ease. The aberrants stared down at Arlen and then pushed forward to nuzzle affectionately at him. He smiled, stroking one chitinous cranium. ‘I have missed you, my children. Forgive me, it has been too long. Tell me, where is Alpha?’

They crooned and gestured with their lumpen heads to the figure sitting prone beneath a low arch. Its massive bulk was contorted as it rested, body curled with its knees up. It was watching him, four eyes aglow with a feral intelligence set in its bifurcated face. He could hear something hissing relentlessly in the dark and his eye was drawn up to the familiar that squatted, coiled like smoke, upon the abominant’s shoulder. The awareness of the progenitor spilled from its psychic form. Once, long ago, Arlen had guided the parasitical thing to Alpha and watched it bestow its blessings. Now Alpha was beloved of the progenitor, exalted of the Helix. With its eyes upon him, Arlen felt surer in his course. ‘We are being lied to,’ he whispered, and Alpha looked up at him in confusion. The familiar stroked the abominant’s head gently, bobbing with the motion. It almost seemed to be nodding at Arlen, as though in approval.

‘Come, my children,’ Arlen soothed, and Alpha growled as he rose to his full and towering height. ‘It is time for war.’

The line of modified Goliaths seemed to stretch to the horizon, gleaming amidst the industrial sprawl that linked the great manufactories. They had been pressed into service, more to transport the men and Arlen’s chemicals than to truly form a defensive cordon. The great thresher blades of agri-harvester variants were tinted crimson by the light of the hulking chem-sprayer Goliaths they squatted beside. Tanks sloshed and bubbled with the promise of salvation, ready to disperse the solution and safeguard them against contagion.

Vector Phi stood on the back of one, her robes whipping in the wind, casting her mind forth to probe the complex ahead of them. Queveron sat silent, dead to every conventional sense and deaf to their signals. It worried her, so used to Respite as a fertile world; so attuned to the never-ending cycles of reproduction. To live was to spread, to assimilate, to subsume.

She looked down at the ranks of gathered troops, in the mortal livery of the Respitian Hospitallers, or in the revealed glory of the cult. She could hear the human minds, their deluded thoughts of ‘exotic foreign regiments’. It almost made her smile.

Heinrich climbed up to stand beside her, grunting with the effort, though she had barely noticed his ascent. She turned, nodded distractedly. ‘Is there word from Arlen?’

‘Nothing.’ Heinrich shook his head and she could taste his anger. He considered it a personal betrayal. Almost a blasphemy. ‘If he has set out with the gene-wrought, then he has not announced it or coordinated with us.’

‘Strange, is it–’

The hub vanished, violently ceased to be. It erupted in an explosion of filthy green un-light, mushrooming into the sky like the clawing of vast talons. For a moment the seething sky was dispelled, peeled back in a rush of superheated air. Vector Phi beheld the wan light beyond her world, filtered through a lens of utter destruction. She tasted metal, harsh and cold, so strong that it made her gag. Heinrich braced her, horror-struck as the facility died before them. It made no sense – to sacrifice so much for so little gain; they were still outside the walls! Had the enemy sprung their trap too early?

And then he saw the extent of the enemy’s spite.

The dead poured from Queveron’s corpse like lice. A verminous tide seeped and ran like liquid, oozing from every sluiceway, door and gap. They tumbled over burning obstacles, traipsing through vistas of hell that any thinking being would run screaming from. The dead did not scream. They did not grunt or shout as weapons found their range. They did not speak, but nor were they silent.

As the dead storm-surged towards their lines, they were laughing.

The furthest under-levels of Valderos were moist with runoff and condensation, streaking the walls with strange patterns and lambent glows. Arlen pushed on alone, ignoring them even as they glistened in the corner of his eye. He had descended most of the way in an elevator, but the true depths were only accessible by stair, and so he had slogged on into the stolid darkness. It embraced him. It knew him. He leant heavily upon the goad-stave he carried, drew himself up. This was the right thing, and as he advanced he became more certain of the fact. We have been deceived.

Around him the passageways grew stranger. The sides of great mixing vats were whorled and gnarled like leprous coral, where elsewhere writhing ferro-cancers and vibrant rustmoulds furred decaying pipes. The very fabric of their efforts was eroding, and none had noticed. Not even Arlen. He sighed. The doors ahead of him were unnaturally aged, their metal brittle, but they shuddered to life at his approach, parting with an asthmatic sputter. Arlen stumbled as the sight beyond broke his stride.

It was a landscape of incomparable horror, far worse than the unsettling excesses outside. The ground seemed transmuted into an undulating carpet of living flesh. It crawled, it climbed up the mechanisms of the underworks – sinuous, grasping. Erratically pulsing organs had melded themselves to the machinery, violating the purity of their undertaking with something–

‘Unclean.’ The word slipped from Arlen’s mouth as he stared in disbelief. ‘Progenitor guard us.’ Before him, kneeling amidst the despoliation, were three figures. They stood unsteadily, turning to look at the source of the voice. Where the room had seemed ungodly, these three were ruin incarnate.

His gaze darted from figure to figure, each singular in their corruption. The first was a giant in seeping plate, its face hidden behind the exaggerated features of a gas mask. It clattered as it moved, hung with phials and alembics, dusting some tincture from its hands. It regarded him with cold impassive lenses, and turned to vox inaudibly to its comrades. It was answered by a muffled guffaw from a hideously bloated warrior-thing hefting a gnarled bronze chem-sprayer. Something gurgled and Arlen realised that many of the pipes feeding the weapon wound their way back into the thing’s twisted anatomy.

But worse was their leader. He had the air of a high priest of biological atrocity, draped in the profaned trappings of a healer. A faded pus-streaked helix was barely visible on one immense shoulder pad, and one gauntleted hand was surmounted by a mockery of a medical rig. It flexed its immense digits as it watched him with rheumy eyes, mouth twisted into a rotten-toothed sneer. A squat creature Arlen could only describe as a phantasmagorical imp clung to the figure’s neck, cooing from a maw lined with needle teeth. ‘Ah, Arlen. I knew you would not be as misled as your scrabbling brood. You have tracked our metastasis as a true master of your art.’ He knew the voice instantly – the voice which had haunted him, and driven him to this desperate confrontation.

‘Jast.’

‘Hektor Jast. Of the hallowed Fourteenth, and these are my brothers in arms – Aicard,’ he gestured to the gas-masked fiend, ‘and Carax.’ The stinking chortling thing bent in a crude bow. Jast stalked forward, and reality seemed to warp palpably as he advanced. The air turned stale and lifeless, with only the entropic whisper of background radiation to fill the vacuum. ‘Count yourself lucky, for if the Death Guard still cared about the common herd of man then your ilk would have been first upon the pyre. Suffice to say, we have better uses for you.’

‘Perverting our work?’ Arlen barked. ‘Reducing this world to anarchy and monstrosity?’

‘Do not talk to me of monstrosity!’ Jast’s eyes flared, genuine anger eradicating the jovial demeanour. ‘You have embraced the xenos to your very core. We annihilated entire civilisations for less. You and your self-deluding creed disgust me, but you fascinate me. You are contagion given flesh – not in the ephemeral, but in practice. That is what brought you to me. You are an infection, Arlen, and so you belong to the Grandfather.’

‘Your god?’

‘The God of All.’ Jast threw wide his arms, sword rattling in its scabbard. ‘Before him you stand, alone and unshriven.’

‘No,’ Arlen whispered. ‘Not alone.’

There was a tortured creak of metal. Jast looked up, surprised, as vent covers and rusted walls gave way. Arlen’s baleful children flooded into the chamber, metamorphs in the vanguard. They spat as they hurled themselves at Aicard, acid hissing as it pitted his already ruined armour. The Death Guard reached up and grasped a phial, hurling it into the midst of them. The volatile mixture exploded forth in a shower of shrapnel and vapour, driving them coughing to their knees. Two of them screamed as the chemicals ravaged them, faces sloughing away even as their kin leapt over them. Blades scraped at his plate, scrabbling for purchase. He thrust his gauntleted hand up, crushing the skull of another squealing creature. A lash closed about his throat, dragging him down and out of sight as the bodies overwhelmed him.

There was a gurgling rattle as Carax turned his weapon upon the pile of writhing bodies that were drowning his brother. Great gouts of steaming green liquid doused the metamorphs, their cries shifting in agony. Flesh melted and bones shattered like glass, leaving only a stinking pool coating the half-devoured corpse of Aicard. Carax was turning to aid Jast when the first aberrants barrelled into him, almost knocking him over.

Jast did not seem to care as he lazily moved towards Arlen. His sword was drawn, turning in his hand, debating where to cut first. ‘You are a crafty one, Arlen. Full of surprises. It won’t save you though.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I had hoped you might abase yourself before the Grandfather and be blessed. You would run with holy putrescence, be remade. You would speak your wisdom to me, eternally.’

Arlen fumbled for a button at his wrist and felt chemical relief flood through him. The censers on his shoulders bubbled as they dispensed their cocktail, and he felt the leaden weight in his limbs abate.

‘I would rather die than be like you,’ he spat. The crook of the goad came up and round, brandished like a club. His fingers found his autopistol and he jerked it up, pulling the trigger. A scatter of shots pinged uselessly against Jast’s armour. One bullet buried in the distended plate, and foulness suppurated from the armour as though it were alive. Jast tilted his head wryly, unbothered, weighing options. ‘Not an ideal outcome, but it can be arranged.’

Despite his terrible bulk, Jast was a thing of dark awe when he moved with killing purpose. He lunged forward, blade skittering across the floor as Arlen hurled himself to the side. Jast was laughing again, taunting him as he raked the sword against the grating beneath them. Sparks and debris danced before his plague-maddened eyes, and Arlen could tell the Death Guard was making sport of him.

He pulled the trigger again and the pistol gave a dull click. Empty. There was not time to reload before Jast batted it aside, as casually as disarming a child. His other hand, with its blades and drills, came round in a savage backhand, sending Arlen sprawling into the mucoid dust. The reek of blood filled his nostrils; he could feel the wetness where his ear had been. Jast looked at him with disdain.

‘You don’t even smell human any more. You are unworthy even of kneeling – I should have taken your wretched industry from the start.’ He raised the blade, poised to impale. Arlen closed his eyes. It had been folly to think he could win.

The blow never came. His body tensed, expectant, but he did not die. There was a vast crash, and a bellow of inhuman rage. Arlen opened his eyes, and beheld his miracle.

Alpha hurled himself against Jast, a wall of vengeful muscle. He had torn free a length of piping and swung it down in great sweeping blows. Jast brought his sword up, the edge hissing as it clattered against the hardened steel and brute force. Alpha clawed at him, raking his twisted face and drawing turgid droplets of clotting blood. The Plague Marine bellowed into the abominant’s faces, hissing acid spittle making the hulking figure rear back.

Behind them Carax had pinned an aberrant to the wall with his weapon, gurgling as its payload devoured the aberrant from the inside out. Steaming loops of intestine unfurled in a visceral rain. Carax turned as the other aberrant launched itself at him, emboldened by its loss or by Alpha’s guiding might. It took hold of one of the creature’s arms and pulled, wrenching the limb off with a rush of toxic waste. Carax twitched, grasped at the aberrant with his remaining faltering hand, and slumped forward. His already swollen armour bulged, steam whistling from between the plates as the pressure finally discharged. Carax exploded, showering the area in blood, bone and armoured shrapnel. The aberrant threw up its arms, but vanished in the miasma, consumed utterly.

Alpha rained blows upon Jast, the pipe buckling and snapping under the strain. The abominant cast it aside; his huge paws tore at Jast’s chest even as the sword hacked at his malformed torso. The cuts flowed freely, soaking them both in the alien stench of his blood. The familiar hissed and snapped as the horrors clashed beneath it, and the daemonic reflection squatting on Jast’s shoulders hurled its own shrill insults. The rival figments threw themselves at each other, tumbling away from the fray – snapping and clawing, an echo of the conflict in microcosm.

Arlen caught his breath. He had a chance, all that remained was to take it. He watched Jast drive his sword up through Alpha’s chest, drenching himself in a torrent of gore before kicking the mewling war-form over. He looked at Arlen with undisguised loathing. Arlen merely smiled, and let his finger find the switch.

Heinrich battered back another drooling undead horror, baring his teeth in hate. He was slick with black blood, his augur stave battered and constantly whining with ultrasonic transmissions. A clutch of hybrids boiled up from a pipe in answer to his summons, lashing out against the creatures with fang and claw. One took hold of a zombie with its third arm, crushing its rotten skull, before leaping towards fresh prey. He spat, looking for Vector Phi. She shone with pale radiance, her helix-topped staff burning as she reduced any approaching foe to ashes. He had never felt more pride, standing with her. A low buzzing drew his attention to a signal rune on his augur as it flashed dully. Arlen? It surprised him; he had thought the biophagus dead. He bit back a growl as his hands moved automatically, splicing the signal into the local feed.

There was a low rumble as the chem-trucks churned and bucked, their hoses swelling. Crimson mist discharged into the air, enveloping the clashing forces in its warm embrace. Heinrich felt the flow of the broodmind shift, becoming urgent. His fellows fought with greater zeal, hurling themselves into the fray with a passionate intensity. The mortal soldiers suffered worse. They clawed at helmets and threw aside their rifles, launching into the undead ranks with no thought of their own safety. They bludgeoned and tore at the dead, ignoring bites and scratches. Their blood ran in boiling rivers from their wounds, yet they kept fighting.

This perversion is your cure? The thought stopped Heinrich dead, dumbstruck by the unfolding madness. This is our salvation?

Jast staggered. His necrotic features twisted in something resembling pain. It came again, like palsy. ‘My children falter. What have you done?’ The psychic weight had once been shared between three, and now it crashed down upon the wounded Jast like hammer blows. Every death was a cut. All unnatural power had its price.

Arlen threw up his goad, but the warrior bisected it with a sweep of his sword. The jagged spur of metal slipped from Arlen’s hand as he stumbled backwards. He scrabbled on the ground, trying to get away even as a boot pinned him in place. ‘I gave you a chance. No more, no mercy. Perhaps I will anoint your head and have it speak your secrets to me.’ Jast raised his blade, poised to kill.

Another tremor wracked him. Arlen felt his own fingers close around the goad’s haft, felt the last of his stimms ebb into his system, and pushed up. He pivoted the broken implement forward and felt it impact. He heard Jast’s wheezing breath and the clatter of his sword as it hit the floor. The shaft protruded from the Plague Marine’s throat, slick with blood and pus. Jast stared at him, his eyes wide with shocked spite as he sank to his knees. He gurgled, shook, and was silent.

Arlen felt fire spreading through his chest. His head was pounding, blood leaking slowly from his wounds in time with the dull throb of pain. He closed his eyes, and let the darkness take him.

Respite was a world without sickness.

He woke to that thought, to the absence of pain, as he pushed himself up from the sickbed. Heinrich stood before him, his clothing still stained with blood and smoke. He looked incongruous against the gleaming white of the room, and fixed Arlen with cold disappointment. Arlen looked down, sheepishly, and brushed his hand against his bandaged head.

‘You found me, then?’

‘We did, Arlen.’ Heinrich grunted the words, but there was no camaraderie in his use of his name. ‘Try as you might, you survived. For the moment, at least.’ The clamavus’ cold fury drained the room of warmth. He leant forward. ‘You are aboard the medical relief ship Fourfold Mercy, and will soon be bound for Vejovium itself.

‘There you alone will answer for your actions, Arlen. Not least to explain their impact upon the harvest to come. Whole hosts of mortals contaminated and lost, our own bloodline tainted. We sacrificed much in the tumult, and many more of the kine fled. The consequences will take years to assess – productivity already wounded by Queveron’s fall will worsen with lack of viable bodies.’ His lips drew back from his teeth. He had never seemed more like the progenitor than in that moment. ‘So it is you who shall return to the sourceworld, and it is there that you will explain our enemy, having endured the most… moral contamination.’

Heinrich looked at Arlen sternly before he turned to leave. ‘The magus sent me in her stead, Arlen. Do not reach for her, this is the progenitor’s will. That you go, alone, and stand before the judgement of the Prime Specimen.’

‘By the progenitor’s will,’ Arlen whispered, closing his eyes and listening as the door closed. He was truly alone now. The silence of the void closed in about him. He did not feel despair; he was not sure he felt anything, other than the pain. He winced as he sat up, his head spinning with sudden nausea. His gut roiled, his fingers dug into the mattress and he bit back a scream.

It’s just the stress, the injury. Withdrawal? Arlen thought. Somewhere he was convinced he could hear laughter, low and mad. He squeezed his eyes shut.

He could feel it, bearing down on him. The inevitable. The impossible.

Alone, disgraced and broken, Arlen coughed.

CASTLE OF THE EXILE

Gareth Hanrahan

The road was so overgrown that Elorn had to dismount and cut a way through for the three travellers. He chopped at the tangled vines and branches in the same detached, methodical way he fought, never wasting a blow. Like one of the ancient threshing machines in Wrmonoc’s museum.

Wrmonoc remained on his horse while Elorn cleared the road, offering the occasional word of encouragement or warning. ‘Beware the vines,’ he called, ‘they’re poisonous!’

Elorn acknowledged the old scholar with a grunt. He knew the vines well; he’d once killed a man by driving him into a patch of those lethal plants. That was… six years ago? Seven? In some other forest, closer to the kingdoms.

‘The ancients referred to such plants as xenoflora,’ said Wrmonoc. ‘You can tell them by the texture of the leaves, you see?’ He babbled on about how rare such plants were on this continent, but how the lands across the seas were overrun with them.

The third member of their group, Lanig, remained mercifully quiet. His grey eyes scanned the forest and the road behind them. Looking for dangers, finding none.

As far as Elorn could tell, they were the only living souls in this whole forest.

He chopped at one heavy branch, letting the weight of the hanging vines finish the job and bring the whole limb crashing down. He jumped back as a cloud of purplish pollen rose into the air. ‘Why the gell,’ he muttered, ‘did the Exile build his damn castle in the middle of nowhere?’

‘Oh,’ said Wrmonoc, ‘well, it’s said that the Exile’s chariot came to rest here in the Border Forest three hundred years ago, and he built his castle in the very spot he descended from heaven. Why, this road was built to carry the wagon-loads of cut stone needed for his fortress. Records in the Kingdom of Lan Din say–’

Elorn shoved the branch off the road and trudged back to his horse. ‘The question,’ he said, ‘was rhetorical.’

‘Oh.’

‘Onwards,’ said Lanig, spurring his horse past both of them. ‘No more delays.’

No one’s come this way in years, thought Elorn, but Lanig was in charge. This whole expedition was Lanig’s brainchild. Lanig had the purse of gold. And so, he followed Lanig.

The road took a sharp turn, running down a deep furrow in the earth. The trees around them were younger here, and more light penetrated through the canopy above. It was as though some great sword had swung down from heaven and cut a great wound in the land, now scabbed over with forest. Wrmonoc squeaked with joy when Lanig’s horse kicked over a clod of earth, revealing something shiny and metallic.

‘Look! Look!’ Wrmonoc nearly fell off his horse in his eagerness to examine the tiny flake of metal. It looked like it might have been good steel, once, but too small to be turned into even an arrowhead. Quite useless.

Elorn grunted dismissively.

Lanig was equally disinterested, but indulged the old man by waiting. ‘What are you going to spend your share on, Elorn? Buy land and title? Maybe you’ve got some aged parent who needs a place to live out their dotage? Or is it all going on wine and women?’

‘Mercenary company. And a better sword.’

Lanig grinned. ‘A man of vision,’ he said approvingly.

Wrmonoc looked up at them from the mud, an expression of disgust plain upon his features. ‘It is forbidden for man to make war on man.’ He reminded Elorn of his father, reciting the Exile’s credo like it still meant something.

Three hundred years ago, the Four Kingdoms were at war. Man made war on man, and then some. Huge armies marched across the land, cities were put to the torch. Those must have been the days, thought Elorn, when a man like me could really prosper. Instead, I got stuck with the Exile’s bloody peace.

In his father’s stories, the Exile arrived in a heavenly chariot of fire. There were three nights of omens before he came – lights flaring in the heaven, meteors streaking through the skies, the old towers of Lan Din waking for the first time in many centuries and screaming with the voices of ghosts.

Three months of silence, and then the Exile came out of the forest.

Single-handedly – or so the stories said – he brought down Calbech, the Lost Kingdom. The other three kingdoms applauded the defeat of their rival. And then, fearing he would destroy them too, they banded together against the Exile. They met him at the Battle of Esstesea Field, forty thousand men against one.

One man walked away victorious. A giant of a man, ten feet tall, girded in impenetrable armour and armed with fury and thunder.

At least, so the stories said. Elorn knew an exaggerated tavern boast when he heard one. The Exile, he was sure, was just another warlord, dead for more than two centuries now. He probably retired to this castle and died of gout.

Wrmonoc kept digging in the mud, looking for more fragments of metal – then he stopped.

‘Oh.’

He held up the remains of a human thigh bone. From a fresh kill, Elorn guessed, and cracked open to expose the marrow.

‘Back on your horse,’ ordered Lanig. ‘And be on your guard. Looks like there’s a reason no one else has ever tried to burgle the Exile’s castle.’

The Castle of the Exile was singularly ugly. The outer walls loomed over them like a landslide caught in stasis, uneven and unadorned, even unfinished in places. The forest had grown up, and now vines and creepers spilled over the parapets and onto the far side. There was only a single gate, and it was shut.

Beyond the walls rose the drum-shaped main keep. No flags or banners, just the worn sigil of the two-headed eagle on the outer wall. No lights burned in any window. No guards stood watch.

It looked empty.

Wrmonoc brushed his fingers against the wooden gate. ‘It is said that the Cult of Man intended to make the Exile’s castle a place of pilgrimage, but he forbade it. So they built the Great Cathedral in Lan Din instead.’ He pushed at the gate, but it didn’t move. ‘That was before it was burned, of course.’

‘And the Exile did nothing,’ said Lanig. He joined Wrmonoc at the gate and shoved it, to no avail.

The Exile founded the Cult of Man, right here in this castle. He banned the surviving kingdoms from practising their old faith, the worship of the ancestral sky-lords, declaring that he would destroy any who defied his edicts. He sent out preachers, armed with his new creed, to bring his word to the people.

But the Cult never took hold, not really. The surviving kings worshipped in the old ways – in secret at first, and then more openly. They ignored the Cult’s commands, and the Exile did not respond. They burnt down the Great Cathedral, and the Exile did not respond.

Finally, they came for the few who still believed in the Exile.

Elorn’s father, Eldred, had been one of those last holdouts. And when the soldiers broke down the door, Eldred did not fight back or flee. He just prayed to the Exile, beseeching the warrior to return. Elorn watched the swordsmen cut his father down, and the Exile did not respond.

On that night, Elorn swore that he would be the man holding the sword, not the fool calling on a vanished god.

‘Give us a hand, you big brute!’ called Lanig. Elorn shook his head, abruptly jerked back to the present. His mind had wandered. Such inattention was foolish. He joined the other two, but their combined efforts did not move the heavy gate in the slightest. It must be barred from within, he guessed.

‘We’ll have to climb,’ said Elorn, looking up at the steep walls. The uneven stone offered plenty of handholds, but was slick with moss and moisture. He could make it to the top, and he guessed Lanig could too. Wrmonoc, though…

‘But not here,’ he added. ‘Let’s circle the castle, see if there’s an easier route.’

They left their horses near the gate, and set off with Lanig in the lead. Elorn took up the rear, so he could keep an eye on Wrmonoc. The scholar scrambled doggedly through the forest, eager to show he could keep up with the younger men, but he was tired now, and kept slipping in the mud. All that kept him going, Elorn suspected, was his desire to see what relics and secrets remained in that castle. The last act of a life obsessed with secrets and forbidden lore. Wrmonoc was not only a devotee of the life of the Exile; he also espoused nonsensical theories about the origins of the kingdoms, about the works of the ancestors. On the journey to the castle, he’d babbled about ships that sailed above the clouds, about other lands beyond the sky. He believed that the Exile came from the same place.

Lanig slipped through the forest like a shadow. Elorn did not know what to make of him – a spoiled rich brat who’d turned to tomb robbing and mercenary work when the family fortune ran dry? Maybe the bastard son of some sky-lord priest, here to finally discredit the myth of the Exile?

‘Here,’ said Lanig, pointing to a section where the forest had encroached upon the wall. Tree branches brushed against the battlements, and the stones were lost beneath ivy creepers. Elorn caught up with Lanig, tested the strength of one of the creepers. It held firm, strong enough to support the weight of a man.

Or something else. There, in the mud at the foot of the wall, was a footprint. Not a human print, but not an animal track either. Humanlike, though – and there were scratch marks on the wall nearby that suggested something used its claws to climb.

‘I’ll go first,’ said Elorn, ‘just in case.’

From the top of the wall, he could see the inner courtyard of the Exile’s castle. It was bowl-shaped – the outer wall ran along the lip of a great hollow in the land, and the central keep stood on a pile of earth that reminded Elorn of a burial mound. The courtyard was partially overgrown, but the trees were small and stunted, their leaves discoloured, as if they’d leeched poison from the soil.

‘Impact crater,’ whispered Wrmonoc as he looked down. Another of the scholar’s gnomic statements.

They crouched atop the wall, watching, waiting. Wrmonoc was out of breath after the climb, but Elorn could feel the man vibrate with excitement at the sight of the Exile’s tower. It was just there, across the field! Nothing between them and the castle door…

…except the grey-furred creature that emerged from the shadow of the twisted trees. The creature ambled out towards a stone trough half-filled with rainwater. Another followed, and another. The things were man-sized, almost man-shaped, but their bodies were covered in rank grey hair, their long jaws were filled with fangs, and their four eyes were bulbous and red.

‘Xenofauna,’ muttered Wrmonoc. ‘From across the ocean. There are tales – I thought them apocryphal – of the Exile wandering the world for seven years, after the defeat of the Kingdom of Calbech. Stories that he brought back monsters…’

A fourth grey-furred beast emerged, dragging a huge carcass behind it. ‘Gell,’ whispered Lanig, ‘is that one of our horses?’

‘Looks like.’ Elorn shook his head. The gate was still closed – the beast must have scaled the wall with the horse carcass on its shoulder. That sort of fearful strength would make for an immensely dangerous foe. He watched for a moment longer.

‘I can’t tell how many there are,’ he said, ‘but there could be dozens of those things living here. I guess they’re… guardians, of some sort.’ A memory: his father telling him that the Exile would come back one day to bring the kingdoms into the light, and that until that day, he slept, watched over by Custodians. Could those ape-wolf things be the guardians out of legend?

One of the creatures twisted the hind leg off the horse with alarming ease, like you’d tear a drumstick off a roast fowl.

‘Maybe we can sneak past,’ said Lanig, ‘while they’re eating.’

‘Maybe,’ said Elorn, ‘we can’t.’

‘We must not turn back now!’ said Wrmonoc. ‘Look! Stairs!’

There was, indeed, a narrow stone staircase running down from the battlements to ground level. The scholar wobbled towards it, stepping over vines and uneven stones. One slip to his left, and he’d fall to the courtyard below. One slip to the right, and he’d fall to his death on the other side, landing outside the castle.

Lanig glanced at Elorn and laughed. ‘Come on!’ He leapt up and followed Wrmonoc.

They nearly made it to the stairs without being detected.

Nearly.

Wrmonoc tripped, and dislodged a rock that fell from the battlements and shattered on the ground below. The crash echoed around the courtyard, resounding from the walls.

The hollow filled with roaring and whooping. Beasts emerged from the shadow of the trees. The four feasting on the remains of the horse looked up, then joined the mob rushing towards the stairs.

‘Back! Back!’ urged Elorn. If they were fast enough, maybe they could climb down and escape into the forest. He drew his sword. He could kill one or two of the beasts, buy them some time to–

And then, answering roars from the forest. There were more of the beasts outside the castle walls. They were trapped.

Elorn lunged forward, pushing past Wrmonoc. The top of the stairs was a choke point. He’d make his stand there.

‘Watch the bloody wall, Lanig!’ he ordered. Lanig drew his own blade, a wickedly sharp rapier. A fancy weapon, but as much use as a knitting needle against brutes like these. This was butcher’s work, not a duel.

‘What-what do I do?’ Wrmonoc asked, his face pale with terror.

‘Throw rocks instead of dropping them.’

The first beast rushed up the stairs, bellowing a challenge, its four eyes bulging, some reddish liquid spurting from holes like tear ducts. Elorn kept his head, waited until the beast was nearly at the top, and then struck. The sword cut through fur and meat and bone.

The brute was tough, and strong, and monstrous – xenofauna, as Wrmonoc called it – but it still died when he cut off its head. Elorn kicked the body back down, knocking another two creatures off the stairs. A good start, he thought, only thirty or so more to go. A last stand that wouldn’t be out of place in the stories of the Exile.

He killed another, hewing at it as the mob came up the stairs. Maimed a third as it climbed. Behind him, he heard Lanig shouting, heard the whistling of the rapier through the air, the gurgling of a monster as it choked on its own blood. Wrmonoc was screaming, but Elorn couldn’t tell if the scholar was screaming in terror or pain, or if it was an attempt at a battle cry.

Another came over the top, and Elorn brought his sword down, cleaving the monster’s skull. Purplish goo spurted out over grey fur – whatever the things had in their skulls, it wasn’t like human brains. Stabbing still killed them, though.

A fifth, and that one nearly got him. It fell on top of him as it died, nearly taking him with it over the edge. Elorn pushed the hairy corpse off his legs, swung at a sixth brute, chopping its forearm as it reached for him. Wrmonoc bounced a stone off the creature’s head.

‘Elorn!’ called Lanig. ‘Hold them off on this side!’

What the gell does he think I’m doing here? thought Elorn. He fell back to the top of the wall. Lanig knelt there, frantically digging through his backpack. ‘What are you–’ Elorn started to ask, but there was no time to finish the question, no time to do anything except stab and thrust and cut and dodge, nothing in all the world except red eyes and grey fur and roaring.

The forest and the castle fell away around him, his existence circumscribed to the narrow space atop the wall. The edge of the universe was a field of grey fur, filled with clawed arms reaching for him. He fought like he’d never fought before, desperate yet dispassionate. Stripped down to nothing but the instinct to survive, the razor-edge calculation. It wasn’t enough to strike each monster – he had to do it perfectly, efficiently, his sword moving from one to the next without time to recover. If his blade became lodged in bone, or if he was too slow killing one, he was a dead man.

Wrmonoc was still screaming, but it sounded different now, lower and drawn out, like time was slowing down.

His arms ached. His eyes burned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d blinked, the last time he’d taken a breath. The world contracted again and again, a circle of grey fur and red-tipped claws, and all that held back the end of everything was his blood-drenched blade.

‘Ready,’ said a voice from very far away. Lanig stood up. In one hand he held a black leather pouch; on his other hand he wore an elegant jewelled glove, long fingers wound around with silver filigree. The glove was black, of the same strange substance as the pouch.

He dipped his gloved hand into the pouch and took out a handful of crystal shards. He flung the shards into the air where they hung, impossibly, hovering above his head.

Lanig pointed his gloved finger at one of the beasts. Shards flew at the creature, slicing its eyeballs, bursting them, blinding it. The monster howled in agony, flailed its arms, and fell from the wall.

Laughing, Lanig pointed again and again. More shards shot through the air. More bulbous eyeballs exploded in fountains of gore. Elorn dragged Wrmonoc out of the way as half a dozen brutes, all suddenly panicked and blind, staggered around the narrow path atop the wall. Two more fell. Elorn pushed a third down, stabbed a fourth. The fifth bolted, running away along the battlements until it lost its footing and fell.

Lanig picked up his rapier and dispatched the sixth. He wiped the blade clean on the grey fur of one of his victims, and looked down at the courtyard below.

Another twenty or so of the creatures were down there. All stumbling, all pawing at their ruined faces, bellowing in confusion or whimpering in terror. Lanig peeled the glove from his hand and tucked it into his belt.

‘What was that?’ croaked Wrmonoc. He cradled his arm – one of the brutes had dislocated his shoulder.

‘An heirloom,’ said Lanig. ‘An ancient treasure.’ He turned the pouch upside down and sighed. ‘All used up now. But the way is clear.’

He strode down the blood-slick steps into the courtyard below.

It was Wrmonoc who discovered the secret switch. The door to the inner castle was forged of steel and decorated with an image of the Exile seated on a throne.

‘It’s not the Exile,’ muttered Wrmonoc. ‘It’s the Emperor.’

‘Aren’t they the same person?’ asked Elorn. He vaguely recalled his father mentioning an ‘emperor’, but he’d forgotten the litanies of his childhood. The Exile and the Emperor, he vaguely recalled, weren’t quite the same being, but the Exile was born of the Emperor’s seed. Something like that. Elorn still felt shaken by what he’d seen on the wall. His armour of cynicism, built up over many years, had been cracked by the sight of that miraculous, ghastly weapon.

‘No. The Exile served the Emperor in heaven,’ said Wrmonoc. He pointed at a symbol on the door, a winged skull. ‘But that symbol there is the Exile’s sigil, not the Emperor’s mark. I wonder…’ He pressed the symbol, and it moved slightly. ‘It’s rusted shut. Push it!’

Elorn pressed on the sigil, and there came a distant click in response. The door shifted a fraction. He shoved it open and stepped inside, crossing the threshold of the Exile. The others followed, passing into the darkness of the empty keep. Lanig produced a lamp from his backpack. He fumbled in the gloom for a moment, then light flooded the room.

‘Oh my,’ breathed Wrmonoc.

Gold. Gold all around them. It was a chapel, its rows of pews facing a shimmering golden altar set with jewels. Paintings and banners hung on the walls, an illuminated book lay on the altar top. A suit of ornate golden armour stood behind it all, an angelic guardian of this holy sanctum.

Lanig tensed at the sight of the armour, as if worried it would spring to life.

‘Is that… is that the Exile’s armour?’ whispered Elorn. His mouth was dry. He wanted to speak out loud, to spit on the mosaic floor and blaspheme, to stuff his pockets with loot, but he couldn’t raise his voice. He imagined his father here in his stead.

Wrmonoc shook his head. ‘No. It’s said the Exile stood ten feet tall. I’d wager it’s a replica, made by the faithful.’ His voice was equally quiet, equally reverent.

Lanig strode forward to examine the armour. Lanig had no fear. ‘So where is the original?’ He wrenched the helm from the suit’s bulky shoulders, held it up to show them it was empty, like a conjurer’s trick, then flung it to the ground.

‘There’s a bloody king’s ransom here,’ said Elorn. He hadn’t moved from the threshold. What was wrong with him? He’d come all this way to loot the castle, and here in this room there was more wealth than he’d ever seen before. Just one of the jewels in the altar was worth a fortune. Every surface glittered with gold. That armour, too, was ornamented with gems and precious metals.

‘A king’s ransom? Try three kings, and the entirety of one kingdom,’ said Lanig. He sounded almost angry.

‘True,’ said Wrmonoc. ‘After the defeat of the Kingdom of Calbech and the surrender of the other three kingdoms, the Exile demanded tribute from all the lands. He asked for gold and other metals, and the finest smiths and builders. The builders, clearly, raised this castle. The smiths made this armour at least. There’ll be more wonders within…’

‘There’s enough wealth here for Elorn, I’m sure.’ Lanig flipped through the illuminated book on the altar. Images of a war in heaven – armoured warriors fighting against monsters and devils. Images of worlds floating in the void, under siege by horrors. The only light in the darkness shining from within a golden throne…

Lanig slammed the book shut, then took out a knife and started to cut the pages from the jewelled cover. A manic energy drove him; the light from the lantern beside him made his face seem bestial, his features distorted by shadow.

‘What are you doing?’ shrieked Wrmonoc.

‘It’s just the litany of the Exile. The same nonsense his followers used to preach. You’ve read it before, Wrmonoc. We all know it. But this case is worth a fortune.’

Loose pages spilled across the floor of the chapel. Lanig finished dismembering the book, then held up the jewelled case, as empty as the Exile’s helmet. He tossed it across the room to Elorn.

‘There – a down payment on the fortune we’ve found. I want you to stay here and guard the door. There might be more of those monsters still out there. You watch our way out, while Wrmonoc and I search the rest of this place.’ Sword in hand, he opened another door in the back wall of the chapel.

Wrmonoc lingered a moment, loath to leave the chapel, but even more unwilling to stay. His eyes darted about, trying to commit every inch of the place to memory. His hands shook as he lit a second lantern. ‘So much to learn. So much – but what else might be here?’ He glanced at Elorn. ‘It’s all true. All of it.’

He darted after Lanig.

The door shut behind the pair, leaving Elorn alone. The sounds of their footsteps quickly faded away, swallowed by the gloom of the Exile’s castle.

The swordsman turned back to the outer door, scanned the courtyard. He could hear distant yowling and whimpering, but there was no sign yet of pursuit. Maybe Lanig’s ghastly glove-weapon had blinded the entire pack.

He roamed the chapel. Elorn’s father had taught him his letters, but he disliked reading. The paintings and icons on the walls were more his speed. Stories out of legend – there was the Exile’s chariot of fire. There, he guessed, was a fanciful depiction of the battle between the Exile and the king of Calbech – but the king was shown as a horribly twisted, bloated monster, and there was a fallen angel on the ground nearby.

A third picture showed a whole army of men in the Exile’s army fighting against devils. Elorn paused in front of that image. He’d seen it before – a copy of it at least, a drawing. A memory of it bubbled up from his childhood. His father told him it depicted the holy days to come, when the Exile would bring an army of heroes to cleanse the world and eradicate all evil. As a child, Elorn dreamed of being part of that army.

More nonsense. He cursed himself – he’d risked life and limb getting here, and now he was getting dewy-eyed over a painting.

That is the point of this place, he reminded himself. To use pomp and glory to batter a man’s soul into submission. The Exile hadn’t saved Eldred from the swordsmen. The Exile wasn’t real.

The painting, while beautiful, wasn’t portable. The jewels in the altar, though – a man could carry a fortune in his pocket with those. Elorn knelt by the altar and started to pry rubies and emeralds from their golden settings. He hacked at the icons, like Lanig had cut the holy litany, eager to prove to himself that this place had no power over him. The Exile was not a god or an angel – just a warlord with delusions. If he wasn’t going to come back to stop Elorn defacing his altar, he certainly wasn’t going to come back to stop the kingdoms going to war, or to lead a holy army against mythical devils.

He pushed one jewelled skull, and it went click.

Elorn flung himself back, fearing that he’d triggered some hidden trap. The front panel of the altar fell away, falling to the ground like thunder, revealing a concealed compartment.

Inside was a casket or coffer, a box like a child’s coffin.

Elorn dragged it into the middle of the aisle. The casket was sealed with copper bands. Stamped on the lid was the sigil of the Lost Kingdom of Calbech, the kingdom brought down by the Exile.

Might it be full of gold and jewels, looted by the Exile from fallen Calbech? It didn’t seem heavy enough. It was light enough that he feared it was empty – but then why hide it away in the altar? And why seal it? Elorn fetched a hammer and chisel from his bag, and the chapel rang with the sound of metal on metal.

One by one, the copper bands fell to the stone floor.

Holding his breath, Elorn wrenched the lid off the box – and recoiled in horror.

If Wrmonoc had still been present, maybe he’d have called the thing xenofauna, but it wasn’t anything like the blind beasts outside, anything like any of the creatures Elorn had fought in the wild places of the world. The skeletal remains in the casket were almost human, but uncannily wrong. The bones were too thin, almost translucent, like the scales of fish. The skull was too long, the eye sockets too large.

Worst of all, though, was the cruelty that emanated from those bones. As he stared at the alien skull, Elorn could suddenly feel the grotesque excess of his own flesh, the glutinous layers of fat and skin and offal larded over his own crude, bulky skeleton.

He sensed the nerves threaded through that sludge of ugly meat.

Could feel glass-thin needles flensing those nerves, stripping them to the point of exquisite agony.

Could feel liquid fire dissolving his brain and holding it forever at that point of torment.

COMMORRAGH, whispered the bones.

Elorn slammed the casket shut and fell whimpering to the floor. He lay there for a long, long time, shivering, muttering a prayer to the Exile his father had taught him.

The thing in the casket was a devil. He knew that with a bone-deep certainty, a loathing written into every cell in his being. An actual devil, a supernatural horror out of myth.

And if those stories were true, then what else might be true? Elorn crawled across the floor, away from the hateful casket, and collapsed at the feet of the golden armour of the Exile. The golden armour stared down at him – in judgement, or forgiveness, he could not tell.

What if the tales of the Exile were all true, too?

Elorn wept like a child, feeling as though he’d been cracked open by the ordeal. The world he thought he knew washed away. It was all real, all terrible and wonderful. There were divine heroes out there amid the stars, and there were horrors there too.

And as he lay there, he saw something glittering on the ground next to him. It had fallen from the casket when he’d opened it.

A long spindle of purple crystal, just like the shards Lanig had flung at the guardian beasts.

An heirloom, Lanig said.

Still shivering, still feeling that phantom suffering in every sinew, Elorn slowly dragged himself upright, using the golden armour to support him as he rose. He shoved the crystal spindle into his pack, then staggered across the chapel.

The Exile will come back one day, whispered his father in Elorn’s memory, but until then he sleeps.

He had to stop Lanig.

Elorn stumbled through stone corridors. Archways yawned on his left, on his right, leading to empty rooms whose purpose he could not guess. Had Lanig and Wrmonoc come this way, or taken another route?

He found a stairway, and nearly fell down it. Another archway, and this one led into a huge cylindrical chamber that must be right in the heart of the castle. It was open to the sky – far above, he could see clouds bloodied by the setting sun. And ahead…

Ahead was a great slumbering hulk of shattered metal, half-buried in the earth. The celestial chariot of the Exile – what else could it be, forged from the same unbreakable star-metal that Wrmonoc had found earlier? But the metal was torn in places, scorched in others. The chariot was a shattered wreck.

Above the chariot, blossoming from its ruined flank like a beautiful flower growing from the rot, was a wheel of filigreed gold. This bizarre ornament, at least, was the work of mortal hands. Elorn could imagine the craftsmen and goldsmiths hammering the plundered gold of Calbech, drawing it out into fine wires, and then weaving it all together into this heavenly mandala, this wheel of frozen fire. In the centre of the wheel was a golden spike, a spire aimed straight at heaven.

He crept closer. The wheel was vibrating, pulsing like a beating heart. Thick cords of some flexible material ran from the base of the wheel into the wreckage of the chariot. Fascinated, Elorn followed the cords back to where they vanished into the machine. He pressed his ear against the cold metal, and the Exile spoke to him in a voice of crackling thunder.

‘Battle-Brother Cromadus of Fourth Company… only survivor of crash… eradicated xenos cult… stranded… now awaiting rescue… entering hibernation… in the name of the Emperor, if you are receiving this vox, harken… This is Battle-Brother Cromadus of Fourth Company…’

The Exile was calling him. The Exile needed his aid.

Another chamber. A hall of wonders.

Two rows of plinths, each one bearing a treasure or a trophy. Some Elorn recognised – crowns and swords out of legend. Others were things he could not comprehend, like the four glowing jars, each one holding a lump of flesh, that stood at the four corners of the hall in places of honour.

One plinth was empty.

At the far end, the armour of the Exile. It was like the golden replica in the chapel below, but half as large again, towering nine or ten feet tall. It was so battle-scarred that Elorn could not discern its original colour.

‘Beautiful… is it not?’

Wrmonoc sat on the ground by the empty plinth, his hands clasped tightly over his belly. Blood welled up between his fingers, ran down his legs to pool around him. Elorn knelt beside the dying man.

‘What happened?’

‘Lanig…’ Wrmonoc groaned. ‘He took a weapon. Went away. But it’s all right.’ He smiled through red-stained teeth. ‘I’ve seen this, at least, Elorn. I got here before the end. So much we’ll never know. But…’ He struggled to breathe.

‘You were right,’ whispered Elorn, ‘the Exile is real. It’s all true.’

‘It is forbidden… for man to make war on man,’ muttered Wrmonoc, ‘but I don’t think that Lanig…’

But whatever the scholar’s last thought was, it was lost forever.

One hand slipped, limp and lifeless, to the floor.

If Elorn had Wrmonoc’s wit, he might have searched the room of treasures for some weapon he could use.

If he had his father’s faith, he might have remembered some tale of the Exile’s deeds, and learned from that.

Instead, he rushed, sword in hand, towards a final archway. Lamplight streamed from within. It had to be Lanig.

Elorn charged in, screaming a battle cry – and was struck by a wall of agony.

Eldritch energies boiled through his body. He fell to the ground. He could feel every bone in his body, as if they’d all been heated red hot or turned to molten lead.

‘Oh, good,’ said Lanig.

Elorn couldn’t stand, couldn’t reach his sword. He couldn’t even focus his eyes. He could see Lanig standing over him, holding a small device in his hand. It looked to be of similar wicked design to the black gloves tucked into his belt, made by the same cruel, monstrous mind.

Beyond Lanig was a long stone bier, and on that bier lay the body of a gigantic man. He was eight feet long at least, thickly muscled, inhumanly beautiful. So still that Elorn might have assumed he was dead, but that blood slowly trickled from a fresh wound on his cheek.

The Exile. The Exile existed. The Exile lived.

‘I was about to go looking for you,’ continued Lanig. ‘I need to calibrate this–’ He made a guttural noise, a word in a language that Elorn did not know. ‘It wouldn’t do to kill the Usurper painlessly, would it? But with you here I can work out exactly how to inflict the proper suffering.’ He aimed the device at Elorn again, and again a searing wave of pain washed over him.

‘My great-great-great-grandmother,’ remarked Lanig as Elorn writhed, ‘was queen in Calbech, until this brute fell from the sky and ruined everything. He murdered her – but worse, far worse, he killed the Pale Folk. They came from afar, from the dark place between the stars, and they brought us wonderful things like this.’ He held up the device. ‘I don’t know if torturing their killer to death will be enough to bring them back, but I’ll settle for revenge.’

He knelt down next to Elorn and gently pushed Elorn’s sword out of reach. He was close enough that Elorn might have throttled him, if only he could move his hands. ‘I just hope the Usurper wakes up from his enchanted sleep so he knows who killed him.’

Again, the wave of pain. This time, it was more focused, the energy swirling through Elorn’s body to gather and pool at specific points – his right temple, his shoulder, his left hand, left thigh. The pain reached a crescendo, and his skin split, ghastly jagged wounds opening up as the underlying nerves burned.

‘Nearly right,’ said Lanig, straightening up.

In his torment, Elorn managed to speak a name. A prayer.

‘Cromadus.’

Maybe it was a trick of the dancing lamplight.

Maybe it was a side effect of the eldritch torment.

Maybe it never happened.

But in that instant, Lanig saw it too. The slumbering Exile stirred, woken by the invocation of his name. Terrified, Lanig’s finger lifted from the control of the agony device.

Elorn grabbed the black glove from Lanig’s belt, pulled it onto his own blood-slick hand. Pointed at Lanig.

The purple crystal burst free of Elorn’s pack and flew through the air for an instant, embedding itself in Lanig’s throat. The last prince of the Lost Kingdom gurgled, his face turning as purple as the crystal. His lips moved, but produced only blood-flecked spittle. He took two slow steps towards the Exile, then fell to the ground, dead.

The agony device, the weapon forged by the Pale Folk, landed nearby. Wearily, Elorn lifted up his sword and struck the hateful thing over and over until it shattered.

The wound on the Exile’s cheek continued to bleed sluggishly. Elorn stumbled over to the bier, staunched the flow with a cloth. The Exile did not respond.

‘You’re real,’ said Elorn, ‘it’s all true. You commanded the kingdoms not to go to war, told them to follow the Creed. They’ve lost their way – but my father said you’d come back when we needed you. So wake up.’

The armies of the Kingdom of Inginerin laid siege to the walls of Lan Din for six days. Inginerin brought a great host, the greatest gathered in one place since the Battle of Esstesea Field. For six days, war returned to the kingdoms.

And on the seventh day, a single armoured knight arrived, and he alone challenged that host.

The knights and lords of Inginerin saw the golden armour of the Exile. They remembered the Exile’s old edict, but more than that, they remembered how the Exile had single-handedly defeated their ancestors. No one dared raise a sword against the warrior of legend.

Their courage failed them, and they yielded the field to the Exile.

Inside the replica armour, Elorn breathed a sigh of relief, then rode off to accept the surrender of the three kings.

In the years that followed, scribes and preachers visited all the remaining kingdoms, and restored the Exile’s Cult of Man to primacy of place among the faithful.

The sound of distant voices woke Elorn.

He lay there in bed for a long moment, wondering if he was dreaming. Then he threw back the furs and rose, his old body trembling with the effort. His leg had never wholly recovered from the torment Lanig had inflicted on it; he could ride, even in armour, but he could not walk quickly. He limped through the corridors of the castle that had been his home for fifty years.

He entered the vault where the Exile slumbered.

The bier was empty.

The voices came again, from the reliquary. ‘Collect the stasis tubes, quickly. Return the progenoid glands to the ship.’

‘Wait,’ shouted Elorn, ‘who are you? Where have you taken Cromadus?’

A figure stepped out of the door, and Elorn fell to his knees.

The figure was another armoured giant, like the Exile.

‘Our battle-brother has been returned to the ship after his long exile,’ said the warrior. ‘The Apothecaries will rouse him from suspended animation and restore him to health.’

‘And then he’ll…’ Elorn’s voice cracked. He choked back tears. ‘He’ll come back to us?’

‘No. Other worlds have need of the Adeptus Astartes. He has done enough for you. But now that we have found your world again, other ships shall follow mine. You shall be brought into the Imperium, and give tribute to Holy Terra,’ said the Space Marine.

Elorn swayed, his wounded leg unable to bear his weight. His wounded mind, unable to comprehend the words. The Space Marine reached out to steady him. He clasped Elorn’s shoulder, his armoured gauntlet heavy as destiny.

‘Rejoice! Your long exile is at an end.’

BEST DEATH WINS

Sean Grigsby

Death surrounded them.

Then again, death had always surrounded Regula Morrison in her duty as an Imperial Guardsman in the Ferlian Seventh. She’d seen groups of men and women disintegrated in an instant, witnessed hordes of greenskins cut into a dozen ragged pieces under the fury of a chainsword. But one thing Morrison had never seen, not until that dark day on Malum, was a tyranid bite off a man’s leg.

‘I’ll never walk again!’ Consus screamed through gritted teeth and spittle. He slammed his head against the barracks wall. Once, twice, three times.

It would have given anyone a headache, if not a concussion. The one-legged man battered his skull against the wall as forcefully as the tyranids trying to claw their way inside.

‘Will you stop that?’ said Amulius, rubbing the back of his head. He ran his hand through short, grey hair, scattering sweat onto the floor like a misty rain.

Something heavy slammed against the wall where Consus leaned. Grunting, he dragged himself to the centre of the room, waving off Regula’s offer of help. On the roof, multiple thuds sounded. Claws tore into plasteel just above their heads, growing closer. A chorus of screeching accompanied it all.

‘Consus,’ Regula whispered, kneeling in front of him, ‘You might not have a leg, but you have both trigger fingers, don’t you?’

With bloodshot eyes, he studied her face, trying to decipher her meaning. ‘Yes?’

‘Then you can shoot. We’ll hold them off until help arrives.’

Amulius snorted a laugh and walked over to a rack of shelves filled with matt-black containers.

‘Is something funny?’ Regula asked.

Amulius tapped his fingers against one of the dark boxes. ‘Help isn’t coming.’

Colour drained from Consus’ face, but Regula knew blood loss wasn’t to blame. Amulius’ words had taken what little hope the man might have clung to.

Regula stomped over to Amulius, pulling the old man to the side. Her words came quiet but sharp. ‘That may be so, but he doesn’t need to know that. The tourniquet I put on him has only slowed the bleeding. He’s going to die, but I’d rather him go out fighting.’

‘Were you promoted as you crossed into these barracks?’ Amulius lifted an eyebrow. ‘No? All three of us are still troopers equally then? Good. It’s not your decision to make.’

Regula lifted her chin. ‘It’s our duty.’

‘Let me tell you something about duty.’ Amulius broke out of the whisper, filling the barracks with his weathered voice. ‘Malum is lost to these monsters. This planet is an insignificant, minuscule piece of the Imperium. It is nothing. What do you think that makes you? Me? That blubbering wretch over there, trying his best not to release the rest of his bodily fluids onto the floor?’

‘You get your leg bitten off and see how you like it!’ Consus snarled.

Amulius pressed on. ‘We’re going to die today. Let’s not pretend otherwise. So, if we’re going to talk about duty, I say it’s our obligation to take out as many of these creatures as we can.’

Regula gripped her lasgun. ‘That’s the first decent thing you’ve said in the last five minutes.’

‘We’ve only known him for five minutes,’ Consus said.

Regula shrugged.

‘Do you know what these carry?’ Amulius nodded towards the containers on the shelves.

‘Power packs, I hope,’ Regula said. ‘Mine’s nearly spent.’

The old man shook his head. He unlatched the container on which he’d been drumming his fingers and splayed it open, revealing a row of demolition charges. ‘This is a breacher’s barracks.’

Regula looked the old man up and down. ‘You don’t look like a breacher.’

‘I’m not,’ Amulius said with a smirk. ‘I was the lone member of my squad to survive, and I found salvation in here just before you came knocking on the door.’

‘Do you even know how to use one of those things?’ Regula asked. ‘What’s your plan? To toss as many charges out there before they overtake us? It would be better to storm into the Emperor’s glory, guns blazing. There’s more honour in that.’

Amulius pointed to Consus. ‘He won’t be storming anywhere, unless he’s suddenly learned to fly. But you’re right. I don’t know how to detonate the charges, but I’m sure the three of us can work it out. And you’re also correct that it would be ridiculous to throw the charges one at a time. We only have to set off a single explosive near the others. Right here. Right now. The rest will follow.’

Regula lowered her weapon to the side of her leg. ‘You want to blow us all to bits?’

‘It would be quick,’ Amulius said. ‘Honourable.’

Regula hissed through her teeth. ‘That’s not honour. That’s suicide disguised as a noble deed. I won’t be a part of it.’

Amulius frowned. Turning to Consus he said, ‘And what do you say, One-Leg? A quick end? Or do you want us to feed what’s left of you to the monsters?’

Consus coughed and winced as pain shot through his body. ‘I don’t care one way or the other, as long as it’s quick. Death is death.’

Crossing his arms, Amulius groaned and stepped over the trail of blood Consus had painted across the floor. The old Guardsman stared quietly at the wall.

Regula had known plenty of men like him before. They turned even sourer when they didn’t get their way. She touched one of the charges inside the box. Press, twist, throw. It had been a long time, but the words were forever lodged inside her mind like sticky sap.

‘I have it,’ Amulius said as he turned round. ‘We’ll play a game.’

Consus laughed, but it caused him to wince. ‘What a sight that’d be. The monsters finally slithering in here to find the two of you locked in a staring contest. No? What’s it to be then? Dice? If you need game pieces, you can use those demolition charges. And to mark the board on the floor, you can use my blood. I won’t be needing it.’

‘You’re playing the game as well,’ Amulius said. ‘Regula is convinced she knows what a good death means. Well, I want to hear about it. The game is this – we will each recount the best death we have ever witnessed. It must be factual. No fictitious imaginings. You must have seen it with your own eyes. No stories overheard round the lunch table. We will vote in the end to see who wins.’

‘A good death, you say.’ Regula huffed, pinching the top of her nose. Of all the words she’d used to describe death throughout her career in the Seventh, ‘good’ had never been one of them. ‘And what exactly would that look like? Some noble charge into oblivion?’

‘That’s up to you,’ said Amulius, ‘and the particular spectacles this cruel life has shown you. All three of us will decide which death is the best.’

‘What’ll we win?’ Consus asked.

Amulius sputtered his lips as if it should have been obvious. ‘The winner chooses our fate. If Regula wins, we’ll drag you along outside until we’re all squashed or digested. If my story takes the prize, we detonate the charges. Since you don’t care either way, Consus, you’ll be the tie breaker. If you win, the decision is once again in your hands.’

Consus blinked. ‘And what if we each vote for our own story?’

Amulius’ face boiled red.

Before the old man could begin yelling, Regula sat on the floor in front of Consus, legs crossed. ‘We won’t be allowed to vote for ourselves. Fair enough?’

Both men nodded.

‘If nothing else,’ said Consus, squeezing his eyes shut, ‘it will take my mind off the pain for a bit. Care to sit with us, Amulius? I’ll try not to bleed in your direction.’

The old Guardsman nodded solemnly and lowered himself to sit.

‘We were talking about glory,’ Regula said, ‘honour. Amulius, you don’t strike me as someone who cares much about those things. Please don’t take offence. I don’t mean it as such, but the truth is that you want to detonate those charges because it’s easier than following our orders and fighting to our last breath. For you, honour can be tossed away when it doesn’t suit you. You don’t seek glory. But that’s why you’ve survived for so long in the Astra Militarum. The best death I’ve ever seen belongs to a man who craved glory a little too much…’

REGULA’S STORY

‘His name was Bernard Wellsmith. He was my sergeant, but how he ever came to that position was always a topic of debate between me and the rest of our squad. Some leaders think of themselves before their subordinates. With others, it’s the other way around. Bernard, however, only thought of himself. The rest of us were just stones to step on as he crossed towards whatever goal he’d fixed in his mind. Thinking back on it now, I don’t believe he ever called me by the correct name.

‘I was in two battles with him, and in both cases he recklessly chased the opportunity to make himself look good. The first time had us guarding a small pass, while the majority of our forces held off an army of heretics less than a mile away.

‘“If they retreat this way,” we were told, “you’ll be the ones to stop them. Blow the pass and crush them as they run through.”

‘That wasn’t good enough for Bernard.

‘We hadn’t been at our post more than half an hour when he turned and said to us, “Friends,” (he was always calling us that) “the fight calls to us. Follow me to victory.”

‘“Sergeant,” I said. “Our orders are to stay here.”

‘“I give you your orders. Now, I’ve got a chill in my bones only the heat of battle can warm. Come. For the Emperor!” With that, he charged towards the clashing forces, raising his gun in the air and softly practising his war cry.

‘Now, this left our squad in a conundrum. We all knew Bernard Wellsmith was a fool, and most of them thought he should be allowed to follow a fool’s fatal endeavour. If he survived the battle, he’d be brought before a commissar and would eat a bolt-round for disobeying specific instructions. The squad would guard the pass as ordered and we’d have a new superior officer before morning.

‘But I suggested that we follow Wellsmith. While I thought it inevitable our sergeant would fall under a commissar’s final scrutiny, I considered that we also would be brought to the firing line if we didn’t operate within the chain of command. More importantly, a dolt like our sergeant, unchecked, would likely get others killed on his march to fame and glory.

‘That didn’t sit well with any of us. With most of the squad grumbling, we pursued Sergeant Wellsmith.

‘By the time we caught up to him, he stood in the thick of it, shooting his gun this way and that. The man was such a terrible shot, and he refused to aim his weapon properly. Instead, he roared and squeezed his trigger, allowing his shots to fly where they would.

‘In the confusion of war, it was difficult to say for sure, but I’m almost certain his misguided shots killed several of our brothers and sisters that day, and I doubt he ever realised. They were unlucky. Sergeant Wellsmith, however, seemed to have fate’s grace upon him.

‘You’ve heard that fools, because they can’t be made wise, are made lucky? Bernard Wellsmith was the embodiment of that phrase. Bullets passed him by, flames diverted direction as if a whirlwind surrounded him. I saw a heretic launch a rocket at the man from less than forty feet away. Bernard turned at just the right moment, and all that touched him was the rocket’s dark smoke across his shoulder. The Guardsmen behind were not so fortunate. Their parts scattered into the air, coating the battleground, and those standing or lying on it, in dark-red gore.

‘Three in our squad were cut down as we made our way further in. Bernard wouldn’t stay in one place, and this frustrated us more than having to fight our way to him. A fellow Guardsman, Bromidge was her name, made it to the sergeant before the rest of us. She must have been angry. We all were. She leapt at Bernard and shoved him to the ground. What she didn’t realise was that a rather large heretic had been standing over Bernard, swinging down a spiked hammer. The blow, intended for our sergeant, broke Bromidge’s back in two, folding her like wet cloth. You may not believe me, but I tell you, I heard her spine snap as if someone had cracked a twig beside my ear. I can hear it now.

‘The rest of us grabbed Bernard and ran.

‘You might think the tale ends here, that Bernard was executed and the rest of us moved on. But his luck, it seems, carried over from the battlefield to bureaucracy. The sergeant and his commissar had some family connection, and we remained stuck under the shadow of Sergeant Bernard Wellsmith. More unlucky Guardsmen were harvested and added to our squad to replace those we’d lost. From then on, Wellsmith had us perform pointless training drills and endless nights of study. We were made to read about tactics, known weaknesses of different xenos, the history of previous battles. The heretics hadn’t yet been purged from the planet and, until we faced them again, we were to spend our time productively. Our hatred for him grew more and more, as we hoped he’d be placed in charge of a different squad. I, however, wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d been transferred to a different world.

‘Our hopes were dashed the day our squad faced the heretics’ leader.

‘This time we weren’t given some lonely pass to guard. We were sent right into the battle, and our sole mission was to demolish a bridge before the heretics had a chance to cross. Things… did not go as planned.

‘While we were setting the charges, the enemy had begun their advancement on the bridge, and several other squads had no choice but to meet them head-on. Bernard once again felt the call to pursue direct combat. I was to stay behind while the rest of the squad followed him onto the bridge.

‘“You have the detonator,” I told him.

‘“Oh!” He stopped in his tracks and handed it over. “Now you have it.”

‘Nothing I could have said would have stopped him from running onto that bridge, and to say it plainly, I had no desire whatsoever to stop him. I’d learned my lesson from the previous battle. Guardsmen were going to die that day, but I wouldn’t allow our squad to be among them, not because of Bernard Wellsmith.

‘Wellsmith didn’t hear me call the others back, nor did he see me lead them away from the bridge, shouting at any Guardsman I passed, imploring them to retreat unless they wanted to be vaporised. Word spread quickly and soon the Imperial forces ran from the bridge, but not Bernard. He charged ahead, a strange sort of joy in his steps. Luck would again be on his side.

‘The warlord was a huge man, armour red as blood, two enormous prongs jutting from his helmet. He carried a pistol in one hand and a fearsome axe in the other. Chains jangled from his left hand as he turned towards two Guardsmen who hadn’t been able to flee. As he sliced them in half, it gave Bernard the perfect opening for a kill shot, and our sergeant knew it. This was the glory he’d sought. Killing this leader of bloodthirsty heretics would write his name upon the scroll of eternity.

‘As loud as his lungs would allow him, Bernard screamed, “For the Emperor!”

‘My sergeant raised his weapon. And that’s when I detonated the charges we’d placed on the bridge.

‘I’d grown accustomed to the sound of explosions, but that had to have been the loudest sound in the entire galaxy. The blast, the fire, the tons of steel and rock that rained from the sky, they erased the warlord, his soldiers, and Bernard Wellsmith from this life.

‘Luck, it seems, can be killed just as easily as any man. I did as I was ordered, and I am not ashamed to say it.’

Amulius scrambled to his feet. ‘You should be ashamed! Your sergeant. How could you?’

Regula remained seated, looking at the old man with eyes too filled with exhaustion to have room for fear. At the door, something scraped at the metal. Screeching followed and several heavy bodies pummelled each side of the barracks. ‘Are you going to use that gun or just stand there stroking it?’

‘And you’re a breacher?’ Amulius’ left cheek twitched. ‘You could detonate the charges. You can end this hell we’ve found ourselves in. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Excuse me,’ Consus said. His face had grown paler. His words were airy, almost a whisper. ‘But I believe… we still have a game to play. That was the agreement.’

‘Game?’ Amulius flicked sweat from his face and pointed at Regula with a wet finger. ‘That story was a confession of treason. She’s forfeited.’

‘If you think her story wasn’t worthy… that would be one thing,’ said Consus. ‘But you said the story had to be true and witnessed first-hand. Is it because you didn’t like… the content? Or are you afraid she’ll win?’

‘I’m not afraid,’ Amulius snapped.

‘Then the game goes on,’ Consus said. ‘Besides, I haven’t had… my turn yet. You want to die in a fireball like Regula’s sergeant? You’ve got… to tell the best tale. Right?’

Regula popped her knuckles. ‘It wasn’t treason. I was ordered to destroy the bridge and I obeyed. But I’m dead anyway, so what does it matter?’

Amulius lowered his gun and, after a few seconds glaring at Regula, nodded and sat on the ground, although a bit further from the other two this time.

Consus coughed wet against his fist, but it came away clean when he lowered it. ‘I… suppose I should… go next. Not sure how much time I have.’

‘The floor is yours,’ said Regula. Muffled by the roof, a tyranid roared just above their heads.

‘Then I’ll take up as much of it as I can, if you don’t mind.’ Consus lay on his back, taking a deep but staggered breath. ‘I don’t have the will to sit up any longer.’

Amulius and Regula shifted away to avoid the man’s bloody stump.

‘Well,’ said Consus, ‘my story is not a tale of one death… but many, all suffered by the same unfortunate man. I’d like to say he helped me… to never fear death, not ever again, and for several years I didn’t. But that’s the thing about living. You… get used to it. You grow covetous of time you’re not sure you have.’

CONSUS’ STORY

‘His name was Veritus.

‘My squadmates and I were as close as could be, and Veritus was the heart and soul of our group, though we didn’t know it until after he’d gone. He was a quiet man, scrawny and almost sickly. But when he had a job to do, he never quit. Never. Not even when things got unbearable for the rest of us. We called him names like Veri-Tinius, and laughed at how wobbly he held his gun, but we respected his perseverance. Veritus had something in him that neither I nor the rest of the squad could ever hope to replicate.

‘We were on a recon mission when we got caught by some greenskins. They had us surrounded and outnumbered. I was sure they’d kill us right then and there. Well, they didn’t. Except our sergeant, who tried shooting out a path for us to escape. They squished his head like a pustule and laughed and laughed, re-enacting the murder in pantomime. A lot of grunts and snorts were exchanged as they spoke in their nasty language. I think they were trying to decide what to do with us.

‘I knew they had come to an agreement when they all started saying the same word: Kutrag.

‘At least, that’s what my ears heard.

‘They shoved us along. When I tried speaking to one of my mates, I was struck in the back of the head and berated with snarls and a spray of greenskin spit.

‘It was a long way, wherever they were taking us, but my only thought was of Veritus. I worried I might stumble over his fallen body, the small man dead from exhaustion or lack of water. But it didn’t happen that way. We finally got to where we were going, all of us accounted for, minus the sergeant, of course.

‘I smelled the greenskin camp before I ever saw it. Think of the worst stench your nose has ever had the misfortune to breathe in, multiply that by a hundred and pour a can of fuel on top. That might come close to what we experienced. As bad as the smell was, the sound was even worse.

‘When we crossed through their spiked and painted gate, we were assaulted by the sound of what seemed to be several dozen hammers pounding against metal. That ceased when they gathered to watch us, snarling and hurling whatever they had in hand.

‘The whole camp came out to see us marching in, pushing and shoving at each other to get a better look. A short greenskin tried to squeeze past one of its larger brethren. The bigger one kicked it, sending it flying into a pile of rusty scrap metal.

‘The ones guarding us laughed, but hurried the squad through a pair of doors. The heat of day no longer touched me, and the lack of light left me stumbling blindly. The sounds of dripping water and our boots descending down endless metal stairs told me we were heading underground. They shoved me against a wall, where they bound me with cold metal against my forehead, chest, arms and legs.

‘Lights turned on with a thud and a shower of sparks. I had to blink away the blur from my eyes, but when they’d cleared… oh, what a sight.

‘The other boys in the squad had been shackled to the wall just as I had. It was as if we were being forced to witness some gruesome greenskin performance. If that’s what it was, then the platform before us was a stage framed by giant metal coils, one at each side. These coils suddenly sparked with electricity that danced around the poles and lit the stage, revealing a green-skinned devil who hobbled towards us, breath wheezing in its chest.

‘Kutrag, I assumed.

‘This slimy green beast was different from the others. A strange device covered Kutrag’s right eye and glowed red as it examined each of us thoroughly, one at a time. On its right arm, a gauntlet, each finger adorned with knives, buzz saws, and instruments of different sizes and ill intent.

‘When it got to me, the greenskin poked at my flesh with one of its instruments, babbling something as if I understood their slobbering language. I had no idea what I was being considered for, but I knew I wouldn’t like it, whatever it was. Clanking as it turned, Kutrag shouted something to the other greenskins, and with its bare left arm, pointed at Veritus.

‘They grabbed our scrawny brother and pulled him from the wall. All of us shouted and pleaded, cursed the greenies, threatened to kill them if they didn’t leave him alone. We were each struck with fists or boots until we’d quieted again. Veritus never said a word. He jerked his chin at Kutrag and called it something I don’t even have the heart to repeat here.

‘On the stage, two greenskins lifted a tarnished rack, where they chained Veritus and removed his shirt. He hung there like a worm on a hook, looking at us all with a sad acceptance, as if he’d been expecting this to happen sooner or later.

‘Kutrag’s wart-ridden hand grabbed two cables that had been lying on the floor, the ends of which were long and sharp, like spears. I then saw these were connected to the large, sparking coils. The greenskin plunged one of the cable ends into Veritus, piercing that fleshy spot where the shoulder and chest meet. We gasped, but dared not retort any louder. Our mate grunted, face twisted in pain, but he was doing his best not to give the greenies the satisfaction of hearing him scream. When Kutrag shoved the other cord into Veritus’ belly, though, he roared like a mad berserker.

‘A greenskin doctor. That’s what I believe this Kutrag was. Don’t believe me, do you? Of course you don’t. I wouldn’t have believed it either. Well, I’m not saying it was anywhere close to the skill level of our medics – Kutrag probably fell more in line with a common butcher – but hear what happened next and decide for yourselves.

‘What sounded to me like lungs coughing up pus was apparently Kutrag ordering one of the greenskins to raise its pistol and fire a bullet into Veritus’ head. One minute, our mate was breathing heavy. The next, he was still as stone, with a hole in his skull. The squad and I lost our restraint then. We shouted and cried and begged the Emperor’s mercy. The greenie scum at our sides didn’t even strike us that time. They laughed, delighting in our misery.

‘I wonder. Do they even grieve for their dead the way we do? Well, I doubt either of you will grieve for me. But… could I close my eyes? Just for a bit? You have my thanks. I… I feel so tired.

‘While we lamented, Kutrag hurried to work. It cut into Veritus’ head, removed the bullet with a pair of dirty tongs attached to its gauntlet and then filled in the wound with a syringe of thick, pink slime. Veritus was still. Dead. The man didn’t breathe, and Kutrag used a hearing device to listen to a heart that held no beat. Nodding, the greenskin shuffled over to a lever near the electrified coil on the right of the stage. It flicked the lever once – forward, then back, as quick as a snap of the fingers.

‘Electricity flooded Veritus’ corpse, shaking him like a dead worm. I didn’t understand it. Why torture a man after you’ve already killed him? But show me someone who says they understand greenskin logic and I’ll show you a filthy liar.

‘The shock from the coils was sudden, and vanished as quickly as it had come. The squad grew silent, myself included, all of us watching Kutrag as the mad butcher watched Veritus’ body with anticipation. What were we waiting for? We didn’t know. The only question that came to me then was who among us would be next?

‘Veritus gasped, as if he’d been under water for a long time and had finally broken the surface. None of us men spoke, we couldn’t believe what we’d just seen and heard. We weren’t sure if we’d imagined it. The greenskins, though, either laughed or grumbled, one handing another a fistful of hard, white objects. Currency? It wasn’t until the ones closest made their exchange that I saw they were teeth.

‘On the platform, Kutrag shined a light in Veritus’ eyes, used the hearing device to listen to the man’s heart. When the greenskin pulled away, our resurrected mate shouted into its face, “I’m back, you ugly pile of rat droppings!”

‘We men cheered then, rattling our bindings since we couldn’t pump our fists or stamp our feet. Veritus smiled proudly, drinking in the praise.

‘I… I am numb. I’ll have to hurry if I’m to reach this story’s end. Where was I? Oh, yes.

‘Kutrag couldn’t have understood what Veritus had said, but our reaction made it obvious that it’d been the butt of a joke, and for all the crudeness I’d seen in greenskin humour, this upset the doctor a considerable amount. It jumped up and down, swinging its oversized gauntlet of terror through the air. A vein throbbed at the side of Kutrag’s temple as it screamed a short sentence of babble.

‘Its rage reaching a climax, the greenskin raised its arms, as if daring us to challenge it further. Kutrag took a step but missed the top stair and tumbled forward, knocking over a cart of supplies. Bits and bobs bounced down the stairs after Kutrag, who landed in a heap under its heavy metal arm.

‘I’ve never laughed so hard in all my life, but it was due to exhaustion, and I was also trying my best to annoy the beast. Everyone in the squad was in tears from a fit of giggles of course, but so were the greenskins who’d captured us. And Veritus, he was up there, dangling from the rack and making each of his laughs cut through the air towards Kutrag like a thrown dagger.

‘The greenskin doctor groaned as it struggled to its feet, several smaller green creatures rushing in to help lift it. We continued laughing as Kutrag climbed its way back to Veritus. We didn’t stop when it raised the gauntlet’s middle finger, the one capped with a knife so sharp it could bisect a whisper. With this, Kutrag cut off our mate’s left arm.

‘Well, that shut us up. The greenskins that’d been laughing with us suddenly remembered themselves and cuffed us across the jaw or socked us in the gut. For whatever reason, I received both.

‘Veritus was surely in pain, but I reckon dying had somehow taken the sting out of life, and our mate refused to yowl. Instead, he shouted angry defiance at his torturer. “Kill me again, you walking bogie! I got more lives than an alley cat. And I’d give them all for my brothers!”

‘Now, as someone who’s recently lost an appendage, I can tell you the only thing you want to do when it happens is scream or die to escape the physical agony and the pain of losing a part of yourself forever. So, it was really something when Veritus gave Kutrag what for.

‘The whole of the squad shouted together thrice, almost in chant, a deep “Ve-ri-tus! Ve-ri-tus! Ve-rit-us!”

‘The greenies at our sides stepped away. I’d like to say it was fear that made them do it, but what’s more likely is they didn’t know what to make of us. Veritus’ stump steadily poured blood onto the platform. Scrawny lad couldn’t have had much to spare. But as I said, he had more than enough mettle.

‘Kutrag snarled and shot flames from a gauntleted finger, cauterising Veritus’ gory shoulder. Sound didn’t escape Veritus’ throat, but his face begged for an end to the suffering. Unfortunately, our brother had a long way yet to go.

‘They brought in a metal tub full of dirty liquid. I’d say it was water, but I’ve never seen water that black. The greenies turned the rack over and plunged Veritus’ head in, all the way up to his neck. Bubbles thrashed the surface and our brother battered against the contraption as hard as any man could.

‘None of us said a thing. This life we’ve been thrown into, the life of a Guardsman, it promises a likely end by blade or bullet. You accept the possibility – welcome it, in a way. But no one, not one soul birthed out of the deepest pit in the Imperium, would ever welcome a death by drowning.

‘When Veritus was dead – again – they dried him off and Kutrag barked something at one of the bigger orks. This oaf grunted and began pounding a fist against Veritus’ chest, as if sounding a war drum. It looked as though the big greenskin was pounding out the water trapped in our mate’s lungs. Kutrag hobbled over to the lever by the electrified coil, and once again gave it a sharp flick.

‘The one who’d been pounding Veritus’ chest flew from the spot, landing hard against the floor in front of me. Tendrils of smoke rose from its neck and armpits, smelling of burned grox-meat. Its fellows surrounded the body, and after a snap of Kutrag’s jaws, dragged the dead greenie away.

‘Veritus hacked up black liquid, spitting towards the mad butcher. I was convinced this was not some defiant insult, but a means to evacuate as much of the dark water from his body as possible. He gasped at air like a starving man tearing into a loaf of bread.

‘Weakly, he winked at us and smiled. “One more life for the Emperor.”

‘We cheered. Tears filled my eyes. I have never, not before that day or since, been so… proud or inspired. Veritus represented everything virtuous and decent. He gave us all a… reason to live, to keep fighting.

‘The greenskins became hurried in their movements, as if they were searching… for a form of death our brother could not return from. They brought a hammer and crushed his chest. Kutrag operated and shocked him back into being. Next came the… next came….’

‘Consus?’ Regula crawled over to him, knees smearing his blood across the floor. She shook him. ‘Consus!’

He’d closed his eyes, and would not open them. Regula checked Consus’ throat for a pulse but found none.

‘Has he gone?’ Amulius asked.

Regula nodded.

Something heavy pounded against the door, causing them both to turn and look. Unlike the times before, when the tyranids would heft their weight or claws against the barracks and move on, this came repetitively, like a battering ram that wouldn’t stop until the door had ripped open. Similar sounds attacked the walls and roof.

‘The game is over.’ Amulius stood and opened one of the boxes filled with bombs. ‘Come now. You’re a breacher. Set one of these to go off. If there’s time, and you’d prefer a shot to the head, I’d be more than happy to oblige.’

Getting to her feet, Regula brushed at her knees, but stopped when she realised they were covered in Consus’ blood. ‘I will not.’

‘We have no time for your misguided sense of honour!’ Amulius threw the box to the floor, watching the explosives bounce and roll away.

Regula wondered if the old man had been hoping the impact would cause the quick death he wouldn’t be able to get from her. A layer of sadness covered his face now. ‘If you want me to detonate one of the charges, you have to win the game. Tell me the best story. Best death wins, right?’

Amulius kicked at the empty container. ‘Consus is dead, and we’re at a stalemate. You hear that sound at the door? Our time has run out.’

‘If you didn’t have a worthy death to recount,’ Regula said, ‘then you shouldn’t have suggested the game.’

Amulius’ jaw twitched. ‘You want a story? I’ll tell you a story!’

AMULIUS’ STORY

‘It started like any other day. Another planet, another day trudging through blood and muck as you hold the line against endless waves of enemy troops. We were entrenched and barely holding back a group of xenos-worshipping cultists. But I soon noticed what made this day different – I could look at the sky without shielding my eyes.

‘Countless dark objects swarmed above, nearly blotting out the day. A woman in my squad wondered if these were our reinforcements, perhaps Astartes drop pods. But I knew different, not because I was sure of what was to come, but because I could feel it in my gut. When the objects in the sky began plummeting into the ground, showing themselves to be large fleshy pods, destroying whatever and whoever crossed their path, it confirmed my intuition. We would never leave.

‘I’d thought I’d known fear. Sergeants had told me that bravery is not the lack of fear, but the strength to push through it and do what needs to be done. I held onto that belief my entire career as a Guardsman. But what I saw in the sky that day, it wasn’t something you could push through. It pushed back. Where before I’d felt a heat that motivated me into battle, this day I felt only cold streams flooding my veins.

‘I ran, ran as fast as my feet would take me.

‘“Follow Amulius!” someone in the squad shouted.

‘I hadn’t wanted them to follow. I was propelled by a deep sense of fear and self-preservation, but I was also too focused on the ground ahead to look back and tell them to find their own path of retreat.

‘The war sirens sounded, calling everyone to arms. Guardsmen stormed from their barracks, hefting their weapons, a horde of sacrificial meat driven by duty. What a word. What a lie. I’d given most of my life to duty, to the Imperium. And after all that, I was to die in this swarm of monsters? No. I was going to survive. That was my duty.

‘Avoiding the pods became harder the further I ran. One landed right on top of the commissary as I was heading for it. I could have lasted a long time in there. Food for ages. But I didn’t slow, didn’t grieve the wreckage of a lost refuge. Those who do that have very short lives.

‘My squad, still running after me, kept shouting that I stop. I refused. It was about this time the pods opened and things inside them ripped their way out. I fired my gun, saw how useless it was against them, how fast they were, how much damage their armoured bodies could endure.

‘What slowed me, forced me to look back into the maw of certain death, was a scream. Lucia was her name. She’d been trying like mad to reach me, but she’d fallen to the ground and the creatures, not so mindless to turn down an easy meal, leapt upon her. The sounds of tearing flesh and twisted bone, the sight of blood and innards scattered across the sand, that’s what got me to running again.

‘The others in my squad diverted course to stay away from the feeding horde, but continued to follow me. When I saw a barracks ahead, a building more fortified than your standard issue, I locked myself inside. You think the monsters out there are slamming these walls? It’s nothing compared to how hard my old squadmates pounded their fists to be let in.

‘I never told them to follow me. Why did I have to let them in? If I let them in, then those things would be right behind and I couldn’t allow that. My fellow Guardsmen screamed, calling me every name under the stars. But, as is the nature of humans, their rage quickly turned to supplication when the beasts were near.

‘They begged to be let in. “Amulius, please!”

‘They did that for a long time. Well, it felt like a long time. Their cries were cut short soon enough, but replaced with the shrieks of monsters. As the massacre raged out there, I was in here, looking through what I had at my disposal. Imagine my disgust at the unfairness of it. Bombs. Explosives. I took it as a sign, though. I’d tried to hide from death, and this was my punishment. That’s when I dared a peek outside and saw a young woman dragging a legless man across the sand.’

Regula wished more than anything to raise her gun and end the miserable life of Amulius Vespan. But she didn’t. ‘You dare threaten me for what I did to my sergeant? You? After what you did? I saved lives that day on the bridge. You are nothing but a coward.’

Amulius threw down his lasgun. ‘Then allow me to enact my own sentence. Please, Regula. Tell me how to detonate the charges. You can escape and die however you want. I realised too late that none of us will survive this. I was wrong. If you won’t allow me the death I want, then shoot me.’

Regula shook her head. ‘Shoot yourself, Amulius.’ She walked towards the door, now barely hanging on its hinges. A claw slid through the crack and scratched at the wall.

‘I can’t!’ The terror in his voice caused Regula to look back. The old man was on his knees, tears in his eyes. ‘You’re right. After all my years, I’ve become a coward. I can’t even take my own life. I’ve got by this long on the courage and sacrifices of others. But don’t let these monsters have me. Please, Regula.’

‘That’s why you let us in,’ Regula said, nodding with realisation. ‘You needed someone else to give you the best death you could hope for. You reckoned one of us could detonate the charge. Save you the trouble. And now you’d settle for a shot to the head. Amulius, I’m sorry to say, but yours wasn’t the better story. Your squadmates’ deaths–’

‘The story wasn’t about them.’ Amulius shook his head, slobbering over himself as he shouted. ‘It’s about us. Our deaths. Our story.’

‘In that case,’ Regula said, ‘I’m going to choose the ending.’

A thunderous groaning filled the barracks as the roof was peeled away. A large claw dropped down and impaled Amulius through his centre. The tyranid lifted its claw, dangling Amulius there like a limp piece of meat at the end of a stick. A dumb, surprised expression across the old man’s face was the last Regula saw of him before his body was pulled into the sky.

She levelled her sights on the door. As the monsters tore into the barracks, dropping from the ceiling, slithering through the walls, charging her from all sides, Regula Morrison ran towards her death, lasgun blazing, and the Emperor’s name on her lips.

NO QUARTER

Rob J Hayes

Malvian tried the vox again, but all he received was static. It was fair to say the patrol had gone to hell. Just a few hours out from the Imperial outpost, Malvian Craw and his squad of Steel Legion Guardsmen had entered the forest. They hadn’t been expecting an ambush, nor prepared for one, but then it wouldn’t have been much of an ambush if they’d seen it coming, and the aeldari were sneaky like that. At least two of Malvian’s squad were down and he hadn’t so much as seen an enemy. Calling for reinforcements was impossible due to the vox being scrambled, and they were pinned down, trading gunfire with an enemy more elusive than ghosts.

Three shards of metal buried themselves in a tree just a breath from Malvian’s face. He threw himself sideways mere moments before another burst of shuriken fire shredded the bark right where he had been hiding. His coat caught on a low-hanging branch and he heard it rip even over the sound of lasgun fire and Trooper Benson’s screams of pain. Malvian rolled in the thick leaf litter, crushing mud and insects beneath him, and slid to a stop, his lasgun up and ready, but he could see no targets. He saw nothing but shadows slipping between trees, there one moment and gone the next, glimpses of green armour over lithe bodies. He had no clear shot. No idea where he should even be aiming.

Malvian slithered backwards on knees and elbows, lasgun pointed ahead of him and eyes straining as he searched for a target. He was breathing heavily, adrenaline making his heart pound. Blood rushed in his ears and the noise made the battle seem a distant thing.

‘Sarge?’ Private Kule’s voice. He was a big man, Kule, so large his uniform barely fitted him. He grabbed hold of the back of Malvian’s collar and dragged him to his knees and they knelt there for a few moments. Back to back, huddled behind a great grey mammoth of a tree, scanning the forest for any sign of the aeldari.

‘I’m good, lad,’ Malvian said, reaching back and patting Kule on the shoulder. ‘Just glad I used the latrine this morning. That was closer than a wet shave with a chainsword.’

Kule laughed but it sounded forced, humour to cover the horror. ‘What’s going on, sarge?’ the big man asked. ‘Weren’t like this before today. Last lot of pointy-headed buggers we found couldn’t find the trigger on a cannon. But this lot… Benson is screaming like he’s being torn apart out there, and Rorak is down and he ain’t moving.’ He sounded scared, and he had every right to be. Up until now their scouting of the region had been easy. Nothing but a few wild beasts, and some unarmed aeldari too stubborn to move on without a lasgun up the arse as incentive. But today was different. These aeldari were different. They were organised, armed and armoured, and shooting back. And by the Emperor’s shiny Golden Throne, they wouldn’t sodding stay still long enough to get themselves shot. Still, it was better than fighting orks. There was little more disheartening than putting a handful of shots into a greenskin and watching it laugh at you all the while like nothing you could do meant a damn.

Malvian shook his head to clear it and pressed the button on his vox-communicator.

‘Benson. Benson, can you hear me? How bad is it?’ The vox had been playing up ever since they entered the forest an hour back, and Malvian was starting to think it was all part of the aeldari’s plan. The squad link was spotty at best, and they had lost contact with the outpost. Not that Malvian missed the sound of the commissar’s voice.

‘Sarge?’ Benson wailed. ‘It hurts, sarge. I don’t want to die!’

Kule groaned. ‘You’d think he’d never been hit before.’

Malvian frowned at a spot of forest where he was certain he had just seen movement. Gone now. ‘Weren’t too long back you were just as green as Benson,’ he said as he turned and slipped past Kule to see where Benson had fallen. ‘I had to pull an ork tooth out of your arse and you screamed yourself raw.’

‘It bit me, sarge!’ Kule said, as if he needed an excuse to scream at the horrors they had been through on Armageddon.

Truth was he thought Kule was lucky. They were both veterans of the war on Armageddon and both had seen more than their share of combat. That Kule had come through years of bloody fighting with only an ork-bitten arse to show for it was beyond fortunate.

‘Cover me,’ Malvian said. He patted Kule on the shoulder once more, and then sprinted for where Benson was lying prone on the forest floor. Shuriken fire whistled past, striking trees and dirt. The surviving Guardsmen leaned out from their cover and returned fire as best they could, but the aeldari were as good as ghosts, nothing but flashes of armour and bursts of deadly fire.

Malvian slid to a stop next to Benson and spent a moment peering into the depths of the forest, but he could see no sign of their enemy. He didn’t even know how many they were fighting. Benson was lying on his back, not moving save for the odd wracking sob and one hand clutching at his stomach. His own lasgun was lying nearby; shurikens embedded the length of it. The sparks crackling along it recommended that nobody touch it ever again.

‘Hold this, lad,’ Malvian said. He pulled Benson’s left hand away from his bloody stomach and shoved his own lasgun into the trooper’s trembling grip. ‘Point it that way and shoot at anything that moves.’

‘I’m hit, sarge,’ Benson cried.

‘Aye, you are,’ Malvian agreed. ‘Now shut up and let me look at your scratches.’

The aeldari used nasty weapons and no mistake. They fired thin serrated discs of metal that pierced armour just as easily as the flesh beneath. Benson was studded with the things all up his right side and had at least one embedded in his chest. Blood pooled around the discs and stained his mustard uniform a dark brown. He was in a bad way and needed a medic.

‘I’ve had worse injuries from stubbing my toe, lad,’ Malvian said.

‘It hurts,’ Benson cried.

‘So does stubbing your toe,’ Malvian said. ‘Now open your eyes and keep that gun pointed somewhere. I’m going to drag you back to safety and get Maine to patch you up good as new.’

Malvian grabbed Benson under the shoulders, counted to three, then started dragging the wounded Guardsman back towards their ragged line. Shuriken fire whistled past, and lasguns replied with equal severity. Benson groaned and cried, and the leaves above rustled. Then Benson screamed. He pointed the lasgun up into the forest canopy and cracked off three rapid shots. A moment later a body clad in green and white armour dropped. It fell between a couple of large tree roots, its head cracking against one with a grim finality. It didn’t move.

‘Hell of a shot, lad,’ Malvian said as he dragged Benson behind a great tree and looked around the three Guardsmen gathered nearby. ‘Maine, get over here and convince Benson he’s fine. Can’t be that injured. He just bagged his first kill.’

Malvian poked his head around the tree as Maine started poking at Benson’s wounds. He wasn’t really a medic, but he knew how to dress a wound and that made him the closest thing they had. ‘What am I supposed to do with this, sarge?’ Maine asked. ‘Do I pull them out?’

‘You’ll figure something out, Maine,’ Malvian said. ‘Just get the lad up and moving so we can…’ He trailed off as a metallic object the size of a small rock sailed out of the forest depths, arcing towards them. Malvian watched it for a moment. ‘Grenade!’ He turned and leapt away even as the device hit the ground nearby. Malvian tackled Maine, dragging him to the ground and a moment later the world flashed a bright, searing white and a wave of heat washed over them.

Benson was gone. Or at least half of him was gone, consumed by the plasma grenade’s detonation. The other half was a bloody, charred mess that threatened to turn Malvian’s stomach. The grenade had left a pit in the forest floor, and the remnants of the grenade still glowed in the centre as the miniature sun ate its way down into the earth.

‘Damn it!’ Malvian said, his voice carrying a familiar bitter edge. Not the first Guardsman he’d lost under his command, nor the second, and not even the tenth. The worst thing, and he hated to admit it, was that it was getting easier. He knew it shouldn’t, but every loss was just a little bit easier to take.

‘Sarge?’ Maine asked. ‘What do we do?’

‘Benson’s gone to see the Emperor, lads,’ Malvian shouted. ‘He’s left us to pick up his slack. Kule, give us some covering fire. Maine and I are going to move up and shove Benson’s regards right down these eldar’s throats.’ He glanced at Maine. ‘Assuming they have throats?’

Maine shrugged and wiped at the sweat running down his face.

The vox crackled, distorted sound without sense. A cold wind blew through the forest and a moment later a sound like thunder shook the earth beneath Malvian’s feet and set all the trees rustling. A sense of dread crept up Malvian’s spine, something he hadn’t felt since the early days of Armageddon. He looked up just in time to see the crackling of energy as a great hulking ship translated out of the warp, so close to the planet there was no way it was going to do anything but crash.

‘Emperor save us,’ Malvian whispered as he watched the ship plummeting downwards. Then he drew in a deep breath and roared, ‘Rebreathers on. Take cover!’ He reached down and grabbed hold of Maine and dragged them both over the remains of Benson and into the pit the plasma grenade had left behind.

Two seconds passed. Three. Then the earth shook violently. A moment later the shock wave hit, whipping earth and detritus all around them, shaking the trees down to their roots. A roar of flames washed overhead and the sound was deafening. Something hard struck the back of Malvian’s helmet and everything went dark.

Malvian woke to darkness and an ache that seemed to travel throughout his body. There was a pressure pushing down on him, crushing him. He tried to reach up to take his goggles off, but he couldn’t move. That was when it dawned on him. He’d been buried alive. He struggled, wriggling and scrabbling, pushing up against the loose dirt and detritus piled on top of him. When he broke free of the earth, Malvian found the forest had turned as grey as his hair. Dust and ash had blown in, coating the trees and fogging the air so thickly he could barely see a dozen yards in any direction. Without his rebreather, he was certain he’d be choking on the fog. Some trees had fallen, and others were leaning precariously, their roots ripped from the earth and exposed. Most of the leaves were gone, either incinerated by the wave of fire or blown off the branches by the shock wave. The crash had turned the forest from a place full of green vitality to a graveyard of skeletal husks.

Malvian staggered back a step, breathing heavily into his rebreather and fighting a wave of nausea. Whatever had hit him on the head had hit hard, and his helmet had the dent to prove it. He was lucky to be alive. He pressed the button on his vox-communicator. ‘Six hundred and thirteenth, sound off.’ Silence greeted him. Nothing but the sound of a fire burning in the distance somewhere and a few echoing shouts he tried desperately not to recognise.

He found a hand half buried at his feet and began digging Maine out of the earth. He was dead. He hadn’t managed to get his rebreather on in time and had suffocated as they were buried alive. One more Guardsman lost under his command. Malvian tried the vox again, but no one answered him. He found Kule underneath a fallen tree. The veteran had tried to take shelter behind its bulk, only for the trunk to splinter and collapse on top of him. He had survived the war on Armageddon with nothing but an ork-bitten arse by way of injury. He had held the line time and again, and fought tooth, nail and bayonet against the green-skinned menace, only to be killed by a tree that couldn’t hold its ground.

Malvian searched for survivors a while longer, ignoring the shouts getting closer, ignoring the silence greeting him on the vox. He couldn’t quite believe his whole squad was dead. Some of them had served with him at the battle for Infernus, lived through the hell of that brutal siege.

A mocking laugh drifted through the fog, brutish and full of scorn. Malvian recognised the sound, had heard its like time and again on Armageddon. He turned to see an ork lumbering towards him, thick with swollen muscle and covered in cuts dripping blood. It had a mouth full of rotting, misshapen fangs, and a snarl twisted its grotesque features. Rusted red metal, dented from weapons fire, was nailed onto its head, shoulders and chest, and it carried an axe that was little more than a wedge of jagged metal bolted to a haft of wood. It was the first of the monsters, probably fallen from the ship as it was crashing, but there would be many more behind it.

Malvian’s shoulders slumped and he staggered back a step. He hated the orks. He’d been born on Armageddon not long after their first invasion, and he’d lived and fought through their second attempt. He’d seen good men and women die at their monstrous green hands, and lost more friends than he cared to count. Hives reduced to nothing but bones and ash. Humans mutilated and taken as slaves. He hated the orks, and with good reason. All the men and women of the Steel Legion hated the orks. But he’d really hoped he’d left the monsters behind for good.

The ork laughed again. ‘Smells like roasted ’umie,’ it said as it walked past a body covered in mud and ash and charred long past recognition. The hole where its nose should have been twitched and its beady red eyes fixed on Malvian. It was a big monster and no mistake, but Malvian had one thing going for him at least; the ork was alone. For now.

Malvian looked around for a gun but could see none. He had given his own to Benson and it had vanished along with the half of him caught in the grenade. The ork advanced on him, gaining speed and swishing its axe from side to side. Malvian gritted his teeth, drew his monoknife, and lurched forward to meet the beast head-on with a bellow of rage.

Even with bright spots dancing across his vision, Malvian managed to strike first. He ducked away from an overhead smash and opened a wound on the ork’s unprotected legs. But orks never went down easily and the monster just laughed and smashed the blunt side of its axe into Malvian’s ribs. He went down onto one knee, struggling to draw breath, then rolled sideways just in time to avoid being cleaved in two. The ork kicked him in the chest, knocking Malvian down onto his back, and then it was on top of him. Malvian grabbed hold of the axe haft and screamed furious defiance at the brute as it bore down on the weapon, using its massive weight to drive the blade towards Malvian’s face.

A burst of shurikens buried themselves into the ork’s flesh, biting through its rusted armour and digging into its face. The ork stumbled away and roared, a clawed hand pawing at its bleeding mouth and cheek. It ripped one of the shurikens from its flesh in a gush of blood, stared at it for a moment, then roared again and charged past Malvian.

Malvian rolled over and saw the aeldari that Benson had shot, propped up and wedged between two large roots, its gun in an outstretched hand. The aeldari let out another burst of fire and the ork staggered from the impacts, blood spraying off to paint the forest floor crimson. Malvian pushed up to his feet and charged after the ork even as it waded forward against another burst of shuriken fire. The greenskin was almost on the aeldari when Malvian caught up to it and buried his knife in its unarmoured back. He stabbed it again and again, screaming in fury, each thrust punctuated by the sound of the aeldari’s pistol firing off bursts of shurikens. Eventually, Malvian staggered back and dropped to his knees, his knife loose in his grip. The ork swayed on its feet for a few moments longer, then toppled sideways in a puff of ash and loosely packed earth. Malvian looked up to see the aeldari pointing its pistol at him.

They stared at each other. Malvian shifted the grip on his knife a little and readied to launch himself at the aeldari. He knew the eldar would get a burst of fire off, but if he could cross the distance between them at least he could take the xenos with him. Then the aeldari’s arm dropped and she sighed. Her emerald-green armour was dented and scored and smudged with ash, and there was a dark lasgun burn in the leg plate. She’d be going nowhere in that state, and other than a few scrapes and the ringing in his ears, Malvian was fine. He had to get out of there before more orks arrived, and he knew more of them would be on the way. Orks never went anywhere alone, and it was clear now the crashing ship was greenskin. A suicidal but effective way to invade a world; he’d seen it before on Armageddon. There was no defence against orks mad enough to crash themselves onto a planet. And no other race in the galaxy tough enough to survive the strategy.

Malvian thrust his knife back into its belt sheath, stood, and walked a few steps away from the dead ork. He glanced about the forest, trying to find his bearings. The orks would be coming and they would be beyond counting. He needed to be away before they arrived. He needed to get out of the forest. Back to the Imperial outpost would be ideal. It was neither large nor well manned, but they had enough people and enough guns to hold out for a while at least, maybe even until reinforcements could arrive. At the very least they’d make the greenskins pay dearly for coming here. Of course, he wasn’t likely to make it that far on his own and with only a knife.

He glanced back to the aeldari. Her helmet was cracked, one of the eyepieces shattered, and she was fumbling at it, ignoring him as she struggled. She’d saved him, that much was undeniable. They’d been fighting just moments earlier, trying to kill each other, but still the eldar had saved him from the ork. She was finished, wounded, unable to move. She had nothing to gain from saving him, just trading one live enemy for another. But she had saved him. Honour demanded he repay that. That, and she’d make a good prisoner.

‘Damn it!’ Malvian cursed and turned around, stalking back towards the aeldari. She hadn’t moved, but upon seeing his approach she lifted her pistol from the ground again and pointed it roughly in his direction.

‘What are you doing, mon-keigh?’ Her voice was discordant but disturbingly beautiful.

‘Saving your arse,’ Malvian said gruffly. ‘Repaying the favour. Taking you prisoner. Pick one, I don’t care. Just point that little pistol somewhere useful and don’t fight me.’

The aeldari scoffed. ‘Your people don’t take prisoners.’

Malvian shrugged. ‘Sure we do,’ he said, though he couldn’t remember a time they had. Then again he’d spent his entire life fighting orks and there simply wasn’t any point in taking a greenskin prisoner.

He arrived at her side and bent down, only to find the barrel of her pistol pressed against his throat.

‘Why?’ There was anger along with the pain in the aeldari’s voice. ‘Why not just run and leave me?’

Malvian shrugged. ‘You saved me first. Besides, there’s two rules I’ve always tried to live by. First is never to leave the barracks without a fresh pair of socks. Very important that one. Second is when it comes to guns, bigger is always better. Well, right now I don’t even have a gun, so your little shredder there will have to do.’

The pistol dropped from his throat. The aeldari was breathing heavily and each breath seemed to bring more pain. Malvian couldn’t say he knew a damned thing about their physiology, he knew little enough about his own, but he doubted the fall from the forest canopy had done her much good. She reached up and flipped the final catches on her helmet so it fell free. Then she gasped in a deep breath and coughed. She had pointed ears, fine features, and skin that seemed a little too tight and smooth; but in truth, she did not seem so different from a human. Not so different at all, now Malvian looked at her. He’d expected something more… alien.

‘I don’t understand,’ the aeldari said, her voice clearer now.

The howls and shouts were drawing closer. More orks were on their way. ‘Why did you save me?’ Malvian asked.

The aeldari stared at him in a way that made him feel small and insignificant. ‘I killed the more dangerous enemy,’ she said eventually. ‘After that, there seemed little point in killing you too.’

A sting to his pride, but there was no sense in taking offence. ‘Well there’s plenty more of those more dangerous enemies on the way, and we stand a better chance of getting out of here together, I reckon. So up you get and let’s go.’

‘Go where?’

‘Anywhere but here,’ Malvian growled. ‘I’ve seen what happens to people taken by these monsters.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. So right now, let’s just get up and get moving.’ He slid an arm behind her back and lifted the aeldari onto her feet. She hissed in pain and Malvian was certain he was carrying more of her weight than she was, but at least they were moving.

‘That thing was an ork,’ the aeldari said as they passed the body. The way she said it sounded almost like a question.

‘Aye. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one before?’ Malvian asked. He had no idea which way was back to the outpost, only that the trees had fallen away from the crash site and so that was the direction he was going. He needed to get them out of the forest and hope his vox started working again.

The aeldari was silent for a few moments. ‘It was difficult to kill,’ she said.

Malvian let out a bitter chuckle as he half-carried, half-dragged the aeldari along. ‘Aye, tough buggers.’ Malvian stepped over a fallen tree and grunted as he lifted the aeldari over it too. She was lighter than he had expected, her armour seeming to weigh almost nothing at all, but still an extra burden to carry. ‘They can survive just about anything,’ he continued. He wasn’t even sure why he was talking to her, but some conversation seemed better than none, helped steady his nerves. ‘However much you think is enough to put one down for good, it will take more. Always more. The trick is to shoot them first and keep shooting until they go down. Then shoot them a bit more for good measure.’

‘Why would you keep shooting them once they’re dead?’ the aeldari said, sounding disgusted.

Malvian let out a grim smile. ‘It’s cathartic.’

‘It’s barbaric.’ A scream of pain erupted from far behind them, echoing through the forest, and the aeldari turned her head towards the sound. She let out a mournful sigh and Malvian guessed the orks had found a surviving aeldari. ‘You hate them,’ she said.

‘Aye,’ Malvian said. He helped her over another fallen tree and winced as she hissed in pain. ‘Been fighting the greenskins my whole life, it seems. I’ve seen the worst of what they’re capable of. Lived through it. Hordes of the monsters beyond counting, all baying for blood and screaming for war. A green tide without end, threatening to wash away civilisation in a sea of blood.’ He shook his head, trying to clear the maudlin thoughts. ‘They’re hateful creatures with no purpose but killing. So, I hate them right back. There’s nothing I’d like more than to never see an ork ever again.’

The aeldari was silent for a moment. ‘I have been fighting your people my whole life, mon-keigh. Do you really think yourself so different from these creatures? There are hordes of you and war is all you know. Hate and killing is all you know.’

Malvian pulled them to a stop. He considered dropping the aeldari, going on without her. After all, she’d compared him to an ork and he couldn’t think of a worse insult. But like it or not, he knew they had a better chance of surviving together. He started forward again, dragging her with him so roughly she let out a little cry of pain. Besides, what better way to prove her wrong than to save her life?

They continued in silence for a while, listening to the noise of orks drawing nearer. The thick fog distorted sounds, confused direction, but Malvian knew what he was hearing all the same. Greenskins grunting to each other, shouting orders or taunts. Their machines clomping through the forest, saw blades chopping through trees. The occasional burst of their primitive shoota fire. Either the brutes were finding enemies to fight, or they were fighting amongst themselves. Malvian hoped it was the latter. He hoped they all killed each other.

The aeldari seemed to be getting stronger, or perhaps just coping with her injury better. Malvian was still half-carrying her, with one of her arms over his shoulders, but he was dragging her less now. She limped with gasps of pain and growls of determination. The orks were monsters, and no doubt about it. Green nightmares given horrible form. He had thought the aeldari no different, but she looked almost human and sounded it too.

‘We’re being stalked,’ the aeldari said as they rounded a large tree that dwarfed any of the others Malvian had seen. This far from the crash site, the forest was less affected by the shock wave, but the fog of ash and dust was still so thick he could barely see a dozen paces in front of him.

Malvian glanced about. ‘I don’t see anything.’

‘Not surprising,’ the aeldari said, her voice mocking. ‘Your technology is as rudimentary as your biology. Regardless, there are two of them to our left. They are both smaller than the last one but carry primitive firearms.’

Malvian looked left. The aeldari was right. He caught glimpses of dark shapes moving through the fog, but he couldn’t make out much else. He pulled them behind a large tree and stopped, glancing around its bulk. ‘We can’t outrun them. We need a plan.’

‘Don’t all your mon-keigh plans just involve mindlessly charging towards the enemy?’ the aeldari said, grimacing in distaste.

Malvian bristled at the insult. ‘Well I don’t think either of us are dancing through the trees like you and yours did earlier. So I guess we’re going with my mindless charge idea. I’ll make some noise, draw their fire, and give you a chance to fill ’em full of metal.’

‘Why would you do that?’ the aeldari asked with narrowed eyes. ‘Willingly risk your life to distract them.’

‘Standard tactics,’ Malvian said with a grimace. ‘Sometimes it seems a Guardsman’s primary job is to distract the enemy away from the bigger guns.’ He glanced around the tree again. The orks were in view now, picking their way between the trees, searching for their prey.

‘You mon-keigh have such odd tactics. Do your lives really mean so little to you?’

Malvian shrugged. He had more important things to do than explain the Guard’s methods. ‘Are you ready? Take the shot as soon as you can. Aim for the head or neck. Body shots are nothing but wasted ammo.’

The aeldari was silent but fixed him with a hostile stare.

‘Right then,’ Malvian said.

He took a couple of deep breaths, then sprinted out from behind the tree. ‘Look at me, you ugly green bastards!’ he shouted. The orks opened fire immediately, their shootas tearing up the nearby ground and eating chunks out of the trees. Orks tended to make up for inferior tactics with superior numbers, and they made up for inferior aim with a relentless storm of bullets. Malvian headed away from the aeldari, keeping his head down and running between trees as often as possible. The distraction worked. He knew the first ork had gone down when its companion let out a roar and the bullets stopped. Malvian turned to see the ork advancing on the aeldari’s cover, ripping the tree to shreds with a hail of gunfire.

‘Hey, ugly!’ Malvian screamed. He started running at the ork, hurling insults, but the greenskin couldn’t hear him over the deafening roar of the junk it called a gun. He was just a few paces away when the ork turned his way, mouth open and grinning, full of yellowing teeth. Malvian threw himself to the ground behind a tree stump just as bullets sprayed his way, tearing up the ground behind him.

The ork grunted and the shoota fire stopped. Malvian poked his head out of cover to see the ork’s shoota riddled with shurikens. The stupid monster was pulling the trigger to a series of clicks, staring at the weapon in confusion. It grunted and smacked the weapon, then pulled the trigger again. The gun let out a shower of sparks and ruptured, sending shards of razor-sharp metal in every direction, peppering the ork and knocking it to the ground.

Malvian jumped out of cover and charged the ork, knife already in his hands. The beast was on the forest floor, bellowing in pain and studded with bloody shards of metal. Malvian leapt on top of the ork and drove his knife down to the hilt through its thick skull. It twitched twice and then went still.

Malvian rolled off the body, happy all over again for his rebreather. If there was one thing he’d learned from the siege of Infernus it was that the only thing that smelled worse than a live ork was a dead one.

‘Are you alive, mon-keigh?’ the aeldari asked as she lurched between the trees, using them for support and putting no weight on her injured leg.

Malvian patted his chest. No bullet holes and no blood. ‘For now,’ he said with a grimace as he forced himself to sit up. He put a boot on the ork’s face and pulled his knife from its skull with a sickening squelch.

‘That was reckless,’ the aeldari said, a note of concern in her harmonious voice. ‘You could have easily died.’

Malvian wiped his knife on his coat and slid it back into its sheath. ‘In the Emperor’s service, I don’t fear death,’ he said, the words instinct more than true faith.

‘That is because you do not understand it,’ the aeldari said. She was leaning against a nearby tree, pistol still held in her hand. ‘You believe that death in service to your corpse-god Emperor is the greatest honour, but you fail to comprehend what awaits after that death. She Who Thirsts waits for us aeldari in the warp, eager to consume our souls. An eternity of torment.’

Malvian shook his head at the thought. ‘That’s just downright unsettling.’

‘Yes, mon-keigh, it is,’ said the aeldari. ‘That is why each of my people carries a stone.’ She closed her free hand around the faintly glowing blue gem in the centre of her chest piece. ‘When we die, these stones trap our souls, in the hope that they will be returned to our people instead of consumed by the Great Enemy.’

Malvian laughed. ‘You really think a stone will… suck up your soul when you die?’

‘Yes.’

Malvian grunted sceptically. ‘Well it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I guess it makes sense now.’

‘What does?’

‘Why you saved me. If I thought some great and powerful warp-spawned beastie was waiting to gobble up my soul… Well I reckon that’d be a pretty good incentive to make sure I didn’t die, even if it meant making friends with an enemy.’

The aeldari was silent for a moment, her eyes dark and piercing. Then she turned her head to stare at the trees. ‘You were never an enemy, mon-keigh. You were little more than an annoyance.’

Malvian chuckled. ‘Come on,’ he said, using a nearby tree to haul himself back to his feet. He bent underneath the aeldari’s arm and took most of her weight once more. ‘We better get moving. There’s no way the rest of the greenskins didn’t hear our little gunfight, and I’d rather not test which of us is right about this whole death thing.’

They laboured on, Malvian certain he was doing most of the work, while the cries and weapons fire of the greenskins drew closer. Before long, they were running, or doing their best impression of it. The fog was thinning, and the shouts of the orks were more distinct. Malvian was convinced he even made out a few words, but what passed for language amongst the greenskins was barely intelligible at the best of times. He heard war machines too, the monstrosities the orks called kanz lumbering through the forest on rusted metal legs.

‘The edge of the forest is not far ahead,’ said the aeldari between gasping breaths and hisses of pain. Malvian thought he could just about see the treeline.

Gunfire sounded, far too close, and a tree nearby splintered as bullets ripped into it. Malvian ducked on instinct and the aeldari tripped, bringing them both down, rolling and sprawling in the leaf litter. Malvian scrambled back to his feet in moments and grabbed the aeldari, wrenching her up and ignoring the cry of pain.

‘No time to lie around, eldar,’ he growled. ‘Not when we’re so close to… So close.’ He lurched into a run, pulling her with him. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he knew it was all pointless. The greenskins had found them, were all but upon them. Even if they made it out of the forest, all that waited beyond was a few grassy fields and miles of open ground before they reached the Imperial outpost. Open ground with a horde of orks at their backs. The crushing realisation that it was all for nothing almost took the fight out of Malvian and he felt his legs wobble.

‘I’m impressed,’ the aeldari said between gasping breaths. ‘I didn’t think a mon-keigh could wield such determination.’

Shoota fire roared past them, joined by more and more. Trees nearby burst apart from the barrage and the ground around them was torn apart. But Malvian kept on running, dragging the aeldari with him. They would die, he was sure of that, but he would not give up. By the Emperor’s shiny Golden Throne, he would get them to safety or die trying.

The last of the trees passed by Malvian in a blur of adrenaline-fuelled running, and immediately his vox began to crackle. He reached up with a hand and pressed the transmit button. ‘Command, do you read?’ he said between great, heaving breaths. ‘Command, this is Sergeant Malvian Craw. Do you read me?’

‘Sergeant?’ a voice said over the vox. It sounded a lot like Commissar Vanx and was about the only time Malvian had ever been pleased to hear the sour-faced bastard. ‘There’s greenskins pouring from a wreck at your last-known position.’

‘I bloody well know that,’ Malvian shouted, heedless of any punishment it would earn him later. ‘They’re shooting at us.’

Now they were out of the forest, fewer bullets were chasing them, but Malvian knew the respite wouldn’t last long. The aeldari was barely even limping any more, and only her laboured breathing convinced him she was still alive. Yet Malvian kept going, dragging her along.

‘Well, what you may not know, sergeant,’ the commissar said, spitting the title with all the menace of a falling sword, ‘is that reinforcements are on the way.’

Malvian couldn’t help himself. He pressed the transmit button. ‘Well they’d better get here soon because I’ve got orks up my arse.’

‘Take cover and look up, Sergeant Craw.’ There was a smug arrogance in the commissar’s voice. ‘The battle-barge Wrath of Hope has been chasing these greenskins for weeks and has arrived in orbit. The vanguard is already en route.’

Shoota fire whistled past and Malvian glanced up to see half a dozen stars burning in the grey sky, falling towards them. Malvian dropped and pulled the aeldari down with him. The grass wasn’t tall, but it obscured them enough that the orks struggled to aim. He lay on his back, breathing heavily, and felt hope surge within him as the first of the teardrop-shaped pods crashed into the earth nearby, shaking the ground with the force of the impact. Small detonation charges blew the pod doors open, and warriors of the Adeptus Astartes in lapis-blue armour charged out with bolters blazing. Another drop pod smashed down only moments later, and yet more Ultramarines joined the fight, wading into the torrent of shoota fire the orks threw their way.

Malvian laughed at their good fortune as he climbed to his knees and pulled the exhausted aeldari up with him. Now they were out of the choking fog, he pulled off his rebreather and unbuckled his helmet, letting the breeze stir his hair and cool his scars for the first time in what seemed like forever.

‘From the clutches of one enemy and into another,’ the aeldari said. There seemed a sad look on her face as she watched the Ultramarines wade into battle against the greenskin filth.

‘What?’ Malvian said, grinning through his patchy stubble. ‘We’re saved.’

The aeldari sighed. ‘I am not so certain,’ she said.

Suddenly Malvian realised he didn’t know her name, nor had he thought to offer his. It seemed wrong after all they’d been through. ‘Malvian Craw,’ he said, holding out his hand to the aeldari.

She looked down at his hand for a moment, a frown on her tight face, then back up at Malvian. ‘Feuran,’ she said, but did not take his hand.

A third drop pod hit the ground, the doors thrown open as a Dreadnought barrelled forth, each footfall shaking the ground. Then a fourth landed just a couple of dozen yards away, and another squad of Ultramarines poured out to join the battle. The last to depart the pod was a sergeant. His armour was gleaming and decorated with gold filigree over the pauldrons and chestplate, and his helmet was painted red. He carried a bolt pistol in one hand and a chugging chainsword in the other, and he stopped and stared directly at Malvian.

Malvian shot to his feet as the Space Marine approached and snapped off a salute. ‘Sir,’ he said eagerly, staring up at the giant imposing figure. ‘Sergeant Craw of the 613th. This is…’

The Adeptus Astartes sergeant raised his bolt pistol towards Feuran and pulled the trigger. The report of the bolt pistol was damning and in the relative silence that followed, Feuran’s body toppled sideways into the grass.

The Space Marine raised a hand to his helm. ‘Push back the xenos filth,’ he said into his vox. ‘No quarter.’ The sergeant lingered for a few moments longer. ‘Pick up your weapon and join the fight, Guardsman.’ With that, he turned and strode away towards the forest where his brothers were pushing back the greenskins.

Malvian watched the sergeant go, then dropped to his knees beside Feuran’s corpse. All relief at being saved from the greenskins had vanished. His hands were trembling, not with fear, but with anger and grief. She was a xenos, true, but not like the orks. Nothing like the orks. She hadn’t deserved such an ignoble end. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, the tremble in his hands reaching his voice as well. ‘Thank you,’ he added, realising he hadn’t told her before, ‘for saving my life.’

Deserving or not, Feuran was dead now and there was nothing he could do about that. He wondered which of them was truly right about death. Whether some great, warp-spawned monster was really waiting for her soul once she died. Malvian glanced down at the stone embedded in her armour and he pulled out his knife, using it to pry the shining gem from her chest piece. If what the aeldari believed was true, that stone now contained Feuran’s soul. He looked at it, clutching it in one hand. It seemed a small vessel to contain something so grand as a soul.

Malvian gave the little stone a shake. ‘You in there, eldar?’ he said, his jaw clenching so tight it hurt. ‘I’ll get you back home. Somehow.’ He tucked the stone into a pocket of his coat and got back to his feet. The Ultramarines had pushed the orks back into the forest and there was a pitched battle happening between the trees. Malvian gripped his knife tightly in his fist and ran towards the fight. He had orders to follow, orks to kill, and a squad to avenge.

THE KARSHARAT ABOMINATION

George Mann

The sky was bleeding.

The rent in the atmosphere was a thick, purple scar, an angry ribbon across the heavens, casting everything below in its vague, unreal light. Shadows danced in twisting interplay, describing shifting patterns of movement. Figures seemed to emerge threateningly from behind every broken lintel, every stub of tumbledown wall, before dissipating again within moments, nothing more than an unwelcome trick of the eye.

From the heart of the rent, fat droplets tumbled in a drizzly veil, pattering against Bledheim’s cloak, so that his hood and shoulders had become sodden, cumbersome. The red fluid streaked his upturned cheeks, oily and gritty against his skin. The air was filled with its rich, iron tang. It sloshed around his boots with every ponderous step.

Bledheim turned to regard the others, who were trudging along beside him in the slick loam. ‘Anyone would think we weren’t welcome here,’ he said, wiping more of the foul liquid from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Inquisitor Sabbathiel turned to meet his gaze, her features set in a grim smile. Despite the torrent, she looked resplendent in her white and red armour, although her hair, loose and tumbling across her gorget, was now streaked with the greasy fluid. It ran in rivulets down the front of her chestplate, pooling in the graven Inquisition symbol that adorned her lower torso, turning the ceramite pink. ‘Your insights never cease to astound me, Bledheim,’ she said. Next to Sabbathiel, the woman, Mercy, emitted a wet chuckle, regarding him with a half-cocked eyebrow. He’d never liked her, and the wicked smile on her lips did little to alter his opinion.

Bledheim sighed. While he understood the necessity of their visit to this Emperor-forsaken backwater, he longed for it to be over. He didn’t even know why Sabbathiel had brought him here, to Karsharat. Mercy and Brondel – well, they were muscle, pure and simple – but it wasn’t as if Bledheim could do much to help in a fight. He supposed she might be anticipating the need for interrogation – his own particular speciality – but that wasn’t what she’d said back on the ship. To all intents and purposes, it was a straightforward mission: storm the ruins, kill the heretics and put a stop to whatever abominable weapon they were devising in there. He’d heard the same story a dozen times before; more, maybe. This was what they did – what Sabbathiel did – and yet, somehow, this time it felt different.

He supposed he’d find out soon enough. He should have paid more attention during the briefing.

The ruins here had once been an Ecclesiarchy outpost but, from what he’d been able to ascertain, had been abandoned some time during the last century. He hadn’t managed to establish why, and he didn’t suppose it mattered all that much, except that the moon had been left unguarded, and now something else had moved in. A renegade Martian, was the working hypothesis, one that Metik – who, Bledheim noted, had somehow managed to remain behind on the ship – had been tracking for some time. A renegade with a particular interest in experimentation. A renegade that Sabbathiel had decided she wanted destroyed.

Still, that didn’t explain the constant shower of blood or the rent in the sky, which raised the dismaying prospect that there might be other forces at play here, too. Forces that Bledheim didn’t want to begin to consider.

And they still had to find a way into the ruins.

Bledheim peered into the hazy curtain of rain, cupping his hand around his eyes. Ahead of them, the remains of the citadel were a towering silhouette, jagged and half-collapsed. Why would anyone choose to come to this place? As a base of operations, it lacked subtlety – and a roof – but he supposed it might very well be the last place people would look for a wanted outcast. Unless those people were Metik and Sabbathiel, of course.

He saw a shape emerging from the rain, and slipped his other hand inside his cloak, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol. Then he caught sight of the flickering blue light, drifting lazily over the figure’s head, and he relaxed, coming to a stop to await the arrival of the newcomer.

Moments later, a filthy, mud-encrusted squat emerged from the rainstorm, flanked by a servo-skull that seemed to be guiding his way with its winking diodes.

‘Frecking Krull, but it’s a beautiful day,’ said Brondel, his voice a low, throaty growl. He shook his head, shaking loose a cascade of blood from his matted beard.

‘Brondel,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. ‘You’ve found a way in?’

‘Aye,’ said Brondel. ‘There’s a door on the west side. It looks as if the structure there has been partially rebuilt, although you wouldn’t know it until you’re on top of it. Whatever’s holed up in there isn’t going to look kindly on visitors.’ He spat, and then ground the phlegm into the mud with the heel of his boot.

‘All the more reason to get on with it and crack some skulls,’ said Mercy. She, of all of them, looked truly menacing, her exposed face and arms spattered in blood, towering over the diminutive squat. The whirring instruments in her chest – an artificial set of heart and lungs, installed by Metik some years earlier after he found her wounded in the lower levels of a hive city – seemed to grind and sputter noisily in the damp. She was clutching a lasrifle in both hands, and the immense two-handed power sword that she usually wielded was slung in a harness across her back. Bledheim knew that, no matter what she said, she had deeper motives than simply cracking skulls – she’d never truly forgiven Metik for what he’d done to her, bringing her back from the brink of death by riddling her body with machine parts, and perhaps taking down a rogue Martian with a penchant for experimenting on people might go some way to at least temporarily quelling her need for vengeance.

Sabbathiel glanced up at the servo-skull. ‘Fitch?’

‘There are life signs within the structure, ma’am,’ said the servo-skull, its voice mimicking the speech patterns of its erstwhile owner, but laced with a sluggish, technological burr. Bledheim shuddered.

‘How many?’

The servo-skull hesitated, as if pondering the answer. ‘Difficult to ascertain. No fewer than five, no greater than twelve.’

‘That’s quite a range,’ said Bledheim.

‘The readings are in flux,’ said the servo-skull.

‘You can say that again,’ murmured Brondel.

Sabbathiel swung her force stave up and around, indicating the ruined citadel with its tip. ‘Fan out and approach the building slowly. We’ll converge again by the door. They might be watching us from the ruins, waiting for us to get close.’

Bledheim nodded, and then slipped away into the rain, edging ever on towards the melancholy ruins. At least, he decided, they might finally get out of the bloody rain.

The jagged remnants of a toppled stone balustrade served as a perfect vantage point from which Bledheim could safely observe the goings-on at the door. It was huge, an ornate archway that had once clearly served as an entrance to a courtyard but had now been barricaded by heavy plasteel panelling. Strange mechanical contrivances – segmented tubular structures – had been arranged around the frame, and they glistened in the red rain. For the life of him, Bledheim could not fathom their purpose.

The others were gathered before the opening, the servo-skull – he refused to call it ‘Fitch’, despite its apparent history – buzzing over Sabbathiel’s shoulder like some skittish familiar.

‘Stand aside,’ he heard Sabbathiel say, and watched as the others retreated a few steps to give her room. She stepped forwards, the servos in her massive armour grinding as she transferred her weight to her front foot. The armour had been modelled on the Terminator patterns of the Adeptus Astartes, constructed by artificers on the forge world of Pholon, designed to Sabbathiel’s precise size and specification. In truth, it seemed to Bledheim to utterly dwarf her, entombing her in its cavernous depths, but time and again it had saved her life – and his, if he was honest – and, wearing it, she became even more the fearsome figure she was without it.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Mercy. She’d already raised her lasrifle to her shoulder, sighting along its length in anticipation of what the door might open to reveal.

‘I’m going to knock,’ said Sabbathiel. She lurched forwards, curling her gauntleted hand into a fist as she extended her arm. She struck the door with a thunderous report, the plasteel flexing beneath the force of the blow, dislodging a shower of broken masonry from above. It had, however, refused to give.

Sabbathiel stepped back, regarding the pitted door before her. The sound of the blow was still ringing out into the ruins around them, the lament of a discordant bell.

Bledheim turned to see a crow, lifting away from its perch atop the broken wing of a monumental aquila that was half-buried in the mud close by. The bird circled overhead for a moment, ignoring the thrumming rain, before dipping low and disappearing into the depths of the ruins.

‘They know we’re here,’ said Bledheim, dropping down from his perch. ‘And before you say it,’ he added, turning to Mercy, ‘I don’t mean because we knocked. That crow – it was watching us.’

Brondel spat again, frowning in disgust.

‘We’re going to have to blo–’ Sabbathiel stopped suddenly, her sentence giving way to a grunt of surprise. Bledheim turned, pulling his laspistol from his robes, half expecting to see the door had opened and guards were spilling out. Instead, he was greeted with a view of seven snaking mechadendrites, which had erupted from the frame around the door, writhing and thrashing in Sabbathiel’s direction. Two of the appendages had already snared her right arm and leg and were dragging her closer – despite the bulk of her armour – while the others quested for her exposed head. At least, Bledheim supposed, he now understood what the mechanical structures around the door were for.

He raised his pistol and tried to draw a bead on one of the twisting appendages, but they were moving too quickly, and in the driving rain he risked hitting Sabbathiel in the process. Grunting in frustration, he lowered the weapon.

Nearby, Mercy had come to a similar conclusion. Discarding her lasrifle, she dragged the massive sword from its harness, swinging it up and over her shoulders, and ran headlong into the morass of tentacles, screaming like some maniacal primitive. Three swift chopping motions later, and Sabbathiel was free, sparks spitting in the rain as the remnants of the two appendages continued to writhe and fizz amongst the nest of their strange kin.

Brondel glanced over at Bledheim and shrugged.

‘Stand aside, Mercy,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. She righted herself, paced back from the door and raised her left arm, so that the nose of her wrist-mounted storm bolter was pointed in the direction of the morass of mechanical limbs.

Mercy, who was attempting to wrestle another mechadendrite into submission, gave a short, dutiful nod, and then released the appendage, stepping slowly away. From her sullen expression, Bledheim could see that she was more than a little disappointed.

There was a sudden eruption of noise and light, originating from Sabbathiel’s outstretched arm, and then the door was buckling inwards, as if folding around the detonating shells, trying to contain their destruction. The mass of tentacles exploded, filling the air with glittering shards that twinkled in the rain as they fell, thudding into the wet ground. A stray shard caught Mercy in the upper arm and she winced, but then, as casually as if plucking an errant hair, she spiked her sword in the ground, dug her fingers into the wound and pulled the bloody fragment free. She examined it for a moment, and then tossed it away, lost in the deluge.

Brondel sighed, and then marched in the direction of the open door.

Brondel had been right, for, on the other side of the archway, they found themselves in a poorly lit tunnel, which seemed to have been constructed – somewhat hastily – from a mix of plasteel and broken fragments of the old building. Here, the new sat alongside the old in glaring juxtaposition, the smooth, industrial plating melding unconvincingly with the ornate stonework of ages past. Every few feet, Bledheim could make out fragments of ancient frescoes, faded now from exposure to the elements, but still vibrant and clear. They seemed to be telling the tale of the Wretch of Menarchus – he had long ago studied such tales during a prolonged stay on the island of Relomas – but in truth it was difficult to be sure as so much of the original painting had been lost, and what survived here had been repositioned in haphazard order.

‘Finally, a reprieve from that frecking awful rain,’ said Brondel, his low voice echoing along the otherwise empty tunnel.

Bledheim nodded, throwing back his hood to reveal his bald pate. Bizarrely, the fabric felt light and dry to the touch. Frowning, he glanced down at his hands, to see that all trace of the bloody precipitation had gone. A quick look at the others established that they, too, were now free from any trace of the dreadful fluid.

Sabbathiel had noticed it too. ‘It seems we can no longer be sure of our own senses,’ she said, a note of caution in her voice.

‘The work of the Ruinous Powers?’ ventured Bledheim.

‘Perhaps… or perhaps not.’ Sabbathiel waved them on. Bledheim had the sense that there was more to her response than he could yet understand, but he’d long ago learned when and how to question her, and now was not the time. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘No doubt the guardians of this place are stirring. We will see battle before the day is out. Be vigilant.’

They moved on, deeper into the network of tunnels. For once, Bledheim was glad to have Mercy looming over his shoulder.

Ahead, the tunnel branched out, splitting off in three different directions. Sabbathiel hesitated at the junction, as if deciding which of them to send each way, but then indicated the central tunnel with a wave of her hand.

‘We stay together,’ she said, anticipating their questions. ‘There’s something… unreliable about the atmosphere in this place.’ She didn’t need to add the remainder of the thought – if I send you off, I’ll probably never see you again.

She was right, though – the deeper they’d come, the more Bledheim had sensed a growing sensation somewhere in the back of his skull: something akin to an itch, but far more invasive, persistent. He could feel it there now, as if some terrible, multi-legged creature had somehow wormed its way inside his head and was even now scuttling about, its tiny feet pricking the undulating surface of his brain. He shuddered at the sudden thought, his hand unconsciously rubbing at the back of his neck.

Everything about the place seemed wrong. The tunnels seemed to stretch on interminably, terminating in nothing but further tunnels. They all looked the same, and all were cloaked in some cloying atmosphere, as if the walls were threatening to close in at any moment. He felt trapped, claustrophobic, fearful that he might never see the sky again. He’d only been in here for – what? – a few minutes, but already it felt excruciating, as if he’d been tramping along these passages forever.

He glanced at Brondel, but it was difficult to tell what the squat was thinking. His expression seemed forever fixed as either thunderously perturbed, or gleefully amused. Presently, he looked as gloomy as he ever did, his heavy brow wrinkled in a frown.

Above them, the servo-skull slid quietly through the air, its blue search lamp rebounding off the plasteel walls to generate an eerie, midnight quality to the light.

Bledheim had slid his pistol back inside his robes, and, as he walked, had begun, almost unconsciously, to massage the palm of his right hand. This was the real tool of his trade – the hand with which he encouraged compliance within those he was brought in to question. Each of the fingers had been replaced by thin, mechanical talons that each terminated in a tiny, retractable needle. These needles were fed from small canisters mounted in a brace upon the back of his hand, containing a variety of colourful fluids designed to incite raw emotions in his subjects. One might sedate, while another excited. A third might inspire fear, a fourth uncertainty and anguish. Choosing which of the poisons to administer, in which order and in what quantity, was the colour with which he painted his masterpieces. He always got his charges to talk.

Now, though, something deep within his palm had begun to ache, and the more he rubbed at it, the more insistent it became. Had he done something to it during the journey here? Was it somehow malfunctioning? He shoved it inside his robes and tried to put it out of mind.

Up ahead, the tunnel disgorged into a vast chamber that was flooded with shimmering light. Sabbathiel motioned for them to fan out, their backs to the walls, as they slowly entered the room.

Bledheim saw immediately that this had once been the refectory of an Ecclesiarchy temple – the towering pillars, the stone arches that had once held panels of coloured glass, the vast, vaulted ceiling. As he watched, the ceiling rippled and began to peel back, exposing a bright and glorious vista of the heavens. Bledheim stood, enraptured, as strange and wonderful shapes – geometric constellations that could never exist – tumbled across a golden sky, and beyond that, twinkling in the distance, the stars, shifting and altering their patterns, dancing into new alignments.

He felt the throbbing in his palm intensify, and tore his eyes away from the view, glancing down. His hand had grown rigid, clawlike, and to his horror, he saw that the poisons in the row of chambers had all discharged, flowing not through the needle tips of his fingers, but back into his arm. The veins beneath the skin were black and pulsating, and he could feel the poison coursing through him, a burning fire spreading up his arm and into his shoulder.

Suddenly, the world shifted. He was surrounded by dancing flames that licked hungrily at his boots, at his robes, at his flesh. He looked around, frantic, searching for Brondel, Mercy, Sabbathiel – but he was already too late. There was nothing any of them could do to help him now. They, too, had been consumed by the unnatural conflagration, their eyes melting to blackened pits, skin peeling from hot, white bones.

Was it the poison? Was that what he was seeing?

Bledheim dropped to his knees, screaming. With his left arm, he searched frantically for his knife. He had to remove the hand, the arm. It was the only way he could stop more of the poison flooding his system. But the knife had gone.

He slumped to the ground, feeling the flames lapping at his face. It was too late. Too late…

A slap brought him around, his cheek hot and stinging. He looked up, confused, to see Mercy standing over him, a crooked grin on her lips.

‘Fine time to wake up, interrogator, now that the battle’s over.’

Bledheim groaned, and then, as it all came back to him in a sudden rush – the flames, the poison – he sat up, tearing frantically at his robes to reveal his right hand. The skin there was pink and smooth, the cylinders in the brace still filled with the same colourful fluids he’d filled them with back on the ship.

He looked up at Mercy, incomprehension in his eyes. She laughed again, and strode away, her boot steps echoing in the cavernous space.

‘Bledheim.’

It was Sabbathiel’s voice. He turned to see her standing over the mangled corpse of… something. It looked as if it had once been human, but it had a brace of what appeared to be electrical filaments erupting from its shoulders and was covered in an array of fine cables and wires. Sparks were still discharging from two metal bracelets encircling its wrists. Sabbathiel’s armoured foot was resting on the side of its head. He could see another three or four of the things scattered amongst the dust and detritus that lined the floor. One of them was missing its head.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Fear. It is a weapon.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘On you, it was ably deployed.’

Bledheim nodded. Psychic attack. He understood now, all too well. The blood rain, the claustrophobia, the poison… It had been deployed ably indeed. ‘So, this is the weapon we seek? The one being crafted here by the renegade?’

Sabbathiel gave a curt nod, then turned away. ‘We must all face our fears, in this place, Bledheim. We must all be strong. We are close now. Our enemy seeks to unsettle us. We shall not be so easily dissuaded.’

Bledheim felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Brondel. He was wearing a fresh scar on his left cheek, and his beard was standing proud where he’d evidently been subject to an electrical attack. He clasped Bledheim by the wrist – being careful to select the left one – and hauled the interrogator to his feet.

‘My thanks.’

By way of response, Brondel simply spat on the ground and wiped his mouth on the corner of Bledheim’s robe.

The itching sensation at the back of Bledheim’s skull was a constant distraction, growing in intensity with every step as they hurried towards the heart of the old citadel, but at least now, he mused, he understood what it was. In its way, it was a kind of poison, too, just like those he might administer – an evil thought that had wormed its way into his head and sought to destabilise him, to throw him off, to dissuade him from completing his mission. But, just like a poison, there was an antidote, and Bledheim was adept at those, too.

In his years of training he had been subjected to all manner of mind-altering substances, testing them upon himself to better understand their effects. In doing so, he had discovered ways to throw up barriers, to parcel off small parts of his mind and keep them free from alteration, from outside influence. This, he had never discussed with any other, as he knew that to harbour such abilities might be seen as heretical, but this was not, he knew, a form of witchcraft, but merely a deep understanding of discipline. He had trained himself to step outside of the effects of the poison coursing through his blood, to reserve a tiny fraction of his mind, so that he might remain, to a degree, in control of his own faculties.

Now that he better understood the threat, now that he had experienced the horror of it, he knew better how to shield himself from its effects.

The others, bar Sabbathiel, seemed not to be faring as well. Mercy had grown increasingly agitated during the last few minutes, twitching at every shadow, her hand constantly playing across the hilt of her sword. He knew it wouldn’t take much to make her snap, and in the confined space of the tunnels, she posed a very real and present threat. If she mistook one of their party for an enemy combatant… well, he’d seen what she could do when her ire was up.

Likewise, Brondel had begun muttering to himself. The words themselves were unintelligible – Bledheim half believed them to be spoken in a different language – but he appeared to be growing increasingly angry and resentful, threatening to boil over at any moment.

Only Sabbathiel herself remained impassive, her expression benign. Bledheim wondered what sort of war she might be fighting behind that implacable facade.

She raised her hand to halt their progress. Peering around the bulk of her armour, Bledheim saw that, ahead of them, the tunnel ended in a T-junction. To the left, the passage looked ill-lit and foreboding, draped in a filthy smear of spider’s webs. To the right, the tunnel was punctuated by hovering lume globes, and had clearly seen more recent use.

‘That way,’ said Sabbathiel, indicating they should follow her to the left.

‘But…’ started Bledheim, his stomach turning at the very thought – but he stopped himself short, recognising the truth in Sabbathiel’s earlier words. We must face our fears. Once again, he’d allowed the tendrils of that psychic presence to burrow insidiously into his mind. Fear was their weapon, but it was also their defence. The images in their minds – the sense of foreboding – they were trying to push Sabbathiel and her party along the opposite route.

‘Ready your weapons,’ said Sabbathiel. Her voice seemed to carry along the entire corridor. Then, with a deep breath, she strode forwards into the darkness, allowing the spectral cobwebs to brush over her face.

Bledheim and the others hurried along behind her.

The tunnel emerged into what had once been a dormitory, during the days of the Ecclesiarchy occupation, but had now been refashioned into a makeshift laboratory. Nests of mechanical arms hung from the ceiling, and upright glass chambers lined the walls, many of them occupied by what looked to be human corpses – although Bledheim could see a man trapped in one of them, his face a visage of utter terror, clawing at the door to his chamber so violently that he had broken all of his fingers.

The place was filthy, rank with spilt blood and discarded, rotting tissue. Trays of surgical tools lay upon stained work surfaces, and tiny mechanical spiders scuttled over the walls and ceiling, red diodes winking.

Strapped to a gurney against one wall was a painfully thin, naked man, his skin so pale that Bledheim initially took him for another corpse, until he noticed the ragged shudder of the man’s breathing, the rattle of the mechanised box strapped to his chest, filtering his air. He was bald, his cheeks sallow, his eyes now fitted with lenses and bionics where once the biological organs had sat. He was peering at them, his mouth hanging limp and open, drool pooling on his chest.

Bledheim heard a clicking sound, and looked round to see a tall, ungainly figure emerging from the shadows at the other end of the room, where an open door appeared to lead off into another area of the complex. As the figure shuffled forwards into the light, Bledheim sensed Mercy recoil at the sight of it.

It was huge, a four-legged monstrosity, now more machine than man. Its body was fat and segmented like that of an insect, formed from interlocking plates that clacked and shifted as it moved, rasping and grating like an ancient machine. Four arms projected from its upper torso, and in one of them it carried a staff, which it used to steady itself as it moved. Its head was hidden beneath a ragged cowl, and jutted forwards inquisitively, pipes and tubes erupting from the place where its face should have been. It issued a hideous noise that might have resembled a laugh, if it hadn’t sounded more like the misfiring of broken pistons. A vent opened in the side of its chest, and a gout of tubercular steam hissed out.

Behind it, two shambling metal constructs loomed, as large as Sabbathiel in her armour, with buzzing saw blades as hands, and heads that resembled those of insects more than men.

‘Restak.’ Sabbathiel stepped forwards, swinging her force stave around before her.

‘Inquisitor Sabbathiel,’ replied the renegade. ‘I am honoured.’

‘It is no honour,’ said Sabbathiel. ‘I have merely come to put an end to your little experiments.’ She glanced back at the others, and Mercy and Brondel moved around to flank her. Bledheim slid his pistol from his robes but held back in the mouth of the tunnel. From here, he might be able to pick off a few choice shots.

Restak gestured to the lumbering constructs behind him, and they lurched forwards slavishly, heads swaying, arms raised and buzz saws screaming.

Sabbathiel’s storm bolter barked, and explosive shells thundered into the construct on the right, chewing two great holes into its heavily plated chest. The construct seemed hardly to notice the impact, however, other than to momentarily correct its shambling gait, before continuing its lumbering, deadly approach.

Mercy went wide, swinging her power sword back and forth before her, flexing her shoulders. Brondel seemed to have momentarily disappeared, but Bledheim knew from experience that he was simply seeking a vantage point from which to unleash his own particular brand of devastation.

With a roar, Sabbathiel charged, her footsteps causing the entire room to tremble as she rushed in to close on the construct on the left, her force stave cutting a wide arc, slicing through thick plasteel until it wedged, with a clang, against the construct’s raised arm. She tugged on the shaft but it was stuck fast, and the construct twisted, wrenching it from her grasp.

With a grunt of frustration, Sabbathiel stepped back, raising her arm just in time to block the downward arc of the buzz saw coming for her face. It bit into her vambrace, chewing into the plasteel with a grinding scream. Grimacing, Sabbathiel raised her other arm, jammed the nose of her storm bolter into the construct’s face – or what passed for it – and fired.

The detonation sent Sabbathiel reeling backwards, but the construct had fared worse, its entire head and shoulders caving inwards under the intense force of the blast. It toppled over with a metallic thud, the force stave still wedged in its arm. Sabbathiel, shaking her head as if to clear the ringing, lurched forwards and set to work freeing her stave. She wrenched it loose a moment later.

On the other side of the laboratory, Mercy had locked the other construct into a spiralling dance, weaving circles around it as it tried to get a fix on her with its saw. Her movements were graceful, fluid, punctuated only by the regular downward thrust of her blade, as she cut furrow after furrow into the construct’s armour. It seemed untroubled by the damage, but Bledheim knew what game she was playing – she was keeping it busy.

A moment later, from the shadows behind one of the glass chambers, Brondel bellowed for her to get down. She hit the floor just as a lobbed grenade clanged against the construct’s head, tumbling down into the hole punched in its chest by Sabbathiel’s earlier shot.

The construct glanced down at Mercy, raised its arm as if to strike her, and then exploded, rupturing out in a bloom of heat and light, shattering several glass chambers and causing thick, viscous fluid to gush out across the floor.

Bledheim, however, had been watching Restak at the time, as he clacked slowly over towards the thin man strapped to the gurney by the far wall. As Sabbathiel righted herself, having finally freed her weapon, Restak gripped the man by the shoulder, and he screamed.

The sound was like fire ripping through Bledheim’s mind, like the entire world had suddenly begun to boil. Blinding light flared in his vision. He could feel himself babbling, could feel warm blood trickling from his nose. And yet, there was a part of him that watched all of this with cool impartiality. That knew precisely what was occurring, that understood that his mind could no longer be trusted, and that the man on the gurney was behind everything that was happening to him.

Bledheim blinked, fighting against the wave of terror and pain that threatened to completely engulf him. Mercy was on the ground, writhing in agony, and Brondel had dropped to his knees, banging the heels of his hands against his head.

Only Sabbathiel had managed to stand her ground, and although clearly in abject pain, she was moving towards Restak, her stave raised.

She lurched at Restak, thrusting with her weapon. He tried to scuttle out of the way, but she caught his lower left arm with a glancing blow and it tore free in a shower of oil and wires, clattering to the floor.

Restak, furious, swept forwards, grabbing for Sabbathiel, battering her stave out of the way and pinning both of her arms, raising his staff in readiness to strike.

As Bledheim watched, his own vision foggy with blood and pain, Sabbathiel slumped, staring down in horror at her own body, as if reliving some distant nightmare. She screamed, and the sound of it was enough to stir Bledheim to action.

Restak was distracted. He had to act now.

Gasping for breath, fighting waves of nausea, Bledheim moved. One foot after the other, wobbling, unstable, he lurched across the room towards the man on the gurney. The man was spasming, frothing at the mouth, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, as whatever power was coursing through him ravaged his own body as much as it was ravaging Bledheim’s mind.

From the corner of his eye he saw Restak turn, call out for him to stop, but it was too late – Bledheim’s fingers had found their mark in the psyker’s chest, and the sedatives were discharging from their capsules.

He fell back, dropping to his knees, before sliding fully to the floor, slick with the spilled fluid from the glass chambers. The fire in his head had dulled, petering out, but the pain was still ferocious, his mind reeling. He watched, only half-aware, as Sabbathiel, still caught in the grip of the renegade tech-priest, wrenched herself loose, grasped the monster’s head in both hands, and pulled it free with a disgusting sucking sound.

Restak’s body twitched nervously, its servos whining, before it skittered back into the wall and sunk to the ground, blood oozing from the stump of its neck.

Bledheim blinked, and the lights went out.

‘That’s twice today I’ve had to slap you awake,’ said Mercy, as Bledheim shifted, dragging himself up into a sitting position. ‘I think I might make a habit of it.’

He looked up at her blearily, then sighed.

Sabbathiel was standing nearby, in the process of strapping the psyker’s body to a stretcher.

‘Brondel, you know what to do. I don’t want to leave any of this standing.’

‘Ma’am,’ said Brondel, not even bothering to conceal his gleeful smile.

Bledheim got unsteadily to his feet. ‘We’re taking the body?’ he said, with a nod towards the remains of the psyker. As soon as he’d done it, he wished he hadn’t, as stars bloomed in his vision. He drew a deep breath.

‘Body?’ said Sabbathiel. She looked at him quizzically. Then something seemed to dawn on her. ‘Oh, he’s still alive. Your sedation should last long enough to get him back to the ship.’

‘Alive? I thought we were here to destroy the weapon?’

Sabbathiel offered him a crooked smile. ‘No, Bledheim. We were here to claim it.’ She met his gaze, and then, with a sigh, she turned and walked from the room. ‘Come along, Brondel is anxious to put this place to the torch, and I can’t say I blame him. Bring the weapon, too. You should be able to manage that, shouldn’t you?’

Bledheim watched her go. He felt nauseous. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I should be able to manage that.’

A FIRSTBORN EXILE

Filip Wiltgren

The Chimera rumbles to a halt.

‘Try again,’ says Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra.

‘Sir!’ Sergeant Dalsik, Idra’s vox-operator, turns the dials, aligning the runes on the vox-caster. ‘992nd Firstborn,’ he says, ‘come in nine-nine-two.’

Idra pushes open the Chimera’s top hatch. Empty, grey Tovogan skies. Empty, grey Tovogan razorgrass plains. So unlike the ash wastes of Vostroya, yet so similar.

Except for the rebels. Vostroya’s heart and loyalty is with the Emperor. Which is why the Firstborn are on Tovoga. Loyal troops to quell the rebellion.

‘Do you read, nine-nine-two?’ says Dalsik, his voice almost drowned out by the armoured troop carrier’s idling engine. The antenna is solid, bending in a shallow arc over the Chimera’s armour. It is only twelve miles to Salomar. Dalsik should have been able to raise the 992nd. He should have been able to raise them sixty miles ago.

Behind Idra, the rest of the Vostroyan 86th Firstborn Regiment is spread across the razorgrass. Two more Chimeras, the boxy, grey troop carriers painted with red Firstborn recognition markings. A Taurox, its triangular tracks clogging with mud. A wheeled Tauros scout vehicle, what constitutes Idra’s outrider squad, making a lone shadow against the horizon. And a brace of grey, steel-wheeled trucks, captured from the Tovogans. Slow and unarmoured, the only transportation readily available to Idra. The 86th Firstborn is a regiment reduced to company strength, a bare hundred troops, plus walking wounded.

Nothing to be done about that until they get to Salomar, and the 992nd.

‘Do you read, nine-nine-two?’ says Dalsik. Idra closes the hatch, waves for her driver to engage the tracks.

The vox erupts with sharp pops. Heavy bolter fire.

‘Who is this?’ comes a voice. ‘Identify yourself. This is a restricted military channel.’

‘Sergeant Dalsik, 86th Firstborn, under command of Lieutenant Idra.’

The vox goes silent, then returns.

‘86th, by order of Colonel Gurlov, you are to proceed to Salomar with haste,’ it says. ‘Enter the city and relieve Command Group Gurlov, engaging and destroying any rebel forces you encounter.’

‘Gurlov?’ says Idra. The name is vaguely familiar.

‘Didn’t he die?’ says Sergeant Mathis Lokhov, Idra’s second-in-command.

Rumours click into place in Idra’s memory.

‘Ramrod Gurlov?’ she says. ‘The one who had his entire regiment flogged?’

She taps Dalsik on the shoulder.

‘Apprise them of our situation,’ she says, but before Dalsik can engage the vox, a slow drawl comes through Idra’s vox-bead. Wisniak, Idra’s lead scout and head sniper.

‘Sir, you’d better see this.’

The Chimera claws its way up the slope. Idra pushes open the hatch.

In the distance, a plume of black smoke stains the Tovogan sky.

Salomar is burning.

The city of Salomar is dwarfed by the factorum. A massive rockcrete box, three miles long and half a mile wide. Tall enough for its roof to disappear in the smoke coming from the burning petro-chem storage at the other end of town.

‘Reminds you of home, doesn’t it?’ says Lokhov, stroking his drooping, grey moustache. Idra nods.

‘Looks a bit like the miniature factorums you’d find in toy shops,’ she says.

The Firstborn around her chuckle, even though the joke is ash-dry. Men will laugh at anything before a battle. It’s either that or cry, and the Firstborn would rather shave their moustaches than cry before a battle. The crying they save for afterwards, when it is time to burn their friends and drink their fear away.

Idra scans the town’s perimeter through her magnoculars. No motion visible. It looks deceptively calm, except for the fire and the occasional explosion or flash of las-blasts near the factorum on the east side.

‘Any ideas, uncle?’ asks Idra. Lokhov shakes his head.

‘Cursed inconvenient,’ he says. ‘The moment we roll into those fields we become grox for the slaughter.’

The 86th’s vehicles stand behind a low ridge, shielding them from view. Between them and Salomar lie rows of fields separated by shallow ditches. Beets, potatoes, what looks like poisonous ashberry bushes, but probably aren’t. Not enough ash on Tovoga.

Idra drums her fingers on the magnoculars’ steel casing.

‘Too long until nightfall,’ she says. ‘But the west side of town looks calm. We move a bit north, then rush across the fields as far from the factorum as we can. Take them by surprise before they can organise a strong defence.’

‘And if they already have a strong defence in place?’ Lokhov says.

Idra gives the town another scan through the magnoculars. The houses look whole, no walls blown open to emplace guns, no camouflage netting or trenches. It looks peaceful, deceptively so. She chews on her lip.

‘Not much choice,’ she finally says. ‘We’ll have to storm across, using the Chimeras to shield the trucks. Lay down a barrage with the multi-lasers, launch the smoke grenades as soon as we’re in range, and drive.’

‘Dangerous,’ says Lokhov. ‘If there were any other way…’

Idra nods again, doesn’t say what they’re both thinking. A lieutenant does not challenge a colonel. Especially not a man like Ramrod Gurlov.

‘Move out,’ Idra says.

‘Any other orders?’ Lokhov asks.

Idra pauses, one foot through the Chimera’s hatch.

‘Pray,’ she says.

Idra hates sitting in the confines of the Chimera. Outside, she has speed, power, control. Outside, she can fight.

Locked up in the troop carrier, she is useless. Her driver knows where he’s going. Her gunner is more skilled at operating the multi-laser. Her vox-operator monitors any transmissions. All Idra has to do is wait, and sweat. The fingers gripping the hilt of her power sword are white with pressure.

‘Don’t scowl,’ says Lokhov.

‘I wasn’t scowling,’ says Idra, trying to force her face to relax. A commander should not give her men cause to worry.

‘You looked like someone had poured ash into your ohx and stirred,’ says Lokhov.

This gets him a laugh.

‘Thank you, uncle,’ Idra says.

The Chimera thumps with the dull sound of firing smoke mortars. Outside, out of Idra’s view, the air will be filling with grey clouds. More grey on this grey world. Only the Firstborn’s uniforms are red, like drops of blood against the Tovogan soil.

Blood about to be spilled. Idra’s neck hairs stand on end. She feels like she’s about to crawl into a blackwasp nest blindfolded, the swarming insects readying to drop on her. Why isn’t the multi-laser firing?

Maybe the Tovogans haven’t spotted them. Maybe they’re pinned by the 992nd, unable to watch the perimeter. Maybe the 86th will make it through to Salomar unharmed.

The Chimera gongs, a giant blow making the armoured side ring like a broken bell. It is followed by multiple smaller pops, almost inaudible after the first crash. Autocannon, followed by heavy bolter or maybe a spate of light infantry weapons. The Chimera’s walls flash rapidly, reflections from its turret-mounted multi-laser. Dalsik is shouting, his mouth moving, but Idra can’t hear a thing. Acrid smoke fills the compartment, tasting of heated steel and burnt rubber. But the Chimera is still shaking, still moving forwards, shielding the following trucks from the fire.

Another crash, followed by a violent rocking, and stillness. The floor leans backwards at a sharp angle; the driver hangs from his seat belts, blood dripping from his slack fingers.

‘Out!’ Idra yells, forcing open the rear hatch, grabbing Lokhov and pointing down. They dive out of the carrier, its multi-laser still firing above them.

A wall. Grey rockcrete, the Chimera having smashed halfway up it and got stuck. More flashes from between the Chimera’s treads, dark orange, not the bright white of multi-laser blasts.

Idra rolls out, ends up beside a stack of sandbags. The autocannon emplacement. She thumbs the rune on her power sword, sheathing the blade in dancing, blue haze. Jumps over the sandbags, her open, red Vostroyan coat trailing like a cape.

Grey uniforms, grey helmets, an empty grey patch where the golden Imperial aquila should be. The rebels gape in surprise. Idra cuts them down, the power sword slicing through flesh and armour alike. Two unarmed loaders fall, the autocannon’s oversized magazine tumbling to the ground. A sergeant raises a chainsword, but Idra’s powerblade cuts through both plasteel and man. She spears the gunner, ending the autocannon’s flashes, then jumps across his falling body, cutting down another loader.

A las-blast lights up the wall beside her. She turns, kicks at the gun in the rebel’s hand, cuts at his head. He ducks, and she decapitates him on the back stroke, the blood beading away from the coruscating blue power field.

A truck rolls out of the smoke, breaking as the driver spots the autocannon. Firstborn spill from the open rear grate, forming up around Idra, their eyes wide. Their mouths move, but all Idra can hear is the ringing in her ears, and all she can feel is the memory of her power sword, slicing through flesh.

Someone hands Idra a steaming cup.

‘Sir!’ Her driver, arm in a sling. Lignin, from Kolbach Hive. His moustache and the hair sticking out from beneath his tall, black, bearskin shako, are almost white. He’s been with the 86th a long time.

Idra sips. Warm ohx, salty and spiced with ground black pepper in the low-born way. It burns its way down Idra’s throat, filling her with warmth and making her smile. An acquired taste. Mother would have a fit if she saw Idra drinking the stuff.

‘Thank you,’ she says. Lignin tries to salute with his wounded arm, but fails and nods instead, before returning to the field medic station.

‘They believe in you,’ says Lokhov. He’s picked up a scratch on his cheek.

‘For leading them into a gun emplacement?’ says Idra, nodding to the no-longer-concealed autocannon. Around her, scout teams are starting off into the town, their red coats like splashes against the rockcrete.

‘You destroyed the gun,’ Lokhov says. ‘Without losses.’

‘And him?’ Idra jerks her chin towards Lignin.

‘He’ll live,’ says Lokhov. ‘Trina, they believe in you. You are the commander who slaughtered a monster, led them out of two deadly and well-executed traps, killed a traitorous superior officer, and got a commendation from the lord commissar of the entire Tovogan campaign herself. You are blessed with the Emperor’s own Luck.’

Idra shakes her head.

‘Not you too, uncle,’ she says.

‘I believe what I believe,’ Lokhov answers, raising his hand to forestall her comment. ‘But get us through this alive, and I’ll stop saying it.’

‘Good enough,’ Idra says, clapping him on the shoulder. There is work to do.

Her sixth, and last, three-man scout squad moves into the city. They’re well trained, the 86th, moving by leaps. Two men watching, ready to fire; one man rushing to the next position, bent over in that leaning, furious run that soldiers adopt in war, presenting a smaller target. No dishonour in that. This is what war does, even to Firstborn – has you always waiting for that sharp yank on the flesh, the bewilderment and the pain.

Six scout teams. Eighteen men. Almost a fifth of her entire force. Blessed indeed.

‘We take it slow,’ Idra says. ‘Scout well in advance, probe until we manage a link up with the 992nd. No casualties today.’

One of her combat engineers is cutting apart the autocannon’s loading mechanism with a portable plasma torch. They’re leaving nothing for the enemy. The command Chimera is level again, Firstborn pulling it away from the wall. Its engine stutters, hiccups, rumbles to life. The armour is gashed and burned, but the armoured troop carrier claws its way out of the rubble.

‘Sir!’ says Dalsik through the hatch.

It’s time to move out.

Salomar is deserted. Idra likes the quiet. Solid rockcrete beneath her boots, instead of the endless, cutting razorgrass. Reminds her of home. A Vostroya in miniature.

Without people.

Whoever lived here has cleared out. Only the sporadic, distant sounds of gunfire from the factorum, and the echoes of the Chimeras’ engines, break the stillness.

The Firstborn march in half-squads, spread out along the road, red coats brushing against the walls of three- and four-storey buildings, scanning the empty windows on the opposite side. Covering each other.

They are good men, forged in battle.

Something crunches beneath Idra’s black, armoured boot. A porcelain doll, its face cracked and squashed by her weight. Civilians passed this way, not long ago.

A far-off lasgun salvo breaks the silence, the sharp cracks muted by distance. A split second later, it echoes through the Chimera’s open hatch.

‘Nine-nine-two, come in, nine-nine-two,’ says Dalsik. ‘86th Firstborn to 992nd.’

‘Err, you’re a bit late for that,’ says a thin voice through the vox. Idra grabs the hatch, launches herself into the Chimera.

‘Who is this?’ says Dalsik. The voice goes quiet for a moment. Then it returns.

‘Acting Corporal Ninov,’ it says. ‘Command Group Gurlov.’

‘Patch me through to the 992nd,’ says Dalsik.

‘Sorry, they pulled out two days ago.’

Dalsik glances at Idra, raising his eyebrow.

‘Hello?’ says the vox voice, Ninov, the acting corporal. ‘86th, are you there? We could use a bit of help over here.’ A brace of las-blasts sounds from the vox.

Idra nods, curtly.

‘We’re coming,’ says Dalsik.

The 86th rushes through Salomar. Empty streets blur by, scout teams rejoined and mounted in the trucks, Wisniak’s Tauros in the lead. A las-blast strikes down from a warehouse window, and the Chimeras reply by blasting the entire facade with their multi-lasers. They don’t stop to look at the half-burned body that falls out.

It is a crazy manoeuvre, relying on speed in a built-up, hostile environment. It goes against everything Idra believes in. But they are still miles away from the barracks, and a command group is counted in squads, a few platoons at most. Without the 992nd, Idra’s depleted 86th is the strongest force in Salomar.

Except for the Tovogan rebels.

The 86th doesn’t stand a chance of punching through. Not against a concentrated effort by a dug-in enemy. Successfully charging a single autocannon through a smoke screen to get into Salomar was luck. A full fire-support company would have decimated the Firstborn. Charging an enemy regiment would be suicide. Their only chance is to link up with Gurlov before the rebels find out how weak they are.

Speed and superior firepower. Sufficient amounts of one gives you the other. It doesn’t matter if the enemy is stronger. They can’t be stronger everywhere, and if they are, you’re already dead, and, by the Emperor’s Grace, haven’t realised it.

But the 86th Firstborn have the Emperor’s Grace. They have faith, they have experience, and they have speed.

The battle is short and brutal. Idra loses eight men and a Chimera to a lascannon. Another four to a heavy flamer. A handful wounded by small-arms fire.

They break through the rebel cordon, charging out of the cover of the grey tenements, then over the killing field outside Command Group Gurlov’s armoured barracks, taking cover behind half-blasted dragon’s teeth, the rockcrete tank obstacles leaving only a small road clear for the vehicles. An armoured gate clanks open steps ahead of the Firstborn. When the gates slam shut behind them, Idra realises her hands are shaking. She clenches her fists, counts her men. They are inside. At least she didn’t have to bang on closed armaplas while her comrades died around her.

The Salomar barracks are standard Vostroyan Mk III pattern, right out of the Treatis Elatii. A square, two hundred and fifty yards to a side, anchored by four squat towers mounting multi-lasers. Three of them are burned-out husks, but the fourth is still firing. Rockcrete bunkers capped with firing parapets. A dark, gaping maw surrounded by blast barriers that is the protected tunnel entrance to the underground vehicle bay. A twisted mess of broken steel where the anti-air battery should be.

Everything smells of sweat, gunpowder and the telltale scorched-ozone smell of lasgun fire. There are black las-blast marks on the insides of the bunkers, almost all the way to Colonel Gurlov’s small office.

‘Tovogans,’ he says by way of greeting, crisply returning Idra’s salute. ‘No honour among them. Snuck in an assault squad among the wounded, the Emperor damn them.’

Gurlov is a squat man, with a fringe of orange hair around his bald head, and an impressive orange moustache obscuring his mouth. His uniform is impeccable: starched, bright red plasweave jacket, crossed by polished, white grox-hide bandoliers. His golden officer’s braid is thick, the gold and copper threads tied in the traditional, hand-made Nadalya’s knot. Idra wonders if he’s tied it himself, like she has with her smaller one.

Gurlov’s face is closed, guarded, his chiselled chin thrust out. Even the bulky metal bionics, an arm and a leg, sticking out of his uniform, look polished. Except for the dusting of dried iron filings on his boot, and the smell of stale sweat in his office, he could have come from a recruitment poster. He seems affronted by the rebels’ ruse, as if it were a stain on his own honour.

‘No courage,’ he says. ‘Proves what forsaking the Emperor’s word does to a man.’

‘Sir!’ says Idra. Gurlov isn’t what she imagined. The rumours paint him as a giant, a hero and a tyrant, using the Tactica Imperium as his sword and shield. And the rebels have shown little cowardice that she’s seen, often fighting to the last man.

‘We lost twelve men,’ she says.

Gurlov nods, his fringe of orange hair waving.

‘They died with courage, in the service of the Emperor,’ he says. ‘No man can ask for more.’ He pauses, eyebrows wrinkling. ‘Or woman,’ he adds.

Callous bastard. But he doesn’t know the dead. Not like Idra did. Lukov. Orlik. Strelvin who played the harmonica. Or maybe Gurlov truly doesn’t care.

‘That’s ten per cent of our regiment,’ says Idra. ‘Gone in minutes.’

‘The Emperor demands, Vostroya gives,’ Gurlov says. ‘They died doing their duty, paying Vostroya’s debt. And it was good that you had the wit to charge. The Treatis and the Emperor favour boldness, no matter what the Tactica says.’

He’s got both in his office. The office is a tiny, windowless room, slightly longer than it is wide. Idra could probably touch both walls if she stretched out her arms. A single strip of pale lighting in the ceiling. An off-white plascrete desk; a pair of steel chairs; a shelf with the thick volumes of the Tactica Imperium and the two-volume edition of the Treatis Elatii, the Grey Lady’s holy text. Even Idra’s private chambers were more lavish. At least she had an arms locker, and a painting of Saint Nadalya by the Throne.

‘Thanks to your acting vox-corporal,’ Idra says. ‘Without his information, we would likely have tried for a slow linkup and been overrun.’

‘Acting corporal?’ Gurlov says.

‘Ninov,’ Idra replies.

Gurlov stiffens, glances aside at the Tactica. When he looks back at Idra, his mouth is pursed, his nostrils flaring.

‘Haugen!’ he yells. ‘Get me Private Ninov.’

It is an uncomfortable wait. Idra stands at attention, hands stiff at her sides. There’s a mad scratching between her shoulder blades, as if an ash-mite is rolling around in her uniform. Why is she still here? Her men need her, to say the words for the fallen and to keep those still living focused on their tasks.

Gurlov paces. Outside, there’s a dull thud, followed by the sharp cracks of a multi-laser. The water in the glass on Gurlov’s desk ripples.

‘Sir!’ The man that rushes in and snaps to attention is no more than a boy, his pale, round face sporting the barest wisp of a moustache. He’s tried to comb it longer.

‘Ninov,’ says Gurlov.

‘Sir!’

‘You impersonated a vox-corporal,’ says Gurlov, ‘contacting the 86th.’

‘Sir,’ says Ninov. ‘Corporal Bagulbin was out and–’

Gurlov’s hand slaps his desk with a crack like a bolter shot.

‘You,’ he says, ‘impersonated an officer.’

‘Sir!’ says Ninov. He licks his lips, his hands shaking. Idra wants to clap the boy on the shoulder, tell him to buckle up. In battle, you do what you need to do, to win and save lives.

‘This is a court martial offence,’ says Gurlov. ‘But in view of your age, I will use my prerogative and sentence you to administrative punishment.’

A slap on the wrist. Idra’s been given more administrative punishment than she can remember. Push-ups, pull-ups, kitchen duty. But Ninov is still shaking.

‘Guard duty,’ Gurlov says. ‘Two months. Double shifts.’

Ninov’s pale cheeks go white as untreated armaplast. Two months of guard duty in a combat zone, while double shifts wear you out and wear down your focus. It is a death sentence.

‘Yes, sir,’ he whispers.

‘Sir!’ says Idra. ‘Permission to speak!’

‘You are already talking, lieutenant,’ says Gurlov.

‘Sir, as we just discussed, without Private Ninov’s intervention, the 86th would have moved for a slow linkup and most likely been wiped out.’

Gurlov runs a hand over his bald scalp.

‘Impersonating an officer, breach of tactical doctrine, breach of vox conduct,’ he says. ‘Without discipline, there is no force, there is no Guard, and there is no Vostroya. A court martial would sentence him to hanging.’ Again, he glances at the Tactica. Or maybe not the Tactica. The Treatis Elatii’s there too.

‘Sir,’ says Idra, ‘the Grey Lady favours luck. As does the Emperor.’

‘The Emperor’s own Luck,’ says Gurlov, with a grimace. He stretches, the servos on his bionic arm whirring. He is not going to budge, and if Idra isn’t careful, she’ll pull down Gurlov’s wrath on the 86th as well. She’s already lost twelve men today. She should salute and be done with it. What importance is a single private in a war?

‘Sir!’ says Idra. ‘May I ask a favour?’

‘Ask away, lieutenant.’

‘The 86th will need a liaison,’ Idra says. ‘I would prefer one that is lucky. Calling us in certainly was that.’

Gurlov barks a laugh. For a moment, his closed face lights up like a lightning rod in an ash-storm. Then he grows dark and dispassionate again.

‘Very well,’ he says. ‘You may take the private. But the punishment still stands. Carry it out.’

‘Sir!’ says Idra, saluting.

‘Who’s this?’ says Sergeant Lokhov. He’s cleaning his lasgun, sitting on a crate of melta bombs in the vehicle bay. The bay is an underground cavern, stretching under the entire barracks. Three hundred yards on each side, it’s built to handle an entire regiment of combat vehicles. The 86th’s surviving transports are dwarfed by it, Idra’s Firstborn scurrying around like red-coated ants on the grey rockcrete floor.

‘Ninov,’ says Idra. ‘The voice on the vox.’

‘The 86th finally get reinforcements?’

‘No,’ says Idra. ‘Gurlov had him up on administrative charges for impersonating an officer.’

Lokhov slots the lasgun’s barrel into the sight block, clicks in the barrel retaining pin.

‘Why is he here?’ he asks.

‘Two months of double line duty, uncle,’ Idra says. She doesn’t need to spell out the consequences. Lokhov lifts his hand to stroke his moustache, before realising that it’s sticky with insulation fluid.

‘Trina,’ he says, ‘why is he here?’

‘He’s our new liaison,’ Idra says. ‘Not officer.’

Lokhov doesn’t answer. The nearest Firstborn stop their scurrying. Only the faint sound of distant gunfire from above disturbs the peace.

‘He helped us,’ Idra says. ‘What would you have me do, uncle? Leave him to die?’

‘By the Throne, girl,’ Lokhov says. ‘Get on Gurlov’s bad side and we’ll all be doing double line duty. Did you think of that?’

‘The colonel isn’t bad,’ Ninov says suddenly. ‘Corporal Bagulbin say he’s a war hero.’

In the dim stillness of the bay, Ninov looks uncomfortable, like a school boy caught writing love poems about the Grey Lady.

‘He is,’ says Lokhov. ‘He also had one of his companies doing push-ups during an artillery barrage for breach of regulations. Emperor’s own Grace that nobody died.’ He turns to Idra. ‘I’m surprised he let the boy get away.’

‘I’m supposed to administer the punishment,’ says Idra.

Lokhov puts aside his gun.

‘Do you intend to get the kid killed?’

‘No,’ says Idra. ‘Do you think the order’s another administrative mishap waiting to happen?’

Administrative mishap is their little joke, a laugh at what the powers in general command do to the 86th. Like the 86th not getting any reinforcements. Like the 992nd pulling out two days before the 86th arrives. Like Idra’s orders from general staff getting mis-transmitted until it’s almost too late to carry them out, and deal with it, lieutenant. Idra almost spits before she remembers herself. Unseemly, for an officer. Gurlov would probably have her up on administrative charges for dirtying the floor.

Still, it rankles. No other commander suffers these kinds of errors this frequently. But then, no other commander is a woman. If Gurlov is enough of a traditionalist, the 86th will be in big trouble.

‘I doubt it would be Gurlov’s doing,’ says Lokhov. ‘All the rumours say that he’s rule-bound to a fault.’

‘Um…’ says Ninov. ‘The colonel really hates rumours. Corporal Bagulbin says that–’

The howl of the alarm klaxons drowns out his words.

Colonel Gurlov’s small office is cramped, with the colonel, a major, a captain and Idra. No adjutants though, nor non-commissioned officers. No room for them. Or maybe they’re all dead.

‘Ten minutes ago,’ says Colonel Gurlov, ‘the rebels overran Captain Kadarov’s forward positions in the factorum’s central hall. This puts the armoury and the void shield generators within their reach. Our orders are to hold the generators at all costs. If the rebels overrun them, and get them operational, they will be able to lock out any counter-attack long enough to start utilising the factorum. General command is very concerned with a fleet of rebel tanks appearing in our rear. We need to push them back, and secure Kadarov’s positions.’ He glances at Idra. ‘The 86th will lead the charge.’

Idra swallows.

‘Sir!’ she says. ‘Permission to–’

‘Speak, lieutenant.’

Every eye in the chamber is on her. The cup on Colonel Gurlov’s desk smells strongly of ohx, the low-born, peppery kind. The room suddenly feels even more crowded.

‘Colonel Gurlov, sir,’ Idra says. ‘The 86th is severely depleted. Our current strength is ninety-one men and four combat vehicles. That includes walking wounded.’

Gurlov steeples his fingers in a tiny pyramid before him.

‘I am aware of that fact,’ he says. ‘However, orders are orders. General staff requires us to retake the factorum. We have an entire regiment at our disposal.’

His face remains closed, serious.

‘Sir,’ Idra interrupts, ‘you have to apprise them of the situation.’

The room’s empty walls are more expressive than Gurlov’s face. Even his bushy, orange moustache doesn’t quiver.

‘I have done so,’ he says. ‘General Krikovin’s orders are to attack.’

Gurlov’s officers exchange uneasy glances.

‘I am aware of the difficulties involved,’ Gurlov says. ‘Two companies against what amounts to an entire regiment is bad odds. However, the Tovogan rebels have so far shown little evidence of training, and limited capabilities. Certainly, they are no match for our Firstborn, no matter how many of them there are.’

‘Sir,’ says the major. His name badge reads Bulwa. ‘We’ll need at least a company to hold the barracks.’

‘You’ll get two platoons, major,’ says Gurlov.

‘Wait!’ blurts Idra. ‘You’re going to withhold troops to guard the barracks?’

Gurlov gives her a hard look. For a second, she wonders whether this is the administrative mishap that will crush her. Instead, Gurlov speaks.

‘Let your heart be a well-defended fortified barracks, your mind a rockcrete pillar,’ he says.

‘Treatis Elatii,’ says Idra. ‘Fourteenth chapter, eighth stanza.’ Gurlov raises an eyebrow, and gives her an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Very good, lieutenant. Now go prepare your troops.’

He’s going to send the 86th, plus two platoons of staff soldiers, to assault an enemy held factorum. Hard, but maybe not impossible. Idra’s done hard before.

But the Tactica states that a force should always hold a link to their command post and base. Meaning that the Firstborn will be spread out in a thin line along the factorum floor. The hairs on Idra’s neck feel as if someone’s dragged a knife over them.

It’s suicide. The rebels will pick off the holding teams one by one. Would Gurlov abandon doctrine? Not likely. Maybe if she could bend one of his officers.

‘Sir,’ says Idra. One glance at Gurlov’s staff shows her the futility of the request. They’re both staring ahead, at their commander. They’re going to follow this man to hell, and beyond.

‘Yes, lieutenant?’

Idra’s mouth is dry, her hands shaky. A wrong word could send her to the stockade. But if she doesn’t say anything, the 86th is doomed.

‘Sir,’ she says, stalling for time. ‘The Tactica says to keep the lines of communication open. The Grey Lady preaches the values of a base of operations.’

A well-defended base of operations.

‘This is hardly a well-defended barracks,’ she says. ‘With two platoons, it will be worse than weak.’

‘Are you recommending that we abandon our post, lieutenant?’ Gurlov says.

Emperor’s Mercy, the man is going to doom them all. He isn’t even trying to see the world beyond doctrine.

‘If we defeat the rebels, we’ll be able to retake the barracks,’ Idra says.

‘General Krikovin’s orders are to hold our command post at all cost,’ says Gurlov.

‘Yes,’ says Idra, ‘but does the general say that it has to remain at the barracks?’

Gurlov blinks. He knows. He has to know. Yet he remains silent. Orders. He’s going to follow his orders to the letter, even if those orders take them straight into the void.

A colonel does not contradict a general, and a lieutenant does not contradict a colonel. But there is always another way. All you need to do is find it. Idra takes a breath, exhales, draws another. Gurlov waits, his eyebrow ever-so-slightly quirked.

‘The 86th command post is mobile,’ says Idra. Which is true. She is the command post. She, Dalsik and Lokhov. ‘May I extend an invitation on behalf of the 86th Firstborn to Command Group Gurlov to utilise our resources?’

The captain snorts. The major hides his mouth behind his hand. Gurlov nods.

‘If we fail,’ he says, ‘it will be your head, lieutenant. General Krikovin has made it plain that he is not fond of you. My orders are to remove you from command at the first sign of incompetence or insubordination.’

Idra nods. Administrative mishaps waiting to happen have turned into orders. She is a woman, the first female Firstborn. Being first into battle is dangerous. Being first is always a danger, regardless of where. But Idra is accustomed to danger.

‘Do you wish to rescind your invitation, lieutenant?’ says Gurlov.

Her men would shield her from the danger, if they could. But a commander isn’t there to be shielded. She is there to lead, and to protect her men from fools.

‘No, sir!’ she says. Firstborn hating her. It is a feeling she knows well.

They are ready. A hundred and fifty Firstborn throng the barracks’ eastern gate. Weapons checked, sword-bayonets mounted, bandolier pouches stuffed with grenades and lasgun power packs. The eastern gate is the secondary one, a slab of plasteel painted grey to match the walls. It’s large enough to let them run through eight abreast.

‘Lieutenant, your commander will be Captain Suvarin,’ says Gurlov. His bionic leg hisses with every step, making him limp, ever so slightly.

Idra snaps to attention and salutes. She knows how this game is played. But to his credit, Captain Suvarin doesn’t attempt to wrest control of the 86th from her.

It’s doubtful that he could. Her troops already mutter about following a staff officer into combat.

‘Attention!’ says Idra, the vox-beads carrying her voice to her companies. The 86th Firstborn stands to, backs straight, guns by their left legs.

‘Firstborn,’ says Gurlov, ‘today we show this world Vostroyan might.’

His troops give a ‘huzzah’. A moment later, Idra’s do, too.

‘Move out,’ says Gurlov.

‘Move out,’ says Captain Suvarin.

‘By companies, move out,’ says Idra.

The gate swings silently open, the hinges well maintained. There’s a three hundred-yard swathe of barren land between the barracks and the factorum, a stretch of grey filled with the spiked pyramids of rockcrete dragon’s teeth. Two communication trenches zigzag between the teeth.

‘Forward,’ says Idra, her heart racing. ‘Into the trenches, double time.’

As soon as her first squad, Wisniak and nine of his scouts, start running down the trenches, the air erupts with the crack of lasgun fire. White and pale blue bolts blast the ground around the trenches. Lascannons stab into the grey earth. At least a company firing, maybe more. The hairs on Idra’s neck rise again, but none of it touches her Firstborn. The trenches are deep, and their zigzagging prevents clean firing lanes. The design is right out of the Tactica, and it works.

‘How far do the trenches stretch?’ Idra shouts to Captain Suvarin as they jog behind the 86th. The rebels’ blasts dust the air with earth, and the dust smells of iron.

‘All the way to the factorum, and beyond,’ Suvarin shouts back. ‘The colonel had them connected to the factorum’s bunker system.’

It makes good tactical sense, but it would have been easy to leave the work for later. Gurlov’s troops must have cursed him more than once, digging it all out.

A scream breaks Idra’s reverie. The troops bunch up in front of her.

‘Move aside,’ she shouts, pushing forwards. Ahead, someone is shouting for a medic.

Her men make room, pressing themselves against walls. A stretch of the trench lies almost perpendicular to the tenements of Salomar beyond the killing fields surrounding the barracks.

Idra’s shoulders clench, her breath fighting to escape her lungs. The angle creates a straight kill lane for the rebels, enabling them to fire down the length of the trench from their positions in the buildings. Las-blasts dig into the bottom of the trench, as more and more of the rebels realise there is a way to destroy the Firstborn. A death zone fifty yards long. She can’t order her men to run through that.

At the end of the line, closest to the barracks, firing starts up. The rearguard, engaging approaching rebels. The rebels have figured out that the Firstborn are outside the protection of the barracks. They need to move.

There’s always another way. A stanza from the Treatis flashes through Idra’s consciousness. Open your heart for the Emperor’s strength. Uncloud your mind and He will fill it.

‘Smoke, then charge through,’ she says.

‘Smoke!’ yells Sergeant Lokhov, waving for the Firstborn to make room for the 86th mortar team.

The mortar team consists of one experienced mortar loader, and three replacements, firing for the first time. They manage to situate their mortar at the bottom of a protected part of the trench. The loader flings a smoke shell into the tube. Idra presses her hands to her ears. The force of the bang hammers at her chest.

‘Outgoing!’ shouts Lokhov.

The first mortar bomb lobs high into the air, falling far beyond the trenches. The second hits the factorum roof. The third is a dud, the fourth disappears.

A lascannon finds its mark, burning a glowing hole through the trench wall. A Firstborn curses, yanking his burning shako from his head. Everyone hunkers down.

‘86th, advance,’ commands Gurlov, through the vox.

‘Lieutenant!’ shouts Suvarin, miming throwing.

Idra jumps at the mortar team, yanking a case of oblong mortar bombs from the surprised loader.

‘Like this,’ she says, bashing the trigger against the steel of the mortar base. She flings the bomb over the side of the trench.

There is a pop, and whitish smoke blows over the Firstborn. The mortar crew starts pulling and throwing bombs. Suddenly, one screams. A smoking mortar bomb rolls down the trench, between the legs of the crouching soldiers. Sergeant Lokhov snatches it up and tosses it over the wall.

‘Nadalya’s Mercy, man,’ he shouts at the soldier, a grizzled grey-hair like himself, ‘you want to kill us all?’

‘Sorry, sergeant,’ says the man, ‘it slipped out of my fingers.’

‘Hold tighter next time,’ says Idra. ‘Now move.’

They run through the covering smoke, and reach the factorum alive, to be greeted by a line of corpses.

They enter through the loading dock, a two hundred-yard stretch of roll-down gates, each one a hundred feet tall and seventy wide, several of them open. As she enters, Idra feels a pang of homesickness. The roof shuts out the grey Tovogan light. Inside, you could almost believe you were on Vostroya.

A single hall, wide enough to make the walls hard to see, stretching into the factorum’s dark depths. Two parallel conveyor belts, lines of connected steel slabs, each capable of carrying a Leman Russ tank. Above them, steel gantries stretch into the gloom, pierced by the occasional window set in the ceiling. The factorum smells of scorched iron, oil fumes and welding gear. But it is eerily silent.

The floor is uneven, craters blasted into it. It is littered with debris, smashed, fallen gantries, overturned tool cabinets, vast chunks of rockcrete. The conveyors stand immobile, a single Medusa heavy artillery tank blocking the right dismount ramp. It lacks armour on the left side, and its heavy siege gun is missing the stabiliser, but shells the size of four men stand at attention in its internal storage space. Unfinished, as if the siege gun went through the production line in the middle of a shift change.

Or a battle.

The rockcrete floor by the loading dock holds a line of Firstborn corpses. The dead are waiting for burning, arms crossed over their bandoliers, hands tied together with a single string of wire, holding the Firstborn souls safe until the cremation frees them. Idra stretches to attention, raises her hand to salute the fallen.

A las-blast flashes past her shoulder, gouging a shining rent in the gate. Motion catches her eye. The shadows by the assembly line crawl with rebel soldiers.

‘Cover fire!’ she yells, yanking her lasgun off her back. She fires wildly in the direction of the rebels, then breaks right. ‘First company, with me.’

She ducks into the lee of a massive chunk of rockcrete, a handful of Firstborn squeezing in with her. Behind her, lasgun fire drowns out the shouts of soldiers. The factorum lights up with their blasts.

From the assembly line, from the gantries, from the disabled Medusa, seemingly from thin air, an answering volley materialises.

A Firstborn by Idra’s side cries out and falls. She pulls him deeper into cover, looking over the ground.

They’re trapped by the loading docks, the rebels holding a solid line by the assembly line. If they stay here, the rebels will be able to pick them off at leisure, or flank them. By chance Idra’s score of men have made it almost halfway to the assembly line. Idra’s face twists into a wry grin despite herself. The Emperor’s Luck.

‘Valeriak,’ Idra tells the corporal by her side, ‘take five men and rush right. Set up a firing position and give us some cover fire.’

The man nods and races off. Her remaining men cover his team with concentrated fire. Even here, outnumbered and outgunned, their training shines through. Pride fills Idra. There are no better urban soldiers than the Firstborn. She shouts towards the open gates, waves her arms until Lokhov notices.

‘Uncle!’ she shouts. ‘Covering fire towards the assembly line.’

Idra draws her power sword, not waiting for his reply. Speed and firepower. Enough of one will give you more of the other. The sword’s power field flickers blue.

‘Forward,’ she screams. ‘We stop, we die.’

Her men rush forwards into the half-open floor, dodging broken spars, jumping slabs of plate and pieces of fallen rockcrete. The assembly line is impossibly far, a hundred steps away, a thousand, a million.

Idra’s boots pound the rockcrete, her pulse pounds in her ears. All she can hear is her pulse, all she can see are the flashes of lasgun blasts.

Forwards, always forwards. Speed and firepower. To stop is to die.

From her right, a brace of las-blasts slam into the rebel positions by the assembly line. Ahead looms the giant slope of the dismount ramp. Beside it, a pair of tool cabinets make an improvised shield. A round, grey rebel helmet pops up over the top. The man’s eyes grow wide with surprise, his arms yank a lasgun upwards.

Five steps. Two. One.

Idra slaps the rebel’s lasgun with her sword’s whirling blue power field. It cuts the barrel, shearing it halfway through. The man fires. Idra ducks.

A las-blast illuminates them, exploding the broken barrel, sending flaming shrapnel outwards. The man screams. Idra stabs her sword through the tool cabinets and the scream fades to a gurgle.

A handful of Firstborn have made it to the assembly line. The hall behind them is littered with prone shapes, some firing, some crawling, some still. By the gate, a clot of Firstborn is firing volleys upwards, trying to clear the gantries of rebel snipers. But Idra’s squad has penetrated the rebel defensive perimeter.

‘To me!’ she yells, waving her sword. The blue power field trails a line of sparks in the air as it sheds droplets of molten tool cabinet.

The closest Firstborn converge on her. Five, eight, ten. The last one is Private Ninov, the not-acting corporal. He’s breathing hard.

‘Orders, sir?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ says Idra. ‘Don’t die.’

They charge.

Grenade. Wait. Explosion. Charge. The ram of sword against steel, against armour, against flesh. Over and over again.

Around them, flashes from other parts of the battle. A man falls screaming from the gantries above. An errant rocket explodes deep inside the factorum.

Idra rushes, cuts, thrusts. Her squad becomes a sickle of destruction, running along their line, flanking it with every step. Through the litter on the factorum floor, a small group of Firstborn led by Sergeant Lokhov joins her team. She splits half of them off to cover their rear, keeps Lokhov with her, orders them on.

A Firstborn falls, clutching his leg. Another stumbles, collapses into a heap. Eight left, seven, six. Idra’s small force clears one side of the assembly line, rushes across the top, boots clanging on the metal plates of the conveyor belt. Speed and firepower.

A grenade explodes nearby. Sergeant Lokhov slips. Idra grabs him, pulls him into the cover of a half-assembled tank. Five Firstborn left.

They reload their lasguns, charge to the edge of the belt, empty their power packs into the crouching rebels on the other side, then jump. One of her men stumbles, moans, grabs at a leg twisted the wrong way. Idra leaves him in cover, firing upwards, then charges. They’ve cleared half the circle of rebel defences.

Suddenly a shout goes up, and the rebels start running, a flood of men abandoning their positions, throwing down weapons, dragging away wounded. A few reach Idra, spy the flickering blue of her sword, the motion of red coats behind her, and raise their arms into the air.

‘Please,’ they say.

Idra jerks her chin, ordering one of her remaining troops to lead the prisoners to the gate. Then she turns, and goes looking for her casualties.

Four wounded, two dead. Kulin, from Tharkov Hive, and Martinov, a shiny recruit that came in on the same transport as Idra.

Lokhov is alive, and only lightly wounded.

‘If you say the Emperor’s Luck, I’ll tan your hide, officer or no,’ he says.

‘Nadalya’s Grace then, uncle,’ Idra says.

Lokhov glares at her.

‘I’ve got a medic digging around in my behind,’ Lokhov says.

‘Shall I order him to leave the shrapnel be?’ Idra asks. ‘It might make sitting an interesting experience, though.’

She tries to put a sting in her voice, but the edges of her mouth keep jumping upwards. She wants to laugh, to dance, to shake and to cry. Around her, each Firstborn reacts to the battle in their own way. Some sit, staring at nothing. Others weep over the bodies of fallen friends. A few share a flask; someone sings, a low, haunting melody, a story of love lost and promises forgotten. Idra moves among them, offering a word here, a silent hand on the shoulder there, watching each manage in their own way. Each is alive, and that is all that matters for now. She is almost surprised to see Ninov amongst them.

He’s sitting with his back against the conveyor foundation, his head lowered. As Idra walks up to him, she sees his hands shaking. He tries to hide them, shoving them into his armpits. Idra squats by his side, hands him a half-drunk cup of hot ohx somebody’s handed her.

‘Everyone’s afraid,’ she starts, and falters. What should she tell this stranger? He can’t be that much younger than her, yet there is a gap of experience between them. Idra looks into his friendly, trusting face, and wonders if she was ever so open. Maybe, before her father tried to make a warrior out of her. Succeeded in making a warrior out of her.

‘Lieutenant.’ Captain Suvarin steps up to her side. ‘The colonel wishes to see you.’

Gurlov doesn’t look happy. A command post is taking shape behind a wall of broken junk, steel spars welded to overturned cabinets and slabs of discarded armour. An ad hoc bunker, in the middle of the factorum, braced by the broken Medusa.

The Medusa’s engine is rumbling, one of the 86th’s enginseers prodding the generator’s machine-spirit to life with one of his serpentine holy tools, Dalsik exploring the tank’s vox. Petro-chem stink covers the smell of scorched steel and spilled blood. The line of corpses by the gate is longer than before.

‘Sir,’ says Idra.

Gurlov grimaces in pain. He’s got a scorch mark on his bionic arm, the uniform above it burnt away. The staff company medic is removing drops of slag from his cheek. Parts of the arm, blasted into his skin.

‘Congratulations on your resolute charge, lieutenant,’ says Gurlov. ‘I would like you to know that I will write it up in my report. Now, your braid, please.’

‘Sir?’

Gurlov taps the Nadalya’s knot of his own braid, heavy with his officer’s aquila.

‘You are demoted, private.’

Idra blinks. The breath huffs out of her, as if she’d been punched. Her throat constricts, her nostrils flare, her fists clench. No Idrov has been demoted, ever. Killed, yes. Maimed, sometimes. Demoted? Never.

‘Why?’ she says.

‘Orders, private.’ Gurlov purses his mouth, as if he’s eaten something distasteful. Then he nods towards the clumps of Firstborn, lasguns at the ready, in cover by the edges of the heavy conveyor belts. ‘I note that Private Ninov is not among our guards,’ he says.

Insubordination. Demotion.

‘Oh,’ says Idra.

Emperor’s own Luck, indeed.

‘You’re our commander, sir!’ Wisniak spits. ‘I’m not going to fight for that desk warrior!’ Around him, the men of the 86th nod.

‘You will fight,’ says Idra, ‘because that is what the Emperor requires of you, what humanity requires of you, what Vostroya requires of you, and what I require of you – and by Saint Nadalya’s Mercy, you will do your duty.’

The spot on her shoulder where her officer’s braid hung feels empty. She resists an impulse to touch it. The cloth is cleaner there, more red, as if a phantom braid still swings from invisible hooks.

‘Sir, it isn’t fair!’ says Wisniak.

‘Nobody said war was going to be fair,’ says Idra. She hates how reasonable she sounds. Like a training platoon teacher explaining things to her wards, when what she wants to do is scream and curse and complain. ‘Your commander is Captain Suvarin, and you will follow his orders.’

At least that is good. Suvarin seems a competent officer. The troops don’t seem convinced.

‘By the Throne,’ Idra roars. ‘Are you Firstborn or are you traitors? Make up your minds, and either fight or walk across the line, because I will have no rebels in my unit!’

They spit and curse, but in the end, they grip their lasguns and form up for battle, every one of them. They are Firstborn, and well trained.

But it still hurts to see them follow someone else.

‘There is at least a regiment of Tovogan forces in the factorum,’ says Gurlov. ‘Captain Kadarov estimates that at least four full companies are holding him pinned by the void shield generators.’

Idra is present at the gathering of officers. Not as a partner, but as Lokhov’s aide. A message runner. The guard posts around the command Medusa are being fortified, Firstborn cutting away parts of the assembly line using melta bombs and plasma-cutters. The lights from the explosions paint the hall in blue and orange. The officers squint each time, but refuse to crouch in the cover of the Medusa. Gurlov stands straight, and so do they. Stupid pride.

If only Idra’s heart wasn’t as full of it. Being a message runner hurts, but being barred from the officer’s meeting would hurt more. At least Gurlov tolerates her presence, even though the excuse is thin.

‘Our orders are to relieve Kadarov, and throw out the rebels before they can restart the factorum.’

‘Sir,’ injects Gurlov’s major, Bulwa, ‘what about reinforcements?’

‘Negative,’ says Gurlov. ‘The 992nd is bogged down in clearing the Tovogan traitors out of Rivanon Gorge. The 569th got ambushed and mauled. General staff is moving the 1055th Heavy Artillery Regiment closer. Should we fail, they will bombard the factorum, reducing it to rubble.’

A murmur passes like wind through the Firstborn ranks. To destroy such technology, even if it’s Tovogan. It’s almost sacrilege. Death comes to all men, but technology remains. It is what binds the generations together, what carries the Vostroyan traditions, the reason Firstborn collect the weapons of the fallen – to pass them on to further generations of warriors. Tradition. Faith. Duty. Those are strong words.

‘You understand, gentlemen,’ says Gurlov. ‘Relieving Kadarov is more than our orders, it is our duty in the eyes of the Emperor.’

‘Could we reach him through the bunkers?’ says Bulwa, nodding towards the hatch bolted to the floor beside the Medusa. ‘Our scouts report that the pathways beneath the factorum seem weakly defended, or even abandoned.’

‘Perhaps the traitors are unaware of the extent of the tunnel system?’ says Suvarin. ‘It could work to our advantage.’

‘It won’t,’ says Gurlov. ‘Kadarov is pinned by the void shield generators on the upper levels, above the main magazine. If we start a firefight in the ammunition storage, we will blow up the factorum.’

His bionic leg sparks, twitching, the motion passing through his entire body, growing ever more violent, until he manages to force it away. Only the corners of his mouth keep quivering. His officers look away, impassively, hiding whatever they may be thinking. Idra forces away an urge to ask, to intervene in the conversation, focusing on her breath. In, out, in, out. What does this man have, that good men will follow him?

‘We lack force,’ says Gurlov. ‘Nor do we have the luxury of outside support. Thus we need to substitute speed and surprise for men and firepower.’

He gives each officer a look. For a moment, his eyes linger on Idra, before moving on.

‘We will take a small relief force of our best into the gantries, as close to the roof as possible. Our main force will launch a diversionary attack along the floor, letting the relief force speed by. Relief force reaches the void shield generators and attacks the traitor positions in concert with Kadarov. Together they break out, spreading to the side walls and flanking the Tovogans, while we keep as much of their forces tied up here as possible.’

Idra has to admit that the man is inspiring. It is a daring move, more out of the stories of Saint Nadalya’s vengeance than the Tactica. From everything she’s seen of Gurlov, and his cautious adherence to standard doctrine, this is surprising. It’s high risk, but if it succeeds, the rebels will be broken.

But there are a lot of them, even though the ones the 86th encountered were not as highly trained nor as combat ready as the Firstborn. The plan is like shoving a stick into a nest of blackwasps in the hopes of spearing the queen. You’d better have a very long stick, and be prepared to run. But the Firstborn have nowhere to run. The holding squad outside the auxiliary gate reports rebel movements across the killing grounds around the abandoned barracks. But still, it is the kind of mission where reputations and fortunes are made. Where privates are promoted to officers. Or ex-lieutenants are reinstated. There is a chance.

‘It is a dangerous mission,’ says Gurlov. ‘I will lead the strike force myself.’

Gurlov hand picks the troops, taking two full squads of his own. From the 86th, he takes Wisniak, the head sniper, an assault squad and both the remaining heavy weapons teams, leaving the regiment a light company without scouts.

He doesn’t take Idra. She walks by his side while he decides, shadowing Lokhov and Gurlov’s senior officers. They don’t seem very happy at being left behind either.

‘Sir!’ she says to Captain Suvarin. ‘I’d like to volunteer.’

‘Noted,’ replies Suvarin, without looking at her, continuing to walk away from Gurlov and the relief force.

‘Sir!’

‘Noted, private,’ says Suvarin. He despatches the last guard changes to their positions. Idra is about to go, too, to lead the right flank ground assault squad.

The diversion assault squad.

‘I can do a good job up there,’ she says, nodding at the gantries. The Firstborn have been ordered to avoid pointing, in case the Tovogans have spotters nearby.

‘I’m sure you would,’ says Suvarin, ‘but the colonel has ordered you to remain behind.’

‘He hasn’t,’ Idra blurts. ‘I mean, sir, he didn’t order me to do anything at all.’

‘Then you are supposed to stay behind,’ says Suvarin. He puts up a hand, blocking Idra from speaking further.

‘Private Idra,’ he says. ‘In my years with the colonel, I have never known him to do anything without cause, nor without thought.’

‘Including having his entire regiment flogged, sir?’ The words leave Idra’s mouth before she can stop them. Suvarin is not one of her troops. He is Gurlov’s, and Gurlov hates rumours.

‘Ah, so it comes down to that.’ Suvarin falls silent, ticking off the squad dispositions on his hastily scribbled map. The Firstborn’s improvised defensive positions are crammed with the forward elements, the diversionary squads are ready. All except Idra’s. At least she’s been given that much, a private commanding other privates. Suvarin glances down at her. His eyes are the grey of a Vostroyan sky, cold and deadly.

‘Yes, the colonel ordered the flogging of his entire regiment,’ Suvarin says. ‘Entire regiment, private. Including himself.’

‘What?’

‘The regiment failed to execute its orders. The reasons were not important. The penalty for misconduct under fire is flogging. It’s in the Tactica.’

Idra’s mouth opens, then closes, no sound emerging.

‘That’s–’ she finally begins, but stops herself in time.

‘Insane?’ says Suvarin.

‘A private would not say such a thing about her commanding officer,’ Idra says.

Suvarin gives a tight, mirthless smile, almost hidden by the throat-mounted aquila raised on his armour.

‘Or to her commanding officer,’ he says.

‘Sir!’

‘How old are you, private?’ asks Suvarin.

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Well, the colonel is sixty-eight. He fought at Pulveron. He’s seen first-hand the treason and corruption that comes out of disregarding orders. So have the rest of us that chose to follow him into exile.’

‘Exile, sir?’

‘Exile,’ says Suvarin, then raises his hand to the vox-bead in his ear. Idra turns off her own beeping alarm. ‘But that is a story for another time. It’s time to attack.’

Every time Idra has charged in battle, it’s come about owing to momentum and position, by the simple fact that charging was less likely to get her men killed.

Now she prepares for it, studies the flat rockcrete floor ahead through a view-slit in the barricades, plans where to run, which obstacles to keep between her squad and the Tovogans waiting in the factorum’s murky depths. She can hear them moving, the occasional clank of metal on metal, or the muted echo of a voice.

There’s precious little light. None of the glow-globes work, and the factorum’s roof is mostly intact, blocking the grey Tovogan sky. At least there will be no artillery barrage. The roof would stop it. Before it collapsed and buried everyone inside.

‘Ready?’ Idra asks her troopers. There are ten of them again, and only four from the 86th. But all of them are close combat specialists, lethal in their own ways. Four of them carry chainswords, another a hand-flamer, his pack stuffed with spare fuel bottles. The remaining Firstborn wield long, double-edged sword-bayonets atop their lasguns. A specialty of Tharkov Hive, the blades turn their guns into spears, equally deadly at long and close range. Idra’s power sword makes up the eleventh position.

Eleven, a good, lucky number. The number of Saint Nadalya’s Deeds, and the number of her companions.

‘Ready,’ comes Sergeant Dalsik’s clear voice in their vox-beads.

‘Mark one.’ A barrage of mortar bombs thuds from static tubes, flying into the depths of the factorum.

‘Mark two.’ The mortar bombs detonate, flashes of light from deep inside the darkness.

‘Mark three.’ The Firstborn’s positions light up with lascannon and plasma gun blasts, streaking light into suspected rebel positions, into the gantries above them, into the walls, into the roof, into the floor itself. Idra forces her eyes shut, blinking away after-images.

‘Advance!’ comes Dalsik’s voice. Idra rushes from her position, rounds the armour plate that keeps it secure. Behind her, a hundred lasguns add their fire to the cannons and plasma streaking into the factory, a concentrated volley of heat scorching her skin and making the air hard to breathe.

She charges across the fifty yards to the nearest pile of debris, a shattered gantry that has crashed into a motorised loading crane, upending both. Her troops jump the jumble of pipes, shouting war cries and curses.

The area is empty, but there is motion behind another pile, twenty yards further into the factory. Idra points at it, her sword’s blue power field turning the gesture into a visible line.

‘Fire,’ she says, and half her squad go down on a knee, levelling their lasguns. The first volley illuminates the rubble, and the pair of Tovogans behind it. The second flings a rebel backwards. By the third, Idra and her men are at the barricade, tearing into it with their hands and swords, climbing, swinging at the poor sod behind it.

The rebel dies without firing a single shot, his lasgun clattering to the ground. Idra hurdles the obstacle, and rolls into a crossfire from two Tovogan positions.

The battle has truly begun.

They fight, they kill, they die. The Tovogans are unprepared for the onslaught, a mere screen of men, a few platoons at most. Idra’s squad overruns another two-man position without losses, charges the third, only to find it abandoned, the rebels running into the cover of the darkened main hall.

Idra is past the loading docks. The dim factorum stretches before her, flashes and screams coming from the assault squads on the other side of the seven-foot-high assembly line. Idra orders her men deeper into the building, running into a rebel half-platoon led by an officer with a chainsword. Both sides are equally surprised, but Idra recovers quicker. She swings, and the officer barely parries, Idra’s power sword stripping the teeth from his whirring chain.

A Firstborn chainsword flashes beneath her guard, tearing into the officer’s arm and ripping it off at the elbow. The man falls with a high-pitched wail. It is drowned out by Idra’s power sword chopping into the Tovogan behind. A series of lasgun shots downs another, and sends the rest running. The Firstborn move deeper.

Idra’s squad is fired upon from a position among the shadowy, half-built tanks on the conveyor belt. She dives into a darkened maintenance tunnel, emerges on the other side of the conveyor, charges the position from behind. Her men follow her, firing salvos into the unprotected backs of rebel defensive positions thrown up between the two conveyors.

It is easy, too easy. Where are the Tovogans that almost threw them from the factorum? Where are the rebel assault companies?

Idra’s vox-bead squawks, snippets of speech emerging. The words are clipped, lasgun fire and screams making them almost unintelligible.

‘Sir, sir!’ The heavy drawl is unmistakably Wisniak’s. ‘Man down!’

Around Idra, everything is quiet. At the end of the factorum, by the auxiliary gate they entered through, the only motion is the red of Firstborn uniforms. On her other side, in the deep gloom, flashes of lasgun fire and melta explosions light up the gantries. Too far to see clearly with the naked eye, almost too far for the vox-beads. Yet it’s clear that the battle is intense.

Her men are fighting there, and even if they’re not her men any longer, they’re Firstborn. Firstborn do not abandon each other, no matter what their orders say.

‘Squad, to me,’ Idra says. Her men jog up, forming into an arrow shape.

‘Sir?’ says one of the gunners, a man from her 86th. Idra points to the flashes.

‘See those?’

The men nod.

‘We climb,’ says Idra, pointing to the gantries. ‘And then we charge. Anyone disagree?’

Nobody does.

From one hundred and fifty yards above the factorum floor, the half-finished Leman Russ tanks on the immobile assembly line look like oversized toys from a training simulation. Or a shooting gallery. The last man of Idra’s squad hauls himself up, his breath wheezing from a face red and sweaty with exertion.

They run across gantries littered with chunks of rockcrete and broken-loose retainer bolts. Every step makes the heavy iron girders sway, causing Idra’s stomach to clench, her heart to flutter. They jump a perfectly round hole in the gantry’s steel-mesh flooring, still faintly glowing from the heat of a melta bomb. Every step takes them closer to the battle.

Twice they fight, once overrunning a four-man scout detail, then attacking a pair of heavy bolters from behind. The sounds of the battle raging ahead drowns out their steps, giving them cover. They reach the factorum’s main support arch, a massive rockcrete edifice thick as three Chimeras set side by side, and emerge into the factorum’s central chamber.

Ten cold rockcrete furnaces, each large enough to melt an entire Warhound Scout Titan in a single go, line the hall. Half-formed Leman Russ chassis and huge swaths of uncut armour plates hang from hooks the size of a grown man. Chains, with links thick as Idra’s torso, connect the furnaces and workstations. An entire Leman Russ turret hangs suspended from one, swinging slowly. At the very top of two connected furnaces, the Firstborn of Gurlov’s strike group are holed up.

They’re hunkered down behind improvised barricades and hastily erected blast shelters. Around them, above them, even from the insides of the cold furnaces, Tovogan rebels fire on the Firstborn’s positions. Three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, it is impossible to estimate the amount of rebels.

Across the hall, by the raised dais several hundred yards across, rages another battle. Captain Kadarov’s positions, near the void shield generators.

This is not a lone traitor regiment; this is two, three, maybe four.

‘Sir,’ whispers a voice in Idra’s ear. ‘What shall we do?’

Her troops huddle around her, in the cover of a pile of severed chain. Idra’s rescue force is pitifully small. A single well-placed rocket could kill them all.

She follows the patterns of the fire, identifies enemy positions. There, a lasgun platoon; there a plasma gun emplacement. Slowly, a puzzle starts to emerge.

The Tovogan commander is incompetent. Or, more likely, there are several commanders, unable or unwilling to coordinate their forces.

‘There,’ Idra points, ‘see the line between the first furnace and that lascannon position? The flow channel for the metal to the plate moulds?’

‘Sir?’ says the Firstborn. Idra realises he’s one of Gurlov’s soldiers, calling her sir. It’s a bitter-sweet realisation.

‘There is no one holding that part. No las-blasts coming from there. Silence the cannon and we have a clear run to the second furnace.’

‘But, sir,’ says the trooper, ‘the colonel is at the third furnace.’

Idra nods.

‘We drop down into the second furnace,’ she says. ‘There are slag tunnels between the furnaces. Standard pattern. We crawl into the second, emerge at the third. Ambush the Tovogans inside. Then all we’ve got to do is convince your colonel to run.’

The trooper looks like she’s slapped him.

‘The colonel would never do that, sir,’ he says.

Idra gives him a mirthless smile.

‘I never said it was going to be easy,’ she replies.

The lascannon falls, the loader and spotter dying before the gunner even realises anything is amiss. The flow channel is black with encrusted steel. It tears at their hands and knees as they scuttle up, keeping as far down as possible to avoid detection.

A funnel of solidified slag greets them inside the oven. Most of it has drained through the tunnels. Giant outflow vents, really. The oven is still hot, still full of fumes, but the Firstborn are used to worse. They pull out their gas masks, calibrated for the poisonous ash wastes of Vostroya. The stink of slag and steel doesn’t even strain their filters.

The masks limit their field of view, and each breath is still hard and hot, like running in a bakery kiln. Still, they make it into the slag tunnel, crawl, emerge in the third furnace.

There are Tovogans there, a lasgun squad spread around the edges, aiming upwards. They don’t notice Idra’s men until it’s too late. None of them make it out of the furnace alive.

Idra thumbs off her power sword, presses her vox-bead. Nobody replies to her queries. They’re still firing, up there. Maybe it is the furnace, blocking the vox signal.

Idra licks her lips inside her gas mask. She’ll have to get their attention. From a spot where they expect Tovogans.

Emperor’s Luck indeed.

‘Colonel!’ she yells upwards. The gas mask muffles her voice. No one replies through her vox-bead. Idra picks up her lasgun and fires a blast into the edge of the furnace’s open top, well below the edge.

A second later, a small, dark object sails over the edge.

‘Grenade,’ Idra yells, her men scattering to the sides. The grenade bounces once, then falls down into the tunnel. The explosion sends up a cloud of slag.

‘Colonel Gurlov,’ Idra yells. ‘Wisniak! By the Throne, anyone up there?’

A flash of light from the top, a mirror on a stick. It withdraws, and a Firstborn face looks down. A moment of shouting later, a chain-link ladder drops into the furnace.

‘Nadalya’s Mercy, sir, are we glad to see you!’ The Firstborn is one of Idra’s, one of the 86th’s veterans. ‘And sorry about the grenade, sir.’ He gives her a guilty look. Idra claps him on the shoulder, and he seems to relax.

Their position is cramped, a child’s blanket fort made out of broken girders and slabs of unpainted tank armour.

‘Where’s Gurlov?’ she says, and the man points to the other furnace.

‘Got ourselves surrounded,’ he says, needlessly, but Idra is already pressing her vox-bead, calling for Gurlov.

‘How many men have you brought?’ Gurlov asks.

‘Ten,’ Idra says. There’s a pause.

‘That’s all?’ says Gurlov.

‘That’s all I’ve got,’ says Idra. ‘Sir, you’ve got to order the holding force to withdraw.’

Another pause. A lascannon drills a hole in the barrier across the furnace, melting the armour plate stapled there. It doesn’t manage to melt the one behind it, and the follow-up shots all hit in different spots.

‘Our orders are to relieve Captain Kadarov,’ says Gurlov. ‘With your men–’

‘Sir!’ Idra interrupts. ‘There are four rebel regiments here. We’ve got less than a platoon.’

Gurlov hesitates.

‘Our orders–’

A gigantic explosion interrupts him, the flash almost blinding Idra. The Leman Russ turret that swung from the chain sits on a furnace across the floor. Its battle cannon is smoking. Gurlov’s position has been breached.

Smoke flows across the covered walkway to the other furnace. Screams sound over the vox-beads. Gurlov’s position is torn open, a gigantic hole blown in one side. Dead and wounded Firstborn litter the furnace top.

Las-blasts crack across the covered walkway between the furnaces. Idra can hear her heart pounding in her ears. Her knees shake. But Firstborn do not abandon each other.

Idra rushes across, las-blasts bouncing off the girders and thin sheets around her. Grabs a screaming man, hoists him over her shoulders; grabs another by the collar and starts dragging. Bolter shots and lasgun beams crack into the inside of the position. The barricade has become a deathtrap.

Men flow in behind Idra, grabbing wounded and weapons. The weapons are as important as the men, heirlooms from past campaigns. By the time Idra is back in the first position, the other furnace is cracking with las-blast hits. She hands off her Firstborn to the medic. Only then does she notice that her arm hangs loose, the plascrete armour melted on her shoulder. The pain hits her, makes her gasp. She pushes it away. Later, there will be time for hurt later.

‘Where’s the colonel?’ she asks. A man points to a prone shape.

Colonel Gurlov. He’s lost his shako. Blood covers his bald scalp. He’s unconscious, but his bionic leg keeps spasming.

‘Who’s in command?’ says Idra.

‘You are, sir,’ comes Wisniak’s drawl.

‘What about Captain Kadarov?’

Wisniak jerks his chin towards a slim gun port in the barricade. Flames and smoke cover the Firstborn positions around the void shield generators. Tovogan rebels crawl among them. No more las-blasts illuminate that part of the factorum. Kadarov’s position is overrun, his force gone.

‘Orders, sir?’ says Wisniak.

A platoon charging four regiments to recover the corpses of Kadarov’s fallen? That’s suicide, no matter what Gurlov would believe. A waste of the Emperor’s troops. For Idra, there is only a single possible order.

‘Climb down,’ she says, pointing to the chain-link ladder into the furnace. ‘Then withdraw.’

Gurlov lives. He’s sitting, propped up behind the armoured barricades by the Medusa near the loading docks, a big bandage swathing his head. A dark red spot is slowly growing on it. The bandage is bleeding through.

The Firstborn engineers have blown off the girders in the assembly hall’s roof. They lie like a giant’s discarded crutches, blocking parts of the approach vectors. The remaining openings are crammed with barricades, manned by Firstborn. So are the tunnels beneath the factorum floor. The line of corpses by the gate is longer, the pile of Vostroyan weapons larger.

The Tovogans have launched probing attacks on the Firstborn positions, throwing companies forwards to claim yet another pile of rubble. Each time the Tovogans lose men. Each time they manage to come closer. It’s only a matter of time before they reach good jumping-off positions. After that, they’ll throw their entire might at the Firstborn.

Or starve them out. The Tovogans have the time. Minutes after Idra’s force managed to get back to the loading hall, the factorum’s void shields flickered to life. There will be no reinforcements, no surprises, no outside help. The shields are powerful. It would require days of bombardment from a heavy siege regiment to bring them down, and no such regiment is available.

Gurlov clears his throat. His voice is no longer the confident rumble Idra remembers from their first talk. At least he isn’t objecting to Idra being present at the staff meeting.

‘Our orders,’ he says, ‘are to retake the factorum to prevent the traitors from restarting the production lines. Should we fail to do so, general staff has ordered us to destroy the factorum.’

A murmur passes amongst the Firstborn. A few look roofwards, glancing around the gigantic hall.

Everything they’ve done so far has been repairable. To obliterate such technology completely, it would almost be sacrilege.

‘Sir,’ says Captain Suvarin. ‘Could we retake the factorum?’

Gurlov leans back, closes his eyes. To Idra’s eyes, he looks tired, a wounded, old veteran struggling to follow orders.

‘Is there a chance to detonate the magazine?’ asks Suvarin. ‘Could we push our way through to Kadarov’s old positions?’

For a moment, Gurlov remains silent. Then he shakes his head.

‘No, captain,’ he says. ‘There is no chance.’

In that moment, both of Gurlov’s officers deflate. His aide looks astonished. The assault trooper who followed Idra, and carried the colonel back, makes the sign of the aquila.

They all look lost.

Sergeant Dalsik sticks his head out the Medusa’s open side hatch.

‘Colonel Gurlov, sir,’ he says. ‘Movement between the conveyor lines.’

Gurlov nods tiredly.

‘Another probing attack,’ he says. ‘Private Idra, can you handle it?’

‘Sir,’ Dalsik interrupts. ‘Sniper Wisniak says there are more of them than blackwasps in an ohx pot. And tanks, too.’

The attack begins with a barrage from five Leman Russ battle cannons. The rebels have managed to reactivate parts of the assembly line at least. The cannons boom, shells scream in, shattering Firstborn positions on the front. Firstborn withdraw, to backup positions, shielded from the tanks’ fire.

Yet the Tovogans are careful. Instead of launching an all-out assault, they keep probing, withdrawing into cover as the Firstborn return fire.

‘Colonel, sir,’ shouts Suvarin. ‘We need to relocate the command post.’ He points to the Medusa’s half-armoured magazine. Idra agrees with his assessment. The shells are immensely powerful. Unprotected, they are easy to detonate. One shot from a battle cannon, and the entire Firstborn command will be wiped out. They should roll them away, maybe towards the Tovogans, if they can find a smooth part of floor.

‘Nadalya’s Grace,’ says Idra. ‘Sir, we can destroy the factorum.’

It is Suvarin who answers her, raising an eyebrow.

‘We couldn’t blast our way out of the tunnels to relieve Captain Kadarov,’ she says. ‘But this time we don’t need to relieve him, just blow up the magazine.’ Idra slaps the siege gun shell. ‘With this.’

‘We won’t be able to get a crane into the tunnels,’ says Suvarin.

‘We won’t need to,’ says Idra. ‘We’ll roll it.’

Suvarin hesitates.

‘Sir,’ he says, but Gurlov is already on his feet, his eyes aglow.

‘By the Throne,’ he says. ‘You have a point, lieutenant.’

Neither Idra nor Suvarin correct the rank.

They lower the shell through the hatch, twenty men with pulleys working while the remaining Firstborn hold off the Tovogan attacks. Once down, the shell tips almost of its own volition.

In the hall, the Firstborn begin a fighting retreat. The holding forces in the tunnels attack, sweeping a few surprised Tovogans aside.

Side tunnels branch off the main route, to storage chambers, to generator halls, to bunkers and air-raid shelters. An entire division could hole up down here.

But the Firstborn aren’t interested in holing up. They roll the shell, blasting doors wider, rigging traps in side tunnels. Fighting an ever-stiffening rebel opposition.

Far behind them, a powerful explosion rocks the tunnels. The Tovogans have found the rigged entrance hatch, detonating a brace of melta bombs and the remaining shells in the Medusa’s magazine. A fitting funeral pyre for the Firstborn dead.

Major Bulwa is killed with the rearguard. Suvarin is wounded leading a charge against a Tovogan platoon holding a tunnel intersection. Idra orders him taken back to a side bunker, one that the Firstborn haven’t booby-trapped. This is their fallback position, the one that will save them from the blast of the magazine. If they survive. Of the officers, only Gurlov and Idra remain in the vanguard, having left Suvarin commanding the rear action.

The tunnel’s grey walls are shot traps, sending shrapnel and bolts ricocheting forwards. The Firstborn vanguard is somewhere beneath the furnaces, when Gurlov is hit.

A las-blast shatters his bionic leg. Idra’s sniper takes out the Tovogan, but their progress is halted. The Tovogans are sending down more troops, trying to clog the tunnels from all sides.

‘Have him taken back to the bunker,’ Idra orders one of Gurlov’s Guardsmen.

‘Wait,’ says Gurlov. ‘I can still fight.’

His eyes are sharp, and the plasma pistol in his hand is steady. The Firstborn are exchanging las-fire with the Tovogans, blasts going past, over and around Idra.

‘We’ll need to charge,’ says Idra. ‘One more push to get close to the magazine.’

Gurlov looks up at her, an old, wounded veteran. Will he be given a command after this? Probably not. The factorum of Salomar is going to be destroyed, and someone will have to pay for it.

‘Please?’ he says.

Idra grabs him by the armoured collar, hauls him onto her back.

‘You shoot,’ she says, ‘I’ll run.’

They charge.

Around them, the Firstborn cry out and rush forwards in a red wave. The Tovogans fire one last volley, but the distance is short, and Idra’s men near. A few Firstborn fall, the rest rush into the square intersection chamber beneath the magazine.

It is full of Tovogans, platoons of them, entering through the entrances on three of the room’s four sides. Idra halts, Gurlov almost slipping from her back, and she grabs him, ducking back into the cover of the firing ports by the tunnel entrance. One of her Firstborn slams the heavy, steel door shut. Gurlov shoves his arm into the gun port, firing his plasma pistol. The replying volley lights the entire room and makes the blast door vibrate.

‘There’s too many of them,’ says Idra. ‘We’ll need to detonate the shell here.’ She waves for her troops to move the shell forwards. It clangs against the door. Two Firstborn have taken Gurlov’s place, firing through the slim port as fast as their guns will reload. As soon as one lasgun pack is empty, another Firstborn sticks his gun into the port. A crude barrage, but it keeps the Tovogans away.

‘Set the charges,’ Idra calls, and a Firstborn ordnance expert rushes forwards. The middle of the door starts to glow with red heat. The Tovogans have got a lascannon or a plasma gun down into the tunnels.

‘No time,’ says Gurlov. ‘Run, and I’ll detonate it.’

He twists the dials on his plasma gun, setting it to overcharge.

‘Sir,’ says Idra, ‘you are the ranking officer.’

Gurlov looks up at her, gives her a smile.

‘I am a wounded, querulous old man,’ he says. ‘With a long history behind me and many enemies among my friends, and nothing to return to back home. This is my last command. We both know it. Let me end it in service to the Emperor.’

Idra pauses. Eyes him, a proud warrior, asking for a chance to die in service.

‘Is that an order, sir?’ she says.

‘A request,’ says Gurlov. ‘Please.’

Idra salutes.

‘Sir,’ she says. ‘Firstborn, back to the bunker!’

As the troops withdraw, Gurlov stretches out his hand. Idra clasps it. Something small tickles her palm.

‘May you wear it in honour and service,’ says Gurlov. ‘Lieutenant.’

Idra opens her fist. There, rolled into a tight ball, lies her officer’s braid.

She salutes again, and then she runs.

The Firstborn emerge from the tunnels. There is little smoke. Not enough is left of the factorum at Salomar to burn. Behind Idra, the bunker’s buckled blast doors squeak as they slam closed for the last time.

The city itself is mostly spared, the void shields having contained enough of the explosion before they failed. On the horizon, a string of Firstborn Chimeras and Basilisks roll down into the Salomar valley. Reinforcements, days too late.

‘Orders, sir?’ says Idra.

‘Nothing right now, lieutenant,’ says Captain Suvarin. ‘Although one request. I believe that I promised to tell you the story of Colonel Gurlov, and his exile. Would you like to hear it?’

‘I’d be delighted to,’ says Idra.

JOURNEY OF THE MAGI

Jonathan Green

The orb designated as the Godstar tumbled through the void as it had done for countless aeons. More artefact than world, it was not bound to the gravity well of any one celestial body. The light cast by dying suns barely penetrated the oily green corona surrounding it, painting the monolithic structures covering the comet-sized construct’s surface with their suffused luminescence.

Below the protective shield, before a smooth obsidian pyramidal edifice, space-time deformed and buckled. Strands of coral-coloured warp matter and aquamarine etheric energy bled out from a rent in reality. Forming into tendrils, they behaved like the tentacles of some deep-sea cephalopod testing the limits of their new habitat.

The writhing corona of kaleidoscopic colours widened, as the hole opened in front of the pyramid. With ice crystals frosting the void-black stones of the processional avenue onto which they stepped, three figures emerged from the portal.

First through was Prototokos the All-Seeing, warp-mage of the Thousand Sons Legion. Eerie green light cast by carved channels in the blockwork of the pyramid reflected from the greaves and vambraces of his turquoise battleplate, while the shimmering cloth-o’-gold icon banner tied at his waist undulated in the unseen breezes of the warp as he walked. So too did the blood-red cape that hung about his shoulders. In one gauntleted hand Prototokos carried a heavy, curse-bound, star-matter blade, which seemed to draw light into itself.

Second, and more impressive still, came Sorcerer-Magister Opados. He was clad in an elaborately ornamented suit of Terminator armour that had survived the fall of Tizca and the burning of Prospero, its myriad battle scars and subsequent repairs adding a gravitas that only age and experience could bring. The crimson cape secured to his auto-reactive shoulder pads flapped in the warp wind. A pair of flattened golden horns, inlaid with platinum and lapis lazuli, rose from his turquoise helm. These features were echoed in the projections that crowned the force stave he carried, the emerald eye-stone set within the tip of the staff rolling and blinking erratically. Standing ten feet tall, Opados was still dwarfed by the edifice that rose before him to more than twenty times his height.

Arch-Magister Tritos, the last of the three, did not step from the portal but glided through it, his feet placed firmly on the back of a thing that was a warp-born amalgam of impossible flesh and gold-chased steel. It resembled a circular platform but with nine great gilt blades rising at equidistant points from its rim, while between those, nine watery eyes bulged and blinked – every part of them painted in shifting shades of blue, from their fleshy lids to their whites and malformed irises.

And the master of the daemon was no less awe-inspiring than the warp beast he had tamed. The sorcerer was clad in a turquoise war-suit, trimmed with gold and inlaid with precious gems, the serpent sigil of the Thousand Sons Legion that adorned his left pauldron turning slowly as it chased its fiery tail. The pauldron protecting his right shoulder bore the Cult of Time’s own writhing icon, a swollen snake pregnant with the possibilities of myriad futures.

Great golden horns, so intricately detailed they looked as if they had grown from the sorcerer’s head rather than having been cast by an artisan of the forge, rose from the crown of his helm, while other antler-like growths curved downwards to frame the front plate of the exalted one’s visor.

His ornate armour was half-hidden by the heavy robes he wore. The gold-embroidered scarlet chasuble gave him the appearance of a scholar or a priest, as much as his battleplate marked him out as a formidable warrior.

Adorning the plastron of his war- and warp-scarred armour was a scarab beetle as large as a man’s head. Sculpted from a single piece of red alabaster, it seemed to cling to the front of the sorcerer’s carapace, looking like it might suddenly crack open its wing cases and take flight at any moment.

During the Faronic Age of ancient Terra, aeons past, the primitive peoples of that dim and distant time had believed the scarab god renewed the sun every day, rolling it above the horizon and continuing to carry it through the underworld after sunset, only to renew it again the following dawn. And so it continued day in day out, season after season, year after year, for all eternity.

It was no coincidence that the beetle had been claimed by the Cult of Time’s Sect of the Crimson Scarab. The magisters of that faction treated time as if it were a tapestry, to be unravelled and resewn as they saw fit, striding through the warp to unpick the past and reorder it in a manner that would echo down through the centuries and aid them in their conquests in the future. To an exalted sorcerer-magister of the Crimson Scarab, past, present and future were mutable and interchangeable, if circumstances so required.

Behind the three magi the immaterial vortex contracted and closed. The echoes of the concussive boom of displaced air that followed the sealing of the rent rippled across the surface of the comet world like laughter, while a shock wave of ethereal spectra swept across the underside of the flickering green force field that stretched from one horizon to the other.

Arch-Magister Tritos of the Heralds of Destiny regarded the angular pyramid before him with a disdainful eye. As he did so, the dragon-head exhaust ports which rose from the power pack that energised his armoured suit turned to regard it too, with unblinking golden eyes.

The processional avenue leading to the edifice was a grand affair, precisely incised geometric channels running on either side, pulsing with the same intense emerald light that writhed in a sickly aurora above the artificial Godstar.

Without a word being spoken, the three sorcerers set off down the stone throat of the avenue. The arch-magister astride his disc led the way, the daemonic entity leaving a trail of iridescent ether stuff in its wake, while gold-embroidered sigils adorning the hem of Tritos’ rippling robes performed a strange, esoteric dance all of their own.

As tall as a Battle Titan, the pyramid’s entrance was constructed of a smooth onyx broken only by a series of circles and lines that formed the demarcation glyph of the impossibly ancient dynasty that had constructed the comet. It was a symbol Tritos had seen again and again, from Kovarian IV to Port Stormshield, etched upon the wraithbone ruins of the aeldari in the Shifting Deserts of Osiris Primus, and inscribed in blood throughout the myriad volumes of the writings of the mad prophet Mortsafe in the dusty libraries of Kelock on the dead world of Narthax. And in its form he now understood its meaning, although that had not been the case the first time he had beheld it in the mirrored waters of his scrying pool.

Consisting of three overlapping circles, superimposed upon one another in green-black stone and near-white light, as well as other emanating rays and discs, it was the symbol of the Nephrekh Dynasty of the aeons-old necrontyr.

The thin light of the Halo Stars struggled to penetrate the flickering gauss defences that surrounded the necron-constructed comet craft. The verdigris glow of the sky shield bathed the sorcerers’ gold and turquoise armour, the light reflecting from their polished battleplate casting rippling reflections on the onyx walls of the processional avenue, making it appear as if they were moving through the pelagic depths of some ocean world rather than across the surface of a deep space fastness.

None, beyond the immortal phaerons of the necron race themselves, knew how many such celestial engines and timeless artefacts there were adrift within the vastness of the galaxy. The name ‘World Engine’ was still spoken of in hushed tones in star systems across a hundred sectors, from the Reefs of Melanoptera to the tribal territories of the T’au Empire offshoot septs in the Damocles Gulf. But it hadn’t been the only such manifestation of the necrons’ world-shaping mega-technology.

The Godstar was another such ancient artefact, unknown to the myriad intelligent species that populated the galaxy. Indeed, it was unknown to all outside the necron race, other than for these three sons of the Crimson King, these three who had discerned its location by studying the cuneiform script pressed into baked clay tablets on arid Za’handra. These three who had scoured the mind of a t’au ethereal having boarded the xenos’ Gal’leath-class explorer vessel seeking more information, and left it to the mercy of void-devourers when they departed. These three who had journeyed across countless battlefields and warzones, across great gulfs of time and space, to reach this place, in what, for the time being at least, they would consider to be ‘now’.

‘The way ahead is closed,’ said Prototokos, regarding the entrance and its Titan-tall warding glyph, as the three magi halted before the cyclopean doorway at the end of the descending defile.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Opados, scouring its surface with his eyes, even as his psychic senses probed its defences, searching for a means of ingress, ‘but there is always–’

‘Another way,’ finished Tritos.

The arch-magister’s hands began to twist and dance in the air before him, manifesting esoteric gestures of serpentine sorcery as he sought to fold time and space with what appeared to be no more than a snap of his fingers.

To look upon the cerulean flesh of his left hand was to look upon the armoured skin of his gauntlet, the warping effects of millennia having merged flesh and bone and ceramite into one, to form a new and unique warp-made amalgam.

As he began to unknit the fabric of reality, the air before them seemed to jerk and twist and extrude itself in obeisance to his flexing fingers, while glowing warp runes became visible, crawling up and down the vambrace of the arch-magister’s left arm. The threads that made up the matter of the universe were loosed into thin strands of pink and blue warp-stuff, which clung to his dancing digits like sticky cobwebs.

What started as a few loose strands soon became a gaping hole. And through that hole, superimposed upon the sealed gateway, could be seen a dusty darkness that was spared the attentions of the flickering aurora of the sky shield.

Taking hold of the edges of the hole, Tritos pulled and stretched the limits of the portal until it was large enough to admit even Opados, cocooned within his Terminator armour.

‘This way,’ Tritos said, pointing. ‘This is our other way.’

‘Will it take us straight to the heart of this place, and the prize we seek?’ asked Opados.

‘No,’ admitted the arch-magister. ‘The deeper levels of this sphere harbour warding technology that prevents it.’

‘But this is enough,’ stated Prototokos. ‘Where our powers of sorcery will not suffice, we will turn once again to bolter and blade to clear a path to the prize.’

In one stride, the warp-mage made the translation from the surface of the artefact-comet to the tomb’s silent interior. He was followed by Sorcerer-Magister Opados, with Arch-Magister Tritos passing through the portal last, carried on the back of his warp steed.

The hole healed itself again and the tomb was briefly illuminated by a flash of witch-light. As the boom of the portal’s closing faded fast, lost among echoing sepulchral halls, the rows of golden warriors were for a moment made visible, before fading back into the shadows, and the all-pervading hush returned.

Not that the sorcerers needed any light to make out the serried ranks of the tomb’s occupants. The optical enhancements of their helms enabled them to pick out every detail of the motionless figures.

They were almost skeletal, not unlike mortal men in form and size, but with limbs made of metal, their bodies encased in gold.

But where the souls of mortal beings would have burned with fierce fire to the witch-sight of the sorcerers, these endless ranks of necron warriors were dull and dead, the brightest thing about them their tarnished armoured body-shells.

They looked like they would not have appeared out of place standing upon plinths within the statue-lined galleries of the twisted silver towers of Tizca.

‘Are they dead or merely dormant?’ Prototokos asked, as if addressing the darkness.

‘Does it matter?’ grunted Opados, his voice distorted by his helm into a daemonic growl.

‘We are here to release the prisoner, nothing more,’ said Tritos. ‘Which way does the vault lie?’

Prototokos scanned the gloom, slowly turning his head from left to right and back again, like a near-blind old man seeking the glow of a lumen-globe. He stopped abruptly, facing what was not so much an archway as a gap in the far wall of the tomb-chamber that ran from floor to ceiling, fully tall enough to admit a Battle Titan god engine.

‘This way,’ he said.

‘Then lead on,’ said Tritos. ‘Our prize awaits.’

The three magi advanced, passing through hall after hall, and gallery after gallery, built around the dimensions of gods rather than mere mortals.

In each one it was the same: sterile, lifeless, with barely even any dust on the floor to be stirred by the sorcerers’ passing; rank upon rank of motionless warrior-constructs clad in tarnished golden armour, packed into crypt-like vaults in their thousands; looming walls adorned with the broken glyphs of the Nephrekh aristocracy, from lords and overlords to the obscure sigils of individual phalanx groups. The only sounds that accompanied the Thousand Sons’ advance through the tomb was the ringing of their armoured feet on the echoing stone floors, and the incoherent whispering of the arch-magister’s disc.

Every time they left one chamber and entered another, they descended a flight of ancient steps, cut from something akin to black basalt, which led them ever deeper into the Godstar’s interior.

Descending a much longer and steeper staircase into another vaulted space, Prototokos saw that where the other galleries had held the sleeping soldiers of the revenant race, this chamber – bluntly cruciform in shape – was no more than a parting of the ways within the labyrinth. And where the other halls had been dead and free of moisture, an oily mist covered the floor of this intersection, shot through with motes of twinkling green light, like an inverted star field.

As Prototokos and Opados reached the bottom of the staircase, their boots sinking into the soupy green fog, they stopped to take in the dimensions of the space. While the warp-mage replayed the visions he had witnessed in the waters of his scrying pool, so as to determine how they might best continue their journey, the trio waited in silence. And that was when the echoing clatter of automaton claws and the hum of gravitic engines reached their ears.

They were not alone.

‘There!’ Arch-Magister Tritos said, gesturing with the golden cobra-head of his force stave at a black shape emerging from the square hole of a maintenance conduit.

The thing bore the characteristic armour plating, and green-glowing sensor arrays and power coils, of a necron automaton, but in every other way it resembled a multi-limbed arachnid.

Tritos regarded the ancient robot with the intense scrutiny of one who sought to know everything there was to know about the entity. For if he understood it, he would then know how best to destroy it.

Unlike their necron masters, ancient robotic constructs such as this one never slept, tirelessly tending to the tomb, servicing its stasis systems and maintaining the fabric of the Godstar’s structure, down through the centuries, aeon after aeon.

The spyder scrutinised Tritos in turn, drawing level with the sorcerer’s elevated position and subjecting him to a barrage of sensor sweeps, broad beams of muted jade light playing over his robed and armoured form.

The disc shuddered under him.

‘And so it begins,’ he said. ‘There is no hiding our presence here now.’

The hum of the spyder’s motive systems abruptly increased in pitch and the construct assumed a more threatening posture, its pincer-limbs raised to strike.

With barely a thought, Tritos lashed out with a lance of psychic power at the automaton, sending it hurtling across the intersection to smash into one of the black stone walls with catastrophic force. There was a sharp crack, followed by a dull boom, and the spyder was consumed by the ball of green fire that emanated from within its carapace, its power core having suffered terminal damage and vaporising the guardian drone in an instant.

‘Brothers,’ Tritos said, his tone having acquired an urgent edge, ‘we must move. Now!’

‘This way,’ said Prototokos, leading the trinity along the left-hand spur of the intersection and down another precipitous stair, the sound of more clacking mechanical manipulators carrying to them through the stillness of the tomb.

As they descended, the mist tumbling over the steps in a slow cascade of condensing cryo-vapour, the black shaft of the stairway fanned outwards to become the walls of a vast hall. Columns like elongated obsidian geodes rose fully one hundred and sixty feet from floor to ceiling, their glassy black faces reflecting the strobing, molten green light-pulses that coursed up and down them, loudly sparking arcs of emerald lightning crackling between the columns in irregular discharges.

It was the echoing tapping and scraping of metallic claws on the pulsing pillars that alerted the sorcerers to the arrival of more of the tomb’s guardians, since their witch-sight was blind to the approach of the soulless alien techno-entities.

They were multi-legged spyder-forms as well. Such constructs didn’t only act as repair-servitors and watch over their sleeping masters. They could also be formidable foes, if called upon to defend the tomb from anything they caught trespassing within the sepulchral complex.

Unlike the first drone the Thousand Sons had encountered, which had only approached them with wary interest – at least at first – this cluster was ready to defend the tomb and its slumbering occupants from the invaders, fabrication arrays snapping open and closed, like the pincers of hungry crustaceans, while particle beamers energised.

Prototokos could only surmise that the first spyder had scanned them and passed on what it had found – and experienced in its final moments – and so the rest of the tomb’s guardians were now on a war footing, expecting an invasion and ready to resist it.

But of course Tritos had anticipated this. ‘Obliterate the arachno-forms!’ commanded the arch-magister.

Before the robots could open fire, the favoured of Tzeentch lashed out with magicks and raw psychic power, accompanied by intermittent yet devastatingly accurate shots from Prototokos’ Inferno-pattern bolt pistol, and withering salvos of fire from Opados’ combi-bolter.

With a furnace roar, like one of the Changer of the Ways’ fire-spewing servants, Tritos’ own ornamented weapon hosed a trio of drones with rippling warpflame, sending them plummeting to the floor of the hypostyle hall, trailing snaking tendrils of fire.

The trajectory of one of the downed spyders sent it hurtling towards Tritos. The arch-magister didn’t even blink as the construct came within arm’s reach of his position.

The sorcerer’s steed rose sharply. Intercepting the spyder’s plummeting dive, with lightning-flash reactions, the disc snatched it from the air and set about rapidly dismantling the automaton’s body with its semi-organic golden blades.

One wave of spyders fell, then another, and another, but all the while other things congregated in the pulse-shot shadows, the occasional flash of an energy discharge briefly illuminating glassy eye-lenses, oily exoskeletons and scythe-sharp reaping blades.

‘We have to keep moving. We cannot fall back,’ stated Tritos with grim finality, even as constructs with exposed spines and tails of articulated metal appeared, clinging to the pulsing pillars or descending from the vaulted roof space of the colossal chamber.

Prototokos looked. The way ahead was choked with hordes of robotic entities, some of them giving birth to other, smaller swarming metallic things. The beetle-like constructs scuttled across the floor of the chamber in their thousands, each following a simple set of subroutines, avoiding each other and all obstacles in accordance with a preprogrammed set of rigid algorithms, but moving as one undulating carpet of iridescent alien alloys.

‘Virus-riddled vermin,’ hissed Opados in irritation.

‘Fear not, brother,’ replied Prototokos. ‘I know how to deal with vermin like these.’

Taking a bejewelled cylinder from a hook on his belt, Prototokos twisted the enamelled crimson scarab cap and hurled the object into the seething mass of robotic beetles rapidly closing the gap between them.

A new sun burned away the sepulchral darkness, hurling the disintegrating cinders of shattered scarabs in all directions. But as the glare of the plasma blast faded, it became clear that Prototokos’ assault had barely decimated the robotic ranks.

The three advanced, Prototokos making continued use of psi-targeted grenades – his witch-sight helping him predict where the bombs should land, moments into the future, to cause the most devastation – while Opados and Tritos helped clear a path through the metal tide with judicious flashes of focused psychic energy, channelled through their shining force staves.

And all the while they suffered the assaults of a whickering hail of emerald energy pulses, as the necrons’ slave-machines continued to resist their advance. Most of the automatons’ beam-blasts were repelled by the wards of protection with which the sorcerers had girded themselves, dissipating in ripples of unctuous magenta light against the surface of the invisible sphere that surrounded the Thousand Sons. But still the occasional pulse of focused light found a way through, only to spang from the ceramite of their sigil-wrought armour.

The reservoir of warp energy they had drawn to themselves was in ever-greater danger of running dry, the more the magi were called upon to bolster their psi-shields and cast their conjurations of devastation.

The tide of scarabs and thrumming spyders parted as rank upon rank of golden warriors, marching in lockstep, advanced from the far end of the vast hall.

‘The sleepers wake,’ said Opados grimly.

Where the gold trim of the Thousand Sons’ suits blazed sun-bright in the light of the necron weapon discharges, the gilt body-shells of the advancing warriors were discoloured and dulled by the endless aeons, just as the minds of their mad masters had been degraded by the remorseless millennia, and who, in their insanity, had taken prisoner the one the magi intended to free from captivity.

Slicing beams of light cut through the gloom of the chamber. The warriors were among the lowliest of the necrons but the weapons they brought to bear, to repel the tomb’s raiders, were potent artefacts born of another age, when star gods had warred across the heavens.

‘The Bringers of the Dawn seek only to send us into the darkness,’ Tritos announced. ‘But we shall enlighten them and teach them that their time is over. Do not falter, brothers, and we shall teach the fearless to be fearful!’

Prototokos lobbed another of his red scarab plasma grenades over the heads of the advancing warriors. It landed in the midst of them, launching two dozen necrons into the air as it detonated. Opados doused the humanoid machines with fire from his combi-bolter, the magical energies bound to the inferno weapon imbuing its shells with the power to melt their soulless robotic bodies. Still more were hurled between the geode pillars as Tritos smote the horde with potent psychic shock waves.

Riding over the heads of the implacable phalanx, the arch-magister focused his sorcerous power through the glittering ruby eyes of his force stave’s hooded cobra’s head. Where his focused magicks struck, warrior after warrior was reduced to its component parts, as metal and crystalline matrices were unmade, time was reversed, and the necrons were turned back into the base elements from which they had originally been formed.

But even those necrons smashed to smithereens by the other magi’s attacks were not out of the fight for long. All along the trail of destruction left in the wake of the sorcerers’ advance, dismembered limbs clawed towards shattered torsos, while eyes of disembodied steel skulls crackled with green fire, as if willing their headless bodies to recover and reattach them. Broken forms that appeared to the magi to be beyond repair were tended to by spyders, the arachnoid robots’ fabrication claws reconstructing motive units and articulated joints damaged during the Thousand Sons’ assault.

The sorcerers’ progress felt slow to Prototokos now. A journey that had taken them across the stars, covering unimaginable, incalculable distances, had almost ground to a halt here in the tomb, within striking distance of where the prisoner was held captive, its furious, star-bright spirit straining to be free.

Prototokos focused his gaze on the far end of the hall, still a third of a mile away – if his measuring reticule was to be trusted in this dead space – and saw something huge move within the shadows there. It looked like one of the ancient statues of Tizca come to life, taking form from the suffocating darkness. The warp-mage could feel the thud of its ponderous footfalls, heavier than a Helbrute’s, through the boots of his own heavy, armoured suit.

As one, without a word of warning from the warp-mage, the Terminator-sorcerer and arch-magister saw it too.

A beam of light, like a blade of green flame, shot the length of the hypostyle hall, focused on Tritos, exploding the sphere of magical protection around him. The daemon-disc gave a high-pitched shriek of pain as its warp-formed flesh and bone-metal blades were unmade by the lethal gauss cannon salvo.

‘Magister!’ Prototokos cried out in cold shock. But he and the Terminator-sorcerer Opados could do nothing but watch, in appalled horror, as a second dissembling beam followed the first to its target, this time hitting the arch-magister himself.

And as they watched, the lower portion of his right arm disintegrated. At first it was only the gauntlet and vambrace that crumbled into nothingness. But then the skin and flesh and bone beneath were shredded at a molecular level too. Gauss beams ate at Tritos’ corporeal form, stripping it away, layer by layer, mitochondrial strand by mitochondrial strand, unmaking him, even as his transhuman constitution and warp-wards battled to reconstruct the fractally fragmented flesh.

‘You must be gone from here and finish our mission!’ the arch-magister commanded, even as he shaped what Prototokos sensed could be his final spell.

Tritos stretched out his left arm, cerulean fingers splayed wide, and in that instant it was as if the very air about him froze – not with ice but in time. The inbound disintegrating beams of the necrons halted a mere moment from making contact with the sorcerer’s armoured form.

But the time-freezing spell did not stop there. It spread outwards from the arch-magister’s position in a crackling sphere of cyan energy.

Anything the expanding bubble touched froze where it was. Spyders hung suspended in mid-air. Necrons became immobilised mid-stride. Searing pulses of gauss energy became glowing green icicles, transfixed to the muzzles of the warriors’ weapons.

And still the spell-sphere swelled and grew.

Flashing beams of gauss-light striking the coruscating barrier suffered the same effect, becoming trapped in time, like fish frozen in a pond in winter.

‘Run!’ Opados commanded Prototokos, and the two sorcerers sprinted for the elongated archway that marked the exit from the vast chamber.

‘He would sacrifice himself for us?’ Prototokos gasped.

‘Is that not what you would do in his situation?’ Opados challenged him.

And then the necron colossus was before them. A titan of metal and lethal intent, it turned synaptic obliterators towards the sorcerers, intending to blast them with a concentrated burst of subatomic particles. Such an assault could tear apart the molecular bonds within the very cells of the intruders’ metahuman bodies.

But Opados had already intoned the incantation that would save them. Out of the corner of his visor-feed, Prototokos saw the red-veined alabaster scarab that clung to the front of Opados’ armour twitch and shake itself, wing cases opening, revealing a fluttering of bejewelled plumage beneath as the sorcerer-magister’s bond familiar awoke at the behest of its master.

The vulture-form of Opados’ pet Tzeentchian spirit freed itself from the esoteric workings of his arcane armour and shook itself, ruffling its feathers and opening its beak in a screeching yawn. Taking wing, it flew straight towards the construct. The daemon-thing’s iridescent down shimmered, as if alive with dancing flames, and then in the next moment it was consumed, phoenix-like, by the hungry azure blaze.

As the familiar was destroyed by the flames, it confounded the colossus’ targeting arrays and alighted on the construct’s insectile cranial command unit.

A hurricane of psychic fire exploded from the daemon-spirit’s immaterial body, consuming the giant necron’s head. As the firestorm raged, still chased by the time-freezing conjuration, Prototokos and Opados passed between the colossus’ multijointed legs and crossed the threshold of the exit archway.

The warp-mage heard the buzz of a force field activating behind them, and a shimmering gauss field filled the portal. But it was too little too late as far as the necrons were concerned.

Turning momentarily, Prototokos saw the cyan shock wave of Tritos’ chronomancy strike the warding shield and there stop. Everything inside the hall had become subject to his time-lock spell, including the arch-magister himself, and all were now as flies imprisoned within amber.

Beyond the hypostyle hall, Prototokos and Opados passed through a now empty vault and from there descended yet another staircase, which led them, eventually, to a bridge of onyx stone. The structure spanned a chasm between two towering walls of exposed circuitry and more of the black metal architecture of the tomb’s interior.

They stood together at the edge of the abyss. The walls of the chasm rose above them as far as Prototokos, or his suit’s optical sensors, could measure, and dropped away below them beyond the range of sight as well. The bridge had no handrails or enclosing cage, such considerations of safety or damage prevention being irrelevant to the unsleeping servitor machines that made use of the causeway during their scurrying maintenance of the tomb.

Halfway across the unnatural canyon stood a lone pillar, twenty yards in diameter, its insides carved out where the maintenance accessway penetrated it, and Prototokos could see a pulsing crystalline power node contained within. The causeway passed through the other side of the impossibly high pillar and ended at an angular platform jutting out from the wall on the opposite side of the chasm, in front of a sealed security hatch.

‘The vault!’ Prototokos exclaimed. ‘It is as I saw it in my vision.’

‘I know,’ said Opados with something like exhilaration colouring his words. ‘We are close to completing our mission at last.’

Without another word, the warp-mage and the Terminator-clad sorcerer-magister set off across the bridge, the door to the vault now in their sights.

It was quiet here at the heart of the Godstar, eerily so after the clamour of the battle in the hall.

Prototokos took in the ominous structures of the deep tomb. The smooth black walls were adorned with more of the geometric glyph patterns of the necrontyr that also brought a certain level of dim illumination to the unplumbed depths of the comet construct. But the closer he looked the more he began to pick out signs of decay – inconstantly flickering icons, the strange metal-stone surface of the pillar they were approaching pitted with corrosion – while oily substances oozed from a hidden network of rusting pipes.

They entered the power node chamber within the pillar, and felt the air thrum with the machine-heart pulse emanating from the crystal.

Exiting the chamber containing the relay, as the two of them set out across the bridge once more, Prototokos became aware of movement at the far end of the causeway. Batteries of gauss flayers, mounted within alcoves in the archway – and that had, prior to their arrival, been pointing at the entrance to the vault itself – responded to their presence now by rotating to target them. And due to the fact that neither of them was transmitting the correct override protocols, the weapons opened fire.

Forced back by the dread power of the gauss batteries, Prototokos and Opados rapidly retreated to the sanctuary of the power node chamber.

The gauss batteries ceased firing, but remained on alert, trained on the bridge and ready to resume their barrage of beams, should the Thousand Sons return.

From opposite sides of the exit archway the two magi regarded one another.

‘Rest easy,’ Opados said, as if reading Prototokos’ anxious thoughts. ‘There is always–’

‘Another way?’ offered the warp-mage.

‘Indeed.’

The Terminator-sorcerer took a moment to observe the relay and assess how it connected to the circuits of nearby systems.

‘Destroy the node and we take out the gate’s defences,’ he said at last.

‘And how do we do that?’ Prototokos asked.

‘How else? Using the same means that have helped us penetrate this far into the tomb. Through indomitable strength and with an implacable will.’

Spreading his armour-plated arms wide, Opados seized the pulsating crystal with both hands, the faceted faces of it fracturing under the crushing pressure of his gauntlet-guarded fingers, and heaved.

With a groan of suit-servos and the tortured rending of metal, the node began to tilt forwards as Opados pulled it towards him. There was a sudden snap and the crystal jerked forwards again, as some vital connector buckled.

Sparks fountained from the disrupted coupling with a crackling buzz, like a swarm of electrified mosquitoes, strewing the floor with pieces of fried alloy.

Opados heaved again and with a shearing crash the crystal broke free of its mountings altogether. Without pausing, the sorcerer cast it to the floor, where it exploded into fist-sized quartz-like chunks.

Arcs of energy erupted from the shattered power node, subjecting the chamber’s other systems to what was, to all intents and purposes, a self-contained lightning storm that wreathed everything in corposant, including the two sorcerers.

Prototokos luxuriated in the energising thrill of it. Even though his arcane armour insulated him from the worst effects of the high-voltage discharge, he could still feel it dancing over his skin as his battleplate burned crimson for a moment.

And then the energy discharge died, the sensation passed, and the chamber was claimed by the preternatural darkness of the tomb.

The warp-mage tore his eyes from the ruptured power node and turned his attention back to the entrance to the vault, on the other side of the chasm. The illuminated barrels of the gauss flayers blinked off and drooped in their gun pods.

‘What did I tell you, brother?’ exulted Opados. ‘With indomitable strength and an implacable will, anything can be achieved!’

‘I will remember that,’ Prototokos replied.

Suddenly sensing the presence of another nearby, the warp-mage tracked something flitting through the pools of oily darkness that lay beyond the suffused glow of the gigantic dynastic glyphs.

Perhaps it had been a subliminal awareness of its gravitic suspensors, or a subtle shift in the air currents of the tomb that had alerted him. It certainly hadn’t been his psychic senses; in this deathless place his witch-sight was as blind as a Prosperine cave salamander. The interloper was yet another of the necrons’ soulless servants.

It moved like an apparition, sometimes there and sometimes not, as it phased in and out of three-dimensional space. It was composed of a mechanical insectile head, crablike claws and a snake-like spine of a body that ended in a cruelly spiked tip.

As Prototokos took aim with his inferno bolt pistol, Opados brought his bewitched combi-bolter to bear, the runes on its artisan-worked casing pulsating as if alive, as he opened fire.

But the sons of Magnus were shocked when, a split second later, they observed their shots pass straight through the phasing entity.

‘It is a wraith,’ Opados said, ‘primarily a probe mechanoid, but a dimensional destabilisation matrix enables it to phase-shift in and out of reality. It can even modulate its matrix so as to keep different parts of its body in different states simultaneously, although this drains its energy reserves more rapidly.’

Prototokos fired his gun again and stared as the robot’s carapace became as immaterial as a warp ghost, his enchanted bolter shell blowing a chunk out of the pillar behind it, rather than harming the construct creature itself.

‘I encountered them during the enacting of the Great Undoing rite at the height of the Scythe Stars campaign.’

‘And did you defeat them then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then how do we kill it now?’ Prototokos demanded, as he continued to fire on the flickering entity.

Whatever wisdom the sorcerer had been about to impart, his advice was abruptly choked into silence as the spectral form of a second wraith materialised around the Terminator. The invisible assassin already had Opados in its clutches. As it took corporeal form, so too did the cluster of writhing wormlike silver tendrils and gleaming claws that had, in their phased state, penetrated the sorcerer-magister’s vital organs. Now that they shifted back again they were destroying Opados’ genhanced body from within, and blood poured from the grille of his helm.

As Prototokos watched, the image of the Terminator-sorcerer that was being relayed to him through his visor’s sensor array flickered like a corrupted pict-feed. And then he could see the details of the far chasm wall behind Opados as the sorcerer blurred and became as transparent as a warp ghost.

As immaterial now as the wraith had been when it first laid claws on him, Opados simply took a step backwards, freeing himself from the tomb keeper’s clutches with that one simple action. In response the wraith phased out of reality again and the two began a dance in and out of space and time, their motions leaving a trail of phantom images behind them as they blinked in and out of existence.

As the ethereal Terminator and the unreal wraith grappled with each other in the spaces between dimensions, Opados sent the near-hypnotised Prototokos a final command, making his intentions plain to the warp-mage with a burst of psychic projection.

+Finish it. Free the prisoner.+

At the same time, the first wraith materialised and flung itself from the pillar, angling its gliding flight towards Prototokos. But as it passed the wrestling wraith and Terminator-sorcerer, Opados stepped back through the veil of reality. Wholly real once more, he reached out a hand, grabbed the necron’s lashing tail, and hung on.

The wraith recoiled, writhing and twisting as it fought to be free, but the remorseless Terminator maintained his hold, both his hands bursting into flame, the canoptek creation catching fire within his grasp.

And then the wraith phase-shifted, as did Opados, and the three combatants continued their dance of death through the dimensions.

Opados had bought Prototokos the time he needed.

Continuing across the bridge, the warp-mage did not stop running until he reached the great black door of the vault. The gauss guns hung limply within their recessed alcoves, giving Prototokos ready access to the lock panel.

After centuries of meticulous planning, the culmination of his quest was now within reach. But there was still one last obstacle to overcome before the prisoner could be freed.

Placing his left hand against the black metal-stone of the arch, Prototokos focused his thoughts on the locking panel. Opening the well of his soul, tracing the skeins of time back into the past, in his mind’s eye he saw beyond the alien alloy composite of the portal’s surround to the arcane mechanisms buried within. He saw the pattern the moving parts had formed the last time the vault had been opened, decoded the path the electrical impulses had followed through the near-neural network of the arcane circuitry and, transforming his thoughts into telekinetic actions, forced them to assume those positions again now, in what passed for the present.

With a hiss of cryogenic gases, the vault door ground upwards into the wall.

At first, all Prototokos could see were the clouds of roiling stasis mist that filled the chamber. As his helmet’s esoteric systems penetrated the obscuring fog, they registered the presence of a series of plinths within the chamber. But it was what he saw with his witch-sight – utilising senses that were neither natural nor artificial – that caused hope to flare within his twin hearts once more, that he might yet complete the mission that he and the others had set out upon, so many years before… Or had that time yet to come?

Taking his hand from the door frame, the hidden locking mechanisms realigned once more and the door began to descend again as Prototokos crossed the threshold.

The vault closed with a dull boom. A moment later a sound like a roar of pain or fury, or both, reached him from the far end of the chamber in which he now found himself. Prototokos hesitated as the enormity of what he was about to do settled about his shoulders like a mantle. The echoes of the roar died to be replaced by a bestial grunting, and the sound of something enchained struggling against its shackles.

The stasis mist had settled on the floor of the tesseract chamber, oozing around the bases of the black stone plinths, upon each a prize, frozen within a beam of flickering green light that Prototokos knew was more than just a source of illumination.

The treasures kept safe within the vault had been wrested from the younger races of the galaxy. He took them in as he passed: the fractured helm of a witch-seer of the aeldari; the blunt, thick skull of an ork warboss, a crude optical implant still embedded within one eye socket; a recon drone that was clearly t’au in origin; a power sword bearing the heraldry and honour ribbons of the Adepta Sororitas; even a tyranid spore mine, frozen at the moment of detonation.

This place was as much a museum as a prison. A mausoleum archive of treasures collected by the eccentric archivists of the Nephrekh Dynasty.

But his steps carried him ever onwards. For in the darkness of the catacomb a soul burned brightly, revealed to his witch-sight now, the blistering flare of the enraged caged spirit imprisoned within the vault. The archivists’ ultimate prize. And his.

His footsteps rang from the onyx floor of the chamber as he neared the prisoner, with something approaching reverence.

The architecture of the vault, with its metal ribs and black stonework between, had something of a skeletal aspect about it, so that Prototokos felt he was walking through the fossilised remains of some long-dead star beast, reconfigured by the passage of time and the esoteric technologies of the necrontyr.

At the far end of the vault, beyond the endless rows of plinths bearing the alien artefacts and lost treasures of a thousand empires harvested from a million worlds, atop a platform raised from a series of gauss-quarried, concentric circular stones, and smothered by a haze of cryo gas, Prototokos could see a hulking shape. The vapour cleared, as his approach disturbed the air of the vault, and he saw the prisoner with his own eyes for the first time.

Locked within a wheel of living metal adorned with more of the necrons’ glyph circuitry, and held within a sphere of crackling sea-green light, was the Godstar’s prisoner, the one Prototokos had travelled so far, and for so long, throughout so many lifetimes, to find. To find and to free.

Doubtless alert to danger, upon hearing the sorcerer’s footsteps suddenly stop, the prisoner gave voice to another bellow of rage and pain.

Three times taller than the warp-mage and more than ten times as heavy, the bulk of its body barely contained by its metal hide, the thing was a monster in the truest sense of the word – a grotesque amalgam of flesh and armour.

The distended ceramite of its body-shell had the same turquoise lustre as Prototokos’ war-suit, edged with gold, while a carved scarab of red alabaster clung to its chestplate.

Above that same chestplate, visible within a metal maw of silver steel teeth, and framed by arching golden horns, was the furious face of the prisoner. The legionary’s gold and turquoise skull visage looked not unlike the mechanical face of one of the Godstar’s woken warriors.

But Prototokos also knew that the sculpted likeness was only a death mask, and not a true representation of the son of Magnus entombed alive within the enormous machine body. The physical form of the captive was now no more than a pulped mass of organs, bones and nerve ganglia, the body of the sacrificial offering having been flensed of its skin and subjected to the mutagenic effects of unsullied warpflame, before being placed inside an amniotic sac. This in turn had been inserted into the coffin-like maw of the Helbrute where, once inside, it became the motive force of the warped Dreadnought armour, the unendurable torments of the damned soul imprisoned within fusing with the Helbrute’s motivators and driving the war colossus into battle.

But that had not been the end of the wretch’s flesh-life, for within the mechanical frame of the Helbrute, that flesh had found new forms, bubbling forth, swelling to fill every empty conduit and claim every motive system of the monstrous mechanical creation for its own. Pulsing, veiny muscle had grown with cancerous enthusiasm to cover the manoeuvring joints of its massive piston legs and encase the armoured vambrace of the huge claw fist that formed the Helbrute’s right arm.

On the left side of its body the thing had no arm, but instead a writhing nest of tentacles, that were as much mechanical prosthetics as they were fleshy appendages of mauve meat.

And yet both the Helbrute’s fist and its scourging whips were held fast within great metal clamps that formed part of the framing ring to which it was bound, as were the hooves of its massive metal feet. Despite being fuelled by the never-ending rage induced by the agony of its continued existence, and an unquenchable hatred for those who had been the architects of its fate, the psychotic organism was unable to free itself.

A walking engine of war, what worse fate could there be for one such as the Helbrute than to be kept caged here, denied the opportunity to fight when it felt the ache of the siren call of combat within every iota of its being?

Resuming his march towards the platform, with a mere gesture the warp-mage deactivated the last of the security systems, the sphere of sea-green light melting away.

Sensing the change in its environment, the Thousand Sons Helbrute began to shake at its bonds with renewed vigour, grunting like a bull grox as it did so.

‘Calm yourself,’ Prototokos said, keeping his voice low, ‘for I understand your pain.’

The beast-machine continued to jerk and pull at the restraining clasps, the sorcerer’s words merely seeming to aggravate it.

‘I know you. You are the End of All Things. You are the Death of Souls, and the fate foretold. And I name you Thanatos.’

The Helbrute suddenly became still, the only sound it made the snorting of its bullish breath.

Prototokos hesitated. He was so close to the beast now that he could pluck the memories from its damaged mind, and remind it of who it had once been. In his mind’s eye he watched those recollections jerk and dance, as if viewing a degraded pict-feed.

He let out a shuddering breath as, in that moment, he experienced what Thanatos had experienced – the pain, the rage, the betrayal.

‘I see it now!’ Prototokos gasped. ‘I see how you were deceived by Sutek of the Brotherhood of Dust, and how at Bav’ilim you fell before the Mosac Gate, only to be dug from the ruins by the Bringers of Dawn, the necrons of the Nephrekh Dynasty, a hundred years later and brought to this place.’

The Helbrute remained still, its actions, or rather lack of them, convincing Prototokos that it was taking in the words that issued from his mouth like a mantra. A cluster of eyes, protruding on short stalks from beneath its chestplate, watched him approach the dais with keen interest, blinking in a random, staccato pattern.

He felt his body tense at the prospect of doing what fate had prescribed he must.

‘And you know me too,’ Prototokos said. ‘You have heard my voice in your stasis slumber. You have heard me calling to you down through the aeons, across the gulf of space and time. For I am Prototokos the All-Seeing, the first, and I am here to free you.’

The hulking monster remained still as the sorcerer began to climb the steps of the dais. Taking in the clamps bolted tight around the brute’s fist and scourge, he hefted his star-matter blade in both hands, as snakes of psychic power began to wrap themselves around the keen cutting edges of the curse-bound weapon.

With a force of will, Prototokos leapt high into the air, his crimson cloak streaming out behind him, sorcerous telekinetic manipulation carrying him higher than the Helbrute was tall. As he descended, he rammed the tip of the force sword down between the silver fangs of the maw-like opening in the front of the daemonic Dreadnought.

The energised blade screamed as it sliced through ceramite substructures, severing power cables and artificial fibre-bundle muscles. And then Prototokos felt the resistance lessen as the sword’s diamond-sharp tip penetrated the amniotic sac containing the mortal remains of the wretch bound to the weaponised prison-machine.

The Helbrute’s scream reverberated around the vault as the imprisoned son of Magnus felt the dark oblivion of death begin to seep into its own organic components.

Oily blood and viscous matter welled up around the life-ending blade, as they flooded from the wound Prototokos had dealt the Helbrute, while the one known as Thanatos bucked and twisted within its bonds, railing against the all-consuming darkness and an end that had been predestined ten thousand years before.

‘Do not fight it,’ Prototokos told the beast in a soothing tone. He hung on to the blade, his feet planted firmly on the Helbrute’s chestplate. ‘I bring you merciful release. I came here to free you, and freed you I have.’

The Helbrute roared again, determined not to give in to anything so easily, ever. Prototokos was aware of a sharp crack, as something within the ancient shackle-wheel, degraded at the atomic level, gave way.

‘I understand, brother,’ the warp-mage said, trying to maintain the same calm tone as he clung to the pommel of the blade that acted as a conduit for the furious force of his blazing psychic fire. ‘Within what is left of your madness-ravaged mind you are wondering why? Why is this happening to me? I know this because it is happening to me as well. And in the hope that it might relieve your tortured psyche, I will do my best to explain.’

The Helbrute continued to lurch within the binding ring and with a metallic groan of protest, something else came free, allowing Thanatos a greater range of movement.

‘I understand because we are the same, you and I.’

But the brute wasn’t listening now; it had been taken over by its wracking death throes. And yet Prototokos persevered regardless, for his own sake if nothing else.

‘Three of us set out upon our quest and penetrated the defences of this necron tombworld construct, this so-called Godstar. Only three. But that was still enough, to do what had to be done.

‘It was I who first discovered our doom-laden destiny, whilst conducting a scrying ritual, although I doubt you remember any of this now. But I had not the power to act and avoid such a future. And so I planned to seek the power, perform the required rituals and achieve the mastery of magic over time that I might intervene and save my future self – you, Thanatos – from such a hellish fate.

‘But it was not until my future self became an exalted brother of our Legion, and achieved the necessary mastery of warp magic, taking the name Tritos in honour of his accomplishments, that he was able to manipulate time and bring together his younger selves, those sorcerers that I had yet to become, that we might begin our journey and free you from your torment. Although, as I perceived it, he appeared to me only a matter of months after I made my discovery and set myself upon this path of fighting fate.

‘But you do not remember any of this, of course, which is why I must release you from your tortured existence. The others have bought me the time I needed to complete my task. For as long as I endure, they can be saved. We can be saved.

‘I have sifted through the remnants of what passes for your mind, and have discovered from the few memories that remain how you fell into this state, how you were tricked by Sutek the Deceiver and entombed within this accursed armour-form. And so I will no longer walk that doomed path. I will not share your fate.

‘And now, Thanatos, the End of all Things, it is the end for you.’

With a screech of rending metal, the Helbrute tore its mighty fist free of its restraining clamp at last. With the crackling energy sphere deactivated, the Helbrute’s bonds were no longer strong enough to hold him by themselves.

In one swift movement, the monster seized Prototokos with its crushing claw. The sorcerer cried out as his battleplate crumpled in the Helbrute’s grip. Flanged plates of turquoise and gold cut into the very flesh they were supposed to protect, rupturing veins and arteries and puncturing myriad enhanced organs. Auto-muscles and servo-motors shorted out, and the resulting jolts of electrical discharge pulsed through Prototokos’ cardiovascular system, setting up an arrhythmic ventricular fibrillation within his dual hearts.

‘Thanatos, stop!’ Prototokos spluttered through blood that bubbled up from his lungs and into his throat. ‘You will unmake us both!’

But Thanatos of the Thousand Sons – nothing more than a brute beast now – was no longer listening, or no longer cared.

In that moment of crystallised time, Prototokos realised that his quest to free himself from his ultimate fate had been a fool’s errand all along. One way or another, it was his destiny to be slain by the madness that beset his soul upon being imprisoned within the Helbrute armour.

Its power scourge alive with energy again, now that the dampening shield was down, Thanatos flexed its mechadendrites and tore them free of their restraints.

The snaking metal and muscle tentacles whipped around the warp-mage’s neck and began to tighten their grip.

‘Stop!’ Prototokos the All-Seeing protested. ‘You know not what you do!’ And then he could say no more as the gorget of his armour fractured and the tentacles began to constrict both his spinal column and his windpipe.

With one final squeeze of its huge hand, the Helbrute crushed the sorcerer’s suit of armour as if it were no more than an empty ration tin.

At the moment of his death, denied his physical voice, Prototokos’ death rattle was reborn as a psychic scream of agony and frustration, the raw, untamed energy of it finding an outlet through the star-matter sword. White fire blazed the length of the black blade into the amniotic sac of fluid and genhanced flesh, boiling what little remained within of the once mighty sorcerer of the Crimson Scarab sect.

The Helbrute’s dying screams echoed from the walls of the necron vault, while the sorcerer hung lifeless within its huge fist, the vital spark of his life having already been snuffed out and passed on in silence.

Bathed in the unreal rainbows of coruscating warpflame, the Helbrute’s body began to unmake itself. Flakes of turquoise lacquer and thin slivers of gold leaf drifted away from it, like burning pieces of parchment rising from a funeral pyre. At the same time the crimson scarab adorning its chestplate crumbled, turning to glassy dust, while the warped flesh that covered much of its lumpen limbs began to dissolve and mingle with the stasis-gas still clouding the containment chamber, before evaporating altogether.

With Prototokos’ life cut short, he would no longer become the Terminator armour-clad Opados of the Nine Kings thrallband who, in turn, could now never ascend to the rank of exalted arch-magister of the Cult of Time. With the tapestry of his life unravelled, the future became malleable again, mutable, unwritten.

The unmaking accelerated, as first the near-impenetrable shell of the Helbrute’s armour and then, as they were exposed, sinews and power conduits, nubs of bone and auto-reactive servo-motors, exhaust stacks, twitching nerve ganglia, coolant feeds, metastasising lumps of gristle, mechanical claws, fibrous connective tissue and carbon-fibre muscle-bundles, all dissolved into threads of potentiality and were carried away on the unseen warp winds of unformed futures.

And as the Helbrute was expunged from reality, its body dissipating into a state of non-being – having never existed at all – there was now no reason for the magi having made their journey to this time-cursed place at all. And so, alone now, the body of the warp-mage began to unravel as well.

The Godstar tumbled through the silent night as it had done for countless aeons, the light cast by dying suns penetrating the chthonic-green corona that surrounded it, picking out the monolithic structures covering its surface. Before one obsidian-smooth pyramid, space-time warped and buckled, and a portal opened.

First to step through it, onto the ice-frosted void-black stones, was Prototokos the All-Seeing, warp-mage of the Thousand Sons Legion, arrayed in his turquoise battleplate. Second – and more impressive still, clad in an elaborately ornamented suit of Terminator armour – came Sorcerer-Magister Opados. Last through the portal, riding upon the back of a warp beast formed of blue flesh and gold-chased steel, came Arch-Magister Tritos of the Heralds of Destiny, master manipulator of the warp and weft of the fabric of time itself.

As the three moved towards the pyramid, following the sloping path of a grand processional avenue, behind the three magi the immaterial vortex closed again, the echoes of the concussive boom of displaced air rippling across the surface of the comet-world, like laughter.

The Beginning.

GREEN AND GREY

Edoardo Albert

Tick, tick, tick.

That was what woke him. The regular ticking of cooling, contracting plasteel.

Tick, tick, tick.

He’d heard that sound before, growing up, the son of a tanker. He’d heard the sound during his training, when the squadron pulled up for the night, the tanks parked in rows ready for a pre-dawn start, their engines cooling, the cylinder blocks ticking out the day’s accumulated heat.

Tick… tick… tick.

The ticks were slowing down. The engine was near enough cold now. He could not remember command telling the squadron to make camp for the night.

His mind was fogged, as dull as the dawn on…

He could not remember where he was.

He could not remember who he was.

It did not seem to matter.

He began to drift.

It was the pain that dragged him back. As the tick of the cooling tank died away, it was replaced by a rhythmic pain, pulsing down from the front of his head.

He did not want to move but the pain forced his hand into motion. But as he tried to reach for his forehead, his hand stopped. There was something in the way. It felt firm but not metallic, with a lingering warmth.

He did not want to open his eyes to see what it was.

Lucius Stilo.

That was it. That was his name.

Lucius Stilo. Loader. Leman Russ Sancta Fide. Third Squadron. Fifth Alphard Tank Regiment.

He knew who he was now, but he could not remember where he was.

He still did not want to open his eyes.

Lucius Stilo would have drifted away then, if he had been able to, but the pain would not let him. It throbbed through his head, an arrhythmic counterpoint to the cooling engine.

The engine was quiet. Stilo knew that it shouldn’t be.

He still did not want to open his eyes.

But he knew he had to. It was his duty. He was a soldier of the Astra Militarum, a member of the Fifth Alphard Tank Regiment. Although his eyes were still closed, he could suddenly see his father leaning down to him, telling him, ‘Yes, it’s true, the Emperor protects, but first, the Emperor expects. Expects every man to do his duty.’

Stilo opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes to darkness.

But it was as if opening his eyes, even though they could see nothing, opened wide his other senses too. He could suddenly smell Leman Russ: the throat-clutching stink of human sweat, the acrid bite of the cannon propellant, the sulphur of the heavy bolter and, overlaying everything, the overwhelming smell of promethium. Although his lips were closed, he could taste it. Had the fuel tank ruptured?

‘The Emperor protects, but first the Emperor expects.’

The words sounded louder than memory, so loud that Stilo turned his head to see if there was someone speaking them in the tank. But the dark was Stygian: he could see nothing.

Without light, he could do nothing.

Stilo began fumbling in the dark. He was searching for the emergency lumens. His fingers found things, but he could not relate what he found to his training – everything seemed wrong, twisted somehow. Then he realised the problem: everything was twisted because he was lying on his side. Stilo turned his mental map through ninety degrees and as he did so, things began to snap into place. There, the bin for the armour-piercing shells; here the bin for high-explosive shells in between the chute for spent shell casings; and on his left, the bank of kill switches.

Yes.

And beneath the kill switches, another console for the backup systems.

First, second, third along.

Stilo pulled the switch.

The emergency lumens came on, red, lurid, pulsing. He could see.

What he saw was the face of his tank commander.

‘Captain Bartezko?’

Bartezko made no answer. He was hanging above Stilo, dangling in his webbing, the standard position for a tank commander going visual. His power sword hung from his belt. Bartezko loved his sword. It had been a gift from the corps commander for his bravery in the Battle of the Machengo Rift.

‘Captain?’ Stilo reached for Bartezko’s webbing and twisted it, so the tank commander’s face turned into view. What was left of it. The captain would not be giving any more orders.

‘Emmet, Vanhof. Klee, van Thienen.’ Stilo called out the names of the rest of the tank crew. ‘Emperor, let them answer,’ he whispered. But the names fell into the thick air and were swallowed. No one spoke, no one answered. The body of Captain Bartezko hung limp in its webbing. Stilo frantically tried to remember what had happened. The captain announcing he was going visual, clipping on his webbing, standing up, reaching for the turret hatch… There. That was when his memory whited out. Air burst, maybe? An ork shell exploding above the tank just as the captain unsealed the hatch, the shock wave thrashing Bartezko against it, then slamming it shut, the pressure change in the confined volume of the tank incapacitating – killing – the crew. Except for him.

‘Come in, Third Squadron. Do you copy? Third Squadron, do you copy?’

The voice, the first that he had heard since regaining consciousness, sounded thin and tinny and far away, but it was coming from the vox-panel. Turning from the corpse of his commander, Stilo twisted past scattered cases to the panel.

‘Third Squadron, receiving. Over.’

‘About time, Third Squadron. We’ve been trying to raise you for the last hour. Report.’

As the voice came through on the vox, Stilo fiddled with the controls, trying to turn it up so that he could hear better. Stilo touched his ear. His fingers came away wet and sticky. His ears were bleeding. The pressure shock of the air burst.

‘This… this is Third Squadron, Sancta Fide, sir. Loader Lucius Stilo reporting, sir.’

‘Put on Captain Bartezko.’

‘I can’t, sir. He’s dead. They’re all dead, sir, I’m the only one left.’

The vox went silent for a moment. Stilo heard the vox-operator whispering to someone.

‘The corps commander wants to speak to you, Loader Stilo.’

A different voice came through: warm and generous, the voice of a kindly, rich uncle.

‘Loader Stilo?’

‘Y-yes. Er, sir.’

‘I need you to call up the auspexes and give me a report.’

‘The auspexes are all dead, sir. Everything’s dead. The fuel tank’s ruptured. I’m standing up to my ankles in promethium. I don’t know what to do. You’ve got to get me out of here.’

‘Stilo.’

The name dropped into the loader’s increasing panic and stilled it, like oil on water.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The vox is working. Try to raise the auspex. You’re a tanker, Stilo. Act like one.’

‘I-I will.’

Stilo reached for the auspex panel. It was unresponsive. All its screens were blank. He banged on it in frustration.

‘Machine-spirits are temperamental creatures – hitting one rarely works. Try restarting it, tanker.’

Stilo stared at the panel in front of him.

‘I-I can’t remember what to do, sir.’

‘Remember your training, tanker.’

Stilo knuckled his forehead. ‘I-I can’t, sir.’

‘This is your first combat patrol, isn’t it, Lucius?’

‘Yes.’

‘No one wanted for it to go like this, but you’re still there, still alive. The Emperor protected you. Now the Emperor expects.’

Hearing the litany coming through on the vox, remembrance settled upon Lucius Stilo. His training took over, moving his hands over the panel, keying the relaunch sequence. The screens flickered into life.

‘They’re coming online, sir.’

‘Good, good.’

‘Frek! They’re all showing static.’

‘The sensor array must be damaged. Loader Stilo, I’m going to have to ask you to make a visual report.’

‘L-let me try again, sir.’ Stilo began keying the cut-out sequence.

‘No time for that. I must have a report. Now, tanker. Remember, the Emperor expects.’

‘Y-yes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sorry, sir. Yes, sir.’

Stilo looked at the body of Captain Bartezko, dangling in his harness, his face a livid red wound scored through with white lines of exposed bone, his power sword hanging uselessly by his side. The loader felt the physical revulsion of the living at the prospect of touching the dead. He was going to have to release the captain from the webbing so that he could get to the hatch.

‘Sorry, sir.’

Stilo unclipped the webbing. Bartezko’s corpse fell forwards, wrapping its arms around Stilo in the embrace of the dead.

The vox-channel was open. Stilo just about suppressed a scream and pushed the body aside so it flopped against the breech of the cannon, sprawling over it like a dead fish. Bartezko’s slack body slumped, slowly, before dropping down off the turret cradle into the pool of blood and promethium at the base of the tank.

The way clear, Stilo scrambled up to the turret hatch.

Skratch, skkkratch.

The noise came from outside, from the other side of the hatch.

Stilo’s hands froze in the act of opening the hatch.

Skkkkratch, skkkkkratch.

Something was outside.

It was the sound of nails on glass, of a knife scraping over plasteel.

Of claws scratching up the hull.

Stilo pushed the turret lock shut.

Bang, bang, bang.

The impacts were so loud that Stilo’s teeth rang in his skull. But this was not the sound of rounds bouncing off the hull of the tank.

Bang. Bang, bang.

Something was hitting it. Hitting it with a hammer or a rock.

‘Lucius, what’s happening? Report, Lucius.’

Stilo dived to the panel and turned down the gain.

‘S-something’s outside,’ he whispered. ‘It’s hitting the tank. You’ve got to get me out of here.’

‘Don’t worry, Stilo. Just hold on.’ The voice of the corps commander was barely audible over the sounds coming from outside the tank. ‘Try the auspex again.’

‘I-I don’t want to see what’s out there.’

Bang, bang, bang.

‘Try the auspex, tanker!’

Stilo mumbled a brief prayer to Sancta Fide’s machine-spirit as he keyed the restart again. It had been more hurt than him. As the screens lit up, the banging intensified, coming now from at least two different places on the hull: one set echoed down the battle cannon while the other was coming from the port sponson.

Despite the damage, the pict-feed from the outside red-lit, steadied, flickered, then the pixels slowly began to come together.

Bang, bang. Bang.

The screen cleared. Outside, Stilo could see a vast, dusty plain. Calleva. He remembered, now. That was the name of this Emperor-forsaken planet. The smoking shells of two other Leman Russ tanks told him that none of the squadron had made it to the extraction zone. The ground around them was gouged with craters; for once, the orks had managed to range their artillery. Far off, he saw the curving arch of the Infinity Bridge spanning the continental abyss, its curve as elegant as the drop-off to the shifting magma sea was sudden.

Even as he saw it, Stilo knew that was wrong. The bridge should have been blown by now. His squadron had been detailed to delay the enemy while demolition charges were set, then head to the extraction zone. Either the charges had failed, or the engineers had not made it to the bridge.

But that was for the brass to worry about.

Bang, bang, bang.

He still couldn’t see what was making the noise. Stilo tried tracking the pict-feed around, but it did not move. Whatever had killed Sancta Fide had broken the motors. It was only by the Emperor’s grace that he could see anything at all out there.

‘Report, Stilo.’

‘I-I can’t see…’

A face appeared in the screen, staring at Stilo. It opened its mouth. Its tusks and tongue were the only things that weren’t a livid, fungoid green. Then, it bit down. The sensor went dark.

Lucius jerked back from the screen.

‘Orks.’ He leaned over the vox, whispering into it. ‘Orks, outside Sancta Fide. They’re what’s banging and biting it.’

‘Orks loot as readily as they kill,’ said the corps commander.

‘I’ve got Sancta Fide locked down, sir. They won’t get in here.’

‘That’s good, tanker. What else did you see?’

‘What? Oh, yes. I’ll try to get another pict-feed running. But the plain looks clear, sir. Only ork I saw was the one trying to get in here. Surprised they’re not heading for the bridge.’

‘What? What did you say, Stilo?’

‘I’m trying to get another pict-feed up.’

‘No, no. The bridge. It’s still up?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s still up.’

‘Hold there, tanker.’

The vox went quiet. But outside the tank, Stilo could hear movement. Lots of movement. He fiddled with the auspex, switching to another sensor array, and the screens gradually cleared.

‘There’s… there’s dozens of them around me,’ he whispered into the vox. ‘Hundreds. If I keep quiet, maybe they’ll go away.’

‘Confirm, the bridge is not down.’

‘What?’

‘Loader Stilo, get visual on the bridge. Is it down?’

Bang, bang, bang.

Stilo started as the banging began again, flinching from the port sponson.

‘Stilo, confirm.’

‘Confirmed, sir. The bridge is still standing.’

There was silence on the other end of the vox, then Stilo heard the corps commander talking urgently to someone else.

Bang, bang, bang.

‘Throne, they’re trying to get in, sir. What should I do?’

‘Stilo, listen to me. Are any orks closing on the bridge?’

Bang, bang, bang.

They were hammering at the starboard sponson now. Creaking, groaning noises came from the plasteel, as if someone were trying to peel it off, layer by layer.

Stilo glanced at the pict-feed. The long plain that led to the Infinity Bridge lay there, dusty, bare and empty. ‘No, sir.’

‘Copy that.’

Bang, bang, bang.

‘They’re trying to get in, sir. What do I do? Tell me what to do, please.’

‘Remember your training. There’s a flight of Valkyries on its way, tanker. The Emperor protects.’

Bang, bang, bang.

‘How long before they get here?’

Stilo was staring, with horrified fascination, at the port sponson. The plasteel there was bending and flexing, like a sheet of paper held in the breeze. ‘I don’t know how long before they split Sancta Fide open.’

‘Are there others, tanker? Are they all focused on you?’

Stilo could not move. The heavy bolter in the port sponson was banging backwards and forwards like an engine piston.

‘Lucius!’

Stilo dragged his gaze away from the heavy bolter to the screens. On them, he could see the greenskins getting on their warbikes and warbuggies, the engines belching smoke. Even through the layers of plasteel that separated him from them, he could hear the roar of the engines firing up.

‘They’re leaving, sir, they’re leaving!’ Stilo remembered his training. ‘Heading two-six-five.’ They were making for the bridge. That was the big prize that opened up the rest of this world to them.

That was for command to worry about. He wasn’t going to die after all.

‘Loader Stilo, open fire.’

Stilo stared at the vox. He made no answer.

‘Stilo, do you copy? Open fire.’

He looked at the pict-feed from outside. The first of the warbikes were already accelerating away.

‘Stilo, this is an order. Open fire.’

‘B-but I want them to go away, sir.’

‘Open fire, Stilo! The Valkyries are on their way, they’re nearly there, but they won’t be able to find you unless you start shooting.’

‘They’re leaving, sir. I don’t want to attract their attention.’

‘Don’t you think there will be more? Shoot them, now, while they’ve got their backs to you. The Valkyries will finish off the rest and extract you. They’re nearly there.’

‘ETA, sir?’

‘Ten minutes, tanker. You’ve just got to hold out for ten minutes. Now, open fire. Use high-explosive shells on them – warbikes are soft targets.’

Stilo stared after the departing cloud of dust that told of the rapid progress of the ork vanguard across the plain. It was true what the corps commander said: out on that dust plain, riding warbikes and wartrikes and warbuggies, the orks had no cover. They were ripe for the killing.

But the basic animal desire to survive, to hunker down and play dead stopped Stilo’s hands from moving.

‘That’s an order, Stilo.’

The words activated something even deeper in Lucius than his instincts: they fired up his training. The hours, days and weeks spent running through the same sequence of actions over and over and over again. He could no more switch off that sequence, once activated, than he could stop his heart beating.

‘Loading main cannon, sir.’

‘Good, lad. Good.’

‘Th-thank you.’

‘By the book, son. Do it by the book.’

Stilo opened the high-explosive ammunition bin, manhandled out a round, slid the door to the bin shut and pushed the round into the breech of the cannon. He was trained as a loader, so this was what he knew to do: during training he’d got his time to load a round down from nine seconds to four point five.

But that was the problem. He’d done almost all his training as a loader; the cross-training as a gunner and a driver had only lasted for an afternoon.

‘You’ll have to track the cannon manually, tanker.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Stilo took a quick look through the sights. The cannon was thirty degrees off. Grabbing the handle, Stilo began to crank the turret round.

The turret groaned as it moved.

‘Three turns for one degree of rotation, three turns for one degree of rotation,’ Stilo muttered, sweat breaking from his skin as he hauled the crank round.

Slowly, the turret turned.

Stilo checked through the sights. Nearly there. The orks were a moving dust cloud, heading west across the plain towards the bridge. Another five degrees. Fifteen turns.

He counted them off.

‘…four, three, two, one.’

Stilo jumped to the sight. The reticule was lined up with the heart of the dust cloud. He set the auspex to heat. The dust cloud lit up red.

‘Elevation, elevation,’ he muttered, checking the vertical calibration. ‘Up, two degrees.’

Stilo grabbed the cannon elevation crank and turned it, counting off six revolutions before checking the sights again.

The crosshair was aligned in the deepest red of the heat source.

Stilo pushed the ignition lever.

‘Fire.’

The battle cannon jerked backwards. Propellant fumes, thick and throat-clutching, swirled into the main turret.

Stilo’s training took over once more. He pulled open the breech block, released the spent high-explosive shell, letting it fall into the cartridge bin, then slid the ammunition bin door open, hauled out another high-explosive shell and shoved it into the breech.

Stilo took another quick look at the sights.

The dust cloud had stopped moving but its heart still glowed red and the crosshair sat in the centre of it.

‘Fire,’ he muttered, not even realising he was talking to himself.

He hardly heard the sound.

Round after round. Without thinking, his body running through its training.

Load, aim, fire. Load, aim, fire.

Load, aim, fire.

Stilo paused.

The vox was crackling but he ignored it. He checked the auspex. It was all red – but then he had just fired Emperor knew how many high-explosive shells into the dust cloud. He switched to motion sensor. There were no movement traces.

The vox was squawking.

‘Stilo. Report.’

‘Can’t see, sir. Flare out on the auspex – heat from the shells.’

‘You’ll have to go visual, Lucius.’

‘Unlock? Now?’

‘It’s the only way to tell if you’ve got them all. Besides, you’ll have to unlock when the Valkyries arrive.’

‘What’s their ETA, sir?’

‘Sub-ten. They’re on their way, tanker. Now get me that visual.’

‘Sir.’

Stilo pushed up into the turret again and began to unlock the hatch. But then he stopped. He dropped back and cycled through the remaining sensor arrays, checking the area around Sancta Fide was clear of greenskins. With nothing showing on the auspexes, Stilo checked his rebreather, then finished unlocking the hatch and, slowly, began to lift it.

The first crack to the outside world opened and the ochre-yellow light of Calleva flooded into the tank. Stilo’s goggles blacked, then adjusted.

He peered ahead, eyes squinting against the glare, searching into the dust cloud. There was no sign of any of the ork vehicles. He turned his head slightly to try to hear. Nothing, apart from the dull ringing that was the aural aftermath of firing shell after shell of high-explosive. In the thin air of Calleva, the dust cloud thrown up by the barrage was already beginning to settle. Stilo pushed the hatch further open so that he could see better.

As the dust drifted down out of the sky, he saw the mangled remains of the ork patrol scattered over the plain: ripped-up warbikes, warbuggies blown into pieces and eviscerated greenskins, some of their severed body parts still flopping with the reflex to war, but no longer able to do anything apart from scrabble in the dust.

He had killed them all.

He, Lucius Stilo, loader, Third Squadron, Fifth Alphard Tank Regiment – on his first combat patrol, with all the rest of the crew of Sancta Fide dead – had done this. He was blooded. He was a proper soldier, a proper tanker now. Like his father.

Lucius Stilo threw back his head and roared his triumph at the yellow sun that hung, fat and bloated, in the thin, dark atmosphere of Calleva.

By the Emperor, and through His Grace, he had done it.

Stilo slapped the slide of the battle cannon, the plasteel still hot.

‘We did it,’ he said. ‘We did it.’

Down in the crew compartment, Stilo could hear the vox squawking but, for the moment, he ignored it, taking in the sight of his first battle. But as the dust settled further and the distance came into view, he saw emerging from the cloud the arch of the Infinity Bridge.

It was still standing.

Even as he watched, he saw distant flares light up on it – light up and die away. Darting round it, reduced to little more than mayflies by the distance, were the silver shapes of Imperial aircraft. Stilo squinted: Marauders, maybe Thunderbolts or Valkyries. Those could be for him, dropping engineers at the bridge before coming to evac. The bridge shivered, moving like a giant snake, but then it settled. Stilo could see parts of the bridge falling into the continental abyss that it spanned, but still it stood.

He’d heard rumours that the Infinity Bridge was xenos built; if they were true, it might explain why it was proving so difficult to bring the structure down.

The distant reports of explosions reached him, echoing past into the vastness of the continental plain. Then, coming through the receding rumble of the explosions, he heard the sound of engines behind him. Lots of engines.

He froze.

Stilo knew he had to turn and look, but his muscles would not obey. They had locked in place, keeping him staring ahead, ensuring his eyes stayed firmly to the front.

This was Lucius Stilo’s first combat patrol. He had thought the greenskins who had surrounded Sancta Fide constituted an ork warband. He had thought he had saved himself when he saw their corpses littering the plain. He had thought the thirty or so bikes and buggies were all the orks were sending his way.

Stilo forced himself to turn around. Now, looking back over the plain, he saw what an ork warband really looked like.

Clanking, smoking, rattling towards him was a tide of scrap metal pockmarked with green, tusked faces, screaming and laughing and yelling.

Stilo could hear the war cries of the greenskins even above the clank and rattle of the Battlewagons and wartrukks, as harsh and guttural as barking dogs.

He dropped back into the tank, frantically locking the hatch behind him, before seizing the vox mic.

‘Where the frek are those Valkyries? There’s thousands of them.’

‘Report, tanker, report.’ The voice on the other end of the vox remained as calm and implacable and unhurried as ever. It made Stilo want to reach through the mic and throttle the commander. But, instead, he made his report.

‘Ork patrol destroyed. Ork warband approaching, ETA about two minutes.’

‘The bridge. What about the bridge?’

‘Still standing, sir.’

There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the vox.

‘What’s the ETA on the evac, sir?’

‘The Valkyries will be there in three minutes, tanker.’

‘The warband will get here before that, sir.’

‘Then you’ll just have to hold them off until the Valkyries arrive.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Stilo dropped the vox and began frantically turning the crank to rotate the turret. As he did so, he could hear, even through the plasteel, the whoops and howls of the approaching orks.

Using the crank, the turret rotation speed was one hundred and eighty degrees in fifty seconds. Stilo began counting, under his breath, turning the crank handle while watching the desperately slow rotation of the turret.

‘…thirty-nine thousand and one, forty thousand and one, forty-one thousand and one.’

Without even checking the auspex, Stilo dragged open the ammo bin and loaded a high-explosive shell into the battle cannon.

Then he checked the auspex.

The greenskins were nearly on him.

Stilo frantically turned the elevation crank, bringing down the barrel of the cannon, until it was pointing at the ground just in front of the oncoming horde of revving, racing trukks, wagons and trikes.

‘Fire.’

Recoil, clear, reload, fire. Recoil, clear, reload, fire.

Recoil, clear, reload, fire.

Bang, bang, bang.

It was coming from the starboard sponson.

Bang, bang, bang.

From the port sponson.

Stilo looked up.

They were on the turret.

The greenskins were trying to peel Sancta Fide open.

Stilo wasn’t thinking now. He was doing.

The hull rang with the reverberations of orks bashing at the hull with hammers and axes and clubs. Even as he watched, he saw the plasteel bulge inwards.

This was close range now.

Stilo grabbed the port heavy bolter and started firing. He didn’t even need to aim, he just sprayed bolts; it was like hitting locusts. Spent cartridges clattered round his feet. Greenskins appeared in his sights and were splattered. It was like driving at speed at night on a bug-ridden road.

The sound of greenskin bodies exploding under the impact of a heavy bolter fired at point-blank range echoed over the concussive blasts of the bolter itself.

Stilo kept pressing the trigger, turning the bolter this way and that, but it was for nothing. Through the sights, he saw the orks gather themselves, kick aside the body parts that were in the way, and come running back at him.

‘Out!’ he yelled, as he’d been trained, just as the wave of orks reached Sancta Fide, hitting it like a green tidal wave. The tank rocked under the impact of a hundred ork fists and axes. The plasteel squealed and screeched. The tank began to rock, back and forth, back and forth.

They were trying to tip the tank over, to get at its belly.

‘They’re all over me!’ Stilo yelled towards the vox, throwing himself at the starboard bolter. ‘I can’t hold much longer.’

Stilo sprayed bolter rounds from the sponson. The rapid click of the spent shell cases falling onto the hull around his feet triggered a fleeting sound memory: the tick of the cooling engine block when he had first woken into darkness.

There weren’t so many greenskins on the starboard side of Sancta Fide. After Stilo had traversed the bolter, there were even fewer.

But the orks came. At the sound of bolter fire, at the smell of seared flesh, they came, swarming over and around the stricken tank.

One of the orks grabbed the barrel of the bolter in its hands. Smoke rose from its fingers. But still it began pushing the barrel up, away from its fellows.

Stilo yelled out and, unholstering his laspistol, he took aim through the viewport of the bolter and put a round between the ork’s eyes. Then another, when the ork didn’t seem to register the first. The third did the trick. The ork went cross-eyed, as if trying to figure out why a hole had suddenly appeared above its nose, then began to sink down. It didn’t get far. Another ork slammed it out of the way.

Stilo grabbed the heavy bolter again, squeezed the trigger.

That ork evaporated into a mist of green slime as it took three heavy bolter rounds at point-blank range; its teeth drummed into the side of the tank like ivory knives.

The roar of the bolter ran underneath the sound of Stilo’s screams of rage and triumph as he killed greenskins at zero range, vaporising the ork vermin in the hail of bolter fire.

But even as he killed orks on one side of the tank, it started bouncing on the other side, rocking left to right like a ship in a storm.

The warboss was here and he was directing the show now.

The tank began to rock, higher and higher on each bounce.

With every upward motion, more orks got a handhold, pushing the tank higher each time. Inside, Stilo grabbed tight, trying to stop himself being thrown around helplessly.

‘Where are the frekking Valkyries?’ he screamed into the vox. ‘They’re going to turn me over.’

‘Hang in there, son,’ said the colonel. ‘The Emperor protects.’

With a final heave, the orks pushed Sancta Fide over onto its side. Stilo crashed down against the starboard sponson. Under the weight of the tank, the sponson housing cracked open. The smell of propellant mixed with spilled promethium.

One auspex was still working, flickering grey and red. On it, Stilo saw the ork warboss click its massive neck, flex its huge fingers, then stride up to the tank.

The warboss grabbed the turret hatch. With the tank on its side, the massive ork could reach it easily.

‘It’s trying to get in,’ Stilo whispered into the vox.

The hatch creaked, the lock straining.

It held.

The warboss backed off.

Suddenly aware it was being watched, it turned and stared into the sensor array.

Stilo saw the guile in its eyes.

The warboss reached out, grabbed an ork and held the struggling greenskin in its hands.

Without warning, the warboss pulled its head off. The greenskin’s body collapsed to the ground.

The warboss held the dripping ork head up in front of the sensors.

Then it turned back to the hatch and grabbed hold again.

The warboss was trying to tear the head off Sancta Fide.

Stilo heard the tank. It was dying. Its machine-spirit moaned and whispered as it leaked away.

He turned to the vox.

‘There never were any Valkyries, were there?’

The vox was silent.

‘Y-you don’t need to sugar-coat it. I’m going to be dead soon.’

The voice, when it came through, was thick, heavy with an emotion that could not be spoken.

‘The Emperor is sending His very own Valkyries, son. They’ll bring you to His side.’

‘Tell the Emperor I’ll bring Him a present.’

While he spoke, Stilo was busy jamming open the remaining ammunition bins for the battle cannon. The armour-piercing rounds were still in there, as well as a handful of high-explosive shells. So long as the bins were locked shut, even if they were pierced and detonated by enemy ordnance, the machine-spirit of the tank would ensure that most of the blast was drawn outwards through explosion vents. But with the bin doors open, the destructive force of all the remaining ammunition would be channelled up and out through the turret.

The hatch was bulging outwards.

The locking mechanism was creaking, creaking. Cracking.

Stilo checked his laspistol.

It was on ten per cent charge. He might as well throw it at the warboss.

He needed a weapon. Stilo looked round frantically. There were a few flares, for signalling if the vox failed, but they wouldn’t even make the warboss blink.

Then, in the depths of the rocking tank, Captain Bartezko’s body shifted and turned. In the dull red of the lumens, Stilo saw the hilt of the captain’s power sword. He scrabbled for it, desperately pushing tank debris out of the way.

The hatch broke open.

The warboss shoved its huge head into Sancta Fide.

Stilo thumbed the activation on the power sword. The ancient blade hummed its eagerness and, turning, Stilo thrust the sword into the middle of the ork’s forehead. The weapon, hungry for greenskin flesh, bit deep, burrowing into the ork’s skull. The warboss screamed – a surprisingly high-pitched sound, Stilo noted, as thought fragments spilled through his mind – and fell back out of the tank.

Outside, through the circle of the open hatch, Lucius Stilo saw the warboss staggering, then falling to its knees as it pawed at the sword sticking out of its skull.

But the warboss did not fall. On its knees, it managed to find the hilt of the sword with both hands. Slowly, it pulled the weapon out of its skull.

Stilo could see right through the hole.

The warboss sniffed the blade, licked it, then looked up. It looked into the tank. It looked at Stilo.

Slowly, it got back up onto its feet. For a moment it staggered, then the warboss steadied itself. It looked at Stilo again. It bared its teeth.

Stilo realised the ork was smiling.

The warboss tossed the power sword aside and began walking back towards Sancta Fide. Behind him, the other orks followed, gibbering in fear and excitement.

Stilo shrank back into the depths of the tank.

‘Are the Valkyries on their way?’

‘They are with you now.’

Stilo nodded.

‘I know.’

This time the warboss reached in through the hatch, its fingers grabbing for Stilo. Lucius pulled back, out of reach.

‘Come and get me,’ he yelled, taking a flare from the rack.

The warboss pulled its arm out and looked into the tank, green blood running down into its red eyes.

From where he sat, scrunched up as far from the hatch as possible, Lucius Stilo, loader, Third Squadron, Fifth Alphard Tank Regiment, pointed the flare at the pool of promethium, and the armour-piercing rounds and high-explosive shells piled in the bottom of Sancta Fide. He fired it.

For a moment it flared brighter than anything Lucius Stilo had ever seen. Then it shone out even brighter.

He never heard the sound.

Sancta Fide’s turret exploded outwards. From out of the belly of the tank flared a jet of purifying, white fire that scoured the surface of the plain, charring to blackened stumps the warboss and the orks clustered round it before igniting the engines and ordnance of the idling trukks and wagons, the explosions leaping from vehicle to vehicle as if blown by the spirit of a young tanker on his first, and final, patrol.

In the HQ of the Fourth Armoured Corps, the general staff were silent.

The vox had gone dead. Before it cut out, they had heard a sound unmistakeable to all tankers: the gushing whoosh of a Leman Russ brewing up.

Colonel Markus Stilo, commanding officer, Fourth Armoured Corps, stared at the silent vox. Then he turned to another of the vox-stations.

‘Report.’

‘The Valkyries have landed the demolition charges on the bridge. Engineers laying them now.’

‘Tell them to remain on station to evac the engineers when the bridge is down.’

The comms officer turned back to his vox, passing on the order.

Colonel Markus Stilo stood up slowly.

The general staff looked upon their commanding officer in silence.

‘Our mission was to destroy the bridge. To achieve victory, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice that which we hold dearest. The Emperor calls upon us to make that sacrifice – so long as we are willing do so, the Imperium of Man shall never be defeated.’

The colonel turned slowly, looking around the room, but his eyes were blank.

‘My son always dreamed of being a tanker. He died one.’

The colonel reached out a hand, steadied himself, then turned to leave.

‘Sir, do you want me to send a Valkyrie to collect… to collect your son’s body?’

Colonel Stilo did not look round.

‘The Valkyries will carry out their orders. Inform me when the bridge is down. Carry on.’

WHERE DERE’S DA WARP DERE’S A WAY

Mike Brooks

‘’Ere we go, ’ere we go, ’ere we go!’

Ufthak Blackhawk, Bad Moon warrior and definite second-biggest in Badgit Snazzhammer’s mob, no matter what that zoggin’ idiot Mogrot thought, raised his voice in the rolling, rollicking war cry as they piled into the ’Ullbreaker. Outside in the cold vacuum of space, Da Meklord’s warfleet was busy crumping the humie ships, but that wasn’t Ufthak’s fight. Blowing stuff up from a long way off was fine in its way, but he preferred getting up close and personal. Let the gunboyz have their fun: Ufthak was on his way to the real fight.

The last few boyz piled in, along with Dok Drozfang and various grots, and then came Da Boffin. A Bad Moon like Ufthak and Da Meklord himself, and one of the warboss’ most trusted meks, Da Boffin had replaced his own legs with a single wheel, powered by a fuel made of concentrated squig dung. Ufthak had never worked out how Da Boffin stayed upright on it, since even warbikes needed at least two wheels, plus either a kickstand or the rider’s leg – or a kickstand made from someone else’s leg – on the few occasions they were stationary. When Ufthak had asked, Da Boffin had just started talking about ‘whirly bitz inside it’, as though that made any sense.

The last hatch slammed shut and the flyboyz in the cockpit whooped, firing up the engines and vaporising anything immediately behind the shuttle. Ufthak had been on boarding missions before, so he knew what to do: grab on to one of the handholds roughly welded into the walls, and hang on like a grot on a warboar.

The flyboy kaptin stamped down on the lever which released the mag-clamp fastening them to the deck of Da Meklord’s Fury, and they were away. Immediately, all the boyz who hadn’t been in an ’Ullbreaker before went flying back to the rear of the ship, where they were crushed into a painful and indignant heap against the metal bulkhead. Ufthak laughed uproariously as they tumbled past him with expressions of confusion plastered across their faces.

’Ullbreakers got up to full speed quickly, and so it was only a few moments before the G-forces subsided enough for the newbies to untangle themselves from each other and start the important process of working out whose gun was whose. It only took a few moments more for fists to start to fly as they began bad-mouthing each other’s shootas.

‘If you gitz don’t settle down den I’m turnin’ dis fing around!’

Boss Snazzhammer stormed down the shuttle, spittle flying from his gob as he kicked boyz out of his way. He was a huge ork, head and shoulders taller than the rest of them, and bedecked in the most ostentatious finery that teef could buy – and, since he was a Bad Moon, he had a lot of teef. There was barely a surface of his armour that wasn’t decorated with loot, whether that was medals taken off the corpses of humie bosses, those little bits of wax and paper from the armour of dead beakies, or even some of the fancy gems the pointy-earz wore. In his right hand he carried the massive weapon that had given him his second name: a metal shaft the height of a humie with its legs still attached, with a hammer on one side of the head and a choppa blade on the other. The entire head could be engulfed in a crackling power field with one flick of Snazzhammer’s clawed thumb, and Ufthak had seen the boss smash right through a humie tank with it.

The boyz ducked their heads, grabbed their own shootas and tried to avoid the boss’ eye. No one wanted to end up like that tank.

‘Dat’s betta,’ Snazzhammer growled. He turned on the spot, addressing the entire ’Ullbreaker. ‘Right, we ain’t da only ’Ullbreaker wot’s flyin’ today…’

Boos and jeers.

‘…but we got da most important job!’ Snazzhammer continued. ‘Da Meklord ’imself told me wot we gots ta do, so you all best listen.’

The mob quietened down, as much as they ever would. If Da Meklord had told them what to do, they’d probably better do it. Da Meklord was no ordinary warboss, if there was such a thing: he was Da Biggest Big Mek, and his gear was legendary. He’d gone toe to toe with rival warboss Oldfang Krumpthunda, and after one hit with Da Meklord’s shokkhamma no one had found any part of the Goff larger than a finger. Da Meklord’s personal force field could shrug off hits from a humie Titan’s cooka kannon. His supa-shoota could cut a Deff Dread in half before you could say ‘Gork and Mork’. He was what any Bad Moon wanted to be: massive, ’ard as nails and carrying enough weapons and armour to kit out a small warband in his own right.

‘Now,’ Snazzhammer declared. ‘Humies don’t got Gork ‘n’ Mork ta guide dem froo da warp, ta take dem to where da next fight is. Dey gotta use some fancy worky bitz wot dey keeps in da middle of dere ships. Wot we gots ta do is get Da Boffin dere, where he’s gonna do some mek stuff. Got it?’

There was a general muttering and nodding of heads, and Snazzhammer beamed. ‘Good. Now den. Who are we?’

‘SNAZZHAMMER’S MOB!’ the assembled mass of orks bellowed, Ufthak amongst them.

‘Are we da biggest?’

‘YES!’

‘Are we da baddest!’

‘YES!’

‘Are we da shootiest?’

‘YES!’ the mob yelled, and everyone waved their shootas, which were almost all kustom jobs with extra dakka. No one pulled their trigger yet, though, which was good: Ufthak had once been in an ’Ullbreaker where some git with a kannon had managed to crack the flyboyz’ seeing-window, and it turned out there was a reason why these things weren’t open-topped.

‘Dat’s what I fort,’ Snazzhammer said with grim satisfaction. He reached up and grabbed a handhold overhead. ‘Now, everyone hold on to sumfing.’

Ufthak had known this was coming, and reached up with his other hand. ’Ullbreakers flew quick.

There was a shudder as the shuttle’s short-range torpedoes all fired at once, concentrating on a small part of the enemy ship’s hull to weaken it. Ufthak began counting down.

Five…

Four…

Free…

Two…

One…

He frowned.

Bit of one…

The ’Ullbreaker smashed into the humie ship, its specially reinforced nose cone taking the brunt of the impact and punching them clean through into the interior. The force of the sudden deceleration lifted Ufthak’s boots from the floor and nearly wrenched his arms from their sockets, but he held firm. Some of the new ladz who hadn’t minded the boss’ words enough went flying the other way down the shuttle. One of them collided with a support strut hard enough to snap his back clean in two, much to the disdain of the other boyz who’d managed to remain upright.

‘Leave ’im!’ Snazzhammer bellowed as a few of them started putting the boot in. ‘We got humies ta paste! Get out dere, and get clobberin’!’ He aimed a kick at the downed ork’s head as he acted on his own words, and his steel toecap hit hard enough to knock it right off. Dark blood sprayed out across the nearby members of the mob, while the flying head caught a lurking grot clean in the chest and knocked it backwards into the wall.

‘WAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!’

Ufthak drew his weapons and surged forwards with the mass of green around him. This was life; this was what it meant to be an ork. Enemies in front of him, ladz around him, ammo in his slugga and a good right arm to swing his choppa. What more could anyone ask for?

The fore hatches burst outwards and the boyz spilled out. Ufthak shouldered his way forwards and forced his way through, looking for something to kill.

They’d busted through into a vast chamber of metal, the ceiling of which arched up overhead into gloomy shadow. The walls looked to consist largely of pipes, cables and contact points, some of which spat blue-white sparks, but Ufthak couldn’t see much of them. That was partly because of the strange humie machines which loomed throughout the chamber – strange even to him, who’d fought a lot of different humies in a lot of different places – and partly because the humies that crewed this ship had decided they wanted to fight.

They were already swarming inwards, like buzzer squigs converging on an intruder into their nest. Ufthak saw the red-robes and the first flashes of gunfire and grunted in recognition: humie mekboyz! No wonder Da Meklord had his eyes on something fancy; humie tek could do some pretty wild stuff so long as you didn’t hit it too hard.

The red-robes slowed, setting themselves to shoot, and Ufthak groaned. Why did humies never want to fight properly? Only beakies ever fancied a real rumble, and they didn’t even taste good once you got them out of their armour. The rest of them got close enough for you to smell ’em, then hung back to shoot like Mork-damned Deathskulls.

They also always seemed to think that da boyz would just stand still.

‘All right, ladz! ’Ave ’em!’ Snazzhammer bellowed, and the mob surged forwards. Ufthak could feel Mork urging him on, and time slowed. His strides seemed to eat up the metal deck beneath him, and the figures in the humie gun line grew larger with each step. He saw an individual barrel track towards him, saw the humie’s finger tighten on the trigger, but he took his next step at an angle and Mork smiled on him, because the bolt of spitting energy flew past his head instead of taking him full in the face. The next shot hit him in the shoulder, a white-cold shock that staggered him for a moment, but Ufthak had taken worse in the past, and the humie had gone for the kill instead of turning to run while it could. Not all of its fellows had done the same; some of them were already fleeing in the face of the unstoppable green tide bearing down on them.

Ufthak bared his fangs, bellowed his war cry and cannoned into the humie line with the rest of the mob.

The humie who’d shot him tried to parry his choppa with its rifle; Ufthak gave it respect for the effort but nothing for the execution, because his heavy blade smashed through the spindly weapon and split its torso from neck down to the middle of its chest. Like most humies, it died after one hit, sagging to the floor as he wrenched his choppa free and fired his shoota into what passed for the face of another, although this one was wearing a lot more metal there than most humies did. The metal didn’t help it: Ufthak’s slugga shots blew its head apart, metal face and all, and it dropped as well.

A humie lunged at him, wielding some sort of spear. The blade buried itself in Ufthak’s chest and he bellowed in pain, then booted the wielder in its stomach. It flew backwards, disappearing with a despairing wail into the rolling maul of bodies around Boss Snazzhammer. Ufthak wrenched the spear out – it turned out to be one of the electro-guns with a knife stuck on the end – and threw it after its owner. There was a roar of anger, and Ufthak grinned as Mogrot Redtoof whirled around and clobbered a humie which had had nothing to do with the fact that there was now a knife in his back.

Next to Ufthak, Deffrow had lost his choppa – probably stuck in the ribcage of a dead humie somewhere – and so was using the next best thing: a stikkbomb. He battered one humie aside into the path of Dok Drozfang, who carved it apart with the power klaw he called Da Surjun, broke the skull of another, then wound up and took a swing at a third–

The world went white, very loud and extremely sharp.

Ufthak realised he was on the floor, along with everyone else within three yards of Deffrow. Deffrow himself was on his back, staring stupidly at the handle clutched in his somewhat shredded fist.

‘Dey go bang, squigbrain!’ Ufthak yelled at him as he got back to his feet. ‘Dat’s why we frow dem!’ Deffrow’s idiocy had left him with a bunch of shrapnel in his right-hand side, but it was nothing he couldn’t deal with later. The humies, on the other hand, hadn’t fared so well. The one Deffrow had hit most recently had taken the brunt of the impact and was now rather red and squishy, and even those further back weren’t in a good way, rolling around, wailing and crying like a grot that had swallowed a fire squig.

‘Seems like a design flaw t’me,’ Deffrow muttered, pushing himself up. He winced and shook his mangled hand, and a finger that had only been attached by a shred of flesh pinwheeled off. ‘Ow, dat smartz…’

‘Now look what you did!’ Ufthak complained at him. ‘Dey’re running away!’ Sure enough, the remaining humies had clearly decided that enough was enough, as they were turning tail and fleeing from the slaughter. Or at least, they were trying to: those of Snazzhammer’s mob who hadn’t still been picking themselves up because their idiotic neighbour had blown everyone up were jumping on the humies from behind and sending them to see their Emprah. Humies liked to yell about their Emprah a lot, but Ufthak had once heard a bunch of really tough beakies in spiky black armour shouting that the Emprah was dead. With worshippers like this, he could see why. He raised his slugga and shot one in the back, but his heart wasn’t in it.

A high-pitched whine grabbed Ufthak’s attention. For a moment he thought it was just the after-effects of Deffrow’s stikkbomb going off, but then he saw a crackle of blue power, and one of the machines lurched into life. It was a big trukk of some sort, with wheels taller than an ork, and if the blue-crackling thing on the top of it wasn’t some sort of gun then he, Ufthak Blackhawk, was a Blood Axe.

‘Oh zog,’ he muttered fervently. ‘Boss! You got ya hammer?’

‘Don’t worry about dat,’ Snazzhammer retorted confidently, spinning his hammer and casually decapitating a stray grot with the backswing. ‘Dat humie stuff breaks if you look at it funny.’

Ufthak had his doubts. Humies might not be much good in a proper scrap, but their guns tended to be the business. The dirty little gitz also had a nasty habit of aiming, instead of pulling the trigger and letting Gork and Mork decide what would land where, as was right and proper.

The big trukk-gun fizzed noisily, and glowed brighter. Ufthak braced himself: he had a feeling this was going to hurt more than a carelessly detonated stikkbomb.

There was a tremendous sound of tortured, tearing metal from behind them, and a huge shape came sliding across the chamber’s floor, careering off humie machines and leaving the wailing red-robes it struck as mere red smears. It collided with the gun trukk, which exploded in a ball of blue fire, and came to a halt. Hatches popped open and boyz emerged, bellowing in anticipation.

‘Told you we wasn’t da only ’Ullbreaker flyin’ today!’ Snazzhammer said with satisfaction. He raised his voice in a mocking shout. ‘What ’appened to you gitz? Got lost?’

The other mob’s boss responded with a rude hand gesture, and Snazzhammer laughed. ‘Right, on wiv da job. Boffin! You know where we’re goin’?’

Through a lot of doors, as it turned out.

‘Beats me how dese humies ever get anywhere,’ Mogrot commented, as Wazzock fired up his burna to cut through yet another sealed hatch.

‘Dey know how to open ’em,’ Ufthak snorted.

‘We know how to open ’em!’ Mogrot protested, pointing at where Wazzock was dragging a white-hot line down the hatch.

‘Open ’em wivout burnas,’ Ufthak said patiently. Mogrot was hot squig dung in a fight, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t what you’d call a thinker. That was why Ufthak was second-in-command, even though they were more or less the same size. ‘Dey’re lockin’ us out, right?’

‘Don’t seem too bovvered we’re here, den,’ Mogrot countered. ‘We ain’t ’ardly ’ad no one to fight since dat scrap when we got out da ’Ullbreaker!’ He nudged a red-robed corpse with his boot, but the mob outnumbered this bunch of humies, and they’d barely been worth the effort.

‘Dere’s a whole buncha ladz on dis ship by now,’ Snazzhammer put in. ‘So da humies don’t twig wot we’re up to. Dey’re what da humies call a “destruction”.’ He raised his weapon and activated the power field. ‘All right, outta da way!’

The ladz parted, and the boss stepped forwards. He swung his hammer and, with a krakka-boom! like thunder, the burna-bisected door caved in as though it were made of sticks. It revealed a long corridor, wide enough for five orks abreast. A few yards down it were another bunch of red-robes, aiming their guns somewhat shakily at the gaping hole where their door had been.

Snazzhammer lunged forwards, swinging his weapon two-handed by the very base of its handle to maximise his reach. The powered head smashed through their squishy humie bodies and killed most of them with a single blow. The other two turned to flee: Snazzhammer let them get a few steps before hurling his hammer after them, decapitating them both, one after another. The mighty weapon skidded to a halt, slippery with red humie blood, and Snazzhammer turned to look at Da Boffin.

‘Def’nitely dis way, right?’

Da Boffin held up a clicking gizmo, and revved the motor of his mono-wheel excitedly. ‘Yup! We got supa-strong warp stuff down da uvver end. Dat’s where we needs ta be.’

‘You heard da ork!’ Snazzhammer bellowed. ‘Get to it!’ He turned back towards his hammer and began to stride down the corridor. Ufthak was just taking his first step after the boss when the door at the other end of the corridor slid open, not thanks to the destructive activities of some other ladz but with the smooth action of a machine operated by someone who knew how to work it properly.

A huge shape stamped into view, blocking out much of the light behind it.

‘Now dat,’ Mogrot said from behind him, ‘looks like a proper fight.’

It was on two legs, but it was no humie. It wasn’t an ork, either. Ufthak reckoned it was twice his height at least, and nearly the same across. It sort of looked a bit like a humie Dread, the kind the beakies sometimes had, but not quite. It had two power klaws, the weird round humie ones instead of a proper pointy klaw like any self-respecting ork would have, and some sort of ’eavy shoota looming over its right shoulder.

‘Tinboy!’ Da Boffin exclaimed with what sounded like real excitement. ‘Always wanted ta see one up-close!’

The ’eavy shoota opened up just as Badgit Snazzhammer broke into a roaring charge. He got three strides before his head exploded in a welter of gore and pulverised bone, and he dropped as dead as a swatted squig.

‘Zoggin’ ’eck!’ Ufthak yelled. ‘Back round da corner, ladz, sharpish!’ The tinboy was tracking its shots towards them, and in the confines of the corridor there was nowhere to take cover. He shouldered Deffrow aside and scrambled back out of the line of fire, and a moment later the rest of the mob joined him, hunkering down on either side of the doorway. More thuds of shoota fire sent gouts of blood spraying across the corridor’s floor and over the threshold of the ruined door, as a couple of stragglers got well and truly crumped. As soon as there were no more orks in view, the tinboy’s gun fell silent.

‘Why’d you run for?!’ Mogrot demanded from the other side of the gap. Ufthak found faces turning towards him, red eyes focusing on him. He’d given a command, and the boyz had followed him. The only problem was, he’d told them all to run away.

That wasn’t going to wash for long, if he wanted to stake his claim as boss. He had to prove himself once and for all as the bigger ork.

‘Dat wasn’t runnin’,’ he declared firmly. ‘Dat was a… strateejik wivdrawal.’

‘If it looks like a squiggoth, an’ it smells like a squiggoth…’ Mogrot began menacingly. He drew himself up, fingering the activation switch on his chain-choppa. ‘I don’t fink you’z proper boss material, Ufthak. Don’t fink you should be givin’ orders.’

‘Yeah?’ Ufthak shot back, making a rude hand gesture. ‘Why don’t you walk over ’ere an’ say dat?’

Mogrot growled, deep in his chest, and took one step…

…then paused, frowning distrustfully at the gap between them. Ufthak tried not to look at the same bit of floor, but it was no good. Even Mogrot’s brain had remembered why they were hiding in the first place.

‘Gimme a grot,’ Mogrot grunted, reaching out behind him. One of the mob’s hangers-on was seized and passed forwards with a squeak of protest, and Mogrot tossed it into the corridor.

The tinboy’s shoota opened up immediately, and the sad, mangled remains of the grot thudded to the floor.

Ufthak cursed inwardly. That would have been hilarious, as well as useful. Nothing for it, then.

‘We need to kill da tinboy,’ he declared, as though Mogrot had never challenged him. ‘An’ we ain’t doin’ dat from here, an’ we can’t get to it ta kill it easy, coz it knows we’z orks, right?’

The ladz nodded. All of that seemed logical.

‘Wot you finkin’?’ Da Boffin asked, scratching one ear and looking at him thoughtfully as he rocked back and forth on his monowheel.

Ufthak beamed.

‘All right, ladz, I’z ’ad a great idea…’

‘’Ello, I’m a humie!’

Humie spaceships, it turned out, had a lot of decent metal sheeting lying around if you had access to a burna to cut it off the walls, so Wazzock had been put to work. Before too long, the mob had several large chunks, to which they’d strapped the more intact of the red-robe corpses they’d made on the way to the door.

‘We’z just humies, walkin’ down dis corridor!’

Ufthak’s plan was proper cunning if he said so himself, which he did, so that was okay. The tinboy must be able to tell humies from orks, or the humies would never let it walk around their spaceship. Therefore, it stood to reason that if it saw humies in front of it, it wouldn’t shoot.

Into the corridor they went, a few boyz behind each metal plate, with dead humies on the front to confuse the tinboy. Simple, but genius.

‘Wot if it don’t work?’ Deffrow hissed.

‘S’gotta work,’ Ufthak argued. ‘I’m talkin’ in humie, ain’t I? An’ makin’ my voice squeaky an’–’

The shoota opened up again. The three boyz behind the foremost plate leaned into the impacts on what had suddenly become a makeshift shield, but the metal sheeting wasn’t designed to stand up to firepower of that magnitude. One of them came apart as a shell punched right through, and Ufthak suddenly had guts over his steel toecaps.

‘Zog it!’ he shouted. ‘Next plan!’

The boyz hadn’t got far down the corridor before the tinboy had rumbled them, but they’d reached Snazzhammer’s body. They dropped their apparently useless humie-shields and opened up, pouring fire into their enemy.

Which stopped short of reaching it, swallowed up and destroyed by some sort of force field.

‘I’ve ’ad enuff of dis,’ Ufthak growled as another ork was blown apart. He reached behind his back and pulled out what he’d decided he’d call a bombstikk. It was basically half the mob’s stikkbombs all taped together courtesy of Da Boffin’s toolbox, and by ‘basically’ he meant ‘exactly’. He took a quick two-step run-up and hurled it overarm.

When that hit the tinboy’s force field it was like Gork himself had stamped on them all.

Ufthak’s vision cleared a moment or so before his ears stopped ringing, and he picked himself up and peered down the corridor.

The Mork-damned thing was only still standing, wasn’t it?

‘Dat woz s’posed ta blow its bloody arms off!’ Mogrot yelled.

‘Nevamind!’ Ufthak shouted. ‘It’s stunned, innit? Scrag da zoggin’ fing!’

He ran forwards, snatching up the Snazzhammer as he passed it. Sure enough, the tinboy was standing wonky, and making confused buzzing noises. Shots began to fly past him from behind, and this time one or two of them raised sparks as they struck home: the force field had been overloaded.

Lenses in the tinboy’s face whirred as the machine suddenly seemed to recover itself, and the ’eavy shoota lowered to target him.

Ufthak threw himself into a slide as the big weapon began kicking out shots again, and he felt the shiver of impacts as they chewed up the floor behind him. The tinboy’s power klaws crackled into life as whatever tek powered it realised that he was getting close, but it was a shade too slow: it lunged for him, looking to crush him, but he was already sliding between its legs and lashing out with the Snazzhammer.

Which bounced clean off with barely a scratch caused, since he hadn’t activated the power field.

‘Mork’s teef!’

The tinboy lurched around to follow him, alarmingly fast for such a big thing. The ’eavy shoota remained steady somehow, pouring shots into the boyz that’d been following him, but the two power klaws were all for Ufthak. It swung at him again, and he barely dodged back from it, then ducked under the counterswing from the other arm. When the tinboy tried to clobber him on the backswing, he set his feet and swung the Snazzhammer to meet it.

He’d activated the power field this time, and it took the tinboy’s arm off at the elbow.

Laughter erupted out of him as the huge thing staggered, its balance thrown off by the sudden lack of weight on one side. The sound of its detached power klaw skittering away across the deck was the sound of his triumph.

Then it punched him in the chest with the other one.

Ufthak had never known such pain, and he’d taken shots from a beakie gun before that had left half his insides hanging out, until Dok Drozfang had stuck them back in and stitched him up once the fighting had calmed down a bit. It was like someone had let buzzer squigs the size of grots loose on his chest, and that was before he flew backwards and hit the wall behind him hard enough to dent it.

He lay there for a moment, vision foggy, as the tinboy turned its attention back to the rest of the boyz. They’d now reached it and were hacking away at it with choppas, blasting it point-blank with their shootas, and were surely going to bring it down any moment now. They didn’t need him to help, he could catch his breath.

Any moment now.

‘Zog it,’ Ufthak muttered, as another boy got pulped by the tinboy’s remaining power klaw. ‘If you want somefing dun right…’ He levered himself back to his feet, ignoring the sensation and indeed the smell of scorched flesh coming from his front, and took up the Snazzhammer again.

‘Oi! I ain’t finished wiv you yet!’

The tinboy didn’t turn around, which was its second mistake, the first having been to not make sure he was properly dead. He ran at its back, crackling Snazzhammer held high, and smashed the axe side into its armour plating.

KRAKKA-BOOM!

The tinboy spasmed and fell forwards, circuits overloading and sparks shooting in all directions. Ufthak forced his own battered body to climb atop it, then raised the Snazzhammer for the killing blow, laughing as he did so. Let Mogrot try to lead the mob after this!

He saw Da Boffin raising one hand in apparent warning just as he brought the weapon down for the final time.

Everything went red.

He was on his back when his brain was actually working well enough again to figure out what was going on. He stared up at the ceiling, which looked to be blackened and scorched as though a massive explosion had washed across it. He could hear the sound of ork boots tramping past him, but no one seemed to be stopping to congratulate him on his kill.

A face appeared in his line of sight. It was Dok Drozfang, who was wearing what Ufthak thought of as his considerin’ face, which was never a sight an ork wanted to see.

‘Dok,’ Ufthak managed, although it was surprisingly hard to speak. ‘I can’t feel me legs.’

‘Well, dere’s a reason for dat,’ the dok shrugged. ‘Look down.’

Ufthak managed to do as Drozfang suggested. For a moment, he couldn’t work out what he was seeing. Then he realised that it was what he wasn’t seeing that was the issue.

‘Where’s me legs?’

‘One’s over dere,’ Drozfang said, pointing out of Ufthak’s view. ‘Not too sure about da uvver one. Or yer arms, ta be honest.’

‘Dat’d explain why dey ain’t hurtin’,’ Ufthak muttered. He frowned. ‘Wot about da hammer?’

‘Mogrot’s got it,’ Drozfang replied. ‘Said ’e’s da boss now, an’ no one argued wiv ’im.’

‘Ungrateful grots,’ Ufthak managed. Air was definitely becoming a problem, which was only to be expected when you looked to be missing the bottom part of your lungs. ‘Well, see us off den, dok. No point waitin’ – may’z we’ll get back ta Gork ‘n’ Mork so dey can put me in anuvver body an’ I can get back ta fightin’ again.’

Drozfang frowned. ‘Yeah, about dat… Wot if I’z got a better idea?’

Ufthak tried not to let his trepidation show. Painboyz were useful to have about if you needed stapling back up, or a new arm sewing on, but some of them could get a bit ‘creative’ at times, especially when the patient wasn’t in a condition to have much say in the matter.

‘Nah, yer all right, dok,’ he said, managing a grin. ‘Nuffin’ ta worry about, is it?’

‘Yeah, well, I ain’t finkin’ Mogrot is da best boss da mob could ’ave,’ Drozfang replied, lowering his voice. ‘I reckon dey could do wiv da sort of ork wot has da smartz ta plan for a tinboy, an’ da gutz ta bring it down. An’ if I could fix dat ork up, he might remember da painboy wot fixed ’im, coz I reckon dat ork might be goin’ places. Know wot I mean?’

‘Wotever you’z finkin’, yer gonna ’ave to do it quick,’ Ufthak told him flatly, as darkness began to encroach on his vision.

‘Fankfully, da raw materials are at ’and,’ Drozfang grinned, and pursed his leathery lips to emit a piercing whistle. High-pitched grunts and swearing heralded the arrival of the dok’s grot ‘disorderlies’, apparently towing something heavy. They stopped next to Ufthak, and he turned his head to look at it.

It was Badgit Snazzhammer’s body. Huge, battle-scarred and untouched apart from the small point of completely lacking a head, thanks to the tinboy.

‘Now,’ Drozfang said, producing an intimidatingly large cleaver and placing it at the base of Ufthak’s neck. ‘Dis may ’urt a bit…’

Ufthak hadn’t really registered the blow given that, percentage-wise, he wasn’t losing much more than he had already. The staples that the dok used to fix his head onto Snazzhammer’s neck – which had been ‘tidied up’ with the same cleaver – only registered as minor pricks of discomfort.

What really hurt was the injection.

‘You’d be lookin’ at a day or so before you’d be up an’ about, normally,’ Drozfang told him matter-of-factly, as burning agony began to spread downwards from what remained of his neck into what had until recently been Snazzhammer’s. The dok tucked his syringe back into his belt. ‘But fanks to Dok Drozfang’s Healin’ Juice, da nerve endin’s will connect right up an’ you’ll ’ave full control in a matter of minutes. Course, dere’s always da side effects,’ he added.

Ufthak tried to swear at him, but he was too busy convulsing.

The tinboy looked to have been the humie’s last real line of defence of their ‘fancy worky bitz’, as Snazzhammer had called them. There were a few bodies scattered here and there on the route to the massive double doors from which an eldritch glow was emerging, but little sign of an organised resistance. The alarms going off suggested that perhaps Da Meklord’s ‘destruction’ techniques had been extremely effective. All Ufthak knew was that they weren’t helping his headache much.

‘’Ere we are, boss,’ Drozfang said with a grin, gesturing at the one open door. ‘Da rest of da ladz should be in dere. Time ta make yer grand entrance.’

Ufthak bared his fangs, squared his – or possibly Snazzhammer’s – shoulders, and strode in as though his neck weren’t still leaking a bit, and his left leg weren’t dragging slightly.

It was a vast space, as big as one of the humie’s buildings which they seemed to put up simply to sit in and have a proper good think about their Emprah. However, whereas those had lots of empty space in, perhaps in order for the thoughts to fly around properly, this one was jam-packed full of… stuff, was the only term Ufthak could come up with. Huge metal pillars which gave off a glow that only partially obscured the runes carved into them. Enormous pistons, crackling with energy. Giant wheels larger than his outstretched arms. And yet, despite how impressive it all looked, there was the distinct impression that this place wasn’t fulfilling its function. It was heavy with potential, an almost palpable heaviness in the air. It was as though the room itself were yearning for something.

Which probably wasn’t Da Boffin and Mogrot Redtoof having a scuffle, but that was what it currently had.

‘Gerroff it!’

‘I’m da boss, I get ta push da button!’

‘Yooz gonna break it, you stoopid–’

‘Gonna break yer face in a minute–’

Mogrot, facing away from Ufthak, reared back with the Snazzhammer in his grip, ready to knock Da Boffin’s lights out with it.

Ufthak grabbed it just under the head and yanked it out of his grip. Mogrot whirled around, fumbling at his belt for his chain-choppa, but pulled up short when he came face-to-chest with Ufthak. His brow creased in uncommon cogitation.

‘Wot da zog…?’

‘Sumfin’ like dat,’ Ufthak agreed, and nutted him.

Mogrot went down. Ufthak winced, and reflected that possibly hadn’t been the smartest thing to do with a stapled-up neck, but what was done was done. He brandished the Snazzhammer over his head.

‘Anyone else wanna be boss?’

There was a distinct lack of volunteers, as the rest of the ladz took a sudden interest in their boots. They weren’t sure if Badgit had got a new head or Ufthak had got a new body, but they weren’t planning to argue with either eventuality.

‘Dat’s settled, den,’ Ufthak said with satisfaction. He could almost feel Dok Drozfang grinning behind him, but that was fine. Fair was fair, and he’d see that the dok got his due. A few extra teef passed his way, the occasional ‘volunteer’ for surjury, that sort of thing.

‘You done ya mek fing yet?’ he asked Da Boffin, who shook his head.

‘Mogrot wanted ta press da button.’

‘Well, get on wiv it,’ Ufthak commanded him. He wasn’t interested in pressing buttons: that sounded like a mek job.

Da Boffin’s device was surprisingly small, and was clamped to what looked like some sort of humie control panel. It had three buttons on it: ‘STOP’, ‘GO’ and ‘MEGA-GO’.

‘Wot is dat, anyway?’ Ufthak asked.

‘Dis,’ Da Boffin said gleefully, ‘is da Warp Dekapitator. You know how humies choose where dey’re gonna fly through da warp?’

‘Yeah?’ said Ufthak, who didn’t.

‘Well, dey leave tracks behind in da warp. Sorta like squig trails, only nuffin’ like dat,’ Da Boffin explained. ‘Dese are humie mekboyz, so dey prob’ly came from a humie mekboy planet, where dere’s loadsa shiny tek Da Meklord can nab.’

‘Right,’ Ufthak nodded. Shiny tek sounded good. Da Meklord would get the best, obviously, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be some left over.

‘So when I turn dis on, it uses da energy of dese warp engines to cause a katastroffic warp implosion!’

Ufthak frowned. ‘Is dat good?’

‘Course it’s good!’ Da Boffin scoffed. ‘S’got a lot of fingies, syllables, innit? Like, “grot” is bad, but “Wazbom Blastajet” is good.’

Ufthak nodded. It was a powerful argument.

‘Dis ship gets sucked into da warp, right back to da startin’ point of da last warp jump it made, and den pops back out again,’ Da Boffin continued. ‘An’ it sucks all da rest of da ships around in wiv it too, includin’ Da Meklord’s fleet. Job’s a good’un!’

He reached out, and pressed the button labelled ‘MEGA-GO’.

The control panel sparked. More alarms started sounding, but these weren’t the high-pitched whiny klaxons that denoted a relatively minor problem like rampaging, murderous orks aboard the ship. These were bone-deep and throbbing, and bore an inherent sense of panic. If a star could have screamed a warning, it would have sounded like that.

All around Ufthak and his mob, the glowing, crackling parts of the room began to move: slowly at first, then faster and faster. Ufthak frowned. He could have sworn that something apparently solid just passed through something else equally apparently solid.

‘Is dat s’posed to ’ap–’

There was a stomach-churning, resonant bloorp! and everything turned inside out.

It took Ufthak a few moments to check that his arms weren’t now five miles long, or that his stomach hadn’t swelled to the size of a planet, both of which felt like they could be viable options. He definitely had an annoying tic in his left eye, but that was less unusual, and he glowered at Da Boffin with it.

‘If dat’s your definition of “good”…’

Da Boffin held his hand up for quiet. Ufthak was about to clobber him for disrespect when he heard it too.

It was the screaming of tortured metal. And that, Ufthak realised, was not fancy words. It was the voice of actual metal, and it was actually screaming, and the whole thing was overlaid with a bubbling, wet giggle. From outside in the corridor came the slithering thump of something malformed dragging its huge bulk along with nothing more than brute strength and an endless malice directed at all living things.

‘Course,’ Da Boffin commented, ‘dere’s always da side effects.’

‘All right, ladz!’ Ufthak barked, laying about him. The boyz hadn’t coped well with the katakrumpic warm diffusion, or whatever it was Da Boffin had said, and most of them were still on their backs or counting their fingers to see if they still had the same amount – which was causing some problems in Deffrow’s case, as he couldn’t now remember how many he’d started with. A few knocks with the haft end of the hammer got them back into it, however. ‘Da entertainment’s comin’! Up ya get!’

The other massive door slammed back, and something made of blood and steel and endless hunger squirmed in, all sharp teeth and barbed tongues, and glistening black talons that reached out hungrily for flesh.

Ufthak grinned at it. Time to see what his new body could do.

‘On me, ladz! One, two, free…’

‘WAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!’

BLACKOUT

J C Stearns

‘It’s definitely not a blackout.’

Chib and Zaylin rolled their eyes. It was most definitely a blackout. Anyone could tell that. Even if the dozen gangers huddled around their lume-sticks wasn’t evidence enough, all they had to do was look out of a window. Seidon City was dark from root to tip. Seventeen thousand square miles of hive, plunged into obsidian blackness lit only by the occasional waste-bin fire. Chib and Zaylin knew what Bugeye meant, of course: it wasn’t just a blackout. The uphivers still had light, but no one in Chib’s neighbourhood could afford a private power source strong enough to illuminate an entire home.

‘Mama said there was an accident at the generatoria last month,’ said Zaylin. She shook her head, jangling the coins threaded through her braids on the right side. The left side had been shaved clean. ‘Maybe that’s why?’

‘Maybe,’ said Chib. He tapped one finger on the slide of his springbow. The lume-stick on the table gave him just enough light to adjust the tension on his weapon. In a hive where rolling blackouts were common, portable light sources were a high-value commodity. Buried in Zone 77 of Silverside, Seidon City’s hydro district, where artificial illumination was the only kind most hivers ever saw, they were even more valuable.

The sign on the door said Mama Jula’s, and advertised a daily special of fresh grox steak, but it had been years since any kind of fresh food had found its way into the building. For as long as Chib could remember, Jula’s had been a gang hideout for the Seventy-Sevens. The kitchen had long ago given way to a storeroom for the gang’s mediocre cache of weapons, the tables and booths eroded by years of intricate graffiti or casual mindless property destruction. The gang lounged around the dining area most days, occupying their time drinking, throwing flipknives into the furniture, or defacing the walls and flakboard barricades over the windows.

‘You think this is just a cogboy frak-up?’ Rekker slid onto the torn bench seat. The three juves regarded the older ganger with calculated disinterest. The direct attention of a veteran might mean an opportunity to prove themselves and move up in the world, but the foul-mouthed Rekker was more likely to corner youths like themselves just to taunt them or send them on some degrading task he couldn’t be bothered with.

‘My ma–’ started Zaylin.

‘Zaylin’s mom can say whatever she likes,’ Bugeye interrupted. ‘That don’t mean we think it’s so.’

Rekker laughed. His teeth were covered in black streaks, and were so pervaded with rot that you could smell them if you got too close.

‘What is it, then?’ Zaylin asked. The other two crossed their arms but didn’t turn away. There was always a possibility Rekker knew what he was talking about.

The older ganger leaned in over the table, the light from the lume-stick below casting ghoulish shadows across his face.

‘You been up to the Carridian Arch, yeah?’ The juves nodded. The Carridian Arch was a monument to the world’s Astra Militarum regiments. Buskers and peddlers hawked and wheedled beneath the rows of statuary depicting fallen heroes of the Imperium. It was a great place to lift a few coins or lose a marshal in a crowd.

‘You ever know anyone who actually volunteered for the rifles?’ As Bugeye shook his head, Rekker leaned in closer. ‘That’s cuz no one does. No, every so often, they come to a hive with too many people and not enough food…’ Rekker paused, allowing the juves a moment to remember a night or two when they’d gone to sleep hungry, or had a desperate adult tear a nutribrick from their hands: the exact sort of experiences that had driven them to join a gang. ‘And they cut the power. Then they move, level by level. They find the people who ain’t got a home to go to, who ain’t got a job to work, who got convictions. The poor bastards get a black bag on their heads, zips on their arms, and shoved into the back of a grav-truck. Next time anyone hears their name, it’s on a Roster of the Fallen, if you ever hear about them at all.’

Chib hadn’t listened to the Roster of the Fallen announcement, rolled forth from the megaspeakers in the cathedral district in years, not since he’d heard Madge and Farlon Bannisarios’ death announcements. After his parents, none of the other names had meant anything to him.

‘I wouldn’t listen to that scummer if I were you.’

The juves turned to face the speaker. Little T rarely engaged with the youngest members of the gang, but when he did it was almost always to impart something important. Sometimes that lesson came with a cuff upside the head, if the juve had erred badly, but none of the three of them had done anything to invoke the huge ganger’s wrath.

Little T still carried the diminutive nickname of his own days as a juve, although he had gone on to outclass Big T by a full head’s height and over ninety pounds of raw muscle. Chib had heard that the last time the marshals arrested Little T, they’d been forced to use shackles to restrain his arms, since handcuffs and zips were too small to encircle his massive wrists.

‘What you know about it, cogboy?’ Rekker half spun, sneering at his larger peer. Little T had never been in service to the tech-priests, but Rekker enjoyed mocking him for his mechanical skills.

Little T pulled his chem-shades down to the end of his nose. Unlike the majority of the gangers, he didn’t sport the acid-burned killtats advertising his victories. He usually went around with only a loose vest to cover his barrel chest, his dark complexion devoid of any visible scars, a subtle reminder that he didn’t start fights he was going to lose. He didn’t say anything, just stared until Rekker broke and turned away, muttering under his breath.

‘The Stratigardian Rifles aren’t conscripting from Seidon Hive this year,’ Little T said.

Some of the other gangers began nodding.

‘Groxshit,’ said Trexx. Several of the gangers turned to look at her. Rekker’s eyes lit up. Chib and the other juves kept themselves as still as possible. Arguments between gangers had a habit of turning violent, and none of them wanted to be mistaken for having taken sides if the knives came out.

Rather than flex and puff up at being contradicted, Little T leaned back against the table he was sitting at and gestured for her to explain. The tension drained from the room. Trexx sat on top of a table across from Little T, rolling a flipknife over in her fingers. She was his polar opposite: small and skinny, with skin as pale as a sub-hive mutant that had lived in darkness its whole life. Where Little T was muted and understated, Trexx wore a tall, violet mohawk, and had covered the left half of her body in a sheath of winding killtats.

‘What if the greenies are attacking Two Heads again?’ she asked. Chib was vaguely aware that the Two Heads penal colony on Stratigardin’s neighbouring planet had been attacked by orks at some time in the past. ‘If there’s aliens rampaging through the system, you think they’re going to keep to their little schedule? Or you think they’re just going to snatch up any soldier they can find with enough fingers to work a lasgun?’

Little T shrugged. ‘Administratum don’t move that fast. When the nitro-pipes started leaking in Zone 40, the Administratum kept to the blackout schedule for two years. A thousand hivers froze to death. If there was a battlefront that was bad enough for them to jump the schedule, we’d have heard about it months before the black baggers showed up.’

Trexx slid to her feet, her face contorted into a sneer. Chib gripped his springbow a little tighter, easing his finger towards the safety. Little T didn’t move.

‘That true, meatslab?’ Trexx hissed. She was holding her flipknife back, blade away from the veteran ganger she was facing, but Chib wasn’t fooled. She could draw and throw the blade in the time it took most men to blink. ‘You hear the sec briefings now? Sit in the governor’s palace of a morning? Having solian tea and nafar biscuits, talking about which hives are getting uppity and need a good cull?’

Little T rose to his feet, slowly. ‘You ain’t need to sit in with the governor to know which way the wind’s blowing, Trexx. Something as big as a war next door is going to be obvious to anyone who ain’t soaked their brains in tat-acid.’

Trexx kicked a chair and started storming across the floor. Chib flipped the safety on his springbow, but a harsh look from Rekker brought him up short. The rotten-toothed ganger shook his head at the juves; he was too eager to see bloodshed to let any sort of loyalty enter the equation.

A couple of gangers tried to intervene, and Trexx might have pushed past them and brought the confrontation to a head if the side door hadn’t burst open.

Soter and Jerrick lurched inside. The first thing Chib saw was the blood: so much blood. Jerrick’s entire right side was soaked with it. Red streaks covered Soter’s arm and chest where she’d supported Jerrick’s weight. With a heave, she managed to get Jerrick onto a torn bench. Two gangers hurried to close the door behind her.

‘What the frak happened?’ Trexx yelled. The adult gangers crowded around the two new wounded arrivals. Chib and his friends hovered at the back of the circle, trying to see what was going on. Little T was leaning over Jerrick, doing what he could to staunch the bleeding. Soter leaned back, grabbing the nearest bottle of rakia and taking a shallow swig.

‘I had us posted up in the alley outside the distill,’ said Soter, ‘looking to do the Hyd-Rats dirty.’ This wasn’t a surprise to Chib. Everyone knew the Hyd-Rats hid out at the abandoned distillery in Zone 21. The two gangs had a long and bloody history, and a blackout was the perfect time to settle old scores.

‘Hyd-Rats did this?’ said Rekker.

‘Frak, no!’ said Soter. Chib felt a flutter of fear in his gut. Soter was pale, her hands shaking. He’d once seen her stare down the barrel of a marshal’s shotgun and quip that the scummer didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger; Chib had never seen her afraid before. ‘Someone else got to ’em first. We heard gunfire from the other side of the distill, but before we could move around to get a better look, something inside exploded.’

Little T looked up at her, pointing one bloody finger down at Jerrick. ‘Did he catch shrapnel?’

Soter shook her head. ‘No. The Rats came running out, scattering every which way. We were too far from the action to see what they were fighting, but they were getting cut to street meat.’

Little T pulled Jerrick’s nauga leather jacket away from his back, and several gangers winced. Rekker looked as though he were going to be sick. Chib craned his neck, but all he caught was a brief glimpse of Jerrick’s shoulder in bloody ruins. A huge gory crater marked where the ganger’s arm had joined to his torso, now held on by some strands of red meat, jagged shards of bones jabbing out accusingly.

‘Throne’s pisswater,’ swore Trexx. ‘Did he catch a grenade?’

Soter downed another shot of rakia. ‘Hell no. This was just a stray bullet,’ she said. ‘One shot from whatever they were firing. I saw some of the Hyd-Rat juvies jumping into the storm drains, but none of the true gangers got away. Some of ’em tried running, others tried to make a stand, but they died just the same, blown apart like they got hit by a cannon.’ She shook her head, and licked her lips. ‘Then one of them came out of the distill. He had armour like an arbitrator, but bigger than any street pounder I’ve ever seen. Goddy Sten and Eritz were closer than us, and I guess they figured they had the drop on ’im, because they opened up with those autoguns like they was gonna be downhive heroes.’

The gang murmured. Goddy Sten and Eritz had paid top coin for their Quillion Arms ’76s. The bullpup autoguns were the slickest, most brutal professional firearms Chib had ever seen. Even arbitrators took cover if they saw them. Only Little T’s custom-made rattlegun could compare.

‘The scummer didn’t even react. Not a flinch. He just turned and put that gun on ’em, blew them to pieces.’

Little T stood up and made the sign of the aquila over Jerrick.

‘He’s gone,’ he said. A murmur started rippling through the ganghouse. Trexx screamed in anger. Soter threw the glass bottle in her hand against the wall and dropped her head into her hands.

‘Where are they?’ yelled Rekker. He pounded a fist on a table. ‘Let’s load up and show these uphive pounders what happens when you mess with Silverside!’ The gangers started shouting, filling Jula’s with howls of rage. Chib scowled and nodded. His blood brothers and sisters snarled and spat oaths, hissing threats and vowing their devotion to Jerrick’s memory.

This was what it meant to be an underhiver: this was the rage born of pure desperation. All of them, from Bugeye right up to Little T and Soter, had seen mothers and sons and friends killed in the streets for a pocketful of coins or a new pair of shoes. They had all seen fathers and daughters and cousins worked to death in the desalination banks, their skin parched and withered from salt exposure, hanging loose on their bones from dehydration, making wages barely enough to cover their own lodging, all so a handful of uphive families could sell fresh water off-world, sleeping on trisilk sheets and eating stuffed vorder leaves. This howling frenzy, this was what happened when the pressure got to be too great, when the people with the boot on their throats pushed them too far. It would only end in blood, now. Chib found himself screaming along with Zaylin and Bugeye.

‘That doesn’t sound like Arbites,’ said Little T. The chaos dimmed, at least a little. Several voices cried out in opposition, but the veteran ganger held up his hands to stave them off. ‘Listen. The Hyd-Rats didn’t do anything to justify a kill order. Any of y’all ever hear about a squad of Arbites pulling something like this?’ He pointed down to Jerrick’s corpse. ‘Wasn’t no arbitrator shotgun did this, neither. We don’t know the first thing about who’s out there, and running half-assed into the dark ain’t gonna do Jerrick or anybody else any good.’

‘Who gives a damn?’ Trexx leapt atop a table near the boarded-up windows at the front of Jula’s, bellowing to address the entire assembly. They fell silent for her in a way they hadn’t for Little T. Chib nodded. Little T had been trying to mute the fire inside of them, but Trexx was stoking it. And tonight, every one of them was in a mood to burn.

‘Trexx,’ said Little T, ‘listen–’

‘No!’ she shouted. She pointed her flipknife at Little T, then swung it wide to gesture at the city behind her. ‘We’re dyin’ out there, Tee! I don’t give a frak if it was the marshals, the Arbites or the damned Guard! Someone killed three of our people tonight!’ She held up a hand as if offering up a poisoned fruit to the gang before her. ‘Did you all join a gang to just sit around and take beatings from these scummers? I don’t know about you, but I crewed up with the Seventy-Sevens so I could be the one doing the kickin’ for once!’

‘Yeah!’ screamed Rekker. Chib and Zaylin did the same, along with several other gangers.

‘Let’s get out into the streets,’ she yelled. The gang cheered. ‘We’re gonna find these back-shooting pounder scum, saw them into pieces and mail each little chunk to a different pounder precinct to show them what happens to stum-heads that frak around with the Seventy-Sevens!’ She raised a fist above her head. The gang roared with collective bloodlust.

There was no warning. The first shot hit Trexx in the hip and exploded, blasting a fine mist of meat and bone over the faces of the screaming gangers and pitching the violet-haired ganger to the floor like a discarded rag. The wall of boarded windows behind her disintegrated as gunfire poured into Jula’s.

Chib hit the ground the moment the gunfire started. Zaylin had thrown herself down almost at the same time he had. Bugeye stood staring, shocked at the chaos around him. Gunfire poured into the restaurant. Explosive rounds detonated against the walls like grenades. Chib grabbed Bugeye’s arm and yanked him to the ground. He wrenched a fallen chair between the three of them and the weapons fire, knowing it would offer little protection.

All around them, the air was filled with the stench of burnt fyceline and spilled blood. Trexx’s left leg still lay on the table she’d been standing on. Someone’s stray round had hit a halon-pipe, and the air had begun slowly filling with tendrils of thin, cold, white smoke. The least experienced gangers were cut down in moments, too confused and terrified to commit to a course of action before the flood of gunfire tore them to pieces. The rest of the gang reacted in the manner of cornered rats, baring their teeth and lashing out at the hand that would crush them. A few of them took cover behind the bar, leaning over the top of it to shoot blindly out into the darkness. The bravest and most foolish pressed themselves against the wall the attack was coming through, clinging to the low brick base, exposing only enough of themselves to fire out at their attackers. If they were able to see anything in the blackness, they didn’t call it back.

Chib’s head snapped around at the sound of the storeroom door bursting open. He had a vision of the Arbites attacking them from the inside of their own hideout, having breached the wall while the gang was distracted by the attack from outside. Instead, Little T came striding through the smoke, a Guard-issue lasrifle slung over one shoulder, cradling his custom-built heavy stubber in his arms. The cyclic, multi-barrel weapon was a marvel of hive engineering, capable of laying down as many shots as an entire gang’s worth of small-arms fire.

Little T braced himself and levelled the heavy stubber at the bank of windows. With a short whine, the barrels spun up and spat hot death back through the breach. The feed belt rattled at Little T’s side, shell casings sprayed out onto the floor. The dark-skinned ganger roared, standing tall as explosive bolts tore the room around him to pieces. Gangers at the wall echoed his rage, bracing themselves and adding to his avalanche of gunfire.

The enemy fire paused, and Little T tossed the lasrifle to Soter. The savage gang leader caught the gun and slid behind a table, taking aim at the windows. Little T knelt by Chib and the other juves.

‘Get out of here,’ he said. Chib looked around in confusion. ‘Use the storeroom.’

Chib shook his head. A round from the darkness beyond the window hit one of the gangers, who flew backwards with the impact of the explosion.

‘I ain’t afraid of pounders,’ he said. ‘Gimme a piece, Tee. We can help.’ Chib’s friends echoed his bravado, but their bluster was a lie: the truth was that they were more afraid of facing the horrors of the street without the strength of a gang beside them.

Little T rose to his feet.

‘We’re already done up, li’l bit. Get you gone before they get inside.’

‘Stand tall!’ Little T yelled to the rest of the Seventy-Sevens, even as the juves scrambled for safety. ‘Stand tall for Jerrick and Goddy Sten!’ Then he was gone, pushing through the thickening smoke, the muscle-bound ganger’s bellows all they could tell of him. ‘Arbites and marshals alike are afraid to step foot in Zone 77! Spell it out for these bastards! Spell it in blood!’ Chib started looking around the floor, trying to find a pistol on one of the dead gangers. He was a Seventy-Seven, and he wasn’t going to cut and run now.

Chib heard the crunch of wood and the dull thunking sound of something hitting the floor, and he didn’t need to see the thrown object to know what it was. He slammed into Zaylin and Bugeye, knocking them to the ground before the frag grenade went off. A renewed salvo of enemy gunfire accompanied the explosion.

Chib slung his springbow over his shoulder and rose, rushing towards the storeroom in a hunched half-run. The smoke was too thick to see anything, but he could hear the gangers by the window screaming. Chib and the other juves dashed into the storeroom, slamming the door behind them.

‘Come and get it!’ Little T’s roaring battle cry rose even over the other mayhem, still rallying the gangers outside. ‘Come in and get some! Welcome to Silverside, you mother–’ His screams and those of the other gangers rose in pitch and became incoherent, undercut by the horrible sound of revving chainblades.

‘What the frak is going on?’ Zaylin yelled. Chib shook his head. The street pounders always marched under a semblance of law and order. They suppressed rebellion and crime with shocking brutality, true, but this wasn’t a crackdown. This was a slaughter.

Chib looked around the storeroom. Little T’s workbench stood, cluttered, covered with various weapons in states of disrepair. All the serviceable guns were already in the hands of the Seventy-Sevens being murdered outside their door.

‘Bar the door,’ said Bugeye. His voice was cracked, laden with terror. ‘Maybe there’re some grenades.’ He started rifling through dust-covered boxes that hadn’t been disturbed since Jula’s had been an actual eatery.

‘The loading hatch!’ Chib yelled. The other two juves looked where he was pointing. There was a single steel hatch set midway up the exterior wall. Once upon a time it had been used to offload crates of foodstuffs from trucks in the street, the loaders simply extending a roller-ramp through the portal and then hurling boxes into the storeroom. Now it was their best chance at survival.

Chib wrenched the locking pin back, and it gave way with a rusty squeal. He grabbed the ring in the centre of the hatch and tried to yank it open, but the corroded metal refused to budge. Outside, a deafening crash announced the arrival of something huge tearing its way through the front door of the hideout. Desperate, Chib pointed to a pry bar on Little T’s workbench. Zaylin grabbed the tool and slammed it under the lip of the hatch. Bugeye threw his weight on the end of the bar, and the hatch popped open, showering flakes of rust onto the three of them.

Chib laced his fingers together, boosting his friends through the hole. Bugeye dropped to the street below, but Zaylin clung to the wall, offering a hand to pull Chib up through their escape portal. Chib grabbed her outstretched hand, but without help she lacked the strength to pull him up. They both fell backwards, Zaylin to the street outside, and Chib back into the storeroom. Behind him, Chib could hear heavy footsteps and the sound of protesting wood as something massive forced its way past the counter to the storeroom door. Terror gave him strength, and he jumped for the lip of the hatchway, pulling himself out into the darkness, away from the monster behind him.

The side street was dark, just like the rest of the hive. The sound of gunfire had killed what little light there was in Seidon City. Wary citizens had covered their glow-globes and lume-sticks, ducking under their furniture and praying that the shots weren’t intended for them. Fires burning in the front of the ganghouse provided the only light, casting the street in yellow and orange. None of the scummers had dared set up a waste-bin fire outside of the Seventy-Sevens’ ganghouse, and the streets were almost completely hidden by the darkness.

‘Where do we go?’ Bugeye looked back and forth, panic rising in his eyes.

Chib was already prying at the edge of a service hatch. Zaylin and Bugeye joined him, levering the rusted metal lid up with their fingers. One by one they dropped into the maintenance crawl beneath.

The serviceways that ran between Seidon City’s zones were a juve’s best friend: too small and cramped for an adult, or heavily armoured marshal, to navigate, and riddled with side passages, ductwork and maintenance hatches, allowing an athletic youth easy shortcuts throughout the city. The power conduits were cool and silent, but the tox and hydro pipes that provided Seidon City’s lifeblood continued to thrum, pumping liquids both pure and foul from one destination to another.

‘What now?’ whispered Zaylin. The three of them were hunched over; even a juve had to navigate the serviceways on all fours.

‘We head to the K-street habs,’ said Chib. ‘They’re all abandoned, so whoever’s killing everyone won’t be going there, and the K-habs don’t drop into 78, so we can just crawl right under them.’ His friends nodded, but he continued anyway, just to reassure himself by saying it out loud. ‘Then we sit pretty with a few tons of hab-block over our heads, and wait for the lights to come back.’

The thud of footsteps on the street above brought the nodding, satisfied juves up short. All three of them stared at one another in horror. Chib covered his lume-stick, wondering with rising panic if the things that had destroyed Jula’s could somehow see through the street.

In the sudden silence of the serviceway, they could hear the creaking metal grates as something heavy strode overhead. Chib tapped Zaylin and Bugeye on their legs, prodding them down the serviceway towards K-street. The three of them began picking their way blindly over the twisting pipes and conduits, afraid even to breathe too loudly. Chib allowed himself the luxury of hope: they were small, they were escaping. They only had to make it a few streets away to lose themselves, and let the monsters pursue more entertaining prey.

The service hatch the three of them had struggled to even lift was torn away into the darkness with a shriek of abused metal. Chib and his friends scrambled down the serviceway, all thoughts of stealth gone. The booming report of an explosive round filled the tunnel, briefly illuminating the trio in the flash of its impact on the wall behind them. Zaylin shrieked as the rancid stench of sewage sprayed into the crawl space, pouring forth from a ruptured pipe.

‘Turn left!’ Chib yelled as they came to a branch in their path, ‘towards K-street!’ He pointed to the right, however, and led his friends in the opposite direction his panicked cry had indicated to their pursuers. Crawling through the darkness, he put his hands along the wall, searching for the slatted fins of a wall duct. When he finally found one, he smashed it with his shoulder. The thin metal buckled, the retaining screws popping loose. Chib wrenched the flimsy duct cover free, and wiggled backwards into the space beyond.

A heavier person would have plummeted straight to the bottom, but the three juves were as skilled at duct-crawling as any of Seidon City’s youth. They climbed down the shaft, arms and legs pressed into the walls to keep them from falling, until they found a ground-level vent they could kick out.

Zone 78 was no less dark than 77 had been. The street they found themselves on was lit by a small scattering of waste-bin fires, but their tenders had abandoned them at the sound of approaching violence, and the weak, flickering light they provided only served to deepen and exaggerate the shadows around them. Chib pulled his lume-stick out briefly to get his bearings. Spiralling graffiti on a nearby wall advertised the area as Augurs territory, which told Chib all he needed to know. The Augurs had been wiped out in a clash with the F-Street Wardens when he was about nine, but they had only ever held a small territory to begin with.

‘What do we do?’ Bugeye hissed. Chib shook his head, his mind reeling too much to realise Bugeye couldn’t see him. The things hunting them weren’t even content to let a juve escape their wrath, it appeared.

‘A serviceway down here,’ said Zaylin. ‘We can still find a place to hide.’

‘No,’ said Chib. ‘They can still get us in a serviceway. If they’re tracking us, they’ll just blow us out with a grenade, or tear their way in.’ He snapped his fingers as an idea occurred to him. ‘The Falls.’

The other two said nothing. Chib read the fear in their silence, and he didn’t blame them. The Falls were in the lowest levels of Seidon City’s hydro district, the sumps that ran beneath the entire city. Down there the auto-desalinators ran constantly, filling the air with a mechanical racket at all hours. Even with the power off, the desalinators kept running: the water of Seidon City was too precious to let go to waste. More than just water pipes ran down into the Falls, however. The tox pipes from the chem-plants, the waste sluices, fuel conduits for the generatoria: everything that needed to be piped a great distance through the hive dropped into the Falls to run underneath the city.

Down in the darkness of the Falls, a person could lose even the most determined of trails. Auspex and therm-scan were useless, the constant cacophony of chugging pipes and hissing pressure valves drowned ambient noise. The stench of industrial lubricant and leaking chemicals obscured even the heightened senses of the cyber-mastiffs.

A burst of gunfire drew their attention down the abandoned street.

‘That’s coming from the grav-ramp,’ said Bugeye. He turned back to Chib and Zaylin with a face paled in renewed horror.

‘They’re coming for us.’ Chib scowled, a suspicion he couldn’t quite give voice to weighing at the back of his mind. So far, the enemy had torn through every defence without effort, seen through every downhive trick. It was a miracle they’d even got enough respite to catch their breaths.

The rattling explosions were punctuated by the sharp, high whine of a chainblade. Far down the street, only barely visible in the thin light of the street fires, a huge shape stomped into the street.

Chib ducked down, scuttling back into the duct. The hunters coming after them were too large to manoeuvre the serviceways, but it seemed they were determined to continue their hunt nonetheless. Behind him, he could hear Zaylin and Bugeye following.

The truth was, their fears weren’t unfounded. The only life forms that called the Falls home were those people desperate enough to live in such a hellish landscape. Mutants, heretics and the worst criminals in the city all went to places like the Falls to avoid the eye of the Imperium, and were loath to share their living space with intrusive hivers. Chib was less concerned with anyone in the Falls than he was the monstrous thing hunting him and his friends. Indeed, he hoped that the inhabitants of the Falls might provide alternative targets for their pursuers.

The duct rattled with a titanic impact. Chib had to press his full weight into the sides of the metal chute to keep from falling. Above him, he could hear a squeal of tearing metal, and a panicked shrieking that was so high and terrified he couldn’t tell if it was Zaylin or Bugeye.

Chib felt a weight pressing on his shoulders, and let loose from the sides of the chute, slowing himself as little as possible. He rocketed down the duct, fear of being crushed compelling all the speed he dared.

The impact with the bottom of the duct came without warning, and forced his knees up to crack the bottom of his chin. A moment later, smothering, crushing weight descended on him, driving his jaw into his knees all over again.

Then the weight was gone, and Chib felt a small hand pulling him up and back. He stood, shaking slightly, but managed to wiggle out of the vent behind him. Bugeye crouched against the wall, just outside of the opening, tears on his face.

‘What was that?’ Chib snapped, looking back into the duct. ‘Where’s Zaylin?’

‘Thing got Zaylin,’ Bugeye said. ‘We were coming down, and it just reached straight through the duct. It was a huge hand, and it was all metal, and it grabbed her by the hair and then she was gone.’ Bugeye rocked himself back and forth, his breath coming fast and shallow.

‘Take deep breaths,’ said Chib, ‘or you’re gonna pass out.’ He needed Bugeye if he was going to survive, and shock was one of the surest ways a young ganger could get themselves killed. The first time he’d got caught in a crossfire, the strain had been too much for him. He could still only recall the ambush in flashes. Rekker standing on a garbage bin, screaming and firing pistols into a storefront; a body of a Hyd-Rat lying in the street, a springbow bolt in its throat; rolling beneath a grav-car, hyperventilating as he frantically tried to reload his bow, not yet aware that he’d pissed himself: only snapshots of what had happened. That had just been a street market shoot-out. This was so much worse.

‘You’re going to be okay,’ he told Bugeye. ‘You get through this, it gets easier. Promise.’ Chib knew he was lying, but it was for the best. There would be nightmares, yes, and Bugeye would probably never be able to crawl inside a serviceway after tonight without fighting down unreasonable panic, but at least he would be alive.

Chib took the opportunity to scan their surroundings. Down here, in the Falls, there was light. Not much, but the soft glow of maintenance panels and the warning lights near overpressure vents gave enough illumination for a savvy juve to pick their way through the darkness. He reminded himself to take his own advice and breathe.

The booming explosion made them both jump.

‘That had to have come from above,’ said Bugeye, but both of them knew he was lying to himself. Like most hivers, their ability to pinpoint the origin of echoing noises was excellent. Even through the din of the machinery, there could be no mistaking that the noise had come from deeper in the maze of pipework.

‘Maybe it’s just a pipe giving way,’ whispered Bugeye. ‘It can’t have got down here that fast.’

‘That was the same sound as before,’ said Chib. The double beat of impact and explosion was unmistakeable. ‘They’re in the Falls.’ Chib slung his springbow over his back and headed into the forest of tubes and conduits.

His instinct had been correct. The pipes were spaced so closely that even he and Bugeye had to squeeze between them, wiggling over some and under others where they ran parallel to the floor, ducking the hissing steam from leaky joints. Occasionally he heard another bolt-round firing in the darkness, a pointed reminder that the predators were still out there, but Chib reasoned they had to be sticking to the largest passages through the field of pipes. Still, the two juves kept to the smallest passages they could find, travelling in as much silence as they could manage.

Over the sound of clanking machinery and pumping chemicals, Chib almost didn’t hear the soft mechanical purr until it was too late. Eyes widening in realisation, he spun around and clamped a hand over Bugeye’s mouth, pointing frantically ahead of them with the other. Bugeye looked dutifully where his friend was pointing. The passage they were following branched around a large hydro pipe, but it appeared clear. There didn’t appear to be any hiding places or tripwires. He looked back and shook his head.

Chib pursed his lips in exasperation and pointed to his ear, then pointed back the way they were headed. Bugeye listened closely. His face paled when he finally detected it too: a soft mechanical chugging sound, almost completely inaudible under the noise of the Falls. He looked back to Chib.

What is it? he mouthed, holding his hands up in confusion. Chib pantomimed holding up a knife, then rotated his free hand over the imaginary blade. A chainblade. Bugeye’s mouth went slack, his eyes desperately looking back and forth for an escape route.

Chib thought for a moment, then licked his lips. This was the first opportunity they had to get the drop on their enemy and maybe get a good look at them. He pointed to Bugeye and then down at the spot he was standing on: stay here. Then he crouched low, squirming his way under a bank of pipes, and edged forwards.

He didn’t know what would be lurking behind the huge hydro pipe, but as he inched his way along, he could imagine. A runaway, berserk servitor? A mutant with a stolen suit of power armour? The possibilities were as varied as they were grim, and the thought that such a creature was stalking him specifically made it even worse. What if they were waiting specifically for this? The thought that he might work his way around the pipe to find the thing hunting him laid down on the ground, bolter aimed directly into Chib’s face, nearly caused him to back out.

He crept forwards a finger’s length at a time, ready to squirm backwards the moment he saw something. No shape manifested, however, and eventually he had crawled far enough forwards to see the back of the pipe entirely. There was nothing there. Chib sighed, the paranoid tension draining away.

As if it could hear his relief, the chainsword roared to life behind him. A scream cut through the tunnel, but it was lost beneath the roar of the blade and the shriek of metal on metal. Chib looked back, but he had worked his way around the pipe, and could no longer see Bugeye. He wormed his way to the side, kicked to his feet and pulled his bootknife. He raced around the pipe, his concern for his friend outweighing the survival instinct that told him to flee instead.

There was no giant thing menacing his friend. In fact, there was nothing at all where he had left Bugeye. He looked around, confused. There was no blood, no bullet casings, no footprints leading away, not even any sign of what the chainsword had cut through. There was no evidence that anyone had ever been in the pipes with Chib at all. Chib frowned, held his breath and listened carefully.

At first, nothing. Then, there, to his right: the soft chug of an idling chainblade. Realising the danger he was in, Chib lurched to his left, pounding his way down the passage. The chainblade growled over his shoulder, squealing as it slashed through pipes, spraying containment fluids over Chib’s fleeing back. He could hear the whir of the blade’s teeth mere inches from his ear. Chib lowered his head and pumped his arms, powering his way forwards as fast as his legs would take him. Behind him, he heard an enraged bellow and the crash of pipes being torn away.

Chib squirmed his way through a pair of pipes, the sound of pounding footsteps so close behind him he could feel the vibrations in his feet. He ducked under a string of electrical conduits, bundled together as thick as a tyre. The obstacles between himself and the pursuing enemy bought him precious seconds, and he used them to climb. Using the thick union of pipe elbows as hand and footholds, he scrambled up, scampering along a long length of pipe on hands and knees.

A round exploded in the ceiling above Chib’s head, and he nearly fell. Heart hammering, he dropped onto the flat top of a coolant tank. A second shot rang out, and the pipe Chib had been crawling on burst open, sagging underneath the weight of the sewage flowing out of it.

Chib scowled. He was never going to outrun his pursuer. He didn’t know how the thing tracked him, how it moved so fast, or even why it was pursuing him in the first place. What he did know was that he was tired of running. He slid himself off the side of the coolant tank and lowered himself to the ground, then set off through the pipes again. He was scared still, but he controlled his fear: he could move quickly without making a racket and advertising his location. Chib knew that staying quiet wouldn’t keep his pursuer from finding him, but it would at least slow them down.

He clambered over a huge steam vent, and froze at a metallic clanging sound. Chib unslung his springbow, his eyes searching for a target. After a moment, he saw a cloud of billowing steam issue out of a nearby pipe, and recognised the clang as a pressure relief outlet. Chib crept closer, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.

The pipe ran at chest height for a grown-up, easily large enough for an adult to hide in. A corpse was sprawled underneath it, and Chib looked over his shoulder, wondering if this was another ambush. He couldn’t hear his pursuer crashing through the pipes, but neither did he detect the low growl of the chainsword. Chib poked the body, but it didn’t respond. Instead, a gout of chem-steam burst from the pressure outlet with a metallic clang.

Chib looked at the pressure valve: a large clapper on the side of the pipe which swung on its hinge when enough pressure built up behind it to raise its weight. Most likely the release was a secondary system, and the pipe was damaged further along its length, unable to vent the pressure normally. The corpse was covered in hideous burns on the face and hands, but the clothing wasn’t the rags and rat-leather of one of the dregs that called the Falls home. The body belonged to a downhiver like Chib, someone who’d come to the Falls to hide from the murderers on the streets. Chib patted the corpse down, looking for a weapon, but the only thing he found on the man was a flipknife with the blade snapped off. The corpse’s skin was still warm from where the chem-steam had cooked it. It couldn’t have been dead more than an hour.

Chib threw one of the corpse’s arms over his shoulder. The body weighed more than he thought it would, but he had a plan, and he wasn’t going to lose out on his one opportunity because his back wasn’t strong enough for the task. He managed to heave the top half of the corpse onto the pipe, and with the steam conduit supporting part of the weight, he slid the body down like a sealing clamp, covering the pressure release. With the body balanced, Chib pulled his jacket off and used it to tie the corpse’s arms over the steam pipe, lashing it in place.

He stepped back to inspect his handiwork. Unless he was standing right next to the body, it looked just like a hiver trying to climb up the pipe to safety. His pursuer might see through the ruse, but it was worth a shot, and he was running out of time.

About ten yards from the trap he found it: a bank of sewage overflow pipes badly in need of repair. Chib climbed on top of them, ignoring the foul stench and the grime which dribbled out from an identical bank of pipes overhead. With any luck, the odour would obscure him even further. A high-pitched squeal emanated from beneath the corpse he had positioned, and Chib dropped to his stomach.

He grinned in the darkness. The squeal rose to a piercing scream of pressure struggling to escape from the pipe. Whoever this thing was, hunting gangers through the hive, they were about to learn you didn’t frak with the Seventy-Sevens.

The pursuer came around a corner, silent as a shadow. A curtain of steam shielded it from view, but after a moment of listening to the scream from the pipe, the thing approached closer, the huge silhouette breaching the mist like a performer emerging through a stage curtain. All of Chib’s optimism evaporated at that moment.

Chib could have stood on Trexx’s shoulders and still not been eye to eye with it. Arms the size of lightpoles gripped a combination of weapons: a three-foot-long purring chainsword, and a bolt pistol that even Little T would have struggled to hold. The riot suits of the arbitrators were like pauper’s rags compared to the smooth ceramite power armour he was looking at, coloured a deep crimson save for the pearly white of the arms, helmet and massive pauldrons. The armoured barrel chest, with its glittering onyx aquila spread across it, was an image Chib had only ever seen in the baroque statuary and bas-reliefs decorating the Administratum buildings. An Imperial Space Marine.

The titanic warrior leaned around a corner, examining the bait Chib had laid out. Chib’s mind raced. Why was a Space Marine hunting them? What could he possibly have done? And how could he even begin to think he could fight one?

‘Because if you don’t, you’re going to die,’ Chib said to himself. Little T, Soter, Trexx, even Rekker: at the end of the day a Seventy-Seven didn’t lay down and die for anyone. Not for a marshal, not for an arbitrator, and not even for a Space Marine.

The Space Marine leaned over the body, reaching out its chainsword to prod the corpse. It shifted slightly, a thin ribbon of chem-steam wafting out. Chib exhaled slowly, just like Little T had taught him the day he first put the springbow in Chib’s hands. He pulled the trigger.

The bolt struck the pipe just to the side of the corpse. The tip of the bolt hitting the steel pipe created a tiny spark, but it was enough. The Space Marine barely had time to throw an arm over its face before the vapour escaping the pipe ignited. It burned for a split second, a halo of green fire ringing the dead hiver, before the pipe exploded.

Green fire roared out, enveloping the Space Marine. Shards of steel blew across the forest of pipes, shredding dozens of them. A piece of shrapnel the size of Chib’s hand lodged in the conduits he was lying on, nearly decapitating him. He was already reflexively reloading his springbow.

Automated shut-offs kicked in, clamping the flow of waste steam, and prevented the explosion from travelling more than a few yards down the pipe. Fire suppression systems ejected billowing white smoke into the area, extinguishing the flames almost immediately. Chib watched the dispensers venting the white gas carefully; if the perlex reached his hiding place, he would need to move before it suffocated him. He grinned wildly, scarcely able to believe his luck. He hoped a few of the gang had survived the attack – he needed someone to brag to.

His grin disappeared as the smoke billowed, a huge form moving within the cloud. Chib felt an icy stab of fear in his gut, insisting to himself that it was impossible. Despite his internal protest, the white and crimson form of the Space Marine strode through the smoke, bolt pistol aimed directly ahead. The Space Marine’s head swivelled slowly from side to side, and then fixed directly at Chib’s hiding place. The figure locked eyes with Chib, raised the bolt pistol and took a step forwards.

Chib’s reflexes kicked in. No matter what Trexx or Goddy Sten said about juves, or what Rekker had said about him in particular, Chib was a true Seventy-Seven to the very end. If he was going to die, he would die fighting, grasping any chance at survival, no matter how small. Still prone, he lowered his eye to the springbow, picked the only vulnerable spot he could see, and fired.

The springbow bolt hit the Space Marine in the armpit of the arm holding the pistol, in the black joint between the ceramite plates. The warrior stopped, staring at Chib for a brief moment before turning his head to look at the bolt protruding from his armpit. The joints looked rubberised; Chib hadn’t realised they were somehow both armoured and flexible. He couldn’t even tell if his shot had penetrated the seal of the joint, or just lodged between the two armour plates. The Space Marine pulled the bolt free. In his massive hand, it seemed so tiny and insignificant. The gargantuan warrior’s head turned, with glacial slowness, to lock eyes with Chib once more.

The Space Marine rushed forwards with a speed beyond anything his size would indicate. The warrior smashed his left arm through the pipes, grabbed Chib by the chest and pinned him into the ground with one hand. Chib screamed defiant curses, spat every profanity he could bring to his lips. He thrashed his body, but there was no point. His arms were pinned to his sides, his springbow lost in the darkness. He muttered a defiant curse and waited for the gauntlet to crush his bones.

The end never came. Instead, the Space Marine’s enormous ceramite-clad hand curled around Chib’s chest, and hauled him up and over one shoulder. The Space Marine set off through the Falls, carrying his prisoner with him. Chib’s captor was none too gentle, and any thought of escape was buried beneath a curtain of agony emanating from his knee, ribs and shoulder.

Exhaustion was beginning to set in. His limbs and joints ached from a score of injuries suffered throughout the evening. Adrenaline-flooded muscles, finally at rest, seized and cramped. Chib’s head, banging occasionally against the rim of the Space Marine’s pauldron, began to swim. He wasn’t sure how long the Space Marine walked, only that his captor navigated the twists and turns of the underhive as if he had been born to them.

Finally, the Space Marine exited the Falls, returning to the streets, and Chib found he could barely focus enough to wonder why he was being spared. Execution? Experimentation? He was in too much pain to give any possibility much thought. He closed his eyes and prayed silently for his torment to end swiftly.

Finally, the Space Marine dropped him, sending a fresh wave of agony through Chib’s bruised body. Chib’s captor had taken him to a vacant warehouse, somewhere within Hyd-Rat territory if the gang tags were any indication. Eyes open again, Chib was unsurprised to see several other Space Marines, all clad in the same armour. He was more surprised to see several other juves lying on the warehouse floor with him. Most of them were wearing ganger colours. He recognised Mathy Nittle, who had once lived on his hab-block but had gone on to join the F-Street Wardens.

Before he could study the other children too closely, one of the Space Marines approached them. All of those who were still conscious raised their hands to defend themselves, despite the futility of continued resistance. The Space Marine lifted an arm encased in a horrific-looking weapon: a swollen metal fist with a variety of gruesome implements projecting from it, including a wicked drill and a gleaming chainblade. Several of the juves made growls or gasps as they saw the menacing device, but the warrior merely unlocked his helmet with a hiss of escaping air, removing it to expose the brutal face beneath. Several grisly scars crossed the warrior’s craggy features, from the square jaw to the high forehead studded with metal bolts driven into the skull.

‘I am Brother Herodytes, Apothecary of the Crimson Shades,’ said the Space Marine. His voice was deep and loud, like the tolling of a cathedral bell. ‘We have received the blessing of Governor Galliarnos to select new recruits from the population of this world.’

The Space Marine regarded the score of youths in front of him. One or two of the juves were weeping silently. Several had soiled themselves. Chib heard one of them moaning no, no, no over and over again, and realised that the droning plea was coming from his own lips.

‘We have made our selection.’

THE SPIRIT OF COGS

John French

‘What dreams sleep in iron that by the turning wheel mankind has brought to waking?’

– from the Smith’s Address as spoken
in the Penitent Cycles of Terra

‘There are ghosts in machines.’ Glavius-4-Rho looked up from the mirror of the blade in his hands as he spoke.

The former Sister of Battle sat on the floor of the armourium, legs crossed, armour replaced by a grey hessian smock. She had been sat there ever since she had brought him the sword. It was damaged, the edge notched and a tine sheared from the cross-guard. He had taken it from her and begun the repairs as soon as she had shown it to him. He had not grieved for the damage done to the sword – some things were created to be damaged.

‘Ghosts?’ said Severita at last. ‘Machines have spirits – that is what all of your priesthood say, isn’t it?’

He felt the servos in his frame twitch as a plasma flame lit on his workbench. Part of him wondered if starting this exchange had been wise. He was a magos after all, a high guardian of the truths and mysteries of the most sacred Machine-God…

No… he was not. That was factually incorrect. He had failed. He had lost the machines and knowledge entrusted to his care. He was a penitent, grey-robed, where once he had been clad in red. Without rank where once he had been most high. He served Inquisitor Covenant now – that was his function.

He looked again at Severita. Like him, she was an outcast from her own kind. She had been a warrior of the Adepta Sororitas but some transgression had seen her cast from her order, service to Covenant replacing the bonds to her sisters. He liked her, and she had made a habit of talking to him. She asked him questions, questions not about the function of things but about him, about what he had experienced, about what he believed. He did not understand why. A non-logical part of his mind thought that she was trying to redeem him.

He focused his attention on the sword for fifteen seconds, his servo-arms holding it steady as he dipped its blade into the plasma flame on his workbench. Blue fire washed over its edge and sent light fizzing from its mirror finish. The beam cut off and he held the blade as it cooled.

Severita was still looking at him, head cocked, waiting for a reply to her question.

Glavius-4-Rho selected a mode of expression that he thought was correct. ‘All machines possess spirits. That is a fact and truth. I did not speak of spirits. I spoke of ghosts.’

The skin around Severita’s eyes creased further. Glavius-4-Rho turned back to the blade and focused the plasma flame to a narrow knife of fire.

‘There are no such things as ghosts,’ Severita said. ‘Daemons, yes, but not ghosts.’

‘Are you certain you wish to understand what I mean?’ he asked, staring down at the blade as it began to glow with heat.

‘I would have an answer if you would give it.’

He felt the seconds pass and the cogs in his chest tick over.

‘As you command,’ he said, and began to speak.

It was 401 days after my ascendancy to the rank of magos when I went to waken the machine in the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad.

Not all of those who serve the machine are made in the sight of its great forges. I was one such. My biological self began its life cycle on Mithras. The techno-clans of the second conurbation were my originators. I cannot remember my direct biological forebears. The first level of mental augmentation removed those memories when I was fourteen years. I do not miss them. I cannot remember what to miss.

I survived the early years of un-augmented life. I showed aptitude in assembly and logic application. I have memory residue from those times: a mental image of a drop of blood on fingers, geometric blocks of bronze alloy tumbling from their grasp, shouts of admonition, the flash of an electro-whip. I hear cries sometimes. I don’t know whose cries they are.

The representatives of the priesthood had already marked me as a potential subject for induction into their ranks. I was inducted into the orders of artisans. I assimilated the first levels of sacred maintenance and construction processes. I manifested the ability to replicate and memorise without error. I was blessed with machine creations to replace my hands.

At the passing of 21.233 years I was taken within the embrace of the Omnissiah. My sponsors were the Demi-flux Governors, a sanctioned branch concerned with the transference of electro-power and field parameters. There were other sects and branches who had marked me for their ranks. The high induction engines, though, calculated my characteristics being of most use to the Demi-flux Governors. If I had a preference on my path into the priesthood, I no longer store it in my memory – it was and is irrelevant.

I progressed through the levels of flux-savants. Further augmentation was made to my physical and mental architecture. At the point when I was raised to the rank of magos my physical self was 43.56% of the machine. My cognition functioned between 35.45% and 37.23% purity. In form my face was the blank mask of an aspirant, the nerves beneath the skin severed and expressive muscles paralysed. My hands and forearms were plasteel and black carbon. My primary organs had just been replaced, though my torso was still blood and bone. I recall that I was still adjusting to the rhythm of my new heart when I made my journey to Zhao-Arkkad.

Zhao-Arkkad was the first true forge world I had ever seen, and it was like nothing that I had expected. That may seem inconstant to you, but the sacred worlds of Omnissiah are few; our empire exists beside that of the Imperium, entwined with it, and my training had been in the priesthood’s enclaves on Mithras, Glaucon, and in the void forges of Jeddev. Zhao-Arkkad was not an enclave world – it was a world given body and soul to iron, to the furnace and turning wheel, to the song of the blessed electro. But this soul hid beneath a skin of forests. It was a wonder and a paradox.

The fumes of engines were the clouds, and the rains that fell onto the green canopy were rich with radiation and minerals. Predator fauna thrived amongst the equally lethal flora. The Primary Forge-Fane Complexes were buried beneath the ground, connected by tunnels and sealed against life on the surface. In these underground realms, the machine fanes and anvil districts stretched to the limits of the stone walls. Spires of data temples and the chimneys of fume vents rose to the stone ceilings and the thunder of forge hammers blended with the crackle of static leaping from wall to wall and spire to spire. Seeing that, hearing that, feeling that, was one of the most sacred experiences I have ever had.

That moment was brief.

I had thought that I would be installed in one of the electro-fanes; the divine flow of plasma and reactor rituals had been my calling since I had been raised to the cog. Instead I found that I was to be diverted to an isolated facility on the southern continent. No one could give me specific data on the purpose I was to fulfil there or even the name of the facility. I was to travel there by air, departing from an obscure landing pad set in a crater on the surface above the forge complex.

When I arrived at the landing pad, a shuttle was waiting. It bore no marks. That was an anomaly; everything I had seen since my arrival was stamped and marked with code and function. It took off as soon as I arrived.

There were two others with me. The first was a male of largely biological make up, uniformed in the style of the Collegia Titanica, but without markings of Legion or rank. All of his noospheric data was also absent. He was a non-presence. A ghost. He offered me a curt sign of respect, but no further data.

‘What is your allocated personal identifier?’ I asked.

‘Zavius,’ he answered.

‘And your designated rank and organisational placement?’

He did not answer. Not even with a negative.

<He will not comply with any other query,> linked the other individual in the shuttle. She was called Ishta-1-Gamma. She had greeted me formally when I had arrived and made a full data exchange. She was a hermetrix – an initiate into the higher mysteries of data transference, neural linking and communication interface. If information is to the machine as blood is to the biologic, then she was to the machine what a blood doctor is to a living being. Her robes of office were orange, woven with graphite thread. Her noospheric aura was multi-sphered, coloured and patterned with the canticles of data fidelity. Her data transmission was 99.999% flawless. I had to acknowledge that I was impressed.

<He bears the signs of the Collegia Titanica,> I replied. Outside the grey-blue clouds were dragging past the shuttle’s portholes.

<He is a princeps,> sent Ishta-1-Gamma. The pause in my data reply must have communicated a query, because she continued. <He has mind-interface plugs and neural augmentation that are only gifted to those of that rank and position. He has refused all my greetings in all formats. Correction – his data links are shut down and he ignores audio greetings. Strange.>

<Strange?>

<Strange. Unusual or surprising. Difficult to understand or explain.>

<I apologise – I am aware of the word’s meaning. I did not follow your line of reasoning.>

Ishta-1-Gamma’s data aura rippled with symbol sets that denoted amusement in a number of language systems. <It was less of a deduction and more of a non-vital conversational opening,> she sent.

<Oh.>

I paused to parse that for several seconds.

The shuttle was gaining speed towards the southern continents now, weaving between columns of storm cloud. Its engines were singing at optimal output. I could feel the contentment of its spirit in the vibration of its skin. Through the portholes, I could see the waste rivers from the forge complexes’ outflows, a rainbow of reds, blues and oranges draining into green land.

<It is strange…> I transmitted to Ishta-1-Gamma, and looked at her. Her face was an ellipsoid of red ceramic. A quartet of teal eye lenses sat in a band across the top half. A vertical slot sat in the location of a mouth. There were no other features. <Do you have data on where we are going, or our purpose when we arrive?> I asked.

<I do not have that data…> She paused, but the transmission did not close. <But I have some theories based on dispersed logic.>

<You mean what the unblessed would call guesses?>

<Correct.>

A moment of silence on the data link. The wheels in my newly installed cognition implants clicked over. I glanced at Zavius, but the princeps showed no sign of having heard what we were transmitting.

<There is no possibility of the princeps intercepting this exchange,> Ishta-1-Gamma noted.

<Why are you concerned by that?>

<For the same reason you are,> she replied, <because the absence of data is disturbing.>

<Conceded. What are your… guesses as to what is occurring?>

<Facts first – I am a devotee of the divine spark of data and transmission. You are a magos of dataetherica. Neither of us are from this forge world. You arrived 2.45 days ago. I arrived 3.34 days ago. We are outsiders to the structures of this world.>

<The high magi of Zhao-Arkkad may not have available resources in those specialities,> I replied. I could see the possible branches of inference forming from her assembly of facts. Negative emotions were building up in my mental buffers.

<Or they do and the need is for individuals whose absence will not be noted and who have no connections through which to share data with the wider priesthood on this world.>

<There are other possible reasons. Those you have outlined have no greater logical weighting than any other.>

<True.>

Another silence.

The cogs turned in my cranium and the shuttle flew on. The nearest entrance to a forge complex was now far behind us. This was the Nul Zone, a reach of Zhao-Arkkad that hid no machine-filled caverns beneath its green shroud, just a vast area of hostile bio-fauna feeding grounds. Grey and black clouds passed us, and rain began to spatter the window ports and front canopy. Needle-like crags of black rock rose from the ground. Streams of water poured down their sides, bright green or blue with minerals leached from the ground.

I admit that a disturbance had entered my thoughts. Perhaps it was Ishta-1-Gamma’s guesses. Perhaps it was something in the green desolation of the land before us, bare of the shapes of machines and buildings. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I felt a long way from the familiar.

<Landing approach protocols initiated,> transmitted the shuttle’s servitor pilot. A second later I detected a shift in the air pressure. I looked out of the portholes, expecting to see a landing pad rising from the jungle canopy, but there was nothing except a range of mountains. The light was fading.

The shuttle continued to lose altitude. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, but her noospheric aura was repeating a pattern of blank data values. I looked out again. The sides of the mountains were close enough now that they filled the view; a black-grey wall stretched before us. The shuttle began to shake.

Zavius was on his feet, face showing no emotional markers. He moved to the back of the crew space, balancing effortlessly with the vibration of the craft. I felt high-power auspex reach out and burrow into the shuttle.

<Submitting clearance codes,> the pilot servitor broadcast. <Standing by…>

Seconds decremented. The shuttle flew on towards the mountainside.

<Clearance granted. Landing protocol initiated. All praise to the vigilance of the machine.>

The whine of the shuttle’s engines was a scream. The mountainside was so close I could see the canopy lights reflecting off the wet rock. I felt a cold shutter fall across my thoughts as my emotional buffers activated.

Thrusters fired. The shuttle spun around and dropped vertically. The fading light vanished. My eyes captured a brief image of the external view. We were plunging down a vertical shaft…

Melta-bored walls…

Diameter: 33.43 metres…

Gun platforms mounted at 50-metre intervals.

Multi-laser and plasma cannons…

Cabin temperature dropping at 1 degree per 50 metres…

The shuttle’s thrusters fired to the edge of tolerance. We settled to stillness, moisture running off the fuselage. Zavius still stood in front of the rear access ramp. Beyond the canopy I could see guide lights flashing in the dark. We rocked in place for a second, suspended in the freezing air, surrounded by the fog from our thruster jets. Then we settled onto the landing platform. The shuttle’s engines cycled down as the ramp at the back opened.

‘You will follow,’ said Zavius, looking back at us before stalking down the ramp himself. I glanced at Ishta-1-Gamma.

<He appears to have discarded his etiquette protocols…> I transmitted.

‘You will follow,’ came the repeated imperative from beyond the hatch.

<And he is determined to put that freedom to use,> she sent, standing and moving towards the ramp. I noticed that his noospheric halo had shrunk and become a monochrome sphere of basic identification data. The equivalent in flesh might be to see an expressive face become still and set.

<You are concerned about the current situation?> I queried, as I followed.

<You are not?> she replied.

Guns rotated on wall mounts to greet us, tracking our steps as we descended to the landing platform. Multi-spectrum targeting and scanning systems locked on to us. An iris hatch had closed off the shaft above us. As we reached the bottom of the ramp, the guide lights shut down across the landing platform. My sight shifted into the infra-red portion of the spectrum. The air was 8.72 degrees below zero. The heat from the engines was already dissipating. Above ground it was an average of 34 degrees above freezing, but here the moisture in the air, vented from the shuttle’s cabin, fell as frost.

A tall figure, wrapped in a cloak of graphite and carbon thread, waited for us. It had four upper limbs. Each one rested its digits on the top of a chrome cane. Its head sat high on its hunched shoulders. The portion of its anatomy that would be a face on an unblessed human was an arrangement of turning cogs. A single violet eye lens sat on the left of its face. From these augmentations alone I assessed this to be a senior member of the machine priesthood. That being the case, I should have offered supplication, made formal greeting. I did not. Like Zavius this magos gave out no noospheric data and offered no connection hail. Still, I might have bowed anyway, but Ishta-1-Gamma had remained unmoved and so I did the same.

‘Ishta-1-Gamma…’ the waiting figure intoned. It breathed and hissed from its voice speaker. ‘Glavius-4-Rho… You will both submit to the rites of data assessment. Failure to grant access to your data reservoirs and instrumentation will result in immediate life termination and reclamation of the blessed machine components of your forms.’

‘You have not identified yourself,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. Her physical voice echoed loud in the cold dark. The hunched magos rotated its head to look at Zavius and then back to us.

‘My identification is not required,’ it said. ‘You shall comply or the stated consequences will occur.’

‘But after we comply,’ she said, ‘you shall tell us who you are.’

A pause. Seconds counted down in the edge of my sight. I was aware of the wall-mounted weapons trained on me. I could feel the tingle of the power held in their charge coils.

‘Your compliance,’ said the hunched magos. ‘Now.’

<I think I have pushed the parameters of this exchange as far as is wise,> transmitted Ishta-1-Gamma, and then spoke aloud. ‘Compliance.’

Her noospheric aura unfolded, and 0.67 seconds later I felt data-interrogators push into my own systems. It took only 0.33 seconds but left me with a sensation of needles and sharp edges.

‘All is as designated,’ said the grey magos and began to move away across the platform. I could see the flash of hundreds of bladed feet moving beneath the hem of its robes as it glided away from us. Lights outlined a door set into the wall, and a section of rock slid back to reveal a passage beyond. I began to follow, but Ishta-1-Gamma still had not moved.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. The hunched magos paused, and rotated its head backwards without turning around.

‘You may use the designation Atropos,’ said the magos, then continued to glide towards the waiting door.

I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. She transmitted an unresolvable code blurt that would be interpreted organically as a shrug, and we followed Atropos through the door.

It was another 3.67 hours until we saw the reason for our being brought to the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad. I use the term underworld advisedly and in full knowledge of its non-literal meaning and symbolic resonance. The caverns beneath the mountains were a world apart. Silence filled their spaces and unseen watchfulness crowded their shadows. We met few other initiates of the priesthood. Those that we did see offered no greeting and passed without pause. The servitors that we saw moved in their own locked rhythms, their joints so maintained and blessed by oil that they made no sound. I observed signal and interface code locks on every device; there would be no communing with their machine-spirits or workings without the keys to unlock them.

<There is no wider noospheric network to access,> noted Ishta-1-Gamma after we had been walking for an hour.

<Perhaps it is shielded from our awareness,> I ventured.

<Negatory,> she responded. <I am initiated to the fifteenth turning of the mysteries of transmission – I would be able to detect a noosphere presence even if it was obscured. There is nothing. Every mechanism in this place is closed and locked to itself.>

<Apart from us two,> I noted.

<For now,> she replied, and then lapsed into silence. This did little to reduce the disturbance building up in my emotional buffers.

The light in all the passages we passed through was increasingly dim the further we went. The lumen globes and strips faded from clear white blue to stuttering dimness. It became colder. My sensors detected that it was not only heat that was leaching from the air – so was radiation of a number of other types. Power was slowly decrementing from my capacitors. It was as though something beyond the passage walls was drawing in every scrap of energy, a mouth breathing in warmth and light.

We passed many doors, some wide enough for large vehicles or machinery, some so small that only servo skulls or scuttle servitors could have passed through. None of the doors were open, and neither Magos Atropos or Princeps Zavius paused next to any of them.

‘What is to be our purpose here?’ I asked as we passed the latest locked opening. I had asked the same question in five different ways since our arrival, and received no reply. I experienced surprise when Atropos spoke.

‘You are here to wake a machine that has lain long asleep,’ it said.

‘What variety of machine?’ I asked.

‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos.

‘To withhold data is to inhibit the probability of success.’ I detected a sharpness in my reply. My emotional disturbance was bleeding out of its containment.

Atropos halted in front of a circular door set into the passage wall. Slowly the magos extended one of its canes and tapped the surface of the door. Bolts withdrew around its edge. Leaves of metal folded into the rock surround.

‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos, as the last portion of the door slid aside. Distant lights glimmered in the vast space beyond. ‘I can only show you.’

I confess that I did not want to pass through the door. I confess that I also wanted to see what lay at the heart of this underworld. We are made to seek knowledge, to revere it, and for all of the Martian priesthood’s traditions and reverence of the known, we crave the unknown far more.

The space beyond the door was not a chamber – it was a cavern. A platform extended into space, secured to a cliff wall that I could only estimate as being as high as the mountain peaks above. Darkness ran off in every other direction. I walked across the platform to its edge, dimly aware of Ishta-1-Gamma at my side, and Atropos and Zavius following a step behind. The air was cold, so cold that warnings lit the bio-monitors linked to my remaining flesh. There were lights shining on the cavern floor far beneath us. I stepped closer to the edge, my eye lenses adjusting to focus.

‘Be careful,’ said Zavius, his breath powdering to crystal in the air. His flesh suddenly seemed stiff and pale, like a mask pulled over something that was not as pure as a machine, or as kind as flesh. ‘It can unsettle the mind at first sight.’

I did not reply, but took the last step and looked down.

<Sacred oils of the turning wheel…> For a fraction of a second I thought the words might have been mine. Then I noticed Ishta-1-Gamma standing on the edge beside me. <The machine is god…>

Beneath us, half buried in the floor of the cavern, was a Titan. It lay like a fallen monarch found in its grave. Rubble had been cleared away around its sides. Ladders extended down to it from a web of gantries and platforms suspended above it. Stab lights lit its form, pouring brilliance into its crevasses and across its armour plates. If it had stood, its head would have been on a level with our platform, and the guns on its back would have loomed far above us. Figures moved on the gantries. I saw huge power lines and machines whose functions I knew in theory though I had never seen in practice: galvanic wave compressors, gain-output macro regulators, trans-uranic adjusters.

‘How did it get down here…?’ breathed Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘You are attempting to…’ I stated, and turned to look at Zavius and Atropos. ‘You mean to wake it.’

‘Correct,’ said Atropos.

I looked back at the dead god-machine. There was something about it that made me not want to look away from it. As though it might have moved while unobserved.

‘But you mean to wake it in secret…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. She was still looking down at the great machine. Her noospheric halo had faded, its loops of data patterns fraying. ‘This is a machine of majesty, a relic from times now long lost. That it remains here is a marvel – that it might walk again a miracle. Yet you hide it from sight.’

Did I detect a flicker of movement in Zavius’ eyes and a microscopic shift in Atropos’ posture?

‘You are here to perform a function,’ said Atropos. ‘No further clarification is needed.’ It turned and began to move away. ‘Zavius will supply the data relevant to your task. Review it. You will be integrated into the endeavour in five hours.’

‘And that endeavour is to waken the spirit of this machine?’ I asked, inferences and uncertainties still spinning at the edge of my thoughts.

Atropos did not stop, but called in a voice that echoed flatly in the vast space, ‘It shall wake. It shall walk.’

They called the first Titan Artefact-ZA01. That was not its name, of course. The names of machines are impressed upon their form and spirit when they are made. They are not designators. They are specific. They are a form of truth. The Titan had a name; we just didn’t know what it was.

We went down to see it after five hours of preliminary data in-load. A platform hoist lowered us down to the gantry web. I had assimilated all of the data supplied by Zavius. It was sizeable, and had required multiple overrides of fatigue to parse fully. I knew now that Artefact-ZA01 was a Battle Titan, but that variations in its system configuration conformed to no recorded class or pattern. Preliminary investigations had been made into its interior systems, and its reactor and energy transmission systems conformed to those of other Titan engines. At least they did superficially.

There was more, reams and reams of data and analysis, but, for all that, there was much that was screamed by its absence. There was no mention of any propitiatory rites being attempted, no identification codes for the adepts who had made the assessments. It was as though there was no history of the endeavour before this moment, as though the past did not exist.

Again a sensation of unfamiliar emotion filled me as I stepped onto the gantry and looked down at Artefact-ZA01. Burnished metal gleamed beneath the layer of dust that clung to its armour plates. I identified amaranth colouration, what is designated as regal purple by some, gold edging and patches of bone-white lacquer. There was no damage though, no marks of battle that had laid this god low. This cavern was not a grave, it was something else.

‘You will need to get moving,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned to see a figure in the robes of an enginseer limp along the walkway behind us, red robes and augmentation in line with the biological human form. The figure stopped, then cocked its head and gave a stuttering bow that spoke of poorly meshing gears and malfunctioning servos. ‘My apologies, honoured magos, I have still not adjusted to the absence of noospheric connection. I have been here for six months, two days, seventeen hours, five minutes and two seconds and I am still sending data hails that no one receives. Personal introduction – I am enginseer designate Thamus-91.’

‘I am Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ I replied. I was aware that an enginseer designated Thamus-91 was the overseer of primary operations at the excavation; it had been in the data supplied by Princeps Zavius. ‘I have requested a close inspection of Artefact-ZA01.’

‘I know,’ said Thamus-91. ‘I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma.’

Thamus-91 straightened, juddering as she moved.

‘Are your movement systems not functioning as ordained?’ I asked.

She shook her head. Patches of black frostbite mottled the skin of her face above her breath mask.

‘I have stayed close to it for too long,’ she replied. ‘I should have withdrawn, purged and charged, but I was informed that you were coming. I waited. We should move. It is worse if you stay in one place for a prolonged time.’

‘What are you referring to, enginseer?’

‘The drain – you must have noticed.’

‘The power drop-off?’ I queried.

‘Not only power, but energetic potential across multiple forms and spectra – all of it vanishes. It takes time but the closer you are to it–’

‘You are referring to Artefact-ZA01?’

Thamus-91 twitched and I formed an impression that she was suddenly exerting a great deal of control not to look down, not to look at the Titan lying beneath us.

‘Yes,’ she said, and gestured at the unlit candles of appeasement and devotion set along the sides of the gantry. A pair of servitors were moving along them, lighting each with a stuttering blast of flame from nozzle-tipped fingers. The flames began to fade as soon as they flared. ‘You see? Even the sacred flames gutter.’

‘That cannot be an effect related to the artefact,’ I said. ‘I have reviewed the data, and it is clear that none of the Titan’s systems are active, and further it is clear that all attempts to waken them and kindle its energies have failed. Added to which there is no system within the bounds of the blessed incandescence and transference of energy that I am aware of that could produce such an effect.’

Thamus-91 gave a creaking nod. ‘Just so…’ she said, and extended an iron finger to point at a candle flame. ‘And yet…’ The flame shrank as we observed it, and then guttered. I had detected no movement in the cavern’s air.

‘Why is there no record of this phenomena in the data I was supplied?’ I asked. Thamus-91 was still pointing and looking at a wisp of smoke rising from the extinguished candle. She made no move to acknowledge my query. ‘Enginseer Thamus-91?’ I queried. She twitched and turned her head back to me.

‘You are Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ she said. ‘Please accept my greetings. I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma. She has requested a close inspection of the… of Artefact-ZA01. If you wish to accompany her, we should join her now.’

For a second I tried to process what had just occurred. The logic trees branched but offered no clear solution. I moved the unresolved calculations out of my immediate focus.

‘We will proceed with the inspection,’ I said.

Thamus-91 bobbed her head. I noticed her fingers judder open and then closed. She gave no sign of being aware of the movement.

‘As you will it,’ she said. ‘We should get moving.’

Darkness. Darkness that I have never known before or since. Our primary source of illumination failed as soon as we were inside the Titan. Lights simply blinked out, and power sources wound down to nothing. Red capacitor warnings lit my visual display as it began to fog with distortion. The thread of noospheric connection between me and Ishta-1-Gamma vanished. We were in a conduit space accessed by a panel that was normally riveted shut. Before the lights had cut out I had captured an image of a cable-lined wall, clean of dust and corrosion. A hatch into the main engineering compartment lay 2.63 metres below us.

‘I would advise linking with the reservoir power-umbilical,’ said Thamus-91. ‘You may wish to divert available power to tactile sensors – they appear to be more reliable than visual.’

An insulated cable linked all of us to an external plasma generator. I had questioned the need for this contingency. At peak function the generator would have been able to power an entire facility and maintain the equivalent output of three Baneblade tanks, a surfeit of power for our augmetics. Now, standing in the total dark and watching my power reserves fall to zero, I had to acknowledge that I had been wrong.

I opened the umbilical power connection. My systems activated, but the power was flowing in only slightly faster than it was vanishing. I flicked my sight to an augmented infra-vision and the grey snow became a multi-coloured image of heat and energy blooms. Thamus-91 and Ishta-1-Gamma became glowing outlines of orange and red. The power-umbilicals glowed white with radiation bleed. Everything else was a perfect, cold black.

‘We should proceed,’ said Thamus-91. ‘Based on previous explorations we have approximately 15 minutes 21 seconds before our power status becomes non-viable.’ She began to move towards the hatch at the end of the conduit space. She braced herself against the walls with all four limbs, moving with care, pausing at irregular intervals as a twitch ran through her frame.

I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. Without her noospheric halo she seemed diminished, a shadow with the same shape. She returned my look and then followed the enginseer.

Thamus-91 reached the hatch and pulled it open. The void beyond was a black circle. For an instant I had the impression that the static in my eyes had begun to spin around it, like iron dust pulled by a magnetic field.

<The machine is god…>

I snapped my head around to Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

She tilted her head in puzzlement. ‘I am sorry, I do not follow.’

‘You made a noospheric transmission–’

‘I am afraid you are mistaken,’ she said, and I formed a non-logical impression of her displeasure at my assertion. ‘I have been trying to activate noospheric connection since we entered the artefact, and have not succeeded.’

‘I would not try to do that,’ said Thamus-91 from by the hatch. She glanced back at us, twitched. ‘I mean, I would not attempt to access the noosphere in here.’

‘Why?’ asked Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘There was no standing prohibition against it in the site protocols.’

Thamus-91 twitched her shoulders in a deeply biological gesture that I assessed as a shrug.

‘It is best not to,’ was her reply. ‘Follow,’ she said and dropped through the hatch. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, and then complied.

The void beyond the hatch was black, unlit and without any form of radiation for my eyes to pick up. There were only the beams from stab lights attached to us, cutting into the blackness for the brief moment of our fall. I landed on the rear wall of the enginarium compartment. My legs mag-locked to the metal. I froze for a second. A cold, yes, a cold sensation slid through my machine limbs from the point of contact. The air temperature had dropped further, but this… feeling was something else. A chill, a… touch.

‘I estimate that we have twelve minutes twenty-one seconds until we lose umbilical power,’ said Thamus-91. We will need to begin to withdraw in nine minutes. I tender humble advice that the exalted magi begin their assays of the relic’s systems.’

‘Let us begin, then,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma.

I had never been in the sacred inner spaces of a god-machine before. I had been privileged to review schematics and system rituals, but this was the first time I had perceived the wonder of such sacred knowledge made real. I must confess that for sixty-seven seconds I did nothing other than take in our surroundings.

Curved girders ran down the walls of the compartment, each one a single, metallic crystal. Bundles of cables and loops of insulated piping snaked beneath grates and curved out through openings in the metal skin of the walls and ceiling. Hatches marked with runes and yellow and black chevrons led off to either side, to the servitor niches that controlled the arms. A wider set of doors yawned open at the far end, the darkness beyond leading to the head of the god-machine and the throne of its command. I could see the marks where piston claws had pried the doors open – each scrape was marked by a taper of parchment held by a wax seal, the code lines printed on each a prayer to soothe the soul of the machine for the harm done to it.

I found myself moving towards the black space between the open doors. There was something vibrating in the dark beyond…

Blurred haze…

Night beyond night…

Ishta-1-Gamma brushed past me as she made for the open doors. I stopped. Power was still draining from my reserves and the umbilical.

The reactor. I was here to examine the reactor.

I turned my awareness to the reinforced hatch in the floor that should lead to the plasma reactor. The hatch’s seals had already been disengaged, and the plasma chamber was utterly inactive, but I still proceeded with caution as I climbed down into the space beneath. The rewards for recklessness are death and suffering, it is told, and I have never observed it to be otherwise.

I began with augurs of the 1st order and cycled through the Aclaan diagnostic sequence. I also began cataclysms of appeasement for any spirit of power or charge still lingering in the reactor systems. I soon halted this litany. There was nothing. No returns. No energetic signatures of any kind. It was dead and cold, as though plasma and electrostatic convergence had never sung in its heart.

I was about to begin an integrity examination of the plasma ignition array when an alert in my visual analysis systems made me halt. There were conduits bonded and integrated into the system in addition to those that I would have expected – pipes and heavily insulated cables snaked and wormed beside those that the schematics had ordained to be there. I had not noticed them at first, in part because I was not expecting them to be there, and partly because they were not made of standard material. It had to be an error but the close augur returns read them as being made of rock or crystal.

<The machine is god… All is known in the machine…>

I hesitated and then stepped forward, extending a blade from a finger to peel the black insulation from one of the conduits.

‘Magos Glavius-4-Rho!’ The call came from the enginarium. It was Ishta-1-Gamma, her voice loud and sharpened with indications of alarm.

‘Is there something awry?’ I called, blade finger hovering above the insulation. I had a strong inclination not to leave, to look at what strange devices had lived in this walking god’s core.

‘Attend immediately!’ she replied. I let my hand drop and climbed back up into the enginarium compartment and then into the bridge in the Titan’s head.

Ishta-1-Gamma was there. As was what remained of Thamus-91. The enginseer had linked to a mind-interface unit set behind the princeps’ throne. Her remains hung from the interface cable, a slack tangle of metal and desiccated flesh. Frost covered her, the crystals growing even as we watched.

‘I went back into the enginarium for twenty seconds…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘She must have been waiting for the chance to be alone…’

I thought of the cables of crystal and stone threading though the reactor spaces, of the whisper on the noosphere channels and the power and heat draining from the world around this… tomb.

‘We must go,’ I said, and was already lifting Thamus-91’s remains and moving for the hatch out to the world above. Ishta-1-Gamma followed. As we climbed back up to the outer skin of the god, I looked back and thought for a second I saw a face looking up at me from the black circle of the hatchway. I began to climb faster and did not look down again.

<It was not my intention to disturb your rest.> Ishta-1-Gamma’s noosphere halo turned slowly as she entered my workshop.

<I was processing the latest ritual read-outs – there was no rest for you to disturb.>

She advanced from the door as it sealed behind her. I watched her as I parsed the symbols walking across the parchment spooling from the data-font. I saw her reach out and take an inert plasma coil-disk from my tertiary workbench. She did not look at it, but rolled it between her hands. The gesture had no purpose to it. It was enough to make me halt all my activity. You must understand, nothing in the Priesthood of Mars is without purpose; everything is of the machine and no part of the machine lacks purpose.

I watched her as the data-font clattered and the buzz of cogitator and power transfers dimmed from a cackle to a hum. She seemed to realise what she had done after three seconds. Her noospheric halo flashed through static as she replaced the coil-disk on the workbench, blurting the canticle input of harmony across all primary frequencies.

<Your pardon,> she said. <I am…>

<Pardon granted,> I replied. She shifted, looking around the workspace at the test components lying under their seals, and parchments of quieting.

I waited.

She had not been the same since that first excursion into the Artefact-ZA01. We had made a full report to Atropos about the demise of Thamus-91. The senior magos had accepted the data, but had requested no clarification or further analysis. I could not help but form a list of possible ideas as to why: the senior magos was uninterested in what had happened, the data that we supplied needed no further clarification or the incident held no new data. This last possibility clung to me. Atropos did not ask for further data because the magos knew what had happened. It had happened before.

Ishta-1-Gamma had demanded more data access. The reply from Atropos had been simple. If we wanted answers, wake the machine. If we wanted knowledge, wake the machine. If we wanted to perform our duty to Omnissiah and knowledge, wake the machine.

We protested, but neither of us had demanded to leave. We had remained, and begun work to do just what Atropos had said. We had worked to wake the machine.

Why? Even now I am not certain as to the answer, or rather, I am not certain there is an answer that would satisfy logic. We like to think that choices are rational, like the turning of cogs, that we leave the weakness of the irrational behind as we shed the weakness of flesh. But the question that does not arise in all the coda of the Omnissiah is whether the irrational fears that pulse in our blood and beat in our chests when we wake in the night are not weakness, but warnings left on the edge of the darkness.

We were priests of the machine. Knowledge is sacred, and there is nothing higher than knowledge lost to the past. The artefact… the Titan in that tomb… there was knowledge in it, great and terrible knowledge waiting just out of sight yet close enough to grasp. You cannot understand, perhaps, what that means, what that demands of us. It calls to the truth of all we are. And so we worked to wake the machine – I to kindle energy in its metal, Ishta-1-Gamma to allow a human to interface with its systems. She worked with a focus and diligence that I have never seen.

We assayed the artefact further, accessed rituals from the Collegia Titanica archives granted us by Zavius and created test rituals that grew sacred theory into a harmony and order. Weeks, weeks and weeks with the cold and silence, weeks of perhaps the finest work I have ever been a part of. All of it bringing us to a threshold.

<May I tender a question?> Ishta-1-Gamma asked after twenty-four seconds of silence.

<That linguistic formation is itself a question, and so the answer is presented by your ability to ask it.>

Her aura expanded for a second, flashed with bright and subtle formulae. <Was that an attempt at humour, magos?>

<An attempt implies that it was a failure, and so I shall choose to say not.>

A brighter flash, a spiral of calculations in the data link. <Was that a second attempt?>

<No.>

<You are lying.>

<That implies a degree of empathy and social judgement I am not sure I possess.> I moved to the tertiary workbench she had stopped by and moved the plasma coil-disk she had handled the 1.4 mm required for it to be resting in the correct position. <There is something you wish to discuss,> I stated. <About the endeavour.>

<Are there limits to what is divine?> she asked.

<I do not understand your frame of reference.>

<The nature of the machine reveals its divinity to us.>

<That is a primary truth.>

<Is there an exception to it?>

<I still do not follow the logic chain of your questions,> I replied.

<Artefact-ZA01, the Titan, is it divine, or–>

<It is a machine of unknown power and pattern from ages long past, how can it be otherwise than divine?> I asked.

<The demise of Thamus-91 implies–>

<The spirits of great machines are not kind.>

<The lack of data from investigations that have already taken place, the anomalies – those do not indicate to you that this might not be something that is divine but unclean?>

In truth, the same possibilities and questions had been rising unbidden in my mind with regular frequency since the first expedition into Artefact-ZA01. But I could not form a full and logical chain of inference from them.

<The demands of knowledge are proof.>

She reached her hand inside her robes and removed a data-cylinder of milled brass – 0.75 cm in diameter, 6.6 cm in length. She placed it on the workbench. I looked at it.

<What does it contain?> I asked.

<As part of my preparations to re-enable the neural interface with the ZA01, I have been able to access a number of data transfer systems in this… whatever this place is. That is the raw output of what I have found.>

<All the systems I have been granted access to are limited to current data directly relevant to the endeavour,> I said, looking at, but not touching, the cylinder. <No wider data has been present.>

<Truth, but there are fragments and trace impressions in the transfer filters and noospheric buffers. The data-djinns loosed to clear the information were thorough, but you cannot remove the past. Ghosts remain.>

I looked back at the data-cylinder, then picked it up. <What does the data indicate?>

Ishta-1-Gamma transmitted a negation. <I do not know, not completely.>

<Then why–>

<I thought I wanted to know the truth,> she transmitted. <But now I am not sure. I don’t know. I have an emotion-based intuition that if I look at what has tried to be hidden from us, then I won’t be able to carry on with the endeavour.>

<Surely the only way to determine the accuracy of that is to examine this data,> I replied.

<Truth. But until it is examined I can choose to ignore it. Once I have examined it…>

<If I may extend an observation – that is not in keeping with the level of protest and suspicion of this operation you have manifested since we met.>

<I know,> she transmitted, and paused. Data silence filled the link. <But you were there. This machine, this god-machine, it is not like anything else. It is a mystery of technology. It is terrifying. And I am afraid to go forwards. And I am afraid that part of me, the part that has a spirit of flesh, is looking for reasons to turn back.>

I considered what she had said for three full cycles of thought. I admit, she spoke fears that had followed me too.

I held the data-cylinder up between us and crushed it between my digits.

<All knowledge is divine,> I transmitted. <And all knowledge comes from the unknown.>

<Thank you,> she sent, then turned and left me to the silence of my work.

‘Initiate the second incarnation of power transfer,’ I said, and the body of the god-machine shook. Plasma cylinders slid out of their magnetic sheaths and slammed into the fuel conduits around the Titan’s reactor core. I watched through a visual feed piped from sensors in the reactor wall. Some of my kind see no value in such direct observation – all can be seen in data, they claim. The eye is merely an imperfect sensor and its output is of no value. But, to me, to watch such a moment, imperfect though that perception may be, is to look on the face of god.

Glowing primary plasma flooded though flow coils and poured into the reactor core. Magnetic fields caught it, spun it, moulded it into a roiling globe of blinding light. Output data danced in my sight. Energy was draining from the Titan’s reactor core, but I had anticipated this. In an instant I had flooded the core with eight times the fuel needed for ignition, more than could drain before we could complete the ritual.

I stood in the centre of Artefact-ZA01’s enginarium compartment. Stuttering blue light filled the space as relay-linked lumen globes lit and died one after another.

Atropos had not joined us in person but watched from a haze of distorting holo-light. Choirs of servitors crowded the space, each sheathed in layers of thermal and energy insulation.

The 441 mm-thick trunk of cables passing power from the reactors outside the Titan buzzed and oozed heat into the freezing air. I had set six Solex grade reactors to work in sequence; like the lumen globes in the compartment they lit as the power drained from the others. From these, we were consuming enough raw power energy per second to power a manufactory for a month.

Through the open doors at the end of the space, Ishta-1-Gamma and her own cohort of servitors filled the bridge. Zavius sat on the princeps’ throne, sheathed in a black body-glove and coiled with interface cables. The neural connection spike that would link his mind and body to the Titan sat poised just behind the socket in the base of his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma’s hand rested on the lever that would close the connection once primary systems had power.

‘Standing by for primary neural interface,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘Plasma in reactor core reaching saturation,’ droned one of the servitors wired into the flux monitors. ‘Primary ignition yield will be achieved in three… two… one…’

‘By the soul of this machine and the truth of iron, ignite!’ I said.

‘Compliance,’ droned a servitor.

A spear of lightning stabbed down into the roiling ball of plasma held at the reactor’s core. I saw it strike, saw the light pour out, blinding even to machine eyes. The body of the Titan shivered. Every light in the compartment blew out. Static poured out of every speaker grille in the chamber. The holo-image of Atropos vanished.

Then silence.

I waited in darkness.

Then I felt it. A low vibration pulsing through the floor, an electro-song on the edge of hearing. Indicator lights lit on access panels. The optical feed to the reactor cleared.

‘Light is brought to dark,’ I intoned. ‘Fire kindled in the forge. The wheel turns.’

‘All praise to the machine!’ echoed the servitors.

The power drain was slowing, dropping as the reactor output grew.

<It hungers no more, but still it thirsts…>

The noospheric words flashed into my mind. I flinched.

‘What?’ I blurted.

‘Standing by for first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. Princeps Zavius had closed his eyes.

‘Take this fire to your soul and be illuminated,’ I intoned, counting the sacred five seconds and holding down the switches on the power governor console. Plasma was pulled from the reactor core into conduits. Heat and power flowed into cold metal and cable. And, for a moment, through the touch of my hand on its heart, I felt the god-machine’s spirit wake.

Hollowness.

The ache and hunger of aeons.

The sound of a scream that never ends caught in metal.

My consciousness almost failed at the vastness of it, but it was partial, incomplete, a half soul of iron. And behind that presence, like a shadow gathered at a god’s back, was a waiting dark. I saw it then. By my oath to cog and data, I saw what had been. The ghosts flowed through my sensors and data connections, and perhaps through the cells of my flesh. I saw them moving in the spaces in which I stood. I heard their voices speak from long ago. They were there – figures in robes of emerald and fire-orange, and they spoke in tongues that were not the tongues of machines or men. And for a moment, a long black terrible moment, I saw what they had done.

I saw their dream, the dream of not just connecting man and machine, but of the machine as a sepulchre for the souls of those it consumed. I saw the devices they had wrought and bound into the heart of these machines. I saw the machines walk, and the dead scream in the minds of those who guided them to war. I saw the core of black iron nested at the root of the machine, sealed beyond sight, and the threads of crystal and stone branching from it through every limb and fibre of the walking god. And I saw the moments and thoughts and dreams held in that black heart, frozen for millennia, sent down to sleep and dream without end at the root of mountains.

And then the vision passed.

‘Initiating first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘All is known in the machine.’

I tried to shout, to warn her. Cold static poured from me. I could not move, but only watch as Ishta-1-Gamma pulled the lever that sent the neural connection spike into the socket at the base of Zavius’ skull.

I think I was moving across the compartment. I think I was reaching for the lever to break the connection. I think that is what I was doing… I am not certain, though, because at that moment Zavius opened his eyes.

Everything stopped. Nothing was moving. Not power, not the sparks running up the power cables, not the flicker of lights on consoles. Everyone else was gone. Ishta-1-Gamma, the servitors, Zavius, all of them.

<Where?> The voice arrived in my connections with power enough to make me fall… then I was not falling, just standing as I had been. A figure in a body-glove of emerald and orange stood in front of me. Gold symbols flowed over her form as she took a step closer to me. Her skin was pale. There was frost, I realised. Frost on the floor and walls. Frost spreading up my legs and robe. <Where?> repeated the woman. I began to form a clarifying question. She froze and began to judder, form and image blurring, face and body melting through shapes like the merged and corrupted output of a pict feed. <Where? Where? Where? Where? Where?>

The words were rolls of data thunder, crushing me down to the deck. I raised my hand to catch myself. An invisible force bent it around. Servos and hinges snapped. Cogs fell to gathering ice as they tumbled.

<Target return negative…>

<When…?>

<I walk, I walk…>

<Where…?>

<Fire and night and the song of inferno, oh the song, listen and hear…>

Black iron, cold iron and shadow and a hole at the centre of all…

<Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul…>

And I was screaming, and the blurred figure was stepping closer as the image of the inside of the Titan faded and folded into a static blizzard and blackness. I could feel something pulling me, something that felt like a hand.

‘Help! Glavius, help us! Help him!’

And the figure was gone and I was standing as blue cords of power wormed over the walls. Zavius was convulsing on his throne. His eyes were red, pupils swallowed by haemorrhages. His mouth was a bloody pit. Pieces of teeth and tongue spilled from his lips as he screamed. Smoke rose from the neural connection. The skin of his skull was charring and peeling, the bone beneath already black. His brain was cooking inside his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma was trying to pull the cable free from his head. I could see the metal of her fingers glowing and distorting with heat as she struggled.

‘Shut down the power!’ she shouted. I pivoted and lunged at the reactor governor controls. I could still see into the reactor core through the remote pict feeds. The spinning ball of energy was distorting, burning bright and flowing with black veins. I began the emergency shutdown ritual, slamming levers down.

Crimson warning indicators lit.

‘It will not comply!’ I shouted. The reactor output spiked. Power lashed out of the console and through my hands. I flew backwards and slammed into the compartment wall. Damage and system errors screamed through my awareness. Frost was spreading over Zavius’ face. Ishta-1-Gamma flinched back, her hands smoking and glowing with heat. Zavius’ body convulsed again. The bones of the Titan creaked and shook around us.

‘The neural connection is overriding all control,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘It has to be shut down from within.’ She was trying to lift one of the back-up mind-interface cables, her damaged hands slipping. Smoke was rising from Zavius, coiling in the air. Ishta-1-Gamma gripped the interface cable. Her hood fell away from her head, and I saw that it was a pure construction of polished brass and chrome. Socket plugs marched in a line from the base of her skull to her forehead. She paused for an instant, the cable held level with her face. I understood in that moment what she was going to do.

‘No!’ I shouted, and tried to rise, reaching for her as the frame of the Titan lurched and Zavius’ back arched on his throne. Its metal was glowing with heat under an impossible covering of frost. ‘No!’

But Ishta-1-Gamma plunged the cable into the socket on her forehead. For a second she was still, frozen.

Light exploded through her. Metal became liquid. Ceramic became dust. And her form became a shadow suspended in the flash of her disintegrations.

Then Artefact-ZA01, the Titan that had slept silent in darkness for millennia, screamed.

War horns boomed. A rolling cry broke from every speaker grille. Steam poured from coolant vents in a rush. I felt the chamber pitch as the god began to rise. Then, with a sound like an avalanche of gears, it collapsed back. The lights on the consoles dimmed. Then the impact shockwave of the Titan falling back to the ground slammed me back into a girder. My consciousness failed and blackness filled me.

‘It was a failure,’ I said. ‘It cannot wake. It should never wake.’

Atropos tilted its head beneath its graphite-weave cowl. Lenses flicked from green to cold blue. No reply was given.

I had woken in a chamber bare of machines and blessed only with the light of caged lumen spheres. The damage to my physical components had been repaired. My chronometric measures indicted that I had been unconscious for 105 hours. Atropos had been there when I regained consciousness.

‘You know what they are,’ I stated. ‘Ishta-1-Gamma found the remnants of the records you had imperfectly expunged from the cogitator-sifts.’ I held up the crushed data capsule that I had carried in my robes. ‘She wanted to believe that there was a purpose to what you… in what we were doing here. A higher illumination that was guiding our actions… She linked to the machine to prevent it waking fully. It was the only way. If we had known, if she had known…’

‘Your contributions to the endeavour are no longer required,’ said Atropos. ‘Your efforts and diligence up until this point mean that no censure will follow you. You will submit to a total data purge before you depart.’

Atropos turned and glided away.

‘I will remember, though,’ I called and even now I am struck by the emotion in my words, the humanity, you might say.

Atropos half turned. ‘Ghosts caught in flesh are not truth. Data is truth. And only truth will be heard. You may keep your memories, Glavius-4-Rho.’

I left the facility four hours and forty-five seconds later. The rites that purged my data reservoirs and sensor captures were thrice performed. I left with nothing. The shuttle did not take me back to one of the forge-fanes but up to a ship in orbit and a summons to attend the forges of Kelio 4 as Magos-Maxima. I never spoke again of what I had seen.

‘Did you ever find out what happened to them, to the Titans, to the facility?’ asked Severita.

Glavius-4-Rho adjusted a dial on a control panel. An armature of chrome unfolded from the top of the workbench. He lowered a tiny cog of grey polished metal into it.

‘What prompts you to enquire?’ he said.

Severita looked at him, unblinking. ‘I believe that I know when a story has not been fully told,’ she said.

He did not answer, but keyed a control and watched the fingers of the armature close on the cog. A hair-fine laser beam extended to the cog from a projector. A tiny wisp of smoke rose as the beam began to cut.

‘Truth is data,’ he said without turning from his work. ‘Do not stories need to be truth, also?’

‘There is more to truth than data,’ said Severita, ‘and more to stories than truth.’

He released the armature, removed the cog and turned to the sword that lay on the metal slab of the workbench. Its disassembled parts lay in gleaming rows beside the repaired blade.

‘I do not know what happened to the facility,’ he said at last. ‘But…’ he hesitated, and then pressed on. ‘There is the dream… I have not dreamed since I ascended to the priesthood. I do not believe my cognitive augmentation allows for it. But before I left, and sometimes since, I have had a dream… In that dream I am standing on the platform in the cavern beneath the mountain on Zhao-Arkkad. I am alone. The cavern is dark except for the lumen spheres on the platform. Beyond its edge the dark goes on beyond sight. I step to the platform edge, and look down…

‘And something moves. Something vast rises up, unfolding through the dark. I cannot move. I hear nothing. Silence swallows any cry. A vast head of metal lifts to become level with the platform. Dust falls from it. Its eyes are cold fire. I look into them, and I hear a voice. Her voice, Ishta-1-Gamma, echoing through me.

<The machine is eternity,> it says. Then the head and the body beneath it turn away, and the light of its eyes shine through the dark, and I see what lies in the cavern beyond my sight… Vast figures of metal, half buried by rubble and grey dust… eleven… fifteen… eighteen…twenty-seven… thirty-three… and more. A Legion sleeping in the dark. <The machine that dreams shall wake,> says the voice, and then the dream goes, but when it returns I always think I can see another metal god stir from its sleep.’

‘And you hear her voice?’ asked Severita. ‘The other magos, it is always her?’

‘Always,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

He turned to Severita, holding out her sword. It was fully assembled. The blade shone blue and silver in the light of the plasma torch burning on the workbench. All notches and blemishes had gone. The power field generator at the base of the blade gleamed with sacred oils.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It is perfect again.’

She took it and muttered a prayer before sheathing it.

‘My thanks.’ She began to turn, hesitated. ‘For this and for your tale.’

Glavius-4-Rho was still for a moment, and then bowed his head and turned back to his machines.

CITY OF BLOOD

Matt Smith

The barmaid just took a shotgun to a man’s guts. The smell of blood soon mixed with the damp in the air. The bar’s patrons jumped and turned to check that no one was pointing a weapon at them then went back to their drinks. They had been startled, but not surprised. The victim’s friends drew weapons of their own but were swiftly set upon by a pair of gene-bulked bouncers who had rushed in from the entrance and beat them to the ground.

Jesca watched all this through the half-light of flickering lumen globes hanging from the low ceiling. She sat in the darkness at the back of the room drinking something that tasted like dirty water and fermented cado root. More bodies, drunks and mutants, piled into the brawl and isolated fights broke out seemingly spontaneously around her as more patrons took the opportunity to settle their own petty grievances. The room was soon filled with a cacophony of shouts and the dull thudding of fists against flesh. Jesca pressed herself back into the shadows and willed herself to be invisible but it was already too late for that.

There was a man at the bar. He was tall, broad-shouldered, healthy. No average underhiver for sure. He wore leather armour and carried mismatched autopistols holstered on each thigh. A mercenary maybe, Jesca thought, but something didn’t fit. He sat too straight and his hair was shaved too neatly, short at the sides and flat on top – a military cut. He’d seen her too. He tried to be subtle about it but she had noticed. His eyes flicked all around the room but always back to her. Who was he? Did he live here? She hadn’t seen him here before, and was that sunburn on the end of his nose? That was wrong, very wrong. Definitely an outsider, but then who had sent him?

Should she run? No, she had been down here too long to get sloppy now. How long had it even been? Too long already, and if she wanted to get out she had to stick to the plan. Wait for the signal.

‘Here you are, lady,’ the barmaid appeared through the crowd, shotgun casually resting against her shoulder, and set down a glass of murky red-brown liquid.

‘What is this?’ Jesca asked. She sneered as she held the glass up to inspect it.

‘We call it a slick shiv. Seems you have an admirer. Enjoy.’

This was the signal and not a moment too soon. Shiv was a code word she had agreed with her contact. It confirmed the location of their meeting. She looked back towards the suspicious man but he had moved. Jesca’s eyes flicked through the crowd until they caught sight of him again.

A part of her had known this would happen but she had hoped that part was wrong. She couldn’t hide. Now was the time to run. She could try to slip out before he reached her. That way she’d get out of the bar but he would soon realise she was gone and pursue her. If she wanted to get away cleanly she would have to confront him. She watched as he approached. He prowled like a hunting cat, taking an indirect route towards her. Jesca gulped down her newly acquired drink and watched him in her periphery. The outsider slipped through the crowd until he emerged beside her, pistol drawn.

‘Come with me,’ he said as he closed in.

Jesca finished the last sip of her drink then threw the glass into the side of his face. He fired blindly but Jesca was moving. As she stood up the solid slugs sent her stool skittering across the floor. She rolled, closing the distance, drawing her laspistol. She came up as her attacker recovered. He grabbed her wrist and sent her first shot through the ceiling. He adjusted his aim but Jesca stepped close, wrapping his arm under hers, and drove her knee into his groin. The attacker wheezed and doubled over. Jesca wrenched her hand free and placed her pistol against his temple. She fired. The outsider slumped to the ground. Jesca put two more shots in his chest to be sure. She kept the weapon in hand as she made her exit.

Obergard Secundus had been built on top of an ancient subterranean transit network. It had long since fallen out of use and had become home to the lowest of society. Jesca had been hiding out in Scavtown, a large shanty town of plyboard and corrugated metal that had grown up around an old maintenance depot. In the claustrophobic maze of uneven corridors it would be easy to get lost, but Jesca had used her time trapped here well. She knew where she was going. She turned right and set off at a brisk walk, holstering her laspistol. The air was humid and oppressive and the ground was slick. Water that had fallen from the sky hundreds of years ago found its way down here eventually and seeped into the structures, riddling them with black mould and rust. She turned right at a junction and passed a vendor with a rotting wooden stall, selling charred vermin on sticks. The scent of burnt meat stuck in her throat and she spat, trying to clear it. She turned and climbed a ramp that creaked beneath her. She had to go north and up several levels to reach the meeting point. It was a long way and she had to avoid the prowling gangs if she was going to get there on time. This route was quiet – the sounds of bustling crowds, gunfire and screaming were muffled and distant below. She pushed on, ducking into the shadows at the sound of footsteps ahead, but it was just a pair of drunk gang serfs. Jesca let them pass.

She found a ladder up to another level. At the top she went left then turned right and stopped. Someone was waiting for her. He had the look of the man in the bar, the same strong posture and haircut, but he was taller and broader across the chest. In addition to his leathers he wore a flak armour chest piece and carried a lasgun across his body.

‘Damn,’ she cursed and started to backtrack. The man followed.

‘Escape and evade,’ she mumbled to herself. A mantra she lived by. She turned away and sped up as she rounded the corner. Another outsider was ahead, a woman this time, clad like the men, lascarbine in hand. Jesca’s heart began to hammer – she was exposed. She turned back and tried to discern a new route, mind racing. There was still a way through. She passed the ladder and cut left again. Her heart sank. It was blocked. A piece of scaffolding had bent, dragging the wall in and blocking her path. She had come this way to the bar not an hour earlier. It had not been this way then. She turned back again but the outsiders stood barring her way. Jesca heard footsteps approaching from behind them. Something growled. The outsiders pressed their backs to the wall, allowing Jesca to see beyond. Deep red eyes stared back at her. A quadruped with a hide of burnished silver, a cyber mastiff. It prowled towards her, head held low, teeth bared. A step behind the mastiff was its master.

He was tall and gaunt. He wore a long black stormcoat, riding boots and a brass breastplate embossed with the Imperial aquila. His right eye was gone, the socket sealed shut by an ugly scar he made no attempt to hide, and the right sleeve of his jacket was pinned up at the shoulder. His hair was white and his remaining eye was a steel blue. He walked with a pronounced limp to his right leg and on his belt were a string of grenades, of both conventional and esoteric designs.

‘Private Veil,’ the newcomer said, his voice filled with righteous authority and no small amount of threat. ‘I am–’

Jesca interrupted. ‘I know who you are, Timur.’ She also knew what him being here meant. She wasn’t going to be able to talk her way out of this. She’d have to improvise. She took a deep calming breath and stood up straight, proud, fearless.

‘That’s Commissar Iovac to you, deserter.’

‘Right, right – hero of the Cecillian Crusade under whose gaze no assault ever wavered and for whom each man would fight with the strength of ten,’ Jesca said with mocking gravitas.

‘You ought to be showing more respect,’ a female outsider spat, taking a step forward and jabbing her weapon towards Jesca.

Oh, this one has a temper, Jesca thought.

The commissar held up a hand for quiet. ‘If you know who I am then–’

‘Speaking of gaze, is that why you spend your days rounding up strays now? Did one side of your assaults start becoming wildly unreliable?’ Jesca said, gesturing to the area the commissar’s right eye had once filled. Iovac didn’t rise to the bait but Jesca took pleasure in the subtle tightening of his jaw. Iovac stepped closer so he could look down on her. When he spoke his voice was calm and clinical.

‘I capture and execute deserters because I am good at it. I have spent my entire life watching for the signs of cowardice in fighting men. I can see into a man’s soul. I know what he will do. I know where he will run. That is how you have come to be trapped here and why I have let none escape the Emperor’s justice.’

Jesca paused and considered his words. ‘Did you know I was going to kill your man in the bar?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t even difficult. Who are these whelps?’

The woman took another step towards Jesca. ‘101st Kothek Fusiliers, designated S Company.’

‘Kothek?’ Jesca said. ‘Aren’t you the ones who fled from the archenemy on Delvin’s World?’

The female guardsman snarled and took another step forward. She was close now. She made to open her mouth but Iovac cut her off.

‘I am done listening. If you know who I am then you know that this is over.’

‘Do it then, or will you have your thugs kill me for you?’

‘I take pride in sending cowards to the Emperor’s judgement personally.’ He paused. ‘However, it need not come to that yet. You may still come with me quietly and return to the crusade.’

‘Don’t play me for a fool. You’re not going to let me live.’

‘Of course not. You are a deserter. The only future left to you is death and damnation. But I would much prefer a court martial and a public execution over an anonymous death in this hole. It is much better for morale.’

‘And why would I do what you would prefer?’

Iovac bowed forward, bringing his eyes in line with hers. ‘If you surrender yourself to my custody I will see that your body is burned to ash. If you do not, I will take your head as proof of my work and leave the rest of you here for the vermin and the cannibals.’

Jesca looked down and let her body sag, allowing herself to appear broken, defeated. When she looked up, she forced a smile. ‘How can I refuse?’

Iovac straightened up. ‘Good, now hand me your weapon.’

Jesca reached for her laspistol and both soldiers trained their weapons on her. She removed the pistol slowly between her thumb and index finger and handed it to Iovac.

‘Good,’ Iovac said and turned away. ‘Restrain her.’

The male trooper stepped forward, withdrawing a pair of manacles. He grabbed her wrist roughly and pulled it behind her back.

Jesca looked the other in the eye. ‘Your comrade, the one I killed. What was his name?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ she spat.

‘You disdain me for cowardice. He would have disappointed you. Before I pulled the trigger, he begged for his life,’ Jesca lied.

‘I said shut your mouth,’ the soldier said and stepped forward, aiming her carbine at Jesca’s head.

Close enough, Jesca thought, and attacked. She threw her head back. Her skull collided with the man’s mouth behind her. Simultaneously her foot came up and kicked the carbine from the female soldier’s hands. The restraining soldier still held her wrist. Jesca used her free arm to elbow him in the temple and he staggered against the wall. The mastiff was barking.

‘Restrain her!’ Iovac ordered again. The female soldier made to tackle her but Jesca threw her aside, sending her barrelling into her fellow as he tried to recover. She made for Iovac but the mastiff stepped between them, steel teeth bared. Jesca dived over it as it lunged at her. As she rolled to her feet she threw herself at Iovac. They fell back against the wall, which buckled under the impact. Jesca grabbed one of the grenades from his belt then shoved herself away and ran. Behind her the commissar spoke two words.

‘Hound. Retrieve.’

She heard its footsteps first, the rapid cadence of a quadruped. Its bark filled the air, artificial and malicious. Jesca was fast. She was yet to meet a human she could not outrun, but even with the adrenaline coursing through her she knew she could never outrun the mastiff. She couldn’t fight it either, not unarmed. She looked at the grenade she had taken from Iovac. It was translucent silver and sparked inside with crackling blue energy. She could use it now, but such a thing was valuable and may better serve her later. She strapped it to her own belt. She may yet escape on her strengths alone. She thought of hiding, but even in the darkness she knew the mastiff could see her clear as day, hear her breath, smell the sweat on her skin. Its footsteps grew louder. Its bark grew closer. Her heart pounded in her chest. She needed a plan. She scanned her mental map of the area. There was a chance. She just had to get there. A whole tower had collapsed recently during the escalation of hostilities between the Bone Grinders and the Reaping Dragons, leaving a jagged hole running through Scavtown’s structure like a badly cored fruit. Jesca would be able to navigate it in a way the mastiff could not. That was her way out. Breaking left, she dropped down through a rust-eaten hole in the floor. She listened for the clang of pursuit. It came four seconds later as the mastiff dropped behind her. Too close. Snapping could be heard now too – its jaws biting at the air in anticipation. She cut right. Nearly there. She could hear the servos in its legs whirring. Its jaws snapped shut around a loose strap on her empty holster. Mercifully, it tore free. She cut right. Here.

The narrow walkways opened up into a wide clearing. It was a mess of bent and broken piping where the structural supports had given way. Large rough-edged metal sheets had fallen and got jammed at awkward angles. The whole area was pockmarked with las-burns and bullet holes. She only had a second to assess it but she saw what she needed. A thick strut jammed into both sides of the hole. She could reach it, just.

‘Emperor grant me strength,’ she prayed, willing life into her tiring legs. She hit the edge of the opening and jumped. Her hands wrapped around the beam and her momentum carried her forward. She swung her hips and let go, sailing through the air. She hit the far side between levels, the impact knocking the wind out of her. She started to slide back. She scrambled for purchase but found none. She looked down at the jagged shards below and saw the mastiff leap after her. It ignored the fallen scaffolding. It ignored the deadly drop below. It leapt at her fearlessly, its powerful hind legs launching it towards its quarry. Jesca felt something rip and she stopped. The sleeve of her bodyglove had snagged on the sheared edge of the floor. The mastiff was almost on her, teeth bared. She could have laughed at her fate – to be saved from falling only to be killed by the beast.

A shot rang out. It was painfully loud and reverberated around her. Sparks burst from the mastiff’s hide and it lost its momentum. It fell away, mouth snapping at her, short by inches. Jesca watched it drop and exhaled but she wasn’t safe yet. She looked up to begin climbing and saw him.

Standing over her was a giant. At first, Jesca thought it was an ogryn but the figure wasn’t quite that big. Although far from handsome, his bald head showed none of the abhumans’ deformity, except that the left side of his face had at some point been severely burned.

‘You were supposed to be the one finding me,’ the giant said.

Jesca frowned, then realisation dawned on her. ‘Heizer?’

The giant nodded. ‘Veil. You gonna get yourself up here or do I have to?’

Jesca growled. With a groan of exertion she regained her grip on the ledge and pulled herself up. At the top she got to her feet and eyed the giant. He was wearing a black fatigue jacket, though the stitching looked strange, like it was being worn inside out, and its arms had been torn off. She could see that burns covered his left arm too. She also noted the heavy revolver, cross-holstered at his left hip, and wondered how anyone could fire such a thing without blowing their own arm off.

‘How’d you like the drink?’ he asked.

‘The underhive sunrise?’

‘Don’t play games with me. The slick shiv.’

‘It was disgusting.’

The brute laughed. ‘Yeah, I like tricking people into drinking those.’

‘Well, thank you. I must say, you’re not quite what I was expecting.’

‘I get that a lot. No time to talk now though – those off-worlders are still following you.’

‘How did you–’

‘Nothing happens down here that I don’t know about. Ain’t that why you sought me out?’

‘I sought you out because I need to get off this planet. Can you make that happen?’

Heizer nodded. ‘Yeah. Plan’s already in place but it’s time-sensitive so let’s move.’

He led them away in silence. Jesca stayed a step behind, watching him. He walked with a hunched back and a heavy stride. His breathing was laboured and he kept scratching the burns on his cheek and neck. He led them east. Progress was slow and cautious.

‘Where are we going?’ Jesca asked.

‘Quiet. We’re not safe yet.’

The further Heizer led her the more uncomfortable Jesca became. She had formed her own backup plans in case this deal didn’t pan out. Heizer’s scheme may have worked but she couldn’t leave it to chance. That was why she had tracked down the smuggler. With every turn they made Jesca tried to discern his plan but nothing she could think of made sense. She didn’t work well with others. She liked to be alone and independent. Ceding control to anyone, especially a stranger, made her uneasy. He led them up through level after level until Jesca could start to make out stalactites above them through holes in the roof of the shanty structure. Eventually they came out on a rooftop, tucked away where the rest of the slum still rose around it. They were close to the cave wall, north of the main transit tunnel. Extending out from the stone was a pipe large enough to walk through. Heizer stopped and turned to her.

‘We should be clear now. So, you got what we agreed?’

‘You want to do this now?’

‘We ain’t going any further without it.’

Jesca reached back and removed a small case that was strapped to the small of her back.

‘Of course,’ she said and placed her thumb on a small silver panel. The case flipped open and Jesca turned it in her hand so Heizer could see its contents – a small brass sphere. ‘You can place this into a decent cogitator and it will grant access to major shipping accounts belonging to the Draycons, the Obergards, and the Tuls. If you’re smart you can skim credits off them forever without ever being noticed. Or you could just sell it.’

Heizer snarled. ‘You said three houses. The Tuls are nobodies. No deal,’ he said.

‘What I’m offering you, even for a single house, is a fortune. Are you really going to let this kind of information on the Draycons and Obergards slip by because you’re not interested in the Tuls?’

Heizer paused for a second. ‘Fine, but this had better not set the tone for our business relationship. I don’t like being played,’ he grunted. ‘Hand it over.’

Jesca snapped the case closed. ‘Neither do I. This seal is bonded to my life signs. I die, it stays closed. It’ll be yours once I am safely on my way off-world.’

‘How do I know you’re not lying?’

Jesca met his eyes and shrugged. ‘You don’t.’

Heizer snorted. ‘Not good enough. You need me, I don’t need you.’

‘I think you do. I know your kind. You think you’re three steps ahead of everyone, always looking to the next score. You do well but you still need investors. You owe people, inpatient people, and I’m paying too well for you to let it slip by. Opportunities like this don’t arise every day. Why else would you come looking for me?’

Heizer scratched his neck. He reached into a pocket in his trousers, then to his mouth. Jesca saw a speck of something white, a pill of some kind.

‘Well, ain’t you smart,’ Heizer said begrudgingly. ‘Come on. This way.’ He turned.

‘Not yet. I want to know your plan.’

‘Fine,’ Heizer said and turned back. Jesca glared at him until he continued. ‘We’re going to walk out along Access Road Alpha Forty-Seven.’

Jesca’s jaw almost dropped and she rolled her eyes. ‘Are you insane? Alpha Forty-Seven is sealed, caved in.’

Heizer stomped back to her. ‘Do you think I’m stupid, girl?’ he spat, his face inches from hers.

‘If you think intimidating me is going to work, well, I’m waiting for you to change my mind.’

Heizer growled and took a step back. ‘They’ve been clearing the blockage for weeks. An hour ago they got through.’

‘Then what am I paying you for?’ She laughed. ‘I’ll walk myself out.’ She turned to walk away.

‘Not so fast.’

A hand engulfed her forearm. Her eyes traced the scarred tree-trunk arm until they met Heizer’s. ‘Let. Go,’ she said, sternly enunciating each word. Heizer didn’t respond immediately. Jesca could tell he wanted to oppose her. Her glare dared him to do so. Then his grip relaxed and his arm fell to his side.

‘It’s not that easy. You even know why they were clearing it?’

A memory flashed through Jesca’s mind that sent a chill down her spine. ‘I have an idea,’ she replied.

‘Does it involve flesh-eating monsters?’

‘They’re calling them the Afflicted.’

Heizer laughed. ‘No such thing. Some snot-nosed spire-born and his friends come down here thinking they’re gonna hunt underhivers for sport. Run into someone they can’t handle. Probably one of the House Sang gangs. Whoever it was made an example outta them. When the kids don’t come back the families send the enforcers down here to find ’em. All they find are ragged bones. One story leads to another and suddenly there’s flesh-eating monsters down here.’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘I believe what I see and I see everything, but I ain’t seen no cannibal monsters. Now though, the roads are open, so the Obergard Militia can move in. Governor Elspin’s been pressuring Lord Obergard to get the situation dealt with so Obergard’s ordered a purge. They’re going to sweep through this whole place and wipe the so-called Afflicted out. That’s their plan anyway.’

‘You don’t think it’s going to work,’ she said.

‘No. If Obergard thinks he can roll troops through here and clear the place out he’s as moronic as he is obese. They’re not gonna find any monsters and the gangs are going to get riled up. Trust me, soon this whole place is going to become a war zone. Besides, Alpha Forty-Seven leads out of Amstar and because you got yourself tailed we’re running late. The militia have already taken the main accessways. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Where is here anyway?’ Jesca asked.

‘An old maintenance tunnel, I think,’ said Heizer as they walked in. Jesca followed.

Heizer started to scramble over the ledge into the tunnel. Jesca gracefully hopped up in a single movement and waited.

‘When we get inside let me do the talking,’ Heizer said as he got to his feet. ‘These maintenance ways belong to the Tunnel Runners.’

‘And?’ Jesca asked.

‘And we’re not getting along right now.’

‘Maybe I should do the talking then.’

Heizer shook his head. ‘They may be mad at me but at least they know me. They really don’t like strangers.’

‘Alright then. So what did you do anyway?’

‘Why do you think I did anything?’

‘I’ve known you almost an hour now and you’ve pissed me off twice already. I expect it’s an effect you have on people.’

‘Well, it ain’t your business, but what I’ve learned about you is we’re not gonna get anything done if I don’t spell everything out for you so here goes. The Tunnel Runners help me move product, out of sight of the big gangs. They’re not house affiliated so they just take a cut of the profits. Everyone’s happy.’

‘Except they’re not.’

‘Last job didn’t go well. The Runners got a bunch of my stock stolen. They seemed to think I’d pay ’em for what they didn’t lose. I said what they lost was their cut. Things were said. People got shot. They’ve been real quiet ever since.’

‘Maybe we should go through without them seeing us.’

‘Nuh-uh.’ Heizer shook his head. ‘They know every inch of their turf. They’ll find us one way or another and if we look like we’re hiding that’ll just piss ’em off.’

‘So what happens when they find us?’

‘If we’re lucky they’re open to patching things up.’

‘And what really happens?’ Jesca asked sarcastically.

‘They’re not.’

Scavtown faded behind them. The tunnel rose steadily, occasionally flattening out and regularly turning back on itself. It got too dark for even Jesca’s well-adjusted eyes to see. A light reached out from beside her. Heizer was holding what looked like an Astra Militarum lamp pack. Its light was weak and flickering, but it was enough to see what they were doing. Occasionally they passed narrow side burrows or ladders leading to other levels that they had to step around. Heizer stopped and placed a hand on Jesca’s shoulder. She shrugged him off but stopped nonetheless.

‘Here we go,’ said Heizer. He shone the lamp pack further ahead and Jesca could make out mounds of stacked rubble.

‘Hey!’ Heizer called out. ‘Anyone up there? Skeech? Parrow? It’s Heizer, I’m here to talk. Don’t shoot me.’ He looked down at Jesca. ‘Or my friend,’ he added.

There was no reply. Heizer went on anyway. Jesca followed. The lamp pack flicked off for three long seconds before the light returned. Heizer shook it with frustration, sending the light dancing around the walls. Everything was coated in a thin layer of pale rubble-dust.

‘Piece of junk,’ Heizer growled. They reached the mounds. Jesca expected to be staring down the barrel of a gun. She wasn’t. In fact, she couldn’t see anyone, or even hear them. Heizer was expecting people, so where were they? She listened and heard nothing but there was a smell, a familiar one. Her heartbeat quickened. Her head darted around. She saw a flash of something dark streak through the pale dust. The light went out again. All she could hear was Heizer pounding the lamp pack into his palm.

‘Lousy piece of–’

She heard glass break. Heizer was stomping around, his heavy footfalls even louder in the enclosed space.

‘Shhh,’ Jesca hissed.

‘Gimme a second.’

‘I saw something.’

‘Well, ya ain’t gonna see it again ’til we get some light so gimme a second.’ There was a burst of static that set Jesca’s teeth on edge.

‘What was that?’ Jesca asked tersely. The smell had her on edge. She wished she still had a weapon.

‘Some device I bought off a tech-scav. It says stuff in machine speak. It’s supposed to activate the old Mechanicus emergency lighting. Doesn’t do a damn thing though.’

Jesca noticed her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Well, it does something. It may be the lighting that’s not working. Let me see.’

‘Sure. Over here.’

Jesca followed Heizer’s voice in the darkness until she could feel his body heat beside her. His hand grasped her forearm and she flinched.

‘Relax, I’m just showing you where it is.’ He took her arm again and directed it to a point on the wall in front of her then let go. She felt something smooth and solid. It was covered in the same rubble-dust as everything else. Her hand moved down and felt cold metal. The object narrowed near the bottom. Her hands painted a picture in her mind. It was a servo-skull. She tried to lift it but it was stuck.

‘Got a knife?’ she asked.

A moment later she felt the flat of a blade touch her arm. She flinched again. She heard Heizer chuckle and fought the urge to punch him in the throat.

‘What’s got you so jumpy?’

‘I told you, I saw something,’ she said irritably, taking the knife and turning it in her hand. She prised the skull from where it had corroded into its housing.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing. Only thing in these tunnels are lousy gun smugglers and even they ain’t showing themselves.’

Jesca returned the knife and inspected the skull with her fingertips. ‘It doesn’t feel damaged. Maybe its power source has simply expired. Hold this,’ Jesca said and thrust the skull into Heizer’s sternum a little harder than necessary. She reached in and pulled a lifeless crystal from what had once been a man’s neck. It trailed a bundle of wiring that she carefully removed. The crystal came free and Jesca unceremoniously discarded the failed energy source into the darkness. She then removed a power pack for her laspistol from a pouch on her belt. It would have been fiddly work even in the light but eventually she had wired the pack into the skull.

‘It’s not ideal but let’s give it a try,’ she said.

There was another burst of static that made Jesca wince. Nothing happened.

‘So much for that,’ said Heizer.

‘Give it a moment.’

The servo-skull started to hum, its repulsion plate lighting up. It hovered up out of Heizer’s hand. A dull white light speared from its left eye socket. It was weak and narrow but in the new light Jesca could see what had caught her eye. The dusty stone walls were streaked deep red. That familiar smell – blood.

‘Look at this,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Heizer replied.

‘Heizer, it’s blood.’

‘So the Tunnel Runners got in a fight. Explains why they’re not here. We should go.’

For the first time Jesca heard something in his voice. Something like fear. She looked round to see Heizer walking away, silhouetted by the servo-skull’s dull light. She jogged to catch up with him. The tunnel wound on. They passed another area that looked like it had once been inhabited, mouldy sheets and empty food cans strewn around. More streaked blood. Heizer kept his eyes forward, never looking around or breaking stride. Jesca’s heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. Every muscle was tense. She fought constantly to control her breathing. The effort was starting to wear on her. Then the scratching started.

It was quiet and irregular but seemed to come from all around. Jesca’s head darted about impulsively but all she could see in any direction was Heizer’s impassive face.

‘Do you hear that?’ she asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, still looking forward.

Jesca paused, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t she pushed the matter. ‘Well? What is it?’

‘Nothing, maybe rats.’

‘That doesn’t sound like any rats I’ve heard. You must have big rats down here.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not it. The acoustics down here are strange. Whatever is making that noise is further away than it sounds.’

Jesca wasn’t convinced. She trusted her own senses far more than she did this smuggler’s. She had no reason yet to trust him any further than she knew her payment would take her. Just because he wasn’t going to shoot her himself didn’t mean he wouldn’t get her killed through incompetence. Jesca had long since learned to be wary of men who believed themselves infallible. The scratching rose and fell as they went. At times, it was punctuated by hisses and snarls or whimpers of pain. Jesca started at each new sound but Heizer just kept looking ahead. The scratching grew louder. Jesca waited for it to quieten again but it grew louder still. A new sound joined the confusing cacophony. A rapid tapping.

‘It’s just our feet echoing,’ said Heizer.

‘No, it’s faster and if it was us why are we only hearing it now?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Heizer insisted, his voice betraying his growing aggravation.

‘It’s something, Heizer, not rats, not us. What are you not telling me?’

The sounds shifted. They were no longer coming from everywhere. They were behind them. Jesca knew what the sounds were. Part of her had known the entire time. She suspected Heizer had too. It was what had brought fear to his voice, such fear that he had gone into denial. Jesca snatched the servo-skull from the air and turned it to face behind them. She didn’t want to see what was there but she knew she had to.

Two creatures were running towards them. In form they were human, clad in mismatched armour over ragged clothing. Their foreheads were distended and swollen. Blood coated their faces. Crimson streams had dried below their ears and painfully bloodshot eyes. Their flesh was pale and thin, displaying intricate webs of purple and black. Where the veins clustered most densely the skin was marked with sore dry growths. Their hands and mouths were wet and glistening. They were fast. By the time Jesca could brace for a fight the first had hit her and barrelled her to the ground. Her back and shoulders scraped against the floor.

‘Throne,’ she cried out involuntarily.

Lashing out into the darkness, Jesca grabbed the monster by the throat. She held its snapping jaws back inches from her face. It sprayed her with bloody spittle. Its breath smelled of death. She spared a look at Heizer but saw nothing. The servo-skull hovered between them. Unable to illuminate them both at once it snapped back and forth in its attempts to compensate but only served to surround them with a disorienting strobe effect. Jesca elbowed her attacker in the head over and over. She felt its eye socket shatter but it paid no heed, still desperately pressing down on her, teeth snapping for her face. It lashed at her with a sharp-nailed hand. Jesca caught the arm and pulled as she pushed away with the other hand around the creature’s throat. It lost its balance and fell beside her. It scrambled and swiped at her but Jesca was quicker. She got back to her feet and stepped away, the swing passing in front of her. It lunged again. This time she was ready. She sidestepped and kicked its legs out from under it. It fell into the tunnel wall. It cried out angrily and tried to reach back but Jesca grabbed its head. She drew it back and smashed it against the wall, again and again. With each blow its body grew more limp and slid down. Jesca continued until she was driving its face into the ground and didn’t stop until it stopped thrashing.

She caught flashes of Heizer. The second creature was on his back and he shook desperately to dislodge it. It had an arm around his neck and its teeth were trying to bite through the collar of his jacket. Jesca darted towards him. As she got close, the strobe lighting became solid once more, the servo-skull’s quandary resolved. Jesca reached up over the creature’s head and dug her fingers into its eyes. It yelped and blindly clawed at its own face. She wrenched back. It fell to the ground before her and scrambled back up to turn on her. She kicked it in the chest and it stumbled back, right into Heizer’s massive hands. He clamped them around its head like a vice and squeezed until it gave way. The body slumped heavily to the ground.

Jesca and Heizer stood staring at each other as they tried to catch their breath.

‘Those are–’ Heizer began.

‘The Afflicted,’ Jesca finished.

Heizer looked stunned. ‘I-I can’t believe they’re real. How did I not know?’ he said. He started to scratch and hurriedly reached into his pocket again, putting a pair of pills into his mouth. ‘We should go, before any more find us.’

The scratching was still there though, the hissing, the snarling, the footsteps, close and closing.

‘They’re already here,’ Jesca said, looking back. ‘Run!’ She set off as fast as she could, sparing only a brief glance to check Heizer was following. He was fast for his size, but not as fast as her and not nearly as fast as the Afflicted. The servo-skull’s grav plates refused to carry it faster than a slow walk and it was left behind. Moments later there was a crunch of splintering bone and its light went out. Shots boomed behind Jesca, deafeningly loud. She looked back again to see Heizer firing his revolver into the darkness. The muzzle flare lent snapshots of the horrors behind. There was no telling how many were there now. They filled the width of the tunnel many times over. In the darkness, they tripped and fell and were trampled to death by those coming behind. Jesca looked ahead again. Her legs were burning. Her breath came in ragged gasps from exhaustion and fear.

‘Emperor preserve me,’ she prayed.

She saw light. The tunnel curved and a world beyond came into view. Jesca could see the sides of white-painted prefab buildings marked ‘Adeptus Mechanicus Station Tetra-Alpha-Rho, Amstar’. Looking over her shoulder she could see Heizer and the horde. They were almost on him. He wasn’t going to make it. She thought of the grenade she had taken from Iovac and was thankful she hadn’t used it earlier. She detached it from her belt and thumbed the activation rune. The arming light turned from red to green and she tossed it back. The tunnel flashed and crackled with gravitic energy. She felt herself being pulled backwards and fought against it.

‘What did you do?’ Heizer yelled.

The majority of the pursuing horde had been caught in the stasis grenade’s field. Their malnourished bodies were dragged to the ground. They crawled, reaching out and snarling with enraged incomprehension. One broke through and charged Heizer as he tried to reload. It was bigger than the others, stronger. Heizer raised his weapon but froze.

‘Skeech?’ he said.

The Afflicted hit him, knocking the revolver from his grip. Heizer was holding it back by the shoulders while the creature tore at his arms. Heizer was grunting with pain but not fighting back. Jesca ran to them. She jumped and kicked the Afflicted. It stumbled back but recovered quickly and came at her. Heizer didn’t move. Jesca grabbed his knife from its sheath. She turned back as the Afflicted lunged again and she drove the blade up under its chin. It sprayed dark blood as she withdrew it and the monster fell forward. Heizer was staring at the dead creature.

‘That was Skeech. How–’

‘I can’t explain now. They’re not going to be held back forever. We need to keep going,’ she said. She cleaned the knife on Heizer’s jacket and handed it back to him. ‘You’re welcome,’ she added.

Heizer recovered his revolver and they started running. The end of the tunnel swiftly grew as they ran. Jesca could hear footsteps chasing them again.

‘How far is the drop at the end?’ Jesca asked.

‘About three storeys.’

‘How much ammunition do you have left?’

‘Not enough.’

‘Then jump.’ Jesca reached the tunnel mouth and leapt, only realising her mistake as she began to fall. She hit the ground hard, letting her momentum carry her down into a roll. She heard Heizer land heavily behind her.

‘Emperor’s chafing–’ The last word was cut off by a grunt of pain.

‘Heizer. Now would be a bad time to be blaspheming.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh.’

She knew he’d seen what she had, what she was still looking at. The barrels of twenty Obergard Militia lasguns.

They were clad in grey camouflage fatigues and flak armour. Their faces were hidden behind rebreather masks. Behind the lines of guardsmen were a pair of Chimeras. An officer stood up out of the turret of the one to Jesca’s right. In one hand he held a laspistol, in the other a bullhorn.

‘Hive scum. By the authority of Lord Obergard and Governor Elspin, you are in violation of edict 6172785.2 addendum 586, obstruction of Hive Militia forces during a sanctioned purging operation. Hand over your weapons and surrender yourselves.’

Jesca held up her hands. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Up there, in that tunnel. There are Afflicted coming through.’

The officer glanced up then back at her. ‘Nonsense. Our intelligence indicates the Afflicted are only active in the lower levels. Levels you are obstructing us from reaching. Now I repeat, you are in violation of edict–’

‘We surrender,’ Jesca said.

‘Veil?’ Heizer hissed.

‘Do it,’ she snapped back.

‘Good,’ the officer said smugly. ‘Corporal, take care of them.’

The nearest trooper stepped forward, weapon still raised. ‘Place your hands on your heads and get down over there,’ he said, pointing behind the Chimeras. ‘Trooper Selvin, take their weapons and watch them.’ The corporal gestured to the two of them with the barrel of his lasgun and they followed his directions. Another trooper separated from the patrol and followed.

‘Hand me your weapons and get on your knees,’ the following trooper ordered as they came to a halt. Even through the rebreather he sounded young and lacked authority. Heizer puffed out his chest and straightened to his full height. Jesca could tell he was thinking of something that would get them both killed. She kicked him in the shin. His head snapped down to her with a look of barely restrained anger.

‘Do as he says,’ Jesca said, meeting his gaze.

Reluctantly, Heizer complied, handing his revolver to the trooper who almost dropped it, surprised by its weight.

‘You’re all gonna die, you know,’ Heizer said as he got down onto his knees. He was squirming, rubbing the side of his neck against the collar of his jacket.

The trooper scoffed. ‘We are the Second Obergard Hive Militia, the Unyielding. We can handle whatever mutant wretches you have down here.’

Jesca could still see the tunnel mouth. It was sparking blue. Then it stopped. She listened, trying to ignore the rumble of the Chimeras’ engines. She heard rushing steps and spitting mouths. The sounds echoed from the tunnel as if it were a serpent of nightmares.

‘Here they come,’ she said quietly.

The first fell from the opening and landed flat in front of the troopers. Their weapons snapped round. The Afflicted got to its feet and lunged at the nearest soldier. It was shredded by lasfire before it could reach him. More came behind it.

‘Get weapons on that opening!’ the officer in the Chimera ordered. The next Afflicted ran straight into a hail of fire and spilled out dead. Trooper Selvin spared nervous glances away to see how his unit fared. He laughed as he turned back.

‘See. The Emperor guides our hand.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Jesca.

She too was watching the fighting. What she saw almost made her heart stop.

They rushed from the tunnel mouth like water streaming through a broken dam. Their momentum carried them out, legs still pumping. Most fell, others stumbled, some hit the ground running and were on the militia before they could be brought down. From where she was knelt she saw a trooper with a flamer pour fire into the horde, but the Afflicted kept coming, clothes burning, skin melting, and fell upon him. He disappeared screaming. Jesca heard his flesh tear. The militia drew back, closing ranks. Disciplined volleys had given way to desperate bursts on full auto. The enemy was so densely packed it was impossible to miss, but the Afflicted shrugged off all but the most grievous damage. The militia couldn’t hold them back.

Heizer was still itching and groaned in discomfort. He took his hands off his head, using one to scratch his neck – the other reached inside his jacket.

‘Hands where I can see them!’ Selvin barked.

If Heizer heard him he showed no sign and kept scratching and squirming, growing ever more agitated.

Selvin turned to Jesca. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is he turning into one of them? Is this how it starts?’ Selvin asked, growing frantic.

‘No, I–’

‘That’s it.’ Selvin raised his weapon to his shoulder.

Jesca leapt to her feet. Selvin turned his lasgun on her but Jesca was already too close. She grabbed him around the waist and threw him. He hit the ground with a lung-emptying thud and Jesca struck him in the solar plexus as she yanked the lasgun from his grip. The young soldier let out a mewling whine and huddled into a foetal position.

The battle raged. All form of order was gone. What had begun as a defensive line had become a dozen individual battles for survival. The Afflicted clambered onto the transports. Jesca watched as the officer on top tried to retreat inside but he was too slow and was torn kicking and screaming from the hatch. The Afflicted shredded him on top of his vehicle. More swarmed over the second Chimera. A fuel line was torn free and Jesca caught the stink of promethium. It was ignited by a spark from the Chimera’s heavy bolter and engulfed the front of the vehicle in flames. More still ran from the tunnel mouth, disappearing in all directions.

‘Get up, Heizer, we have to go,’ Jesca said urgently, and she reclaimed Heizer’s gun. He didn’t respond. He had fallen onto his side and was writhing in pain – his eyes were closed and his teeth gritted. Jesca reached out and grabbed his arm. She started to pull but he was far too heavy to move. Something reached him though. His eyes flared open and he rolled to his knees. As he pushed to his feet he snatched his weapon from Jesca’s hand and shoved her to the ground. Then he ran, still squirming, away down the street, not looking back.

‘Emperor damn you, you ugly whoreson!’ she shouted after him. She got to her feet and tried to follow but she felt something around her ankle. She kicked it away then looked down. Trooper Selvin was still huddled on the ground.

‘Please, help me,’ he pleaded.

Behind him the last of his unit were dead. The Afflicted poured through the flames of the burning Chimeras towards them.

‘Are you not unyielding?’ Jesca replied and turned away. She just had to reach the access road. Looking ahead though she saw this was no simple task.

Enforcer patrols and gangers spilled out of prefab structures and re-purposed haulage towers on either side of the street. They carried the horrifically wounded and fired behind themselves. Jesca saw terror in their eyes. More Afflicted followed, tearing down fighters as they attempted to flee. With every passing moment the battle turned closer to a massacre, the Afflicted feeding gluttonously all around. She had almost lost sight of Heizer. She ran into the madness, firing controlled bursts from her lasgun. Her eyes scanned ahead for every opening in the crowd. She slipped past desperate duels between enforcers and gangers and stepped over half-eaten corpses. She was a wraith, a ghost on the battlefield, but the openings grew fewer and tighter. She finally lost sight of Heizer. An Afflicted burst from beneath a pile of fallen bodies and grabbed her leg. She bludgeoned it with the butt of her rifle until its skull gave way. Another grabbed her from her left. She stuffed the lasgun in its mouth to keep it from biting into her shoulder. She staggered back and tripped, the monster falling on top of her. She could see more coming towards her, sensing an easy meal. She could not stop them all. She was going to die. She was going to fail.

‘Emperor forgive me,’ she breathed.

Heavy weapon fire boomed over the sounds of slaughter. The horde began to fall away. Spaces formed – between them Jesca could see her saviours, a trio of sentinels, autocannons flaring. For a fleeting moment she felt relief, then she looked down at their feet and it was dashed.

‘Jesca Veil!’

Leading the sentinels was the unmistakeable figure of Commissar Iovac. He had shed his stormcoat. In his left hand was a bolt pistol. Fixed to the stump of his right arm was a clenched power fist. He was coming straight for her, flanked by his retinue.

‘You have had your chance, Veil!’ Iovac barked. An Afflicted charged him from his left. He shot it in the chest and head in quick succession, without breaking stride. ‘You have abandoned your duty as a servant of the Holy Emperor. You have deserted his blessed crusade. You assaulted an officer of the Officio Prefectus. These are crimes for which there can be no forgiveness.’

A group of gangers, led by a brute with a large industrial hammer, charged at him. While the guardsmen gunned most down in short order, Iovac struck the leader with his power fist. The ganger’s torso liquefied, his limbs splattering noisily to the ground.

‘You understand that I cannot allow you to leave. All must face justice for their crimes. As the Emperor’s voice in this darkness, I sentence you to death. May you burn for eternity, never granted His holy benediction.’ He levelled his pistol at her and fired.

Jesca was already moving. She threw one of the Afflicted aside and shot it as she scrambled back to her feet. She took in her shifting surroundings. The Afflicted had been thinned but not stopped and the battle was drawing more of them into the street. Gangers were fighting both sides. Alpha Forty-Seven was ahead, beyond Iovac. There was no avoiding it – she had to get past him. She ran right, making for the shadows of the pre-fab towers. Bolt rounds slashed past her, their propulsion burners distinct and terrifying. A shot buried itself in a wall as she passed and detonated, spraying shards of stone into her face. She shot an Afflicted as it charged out of a tower and then something grabbed her. She twisted and rolled under the arm, bringing her lasgun up.

It was Iovac’s female bodyguard. Jesca pulled the trigger but the rifle was knocked from her grip. A blade rose up towards her abdomen. She turned it aside but was immediately struck in the jaw, and her head snapped around. She turned back in time to see the knife slashing towards her throat. She let it come, struck the woman’s arm above the elbow and pulled on her wrist. The joint broke. The guardswoman cried out and dropped the knife. Jesca caught it before it could hit the ground and drove it up through her enemy’s throat. The Kothek woman coughed blood and fell back, the knife still embedded. An Afflicted fell on the bleeding body but slumped dead a second later, two great craters blown in its back. Iovac stood mere feet behind it.

Jesca fled. Everywhere she looked people were running in all directions. It was so loud she couldn’t make sense of anything. The air reeked of blood and promethium. Jesca shoved and elbowed her way through the crowds. She stumbled over bodies, struggling to keep her footing. Every time she dared look back, Iovac was there, smashing monsters and gangers aside with his power fist, unstoppable, implacable.

‘This is your fault, Veil,’ he called. ‘You have angered the Emperor so grievously that His rage has affected these people. Only with your death will He be appeased. Only with your death will their suffering end.’

Jesca kicked a ganger aside only for her path to be blocked by a pair of Hive Militia. They held their lasguns like quarterstaves before themselves. The first swung for her with the butt of the rifle. Jesca swayed back and raised her foot into his crotch then rammed his rifle back into his face. He fell back, relinquishing his weapon. The second adjusted his grip to fire but Jesca swung the lasgun in her hands like a club and knocked the barrel away. She stepped into a reverse swing that snapped the guard’s head around and he crumpled into a heap. She felt a wave of concussive energy blindside her. She was thrown forward, losing her grip on the lasgun, and landed on top of a dead ganger whose entrails were spilling from his torn stomach.

Iovac, he was right there behind her while she was flat on her face and unarmed. She was dead. Then she saw it. The ganger had died with a stubber in his hand. Jesca crawled over the body, shielding the weapon, and prised it from the ganger’s fingers.

‘Do not feign death, Veil. Meet your end with a little dignity at least,’ Iovac said. ‘Face me.’

There was no time to check the clip. ‘Emperor save me,’ Jesca whispered as she rolled. She brought the stubber up and fired. The first shot hit Iovac in the hip. The second glanced off his armour. The third dug into his shoulder. The fourth only dented his breastplate but the fifth broke through. Iovac’s eyes went wide with shock. ‘No,’ he gasped as he fell.

The stubber was empty and Jesca tossed it aside. She pushed to her feet. Everything ached and she was slick with blood from her cheek to her knees. She looked down at Iovac. He still stared in disbelief up into the cavern ceiling. Jesca felt dizzy and her head hurt. She raised her hand to it and it came away bloody. Was it hers? She tried to focus. She had to get to Alpha Forty-Seven. What was she going to do when she got there? Damn that coward Heizer and his half-cocked plan.

Something was coming. She could hear bodies being bludgeoned and trampled. She squinted and made out a green-bodied Cargo-6, its rear covered in a dirty white canopy. It was rushing towards her. She saw an Afflicted roll over its engine house and crack the windscreen before it fell aside. She tried to move but her legs wouldn’t react.

Before it hit her the truck slewed sideways and came to a halt. The door swung open. ‘Get in.’

It was Heizer.

He had turned his jacket the right way to reveal camouflage matching the Hive Militia. He had a white armband stretched around his bicep, marked with the symbol of a corpsman.

‘What’re you waiting for?’

Jesca staggered towards the open door when a shot erupted behind her. It ricocheted off the cab and detonated, blowing a burning hole in the canopy. Jesca glanced over her shoulder. Iovac was on his feet. He was unbalanced and his arm shook – he was struggling to hold his pistol aloft.

‘The Emperor protects me, Jesca Veil. He will not allow me to die while you still live.’

He screamed. An Afflicted with no legs had bitten into Iovac’s calf. He fell to one knee. He pressed the bolt pistol against the Afflicted’s head and blew its skull open. Another creature ran at him from behind. Its momentum bore them both to the ground as its teeth bit into the back of his neck. Another crawled out from under a pile of bodies and bit his arm. Jesca watched, frozen with horror, as he was devoured.

‘Veil! Now!’

Heizer’s voice snapped her back to reality and she turned back to board the truck. They were moving before she had shut the door. Lasfire whined past them. Jesca looked back to see the last of Iovac’s guardsmen. He was chasing them, covered in blood, and roared with fury as he fired until he was lost to the crowd.

‘Put that on,’ Heizer said, gesturing to a militia uniform jacket bundled in the footwell. He had regained his composure. The cab was strewn with medical supplies. It looked like it had been ransacked.

‘I thought you’d gone.’

‘Shut up and put it on. This is the plan. Any of that blood yours?’ Heizer asked.

Jesca put the evidence together in her mind. Heizer was an addict. What exactly he was taking she didn’t know but he couldn’t exist long without it. That made him a liability.

‘A little maybe.’

‘Well, pretend it is. Look,’ Heizer pointed ahead. Jesca peered through the cracks in the windscreen.

Access Road Alpha Forty-Seven was a long steep slope, reaching up out of the underhive into the smog-filtered light of the lower city. It had once been wide enough to accommodate heavy drilling equipment but was now strewn with heavy boulders and rubble. A space wide enough to allow trucks and Chimeras access had been cleared by enormous cranes. At the foot of the road was a platoon of Hive Militia dug into a sandbagged checkpoint. Heizer drove straight for them.

‘No, Heizer, this isn’t a plan.’

The truck came to a screeching halt.

‘What’re you doing, trooper?’ she heard someone say, but Heizer’s bulk was blocking her view.

‘What does it look like? I’m getting injured outta here.’ He pointed back at Jesca. She could see the soldier now. The pins on his collar marked him as a sergeant. ‘Do you know who that is?’ Heizer growled.

‘N-no.’

‘Idiot. That there is Major Carovenko, one of the favourite students of General Astor Sang, and if she doesn’t get to Aegis Outpost in thirty minutes she’s going to bleed to death here in my truck.’

‘Trooper–’

‘Corpsman,’ Heizer corrected him.

‘I am your superior officer, corpsman. No one hurt by the Afflicted is to leave the underhive. Now turn around. That’s an order.’

‘She didn’t get hurt by the Afflicted. Some gang scum jumped her. Now do you want to be the one to explain to General Sang that one of his best died because you stopped her getting the help she needed or should I?’

The pair locked eyes.

‘Let them through!’ the sergeant yelled,

Heizer floored it and they left the raging battle behind.

Minutes later they emerged. The lower city was dank and grey but compared to the underhive it was blinding. Jesca didn’t like it. She felt exposed and pushed herself back into her seat. Troop transports and Munitorum cargo movers rolled past them. Jesca held her breath but none of them paid the medicae truck any notice. They came up on the outskirts of the hive, a few miles from the outer walls, in a complex of tall water-processing plants. The road led into the centre of the city, further than Jesca could see. Heizer pulled them off a slip road and onto the narrow streets that wove between the plants. Jesca was looking for something to start cleaning herself with when something hit her. It smacked her head back against the seat. It took her a moment to register it as Heizer’s fist. When she snapped forward, the edge of a blade was against her throat. Heizer was still driving, only glancing over at her sparingly. She chastised herself for letting her guard down. He didn’t want her dead though, or else he wouldn’t have come back for her.

‘What do you want?’ she growled.

‘Who are you?’ said Heizer.

Jesca sighed. ‘Private Jesca Veil, former 151st Hadran Rifles. Deserter.’

‘You’re lying. The way you move. Your skills. Whatever that thing was you dropped in the tunnel. You’re no rifleman.’

‘I was a scout, recon division.’

‘Stop. You’re a bad liar and it hurts to listen to ya.’

Jesca flinched at his words. If there was one thing she prided herself on it was her ability to lie. For a moment her ego demanded she prove him wrong and she began to craft a new falsehood. Then reason took over. Trying to fight her way out was too great a risk. Getting off-world was all that mattered. The truth would serve her better than any lie now.

‘Okay, I’ll do you a deal.’

‘You’re in no position to negotiate.’

‘If I tell you the truth you’ll become a target. People will come for you.’

‘People try to kill me every day.’

‘Not like this. Make the deal and I’ll do what I can to keep them away from you,’ said Jesca.

‘I ain’t scared.’

‘Yes, you are. I saw you in the tunnel. The Afflicted terrify you and who comes for you will be worse.’

The knife moved away from her throat. ‘What’s the deal?’

‘Simple. A truth for a truth. You first.’

The truck came to a halt. Heizer turned as far as the cabin’s confines would allow.

‘What’re you taking?’ Jesca asked. ‘You’re addicted to whatever it is.’

Heizer scoffed. ‘An addict? That’s what you think? Well sure, if you call not wanting to feel like I need to rip my own skin off being addicted, then I guess that’s what I am. I take this morphodone stuff. It keeps the pain away but I’m out, that’s why I needed to get up here so bad.’ He leaned towards her, his face stern. ‘Your turn.’

Jesca sighed. ‘Jesca Veil. Servant of the Holy Ordos.’

Heizer’s jaw dropped.

‘That you believe?’ said Jesca.

‘Now you’re not lying. You’re an inquisitor?’

‘No,’ said Jesca, ‘just a servant, a spy, my master’s eyes where he is not.’

‘The Afflicted, you knew about them. You need to get off-world to report to your master but why not just use an astropath?’

Jesca shook her head. ‘I can’t trust them with this. The affliction, it’s not natural. It was created by men.’

‘Who could create those things?’

‘Heretics. They are a weapon and this city is a testing ground. I found the perpetrators but they found me too. I managed to escape so they sent Iovac to kill me.’

Heizer shook his head, struggling to take it all in. ‘Get out,’ he said as he exited the truck. Jesca did so cautiously. Heizer went through a hole in a wire fence then climbed a spiral staircase running up the side of a vast water tank. Jesca followed. They crossed the top then climbed again to the top of a tall processing building. Around the sides were a network of thick pipes. Jesca could hear water rushing as she slid between them. In the centre was open space. Heizer turned to face her. He held out his hand.

‘Sphere,’ he said bluntly.

‘When I’m clear,’ Jesca replied.

Heizer withdrew a small device from the pocket of his trousers – it was a rectangle with a short antenna and a blinking white light. ‘I got you passage on a rogue trader’s vessel out of the system. When I press this button it’ll send a signal and he’ll send down a transport. Now pay up.’

Jesca eyed him warily as she detached the case and opened it. She offered it to Heizer. He took the sphere and weighed it in the palm of his hand. With the other hand he pressed a button on the transceiver. The blinking light became still.

‘It’s done,’ he said.

They stood in silence until a shape descended out of the smog. It was sharp and angular with narrow swept-back wings. It came in low between the buildings. Jesca and Heizer stepped back as it set down. A hatch on the side popped open.

‘It’s for you,’ said Heizer.

Jesca looked up at him then over to the lander. Without a word, she walked away. As she reached the hatch, Heizer spoke up.

‘Jesca.’

She paused and looked back to him but said nothing.

‘If you ever come back here, leave me out of it.’

Jesca stepped inside. She hoped she would never have to see this world again.

EMPRA

Nate Crowley

ONE

Deep among the manhills of the first people, down south out of Shellforge – that’s where I meet the Angel.

I’m after a fivejaw. A big halfmale, slow from a moult, leaving clumps of crimson fur snagged on the thorngrass. Good fur – the kind I know I’ll need for mother’s burial cloak. So when I see it, I decide to hunt it. I’m on the edge of the old city anyway, digging flux for the forges, so when my shift ends at dusk I just follow the red tufts, all the way down into the old crumble.

I know, I know. Stupid Toa, walking the ghostways at night. But I’m a Shellmaker, not one of the Rivetfolk – I don’t believe in ghosts. And besides, what choice do I have? Tough as they are, even fivejaws are giving in to the poison now. I’ll be lucky to sniff another one this year, let alone before mum needs her cloak.

So here I am, picking my way between the old manhills in the dark, and I can’t even see the lights of the Body Above on account of the fog that’s risen. Stinks worse than spoiled blast-dust, that fog. It’ll be thick with poison, so I wrap a wet cloth over my mouth and nose and hope for the best. I might not believe in ghosts, but I’m jumpy. I keep seeing things looming in the murk, and even though it’s just the worn old statues of the first people, they still make me prickle.

Should be watching my feet, not the fog, ’cause not ten shellwidths later, the dead city makes a fool of me. I think I’m walking over leaf litter, but it’s just a thin crust of vitregren, grown out over a pit in the track. I plunge through it like piss through snow. My forge-breeches save my skin from the glassy stems, but don’t save my arse from the rock below. I hit sloping ground and roll, trying to suck air into my winded gut as I bounce on the stone.

I stop at last, and my spear skitters to a halt a few boltswidths away. There’s no air in me, and I heave for a long moment before I check for broken bones. If a leg’s gone I’ll probably die here, but if an arm’s gone I’ll not be able to dig flux or work the ’phaestus, which’ll be worse. I’m fine, though. Elbow’s taken a solid crack, probably chipped the bone. But my feet carry me and my fingers all bend the right way, so I cross my thumbs, clap my palms to my collarbones, and fan out my hands to make the Quilla in thanks. Hail Two-Bird, hail Empra.

I’ve fallen through the manhill’s skin, into one of the big chambers of the first people. The Rivetfolk say these places are the worst of all, as Two-Bird can’t see into them to shoo the ghosts off. We Shellmakers know better; we take the sight of the Two-Bird – of the Body Above, and Empra – wherever we go. I keep my hands spread in the Quilla, and hold them out like a shield as I look around that musty old cave.

Then I see the sigil – a great white mark looming behind my crossed thumbs, just visible in the dark. A skull daubed in thick pale clay, split in two halves inside a ring of teeth. I freeze like a rat before a gastergrieff, neck-hairs stiffening. A skull within a maw – that’s a holy sign, I know it is. A powerful one. But I can’t remember what it means.

Before I can bring it to mind, something hideous uncurls out of the dark. It’s spindly and red, and I take it for the fivejaw until I clock how big it is – larger than a wild grox. It’s a jungle of tendrils and claws and snippers, spreading out under a baggy red membrane, and it’s got one eye, blazing like hot iron.

My mind’s blank, but my body erupts like a coiled spring, glad to have something to do with all that fear. My spear’s flying before I know what I’m looking at, and it would be a boltswidth deep in the thing, only an arm like a vine whips out and grabs it. The thing snaps my spear like a twig, and then it flows towards me, skittering on the stone with its membrane flapping. I only just get my knife out before it’s on me, and I dodge one, two swipes of its talons. But it’s too fast – before I can get a thrust of my own in, I’m flat on the floor, metal-cold tentacles closed round my wrists.

Figuring that’s my time up, I screw up my eyes and throw my head back, so at least it goes for my throat and makes it quick. But I don’t die. The monster just holds me there, its breath stinking of dust and hot oil, and so I open one eye to get a look at it.

Another eye looks back at me. A human face, or at least half of one. The monster’s head is mostly grimy steel and wires and ventwork. Machinery, somehow – the sort that only comes from heaven, full of the Iron Magic. But on its right-hand side, above a brass jaw and a thick mat of scar tissue, there’s the face of a woman. It makes no sense. Is she imprisoned? Is she being eaten up? Or is she the monster?

‘Inteleggiss,’ growls a speaking-pad on the monster’s neck. Its human eye scowls in concentration, and its machine eye flares. ‘Mey inteleggiss.’

More sounds came out, distorted and grunty, but I’m not listening – the monster’s grip on my left hand is loose, and I reckon I can reach my belt, fish out my skinning blade. I brace myself against the stone, ready to twist free and jam my blade into that eye before it even knows I’m loose. But then the monster surprises me again.

With a click and a greasy-sounding whir, its machine eye turns a deep blue, and casts this glowing web onto the stone beside me. Some of the light touches me and I gasp, but it doesn’t hurt. I can’t even feel it, even though it looks solid. I turn my head and try to focus on the light, and I see it makes a sort of picture. A model, maybe, like the ones the camp’s builders make when they’re planning a new metal store, but made of light and fog that wobbles and fizzes at the edges.

‘Mizerrikoardi,’ says the monster in its weird buzz, and like a spell has been cast, I know what I’m looking at. The light is making a small picture of something vast – a shape I know like I know my own body. Because I see this shape in the sky every day. It’s the Body Above, the Body of Empra. It’s my god, and so this monster has to be an Angel.

TWO

After it – she – shows me the picture of the Body, she goes into a sort of seizure, like old Jonus after a gas leak, then goes limp. Whatever she is, she’s in a bad way, and she’s used up whatever strength she had left trying to fend me off. But there’s no question of just leaving her there; she’s a holy creature. And if she is from heaven – if she has touched the Body itself – then her life is way bigger than mine. So I run back to the flux camp, heedless of any ghosts or pitfalls, fetch help from the diggers on the next shift and get her loaded onto a cart bound for Shellforge.

The three who help bring her to the camp are good lads from the hauler’s quarter, the kind with more meat than wits in their heads. They’re curious at first, babbling questions and poking at the Angel’s metal bits. But they know I’m a higher rating than them, so they lay off when they’re told. That’s lucky, as I barely know a thing more than them – all I can tell is the truth: that this Angel’s fallen down from Voyd, and needs healing.

Back home at Shellforge, nothing’s so simple. Because Soft-Voice Kal’s there at the camp gate, checking off the flux carts as they go through and scratching marks on his tally-block. Kal’s alright, as the shamans go – he’s taken on his share of mum’s duties as she’s got sicker, and his faith’s as strong as his good arm. But the man’s obsessed with details, and he can make an hour of fuss from a minute’s error. Two-Bird knows what he’ll make of the Angel, I think, as he catches sight of me and waves the cart over with the blobby spindle of his bad arm.

‘Empratex, Toa.’

‘Empratex, Kal,’ I reply, trying to catch his eye with a cheery smile. But he’s already got his neck craned, trying to look past me into the cart’s bed. He must have heard about it, from someone on one of the other carts.

‘Let’s see it then,’ he says, like I’m five years old and hiding a stolen ration pack behind my back. He levers himself off the gatepost with a huff, and limps over to the side of the cart where the Angel’s laid out under a sheet.

‘It’s a she, Kal, and she’s an Angel from heaven.’

‘We’ll see about that, girl. You wouldn’t be the first to go rooting around in the old city and find some toy of the first people, try to pass it off as Empra’s work. Hmph, an Angel indeed. Let’s take a look at what you’ve rea–’

Kal lifts the sheet with the tip of his bad arm, and his voice cuts off like he’s been brained. He looks that way too: mouth hanging slack, eyes swimming. But then his brow creases and his eyes sharpen up, like he’s recognised something, but he doesn’t know where from.

‘Told you,’ I say sullenly, and put the sheet back before anyone else can wander over for a look.

‘Toa, you need to take her to your mother right now,’ he says, as if that wasn’t my plan already, and I get a little crackle of anger behind my ears. But I don’t answer back, as I’ve barely slept in four shifts, and a fight won’t get the Angel fixed any quicker. ‘Quick as you can,’ he adds, earning himself a look that makes him flinch, before he waves the cart into town.

We pass under the beaten tin Quilla on the gate’s lintel, and head up the main dragway towards the centre of camp, where the sun’s rising behind the bulk of the ’phaestus. It’s a clear morning, so I can pick out all the detail on the side of the giant forge-engine – every vent shimmering in the chill, every gantry crowded with workers coming on shift. Exhausted as I am, I take a moment to thank Empra and Two-Bird for bringing it to us, looking up at the pale bones of the Body Above as I pray. ‘May we work fast, strengthened by the rations,’ I say, ‘and bring your Glory Day soon.’ Then, moving my eyes back down from heaven, I rest a hand guiltily on the Angel’s body, and pray so quietly only it will hear me. ‘Tell me your secrets,’ I whisper. ‘Tell me what life’s like in heaven.’

THREE

After I get the Angel to mother’s yurt, she falls into a fever that lasts thirty shifts. At first she’s downstairs behind a screen, but that doesn’t work out. There’s just no peace to be had. Mother’s crackthroat may be in the final stages – the bloody, burbly, bone-mulching stages – but she’s still chief shaman of the forge. That means home’s where the whole priesthood meets and argues, and where gawking kids sometimes need shoving back into the dragway.

The Angel’s got no need of shamans prodding and poking her. So we make a nest for her upstairs in the great yurt’s loft, where mum spends nights in her chair, and where the holy prints are stored in their racks of tubes.

I stay by the Angel’s side all shifts, tending to her according to mother’s directions, and sleeping on a pile of furs beside hers. When mum lets me, I look after her too. I’m allowed to take my rations from the shamans’ stock, and I’m excused from the ’phaestus until either the Angel comes round or she dies. On the night it finally happens, I’m washing her. And like any good Shellmaker daughter, I’m reciting the creed in my head as I work.

I) Empra is the maker of heaven, and the master of the Iron Magic. His home is Tera, the highest vault of heaven, and there he leads the war against his great Enemy.

I scoop the bitter mash of herbs from the bowl, and squeeze the juice out with my hands. Then I lift the furs covering the Angel, and begin to clean. Her strange red robes – which I had reckoned to be membranes like a Barratur’s wings when I first saw her – are off now, and what’s beneath is way smaller and more human than I’d been expecting.

One of her arms is a mess of branching metal claws and tendrils, and her hips gave way to brass legs like an insect’s, plus there’s the half of her head that’s steel. But beyond that, most of her is pale flesh, and skinny as a starveling. Even after the ration shortage last winter, I’d have outweighed her by a stone or two. Her skin is less discoloured now as her blood heals, but it’s still puckered into puffy red rims around the tubes and cables punched into her ribcage. I soothe the seams between flesh and metal with the balm, even though I’m not sure I need to. It’s hard to know what’s infection, and what’s just her nature. It seems like heaven might just be a painful place to live.

II) Empra made the first people long ago, but they forgot him and they forgot the Iron Magic. We are the City-sens, distant and penitent children of the first people. We became the City-sens when Empra came down from Tera in his great steel Body. He came here to make the world a part of heaven.

As I clean the cuts on her meat arm, her hand clenches round the talisman it grips, even in sleep. It’s a strange hand – her fingers can’t be much more than half the width of mine, and are soft as butter – but the thing held in it is even stranger.

When I returned with the boys from the flux camp to fetch her, she’d dragged herself into the little cave under the white sigil. Inside, she was rummaging through a sort of metal pod, just larger than a person, and shaped like a pegwort seed. It was all charred on the outside, like it’d been through a fire, and had one face cracked open to reveal a mess of blood-stained padding. The pod had been alive with the Iron Magic, but the Angel had acted like it was nothing as she foraged jerkily through the insides. Eventually, she’d pulled out this little ridged grey block, with one small glass plate on it, and passed out. She hasn’t let go of it since.

III) But Empra was attacked. His Enemy cleaved his Spirit from his Body and sent it back to Tera, leaving his Body wounded and sleeping in the lowest vault of heaven called Voyd. While the Body Above is broken in Voyd, Empra’s Spirit is trapped in Tera. We cannot meet Empra, and he cannot make the world a part of heaven, until the Body is healed.

‘How’s she faring, Toa?’ comes a quiet, raspy voice from across the loft. Mother’s awake.

‘Still deep under,’ I reply, turning to glance at her through the medicine-haze that drifts through the loft, ‘but I swear on Quilla the worst’s done.’ Mother grunts, either considering what I’ve said or trying to clear her throat. Her face looks tiny. Maybe it’s the mass of hides and gurrux-foam heaped around her that makes her look small, or the sickly orange light flickering up from the herb-burner, but it’s like she’s shrinking in her chair as I watch. She works her jaw, trying to rub moisture into her lips, and winces before she manages to speak again.

‘No blaspheming, girl. Don’t let up on cleaning her, and be sure to pray over the metal… as well as the flesh.’ Mum breaks off in a wet, sucking cough before finding her voice again. ‘There are ’cantations…’ Then she’s asleep again, or just lost in search of a thought – now the crackthroat’s in her head, it can be hard to tell.

I wonder how many days she’s got left, much as I have done most nights in the last year. She’s not dying quick. Secretly, I reckon she can’t stand the thought of letting the tribe’s Works go on without her supervision. Even though Kal and the rest carry much of her burden now, there’s no question who’s chief shaman. Sitting up here, closer to the Body Above than anyone except the workers on the burning mountainside of the ’phaestus, she’s still in charge.

And maybe all she can do now is sip tea and breathe smoke and squint down at the camp through the loft’s little vent-flap – but who’d begrudge her? If anyone’s earned a rest before they die, it’s mother. She’s worked that colossus of an engine out there for thirty years, longer than many live, and been chief shaman for twenty of those. She’s seen the Shellmaker tribe swell to nearly a third of its size again, and increase output from five score shells a year to nearly eight. Two-Bird favours her with the best rations, and even the Girder-people out west honour her name. And her daughter will miss her, when she’s gone.

IV) This is our purpose: to work, and to make the Body whole again. We dig and we smelt and we forge and we rivet, and we offer our Works to the sky. The Enemy sends the poison to dissuade us from our Works. For every day that we strive, it grows thicker in the air. But we are not disheartened.

Mum’s definitely asleep now, her breath keeping pace with the whoosh and whoomph of the big hammers in the night. I wonder if she’s got one ear out for them, even in her dreams. We both know that one of the shells being forged out there is hers. Deep in the ’phaestus, bathed in sparks, is the one that’s going to take her to heaven, and sit in the Body Above until the Glory Day. She’ll be short a cloak, but she tells me not to feel bad about it. Empra will be happier you saved an Angel, she said when I arrived back that night. I hope she’s right.

V) When our bodies fail, we send them to the Body Above, to wait until the work is done. Then, when Empra’s Spirit returns to his Body, he will know his children at last. He will drink the poison of the world away, and begin the Glory Day, when all that is broken shall be repaired by the Iron Magic, and all who are dead shall return from Voyd.

There’s hundreds of tribes out there, each working on a single part of the Body. And we all have our ways of uniting our fallen with Empra, to wait for Glory with him. The throngs of the Girder-people lower their dead into the molten metal that forms their Works, so their people can be woven into the Body’s very bones. The Bloodbrewers of the tar bogs embalm their lost, and set them afloat in the great tanks where the refined godsblood is stored. The Rivetfolk grease their offerings with the rendered fat of their dead, and we stack them in the shells we make. We don’t know what the shells are for – mum thinks they’re Empra’s teeth, on account of their shape – but behind the caps of blast-dust milled for us by the Powdermen, we always entomb a ring of carcasses. Sometimes just one, in the case of someone important like mother.

I try not to think about mum in the shell as I wash the Angel’s body. About how it’ll feel when she’s gone, or how we’ve never really talked about anything but the forge-work. It’s more important to remember that she’ll be back. This life isn’t for living – it’s for working. We’ll have forever to talk come the Glory Day, and we’ll never have to lift so much as a hammer – that’s Empra’s promise.

VI) We cannot touch the Body of Empra itself, as we are too impure, and the air of Voyd would burn us. But the spirit called Two-Bird, with its many bodies of steel, can fly between our world and the heavens. It is Two-Bird who brought us the ’phaestus forges, who brings us the rations that sustain us, and who comes to collect our Works. Two-Bird is Empra’s guardian, and his champion.

As I get to the sixth verse of the creed, it reminds me the Angel needs to eat – and so do I. So I head to the store-basket and fetch back one of the silver packs of rations, stamped with Quilla, the mark of Two-Bird, and say a short prayer before tearing it open. I count out the contents – the three white blocks, the green square, the two red cubes (my favourites) and the pink water.

Rations aren’t the only food, but they’re the best by far. I’ve had world-food from time to time – barratus meat and tunnel-tubes mostly – but it’s messy and hard to prepare, plus it usually makes you ill, so it’s only really for emergencies and ration shortages. Mum says that when she was little there were places called farms, which made stuff that tasted a bit like green squares, but the poison got too bad for them to work anymore. That’s fine though, because green squares are my least favourite part of rations anyway.

After I crumble one of the white blocks into the pink water for the Angel’s feeding tube, we’re ready to eat, and so I close my eyes and say the seventh verse of the creed – the most important one – aloud.

‘Seven – Two-Bird is an aspect of the Body Above, just as the Body is an aspect of Empra. Together, they are Imperium, the whole of god.’

As I finish I open my eyes, and I nearly jump when I find the Angel staring right at me, wide awake. With a soft crackle, her speaking-pad comes to life.

‘Imperium,’ she says, and gives me a look that makes my fingertips shiver. And that’s when things get interesting.

FOUR

On the surface of it, life’s still normal. The moon comes and goes through another cycle, mum gets sicker somehow, and I return to work. Digging’s done for now in the flux camps, so I’m back working tongs in the ’phaestus, swapping my grazes and coughs for burns and blisters. But it also means I’m in camp, so after shifts I head back to the loft to talk with the Angel.

She sits across from mum in the days, keeping quiet. Healing up, and tinkering with that strange little glass-faced block. From the way she looks at it, I reckon the talisman gives her some way of looking inside herself – but I don’t know what she’s after, or what she’s finding. Now that her red robes are back on, keeping the human parts of her deep in shadow, she’s as hard to read as the flickering glyphs on the talisman itself. She won’t let me wash her anymore, and keeps as much skin covered as possible. It’s like she’s horrified I ever saw underneath the robes; like she’s ashamed of her flesh.

I can see why, maybe. During the fever, she changed. With the robes off, and those red welts between meat and machinery showing, she was starting to seem like a person. Sick and weird, with strange things wired into her. But still a woman, whose skin at least didn’t look much older than mine. Heaven-born she might have been, but she still shat, and she still needed wiping by a forge-rat like me. Now the shroud’s back, and that eye of hers is glowing from under a crimson cowl, she’s an Angel again. An it, not a she – something fierce and faceless and ageless, that you wouldn’t touch unless you wanted to lose a hand.

Still, I can’t quite let go of what I saw underneath. I catch the little scrunch of her eyebrow that shows her annoyance when her tinkering leads to a dead end, and I see the worry in the way she stands when she looks up at the Body Above. Riven through with the Iron Magic though she is, she’s a person. And she’s got problems she doesn’t know how to solve.

In the evenings, between shift-end and sleep, mum and I talk with her. It’s slow going at first, especially with mum losing her voice and blacking out more often. But the Angel learns blazing-fast, and I reckon she’s somehow been listening to us all the time she was out cold. She keeps cagey while she’s picking up our speech, though. Mum and I are forever asking her questions about heaven and the Body – we’ve got the whole tribe asking us, after all, and Kal relentlessly trying to poke his head into the loft. But for now, she tells us only what she wants to, and that ain’t much.

Then comes the day of the Lift. We’re all amazed that mother’s watching this one from the outside of a shell. But there she is – out on the lifting-yard with her ceremonial furs, her forge-staff and her leather cap passed down through forty-two pairs of hands since the first chief shaman. There’s a big autumn storm coming in, and the rain’s the kind that burns your eyes, but she’s sitting in her chair undaunted, tiny jaw set as she looks out over the tribe’s Works. There are seventeen shells arranged on the ’crete – the most we’ve ever forged in one passing of the moon – and each one the height of twenty folk. Between them, they’ll bear eight dozen dead to heaven. The toil of moving them out onto the yard alone is backbreaking, with whole districts pulling in harnesses, and children running ahead to bear the log rollers in their beaten gold casings. But it’s always joyful work, hauling in the cortege, because it’s the holiest work of all. And because of what comes next. What happens now.

Everyone’s gone quiet, but it’s an electric quiet, as they wait in perfect rows for Two-Bird’s descent. A messenger is coming from heaven. The Angel and I watch from an old water tower, just north of the yard. I’d wanted to show the Angel to Two-Bird, but her eye flared at the prospect, and she forbade it. She says I’ll understand soon enough, and her words are barely cool from the fire when the horn sounds.

The horn. Two-Bird’s call. It’s more like weather than sound, like something solid that you can’t see, which shakes your blood as it blasts through you. It comes from far under the clouds, and sure enough, there’s Two-Bird’s shadow growing beneath the boiling grey. ‘Big’ doesn’t even start to describe it. It’s like a mountain in the sky, coming down base first, with lightning flashing off its sides. If it fell, it’d crush half of Shellforge, and yet the creed tells us Two-Bird’s body is only a speck next to the size of the Body Above.

Once Two-Bird’s great belly is poking clear of the clouds, its talons start to descend on thick black chains – chains so heavy they don’t even sway in the wind. Tribesfolk scramble up the brass, ready to attach our offerings to the talons as they descend. It’s lethal work, can get you crushed in a heartbeat. But who wouldn’t risk it, for the chance to touch the metal of Two-Bird itself, still cold from Voyd?

As the climbers abseil down again and the shells are winched up towards heaven, you can see people in the crowd mouthing farewells, and I know that’ll be me soon enough. But the Angel isn’t watching the tribesfolk. She’s staring at the rising shells, like she’s trying to figure something out in that iron skull of hers. The shells lock into racks on Two-Bird’s belly, and there’s another pause. This is it. We all stare upwards, holding our breath. And the hatch opens.

At first it’s a puff of silver, twinkling against the black of the open hatch. But then the individual shapes start to become visible, tumbling in the wind before smacking into the ’crete far below. Ration packs. The scattering becomes a deluge as Two-Bird’s belly empties, and a huge drift starts to build in the yard. A mountain of ration packs, measured out to match the Works we’ve offered. Everyone stays still as statues, eyes fixed on the silver. But then mother twitches her staff, and they bolt for the food.

Two-Bird’s engines come on somewhere up in the clouds. The roar’s almost as loud as the cheering of the tribesfolk as they fill their bags in the yard. But it catches the Angel’s interest, and she speaks at last.

‘What do you call that phenomenon?’ she says with a curious tone, extending a tendril towards the glowing plumes of steam coming down from the engines.

‘It’s the breath of life,’ I say, wondering why she’d be so focused on that, of all things. ‘Two-Bird breathes it out when it goes back to heaven – it keeps the poison at bay.’

There’s a long pause before the Angel replies.

‘We must speak with your mother now, before she expires,’ she says, like she’s finally finished chewing over a problem. ‘All is not well in heaven, and it is time you knew the truth.’

FIVE

The Angel says we’ve been lied to. At first, of course, we don’t really know what she’s trying to say. Even with all the progress we’ve made, there’s just no match in our language for half the words she uses, especially now she’s talking about the business of heaven and all. But after a little fumbling round the edges of meaning, it gets clearer.

The Angel says Empra made heaven, just like we believe. But she says Empra had the help of another god, who’s been hidden from us. This god – the Mawed Skull – gave Empra the Iron Magic to begin with, and knows all of its secrets. The Angels are its servants, woven in heaven from machines and people.

No matter what the Angel claims to be, I get angry with it. Even if you’re a magical being, you can’t just blaspheme like that in someone’s home. But mother stops me raising my voice, says she knows the truth of what the Angel’s saying. She has me fetch one of the holy prints from its tube in the rack, which she unrolls to reveal an enormous plan of the machinery inside the ’phaestus. And there it is. That sign – the one the Angel had painted in clay in its cave, with the split skull in the ring of teeth – stamped all over the holy prints. The sign of the Mawed Skull. Mother says it’s stamped all over the insides of the ’phaestus too. In hidden places that the shamans know, where they go to say secret prayers.

But that’s not all. This god has been hidden from us by Two-Bird. Two-Bird, who’s not the third part of god – not any kind of god at all – but a parasite working for Empra’s Enemy. What we see as Two-Bird – the great creature that comes from heaven to lift our Works into the void – is just a shell, a haw-ler, as the Angel calls it, created long ago as tools of the Mawed Skull. Two-Bird’s spirit animates them, working through a tide of grey-faced people who bear its sigil.

These thralls also infest the Body Above, in numbers we struggle to picture. They fill its holy spaces like featherworms fill a flyblown gurrux, and they’ve even seized the Angels of the Mawed Skull to serve Two-Bird.

‘They hunted down the faithful,’ says the Angel, ‘called us heretek and slaughtered us. Only I escaped, in a pod they did not see.’

‘But… why?’ I ask, feeling like the bottom’s dropping out of my mind.

The Angel takes a long, hissing breath, looks directly at mother, and answers. ‘The miserik – the Body Above, that is – is all but healed. The Body is prepared for… Empra’s spirit to enter, but Two-Bird has taken control and refuses ingress. Empra is trapped as a spirit without a body, while Two-Bird assumes his mantle and says it acts on his will. Imperium, it calls itself – the whole of god.’ The face of the Angel is a steel mask of hate, seething with the reflection of flames from mother’s herb-burner. But those flames also glitter off wetness in the Angel’s human eye. ‘We were attacked for trying to free the Body. It has… a machine in it for holding a spirit, which Two-Bird keeps… suppressed. We wanted to let that machine blossom, open it directly to Empra. But we were cut down, and now I’m all that’s left.’

‘So what happens now?’ asks mother, straightforward as if she’s asking a shaman for a temperature reading. My mind’s still heaving from having the heavens turned upside down, but she’s already thinking about her next step. The Angel hesitates before responding, but aims a level gaze at mother as it speaks.

‘Two-Bird will keep poisoning your world, while telling you that only Two-Bird can keep the poison at bay. And you’ll keep working for Two-Bird, because soon the rations will be all that’s left to eat. And when Two-Bird has taken all you can give, it will steal Empra’s Body and take it away, and you will choke in the dust of its passing.’

I feel the sort of shock you get when something sharp goes right through you, when you see the blood well up a moment before you feel the pain. I can’t see what the Angel’s saying for the size of it. It’s blasphemy – the sort of stuff you’d be furnaced for even joking about. But it’s an Angel from heaven telling us, and mum’s face says she knows the truth of every word. We’re all living and dying for a parasite.

‘What can we do?’ I ask, after a long time goes by. Because you have to start somewhere. The Angel turns to me with a curious look.

‘Before we were massacred, my cadre developed a piece of… skrapkoad. A… magic spell, which, if it could be cast on the Body’s… spirit-machine, could crack its shackles and allow it to draw in the presence of Empra.’

‘Do you still know the spell?’ asks mother, more alert than she’s been in months, and the Angel taps the little box with the glass plate.

‘I managed to save most of the spell before I escaped, and I have been optimising it since. But I have no way to get it to heaven – even if I could get into or-bitt, the servants of Two-Bird would… detect me in moments.’

I’m still struggling to put it all together, when mum comes out with her answer. The sheer speed of her coming to terms with all of this – it’s like she’s not surprised. Like she’s been waiting all her life to have it confirmed, and had a plan spare just in case. And once I take in what she’s saying, the shock already quivering in my arms goes deep cold.

‘Take my place in the shell, Toa,’ she says, in the nearest the crackthroat will let her to a shout. I jump to my feet, head spinning, but she sits me down with the smallest twitch of her hand.

‘But, mum!’ I say. ‘When Glory Day comes, you’ll not–’

‘Glory Day won’t come at all if Two-Bird keeps its talons on the Body. You have to travel to Voyd, to the Body, and within a shell is the only way. Take my place, and carry the spell to heaven.’

The way she speaks, the look on her face, is like she’s solving a mechanical problem. She’s just given up on resurrection – the one promise that makes this life bearable – but you’d think she’d just told someone where to dump a barrow of flux. I’ve never bothered worrying about the fact I don’t really know her, because I know there’ll be time for that when the Works are done. But if I take her place in the shell, we won’t even get that.

I open my mouth to say so, but I can’t find the words. I want to say I love her, but I can’t face knowing for sure that it doesn’t matter to her. So I look to scripture instead.

‘Even if I did go in the shell,’ I stammer, trying to keep my heart rate down, ‘the air up there… it’d burn me up. We know from the creed we ain’t capable of touching the Body ourselves, right?’

Now the Angel speaks – but it speaks to mother, with the tone of one shaman examining a faulty valve with another. ‘There are materials in my escape pod. It will be tight inside the shell, but we can prepare the space to protect Toa. And inside the body, there is a world with air like this one. The odds of success remain slim, but there is a chance.’

‘How long will it take?’ asks mother.

‘The chamber will be prepared at the exact moment we need it,’ says the Angel. ‘Or very slightly afterwards.’ And although her mouth’s covered in steel and her voice is a monotone buzz, I’ll bet my hands I see a smile in her eye. And in mother’s. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were sharing a joke. Perhaps mother always spoke the Angel’s language after all.

SIX

I hear the sound of the horn just as clearly as always, even from inside the shell. It’s like it comes from inside my bones. Winter’s here, but I’m sweltering – my body’s wrapped in layers of fur and leather, and the wet from my own breath drips back on me from the glass in front of my face. We’ve always built tiny windows into each shell, so the dead can be counted by Empra as they arrive in heaven. Now, that window’s the only thing keeping me from feeling like I’ve been buried alive. There can’t be more than a boltswidth between my body and the metal in any direction, and every bit of space is packed with insulation or air-bags.

Mother died a week before today’s Lift, and this shell – always intended for her – is painted all over with stories from her life, in ochre mixed with Barratur-tallow. I think of everyone out there reading the pictures, all thinking she’s laid to rest underneath them. But instead it’s me, packed in with the mechanical guts of the Angel’s pod, and a big cluster of air-filled gurrux bladders.

Mum’s real funeral was secret, and barely anyone came – just those few shamans who were in the know. Her closest, who she’d called on to help outfit this chamber for me. Kal spoke for her, and slid her into the molten depths of the ’phaestus when it was done.

It was a metal burial, in the way of the Girder-people; mum had asked for it at the end, before she lost the energy to speak. The morning after, Kal had pressed a piece of not-yet-cool steel into my hands, and told me to take it safe to heaven. It’s with me now, still warm against my skin. It might not ensure mum’s resurrection, but it lets me hope for it, and that’s good enough. Hitched to the next loop of my belt is another gift – this one from the Angel. It’ll help me cast the spell when I need to, and it gives me a different sort of hope.

I touch both pieces of steel in turn for luck, and begin running through the plan again. The machinery around me starts to rattle with the presence of Two-Bird above, and I can almost feel its shadow pressing down on me. But I keep calm by visualising the map of light the Angel showed me. Following the little moving arrows from the chamber the Angel called Munishionstoar – where I’ll arrive – right through the guts of the Body to a place called Haadpoint, where the spell must be cast.

I’m about to begin reciting the words of Angel-speech I know – Maygos, mekanikas, heretek, haw-ler, stah-ship – when I hear footsteps clanking up the outside of the shell. Things are moving faster than I expected. There’s a thud – I feel it in my bones as the talons are attached to the shell by one of my tribemates. Then a deep stretchy creak, as the chain takes the weight. A tremor in my stomach tells me I’ve left the ground, and I gasp. From now on, I’m in the realm of heaven.

I can only see dirty sky through the tiny slit of the window, until there’s another rumble, and the shell tips forward to clamp to Two-Bird’s – to the haw-ler’s – body. I know to expect it, but it still yanks on my guts when the view swings downward, and I’m lying on my belly with the world spread out hundreds of shellwidths beneath me.

The tribesfolk out on the ’crete aren’t much more than specks from up here, surrounded by all the soot and the stink of Shellforge. As I rise, the tents begin to look like scales on a tattered hide, darker in the bands of old leather yurts, and lighter out where Two-Bird drops the smaller, newer pre-fabbs. The ’phaestus glowers in the middle of it all, shrouded in its own steam. Then it’s all gone, lost in a bank of thick, bitter brown cloud, and I’m alone with the thunder of the rising metal.

When the cloud finally thins I can see the curve of the horizon, and night creeping across it like thick black godsblood. The whole world looks like old leather – brown and grey and grubby, and thicker with scars than a slag-scraper’s arms. Where the dark pools, the land is angry, blazing with furnaces and glowing with firelit smog. How many tribes are down there? How many do we know, and how many have we never even heard of, burning and working and living and dying?

I feel dizzy, to the point where I think the shock of it all has cooked my head. But right before I black out, I remember the Angel saying something about the air… the air! As we get higher, it’s turning to Voyd! Hurriedly I grab the air-mask and start breathing from the gurrux bladders, and the world beneath shimmers into focus again.

The frost on the edges of the glass deepens, and soon I feel cold to the bone, even under all my layers. It’s so much deeper than the cold of winter. A pounding pain starts up deep in my ears, and I grit my teeth. I’m being lifted through Voyd now, and all I can do is hope – hope, and pray to Empra and the Mawed Skull that the Angel’s seals hold. That the air stays in.

After a while I lose all sense of up and down, and it feels like I’m floating, weightless in my cocoon of hides and heaven-stuff. There’s no wind buffeting the shell anymore, and only the deep growl of the engines underscores the silence. Then home swings away. The battered brown curve falls out of view, and all there is, is black. Black, and things I’ve never seen before – white pinpricks that get brighter the longer I look out into the dark. Are they ghosts? Watching eyes? Or windows through to the highest vault of heaven, where Tera waits? I feel so tiny here, and so fragile – a trespasser, in a place only gods are strong enough to endure.

Then I see god itself. The Body. It’s tipped with a blade that could carve the moon – a great steel cliff that slides out of the abyss, more clean and white than a furnace heart. Gold glistens like frozen clouds on its edges, and letters in the script of heaven tower hundreds of times my height as I drift past. ‘PRINCEPS MISERICORDIAE’, they spell – that strange phrase I first heard from the Angel, one of the secret names of god. The metal speeds past outside my window as Two-Bird ascends towards the Body’s spine, and I think I’ve clocked the scale of it all until I see a tiny, winking light in the distance – a welding torch, like the smallest spark from a spilled ember.

At last I’m lifted all the way up that iron cliff, and find myself looking down the length of the Body along its backbone. It must be thousands upon thousands of shellwidths, like the manhills of the old city, but built on the scale of the world. It’s so big I can’t breathe, and I feel pinned to the wall of the chamber. It’s too big for me to hold in my head all at once. And there, crouched like a thundercloud in the middle of it all, is Two-Bird.

This isn’t one of the haw-lers; this has to be the interloper itself. A titanic metal bird, with wings easily a hundred shellwidths across, perched on the Body’s highest hump. Its double heads scream spite into heaven, and one stares directly at me with eyes like black gold. As soon as I see those eyes I shut mine and hold my breath, praying to Empra that it thinks I’m dead, that it didn’t catch me looking. I’ll be lucky – Two-Bird sees everything. It can even see inside you, mum used to say, to see how much you love Empra.

I keep my breath pent up in my chest for a long time, and my eyes shut even longer. I’m just starting to reckon I might have got away with it when there’s a resounding bang against the walls, and I scream. I’m thrashing around, blood hot with panic, until I remember the Angel’s words. This must be the dokk-klamp, and it means I’m being taken in by the Body. It means I’ve survived Voyd.

It’s dark outside the window, with only the vaguest shapes suggesting the shell’s movement. A row of dim lights slips past in the gloom – metal glints. After a while, there’s a sense of enormous doors silently closing as I pass. I must be inside the Body now. After a long time there’s another, softer thud, and then stillness. A weak breeze moans against the outside of the shell. Air. I lie still for a long while in the cold, just breathing, desperately thankful to Empra for having made it. I’ve got tools to open the hatch behind me, but I decide to wait a while, just in case Two-Bird is watching for tricks.

I must have dozed off, because suddenly there’s a skittering and a clanging outside, and a rattling on the hatch. Bolts being undone. My blood runs thick and cold – this wasn’t in the plan. Before I can work out what to be afraid of, the thick hatch is pried open with a wicked crack, and there’s a hiss of air. I breathe the first lungful of heaven, of the Body, and it smells like piss and turds.

SEVEN

There’s a gaunt face in the hatchway, ruddy with firelight, sniffing like an animal. I open my mouth, stunned, but there’s no time to speak before long arms shoot in to grab me. I’m hauled out like a grub from dead wood, and flopped onto a filthy metal gantry among a forest of scabby grey feet.

There’s at least two dozen of them – dog-thin folk wearing faded leather rags, and decked with strings of little bones. They stink like a latrine, and they’re vile to look at, with sunken eyes and slippery-looking, too-thin grey skin. I get to my feet and they shriek in horror, leaping backwards from me – because of course, they expect me to be dead.

I sway, lightheaded, drawing my knife and tracing drunken circles in the air with it. Keeping them back while I try to make sense of where I am. It’s a bit like the caverns beneath the old city – like the place inside the manhill where I found the Angel – but the ceiling’s so high it may as well be night. I can only see one wall. The others are too far away in the dark. And all around me in every direction are thousands – tens of thousands – of shells. This must be Munishionstoar. Some of the shells are plain and some are painted, with some designs I recognise and others I don’t. Has to be every shell we ever made, and far more besides. Where have they all come from? Are there other Shellmakers?

It’s then I notice that most have their tomb-hatches busted open, and my attention snaps back to the grey people. A few of them are capering around me, keeping away from my blade, but the rest are swarming over the other shells from the Lift, clawing away with crowbars. Pulling bodies out. It all makes sudden, sick sense. Those rags they’re dressed in are the remnants of Shellmaker clothes, and those bones they’re wearing… I fight back vomit as I see they’ve got skinning knives out.

‘Away!’ I roar, barreling one of them aside as I sprint towards the nearest shell. They’ve got the body of a boy I don’t recognise laid out on the metal, but I won’t let them touch him. Despite the layers swaddling me, I move like a steam hammer, and I bellow the striking-cry of my people as I come. But the grey folk are too excited, chattering too loudly to even notice. They’re tearing the clothes off the corpse, and its head is lolling on the grimy mesh, eyes half open.

I don’t even think as I fall on the largest of the people, a gangly man with boils on his skin. The next moments are a mess. His blood shoots out hot and dark where I jam the knife tip into his neck, and all I can think of is how it doesn’t really feel like anything to kill a man. Then there’s three more on me, and I’m hacking at them with the blade, leaving wide, dark wedges in their forearms. The blade gets stuck in the gristle of a woman’s hand, and I have to shove her hard to get free. Blood gets in my eye. They’re smaller than me, and much weaker, so I know I’ll be good so long as I can keep them off me.

But there’s so many of them – too many to keep away. I spin and dodge, but there’s always one behind me, and before I know it there’s dirty fingers scrabbling for my eyes. I throw myself hard to the floor, with one of them beneath me, and there’s a spongy crack that says I’ve busted its ribs. The hands slip off my head, but there’s two more grey faces pouncing at me, and a knife working at the leather over my hip. It punches through, and there’s wet all down my leg. I shield my face, but someone’s kicking at my head. I know I’m going to die, and I’m so much angrier than I expected.

Before the Angel came I wouldn’t have cared about dying – it’s just something that happens, sooner or later. But I can’t die right now. If I die, Empra’s never going to be free of Two-Bird, and Glory Day will never come. I’m suddenly terrified – not of the grisly hands reaching for my throat, but of my own significance. I’m no longer just a forge-rat. I’m responsible for the fate of my whole people. For all people. If I fail, so does everything. I can’t let myself die.

Knowing this gives me a terrible strength. I don’t know whether it’s from Empra, or the Mawed Skull, or just from a girl who’s scared to die. But it’s drastic, bone-deep. I roll, find a place to plant a boot, and launch upwards with my blade, straight into a twitching grey belly. I slice open a neck on the backswing, go to lunge for another, but the surge is already fading. Bellowbreaths later I’m down again, and they’re on me.

Just then, a sharp crack sounds somewhere in the cavern and the grey folk freeze, faces snapping up to stare into the dark. Another crack and they hiss, baring black peg teeth, before turning and scurrying like flies shooed from a wound. They’re off me, loping down the gantry away from the sound and into the night. A few of them try dragging bodies from the shells, but a third crack makes them drop and run.

I try to pursue, but my legs won’t move well. My hand slips on blood as I try to get up, and my vision blurs. There’s voices in the distance, getting closer. They’re talking what sounds like a different language to begin with, but then I realise it’s just my own, pronounced weirdly.

‘Bilgers again,’ growls one, before spitting loudly. ‘Transpired here just afore we.’

‘Pox the skaffers and their hushways. We need to fast up, get here quicker. How many bodies take they, this day round?’ This one sounds like their leader, and the first voice counts under its breath before replying.

‘Noneways, don’t think. Saw ’em fighting just as we came, like. Must’ve kept ’em baffled.’

‘Praise Thee-em-pur. Now have the lads fetch up the worthy-dead for proper burial, while I check the ’nitions. And stack the bilgers for mulching, else their kin’ll be back for nibbles.’

‘Chief,’ cries another voice, much closer, ‘quick now, this one’s alive!’ Then there’s a drumming of boots on metal, and a ring of faces looking down on me. Not Angel faces or ghoul faces, just normal ones, swathed in fur caps against the cold of the cavern. They’re frowning at me like I’m something impossible, but they’ve got no blades out, so I decide to let sleep take me and worry about them later.

EIGHT

I come round in a corrugated metal shed, not much bigger than the thin mattress I’m lying on. Dim firelight flickers through a curtained doorway, and a huddle of children are watching me, so still I don’t even notice them at first. Immediately, my hand flies to my belt in panic – but the gifts are still there. I’m safe, for now.

Looking out past the door-curtain, which is sewn together from sacks bearing Two-Bird’s sigil, I see a sort of street. It’s lit by fires in low braziers, and filled with people shuffling along with handcarts. The ceiling is low, way lower than in Munishionstoar, and it shakes with constant rumbles and chugs. The voices of distant machines, growling to mark their territory. The air’s cold. It smells of sweat, and the spilled godsblood that shimmers in rainbow slicks on the damp road.

Agitated, I scramble to get up. I need to leave, to get to Haadpoint. But there’s a tube in my arm, attached to a grimy bag on a sort of pole on wheels. The tube makes me think of the Angel’s welts and I pull it out on instinct, leaving behind a cold pain and a pool of red. Stumbling slightly, I lunge for the door-curtain, and have it half pulled aside when a man appears with a steaming bowl.

‘No, no,’ says the lumbering figure, and I recognise the voice as the chief of the group from Munishionstoar. ‘You’re safe hereways. No bilgers – we’re all kru. Now drink,’ he says brightly, gesturing at the bowl. ‘It’s meaty – good stuffs!’

The man sits at the end of my thin blanket, and I take the bowl. As I drink, I notice there’s a small crowd peering curiously in at me around the entrance, but I don’t care. I’m famished, and the taste of the broth is the taste of comfort itself – pink water, with a double portion of red cubes crumbled in.

‘Rations,’ I say, as I breathe the steam in and smile.

The man’s eyes go wide, and he laughs. ‘Correctus! Rations! You mean you eating thems in Terrah too?’

‘Tera?’ I ask, wondering if I’ve heard him right.

‘Yeah, Terrah! You know, the greenworld, the destination. That’s where you’re from, no?’

NINE

The man who saved me is called Pipes. He lives with his children Roq and Hal in Batterytown, a warren of tunnel-streets that fill the Body between Munishionstoar and the district he calls port-broadsyde. His people are called the Loaders, and they are part of a wider people called Kru, who Pipes says live all through the Body. They worship Empra just like us, but they call him Thee-em-pur, and they have other gods besides.

The grey people he saved me from are the Bilgers, who live in a terrible catacomb called the belowdex, in the lowest layers of the body. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a grimmer place than the overcrowded squalor of Batterytown, but Pipes’ face goes hard when he thinks of the belowdex.

I was expecting heaven to be a bright place, sparkling with the Iron Magic. But although the tunnels throng with countless magic lights and screens, they don’t bring much light to this underworld. Truly, life in Two-Bird’s heaven seems grimmer than it is in our world. Even Pipes’ people seem to believe they live here as some kind of punishment, and it takes me until the Briefing to work out why.

It’s my eleventh shift in Batterytown when the Briefing gets called, but I’ve been expecting it, because Pipes has told me how much he’s looking forward to it maybe a dozen times. We’ve repeated a lot of conversations, these last few shifts, as I’ve been healing up on the mattress in his hovel. Even though he sleeps on the floor with Roq and Hal, and splits his rations with me, Pipes just seems so excited to have me under his roof.

His people think the bodies of my people come from Tera itself, and that’s why they protect them from the Bilgers. He thinks we’re holy, that I’m a living miracle. But I reckon he’d look after me even if he knew the truth. He’s a strange, kind figure, and he strikes me as someone who’s been lonely for a while.

When the bell finally rings from the town square to summon us to the Briefing, he’s overjoyed. He fusses over his children, dressing them in almost-clean tunics with real brass buttons, which they keep in a tin wardrobe just for these special days. He dons a matching outfit of his own, and even finds one for me, which clearly hasn’t been worn in some time.

As we join the crowd in the square, Roq and Hal run round us excitedly, hooting at the other children as they weave between their parents’ legs. There’s a festival mood in the air, like the day of a Lift, and everyone’s watching the dais at the square’s centre. There’s a pulpit there, and speaking-boxes, and everything’s decorated with iron skulls. There’s a lot of skulls on things, up in heaven.

Another bell rings, everyone hushes and the Briefing starts. It turns out it’s a play – a bit like our festival of Empra-Mercy – but it happens every twenty-one shifts, rather than once a year. It’s confusing to start with because of the Loaders’ weird language, but Pipes’ occasional whispers help me make sense of it.

It all starts with a brown sphere, held up on a pole by a woman whose face is painted in ash.

‘That’s Theta,’ murmurs Pipes. ‘That’s where we came from. Failed kolony – a poisoned world. But look, hereways come the stah-ship to take us away!’ Right on cue, three Loaders march onstage with a representation of the Body, painted on sheet metal and fixed on more rusty poles.

Another woman appears at the other side of the stage, this time with a green sphere, and the crowd cheers. Pipes elbows me and points, grinning. ‘Lookways, Terrah! Your home!’

The Loaders carrying the Body begin moving from the brown sphere to the green, but they never make it across the stage. Halfway to Tera they begin leering and grimacing at the crowd, and then they turn and start fighting each other.

‘Sinners,’ says Pipes with a sad shake of his head, before booing loudly. As its bearers brawl, the representation of the Body falls to the floor with a clang, and the crowd starts to bellow in agitation. It’s starting to look like a full-fledged riot is going to start, when a flash of blast-dust goes off in the centre of the stage, releasing a pillar of smoke.

When the smoke clears, there’s a steel frame at the centre of the stage, in the shape of a person, dressed in ornate clothes. To its side, up on the pulpit, a man with a loudhailer addresses the crowd.

‘Kru!’ he roars.

‘Captin!’ they shout back – but they’re not talking to the loudhailer man. They’re shouting at the giant rickety person-shape on stage.

‘Kru, listen up!’

‘Yes, Captin!’ the Loaders shout in unison, and I see tears fleck the corners of Pipes’ eyes.

Drums begin to beat, and the loudhailer man begins to speak in a monotone.

‘This is the mission. We are on our way to holy Terrah – to Father! To Thee-em-pur! But we sinned. We betrayed him, and now are we stuckways in the cold of deep-space! But do not fear, for we have a ways to redemption! Thee-em-pur sends cargo from Terrah to fix the ship. He sends bodies in the cargo, as proof of paradise! When the work is done, we go to Terrah! To paradise-ways! The work absolves us! The Captin guides us! Live by the Captin’s word! Thee-em-pur protects!’

The speaker builds their voice into a frenzy, and the crowd cheers louder with each exclamation. By the end, even the loudhailer is drowned by the screaming, and it only stops when a new figure moves onto the dais and raises a hand for silence. This person is almost as tall as the effigy of the captin, and is dressed in an immaculate version of the tunic Pipes wears, with golden buttons and the sigil of Two-Bird on its breast. They have a hard jaw, a nose like the prow of the Body itself, and eyes like black gold beneath the brim of a gleaming cap. Surely, this creature is something more than human?

In a voice like thunder, the giant starts to read off a list of news from a scroll, but none of it means anything to me. It sounds a lot like the production reports mother would receive from the shamans each month, but with more of a sense of veiled threat. When it gets to the last item on the list, however, my ears prick and I break out in a chilly sweat.

‘Crew,’ warns the figure, saying the word strangely, ‘the hereteks may be defeated, but be vigilant. Rumours abound that their corruption persists, and the Mekanikas Maygos suspects infiltration. If you see anything irregular, it is your duty to the Em-per-or to report it! Has anyone seen anything unusual, of late?’

The giant’s hard eyes sweep the crowd, and only too late do I realise – this isn’t a human at all. It’s surely Two-Bird itself, in disguise! And it’s about to spot me. I’m on the verge of sprinting through the crowd, when Pipes speaks up and I freeze.

‘Sir!’ he shouts, smiling and eager. ‘I saw something! But it’s good news, sir! One of the shells from Terrah, it had a living girl in it! A miracle!’

‘And where is this… girl?’ says Two-Bird.

‘Why, sir, she’s right here.’

But I’ve already turned and fled by the time Pipes answers. I’m hobbling as fast as my leg will allow, ducking below the shoulders of the crowd to avoid Two-Bird’s eyes. I feel a sting of betrayal as I round a corner out of the square, but I can’t blame Pipes. How could I expect him to have seen through Two-Bird’s trickery, to resist its magic, when all of my people have been fooled for generations? I’m angry with myself instead – for getting attached to him, and for not running as soon as he’d rescued me.

But I force myself to let go of it. Mum always told me life’s too short for regrets, and I’ve got more important things to concentrate on. As I stumble through the twisting streets, hip still aching from the Bilger’s knife, I know I’ve got barely a head start on Two-Bird’s avatar, and barely any chance of escape. But I’ve still got Kal’s gift, and the Angel’s. And for now at least, the whole of the Body is ahead of me.

The sense of mad freedom powers my legs, and I visualise the Angel’s map as I run. I’ve spent the last few shifts quizzing Pipes, piecing together a route out of Batterytown towards Haadpoint. But if I take that route now, I’ll not make it a hundred shellwidths. My whole plan was based on hiding in plain sight, blending in with Pipes’ people, and that’s not going to happen now. Footsteps slap against metal just around the corner, and I know I need a contingency plan fast.

Of course, I’ve got one, but I don’t like it. It had been the first route I’d come up with in Pipes’ hovel, as it seemed so direct. But when a talk with Pipes gave me an inkling of where it would take me, I’d rejected it outright. Now, I’ve got no other options. Just a few streets over from Pipes’ hovel, at the border of Batterytown’s ration factory, there’s a sluice gate, which Pipes says has a rusty lock. If I can batter it open, I’ll be able to walk through the bowels of the Body, all the way to Haadpoint. Through the belowdex.

TEN

I make it to the ration factory without being spotted, right as a new shift is headed in to work. The bustle of the crew change gives me a crowd to hide me until I can find the gate with the rusty lock. After that, five bellowbreaths’ frantic hammering with a piece of scrap, while standing in knee-deep factory runoff waiting to be spotted by Two-Bird, wins me a way into the dark.

The way down is steep, and slippery, and reeks of mould and rot. Once my eyes get used to the gloom, it almost reminds me of the old city down here. The floor’s got the same pools of stagnant, chemical water, and the echoes are the same. There’s the same worn, rusty decoration on the walls, and stalactites on the ceiling that make me wonder just how old the Body is.

These tunnels clearly haven’t been used by the Kru for lifetimes. But they’re not abandoned, either. The occasional pile of well-gnawed bones litters the track, and at one point I pass what seems to be a sort of nest, full of degraded ration wrappers and scraps of cloth. Bilgers – or worse.

My mind paints all kinds of grey horror into the dark around me, and every noise – every distant rumble, every trickle of water – makes my breath catch. But I don’t slow down, and I don’t cringe in the dark. Ahead, somewhere, is the place where I can free my god and my people. And all I have to do is find it, before my death finds me. I finger the two gifts that hang from my belt, focusing on the hope they offer, and stride on into the black.

Maybe twenty bellowbreaths into the journey, in a wide, low cavern, it nearly happens. All of a sudden, there’s an explosion of feet slapping on stone behind me, and I flinch as something runs out of the dark – but whatever it is, it sprints straight past me. Running from something. As shrieks echo from the tunnel behind me, I dive into a nook behind a collapsed statue, and lie motionless. There’s heavy footpads on the path, and I swear something leans over the pitted stone and sniffs me. But it passes, and I’m alone again.

I walk deeper into the Body’s bowels. As I go, the walls get more deeply caked in grime, and the floor sinks further into sludge. My clothes are filthy from wading through it – even though I avoid the deeper patches after I see something big roll in the slime. The magical lights in the ceiling, dim and infrequent to begin with, are dying entirely now. When they’re gone, I’m guided only by the greasy light of tunnel-wall mould-slicks. The passage expands into a series of wide, musty caves, and I try not to think about what might be watching me from the shadows.

But again, nothing comes for me, and there is no sign of pursuit. Perhaps at last, my faith in Empra has paid off. Perhaps, in surrendering myself to the depths of his Body, I’ve earned his protection. I thank him aloud in the darkness, not caring who hears, and feel glad to be alive.

And then, I reach a pair of huge steel doors in the gloom, marked with the glyphs the Angel taught me – Haadpoint is beyond them, and access to the Body’s spirit-machine. I’ve been expecting Haadpoint to be a glittery citadel or a tower, not buried down here in the dark and forgotten. But then, nothing in heaven has been what I expected.

Using the gestures the Angel taught me, I speak with the doors, and they begin to grind open.

ELEVEN

I’m confused, at first. Thinking the Angel must have been wrong. That I’m in the wrong place after all. This can’t be Haadpoint, because it’s not really anything – it’s just a big, dark, empty cave. Like the inside of a skull, with a single red light hanging somewhere near the ceiling.

Then the light moves. The shadows move with it, and I see there’s something in the room with me. Something living. I’m struggling to put its shape together in my head, when I realise the light is its eye, looking down on me.

It’s like the Angel, but far, far bigger. It can only be the creature she warned me about: the fallen Angel called Mekanikas Maygos, which killed her people. It is monstrous. Where the Angel had at least half of a person’s body, there seems almost nothing human about this Maygos. In the ruddy glow of its eye, all I see is a shifting mass of spindles and cables, shadows and fabric, with no certain form. The only flesh I can see, emerging from a thicket of tubes, is the withered mask of its face. Little more than a dried-hard, leathery scowl, clamped around one magical eye, and one blind, withered human one.

For what feels like ages, the chamber is still. Even the rumbling in the walls is faint, this deep in the Body. The Maygos just hangs there in the dark, and I dare to hope that maybe I mean nothing to it, that I’m like a fly, crawling past on tiny business. But of course, this isn’t true. The monster looms down, robes billowing and whispering, until its face is level with mine. A deep ragged wheezing might be its breath as it studies me with that pulsing red glare. And then, in perfect Shellforge dialect – not even a halfway effort, but as purespoken as Kal – it speaks to me.

‘Your faith… is commendable, savage child. What strange things you must believe, to have been guided here.’

‘Empratex,’ I whisper to myself, hand shooting to the two gifts, as if they’ll keep me safe. This monster can loom as close as it wants, but I won’t take a step back. I’m where I meant to get to, and if I die here, I won’t die running. I look the fallen Angel right in its milky eye as it speaks again.

‘Empratex?’ it muses. ‘Ah. I see. What was it that we told you… back at the start? When it became clear we’d have to make… repairs here. The ship was… Empra’s body, wasn’t it? Which you had to heal?’

I nod, jaw set, and manage to prise my mouth open just long enough to speak. ‘That’s right,’ I squeeze out. ‘I’m Toa. I’m a Shellmaker.’

‘You’re a tool,’ hisses the Angel, tendrils lashing in the dark. ‘You’ve been stowed away and sent here by the heretek, tricked into thinking you are rescuing… your god.’ A deeply unpleasant, atonal laugh echoes around the chamber, and the face slithers closer, until it can only be ten boltswidths away.

‘But for all their… resourcefulness,’ rumbles the Maygos, ‘it seems my erstwhile novishate lacked foresight. I have been waiting here, in anticipation of just such a… plan.’

The Maygos speaks for some time, explaining its out-thinking of the Angel as if pointing out the mistakes in an apprentice’s work. In honesty, I understand little of what it says – there are too many of the words of heaven in its speech. From what I can understand, it removed Haadpoint, suspicious the Angel would return with its magic spell, its skrapkoad. Then, at last, the Maygos says something that means something to me, and sets my hope alight.

‘Even if you have been given a successful iteration of the koad,’ it booms, ‘there’s no tuh-minal to use as… a vector for entry. Did she expect me to leave an… unguarded port, ready for sabotage? No. Access to the spirit flows only through my mind now.’

That confirms it. Through the mind of the Maygos – that’s the way to free the Body’s spirit-machine. That’s where the skrapkoad needs to be cast. And what the Maygos doesn’t know is that this is exactly what the Angel has prepared me for. She knew the fallen Angel would have gutted Haadpoint. She knew it would have removed tuh-minal, and put the access point for the spirit-machine inside itself. And she knew, for sure, that it would come in person to revel in its supposed victory.

So I carry out the plan. I strike almost before I know I’m striking, before the Maygos can notice my reaction to what it has said. I know surprise and speed are the only things going for me in this fight – I’m fighting a fallen Angel, by the bones – and neither are going to last for long. So I jam my skinning knife into the beardlike horror of tubes below the Maygos’ face, yank with everything I’ve got and boost myself up onto its body.

I almost tumble to the ground straight away. The handful of cables I’ve snatched are blisteringly hot, but I have to clench hard, feeling my skin blacken, as the monster thrashes to shake me off. The Maygos roars – a terrible, blatting mess of clashing tones – and I pray to Empra just to give me a few more moments.

‘Upstart feral!’ growls the mountain of wiring beneath me, as the stink of mildew and machine oil fills my nostrils. ‘Who are you, even to touch me?’

‘I’m Toa,’ I shout, through gritted teeth and the pain in my hand. ‘I’m a Shellmaker. And I will bring my people – my world – to Empra’s heaven.’ I mete the words out one by one, using them to fuel my climb up the surging robes. If I let it fling me, it will pluck me out of the air with its tendrils and slice me to ribbons, so I have to hold on with elbows and knees.

‘You already have what you seek, savage!’

I resolve not to listen to the Maygos’ lies, but the words seep in.

‘Before we came, you were nothing but huddled primitives. Rebuilding this ship has made you a planet of workers. An Imperial world, like a million others. The work… the duty, is the Emperor’s blessing. Even if you could unwind it all, as the heretek wants, you would render your people meaningless.’

The last word is screamed so loud it makes the inside of my head hurt, but still I cling on. There’s a cold sort of sense behind the Maygos’ rage that rings true with what I’ve seen – heaven, if anything, seems darker and dirtier and more painful than the world. But I can’t let Two-Bird’s lies cloud my head. Snarling like an animal against the burning in my muscles, I throw out my arm and yank back the monster’s cowl. It falls away to reveal a hump of twitching machinery, and at its crest a grey, puckered patch of scalp. The place of access.

As the Maygos rants, I hold on to its robes with one shaking hand. With the other, I reach at last to unhook the Angel’s gift from my belt. The gift is part of her head – a long, encrusted spike called a shunt – which went into her brain and held some of her thoughts, including the skrapkoad spell. Taking out the shunt killed her, but it also gave me a version of the spell that the Maygos will be weak to – if I can only get it in its head.

That’s where the other gift comes in – the long, thin needle forged with mother’s grave-steel, which Kal pressed into my hands before I left. Gripping the fallen Angel’s neck with my knees, I hurriedly click the two gifts together, and draw back my arm as if aiming a spear. Two people died to make this shot possible, so I can’t afford to miss. As I line up the strike, staring at the patch of skull, the monster speaks one last time. I still don’t think it realises what I’ve got in my hand.

‘Do you even know the purpose of the shells you made?’ it says, with cruel curiosity. ‘The tombs of your ancestors?’

‘Teeth?’ I say, wondering why I’m being asked.

‘Bullets,’ whispers the Maygos. ‘That’s all you are to… Empra. And all you will ever be.’

‘Then we shall be free of him too,’ I say, shrugging, and stab straight through the patch of wizened scalp.

It’s done, just like that. The bone caves in like sponge, the shunt crackles and thumps as it discharges and the Maygos’ head snaps back. Before its eyesocket erupts in a plume of black steam, I could swear it looks surprised. Then it’s dead. One last spasm throws me to the chamber’s floor, where I watch the mass of fabric shudder and collapse like a poorly built tent. Then the guttering red light of the eye cuts out, and all is still. For one last, blissful moment, there’s nothing happening, no work to be done and no problems to solve. Peace.

The floor begins to rumble.

TWELVE

Soft-Voice Kal never knows exactly what is happening inside the Body of his god. He knows he made the needle to the Angel’s specifications, and sent Toa off to heaven with the satisfaction of a job well done. Even so, when the dawn comes early one shift, he is certain of what has happened. Toa has succeeded, and the Glory Day is at hand. He sees a glow at the apex of the heavens, which swells until it’s brighter than the sun, and he gathers his sons to watch with him. All down the street – all over Shellforge – the people are flooding from their tents to watch, as the Body turns in the heavens, and descends on a pillar of light. When it pierces the veil between heaven and the world, thunder drowns out the sound of every furnace. Kal is deafened, but jubilant, for the dead are coming back in the arms of Empra. He raises his sons’ hands in rapture, and cries in thanks. The last thing Kal sees is the immensity of his god, plunging towards him on wings of fire, promising rest at last.

THE WEIGHT OF SILVER

Steven B Fischer

The body lying still in the dirt may have once been human, but there was little left to mark it as such, aside from the mangled remnants of a man’s face, sun-darkened and wrinkled and now caked in blood.

Lieutenant Glavia Aerand stood over the corpse, eyes tracing the tattered remains of its heavy, brown tunic to the broken limbs and gouged torso beneath. Her helmet’s lumen flooded the pool of blood beside the body, already grown thick and dark in the chill mountain night, and something flickered in what was left of the man’s calloused hand.

Aerand knelt as dark forms circled around her, the deep-green flak armour of her platoon a ring of ghosts in the night. As she reached down and lifted the small piece of metal, a gruff voice echoed behind her.

‘It’s silver,’ Sergeant Roderick Olemark whispered, his violet eyes flickering above the hoarfrost in his beard. ‘The locals believe silver can ward off cultists and the warp-taint they carry.’

Olemark was one of the few in their formation familiar with the planet. He’d come to Ourea nearly three years ago with the Cadian 873rd – before the slow bleed of counterinsurgency and desertion cost the unit nearly all of its soldiers and the 900th absorbed the remainder when they landed a few days ago.

Aerand rose awkwardly in her dark, heavy armour, trying to hide the difficulty of the gesture. She was still adjusting to the mountain world’s harsh gravity, but she’d be damned if anyone knew how much her legs burned after only a short patrol.

She dropped the metal trinket into her palm, its design crude but unmistakable – an armoured figure, wreathed in blistering sunlight. The Emperor of Mankind sat glorified on Holy Terra hundreds of light years away, but even here His hymns and prayers were sung. Even here He shielded human minds from the warp.

‘You don’t seem to share their confidence,’ Aerand replied, returning the effigy to the corpse’s hand.

Olemark chuckled, then patted his lasgun. ‘This is the only metal I trust to stop a heretic.’

There was a subtle condescension in his voice that grated on Aerand like the new, stiff boots tearing her feet apart. At first she had thought it was Olemark alone, or that his patronizing was directed only at her. Maybe because she was young. Maybe because this was her first command. Maybe because most people who heard her name assumed she’d gotten where she was on the coattails of her father.

But it wasn’t any of those things. There was a sense of superiority among all the veterans, and truth be told, she couldn’t fault them for it. Olemark and his men knew more about this planet than she ever would – knowledge they’d earned through misery and bloodshed. To make an issue of their arrogance would only sow dissention and alienate the few experts she badly needed.

Aerand motioned for the platoon to advance, and forty sparks of light drifted forward through the trees.

Corwyn, Delaver, Maltia, Artus. She knew the names and stories of every trooper around her. She’d made certain of that on the voyage to Ourea, because if her father had taught her any lesson, it was this: her soldiers were willing to fight for the Emperor, but few would die for anyone other than their comrades. But she didn’t know Olemark and his grizzled veterans, and that unsettled her nearly as much as the steep ridgelines around her or the dim glow of firelight in the valley below.

Up ahead, between the silhouettes of jagged, titanic mountains, a cluster of buildings was burning. Aerand motioned for the platoon to halt, and unfurled a crude, bulky map from the case across her shoulders.

‘Haggerty Homestead,’ Olemark mumbled as he strode past, the orange glow of the flames bathing his scar-crossed face. ‘Save you the time searching around on the map.’

Aerand bit her tongue and made a point of locating the small complex anyway. No other settlements nearby. No known cultist hideouts for miles. She turned to the young trooper beside her and pointed to the vox-caster strapped to his back. ‘Let headquarters know we’re investigating, Maresh. I’ll report back once we find something.’

Dead foliage and loose stones ground beneath Aerand’s feet as she descended the steep incline, squads fanning out in a crescent around her. This was a standard cordon manoeuvre – one she’d forced her platoon to rehearse hundreds of times – but even so, she felt her breath grow rapid. She was no Whiteshield anymore, and this was her first chance to prove it.

The complex had been built from wood and stone, a carryover from the time before Imperial voidcraft brought rockrete and machines to this world. In the centre of the valley, a large building was burning, smaller cottages already reduced to ash. No simple accident could have caused such a blaze, and there would be no survivors, she was certain of that.

A beam in the main building settled with a crash as her platoon strode past like smoke-shrouded shadows. In the light of the sparks it threw into the air, Aerand spotted a cluster of charred bodies ahead.

Fifteen, maybe twenty, mangled and marred like the man in the forest. As she neared, a strange apprehension grew inside her, the skin along her back prickling with unease. Aerand paused and surveyed the macabre scene as her soldiers pushed forward to clear the complex.

It was clear once she’d drawn closer that the bodies hadn’t been randomly scattered – they were arranged in a deliberate pattern. Eight gory rays extended from a central circle, a single naked body at its centre, less mutilated, but more disturbing than the rest.

‘Terra save us,’ Corwyn muttered as he led his squad past, crossing his arms in the sign of the aquila amid unsettled glances from his soldiers.

Aerand knelt in the wavering firelight and stared at the young woman. Across her chest and stomach, a symbol had been etched into the woman’s pale flesh – a twisting teardrop like a tongue of flame.

As Aerand stared at the pattern, an inexplicable horror washed over her. She’d seen her share of corpses, many mutilated far beyond this, but there was something obscene in the mark itself, even ignoring the way it had been fashioned. The scent of burning metal and rotting flesh replaced the odour of smoke in the air, and the taste of bile and blood rose in her throat. When she reached to cover the corpse with the torn cloak beside it, the young woman’s eyes snapped open and the sound of gunfire rang out from the ridge.

The roar of weapons and shouting voices split the night like a peal of thunder, and bursts of lasfire rained down towards her platoon. Aerand tried to tear herself away from the body, but found she could not look away from its empty, black eyes.

A rough hand shook her shoulder, Olemark’s voice towering over the sea of hushed whispers that had suddenly filled her mind.

‘Lieutenant!’ the sergeant shouted, shouldering his lasgun and laying into the trigger. ‘How do you want us to engage?’

Aerand stared at his face and the flashes of lasfire from his weapon. Beside him, Corwyn and Delaver crouched, pouring rounds into the dark trees.

Lieutenant,’ Corwyn shouted, the gold chevrons on his shoulder gleaming red in the firelight. ‘Fix and flank?’

Aerand opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t form the words. She looked back at the corpse, its black eyes fully open, the symbol on its chest reaching out through the night.

‘Throne,’ Olemark grumbled. ‘She’s shell-shocked already.’ He turned to the soldiers beside him, as Aerand struggled against the shackles on her voice. ‘Can’t be more than half a dozen up there. Keep your squads behind what’s left of the buildings and lay down suppressive fire. My troopers will flank up the draw.’

His troopers, not hers.

‘And someone send a medicae to grab the lieutenant! If she gets herself shot, you know they’ll blame it on us.’

Desperation rose in Aerand’s mind as her platoon streamed out into the night. She should be with them. She should be leading them. But for some terrible reason, her body wouldn’t listen. Instead, her eyes darted between the woman in the dirt and the ridgeline above, the same dark repulsion tethering her to both.

Aerand blinked as two medicaes rushed up beside her.

‘Lieutenant,’ Artus whispered, pulling a bioscanner from his pack and running it across her body. ‘We need to get you out of here.’ He shook his head as the readout came back blank.

In the darkness of the forest, the lumens of Olemark’s squad flashed like shooting stars, streaking up towards the sound of weapons fire on the ridgeline. The taste of rust grew stronger in Aerand’s mouth, the prickling of her skin now a veritable frenzy. ‘Fifth squad engaging,’ Olemark growled over the vox.

A moment later, the ridgeline flashed bright with lasfire and the explosions of well-placed frag grenades. The roar of rifle reports swelled like a wave, then drifted slowly away until only the crackling of flames echoed through the valley.

‘The heretics are dead,’ Olemark called, then continued in a sullen whisper, ‘As are two of ours.’

Aerand’s breath fell from her lungs. Two of her soldiers, dead, against a force they outnumbered nearly ten to one. The ringing in her ears began to fade, and the taste in her mouth slowly evaporated, replaced by a horrible weight in her chest.

‘Who?’ she asked, blinking and staring at the body beside her.

Olemark spoke the names of the dead troopers over the vox, but Aerand was too numb to understand anything but the anger in his voice. She reached down and grasped the tunic from the dirt, throwing it over the woman and the sigil on her chest.

The woman’s eyes were not black. The woman’s eyes were not open. They had never been.

Hours later, Aerand struggled to shake that moment from her mind as she marched beside her soldiers along a narrow mountain path. Apex Inruptus loomed tall on the mountainside ahead, the dark, jagged towers of the ancient fortress climbing like knives into the bleeding horizon, casting their shadows over the high mountain pass. For centuries this valley had been one of Ourea’s vital arteries, allowing caravans of livestock, then hulking, smoke-laden machines to bear timber and stone through the treacherous mountains. For the past decade that flow had been choked to a trickle, replaced by endless Astra Militarum convoys shuttling fuel and ammunition from one harried encampment to another.

Her platoon stretched beside her like a twisting, black river, Olemark’s veteran squad at the fore, bearing the bodies of Karletti and Vaughn on salvaged boards from the homestead. Aerand had hardly known either trooper, but they had been her soldiers, if only for a few days. And now they were dead because of her.

Her eyes met Olemark’s as she walked beside the formation – his expression was pure ice. His doubts had been muffled before, but she could scarcely imagine how his veterans must feel now that she had confirmed them. How her own soldiers must feel to know their leader had failed them in their first real trial.

For the first time in her life, she was glad her father was no longer alive. Glad he wouldn’t have to know how badly she had let him down. She’d been only a child when he died beside his regiment, holding Kasr Kraf as Cadia fell, all so that a few more transports could reach the evacuation zone. All so that she could reach the evacuation zone. It would break his heart to know this was how she’d repaid him.

Aerand trudged up the slope, the burning in her feet long since faded into numbness, dwarfed by the guilt that gripped her chest and stole her breath. The feeling only grew as she crossed the narrow bridge to Apex’s western gate, hardly noticing the mind-numbing chasm below. The thick, stone doors ground slowly apart, opening to a courtyard blanketed in thin snow.

Colonel Yarin waited within, her face drawn into a steely grimace as she stared at the pair of corpses leading Aerand’s platoon. Behind her, a field chirurgeon took one look at the ice on Vaughn and Karletti’s pale skin and packed his instruments back into a row of blood-stained crates.

‘Colonel,’ Aerand began, as Olemark’s squad laid their morbid cargo down onto the cold stone. ‘Let me–’

‘Stop,’ Yarin replied, her short, greying hair fluttering in the stiff, mountain wind. ‘See to your dead first, then meet me in my quarters. You can explain then.’

Aerand nodded and turned back to her platoon. In the centre of the courtyard, Olemark knelt beside Karletti and Vaughn, pulling an old, faded flag from deep within his pack. Cadia’s golden pillars glimmered on a crimson sea, the original standard of the 873rd. Slowly, he tore two strips from the fraying fabric and laid them over the corpses’ eyes.

This wasn’t the same ritual the 900th practiced, but Aerand recognized its significance well enough. She had been born on Cadia. She had stared into the Eye of Terror and felt its heavy gaze staring back. Karletti and Vaughn had spent most of their lives looking into that madness, and now in death, they were finally free.

Olemark’s squad gathered around him and lifted the two bodies from the snow, bearing them back towards Apex’s gate.

‘They’ve carried that weight far enough, alone,’ Corwyn said, stepping up beside Aerand. ‘The least we can do is help.’

She shook her head. ‘I think our help is the last thing they want right now. Take the platoon back to the barracks and give them some rest.’

As Olemark’s squad carried the bodies through the gate, Aerand followed. She had seen men and women die before. Throne, she’d killed her fair share during her years as a Whiteshield. But this was the first time she’d stared at her comrades’ corpses and known their deaths rested on her. Her troopers’ lives were her single greatest weapon, and she had just squandered two of them.

Aerand stood at a distance on the narrow stone bridge as Olemark and his squad lifted their comrades, then dropped them over the ledge. Bitter wind whipped up from the chasm as the corpses fell, vanishing into the shadow of the mountain fortress. In months, they would be nothing but bone. In years, nothing but dust. In centuries that dust would become one with the mountain and the fortress both men had died to defend.

Aerand nodded as Olemark returned to the fortress ahead of his squad. He brushed hard against her shoulder.

‘Why don’t you step aside, lieutenant? Before anyone else gets killed.’

Aerand opened her mouth to reply, before her voice was drowned out by the sound of the wind.

‘I don’t know what it was, sir,’ Aerand confessed, as Yarin paced behind her crude desk. The colonel’s office had been an ammo depot only two days before, and a servo-skull twittered over a stack of papers atop the crates and shell boxes clustered at the centre of the room. Yarin’s face was drawn up into its customary scowl, the look somehow even more rigid than usual.

‘I’ve been through dozens of battles. Nothing like this has ever happened before.’

‘And you’ve never been in command during a single one,’ Yarin replied. ‘It’s different when you’re making the decisions. When there are others’ lives resting in your hands.’

Aerand couldn’t deny that, but it hadn’t felt like fear or panic – she’d learned to master those sins when she was just a child.

Yarin leaned against a thin, slit window, staring into the snow falling on Apex’s battlements. ‘Frankly, I don’t care what it was. I care that it crippled you in the middle of combat and forced your senior sergeant to take over command.’

‘It won’t happen again, sir.’

‘No. It certainly won’t.’

As she uttered the words, a shadow crept over the room, and Aerand turned to see a massive form in the doorway. Her father had fought with the Adeptus Astartes on Cadia, and he’d told her stories of the Emperor’s Angels when she was young, but seeing one in person was another thing entirely.

Slowly, the behemoth stepped into the room, his steps nearly silent, despite the fact his dark-grey power armour dwarfed both Aerand and the colonel. On his chestplate, the aquila shone in blood-red, mirrored on his shoulder by a crimson skull bearing lightning wings.

‘Colonel.’

The voice that spilled from the Space Marine’s dark helmet seemed not entirely human, its cold, rocky tenor as unyielding as the mountains outside. Aerand wondered how long the Space Marine had stood there, and how much of her stumbling conversation he’d heard.

Even Yarin seemed shaken by his presence, her confident demeanour shifting to something more guarded.

‘My lord,’ she replied, before turning to Aerand. ‘The Storm Wings have come to lead the push to retake Ourea. Across the planet, they will be leading key assaults against the cultists and traitors.’

The red slits of the Space Marine’s eyes fell across Aerand. ‘Indeed.’

‘Scouting patrols from Guard convoys have reported a group of cultists not far from here,’ Yarin continued. ‘Amassing in numbers we’ve not seen before, and converging on the spaceport at Noravis Opum. I don’t need to tell you how crippling it would be to lose one of the largest loyal settlements in the region.’

‘At nightfall, Lord Tarvarius will lead the 900th in a counter-attack to destroy this army, crushing the cultist threat in the region. You and your platoon will stay behind to secure Apex Inruptus against any retaliation.’

Aerand’s shoulders fell as her breath escaped her. Relegated to nothing but glorified guard duty. This was the single most important operation of the war and her platoon was going to be left behind. She had made a mistake. She had lost the colonel’s confidence. She could accept that. But her platoon was one of the best in the regiment, and there was no reason to punish her soldiers for her failings. She nearly began to protest before Yarin continued.

‘Commissar Burdain will accompany the main regiment on the mission, but when she returns there will be a full investigation into last night’s ambush.’

Aerand’s mind spun, as if she could suddenly feel the weight of the mountain above her head pushing down onto her shoulders.

‘Do you know why I chose you for command, lieutenant?’ Yarin asked. ‘Why, of all the young recruits, I selected you?’

Of course Aerand knew. It was the same reason she’d been chosen for anything in her life.

Colonel Regus Aerand had been a hero – it stood to reason his daughter must be, too. ‘Because of my father.’

For a moment, the colonel seemed to forget the titan standing beside her, because her expression almost crept into a smile. ‘In spite of him. I served with your father on Cadia and Rusk. He was a brave man and his soldiers loved him deeply, but he was arrogant and rash. I chose you because you seemed to be neither, and I hope I did not make a mistake.’

Aerand knelt on the dusty chapel floor, staring up at the statue at the front of the nave and mouthing the words of a whispered prayer.

‘My Emperor, forgive me, for I have failed you. My Emperor, forgive me, for I have failed myself. I have forgotten your light and wavered before the darkness. I have forgotten your strength and stumbled on your path. I ask not for mercy, but only redemption, that I may prove myself true in the battles to come.’

Dim light streamed through the building’s stained windows, bathing the image of the Emperor in a multi-hued glow. He always appeared fearless. An image that demanded obedience and respect. Aerand stared at her own hands, knotted in prayer, and wondered if He had ever felt the same doubt she felt now.

Olemark’s words rang like knives in her ears, spat so bitterly over the bodies of her dead soldiers. She could not step down, but maybe she should step aside. Olemark and his veterans had been on this planet for years. They knew its people, and their enemy, better than anyone else. And what did she know? How to lock up during battle and get her troopers killed.

Aerand sighed, and across the room a massive form emerged from the shadow of a soaring pillar.

‘There is desperation in your prayers,’ Tarvarius remarked. ‘That is good. We should all be desperate for deliverance from the evil that stalks this galaxy.’

The Space Marine was still adorned in his grey ceramite armour, but he cradled his helmet in one massive arm. His eyes, the colour of ink, watched her with careful determination, two black pools set against ghost-pale skin like dark stones rising from the snow-capped mountains outside. Aerand nodded. But it wasn’t just desperation she felt, it was guilt, and fear, and doubt, as well.

The Adeptus Astartes dropped to his knees beside her in a motion that made the chapel tremble. As he knelt, his eyes fell onto the image of the Emperor, and his lips mumbled a silent phrase.

‘I thought you didn’t worship Him, my lord?’ Aerand asked softly, pausing for a moment as she remembered who it was that knelt beside her. ‘At least not the same way we do.’

Tarvarius nodded slowly, surveying the arches and altar around him. ‘I do not need to believe He is a god in order to find comfort in the ritual of prayer, or to find peace and guidance in His holy places.’ He was silent for some time, then continued, ‘You saw something out there. Something that shook you more deeply than the others.’

Aerand pursed her lips, regretting opening her mouth, but unable to stop now. ‘And two of my soldiers are dead because of it.’

A muffled sound escaped Tarvarius, what she might have believed was a chuckle if produced by anyone else. ‘You say that as if it is some great evil.’

He motioned with a coal-grey gauntlet to the panes of stained glass surrounding the chapel, cluttered with bleeding bodies and wounded heroes.

‘Soldiers die,’ he said. ‘That is why we exist. It is our greatest service to the Emperor, and the greatest honour for one of his servants. If I led your entire regiment to death tonight, I would consider it no great loss in the grand weight of his galaxy.’

Aerand shifted uneasily. She had heard these words before, or words close enough to them from the mouth of her father. Your soldiers’ lives are your most valuable weapons. You cannot be afraid to use them.

‘But they didn’t have to die,’ she replied. ‘They died because I made a mistake. They died because of me.’

Tarvarius nodded, reaching his gauntleted hands around his neck and pulling out a chain of thick, dark iron links. He held the chain before him, then set it gently in Aerand’s hands.

Her arms nearly buckled with the weight of the metal, but holding it closer, she saw that each link had been crafted in the shape of two interlocking talons, like birds of prey bound in combat. Aerand winced as one link dug into her palm, the razor talon drawing a thin streak of blood. Only then did she notice the row of pale scars lining the Adeptus Astartes’ neck.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked, his voice quiet but dangerous, like a storm about to break.

Aerand shook her head.

‘This is a record of my Chapter’s failures, forged on our home world of Eyrie.’ Tarvarius took the chain from her shaking hands, running his fingers across each time-worn link. ‘One link for every battle we have lost. One for every mission we have failed to accomplish.’

The Space Marine paused upon a single, ancient ring, time-eaten and tarnished, but larger than all the rest. ‘When our primarch Corvus Corax led the Raven Guard against the heretic Horus, he stumbled into a trap that killed nearly all of our brothers. We were almost purged from the galaxy, and Corax fled in disgrace. It was millennia before the Raven Guard and their successors recovered from his departure. Centuries more before we learned to embrace our failings as strength rather than weakness.’

Tarvarius replaced the chain onto his broad, scarred shoulders. ‘Your past is either a shackle or an inspiration. You will make mistakes. And your soldiers will die for them.’

He pointed a massive finger towards the gleaming silver bar inlaid on her shoulder guard. ‘But that is the weight of the silver on your shoulders. That is the weight of the iron on mine. The Emperor has no perfect servants, and so he must make do with broken ones like us.’

Slowly, with unexpected grace, the living war machine rose and strode towards the door. ‘Say your prayers, lieutenant, but do not linger on your knees. Your Emperor needs your leadership more than your repentance.’

Olemark’s glaring eyes flashed in Aerand’s vision. ‘What if I lead and they don’t follow, my lord?’

‘Then move alone,’ the Space Marine replied.

From the portico along the citadel’s western wall, Aerand watched a storm roll into the valley. Somewhere beyond the black clouds and peals of thunder, the Cadian 900th was closing in on its target. She should have been with them – her soldiers should have been with them – but instead, they lingered here.

Aerand reached her hand out from beneath the ancient shelter, drops of half-frozen rain splattering into her palm. She shivered slightly as she surveyed the fortress before her. Apex Inruptus had stood for a thousand years, built in the dark ages before the Imperium returned to Ourea in order to secure one of the few passable routes through the titanic summits that blanketed the planet. As she studied its pinnacled, razor walls, nestled into the mountain like just one more peak, she knew it would stand for a thousand more, regardless if anyone remained inside to defend it.

In the three soaring towers along Apex’s outer wall, squads held vigil beneath needle-like spires, pairs of soldiers manning the autoguns mounted within. Twelve troopers to watch the narrow mountain pass, while the rest of her platoon took shelter inside.

As she stared into the approaching storm, a flash of lightning struck a high peak nearby, toppling snow and stone into the valley below. When the light faded, Aerand felt the hair on her neck rise, her skin prickling just as it had the night before.

She took a deep breath and willed her racing heart to slow. Had she become so fragile that even a simple storm could leave her on the brink of terror?

Aerand sighed and turned back towards the barracks, but as she passed beneath the portico, two dark forms hurried down the corridor towards her.

‘Lieutenant,’ Corwyn said, ‘Lord Tarvarius is calling with word from the regiment.’ Beside him, Maresh held out the receiver attached to the vox-caster on his back.

Aerand nodded. If Tarvarius was reporting back, that meant the battle was already won. She should have been relieved, but instead, a wave of trepidation washed over her.

‘They are gone,’ Tarvarius said the moment she lifted the receiver.

‘Praise the Throne,’ Aerand replied, feeling anything but joyful.

‘You mishear,’ said Tarvarius, the first hint of something other than confidence in his tone. ‘Your intelligence was deceived. We have scoured the sector and there are no cultists here. What is your status?’

As he spoke, the prickling along Aerand’s neck grew, memories of the night before washing over her like a wave. Her mind spun with a sudden imbalance, and the taste of bile rose in her throat. Suddenly, the air smelled of smoke, and her arms grew heavy as she raised the transmitter to her lips.

‘Fine,’ she whispered.

But they were not fine – she was suddenly confident of that. The cultist army had not simply vanished; if they’d abandoned Noravis Opum, it was for some other target. A target like the fortress she currently held.

Tarvarius broke back through the static. ‘Are you certain?’

Aerand heard her breath begin to race, shallow and rapid like the night before. Her armour settled heavy on her shoulders as Corwyn stared at her, confused, untouched by the terror that burned through her bones.

But it wasn’t just terror she felt anymore. Something even stronger grew beside her fear. She was angry and determined. Whatever was coming, she would meet it this time.

‘No,’ Aerand replied. ‘But it will be.’

‘You feel it,’ Tarvarius said. Not a question, but a statement. ‘The same presence as during the ambush.’

She paused. If she said yes and was wrong, she’d be a fool once again. If she said yes and was right, that could mean something even worse.

‘I do,’ she replied, staring at the soaring citadel above her head. Apex Inruptus had not fallen in a thousand years, and she would not let it tonight.

There was silence, then a muttered curse over the vox as Colonel Yarin shouted orders in the background.

‘We are coming,’ Tarvarius replied. ‘Hold the fortress.’

The door slammed open before Aerand, Corwyn and Maresh stumbling in at her heels. Soldiers lingered throughout the barracks, most lying on bed rolls cleaning dusty lasguns or checking power packs before it was their turn to hold watch.

It was obvious, now that she could see it. Noravis Opum had never been the cultists’ true goal. The settlement was exposed, practically indefensible, vulnerable from both the ground and the air. Even if the cultists had captured the spaceport, they never could have held it. But if their feint allowed them to take Apex Inruptus, they could cut off reinforcements and resupply from Noravis to a dozen other settlements, then take any they wished after starving them to the bone.

‘All bodies on the wall in five minutes,’ she called. ‘Full battle gear and loadouts, ready to fight.’

As Aerand stormed into the room, they should have risen to attention. Instead, the few closest to the door stood slowly and leaned up against the wall while the rest continued their business, unbothered. In the back of the room, circled around steaming rations, Olemark and his veterans stared at her, unimpressed.

‘The sky is falling out there,’ Olemark replied, turning back to polish his lasgun’s barrel. ‘If you wanted to get the rest of us killed, you could find a faster way to do it than making us catch rot.’

Aerand bristled at the contempt in his voice. She could make a show of force. She could shout or fire her laspistol into the ceiling. Throne, she could drag those still sitting onto their feet and demand at gunpoint they show her the respect her rank merited. But what good would that do? She had lost their trust, though she desperately needed it now, and no amount of anger could bring that back.

‘I made a mistake,’ Aerand said, her voice cool and level. Her father may have been brash, but he understood his soldiers, and for those who were accustomed to screams and berating, a quiet tone was often harder to ignore.

Never let a failure hide, because they have a way of growing in the shadows, and if you let a mistake fester long enough, you may find it has rooted too deep to correct.

‘I made a mistake last night and two of us are dead because of it.’

Throughout the room, all eyes turned towards her, the exhausted, dirty faces of her soldiers awash with frustration and lingering hope.

‘I don’t have an excuse for that, but I do have a reason.’ Aerand motioned to the open door behind her, where rain and lightning poured down in a deluge, out on the saw-toothed peaks and plummeting valleys rising and falling like the teeth of some unholy maw.

‘I felt something last night – something I’ve never felt before, not on a dozen missions on half as many worlds. I’m not certain what it was, or why I alone felt it, but I feel it again tonight.’

Olemark scoffed. ‘What you felt was fear.’

Aerand’s fingers drifted slowly towards her laspistol. He was bordering on insubordination. She could kill him for that, and Throne, she wanted to.

But she needed Olemark. She needed his veterans. She needed every soldier in this room with their eyes locked on her every movement.

Violence can never ensure discipline. Executions do not inspire loyalty.

‘A storm is coming,’ she said resolutely. ‘Who will stand with me against it?’

One by one her soldiers’ gazes drifted away, and not a foot budged from their positions.

‘Very well,’ she muttered and stepped out into the night.

Aerand climbed the steep steps alone, rain drumming across her helmet and armour, seeping through to her skin and chilling her bones.

Her legs burned as the stairs fell away behind her, the yawning abyss at the base of Apex’s walls a constant reminder to watch where she stepped. Flashes of lightning bathed the craggy pass in light. The doubt she felt in the barracks evaporated like smoke as she inspected the dozen tired soldiers on her wall. Twelve troopers to hold the most important fortress on the planet. If the rest would not stand with her, then these would have to do.

As she stared out into the shadow-strewn valleys, the slow stomping of bootfalls reached her ears. She turned to see a group of green-clad figures, the dull sheen of their helmets glimmering in the rain as they ascended the dark stone stairs behind her.

Corwyn reached the tower first, an embarrassed smile stretching across his sun-darkened face. ‘We couldn’t let you freeze to death out here alone,’ he mumbled, then pointed to the group of soldiers behind him. ‘First squad will man the northern wall.’

As they passed, twelve fresh bodies took their place, Artus grasping her arm with a slight bow. ‘If you say you sense something, then we sense it, too.’

In piecemeal fashion, the rest of her soldiers trickled out of the barracks and took up positions along the walls, until only Olemark’s veterans remained inside. Finally, their dented, cracked armour ambled up the staircase with more grace and speed than any of the others.

Olemark paused before her, his eyes still sharp. There was no apology, no admission of guilt, merely the slightest of nods and a stiff salute. ‘Where do you want us?’ he asked, unflinching in the rain.

‘West wall,’ Aerand replied, too certain of the coming evil to make issue of his prior disrespect. Beneath her armour, her skin burned like fire, each breath laden with the scent of charred air. ‘Hold the gate and the bridge however you must.’

The sergeant nodded, then marched off along the rampart, rain beading silver on his helm like the stars above.

‘Sergeant,’ she called, staring out at the storm. ‘I think you should hurry.’

As she spoke, a bolt of lightning lit the canyon, arcing between dark clouds before striking the citadel’s spire. As the valley burned blue, dark forms burst from the mist, and a hail of lasfire tore through the night towards the fortress.

‘Incoming!’ Aerand shouted, dropping below the crenulations. The blistering volley crashed against Apex’s walls as her troopers dropped with her, some not rising again.

‘Return fire!’ Aerand rose to a knee and aimed her lasgun over the wall, pulling hard on the trigger.

Far below, a wave of bodies rushed towards the fortress, shrouded in the smoke of roaring weapons, but even at this distance she could see their enemy was well-armed and determined.

Beside scores of cultists, rows of silver-armoured Ourean guards marched with traitors in Imperial armour. At their head rolled three Eradicator battle tanks, patched and precarious, but functioning well enough to heave shells straight at the western gate.

‘Vox-caster, on me!’ Aerand bellowed over the din of the firefight, sprinting along the slick rampart and scanning the silhouettes of her soldiers for Maresh.

‘Corwyn,’ she roared, sliding into place beside the sergeant and pulling him back from his post by the shoulder. In the tower above them, a turret lay empty, a heavy stubber jammed between the rampart and a charred body, firing aimlessly into the valley below. ‘Get that weapon back in service.’

‘On it, sir,’ he called, pulling two troopers in his wake. ‘Looks like we’ll be in the fight, after all.’

‘Indeed,’ she replied grimly, as a salvo from the Eradicators burst against the northern wall. As she sprinted along the rampart, she spotted the chevrons of Delaver’s armour lying still on the stone in a puddle of rain. Beside him, a section of the wall had crumbled, casualties of the Eradicators’ ordnance.

Next to the rift, troopers poured fire at the approaching force, one bearing a corporal’s insignia on her shoulder. Their las-rounds streaked red and brilliant through the rain.

‘Maltia,’ Aerand shouted, crouching beside the corporal. ‘Where the hell is the rest of second squad?’

‘You’re looking at it.’ Maltia pointed her weapon over the precarious ledge. A cluster of bodies lay broken on the rocks in the valley below, Maresh’s vox shattered beneath his still form.

‘Throne,’ Aerand swore.

The oncoming swarm was now close enough to see clearly, but far too large to count. A group of scarcely clad men and women surged forward ahead of the main assault, crude weapons in their hands and madness in their eyes.

From the turret above, Corwyn’s stubber dropped dozens in seconds, but the rest did not slow. It was only then that Aerand noticed the symbol carved across one man’s chest. The same flame and eye she’d seen at the homestead.

An image of the dead woman’s open, black eyes flashed into her mind, that same weight returning to her limbs. Maltia stared in confusion while her soldiers’ weapons roared out into the night.

‘Any orders, sir?’

Aerand’s mind raced with a sudden terror. Not again. Not now. Not when they needed her more than any moment in her life.

She froze and stared down at the weapon in her hands. A thin streak of blood rolled down the handle of her lasgun, from the spot on her palm where Tarvarius’ chain had bled her.

The Emperor has no perfect servants. So he must make do with broken ones like us.

Aerand breathed deeply and snapped her eyes back to Maltia. ‘Aye,’ she replied. ‘Hold this damned wall, and make those heretics sorry they came here tonight.’

‘Will do, sir,’ Maltia replied with a grin.

Aerand darted towards the north gate as two missiles blazed from the tanks along the path, crashing into the gatehouse, and shaking its massive stone doors. Atop the building, Olemark ran between his soldiers – lasfire was pouring from their weapons towards the horde gathered below.

All along the wall, her soldiers were fighting bravely but dying fast. Attack groups closed on all three gates, and her platoon was barely slowing them down.

The army outside was far too large. Far too many for a simple cultist uprising. Bolstered by Astra Militarum deserters and the forces of at least one traitor feudal lord, it was only a matter of time before the approaching darkness overwhelmed them. Their only hope was to hold until the regiment returned.

Aerand clambered down a set of shattered stairs, careening over rubble and dancing beside the mind-numbing precipice. Apex hung on the wall of the mountain, and three bridges were all that connected the fortress to the world outside. Perhaps her soldiers could not stop the approaching army, but without a way to cross, they’d have no way to take the fortress.

The roar of krak missiles tore past Aerand’s face as two bright streaks of metal darted down from Corwyn’s tower towards the Eradicators below. The first tank crumbled into a cloud of smoke and glowing metal, while the second missile detonated along the valley wall, dropping a heap of stone onto a platoon of Ourean guards.

Up ahead, Olemark’s men were following suit, a pair of troopers loading a krak missile into its launcher and positioning themselves at the edge of the gatehouse. Aerand leapt the rest of the way down the steps, sprinting across a small stretch of open ramparts, lasfire and bolt rounds soaring past her head. She dropped to her knees beside Olemark just as he raised the missile launcher.

‘Wait!’ she shouted, lungs heaving with each beat of her heart.

Olemark turned in surprise.

‘The bridges,’ she panted, pointing over the ledge.

Only a few hundred yards from the edge of the wall, the vanguard of cultists streaked towards the gate, the two remaining Eradicators loosing another salvo. Beneath them, the gatehouse shuddered, and with a horrible crash, one of its stone doors toppled open.

‘Blow the bridges,’ Aerand ordered, lifting her lasgun slowly, uncertain if she’d be firing over the wall, or at a target much closer.

Olemark stared, then nodded in understanding. ‘It’d be my pleasure, sir,’ he replied, and a streak of flame darted over the wall.

As the missile found its mark, a promethean crack pierced the night, and the northern bridge toppled into the chasm. Moments later, two matching explosions echoed across the courtyard as Corwyn and Maltia directed their soldiers to follow suit. Aerand smiled and breathed a sigh. Only then did she notice the searing pain in her leg and the blood oozing from the hole through her thigh.

Nearly an hour later, and the fortress still stood. Blowing the bridges had stalled the assault, and the fever pitch of the initial battle had faded into a steady siege. Corwyn, Olemark, and Aerand huddled in the courtyard, Apex’s scorched, splintered citadel overshadowing the trio as they stooped over Aerand’s map.

‘Noravis Opum is nearly two hours away,’ Olemark said. ‘Even if they left the moment you voxed Lord Tarvarius, we’d still have the better part of an hour before they return.’

Corwyn nodded. ‘Then we hold the wall for another hour.’

Aerand shook her head and surveyed the heap of stone beside them, leaning up against a crumbling staircase to hold the weight off her injured leg.

Toppling the bridges had stalled the cultists and forced the Eradicators to stay out of krak missile range. But even at a distance, they’d nearly razed Apex’s walls and had taken another dozen of her soldiers. Now, without towers or autoguns and only a handful of troopers, her platoon was doing all it could to keep the army from finding a way across the chasm.

‘We fall back,’ Aerand muttered, staring at the hulking stone spire behind her.

‘And give them the outer wall and the courtyard?’ Corwyn asked.

‘They have it already.’ Aerand grimaced as she twisted to motion to the toppled wall, and a bolt of pain shot up from her thigh. ‘It will take them time to devise a way across the chasm, and with any luck, the regiment will be here before they do.’

Olemark nodded, condescension long absent from his voice. ‘It’s a good plan. It’s the only good plan.’

‘Then make it happen.’

Aerand limped across the courtyard as Olemark and Corwyn retrieved their soldiers from their posts. As she forced her way towards the shadow of Apex’s citadel, lazy bursts of enemy lasgun fire arced over her head, splattering harmlessly against the bastion walls. She scarcely noticed the sound after nearly an hour of it, simply one more voice in the chorus of battle, along with the rain and the constant, rolling thunder.

She pulled to a stop as a streak of lightning lit the valley, silhouetting a figure atop the peak above Apex’s walls. It was impossible that any human could have scaled the sheer ridgeline from outside the fortress, and yet there someone stood. Her lasgun was already on her shoulder when the shadow dropped from the mind-numbing peak and landed before her with little more than the sound of stirring air.

‘I am pleased to find you are not dead yet.’

Tarvarius surveyed the decimated outer wall and the small group of soldiers withdrawing towards him. ‘Although I had hoped to find more of your platoon still standing.’

Despite the grim setting and the fire in her leg, Aerand found herself on the brink of smiling. ‘As had I,’ she replied, limping towards the Adeptus Astartes. One Space Marine was not a regiment, but perhaps he was even better.

‘The rest of the 900th?’ she asked, hope lacing her voice.

Tarvarius motioned towards the north. Outside the wall, the sound of lasfire picked up, followed by a series of heavy explosions. ‘Yarin pushed them hard.’

Aerand limped towards a gap in the wall, where Olemark stood staring.

‘It seems we may have to share some of the action, sir,’ he remarked, a tired smile creeping across his face.

Through the rain and over the scorched battlefield, the Cadian 900th approached, pouring withering fire into the cultists from behind. Already, their assailants were falling back, unable to stand up to the dauntless assault, and charging instead towards the fortress and the waiting, gaping chasm.

Aerand lifted her lasgun, prepared to open fire, when a sudden weight dropped her to her knees. The taste of blood and burnt flesh assailed her again, stronger than before. She retched onto the dark, slick stone, feeling her mind spin and her skin spark with fire. Slowly, she raised her head, expecting the stares of her confused soldiers, but they were all in a similar state. Even Tarvarius leaned against the wall awkwardly, scanning the night.

A creeping horror built within Aerand. Whatever had crippled her on the ridgeline was here in their midst. Whatever evil she had felt when the cultists approached had waited until now to show itself fully. As she stared out at the oncoming army, she suddenly understood her mistake.

They were not retreating, they were charging towards the gate, where a cloud of massive boulders were rising from the chasm, wreathed in flickering blue firelight, forming themselves into a bridge.

‘Witch,’ Aerand muttered, her voice hoarse and weak. A sudden desperation filled her as she stared through the gate. She had held the fortress against an army with only a few dozen soldiers – if the horde outside was allowed to enter, not even the entire 900th regiment could dislodge them. She forced her leaden limbs to move, stumbling towards Tarvarius and laying a hand on his colossal armour.

‘What?’ The Space Marine blinked, then shook his head slightly as if trying to rid himself of an invisible pest. A moment later, his confident posture returned and he fixed his gaze on Aerand. ‘They have a witch.’

No sooner had he spoken the words than that same blue glow lit the peak of the citadel’s tower. Aerand looked on in horror as a form emerged onto the high terrace, fire dancing around its twisted body, streaking out over the battlefield towards the approaching Cadian regiment.

Beside her, Olemark struggled to his feet, his shoulders bent by an invisible burden. The cultists had nearly reached the bridge, the fire of their weapons becoming dangerously accurate.

‘By the Throne,’ Olemark mumbled, turning to help one of his troopers rise. ‘He’ll lay the entire regiment to waste.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Aerand replied, limping towards the base of the citadel. ‘We’re going to kill him first.’

Aerand stumbled onto the high terrace, legs burning and mind swimming, while Olemark, Corwyn, and her few remaining troopers lumbered up the final few stairs. In the shadows of the pillars and stonework beside them, Tarvarius moved like a patient ghost.

The sorcerer stood at the centre of the platform, bathed in the horrible blue light of witch fire, bright streaks pouring from his body like vines, arcing down towards the raging battle below. Behind the darting, swirling inferno, the sorcerer himself was harder to discern, a thin, emaciated form buried beneath thick, dark smoke. If not for the fire pouring from him, Aerand might have thought the man on the brink of death, weak and haggard, as if the forces he channelled had taken not only his soul but his life.

Eight bodies knelt prostrate on the ground around the witch, hands clawing at writhing, moaning skulls. A thin tendril of flame connected each to the sorcerer, their naked bodies covered in tattoos and deep scars, each bearing at least one variation of that sinister flame and eye.

There was something terrible in that sigil, made even more awful in the witch’s unnatural glow. For a moment, Aerand felt she was a child again, staring up into the sky on a planet she hardly knew, a twisting wheel of fire marring the blue canopy above her.

‘You come at last.’

The sorcerer’s words spilled out from the flames like the falling of night as the sun disappeared, dozens of voices layered to form one. As he turned, a glimpse of the sorcerer’s empty, black eyes held Aerand firmly in place, and she was struck by the sense he was speaking directly to her.

The same black eyes she’d seen at the homestead. But instead of fear, they now filled her only with hatred.

‘Kill him,’ Aerand ordered, lifting her weapon and pulling the trigger.

A wall of lasfire streaked towards the sorcerer, lighting the balcony in a blinding display. For a moment, the flame around the witch seemed to dim, before it swelled again and the volley split harmlessly around him.

As the witch raised his hand, Tarvarius rushed forward, his chainsword roaring to life. Whatever share of the weight that crowded Aerand’s mind and limbs the Space Marine might have felt before was gone, for he moved like a raptor striking on the wind. As his weapon dropped towards the sorcerer’s head, a streak of fire split from the witch’s inferno and rose up to meet it, halting the chainsword while Tarvarius continued forward, leaping over the stalled weapon and skidding to a stop as his legs met the terrace’s ancient railing. The row of dark stone posts cracked but held, debris careening over the ledge into the smoke of the firefight below as Tarvarius turned and reengaged.

The witch’s fire rose up to meet him once again, streaks of flame and lasfire darting from the pair as they danced across the terrace with blinding speed.

Aerand dove to the side as they careened towards her, landing beside one of the cowering cultists, as a streak of blue light shot out from the sorcerer in her direction. The tether of flame between the woman and the witch seemed to swell as Aerand’s soldiers poured fire towards him, as if the witch’s magic was feeding off the bodies around him.

Aerand rose to a knee and stared at the woman. Beneath clawing fingers and a face contorted in pain, she could see the woman’s lips moving slowly, mumbling something incomprehensible.

As a fresh salvo of lasfire arced towards the sorcerer, the woman’s face calmed slightly and her eyes flashed open. She stared at Aerand with a terrible sincerity, then reached out and grasped her by the wrist.

‘Kill me,’ the woman whispered, voice laden with desperation. ‘Please. They didn’t tell me it would be like this.’

As the lasfire crashed into the sorcerer again, and the tendril connecting him to the woman swelled, her eyes snapped shut and she let out a scream. Aerand lifted her weapon and granted her wish.

The woman fell to the ground, and the thread connecting her to the sorcerer vanished. The witch’s black eyes turned towards Aerand in anger.

‘The bodies!’ Aerand shouted as a wall of flame rushed towards her, and she dived behind an ancient stone pillar. ‘Kill the bodies! He’s drawing power from them!’

The sorcerer’s attack abated for a moment, and Aerand spun to fire at the creature’s back. As she did, Olemark and Corwyn dropped two of the cultists, and Tarvarius lunged forward, gripping a pair of cowering, flame-wreathed bodies and tossing them over the precipice like refuse.

As the cultists shattered on the bulwark below, a sound like rushing water burst from the sorcerer – myriad voices crying out with rage. The sphere of fire around him grew bright as a star, until Aerand dropped to her knees from the sheer brilliance of him. She shivered to think of the terrible darkness that supplied that power, if it could afford to funnel so much strength into a single one of its servants. The flames swelled and tightened, then burst outward like a breaking wave, throwing her through the air.

Something struck Aerand’s shoulder with a sickening crunch, then her chest collided with unmoving stone. When her vision cleared, she stared over the edge of the high terrace, saved from falling only by the railing pillars that had broken her shoulder and ribs.

Beside her, Olemark grasped the shattered remnants of a pillar, body dangling over the towering precipice. Below him, several green-armoured bodies clattered against black stone, the darting glow of lasfire bursting around them from the battle below. Across the platform Tarvarius rose to his feet, tossing aside the debris of a shattered statue after bearing the worst of the sorcerer’s assault.

As Aerand dragged herself towards Olemark, shoulder and sides screaming in protest, the dark shadow of the sorcerer moved towards them. The light around him had faded into a dull flicker, his three remaining disciples reduced to nothing more than scorched husks.

‘No,’ Aerand whispered, as the witch’s eyes locked on Olemark. She reached out towards the sergeant, praying she had the strength to pull him up over the ledge. But instead of taking her grip, Olemark reached one hand over his shoulder, slipping dangerously as he pulled a weapon off his back.

‘Take the shot, sir,’ he said, dropping a missile launcher on the ledge beside her, then glancing up at the tower above them. The citadel’s pinnacle arced overhead like an executioner’s blade, the damaged, worn pillars lining the balcony barely supporting its weight. ‘He can’t hold the whole mountain up,’ Olemark muttered, then his hand slipped, and he dropped over the ledge.

As Aerand snatched the launcher from the ground, the sorcerer extended a shadowy hand towards her, a thin blue flame dancing across his fingers. She felt the launcher kick as a missile tore from its barrel, streaking towards the pillar beside them and shattering the stone into a cloud of dust.

For a moment, the tower above them hung steady, as if after standing for so many centuries, it did not remember it was able to fall. Then a single block dropped loose from the pinnacle, followed by another, then a horrible crash, as the tower slid from its bearings and toppled towards them.

The sorcerer cast both his hands over his head, the fire around him streaking towards the collapsing wall. At first, the stone held, shaking in place as a sinister blue glow swelled around it, but the witch himself was laid horribly bare.

Aerand reached down to her waist, snatching her laspistol from its holster and aiming towards the heretic’s dark, withered form. She pulled the trigger, and a bolt of light streaked towards him, this time unhindered as it pierced his skull. Instantly, the flame above him extinguished, and the stone over her head came crashing down.

Aerand felt her leg shatter first, then her ankle gave way as the air around her filled with dust and the sound of stones crashing like water.

‘I offer my life to the Emperor,’ she whispered. ‘I pray He accepts it.’

A weight descended on her chest, stifling her prayer. But moments later, when she found herself still breathing and the air had grown quiet, she heard her words echoed back on stern, iron lips.

‘I offer my strength to the Emperor. I pray He redresses it.’

Slowly, Aerand opened her eyes, staring into the dark-grey form of Tarvarius’ helmet. The Space Marine raised himself slowly, casting aside the avalanche of stone that had toppled onto them.

‘There will be enough time for prayer later,’ Tarvarius muttered, a flash of lightning gleaming off his dented, rent armour. ‘Right now we have a battle to win.’

Behind him, over the edge of the balcony, green Cadian bodies swarmed over the walls and back into the heart of Apex Inruptus.

‘Tell me once more what you experienced that night.’ Commissar Burdain’s voice rang out in clear, metered staccato, her arms and shoulders rigid beneath a flawless uniform.

‘Of course, sir,’ Aerand replied. In contrast to the commissar’s perfection, she was externally a mess. Her right arm was bound in a heavy sling, her left leg braced by crude metal bars burrowing into the bone beneath her skin. She leaned heavily on the desk beside her, ribs screaming with every breath, as Colonel Yarin watched in silence from the back of her chamber. A week ago, the commissar’s severe demeanour would have shaken Aerand, but now, after staring into the sorcerer’s black, warp-swallowed eyes, Burdain’s grey ones held little sway.

‘It’s difficult to describe the sensation I felt, other than to say it was deeply, horribly… wrong. The other soldiers of my platoon all describe similar feelings on the night of the Apex assault.’

‘But not on the night of the ambush,’ Burdain replied. ‘That night you were the only one who felt anything.’

And saw it. Aerand hadn’t lied to the commissar, but she hadn’t told anyone about the vision of the dead woman’s eyes. ‘That’s correct, sir.’

Burdain’s mouth drew into a stern line. ‘And on the night of the assault, you felt it first.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Aerand knew where this was headed – knew what question would come next – because she’d asked herself the same thing for the past three days while her body slowly stitched itself back together.

‘Why do you think you alone felt these things?’

She’d considered every possibility. Perhaps, as an officer, the sorcerer’s presence had been directed more strongly at her. Perhaps her proximity to the ritual had simply caused the sensation to be more intense. Maybe she’d just been more exhausted, or more anxious. Maybe her fear of failing had given the darkness a foothold to exploit.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Aerand replied, and that was honest. Burdain began to pace slowly, certainty growing in Aerand with each of her steps. She’d be removed from her position if she was fortunate. Executed if she was not.

Somehow, though, that thought didn’t bother her. She had done her duty – let the consequences be what they may.

After some time, the commissar paused and looked as if she was about to speak, but before she could, a quiet knock rang in the doorway, and a green-armoured figure limped slowly inside.

Corwyn had not escaped the citadel unscathed, and he walked clumsily on a gleaming prosthetic leg.

‘My apologies, sirs,’ he said quietly, unable to conceal a small grin as he stepped past Aerand bearing a piece of parchment. ‘I’ve been sent to deliver an urgent dispatch.’

As Corwyn handed the scroll to Commissar Burdain, Aerand caught a glimpse of its seal and felt her heart begin to race. Pressed into dark-grey wax was the wing-wreathed skull of the Storm Wings Space Marines.

Corwyn took his leave of the room, and the commissar’s face grew sterner still as she read through the message. When she finished, she sighed, then re-rolled the parchment and placed the scroll in Aerand’s hand. Aerand gripped it tightly – there was something firm and heavy inside.

‘The Adeptus Astartes send their regards,’ Burdain said. ‘As well as an endorsement of the lieutenant’s valour. In light of these events, and the… unique… circumstances surrounding the Apex Inruptus assault, I think it is reasonable to sentence Lieutenant Aerand to only minor discipline for her lapse during her platoon’s ambush, administered at Colonel Yarin’s discretion.’

As the commissar walked brusquely from the room, Yarin rose and placed a hand on Aerand’s shoulder, leaning in towards her ear. ‘You must have done something right to get her so upset,’ she whispered, her normally harsh face softening slightly. She looked as if she might say more, then paused and shook her head. ‘I best not keep you too long, lieutenant. You have a platoon to return to.’

As Aerand limped slowly down the dark stone hall, she opened the scroll and read the final few lines. A small token for the commander of the Cadian Storm Guard, from another of the Emperor’s broken servants. May it be the first link in a chain of your own.

A small smile spread across Aerand’s face as she gripped the iron-claw link wrapped inside the parchment.

THE EMPEROR’S LIGHT

Robert M Leahy

‘There,’ said Kazikov, pressing a gloved finger against the viewport, ‘can you see it now?’

The plexiglass of the Gravidus lighter’s cockpit was stained and yellowing in places, forcing Silvana to lean forwards and squint as she followed the line of Kazikov’s finger. Ignoring her own reflection in the toughened glass, she searched the shifting gas clouds through which the grizzled starshina was piloting their small craft.

‘I don’t see it.’

Kazikov sighed and, without looking up from his console, jabbed again at the glass with his finger.

‘Use eyes, sestra,’ he said. ‘Look… there.’

Silvana pushed his hand out of the way and peered again into the nebula. The sickly light from the nearby neutron star bled through the miasma of drifting gas that surrounded their ship, causing a slow cascade of colours as the different densities of dust occluded one another. This made it hard to gauge distance, size or even shape, and Silvana was about to speak again when she spotted something.

A shift in the interstellar debris had transfigured a patch of dark crimson dust to a limpid green, and suddenly Silvana could see their destination outlined against the clouds. At this distance it resembled little more than a rock, but she fancied she could discern the sharp angles of its outline that suggested a man-made structure clinging to its surface.

‘So that’s Watch Station Mausolus,’ she said, leaning back from the glass.

Kazikov smirked. ‘Ah, you see it now, yes? I was worried that only me and Durak here still had our eyes.’ He playfully punched the arm of the servitor sat next to him. The ship’s mute co-pilot was little more than an upper torso hardwired to its station, and its eyes had long ago been replaced with ugly bionic optics. ‘Of course, I don’t know where he keeps his…’

‘Don’t distract the real starshina, Kazikov,’ said Silvana, returning to her seat at the rear of the cabin. ‘He might just walk out of here and leave you to pilot this thing on your own.’

Kazikov gave his short bark of a laugh and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. ‘So, sestra, Mausolus is teeny-tiny station stuck on teeny-tiny rock hidden in big cloud of dust.’ He paused, turning to look back at Silvana. ‘I do not think Deathwatch is wanting visitors, eh?’

She gave him a dry look before turning away to stare through the plexiglass again. ‘They’re not known for their hospitality,’ she said, running a hand over her shaved-smooth head and watching her hollowed-eyed reflection do the same, half its face lost in shadow. ‘How soon will we know if they’ll allow us to dock?’

‘Once we’re in range of their weapons and they choose not to fire.’

Silvana looked back at Kazikov, expecting to see the usual smile on his face, but his expression was carefully neutral.

‘Would such a small watch station really be that well-armed?’ she asked.

‘If inquisitor’s intelligence is correct, Mausolus could turn us into finer dust than nebula.’ Kazikov began counting off weaponry on his fingers. ‘Las-burners, multiple torpedo batteries, three Ardalus-class mega bolters, possibly a small volcano cannon–’

‘I get the idea, Kazikov.’ Silvana shook her head. ‘All that firepower, and they still decided they needed a garrison of the Emperor’s finest waiting for anyone who gets past it… Whatever weapon is locked in Mausolus’ vault, the Deathwatch have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure it stays exactly where it is.’

‘We will have to be asking extra nice, then, eh?’

Silvana sighed. ‘What are we doing here, Kazikov? After everything that has happened, everything we’ve seen, is this really our best course of action?’

Kazikov shrugged. ‘Has inquisitor told you anything about weapon?’

‘No. He… he no longer confides in me.’

Kazikov leaned even further back in his chair, a conspiratorial look on his face. ‘I heard it’s something deadly to psykers,’ he said, his voice lowered. ‘Even locked inside vault, it can burn them up, from inside out. That’s why they have no astropath on watch station, and why we leave Kreutznaer behind. Maybe that is why–’

Abruptly, Kazikov stopped speaking and rocked forwards in his chair.

A moment later, Inquisitor Daevos made his way into the compartment. Encased in his ornately decorated power armour, the broad-shouldered inquisitor filled the cramped cabin space, even having to stoop slightly to avoid scraping his grey hair on the ceiling.

‘Mission status, starshina?’ he asked, ignoring Silvana. He rested his hands atop the backrests of the pilots’ seats, both of which creaked painfully in response to his weight.

‘My lord,’ said Kazikov, busying himself with the console. ‘Yes, we… we have visual on watch station. It’s still not showing on any of ship’s auger arrays.’

‘And I don’t imagine it will, no matter how close we get. I trust we have begun tight-beaming our Ordo credentials to them? I’d rather they did not fire on us without at least knowing who we were.’

‘Yes, er… of course, my lord.’

Daevos turned to Silvana. ‘Your sisters are awake,’ he said brusquely. ‘You should attend to them.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ she replied, forcing herself to hold his gaze for a moment longer than proper deference might deem appropriate. Then she rose from her seat and left the cockpit.

As she made her way back down the spine of the ship, Silvana passed the other two members of the inquisitor’s retinue, each ensconced on the seating that ran down the port side of the hull. Dvorak Stetner was sitting nearest the cabin door, surrounded by parchment scrolls, data-slates and hololithic recorders of every size. The scrivener was engrossed in frantic study, muttering under his breath as he fought against the armies of data with which he had besieged himself.

He spared a brief glance at Silvana as she passed by, momentarily peering up at her with his mismatched, augmented eyes, the larger of the two dilating slightly with an audible whir. Then, with no further acknowledgement, he returned to his work. Were it not for his eidetic memory, Silvana felt sure he would have had no recollection of seeing her, such transitory experience holding little value to him when set against the archival perfection of his blessed data-slates.

Further along from Stetner sat Corporal Rodhem, a half-smoked lho-stick hanging from his lip as he methodically checked the connections on the heavy backpack rig that powered his hellgun. The weapon itself – which, for reasons he had never revealed to Silvana, he had named Emiline – was lying on the seat beside him, its gleaming and scrubbed-clean body in stark contrast to the corporal’s own.

He nodded to Silvana as she passed, before allowing himself a long, slow drag on the lho-stick. Its flaring tip lit up his features, revealing the heavy scarring that marred the right-hand side of his face. Did Rodhem hold Inquisitor Daevos responsible for what had happened to him? He had every cause, but Silvana doubted he harboured any grudge; though his sartorial discipline may have slipped since his regimental days, Corporal Rodhem’s loyalty to the inquisitor remained absolute.

She envied him that conviction.

Silvana left Rodhem to his ministrations and made her way along the gangway, descending via a steep flight of metal steps into the plump belly of the Gravidus lighter. Ahead of her, the entrance to the main cargo bay was still sealed, much to her relief. She had no desire to have any contact with what lay on the other side of those doors.

Instead, she turned to the left and entered one of the smaller holds on the ship’s starboard side. Her sisters were as she had left them, lying strapped to two heavy benches installed in the centre of the hold, from which a confusion of wires, cables and conduit tubing stretched away to the walls. The smell in the small space had ripened during the journey, becoming a queasy mix of human sweat and synthetic chemicals.

Looking at them from the doorway, Silvana was struck once again by the monstrousness of her sisters’ appearance. Their clothing was little more than a mix of rags and thin strips of holy parchment, many of which had been stitched directly to their skin. Both of her sisters had undergone the same brutal surgeries: their lower arms had been removed and replaced with twitching electro-flails, whilst their upper backs were a crowded mess of stimm-filled syringes and arterial cannulae.

She could see that they had woken from their induced sleep, but were still in a subdued state – the pacifier helm each wore saw to that. On each of her sisters, riveted metal encased half the head above the cheekbone, an unblinking bionic lens replacing the delicate eyeball that had been drilled through in order to fix the mask in place. What was left of her sisters’ dark hair had grown long on the unmodified side of their heads, and on each of them the dark tresses framed half a face that eerily resembled Silvana’s own.

For Silvana, that had seemed an unnecessary cruelty. The process of arco-flagellation usually left a heretic’s head fully encased inside the pacifier helm, the Ecclesiarchy allowing penitents the small mercy of being fully robbed of their humanity. However, the Mechanicus-sanctioned magister chirurgiae who had operated on Silvana’s sisters had instead carefully left half the face of each woman untouched, a pitiless reminder of what they had once been.

And, perhaps, a warning to the sister who still remained.

One of her sisters turned her head towards Silvana as she stepped between the benches, her one natural eye gazing up at her elder sister as if she were something angelic. Silvana knew the pacifier helm would be suffusing her mind with soothing images and continuous hymnody, leaving her sister happily adrift in a religious ecstasy until the moment she heard her command word and became a terrifying, screaming weapon.

Silvana gently wiped away the patch of drool that had formed at the corner of her sibling’s mouth. An uncomprehending, beatific smile lit up the half-face of the horrifying killing machine that wore her sister’s shape.

In a moment, Silvana would begin preparing them both, readying them for battle in a grisly echo of Corporal Rodhem prepping his hellgun. She would check the levels of each of the combat-stimm injectors that adorned her sisters’ backs; she would ensure the adrenal pumps grafted to their skin were clear and ready to fill their veins with thrashing rage; she would repeat memorised litanies of tech-prayer over the electro-flails that hung from their arms, so that when the time came her sisters could flay the skin itself from the Emperor’s enemies.

In a moment, she would do all these things. But first, she had her own ritual to observe.

Hanging around her neck were three strings of adamantium prayer beads. They varied in length, but from each string dangled a simple chaplet ecclesiasticus, a small icon in the shape of a stylised column. It was the symbol worn throughout the Imperium by all staunch servants of the Ministorum.

Silvana gripped the three tokens in one hand, half expecting her flesh to burn at their touch, but the metal of each icon was cold and hard against her palm. Though in her heart she feared that there would now be no answer, she nonetheless knelt before her ruined sisters and began her simple prayer.

‘Emperor, forgive them…’

THE THIRTEENTH PSALM

Peter Fehervari

Beauty blinds the beholder, bedazzling the eye with grace or splendour and beguiling the heart with the promise of hope. The first rapture is an illusion, the second a lie, both wrought by the Archenemy to bind the soul in sweet tangles while the world sours, bleeds and burns unopposed. Those who cherish beauty flirt with corruption, but those who fabricate, disseminate and embody its deceits are among the foremost of heretics.

– Thirteenth Psalm
The Testament of Thorns

FIRST REFLECTION

Once I was among the worst of sinners. Whenever I meditate upon the Thirteenth Psalm I am dismayed anew by the weight of my past transgressions. The bloodline of my brotherhood runs strong with the Angel Sanguinius’ golden taint, cursing us with a comeliness and refinement uncommon among the Adeptus Astartes, even surpassing others who share our progenitor, but that does not excuse my excesses. When I walked among mortals as a Knight Artificer of the Resplendent they gazed upon me as though I were the God-Emperor Himself! But it was the accolades my creations received that truly filled my heart with pride, for even among a Chapter of artisans, poets and painters, my works were extravagant in their number and arrogance.

There was a time when the sculptures of Bjargo Rathana were lauded across a thousand worlds and sought by the most discerning – and avaricious – of the Imperium’s elite. I brought more glory upon my Chapter with chisel and stone than ever I did with bolter or blade, not to mention the bounty I reaped for our coffers. I recall earnestly declaring that I was a warrior of the soul, charged with waging a higher war than the petty scuffles of bone and sinew. Such was our Chapter’s decadence that my hubris was not only tolerated, but revered. Chapter Master Varzival titled me an Artisan Illuminant and decreed me too valuable to hazard in battle. And I delighted in it!

It shames me to confess such things aloud, yet it is necessary, for I must face myself without mercy if I am to prevail in the trial before me. The God-Emperor has condemned us all as sinners and shame is the first step on the road to penitence. Since the revelation that excoriated my Chapter I have walked far along that path and become a true warrior of the soul. And yet I was among the last to embrace atonement.

For years I languished in our monastery’s Ghost Pits with the foulest recidivists, clinging to my pride, yet our prophet refused to forsake me. Time lost its way in that changeless darkness until nothing mattered save the patient, passionate tone of his censures.

‘Concede the squalor in thy soul, Bjargo Rathana,’ the Undying Martyr urged. ‘Confess thy sins and rise above them, soiled but honest in thy contempt.’

I have heard outsiders claim that our prophet is surely a madman or a sly servant of the Archenemy who has led us to ruin like cattle to the slaughter. Why, they ask, would a civilised brotherhood like the Resplendent submit to the degradation prescribed by a mortal stranger? To them I say this – listen to the Undying Martyr speak. See the sorrow in his eyes when he laments humanity’s fall from grace. Only then will you understand and earn the right to judge. Until then it is we who shall stand in judgement over you. That is the doom of the Angels Penitent.

After I awoke to the revelation I seized it with a fervour that eclipsed all but the most blessed of my brothers, and ascended swiftly to the Crown of Thorns that governs our Chapter. For nearly twenty years an iron skull has masked my impure visage, riveted to the bone beneath to seal the compact, for a Chaplain Castigant never relinquishes his vestments. My hempen robes have never known the touch of water and the soot-black armour beneath is begrimed with old blood and the dirt of countless worlds, their stain a litany to the battles I have fought in His name. The crozius I now wield is more honest than a chisel, though it carves in fewer strokes and leaves every subject broken.

I wrought much good work in my new calling, yet my past disgrace tormented me, thus when the Undying Martyr proclaimed a crusade to scour the Imperium of the Resplendent’s artistic legacy I sought his blessing to lead the quest. My creations were at the forefront of that prideful diaspora, so who better to expunge them than I? As I had sown, so I would reap!

The Chapter’s numbers were few and our allies fewer still, so it fell to a single, much diminished company to prosecute this sacred quest. Rechristening our strike cruiser the Severance of Glory, we set about our task with zeal, seeking out and purging the vainglorious artefacts of the Resplendent.

Many years have passed since the Absolution Company’s departure, and with them many of my brothers, for the heathens who covet our heritage have rarely surrendered their treasures willingly and some have commanded armies. It is a testament to the iniquity of the baubles we fabricated that they evoke such ardour in mortals. Indeed our dreams have seeded many monsters.

And so we come to the exquisite abomination that stands before me now – the centrepiece in this gallery of aberrant constructions.

Balanced on a tripod of curved legs, the mirror is taller than I and almost as broad, its arched top lending it the aspect of a doorway. The frame is forged from silver-plated plasteel, sinuous and seamless in its construction, its edges carved into the likeness of curled waves that appear to seethe at the corner of the eye. It is quite remarkable, yet mundane beside the glass it cages. Words are my foremost weapon, yet they defy my attempts to describe that strange surface. There is no tint or distortion to it, nor does it harbour subtle ghosts or glimpses of unholy realms. No, the mirror only reflects the world before it, but with a clarity that somehow surpasses its subjects, as though the reflection is the truth and the reality merely an impoverished approximation.

Above all else, it reveals you.

You gaze back at me from that heightened place with a sharpness of being – a completeness – that I cannot equal, though we are one. What lies behind your iron death mask, my brother-self? My own face for certain, yet also not.

It is imprudent to gaze into that eloquent glass too long, yet duty demands it. My purpose here is not crass destruction, but righteous castigation. Each artefact of the Resplendent must be studied, decried and conquered with the correct rituals for its redaction to bear meaning. The physical act of violence is only the tip of the spear I plunge into the Sea of Souls whenever I obliterate one of our heresies. As the mirror itself so insidiously suggests, the world of flesh and blood we inhabit is a shroud obscuring an infinitely greater, darker reality, where the Archenemy lurks, ever watchful. That is where I must strike! That is–

My work? No… You are mistaken. The mirror is not mine. I had no skill in the crafting of metal or glass, let alone the warp-weaving talents to enliven them. No, it was forged in the Librarium Resplendent by the most potent of our old Chapter’s sorcerers, Chief Librarian Athanazius himself. The description in the Inventorium Illuminatus is unmistakable, though there is no mention of the mirror’s arcane properties – and little wonder, since it was the Librarium that compiled the records and its acolytes were cautious even in those dissolute times. Wise to such evasions, I had prioritised their creations in our hunt, yet Athanazius’ masterwork had long eluded us.

It would take too long to recount the twisted skein of events that carried the mirror so far from our monastery on sacred Malpertuis to the remote world I stand upon now. Suffice to say the Archenemy undoubtedly had a hand in its journey, though whether by intent or instinct, I cannot fathom. Either way, this planet has proved itself to be a trap.

As always, it was Brother Anselm, our company’s most studious Redactor, who pieced together the trail. I recall the gleam in his eyes when he sought me out in the ship’s chapel to reveal the breakthrough, though he kept his elation leashed. Like my own, Anselm’s zeal burned cold, tempered by the discipline that our baleful blood demands lest it spill over into madness. We were both veterans of the Resplendent era, our roots steeped in sin, while more than half the Chapter’s warriors are now Penitent-forged. While these young ‘Thornborn’ are aware of the past, they cannot feel it as we do, nor loathe it with such clarity. Though my calling disallows the camaraderie shared by common battle-brothers, there was an understanding between Anselm and myself that I choose to remember as friendship.

Now my friend is dead, along with all the others who accompanied me to this foul place. I can see him behind me, still kneeling where he fell, his body propped up by his rigid armour. His eyes are frozen in surprise beneath the splintered crown of his cranium. No… There is more than surprise in them – betrayal – for the trail of blood weaving from his corpse leads to the crozius in my hand.

I had no choice. But you already know that, mirror-brother, for Anselm Giordano also kneels broken on your side of the glass.

SECOND REFLECTION

I should say something of the benighted world where we found the mirror. Oblazt lies on the borders of the Damocles Gulf, just beyond the overt incursions of the foul xenos empire that festers beyond that great void. Though the planet is an insignificant speck of ice within the greater Imperium, it is the cornerstone of its own miserable subsector. The oceans under its frozen skin are abundant with edible beasts, and beneath their realm, deep wells of promethium. A network of domed cities harvests this wealth in the Emperor’s name, though our records indicated their masters’ loyalty derived from obligation rather than devotion.

Like so many provincial rulers, the Koroleva blue bloods revere themselves first and the God-Emperor second, wallowing in excess while the wretches under their yoke suffer the burden. It sickens me that such leeches are tolerated, indeed fostered, across the Imperium; however it bears witness to the Undying Martyr’s message – mankind is beyond redemption. The Emperor condemns and the day of His wrath is imminent. By His leave the Angels Penitent shall prosecute it, but for now the wickedness of backwaters like Oblazt was not our concern. That was my decree when we set our course, but malign fate conspired against us.

When we entered Oblazt’s orbit we found a world in the throes of revolution. Most of its cities burned like funeral pyres across the tundra, some with their domes cracked open to the killing cold. The vox waves blazed with defiance of the Imperium, promising a new age of harmony under the aegis of the blue-skinned ‘Liberators’ who would soon cross the Damocles Gulf and rebuild Oblazt equitably. Their watchword was Unity, but beneath its benevolent sheen their manifesto was a filthy xenos lie.

My brothers demanded action. Overlooking the grubby injustices mankind wreaked upon itself was tolerable, but turning a blind eye to this heresy was surely unforgivable! Was it not the God-Emperor’s hand that had guided us to this place in its hour of vitiation?

I admit I almost surrendered to the temptation of war, for my own ire was stirred, but a Chaplain Castigant must rise above such indulgence and cleave to a higher purpose. Oblazt was in the grip of a headless, many-tentacled leviathan, while only fifty-five battle-brothers remained to me. We might hunt the beast for months, slicing away limbs, but never slaying it. It was a fool’s errand. More than that – a test of our devotion to the true quest!

My brethren’s fury withered before my rebuke and Brother Veland, who had been the most outspoken of them, begged that his tongue be cut out lest he utter such foolishness again. I denied his plea and merely chastised him with the Mute Censure, binding him to ninety-nine days of silence. Though he was the youngest among us he had the makings of an exceptional warrior, but his quickness to anger troubled me, for it likely presaged the onset of the Black Rage. The Chapter’s new recruits have proven more susceptible to our blood’s ancient curse than the veterans, as though the clean slates of their souls are easier to stain, but I hoped Veland might elude the blight if correctly tempered. That is why I chose him for the mission ahead. With little prospect of meaningful opposition it would be a fine opportunity to observe and guide him.

No, do not berate me for it! Did you not make the same choice, mirror-brother? Or was your Veland made of purer stuff than mine?

THIRD REFLECTION

‘The trail ends at a city named Zakhalin, Master Rathana,’ Brother Anselm told me. ‘It is among the most inflamed of this world’s cankers.’

We were alone in the ship’s obsidian-tiled strategium, for I required no others to advise me on our course.

‘The disorder will mask our arrival,’ I replied, studying the flickering holo-scan of the city that floated above the tactical pedestal between us. ‘I trust you do not expect me to scour the entire hovel, Brother-Redactor?’

‘I do not.’ Anselm ran a long-fingered hand over the holo, manipulating it with the fluidity he had once applied to a laserwire harp. Truthfully, I still struggled to muster sufficient contempt for the sublime compositions he used to weave, though I know harmony is a false salve.

‘The mirror is almost certainly here, master,’ Anselm said, plucking a building into prominence. ‘They call it the Concupiscent Hearth.’

‘A carnal name,’ I judged, but it wasn’t the name that troubled me. I glared at the holo of the grandiose mansion, trying to identify my disquiet.

‘The name befits its mistress,’ Anselm continued. ‘Even by the standards of this world’s degenerate overseers, the reputation of the Konteza Esseker is wanton and cruel.’ He frowned, deepening the seams of his sensitive face. Like many of our veterans, he had aged strikingly since the Great Excruciation, his long, once sable hair now entirely white. ‘The reports I accessed are obscene.’

‘You will cleanse yourself while I am gone, brother. The Seven Flagellations Incinerant shall suffice.’

‘Forgive my impertinence, Master Rathana,’ Anselm said, bowing his head, ‘but I had hoped to accompany you on this purgation. I have long dreamt of redacting Athanazius’ greatest blasphemy.’

I hesitated. Anselm’s wisdom was too valuable to hazard, yet he had earned the right to see this through. Besides, what possible peril could the nest of a debased noblewoman pose?

‘Very well, Brother-Redactor,’ I decided, ‘we shall prosecute His will together once more.’

It was many hours later, as our transport gunship descended to the city, that I finally realised what had troubled me about the mansion. Among the sprawl of burning buildings, the konteza’s eyrie had appeared perfectly untouched.

Our Thunderhawk set us down atop a hab tower several blocks from our destination then roared back into the blizzard weeping through the cracked dome high above. I had chosen the deployment site to avoid drawing attention, but in the face of that churning white squall I suspected it was a needless precaution. My helm’s sensors indicated the temperature was below freezing in the wind-wracked heights and I doubted it would be much warmer in the streets below, despite the fires raging throughout the city. The cold posed no threat to us, of course – even without our armour’s thermo-regulators we could easily weather it – but Zakhalin’s inhabitants would likely be compelled to seek shelter.

I recited the Canticle of Inception as my squad scanned the flat rooftop for heat signatures, but we were alone.

‘They have brought ruin upon themselves,’ Anselm observed over the vox, for the gale was too fierce for unassisted speech to carry beyond a few paces.

‘As within so without, brother,’ I replied, gazing down upon the fires shimmering through the blizzard. ‘These degenerates were damned long before this cataclysm.’

‘The Emperor condemns!’ Brother-Sergeant Salvatore declared. A veteran of many redactions, he never forsook an opportunity to voice the First Psalm. Like all our Thornguard elite, his helmet was painted brown and crested with rusty spikes to mark his piety. A ragged tabard hung from his belt, woven with dried thistles and shards of bone, for our brotherhood forbids fanciful icons of faith. The Ecclesiarchy’s proclivity for garish ornamentation mocks the holy war we wage, as does the leniency of its doctrine.

‘The Emperor condemns!’ we chorused reverently, though Veland held his tongue. It is a sin to abstain from responding to the First Psalm; however the prohibition of silence upon the young warrior was a graver ordinance. He would still be punished for the omission once the mission was over, but I would be merciful.

‘How did the mirror come to be here?’ Brother Laurent, the fifth and final member of the squad wondered aloud.

‘By the Archenemy’s wiles, boy!’ Salvatore growled, his flamer’s tongue lashing about in the wind. ‘Why ask such things?’

‘I stand corrected, brother-sergeant.’ Despite his assent I suspected his curiosity was unappeased, but I tolerated such infractions in Laurent Toledos, for he was another young Thornblood with promise. Though he didn’t possess Veland’s martial flair, there was an earnest intuitiveness about him that leaned towards a subtler path, perhaps as a Redactor like Anselm. Such recruits are rare, for inquisitive souls are seldom pure enough to survive the Trial of Thorns, hence Laurent was worthy of cultivation.

Had I known what lay ahead I would not have chosen him for this mission, nor Veland or Anselm for that matter. The Concupiscent Hearth was no place for complex souls.

We crossed the city without serious incident. Our kind are not naturally built for stealth, nor does our creed encourage it, but the blizzard served as a partial cloak, surrendering to our helmets’ sensors but blinding the scum who wandered the streets. Despite the cold there were many about, mostly in small groups, but occasionally in great mobs. Some were intent on destruction, others on escape from their fellows’ madness. Most who stumbled upon us fled, shrieking that the Imperium’s vengeance was upon them, or fell to their knees and begged for succour. All these we ignored, our consciences salved by the certainty of their doom, but some attacked us with makeshift weapons or autoguns. These fanatics’ foreheads bore the blue circle of their imagined liberators and they fought with a measure of courage, if not skill. We purged them swiftly and without passion, for such vermin were unworthy of zeal.

More of Zakhalin’s phantoms haunted the gateway leading to the konteza’s estate, but they slunk away at our approach. The high marble wall surrounding the grounds had been defaced with paint, lewd symbols and phrases vying for attention with the hateful circle of the xenos-lovers. The iron gates had been battered down, yet I saw no bullet holes or scorch marks, let alone the bodies that typically attended such violence.

‘The gates were undefended,’ Anselm mused, echoing my thoughts. ‘There was no battle fought here.’

‘Doubtless their wardens fled,’ Salvatore said, stomping over the twisted iron wreckage to enter the grounds. ‘Only cowards would let such scum bring down their world.’

As the rest of us followed, a bundle of rags shivered beside the wall and a hand reached out to clutch at Brother Laurent’s armoured shins. He spun and brought his bolter to bear on the figure slouched under the gateway. It was a crone, her form wasted to a minimalist caricature of humanity.

‘You have come… angel,’ the woman hissed, her heavily accented rasp somehow carrying through the wind. Her heat signature was so faint I marvelled she still lived, yet her eyes glittered in the gloom. ‘I… saw you. Dreamt of you.’

Laurent offered no answer. Though his expression was hidden by his helm I sensed his uncertainty. Some day soon that hesitation would either sharpen into astuteness or prove his downfall.

‘She took my sons,’ the crone continued, her voice trembling with passion. ‘Took so many others too… Burn the bitch!’

I was intrigued to watch the scene play out, but our comrades had already disappeared into the blizzard.

‘Brother Laurent, with me!’ I ordered.

As I marched after the others I heard him say something to the woman, but the squall snatched away his words. Now, after all that came after, I find myself wondering what he said.

Yes, mirror-brother, such things matter! We are the progeny of the choices we make and I believe Laurent made a choice at those gates, even if it came to nothing.

Be silent! Let me finish. I must order my thoughts if we are to end this.

FOURTH REFLECTION

Like the gates, the konteza’s garden bore no traces of conflict. It was a flat, circular expanse covered in many-hued tiles that hinted at some overarching pattern I could not discern; however there was no mistaking the depravity of the statues that adorned it. They were dotted about the place seemingly at random, their strangely distended forms contorted into sinuous studies of carnality. The pink marble they were hewn from was aglow with an ardour their featureless faces couldn’t express.

‘Are they dancing?’ Laurent asked as we passed an improbably conjoined pair.

‘In a manner, brother,’ Anselm answered solemnly.

‘Do not look upon them,’ I commanded, though my own eyes strayed to each tableau we passed. Despite their prurience I could not deny the excellence of their execution. Their creator had evidently been a sculptor of rare genius, almost the equal of my own. I vowed we would destroy them once our primary duty was accomplished, for it would be remiss to leave such magnificent obscenities standing.

The konteza’s chateau emerged slowly from the blizzard, rising from the estate’s centre in a riotous congeries of fluted pillars and faux towers clad in the same roseate marble as the statuary it presided over. Bulbous, vividly enamelled domes topped each wing, vying with one another for attention like the painted harlots who preyed upon mortals. The holo had failed to capture the building’s sheer decadence, but it was certainly a fitting receptacle for Athanazius’ heresy.

‘It is… extraordinary…’ Anselm trailed off before he said too much. Some among us have never fully cast off the tyranny of beauty, but we must never give it voice. I would castigate him for the lapse later.

‘We should burn this abomination in our wake,’ Salvatore declared piously.

‘We shall raze it to rubble, brother-sergeant,’ I promised. ‘Even if it requires an orbital barrage.’

The mansion’s wing-shaped doors were wide open, their ornately carved woodwork showing no sign of having been forced. We approached them cautiously, our weapons readied in expectation of a trap, but the brightly lit hall beyond appeared deserted.

‘Brother Veland, take the spearhead,’ I commanded. The choice would irk Salvatore, but the volatile Thornblood was the most expendable among us.

Nobody sprang from hiding as Veland entered, but I waited until he reached the centre of the immense hall before signalling the others to follow. We fanned out into our pre-designated quadrants behind our spearhead, swiftly scouring the space for enemies. The room was as lavishly furnished as the building’s exterior promised, but many of its ornaments had been smashed and the floor was scuffed with dirty tracks. The xenos symbol was sprayed profligately across the walls in blue paint.

‘Others have trespassed here before us,’ Anselm gauged, studying the trail, ‘but not many.’

‘Surely it matters not,’ Salvatore said. ‘Either way they are nothing.’

‘Yet it is strange,’ the Redactor pressed. ‘This edifice of privilege should have drawn the rabble’s fury.’

‘They were afraid,’ Laurent ventured, running a gauntleted hand over a velvet-papered wall, as if testing it.

‘Perhaps,’ Anselm acknowledged. ‘If even half the tales of the konteza are true, they had cause to be.’

I considered our options. Several doorways led off from the hall, promising a sprawl of corridors and chambers spanning several floors. It might take hours, perhaps even days to locate the mirror if its mistress had concealed it.

‘We will pursue the intruders first,’ I decided. ‘They may know something of use… Laurent, take the spearhead!’

‘By your command, Chaplain Castigant.’

I noticed Veland had stopped at the foot of the grand staircase at the chamber’s far end, his head tilted to one side, as if listening for something.

‘Veland, do you have a contact?’ I demanded. There was no answer. ‘Brother Veland, do–’

He sent a negative, using the tongue clicks of the Muted. All our brethren are required to learn the code, for the prohibition of speech must never be broken, even in extreme peril.

My gaze lingered on Veland as he turned away from the stairs to follow the others. I could not say what troubled me, but revisiting that moment with hindsight, I believe it was the first time he heard the witch’s voice.

We followed the intruders deeper into the chateau. Even after their boots had been scrubbed clean by the fulsome carpets their tracks were easy to follow, for their passage was marked by a trail of destruction, though they always left the lights intact, as if fearful of the dark. Beyond this crude ruination there was a more subtle blight upon the palatial maze. Everything was dusted with ice and my sensors indicated a temperature well below freezing, though the windows were unbroken. Indeed, it was colder within the building than without.

‘Is there no end to the depravity here?’ Salvatore snarled, glaring at the paintings lining the walls of yet another wood-panelled corridor. The canvases had been slashed, but their salacious subjects remained apparent.

‘She doesn’t believe in limits,’ Laurent murmured.

‘I don’t follow you, Thornblood,’ Salvatore said.

‘I…’ The young warrior faltered, as though he hadn’t meant to speak the thought aloud. ‘Forgive me, brother-sergeant, it was a stray notion.’

‘This is not the place for them, boy.’

The veteran was correct. More than any other battleground I had walked upon, the Concupiscent Hearth demanded absolute focus. Yes, my mirror-brother, I recognised it as an arena from the moment we entered, even if its trials were not of muscle and sinew. But if I still harboured any doubts that something unclean haunted the konteza’s eyrie they were banished when we finally caught up with the intruders.

‘What madness is this?’ Salvatore hissed as we entered the grand dining hall where their trespass ended. Unlike the other rooms we’d passed through, it was sparsely lit and steeped in shadows, as if to convey an intimate mood, but we saw our quarry clearly enough.

There were eleven of them, sitting stiffly on high-backed chairs at a round, linen-draped table. A sumptuous repast was set before them, as though in celebration, but the roasted meats and elaborately presented vegetables were rimed with frost, along with the prospective diners. They were naked, their clothes left in neatly folded piles by the door, along with their weapons. The cold had turned their flesh blue and preserved the pain in their staring eyes, yet their faces wore wide grins. Their left arms were raised, locked in a perpetual toast, the wine in their goblets turned to crimson ice.

Murmuring a prayer of chastisement, I walked along the dead, looking for wounds, but saw nothing except the cold’s kiss. I imagined them undressing and taking their places decorously, then waiting in silence while their blood chilled.

‘How long?’ I asked Anselm, who was the closest to an Apothecary among us.

‘It is difficult to say, master,’ he replied, approaching a bearded brute with concentric circles tattooed across his face. He snapped the corpse’s arm off at the elbow and inspected the limb’s core. ‘Frozen through… But a few hours would suffice for that, after which there would be little change. This could have occurred days ago, perhaps even weeks.’

‘A decadent way to die,’ Salvatore declared, swiping the head from the cadaver beside him. It shattered at his feet in crimson shards.

‘I doubt they chose it, brother-sergeant,’ Anselm said. ‘It would have been an agonising fate.’ He placed the severed arm on the table gently. ‘Something dulled their wits and lulled them into death. Perhaps the wine was poisoned.’

‘Not the wine,’ I judged. ‘This was sorcery, brother.’

‘She watched them die,’ Laurent said, his voice tight with loathing. ‘It amused her.’ He pointed at a large, gold-framed painting overlooking the head of the table. ‘It’s in her eyes.’

‘Thornblood, I have warned you against such.’ I silenced Salvatore’s reprimand with a raised hand. I had chosen Laurent for his Emperor-given instincts and it would be folly to ignore them in this nest of serpents. Before the Great Excruciation I suspect he might have found a place among our Librarium’s heretics, but properly wielded, his latent gift might become a righteous weapon.

‘Corruption slinks beneath the skin of the world, brother-sergeant,’ I said, striding to join Laurent beneath the painting. ‘Sometimes we must hound it with our souls, not our wits.’

The lighting was contrived to fall upon the picture gracefully, emphasising its prominence without washing out its hues. A woman in a black dress returned my gaze from the canvas, her hands folded possessively over the heavy tome in her lap. A mane of red hair framed the pale oval of her face, cascading to her waist and woven with black flowers. Her green eyes were sharp with icy disdain, though her expression was wistful, brooding even. I had never seen her before, yet I knew her immediately – Konteza Urzelka Esseker, the mistress of the Concupiscent Hearth.

Unlike most bloodlines of the Adeptus Astartes, those of my lineage can recognise comeliness in a woman, hence I saw the beauty in that painted visage, but I also recognised it for a mask. The calculation in the matriarch’s eyes pierced the deception, making a mockery of her studied pensiveness. I was quite certain that hesitation was alien to the spirit behind that exquisite face. This was a woman who did as she willed, no matter the cost.

What do you think she saw when she gazed into Athanazius’ glass, brother? I have no doubt she indulged the impulse obsessively, even if she disliked the truths it revealed. Perhaps that is what drove her to heresy.

As we left the room I noticed Veland lingering under the portrait, his head once again tilted to the side. There was a perceptible sway to his posture.

‘Brother Veland!’ I shouted from the doorway, my patience with his laxity wearing thin. His helm’s lenses locked on me impassively, the white cross of the Muted daubed across his faceplate stark in the gloom. For a moment I thought he would speak, but he merely clicked an affirmative. Somehow it sounded insolent.

FIFTH REFLECTION

I was compelled to divide the squad, for the mansion’s size vastly exceeded my estimates. It was almost as though its inner dimensions defied its exterior, or enlarged slyly around us, spawning new configurations out of sight. There was hazard in separating, yet also in lingering in this defiled place, so I was eager to find our prize, redact it and be gone.

Yes, my brother-self, I am aware how absurd that now seems, but it was a lifetime ago and you fared no better, so do not presume to judge me. We are one in our folly!

It was Laurent who found the mirror. I had assigned him the uppermost floors and taken the cellars myself, convinced the konteza would hide her darkest secrets underground, but that assumption dignified her with caution or shame. Even then, I should have known her better. While I wandered through a sprawling storehouse of condiments to sate or embolden mortal appetites, Laurent uncovered a temple… of a kind.

‘It is an abomination, Thorn Master,’ he continued after reporting his find. ‘How can such things evade the God-Emperor’s gaze?’

I frowned at the static drenching his voice. Something had been interfering with the squad’s vox since we split up, becoming worse as the distance between us grew. Occasionally I heard an anomalous sound beneath the white noise – a voice perhaps? – but it slipped away whenever I tried to make sense of it.

‘Master, we cannot let this stand!’ Laurent pressed, his passion carrying through the distortion. ‘If we–’

‘The mirror, Thornblood?’ I snapped. ‘You have located it?’

‘I… Yes, Thorn Master, it is here.’

‘On route,’ I replied, dismissing his plea. ‘Brothers, converge on Laurent!’ Anselm and Salvatore voxed affirmatives. Veland’s clicked response followed several seconds later, but I was too intent on our prize to admonish his tardiness.

The blizzard pressed close against the windows as I hurried towards the upper levels, its cloak now so dense the outside world might have been gone, erased by that swirling nothingness. And yet, despite its ferocity, I heard no wind beyond the casements.

As I passed an open door something moved at the corner of my eye. I swung round, my crozius and bolt pistol raised. Beyond the threshold was a hexagonal chamber devoid of windows, its walls sheathed in black tiles engraved with floral coils. Serpentine lumen strips lined the walls, bathing everything in a soft indigo radiance that also appeared to heat the room, for the perennial ice was absent here – indeed my sensors confirmed the temperature was humid.

My steps clattered loudly when I entered, for the floor was a smooth sheet of glass. Fibrous strands ran under its misted surface in a dense web, presumably extending under the whole room and possibly even beyond. Indeed, I imagined those tendrils insinuating themselves throughout the entire mansion, clustering beneath the plaster like rot.

The lights brightened with my advance, revealing a bulbous urn at the chamber’s centre. A plant had erupted from the container’s neck in a rampant tangle of vines and leathery leaves that pressed against the ceiling. Vast flowers bloomed among the snarl, their fleshy bulbs fringed with black petals. I have never been more thankful for the sanctity of my sealed armour, for I had no wish to inhale the musk of those leprous blossoms.

‘Are you so sure of that?’ The voice surged up on a wash of static, its rich contralto timbre cutting through the distortion. ‘The boon of the Sable Kiss might spur you to profundity once more, Artisan Illuminant.’

‘Only to profanity, witch,’ I answered, for I was in no doubt about the speaker’s identity. That voice was the perfect match for the woman in the portrait. I realised I had been waiting for Urzelka Esseker to address me since seeing her likeness. But how did she know my old honorific, and the dishonour it celebrated? Had she plucked it from my mind? No – no, that was not possible… but perhaps from one of the others, though only Anselm and Salvatore would remember such things.

‘Paradise lost is all the sweeter rediscovered,’ the witch wheedled, ‘and damnation not nearly as sour as you might imagine.’

The plant was rustling gently, all its flowers turned towards me. Its movements revealed several skulls nestled among its vines like pale bulbs. How many souls had surrendered willingly to its lure over the years? And how many who resisted had simply been hurled into its embrace?

‘Why so fearful of your own gifts, Bjargo Rathana?’ my tormentor asked tenderly. It sickened me to hear her speak my name, as if to a lover. Which of my brothers had betrayed it to her?

‘You are mistaken, heretic!’ I jabbed my crozius at the plant, as if the witch resided there. ‘By His holy name, I abjure you!’

‘You abjure nobody save yourself, broken thing,’ she mocked. ‘And whatever I will, will be!’ With a swell of static she was gone.

‘The Emperor knows you!’ I bellowed. ‘And He condemns!’

The plant shivered, as if in empathy. To my disgust I realised its container wasn’t an urn at all, but the fleshy seedpod it had sprung from. Resisting the impulse to waste ammunition upon it – for I would not taint my crozius with its sap – I stalked from the room. Doubtless that malign growth was but one of many abominations cultivated in the witch’s domain.

I found Laurent on the top floor, standing just beyond the stairwell, with Anselm and Salvatore to either side, all three shrouded in the same silence. I slowed my stride as I joined them, aghast at the enormity of the blasphemy before me.

The whole level had been opened up into a single cavernous space under the mansion’s central dome, from which a vast chandelier hung. Thousands of cut-glass lumoglobes glittered in that baroque web of light, leaving no room for shadows, though they would have been welcome, for the entire chamber was devoted to depravity.

I will not dwell upon the myriad engines of torture assembled in that unholy gallery, save to say their construction was masterful. Every one of them sported exhaustive controls to tweak and tune the laments they played upon the flesh, offering countless variations on every conceivable theme. I doubted any of the konteza’s victims had shared quite the same agony or perished before she was entirely satisfied.

Oh, there was genius behind those machineries of misery – her genius – yet every one was an obscenity.

As you well know, the Angels Penitent are no strangers to the virtues of torture. Applied with sobriety, the excruciation of the body is a righteous instrument of correction, coercion or execution. Indeed it is the sixth sacrament of the Trial of Thorns that our neophytes must endure to earn the black carapace. But the rites practised here were of a different order and their intent vile, for it was abundantly clear that the konteza’s engines powered not just suffering, but also pleasure of equal magnitude.

Do not ask me to describe how she accomplished this perversion for I will not stoop to such vulgarity. Besides, you can see the devices on your side of the glass, so you know their methodology. Never have I been so repelled by mortal vice!

Evidently the chamber had hosted one last great orgy of ecstatic torment, for there were corpses everywhere, frozen like the intruders below, but boasting the marks of far more outlandish deaths. They were displayed alongside the machines that killed them, posed like the mangled dolls of a diabolical child.

‘Their lips wear smiles their eyes deny,’ Anselm said bleakly, breaking the silence.

‘The Emperor condemns!’ Salvatore declared. We chorused the sacred words, drawing purity from them.

‘This was more than depravity,’ I judged, glaring at the curved runes inscribed upon the machines. ‘It was a ritual.’

Despite my helmet’s filters I could smell those malefic sigils – the bittersweet aroma of poisoned dreams, pregnant with the promise of lies that might be true… if only I would drink deep of their charms.

‘She sacrificed her followers,’ Anselm gauged, examining the nearest cadaver’s finery.

‘Yes, Redactor,’ I agreed, looking away from the runes. ‘And they offered themselves willingly.’

‘Not all of them,’ Laurent said quietly. He had removed his helmet, as if in mourning. Doubtless he was remembering the words of the dying crone at the gates. The konteza took whatever she needed – her own and others. ‘There are innocents among them,’ he added.

‘Nobody is innocent, Thornblood,’ I rebuked him. ‘And it matters not who they were. They died for her regardless. That was enough.’

‘Enough for what, master?’ Salvatore asked.

‘To escape her people’s wrath! Sooner or later they would have come for her in numbers her thralls could not withstand.’

‘You believe she survived, master?’ Salvatore raised his flamer instinctively.

‘Oh, I know it, brother-sergeant! She is still here, though not as she was. Her escape was not flight, brother.’

‘We must destroy her,’ Laurent urged.

‘Yes, Thornblood,’ I assured him, but my attention was elsewhere, for I had seen our true objective.

The Mirror of Athanazius stood upon a circular platform at the far side of the chamber, gazing upon the atrocities like a vast glass eye. Instinctively I understood it had been the ceremony’s focal point, one heresy used to amplify another. Though I was here to destroy the artefact I was outraged that our legacy had been defiled in such a way. The mirror’s sins belonged to the Chapter!

We crossed the gallery in silence, wary of the narrow spaces between the machines, though I didn’t believe any conventional foes remained. The darkness haunting this place was no longer a creature of flesh and blood.

As I climbed the platform’s steps I saw you rising through the glass ahead to meet me, the hollows of your iron skull fixed upon my own, the razor wire halo wreathing your cranium flecked with rust. A ring of runes encircled your window, carved into the wooden boards of the dais and filled with blood. Their power was enhanced by a plethora of occult paraphernalia – black candles, an antlered skull inlaid with gold, a desiccated six-fingered hand… They were the common trinkets of heretics, made uncommon here by one who knew her craft all too well.

By unspoken consent we kicked the circle apart and crushed the foul baubles underfoot. Laurent’s expression was thunderous, but it was a righteous fury, free of the Black Rage’s mania. I felt pride in him then shame in myself, for pride begets the fall.

‘Master, we cannot leave the witch’s fate to chance,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘If we burn this place she may escape.’

‘The konteza is not our objective,’ I demurred, but not harshly.

‘Then what is our purpose?’ Laurent pressed. ‘If we suffer such heretics to live then why fight at all?’ The sensitivity of the Resplendent endured in him, yet he was unmistakably a Penitent. With time he might have become one of our staunchest voices. ‘Does the Testament not demand–’

‘Beware!’ I yelled as a grotesque figure appeared in the mirror behind him. It wore the black-and-umber armour of a Penitent, but its plates were warped into forms that looked organic, their surface whorled and veined with red. Mauve smoke gushed from spiny nodules atop its backpack, framing a backswept helmet sporting a quilled crest. The helm’s speaker-grille had elongated into a maw that yawned to the warrior’s breastplate and squeezed its eye-lenses into slits. Yet despite all these corruptions it was the symbol painted on its faceplate that appalled me – a white cross.

‘Brother Veland?’ Laurent asked, looking over my shoulder as the horror stepped onto the dais behind me. There was no trace of revulsion in his eyes as he greeted it, for while I saw its honest reflection, Laurent had his back to the mirror and merely saw its physical form.

‘Will you not agree–’ Laurent’s head disintegrated into a red mist as the thing that had been Veland opened fire, its bolter’s concussive bursts wringing strange harmonies from the air.

I dived aside and the bullet intended for me struck the mirror and disappeared in a swirl of ripples, as if passing through a pool of water. In the same instant Anselm threw himself from the platform, returning fire with his own bolter as he leapt away from Veland’s assault. Salvatore simply stood his ground and brought his flamer to bear. As it belched fire an incoming round pierced the nozzle and detonated inside the weapon. I have never seen such an improbable shot, nor could I tell whether it was the result of dazzling marksmanship or outrageous misfortune, but the result was the same. The weapon exploded, drenching Salvatore in burning promethium and incinerating his arms from the elbows down.

With a curse I spun round, my bolt pistol bucking furiously as I fired. I wasn’t facing the abomination I’d seen in the mirror, but a fellow Penitent. Veland was hunched in a feral stance as he targeted me, but his armour was unmarked by corruption. Nevertheless, the noise screeching from his helm’s speaker-grille was evidence enough of taint. That dissonant shriek wracked the soul as keenly as the ears, like a dirge channelled from the warp.

Stumbling, I muted my auditory receptors with a coded word and the gunfire fell to a distant booming, but the sonic barrage was unabated. It swirled about my helmet like a swarm of infernal insects, gnawing at my senses and tearing my thoughts apart before they could crystallise. I felt the buffeting of Veland’s bullets slamming against my armour, ripping away chunks of ceramite while my befuddled aim went wide. Dimly I realised my eyes were bleeding.

I barely heard Salvatore’s roar as his flame-ridden form barrelled into Veland. The sergeant’s back erupted as a slug tore into his midriff at close range, the spray of blood hissing into red steam from the heat. It was a dire wound, but Salvatore’s momentum carried them both over the platform’s edge.

Freed from the sonic assault, I charged forward and saw them hit the ground in a flame-tangled sprawl that left Salvatore on top. With his arms scorched away and his spine severed, the Thornguard tried to hold Veland down with his bulk alone, but it was a hopeless struggle. With an ululating cry, the madman threw him off and reached for his fallen bolter.

‘The Emperor condemns!’ I cried, firing as I leapt from above. My explosive shells thudded into Veland’s chest a heartbeat before my boots followed, crashing onto the weakened armour like twin hammers. His breastplate caved in, rupturing the solid bone cage beneath. The impact threw his helmet free, revealing the travesty of my foe’s once handsome face. His mouth was distended into a rictus yawn, its lips drawn back from spiny shark-like teeth. The flesh framing that maw had stretched and torn to his ears, only held together by bloody strips. Black eyes glared at me from sunken, scale-rimmed sockets that wept purple smoke.

‘She… knows… you!’ The words bubbled up from the back of the creature’s throat, their intonation slurred and broken, for that razor-toothed maw wasn’t built for speech. ‘Knows… you… for… a…’

I rammed my crozius between its jaws and silenced its blasphemy.

Salvatore still lived, though only a sliver of vitality remained to him. Of Anselm there was no sign, nor any answer on the vox. It was perplexing, but I would have to address that later.

Smoke wafted from the sergeant’s scorched armour as I removed his helmet to offer the Everlasting Sacrament. Flat on his back, he waited silently as I spoke the elegy.

‘Burn me, master,’ he rasped when I was done, turning his head to regard the nearest display of corpses. ‘Don’t let the witch… play… her–’ His appeal broke into a blood-flecked coughing fit.

‘It will be done, brother-sergeant,’ I promised. ‘She will not have you.’

‘The boy… was right. Have to… purge her.’

‘Yes, my brother.’

His eyes clouded and the silence lingered until I thought he was gone, but then his gaze locked on me once more. ‘I have sinned, master.’ It was the faintest of whispers. ‘I used to… paint. Never any good… but…’

‘All the Resplendent have sinned,’ I assured him. ‘Our vanity damned us. There can be no forgiveness, only penance. Now and ever after, the Emperor condemns!’

I expected him to repeat the blessed phrase, for there is no finer way for an Angel Penitent to pass into oblivion, and Salvatore Jacinto was among the most fervent of us. Instead, in that final moment, he smiled sadly and whispered the words that still haunt me.

‘I never stopped.’

SIXTH REFLECTION

We are almost done now, mirror-brother. This has been a tortuous redaction, far exceeding any other I have presided over, but Athanazius’ mirror is an artefact of a different order, hence the ritual cannot be expedited. I have castigated the unholy glass with the entirety of the nine hundred and ninety-nine litanies of Reverent Banishment, repeating every word until the intonation was perfect. Black incense wafts from my armour’s censers, filling the air with the burnt stench of regret, while the Exhalation Excruciatis drones from the skull-bound speakers upon my backpack, its atonal groan lending weight to my words.

Naturally, I divined the physical expression of the mirror’s redaction long ago. As witness Veland’s stray bullet, the glass cannot be broken directly, so I shall strike it from behind, where it is blind. My blessed crozius will make short work of the frame’s back-plate, and through it the glass itself. No, it is the spiritual aspect of the task that has challenged me, for I have been assailed by misgivings. Before I attempt the final step I must lay them to rest. And so I stand before you now, my first brother. Together we shall purge ourselves of doubt!

The sorceress is the least part of my irresolution. She has returned often to haunt me – taunting, teasing, cajoling or threatening as the mood takes her, but I am dead to her words. I cannot deny she knows what I once was, for she never tires of parading my sins before me, but she understands nothing. Her mind is sharp, yet surprisingly shallow, eroded to pettiness by unbridled ambition. In time what little remains of her shall devour itself, as a rapacious serpent consumes its own tail. Oh, make no mistake, she is poisonous beyond measure, but she has no form or substance to administer her venom unless we open ourselves to her, as thrice-cursed Veland did.

My fallen brother’s submission to the witch troubles me more than the tempter herself. Doubtless she prised open a fault line in his soul, yet the swiftness and extremity of his corruption makes a mockery of the Trial of Thorns. Is our testing flawed or are the judges themselves blind? To ask such things is forbidden, yet I must, for Veland’s outrage pales beside the quiet treachery of Salvatore Jacinto.

The Crown of Thorns is watchful for recidivists who cling to the blasphemies of art in secret. Thirty-one pariahs have been uncovered since the Great Excruciation, but not one among the Thornguard. Until now. If a devout warrior like Salvatore has betrayed the faith how can we be certain of anyone? How many more are there? Writing, composing, carving, painting, perhaps even sculpting in the shadows!

And therein lies my dilemma, brother, for Athanazius’ mirror could uncover the traitors among us. It revealed Veland’s corruption with damning clarity, as it did Laurent’s purity. I did not see Salvatore’s reflection while he lived, and though I dragged his corpse before the glass nothing of his soul remained to tell its tale.

But I saw Anselm Giordano’s truth.

It was more than a day before the last of my battle-brothers returned to me. At his shouted greeting I turned from the mirror and watched Anselm approach. His helmet was gone and he walked with a limp that hadn’t been there before. As he drew closer I saw his armour was battered and scarred with deep scratches.

He stopped below the dais where I waited and his eyes fell on our dead brothers. ‘Then we are the last,’ he said sadly.

‘Explain yourself, Brother-Redactor,’ I demanded. ‘You have been gone almost twenty-eight hours.’

‘My chronolog records it as fifty-five, Master Castigant,’ Anselm replied, meeting my gaze. ‘Time is as treacherous as everything else here.’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot explain any of it. When Veland fired on us I jumped and fell… elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere?’

‘Another level, hidden below the cellars, though I cannot say how I came to be there.’ His expression darkened. ‘It was not empty. The witch had other servants – mutants, but not like any I have seen before. Her blasphemies are without end, master.’

‘Has she spoken to you, Brother Anselm?’

‘No.’ He appeared surprised by the question. ‘And the degenerates I slew had no wit for words. I fought my way to the surface, but it had changed… become a labyrinth. In time I stumbled upon the entrance hall, but the way out was gone. And beyond the windows… nothing.’ He opened his hands, palms upwards as if beseeching answers. ‘I believe the witch was toying with me, master. This building is her plaything – perhaps even a body of sorts.’

‘Perhaps,’ I agreed. His theory was sound, but irrelevant to my dilemma. ‘Come Brother-Redactor, I require your assistance.’

‘By your command, master.’

I turned to face the mirror, watching for his reflection as he ascended the steps to the dais. Sentiment vied with duty in my hearts as I waited, but the glass was merciless.

‘What do you require of me, master?’ Anselm asked, stopping a few paces behind me.

‘Only the truth,’ I said, addressing his reflection.

‘Always.’ The finely chiselled face in the mirror was free of the seams and blemishes I had grown accustomed to, and the hair framing it was a lustrous black. But the changes ran far deeper, extending to Anselm Giordano’s very soul. There was a vitality about him I hadn’t seen among our brotherhood since the Great Excoriation. This was not the face of a Penitent, but a Resplendent.

‘Did you relapse, Anselm?’ I asked softly. ‘Or did you never forfeit the old heresies?’

‘I do not understand, Master Castigant.’

‘Do you still play the laserwire harp? No… It must be something smaller… easier to conceal.’

‘Forgive me, but you are mistaken, master. I have been true to the Testament of Thorns.’ He frowned. ‘It is her. She seeks to deceive and divide us.’

‘It is not the witch’s deceits that concern me now, false brother.’

‘Don’t listen to her, my friend!’ Anselm stepped forward, his hands raised. ‘We must destroy the mirror before–’

‘Traitor!’ I thundered, swinging round. My crozius crackled with energy as I whirled it in a wide arc that scoured away the top of his skull. Anselm froze, staring at me as blood stained his white hair. His lips moved, but no words came. With a final exhalation, he crashed to his knees, his dead eyes locked on me. His face was once again as I remembered it.

‘The Emperor condemns,’ I whispered. As I turned my back on the traitor I heard the witch’s laughter.

And so we are the last, mirror-brother. We stand together in this gallery of iniquities, facing each other through a blasphemy. Much time has passed since we executed our respective Anselms. Like you, I have spent them in prayer, searching for an answer. Sometimes I have wondered why no others have followed us from the Severance of Glory, for our mission was expected to be brief, but it is better this way. They would be a distraction at best and a peril at worst. Nobody can be trusted. We must make this choice alone.

The witch has fallen silent, but I sense her watching me. Her eyes are everywhere and nowhere at once. Has she finally accepted that I am beyond corruption? Or is she scheming some fresh atrocity to tempt me? She will not succeed, for the redaction is almost complete. Only the final blow remains to be made, yet still I waver, for the fell truth cannot be denied. Our Chapter is rife with apostates whose cunning has surpassed our most vigilant scrutiny. I fear the rot may even extend to the Crown of Thorns itself. With the mirror’s wisdom I could find them all. I cannot destroy it… Yet how can I not?

I do not even comprehend its logic. Veland’s corruption extended to the flesh of his face, while Anselm’s existed only in reflection. Is the artefact fickle in its judgement? False even? Or is my understanding at fault? My purity?

Yes, brother, I understand what I must do to learn the answers. It is a grave sin, yet also the lesser of many evils. I am beset by secrets and lies, but the most malign are the misgivings in my own soul. If Anselm and Salvatore were impure how can I be certain of anyone?

I must know myself.

I must see you.

I feel the witch’s excitement as I grasp my iron mask in both hands. Its rivets are old and buried deep in my skull so there is pain when I tug it free, but I welcome that. Nothing matters except the truth. And yet I hesitate, holding the mask before me like a shield. What if…

What if you are still yourself, Resplendent? Urzelka Esseker completes my thought. What if you still dream of beauty, false Penitent?

‘I do not.’

Then look upon yourself and learn, Bjargo Rathana!

And finally, I do.

WHAT WAKES IN THE DARK

Miles A Drake

His eyes opened to the reflection of a ghost. An apparition stared back at him from the surface of the inky river that flowed silently below him. He regarded his own shimmering image for a moment. His ivory pauldrons were in stark contrast to the ebon ceramite plating he wore. His helm was gone, revealing bleached, hairless features – gaunt, but cast in the wide mould of a transhuman skull. His eyes were as black as the void.

‘The river…’ he muttered, his voice deep but barely a hiss as he overcame his disorientation. He looked up, into the rest of the ill-lit cavern.

It was vast, its obsidian walls disappearing into the gloom, and a veritable landscape of jagged black glass formed hills and peaks in the distance. The colossal space was lit by an ephemeral glow, emanating from nowhere and everywhere at once.

He stood on the bank of the Black River. That meant death was near. Its dark waters were impenetrable, plodding and relentless as they wound their way through the mantle of dead Occludus, his home world. They gave life as they exhaled the atmosphere during each perihelion, and they brought death when they inhaled it again, on the aphelion.

His vision resolved, seeing the far bank, several hundred paces away.

It was there. He was there.

‘Megir…’ The Space Marine bowed, his voice barely a hiss. It would carry across, in the total silence of the cavern, towards the master he had never, until this night, seen.

‘Achairas,’ a voice returned. It was older, many hundreds of years more lifeless than his own. It was ragged, and echoed impossibly through the Stygian darkness. The voice came from the structure on the opposing bank, from the jagged throne of dark crystal, entombing his master in this place of death and silence.

That throne was the Shariax, the tomb of the Chapter Master of the Death Spectres. And it was seen only by those who were marked with doom.

Achairas regarded the Shariax, master of himself and all of his brothers, with reverence. Its crystalline lattice of dark razors, spurs and blades was woven around a cadaver in black-and-white artificer armour. The crystal was a symbiote, growing from the Megir where he sat, fusing with ceramite and flesh alike.

Achairas advanced deeper into the waters.

‘Wait,’ the Megir commanded, halting his steps. ‘Return to the shore. This is not your time.’

‘But I am in its waters…’ Achairas looked down. The darkness coiled around him, tugging at his armour like the cold hands of the dead.

‘You are,’ the Megir agreed. ‘Your destiny has been marked. And death is its end. But you must still follow the path to meet your ending.’

Achairas looked back up. The certainty of his own doom did not bother him. ‘What path?’

‘Follow the call. Follow it to what is buried. Learn what wakes in the dark and ensure that the Menrahir are warned.’

Achairas nodded. The words were cryptic, and he did not understand them, but it did not matter. The Megir had spoken. He had given Achairas a command, to learn something and warn the Council of Librarians that shepherded his Chapter in their master’s absence.

‘Now return to the shore,’ the Megir commanded once more.

Achairas did as he was bidden, wading through the beckoning waters. He stepped from the shifting, glittering silt onto the broken obsidian beyond the banks. His vision dimmed, then faded entirely.

And he awoke from his dream.

898.M41 – System Thirsis 41,
Subsector Thirsis, the Halo Region

Brother-Sergeant Achairas stood with his compatriots and their new guests within the aphotic strategium of the Vox Silentii. He listened to the muffled chatter of Chapter-serfs and servitors as he watched the bleak orb of Thirsis 41-Alpha slowly approach on the external pict-feed. The vaulted arches of the deck were decorated with images of death and darkness.

Four of his nine battle-brothers were on deck, monitoring key systems and overseeing the serfs. The other five were attending to their various tasks about the ship, or were taking their Hours of Silence.

The Megir’s warning had foreshadowed a call, a black-clearance astropathic cry, flagged with markers of the Ordo Xenos, from the quarantined world of Sarvakal-22b. Achairas’ squad and their Nova-class frigate had been in silent vigil, monitoring the Sarvakal Cluster along the edge of the Ghoul Stars for years, lying in ambush for the retreating Cythor Fiends that fled the fury of the Black Templars’ crusade.

It was beyond any doubt in Achairas’ mind that the astropathic cry was the call the Megir had forewarned him of. He had immediately brought his ship to full power to make for Sarvakal-22b, and sent missives to the other four ships the Death Spectres had committed to the vigil, explaining his withdrawal from the campaign.

Several days of warp travel through the unstable sector had brought them to the source of the message, a world of nightmare oceans and monolithic alien spires. It had indeed come from an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. With his work documenting the Cythor Fiends’ disturbing empty worlds finished, he was requesting aid for another assignment, one of a more pressing, and sensitive, nature.

That inquisitor now presented a wraith-like silhouette as he observed the feed from the Vox Silentii’s heavily modified augur arrays. Grey robes obscured tortured, mangled flesh and replacement machine. A mask of faceless steel concealed a flensed skull, and nearly a third of his body was galvanised metal, meshed seamlessly into his slate-grey carapace armour.

This was Inquisitor Senerbus Astolyev. Sergeant Achairas had heard the name before. It was synonymous with radical ideals, known well enough to those possessing clandestine knowledge in the Halo Region. He was an inquisitor renowned, and loathed, for turning the weapons of the enemy against the enemy. To the Space Marine, it was sound reasoning, but such a line had always to be trodden carefully, and Achairas did not yet know how light Astolyev’s tread was.

‘Six point eight standard days ahead of schedule, barring warp-related time oscillations,’ Magos Explorator Vemek commented. ‘The technology of this vessel’s peculiar… adaptations… intrigues me. The augur systems and internal energy absorption coils are beyond the capabilities of most Adeptus Astartes vessels…’

The magos beside the inquisitor was a small man, entirely concealed behind augmetic replacements and bone-white robes, his four mechadendrites shuddering in excitement.

Both Achairas and Astolyev ignored Vemek. The magos had been a mild annoyance since the inquisitor had boarded with his retinue of acolytes and Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, and Achairas did not approve of his meddling with the vessel’s systems.

‘Keep your fascination to yourself,’ Brother Nym reminded the magos, as he approached to join in the observations. Like all the Death Spectres, Nym was clad in black ceramite, with ivory pauldrons bearing the heraldry of a hooded skull on crossed scythes. He was albino, and completely hairless, with black, pupilless eyes. Such was the result of the faulty mucranoid gland that was present in all of the Chapter’s warriors.

‘I’m more concerned with the auguries themselves, magos.’ Achairas steered the conversation back to what mattered.

He watched the hololithic display, studying the image of Thirsis 41-Alpha, committing the bleak geology of the planetoid to memory. It was a dead world of no consequence, orbiting a stillborn star, a brown dwarf. But the auguries had detected an energy source of unprecedented power burning in the upper crust of its scarred surface.

‘The power source is situated directly below the excavation site,’ Inquisitor Astolyev rasped, turning to Achairas. The inquisitor had already elaborated that it was far more than a simple excavation site. It was an operation involving an Inquisitorial shroud station – seven hundred personnel divided among servants of the Ordo Xenos and the Adeptus Mechanicus, working secretly, hidden from all other Imperial eyes.

‘I take it this is a new discovery,’ Achairas guessed.

‘Indeed. This is… an anomaly.’ The inquisitor’s hesitation did not bode well.

Achairas had already been briefed about the shroud station falling silent. The Ghoul Stars were a place of unnatural danger. A station or colony going dark was not unheard of, but Subsector Thirsis was unusually quiet, unusually devoid of the typical xenos and nightmare phenomena plaguing these regions.

According to the information Astolyev had divulged to the Death Spectres, the excavation had begun eight years earlier, the goal to unearth a vast, monolithic structure of unknown xenos origin. Initial carbon readings had dated it back sixty million years.

‘Could the origin of the power source coincide with the time of the last astropathic cry?’ Achairas inquired. When the research station had fallen out of contact, it had submitted one last frantic signal that had been received some six weeks prior. Of course, given the nature of the medium through which astropaths communicated, the true ‘time’ of the cry’s origin could not accurately be determined.

‘Possibly,’ Astolyev admitted. ‘Vemek, can you discern when this power source was first detected?’

‘Preliminary scans indicate that it has grown in magnitude by six point three eight per cent since our first observation,’ Vemek replied, taking in the hololithic feed data. ‘The growth in magnitude has been exponential, not linear. I should be able to calculate when it originated. Roughly.’

The magos chittered with his servitors, the binaric chirps indecipherable to Achairas’ ears. Judging by the way the inquisitor angled his head, as if listening, he guessed that Astolyev had the prerequisite implants to understand them.

‘Analysis of reverse exponential growth traces the power source’s origin to seven point three three eight weeks ago,’ Vemek buzzed, after a few moments.

The inquisitor sighed. Or hissed.

‘Convenient,’ Brother Nym growled, his drawling accent evident of his non-Occludan birth. Nym was from the marshes of Atropos Sigma, one of six worlds the Death Spectres recruited from.

‘Close to when the astropathic cry might have been sent,’ Achairas agreed, frowning. While it was imprecise, the times lined up too well to be coincidence. ‘And I can’t help but notice that the power source seems to emanate from within the xenos structure.’

The inquisitor did not respond.

‘What is down there?’ Achairas asked. His tone carried threat and command, even though he voiced the words as an inquiry.

After a few moments of tense silence, Astolyev responded. ‘I don’t know.’

Even with the man’s augmetic voice, Achairas sensed an undercurrent of unease in the reply. It was clearly not something the inquisitor was used to saying.

Achairas knew there was one way to get more information, and that was to make planetfall and investigate in person.

898.M41 – Thirsis 41-Alpha,
Subsector Thirsis, the Halo Region

A long retro thruster burn slowed the Vox Silentii’s immense re-entry speed over the course of many hours, and the vessel sank into a wide orbit around the small, battered black orb of Thirsis 41-Alpha.

The ground team was diverse. Three forces, independently led, yet all unified in the desire to find answers, had embarked upon the ebon-plated Thunderhawk Apparition, and descended towards the eerie, rugged landscape of the world below. The inquisitor led his own team, thirty warrior acolytes in slate-grey, void-sealed carapace armour, devoid of any heraldry. Their helmets were fed by backpack-mounted canisters via thick tubes, and their optical lenses glowed a faint green. Many possessed cybernetic augmentations and their hotshot lasguns, flamers and bolters were clenched calmly in their hands. These were well-disciplined, elite soldiers, Achairas noted, not the typical rabble used by some, more eccentric inquisitors. Astolyev was known to possess a private army, and resources provided by an alliance with the Dalvarakh Explorator Consortium.

Magos Vemek led two squads of grey-robed skitarii rangers, their rebreather masks hissing vapours, and their many eye-lenses shimmering with an emerald hue. Most were armed with galvanic rifles, though a few carried faintly humming arc-rifles and plasma calivers. A trio of heavily armed gun-servitors were their support. These lumbering behemoths were draped in armour, their limbs fused and linked to multi-meltas. Their withered, grey flesh and slack, drooling jaws seemed entirely at odds with the destructive power they could unleash.

Achairas’ own team was four of his battle-brothers, Tactical Marines in black ceramite. They stood in their acceleration harnesses, faceless in their corvid helms, each running over their own pre-battle mantras. Only Brother Celaeno did not bear a bolter, his flamer mag-locked to his thigh-plate instead.

Apparition’s retro-thrusters roared as it decelerated through the planetoid’s thin atmosphere, the interior temperature rising to almost unbearable levels for the mortals surrounding him. The modified thermal coils within the Thunderhawk directed excess heat inward, practically boiling those within, but emitting next to no thermal signature for enemy augurs to detect. Achairas patched his auto-senses into the forward display of the gunship, watching the crater, the most prominent feature in the otherwise Stygian landscape, grow as they hurtled towards the surface.

He saw the installation, the shroud station, precariously positioned over the feature’s rim, three massive struts suspending it from the cliff face. Its main bulk hung below, reaching the floor, where the excavation site sprawled outward from it in the form of countless quarries and trenches snaking towards the crater’s centre.

Apparition set down on the landing pad that made up the majority of the shroud station’s upper surface. It was large enough to support the Thunderhawk, while providing an excellent vantage point over the surroundings.

As Achairas, taking point, stepped out of the lowering bay door with his battle-brothers, he was among the first to gaze upon the lifeless darkness of the world. A communication and augury tower protruded from the north-eastern edge of the landing pad. Four Hydra batteries would have provided cover from the station’s corner points, but their guns drooped, inactive and dead. Three red-plated Arvus lighters stood wrecked in their landing spots, their hulls scorched from within.

‘Secure the perimeter,’ he ordered his brothers. They complied in silence, fanning out to inspect the towers and check for hostiles.

The vista beyond the landing platform was of jagged thorn-like mountains to the east. The dim red orb of the stillborn sun shimmered on the far horizon, beyond an expanse of broken plains. The thin atmosphere barely held the light, and every ragged outcropping cast long shadows.

Achairas strode to the edge of the pad that faced the crater as the other teams disembarked. A few hundred yards down, he saw the criss-cross of deep grooves and gouges, veritable chasms in their own right, leading towards the central stepped quarry.

It was there. The reason they were here.

A ruin. A lone, black apex protruded from the wounded rock, surrounded by cylindrical hab-units and Adeptus Mechanicus excavator engines. It appeared to be covered in some manner of scaffolding.

The light-devouring darkness of the pinnacle was unwholesome. Though it was scarcely larger than the workers’ habs around it, Achairas felt uneasy just looking at it. It was not a sensation he was used to.

He scanned the horizon in case there was something he’d missed. Magnifying his vision, he expected to find nothing, but was surprised when he did find something. It was a lone black monolith, a few dozen yards in height, but many miles away.

‘Inquisitor?’

Astolyev had joined him at the edge.

‘That monolith in the distance. What is it?’ Achairas inquired.

‘The sentry pylons, we named them,’ Astolyev’s grating voice replied. ‘The reports indicated that there were six of them, scattered out beyond the ruin at equidistant range from the centre, and each other.’

‘I assume they’re related to the ruin?’

‘Undoubtedly. The architecture is the same. We were unable to discern their purpose, but they were projecting an unknown energy signature. A signature the augury-scans of your vessel did not detect during our approach.’

‘Then something has changed,’ Achairas mused.

‘That seems likely,’ Astolyev agreed. ‘Something caused this station to drop off the grid, and these pylons are as suspect as anything else. Have your vessel continually monitor them and the ruin below. Just in case.’

Achairas raised an eyebrow, invisible beneath his helmet. The Death Spectre was not used to receiving commands from anyone other than his captain, and the Menrahir, but in this case, he would have chosen the same course of action. Thus, he relayed the command to Brother Vairan on the Vox Silentii.

There had been no greeting party, and the orbital bioscans had been disrupted by the mysterious energy fluctuations emanating from the buried power source. It was yet unclear if there were any survivors hidden within the station or the excavation site. Achairas drew his auspex, and ran a preliminary scan of their surroundings. The device’s sensors would only pierce the upper levels of the complex, but it would provide some indication of what might wait below.

‘No life signs near the landing pad,’ he reported into the general vox-net. ‘If anything is still alive, it’s deeper within the station.’

The inquisitor nodded. ‘Then we move into the complex, search for survivors and extract what data we can from central cogitation. Once the station is secure, we make for the excavation site. Maintain vigilance.’

Achairas affirmed and signalled his battle-brothers to lead.

Vemek chimed in, advancing with his thralls towards the bulkhead door at the base of the augur tower. ‘Are we expecting hostiles?’

‘We always expect hostiles,’ Brother Nym, to Achairas’ right, answered. ‘Chirinoids. Togorans. Cythor Fiends. Eldar. Other xenos. This station didn’t murder itself.’

Achairas gestured at the Hydra batteries. They were unused. ‘Whatever happened, it was no aerial incursion.’

‘What then?’ Vemek crackled. ‘A teleportation onslaught? A–’

‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ Astolyev waved the teams onward, to the large door at the base of the augur tower.

Vemek coaxed the airlock open with a spark of energy from his potentia coil, and the team moved into the gloom of the entrance chamber. It was powered down, the elevator inoperable, so Achairas and his squad took point, levelling their bolters as they descended the adjacent stairwell. Even though the station had pressure and air, none removed their helmets.

‘Sevrim, Nym, Celaeno, with me on point. Charason, rearguard,’ Achairas commanded into his squad’s vox-net. Their affirmations were silent.

The four Death Spectres were followed by the inquisitor and Vemek, while the rest of the force trailed behind. A musty, clammy gloom that reeked of oil, ozone and spilled viscera met them. The walls were dull, riveted gunmetal, coated in grease and condensation. Several of the Inquisitorial acolytes activated their luminators.

‘Vemek, is there any way to restore power?’ Astolyev asked.

‘Negative. Preliminary readings suggest power generator units are destroyed, not disabled.’ The magos muttered a spurt of binaric prayer for the machines that had died in this place.

‘Death is here…’ Brother Sevrim, on point, gestured to three eviscerated, half-decayed corpses clustered in a gouged-open service duct. By their red robes and augmetics, they could be identified as Adeptus Mechanicus adepts. Achairas knelt and saw the patchwork crest of the Dalvarakh Consortium on the robes of one of the least dismembered bodies.

‘You crewed your station with Consortium adepts?’ He looked to the inquisitor.

‘Yes,’ Astolyev replied. ‘I acquired six hundred indentured serfs of varying specialities to complement my own crew. They were to be returned afterwards, mnemonically cleansed…’

‘Well that won’t be happening any more,’ Brother Nym cut in, drawing a glare from the inquisitor.

‘Impending debts aside,’ Vemek rasped, ‘what happened to them? The wounds are… unusual.’

Vast raking incisions marred their remaining flesh. Even their augmetic components were shredded, as was the sheet metal behind them.

‘Looks like Bloodreeks,’ Brother Nym guessed, poking the remains with his boot. ‘Savage. Grotesque. Generally excessive.’

Achairas suspected otherwise and shook his head. The wounds were too clean. ‘These are blade wounds, of a sort, even if they are patterned like claw marks.’

‘Genestealers, possibly?’ the inquisitor interjected. ‘Only their talons cut that sharp.’

Vemek shook his head. ‘Electrical abrasions on flesh, and oxidation on metal suggests electrical charge,’ he chittered. ‘Unlikely to be genestealers, unless they have developed new biomorphs.’

‘These corpses don’t tell us enough. We should head deeper,’ Achairas suggested.

The inquisitor nodded in the affirmative and the group continued.

More dead awaited them, several Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, blood and oil trails suggesting they’d been dragged down several flights of stairs. At the access doorway to the main body of the station’s interior, they discovered three eviscerated skitarii flayed to the bone, their galvanic rifles empty of ammunition and discarded, the door rife with flash-burned bullet holes. But the real damage was in the form of oxidised tears in the bulkhead door, as if something had clawed its way through.

With the door inoperable, it fell to Vemek’s melta-armed gun-servitors to widen the breach, allowing the party to move on.

Achairas led with Sevrim, stepping into the charnel horror of the corridor before them.

Silently, the Death Spectres stepped over a river of viscera, bone and augmetic remains. Several in the inquisitor’s retinue hesitated for a brief instant. It was testament to their discipline that most did not.

‘What a mess,’ one of them muttered.

‘Steel yourselves,’ Astolyev reminded them. ‘We are not here to gawk like greenhorn Guardsmen at the sight of the dead. Worse will come.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Brother Nym agreed, rolling over a rotten, quartered torso. ‘Whatever did this, they seem mostly interested in the meat. Still think it’s Bloodreeks…’

Achairas studied the macabre carpet. No body was whole. Each had been torn apart, flayed and flensed. It was impossible to distinguish where one corpse ended and the next began. Las-burns, blood and oil splatters covered the walls.

‘They were attempting to reach the door,’ Vemek muttered. ‘But it was already locked. They couldn’t get out, so they just… died.’

‘Whatever did this came from further inside,’ Achairas observed. ‘What is down that way?’

‘Central cogitation,’ Astolyev answered, stepping over the corpses with his stalking gait. ‘Below that? The sub-levels… maintenance, aeroponics, the armoury and ground access…’

‘Ground access. Could they have come from below, then?’ Brother Sevrim inquired, voicing Achairas’ suspicions. ‘From the excavation site?’

‘That is a possibility,’ Astolyev nodded after a moment.

Achairas could not read the inquisitor, but his pause indicated unvoiced information. He knew something. Or guessed at something.

‘That would imply that whatever did this either landed far away and advanced on foot, to avoid the Hydras…’ Achairas tested the inquisitor’s reaction. ‘Or came from the xenos structure.’

Astolyev didn’t respond, staring out over the dead. There were no other bodies to indicate who, or what, they’d been fighting. The enemy had either taken its own dead, or it had been a single-sided massacre.

‘From the ruin…’ Vemek muttered, partly to himself, turning a few heads.

‘Could something have been down there?’ Achairas inquired to both of them.

‘I’m afraid I cannot answer that,’ the inquisitor replied, his words slow and measured. ‘The station’s last reports indicated the excavation teams were unable to enter the structure.’

Vemek gave an ominous answer, his mechadendrites twitching uneasily. ‘The sudden ignition of the power source within might imply some manner of activity. It could be that something… awakened.’

‘Awakened?’ Achairas glared at the magos.

‘Uncertain…’ The tech-priest held up his hands defensively. ‘Pure conjecture.’

‘Let us move,’ the inquisitor cut in. ‘If there’s any data on what happened, it’ll be in central cogitation.’

The team progressed through the corridor, intersected by a dozen corpse-strewn side passages leading to laboratories and monitoring stations, before they finally reached their destination.

Central cogitation was a large chamber fitted with gantry walkways that wound between two-storey-high cogitator stacks. Several of these were damaged or had been destroyed by raking slashes, and there were the mangled remains of dozens of people and servitors scattered about. At the heart, upon a central dais, was a fully intact data loom. The massive machine was all columns, humming faintly, blinking with cascades of raw binaric data. A vast network of thick cables spread out from it like arteries, feeding into the cogitator stacks, and into wall sockets. Many more connected directly to the ceiling, looping up to link to the augur station on the landing pad.

Astolyev stalked towards the dais. ‘The data loom was connected to reserve power, and given maximal priority. It must still be active, to some degree.’

‘What did you need all of this cogitation power for? What were you doing here?’ Achairas asked, motioning Celaeno and Sevrim to move ahead and secure the chamber. Nym and Achairas kept pace with the inquisitor, while Charason kept watch out in the hall.

‘Cross-referencing,’ Astolyev replied. ‘It stores thousands of years of relevant data copied from the archives of both Terra and Mars – xenology, archaeology, geology, astrography, et cetera. It possesses the power to analyse, filter and compile all relevant insights.’

‘All those resources invested for one archaeological investigation?’

Vemek cut in, trailing behind them. ‘An archaeological investigation that might be the find of the millennium! The t– ruin possesses a metallic outer structure that is almost impervious to all forms of direct aggression.’

Achairas was mildly impressed. ‘An indestructible metal?’

‘Indeed,’ Vemek replied, smugly, reaching the central data loom, and plugging two of his mechadendrites into data-ports.

After a few moments, the data stream flickering from feed to feed on the display, Vemek spoke. ‘Or perhaps not so impervious.’ He cocked his head to the side, as if confused. ‘It would appear they did breach the outer shell. Fascinating. Bringing up hololithic visuals.’

‘What!’ Astolyev snapped. ‘They breached the ruin?’

A hololithic geological survey image flickered to life, suspended above the data loom’s access panel. Achairas saw a pyramid, colossal by the scaling of the surrounding crater, more than a mile high, and attached to some manner of immense crescent shape below. The shape beneath extended further, stretching well beyond the crater, buried in the crust of the planetoid.

‘Immense… Much larger than we anticipated,’ Vemek chirped in excitement. ‘It appears the initial structure we found was part of a considerably larger one!’

Vemek zoomed the image to the apex of the pyramid, barely a minute fraction of its actual bulk. ‘The breach was made here–’

‘I did not authorise a breach,’ the inquisitor interrupted. ‘My orders were to send an astropathic message with each major advancement.’

‘Yes, erm, regardless, it would appear the research team used vortex charges to gain access to the apex.’

‘When did this occur?’ Achairas already suspected the answer.

‘Seven weeks ago…’ Vemek hesitated, his mechadendrites slumping. ‘To the cessation of all further records.’

‘The day the station was silenced,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘Undoubtedly not a coincidence…’ He turned sharply to the magos. ‘You told me your researchers were reliable. I specifically ordered them not to perform any hasty actions without first acquiring my consent.’

‘Evidently I made a miscalculation.’

Astolyev snarled, shaking his head. ‘And who authorised the breach?’

‘That is unclear,’ Vemek replied. ‘All records of who gave the orders, and to whom they were given, have been deleted.’

Astolyev flexed his organic hand, clearly unsettled by the revelation. ‘Then one of your men has compromised this operation by acting too swiftly. Or it was sabotage. See if you can dig deeper.’

‘Unfortunately, many of the station’s records have been compromised by an unknown data corruption. And, as there is no data, and your personal crew made up a significant portion of the station’s crew, it is also a notable possibility that it was one of your men that acted hastily.’

‘I select for loyalty and obedience, Vemek. My men do not act without my express consent. It was your team that formed the weakest link, not mine.’

‘Can we get a visual feed from interior surveillance?’ Achairas inquired, ignoring the argument. ‘I want to know what we’re dealing with.’

‘Negative. Interior feed is corrupted. In any case, all of the station’s primary functions were shut down thirty-two minutes after the breach was made.’ The magos’ fingers flitted over the control console. ‘I detect traces of a viral onslaught, but I cannot identify the source. Only the enhanced aegis systems hardwired into the data loom saved this relic, Omnissiah be praised.’

Achairas glanced around. The acolytes and skitarii had taken cover behind the cogitator stacks, assisting his battle-brothers in covering each entrance. The inquisitor moved to the data loom, adjusting several of the runes and zooming the image out. Six other points were highlighted and arrayed in an equidistant radius a few dozen miles from the central pyramid.

He magnified one of those. It was one of the pylons Achairas had seen earlier from the landing pad. It was buried some thirty yards beneath the surface, its pinnacle barely visible. It was clear that excavations had been performed around it as well. The damage to it was obvious. Vemek flitted through the images of the other pylons, and it became evident that all of them had been at least partially destroyed.

‘These were intact before!’ Astolyev snarled, whipping towards the magos. ‘Find out what happened! I did not authorise their destruction.’

Vemek hastily complied.

Shaking his head in rage, the inquisitor circled around Vemek like a predator while the magos frantically sifted through the data stream. Minutes passed before Astolyev shoved Vemek aside and seized the access panel himself. The magos retreated to his skitarii, evidently not wanting to stand near the inquisitor.

‘I suppose the destruction of the pylons might explain why they were no longer emitting energy signatures,’ Achairas mused.

‘Yes,’ Astolyev hissed. ‘That would be logical.’ He paused for a moment, sifting. ‘It would appear as though my researchers discovered that the energy fields emitted by the pylons were linked, like… some manner of fence around the ruin. It did not seem to affect our vehicles and personnel, however…’ He trailed off, inspecting the data feed closer. ‘What! They were destroyed under my authority! Somebody used my access codes to relay orders to this station.’ He aggressively hammered a few more codes into the panel, before stepping back, exasperated.

‘Naturally,’ he spat. ‘The data concerning when and where these orders originated was deleted!’

Achairas did not know what to make of the foul play. Had somebody deliberately sabotaged the inquisitor’s work, or were there elements within the excavation team that had become hasty, and careless in their assessment of this ‘miraculous discovery’? In any case, he had no time to ponder it as his auspex flickered to life.

‘Unidentified movement, two hundred feet due north,’ he reported into the vox-net. ‘Approaching through access corridors.’

The inquisitor and Vemek knelt down behind a fallen cogitator stack in the centre of the defensive ring.

‘Protect the data loom!’ Astolyev shouted.

In a matter of moments, Achairas counted scores of contacts converging on their location from multiple angles. As Achairas and the inquisitor relayed their orders, the teams repositioned, with the Death Spectres taking forward positions around the data loom, concealed behind the cogitator stacks to inflict maximum damage if violence broke out.

‘Survivors?’ Vemek chittered.

‘If so, they’ve picked a rather aggressive way to announce their presence,’ Brother Nym retorted.

Seconds later, the first shape emerged, not sixty feet from Achairas. By the look of her tattered garb, she was an enginseer. Coming to a halt, she stood there, regarding them with her three augmetic eyes. Shredded red robes clung to her heavily augmented body, and with some disgust, Achairas noted that remnants of flayed flesh were interwoven into the cloth, making a macabre cowl. Her fingers had been severed, and razor-sharp blades were crudely grafted in their place.

Vemek muttered some binary spurt, and she turned to regard him as a score more shapes, similar in apparel and disfigurement, emerged behind her. Brother Sevrim flanked them, unseen between the cogitator stacks.

The chittering of binary echoed from the ragged rabble approaching them. To Achairas, it sounded like static, except for the alien syllables interspersed between the clicks and crackles. Even his unaugmented ears could hear them.

‘Llandu… Gor…’ the words came, slithering through the noise. Somehow, they were an affront to Achairas’ ears. This was something vile. Alien.

Vemek started back, leaving his cover and retreating. ‘Corrupted data streams. The binary is broken! Kill them! Kill them all!’

The mob of mutilated Adeptus Mechanicus personnel rushed them at that instant, making his wish reality.

‘Fire,’ Achairas commanded calmly, into the general vox. The Death Spectres fired first, unleashing a crossfire of bolter shells from their concealment to reduce the entire charging mob to pulped meat and twisted metal in a matter of seconds.

But more came, from other passages and the gantries above. Scores of additional malformed machine cult men and women poured into the cogitation hall, descending upon the defenders from all angles with a reckless abandon born of madness. They screamed those words, again and again. Achairas did not know what they meant, and he did not care.

He spent his bolt pistol, turning half a dozen of the attackers into pulp and scrap, blasting them off the gantries above. Drawing his power sword, he sprinted between two cogitator stacks to where one of the lunatics had descended upon a skitarius, tearing into the warrior’s armour with his grafted talons. Achairas scythed past the madman, delivering a decapitating strike with his power sword before twisting around and deflecting the deranged swing of another wretch with his vambrace. The talons gouged raking scratches into his armour, negligible, but deep enough that Achairas guessed the blades would be more than able to slice through the sealed joints. He cleaved the second attacker in two, reversing his momentum to disappear behind another cogitator stack and relocate.

More of the tattered creatures rushed in, some dropped by las and galvanic rifle fire from the Inquisitorial acolytes and Vemek’s skitarii.

On the far side of the central dais, Brother Celaeno’s flamer roared its promethium fury into another mob. The Death Spectre carefully cultivated his inferno to avoid the valuable technological relics in the chamber, whilst incinerating and blocking off as many of the charging rabble as possible.

A burst of strange, dark energy screeched through the chamber, disintegrating another madman. Achairas saw the inquisitor, his alien carbine raised, with a few of his acolytes, pressed back to the data loom as another group of mutilated lunatics darted towards them.

They didn’t get far, as Achairas rushed them, having reloaded in the seconds since his last kill. His pistol roared, blowing a few more apart as Brother Charason added his own bolter fire, mulching the rest of the approaching mob.

Wheeling around, Achairas saw three more enemies leaping down from a low gantry towards Vemek and his gun-servitors, who had yet to even react. He dispatched them all with a single bolt pistol shell each.

And then there was quiet, the only noise the faint humming of the machines, and the rasp of a few wounded skitarii.

‘Clear!’ he shouted, his pistol still levelled.

‘Clear!’ his battle-brothers returned, from their positions.

He lowered his weapons. The skirmish had scarcely taken a minute.

‘Station crew,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘Driven mad…’

‘Did this station not have weapons?’ Brother Sevrim inquired.

‘Plenty. It was fully stocked in case of emergency.’

‘Then why were they using these crude… modifications?’

Achairas stared down at the mangled remains. All of them had replaced their fingertips with scythe-like blades. Some were nearly as long as their forearms. All had draped themselves in gobbets of flesh and skin.

‘Wrong…’ Vemek muttered, poking at a corpse. ‘Infected. Madness in their holy machinery.’

‘The virus?’ Astolyev guessed.

‘Perhaps. We cannot know without further analysis.’

‘If it is a virus, perhaps further analysis should be avoided until proper quarantine procedures are followed.’ Astolyev glanced at Vemek. ‘It would be… unfortunate… if I were to have to euthanise you.’

‘Those madmen…’ Brother Nym started. ‘They were saying something. Over and over.’

Nobody answered. Whatever their meaning, Achairas felt uneasy about repeating the words. ‘A name,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Llandu Gor…’ He didn’t know how he knew it was a name, but he was certain it was. ‘Let us move on,’ he offered. ‘We should find out where these wretches came from. There might be more of them. We haven’t seen nearly enough corpses to account for the entire station’s crew.’

Astolyev agreed. ‘Indeed. Vemek, stay here with your skitarii. Extract what information you can from the data loom and keep in vox contact. Sergeant Achairas, if you would lead the way. I assume your… abilities… can pick up the trail easily enough.’

Vemek nodded in deference, drawing a servo-skull from the depths of his robe and activating it. The lens of its right eye flared green, and tiny whirring gyro-systems hummed momentarily, projecting a rippling anti-gravity pulse to levitate it. Its vox-unit crackled to life under its upper jaw.

‘I will follow remotely.’ Vemek’s voice emanated from his own vocal implants, and from the servo-skull’s vox-grille.

The inquisitor nodded his assent, and motioned for his acolytes to move out. The Death Spectres led, once more.

Achairas could indeed detect the trail. Removing his helmet, he inhaled. The air was thin, but breathable. He found the severed arm of one of the tattered madmen and tasted its putrid flesh, biting deep, his omophagea learning and allowing him to sense the spoor in the air. Astolyev’s acolytes looked upon the pseudo-cannibalistic process with unease, but their discomfort did not concern Achairas.

Choosing the access point that most of the station crew had come through, they arrived at another stairwell, descending to find yet more corpses. Helmetless, Achairas was untroubled by the darkness, his pupils widening until the whites of his eyes were no longer visible. He led, sword drawn, to the base of the stair, near ground access, where his auspex detected a lone contact one hundred feet away down a network of labyrinthine passages in the base of the station.

‘This is aeroponics,’ Astolyev announced, as Nym coaxed open the bulkhead door with a heavy valve handwheel. They entered into a sizeable chamber that reeked of rotten vegetation and flesh alike.

Inside were stacks of algae vats and hovels of scavenged scrap metal and organic material. It looked like a refugees’ shanty, and a poor one at that. Another pile of bodies was arranged at the back of the chamber, around some manner of twisted effigy. It was a skeletal thing made of twisted plasteel, bolted and wired together in the shape of a hunched, scarecrow-like figure with immensely long talons. The entire thing was draped in tattered, rotting flesh.

‘Seems your crew adopted some unwholesome idolatry,’ Nym muttered to the inquisitor.

The inquisitor did not respond. His organic hand flexed.

Nym kicked the effigy, sending it clattering to the ground in a heap.

‘Celaeno.’ Achairas didn’t need to give the order.

His taciturn, ever-silent battle-brother levelled his flamer and bathed the debris in a wash of promethium.

As it burned, Achairas turned back to his auspex, and followed the blip into the nearby service tunnels. In the confined space, he moved forward with only Sevrim and Celaeno, followed by the inquisitor and two of his flamer-equipped acolytes. Vemek’s servo-skull remained behind, scanning the wreckage of the strange effigy.

The cylindrical passage was claustrophobic, its floor grating oozing with black oil. As they advanced, the auspex blip made several quick movements, traversing a few passages and then going still.

‘Whatever it is, it’s trying to hide,’ Achairas observed.

He squeezed through several smaller ducts, his armour scraping against the walls, until the contact was dead ahead, hidden in a small service shaft. He aimed his bolt pistol at the half-open door.

‘Come out and surrender. You have one chance.’ His voice was cold and quiet.

‘Are you one of them?’ A woman’s voice returned, terrified and exhausted.

The inquisitor shouldered past the Death Spectre, his weapon already lowered and a luminator active in his hand.

‘No,’ he rasped. ‘Ketyanna.’

At the name, a young woman with long, dark, matted hair and pale features slid out from behind the door, falling to her knees. She was malnourished and covered in abrasions and bruises, her black robe naught but tattered rags. The inquisitor knelt, dropping to her level as she broke down in frantic sobs, clawing at him. ‘Ketyanna. How are you still alive?’

‘Who is this?’ Achairas inquired.

‘My xenolinguistics savant. Eccentric, but one of my best.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Are any others alive?’

‘No…’ she sobbed. ‘The flayed… things… They killed them. They… ate them. They’ve been hunting me for… for I don’t know how long.’

‘What happened to the station? Why did everyone go mad?’ Achairas cut in.

The woman started back, only now noticing the Death Spectre.

‘They came from below…’ she hissed, looking around in terror, as if expecting them to appear again. ‘From the tomb. Metal things with clicking claws and horrible empty eyes. Machines. But mad. Mad machines…’

‘Machines?’ The inquisitor cocked his head. ‘From the… tomb?’

‘That’s what it is. It’s a tomb. They came from the tomb. They killed everyone… Everyone in the excavation site. They clawed their way in here and they slaughtered. They killed and killed and killed. Some of us lived… But…’ She trailed off, staring out behind Achairas, down the way they’d come.

‘But…?’ Achairas glanced behind him, even though he heard no one. The acolytes glanced around suspiciously.

‘But they went mad. The ones with the augmentations… the Mechanicus people… It got into them. It made them try to become like the things from the tomb.’

‘What…?’ The inquisitor looked confused.

‘Machines that slaughtered people and took their flesh. They wore it… They wore… us. The survivors started doing it too…’

Achairas understood. The survivors had started to imitate their killers, these ‘mad machines’.

The inquisitor stood. ‘I see. And this all occurred when the… tomb… was breached?’

She nodded, then bowed her head. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus men, the ones you sent to aid us with the supply ship, they shattered the pylons. They thought the pylons were protecting it…’

Achairas assumed she meant the broken structures that had powered whatever energy fence the inquisitor had mentioned. ‘Protecting it?’

She shook her head violently, shuddering. ‘The tech-priests said it was a stasis web, to protect the tomb. To keep us out. But it wasn’t just keeping us out. No, no… It was keeping the things inside… in. The pylons were protecting everything else… And when the Mechanicus men broke the pylons… the tomb started waking up. The power source… and the things inside… The men breached the tomb then. They opened the door for the machines to come through…’

‘These Adeptus Mechanicus men, you said they came with the supply ship?’ Astolyev asked, his voice tense.

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘They came with your orders to destroy the pylons and breach the tomb.’

Astolyev’s human hand flexed, squeezing the luminator with white knuckles. ‘I never sent additional men.’

Ketyanna blinked, batting away some strands of greasy black hair, her wide eyes confused. ‘They were Dalvarakh Consortium…’

‘Throne of Terra…’ Astolyev cursed.

‘This answers why the breach was made prematurely,’ Achairas noted, remembering Astolyev’s connection to the Explorator Consortium.

‘So I’ve been infiltrated,’ Astolyev growled, his tone somewhere between spiteful and impressed. ‘It would seem my benefactors had an ulterior agenda. What a surprise… I knew the Dalvarakh Consortium had an interest in illicit xenos artefacts, but defying a direct order from the Inquisition. That… is heresy.’

‘It could be a fringe element within the Consortium,’ Achairas offered. ‘Perhaps they are traitors, or a group of more radical intent than your own.’ The Space Marine duly noted the xenos carbine the inquisitor carried, but said nothing.

‘I believe I will need to have a word with Vemek. He’s one of the few who had access to my clearance codes. And he was Dalvarakh…’ Astolyev said, helping the battered woman to her feet. ‘Very well, Ketyanna, the remaining survivors, at least the ones here, are dead – I will have several men escort you to our drop-ship.’

‘D-dead?’ she stuttered. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Hardly,’ the inquisitor muttered. ‘But let’s get you out of here. You will give me a detailed account of everything that has transpired in my absence once I return. Until then, you will rest. And recover.’

Guiding the traumatised woman through the tunnels proved difficult, since she refused to enter the aeroponics chamber because of the altar. Even with Astolyev’s assurances that it was destroyed, she would not so much as move towards it, so it fell to Achairas to carry her along. Her sobs stopped when she saw the shattered, burnt husk of the effigy and the force of grey-armoured Inquisitorial acolytes. Astolyev turned to two of them. ‘Nerek, Ariane, take Ketyanna back to the gunship. We will debrief her properly once we’ve investigated this… tomb.’

Then the inquisitor wheeled towards Vemek’s drifting servo-skull.

‘Magos Vemek! If you would kindly explain how Dalvarakh Consortium agents infiltrated my station, I might refrain from having you executed on charges of sedition and heresy.’

The skull drifted away, seemingly involuntarily. ‘Inquisitor, my ties with the Dalvarakh Consortium were severed many years ago. After our altercation on Disnomia Four, I believe they branded me a heretic. It was only by your wisdom that I was acquitted.’

‘Indeed, now tell me I haven’t been played for a fool!’

‘You have not. My loyalty is to you, inquisitor. Not to the Dalvarakh Consortium. It is possible they have acquired information about your station through other means. Perhaps the personnel you purchased from them were not properly mnemonically censured. Perhaps one of them was warded against it deliberately, and continued feeding information to them following their arrival here.’

The inquisitor did not reply initially, his metal mask concealing whatever thoughts undoubtedly raged through his mind.

Vemek’s logic appeared sound to Achairas. What was less clear was why the inquisitor had utilised the aid of alleged hereteks, wielding xenos weaponry and delving into a mystery best left buried. He shook his head, and forced his suspicion away. He knew the Inquisition had to tread a line far closer to damnation than the Adeptus Astartes did.

‘So…’ the servo-skull chirped, ‘you are not going to have me executed?’

‘No,’ the inquisitor snarled. ‘For now. Keep to your task. This ruin remains our priority. I will sort out the matter of treason later.’

From there, the team navigated their way out of the lower tunnels into ground access. They descended a long stairwell marked with trails of dried and flaking gore, but found no further bodies. Achairas strode beside the inquisitor with the servo-skull trailing behind, keeping its distance from Astolyev.

‘You authorised the construction of this station, yes?’

‘Indeed. Eight years ago, after the discovery of the ruin by an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator vessel.’

‘I take it this Explorator vessel belonged to the Dalvarakh Consortium?’

‘Yes. But it was lost with all hands. Its astropathic choir managed to send out a distress cry, but as most of the choir were presumably already dead, the cry was weak. My agents operate in this region to monitor the movements of the Cythor Fiends. They were the only ones to receive the message. My spies within the Consortium are certain that they never learned of this ruin’s location.’

‘Out of curiosity,’ Achairas inquired, ‘what destroyed this Dalvarakh vessel?’

‘Cythor Fiends, naturally. One of their so called Pinion-class stealth frigates. The wreck is still in-system, orbiting the brown dwarf several astronomical units out. My personal investigation of the wreck uncovered the location of this ruin. I copied the data from the Explorator vessel and destroyed its archive. The Dalvarakh do not know of this. It is possible that what Vemek suggests is true, that my mnemonic censure went faulty on one of the purchased adepts. Or… that one of them was deliberately altered to resist it, and report my findings to the Explorator Consortium.’

‘Or this could be Vemek’s doing,’ Achairas offered quietly.

‘Unlikely. Vemek’s crimes against the Dalvarakh Consortium created a rift between them that will never heal. He could be involved with fringe elements, however – individuals within the Consortium who have pursued the research of xenos technology farther than the others.’

‘What was Vemek accused of, exactly?’

‘Modifying his personal Explorator vessel with holo-fields captured from an eldar wreck.’

Achairas was silent. He shook his head.

‘I know, you’re probably wondering why I conscripted him into my service. This isn’t the core Imperium, where purity and heresy are easily drawn lines of white and black. Out here in the Halo, we are on the edge of damnation. We must tread the grey in between and utilise every bit of knowledge we can to gain an edge. Xenos, natural and unnatural, plague us from beyond the Halo, and space itself seems to want to destroy us. The xenos out here are able to survive. They are able to tread the impossible reaches of the Ghoul Stars themselves. I will learn how they do it. And then I will implement that technology into a grand crusade fleet, and deliver the fiery sword of the Emperor’s judgement into the heart of all the vile aliens populating these unnatural stars. You, of all people, must understand…’

Achairas blinked. It was an ambitious plan, borderline megalomaniacal. And it didn’t sit well with him. One often didn’t realise that the grey line between purity and damnation had been crossed, until it was far too late.

‘I am a radical, Sergeant Achairas,’ the inquisitor continued, as the group reached the ground access airlock gate. ‘I do what I must for the good of the Imperium. If I am damned for it, then that is the price I will pay.’ He flexed his mechanical arm. ‘I have already given my flesh for the Imperium, the only thing I have left to give is… my soul.’

‘It is not my place to question your conviction, nor your methods,’ Achairas said at long last, his inner conflict evident enough in the tension in his words. ‘My purpose is to destroy the threats to the Imperium, whatever they might be.’ He let the words, the threat, hang in the thin air as he re-donned his helm and gestured for Nym and Sevrim to wheel open the airlock.

When the door was coaxed open, they saw the gouges in the outer hull of the station; it looked as if raking talons had torn open the thick sheet-metal.

Several of the Inquisitorial acolytes brought forth lascutters and widened the gap, allowing the team to descend, two by two, over a steep access gantry that traversed the lower slope of the crater. After a few minutes, they emerged out from under the shadow of the station, and found themselves beneath the cold, lightless sky of Thirsis 41-Alpha.

They followed an excavated chasm-turned-road, winding between the jagged rocky outcroppings amidst the muted red glow of the stillborn sun. Vemek’s servo-skull crackled, rejoining the head of the column. ‘I have detected seismic activity emanating up from the ruin.’

‘We have felt nothing here,’ Astolyev noted.

‘Minor seismic activity, inquisitor. Small quakes, but frequent. The power source continues to build, at a heightened rate.’

‘Interesting. Keep me updated.’

The road gouged in the crater’s base led to a sizeable secondary quarry half a mile from the station’s shadow. Cliffs of black rock jutted up around them, and small cylindrical dwellings shared space with heavy-duty tracked vehicles. All of them were torn open, deep rents ripped in their hulls. The mutilated remnants of servitors and Adeptus Mechanicus personnel were scattered about, left open to the void. As the Inquisitorial acolytes and Space Marines picked through the wreckage, they discovered many more bodies littering the impromptu streets of the chasms, and hidden away in the structures.

‘They tried to hide.’ Vemek’s voice chirped through the vox. ‘Or they tried to run. Neither worked.’

‘Strange,’ the inquisitor muttered. ‘I highly doubt we’ve seen more than a few hundred corpses. This station had a crew of seven hundred.’

The comment only added to the sense of unease as the team followed Astolyev’s lead down a small road towards the centre of the excavation site. The road broke out into a massive quarry, with many tiers of levelled rock cut directly into the crater. It resembled an amphitheatre of immense scale, one hundred and fifty feet deep and nearly a thousand wide. More cylindrical structures and cargo vehicles sat abandoned, interspersed with the massive excavator engines.

At the centre, Achairas saw the structure that was the goal of this entire endeavour.

The apex.

The pinnacle of a pyramid, jutting forty feet into the air, jet-black and reflectionless. Scaffolding scaled its smooth flanks, and as the team approached, moving down the switchback road that descended into the dig, Achairas noted the strange green symbols adorning its sides. Arrayed in columns, the alien glyphs glowed with a faint but unsettling emerald light. Green lines radiated out from the glyphs, arranged over the slopes in a pattern that Achairas could not understand.

The Space Marine felt cold pinpricks on his skin, and heard the faint sound of trickling water. He shuddered. His growing disquiet was not something he was used to.

Even though the structure itself seemed relatively small, their knowledge of the immensity that lurked below only added to the sense of foreboding. The acolytes gripped their weapons tighter as Astolyev cautiously strode forward, ahead of them.

Between the scaffolding, Achairas saw a molten wound in the side of the pyramid. A ten-foot-wide circular gap had been blown, at ground level, through the thick metal skin of the apex.

The inquisitor shook his head. ‘Idiots. Overambitious fools…’ He stalked forward.

Achairas and Vemek’s servo-skull followed. The Death Spectre kept his bolt pistol trained firmly on the entrance, and double-checked his auspex. The energy readings it picked up were bizarre. He’d never seen anything like them.

‘Intriguing…’ the servo-skull chirped. ‘The pict records of the breach created by the vortex charges show a far larger gap than this one.’ A crackling noise emerged from the skull as it flitted up to investigate the gap. ‘Marvellous! The wound appears to be healing! Self-knitting metal!’

‘Healing?’ Achairas cut in, kneeling before the ruin, and zooming his auto-senses into the molten metal edge of the breach. Another shiver travelled up his spine as he saw tiny trickles of dark liquid pooling in the rough gouges. He watched as they solidified, becoming the same glossy, black metal of the pyramid itself. It was self-repairing. Before his very eyes.

‘Imagine the potential!’ Vemek’s skull chirped again. ‘If the Mechan– the Imperium were to acquire this technology, the boon to our war engines and voidships would be immense… Not to mention the benefits the power source itself might provide. It is a growing source of energy, exponentially so. And the scans showed no power being fed to it from external sources. Can you imagine, inquisitor? Infinite energy! We must retrieve it, or make visual contact. I possess the necessary sensory equipment to make a full diagnostic scan of the energy source, and would very much like to collect data.’

Achairas shared a glance with the inquisitor. The magos’ claims sounded an awful lot like lunacy, and he sincerely hoped the inquisitor felt the same.

Astolyev hissed. ‘Yes. Then we go inside.’

Achairas agreed on that, at least. They needed answers. He cared nothing for the vague boons this discovery might provide. He did, however, care about the threat contained within the ruin. He needed to know what, exactly, the inquisitor’s project had awoken in the dark, and how to destroy it.

‘Be prepared,’ Achairas whispered to his brothers over their private vox-net. ‘The magos is clearly delusional. He will not have access to this technology if I deem it too dangerous. If the inquisitor disagrees, and stands in our way, we take action.’

‘The permanent kind?’ Nym inquired.

‘There is no other kind,’ Achairas retorted grimly.

‘Against an inquisitor?’ Even Nym sounded hesitant.

‘If necessary. Yes.’

‘Check your weapons,’ Astolyev ordered. ‘Say your prayers. We enter the belly of the beast. We are here to acquire answers. If our erstwhile Adeptus Mechanicus allies have awoken something down here with their impertinent ingress, then we need to know what it is. Get visual contact, and if possible, kill what we find, so we can take samples back with us. Understood?’

A series of affirmations returned to him.

Achairas turned to his battle-brothers, the sound of running water clear in the back of his mind. ‘Death is coming. It is waiting. Today, we meet it.’

Silence was all that answered him.

And with that, the Death Spectres took the first steps into a darkness that even they could not find solace in.

Achairas was awestruck by the black, cyclopean architecture within. The chamber in which they stood connected to a descending passage that spiralled downward, following the interior slope of the pyramid like an inverse gyre. Faintly glowing, emerald geometric panels were splayed on the walls, bearing symbols that he could not even begin to guess the meaning of. A dull rumbling hum began to sound as they advanced, accompanied by a series of light tectonic shudders.

Streaks of dust, which Achairas’ auto-senses identified as organic residue, created something of a trail for them to follow, though there were no side passages to lose themselves in. Unfortunately, the settled dust was far too degraded to quickly determine its origin.

‘The power source,’ Vemek’s servo-skull muttered. ‘Its growth is escalating further. I speculate that you entering the ruin has triggered some manner of response. I advise haste.’

The further they descended, the more expansive the passage became, even if the feeling of claustrophobic oppression only worsened. It reached a point where even the Death Spectres felt tense, and utterly unwelcome in the unwholesome, alien darkness of the place.

‘The geometries of this… tomb are incorrect.’ Vemek’s skull crackled, the voice growing even more distorted.

The dusty trails led to where three almost skeletal corpses, part-machine, had been scattered across the obsidian floor.

‘More station crew,’ Astolyev muttered, prodding one of the tattered red rags with his augmetic foot.

‘They were dragged down here,’ Achairas observed, understanding the origin of the dusty trails, now easily identifiable as flaking blood and viscera.

They continued down the ever-widening passage into a monolithic chamber filled with randomly spaced obelisks of black metal, and faintly glowing green nodes on the wall. Emerald prisms, pulsing softly, stuck out of almost every flat surface, even as the geometrics of the structure became more complex.

Deeper down, the oppressive darkness began to play tricks on them. Phantom auspex blips flickered and ceased periodically, appearing around them, sometimes in the walls, sometimes clustered behind them. Out of the corner of his field of view, Achairas was almost certain he saw movement, here and there. For an instant, he thought he’d seen a shape, large and sinuous, flitting across the wall. But when he turned, it was gone. Judging by the jittering movements of the acolytes, they were seeing things as well.

More dismembered corpses dotted the way. Dozens had been dragged down here and abandoned in the darkness. It was only when one of Astolyev’s acolytes cried out that the true danger was revealed. Achairas whirled to see a darting shadow vanish into the unwholesome angles of the wall. An acolyte at the rear of the group fell to the ground in gory pieces.

‘Ambush!’ Achairas shouted. Weapon raised, he saw a strange pulse flicker through the glowing runes just as a shape erupted from the wall once more, giving him his first clear view of the phantom that stalked them. Its sinuous, metallic form was somewhere in between that of a mantis, a centipede and a scorpion, but shimmering as if it were hardly even there. Brother Charason managed to fire a few shells into it, but they passed straight through, striking the wall behind. The phantom ghosted towards him, snaking coils of barbed metal erupting from its form to ensnare the Death Spectre.

Las and bolter fire ripped across the apparition, some striking Charason, even as three of the thing’s six talon-like appendages scythed through the Death Spectre’s gorget. Phasing back into reality, the wraith-like creature slipped away, tearing its claws free from Charason’s throat in a spray of crimson. Achairas rushed to intercept its erratic escape, slashing with his power sword. The creature coiled away like a serpent, avoiding the swipe. Achairas’ momentum took him around the thing as it lashed out with its tendrils. He spun backwards, feeling his sword connect with its centre of gravity. It fell to the ground, partly bisected, three of its limbs and half of its tendrils sheared off. Seizing the opportunity, he drove into it.

He uttered no war cry, no words as he fought. He was locked in the deathly silence of battle’s murderous focus. A talon raked his greave, while several of the creature’s tendrils coiled around his neck. All he heard was the sound of rushing water. The river flowed around him, its cold, black currents threatening to take him along.

Not yet, he thought, and delivered a series of economic stabs, his blade passing through the creature several times as it flickered out of material existence. Then a blinding burst of dark energy struck the thing’s metal ribcage, vaporising part of it and sending it clattering against the far wall. The tendrils slackened and fell away. Achairas staggered back, severing the talon still latched around his knee for good measure.

And then there was silence. Astolyev stood there, his elegant xenos carbine held in his hands, aimed at the remnants.

‘Clear!’ Astolyev shouted, and his acolytes responded. The Death Spectres remained quiet.

Achairas knelt beside the near decapitated body of Charason. Several of Astolyev’s men bowed their heads out of respect, or reverence, evidently unsure of how to react to a dead Space Marine.

‘Drink deep of the Black River, brother,’ Achairas said, switching off his vox so none could hear. The rushing water quieted to a steady trickle. The other Death Spectres said nothing. There was nothing to say. Death was silent, and so were they who embodied it.

Astolyev moved to inspect the fallen creature. Two of his acolytes were dead, another slain by an off-hand swipe of the creature’s talon during the fray. He bade one of his men, wearing confessor’s robes over his armour, to administer rites to the fallen.

Achairas joined the inquisitor.

‘Machines,’ Astolyev remarked, impassively watching it twitch and shudder, as if it was still partly functional.

He was kneeling to study it more closely when Achairas again heard the rushing water, and shoved the inquisitor aside, delivering a savage decapitating strike to the creature even as it lurched to life again. His blade passed through it, and it snaked away, coiling through the darkness in a revolting manner as the startled acolytes fired again. Whether any shots connected was unknown, as the thing slipped into the obsidian ceiling of the hall some thirty feet up, as if it weren’t even there.

Rising, the inquisitor nodded to Achairas. ‘Not dead…’ he rasped. It sounded like a laugh. ‘Wonderful. Self-repairing walls. Self-repairing machines. What next?’

With no remains to study, and nothing to be done for the dead, the team advanced, more cautiously than before. The spiralling descent came to an end as they entered some manner of narrow chamber composed of dozens of passages, honeycombing the walls at various heights. Half-liquefied pillars, part black chrome, part quicksilver, connected to a high ceiling, and the trails of dried blood continued through it. The strange alien glyphs on the walls seemed to flicker, sporadically. Dozens of small xenos creatures drifted about, some clinging to the walls and ceiling, with others erratically flitting around the pillars. A central obelisk, covered in glowing nodes, was tended by another dozen of the things. They were no larger than a man’s torso, fashioned from glinting black metal and scarab-shaped. They hardly showed on his auspex at all.

Achairas set his sights on one of them; it registered as a minimal threat, even with its clacking, bladed mandible apparatus. It chewed through the small pylon it hovered around, piece by piece, before drifting a short distance right and seemingly regurgitating the liquefied metal into the form of a brand new pylon.

‘What are they doing?’ Astolyev inquired. The scarabs seemed to be randomly rearranging pieces of the interior for an unknowable purpose. They ignored the advancing team, and each other, as they periodically collided, before righting their course and moving about their erratic business.

‘Strange…’ Vemek’s servo-skull hissed. ‘I can extrapolate some manner of preset routine among them. They appear to be moving about in a loop, taking matter from one pillar and rearranging it into another. The loop appears to be redundant. A repetition. I believe they are… glitched.’

‘Glitched?’ Astolyev turned to the servo-skull.

‘Like malfunctioning servitors. But different. Caught in a cycle of endless assembly and reassembly… Horrible…’

‘Right,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘If they’re not a threat, then we can come back and capture one later.’

‘That would be most excellent,’ the servo-skull agreed.

‘In the meantime, any news on the power source?’

‘It was building the last time I observed it, but fluctuating in a similarly erratic manner. Most peculiar.’

Passing through the increasingly labyrinthine network of pillars, obelisks and prisms, the team followed the sporadic trail of corpses until the passages became so dense as to be tunnel-like. They reached what was clearly a damaged area of the structure. Cracks ran through the dark metal like infected veins, and the crystals pulsed more rapidly, causing the emerald light to flicker across the alien geometry in an unsettling manner. Achairas felt the ground shake several times, and he heard a deep rumble coming from somewhere below. They moved on, descending further.

His auto-senses detected the stench before they saw the atrocity appear in the darkness before them.

‘We found the rest of the station’s crew,’ Nym announced as they strode into a blanketed mess of desiccated, mutilated remains.

Heaps of dead, hundreds, were scattered about the passage.

‘God-Emperor…’ Astolyev said. ‘Why drag them all down here just to leave the scraps behind?’

‘Does not cogitate,’ Vemek’s skull crackled. ‘Artificial life forms and automata only act upon existing protocols. Either this serves some alien function we are not yet aware of, or the creators of these machines were mad…’

Achairas saw Astolyev’s acolytes tighten their grips on their weapons. Mortals were not as adept at channelling their fear into focus as Adeptus Astartes were, but these men and women were performing admirably.

‘Advance. We should not dally here unless we discover something relevant,’ Achairas commanded.

The Death Spectres led, their weapons shifting from each new passage to the next. As Achairas panned his bolt pistol right, he saw, some ten feet from him, a form rise up from a pile of corpses, its shimmering outline barely even disturbing the dead. It was bipedal, as tall as he was, and built like a skeletal scarecrow of dark metal. Emerald light burned in its empty eye sockets, and its fingers ended in two-foot-long talons, sizzling with energy. A crude cloak of mangled, tattered flesh, severed limbs and rotting viscera was coiled around it.

Achairas’ trigger discipline stopped it before it could advance, and he turned its metal skull to metallic pulp with three bolt shells. More gunfire sounded around him as his brothers and several of the acolytes unleashed their fury. Shouts of alarm went up from the acolytes as more of the flesh-clad things emerged from the nooks and crannies of the labyrinth, as well as materialising out of the corpse piles. The thin air became thick with crimson sprays, screams and the sickening crackle of dead static. As Achairas dodged a raking swipe from another flesh-clad horror, he shot it in the jaw and lashed out with his power sword, severing its arm and then its head with the backswing.

‘To me, acolytes!’ The inquisitor disintegrated most of an advancing xenos with a burst of dark energy, before wheeling around to dodge a slashing blow that shredded part of his robe. He drew a short knife that hummed with sonic disruption, and plunged it into the xenos’ ribcage. It lunged further into him, its talons flashing but deflected by a halo of shimmering energy. A fusillade of las-fire from a squad of his acolytes, covered by Nym and Celaeno, sent the creature staggering back into an alcove.

Achairas slashed the limbs from another, ignoring the distractions, focusing on the sound of running water. It staggered back, its severed appendage skittering across the ground to cut the legs from underneath an acolyte.

Sevrim bashed his bolter repeatedly into one xenos as it tore at his armour, as another plunged its talons through the seals under his arm. Even with such a wound, the Death Spectre said nothing, merely wheeling around with combat blade drawn to plunge it through the eye of another xenos behind him. Achairas reloaded in his moment’s respite and blasted the first from his brother.

He saw his original kill rise again, its skull half-repaired. Achairas delivered a second killing strike with his power sword, cleaving it in two.

Somewhere, a trio of frag grenade crumps sounded, showering the room with a spray of pulped meat as one of the acolytes targeted the corpse piles. That seemed to be where the tattered xenos machines were emerging from.

Burning promethium showered the passage, creating a wall of roaring flames around the team, driving the flayed monstrosities back. Achairas shot down another one through the flames, only to see it rise again, its metal ribs knitting back together in a revolting manner as fire wreathed its form.

‘They… won’t… die!’ Astolyev roared, out of breath, even though his xenos weapon seemed more effective than everyone else’s.

The ragged band of surviving acolytes, now at half-strength, clustered around the inquisitor in a defensive cordon. The Death Spectres bolstered them, anchoring their position with their power-armoured presence. Achairas used his last two magazines to assist his brothers in dispersing the surrounding onslaught, stepping out of the defensive ring to slash down any creature that managed to come through.

And then, just like that, the assault was over. The remnants of the xenos simply phased out of reality, and those still standing disappeared back into the tunnels they’d come from. The rushing water subsided, and Achairas lowered his sword.

Any respite they might have gained was short-lived as a tectonic shudder lurched the entire chamber, and the dull humming grew in intensity.

‘The tomb…’ Vemek’s servo-skull chattered, emerging from its high hiding place. ‘Something is happening. My readings indicate more and more of the superstructure seems to be coming online…’

‘Coming online?’ Astolyev growled, signalling the group to advance with due haste.

‘Yes, the other parts of the ruin are… powering up.’

‘Then we make haste,’ Achairas commanded. ‘Whatever this structure is, we cannot allow it to awaken! Its threat is clear enough. We must end this!’

The tunnel converged into a larger passage, angling steadily down. More scarabs flitted to and fro, most of them avoiding the advancing group. The cavernous hexagonal hall continued on for a great distance, its end lost in the emerald gloom. All the while, the humming grew louder and louder, and the quakes grew in intensity and frequency, hobbling those not blessed with the stability granted by power armour with each tremor.

More phantom auspex blips followed, but the device was rapidly becoming unusable, flickering in and out from moment to moment.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have long,’ Vemek’s servo-skull chirped. ‘Immense power fluctuations det–’ The crackling voice was cut off suddenly as the entire chamber shook, and a deafening roar echoed from further down. Several of the acolytes staggered and fell, their balance stolen by the seismic activity. All of the prisms and luminescent nodes on the floor and walls flared, painfully illuminating the darkness.

Achairas’ auto-senses adjusted almost immediately, as did the acolytes’ photo-visors. An energy surge disrupted everything, and for a moment, his vision became crackling static, and his power armour seized up. Thankfully, its internal dampening systems quickly compensated.

‘Vemek?’ Astolyev called over the din of the tremors, shuddering as his own augmetics similarly restored functionality. ‘Status report!’

There was no response, and moments later Vemek’s servo-skull clattered to the ground, its delicate circuitry evidently fried.

‘Throne of Terra, let’s move!’ the inquisitor shouted, and the group advanced, jogging down the massive tunnel towards the newly growing source of blinding jade at its end.

The tunnel led them into what could only be the heart of the tomb, an open space of staggering size. More than half a mile across, the chamber resembled an amphitheatre of massive proportions. It was an inverted ziggurat, the ceiling soaring hundreds of feet above them. Massive pylons loomed in concentric circles around a central, colossal obelisk rising to a quarter of the height of the cavern. The obelisk was covered in gleaming geometric runes and prisms burning with the brightness of green suns. Even Achairas’ auto-senses could not adjust, and he was forced to look away.

Millions of scarabs moved about in a wanton manner, scuttling along the walls and descending steps. More of the sinuous mantis constructs darted about while arachnoid machines the size of light tanks drifted between the smaller pillars jutting up everywhere. Achairas saw packs of metallic humanoids stalking about below, some draped in tattered flesh, others not. They seemed to chitter and claw at each other in fits of madness. It was some advantage as, at this distance, they had yet to notice their intruders.

‘This is it!’ Astolyev called over the distorted vox-net, gesturing at the central obelisk. ‘The power source!’

Beams of energy lanced from the contained emeralds to immense prisms set into sockets on the walls, each a blinding solar flare that sent waves of heat and static resonating through the entire chamber.

Around the obelisk, at the dead centre of the inverted ziggurat, was an elevated ring, and Achairas’ magnified vision noted four more metallic skeletons working on panels within its interior. They were adorned differently, with elaborate crests, and were slightly smaller and more hunched than the xenos they had fought.

‘Inquisitor, can you assess what we are seeing?’ Achairas shouted into his vox.

Astolyev’s answer was interrupted by another sudden lurch and an increase in gravity, sending everyone but the Space Marines sprawling. Even the Death Spectres were hobbled. Surging gravity was a sensation Achairas knew all too well.

The tomb was rising. Somehow.

Astolyev struggled to his feet. ‘Blood of the Emperor!’

Achairas’ vision centred on the obelisk in the middle, and the projections of energy beaming from it.

The inquisitor motioned for his acolytes to take up defensive positions behind the various obelisks and pillars scattered around the upper tier of the inverted ziggurat, closest to the passage they’d emerged from.

The Death Spectres did likewise, dropping into cover so that they might make observations with less risk of being spotted. Astolyev took up position beside Achairas.

‘That is the heart,’ the inquisitor said. ‘That is what we must destroy.’

‘Yes,’ Achairas agreed, glad that the inquisitor was of similar mind on what to do with it. ‘I assume your expertise on xenos technology might be able to discern some manner of weakness?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Where the energy bursts are emitted from, I’d wager my life on those being weak points. But… I have another solution.’ He reached into a satchel attached to his belt, and withdrew a fist-sized object that resembled some manner of exotic bomb.

‘A vortex grenade,’ Achairas muttered, actually impressed. Such relics were exceedingly rare.

‘Count on the Inquisition to have the right tools at hand,’ Astolyev returned. His mask displayed nothing, but Achairas assumed that beneath it he might actually be smiling.

‘Alarm! Contacts behind us!’ Brother Sevrim called over the vox-net, causing everyone to wheel around.

What Achairas saw approaching was certainly not the threat he expected to see.

Three dozen pale-robed skitarii ran towards them in two columns, with Vemek protected behind the first few ranks. Their weapons were in ready position. Somehow, the magos’ titanium legs had unfolded from underneath his robes, reverse jointed and loping.

Another surge of gravitational pressure buckled everyone, including the Space Marines.

‘What in the God-Emperor’s name are you doing here, Vemek?’ Astolyev called.

‘Taking personal stock of the situation, and ensuring that our goals are met,’ the magos returned, emerging from the skitarii ranks as they fanned out and started taking up positions in cover.

The inquisitor’s weapon was drawn.

‘I sense treachery,’ Achairas whispered to his brothers over the vox. They levelled their bolters in the direction of the skitarii. If this turned to violence, it would be a battle at very close range. That suited the Space Marines well enough.

‘How did you even get here?’ Astolyev snarled, aiming his xenos carbine at Vemek.

Vemek held up his hands defensively. ‘I followed. A mind-linked servitor is maintaining vigilance on the data loom along with my gun-servitors.’

‘I did not give you the order to follow!’

‘Negative. I took initiative. It would appear, given the threats arrayed between us and the power source, that you will need additional assistance.’

Achairas glanced down into the veritable valley below, and ordered Sevrim to keep watch in that direction. Thus far, the xenos there had not been alerted. The majority of the insectoid constructs continued to drift about aimlessly. The bipedal, skeletal machines shambled about in packs. If they were patrols, they seemed random and haphazard.

Another gravitational surge struck, as if the floor were rising up beneath them. Thunderous tremors tore through the cavernous chamber, momentarily deafening everyone.

‘It feels as though the complex is rising,’ Achairas called to Vemek.

‘It is,’ Vemek returned, his elongated legs in a wide stance to keep him steady. ‘The final scans of my servitor proxy in central cogitation have suggested that the entire complex appears to be some manner of ship.’

‘A ship?’ Astolyev exclaimed, aghast. ‘You could have mentioned this! We need to hurry. We must destroy the heart.’

‘No!’ Vemek crackled, equally aghast. ‘I must get close enough to make an analysis of the power source, and we must capture one of those xenos engineers below.’ He gestured to one of the machine-men working on the interior console ring. ‘And it is of paramount importance that we harvest one of the emerald prisms on the central obelisk.’

‘We don’t have time for that!’ Achairas interrupted. ‘If this entire complex is a ship, it is far larger than even a battle-barge of the Adeptus Astartes. We are not yet aware of the danger it poses, but I will not allow an unknown xenos vessel of this size to threaten the Halo Region. If destroying this power source has any chance of crippling it, it is a risk we must take.’ He looked to the inquisitor. Achairas honestly did not know which way this would go, but if Astolyev decided to follow the magos’ exceedingly reckless plan to steal forbidden xenos technology, at the cost of allowing a potential threat to free itself from the prison of this world’s mantle, he would respond with whatever force was necessary.

He tightened his grip on his power sword.

Astolyev nodded. ‘Acolytes, we make for the obelisk. Cut us a gap through whatever stands in our path.’ He raised the vortex grenade in his mechanical hand. ‘We end this.’

Vemek took a step back, his heavily augmented face betraying nothing. Achairas nodded in thanks to the inquisitor for seeing reason.

‘You must not!’ the magos exclaimed, drawing a pair of flechette pistols from his robes. His skitarii trained their weapons on the Inquisitorial acolytes and the Death Spectres.

‘Are you mad?’ Achairas cut in, levelling his power sword at the magos.

The inquisitor raised his xenos carbine. ‘Vemek, don’t do anything we’ll both regret…’

‘I have invested far too many resources in the pursuit of the knowledge buried here!’ The magos’ mechadendrites twitched, and Achairas saw the madness then. Whether it was greed, ambition or something else, this tech-priest was not whole of mind. ‘I will acquire the data I need! My research must be completed if I am to return to the Consortium–’

‘You did this!’ Astolyev shouted back, accusation marring his augmetic voice. ‘You ordered the breach under my authority! That is sedition, treason and heresy!’

The commotion was drawing attention. Already, one of the arachnoid constructs was drifting over, cloaked in a halo of shimmering scarabs.

‘Inquisitor…’ Achairas warned. His battle-brothers started taking up positions against the oncoming monstrosity. The inquisitor ignored the warning, squaring off against Vemek. The skitarii and acolytes mirrored their masters, kneeling into firing positions.

Achairas shook his head, disappointed. ‘Inquisitor!’ he shouted. ‘The xenos!’

‘Vemek!’ the inquisitor roared. ‘We can settle our dispute later. For now, we have a common–’

Vemek fired, a burst of flechette rounds pattering over the Inquisitorial group like raindrops. The inquisitor’s refractor field shimmered, absorbing the impacts targeting him, and several of his acolytes staggered. One fell. The skitarii fired in unison. Galvanic slugs, incandescent plasma fire and arcs of blinding electricity felled acolytes and forced the rest into cover.

The acolytes recovered quickly, and immediately retaliated, turning the entire upper step of the inverted pyramid into a criss-crossing web of gunfire.

‘Fools!’ Achairas shouted. ‘Celaeno, burn the traitors! Sevrim, Nym, watch those xenos!’

The spider machine was approaching, drifting up towards them like an immense spectre, a nightmare apparition of glowing optical lenses and scything limbs. The smaller, hovering scarabs flitted around it. His brothers immediately began to fire.

Achairas dashed into cover as a plasma burst turned the small pillar before him into molten slag. Breaking from the destroyed cover, he charged the plasma caliver-armed skitarius, cleaving him in two and moving on to decapitate the next in line on the skitarii’s left flank. A third pounded him with a volley of close-range slugs. They struck his breastplate and staggered him, but did not penetrate. Another skitarius fired at his knee joint. Twisting, he took the impacts to the greave, barely keeping his feet as he rushed forward, slashing the first’s galvanic rifle in two, and bashing his fist into the skitarius’ titanium-plated skull a few times before it pulped. With a deft twist, he seized the falling corpse, raising it to absorb more fire from the skitarii ahead of him.

Darting behind another pillar, Achairas feinted right but ran left, the skitarius corpse and his pauldrons absorbing most of the impacts, before he slammed into the traitors, hurling the carcass away. In close quarters, Achairas became a true spectre of death. Never breaking momentum, he weaved from cover to cover to avoid their fire, and delivered killing stroke after killing stroke with his power sword. The skitarii were competent, elite even. But they were no match for a Space Marine. Distracted by the last few acolytes’ assault on their main line, they were unable to stop the Death Spectre from making quick work of their left flank.

On the right, the remnants of the Inquisitorial team retreated down one step of the amphitheatre, pinned behind a few pylons. They were being rapidly whittled down by the skitarii’s superior armaments. Galvanic slugs tore through the acolytes and thumped into Celaeno, even as the Death Spectre covered their retreat with a wide sweep of burning promethium from his flamer. Celaeno staggered, falling, his armour fractured in places from high-velocity impacts. An arc rifle flared, scorching another pair of acolytes to the bone before the inquisitor himself disintegrated the offending skitarius with a burst of dark energy. Celaeno rose again, stumbling, spraying more promethium to create an infralens-disrupting heat flare that would befuddle the aim of the enemy.

Darting into cover, Achairas halted his advance, as Vemek himself, now exposed, drew some other manner of pistol from his robe. ‘I did not wish for it to end this way!’ the magos screeched.

The sound of rushing water surged around Achairas once more, grasping at him with its inviting cold.

The magos fired, a beam of energy shattering the toppled pillar that Achairas knelt behind. The Death Spectre immediately relocated, taking cover behind a taller pylon.

‘Fools!’ Vemek shouted, realising that he too had other problems. A trio of mantis-like machines had descended on him from behind, tearing into his remaining skitarii.

‘Achairas!’ Astolyev called across the vox. ‘We must reach the obelisk! If we destroy that, we can end this!’

Achairas relayed the command to his brothers and moved to disengage, taking a moment to survey how Nym and Sevrim were faring. They’d split up, attacking the spider construct from both sides, Nym darting from pylon to pylon as the engine focused on him, projecting emerald arcs of energy at the Death Spectre. But Nym was too quick, his momentum keeping him just ahead of the spider’s attacks as Sevrim closed in and lobbed krak grenade after krak grenade into the thing’s abdominal section, blasting away chunks of liquefied metal.

Achairas left Vemek and his skitarii to fend off the mantis-like constructs, and rushed towards the inquisitor and his few remaining acolytes. They unleashed a volley of fire into a pack of oncoming humanoid machines. The shambling, taloned things scrambled up the steps of the inverted ziggurat, straight into the Inquisitorial retinue’s withering fire. Most fell to hotshot las-fire, even if over half of them seemed to rise again.

Another spider construct reared up, dislodging itself from some manner of socket in the floor. A beam of white energy pulsed from the cannon on its back, blasting two acolytes to their molecular components and causing a rippling explosion that scattered the entire group. The spider drifted forward and reached down with a pincer-limb to grab Celaeno as he rose. It lashed down with its mandibles to seize the Space Marine’s arm. Nym and Sevrim rushed it, having finished off the first spider. Both hurled krak grenades, blasting limbs off and causing Celaeno to drop to the ground. The Space Marine’s left arm had been sheared off.

Nym reached his brother, lifting the wounded Death Spectre to his feet. ‘No dying yet!’

Celaeno didn’t respond, nor cry out in pain, but drew his bolt pistol in his free hand, his Larraman’s organ already clotting the wound.

The spider recovered, and much to Achairas’ dismay, a whole swarm of the smaller scarab machines drifted out from under its abdomen, immediately swarming towards them. Nym’s bolter was empty, but Sevrim, Celaeno and the last four acolytes managed to cut a few down before they reached them. Achairas scythed a scarab in two with his sword, before shattering another with his backswing, even as two more latched on to him. One gnawed on his pauldron, while another tore at his breastplate with its talons. He ripped the scarab off and stomped it to pieces, as another acolyte was dragged down and eviscerated by the gnashing creatures.

Astolyev rose, still dazed, gathering up his xenos rifle. He loosed beams of dark energy at the spider, disintegrating portions of its carapace, and finally its skull. It fell to the ground with a deafening crash.

Throwing the scarab on his pauldron off and slashing it in two, Achairas ran on, followed by his surviving allies, while Vemek and his skitarii continued their losing battle against the mantis-creatures a way up the steps behind them. But when Achairas saw what approached, he realised there was little hope of them reaching the obelisk alive.

The bipedal skeletal machines advanced in full force, dozens shambling up the ziggurat towards them, clacking their talons and howling dead static. The ones that had fallen before had risen again, joining their ranks.

‘Inquisitor!’ Achairas shouted. ‘Give me your grenade and get back to the Vox Silentii! Warn Occludus!’

Astolyev saw what was coming and hesitated. Sevrim fired the rest of his bolter shells into the advancing xenos, sending a few to the ground, if only to slow them. Celaeno readied his bolt pistol, while Nym drew a pair of wickedly curved mono-edged daggers. The three remaining acolytes fired their weapons, to limited effect, while Vemek’s team was assaulted by another spider construct that had dislodged itself from a hidden socket in the upper wall.

‘Astolyev! Run! You, of all of us, must live!’ Achairas urged.

The inquisitor lowered his weapon and finally nodded, handing Achairas his vortex grenade. ‘Die well, Death Spectre.’

Achairas did not respond. There was only the rushing water. The torrent of death.

Achairas and his battle-brothers charged into the mass of approaching xenos, hurling their remaining frag grenades a moment before impact. Using his weight and momentum, he bowled through them, slashing three apart with a series of pirouetting blows. The tide of horrors washed over them. He saw Celaeno die first, decapitated by raking claws.

Even so, their charge accomplished what it was supposed to. All of the approaching xenos swarmed the most direct threat, allowing Astolyev and his last acolytes to retreat. They stayed low among the pillars as they ascended the steps, evading the frenzied vivisections being carried out by the mantis-creatures that had torn apart Vemek’s unit.

The butchery continued around the Death Spectres. The ground lurched and heaved as the tomb struggled against its stony prison. Staggering, Sevrim failed to evade a pair of curved talons that impaled him through his underarm seals. Two of the creatures lifted him up into the air, tearing an arm and a leg off, even as he pulled the pin of a krak grenade in his free hand and took several more of the xenos with him to oblivion.

Slashing their way through, Achairas and Nym inflicted a substantial butcher’s toll, bringing down a dozen xenos machines between them, despite sustaining numerous grievous injuries. When all seemed lost, the obelisk maddeningly out of reach, the onslaught ceased.

They were scarcely three hundred feet from the ring around the central obelisk when the clawed xenos retreated down the slope, hissing madly.

‘What is this?’ Nym roared. ‘Cowardice from machines?’

The four skeletal engineers operating the control ring knelt as an arc of blinding light appeared ahead of them, between the ring and the Space Marines. The light coalesced into a form. It was all dark metal, cast in the shape of a massive humanoid skeleton, easily a head taller than the Space Marines, hunched as it was. A regal crest adorned its skull, and a robe of tattered flesh was draped over its ornate emerald pauldrons. In a clawed hand, it clutched a glaive with a khopesh-like blade that shimmered with a fell greenish light. Everything about its appearance told Achairas that this was some kind of leader. An overlord of these xenos, even if it, too, was a machine.

It stood silently, still among the madness of its minions. Whatever insanity was infecting the rest of this tomb clearly did not affect its king. Achairas and Nym took a moment to gather their breath. The sound of rushing water intensified, and Achairas knew he stared into the hollow, soulless eye sockets of that which would be his end.

Nym looked at him, hobbled, but still alive. ‘Use that grenade. I’ll distract this overly decorated carcass.’

Achairas nodded. He had to get closer. He could not miss.

Smiling, the two Death Spectres advanced to their doom.

Nym hurled his last krak grenade at the overlord. It calmly caught it in its free hand, crushing it before it could detonate. Achairas flanked around, but the creature moved to block both of them. Nym rushed the towering xenos lord, raking it with his knives. His onslaught was warded off as his foe spun its glaive in an arc with alarming speed. His momentum broken, Nym was barely able to duck the retaliating swing, and the xenos’ weapon lit up with jade energy as it scythed through the air. Nym darted in, delivering a pair of thrusts into the thing’s ribcage. It was all he managed.

As Achairas sprinted forward, shouldering through two more retreating clawed xenos, he primed the vortex grenade. In a dead run, he hurled it, as hard as he could, at the central obelisk.

The grenade soared through the air, just as the overlord lifted Nym up by his throat and hurled him away. The xenos king advanced, thrusting with its glaive, impaling Nym through the back as he rose to his feet. Green fire tore through the Death Spectre, burning his flesh to ash in seconds, just as the vortex grenade contacted.

The detonation devoured all light, noise and sense, sending Achairas, and all of the xenos, staggering away as a blinding explosion of the warp’s uncolours struck the side of the obelisk. A maelstrom of polychromatic energy tore at its flanks, warping the outer shell and shattering the crystals. Rays of emerald light spewed violently, causing several of the prisms on the wall to overload and explode.

The entire chamber rocked violently, and Achairas struggled to his feet, bashing in the skull of another xenos. Looking up, he despaired as he saw thousands of scarabs and dozens of spider constructs swarm towards the obelisk. He found his sword, slashing the legs out from another horror only a split second before a searing lance of agony ripped through his midriff.

Burning blood spurted up into his helmet, as the blade of the xenos overlord punched clean through his torso, from side to side. His sword clattered from his hand as his blood turned to flame and his bones burned to ash. He did not have time to scream. The only sensation Achairas felt as he died was the cold caress of the Black River that had beckoned him for so long.

And so Brother-Sergeant Achairas of the Death Spectres died, having failed to destroy the obelisk awakening the tomb ship. But he did not fail in buying time for Inquisitor Astolyev to make his escape, and gain a chance, however small, to warn the Menrahir of Occludus of this new threat to the Halo Region.

The inquisitor’s sprint out through the tomb had taken considerably less time than his original, cautious foray. Terror soiled Astolyev’s mind. It was an unfamiliar sensation, even if he felt some minor satisfaction in having vaporised the dying, treacherous Vemek with his dark energy blaster during his escape. Of his three last acolytes, Tyberius and Heshal had fallen in the tunnels, clawed down by the skeletal xenos that had ambushed them. He’d ignored them, sprinting past. Only Kailani still lived.

He dimly made a note to give her a worthy commendation if any of them actually made it out of this wretched place alive.

The entire tomb buckled and quaked, and gravity itself fought him, but he ascended the innards of the pyramid to reach the gaping rent in its apex. When he finally emerged into the wan light of the world’s stillborn sun, the scene that faced him was apocalyptic.

The earth of Thirsis 41-Alpha was a shattered mess, as the immense shape of a black metal crescent tore itself from its terrestrial prison. Rock peeled away from the pyramid, the entire crater collapsing around it, shattering the shroud station to splinters. The roar was deafening as it rose, the crust fracturing, grinding into smaller boulders and rolling off the sides of the immense superstructure below. The atmosphere recoiled as tidal surges of emerald energy stripped away the last grasping claws of rock.

The cataclysmic vista before Astolyev was truly the most awe-inspiring, terrible thing he had seen in all his many long years as an inquisitor.

He couldn’t even hear his own voice as he shouted to Apparition over the vox. He hoped the servitor on the Thunderhawk could make out his commands, and had had enough sense to take off before the research station had crumbled into oblivion.

But then, there it was, screaming through the tortured atmosphere like an apparition of one of the Emperor’s angels of death. Its ominous, black-winged shape was a joy to behold. He gripped Kailani’s arm. She was barely standing. Astolyev hadn’t even noticed the deep wound in her side. She’d said nothing of it throughout their escape.

‘Stay alive!’ he yelled through the vox, realising she’d be as deaf as he was, that words were utterly useless.

Apparition descended towards the pyramid, hovering alongside the slope of the apex, and opening its ramp. It swayed back and forth as it hung there; it would be a long jump onto a treacherous surface.

Astolyev pulled Kailani back into the tomb, before sprinting forward to gain a running start. They jumped from the slowly rising pyramid onto the ramp of the waiting gunship. Out of breath, aching and battered, they were dragged into the hold by Nerek and Ariane, and were buckled into acceleration harnesses beside a sobbing Ketyanna.

The short, twisting flight took less than fifteen minutes to reach the Vox Silentii, which was already powering up to ready for a rapid escape. The frigate flared its engines the moment they passed through its void-shielded landing bay, and began to accelerate away from the planetoid as the colossal xenos vessel tore itself free from the planetary crust.

After sprinting through the corridors of the cruiser, and hurtling up through the magnetic elevator to the strategium, Astolyev entered the chamber to find the other five Death Spectres there waiting for him.

‘Sergeant Achairas?’ one of them inquired.

The inquisitor’s hearing had returned, to some degree. ‘Dead. To buy us time to escape,’ he gasped.

The Space Marines regarded him silently.

‘Considering the size of the vessel, escape is all we can do.’ The Death Spectre gestured towards the vid display, showing the immense, crescent-shaped ship, now almost fully free from its prison. The energy signatures of the vessel did not cogitate on the Vox Silentii’s augur systems, and the inquisitor shook his head in disbelief.

‘Blood of the Emperor, what have we done?’ He turned to the shipmaster. ‘Get us out of Thirsis 41’s gravity well and make for the warp as soon as is physically possible! Make for your home world, your Menrahir must be warned.’

The Death Spectre nodded his assent.

‘That is what Achairas commanded,’ the inquisitor added with an exhalation.

And with that, the Vox Silentii surged away from the rising tomb ship at maximal speed. Whether the xenos vessel was unable to target them due to not being fully awoken yet, or whether it simply did not care, Astolyev could not guess, but it was no small mercy when the Vox Silentii’s Navigator announced that they were far enough out to tear a rift into the warp and slip away. Astolyev retreated to his guest quarters with his three remaining acolytes and Ketyanna in tow.

He would need to do some serious thinking, and perform an analysis of what they’d found, before bringing this warning to Occludus. The Death Spectres were the watchers of the Eastern Halo, the Space Marines who vigilantly kept the nightmares of the Ghoul Stars at bay. And now, they’d have one new nightmare to deal with. One that was undoubtedly far, far worse than the others. Whatever they’d awoken down there in the dark was perhaps the single greatest threat encountered in the Eastern Halo since the Pale Wasting, and Astolyev decided, then and there, that he would devote his entire being, and all of his considerable resources as an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, to counteracting that threat. That would be his atonement, for his role in awakening the sleeping nightmare buried in the rock of Thirsis 41-Alpha.

SOLACE

Steve Lyons

They should have made it back to camp by now.

Guardsman Maximillian Stürm was footsore and weary. He didn’t complain, of course. His squad had been tramping through the dense, thorny forest for hours. The tangled canopy stole the sun’s light, making it impossible to tell the time of day. The temperature had dropped, however, and everything was washed in shades of grey, which suggested that evening was preparing to give way to night.

Sergeant Kramer called another halt. ‘Something wrong with this damn thing,’ he grumbled, tapping his chrono-compass again.

Kramer didn’t look well. The bandages around his chest were dark with blood. His normally steel-hard, angular face was slick with sweat. His pupils were dilated, his gaze unfocused, betraying the fact that a heavy dose of stimm was keeping him going.

‘We’ve been here before,’ said Stürm. ‘I recognise the shape of those trees there. We are going round in–’

He broke off as Ven Eisen snapped up his lasgun. Stürm and the others followed suit, their tiredness forgotten. For a minute, the only sounds were Sergeant Kramer’s laboured breathing, and a nearby rustle as a forest bird took flight. ‘What is it?’ Stürm whispered.

Ven Eisen lowered his weapon. His comrades took the cue to relax. ‘My apologies. I thought I saw movement. It must only have been a shadow.’

‘Here, the shadows can kill you,’ muttered Guardsman Zoransky.

‘We must press on,’ Sergeant Kramer resolved. ‘If we are caught in the forest at nightfall, we will be dead by morning.’ No one doubted the truth of those words. The sergeant clicked his tongue and rotated on the spot. He led the way onward, following his compass needle. It might be unreliable, but it was all they had.

Stürm had never felt so far from home, so out of place. He was Iron Guard, accustomed to the noisy, bustling hives and machine-planed lines of Mordian. His squad wore bright blue uniform greatcoats and caps with gold adornments, in violent contrast to the pastel shades around them. They were shining lures to the forest’s predators.

They broke step, but stayed in formation. Ven Eisen was dragging his left foot behind him. Ludo – the squad’s youngest recruit, as yet unseasoned – held his slashed arm in a sling. The morning’s battle had been brutal. They were lucky to have survived at all, and many of their comrades hadn’t. Kramer had voxed repeatedly for assistance, but no one had responded. Either the equipment was faulty, or no one was left.

Stürm felt he could have done better. He ought to have been more alert, more disciplined, fought harder. He felt ashamed of himself.

Ven Eisen stopped them again. He wasn’t seeing shadows, this time. Something, some creature, hung from a branch before them. Sergeant Kramer had missed it, which was unlike him. The creature made no move as the soldiers trained their sights upon it. Stürm struggled to discern its shape in the deepening gloom. With a jolt, he realised that it was hanging, almost bat-like, upside down.

Kramer sent Ven Eisen forward with a wordless nod. A moment later, the Guardsman signalled to the others to join him.

‘It’s dead,’ he reported. ‘Its throat has been slit. From the smell of it, at least a couple of days ago.’ The inverted face of the creature was striped with crusted blood.

It was an aeldari: a male, with the milky complexion and lithe build of its kind. Silken black hair tumbled around its tapered ears. ‘Who – or what – do you think did this to it?’ Stürm asked.

‘No man of Mordian,’ declared Kramer. Stürm knew what he meant. He didn’t mourn for the xenos. It had deserved a painful death. The means of its execution, however – its ritualistic nature – discomfited him.

‘Why hang the xenos like this?’ puzzled Zoransky. His heavy brow creased with the effort of deep thought.

‘A better question would be how,’ Kramer growled. ‘We’ve been in this forest for weeks, hunting these damn things, and barely laid a hand on them.’ He winced, and his hand went to his ribs reflexively.

‘It’s a warning,’ said Ven Eisen.

He had looked past the xenos and seen what lay beyond it. Stürm saw it too now: incongruous shapes between the trees, hard lines and angles. Falling silent again, the five soldiers crept forward – and the alien forest opened up around them. They found themselves looking at a huddle of dark, wooden buildings with sloping roofs. Well-trodden muddy tracks weaved around and between the structures.

‘A village,’ breathed Stürm. ‘I didn’t know there were any out here.’

‘A xenos village?’ Zoransky wondered.

Kramer shook his head. ‘Captain Venig believes the aeldari of this world are outcasts. His company found one of their settlements four days ago. They live in primitive hide tents. They could build nothing like this.’

‘Even so,’ said Stürm, glancing back at the strung-up corpse, ‘we should proceed with caution.’

No sooner had he spoken than a gunshot shattered the silence. It was loud – far louder than the report of a lasgun. A projectile hit the ground only feet in front of the troopers, kicking up a miniature dirt storm.

Instinctively, the Guardsmen sprang into action, separating and seeking cover. Before the shot’s reverberations had died down, Stürm was crouched with his lasgun to his shoulder, its barrel resting across a stout tree branch.

‘Stand fast,’ came a voice from between the buildings, ‘and identify yourselves.’

‘Sergeant Vulfgang Kramer of the One Hundred and Ninety-Third Mordian Regiment, the Emperor’s Iron Guard,’ Kramer responded. ‘My Guardsmen and I are engaged in His holy work, but have lost our comrades and our way. We require shelter for the night, no more. Praise be to the Emperor.’

There was a short pause – slightly longer than Stürm would have liked – before the disembodied voice repeated, ‘Praise be to the Emperor.’

Nothing happened for several minutes, during which time the Mordians maintained their rigid stances. Stürm heard low voices – too distant for him to make out. Then, a group of six men emerged from the settlement. They wore shabby breeches, shirts and jerkins. Their faces were steeped in grime, and most had straggly hair and beards. Five of them wore crude-looking pistols in holsters, strapped to thick leather belts at their hips. The sixth had an equally crude shotgun, which he had drawn.

This man rode a four-legged beast of burden, similar to a horse but with larger, nastier-looking teeth. His pinhole eyes, shaded by the broad brim of his hat, gave nothing away, while a drooping moustache lent him an air of melancholy. He halted his mount a few yards away from the troopers.

‘Magistrate Gideon Lymax,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’m the law in these parts – and any servants of the Emperor are welcome to our hospitality.’

The shotgun dangled lazily over his left knee, its threat implicit. His comrades’ fingers twitched close to their pistol grips. Stürm saw little discipline in their rounded postures, however. The Mordians may have been outnumbered and battered, but they were better equipped than these six men, and far better drilled.

Kramer stepped into the open. His lasgun was in its sling, allowing him to display empty hands. He called to his men to follow his lead and form up on him. Lymax’s beady eyes darted from tree to tree. ‘Is this it?’ he asked. ‘Five of you?’

‘Five of us,’ Kramer confirmed.

The magistrate gave a curt nod. ‘Then, gentlemen, welcome to our home – to our little sanctuary out in the wild here. Welcome to Solace.’

‘I don’t like this,’ muttered Zoransky as the wooden buildings closed in around them.

‘These people have been nothing but helpful to us,’ said Stürm, ‘and have probably saved our lives.’ He shared his comrade’s misgivings, however. A backwater village like Solace seemed out of place on a developed world such as this one. How could it even survive here, in the forest, surrounded by enemies?

Lymax had dismounted to stroll alongside his guests, leading his beast behind him. ‘How do you come to be here,’ Stürm asked him, ‘so far from civilisation?’

Lymax shrugged. ‘Our forefathers struck out from the city a hundred years ago.’

‘That can’t have been long after Silva Proxima was settled.’

‘Some dispute with the city overseers, so the tale goes.’

Stürm’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Your ancestors were lawbreakers?’

‘Pioneers,’ the magistrate gainsaid him. ‘They set out with the loftiest ambitions – to tame the forest. In the name of the Emperor, of course.’

‘Of course. Praise be to Him.’

‘Only they learned that the forest was already inhabited.’

Cheerful voices drifted out of a broad, two-storey structure ahead of them. They tramped on wooden planking, which strained and creaked beneath their boots. A crooked sign nailed over the building’s door read ‘Solace Tavern’.

Lymax pushed through a pair of swinging gates. Stürm and the others followed him. The air inside the tavern was hazy, diffusing the blue light of flickering lumoglobes. The odours of lho-leaf and cheap amasec played about his nostrils. Civilians were perched on wooden benches and stools, around circular tables. Fifty or so pairs of eyes turned to the newcomers, while as many tongues were abruptly stilled.

Lymax spoke into the ensuing silence: ‘As you see, we’ve picked up a few strays from the forest. They’ll be staying a night or two, perhaps longer. I’m sure no one needs telling to treat them right. They’re good Emperor-fearing folk.’

A thin-faced bartender stood frozen, eyes bulging at the newcomers, holding a glass and a towel. Lymax snapped his fingers to get the man’s attention. ‘Our guests have had a hard day. I’m guessing they might be a touch thirsty.’

‘Just water for us,’ Sergeant Kramer intervened. ‘We are on duty. We can pay.’ He dug into his pockets.

Lymax grinned a lopsided grin. ‘Your Imperial credits are no use to us. You can work for your keep, though, if you stay long enough.’

‘We’ll be leaving at dawn,’ said Kramer.

‘You sure about that? People have struck out from Solace before. We sent out scouts, to find the city and fetch help. Not a one of them ever returned.’

‘As soon as we are rested, we will be returning to our camp,’ insisted Stürm. He hesitated for a moment, before adding, ‘If you have a map of this area of the forest, that would be very helpful.’

A low buzz of activity was already resuming around them. They were still the recipients of many sidelong glances, but the novelty of their arrival was wearing thin. The bartender provided two jugs of water and five glasses. Stürm hadn’t realised how dehydrated he was. He had been rationing the contents of his canteen, until there was barely a sip in it. He emptied his glass in one gulp and poured another.

‘So, you came from the big city? I only know it from tales of old, of course.’

A man had sidled up alongside Stürm. He was in his sixties, balding, overweight, his slack chin carpeted with grey stubble. His cheeks were ruddy. He drained a glass of amasec, slammed it down and called for another. He hauled himself onto a stool, took Stürm’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. ‘Jerebeus is the name. Round here, they call me Old Man Jerebeus. I can’t imagine why.’

‘Maximillian Stürm. I haven’t seen your city. I come from another world.’

‘You don’t say. What brings you to this one?’

‘Xenos. The aeldari. The forest is infested with them.’

The old man’s rheumy eyes twinkled. He grinned, exposing gaps between his yellowed teeth. ‘You don’t say.’

‘No one in the city knew of them,’ Stürm recalled from his briefing, ‘until they started to clear the forest for development. Then they came under attack. My regiment was dropped in three weeks ago, to eradicate the xenos threat.’

‘Good luck with that. Elusive critters, aren’t they? Impossible to pin down.’

Stürm’s surprise must have shown, because the old man grinned again. ‘I wasn’t always this broken-down wreck you see before you. I did my share of sentry duty in my younger days, went on my share of hunting parties.’

‘I’m sure you did.’ Jerebeus still wore a gun at his hip. Stürm could see no man in the tavern who didn’t.

‘You see a shadow out the corner of your eye. Next you know, there’s a blade through the heart of the man beside you. Mocking eyes, boring into your head like a challenge. By the time you’ve drawn your pistol, they’re gone. Oh, I got off some good shots in my time, don’t get me wrong. I drew some blood. Once the wood sprites – your ‘aeldari’ – have set their sights on you, though, best thing is to run.’

‘Mordians don’t run,’ Stürm intoned stiffly.

‘You don’t say.’

‘Especially not from aeldari. It’s what they want. They’re faster than we are. They want the pleasure of hunting you down.’

His mind drifted back to the morning’s battle. His squad had walked into an ambush. The enemy had been everywhere at once, their swords a blur. They had shattered the Mordians’ regimented lines. The fight had raged for hours, and yet there had been no time to think, to plan, only to react. At last, when Stürm had thought he could endure no more, the ordeal had ended. Perhaps the aeldari had been hurt more than he had seen. Perhaps they had just got bored. Whatever the reason, he and his squad had found themselves lost and alone.

Old Man Jerebeus was right about the aeldari’s eyes. The memory of them would haunt Stürm for the rest of his life.

‘Where would you run to, anyway?’ he murmured.

‘Back here, of course,’ said Jerebeus. ‘Where else but back to Solace?’

The old man was distracted by something over Stürm’s shoulder. Suddenly, the Guardsman’s neck hairs prickled with foreboding. He turned. Someone new had entered the tavern. The gates were still swinging behind her.

She was a young girl, no older than five or six. She wore a dark red tunic and breeches like one of the men. A red bow nestled in her flowing, clean blonde hair. Her bright blue eyes shifted from Stürm to each of his comrades in turn; and each of them broke off from his conversation, or lowered his glass, transfixed by her.

‘Magistrate…’ Jerebeus sounded concerned.

Lymax had been talking to Kramer. At the old man’s urging, he turned and saw the girl. He snatched his hat from the bar and jammed it over his ears. He hurried up to her. ‘Now, Alyce,’ he cajoled her, ‘you know you shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Alyce, still staring at the Mordians.

‘I’ll tell you as we walk,’ Lymax offered. He made to place an arm around Alyce’s shoulders, but changed his mind. He fixed her with an expectant look instead. She drew a breath and blinked – and Stürm blinked too, and tore his gaze away from her. The young girl allowed the magistrate to guide her outside, leaving Stürm to wonder what it was about her that had unsettled him so.

Jerebeus drained another glass and motioned to the bartender for a refill. ‘Should you be drinking so much?’ asked Stürm, with a hint of disapproval.

The old man wiped his lips on a dirty, tasselled sleeve. ‘Who’s to tell me I can’t? I’m the senior member of this community.’ He slurred the words a little. ‘I’ve lived here longer than anyone else – and this is my party, after all.’

‘What are you celebrating?’

‘It’s my leaving party.’

‘Oh? Where are you going? I thought the magistrate said–’

‘Although… I guess it isn’t, is it?’ Jerebeus laughed, exposing his ragged teeth again. ‘I guess I’ll be staying in Solace a time longer yet. Seems a shame to cut short the fest… festivities, though. So, I know, let’s call this my staying party.’ He hefted his freshly charged glass, sloshing amasec over its rim.

Stürm heard a crash behind him. Sergeant Kramer had slumped over the bar and knocked over his water, smashing the glass. In a second, Guardsmen Stürm and Ludo flanked him, hauling him upright by the armpits. Kramer shrugged them off, his eyelids fluttering. ‘I’m fine,’ he insisted. ‘Just tired. Why is it so warm in here?’ His dose of stimm was clearly wearing off. He fumbled in his belt pouches for an injector.

Stürm glanced around his comrades. In their faces, he saw approval for what he had to do. After Kramer, he was their squad’s most senior member. He had served longer than the sergeant, even. He had always felt more comfortable following orders than giving them, but now he had no choice.

He teased the injector from Kramer’s trembling fingers. ‘You don’t need this, sergeant. There is no enemy here. You need sleep – and a medicae to stitch that wound and redress it.’ He called over his shoulder to the room: ‘Is there a medicae in Solace?’

A pair of young men stood. ‘We can take you to Doktor Matthias,’ one of them offered. ‘We may not have the drugs and equipment you’re used to, but you won’t find anyone with a steadier hand than his.’

Stürm nodded, gratefully. ‘Thank you.’ As the men came forward, however, Kramer shrank away from them. He gripped Stürm’s arm with an urgent strength. Stürm saw the forbidding look in his sergeant’s eyes and knew what it meant.

‘Guardsman Zoransky.’ He was the strongest, and right now the healthiest, of them. ‘Stay with the sergeant. Don’t leave his side for anything.’ Kramer seemed content with that decision. Leaning on Zoransky, he allowed the two locals to lead him away. Moments after they had exited the tavern, Lymax returned alone.

Stürm looked for Old Man Jerebeus. He still felt unsettled, though he couldn’t put his finger on the reason. He had more questions about Solace. Jerebeus had been hijacked by other revellers, however, who were toasting his health exuberantly.

‘You fellows must be tired,’ said Lymax. ‘Time we talked about finding you a place to bed down.’

‘A place’ turned out to be a bunkroom upstairs.

There were four beds, with feather-stuffed mattresses and pillows – and a wood-burning stove, which was cold. Stürm removed his greatcoat and boots. He collapsed onto a bed and stared up at the rafters.

The festivities below had subsided, but he heard muffled voices and occasional bursts of laughter. His muscles were glad of the rest, but his racing brain kept him from sleep. Ludo had no such problems, snoring softly. Ven Eisen was awake, however, on the bed to Stürm’s left. ‘Do you trust these people?’ he asked.

‘We could not have endured much longer in the forest,’ said Stürm. ‘We had no choice but to accept their shelter.’

‘But do you trust them?’

‘I don’t. I distrust their reasons for being out here. They claim the aeldari keep them from leaving Solace, from returning to the Imperial city, but isn’t it their duty to try?’ He was struck by a parallel between these people and the xenos in the forest. Outcasts, Sergeant Kramer had called them.

‘What use are they to the Emperor here?’ Ven Eisen mused.

‘And what keeps them safe? They are not soldiers – and you have seen their weapons. I doubt they could withstand a determined aeldari assault.’

‘You think they’re hiding something?’

‘I am sure of it.’

‘Could they have made a deal with the xenos?’

Stürm mulled that disturbing thought over. ‘It is possible – but then, what of the corpse we found at the village limits?’

‘An aeldari that broke the truce, perhaps?’

‘And what would their side of the bargain be? What do they have to offer?’

‘The magistrate talked of Imperial credits,’ Ven Eisen recalled. ‘If his people have had no contact with civilisation in a century–’

‘You’re right. Would they be familiar with our currency?’

The conversation had helped Stürm to a decision. He swung his legs back over the side of the bed, ignoring his protesting muscles. He pushed his feet back into his boots. ‘I think I’ll take a stroll around Solace – this time without an escort.’

Ven Eisen sat up. ‘Let me come with you.’

‘This is just a scouting mission. We don’t yet know of any real threat here. I’ll be less conspicuous alone – and you are injured. You should rest. Keep your gun close by. I will vox you if I discover anything.’

‘What if you do not return?’ his comrade asked.

‘Give me one hour,’ said Stürm, fastening his greatcoat and checking his lasgun’s power pack. ‘Then assume the worst.’

A back door allowed Stürm to slip out of the tavern unseen.

Outside, night had well and truly fallen. He took his first long look up at the sky of Silva Proxima. It was brighter than he had expected – freckled with stars, and there was a large, full moon with a faint red tint.

This was just as well, as there was no street lighting – only flickering pools of candlelight, seeping out between the slats of window shutters. The magistrate’s mount was tied up to a post, its muzzle in a trough. Whatever it was feeding on, it stank of blood and crunched like dry bones.

Stürm kept to the shadows. Subterfuge did not come naturally to him. Mordian Iron Guard did not hide, as a rule. They displayed their colours proudly, daring their foes to come at them – but these were unusual circumstances.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have worn his colours at all. Even without them, though, he would have stood out in Solace. His shaved hair and chin would have ensured it, as would his disciplined, straight-backed posture. Even his pale skin, sunlight-deprived on the World of Eternal Night, contrasted with the callused, weather-beaten locals.

There were several locals around. He could hear their muttering and boot scrapes even when he couldn’t see them. Stürm sensed a restless charge in the atmosphere. He ducked under cover as the door of a single-storey shack flew open. A couple emerged from within. They looked tired, but were twitching with nervous energy. They crossed the road, into an alleyway between two larger structures. One of these appeared to be a general store; the other had bars on its windows.

A group of four women hurried by, into the alleyway too. They wore full-bodied, patterned skirts – finer and cleaner clothes than Stürm had seen in the tavern. From the build-up of voices in the distance, he deduced that a crowd was gathering behind those two buildings. Perhaps, he thought, if he circled around the store…

He was interrupted by an already familiar sound. Two men pushed through the tavern’s swing gates, stepping onto the planking outside. They spoke in low murmurs, but he recognised the magistrate’s drawl. He crept closer, hoping to make out more. He thought Lymax had spoken Sergeant Kramer’s name.

‘–break for you, old man, them turning up just when they did.’

‘You don’t say.’ The second voice – a little louder than the first, slurred by drink – belonged to Old Man Jerebeus.

Lymax sucked air between his teeth. ‘Five of them, though – and more dangerous, to look at them, than any we’ve dealt with before.’

‘Ah, they aren’t so tough as they pretend. One down already, one more by dawn. That leaves only three – and two of them hurt, at that.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You know I was ready to take my turn. Still am. I’ve lived a good, long life. I can’t say I’m not glad of a few more months, though – to prepare. You know what it feels like, Gideon? It feels like the Emperor still watches over us, after all.’

Lymax sighed, heavily. ‘I wish I could feel that too.’

The pair moved away, and Stürm didn’t catch the old man’s rejoinder. He considered whether to follow them, in case he could learn more. He was startled by a sudden voice behind him: ‘Are you lost?’ He whirled around.

The young girl in the red tunic stood a few feet from him. Her eyes were bright circles of light in the gloom. Stürm didn’t know how he had failed to hear her creeping up on him. He must have been more tired than he thought. He had to quieten her before she gave him away.

He took a step towards the girl. She flinched and backed away from him. Stürm dropped to his haunches, so as not to tower over her, and forced his facial muscles into an unaccustomed smile. ‘Your name is Alyce, isn’t it?’

Alyce nodded.

‘My name is Guardsman… My name is Max – and yes, you’re right, I am lost. My friends and I were fighting, uh, wood sprites in the forest. Do you know what they are? Have you seen them? Have you seen them in the village?’

‘The monsters can’t come into Solace,’ Alyce declared – thankfully now in hushed tones matching Stürm’s own.

‘Is that because your men protect you? With their guns?’

‘Your gun is different to theirs. It’s very shiny. I haven’t seen a gun like that before. Can I hold it?’

‘No. It’s dangerous if you don’t know how to use it.’

‘I’m old enough to use a gun.’

‘Do you have other weapons? How do the grown-ups defend you? How do they keep the aeldari at bay? Alyce, tell me.’

He was being too insistent, making the girl flinch from him again. Before he could stop her, she bolted, racing out in front of the tavern. ‘Magistrate Lymax!’ she cried. Stürm ground his teeth in chagrin. He thought about running, but this too was not the Mordian way. He straightened up and marched after Alyce instead.

He found her with her fingers wrapped around the magistrate’s thick belt. As he walked into view, her blue eyes reaffixed themselves to him. Lymax had both hands on his shotgun and was frowning. ‘Guardsman… Stürm, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as if nothing was wrong. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten her. I saw her outside, alone, and was worried for her.’

‘And what brings you outside, alone?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ That much was true. ‘My mind was racing. I thought some air might clear it.’

Lymax nodded. ‘There’s no cause for concern,’ he reassured the clinging Alyce. ‘No one wants to hurt you. No one can hurt you in Solace. Why don’t you run along now? Go and find Deputy–’

‘I want to stay with you,’ said Alyce, stubbornly.

‘Now, Alyce, please. I just have a couple of things I have to deal with. I’ll follow you on in a minute or two. I promise.’

Alyce detached herself from the magistrate and scuttled away, giving Stürm a wide berth as she passed him. She ran towards the store. He wanted to look, to see if she went down the alleyway – but Lymax was bearing down on him, his features still tight with suspicion.

‘Don’t her parents wonder where she is?’ asked Stürm.

‘Alyce’s mother died in childbirth,’ said Lymax, gruffly. ‘She’d had the fever for weeks, but held on for the baby’s sake. We’d lost her father only weeks before. He rode out on a hunting expedition and never returned. We all take a hand in caring for young Alyce. She is family to all of us in Solace.’

‘For some of us, the only family we have,’ agreed a cordial voice. Old Man Jerebeus tottered up to the pair, insinuating himself into the conversation.

‘I was wondering–’ Stürm began, but Lymax interrupted him.

‘Your sergeant talked about an early start tomorrow. You should sleep.’

‘Where is Sergeant Kramer?’ asked Stürm.

‘In the doktor’s office, all freshly bandaged up. Your other friend is with him too. Both were spark out when last I looked in on them.’

That was a lie. Zoransky had been charged with watching Kramer. He would never have allowed himself to fall asleep. Stürm kept his expression neutral, however. The last thing he wanted was a gun battle, which would be heard across the village. Not yet. Not until he knew what he was facing.

He didn’t have to fake a yawn, only let it happen. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you’re probably right. I should try to rest.’ He took his leave of Lymax and Jerebeus, heading back to the rear of the tavern. The whole way, he felt their eyes on his back, and he listened intently for the sound of a gun being drawn. He unlatched the rear door, opened it and swung it shut again. He waited until he heard footsteps moving away.

When Lymax had talked of the doktor’s office, he had made an involuntary movement. His head had jerked in a particular direction. Stürm crept from shadow to shadow again, following that pointer. He left the narrow alleyway and the sounds of the gathering crowd behind him.

At the village’s edge, he found a two-storey building with a sign that read ‘Physician’.

There were no lights inside and no sounds of movement, so he forced the door as quietly as he could. It splintered open with little resistance. Stürm readied his lasgun and stepped into the darkness beyond, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

He was in a narrow hallway. He made out doorways to his left and a wooden staircase ahead of him. Checking the downstairs rooms, he found an office and a parlour, both empty. He climbed the stairs, his eyes scouring the shadows that darkened his path. His stomach felt tight. The creak of every wooden step beneath his feet sounded like the screech of an alarm.

There were three more rooms upstairs. In the first of them, Stürm discerned the outlines of a bed with a chair alongside it – and a large, crumpled shape on the floor. His nostrils twitched at the mingled scents of gunpowder and blood. Fearing the worst, he crossed quickly to the window. He yanked its shutters open, flooding the room with reddish moonlight.

Guardsman Zoransky was dead.

Stürm turned the body over. Its armour-reinforced overcoat had been blasted to shreds. He teased a bullet out of the bloody mess of Zoransky’s chest, aching with regret for having sent the big soldier to this fate. He took a deep breath, reining in his feelings. Feelings were the ruin of discipline, and Stürm had work to do. Of Sergeant Kramer, there was no sign. There was more blood on the bed, however, and its sheets were tangled and torn. His comrades had put up a fight.

He hissed into the comm-bead at his collar. ‘Ven Eisen. Do you read me?’

A creaking floorboard behind him alerted him to danger.

A man appeared in the doorway, well dressed and clean-shaven, with a pair of small, round spectacles. He was bringing a pistol to bear. Stürm snapped up his lasgun and fired first, shooting for the heart. The would-be assassin gasped and reeled backwards. He fired one bullet, at the ceiling – then crashed through a banister rail at the top of the stairs.

Stürm raced from the bedroom and descended the stairs four at a time, seeing no point in stealth now that the world had erupted into noise. He yelled Ven Eisen’s name into his comm-bead, but there was no response. He had to get back to the tavern.

The assassin lay sprawled in the hallway. The elusive doktor, Stürm wondered? It hardly mattered. Broken bone protruded through the side of the corpse’s neck. The shack door caught on its dead weight, and Stürm had to kick it out of his way.

He raced into the crisp night air, keeping his head down: a sensible precaution, as two more bullets thudded into the wall behind him. ‘Hold it right there!’ a gruff voice rang out, belatedly. Ignoring it, he dived behind a cluster of rainwater barrels and strafed the shadows around him with las-beams.

Suddenly, villagers were coming at him from every direction, some with pistols drawn, others wielding makeshift clubs or pitchforks or knives. Stürm loosed off five more shots into the advancing mass. He struck three men, maybe four, but the rest fell upon him, shouting and screaming and clawing and battering at him. Above their cries and the drumbeat of his own heart, he heard another voice, a familiar one: ‘Don’t shoot him. Do you hear me? If we take him alive, we buy ourselves another month.’

The crowd wrenched away his lasgun, punching and kicking until his grip on it was loosened. A dozen hands latched on to his uniform, hauling him to his feet. An old woman spat on him as they dragged him to meet the man who had called out.

Old Man Jerebeus stood straight-backed, eyes agleam with malice. He seemed perfectly sober now. ‘You should have slept – you and your friend in there.’ He nodded towards the physician’s shack. ‘We just wanted to get tonight over with and deal with the rest of you later, but you forced our–’

Stürm lunged at him, with a roar of effort. He took his captors by surprise, wrenching himself free of them. He knew for sure now that Jerebeus was the Emperor’s enemy – and this would likely be his only chance to slay him.

His fingers almost reached the old man’s throat. Then, something – a pistol butt, he would later assume – cracked the back of his skull, dislodging his cap. For a second, he deluded himself that willpower would keep him upright. Then a rain of fists drove him to the ground, and the stars above him seemed to pinwheel and explode.

The next thing his senses registered was the clanging of a heavy iron gate.

Stürm opened his eyes and instinctively lifted his head. A flash of pain blinded him and teased a groan out of his throat. His lasgun was gone, as was his combat knife. He felt a rush of shame, leavened with fear for his comrades, and he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Bedsprings creaked under his weight.

‘I thought you’d be out for the night. I’m starting to wonder if you off-world types ever sleep at all.’

He was in a square cell that smelled faintly of cleaning agents. It was bordered by wooden walls on two sides and bars on the others. A crude symbol, meaningless to him, had been etched into the stone floor in blood. Someone had tried to scrub it away, but only partially succeeded. A tiny window above the bed was barred too. Stürm guessed that he was in the building he had seen before, beside the store. The gaolhouse. Through the bars to his left was a second cell, furnished like this one with a basic bunk and a chamber pot, otherwise empty.

Behind the bars in front of him was Magistrate Gideon Lymax. He was backlit by a candle sitting in a brass holder on a desk, casting his face into shadow. He had just locked the cell gate with a key: one of many, attached to a jangling ring. He tossed it casually to an older, grizzled man, who sat with his heels up on the desk.

‘How long have I been unconscious?’ asked Stürm.

Lymax shrugged. ‘Not too long. Long enough.’

‘Give me one hour,’ he had said to Ven Eisen.

‘Don’t expect your friends to come rescue you,’ said Lymax, as if he had read Stürm’s mind. ‘We had to take them prisoner too. You gave us no option, in the end. I thought it best to hold you separate from one another.’

‘Those of us you haven’t killed,’ Stürm spat.

‘The big fellow, you mean? Zoransky? That wasn’t meant to… He should have known when to stop fighting. He should have known when he was beaten.’

‘We are Mordian Iron Guard,’ Stürm growled. ‘We are never beaten.’

‘Begging your pardon, that’s not how it looks from over here.’

‘What did you do to Sergeant Kramer? Where is he?’

Lymax’s gaze dropped to his boots. It seemed he felt some shame for his actions, despite everything. ‘He wouldn’t have survived long, in any case. His wound was infected. We don’t have the medicines to treat him.’

‘What did you do to him?’ Stürm demanded again.

‘This village is more than our home,’ said Lymax. ‘Solace is our shelter. Here, we are protected. You’ve seen the monsters. You know what they can do. They’re waiting for us out there, in the forest. For a hundred years, they have been waiting.’

He had ignored Stürm’s question. Did that mean Kramer was dead? Stürm balled his fists, suppressing his righteous anger. It would do no good to scream at Lymax. As calmly as he could, his voice trembling a little, he asked, ‘How are you protected?’

‘They cannot reach us here,’ said the magistrate.

‘Why not? Some kind of weapon?’

‘They can’t set foot across the village limits.’

‘What happens if they do?’

Lymax turned away, and Stürm thought he would say no more. In a hoarse voice, however, he confessed: ‘I only saw it happen the one time. A female wood sprite. She made it as far as the tavern. We stepped out to meet her, those who could muster the nerve for it. We thought this was it, the final showdown. Only, then…’

His words ran dry. Stürm prompted him, impatiently. ‘Then what?’

‘Something, some force, set about her. I was standing just ten feet from her as she was pounded into the ground. I heard her bones snapping one by one. I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I felt… My heart was pounding fit to burst out of my chest, and there were voices screaming in my ears, screaming for blood.’

Stürm swallowed down a rising tide of bile. ‘“Some force”, you said.’

‘Some invisible force.’

‘You must know what you are describing.’

‘That I do. Our protector. Our shield.’

‘You must know what that–’

Lymax turned back to Stürm, and now his eyes were defiantly ablaze. ‘The Emperor doesn’t see us way out here, or chooses not to. Our ancestors faced slaughter. What choice had they? What choice have we, but to honour the deal they made?’

‘You could choose to die with honour,’ argued Stürm.

‘At last count, this village houses one hundred and fourteen souls. My duty is to them. We have a deal – and it is a good deal, if hard to bear some days. We are protected in Solace – but yes, there is a price. There is always a price.’

Stürm had miscalculated. He had thought he could reason with the magistrate. He knew now that he was beyond reaching.

Lymax tipped his broad-brimmed hat, his old cordial self returning like a well-worn mask. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he drawled, ‘I have business to attend to. I’ll leave you in the hands of my trusted deputy here. Until the morning.’

He turned and strode out of the building. In the silence that followed, the deputy rocked back on his chair. He rummaged a bottle out of the desk and poured himself a drink, which he sucked through his ratty grey beard. He lit up a lho-leaf stick, filling the room with pungent smoke. He barely glanced at his prisoner at all. Stürm doubted there was much point in talking to him either.

He had to do something. He had a shrewd idea of what Lymax’s ‘business’ must be, and he had to stop it. He levered himself to his feet, and was overcome by dizziness. He paced the cell to get his blood circulating again. He tore the threadbare sheets from his bed, and set about plaiting and knotting them together.

At this point, he imagined he had the deputy’s attention. He kept his back to him, as he fashioned his sheets into a noose. He heard a scrape from the deputy’s chair. He cast his makeshift rope over a ceiling rafter, as footsteps hurried up to the cell gate. He looped the rope around his bed frame and knotted it.

The deputy pounded his fist on the bars. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I refuse to sit here waiting to die,’ said Stürm. He stepped up onto the bed.

‘But you aren’t dying tonight. You could still have months yet. If you do as you’re told and accept the way things are, you could even have a comfortable–’

‘The Golden Throne I will,’ spat Stürm, reaching for the dangling noose.

The deputy drew his pistol. ‘Now, you step down from there.’

‘Go ahead,’ Stürm challenged him. ‘Shoot me. That way, I die resisting the Emperor’s enemies. That way, I die with honour – on my own terms, not on yours. My soul remains undefiled by whatever dark powers you have conjured here.’ He slipped the noose over his head.

The deputy gave a start and fumbled with his jangling key ring. He thrust a key into the lock, cursing as it wouldn’t turn.

Stürm tightened the noose around his own neck. As his gaoler found the right key at last, unlocked the gate and burst into the cell, he took a powerful leap from the bed. The slipknot he had tied around the frame unravelled. He cannoned into the deputy and sent him reeling backwards into the bars.

Stürm pressed his attack with two punches to the head, one more to the stomach. Dazed and winded, his victim slid gracelessly to the floor. Stürm snatched his weapon from him. He only wished there had been a more honourable way.

The deputy was conscious, though only just. ‘Can’t… stop them,’ he groaned.

‘How old are you?’ asked Stürm. A few years younger than Old Man Jerebeus, he estimated. ‘How long before your turn comes?’ The deputy didn’t answer him. His eyelids fluttered, and he slumped into unconsciousness. Stürm locked him in the cell and searched the outer room for his equipment, finding nothing.

He was left with the deputy’s gun. Its operation seemed simple enough, similar to a stub pistol he had fired in training. It had no scope, just a notch at the end of the barrel to sight along. There were shells in each of its six chambers.

It wasn’t much, but it was all the Emperor had granted him. It would have to be enough. Stürm heard a swell of excited voices. The crowd behind the gaolhouse was being whipped to fever pitch. He had no time to search for his imprisoned comrades. He hurried out of the building and plunged into the alleyway alongside it.

One hundred and fourteen souls, Lymax had said.

Almost all of them had assembled at Solace’s heart. They filled an open square, at the centre of which had been erected a scaffold. The magistrate himself stood atop this, Old Man Jerebeus alongside him. Four younger men, between them, supported the limp, bound form of Sergeant Kramer.

Lymax was appealing for quiet. At length, the crowd subsided enough for him to speak. Concealed in the mouth of the alleyway, behind their backs, Stürm watched and listened.

‘This past month has been uncommonly kind to us,’ said Lymax. ‘Young Karib shook off his sickness to become a fine, strapping young man. Our hunting parties returned safe from the forest, having gathered all we need. We celebrated the arrival of a new member of our community.’

A smattering of applause greeted this pronouncement, as if childbirth were a rare event in Solace. It probably was.

‘Even more crucially, no wood sprites dared enter our village. We were kept safe from the monsters that would slaughter us all in our beds. Our children were kept safe. We were protected. Now, it is the night of the Thanksgiving Moon once again, and time for us to show how we appreciate that protection.’

These words dampened the crowd’s enthusiasm. Lymax continued, however: ‘It pleases me to say that here too fortune has favoured us. Tonight, we were to say farewell to a long-time pillar of our community.’ Old Man Jerebeus shuffled forward and took a half-bow. ‘Thank you, my friend,’ said Lymax, ‘for what you were willing to do for all our sakes. It will not be forgotten. That sacrifice is no longer needed, however – because, tonight, five strangers came to Solace.’

Sergeant Kramer was dragged to the hanging frame. He was awake, but barely so. Stürm saw purple bruises on his face, even from this distance. Three of the young men lifted him, while the fourth looped a rope around his ankles. They were planning to hang Kramer upside down – like the aeldari out in the forest. Stürm felt anger overtaking him again, even as his stomach muscles cramped in disgust.

‘They are not like us,’ Lymax proclaimed. ‘We know this from hard-won experience. As city-dwellers, they live their lives protected by great walls and armies. They haven’t endured what we have been forced to endure. They cannot comprehend our ways, and will never approve of them.’

The crowd rallied now. Many yelled out in anger – which made Stürm resent them all the more, because what did they have to be angry about? He sensed that proceedings were building to a climax. His every nerve screamed at him to act – but what could he do? Every man and woman here was armed as well as he was. Moonlight glinted off a blade in the magistrate’s hand.

‘The lives of these strangers will buy more life for all of us – their leader tonight, the others during the moons to come.’

Sergeant Kramer was hoisted by his ankles, the crowd hooting and jeering at him. Someone threw a bottle at him, which shattered on the hanging frame. For Stürm, it was the final straw. These people, every one of them, were traitors, consorting with the vilest forces imaginable. The thought of what they had done to Zoransky, what they were doing now, made his blood run hot in his veins. He wished he had killed the deputy at the gaolhouse. He wished he could kill every one of them.

‘The appointed moment arrives once more,’ Lymax intoned. He brandished his knife and stepped up to the hanging Kramer. He uttered an incantation in some arcane, blasphemous language. Stürm threw his hands to his ears, but couldn’t quite blot out the terrible, painful words.

Then the crowd began to chant along with their magistrate: a grumbling undercurrent at first, but swelling to a resounding roar. They pounded their fists in the air. The moon was still full, the stars bright, but the sky seemed to have darkened. Stürm could feel the villagers’ hyped-up emotions like a physical wave crashing over him, making his heart beat faster. The veins in his temple throbbed.

He had to force himself to breathe. He had to think clearly, now more than ever before. He raised his salvaged pistol. He could get off two shots, perhaps three, before the crowd saw where he was and fell upon him. He had to make them count.

He rested his sights upon Magistrate Lymax, whom he hated most of all. Think clearly… Would his death halt this unholy ceremony? Probably not. Someone else – Old Man Jerebeus or one of the younger men – would only take over from him.

‘He wouldn’t have survived long, in any case. His wound was infected.’

Stürm saw no way to save his comrade’s life. He could save his soul, however. Vulfgang Kramer was a good man, a devout man. He deserved the Emperor’s mercy. One bullet for him, then; one for the magistrate after. Stürm shifted his aim to his faithful comrade, his friend. He prayed for the fortitude to do his duty. He took a deep, steadying breath. His finger tightened on his trigger.

Then, with his peripheral vision, through the crowd, he saw her.

She was standing at the front, a hundred yards away from him. Her back was to him, but her vivid red tunic and flowing blonde hair were unmistakable.

Suddenly, Alyce’s head snapped around. She couldn’t have seen him in the shadows, not from that distance. It was impossible. While all other eyes were fixed upon the stage, however, her bright blue orbs stared directly at Guardsman Stürm.

His bullet ricocheted off the hanging frame. He cursed in frustration. He had allowed himself to be distracted, and the strange weapon’s recoil had surprised him. He re-aimed and fired again, hastily – even as Lymax dived for cover. Stürm was just in time to see his broad-brimmed hat dropping behind the scaffold.

The villagers turned on him, howling in indignation. He knew he had to run, lest he take Kramer’s place. Then he realised that no one was moving towards him. The raging crowd parted, creating a channel from him to Alyce. She was skipping towards him, her eyes shining coldly, a smile pulling at her lips.

She raised a hand towards Stürm, and something struck him in the stomach. He doubled over with the force of the blow, which was followed by another and another. Invisible punches assailed him from every direction, filling him with pain, making him jerk like a broken puppet. His nostrils filled with the scent of blood, though he didn’t think he had been cut. The faces of Solace’s inhabitants leered before him, twisted into nightmare masks. Their raging voices filled his ears, building in intensity until he felt like his head would explode.

He recalled Lymax’s tale of the aeldari that had penetrated the village, of the dark force that had destroyed it. In a moment of adrenaline-sharpened clarity, he knew that force had been the anger of the villagers themselves. A force that was killing him too. A force collected, directed, embodied – somehow, in some way that he couldn’t understand and feared to try – by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl.

Alyce had almost reached him. Stürm fell to his knees at her scuffed leather, open-toed shoes, tears and sweat blurring his vision. He gaped up at three images of her face with its fixed look of detached amusement. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘I am Mordian Iron Guard. No remorse, no mercy, no forgiveness.’

He had never encountered a psyker before. He had been trained to resist their malign mental influence, but had never imagined the effort would hurt so much. He felt as if his mind would shatter.

‘Not a single step back, not a single moment of hesitation.’ He recited the words of Colonel Drescher, when he had raised the legendary 18th Regiment – words that had been drilled into every Iron Guard recruit since.

‘You will not… will not succumb to fear or… doubt…’ His right arm was a dead weight, but he willed himself to raise it. The primitive pistol trembled in his grip. Three images of Alyce became hundreds, twisting and whirling in front of him as if he were looking at her through a cracked kaleidoscope.

‘…and you will relent only after you have given your last moment for…’

Stürm screwed his eyes shut. He tried to focus past the pain that wracked his body, his mind and his soul. He tried to slow his breathing, which had become a series of tortured gasps, slicing into his lungs like icy blades. He couldn’t see his enemy, couldn’t hear her, but he knew where she was by the waves of hatred emanating from her.

‘…for the Emperor!’ he bellowed. And fired his pistol.

It felt like the world had stopped.

For one eternal moment, Stürm drifted in silent darkness and knew the Emperor’s peace. Only gradually did he become aware of his surroundings again. He was still at the edge of the square, still on his knees. His pistol was still warm. It pinned his hand to the ground, as if it had become too heavy to bear.

Many members of the crowd were kneeling too. They might have been praying – assuming they had anyone left to pray to. Their anger had drained out of them, leaving them spent. Someone let out a keening, despairing howl. It was Old Man Jerebeus, on the scaffold. Some followed his lead, while others wept self-pitying tears over Alyce’s body or just into the dry, dusty soil.

Stürm had just shot a child. The thought made him feel nauseous. He would need to pray too, for forgiveness. Not now, though. The villagers appeared to have forgotten all about him. Doubtless they would pull themselves together soon and turn on the architect of their woes. Stürm knew he had to move – only he couldn’t muster the energy to stand.

He saw a blur of movement, then another. He blinked, in case his vision was at fault. He witnessed an explosion of blood and gore in the crowd directly ahead of him, but couldn’t see its cause. Momentarily, he glimpsed a milky-white face, silken black hair and mocking eyes. Then, there was more blood – and the screaming started.

There were aeldari in Solace. They must have been waiting all this time for their chance. As ever, there may only have been a handful of them; there may have been dozens. It was impossible to tell. Stürm only glimpsed them out of the corners of his eyes. He tracked them by their deadly wakes.

He saw the flashing of their slender blades. He saw one villager after another cut down before they could apprehend their peril. Some were just beginning to rally. Pistols were drawn and fired, their bullets striking more friends than foes.

Stürm pushed his way through them. He elbowed and punched them aside when they stumbled into his path. His duty, first and foremost, was to his endangered comrades. He reached the scaffold and pulled himself up onto it. He was too late.

Kramer was still hanging, inverted, from his ropes. His throat was slit. Old Man Jerebeus knelt beside him. Tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks. His hands dripped with the sergeant’s blood. His clothes were plastered with it.

‘I thought… I prayed, if I completed the sacrifice,’ the old man bleated. He raised his head to the moon and cried out, ‘Take me. Please. Take my body. My soul. Do with them as you wish. Just, please, do not desert us. We need you. My people. My family. Don’t let the lives we have lived here count for–’

Stürm shot the old man in the head.

He heard the heavy double-clack of a cocking shotgun. He knew, before he turned, who he would find behind him. Lymax marched across the planking towards him, with both barrels levelled at Stürm’s unprotected head. His pinhole eyes blazed with contempt. ‘You did this,’ he spluttered.

‘I defended myself and my comrades from you.’

‘From the moment we took you in here, you judged our way of life.’

‘Your way of death.’

‘We only defended ourselves too. We did what we had to, to survive.’

‘But at a price.’

‘A few lives – most of them close to ending, anyhow – in exchange for a hundred years of peace. Now, you have destroyed us.’

‘Yes,’ Stürm acknowledged, proudly. ‘I have.’ He straightened his back and puffed out his chest. Lymax could hardly miss him at this range, but he would die with honour. He had served the Emperor dutifully. His life was a price worth paying.

Suddenly, the magistrate stiffened. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth and the shotgun slipped from his numbed fingers. It took Stürm a second to see the blade protruding from Lymax’s chest. Then he noticed the shadow beside him. He fired at it, but the shadow, along with the blade, was gone. He whirled around, half expecting to find both looming behind him, but saw nothing.

Lymax’s corpse hit the planking with a hefty, wet thud. Stürm was left alone on the scaffold at the eye of a maelstrom. He checked his gun: two bullets left. He decided to save them. He took a breath and leapt back into the heart of the melee.

He fought his way through it, through a writhing mass of anger and fear and despair, back the way he had come across the square. Some villagers yelled out as they saw him. Some even made hopeless grabs for him, but most were only concerned with themselves. Stürm saw no more aeldari, but he felt their presence in the spasms that wracked the crowd each time they struck.

He found himself trampling an increasing number of dead and dying. Hemmed in as he was, he was no less vulnerable than anyone else around him. He probably wouldn’t even see the creature that slew him.

‘Mordians don’t run.’ His own words returned to haunt him.

He fought his way along the alleyway between gaolhouse and store.

Beyond this, the crowd was dispersing. People streamed into their all-too-flimsy shacks, bolting doors behind them. One man, locked out of his home, hammered on the shutters, pleading with his family indoors. Seconds later, he lay dead on the ground, criss-crossed with livid red cuts. The aeldari were here too. ‘They’re faster than we are. They want the pleasure of hunting you down.’

Stürm heard the cracks and whines of a pair of lasguns. He found the sound – something familiar, amid so much that was not – reassuring. Guardsmen Ven Eisen and Ludo stood back to back outside the tavern, ensuring that no one could sneak up behind either of them. Ven Eisen’s posture was awkward, favouring his injured foot, while Ludo struggled to aim one-handed. They fought on, nevertheless.

Stürm hurried up to them. ‘Where have you been?’ Ven Eisen greeted him, breathlessly. He loosed another beam into the shadows, punching a hole through a barrel. ‘What the Golden Throne is happening in Solace?’

‘A long story,’ said Stürm, ‘best saved for our debriefing.’

‘Armed men burst into our room. I was unarmed, and Ludo was sleeping. They held us captive. When the shouting started, one of them panicked and fled. We sprung on the other two and overpowered them.’

‘We’re leaving. Now,’ said Stürm.

Ven Eisen gaped at him. ‘What of Sergeant Kramer?’

Stürm shook his head. ‘He’s dead. Zoransky too. That leaves me in command of this squad, and I say we’re leaving.’

How could he explain all he had witnessed here? Already, he questioned his own recollections, as if his mind knew they were too dangerous to retain. He felt as if he had just stumbled through a dream, and now reality’s cold air had slapped him hard across the face. He only knew he had to get away from here.

He led his two surviving comrades out of the village, the same way they had entered it. The aeldari didn’t bother them. By sheer good fortune or the Emperor’s grace, he wondered? Perhaps they saw the villagers as the greater threat to them. Or they knew three Guardsmen wouldn’t get far in the forest.

It was a few hours yet till dawn. ‘My guess is, our compasses will lead us back to our campsite now,’ said Stürm. He even half believed it himself.

They reached the branch from which the dead aeldari had hung. Someone had cut down the body and taken it away. From among the huddle of wooden buildings behind them, they heard a woman’s scream, abruptly curtailed. Ven Eisen faltered. He had obeyed his orders, as any Mordian would. Now, however, he could hold his silence no longer. ‘Shouldn’t we fight for them? They are men, after all, facing the xenos scourge. Is it not our duty to protect them?’

Stürm shook his head emphatically. ‘Not this time. Not these men. You haven’t seen all I have seen. They have amply earned this fate. Our duty now is to survive to fight again – and choose a better battle, a worthier cause, next time.’

His comrades saw his grim expression and the shadows in his eyes, and they questioned him no more. They formed up and straightened their backs, adjusting their bright blue uniform greatcoats. As one, they stepped out into the dark, foreboding forest.

They shook the dust of Solace from their shoes to whatever fate now awaited them.

TURN OF THE ADDER

J C Stearns

‘The reward of treachery is victory.’

Thunderous cheers rolled through the drukhari fleet. Archon K’Shaic stood on the command dais of his battle-barque and held up a hand for silence. On hundreds of sleek-keeled Raiders, the archon’s holographic image – projected from each transport’s command relay or the hand-held unit of a dracon – towered over the kabalite foot-soldiers and gun crews. K’Shaic’s image was repeated so frequently that even the countless hired mercenaries from lower Commorragh, soaring between the Raiders on jetbikes and skyboards, could hear his proclamations.

‘The Dark City stands as an eternal monument to the power of betrayal!’ Another cheer, loud enough to be heard over the screaming jets as the massive fleet barrelled through the webway. ‘But,’ the archon said, holding one interjectory finger aloft, ‘what the Jade Labyrinth has done is no betrayal!’

All the fleet’s members booed as one. They followed the oratory lead of the great archon as surely as they followed the physical lead of his battle-barque. The triple-decked catamaran was larger even than the Razorwing jetfighters roaring overhead. Disintegrators and dark lances bristled along its long black decks. The graceful hull was the colour of oiled gunmetal, the sharp edges of its plates tinged violet, its sails boasting the insignia of the Bladed Lotus, in K’Shaic’s colours of purple on steel. Evaeline, the barque’s experienced pilot, commanded the ship from directly behind the command dais.

‘Had the hekatarii of the Cult of the Jade Labyrinth merely turned upon us, they would be role models, not criminals. No, the Labyrinthae have done something far worse than betraying us – they have chosen subservience. They’ve made themselves willing slaves, whoring themselves for the false promise of a non-existent deity!’

Leaning against a railing on the barque, Naeddre and his brother Qeine watched their father rousing the bloodlust of his troops. K’Shaic, Archon of the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus, was in rare form. Naeddre didn’t know how many slaves had been flayed to give his father such a youthful vigour, but the number had to be in the thousands. He’d never seen K’Shaic so energetic.

‘I say, if these Ynnari,’ K’Shaic snarled the word with undisguised contempt, ‘if these wyches and whatever craftworld scum have lured them astray want to court death so badly, then let’s give them exactly what they’re asking for!’

The archon keyed his command dais. Across the fleet, his mighty holographic images vanished.

‘Inspiring,’ said Qeine. Tall and broad of shoulder, Qeine was a peak physical specimen of his kind. He wore ridged ghostplate armour to add to his profile, which made him tower over every warrior on the ship.

‘Victory will give us our real inspiration,’ said K’Shaic. Even without his holographic enhancements, he was an imposing figure. His own ghostplate armour was exquisite, a custom-built relic, its form the template for the armour of every kabalite soldier in his employ. His long flowing mane of ebony hair normally struck Naeddre as a token of vanity, out of place in his father’s aging features. With the full glory of his youth restored, it suited the archon. His alabaster features could have been graven from purest marble, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut flesh. His ancient powerblade, the surgesabre, rested at his hip, silently hungering for murder.

‘All the inspiration in the galaxy will do us little good if we’re murdered from behind,’ said Naeddre. Both his father and older brother fixed him with hateful glares, although he could see Qeine struggling to keep the edges of a smile out of his sneer.

Slender where his brother was muscular, short where Qeine was tall, Naeddre had always been seen as the lesser brother. Nearly everyone with whom they interacted seemed to take his reduced stature as evidence of a reduced character. Qeine boasted the best equipment, while Naeddre went to war in a studded flight vest befitting a wealthy heliarch. The thin material made it easier to manoeuvre on a skyboard, sacrificing none of the wearer’s agility for added protection. In fact, while it looked as flimsy as the wychsuit of any hellion, it had been made by the same craftsmen as Qeine’s ghostplate, and could easily deflect a bolt shell or Commorrite splinter shard.

‘If you fear the forces at your back, then perhaps you’re better suited to guarding the Amaranth Spire,’ K’Shaic sneered.

‘It’s not our own forces that worry me,’ said Naeddre. ‘They’re far more interested in murdering the Jade Labyrinth.’ Which was true. When Kysthene and the wyches under her command had fled the Dark City, declaring allegiance to the Ynnari and seizing control of the Port of Widows, they’d done more than just betray their kabalite benefactors. They’d left the Bladed Lotus without their primary means of psychic sustenance. They’d cut off the kabal’s access to the port that provided a great deal of its material wealth. Most importantly, they’d made the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus, and by extension every member of it, look foolish and weak. Their destruction was not only in compliance with Vect’s edicts, but also a necessary step if the kabal was going to survive in the wake of Commorragh’s recent upheavals.

‘The garrisons?’ Qeine guessed.

‘The garrisons,’ Naeddre confirmed.

Their father steepled his fingers, staring at his two sons. They needed no goading to know when he expected them to compete for his favour.

‘Ignore them,’ said Qeine. ‘They’re intended to reinforce the port in the event of sustained invasion, but the Port of Widows was never designed to repel invasion from the Commorragh side. We’ll overwhelm them, put the Labyrinthae to death and surround whatever forces remain in the garrisons before they have time to assault our rear lines.’ As ever, Qeine’s plan was raw, naked aggression, designed to win through bravado and brute force.

‘Take them one at a time,’ Naeddre countered. ‘We first overwhelm one of the rear garrisons, then the other, before moving on to the port itself. Let each enemy bastion that falls increase the terror of the next.’

‘If the corsair fleets arrive at the Port of Widows, the wych cult will barter all the goods they’ve stolen from the kabal for passage away from our reach,’ Qeine argued. ‘We can’t give them the time to escape.’ He stood, looming over his brother. Naeddre wondered if his sibling truly believed they needed to act with such urgency, or if he just didn’t want to return to the webway fortifications. Whenever K’Shaic wished to remove his sons from the Dark City, either as punishment or to curtail any sudden rises in influence, he often chose to send them to command the garrisons.

‘No one’s suggesting we do,’ Naeddre countered. He dropped his arms to his side and returned his brother’s aggressive posture, ignoring their height difference, their chests nearly touching, each close enough to feel the other’s angry breath. ‘The corsairs aren’t due to arrive until tomorrow. By then, there won’t even be a lock of wych hair remaining in the port.’

The brothers might have come to blows if Archon K’Shaic hadn’t raised his voice.

‘Enough,’ he said, waving his hand. ‘The kabal as a whole will bypass the garrisons entirely and assault the port. You’ll each take your personal forces, the kabalites loyal to you and the mercenaries you’ve hired, and assault one of the garrisons. Naeddre will take the Viscerean Garrison, and Qeine the Weeping Garden. Waste no time in your conquest – once whatever commanders you find have been slain, join me with all due haste. Claim your glory in the main assault.’ Their father gestured with his arm, and two of the Raiders flanking the barque drifted towards the rear. Each carried a trio of incubi, K’Shaic’s customary ‘gift’ to protect his sons as well as to guard against treachery.

Naeddre and Qeine turned as one and stalked towards the aft of the barque. They needed no further instruction. Their father had turned the brothers upon one another, then taken the best part of each of their offerings and left them with only veiled threats. Each second that passed before they reached the Port of Widows would be another that saw their own personal contribution to the legend that K’Shaic was constructing diminish.

The brothers each boarded their own personal craft, Qeine astride the gleaming onyx bike he’d named Razordirge, and Naeddre atop a broad-winged skyboard of his own design.

‘Watch your back, brother,’ Qeine laughed before fitting his helm. At some point he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with triangular neoferrium razors, giving him the look of a grinning predatory beast. ‘I’d hate for one of your mercenary leaders to slay you for that fine toy of yours.’

Like all archons, each of the brothers was in charge of one of the kabal’s commodities. Qeine, as a young officer, had taken troops loyal to him and captured a large chemical manufactory, giving him control of a great supply of quality ammunition for the poisoned weapons of the line in the Dark City. His forces were full of gunboats filled with kabal troops, outfitted with the finest weapons.

It was Naeddre’s turn to laugh. ‘No need,’ he said. ‘I’ve promised the heliarch who brings me the most plundered hekatarii knives a Moonfoe of his very own.’ Naeddre’s own commodity was more niche. Creating exquisite skyboards and jetbikes was a highly specific task, one that required specialised labour. It took slaves with a discerning enough ear to attune the acoustic crystal lattices as well as the manual dexterity to string them. It was no easy job, but decades of scouring the galaxy for the perfect servants to assist his work had paid off. His creations were the pride of the wych cults. Entire gangs of hellions would fight to the death, just so the last gang scum standing could receive one of Naeddre’s cast-offs.

‘Good,’ said Qeine. He gunned Razordirge’s engine. ‘You should be on your guard. This far from Commorragh, and with his pet wyches in open revolt, father is uncharacteristically vulnerable. One of his servants might take such an opportunity to remove him from his position.’

‘How good of you to think of K’shaic in his time of need.’ Naeddre snapped shut his own ghostplate helm, which was both his connection to the command network and his badge of office. He shivered as micro needles bit into his scalp, locking the helm securely. ‘Take care to show the same caution with your own position.’

Qeine laughed, and his bike blazed away, leaving only a flare of pale energy behind him. This attack was what both brothers had been waiting decades for: an opportunity to assassinate their father while most of his forces were otherwise engaged. Which one of them took the mantle of leadership was open to speculation, but both of them would be willing to bleed that particular issue out after K’Shaic’s fate had been settled. First, however, Naeddre had to take the garrison.

Following his orders, the soldiers loyal to him peeled away from the bulk of the attack fleet. Qeine had scores of Raiders at his command, enticed by the elder brother’s legendary brutality, and flocks of scourges willing to follow him for the promise of his favour. Qeine was the preferred successor, and no small number of kabalites wanted to be able to claim that they had supported the new ruler before his ascension.

Naeddre’s own forces were less prestigious. He had support from the kabal, to be sure, but the men and women who followed him did so because he had personally recruited them, because they had seen first hand the rewards of his leadership. Where Qeine had dozens of gunboats, a single squadron of Ravagers followed Naeddre’s own force as they barrelled towards their target. No, Naeddre’s forces consisted largely of Commorragh’s dregs. For every Raider that Qeine could boast, Naeddre had a gang of hellions or pack of Reavers ready to murder at his command. They knew the arenas of the Jade Labyrinth would be inherited by someone, that a new wych cult would find themselves with the Bladed Lotus’ patronage. The mass elevation of scores of low-born Commorrites was rare in the extreme, but circumstances had put just such a shining prize within their grasp, and every one of Naeddre’s soldiers was determined to prove themselves worthy of such a reward. To show his solidarity with them, he even wielded a helglaive, albeit an exquisitely crafted one that had cost him an entire raid’s worth of slaves.

The webway tunnel was massive, large enough to accommodate an entire battleship. The edges were so far away they were lost in the mists that clung to the borders of the passage. There was no wind within its confines, but so intense was their flight that they may as well have been flying into a hurricane gale.

Just as Naeddre finished concentrating on his gauntlet to bring the dark orb of his shadow field into existence, the oiled black metal of the Viscerean Garrison came distantly into view. A gleaming sphere of darkness, curving blades jutting from above and below, the fortress sported three decks, which ringed it like lines of longitude. All were empty. No picket line greeted them, no warning weapons fire harried them. No enemy aircraft hung above the fortification. Naeddre felt his heart begin to sink with the prospect that the enemy had left the stronghold undefended.

But then they began pouring forth. From both above and below, skyboards streamed into the air of the webway, and even at so great a distance, Naeddre could hear the shrieking war cries of the hellion gangs.

All around him, the low-born scum in his employ shrieked and cackled their own cries. Expletives, profanity, promises, curses and simple wordless screams of bloodlust: the desperate flock of murderers filled the air with a hateful chorus. Naeddre couldn’t tell who opened fire first; the sound of splinter pods thrumming and the spitting of shards of toxin-laden death seemed to start simultaneously with the zipping hiss of glass needles shooting past. Neither side could hit a specific target, but that hardly mattered. The splinter pod wasn’t a weapon of precision; it was intended to strafe, to keep the enemies’ heads down long enough to close with agoniser and helglaive.

The cluster of hellions screaming towards them bore the colours of several rival gangs, all painted over with the looping knotwork designs of the Jade Labyrinth. There was no sign of any Ynnari banners or insignias. Naeddre crouched as the packs barrelled towards one another.

‘Reavers, now,’ said Naeddre. The gangs of jetbikers under his command leapt to obey. With a high-pitched whine of overcharged engines, the razored bikes careened ahead of the hellions and into the knotted mass of the enemy. With a speed that not even the hellions could match, they tore through flesh and skyboard alike.

The Reavers blazed through the masses of bodies, seeking targets with the most intricate skyboards, the greatest trophies dangling from their wychsuits. With grav-talons, envenomed blades and the shearing edges of the bikes themselves, the Reavers shredded the heliarchs where they found them, then shot away before the Labyrinthae could react.

Naeddre howled in joy as the lines smashed together. The hiss and zip of traded splinter fire was gone, replaced by the clang of helglaives ringing from each other, the metallic sound of blade meeting flesh and the frustrated rage-filled shrieks of the dying.

For Naeddre, the battleground was an aerial slaughterhouse. The choking, repressive aura of his shadow field stole the momentum from any who came within its radius, slowing their reflexes and even the engines of their skyboards. His enemies came to him dulled, blinded and lethargic. He roared through the air, deflecting enemy blades aside and gutting foes with wanton abandon. Let Qeine and his father exalt in conquering enemies of equal skill; for Naeddre there was no greater thrill than killing his way, godlike, through an enemy force that stood helpless and weak before him. He was an obsidian cloud, blazing through the foe for his soldiers, casting a rain of riderless skyboards and dismembered body parts in his wake.

The pain of his victims was a wonderful thrill, so exquisite he could nearly taste it, but today something was wrong. Normally, the delightful rush of each victim’s agony would be capped by the ultimate moment of fear and despair as they finally slipped away into death, but with each new kill, the climax remained absent. Naeddre frowned as he realised this. He lashed out with his helglaive and lopped the head from one of his own Reavers as the biker shot past. The pain was exquisite, sharp and solid like a pungent, aged funerary wine, but still the Reaver’s life force slipped away without the final moment of despair.

‘Soul drinkers,’ he hissed. The revelation thrilled him and terrified him at the same time. Ever since the last disjunction, the archons and haemonculi had missed no opportunity to tell the populace of Commorragh about the falsehood of Ynnead, that the god did not exist and that his followers were powerless.

Like all drukhari, he felt the pull of She-Who-Thirsts, the devouring addiction that eroded their souls with each passing moment. Each drop of fear and pain he inflicted fed the void of Her hunger by proxy, preserving his own spirit from consumption. However, since the flight of the first Ynnari and the shattering of Khaine’s Gate, he had felt a second pull at his soul. Not the screaming, howling demand of his birthright, but a gentle, insistent call. He sometimes wondered how many other denizens of Commorragh listened to the wordless, whispered entreaty, and like him ignored it, all the while hoping no one would realise they heard the call of a god who wasn’t supposed to exist.

Victorious cries echoed over the command net. The mob of hellions that had poured out to meet them were hopelessly outnumbered, their leaders surgically murdered by the arcing paths of the Reavers. The defenders were far from finished, though. The first wave of Labyrinthae was just a lure to bring the bulk of the Commorrites closer and keep them engaged. More hellions were swarming from the upper- and lower-most levels of the Viscerean Garrison now, manoeuvring to hit the attackers from above and below. The Venoms that had been conspicuously absent previously now hovered around from behind the fortress. A flock of scourges soared far overhead. The chatter and screams across the command network in Naeddre’s helm announced a dozen new threats.

Naeddre glanced up to see incoming hellions, curling down like the leading edge of a great wave threatening to wash them out to sea. They had repainted the underside of their skyboards, each bearing a single part of a larger image, so that when they flew together, they formed a single picture: a jagged, stylised version of the rune of Ynnead. Even among his own battle-hardened and desperate troops, Naeddre could feel an undercurrent of fear at the sight of the image. He took a moment to savour the peppery spice of the terror rippling across the battlefield before responding.

‘Raevij, this would be your moment.’

‘Confirmed, your grace.’

The Ravagers that had trailed the attack force, creeping low and slow along the lowest edges of the massive webway tunnel, struck with the potency of a capricious, sadistic god. They rose from the mists, disintegrator arrays blazing. Coruscating streams of blue-white energy tore into the lower hellion pack. Boards and riders alike fell before the torrent, the superheated energies enough to utterly destroy anything they came into contact with.

‘Reavers, tear their Venoms apart,’ Naeddre commanded. ‘All Raider crews, ignore the defenders. Land the damn troops, and then engage the Labyrinthae out here at will.’ The scourge flock swooped in a great arcing glide, their haywire blasters raining down on the Ravagers below. ‘Crimson Chains, break from orders and kill those winged bastards.’ The Reaver gang swung away from the other bikers and fell into formation, rocketing towards the retreating scourges. ‘As to the hellions, there’s a second Moonfoe skyboard for whoever brings me the most scalps!’

The savages screamed loud enough to be heard over the roar of battle. Naeddre skimmed low beneath the melee in the sky, even as the reinforcements were crashing into them from above. He needed to end this battle quickly; something was out of place. The anguish of the dying was invigorating, but nowhere near as vitalising as it should have been. It was as if the lives of the dying were being extinguished before he and the other Commorrites could truly relish their suffering. If the rumours of the rebels were more than lies, then each death only empowered them, while denying the Commorrites a portion of their psychic spoils.

The first shot nearly tore his head from his shoulders. He had a moment to cast about looking for which direction it had come from before his shadow field collapsed, and only by a crazed drunken lurch was he able to keep his balance and avoid tumbling into the open air of the webway tunnel. Only the maddeningly expensive ghostplate helm kept the impact itself from killing him. The first was not the last, however: several more laser rounds slammed into him in rapid succession.

Righting himself, Naeddre stamped his foot and accelerated towards the garrison. The Moonfoe’s manoeuvring jets screamed in protest as he cut a juddering, erratic path. Smoke poured from one of the board’s jet vents. The laser bolts blazed in around him, close enough for him to feel the heat of their passing. Naeddre didn’t need to see the rangers to recognise the product of their elegant weapons.

‘Phaerl,’ Naeddre signalled to the leader of the incubi his father had sent to accompany him, ‘I’ve selected my breach point.’ With one arm, Naeddre pointed his helglaive at the upper platform where the long rifles were being fired from. Let the cowards know he was coming; it made no difference.

‘Noted, your grace. We will reinforce directly.’

The garrison loomed large. Naeddre leaned sharply, skimming along the outer wall of the structure. The rangers saw him coming, and unleashed a desperate hail of laser fire to prevent his assault.

Naeddre laughed, no longer trying to avoid the shots. The glancing injuries they could inflict were nothing compared to the vitality he was enjoying from the slaughter going on around him, even with the Ynnari stealing a portion of the suffering. One hit dug into the Moonfoe skyboard, making it waver uncertainly. Another tore into his shoulder, the impact sending waves of agony through his arm. He could think of no more perfect aperitif to the feast that was before him.

With a sadistic cackle, he released the control chain and fell away from the skyboard. He snapped his body with preternatural grace, rolling over in mid-air. With one foot, he kicked off the railing at the edge of the platform, with the other he kicked off the wall, and landed deftly on the walkway. The skyboard slammed into the rangers. The closest managed to duck low enough to avoid its bladed wings, but the two forming the rear rank were less fortunate. One was bisected, his head, neck and left arm severed from the rest of his body. The other took the full impact of the skyboard in his chest. The board, jets still firing, bucked skyward, rocketing away with enough force to pitch the ranger over the railing. Naeddre ignored it; he could recall the Moonfoe if necessary.

The remaining three rangers struggled to their feet, but Naeddre could feel their despair emanating from them. They stood no chance against him, and they knew it. The walkway was a firing platform, barely wide enough for three people abreast, and Naeddre was between them and the only entry to the garrison proper. Escape was as impossible as victory. Naeddre allowed them a cruel moment to appreciate their doom, then swung his helglaive in a broad spiral.

The blades hit the lead aeldari ranger three times in the first series of loops. Blood sprayed from a slash on his thigh, viscera poured forth from the rend across the youth’s abdomen, and his gyrostatic arm soared away, severed completely at the shoulder. The ranger slumped to the ground, overwhelmed with pain. Naeddre stepped past him. The other two retreated, trying to bring their longrifles to bear. They knew that each razored blow could have been lethal if he’d so chosen. If he couldn’t enjoy their deaths fully, then he’d just have to keep these poor unfortunate souls around for as long as possible, to maximise their suffering while they lived.

Naeddre lunged forward. The pain in his shoulder was gone, vanished amid the rush of his enemies’ fear and pain. He flanked the two of them, smashing first one then the other with the blunt squared ends of his helglaive to drive them apart. He brought the glaive down in an overhead chop, cutting deep into the shoulder of the furthest. The second leaned back, bringing her longrifle up for a desperate shot. Sparing her only a sidelong glance, Naeddre slammed the helglaive backwards, hooked the longrifle and wrenched it from the ranger’s grasp with a twisting forward yank.

The other aeldari, too injured to hold his rifle, pulled his shuriken pistol and fired. A monomolecular disc ricocheted off Naeddre’s helm with a high-pitched sping. The ranger levelled his pistol for a second shot, unable to overcome his instinct to aim before firing, and in the moment of hesitation Naeddre struck. He smashed his helglaive’s blunt end into the enemy’s face, then flourished the same blade down with a curve of his wrist, slitting the Ynnari’s throat.

Naeddre turned back to the female ranger. Her comrades still technically lived, their lifeblood pooling on the oily black metal, but she might as well have been alone. She glanced behind her, and Naeddre could see her realising that the entrance to the garrison was now open, if she could reach it before her drukhari attacker could overtake her.

‘Run,’ said Naeddre. ‘Tell those within that I come for them, little herald.’

The ranger turned, her cloak fluttering like a frightened bird, and bolted for the door. Naeddre pulled his blast pistol from his side and shot her in the back. The darklight beam burst through her body, extinguishing her life in an instant. Naeddre flexed his shoulder. Beneath the burned edges of his vest, the flesh was whole and healthy. He holstered his pistol, looking forward to telling Qeine about the panicked battle with the rangers. He paused before heading deeper into the Viscerean Garrison to survey the battle.

The stronghold was too large for the Ynnari to defend properly. All along its platforms similar scenes were playing themselves out, with his attacking forces landing and seeing scattered or no defence. The rebels would be holed up inside, of course, at choke points and strategic nexuses.

Raevij had pulled her Ravagers back and gained altitude. They were beginning to tear into the enemy from above, although one of them appeared to have been damaged, only one of its guns still firing. The Venoms were now the largest threat remaining in the aerial battle, the raking passes of their splinter cannons scattering and felling the knots of hellions. Several smoking craters in the installation marked the termination of a Reaver’s flight, the riders laid low by the toxic fusillade the attack craft could put out.

Acceptable losses, of course. While Naeddre needed to keep enough of his forces intact to contribute to the greater battle at the Port of Widows, he also recognised that each dead Commorrite was one fewer gang scum that he had to pay.

‘Phaerl, do you intend to honour me with your presence any time in the near future?’ Naeddre could see the Raider flying the banner of the Stalking Fiend Shrine. Two Venoms circled it in close arcs, their Labyrinthae boarding parties locked in combat with the incubi on deck.

‘Momentarily, your grace. We’ve run into a small bit of resistance.’

Naeddre gave a great exaggerated sigh. ‘If you’re having too much trouble, ask my troops for some pointers. I’m sure you could find some gang scum willing to take you under their wing. Catch up whenever you get the time, Phaerl.’

Ignoring the incubus’ hateful hiss, Naeddre held up his arm to stare into the nishariel crystal on his bracer. It took a mighty force of will to create and maintain a shadow field, and the crystal was the key to transforming intent into tangible effect. The moment he focused his attention on it, he felt the energies in the crystal rebel, attempting to scatter and diffuse his thoughts. He laughed arrogantly, allowing the last vestiges of agony from the rangers to buoy his willpower. He focused on the image of Phaerl’s sputtering, indignant face, and as his hubris soared, his personal shadow field billowed back to life.

The halls of the garrison were empty, at first. They wound back and forth like a circular maze. There was little ornamentation, save for racks for splinter rifles and additional ammunition. He knew where to go, and the quickest path to get there. The years of monotonous service at the Viscerean Garrison had given him an intimate knowledge of its turns, paths and secrets. His movements were as sure and confident as a lover’s touch.

The upper antechamber was where he would find resistance. It was where the elite soldiers, the commanders and favoured sybarites brought slaves for their cruel enjoyment, one of the only forms of entertainment to be had in the garrison. The room was large enough to amass a meaningful number of soldiers, and was the last such bulwark before reaching the command centre. He paused at the last junction before the antechamber, wondering if he should wait for Phaerl’s assistance. His caution made the shadow field fluctuate, and that was all the chastisement he needed to storm around the corner.

The furniture in the antechamber had been formed into a makeshift barricade, torture tables and elegant reclining couches jammed together to form a single shoulder-high wall between the entrance and the archway to the command centre. A perfect firing position for desperate rebels trying to hold off a superior invading force coming through a choke point.

Naeddre was halfway across the room when he saw the grenades arcing over the wall. Half a dozen bronze orbs sailed into the antechamber, already billowing a putrid violet gas into the air. Phantasm grenades had been a smart decision, he admitted to himself. The fearful hallucinogens in the mist were no danger to him and the filter in his helm, but his eyes were no more able to pierce the fog than anyone else’s.

The first sign of an attack was the silver of the knives flashing through the smoke. His enemies were like ghosts. They were silent, eerily silent. He’d never heard wyches before that weren’t screaming battle cries or jabbering in drug-addled rage. The mute, focused wrath of the hekatarii was unsettling.

He fought back with fury. His helglaive whipped to and fro, tearing rifts through the smoke and cleaving through flesh. The rangers had just been sport. They had been children before an angry ursodon. The wyches had skill. They could strike and withdraw, leaving his counter-blows to slash in the air. In the final tally, however, they were still common rabble. He was the product of thousands of years of noble blood, tempered with the finest training and outfitted with the most masterful equipment that could be crafted, purchased or stolen.

Naeddre swept his helglaive in great arcs, keeping his enemies at as great a distance as possible. Their chemical-laden blood sprayed in broad fans across the walls of the antechamber with each hit. The discipline of the gladiatrixes broke at some point; he began to hear high-pitched screaming coming from all around him. The shadow field robbed the wyches’ blows of real power. Still, it was only a matter of time before he felt a jab, a stinging sharpness in the broad meat of his left shoulder. The back of the same damn shoulder the ranger had shot. His arrogant bravado faltered for the briefest of moments, and with it the shadow field collapsed.

Nearly a dozen wyches lay dead at his feet. Phaerl and his compatriots had joined the fight somewhere along the line. In a straight fight, they might have been more evenly matched; both wyches and incubi were the peak of martial skill in the Dark City. The incubi had superior arms and armour, but the wyches had the advantage of speed, agility and numbers. Unfortunately for the Labyrinthae, it had not been a fair fight. Focused on the whirling, spinning form of the archon they’d surrounded, they’d been unprepared for the incubi to hit their line from behind.

Phaerl and his men moved through the carnage of the room, dispatching the wounded with cold, mechanical precision. The lead incubus gave a cry of protest when Naeddre skipped past him towards the command centre, but he ignored his father’s lackey.

The command centre was a hollow icosahedron, carved from a single massive crystal, the nexus around which the entire garrison had been built. Floating images projected from each of its faces, showing the progress of the battle outside, which was grinding on towards an eventual victory for the Commorrites. Naeddre had been expecting a hekatrix, perhaps even a syren. The sight of an incubus was one he hadn’t prepared for.

The rebel commander could never have been mistaken for one of the Stalking Fiends. Where their armour was the deep, sullen purple of a fresh, brutally swollen bruise, the Ynnari’s was a pale, yellowish cream, like sun-dried bones, and trimmed with bright crimson. He wore a long red cape draped from his warsuit, bearing the same jagged sigil of Ynnead the hellions had flown.

‘Hold and speak,’ he said. ‘We are all brothers and sisters here.’

Naeddre might have heard him out, but for Phaerl. At the entreaty to peace, the incubus let out a bellow, as if the Ynnari had personally befouled everything that Phaerl held dear. As one, the three incubi rushed their outcast brother.

‘We have each performed this dance so many times,’ the rebel commander said. He lashed the blade back and forth faster than a master heliarch could wield a much lighter, slimmer helglaive. It was as if it weighed nothing at all in his hands. ‘Has its tune not grown dull to you? Its steps monotonous? Can you not hear the call of something different?’

The three incubi circled their quarry like khymerae, but his skill proved more than sufficient to hold their murderous pack at bay.

Naeddre leaned against the wall of the command centre and watched. If his father’s bodyguards were so intent on proving themselves that they would attack without command, then they were welcome to do so alone.

‘You can feel the pull,’ the rebel incubus said again. ‘The Shrine of the Slit Throat heard it. You surely hear it, too.’ He slashed his blade in a blinding series of cuts and swipes that drove all three of his attackers back a pace. ‘Here, in this place, you can surely feel the souls of the fallen called to Ynnead’s glory.’

Phaerl made a clicking sound in his throat, high and sharp. His brothers fell in beside him, their blades crossing over one another, forming a barrier of razored death.

‘The Slit Throat are deluded soul drinkers,’ Phaerl snarled. ‘The Shrine of the Stalking Fiend shares neither their weakness, nor the rewards of their treachery.’ He began stalking forward, his blade weaving through the air, over and under those of his brothers. The practised coordination of the blades left no gap, no weakness to exploit. They sacrificed personal glory for the surety of the kill. A tactic unnatural to the drukhari, of course, but utterly lethal when required.

‘That’s a shame,’ said the rebel commander. He nodded.

The incubus at Phaerl’s right hand stopped, his steps faltering. Phaerl spared a single glance towards his brother, whose arms had ceased their synchronised weaving. The hesitating drukhari dropped his klaive with a clatter. A moment later, his head tumbled from his shoulders, blood pumping furiously from the vacant neck stump. The corpse toppled to its knees, revealing the figure that had been hidden behind it.

No matter how many times Naeddre saw the Striking Scorpions in battle, they never ceased to amaze. Their segmented armour was as resilient as the wrist-thick plates of the giant gene-altered mon-keigh, but the brilliant green plates moved over one another silently. Every facet of them boasted of their skill. Bulky armour, rotating chainsword, even a mane of clacking beads streaming from their helms: each should have precluded the possibility of stealth, yet the Aspect Warriors went unheard and unseen, unless they wished otherwise.

To Phaerl’s credit, he jerked away from the Striking Scorpion with lightning speed, a reflex that saved him from the flashing, whirring chainblade that slashed past his face a heartbeat later. The rebel incubus pressed the attack from the other side. The Commorrite incubi, on the offensive a moment ago, now found themselves fighting to retreat from the Ynnari.

‘If you need some assistance, you had but to ask,’ Naeddre said, peeling himself away from the wall. ‘Don’t fret, Phaerl – I’ll rescue you.’

The stolid incubus couldn’t contain a grunt of consternation as he desperately defended himself.

Naeddre leapt into the fight, his helglaive flashing. The Striking Scorpion turned on him, deflecting his blows defiantly. The Ynnari traitor swung his off hand to bring his shuriken pistol to bear. Naeddre cartwheeled to the side, letting the discs ping off the floor, trusting his spinning glaive to keep the ravenous teeth of the chainblade at bay.

With the fury of a hurricane, the Aspect Warrior moved from the younger drukhari to cross the room in a single bound and plunge his chainsword into the exposed back of Phaerl’s other companion.

Phaerl kicked at the Striking Scorpion, who turned to meet Naeddre’s furious rush.

‘Shoulder to shoulder?’ screamed Phaerl. Naeddre had spent decades taunting the temperamental incubus his father sent to watch him, but had never seen Phaerl so unhinged. Phaerl’s klaive rose and fell in brutal, undisciplined hacks, his wrath stoked so greatly it threatened to burn them all. ‘You stand shoulder to shoulder with the brood of Karandras? Does your dishonour have no limit?’

‘It is you who dishonours yourself,’ said the Ynnari incubus.

The Striking Scorpion pressed his assault against Naeddre, forcing the archon to spare his attention from the spectacle of Phaerl’s meltdown. He gripped his helglaive close to the middle, closing as tightly as possible and weaving the ends like two separate weapons. Vicious little jolts from the Aspect Warrior’s mandiblasters drove him away every time an opening presented itself.

‘My friend seems quite perturbed,’ Naeddre told the Striking Scorpion.

‘That’s because he feels the weight of his own shame,’ said the craftworlder. ‘He hears the call of the Whispering God, but his heart is too filled with fear to heed.’

The aeldari was masterful. His humming chainsword buzzed close enough to breathe across Naeddre’s flesh, his pistol spat to hem the archon’s movements one moment and blocked the haft of his glaive the next, and the stinging laser spikes of his mandiblasters forced the drukhari into contorting evasive twists and rolls. ‘So he beats his breast and proclaims his greatness even as his soul slips away to feed She-Who-Thirsts.’

Naeddre ducked the chainsword and slashed in with a series of staccato hacks and chops, forcing the Striking Scorpion to back further and further away.

‘When I win here,’ Naeddre said, ‘I’m going to drag you back to the Amaranth Spire, to fight over and over until I learn all these marvellous techniques of yours.’

The craftworlder didn’t fight like a wych or a hellion; he never retreated. When he moved, it was to gain an advantageous position. When he withdrew, it was to goad his opponent into a mistake. Every one of Naeddre’s blows was met not with a dodge or a weave, but with a bone-jarring parry.

‘When this battle is concluded,’ said the Striking Scorpion, ‘you could command an army larger even than your father’s.’

Naeddre was shocked, so shocked he faltered. He slashed at his opponent quickly, giving ground to regroup mentally.

‘Kysthene tells us the Labyrinthae have always followed the Bladed Lotus in all things. Would it be less so among the Whispering God’s warhost?’ The Aspect Warrior jabbed at Naeddre again. The archon’s mind reeled, trying to determine the craftworlder’s angle. If the Striking Scorpion had wished, he could have torn Naeddre’s throat open in the moment of his hesitation. He wasn’t just trying to rattle Naeddre. But he couldn’t be serious. Could he?

Behind him, he could hear the two incubi grunting in weary exertion. It seemed likely that they would fight until they died and withered away unless either he or the Aspect Warrior triumphed and came to their ally’s aid.

‘You’ve heard the whisper, haven’t you?’

There was the question, out in the open. K’Shaic had not even dared to ask it of his sons. In the Dark City, no one dared ask. Colleague, compatriot, even brother – no one could tell who had felt the pull of Ynnead, who would be willing to follow his path. Since the disjunction, Naeddre’s greatest fear, the one that squatted in the dark corners of his mind, lurking at the edges of his vision, was that someone would ask him directly if he had considered heeding the summons of the Ynnari.

For all his fear, there was no need. He didn’t even have to answer aloud. The Striking Scorpion’s shoulders relaxed a fraction; his guard remained up, but his blows were half-hearted, for show rather than to kill.

‘If you answer the call, we would follow. We knew K’Shaic would send his sons to these garrisons. Right now your brother is hearing the same message – take up our banner, join our cause and we will follow you. We can fall upon your father like the vengeful storm, crush his forces between our fury and that of the Jade Labyrinth.’ The Aspect Warrior holstered his pistol, holding his hand up as if to take Naeddre’s. ‘All you have to do is let go, to give in to the whisper you hear inside.’

The word ‘yes’ forced its way up Naeddre’s throat. It nearly made it past his lips. But the sound choked in his mouth. He couldn’t dare to speak it.

‘I… cannot,’ said Naeddre. ‘That pull, that whisper… I’ve felt a pull all my life. Just as we all have. I have no way of knowing if this whisper is any different from the other.’

‘And if you knew? If you knew that the Whispering God was not She-Who-Thirsts, that he would not tear you apart, but instead that he would put you back together?’

Naeddre had no words. He didn’t need to speak. His silence was all the Striking Scorpion needed to know the truth, and all Naeddre needed to realise the truth himself: if he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Ynnari spoke true, he would heed the whisper in a heartbeat, without hesitation.

‘Then if you will not see, I will show you.’ The Striking Scorpion reversed his chainsword, and plunged it through his own breast.

Naeddre felt the surge of agony as the teeth mangled the Aspect Warrior’s heart and lungs to shreds. He could feel the pain the Ynnari felt, and for the first time since arriving, could feel the agony in its totality. He could feel the death rush. Then more. The dead aeldari gave his life force, not to Ynnead, but to him.

He reeled, the flood of sensation unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

He was a child, sprinting through the draping keldora ferns, laughing and chasing his cousin. He was too young to fully realise they were refugees, drifting through the stars on a craftworld that was as much their tomb as their home.

He was an aura painter. He stood before the artisans of Yme-Loc, presenting a floating, three-dimensional composition of photoluminens to the approval and emotional outpouring of his peers.

He was a Guardian, clad in grey-and-orange armour, shuriken catapult clutched to his chest. He stood knee-deep in corpses. For three days the humans in the long grey coats had hurled themselves at the eldar position, dying in droves, but never stopping in their relentless march. He wished beyond anything that he was back in his aura studio.

He was kneeling in the Shrine of the Veiled Threat. The Striking Scorpion Exarch Vakuna stood over him, asking him if he was ready to follow the footsteps and example of Karandras. He felt a great fear in his gut, but he knew that he would soon learn to summon the war mask, and that fear would be a thing of the past.

He was fighting again. Greenskins massing for a war against the aeldari. He stalked through their camps with his shrine brothers at his side. They slaughtered their enemies before they were seen, killed droves without a shot being fired. He still made art, but it was writ in blood and spilled viscera across a hundred warzones. He wasn’t even sure he remembered how to paint.

He stood outside his shrine. Without the war mask upon him, he didn’t know if he could bear donning the armour once again. Each time he fought the urge to lose himself to the path, each time he banished the war mask, he could feel a tiny piece of himself being cast aside. He had heard the whispered scream, the birth cry of a god, the whispering demand to open himself to it. He let go, not caring if his soul was obliterated. Anything would be better than an eternity of this torture.

He was fighting against a horde of daemons. The servants of Slaanesh swarmed the embattled Ynnari. His shrine brothers were dead. He slipped in a pool of gore, and fell. A squealing daemonette lunged over him, her scissoring claw raised for the killing blow. She vanished, cut down in a spray of ichor. A figure in a blood-red warsuit, a black cape draped over his shoulders, offered a hand to lift him back to his feet.

He was standing side by side with his long-lost spiritual brother, Jazao of the Shrine of the Slit Throat. They could hear the drukhari beyond the walls, see the Commorrites storming the Viscerean Garrison. The son of K’Shaic would arrive soon. He stepped back to blend into the shadows.

He was dying.

He opened his eyes.

Naeddre staggered, even as the body of the Striking Scorpion fell to the ground. He turned to see Phaerl still battling the other incubus. The two warriors had battled to exhaustion, and their blows had become slow and heavy. Before he could move to intervene, the Commorrite incubus brought his klaive down in a brutal overhand chop. Jazao blocked with his klaive in a two-handed grip, but the blow drove him low. Phaerl brought the sword down again, and then again. Each blow forced the other incubus down lower, first to a crouch, then to his knees.

Jazao caught Naeddre’s dazed stare. He nodded, even as Phaerl smashed the klaive from his hands. The victorious incubus wiped the blood from his eyes and hefted his own klaive overhead.

‘Gashvat yandun. Only I remain.’ With a spat death curse, Phaerl struck Jazao’s head from his shoulders.

Naeddre didn’t just feel the rush as Jazao slipped away. He could feel the incubus, not snatched away to a warp fiend or a soul prison, but flowing through him to join the greater part of the aeldari people.

‘Your father is waiting,’ said Phaerl. The incubus had regained his composure for the most part, although Naeddre could see he was still breathing in great heaves.

‘Did you hear any of that?’ Naeddre asked.

‘You mean the craftworlder wheedling you to join them? What of it?’

‘Are you loyal to me?’

Naeddre’s question went unanswered. The incubus cocked his head for a moment, then arrogantly turned his back to his ward and headed for the door, as if the query weren’t of any merit.

‘I am true to my shrine and my oaths,’ Phaerl said. ‘My loyalty has been paid for, and is unshakeable.’

Naeddre sighed. That’s what he’d thought. He drew his blast pistol and shot Phaerl in the back. The warsuit had withstood wychblade and chainsword with ease, and even mitigated the slashing blows of the enemy klaive, but the lance of anti-light tore through it like it was mere slaveflesh. Naeddre felt the death rush, invigorating him and clearing his head. He paused to pull the red cloak, emblazoned with the drukhari version of Ynnead’s rune, from Jazao’s body. He draped it over his own shoulders, attaching the chain clips to his flight vest.

‘Unfortunately,’ he said as he stepped over Phaerl’s smoking corpse, ‘it was my father who paid you.’

Naeddre whistled as he exited the garrison. Dutifully, his Moonfoe skyboard heeded his call, wrenching itself loose from the wall and skittering to his side.

‘Listen closely,’ he said over the command net. All around him, aeldari tore one another apart, with blades and blasters and poisoned shards of glass. ‘The archons in the highest spires of Commorragh have something in common with every one of you low-born gutterscum – every one of us, every single eldar, has heard the whispered invitation of Ynnead. We’ve just been too afraid to take it. We’ve seen what the birth of an eldar god heralds, and no matter how much we boast otherwise, we are terrified that this new god will finish what the first one started.’

The Moonfoe roared to life, trailing a thin stream of smoke but still capable of flight. The fighting had slowed, as gang leaders and dracons called for fire to be held, and each listened intently, many unable to believe what they were hearing.

‘No more. We are the True Kin. We do not live in fear. If Ynnead draws the souls of the aeldari to himself, then the aeldari will answer. If K’Shaic and Vect and every other terrified old man in High Commorragh want to quaver in fear and ignore the call, then we will leave them behind with the orks and mon-keigh they’ve chosen to emulate.’

He shot through the ranks of troops, those bearing his colours, those in the green and black of the Jade Labyrinth and those daubed with the red of the Ynnari. The cloak fluttered behind him, a rallying banner that advertised the blood that united them and the blood that they would shed.

‘The future belongs to the aeldari!’

He could have boarded a Raider and squeezed a tiny bit more speed from his advance, but there was strength in unity. He needed the hellions, and the full force of Reavers, when he impacted his father’s lines. They swarmed behind him. Venoms and Raiders paused long enough to allow troops to board them, then roared to catch up with the skyboards and jetbikes already speeding to follow their archon.

The trip was brief. The garrisons had been designed to reinforce the port in the event of attack; it needed to be close. There wasn’t even time to focus the nishariel crystal again before the webway artery curved and their destination was in sight.

The Port of Widows utterly dwarfed the garrison. It was huge, a maze of platforms and arched walkways, battlements and bunkers. Across its surface, the battle raged in full. Wyches matched blade with incubi. Hellions soared over clusters of gunmetal-armoured kabalite warriors, exchanging rattling, hissing volleys of splinter shard fire with each other. From a distance, the two sides couldn’t even be discerned. Only a morass of aeldari, all fighting each other.

K’Shaic’s battle-barque stood out as they drew closer. It was designed to: a massive banner daring the enemy to strike.

Corpses were strewn across all three decks of the barque, the remains of several assaults intended to decapitate the fleet’s leadership. Half of the guns were silent, the gunners dead with no replacements available. Wych bodies had let forth a virtual river of blood, rent asunder by the klaives of K’Shaic’s personal guard.

Most of the incubi had already died. Only one of them remained, a sullen, silent figure to whom Naeddre had never been introduced. Centuries of following his father’s leadership could not evaporate in an instant. He wondered if he could speak to K’shaic, to convince him to heed the Whispering God.

K’shaic stood at his command dais, issuing instructions to his forces. At the metallic clank of Naeddre’s booted feet on the grilled deck, he glanced up. He gave his son a jerk of his head: all the praise and reward he intended to give for Naeddre’s performance.

The curt gesture sent cold fire coursing through Naeddre’s body. Centuries of sacrificing his very soul upon the altar of his father’s own hubris, for nothing more than a snide tilt of the head? His silver words turned to lead in his mouth. All thoughts of convincing his father to turn his banner evaporated. He drew his blast pistol and fired into his father’s exposed back, turned to him with the same fatal arrogance Phaerl had shown.

The sole remaining incubus was a credit to his caste. He gave no indication of even looking at Naeddre, but when the blast pistol fired, he had already shoved his liege aside. The darklight instead bored a trough through the bodyguard’s chest. He took a faltering step towards Naeddre, determined to protect K’Shaic to the end, but there was no more he could do. The drukhari collapsed.

K’shaic lunged at his son. He hadn’t become the leader of one of Commorragh’s greatest kabals by giving in to shock or sentiment. It was all Naeddre could do to get his helglaive up before his father’s sabre gutted him. The surgesabre sent a cascade of sparks ringing off his weapon.

‘Here?’ his father bellowed, incredulous. ‘Now? You couldn’t wait?’

The surgesabre was lethally dangerous. It did not radiate energy or absorb light, or any of the fancy tricks that some archons desired in their weapons. It could, however, deliver an electrical charge that would kill a rampaging gnarloc. Naeddre had seen his father plunge the sword into an ork warboss, the furious energies holding the greenskin immobile while the power did its work, the warlord’s mighty frame only able to twitch and spasm as its skin blackened and its eyes melted out of its skull. Even a glancing blow would stun him. A solid hit would mean death in an instant. He’d practised subjecting himself to shocks of increasing intensity so that he might one day be able to resist his father’s weapon, but he had nowhere near the degree of tolerance he would need to survive a substantial blow from the surgesabre.

‘Of course,’ said Naeddre. ‘How else can I make sure the Jade Labyrinth escapes your assault?’

He heard his words with a slight reverberation in his own helmet. His father’s command dais was still on, still transmitting. Every dracon, solarite and klaivex could hear everything that happened on the command barge. Every pilot could see, in holographic miniature, the battle between father and son, playing out before their very eyes.

‘The rebels?’ K’shaic hissed. He wielded the surgesabre in his left hand, and a ghoulsteel knife, its grey-green metal inherently toxic to living flesh, in a backhand grip in his right. ‘You join with the traitors?’

Naeddre didn’t need to respond. The hellions, his hellions, were smashing into the Bladed Lotus forces.

‘Why?’ K’shaic drove his son backwards with his skill. His blades moved faster than any Naeddre had ever faced.

‘For a better future,’ Naeddre replied.

‘Fantasies? You trade a seat at the right hand of greatness, the chance to steal the throne yourself, for a child’s fairy tale?’

‘A child’s fairy tale?’ It was Naeddre’s turn to be furious. He’d never felt this sort of anger. ‘Like the supremacy of Commorragh? How the galaxy lights torches because it is we who have made them fear the darkness?’ His staccato back-and-forth attack pattern brought both blades to bear simultaneously, forcing his father to defend from both ends.

‘We are supreme!’ Never had the sentiment sounded so desperate before. Naeddre knew the truth now: his father spoke to convince himself. ‘We take what we wish! We fear nothing, not even the Ancestral Enemy that the craftworlders shake and imprison their souls to avoid!’

Naeddre laughed in his father’s face. The dam had broken, and he had centuries of disrespect built up.

‘We are Her slaves!’ he yelled. ‘And She eats away at us, little by little.’

‘And you think to break the cycle?’ K’shaic sneered. ‘Will you preach to me like one of the dirt-worshipping Exodites? Do you ignore the blood on your hands, Naeddre? The deeds you’ve committed?’

His father tried to vault off the command dais, but Naeddre’s helglaive hooked the old archon’s leg, tripping him. Before Naeddre could swing in to end the fight, K’Shaic had rolled to his feet.

‘I did it all!’ Naeddre laughed. His blows hammered away at K’Shaic, who was desperately defending himself from his son’s ruthless onslaught. ‘I slaughtered, and I killed. Millions wept. But I did what I did because there wasn’t another option. I am a true son of Commorragh – if damnation is all that remains to me, I will drape it about myself like a cloak of regency, I will drink and savour it like a fine wine. But to choose damnation when salvation is not just an option, but freely offered? That’s nothing more than the terrified cowardice of an old man too afraid of the future to unmire himself from a past that’s eating him alive.’ He stopped, allowing his father to gain a handful of steps between them.

‘Go back to your Dark City,’ Naeddre spat. ‘Crawl back to your Overlord. You can clutch each other together and cower in the darkness like frightened children.’

The battle was lit by a colossal explosion. Both combatants recoiled from a shock wave overhead, uncomfortably close. One of the Reapers that was the pride of K’Shaic’s fleet burned in mid-air, its anti-gravity engines struggling to keep it aloft even as cobalt-blue flames engulfed its decks. Fighting had broken out between the crews, with the Reapers turning their massive vortex projectors on members of their own squadron.

‘The future belongs to the aeldari!’ The cry came over the command network. An unknown dracon, commanding his own men to turn on the loyalists. Throughout the fleet, those who had heard the whispered entreaty tugging at their hearts for weeks finally committed to its call.

For a moment, father and son stared at one another across the deck. The forces of the Bladed Lotus were in turmoil. Half of them floundered, unsure whether to attack Naeddre’s forces or continue assaulting the Ynnari, not realising the two were now the same. A few dracons, believing a coordinated coup was underway, had chosen to support one of the sons rather than the father, and had struck K’Shaic’s banner in favour of Naeddre or Qeine’s colours instead. The Ynnari shared a much greater unity of purpose. The Commorrites who flew Naeddre’s banner they largely left alone, turning their fury on those still bearing the purple-on-steel pennant of K’Shaic’s Bladed Lotus.

The ancient archon crossed the dais in an instant, his blades scissoring at his son’s neck. Naeddre gave ground, unable to do anything but defend against the feral attacks of his father. K’shaic’s strength and savagery was born of desperation; he knew as well as Naeddre that whoever won their duel would win the loyalty of the majority of the kabal, and would carry the day.

Naeddre turned and ran straight for the prow of the barque, as though to hurl himself from the side. His father pursued, his wrath stoked to full blaze. Naeddre leapt, kicked off the highest point of the railing, and flipped backwards over his father’s headlong charge. All it would take was a single kick to send his father tumbling into a fatal fall. As he flipped overhead, the surgesabre clipped his shoulder, slicing a slight nick in his flesh.

Naeddre crashed to the deck, skidding to the opposite rail. His limbs wouldn’t work. All he could do was shake; every joint tried to clench and unclench at the same time. He could taste blood, ground his jaw hard enough to hear his teeth crack beneath the strain.

K’shaic stalked towards his son, pointing the blade at his wayward child. Naeddre’s head, held aloft for all to see, would put the challenge of the Ynnari to rest with unambiguous finality.

The archon’s chest burst apart, as a lance of black energy tore through him. K’shaic stared down in wrathful ignorance. Steaming, charred flesh ringed the wound. The archon turned to see Evaeline standing at the foot of the forecastle. She held Naeddre’s blast pistol in a two-handed grip.

‘The future belongs to the aeldari,’ she said.

She didn’t pause to help Naeddre up, returning instead to the pilot’s console. Naeddre staggered to his feet and stumbled to the command dais. His limbs still twitched from the electrical fury the sabre had unleashed on him, but he fought through the tics and tremors with sheer willpower.

‘The fortress belongs to the Ynnari,’ he rasped, his voice harsh. Even his throat had suffered the ravages of K’shaic’s sabre.

The proclamation was unnecessary. Many of the purple-on-steel banners were cut down, replaced by the pink-on-black of Naeddre’s own banner. The Raiders, Venoms and Ravagers that had not struck the colours of K’Shaic’s Bladed Lotus still fought, but for escape, not for victory. All that remained was to consolidate his forces.

Naeddre tapped the controls of the command dais, then stared in confusion. Qeine’s forces were moving in the opposite direction. As if in answer to his confusion, his brother’s voice cut over the communication network.

‘K’Shaic is dead,’ his brother said. ‘Long live Archon Qeine, ruler of the Amaranth Spire and leader of the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus!’

‘Damn it,’ said Naeddre, restricting the communication to Qeine alone. ‘Brother, listen to me – there’s a chance for something better. We don’t have to do this.’ No answer came back. Over the open network, he could still hear Qeine posturing and issuing orders.

‘Excellency, what do we do?’ Evaeline had brought the barque to a hovering halt.

‘“Your grace” will still suffice,’ Naeddre said.

‘What do we do?’ The barque pilot repeated. Long years of service to his father before him had taught Evaeline to be task-oriented and unfazed by threats, sarcasm or torrents of gunfire.

‘We regroup,’ said Naeddre. ‘The corsairs of the Blackblood Nebula will be here tomorrow. We trade the goods in the port’s holds to secure passage out of here.’ He’d need to coordinate with Kysthene, if she still lived, to get the most out of the Labyrinthae. Eventually, he’d need a long-term plan. Raiding for supplies would be good, finding the bulk of the Ynnari would be better. Crusading to liberate more aeldari willing to fight for the future of their race, that seemed the most enticing.

Naeddre stood on the command dais, unmoving. The cowards who had fled for the Dark City were gone. The warriors, the Ynnari under his command, were rounding up the Commorrite loyalists they’d managed to capture. Many of the damaged ships could be repaired. Those who survived had their pick of equipment that could be scavenged from the dead. The hellion gangs were already scouring the wreckage far below, looking for weapons and other commodities to be bartered.

‘Are you injured, your grace?’

‘No,’ said Naeddre, ‘it’s just quieter than I expected.’

Evaeline said nothing. Naeddre knew she’d piloted the barque for decades, and had witnessed the raucous aftermath of the Bladed Lotus’ battles. She’d seen Naeddre and his brother boasting and threatening one another, laughing and lying as each recounted their own personal glories from the fight they’d just survived. They always claimed they were vying for K’Shaic’s favour, but their braggadocious stories often continued long after the old archon had lost interest.

Naeddre gripped the railing, his legs still unsteady after the surgesabre’s assault. There was an emptiness inside him. Not a devouring hole like the call of She-Who-Thirsts, or the gentle whisper of Ynnead. Just an emptiness. A pit where something had been lost, something that could never be replaced.

Still, it was the silence that hurt the worst.

THE UNSUNG WAR

David Annandale

The Rat crawled over metal and between shadows. She was, she thought, moving towards death. She hoped it would be a good one. There wasn’t much else left to hope.

The Rat had fled when the gods and monsters invaded her world. She had burrowed underground, as far and as fast as she could go. Only, in truth, there was no underground, and she was not truly a rat. She was a human, doing her best to disappear into the metal embrace of the freighter Summons of Faith. The gods and monsters, though, were real. They had torn apart her conception of reality, and she had run in terror. She had become the best Rat she could be, and she was a good one, because she was still alive.

Sebastia Hoven had thought of herself as the Rat for almost twenty years now. She had come by the name honestly, and it was more than a name. It was a calling. It was also a kind of revenge. She had been born to a life aboard voidships but fated to serfdom. From her earliest childhood she had served on the lowest decks, the most insignificant menial but the fastest student. She had come to know the bodies and veins of freighters with absolute certainty. She did not think of them as extensions of her own form; rather she was a parasite, infecting a host for her own benefit. She moved through their corridors and shafts like a ghost. Her skills grew with her knowledge. She saw everything. She observed officers. With awed envy, she witnessed the power and the agency of the merchant captains who commanded the destinies of the ships and everyone aboard. In their lives, she saw what she most desired, but could never have.

But there were some things the Rat could have. Scavenger, smuggler, thief, she moved from ship to ship, rarely seen and never noticed. Her targets were modest, more important to those who bought her services than missed by her victims. It was a life that was good enough that she did not want to part with it.

She had boarded the Summons of Faith at its last port of call. It was a target of convenience. It was bound for the Skopos System, and there was a commission waiting for her there. The Summons was in the right place at the right time for her, and she had seized the chance. While aboard, she thought, she would see what her host had to offer her by way of further scavenging.

She had seen much more than she had expected. She had seen the crew. She had seen the officers, and their faces had troubled her. Their eyes had been too fervid. They did not behave like merchants. As she observed them, she had moved from puzzlement to deep anxiety and revulsion. And there were noises coming from the cargo holds. Noises she was too frightened to investigate.

Then the gods had come, fearsome in their righteousness, raining fire upon their foes and terrible to behold. She had heard stories of the Adeptus Astartes, but she had never seen them before. The colossi in blue armour marched through the corridors of the freighter like the embodiments of war itself, and the Rat wanted no part of war. She was frightened of the gods, and her first instinct had been to stay hidden from their sight as they brought it to the Summons. She feared their judgement.

She feared the monsters who had come next even more. These were monsters of beauty and grace and cruelty, monsters whose weapons flayed the flesh with storms of crystals.

She had fled. She hid. She could hide for a long time in the bowels of a voidship.

But not forever. If the monsters wanted to find her, they would. So, finally, she had decided to face the gods.

The crawlspace wasn’t even a shaft. It was a thin, winding vein formed by the gaps between giant conduits. It was the space between the lines of a schematic, a region of the ship that was not forgotten because no one except her thought of it as existing. But if the monsters decided to look for her, they would find her even here. She had faith in their terrible abilities. She had seen what they could do. They had come to the Summons of Faith with beauty and terror, elegance and cruelty. There were clearly no limits to what they were willing to do. She dared not hope there were any limits on what they could do.

The Rat felt the space through which she moved narrow. Metal brushed her hair, its caress no more than a whisper, but a whisper with the threat of millions of tonnes that would crush her to nothing if it ever moved. She thumbed her glowstick on, and its faint light pushed back the darkness. The Rat was on her stomach, on top of a coolant pipe. Above her was a ventilation conduit ten feet wide. Ahead, the two pipes drew near to each other, the space between them vanishingly small. She had travelled this way before, though. She knew that if she sucked her breath in, the width would be just enough for her to squeeze through.

The sound of the ship’s inner workings filled her ears. It was an almost-physical wall of metallic throbbing. Grace notes of escaping steam, the grind of metal and the flare of electrical sparks cut jagged slashes through the deeper rumble of the freighter’s heartbeat. The ship was wounded, bleeding from a hundred injuries, but it was not dead yet. It was still heading for Skopos.

Either the ship, or the beings aboard it, had to be stopped. She had seen enough to know that. She had seen the horrors. ‘Do this,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You have to. Do this, and earn a good death.’

That would be her greatest theft. Her greatest victory.

‘I wonder why the drukhari are keeping us alive,’ Calenus said.

Sergeant Aetius raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s hardly a mystery,’ he said.

‘I know what they would like to do, but I question the tactical decision.’

‘They will subordinate strategy to cruelty whenever they can. They think they can.’ He stopped himself from saying, Are they wrong? That would have been his shame speaking. The shame of having failed his command. The shame of seeing all but one of the battle-brothers of his Intercessor squad killed, surprised by one enemy as they battled another. The shame was made manifest by the scars on his armour. Its emblems were scorched by fire damage and the ceramite sliced and chipped by the drukhari rifles’ withering hail of neurotoxic crystal shards.

Aetius scanned the confines of the cell again, searching for the means of escape that he and Calenus had already determined did not exist. The drukhari had taken their weapons and sealed them in a cargo tank. The walls were smooth, the locked door a yard thick, and the hatch in the ceiling, at least twenty feet up, was unreachable. Aetius and Calenus had tried punching their way through the metal. They had dented it, but it was too thick.

No way out, Aetius thought, but held his tongue. To let his shame control his words would be to compound his failure. And Calenus was right. By keeping the Primaris Space Marines alive, the drukhari had erred. Somehow, Aetius would teach them the cost of their mistake.

With a faint grind, the hatch in the ceiling turned. Aetius nodded at Calenus, and they took up combat stances facing each other, ready to seize whatever foe dropped into the tank. The hatch opened, and a mortal face appeared.

‘My lords…’ The woman croaked when she spoke, as if her voice had rusted with disuse. She cleared her throat and tried again, still rasping. ‘Come to free you. Going to try.’

Aetius exchanged a look with Calenus. He scrutinised the woman. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I am the Ra– Sebastia Hoven, my lord.’

‘Are you part of the crew?’

‘No!’ The tank echoed with her horrified whisper. Her terror was a positive sign. Her features, dark with grease and oil, were entirely human.

Aetius shared another look with Calenus. The other Intercessor’s shrug, so minute it was undetectable to mortal eyes, was expressive: What choice do we have?

‘Can you reach the door to our prison?’ Aetius asked.

Hoven shook her head.

‘Guarded.’

‘Do you know where our weapons are?’ Calenus asked.

She nodded.

‘You are very well informed,’ said Aetius.

‘I know the ship. No secrets from me. I can be your eyes where you cannot go.’

‘Do you know what is in the lower hold?’

Hoven shuddered. ‘Some secrets not for me. I don’t look.’

‘What has happened to the… crew?’ Aetius asked, spitting the last word.

‘Imprisoned. Lower hold still sealed.’

‘How well guarded is the crew?’

‘Not heavily. The…’ She hesitated.

‘They are called the drukhari,’ Aetius told her.

‘They watch you. Much more interested in you. Enough for them to lock the crew away. No escape for them.’

‘Can you free them?’

‘Some.’ She did not sound happy at the prospect. ‘Enough for them to free the others if they move quickly.’

‘They will,’ said Aetius. ‘Do it, then. Free them. And when the guard responds, come for us.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ She pulled back into the darkness beyond the hatch.

‘Is she part of the genestealer cult?’ Calenus asked.

‘I don’t think so. Her fear of the crew seems genuine. She seems entirely human.’ He grimaced, acknowledging the impressions meant little. ‘If she isn’t, we will be no worse off than we are now. If she does what I asked, the advantage of surprise swings back to us from the drukhari.’

‘We’ll need it.’

Aetius nodded. The odds were not in their favour. The genestealer cult his squad had tracked to the Summons of Faith was a large one. The Ultramarines had made good progress in the battle, but the cultists had pressed them hard.

‘How much of the cult is still alive, do you think?’ said Calenus.

‘At least half.’ And the drukhari had lost little of their complement in the attack.

‘Enough for our purposes? For us to use the foes against each other?’

Aetius ran through strategies based on his incomplete knowledge of the battlefield. The calculations were difficult. There were so many variables, and so much chance in play. ‘We will have to make sure they are strong enough,’ he said.

‘The balance will be a delicate one,’ said Calenus.

Aetius nodded. He compared what he knew of the two xenos forces. ‘The genestealer cult is not strong enough as it stands,’ he said.

‘Desperate measures, then.’

‘Yes. We will have to undo some of our earlier good work.’

‘If we get out.’

‘Yes.’ Aetius moved to the door. He stood just to its left, ready to spring, listening, feeling the vibrations in the ship, waiting for change.

He did not have to wait long. The changes came, and he read the new sounds. He felt the distant grind of opening doors, followed quickly by several more. Then shouts, coming closer. There were snarls and guttural cries, more bestial than human, the hybrid cultists losing their humanity in answer to the call of the Great Devourer. The other voices spoke a language utterly inhuman and musical, lilting and beautiful, yet these were also voices that were utterly corrupt and cruel. And there were the snaps of energy weapons, and the impacts of bullets.

‘The battle has been joined,’ said Calenus, listening too.

‘It will not be properly joined until we are there as well,’ Aetius said.

Time was short. They could not afford to let the drukhari gain the upper hand and wipe out the cultists.

About to put his helmet on, Aetius paused and looked at Calenus. He saw his own frustration and purpose mirrored back at him. His battle-brother was clean-shaven, his features hewn from granite and noble as marble. His eyes glittered with the need to avenge fallen comrades.

Aetius and Calenus’ role in the Imperium’s great struggle had come down to this single ship. This was their war.

‘Two against hundreds,’ Calenus said.

‘A worthy fight.’ Aetius grinned. ‘Worthy of song.’

Calenus shrugged. ‘I will leave the songs to the Space Wolves.’

‘Agreed. I will be satisfied with the poetry of victory.’

They waited with growing impatience and growing confidence. Hoven had freed the genestealer cultists. She was a good judge of what she could do. She would come and free them too.

After another few minutes, there was the hard clank of unlocking latches, a hiss of hydraulic pistons, and the door to the cargo tank opened. Aetius and Calenus lunged through. The short corridor beyond was clear. The sounds of combat came from their right, towards the stern, and from the upper decks. The air of the freighter was still smoky with the smouldering fires of the earlier battle. Now too there was the sharp sting of freshly burned fyceline and the ozone stab of energy beams.

Hoven, her face a rigid mask of fright barely suppressed by determination, stood on the other side of the corridor a short distance down from the tank. Beside her was the open door to a utility passage. It was barely a hall, the sort of space that was forgotten by all aboard except the serfs who would use it to reach rarely serviced corners of the ship. Hoven slipped through the door. The two Primaris Space Marines followed.

Hoven’s route was just barely wide enough for the Intercessors to pass through. Walking sideways, they were able to avoid scraping their Mark X armour against the walls and signalling their presence. The journey was a short one. Hoven took branches to the left, then to the right, and then kicked open a grille to drop down into a storage chamber. The Intercessors’ weapons were here, placed on top of cargo pallets like the war trophies they were.

Aetius murmured litanies of praise and war as he claimed his bolt rifle and its chainblade bayonet. He ran a gauntlet over the barrel, frowning at the marks that defaced the artistry of the gun. Every blemish was an insult he vowed to avenge. He checked his bolter’s clip and slammed it home, then he turned to Calenus, who saluted, forearm against chest, ready for their impossible war.

‘How far are we from the Skopos System?’ Aetius asked Hoven. ‘I believe the ship translated into the warp shortly after we boarded?’

Hoven nodded, and Aetius grimaced. That explained why the squad had lost contact with the frigate Avenger’s Wrath early into the battle. Another failure, he thought. The Intercessors had fought towards the bridge, but had been just a bit too slow.

‘We came through the nearest Mandeville point to Skopos just before the drukhari attacked,’ Hoven said. ‘At the ship’s current speed, we should reach the system in perhaps two standard days.’

‘Not long enough,’ said Calenus.

‘No,’ Aetius agreed. Not with the odds they were facing. ‘We need contingencies.’ He turned to Hoven. ‘You can travel through a voidship. What can you do with one?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never tried to do anything.’

‘You may have to. Head for the bridge, but remain hidden until I call.’ He explained what he would need her to do.

‘As you will, lord,’ said Hoven, and she disappeared back up into the vent.

‘I’ve been evaluating probable outcomes based on the odds against us,’ Calenus said.

‘As have I.’

‘There are too many variables to gauge the chances of victory.’

‘But you have one certainty, the same one I do, regarding our fate.’

Calenus nodded.

‘If my legacy is the record that my squad was lost under my command, then that is only justice,’ Aetius said. ‘It will be enough for me if I can know, in the end, that I redeemed that shame.’

‘If you need redemption, brother-sergeant, then so do I. If no one knows of our victory but ourselves, I can still ask for no greater boon.’

Aetius clapped him on the pauldron in solidarity, and they marched out of the chamber, the pounding of ceramite boots booming against the walls of the corridor. The sounds of war called to them from above, from the freighter’s superstructure. The distant vibrations of conflict were a summons as powerful as a clarion blast, but they resisted. There was work to be done first.

‘I would never have conceived of knowingly taking this action,’ Calenus said as they reached a stairwell and started down, taking the steps three at a time.

‘Nor I,’ said Aetius. ‘I hesitate to call this strategy sound. But I will call the risk necessary.’

They descended to the lowest level of the holds. They had come to undo the first action they had taken after the squad’s boarding torpedo had breached the hull of the Summons of Faith.

On the lowest deck, they ran a few hundred yards to stern, where the passage ended in a crumpled barrier of collapsed metal. Everything beyond this point was sealed, the lower reaches of the ship completely quarantined. Before anything else, before even attempting to seize the bridge, this area had been the highest priority of the Intercessor squad. Now it was again.

Aetius leaned against the crumpled wreckage, trying to hear beyond the barrier.

‘Anything?’ Calenus asked.

‘The faint sound of clawing.’

‘We knew we hadn’t killed them all.’

‘No, just that we had them contained.’ Undoing that victory left a sour taste in Aetius’ mouth. He nodded to Calenus and stepped away.

The Intercessor fixed a melta bomb to the barricade, then they retreated back up the corridor to observe the burn. The charge melted deep into the barrier, leaving a crater glowing white-hot, and the entire barricade began to crack. The breach was not complete, but the clawing from the other side became frenzied. The sound of tearing metal reached the Ultramarines.

‘Another?’ Calenus asked.

‘No. We gave them enough to work with. They’ll get through. We could use a bit of a delay.’

They took the stairwell up again, grimly eager as they ran. They had already begun to fight back, but now they would truly join the battle.

The Summons of Faith was an ancient ship, indifferently maintained. It had been gnawed by time, turned into an old and porous bone. It was not built to withstand battle, especially not within its own corridors. Klaxons wailed across its length as Aetius and Calenus made their way up the decks of the superstructure. A weak vessel to begin with, fractured in the initial combat against the genestealer cult, wounded again by the arrival of the drukhari, now it moaned in terminal pain as another war tore at its integrity. Secondary fires spread unchecked. Broken pipes hissed steam and flame into the corridors, and lighting wavered as power fluctuated. Crosswinds at intersections, the sign of a fracturing hull, fanned the fires, and in the moments of relative quiet, Aetius could hear the high-pitched whistle of escaping atmosphere.

Whenever the Ultramarines crossed paths with a servitor attempting to repair the damage, they cut the monotasked cyborg down. They undercut the ship’s ability to staunch its wounds, and so pushed it closer to death.

‘Why have the drukhari stayed with the ship?’ Calenus wondered.

‘I think they plan to use it for a larger prize,’ said Aetius. ‘They need it, like the genestealer cult, to reach Skopos. There are much richer hunting grounds for them there. This freighter is not much of a trophy in its own right.’

‘They simply need it to hold together long enough to reach Skopos.’

‘Exactly.’ Aetius put his fist through the skull of another servitor that sought to douse the flames roaring through the corridor.

They reached the top decks of the superstructure. The region adjacent to the bridge had become an abyss of war.

Three levels of decking had collapsed. The space before the bridge doors was a canyon of jagged metal and flame. Genestealer cultists swarmed over the ruins while their drukhari foe seemed to dance. From where she hid in the ceiling above the threshold of the bridge, it was as if the drukhari flickered before the Rat’s eyes, never still, their way of war one continuous movement, one never-ending death blow. Their weapons sent a murderous wind of black projectiles across the canyon from the bridge, slicing cultists open, pouring their blood over the shattered slopes of the decks. The cultists died, but there were many of them, and every few seconds their numbers managed to overwhelm a drukhari, catching the pale, beautiful monsters in the crossfire of lasrifles, or smashing their elegant dance with shotgun blasts.

There was no order to the battlefield, but there were patterns of movement. The deadly vortex of the drukhari cut back and forth across the mass of the cultists, and the cultists hurled themselves into a pursuit of the attackers.

The Rat hid in the ductwork of the ceiling, watching the monsters tear each other apart. Seeing them now in battle, she wondered how she had ever thought the cultists were human. Their skin clung too closely to misshapen skulls. Many had fangs and clawed limbs. Some had too many arms. In all of them, there was the sense of horrors about to erupt from within the weak disguise they wore. The Rat gave thanks to the Emperor that they had never known she was aboard. She had never made contact, but she had heard them speak, and felt now that if they had addressed her, she, in some way, would have been tainted by the mere sound of their words.

The bridge doors had been breached. They hung open, and the fringes of the battle moved back and forth across the threshold. Both sides wanted control of the bridge, and neither wanted to destroy it, but the ferocity of the struggle meant that damage was occurring. From the Rat’s hiding place, she could move easily to a position on the other side of the bulkhead and track its condition. She could see the workstation she needed to reach, but she could not act just yet. She would be seen and stopped.

Though there were variations in the tides of battle from moment to moment, the drukhari were gradually gaining the upper hand. They were too skilled, too swift. Numbers would not be enough to defeat them. The cultists needed something more.

Then something more arrived. Aetius and Calenus appeared at the torn end of a corridor midway up the pit. They hit the battlefield with the force of a lightning strike, and their bolter fire ripped the drukhari apart.

The moment of surprise was brief, but it mattered. Aetius killed two drukhari before either force knew what was happening. He caught them in mid-leap, the graceful arcs of their movement turning into broken tumbles. A drukhari wych to his right was just beginning to turn his way when he swung the bolter around, and his stream of shells cut her in half.

He saw two other wyches come at Calenus. The Intercessor blocked the first’s initial strike, but the second slashed under his raised arms, the blade cutting through his chest-plate and plunging into his lungs. Aetius came to his battle-brother’s aid and fired, his bolter rounds blasting one attacker away. The other leapt from the stream of fire, and from the left and right came volleys from splinter rifles. The minute crystals hit Aetius’ armour like a sandstorm, their barbs pockmarking his ceramite, the concentrated bursts punching deeper, bringing the neurotoxins closer to contact with his flesh.

Aetius and Calenus leapt forward, off the ragged edge of the hall decking and into the crater. They moved at a run, firing back at the kabalite warriors. They did not shoot at the cultists. At first, the xenos hybrids attacked them as well as the drukhari. Many were armed with rocket launchers, and the missiles they loosed exploded against the weakening walls of the ship. The power fluctuations wracking the vessel became more violent, its systems cutting out completely for fractions of a second. Calenus threw himself to the left as a rocket slammed into the deck a few yards from him. He and Aetius charged through the wash of flame and rubble, and instead of firing back at the cultist, they brought down the drukhari that had closed in on him. Aetius saw the look of surprise on the abomination’s misshapen features.

‘I think they’re beginning to notice what we’re doing,’ he said.

As the Primaris Space Marines made their way up the bridgeside slope of the crater, the cultists that had been shooting at them redirected their fire. Their savage bursts joined with the precision shots of the Ultramarines, and the balance of the struggle began to change. The drukhari evaded most of what the cultists could throw at them, but Aetius and Calenus tracked their manoeuvres and blew them apart.

The drukhari turned their wrath on the Space Marines. They recognised the greater threat and the tactics that were turning the battlefield against them. Aetius saw rage in their movements and in their pallid faces. When the drukhari had first boarded the Summons of Faith, they had caught the Ultramarines by surprise, trapping the squad between two hostile forces. That these two lone survivors had dared turn the tables on the drukhari and catch them in the same manner was an insult too much to bear.

Aetius and Calenus were a spear tip aimed at the bridge, forcing the drukhari into a defensive mode alien to their nature. The xenos cursed the Ultramarines in their lilting tongue. While the wyches still leapt and cut back and forth across the crater, flaying cultists with their blades, most of the kabalites formed up at the entrance to the bridge and set down a wall of suppressive splinter fire. Aetius ducked under an overhang of metal, pushed back by the storm of neurotoxic crystals.

One of the kabalites shouted at the Intercessors, his anger turning the musical language into a vicious snarl.

‘I don’t think he likes our trick of forcing them to fight the genestealers,’ said Calenus.

‘He’ll like the next one even less,’ said Aetius. When the squad had been at full strength, the drukhari had still overcome the Ultramarines and the genestealer cult. Aetius needed something more on the battlefield, something that had not been present in the first engagement. Something that had been locked away. Something that he and Calenus had freed.

It arrived with a feral roar and the scream of tearing metal. The patriarch of the genestealer cult burst up from the bottom of the crater. The monster was huge, multi-armed, with claws that could tear open a Chimera. With it were other purestrain genestealers, monstrosities as distilled and absolute as the foul beauty of the drukhari. When the patriarch roared, every cultist answered in worship and obedience. The cultists attacked the drukhari with renewed frenzy. The kabalite fire pushed them back for another moment, and then the genestealers shot up the sides of the crater and into the drukhari defenders. With one hand, the patriarch tore the head off a kabalite. Its other arms seized another drukhari and gutted him.

The barrier collapsed. The drukhari fell back, inside the bridge, and now the tide was truly against them.

Aetius climbed to the level of the bridge with Calenus.

‘This battle’s outcome is assured,’ said Calenus.

‘Then it is time to change that certainty again,’ said Aetius.

They opened fire on the genestealers.

Their shells slammed into the spine of the patriarch. The monster reared back and spun around, still holding kabalite corpses. Aetius moved away from Calenus, dividing the monster’s attention while their rounds converged at the centre of the creature’s mass. Viscous alien blood poured from wounds punched through its thick, grey hide. The patriarch lunged at Aetius, while two of its escorts went for Calenus.

Aetius charged at the patriarch, ducked beneath its claws and fired upwards, blasting away its lower jaw. The creature sideswiped him with a staggering blow, its claws punching through a weakened seam in his armour and shattering his fused ribcage, driving shards of bone into his organs. He kept his feet and dragged his chainblade bayonet along the patriarch’s flank as he rounded the foe, then launched a quick volley at one of Calenus’ attackers.

Calenus finished off the second, then joined him, driving back the patriarch again.

‘Moment of truth,’ Aetius told him. The next actions of the drukhari would determine whether he had been wrong to release the monsters.

The question was whether it was anger or self-preservation that would drive the drukhari. Aetius had based his strategy on the latter being true.

It was.

Though Aetius could imagine the reluctance with which they acted, the drukhari turned their fire away from the Ultramarines and concentrated on the purestrain genestealers.

The patriarch raged before the entrance to the bridge. It managed to grab Aetius. He unleashed point-blank fire into its thorax while Calenus severed one of its clawed hands with his chainblade. A wych jumped onto its shoulder and sank her sword into its spine. It snapped an arm back and crushed her before she could leap away.

The patriarch slashed at the Primaris Space Marines again. It was viciously fast, and Calenus, breathing through torn lungs, was slower than he had been. The monster’s strike sent him flying. Aetius caught him at the last moment and hauled him back from the edge of the crater. He loosed a blast of shells at the monster’s face. It recoiled, whipping its skull away from the mass-reactive hell, and its retreat bought the Ultramarines a few more seconds.

Calenus’ breathing was a hollow rattle through the grille of his helm. There were deep claw gouges in his chest-plate. The battle was talking its toll on both of them. Aetius’ blood burned with the effort of keeping the effects of the drukhari neurotoxins at bay, and his reaction times were more sluggish than they should have been.

The drukhari killed two more purestrain genestealers, and threw everything they had at the patriarch, even as the cultists took more of them down. The enemies of the Imperium were shredding each other. Aetius looked upon his handiwork. It was pleasing. But it wasn’t enough. The entrance to the bridge was still blocked, and the balance of destruction was ephemeral. Either the genestealers or the drukhari would gain the upper hand, or they would both turn on the Ultramarines.

Aetius refused to give them the chance to make that decision.

The ship’s power wavered again. The battlefield was plunged into darkness for a moment and Aetius’ footing became unstable as the artificial gravity trembled. The patriarch charged Aetius, knocked him into the air over the crater and seized him in a vice-like grip.

‘Now, citizen!’ Aetius boomed through his vox-speakers, calling to Hoven, trusting her to have reached her position. ‘Do it now!’

The monster had his arms pinned. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, the lower part of its skull mangled, its ferocity was undiminished.

It closed a fist over his head. Aetius’ helm began to crack.

The Rat was in position. The workstation was on the port side of the bridge, away from the entrance and the swirl of combat. The Rat was among the predators, and they ignored her. What she had to do was simple. The damage-control runes on the pict screens that surrounded her were screaming for her to take this very action. The ship was burning. There was fire everywhere. Something drastic had to be done, but the remedy was too severe to be performed automatically by a servitor. One stood before the consoles, inert, its function surpassed by events. When she heard Aetius’ shout, the Rat shoved the servitor aside and faced the emergency venting procedure. Two levers to override the fail-safe protocols. A third to open the ship to the void. Or so she thought. She moved the levers one after the other, uttering a prayer to the Emperor that she was not mistaken.

Explosive bolts blew off hatches. Containment fields shut down and cargo bays gaped. A massive blow shook the entire length of the Summons of Faith’s hull as its atmosphere erupted into space. A hurricane twisted through its corridors. The sudden shock was too much for the damaged ship. The superstructure, critically damaged by the war waged within, gave away completely. The entire bow-ward side exploded, and the rest of the bulkheads collapsed in the last moments of artificial gravity. Then the power failed.

Just before the dark came down, the Rat dived beneath the console as the ceiling of the bridge fell in.

Aetius’ eye-lenses compensated for the sudden night as death came for the Summons of Faith. The gravity failed and the patriarch floated upwards. It flailed, reaching for an anchor point, and released Aetius’ right arm. He raised his bolter and sent shells blasting through the monster’s skull. The creature went limp. Aetius used the mass of the corpse to push himself down, and his boots mag-locked him to the decking. Above him, the hull was open to the void. Flaming gases dissipated into the cold and airless night. Genestealer cultists and drukhari cartwheeled away from the ship, weightless, carried by the gale-force winds.

Their armour clamping them firmly to the ragged deck, Aetius and Calenus riddled the xenos bodies with shells. Behind them, there was only wreckage where the bridge had been.

The calm after the storm descended upon the battlefield like a sarcophagus lid. So much of the vessel’s superstructure had torn away that Aetius could look out across the full expanse of the hull.

A faint vibration thrummed in the decking.

‘The engines are still running,’ said Calenus.

Aetius nodded. ‘The ship might yet reach its destination,’ he said. ‘And so will we, after a fashion.’

His power plant was straining to keep oxygen flowing to his lungs, but there were too many tears in the seals of his armour and the poisons of the drukhari continued to eat at his blood. He thought he might live for another hour, perhaps two, but no more than that.

‘The war is over, and we stand,’ said Aetius. They would still be standing when they died, locked into position by their armour. The thought pleased him. He and Calenus would be sentinels past the end.

‘No songs for this war,’ said Calenus.

‘What need of song when we have honour?’ Aetius said, and he smiled, knowing he had, in the end, done his duty.

The captain’s saviour pod, accessible from the bridge, had still been in working order. The Rat manoeuvred it over the wreckage of the Summons of Faith’s superstructure. She moved away from the ship, and it responded well. She would, she thought, be able to reach Skopos. She didn’t think of any purpose beyond immediate survival.

But as she left the dark tomb behind, she saw the two figures standing guard atop the ruin, motionless and proud. Two warriors had ended two invasions heading for Skopos. The image of the guardians stayed before her mind’s eye as the vessel dropped into night, and the vision gave her purpose.

‘I will bear witness,’ she murmured.

‘I will bear witness,’ she vowed.

NO HERO

Peter McLean

On distant Vardan IV, the brave men and women of the Astra Militarum have successfully commenced their strategic redeployment. Our glorious Imperial Navy are even now lifting troops and noteworthy civilians for transit to new fronts, where fresh opportunities to serve the glory of the Imperium await them! The redeployment from Vardan IV is a major victory for mankind!

The Emperor protects!

– From the Imperial newsreel archives
of the Officio Prefectus

The withdrawal is underway at last. The greenskin menace is unstoppable, and I can only praise the Emperor’s name that the warmaster has finally seen sense and signalled a full retreat.

I have lost two million men on Vardan IV.

– From the field notes of Lord General
Militant Leopold D’Vangion

Holy God Emperor, I beseech you, deliver us from this terrible place.

– Colonel Noriego, Reslian 45th

I don’t know if anyone will ever read this journal, but I’m going to start writing it anyway. There’s nothing else to do, other than sit in my tent and sweat and wait for it to be over. It’s that or listen to Corporal Cully and Sergeant Rachain make fun of people, but after six months in D Company I’m tired of the pair of them. They’re fine soldiers but their sense of humour revolves around making up cruel names for everyone, and I don’t like it. At least they’re not in my platoon – that’s something, I suppose.

It’s so hot in the tent that I’m feeling faint even as I write, this despite the rain drumming down. The air itself is like liquid, the humidity making my combat fatigues stick to me in the most disgusting way. There hasn’t been a single day in the last six months when it hasn’t been like this, and the nights are no better. Our advance firebase is deep in the jungle, hundreds of miles away from the landing fields where even now the massive transports are evacuating whole regiments up to the orbiting troop ships.

Praise the Emperor, we’re getting out of this hell.

The first wave of Valkyries came an hour ago and took C Company away with them, heading for those blessed landing fields. It’ll be our turn soon, thank the Golden Throne. The rampaging horde of orks is less than twenty miles away from our camp now, so the scouts have reported, and there are vast numbers of them.

Vast. Too many to fight any more. The firebase will be overrun.

The order to evacuate Vardan IV came at the very last moment, but I’m just thankful that it came at all. I’m praying that our Valkyrie gets here before the greenskins do. I cannot wait to get in that carrier, and if I never see another ork again in my life it will be too soon.

I’m still alive. Somehow, dear journal, I survived it. This is what happened:

Our turn finally came to board the Valkyries. I was with Corporal Rikkards and the rest of One Section. The sergeant was with Two Section in the craft after ours. The lieutenant had already gone, no surprises there.

I clambered on board with Jannek ahead of me and Straub behind lugging his vox-caster, all of us jostling for position even though we knew there would be room for everyone. There were only ten of us in the section including the corporal, and the Valkyrie swallowed us and our gear with ease. Not in comfort, admittedly, but I wasn’t complaining. No one was.

Karrel and Varus pulled the hinged benches down on their scissor mounts and we all promptly took our helmets off and put them on the benches to sit on. We had to fly over the rapidly approaching orks to get to the landing fields, and one thing we had learned very quickly on Vardan IV is that greenskins like to shoot at anything that moves, including Valkyries. Once you’ve seen your first man hit from below by a spray of bullets coming up through the floor between his legs, you learn to sit on your helmet when you’re flying over the jungle.

‘Shove up,’ Cialella said as she lumped down next to me.

I grunted and moved a bit, but not much. I couldn’t really, with Lopata looming on my other side. He was a ridiculously big man – Cully had called him ‘ogryn’, but not where Lopata was likely to hear and make something of it. Even Cully was wary of Lopata.

‘Shove up,’ Cialella complained.

‘I’ll shove it up yours in a minute,’ I snapped at her, and Corporal Rikkards glared at us both.

‘Be quiet, the pair of you,’ he said.

I muttered an apology. It was like an oven in the idling Valkyrie, and everyone was short-tempered, and scared that the greenskins were going to charge into the camp shooting at any minute, and utterly overwhelmed with relief to be leaving alive, all at once. Brendahl was the last one in, and then the Navy gunner slammed the side door of the Valkyrie closed behind him and took up position behind his door-mounted heavy bolter. Varus mopped her face with a greasy rag, making it even dirtier than it had been. Blashak, by far the oldest of us at nearly thirty Terran-standard, coughed into his fist.

That was it, we really were getting out at last.

The Valkyrie’s twin engines began to scream, and the heavy carrier shuddered as it lifted vertically off the ground in a swirling cloud of dust and wind-blown debris. I could just see out of the door-gunner’s firing slit from where I was sitting, and I watched the thick foliage of the jungle canopy drop away beneath us as we lifted. We hovered for a moment while the pilot vectored the engines for horizontal flight, then sudden acceleration shoved me hard against Lopata’s meaty shoulder. I don’t think he even noticed.

We were still flying at a relatively low altitude, but the wind rushing in through the gun ports in the doors was blissfully cool now that the aircraft had picked up speed, and everyone started to relax as the temperature in the crew bay dropped. I could hear distant gunfire over the noise of the engines as the greenskins wasted ammo trying to shoot us down, but we were high enough to be out of range of their small-arms fire.

‘Sorry I shoved you,’ Cialella said.

‘Forget it,’ I said, and smiled at her. ‘Sorry I snapped at you.’

Cialella was all right, and a crack shot too. She was the nearest thing One Section had to a proper sniper, even if she didn’t warrant a specialist marksman’s long-las. I sighed with sheer relief. This was the closest I had come to being comfortable and happy in over six months.

The feeling was wonderful, and it lasted right up until the missile hit us.

We must have been right over the orks, and they were already taking potshots at us, but we knew they couldn’t hurt us now. Only I guess whichever warband was directly below us just then had heavy weapons.

Bad luck, that was all it was. The pilots wouldn’t have known what hit them. I don’t know much about it myself, truth be told.

All I remember is that the front of the Valkyrie exploded in a shrieking fireball and then we were falling out of the sky, screaming as the wind tore through the crew bay.

I don’t know what happened after that.

I woke up with my head in Cialella’s lap, or what would have been her lap if she’d still had any legs.

She was very, very dead.

So was Straub, who was on top of me with a huge chunk of shattered metal sticking out of his forehead like a single, twisted horn. The floor of the crew bay was slanted at a crazy angle and the whole interior of the carrier was sticky with blood. I couldn’t move.

I could hear someone moving about, then the clang of an equipment locker swinging shut.

‘Help me,’ I croaked. ‘Who’s there? Please, help me.’

‘Sorry, boy, I thought you were dead too,’ Lopata’s voice said.

I saw his huge hairy hands reach down and hook Straub’s body under the armpits, then the big man hauled the corpse off me and tossed it unceremoniously aside.

‘I don’t know how I’m not,’ I said. ‘Is anyone else alive?’

‘Yeah, the corporal is, but he’s hurt, and Jannek is hurt far worse,’ Lopata said. ‘Varus and Blashak seem to be all right, and one of the Navy gunners made it too. Everyone else is paste.’

Seven of us had survived the crash, then. It didn’t seem possible.

‘It’s a miracle,’ I whispered. ‘The Emperor protects.’

Lopata shrugged and helped me to sit up.

‘Varus reckons we came down on top of the jungle canopy and sort of slid across the top of the trees for half a mile or so, and that slowed us down enough that we weren’t all pulped when the craft hit the ground. Pure luck, she says.’

‘Oh, how would she know?’ I muttered as I pulled myself the rest of the way up and tried to wipe as much of Cialella’s blood off my face as I could.

‘She looked at the trees – reckons she knows woodcraft and all that stuff,’ Lopata said. ‘She’s a scout, after all.’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

Varus had only been made up to scout two weeks ago after Darrup had been killed in an ork ambush, and in my opinion it had gone to her head. I took an unsteady step and the world spun around me, making me clutch at a broken piece of the Valkyrie’s twisted fuselage to hold myself up.

‘Steady there,’ Lopata said, grabbing my arm in a hand that went all the way around it with ease. ‘You must have taken a hell of a blow to the head – you’ve been unconscious for hours. It’s why I thought you didn’t make it.’

I grunted, just glad the other survivors hadn’t already been rescued before I woke up. I would have been left behind for dead, if that had happened. That made me frown as I thought about it.

‘Why haven’t we been picked up yet?’

Lopata just shrugged.

‘We’ve been written off as lost in action, the corporal says, and we’ve no way to tell anyone otherwise. The cockpit… well, isn’t there any more, so we’ve got no vox and no distress beacon. We were going to move out on foot once I’d finished scavenging kit.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What about Straub’s field set?’

‘Some of it’s sticking out of his head, and the rest is smashed to bits,’ Lopata said.

‘Oh,’ I said again.

‘Reckon you can walk yet?’

I tried a tentative step towards the hole in the side of the aircraft where the crew bay door had been torn off. My vision was a bit blurry and my head was throbbing, but nothing seemed to be broken. I offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the Emperor for my deliverance.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right. Thanks for pulling me out of there.’

I climbed carefully down out of the wreckage and into a steaming jungle clearing that was strewn with bits of the shattered Valkyrie. The jungle stank of rot and the promethium that was slowly dripping from the carrier’s ruptured fuel tanks. I could only thank the Emperor that we hadn’t all gone up in a fireball.

Corporal Rikkards was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, with the surviving Navy door-gunner not far away from him. Blashak was away by the edge of the treeline, and I could see Varus staring up at the canopy, as though still trying to work out how we were alive at all. Lopata followed me out of the wreckage with four lasguns in his arms.

‘Look who I found,’ he said, grinning.

Corporal Rikkards looked at me in surprise.

‘Thought you were dead, boy,’ he said.

He was nursing his left arm. Blashak, our squad medic, had bandaged it up for him, wrapping his left hand in a great ball of dressings that told me the wound must be pretty bad.

‘No, sir,’ I said.

‘I can see that now, boy,’ Rikkards said, and winced as he moved. ‘What did you get, Lopata?’

‘Four more lasguns,’ he said. ‘At least we can have one each now, and I’ve salvaged a fair bit of ammo too. And a Navy flare pistol, in case we can think of a use for it.’

‘Good,’ Rikkards said. ‘Stack them with the rations. We need to move out soon.’

‘You really don’t think anyone’s going to come looking for us, corporal?’ I asked.

‘No, I really don’t,’ Rikkards said. ‘You can see the state of the craft as well as I can – no one’s going to be expecting any survivors from that.’

I sighed. He was right. The front half of the Valkyrie had been obliterated. If it hadn’t been for the Emperor’s Grace and the thickness of the jungle canopy we would all be dead. As it was, it seemed our plummet from the sky and subsequent slide across the treetops had carried us well away from the orks. I couldn’t hear any shooting in the distance, or anything at all except the hooting and screaming of the hideous simians and fierce avians that infested the jungle.

‘Corporal,’ Blashak called over to where Rikkards was sitting.

Blashak was hunkered down on his haunches in the shade of the trees, bent over the prone figure of Jannek, with a medi-kit open on the ground beside him.

‘What?’

‘Jannek isn’t in a fit state to be moved,’ Blashak said. ‘This is way beyond anything I can do with field dressings. I don’t think he’s going to make it.’

Rikkards wiped his good hand over his face and looked away.

‘No, I don’t think he is either,’ he said.

‘Well, what are we going to do with him?’

‘You know what we’re going to do with him, Blashak,’ the corporal said. ‘We… Oh Throne, I’ve got the seniority, haven’t I? Where’s the lieutenant when you actually want him for once? I suppose I’ll have to do it.’

He climbed off the tree trunk and walked over to where Jannek lay. Jannek was alive but only just, impaled through the gut by a long piece of the Valkyrie’s broken airframe. His breathing was shallow and weak, and he was the colour of rancid milk.

Blashak looked up at the corporal and shook his head.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said again. ‘I’m sorry. I tried, but…’

He gestured helplessly at the critically wounded man.

‘I know.’

Corporal Rikkards bowed his head in prayer for a moment, and drew his laspistol.

‘The Emperor’s Mercy,’ he said, and shot Jannek through the head.

‘You can’t do that!’ the Navy door-gunner protested, leaping to his feet from where he had been sitting with his back to the fallen tree.

He looked down at Jannek for a moment, then took a step away from the corporal.

Rikkards shrugged.

‘Just did,’ he said. ‘And anyway, yes I can. You know the regulations as well as I do – if a man is wounded and can’t continue, if it would be a mercy to end his suffering or if his condition presents a clear and present danger to his comrades, the senior officer present is empowered to administer the Emperor’s Mercy.’

‘All the same…’ the gunner started.

Lopata put a huge hand on the Navy man’s shoulder. The gunner swallowed.

‘You don’t want to make a fuss about this, Navy boy,’ Lopata said quietly. ‘You survived the crash with us, so you’re one of us now. And we don’t make a fuss. Otherwise maybe you didn’t survive the crash, you understand me?’

The gunner nodded. He still looked a bit sick, but he had obviously taken the big man’s meaning. Regimental legend had it that Lopata had been some sort of big-time ganger back home, or at least an enforcer for someone who was. A man who broke people’s kneecaps for money, or worse. Right then I could well believe it.

‘The name’s Civatte,’ the Navy man said. ‘Gunner, second class.’

‘Welcome to the glorious Reslian Forty-Fifth,’ Rikkards said. ‘You’re in the army now, and I’m in charge. Right you lot, share out the gear and get ready to move. We’re getting to those landing fields and onto a transport even if we have to walk.’

We had to walk, all right. We walked for four days.

The heat was almost intolerable. The entire jungle steamed with humidity, and the stench of rotting vegetation filled the foetid air, half choking us. I cursed under my breath and wiped uselessly at the thick film of sweat that covered my unshaven face, dislodging a pale, translucent arachnid from my left ear. I hadn’t even felt it. In half-formed words I cursed the constant rain, cursed my waterlogged boots that felt like they were made of lead, and the straps of the heavy pack that bit into my shoulders through my sodden combat jacket. I cursed the ever-present biting insects that tried to settle on every inch of exposed skin. I could feel them trying to suck out the lifeblood that somehow kept me moving hour after hour through this living nightmare.

I dug my canteen out of my pack and took a pull on it, but the water was warm and brackish and metallic-tasting from the container. I grimaced, and made myself drink it anyway.

The Navy man, Civatte, was ahead of me, struggling with his pack and muttering pitifully to himself every step of the way. His fancy Navy boots had half rotted away in the often knee-deep mud and he was walking with a pronounced limp, favouring his left foot heavily. Neither the man nor his boots were built for marching, and it looked to me like he might not last too much longer.

Four days of forced marches in this terrible terrain and vile weather were hard enough on infantry troopers like us. For the Navy flyer, it must have been pure hell.

Varus was adamant that we were going the right way, but I didn’t see how she could be so sure. So much of our kit had been destroyed in the crash that we were without even the most basic things that every infantry trooper takes for granted, like compasses and lamp packs. We could have been a hundred miles behind the ork lines by then without knowing it. All we could do was put our faith in the scout and pray to the Emperor for His guidance.

‘It’s getting late,’ Varus said over her shoulder. ‘We’d better start looking for somewhere to make camp before we lose the light.’

It got dark very quickly in the jungle, and the canopy overhead was so thick that no moonlight made it through after dark. Trying to move after sundown was impossible.

Corporal Rikkards grunted agreement, his face haggard and drawn. This was his first full command, and the strain of that and his wound was taking its toll on him. I had a nasty feeling the wound was infected, his hand starting to rot under the ball of now-filthy bandages. He hadn’t said anything, but I could smell it sometimes. That worried me – Blashak was only a field medic orderly, not a proper doctor, and he didn’t have the skill or equipment to perform a field amputation. Not one that the corporal would be likely to survive, anyway. None of the rest of us had any medical training at all.

Civatte fell forward suddenly, his foot snagged on a fine wire. The rest of us dived clear with a split second to spare before the clutch of grenades went off, blowing the Navy gunner into the air like a limp rag doll. He fell heavily in a rain of mud and shrapnel, his body bloodied and broken.

‘Nobody move,’ Rikkards whispered hoarsely, raising his head a fraction of an inch from the thick mud in which he lay.

I eased off the safety of my lasgun, my eyes sweeping the dense undergrowth for any sign of movement. Rikkards was inching his way towards me on his stomach, his laspistol clutched in his good hand. Something jumped in the bushes behind the prone corporal and I squeezed off a short burst over his head, the stock of the weapon held tight to my shoulder. The superheated rounds tore through the undergrowth, shredding the fern-like plants into cellulose shrapnel. The small purple simian that had moved gave a final twitch and lay still, its dismembered corpse resembling a scale model of Civatte.

‘You’re getting twitchy, boy,’ Rikkards cautioned me sternly.

‘Sorry, sir,’ I said.

Varus got slowly to her feet and tried to wipe the coating of mud from her face. She was caked with it, wet and foul-smelling. We all were, now.

‘Keep your eyes open for any more wires,’ she warned, tucking a loose strand of dirty brown hair back under her helmet.

Rikkards nodded. ‘Let’s move,’ he said. ‘If there were any greenskins still around they’d have been on us by now. That booby trap could have been months old for all we know.’

I nodded and followed him as Varus took point again, Lopata at my side and Blashak on the six.

‘Where are we, corporal?’ Blashak complained, his eyes scanning the ground for more tripwires as he walked. ‘If we’re as far behind our lines as we’re supposed to be we should have run into someone by now.’

‘Think you could do better, Blashak?’ the corporal snapped. ‘You couldn’t track your way out of your own boot.’

Blashak shot him a filthy look and fell into sullen silence behind us. Dusk was settling in fast now, but at least the rain had finally stopped. Mist rose through the trees to cast a ghostly pallor over the jungle. Varus was leading us up an increasingly steep incline, winding through undergrowth thick enough for us to have to use our bayonets as machetes in several places.

She brought us to a halt a few minutes later with a silently raised hand, then turned to speak to the corporal in a low voice.

‘The trees are thinning out up ahead,’ she said. ‘Go carefully, we could step out into a ork camp any minute. There’s no telling how the front line’s altered by now.’

We moved silent as spectres, creeping through the trees to be confronted with a sight that brought us up short in our tracks. The heavy vegetation gave out suddenly a few feet from a cliff edge. Ahead of us, the ground dropped sharply away into a valley obscured by thick banks of drifting mist. On all sides the jungle continued into the dwindling distance, and only the Emperor and the orks knew what lay in the valley below.

‘Where are we?’ Blashak demanded, rounding on Varus with an angry look on his face.

She looked up him and shook her head.

‘I honestly have no idea,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

Corporal Rikkards sank onto the ground and sat staring out across the misty valley as the light grew steadily worse, cradling his rotting hand in his lap. His face was blank and hopeless, drained of every feeling except pain. He had trusted in Varus as our only hope of making it to the landing fields – we all had – and now this. There was no way of knowing how long we had been walking in the wrong direction.

Blashak leaned his lasgun against a tree and stared at the scout.

‘We’re dead,’ he stated bluntly.

Varus nodded silently. ‘That’s a pretty accurate assessment of the situation, Trooper Blashak,’ she said. ‘We are dead, well and truly. We could’ve been heading the wrong way since we crashed for all I know. Some scout, aren’t I?’

She began to cry suddenly, just stood there weeping silently and looking out across the alien valley. I didn’t much like Varus, but right then I wanted to put my arms around her, just hold her and comfort her, but I didn’t dare. She would probably have knifed me if I had touched her. I sat down beside the corporal instead, and shared my last lho-stick with him while trying not to notice the smell of his hand. After a while Varus came and sat too, and we watched the darkness settle in.

‘We may as well stop here for the night,’ Rikkards said after a while, drowning the end of the stick in the mud.

‘We may as well all drop dead,’ Blashak snapped. ‘Stop prolonging the inevitable and get it over with.’

Lopata turned with a speed you wouldn’t expect from such a big man, and punched Blashak in the face hard enough to knock him down.

‘Shut up,’ he growled. ‘You just shut up, Blashak.’ He stood over the fallen man with his huge hands balled into fists and a look of fury on his face. ‘Varus did her best. What have you done, except complain?’

‘Stow it, Lopata,’ Rikkards said. ‘It’s not worth it. Let’s make camp here and see if it looks any better in the morning.’

Of course it didn’t look any better in the morning.

Dawn brought the first rain of the day, reeking and poisonous, and I woke from my exhausted sleep with my hand resting on the grip of my lasgun and the left side of my face pillowed on my mud-covered pack. It was hot already, and the rain steamed in the early morning light.

I lifted my head from the pack and sat up, looking around for the others. Varus was sitting on the ridge, staring out across the valley with her helmet off and her hair hanging around her face in a dirty matted curtain. Blashak and Lopata were making a point of ignoring each other. There was no sign of Rikkards.

‘Where’s the corporal?’ I asked as I rummaged uselessly through my pack for something to eat. We had finished the last of our ration packs the previous day.

‘Latrine,’ Varus said, which meant he’d gone into the undergrowth somewhere to do his business.

We had all been too tired and depressed the previous night for anyone to feel like digging a regulation latrine pit. I got up and went over to where she sat.

‘Got anything to eat?’ I asked her.

‘These are edible,’ she said, and passed me a handful of small, wizened fruits with diseased-looking greyish skin.

I popped a few into my mouth and chewed, wincing at the bitter taste.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I didn’t say they were good,’ she admitted. ‘Nothing here is, is it?’

I was trying to think of some words to say to her when there was a sudden yell from somewhere in the undergrowth about fifty feet away from the camp, the corporal’s voice, followed by the crack of a laspistol.

‘Orks!’ he bellowed.

We grabbed our weapons and threw ourselves into cover in the heavy vegetation, trying to make out shapes in the impenetrable green and the steaming rain. The corporal’s laspistol fired again, twice, then fell silent.

Something moved in the trees, something big.

Really big.

In the Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer there is a section called ‘Patrols & Ambushing’ that details the correct use of the bayonet to make silent kills. There’s an illustration there, and I remember it very clearly, that shows a proud Imperial Guardsman bayonetting an ork. The ork is about four feet tall and pot-bellied, and rather comical-looking.

Orks are not four feet tall, or pot-bellied, or even remotely funny.

The smallest ork warrior I have ever seen was eight feet tall and four hundred pounds of lean, murderous muscle. Some are much bigger than that.

Orks are terrifying.

I squeezed off a short burst but missed, the pouring rain spoiling my aim. I tried to line up on the place I had seen movement again, cursing the appalling conditions. Just then something burst up out of the undergrowth right in front of me, something huge and green and reeking.

The ork towered over me. Nine feet of pure hate with a massive, jagged axe in its fist. It was so close to me that the muzzle of my lasgun was almost touching its stomach. Its foul breath washed over me from its gaping mouth, two yellow, broken tusks jutting up from its enormously protruding lower jaw. I froze, but the Emperor moved me just enough to make my trigger finger clamp down in sheer panic.

I must have emptied half of my lasgun’s power pack into the ork on full auto, at point-blank range.

It exploded, covering me in foul ichor and chunks of sizzling burned meat. I fell to my knees, retching and gasping in horror and relief. I could hear shooting from my right, Blashak shouting obscenities as he fired. I dropped and crawled that way, cradling my lasgun, and came up on the medic’s flank.

‘I only clipped it,’ he hissed. ‘Keep your head down.’

‘Where?’

‘Three o’clock – or it was, anyway.’

I nodded and readied my weapon. Visibility was down to about ten yards in the pounding rain, but a fully grown ork is hard to miss. I spotted it, creeping through the undergrowth and hefting what I can only describe as a home-made heavy stubber. The weapon was boxy and ugly, badly welded together from what looked like scrap metal, and, inexplicably, spray-painted bright red. There was a huge drum-pattern magazine attached to it, though, and I had no doubt that it worked. I raised my lasgun just as the ork saw us.

It opened up immediately and tried to aim afterwards, giving Blashak and I time to flatten ourselves to the filthy mud underfoot. The noise of the ork weapon was deafening, and it bucked and kicked like a live thing even in the xenos brute’s massive hands. Heavy-calibre explosive shells screamed over our heads and cut down a tree behind us as the stubber showered sparks furiously. Blashak returned fire as best he could from his prone position, but missed.

I noticed the ork already had a long las-burn across the meat of its left shoulder, where the medic had clipped it earlier, but the wound didn’t seem to be slowing it down at all. The ork scurried into cover to reload, and I broke and ran in an attempt to outflank it, Blashak shooting to cover me as I went. I ducked behind the thick trunk of a huge tree just in time, as the ork’s monstrous stubber started to roar again. I had the shot from there, and I put a tight burst into the beast’s back.

Las-rounds tore through it, spinning it around with the stubber still firing. I threw myself down in panic as great chunks were blasted out of the tree I was hiding behind. The greenskin was hunched over and snarling, badly wounded but somehow still not dead. The toughness of orks is prodigious, but this was ridiculous.

Blashak started shooting again and earned himself a deafening return blast from the stubber for his troubles. Sparks flew from the massive weapon, which suddenly jammed with a horrible grinding noise. I seized the moment, sprang out of cover and blew the ork apart with a long burst of full auto.

I leaned against my tree for a long moment, gasping for breath.

‘Clear,’ I said at last, and Blashak stood up in a thicket of ferns.

‘It’s gone quiet,’ he said, and I nodded.

The ork guns were so loud we would have heard any within a mile at least, and there was no las-fire anymore either. I took the opportunity to slot a fresh power pack into my lasgun.

‘We need to regroup, find the others,’ I said.

We retraced our path through the undergrowth, listening. Blashak stopped, and put a hand on my arm to hold me.

‘I hear something,’ he said. ‘It’s coming from over there.’

I followed him to the edge of a small clearing, and there Lopata was facing down an ork in single combat. The ork had a broad-bladed, serrated knife clutched in its massive hand, and Lopata had his bayonet, his lasgun lost somewhere in the undergrowth. Lopata was so huge they looked almost evenly matched, and each snarled at the other as they circled. The ork roared and lunged, its knife plunging towards Lopata’s chest, but the big man wasn’t there any more.

He spun with the trained skill of a knife fighter and jammed aside the ork’s forearm with his own, blocking the stabbing thrust, and at the same time his other hand came down and plunged his bayonet into the meat of the creature’s muscular shoulder. The ork bellowed in rage and backhanded Lopata across the side of the head, knocking him down into the reeking mud. I raised my lasgun.

‘No!’ Lopata shouted.

He was on his feet again now, circling once more, and the look of savage joy in his eyes told me that he would be very unhappy with me if I shot the ork. He had something to prove here, I could tell, to the ork or to himself or maybe to the whole galaxy.

‘Come here,’ he hissed. ‘Come here, you ugly pig.’

I glanced across the clearing and saw Varus standing there watching too, her weapon lowered. There was no more shooting coming from anywhere, so this had to be the last of them. Lopata was going one-to-one with an ork with blades, and that was something to see. That was something special.

‘Go on, big lad!’ Blashak yelled, grinning as though the previous night’s altercation between him and Lopata had never happened.

To see a human fight an ork on its own terms was inspiring, stuff to stir the blood. The ork feinted with its heavy knife then slashed back the other way with astonishing speed, and opened a long, red cut in Lopata’s left arm. The big man hissed and kicked out hard enough to take the door off a Chimera, buckling the ork’s knee.

‘Lo-pa-ta! Lo-pa-ta!’ I started to chant, and the others took it up until we were shouting and clapping and stamping like the audience at a stadium fight back home.

The monster took a limping step, snarling with hatred. Lopata’s arm was running red but he barely seemed aware of it. He laughed even as the blood dripped from his fingers.

‘I’m playing to the home crowd here, piggy,’ he taunted the ork.

The ork crouched and sprang at Lopata, but instead of rolling away Lopata surged into its leap with his bayonet up. The ork crashed into him but now it was screaming, and Lopata put both hands on the bayonet that was hilt-deep in its chest and heaved it downwards with all his might. The ork tore open from sternum to crotch, and great ropes of reeking purple intestines spilled out of it as it fell. Lopata fought his way to his feet and kicked the dying ork away from him with a smile of vicious, blood-drenched triumph.

‘Now you can shoot it,’ he told me.

I put a las-round through the thing’s forehead, and it fell quiet.

Varus let out a long breath, then turned away and vomited into a stand of ferns. Blashak shook his head in amazement.

‘Nicely done, mate,’ he said.

Lopata just grinned, trying to get his breath back.

‘Are we sure that’s all of them?’ I asked, after a moment.

Blashak nodded. ‘There were only four of them – Varus got the other one. A scouting party, I reckon, though scouting what I don’t know.’

I shrugged, then a thought struck me. ‘Where’s the corporal?’

Blashak looked at me. ‘Yeah, about that,’ he said, after a moment. ‘There’s bad ways to go, then there’s an ork catching you with your trousers down. Literally.’

I swallowed. I couldn’t think of anything worse, and I really didn’t know what to say to that.

‘Oh,’ I said feebly.

That made us four, then.

‘Now what do we do?’ Varus asked. ‘Who’s in command?’

She had the seniority, as the only scout, but she had only been a scout for two weeks and she didn’t seem very sure of herself any more.

‘I am, of course,’ Lopata said. He pointed at the butchered ork lying at his feet. ‘Anyone want to argue about that?’

I sighed. That was how the greenskins settled things. The biggest and strongest one in any group was automatically in charge. If that sort of thinking was starting to seem reasonable then we had definitely been on Vardan IV too long, but we all nodded just the same. Lopata’s blood was up and he was still holding his dripping bayonet, and I don’t think any of us wanted to argue with him just then.

Blashak nodded and took the medi-kit out of his pack.

‘All right, boss,’ he said. ‘Let me see to your arm, then you can tell us what we do now.’

Lopata thought about that while Blashak cleaned and dressed his wound and Varus retrieved his fallen lasgun for him, then he made his decision.

‘Those orks were scouts, like you said, and they were coming this way. Scouting something. I don’t know what, but I reckon we’ll find it down in that valley. That’s the way we’ll go, find what they were looking for and see if it’s anything we can use.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Blashak said, and nodded.

Varus had a look about her like she wanted to argue, but given that she still felt guilty about getting us lost in the first place I supposed she thought better of it. Personally, by then I would have followed anyone who seemed to have even a vague idea of what to do. I nodded as well.

‘Right, boss,’ I said.

We left Corporal Rikkards where he had fallen. An undignified end, I know, but there was nothing we could do about it now. Lopata led us to the edge of the cliff and we gradually wound our way down the perilous slope, using the heavy undergrowth to keep from sliding to the bottom on our backs. The rain was coming down in hot sheets by then, washing away the increasingly unstable footing, and in the end it was all we could do to get to the bottom in one piece as the deluge turned the slope underfoot into a shifting quagmire.

At last the rain stopped and the incline reduced to a manageable gradient, and we found ourselves in even denser jungle than before. We unsheathed our bayonets and slowly hacked a path forwards, cursing with every step as the alien flora tore at our clothes and skin. We had barely gone fifty yards when an impossible sight stopped us dead in our tracks.

A settlement.

The wall of foliage ended suddenly where it had been hacked away, the stumps glistening wet after the pouring rain. People were moving around in the settlement, children running and playing in the muddy streets. Prefab buildings stood up on short stilts, their walls rotting and damp, and beyond them the watery sunlight glinted off small, cultivated paddy fields.

It was a settlement full of Imperial civilians.

‘What the…?’ Varus started.

‘I thought we evacuated all the civvies?’ I said.

‘Didn’t you hear the commissar?’ Blashak sneered. ‘The noteworthy civilians, he said. The Administratum, that means, and the folk with money. This lot…’

He tailed off, and just shrugged.

‘They’ve been abandoned,’ Lopata said. ‘Too deep into greenskin country to get out, maybe, or just overlooked in the panic. Either way, they’ve been left for dead just like we have. And there are orks coming this way.’

I watched the children playing.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, they haven’t been abandoned. Not yet. We’re here.’

‘There’s four of us,’ Blashak pointed out.

‘That’s right, there’s four of us,’ I said, rounding on him in sudden anger. ‘Four of the indomitable Astra Militarum, with lasguns and grenades and plenty of ammo, and a man who killed an ork in single combat.’

‘I did that,’ Lopata said, nodding proudly to himself. ‘Me. I’m not scared of a few greenskins. We’ll look after them for a bit.’

I was scared of orks, and I doubted it would only be a few of them, but I nodded anyway. It was the right thing to do. The Emperor protects, and we were the Emperor’s instruments in that valley.

It was our duty.

‘So we stay, then?’ Varus asked.

‘We stay,’ Lopata said. ‘We’re not getting out anyway, now. I say we die well.’

He shouldered his lasgun and marched out of the foliage and into the settlement with the three of us behind him.

We slept in the largest of the prefabs that night, the one that belonged to the settlement’s head woman, taking it in turns to keep the watch. Varus had rigged the perimeter late that afternoon, using her scout training to set tripwires attached to frag grenades at each likely entry point. That left us low on throwable ordnance, but we all agreed with her that it was the best course of action.

The colonists were keeping their children inside now, as much as they could anyway. The very young ones, the ones who were too young to understand why we were there, were excited to have real soldiers in their settlement. The others looked at us with the same wary fear as their parents.

It was obvious that this remote place had been untouched by the fighting until now, and the settlers knew that if we were there then the war couldn’t be far behind us. No one mentioned the evacuation, and it soon became clear the settlers knew nothing about it. The place didn’t even have a vox-station. We kept quiet rather than tell them how their own side had left them behind to die.

All the same, I thought they might be starting to suspect something along those lines. There were only four of us, and we were filthy and hungry and quite clearly cut off from our own forces. The head woman had been gracious, welcoming, even grateful to us, but I could see the quiet terror hiding behind her ancient grey eyes.

My chrono read four a.m. when Blashak shook me awake for my turn on watch.

‘You’re up,’ he said, and went through to the back to grab some sleep while he could.

I took my lasgun and went and sat on the rickety wooden steps in front of the house. All the buildings in the settlement were standard-pattern prefabs but they had been raised up on thick wooden pilings to keep the water from coming in when the rains were heavy. Even that early in the day the humidity was already crushing and the jungle stank of rot and despair, but at least it wasn’t raining yet. I checked my lasgun methodically, oiled the moving parts and picked muck out of the fixed sights with a cracked thumbnail, reciting the Litany of Durability over the precious weapon as I worked. It was nothing special in itself, just a mass-stamped M35 Short Pattern lasgun with a skeletal metal stock, but I knew it was the difference between life and death.

It says in the Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer that the lasgun is the most precious item in a Guardsman’s possession, and I truly believe it. It’s not just a weapon, although of course it is that and a very good one too. The lasgun, I firmly believe, is the mortal instrument of the Emperor’s will. Every shot is a prayer to His eternal glory, every kill an affirmation of His divinity and the ultimate divinity of mankind. The lasgun is the very heart and soul of an Imperial Guardsman.

Satisfied at last, I leaned back against the damp wall behind me, watching the perimeter. It started to get light, and the jungle woke around me in a chorus of birdsong and the chattering of simians. It was strangely beautiful, as Vardan IV often was when the chaotic roar of war faded away. I smiled to myself as I watched the sun rise over the trees.

‘What’re you smiling about?’ a woman’s voice asked me.

I turned and looked down towards the muddy street, and saw a woman peering up at me. She had a jug of water from the communal well balanced on her hip, and a little boy of four or five years clinging to her skirts. His feet were bare, and splashed with mud.

‘It’s a nice morning,’ I said, for want of anything better.

‘Go back to the house, Rami,’ the woman told her son, and she waited until he had trotted out of earshot before she spoke to me again. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ she said.

‘I…’ I started. Yes, they probably were. We all probably were, but I knew it wouldn’t help anyone to tell her that. ‘No, you’re not,’ I said at last.

‘Why not?’

I patted my lasgun and smiled. ‘We’re the Astra Militarum.’

She snorted and turned away, obviously not impressed. Lopata might have impressed her, with his size and the sheer raw power of him, or maybe Varus with her stealth and cunning, or even Blashak with his age and experience, but not me. I’m nothing special, I have to admit, but I am a Guardsman.

‘Hey,’ I called after her, and she stopped and turned to look back at me. I realised I had no idea what to say to her. ‘Stay inside today, if you can,’ I managed after a moment. ‘Keep your children indoors, at least.’

She just nodded, and went on her way.

I watched the sun rising through the morning mist, and thought about the children. Each of them just one amongst countless billions, utterly insignificant. Each one a pure, brilliant spark of life, precious to the Emperor if not to His Imperium.

It was maybe an hour later when the first of Varus’ booby traps detonated. I dived off the steps into cover with my lasgun in my hands as a fireball blew out of the foliage fifty yards away, throwing chunks of ork into the mud at the edge of the settlement. I sighted and fired into the dense undergrowth, one, two, three closely grouped shots. My training sergeant would have been pleased with that grouping, although I doubt he would have said so. Something big grunted and fell over. Undergrowth rustled to my left, then there was a deafening roar as one of the orks’ primitive stubbers opened up.

Massive bullets stitched their way across the muddy street in front of me, throwing up plumes of water and muck with each explosive impact. I rolled and sighted again, and squeezed off a short burst into the impenetrable wall of jungle. More las-shots cracked from my left flank and I realised the others had come out of the prefab through the back way and got into cover, and were now returning fire.

‘Cover me!’ Lopata yelled.

I opened up on full auto, spraying the foliage until it steamed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lopata rear up and hurl a grenade, his powerful arm sending it sailing into the jungle. It exploded with a roar, and silence fell.

‘Clear,’ Varus called after a count of twenty, and I slowly got to my feet with my lasgun still held warily in front of me.

Orks are huge and terrifying but they aren’t particularly clever, and once they start shooting there’s no stopping them. If there had been any left out there they would still have been blasting away at us.

‘Varus, secure the perimeter,’ Lopata ordered.

She ran doubled over, her lasgun ready at her hip, but the calm held. The scout disappeared into the undergrowth without a sound. I let out a long breath and lowered my weapon.

‘Good shooting, boy,’ Blashak said. ‘Reckon you got one at least.’

I looked at the older man, trying to work out if he was mocking me or not. I shrugged.

‘Thanks.’

He clapped me on the shoulder.

Lopata came out of cover with his lasgun over his shoulder in the parade ground style, a big grin on his face.

‘Looks like the booby traps did their job,’ he said, as though they had been his idea and not Varus’. ‘I knew they would.’

I understood then why Lopata had never made corporal. The arrogance of the man was staggering, and he just didn’t have the right temperament for even a junior command role.

‘Yes, boss,’ I said, and kept my thoughts to myself.

I’ll admit it now, but I’d always been a bit scared of Lopata. The whole business about him having been a ganger back home was all too believable.

Varus came back then, and reported what she had found.

‘Four orks, boss,’ she said. ‘All dead. From the bodies, I reckon the boy got two of them, and the grenades took care of the other two.’

The boy. I sighed. I was the youngest member of the platoon, but I was getting tired of hearing that by then.

‘I’ve got a name,’ I protested.

‘Course you have,’ she smirked, and turned away.

I really didn’t much like Varus either.

‘Now what?’ Blashak asked.

Lopata shrugged.

‘Dig in,’ he said. ‘Those must have just been more scouts, but that’s two scout parties they’ve sent out now that haven’t come back. Sooner or later even greenskins are going to start thinking that’s a bit odd. Sooner or later they’re going to want to come and find out why that is, and it won’t just be four of them next time.’

‘Yes, boss,’ we chorused, and went to set about it.

It was the worst sort of ground for digging in, and within an hour my foxhole had a foot of water in the bottom of it. Lopata had the right of it, though, for all that. With only the four of us, very few grenades and no heavy weapons, we needed every possible advantage we could wring out of the miserable terrain.

All day we held the settlement, watching and waiting for orks that didn’t come. Nerves fraying, we ate the food the colonists gave us and watched the sky gradually darken overhead. Lopata was just finishing sucking sticky rice off his fingers when Varus cocked her head and held up a hand for silence.

‘I hear something,’ she whispered.

We froze, hands creeping towards our weapons.

‘Sounds like…’ Blashak started.

‘Engines,’ Lopata said, and leapt to his feet. ‘That’s a Valkyrie!’

‘I guess not quite everyone has left yet after all,’ Varus said. ‘What happened to that flare pistol? Quickly!’

‘My pack, in the house,’ Blashak said.

He hauled himself out of the foxhole we were sharing and dashed across the street and into the prefab.

‘Come on, come on!’ Lopata shouted.

Blashak was back a moment later with the bulky Navy pistol in his hand. Lopata snatched it off him and checked it over quickly, making sure the flare charge was correctly chambered. We only had the one.

‘Where is it?’ Lopata muttered, scanning the rapidly darkening sky. ‘Don’t do this to me, where are you?’

‘Lights, there!’ Varus said, pointing urgently.

I could see the Valkyrie’s running lights moving in the distance, its trajectory indicating that it would pass within a couple of miles of the settlement. Lopata lifted the pistol in both hands and aimed it straight up, trying to work out the best moment to make sure the Valkyrie actually saw us.

‘Here goes nothing,’ he said, and squeezed the trigger.

The pistol kicked in his hand and hurled the Navy distress flare into the sky. It blossomed crimson in the darkness overhead, illuminating the jungle canopy for a good mile around our position. If the greenskins didn’t know where we were before, they did now.

The flare began to slowly float down, but the Valkyrie was already banking towards us and beginning to shed altitude as it came. The Guard don’t use distress flares, so the carrier’s crew must have taken us for fellow Navy men shot down over the jungle, and that brought them running. We scattered as the heavy carrier came in over the settlement and hovered, the downwash from its powerful twin engines throwing up fantails of muddy water from the ground. Lopata waved his arms frantically over his head, and the aircraft’s nose-mounted searchlight stabbed on and bathed him in harsh white light.

A moment later the Valkyrie came in to land and the roar of its engines faded to an idling throb as the pilot throttled down. The side hatch opened and a woman in Navy uniform stuck her head out.

‘Guard!’ Lopata shouted. ‘We’re Guard! Reslian Forty-Fifth. We could really use a ride out of here.’

The Navy woman nodded.

‘You haven’t half cut it fine,’ she said. ‘The last transport leaves tomorrow, and we’re on it. How many of you?’

‘Four,’ Lopata said.

‘I’ve only got three spaces, but… I’ll make it work, fly low if I have to. Get in.’

I stared at Lopata as the sick realisation dawned on me, cursing my own stupid naivety.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I thought… I thought we were asking them to help us with the orks, not…’

‘What?’ Lopata spat at me. ‘This is our ticket out, you idiot. This is our salvation!’

I turned and pointed at the buildings of the settlement.

‘What about their salvation, Lopata?’

‘Life’s tough,’ the big man said. ‘They were going to die anyway – all this means is we don’t have to die with them. Now shut up and get in that carrier.’

‘We can’t just leave them,’ I said.

‘Not our problem,’ Blashak said. ‘Get in the damn carrier, boy.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘That’s an order,’ Lopata said.

‘No,’ I said again. ‘What happened to “I say we die well”, Lopata?’

‘You know what’s better than a good death, you stupid boot?’ he shouted at me. ‘Not dying, that’s what!’

I looked up and met his eyes. Lopata was scared, I realised. Everyone was, especially me. Some of the younger children had crept out of their prefabs to gawp at the Valkyrie in chattering excitement. I shook my head and pointed at the children.

‘I’m not leaving them,’ I said. ‘I mean it.’

‘Are you mudfoots coming or not?’ the Navy woman demanded. ‘I’m not missing that transport for the sake of your argument! Get in now or we’re going without you.’

‘We’re coming,’ Lopata said, and hauled himself up into the crew bay of the waiting carrier with Blashak right behind him.

Varus put a hand on the hatchway and turned to look at me.

‘Last chance, hero,’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘I’m no hero,’ I said, and turned my back on her. ‘I’m just not a coward.’

Behind me, engines screamed as the Valkyrie lifted off without me.

So that’s what happened.

I think this will probably be my last journal entry. It’s midnight now, and in the morning the orks will come, and find me waiting for them.

I’m no hero, and I’m not looking for a medal. No one will ever even know that I did this, or that these people were left for dead by the high command. Just like those children, I am one amongst countless billions. Utterly insignificant. No one will ever know my name. I know the people back home don’t want to hear anything but rousing victory speeches.

And they never will.

If anyone does ever find this journal, tell my mother that I love her.

Tell her that I love her, and I’m sorry. I had to stay, Ma. This is why I was saved in the crash, I’m sure of it.

I’m no hero, but the Emperor protects, and I am the instrument of His will. While there are civilians still here and in need of that protection, the Emperor expects me to do my duty. There are so many children here.

I turn nineteen tomorrow.

It’s going to be quite a day.

THE EMPEROR’S WRATH

Steven B Fischer

The first lasgun round shattered the window. The second blew a hole through the door.

‘Open in the name of the Emperor’s Wrath!’ a voice called through the charred fissure, accompanied by the scent of scorched metal and ash.

Caius stared from beneath his parents’ bed and hugged the two children beside him even tighter. Rhea and Remus were too young to understand. To see that the world around them was crumbling.

In the centre of the room, Father levelled a laspistol at the door, shaking slightly on clumsy pneumatic legs, fire in his violet eyes. A crimson banner adorned the wall behind him, emblazoned in silver with a skull bearing outstretched wings – the same sigil that marked the old, faded uniform in his wardrobe.

‘Damned militia,’ he growled. ‘They bear His name. They bear His emblem. Now they burn half His planet and usurp His governor.’

Beside him, Mother grasped an effigy of the Emperor, the words of a prayer streaming silently from her lips. ‘You knew there were risks when you advised a ceasefire.’

‘Yes,’ Father scoffed. ‘But I expected betrayal from the rebels, not the governor’s own forces.’

An explosion rocked the room, and the door burst into a cloud of smoke. Through the opening, soldiers stormed into the apartment, clad in grey body armour, toting lasguns in their hands. Caius felt Rhea squirm beside him and clasped his hand over the girl’s mouth before she could cry out.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Father warned, voice calm despite the shaking of his palsied hand. ‘We serve the same Emperor.’

Across the room, a black-armoured figure stepped forward, blood and soot across his face, ice and shadow in his smile. ‘My Emperor does not condone surrender,’ he muttered as the weapon in his hands roared to life.

Caius held his siblings close as their parents fell to the ground and the soldiers retreated from the room, the silver skulls on their helmets gleaming crimson in the light of a burning city, mirroring the dark pools that spread across the floor.

Ten years later, Halcyon still smouldered.

Caius padded through the night-soaked city, flitting between crumbling buildings and refuse-strewn alleyways. Behind him, Rhea and Remus darted through the rubble, black hair and grey eyes just two more shadows in a city full of darkness.

Caius traced the fractured remains of buildings that had once soared towards the heavens. Towards a sky that used to be full of starlight, but tonight was swimming with metal. A cloud of steel and flame descended over Halcyon, twisting and swelling like an immeasurable wave. Thousands of ships marked with the Imperial skull, a flock of dark-winged carrion fowl come to feast on the planet’s carcass.

Caius brushed the pistol at his waist, that same sigil embossed on its pommel. He hated that skull, but he’d kept the weapon. An old, heavy brute, inlaid with silver and gold and workmanship too fine for an agri world like Halcyon. The only thing the Imperium had ever given his father, after he had given it all of himself.

Beside him, Rhea stared into the sky, Remus close behind with a tattered blanket stretched over his shoulders. Neither child spoke – neither had spoken since the night their parents died – but their eyes asked the question for them.

Caius sighed. There was no use masking the truth. ‘The Imperium has returned to Halcyon, and they’re going to burn it to the ground.’

Beneath his feet, the fractured statue of some tortured saint lay covered in dirt and lichen. His parents had followed the Imperium’s cult, but its god was no more loyal than its armies. The Emperor’s Wrath killed without regard for piety, and now their masters had returned to finish the job. Their only hope was to flee.

Above their heads, the sky swarmed with darting ships, jostling to drop points on the ground. Escape meant slipping through that mess, and Petyr Unger was the only captain who stood half a chance. Caius had run contraband for him for years, and if any ship could evade an Imperial blockade, it was his. Three years back, he’d had the chance to sell Unger out when the Emperor’s Wrath caught wind of a weapons drop to a rival gang. Caius had chosen a set of broken ribs and a knife across his belly instead. The captain wasn’t sentimental, but he hoped their history would earn him a chance to buy his way on board.

Caius gripped his father’s pistol. Unger had mentioned more than once that it was a pretty weapon – he’d even tried to buy it on a few occasions. Hopefully, that offer was still on the table. His hand shook slightly at the thought of parting with the weapon, before Rhea darted up beside him and Remus paused atop the ruins on the side of the street. It would be a small price to pay for saving their lives.

The hangar floor was littered with bodies, blood slicks mingling with spilled voidcraft fluid, the scent of burnt fuel and flesh heavy in the air. Caius crawled to the lip of the catwalk, struggling to make out the shapes that stalked below in the dim twilight of the hangar’s flickering lumens.

A groan filled the air, and a body on the floor writhed with pain. A man walked swiftly from the shadows, his green helmet and dirty, grey fatigues both adorned with a dark-winged skull. Caius recognised the sneer on his face – the soldier who’d tried to gut him a few years back. Unger’s hangar was well outside Emperor’s Wrath territory, but the impending assault must have emboldened the faction. The soldier stepped up to the man on the floor and delivered a boot to his face to silence his screaming.

Caius leaned over the ledge and caught sight of the ship below. He recognised the Starshadow’s burnished, black metal and breathed a sigh of relief. If Unger’s ship was still in the hangar, maybe he was, too, stowed away inside, waiting for the Emperor’s Wrath to move on before making his escape.

Behind him, Rhea inched her way forward. ‘Don’t move,’ Caius whispered, motioning to the alcove where Remus still hid. ‘I’ll be back.’

Caius lowered himself over the ledge and dropped down between the Starshadow’s massive turbines, scrambling across the hull to a maintenance hatch nearby. Once inside, he raced through the narrow shaft, clambering over sparking wires and leaky fluid lines towards the ship’s bridge.

Unger would be there. He had to be. It was their only chance. Caius kicked his way through a rusted hatch, heart racing before his stomach dropped into his feet.

Unger was dead – tied to his captain’s throne, limbs bound with tubing stripped from the bridge’s machinery. Blood wept from a gaping hole in his chest, trailing down his arms and dripping from his fingers. A hole that looked like it had been made slowly. Across his forehead, someone had gouged a skull into his skin, this one wreathed in flame.

On the floor, five more bodies lay similarly marked, the remnants of the Starshadow’s crew. Caius closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them, a shadow moved behind him.

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ a sneering voice asked.

Caius’ hand darted towards his pistol, before the butt of a lasgun smashed into his head, and his world began to swim.

‘The Emperor is coming,’ the voice whispered. ‘It’s only fitting that his subjects help us welcome him.’

Caius woke to the hangar’s flickering lumens, head throbbing, with the taste of blood in his mouth. The cold stone floor grated against his shoulders, wrists burning from the wire that bound him to a cargo crate. That sneering face leaned over him, grinning, close enough that he could smell the soldier’s rancid breath. Behind him, a small crowd of Emperor’s Wrath gathered.

Caius spat, spraying blood across the man’s face, then threw himself forward against his restraints, but the soldier only laughed, licking the splatters of blood from his lips.

‘Don’t worry. We tied them tight.’ He pulled a jagged knife from the scabbard at his waist, its long, black blade already streaked with crimson, and pointed towards a body slouched against the wall, defiled just like the Starshadow’s crew. ‘We wouldn’t want you squirming too much.’

Behind the man’s twisted face, two sets of grey eyes watched from the shadows, and Rhea crawled towards the lip of the ledge. Caius swallowed and shook his head. He was going to die, but they didn’t need to.

‘Run,’ he mouthed, as the blade dropped towards his chest.

The sound of gunfire rang through the hangar, and the sneer on the soldier’s face melted into confusion as clusters of red bloomed across his chest and his blade clattered to the ground.

The remaining soldiers spun towards the sound of the attack, a few managing to lift their weapons before a hail of lasgun fire consumed them. One sent a salvo back before taking a shot through his neck, and a second sprinted away from the firefight. A crimson-armoured body knocked him to the ground, blood spurting into the air as a long, silver blade sprouted from his chest.

Caius pulled against his restraints. Across the hangar, a dozen men strode towards him, crimson helmets and armour gleaming, far too well kept for Halcyon militia. One bore a banner on a stave across his back, an Imperial skull mounted over crossed swords.

Steel bit into Caius’ wrists as he stretched and snatched the knife off the ground. He sawed madly at the wire above his head, feeling the metal give way just as a bright lumen fell across his face.

‘Got a live one.’

Caius tensed. These men had gunned down a dozen Imperial militia; there was no reason to think they wouldn’t do worse to him. He launched himself onto the soldier, and the man collapsed under the surprise of his attack before regaining his composure and slamming an armoured gauntlet into Caius’ ribs. Caius rolled to the side and pulled out his pistol, only to find himself staring into the muzzle of a lasgun. A second soldier’s boot burst from the shadows, sending his pistol spinning before pinning him to the ground.

The first soldier approached slowly, touching the cut on his cheek where Caius’ knife had grazed him. ‘Close,’ he murmured with a grin. ‘But you’ll have to do better than that to kill me.’

The boot on Caius’ chest pressed more firmly into the ground, forcing the breath from his lungs and leaving him gasping.

‘Let the boy breathe,’ a deep voice bellowed. ‘He can’t tell us anything if he’s suffocated.’

Caius looked up at an aging, grizzled soldier. The man stared at him over a short-cropped beard and a face strewn with scars, twirling Caius’ pistol around the fingers of one hand. In his other, a long, silver sword dripped with blood, and a stack of gold chevrons rested on his sleeve. His violet eyes burned bright, just like Father’s.

‘Let him up, Jost,’ the man grumbled, glancing at the wire trailing from Caius’ wrists. ‘And get that rifle out of his face, Marset. He’s not going to hurt you unless you’re slow enough to let him catch you with that knife again.’

‘Course, sarge,’ the soldiers mumbled. Caius scrambled to his knees as they backed away.

‘Easy,’ the sergeant warned. ‘Just because I haven’t shot you yet, doesn’t mean I’m not going to.’ He stared at Caius’ pistol with recognition. ‘Where’d you get this?’

Caius turned and spat. He didn’t owe them an explanation.

The man laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but a dangerous one. ‘A little defiance. Not necessarily a bad thing. But if you want to give me a reason not to kill you, you better do it fast.’ He looked down at Caius’ wrists again. ‘You’re not one of them, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t the enemy.’

Something boiled inside Caius, and he tried to shut his mouth, but the words spilled out. ‘Them? You talk about them like you aren’t the same thing. Like you don’t serve the same master.’

The good humour dropped from the sergeant’s face. ‘You don’t know what you speak of, so you best not carry on.’ He levelled the pistol at Caius’ chest. ‘I’ll ask you once more. Where’d you get this weapon?’

Caius took a deep breath, catching sight of Rhea and Remus on the ledge above him. He was no good to them dead. They’d lost enough family already. ‘It was my father’s.’

Surprise crossed the sergeant’s face. ‘His name?’

‘Gaius Maristratus.’

Slowly, the sergeant lowered the pistol, something softening in his expression. ‘A tall man, your father? About my height?’

‘Maybe once,’ Caius replied. ‘Not after they fit him with iron legs.’

The sergeant grimaced and stepped forward. Caius tightened his grip on the knife, but the man held the pistol out to him, then motioned to his men.

‘Meet the remnants of the Cadian Eleven Hundred and Ninth, Secundus Company. I’m Master Sergeant Hector Armines. I served with your father when he commanded this unit. He was an honourable man and one of my closest friends.’

Caius took the pistol slowly. It was a lie. It had to be. A ploy to make him drop his guard. But why would they need to lie, when they had him at gunpoint already?

The sergeant glanced around the hangar. ‘Trying to get off the surface?’

Caius nodded.

‘A not entirely foolish decision.’ The remainder of the squad shared a collective nod. ‘We’ve been tasked with clearing a corridor to the governor’s palace. There will be medical transports there once we arrive. I’ll do my best to talk you on board.’

Armines motioned at the two soldiers beside him. ‘Jost, Marset. You know the boy already. Keep him close and preferably absent of holes.’ He pointed to the catwalk above the Starshadow. ‘Those Gaius’ children, too?’

Rhea stepped into the light, and Remus followed behind her. Caius nodded.

‘Don’t let them wander off. Not everyone in this city is as blind as my men.’

The two soldiers were surprisingly cordial without their weapons pointed in Caius’ face. Jost strode easily across the rubble-strewn boulevard, long, lanky legs clearing blocks of stone like pebbles. Marset, in contrast, moved like an animal, darting and weaving on a stocky body that seemed wider than tall.

Marset grinned as he vaulted over a toppled statue, violet eyes gleaming against his dark skin. ‘We’ve been itching for a fight. Sarge does his best to keep the drills full speed, but training just can’t match the real thing.’

Jost’s sullen face stretched into a smile as he leaned around the edge of a building, clearing the alley beyond. ‘You seemed to think it was plenty real enough after I broke your jaw.’

Marset scowled.

Caius gripped his pistol firmly and turned to his siblings. He’d never seen the city this still, and it left an unsettled pit in his stomach. ‘Stay close,’ he murmured.

Rhea nodded and took Remus by the hand before a loud boom echoed behind one of the buildings. Caius spun towards it with his weapon raised.

Marset chuckled and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s one of ours. Basilisk laying somebody low, from the sound of it.’

Jost glanced at the pistol in Caius’ hand. ‘You ever used that thing for real?’

Caius shook his head. He’d learned to fire a dozen weapons before he could write, but he’d never actually killed with one.

The soldier nodded. ‘Aim for the chest, not the head. A round through the lungs will drop them just like one in the brain, but centre of mass gives you a bigger target.’

In the centre of the street, Armines strode casually through the rubble, eyes darting between the squad spread out around him. Caius had seen these soldiers fight, but he wondered how much twelve men could really handle.

‘This is your entire unit?’ he asked Marset.

The soldier laughed. ‘No. Just a veteran squad.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the empty street behind them. ‘The rest of the company’s back there somewhere, but you can’t expect Savlars to keep up with real Cadian troops.’

‘You aren’t all from Cadia?’

Marset shook his head, smile faltering. ‘There is no Cadia. Not any more. And your father isn’t the only soldier we lost over the years. The few of us left are split across other regiments.’ Marset stepped closer and lowered his voice. ‘What happened to your father? I assume he’s dead?’

Caius glanced down, and Remus grasped his hand. ‘Those soldiers back there,’ he explained. ‘They call themselves the Emperor’s Wrath. They killed a lot of people after the governor died.’

His voice trailed off, and Marset’s face hardened with understanding. ‘Monsters,’ he mumbled.

‘Monsters that serve the same Emperor.’

The soldier’s expression turned to stone. ‘They might wear His emblem, but they don’t serve Him.’

Caius opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of gunfire silenced him. Marset dropped behind the remnants of a building, bracing his lasgun atop the crumbling stone as Armines’ voice bellowed through the street.

‘Contact. Dead ahead. Four hundred yards.’

Caius dived behind the low stone wall, dragging Rhea and Remus to the ground as a mix of lasgun discharges and bolts whizzed overhead. He crawled towards Marset, aiming his pistol at the sound of incoming fire.

The soldier shook his head. ‘Pistol’s no good at this range. Don’t waste the ammunition.’ He rolled behind the wall and swapped a new power pack into his weapon before resuming fire. ‘Besides, we’ll have them running soon.’

Down the street, however, their assailants weren’t fleeing. Instead, a few dozen men and women in ragged clothing advanced towards the soldiers, some toting rusting lasguns or bolt-throwers, but most armed with only crude knives and spears. The squad pummelled them with fire, but the mob just moved faster, despite the holes erupting through their bodies. Finally, broken by the vicious salvo, they began to fall, until only a single man continued stumbling forward.

‘Cultists,’ Jost remarked grimly as Armines motioned for the squad to advance.

‘Pumped full of stimms,’ Marset replied, turning to Caius and the children. ‘Keep them close. Hard to tell when these bastards are really down.’

As the squad moved down the street, several bodies crawled towards them, inching along on bloodied arms, trailing legs reduced to smouldering stumps. A woman dragged herself towards Jost with a single, mangled arm. Across her forehead, a crude skull was carved into her skin. Jost waited until she had nearly reached him before he put a las-round through her head.

‘Not as much fun when they can’t fight back,’ Marset said, absent of his usual levity. A worried frown spread across his face.

Beside them, a female Guardsman took up position beside a rusting transport, dark blood oozing from a wound in her shoulder.

‘You all right, Lorne?’ Jost asked, motioning to the streaks of red down her armour.

‘Course,’ she replied, glancing at the wound. ‘It all just looks crimson to me.’

Jost nodded and turned to Caius before kneeling behind a building on the plaza’s perimeter. ‘Blood and fire are our profession,’ he explained. ‘It’s only fitting we wear their colour.’

In the centre of the street, the stumbling man lunged at Armines with a sharpened length of pipe. The sergeant sidestepped the clumsy thrust and knocked the weapon to the ground, then levelled the man with a strike from his gauntlet. Armines kneeled beside him and clasped a hand over his throat.

‘How many of you are there?’ he growled, but the man simply laughed. The sergeant pressed the muzzle of his lasgun against the man’s head and asked again. ‘How many?’

The man mumbled something too quiet to hear, bloodshot eyes darting to and fro. Across his forehead, that same skull sigil dripped blood down his face, just like the ones that had marked Unger’s crew. Armines ground his knee into the man. ‘I can’t hear you.’

Slowly, the man’s babble resolved into words, and Caius felt his stomach drop. ‘The Emperor is coming. All of you will kneel before him.’

Armines frowned, confused. ‘The Emperor sits on Holy Terra.’

The man laughed again, madness in the sound. ‘Not your Emperor. Ours. The Emperor Incarnate.’

With that, he lunged forward, throwing Armines off balance and snatching his crude spear off of the ground. Caius lifted his pistol, but before he could fire, the man had driven the pipe into his own chest.

Caius stared at the dead man’s forehead as Armines pushed himself from the ground. ‘That mark,’ he said. ‘The soldiers at the hangar had done the same thing to the men they killed.’

A shadow crossed Armines’ face, and he nodded slowly. ‘I know you don’t trust us, but there are worse things in this universe than the Imperium.’ He looked down at the body, then turned to his squad. ‘Eyes open. Move quickly. Don’t be skittish on those triggers.’

The governor’s palace towered across Halcyon’s skyline like a mangled, decaying corpse, iron bones and rotting stone flesh laid bare a decade ago. The knot in Caius’ gut should have loosened as they neared the palace, but it only grew, that bloody skull still fresh in his mind. His limbs felt heavy, and his chest starved of breath, as if the air itself had grown thicker here. He told himself it was only nervous excitement, but the tense expressions of the soldiers around him suggested they felt it too.

Rhea and Remus pressed close to him now, an urgency in their steps he hadn’t noticed before. Remus clutched the thin blanket over both their shoulders, as if its fraying threads could hide them from whatever evil waited ahead.

Caius felt the skin on his neck begin to flush, and he whispered to himself, an old mantra Father had taught him as a child. ‘There is no fear, only courage. There is no weakness, only strength. There is no danger…’ He trailed off as the sound of bootfalls caught his ear and turned to see Marset approaching.

‘Only glory,’ the soldier said, completing the mantra. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced by a keen focus that filled Caius with both confidence and fear.

‘The Canticum Bellum,’ Marset whispered, eyes darting between crumbling windows and dark alleyways. ‘Good words, but perhaps silence is best now.’

The soldier had hardly finished speaking before a burst of light erupted from his forehead and gunfire shattered the silence. Rhea pulled Remus to the ground, and Caius dropped beside Marset’s body. The track of a lasgun round smoked through his skull, charred blood and something grey bulging out from within. Caius grasped the soldier and began to shake him before a cold, armoured hand gripped his shoulder.

Jost stared down at his friend, face devoid of emotion but shaking slightly. ‘Don’t waste your time.’

Around them, the squad engaged in a vicious gun battle. Muzzle flashes burst from the windows and rooftops, and dark forms flitted through the shadows, kept at bay by the withering fire of Armines’ squad. Even still, three crimson bodies already lay on the ground beside Marset. In the centre of the street, Armines poured fire into an alley and shouted over the vox.

‘Follow the sergeant!’ Jost ordered, motioning to a building across the street – the only structure that wasn’t swimming with enemy.

Caius grasped Marset’s armour and began to drag, but Jost pulled him away. ‘He wouldn’t give two shits if you saved his body, but you can honour him by not dying, too!’

The soldier dropped to a knee and fired at the silhouettes along the rooftops as Caius pulled Rhea and Remus towards cover. He looked back only once, long enough to watch Jost fall to the ground beside Marset. Long enough to see bodies in grey fatigues and green helmets pour into the street, a telltale skull emblazoned across their chests.

The Emperor’s Wrath charged towards the squad, along with a ragged swarm of men and women, most nearly naked and poorly armed, bodies streaked with bloody symbols. Caius sprinted to the cover of the building, pushing the children through the door and diving in behind them.

‘Emperor’s Wrath!’ he shouted over the roar of gunfire.

Armines was propped up in one of the windows, his lasgun spraying the street. Across the room, Lorne lobbed a frag grenade out a doorway, while her few remaining comrades pumped death through the building’s other orifices.

The sergeant dropped to the ground, swapping the power pack from his weapon. ‘What?’

‘Those soldiers,’ Caius replied. ‘Same faction as the hangar. The Emperor’s Wrath.’

Armines nodded grimly, then returned to the window. ‘Then you’ll take no issue with us killing a few more.’

Caius stared into the street. Armines’ squad was carving the horde apart, but it kept advancing. Beside him, a crimson-armoured soldier fell back from her post, a long, rusted bar extending through her neck, blood pooling on the floor in rhythmic gushes. Rhea scrambled out from the cover of a toppled staircase and slid the fallen soldier’s weapon towards Armines. Flashes of lasgun fire lit his scarred face as he dropped his smoking rifle and snatched the new one off the ground. Beside him, Lorne’s armour was streaked with the blood of fresh wounds.

These soldiers were going to die. There was nothing Caius could do about that. Despite their bravery, despite their resolve, the swarm would overwhelm them. But it didn’t have to end this way for Rhea and Remus. Or for him.

To the north, the bones of the governor’s palace stood tall through the smoke. There was a transport waiting there. A transport that could get them off this planet for good.

Caius stared at the skull-emblem helmet on the corpse beside him. Armines had been his ticket onto that transport, but maybe the helmet would do just as well. He didn’t need them to believe he was a soldier for long. Just long enough to get in the door with his siblings. After that, he didn’t care what happened to him, so long as those two were safe.

Beneath the staircase, Rhea wrapped her brother in her arms. They didn’t deserve to die here. They hadn’t deserved to be born here. Just like their father hadn’t deserved to be maimed and then murdered.

Caius lifted the helmet, but stopped when Armines caught his eye. The sergeant nodded with grim understanding, then pointed to the door at the back of the room. ‘Go,’ he shouted, his voice drowned out by the fire of his soldiers.

Caius rose and reached out to take Remus by the hand, but stopped when the shouts outside the window fell silent. Slowly, the gunfire trickled away, and the swarm retreated from the street, filtering back into the alleyways and behind the surrounding buildings.

‘What’s happening?’ Caius asked.

Armines shook his head. ‘I have no damn idea. But if you’re going to make a go for it, now’s the time.’

Caius nodded, then froze. In the centre of the street, buried beneath mounds of dishevelled bodies, he caught sight of two crimson helmets. Marset and Jost had died trying to protect him. Armines and his soldiers were about to do the same.

‘Why?’ he asked, turning towards the sergeant. ‘Why did you let us come with you? Why have you kept us safe even when we slowed you down?’

The sergeant’s face adopted a worried frown. ‘It’s our duty.’

‘Your duty to who?’ Caius scoffed. ‘The Imperium? The Throne? An Emperor who will never know you exist? How does protecting three children matter to Him?’

Armines was silent for a moment. ‘It doesn’t. But it would matter to your father. And I owe him that, at least.’ The soldier took a deep breath and sighed. ‘He never told you how he lost his legs, did he?

‘I was just a platoon sergeant, then. He was my company commander. We were tied up on some Throne-forsaken hellhole, brimming with xenos and hive-scroungers, and other trash not worth our blood. But we had our orders, and we were nothing if not obedient.

‘My platoon was pinned down, split off from the regiment, and your father’s command squad had got caught up with us. He’d already ordered the company to move on without us – the mission wasn’t worth risking just for our sakes. Somehow, his command squad managed to break through the lines, and he had a chance to regroup with the unit. It would have been the right tactical decision. None of us would have blamed him. We’d already made peace with the fact we were going to die.

‘But instead of leaving, he brought the squad back.’ Armines smiled, the first time Caius had seen his stony face adopt the expression. ‘You should have seen him, boy, rushing back through the breach. I think he scared the enemy witless, lasguns blazing in both hands. He bought us a window, and the platoon turned the tide.’

A shadow crossed Armines’ face, and his mouth settled back into its resident scowl. ‘It cost him, in the end, but he came back for us. Throne, I wish I could have been here to do the same for him. But if I can do it for his blood, that’s good enough for me.’

Armines glanced out the window and shook his head. ‘Enough talking. Get out of here before those bastards change their minds.’

Caius opened his mouth to reply, but the sergeant nudged Remus and Rhea towards the door. ‘Words aren’t worth much at this point, boy. Just get those two on that ship.’

Caius nodded and pulled his siblings through the door. In the sky above, transports streamed towards the governor’s palace. They were close. So close.

A scream rang out through the empty street. It took Caius a moment to register the sound, then another to realise who had produced it. Remus’ mouth hung open, a shaky cry pouring from his lips. Caius turned and followed his gaze down the street.

Through the dust and smoke, something terrible approached, a bloated, twisted form, scraping its way across the rockcrete. The creature was almost as tall as the surrounding buildings, a myriad of long, sinewy legs dragging its bulbous body along. Its head swung atop a writhing neck, ringed by dozens of mandibles like those of an insect, but its face was clearly, horribly human.

Caius tasted bile and copper in his mouth as he realised the thing had once been a man. A man he recognised. The man who had put his parents to death. A red skull dripped in the skin across its chest, just like those adorning the heads of its servants.

Slowly, the horde re-emerged between the buildings, and a single man walked out into the creature’s path. ‘Behold!’ he shouted. ‘The Emperor Incarnate!’ The man spread his arms towards the sky and closed his eyes. ‘All must kneel before a true god!’

In the shadows, the crowd dropped to its knees. The beast, quickened by the man’s shouting, slithered towards him with horrifying speed, its inhuman arms tearing his body apart before delivering the pieces to its waiting maw. A horrible cry erupted from the creature, some twisted mix of human language and the primal scream of the abyss, then it threw itself down the street towards Caius.

Before he could move, the creature was on them. Instinctively, he reached out for his siblings, but Remus had already begun to run. He darted down the street away from the creature, his foot catching on a block of fallen stone and throwing him to the ground.

Caius felt Rhea shift beside him and grabbed hold of her tunic before she could follow.

‘Stay,’ he ordered, pushing her back towards the cover of the doorway.

The earth around Caius shook as the monster rushed past, its legs striking the ground with a sickly rhythm. Its swollen body lurched across the stone, leaving a trail of film that reeked of rotting flesh and burned Caius’ eyes. His vision swam and his ears still rang, as if its scream had lodged inside his head, but he raised his pistol and fired into the beast’s flank.

Rather than slow, however, the monster seemed to speed up, until it towered over Remus and dropped its head towards the ground. A moment before its mandibles closed, a crimson streak flashed through the road, and a burst of lasgun fire erupted into the creature’s face. The monster reared and let out a guttural screech as Armines loosed a deluge of las-rounds up at it.

Caius sprinted towards the sergeant and his brother as Lorne and the squad opened fire behind him. Lasgun rounds splattered across the creature’s torso, starbursts of char erupting on its grey, hairless skin, maggots pouring out from each wound they produced. Screeching, the creature reared up once more and nearly turned away, then dropped back to the ground, swinging a long, black leg and catching Armines with a jagged claw.

The sergeant fell to the ground in a spray of blood as Caius pulled Remus from the creature’s path. A long, clawed leg slammed into the dirt beside him as he spun to face it.

Around the monster, the light itself seemed to shift, as if the abomination were fashioned not just from flesh but shadow too. Its horrible mandibles crashed together only feet from Caius’ face, and he fired his pistol again and again. He watched with satisfaction as the rounds burst across its already-charred skin, and the Emperor Incarnate pulled itself away.

Caius scrambled up from the ground, dragging Remus to the doorway where Rhea waited. To the north, the path to the governor’s palace lay clear, only a few hundred yards across open terrain.

They could make it. They could make it if they ran right now.

Behind them, Armines’ squad peppered the Emperor Incarnate, while the sergeant struggled upright in the middle of the street. The creature staggered, then righted itself and turned back towards the wounded soldier.

‘Wait here,’ Caius muttered, pushing his siblings towards the doorway where Lorne pulled them safely inside.

Caius sprinted towards Armines. The sergeant had risen onto his elbows and drawn his sword, but the Emperor Incarnate had knocked the rifle from his hands. Caius snatched the weapon from the dirt and dropped to a knee beside Armines, pouring fire into the monster. Armines slashed one of its legs with his sword, severing the limb and spraying foetid blood into the air.

Despite the wound, the creature reached out once more, shielding its face with a set of arms. Caius laid into his weapon’s trigger, but each leg he severed was replaced by another. Finally, the weapon in his hands fell silent, and he glanced down at the smoking power pack as the creature lifted him into the air.

Caius watched in horror as the ring of mandibles spread out around him and the monster opened its twisted mouth. Inside, a black and pockmarked tongue flitted between rows of razor-sharp teeth. Caius’ mind rang with the memory of the creature’s scream, and he felt himself retch something sour and rotten. He reached desperately for the pistol at his waist, but was unable to move in the monster’s grip.

Blood dripped from his wrists, crimson drops raining down into the creature’s maw. Its mandibles squirmed madly before him, their jagged points dancing inches from him, when suddenly the creature shuddered, and its hold relaxed a fraction.

Caius wrenched his arm free and ripped his pistol from its holster, pressing the barrel into the monster’s face. When he fired this time, there were no arms to shield it, and the round let loose a spray of thick, black blood. The creature screeched and tried to drop him, but Caius clung to its arm and fired again.

With a horrible shudder, the monster toppled to the ground, its seething legs falling slowly still. Caius struggled beneath the tangle of lifeless limbs, finally staggering into the street. Armines lay on the ground beside him, a long, deep gash across his chest and face. The sergeant’s arm was crushed and bloodied, pinned beneath the monster’s body, still grasping the sword embedded in its belly.

‘Good shooting,’ he muttered, grimacing as a soft laugh escaped his lips.

Caius staggered to the sergeant and pulled the helmet from his head. ‘Pressure,’ he ordered, tearing a piece of his tunic and pressing it into the soldier’s hand.

Behind the massive carcass of the Emperor Incarnate, the sound of lasgun fire rang through the street, accompanied by the shouts of a mob that was no longer kneeling. Armines’ three remaining soldiers circled around the monster’s body, Lorne leading Rhea and Remus while the others fired at the approaching swarm.

‘Best be going, sarge,’ Lorne said. ‘Don’t think our friends are too happy about the welcome we gave their emperor.’

Armines nodded, then let out a groan as she and Caius pulled him from beneath the monster.

Caius stumbled the final few steps to the transport, Armines leaning heavily on his arm. The wide doors of the carrier sat open, a mass of soldiers stretched across its hold in various states of injury. A few medics darted between the bodies, binding wounds and staunching blood with crude tourniquets and cruel-looking needles. Caius grimaced as the scent of blood and excrement assaulted him while Lorne escorted Rhea and Remus on board.

A young man looked up from beside a mangled soldier, a surgeon’s emblem marking his shoulder. He nodded and pointed at Armines. ‘Lay him on the floor. I’ll get to him as soon as I can.’

The sergeant laughed. ‘Like hell you will. Throne itself couldn’t get me to stay on this transport.’

The surgeon’s face wrinkled in confusion as he looked over Caius and the other soldiers. ‘Then I’m not sure what you’re doing here. The rest of you seem serviceable to me.’

Armines motioned with his weapon, and Rhea and Remus stepped up beside Caius. ‘These three would like to hitch a ride.’

The surgeon’s face hardened. ‘This is a military transport, not a civilian rescue mission.’ He looked around the crowded ship. ‘You can see we’re practically full already. We’ll be taking off soon.’

‘Good,’ Armines muttered, tightening his grip around his lasgun. ‘Then they won’t have to wait too long.’

The surgeon opened his mouth to protest, then looked at the rifle in Armines’ hand and shook his head. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he muttered. ‘When the commissar finds out, it’s your head, not mine.’

Armines laughed again and looked down at the wound stretching across his chest, still oozing blood and caked with filth. ‘I’m not sure he could do much worse to me.’

The surgeon departed to tend to another patient, and Caius ushered Remus and Rhea on board. ‘Thank you,’ he said, turning to the sergeant.

‘Didn’t do it for you,’ Armines replied. ‘But you could have done worse for yourself today. Now get settled in before that prig kicks you off his ship.’

Caius reached out to hand Armines back his helmet, but the sergeant shook his head, looking down at his gaping wound. ‘Not much point, is there? Don’t think I’m leaving this planet alive.’

Armines threw his arm around Lorne, and stumbled back down the gangplank to the plaza outside, where armoured bodies were already digging in.

Caius stared out at the city as Rhea settled onto the floor beside him. Remus sat beside her and stretched the worn blanket once again over her shoulders. This planet had been beautiful, once. A planet worth fighting for. His father died believing that, years ago. Armines’ men died believing that, today.

Caius turned the sergeant’s helmet in his hands, staring at its skull insignia. Beside him, a tired-looking medic leaned over a body with a vial. The soldier mumbled something then pushed the medic away, cradling a bleeding arm and limping towards the door of the transport. These men were willing to die for his planet. These men were willing to die for a planet they’d never seen before today.

Armines’ words rang in Caius’ ears. There are worse things in this universe than the Imperium. There were worse things than dying for something you believed in.

Caius took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet. Rhea rose beside him and grasped his hand, Remus wrapping his arms around Caius’ waist. They stared at him with those haunting, grey eyes. Eyes that betrayed so much more than words could. Eyes that told him they understood.

‘Stay safe. Protect each other.’ He paused, afraid his voice might break, and pulled both children into a tight embrace. ‘Remember Father and Mother. Remember me.’

The engines of the transport roared to life as Caius ran towards the door, snatching a lasgun from a soldier too dead to use it. He slipped out the door as it began to close, leaping off the edge of the gangplank as the ship lifted from the ground.

He ran towards the familiar, crimson silhouette limping towards the plaza’s perimeter, fastening Armines’ helmet in place. By the time he reached them, the sergeant and his remaining soldiers had settled in behind a row of sandbags, aiming down one of the plaza’s radiating approaches, where a crowd of dirty bodies approached at a run.

Caius knelt beside Armines, bracing his weapon on a pile of crumbled stone. ‘I won’t swear an oath to your Emperor,’ he said. ‘I won’t worship Him, or pray to Him, or whatever it is that you do.’

Armines smiled. A jagged expression, tempered but not extinguished by decades of hardship and war. ‘My Emperor doesn’t require your words. All He asks for is your blood. And theirs.’

Caius stared down the barrel of his lasgun at the waves of approaching cultists and tightened his finger around the trigger. ‘I think I can manage that.’

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

Nate Crowley

Nestor blinked away ash-brown rain and tried to imagine, for the fourth time that day, the words with which he would accept his promotion.

The scene was clear in his head: the immense basilica, drenched with light and cheering, the warm kiss of metal as the laurels were set on his brow. But the words would not come. He stood dumbstruck, gaping like a fool before the glaring statues of his forebears. Could he not even muster a little dignity here, in the safety of his daydreams?

Something gave way beneath his boot and he stumbled, dashing the image from his mind. It was the chest of a Guardsman – some unfortunate wirecutter, sunk in the mire and plastered over with battlefield filth. Nestor retched as the stench billowed up from the carcass, but soon steadied himself. The last thing he needed was to lose his stomach in front of Phocus.

‘General Pyrrhus?’ chirped the younger officer from behind Nestor, his voice a perfect facsimile of loyal concern.

‘I’m well, Colonel Phocus,’ he growled, straightening himself and scraping the worst of the muck from his boot. ‘Just acquainting myself with the mood among the troops,’ he added in a mutter to himself, before setting his jaw and looking forward.

Cavernam Tertius was a bloody mess. A mining world that had never lived up to the hopes of the explorators, it had been a dreary backwater even before it had been visited by war. Now, it was little more than a cesspit. But with the segmentum shipyards ever hungry for ore, it was a cesspit which the Mystras VIII, the Golden Eighth, had been consigned to defend for the last ten miserable years.

Frankly, it was madness to stay. Nestor had often, to his dismay, calculated the cost of defending the world: the squandered ammunition alone almost outvalued the meagre ore shipments it guaranteed, while the human disbursement did not bear considering.

Fortunately, the Departmento Munitorum, in its star-spanning majesty, had no appetite to consider it. The immense bureaucracy dealt with arithmetic on a stellar scale, provisioning wars on fronts light years long. On that measureless counting board, Cavernam Tertius was just a drab speck, a bead on the abacus of some lowly, cable-faced wretch. Nestor and all the men and women of the Eighth – of every other regiment in his battlegroup – were insignificant figures, liable to be swept away in a carried digit.

Of course, this would all be bad enough, thought Nestor, if the enemy had some desperate need to take this world. Some relic they were sworn to recover, or a holy city they would give everything to possess. Indeed, anything that could be denied them by the stalwart defenders of mankind. But this was not the case. As Nestor gazed past the water running from the brim of his cap, at the jagged earthworks and belching smokestacks of the enemy lines, he knew the awful truth: they were just here for the fun of it all.

Despite it all, Nestor managed a tight little smile for himself as he resumed his trudge through the bog and signalled for his staff to follow. The stalemate was about to end. And it was going to end in a fashion that nobody – not the drones of the Munitorum, nor the brutish cretins waiting in the trenches ahead, and certainly not that conniving bastard Phocus – could have foreseen. No, this appalling little war was going to end on his terms. And in the slim eventuality he didn’t end up a drinking companion to that poor wirecutter in the mud, it would be the making of his name.

‘Lord General Militant Pyrrhus,’ he murmured under his breath as he reached the agreed spot. ‘Lord General Militant Pyrrhus,’ he repeated, rattling through the words in the same way his men would invoke the Throne before a big push, and closed his eyes. He let the warm light of the basilica linger behind them for a moment, then opened them and thrust his arm into the dull, brown sky.

‘Pax!’ he cried, and let the white rag bunched in his fist unroll into the drizzle.

A long moment of nothing passed – nothing but the sound of the rain, tapping on his epaulettes and spattering the shell-crater puddles. Nestor stood with his head back and his chest out, ready to be split by a bullet, but none came.

Then the xenos appeared. They rose from nowhere, as if from beneath the sludge, unfolding from their haunches until they towered over Nestor’s party. Seen through binoculars, they had always seemed crooked and hunched – awkward, scurrying things. Up close, however, with little more than a lasrifle’s length to keep them at bay, they were monsters.

It wasn’t their size that was so intimidating. Nestor had dealt with renegade ogryns that would have outmassed these things twice over, and for all their bulk, they had just been bigger targets. No, there was something innately threatening about the xenos – something more primally awful about their proportions. Their gangly, sinew-bunched arms, the blunt enormity of their jaws, made them something out of a child’s night terrors – things that wanted to reach out of the dark, pull you away and gobble you up…

Luckily, it took more than monsters to rattle the Golden Eighth. Before the beasts had even risen past their knees, Nestor heard Vatatze’s hellgun power up with a shriek, and the old NCO had leapt out in front of him in a firing crouch. He was grateful as ever for the staff sergeant’s reflexes, but a firefight now would doom them.

‘Stand down,’ cried Nestor to Vatatze, waving a hand at the long rifles slung on the backs of the xenos. ‘They’re snipers. If they’d wanted us dead, they’ve had this whole bloody walk from the trench to put holes in us.’

‘It’s just a ploy,’ added Phocus, uninvited, to the whole of the cohort. ‘They’re trying to put the wind up us while we wait for the parley, is all. Don’t let the brutes get in your head!’

Nestor was furious at the colonel’s interjection. To be talked over in front of his staff was bad enough – but in front of the bloody xenos? The little turd just couldn’t wait to step into his boots, could he? He considered a reprimand, but this was not the time.

Besides, it was hard to concentrate on anything with those dull red eyes regarding him. The beasts had not moved since rising from the mud. Even with Vatatze’s hellgun sweeping across them, they had just stood there, staring with expressionless curiosity, like predators behind plasglass. Nestor hated to admit it to himself, especially after Phocus’ little speech, but they did put the wind right up him.

Particularly uneasy was the fact the enemy was fielding snipers at all. Every tactical codex Nestor had read suggested they preferred to fight at close quarters or, if firearms were involved, via wild onslaughts of mass automatic weapons. The Cavernam posting had soon revealed otherwise. After the first few heads had popped with no enemy in sight, Nestor had quietly amended his manuals, and the men of the Eighth had kept their heads well below the trench parapets.

Examining the sniper closest to him, he wondered how they had never been spotted in the field – especially now, when his party had been walking almost within arm’s length of them. The creature in front of Nestor was a good head taller than him, and it was by no means the largest of the group: the one standing a few feet to the right must have been half the size of a bull grox. And although they wore long sniper’s cloaks, they were little more than gaudy rags, covered in wild splashes of colour like a fool’s mockery of his own regimental camouflage.

‘Staff sergeant,’ said Nestor softly, beckoning the scowling woman to his side, ‘am I losing my eyesight? Look at the colours on those cloaks, and tell me how in the name of Holy Terra we didn’t see these skaffers a mile off.’ Vatatze shrugged and wrinkled her scarred brow, running her eyes across the line of xenos with a look of contempt.

‘Beats me, general. I dunno – you know what they say in the trenches, though.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Word is they’re born like that, sir. They grow underground like fungus, then just pop out from the puddles, gear and all. That’s why we send ’em back there, sir. Doing ’em a favour.’

Nestor replied with a grunt of grim amusement, then fell silent as he noticed, to his immense discomfort, that the sniper was trying to catch his eye. The beast had clearly caught him frowning in consternation at its cloak, and had dipped its head to stare right into his eyes. And although the leathery wasteland of its face was impossible to read for human emotions, he could have sworn on the aquila that it was giving him a knowing smirk.

Withstanding the urge to shiver, Nestor tore his eyes away from the monster, and looked towards the xenos front line. Aside from the usual plumes of smoke from engines and cook fires, the enemy trenches were still eerily quiet. The wind was picking up now, the rain smacking against them in fat streaks, and Nestor felt a cold stab of doubt. There was still no sign of the enemy commander. What if it wasn’t coming at all?

After another minute of unbearable silence, the men began to murmur. Clearly, they were beginning to have similar doubts. He would have to put a stop to things before he was undercut by Phocus yet again. Turning his back to the bestial snipers while Vatatze stared on at them, Nestor straightened himself to address his soaked-through comrades, radiating parade-ground confidence despite his clenching guts.

‘We give it ten minutes from here,’ he decreed, making a point of glancing at his timepiece, ‘and then we make a controlled retreat to our lines. Colonel Phocus will lead, while Staff Sergeant Vatatze will bring up the rear with me. Until then, we wait in silence. Am I understood?’

‘Very clearly, general’ said a voice as low and rumbling as distant shell fire, and Nestor felt his shoulders stiffen. Spinning on his heel, he scanned the wasteland for the source of the voice, but they were still alone with the snipers. Then the voice came again, this time with a guttural chuckle, and Nestor’s eyes shot to the largest of the beasts. In their savage hierarchy, leadership was determined by size alone (‘large means in charge’ was the mnemonic drilled into the marksmen of the Eighth) so surely it was their leader? But the hulk stood sullenly silent.

‘I’m here,’ said the voice from a few feet to the left, and Nestor could barely believe the evidence of his eyes as they flicked to its source – it was the sniper who had smirked at him, calmly addressing him in serviceable Low Gothic.

‘And may I say,’ it continued, the words bubbling up from deep in its boulder chest, ‘what a pleasure it is to meet my adversary in the flesh at last. Shall we… make parley?’

Negotiations were brief.

After the enemy commander had revealed itself, ‘refreshments’ had been called for. A bark from one of the snipers had summoned the atrocious, scampering slave-creatures of the xenos, who had come boiling from some rathole bearing trestles, boards and cans of stinking meat. With the bizarre feast set up, Nestor’s party of eight had taken their places across from the eight xenos, and each side had begun weighing the other up. Phocus had been paired with a vile creature whose left side was a mess of scar tissue and leaky hydraulics; he looked at the thing like he had a mouthful of battery acid. Vatatze, meanwhile, had her elbows on the table, offering a mocking grin to the mountain of green meat opposite, as if she were at ease in the regimental mess. And across from Nestor was the xenos commander.

The thing seemed absurdly proud to be offering its ‘hospitality’, making a long, rambling invitation to the humans to partake in the food and drink available. As the oration lumbered on, it became clear how doggedly rehearsed the creature’s opening lines had been, and how limited its command of Low Gothic really was. Nestor couldn’t help but curl his lip. This was no aberrant mastermind; it was just another beast, foolishly aping the customs of its enemy in the hope some quality might rub off.

Needless to say, nobody touched the food – not even the xenos. By the time the parley began, the tins of charred offal were sodden: sad tokens of civility, awash in rainwater.

Next, their host introduced itself. Intercepted transmissions in the early days of the war had forewarned them of its name: in the alien tongue it was Eats-Face-Of-Face-Eater, and so ‘Face-Eater’ had become the common parlance among the ranks of the Eighth. But in its own head at least, the alien had apparently cultivated another identity.

‘I… am Colonel Taktikus,’ it announced, gesturing proudly at itself with a leathery green claw, and Nestor had to stifle a laugh. This thing called itself a colonel. Now he looked closer, he saw its chest was covered in dented, rusty medals – meaningless things hammered from scrap metal, and looted Imperial insignia on loops of wire. Then, his amusement turned to pure misery. This savage clown, for all its buffoonery, had been the mind keeping him in stalemate for the fading years of his career. His greatest achievement, his entry in the annals of the line of Pyrrhus, was to be the equal of a barbarian playing at soldiers.

As if to hammer home the mockery, the brute’s retinue began chanting. While the creatures seemed insensible to most words in Low Gothic, the name of their commander had drawn an instant and explosive reaction.

‘Kurnel Taktus!’ bellowed one of the other xenos, hammering the flimsy table with the butt of an axe, and the rest joined in. ‘Kurnel Taktus! Kurnel Taktus!’

As the aliens roared, Nestor winced at the stink. Whatever weird chemistry boiled away inside them made their breath nearly unbearable. The smell was somewhere between penal battalion wine and the deep mildew of canvas stored in the damp, with undertones of promethium fumes and rotten meat. It was a relief when Taktikus finally silenced them.

‘Colonel… Taktikus,’ acknowledged Nestor with a sigh, swallowing his distaste. ‘I am General Nestor Pyrrhus–’

‘–commander of the Mystras Eighth,’ finished Taktikus, ‘and director of the Astra Militarum battlegroup on Cavernam Tertius. I know you.’ The alien stumbled over the High Gothic terms, but spoke at least with confidence in their meaning.

‘Well then,’ answered Nestor smoothly, ‘if you know so much, I dare presume you will know why we’re here now?’

‘You are here to offer peace,’ said the brute, with what was definitely a smile this time.

‘On the contrary, my good colonel. We come to invite you to war.

‘Allow me to elaborate,’ said Nestor, as the group of soldiers and monsters huddled over the table in the rain. And so he did.

The doom of Cavernam Tertius had announced itself on a day like any other in the long, grinding war. The Basilisks at Ferghal’s Wood had cut short the dawn bombardment of xenos trenches on the Blackpine Front, citing a missed delivery of shells. The colonel from the 318th Dolmen Blackhands had voxed yet again, requesting the rotation of his men to the rear, and the damn Belisarians were demanding engineers and heavy weapons platoons from the Eighth, after a night raid had nearly made it into their trench on the Dunrust Salient.

‘It’s the same story every bloody day,’ Nestor cursed to Vatatze, his knuckles tightening the sheaf of reports into a grubby crumple. ‘I spend every waking hour telling these boneheads they can’t have the things they need, and if I’m lucky, I get to squeeze in the time to be told the same myself. Throne forbid I ever get five minutes to fight a war.’ Vatatze said nothing, but that was fine – this was their ritual. He would wear himself out ranting about the day’s frustrations, and she would lean in the doorway, inspecting the glowing tip of her lho-stub and occasionally cursing in solidarity.

‘Oh, and speaking of which,’ Nestor continued, in a tone of sarcastic brightness, ‘word’s in from the Munitorum on those reinforcements I requested. Guess what?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Not coming. Again. Just reams of platitude and bloody scripture, imploring me to do more with less, in the Emperor’s name.’ Nestor made the sign of the aquila in a way a commissar would find deeply questionable, and threw the papers to the floor. ‘Frankly, it’s getting to the point where I’m not sure why I bother asking. We’re old news.’

Vatatze nodded her agreement, and aimed a wad of spit into his waste paper basket. Everyone knew their war was a footnote. The massive xenos migration from which their enemies had split was now light years past Cavernam, and deep into the sector interior. Having smashed through the redoubt at Perikal IV, it was now dangerously close to several vital worlds, and was soaking up appalling quantities of materiel as a result. As such, when the bureaucrats did see fit to send something to Nestor’s half-forgotten little conflict, it always came as a surprise, and was almost never what he needed.

‘Hey, general,’ Vatatze quipped, ‘remember the horse guys?’

‘Ugh, don’t remind me of that.’ The last big bolstering, two winters past, had comprised a bulk carrier bearing seventy thousand horsemen from a feral world, who had been handed lasrifles en route, and who had gaped in astonishment at the first tank they had seen.

‘They didn’t exactly turn the tide of the conflict, did they, staff sergeant?’

‘Nope. Horsemeat made for better rations though.’

Nestor laughed then, as he only tended to with Vatatze, and found the strength to continue working through the day’s pile of unfulfillable requests.

After another hour, he put down the papers and rubbed his eyes, feeling a creeping thirst gathering. His glass of morning amasec was down to a fingernail’s depth, dwarfed by the stack of requests he had yet to read.

‘What do you reckon, staff sergeant – would a second glass constitute a problem, or just a habit?’ There was no reply, which was odd. Vatatze was always game for opening a bottle: along with her brutally dispassionate sense for logistics, it was what made her such an invaluable NCO.

‘Staff sergeant?’ he repeated, but there was still no answer. Nestor looked up to find Vatatze staring at a roll of printouts that had just been handed to her by a trembling courier. Her face was as grey and still as stone, which, on an officer who considered leading a charge across no man’s land to be a reasonable afternoon’s recreation, was not a good sign. Wordlessly, she walked over to hand him the papers, before uncorking the bottle of amasec and taking a deep, joyless pull from its neck.

‘Tyranids,’ Nestor said in a husk of a voice, ten minutes later, after reading through the astropath’s report for the third time.

‘Aye,’ Vatatze said, with a bleak smile. There was nothing much more to say. The tyranids would end the war on Cavernam. They were, almost always, the enders of wars. The arrival of one of their swarms put a full stop on a conflict, a vicious inkblot that pooled and spread, erasing all that came before and after. They were profoundly alien, incomprehensible to a degree that made the monsters in the opposing trenches seem brotherly by comparison. They had no insignia, nor logistics, nor language, nor tactics. Just teeth, and claws, and numbers that beckoned giddy madness.

‘The Blackpine offensive, the crossing at Tahl’s Rest, the Dunrust Salient… None of it means a damned thing any more, does it?’

‘No, general,’ Vatatze replied, pouring him a wounded man’s measure of amasec.

‘The war’s over, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes it is, general.’

He drank, and his thoughts turned grey. Against the constant, miserable drizzle of the campaign, he had always cupped a flickering hope in his hands. A hope that one day he would outmanoeuvre the xenos, that he would find a way to rout them despite their numbers, and be immortalised as another genius in the line of Pyrrhus. But the tyranids, the Great Devourer, had eaten that future. His only option now was to pull as many civilians as he could off-planet, with as many troops as the carriers would hold, and flee in disgrace.

‘How quickly can we evacuate?’ he asked, mouth dry. But as Vatatze began rattling off a plan based on her almost preternatural memory for planetary statistics, he found himself not listening. A thought had come to him – one that made his head buzz with the rising tide of the amasec. An idea so preposterous that it offered only glory or immediate death – both of which seemed preferable to the options currently on the table.

The tyranids were so alien as to make his monstrous enemies seem brotherly. And he would require a tremendous number of troops to have even a hope of staving them off. The sort of numbers which the Munitorum had denied him for ten years. The sort of numbers, in fact, which his enemy had in abundance…

‘Staff Sergeant Epiphania Vatatze,’ he announced, knowing the use of her hated forename would stop his comrade in the middle of her tally of civilian populations.

‘General Pyrrhus, sir?’

‘I may have just solved all our problems. Bring me whoever knows most about enemy communications, as many logistical specialists as can get here in the next hour and another bottle of amasec.’

‘And Colonel Phocus…?’ Vatatze added, her shrapnel-pocked face creasing into a smile as she pre-empted his thoughts.

‘…can stay blissfully ignorant in his bunk until it’s too late to complain. I’m sure he’ll have his own view of things, but if the bloody tyranids don’t make a case for unilateral action then I’m not sure what will.’

‘So… you offer me death?’ growled Taktikus, picking a sprig of mycelium from between greying tusks as it ruminated on his words. The other xenos had grown bored during Nestor’s explanation of the incoming tyranid swarm, but now they hunched forward, sensing the challenge in their leader’s response.

‘I always offered you death, Taktikus. But so far, to your… credit, you have been unwilling to receive it. Now, however, I fear the tyranids may have an overwhelmingly compelling proposition for us both. What I can therefore offer you, in the light of this development, is a longer and a better fight against the tyranids… If you make war alongside me.’

At this, the brute gave a long and thoughtful rumble, working a claw into the rotten corner of its maw, as if trying to winkle out the logic of the situation. But Nestor knew there could be only one outcome. While Taktikus’ warband were peculiar in their obsession with Imperial doctrine, they were still beasts at heart. Beasts that valued the potential for bloody conflict above all other things. Victory, to them, was incidental – any resources and territory acquired through a fight were secondary to the fight itself. It was why they had stayed committed to a stalemate on Cavernam for ten years, despite full knowledge of how poor a prize the planet would make. Now, that mad alien logic would at last work in Nestor’s favour. Given the choice between a war on two fronts that would be over in days, and a war on a single front that might last a month, the ugly green knot of Taktikus’ mind could only flex towards one conclusion.

‘If you know death certainly is,’ said Taktikus, Low Gothic beginning to fray with the effort of concentration, ‘why look for fighting together us? Surely… no difference, us or tyranid?’

‘Because we are sworn to defend this world in the name of Holy Terra,’ said Nestor, segueing smoothly into the lie. ‘And if we can hold it for even an hour longer through allying with your forces, then we honour the Throne, even as we die.’

Amusingly, this was almost the logic Colonel Phocus had espoused when he had been informed of the looming tyranid threat. A vainglorious, pious bore, the man had been itching to die for the Throne the moment he had heard the news. The only difference was that he wouldn’t countenance an alliance with xenos scum. As far as he was concerned, the only way forward was to evacuate as many civilians as possible who couldn’t hold a lasrifle, then go down fighting both sets of xenos. To even consider alternatives, in his mind, was heresy.

But then, Phocus was not the battlegroup’s general. By the time he had been let in on the plan, with the swarm just days away, there had been no time for extended debate. Nestor’s word, for once, had been law.

Crucially, what neither Phocus nor Taktikus knew was the real goal of the proposed alliance. This was no case of delaying the inevitable. It was a chance to achieve the impossible. While Nestor was by no means certain of the maths, he had an inkling that with Taktikus’ horde at his disposal, there was a slim chance the tyranids (whose already vast numbers he had exaggerated in his report to the beast) might in fact be beaten back.

And if such a miracle was to occur, Taktikus’ forces, after being fed into the meat grinder of the front line, would be so weakened that Nestor could sweep them from the face of the planet. He would be remembered as a defensive mastermind on a par with Dorn or Invictus – and Phocus as the boneheaded naysayer who had tried to impede him.

All it relied upon was for Taktikus to seize the big shiny bauble it had been offered, and give in to its genetic thirst for a big scrap. The enemy commander might have surprised him with snipers and a penchant for language, but there was no helping the nature of the beast. Nestor was certain of the outcome, even as the guttural words emerged in a puff of stench.

‘So be it,’ boomed Taktikus, and let loose a string of battered consonants in its native tongue. ‘An alliance, of orks and men.’

The beast stood to settle the deal, and Nestor allowed himself just a moment to shoot Phocus a look of pure dominance before he too rose from his seat. But in the brief moment his head was turned, chaos erupted on the other side of the table.

The creature to Taktikus’ left – the towering hulk that Nestor had at first taken to be the xenos leader – had gone berserk. Letting out a bowel-loosening roar like a Leman Russ trying to power its way out of a quagmire, the beast drew a monstrous axe from its back and dashed the table before it into splinters.

‘No fight with mans!’ it bellowed as it lunged forward, and for a heartbeat Nestor wondered if he was about to meet his end in the most shockingly simple betrayal in the history of the Astra Militarum. But then, just as suddenly as the beast had erupted, it was smashed sideways by a blur of deep green muscle – Taktikus, moving with terrible, animal agility. The two creatures fell to the mud in an explosion of limbs, and the rest of the xenos contingent began baying in excitement.

The strength of the larger beast was horrifying to behold, but for every blow it landed, the smaller xenos delivered three. The speed, the ruthlessness of the thing, was shocking to witness, and left Nestor with no doubt as to how it maintained authority over its larger fellows. After a furious scramble, Taktikus had the big xenos in a headlock, and a fist wrapped round the largest of its tusks. There was a wet, tearing crack, and the fang came loose in the colonel’s hand. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, the tusk was jammed once, twice and three times into the giant’s neck, springing torrents of thick blood.

Then it was over. Dropping the blood-black tusk in the mud, Taktikus stood back up and sauntered over to the table.

‘Forgive the major, general,’ it said, wiping its hand on its striped cloak and extending it. ‘Their mouth… gets them in trouble sometimes.’

Nestor shook the creature’s great, cold brick of a hand, and caught Phocus scowling from the corner of his eye. Maybe, he thought, these beasts could teach him a thing or two after all.

Less than a week later, Nestor was stood on the turret of his command tank, watching mycetic spores streak through the evening sky.

It was a rare clear evening: Cavernam’s clouds, having parted grudgingly like theatrical curtains, now wallowed in the sun’s weak, orange light as the spores carved fierce gashes in the gulf between them. High up, where the sky faded to deep indigo, smaller puffs of light signalled the destruction of further spores by the planet’s defences. It was all rather beautiful, thought Nestor, although he suspected it was mildly heretical to do so.

Of course, any prettiness would not last. This was just the start. The leviathan vessels of the tyranids were already deep in the system’s gravity well, but would still take weeks to arrive. Nevertheless, they had launched a vast swarm of spores on a hard burn ahead of them, like the slithering feelers of some corpse-pile crawler. Spiny pods grown on vicious biorockets, their only purpose was to slam into the planet, then peel open like rotten fruit to disgorge their innards.

They had no targets, nor any strategy. Wherever the pods landed, their occupants emerged, marshalling in instinctive packs deep in the wilderness. Reports were rife of abominations glimpsed on the edge of searchlights, and Nestor had seen snatches of grainy footage from the scout platoons, the layers of fibrous husk sloughing away, the chitinous shapes clawing themselves clear of sacs of shock-absorbing gel. Needless to say, they were already running short on scouts.

And still the pods came. For now, they were still able to shoot down most of them. Cavernam’s orbital defences had been augmented by the two frigates attached to Nestor’s battlegroup and then – after much negotiation – by Big Animal, the appalling warship that had originally brought Taktikus’ forces to Cavernam, which had spent years skulking in the icy rubble at the system’s edge. Still, it would not be long before their torpedoes were outnumbered by their targets, and as the brood-ships lumbered closer, vomiting a swelling stream of pods from their bellies, orbital space would have to be abandoned entirely.

But while this stage of the defence held, the race was on to bed in for the ground war to come. Most of the main population centres were being evacuated and laced with mines, while the combined forces of the xenos and the Astra Militarum were deploying in rings around the loose triangle of hive-cities deemed defensible. Restructuring a labyrinth of opposing trenches was proving to be a logistical nightmare, but the sheer earth-moving potential of xenos muscle was staggering. Given shovels and simple charts, the beasts – who of course had been offered the outer line of defence out of supposed courteous deference – had thrown up towering earthworks virtually overnight.

A Chimera column rumbled past on squeaking wheels, like beetles beside the bulk of Thriambos, Nestor’s ancient Baneblade. Drawn-faced troopers on their flanks threw salutes up at his turret, although Nestor couldn’t be quite sure if they were for him or for the vehicle itself. Older than his own family line, the gilded colossus had been with the regiment since the breaking of the gates of Krax Prime, and was decorated all over with statuary and inscribed scripture. Nestor caught himself sneering at one of the sculpted lions that adorned the cupola, and sighed with self-disgust. Was he so bitter as to be jealous of a tank? Purging the thought, he found a salute for the men, along with what he hoped was a stern, fatherly smile. Throne knew they’d need the encouragement when the Great Devourer came.

He doubted Taktikus would be having any such problems with morale. While Nestor’s forces were digging in with a grim, tight-lipped anxiety, the xenos lines were alight with revelry. As they rotated from trench duty, the brutes roared and wrestled by the light of bonfires, choffing down rancid meat and bellowing along to what was either music or engine noise. There were rumours that the gunners on Big Animal had turned the orbital defence operation into a drinking game. As far as the xenos were concerned, the eve of annihilation was a festival of pure joy.

For the most part, their lines and the humans’ were as separated in distance as they were in mood, as there was no easy cooperation between the two forces. Nestor’s soldiers hated the beasts they had been fighting for years, and the beasts in turn had nothing but contempt for their fragile new allies. Nestor had been forced to make examples of several officers who had refused to collaborate, and he imagined Taktikus had done the same in his own alarmingly direct fashion.

Tonight, the alliance would face its first acid test. The miners’ barrack-town of Low Digbeth, separated from Imperial lines by half a continent, was due to have its occupants emptied into the hold of a bulk hauler before it could fall to the swarm. What’s more, its former defenders had been recalled to headquarters three days previously, leaving only the town’s former besiegers to oversee evacuation. As far as Taktikus – and indeed Phocus – knew, this was a strategic oversight on Nestor’s part. Privately, however, it was a tray of meat left before a sitting hound: a test of obedience. If the xenos could resist the sport of a perfect massacre, it would put all dissent to rest among Nestor’s staff. If not…

‘Savage Rush,’ said Colonel Phocus behind him, as if conjured by doubt. Nestor was so startled he almost failed to question the non sequitur, but mastered himself enough to give an inscrutable grunt as he turned to face the younger man.

‘Savage Rush,’ repeated the colonel, turning a well-worn green hexagon between his gloved fingers. ‘Pelekys, seventy-fifth edition – If a greenskin token is within six spaces of a civilian token in a sector with no more than eight command points,’ he recited, ‘it automatically moves to the space and gains three materiel. Surely you remember the rule, general?’

‘Of course I remember,’ snapped Nestor. How could he not? Like every other alumnus of the Mystrasian Academy, he’d played that bloody wargame over and over, with its appendices and its token stacks and its insistence that the Adeptus Astartes were the solution to every damned problem. It would be just like Phocus to resort to it now. ‘I remember it as well as you do,’ he continued, ‘but I fail to see its relevance now. Unless of course you’re coming to resolve a rules query, in which case I’d ask you why in the name of Holy Terra you’re mucking about with bits of card when there’s an actual war on.’ To this, Phocus gave an oily smile of false deference.

‘I suppose it is a rules query of a sort, sir. The rules, of course, being distilled from thousands of years of combat experience, not to mention the tactical insight of Lord Guilliman himself. Quite simply, general, they tell us what to expect from the enemies of the Imperium, and to prevent disasters such as the one which may be about to unfold at Low Digbeth.’

‘Disaster? Do you question my decision?’ spluttered Nestor, incredulous at the youth’s patronising tone. The thing Nestor hated most about the man was his inability to be properly insubordinate; he always had to come at it from an angle.

‘Do you question the nature of the enemy?’ came the reply, loaded smoothly as a shell into a greased barrel, beneath a cocked eyebrow. Nestor’s mouth hung open, half in outrage at Phocus’ challenge, half in horror at the truth of the question. He had left ten thousand civilians in the hands of ruthless monsters, based entirely on intuition, and against the wisdom of the primarchs themselves. Was he mad? Struggling to form a reply, Nestor was almost relieved when Vatatze appeared at the hatch to interrupt the discussion. When he saw her face, though, his heart sank even further.

‘It’s Low Digbeth, sir,’ said Vatatze, with uncharacteristic alarm. ‘The xenos have opened fire.’

‘Get me a live feed now,’ bellowed Nestor over the din of Thriambos’ command deck, as junior officers scurried frantically across his path. If this was going to be the end of his career, he’d at least go out shouting. The vehicle’s comms officer was rummaging desperately at the thicket of controls beside the strategic display unit, mopping sweat from her forehead with a braided cuff as she tried to bring up a secure link. It was hellishly hot inside the tank at the best of times, but the crimson situation lights made it seem to swelter like an oven. Nestor was glad of this at least, as it would disguise the anxious sweat pouring from his temples.

If Taktikus had gone rogue this early, they were all doomed, and yet Phocus stood watching proceedings like a man waiting to be served a feast. The sod didn’t even care about death, so long as he died in the right. As the display unit’s holographic surface crackled to life, he craned forward, squinting for vindication in the resolving static. Sound came first, and it was all Nestor could do not to cringe – from the tinny speakers came the brutal clatter of crude gunfire, the raucous howl of xenos laughter, and under it all, the thin screaming of children.

Nestor put his hands on the table’s edge and sagged forward, his head drooping. He was just clearing his throat to resign his command, when the image snapped into perfect clarity. At the table’s centre, a child wailed in the dirt, clutching a wooden doll to its chest. Lumbering towards them, pitted blade in hand, was a xenos warrior in a fighting crouch. Nestor stared at the image, unwilling to be seen looking away from what he had done, and bit a hole in his lip as the monster snatched the child up by the scruff of the neck.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

Barreling in from out of shot, right into the space the child had occupied just a moment ago, came a monster. A real monster, with limbs like knives and a face (if that was its face) like a mass of writhing intestines. It chittered and reared, lashing out with a barbed tail so quickly that Nestor couldn’t follow the motion. Then the end of the thing’s tail was severed and flopping on the floor, and the ork’s boot was on its neck, stamping down with a liquid crack. And that was that. The brute set the child aside with a motion that might generously be called tender, and sprinted out of view, leaving only a trail of viscous footprints and a receding bellow. With eyes as wide as Nestor’s, the child ran for safety.

‘Horus’ teeth,’ swore Vatatze, to a room too shocked to even register the blasphemy. Phocus simply gawped, as if he had been slapped in the face.

‘Well then, colonel,’ said Nestor quietly, feeling strengthened by the rumble of Thriambos’ ancient reactor as it travelled up his arms. ‘Rather looks like the rules of the game need updating, doesn’t it?’

Nestor swept his eye over the immaculately modelled contours of the strategic map, and let half a breath hiss slowly between his teeth. He counted off the units arrayed round the hives for the fifth time, but still could not find the weakness he was sure in his bones he had missed. Despite the sick dread that rose up from his guts each morning, the war was – for an apocalyptic last stand, at least – going well.

The fall of Low Digbeth had signalled an earlier start to the ground engagement than even the most paranoid of his staff had predicted, and yet still they had been prepared. Within hours of the xenos-led evacuation, creatures had begun rushing from the wilds like ants boiling from a hole, and by the first night the trench-lips had been piled with twitching corpses. Things had only intensified since then, but the lines were holding. Even where they faltered, the sheer ferocity of the defence had ensured that every inch of ground cost the tyranids kilotonnes of biomass.

Nestor looked to the drab grey spires of Primaris Hive, where nearly half his forces were concentrated. Ghostly figures hovered over the model, offering mute reports of the city’s efforts to forge shells from its remaining ore stockpile, while blinking lights signified fresh deployments of artillery in the rear lines. The whole edifice twinkled with defiant life.

Two days ago, he had been prepared for the lights to go off altogether in Primaris, replaced by the virulent purple of infested territory. The city had been caught in a vicious claw, hammered on both sides by waves of tyranids, and denied reinforcements by the eruption of burrowing horrors among the supply lines. The situation had teetered on the very brink of collapse – and then the xenos had swept in. They had come out of nowhere: an armada of ramshackle vehicles driven at maniac speed, carving straight through the western pincer of the enemy advance like spilled plasma. With the tyranids reeling, the Third Karakum Airborne had been able to launch a mass drop operation, securing the ground taken by the xenos, and relieving the siege.

Such strange synergies had boiled up over several fronts. In the mudfields at Dunrust, the tyranids had been stopped in their tracks by the mad, clanking war machines of the xenos, pinned down by hydraulic claws while human sharpshooters finished them off. At Thar’s Bluff, the enemy’s grotesque living artillery had been swarmed by xenos slave creatures, erupting from tunnels as a line of Imperial armour had advanced as a distraction. Time and time again, human precision and xenos ferocity were being boiled up into a brew stronger than it had any right to be.

As the two forces had realised this, their long-term enmity had begun to express itself as brash competition. Where humans held trenches next to the xenos, kill tallies were kept on tall wooden boards, while in Ferghal’s Wood, where the aliens’ exotic artillery had been pooled with Imperial batteries, the bombardiers were engaged in constant one-upmanship over the reload speed, the accuracy, and even the volume of their guns. As far as Nestor was concerned, this was to be encouraged, as it gave his troops something to do other than imagine death beneath a swarm of writhing nightmares.

Before his own thoughts could sink too far in that direction, he was distracted by a shout of protest from across the bunker.

‘Filthy skaffing greenskin!’ barked Vatatze, as the brute sitting opposite her shook with growling laughter. The xenos, one of Taktikus’ retinue, was a crookbacked mess of scars and metal plates that – so far as Nestor could tell – fulfilled its species’ archetype of ‘grizzled NCO’ as thoroughly as Vatatze did for the human race. The two had been engaged in a game of dice for the best part of an hour, playing for lho-stubs and coming up with increasingly profane ways to accuse each other of cheating.

Glancing at the staff sergeant, with her face riven by shrapnel from a xenos grenade and her prosthetic arm gleaming, he saw someone with every reason to put a blade in the creature across from her. And yet, despite all the cursing, she was wearing the same fierce, weights-room grin as she might in human company. That was the astonishing thing about infantry, he mused, as the pair of bruisers set into another exchange of insults. No matter what world – or species – they came from, if you gave them a shared enemy and a way to cheat each other out of smokes, soon enough they’d end up willing to die for each other.

Yes, there had been mutinies. And yes, there had been examples made of those officers who would not cooperate. By and large, however, you could almost forget the members of the alliance had been locked in a brutal trench war for the last decade. On the xenos side especially, there was simply no grudge – while they viewed their new comrades with a mixture of amusement and contempt, they had regarded the war as fantastic sport, and had no scores to settle.

For the more bitter human troopers, this was perplexing – it was hard to hate an enemy that didn’t hate you back, after all. And when it became apparent how recklessly enthusiastic the xenos were to die for the cause, they had been stumped altogether. Nestor would have called the aliens’ attitude suicidal, if it wasn’t so carefree: as far as they were concerned, a violent death was just the ultimate culmination of good living, a mindset that the soldiers of the Astra Militarum could only regard with awe. When a platoon of Taktikus’ self-styled ‘kommandos’ had lured an advancing swarm into an abandoned smelting plant and then overloaded its reactor, creating a fireball six miles across, the hives had shaken with human cheering.

While Vatatze had adapted surprisingly well to this new madness, Colonel Phocus had collapsed entirely. Vindicated by the events at Low Digbeth, Nestor had relegated the upstart to logistical command, where he could be lord and master of biscuit crates and promethium barrels. Of course, the man still droned on about the risks of trusting the xenos, but it was increasingly obvious he was just bitter. And with Phocus exiled from the war room, Nestor found his droning easier and easier to ignore.

It was then that Nestor noticed Taktikus playing with the war map. The ork commander – which had awarded itself several more bottlecap medals since the start of the defence – was pushing a model tank around the Dunrust Salient with a sinewy claw, making contemplative engine noises as it went. Nestor sighed.

‘Taktikus, that’s the Nineteenth Cambrian Heavies, and they belong in sector six – could you please put them back?’

Taktikus snapped its gaze from the table with eyes that made Nestor’s scalp prickle, and he found his hand darting towards his sidearm before the beast’s glare softened.

‘Apologies, general,’ it rumbled, putting the tank company back in place. ‘I was… ronternating strategy.’

‘Of course, we all have our habits,’ conceded Nestor. ‘But perhaps you’d like to share your thoughts with me? And it’s “contemplating”, for future reference.’

Taktikus made the growling noise Nestor had come to translate as ‘let’s agree to disagree’, and gestured for a slave creature to bring food. After inspecting the repast – some sort of dreadful, charred bird with feathers still attached – the xenos commander took a great bite from it as if it were a piece of fruit, and raised a finger.

‘Have you considered…’ it said through a grim mouthful, puffing itself up with parade ground pride, ‘…a full charge at the enemy, with everything we’ve got?’

Nestor shut his eyes momentarily, after catching Vatatze stifling a laugh from the corner of his eye. Taktikus had already asked the question four times that day, with subtly different phrasing each time, and it was beginning to test his patience. Regardless, Nestor took the time once more to explain why, in a frantic defence against an enemy that was coming from everywhere, a massed charge wasn’t always the wisest course of action. The brute nodded along, soaking up every word, with its reverence for Imperial tactics that was almost as endearing as it was pathetic. When Nestor finished by gently suggesting a xenos airstrike on the armoured beasts gathering in the hills north of Secundus Hive, however, Taktikus surprised him.

‘A capital idea,’ agreed the alien, nodding sagely. ‘But doomed to fail. Many spitters in those hills, you see.’ With this, Taktikus mimed the action of the enemy’s anti-aircraft batteries, and shook its head sadly.

‘Instead,’ it enthused, snatching up an Imperial bomber wing from an airfield by its elbow, ‘airstrike from Imperial bombers – more boom, general – with ork planes flying low and light to soak up spit.’ Concluding with a sweep of the model over the hills, and a series of explosion noises that it clearly thought sounded dignified, it replaced the bomber delicately, and grinned over the table at Nestor.

Nestor could only smile back, if a little uncertainly. Although it had been expressed with characteristic crudity, the plan was a solid one, revealing a surprising understanding of Imperial assets, and their place in a combined arms operation. At moments like this, when the creature’s walnut of a mind cracked to reveal a kernel of insight, Nestor could almost respect Taktikus. It almost made him feel less of a fool for being the alien’s equal for all those years.

As he voxed through the order to air command, Nestor felt a twinge of sadness. They might yet actually win this war – and if that happened, it would almost be a shame to wipe the xenos from the face of the world.

Nestor was dreaming of the basilica and the laurels again, when the hammering started. Although he knew he was dreaming, he was furious at the interruption, and tried to shout for it to go away. What came out was something between a croak and a murmur, and the vision began to collapse. All of a sudden, the hands bequeathing the laurel were huge and green and calloused, and the laurel itself was a mass of wriggling gut. The banging continued, and Nestor tried to scream, but his lungs were empty.

‘Ugh,’ he gasped as he awoke, bolt upright and drenched in sweat. Rubbing a hand over his itching stubble, he glanced anxiously around the dim red confines of the room, swimming in confusion until his brain caught up. He was at his desk, in his cabin on Thriambos, and it was day twenty-five of the invasion. Or was it day twenty-six?

The hammering came again, and he jerked round to the cabin door as he realised it was urgent, and real.

‘Wuh… Come in,’ he blurted, trying to sound awake, and rubbing his eyes with the coarse fabric of his uniform cuff.

‘It’s locked,’ said Phocus from outside, and Nestor gritted his teeth as he got up to let him in.

‘What do you want?’ he growled as the colonel stepped into the cramped, sweat-stale cabin. It was some small consolation that the younger officer looked every bit as rough as him, with red-rimmed eyes and a week’s worth of straw-coloured beard on his jaw.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Phocus.

‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Nestor in a hollow whisper, daring the man to say more.

‘You’ve doomed yourself,’ answered the upstart, and Nestor struggled to reply. After all, he was probably right.

What Nestor had come to think of as the war’s honeymoon period, when the enemy had just been a mass of chitin to be pulverised by the guns of the alliance, was long gone. The civilian evacuation was over, while the Naval blockade had been forced to retreat out-system, leaving the planet entirely encircled. There would be no reinforcements now, even if some miracle transpired in the halls of the Munitorum. Something in the bellies of the tyranid vessels was curdling the warp, trapping Cavernam deep in shadow. From now until the last body dropped, the planet was a cage in which they were locked, with insects swarming between the bars.

‘You know I’m right,’ pleaded Phocus, causing Nestor’s blood to surge in his veins. ‘There’s been no signal from Secundus Hive since the breach last night, and Primaris might last, what – another three days? We’ve only got ammunition left because we’re running out of hands to fire the guns. The Belisarians are gone, general, and the Eighth itself is down to two-thirds strength. How long–’

‘Good riddance to the Belisarians,’ spat Nestor. ‘All they ever did was beg for kit. And of course we’re losing men, you bloody fool – we’re fighting a war. Besides, we have the orks!’

‘General, sir, with all respect, we can’t rely on those… beasts. I’ll admit they’re tough as tank treads, but they’re not our troops. This is a game of numbers, General Pyrrhus, and they have more bodies they can comfortably lose. If the balance tips, and they smell our weakness–’

‘So don’t let the balance tip, colonel. We keep the orks in the teeth of the enemy, and make sure there are Imperial bayonets behind them when we run out of tyranids.’

‘Nestor, please,’ cried Phocus, forgetting his manners, ‘this is… this is a fantasy. This is madness. I tell you as a loyal officer of the Eighth, there’s another way.’

Nestor’s vision throbbed crimson at its edges. Even now, at the height of the battle that his life had led to, this wretch dared to question him. There was no second option – they would fight with the orks, and by the Throne, they would win. It needed to be real. It was the possibility Nestor had staked everything on, and which would see his name last ten thousand years, as the brightest in the line of Pyrrhus, if it came to pass. This war could still be won, and he’d be damned before he let some snivelling career officer drag him from what little rest he could gather to tell him otherwise.

‘Another way?’ roared Nestor, surging forward and pinning Phocus against the doorway. ‘Doom? I thought that’s what you wanted, boy. A noble death in the name of the Emperor? A chance to put on your shiny officer’s cap and go down under a hill of monsters?’

‘I said you’ve doomed yourself, you old fool,’ hissed Phocus between gritted teeth, with a flash of sympathy in his eye that caused Nestor to waver. ‘I’m ready to die in the Emperor’s name, general. We all are. And I’ll be the first to concede that we’d all have died sooner if you hadn’t made parley with that… thing. But events are coming to an end now, sir. And you’ve still got a way out of this. A way that could save billions of lives.’ Nestor squinted in disbelief, his hands falling to his sides as he wondered if he was still dreaming. After a steadying breath, Phocus continued.

‘There are still ships, general. Fast clippers, message carriers, capable of slipping through the net and making it out-system. What we’ve learned in this campaign – the data we’ve gathered, the insights we’ve gleaned on both sets of xenos – could turn the tide when the tyranids hit the rest of the sector. The Golden Eighth won’t make it, sir, but you might… And you could save a hundred worlds.’

‘Colonel Phocus, what exactly are you proposing?’

‘There’s a clipper fuelled and loaded on the east pad, sir. We can have you on board before dawn, with all remaining aircraft scrambled to cover the launch. Leave Cavernam to me, sir – let me die here. I can overload the hive cores, make a quick end for the troops, and put a hole in the tyranid ranks as we go. It’s… all we can hope to do.’

Nestor stood motionless, his mind tumbling. The thought that he could be away from here, out of the stifling heat of the tank and the moronic discourse of the map room, in a matter of hours, was intoxicating. The thought that he could leave this awful world, this awful war, behind. For a brief moment, he wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything.

But then he caught sight of his grandfather, stern face sculpted in gold, in the cornice above the door. Last of the line of Pyrrhus, said the old man, fleeing the battlefield at the darkest hour. Leaving a lesser, more cunning house to raise the flag come dawn. Coward.

‘Intriguing,’ said Nestor, deathly calm. ‘And what if the situation should happen to improve once I am gone, Phocus? What if you beat the tyranids back, and wipe out the last of the xenos? What then? I suppose that would leave me as a lone deserter, a collaborator with xenos, and you…’

‘No!’ yelled Phocus, raising his hands. ‘We can’t win this war! And the xenos, Taktikus, they’re not what you think. General, please – even if we did win–’

Phocus was silenced then, as Nestor smashed his nose sideways with the butt of his laspistol. A second blow caved in his front teeth, and a third to the back of his skull sent him crumpling to his knees. The colonel raised shaking hands, trying to mumble more lies, but Nestor’s boot sent him sprawling into the corridor. He fled, limping like a beaten dog, leaving Nestor drawing ragged breaths and waving his gun like a club. From the bridge at the passageway’s end, Thriambos’ command crew stared on with horror, and Nestor stared back, before closing the door with a shaking hand.

When the rage had subsided enough to allow speech again, Nestor lifted the receiver of his desk’s vox-rig, and dialled it to an encrypted frequency that only he knew. Holding a palm to the side of his face to keep his grandfather’s from view, he listened to the growling static that rose from the endless synaptic chatter of the tyranids, and waited for the other side to pick up. When it did, there was a brief silence, followed by a curious grunt.

‘General,’ said Taktikus, like a host welcoming a guest to dinner, as gunfire rattled in the distance.

‘Taktikus,’ acknowledged Nestor, his voice hoarse. ‘I require your counsel.’ There was another pause, in which he swore he could hear the commander’s leathery skin stretch into a smile of delight.

‘You… honour me,’ said the alien, clearly taken aback. ‘Have you considered… a full charge at the enemy, with everything we’ve got?’ Nestor couldn’t help but let out a bleak laugh at the response, but Taktikus continued unfazed.

‘The Devourer prepares itself to feed, general. It has sent a new creature. A very big monster, with a big, big mind, on the northern plain. It will come here, and eat us up like grots. But with your tanks…’ said Taktikus, with a twinkle of intrigue, ‘we could punch through. Fight our way to the middle of the swarm, before tyranids can adapt. With the iron of Taktikus, the gold of Pyrrhus. We fight through, and make meat of it! Meat to share!’

Nestor had never heard Taktikus manage such a long speech in one go, but every word was like nectar.

‘And what happens if we do, Taktikus?’

‘The swarm dies. We win the planet. We win the war. Together. But it will need… everything. Every tank. All bombers. And in space. Every gun, all the boom. The ork way.’

‘The ork way…’ mused Nestor, his mind racing. If he pulled this off, he would rewrite rules of war that had stood since the Emperor had walked. Maybe he would even spare Taktikus; he would grant him vassalship under the flag of Mystras, and create a fighting force the likes of which had never been seen. Golden light, tinged with green, now rippled at the edge of vision.

‘So be it,’ he breathed, sounds of glory ringing in his ears. ‘Prepare your vehicles, Taktikus, for we charge at dawn.’

Nestor experienced the battle in flashes, as if in the throes of a fever.

He stood at Thriambos’ turret hatch, soot-streaked rain lashing his face, as he signalled the charge. He felt the machine-spirit howl beneath him as the ancient vehicle advanced, the rumble in his bones as the great gates opened. All around him, the dying city sang a hymn of steel, a battle dirge from the throats of a thousand engines. Armour from a dozen worlds advanced, every hull crowded with grim-faced troops, while among them weaved the rattling, smoke-belching vehicles of his ally.

The orks were glorious, in their own way. Even if they were born in mud, as the men liked to mutter, they came into the world without fear, without a moment’s doubt of their right to win. Without any of the drills or the decorum or the endless bloody manuals of the Astra Militarum, they were everything a soldier could hope to be. To fight alongside them was not just an advantage; it was a thrill.

He screamed into the wind as the first chitinous bodies cracked under the treads, shook his fist at a sky that swarmed with horrors. Thriambos was a ship afloat on a terrible sea, a mass of shrieking things that covered the world from horizon to horizon. They scrabbled at the sides and boiled up onto the hull, but he picked them off with his sidearm, cursing them as they fell back into the morass. Spittle flying from his mouth, he beckoned them on with wild taunts.

He saw tank after tank die, ripped open by the claws of abominations or simply pulled down beneath the gibbering waves. Bombers plunged screaming from the sky, drowning the darkness of the plain in holy light as their payloads went up. Their death-flashes rippled across an ocean of teeth; a galaxy of unblinking eyes.

At some time point in the fugue, Vatatze came to him on the tank’s parapet, face etched with worry. She waved her steel arm at the orks massing at the back of the Imperial column, babbling words he could not hear through the thunder of glory. The words did not matter; how could her words weigh anything, against the voice of war?

Dawn came like a sabre, cleaving black clouds to sear the world with golden light. In that first brightness he saw it, distant and dim with haze: a beast like a mountain, moving with the slow threat of a glacier, lowing a challenge deeper than an earthquake. Reckoning he could lock eyes with the thing across the miles, he lifted the blade of his grandfather and slashed down with a shout that echoed in the voices of orks and men alike. As Thriambos surged forward, he stared ahead at the behemoth as if his gaze could sear its hide. There was no need to look back now, no need to glance around like a trench-hole rat trembling at imagined threats. The enemy was ahead of him, Taktikus was at his side, and they were unstoppable.

New stars blazed in the morning sky, erupting from the bellies of dying voidcraft. Fumes pounded in his lungs, and he was deafened by the rapture of war. Trembling officers brought him reports, but he shouted them away, exalting in the moment. He had been bred for this, had dreamed of this, had lived every crippled moment of his life in the shadow of this incandescence. As Thriambos’ main cannon fired again and again into the wall of flesh ahead, he felt as if it were his own will, the will of his line, conjured into fire.

When at last the hide of the beast cracked, when its innards spilled in a steaming avalanche and it boomed its death-cry, it was as if a clap of thunder had gone off in his head. All around him, men screamed in sudden agony, and the world seemed to twist and shriek. Blinding white consumed his vision, followed by deepest black, and he watched the golden hull of the tank streak by in flashes, as if lit by strobe-light, as he fell from its turret. The ground met him with a lung-crumpling thud, and he waited for the swarm to fall on him, but there was only silence.

All around him were the twitching, ruptured bodies of the enemy. And above them, even as vision faded, he fancied he could see it. Descending from the heavens was the laurel itself, offered by the hands of his forebears. His triumph.

Nestor woke on his side, listening to the wind. Opening his eyes to a murky world, he blinked away stinging muck until it came into focus. All around him, convulsing weakly like crushed insects, were the bodies of the tyranids. And moving among them, putting blades through skulls with the methodical rhythm of harvesters, were orks. Some way off, the gore-blackened hull of Thriambos steamed under a clear sky.

Despite the tranquility of the moment, he felt a surge of panic down his spine at the sight of the vehicle. Of course – he had fallen from the hull! He tried to stand, but his arms would not move; they were lashed together behind his back. Filling his lungs to call out, he fell into a coughing fit, which made his eyes water again. When they cleared, Taktikus was kneeling beside him, admiring Nestor’s sabre as he wiped ichor from its blade.

‘General, you’re awake,’ said the creature, in a tone of pleasant surprise.

‘Taktikus…’ croaked Nestor, voice raw from the battle.

‘Are you going to ask me what happened? I thought… you would have guessed.’

‘The tyranids…’

‘All dead now. Or… scattered.’ Taktikus searched for words, but resorted to mime instead, of an exploding head and creatures running to and fro. ‘Big head bang. Sigh… kick, I think you say? Knocked you out, and most of your troops. Not orks though… Thicker heads.’ With that, the xenos tapped a claw to the side of its cinderblock skull, and grinned.

‘And then?’ said Nestor, head pounding as realisation dawned. To his astonishment, Taktikus looked almost sheepish, like a vast child caught red-handed in an act of minor theft.

‘Well, I betrayed you, of course. The charge, with the tanks. It was… you know… a trick. We held back and… we got you.’

There was an awkward silence, and the xenos grumbled, before continuing. ‘You didn’t think…?’

‘No,’ said Nestor, trying to hide the lie. ‘I had… planned the same.’

‘It was an excellont campaign, still.’

‘It was an excellent campaign, yes, Taktikus.’

Another long silence followed. Taktikus looked curiously at Nestor, and Nestor looked at Taktikus, who was no longer the nightmare hobgoblin he had first met in no man’s land, nor the clownish oaf who had played with model tanks in the war room. No, while his betrayer had plenty of each aspect, it was also something else entirely. He supposed that alien might be the right word for it.

‘I suppose the lesson,’ said Taktikus, with a faint glumness, ‘is something about knowing your enemy? Hmm. Reminds me…’

Then the beast issued a string of throaty barks in its own tongue, and Colonel Phocus was dragged from Thriambos’ shadow, led on a rope by a dull-eyed hulk.

‘Now this one,’ said Taktikus, indicating Phocus with a flick of a claw as the man glared at Nestor through a swollen eye, ‘he knows his enemy. He was a sharp one. In fact, I’m going to keep him.’ It was only then, as Nestor figured out what was about to happen, that his heart truly deflated.

‘Colonel Phocus,’ said Taktikus, with an odd air of ceremonial solemnity. ‘Please tell the general the big Imperial rule about negotiating with xenos?’

‘Don’t,’ mumbled Phocus through broken teeth, and spat blood on the ground.

‘Good,’ said the alien, nodding, and handed the man Nestor’s sabre. ‘Now, teach the general his lesson.’

Phocus trudged forwards, under the inquisitive gaze of the ork. Sighing with what he suspected was relief at last, Nestor closed his eyes and waited for the sabre’s kiss.

THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER

Filip Wiltgren

Major Jorun Haskel is everything Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra wants to be. Respected officer. Fearless leader. Doubly decorated with the Star of Saint Nadalya. His merit list is the stuff of campfire legends, and Lieutenant Idra is about to save his life.

The Vostroyan 262nd Firstborn Regiment’s position is a smudge of smoke on the horizon, a grey thread against the grey clouds.

‘A big fire,’ Sergeant Mathis Lokhov says, stroking his drooping moustache. ‘Will they be alive?’

‘The Emperor willing,’ Idra replies. ‘How long?’

‘Ten minutes,’ her driver says. ‘Unless we hit another gorge.’

Idra wants to tell him to speed up, but resists the urge. The men of Idra’s light platoon already resent being commanded by a woman. Even the low-born treat her with contempt. She bites back a harsh word and holds on as the Chimera’s tracks churn the razorgrass into paste.

‘I will not disgrace this family!’ Ekaterina’s father rages. ‘Eight children and not a single son!’

‘Calm yourself, Rhyslan,’ her uncle replies. The stack of empty rahzvod glasses before Davut Idrov puts a lie to his words. He, too, has sired only daughters. No Idrov line has produced a firstborn son to send away as atonement for Vostroya’s sins.

Ekaterina peeks from behind the massive oak of the chamber door. The door is black with age, hard as stone, brought by the patriarchs of the Idrov family from worlds where trees grow. From Holy Terra, her nana says. Ekaterina wonders if the Techtriarchs will take their holy doors away when they can’t send a son to battle.

‘What can we do?’ Uncle Davut says. It’s almost a whisper. ‘Even if our wives would bear a son now, he won’t be old enough for the coming draft.’

The silence stretches, a moment of infinite weight. Even the crackling of the fire is muted.

‘We will atone for our sins,’ Ekaterina’s father says. ‘We will send our firstborn to serve the Emperor.’

‘Rhyslan,’ Uncle Davut says, ‘you have no firstborn.’

‘I do.’ Her father raises his voice.

‘Ekaterina!’ he shouts.

The 262nd’s command post is a rockcrete bunker. Grey, like everything on this Throne-forsaken world. Grey skies, grey razorgrass, grey uniforms on the Tovogan dead that litter the ground. Only the bloodworms are red. The bloodworms, and the greatcoats of the fallen Vostroyans.

Lieutenant Idra steps out of her command Chimera. Mud stains the outside of the boxy APC, blending with the pale blue hull and covering the red Vostroyan unit markings. The Chimera’s multi-laser tracks across the plain, the gunner searching for targets. But everything here is already dead. Everything except Major Haskel and a handful of his men.

Haskel perches on a slab of blasted rock. His red coat is smeared with mud, his armour scorched by a lasgun blast. His short, black moustache droops, and greasy black hair pokes out from beneath his bearskin shako. Only his weapons are immaculate.

He’s holding a power sword across his knees, cleaning it. The Crystal Sword, an ancient weapon as legendary as the major himself. The fist-sized ruby embedded in its pommel is cracked, a hairline fracture in the shape of the Imperial aquila. Idra knows this. Tales of the Eye of the Eagle, and the Crystal Sword, are barracks lore among the Firstborn on Tovoga. The major keeps rubbing at the spotless blade. A drop of old blood stains the aquila on the sword’s crossguard.

The major’s men are walking among the dead, looking for those who aren’t. There aren’t many of them, neither Firstborn, nor living.

A Firstborn of the 262nd, a giant of a man with his lasgun slung over his back and a huge, serrated axe in his hand, walks past, between Idra and her command Chimera. He doesn’t even look up. Neither does the major. The giant lifts his axe, brings it down on the head of a Tovogan rebel. Bone crunches. A moan Idra wasn’t even aware of is cut short.

‘Major Haskel, sir,’ she says. The major continues to wipe his sword with a grey rag, the torn-off sleeve of a Tovogan militia uniform. Idra waits silently beside her Chimera, keeping her face expressionless. It isn’t the first time she has been snubbed by a Vostroyan soldier. Her anger is a quiet, simmering flame deep inside her. No part of it touches her face. Anger is for those who can afford it. So she waits, impassionate, while her outrider squad, a stinking, petro-chem Tauros and two Tovogan bikes that tend to fail, drive in lazy circles around the outskirts of the battlefield. The major polishes his sword. Idra’s men look at him, enthralled. Idra wonders if he’s ignoring her because she’s–

‘A woman,’ says Haskel. ‘In the uniform of a Firstborn.’

His voice is like crushed glass and rock. Haskel’s giant spits. A few of Idra’s men snicker. Sergeant Lokhov’s glare silences them.

Idra doesn’t react. It is a challenge she’s faced hundreds of times. She has her own way of dealing with it.

She snaps to attention.

‘Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra,’ she says, saluting. ‘Light platoon, Eleventh Company, Vostroyan Eighty-Sixth Firstborn.’

The major looks up from his sword, fixes a sharp gaze on Idra. His eyes are grey, and bloodshot. His attention makes her want to squirm. She forces herself to remain still. Expects him to laugh at her. Propose to buy her a drink and show her to his barracks.

‘Can you fight?’ Major Haskel says.

‘Sir?’ says Idra, confused.

‘Can you kill traitors?’ asks Haskel.

Idra nods, curtly.

‘For the Emperor, for Vostroya and for humanity,’ she says, making the sign of the aquila.

‘Good,’ says Haskel. He grins, showing too many teeth.

‘You are mad, Rhyslan Idrov.’ The lord hetman’s voice is quiet, but everyone in the council chamber hears. Ekaterina is sure of it.

‘I request my right, as a voyarin and a Vostroyan,’ says her father. ‘I demand the right to pay my family’s debt with our firstborn.’

‘You have no firstborn,’ says the lord hetman. ‘Your family will produce sons for the next generation. I will forget this conversation.’

Her father doesn’t move. Ekaterina doesn’t move beside him.

‘A woman can’t fight,’ says the hetman.

‘She is my firstborn,’ says Ekaterina’s father. ‘She can fight. By Saint Nadalya’s Grace, I ask the right to prove it.’

The hetman’s face colours, blood rising in his cheeks like paint dripping into the sky. A voyarin, the lowest of the nobles, contradicting a hetman.

‘Try whatever you want,’ the hetman says. ‘You will fail.’ He raises his hand to wave the council guards forward.

Her father nods. Ekaterina charges.

Her finger pokes the hetman twice in the gut before his guards manage to react, twice more before they pull her away. Beneath his red greatcoat, the hetman is surprisingly thin. His guards yell, four of them wrestling Ekaterina to the ground. The hetman bellows in rage. The courtiers shout. Only Ekaterina is silent, her sole noise a bitten-back cough as the guards slam her into the hall’s polished marble floor.

‘My firstborn can fight,’ says her father. ‘I demand my right.’

The lord hetman stares at them, his cap askew, grey hair sticking out, hate plain on his face. Her father doesn’t flinch. Ekaterina tries not to.

‘The warp take your right,’ the hetman growls. ‘The ashen wastes will take your firstborn.’

Ekaterina’s father smiles, a cold, dark, hungry expression.

The entire 262nd consists of Major Haskel and seven men. All of them look like rejects from a Vostroyan horror show. All of them look lethal. The giant with the axe. A thin, ghoulish Firstborn, half his face a mess of burns, the other black with soot. A marksman missing his left hand, his brass augmetics tarnished. They’re walking the battlefield, between the husks of Tovogan Chimera APCs and Leman Russ tanks, stepping over enemy dead.

The men of Idra’s platoon follow, their rescue mission transformed into a burial detail, the collection of the weapons of the fallen and carrying the Vostroyan dead to the bunker. The rockcrete stains red with blood. At least the dead are fresh, their flesh unspoiled by bloodworms. A lot of the Tovogans already squirm with the creatures’ larvae. On the horizon, silhouetted against the storm clouds, a pair of Thunderbolts strafe Tovogan positions. Two black dots rising and falling. Suddenly, one flashes into a pinprick of light and falls, trailing smoke.

The Chimera is filled with the rifles, blades and pistols of the 262nd. They are heirlooms, hundreds of years old. Their loss would be a blow to the honour of all Vostroya. They will ride in the Chimera. Idra’s men will ride on top, or cram into the unarmed and unarmoured Tovogan steel-wheeled trucks – unreliable vehicles, captured from the enemy. Always the best equipment for the light platoon. Idra is despised by more powerful men than those in her command. Her remaining transport, a captured Tovogan Taurox missing its turret, is for the major and his men.

Sergeant Lokhov carries the last of the dead Firstborn into the bunker. Idra recognises him, a low-born boy from Krikov Hive, a replacement from her own draft that landed a few weeks ago. Sarkhan or Kharkhan, she can’t remember his name. His torso has been hacked almost in half.

‘Major?’ Idra asks, holding out her igniter.

‘You do the honour,’ says Major Haskel. One of Idra’s men gasps, another curses. Major Haskel doesn’t react, so neither does Idra. Her men hiss and curse quietly, but their awe of the major overcomes their distaste for her. When Idra orders them into formation they form up crisply, the major’s seven in a line facing the war-scarred bunker, Idra’s platoon behind them. Sergeant Lokhov reads the catechism. To fight for the Emperor, to carry His will to the enemy, to follow the Tenets and the Creed. To pay the debt. Idra drops the igniter.

The bunker flames anew, fire consuming the flesh and bones of Firstborn. It isn’t a proper funeral, but better than leaving them for the bloodworms. When the platoon leaves, the pillar of flame reaches for the skies.

‘She will not survive,’ Davut Idrov says. ‘An untrained girl.’

‘I will train her,’ Ekaterina’s father says. He’s holding one of the twelve knives of the Idrov clan, an oddly balanced piece of silver-engraved steel. For five hundred generations, the Idrov firstborn have been given a knife by their fathers when they embarked on their draft. Twelve Idrov knives have returned to Vostroya.

‘What does Lumila say?’ Uncle Davut asks.

‘She understands,’ Ekaterina’s father says. He gives Ekaterina the knife, corrects her grip. Her fingers are very small around the steel hilt.

‘Don’t hold it as a shield,’ her father says. ‘This is a knife for slaying, not for brawling.’

The knife is heavy in her hand.

Idra hates the steppe. Bleak razorgrass dunes as far as the eye can see. The short, spiky grass will cut through anything given time, even the tracks on a Chimera. The tech-priests curse the grass and pray over the vehicles. Still the grass prevails. There is no cover, unless you come across one of the deep gorges that fill with flash-floods every time there is rain. Mud that gets into everything, then freezes. Clean your lasgun at every stop, or risk a misfire. Clean the vehicles’ engines, too, or haul them by hand. Top it off with a governor who’s gone traitor, refusing the tithe to the Emperor, and convinced his population to follow him. A bad leader and weak-willed natives, refusing the service of the Imperium. Now fighting for their lives on their own world because they did not wish to go fight elsewhere.

But every human has their place in the Emperor’s Holy Order. Purge the heretics, kill the traitors, and the rest will come back into the fold. It is the way of the Throne, to eradicate those tainted by treason, and let the merely guileless pay their penalty and serve. And the Tovogans are decent fighters, too. Not as good as the Firstborn, but decent.

The vox-bead in Idra’s ear crackles, Wisniak’s voice coming in fits and hisses. He’s Idra’s lead scout and best marksman, and one of the few men who judges her by her record. She can barely see the rear of his scouting Tauros. The unarmoured body of the vehicle is hidden in the folds in the land. Only its top-mounted autocannon is visible, floating amongst the razorgrass.

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘There’s a convoy coming.’

‘Ours?’

‘No, sir. Drawn by mule-beasts. I see a Chimera with rebel markings.’

Idra grins, claps the shoulder of her Chimera’s driver, and points to where a short gully begins. Beside her, Sergeant Lokhov nods approvingly.

‘Get into cover,’ Idra tells Wisniak. ‘We’ll find a spot to ambush them.’

The caravan follows what passes for a road on Tovoga: a pair of deeply rutted tracks in a gully. Idra lies on the ridge, overlooking the shallow bend in the road, her platoon dismounting and readying behind her. The razorgrass cuts through her uniform, nicking her skin. Stay here long enough and her blood will attract the worms. Another reason to hate this place. The lead wagon is a half a mile away.

She scans the caravan through her magnoculars. Twenty heavy carts pulled by the big, six-legged mule-beasts. Two Chimeras, armed with inferior Tovogan lascannons. A war wagon.

The war wagon is dangerous. Like everything here, it is grey. A three-storey, heavily armoured tower rolling on eight steel wheels, each wheel as large as a Chimera. The sides are dotted with firing ports. The top is a fighting platform, with a pair of twin-mounted heavy bolters and a set of lascannons in a Hydra’s anti-air quad mount. The gunners’ heads are indistinct black dots behind the guns’ splinter shields.

‘A squad in each Chimera,’ says Idra. ‘At least four more in the war wagon. Eighty to a hundred troops. Five heavy weapons.’

‘Make that ten, with the squad heavy weapons,’ says Sergeant Lokhov beside her.

‘Set Wisniak and Nye where the road bends,’ says Idra, indicating her snipers. ‘Take out the gunners on the fighting platform. One squad and the Chimera in front to block their route. Half-squad at the very rear to stop them from retreating. Situate the platoon’s remaining three and a half squads to pour fire down onto them, then move the blocking squad up to the opposite hill once they take cover. Trap them in the crossfire.’

‘Doable,’ says Lokhov. ‘Hard but doable.’

‘They might surrender,’ says Idra. ‘The colonel wants prisoners.’

Heavy boots crunch on the razorgrass behind her.

‘Considering your strategies, lieutenant?’ Major Haskel’s gravel-and-glass voice cuts through their discussion. The Taurox he’s been riding in stands idling behind Idra’s command Chimera, both hidden from the rebels in a fold in the ground. But Haskel’s standing on the ridge, silhouetted against the approaching storm, daring the heretics to spot him.

‘Yes, sir,’ Idra says.

Haskel glances at the approaching caravan, the Chimeras, the war wagon. His mouth turns up at the corners.

‘We charge,’ he says.

Idra pushes away the annoyance that floods her at Haskel’s casual disregard for her plan. Because it is a good plan. Even if the enemy would prove stronger than expected, the Firstborn can inflict heavy losses while taking minimal casualties themselves, and still have a way of disengaging while blocking the enemy’s pursuit.

Haskel’s idea of charging a stronger enemy is dangerous. Charging a stronger enemy in a fortified war wagon is insane. Sergeant Lokhov’s eyes go wide. Yet Haskel stands unconcerned. Defiant. And Idra realises why he is a hero.

This man knows no fear, his certainty absolute, contagious. Idra’s men keep glancing at him, walk taller when he’s present, parade when he looks their way. They whisper his name as a talisman: the Emperor and Haskel, Haskel and the Emperor. The men will charge, they will fight, and they will win. They are the carriers of the Emperor’s retribution. With Major Haskel to lead them, they cannot lose.

The caravan rumbles closer. Idra can see the individual drovers huddling beneath their grey cloaks. She feels herself grinning in anticipation, straightens. A bead of blood runs down her chin where the razorgrass cut her.

‘Firstborn,’ says Major Haskel. The lead cart passes his position. He lifts his sword to the skies.

‘Charge!’ Haskel screams.

The 86th charges. The world explodes around them.

‘It’s impossible,’ Ekaterina says.

‘Nothing is impossible,’ her father replies. The gun dummy in the middle of the room disagrees. Ekaterina stalks around the steel coffers set out as cover, her Idrov knife resting comfortably in her hand. The Idrov great hall’s oaken doors are shut. This moment is for Ekaterina and the gun dummy. She has to kill it before it shoots her.

It pivots, its low-power las-trainer flashing and adding another painful burn to the collection already on her skin. Her shirt and trousers are pocked with black circles where the thin material has burned away. Ekaterina curses. Her father resets the dummy.

‘Again,’ he says. He doesn’t correct her language.

‘It’s too fast,’ says Ekaterina. ‘I can’t reach it.’

‘Then don’t try,’ her father says. ‘Use your mind. You are high-born. You will be a leader. Think.’

Ekaterina pauses, thinks. The gun dummy twists on its pedestal, pointing the las-trainer at imaginary targets. It turns away from her.

Ekaterina steps out from behind her cover. She throws her knife.

They scream as they charge. Around them, the razorgrass burns from lasgun hits. But the slope is long, and steep. Firstborn stumble, fall, roll down to be met by bolter shells and lasgun blasts. Idra’s men start to waver, slow, start to take cover behind the low rocks that dot the slope.

The gully has become a death trap. If they stay on the slopes the Tovogans will kill them. The gun ports in the war wagon are open, spewing lasgun fire at the charging Vostroyans. Idra’s Tauros is trying to distract it, but its autocannon shells bounce off the war wagon like gravel. The hits sound like a demented drummer hammering away at a steel door.

An explosion throws Idra forward. An enemy lascannon has found her Tauros. Its autocannons fall silent.

She grabs a Firstborn crouching behind a rock, forces him up.

‘Move or die,’ she screams. A bolter shell removes the man’s head. She lets the body fall, rushes forward herself, firing her lasgun one-handed. The sword-bayonet at its end weighs it down, and all she hits is grass.

Sergeant Lokhov forces a squad into motion. The Tovogan heavy bolters churn up the slope around them, yet the Firstborn run through it. They are no longer screaming in defiance.

Forward, forward and downward. To stop is to die. Their only chance is amongst the carts, where the war wagon’s guns can’t reach them. Idra’s legs pound the ground. She stumbles, razorgrass tearing open her uniform, but gets up, keeps running.

‘For the Emperor and Vostroya!’ she shouts. The bolters drown out her voice.

She grabs another man, pulls him out from behind the cover of a large rock. He starts to curse her, but the rebel Chimera has found his hiding place and reduces the rock to glowing slag. The man and Idra both yell, plunging downward.

They make it into the cover of one of the carts. Its mule-beast lies twitching in its yoke, a hole the size of Idra’s head spilling its bloody guts onto the ground. Its dead drover lies beside it, torn apart by an explosion. For a moment everything is stillness. On the slope, her men keep dying, but the Tovogan bolters can’t reach beneath the carts and the Chimera hasn’t noticed her, rumbling up to disgorge a squad of Tovogan infantry.

Somewhere, Haskel’s glass-and-gravel voice is howling, a sound of hatred and bloodthirst. It is accompanied by screams of fear.

Idra pokes her head around the edge of the cart’s towering wheel. The Tovogan infantry have their backs to her, firing up-slope at her men. She kills four before the others realise the danger and turn their guns on her. Again, she takes cover beneath the cart, its broad wheels and low-slung, iron loading bed sheltering her.

Over her head, the cart’s tarpaulin has split, revealing metal crates covered in shipping labels and the unmistakable warning sign for active melta weapons. Idra grins.

‘Distract them,’ she orders her trooper. The Firstborn nods and pulls out his pistol. He’s lost his lasrifle. He’s lost his tall bearskin shako. His head looks small and vulnerable without it. A lasgun blast scores the earth beside him, another drills into the cart above him.

Idra jumps up. Instantly the air is filled with lasgun fire. A blast hits her chest carapace, melting the armaplast. Idra ignores it – she’s used to getting hit, her chest marred with faded scars from las-trainers. She grabs the crate and pulls. It won’t budge. She hangs on it, yanking, while las-blasts scorch the cart all around her. Then something snaps above. The crate slides away, gathers speed, crashes to the ground. Idra rolls clear and lands amid a flow of oval objects.

The crate is full of melta bombs.

They’re the poor, Tovogan version. Large and clumsy, with a twist fuse and four magnetic hooks. Idra grabs a bomb, twists the fuse and hurls it at the Chimera. It bounces, rolls a few feet. The detonation is a wave of heat, showering molten metal in Idra’s direction. She dives into the razorgrass, putting her arms before her face. When she raises her head, her greatcoat is smouldering.

‘Keep firing,’ she shouts, but her backup lies still, a smoking hole burned through his face, a charred exit wound in the back of his neck.

The Tovogans’ las-blasts crack into the wagon, the wheel, the crate. Burning shrapnel blasted free from the wagon mixes with spent bolter casings dropping from the war wagon behind it. Both rain down on Idra. She is trapped.

‘Lick.’ Babayev holds forth his boot, the sole towards Ekaterina. The boot is covered in mud and ash from the training platoon’s morning run. Babayev is the platoon’s acting sergeant for the week, a low-born from Tharkov Hive, bossing it over a high-born woman. The other boys in her platoon snicker.

‘Lick, Idra,’ says Babayev.

Ekaterina has her knife, the Idrov knife her father made for her. She considers killing Babayev, but that would get her removed from the Astra Militarum. She will die before disgracing the family.

‘You were given an order, private,’ Babayev says. He’s a big man, one of the oldest in the training regiment. The other boys look up to him. They are waiting for the chance to turn on Ekaterina, to prove that she is no Firstborn.

‘No,’ she says, setting her feet and raising her arms. In the end, there is stillness and blood.

Idra fires from behind the cover of the cart’s huge wheel, but the Tovogans in the Chimera fire back tenfold. She hits one, and he falls, screaming, but another soldier takes his place. All they need is to hit her once.

A great, enraged bellow snarls its way past the sound of lasguns. Haskel, charging from up the line of wagons. He is covered in gore, his golden chest-plate the same blood-red as his flapping and tattered greatcoat. Only his sword is spotless, its power field flickering in black and red. He’s howling, face deformed by hatred, sprinting for the Tovogan Chimera.

Idra realises that he won’t make it. The heavy bolters atop the war wagon are shifting their aim, the trail of bolter shells mere yards behind the major.

To hide is to die. To fight the enemies of the Emperor is to live. She scoops up an armload of melta bombs, running before she’s even consciously decided on her action. Running for the towering war wagon.

Lasgun blasts chase her, but she is invulnerable, a red shadow dancing across the ground, beyond fear, beyond pain. There is only the war wagon, and the melta bombs in her arms. A las-blast flashes before her eyes, turning the world white, then black. She keeps running, twisting the fuses by feel, as she dives below the war wagon. Its wheels run on four metal drive shafts, each as thick as her thigh. She slaps the first melta bomb to the closest shaft, next to the giant wheel, ducks beneath it, slaps the second on the next shaft. Runs, doubled over, the bottom of the war wagon inches above her head.

She can feel the timers ticking, small vibrations from the steel spheres in her hands. Three more steps, two.

Behind her, the first melta explodes, washing her with light and heat. The second goes, the blast wave pushing her forward. She slaps her last two meltas on the third drive shaft and rolls beneath it, thrown forward by the blast behind her, curling up, throwing both her arms over her head.

The last meltas explode, almost on top of her. The heat is like diving into a factorum furnace, like bathing in the heart of a nova star. The air is sucked from Idra’s lungs. She sees the wheels fall away from the war wagon, its armoured sides leaning down, the entire wagon tipping away from her. Everything goes black.

Ekaterina groans. Breathing hurts. Moving hurts more.

‘Stand to!’ The duty recruit’s call echoes throughout the barracks. Captain Twarienko bursts through the double doors. He is their lord and master, a veteran and the voyarin of the whole training regiment. All the Firstborn stand at attention, their red tunics glittering like blood. Ekaterina fights to her feet, forces herself to stand straight. Twarienko stops before her.

‘It is the Emperor’s will that a private obeys a sergeant,’ Twarienko says. ‘Are you aware of this?’

‘Yes,’ says Ekaterina.

‘You refused an order by a superior officer,’ Twarienko says.

‘Yes,’ replies Ekaterina. No excuses. No begging.

‘Taking responsibility for one’s actions is an admirable trait, encouraged in Firstborn and required in leaders,’ Twarienko says. ‘And a leader is responsible for the welfare of his men. Recruit Babayev, you are stripped of your rank. Recruit Idra, administrative punishment.’

Twarienko glares at the assembled Firstborn. ‘And the next recruit to lay a hand on another without my permission will be hung like a meat-rat and fed to the grox, is that clear?’

‘Yes, captain!’ the recruits shout.

Smoke. The metallic smell of burning razorgrass. Pain. Cold wetness on her face. Lieutenant Idra forces her eyes open.

‘So you’re still with us,’ Sergeant Lokhov says.

‘Uncle Mathis,’ Idra says. She tries to sit up, but Lokhov pushes her back down.

‘Lie still and let the medicament do its work,’ he says, checking the read-out on the medi-pack.

‘We won,’ says Idra. She should be joyous, but all she feels is tired, and a tiny bit surprised at being alive.

‘By His grace,’ answers Lokhov, making the sign of the aquila. ‘There was great sacrifice.’

‘The war wagon?’

‘Spilled its contents like a broken skull,’ says Lokhov. ‘The major has been mopping up.’

A scream sounds, ends abruptly. Idra forces herself to stand. Her golden chest carapace is black, the gash where it melted and ran still hot to the touch. She ignores it, like she has ignored so many pains in her life, and staggers to where Major Haskel is raising his sword. Its power field flickers and the drover on his knees before the major screams. Then the Crystal Sword descends, the scream ends. There is a line of dead Tovogans stretching to the left, a gaggle of prisoners to the right. The giant from the 262nd and the marksman with the brass augmetics drag a new prisoner forward. The major lifts the Crystal Sword.

‘Major Haskel, sir,’ says Idra. She has to shout it twice before the major reacts. ‘The colonel’s standing order is to bring prisoners whenever possible.’

‘We have no use for prisoners,’ the major replies. His face is a twisted grimace of vengeance.

‘They know things,’ Idra says.

‘They’ll know death,’ the major says. His sword descends. The Tovogan dies in silence. Haskel’s men drag the next one forward.

‘The Emperor is the Light of Humanity,’ Ekaterina screams. Her arms burn, the gravel is cold beneath her hands. Her arms shake, pain radiating from them. She ignores it, pushing against the ground, pushing herself upward.

‘Nine hundred eighty-nine,’ says the lord assessor. Ekaterina breathes in as she lowers herself towards the ground. Towards, but never touching. A thin, cold wind blows between her uniform and the rocks.

‘He once walked among men–’ Ekaterina’s voice falters, her arms refuse to budge. Her teeth grind against each other.

‘–but He has always been divine!’ She pushes at the ground with her will and her anger until her arms start to move.

‘Nine hundred ninety,’ says the lord assessor. Ekaterina’s arms falter once more. All she can feel is pain. But she is used to pain. She forces them to move again. Up, down, up, down, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

‘Recite,’ says the lord hetman.

‘It is the duty–’ Pain. Breathe in. Pain. Breathe out. ‘–the duty of the faithful–’ Breathe in. Pain. ‘–duty of the faithful, to obey–’ Pain. Breath. Pain. ‘–obey the authority of the Imperial Government–’

‘I cannot hear you,’ says the lord hetman.

Pain. Breath. Hate. ‘–the Imperial Government–’ Pain. Breath. Hate. ‘–and their superiors, who speak in the Emperor’s name.’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ says the lord hetman.

His face is red. Ekaterina’s is white. Of them all, the lord assessor is the most animated.

‘A thousand,’ he says. Ekaterina’s arms are locked, rigid as tent-poles. The lord assessor helps her up.

‘Go, girl,’ he says, not unkindly.

Ekaterina sways, her feet feeling a million miles away, her arms lumps of dead flesh. She forces herself to control her breath. Forces away the pain and the darkness threatening to claim her.

‘Am I Firstborn?’ she asks.

The lord assessor nods.

‘For now,’ he says.

Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra fills her cup with steaming ohx. The smell of powdered grox meat and spices usually calms her. Now she has to fight to keep her hands steady, keep the anger boiling inside her from reaching her face.

Sixteen of her men are dead, another twelve are in the arms of the medicae. Fully half her platoon gone. An officer is responsible for her men. Their lives belong to the Emperor; the officer’s duty is to Him, to make sure that His followers’ sacrifice isn’t wasted. There is a grand ceremony in Colonel Shostkov’s command quarters, celebrating Major Haskel’s victory over the Tovogan traitors.

Sergeant Lokhov barges into Idra’s quarters, trailing a flood of grey, Tovogan dust.

‘You look like you encountered chernobog and lost your father’s sword,’ he says.

‘High losses,’ Idra answers. She offers him the chair. Her quarters are spartan. A bed. A desk. A weapons locker. An image of the Throne, the Emperor radiant upon it, Saint Nadalya, patron saint of Vostroya, standing by His left hand. On a bare shelf are two printed tomes: the Treatis Elatii, the Grey Lady’s sacred text, and the Vostroyan version of the Tactica Imperium.

‘There are always losses,’ says Lokhov. He strokes his ragged moustache. A nervous habit.

‘Not like this.’ Idra’s anger shines through.

Lokhov purses his mouth, as if he wants to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, he brings out a flask of Tovogan black distilled. It looks like mud and tastes like petro-chem fumes. Far beneath the purity of Vostroyan rahzvod, even the cheap Mushovy rahzvod.

‘No good plan,’ he says, pouring a splash into Idra’s ohx, ‘survives contact with a superior officer.’

‘He’s a hero,’ Idra says.

‘So are you,’ Lokhov says. ‘The major mentioned you to the colonel.’

‘That I lost half my platoon?’

‘That you took out a war wagon.’

Idra shakes her head.

‘There’s something wrong there,’ she says. ‘Jorun Haskel is a responsible leader. His defence of Rittas during the Convalen campaign – holding the Froth River Bridge for two days so the One Hundred and Ninth could fight its way across. His push to relieve the Third Army, killing a heretic champion. This man… His entire regiment gone, abandoning a perfect ambush to charge headfirst against a stronger enemy. Today…’

Idra stares at the aquila on her wall, at the Emperor radiant.

‘Today he was more interested in killing than in winning,’ she says.

‘Ekaterina,’ says Lokhov in a low voice. ‘Do not share your thoughts with anyone.’

‘Only my uncle.’ Idra grins without humour.

‘It’s good for you that I have fond memories of the girl I carried on my shoulders,’ Lokhov says. ‘If the commissar would hear you…’

He doesn’t have to finish. Ekaterina remembers what a commissar can do. Remembers the bolt pistol pointed at her head.

‘Can’t do anything,’ she says. ‘No one will listen to a woman, and a shiny at that.’

‘Not so shiny any more,’ Lokhov says. ‘The tales of you taking down that war wagon are spreading. And you weren’t a shiny before that. You paid your dues on Vostroya, and in your father’s house. Any man with eyes in his head should see that.’

Idra snorts, but Lokhov looks serious.

‘They should,’ he repeats, and rises, leaving the flask of black distilled on her desk.

‘Will you ask around?’ Idra says. ‘Find out what’s happened to the major?’

‘I will keep my ears unstuffed.’ Lokhov picks up his shako, placing the tall fur hat on his head.

‘Thank you, Uncle Mathis,’ Idra says. ‘And uncle?’

‘Yes?’

‘Be careful.’

Lokhov nods, and leaves.

‘Be careful,’ Captain Twarienko says. Ekaterina looks up, surprised. The barracks are empty, the men in the mess hall. Only Ekaterina remains, acting sergeant, going over the duty roster.

‘You cannot be blind to those around you,’ Twarienko continues. ‘A leader must know which among his men are dangerous.’

‘Babayev?’ Ekaterina says.

‘Babayev,’ Twarienko confirms.

The plan is to infiltrate the city of Dolemino after dark. There’s a company of Tovogans out there, harassing the Firstborn regiments in the area. Haskel is sure that they’re based in Dolemino, a mining community twenty miles ahead of the 86th’s position. Colonel Shostkov has given Haskel command of two companies in order to trap and eradicate the Tovogans. Haskel’s plan is to lure them with an easy kill, then block their retreat with his own companies while the colonel rushes in with the rest of the regiment and surrounds them while they’re distracted. A bold plan for a large catch on a small bait, the colonel claims. Idra’s platoon is the bait.

‘It ain’t right,’ grumbles one of her men, Radivil. He’s been with the platoon a long time, lost a lot of friends yesterday. His comrades agree.

‘Shouldn’t be us,’ one says. Others nod.

‘Sixth platoon hasn’t been out in a month,’ Radivil says. ‘Let them be heroes.’

Idra stands. The small storage room is cluttered, filled to the walls with crates, and men packing, stuffing their combat harnesses with charge packs, frag grenades, rations. A lot less rations than charge packs. Idra approves of their training. A charge pack can save your life, a ration will only fill your stomach. Still, she’s the leader. She needs to stop their grumbling, crush this sentiment right now, before it spreads. Before Commissar Grotschalk hears it.

‘It is the duty of the faithful,’ she says, ‘to obey the rule of the Imperial Government, and follow the orders of their superiors who speak in the Emperor’s name.’

The grumbling increases in volume. They don’t like what they hear. For a moment, Idra wonders if they’re going to shoot her. Accidents happen. She buries the thought. Digs for what she believes in.

‘We are Firstborn,’ Idra shouts. Heads come up. They’re listening. ‘We are here because of the infinite mercy of the Emperor, which gives every faithful human a place in His divine order. We have been given the chance to atone for the sins of our fathers. Are you going to complain of the dangers on the path to redemption?

‘We are Firstborn. We serve the Emperor’s will, and He wills us to find that traitor company, pin it until the major arrives, and then wipe them out. This is what we are going to do. And if you don’t dare to follow where a woman leads, then you can khekking well join the Krieg Death Corps and hide in a hole!’

Some of them look ashamed. A lot of them grumble. But when Idra orders them to fall in, they pick up their kit and march to the waiting Chimeras.

‘In the name of the Divine Emperor and Holy Terra.’ The commissar’s voice is soft, sing-song. Almost like a priest’s. His accent, from the Schola Excubitos on Terrax, sounds strange to Ekaterina’s ears. The bolt pistol in his hand is freshly oiled, the bore cleaned and huge, a gaping hole pointing at her head. This will be the gun that kills her. Ekaterina stands at attention, her fear a deep, cold stone inside her. She pushes it down into the depths of her soul, stands straight. She will not shame her family.

‘The crime is wilful slaughter of a fellow recruit,’ says the commissar. ‘The punishment is death. Does the court wish to speak?’

‘No,’ spits the lord hetman. He pushed for the crime to be named murder.

The lord assessor lifts his tall shako, scratches at the ash-blond hair beneath.

‘The exercise was under battlefield conditions,’ he says.

‘It is the duty of the faithful,’ says Captain Twarienko, ‘to follow the orders of their superiors who speak in the Emperor’s name.’

‘Does the recruit wish to speak?’ the commissar asks.

‘I would ask for my knife back,’ says Ekaterina.

The commissar bends, yanks the blade from Babayev’s cold, bloodless throat. The knife is still stained with a sheen of grey ash from their march. The commissar thumbs the safety rune on his bolt pistol.

‘Your reputation precedes you,’ he says, with a glance at the lord hetman. Then he very carefully hands Ekaterina her knife.

The red greatcoats look like black ink in the darkness. Only the occasional swaying shadow betrays the presence of the Vostroyans among the ruins. The broken walls of Dolemino rise around them, craters from orbital bombardment providing cover.

‘Shoot and fade,’ whispers Idra to her men. ‘We’re not here to be heroes. Save that for when the regiment arrives.’

Kolczak, her vox-operator, gives her a nod. He’s already voxed it in. Now all they need to do is wait until the regiment comes, then engage, draw the Tovogans in, and keep them from spotting the approaching 86th Firstborn.

The traitor forces are arrayed in a semicircle, protected by bombed-out buildings. Slabs of fallen rockcrete shelter their meagre fires. They’re burning mule-beast dung and petro-chem fuel for warmth. A reinforced company, from what Idra can see. Lots of men, line platoons interspaced with heavy weapon squads, their lascannons stacked atop boxes of charge packs.

‘Nye,’ she voxes. ‘Anything?’

‘No,’ her sniper says.

‘Wisniak?’

‘Nothing here, sir.’

They’re posted at opposite ends of the town, Nye in a cracked bell tower, Wisniak atop the old mine elevator. Not much of an outer perimeter, but it will have to do. If the entire Tovogan company is here, there won’t be a need for a perimeter. Another twenty minutes and the major will be here with reinforcements, the Emperor willing.

Someone shouts, a challenge in the lilting Low Gothic of the Tovogans. There is a clatter, the grunt of men struggling. A las-blast illuminates the sky. Around the fires, men are standing up. The light platoon has been spotted.

‘The Emperor and Vostroya!’ Idra shouts. The night flashes into brightness as the Vostroyans fire. Tovogans fall screaming. They’re in the open, illuminated, surrounded by an invisible enemy. The Vostroyans are the best city fighters in the Imperium. The Tovogans are meat-rats for the slaughter.

‘Sir!’ Wisniak’s voice whispers in Idra’s vox-bead. ‘Company. Lots of it.’

‘Ours?’ Idra asks.

‘No, sir, Tovogans. An entire company just exited one of the mine shafts.’

‘Kolczak, vox it in,’ Idra orders. ‘Second squad, fifth squad, pivot right.’

‘Sir!’ It’s Nye. ‘Motion. Vehicles coming into town, Demolishers, a full company, and Hellhounds. They’re swinging around the south.’

‘Sir!’ Wisniak sounds stressed. ‘Another company just exited. More are coming.’

‘Kolczak,’ says Idra. She’s firing her lasgun, too busy to spare a glance at the vox-man. The Tovogans are getting organised, advancing by platoons, one laying down cover fire, the other rushing. Their officer yells them onward, waving a chainsword over his head. Stupid. Idra drops him with a blast from her lasgun. She throws herself flat behind a broken wall as his men retaliate, blasts and bolter shells chewing pieces from her shelter.

Star shells illuminate the sky, making shadows dance crazily over the town.

‘Sir!’ says Nye. ‘I count twenty Chimeras heading your way. Four companies, more incoming.’

The battle has just grown out of proportion. The amount of troops concentrated in this town is way too much to merely harass the Firstborn; the Tovogans are building their forces for a full-scale assault. The 86th isn’t strong enough to destroy such a force alone. They’re walking into a steelspine hive, and like steelspines with their thick, black spines and razor mandibles, the Tovogans will stab them to pieces.

‘Kolczak, get Colonel Shostkov on the vox. Call off the attack,’ yells Idra. Kolczak doesn’t reply. She grabs him, and his arm comes off, cleanly seared away. The front of Kolczak’s body is missing, the vox-caster’s ornate case a puddle of molten metal.

From behind comes the roar of tank engines. The lead Tovogan platoons rush towards the thin line of Vostroyans.

‘The duty of a soldier of the Astra Militarum,’ the recruit company’s commissar lectures, ‘is to carry out the will of the Emperor.’

Ekaterina doesn’t know the commissar’s name. To the recruits, he’s simply ‘the Commissar’. Twarienko may threaten them with grox-feed, but the Commissar will shoot them at the first sign of treason.

‘The duty of a leader,’ says the commissar, ‘is to ensure that His will be carried out in the most effective way possible. Any deviation from this is treason.’

‘Do not fail,’ says Twarienko. ‘You have your orders. Bring all of your men through to the other side, or don’t come back. This exercise is under battlefield conditions. You will get no help. Understood?’

‘Yes, captain,’ the cadets say.

They are fresh from the scholam, their red uniforms trimmed with gold, the golden badges on their fur shakos gleaming. Only Ekaterina’s uniform is worn. Only Ekaterina has commanded previously. She is Firstborn, having survived the ash wastes and the recruit regiment. She is high-born, destined for command. Of all the lieutenant cadets, only Ekaterina is familiar with her troops. Only Ekaterina’s troops hate her.

‘To me, to me! The Emperor and Vostroya!’ Idra’s voice cuts through the flickering darkness. Her men respond, falling back to her position. The line contracts, Vostroyans moving and firing, firing and dying, always towards the familiar voice of command. They no longer care that she’s a woman. They no longer care that she’s a shiny. She’s a beacon of authority in a night that’s gone bright and bloody.

The Firstborn are racing the Tovogans, a line contracting into a knot before the hammer strikes it. Ten, fifteen, twenty, Idra’s Firstborn make a circle of red and gold, their bearskin shakos sticking up behind lasguns and stone. A tiny fortress of flesh and courage.

The Tovogans will overwhelm them. Their line is sweeping up to the edges of the ruined factorum that shelters the Vostroyans. In the midst of the Tovogan line stands a man in the black coat of a commissar, with a helmet on his head. A star shell detonates above, making the commissar’s coat shine with two clear blue lines, the mark of the Tovogan traitors. There is a large hole blasted in the coat, the traitor’s uniform visible beneath. And Idra knows what she’s going to do.

They are given las-trainers and ohx rations. Full packs and rebreather masks. Orders.

Make it across the ruins of Gurilov Hive alive.

That’s all.

‘Fix bayonets!’

Two dozen Firstborn stop firing. Two dozen Vostroyan sword bayonets, each the length of an arm, are clicked beneath lasgun barrels. The Tovogans reach the edge of the factorum, slow. They’re cautious of the sudden stillness, wary of the enemy. They’ve fought Firstborn before.

‘Wait.’ Idra’s whisper is a harsh sound in the silence. ‘Pick a target. Kill them. Then charge. We break out to the north.’

The Tovogans come closer. The man in the dead commissar’s coat is in their centre, chainsword in one hand, laspistol in the other. Idra has found her target. She aims.

‘Fire!’ she says, but her target slips, her las-blast striking the wall behind him.

‘The Emperor and Vostroya,’ she screams. ‘Charge!’ Around her, the Vostroyans yell, surge, rush forward.

The Tovogans hesitate. In that moment, the Vostroyans are amongst them, stabbing, slashing, firing at point-blank range. Idra jumps over a rusty steel beam, lands lightly. The false commissar is in front of her. An officer, a Tovogan captain’s uniform beneath the black coat. His chainsword screams. Idra blocks with her gun. The chainsword’s teeth bite into it, tearing chunks of wood from the stock. She lets it drag her weapon upward, holds it with one hand, draws her knife with the other…

Plunges the knife into the Tovogan’s unprotected chin. A sharp thrust, up and over. The Tovogan jerks, his fingers going limp and releasing his sword. Idra yanks out her knife.

‘Forward!’ she yells. ‘Forward, men of Saint Nadalya!’

Behind them the rubble lights up as the first Tovogan Hellhound covers it with burning promethium death.

They run, a knot of men in red and gold, black shakos bobbing through the ruins. They’re among the enemy now, hidden in plain sight. Behind them, the Tovogans fire on each other, unaware that the ruins are empty. The Firstborn are firing as they run, killing small groups of Tovogans, avoiding larger ones. A las-blast takes down a Firstborn and his comrades grab him, drag him forward with them. Idra checks for a pulse, finds a gaping hole in the armour, large enough to shove her fist into.

‘Dead,’ she says, and they drop the soldier, muttering a quick prayer for his sacrifice while moving, always moving. To stop is to die, to fight is to live. This is a time for the living. There will be a time for the dead later.

Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. Her troops fall. They carry the wounded, leave the dead, scavenging only grenades and charge packs.

Sergeant Lokhov ties the grenades into bundles, cracks the activation runes. He wipes blood from his eyes as he works. When the Firstborn move, they leave their improvised mines behind. They can follow the Tovogans’ advance by the resulting explosions.

Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve. Idra orders her men forward, forward and onward. The town burns, rockcrete covered with promethium flames shining as bright as star shells. The night is no longer their friend; it has become a butcher, and they meat for the slaughter. Eleven. Radivil falls, wounded, and they can’t recover him. Idra leaves him prone in an intersection, huddling behind a chunk of stone cut with the Imperial eagle, firing at the approaching Tovogans. She promises herself to return and moves away.

‘Stand to!’ The voice screaming from Idra’s vox-bead is like gravel on crushed glass.

‘Major Haskel, sir,’ Idra voxes. ‘The town is overrun, we need to redeploy.’

‘No!’ the major growls. ‘Kill! Forward until you can bathe in their blood!’

‘Sir!’ shouts Idra, and a shape jumps through a broken window before her.

It is barely human, a flowing, moving, red-and-gold terror charging the traitors, its voice screaming hate and promising death. Haskel’s sword flashes, red and black, cuts through a Tovogan trooper, decapitates his partner, splits the lascannon and the gut of the soldier behind them. This isn’t a man, this is a force of fury, the Emperor come to life, a sword of bloody retribution, leading a tide of men, and the sight of him killing fills Idra with fear and admiration. It feels like riding an ash-snake, a need to hang on at all costs, lest it turn and eat you.

‘Light platoon, about face!’ Idra shouts, charging after the major. Her men turn, joining the wave of Firstborn flowing behind Haskel.

They run up to the intersection where Radivil crouches behind his makeshift barricade, his leg a bloody pulp, bone visible through his tattered trousers. A Tovogan Leman Russ clanks towards him, the commander’s head poking through the open hatch.

Haskel charges. He grabs the tank’s side-armour and dances upward like a wave of red fire. His sword rams into the tank commander, forcing the corpse down into the tank. Haskel dives in behind, stabbing. His dangling legs are briefly illuminated by the flashes of his bolt pistol. Then he re-emerges, the Crystal Sword trailing a spray of bloody ruin. He glances down at Idra, his face twisted into a grin of too many teeth. For a split second, Idra thinks he will kill her, but then a Tovogan fires on the major, drawing his attention, and Haskel is off again, charging into fierce bolter fire.

They kill, and they kill, and they kill, the night bright with burning vehicles and the shine of spilled blood. Still the Tovogans come. Firstborn rally to Idra’s call, die, rally again. She loses track of Haskel, loses track of her men. A lasgun scorches her shoulder, a chainsword bites into her newly repaired chest carapace. Her greatcoat catches fire and Sergeant Lokhov tears it off, burning his hands in the process. There is no end to the Tovogans.

Idra glimpses Colonel Shostkov leading a charge, his command squad a fist of men around the 86th’s banner. She sees Commissar Grotschalk whipping a wounded Firstborn forward with his pistol, then shooting the man when he turns to flee. Still the Tovogans come.

The night is a hell of death, a monster chewing its way through the 86th. Idra assaults a Taurox, drops a krak grenade through the driver’s hatch, doesn’t stop to see it burn. Sergeant Lokhov pulls her back from the flame of a Hellhound. She sees Wisniak firing point-blank into the back of a line of Tovogans too busy, too pinned, to notice him. Still the Tovogans come.

The ground shakes beneath the heavy threads of their attacking tanks, the town blazes with the fire from their flamethrowers. They die, and they die, and the Firstborn die with them until the very ground erupts with the fires of hell.

A screaming whine, louder than even the firefight, fills the air. Then the town starts to disintegrate.

‘Emperor’s teeth!’ cries Idra. Lokhov pulls her down, into a hole, the very hole where Radivil made his stand an hour, a lifetime, ago. Wisniak drops in behind them.

‘Bombards,’ yells Lokhov. ‘The One Thousand and Fifty-First Siege Regiment!’

‘They’re firing on us!’ Idra shouts. The ground is shaking, throwing them into the air with each blast.

‘They’re razing the town!’ Lokhov shouts back. His voice is almost inaudible among the explosions. Wisniak holds his hands over his ears, pressing his head down into the ground. Idra tries to stand up but Lokhov pulls her down again.

‘You’re hurt enough already,’ he shouts into her ear. A Firstborn Sentinel rushes by, steel legs churning, its pilot trying to outrun the barrage. A bombard shell drops into the cab, turning the machine into flying shrapnel. Idra ducks, remaining in the hole as the 1051st pounds the town into rubble, then pounds the rubble into dust.

Darkness returns. The night is no longer rent by huge explosions.

‘To me,’ Idra calls. ‘To me, Firstborn! For the Emperor and Vostroya!’

Men crawl from the ruins, red coats grey with dust, gold armour red with blood. Five, ten, twenty. The knot around Idra grows. She starts splitting men into squads, sending them to secure parts of the town.

There isn’t much to secure. The city of Dolemino no longer exists, the ruins turned into piles of dust and gravel. Firstborn crawl over them, digging firing positions, dragging wounded to safety.

‘Lieutenant.’ The medic looks almost shamefaced at interrupting her.

‘What?’ Idra says.

‘Your side, sir,’ he replies, pointing. Idra glances down, then looks again. A piece of tank armour protrudes from her side, through her carapace. Her golden armour is black with old blood.

‘Throne and Emperor,’ she curses.

‘You’d better sit down, sir,’ the medic says.

In the west, the pale, greyish Tovogan dawn arrives.

Gurilov Hive stretches before them, broken fingers of black steel poking towards the Vostroyan sky. The frozen ash shifts as Ekaterina steps upon it, toxic black motes swirling into the air. Without a rebreather mask, it would kill her.

‘Forward,’ she commands her platoon. The men remain standing, weighted down by their packs and masks. Ekaterina wonders if she should repeat her command. But that would be showing weakness before a pack of wild grox. She glares at them instead, until one man steps forward.

Babayev adjusts his pack and starts marching. The men fall into line behind him, and Ekaterina notices their gear. They’re all carrying swords.

The medical station’s ceiling is grey like the Tovogan sky. The medic-apprentice changes Idra’s bandages, praying over her wounds. Around her, bunks are filled with wounded Firstborn. Someone is praying to Saint Nadalya, a deep baritone of supplication. Vidrun Wisniak sits by Idra’s bunk, carving a whorl on his mule-beast leather gun belt. The belt is full of them.

‘Another kill mark?’ Idra asks her sniper.

‘Yah,’ says Wisniak. Then he registers who he’s talking to, changes his tone. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘How many?’ Idra asks.

‘Twenty-nine,’ says Wisniak. ‘I lost track. Not counting those.’

‘Why are you here, Wisniak?’

The marksman sheathes his knife, inspects his lasgun.

‘Sergeant said to watch you,’ he says.

‘Since when does a Firstborn officer need watching in a Vostroyan medicae chamber?’

‘Lots of people are unhappy, sir,’ Wisniak says. ‘Half of the regiment’s wiped out. Colonel’s dead, flag-major’s dead, commissar’s dead. Even the psyker is dead.’

The scale of their losses stuns Idra. Four full companies, and the regiment’s entire leadership, gone?

‘Who’s in command?’

Wisniak shrugs, as if it is no concern of his.

‘I expect they’ll tell us, sir. Or maybe you are.’

The medic ties off Idra’s bandages, pulls out an injector. Blue and red fluids slosh around in the cylinders.

‘The Throne protects you,’ he says, and stabs Idra in the thigh. The world fades into the sky grey of the ceiling.

‘Ekaterina.’ Idra floats towards consciousness, slips, fades back into the comfortable grey warmth. Is dragged up by a hand shaking her shoulder. ‘Ekaterina.’

Sergeant Lokhov stands by her bunk. He’s in full field gear, lasgun cradled in one hand, shaking her with the other. His armour and coat are still covered in blood and dust from the battle at Dolemino.

‘I’m awake,’ says Idra. It comes out all garbled, like talking with a mouth full of ohx and mashed oats.

‘Half the regiment’s gone,’ Lokhov says. ‘Fourth Company is down to a single squad. The Eighth lost all of their tanks. And we’re moving out.’

‘Moving where?’ asks Idra.

‘Dolemino,’ says Lokhov. ‘Going to hunt the remaining Tovogans. We’re moving with no support.’

The news hits Idra like a spear of ice.

‘What about artillery?’ she asks.

Lokhov shakes his head.

‘General command got ash-pox when they heard about the One Thousand and Fifty-First shelling our position. Threatened to have the colonel court-martialled, except the colonel was already dead.’

‘Who commands?’

‘Haskel,’ says Lokhov. He turns to spit, remembers himself, swallows instead.

‘He’s taking the regiment out. We’re going to clear out the mines. Make sure the Tovogans can’t use them as a staging area against us.’

The Firstborn in the next bunk moans. His face is covered with cloth. Only his mouth and part of his singed moustache stick out through the bandages. His right arm ends at the elbow. Pus seeps through the bandage there.

‘What about the other commanders?’ Idra asks.

‘Trzewik is dead, Kaluza lost an arm and both legs, Orkacz is following Haskel’s lead. And ’Trina…’

‘Yes?’ says Idra.

‘It was Haskel who ordered the strike by the One Thousand and Fifty-First. That big brute of his dragged the colonel’s vox-man away and one of Haskel’s other men voxed it in. Didn’t mention us being in the target zone.’

‘Emperor’s mercy!’ Idra curses.

‘It gets worse,’ Lokhov says. ‘Sorokov in Third Company saw Haskel and his brute following the colonel into the charge. The line broke, the colonel and Haskel remaining to hold off the traitor’s counter-attack. Next time Sorokov sees him, Haskel’s slaughtering his way through a line of Tovogans and there’s no sign of the colonel or the command squad.’

‘He left them to die,’ Idra says. Lokhov nods.

‘More interested in killing than in winning,’ the sergeant says. He picks up his pack, slings his lasgun over his shoulder. ‘We’ve lost the commander and the commissar. Haskel’s men are threatening to execute anyone who doesn’t follow. There’s no one to stop them.’

Idra goes cold, memories burning through her mind. A leader killed. A subordinate taking command. You cannot be blind to those around you. A leader has to know which of her men are dangerous. She sits up, the stitches in her side straining against her shifting skin. Warmth starts to seep from her wound, blood staining the bandages.

‘I’ll go reach general command,’ Idra says. ‘And uncle…’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t get yourself killed.’

Ekaterina labours to breathe through her rebreather mask. With every step, the ashes of Gurilov Hive swirl up, clogging the filters. Behind her, the men are cursing. Pegasov yanks his mask off, breathes, starts to cough.

‘Idiot!’ Ekaterina slides down the slope she’s been climbing, yanks the mask from his hands and presses it over his face. ‘Do that again and I’ll have you court-martialled for stupidity!’ Pegasov glares at her, but refastens his mask. Ekaterina starts to climb again.

They make it over the hump, start down the ash-slope on the other side, half sliding, half falling. A hundred yards beneath the summit, a slab of broken rockcrete sticks out over the abyss. Ekaterina calls for a halt. She glances over the edge.

It is a long way down, where steel spars spear up from the ground. Like a field of broken teeth, waiting for the unwary. She plots the route, following thin trails with her eyes.

‘Move out,’ she says. ‘There, then down left, and over to the other side.’

Her men don’t react. They stand in a half-circle between her and the sloping mound of ash. Behind her is the long drop into the abyss.

Babayev draws his sword.

‘Lieutenant!’ Sergeant Dalsik, the regimental vox-operator is wild-eyed. His thin, waxed moustache trembles. Idra hobbles up to him, follows him to the vox-room.

The halls are empty, every able-bodied man in the regiment gone with Haskel. Dalsik shoves a chair in front of the vox-set, rests his broken arm on the table, presses the runes, turns the wheels.

‘Eighty-Sixth Firstborn, Eighty-Sixth Firstborn. Emperor’s mercy, Dalsik, answer!’

It’s Lokhov’s voice. There’s something in it that Idra’s never heard before. Desperation.

‘Lokhov, we’re here,’ Dalsik says. Only crackle comes from the vox-set.

‘Eighty-Sixth, Eighty-Sixth,’ Dalsik says. ‘Lokhov, can you hear me?’

Sergeant Lokhov’s voice comes muted, like he’s talking from the bottom of a lake of ash. Explosions and bolter fire wash over it.

‘Traitors,’ Lokhov says. ‘Got us–’ Heavy bolter fire drowns him out, an extended bakka-bakka-bak. ‘–get the One Thousand and Fifty-First, get them to shell Dolemino.’ More bolter fire. ‘–all going to die!’

The vox falls silent.

‘Get him back,’ Idra says.

Dalsik twirls the dials.

‘Can’t,’ he says. ‘Sir.’

Idra bites back a retort.

‘I’m coming, uncle,’ she says, softly. ‘We’re going to relieve you.’

‘With what troops?’ Dalsik asks, and Idra grins, a cold, hard, hungry expression.

There aren’t any Firstborn in the barracks. Everyone that’s left is in the medical station. Idra walks among them. Some of them lack arms, others legs. Some are burned. A lot of them are dying. Idra is going to ask them to die quicker.

‘Firstborn!’ she yells. ‘Vostroyans!’

Heads come up around her. Eyes open. Moans escape parched lips.

‘We have been betrayed,’ Idra says. ‘Our regiment is trapped in the rubble of Dolemino, our brothers fighting for their lives with no relief available. There are Firstborn dying out there, without support, without rescue. The closest forces, if general command is willing to release them, are four hours away. We are not.’

She pauses, lets it sink in.

‘It is the duty of the faithful to obey the will of the Emperor, and the Emperor wills every human to have a place in His divine order. We are here, we are alive, by His grace and His mercy. We are here because it is His will that we be here, outside the trap that has snapped shut around our brothers.’

She coughs, blood splattering her lips. She wipes it away, forces herself to stand straight.

‘You are hurt,’ she says. ‘You are in pain. You can let that pain rule you, or you can honour Vostroya and stand to fight against the enemies of the Emperor.

‘We are Firstborn. We are the Hammer of the Emperor. Our brothers are dying. Now get up, and save them.’

Idra turns, and starts to march. Behind her, every soldier able to hold a gun follows.

They are an army of the dying. Red and gold, interspaced with the white of bandages, dotted with more red. Twice, they’ve stopped to leave dead behind. They’re not even halfway to Dolemino.

They’re riding into battle atop soft Tovogan transports, a hundred men who can barely hold a lasgun. They go to fight for their regiment, for their planet, and for the Emperor. Idra is leading them to die. She is immensely proud of them all.

Pillars of smoke rise from the ruins of Dolemino. Scattered shots and las-blasts echo among the broken walls. A trail of dead Firstborn lead into the town.

‘Double line,’ Idra says. ‘Those who can walk on their own help those who can’t.’

She leads by example, supporting a wounded missile gunner.

‘Thank you, sir,’ the Firstborn says, struggling with his launcher. The brass tip of a krak missile glitters in the tube.

‘Vostroya and the Emperor!’ The scream is drowned out by a massive explosion. Somewhere in front of Idra, Firstborn are dying.

Idra’s men move, hobble forward as fast as they can. Their lines are straight, their lasguns ready. They stop.

Ahead of them, a clump of Firstborn are running. Half a company, maybe. And a big, burly sergeant in their middle, directing their flight.

‘Uncle,’ Idra shouts. ‘Sergeant Lokhov.’

Lokhov stops, looks confused. Spots the reinforcements.

‘By the Throne!’ he breathes. ‘Run, girl!’

Behind him comes the growl of massive engines, and the crunch of steel threads. Over a pile of broken rockcrete rumbles a Leman Russ.

‘Fire!’ screams Lokhov.

The missile gunner goes down on one knee, the launcher coming up. Idra recognises the markings of the 86th Firstborn on the Leman Russ.

‘Hold fire!’ she shouts, clapping the gunner on the shoulder. ‘Hold fire!’

Standing in the tank’s hatch, like a martyr emerging from the maw of a beast, is Major Jorun Haskel.

He sees the line of Firstborn. His grin shows too many teeth, the tongue lolling between them impossibly long. He howls, an inhuman sound of splintering glass.

The lines of Firstborn waver, fear visibly slicing through them. Idra feels the hair on her neck and arms like a thousand needles. The monster emerging from the tank wears Haskel’s skin, Haskel’s face, but it can’t be human, it can’t be Firstborn. Whatever that thing is, it is an abomination against all of humanity, an affront to the Emperor. Idra’s stomach churns, her legs shake, but her hate for the monster that’s killed her men burns fiercely through her, driving the fear away with red-hot rage.

‘Die!’ she rasps, lifting her lasgun.

The Leman Russ opens fire.

Its heavy bolters spit flame, carving into the line of Firstborn. The missile gunner is cut in half, bolts blasting from his back to splatter against Idra’s chest armour. Both of them fall, as the tank advances, its engine impossibly loud. The bolters seek Firstborn flesh, tearing into the wounded, their white bandages overflowing with red.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Haskel howls. The tank’s guns keep blazing.

Idra struggles up from beneath the dead gunner. She hoists the missile launcher. The tank is almost upon her. It is so close that there is no need to aim. She pulls the trigger.

The missile whooshes out, flames enveloping her, the explosion turning the entire world red.

Silence.

There is a soft, high-pitched whine in her ears, red before her eyes.

She’s on her back, pain lacerating through her.

Faint screams cut through the silence.

Idra blinks. The world snaps back into focus. Haskel stands a few yards from her, on the other side of the burning Leman Russ. His uniform is ripped, his naked flesh thicker than any skin has a right to be, sliced into geometric slabs, red scar tissue visible between them, obscene symbols carved into them. He hoists one of Idra’s wounded into the air with one hand, slams him into the ground, breaks his back. Hacks the Crystal Sword into the dying man in passing.

The hand holding the ancient power sword is crowned by long, black claws. Budding horns adorn the major’s head. His blue tongue stretches below his chin. Whatever Jorun Haskel is, it is no longer human. More interested in killing than in winning, indeed.

Fear of the monster battles the rage in Idra’s heart, crushing her questions between them. What manner of disease can turn a Firstborn hero into a beast like this? She tries to push the thought away, is frozen in indecision.

The Firstborn around Idra cringe, waver. Idra wants to shout them forward, wants to lift her lasgun and fire upon the thing, but her legs shake, her arms refuse to move. Calling upon the aid of the Throne, she lifts the lasgun, but it refuses to fire. Around her, the Vostroyan line breaks.

Haskel is stalking the Firstborn. Their las-blasts can’t touch him, flying past him or scorching him with no more effect than las-trainers. A Firstborn dies beneath Haskel’s sword, the man’s head rolling away, a surprised expression on its face. Haskel slides down the pile of rubble, reaches for his next victim.

Lokhov.

The sergeant swings his sword-bayonet, but the major parries, his powered blade slicing through the common steel of the sergeant’s weapon. The major lifts his sword over his head.

Idra bellows. She hurls her lasgun at Haskel, the stock bouncing off his head. The monster turns, rage dripping off Haskel like sweat.

‘Lieutenant,’ he says. The sound of his voice makes Idra’s skin crawl. It goes beyond gravel and glass; it is the crunch of bones among splintered steel. No human throat can produce a sound like that.

‘You threw away your gun,’ Haskel says. He’s stalking her, his legs bending in the wrong direction. The Crystal Sword hums, flickering between black and red.

‘I don’t need a gun,’ Idra says. Her side bleeds. She’s backing up, searching for a weapon.

All she has is her knife.

Ekaterina stands poised. Everything is clear in her mind. Her back is to the abyss, her front to Babayev.

‘This is treason,’ she says. ‘The Emperor will curse you.’

‘The Emperor,’ says Babayev, ‘doesn’t want women among His Firstborn.’

His sword is a low-born’s blade, poor quality. It will probably break when he stabs her.

‘You could have let things be,’ Babayev says. ‘But no.’

‘Captain Twarienko will punish you,’ Ekaterina says. ‘It is the duty of the faithful–’

‘The lord hetman will be happy,’ Babayev says. ‘I see how he looks at you. Maybe he’ll make me a voyarin. A poor boy becoming a voyarin, eh?’

Ekaterina searches for a way to charge, to disarm Babayev, but they have trained together. He has enough respect for her to be careful, pushing her towards the edge, sliding step by sliding step.

Her foot reaches the edge, her heel hanging in the air.

‘Nowhere to run,’ says Babayev. He’s grinning. He lifts his sword for a killing stroke.

Ekaterina throws her knife.

The knife leaves Lieutenant Idra’s hand with all the power she can muster. It flies true, burying itself in Haskel’s throat.

He grins.

‘Good,’ he says, his voice rasping worse than ever. ‘You are a killer.’

‘You are a traitor,’ Idra says.

‘I am strong!’ Haskel bellows. ‘I am Vostroya’s honour. I am blood and death.’

He stops, fingers Idra’s knife in his throat. Tries to pull it out, but it’s stuck in the hard, red folds of his too-thick skin.

‘You lack the power,’ he says. ‘Think of what you could do if you had the strength.’

‘The Emperor is my strength,’ Idra says, but her voice shakes.

She’s climbing, scrambling backward as Haskel steps towards her. A steelspine stalking a meat-rat.

In the street, below the ruins of the factorum she’s climbing, Idra’s troops are fighting Haskel’s giant. The man is cleaving them with his axe, shrugging off lasgun hits. The axe moves with his hand, is his hand, the blackened steel part of his flesh, the blade a great upside-down cone, like the markings on Haskel’s flesh.

‘Join me,’ says Haskel. ‘You have the will. Think of what you could do with the strength. Think of the enemies of Vostroya, dying by your hand.’

‘The Emperor is my will,’ says Idra. ‘He is my strength and my protection.’

Her hand lands on a smooth stone, a piece of a cracked Imperial eagle. She grabs the aquila, a cold, heavy weight in her hand. Haskel grins, his too-many teeth sharp as daggers.

‘You are a killer,’ he says. ‘And the Emperor cannot protect you. But join me, and you will have the power to protect yourself. No more grovelling before disdainful officers. No more struggling while those who’d support you sit back and drink and laugh and your men die.’

‘You are a traitor,’ says Idra.

Haskel nods.

‘The world is full of traitors,’ he says. ‘Become one of my men, and you could be killing them by the thousands. We will purge this planet of them, no matter what uniform they wear. We will fill the void with rivers of blood and send the souls of the dead screaming into the warp.’

‘Heresy!’ shouts Idra.

‘Truth!’ growls Haskel. ‘You think the Emperor will protect you? He cannot protect you. He is a shell of a man inside a shell of a machine, and with every battle He orders, every death He causes, He’s pushing us closer to the Ruin. You think this is the path of murder? This is the path of honour, of courage, of the will to fight. This is where all roads lead, but not all roads are the same. You can choose to bathe in blood, or have others bathe in yours.’

‘Lies and heresy,’ says Idra, still backing away.

Her foot slips. She is at the top of the mound of rubble. Behind her gapes an abyss of broken rockcrete. There is nowhere else to go. Haskel licks his teeth. There is hunger in his expression, a terrible hunger.

‘The Emperor cannot protect you,’ he says. He lifts the Crystal Sword, the ruby in its grip sparkling.

A giant explosion rips through the Leman Russ. Haskel’s gaze darts to the flaming wreck. For a split second, his weight shifts.

Ekaterina Idra charges. Haskel twists, fast as a blindsnake, but she is inside his reach, lifting the piece of the aquila, slamming it into the knife caught in the folds of Haskel’s throat.

They fall. Two bodies tumbling down the long, jagged slope. Tumbling towards the burning Leman Russ.

Idra lands dazed, her hand closing on the warm grip of an active power sword.

A bellow of rage chases the fog from her mind. Haskel’s giant.

The man charges, his axe trailing gore. But as he closes, Idra twists aside, lifts the Crystal Sword. It shears clear through the giant’s massive bulk, spilling black blood onto the stones. The giant falls. Behind Idra comes a rasping laugh.

The laugh turns into a cough, then a gasp. Major Haskel is lying on his side, legs and arms bent at unnatural angles, Idra’s knife buried deep in his throat, its tip protruding from the back of the major’s neck. Still, he does not die.

‘I serve the Emperor,’ says Idra. She walks over to the major, lifts the Crystal Sword.

‘For the Emperor, and Vostroya,’ she says.

A look of regret passes over the major’s face. His tongue twitches.

‘For Vostroya,’ he whispers. The sword comes down.

Ekaterina’s men stand in a huddle around the corpse. She kicks Babayev’s sword over the edge. Stares at her recruits.

‘You will,’ she says, ‘khekking move when I say you move. Now pick that traitor up, and khekking move.’

They move.

There are no Tovogans left in Dolemino. The town is silent but for the whispers of the Firstborn as they collect their dead.

‘Idra,’ her men whisper. ‘Ekaterina Idra. Blessed. Blessed by the Emperor.’

As Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra helps her men gather the multitude of dead, she does not feel blessed.

Her bed is hard. Her weapons locker has been removed. The image of the Throne, the Emperor radiant upon it, still hangs on her wall. The Treatis Elatii lies open in Idra’s lap, but she’s too distracted to read. Besides, she knows most of it by heart.

At least they’ve let her out of the cell.

The door opens. For a moment, she thinks it’s Lokhov. But no, it’s the commissar. She strides into the room, a presence of black upon black, her pale face hidden in the shadows beneath her black cap. She speaks without preamble, her voice hard as ice.

‘You disobeyed your superior officer,’ she says. ‘And killed him.’ It is a statement, not a question.

Idra nods. The stitches in her side have come out, but moving still hurts. She’ll be damned if she shows it to this non-Vostroyan, though. So she snaps to attention, ignoring the jab of pain in her ribs.

‘No excuses?’ the commissar asks.

‘He was a traitor,’ Idra says.

‘How did you know?’ says the commissar. ‘Before you saw him at Dolemino.’

‘He was more interested in killing than in winning,’ Idra says. She’s told the story before.

The commissar barks a short laugh. If a bolter could laugh, this would be the sound.

‘Killing is what we do, lieutenant,’ she says.

‘We kill for the Emperor,’ says Idra.

‘That we do,’ the commissar says. She smiles, a faint glimmer of teeth beneath the shadowy brim of her hat. ‘Very well, lieutenant, the investigation has proven your story. You are freed from suspicion, although I dare say you have made a fool of a number of highly ranked men, and rank seldom appreciates being wrong.’

She turns to leave, but Idra stops her.

‘May I have my knife back?’ she says, and the commissar grins a feral grin. She hands Idra’s knife back to her, hilt first.

‘And I believe,’ the commissar says, ‘that this is yours by right of conquest.’

She lifts the Crystal Sword. The Eye of the Eagle glimmers like blood.

The Tear of Saint Nadalya stands on the launch pad, a big, black, ugly ship, swallowing hordes of Firstborn in crisp red uniforms. Ekaterina Idra shoulders her pack. This is the ship that will take her to the Imperial Navy ship Blessing of Mars, which will transport them to another world. To fight for the Emperor.

A man blocks her path, a familiar face looking down on her.

‘Captain,’ Ekaterina Idra says.

‘Lieutenant,’ Captain Twarienko replies.

They stand there, windblown flakes of ash scattering across the launch pad, the old campaigner and the fresh graduate.

‘Captain,’ says Idra. ‘Why did you defend my actions before the commissar?’

Twarienko twists his moustache.

‘Colonel Sebastev,’ he says, smiling at Idra’s confusion.

‘Sebastev was the first low-born to gain a field commission and survive to return to Vostroya,’ Twarienko says. ‘A good commander, too, and skilled tactician, for all of him being low-born. Now there’s been a score of them. Who knows, maybe there will be a score of female Firstborn one day.’

‘Do you think so, sir?’ asks Idra. She fingers the Idrov knife at her belt. There is no need to remind the captain of what the other Firstborn think of her.

‘If the Emperor wills it,’ says Twarienko and stretches to attention. ‘Stand to!’ he says, and throws her a salute.

Lieutenant Ekaterina Idra returns it with a smile.

MERCY

Danie Ware

The cathedral’s corpse was vast.

Standing in its hollow heart, its darkness vaulted huge above her, Sister Superior Augusta rested one scarlet-gauntleted hand on the bolter at her hip. She said nothing, only scanned this icon of the Emperor’s might, searching for motion, for threat, for any remaining gleam of His Light.

But there was nothing.

This was Ultima Segmentum’s darkest corner, and little reached out here.

Beside her, the missionary Lysimachus Tanichus was speaking in hushed tones. ‘From the last years of the Age of Apostasy, Sister. Or so they say.’ His sibilance coiled in the dark, like echoes of millennia.

Augusta gave a brief acknowledgement and walked carefully through the debris. The air was hot here, clammy with the overgrown jungle-marsh outside; twisted creepers had penetrated the cathedral’s crumbling walls and they writhed across the stonework like the tendrils of Chaos itself. Sweat itched at the fleur-de-lys tattoo on her cheek.

‘Sisters.’ She spoke softly into the vox at her throat. ‘Roll call.’

Five voices came back through the darkness. Augusta’s retinal lenses tracked their locations: blips deployed in a standard sweep-reconnaissance pattern. Her squad were experienced – all except one – and she had complete trust in their worthiness, and in their love for the Emperor. Together, they had carried fist and faith across every segmentum of the galaxy.

Tanichus, fiddling with his rosarius, spoke again. ‘The Emperor’s light had not touched this world in millennia, Sister, not until I came here, carrying His name. The local townspeople told me of the cathedral. It’s a part of their mythology–’

‘I trust you’ve brought them Truth,’ Augusta said. Her authority was unthreatened by the missionary, but she needed to listen – the brief from the canoness on Ophelia VII had listed this world as a potential staging point for Chaos, invading from the Eye of Terror, for witchkin or renegades, for marauding xenos of every kind. Augusta was a twenty-year veteran, her bobbed hair and stern gaze both steel-grey, and her experience made her both sharp and wary.

‘Me serve vivere, Sister,’ Tanichus said. ‘I live to serve.’

‘Sister Jatoya,’ Augusta said into the vox. ‘Anything?’

Her second-in-command responded, ‘No, Sister. If there’s anything here, it’s well hidden.’

‘Check everywhere.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Very well.’ Her touch still on the bolter, eyeing the decaying statues and pillars above her, Augusta gestured for Tanichus to keep speaking.

But he told her only what she already knew: his history with the townspeople, and their rumours of the cathedral. The town held the place taboo, but they’d told Tanichus their local myth – that the ruin had a guardian, an armoured stone icon with a bloodied flower upon its chest. And Tanichus had carried word of this back to the Ecclesiarchy, and to the Sisters.

A member of the Order of the Bloody Rose, Augusta had volunteered for the mission immediately – with the cathedral’s age, it was possible that the icon could be Saint Mina herself. ‘The Emperor has called me,’ she’d said to the canoness. ‘And I must go.’ Perhaps for more political reasons than visionary ones, the canoness had agreed.

Her boots crunching over ancient, fallen masonry, Augusta climbed the steps towards the high altar. Ruin or not, she paused before the top and dropped to one armoured knee, her black cloak billowing and her hand tracing the fleur-de-lys on her armour.

‘Quantus tremor est futurus, quando attingit locum Lucis.’

How great the fear will be, when the Light touches this place!

She felt the missionary shiver as he, too, knelt. Tanichus was a talker, a good man to carry the Emperor’s word, but she was His daughter, and her task was clear.

She would find this icon.

‘Did the townspeople tell you anything further?’ she asked, coming back to her feet. ‘You lived with them for several months.’

‘Only superstitions,’ he told her. ‘If this is your patron saint, Sister, then we must find her without their help.’

Augusta nodded. She gave her squad orders to structure their search, to move in a standard skirmish pattern throughout the cathedral’s cloisters and side-rooms. Sister Viola, the youngest, she ordered to stand guard at the fallen doors. Viola was new from the schola; she was high-hearted and eager to prove herself and that was all very well… but Augusta wanted her close.

‘Yes, Sister.’ Viola, bolter in hand, returned to the doors and took her position, watching the huge and muggy writhe of the outside jungle.

Over the vox, the Sister Superior recited the Litany of Mettle. Whatever was here, they would find it.

In the cathedral’s transept stood a colossal thirty-foot statue, its broken hands raised in the sign of the aquila. It had been carved in full armour and, like all such things, it faced Holy Terra as if it still sought the Light.

But if this was Saint Mina, then she had no face, and her insignia had long since fallen to dust.

Augusta was scanning, carefully looking for age and identity, when the cry came from Viola at the doorway.

‘Sisters!’ The word was soft across the vox, but it carried the faintest of quivers. ‘I see movement!’

Augusta felt the touch of adrenaline and inhaled, enjoying the lift, the first flush of faith – as her briefing had warned her, this was a dangerous place.

‘Be specific,’ she said, turning to crunch back out to the nave, the cathedral’s main aisle. ‘What do you see?’

‘Large force incoming. Seventy, eighty yards. Moving slowly, but heading this way.’ Her voice was taut with fear. ‘It’s hard to see them through the jungle.’

Tanichus followed at Augusta’s shoulder. The missionary had unhooked his lasrifle and looked slightly queasy; she hoped he could shoot straight. ‘Sisters, to me. Kimura, to the doorway. Jatoya, watch the rear.’ Kimura carried the squad’s heavy bolter, and its faster suppression would be critical. ‘Viola, description.’

‘I can’t see well, Sister, but they’re all shoulders. They’re huge!’

‘Space Marines?’ Jatoya’s tone was surprised. ‘Out here?’

But Kimura was at the doorway now, weapon at the ready. Her voice came back over the vox, her tones shuddering with a rising, burning eagerness. ‘They’re not Heretic Astartes, Sisters.’ The words were alight.

‘They’re orks.’

Orks.

If there was one damned xenos that Augusta loathed, it was the ork. Filthy, stinking things, slavering and disorderly; they were as much the enemies of the Throne as any witch or heretic. She could feel her faith unfurling in her heart like a banner – she had a chance to reclaim this holy place, at the edge of the segmentum…

But Augusta’s ruthless discipline was what had kept her alive through twenty years of warfare. She could embrace the love of her Emperor and keep her thoughts clear.

She reached Kimura at the doorway, and used her auspex to look outside.

Many of the incoming beasts were enormous, bigger than the Sisters, armour and all. But this was not the disciplined advance of highly trained soldiers, this was ramshackle, and noisy, and slow. The orks moved more like marauders; they laughed amongst themselves, pushing and shoving and snarling. Their tones were harsh and their voices guttural.

They were hard to see through the steam, through the festooned and looping creepers.

But they were heading straight for the cathedral.

‘Sister!’ Kimura had reached the same conclusion – her voice was tense. Augusta saw her take a sight on the lead ork, anger radiating from her stance as if her armour burned with it.

‘Hold your fire.’

For a moment, she thought Kimura would disobey, but Augusta’s command of her squad was too strong. Instead, Kimura paused, quivering, her finger on the trigger, tracking the orks as they approached.

Behind them now, Viola’s breathing was swift in her vox. She was afraid – and Augusta understood.

But still, the youngest of the squad had to control herself, and quickly.

Swiftly, the Sister Superior gave orders for deployment. Kimura and Caia at the door, Viola and Melia at the front left archway, Jatoya, with her flamer, watching the rear. Augusta herself, Tanichus still with her, took position at the front arch to the right, its window long since put out by the creeper and shattered to forgotten dust.

Outside, the orks advanced, oblivious. A fight had broken out amongst their number, cheered and jeered by those surrounding.

Beneath her helmet, Augusta curled her lip – she had no fear of these beasts, whatever their numbers. Over the vox, she recited the Battle Hymnal and heard her Sisters join her, avidly soft.

‘That Thou wouldst bring them only death,

That Thou shouldst spare none,

That Thou shouldst pardon none

We beseech Thee, destroy them.’

She felt Viola stiffen, felt her courage coalesce. She felt Kimura steady, ready to unleash His wrath on the incoming creatures and their blasphemous intentions…

‘Wait,’ she said, again.

The orks moved closer.

Within heavy bolter range.

Within bolter range.

Any moment now, they would see the crouching Sisters, their blood-scarlet armour and their black-and-white cloaks…

‘Sisters, stay down. Kimura, on my command, full covering suppression. For the Emperor… Fire!’

The orks had no idea what had hit them.

Raiders and warriors alike, everything vanished in a hail of gore and shredding flesh. The heavy bolter howled in Kimura’s hands, and the jungle was ripped to pieces, leaves shining like shrapnel, trees and vines cut clean in half.

One ancient trunk toppled over with a groan, but was stopped by a tangle of creeper. It hung there, creaking, like some huge executioner’s axe.

Kimura’s voice came over the vox, louder now, ‘A morte perpetua, Domine, libra nos!’ The Hymn of Battle raged in tune with the furious barking of the weapon. The Sisters’ voices joined her, rising to crystal-pure harmonics as Kimura visited bloody destruction upon the orks.

Augusta was grinning now, tight and violent beneath her helm. She knew this with every word in her ear, every flash in her blood – this was her worship, her purpose and her life. The Emperor Himself was with her, His fire in her heart, His touch in the creak and weight of her armour, in the bolter in her hand. She was here to unleash His wrath against the despoilers of this forgotten and holy place.

And it felt good.

At her other hip, her heavy chainsword clanked as if begging for release, but not yet… not yet.

She heard Kimura’s singing ring with vehemence as the Sister cut the orks to pieces.

‘From the blasphemy of the Fallen, our Emperor, deliver us!’

But orks, despite many flaws, had no concept of intimidation. They had no interest in the Emperor’s wrath, no tactics, and no sense. Another force might have gone to ground, given covering fire, but not these beasts.

Roaring with outrage, waving what clumsy weapons they had, they simply charged.

Over the singing, Augusta shouted, ‘Kimura, fall back and reload! The rest of you, fire!’

She raised her own bolter, aiming for the largest ork she could see. Greenskins had a very simple rule of leadership – the bigger the beast, the more control it wielded. And if she could take out the leaders, the rest would be easier to kill.

The battle hymn still sounded and she added her voice once again, feeling the music thrill along her nerves like wildfire. A second wave of orks raged forwards, leering and eager.

There seemed to be no end to them.

The beasts were closing fast now, and she could see them clearly: their jutting teeth and green skin, their rusted weapons, their armour all scrappy pieces of ceramite and steel, scrounged from who knew what battlefields.

One had a set of white pauldrons bearing the distinctive fleur-de-lys. Snarling, she blew it away.

But their losses didn’t touch them; they picked up the weapons of their dying and their trampled, and they just kept coming.

Bolters barked and howled in red-gauntleted hands. Tanichus took single shots with his lasrifle, picking his targets carefully. The jungle became a mess of blood and smoke and noise, but still the orks came on, slobbering and shouting, ripping through creepers and fallen trees. To one side, there was a lashing and a gurgle and half a dozen greenskins vanished, shrieking and struggling, below the surface of the marsh. Jeers and calls came from the rest, but they didn’t slow down.

‘There’s too many of them!’ The youngest Sister’s cry broke the hymn’s purity and Augusta felt her squad waver.

She raised her voice to a paean, a clarion call like a holy trumpet, allowing them no pause.

‘Domine, libra nos!’

Shrieking with fury, Viola resumed firing.

But the orks didn’t care. They tore themselves free from the jungle’s tangle and threw themselves at the steps.

The lead ork went backwards in a spray of crimson mist.

The others were already boiling past it. Tanichus kept firing streaks of light past Augusta’s shoulder. Augusta switched to full suppression and heard the bolters of the others, all growling in righteous fury.

Yet the orks still came. They were like a rotting green tide, large creatures and small, no structure, no fear. They bayed and snarled like animals.

The Sisters couldn’t stop them all.

Fury rose in Augusta and was annealed to a magnesium-white flare of righteous wrath. You shall not enter here!

Viola, afraid, screamed the words of the hymnal, the same verse, over and over…

The advance stopped.

Shredded leaves fluttered slowly to the rotting jungle floor.

The orks had paused. Changing magazine with an action so reflexive she barely noticed, Augusta scanned them through her retinal lenses, wondering what in Dominica’s name they were doing.

Had they just been overcome by the holiness of the cathedral itself?

Somehow, she doubted it.

She watched as the creatures at the front moved, taking cover behind toppled statues. She gave the order to keep firing and heard the bolters start again.

The beasts knew the Sisters were here – and they’d responded.

Smart orks? The idea was horrifying.

Yet something down there – the warboss or whatever it was – had intelligence.

It made her wonder if their presence was pure coincidence… and an odd chill went down her back.

The lead orks had taken cover now, and the jungle was ominously quiet. Behind them, through the rising steam, she could see bigger figures, moving forwards. Several had stubby sidearms, luridly decorated; the weapons gave a steady bark of fire. Rounds chewed chunks out of the stone and made the Sisters keep their heads down.

And one of them–

‘Get back from the windows! Take cover!’

Her squad were already on the move, throwing themselves back. They didn’t wait for the ork with the rocket launcher to loose his leering-skull-painted missile… straight into the cathedral nave.

Augusta hit the floor, taking Tanichus down with her.

The world erupted in fire.

She heard the whistling of shrapnel, felt the whoosh of heat that seared her armour and shrivelled her cloak to tatters. The orks would use the cover of the missile to gain entrance to the building, and she was back on her feet even as the flame was dying.

‘Sisters! Roll call!’

Tanichus was scrambling up, charred but unhurt – Augusta had covered as much of his unarmoured body as was possible. He was coughing, fumbling for his lasrifle amidst the settling dust.

Five voices came back to her, making her thank the Emperor Himself for the courage and experience of her squad.

The orks were on them now, piling through the doors, scrambling over the window ledges – if all else failed, Augusta would bring the building down in a final hail of rounds, and kill everything within.

For the glory of the Emperor!

But they were not done yet. They would fight with the Emperor Himself at their backs, and they would fight to their last breath.

‘Kimura–!’

She started to give orders to fall back, for Kimura’s heavy bolter to cover them, but her voice was lost under the detonation of a grenade, impacting right at Kimura’s feet.

The Sister disappeared in a blast of smoke and fragments.

Viola screamed. Chunks of roof tumbled to the floor. Tanichus scrabbled away on his backside, his rifle lost.

Now, the orks were all over the nave. Augusta could see the smaller, darker gretchins, scuttling in among their boots, picking things up and shaking them and biting them, then scurrying gleefully away.

Slinging the bolter, she drew the chainsword and started the mechanism.

It snarled into life like pure impatience, eager for the blasphemers’ blood.

Called by the rasp of the weapon, the Sisters were upon the orks with fists and feet and fury, punching one, kicking it to the floor, then ripping the axe out of its grip and using it on the one behind. Their armour, already red, slicked brighter with colours of death.

But somewhere under the combat-high, Augusta was beginning to understand something: this was not just a random raid, it was too big, too clever, too strong. These orks had come here knowingly.

And they’d come expecting resistance.

A hand grabbed her cloak and pulled her backwards.

She spun the chainsword, slashed through the neck of one ork and into the chest of another. Both went over, one still howling, and her thoughts were forgotten – she had other priorities. Stamping at the impertinent gretchins, she slashed at a third ork, and a fourth. She was wrath incarnate, the rage of the Emperor, carving flesh and bone and armour, and spraying gore like red wine.

Tanichus had vanished, somewhere in the mess.

Sister Jatoya shouted over the vox – the orks had got round behind them.

Clever indeed.

The flamer roared as Jatoya retreated, searing the enemy and sending them screaming, burning, stumbling. The wet and seething creepers started to smoke.

And then, Augusta saw something else.

Warboss.

Throne, the beast was big! Seven and a half feet of pure, green muscle. It had metal in its ears, one lower tooth that jutted over its face, and an almost full set of armour that offered more than one well-known symbol – Blood Angels, Imperial Fists, the eight-pointed emblem of Chaos. It was a champion, and the biggest damned ork she’d ever seen.

And if that thing was out here scavenging, then she was straight out of the schola.

It had a sharp, sly glimmer in its red eyes – and its gaze stopped on Augusta.

She snarled at it, ‘Mori blasphemus fui.’

Die, blasphemer.

Around them, the melee slowed to a fluid dance of blood and blades. From the corner of her eye, Augusta saw Viola punch her scarlet gauntlet clean into an ork’s face, saw the ork rock backwards, then shake itself and grin.

But her attention was still on the leader.

Just as its was on her.

They were the eye of the storm. The ork carried twin axes, each as long as its muscled forearm, and there was a second grenade at its belt.

It said, ‘Sis-tah.’

But the snarl of the chainsword was its only reply.

Not only big, but fast.

Augusta was used to orks being slow, bearing down an enemy by brute force, rather than by speed or skill.

Not this thing.

In her mind, she recited the Litany of Blood – a reflex, a chant of pure focus. It was part of her combat training, something she’d learned at the schola, and it made her sharp, the tool of the might that flowed through her.

But her first side-slash was blocked, then the second, the rasp of the chainsword rising to a scream as the axes caught in its teeth.

The ork didn’t falter. It was controlled and powerful. She went backwards, parrying one blow after another, her boots scattering dust and mess and fallen xenos bodies. And it came after her, its breath as foul as its coated yellow teeth. It was still talking; threats and mockery, but she had no interest in bandying words with it. It was defiler and despoiler, and it would die.

Another blow, and another. She tried to press forwards, but it gave her no gap in which to strike. Around her, the rest of the squad fought with knives and fists, hammering the orks to a bloody green pulp.

She saw one Sister falter, and fall to her knees.

‘Sis-tah.’ Grinning, the monster dropped both axes. It grabbed the chainsword, blades and all, in one massive hand, and tore it out of her grasp.

It threw it aside.

She saw Jatoya’s flamer in the corner of her vision, saw Caia and Melia together pick an ork up bodily and hurl it into a gathering of its fellows, sending all of them scattering to the floor.

They would win this!

It almost made her laugh, the sound like pure, righteous joy. With only her gauntlets, she threw herself at the monster.

But it was too fast – it grabbed her, its chainsword-carved hand around her gorget, and it lifted her clean off the floor.

Furious now, she kicked it.

Again.

Again.

She split the beast’s lip, but its grin only widened, its teeth now streaked with its own blood. Furious, she took its wrist in her grasp and tried to twist and crush its arm, force it to drop her.

It shook her like an errant underling.

‘Sister!’ Across the vox, she heard Jatoya’s cry. Her second in command couldn’t use her flamer but Jatoya barked a clear order at the rest of the squad.

‘Take it down!’

The warboss didn’t care. It shook her again, her armour clattering.

‘Sis-tah,’ it said. ‘Know you. Came to find.’

What?

‘Wait!’ Her voice was a gurgle over the vox.

The beast was laughing at her. ‘We take all. Kill sis-tahs. Take weapons.’

Understanding grew up her spine like ice. She stared at the ork as it shook her for the third time.

Take weapons.

It had known that the Sisters were here!

The fighting around them was beginning to lessen. The orks were faltering, and the Sisters hacked at them without mercy, driving them back. Many of the smaller beasts were dropping their weapons and running away. Jatoya had slung her flamer and fought with her fists alone; Augusta saw her punch an ork in the back of the neck, saw it stumble to its knees.

One red-armoured figure – she couldn’t tell who – was walking through the mess, bolter in hand, putting single shots into struggling heaps. Another was clearing the bodies from the altar steps, and she could see the broken form of Kimura, smoke still rising from the joints in her armour.

Then she saw one Sister click the neck of her helm and remove it, revealing a freckled face and bobbed red hair, all tousled and sweating.

Viola.

Her expression was like acid-carved steel.

‘Put her down.’

Viola raised her bolter, and took clear aim at the ork’s head.

The warboss paused. Augusta saw it look round at its defeated force; saw its red eyes narrow, its lip curl. Then it let her go, and she fell, crashing to her knees on the cathedral floor.

Viola came closer, the bolter aimed and steady.

The ork bared its teeth at her.

Impressed with the new mettle of the youngest Sister, Augusta stood up. She stepped in close to the warboss and said, ‘You knew we were here.’ Talking to the thing made her flesh crawl, but she had to know. ‘How? Who told you?’

‘Sis-tah.’ The warboss looked from Augusta to Viola and back. It cocked its head to one side and said, ‘So fool-ish. So tiny.’

Augusta glared at it. ‘How did you know?’

‘Blood Axes.’ It thumped the crossed-axe symbol on its chest. ‘We kill. Take weapons.’

She held its red gaze. Augusta had heard of the Blood Axes, they traded with humans sometimes – it might explain why this monster was so damned clever. But not how it had known–

Tanichus.

The realisation came like the Light of the Emperor Himself – a ray of pure Truth. Tanichus had been here before – had lived here for months – and only Tanichus had known that the Sisters were coming.

And, as Augusta remembered, he’d used his local knowledge to set the time of their reconnaissance.

He’d told them when to be here.

‘Get the missionary.’ She snapped the command over the vox, saw Caia nod and turn away.

‘What did he offer you?’ she said to the warboss.

It sneered at her, its red eyes cold.

Reached for the grenade at its belt.

She saw the motion, went to kick its wrist – but Viola was faster.

Her face like stone, the youngest Sister shot it clean through the head.

Gore spattered. The huge beast teetered for a second, almost as if startled – then it crashed to the floor like a tree falling. The whole building seemed to shake.

A pool of crimson spread out across the flagstones.

‘Good shot,’ Augusta told the youngest Sister.

Viola grinned.

Behind them, Caia had returned with Tanichus, the missionary almost gibbering with fear.

‘Found him trying to flee,’ Caia said. ‘Scuttling out of the crypt like an insect.’

‘Sister!’ The missionary was white-faced; he looked like he was about to vomit. Her armour still dripping, she walked over to him, closing her hand about his neck just like the ork’s had been about her own.

He looked at her, his eyes wide, his mouth open. ‘Sister Superior, I swear by His Light–’

‘You dare? You dare swear by the Emperor’s name?’ Her hand closed; she felt his breath catch in his throat. ‘I should crush you where you stand.’

‘Sister, please!’

At her feet, the warboss lay dead. The orks were finished and the Sisters had closed ranks at Augusta’s shoulders – the entire cathedral seemed gathered at her back, looking at the missionary.

‘You’ve been here before,’ Augusta said. ‘Lived with the townspeople. You’re the link, Tanichus. You’re the only thing that could have manipulated the pieces. Tell me, did you speak to the orks? Deal with them? Did you lie about the icon? Something to bring us out here, just so the orks could kill us for our weapons.’ She shook him like a rat.

‘Sister, I swear!’

Disgusted, she let him go, watched as Caia’s gauntleted hands closed on his shoulders and forced him to his knees.

‘Sister Kimura died,’ Augusta said. She freed the seal on her helm and took it off, enjoying the relative cool of the marsh-thick air.

Meeting her flat, steel gaze, Tanichus was starting to panic. ‘Please!’

She dropped to one knee, gripped his jaw in one bloody gauntlet and forced him to look at her.

‘Repent, heretic, you may yet save your soul.’

Tanichus was shaking now, his face pale. Sweat shone from his skin.

She’d seen this a hundred times in the suddenly caught-out-and-penitent – the guilt, the fear. And they were exactly the admission she was looking for.

‘Tell me the truth,’ she snarled at him. ‘What deal did you do?’

He was snivelling now, terrified. Words spilled out of him. ‘When I came here,’ he said, ‘the townspeople told me about the orks. The tribe had been destroying the villages, committing such horrors… and they were going to wipe out the town. The people told the orks about the cathedral. Said they could have anything they could find if they just left the town alone. Then I came, and they begged me for my help. They knew that the orks would come back. Knew what would happen to them.’ He seemed almost in tears. ‘They’re just people, Sister, just families. They have lives and fears and hopes. Children growing up.’ His face was etched in pain. ‘I just wanted to help them.’ He held back a sob.

Augusta saw the pity on Viola’s freckled face, saw the stances of the others shift – they knew full well what the orks would have done to the townspeople.

He said, ‘I went to find the orks. I told them that I would bring them weapons, armour, if they just left the people alone. And–’

‘And so you brought them us.’ Augusta’s tone was scathing.

‘You beat them, didn’t you?’ He was pleading with her. ‘You won!’

She contemplated the sobbing man, water tracing clean lines through the filth on his skin, and she understood his pain, the choice he’d made.

But it didn’t change the facts.

‘Lysimachus Tanichus, you are a traitor. You have manipulated the Adepta Sororitas to your own ends. You have betrayed the Ecclesiarchy, and the name of the Emperor.’ Tanichus opened his mouth, but she didn’t want to hear it. ‘And your story misses one critical point – what would have happened if we’d lost?’

‘You’re Sister Superior Augusta Santorus – you don’t lose!’

‘Tell that to Kimura.’

Tanichus glanced at the fallen Sister, then slumped forwards, defeated. He was sniffling. ‘I only wanted to help the people.’

‘You betrayed us to the enemy.’ She backhanded him, her metal gauntlet cutting his cheek. His head snapped sideways, then he looked back up at her, uncomprehending and horrified. ‘You brought us here on a lie. You cost the life of Sister Kimura. You tried to flee the battle. Your guilt is manifest, and your life is forfeit.’

He stared at her, his mouth open.

But she wasn’t done. ‘However, I will say this – this world, Lautis, in the Drusus Marches of the Calixis Sector, is now under the observation and protection of the Order of the Bloody Rose. We claim this cathedral, and all within it, in His name. And we will protect the people – on the assumption that they acknowledge the Emperor of All Mankind.’

Tanichus had fallen forwards. He was shaking, his hands over his face. ‘Please! I knew you’d beat them! I knew!’

‘I will deliver your protection, Tanichus. But you…’ She dragged his head up again. ‘In pythonissam non patieris vivere – I shall not suffer your life.’

‘Sister Superior…’ Viola’s voice came to her ears, not over the vox. ‘He should come back with us, face judgement–’

‘Enough!’ Augusta snapped the order and Viola recoiled. ‘I know exactly what to do with this offal.’

‘Sister,’ Jatoya said, more cautiously. ‘It is not our place–’

‘He has mocked us!’ Augusta barked, furious. ‘Kimura is dead!’

Tanichus threw himself at her feet. ‘Please!’

Viola and Jatoya exchanged a glance.

Augusta reached down with one hand, and dragged the sobbing man back to his feet. ‘You do not take the name of the saint in vain. You do not manipulate the Order to your own ends. And believe me, if the orks had won, both you and your town would still have been destroyed. That warboss would have cut you to pieces and eaten you.’

Tanichus was shaking now. She tore the rosarius out of his grasp, gave it to the closest of her Sisters.

Then she pulled her fleur-de-lys punch-dagger from the front of her armour, and slit Tanichus’ throat.

Augusta felt Viola flinch, though she said nothing. Tanichus gaped and fell, bubbles on his lips, hands to his throat, his blood mingling with that of the dead ork.

His last word, as he hit the floor, was Mercy.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author of the acclaimed ten-book Shadows of the Apt series, and many other novels, novellas and short stories including Children of Time (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2016) and its sequel Children of Ruin (which won the British Science Fiction Award in 2020). He lives in Leeds in the UK and his hobbies include entomology and board and role-playing games. ‘Raised in Darkness’ is Adrian’s first story for Black Library.

Matt Smith has written several Warhammer 40,000 short stories for Black Library, including ‘In Service Eternal’, ‘The Twisted Runes’, ‘City of Blood’ and ‘The Price of Duty’. He is based in Norwich and spends his spare time working on his Raven Guard army and training in martial arts.

Noah Van Nguyen is a writer of speculative fiction who lives and works in Vietnam. After a stint in the military, he tried his hand at translating, copywriting and teaching English. He intends to keep writing fiction as long as the coffee keeps flowing, which his wife has promised is never-ending. This has so far turned out to be true and the matter is now pending Inquisitorial investigation. His work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘Vova’s Climb’ and ‘No Third Chance’.

Steve Lyons’ work in the Warhammer 40,000 universe includes the novellas Iron Resolve, Engines of War and Angron’s Monolith, the Imperial Guard novels Death World, Ice Guard and Dead Men Walking, and the audio dramas Waiting Death and The Madness Within. He has also written numerous short stories and is currently working on more tales from the grim darkness of the far future.

Gavin G Smith is the Dundee-born author of various science fiction and fantasy tales such as Veteran and Chivalry. His work for Warhammer 40,000 includes the short stories ‘Apex Predator’ and ‘The Last Knight: Part One’.

Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He is the writer of the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Ghosts of Iron’ and when not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

Gareth Hanrahan’s three-month break from computer programming to concentrate on writing has now lasted fifteen years and counting. He lives in Ireland and has written more gaming books than he can readily recall by virtue of the alchemical transmutation of guilt and tea into words. ‘Castle of the Exile’ marks his first foray into the worlds of Warhammer.

A former firefighter in Arkansas, Sean Grigsby writes novels, comics and scripts about everything from dragons to robots, and has been featured in Amazing Stories magazine, Tor.com, and several other short story anthologies. ‘Best Death Wins’ is his first story for Black Library.

Award-winning author Rob J Hayes has been a student, a banker, a marine research assistant, a chef, and a keyboard monkey more times than he cares to count, but eventually his love of fantasy and reading drew him to the life of a writer. He is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Anarchy’s End’.

George Mann is an author and editor based in the East Midlands. For Black Library, he is best known for his stories featuring the Raven Guard, which include the audio dramas Helion Rain and Labyrinth of Sorrows, the novella The Unkindness of Ravens, plus a number of short stories.

By day, Filip Wiltgren is a mild-mannered communication officer at Linköping University, where he also teaches communication and presentation skills at a post-graduate level. But by night, he turns into a frenzied ten-fingered typist, clawing out jagged stories of fantasy and science fiction, which have found lairs in places such as Analog, IGMS, Grimdark, Daily SF, and Nature Futures. Filip roams the Swedish highlands, kept in check by his wife and kids.

Jonathan Green’s contributions to the Warhammer 40,000 universe include the Black Templars books Crusade for Armageddon and Conquest of Armageddon and the novel Iron Hands. In the Warhammer World, he wrote Necromancer, Magestorm and The Dead and the Damned. He is also the author of numerous short stories and the Path to Victory gamebooks Herald of Oblivion, featuring Imperial Fists Space Marines, and Shadows over Sylvania. He lives and works in London.

Edoardo Albert is a writer and historian specialising in the Dark Ages. He finds that the wars and cultures of the early Medieval period map very well onto the events of the 40th and 41st millenniums. Silent Hunters is his first novel for Black Library. For Warhammer 40,000, he has also written the short stories ‘Green and Grey’, ‘Last Flight’, ‘Born of the Storm’, and the novella Lords of the Storm.

Mike Brooks is a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Warhammer 40,000 novel Rites of Passage, the Necromunda novella Wanted: Dead, and various short stories. When not writing, he plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

J C Stearns is a writer who lives in a swamp in Illinois with his wife and son, as well as more animals than is reasonable. He started writing for Black Library in 2016 and is the author of the short story ‘Wraithbound’, as well as ‘Turn of the Adder’, included in the anthology Inferno! Volume 2 and ‘The Marauder Lives’, in the Horror anthology Maledictions. He plays Salamanders, Dark Eldar, Sylvaneth, and as soon as he figures out how to paint lightning bolts, Night Lords.

John French is the author of The Solar War, the first in the Siege of Terra series, as well as several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection and Incarnation for The Horusian Wars and two tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe Award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies and Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

Nate Crowley is an SFF author and games journalist who lives in Walsall with his wife, daughter, and a cat he insists on calling Turkey Boy. He loves going to the zoo, playing needlessly complicated strategy games, and cooking incredible stews. Severed is his third story for Black Library, the others being ‘Empra’ and ‘The Enemy of My Enemy’.

Steven B Fischer is a resident physician living in the US Pacific Northwest. When he’s not too busy cracking open a textbook, he can be found exploring the Cascade Mountains by bike, boat, or boot. Steven’s work for Black Library includes the short story ‘The Emperor’s Wrath’, which featured in Inferno! Volume 1.

Hailing from the wilds of Derbyshire, Robert M Leahy was an editor, budding author and esteemed Black Library veteran. A lifelong fan of literature, film and the arts, Rob adored sci-fi and fantasy in any medium, however it was his unrivalled passion for books that inspired him to pursue a career in the publishing industry, and led him to pen the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘The Emperor’s Light.’

Peter Fehervari is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Requiem Infernal, Cult of the Spiral Dawn and Fire Caste, as well as the novella Fire and Ice from the Shas’o anthology. He has also written many short stories for Black Library, including the T’au-themed ‘Out Caste’ and ‘A Sanctuary of Wyrms’, the latter of which appeared in the anthology Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters. He also wrote ‘Nightfall’, which was in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology, and ‘The Crown of Thorns’. He lives and works in London.

Miles A Drake is a professional bartender and aspiring author based in Amsterdam, Holland. His work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘The Flesh Tithe’ and ‘Ghosts of Khaphtar’.

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy series includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

Peter McLean has written several short stories for Black Library, including ‘Baphomet by Night’, ‘No Hero’, ‘Sand Lords’ and ‘Lightning Run’ for Warhammer 40,000, and the Warhammer Horror tale ‘Predations of the Eagle’. He grew up in Norwich, where he began story-writing, practising martial arts and practical magic, and lives there still with his wife.

Danie Ware is the author of the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin 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 Indomitus.

‘They shall be pure of heart and strong of body, untainted by doubt and unsullied by self-aggrandisement.’ Praxamedes had spoken without thought, the words of the Codex Astartes coming to him unbidden and reaching his tongue before he could stop them.

‘Is that censure of a senior officer, Lieutenant Praxamedes?’ asked Aeschelus as he looked away from the command bridge’s main viewing display. The Ultramarines captain paced across the strategium of the Ithraca’s Vengeance, heading to where his second-in-command stood alongside the task force’s other lieutenant, Nemetus.

The polished blue of their armour danced with the amber-and-red glow of console lights, smudged by a bright plasma gleam shining from the tactical videolith that dominated the wall of the large command chamber. Tac-slaved servitors wired to terminals and augur banks grunted and chattered their dataflows to azure-robed overseers, who in turn compiled reports for their Space Marine officers. Behind them, Shipmaster Oryk Oloris, in heavy trousers that were tucked into knee-high boots and a crisp white shirt beneath his Ultramarines uniform tunic, prowled the deck with a watchful eye.

Praxamedes instantly regretted his momentary lapse.

‘As a scholar of the lord primarch’s teachings, you would know that the Codex Astartes has much to say on respect for the chain of command.’ Aeschelus came alongside his two officers and half-turned back towards the main screen. He opened his hand towards the screen, indicating the starship that drifted across the spray of stars, plumes of blue and white plasma ejecting haphazardly from a ruptured reactor. ‘Our preliminary surveyor reports indicate that we have disabled their weapons grid. The threat is minimal.’

‘My words, brother-captain, were in reference to Nemetus’ overly keen desire to lead the boarding,’ Praxamedes told his superior. ‘There are still enemy vessels in the vicinity.’

‘Two destroyers,’ scoffed Nemetus. ‘Too fast a prey to hunt on our own. As soon as we give chase, they will disappear into the asteroids and gas clouds on the boundary of the third orbital sphere. Would you follow them into that, knowing that they could turn on us under the cover of our overwhelmed scanners?’

‘That was not my suggestion, brother-lieutenant,’ said Praxamedes, frowning. It was an occasional fault of Nemetus to protest against an ill-thought strategy that had not, in fact, been raised, perhaps purely to show that he had considered and discarded such action himself. ‘Our primary objective is destruction of the enemy. Boarding brings unnecessary risk, at a time when the battle groups of Fleet Quintus must conserve their strength.’

‘That is a Hellbringer-class cruiser,’ added Nemetus. ‘Nobody has built one for eight thousand years. It is a piece of archeotech in its own right.’

‘The lord primarch would also favour heavily any intelligence we might glean from its cogitator banks,’ said Aeschelus. ‘We are at the forefront of the crusade, encountering foes fresh to the battle. This is a raider, an assault ship built for planetary attack. Perhaps this ship comes from beyond the Cicatrix Maledictum and could shed light on what is occurring in the Imperium Nihilus lost beyond the warp rifts.’

This time, Praxamedes was wise enough to hold his tongue, wishing the whole conversation would be forgotten. Aeschelus noticed his lieutenant’s reticence and continued.

‘You urge caution with a depleted resource, which is laudable, but I would not spend the lives of the lord primarch’s warriors needlessly.’ Aeschelus allowed his voice to travel a little further, carrying to other members of the command crew across the strategium. It was typical of Aeschelus’ fine touch of command that he would turn potential remonstration into a moment to inspire others. It was a knack that Praxamedes sorely lacked, nor had any idea how to acquire despite his efforts.

‘For near a decade, as ship-board chronometers reckon it, we have fought hard in the crusade of the lord primarch. At the outset there was treachery and catastrophe, losses suffered before the fleet had even left Terra. Our own task force lost its noble group master to the plague purges. Those here, and that came before, knew that there would be no easy victories, that a galaxy broken asunder by the witchery of our enemies would be an unwelcoming battlezone. Yet even the most pessimistic among us would not have countenanced the uncountable labours and obstacles that Fleet Quintus has found in its path.

‘Every victory has been hard-fought and we have met with more reverses than those in other fleets. Each foe must be overcome in turn – every opportunity to rise from the shadows of past setbacks must be seized. Before us lies a prize, won by our own endeavour, that may lift the fortunes of not just the Ithraca’s Vengeance or Battle Group Faustus, but perhaps bring heart to all of Crusade Fleet Quintus that our extraordinary travails have been to purpose.’

‘A prize that is even now trying to slip from our fingers,’ growled Nemetus, nodding towards the videolith. ‘See how they crawl towards the stellar flotsam, seeking sanctuary in its midst. We must seize the moment, brother-captain.’

‘And I stand ready to lead the attack, as always,’ said Praxamedes. ‘As the longest serving lieutenant it would be my honour to do so.’

‘I have no doubt that you would be determined and diligent in the execution of the attack, Praxamedes, but I think this operation is more suited to the temperament of Nemetus.’ The captain turned his full attention to the second lieutenant. ‘Assemble your boarding force swiftly. Take control of the enemy strategium and extract what you can from the cogitators.’

‘You’ll need charges, to scuttle the ship when you are done,’ said Praxamedes.

‘There will be no need for that,’ said Nemetus. ‘It looks as though their reactors are already descending towards critical state. A few hours from now there will be nothing left but plasma.’

‘All the more reason to fly swift and fight with narrow purpose,’ said Aeschelus.

‘If we’re set on the mission, I’ll review the augur data and calculate the approach vectors that will bring you most swiftly to your objective, brother.’ Praxamedes lifted a fist to his chest to salute the departing officer.

Nemetus returned the gesture of respect with a nod. ‘For the primarch and the Emperor.’

When the lieutenant had exited the strategium, Praxamedes turned to move towards the augur terminals. Aeschelus stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He spoke quietly.

‘I know that you think I undervalue you, Prax. I will give you battle command soon, I give you my word. It’s just…’

‘Nemetus is the more dynamic of us?’

‘Restless,’ Aeschelus replied. ‘Nemetus excels in direct action. In all truth, would you have him providing overview for the expedition while you were leading the squads? Is that truly the best use of his and your aptitudes?’

Praxamedes said nothing. He had spoken out too much already and did not wish to push his superior’s patience any further. In truth, he felt it was Aeschelus, in longing to prove his worth in the eyes of the primarch, that felt undervalued. Like many in the latest cohort of recruits pushed to the leading edges of the crusade, Aeschelus had not been in the fleet when those early disasters had occurred. He had not witnessed how the hope and excitement of the crusade’s potential had withered in a matter of months.

Perhaps that was a good thing. Praxamedes had enough self-awareness to admit, to himself if no other, that those early experiences had given him a more pessimistic outlook than his new commander. The captain hoped Nemetus would bring glory to the Ithraca’s Vengeance with some daring act, and Praxamedes was well aware of his own deficiencies in that regard. He was neither charismatic nor blessed with startling initiative. He was diligent and capable, and those were qualities that perhaps Battle Group Faustus needed right now when another serious setback might break the morale of the whole Fleet Quintus.

But Aeschelus was not interested in such thoughts and so Praxamedes kept them to himself.

‘As you will it, brother-captain,’ he said simply.

Aeschelus gave a nod of dismissal to set Praxamedes about his task, yet as the lieutenant moved away the captain felt the admonition in his formality. His second-in-command doubtless meant well but the last thing the command needed at the moment was negativity. There were finally reports of good news from the other battle groups, and while Faustus still laboured hard against warp storms and a ceaseless swarm of small but diverting traitor attacks, Aeschelus was determined that he would make a breakthrough soon.

Praxamedes tended to think in tactical terms, lacking the longer view of the strategic that had been inculcated into Aeschelus as part of his rapid training to the rank of captain. He and others like him had been despatched to the cutting edge of the Indomitus Crusade to bring some renewed urgency, particularly across Crusade Fleet Quintus.

Fresh blood, fresh energy.

Those had been the words of the lord primarch. Not heard in person, as Lord Guilliman was far from Terra leading the crusade when Aeschelus had been sent to his command. It wasn’t like the days when Praxamedes and the first torchbearer fleets had been sent out. No fanfare, no primarch. Just reinforcements and a renewed will to press into the darkness.

One day, perhaps soon, Aeschelus would have the honour. One day he would stand before the lord primarch in victory, recognised for an effort that changed the fortunes of the fleet.

The captain broke from his reverie to find Oloris standing close by, a dataslate in hand. The shipmaster raised a fist to his forehead.

‘Latest fleet dispositions, captain.’ The unaugmented human presented the dataslate and withdrew a step, brushing a wisp of blond hair from his pale face.

‘Anything of note?’ asked Aeschelus, knowing that Oloris could be trusted to review the information relevant to their current course of action.

‘We received word that Sword of Justice and the Vaputatian both broke warp to rendezvous with the support fleet.’

‘That leaves nobody on our starward flank. A little early for refit.’ Aeschelus scrolled through the report but Oloris provided the answer first.

‘They each had an unexpected encounter with a battleship-class enemy. They were able to break away but not before taking heavy damage.’

Aeschelus found the entry and accessed the engagement report. ‘No identifier. Possible traitor flagship. Heavy lance arrays outranged our ships.’

‘And us, captain,’ said Oloris. He hesitated, cleared his throat and continued, ‘Lieutenant Praxamedes wishes to know if we are proceeding with the boarding action.’

Aeschelus looked up. The lieutenant was at the augur console, ostensibly engaged in his preparations, though his enhanced hearing was more than capable of picking up the conversation between captain and shipmaster. It was protocol for any matters concerning the running of the vessel to come through the shipmaster, but it seemed peculiar on this occasion that Praxamedes had not delivered his question directly. It was likely that he was being more circumspect after his uncharacteristically outspoken moment.

‘You have concerns, Prax?’ the captain said, hoping informality would assure his subordinate that he was not in any way being censured. ‘You think there is a danger presented by this rogue battleship?’

‘It is a possibility, captain,’ said Praxamedes, turning from his work. ‘The engagement with the Sword of Justice took place within the last two days, only four hundred and fifty thousand miles from our current position. What if it’s the Desolator?’

‘I am surprised you put stock in such tales, lieutenant,’ said Aeschelus. He snorted, shaking his head. ‘The Desolator? Rumour and hearsay. The grumblings of reluctant Imperial Navy officers.’

‘You think there is no truth to the reports, captain?’ Praxamedes approached, darting a look towards Oloris that betrayed their conspiracy. ‘Seven vessels lost or driven off in the last thirty days, all within this sub-sector.’

‘There is no phantom enemy battleship striking with the speed of a frigate and disappearing.’ Aeschelus raised a finger to forestall Oloris as the shipmaster opened his mouth to speak. ‘And it certainly is not The Ninth Eye, that identification was based on the tiniest fragment of augur return and vox-scatter. Battle Group Command insist that there is no Alpha Legion presence in this whole sector. You want me to ignore the prize we have won based on the chattering of Navy officers?’

‘I wished to clarify our intent, captain,’ Praxamedes said stiffly. ‘Your will is clear.’

‘It is,’ growled Aeschelus, now irritated by the lieutenant’s intervention. ‘Ready your calculations for Lieutenant Nemetus as quickly as possible.’

Aeschelus turned his eyes back to the drifting ship on the main display. This equivocation and rumour-mongering was just one of the many symptoms of the fleet’s morale problems. He should not fault Praxamedes for falling prey to the same deficiencies as others caught up in the long tale of misfortune, but it was starting to affect his judgement. Despite his earlier words to the lieutenant, this kind of irrational behaviour, coupled with overfamiliarity to the non-Space Marine crew, made Aeschelus wonder if Praxamedes really was suited to any kind of battle command.

With the order for the boarding action given, the tone aboard the Ithraca’s Vengeance changed from one of pensive watchfulness to energetic activity. The crews of the gun decks remained alert, sensor stations poring over the broken flank of the heavy cruiser, seeking any sign of sudden life from their foe. From the command bridge came firing solutions, pinpointing breaches in the enemy’s armoured skin, selected to prepare the way for the incoming attack. In the flight bays the roar of plasma engines joined the thud of armoured boots, filling each launch deck with the noise of pending war. Red-clad tech-priests croaked and burbled sermons of the Machine-God to bless their charges before launch, lower adepts of the Cult of Mars anointing the gunships’ weapons and targeting arrays with unguents while nano-laced censer smoke drifted into idling intakes to cleanse engine feeds.

Squad by squad, the boarding parties assembled at the mustering deck between the two flanking launch halls. Nemetus paced the concourse at the hall’s centre, passing a critical eye over the thirty Space Marines as they came to attention. From the ship’s complement he had selected three squads of Intercessors, the backbone of the new Primaris formations. Standing to attention, weapons presented, an unmoving line of Ultramarines blue, they awaited the order to break rank and move to board the gunships.

Unsullied by self-aggrandisement.

The words of Praxamedes lingered in the thoughts of Nemetus while he readied himself for the battle ahead. Whether intended for Aeschelus or Nemetus, that softly spoken line from the Codex Astartes had carried the same vehemence as a shouted outburst from any other. Praxamedes was calm to the point of coolness and guarded in everything he said. To have spoken as he did was almost without precedent.

Helmet under his arm, Nemetus walked along the ranks, inspecting every warrior. Each was impeccably turned out, a credit to themselves and the dedication of the armourium. Sergeant Villina lifted fist to chest as Nemetus reached the front of the formation once more.

‘Most excellent, brother-sergeant, fit for a parade before the lord primarch himself!’

‘And ready for more than just a parade, brother-lieutenant,’ added the veteran sergeant.

‘I am sure of it, Villina. It is my honour to lead them again.’

The Codex Preparatory Statements on the Nature of the Adeptus Astartes continued, and it was from the following words of the lord primarch that Nemetus took inspiration.

They will be bright stars on the firmament of battle, Angels of Death whose shining wings bring swift annihilation to the enemies of man.

A bright star in the firmament of battle.

Bright stars were in short supply of late, with the Imperium beset by all foes, both ancient and modern. A relative latecomer to the Indomitus Crusade, Nemetus had learned from afar of its great reconquest whilst undergoing his transformation and training. He knew the power of the stories that returned from the exploits of humanity’s finest warriors. He had heard temple bells ringing the triumphs of the lord commander, listened to the cheers from hundreds of thousands of throats as great victories were read from the balcony-pulpits. As a Primaris Marine, he was to be the new exemplar of everything the Adeptus Astartes represented.

And yet the words of Praxamedes still bit deep.

Unsettled, he passed an expert eye over the next warriors – a squad of Eradicators, their melta rifles at the ready. They would be the breaching team once the expedition reached the enemy strategium. Nemetus’ gaze moved between them and the Intercessors, noting that most of their wargear was freshly issued.

Many of Aeschelus’ command had been sent as reinforcements to Fleet Quintus, as had he and Nemetus; only a few were longer-serving, having departed Terra at the crusade’s outset. Praxamedes was among those that had seen the earliest fighting, the most terrible wars and dogged campaigns. A member of Fleet Quintus since its inception, he had risen from the ranks while Nemetus and Aeschelus, and no few others, had been trained to their officer roles. Such had been the early casualties among the Space Marines – a force that lived by the creed of leading from the front – that deaths among the first Primaris officers had eliminated almost half the Adeptus Astartes leadership of Fleet Quintus within three years. Battlefield promotions and brevet ranks were good as a stop-gap, but as a longer term solution Nemetus and others had been command-trained from the outset of their inductions.

Was Praxamedes’ slight genuinely aimed at Aeschelus, a subtle admonition for a superior who had been promoted ahead of him?

That was an unkindness to Praxamedes, Nemetus decided. The very moments before battle were not the best time to weigh up the motivations of his brother-officers, and Nemetus had nothing but respect for his fellow lieutenant. Praxamedes had simply been urging his usual circumspect approach, nothing more.

Nemetus turned his attention to the remaining members of his expedition. A little apart from the Intercessors stood ten Incursors, two combat squads of dedicated close assault specialists under Sergeant Dorium and Sergeant Lato. Clad in armour incorporating the most sophisticated internal auspex systems, they would pave the way for the main force, their bolt carbines ideally suited to the closer confines of the enemy starship. It had been just days since they had last seen action, and their wargear told a different story to that of the Intercessors. Here and there the lieutenant spied bare ceramite over some recently suffered damage, and the paint of their livery was much scratched.

‘Is that blood?’ Nemetus demanded, directing an accusing finger towards the gauntlet of Brother Sennecus.

The Incursor lifted his hand and inspected it. He flexed the red-stained armoured digits.

‘Yes, lieutenant,’ Sennecus replied. ‘I ripped out the heart of a secessionist in our last engagement. The red mark is a trophy of our victory, brother-lieutenant.’

‘Yes, I have heard of this “battle paint”, brother.’ Nemetus took a step closer and was about to deliver his chastisement when a voice cut across the muster hall.

‘A fitting memorial to a traitor,’ rasped Judiciar Admonius.

Armoured all in back, the Judiciar cut a sinister figure. At his waist hung a great hourglass, filled with dark sand: his tempormortis. Each grain came from the debris of Callosi station, a renegade installation atomised in the first engagement of Battle Group Faustus. Admonius’ zealotry in that action had seen him recruited to the position of Judiciar, on the pathway to becoming a Chaplain.

The dedication that had drawn Admonius to the Reclusiam’s ranks had increased with his acceptance, as if he were afraid that his status as novice would count against him. Nemetus knew better than to gainsay the Judiciar and instead raised a fist in salute.

‘You are joining the boarding force, Brother-Judiciar?’

‘Of course. It is my duty to prosecute the war against the traitors with every fervour. Did you think I would pass on this opportunity?’

Recognising the rhetoric in the question, Nemetus returned his attention to the warriors under his command.

‘Brothers.’ He took a breath, trying to ignore the nagging thoughts that came to him.

Self-aggrandisement.

Was he guilty of that crime?

‘Brothers,’ he began again, taking inspiration from his own mood. ‘Some of you have raised your weapons beside me in battles before this day. Many of you have not, and indeed this is the first encounter with the foe since your preparatory missions. It matters not. We are all Adeptus Astartes. We are all sons of Lord Guilliman. We are all servants of the Emperor.’

He could not resist a glance towards Judiciar Admonius before he continued.

‘It is not for ourselves that we fight, though we owe our brothers our commitment. We were created to spearhead a war far greater than any single warrior. Our foes seem without limit, but we will find it. We shall slay as many as needed, until the galaxy is secured once more for the dominion of humanity.’

He took another breath, settling into himself, finding direction from his own words.

‘Remember that every blow you strike, every bolt you fire, is directed towards that single duty. Know also that at our backs stands the whole of the Imperium, its will bent to the reconquest of lost realms, the succour of enslaved worlds and the destruction of the dark enemy that has brought this wrath upon them. You are the implementation of that will. You are the Emperor’s strength given form. Fight well and you shall not die, for your names shall live on ever after in glory!’

As his triumphant shout reverberated across the hall, Nemetus signalled the embarkation to begin. He felt Admonius beside him and turned his gaze on the Chaplain-in-Waiting.

‘A fine speech,’ said the Judiciar. ‘Now let your deeds echo your words.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Raised in Darkness’ first published in Inferno! Volume 6 in 2021
‘The Exorcism of Karsa V’ first published in Inferno! Volume 6 in 2021
‘Vova’s Climb’ first published in Inferno! Volume 6 in 2021
‘The Stuff of Nightmares’ first published in Inferno! Volume 6 in 2021
‘The Last Knight: Part Two’ first published in Inferno! Volume 6 in 2021
‘The Last Knight: Part One’ first published in Inferno! Volume 5 in 2020
‘Respite’s End’ first published in Inferno! Volume 5 in 2020
‘Castle of the Exile’ first published in Inferno! Volume 5 in 2020
‘Best Death Wins’ first published in Inferno! Volume 5 in 2020
‘No Quarter’ first published in Inferno! Volume 5 in 2020
‘The Karsharat Abomination’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘Firstborn Exile’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘Journey of the Magi’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘Green and Grey’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘Where Dere’s Da Warp Dere’s A Way’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘Blackout’ first published in Inferno! Volume 4 in 2019
‘The Spirit of Cogs’ first published in Inferno! Volume 3 in 2019
‘City of Blood’ first published in Inferno! Volume 3 in 2019
‘Empra’ first published in Inferno! Volume 3 in 2019
‘The Weight of Silver’ first published in Inferno! Volume 3 in 2019
‘The Emperor’s Light’ first published in Inferno! Volume 3 in 2019
‘The Thirteenth Psalm’ first published in Inferno! Volume 2 in 2019
‘What Wakes in the Dark’ first published in Inferno! Volume 2 in 2019
‘Solace’ first published in Inferno! Volume 2 in 2019
‘Turn of the Adder’ first published in Inferno! Volume 2 in 2019
‘The Unsung War’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
‘No Hero’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
‘The Emperor’s Wrath’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
‘The Enemy of My Enemy’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
‘The Firstborn Daughter’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
‘Mercy’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018
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ISBN: 978-1-80407-135-9

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